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<p>
<label for="mn-demo" class="margin-toggle"></label> <input
type="checkbox" id="mn-demo" class="margin-toggle"> <span
class="marginnote">
<img src="images/WutheringKunstlerBanner4.png" alt="WutheringKunstlerBanner4.png"> <br>
<img src="images/blogbanner1.png" alt="blogbanner1.png">
</p>
<section id="outline-container-orgee35afe" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="orgee35afe"></h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-orgee35afe">
<span class="blogtop"><img src="./images/BlogInlandSea.png" width="750" alt="Harbour view out to sea"></span>
</div>
</section>
<section id="outline-container-org0ce0959" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org0ce0959">What has happened to feminism?</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org0ce0959">
<p>
The latest from feminist hell is the so-called 4B movement
</p>
<p>
Käthe Kollwitz nerves of steel to live through Nazi times without fleeing.
</p>
</div>
</section>
<section id="outline-container-org7f6f53b" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org7f6f53b">Made in Minnesota</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org7f6f53b">
<p>
Recently, two things did “a perfect storm” in my head helping me
crystallize my thoughts on just what I really think about
Minnesota<label id='fnr.1' for='fnr-in.1.572549' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>1</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.1.572549' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>1</sup>
… so do I actually publish this Monster Troll? If you’re
reading it, I guess I did…
</span>
</p>
<ul class="org-ul">
<li>Brothers Bart (poet/writer) and Russ (musician) Sutter performed at
my Grand Marais library this past Friday.</li>
<li>I came across the book <i>Jack & the Ghost</i> by Chan Poling and Lucy
Mitchell (2019; University of Minnesota Press) at a local thrift
store.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org9beed48" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org9beed48">A nervous coexistence</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org9beed48">
<p>
Since arriving in Duluth in 2003 with my Kansas Mennonite
(non-conservative) wife and our twin boys, finally settling in Grand
Marais in 2007, I’ve had, to put it mildly, growing issues with the
Northern Midwestern Minnesotan social and cultural scene, especially
here on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Insular, provincial,
parochial, incestuous, puerile emotionally immature,
anti-intellectual, stiltedly intentionally dumbed-down
unsophisticated, a hodgepodge of recursive <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality">hyperreality</a> tropes—are
just some of phrases and terms I mutter under my breath on a daily
basis in the direction of those I refer to as the Flannel Shirt
People, the Carhartt Steger-Mukluk Wintergreen-Anorack Filson Vest
Nazis, the Red Green Show extras who drive Jeep Cherokees and Subaru
Outbacks and insist this Arrowhead Region must be a continuation of
their Kumbaya around the campfire childhoods.
</p>
<p>
Grand Marais: North Shore ground zero. Besides the minority
local-yokel born-and-raised-heres, we have two big Venn diagram
circles: the well-off, DFL-voting retirees, and the middle- to
upper-class suburbanites come here to make this wilderness corner
their Jack Fucking London! Ernest Fucking Hemingway! Robert Fucking
Service! Lost Alaskan County Fantasy Park.
</p>
<p>
Okay, slow down. I fully understand that all of these Jimmy Billy Jack
London Thudpucker she ran calling Wildfire, Wildfire types are simply
searching for authenticity, truth, purity, and innocence, and it’s all
good on some level. But really, how did I, who basically wants the
same things, get so left out? Why don’t I fit in? Why am I so out of
synch? Why am I the lone boy who sees the emperor naked? I blame
Europe and my almost ten years there, specifically Germany and
Switzerland. For it was there that I was exposed (indoctrinated in-)
to the Old World way of thinking and being.
