Category: Politics Page 2 of 5

My first thought when I read Thomas McArdle’s article in The Stream entitled Deconstruction is that the subject of the article, an academic named Paul de Man, would have been a worthy addition to Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals. Kelly, Christian and I all read Intellectuals as part of our homeschool efforts. In the words of a reviewer at Amazon, the book profiles some famous thought “leaders” who held themselves “as having a special capacity to determine proper behavior and beliefs and to use this capacity to enlighten their neighbors” at the same time they lived decadent and tawdry personal lives.

Actually, the article in The Stream is about a biographical play about Paul de Man, a Nazi sympathizer who was a kindred spirit of those discussed in Intellectuals. He is introduced this way in the article:

The Antwerp-born Paul de Man came to America after the Second World War and Blitzkrieged the study of literature by pioneering the postmodern theory of deconstruction — which, among other things, put morally-relativistic modern man in the place of a murdered God.

According to the play, De Man certainly appears to have lived according to his morally-relativistic philosophy, lying about his Nazi sympathies to get the academic positions he wanted, living the exact same decadent and tawdry lives as the bulk of the “intellectuals” described in Paul Johnson’s book. It sounds like a fascinating play. I really would like to see it sometime, but I might just be relegated to reading it. Given the progressive proclivities of the theatric community in our country, it might not be widely performed.

Whenever grandpa ran a stop light or forgot to put on his blinker when he changed lanes he said, “I like to follow the spirit of the law. The letter kills.”

We were all pretty skeptical about that, but today we ran into a situation we think might qualify for a Grandpa Milo type approach. I order my prescriptions from the only mail-order place approved by our insurance. They have good prices and represented that after they confirmed my identification and the validity of the prescriptions, most of the time they would just send them. The service has really been pretty good, but they have sent an email every month asking me to call in to confirm new information (or, in most cases, stuff I had already confirmed). The drugs I need are nothing more the benign high blood pressure, high cholesterol medications, nothing heavy at all.

Last month, I was slammed, so Lorena called in for me. They said even though she was my wife, they needed to talk to me. This month, with everything going on, I asked her to tried again.

When she called, a lady told her, “We cannot talk to you, we have to talk to Kenneth.”

She said, “I am Kenneth.”

The lady said, “Mame, are you really Kenneth?”

She said, “I am.”

After a series of fairly intense questions they went ahead and sent her the prescription. I told her afterward she should have acted mad that they did not respect her gender. I think Lorena has that “spirit of the law” thing down pat, but I probably should be ashamed of myself.

There is a grating song/beat poem that came out in 1970’s that was some sort of a theme for a certain element during my college years. You can see it here (if you must). It is called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The thing that is going on in our country is put into context in a truly ironic way by Lloyd Marcus in an article titled The Trump Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He has enough years to have written this article based on personal knowledge. I am not sure that those who were not there and paying attention in the seventies will be able to understand and appreciate how much joy an article like this brings to those of us who were conservative, but were doomed to come of age in the hippie generation. Here is an excerpt, but you should read the whole thing:

Trump’s election ushered in a new tone for America. Feeling emboldened, people are pushing back against the tyranny of political correctness by just saying, “no”. But you will not hear this widely reported in the leftist-controlled mainstream media. Panicked, the Left is desperately and frantically working to keep us believing that their extreme ideas are mainstream majority opinions.

This is why for the next four years, half a dozen protesters showing up to oppose Trump or his policies will be treated like a major news event by the media. Relentlessly, the Left will sell us their lie that Americans hate Trump and what he is doing. Therefore, the Trump revolution will not be televised.

The selection of Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton yesterday is the strangest ever election season in my experience. It is not so much that way because of who is running or what is at stake for the county although that does to be quite monumental. It is more because, even though the stakes are monumental, it really is because my mindset on this election and maybe even elections in general has changed fairly dramatically. It would be wrong to say I do not care what happens or that I should not participate. I think I should participate. It has more to do with the fact that my mother is on her death bed and I have been focused on bigger and much, much more important issues than just the election of a president.

At the same time, I have gotten a kick out of watching my family watch the election. None of us think Trump will be much good, but we do think he will be better than what would have been perpetrated on us by a Hillary administration. The thing that has been interesting is how much of a kick Lorena got out of the election, the horror of the illegal Mexican community of our acquaintance here in the US and the very interesting reaction of our close family in Mexico who are certainly not Trump fans, but believe the Mexicans who reside here illegally are getting what they deserve.

All said, this is the first election since I had the right to vote that I went to bed early and did not get the result until the next morning with only mild interest. Sadly, I think we are living in the interesting times alluded to in that famous Chinese proverb.

I just read an article, ironically titled Question The Stories You Tell Yourself About Terror Attacks And Police Shootings, that said one’s chance of getting hit by lightning are greater than getting killed by a terrorist attack. That is neither true for the United States nor the world. On average, 51 people per year get struck by lighting in the US for 20 year average of 1020. For the years 1995 to 2014, 3264 people were killed in the US by terrorism for an average of over 163. Of course, that is greatly inflated by the 3000+ killed on 9/11, but the point remains. It is even worse for the rest of the world. It is hard to estimate the number of lighting strikes around the world, estimates ranging from 6000 to 24,000 per year. The number of terror attack deaths as estimated by the US State Department for 2015 was 28,328. This is a big and growing problem, not caused by the Amish nor the Lutherans.