Captain Tron

If we align ourselves with truth and beauty, if we act with an honor and integrity that would make our ancestors and descendants proud, we have already won. Only the lost forfeit their souls to gain a country.

What if the reason Zoomers don’t dance is because the music they play in the club sucks

The left holds control of almost all institutions of power and influence. They hold the bag for the current state of society and mainstream culture. They have no principles. The world view is based on envy. They want more power and other peoples resources and will use any means necessary to get it. They have gained the country, but forfeited their souls. Thats's why they can't tell a joke, make a decent movie or build a railway. They are not on the side of truth or beauty. We all want to enjoy life. It's an art. For some, it's taken an awful lot of dope to maintain the delusion for the last 10+ years. Now the party is over. The Sun is up. The hangover is heavy. The only way out is through.

One of the reasons highly educated people tend to be so remarkably stupid and destructive is that they don’t know anyone who functions in the real world their ideas are intended to change. They have ideas about war without having ever seen war, and without knowing anyone who actually fought. They have ideas about crime without having committed crimes themselves or knowing hard-core criminals. They have ideas about justice without having been victimized, and without knowing cops. They have ideas about capitalism without having ever started a bricks and mortar business or knowing anyone who had. Its a giant tower of bullshit. The fantasy world they live in is removed from human mess. Some of them are insulated by inherited wealth. Others are ambitious social climbers who are taught to reject their families of origin as bigots as the price of admission. They understand religion as primitive superstition and as a result have zero understanding of human life. They see themselves reflected in the shrinking mirrors of elite opinion and prestige institutions that tell them they are beautiful and righteous, even as those institutions themselves are rotting away. We all know these people. We spend our lives being condescended to by them, while they destroy what it took others decades or centuries to create. Their record of unrelieved failure doesn’t seem to make any impact on what has become a closed culture which continues to congratulate itself on its genius while blaming the rest of society for its escalating failures. Twenty years ago, there was still a widespread awareness that this was a bad situation — if only because the Democratic Party still thought that talking to the middle of the country was the only way to win elections. Bill Clinton was the model, however flawed, of how to reconcile the meritocrats and their chain-smoking slot-machine playing aunts. Plenty of Republicans followed that model. It involved a lot of fakery. But it created at least some common ground, which in turn offered a way out. Now you have the moronic radicals on the left at war with the radicalized morons on the right. Together, they represent at most 30% of the American public. But the tools of coercion and division that they have at their fingertips are only growing more powerful. The remaining 70% still wants to enjoy life and make new stuff. Thats where hope lies. But we need to build more, better, and faster — and to make new friends.

@JamesTheodre @meghan_daum I pray for you. I hope you find peace and safe streets for you, your friends and family.

@captainrontron @meghan_daum All crime is down in California you twat

This is the way to do it. Form your opinions on an issue-by-issue basis. Tribalism kills your soul. Independence sets you free.

@Logo_Daedalus Can you dance to critical race theory translated by Chiat/Day? Good music doesn't need a narrative. "Who feels it knows it."

@captainrontron Yeah bip bop boom

My theory of Drake hate has a lot to due to with the socialization of millennial white boys who would talk about “real music” (dadrock) against Justin Bieber in their youth, transferring that to Wayne/Drake in the YOLO era, but at the same time becoming “poptimistic” regarding rap (Kanye specifically) in the Obama era when it became gauche to not listen to rap, so then adopting the “real rap” borrowed authenticity in order to shield from accusations of “not getting the culture”— Kanye became problematic— so Kendrick Lamar was the golden child for this exact moment— one could now just say “Kendrick” & be “a real one” — & a Pulitzer Prize too! Nobody will judge you for “slumming it” when it’s “literary”— The Millennial White Boy is now a Millennial White Man & he says “Kendrick bodied Drake” & feels that he has absolved himself of all the guilt of saying “music is like candy, you throw out the rappers” in elementary school— Drake is too close to himself, Drake is a “white boy” in these terms of “ethnic authenticity” where the definition of “real rap” is west coast gangster rap that was “political” — this is what the Pitchfork review of Iceman is, “Drake is unserious party music, but Real Rap is Political and about Race & that’s Kendrick, & I am an intellectual” — they are still embarrassed about the idea of music being “fun” or “for the clubs” etc— music must be “an object of contemplation” to be “art.” Music isn’t for enjoying a car ride, in the car we listen to NPR, music is like a movie, you sit down with an album-experience, a concept album, & treat it like it’s a movie. Rap becomes an “audiobook/podcast” about the “real experience of african americans”— & you can tune in once a year & this is your penance for being “lowkey racist” against the genre in your youth. Real music is still a Pink Floyd concept album to you— it has to be narrativized as opera— it has to be HAMILTON hahahahaha

Ms. Khachiyan once again making the most insightful culture commentary on X: "being a libtard is not so much a function of privilege but specifically the inability to appreciate how good you have it and how you’ve been protected by others every step of the way"

@djdashoner x.com/i/status/20551…

We Used To Have Fun In So. Cal🌴

Turn, turn, turn. 1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

This has the potential to be a real problem…not just in rural areas but everywhere. I see a lot more old people than children everywhere I go…a lot more. And I have small children, so I’m not juts frequenting places that are bereft of kids.

