tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436782247272162797.post7143713295640714774..comments2024-03-27T17:27:49.087-04:00Comments on Strangely Blogged: The Pitch That DefilesVixen Strangelyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01976594951225450413noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6436782247272162797.post-53723934983635013352017-10-21T15:17:16.512-04:002017-10-21T15:17:16.512-04:00Felicitations, Vivacious! I see you have an attra...Felicitations, Vivacious! I see you have an attractive new background for your blog. Very nifty. I think it's a good one. <br /><br />As you know, I stay away from the querulous nature of tit-for-tat. It reminds me of a line from E.M. Forester's novel <i>A Room With a View</i>, <br />“The ladies' voices grew animated, and – if the sad true be known – a little peevish. They were tired, and under the guise of unselfishness they wrangled.”<br /><br />I will agree with General Kelly up to a point. However, most of what he said would be more applicable to people who have reenlisted. The reenlistee has definitely decided that this is a direction he wishes to go in, and he does understand the potential consequences. <br /><br />The people who go down to join still do not realize what awaits them, and they join for many reasons. Here's something your father will remember:<br />“Don't be sad. Don't be blue. Our recruiter screwed us too!”<br /><br />My experience suggests that a lot of enlistees are not as noble as General Kelly would propose, but neither are they as bad as their critics try to assert. <br /><br />When I first got back from Vietnam, the left was screaming that we were “baby killers”. They would attempt to spit on our uniforms. (Occasionally one would get too close... ahem!) <br /><br />I could go on at length about this, but I wanted to touch on a different subject.<br /><br />Today we have a unique opportunity. We are witnessing the death of an old narrative and the beginning of a new one. The old narrative started in the 1960s, though of course the underlying motives for that narrative grew strength in the invisible for some time before it popped up in the visible behavior of different 60s movements. This cycle is drawing to a conclusion. It won't be entirely visible overnight, but in a decade or so it will have changed our culture and our sensibilities. What the new zeitgeist will become is not entirely predictable. Richard Fernandez calls it a paradigm shift. The only thing we can have some confidence about is that it will be neither left nor right in the terms we have come to understand those designations. The old concept of left and right are going down with the dying narrative. <br /><br />Returning for a moment to General Kelly's speech, he did touch on what is referred to as desacralization. This of course belongs to a much longer cycle. It is typical of the counter-initiation when counterfeits replace the sacred in a race to the bottom of materialism. (For example, when one gets one's self-worth from the kind of car they drive, the neighborhood they live in, the clothes they wear, the ideological perspectives they affect, etc., rather than a real initiation that leads to a deeper and more profound experience and understanding of the spiritual. We have come quite some distance in the Kali Yuga. Whoever advances chaos or hatred under whatever pretext is advancing the Kali Yuga. <br /><br />Anyway, n the shorter term cycle we are in a unique position to watch a new narrative being born. The Trump presidency, Brexit, sex & politics presented by Hollywood after Harvey Weinstein, leftist protests by the NFL, etc., etc. This will eventually result in a new narrative, and so we are in a situation much like an astronomer watching a new star system. Only time will tell what dimensions the new narrative will take.Formerly Amherstnoreply@blogger.com