Starting out from the fact that the frustrated predominate among the early adherents of all mass movements and that they usually join of their own accord, it is assumed: 1) that frustration of itself, without any proselytizing prompting from the outside, can generate most of the peculiar characteristics of the true believer; 2) that an effective technique of conversion consists basically in the inculcation and fixation of proclivities and responses indigenous to the frustrated mind….
The fact that both the French and the Russian revolutions turned into nationalist movements seems to indicate that in modern times nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated.
The love of humanity is a thing supposed to be professed only by vulgar and officious philanthropists, or by saints of a superhuman detachment and universality. As a matter of fact, love of humanity is the commonest and most natural of the feelings of a fresh nature, and almost every one has felt it alight capriciously upon him when looking at a crowded park or a room full of dancers. The love of those whom we do not know is quite as eternal a sentiment as the love of those whom we do know. In our friends the richness of life is proved to us by what we have gained; in the faces in the street the richness of life is proved to us by the hint of what we have lost.
Consider the Khan affair. Were Trump’s remarks tasteless? Absolutely. But no more so — I’d actually say quite a bit less so — than countless other comments he’s made over the past year. But wait: How dare I! This is a Gold Star family! A grieving father and mother whose son, Army Captain Humayan Khan, gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country! What could be more horrifying than to slander them?
Here’s the thing: The moment Khizr and Ghazala Khan took the stage at the DNC to deliver a speech that savaged the Republican presidential nominee and endorsed the Democratic presidential nominee, they ceased to be any old “Gold Star family.” They became political actors and legitimate political targets. You can’t claim immunity from political attack after you’ve launched an attack of your own in primetime at a political convention.
Damon Linker. Overall, Damon makes a good argument in this post — you should read it all. But I think I can explain why people (in and out of the media) reacted as they did to Trump’s sneering at the Khans. It demonstrated something that many of us already knew, which is that Trump thinks about absolutely everything and everyone in terms of himself. The only thing that matters to Trump, in any and every situation, is: What do you think about me? Because if you praise me, I will praise you, and if you criticize me, I will make every effort to destroy you. That’s it — that’s his entire worldviw, that is the single principle on which he acts. Doesn’t matter whether your son died in combat, doesn’t matter if you are disabled, You come at me in any way, shape, or form and I will ruin you. And when we’re reminded that that the man who wants to be the leader of the most powerful nation on earth thinks that way we’re shaken, and will continue to be shaken no matter how many times he demonstrates it. Because the prospect of a man that profoundly, pathologically narcissistic holding the powers of an Imperial Presidency and the nuclear codes doesn’t really bear contemplating, if you have any moral sense at all.
This Cypriot incense
burner was discovered in the lost ancient Egyptian city of Thonis-Heracleion. Over 2,500 years old,
this object would have been used for burning fragrances such as incense, an
important ritual both in Egyptian and Cypriot religious practice. This seated
sphinx, part-woman, part-lion, carries a bowl on its head. Since the 3rd
millennium BC in Egypt, a male sphinx embodied the powerful pharaoh. Greek and
Cypriot culture transformed it into a fantastical female creature and guardian
of borders, especially that between life and death.
See more incredible objects
preserved and buried under the sea for over a thousand years in the BP exhibition Sunken cities: Egypt’s lost worlds (19 May – 27 November 2016).
Cypriot incense burner. Thonis-Heracleion, early 5th century BC. National Museum of Alexandria.
The Satanic Temple — which has been offering tongue-in-cheek support for the fallen angel in public arenas that have embraced prayer and parochial ceremonies — is bringing its fight over constitutional separation of church and state to the nation’s schools.
But the group’s plan for public schoolchildren isn’t actually about promoting worship of the devil. The Satanic Temple doesn’t espouse a belief in the existence of a supernatural being that other religions identify solemnly as Satan, or Lucifer, or Beelzebub. The Temple rejects all forms of supernaturalism and is committed to the view that scientific rationality provides the best measure of reality.
According to Mesner, who goes by the professional name of Lucien Greaves, “Satan” is just a “metaphorical construct” intended to represent the rejection of all forms of tyranny over the human mind.