</p>
<p>
As I’ve explained elsewhere, Europe, the Eastern Hemisphere in
general, is working with <i>four</i> dimensions, while Americans only work
with three. The fourth dimension is of course time, but in a
social-cultural sense <i>time as history</i>. Which is necessary in order
to have <i>real</i> culture. Americans, lacking history and real rootedness
are like children fighting to dominate the ever-changing Zeitgeist, an
endless, senseless version of King of the Hill. That is to say, we’re
just kaleidoscoping churn. As a German once said to me, You Americans
are trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces and
no box lid to know what it’s supposed to look like. Right. So we just
cut and glue and tape some abstraction together, then fight over whose
is the right picture. Yeah, ouch! I cried when I heard this…
</p>
<p>
Alas, but I’m the American who went to Europe and now can’t resettle
back in my land of origin, hard as he has tried.<label id='fnr.2' for='fnr-in.2.1716693' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>2</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.2.1716693' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>2</sup>
Yes, I should have stayed! But A) they don’t just hand out
citizenship to anyone, assimilated as I was or no, and B) a busted
engagement put me in an irrational state of mind which had me
scurrying brokenhearted back home. Alas…
</span> Especially
Germany was my Hogwarts where they sorted me into the Ravenclaw House,
i.e., the intellectuals. And ever since it has been my <i>noblesse
oblige</i> to keep learning, keep exploring and growing
intellectually—which puts me at odds with the Kumbaya singers, the
rugged outdoors types who must dominate this space.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org2dc1f56" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org2dc1f56">Bullerby Syndrome? Nej tack…</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org2dc1f56">
<p>
What is known as the Bullerby Syndrome is the idealization of that
particular other-century
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org0c8fbd7" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org0c8fbd7">The Sutter Brothers</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org0c8fbd7">
<p>
The audience at the Grand Marais Public Library on November 8 numbered
some fifty-plus, nearly all Boomers like me, the DNA visibly skewed
Scandihoovian. And as the show got underway I realized this was the
same audience that would flock to <i>A Prairie Home Companion</i>, a <a href="https://northhouse.org/">North
House Folk School</a> presentation, and most sorts of “workshops” on New
Age esoterica.
</p>
<p>
Once again, the predominant psych marker was some variant of Freudian
emotional immaturity. Here were the people for whom the childhood
trips up the Shore have never really ended. Here was just another
reliving of the campfire in the deep woods singing about Michael
rowing his boat ashore. But how dare I rain on their parade?
</p>
<p>
Ross began with a campfire song, his next a Bill Staines song. Cringe.
Bill Staines would be the antidote to the dark sarcasm and nihilistic
cynicism of John Denver. People who didn’t understand that the film <i>A
Mighty Wind</i> <label id='fnr.3' for='fnr-in.3.2232248' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>3</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.3.2232248' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>3</sup>
<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mighty_Wind">A Mighty Wind</a></i> was made by the same people who made <i>This is
Spinal Tap</i> and intended as a “mockumentary.”
</span> was mocking them and their overwrought, saccharine
“sucky folk” were there legion.
</p>
<p>
Really though, what reaches us emotionally? What is sentimentality?
And why is one man’s sentimentality another’s mawkish kitsch?
Expressing gentleness, matters of the heart is fraught. The main
problem is vulnerability and triggering defensiveness. I’ve heard that
Garrison Keillor can be short if not irascible if, say, a East Coast
city-slicker were to cast aspersions on his Northern Midwest
shtick. It’s all good but it’s not.
</p>
<p>
I compare this with my parents who were born in 1935,<label id='fnr.4' for='fnr-in.4.8061131' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>4</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.4.8061131' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>4</sup>
A strange generation, sometimes called the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Generation">Silent Generation</a>,
that came between The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greatest_Generation">Greatest Generation</a> (people born between 1901
to 1927) and the baby boomers (1945 - 1960). They were a sort of
second “Lost Generation,” the first I would say exhibited “old soul”
traits. Think Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard’s characters in
<i>Breakfast at Tiffany’s,</i> the generation’s theme songs <i>Moon River,</i>
<i>The Shadow of Your Smile,</i> and then of course <i>The Girl From Ipanema</i>
as sung by one of their leading old soul mascots Astrud Gilberto.
</span>
college-educated (Washington University, St. Louis), vaguely
intellectual. They lived in tumultuous times, but their collective
inner space was soft and gentle and compassionate—and yet ultimately
with a fatalist streak. They came and went, almost unnoticed
generationally-speaking. Oh but we Boomers! Loud, brash,
trouble-making, facile, feckless “new souls,” we talked big, delivered
little. Our “rock stars” tore up hotels and smashed guitars on
stage.<label id='fnr.5' for='fnr-in.5.6442931' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>5</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.5.6442931' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>5</sup>
Can you imagine Tracy Chapman smashing her acoustic guitar?
</span> But now we’re middle-aged and older and finally beginning
to sort out adulthood.
