Prairie oilcloth blues

As if wearing Werther.

I was listening to a con-

cert version of Tom Pet-

ty's I won't back down, 

and heard the audience 

whistle for a defiant 

guitar pick in that bal-

lad of redneck indigna-

tion; it was exactly how 

Gustavo Santaolalla open-

ed the film of Brokeback 

Mountain.

There is being isolated,

and there is feeling iso-

lated; islanded. Pride 

and contempt will sound:
who would sing of fear?

Muss es sein?

I wonder if we might be cutting off the fascists from real continuities in European thought. The idea that one's nation is not the people living in the country but rather those who speak a language, or associate with a tradition, or worship in a certain church, derives quite directly from the Romantics .. the intonations of the latter appear naïve and somehow harmless to us when read today, but nevertheless, there does seem to be a continuity .. between Fichte and Herder and fascists a century later.

Tony Judt

Timothy Snyder

Thinking the Twentieth Century

op. cit.