"Big-league baseball is subtle; cloaked in summer languor, moving with the slow, supple grace of a ballerina practicing backstage, yet taut and technical in its skills. To view a baseball game and appreciate it takes concentration.”
Donald Trump's principal personality trait has always been crippling narcissism, and he's always had trouble distinguishing between his own interests and those of his followers. He obviously thinks the MAGA movement exists because he has some magical hold on his supporters, but that's exactly backward. His followers they have a set of political goals and desires — white supremacy, male dominance and "owning" the liberals — and Trump molded himself into their perfect leader by reflecting those desires back at them.
But Trump yearns to believe that his followers are so infatuated with him personally that they'll be willing to give up their own lives and freedom just to keep him out of jail. His latest Truth Social post proves, yet again, how much contempt he feels toward his own followers. He really does seem to think there's a wellspring of Trump-loving patriots who'll risk everything for him — and not in hopes of seizing political power, but just to stop a private citizen from going to jail. He doesn't care, quite obviously, how many people he induces to get arrested, hurt or even killed, just so he can avoid consequences for his lengthy career of criminal activity.
-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com
C. Vann Woodward is arguably American's greatest historian of the 20th Century. For sure he is the most acclaimed and recognized Southern historian of the 20th Century. This is the first full blown biography of which I am aware. James C. Cobb, Univ. of Georgia, is a great historian in his own right.
In the preface the author says that Woodward's star somewhat dimmed in his latter years as he seemed to get more conservative Also, Woodward did not warm to multiculturalism. I wonder if he approved of Black History Month. He was a strong integrationist. We are all one in America.
His early interest was literature, not history. He slowly ambled his way into becoming an historian. He was a good writer from the get-to, but not a good public speaker.
A native of Arkansas, Woodward began his academic career at a small Methodist college Henderson-Brown in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. From there he migrated to Emory. He was a voracious reader, a real book-worm. His father was not an intellectual, but his uncle was and the uncle was the reason he moved from Arkansas to Emory University. At a young age he visited Europe. His horizons were broad early: No way he was going to stay in Arkansas.
C. Vann Woodward was a legendary historian up there with the greats of the 20th Century. P. 1
His Phd was ubdifferenrtly acquired at UNC. P. 3
Comer Vann Woodward was born in Vandal, Cross County, Arkansas, on November 13, 1908. P. 9
Details of his family history do not really interest me.
From Henderson-Brown in Arkansas to Emory to UNC.
Woodward was involved in issues and politics in Georgia while at Emory. The author's details are confusing and not worth my reading time to follow. P. 28
I am mostly interested in this book for commentary and evaluation of his work within the historical community.
How Woodward came to write a biography of Tom Watson. P. 32
To Chapel Hill. P. 37
This book is loosely written.
As he began his graduate work at UNC the fall of 1934 he was discouraged to discover stale Southern thinking in Chapel Hill as if the faculty were only interested in traditional Southern historical defense. P. 39
As Woodward began his graduate work at UNC the Dunning School was in full control in the South.
The author does a good job of describing the hold the Dunning School had over Southern historiography in the 30's. He sort of insinuates that Woodward disagreed but I am not sure if did disagree in fact.
Woodward was an ideas person, not a nuts and bolts person. P. 45
Despite being a Southerner and literature being his first love, he could not finish Faulkner's Sound and Fury. Nor Margaret Mitchell though he adored Thomas Wolfe. P. 46
It seems that Woodward barely passed his PHD oral exams as if he were almost indifferent to it. He was not perhaps an historian's historian. P. 50
He seems to have ignored and/or confused great swaths of history. P. 50
In his Phd exams he was long on promise and long on generalizations but short on details. He did not know many facts. P 50
His dissertation on Tom Watson was supervised by Howard K. Beale.
Fascinating that he started preferring literature over history which to me explains his carelessness over historical facts. Perhaps he put some literature storytelling in the Watson book.
Philosophers like to explain their ideas by telling little stories about experiments they conduct in their heads, like the time Descartes tried to convince himself that he didn’t exist, and found that he couldn’t, thereby proving that he did. Such deductive logic leads me to point out that I once tried to convince myself that I was descended from a Mother Lion, but having found that I could not so convince myself, I concluded that I sometimes confuse fantasy and reality. Maybe I don't really know from whence I came. Call me Freddy X.
Pointing to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, some Democrats and activists have also dismissed the former president as an autocrat and authoritarian who must be stopped at all costs.
But much of the rhetoric from the declared and potential Republican candidates so far is remarkable for its dystopian tone. In many high-profile moments, these Republicans portray the nation as locked in an existential battle, where the stark combat lines denote not just policy disagreements but warring camps of saviors vs. villains, and where political opponents are regularly demonized.
They warn that Biden and a “radical,” “woke mob” of liberals are determined to “destroy” and “ruin” the nation.
Frank Luntz, a pollster and communication analyst who said he “came of age in the days of Ronald Reagan,” said that in the current Republican Party, gone is the era of Reagan’s sanguine optimism.
“Trump has turned Republican politics on its head, ” Luntz said. “We were so much more positive and hopeful, and it was Republicans who looked to the future with excitement and energy, but those days are long gone.”
-SALON.COM