Via Col Vento
Or at least col aereo. After 13 days of wasting hours –and money–on renewing my passport, it arrived this morning in time to proceed with plans to fly to Munich for a ridiculously long layover…….
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Texas Outlaws?
A friend and reader writes in to ask what is going in Texas, where Governor Abbott is trying to control the border with Mexico. Isn’t this unconstitutional, he asks, since the Federal government is responsible for maintaining the border?
Wednesday’s Child: Something in the Water
I remember reading somewhere that the Japanese, whose diet in historically rich in soy, have a preternaturally high level of estrogen in their bodies. Soybeans have a high concentration of isoflavones, plant estrogens known as phytoestrogens and similar in function to the human hormone. Soy isoflavones, notably genistein, bind to estrogen receptors in the body.
Tuscan Histories III: Imperial Rule and Collapse
The immediate burdens of empire are born by the conquered subjects, but in the long run it has the people of the imperial nation that find themselves overtaxed to support the endless wars and swamped by subject peoples, allies, or just about anyone who can get to the frontier.
Will the Establishment Accept Trump’s Inevitability?
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.
Joy Reid and Degrees of Idiocy
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….
Journalists and Other Liars III: The False God of Objectivity
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.
Westerns Episode 17: Sicario (2015)
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.
Tuscan Histories II: The Etruscan Legacy
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.
Wednesday’s Child: No Nanny State
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.
