s. wallerstein

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".

I don't understand what you mean by "understanding of the medium". If what you mean is that Woody Allen is atypical, sure. For me, his films are the most interesting of the second half of the 20th century. That has to do with my idiosyncracies, but critical objectivity isn't my thing.

YouTube video by The Free Press Woody Allen on Life, Death—and the Movies

I just saw this interview with Woody Allen. He still talks about directors like Bergman, Fellini, and Truffaut as the ones who shaped him. I learned in the 60's that they were the great directors, but tastes change. I'd put Woody Allen on my list.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc9t...

You're very welcome.

I'm not just being kind. The dialogues are very good.

That's too bad. The ones you did are classics.

No chances of other dialogues with philosophers in Youtube?
Not necessarily Massimo, but anyone else interesting. You do it well and it's a good way for us non-philosophers, who are not going to read philosophy texts, to learn a little philosophy.

Great dialogues with Massimo...

A sense of shame can have very positive effect on behavior. In my own case a sense of shame prevents me from doing various things, which I'll not detail here, but which we'd agree do not make the world a better place.

All three are great movies.