The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
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.
I knew this early on and watched, as every decade went by, people—not just Americans—growing duller and dumber, ruder and more indifferent to all the little customs and courtesies that had separated us from savages.
The prologue is rather more dramatic than in many plays, where a god or mortal steps forth (as in Euripides so often) and gives us a brief sketch of the situation and hints at development. In this scene, Athena surprises Ajax in the act of trailing Ajax to discover if he is the author of the insane night-attack on the animals. She gives him more knowledge than he bargained for, and, depending on our view of the play and its characters, the ethical point of the play may be anticipated in this first scene.
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.
Rather than give you a rehash of the recent “election” and whether President Trump somehow can overcome the blatant stealing of his victory, I thought I’d write about something else. Everyone not just in America, but across the globe, has known one day Trump’s reign would end, whether in 2021 or 2025. So everyone has been preparing.
Aias (Ajax) is a prominent character in the Iliad. He is the cousin of Achilles and half-brother of Teucer. He is most conspicuous for his athletic strength and unremitting valor in defense. Sometimes thought of by readers as a bit of a dumb ox, he is praised for his prudence by Hector and is among the small group chosen to take part in the embassy to persuade Achilles to return to the battle.
In the conflict between Fraud and Megalomania, sensible Americans would do well to cheer up and go about their everyday business, take a vacation, read a book…..
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.
