Enjoying the view from Limbo
Indignation, as I have recently noted in another context, is the soul’s rebellion against uncomfortable questions about itself. But indignation retains a semblance of rationality (or at least rationalization) at its core. One step beyond indignation lies the even more revealing spectacle of a man responding to criticisms that touch sensitive nerves by melting down into hysterics. Here, then, is a Trump tweet...
As Trump’s admirers inundated us with their year-end “Wishlist fulfilled!” declarations last week, detailing (without differentiation) the accomplishments, pending accomplishments, or dubious rhetorical “accomplishments” of his first year, I have begun to notice a distinctly familiar aura about this presidency — a fairly predictable aura to anyone who has been observing Trump from outside his cult’s myopic circus tent: the aura of the...
Streiff at RedState, one of Donald Trump’s most ardent damage controllers — it’s amusing how many feel the need to defend the honor of a man they claim to believe is Alpha++ — has posted an article in which he tries to deflect attention from Trump’s embarrassing chest-beating gorilla act over Steve Bannon, by nitpicking over inconsequential misstatements in Michael Wolff’s new “scandal”...
Republican lawmakers, continuing the time-honored Donald Jr.-Roger Stone-Reince Priebus-Jeff Sessions tradition of following Donald Trump around with a big beautiful pooper scooper, are now out at the microphones promising that of course when Trump built his cult of nationalist (i.e., anti-American populist) morons by endlessly repeating the mantra, “The Wall,” he didn’t actually mean a wall. He meant an amnesty deal. Someday, when...
Matt Drudge — for years the GOP establishment’s most influential and valuable mouthpiece (aka fraud) within the so-called “new media” — inserts himself into the Trump-Bannon messy divorce case as Trump’s public defender and deflector shield. No surprise there. But what most people will fail to see is whom Drudge’s seek and destroy mission is really destined and designed to help: Mitch McConnell....
Steve Bannon, a woman scorned, now says Donald Trump’s family members are traitors, the Russia scandal is real, and Trump knew what was happening. (“Me too!”) Trump has responded by saying he never really loved Bannon, that Bannon was little more than a hanger-on, and that every mistake of the GOP during the past year was due to Bannon’s mindless incompetence. Ah, the...
Well, my calendar says it’s 2018, but anyone taking a quick glance at today’s world scene and its sorry cast of characters could be forgiven for imagining it was 1918. After all, we humans pride ourselves on learning from our mistakes, and surely no era would be more inclined to indulge in this pride than one that calls itself “progressive.” And yet… One...
Joseph Conrad said that “women, children, and revolutionaries hate irony, which is the negation of all saving instincts, of all faith, of all devotion, of all actions.” To challenge Conrad’s broad judgment of women and children (“Wasn’t the juvenile Jane Austen a most clever ironist?”) is perhaps to prove his point: One mark of a “true believer” is his inability to take a joke...
Gallup, the leading purveyor of the pseudoscientific propaganda technique called “opinion polling,” has released the results of its annual survey of “the most admired man and woman living in the world today.” And for an amazing eighth year out of nine, the winner on both sides is: “None/No opinion.” In fact, None/No opinion won the Most Admired Man title with an impressive 26%...
Ideas and Reflections / What is Progressivism?
by Daren Jonescu · Published December 30, 2017 · Last modified December 12, 2021
Progressivism, particularly in its neo-Marxist form, is as rife with self-contradiction as any big lie can be. Orwell captured this inherent self-contradiction well, albeit somewhat superficially, in Animal Farm (“Some animals are more equal than others”) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (e.g., Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, etc.). By “superficially,” I mean that Orwell defined the overt hypocrisy of Marxist revolutionaries well at the...
Follow: