Jewel's Gem

Below is an introduction to some elegant and intelligent writing by our friend Jewel, writing about the difference between a half-naked creep celebrating his nihilistic personal urge to destroy, and the making of a high-precision, high-intelligence piece of work in the form of a musical instrument. This is one of the nicest pieces of short prose I've read in a long time. The link at the bottom will take you to the original.

Is the young anarchist in the photograph proud of himself? Is he? He is all but naked, he is holding in his teeth a pair of very expensive sunglasses, and though frozen for a moment forever, you can make out the swagger of a man who believes he has accomplished something very important with his wanton act of vandalism. He has made a statement, of course.

Death to the police! The law be damned.

But I am not interested in him...he's a piece of wondrous crapmanship, all right. No. It is the trumpet that has caught my eye.

The trumpet was made according to very strict guidelines. The combination of copper and nickel and other metals was exact, the precise width and bend of the pipes were carefully hammered out, and it was passed on to someone else who buffed and cleaned and polished and buffed again and again and again.

http://tastyinfidelicacies.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-trumpet-could-speak.html

U B U 2 U

Even now in the middle of a very long and eccentric life I find myself sometimes wincing and grimacing over the rise of unbidden memories from random experiences that just won't go away in spite of whatever discipline I use to keep them away. Some ugly memories are scars that won't fade. One such nasty memory is of a repulsive young woman at a dance hall whose tee-shirt bore the caption: "I wouldn't wanna be you."

I can appreciate the idea of not wanting to be you. Regardless of who I might be, I'd rather be me than not. I don't want to be you. Fair enough. But I don't want you not to be you. Islam, for all its obvious faults, at least understands that no one is ever going to be the Perfect Man, he being, according to Islam, Mohammed, not to be repeated, only imitated. Islam, for all its totalitarianism, doesn't attempt to make anyone into the kind of person "we all should be." Islam settles for orthopraxy, for outward ritual behaviour. For the totalitarian Leftist, this is not enough. He not only rejects you as you but demands that you conform to his vision of the Ideal Man as you. It's one thing not to want to be me; but it is something creepy to not want me to be me. That's me The Individualist writing. I value Privacy. Muslims and the Left value Publicity. No, I wouldn't want to be you, but that's not a problem for me. It is a problem for the communitarian.

For the communitarian, the idea of Another not being a conformist in all ways, body, mind and soul, is an outrage against Nature. Communitarians, Statists, Muslims, collectivists of all sorts, they hate individuals and individualism. Usually this is of no concern to most of us. Unfortunately, there is a growing movement of middle-aged hippies in government and areas of social control, e.g our universities, who are fanatical in their drive to make all others "not themselves." We must all be One.
I'm rereading Matthew Arnold today. I read Arnold as a young man, ( not, at the time, realizing that in the doing I was preparing myself for marriage in middle-age,) from a sense of duty rather than passion. Today, for me, he raises the question of the benefits of Culture, by which he means High Culture of the mid-Victorian era. He writes of others as in need of the education they lack, an education which makes their philistine lives "hole and corner." Like most people, he doesn't like people not like himself. He writes of others: "Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come from their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?"1.

Good grief! Would I want to be a man like him? Not for all the money on Earth. Wouldn't even want to be Elvis. Nor does Arnold, for all his obnoxious snobbery, intend anyone to think others should be him or like him. In that he is ultimately far superior to the average Leftist. Arnold's snobbery begins and ends with himself. He did not kill anyone in a futile and hubristic attempt to make a New Man. Such cannot be said of the Death Hippies who today rule our many nations of Modernity, lands of Sweetness and Light, where ignorant Leftards clash on sight.

Who then is the Humanist? He who doesn't want to be you is probably fine with not being you. He who doesn't like you is probably fine with that too. It is he who doesn't want you to be you who is the man we must not tolerate. I wouldn't be someone else for all the money on Earth. Nor would I want to make another not himself even if that someone is someone I'd gladly hang from a lamp-post. People have rights, innately, and the most basic right is to be their own Lords. Sometimes others are so disgusting I can't shake the horror of the vision of them; but that's my problem, not theirs. I can live with it. Can our collectivist Culture Curators? Can we live with them?

1. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1869; rpt. revised 1933 and19 50; p. 52.

Election Night of the Living Dead

"I don't get how people can not vote for Obama. He's so inspiring. Every time I see him I think of the Foo Fighters song, "There goes my hero". That's pretty much because Obama is my hero.

I think he will make this world a better place. I'm pretty sure he will end world hunger and probably AIDS too. I just know he can do all this cause when I hear him speak I get excited on the inside."

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081014094746AAd2S8M

I quoted the genius above recently for the sake of the shock value; but I didn't realize then, which I certainly do now, that the shock's on me. Unlike the thrill of the Night of the Living Dead, I'm not enjoying this zombie take-over of the land. In fact, this horror-show is really scaring me. I don't mind being scared, as a rule. I live a pretty rough life, and part of the reason I do so is because it's so scary. But that's my personal life. The nation, that's a different story. That's something far more interesting and important than my own petty doing, no matter how important my petty doings might be to me. Unfortunately, many, maybe more than half of Americans, don't see that their petty doings are no more important to the nation than mine. They seem to think they actually matter to everyone. Sorry, but no one is that important. Nope. Not me, not even you, and especially not that f*****g weasel Obama. The beauty of knowing ones one relative unimportance is in the knowing that none are much different, and that we must all go our own ways as well as we can without recourse to demagogues and demiurges. A nation of ordinary folks doing their own thing is what makes the nation so great. That's America. What we see below is from one of Dante's middling circles of Hell. Which one? Maybe the one for the self-obsessed, for gluttons and sloths and card-cheats. Here's our America. Look out, here come the zombies!

Rick Moran, "Meet the people who are going to put Obama in office." American Thinker. 15 Oct. 2008

This is really incredible. It stunned Ben Smith over at Politico where I got these quotes. It floored a GOP consultant who conducted the focus group where the people were quoted.

And it is perhaps the single most depressing thing I've read this entire campaign season:

The GOP consultant emailed Smith about a focus group he just finished conducting. Evidently, he showed a hard hitting ad on Ayers to the group and this was the email he sent:

Reagan Dems and Independents. Call them blue-collar plus. Slightly more Target than Walmart.

Yes, the spot worked. Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

For the first time, I really feel scared about the future. These people are like the Germans in the election of 1933. They know what's coming but they don't care. Back then, all they cared about was that Hitler was going to give them a job and keep their lunch pails full. And stick it to the Jews. And restore Germany's "rightful place" in the world. They knew full well that Hitler would destroy the independent unions, crack down on dissent, and turn Germany from a very free country into a fascist dictatorship.

Part of this is McCain's fault. He bought into that populist crap about greedy Wall Street. Well, so as ye sow, so shall ye reap. And we're about to reap the whirlwind.

In this kind of atmosphere any kind of a government is possible. And I don't know if Obama can resist the kind of raw power these nincompoops are willing to give him. Who could?

You need a license to own a dog but any fool can vote.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/meet_the_people_who_are_going.html

I'm keen of Godwin's Law, i.e. that to call an opponent a Nazi is to lose the argument. I'm not calling Osama Barka supporters Nazis. I refer to them instead a Death Hippies, Conformity Hippies, Povertarians, Irrationalists, Communitarians, and nutters. Many of the intelligentsia in support of Osama are Left dhimmi fascists. Few are going to be Nazis. But many of the above are going to feel emotionally right at home living the nightmare that was Nazi Germany.

First they'll come for Truepeers, then they'll come for Charles-- by which point I hope to be long gone outta here, maybe in some mountain hide-away in the jungles of Paraguay, formerly but seemingly not for much longer, "The Last Place on Earth for the Worst people in the World."

****

What about Sarah Palin? She spoke to Rush Limbaugh [transcript]. Of him I know nothing. Of Sarah Palin I know this:

"So, you know, I’m going out there and I’m just simply speaking. So be it that I’m a simple talker, but I’m just going out there and letting people know the differences and how absolutely paramount it is that voters are paying attention and that voters are understanding candidates’ records, their associations, their plans for the future; instead of being kind of wrapped up into all this rhetoric of Obama’s and buying into it and not holding him accountable for the things that he’s done, the things that he’s said, his associates, and where he wants to take America."

Rattle and Chain: Night of the Death Hippies

I picked this up from Terry Glavin:

On Wednesday, April 16, Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee co-founder Lauryn Oates will be debating Stopwar.ca co-chair Derrick O'Keefe. The proposition: "THE CANADIAN MILITARY SHOULD LEAVE AFGHANISTAN AT ONCE".

