by Neil Vodavzny

Ghost World asks “were things better then?” They certainly were less anonymous, with less anomie. Musically-speaking, the 60s saw cross-genre influences like never before, particularly across race. Soul/country pioneer Joe Tex came from a share-cropping heritage, and his preacher-man influence is heard in country-rock pioneers Burrito Brothers (Gram Parsons).

Great stuff, but share-cropping is the very pillar of Jeffersonian principles. The life, though hard and relatively poor, was by definition occupation-based breeding. The Georgic principles of vigour are the same whether applied to Black, or to White ranchers and cowboys.

Where you have a society based on breeding, you’re going to have more imagist, stereotypical scenes – more film-like. Ghost World has an allusion to Coons in an old advertising poster – a racial epithet that shocks the hip-set – what you might call a caricatural stereotype. On the other hand, a society without epithets is an Orwellian tyranny, so you takes your choice.

Whether things were better then or not, they were way more Georgic, and so true to the principles of America, Black or White. Joe Tex escaped the harsh poverty, but how many present day Blacks would give their eye-teeth for the chance of a share-cropping smallholding? Heck, they could invent a novel cotton-picking hip-hop genre – why not?

The Graduate may appear a very different film, yet it asks similar questions of society – set in the flower-power era of uprisings, it foreshadows the Paris student riots of ’68 when de Gaulle fled the country (the film is a Gallic favourite, and with that schnozzle Ben could even pass for a Frenchman).

We are constantly told that modern day Luddites are as blind as they ever were, yet to my eye the Alpha Romeo Spider has never been equalled. Ghost World has a scene that mocks 50s style but actually there’s a lot to be said for the raw elegance. The problem with capital is it has no interest in the sensual world, the world from which all products of human art originate. One of the themes one can take from The Graduate is of an isolated Eros, represented by the elegant chase of Ben in his Alpha Romeo, chasing the single source of his dreams and connection. But the sensual world is never within reach of the capital one, so the bus that takes them away is another dream (like the end of Ghost World).

From this, one can get the idea that techne can sometimes represent myth – Bronze Age, Eros, romance – so how does one reconcile that with Heidegger? For starters, there could be an optimum level of techne where the human is not subsumed. Designers not only have an interest in the sensual world, but there is a carry-over from classical imagery to modern artefacts. This carry-over is easy to spot in classic designs: Spider, E-type, Harley Davidson. They’re metallic sculptures.

That’s in the world of image. Once we become textual and programmatic, all objects are much more equivalent, ie like smartphones. Modern cars all look like tanks to me. So, the age old ideals of Eros and romance are lost to techne. This seems to be why old or retro-films show you what is now missing. We are missing the world of praxis which is sensual and romantic, and of which techne is just a vital part, not the whole caboodle. The Western is a very good entrée to this lost world, its simple virtues are those of America in its heyday.

Katherine Ross (Elaine) is interesting in her own right , very obviously a Jeffersonian. Quote, “What is an individual’s true moral responsibility, regardless of what is legitimized by a government? You can’t help but ask yourself, “What would I do in that situation?”

She and husband Sam Elliot converted a Louis L’Amour western, Conagher, into a film made for cable feature. Such simple, manly and womanly virtues of self-sufficiency haven’t changed since the days of the High Chaparral (set in 1870s Arizona). Feuds and rivalries set the pace of a hard life of independence and romance lived off the land. One often marries into an occupation as well as a man or woman, so there is a much more holistic sensibility.

This is not at all what is wanted by capital, which has no interest in the romantics of breeding, only quoting American Matt Lewis:

“With shifting demographics, it is likely that today’s anti-immigration reform rhetoric, while popular with the base, may sow the seeds for future losses in general election, where the electorate is typically younger and more ethnically diverse than in Republican primaries. (No, I don’t think Hispanics are solely focused on the issue of immigration reform, but I do think tackling this problem is a sine qua non.)”

Their watchwords are demographics and ethnic diversity, abstractions of a capitalist world. Their blanket assumptions leave no way back to the poetic foundations of society, be it border ballads commemorating battles, or Georgic principles of pioneer stock descending the Appalachians to the mid-west frontier.

Their ideal is for there to be no closed communities; everything is to be open to free movement of people and products. Liberal-capital is the most effective means ever devised to render communities impotent in the face of the twin engines of demographics and diversity.

In order, therefore, for a folk-culture to have some traction, the Right should, I think, recognize the simple virtues nurtured by living off the land. The Virgilian principles of stewardship and retainer-ship never go out of fashion, but the real question is how does one stand up to multi-nationals with a hand-hoe, or even a drive of prime beef?

As has been said of late, mainstream organs like the Telegraph aren’t that right-wing; what they are though is very pro-capital. In order for the Right to gain traction, they have to divorce themselves from the aim of totalitarian capital, namely a demographic society where communities are stampeded by demographic assumptions.