</p>
<p>
As I understand, many modern-day Old World Scandinavian social
scientists have come here to study our isolated, time-capsuled New
World immigrant Scandinavians. The most obvious trait they find is the
general religious hangover, i.e., that here is a Lutheranism long
since faded away from the Scandinavian homelands. Meaning here are yet
strong echoes of that yesteryear Scandi-Lutheran Calvinist-Pietist
which is led by strict morality and fatalistic emotional
minimalism.<label id='fnr.6' for='fnr-in.6.852288' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>6</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.6.852288' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>6</sup>
See this for a parallel “severist” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters">English Dissenters</a>’ take on
Protestantism.
</span>
</p>
<p>
Certainly Trump will rip many layers of fantasy off our collective
carcass—to replace them with his layers of fantasy. But we may just
bleed out, or reject the new transplant layers and die of sepsis. Big
alas.
</p>
<p>
What do Bart Sutter, Sigurd Olson, and Sam Cook—and now Chan
Poling—all have in common? I begin by saying they all share an
impressionistic but strangely noncommittal vagueness. It’s when you
try to have one foot in some hazy Northern European <i>peasant</i> past and
the other in our always played-down American college-educated
milieu. It’s as if nobody can step up and actually say anything
consequential lest it sound too intellectual, lest some paragraph of
<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante">Jantelagen</a></i> be violated. And so out come shiny soap bubbles that must
never drift above a cultural-intellectual ceiling only coming up to
the knee. Was East Germany this repressed repressive?
</p>
<p>
This might be explained as an exit route to the general dominant
modern realism of so-called <i>literary fiction</i>. Think Faulkner,
Nabokov, or Samuel Beckett where protagonists emotionally savage one
another as they spiral down into a nihilistic void. And yet when I
read Sutter’s poetry or non-fiction (<i>Cold Comfort</i>) I can’t help but
get a <i>Mod-real Lite®</i> vibe. He still wants to hint at existential
meaningless—to fit in with the modern trend? Keep everything at the
Scandi-peasant level and all will be fine.
</p>
<p>
Contrast any of the “nature-themed” writings of the above-mentioned,
and Romantic Era poets like the Brontë Sisters or Wordsworth come
across as champions of a new Northern European nature paganism. When I
read these guys I never feel like the North Woods is anything but
“inspirational” as I sit in my Ekornes Stressless® recliner in a
cardigan-sweater, golden retriever at my feet way. I don’t mean to say
this is not interesting writing, for how else could one be so
conformist except with great skill? They have spoken to, reached the
nervous <i>Angsthase</i><label id='fnr.7' for='fnr-in.7.9214321' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>7</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.7.9214321' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>7</sup>
<i>Angsthase</i> or <i>frightened rabbit</i> is a German term alluding to
the fearful yet resentful glare of a scared rabbit staring at you, the
supposed predator, from within a briar patch.
</span> Minnesota audience and have gain fame and some
coin doing it.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgff52af2" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="orgff52af2">Poling’s <i>Jack & the Ghost</i></h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgff52af2">
<p>
America, this land of peasants, is stuck fast between culture
formation, and its peasantisms, seemingly not able to proceed, a sort
of eternal <i>cultura interruptus</i>.
</p>
<p>
I suppose what annoyed me the most about Poling and Michell’s <i>Jack &
the Ghost</i> is, once again, it dared not sound too, what?, cultivated,
erudite, highbrow literati. Good, it dodged the harshness of say, <i>The
Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea</i> (1976)<label id='fnr.8' for='fnr-in.8.9670868' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>8</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.8.9670868' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>8</sup>
Very gritty, grimy mod-real book (then made into a film) by
Japanese Neo-Nietzschean writer Yukio Mishima.
</span> by presenting itself as a
quasi-children’s picture book.
</p>
<p>
There was a time in film when men and women were portrayed by—men
and women, i.e., grownups. Then came the era of dumbed-down persona,
e.g., the eternal pretty high school boy look of Beau Bridges, Brad
Pitt, and Tom Cruise. When we see Sarah Miles (below) in <i>The Sailor
Who Fell from Grace with the Sea</i> we know we are looking at a grown
woman of some class and breeding—which is of course eschewed by so
many today.
</p>
<figure id="org1520f12">
<img src="images/SarahMiles.png" alt="SarahMiles.png">
</figure>
<p>
My Kansas Mennonite wife and I came to Duluth back in 2003, moved up
the shore to Knife River, finally landing in Grand Marais
in 2007. Disappointment, disenchantment grew, however, and in 2014 she
just had to get back to her people. And so we packed up and headed to
Northern Indiana where the Anabaptists are dominant and she could
attend a Mennonite seminary.
