Jonah Goldberg:
The kinds of things one might say in private, to close friends, for shock value, as a joke, or out of a shared hateful anger at this group or that, are now welcome or at least tolerated in the public square.
This is but one of Trump’s (and Twitter’s and Reality TV’s, et al.) malignancies: it’s now OK to say nasty things out loud that once were hidden or, at least, circumscribed.
… the stars shone in their watches, and were glad;
he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are!’
They shone with gladness for him who made them.
Who knew tarragon flowers? Not I.
Fall is. It always comes round, with its lovely patience. If in the beginning it’s restless, at the end it’s resigned, complete in its waiting, complete in the utter correctness of what it has to tell us. Which is that we’re transitory.
Joy Wiilliams, via Austin Kleon
Mono no aware
Jill Lepore’s article in The Atlantic on originalism (it’s not great) got me thinking about the 2nd Amendment. The plain words suggest that your right to keep and bear arms is conditional on your being a member of a well-regulated militia. Query: can the state regulate a militia?
OK. Good, Ted. Dallas Morning News: “Ted Cruz says FCC chair sounded like a mafia boss in threats against ABC over Jimmy Kimmel”.
He quotes Wyndham Lewis, who said times like these, when “the world is too much with us,” is like living in a moronic inferno. That’s a phrase to remember.
Last week, I posted about the country’s need to recommit to the truth in the face of MAGA’s “reality TV” theory of governance. As Catoggio points out, the left is not so great at the truth, either.
