Enjoying the view from Limbo
Recently, a serious student who has embarked with gusto on the path of philosophy mused, in an e-mail, about what it means, definitionally speaking, to “be who she is.” Let’s say this is a note for the future, in case I might lose myself someday. What if I lose myself and forget who I was? Read this: “From myself in the past (2022)...
From Day One of his mock-political career, Donald Trump has been a classic and self-evident example of the unprincipled sycophant who pretends to be strong by parroting in an authoritative voice whatever he perceives to be the feelings or preferences of the people whose love and admiration he so weakly and desperately craves. In other words, the danger of Trump, like all of...
All the populists and ersatz conservatives who continue to claim, in response to every disaster unfolding today, “This wouldn’t have happened on Trump’s watch,” should be held to account to explain why, if Trump’s watch was so brilliant, all of this is unfolding so precipitously and unstoppably in the immediate aftermath of that wonderful period of the Trump presidency. Far more accurate and...
A simple question: Vladimir Putin, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tulsi Gabbard, Candace Owens, Donald Trump, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, Nick Fuentes, Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Syria — does this list embody the alliance for peace and freedom today? If it does, then I oppose peace and freedom with every fiber of my being, and wish to go to my grave as the...
Donald Trump has announced that he is running for president in 2024, because Americans just don’t realize how much they are suffering yet, and how terrible things have gotten under the Democratic White House. That’s precious coming from the man who almost singlehandedly created the current Democratic power lunge. After all, it was Trump who lost the popular vote in two consecutive elections,...
Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit — why a communist murderer is even allowed to attend an international economic conference in the first place is one of those questions that can only be answered by adopting a resigned “Such are the times we live in” frame of mind — expresses anger that his private chastisement of Justin Trudeau, whose country’s political system China...
Dave Chappelle, a clever comedian of the social satire bent, though not quite to my taste, began his (according to news reporting) “controversial” appearance as guest host on Saturday Night Live last weekend with an inordinately long opening monologue — the only part of the episode that I have seen, or would care to see — in which he touched on several topical...
Kafka’s burden — the bureaucrat of practical necessity suffocated by life in the bureau — embodies in its tortured anxieties the modern diminution of the raging Heracles: Why must I, a soul full of passion, strength, and cravings for eternity, succumb to these expectations of others, to these odious priorities of daily life, to the duties of my lot, my status, my family,...
One of the great falsehoods of late modernity is that our political structures are so ingeniously self-renewing and self-correcting that the days of the just revolution are over. This position is not only untrue, but likely an indication of devious motives on the part of those who maintain and seek to perpetuate it. For political leaders to say, as President Biden and others...
Over the next forty-eight hours, the United States Federal Government is either going to become substantially dumber and more unhinged from reality, or substantially more Marxist and inclined towards the coercive silencing of all alternative thoughts or ways of living. In either case, however, the U.S. is about to become more overtly authoritarian (which is saying quite a lot given the recent trajectory),...
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