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 theNOT-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 butthrough the groups we belong to - race, gender, etc. The pluralists thinkdemocracy is useless and unless we bind together into our "group" we can't berepresented. Leaving the group for another or disagreeing with your assigned"interest" is the deepest betrayal and provokes a backlash imminently Freudianin its ferocity. I haven't seen anything like it since I argued with theCommunist Party cult remnants in graduate school about the value of money.They don't accept that "interests" cut across these boundaries. They don'twant to see, for instance, that women have an interest in men graduating fromcollege so they can have marriageable mates. They're an extension of theZuckerberg computerization of our lives that wants to chop us up intointerests so they can monetize us when we connect that way.NOT-heads aren't "almost angry" at the Constitution; they're in outrightcontempt of it because the founders were explicitly against this form ofthinking. In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison warns that giving organizedgroups of people the same rights as actual individual citizens will destroyreal rights for those citizens and enable factionalism. This type of groupbehavior has to be controlled or it will destroy the community of democracy.The knotheads are simply a different side of that tribalism - the Confederacytribe. This other great enemy of democracy has been engaged in its own longwar against federalism going back to the days of the first Confederacy. Theanger you see on the "right" is seething resentment from having civil rightslegislation shoved down their throats. Since the '70s, the Republican Partyhas been fueled by vendetta Dixiecrats fishing for ways to make the Federalgovernment fail - first with Nixon's failed budget impoundment, then with taxcuts they hoped would drive up the deficit so high one day they could use itas an excuse to gut spending. ("We're finally bankrupt. Yay!") But everyescalating disaster caused by their sabotage of government action - 9/11,credit default swap implosions, Hurricane Katerina, S&L crises - onlyincreased demand for government action - because, as you see today, there's noother central actor in America that can handle crises of this magnitude.These two sides resemble one another because racism - tribal revenge - is acommunicable disease, quickly mutualizing contempt when unchecked. Socialmedia has brought us into one another's lives like never before and many of uscan't stand what we see. (Maybe better digital fences would make betterdigital neighbors.) Contempt breeds contempt and without tolerance for oneanother, democratic compromise is impossible and we can't govern ourselves -which suits the short-term interests of the oligarchs just fine. They need todismantle property protections (i.e., the justice system), if they're going tosteal from us.What does this have to do with anything?When you leave groups on their own to organize, those with the most moneyoraganize the best. Sick people are probably the most important group in thecountry because when you become sick, you lose your autonomy and becomedependent upon others. Sick people also have the least influence on thepolitical 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 toorganize yourselves. Some interests can't organize themselves like this.That's the function of government - to organize and address the concerns ofall citizens.What the NOT-heads fail to acknowledge is that their attitudes towardspolitics benefit the very oligarchs paying for us to hate each other. Theinsidious idea underlying pluralism is that these groups somehow "compete"with one another for "influence" over the government. That is, they bribeofficials. This is what I mean when I say a coup took place at the SupremeCourt level in the 1970s when unelected judges equated bribery of politicianswith "free speech." If you want to see what the Koch Brother's perfect marketin politics looks like, go visit Mexico today where every official isavailable 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 findourselves. They both promise heaven on earth but can't even stop graffiti,much less a pandemic. Reality collides with these delusions and knocksfollowers into the same fatalistic flights of fancy that all failedcharismatic cults descend into. Donald Trump becomes the Stokely Carmichaelof 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 moreinteresting how the Left fell into this heresy. Basically, in the '60s and'70s, Nixon destroyed the Left with targeted assassinations of Black Pantherleadership, the War on Drugs, Cointelpro and other programs. The apparatusdeveloped against democracy in Vietnam and Indonesia was reimported to"deradicalize" urban resistance to the new oil imperialist/banking oligarchythat you now see coming apart. This is why, today, we have such highincarceration rates: Jim Crow Part II.With both parties now locked down by bribery, unions getting dismantled andwages driven down, there was no room anymore for the Left outside academia andto succeed on the Left there, you had to abandon claims on material wealth andeconomic justice or you'd be dealt with too. Courses on Locke, Rousseau andMadison were shunted aside and restricted to graduate school - if available atall - so no uppity undergrads would ever have the gall to attack undemocraticmilitarism with democratic theory ever again. That forced the Left into apeculiarly sterile conversation about race and sex - not the underlyingsources of injustice there that could never be questioned but rather onpersonal experience - to a fatalistically myopic degree. The end result ofthis is something called, bizarrely, Boasian antiracismA similar defenestration of Christianity occurred on the right. It'sconsidered "heresy" now to discuss the fact that Jesus wanted debtcancellation - when in fact the heresy is failing to point out that he did andthat led to the crucifixion.Blame it all on the "Me Decade" of the '70s. Both the right and the leftturned toward the personal, especially personal narrative and confessional -and new forms of communication gave them this power. Both