Laurel: Reclaiming a Hometown - One Home At A Time

Laurel, Mississippi went on a downward spiral after its pine woods industry went downhill. But, forests grow, and communities rise, especially with dedicated reclaimers, like Erin and Ben Napier.

Nobody knows and loves Laurel, Mississippi, quite like Erin and Ben Napier. After all, the small Southern city is where Home Town is filmed, and the Napiers are the stars of the HGTV show.

Bringing positive attention to their hometown was a major factor in the couple's decision to star in the show, currently airing its second season. In each episode, the husband and wife (and brand new parents!) help Laurel newcomers find and renovate their dream home. Along the way, we get a good look at the quaint town (population 18,756) that the hosts are so very proud of.

Through the series, Erin and Ben have indeed put Laurel on the map. And since it's only a matter of time before people start planning to visit the small town (just look at all the folks trekking to Magnolia Market and Pioneer Woman Mercantile!), here's our guide to the Home Town filming location, complete with Erin and Ben's favorite local spots.

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Ben and Erin: Hometown One Home At A Time

How the Devil Plays the Game

VDare, about whom I've recently written here, has finally decided to put some Christian, spiritual article on its website, other than as a "War on Christmas" tag (without the Christ and the Christian).

In the article Is It Time For Americans To Start Talking About The Devil? Matthew Richer does an extensive expose on the Devil, and why we should acknowledge his presence.

But confronting the Devil becomes the final frontier in saving America, not presenting the grace of God. To my knowledge, and I've searched through the extensive articles written for/by/against VDare, there is no article that is exclusive to the praises of God's excellent hand in this American Nation.

Rather, we now have a full expose on the Devil himself.

January Garden

January Garden
[Photo By: KPA]

"The belief in objective truth is the keystone of traditional Western culture, and the explicit basis of the United States of America. For America's founding generation and their posterity, man's inalienable rights to liberty and self-government proceed, not from from the will and desire of man, but from "nature and nature's God." Man's freedom is ordained, and constrained, by a reality higher than man. It was the shared experience of that truth that formed the American nation."

Lawrence Auster
Our Borders, Ourselves: America in the Age of Multiculturalism
Chapter 4: The Spiritual Effects of Multiculturalism
P.58

Give Thanks for our Founding Fathers

Give thanks for our Founding Fathers
Our Annual Independence Day Message
On the Contrary: Revisionist Review Blog
By Michael Hoffman
July 4, 2018

242 years after our Declaration of Independence, the Left insists that “America was never great.” They allege that our nation was always a hellhole of evil compared with benevolent colored nations (oops, I meant to say “nations of color”), that are supposedly "compassionate and caring, with human rights and dignity for all.” Uh-huh.

In the black slavery reparations' debate the heartless Africans who captured their fellow blacks and sold them on an industrial scale for centuries to (mostly) Judaic slave-traders, are almost never held responsible, or exposed as criminal sadists produced by ghoulish cultures.

Furthermore, why have China, India and Africa never produced a Bill of Rights that has the force of law, recognizing that every human being has divinely endowed rights that no government can remove? Because only a Christian nation, however flawed, bases its laws on the premise that every human being is the imago Dei — Almighty God’s image-bearing creature.

Awareness of this truth epitomizes the heart and soul of our nation at its founding, which Third World barbarians, latter-day Stalinists and Talmudists cannot fathom or embrace.

The Supreme Court recently upheld the privacy rights of cell phone users, something which the government of China or that of almost any other Asian, Latin American or African nation violates (or would violate if they possessed the technical means), every nano-second.

The spoiled-rotten Leftist punks infecting our universities, media and body politic, are fundamentally self-hating ingrates, having no gratitude to the dead white men (and women) who bequeathed Constitutional rights unequaled by all but a handful of nations on this planet.

Our (imperfect) Founders bequeathed to us liberty. It can be preserved against the Deep State and its controlled street mobs, only if we are eternally vigilant against the entropy that inevitably decays over time that which was once fresh and new. It is our perpetual duty as Americans, with each successive generation, to guard and renew the liberty born on July 4, 1776.

Let us give thanks for America’s Independence Day and our Founding Fathers!

— Michael Hoffman
Revisionist History®

Walk Away From Mendacity

Below is an article from The Orthosphere written by J. M. Smith on July 4

---

Walk Away From Mendacity
By: J. M. Smith
July 4, 2018
The Orthosphere

We have returned to the sultry swelter of Texas, retracing the route by which we had, but a week before, escaped over the dusty rolling plains. Traveling in the homeward direction, I was not so impressed by visible signs of Christian faith (although the many white crosses in the town of Memphis were something to ponder). I was impressed by visible signs of mendacity.

Mendacity is not the simple act of lying, or even lying habitually. It is living a lie because one believes in “the salutary nature of falsehoods.” The phrase is from the last of Carlyle’s Latter Day Pamphlets, in which the great man also describes mendacity as “the universe of cant.” What he means is not only that lies are so common as to be virtually universal, but that, in “the universe of cant,” reality is conceived to be of so indefinite, elastic and manipulable a nature as to conform to anything we might say that it is. As Carlyle explains, the spiritual ground and first cause of “the universe of cant” is a conviction that

“the universe makes no immediate objection to be conceived

in any way.”

In the mouth of a modern savant, this principle would be expressed by the line,

“Reality is a social construct.”

When a liar lies, he knows his words are not true. The mendacious man does not care if words are true because truth has for him no value. If he has had the benefit of a university education, the mendacious man will say

“Everything is an interpretation.”

Because a liar knows that his falsehoods are untrue, he “lives by his lies” only insofar as he must to maintain his deception. But the mendacious man goes beyond this “voluntary spoken divergence from the fact as it stands” and assumes a voluntary “divergence in thought from what is the fact.” As Carlyle goes on to say,

“Alas, the palpable liar with his tongue does at least know that he is lying, and has or might have some faint vestige of remorse and chance of amendment; but the impalpable liar, whose tongue articulates mere accepted commonplaces, cants and babblement, which means only ‘Admire me . . .’ of him what hope is there?”

* * * * *

There are official signs along U.S. Highway 287 north of Amarillo indicating that this stretch of road is part of something called the “Plains to Ports Highway.” Reading these signs, an ingenuous motorist might form the belief that the enormous, thundering truck by which he is being crowded off the road is, at least, conveying the bounty of the plains to a saltwater port, from whence that bounty will be shipped across the sea. But in this belief the ingenuous motorist would be wrong, for, as you can see on this map, the “Plains to Ports Highway” is, in fact, a highway to Mexico.



Do not be deceived by the coastal town of Mazatlan, away down south by the mouth of the Gulf of California. Mazatlan is a tourist resort and port of call for cruise ships. If the farmers of the high plains actually wished to export their beefcakes to Australia or the Galapagos Islands, they would do so through, Manzanillo, the real port farther south.

The absence of any real ports on the “Plains to Ports Highway” may be a small thing in itself, but this false and misleading name is part of the pervasive mendacity that runs through all of our dealings Mexico.

We are not told the truth about Mexico and we do not wish to be told the truth.

* * * * *

If the “Plains to Ports Highway” was, in truth, a highway from the Plains to some Ports, it might have continued to follow Highway 287 southeast from Amarillo to its terminus, which happens to be a city called Port Arthur on the Gulf of Mexico. But as it is, the “Plains to Ports Highway” leaves Highway 287 at Amarillo and makes a beeline for the border.

Southeast of Amarillo, Highway 287 might be called the Colorado Trail, for it is by this route that thousands upon thousands of Texans make their annual hegira to the Rocky Mountains. Nowadays it might also be called the Cannabis Trail, for it is by this route that thousands upon thousands of pounds of marijuana are transported from the happy highlands to the great, sweltering, unhappy cities of Texas.

That this is so was evident in at least fifty large billboards along that highway, all hawking the services of lawyers who specialize in the defense of marijuana smugglers. “Got Pot?” read more than one of these.

Assuming that these lawyers know their market, quite a few of the drivers on that stretch of road nod their heads and answer, “you bet your sweet ass I do!”

Obviously, Colorado’s legalization of marijuana made Highway 287 into the Pot to Potheads Highway, but only lawyers specializing in the defense of marijuana smugglers act as if this is so. That the services of such lawyers are required suggests that the state occasionally manages to nab a car loaded with cannabis candy bars, but I nowhere saw evidence of any serious effort to curtail the Colorado cannabis trade.

