Lately out of sheer intellectual boredom I have been comparing myself to Aldous Huxley. Like Huxley I abhor popular culture, and my disdain knows few limits. Like Huxley I think we are amusing ourselves these days into irrelevancy. Huxley foretold the current world better than Orwell. Where I part company with Huxley is over his perennial philosophy---beyond my fathoming---and with his doors of perception---the 60's are over, Aldous, and Timothy Leary and The Greening of America will not be making curtain calls although writer Thomas Wolfe might be seen winking offstage.

Chauncey Devega on DeSantis in Salon.com

 At DeSantis’ command and encouragement, Florida, like other red states, has implemented a thought crime regime where teaching the real history of Black Americans, and the country’s complex history more generally, has been banned and replaced with right-wing patriotic education that “does not make white children uncomfortable." Florida’s fascist authoritarian thought crime regime includes such measures as banning books, harassing, and firing teachers and other educators who are not in agreement with the goals of the white right and neofascist movement, defunding school programs and departments, and rubbleizing the once respected New College of Florida. DeSantis’ Orwellian thought crime regime is an extension of a decades-long campaign by the American right-wing and “conservative” movement to destroy public education as part of a much larger project to end social democracy.

 Nikki Haley is not a racist. She showed formidable leadership as South Carolina governor, in the aftermath of the 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in her state. But as a former MAGA activist now working to persuade people to leave the MAGA movement, I see Haley's recent comments on the Civil War and slavery in a particular light. They reflect the intense white fright pervasive in MAGA supporters as a result of continuous demographic change, and they affirm that a demythologization of historical nostalgia is necessary. 

-Rich Logis in Salon.com

republican excuses

 

When tens of millions of Americans reject the premise of our Constitution, resort to fascist methods to hold power and demand the country be redefined along racial and religious lines, no structural remodeling nor crop of virtuous politicians can save the republic.

So, yes, reform the system and vote for better people, but the only real solution to what ails us is a surge of democratic activism, civic involvement and collective rededication to our constitutional system. If that happens, the rest will follow.

-Jennifer Rubin in the WaPost

 A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened. Then, again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revaluation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but clearly it is likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in England usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or, on the other hand, that modem physics has proved that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism.

-George Orwell

 Finishing at Lakeshore.

 Christmas at Lakeshore Hospital.