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bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Brian Walter
@bdwlecteur.bsky.social
520 followers 560 following 590 posts
Reedie '88. I don't take naps; they take me. https://www.filminquiry.com/author/brian-walter/
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bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Just finished re-reading @sarahkendzior.bsky.social's THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP, a valediction embracing and deepening mourning. My students and I will finish discussing t this week, but they too will carry it with them the rest of their lives, no doubt. Highest and most grateful recommendation!
From THE LAST AMERICAN ROAD TRIP.
October 21, 2025 at 2:00 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Shared by an old friend from high school.
Living in the Shadow of the American Dream.
October 20, 2025 at 11:46 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Once again, @sarahkendzior.bsky.social sets the most chilling but urgent truths free. Highest and most grateful recommendation!
October 19, 2025 at 1:07 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
One of many critical (and often counterintuitive) insights from @sarahkendzior.bsky.social's latest Q & A. Highest recommendation!
Screenshot from linked essay.
October 10, 2025 at 10:42 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
My latest for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas: an entry on Donald Harington’s 1975 novel, THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARKANSAS OZARKS. encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/the-...
Cover of Donald Harington’s 1975 novel The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks. Novelist Donald Harington’s hand-drawn family tree for the Ingledews, the first European American settlers in his fictional Ozark town, Stay More. Author Donald Harington standing next to an oversized reproduction of the cover of his 1975 novel, The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks.
October 3, 2025 at 5:04 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Curiosity, Nabokov once wrote, is insubordination in its purest form. It is also, as @sarahkendzior.bsky.social shows, a means of moral and imaginative survival that becomes more crucial by the day. Highest recommendation! open.substack.com/pub/sarahken...
"The assault on university life is part of a broader authoritarian agenda. Fascists seek a society where people lack not only the motive to learn, but also the means. Alternative avenues of education — libraries, search engines, archives, museums — are being shut down or restructured to curtail access to knowledge. Curiosity and community are under attack." -- Sarah Kendzior, "The End Times of Academia"
September 5, 2025 at 4:44 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Does this count?
August 26, 2025 at 2:16 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Can’t put it more succinctly than @sarahkendzior.bsky.social did.
“Impunity, the sadist’s conception of freedom, mainstreamed and marketed as the new American dream.” — Sarah Kendzior, THEY KNEW
August 18, 2025 at 4:23 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Perfect day in area code 314 to cut the grass. 🥵😂
A sweat-soaked T-shirt with the slogan “If you need me, I’ll be in Hell” draped over an open gate.
August 17, 2025 at 5:21 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
From @sarahkendzior.bsky.social's first Q & A, Sep. 30, 2024. sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/just-answe...
"I worry open discussion of Israel will, within a year or so, be censored under law." --Sarah Kendzior, Sep. 30, 2024
August 16, 2025 at 3:27 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
As noted by @sarahkendzior.bsky.social, such memory-holings are part of a much larger assault on the truth and a key means of entrenching elite impunity. 🫠
But the erasure of his account was not a punishment. It was a gift. “Who controls the past, controls the future,” George Orwell wrote in his dystopian novel 1984. “Who controls the present, controls the past. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written records and human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.” — Sarah Kendzior, THEY KNEW
August 13, 2025 at 4:29 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
🎯 Cf. Nabokov, who survived both the Soviet and the Nazi regimes.
But within the emphatically and unshakably illogical world which I am advertising as a home for the spirit, war gods are unreal not because they are conveniently remote in physical space from the reality of a reading lamp and the solidity of a fountain pen, but because I cannot imagine (and that is saying a good deal) such circumstances as might impinge upon the lovely and lovable world which quietly persists, whereas I can very well imagine that my fellow dreamers, thousands of whom roam the earth, keep to these same irrational and divine standards during the darkest and most dazzling hours of physical danger, pain, dust, death. Nabokov, Vladimir. Lectures on Literature (Harvest Book) (p. 558). (Function).
August 12, 2025 at 1:54 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten. Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 154).