Just as with our dealings with Mexico, our dealings with illegal drugs are shot through with mendacity. We are not told the truth about marijuana and we do not wish to be told the truth.

* * * * *

We left the Pot to Potheads Highway at Fort Worth, where the newspaper headlines blazoned the news that my employer is squirming in the face of awkward questions about its handling of sexual assaults by and of its students. I’ve written several posts about this problem, which is hardly unique to Texas A&M, and is probably insoluble without rolling back much of the sexual revolution.

The essential problem is how a university can prevent bad sex between its students without inconveniencing the students who wish to take a shot at good sex. That university students have a right to conveniently take a shot at good sex is never questioned. That the university has a responsibility to prevent this from going bad is, likewise, a foregone conclusion. Thus separation of good sex from bad sex is the Gordian knot that our president hopes to unravel with the help of a task force, panel of experts, firm of outside consultants, and, perhaps, Ouija board.

The big brains are being asked to furrow their brows and discover a way that Chad and Susie can lock themselves in Susie’s room, with no questions asked, notwithstanding that Chad and Susie are drunk and do not know each other’s names, and yet emerge the next morning with smiles on their faces and love in their hearts.

Furrow away, say I, because this is a puzzler that cannot be solved. And it cannot be solved because it drips with mendacity.

It cannot be solved because we are not told the truth about sex and we do not wish to be told the truth.

* * * * *

Mendacity is a resolution to permanently reside in a false and fictional world, in a pretend world of make-believe. It is a decision to take the plunge and really “live the lie.” We are, for instance, living the lie that Mexico is just a normal neighbor, and that our relations with that strange and unhappy country are not fundamentally different than our relations with, say, Canada or Italy.

We are living the lie that contraband will not cross an unregulated border, and that Colorado is not, therefore, supplying marijuana to all of the western states that are too uptight to supply themselves.

We are living the lie that Chad and Susie can always come out of Susie’s room smiling, if only Chad is sufficiently schooled, beforehand, in the precise protocols of prophylaxis and feminist sex, not to mention the fearsome penalties for sex crimes.

Or we could refuse to live by these lies and face the fact that countries, contraband, and young couples do have an “immediate objection to be conceived in any way.” We could accept the fact that they demand that we conceive them in just one way–and that is their way, not ours.

Because otherwise there will be pain!

* * * * *

In 1974 Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote a short and powerful essay called “Live Not By Lies.” He wrote the essay just before leaving the Soviet Union, and was, of course, writing in protest against the lies of the Soviet authorities and the mendacity of the Soviet citizens who lived by those lies (excusing themselves with the words, “It is all the same to me so long as I’m fed and warm”).

The dishonest authorities cared enough about the truth to suppress it. The mendacious citizens cared so little about the truth that they would not trouble themselves to demand it. And it was by their “daily participation in lies” that these mendacious citizens lost their souls.

At the heart of Solzhenitsyn’s great essay, there is a litany of the mendacities to which every one of us is prone, and of which almost every one of us is guilty. I suggest that this litany may make more suitable reading for Americans on this Independence Day than, say, the Declaration of Independence. And while you are at it, why not accept Solzhenitsyn’s challenge and commit yourself to “personal non-participation in lies.”

“Walk away,” he says, “from the gangrenous boundary.”

Some Folks

Recent email correspondence (abridged):

I continue to marvel at life and at what we have: The photographs I take; the honey from the summer farmers' market; the bookstore in the mall;

And seeing joy for life, and through God.

I labeled this post "Reclaiming Beauty." Reclaiming Beauty is an active and personal behavior. Refusing to be dragged in by Devil-induced negativity is one such. The Devil just loves to see us dejected and miserable. He can then lure us into his den with promises of a better world. And the weak and the miserable follow "happily" believing they will find relief from their misery.

Antidote and shield:

Some Folks
Lyrics by Stephen Foster
Video & Performance 2016 by Charles E. Szabo



1. Some folks like to sigh,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Some folks long to die,
But that’s not me nor you.
Chorus:
Long live the merry merry heart
That laughs by night and day,
Like the Queen of Mirth,
No matter what some folks say.

2. Some folks fear to smile,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Other laugh through guile,
But that’s not me nor you.
Chorus:
Some folks get grey hairs,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Brooding o’er their cares,
But that’s not me nor you.

3. Some folks fret and scold,
Some folks do, some folks do;
They’ll soon be dead and cold,
But that’s not me nor you.
Chorus:
Some folks get grey hairs,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Brooding o’er their cares,
But that’s not me nor you.

4. Some folks fret and scold,
Some folks do, some folks do;
They’ll soon be dead and cold,
But that’s not me nor you.
Chorus:
Some folks get grey hairs,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Brooding o’er their cares,
But that’s not me nor you.

5. Some folks toil and save,
Some folks do, some folks do;
To buy themselves a grave,
But that’s not me nor you.
Chorus:
Some folks get grey hairs,
Some folks do, some folks do;
Brooding o’er their cares,
But that’s not me nor you.

"Boo, white males!"

Below is the full speech by comedienne/actress/#metooer/Oprah-fan Mindy Kaling.

Kevin Michael Grace tweeted a link to at it his twitter page @KMGVictoria with the comment:

#MindyKaling's commencement address at her alma mater Dartmouth was rather good. I'm disappointed (but not surprised) to see her engaging in this reflexive "Boo, white males!" agitprop in response to the reviews of #Oceans8

A few comments:

1. Why is KMG surprised to see a brown woman diss white men? That is par for the course now as in "those racist, oppressive, anti-women" white men. The whole world is against white men, including a large percentage of white men themselves.

2. How does Kahling's "rather good" Dartmouth speech" exonerate her from "'Boo, white males' agitprop?" That's not what KMG means really and "excuse" might be a better word. But we're talking about big stakes here, as in the the future generation. "Good" at one point meant worthy and responsible and exemplary.

3. And how good really is Kaling's speech? She spends the better part talking about Dr. Seuss!!! How is Dr. Seuss showing these university graduates to be worthy and responsible and exemplary? Or did Mindy Kaling get the venue wrong and she's at a preschooler's graduation? So much for intellectual stimulation and words of wisdom to those 100+ students hanging on to the every world of this famous television personality!

But this is Dartmouth, and she chooses an alumni: "Poet" Dr. Seuss, of The Cat in the Hat fame is an alumni!. Well we can give her that bit of nostalgia.

But why not evoke (invoke) the spirits of another Dartmouthian poet, the deceased white male laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Robert Frost, who wrote "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," highlighting the adventurous character of (dead and alive) white men who take on those less travelled worlds out of CURIOSITY! To see where the adventure would lead them! Then they build things like universities.

Of course nothing is innocent when with adults, and I presume Kaling is on such. Seuss was a "reformed" racist who drew anti-black cartoons and was vocally anti-Japanese during the WWII years. Perhaps that is the morality in her speech: We may start out bad but we can all be reformed and redeemed.

And another poet from Dartmouth? "Robert Frost? Are you kidding?" would kid (half in jest) Ms. Kaling. "We cannot perpetuate the racist and oppressive America that was built on the backs of others [allusion to slavery and "globalism" here of course]. These riches should be meted out to the whole world [to these hypocritical globalists] to exonerate [there's that word again] those whom Americans exploited."

And I would retaliate:

The Western world built and elaborated by white men now is a refuge for people from all over the world who can take advantage of the structure and system. Kaling's comedy show and her other successful public projects are dependent on this success. She has talent. But so what? What would happen to her and her talent if she didn't have this set-up? What would happen to her back in India, which her parents - both with postgraduate degrees - fled for "a better life in America"? Actually they both went to Africa - to Nigeria - where they met and planned their migration and life n America. They abandoned TWO countries for a chance at the American Pie.

"My parents adopted a kind of Boston-by-way-of-India-by-way-of-Nigeria culture with some Indian flourishes" says Kaling.

No mention of why they abandoned their lucrative degrees (or not so lucrative back in their hometowns), but the prevailing word is "opportunity." Strange, I would think that people would prefer to build opportunities in their familiar places, their homes, where their ancestors have left a legacy.