</p>
<p>
Why Jack must be a peasant fisherman while Richard Burton and
Elizabeth Taylor’s characters in <i>The Sandpiper</i> are denizens of the
day’s general culture.
</p>
<p>
This particular Minnesotan Scandihoovian subculture.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<section id="outline-container-org50a2617" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org50a2617">Why Trump won</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org50a2617">
</div>
<div id="outline-container-orgf718da5" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="orgf718da5">The Left pushed the commoners too far</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-orgf718da5">
<p>
The simplest way to explain Donald Trump’s victory is to realize the
“elitist” Left tried to push the common man/woman too far. For many
years now the Left has been hectoring, pushing the Average Janes and
Joes, the <i>Everyman</i>, the salt of the earth, yes, the <i>peasants</i> to go
too many places they just couldn’t go, to do too many things they just
couldn’t do.
</p>
<p>
As sociologist Jonathan Haidt said (and I paraphrase liberally), The
Left is rabidly anti-past. They believe the past is a graveyard of our
mistakes, that the present is the best time to be alive; thus, they
throw a flying wall of hyper-idealistic leftisms at society in order
to keep correcting supposed social ills and historical wrongdoing. The
Right, on the other hand, believes just the opposite, i.e., that some
past age was golden, and that we must return to it. When you
understand this, you understand a whole lot about today’s politics
… and why Trump won. His <i>Make America Great Again</i> slogan is
nostalgia for the past. Trump and his forces aim to stop and even
reverse the leftist flying wall of hyper-idealisms. But where lies
this nostalgic Netherland of theirs?
</p>
<p>
Haidt has also described how these Everyman types, when pushed too
far, have a tendency to “snap back.” By that he means they will reach
desperately, spastically for a leader who promises immediate relief
from the dysphoria of having their status quo threatened, of having
been pushed too far leftward. Mysterious unknowable of course is their
tipping point, how this gets triggered. As I’ve written before, humans
are far less “group-logical” and far more susceptible to herd stampede
or “freak-out” than we like to admit. That is to say, we collectively
freak-out, fall deep into collective irrationally, with devastating
consequences. Germany in the 1930s freaked out, snapped
hard-Right—and the rest is history. A line had been crossed, and the
common <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Michel">German <i>Michel</i></a> (over-)reacted strongly.<label id='fnr.9' for='fnr-in.9.8196407' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>9</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.9.8196407' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>9</sup>
It is my contention that <i>nobody</i> has figured out the
Industrial Age, that the complexities of the modern world keep us
careening about between Left to Right.
</span>
</p>
<p>
A result of this hard Right snap-back is invariably dictators who are
very impatient. If the vehicle of state has been going down Highway
Wrong Way at 120 mph, the dictator immediately throws the transmission
into reverse—with devastating results. But don’t worry, Trump will
not be able to do this. There are still enough checks and balances to
hold him to a slower pace, if not block him entirely. How do I know
this? Read on.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org0c2fec5" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org0c2fec5">Trump is a showman</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org0c2fec5">
<p>
Yes, Trump is certainly a showman. But so was Hitler. The difference
was that many of the 1930s German Powers That Be privately were for,
encouraged Hitler to seize dictatorial power. Nobody is seriously
doing that with Trump—other that perhaps Steve Bannon. Yes, American
democracy is definitely ailing. When elections are not accepted by one
side, as in the 2020 election, then democracy is basically over. And
yet Trump vacated the White House, and his followers did not morph
into <i>Sturmabteilung</i> Brownshirt street-thug paramilitaries.<label id='fnr.10' for='fnr-in.10.711221' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>10</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.10.711221' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>10</sup>
Consider the January 6, 2020 Capitol uprising. Only a few
scattered individuals were actually found to have serious insurgency
plans. The rest were just a mindless, angry mob—if not
tourists—caught up in the moment. It was <i>not</i> a planned, directed
Beer Hall Putsch or a Spartacus League takeover as in Weimar Germany.
