“Here in the US, there’s a growning recognition that this is a bit like WWF. That it’s entertaining, but it’s not real. And I kknow people want to say,, yeah, they believe in the “Big Lie” in some cases, but I think people recognize that it’s a lot of show and bombast. But it’s going nowhere. The election is over. It was fair … let’s move on.”
-Mitt Romney
Peter Thiel on “The Straussian Moment”
says well we’ve had all these years ofwarfare over religion we’ll stop askingimportant questions and all thesedecades these centuries after theEnlightenment here’s the world we’vereached this is the way I read you youcan correct my reading but let me finishquoting you instead of violent warsthere could be violent video gamesinstead of heroic featsthere could be thrilling amusement parkrides instead of serious thought therecould be intrigues of all sortsin a soap opera it is a world wherepeople spend their lives amusingthemselves to death close quotenow that is a devastating indictment ofmuch of contemporary America correctwell it is I mean I think this has been06:59the trend of modernity now it’s it’s07:02it’s not as though politics has07:04disappeared though it’s it’s often just07:05gets displaced in various ways but but07:08yes I think there is this this07:10incredible degree to which we’ve we’ve07:14we’ve substituted the realities of07:18politics for these sort of increasingly07:20fictionalized worlds and and it’s07:23probably uh that’s probably a very very07:25unhealthy thing there’s sort of a07:27slightly different frame that I’ve often07:29given on this is is that in in the last07:3340 or 50 years there’s been a shift from07:36exteriority which I which you know doing07:41things in the real world to the sort of07:43interior world which is sort of in a way07:46can be thought of this also the shift07:47from politics to entertainment or07:50something like that and and the the from07:54a dr. Phil a the powerful frame I give07:57is you know almost exactly 50 years ago08:00today and you know July of 1969 men08:03reached the moon and three weeks later08:05Woodstock began and with the benefit of08:07hindsight we can say that that’s when08:10you know progress ended and when the08:12hippies took over the country or08:14something like that and then we’ve had08:16we’ve had this incredible shift to08:18interior tea in the decades since then I08:20would include things like the drug08:22counterculture I would include08:24videogames you know maybe a lot of08:27entertainment more generally you know08:30there’s sort of parts of the internet08:31that can be scored both ways but but08:34certainly there all these things where08:36we’ve shifted towards the you know your08:39world of yoga meditation there’s a world08:41of interior culture that sort of and it11:04Rene Girard is in some ways theaddresses an aspect of human nature wellit’s it’s good it’s the very thing thatthe Enlightenment says no no don’t eventhink about such things rightyeah well the Enlightenment alwayswhitewashes violence it’s one of thethere are many things we can’t thinkabout an under Enlightenment reason butone one is certainly violence itself andand if you go to the anthropologicalmyth of the Enlightenment it’s the mythof the social contract so what happenswhen everybody is that everybody’selse’s throat what the Enlightenmentsays is everybody in the middle of thecrisis sits down and has a nice legalchat and draws up a social contract andthat’s maybe maybe that’s the foundingmyth the central lie of theEnlightenment if you will and whatGerrard says something very differentmust have happened and when everybody’sat everybody’s throat the violencedoesn’t just resolve itself and maybe itgets channeled against a a specificscapegoat where the war of all againstall becomes a war can of all against oneand then somehow gets resolved but in ain a very violent way and so I think youknow what what Gerrard and Schmidt orMachiavelli or you know the12:18judeo-christian inspiration all have in12:20common is this idea that human nature is12:22problematic its violent it’s um you know12:25it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s not12:27straightforward at all what what you do
Shane Claiborne (Onbeing)
And then there comes a point, as Dr. Martin Luther King said so well, where we’re called to be the Good Samaritan and lift our neighbor out of the ditch. But after you lift so many people out of the ditch, you start to say, “Maybe the whole road to Jericho needs to be transformed.
Ms. Tippett: There’s something not just in the way you see your Christianity, but in the way you look at the world. It’s a very holistic vision. So, for example, you’ve taken the old adage that if you give someone a fish, they’ll eat for a day, but if you teach them how to fish, they can eat for a lifetime. But you say, “We also need to ask who owns the pond and who polluted it.
.. And I’m convinced that if the Christian church loses this generation, it will be not because we didn’t entertain them, but because we didn’t dare them with the truth of the world. It won’t be because we’d made the Gospel too hard, but because we made it too easy, and we just played games with kids and didn’t actually challenge them to think about how they live.
There’s something magnetic about a group of people that say, “Hey, we don’t have it all figured out, and we need each other.” We’re broken people and in the middle of that brokenness I feel like the spirit is able to connect.
Paris Is Out! – Broadway Play – Original | IBDB
http://www.playbill.com/article/looking-back-on-donald-trumps-broadway-ventureand-his-playbill-bio
Liberals, You’re Not as Smart as You Think
And a backlash against liberals — a backlash that most liberals don’t seem to realize they’re causing — is going to get President Trump re-elected.
People often vote against things instead of voting for them: against ideas, candidates and parties. Democrats, like Republicans, appreciate this whenever they portray their opponents as negatively as possible. But members of political tribes seem to have trouble recognizing that they, too, can push people away and energize them to vote for the other side. Nowhere is this more on display today than in liberal control of the commanding heights of American culture.
.. Liberals dominate the entertainment industry, many of the most influential news sources and America’s universities. This means that people with progressive leanings are everywhere in the public eye — and are also on the college campuses attended by many people’s children or grandkids. These platforms come with a lot of power to express values, confer credibility and celebrity and start national conversations that others really can’t ignore.
