This is Van der Leun's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Van der Leun's activity
Van der Leun
Editor and writer for American Digest at http://americandigest.org.
Interests: art, books, photography, poetry, zen, philosophy, politics, and who put the bomp in the bomp-de-bomp....
Recent Activity
Memes are the 21st century equivalant of Broadsides from the 18th and 19th centuries before newspapers ran them over.
"One classic example of a broadside used for proclamations is the Dunlap broadside, which was the first publication of the United States Declaration of Independence, printed on the night of July 4, 1776 by John Dunlap of Philadelphia in an estimated 200 copies."
All Hail The Meme, The New King of Political Communications
During this year's US election, what is the most common form of political communication? Is TV, print, or online advertisements? No. Is TV, print, or online journalism? No. The most common form of political messaging is found on social networking. It's called a meme. A meme is an image an...
Take the blowhard. Leave the cannoli.
".... a new set of hot confrontations with friends and enemies that will polarize sentiments and obscure his ham fisted bullying."
I see you too are reveling in all the racial healing of the Obama years, right?
Of Caretakers and Firestarters
I've been hearing a lot of talk about how racist candidate Trump is. Here's the thing. Nobody seems to have a specific concern about Trump actually using some government agency to undo what anti-racism Obama did. It's all just ass-kissing or ass-kicking rhetoric on both sides. I do not doubt f...
She's not a woman. She's a cunt.
UPDATE FROM PHILADELPHIA
You will not believe what I found out.
Hold Fast. Stay True.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjWPCIW7Rwo
At..... 3:58
What It Feels Like Today
It feels like I have a dead brother. When you have a dead brother you fear death because your own death now means you leave fewer behind who knew you. It's the anonymous, empty, what was he all about anyway kind of nullity that puts you in the hole in the ground staring at oblivious planets an...
"And it's going to continue to be that way until nobody (meaning black Americans) cares any longer, about halfway through the next black President's term. "
Unless, of course, the Left Behinds overplay their hand.
The Black Power Bogard & Why Race Is
The simple fact of the matter is that during the 1950s and 60s, angry black Americans, especially those men who served in WW2, were just about fed up with foot-dragging on the Civil Rights front. And even though things were better outside the South, a lot of us had family there and we weren't go...
This is very strong, correct, and poetic. Well seen and clearly stated.
I am reminded of something similar said at slant by Jon Gabriel, "My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing. "
Dumbing Down Racism
The deliberate attempt to redefine racism is done in order to sustain the fiction that there is more that can be done politically, beyond a reasonable guarantee of civil equality, to alleviate racism. The direction in the US is to make even more and more insults, slights, harassments and petty...
To read the headline is to know, instantly, the ethnic origins of the "youths" involved.
TEXAS
High school cheerleader dance-off turns nasty as brawl erupts between rivals (Thanks to Ron G.)
"And I realized that I hadn't been fooled by anything obvious."
True enough. What you were fooled by were your mind parasites that you've carried inside you for years. You were colonized at a young age, though, so no blame.
Sherman Alexie Speaks Out on The Best American Poetry 2015
Like most every poet, I have viewed the publication of each year's Best American Poetry with happiness (I love that poem), jealousy (That poet has been chosen for seventy-three years straight.), disdain (Oh, look, another middling poem from one of the greats.) and hope (Maybe they'll cho...
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —"
-- Dickinson
The Thai Civil Engineering Problem
On racial unity. Let's say you're a Thai and you love civil engineering, but you live in California and there aren't many around you. You find the best engineering school and join the Thai Civil Engineers. Now you're surrounded by people and motivated and want to prove things to the Thai commu...
To The Stone-Cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Robinson Jeffers
The Downside Again
A couple years ago, when I was absorbing the wit and wisdom of Nutnfancy and developing my Peasant Theory (now mostly complete), I started The Downside Blog. The Downside Blog was kind of a prepperish journal of observing things that fail and processes that might fail in order for its readers to...
Nature itself argues against and enforces inequality.
As for cars, as we learn in the sacred scripture of Repo Man: "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
Why America is the World's Stupidest Country
It's because we make life easy and convenient. For stupid people. And we do a good job. And we have more people. So we get better at it. Imagine a country where you don't get a chance to drive a car until you are 21 years old. And in that country there are no cars with automatic transmissions, a...
Oh clearly better than Andy Rooney. I'll get back to you on Royko after another decade.
Tell Me Less
I was one of the original dudes in Michel Martin's Barbershop. It was great. After about a year, I left for a variety of reasons I may or may not get into - nothing controversial mind you, but recent events, namely the closing of that shop puts me in a mood to talk about it. According to the com...
