The Quidnunckis

 How vain are mortal man's endeavours?
 (Said, at dame Elleot's, master Travers)
 Good Orleans dead!  in truth 'tis hard:
 Oh! may all statesmen die prepar'd
 I do foresee (and for foreseeing
 He equals any man in being)
 The army ne'er can be disbanded.
  --I with the king was safely landed.
  Ah friends!  great changes threat the land!
  All France and England at a stand!
There's Meroweis-- mark! strange work!
 And there's the Czar, and there's the Turk--
The Pope-- An India-merchant by
Cut short the speech with this reply:
All at a stand?  you see great changes?
Ah, sir!  you never saw the Ganges:
There dwells the nation of Quidnunckis
(So Monomotapa calls monkeys
On either bank from bough to bough,
They meet and chat (as we may now):
Whispers go round, they grin, they shrug,
They bow, they snarl, they scratch, they hug;
And, just as chance or whim provoke them,
They either bite their friends, or stroke them.
There have I seen some active prig,
To show his parts, bestride a twig:
Lord!  how the chatt'ring tribe admire!
Not that he's wiser, but he's higher:
All long to try the vent'rous thing,
(For power is but to have one's swing).
From side to side he springs, he spurns,
And bangs hisfoes and friends by turns.
Thus as in giddy freaks he bounces,
Crack goes the twig, and in he flounces!
Down the swift stream the wretch is borne;
Never, ah never, to return!
Zounds! whata fall had our dear brother!
Morbleu! cries one; and damme, t'other.
The nation gives a general screech;
None cocks his tail, none claws his breech;
Each trembles for the public weal,
And for a while forgets to steal.
Awhile all eyes intent and steady
Pursu him whirling down the eddy:
But, out of mind when out of view,
Some other mounts the twig anew;
And business on each monkey shore
Runs the same track it ran before.
          -John Gay

Well the Line Forms, On the Right, Babe

   "Less known to our intelligentsia is an aphorism in Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book well known to {Bertholt} Brecht, entitled "On the Pale Criminal," which tells the story of a neurotic murderer, eerily resembling Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who does not know, cannot know, that he committed murder out of a motive as legitimate as any other and useful in many important situations, but delegitimized in our pacific times:  he lusted after "the joy of the knife."  This scenario for "Mack the Knife" is the beginning of the supra-moral attitude of expectancy, waiting to see what the volcano of the id will spew forth, which appealed to Weimar and its American admirers.  Everything is all right as long as it is not fascism!  With Armstrong taking Lenya's place, as Mai Britt took Dietrich's, it is all mass-marketed and the message becomes less dangerous, although no less corrupt.  All awareness of foreignness disappears.  It is thought to be folk culture, all-American, part of the American century, just as "stay loose" (as opposed to uptight) is supposed to have been an insight of rock music and not a translation of Heidegger's Gelassenheit.  The historical sense and the distance on our times, the only advantages of Weimar nostalgia, are gone, and American self-satisfaction--the sense that the scene is ours, that we have nothing important to learn about life from the past--is served.
       This image can be seen in our intellectual history, if only one substitutes Mary McCarthy for Louis Armstrong and Hannah Arendt for Lotte Lenya, or David Riesman for Armstrong and Erich Fromm for Lenya, and so on through the honor roll of American intellectuals.  Our stars are singing a song they do not understand, translated from a German original and having a huge popular success with unknown but wide-ranging consequences, as something of the original message touches something in American souls.  But behind it all, the master lyricists are Nietzsche and Heidegger."  The Closing of the American Mind by Allen Bloom, pgs. 151-52.

Robin Hood: Genesis of a Whig Myth

       I am going to lay out a personal theory, and encourage anyone who knows anything about the history of the Robin Hood myth to share knowledge in the comments. 
       In my early days as a conservative, I had the knee-jerk idea that there was something wrong with the Robin Hood myth.  Steal from the rich, give to the poor;  how Marxist!  As an experienced observer of eighteenth century British politics, I now conclude that Robin Hood is a Whig myth.  Who are the villains in Robin Hood?  Landed aristocracy, the church, and a corrupt Sheriff.  In other words, three groups that anyone in the elegant eighteenth would have associated with the Tories.  And another thing, the heroes are thieves!  Thieves, as in Bluff Bob in The Beggar's Opera?  The emerging commercial class are often spoken of by the Tories as being thieves.  Hence Estase's term Hip Hop Whiggery, also referring to the Daniel Defoe novels Roxana and Moll Flanders.  So in defending thievery as the natural consequence of restricted economic opportunities, the Tories are again attacked!  Feel free to conclude I've watched The Public Enemy too many times.

Defoe, Gay, and Snoop Dogg

Having read a internet news story about how Snoop Dogg has endorsed Obama, Estase will, as usual, relate it back to the eighteenth century.  John Gay's The Beggar's Opera is the origin of what may be called hip hop Whiggery, along with that remarkable Daniel Defoe novel Moll Flanders.  These two works are a celebration of criminality, where the thieving Moll Flanders (we never learn her actual name) describes her life of thievery.  The Beggar's Opera celebrates a whole society on the take, from the simply corrupt lawyer to the king of the thieves, Bob Bluff (Walpole).  Are these works designed to turn morality inside out?  Or is the point simply that people who cannot profit in legitimate ways will find other ways to profit?  Estase tends to believe the second explanation, particularly in the case of his fave Daniel Defoe, champion of the tradesman.  Unlike Jonathan Swift, who held shopkeepers and tradesmen in low esteem, Defoe exalted this new commercial middle class.  So when Defoe explored the criminal underbelly of Britain, it was perhaps with an eye towards what might happen when the legitimate commerce of a nation becomes impossible.

On a totally unrelated note, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has sent out a threatening note discouraging churches from participation in the 2012 election, which would have absolutely nothing to do with the current president's obsession with gay marriage and abortion.  The letter promises that any church that involves itself with politics will lose non-profit status with the IRS.