America–the Picture Show
In the midst of war and rumors of war, the ongoing soap opera of “The Sussexes” seems hardly worth mentioning, but if–like some future archeologist, holding his news and sifting through the middens of a 21st century….
In the midst of war and rumors of war, the ongoing soap opera of “The Sussexes” seems hardly worth mentioning, but if–like some future archeologist, holding his news and sifting through the middens of a 21st century….
I have reposted this piece from four years ago and made it free to everyone at the request of a friend who is now reading The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
Lately Senator Ed Markey has been threatening a congressional attack on Elon Musk’s neo-Twitter over “public health” concerns. He said, “Someone could impersonate the CDC for eight dollars, pay for it, not be authenticated and then on that site, say, ‘CDC says vaccinations are not good for you,’ That’s a public health and safety problem.”
It is a main thrust of philosophical Liberalism (and of ancient Stoicism) that human beings have a duty to rise above not only animal but parochial and sectarian passions. Any attempt to justify revenge must therefore represent a step back toward the jungle from which we escaped all too recently.
These two poems of Lionel Johnson, included by his friend William Butler Yeats in a little volume of 20 Poems of Lionel Johnson, attest to Johnson’s deep sense of the sacred.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all. We are having a simple dinner: vegetables a la grecque–leeks, mushrooms, cucumbers; fresh turkey with corn bread , apple, onion, sage, and sausage stuffing; Southern green beans with bacon and onion cooked in broth; rice of course to honor South Carolina; and pecan pie.
No argument drawn from biological necessity would impress philosophers who, since the Enlightenment, have often written as if man were either naturally good or was only weakly endowed with a bundle of propensities known by philosophers as human nature or, by Christians, as “the old Adam.”
If Biden and Merrick “Vyshinsky” Garland want to “get” Trump, they will be able to. Henry Silverglate described how in his 2011 book titled, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.”
On the morning of the first day of the Republican restoration of America, Americans should be waking up to the reality that roughly half the voting population is still so devoted to the devices and desires of their hearts that they cannot break free of their delusions.
This is a typical midterm election where many people are upset with how the country is going, and want to “throw the bums out.” Next January, Republicans will make some needed changes, but nowhere enough of them, to right the ballast of the sinking ship USA.