Songs of Experience

Novus Ordo Seclorum

William Timberman2 Comments

Along with many others, I’ve long thought and said as much here and elsewhere that Americans would have a difficult time adjusting to the end of post-war US hegemony and the rise of a multipolar world order. It now seems fair to say that the re-election of Donald Trump makes that hard-core recalcitrance a certainty. And when you start finding things like this on the Internet, it’s probably also fair to say that none of that pig-headedness will go down well with what our previous leaders have been pleased to call The International Community:

A map of the united states with the words " dumbfuckkistan " written in it.

Film Criticism (Of a Sort)

William Timberman

So I find myself netflicking again the other night, looking for something to rest my weary eyes on after another long day spent reading and writing on that radiant little iPad of mine. Ah, here we go then, a new one of those geriatric menaces with Liam Neeson in it. This time he’s to be a hit man (what else) retired in a village full of innocents the producer seems to have borrowed from the Banshees of Inisherin. It does also have Ciarán Hinds and Colm Meaney in it, though, so maybe….

Turns out it’s quite satisfying—serious enough to portray a character who has as hard a time as any of us figuring out if it’s his death or his life catching up with him, and wise enough to cast a superb Kerry Condon as the young harridan with a revolver who helps him with the final bit of calculation. It’s not quite Inisherin, but it doesn’t embarrass itself.

It’s called In the Land of Saints and Sinners, and it’s on Prime. It wouldn‘t kill you to have a look at it.

How It Happened

William Timberman

The DNC wants to know how it happened, by which they mean how it happened to them. Someone—I no longer remember who—once said that after 1968, the Democratic Party finally succeeded in locking its entire left wing in a windowless room, then spent the next 40 years booby trapping all the exits. Ironically, it was a Democrat who once told us that those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. He was another kind of Democrat, though, and anyway he was talking about somebody else.

Nancy Pelosi thinks it happened because men in her party aren’t cunning enough. She may be on to something.

Joe Biden thinks it happened because the Democratic Party wasn’t Joe Biden enough. Enough said about that.

AOC tried everything she could think of to keep it from happening, including reluctantly acting the part of a loyal apparatchik in party conferences. To no avail, as is now clear even to her.

David Frum says he knows how it happened, but rather unconvincingly ignores the fact that he was in the room when it was being planned.

Donald Trump thinks it happened because he’s the bonfire of all the vanities. Not quite all the vanities, though, as will soon become abundantly clear.

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks it happened because stupid is not only stronger than smart, it’s also more patient. She’s wrong, yet on the scale of a single human lifetime, it’s gonna be impossible to prove to her or to anyone else exactly how wrong she is.

How do I think it happened? You don’t want to know.

Ars Gratia Artis Ain’t the Half of It

William Timberman

The sarabande from Bach’s cello suite no. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008, was my first glimpse into the one abyss that human beings can always look into with confidence that their eternal immaturity will be respected. Music is the abyss that looks back into us without any attempt to claim dominion over us, the abyss that offers us a rare chance to defeat entropy. Music isn’t always destined to soothe the savage beast in us—every once in a while it escapes the definitions we’ve reserved for it and confirms the fundamental savagery of our right to exist in a universe filled with marvels that otherwise might remain beyond us in every way.