“Israelis as Jewish rednecks” is very apt as well. To be perfectly true, we have our Lennon-Imaginists as well (I did mention the Tel-Aviv culture), but while they seemed poised to carry the day in the 1990s, when peace with all Israel’s neighbors was “just around the corner,” in the 2000s their view got a hard clobbering from both the Arab enemy and Western Leftists who betrayed the many Israeli Jewish Leftists by sympathizing with Arab aggression at precisely the wrong moment, thus causing a great decimation of the Israeli Jewish Left, which unfortunately still retains virtual political sway through the MSM. That only goes to show how important the issue of information flow control is. I think all the doomsday scenarios regarding a permanent Leftist domination of the U.S.A. can be averted if conservatives manage to grab hold of the MSM megaphone and play it for their side the way the Marxists have done for so long. Problem is, I have no idea how this can be done legally.

Re rednecks: someone I know (who is Jewish) remarked that Israelis are “Jewish rednecks”…which she definitely meant as a compliment.

Synchronicity strikes again. (But unlike Jung, I attribute it to Divine Providence rather than consider it a fortuitous epiphenomenon.) I just sampled two old songs on Youtube, Okie from Muskogee by Merle Haggard from 1969, following Michael Filozof’s pointer, and another one I already knew of but hadn’t heard till now, John Mellencamp’s Small Town from 1985. Idiot Mellencamp, endorsing the presidential candidate whose values couldn’t be further removed from those of smalltown America. That’s the whole point.

On one of the Israeli blogs I frequent, there’s an American liberal and gay man regularly commenting there who loves Israel. He’s absolutely sincere, but he bashes the religious in Israel, the Jewish inhabitants of Judea and Samaria, in short, lefty is as lefty does. When I try to find out what he loves about Israel, he says it’s the Tel-Aviv culture, the vibrancy and hipness… again, everything that’s not to my taste. It’s clear to me now we two have been locking horns not so much over opinions as tastes. It’s clear, not only because of what he likes about Israel, but because of what I like about America.

I’m in love with smalltown America. The big, soulless, godless cities like New York and San Francisco make me recoil in distaste. Smalltown America, where everybody knew each other, played ball on God’s green earth and prayed together, is where my heart is. I mean, my heart is in my own country, of course, but the lifestyle I strive to live in my country is the same kind of lifestyle found in smalltown America, and not the Tel-Aviv and New York lifestyle the aforementioned lefty poster loves.

I’m gushing in sentimental chatter, so forgive me, but I consider the rednecks to be the only true Americans. If it has been said, in the Jewish world, that the yeshivahs (religious academies) are “the manufacturing plant for the soul of the nation,” then I’d say that for smalltown America. One of the reasons why I’m such a Back To The Future freak (much to the annoyance of that lefty poster) is that I simply love watching those movies to catch every tiny detail of the 1955 Hill Valley, which is an epitome of smalltown America. In hindsight, even the 1985 Hill Valley, though contrasted with it, still embodies a lot of those values. Too bad the only things that look like coming true for 2015 are the sharp devaluation of the currency.

The pain of this electoral loss, which looks as if it has escaped Rob, is the realization that the old-time American values, as exemplified by smalltown America, no longer infuse the American nation. The soul has been sucked out of the nation over the past few decades, between the time Merle Haggard wrote his song (in satire, to be sure, but many a true word is spoken in jest) and this November. Politically speaking it may not be so difficult to find a way to recover, but how do you regain the former soul of the nation? Character-building is a much harder endeavor than putting down a ballot box vote.

By the way: Let nobody be deluded that when (not if) the financial cataclysm hits, Leftists in America would turn into conservatives. I no more believe it’ll happen than the Muslims living in hell-hole conditions and under tyrannical fists ever blame Islam for their predicament. Political conversion like religious conversion is a change of heart, not a rational process.

Oh, M of Hollywood, thank you for reminding me of “The World is Too Much With Us.” It’s been far too long since I’ve read Wordsworth.

