Civil Horizon
Free Thoughts, Adequately Expressed

I’m not going to deny that I’m enjoying a bit of schadenfreude over the accusations of sexual harassment presently sealing Governor Cuomo’s political doom. Any sympathy I may have otherwise felt for a man accused without evidence is overwhelmed by the deliciousness of considering the now all-too-obvious stupidity of his faux-high-minded posturing during the Kavanaugh hearings when similar accusations were leveled at the judge. I’m pretty sure he regrets his tweets from that time.

That said, schadenfreude is not a noble impulse. There is nothing generous about enjoying others’ troubles. And in truth the nature of the present storm around Governor Cuomo is rather strange.

One woman, an aspiring politician, is accusing him of having sexually assaulted her – in the sense of i...

It’s not hard to figure out why most of my prosperous neighbors and many of my friends supported Biden. Sure, the constant demonization of Trump by the nation’s corporate media made pulling the lever for a borderline senile, venal political retread the more socially acceptable choice, at least among the crowd that gets its opinions from the ‘news’ sections of The New York Times; but the most fundamental reason was far simpler: near-term economic self-interest.

Begin with the fact that, using Covid19 as the excuse, the Biden Administration is going to bail out many essentially bankrupt (and uniformly ‘blue’) cities and states without imposing budget restraints that would address the overspending that created their fiscal messes long before Covid19 came along...

A few years ago, the Beloved Spouse and I did a major home renovation.

Out of what had been a large, derelict room we built a beautiful library (or rather, our contractors did), with shelves that can hold something like 10,000 books. The Beloved is a truly prodigious reader, and I intermittently one, so we already had around 5,000 books, acquired over the roughly fifty years since each of us entered high school. I thought it would be fun to put them all in one place, then fill the obvious holes in what we had. The end result is a room in which we can sit surrounded by the masterworks of brilliant writers from down through the ages.  

With gifts from friends and family, many of whom are looking to get rid of the very things I’ve been seeking, the collection now numbers about 7,000 ...

Some mammals occasionally commit mass, unintentional suicide by forming herds that charge right off cliffs. Native Americans used to take advantage of the, ah, counterproductive instincts that drive this behavior by directing stampedes of bison into gorges where their meat and skins could be harvested at leisure. A relatively few hunters could – and did – kill vast numbers of animals in this manner.

It’s horrifyingly easy to understand what the bison were probably thinking as they rushed to their deaths. They were surrounded by their equivalent of family and friends and following the lead of other bison just as eager as they were to move in the direction chosen by leaders somewhere off ahead...

I’ve been walking Sunny a lot lately. Now all of 50 pounds – four times her weight when she came into our lives three and a half months ago – she’s still every ounce a puppy. She leaps eagerly in the direction of every nearby person or dog, hoping to snuggle up to them all. When there are no such delightful diversions, she plays tug-of-war with her leash as we walk, sometimes nipping gently at my (happily, gloved) fingers.

Sunny’s ceaseless cavorting invariably draws smiles from passersby and on most outings once or twice drivers stop their cars, lower their windows and shout compliments or ask about her breed...

about class in America: https://spectator.us/topic/oligarchy-america-rome-athens-jeff-bezos/.

The reactions to Trump Agonistes were interesting. First off, the post was read more than twice as many times than is usual with my posts; the only CH posts that have gotten more reads than it have been the few that were linked to by major websites – and they got twenty or thirty times as many. The number of times TA was read is mildly interesting (and to me, surprising); more interesting were the comments it elicited.

More than half of the comments that were made online were from the left and negative, generally harshly criticizing what the commenters saw as my having played down the seriousness of the riot. These, I left up.

I deleted several anonymous comments (from the left) of the ad hominem ‘you’re an idiot’ or ‘you’re deeply unethical’ variety...

One of the reasons that I write these posts is to try to inform the Trump-despising progressives among Civil Horizon’s readership, of whom there are many, of what the other side is thinking. I know the social and media contexts from which such people draw their hatred and hope that I can, to a small extent, open their minds to another, very different, way of seeing things. I don’t think I’ve actually made much headway in that regard, but I feel compelled to keep plugging away at it.

Today is not the easiest day for me to make my case. The mini-riot at the Capitol yesterday certainly didn’t show Trump ‘s supporters in the best light...

The left revels in its self-image of being the more generous, tolerant and sophisticated side of the political spectrum. In political terms, progressives cast themselves first and foremost as defenders of the downtrodden. They take it as a given that if only the knuckle-draggers on the right would get out of the way, their policy prescriptions would quickly light the way to the just, inevitable and above-all correct future. Let’s take a closer look at their pretenses of moral superiority.

1. Generosity

It’s well-established that conservatives, devoutly believing as most do in the personal responsibilities that come with freedom, give more of their own money to charity than progressives do; even so, progressives tell themselves that they are really more generous than their allegedl...

Best post I’ve read in a long time, by Glenn Greenwald: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-threat-of-authoritarianism-in.