My post on ‘Blogging for Peace’ was timely. Larry Hamelin, the Barefoot Bum, has ordered me to take him off my ‘neoCon blogroll’ because he is personally affronted by my reference, in my earlier post ‘Idiots’ Corner’, to the ‘lickspittle Left’.
Larry – usually a highly reasonable breath of sanity amidst American blogsites awash with irrational triumphalist religiosity and extreme right wing gung-ho politics – has completely misconstrued my meaning. I didn’t have him in mind at all when I used that phrase, but I can’t tell him so as he has admonished me not to reply to his rude emails as he “doesn’t want to be associated with me in any way” and has placed me in his killfile. Oh dear! What next? Conversing with even ostensibly sensible Americans is like walking on eggshells…..
The Barefoot Bum, I sadly conclude, is abysmally ignorant of the minutiae of British politics – utterly insignificant as they are to 99.9 per cent of self-absorbed Americans. If he knew anything about the lamentable state of political debate here, or ever visited sites such as the Guardian’s ironically named ‘Comment is Free’, he would be aware that liberal discourse in the UK is infested by the pathetic “Muslims can do no wrong and their religion should never be criticised because we have wickedly invaded Iraq” babble of Respect supporters and other SWP-type loony Left groupuscules who cannot see the wood for the trees, or the non-sequitur of their absurd ‘argument’, and are so viscerally anti-American – regardless of who is in office there – that they welcome any setback or defeat that the USA suffers in the world. It is these people whom I label the 'lickspittle Left'.
My position, as I set out clearly in my original post, is that the American-British invasion of Iraq, without United Nations’ authorisation, was – quite apart from being illegal and immoral, which latter is the only aspect which seems to worry Larry – criminally stupid and – as many of us were saying it would do before it commenced - has resulted in undermining the West’s moral, military, and material strength. The US and UK should never have gone in there, but as they did there has to be a better option for phased withdrawal than an ignominious helter-skelter pursued by the triumphant jeers of fanatic Islamists. The sooner the UN and other appropriate international bodies are involved in constructing a credible international force to take over in
If the Barefoot Bum thinks that this is a ‘neoCon’ attitude, his usual rational stance has sadly deserted him.
OK, Larry, I’ll remove the Barefoot Bum from my blogroll. A pity – because I hoped that through me your generally sensible and sometimes wise posts would reach some new readers who wouldn’t otherwise have found you.
But I would have had to do it anyway, because as I said in ‘Blogging for Peace’, life’s too short to bother with people who descend to trading personal insults and obscenities, as you have chosen to do. So Goodbye.
8 comments:
Mr Barefoot Bum seems to have "gone on the rag," as we say here in American, but I suspect that all involved may benefit from at least trying from time-to-time to eschew two-valued thinking. It IS difficult, of course, and I do not care to see dialogue buggered by hissy-fits in any case....
AS To the New Cunts referenced /supra/, they are in a peculiar position, indeed, trying to 'act out' a theory of history that, in any case is anachronistic; late-modern, or nation-state, power-politics mis-conducted (twice over!) in the early-postmodern period.
MEES, In his 1977 account of /Meeting At Potsdam/ argues convincingly that the conference in effect was about ending the wartime-alliance. In nation-state relations, it was alliance and not rivalry that was the exceptional condition. Mees further shows that President Truman held a vested american interest in perpetuating an unresolved situation, whereas /quondam/ PM Churchill was /sotto voce/ trying to cook up whatever deals and 'alliances' he could, with Greek fascisti, the Roumanians & Buggers and such gentry....
MEES' Point is that, on the way up, powers invest in chaos; and, on the way down, must bargain for stabilities.
THE Irony of the New Cunts' machinations is that they are dealing wholesale in chaotics as though they was Teddy Roosevelt and even /had/ somewhere left to go. Whereas the Old Atlantic West now is contracting. This is objective, merely, resistance is vain if emotionally-understandable; and, once again, the doom in history reserved for stupidity (and the credentialled non-amateur ideologue in history, all swathed in tenure, theft & professionalist cowardice) is writ large.
FOR Americans, the immediate preceding example, the decline of Britain, had been totally misunderstood in most quarters -- and, most notably to have been missed is that decline over the long-term can bring gains in prosperity to the society not formerly available to any but the /haute bourgeoisie/ in the earlier imperial period.
