Enjoying the view from Limbo
Donald Trump, teasing a 2024 presidential run, says that his new slogan would be “Make America Great Again, Again,” because “America is not great now,” but you can’t just say “Make America Great Again,” “because we already did it.” So let’s get this straight. If Donald Trump wins an election and uses his four years in office to set the table for Xi...
The best things that could ever happen to a young person today: rejection, isolation, exclusion. To be left out is to be left alone, which is the most precious gift that can be bestowed in an age of suffocating social life. To be disliked or ignored is to be spared the horizon-limiting sameness of success, i.e., fitting in, thus preserving for him nature’s...
Making news.— A quick scan of the American “news headlines” today reveals that so many of them are just that: news headlines. That is, headlines about “the news,” which is to say nothing but trumpeting reiterations of this or that news outlet’s, or news reader’s, or news pundit’s, latest loaded interpretations, exaggerations, or fabrications of “the facts.” How many headlines today merely tell...
You cannot do what you have never attempted. You cannot attempt what you have never imagined. You cannot imagine what you have never seen. You cannot see what your faculties have never sought out. You cannot seek out what you have never desired. You cannot desire what you have never thought of. You cannot think of what you have never experienced. You cannot...
Stoicism and (to a lesser extent) Epicureanism, two late Greek philosophic schools often regarded as relatively minor movements during the intervening centuries, have become fashionable of late, primarily thanks to popular philosophy — the realm of touring lecturers and media stars — which is not really philosophy at all, but rather a quasi-philosophic posture assumed in the manner of a self-help strategy, specifically...
Wanting to participate in the Great Conversation vs. wanting to be heard in the general chatter. Philosopher vs. professor, teacher vs. lecturer, epistolist or essayist vs. professional writer. Everything we do for pay or personal advancement is done with primary attention on the expressed wishes of our audience. Everything we do for the sake of the true, the good, and the beautiful is...
To the extent that we are social animals, we all have an urge to help. The problem is that we also have a common weakness — perhaps, paradoxically, an expression of our lust for power — for confusing helping with “making the problem go away.” Nietzsche observes, in The Gay Science, that the “religion of pity” thrives on the self-important air of the...
Proponents of soft despotism have long understood that with the proper attention to universal schooling and heightened public sentimentality, it is possible to gain absolute power over the majority of any population if one is patient enough to plant the seeds and cultivate them carefully. However, soft despots have also long understood that there will always be a significant proportion of any population...
The Arizona election audit — paid for and conducted by Trump dreamers who would give their right arms (they gave their souls years ago) to find one scintilla of semi-plausible evidence of widespread voter fraud that might lend credence to their idol’s endless and hitherto groundless ranting about a stolen election – turned up exactly zero scintillas of such evidence. Nothing. “Not a...
There is balance in the cosmos and in the soul. We humans call this cosmic balance “justice.” People who, through family prominence, good looks, good luck, or an attractively extraverted temperament, gain advantages and opportunities throughout their younger years, will likely pay for it later….
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