Monday, May 22, 2017

Gino explains, yet again

Our friend Gino explains, yet again, the motivation:
Trump may go down, as the Press, the DNC and the GOP all plot against him... but these issues will still remain.
See, you keep thinking it's about Trump. And for for those who oppose him, it is.
But it's not.
We didn't vote for Trump, The Man.
Trump, The Man came to us... offering deliverance.
A deliverance that nobody else believed we deserved.
Why is that?
Click on the link to see the reason. His conclusion rings true:
We have ceased to be a democracy and have become a mobacracy.
The strongest mob runs the show.
Unfortunately, the ones who voted for Trump, we who drastically need the change in policy, are too busy working overtime while trying to provide for our families, to 'mob up' and cause trouble... until the day arrives, when we decide that there is nothing left to lose...
(when we decide to act like college students, you won't soon forget it.)
It's taken me a long time to understand what Gino is saying. My worldview comes from a half-century of living and a sense that I should aspire to get beyond the provincialism and paper mills of my hometown. That I should be a person of culture and learning, a person who has read the Great Books and grappled with the Big Ideas of western civilization. The joke's been on me, though -- the institutional keepers of those traditions have been gone for a long time. If you look to academe today, you see a bunch of shrieking harp seals who are more into intellectual parlor games and raw power mongering than in the life of the mind. It's been a thoroughgoing betrayal. It's been an ongoing project for nearly 100 years, but you have to stand apart from it to see it. We've gone from Julien Benda to Jacques Derrida and the applause has never ceased. You don't have to necessarily know who these two very different French philosophers are to understand the process, and I don't have enough time this morning to explicate it, but you've experienced it. And the ruin is everywhere.

Gino, and people who share the challenges that Gino faces, have had just about enough. We need to be listening.

7 comments:

W.B. Picklesworth said...

That I should be a person of culture and learning, a person who has read the Great Books and grappled with the Big Ideas of western civilization. The joke's been on me, though -- the institutional keepers of those traditions have been gone for a long time.

No, these things are worth it for their own sake. That elites have abandoned them or, to give them less credit, that they aren't bright enough to have understood their value, is what makes them diseased.

What I'm wondering is if there has been a decisive break or if this is just a time in the wilderness. I think of how the Renaissance thinkers brought back and elevated Greek and Roman knowledge. The period that preceded it, brought on by civilizational fatigue and barbarian invasions, was a necessary lull in order to appreciate anew what had almost been lost. Is that available to us, are must everything fall apart first?

Mr. D said...

The period that preceded it, brought on by civilizational fatigue and barbarian invasions, was a necessary lull in order to appreciate anew what had almost been lost. Is that available to us, are must everything fall apart first?

That’s the question. And are we talking about a momentary phase of barbarism, like the French Revolution, or a thousand-year neo-medieval period? Because I think it’s gonna be getting all medieval up in here pretty soon, if you catch my meaning.

Gino said...

This time, the barbarians will come from within.

Mr. D said...

This time, the barbarians will come from within.

They're already here.

Mr. D said...

And, I hasten to add, you aren't the barbarian, Gino.

Bike Bubba said...

Regarding the barbarians at the gate, I am becoming more and more convinced that the worst barbarians are--as with Rome--within. Just yesterday, my wife asked about the extent to which Muslim radicals might look at our email and things, and my response was simply that if you want to find someone violating our privacy, that would be our own government.

It also strikes me that there is an uncanny resemblance between the deep state/establishment and Jim Crow advocates in the Old South. The latter believed that they were entitled and better because of their race and heritage; the former believe that they are entitled and better because of their almae matriae and positions in the deep state.

The sad thing is that Mr. Trump is an unlikely Dr. King to end this situation without violence.

Gino said...

", I hasten to add, you aren't the barbarian, Gino."

I'm ready to storm the gates when the time comes.