Author Archives: jimmie

The Bottom of the Barrel

Posted on February 26, 2023 by jimmie

By and large, for an ideology to take root among a people or a nation it is necessary to transform the individual into the mass man. For masses are – before in time and now often in the impalpable ether … Continue reading →

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A Tale of Two Cultures (America and Russia)

Posted on January 13, 2023 by jimmie

When events do not make sense or are such as sense cannot untie,(1) an option is to forget all about them – the head-in-the-sand solution. Another is to remember that man is but a quintessence of dust (2) and often, … Continue reading →

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Decline and Fall of the Western World

Posted on November 19, 2022 by jimmie

Comparisons are often like bikinis, what they reveal is suggestive, what they conceal is vital. The principle equally applies when comparing the history of nations, as implied in the title, which echoes Gibbon’s 6-book, monumental “Decline and Fall of the … Continue reading →

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Gorbachev, Trajectories of Opinions

Posted on September 9, 2022 by jimmie

All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity, (1) and from this point of view Gorbachev’s life is no different. Especially when equally remembering that all the world is a stage and all men and women merely players … Continue reading →

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Gulliver’s Travels

Posted on August 29, 2022 by jimmie

Does art imitate nature or is nature herself inherently artistic? The debate has engaged the minds and pens of many critics and philosophers. But, given that comedy is equally a form of art, when man becomes unintentionally comic, is his … Continue reading →

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Democracy in America

Posted on August 23, 2022 by jimmie

Words being arbitrary, they owe their power to association, and have the influence which custom has given them – for language is the dress of thought. Therefore on hearing the words “Democracy in America,” some will think of Alexis de … Continue reading →

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The Reason for Things

Posted on August 11, 2022 by jimmie

The mythical average citizen probably believes that the universe is under the perpetual superintendence of uncontrollable forces. And that the hallucinating social changes currently occurring – and of which he is sometimes the victim – are akin to a force … Continue reading →

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The Masking of the Obvious

Posted on June 21, 2022 by jimmie

An Eastern monarch, of whom we know the existence but not the name, kept an officer in his house whose employment it was to remind him of his mortality, by calling out every morning at a stated hour, “Remember prince … Continue reading →

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Putin, Macron, Biden

Posted on April 20, 2022 by jimmie

“One, no-one, one hundred thousand” is the title of a novel by Italian author Luigi Pirandello. ‘One’ refers to the image that everyone has of himself, ‘no one’ refers to what the protagonist decides to be at the end of … Continue reading →

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The Curious History of American Exceptionalism

Posted on April 7, 2022 by jimmie

Francois Mitterrand, the longest serving president of France (1981-1985), not long before he died (1996), made this quite extraordinary statement: “France does not know it, but she is at war with America. A permanent, vital, economic war, and only apparently … Continue reading →

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