August 3, 2025 at 5:36 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Sorry, but is it blindly or blithely?
A depopulated, partitioned United States is easier to exploit and control, particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten. Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 154).
August 2, 2025 at 4:54 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Read anything and everything by @sarahkendzior.bsky.social, but on this grim topic, her third book, "They Knew," is particularly on point.
A depopulated, partitioned United States is easier to exploit and control, particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten. Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 154).
August 2, 2025 at 3:48 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
A depopulated, partitioned United States is easier to exploit and control, particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten. Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 154). (Function). Kindle Edition.
August 2, 2025 at 3:44 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
A highly appropriate question -- if we could assume that our fellow human creatures in positions of enormous economic and political power cared about anyone's survival but their own. Sadly (and monstrously), the evidence continues to pile up that they just don't.
"A depopulated, partitioned United States is easier to exploit and control, particularly in a chaotic era of climate change, which they anticipated decades ago. To them, the state is just something to sell. They do not care if the buyers are foreign or domestic. The United States of America is merely a landmass to split into oligarch fiefdoms. It inspires no sentimentality and requires no veneration. Its laws are irrelevant, its rights ephemeral, its population disposable. Its history can be rewritten." Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 154). (Function). Kindle Edition.
August 2, 2025 at 3:43 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
My article “A Stray in a Strange World: Nabokov, Trauma, and BLADE RUNNER 2049” is now available at @litfilmquarterly.bsky.social. Fair warning: it’s long, but if you’re a fan of Nabokov, dystopian art, or the movie, you should find something of interest. Enjoy! lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/53_3...
A composite image of K the Blade Runner stepping off of the cover of “Pale Fire” into an orange-clouded wasteland in the movie “Blade Runner 2049.”
July 29, 2025 at 1:32 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Too hot to fly, maybe. 😅
A line of geese, more or less single file, crossing a bridge in a park and heading for the grass. (Same in next photo from different angle.)
July 16, 2025 at 6:37 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
"'[C]an ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,' sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow; 'if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam?'"
A silhouetted black-and-white drawing of Captain Ahab alone on the deck of the Pequod. From Christophe Chaboute's graphic novel of MOBY-DICK.
July 15, 2025 at 7:01 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
He doesn't care about or need "support" anymore. (With thanks once again to @sarahkendzior.bsky.social.)
A quotation from Sarah Kendzior's third book, "They Knew": "Impunity, the sadist’s conception of freedom, mainstreamed and marketed as the new American dream."
July 13, 2025 at 5:17 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Make that "DISinformation arms race." 🫠 www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
July 12, 2025 at 2:12 AM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Dystopia: not just for comics. "Meta ... will soon supply the U.S. army with AI systems to control drones and automate decision making. Whether churning out military targets or memes, most generative AI applications are deployed to prioritize content and scale rather than authenticity and accuracy."
Cover of The Uncanny X-Men #141, from January of 1980, the first issue of the "Days of Future Past" story cycle which was set in a dystopian future in which giant weapon robots called Sentries have taken over the world and terminate targets automatically upon detection. Caught in a Sentry's spotlight are an aged Logan-Wolverine and Kate Pryde.
July 10, 2025 at 10:39 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
Puttered around this afternoon, including a stop at one of our old favorite used bookstores. 📖🐛♥️
Two books, The Best Cartoons of Punch and Selected Poems by John Morris, alongside a bag from Dunaway Books bookstore.
July 3, 2025 at 11:46 PM
bdwlecteur.bsky.social
The images of 45/47 and his lackeys at the Everglades detention camp work as "vice signaling," sure. But, still more, aren't they gleeful shows of power? I. e., impunity, which @sarahkendzior.bsky.social has all too aptly explained as their goal and ideology.
"Impunity, the sadist’s conception of freedom, mainstreamed and marketed as the new American dream." Kendzior, Sarah. They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent (p. 65). (Function). Kindle Edition.
July 2, 2025 at 1:04 PM