I call it pure greed and envy, of the type where you say: "If they can have it why can't I/my family/my children?"

And here is some "factual" information:

[Kaling] was a classics major for much of college and studied Latin, a subject she has been learning since the seventh grade.
[Source: Kaling's (heavy edited and upgraded) Wikipedia page]

How does one go from studying Latin to giving a speech wth Dr. Seuss as the protagonist?

How many brown-skinned women do you see running TV shows? Whenever there is ONE successful minority, then he (she) represents hundreds of others. "Oh you know Mindy. She's Indian."

How many white men comedians are there? This is a rhetorical question.

I strongly believe that this is the kind of covert thought processes that lead "comedians of color" to hold deep-seated beliefs which are exposed in moments of seriousness. Like when giving speeches at graduation ceremonies.

The infantile examples of a dubious poet like Seuss come in handy at such critical moments of seriousness in a comedienne of color's juncture in public life.

Fire and Ice
BY Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

---

2018 Commencement Address by Mindy Kaling ’01

Good morning to the Class of 2018, the faculty, the parents, the grandparents, fellow honorees, and the paid laughers I have scattered throughout the audience.

It is an honor to join you this morning for this special occasion.

It is also an honor to speak to you today from behind this gigantic tree stump. Like some sort of female Lorax with an advanced degree. That’s right, you guys; I’m hitting Dr. Seuss hard and early in this speech. Because Dartmouth grads have a privilege unique among all the Ivy League: We will be forced to be mini-experts on Dr. Seuss for our entire lives.

On my deathbed, I’ll be saying, “Did you know that his real name was Theodor Geisel? Did you know he was editor of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern?” And yes, while no U.S. Presidents have gone to Dartmouth, we can at least lay claim for the wonderful Dr. Seuss.

Another notable alumnus is Salmon P. Chase, the man on the $10,000 bill. A symbolically powerful piece of paper that’s largely useless in the real world. Like a degree in playwriting which I received from this very institution. Thank you for paying for that, Mom and Dad!

It’s a thrill to be back here in New Hampshire, the Granite State, known for two things: the place where you can legally not wear your seatbelt, and Adam Sandler’s birthplace.

New Hampshire has one of the best mottos of any state: “Live Free or Die.” For outsiders, it sounds like an exciting declaration of freedom; but when you’re here in January, “die” actually sounds like a pretty good option.

I remember the days when it was so cold your sneeze would become an ice sculpture before it hit the ground. In Los Angeles, where I live now, if I sneeze, I just call my doctor and have my blood replaced with that of a teenage track star. That’s normal there. I’m mostly track star right now.

Before I get any further, I should actually probably clarify who I am for the parents and grandparents in the audience who are thinking to themselves, “Who is this loud Indian woman? Is that the girl from Quantico? She looks so much worse in person.”

No, no, I’m not Priyanka Chopra, not even Padma Lakshmi. I’m the other Indian woman we have allowed to be on television, Mindy Kaling. Thank you, thank you.

You may remember me from my role on The Office as Kelly Kapoor, who internet commenters said was—quote—“shrill” and—quote—“took up valuable time that could have gone to Steve Carell.”

I then created and starred in my own TV show, The Mindy Project. Thank you, thank you very much. It was an uphill battle to get the show on the air, but it was worth it, because it enabled me to become Dartmouth’s most successful female minority show creator who has spoken at commencement!

Oh wait, no. Shonda Rhimes went here. Yup, and she’s created like 10 more shows than me, so great. No, cool. Cool, cool, cool, Shonda. Friggin’ role model, good for you.

But today is not about famous alumni. No, no. It’s about the men and women who have toiled in obscurity for years so that they might better our country. I speak, of course, of the 51 percent of Dartmouth grads who will go into finance—highest in the Ivy League! Look left. Look right. All three of you will be spending at least ten years in a white collar prison.

I know that going into the real world sounds scary, but it’s exciting too. Finally, you’ll be in control of your own lives. No longer will there be an irrational Board of Trustees telling you you can’t have hard liquor on campus, for the ridiculous reason that they don’t want you to die. Come tomorrow, no one can stop you from filling your apartment with $4.99 handles of Uncle Satan’s Unfiltered Potato Vodka. Go crazy.

It’s a real moment of reflection for me to be standing here speaking to all of you now, because it makes me harken back to my own time at my Dartmouth graduation. Madeleine Albright was my commencement speaker; and while I don’t remember any specific quotes she said, or even a general gist of what she was talking about, I do remember thinking: “I wonder what it will be like to have my own cell phone?”

How things have changed. For all I know, at this very moment, most of you are posting this speech on your Instagram stories with a GIF of Winnie the Pooh twerking. If you are, please at least use my official hashtag, MindyGoesBigGreenTwentyEighteen. Thank you.

I bet none of you remember a time before the internet. Hell, you probably don’t even remember a time before the Facebook page, “Dartmouth Memes for Cold AF Teens.” Yeah, yeah. I know about that. Made me feel like a real creep researching it. “Hello, I’m a 38‑year‑old woman who wants to join your teen Facebook group. It's for research, I swear!”

Meanwhile, when I was in college we didn’t even have Google. If you wanted to find out, say, how tall Ben Affleck was, you were out of luck. You just had to sit there, not knowing, and your entire day would be ruined.

Or, say I wanted to meet up with a friend—I couldn’t just text her. I had to walk outside and hope I accidentally bumped into her. Or, I “blitzed” her. Ah, BlitzMail. You know that feeling you have when you tell your friends that you “blitz” and they don’t get it and you roll your eyes all smug like “Oh, it’s a Dartmouth thing.” That ends today. You try to say “blitz” one hundred yards east of White River Junction and you will get laughed back to your one-room triple in the Choates.

Fun fact: In 2001, the year I graduated, a pinkeye epidemic broke out amongst my classmates because we were all using public BlitzMail iMac terminals and not washing our hands. Those are just the kind of the sexy stories indicative of my time at Dartmouth.

You have so many cool new things here now. Like, look at the new logo, the D-Pine. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of what college-aged Mindy thought a marijuana leaf might look like but I was too scared to actually find out. And this new House System sounds really cool! It's so Hogwarts-y! You know, you're sorted into your little Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, except they’re called … South House. West House. School House.

Okay, come on guys. School House? Really? We’re just saying what we see? That’s the laziest name I’ve ever heard in my life, and I've spent over a decade working on shows called The Office and The Mindy Project.

Still, I remember sitting where you’re sitting. I was so full of questions like, “When is this thing going to end?” and “How many friends can I invite to dinner and still have mom and dad pay?” And, most importantly, “Why didn’t I wear any clothes underneath my gown?”

Now we’re reaching the part of the speech where I am supposed to tell you something uplifting like “follow your dreams.”

In general, advice isn’t actually an effective way to change your life. If all it took to make your life great was hearing amazing advice, then everyone who watched TED Talks would be a millionaire.

So don’t trust any one story of how how to become successful. As Madeline Albright said at my Commencement—see, I don’t remember anything. And I did just fine.

So here is some practical advice that you may or may not remember at the end of this speech because, hey, that’s the gig:

1. First off, remove “Proficient at Word” from your resume. That is ridiculous. You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel of competency there. This is how you become proficient at Word: You open Word on your computer.

2. Most of your post-college life is simply filling out forms. Car insurance, health insurance, W-2s. W-4s, 1099s. Guess what? None of us know what any of those forms mean, but you will fill out a hundred of them before you die.

3. You never need more than one pancake. Trust me on this. Cartoons have trained us to want a giant stack of those bad boys, but order one first and then just see how you feel later.

4. This one is just for guys: When you go on dates, act as if every woman you’re talking to is a reporter for an online publication that you are scared of. One shouldn’t need the threat of public exposure and scorn to treat women well; but if that’s what it’s gonna take, fine. Date like everyone’s watching, because we are.

5. And this might be the most important—buy a toilet plunger. Trust me on this. Don’t wait until you need a plunger to buy a plunger.

Commencement is a time of transition for parents, too. That empty nest you were enjoying these past four years? Gone as soon as this speech is over. I hope you like full‑time lodgers who don’t pay rent, don’t do laundry, eat all the food in your fridge, and binge Family Guy on your sofa for weeks. That is your life now.