This debate is part of the Langara Dialogues series, held at the Vancouver Public Library's central branch.
****

I came, I saw, I conked out. I left the Vancouver Public Library debate this evening after ninety minutes of what moderator David Berner called "a muscular debate," on 'The presence of Canadian armed forces in Afghanistan: Should they stay or should they go?' and I found myself thinking of the political theorist so popular in the 1960s, C. Joseph McDonald, well-know author of thesis and synthesis on war and conflict in Southeast Asia. McDonald wrote, if I recall it properly; "One, two, three, four; what the hell are we fighting for? Five, six, seven, eight; open up the Pearly Gate. Who pee we are all going to die." It was a profound experience I can tell you.

One of Canada's leading intellectuals, Derrik O'Keefe, of Stop War, spoke in favor of Canadian troops leaving Afghanistan immediately or so. He was really really convincing. He said, for example, that the whole imperialist venture is because the Americans, (meaning Bush and his cabal of neo-cons,) are really really greedy and they want to capture Afghanistan so they can control a copper mine. They tried to get it but the Chinese got it instead so it's OK. Americans are bad because they bomb villagers and kill really big numbers of innocent civilians and stuff and the people don't like it and Canada should stop listening to Steven Harper who only does things because Bush tells him to and that's because of the neo-cons. They are bad. And torture? Americans do that to nice people who don't deserve it because they are nice. It's imperialism because some corporations are pulling the strings that-- I don't know-- maybe rip out the fingernails of babies or something, just like typical American war-mongrels do.

War is bad. One might say war is poopy.

We should get out of Afghanistan because America made the Taliban up and now it supports war-lords who sell lots of opium that causes medical problems for the socially marginalized on the streets of Vancouver who don't have homes though they have a right to them and more buses at night too.

Well, I'm bored to tears. I suffered through 90 minutes of puerile nonsense that was supposed to pass as -- What? Wind? I have no idea. Like most of these events, the level of debate was on a level with a Ralph Bakshi cartoon but not as entertaining.

Yes, Ralph Bakshi came to mind as I took mental notes on how to be cool like the award- winning journalist who tried to come across like Dan Brown, author of the DaVinci Code. I'm never going to be cool like him. I must seek counselling, consulting, or consoling or constellations or something. I think I'm hopeless. When I say "Imperialism," I laugh. This evening someone said: "It's an old fashioned word but..." I Am Not Cool. Not fashionable. Why do I even bother to live?

If you missed this important event, well, I ne'vah! Shame on you!

This is an indication of what you missed when you went to the hockey game:

"Whichever way you look at it, nothing changes the fact that between now and 2011, Canadians will be maimed and killed in Afghanistan because the Liberal Party of Canada does not think this is an opportune moment for a federal election and the Conservative Party of Canada insisted on this being a confidence motion. Canadians and Afghanis will die because of partisan politics in Canada. It is tragically shameful."

Now, am I the heartless prick who wrote recently that something or other is shamefully twagic? Hmm. I think maybe yes. Did I have occasion to pick on some pretend-concern about The people! from a Death Hippie? I think again maybe yes. I think I didn't have much sympathy for whoever it was who used the lives of people he doesn't know to make some cheap political statement about something that his pre-fab ideology finds for him offensive. I think maybe yes I get pissed right off when people in the West use peasants in far-off and unknown places as tragically shameful victims who aren't accorded status as or understood as real people. I think really maybe yes I get disgusted by poseurs who show off by talking about how upset they are about "suffering" and the evils of capitalism. I think they make me puke. I think if spoiled fat kids in the West want to promote "social justice" they should find some dark place and go fuck themselves.Cause, cause, cause? Cause there are real people suffering from real injustice that has not a thing to do with fat kids in the West emoting in public.

My vote for the evening's best line goes to Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee co-founder Lauryn Oates who spoke on behalf of charity workers in Afghanistan, of which she is one and has been for 12 years, taking some genuine courage, and more. She condemned the "concerned" as having a morality of the "Do these jeans make my ass look fat?" type.

That was excellent. Even better was the kid who asked if I'm Terry Glavin. I confessed that I am indeed, and that my car had been towed and I needed $20.00 to get to the airport, and if he'd lend it to me he could go to the office tomorrow and the receptionist would pay him back -- and a bit extra for his trouble. GEE zuz. I thought if people are gullible enough to take in Derek's spiel I could get a quick twenty off the kid. Money is worth more than ideas, it seems clear now.