</span>
Which means our democracy is in critical condition, but not yet
dead. Somehow the checks and balances are holding.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org8a1512e" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org8a1512e">Trump is an enrager, not a fighter</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org8a1512e">
<p>
Another interesting aspect of the modern American socio-political
landscape is how the Left and Right seem to be having far more fun
baiting, insulting, enraging each other, at striking theatrical
outrage poses than actually taking up bats and pitchforks and going at
it on the street. Sure, some radical groups are violence-ready—think
of the Proud Boys or the Antifa hooligans. But seriously, America has
never really had street hooligan issues like, say, Europe. Too much of
the Leftists’ limbic-neocortex is marinated in memories of singing the
peacenik <i>Kumbaya</i>, while right-wingers are typically blasé, “you’ve
got to be kidding” towards any leftist posturing. Indeed, we seem to
be in a strange state of suspended animation where both sides are more
willing to patronize and condescend than take actual swings at each
other. “You’re an idiot” has not descended into "You’re a dangerous idiot <i>who
must die!"</i> Let’s hope it never does.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org5c0e423" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org5c0e423">MAGA = nostalgia, but…</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org5c0e423">
<p>
Again, nostalgia for what exactly? This of course is where any
nostalgic fantasizing goes missing in the weeds, i.e., on the actual
details of what MAGA would actually mean and become.
</p>
<p>
At least in theory we could all join the ultra-conservative, Luddite
Amish. After all, the Amish actively hold to a strict set of rules and
principles that keep them “back” from modern times.<label id='fnr.11' for='fnr-in.11.9115149' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>11</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.11.9115149' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>11</sup>
The Amish and Mennonites refer to themselves as <i>Die Stillen im
Lande</i> or “the quiet in the land”, which is a reference to Psalms
35:20: <i>For they speak not peace: but they devise deceitful matters
against them that are quiet in the land.</i>
</span> But could a
whole society ever agree on which rules and principles to artificially
hold to? And with resources so liberalized,<label id='fnr.12' for='fnr-in.12.362816' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>12</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.12.362816' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>12</sup>
Consider the fact that you are consuming easily <i>one hundred
times!</i> the resources and energy of an ancestor from two hundred years
ago. This is an exponential liberalization of resource consumption.
</span> materialism so
expanded that social liberalization could only follow, how could any
American politician pack all that back into Pandora’s Box? Even just a
fraction of the strict, draconian laws, limitations, and rules from
some past “Golden Age” would be nigh on impossible to enact and
maintain nation-wide. Short of an apocalyptic Dark Age throwing <i>all</i>
of society back into a quasi-Stone Age, we cannot put the resource
liberalization genie back in the bottle—except in artificially
staged ways as do the Amish—who are still surrounded by the
resource- and socially-liberal world. Think about a monk or nun
sitting in a monastery or convent. Every second of every day they
subconsciously know they could walk away from the aesthete life of
minimalism and self-denial, which is why I say…
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org819e6b8" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org819e6b8">Trump is <i>not</i> conservative</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org819e6b8">
<p>
No, Trump is not really conservative, rather, he is libertarian. And
libertarianism is really just a new form of liberal. I’m saying
<i>liberalism has gotten so big that Leftism can no longer contain it
all</i> and some has spilled into this limbo nether-region frontier
outside of Leftism—to be claimed, falsely labeled as
conservatism.
</p>
<p>
So what is true conservatism? Real conservatism is when every part of
life is geared towards conserving, first, resources, then matching the
behaviors necessary to track with that tight, conservative resource
base. Think Medieval Age England with its limited space and good soil,
its periodic famines, maxed-out forestry,<label id='fnr.13' for='fnr-in.13.2535754' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>13</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.13.2535754' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>13</sup>
Think about it. The forest was the hypercritical base of
life. From it came wood for housing and heat. The forest had to be
tightly controlled and managed exactly correctly. That is, none of
this modern clear-cut-and-run crap.
</span> harsh winters,
etc. Conservatism had to be the way of life. Tight resources equals
tight, rigid social behavior.<label id='fnr.14' for='fnr-in.14.1650310' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>14</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.14.1650310' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>14</sup>
I’m always surprised that I seem to be the only person who has
made this connection, which has allowed me to understand the
foundation of conservatism.
</span>
</p>
<p>
I say in this modern landscape of wall-to-wall, play-now-pay-later
materialism that <i>no real conservatism is possible</i>. Again, a tight
resource base necessitates conservative behaviors. And we no long have
these conditions. Thus, any conservatism today is strictly <i>pro
forma</i>, at best some nostalgic throwback, cosplay.<label id='fnr.15' for='fnr-in.15.1165058' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>15</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.15.1165058' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>15</sup>
Wherever there are Amish there are also Mennonites of various
conservative-orthodox severity. But along with Anabaptists you will
also find “cosplay” Amish, i.e., non-Amish-Mennonites who are playing
Amish, primarily in dress. Women especially like dressing as
Amish/Conservative Mennotite, while having no real affiliation with
them.
