#ross douthat
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bitterkarella · 2 years ago
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Midnight Pals: Fatality
Ross Douthat: [wearing hat with PRESS tag] why are kids today so depressed? Douthat: I, Ross Douthat, serious thinker, take a hard look at the question in today's new york times Douthat: because sometimes even the grey lady needs a break from cheerleading genocide
Douthat: could it be that they live in a soul-crushing panopticon with no hope for the future amid rising fascism, climate catastrophe and unchecked disease? Douthat: or it it be Douthat: cell phones?
Douthat: kids today, all they want to do is look at their cellphones! Douthat: and while i'm at it Douthat: [shaking fist at cloud]
Douthat: why are kids today so obsessed with cellphones? Joyce Carol Oates: maybe it's because you're a boring little bitch Douthat: Douthat: [FATALITY! appears on screen]
Poe: did you guys hear? Joyce bodied ross douthat! Barker: Joyce? our Joyce? Barker: Joyce Carol Oates? Poe: yeah Barker: damn King: how's her foot doing? Poe: well she still has it Poe: so i imagine it must be doing better
Mary Shelley: sup fuckers Poe: joyce carol oates just killed ross douthat Shelley: huh Shelley: [putting away shiv] well guess i won't need this today
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timbarrus · 1 month ago
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Take notes. I am a radical. Not a democrat. Not a republican. There are no independents. They employ the same political and cultural infrastructure -- how things work -- that the rest of us are compelled to use. Climate: Not a word. It's the Trump go to for climate change, a hoax. Americans are in denial. Why. Not a word about that. Save the American Dream. The American Dream is flat-out vanished. Is America is a corpse because it has a fetish for illusion. The American people still believe in the goodness of Gotham. Hollywood's Gotham is urban decay on steroids. Not one word about how Hollywood's cultural prostitution, carved from graves for advanced rot. Criminals rise to power. The word criminal is not to be found. There are metaphors for the word rapist. There are metaphors for the word crook. There are metaphors for the word deviant. You will not find the word deviant here because the republican (small d) party cannot bring itself to believe it's leader (ownership culture) is aberrational. Even the bad word sex is an economic negotiation. Or it's rape. You get to pick one. Not both. They take a deviant, and they normalize him as a leader who struggled. Another idea they avoid is based on the word individual. Individual is Americana. This is about the rise of Trump. And what did I learn. The word nothing has a metaphor, too. Vacuum. They are telling us America loves Trump. Genuflect. Now, the truth. Scratching heads. Suddenly, perplexed. More questions. No answers.
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Libro “La sociedad decadente- Ross Douthat”
Título Original y en Español Título original: “The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success” Título en español: “La sociedad decadente: Cómo nos hemos convertido en víctimas de nuestro propio éxito” Autor Autor: Ross Douthat, un columnista del New York Times y autor de varios otros libros. País y Idioma Original País: Estados Unidos Idioma original:…
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prcg · 2 months ago
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Ni siquiera vale la pena ver la segunda temporada de 'Rings Of Power'
Las máquinas de asedio no son sigilosas. En relación con esto, es hora de desconectar la adaptación de Tolkien de Amazon. Hubo mucho de qué quejarse en la segunda temporada de “Los anillos de poder”, pero el punto más bajo podría haber sido un escuadrón de máquinas de asedio que surgieron del bosque en un ataque sorpresa contra Eregion. Esto podría parecer una objeción menor dada la fracasos de…
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drownmeinbeauty · 2 months ago
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DEMOCRACY BY DESIGN
In an essay in the Times subscriber newsletter called Why We Don't Build Beautifully, neoconservative pundit Ross Douthat asks Americans to return to classicism. More alarmingly, he links aesthetics to politics and endorses the Trump administration's 2020 executive order to design federal buildings in a classical style. As with most declarations about architecture from not-architects, its logic is flimsy. And, as with most declarations supporting classical architecture, it feels foolishly nostalgic and vaguely ethnocentric.
There are some improbable leaps in Douthat's thinking. First, he equates classicism with ornament, and attributes its decline to the loss of a shared culture. Then, he posits that modern technology makes it more economical to produce ornament. Finally, he claims that a nefarious cultural elite led us astray.
Arguing for a return to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century building technologies is like recommending that all men wear felt suits and hats, all women wear crinolines and corsets, and everyone commute to the office in a horse and trap. Douthat is correct asserting that many people -- maybe even most people -- prefer older buildings, that is, buildings clad in stone and brick, to those clad in glass and metal. They offer an image of stability and history that can comfort. But masonry work is expensive and the know-how to execute classical ornament is uncommon; it's only taught in a handful of architecture schools.
There's a severity in Douthat's argument for classicism, a fear of eclecticism, as if modernism incorrectly disrupted a majestic, pre-ordained, linear path. Looking back, some passages in American history would best be reexamined before they're enshrined. Why accept a time before emancipation, or before the modern civil rights movement, as ideal? In addition to providing critical program, civic buildings are called on to present a compelling collective image. And many Americans today don't trace culture to ancient Greece and Rome but to other civilizations, and architectures, like those of Ghana, Cambodia, or Mexico. We can't simply copy old styles for warm feelings.