Yeah, actually, there is a real world. It affects real people. Even those in Afghanistan. It's a real nasty world that takes some real nasty bastards to keep it from going to the dogs in-all. And when the good guys walk away, who walks in? George Bush and the neo-cons are bad? Nope-pers; that'd be me, among others. Bush and the neo-cons are bending over back-asswards to be so nice to the Afghanis in power that this is what "imperialism" brings to the Afghan people:

KABUL (AFP) - An Afghan legislative committee has drafted a bill seeking to introduce Taliban-style Islamic morality codes banning women from wearing make-up in public and forbidding young boys from wearing female fashions.

The draft, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, needs approval by both chambers of the Islamist-dominated parliament and President Hamid Karzai signature to become a law.

"Women and girls are obliged to not wear make-up, wear suitable dresses and observe hijab (veil) while at work or classrooms," said one article of the draft.

It also aims to ban women dancers performing during concerts and other public events as well as on television.

"The mass media including television and cable networks must avoid broadcasting programmes against Islamic morals," it said without giving details.

In a similar move the parliament, which is dominated by former anti-Soviet Islamist warlords, called earlier this month for a ban on dancing and Indian soap dramas on private television networks.

Men and young boys must avoid wearing bracelets, necklaces, "feminist dresses," and hair-bands, the draft reads.

The proposals also demand an end to dog and bird-fighting, pigeon-flying, billiards and video games, all past times favoured by many Afghans.

It demands separate halls for men and women during wedding parties, while loud music is banned at such gatherings. Afghans hold big and costly get-togethers for weddings, usually in a public hall with music.

If the proposals are passed, violators could be fined 500 Afghanis (10 dollars) to 5,000, according to the draft.

The plans mirror many of the laws introduced by the extremist Taliban regime, which ruled the country from 1996 to 2001 with strict Islamic Sharia law.

From Dhimmi Watch: Agence France-Presse

What we have here is a failure to communicate. We have in a formerly hostile sharia state-- a currently hostile sharia state. Bush and the neo-cons and such are so afraid of upsetting the Muslim world that they allow and even pay for more sharia. Courageous and dedicated people like Lauryn Oates will spend 12 years in Afghanistan or even 120 years and not make a bit of good difference so long as there is no force to affect good change. All the well-intentioned school teachers on Earth can camp out in Afghanistan with freezing peasants while U.N bureaucrats whinge and dine in five star hotels in Kabul, and it will do not a speck of good. School teachers without guns to back up themselves and to save their students from the culture of violence and sharia might as well go to Bahamas' Club Med and have a good time.

So, at the end of this you find me, dear reader, siding with the Death Hippies, in this case. If we invaded a sharia state to reimpose a sharia state we should pack it in and let the real work of real revolutionaries reign. Copper mines in Afghanistan? Give me a break. They have lapis lazuli. That's worth some bucks, and some daring. But you can't mine it in a war zone. That war has to stop. And you can't mine it in a sharia state. That has to stop too.

So, what do you do? Sigh-igh. Death Hippies clappering at the library. All them, rattle and chain.

More comments at No Dhimmitude.

A Drop in the River of Time

She was in her 50s back then, still an attractive women to look at, very pleasant to be around, gentle and placid, a lady uninvolved in the brute rush of—men. She spoke softly, sometimes seemingly unaware of the import of her anecdotes, such as the story of the nice young man she had a slight affair with many years before, shortly after the war, a nice young man from Denmark, a young man who’d been conscripted into the German Army, who’d been reluctant to join, who’d gone to the tropics afterward to live a quiet life as a hand on a riverboat in the jungle. She looked still surprised when she told me the other young men on the boat didn’t like her boyfriend, there being no reason she could see for them not liking him, he being attractive and nice, courteous and kind. The other young men on the boat tormented him, seemingly for his time in the army, which she felt was unfair to him, he having been conscripted. And she sighed and looked dreamy when she said he fell overboard one evening and was caught in the boat propellers, how awful it was to see him like that, how she’d never forget him. “He was so nice, you know.”

I do know. I recall laughing out loud when she told me that. I knew some “nice old men” who were nice. I laughed then; I could laugh now. We might all in time know others of various sorts who claim this or that, those who believe for or against; and in the muddle of Wonder we could come away with stained and dirty faces all of us looking much the same.

