“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’s time to dry our eyes, take a deep breath, and bear our burdens cheerfully.
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.
Athena’s parting words are to remind Odysseus and the audience that “The Gods love the sophrones and hate the kakoi. These are two key words for Greek morality and are rather more opposed than the English words “prudent” and “bad.” The man who is sophron, is he whose thinking abilities (the phrenes) are sound, who can judge the future by the past, who keeps his strong feelings under control. Sophrosyne, the great Aristotelian virtue, is a distillation of the Greek folk wisdom exemplified in the Delphic proverbs, “Nothing in excess,” “Measure is best,” and “know thyself,” which is to say, “always...
This line of thinking was so tediously familiar to me that I had given up following the news through any medium, and, as I fell into walking down these mental pathways, my own musings began to bore me so much I could not control my yawning. I had obviously awakened too early. I closed my eyes, and, as I drifted off, I saw myself or someone who looked an awful lot like Anterus Smith, dressed in the simple white tunic philosophers in the schools affected. He was speaking in Greek with an older and more distinguished man, who was having...
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.
