[Author’s note: At the online reader-comment forums of The New York Times and The Washington Post, my screen name is poodlefree.]
JUNE/JULY 2021
As a kid, I often ate a boiled hot dog on a sliced bun, with a squiggle of mustard along the frankfurter from end to end.
sentient (1632) finely sensitive in perception or feeling; aware.
Today, in the online reader-comment forum at The Washington Post, one reader’s screen name was sentient hot dog water. At 74, I wondered if, by drinking sentient hot dog water, I might experience the same rejuvenating effects as drinking from the Fountain of Youth.
"The Pentagon Papers 50 Years Later” / Andrew Bacevich / The New York Times
The Pentagon Papers revealed "a portrait of fallible policymakers concealing their ignorance behind a veil of secrecy, oblivious to their dubious assumptions. U.S. policymakers believed the problem in Vietnam would yield to a military solution. The Domino Theory contaminated all decision-making. Internal doubts were ignored or suppressed. Delusions and dishonesty reigned."
"We are in a conflict between our better angels and our worst instincts."
poodlefree
Seattle | June 13 | NYT
We Americans are playing a chess game. By way of the Oath of Office, our politicians have agreed to play by certain rules. The ultimate power of American democracy is that we ask each and every American to act in good faith and play by those rules, too. Donald Trump, the Republican Party, certain corporations, certain billionaires and the MAGA horde are acting in bad faith. In a fit of pique, they want to upend the game board and scatter the chess pieces, the Tantrum Gambit. Trump is not the Second Coming. MAGA is not the Master Race. Fascism is not the future of America. [113 recommend]
"The Lost Cause Is Back" / Charles M. Blow / The New York Times
"Conservative Americans prefer the sanitized version of American history. They will choose the myth and the lie in order to avoid guilt and atonement."
"Via the denial of American racism, Republicans are on a political crusade to protect the American myth."
poodlefree
Seattle | July 28 | NYT
At the first J6 hearing, after three hours of truthful and emotional testimony by four honest police officers, it's over. Trump is guilty. The Republican Party is guilty. The MAGA insurrectionists are guilty. Guilty of what? Pushing the new Lost Cause narrative, a “stolen election,” and cosplaying the Civil War on a new battlefield, the sullied corridors of Congress. Everybody knows that Trump ordered the hit on the Capitol. Republican denial is in the whitewash and the spin cycle is set on HIGH. [883 recommend]
[food for thought from Chris Hedges]
“No historical figure has been as manipulated, distorted and used for nefarious and self-serving ends as egregiously as Jesus Christ. Jesus has been trotted out over the past two millennia to justify a litany of evils including the Crusades, the Inquisition, the European conquest, the genocide of the native peoples of the Americas, the Puritan witch trials, the burning of heretics, slavery, the subjugation of women, the persecution of homosexuals and, in the latest iteration, the endless wars in the Middle East. Since there is so little known historically about Jesus, he is infinitely malleable. Every generation, and every brand of Christianity, has, for this reason, produced a Jesus in its own image.”
Bret Stephens: “There was a time not long ago in America when the conservative movement had a brain. That brain belonged to a public intellectual named William F. Buckley. Through the National Review, his magazine, he gave a hidden American intelligentsia a platform to develop conservative ideas. Through Firing Line, his TV show, he gave an unsuspecting American public a chance to sample conservative wit. Not all of his ideas were right, but they were always fine-tuned. And as they evolved, they went in the proper direction.”
William F. Buckley “learned to free himself of views that had come to him by the circumstances of his background, views that he concluded ran counter to values he cherished. Buckley shed isolationism, segregationism and anti-Semitism, and insisted the conservative movement do likewise.”
The hot dog has an origin story. “In 1867 on Coney Island, New York, pieman Charles Feltman, a German immigrant and baker by trade, had a cart made with a stove on which he boiled sausages, and a compartment below where he stored fresh buns. Feltman invented the first hot dog as a convenient way for beachgoers to enjoy frankfurter sausages on a long sliced bun without the hassle of plates or silverware.”
[encore insight] “It is the foundation of Western Civilization to face facts. If the facts inconvenience the beliefs, too bad for the beliefs.”