Although some of your graduates will be making more money than you—51% to be exact. And to the parents of those investment bankers, consultants, and hedge fund analysts—congratulations. Your kids will be fabulously wealthy but still somehow sharing your cell phone plan because it—quote—“saves everybody money.”

Okay, now let’s get real. Let me rip off the Band-Aid for all you, the ’18s. Next year, the next year of your life is going to be bad. You have been in the comfortable fleece-lined womb of mother Dartmouth for four years now, and you’re gonna go out in the cold, hard world.

Out there in the real world, there will be a target on your back. People will want to confirm their expectations of Ivy League graduates—that you’re a jerk, that you’re spoiled, that you use the word “summer” as a verb. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. I mean come on, the guy from the ten-thousand-dollar bill went to this school.

You’re graduating into a world where it seems like everything is falling apart. Trust in institutions are at a record low; the truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore; and for all I know, the president just tweeted us into a war with Wakanda, a country that doesn’t exist.

So, Class of 2018, you are entering a world that we have toppled—we have toppled—like a Jenga tower, and we are relying on you to rebuild it.

But how can you do that with the knowledge that things are so unstable out there? I’ll tell you my secret, the one thing that has kept me going through the years, my superpower: delusion.

This is something I may share with our president, a fact that is both horrifying and interesting. Two years in, I think we can pretty safely say that he’s not getting carved onto Mount Rushmore; but damn if that isn’t a testament to how far you can get just by believing you’re the smartest, most successful person in the world.

My point is, you have to have insane confidence in yourself, even if it’s not real. You need to be your own cheerleader now, because there isn’t a room full of people waiting with pom‑poms to tell you, “You did it! We’ve been waiting all this time for you to succeed!”

So, I’m giving you permission to root for yourself. And while you’re at it, root for those around you, too. It took me a long time to realize that success isn’t a zero-sum game. Which leads me to the next part of my remarks.

I thought I might take a second to speak to the ladies in the audience. (Guys, take a break; you don’t have to pay attention during this part. Maybe spend the next 30 seconds thinking about all the extra money you’ll make in your life for doing the same job as a woman. Pretty sweet.)

Hey girls, we need to do a better job of supporting each other. I know that I am guilty of it too. We live in a world where it seems like there’s only room for one of us at the table. So when another woman shows up, we think, “Oh my god, she’s going to take the one woman spot! That was supposed to be mine!”

But that’s just what certain people want us to do! Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together to dismantle a system that makes us feel like there’s limited room for us? Because when women work together, we can accomplish anything. Even stealing the world’s most expensive diamond necklace from the Met Gala, like in Ocean’s 8, a movie starring me, which opens in theaters June 8th. And to that end, women, don’t be ashamed to toot your own horn like I just did.

Okay, guys, you can listen again. You didn’t miss much. Just remember to see Ocean’s 8, now playing in theaters nationwide. Ocean’s 8: Every con has its pros.

Now I wanted to share a little bit about me, Mindy Kaling, the Dartmouth student. When I came to Hanover in the fall of 1997, I was, as many of you were: driven, bright, ambitious, and really, really into The Black Eyed Peas.

I arrived here as a 17-year-old, took the lay of the land, and immediately began making a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish. I told myself that by the time I graduated in 2001, I would have checked them all off.

And here was my freshman fall checklist: be on Hanover crew, on Lodge crew, be in an a cappella group, be in an improv troupe, write a play that’s performed at the Bentley, do a cartoon for the D, and try to be in a cool senior society. And guess what? I completed that checklist. But before you think: “Wait, why is this woman just bragging about her accomplishments from 17 years ago?”—keep listening.

Then, I graduated. And I made a new checklist for my twenties: get married by 27, have kids at 30, win an Oscar, be the star of my own TV show, host the MTV Music Awards (this was 2001, guys; it made more sense then), and do it all while being a size 2.

Well, spoiler alert: I’ve only done one of those things, and I’m not sure I will ever do the others. And that is a really scary feeling. Knowing how far that I’ve strayed from the person that I was hoping to be when I was 21.

I will tell you a personal story. After my daughter was born in December, I remember bringing her home and being in my house with her for the first time and thinking, “Huh. According to movies and TV, this is traditionally the time when my mother and spouse are supposed to be here, sharing this experience with me.” And I looked around, and I had neither. And for a moment, it was kind of scary. Like, “Can I do this by myself?”

But then, that feeling went away, because the reality is, I’m not doing it by myself. I’m surrounded by family and friends who love and support me. And the joy I feel from being with my daughter Katherine eclipses anything from any crazy checklist.

So I just want to tell you guys, don’t be scared if you don’t do things in the right order, or if you don’t do some things at all. I didn’t think I’d have a child before I got married, but hey, it turned out that way, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I didn’t think I’d have dessert before breakfast today, but hey, it turned out that way and I wouldn’t change a thing.

So if I could impart any advice, it’s this: If you have a checklist, good for you. Structured ambition can sometimes be motivating. But also, feel free to let it go. Yes, my culminating advice from my speech is a song from the Disney animated movie, Frozen.

I’ve covered a lot of ground today, not all of it was serious, but I wanted to leave you with this: I was not someone who should have the life I have now, and yet I do. I was sitting in the chair you are literally sitting in right now and I just whispered, “Why not me?” And I kept whispering it for seventeen years; and here I am, someone that this school deemed worthy enough to speak to you at your Commencement.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, but especially not yourself. Go conquer the world. Just remember this: Why not you? You made it this far.

Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2018.

"Multiculturalism and the Demotion of Man"

Image from the book cover for A Country of Strangers:
Black and White in America (book quoted in Auster's article)
Design by Virginia Tan

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Multiculturalism and the Demotion of Man
Lawrence Auster
1998
Culture Wars (via a link from the author's webpage)

The perverse tendency among white Western elites to welcome and embrace non-Western peoples and cultures while refusing to defend their own people and culture is no mere fashion, as superficial conservatives would have it, but a natural and inevitable expression of a new culture-a culture of nihilism-that has become the dominant culture of the West. The organizing idea of this nihilist culture is that abnormal and transgressive conduct is normalized and celebrated, while traditional moral norms and constraints are either ignored or subjected to crippling social and civil penalties. Hardly a day goes by when this dominant nihilism does not announce its presence in unmistakable terms, as seen in the following items, selected almost at random from contemporary events (the reader is invited to think of his own examples):

High school pupils who physically attack their teachers go unpunished, while a police officer who slapped a boy he discovered having sex with his daughter is suspended from his job.
Male and female students at elite colleges are housed together in the same dorms, using the same bathrooms, while religious students who don't want to be forced to live in this libertine environment are told they should have gone to school elsewhere.

People who want the Unabomber executed are described by The New York Times as "angry," while people who consider the Unabomber a hero are described by the Times in neutral, nonjudgmental terms.

Hospitals are informed by federal courts that carrying on hospital business in the English language is "discrimination," while illegal aliens using those hospitals are told they have a "right" under the U.S. Constitution to be addressed in their native languages.

Laws against disability discrimination punish employers for failing to hire or make "reasonable accommodations" for hostile or violent or chronically late employees.

This systematic inversion of normal and abnormal, of law and lawlessness, of good and evil, goes beyond mere democratic leveling. It is a rebellion against what philosophers call the order of existence. Ultimately, it is a rebellion against God and the belief that man is made in the image of God. When man gets rid of the belief (which comes through revelation and rational intuition) that he is made in the image and likeness of God, man is not-as secularists imagine-enhanced. He is degraded. If man is not made in God's image, then he is made in his own image. If God is not the measure of all things, then man is the measure. But without a higher truth to raise him above himself and his disordered impulses, man inexorably sinks, finally becoming so contemptible that he can no longer believe in God or in man. So he begins to worship non-human, sub-human, anti-human behaviors and forms.

The organizing idea of this nihilist culture is that abnormal and transgressive conduct is normalized and celebrated, while traditional moral norms and constraints are either ignored or subjected to crippling social and civil penalties.

The manifestations of this depravity can be seen not only in our popular entertainments (e.g., the Jerry Springer Show and most prime-time television) and "lifestyles" (e.g., face-piercing and vampirism), but in the so-called high culture of post-1960s America. Sculptures and monuments once embodied an heroic-divine ideal going back to the ancient Greeks. But today our typical public sculptures portray grotesque shapes of victimhood, human figures bedraggled and twisted in pain, as though the universe were one vast Auschwitz. It is an aesthetic in which any sense of human dignity in suffering is erased.

