Letters to the Editor
Jkalos
Published Letters: 486 Editor's Choice: 3
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Well, RMP
[Read the article: Championing mainstream political thought while pretending to oppose it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that Levinson interview was fascinating. In a way it increases my sense of helplessness, since now I have been educated into seeing 6 more things critically wrong with our system I did not clearly understand before.
But clarity is to be prized, especially in dangerous situations.
Thanks for the link.
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Come on Glorious Girl
[Read the article: Mitt Romney's pursuit of tyrannical power, literally]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Enough with the puppies and kittens and such. It doesn't seem funny or witty to me and makes me feel rather lonely. I hate being made to feel lonely by a glorious girl.
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An old professor
[Read the article: Mitt Romney's pursuit of tyrannical power, literally]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]from Italy once told me, when I was part of a NEH seminar with him, something that has stuck with me. I was young then, and had become visibly upset with some of the participants who were trying to hijack the seminar to fit their own agenda, and being quite rude in the process. Seeing my dismay, he took me aside and gave me advice I remember tonight reading some of the not so nice comments some have written. "Whenever something real happens, Jim" he told me (and you must imagine it with a heavy Italian accent)"always there are the jerks. Without fail, Jim " he told me "when truth is spoken, where beauty results, there will come those who jeer at it and mock it and say ugly things. When Moses was at the burning bush, I just know, Jim, there was some jerk in the weeds jeering. Never forget: when it is real, always there are the jerks."
The old professors words came back to me tonight as I read some serious troll posts on this thread tonight, whose venom puzzles me and makes me wince.
Glenn, something real going on around here I think.
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Barefoot.
[Read the article: Hillary and the mean kids on the bus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I always go barefoot when making comments here. Well, sometimes I wear sandals.
What do you wear, bebop-o?
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@William Timberman
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You wrote that "The Apocalypse doesn't always come when it's called". Now that made my day. Apocalypse, from the Greek apokaluptien: to uncover, to reveal, a revelation. What if the uncovering, the revelation is a good thing? Wouldn't that upset all those expecting some horrible blood-letting and civilization destroying event? I've always thought that it would be s horrible surprise for those who look forward to seeing their enemies burn in hell if in fact hell was merely a place of rehabilatation (though who would in fact need rehabilitation would be an interesting topic too: anyone here ever read Flannery O'conner's short story called, appropriately enough, "Revelation.") Happy thought: the unveiling is one of hope. As you wrote, "the Apocalypse has too much self-respect to do anyones bidding,+-- or perhaps to be what what anyone wants it to be. I hope bethincary is right and there are no accidents, though that is not my persuasion. But now and then something fills me with hope. Listening to Obama's speech after he won Iowa made me imagine what it would be like to be proud to be an American again.
And bepop-o: the weather is really nice here today. Sunshine, crisp air, birds singing. My mom has recovered enough from her surgery and time in intensive care to cook me a breakfast sausage: a regular unveiling.
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Thank you
[Read the article: Remembering Bob Watts]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]for sharing these memories. I too had no idea of the person responsible for all the witty illustrations and images i have been seeing. I am sorry for your loss.
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Ah, DC Law1:
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You made me smile for saying so well what I am feeling today. Thanks. It feels good to have hope for a change. Its been a long cold lonely winter.
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@Chris C
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well said: reading the comments here has become part of my daily education into reality (I need all the help I can get). As for the trolls or whatever you call them, they mainly puzzle me; I cannot understand not wanting to truly engage in argument (but as a teacher of logic and philosophy, "argument" for me means "a joint attempt to get at the truth of the matter."). I sometimes wonder what it would be like to meet these troll posters in person: would I be able to really talk with them then? Or would they still refuse the conversation? I think RMP and others are right about how to engage them here: by not engaging them, or if you do, to be so relentlessly rational that Socrates would cheer if he read it.
Again, thanks to all the thoughtful posters here. Y'all make my day.
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Humanity
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]dances past, and I stare at it in wonder.
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American Shakespeare, you said,
[Read the article: The role of political reporters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and it made me think of something I told a class of freshman once. It was in a seminar for a year long class in cultural literacy (classic texts of one sort or another) that they have to take at my college, and we had read for that week a book called "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neal Hurston. For some reason I had never read that book before then, and I was astonished by it. Simply astonished at the beauty and depth of that text, and amazed that I had not read it before. I told my students that morning in seminar--and I was serious--that I found her book and its prose and its imagery greater than anything I had ever read in Shakespeare. Perhaps, I told them, that was because it was a more contemporary text and affected me more, but that I really didn't think so: that I was willing to argue that this text by Hurston matched anything I had ever read for speaking about the human condition in unmatched english.
Anyway: you never know when you might run across an American Shakespeare.