The Right has to mean folk, which means primarily peasants and smallholders who occupy land through marriage. So, it has to be a racial assumption, not a demographic one. In order for the Right to gain traction, in other words, they have to retake the land from corporations. Not with pitchforks and a grass-roots revolt but with recourse to legal claims.

The domain of capital has eclipsed communal rights of the commoner to live freely, to have territorial rights, rights of ownership, right to sell and barter for the benefit of the community. This lost world is visible in Ghost World, which exists in a sort of oasis surrounded by multi-nationals. In fact, on the DVD creator Dan Clowes points-out some real features of the neighbourhood, such as a 40s shoe-repairer’s “expert workmanship”, quaintly color-some decals (which closed down for a bistro).

As R. Crumb has said, a muffin made to an idiosyncratic family formula is no match for a Macmuffin. Whether such rights are written-in constitutionally is worthy of debate. The earliest document of this kind is probably Magna Carta, signed by King John in 1215. The king governed in collaboration with the landed classes – the barons – and it was to support their rights that the king signed. Though it has since come to stand for liberties of the commoner, its original intent was to safeguard property .

It has come to be supposed that money can buy anything – yachts to course the pacific dangling on a google thread etc – but it can’t buy land if the land is already forfeit. American Indians had that same notion when told they must sell their ancestral homelands to the white man.

In order to gain traction, this ancient idea of land as an ancestral right has to be re-instigated. It would apply to any territory which has the capacity to trade and collaborate so as to establish some self-sufficiency. In terms of American history, something analogous might be the anti-trust laws signed by Theo Roosevelt to protect individuals from corporate despotism.

The right to territory protects small-town values and is consistent with the principles in Virgil’s Georgics and expounded by Jefferson. If we say there is a factor called natural energy – I-ching – which “just happens”, then it is by definition absence of government or a type of quasi-anarchy. In order to further delineate such a society, what are some of its other attributes?

First, it is based on family-groups who inherit land by some means such as tenure-ship or ownership, since this is the means whereby cultivation, in the broader sense of culture, is tied to spirit and race (folk). The natural energy of Earth Mother which we as humans access is mysterious, and if we do not pay attention starts to dissipate.

Farming of the land according to natural energy obeys holistic principles which are known so I won’t go into here – predator-prey relationships etc.. Beyond that, then, the principle of energy manifests itself in the appearance of things (image). Earth or raked soil tends to form in clods, you may have noticed? Energy-clusters of material. Without this capacity of earth it would be impossible to till.

You may say this is a physical attribute of clay and it may be, but the properties of clay minerals are fairly astonishing, almost miraculous . So, this attribute of energy-clustering is the first principle of tillage and harvesting.

Family-groups who inherit land will obviously breed. In case you hadn’t noticed, this means two split into three, then four etc.  Family trees are another type of energy-clustering, branching formation. It happens when the generating force of a people is manifested. In other words, the temporal aspect of generations is made visible in clans, villages.

These resource-based societies grow in spontaneous energy-clusters, so this is actually quite a good definition of folk-culture. Such formations are also recipients of a natural fecundity possessed by the land. In order to reclaim land in this way, one would have to establish a legal basis for re-energising folk-culture and cultivation, in tandem. The two invariably go together.

There is a fairly fundamental principle at stake here. Can one lay claim to honest patriotism if a country is bought and sold like so many bushels of wheat? Except it’s not wheat, it’s paved-over so as to gradually de-energise the entire kingdom, or republic. As Harlan Ellison has lamented, how can optimism survive when they’re paving over everything and pessimism must thrive? (actually he didn’t say it, though did say some of those words, not necessarily in that order).

Those who deal in folklore, as I believe I’ve said, are friends in that they partake of the spiritual energy of the Earth. We as right-wingers cannot impose a political order; that is state tyranny. What we can do is free the Earth of the bonds of state tyranny: this is entirely a right-wing proposition, and so may attract the Right. With sufficient support, a legal battle can then be waged (by the Right against a tyrannical state-capital machine).

Only once the Earth is freed of such bonds can natural energy be re-released. The type of societies that emerge will perforce be freer. Instead of some universal panacea, then, one would expect a more collaborative approach to societies. An environment engenders certain temperamental affinities, irrespective of race or caste. It surely hasn’t been lost on people that a troll-ish temperament is engendered by a cyber-space?

The Right, unlike the Left, should not expect a universal constituency. Outsiders are a natural constituency, mainly because they have a kinship to folk, are oppressed by state tyranny, living free on mother Earth. The entire clan Crumb now resides in the south of France – along with other creative Americans, I might add – independent-types who value a creative environment. Meaning villages nestling among hills and vines, lost to time and no doubt filled with Marine Le Pen supporters. Crumb is what you might call the scurrilous side of gospel – he’s even illustrated Bible stories.

Crumb’s wife, Aline, is beyond Jewish – perfect. These people are our natural allies – people who are what they are and nothing more - you know exactly where they’re coming from. They are temperamentally unsuited to clone-like existence, comfortable in their skins. Also, totally creative.