Quotes & More: Wednesday 12 June 2024

In case you’re older, like me, and have to squint or maybe don’t know how to enlarge an image yourself. And, heck, it’s LBJ from Texas—let’s think BIG!

It LBJ’s assertion accurate? If so, how far does it go in explaining Trump & the MAGA phenomenon? Is it all about status anxiety, as many mid-20C American historians and social scientists suggested? Or does the current MAGA phenomenon go deeper? Remember, many MAGA voters are wealthy. And I’m not talking about the mega-wealthy, like Musk or Koch and such, but the “ordinary” wealthy, owners of car dealerships, for instance. Can their support be bought off so easily? Do they fear those beneath them? Or do they resent (as in Nietzsche’s ressentiment) those they perceive to be above them looking down upon them? Maybe those social anxiety explanations deserve a second look. It certainly seems that merely economic rationales are not nearly (or perhaps at all) the full story about why Trump/MAGA retains so many supporters.

In what political decisions, certainly in democracies and even in autocracies, are not decisions, behaviors, & expectations of “the people,” not a significant concern? Even XI & the CCP are interested in what people are thinking at the street level. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” And, “we get the leaders that we deserve.”

And you may have thought that Collingwood was just about history. Au contraire!

Thinking is fleeting; speech can last forever.

We are a part of Nature; we are apart from Nature.

More:

1. Grok this: Climate Change Is Coming for the Finer Things in Life

   Wine. Olive oil. Coffee. Cocoa. ‘It does feel a little apocalyptic.’ Climate change and environmental degradation is going to change our lives in ways we won’t like in so many ways. But how will you feel without your morning cup of coffee, without that nice glass of wine—and without chocolate! Of course, not all is going to disappear overnight, but do expect prices to climb. Supply & demand, baby! (And don’t relish having to tell my wife that tea is going to go on this list—which I have little doubt that it will sooner or later.)

2. “‘The only clue to what man can do is what man has done,’ the Oxford historian RG Collingwood once wrote.” Any article that begins with Collingwood is probably worthwhile, and this one certainly is: ‘We’re in 1938 now’: Putin’s war in Ukraine and lessons from history: Some analysts believe Kyiv is buying the west time on the precipice of a world war. Is it being used wisely?. Besides the substance of the reporting, the article raises the issue of historical analogies. References to “Munich” and “Pearl Harbor” abound in post-WWII foreign policy discussions, as “Munich” is featured in this article. Those analogies can guide us or lead us astray. So how do we distinguish between analogies that guide us versus those that lead us astray? I don’t know—nor can I imagine—any formula or heuristic by which to answer this query about the wisdom of applying any particular analogy. Sound judgment and knowledge of the particulars, of both the situation at hand and the analogy proposed as a template, are the only way to go. But no application—or failure to apply—a particular analogy provides foolproof results. Leaders with deep wisdom and knowledge provide our best hope.

Good day.