sides fell prey toexaggerated doctrines of Deconstruction, elevating personal revelation abovelaw, constitution and Gospel truth enabling the "will-to-power" movementscommon in fascism. Out went universal meaning and in swept wishy-washyrelativism with "safe spaces" where nobody has to be overruled.Charismatic evangelicals (read: segregationists) substituted personalconfession for Biblical truth. Witness George Zimmerman claiming it was partof God's plan he shoot an unarmed black boy walking home at night. The Rightate it up forgetting that1) 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 afraidhe 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 hehated 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 toeverybody, my first thought was, "He's admitting to cheating with steroidslike I'm positive almost everybody in track and field at the Olympic level hasbeen doing since the '50s?"No.My second thought was, "He's apologizing for giving people cancer and diabetesby 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 alltrapped in our own personality cults. We're one big self-published, uneditedecho chamber of one. Ours is an era of personal narrative devoid of genuinereaders. Reading takes kindness. Reading takes reflection and reflection isthe enemy of sensationalist tweets. (Got to move those ads.) Bridging theseislands of self presupposes an objective reality that can sustain us whilewe'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 subjectsof one, which was Madison's point. Substituting mob gangs does not give you abetter form of government.We all fall prey to different heresies of perfection. Tech bros seem to thinkthe 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 isnasty too. Nostalgia is the enemy of forgiveness, which was a major theme ofPercy'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 unnecessaryand we need no forgiveness. We just need to travel back in our memory to getthere.But there's no one left showing us how fallible that memory is. Those criticsdisappeared in our flattened new perspective on life.We shouldn't idealize the past or despise it. Nor should we idealize thefuture. We should be, in our dire time of need, raging Pragmatists andradicalized moderates.Wade Riddick------ Original Message ------Received: Thu, 06 Aug 2020 10:43:12 AM EDTFrom: Ernest Hutton <ehutton AT huttonassociates.com>To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"Subject: Re: [percy-l] Percy-L Digest, Vol 162, Issue 11Hazel Motes (in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood), searches for God byrailing against organized religion. But in doing so, he prophesizes theauthoritarian end-state pushed by today’s cancel culture: ‘Where you comefrom is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and whereyou 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. Thisreign of terror is destroying us all!Ernie HuttonSent from my iPhoneErnest W Hutton Jr. FAICP Assoc AIAHutton Associates Inc.New York/ Westhampton917.836.790217 Woodbridge Lane, QuiogueWesthampton Beach NY 11978>> On Aug 6, 2020, at 4:55 AM, Plemmons, Gregory <gregory.plemmons AT vumc.org>wrote:> > Patrick Connelly, a Percy scholar, spoke on Percy and race at one of theformer Walker Percy Weekends. He commonly referenced a quote from Percy (Iwish I knew the original source) about the eternal “problem of human frailtytrapped in historical circumstance”. That quote has stuck with me. It hasechoes of Pompeii, especially as we seem to be entering a whole new era ofcancel culture. The extreme left’s iconoclasm frightens me almost as much asthat of the Knotheads. I wish people could devote more energy inward towardthemselves and the current state of things. While dissecting the past willalways have some merit, what are we ourselves going to be judged on, fiftyyears from now? Even five years from this pandemic? Percy was imperfect as thebest of us, but he and his family also slept in their attic for two weeksafter a bomb threat from the local Klan in 1969, after defending the removalof the Confederate flag from the principal’s office of the local highschool.>> Zadie Smith took a stab recently attempting to answer the question of thepurpose of fiction. “Does it seem at all surprising in 2019...that we shouldhave this hypersensitivity?... Whereas many more material issues—economicinequality, criminal justice reform, immigration—prove frighteninglyintractable, language becomes the convenient battlefield.”>> Apologies for the long-winded rant. I read the New Yorker article. It taughtme nothing new. Flannery was trapped as anyone. Her poor physical health isoften overlooked. Lupus is a horrible disease and there were little optionsfor treatment or even simple relief in her time. Again, “historicalcircumstance”. 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>wrote:>> >> Just to weigh in on the Flannery O’Connor/ Paul Elie scrum.>> At the seminary (Episcopal) that I attended, a professor had included theshort story “The Artificial N____” in his compendium of short storiesmatched up to the preaching lectionary. (Flannery O’Connor fiction is VERYpopular in Episcopal circles.)>> A draft copy somehow was made available to my fellow students, who opposedthe 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 thisparticular moment is all about. I know that Walker Percy spoke on that shortstory specifically but cannot find it, it’s in CONVERSATIONS with WALKERPECY.>> I do think that it’s a topic that we can discuss on this forum with careand concern and kindness for one another.>> Also, I have been reading THE NEW YORKER all my life (“a wonderful Yankeemagazine”- my Dad always would say!). Only with this article the magazine itreveal how detached it is, as a source of journalism, from the world. Itreminded me of Percy’s dislike (too soft a word?) for Descartes. Instead,Percy believed we are all embodied creatures, fallen and stumbling in theworld. Whereas the New Yorker writes an article with the title: “How Racistwas Flannery O’Connor?” without any source of social location of time andplace.>> All my best,>> Charles Cowherd>> [ WARNING : This email came from an external source. 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