And song remains song
I move my fingers to hear
And remember what was
Elegy IOrder like Spring is returningto us as a tempest in summer,Thunder and lightning and rain,nothing to lose or to gain;Standing in ruins, foundations exposed,with a soft distant tremor--Someone is meeting their end,still it is far 'round the bend;Slumbering giants are somewherearoused from their sleep without dreaming,Sleep of a million years,fear as the sum of all fears;Maybe our ears must deceive us butwe hear a sound much like screaming,Sound of a funeral song,soon as it's heard it has gone.
[Author's note: later I will post notes and corrections to Coleridge and Schiller on Elegaic Verse.]
The Old Guard Will Pass
There's some opinion among those who come from the cities that we're in an age of youthful enthusiasm concerning the 'revolution'. Opinions differ here, but it is worth remembering that we had our 'revolution' in or around 1968. This new generation does not have the force or fire to do what they attempted. When then does this madness end for good?
I am Orthodox, so I often read the writings of fellow Orthodox Christians, among them a gentle and sincere man, abbot Tryphon. He recently responded to the destruction of statues in the following essay (hyperlinks applied only to their own text):
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/morningoffering/2020/06/historic-memory/
You may read it if you wish, but you will notice a certain, perhaps, unusual softness towards the demands being made by the younger 'generation'. This differs from the response of Orthodox from say, Russia -- and for good reason. If you read through the whole thing, you may notice how straightforward Tryphon is about his past, which completely explains his position:
"As a former Marxist (back in the 70’s), I look on at the radical movement sweeping our nation, and fear what may be coming."
Almost every educated person TODAY of any influence or note is a former marxist or communist sympathizer. My own father, who is perhaps as conservative as possible without being openly reactionary, only stopped short of joining the SDS because he couldn't stand the personalities of the New York Jewish Boys who ran the club. (I was never a liberal.)
It is in fact not the apparent enthusiasm of the youth we should look to, to understand the current wave of hysteria, but to the broad sympathy among the old guard. We can call these people 'Boomers' if we want, some are probably a little older than that (my father is) but as a broad target, it's correct.
People don't know the history of modern Antifa (to be distinguished from 'Antifaschiste Aktion' of European origin) - it originated not with youth enthusiasm, but as a last ditch attempt of remaining faithful marxists to reinvigorate their revolution. It happened in 1999. The change they made was that they decided to capitalize on black resentment by pushing whites out of marxism; they declared that whites, because they didn't rise up and throw off their 'capitalist' masters as the prophet marx declared they ought, they could not be a true proletariat and had to be destroyed.
It's 20 years later.
Tryphon, though doubtless a good man, is still stuck mentally in the same place as the other aging marxists, still sympathetic to the feelings of the students in 1968, just in disagreement about the means to creating a truly 'anti racist' world.
Some of this generation also tell us that individualism is the answer, but group-mediated differences in outcomes tell us that while people do have to rise and fall on their individual merits (this is necessary for a society to access talented and able people--) it has to be possible to state the IQ gap between blacks and whites, genetic differences, ramifications of human bio-diversity, and so on, to attain any high ground of intellectual rigor.
If indeed on average blacks are more violent and less intelligent as the tests repeatedly show, how can 'anti racism' be a tenable position for a person of intellectual honesty? How can 'sins of racist past' even be properly reckoned without this information? In the current arrangement, short of blacks massacring all whites (physically impossible in our circumstance;) there is no way for them to obtain the desired feeling of equality with whites, or, for that matter, Jewish people or Asians.
While not dangerous in and of itself (as slavery and Jim Crow demonstrated) this resentment is very useful for enemies, whether internal or external, of the state. It is not a revolution waiting to happen, but it remains a tool for mayhem in the hands of evil men.
It's not impossible for black people to have a good society; Botswana as an example demonstrates this. Rather than trying to purge out 'racism', we should start with examining whether the arrangement we have declared necessary isn't itself the cause of all that we see as 'racism'.
When we look at the past, we see that it was common to segregate girls and boys - to the point that many schools were one sex only. There are several reasons for this, but one is to prevent issues from markedly different outcomes between boys and girls. (It's also to limit fooling around between teenagers.) In those circumstances, boys and girls could have mean opinions about one another, but their separate circumstances meant they could remain opinions and not become weapons.
Malcolm X's opinion was that *being segregated* by someone else is for the birds, but choosing segregation is much different. The bottom line is, however, that treating human beings as an interchangeable mass creates the side-effect people call 'racism'. A state that permits, nay, encourages local homogenization does well to combat the emergence of resentment. Of course, this state would also need to ensure that these groups are not preyed upon by unscrupulous men - America did neither of these things.
But again, for this conversation to even take place, Tryphon's generation has to pass away, and with them, their ideals for an anti-racist world and their eldership. The young marxist agitators can easily be given new ideals, especially once they are done purging each other out of every place they can find each other for lack of purity.
Some think the current world doesn't have 'elders' or respect the previous generation. But I tell you the truth; it is more bound to their teaching than ever before, rebelling from it only in a disagreement over zeal versus cunning.
I give it five to ten years. Perhaps the crownbug, as a seasonal virus, will reduce life expectancies for awhile, and hasten their demise. Then again, we could get 75 years of this, as the "final" government of the USA, inaugurated by the "woke" deep state of the Obama years.
My opinion is that this promised new government however, didn't arise at all.