Alongside the depiction of human beings as hopeless victims, we have now statues of monsters. In recent years New York City has displayed in parks and squares such "art works" as a 25-foot-long statue of an insect, and a statue of a gigantic, hideous dog as high as a man, with huge teeth projecting downward like knives. These sculptures are our postmodern equivalents of the terror-gods of the pre-Columbian cultures. When man loses belief in God, he also loses respect for man, and turns to non-human or anti-human figures as symbols of the malign spiritual universe he now inhabits.

The postmodern degradation of man and culture begins with the modern idea of placing all human beings, and even all of nature, on an equal plane, free of the burden of transcendence. The essence of this agenda has been put forth in a remarkable essay by religion professor Steven C. Rockefeller. Blending deep ecology with multiculturalism, Rockefeller enunciates what is in effect a new religion. "All life is sacred," he writes, "[and] all life forms should be respected as a 'thou' and not just as an 'it.' ... If, as has been suggested, all cultures as well as all life forms are of intrinsic value and also sacred, then from a religious perspective all are in this sense equal in value."[1]

All of this is, of course, a total inversion of Christianity and Judaism, which tells us that God is holy, not the world, and that human beings can become holy by orienting themselves toward God: "Be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy." But according to Rockefeller's gospel, everything that exists-plants, animals, humans, and (most of all) Third-world cultures-is not only holy, but equally so:

If one employs this kind of religious argument in defense of the idea of equal value, one should recognize its full implications. It is opposed to anthropocentrism [the idea that man is higher or more important than animals or plants] as well as to all egoisms of class, race, or culture. It calls for an attitude of humility. It encourages a respect for, and pride in, one's own particular identity only insofar as such respect and pride grow out of recognition of the value of the uniqueness in the identity of all other peoples and life forms. Furthermore, if what is sacred in humanity is life, which is not something exclusively human, then humanity's primary identity is not just with the human species but with the entire biosphere that envelopes planet Earth.

It is no longer God above man, and God's spirit working within man, that is divine, but mere biological life, in respect of which man is equal with crustacea, worms, and viruses. Instead of being humble before God and the nobler manifestations of mankind, we are supposed to be humble before plants and animals and primitive cultures. Most importantly, our own culture has no right to self-respect unless we first have total respect for all other cultures and life-forms. Rockefeller continues:

The call for recognition of the equal value of different cultures is the expression of a basic and profound universal human need for unconditional acceptance. A feeling of such acceptance, including affirmation of one's ethnic particularity as well as one's universally shared potential, is an essential part of a strong sense of identity.... The politics of recognition may, therefore also be an expression of a complex human need for acceptance and belonging, which on the deepest level is a religious need.

Unconditional(!) acceptance as a sacred(!) right of every(!) person and culture. Try to imagine what this would mean in practical terms. Of course, there’s a catch, which Rockefeller makes explicit elsewhere in his essay. Only some cultures and life-forms (namely white Western males) are actually obligated to extend this unconditional acceptance to other cultures and life forms, while those other cultures and life-forms are only expected to receive such recognition as is their divine right.

In Steven Rockefeller's mad epiphany, we seem to hear the final, degenerate gasp of the Protestant spirit that made America. In the earlier stages of this devolution, the Protestant loses his Christian faith, which eventually leaves him with nothing but "niceness." Then this "niceness"-cut off from the religious faith that was its source and discipline, but still in need of a "divine" sanction-spreads out indiscriminately until it embraces the whole universe, ultimately taking the form of nature worship, the belief in the equality of all cultures and life-forms, and the totalitarian religion of "unconditional acceptance."

The essence of this agenda has been put forth in a remarkable essay by religion professor Steven C. Rockefeller. Blending deep ecology with multiculturalism, Rockefeller enunciates what is in effect a new religion.

But the religion of cosmic equality, as crazy as it is, is not the end of the process. The attempt to eliminate all hierarchy and transcendence leads inevitably to an inverted hierarchy, in which man, particularly Western man, is at the bottom. The Bible placed man near the top of a divinely ordered universe, only a little lower than the angels. But now the radical egalitarians tell us that man is no better than animals, who (it is argued), also communicate and reason, and are less destructive than humans. "And as with animals," remarks the late literary critic Peter Shaw, "so with primitive man and with societies less developed than our own: both are closer to the sources of natural wisdom, and both wreak less damage upon the ecosystem and biosphere than does Western man."[2] As an extreme example of this inversion, Shaw quotes the popular left-wing paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould:

Evolution is a copiously branching network, not a ladder, and I do not see how we, the titular spokesmen for a few thousand mammalian species, can claim superiority over three quarters of a million species of insects who will surely outlive us, not to mention the bacteria, who have shown remarkable staying power for more than three billion years.[3]

"Here we have very nearly the ultimate demotion of man," comments Shaw, "the inferior not only of primitive peoples, other mammals, and the cockroach, but even of bacteria."

But, as Shaw points out, there is just one little problem with this belief in the superiority of primitive cultures: It is not true. Therefore it can only be sustained by ceaseless mental gymnastics. Embarrassing evidence, if it can't be suppressed, must be re-interpreted so as to make it fit within the egalitarian paradigm. It came to light some years ago that the ancient Mayans -long thought of as an exemplary, peaceful civilization-engaged in horrifying practices. Before going to war, reported The New York Times, "the king would puncture his penis with a stingray spine, while his wife drew a thorn-barbed rope through her tongue."

The Mayans waged war in order to capture aristocrats for torture and sacrifice; the captives would sometimes play ball games using the decapitated heads of the losers as balls. The Times admitted that the evidence of these practices had been available for decades in stone reliefs and paintings, but that scholars had explained it all away in order to keep the Maya on a "mist-shrouded pedestal," where they could be idealized as an austere and enlightened people. But while the new evidence has shattered that peaceful image, it has not ended the need to portray nonwhite and non-Western cultures in a positive light. Anthropologists now argue that the Mayan practice of royal self-laceration indicates "a cooperative, sacred relationship between the elites and the commoners." In other words, remarks Peter Shaw, "if the evidence shows a society's aristocrats obsessed with self-mutilation and torture, a bit of interpretation will help us see beneath the surface to the class solidarity so characteristic of pre-Columbian America and so lamentably missing from the modern world."

More recently, the human sacrifice cult of the pre-Inca Moche culture of Peru, memorialized in the ubiquitous image of the Decapitator (a demonic grimacing figure holding a severed head in one hand and a curved blade in the other), has been interpreted by Stanford anthropologist John Rick, not as the sacred core of the Moche culture (which it obviously was), but as a temporary expedient through which the Moche ruling class solidified its political power over a recalcitrant populace.

The New York Times referred to car thieves and police in Newark, New Jersey as two "cultures" that were "clashing,"

Once the Moche elites were safely established through the use of violence, Professor Rick told The News Hour, they were "no more violent than ourselves." Thus, in the practiced manner of a contemporary liberal academic, Rick effortlessly made it seem that there is no essential difference between this ancient cult of death and the "oppressions" of modern America.

What anthropologists write in their academic journals, public school teachers, judges, reporters, and social workers are disseminating through the whole society. When The New York Times referred to car thieves and police in Newark, New Jersey as two "cultures" that were "clashing," and spoke of a deranged woman sitting on a sidewalk as having a "culture" that was different from the "culture" of the shoppers walking past her; when a New York City case worker refused to investigate a Nigerian immigrant who had been torturing his son for months, on the grounds that such beating were part of the father's culture; when American teachers excuse the Japanese for their inhuman brutalities during World War II, while damning the U.S. for the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans in California; when the national media covers up an endless series of horrifying racial murders of whites by blacks, while generating national hysteria over a non-existent white racist plot to burn black churches, the underlying idea is always the same: never to allow a non-Western or nonwhite people to be portrayed in a critical light, while portraying whites and Western culture in the harshest light possible.

As David Shipler, an apostle of racial correctness, inadvertently reveals in his recent book A Country of Strangers: Black and White in America[4], this systematic denial of plain evidence by "right-thinking" whites is achieved through a deliberate act of self-hypnosis:

This is the ideal: to search your attitudes, identify your stereotypes, and correct for them as you go about your daily duties.

