Author: photog

Vitality and Right-Wing Literature

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I was listening to a podcast by NY Times token “conservative” Russ Douthat talking to conservative publisher Jonathan Keeperman.

Keeperman is a publisher for a press called Passage Publishing.  He has a lot of avant-garde friends like Curtis Yarvin and possibly some of the Silicon Valley folks like Peter Thiel.  He and Douthat talked (a lot) about how the Right is becoming a sort of counter-culture in the way that the Left did back in the 1960s and beyond.

It’s kind of interesting to hear them discuss this shift in the culture in general but one of the more interesting things that Douthat said was that up until now the Right hasn’t produced any real literature on its side of the cultural divide.  Then Keeperman made some offbeat suggestions saying things like Cormac McCarthy’s

“No Country for Old Men” is from the right.  I think specifically he said that the Coen Brother’s movie based on it is from the Right.  Now never in any imagining have I ever equated the Coen Brothers or their movies with anything right-wing.  So, I find this very strange.  And honestly, all the people associated with Curtis Yarvin have always struck me as hipsters.  And I have always ranked hipsters as the most left-leaning of all the various weirdos to be found in New York City.  So, none of this makes a lot of sense.

But I guess if someone interested in literature who wasn’t a Leftist wanted to talk to the New York Times about literature, he would talk to Russ Douthat and try to find some middle ground where they could both make believe that Douthat wasn’t a total leftist.

I was interested to read that Keeperman has published illustrated editions of H P Lovecraft and Robert E Howard and that leads me to think that maybe he’s not a leftist.  The Left despises both of those old authors and would never publish their works under any circumstance.  So, I need to find out a lot more about Keeperman and his press.  It could be interesting.

But he said one interesting thing about the current state of right-wing literature.  He said that the problem with most of it is that it’s mostly just grievance based.  It exists to rail against and blame the leftist society we currently live in and therefore loses the chance to be “vital.”  Essentially, it’s existence is only as a protest against the status quo and therefore only has a negative presence.

And that interested me.  Because my book is in a real way, exactly that.  It is a war being fought against the status quo.  And so, I have to look at what I wrote and see if his criticism of this kind of story is a legitimate case against the value of the story I have written.  In order to do that I will have to look at what gives “vitality” and entertainment value to a story.

Of course, all things are relative and being objective, especially about something I myself wrote is fraught with peril.  Probably the only way to know for sure is to attempt to get it published and see what results.  But it has given me pause and I will think long and hard to see if I think there are any aspects of the story that lack “vitality.”  Whatever that is.  Boy when it rains it pours.

03MAY2025 – Quote of the Day

photog Quote of the Day ,

‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home;

A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,

Which sought through the world is ne’er met with elsewhere.

An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,

Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again;

The birds singing gayly, that came at my call,

Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all.

John Howard Payne

Trump Signs EO Ending Federal Funding for NPR & PBS

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Sure, I know there will be a court injunction within the hour but still the schadenfreude and just general hilarity from this move makes it all worthwhile.  I dream of all the muppets being laid off.  Elmo, Big Bird and the other weirdos who inhabit the creepy corners of Sesame Street.

Imagine all the NPR hosts of “All Things Considered” talking in the Robert Siegel whisper until they find out they’ve been laid off and then all shrieking and cussing at the tops of their lungs.  How glorious.

But my favorite subtractions will be Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks.  These two pretentious blowhards have been the greatest sources of government funded misinformation on display.  Not having to pay for their efforts will be an enormous relief.

Trad-Wife Boot Camp

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I wonder if Camera Girl knows that if she were a zoomer she’d be considered a “trad wife.”  I’m actually afraid to tell her what that is.  She’d shake her head and tell me that people today are ridiculous and I shouldn’t waste my time talking about ridiculous things.  But she’s so far out of the mainstream that she might as well be from another planet.

And that brings me to the topic of today.  How to find trad wives for my grandsons.  It’s a complicated question.  I wonder if Google Ads has a category for it?  I’m sure there are dating sites that categorize people by the lifestyle they align with.  But I don’t trust my grandsons to handle an assignment this important.  I’m not even sure if their parents are up to the challenge.  I think this requires Camera Girl to handle the interviews.

I don’t expect her to have the final say over the bride but I think she should be given a veto over the candidates that are obviously flawed.  Now of course the heart wants what the heart wants.  But I think it would make good sense to have some oversight of the matrimonial process.  Let’s face it, men are not very savvy when it comes to women.  In fact, the zoomers may actually be responsible for this whole kerfuffle about the question of, “What is a woman?”  Maybe they honestly don’t know.  Sure, they’ve seen them online but have they ever spoken with a live woman since graduating college?

