That is the point of all the CRT and self loathing.

I’d say that this is a near-certitude, if only because they don’t have to pretend to believe a bunch of obvious lies in order to get tenure.

I know, right? I kept trying to read that thing in high school because my English teacher kept going awnandawnandawn about it and the amazing things it had to say…

End of the day, all it did was convince me that he was a special kind of idjit, and that anything he had to recommend was probably equally crap. I should have been warned by the fact that he told us it had taken him a summer to read when he was a senior in high school…

At that point in my life, I had the time and the vast boredom necessary to crank through things like Michener’s Centennial in a frenzied weekend, and I was re-reading the entirety of The Lord of the Rings after school in the space of a workweek. He never believed I was actually reading as fast as I was, and would make out that I was merely carrying new books to make it look like I was smarter than I was–I never really got that, bit. It was like he was offended by my reading speed, or something.

There were reasons I didn’t go on to college. I am pretty sure that if I had, I’d have been playing Charles Whitman before I hit my junior year of schooling… I still have about zero patience for the usual run of dolts we have been producing through “higher education” of late.

And, I remain convinced that there are “uneducated” auto-didacts out there who could probably give your average college professor a run for their money, in terms of actual knowledge in their fields, all merely by reading and self-study. I know for a damn fact that most of the putatively “educated” military officers I worked around had the intellectual curiosity and reading habits of a sea urchin…

I hate that book with the intensity of a thousand suns.

The irony is that these people were and are traitors to their own kind, and have done far more to ensure the coming endarkenment than even our enemies managed. I suspect that there will be little pity or sympathy for any of them, in the coming generations, as those surviving “civilized” men look back at what we’ve thrown away, thinking it so much dross.

I doubt that there’s an historical precedent for any of this–The general coarsening of it all, the admiration for the virtually sub-civilized failure cultures in the underclasses, the fascination with celebrity. Even the Romans had the good sense to see actors and actresses for what they were–Not fit for polite company. Instead, what have we done? Elevated them to celebrity status and worshipped at their feet. You can tell an awful lot about a culture by what it holds up within itself to admire, and what it acclaims. Our favorites do us little credit–The meanderings of the various Kardashians and others of that ilk show us to be a vastly diminished culture, bereft of sense or virtue.

Meanwhile, the men and women who actually kept and still somewhat keep things going…? They’re denigrated and mocked, disrespected and sidelined. Sports “heroes” are made much of, yet what they actually do? Play children’s games for millions, and behave like uncivilized felons, while their sycophants hang on their every word as though they were fonts of wisdom…

Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Headings” can’t be very far off, these days. I look forward to their reign with not a little bit of schadenfruede and expectant glee at the no-doubt spectacle of the whole sorry edifice crashing down around the ears of these assclowns. It’ll be worth eating the neighbor’s dogs in my dotage, to see such luminaries as LeBron James having to actually work for a living or starve.

Long ago, I recall hearing a theater-type forcefully say that the purpose of the the theater was to highlight problems, not to offer solutions.

Those types live in a different world from the rest of us, who are firmly told that when we go to our boss with a problem, we had better have a solution to propose.

I think Hemingway would have been a happier, more productive of actual quality writer, had he not gotten all the adulation and acclaim he did. Same with most celebrities–It’s the rarefied world created by the publicists and the worshipping public that forces most of these types so far off the rails. If Hemingway had been a moderately successful writer, one that did not catch the attention of the crowd, what then would have been his legacy?

Likewise, what about men like Melville? What if he’d been held up to a similar sort of acclaim as Hemingway, from the same point in his life? Would we have more or better work from him, or would we have lost Moby Dick?

There’s an ocean of nihilism lurking beneath much of the “culture” of the 20th Century, stemming from I don’t know what. You can speculate all you like about root cause, but the fact is… It’s there. And, we’re living in the results of having our cultural commons murdered by the people who should have been appreciating and extending it.

Rod Dreher has a post up, one that got highlighted over at Instapundit:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/springtime-for-spengler-benedict-option-paul-kingsnorth/

Regrettably, the original is behind a paywall, but the gist of it is contained in Dreher’s post. Food for thought, there–And, the general thrust of it is in total agreement with the same thing I’m saying here, and have been saying for years. There’s something fundamentally wrong, and perhaps historically unique, rooting around at the foundations of our civilization. One wonders if we are going to survive it…

And, it’s all of a piece with the same things I’m pointing out here about the general thrust of what these sorts like Hemingway and Lewis were getting up to in their writing. They disdained the plebian accomplishments of those they disparaged as Babbitts, but did they offer up anything superior as a model? Did any of their criticisms and savaging result in a better world?

I’d submit that the answer to those questions is an emphatic “No.”.

If you hate fish stories it ain’t you.

I’m considered well read by most folks, but that’s a damn low bar these days and certainly not as informed as you. Many years ago I read Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. I thought it stunk. No wonder he offed himself if that’s what was in his head.