Works of comedy are now often judged on their “cringeworthiness,” which is a shorthand way of describing an exact combination of hubris and humiliation, in situations that are once absurd and yet universal. Its ingredients include neurosis, self-absorption and the certitude that hell really is other people. It involves being a kind of loser, but never a clown.I'm reminded of one of the few Seinfeld's I recall (other than "Festivus") about "spongeworthy". Once sex is reduced to an amoral "social activity" like going to a movie or sporting event, devoid of other meaning, then a prospective participant can be "rated" by an a priori metric -- in this case, relative to using up a contraceptive sponge.
... let’s just say it, in 2016 Lucy would have to accidentally defecate in her pants through some preventable fault of her own,because that’s universally cringeworthy and that’s what happens (all the time) in Judd Apatow’s world or Amy Schumer’s, or Kristen Wiig’s, Seth Rogen’s and all the rest. They all owe Garry Shandling. In particular, “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “The Comeback,” “The Office,” “30 Rock,” “Veep” — their debt to Shandling is notable.I'm not sorry I missed it. It does help me understand how we got the Clintons, BO, Trump, etc, but I don't really see where that can be of any assistance. In a meaningless world, people will come up with things that take up their time between birth and death. The vast bulk will not "have the time" to take in a Good Friday service, but would rather be "occupied" by something from the paragraph above.
Didn’t you write your Ph.D. thesis on the Belgian Congo?
I did, and I wrote my master’s thesis on Japanese and Russian railroad construction in the 19th century.
So why are you bashing people with Ph.D.s?
Because I have been in the real world, doing real things, and I understand the limitations of academic knowledge. I think it’s greatly overrated.
Look, you read a lot of books about how the world works, you are an educated person, you care about policy. When you hear Trump address subjects like NATO, it doesn’t worry you—
No. I read what he said about NATO, and I think it has been grossly taken out of context. What he said about NATO was the Bush–Rumsfeld position, which is that the Europeans ought to pick up more of the slack.
I want to get back to what Trump is doing, and we both know he is playing on impulses
—No, no we don’t.
We don’t?
What we know is that Trump has had the nerve to raise questions in a clear language because he represents the millions of Americans who are sick and tired of being told that they have to be guilt-ridden and keep their mouth shut.
So why are Trump’s negatives so high, if he is giving a voice to the masses?Look, Trump has been campaigning in a Republican primary with harsh language and has been routinely attacked by the elite media as much as they can. Reagan went through the same cycle. Do you know how many points Reagan was behind Carter in March?
It was double digits, right?Twenty-five. Not just double digits. Twenty-five points. So if you had talked to me in March of 1980, you would have said, “How can I support this crazy right-winger who makes movies with chimpanzees and is 25 points behind Carter?” And I would have said, “Because I think he can win.” Which, by the way, he did.
Is there really nothing that worries you about this guy? The way he deals with reporters, his campaign manager, etc.? You are not at all worried he has authoritarian tendencies?
No. No. [Laughs.] Which part of that is supposed to bother me?
But that masks deeper structural problems with Belgium’s taxation. The taxes (including social security) on labor have been so high that they encouraged evasion and the development of a sizeable black economy.
"The view that there is a God, [Richard Swinburne] says leads us to expect the things that we observe -- that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate in it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory there is no God he argues does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, a belief in God provides a better empirical fit ..."
If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists then that he does not. If you insist on a secular view of the world and yet you continue to pronounce some things right and some things wrong, then I hope you see the deep disharmony between the world as devised and the real world (and God) your heart knows exists. This leads us to a crucial questions. If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise?As frequent readers know, Nietzsche and a lot of other lesser philosophers have decided long ago that "God is dead, so power = morality" (might=right)". The baby of morality goes out with the bathwater of God, and the world ends up arguing in strange gibberish that has been known to be gibberish since the Greeks. It seems to be getting clearer every day that our civilization is dying rapidly without God.
"It is only Grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion. Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living lives as we choose".He quotes a lot of CS Lewis, who I love, he also is high on Jonathan Edwards who is now on my reading list. There are others. This book is a TREASURE to anyone who seeks God and restoration of our broken nation and world! I can't recommend it highly enough!!!
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
Let’s not forget that Bork had been approved unanimously by the Senate for the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. So much for that Garland talking point.We are WAY into the age of incivility and NO RULES! The Bork nomination was a great milepost on the slide to destruction. The fact is, if you are partnered with a bad actor and want to survive, you HAVE to play "Tit for Tat" according to game theory and the Bible ("an eye for an eye") as the article mentions.
"It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future."Remember, this is '93 -- the USSR is just gone, the first Gulf War was 1991, and appeared very economic / Arab on Arab (Iraq invaded Kuwait). The next paragraph covers the
Everyone thought that the world was going to go into a "golden age" as science replaced religion, but as the 20th century wore on with it's two world wars, Korea, Mao killing millions in China, Vietnam, Pol Pot killing millions in Cambodia, and scores of regional bloodbaths, religion started to look better than it once id.
In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "the wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth-century pattern lasted until the end of World War I. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy.
The "unsecularization of the world," George Weigel has remarked, "is one of the dominant social facts of life in the late twentieth century." The revival of religion, "la revanche de Dieu," as Gilles Kepel labeled it, provides a basis for identity and commitment that transcends national boundaries and unites civilizations.I'd argue that in the West -- Europe and the US, religion has NOT recovered and along with it's continued decline, any sense of culture or "civilization" has declined with it. The cultures are less damaged in Europe, but in the US, the culture is on life support at best.
Fifth, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones. In the former Soviet Union, communists can become democrats, the rich can become poor and the poor rich, but Russians cannot become Estonians and Azeris cannot become Armenians. In class and ideological conflicts, the key question was "Which side are you on?" and people could and did choose sides and change sides. In conflicts between civilizations, the question is "What are you?" That is a given that cannot be changed. And as we know, from Bosnia to the Caucasus to the Sudan, the wrong answer to that question can mean a bullet in the head. Even more than ethnicity, religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people. A person can be half-French and half-Arab and simultaneously even a citizen of two countries. It is more difficult to be half-Catholic and half-Muslim.So the US is essentially unarmed in this conflict, because there is no longer any answer to "What are you". ... "black", "Christian", "progressive", etc, but NOT "American". Other than at Trump rallies, there really aren't any people very excited about "America" -- let alone rallying around it. No, it is all about "special interests" and "voting blocks" ... women, minorities, elderly, gays, the unemployed, single mothers, etc, etc ... "Americans"? You mean the "Trumpkins"???
Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.So as early as '93, there wasn't enough "American civilization" to recognize -- and there is a LOT less now! I'd argue that we are already not "playing" in this clash, but rather just LOSING.
