Enjoying the view from Limbo
I love and cherish freedom — not the word, not a particular material advantage that I associate with some byproduct of freedom, but the thing itself. This is a testament to the power of imagination, and to love’s natural capacity for clinging to ideals; for I have never seen real freedom in my midst, let alone experienced it with any fullness in my...
I have nothing new to say about Vladimir Putin’s official international media celebrity of choice, Tucker Carlson, or Carlson’s official Putin talking point mouthpiece, “Colonel” Douglas Macgregor. The truth is that after two months of explaining and analyzing their duplicity for Putin, their alternative reality optics for Putin, their historical revisionism for Putin, their overt lies for Putin, their blatant cheering for Putin’s...
It is standard rhetoric for those who oppose their country’s “getting involved in a foreign conflict” to say that a government’s role in foreign affairs must be determined by considerations of “legitimate national interest.” On its face, this is a sound position, and one with which any person possessing a modicum of rational restraint, forethought, or political moderation ought to agree. However, that...
For most people, belonging to a group or tribe brings comfort. Comfort is pleasure. Therefore, if pleasure is happiness, then belonging brings happiness. If, however, pleasure is not happiness, then what does the comfort of belonging to a tribe bring you? An escape from the reality of unhappiness, perhaps? The same may be said of all other pleasures which, like belonging, entail a...
Ideas and Reflections / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published March 17, 2022 · Last modified March 18, 2022
One country, ruled by a thuggish oligarch from the KGB with a long history of butchering masses of people to achieve his personal expansionist ambitions, and poisoning or imprisoning dozens of domestic critics who get a little too influential, has attacked a non-aggressive, non-threatening neighbor whose only “provocations” were to express disapproval at having its territory invaded by that thuggish oligarch eight years...
“I have lost more friends over the past six years than I even knew I had.” False. For you cannot lose a friend. You can only lose illusions. To “lose a friend” is merely to realize that there was no friend. That is a pure gain; an evolution from ignorance to knowledge. Better no true friends than a hundred illusions. “What in the...
If you speak as though being understood were your primary concern, then you can only say common things. For language, insofar as it is a tool of clear and straightforward communication, is by definition common, which is to say it is limited to common meanings. Nothing uncommon may be said by common means, unless those means are explicitly used against their primary function,...
Freedom is not caring what they think, not fearing what they say, and not dwelling on what they might do. Freedom is listening to them when it suits you, but without ever needing to listen — and speaking when it suits you, but without ever needing them to hear. Freedom is seeing where you have changed, without fear of the sight — and...
Donald Trump and his fan club are fond of saying that Vladimir Putin would never have attacked Ukraine during Trump’s presidency. Of course, the Trump cult’s favorite big claims on behalf of their idol are always the claims that cannot be backed up with proof or tangible results. Since Daddy had his butt handed to him by a crotchety old fool in November...
The world’s current fidgeting over rising energy prices amid the Russian war of attrition in Ukraine, as though our daily convenience is reason enough to let a rabid tyrant go ahead and blow out the doors of his cage, got me to thinking what a wonderful metaphor this impending “energy crisis” has become for so much of what has gone miserably wrong with...
Follow: