Articles of Note

I'm somewhat stunned by what I've seen on television this Memorial Day weekend. I'm hoping that CNN, MSNBC, and other news outlets have used shock value interview snippets and footage of various beaches and restaurants, because if what I have seen is representative of widespread behavior during the preceding 72 hours, this country will be in far worse shape in a month than I thought. And I was not an optimist to start.

For now, here are some insightful pieces that have appeared in the last few days.

The first is by one of my favorite authors, conservative national security expert Tom Nichols. In The Atlantic, Nichols' "Donald Trump, the Most Unmanly President" asks many common baffling questions regarding the president, but manages to hang a coherent theory on the answers. One of Nichols' explorations particularly resonated with me, namely the similarities and differences between President Trump and Howard Stern, who share both a fanbase and a history of ubiquitous media presence.

If you pair Columbia University's John McWhorter's linguistic analyses of President Trump with Nichols' arguments, you'll notice some thematic overlap. Clips of various McWhorter interviews from years past can be found on MSNBC.

Another striking piece is "America's chilly experiment in human sacrifice" by Lynn Parramore and Jeffrey Spear. Nineteenth-century political economist John Ruskin features prominently, and the authors use a number of gambling references throughout the article.

I highly recommend giving both pieces a read. Meanwhile, sometime today, the "official" U.S. death count will reach 100,000. We are just 90 days into this pandemic. If Memorial Day weekend was any indication, we will have a long and painful way to go.


Bob Dietz
May 26, 2020