In general I was a smarter and better writer before I switched from Blogspot to WordPress in late 2021. Maybe I’m used up from fighting the “virus” monsters, maybe I’m just getting older and losing sharpness.
The readers seen by Statcounter seem to share the same judgment. A wide variety of readers are STILL looking at the old blog, even though it hasn’t changed since Nov 21. One of those accidental reads found an interesting moment in 2007 when I was trying to pry out of the 9/11 neocon trap but still partly caught.
= = = = = START 2007 PIECE:
Peggy Noonan’s latest column gives critically important instructions to us as Americans. If we want to remain a great power, we need to follow this path.
I’d been thinking about the subject from a different angle, and it’s no longer clear to me that we should even try to remain a great power. I’m just about convinced that our citizens would be better off with a more French attitude toward the world … but if we’re going to hold onto the Superpower Status, we must listen to Peggy.
I’d quibble with one thing in Noonan’s writing:
= = = = = START NOONAN QUOTE:
To be a beacon is to speak softly to the world, with dignity, with elegance if you can manage it, or simple good-natured courtesy if you can’t. A superpower should never shout, never bray “We’re No. 1!” If you’re No. 1, you don’t have to.
To be a beacon is to have a democracy in which issues of actual import are regularly debated. Instead our political coverage consists of daily disquisitions on “targeted ads,” “narratives,” “positioning” and “talking points.” We really do make politicians crazy. If a politician cares only about his ads and his rehearsed answers, the pundits call him inauthentic. But if a politician ignores these things to speak of great issues we say he lacks “fire in the belly” and is incompetent. So many criticisms of politicians boil down to: He’s not manipulating us well enough! We need more actual adults who are actually serious about the business of the nation.
= = = = = END NOONAN QUOTE.
The quibble: When a politician skips the Brand-R and Brand-D recorded talking points to discuss real questions with real solutions, our pundits don’t say he lacks “fire in the belly”; they treat him as crazy, and describe his obvious truths as unthinkable, racist, protectionist, nativist, etc, etc, etc.
= = = = = END 2007 PIECE
I returned to the beacon theme in 2020 without remembering this earlier use of the theme.
Sidenote: Trump pretty much finished off the transformation of “fire in the belly” to “crazy”. In recent years Google finds no uses of the term in politics; it’s only in sports.
Sidenote 2: Several recent reads are by Microsoft Azure, and all are varied and interesting pieces that I hadn’t remembered or reprinted. If I wanted to pull out a ‘best of’ anthology, these would be in the set. Is Microsoft’s AI gathering material? Previous automatic-looking reads were mainly trivial pieces, accidentally picking up keywords that resembled something in a videogame.
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