But this makes liberals feel more powerful than they are. Or, more accurately, this kind of power is double-edged. Liberals often don’t realize how provocative or inflammatory they can be. In exercising their power, they regularly not only persuade and attract but also annoy and repel.
In fact, liberals may be more effective at causing resentment than in getting people to come their way. I’m not talking about the possibility that jokes at the 2011 correspondents’ association dinner may have pushed Mr. Trump to run for president to begin with. I mean that the “army of comedy” that Michael Moore thought would bring Mr. Trump down will instead be what builds him up in the minds of millions of voters.
.. Some liberals have gotten far out ahead of their fellow Americans but are nonetheless quick to criticize those who haven’t caught up with them.
.. Liberals denounce “cultural appropriation” without, in many cases, doing the work of persuading people that there is anything wrong with, say, a teenager not of Chinese descent wearing a Chinese-style dress to prom or eating at a burrito cart run by two non-Latino women.
.. Pressing a political view from the Oscar stage, declaring a conservative campus speaker unacceptable, flatly categorizing huge segments of the country as misguided — these reveal a tremendous intellectual and moral self-confidence that smacks of superiority. It’s one thing to police your own language and a very different one to police other people’s. The former can set an example. The latter is domineering.
.. This judgmental tendency became stronger during the administration of President Barack Obama, though not necessarily because of anything Mr. Obama did. Feeling increasingly emboldened, liberals were more convinced than ever that conservatives were their intellectual and even moral inferiors.
.. college campuses — which many take to be what a world run by liberals would look like — seemed increasingly intolerant of free inquiry.
.. It was during these years that the University of California included the phrase “America is the land of opportunity” on a list of discouraged microaggressions.
.. Champions of inclusion can watch what they say and explain what they’re doing without presuming to regulate what words come out of other people’s mouths. Campus activists can allow invited visitors to speak and then, after that event, hold a teach-in discussing what they disagree with. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that states had to allow same-sex marriage, the fight, in some quarters, turned to pizza places unwilling to cater such weddings. Maybe don’t pick that fight?
.. Liberals can act as if they’re not so certain — and maybe actually not be so certain — that bigotry motivates people who disagree with them on issues like immigration.
.. Without sacrificing their principles, liberals can come across as more respectful of others. Self-righteousness is rarely attractive, and even more rarely rewarded.
.. many liberals seem primed to write off nearly half the country as irredeemable.
.. But it is an unjustified leap to conclude that anyone who supports him in any way is racist, just as it would be a leap to say that anyone who supported Hillary Clinton was racist because she once made veiled references to “superpredators.”
Liberals are trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle. When they use their positions in American culture to lecture, judge and disdain, they push more people into an opposing coalition that liberals are increasingly prone to think of as deplorable. That only validates their own worst prejudices about the other America.
For the Oscar-winners, the times, they’ve a-changed
The four-hour ceremony threatened to turn into a lecture on how Hollywood is already busily vanquishing racism, sexism and other ills
But the ceremony eventually came to feel less like an outraged call to arms than a long lecture, written in thick black gold capital letters, about what a wonderfully warm and welcoming place Hollywood is. Everyone agreed that the times weren’t just a changin’. They had already changed.
.. It’s understandable that, in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, the ceremony’s organisers wanted to repair some of the damage done to their industry’s reputation. But the Academy isn’t practising everything it preaches. There may have been a utopian range of presenters on the stage, but they handed the main prizes to a male director, male screenwriters, a male composer, a male cinematographer, a male editor, a male costume designer, and so on. Over all, there were six female winners on the night, and 33 male winners, which means that, basically, men won everything they possibly could, and that the female nominees didn’t get to stand up until Ms McDormand insisted that they do so during her rabble-rousing speech.
What’s Trump’s parade really about? His bottomless insecurity.
Well, of course the president who claimed bone spurs to dodge the Vietnam War wants the biggest, bestest military parade ever, with lots of tanks and rockets and flags — zillions of flags — and fighter jets screaming overhead. Why is anyone surprised?
.. anyone who fails to cheer as the bands play and the troops march by will surely be guilty of treason.
.. Trump has already matched North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in dangerous, unhinged rhetoric. Now it appears he hopes to surpass his rival in linear mileage of meaningless military display.
.. It is hard to imagine any other president summoning his generals to demand not a better strategy in Afghanistan, not a detailed plan for success in Syria, but rather an elaborate entertainment that gives him an opportunity to be seen reviewing the troops. In this reality-show presidency, it sounds like the kind of extravaganza that one could imagine as a series finale. If so, bring it on.
.. There is a semi-plausible argument that Trump could consciously use such a patriotic extravaganza as a wedge, the way he has used the national anthem protests in the NFL. It could be a with-me-or-against-me ploy. If you support the parade, you love America; if you don’t, you don’t.
.. But a celebratory military parade with nothing to celebrate could also highlight the gulf between Trump’s campaign promises and his actions. He pledged to wind wars down and bring the troops home; he has done quite the opposite.
.. My guess is that both his narcissism and his authoritarianism are at play in his need to honor himself with a parade.
.. Despite his boastful tweetstorms, the president clearly realizes that his approval ratings are historically low. He is so unpopular that he will not even risk a state visit to London to open the new U.S. Embassy there for fear of being humiliated by mass protests.
.. The campaign-style rallies he so enjoys do not appear well-designed to advance a political agenda; they do, however, boost his spirits and massage his ego.
.. He would be saluted and serenaded to his heart’s content. It would be an egomaniac’s heaven.
.. Trump’s big parade would also be a massive display of power — not so much the nation’s as his own. There is not a soul on Earth who doubts the overwhelming strength of the U.S. military. I can think of one soul, however, who is insecure enough in his own authority that he accuses members of Congress who do not stand and applaud him of treason.