This, at its Orwellian core, is the mindset that enables contemporary whites never to entertain a negative conclusion about blacks, while always making whites themselves responsible for blacks' moral and intellectual failings. This (in Joseph Sobran's useful coinage) is alienism: "a prejudice in favor of the alien, the marginal, the dispossessed, the eccentric, reaching an extreme in the attempt to 'build a new society' by destroying the basic institutions of the native."[5] This is the intellectual and spiritual environment which, combined with racial diversification, has turned America into the opposite of itself-into the anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-rational, anti-American anti-nation that is Multicultural America.

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References:

1 Steven C. Rockefeller, “Comment,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, Princeton University Press, 1992, p.87

2 Peter Shaw, “The Demotion of Man,” in The War Against the Intellect: Episodes in the Decline of Discourse, University of Iowa Press, 1989, p.138

3 Stephen Jay Gould, "Hooking Leviathan by Its Past," in Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History, Harmony Books, 1995, p. 138

4 Joseph Sobran, “Pensées: Notes for the Reactionaries of Tomorrow,” National Review, Dec. 31, 1985

5 David K. Shipler, "Acting Affirmatively," in A Country of Strangers: Black and White in America, Vintage Books, 1998, p. 491

Review of "Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience"

Master of the Munich Golden Legend, 1400-1460
The Tower of Babel
Folio 17v from the Bedford Book of Hours.
Illumination (10 in × 7 in), 1415-1430

Genesis 11:1-9
1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.
8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

It is fascinating that Melanie Kirkpatrick should start her new book Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience with the chapter headed Newcomers. She writes in the chapter of her visit to Queens, New York to give a presentation on Thanksgiving to sixteen-year-old new immigrants in a public high school especially constructed for "new comers" and aptly called Newcomers High. She could have at least called it "New Americans."

She writes, as though it is a good thing: "If the Tower of Babel had a contemporary earthly home it would be located in the corridors of Newcomers High." Yet this biblical tower, which was intended to reach God, was never completed since he "confound[ed] their language, that they may not understand one another's speech" and thus couldn't communicate with each other. Their lofty and arrogant goal collapsed.

But what is fascinating about Kirkpatrick's account is not this usual glorification of multiculturalism, which all westerners are now doing, but how she rewrites the history of Thanksgiving to fit this multicultural ethos.

Thanksgiving dinner was created out of a specific historical context. The foods describe the original historical event and thus a specific time in American history. Re-structuring the menu changes this history and makes Thanksgiving something else.

Kirkpatrick recounts their Thanksgiving meals students described to her:

There would be non-traditional food on the menu too as their families initiated their own Thanksgiving food traditions by incorporating favorite home-country dishes into the classic American meal.

If Kirkpatrick wants immigrants to contribute their thanks with their own particular histories and backgrounds, then she should advocate for a different holiday: Multicultural Thanks to America perhaps. Changing the foods changes the holiday. Kirkpatrick is not directly (or consciously) advocating for a new Thanksgiving narrative, but in her desire to be "inclusive" she is boldly rewriting American history. A less generous critique would be (given that she is a seasoned researcher and historian) that she is provoding a false version of American history to fit her ideology of inclusiveness.

The rest of the book offers nothing new or no new insights. There is the mandatory chapter on the "tragedy" of the Native Americans, who have wrung the sympathy tears out of contemporary Americans for decades, the same way that blacks have picked at the wounds of slavery even when they now have been infinitely compensated by the collective guilty conscious of whites. In an interesting but long chapter on turkeys, Kirkpatrick appears to refute the historical presence of the bird on Americans' Thanksgiving dinner tables by weaving in substitutes (oysters, geese chicken) but finishes off the chapter by acknowledging the importance of the bird in celebrating the holiday.

She also writes of the generosity of Americans in holding out their hands to the poor. Churches and communities provide food and dinners for the poor to celebrate the holiday, with some collecting their turkey from food banks, and other sitting together at communal tables for a Thanksgiving meal in church basements. Thanksgiving, in the peculiar history of American christianity, is a quintessentially American Christian holiday, coming close to Christmas and Easter. She gives no account of parallel charitable outreaches by those multi-faith, multi-cultural Thanksgiving co-celebrants she writes about.

What could have been an interesting re-counting of the American Thanksgiving story becomes tarnished by its ode to multiculturalism and its attempt to make Thanksgiving, inacurately, into a multicultural event. It might be excusable if Thanksgiving: The Holiday at the Heart of the American Experience were an innocent attempt at inclusveness. But its agenda is bigger than a generous inclusion of all "Americans" and becomes a subtle movement toward changing America instead.

Making America Great Again: v1.0-R and v2.0-T

1980


1980


2016

Infused With Beauty

The last time went to the Fraunces Tavern Museum website (only about a week ago), I didn't notice this new acquisition:

Fraunces Tavern Museum is proud to announce the most recent acquisition, a terra cotta bust of George Washington. This bust is a 19th century draped a l ‘antique unsigned copy of the original bust made by Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785.

I've written about this bust here and here. And, Larry Auster, whose admiration of the bust I shared, wrote about the bust, and made a post here on my commentary on the sculpture.

I wrote in the commentary Auster/Asrat: Interaction on Beauty:

Although Larry Auster didn't directly write about beauty, his work is infused with the desire to bring beauty back into our world.

One of the most memorable posts he did on art (and beauty) was his reaction to a bust of George Washington. The image of the bust he has posted is huge and takes up the whole screen, so that we, like him, can have as close a look at it as possible. [the rest of my post is here]

So, it is a nice surprise that a museum is bringing this piece into its collections.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

America's the Greatest Land of All

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

George Washington: The World Historical Figure in the Quintessentially American Tradition

George Washington, 1780
Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827)
Oil on canvas; 95 x 61 3/4 in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Part of what makes his live story so gripping is that he shaped himself into the world-historical figure he became, in the quintessentially American tradition of men who spring, as F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, from their own Platonic conception of themselves. But his self-conception was extraordinary: it began as a worthy ideal and evolved into a magnificent one. In his fiercely ambitious youth, he sought to win acclaim for his for his heroism and savoir faire. In his maturity, he strove to be, in his own conscience even more than in the eyes of others, virtuous, public-spirited, and (although his ethic wouldn't allow him to claim the word (noble). He did hope, however, that posterity would recognize and honor the purity of his motives; and Americans, who owe him so much, do him but justice in understanding not only what he did for them but also what greatness of soul he achieved to do it.

From: The Founding Fathers at Home (p. 94)
By: Myron Magnet

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The Astonishing Arrogance of Obama's "We"

[T]he single most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” We The People. We Shall Overcome. Yes We Can. It is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given, to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.

(Excerpt from President Obama's speech on March 7, 2015 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights march that took place on on March 7, 1965)

Extraordinary.

It's odd that no journalist, or humble blogger, has picked up on this repetitive "we" other than Jeannie DeAngelis at the American Thinker, and then only briefly. I did two days of google searches in all possible combinations to try to find this "we" scrutinized, but to no avail.

Here is what DeAngelis wrote:

Before suggesting that “Yes We Can” belonged in the same context as “We the People… [and]… We Shall Overcome,” the Mt. Rushmore hopeful mocked those who revere an iconic American identity when he said that America is “Not stock photos or airbrushed history or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others."

Obama equates his failed "Yes We Can" presidency with the Constitution's "We the People," and Civil Rights' era "We shall overcome."

This is extraordinary because it came right after Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel had come to the United States, brave through his humility, to plead America for assistance against a force that is ready to annihilate him and his people, and without a doubt the rest of the world, if given the chance. I have to conclude that there is deep-seated anti-Semitism in Obama, which manifests itself at crucial, existential moments.

How can people not see this huge, glaring, hypocrisy, where the annihilation of Jews is less important than the freedom of blacks? How can people follow a president who behaves in this manner?

Perhaps Americans are indeed smart and they will wait him out, find as many ways to stall his maneuvers, and quietly rid themselves of this president.

But maybe they simply don't know what to do.

But, the time for wavering is over. This astonishingly arrogant president tells us clearly time and time again his intentions, and he has started to transform these intentions into policies, mainly because Americans are unable, and unwilling, to challenge him with the truth.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Title Change: Are Black Americans Serious About Separation?

