For a lot of people, the election of Obama caused them to ejaculate, “I want my country back!” Eight years later, another president was elected (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Personal responsibility versus social responsibility
03/12/2022 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsKurt Andersen has made clear the course of thinking in this country derived from Milton Friedman: nothing matters more that making money except making more (Continue Reading)
Who is the true egalitarian
03/04/2022 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhen a conservative savages a poor person, a person of putative lower status, or anyone at a disadvantage, we liberals rush to their defense. But (Continue Reading)
What I Am Most Proud Of
12/10/2021 Pat Barrett 6 CommentsIn his Atlantic article, “Are We Doomed?” George Packer has two lines that went to something I’ve been saying ever since the rise of Trump. (Continue Reading)
No Serious Consequences
12/05/2021 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsIsabel Wilkerson so deftly put into frame and focus the experience of Black Americans, I wondered as I read what the obverse of that coin (Continue Reading)
What’s been happening all along is………
08/16/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis is an attempt to put together the essential matters we all have to consider. I was inspired by Francis Fukuyama’s Origins of Political Order (Continue Reading)
Juneteenth
06/17/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentSigned into law today is a new federal holiday celebrating the time in June, 1865, that slaves in Texas found out they had been freed (Continue Reading)
Cultural Condescension
06/03/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn interviews with Eliot Cohen, the authors, Saldin and Teles (terrific book so far) quote him referring to Obama’s “cultural condescension” and to how furious (Continue Reading)
Whence the anger?
02/21/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAmericans carry beneath their Hail Fellow Well Met exterior a lot of anger. You can see it when you are out driving. But where does (Continue Reading)
What there is pattern, there is intention
02/01/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentWhen artists bypass rules and structures, their work can sound chaotic to anyone expecting the traditional patterns of rhyme, harmony, rhythm, tone, pitch, scale, mode, (Continue Reading)
Up to here
01/16/2021 Pat Barrett 8 CommentsMaybe we felt bad about Trump supporters and Trump voters being ridiculed by the leading-lights of the major culture, esp for thinking they are the (Continue Reading)
Symbols are important
12/02/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOur language sometimes scrunches word meaning down into what is commonly heard. Symbolism is one of those words, as in “It’s only symbolic.” That takes (Continue Reading)
oases of reinstatement but our long
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsHonor was lacking. Biden will tsk tsk us for saying a lack of honor was the principle in the Trump administration and in the Trump (Continue Reading)
As the dust settles……..
11/23/2020 Pat Barrett 3 CommentsAs Trump gives up his law suits to overturn the election results, it remains to be seen what he will do next. Some say he (Continue Reading)
What is a conservative?
10/25/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentSomeone who wants to conserve things the way they are. Why does he want to do that? Because he is comfortable with that way and (Continue Reading)
Upworthiest is great, but……
09/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentHeart-warming stories are the stock-in-trade of the site Upworthiest. Puppies, little kids, kittens, grateful oldsters, tough guy softies, and so on. Lots of fun. Makes (Continue Reading)
Two Kinds of Conservatism
09/24/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIgnoring for now the variety of ideologies, policies and crank ideas that make up the so-called conservative movement (Paleoconservatives. Reactionaries, Libertarians, Movement Conservatives, Old Guard, (Continue Reading)
Peer Review
09/17/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOnly one instance of this term appears in this blog:” I found that people whose knowledge and wisdom I had reason to respect presented this (Continue Reading)
Is this what they were looking for?
09/05/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt this point there must be a halt to pointing out how upside down the world must look now to Trump supporters: his Christian supporters (Continue Reading)
Obama – Trump twisted
09/05/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentSeveral features of Trump’s attacks and his surrogates’ attacks on Obama are curious or downright hilarious. Obama not understanding America? Have you ever heard of (Continue Reading)
The Untouchables
09/01/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsHere’s a scenario, all fantasy on my part but based a bit on conversations with police officers. Why do officers form a blue wall against (Continue Reading)
The Holy Trinity redux
08/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe Reverend Jerry Falwell has given a special twist to the ever difficult to define Trinity.
Compromises
08/15/2020 Pat Barrett Add Comment“It’s easy to write about other people’s compromises; it is much harder to write about your own.” My lack of compromise turned out not to (Continue Reading)