Where are those Americans now?

Because majorities are often wrong it does not follow that minorities are always right.
~ ~ ~ Don Marquis

In the midst of the karmic retribution engulfing Rupert Murdoch’s papparacitic, parasitic empire (and the sad decline of daily newspapers in general) it is perhaps worth remembering that Don Marquis was born on this day, July 29^th, in 1878. Most people remember him (if they do) for Archy and Mehitibel. Archy was a free-verse poet trapped in the body of a cockroach. He inhabited Don’s office in the old New York Sun, and jumped on the keys of his typewriter at night to leave immortal philosophic tales in blank verse of Mehitibel the alley cat, who was the re-incarnation of Cleopatra. Great stuff that from 1910 into the 30’s delighted New Yorkers. But another recurring theme this remarkable “colyumist” was “The Almost Perfect State.” Note that he didn’t set out to cement fixed, non-negotiable rules for a “perfect state.” He knew better than that, and proclaimed that:

“Politeness, rooted in the soul, is the only true politics.”

That seems quaint today. But even in my lifetime I can remember when Republicans like Edward Brooke and Everett Dirksen could sit down and work things out with Democrats like Jack Kennedy and J. William Fulbright.

Rupert Murdoch’s FOX News and the rest of his Empire don’t sell advertising based upon balance; quite the opposite. Many people like to be spoon-fed just what they already believe. This isn’t new. A re-read of what Marquis’ good friend Sinclair Lewis laid out in Main Street, Babbitt or It Can’t Happen Here will remind you that it has always been so. But I fear that in this age when Henry Adams’ nightmare of ever accelerating society has come to roost, (and where twittering passes for thoughtful journalism) some important things are lost: The very concept of contemplation, and the appreciation of beauty in life.

Thomas De Quincey said of newspaper archives:

Worlds of fine thinking lie buried in that vast abyss, never to be disentombed or restored to human admiration. Like the sea, it has swallowed treasures without end, that no diving‑bell will bring up again.

For an example, I took a dive into my library and came up from the bottom with this from Don Marquis’ column, The Sun Dial:

We used sometimes to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, that song in stone and steel of an engineer who was also a great artist, at dusk, when the tides of shadow flood in from the lower bay to break in a surf of glory and mystery and illusion against the tall towers of Manhattan. Seen from the middle arch of the bridge at twilight, New York with its girdle of shifting waters and its drift of purple cloud and its quick pulsations of unstable light is a miracle of splendor and beauty that lights up the heart like the laughter of a god.

But, descend. Go down into the city. Mingle with the details. The dirty old shed from which the “L” trains and trolleys put out with their jammed and mangled thousands for flattest Flatbush and the unknown bourne of ulterior Brooklyn is still the same dirty old shed; on a hot, damp night the pasty streets stink like a paperhanger’s overalls; you are trodden and over-ridden by greasy little profiteers and their hopping victims; you are encompassed round about by the ugly and the sordid, and the objectionable is exuded upon you from a myriad candid pores; your elation and your illusion vanish like ingenuous snowflakes that have kissed a hot dog sandwich on its fiery brow, and you say: “Beauty? Aw, h-l! What’s the use?”

And yet you have seen beauty. And beauty that was created by these people and people like these. You have seen the tall towers of Manhattan, wonderful under the stars. How did it come about that such growths came from such soil - that a breed lawless and sordid and prosaic has written such a mighty hieroglyphic against the sky? This glamour out of a pigsty . . . how come? How is it that this hideous, halfbrute city is also beautiful and a fit habitation for demi-gods? How come?

It comes about because the wise and subtle deities permit nothing worthy to be lost. It was with no thought of beauty that the builders labored; no conscious thought; they were masters or slaves in the bitter wars of commerce, and they never saw as a whole what they were making; no one of them did. But each one had had his dream. And the baffled dreams and the broken visions and the ruined hopes and the secret desires of each one labored with him as he labored; the things that were lost and beaten and trampled down went into the stone and steel and gave it soul: the aspiration denied and the hope abandoned and the vision defeated were the things that lived, and not the apparent purpose for which each one of all the millions sweat and toiled or cheated; the hidden things, the silent things, the winged things, so weak they are easily killed, the unacknowledged things, the rejected beauty, the strangled appreciation, the inchoate art, the submerged spirit - these groped and found each other and gathered themselves together and worked themselves into the tiles and mortar of the edifice and made a town that is a worthy fellow of the sunrise and the sea winds.

