Enjoying the view from Limbo
Donald Trump is the Republican Party establishment. This is true not merely in the sense that there must always, of necessity, be an established leading force within any nation or faction. It is true in the very sense most despised by the self-described establishment-haters who comprise the Trump cult, namely that Trump, their god, is absolutely embedded within, and inseparable from, the old...
An article in The Hill outlines the negotiations taking place between Donald Trump’s campaign team and Mitch McConnell’s representatives, seeking to “lay the groundwork” for McConnell to officially endorse Trump’s presidential bid for the third time — Dr. Frankenstein debating over whether to support the bucket of innervated nuts and bolts that escaped from his own lunatic laboratory. The article quotes various unnamed...
I would rather live in exile and see things as they really are, with the clarity of distance and detachment, than end up dead in a Siberian prison camp because I thought I could fight the tyranny and “free my people” from the inside. Which approach is nobler? There is undeniably something spectacular in the latter choice. But does not true nobility eschew...
2024 U.S. Election / Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 25, 2024
I have been absent from Limbo for longer than usual, due to the death of my father. Needless to say, a lot of noteworthy events have occurred in the world of public significance during my absence, but — also needless to say — nothing really substantial has changed. A brief roundup of what I have observed, unsurprisingly, upon my return to the real...
Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 11, 2024 · Last modified February 29, 2024
A few days ago, Armond White at National Review published his retrospective assessment of Rob Reiner’s cult favorite comedy, The Princess Bride. His basic take on the movie, which as he notes with disapproval is often affectionately cited by conservatives (i.e., NR writers and readers), is that it lacks both artistic and moral coherence, and owes its enduring popularity to the fact that...
The purpose of higher education, as originally founded in the solid ground of the classical philosophic life, was to foster the civilized notions that there is no real safety in numbers; that truth is not amenable to popular opinion; that the adage “knowledge is power” is not reversible; that detached, quiet reflection is the only antidote to the intellectual poison of the public...
2024 U.S. Election / America Descending / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published February 5, 2024
If Ukraine loses its war of survival against a scheming KGB autocrat after all this devastation and bloodshed, the loss and its inevitable global implications will be entirely on the heads of those tens of millions of Americans who pretend to want to make America great again, which fake goal they propose to accomplish by electing the most corrupt and ignorant man ever...
Faith vs. Convenience.– A student recently wrote to me about the diary of a well-known Korean author, written for a Catholic magazine, describing her emotional journey following the death of her son. At the heart of the diary is the author’s struggle, quite typical of such stories, whether public or private, to find an answer to such questions as, “Why would God do...
A Symptom.— Public shaming implies a character that is incapable of mercy, which implies a lack of empathy, which implies an inability to recognize one’s likeness in the other, which implies seeing the other as specially separate and thus essentially unfamiliar. The inability to recognize one’s likeness in the other, i.e., to see the subjectively unfamiliar as objectively familiar, indicates an uncivilized man....
Recently, Senator Mike Lee endorsed Donald Trump for president yet again, proving, yet again, that his own political survival and prospects for personal gain take primacy in his heart over all concerns for constitutional government, republican principles, and whatever else he used to claim, sincerely or otherwise, to stand for. He saw what happened to Mitt Romney, Utah’s most celebrated political son, when...
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