</span> This means
that so-called conservatism is riddled with libertarianisms, i.e.,
liberalism that is not leftist. And so I say Trump, Trumpism is really
just a peasant rebellion, he the peasant chieftain. Which we’ve seen
before, and typically go nowhere and must be put down. Indeed…
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org0c96d26" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org0c96d26">We’ve seen this before</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org0c96d26">
<p>
Back in the early 1800s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Wolfgang_von_Goethe">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</a> made a serious
break with Romanticists of his time, calling Romanticism and its
followers “everything that is sick about modern society.”<label id='fnr.16' for='fnr-in.16.3344225' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>16</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.16.3344225' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>16</sup>
It would be helpful to read my essay where I discuss the
Romantic Era. Click on the icon top left and click on <i>Preface.</i>
</span> There
is a whole universe behind this simple-seeming pronouncement.
</p>
<p>
As you may know Goethe<label id='fnr.17' for='fnr-in.17.5913226' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>17</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.17.5913226' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>17</sup>
<img src="images/GoetheWalk.jpg" alt="GoetheWalk.jpg"> <br>
Goethe (far right), the Duke, and actress-muse Corona Schröter out for
a stroll, probably discussing how Classicism must fight back against
the sickness of Romanticsim. <br>
<br>
</span> was the leading German intellectual and
Germany’s most lauded bard of his time. But he broke with the leaders,
the artists of Romanticism (beginning ca. 1800 in Jena) mainly due to
what he considered their irresponsible behavior and airy-fairy
ideas. Goethe, born middle-class, had been ennobled, placed by his
liege Karl August, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in charge of various
Weimar Court posts. He was also a “veteran” of the disastrous French
Revolution, which had given most “freedom fighters” of the time
pause. Basically, Goethe could not accept that the best-and-brightest,
the educated elite of the times were being so hyper-idealistic
irresponsible, off chasing “feelings,” fairies in the forests,<label id='fnr.18' for='fnr-in.18.8263294' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>18</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.18.8263294' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>18</sup>
…as his contemporary Ludwig Tieck brought out in his “Big
Three” novellas: <i>Eckbert the Fair</i>, <i>The Elves</i>, and <i>Runenberg</i>
which were a cross of fairy tale and gothic lit.
</span>
waxing nostalgic for the Medieval Age or some proto-European times,
acting aloof from the cares of the day. He countered Romanticism with
his take on Classicism which came to be called <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Classicism">Weimar Classicism</a></i>
where looking back to the high aesthetics of the Greeks was the place
to start, to emulate, to get back to. But isn’t this exactly what the
Trump side is saying about today’s Intelligentsia and educated elites?
Pragmatism, feet on the ground was lacking from Romanticism—as
evidenced in today’s flying wall of leftist hyper-idealisms coming at
us from our supposed best-and-brightest.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div id="outline-container-org8b8830a" class="outline-3">
<h3 id="org8b8830a">And yet…</h3>
<div class="outline-text-3" id="text-org8b8830a">
<p>
Please read the next post right below. This whole Trump phenomenon has
coincided with <i>The Great Stall-out</i>, which surely must mean
something…
</p>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<section id="outline-container-org6ee8555" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org6ee8555">The Great Stall-out</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org6ee8555">
<p>
<i>The Jetsons</i> was an animated sitcom from 1962-63 showing us what
future space-age suburban life would be like. I was a little kid back
then and we all thrilled to each episode. So exciting, so cool it was
to think about all the great technological advancements just around
the corner. But when the film <i>The Graduate</i> came out in 1967 dealing
head-on with vapid, dysfunctional, existential meaningless
middle-class suburban life, something had changed and modern life was
mysteriously suspect, expectations seriously downgraded.<label id='fnr.19' for='fnr-in.19.6439167' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>19</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.19.6439167' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>19</sup>
Contrast <i>The Graduate</i> with <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i> (1969),
which depicted human technological advancement as our quasi-mystical
destiny.