Humanity triumphs over its details.

The individual aspiration is always defeated of its perfect fruition and expression, but it is never lost; it passes into the conglomerate being of the race.

The way to encourage yourself about the human race is to look at it first from a distance; look at the lights on the high spots. Coming closer, you will be profoundly discouraged at the number of low spots, not to say two-spots. Coming still closer, you will become encouraged once more by the reflection that the same stuff that is in the high spots is also in the two-spots.

Before Don’s funeral in December of 1937 his best friend, Christopher Morley (also a writer worth a second look) found that he had been gussied up. Morley re-dressed him in his favorite old brown suit, took off and tied his own favorite tie onto him, and “. . . then Bucky Fuller and I went out and got drunk.”  Don was a lifelong Republican and friend of Coolidge. Kit Morley was a Democrat and friend of Roosevelt. Buckminster Fuller was unique. Beauty was created by people like these (and bridges, and space programs) who dared to dream rather than march in lock-step party line. They well understood that “The individual aspiration is always defeated of its perfect fruition and expression.” And much of America was populated by those who took the time to read them.

Where are those Americans now?

I'm Mad as Hell

I have never been in Brooklyn. But I would like to go there. In all of the old WWII movies, there was one scruffy, down-to-earth sergeant with a thick Brooklyn accent. He was always the symbol of the solid blue-collar, ‘regular’ guy. The one you wanted in your foxhole. In 1990 I got to know and become friends with a great woman, the late Rita Klimova. She was then the Czech Ambassador to the United States. She was the woman who coined the phrase “Velvet Revolution” while interpreting for Vaclav Havel. She was a professor of economics with a very practical view of world affairs. Once at a luncheon in San Francisco someone at our table asked about the possibility of Czechoslovakia breaking up. “Well,” she said diplomatically, “it is like a divorce. Sometimes it happens, and nothing can stop it. But who ever heard of both sides coming out richer after a divorce?”

Nice line, but the reason I repeat it and speak of Rita is that she said it with a pronounced Brooklyn accent. And that accent, after one got over the surprise of it, tended to sooth her audiences. This was someone you could trust. A straight talker and a straight shooter. Rita’s family had escaped Hitler, and she learned her first lessons in economics by selling Girl Scout Cookies in the neighborhood of their wartime Brooklyn home.



One of my favorite writers of all time is Don Marquis, who wrote: “. . . the Brooklyn Bridge, that song in stone and steel of an engineer who was also a great artist . . .” Don also said: “Politeness, rooted in the soul, is the only true politics.” President Obama has tried to live up to that adage, I believe. But there are limits. I have been waiting for someone to speak up about the pure political obstructionism of the Republican Party; the new incarnation of Newt Gingrich’s “Shut Down Congress.” Someone more like Harry Truman. Someone who would finally get up and remind us of the line from the movie Network: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

I took a congressman from Brooklyn to do that. My hat is off to him. Give’m Hell, Tony!

The Solid Rock Church

In 2000, Pastor Lawrence and Darlene Bishop have pastored Solid Rock Church since 1978. The stories of how they began in ministry are quite interesting. Lawrence Bishop has a powerful testimony of how God called a prosperous Christian businessman with a heart to serve to pastor a thriving New Testament church. Pastor Bishop began in the horse business at the age of twelve and has built one of the most successful Quarter Horse ranches in the nation. The LB Ranch is home to many famous stallions and other championship horses. Horsemen come from across the United States and all over the world to buy quality horses from the LB Ranch.

In 1975, Lawrence reached a desperate point in his life. While building a successful horse business and traveling as a highly sought-after auctioneer, he found himself putting his family and God behind his business ventures. He knew that his priorities had to change. One night, after much prodding by his wife, he attended a local church service. During that meeting, he felt as if the preacher was speaking directly to him and even suspected that Darlene had spoken to the preacher concerning his situation. Lawrence recommitted his life to Christ that night and a short time later surrendered to the call of ministry. Lawrence preaches in churches around the world and promotes the gospel through Bluegrass music. He has recorded several cd’s including Traveling Preaching Man, White Horse Rider, and Three Dollar Baby.