Over the course of the long way through the years I’ve met nice men and not so nice men, some of whom of either kind weren’t much of either mostly. Some I’ve met have claimed their innocence, which makes me laugh; and I’ve met others who claim they want only justice, which makes me howl. Those I meet, each and every unique one, all the sons of their fathers.

Hemmingway did it, and so too did Kosinski, between them Sven Hassel doing it in a book I’m reading this evening. They italicize parenthetical narratives. Before ‘our heroes’ stand the giddy old lady at the wall and shoot her, let me step back a bit and bring out the fathers of our children, anecdotal and italicized.

‘Look, they can do what they bloody well like,’ declared the youth, vaingloriously certain of himself. ‘I don’t give a tinker’s damn for any of ‘em. Far as I’m concerned, they can go and get knotted.

He was sitting on the draining board, his feet in the sink, eating pickled gherkins from a jar. As he spoke, his companions solemnly nodded their agreement and approval. The house was full of young people, boys and girls, all very vociferous and very sure of themselves; sure of their ability to stand out against authority and of their willingness to face death rather than fight for a cause they did not believe in. On the chairs and the tables, stretched out on the floor, squatting in the corners, in the kitchen, the salon, the bedroom, this band of young rebels shouted their agreement.

‘It’s not our war!’ cried a disembodied voice from beneath a table. ‘We didn’t start it, we don’t want it, and we’re not going to fight it!’

‘People are dying every day, in their thousands, and the poor fools don’t even know what they’re dying for—‘

‘They torture them at the Gestapo. People are scared to open their mouths and tell the truth anymore,’ declared a young girl who was not quite as young as she looked and was doing her best to seduce a nervous youth who was still a virgin.

‘Well, I’m not scared!’ screamed a fragile-looking creature from his position on top of the unlit stove. ‘When my turn comes to be called up I shall tell them exactly what I think of them!’

‘Hear, hear.’ Muttered his companions, while the nervous youth took off his spectacles and vigorously polished them, rather alarmed at his won daring at being in such company.

‘What happens if the Gestapo comes?’ queried some faint-heart sitting in the passage.

‘Let them come!’ A young boy seated on the kitchen table, who was in the habit of declaiming dramatic poems that he learnt by heart, threw wide his arms and faced them challengingly. ‘Let them come! What do we care? The world is our oyster… and this land is our land, because we are the future! They can’t force us to fight and destroy ourselves!’

One Sunday morning, five months later, their weekly meetings were brought to an end by the sudden arrival of three men. Three men in leather coats, wearing shoulder holsters.

The nervous youth, who greeted their appearance with shrill screams of hysteria, was silenced by one sharp slap across the face.

The young girl who was not so young as she seemed, and how never had succeeded in seducing him, managed to spit out a couple of obscenities before she was kicked in the stomach and pushed to one side.
The boy in the sink had moved to the bathroom and was making love on the floor with his girlfriend. They were separated with a few well placed prods with the butt end of a pistol and sent downstairs to join the others.

The poet wet himself with fright the very moment the intruders arrived. He offered no resistance of any kind.

In a long line, shuffling single file with their heads hanging, fifty-two boys and girls left the house and entered two green coaches that were waiting outside. The world was their oyster, but fear was an unknown quality and they were meeting it face to face for the first time.

For three days they were retained at Stadthausbruke No. 8. Their treatment was not particularly harsh, but it was enough to simply be there; it was enough to learn the meaning of fear and to understand that courage had no place in their lives. Courage was for those with power.

After three days they were put into uniform and sent off for training. Several died during the preliminary courses of instruction; some through accidents, others because they chose to. And as for the rest, they battled on and tried to come to terms with their new situation and their new selves; tried to grow reconciled to the fact that when it came to the point, they were no different from all the other poor idiots whom they so heartily despised.

They didn’t want to fight. It wasn’t their war. They hadn’t started it and they didn’t believe in it. But they fought, just the same.

That’s a passage from my second-favorite Danish Existentialist philosopher, Sven Hassel, Assignment Gestapo. London: Corgi Books, 1965; trans. Jean Ure, rpt. 1973; p.p. 110-111.

Nice kids, likely. Nice young men, nice old men. One drops here, one drops there, 52 drop; all drops in the River of Time. And still the level lowers.