Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

["Wade Riddick" <wriddick AT usa.net>]

I always knew my pastor was delivering a good sermon when the Martin Niemoller
came out.

As to the Koch Brothers, though I haven't mentioned it, they are the closest
to Communists we have in the country at the time.  They really don't believe
in property rights - private *or* public - when it comes to other people.  The
fact that this statement will strike so many people as odd is a testament to
the degree of media influence they have.

We require public goods like air to breathe or we drop dead.  To rephrase it
for thick-headed economists, we need clean, cheap public property like air or
our body, our most fundamental piece of private property, gets devalued to
zero.

The Koch Brothers, though, don't believe we should have access to that clean
air.  They think air poisoning is great for "wealth creation" - yet there
aren't any smokestacks in Koch mansions driving up their property values. 
That's because they know it destroys lives.  They think they can dump their
pollution on other people because their rights don't matter - like the blacks
in St. John parish dying at inordinate rates from Covid-19, living in one of
the most polluted zones in the country.

We're all entitled to honest government - our most fundamental public property
- which the Koch Brothers also don't agree with.  They use bribery to steal it
from us.  If you get hauled in front of a judge over a property dispute
involving a large company that stole $500 from you and that company is a donor
to the judge or people who appointed him, how do you expect a fair resolution
of your complaint and enforcement of your rights?

Take a look at the AT&T Mobility case where management just decided to steal
("overbill," as McKinsey consultant apologists would put it) from thousands of
customers.  The court's resident corporate communists like Scalia declared
that the organized crime conspiracy could band together to share legal costs
but their victims could not.  Technically victims still had the right to sue
to get their money back but without class action status, none of the thousands
of victims could share legal costs to prove the exact same case in court. 
Would you spend $200K to get back $20?

(And don't even get me started on the fifty year decriminalization of white
collar crime that culminated in the Trump looting of the Presidency.  I'll be
very shocked if Biden reverses this.) 

For John Bircher paranoiacs obsessed about pollution of the body politic, they
sure have killed plenty of folks with pollution.

These right wing "property rights" absolutists have been sawing off the tree
limb they're sitting on for the last fifty years and Trump is the apotheosis
of their celebration of sociopathic organized crime.  (How do you expect to
sell your office as a lawmaker to the highest bidder if the highest legal
officer in the land won't even follow the law?  Why am I paying you for laws
nobody's going to follow or enforce?)  It's the basic problem of kleptocrats. 
When you steal the money in a kleptocracy, where do you put it where it won't
get stolen by your fellow kleptocrats?

The fact is there has never been any greater endogenous Communist threat in
this hemisphere than the Confederacy.  They invented an excuse to completely
confiscate all the property and rights of an entire class of citizen based on
an accident of history, their skin color.  This original sin has tainted every
attempt to impose a more perfect understanding of democracy, free market
competition and rights all across the country.

It's no mistake the Koch's are obsessed with the absolute private property
rights regime of the Confederacy and spent years funding the research of the
fascist economist James Buchanan.  Nancy MacLean outlines this vital but
overlooked history in her recent work, _Democracy in Chains_.

You may dislike my conflation of fascism with communism, but when you get down
to brass tacks, the right/left spectrum is a bracelet, not a straight line. 
The extremes bend back around toward one another and wind up much closer than
they are to the middle.  Communists and fascists both have rigged elections to
fake a popular mandate, death camps, propaganda, secret police, kangaroo
courts, etc...

What does this have to do with Percy?

It's the eternal cu-de-sac of justified injustice and righteous vengeance that
Jesus tried to break us out of.

By the way, as to my academic bonafides, Janet, I was paid by the National
Science Foundation to study politics, technology, fraud and other topics.  You
should pay attention to these opinions.  They kept me alive after I was
poisoned with dental mercury.  Nothing screams fraud like medicine in America.
 Take a look at the Sackler family crime syndicate selling highly addictive
opiates to chronic pain patients like me and lying about it.  (I'll give Trump
credited where it's due.  At least he prosecuted a few opiate pill pushers.) 
Those of you about to go through the Covid-19 meat grinder will soon find out
what I'm talking about when it comes to post-viral syndromes.  It's why I've
been writing so furiously since April.