There is something oddly…comforting…in knowing that previous generations–including poets who wrote 200 years ago–felt the same pain and angst over the state of humanity that we do today.

By ~ William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

And I’d like to take this opportunity to say that you have really been on a roll lately.

Newfoundland
E. J. Pratt

Here the tides flow,
And here they ebb;
Not with that dull, unsinewed tread of waters
Held under bonds to move
Around unpeopled shores–
Moon-driven through a timeless circuit
Of invasion and retreat;
But with a lusty stroke of life
Pounding at stubborn gates,
That they might run
Within the sluices of men’s hearts,
Leap under throb of pulse and nerve,
And teach the sea’s strong voice
To learn the harmonies of new floods,
The peal of cataract,
And the soft wash of currents
Against resilient banks,
Or the broken rhythms from old chords
Along dark passages
That once were pathways of authentic fires.

Red is the sea-kelp on the beach,
Red as the heart’s blood,
Nor is there power in tide or sun
To bleach its stain.
It lies there piled thick
Above the gulch-line.
It is rooted in the joints of rocks,
It is tangled around a spar,
It covers a broken rudder,
It is red as the heart’s blood,
And salt as tears.

Here the winds blow,
And here they die,
Not with that wild, exotic rage
That vainly sweeps untrodden shores,
But with familiar breath
Holding a partnership with life,
Resonant with the hopes of spring,
Pungent with the airs of harvest.
They call with the silver fifes of the sea,
They breathe with the lungs of men,
They are one with the tides of the sea,
They are one with the tides of the heart,
They blow with the rising octaves of dawn,
They die with the largo of dusk,
Their hands are full to the overflow,
In their right is the bread of life,
In their left are the waters of death.

Scattered on boom
And rudder and weed
Are tangles of shells;
Some with backs of crusted bronze,
And faces of porcelain blue,
Some crushed by the beach stones
To chips of jade;
And some are spiral-cleft
Spreading their tracery on the sand
In the rich veining of an agate’s heart;
And others remain unscarred,
To babble of the passing of the winds.

Here the crags
Meet with winds and tides–
Not with that blind interchange
Of blow for blow
That spills the thunder of insentient seas;
But with the mind that reads assault
In crouch and leap and the quick stealth,
Stiffening the muscles of the waves.
Here they flank the harbours,
Keeping watch
On thresholds, altars and the fires of home,
Or, like mastiffs,
Over-zealous,
Guard too well.

Tide and wind and crag,
Sea-weed and sea-shell
And broken rudder–
And the story is told
Of human veins and pulses,
Of eternal pathways of fire,
Of dreams that survive the night,
Of doors held ajar in storms.

This transformation, it seems to me, is a good barometer of our general state of wellbeing, which ain’t good and is getting worse, as deviance is defined down, those who commit crimes are seen as merely the unfortunate, essentially blameless victims of circumstances beyond their control, and far too lenient mercy is only for the perpetrators and the not their real victims, who are quickly forgotten.

Despite the nattering and irrelevance of most of our social work, social climbing, building-obsessed, and politics focused Churches and Synagogues, there is such a thing as Evil, which in the past they used to look in the eye and confront in “the bad old days” of supposed ignorance, fanaticism, rigid moral codes, and stultifying, cruel “conformity and repression,” an Evil which they now refuse to even acknowledge, much less look at or tackle, and this Evil is obviously growing by leaps and bounds here in the good old USA, and it confines us and circumscribes our freedom and our “peaceful enjoyment of our lives” more each day.

We are headed, it looks to me, towards Fellini’s Satyricon territory, this election merely being a longer than normal, giant step taken down that dark road.

By all means, shoot a complaint to our good hostess. If I recall correctly, you’re the one who just insulted everyone here.

Let me see if I can find the quote… ah, yes, here it is –

Quoth Rob:

“And if I show no interest in ‘furthering a discussion,’ then I should fit right in here.”

Be sure to double down on that when pressing your case. Neo will appreciate the compliment, I’m certain.

*smh*

(And thank you rickl – a doff of the hat to you, sir).