Interviewer: You’re walking through the desert, encounter a tortoise, and flip it on its back.
MAGA: Is it mexican?
Interviewer: Excuse me?
MAGA: Yeah, is an illegal alien tortoise?
Interviewer taking notes: Subject does not seem to understand what a tortoise is.
I would argue that is more a trait of authoritarianism or fascism than conservatism. You can be conservative and still feel empathy, even about people “not of your tribe”, but will be expressed in more traditional ways, paternalism and charitability being the most common in occident.
To put it in a different (and very simplistic) light: confronted with the homelessness crisis, the socialist will build social housing and employment programs to get them out, the conservative will build refuges and free kitchens, the authoritarianist will displace or kill them.
I think the word you may be searching for is “bigot”. No need to use a medical term when we have a perfectly good slur for that.
The fact is you’ve been experiencing the reversal for at least a decade, if not more (I would argue that this started with Reagan, as many problems in US, but that is too long term to certify). Trump is accelerating and coalescing the destruction, but you had your share of “creationists”, “flat-earthers” and “antivaxxers” long before Trump, interfering in state legislation.
Quislings and collaborators.
It’s not just that Columbia caved, but that it lets the fascist gits think they are in the right and that’s why they won. It won’t stop unless it is actively resisted. If you pay the Don-geld once, you never stop paying it. And it isn’t just money that is being paid, here.
Plz also see
Nixon.
I thought of that poem, too, as well as the fact that Yeats himself was at best a misanthrope. That’s mostly kept me from caring about, or diving into, his work after I first encountered it, so perhaps a grain of salt: Either the sphinx-thing represents what they now call wokeness, or Yeats is instead gleefully rubbing his hands over what the sphinx-thing portends. Of course that doesn’t prevent the rest of us from seeing the sphinx-thing differently.
ETA:
I’d say “See also: John Lydon”, but was he ever really left-of-center (if he had any ethos at all) to begin with? Were GenX types into confrontational music because of the message therein, or because it annoyed everyone around them & they just kept going with the antagonism? When I was writing about Yeats above, I remembered an English professor from college who suggested that literary or artistic advancements were often just elitist strategies to demonstrate how much smarter the writers/artists were than everyone else, who (mostly) didn’t get it. & this is why we get John Dos Passos, in spite of the subject matter in the USA trilogy, turning rightward because he was an elitist all along. (I went on about this at ToP) Anyway, perhaps something similar here with those who’d blast Crass or CoC or Black Flag when (& because) their parents were in the house, only to vote to the right of them later. (& come to think of it, whether it was meant as a joke or not [or if that matters], this album seemingly turned up a lot at various people’s houses)
Possibly Nelson Mandela, but there was the anti-divestment movement in general (I was thinking about this the other day; but also the UT 16 for example were several years older than me, if not too old to be GenX). Also opposition to our foreign policies in Central America, anger over the non-handling of the AIDS crisis, anger over the Valdez spill… But, yeah, most people probably don’t remember any of this, the way they’d remember civil rights or anti-war activism during the 1960s. D’oh! What @mindysan33 said:
Why is Tulsi making a big deal out of Obama committing crimes?
Didn’t the Supreme Court rule presidents are immune from prosecution?
Or is there some fine print that only trump is immune.
No wait, it doesn’t apply to Obama because he’s not a citizen because birth certificate.
Because she’s following the orders of Tramp, who’s throwing any and every piece of meat at us he can to throw us off the Epstein trail.
(apologies for off-topic-ness)
Yeats (for those of us tracking his unexpurgated bio) has or had many flaws.
In the earlier part of his life, Yeats was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.[66] In the 1930s, Yeats was fascinated with the authoritarian, anti-democratic, nationalist movements of Europe, and he composed several marching songs for the Blueshirts, although they were never used. He was a fierce opponent of individualism and political liberalism and saw the fascist movements as a triumph of public order and the needs of the national collective over petty individualism. He was an elitist who abhorred the idea of mob-rule, and saw democracy as a threat to good governance and public order.[67] After the Blueshirt movement began to falter in Ireland, he distanced himself somewhat from his previous views, but maintained a preference for authoritarian and nationalist leadership.[68]
No angel, was Yeats.
