Take Five: The News
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
Harris has the “we came, we saw, he died!” laugh. The Arizona Attorney General has argued recently that the influx of of illegally undocumented immigrants will exacerbate climate change. This means he’s “weaponizing” climate change and that he’s an “Ecofascist.”
We haven’t had a President or Vice President with any bearing under stress since Jimmy Carter or maybe Ronald Reagan. Carter had a tick with his nervous smile but he still possessed a bearing. Reagan was an actor and performer so it was harder to tell but believe he probably did. Bill Clinton had none whatsoever in office. Young Bush was simply pathetic in public but he did have advisors to coach him properly and perhaps he did get a bit better towards the end of his term. Obama had none either but covered it with decent rhetoric and endless practice in exuding political passion. Trump had very little either but he was a gaudy New York entrepreneur with so little political experience his audacity to speak openly was welcomed by deplorables who still believed.
Joe Biden is pitiful. I won’t make fun of an old man in the early onset of dementia but Kamala is pitiful for different reasons. She is also ambitious and blindly naive to her weaknesses and limitations which only highlights them all the more.
Jimmy Carter probably learned something about “bearing up”under stress at Annapolis and of course for Southerners, manners and a way or quality of doing things still mattered in those days. But I would say he or Reagan were definitely the last.
Rex,
Your sound effects and production skills, your ability to toss question and create a context that your audience wants is really quite a gift and I admire you for practicing it in a field so dumbed down as to be retarded but your shows are quite good. Much better than anything else out there. I hope the show does not become better known for fear it would lose the quality of small good things although in substance and humor and presentation and art, it is superior to everything else out there.
Mr. Reavis,
Thank you for listening and thank you for your kind words.
Rex,
Do you drink whiskey? I know a liquor store syndicate and was wondering if you gave a favorite I could bring to the summer school.
And please don’t commit the modem fraud and tell me it’s pappy van winkle bourbon!
Mr. Reavis,
Dr. Fleming gave me a bottle of Zubrowka, a Polish Vodka that we very much enjoyed. It is difficult to find around here.
Thank you Rex, I will check it out. I almost thought to ask Mr Navrozov what he thought of the polish vodka but my friends who know him better than I do say he likes it all. I can get it around here I am sure. Arkansas and Oklahoma have been bootlegging for decades in one form or another.