I changed the title of my previous post from A New Black Nation to Are Black Americans Serious About Separation? I made this change since I don't think there will ever be a "new black nation" chipped off America because the American nation wouldn't allow it and blacks wouldn't seriously want it. But, there is a small group of Americans which is considering separating from all these grievous groups - blacks, Hispanics, liberals, and the large array of immigrants who identify themselves as non-whites. Rather than giving blacks, and these other groups, their own nation, they are considering siphoning off their own.

I don't know how this will work out. But it is becoming more of a reality than a few years ago.

Addendum:

I initially wrote A New Black Nation (whose title I changed as I indicated above) referring to this post by Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife. The discussion has grown there with a comments on a separate black nation.

Laura writes:

You write:

Black re-settlement in Africa is out of the question.

Of course, it is out of the question today and anytime in the near future, just as a separate black nation in North America is out of the question today and anytime in the near future. But you can’t predict the future. You can’t forecast what kind of changes there might be. It is not out of the question because it is physically possible. To work for any such goal now would be patently ridiculous.

I think that as I wrote above, blacks wouldn't seriously want a separate black nation, or if they did, they would demand all kinds of conditions in order to gain as much benefit from the white America as they could.

I think David J., who is a black American commenting at Laura's post, is a clear example of that, although he is civilized and thoughtful with how he expresses it. But, it is strange to find someone expect to stay within the white culture while talking of "my people" as a separate and irreconcilable group. His praise of white culture may be genuine, but his support for unity is opportunistic.

I say this based on my observations of blacks who declare, antagonistically, that they have very little in common with white America, yet expect all the benefits of white America to be passed on to them.

This is similar to what is happening in Quebec, which has talked about separation from Canada for decades, which has come close to separation from Canada at least on two turbulent occasions. But at the moment of decision, it always opts to stay with Canada. And with each return to "unity" comes a list of conditions that benefits Quebec culturally and financially, giving it the best of all worlds.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Are Black Americans Serious About Separation?

I think not. I think they just want the best of all worlds: a place which they can call their country, but which will have the perennial benefits of a white America. But they will keep rumbling on, making all kinds of demands, using a stealthy weapon of discrimination to get their way, since to be racist (well, to be called racist) is now one of the deadly sins.

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It is interesting that the standards for art remain Western. We have tried Chinioserie, Japonism, Orientalism, Primitivism, and many more non-Western "inlfluences" on Western art. I put influences in quotes because the trajectory is more Western art picking up styles from the non-Western world and applying it in a new way to Western art.

Laura Wood of The Thinking Housewife writes about the celebration of African-American History Month here:

As the annual observance of African-American History Month comes to a close, it is worth noting one of the most compelling reasons why African-Americans, or blacks, should have their own nation in North America: Blacks view themselves as a separate nation — a nation with its own distinctive history, its own heroes, its own literature, its own folklore, its own popular culture.

There is no Irish-American History Month, Italian-American History Month or German-American History Month. There is no White History Month. The Irish, the Italians and the Germans are not clamoring for these observances. That’s because they do not view themselves as separate to the same extent. They are not a separate nation. Look at the uniformity with which blacks approach politics. Almost all blacks vote the same way. No group in America has such a strong collective identity.

Here are her posts and the ensuing discussions:
- A Black Nation in America
- A Healthy Black Nationalism and its Benefits for Blacks

I went to the African-American History Month website that Laura directed us to, and looked up the link provided for African-American artists' collections at the National Gallery of Art. As I went through the collections' highlights, it became clear that these were works which emulated, if not mimicked, Western art standards, and even the "black" references could not disguise these origins.

The one that stood out for me was the African Nude by James Lesesne Wells. It was clearly after Henri Matisse's odalisques (of which there are dozens), which Matisse got from Ingres' Grande Odalisque, which itself was influenced by several centuries of Western artists, as well as Greek and Roman art. The leaf-like shapes in the background are also from Matisse's well-known leaf-like cut-outs he did much later in life when he could no longer paint.

Other resemblences are the "flattened surface" which Matisse explored and experimented with throughout his life: "Matisse used his curvilinear forms and bold decorative patterns to emphasize the flatness of the canvas surface." [Source]

Matisse worked with various print-making techniques, partly to get this "flattened surface" that he finally perfected with his cut-outs.

And Wells' African Nude is a the printing technique linocut, which is a variation of a woodcut.


James Lesesne Wells
American, 1902 - 1993
African Nude, 1980
Color linocut on Japan paper

The National Gallery of Art, where this painting is exhibited, says this about Wells:

James Lesesne Wells was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1902 and received BS and MS degrees from Columbia University, New York. He had a long career in printmaking, first participating in the Federal Arts Project, which encouraged the development of the art in the United States during the Great Depression, and then teaching at Howard University in Washington, DC, for almost four decades. Wells was active in the civil rights movement and often depicted the struggles of African-Americans in his work. African Nude, which Wells created late in life, reflects his printmaking skill, interest in traditional African aesthetics, and commitment to representing African-American history and experiences.

And this about his African Nude:

The woman in African Nude, wearing only a large necklace, reclines on an overstuffed settee. Her alluring position is similar to the pose found in classic images of odalisques—female slaves in the Ottoman Empire whose identities became sexualized and popularized during the nineteenth century. Yet unlike the seductive odalisque seen in Western art, whose gaze challenges by staring directly at the viewer, the nude in Wells' work, with eyes downcast, appears unhappily submissive and ill at ease amidst the oversize lush plants and gala colors of the background. The viewer is thus left unsettled, as if unwelcome despite the outwardly inviting scene.

I cannot leave this biography without commenting on the National Gallery of Art's description of African Nude.

I like the modesty with which Wells portrayed his image. But I think it is as much a commentary on modesty as on submissiveness. This leads me to the question: "Why is this black nude 'modest' while the Arab or white odalisques are so confident? Is Wells telling us not of submission but of the oppression of blacks? As is often the case with black American art, the language revolves around race conflict, and blacks always come out "losing."

Here is a 1990 New York Times article where the commentary says something similar to my point above, and written with the usual "aggrieved blacks" angle.

Below are odalisques by Matisse and Ingres.


Henri Matisse
Odalisque à la culotte rouge, 1924-1925
Oil Painting
50 x 61 cm
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris


Henri Matisse
French, 1869–1954
Reclining Odalisque, 1926
Oil on canvas
15 1/8 x 21 5/8 in.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
French, 1780 - 1867
La Grande Odalisque, 1814
Oil on canvas
91 x 162 cm
Louvre, Paris

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Finally, all decisions, especially in the media world, count. Why did the website African-American History Month chose to use a .gov as its domain (http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov), rather than the much more common .com?

As with the politicized black artists, everything is race-relations with black Americans, i.e. the politics of the oppressed.

The domain name .gov is:

derived from government, indicating its restricted use by government entities in the United States. The gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency of the United States federal government. [Source]

As Laura wrote:

There is no Irish-American History Month, Italian-American History Month or German-American History Month. There is no White History Month. The Irish, the Italians and the Germans are not clamoring for these observances. That’s because they do not view themselves as separate to the same extent. They are not a separate nation. Look at the uniformity with which blacks approach politics. Almost all blacks vote the same way. No group in America has such a strong collective identity.

And she asks:

Can Americans ever amicably come to the conclusion that blacks should have their own nation and make this happen in a peaceable way?

It seems that blacks have already decided, no matter what everyone else thinks, or does. And I saw it in the simple suffix to the website African-American History Month, which is used for website's address andtitled, as though the whole of black American life is subsumed by that one month of "identity."

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Beck's Grammy, and the Black Artists Who Want it for Themselves

This is the song Heart is a Drum from Beck's new album Morning Phase.

There was drama at the Grammys, which I no longer watch because of the coarse behavior, the ugly outfits, the juvenile performers, and the unmusical music. And sure enough, the untalented, aggressive, entitlement-fed black rap performer Kanye West hijacked Beck as he was receiving Best Artist award.

Everyone thought it was a joke, including his pathetic wife, Kim Kardashian, who is part of the Kardashian enterprise which puts on a "reality" show on television. Her mother was also married to Bruce Jenner, the now freaky creature who decided to become "female."

