Althouse

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• "Hillbilly Elegy was cited by Hillary Clinton and feted at pointy-headed panel discussions, though some liberals criticized its up-by-the-bootstraps framing."
• Hmm... and I recently bailed quickly on "The Overstory" because I thought it was badly written.
• "The person that shot Ashli Babbitt — boom, right through the head. Just, boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up, and why isn’t that being studied?"
• "What Michael Pollan Learned from Quitting Caffeine for 3 Months."
• 5:22 a.m.
• "The specifically English hatred of patriotism has long been kept alive by its intellectual classes, the people who, as George Orwell wrote, 'would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than of stealing from a poor box.'"

"Hillbilly Elegy was cited by Hillary Clinton and feted at pointy-headed panel discussions, though some liberals criticized its up-by-the-bootstraps framing." Posted: 08 Jul 2021 09:11 AM PDT "At a time when elites struggled to comprehend Trump's appeal, [J.D.] Vance's diagnosis of rural white Americans' disillusionment with a government and society that had left them behind seemed prescient. These days, Vance's persona is more right-wing provocateur than establishment darling. But it's his stance toward Trump that seems destined to dominate his campaign in a primary that could be a bellwether for the post-Trump GOP. As his rivals strain to outdo one another with displays of fealty to the former President, Vance's past opposition has been cited as proof of an all-too-convenient conversion. Vance admits it took him time to come around, but points to his book and commentary as evidence he understood Trump's appeal before most. 'I sort of got Trump's issues from the beginning,' Vance says. 'I just thought that this guy was not serious and was not going to be able to really make progress on the issues I cared about.'" From "Breakfast with J.D. Vance, Anti-Trump Author Turned Pro-Trump Candidate" by Molly Ball (Time). I think his position on Trump is just fine. What's more interesting is the way liberals embraced "Hillbilly Elegy" before they decided it was a yucky conservative they had in their arms. ADDED: Here's a New Republic article from November 17, 2016, "J.D. Vance, the False Prophet of Blue America/The bestselling author of 'Hillbilly Elegy' has emerged as the liberal media's favorite white trash–splainer. But he is offering all the wrong lessons."

Hmm... and I recently bailed quickly on "The Overstory" because I thought it was badly written. Posted: 08 Jul 2021 06:00 AM PDT From a NYT interview with Michael Pollan (and sorry, but it's just by chance that 2 out 3 posts this morning have been about Pollan!):  What's the last great book you read?  "The Overstory," by Richard Powers, is a book that, the further I am from reading it, looms larger and larger in my imagination....  Can a great book be badly written? What other criteria can overcome bad prose?  I probably haven't stuck around long enough to find out — I usually bail quickly on badly written books....

"The person that shot Ashli Babbitt — boom, right through the head. Just, boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up, and why isn’t that being studied?" Posted: 08 Jul 2021 12:14 PM PDT "They've already written it off. They said that case is closed. If that were the opposite, that case would be going on for years and years, and it would not be pretty.... Nobody knows who that man [was]... If that were the opposite way, that man would be all over. He would be the most well-known — and I believe I can say 'man,' because I believe I know exactly who it is — but he would be the most well-known person in this country, in the world."  Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump says 'there was no reason' for officer to shoot rioter who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6" (WaPo) ("Trump made the remarks during an event in Bedminster, N.J., where he announced he is filing lawsuits against U.S. social media companies following their suspensions of his accounts.... The companies cited the former president's incitement of violence in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob as a reason for his suspension").

"What Michael Pollan Learned from Quitting Caffeine for 3 Months." Posted: 08 Jul 2021 05:05 AM PDT

5:22 a.m. Posted: 07 Jul 2021 06:59 PM PDT

"The specifically English hatred of patriotism has long been kept alive by its intellectual classes, the people who, as George Orwell wrote, 'would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God Save the King than of stealing from a poor box.'" Posted: 07 Jul 2021 04:05 PM PDT "Because England was not the creation of intellectuals, patriotism has never been an intellectual pastime. The ecstasies of 19th-century Romantic nationalism which gave birth to Germany and Italy were forged by poets, musicians and the re-assemblers of lost national epics and folk traditions. By this time England had been muddling along for a millennium. Unlike nations ushered into being by Enlightenment intellectuals which enshrined philosophical abstractions as national principles ('liberty, equality and fraternity' for Republican France, 'freedom' for the United States), British patriotism comes from below. Accordingly it is usually defined in hilariously prosaic terms: queueing, warm beer, roast beef, rain. These are all things disliked by intellectuals.... Our long tradition of national self-hatred has in some ways stress-tested the national consciousness. Self-hatred doesn't portend a 'chasm.' It is something we are long-sufferingly accustomed to. Things are more dangerous in brittler, prouder America."  From "It's deeply British to question our patriotism/A tradition of tolerating dissent is a sign of national strength rather than something to fret over" by James Marriott (London Times). We're brittler than Brits, he says. And prouder. He sounds proud, you might say, but not proud of his country, and that's his point about pride. I do think our intellectuals look down on patriotism too, though less amusingly. There's a lot of expression of patriotism in America because most of us don't take our cues from intellectuals. I'm sure at least half of my readers are, right now, rankling at my acceptance of Marriott's word "intellectuals" to refer to America's present-day elite. The top-rated comment at the London Times quotes James Boswell's "Life of Johnson" (entry dated April 7, 1775): Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apothegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.

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