We live in a culture gone mad on theory: theories of sex and family, theories of government, and, inevitably, theories of education. A debate has raged for centuries over “the future of education.” Early American liberals like Noah Webster insisted that a democratic society needed a suitable educational system, divorced from the classical tradition that encouraged aristocracy and elitism.
A haunting image was making the newspaper round the other week, which I am certain the gentle reader, if only out of a corner of his eye, has noted, perhaps even musing to himself that one of these days this photograph would get a mention in Wednesday’s Child.
“Pollsters always lie, as we know, but apart from that, polling should be a major felony because it is based on the degrading fallacy that it is important to know what people want and that political–therefore social and moral–questions can be treated as a popularity contest.”
In this passage, dialogue between Ajax and Tecmessa, Ajax and the Chorus, Ajax and Eurysaces, the embittered hero sticks to his decision to kill himself, despite the appeals of his “wife”—she may as well be—son, and followers, all of whom depend on him. It is a bit like the Book of Job, except these are Greeks, for whom friendship—which includes kinship—is a primary moral quality.
It is reported that Donald Trump, while his supporters were having the “million man march” in Washington, rode in his armoured car to play golf. What would a man and a real leader have done? He would have gone out among the people who were making an effort and putting something on the line for him. And he would have made his sissy son-in-law go with him and meet some real Americans. And he would have made sure, with military police or whatever could be used, that his supporters were not beaten up by the thugs of antifa and BLM.
It’s still unclear who will be declaimed Caesar. In addition to the recounts and lawsuits, behind the scenes deals are being made and people bribed and blackmailed. The stakes are so high – ruler of what’s still ridiculously called the “free” world – there’s no way immense crookedness is not occurring.
The other day I stumbled on a Reuters news report from some time back, which cited police sources in Rostov-on-Don, a city in the south of Russia with a population of one million. According to the case docket, a fight broke out between two men who were standing in line in a grocery store, whereupon one of them drew a gun and shot the other.
It seems likely that, one way or another, Biden and his handlers will invade and occupy the Executive Mansion in January. That will only be symbolic since they already possess most of the Executive branch of government. Conservative commentators, always wishful thinkers, are now telling us that it won’t be too bad—after all, Biden is weak and the Republicans have the Senate.
I sometimes wonder how many of those reading me in this space realize what a privilege it is for a writer or journalist to set down on paper whatever comes into his head. I recall, with a sadness not much tinged by sympathy, how my erstwhile colleagues in the profession would spend days searching for what their editors called a peg, which in practical terms meant that as March 8 rolled around the lot of them would be filing regurgitated biographies of Rosa Luxemburg. The peg, in other words, amounts to censorship by social order. Everything written to fill this order is, quite literally, off the peg, like a suit of cheap clothes.
Two weeks ago on Saturday near my residence in coastal Georgia, I spent an uneventful early morning sitting uncomfortably in a deer stand in a fruitless endeavor to be a murderer. Undaunted, I switched to fishing and launched into the intercoastal tidal river in my kayak at low ebb to try a fishing spot where the rapid outgoing tidal flow temporarily exposes an intermittent island near a bridge.
