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One of the hardest life lessons I ever had to learn is that in the main, people prefer to be deceived. They would rather believe a lie that upholds their comfortable lives than face a truth that challenges it.
Rod Dreher. The context matters little; that principle’s the thing.
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Report from The Retired Guy, playing househusband to his still-working wife: our light loads stick to the side of the washer after spinning more than the darks do. I think there’s more cotton underware in the light colors than in the dark.
I thought you’d want to know.
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Peggy Noonan once again puts into words something that a lot of us probably have intuited vaguely:
Politics is part theater, part showbiz, it’s always been emotional, but we’ve gotten too emotional, both parties. It’s too much about feelings and how moved you are. The balance is off. We have been electing magic ponies in our presidential contests, and we have done this while slighting qualities like experience, hard and concrete political accomplishment, even personal maturity. Barack Obama, whatever else he was, was a magic pony. Donald Trump too. Beto O’Rourke, who is so electrifying Democrats, also appears to be a magic pony.
Messrs. Obama and Trump represented a mood. They didn’t ask for or elicit rigorous judgment, they excited voters. Mr. Trump’s election was driven by a feeling of indignation and pushback: You elites treat me like a nobody in my own country, I’m about to show you who’s boss. His supporters didn’t consider it disqualifying that he’d never held office. They saw it as proof he wasn’t in the club and could turn things around. His ignorance was taken as authenticity. In this he was like Sarah Palin, another magic pony.
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But sober judgment, serious accomplishment, deep knowledge and personal maturity are most important in our political leaders, because of the complexity of the problems we face. History will be confounded that at such a crucial time, trying to come up with a plan to address such issues as artificial intelligence and robotics and the future of work and a rising China and the stresses of the nuclear world, we kept choosing magic ponies and hoping for the best.
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Sigh! Nancy Wilson, who always seemed more than a bit underrated as a songstress, has died at age 81.
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Christian struggle against evil in this world is not, in its first instance, political or social, but ascetical.
Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms, commenting on Psalm 57 (Septuagint numbering)
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I very recently retired from the practice of law, midwest county seat style. I hated dealing with lawyers like Michael Cohen. But to my surprise, I feel a bit sorry for him. He probably thought getting Trump as a client “made” him, and intended to do whatever it took to keep him.
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They can keep the furniture; we’ll keep the faith.
Sherri Edman, ACNA Member whose church lost all its tangible property in a lawsuit after leaving ECUSA.
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Princess Gloria is working with Stephen K. Bannon, center, the populist former adviser to President Trump, and conservative Catholic leaders to undermine Pope Francis.
Nonsequitur photo caption in a failed conspiracy theory story by Jason Horowitz
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Complicit with The Man, I’m really enjoying streaming the “Best of Joni Mitchell” play list on Amazon Prime.
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[T]here are good Catholics and bad Catholics and … the [New York] Times team gets to decide who is who.
Terry Mattingly, Tale of two New York Times stories: Seeking links in ultimate anti-Pope Francis conspiracy (Get Religion)
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We. Are. Doomed.
More people are getting their “news” from social media than from print newspapers.
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It seems unlikely that I’ll read anything timelier today than Joseph Sternberg, Macron’s Warning to America’s Ascendant Left (WSJ).
Premise: France is suffering from too much democracy, too little politics, but America’s Left chafes at constitutional, political, constraints.
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[U]nless families are abolished, successful parents will always pass on advantages to their children, which will compound with each generation. It does not matter how merit is defined; the dynamic of meritocracy remains the same, its operations inexorable.
Helen Andrews, The New Ruling Class, Hedgehog review, Summer 2016.
I have no plans for further postings on meritocracy. If you hadn’t noticed the series, though, I’ll explicitly commend Helen Andrews’ article.
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This is where Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss came from:
“I don’t actually know much,” an alumnus told me after he finished his freshman year at Harvard. “I mean, well, I don’t know how to put it. When I’m in classes all these kids next to me know a lot more than I do. Like about what actually happened in the Civil War. Or what France did in World War II. I don’t know any of that stuff. But I know something they don’t. It’s not facts or anything. It’s how to think. That’s what I learned in humanities.”
“What do you mean, ‘how to think’?” I asked.
“I mean, I learned how to think bigger. Like, everyone else at Harvard knew about the Civil War. I didn’t. But I knew how to make sense of what they knew about the Civil War and apply it. So they knew a lot about particular things. I knew how to think about everything.”
Helen Andrews, The New Ruling Class, Hedgehog review, Summer 2016, quoting Shamus Rahman Khan, Privilege.
I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but he failed to learn about the Civil War and World War II in humanities!?
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The past two years have given the lie to many of the nastiest accusations the left levels against conservative intellectuals — that conservative ideas are little more than veils for personal greed, that conservative institutions are nothing but a grift racket, selling self-justification to the richest bidder. If that were true, there would be no civil war shattering the movement, and there would certainly be no #NeverTrump conservatives holding firm. I’m certainly not suggesting that everyone in the movement has stood fast against the Trump incursion. What’s impressive is how many did.
Megan McArdle, on the possible shut down of the anti-Trump Weekly Standard.
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When an author caps two hundred pages of rhetorical fire with fifteen pages of platitudes or utopian fantasy, that is called “the last chapter problem.” When every author who takes up a question finds himself equally at a loss, that is something else. In this case, our authors fail as critics of meritocracy because they cannot get their heads outside of it. They are incapable of imagining what it would be like not to believe in it. They assume the validity of the very thing they should be questioning.
But what would it be like not to take meritocracy for granted? …
Helen Andrews, The New Ruling Class, Hedgehog review, Summer 2016
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Patronage is the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and that is Power.
Benjamin Disraeli, quoted by Helen Andrews, The New Ruling Class, Hedgehog review, Summer 2016.
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Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. It’s in our genes and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized husk of a society.
Andrew Sullivan. My! How this ramifies!
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Jake Meador announces his “2018 Eliot Awards” for best magazine writing. There’s some very good stuff in there.
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I’d like to say that everyone on the Purdue team who’s not named “Carson Edwards” or “Evan Boudreax” just isn’t playing up to their potential.
But what if they are? Is a laconic 4-point loss to, say, Texas as good as it’s gonna get? 🏀
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🏀 I’m very, very happy for Carson Edwards. I wish he could get a little help from his friends.
Boiler Up! guys!
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“There is a reason normal people hate journalists.”
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Wall Street Journal says binge-watching is “only the beginning” of the future of television.
I may have bought a BIG TV to watch soccer and baseball in retirement, but I really am an alien to this culture.
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Ammon Bundy creates a teachable moment, but some people are just incorrigible, unteachable — and glory in it.
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As long as I’m kvetching about language use (like “shaking up” an Administration that’s in constant chaos already), what, pray tell, warrants calling John Lennon’s murder an “assassination”?
My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.
