Enjoying the view from Limbo
I mentioned the other day that Jonah Goldberg is a writer who, in spite of his having remained agreeably consistent in his anti-Trumpism, has nevertheless failed to endear himself to me (not that he was trying to do so). I feel compelled to note, therefore, that his latest editorial (click the link) on the dying embers of the Trump presidency has me twitching...
As you back away from a mirror, your reflection becomes smaller, and therefore less minutely detailed — but also, in another sense, more complete and true, due to the widening context. For a man seeking the truest image of himself, the goal is to hone his eyesight and maintain perfect focus, while viewing his reflection in ever more distant surfaces. The smaller he...
Yet another Trump cultist with a respectable public position has taken advantage of this tinder box moment in America to incite deadly violence on behalf of the worst (and in a sense, probably the last) president in U.S. history. This time, it was Texas state Republican executive committee member Terry Harper — I do not care about the man’s personal existence whatsoever, but...
On those occasions when, primarily to avoid being paralyzed and embarrassed by his complete ignorance of a situation, Donald Trump allowed himself to be coached or coaxed into a certain course of action by his large team of establishment Republican advisors, he ended up doing a few sensible-looking things that any — literally any — Republican president would have done. Both his cultists...
Ideas and Reflections / Socialized Medicine
by Daren Jonescu · Published January 4, 2021 · Last modified April 15, 2024
The profit motive is not inherently evil. Nor is it inherently moral. Everything depends on what a man is seeking to profit from, how he hopes to gain that profit, whether the need he is claiming to meet is a legitimate need in natural human terms, or a harmful and illegitimate one, and what interests are being furthered by the efforts and gains the profit-seeker is pursuing.
In a fit of self-fulfilling prophecy, the Trump cult appears to be trying to put itself on a path to the internment camps their propaganda wing has been fearmongering about for years. If they continue demanding executions for elected Republicans and threatening violence in the streets to overturn a presidential election result they do not like, they may indeed put the U.S. Federal...
A group of nine U.S. senators, including, inevitably, Ted Cruz — the most pathetically compromised man from a state apparently now comprised of nothing but pathetically compromised men — has issued a joint statement declaring their intention to oppose the certification of electoral college votes until the completion of a “ten-day emergency audit” that they have fabricated. In other words, those nine senators...
Here is Louie Gohmert, the Trump cult’s new lead spokesman, “explaining” what Trump’s fifty million drooling idiots should do to respond to the inevitable dismissal of his lawsuit against Mike Pence on the grounds, in part, that he has no standing to bring such a suit: “With regard to the standing issue, if a member of Congress who is going to object to...
Here is incoming U.S. congressman Burgess Owens explaining his decision to join the Republican challenge to the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory: Owens told The Salt Lake Tribune that he believes President Donald Trump actually won the November election, stating, “There’s no question in my mind that I think he won.” “There is no question in my mind that I think X” — if that means...
Try not to hate humans en masse, no matter how infuriatingly inhuman and inhumane they collectively become. Remind myself every day that a population raised from earliest childhood to belittle itself and aggrandize the state can hardly be expected to view itself and the world any differently than in accordance with its lifelong training. Consider humanity, for at least ten minutes a day,...
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