From Pine View Farm

False Idols category archive

Scaredy Cats 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Rosalind C. Barnett and Caryl Rivers explore the theory then white men are afraid that they are losing out. A snippet:

At that time (the 1890s–ed.), historian Frederick Turner reacted with alarm, because he believed that the open, seemingly limitless frontier with all its freedoms formed the rugged American character. He worried that American dynamism and energetic masculinity would vanish along with the frontier.

Henry James echoed this sentiment in his novel of the same era, The Bostonians: “The whole generation is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it’s a feminine, a nervous, hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities.”

Today’s closing frontier is not a geographical space but a psychological one. Ever since the founding of the nation, white men–especially straight white Christian men–have been in charge. They have been our presidents, our captains of industry, our generals, our Wall Street titans, and they held all the power. They were the ones in “The room where it happens,” as the Hamilton lyric observes.

Even men who had no wealth or celebrity or grand accomplishments could bask in the glow of white male hegemony. They could at least imagine themselves in those “happening” rooms because all the people there looked like them.

I commend the article to your attention. It raises points worthy of consideration.

Share

Apocalypse Now 0

Sarah Huckabee Sanders at press briefing:  By moving the embassy to Jerusalem the President has fulfilled his promise to his evangelical base to usher in the apocalypse before the release of the next Veggie Tales movie.  We feel awful about the massacre of Palestinians and prayers and thoughts, y'all.  The President suggests y'all study 2 Corinthians for guidance.  Let me reassure y'all that the President remains fully committed to facilitating Armageddon in the Middle East.  As for the volcanic fissures that have erupted in Israel, we have no comment.

Via Job’s Anger.

Afterthought:

If Donald Trump knows what “2 Corinthians” is or says, I’ll eat my hats. And I have a lot of hats.

When I worked at Amtrak, one of the conductors on my morning commute called me the “hat guy.”

Share
From Pine View Farm
Privacy Policy

This website does not track you.

It contains no private information. It does not drop persistent cookies, does not collect data other than incoming ip addresses and page views (the internet is a public place), and certainly does not collect and sell your information to others.

Some sites that I link to may try to track you, but that's between you and them, not you and me.

I do collect statistics, but I use a simple stand-alone Wordpress plugin, not third-party services such as Google Analitics over which I have no control.

Finally, this is website is a hobby. It's a hobby in which I am deeply invested, about which I care deeply, and which has enabled me to learn a lot about computers and computing, but it is still ultimately an avocation, not a vocation; it is certainly not a money-making enterprise (unless you click the "Donate" button--go ahead, you can be the first!).

I appreciate your visiting this site, and I desire not to violate your trust.