Enjoying the view from Limbo
Roger Kimball, whose thoughtful discussions of art, education, and progressivism I once attended to with appreciation, and occasionally cited in my own writing, has, over the past five years, become one of the most ridiculously unrepentant and irrational sycophants for Donald Trump. There may be even more irrational cases, but none, I suspect, that have fallen so low from so high. In one...
Today, I received an e-mail from a good American friend who, after reassuring me (or himself) that he has reconciled himself to the ugly truth of his country’s current predicament, proceeded to offer his comments on the Afghanistan debacle, beginning with the observation that even with years of planning, no one could have done a better job of reducing and shaming America than...
A few thoughts of a Sunday morning migraine. China has “fat-shamed” Greta Thunberg, according to a headline I just read. I hate expressions like “fat-shamed,” as they are indicative of our egalitarian, hurt-no-feelings, “no-fault life” code of amorality — which is itself nothing but the ultimate assertion of judgmental power by the Whining Majority. Thunberg, for her pathetic puppet part, has apparently “responded...
Rush Limbaugh had an excellent radio voice and manner. He spoke with a rare combination of mellifluousness, somewhat ironic pomposity, and down-home charm. He was the Johnny Carson of talk radio hosts — no one built a brand entirely around his own unique persona with more ease, humor, or confidence. At the peak of his rise to fame as a conservative talk radio...
When all is equally agitated, nothing appears to be agitated, as in a ship. When all tend to debauchery, none appears to do so. He who stops draws attention to the excess of others, like a fixed point. — Pascal, Pensées, §382 A small event this past weekend crystallized the full ugliness of what America has become in the age of Donald Trump...
He will be taught how to do socially useful things, and how to accept his social role peacefully, perhaps even to like it; that will be his “adulthood.” Meanwhile, the basic emotional dependency, fear of standing alone, and need for external guidance intrinsic to childhood will become permanent conditions of his soul. It is the teacher’s role to hold the child in position,...
Two of the standard smears Donald Trump’s apologists apply to denigrate Trump’s conservative critics are the term “NeverTrump” used as a pejorative (as in, “Why should I listen to you NeverTrumpers?”), and the related accusation that those who oppose Trump are driven by “hate.” The first of these, the “NeverTrump” label, is typically used with the intention of associating Trump’s critics with the...
Marvel Comics superhero Stan Lee died recently. In response to this news, Bill Maher, an iconoclastic moron comedian who pretends to be a social commentator, took his usual contrarian stance: In a blog post to his website Saturday, the late night host wrote, “America is in mourning. Deep, deep mourning for a man who inspired millions to, I don’t know, watch a movie,...
A dear friend sent me an e-mail the other day in which he lamented the incoherence of “modern conservatives” (his well-chosen term), with their endless compromises on fundamental principles, their willingness to support politicians who contradict everything these people claim to believe in, and their unwillingness to defend free markets and property rights with consistency and clarity. His thoughts, perfectly in line with...
For two years, one alleged conservative after another has disappeared from American society and been replaced with a pod replica prepared to make or accept endless excuses for a laughably wee man who comes with more baggage than a Samsonite warehouse. How often have we heard this one: “I’m so worried about America’s future that I have no choice but to support Trump.”...
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