</span> Sure,
we limped along for the next decades with progress, even “futurism,”
but the space race seemed stuck in those largely meaningless space
shuttle launches, the push to get kids into STEM tanked, and the only
truly positive sci-fi, <i>Star Trek</i> gave it up with the early
cancellation of <i>Enterprise</i> in 2005.<label id='fnr.20' for='fnr-in.20.7675764' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>20</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.20.7675764' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>20</sup>
And no, <i>Star Wars</i> was always just a “lite” version of
dystopian cyberpunk.
</span> Odd how
humans—narrative-based as we are—have had no real positive,
futuristic storytelling to latch onto since those halcyon 1960s.
</p>
<p>
And so I ask, How can technologically, materialistically forward not
be the way forward anymore? Think about it. Humans strove for
centuries to reach the science and technology pinnacle we had achieved
by the 1960s—with even more amazing advances right around the
corner! But for some reason the air started leaking out of the tires,
positive thinking about the future waned, and many of us became
doubters, questioning and even rejecting the high-tech, the
materialism, the progress, the wealth, the modernism. And so today we
are gripped by an anomie, an ennui of seemingly unknown origins.<label id='fnr.21' for='fnr-in.21.8811130' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>21</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.21.8811130' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>21</sup>
<i>anomie</i>: lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an
individual or group. <br>
<i>ennui</i>: a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a
lack of occupation or excitement.
</span>
</p>
<p>
You might say progress is still humming along. The iPhone is version
16, the electric vehicles are beginning to get solid-state batteries,
wind and solar are much cheaper than any fossil fuel, huge rockets are
now grabbed by mechanical chopsticks upon reentry, and the computing
world is roaring forward with AI, robotics, quantum computing. And yet
I can see the peak, i.e., the end of this mad rush. The spirit is
surely waning, the dynamism just about to crash and burn. Oh yes, a
small elite core are still driving on with their amazing
overachieving, but the man on the street could care less. Complexity
grows, technology rocks—but the average citizen is regressing back
to a medieval level of knowledge and education.
</p>
<p>
Indeed, we’re stalling out. And all sorts of quasi-nostalgia peddlers
are coming out of the woodwork to entice the masses into—into what
exactly? But then if the way forward is not forward as we’ve defined
it for literally centuries, then what are we doing, <i>where are we
going</i>? Ever since this unbelievable, impossible to have predicted sea
change of progress stalling out, I’ve noticed everything slowly coming
unraveled in society. Now I see the predictions of the cyberpunk
near-future dystopian stories coming true, all while things still seem
to be functioning, suburbs are occupied, and modern high-tech
materialism is still on track. And yet people are heading to various
nostalgic exit doors. My boys grew up in the 2000s with <i>Lord of the
Rings</i> and <i>Harry Potter</i>, two vaguely medieval nostalgia trips.<label id='fnr.22' for='fnr-in.22.3919073' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>22</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.22.3919073' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>22</sup>
Most fail to see that the “wizarding world” was really just a
Medieval Age holdover running parallel to the “muggle” modern
world. The so-called <i>Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office</i> underlined
how the wizarding world saw human technology as just so many
artifacts, i.e., curious but inferior.
</span>
Then the fantasy wave, all of it set in some quasi-past, typically a
parallel Medieval Age. This alongside very grimy, depressing dystopian
near-future “cyberpunk” sci-fi basically slamming the door on the
future. No more Jetsons and no more positive Utopian sci-fi. But then
The Powers That Be tried to slam the nostalgia door with <i>Game of
Thrones</i>, which wanted the Medieval Age to be awful horrible. But it’s
too late. The modern world is paralyzed in ennui and great confusion
over what direction we should go. Basically, the entire Muslim world
is reaching for something bygone. The main radical factions are all
some version of primitivists. Then all the autocrats doing Backwards
like Putin et al. Alas. And no, Elon Musk isn’t going to revive some
Jetsons futurism.
</p>
<p>
This is really crazy when you think about it. Consider how
scientifically advanced the Covid vaccines were. To hear the science
behind the mRNA is to marvel at how so much advancement came together
so perfectly. Never before had a vaccine been rolled out so quickly
and had such off-the-charts efficacy. But then came the huge
irrationalist backlash, the all but superstitious opposition
demonizing the vaccines. So many people these days have become
degenerate, disenchanted, dysfunctional, depressed, cynical, addicted,
etc. all because they’ve somehow missed the progress bus. Why is all
this amazing progress not taken up by more people and used as a
springboard to amazing lives and Utopian pursuits? Crazy weird this
situation. Don’t know how it will end.
