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Victor Davis Hanson on Ajax, Achilles, and Trump
Victor Davis Hanson on Ajax, Achilles, and Trump
Comparing Trump to Ajax or Achilles: bonkers. If Trump resembles anyone in the Iliad, it’s Agamemnon, the leader who is at a loss in a true crisis and claims Achilles’s prize of war (the enslaved Briseis) to assert his own greater authority. It’s the preening, self-aggrandizing Agamemnon who complains of fake news, dismissing the prophet Calchas’s explanation of a plague: “Not a single favorable omen ever!”
#classics#Homer#Iliad#politics#Sophocles
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Victor Davis Hanson on Ajax, Achilles, and Trump
Missing from the SOTU
Missing from the SOTU
Climate change, alternative energy, children in cages, the government shutdown, gun violence, violence against ethnic and religious minorities, violence against LGBTQ people, LGBTQ rights, the minimum wage, poverty, the cost of health care, student debt, affordable housing, educational inequality, income disparity, voting rights, opioids, xenophobia, white nationalism. It took me about a minute to create this list, which is probably longer than the president and his people thought about giving any attention to these matters.
#culture#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Missing from the SOTU
Eris in the news
Eris in the news
Speaking from her temple on Mt. Olympus, the usually reclusive deity said that Trump was “far and away” her first choice to be President in 2016.
#gods#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Eris in the news
Good timing
Good timing
Kamala Harris makes an announcement.
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Good timing
Public Official A
Public Official A
A new podcast series from WBEZ, Chicago: Public Official A, the rise and fall of the now-imprisoned Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois.
#Illinois#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Public Official A
Defunding public higher education
Defunding public higher education
The American Federation of Teachers examines the result of cuts to higher education in Illinois (41% since FY 2000): layoffs, program elimination, increased tuition, lower enrollments.
#education#Illinois#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Defunding public higher education
Fools
Fools
The Shakespearean fool speaks truth to power. He speaks wisdom in the form of deeply sensical nonsense. Giuliani speaks mere nonsense, a fast-paced double-talk whose purpose is merely to befuddle. He’s really no Shakespearean fool at all, though he does play a fool on TV.
#politics#Shakespeare#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Fools
Cash and a glove
Cash and a glove
In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter.
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Cash and a glove
WWLS
WWLS
As I look at the photograph, I try to imagine: what would Lincoln say? Not about the food but about the huckster showing it off.
#culture#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
WWLS
Bratty pro tip
Bratty pro tip
Slamming your hand and walking off never work. Try holding your breath, sir.
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Bratty pro tip
Ties, misspellings, typos
Ties, misspellings, typos
“Is his seeming ineptness genuine? Or is it part of a contrived performance, designed to deploy the symbols of power while rejecting the conventions of civility that have traditionally defined and constrained them?”
#Dunning-Kruger#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Ties, misspellings, typos
Statue vs. wall
Statue vs. wall
“A crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul”: sounds laughable coming from a man who seems to have neither. Best line, from Charles Schumer: “The symbol of America should be the Statue of Liberty, not a thirty-foot wall.”
#politics#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Statue vs. wall
The origins of “the” wall
The origins of “the” wall
How remarkable that a cheap gimmick created by amoral, irresponsible advisers for an amoral, irresponsible, unthoughtful, easily manipulated candidate should grow to have such enormous costs, becoming an impediment to the very functioning of government. This kind of stuff belongs in a movie, not in reality.
#politics#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
The origins of “the” wall
A political thought
A political thought
What the Democratic Party needs is a candidate who offers a sharp contrast to Donald Trump not only in policy but in affect. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke: yes.
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
A political thought
Screen life
Screen life
“By all accounts, Mr. Trump’s consumption of cable television has actually increased in recent months.”
#politics#television
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Screen life
Alliances
Alliances
Two excerpts from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s letter of resignation.
#culture#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Alliances
SHSL
SHSL
Sarah Huckabee Sanders Live, a fourteen-minute press briefing.
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
SHSL
Felonious Trump
Felonious Trump
I’m no lawyer, but it seems clear that Individual-1 directed Michael Cohen to commit felonies.
#politics#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Felonious Trump
Unabated
Unabated
The hypocrisy never ends: in Bedminster, New Jersey, an undocumented immigrant cleans house at Trump National Golf Club.
#politics#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Unabated
Lines
Lines
Just a few of the redacted lines in the addendum to Robert Mueller’s sentencing recommendation re: Michael Flynn.
#politics#truth
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Lines
Bush to Clinton
Bush to Clinton
The note that George H.W. Bush left for Bill Clinton seems like an artifact from a lost America.
#politics#letters
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Bush to Clinton
Hope vs. fear
Hope vs. fear
Michelle Obama: “I think it is so easy, and lazy, to lead by fear. It is much harder to lead by hope.”
#politics
·mleddy.blogspot.com·
Hope vs. fear