Political, Social Things Discussed

 A grab-bag this morning for whoever you are reading this. I wonder, since no one leaves comments.

I start you with three articles from Englesberg Ideas.

Anna Parker's review In search of Mitteleuropa’s lost nobility is the lightest reading, I had hopes of learning what happened to more of the Austro-Hungarian nobility after World War One. That might explain my feeling a little disappointed.

Antony Beevor's The crisis of progressivism is the one I think everyone should read. First, it gives a British perspective on America's slide into autocracy, which seems to escape both the wailing and the bitter despair of the Democratic Party that seems to be the only American response. Secondly, it gives a wider view of the social problems underlying the appeal of the strong man, one that includes the world beyond the navels of American pundits.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai's What is sprezzatura? was read out of pure curiosity. I could not recall where I had seen the term before. It came as a good reminder of what might be done with the rest of my life - and touches on what I did wrong in the past.

She sought to claim sprezzatura as a quality natural to the poet, ‘with his deep-seated horror of easiness, prudery, euphemism, promiscuity, heaviness, undue haste’. She saw it as a kind of moral rhythm, ‘in which the perfect freedom of any given destiny is made manifest, although it is always delineated by a secret ascesis’. To manifest this quality is to demonstrate ‘an alert and amiable imperviousness to the violence and baseness of others’, an almost total detachment from earthly goods, and a complete forgetfulness of self. Of course there is an aesthetic element, but at heart this is a quality of saints.

If Mr. Beevor is correct that people want a strong central government, even if that means an authoritarian government, I think the solution is a decentralized opposition. I made this idea known to the Indiana Democratic Party; I expected it will be ignored. However, the Indiana Dems do maintain a web page with local activities. I am putting my money where my mouth is and ask if you are an Indiana Democrat to go to Volunteer Opportunities.

sch 12/25