We should all remember a lesson I picked up during my brief, painful sojourn
in private elementary school with a deplorable basket of toxic, proto-iZod
nazis.  We each have to earn the right for others to consider our opinions -
and they have to earn the right for us to consider theirs.  Short of a gun,
nothing bullies really believe can hurt us or alter reality - which is,
perhaps, the source of that fascination with violence and honor in Southern
culture.  Absent a strong central government to secure justice, it's up to the
individual to redeem a "fallen" world through privatized violence.

Except it's bullshit.

Wade Riddick


------ Original Message ------
Received: Fri, 07 Aug 2020 01:43:04 PM EDT
From: Karey Perkins <kareyperkins AT gmail.com>
To: "janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com" <janetcantor37 AT yahoo.com>, "Percy-L: Literary
and Philosophical Discussion" <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [percy-l] A response to Janet Cantor




#2, the Koch brothers decades-long stealth takeover of the United States
government:  Read Jane Mayers' Dark Money:  The Hidden History of the
Billionaires behind the Rise of the Radical Right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer.html>
https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south
<https://www.history.com/news/how-the-party-of-lincoln-won-over-the-once-democratic-south>

#3, that BLM, antifa, and other leftist protesters are inciting violence: 
Almost all of the protests are peaceful demonstrators exercising their first
amendment rights.   Nor are these groups in any way at all “anarchist” -
they just don’t like the fascism and racism that is rising in our country. 
Antifa literally refers to being “anti-fascist” and is “a moniker, not a
single group with an organizational structure or leader.”  It is an
adjective, not a noun.  Right wing social media and right wing media are
propagating the myth that these are groups are violent, yet evidence shows
that white nationalists and opportunists have infiltrated the protests to
instigate violence. Trump's failures on the economy and the pandemic has
caused him to move to campaign as the “law and order” president, but this
too is failing as his “secret police” (for example in Portland, where
federal agents were unmarked and unnamed) are attacking and hooding and
capturing unarmed peaceful protesters, pulling them into unmarked vans, and
the federal agents are the ones causing the violence themselves, against moms
and Catholics.  (They’ve since been driven out of Portland, and guess what?
No more violence.). These feds are just another photo op for Trump, akin to
his tear gassing peaceful protesters in order to walk across the street and
raise a Bible (which I doubt Mr. Two Corinthians has ever opened) upside down
outside of the Episcopal church in front of the White House.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/>
https://www.voanews.com/usa/four-extremist-groups-suspected-involvement-protest-violence
<https://www.voanews.com/usa/four-extremist-groups-suspected-involvement-protest-violence>
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-the-law-and-order-candidate-thats-a-laugh/2020/07/14/17037e86-c610-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-the-law-and-order-candidate-thats-a-laugh/2020/07/14/17037e86-c610-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html>
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/508597-the-memo-trump-struggles-to-get-traction-with-law-and-order-message
<https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/508597-the-memo-trump-struggles-to-get-traction-with-law-and-order-message>
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/trump-getting-what-he-wants-portland/614635/
<https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/trump-getting-what-he-wants-portland/614635/>

Your gross misinformation is because of the what’s happened to the media
today — which was supposed to be the fourth estate, part of the executive,
judicial, and legislative branches’ checks and balances on each other —
but has failed miserably at its job ever since the FCC Fairness Doctrine was
repealed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#:~:text=The%20fairness%20doctrine%20of%20the,honest%2C%20equitable%2C%20and%20balanced.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine#:~:text=The%20fairness%20doctrine%20of%20the,honest%2C%20equitable%2C%20and%20balanced.>

Because of that, news outlets of any source - TV, newspapers, magazines,
internet — can report anything they want.  So we now have two completely
different realities, and half of American live in one reality conveyed by one
side of the aisle, while the other half lives in an entirely different reality
conveyed by a different side of the aisle.  

Oh, wait, who said, fifty years ago, that that would happen?

