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.)