While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing is ours except time.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistles to Lucilius.
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Watch: Beyond Peeved?
Paul Jacob has a list. And another list, too:
This Week in Common Sense, vlog version.
On September 20, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the battle of Salamis.
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Baruch Spinoza
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus (1667), Chapter Five, as liberally rendered in A Natural History of Peace (1996) by Thomas Gregor.
Paul Jacob now unleashes upon the world the weekend podcast!
This Week in Common Sense, September 14 – 18, 2020.
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First U.S. budget
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.
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Hairdo, Don’t
The name was dropped again the other day, Karen.
Not a proper name, though — it is a put-down, idiomatic and not inoffensive.
Over at PJMedia, Bryan Preston used the term “Karen” good-naturedly (and with an *) in reporting on the “trained Marxists” at Black Lives Matter taking over a Trader Joe’s grocery store in Seattle to protest the, ahem, “lack of access to grocery stores” . . . because “capitalism exploits the working class.”
Somehow I got stuck on Karen.
“Karen is a pejorative term used in the United States and other English-speaking countries for a woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is appropriate or necessary,” Wikipedia informs. “A common stereotype is that of a white woman who uses her privilege to demand her own way at the expense of others. Depictions also include demanding to ‘speak to the manager,’ anti-vaccination beliefs, being racist, or sporting a particular bob cut hairstyle.”**
Is it just me, or does “being racist” seem a lot worse than sporting an uncool haircut? When racism’s at issue, why not use the label “racist,” instead?
And isn’t there already another five-letter word for a female exhibiting the less extreme negative features?
“Karens are most definitely white,” Helen Lewis assures in The Atlantic. “Let that ease your conscience if you were beginning to wonder whether the meme was, perhaps, a little bit sexist in identifying various universal negative behaviors and attributing them exclusively to women.”
Apparently it is not okay to mock women . . . but thank goodness we can still mock women who have white skin!
And a specific hairdo!
Land of the Free, Home of the Trash-Talkers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Preston’s footnote read: “with all due respect to the Karens I’ve known, all of whom are nothing like the stereotype of Karens as busybodies who leap to complain and always end up running authoritarian regimes such as HOAs.”
** The Urban Dictionary also does not fail to mention that “crown bowl haircut.”
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When I see bad-looking bikers with black leather studs on their wrists hanging out at the Oregon Country Fair, I take it as a sign of health. No, I don’t want them hanging around, but trying to eliminate them all, arrest them all, legislate against them all — that’s evil. I have asked feminists, If you could, would you eliminate all male chauvinist pigs? If you could come up with some kind of spray to spray in the air and do away with them, would you? Would you do away with all scorpions and rattlesnakes, mosquitoes? Mosquitoes are part of the ecosystem. So are male chauvinist pigs. You’ve got to fight them, but you don’t try to exterminate them. A purifying group or system that would eliminate them all — that would be an evil force. Anytime you have a force that comes along and says, We will eradicate these people, you have evil. Looking back in history, what has seemed the worst turns out not to be the worst.
Ken Kesey, as quoted in “Ken Kesey, The Art of Fiction No. 136” by Robert Faggen, in The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994).
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Washington
On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.
It has grown, since.
On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which proceeded to bring free trade to Britain.
When Hillary Clinton talked about carrying hot sauce around in her handbag, on the popular Breakfast Club show featuring the annoyingly monickered Charlemagne Tha God, did anyone believe her? It was such an obvious and shameless ploy to get African-Americans to see her as “relatable.” For Mrs. Clinton, however, that was ‘a bridge too far.’
Now Joe Biden provides the cringe.
“I just have one thing to say,” Biden informed his audience at an event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. Looking down at his phone, he struggled for a moment. “Hang on here.”
And then he played a song. “Despacito,” which means “Slowly.”
Try not to think too much about this, for the song is a little sexually suggestive. The Daily Wire reprints a translation of the lyrics, for your disgust or delectation.
First element of cringe: It was an obvious play for Latino sympathy. The song itself had nothing to do with anything other than that it was a popular song from “the community” When you are this pandering, this patronizing, this transparent about your play to the cliché, what kind of respect do you hope to get?
Second element: It’s such a desperation move — with the Florida Spanish-speaking vote in jeopardy. Cuban-Americans, especially, are turned off by the Democrats’ move further left, having themselves left Cuba to come to American freedom. And the generally woke-socialist mindset of the Biden-Harris team (or is it Harris-Biden?) is a bit hard to take for the generally culturally conservative folks hailing from the south.
When will Democrats try authenticity again?
Third element: Assuming riots and conflagrations aren’t precisely that.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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