The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

6

Donald Trump: My Favorite Sociopath

President Trump is undoubtedly a creep, but what else can one say of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton? Jack Kennedy and his disgusting brothers? Franklin Roosevelt? Lincoln, whose foul mouth around women, when he was in Congress, caused decent colleagues to shun his company?

16

The Plight of the Homeless, Part One

In one of Douglas Addams’ very silly books, Zaphod Beeblebrox, the egocentric two-headed president of the universe, is condemned to undergo the ordeal of the Total Perspective Vortex.  It is an excruciating form of torture that exposes the criminal to a sense of the infinite size of the universe and his own small place in it.  The result is the annihilation of the self.  The device was designed by a scientist who got tired of his wife telling him to put things in perspective.  The nagging wife might just as well have been Adam Smith or William Godwin or any...

24

The Language of Lying

North American English is now the dominant form of the language, and as one can tell by reading British newspapers or listening to British speakers, under American influence American English is edging out other, local varieties of English, bringing with it American habits of speech and the habits of mind that go with them as it does so.  This is not necessarily a welcome development. As anyone who moves to America from England immediately notices, besides the obvious differences in sound, one peculiar, noticeable feature of North American English is a constant tendency towards euphemism, suggesting that Americans, however big-hearted...

2

Born out of Due Time, Chapter One, Part c

By

In which our hero discovers that not all dreams reveal the truth. We visit the home of the improbably named Shawn Borowski, who is beginning to imagine that he is a noble Aztec, whose world has been destroyed by people who look like him.

3

Dems Lurch Further Left

It seems hardly possible, but the Democratic Party is lurching even further to the Left. At this rate, they’ll soon advocate kidnapping missionaries to feed them to cannibals. (I hope I’m not offending a key interest group there.) California is the epicenter of Dem Party doctrines and cash. Silicon Valley Leftist oligarchs now form the money foundation for Dem candidates across the country. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is salivating at the prospect of again becoming House Speaker. Yet even she still isn’t Left enough for many in the party. The Sacramento Bee’s story after last weekend’s California Dem confab in...

2

In Search of the Different Drummer (a postscript)

As a college freshman, I made friends with a high school senior who was permitted to live in our dormitory.  I never learned how Gary, a Catholic high school student from Chicago, ended up in a college dorm in Charleston.  Perhaps I should have asked. Whenever someone did make the mistake of asking Gary what he was doing in Charleston, he invariably answered: “I’m just waiting for a streetcar.” And, if the questioner persisted with the inevitable protest, “But there aren’t any streetcars in Charleston,” Gary responded: “That must be why it’s taking so long.” That is where many of...

6

Marching to a Different Drum, Concluded

Previous If you think any of this argument is overstated, just go to the library and look at the artistic masterpieces of Jacob Epstein and Andy Warhol, and, as you are reading the wit and wisdom of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, explaining the evils of Western culture, listen to some light background music from Ornette Coleman playing “between the notes” on his plastic saxophone.  This was all decades ago, in the period that conservatives still celebrate as a high point of our culture, the time when “the Greatest Generation” was still ruling the planet, back before every imaginable ethnic,...