What would make sense would be some kind of practical exam.  Let’s see:

  • Make spaghetti and meatballs from scratch.
  • Make decent coffee.
  • Make pancakes.
  • Figure out the menu for the week.
  • Bake an apple pie.
  • Entertain your prospective in-laws without saying the word “cringe” once.
  • Show that you like kids.
  • Tell a joke.
  • Go shopping with your prospective mother-in-law.
  • Don’t look at your phone once during dinner.

Now I know this is a stone-age list.  Women nowadays can’t cook, don’t want kids and have no interpersonal skills except in the office or on-line.  But that’s the point.  Men should be trying to find a way out of the awful world that girl-bosses and feminism has created.  If they marry, they need to find a woman that they’ll be able to stay married to for more than a month.  And if a woman doesn’t intend to have children, then there’s no imaginable reason to marry her in the first place.  If she wants companionship, she should save time and money and buy a cat or two or three.

Now it’s entirely possible that there are no more wifeable women left.  Maybe the whole western world of women is composed of girls who want to work in middle management and eventually end up as middle-aged, Botox-shooting, cat-keeping, barren girl-bosses spitting venom at the whole male sex for not wanting to serve as their place-holder partner at the corporate parties and gatherings.

If that’s the case my recommendation is for my grandsons to go marry a girl from a traditional country where women still give birth to children and think of house-wife as a pretty nice career.  But we’ll have to see how my talk with Camera Girl goes.  She’s ornery and may not agree right away.  But she’ll come around.  She likes to help young people.  And she can give remedial classes in the spaghetti and meatballs exam question if it’s a problem.  After all nobody is perfect.

Seeing Things as They Really Are

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The stoic Epictetus is supposed to have said, “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”  When I read up on what Epictetus thought was within our control it’s pretty small.  All that’s under our control is our thoughts and opinions.  Even our actions are constrained by the external world.  So, this freedom he speaks of is internal.

It doesn’t seem to be much.  But I guess if you live in a world where there is one Nero and a hundred million Romans without any real freedom you have to take what’s available.  And who knows, some of the good emperors were stoics.  At least Marcus Aurelius has been presented to us through his writings as one.  Maybe he was.

Then what about our world?  We brag that we are a free people.  And compared to the Roman Empire I guess we are freer.  But when I think of the direction, we are headed it’s not that much better and in fact because of the efficiency of our technology maybe eventually we will be more thoroughly enslaved than my ancient forebears on the Italian peninsula.  In that case maybe I should consider the wisdom of Epictetus and his world view.

This all came up because I saw a quote that said something like, “Hopelessness is freedom.”  I took it to mean that hoping for things that won’t happen is wasting your life.  That the better way is to take the situation as you find it and work around it to accomplish what is possible.

This makes sense to me.  I waited decades for things to go the way I wanted them to go and it only ever got worse.  That’s because I thought that other people believed what I did.  I thought that George W. Bush was a “conservative.”  Well, maybe he was, by his definition.  But reality wasn’t the same for him and me.

Now, Donald Trump seems more like what I hoped for.  But Donald Trump isn’t the Emperor of America.  He’s not even the boss.  He’s just someone trying hard to fix things.  I wouldn’t exactly equate him to Marcus Aurelius.  I don’t think anyone who spent any time with Stormy Daniels could be considered a stoic.  I don’t think he’d even qualify as an epicurean.  He’s a well-meaning man trying to fix things by plugging holes in a collapsing dam.  Will he succeed, even temporarily?  It’s really hard to say.

Stretching the Roman Empire analogy way beyond recognition, the Goths are already over the Rhine and the legions are undermanned and poorly trained.  So, things look pretty bad.

Maybe it is time to start looking within to see what can be done to make the best of a bad situation.  The stoic viewpoint was an important part of the Christian philosophy that allowed something to survive the wreck of the Western Roman Empire.  The Christians couldn’t become legionnaires and defeat the barbarians.  But they could become monks and form a nucleus of knowledge and civilization to help the common people survive the chaos of the dark ages.

Maybe we will see something similar.  Any help that is going to come in the future might have to come from ourselves.  I’m not sure I’d express it as, “Hopelessness is freedom.”  Maybe a better way to say it is. “The truth shall set you free.”  Facing reality is the best way to make progress.  See things for how they really are and you are less likely to be disappointed in how things turn out.  Do I feel freer now?  Maybe.