Thursday, December 29, 2016

Hmm …

… Oh, Sancho: The Ongoing Ride of Don Quixote in American Politics - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



The problem, it seems to me, is essentialism — seeing things in terms of categories, pigeon-holing reality (quixotism being this author's contribution). The antidote is phenomenology — describing things in all their inconsistency and contradiction.
Our most recent presidential election provided a rich vein of both — inconsistency and contradiction — on both sides. The passionate intensity these evoked only made things seem more bizarre. Those of us inclined to cast a cold eye on politics and politicians could only roll our eyes. 

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