The sexual assault scandal that took down Baylor University’s president and revered football coach also found a problem with a bedrock of the school’s faith-based education: a student conduct code banning alcohol, drugs and premarital sex that may have driven some victims into silence.
Investigators with the Pepper Hamilton law firm who dug into Baylor’s response to sexual assault claims determined the school’s rigid approach to drugs, alcohol and sex and “perceived judgmental responses” to victims who reported being raped “created barriers” to reporting assaults. Some women faced the prospect of their family being notified.
“A number of victims were told that if they made a report of rape, their parents would be informed of the details of where they were and what they were doing,” said Chad Dunn, a Houston attorney who represents six women who have sued Baylor under the anonymous identification of Jane Doe.
1) Let it all come out, and the sooner the better. Let no element of the corruption remain hidden.
2) Say someone involved with insider trading were discovered and blackmailed by a co-worker: would we argue that the laws against insider trading were to blame? There is nothing wrong with a conduct code such as the one Baylor has. What is wrong, what is absolutely wicked, is the use of that code to pressure victims of sexual assault into hiding the truth of what happened to them.
The essay (or the essay-affect) at its best interrogates these questions of truth and verification, bringing the reader directly into the process of evaluating fact and fiction, and providing the reader with some kind of navigation for our current state in which truthfulness is such a fraught concept. In a contemporary landscape in which fact is so regularly and systematically disregarded, the essay responds not just by demanding its own truth, but by turning our attention to the means by which we evaluate the information around us. Biss, Nelson, Jameson and other modern essayists all work, as D’Agata says of Joe Brainard’s essay, ‘I Remember,’ to 'engineer significance out of doubt.’
The frontispiece (above) offers a striking visual image of a “comprehensive” organization of knowledge. Extending from the bottom of the page to the top right side is a bookcase filled with books of all shapes and sizes. Its immensity is highlighted by a marked contrast with two much smaller men standing opposite it on the left-hand side of the page. One of the two men, cast in bright light, stands with an outstretched arm gesturing toward the towering shelf of books, whose spines are visible in a single glance. A vaulted ceiling extends across the top of the page and imbues the entire image with a sense of light-filled openness in which everything is illuminated and knowable. This image is a visualization of what Jöcher and Mencken claim their lexicon to be: an accessible, complete, and clear view of the entire scholarly world. It is an image of what eighteenth-century scholars referred to as the “empire of erudition” [Reich der Gelehrsamkeit]––a unified, homogenous realm of knowledge, theoretically accessible to all fellow scholars in print. The lexicon reveals, as though it were pulling back a curtain as suggested in the top left hand corner, an already organized and established set of knowledge.
And yet, this particular image of knowledge or learning is one of book bindings, closed books shelved one beside the other. And the sheer immensity of the bookshelf, how it dwarfs the two men opposite it, is ominous. With the unlimited vertical horizon, the bookshelf could expand infinitely. With every newly published book, it could continue to grow upward, but the two men would be left to gesture in vain toward a accumulating mass of print. Furthermore, the shelf may well be visible, but there is no ladder, no way to actually reach the books. Would its shadow not ultimately obscure those two men gazing skyward? And what was to prevent the bookshelf, teetering under the weight of ever-more print, from tipping over and crushing them?
I put this appeal before any other observations on Dickens. First let us sympathise, if only for an instant, with the hopes of the Dickens period, with that cheerful trouble of change. If democracy has disappointed you, do not think of it as a burst bubble, but at least as a broken heart, an old love-affair. Do not sneer at the time when the creed of humanity was on its honeymoon; treat it with the dreadful reverence that is due to youth. For you, perhaps, a drearier philosophy has covered and eclipsed the earth. The fierce poet of the Middle Ages wrote, ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’ over the gates of the lower world. The emancipated poets of to-day have written it over the gates of this world. But if we are to understand the story which follows, we must erase that apocalyptic writing, if only for an hour. We must recreate the faith of our fathers, if only as an artistic atmosphere If, then, you are a pessimist, in reading this story, forego for a little the pleasures of pessimism. Dream for one mad moment that the grass is green. Unlearn that sinister learning that you think so clear; deny that deadly knowledge that you think you know. Surrender the very flower of your culture; give up the very jewel of your pride; abandon hopelessness, all ye who enter here.
