Editor’s Note: Marlow hits something close to home this morning. It is a topic that has been eating at many of us for a while. There was a minor battle in the Writers Circle that brought it on. Three topics were floated, each of which already had some work done: UAPs, formerly known as “UFOs,” “Chauvin,” and “The President.” One old timer muttered about the latest casualty in Afghanistan, which was…Afghanistan. The topic had an eerie echo in some of the other back-channel chatter Marlow references. Some of it is jargon we understand, but much is not. We Socotra scribblers are practitioners of an outmoded art: words strung together in traditional patterns with unexpected variation intended to convey passion, irony or arcane art. It is a reaction to a regular but abrupt social sea change. In the swirl of the tide, we still afloat see a shore receding. It is the shore on which we played on the beach, sunlit and happy. Now diminishing, occupied by others who choose not speak the same language. Because new is good.

– Vic

Author’s Note: Some likely not ready for prime-time snark about our old and new public commons. It’s a bit whiny as well.
I can’t hardly believe what I read each AM in the not-so-funny papers.

-Marlow

Thumbs up

Western-style republics’ Main and Broad Streets are the climax of human civilization. That gleaming late model cars might stand parked in front of Parisian department stores, Saddam invaded Kuwait and got shown the door, and Shakespeare wrote the greatest plays in the dusty corners of London’s bars along these avenues all say so.

Or nowadays used to say so.

What young Adolfinia the TicToc influencer says to Ezra, Chan, Marcellus and her/his/its millions of followers is the new law for London, Beijing, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro and the far-flung webbed human isles upon world’s seas; whatsoever these minions do not know and sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to consider. Indeed, they cancel it like old fashion emperors cast the guilty and unpleasing to their eyes and ears aside to their deaths.

I for one find them untrustworthy. They slowly beat us with their empty eyes and pronouncements full of obliviousness. They don’t know, they don’t understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. They are like ants and summer mid-afternoon sun on an open wound.

I wish they’d stop ignorantly quoting things that were cadged from Marxist and Leninist wellsprings or hanging out certain flags du jour to obscure things that belong to their more proper neighborhood like three card monte or shops with three golden balls.

I am reminded of the old South’s night-riders. See how trainloads of them flock to enjoy online lynchings. Not happening here? Maybe it’s just 2020’s-style Prohibition — shooting down people just because they might be transporting unlicensed thought liquor — no, that couldn’t happen in America! Why, where in our history has there ever been so many people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours? They’re ready to embark on a Children’s Crusade, no?

Perhaps it already started, and I didn’t get the memo or email. Correction — text, tweet and/or meme.

Our great physical commons no longer exist to serve the citizenry who were their reason of existence and that of their countries. These new digital ones exist to fatten on the old producers (farmers, manufacturers, etc) to provide for the townsfolk packages, large and small, delivered in 24 hours or less and sociable pleasurable preferment; and, unlike the old analogue commons, they do not give to the country in return a beautiful or permanent center — just a ragged camp inundated with smiley’dcardboard boxes under the unblinking gaze of doorbell cams. It is a parasitic civilization — minus the civilization.

——

To me these truth-determiners smell nasty like something that’s been vomited up by the internet. There’s an endless supply of others still fermenting in the web’s stomach like those who mindlessly parrot quack political theorists dispensing every sort of extremist ptomaine! Not that it isn’t important to address this sickness that has made a large percent of us permanently deranged that is growing ever larger, but there seems to be no cure for it.

I have come to see that we liberal Jeffersonians must remain alone scorned by all these noisy preachers for refusing to be willing supplicants to the busy screechers of either side. How can we, the Liberal and the Tolerant, in the long run preserve some of the arts of civilization, no matter which brand of tyranny finally dominates the country remains unanswered?

On the other hand, perhaps we should succumb and be grateful for them explaining to us what the expert classes of the country say that we really need, not just want, that is in our collective best interests.

Yeah, I know their pleadings sound and smell like molasses to cockroaches. But as Jules said in Pulp Fiction “these are some tasty burgers.” Their central policies are just three:

– increase taxes on the income and wealth of the rich,
– condemn whitey and his privilege, since nothing so elevates the dispossessed as much as having some race/creed/color, any race/creed/color, on which he/she/it can look down, and
– the average toiler immediately receives $2000 a month tax-free.

Now that I’ve pondered on it, I’m convinced, so “come on, you bozos! Those swell folks have told us for too long to not be selfish. Well, be selfish, and vote for the folks who’re willing to give us something — give us something — and not just grab every dime and dollar out of our pockets we earned off the fruits of our hard labor and internet live action role playing gaming!”

We should insist on being saved. Embrace the hysteria and the obsequiousness of these digital Aimée Simple McPhersons, Father Coughlins and Billy Sundays.

Lat us all thumbs up it and them!

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