It has never been more important that Americans today have to be critical
thinkers to evaluate news sources and information they come across to find out
what the truth really is.  But critical thinking and civics classes no longer
exist in our high schools, so few Americans have any idea how to evaluate the
media.  Hence the great divide that Percy writes about - not just two sets of
attitudes about the same set of facts, but completely different sets of facts,
completely different realities entirely.

My hope is that you will find better, more accurate sources, and become a
better critical thinker concerning the constant bombardment of lies and
misinformation that propagate in America.

As for Lauren’s poem, I have another poem (there are many versions, here’s
just one):

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

America is in a crisis.  Percy would not have been quiet, and he wasn’t. He
spoke out in his novels, even before this happened.  

Karey



Karey Perkins, M.A., M.A.T., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of English
296A Turner Hall, South Carolina State University
Orangeburg, SC 29117
kperkin1 AT scsu.edu <mailto:kperkin1 AT scsu.edu> | 803-536-7016
www.scsu.edu <http://www.scsu.edu/> 
Member, Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX  79409-0002
kareperk AT ttu.edu <mailto:kareperk AT ttu.edu> | http://www.pragmaticism.net
<http://www.pragmaticism.net/>




> On Aug 7, 2020, at 6:36 AM, janetcantor37--- via Percy-L
<percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org> wrote:
> 
> You opened so well. Federalist #10 is my favorite of the Federalist Papers.
> Then you fell into conclusions that do not match mine.
> 
> I agree that pluralism as you describe it - belief in the ascendancy of our
attachment to factions instead of love of the whole, patriotism, love of
country - is not good.
> 
> The trouble is when I look up the definition of pluralism, it is the
opposite of how you describe it.
> 
> So I am going to tell you how I read #10:
> 
> Our country needed a strong central symbol, the flag, a president, so that
our individual interests (factions) could never get big enough to disrupt or
bring down the whole. If we wanted to be a "country", able to defend itself
against outside mischief from other countries, we had to be unified. Pluralism
entailed allowing individuals as well as states and individual interests to be
protected from meddling or destruction, as long as those individuals did not
break the country's laws. 
> 
> The colonies were worried that they had just left the King and wanted no
parts of a president. So #10 tried to explain all about the protections we
would put in place so individual interests and minorities would not fall prey 
to a new kind of tyranny. They would put in place protections of each state by
having representations in a Senate where every colony - eventually state -
would get the same representation no matter how small it was compared to the
others. They would put in place a Court to interpret the law. And the constant
tension among all of these entities would prevent a president from having too
much power and individuals or groups with they interest from inciting
confusions to bring down the whole, the U.S.
> The central power in the hands of a president having to contend with these
safeguards against its controlling all the power would help keep all
individual Americans safe.
> The larger the country, the more diverse the separate states, the more
difficult it would be for a dictatorship to arise.
> The colonies became convinced and stopped fearing having a president.
> 
> 
>  Again, you were doing so well, It is true that leftists of recent history
love chopping us up into groups with grievances so they can better control
us.
> 
> Where you went astray is when you began describing the "seething resentment
" of the right and its origins.
> 
> There is no resentment in Republicans and other rightists here from having
Civil Rights legislation shoved down "their throats".
> It was the Republicans throughout our history who instigated and helped
bring about the end of slavery against the Democrats. It was the right which
fought for integration. 
> The KKK, those who fought to preserve slavery and prevent integration of
schools were always in the Democrat Party. 
> LBJ got lots of attention when he passed the Civil Rights act, but without
the votes of Republicans in Congress, it would never have come to fruition.
> 
> Tax cuts were never designed to drive up the deficit, but to spur growth of
the economy which would bring more money into government, not less. When JFK
passed his tax cuts, the economy got a big push and the government made more
money.
> 
> Yes, both sides promise heaven on earth. But if you look at the history from
1976 until today it is a series of democrats pulling the country away from
capitalism and Republicans correcting their mistakes and fixing the country
and then the sliding again when democrats win again.
>  Taking power away from the central government to give us goodies or manage
things is a good thing. 
>  Reagan fixed Carter's disastrous economy. 
> Under Clinton we were headed back to catastrophe again until the 1994
Republican congress came in and fixed everything again, and then Clinton took
credit for it, and that's okay, because at least he didn't get in the way. And
I don't want to ruffle feathers, but recently the pattern began again. 
> And until the plague hit us, we were coasting along in the best economy
ever.
> 
