When this cotton-mill boy went down to the University in 1959, he noticed something at once. There was a division between the superior US (that is, them) and the inferior THEM (that is, us). The division had nothing to do with intellectual distinction or even athletic prowess, but the members of US definitely regarded themselves as superior.
I’ve just started rereading Sophocles’ Ajax. I’m not sure why, apart from the need to keep reading Greek, but there is something that has always attracted me in the portrait of the staunch reactionary who goes mad, after being dishonored, and of his glib enemy, Odysseus, who learns humanity. (I have a strong hunch that in his depictions of Odysseus–as in his Oedipus–Sophocles is dealing with the Athenian mentality of his own day, and that scholars who see the poet’s friend Cimon in Ajax are on the right track.) If five people promise to start reading it, I’ll start a...
Here in the Old World, there is often a lot of debate about the Electoral College anytime a US Presidential election looms, but the truth is that so few people, even in the US, really know much about it (beyond what the media tells them). Hence my European friends often ask me what the deal is and what I think about the system. The truth is that the history behind the Electoral College is pretty interesting, and gives us some insights into how America’s current form of government has traditionally tried to function.
In his book, Tye digs up the corpse of Senator Joseph McCarthy with the intent of comparing his maligned career to the current administration of Donald Trump. The Democrats, who have gone full Marxist, could find no better grave to desecrate and phantom to exorcise than that of Joseph McCarthy.
Finally, the American people got to hear a refutation to the Fine People Hoax. That’s where President Trump supposedly said, after the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, there were “fine people” on both sides – meaning the white supremacists, KKKers and neo-Nazis supposedly were “fine people.”
Health updates are always tedious, especially, in my case, when one is the patient. This should be my last report.
Trump blew it. The President of the United States allowed himself to be called a “liar” and a “clown,” an enormity that has not even been noticed. And he failed to deal effectively with any of his opponent’s smooth lies. For millions of shallow, naïve, clueless Americans, Biden appeared “Presidential” and as Trump’s superior in character, knowledge, and constructiveness.
The modern American household is a far cry from the family “castle” that even the King dared not enter. It is a set of cubicles, where individuals stash their stuff and listen to their own music or watch their own programs….
Biden was refreshingly candid. At last the American people get to see the real Joe, a nasty, lying, slandering little reptile with a fixed grin on his face begging for someone to knock it off with a well-aimed blow of the fist.
Lying awake, I half-dreamed a novel plot in which an ordinary man dies, technically, on the operating table. The doctors revive him, and after weeks of slow and painful recovery, he goes back to his old life.
