There's a man who works in rural Kansas repairing downed telephone lines. He thinks he should take a vacation soon but there's work still to do, and there's more coming. He'll hold off on the vacation. His work is important, for its own sake, of course, to him, to those who rely on him, unknown though he likely is to those who rely upon him. He's just one guy doing his job, like so many others, all of whom together in some way make our Modernity what it is, good or ill. There's this guy who's a Wichita lineman. He misses his girlfriend when he's out working, but he hears her voice in the hum of the wire.Continued at:
http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.
5 comments:
It might help if you linked to the Death Hippie, so we could see what you are railing against.
:)
You have to click on her name in the post, Jacko, if it matters much. I'm stuck on Glen Campbell. For others, though, her name takes us all directly to her blog.
I fear Dag, that I understand completly. I feel like I'm still in the early stages of a twelve step program, wherein I pretend not to notice the obvious utility of street lamps. "Fake it untill you make it, I'm told."
My friend and colleague Truepeers often suggests that I am a "Gnostic," which we take in its Voegelian sense to mean one who takes a self-assigned role in society as a seer of the Agathon and the pleroma, i.e. as one who thinks he knows the Mystery and is able, due to his superior intelligence, to implement a programme on Earth that will usher in the Utopia, if only he can find the Will to Power to do so, regardless of the blood spilt. The Gnostic sees himself as so smart that only Obama is smarter; that the Gnostic knows the answers to all social questions, all questions being solvable in his mind, all questioning of such being evil. Politics becomes religion, becomes a poligion, the political figure becoming a demi-god, all others deamoms or slaves to his superior intelligence.
I see the world as divided between sado-masochists and folks who quietly get caught in the middle, the far side of middle being that held by cowboys.
The older I get, the more I see myself burying family and friends, the longer the decades on the road far from home, then the closer I get to home after all, home growing in the mind till I'm there rather than exiled in foreign lands. I'm more a cowboy today than ever I was in the mountains back home as a boy. Now I can ride through barbed wire fence till there is only free and open range everywhere. I'm free now. My freedom allows me to see at last the nature of my working-class family and fellows doing their jobs, raising their families, living their private lives as works of art. They live as works of love, some of them, and I am proud to know them. Those who wreck our nation, the Death Hippies who destroy our land, who torment and hate our people, by God, I want to hang them from street lamps. Some folks will try to trample our folks into the dust and humiliate them and crush them; but some folks have to realize that there are cowboys over the plains and in the hills and woods who will come riding in someday soon to clean up the nation.
There are rules to this game, el Duelo, the rules of the manly art of murder. I've been wondering for years why is it I'm not a terrorist, and now I know it's because I follow the rules of the duel. It means that a working man works and lives and loves and might not notice the worst of bad men going down in the dust. There are rules, and a man, even a killing man, must obey them, even if it's about murder. The average man can go about his life loving his best gal and being a decent guy, all things else unknown.
So, it's not about some far-seeing genius knowing what's perfect for all of mankind, and to Hell with men who differ in opinion. There's no Gnostic vision here, just a common care for our people and our nation, and the demand that men put down their daily tasks of now for the common good of families and friends and the common good of us all for the future to take up the task of defending our right from evil. It doesn't take a Gnostic's vision to see it: it takes a man who will even if he doesn't want to-- because it's right.
Who can say it's right? Ask a free man calling out a Death Hippie consorting with our enemies, enemies who kill at random for thrills. We have rules, el duelo, the rules of murder for men. Cowboy rules.
Hi, Maccus. Good to see you again, friend.
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