Christmas Prisms

One aspect of our society we should hope never succumbs to speed, convenience or economy is the habit of exchanging Christmas cards. The real paper ones sealed inside envelopes, bearing stamps, and dropped in mailboxes.

Unlike the rotary phone, black & white televisions, and phonographs, inventions that became consumer goods which progress raced by and rendered obsolete, printed cards delivered via surface mail, bearing stamps, contained in covers carrying the sometimes nearly indecipherable scrawls of well-meaning senders who held the recipients in worthy esteem, are worthwhile remnants of our less instantaneous time.

They reflected humanity. Ours. Continue reading Christmas Prisms

Magnificent Arrogance

Were Time magazine founding publisher Henry Luce still alive, the man who’d coined the 20th century “the American Century” would today declare any extension of it dead.

Our epoch of true world influence stretched from the Jazz Age until Bolshevism collapsed under capitalist superiority. Although our Levant fiasco significantly diminished the nation’s prestige while emboldening adversaries, much of the global community still accepted the United States as the planet’s cock of the walk.

After wrong-footing throughout 2017, the only standing America retains is being musclebound and brainless. Continue reading Magnificent Arrogance