without apology......................

Van Buren's wooing of Jefferson captured the changing mores in US politics.  The Revolutionary Era system of deference was rapidly crumbling.  In most states, property qualifications were no longer a prerequisite for voting.  A growing number of Americans—all white men, of course—were enfranchised and participating in the political process.  The forty-one-year-old Van Buren typified this brash new style of egalitarian politics.  He played the game of politics to win elections and build power, and he pursued those goals without apology.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician 

fraternizing.............................

 

Levelheaded and calm, he rarely lost his cool in the company of others.  He spurned codes of honor.  He ignored insults.  He fraternized with his enemies, and even enjoyed their company.  At a time when political rivals still settled their differences on the dueling ground, Van Buren's example of courtesy toward the opposition set an important example in establishing some semblance of a peaceful republic.

-James M. Bradley, Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician

the power lies within.................

 

47.  If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.  If the cause of the trouble lies in your own character, set about reforming your principles; who is there to hinder you?

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations: Book Eight

One of the greatest...........................

 

...............................letters ever written.

And we have front-row seats............

 

The revolt of the public will not necessarily usher in an authoritarian age. It does not necessarily foster populism. It is not necessarily destructive of liberal democracy. The revolt of the public, as I envision the thing, is a technology-driven churning of new people and classes, a proliferation and confusion of message and noise, utopian hopes and nihilistic rage, globalization and disintegration, taking place in the unbearable personal proximity of the web and at a fatal distance from political power. Every structure of order is threatened—yes. Nihilism at the level of whole societies, in the style of ISIS, is a possible outcome. But no particular system is favored or disadvantaged—and nothing is ordained.

-Martin Gurri, as culled from here

One understanding..................................

 

..............................of Trump's election victory:

With The Great Clarification of what was really going on with lawfare, back-channel understandings between Big Tech and Big Govt, and questionable conduct by the FBI and the CIA, fear of him was replaced by fear of them.

Speaking of sobriety...............

 If you have a bad habit, replace it with a good habit. Do not try to suppress it entirely. This astute observation echoes a point made by Aristotle himself, more than two millennia ago. It was valid then; it is valid now.

-Stuart Schneiderman, from this post

The spell is...............................

 

.........................................broken.

Optionality.................

 

Don’t get me wrong. America has a lot else going for it, including being protected by two massive oceans on its coasts and two friendly nations to its north and south, vast resources (energy, farmland, and navigable waterways), a diverse population, an educated workforce and entrepreneurial ethos, and the world’s strongest military, economy, and financial markets. However, Americans’ ability to choose how to leverage these assets most effectively is what makes it the most dynamic country and economy in the world.

-Ted Lamade, from here

Martin Gurri...............................

 

...............................is always worth reading:

Something new was afoot. In 2016, Trump won an electoral contest. In 2024, he stood at the vanguard of a profound cultural shift that touched on everyday morals and manners, the relations between the sexes, a freer but more fragmented internet—with artificial intelligence hovering in the near foreground—and the first concerted effort in 50 years to reduce the federal government to the dimensions suggested by the Constitution. Trump had become the definitive avatar of the revolt of the American public, and he had been granted much power by the election. The immediate question was whether such a volatile personality, assisted by a gang of eccentrics, could succeed enough to satisfy the public’s hunger for change.

The answer will not be long in coming.

You can, but it won't.................

 

........................Frustration is bargaining with reality, hoping it will change.

-Farnum Street

Arnold Kling's.................................

........................................recurring daydream: 

By undertaking a wholesale re-org, you can change the default status of a unit from “keep doing what you did last year” to “justify your continued existence.”

As agendas go.............................

 

.............this one could garner a lot of support:

The new political agenda is for voter ID, an end to daylight savings, Congressional term limits and buying Greenland. Who says no?

-Chris Lynch

be the change.....................

 

It is yourself as perceiver of the world, not the world, that you should be attempting to change.

-John Moriarty, Dreamtime

There is some truth in this..................

 

Most of us are making it up as we go, moving the goalposts continually and never settling on a specific definition of money or happiness.

-Ben Carlson, as extracted from here

Never bet against America.....................

..........................................says Warren Buffett

(ignore the mis-leading hype about a collapse)

 

Ouch..........................

 

If anything, the Democrats synchronized swimming of the past month could only occur in a party largely uniform in its core constituencies and essential beliefs. They shift positions and allegiances through technology and media control, using influencers to hide troublesome past positions with a dexterity that a Communist vozdh like Joseph Stalin would have appreciated.

-Joel Kotkin, from "What Happened to My Party?"

Let it go...............

Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

-Kevin Kelly, from here

 

An understatement...................

 

But I also think that it is important to separate out what is real from what is just a comforting lie that we tell ourselves.

-James O'Malley from his Music Just Changed Forever post

Wedding................................

...................................sneakers?

 'But casualization has penetrated so far up the chain of formality that it would almost be punk for him to wear leather shoes.'"