I have posted The Second Coming in other places. I always get pushback. The truth of Yeats’ life is out there for anyone who can click on wikipedia et al.
There is no doubt that the art world is just as full of all sorts, just as in real life. Picasso’s moral life was a shambles. No one argues his paintings are insignificant. I personally can’t stand the guy. Feeling conflicted, I am guessing, is part of what makes us human.
I have heard it said that paradox is a great vehicle of truth.
This dynamic can easily be applied here.
At some point, and I say this as a lifelong art lover, I see/understand that a real work of art acquires its own life, independent of the artist inasmuch as the artist does eventually die. Part of that work of art’s art is that, despite or perhaps because of its baggage, it still has some kind of transformational resonance across generations of humans.
I am no fan of W.B. Yeats, the man.
However.
To throw The Second Coming in the Dustbin of History, to dismiss it because its creator is flawed, objectionable, etc., is equivalent to holding the “sins of the father” against his own child.
If an artwork is worth anything, it must be judged on its own terms. If there is an objectionable angle in the work, that content must be called out. Full stop.
why-not-both.gif
A close reading of any poem must necessarily contain something of the close reader. Nothing human, not even literary analysis, is ever subjective. So much of art has, whether intentionally or not, multiple layers of ambiguity. What did the poet mean? And was that true in that moment? And should that moment be the one defining truth, even as we sit here in 2025 and see other, more, different truths?
ETA: tyop
Yep, I listen to a whole lot of jazz by people who could be really horrible, especially toward women. I got some pushback from my daughter over Joni Mitchell because of the Don Juan album cover (she sang “For Free” in vocal class & learned it on piano, but mostly lost interest in JM after that). Sorry, didn’t mean to put you in a similar spot.
I always feel a bit ick when he’s quoted (here particularly) as his personal viewpoints would not align at all with most here.
That said he was an artist and his opinions are those of an artist. They were radically inconsistent, changed to the point of reversing on many topics over relatively short periods of time, and weren’t rationally arrived in the first place. He believed in magic and ritual. I would never trust Yeats’s opinion on what actions to take in a political context.
He’s about how politics makes you feel, beyond that I wouldn’t take any notice of him.
I don’t think it holds up to discard a work of art because the artist was a dick. Especially when enriching said dick is no longer a concern. IMHO, Second Coming is as intense a portrait of our current state as I can imagine, and I have quoted it a few times myself. If we require our artists to be perfect, we will have no art. I have no issue with avoiding enriching artists who are objectionable (JKR, NG spring to mind) but to claim their art is disposable is not justified. IMHO, of course. No one has to appreciate any art if it does not speak to them.
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in announcing the proposal in March. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.”
I hate these guys so fucking much… FL and TX will/are getting the brunt of this currently, but we will all suffer for it. The stupid burns. Quite literally, in this case.
Absolutely.
I was just concerned that Americans might not know his history. That’s probably an unfair concern in such an educated group though.
As I said he certainly captures how we feel facing this, and the poetry is very vague on specific solutions so it is eminently quotable and relevant to our times.
Well you sure as shit ain’t gonna be able to sell coal rollin’ Canyoneros anywhere else in the world…
Good God, that is exactly 14 words and HH. Very subtle, you Nazi assholes. They are not even trying to hide it anymore…
‘tiny’ clip from brand new Southpark (27th season, egads) episode and trump’s endowment: link. warning: tiny phallus is depicted!
addendumdumdum… so as part of the S2701 there’s a bit where Southpark has to agree to promote trump as part of some settlement. And lo’, there’s a pro trump Ad which yet again includes his tiny penis. Impressively disgusting satire starts up at 54secs of:
Here is Guardian’s spoiler-filled write up of the episode…
Yeah… not sure how i’m feelin’ about it.