Finished Martin Gurri, The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium. đź“š

A fascinating analysis of how we got polarized (the internet made all emperors’ clothes disappear) and what it will take for things to settle down. Recommended.

An idea for a drinking game, if you don’t want to live to see the next president: take a drink any time someone says “future of democracy” in the lead-up to November.

Nellie Bowles

Piers Morgan did a long interview with John Mearsheimer. Bad news: So deep is my antipathy to Morgan that I don’t dare watch it for fear of throwing my computer across the room. Good news: I think I’ve understood Mearsheimer’s insights fairly well already.

My friend Terry Cowan (Friend? Sure. I narrowly missed meeting him IRL once), a history teacher and obsessive traveler in Georgia, has a masterful summary of the situation in Ukraine.

We have been sorely misled by ill-informed officials and war profiteers.

Finished reading Allan C. Carlson, Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies–and Why They Disappeared. đź“šA helpful introduction to third ways that should inspire us still today (even if one of the implied two ways is gone).

Bless, O Lord, all these prayerful ascetics, who cense the slumbering world with their life like incense.

St. Nicolai Velemirovich, Prayers by the Lake, number LXXVI.

Venting

We do things differently in the Hoosier State.

Near Whitestown, 3 children were buried in the mid-19th century near what’s now a state highway. Cars repeatedly knock down the tombstones.

But fear not! As solemnly reported on TV news, their ancestors are going to get the graves moved into a nearby cemetery. One of the self-identified ancestors even appeared on camera, and looked awfully good for someone 200 or more years old.

Is this a form of dyslexia? Spoonerism?

Lest I forget that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a nasty piece of work, there’s Religion Clause: Texas AG Seeks to Liquidate Catholic Agency Providing Services to Migrants

Any social medium where a guy with the handle “Turd Flinging Monkey” is an influencer with 80,000 followers is not a place I’d care to hang around. The Anti-Family Right by Matthew Schmitz.

(And don’t get me started on BAP)

How should we live?

  1. First, live as though in the coming of Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated into the world and the outcome of history has already been determined. (Quit worrying)
  2. Second, love people as the very image of God and resist the temptation to improve them.
  3. Third, refuse to make economics the basis of your life. Your job is not even of secondary importance.
  4. Fourth, quit arguing about politics as though the political realm were the answer to the world’s problems. It gives it power that is not legitimate and enables a project that is anti-God.
  5. Fifth, learn to love your enemies. God did not place them in the world for us to fix or eliminate. If possible, refrain from violence.
  6. Sixth, raise the taking of human life to a matter of prime importance and refuse to accept violence as a means to peace. Every single life is a vast and irreplaceable treasure.
  7. Seventh, cultivate contentment rather than pleasure. It will help you consume less and free you from slavery to your economic masters.
  8. Eighth, as much as possible, think small. You are not in charge of the world. Love what is local, at hand, personal, intimate, unique, and natural. It’s a preference that matters.
  9. Ninth, learn another language. Very few things are better at teaching you about who you are not.
  10. Tenth, be thankful for everything, remembering that the world we live in and everything in it belongs to God.

(Fr. Stephen Freeman)

“It’s a funny thing to take 40 days each year to remember that we will die.” Lent as Counter-culture

Is SCOTUS going to announce the decision of the “Section 3 disqualification case” at 10 am Friday?

Reading Allan C. Carlson, Third Ways: How Bulgarian Greens, Swedish Housewives, and Beer-Swilling Englishmen Created Family-Centered Economies–and Why They Disappeared. đź“š

Finished Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon. đź“š

Buckingham Palace has not yet divulged what kind of cancer King Charles has, but I’m thinking that prostate cancer is so common that true royals don’t get it.

Reading Arthus Koestler, Darkness at Noon. đź“š

This is looking more like prophecy, less like mere venting.

One of my favorite weekly podcasts decided to do “Our Superbowls, Ourselves” today. Even that ensemble could not hold my interest in our annual spectacle, which I would watch, if at all, only because it’s traditional to debut clever new ads there.

The low quality of callers-in to CSPN Radio, in the run-up to this morning’s SCOTUS arguments, is pretty depressing. I have thought of CSPAN as pretty upscale, yet ….

A rarity: I expect to listen to an audio stream of the SCOTUS arguments in Trump v. Colorado this morning.

My fairly settled theory is that, counter-intuitively to us today, POTUS is not an “officer” of the United States. I’m dying to see how much emphasis that gets today.

My main blog is the Tipsy Teetotaler, http://intellectualoid.com.