Above jihadjihad mentions how very American the book is.
Their comment combined with yours might explain my bemusement once I’d finished it.
‘What was that and why is it so well regarded?’
Their comment combined with yours might explain my bemusement once I’d finished it.
‘What was that and why is it so well regarded?’
Very few days go by when the HN Front Page does not remind me of Jay Gatz:
Gatz' schedule:
Rise from bed..................................6.00...........A.M.
Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling..............6.15 - 6.30...."
Study electricity, etc.........................7.15 - 8.15...."
Work...........................................8.30 - 4.30....P.M.
Baseball and sports............................4.30 - 5.00...."
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it.5.00 - 6.00...."
Study needed inventions........................7.00 - 9.00...."
No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable].
No more smoking or chewing.
Bath every other day.
Read one improving book or magazine per week.
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week.
Be better to parents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_Tide_of_Color_Again...
I suspect our axioms are very different, and am trying to think of where in between to start from; will write more later tonight.
1/ How are "they" being replaced by "their" elite? What even is the "elite"?
2/ What makes you think this "replacement" is intentional?
3/ How do porous borders imply a single conclusion?
4/ What constitutes a "porous" border?
5/ What is the "founding stock"? (Does it include the 3/5-counted people in 1789? How about people in 1776? Beforehand?)
6/ How does "woke" differ from "not characterising one's country as a Mary Sue" (universally beloved, possessed of all positive virtues and suffering no negative vices)?
7/ What is the difference between your morals and those of Lothrop Stoddard?
from front to back, my positions (we can either seek a middle ground on any of these, or simply agree to disagree):
7/ my morals are secular: "climbers: do not pull the ladder up after you"
6/ "woke" is a recognition that much of US history has been driven by slavery and bigotry — neither of which fit the ideals of the country: "with liberty and justice for all"
5/ Although I don't count, say, Lakota among my people, I do have people who were in the New World before 1789, as well as those who arrived after 1883's "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." All were pioneers in their way (I have kept up the family tradition by emigrating from The Old Country); were any more or less "American"?
4/ Can the US border truly be said to be porous if the foreign population is only 14% (compared to my adoptive country's 25%?)
3/ Freedom of movement (one of the 4 freedoms of the EU) can easily be explained on liberty grounds, on economic grounds, as a necessary counterpoint to freedom of capital, etc. There are many possibilities beyond replacement.
2/ if we ascribe stupidity before malice, why should we think replacement (stipulating in this case that it occurs) is due to the latter and not the former?
1/ assuming non-Hispanic white people decline to under 50% of the population, so what? why would that be bad? Are minorities so poorly treated in the US that becoming a minority should be cause for concern?
I suspect some familiarity with that milieu helps one appreciate Fitzgerald just as some familiarity with the South helps one fully appreciate Faulkner.