Sep 3, 2022·edited Sep 3, 2022Liked by Charles Clemens
It is the 200 year cleansing of every empire that goes on in history. The bad actors outnumber the good, the debt mounts, the wars are continuous and un winnable. Orwell was Nostradamus in disguise.
I would say we fell because we are a mixed multitude not WE THE PEOPLE. A rabble. A Great Beast in Hamilton's phrase. So only natural someone wants to be Fuhrer someday.
As a powerless nobody, I can clearly see the futility in thinking “something must be done.” Actually, NOTHING must be done. “Ozymandius, Ozymandius, wherefore art thou Ozymandius?”
Empires come. Empires go. So? Mutability, the poets knew, is all there can ever be. So lamentations for the passing of an empire are best put to the music of Aretha, with a slight misspelling. What we are seeing today has been seen for thousands of years: “Change, change, change, a change of fools.”
At times like these I am compelled to remember that prosperity and safety are ephemeral flukes, while perpetual unrest and danger are the norm. Far too many Americans “sit in darkness,” and have no understanding of the world whatsoever. But neither do the citizens of any other country.
On my worst days I recall the wisdom of Marshal Vasilevsky. As his army was obliterating Germany’s, he received reports of his soldiers raping and pillaging. Recalling just how brutal and sadistic the German soldiers had been as they marauded across eastern Europe, the weary, loyal commander replied, “I don’t give a fuck.”
This is not to say that joy and happiness cannot be had, nor is it wrong to pursue those things; but to even insinuate that we live in a beautiful world is a fool’s errand. As I have previously stated: The world is not beautiful, but there is Beauty in the world; and between the two there is a world of difference.
I liver in the Mayberry Triangle, my name for the interzone between Portland and Beaverton, Or, and Washington and Multnomah counties, adjoining fringe zones that allow for pockets of old-fashioned urban decay and a lingering bit of what passed for sanity in the previous century.
Moved here after a few decades in Spokane, WA. Going from red-state-ish eastern Washington to very blue state Portland was a major culture shock:" hadn't realized that urban neoliberal America had gone that crazy. Within a year, covid hit. Oy, mucho insanity.
But I've adjusted and am a flourishing local lunatic.
It is the 200 year cleansing of every empire that goes on in history. The bad actors outnumber the good, the debt mounts, the wars are continuous and un winnable. Orwell was Nostradamus in disguise.
Hedonism
I would say we fell because we are a mixed multitude not WE THE PEOPLE. A rabble. A Great Beast in Hamilton's phrase. So only natural someone wants to be Fuhrer someday.
https://youtu.be/QVcNfiRWS6U
Stream of consciousness?
As a powerless nobody, I can clearly see the futility in thinking “something must be done.” Actually, NOTHING must be done. “Ozymandius, Ozymandius, wherefore art thou Ozymandius?”
Empires come. Empires go. So? Mutability, the poets knew, is all there can ever be. So lamentations for the passing of an empire are best put to the music of Aretha, with a slight misspelling. What we are seeing today has been seen for thousands of years: “Change, change, change, a change of fools.”
At times like these I am compelled to remember that prosperity and safety are ephemeral flukes, while perpetual unrest and danger are the norm. Far too many Americans “sit in darkness,” and have no understanding of the world whatsoever. But neither do the citizens of any other country.
On my worst days I recall the wisdom of Marshal Vasilevsky. As his army was obliterating Germany’s, he received reports of his soldiers raping and pillaging. Recalling just how brutal and sadistic the German soldiers had been as they marauded across eastern Europe, the weary, loyal commander replied, “I don’t give a fuck.”
This is not to say that joy and happiness cannot be had, nor is it wrong to pursue those things; but to even insinuate that we live in a beautiful world is a fool’s errand. As I have previously stated: The world is not beautiful, but there is Beauty in the world; and between the two there is a world of difference.
I liver in the Mayberry Triangle, my name for the interzone between Portland and Beaverton, Or, and Washington and Multnomah counties, adjoining fringe zones that allow for pockets of old-fashioned urban decay and a lingering bit of what passed for sanity in the previous century.
Moved here after a few decades in Spokane, WA. Going from red-state-ish eastern Washington to very blue state Portland was a major culture shock:" hadn't realized that urban neoliberal America had gone that crazy. Within a year, covid hit. Oy, mucho insanity.
But I've adjusted and am a flourishing local lunatic.
I'm off to read about Carlton the Crime-Fighting Pig.
"Every essay seems to be an attempt to outdo all the others as it presents facts about our dying empire and our way of life."
Sen sationalism, whether fraudulent or truthful, rarely fails to sell.