The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
The Republican Establishment has been jumping on the Trumpwagon as his nomination by the party becomes inevitable. Any early scheming to push him off because of the lawsuits mostly has evaporated. Nikki still is howling she’ll keep her campaign going. Even as she lost last night in New Hampshire.
Once upon a time, when working class people had skills and practical wisdom and the educated classes actually studied subjects closer to reality than the race and gender fantasies that give college presidencies to people like Claudine Gray….
You could read FOX News or Tucker Carlson for the rest of your life, and while you might hear echoes of any number of conspiracy theories—Carlson sounds more like Glen Beck and Alex Jones every day—but never hint that the country’s problems cannot be reduced to the machinations of evil Democrats and weak-spined Rinos.
In this episode, Dr. Fleming critiques the Denis Villeneuve-directed, Taylor Sheridan-written film Sicario, which he characterizes as a comic book take on some of the themes of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Homework for the next episode: Wind River.
If Christianity is difficult to conceive without the Old Testament, then Christendom is an impossibility without the legacy of Greeks and Romans, and the Etruscans made no small contribution to the character and culture of Rome, though very little of the Etruscan legacy is obvious.
The “Nanny State” is a figure of speech that could only have come from England. To devise a metaphor one needs a more than passing familiarity with its vehicle, indeed it must be second nature to the metaphorist. “All the world’s a stage,” said William Shakespeare because he was a playwright. “The Lord is my rock,” said the nameless Canaanite psalmist because to this day Palestine is a stony place in more ways than one.
Why go to Tuscany in the Winter, when you can go to Sicily, Crete, or Costa Rica? Everyone has read or seen Under the Tuscan Sun, but who wants to endure “Under the Tuscan Wind, Rain, and Flooding?”
As an informal and sometimes formal travel advisor, I am forever reminding–my wife calls it bullying people–to double check everything, including passports, visas (if necessary), ticket times and dates.
Gonzalo Lira was an American citizen and journalist who died last week in Ukraine’s gulag because the Zelensky regime didn’t treat his pneumonia. It also had tortured him. The Biden State Department knew about this. I saw at least one of its press conferences where Lira’s plight was brought up. Lira’s only “crime” was reporting on the criminal Zelensky dictatorship and the horrors of a war than never should have happened.
Dr. Fleming comments on the (thankfully) only Tom Cruise film in our series, though his thoughts on it as a whole may surprise you. Homework for the next episode in the series is Sicario.