Edited by Moristotle
[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]
“Authentic stoicism.” This article is great: “Prince Philip’s Death and the Last Embers of British Stoicism” [Anthony Lane, New Yorker, April 9] Excerpt:
In later life, Philip was asked about the effect of this fractured upbringing, with more than its fair share of wanderings, betrayals, and losses. He replied, “...I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.” That is the authentic note of stoicism, embattled but unlamenting...Philip would have argued that some sort of shield is required, by all of us, whatever our situation, to fend off any sudden blows and to steel us for the slough of boredom. There are no fair shares.
The principal fault of the stoic, as a rule, is an inability to see why other people can’t take the same basic precautions – why they find it so damnably difficult to grow a thick skin. Did Philip consider the modern world too thin, too soft, and too yielding for his taste? Probably so. Yet he was an unorthodox example of the hardy breed, because his primary duty, as it turned out, was to protect not his own interests but those of someone else, who happened to be the Queen. She herself is made of stern and durable stuff, but few observers believe that she would have weathered so long a reign, let alone found any joy in it, without the presence of her consort. Crucially, they made each other laugh. The difficult question now has to be: How will she survive his passing? Will the burden of widowhood weigh her down and hasten her end? Such was the fate of another Elizabeth – the wife of Sir Albertus Morton, a diplomat of the seventeenth century – recalled in a famous poem:He first deceased, she for a little triedThere is a noble simplicity to that response. The Queen, nonetheless, is just as likely to redouble her efforts, and to proceed with mournful dignity toward her own centenary. I like to think of her, in a little over five years’ time, pouring the tea, buttering the toast, opening a letter, and exclaiming, with unfeigned delight, “Oh, good, a telegram from me!” Her late husband – friend, adviser, sailor, grouch, almost an orphan, and perhaps a god – would surely wish for no less.
To live without him, liked it not, and died.
Formula for autocracy. For people who still believe the Republicans wouldn’t overthrow democracy in favor of an autocracy, even after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, read “Arizona GOP Bill Would Allow GOP-Controlled State Legislature to Overturn Presidential Popular Vote” [Colin Kalmbacher, MSN.com, March 12]. Excerpt:
The effort is not some piece of fringe legislation meant to provide grist for the conservative media mill or simply to raise funds. Rather, it is supported by one of the Grand Canyon State’s top Republicans.
State Rep. Shawnna Bolick, who represents Phoenix as the GOP chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, originally introduced the anti-democratic measure in late January – tapping into a wellspring of GOP thought on the would-be authority of such legislatures to make such choices after former president Donald Trump and some of his allies engaged in months-long efforts to question, dispute and overturn the results of the 2020 election, and occasionally making the precise argument that state legislatures have the power to overturn the voters’ preferences.
House Bill 2720 aims to codify that theory of power. The bill would allow state legislators, by a majority vote, to select the Electoral College electors of their choice regardless of the state’s popular vote.
Excerpts, edited and rearranged:
Reading the book Sonata Mulattica, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning African American poet and former United States poet laureate Rita Dove came as a big shock, because we musicians know Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major, Op.47, as Kreutzer’s Sonata. Yet it turns out it was originally the Bridgetower Sonata. Beethoven’s original dedication read “Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer, gran pazzo e compositore mulattico” (Mullatic sonata written for the mulatto [George] Bridgetower, a complete lunatic and mullatic composer).
Beethoven and Bridgetower had what is described, in modern parlance, as a bromance. They spent countless hours in each other’s company, performing music together at the fortepiano by day and carousing in Vienna’s many bars by night. Both were remarkable child prodigies who had abusive, exploitative fathers who paraded them around Europe. In Bridgetower’s case, his father dressed him up in oriental robes, billing him as “son of the African prince.”
The premiere of the Sonata in A major is now legendary. It’s one of those concerts I’d sacrifice anything to have attended. Early on the morning of May 24, 1803, Bridgetower took to the stage with Beethoven in the big pavilion of Vienna’s Augarten. The ink on Beethoven’s manuscript was still wet, and Bridgetower was forced to read the barely finished music over Beethoven’s shoulder.
Many a musician would buckle under such circumstances, but not these two. Bridgetower gave the performance of his life, matching Beethoven’s dynamism on the fortepiano with an array of kaleidoscopic effects on his violin and, to Beethoven’s delight, even providing improvisations of his own.
Afterwards, the two men celebrated in a kneipe (pub) where, after one too many beers, Bridgetower allegedly made unsavoury comments about a woman with whom Beethoven was enamoured. It may have been the composer’s famous “immortal beloved”; we’ll never know. What we do know is that Beethoven never spoke to Bridgetower again and re-dedicated the work to the Rodolphe Kreutzer.
I would like to know when we as a country, and Colorado as a state, are going to figure out that having open carry laws the allow a person to legally walk openly through a parking lot carrying a rifle until he picks out whom he wants to shoot, with no legal recourse to stop him until he does shoot. “10 Killed in Boulder, Colo., Grocery Store Shooting” [NY Times, April 6]. The store is less than a mile from our house and has been our main grocery store since we moved here in 1975. All our neighbors do most of their grocery shopping at that King Soopers. Before Covid I was probably in that store at least three times a week. Some of the checkout clerks have been very friendly to my wife over the years, especially when she comes in with one of our grandchildren. We don’t know yet if any of them were among the victims today. Excerpt from the NYT article:
BOULDER, Colo. – A day after a gunman opened fire Monday at a grocery store in Boulder, Colo., killing 10 people, the police had publicly identified just one of the victims, one of their own, a 51-year-old veteran officer.We had our two grandchildren at our house when I heard the news that there was a shooter at the store, and I told my wife by text message, so as to not frighten the children, to get the kids away from any windows until we could be sure that the shooter wasn’t wandering around our neighborhood. We have a low crime neighborhood, and I am sure that it will take all of us some time to deal with the fact that our safe neighborhood has now become the scene of a mass murder walking distance from our house.
A suspect, who had been injured, was taken into custody, the authorities said. Videos showed a handcuffed man being escorted from the building by officers, shirtless and with his right leg appearing to be covered in blood. People inside the grocery, King Soopers, in the South Boulder area, described a harrowing and chaotic scene.
“I thought I was going to die,” said Alex Arellano, 35, who was working in the meat department at King Soopers when he heard a series of gunshots and then saw people running toward an exit.
In her latest display of “I care about guns, not people” grandstanding, within hours of a shooter murdering 10 people at a Colorado grocery store, Boebert sprang into action – and sent out a fiery pro-gun fund-raising email “Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s campaign sent ‘hell no to taking our guns’ email hours after Boulder shooting” [Nicole Lyn Pesce, Market Watch, March 23].
As always with Republicans, Boebert ignores simple facts in claiming that an assault weapon ban wouldn’t prevent mass shootings. If the country banned assault weapons, the Colorado shooter would not have been able to buy one – and use it less than a week later to murder 10 people in a grocery store. Yes, he may have been able to crash his car into pedestrians, and he may have been able to shoot people with a hunting weapon, but only an assault-style weapon provides a lone shooter with a large-capacity magazine and the ability to fire dozens of rounds and kill multiple victims – without having to take time to reload.
So, let me tell you about my friend who is a professor at a hospital in Paris. He is a fine athlete, outstanding golfer, and workaholic. He owns a chalet in Burgundy with an extraordinary wine cellar and a number of guns. Before the French revolution, hunting was the sport of kings (think falconry) and nobility. Today in France, it’s the sport of the upper middle class and intelligentsia. My friend goes to his Burgundian home to hunt wild boar. My wife and I have enjoyed a traditional autumnal meal of “roast pig” at his table in Burgundy and in Paris, with the warning to be careful not to break a tooth on buckshot.
As we were driving back home, our friend said, “You know, there were no guns in that shop.” I asked him what he was talking about, and he explained that all he saw were “weapons, not guns” firearms that were nowhere sold in retail establishments in Europe. I subsequently learned that the Daniel Boone “gun” shop, which is close to both I-95 and I-85, was a booming business that catered to gangs coming north from Miami or south from Philadelphia.
What did I know?
In the post-2020 election chaos created by losing candidate Donald Trump, as he spread a swath of lies about voting irregularities without ever revealing a single fact to support any of his outlandish claims, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – Republican – dared stand his ground and properly do the job he was elected to do. Even when Trump, then still the sitting president, personally called Raffensperger and tried to browbeat him into “finding” the necessary votes for Trump to illegally stake claim to Georgia’s electoral college votes, the state attorney general calmly stood his ground. For Republicans, it was one of the few recent shining moments of integrity, after all the years of spreading lies about President Obama being born in Kenya, and Hillary Clinton being part of some perverted cult of child traffickers, and so on.
After multiple recounts vindicated Raffensperger and found zero evidence of voter fraud in the Georgia election – yes, ZERO evidence, despite hallucinatory claims by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, etc. – surely the members of the “law & order” party would come to their senses and reward him for a job well done under the most trying of circumstances: Right?
No. In fact, emphatically NO!
Just as Republican legislators decided to stand with Trump after the fact instead of voting to impeach him – despite the fact they could have been killed by the throng of domestic terrorists Trump inspired to attack the Capitol Building on January 6 – Republicans are rallying around him in Georgia and going after the man who followed the law and did his job “‘He’s toast’: GOP leaves Raffensperger twisting in the wind” [David Siders and Zach Montellaro, Politico, March 28].
For those who were raised to believe in Republican politicians in the 1950s, 60s and even into the 70s, because the leadership of the Southern Democrats – Lester Maddox and George Wallace foremost among them – were outspoken racists who openly defied federal laws to maintain racist policies and every form of segregation they could, it is a dizzying turn of events. The Republican “law & order” party of that era, built around middle-class values, has somehow morphed into an entity that manages to be racist yet elitist all at once, and spews lies on all fronts to cover its complete abandonment of rational facts.
To think that a party that would have supported and championed Raffensperger in times past, is now targeting him for making a principled stand, tells us all we need to know about that party and what it now stands for. That argument is over and settled, the lies and delusions are all that are left.
Apparently I’m not the only person who thinks churches should not be allowed to run scams that companies like Volkswagen would be prosecuted for. “In federal lawsuit, James Huntsman, of prominent Utah family, accuses Mormon Church of fraud” [Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post, March 23]. Excerpt:
This is a candidate for “greatest headline ever” and is worth at least a quick watch just to enjoy the completely befuddled look on Tucker Carlson’s face. “Matt Gaetz’s Fox News Fiasco Was an Exhibition for the Grotesque Mediocrity of the Conservative Movement” [Jack Holmes, Esquire, March 31].
Given the amount of air-time Carlson has devoted to trying to make Rudy Giuliani and other “Biden-won” deniers sound at least semi-rational, when he says the Matt Gaetz segment “was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted,” that is really saying something.
When you have a very likely future presidential candidate (Carlson Tucker) with the same credentials as Donald Trump doing a show with a republican rising star (Matt Gaetz) who is/was supposedly a future presidential candidate, there HAS to be something of merit in that video. Sometimes people are too quick to dismiss political and media types simply because they disagree with them; that’s the mistake the democrats made in 2016.
Gaetz has been, and continues to be, much in the news; for example:
It is fine for informed and intelligent people to rightfully assess radical conservatives like Gaetz, Carlson, Boebert, Trump, et al, as con artists who don’t deserve a place in media or politics, but it is dangerous for those informed and intelligent people to dismiss the threat posed by lunatics who lie constantly, yet have the trust of 74-million rabid supporters. 74 million is a huge number, and unless the intelligent and informed majority in society stays on its game and fights the nut cases at every turn – like supporting the call to boycott Georgia-based businesses who don’t step up and challenge that state’s GOP leadership for passing “Jim Crow for the 21st century” as Biden aptly called it – then that radical minority will give us another Trump as president, just as they gave us the Civil War, the post-war Jim Crow south and 100 years of racist governmental policies and educational segregation (and that was after they LOST the war).
Liberals and moderates vastly outnumber conservatives, but conservatives walk the walk, while liberal and moderates often just talk the talk. By logic, and by the numbers, there shouldn’t be a Mitch McConnell of Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert in office today, but they keep winning because those who smugly dismiss them don’t bother to show up to vote against them, just as they don’t call them on EVERY lie, because they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lies – as the media was by Trump’s flagrant dishonesty.
The “intelligentsia” in this country have momentum and numbers on their side and a golden opportunity to crush the con artists: they also had that opportunity after JFK was elected in 1960, only to see Nixon elected in 1968. There is a lesson there. From where we are today, does this country go forth with progressive agendas that benefit the majority, or does it fall into the clutches of a second Reagan, or worse yet, a second Trump, and a government that again benefits only the 1%?
I think maintaining a constant drumbeat of fact-backed information running across as many fronts as possible to combat the fantasyland misinformation and outright lies generated by conservatives and the radical right is the only hope. We are NEVER going to change the hearts and minds of people who choose to believe absurd storylines that support their warped perspectives, because that is an even tougher task than changing the hearts and minds of people who choose to be racist or sexist or whatever, so the only hope is keeping the educated and informed active enough to at least vote, and maybe even write op-eds, etc, to support a factual and educated viewpoint.
Here is an example of what the “intelligentsia” usually miss, and seldom bother to speak up about even if they catch it: “Founder of firm hired to conduct Arizona election audit promoted election fraud theories” [Andrew Oxford, Jen Fifield, & Ryan Randazzo, Arizona Republic, April 1]. You are a government entity, allegedly conducting a legitimate recount to verify election results, and you can’t find a company to do the work other than one founded by a guy with a long, sordid history of bullshit fake claims about election fraud? Seriously? What, they couldn’t find an actual Trump-owned company to conduct a recount, they had to settle for a MAGA underling? This is yet another example of the dishonest, corrupt – and very possibly illegal – crap the conservatives pull at every opportunity, because, just like in Georgia, they know they are outnumbered and the only way they can possibly win is to discourage moderates and liberals from voting, and then throw out as many of their votes as possible after the fact.
And speaking again of Georgia (and Major League Baseball’s moving its All-Star Game to another state), some more reports about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bidding corporations to “stay out of politics”:
To think that a party that would have supported and championed Raffensperger in times past, is now targeting him for making a principled stand, tells us all we need to know about that party and what it now stands for. That argument is over and settled, the lies and delusions are all that are left.
James Huntsman, of a prominent Mormon family from Utah, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday accusing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of fraud, saying it spent members’ tithes meant for charity on commercial purposes.
In the suit, Huntsman says he wants back millions of dollars he donated and plans to give it to “organizations and communities whose members have been marginalized by the Church’s teachings and doctrines, including by donating to charities supporting LGBTQ, African-American, and women’s rights.”
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, comes 16 months after a former high-level investment manager with the church filed a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint, which The Washington Post obtained in December 2019, alleged that the Church amassed about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes and misled members by stockpiling surplus donations using the tax-exempt donations to prop up a pair of businesses.
Given the amount of air-time Carlson has devoted to trying to make Rudy Giuliani and other “Biden-won” deniers sound at least semi-rational, when he says the Matt Gaetz segment “was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted,” that is really saying something.
When you have a very likely future presidential candidate (Carlson Tucker) with the same credentials as Donald Trump doing a show with a republican rising star (Matt Gaetz) who is/was supposedly a future presidential candidate, there HAS to be something of merit in that video. Sometimes people are too quick to dismiss political and media types simply because they disagree with them; that’s the mistake the democrats made in 2016.
Gaetz has been, and continues to be, much in the news; for example:
- “Matt Gaetz Under Investigation Over Possible Sex Trafficking”
- “U.S. Rep Gaetz faces ethics probe in Congress over sex trafficking allegations”
- “DOJ veterans say the latest twist in the Matt Gaetz sex-trafficking investigation could be the most ‘scary’ one yet for the lawmaker”
- “Florida Republicans see opening as Gaetz’s legal peril rises”
- “The G.O.P.’s Matt Gaetz Problem”
- “‘Well...bye’: Second senior Matt Gaetz aide resigns amid investigation”
- “‘He really jumped on the Trump train’: How a brash Matt Gaetz climbed the ranks in Trump’s Washington”
It is fine for informed and intelligent people to rightfully assess radical conservatives like Gaetz, Carlson, Boebert, Trump, et al, as con artists who don’t deserve a place in media or politics, but it is dangerous for those informed and intelligent people to dismiss the threat posed by lunatics who lie constantly, yet have the trust of 74-million rabid supporters. 74 million is a huge number, and unless the intelligent and informed majority in society stays on its game and fights the nut cases at every turn – like supporting the call to boycott Georgia-based businesses who don’t step up and challenge that state’s GOP leadership for passing “Jim Crow for the 21st century” as Biden aptly called it – then that radical minority will give us another Trump as president, just as they gave us the Civil War, the post-war Jim Crow south and 100 years of racist governmental policies and educational segregation (and that was after they LOST the war).
Liberals and moderates vastly outnumber conservatives, but conservatives walk the walk, while liberal and moderates often just talk the talk. By logic, and by the numbers, there shouldn’t be a Mitch McConnell of Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert in office today, but they keep winning because those who smugly dismiss them don’t bother to show up to vote against them, just as they don’t call them on EVERY lie, because they are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of lies – as the media was by Trump’s flagrant dishonesty.
The “intelligentsia” in this country have momentum and numbers on their side and a golden opportunity to crush the con artists: they also had that opportunity after JFK was elected in 1960, only to see Nixon elected in 1968. There is a lesson there. From where we are today, does this country go forth with progressive agendas that benefit the majority, or does it fall into the clutches of a second Reagan, or worse yet, a second Trump, and a government that again benefits only the 1%?
I think maintaining a constant drumbeat of fact-backed information running across as many fronts as possible to combat the fantasyland misinformation and outright lies generated by conservatives and the radical right is the only hope. We are NEVER going to change the hearts and minds of people who choose to believe absurd storylines that support their warped perspectives, because that is an even tougher task than changing the hearts and minds of people who choose to be racist or sexist or whatever, so the only hope is keeping the educated and informed active enough to at least vote, and maybe even write op-eds, etc, to support a factual and educated viewpoint.
Here is an example of what the “intelligentsia” usually miss, and seldom bother to speak up about even if they catch it: “Founder of firm hired to conduct Arizona election audit promoted election fraud theories” [Andrew Oxford, Jen Fifield, & Ryan Randazzo, Arizona Republic, April 1]. You are a government entity, allegedly conducting a legitimate recount to verify election results, and you can’t find a company to do the work other than one founded by a guy with a long, sordid history of bullshit fake claims about election fraud? Seriously? What, they couldn’t find an actual Trump-owned company to conduct a recount, they had to settle for a MAGA underling? This is yet another example of the dishonest, corrupt – and very possibly illegal – crap the conservatives pull at every opportunity, because, just like in Georgia, they know they are outnumbered and the only way they can possibly win is to discourage moderates and liberals from voting, and then throw out as many of their votes as possible after the fact.
- “McConnell tells CEOs critical of voting restrictions to ‘stay out of politics’”
- “McConnell to CEOs: ‘Stay out of politics.’ Republicans threaten businesses opposing Georgia voting law”
- “‘It’s stupid’: McConnell’s warning for corporate America”
- “McConnell warns corporate America to ‘stay out of politics’— but says donations are OK”
- “McConnell says companies should stay out of politics — unless they’re donating money”
- “Defying Republicans, Big Companies Keep the Focus on Voting Rights”
- “McConnell backs away from warning businesses to stay out of politics”
| Grateful for correspondence, Moristotle |
That is an entertaining article. In all the remembrances of the astounding number of significant and sometimes humorous highlights in the life of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, hopefully his long history of environmental commitment and activism - especially involving the World Wildlife Fund - won't be forgotten. More than a figurehead, he was a man of substance: at the time of his death, Prince Philip was president emeritus of WWF.
ReplyDeleteI watched the entire thing. All I can say is that, it was the whitest event I've seen other than a KKK rally. Even in the ranks of men standing parade I couldn't find a dark face.
DeleteNot sure what your point was regarding “whitest event”” The UK does not have the same demographic as the USA so there’s no surprise to us Brits, especially as CoVid rules are in force and strictly adhered to by the populous. To suggest otherwise is foolish!
DeleteIn today’s NYT: “Hundreds of Companies Unite to Oppose Voting Limits, but Others Abstain.” [April 14, 2021, Updated 7:12 a.m. ET]
ReplyDeleteAmazon, Google, G.M. and Starbucks were among those joining the biggest show of solidarity by businesses over legislation in numerous states.
[photos]From left, Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck; Kenneth Chenault, a former chief of American Express; Mary T. Barra, who runs General Motors; and Kevin Johnson, who runs Starbucks.
Amazon, BlackRock, Google, Warren Buffett and hundreds of other companies and executives signed on to a new statement released on Wednesday opposing “any discriminatory legislation” that would make it harder for people to vote.
It was the biggest show of solidarity so far by the business community as companies around the country try to navigate the partisan uproar over Republican efforts to enact new election rules in almost every state. Senior Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell, have called for companies to stay out of politics.
The statement was organized in recent days by Kenneth Chenault, a former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck. A copy will appear on Wednesday in advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Last month, with only a few big companies voicing opposition to a restrictive new voting law in Georgia, Mr. Chenault and Mr. Frazier led a group of Black executives in calling on companies to get more involved in opposing similar legislation around the country.
Since then, many other companies have voiced support for voting rights. But the new statement, which was also signed by General Motors, Netflix and Starbucks, represented the broadest coalition yet to weigh in on the issue.
“It should be clear that there is overwhelming support in corporate America for the principle of voting rights,” Mr. Chenault said.