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January 28, 2019
Rangers.
Sometimes I miss Sundays growing up in Indian Hill, Ohio. A community that protected its own.
If I were driving around at 17 and the local cops—the Indian Hill Rangers—stopped me, this:
“Why it’s Dan Hull. John Hull’s eldest. You got any beer or dope there in your daddy’s car?”
“No, Sir.”
“Would you like some?”
Posted by JD Hull at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2019
Ethiopians
Even America’s ruling legions of effeminate white males are no longer afraid of black dudes in big cities. In alleys, streets, parks, late at night. Drives the Brothers crazy, too. So they take it out on Ethiopians working counters in shops & stores. Who smile & go on working.
Posted by JD Hull at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)
January 26, 2019
Logan Circle.
I live in a ‘hood that’s so neutered-male where the toughest guy in the bar wears a bow-tie, trench coat and tasseled loafers. And it’s me.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)
January 25, 2019
Machine Gun Roger Stone Finally Brought to Justice.
Sure, Roger Stone is a major piece of work who’s been scaring the horses his whole life but was it really necessary to arrest him early this morning in Florida like he was Machine Gun Kelly just to be predictably released hours later and why was goofy CNN there? Dogged shoe leather journalism?
Posted by JD Hull at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)
January 23, 2019
Happy 104th, Potter Stewart, Cincinnati Homeboy.
Died at 70 in 1985. SCOTUS Associate Justice October 14, 1958 – July 3, 1981.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:51 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2019
Trump the Humorist.
Trump can be off-the-charts funny. The “Pocahontas” label for Warren and referring to some 3rd World nations as “shitholes” last January about this time are classics. That’s the way corporate men talked in private when I was growing up. Irreverent, creative, dead-on true and calculated to shock. These weren’t racist, insensitive or bad. They were quick-witted and unforgiving about anything that begged for humor, satire or parody. Above all? They hated bullshit no matter what side was hurling it.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:04 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2019
Redux: Your Life as a Work of Art.
About half the people you meet live from one day to the next in a state of such fear and uncertainty that about half the time they doubt their own sanity. Their boats are rocking so badly that all they want to do is get level long enough to think straight and avoid the next nightmare.
--HST, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
For the past two centuries, starting just about the time the world started feeling the effects of morphing from farming to industrial economies, people got more out of whack than ever. Many historians think the industrial revolution started as early as the mid-18th century--when Brits learned how to do machine-based manufacturing--but it took a few decades for the world to lose its way while it enjoyed and celebrated labor-saving devices, increased wealth and higher standards of living for most Westerners.
What ever happened to well-roundedness?
"Fragmentation" became one word philosophers and writers often used to describe the real price paid for our "progress". People became cut off from the natural world, their own innate spirituality and the meaning of a true education. We drifted away from physical culture, real health, exercising our bodies and eating correctly. Notions of friendship and bonds with others changed and, in my view, all but disappeared. As a result, we became less useful to others, friends and family, clients and customers, co-workers and ourselves. We are more alone than ever. We lead paltry, under-achieving and often miserable lives. Many of us are, most of the time, "hatin' life".
In short, we have lost our very souls. We feel isolated from life itself and we feel alone. We are ignorant of the history that got us here, watch television mindlessly and by default, wax patriotic or tribal as a substitute for thinking, are unaware of that happens in the rest of the world (Americans are easily the worst offenders), take pills we don't need and are getting fat enough to have our own zip codes. We don't even venture outside and into the natural world that much. We think we'll be and feel better if we "buy more stuff". Perhaps worst of all, even the most talented of us no longer think for ourselves. We follow. We run in mindless packs.
Fragmentation, isolation, unthinking conformity, chronic unhappiness or being "screwed up"--whatever you want to call it--is true of most of us, in varying but substantial ways, regardless of race, class or level of education. The unhappiness covers us all. We are not "putting it all together" to form (to take a musical conceit) one major chord.
Doing that starts with each human--and it takes work. Work we should be anxious to undertake.
Work at a life more complete: one that "adds up".
*This post first appeared in What About Paris? on January 2, 2014.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2019
Trump in 100 years.
The Left—which until recent years I admired—hates Donald Trump far more for his personality than for his politics. It’s Cultural. Almost 100%.
I’ve been working for or working with national pols steadily since I was 21. There is nothing “political” about Trump the man. Zero. Zilch. Nada. He’s a pragmatist.
The Left dislikes Donald Trump so much because he’s an out-of-the-blue (if inadvertent) alpha male bid to reverse 30 years of emasculating and effeminizing The West. They never saw him coming; they’re losing it.
In 100 years Trump, if nothing else, will be seen as a foil to “moral evolutionists,” most feminists and some Beta-males who politically and culturally were used to getting what they wanted.
Generationally, Millennials were taken by surprise. They still don’t know what to think about Donald Trump. They were brought up to think school/workplace would always be PC: chilled and sterile environments where human interaction, play, flirtation and free expression existed mainly as intriguing ideas once fully embraced by their Boomer parents. Millennials thought free speech and expression meant a certain quality and content of speech/expression—it doesn’t and never did.
No one saw Trump or anyone like him coming.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
January 06, 2019
Sane writing.
It makes little difference how many university degrees or courses a person may own. If he cannot use words to move an idea from one point to another, his education is incomplete.
--Norman Cousins, author, editor, professor (1912-1990)
Posted by Rob Bodine at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2019
Hermann Hesse: Real Life.
It is hard to find this track of the divine in the midst of this life we lead.
Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (1927)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)