‘Exhausting’, but not awake – The Morning Sun

A reader who likes to present himself in CAPITAL LETTERS accused me by email last week of having become, in his words, ‘tiring’.

To each their own, I guess, but at least I’m not awake. To Sammy Davis, Jr. to quote: “I have to be myself!”

Of all the brickbats hurled at me in the past decade, the tiring one may be the laziest. If you can’t get through the mere 650 words of prose I get each week without fatigue, you might want to see a doctor. Or increase your caffeine intake.

Or, as WH Auden wrote in “The Cave of Making,” ignore it completely.

“After all, it is quite a privilege/amid the affluent traffic/to serve this unpopular art that cannot be turned into/background noise for study/or hung up as a status trophy by up-and-coming executives,/cannot be ‘done’ like Venice /or abbreviated like Tolstoy, but stubbornly insists on being read or ignored”….

Oops! To quote Richard Thompson quoting Britney Spears: I did it again! That is, I was quoting literature and by pointing it out, I ended up referring to music that I happen to be familiar with.

Somehow, mentioning “music, literature, fly fishing, and real conservatism” offends the ALL CAPS guy (as does coming up with “juvenile names for people” I “don’t like”).

Such is the life of an ink-stained wretch, steeped in conservative thinking by a man surrounded by thousands of books, records, cassette tapes and compact discs, and obsessed with fly fishing as both a sport and a spiritual connection to nature.

Writing what you know was once the main goal of my profession, but now it looks like Sominex®. In reality, my writing is an essential part of who I have become after nearly fifty years as a published writer and cradle Catholic. My decidedly conservative leanings stemmed from the real source of contemporary conservatism, Russell Kirk (whose birthday was celebrated worldwide last weekend).

At the risk of succumbing to what Mr. ALL CAPS called “assumption motives,” I am inclined to believe that he was simply reacting negatively to my column last week in which I took a cold look (sorry, WB Yeats!) at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s mocks the Eucharist and plagiarism of US Vice President Kamala Harris. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

However, instead of providing a reasoned rebuttal, the ALL CAPS guy tried to shame yours truly for reporting facts in this property. But because the facts are indeed facts and are available for every reader to discover for themselves, he opts for the ad hominem attack on the writer’s palette.

Newsflash: Harris, whether asleep or wide awake, is still a plagiarist, and Whitmer and her feminist cohort have blasphemed the Blessed Sacrament of Communion (despite her subsequent protestations that she would never, EVER, intentionally insult someone else’s faith. Yes, Correct).

The events of the past week also highlight the left’s clear hostility and growing intolerance toward Christianity.

Shakespeare (sorry, not sorry!) wrote that many truths are said in jest, and Madame Vice President completely gave up the game last week when she extemporaneously joked to two Wisconsinites that they were in the wrong building after had shouted: ‘Jesus is Lord’ during one of her meetings.

It reminds me of Henry II, who spoke of Thomas Becket: “Will no one deliver me from this meddlesome priest?” For their part, the Wisconsinites were forcibly escorted from the arena.

To quote TS Eliot: “If you don’t want God (and He is a jealous God), you must pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.” Sorry, I couldn’t resist, but Eliot’s point is well taken. Some (not all) Democrats have done everything they can to drive God from the public stage. Things will only get worse, as religious faith seems to be civilization’s only bulwark against the encroachments of our increasingly cowardly culture.

Tiring, indeed.

Bruce Edward Walker ([email protected]) is a Morning Sun columnist.