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2026-04-24 -Short Attention Span Theater-

If by Rudyard Kipling to His Son - If You Can Keep Your Head When All About You Are Losing Theirs

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Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-24 00:00|| E-Mail|| Front Page|| [1806 views ] Top

1 A Kipling jewel for both young men and old.

Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-24 06:58|| 2026-04-24 06:58|| Front Page Top

2 Rudyard Kipling was a renowned English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer born in British India. Best known for The Jungle Book.

Posted by mossomo 2026-04-24 13:19|| 2026-04-24 13:19|| Front Page Top

3 For an old, dead, white guy, Mr. Kipling was one smart fellow. Know how to tell a tale, too.

Posted by SteveS 2026-04-24 13:32|| 2026-04-24 13:32|| Front Page Top

4 I certainly agree Steve. Ques for you; where is their kind to be found or heard from today ?

Posted by Besoeker 2026-04-24 13:34|| 2026-04-24 13:34|| Front Page Top

5 You're a better man than I am Gunga Din.

Posted by alanc 2026-04-24 17:34|| 2026-04-24 17:34|| Front Page Top

6 where is their kind to be found or heard from today ?

A most excellent question, sir!

In the opinion of this amateur literary critic, something that comes through Kipling's work, something that makes Kipling Kipling, is a willing to look at the world and see it as it is. One of my favorite poems is The Grave of the Hundred Head - tale both noble and appalling, a lesson about order and chaos. You might even call it a morality play. If it were written today, the usual ninnies would be shrieking about war crimes and colonialism.

Once upon a time, The Atlantic magazine was filled with great writing on a wide range of topics. I used to subscribe and read it cover to cover. I think that was where I first came across Tom Wolfe. Over time, the writing became more partisan, more predictable and less interesting. I canceled but still thumbed through new issues at the library. Now, I have not read it in years. Same with Scientific American. I think the last straw was when they started going on about Climate Change which is the biggest scientific hoax since the Piltdown Man.

These were not just magazines, they were institutions, the tips of cultural icebergs. Nowadays, everything must be examined through a "lens" of some kind - a process that makes you both near-sighted and boring. Outrage has become the currency of the day. Too many formerly sane people have contracted Trump Derangement Syndrome and similar mono-maniacal afflictions. Combine that with institutional decay and the distributed nature for our world, and it becomes harder find value.

tl;dr: Even though Rantburg is a news aggregator for the War on Terror and Poetry and the occasional Oxford comma, there are a lot of references along the way to interesting thinkers and their works.

Posted by SteveS 2026-04-24 18:39|| 2026-04-24 18:39|| Front Page Top

7 Print and broadcast media has always been biased. Internet access to wider opinions and fact-checking has disrupted their effects, to the point their credibility and approval ratings are in the dumpster. Kipling would have a substack or blog nowadays

Posted by Frank G 2026-04-24 19:17|| 2026-04-24 19:17|| Front Page Top

19:17 Frank G
18:39 SteveS
18:23 swksvolFF
18:19 Whiskey Mike
17:58 Besoeker
17:46 Besoeker
17:34 alanc
17:17 swksvolFF
16:57 SteveS
16:48 SteveS
16:01 Woodrow
14:41 Skidmark
14:37 Skidmark
14:18 DarthVader
14:13 swksvolFF
13:50 Besoeker
13:34 Besoeker
13:32 Besoeker
13:32 SteveS
13:19 mossomo
13:16 mossomo
13:08 mossomo
12:25 Regular joe
12:16 Glenmore
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