We know the truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart. ---Blaise Pascal
“Life failure” is the central problem for Wilson. We are all familiar with it. Its most common form is boredom, which, Wilson tells us, is essentially a kind of drooping of intentionality.
If our attention is like a hand, it can only grasp something in one way at a time.
Without a patrician center, there are no standards, and so people increasingly go their own ways or take their cues from below, not above. And the society breaks down into fractions that passionately pursue their partial interest at the expense of the larger whole. Hence the moral confusion and political dysfunction that now afflicts the United States.
Our immune system is the best weapon we have to root out the source of most illness.
N.B. Indeed. So use it. Get vaccinated!
Realism emerges from the tension between moral philosophy and area expertise. The weight of history and landscape limit what can be accomplished in any particular terrain, even as the possibilities for improvement must always exist.
Nixon’s attacks on Kennedy seemed half-envious, never contemptuous. Murray Kempton observed at the time: “Mr. Nixon is cursed by the illusion that he is playing dirty with his betters.” Like Johnson, Nixon felt compelled to mimic where he could not scorn—the Nixon inaugural address was slavishly imitative of Kennedy’s more successful one.
N.B. It's this depth of insight that earned Wills a place on Nixon's enemies list.
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