Darlene made her commitment to Christ at fourteen years of age and felt the call to preach shortly thereafter. After marrying Lawrence at the age of seventeen, she began to work with him in the horse business. As they became more and more successful, Darlene still had a burning desire to preach the gospel, often getting up in the middle of the night to rehearse the messages God had given her. This led her to answer the call to preach and now she ministers not only along side Lawrence at Solid Rock Church, but also as founder of Darlene Bishop Ministries. Darlene is the author of such works as Your Life Follows Your Words.

They have many things to sell you:

http://www.darlenebishop.org/catalog/

 

They built this:

God replied with lightning:

Lesson: God has a sense of humor

Final Word, Final Solution?

.
Politness, rooted in the soul,
is the only true politics.
~~~ Don Marquis




I created this blog because I was very sorry to see that the underpinning of Erik Best's "Final Word" (which has unfortunately become a Spenglerian “Decline of the West” rant) is based partly on Pat Buchanan’s horrible piece of tripe "The Unnecessary War." Were the Czechs really better off under Heydrich than Masaryk and Benes? Buchanan thinks so. The man is so much the antithesis of the quote above I attach to my e-mails that I have to reply. He is more than bad, he is evil. This is the very worst of Nixon’s White House still raising his ugly head. The man who called Watergate:


The lost opportunity to move against the political forces frustrating the expressed national will ... To effect a political counterrevolution in the capital — ... there is no substitute for a principled and dedicated man of the Right in the Oval Office.


He is nothing less than a neo-Nazi; a malevolent spirit of hate. This is the man who pushed the always flawed Nixon from the moderation that had begun to come with age and experience into the nether world that destroyed him. This is the man who then saved himself by getting Nixon to burn the White House Tapes . . . destroying Nixon, but preventing Buchanan’s part in those tapes from coming out. Spengler, at least, despite being the philosophical underpinning of Nazism, rejected the most extreme views of Hitler and did not buy into true Nazism. He was not a base, hate mongering rabble-rouser like Buchanan; the American version of Josef Goebbels.
This country especially (The Czech Republic) but also the world in general have had too much of pseudo-religious ‘philosophies’ where followers look at every turning leaf and say:


“Look! . . . . . Capitalists!/Jews!/Communists!/ Nazis!/The Market!/Decline of the West!
And then they warp whatever they see to fit their pre-conceived notions.


Apocalyptic visions of the “End of the World” are not new. They have been used over and over again by those who fear change most of all; but who also fear those different than themselves, racially, religiously, or politically. They breed fear and hatred, not understanding. They are almost always destructive, not constructive. That is why I twitched when “The Final Word” began, a year or so ago, to veer into polemic; not recommending policy or change but attacking almost everybody for aiding and abetting “Decline.” It became an almost paranoid window viewing plots under every leaf, and in doing so lost credence as did “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” It has gone from clear-eyed watchdog to mean-spirited diatribe. I we need to take a good look at where all this xenophobia is leading us. When Buchanan's book is a best seller, the fertilizer that Hitler's brooding hatred grew from is still plentiful, and the Spenglerian structure Goebbels put to use is still a wickedly useful tool.


I quoted Don Marquis above. He was a newspaper “Colyumist” in the teens and twenties in New York; and a poet; and a playwright (His “The Old Soak” had a long run on Broadway in 1922 opposite Capek’s “RUR”.) Read one of his columns below, and another I will link to, if you will. I think they are pertinent today . . . and in the present discussion . . .




I pray Thee, make my colyum read,
And give me thus my daily bread.
Endow me, if Thou grant me wit,
Likewise with sense to mellow it.
Save me from feeling so much hate
My food will not assimilate;
Open mine eyes that I may see
Thy world with more of charity,
And lesson me in good intents
And make me friend of innocence ...
Make me (sometimes at least) discreet;
Help me to hide my self conceit,
And give me courage now and then
To be as dull as are most men.
And give me readers quick to see
When I am satirizing Me....
Grant that my virtues may atone
For some small vices of mine own.

 Don Marquis on New York; the good, bad, and the ugly


(note: The link above is part of a little book about Christopher Morley I wrote, and the comments at the bottom of the second page are directed to him in first person. The photo is Marquis.)