Author: Thomas Fleming

8

Bulldog and the Meaning of Life

When I selected the first Bulldog Drummond for our ongoing discussion of books, it was partly because it is the kind of old-fashioned adventure that people like to read in the summer, and partly the author’s understand of certain fundamental things of life might remind readers of the “world we have lost.”

21

Let’s All Blame Biden and Feel Good About Ourselves

Biden’s performance as commander-in-chief is disastrous, but let us never forget that George Bush and his team of aspiring world-controlers had no valid reason for invading and destroying this rotten country–as I said before the invasion–and the only exit strategy that seemed likely is what is happening now

44

Brief Announcement of Little Interest

An earlier less humorous version I meant to keep in draft mode got posted (by me). If you read it, please read the new version. I have post neither column nor comment since August 1.  This slacking is not due to heat–it has been in the very low 80’s here in  Rockford–nor pique with anyone or anything.  I’d spent much of a day eating out, smoking a cigar, and talking for hours and was not surprised to find I had a minor sore throat.  

5

Make My Day

If you are unwise enough to be on one or another social medium, you will have read something like this: “If you want to disagree with my futile ill-thought out and clumsily expressed opinion on X Y or Z, go ahead and make my day. I can’t wait to unfriend you”?  Do you ever wonder what is going on in someone’s mind, when he issues such a  taunt?   I automatically unfriend such people, even if I agree with their position. I no longer have to teach low-achieving American adolescents with exaggerated opinions of themselves.  I am speaking of the early...

9

Bulldog: The Characters

In reading fiction, especially fiction of the lighter sorts, readers are tempted to see the characters in abstract terms as straw men or lay figures invented to play a part or represent an idea, a virtue, or a vice.

4

Other People, An Essay

“L’enfers c’est l’autre.”  Whatever Sartre meant by “Hell is other people,” he was certainly right about the people he liked to refer to as “salaud”—the scum who think only of their own interests and reduce the universe to their own dimensions, in other words, people like Sartre and his friends.