Mother of Mercy, like Global Warming, is there ANYTHING Obama can't do? What a man!
On the Multiculturalization of Superheroes
I'm all for it. Except the 'it' I'm talking about ain't happening. Far be it from me to be a champion of diversity, but where it actually matters, ie genuine heroics, it seems to me that Marvel and others have got it all wrong. Now I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not a big comic fan, bu...
"And so the problem persists - how do you exist in a society that you are convinced cannot stand your very presence,..."
De-program and de-perpetuate. To recall an ancient saying about the Net: "The net sees censorship as system damage and routes around it."
Reparations Are For Negroes
The Negro is the person who needs to express himself in terms of his previous condition of servitude in his approach to life in America. The Negro is trapped in dual consciousness because he is isolated in the world and completely dependent in his self-image to white Americans and his interpret...
I'd say that was Saudi's at their worst but that would imply there's a best.
Rich Barbarians
Just in case you forgot about Saudi Arabia https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=304792496296142
Ah yes. Now I see where you're going with this.
The False Majority
It's better to be the king of a small hill, than a prince at a higher elevation. -- Cobb's Rule #9. The last book I just finished reading is Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. It is a very interesting and good book which goes into some detail about security, trust, society and all things rela...
Oh it can yield meat and you're first.
The False Majority
It's better to be the king of a small hill, than a prince at a higher elevation. -- Cobb's Rule #9. The last book I just finished reading is Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. It is a very interesting and good book which goes into some detail about security, trust, society and all things rela...
I think there's something essential missing here: "Somewhere around whatever we were in the 1950s in breaks and there is the active nation and there is the passive nation. "
The False Majority
It's better to be the king of a small hill, than a prince at a higher elevation. -- Cobb's Rule #9. The last book I just finished reading is Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. It is a very interesting and good book which goes into some detail about security, trust, society and all things rela...
Forget the homeopathy. I'm waiting for George's update on his homopathy.
The Science is Throbbing
This chap, via Peter Risdon. I do hope someone’s told Caroline Lucas.
"ince there has been no public outcry about the Alderman not standing for the pledge. "
Well, if it was not reported it is hard to see how the public would know about it one way or the other.
Protest: Three more split with Register
Carole Osterink has the latest on the turmoil that is apparently worsening at the Register-Star, writing that the paper now also has lost an editor and two more reporters, in addition to the Friday firing of Casey: http://www.gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2012/11/ear-to-ground.html Gossips ...
Speaking for white folks born in LA I'd have to say that it's not race that drives us to suicide in LA. It's parking.
Suicide: Erasing White Privilege Since 1994
Deaths by Suicide By Race Los Angeles County, 1994 - 2003 Race All Races White Black Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander Suicides Rate* Suicides Rate* Suicides Rate* Suicides Rate* Suicides Rate* 2003 727 8 442 12 55 6 163 4 65 5 ...
You know, somehow I'm not worried one bit.
Jaded Old Farts & The Need for 'Creativity'
I'm not sure that world needs more ballet dancers, but I'm more convinced that we don't need the sort we would get out of public schools. It is absolutely true that the architecture of public education is industrial but so are most of the jobs as 'jobs'. I mean if you want to get 'a job...
"Play is a natural human expression. When enshrined as a cultural nucleus, such play leads to cultures of competency. "
No, it leads to the kind of shitting in the streets play we are currently witnessing in New York courtesy of the "Occupy" children.
Jaded Old Farts & The Need for 'Creativity'
I'm not sure that world needs more ballet dancers, but I'm more convinced that we don't need the sort we would get out of public schools. It is absolutely true that the architecture of public education is industrial but so are most of the jobs as 'jobs'. I mean if you want to get 'a job...
Sorry, I couldn't take more than 5 minutes of clicking around in this jabber. He's a self-parody when he says "But ADHD hadn't been invented," but I don't think he can see that.
Jaded Old Farts & The Need for 'Creativity'
I'm not sure that world needs more ballet dancers, but I'm more convinced that we don't need the sort we would get out of public schools. It is absolutely true that the architecture of public education is industrial but so are most of the jobs as 'jobs'. I mean if you want to get 'a job...
"Perhaps Cornell West has moved politically from being a democratic socialist to a revolutionary socialist."
Make that "to a clown socialist" and you've got it right.
Playthell Benjamin's Open Letter
Posted without comment. Dear Cornell After reading your Op-Ed column on Dr. Martin Luther King in the New York Times, I felt compelled to sit down and write you a letter. Since the conversation that I want to have with you is about public matters i.e. the fate of our nation and...
More...
Subscribe to Van der Leun’s Recent Activity