Wednesday, January 20, 2021

THE OLD ORDER PASSETH

In the end, Trump seems not to have pardoned his children or himself. I say “seems” because my son informs me that there is no constitutional or legislative requirement that a pardon be made public. He may have issued pardons to his children and himself and tucked them into his pocket to be produced when needed, but I confess that strikes me as incompatible with his character.

 

There will be much to be grateful for when Joe Biden assumes the presidency in roughly 2 ½ hours. Much to be grateful for, but also some things to regret and others to view with apprehension. I personally experience a certain distress at the prospect of having Joe Biden feel my pain every day for the next four years, publicly and lugubriously, even when I am in fact not in pain. It makes me long for Oscar Wilde who famously said “a man would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of little Nell.” Oh well.

 

Let us leave the prosecution of the insurrectionists to Merrick Garland, who is, I remind you all, a graduate of the Social Studies program at Harvard of which I was the first head tutor. Our job starting right now is to do everything we can to strengthen the progressives in Congress and to win as many seats in the 2022 elections as possible.  A luta continua


5 comments:

  1. I really don't care who he's pardoned so long as he's gone--less than an hour and a half from now.

    In an earlier post, I mentioned the crazed young man who drove all the way from South Carolina to DC in 2017, armed to the teeth, to rescue children from the basement of Comet Ping Pong Pizza where Hillary Clinton and her cohorts were worshiping Satan and abusing children.

    Well last night a contingent drove all the way from Ohio--this time without guns--to protest the child abuse they believe continues in this pizza parlor. Fortunately, as the link below shows, a large group of customers repelled them with rock music and dance. (A few doors down to the right of the pizza parlor is DC's premier indy book store, Politics and Prose.)

    https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/19/conspiracy-theorists-target-comet-ping-pong-on-trumps-last-night-in-office/

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  2. It's incredible how witty Oscar Wilde is. Political correctness inhibits us too much today for being that witty.

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  3. David P.,

    Amazing. I missed that story. I've eaten at Comet Pizza, and I'm glad these Trumpist (or whatever adjective fits) nuts were repelled. This will also serve to correct the misapprehension in certain previous comments that the targeted restaurant is in NY. It's not in NY of course; it's in n.w. Wash. D.C.

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  4. Btw, I'm waiting for Prof. Wolff to take credit not only for Merrick Garland but also for the Straussian (there's at least one) who graduated from Social Studies (whose name is escaping me at the moment, but I could look it up). Logic sort of dictates that if you're going to claim credit in that situation, you have to claim credit for the good and the not-so-good equally.

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  5. Two other jewels by Wilde:

    “I can resist everything except temptation.”

    And his last words, as he lay dying in L’Hotel in Paris:

    “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has got to go.”

    In terms of political incorrectness, one of my favorites was spoken by the actress Tallulah Bankhead, who said, denying the rumor that she was a drug addict, “Heroin is not addictive. I should know. I use it every day.”

    And then there is Lady Margot Asquith’s (wife of Prime Minister Asquith) response to Jean Harlow, who asked her how her first name was pronounced: “The t is silent – as in Harlow.”

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