Such is the level of our artists these days.

I've posted above the song which Beck sang at the Grammys, Heart is a Drum, from his deserved win, Album of the Year, Morning Phase.

It is a textured, layered piece, which reminds me a little of the Simon and Garfunkel rendition of the English folk song Are You Going to Scarborough Fair.


Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park,
Singing Are You Going to Scarborough Fair in 1981

Below is Beck performing Heart is a Drum with Chris Martin, of the group Coldplay, at the Grammys. Perhaps they are the next Simon and Garfunckel?


Beck and Chris Martin, of Coldplay, performing together at the Grammys

And here is Beck startled as West moves on stage, interrupting his Grammy acceptance.


"This is NOT a Joke!!!!!!!"

And here is West declaring he was very serious about jumping on the stage to interrupt Beck. BEYONCE WAS THE TRUE WINNER! West did the same thing in 2009 when Taylor Swift won Best Female Video at the Video Music Awards. That true winner, Beyonce, was robbed of her prize!

Such is the aggression of anti-white blacks, who declare their own standards and we better agree, or else.

Kim Kardashian, who was next to West, is realizing what she's in for with her life with West, whom she married in 2014. Below is her startled expression at West's tirade.


"That was NOT a Joke!!!!!!!"
[Source: Screen capture from Youtube]

Below is how Beyonce ended her performance at the Grammys with the now much referenced but false narrative "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" of the Ferguson shooting. Several other black performers also did the same "hands up" motion at the end of their performances. Pharrell Williams went one step further and added "hoodies" on his multicultral/multiethnic/multigendre background performers. We are ALL Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin.


Beyonce on stage at the Grammys singing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"

Here (youtube) is Beyonce's rendition.


Pharrell: Hands Up Don't Shoot in Hoodies as I Wear My Monkey Suit

There is a message Pharrell is trying to convey, I guess:

- He's an organ monkey
- He's NOT a monkey
- This is a joke
- This is NOT a joke
- White people think we're monkeys
- Let's play at monkeys

Another idiot on stage.

The song Take My Hand, Precious Lord is from the 2014 movie Selma, which is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. It was performed in the film by another singer.

Selma is a gospel song written by Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey in 1956 (a black man), but performed with genuine spirituality by a white performer, Tennessee Ernie Ford, who sang in the "country and Western, pop and gospel musical genres."

Below is Tennessee Ernie Ford's rendition, with a full, white, choir which he sang in 1965, right in the middle of the civil rights era.


Tennessee Ernie Ford singing Take My Hand Precious Lord in 1965

So what do Beyonce, Pharrell, Kanye and all those spoilt, contemporary blacks think about this? I assume Beyonce has seen it, given the close resemblance of her big Grammys choir to Ford's original. She is, then, a great hypocrite.

Beyonce is no doubt a talented singer and songwriter, but her insistence on the riffs and improvisations (known as melisma [pdf article]), overloads and drowns the melody. The Grammy judges made the right call, if only for her and other blacks to listen to Beck's album, in some moment of curiosity and humility, and learn from it.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland Greyhound Station

Touted by Cleveland News with the headline, “Greatest Bus Terminal in World to Open in City Tomorrow”, the Greyhound Bus Terminal opened its doors for customers in the spring of 1948 on Chester Avenue in Cleveland amidst sizeable fanfare and press. Among the guests in attendance for the grand opening which also included the unveiling of the new Highway Traveler model of Greyhound Bus were the then Governor Thomas Herbert and Cleveland Mayor Thomas Burke. Constructed in the Streamline Moderne Style of Art Deco design at a cost of $1,250,000, the Greyhound Terminal continues to service three million passengers a year to the lower forty-eight states with the ability to accommodate up to 300 passengers at one time.

The Cleveland bus terminal was designed and constructed by architect W.S. Arrasmith, who prior to the Cleveland project, had designed numerous Greyhound stations for cities all across the eastern and midwestern portions of the United States beginning in 1936. Arrasmith was an active member of the Army Reserve and commanding officer for the unit in which he served in with his military involvement stretching back to his college years when he was enrolled in the R.O.T.C program. When fighting broke out during World War II, Arrasmith commanded forces in Europe and served as an area engineer for the Army Corp of Engineers. After the fighting ceased, Greyhound executives petitioned the government for Arrasmith’s discharge so he could continue work on designing bus terminals, citing the company’s contributions during the war effort in moving troops across the country as reasoning. After an agreement was made where Arrasmith agreed to remain in the Army Reserves, Arrasmith and his family moved to Cleveland where he began preliminary work on the “Greatest Bus Terminal in the World.” [Source]

Ohio Savings Plaza
(View from a small restaurant "Becky's" downtown Cleveland)

The Ohio Savings Plaza is a commercial high-rise building in Cleveland, Ohio. The building...was completed in 1969...The architect who designed the building was George S. Ryder. [Source]

The Terminal Tower

The Terminal Tower is a 52-story, 235 m (771 ft), landmark skyscraper located on Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. It was built during the skyscraper boom of the 1920s and 1930s, and was the fourth-tallest building in the world when it was officially dedicated on June 28, 1930. Only three buildings in New York City were taller than its 708 feet (216 m), 52-floor frame...

Built for $179 million by the Van Sweringen brothers, the tower was to serve as an office building atop the city's new rail station, the Cleveland Union Terminal. Originally planned to be 14 stories, the structure was expanded to 52 floors with a height of 708 feet (216 m) and rests on 280-foot (85 m) caissons. Designed by the firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the tower was modeled after the Beaux-Arts New York Municipal Building by McKim, Mead, and White. [Source]

The Superior Building

The Superior Building, originally known as the Cleveland Discount Building, is a high-rise building in Cleveland, Ohio. The building rises 265 feet...and was completed in 1922. The Superior Building currently stands as the 26th-tallest building in the city. The architectural firm who designed the building was Walker & Weeks....

The Superior Building was one of the earliest skyscrapers to be completed in Cleveland. However, it never stood as the tallest structure in the city; the Keith Building, also completed in 1922, rose only 7 feet (2 m) taller, and thus captured the title of tallest building in Cleveland. The Superior Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. [Source]

"Security" at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is the Cleveland-based headquarters of the U.S. Federal Reserve System's Fourth District...

The bank building, located at Superior Avenue and East 6th Street in downtown Cleveland was designed by the Cleveland firm of Walker and Weeks and completed in 1923. Its exterior architecture emulates an Italian Renaissance palazzo, is clad in pink Sienna marble...The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building's entrances feature allegorical sculptures by Henry Hering representing Security and Integrity flanking the East Sixth Street entrance, while his Energy watches the Superior Avenue entry. [Source]

Lincoln Statue

A 1932 statue of Abraham Lincoln by Cleveland sculptor Max Kalish(1891-1945) stands on the west side of the plaza...behind the Cleveland Board of Education Building and faces the Peace Memorial Fountain on the Mall. The statue was a gift of The School Children of Greater Cleveland in 1932.

This naturalistic figure shows President Lincoln delivering his Gettysburg Address, which is engraved on a plaque below. [Source]

(Note: The building is now being converted into a hotel!)

Detail from the Board of Education Building


Cleveland Public Library, Ceiling Detail
Allegory of Industry
The other two visible are:
Right: Allegory of Music
Left: Allegory of Drama.
At the top (not visible) is Allegory of Graphic Arts

The vaulted ceilings [in the entrance lobby] are decorated with paintings completed in 1926 by artists working for the Joseph F. Sturdy Company of Chicago. The paintings recall those found in 15th century vaulted ceilings from the Italian Renaissance. [Source: Cleveland Public Library: The Art, Architecture, and Collections of the Main Library. A Self-Guided Tour]

Cleveland Public Library, entrance hall ceiling

A large terrestrial globe of pear-gray art glass hangs from the entrance hall ceiling. The globe was made by the the Sterling Bronze Company in 1925 and is based on a map by Leonardo da Vinci, now housed in Windsor Castle. The map is one of the earliest to depict the Americas - with North America indicated simply by small islands! The globe is surrounded by a bronze band depicting the signs of the zodiac. [Source: Cleveland Public Library: The Art, Architecture, and Collections of the Main Library. A Self-Guided Tour]

[Photos By: KPA]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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