WE Are all the more, therefore, in need of trying to take the long view:
ISLAM Now is very much on the threshold of its own 'modern' period; necessarily, it must compose its own modernist texts, therefore; and, this it will do in succeeding phases & for itself, as its historians assess the role of their fundamentalist & terroristic early-modern period.
NOW, What the target-societies undergoing decline will do in this present & in the very best-case scenario, and all on their own behalf, is to re-compose their own diplomacies toward alliances with the progressive element in Islam, most notably that represented not by discredited nationalists but, rather, the Ismaili Aga Khan 'Sevener' Shia'a & such factions....
I Perfectly anticipate that, of course, the human story is not over; and, that whole new ways of being for societies await expression in the world; and, as these simply can not be lived in the narrow and yet extravagent terms of our waning metaphor, for the consumption of goods & persons all as 'objects', these new possibilities will find their expression in periods successive to our own; whereas, that said, the all of it makes of me a Whig, indeed; and, whiggish most of all about the long-term outlook...the really long-term, I mean.
AMERICAN-Speaking North America will necessarily retreat to a line East of the Mississippi and North of the Ohio, with a Southwest-ward reach into the Carolinas, East of Appalachia and cut off from the coastal piedmont, by a pullulating Gullah voudon-culture....
SIMILARLY, In old Europe, Islam will rise to the Pyrenees and the alpine ranges, and to the South banks of the Danube. None of this assertion by me need be 'defended'; nor, any more than the geography described, /can/ it be -- the matter is lucent, demographic, /QED/.
THE Great opportunity for our heirs & assigns is that once again, and within our proper linguistic & physical range, causcasionoid Euro-americanos /may/ rediscover actual democratic processes & self-governance....
THIS All, of course, is very much a done deal; /that/ is what I am saying; and, already, these matters in fact are a matter of experimental speculation, by certain inner circles among -- the chinese Han. For if they are not, then, these Chinamen will do no better job for themselves in their looming round than ever did all the Portugees and random Dutchmen before them!
SORRY For my impatient tone,
s/Wook, Senior & CC [/retd/]
A most thought-provoking comment, Emmett, which I hope you will develop on your blog. Such discussions are overdue.
Like you, I account myself a Whig - as was Edmund Burke, of course. I always remember a florid and amply-fleshed president of the Cambridge Union who was a brilliant high-flying young Conservative [sadly, he later committed suicide]. When he was chairing a debate, one of the speakers referred to him as a "crusty old Tory", whereupon he rang his bell, rose, and said: "No Sir, I am a Whig!" "And which variety of Whig are you, Sir?", the speaker persisted, to which he responded: "Sir, I am a FULL-BOTTOMED Whig!" - reducing the House to helpless laughter.
AND So I am too, Sir, at least when I'm not busy being a Baldwin-Tory....
I'M Just digging through Cannadine's 2003 thing, essays on old Churchill, and feel a review coming on!
HAVE Just finished /Anglo-Saxon Attitudes/, a kind of bi- or triennial read.... And, now, I have to drench a horse.
s/Farmer Wook
I knew Angus Wilson quite well. A strange chap. His first novel, "Hemlock and After", I enjoyed, but found his later ones hard going. His life ended sadly with Alzheimers, and his devoted [and much younger] companion, Tony Garrett, had a very difficult few years nursing him.
Angus's biography by another friend, Margaret Drabble, is interesting. There are several references to me.
THE Hell you tell me! I'll dig around here in the stacks -- if it is by Margaret Drabble, even-odds there's a copy tucked in somewhere! I've not read /Hemlock/ -- I shall fossick around & see if it pops up, also....
We can tolerate jihadis, but we can't tolerate each other.
No wonder they feel they can't lose.
Good discussion here in the comments! :)
I'm sorry about Larry, as he is belongs to the minority [if Emmett and Yankee Doodle will forgive me for saying so!] of thinking Americans.
Whether or not Voltaire actually said that he tolerated everything except intolerance, there's more than enough intolerance abroad these days to keep would-be tolerators busy!
I've long wondered if there isn't some permanent misfire in the barefoot bum's hardware. He's a smart guy, and sometimes an insightful one. But he's got such an unpredictable and irrational temper, such a two-fisted way of bullying his way through any argument, and such a maniacal list of hatreds, that most of the time it's difficult to take him seriously.
At any rate, he's now honored us with his absence. All things considered, his best gift to the blogosphere.
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