The Dilettante abides
The Dilettante abides
Two recent tweets (not mine): Western pundits in thrall to American “dissident” conservatarianism all “independently” share the same opinions on Covid, ecology, Ukraine, and many other topics. Source. Also, check out Russian conspiracy theorists from 20 years ago. You may…
Paul Krugman admits that he underestimated the current rate of inflation when assessing the impact of the $1.9-billion “American Rescue Plan” early in 2021. On the other hand, Lawrence Summers warned in February 2021 that inflation might rise too high…
A few years ago, I tried listening to Jordan Peterson debating Marxism with Slavoj Žižek. It soon became clear to me that Peterson was completely unprepared: he knew next to nothing about Marxism. Or, perhaps, he was deliberately playing the…
I’ve argued that anti-abortionists have a common cause with Big Brother worshipers. The word “surveillance” has already appeared in some news headlines on states’ enforcement of their anti-abortion laws. But there’s another consequence: young professionals are now less likely to…
On abortion, my thoughts aren’t much different now than in 2016: …[E]nforcing a universal ban on abortion will require a greater degree of governmental interference into the private lives of the citizenry. It would make every woman of childbearing age…
In Tablet, David Mikics quotes Wallace Stevens and explains: His grief is that his mother should feed on him, himself and what he saw,In that distant chamber, a bearded queen, wicked in her dead light. […] Madame la Fleurie, the flowering earth,…
Over the past three years, I’ve written more than once about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine: Will there be war? (December 2018); A test of American resolve (April 2021); Operation Eviction (January 2022). Also, this comment on Tyler Cowen’s…
In a recent NYT column, Fiona Hill gave a convincing summary of the Kremlin’s strategy: This time, Mr. Putin’s aim is bigger than closing NATO’s “open door” to Ukraine and taking more territory — he wants to evict the United…
Tyler Cowen wrote in his Bloomberg column last week: Two questions are of particular concern: Is he [Putin] rational? And can he be deterred? …The answers, unfortunately, are: Yes and no. That is, he is probably rational and cannot easily…
According to the Cambridge Dictionary of Spanish, brea means tar or pitch. Confusingly, the Spanish definition provided alongside the English translation is “sustancia resinosa de ciertas coníferas.” Roughly, “the resinous substance of certain coniferous plants,” which sounds more like resin…
Fiona Hill’s new book, There Is Nothing for You Here, went on sale last week – five and a half years after Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin had been published (co-authored with Clifford Gaddy). Hill served as the national…
I was trying to write a sensible comment to a piece on Medium, It’s Time We Tell the Truth about the Rolling Stones, when I came across a stunning essay by Margo Jefferson. Ripping Off Black Music, published in 1973…