This machine kills fascists

woody guthrie

This famous slogan was etched into one of Woody Guthrie’s guitars. I’d rather someone of the calibre and integrity of Woody Guthrie in my corner than most of the collective brain power of thousands of the regressive left humanities academics who so fraudulently claim to stand up for the down-trodden. Having recently visited the superb Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa what is patently clear is that Woody, though he was not formally educated, was authentic in the sense that he had “skin in the game” and never played the illiberal idiocratic identitarian politics card — moreover he was always a patriot. No wonder the aforementioned academic hucksters are so frustrated by the cultural rumblings of late now that they are the castrati. Isn’t it remarkable that a major driver of social liberalism and the attendant sexual revolution was popular music (jazz, blues, country and western,  folk, rockabilly, rock and roll, boogie-woogie and even gospel) — yet these dissident and radical artistic pioneers would be deemed to fall squarely into the “basket of deplorables”. So kids pick up a guitar, get to grips with some STEM subjects, and avoid the vulgar indoctrination of much of the humanities. And you’ll have much more fun and meaning to boot.

the-woody-guthrie-center

Walker Percy Wednesday 112

walker percy

percycovercroppea

A lot happened to her. She married, not a Notre Dame boy, but Buddy Dupre, Ed’s brother, a pleasant Tulane DKE, not merely pleasant but charming, the sort of Southern charmer who drinks too much. He had that sweetness and funniness which alcoholic Southern men often have, as if they cannot bear for the world not to be as charming as they are.

*****

It is as if she had only just now decided to become a woman, but not entirely seriously. Having failed at marriage, she has succeeded in farming and doctoring and has discovered that succeeding at anything is a trick, a lark. She’s enjoying herself. She is also exhilarated by my failure and disgrace.

*****

It, the déjà vu, came from the smell of hot Chevy metal and vinyl and seat stuffing tingling in the nostrils and radiating up into the hippocampus of the old brain and into the sights and sounds of the new cortex, which gathers into itself a forgotten world, bits and pieces of cortical memory like old snapshots scattered through an abandoned house.

*****

Mrs. Ernestine Kelly, wife of councilman Jack Kelly, an old fisherman friend of mine and sometime barmate at the Little Napoleon, a very pretty grayhaired woman with a solemn, even sad, expression, whom one thinks of as pious in the old sense, who still observes the old Catholic devotions, still makes First Fridays, sends vials of Lourdes water to sick friends, and from time to time mails me a holy card with a saint’s picture and always the same note: Praying for you and your intentions, on which occasions I always wonder what she is praying for, my doing time in Alabama? mine and Jack’s drinking? my loss of faith? Ellen’s neglect of me for duplicate bridge? And Jan Greene, a youngish, intense blade of a brunette, ex-New Orleanian, wife of a gynecologist colleague and an old-style Catholic who wants to rescue the Church from its messing in politics and revolution, from nutty nuns and ex-nuns, from antipapal priests and malignant heterodox Dutch theologians, and so revive the best of the old Church, that is, orthodox theology, without its pious excesses, meaning Ernestine’s holy pictures and First Fridays.

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Race Pimping

John McWhorter

Race pimping is more than a cottage industry and goes hand-in-hand with conceptual creep. Here is the ever insightful John McWhorter on the topic, well called by Booker T. Washington a long time ago. McWhorter grasps the idea of the imperfectability of mankind, something that rationalists (perhaps necessarily) delude themselves about.

The way we use the word “racism” has become so imprecise, abusive, and even antithetical to genuine activism that change is worth addressing.

However, to understand that racism is real is not to pretend that humans will ever be perfect. If there is a way to eliminate implicit bias entirely, there are no studies showing that the way to do it is to tar and feather anyone displaying the slightest sign of any kind of insensitivity on the Internet for weeks. This new practice is more about self-congratulation than change, turning what began as an unprecedentedly mature understanding of the nature of racism into a grown-up version of tattletaling and cops and robbers. What happened to simply noting civilly that someone has made a mistake?

quote-there-is-a-certain-class-of-race-problem-solvers-who-don-t-want-the-patient-to-get-well-booker-t-washington-54-47-48

Yukio Mishima’s death poem

Yukio Mishima

Mishima died on this day in 1970. The very excellent Damian Flanagan marking this event a year ago.

The sheaths of swords rattle
As after years of endurance
Brave men set out
To tread upon the first frost of the year.

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Eating raccoon with Dr. John

Dr. John

I had a birthday dinner at GW Fins — Mac’s predilections for raccoon and squirrel were sadly not on the menu :) — Article in The Times-Picayune  

On blues musicians, generally: “I never knew there were so many guys named Slim.”

On Aunt Guerneri, who was Sicilian: “She was prejudiced against all Italians.”

On iconic record producer Jerry Wexler: “No comment.”

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Kafka: The Early Years

franz kafka

Warm review of supposedly definitive biography.

His Kafka is, not surprisingly, a complex man, tormented by all the well-documented demons, but also someone who liked to have fun and drink beer, a fan of both movie houses and brothels.

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C+T Milan

cosmos & taxis

Here are the photos from the Milan conference which was a terrific success. Below is the editor-in-chief David Emanuel Andersson holding a copy of the latest issue of C+T.

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Walker Percy Wednesday 111

walker percy

percycovercroppea

There is a slight unpleasantness about doing a psychiatric consultation in a small general hospital. Here a psychiatrist is ranked somewhere between a clergyman and an undertaker. One is tolerated. One sees the patient only if the patient has nothing else to do.

*****

“Very interesting. Okay, okay. Let’s skip the metaphysics. You get into the prefrontal, you get into metaphysics. In any case it’s academic when it comes to managing her. ”

*****

A small matter certainly, especially in Louisiana, where name changes were commonplace to accommodate whatever nation prevailed. German Zweig and Weiss often became La Branche and Le Blanc. Le Blanc and Weiss have been known to become White. No one cares. I know a man named Harry Threefoot whose family changed their name from Dreyfus. From French-Jewish to Choctaw. Why? Who knows? And in Louisiana who cares?

*****

“You know, Doctor, you and I might just be the ones to achieve a meeting of minds over the old mind-body problem, that ancient senseless quarrel. What do you think?”
“Our minds might.”

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The Ozark Mountain Daredevils

music

While traveling through the beautiful Ozarks I was reminded of this band’s compelling sound, at least manifest in their most famous number “Jackie Blue”.

You like your life in a free-form style