"The power of righteous vexation is what keeps so many old Democrats hanging on in nursing homes long past the time they should have kicked off. Ancient crones from FDR's time are still walking the halls, kept alive by anger at what has been done to our country. Old conservationists, feminists, grizzled veterans of the civil rights era fight off melanoma, emphysema, Montezuma, thanks to the miracle drug of anger. Slackers and cynics abound, not to mention nihilists in golf pants and utter idiots. Time to clean some clocks. As Frost might have written, "The woods are lovely, dark and thick. But I have many butts to kick and some to poke and just one stick."
Garrison Keillor
enigma 1: something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained; 2: One that is puzzling, ambiguous, or inexplicable. 3: A dark, obscure, or inexplicable saying; a riddle; a statement, the hidden meaning of which is to be discovered or guessed.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Monday, October 02, 2006
Why Voters Like Values
"...values sell because they’re an antidote to the endemic mental health problem of our time: depression.
Humans demand that there be a clear right and wrong. You’ve got to believe that the track you’ve taken is the right track. You get depressed if you’re not certain as to what it is you’re supposed to be doing or what’s right and wrong in the world.
People need to divide the world into good and evil, us and them. To do otherwise – to entertain the possibility that life is not black and white, but variously shaded in gray – is perhaps more honest, rational and decent. But it’s also, psychically, a recipe for disaster, as are the psychic pressures of life in our multicultural, tolerant, globalist, egalitarian, post-1960’s era. It all leads to great uncertainty as to what is right and what is wrong. That is very conducive to depression.
The Republican Party wins elections because the Democrats – with their perceived agenda of tolerance, multiculturalism and equality – are inherently depressing." Jerome Kagan via a column by Judith Warner
Humans demand that there be a clear right and wrong. You’ve got to believe that the track you’ve taken is the right track. You get depressed if you’re not certain as to what it is you’re supposed to be doing or what’s right and wrong in the world.
People need to divide the world into good and evil, us and them. To do otherwise – to entertain the possibility that life is not black and white, but variously shaded in gray – is perhaps more honest, rational and decent. But it’s also, psychically, a recipe for disaster, as are the psychic pressures of life in our multicultural, tolerant, globalist, egalitarian, post-1960’s era. It all leads to great uncertainty as to what is right and what is wrong. That is very conducive to depression.
The Republican Party wins elections because the Democrats – with their perceived agenda of tolerance, multiculturalism and equality – are inherently depressing." Jerome Kagan via a column by Judith Warner
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