> Too much federal spending is terrible, I agree and both sides are guilty of
that. Dismantling private property protection is lethally bad. We agree there.
Oligarchs stealing from private citizens is a disease, yes. Taking power from
individuals is dangerous. But we get more of these bad things every time we
elect Democrats and this time the contrast couldn't be starker.
> 
> I don't know about the Koch Brothers, but George Soros and the teachers
unions have them beat when it comes to stealing power from individuals and
placing it in the hands of government operators.
> 
> Wages were going up, unemployment was virtually disappearing, and minorities
of all kinds benefitted from these things the most. And then the pandemic
struck and we were told were have to close down the economy. 
> If this hadn't happened, we would have been in excellent economic shape.
> 
> The chaos of now is a left wing phenomenon. These destructive mobs are
avowed Marxists by their own definition. the graffiti and bringing down of
statues and buildings and chaos and murder is all a left wing phenomenon these
days - and BTW, occurring in cities run by progressive democrats.
> 
> As for the left abandoning claims on material wealth and economic justice,
where do you see that? It is in the Democrat party where you find the most
rich who came into government with modest savings and left multi
millionaires.
> 
> Hillsdale College, which I would describe as closer to conservatism than
liberalism as defined these days, does not deconstruct, does not elevate
personal revelation above law or enable will to power movement. Hillsdale
encourages individual responsibility.
>  Lovers of safe spaces where nobody has to be overruled is a leftist
phenomenon.
> 
> Where are you finding in your George Zimmerman narrative that those three
points you name are being forgotten by the Right? I call myself a rightist and
those points seem just fine to me.
> 
> Look how easy it is for two sides to see the same facts and come to
completely different readings of what is going on.
> 
> Of course, the big question is what would Percy make of it all these days?
> I am guessing he would hate what anarchist Marxists are doing to our cities,
and attempting to do to our history, and our culture. We all should. I know
that Percy would despair that things are not better. And I suspect he might
find it very difficult to write those crazy fun house novels of his with their
gorgeous endings.
> 
> I suggest that each of us should settle down and set aside time to read the
beautiful book by Wilfred McClay, Land of Hope. It clears up a lot of the
confusion between Wade Riddick and me. And, borrowing from Ariel in The
Tempest, it is so inspiring, it will make any reader cry if he is human.
> 
> Janet Cantor
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2020 at 3:47 AM, Wade Riddick
> <wriddick AT usa.net> wrote:
> What many people fail to understand is that both the Knotheads and the
> NOT-heads (i.e., "cancel culture") spring from the same toxic stew of sins:
> pluralism.
> 
> Pluralism is the belief that we have rights not as citizens of countries
but
> through the groups we belong to - race, gender, etc.  The pluralists think
> democracy is useless and unless we bind together into our "group" we can't
be
> represented.  Leaving the group for another or disagreeing with your
assigned
> "interest" is the deepest betrayal and provokes a backlash imminently
Freudian
> in its ferocity.  I haven't seen anything like it since I argued with the
> Communist Party cult remnants in graduate school about the value of money. 
> They don't accept that "interests" cut across these boundaries.  They don't
> want to see, for instance, that women have an interest in men graduating
from
> college so they can have marriageable mates.  They're an extension of the
> Zuckerberg computerization of our lives that wants to chop us up into
> interests so they can monetize us when we connect that way.
> 
> NOT-heads aren't "almost angry" at the Constitution; they're in outright
> contempt of it because the founders were explicitly against this form of
> thinking.  In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison warns that giving
organized
> groups of people the same rights as actual individual citizens will destroy
> real rights for those citizens and enable factionalism.  This type of group
> behavior has to be controlled or it will destroy the community of
democracy.
> 
> The knotheads are simply a different side of that tribalism - the
Confederacy
> tribe.  This other great enemy of democracy has been engaged in its own
long
> war against federalism going back to the days of the first Confederacy. 
The
> anger you see on the "right" is seething resentment from having civil
rights
> legislation shoved down their throats.  Since the '70s, the Republican
Party
> has been fueled by vendetta Dixiecrats fishing for ways to make the Federal
> government fail - first with Nixon's failed budget impoundment, then with
tax
> cuts they hoped would drive up the deficit so high one day they could use
it
> as an excuse to gut spending.  ("We're finally bankrupt.  Yay!")  But every
> escalating disaster caused by their sabotage of government action - 9/11,
> credit default swap implosions, Hurricane Katerina, S&L crises - only
> increased demand for government action - because, as you see today, there's
no
> other central actor in America that can handle crises of this magnitude.
> 
> These two sides resemble one another because racism - tribal revenge - is a
