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Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

Random Thoughts on the Way We are Now

9/10/2023

7 Comments

 
Picture
I am a year older than Mitch McConnell but am a lot smarter (as well as better-looking). Same goes for Joe Biden, now and always.

The U.S. now has two holidays for African Americans (one of them fraudulent) and only one for the founders of the country.

What I have noticed recently in streaming television shows (mostly intelligent European ones): ads for HIV drugs showing gloriously happy sodomites. I have also noticed that in every show, in the first 5-10 minutes, there will invariably appear an admirable black person, no matter how irrelevant to the country or the plot. This is nearly universal for recent shows in European countries. In one Iceland police series, white supremacists were being evil to an African immigrant. Happy sodomite couples also invariably appear in almost every series as an everyday matter. Is somebody trying to tell us something?

The great Wendell Berry teaches a lesson for us in these degraded and threatening times on the difference between optimism and hope. Optimism is merely a program, hope is a Christian duty.

Just before the War for Southern Independence, the great William Gilmore Simms wrote: “The virtues of a people depend very much on the incorruptible integrity of language.” In this light consider the current babblings of our politicians, advertisers, bureaucrats, college presidents, leading clergyman, “experts.” The old idea of integrity - that you should say what you mean and mean what you say - has disappeared from American discourse. It is worth reminding ourselves who is “the Father of Lies,” the first corruptor of language.

In his nonfiction speeches and essays Faulkner made a similar point. What he was hearing in America was not words but rather “mouth sounds.”
​
Speaking of Faulkner, he said his favourite things were horses, trees, and silence. While I am not remotely on the same level and have never been fortunate enough to deal with horses, I got the other two right
7 Comments
Lynne Neal
9/11/2023 01:52:20 pm

Dr. Wilson,
This article was a breath of fresh air today.
Your first paragraph made me laugh out loud.
Thanks for a bit of light in this dark world.

Reply
H. V. Traywick, Jr. link
9/11/2023 03:31:15 pm

Two black holidays: one for a Communist and the other bogus. White Supremacists in Iceland? Are there any shows about Black Supremacists in South Africa? "Kill de Boers!" Just askin'...

Reply
Perrin Lovett
9/11/2023 05:48:19 pm

A world of fakery with an agenda. Weren't a bunch of Icelanders kidnapped and sold into slavery in Africa one time? Oh, my bad - that fact violates the narrative. Pardon, please. Excellent observations, Dr. W!

Reply
Joe Johnson
9/12/2023 03:54:12 am

Dr. Wilson, someone writing on another site says the Ethan Edwards character in John Ford's the seachers is comparable to Captian Ahab in Moby Dick, Is this true?

Reply
Clyde N Wilson
9/12/2023 08:46:08 am

Mr. Johnson, that it the kind of ridiculous pseudo-intellectual "scholarship" we have today. Ethan was dedicated to finding his kinfolk. Ahab was engaged in an entirely selfish and crazy effort that led to the death of many innocent men.
By the way, Herman Melville was a Southern sympathiser and you can make a good case that Capt. Ahab represents an abolitionist..

Reply
Joe Johnson
9/12/2023 06:45:37 pm

Thanks very much, Dr. Wilson

Reply
Wes Shofner
9/18/2023 07:48:04 pm

You could make a good case that Capt. Ahab is Ahab, whoops, Abraham , Lincoln.

Reply



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    Author

    Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews

    Dr. Wilson is also is co-publisher of Shotwell Publishing, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books. 

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