@nealjclark1 youtu.be/C12iLwXouVs?si…

“I gave joy to my mother. I made my lover smile, and I can give comfort to my friends when they’re hurting. And I can make it seem better, For a while”

Ripple (Grateful Dead) and Lonesome Valley (Author Unknown/God) are songs about the dark night of the soul. The Valley and the road between the dawn and the dark of night are the same road. At the end of that road is Heaven, a fountain that was not made by the hands of men.

@nealjclark1 All true & beautiful.

Ripple adds an extra twist of pathos as it highlights a core tragedy of the human condition: the longing to TAKE this burden from the ones you love despite knowing that you can’t. It is the one thing we know can’t be done. “If I knew the way, I would take you HOME”

@countyhwy Something beautiful and amazing already rises up out of the rubble of the fake and gay cultural empire. Thank you @countyhwy. The land, the water, trade and traditions, the spirit of this land holds us together. Popular cultural with soul is born out of real people living here.

Thats Dostoyevsky territory, not America. The sooner we get back to a positive understanding of great American art — and by art, I mean popular music and cartoons along with poems and novels — the better. Because it’s the glue that holds us together, not politics.

We are seeing a sharp decline in our ability to create cool American stuff, and in our ability to creatively imagine a common future.

@PickledCalamari @QuetzalPhoenix @ClarkeMicah This seems like an ideal time to tell the joke about conservatives being liberals driving the speed limit.

@captainrontron @QuetzalPhoenix @ClarkeMicah Peter is a conservative, not a liberal, and his arguments against cars are conservative

First Draft. Have just bound the manuscript of my forthcoming book ‘The Madness of Cars’

@LordIxabert Alasdair Roberts worth listening to in this regard. Many amazing songs. alasdairroberts.bandcamp.com/track/i-walked…

Examples of lyrically well-crafted songs from a poetic perspective? Off the top of my head: ∙ Robert Burns, I think, wrote a number of superb songs, AULD LANG SYNE (1788) being one of the better known. ∙ Some of the older Christmas hymns are very well written: my personal favourites being SILENT NIGHT (1818), O HOLY NIGHT (1847), & WHAT CHILD IS THIS (1865). ∙ That old English folk song used in the film "Scrooge" (1951) is very well written. BARBARA ALLEN (~1660s), I believe it's called. . I always thought LADY WITH THE BRAID (1971), by Dory Previn, a lyrically well-crafted song from a poetic point of view. ∙ AMAZING GRACE (1772 ) is well written. ∙ AFTER THE BALL IS OVER (1891), in its light-hearted fashion, is good. ∙ STAR-SPANGLED BANNER (1814) is, for a song——and, indeed, for a national anthem——remarkably accomplished. So there's no reason, in principle, why songs of comparable quality should not appear in rock music; it's merely that rock lyricists have not, so far, exhibitted anything approaching the requisite poetic skill to compose lyrics of the highest calibre. They ought, of course, to do so, as it would considerably enhance the genre, whose chief merit, at present, rests almost entirely in its instrumentation.

@Girardism @chaven I enjoy your account. It keeps the ideas fresh in my mind. I like how you quote older posts to create a seemingly infinite click through connecting the concepts. I don't think I've ever seen it done quite like that before. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing this! I hope it encourages someone out there to read Girard! There's so much more to become by the help of these ideas! And, thank God for Mrs. Haven! In the early pages of ‘Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard,’ she says, among other remarkable things, that the purpose of Girard's thought is “change of being.” That really touched me and showed me how I was to run this account, even if I've veered from the vision sometimes.

Girard helped me through a tough time when people I trusted betrayed me. Now, on the other side, I can say that taking the higher road lead to a new world of opportunity and fulfillment I could have never imagined. Cynthia Haven @chaven helped me better understand Girard.

@RichardHanania The largest conspiracy on the planet is the conspiracy of the stupid.

The Sopranos perfectly captured the thinking of conspiracy theorists. These guys used to just talk in diners. Today Bobby Baccalieri would be a regular guest on Rogan.

You cannot let your life go to waste, you just cannot.

Dostoevsky's hell is indeed the inability to love; but it is rooted in the inability to let go of the slightly mocking comments of others, the disdainful glances, the oversights by others — real or presumed. It is not indifference so much as obsession with the Other, which makes it impossible to ignore — pretend as we might — let alone forgive or love them. This does make us calloused to the sufferings of all others with whom we might not necessarily feel at odds, for we see them as potential enemies rather than as friends we haven't yet met.