I once thought the Constitution, the rule of law, and basic common sense would protect this country from political chaos, the way the French believed the Maginot Line would shield them from invasion in 1940. The French were wrong—and so was I. What I did not anticipate was the near-total surrender of many corporate leaders to the political pressures of the Trump administration.
The word “hero” has been so cheapened in the past eight years that the bar hasn’t just been lowered—it’s been buried underground.
Before his death, I knew little about Charlie Kirk beyond a handful of YouTube clips where he “debated” college students. His philosophy struck me as shallow, reactionary, and hostile to nearly every step of progress made since the 1960s—civil rights, women’s rights, gay marriage. To me, he seemed like this generation’s David Duke.
As much as I would love to be a historian looking back at this moment from 20 or 30 years in the future, that’s exactly how much I despise living through the chaos in real time.
Strangely enough, comedians have become the most responsible and courageous voices in these perilous times, while many of our politicians and representatives play the role of clowns.
Now, with Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite suspension, we’ll see whether the promised economic and cultural backlash against Disney, ABC, and their affiliates materializes. As for Kimmel himself, I would not be surprised if he decides not to return at all to his show.
I’d say this analysis from outside the United States and about the United States is dead on and reflects my thinking about the end of the American dream. I don’t think things will change, certainly not for the better. My sense is that there will be a “Civil War” in this country and it probably has already started.
The United States is a dangerously volatile country. There has always been a palpable element of derangement in its social order. It has a record of assassinations and attempted assassinations, and a perennial problem with violent crime which is matched by almost no other first world country. But what is happening now feels different: apocalyptic and inexorable. And the reason it cannot be stopped is that the people, both the population at large and those who are supposed to be in charge, do not want it to stop whatever they may claim.
If they sincerely wanted to put an end to it, they could do so in a moment of reasonable consensus. But they have consistently resisted any attempt to enforce standards or controls on the virulent social media activity which is undermining the real freedoms they revere. So the tide of what would once have been called “extremism” – the incitement of violence and the perpetration of blind hatred – are now the accepted currency of political discourse.
Janet Dailey The American Dream is ending in a Psychotic Breakdown The Telegraph
At 73, this Labor Day weekend makes me wonder: How many summers do I have left?
I don’t miss the heat or humidity of summer. I miss the sunlight—the early sunrises, the lingering evenings. A metaphor, perhaps, for life’s stages.
Leisure reading is fading. Only 16% of Americans read regularly for pleasure—down from 28% in 2003. In the UK, just 41% of parents read daily to toddlers, compared with 64% in 2012.
I wandered into a Barnes & Noble last week, my first visit in over a year. Chairs and cozy nooks were gone—B&N is all business now. I left without a book. Even their sale couldn’t entice me; I balk at paying more than $20 for a hardcover.
On my nightstand:
King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution—A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson
Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels
Haruki Murakami once wrote:
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Mortality hovers. I don’t fear death, but I do fear dying. Sometimes I feel like a man with his head beneath a guillotine, staring at the blade. I’ve been fortunate with health, but around me I see friends whose luck has run out. The blade will fall on me too.
Meanwhile, the U.S. falters. Ineptitude, cowardice, hubris—displayed daily. A recent New York Times photo showed India’s Modi with Putin and Xi, a tableau of shifting power. It captured the failure of American diplomacy and leadership. One man bears much of the blame: Donald Trump. As summer declines, so does America as it retreats further into the darkness.
House Republicans Move to Rename Kennedy Center Opera House After Melania Trump. Why? This woman has as much interest in being first lady as she does in spending any meaningful time with her husband. I can’ t think of any remote contribution that Melania Trump has made to the Arts, the Theater or Entertainment to deserve that type of recognition.
The extent of the furor and mockery about the “Coldplay couple” canoodling at a concert and getting caught. The Astronomer CEO immediately retired or was fired, depending on what story you believe. However, we have a president whose conduct was even worse (with even more to come?) and yet there is no outrage about him still holding office.
Regrettably the shame committed by the CEO and HR director is going to be shared with their spouses and even worse, their young children. Maybe we should consider terminating all the parodies and skits that most of us have found funny just out of respect for their kids.
Greg Gutfeld of Fox News? I’ve seen brief snippets of his show and also some of his appearances on The Five. I don’t find him funny or relevant. Gutfeld is not an H.L. Mencken, he’s not even Dennis Miller.
I’m amused by Trump’s reluctance to release the Epstein files—as if there’s anything left that could truly shock us. His behavior has long been an open book. At this point, what more could possibly lower public opinion of him?
Replace Jerome Powell as head of the Federal Reserve? Makes about as much sense as firing the fire department while a building is still on fire.
The CEO and the HR Director of Astronomer were caught on a kiss cam in a romantic embrace at a Coldplay concert. The CEO is married with children and the HR Director is recently divorced. Due to the public and rather unusual nature of the disclosure of the relationship, this story is all over social media and other news outlets. My guess is that the HR Director will either resign or be let go but that the CEO will keep his job after publicly confessing his infidelities and promising to reform.
Though I’m not a late-night viewer at my age, I recognize that some of the sharpest political and social commentary in recent years has come from the desks of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and especially Jimmy Kimmel. The upcoming end of The Late Show with Colbert marks more than just the close of a program—it signals the fading of a cultural force that once helped us laugh through the chaos.
