National treasure Peggy Noonan most delights me when she sees what others overlook, which (if memory serves, and certainly in today’s installment) often is in the category of things that are overlooked precisely because they’re lying right out in the open.
About this week’s State of the Union Address:
The Democrats in the chamber were slumped, glowery. They had chosen to act out unbroken disdain so as to please the rising left of their party, which was watching and would review their faces. Some of them were poorly lit and seemed not resolute but Draculaic. The women of the party mostly dressed in black, because nothing says moral seriousness like coordinating your outfits.
Here it should be said of the rising left of the Democratic Party that they are numerous, committed, and have all the energy—it’s true. But they operate at a disadvantage they cannot see, and it is that they are loveless. The social justice warriors, the advancers of identity politics and gender politics, the young who’ve just discovered socialism—they run on rage.
But rage is a poor fuel in politics. It produces a heavy, sulfurous exhaust and pollutes the air. It’s also gets few miles per gallon. It has many powers but not the power to persuade, and if anything does them in it will be that. Their temperament is no better than Mr. Trump’s . It’s worse. But yes, they are intimidating the Democratic establishment, which robs itself of its dignity trying to please them.
(The Left’s Rage and Trump’s Peril: The Democratic base is even worse-tempered than the president. But Mueller could still harpoon him. Emphasis added) She notes some obvious things about Trump and the GOP as well, but I found none of those so startlingly obvious.
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We develop heart and mind in parallel, that the mind will protect us from the wolfs, and the heart will keep us from becoming wolves ourselves. (Attributed to Serbian Patriarch Pavle)
Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.
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We develop heart and mind in parallel, that the mind will protect us from the wolfs, and the heart will keep us from becoming wolves ourselves. (Attributed to Serbian Patriarch Pavle)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 