Melville wrote books that could be said to be about: Christian hypocrisy in the Marquesas, authoritarian coercion, military rule, torture, the Leviathan state, labor and brotherhood, wanton slaughter for the benefit of human “profit and…
Posts tagged white jacket
A Reasoned Resistance
Below we find (in bold) the reason why, as I put forth in “The Plunder Years,” it is necessary to stand against systems serving utilitarian and martial purposes; we find these to be argued in…
The Jesus-Prop–The State at War and the Lie of Humanitarianism
You’ve read rant upon rant about the topics in the title of this post if you’ve stopped here for any length of time or visited now and then over the months. One runs down. But…
Our Whimpering World
Listen, recently we have discovered that the Obama Administration is negotiating in secret with other nations to create a “trade” agreement that will circumvent, override, trump, all other types of “agreements.” This means any and…
The Seeming Banality
Besides, this Bland, the master-at-arms, was no vulgar, dirty knave. In him—to modify Burke’s phrase—vice seemed, but only seemed, to lose half its seeming evil by losing all its apparent grossness. (Melville, White Jacket) No doubt…
Rights on Warship America
I would to God Shakspeare had lived later, & promenaded in Broadway… [so] that the muzzle which all men wore on their soul in the Elizebethan day, might not have intercepted Shakspers full articulations. For I hold…
Grandma’s Receipts
Some years ago, as a gift, my grandmother (Boop) gave me a book of family recipes that she had gathered, and which, as these were not overly numerous, she had complemented with a number of…