If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated …
The world is built on relationships, not leverage, and relationships are built on reciprocity and respect. It is not Trump’s genius to recognize America’s unused strength; it is his blindness to see that our strength was a function of our restraint.
Other institutions – non-profits and for-profits alike – must call out ICE and Trump. This article about clergy (and others) pressuring airlines is an example.
For Kolnai, however, what attracted the young to fascism was not so much any real practical concern, nor any really coherent philosophy. It was, rather, a kind of boredom with the peace and orderliness of liberal times. Distinctly lacking in liberal societies is the kind of enmity, battle, conflict, and esprit de corps that a conquering master-nation can provide.
– Nathan Beacon, “How Not to Be a Fascist: How one Hungarian philosopher resisted the Nazis through ‘civilization.’"
Sounds a bit like ICE thugs, eh?
I’m hopeful that
to save its own species,
the tiger will become a poet,
the way dinosaurs became lizards,
And the poet, occasionally, a tiger
My only point is that no one benefits from a political, never mind, a policy debate, between Team Jackass and Team Thug fueled by a flood of voyeuristic videos. This spectacle feels to me like a metaphor in miniature of American politics generally. … Everyone plays to the crowds for attention and funding. Nobody wants to hammer shut the windows and do the work of the American people.
Right. Our politics are so juvenile. (Hence, the now almost mandatory dropping of f-bombs.)
Where did all the grown-ups go?
Remember how after 9/11 Katha Pollitt told her 13-year-old daughter she couldn’t fly the American flag, because “the flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war”? Pollitt was wrong. But this administration is making her seem less so.
By hijacking the language of patriotism for this nationalistic, statist, militaristic horseshit, the right is picking up the baton of the left by signaling to millions of Americans that America’s heritage—and the people who talk about it—are precisely the kinds of people who see the American flag the same way she did.
The lies spewing from Kristi Noem’s mouth about the bullshit “weaponization” of the murdered Minneapolis woman’s vehicle demand a mass response by the citizens of this country. Watch the video. Lies. Lies. Lies.
Tom Friedman in the NYTimes makes an excellent point: Trump’s toppling of Maduro provides Xi another precedent for invading Taiwan.
From the NYTimes: “50 Years Ago, He Was an Olympian. At 80, He’s Just as Happy to Finish Last. | Jeff Galloway, who popularized the run-walk-run method, is determined to complete one more marathon.”
15,051 days.
Already off the website. 🤷♂️
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. (!)
Joe Ely was so important to Texas music and especially to me when I lived in Austin in the early ’80s. This Texas Monthly tribute by Michael Hall is great.
The three lenses of opportunity cost: (1) Compared with what? (2) And then what? (3) At the expense of what? — Shane Parish
The attack on Pearl Harbor came 84 years ago today. We remember those who died that day.
Stoppard was the author of the greatest (imo) English-language play of the last 50 years, “Arcadia," and in “Leopoldstadt," his last play, one of the most wrenching last scenes in the theater.
