A Different T.S. Eliot
I will begin with his response to the capitulation at Munich:
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It was not…a criticism of the government, but a doubt of the validity of a civilization. We could not match conviction with conviction, we had no ideas with which we could either meet or oppose the ideas opposed to us. Was our society, which had always been so assured of its superiority and rectitude, so confident of its unexamined premises, assembled round anything more permanent than a congeries of banks, insurance companies and industries, and had it any beliefs more essential than a belief in compound interest and the maintenance of dividends?
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He was not just a poet, but a commentator on the Human Condition of his time. And should be remembered as that.
This article not an easy read – and it’s safe to assume few will read it. Take a couple of days – and make yourself one of them.
The Kindle version of The Wasteland is now free from Amazon.
Iowa is Full of Shit
Harper’s Magazine – The Trouble With Iowa – you have to be a subscriber to read this, but subscriptions are practically free.
Actually, Iowa is full of nitrates from all the fertilizer used in its agriculture – plus manure from all the pigs, and all the chickens – very little of which gets treated, and ends up in Iowa rivers, then the Mississippi River, and then in the Gulf of Mexico – where it creates a huge dead zone.
Iowans insist that this is not happening – that they are the best people in the world – and, as a result, their shit could not possibly hurt anything.
I was born and grew up in Ft. Madison, Iowa – and then lived in neighboring Illinois – which also produces plenty of corn – and its by-products. The sewer from my home town of Nauvoo, Illinois flowed directly into the Mississippi River, just upstream from our house. The smell was pungent, but my father insisted that was unimportant – because after a few minutes your nose got used to it.
During the summer, the river consisted of more sewerage than water. But our municipal water supply pumped it out, purified it – and then flushed the sewerage back into the river for the next town downstream to use.
The Mississippi River had been destroyed. But no one seemed to care.
Eventually, the Federal Government built a sewerage treatment plant, and provided for its operation – but the local attitude towards it was strange, They seemed to think pollution was manly – because you were showing the world that you could do what you wanted, and get away with it.
But sewerage treatment was a sign of weakness. It was letting nature rule you – instead of you ruling it.
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