s. wallerstein

Isn't it also because no one expects much from Trump? If you were to tell me that Maduro is building a temple to worship himself, I'd shrug it off, so what, big news. I don't expect anything more from Trump than I do from Maduro.

Very pretty and apparently smart like her father is.

Give her my regards please.

the plot thickens...

Your relation with her seems horizontal. You're not an authority figure for her, but rather a complice or pal.

Interesting.

It's hard to believe that your daughter reads it the way your mother did. People look on a small child with benevolent eyes, but after a certain age, which you've reached, I believe, that benevolence disappears.

You can still make the same face, but it doesn't have the same meaning to others, even if it does to you.

I was listening to the sociologist Kathya Araujo talk about the increasing process of detachment in Chilean public life. Her example was the subway seat, which once would have been offered to a pregnant woman or an elderly person, but no longer. A loss of the sense of being in all this together.

Airports, subways, shopping malls, etc. At age 79, when you're too old and weak to elbow your way through a crowded subway car, you notice those things instantly.

Insightful observation.

Good for you, Mehdi. Thanks for speaking out.

A nightmare. Trump's agreement is not going to work and it's Israel who will ruin it, not Hamas.

The Watergate coverage was their finest hour. After the post-Watergate bath of moralism of the Carter years, America went back to being America, a super-power that plays dirty with a complicit media. Maybe Trump is another nadir and you'll get a new Carter.

Mainstream journalism, including Cronkite, lied about Viet Nam for years, they lied about the Bay of Pigs, etc. , but no one questioned the basic narrative until the Viet Nam disaster became too obvious to hide.

Journalists weren't once more serious although Cronkite was serious, but rather he worked in a time when there was one basic narrative in the U.S. Now there are scores, some more serious than others and they are exacerbated by social media. If Cronkite were reborn, he could not be Cronkite.

I live in Chile and you're right. The radical far left can be dogmatic, sectarian, self-righteous, authoritarian, but while not entirely free of hatred, it by no means has the level of hatred that the far right has.

Very interesting. I tend to think that someone like Mamdani has a special charisma which allows him to appeal effectively to our best selves and that if someone like me without that charisma tried to same strategy, people would laugh. Still it's worth trying. Thanks.

excellent interview. well worth reading.

If we say that being smart involves knowing how to win whatever game you're playing, then Trump is smart in playing the game of politics. Not my game. I've never been elected anything.

Me too. My favorite actress of my generation (and also hers).
I'll miss her.

We've learned that there are multiple forms of intelligence, not just IQ and while Trump has no idea what Kant's critique is about (nor do I), he is a lot more insightful about what attracts the ordinary voter than lots of folks with PHD'S from Harvard.

Shame is an effective moral enforcer, especially in a culture such as ours where traditional values have lost their force. In a culture with strong traditional values a sense of guilt keeps us in lline, but without them, it's shame before others. Plato's ring of gyges is worth pondering.

My sister visiting me from USA. She insists on "they're so stupid". If they're so stupid, I ask, how do they win elections?
Liberals seem stuck in the narrative of "we're so smart" and "they're so stupid". You don't win elections telling the voters that they're stupid.

Good!!! Because things could get very weird.

Are you still in Missouri?

Don't watch CBS news.

Actually "we" didn't win either World War 1 or 2. We were on the winning side in both wars, but our allies played an important role in both. If anyone "won" World War 2, it was the Soviet Union which with very heavy casualties on both sides, destroyed the Nazis.

Toxic masculinity is making a come back. It's very frightening.
If the Trump era has shown us one thing clearly, it's that history does not progress. There's no happy ending to history.

Good explanation. Thanks. Woody Allen obviously does not establish a paradigm. He's sui generis and yet successfully markets his work. That's what I admire in him, an eccentric genius who "sells".