> communicable disease, quickly mutualizing contempt when unchecked.  Social
> media has brought us into one another's lives like never before and many of
us
> can't stand what we see. (Maybe better digital fences would make better
> digital neighbors.)  Contempt breeds contempt and without tolerance for one
> another, democratic compromise is impossible and we can't govern ourselves
-
> which suits the short-term interests of the oligarchs just fine.  They need
to
> dismantle property protections (i.e., the justice system), if they're going
to
> steal from us.
> 
> What does this have to do with anything?
> 
> When you leave groups on their own to organize, those with the most money
> oraganize the best.  Sick people are probably the most important group in
the
> country because when you become sick, you lose your autonomy and become
> dependent upon others.  Sick people also have the least influence on the
> political system because all our time and money is tied up in being sick. 
> Ditto for groups like the poor and unemployed - because you need resources
to
> organize yourselves.  Some interests can't organize themselves like this. 
> That's the function of government - to organize and address the concerns of
> all citizens.
> 
> What the NOT-heads fail to acknowledge is that their attitudes towards
> politics benefit the very oligarchs paying for us to hate each other.  The
> insidious idea underlying pluralism is that these groups somehow "compete"
> with one another for "influence" over the government.  That is, they bribe
> officials.  This is what I mean when I say a coup took place at the Supreme
> Court level in the 1970s when unelected judges equated bribery of
politicians
> with "free speech."  If you want to see what the Koch Brother's perfect
market
> in politics looks like, go visit Mexico today where every official is
> available for a price (or soon shot).  That's the future that awaits us.
> 
> So these two groups, lacking any pragmatic influence on positive agendas,
> can't govern.  They can only veto, fume and fulminate.  That's where we
find
> ourselves.  They both promise heaven on earth but can't even stop graffiti,
> much less a pandemic.  Reality collides with these delusions and knocks
> followers into the same fatalistic flights of fancy that all failed
> charismatic cults descend into.  Donald Trump becomes the Stokely
Carmichael
> of white power and the Abbie Hoffman of the pandemic - gonna levitate that
> 'ronavirus with the good feelings of his mind ray.
> 
> It's clear how the Confederacy keeps winding up in the same spot.  It's
more
> interesting how the Left fell into this heresy.  Basically, in the '60s and
> '70s, Nixon destroyed the Left with targeted assassinations of Black
Panther
> leadership, the War on Drugs, Cointelpro and other programs.  The apparatus
> developed against democracy in Vietnam and Indonesia was reimported to
> "deradicalize" urban resistance to the new oil imperialist/banking
oligarchy
> that you now see coming apart.  This is why, today, we have such high
> incarceration rates: Jim Crow Part II.
> 
> With both parties now locked down by bribery, unions getting dismantled and
> wages driven down, there was no room anymore for the Left outside academia
and
> to succeed on the Left there, you had to abandon claims on material wealth
and
> economic justice or you'd be dealt with too.  Courses on Locke, Rousseau
and
> Madison were shunted aside and restricted to graduate school - if available
at
> all - so no uppity undergrads would ever have the gall to attack
undemocratic
> militarism with democratic theory ever again.  That forced the Left into a
> peculiarly sterile conversation about race and sex - not the underlying
> sources of injustice there that could never be questioned but rather on
> personal experience - to a fatalistically myopic degree.  The end result of
> this is something called, bizarrely, Boasian antiracism
>
<https://policytensor.com/2019/10/10/what-in-the-name-of-the-lord-is-boasian-antiracism/
<https://policytensor.com/2019/10/10/what-in-the-name-of-the-lord-is-boasian-antiracism/>>.
> 
> A similar defenestration of Christianity occurred on the right.  It's
> considered "heresy" now to discuss the fact that Jesus wanted debt
> cancellation - when in fact the heresy is failing to point out that he did
and
> that led to the crucifixion.
> 
> Blame it all on the "Me Decade" of the '70s.  Both the right and the left
> turned toward the personal, especially personal narrative and confessional
-
> and new forms of communication gave them this power.  Both sides fell prey
to
> exaggerated doctrines of Deconstruction, elevating personal revelation
above
> law, constitution and Gospel truth enabling the "will-to-power" movements
> common in fascism.  Out went universal meaning and in swept wishy-washy
> relativism with "safe spaces" where nobody has to be overruled.
> 
> Charismatic evangelicals (read: segregationists) substituted personal
> confession for Biblical truth.  Witness George Zimmerman claiming it was
part
> of God's plan he shoot an unarmed black boy walking home at night.  The
Right
> ate it up forgetting that 
> 
> 1)  No greater love has a man than he gives up his life to save another
(*not*
> takes another).
> 2)  Do not be overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good.
> 3)  There is no fear in love.  Love casts out fear.
> 
> Zimmerman got out of the car that night armed with a gun because he was
afraid
> he might die and unafraid to kill - pretty much the opposite of a Christian.

