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Dee Rambeau's avatar

“That Walz’s masculinity is mocked by those who would vote for him despite it being the whole rationale for his candidacy is no mystery when one understands that the most significant force holding together that fragile coalition is resentment. “

💥💥💥💥

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JD Free's avatar

That's the money quote.

The notion that Walz actually reaches across the aisle is ludicrous in every way. He won't actually attract masculine votes, so why have him on the ticket? Because the conversation about attracting masculine votes attracts the sort of shrews who resent the idea that they should need to attract masculine votes.

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Throgmorton's avatar

Walz was chosen, not for any positive quality, but only because he was not Jewish. The first choice for the Harris campaign was Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, but the far-left Hamas-supporting mobs went wild with rage.

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Carl Eric Scott's avatar

Well, as someone who leads a book group that recently read Beowulf, I thought the money quote was "Near the hall, in the bleak fens yet unconquered by the faith, lived a single mother and her son."

Seriously, the overall analysis here is very solid--even contains an in-depth response to the quite plausible idea that Grendel's mother follows the feud-code.

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Alison Bull's avatar

The man who has tampon dispensers installed in boy’s bathrooms will not attract masculine voters. Walz comes off not as a strong leader but as a political shape shifter who easily trades one deck of cards for another and nastily chastises those who won’t play his game.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

It’s really quite a lot of just that.

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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

I have long been perplexed by those who say the world is disenchanted. It is a magical, divine world, mystical and amazing, whatever anyone thinks about it, particularly the depraved, decadent, dissolute and....Democrat.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

It’s easy to become un-attuned to it. It gets drowned out in the noise and pressure of life. We miss it.

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William Hunter Duncan's avatar

One of the many reasons I maintain a garden, swim, paddle a canoe, hike in the woods, hunt, fish and camp in the wilderness.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

It’s a wise choice.

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Zorost's avatar

A lot of good points, but it could be as simple as typical feminist 'Mean Girls' logic: befriend a fat chick so you look better in comparison. Leftists don't want to say anything bad about Kamala as she is a magic negro female, so instead they are drawn to attack Walz. He acts as a lightning rod, so the media can seem to be covering the election in a fair way while completely ignoring Kamala.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

They needed a white guy, but he couldn’t be anyone who would outshine her.

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Fabius Minarchus's avatar

It's also disturbing how old Tim Walz looks. He's younger than I am and looks 20 years older than I look in real life. Does he smoke? Does he live off of deep fried crap? Is it a case of Scandinavian being out in too much sunshine? Or has he suffered unnatural aging from casting too many spells?

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

It might actually be not especially sinister. He may simply be forgoing the Botox the rest of them inject on an industrial scale. Maybe VA doesn’t cover it for anyone under the rank of sergeant major.

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Fabius Minarchus's avatar

Dork Magic

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Simon Tanner's avatar

So good. I need to revisit Beowulf. I read it in High School and I was blown away by it.

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Scott's avatar

Try “Grendel”, which tells the story from the monster’s perspective.

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Michelle Lobdell's avatar

I adore; love love love; your perspective on these ancient myths and lore. I never had the pleasure of a teacher in my lit classes that so thoroughly understood and made relevant the stories and myths of our past. Every time I read one of your essays, I can almost feel my mind cracking open to a wider view of humanity. I cannot express enough how much I appreciate your writing, your mind, your gift. (You probably won't be surprised, I was the bored disruptive kid in class who was almost always smarter than my teachers. No pride there, I didn't grant myself my intellect. Especially as a very immature and troubled youngster, (home life), I wielded it very carelessly and sometimes with malice. It is still a gift/curse. With few exceptions, I was a nightmare to have as a student. I dropped out of college three times from sheer boredom. And yes, I got in trouble a lot.) In any case, I digress; but thank you for writing these essays. My curiosity and list of must-read books, as well as my understanding of the world, continues to grow, with many thanks to you.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Thank you so much. It’s never too late to read more, and you never have to stop being a student.

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The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Well written, I must confess to being utterly confused at one time by the madness that have gripped our era. Strangely, divorced now from liberalism, I've begun to ponder why people always revert back to Kingship and why stories of monster slaying are so popular and have reached the same conclusion as you, it is made worse by the madness that haunts democracies, so that I now wonder if it was all a mistake and if we might not have been better off with kingdoms united under Christendom.

I don't know if we'll revert back in the next ten years or something, or if it won't be in a hundred years or so, but I'm beginning to think us returning to Kingdoms might not be inevitable, given how most Republics & Democracies tend to end in a Great Man seizing power and re-invigorating his people and they assenting to his coronation and that of his lineage.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

My own view is that monarchies are inevitable. I just wait.

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The Brothers Krynn's avatar

Ohhh d’accord, given what happened with Caesar, Napoleon, certainly seems the face.

I wonder if given the recent popularity I’m seeing in France for Jean Capet (the pretender to the French throne), if France might not return to the Capet line down the road.

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Argo the Second's avatar

They remember that ideology, faith, and blind hatred grew their pile, and so they will continue to grow the pile.

https://argomend.substack.com/p/the-pile-grows

They will claim that it is not faith, but logic, science, reason. That in itself requires faith in the process, something they have already denied.

They have nothing.

https://argomend.substack.com/p/by-faith-alone

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Jeanne's avatar

I am converted. I got my library card. Perfect post.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Thank you very much.

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Karen Lynch's avatar

Great comment!

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Fernando Ferreira Jr's avatar

As Frithjof Schuon once said: the devil's great trick in recent times has been to make people think he doesn't exist.

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Karen Lynch's avatar

“There is an order to the universe, and in some fundamental way the coming together of men and women is a part of it. Their collective inability to reconcile is a harbinger of every other kind of evil.” I read this, as I often read the Librarian’s pieces, with a sort of intake of breath at the parts that resonate so deeply. This piece fed my soul and renewed my hope which ultimately always comes from God. Thanks for the reminder from Romans!

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

And thank you for reading.

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kurt Hagen's avatar

Outstanding article. I've always loved Beowulf, and you hit the nail on the head with Romans 1. Keep at the writing and thinking - we all benefit.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Thank you kindly.

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s_e_t_h's avatar

“Anthony Hopkins has been in everything.”

I have noticed this as well, and in almost everything he does, he makes a soliloquy to the sea…Troy, Westfield, etc. someday I’ll take the time to make an Anthony Hopkins talks to Water megacut.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Sadly, he wasn’t in Waterworld.

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Jim in Alaska's avatar

Alas and alack, where's Beowulf, or even Gilgamesh today?

The age of heroes is long gone but the age of demons and dragons is strong ongoing.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

We live in an age of monsters. I expect the heroes will arise to meet them. They won’t always look like Beowulf, but they’ll do their part.

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Jim in Alaska's avatar

Hope you're right

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Tom Watson's avatar

Funny, the first few times I saw the term 'longhouse' I was incredibly confused, because I assumed it was referring to precisely the kind of Saxon mead hall you used as an image for this essay - not an environment I'd have thought was characterised by feminine tyranny. Blame it on those being the longhouses found on my side of the Atlantic. Excellent piece.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Longhouse is online RW lingo for female-dominated social systems, more or less.

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Dissident Dad's avatar

Brilliant. Too many quotes to repost them all. Resonating strongly is the idea that God has been here all along. Even those who fell into secular humanism (like this writer) feel and live according to that reality in their automatic sense of right and wrong. So how did we lose our ability to understand this force as the supernatural Higher Authority? The Romans excerpt is on-point.

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Librarian of Celaeno's avatar

Thank you again.

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