</p>
</div>
</section>
<section id="outline-container-org94dc380" class="outline-2">
<h2 id="org94dc380">The Great Internet Detox</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-org94dc380">
<p>
Here I’ve finally got my website up and running and I immediately want
to go cold-turkey from the internet? Ironic for sure. Though I’m not
sure I should start immediately. But really, if I am supposedly on
some sort of back-to-nature nostalgia trip, or as some have called it,
“<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottagecore">Cottagecore</a>,”<label id='fnr.23' for='fnr-in.23.8006679' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>23</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.23.8006679' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>23</sup>
<img src="images/Taylor_Swift_Eras_Tour_Folklore_act_2.jpg" alt="Taylor_Swift_Eras_Tour_Folklore_act_2.jpg"> <br>
Taylor Swift up on the roof of her cottage in the forest—but not
really… <br>
<br>
</span> then I should not pretend to be like I’m Henry David
Thoreau back in his offline/off-grid cottage in the woods, all while
running a very plugged-in, connected, high-tech online presence.
</p>
<p>
Let’s be honest, the internet has proven to be one step forward and
two steps backward for most of society. I’ve noticed how being online
has changed me, my daily habits and routines, and I know I’m suffering
for it, i.e., what I’ve gotten out of it lags far behind the negative
consequences.<label id='fnr.24' for='fnr-in.24.2219476' class='margin-toggle sidenote-number'><sup class='numeral'>24</sup></label><input type='checkbox' id='fnr-in.24.2219476' class='margin-toggle'><span class='sidenote'><sup class='numeral'>24</sup>
There is no end to the hand-wringing of experts about the
deleterious effects of too much internet screen time.
</span> And so I want to get off the internet and avoid
screens…
</p>
<p>
…but of course that’s not entirely possible in this day and
age—unless we actually do live like an off-grid, offline hermit in
the woods. Hence, I want to “mainly” get off, by which I mean I will
</p>
<ul class="org-ul">
<li>only be online to do absolutely necessary work-related things</li>
<li>one daily check of only email, phone, or messages</li>
<li>absolutely no “social media” e.g., Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, etc.</li>
<li>no online reference or research</li>
<li>no online entertainment</li>
<li>only the most absolute bare necessities from online stores, i.e., no
browsing shopping.</li>
</ul>
<p>
Of course this may seem draconian, especially the bit about no
reference or research online. Why? Because the temptation to keep
click and swiping and scrolling is ever-present, that experts say this
whole screen-online experience has very real psychological addiction
issues. But hey, let’s just slow down!
</p>
<p>
I plan to dive into my German lit again, which I’ve neglected for so
long. I do have plenty of real, hold-in-hands books that have been
gathering dust for many years. Now is the time to get out of the
internet rat race.
</p>
<p>
It will be hard. I know because I’ve tried and failed many times
before. Internet-screen addiction is a very insidious, and going off
this constantly connected state leaves me feeling—detached, adrift,
lost, depressed, anxious, without purpose or meaning. But I know that
I’m only getting fake fulfillment from being online, that whomever I
imagine myself engaging with is complete illusion. Who’s to say we are
not at some ChatGPT juncture where some chatbot is pretending to be my
advocate, friend, supporter—as in the frightening film <i>Her</i>?
</p>
<p>
I once thought I’d really do this whole project up, i.e., not just
internet detox, but do a sort of “historical reenactment theater”
where I would pretend to be a German nobleman (in period costume) come
to the American wilds for to gather observations, a la <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville">Alexis de
Tocqueville</a>. No, just getting offline will be a good beginning.
</p>
<p>
I also thought that once I got this Wuthering.UK site up I’d launch a
total media blitz, anchored by a YouTube channel where I’d do videos
after videos and get real famous and rich. But then I thought, Does
the world need another braying ass going on about how he knows better
than all the other braying asses? No. I’ve come to a very big
realization in my life, namely, that I really don’t know
anything. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to forgive/ignore those
around me who know even less; hence, a detox will help me work on this
last hurdle to absolute perfection.
</p>
<p.myindent>
<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" target="_blank"><img src="./images/by-nc-sa.png" width="125px" style="padding: 100px 0px 0px 0px" alt="License-disense"</a>
</p>
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