> But the anti-Christian charismatics ate it up in their culture war because
he
> hated the right people.
> 
> Of course, on the Left, these ironic contradictions abound too.
> 
> When I heard Bruce Jenner confessing happiness at no longer having to lie
to
> everybody, my first thought was, "He's admitting to cheating with steroids
> like I'm positive almost everybody in track and field at the Olympic level
has
> been doing since the '50s?"
> 
> No.
> 
> My second thought was, "He's apologizing for giving people cancer and
diabetes
> by selling us Wheaties?"
> 
> Nope again.
> 
> He's transgendered.
> 
> Oh.
> 
> How was that ever my business?
> 
> What about all the people harmed by the cheating?
> 
> Oh, well…
> 
> In the future, we did get our fifteen minutes of fame and now we're all
> trapped in our own personality cults.  We're one big self-published,
unedited
> echo chamber of one.  Ours is an era of personal narrative devoid of
genuine
> readers.  Reading takes kindness.  Reading takes reflection and reflection
is
> the enemy of sensationalist tweets.  (Got to move those ads.)  Bridging
these
> islands of self presupposes an objective reality that can sustain us while
> we're "at sea" off your own island.  I think Percy referred to this as the
> "intersubjective."
> 
> But politically speaking, no man is an island.  We can't be our own
subjects
> of one, which was Madison's point.  Substituting mob gangs does not give you
a
> better form of government.
> 
> We all fall prey to different heresies of perfection.  Tech bros seem to
think
> the world will become a perfect place with enough microchips thrown at it. 
> (I've debugged too much code to believe that one.)  The flip side of that
is
> nasty too.  Nostalgia is the enemy of forgiveness, which was a major theme
of
> Percy's.  Nostalgia imagines a perfect past.  If the past was once perfect
-
> or at least better - then the screwed up way things are today is
unnecessary
> and we need no forgiveness.  We just need to travel back in our memory to
get
> there.
> 
> But there's no one left showing us how fallible that memory is.  Those
critics
> disappeared in our flattened new perspective on life.
> 
> We shouldn't idealize the past or despise it.  Nor should we idealize the
> future.  We should be, in our dire time of need, raging Pragmatists and
> radicalized moderates.
> 
> Wade Riddick
> 
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: Thu, 06 Aug 2020 10:43:12 AM EDT
> From: Ernest Hutton <ehutton AT huttonassociates.com
<mailto:ehutton AT huttonassociates.com>>
> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
> <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org <mailto:percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>>
> Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 162, Issue 11
> 
> 
> Hazel Motes (in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood), searches for God by
> railing against organized religion. But in doing so, he prophesizes the
> authoritarian end-state pushed by today’s cancel culture:  ‘Where you
come
> from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and
where
> you are is no good unless you can get away from it.’ 
> 
> O’Connor had it right, and is now a victim of her own perspicacity. This
> reign of terror is destroying us all!
> 
> Ernie Hutton
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> Ernest W Hutton Jr. FAICP Assoc AIA
> Hutton Associates Inc. 
> New York/ Westhampton 
> 917.836.7902
> 
> 17 Woodbridge Lane, Quiogue
> Westhampton Beach NY 11978
> 
> >> On Aug 6, 2020, at 4:55 AM, Plemmons, Gregory <gregory.plemmons AT vumc.org
<mailto:gregory.plemmons AT vumc.org>>
> wrote:
