Off to a good start, chyrons, headlines, phrases, metaphors, 31
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MTP 3/29/2019:
Again, trump, trump, trump..
Rep Jamie Raskin, his way with words:
Attorney General Barr writes letters like Agatha Christie novels, there are more and more mysteries built into each one ..
[Impeachment] it’s the people’s defense against a president who’s acting like a king ..
Katy Tur:
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The Beat, Ari Melber:
First, a stream of chyrons..
Aisha:
I’m dropping this four-page letter and enclosing it with a kiss..
Aside: the things we learn!!
Howard Fineman:
I think he’s part of the team..
Let me use a basketball analogy if you don’t mind.. You know how, at the end of a game when one team thinks it’s ahead and they spread the floor and start tossing the ball around to keep from getting fouled to stop the clock, that’s my interpretation [of Barr’s actions] here..
.. dozens of years of Yale Law School education, and we end at the freak-show tent ..
A pair:
Then there’s a quote from Obama’s Selma Bridge speech:
We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others.
Fallback, which I generally don’t like too much, but here —
— hunting and shooting a sleeping lion —
If you’re hunting to eat, that’s one thing ..
You want to impress me — go fight that lion with your bare hands, knuckles, teeth — and then come back and talk to me..
[cf past Maasai hunting traditions.. ]
— and which, further into the Fallback episode, brings us more music — Stay in ur lane:
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So here I’ll take a break..
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Grurray:
March 31st, 2019 at 3:39 pm
Regarding the long ball, there is also this emblem of the 1990s
http://bit.ly/2OyDSMb
Charles Cameron:
March 31st, 2019 at 10:42 pm
It’s hard for me to tell, as an un-inducted Brit, whether that commercial verges on the pornographic or not..
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Grurray:
April 1st, 2019 at 5:04 pm
Haha… well there might be some deeper insights beyond the home runs and ball bunnies.
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I think there are elements of Charles Atlas’ proverbial seven-stone weakling who transforms himself after sand is kicked in his face.
And then there’s rising from the depths of Zarathustra’s Roundelay-
“Joy (or lust which may work better in this context)— deeper yet than woe is she
Saith woe: ‘Hence! Go!’
Yet joy would have eternity,
Profound, profound eternity!”
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I also detect some of Plato’s scala amoris. The perception of beauty triggers forms embedded in us that start us on a climb up this ‘ladder of love’ from the beautiful bodies, to the beautiful souls, to the beautiful laws that all young men utilize to better their lives. A search for the good origins of the beauty leads to the Good itself.
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Finally, of course, I see a little bit of St. Gregory’s doctrine of epektasis, perpetual striving up the endless mountain to approach, but never attain, transcendence. As in Blake’s exclamation of constant striving for unrealized potential:
“I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.”
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So what does this mean for the practical matter at hand? Aside from that unfortunate belittlement of physical appearances which I admit distracts from any real point, perhaps Trump is just trying to say that the esteemed congressman from Burbank is so wrapped up in the search for Russian collusion that he misses the real search. The search for truth, beauty, and love that brings us ever closer to our ultimate purpose.
Charles Cameron:
April 1st, 2019 at 5:46 pm
Phew!
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If Trump’s a Platonist, I must be an Aristotelian. Who’d have thunk it?
Charles Cameron:
April 1st, 2019 at 6:03 pm
More seriously, epektasis — St Gregory of Nyssa, in what I take to be a Danielou quote in Liviu Petcu, The Doctrine of Epektasis, not one from St Gregory himself:
and likewise, the perpetual beginner-status of the accomplished.
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Really, these Cappadocians are working at a depth I can barely imagine, let alone realize — depth, height.
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and your description of epektasis, “perpetual striving up the endless mountain to approach, but never attain, transcendence” reminds me of my poem No Place Special, which I posted here a while back.. But that’s me trying to climb to an understanding of a book, which is not exactly the same as Unknowable, eh?
Grurray:
April 3rd, 2019 at 5:43 pm
Using our ‘ears on the inside of the skull’ sounds about right to me, whether for the inward call of a book or the inward call up the mountain.
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In ‘The Life of Moses’ Gregory made this wonderful analogy between the Israelites’ passover doorposts and Plato’s tripartite nature of the soul.
The soul is divided into there parts: the rational representing the upper post of the door and two supporting side posts consisting of the appetitive and the spirited. The spirit trains the rational in courage and the appetite elevates the rational to participate in the Good. In turn the rational provides safety for the spirit and appetite. Virtuous thoughts are the bolts and fasteners binding them together, and the blood of the lamb purifies all.