Deep Thought For the Day

At breakfast here on Sullivan's Island, my wife commented: "I guess we missed two really big events last night: The Golden Globe Awards and Trump's CPAC speech."  I feel just awful about it. We probably should have postponed the Latin Mass and dinner with friends to witness two exercises in media vulgarity. Although it's been at at least a decade since I've gone to see a new movie, the Golden Globes were probably only slightly less depressing than a CPAC meeting. When wealthy friends used to attend these things and tell me about them, I always heard, ringing in my ears, Eli Wallach's line in The Magnificent Seven: If God didn't want them sheared, why did he make them sheep?"
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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

8 Responses

  1. Vince Cornell says:

    Just watching the Ever-Trumpers gush over yesterday’s CPAC is punishment enough. Now that Trump has created his own Super PAC, it’s a “game changer”! He might run to be elected to the House in Florida in 2022, and then, because his Super PAC will create a majority of “good” Republicans, he’ll be elected Speaker of the House, and then run successful impeachment efforts against both Biden AND Harris, resulting in him becoming President again, and THEN he’ll run for and win another term in 2024!!!!!

    Meanwhile, for Lent, I’m reading the “Gulag Archipelago.” I just want to get myself mentally and spiritually prepared for what is surely coming down the pike.

  2. Clyde Wilson says:

    You also, sadly I am sure, missed the end of Black History Month.

  3. Robert Reavis says:

    The good news is at least there will be no State of The Union blather this year since our current President doesn’t have the mental capacity to read that long from a TelePrompTer.

  4. Jacob Johnson says:

    But you missed the Star Spangled Banner.

  5. Vince Cornell says:

    It might be the one nice thing I’ll ever be able to say about President Biden. I hate the State of the Union blather.

  6. Gregory Fogg says:

    I had long hoped for a president with the gumption to return to Jefferson ’til Wilson tradition. We’ve got a one shot return by default. I’ll keep my fingers crossed now that the ice is broken.

  7. Mark Atkins says:

    Trump is no saviour but is a step in a better direction and has at least broken things up.

  8. Avatar photo Thomas Fleming says:

    Mark, if I knew what you were getting at, I might know how to respond. Trump as either savior or destroyer is not the issue, but whether or not his CPAC scripted performance was worth the time it would have taken to watch it. When you say he is a “step in a better direction,” don’t you think you should say what that direction is and how he represents a step, and, when you say he has broken things up, should’t you say what things? A child who takes a hammer to his dad’s computer certainly breaks something up, but whether that constitutes a step in any direction, as opposed to a fit of temper or mere perversity, remains to be seen. I voted for him twice without expecting him to accomplish anything. So far as I can see, he had little idea of what he was up against and failed to accomplish anything lasting–by lasting, I mean something that would outlast his immediate successor. Executive actions of the sort he and Biden take are inconsistent with the Constitution and completely ephemeral unless they reflect, as Biden’s actions do, the consensus of a powerful political coalition.