Sam Tanenhaus’s nearly 900‑page biography is a major investment of time, and it helps to arrive already curious about—or at least aware of—William F. Buckley Jr. and the post‑war conservative movement he helped shape. For readers who meet that threshold, the book proves surprisingly readable; for those who don’t, the dense historical detail may feel arduous.
Scope and Balance
Tanenhaus is both exhaustive and even‑handed. He neither canonizes nor demonizes his subject, instead cataloguing Buckley’s triumphs alongside his missteps. Critics may bristle at the close attention paid to family “warts,” especially the overbearing father, but the research is meticulous and the portrait persuasive.
Buckley’s Major Misjudgments
Foreign‑policy zigzags – Buckley opposed U.S. entry into World War II before Pearl Harbor yet staunchly backed the Vietnam War.
McCarthyism and Watergate – He defended Senator Joe McCarthy and later downplayed Watergate, even championing conspirator Howard Hunt.
Civil‑rights resistance – Buckley was late to endorse full political rights for Black Americans, claiming many were unprepared for the franchise.
The Edgar Smith debacle – Perhaps his worst lapse: lobbying for the release of convicted murderer Edgar Smith, who soon attacked another woman. Charm and flattery clouded Buckley’s judgement, and basic due diligence was absent.
Admirable Qualities
Despite his blind spots, Buckley inspired loyalty. Friends—ideological allies and foes alike—describe his private warmth, generosity, and wit. His charitable giving was substantial and discreet, and he remained courteous to adversaries off camera.
Education and Talents
An indifferent early student who failed several prep‑school entrance exams, Buckley benefited from a cosmopolitan upbringing in Europe, becoming multilingual. At Yale he honed the dazzling rhetorical style that later defined Firing Line. A true polymath, he wrote gracefully, played concert‑level piano, skippered ocean races, debated ferociously, and chronicled his frenetic routines in the memoir Overdrive.
Personal Speculations
Tanenhaus briefly entertains Gore Vidal’s insinuations about Buckley’s sexuality but unearths no substantial evidence. The Buckley‑Vidal televised clashes, however, remain one of the book’s liveliest threads.
Blind Spots in Business
For all his verbal precision, Buckley was financially inept. National Review survived only through repeated infusions from his father and sympathetic backers; balance sheets mystified him, and bankruptcy loomed more than once.
How the Book Changed My View
I once saw Buckley as an unalloyed Renaissance man. Tanenhaus complicates that picture, revealing antisemitic streaks, chronic resistance to civil rights, and a habit—memorably skewered by Yale philosopher Paul Weiss—of sounding authoritative on books he hadn’t read. In the end, Buckley emerges as brilliant but fallible, magnetic yet blinkered—a man whose revolution reshaped American conservatism while mirroring its contradictions.
Verdict
For readers already engaged with post‑war political history, Tanenhaus offers a definitive, engrossing study. Newcomers to Buckley may wish to sample his columns or television debates first; only then will they fully appreciate the nuance—and magnitude—of this sprawling biography.
Alzheimer’s research in peril. Will Trump budget cuts set progress back by decades? President Trump wants to cut the budget of the National Institutes of Health by 40%. I would think that a man approaching 80 years of age and reputedly evidencing signs of dementia would want enormous amounts of money directed to finding a cure or treatment and quickly. For all the 65 and over voters who voted for Trump last year, here is what your support is getting you – – the possibility of a horrible ending of your life. If you have ever had a family member or friend who had Alzheimer’s, you realize how tragic and devastating this disease is.
Catholic Bishops Try to Rally Opposition to Trump’s Immigration Agenda President Trump got 64% of the white Catholic vote as many bishops and priests urged support for him primarily to overturn Roe v. Wade. My admonition to the bishops: you reap what you sow. Too late now that the Trump Genie is out of the bottle. Your support helped uncap the bottle.
When stupid people get together, they tend to elect stupid candidates. Those candidates, once in office, appoint other stupid people to help them mismanage the government. Naturally, stupid politicians make stupid decisions. And stupid decisions, like a biblical plague rain chaos and destruction on everything they touch.
That, in a nutshell, is a brisk and brutal diagnosis of our current political condition.
But what about the so-called smart people? Are they truly intelligent if they keep letting the proudly ignorant run the country—and ruin their lives in the process? A genius who surrenders the steering wheel to a blindfolded clown isn’t a genius at all; he’s just a polite passenger on the road to nowhere.
There was once a time when a stupid person had the humility to recognize he needed the expertise of smarter minds. That time has passed. Today, asking for advice is seen as weakness, and expertise is treated with the same suspicion once reserved for door-to-door preachers. Guardrails? Who needs ’em when you’ve got overconfidence and a social media following?
The rise of stupidity in America isn’t a fluke—it’s a feature. For at least a quarter century, our culture has glorified the simple-minded and vilified the competent. Stupidity has become endearing, even charming. Meanwhile, intellect and nuance are treated as elitist sins. Smart people are mocked, threatened, canceled (by both the woke and the anti-woke), and exiled from conversations (and decisions) they might actually improve.
So what happens? Smart people stop running for office. They quit their jobs. They retreat from the public square. Why volunteer for a high-stakes pie-throwing contest where the prize is harassment and the consolation is a subpoena? When idiocy becomes fashionable, intelligence becomes a liability.
If democracy dies in darkness, it may also perish in stupidity—with a laugh track.
Esot-eric 