Thomas Wolfe on the Limbaughs of the world

[soupkitchen]

This is Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward Angel, You Can't Go Home Again) writing in the 1930's.

I post this edited excerpt about once a year. Always it rings true. Now it rings truer and truer. Since Rush was not born when it was written, Wolfe must be talking about He who Rush serves.



"I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found……I think the true discovery of our spirit, of our people, of our mighty and immortal land is yet to come. I think the true discovery of our own democracy is still before us……
I think the enemy is here before us, too…….I think the enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I, we, know that all his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single selfishness and compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of his blind grab…….
I think the enemy deceives us with false words and lying phrases, saying:
“See, I am one of you—I am one of your children, your son, your brother, and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become—and all because I am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful Iam....Am I not just one of you?….Am I not the living image of what each of you may hope to be, would wish to be, would desire for his own son? Would you destroy the glorious incarnation of your own heroic self? If you do, then, “says Enemy, “you destroy yourselves—you kill the thing that is most gloriously American, and in so killing, kill yourselves.”
He lies And now we know he lies . He is not gloriously, or in any other way, ourselves. He is not our friend, our son, our brother. And he is not American For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces, his own true face is old as Hell.
Look about you and see what he has done."

[DS1]

1. Do we always have to use words? Can't we just punch the bastard in the face every 60 seconds?

I'd line up for that

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Where's that mahchine I designed to hit Jennifer Hudson in the face with plywood 100 times a second?

That oughtta work.

[DS1]

4. Can the plywood be sprayed with rock salt on the return path?

[NuttyFluffers]

5. even on "Love Tap" setting her face would turn into fine red mist like aerosol from a can...

can you please switch to balsa wood? you may use extra fine grit sandpaper if you must, but if you are going to spray it with alcohol, at least choose Chanel No. 5 or something.

[Rabrrrrrr]

11. That's the whole idea, dude.

[rurallib]

2. I'd say that about hits it.

[On the Road]

6. See What Happens

when you post wonderful flowing prose on DU? You trigger a discussion of hitting people in the face with blunt objects.

I was expecting this to be something from the author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Perhaps to avoid confusion, the author you quoted is often referred to as "Thomas Wolfe."

An anecdote that has to be shared: Apparently Thomas Wolfe was 6'6" tall and wrote standing up, using a refrigerator or ice box as a desk. When he visited Europe he developed writer's block because the European refrigerators were only 4" tall.

[soupkitchen]

7. You're right, I should have used Thomas, Corrected

[On the Road]

9. Wow, Look at Some of These Quotes --

This guy could write.

“The sounds that come up/from the harbor of Manhattan at night—/that magnificent and thrilling music/of escape, mystery, and joy,/with the mighty orchestration of the transatlantics,/the hoarse little tugs, the ferryboats and lighters,/those sounds that well up/from the gulf and dark immensity of night/and that pierce the entrails of the listener.” (A Stone, A Leaf, A Door, 70)

“It had come to him when he had smelled the sea-wrack of the harbor, the clean, salt fragrance of the tides, and it was in cool, flowing tides of evening waters and in deserted piers and in the sliding lights of the little tugs. And it had risen to his lips when he had heard the great ships blowing in the gulf of night, or heard exultantly the shattering baugh of their departure as they slid into line and pointed for the sea at noon on Saturday. And it had come to him each time he saw the proud, white breasts of mighty ships, the racing slant and drive of the departing liners, and watched them dwindle and converge into their shape away from piers, black with crowds of cheering people.” (The Web and the Rock, 610)

“Westward, a little to the south, against the darkening bulk of the headland, a long riband of smoke, black and low, told the position of the ship. She was approaching fast, her bulk widened: she had been a dot, a smudge, a shape—a tiny, hardly noticed point in the calm and immense geography of evening. Now she was there, sliding gently in beyond the ancient breakwater, inhabiting and dominating the universe with the presence of her 60,000 tons, so that the vast setting of sky and sea and earth, in which formerly she had been only an inconspicuous but living mark, were now a background for her magnificence.” (Of Time and the River, 903)

“She lay there, an alien presence in those waters; she had the reality of magic, the realty that is so living and magnificent that it seems unreal. She was miraculous and true—as one looked at her, settled like some magic luminosity upon that mournful coast, a strong cry of exultancy rose up in one’s throat: the sight of the ship was as if a man’s mistress had laid her hand upon his loins.” (Of Time and the River, 905)

http://www.thomaswolfe.org/questions/Shipquotes.htm

And those are just the ones on ships. Thank you for turning me on to him.

[jpgray]

8. Excellent post

[Winterblues]

10. Isaiah 32..5-8

5 The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.

6 For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry; and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.

7 The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.

8 But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.

And I will stand by Liberal things with all my power.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. Awesome! I never realized that the KJV had "liberal" there!

Which is wonderfully perfect, because the only idiots who still use the KJV are the hate-based Christians who vote Republican.

They should read their own scriptures.

:rofl: