#lance morrow

The country’s myriad cancelers emit the odor not of sanctity but of sanctimony, and of something more ominous: the whiff of a society decomposing.

The other day, Ted Koppel, a voice from the late-twentieth-century practice of journalism, spoke about what has become of his old business in the age of Trump. “We are not the reservoir of objectivity that I think we were,” Koppel said, in an understatement. The Left always cites Fox News in this regard. He singled out the Washington Post and the New York Times, saying that they have gone overboard in their bias, transforming themselves into anti-Trump advocates. “We are not talking about the Washington Post [or New York Times] of 50 years ago,” Koppel said. “We’re talking about organizations that . . . have decided, as organizations, that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States.” Both papers have in effect declared a state of emergency because of Trump and have granted themselves the editorial equivalent of dictatorial powers. Doing so may be as ill-advised with newspapers as with elected officials. When journalists don’t consider themselves bound to old norms of objectivity, there comes an absence of restraint that is inherently corrupting. The morning story conference takes on the atmosphere of a rally of zealots. The newspaper becomes the Pequod: President Trump is the white whale.

It is as if progressives in the era of Donald Trump are stuck in what physicists call a “metastable state,” an adolescent condition of mind—and a ridiculous place to have one’s thoughts detained. Is it not odd for a society to argue crucial moral issues on the basis of the behavior of teenagers, debating great matters by trying to read the smile of a 16-year-old on Facebook? Do progressives understand that adolescence (volatile, experimental, mostly ignorant, and naturally running to extremes) should not be the territory on which to thrash out these issues? At work here—besides a massive failure of adult responsibility—is the cynical manipulation, for political gain, of shallow adolescent emotions. Twenty-first-century American middle-class society indulges adolescents well into their twenties and beyond. Masses of young people move back in with their parents, deferring adult life in favor of a sort of liminal, embryonic state. Yet here we see progressives placing adolescents at the center of their moral imaginations, as if the moods of teenagers were the mirror of their most consequential thoughts.

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.

Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another's control... to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else's nightmare.

#FrasesCelebres: la música és el mitjà que tenen els nostres records per cantar-nos a través del temps