> > 
> > Patrick Connelly, a Percy scholar, spoke on Percy and race at one of the
> former Walker Percy Weekends. He commonly referenced a quote from Percy (I
> wish I knew the original source) about the eternal “problem of human
frailty
> trapped in historical circumstance”. That quote has stuck with me. It has
> echoes of Pompeii, especially as we seem to be entering a whole new era of
> cancel culture. The extreme left’s iconoclasm frightens me almost as much
as
> that of the Knotheads. I wish people could devote more energy inward toward
> themselves and the current state of things. While dissecting the past will
> always have some merit, what are we ourselves going to be judged on, fifty
> years from now? Even five years from this pandemic? Percy was imperfect as
the
> best of us, but he and his family also slept in their attic for two weeks
> after a bomb threat from the local Klan in 1969, after defending the
removal
> of the Confederate flag from the principal’s office of the local high
> school. 
> > 
> > Zadie Smith took a stab recently attempting to answer the question of the
> purpose of fiction. “Does it seem at all surprising in 2019...that we
should
> have this hypersensitivity?... Whereas many more material issues—economic
> inequality, criminal justice reform, immigration—prove frighteningly
> intractable, language becomes the convenient battlefield.”
> > 
> > Apologies for the long-winded rant. I read the New Yorker article. It
taught
> me nothing new. Flannery was trapped as anyone. Her poor physical health is
> often overlooked. Lupus is a horrible disease and there were little options
> for treatment or even simple relief in her time. Again, “historical
> circumstance”. I like to think if her disease hadn’t claimed her at 39,
> her views might have evolved, too. I guess we’ll never know.
> > 
> > Gregory Plemmons, MD
> > 
> >> On Aug 5, 2020, at 7:17 PM, Charles Cowherd <charlescowherd AT hotmail.com
<mailto:charlescowherd AT hotmail.com>>
> wrote:
> >> 
> >> Just to weigh in on the Flannery O’Connor/ Paul Elie scrum. 
> >> At the seminary (Episcopal) that I attended, a professor had included
the
> short story “The Artificial N____” in his compendium of short stories
> matched up to the preaching lectionary. (Flannery O’Connor fiction is
VERY
> popular in Episcopal circles.)
> >> A draft copy somehow was made available to my fellow students, who
opposed
> the inclusion. There was a big townhall meeting, a student petition,
> eventually the professor/author agreed to remove the story. 
> >> This was about 3 years ago. 
> >> I offer that up merely as another tiny data point in whatever this
> particular moment is all about. I know that Walker Percy spoke on that
short
> story specifically but cannot find it, it’s in CONVERSATIONS with WALKER
> PECY.
> >> I do think that it’s a topic that we can discuss on this forum with
care
> and concern and kindness for one another. 
> >> Also, I have been reading THE NEW YORKER all my life (“a wonderful
Yankee
> magazine”- my Dad always would say!). Only with this article the magazine
it
> reveal how detached it is, as a source of journalism, from the world. It
> reminded me of Percy’s dislike (too soft a word?) for Descartes. Instead,
> Percy believed we are all embodied creatures, fallen and stumbling in the
> world. Whereas the New Yorker writes an article with the title:  “How
Racist
> was Flannery O’Connor?” without any source of social location of time
and
> place. 
> >> All my best, 
> >> Charles Cowherd
> >> [ WARNING : This email came from an external source. Please treat this
> message with additional caution.] 
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