Douthat's argument is also deeply anti-urban. American cities allow for an architecture of juxtapositions, innovations, and erasures. Individual structures, regardless of aesthetic merit, assert themselves through conflict and contrast. And all of this -- the freedom of choice, its untrammeled material expression, and the chaos and music that ensue -- is fundamentally American.
Giovanni Paolo Panini, Interior of the Pantheon, Rome, c. 1734. Courtesy of the National Gallery.
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davidblaska · 6 months ago
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Don't stand by your man
Throw papa off the train! We get that spouses are supposed to be supportive. Stand by your man 🎵, and all that. But the villain —  well meaning though she may be — in this norm-busting presidential campaign is less Nurse Ratched and more Edith Galt Wilson.  “Doctor” Jill Biden reminds us of President Wilson’s second wife, the one who said all is well while she hid old Woodrow, felled by a…
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sinoeurovoices · 1 year ago
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為什麽美國應該更擔憂中國而不是中東的戰爭
周四,拜登發表演講,將以色列與哈馬斯的沖突與俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭聯系起來,並將美國的參與定性為遏制敵人和對手的大戰略的一部分。“當恐怖分子不為恐怖行為付出代價時,當獨裁者不為侵略行為付出代價時,”他宣稱,“他們就會繼續下去。美國和世界付出的代價和面對的威脅不斷增加。” 總的來說,拜登是對的;防止敵對勢力重新繪制地圖或破壞美國的民主盟友極為符合美國的利益。但是,總統的戰略分析與我最近試圖提供的分析之間存在兩個區別:拜登的話總體上沒有承認任何艱難的權衡,也沒有具體提到,中國是比俄羅斯或伊朗更嚴重的潛在威脅。 這些缺失並不特別令人驚訝。美國總統常常會說些“沒有任何東西,任何,超出我們的能力範圍”之類振振有詞的話,而不是談論我們的力量可能受到的限制。既然我們實際上不想與中國開戰,那麽避免將北京與莫斯科和德黑蘭混為一談也是有一定道理的。 但總統的言論和政策不可避免地聯系在一起,拜登的演講中沒有提…
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maa-pix · 8 months ago
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And Bret Stephens, never met a bad-faith argument he didn't embrace.
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David Brooks is paid to be a character.
He represents whiteness. He is endlessly wrong. He is a bad faith actor who never atones/repents. It's just one long advertisement for products that don't work. His lack of accuracy is a perfect description of conservatism, writ large.
Often dead wrong, never in doubt.
Ross Douthat is equally as worthless.
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minnesotafollower · 1 year ago
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Are Anti-Trumpers “the Bad Guys”?
This is the question posed in a recent David Brooks column in the New York Times.[1]  He starts out with the admission (or confession) that he is an anti-Trumper who believes that members of this group are “the good guys, the forces of progress and enlightenment” while the “Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians” who see Trump as “the embodiment of their resentments.” At least for…
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sarkos · 5 months ago
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Hewwo... Mrs President?
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mariacallous · 1 year ago
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vonnegussy · 2 years ago
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The nyt opinion page is truly the worst place on the planet
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timbarrus · 4 months ago
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Take notes: I am a super cool parent and I have set no one adrift. I do not bite Barbie's head off. Who actually parents children in a politikal context. My three-year-old is a Nazi. She orders everyone around. Are you telling me that republicans have children. Who demonstrate the teachings of a lone homo sapiens who never had any children let alone a marriage. Yes, Jesus had many republican children. This was more difficult than walking on water. Weird. My three-year-old usually knows a fantasy when she sees it. I teach her that everyone who is republican is bad. Republicans smell as they do not bathe. Republicans give Barbie cigarette burns. Republicans are mean to dogs. You are Wonder Woman, you have Wonder Woman pajamas, and you have magic ropes to tie people up so republicans have to tell the truth which is what makes them all go blind, they run into things. Wonder Woman (or our image of her) was never subservient to a male. Any male. Men are bad. Repeat after me: Men Are Bad, Men are Bad, Men are Bad. Why. Don't ask questions. And don't marry one. Why. Because when you have children, they will probably be men children. Why. Because men children play with matches. Pick me up. No, you have to walk by yourself. Everytime I say that I have to slap myself. We all fall down somewhere in our lives, republican or Democrat. Bring in the next one. There are no prophets in the world dreaming of things to come. Those would be our kids.
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amethyinst · 1 year ago
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deedsandcreeds · 2 months ago
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“Christianity is a paradoxical religion because the Jew of Nazareth is a paradoxical character. No figure in history or fiction contains as many multitudes as the New Testament’s Jesus. He’s a celibate ascetic who enjoys dining with publicans and changing water into wine at weddings. He’s an apocalyptic prophet one moment, a wise ethicist the next. He’s a fierce critic of Jewish religious law who insists that he’s actually fulfilling rather than subverting it. He preaches a reversal of every social hierarchy while deliberately avoiding explicitly political claims. He promises to set parents against children and then disallows divorce; he consorts with prostitutes while denouncing even lustful thoughts. He makes wild claims about his own relationship to God, and perhaps his own divinity, without displaying any of the usual signs of megalomania or madness. He can be egalitarian and hierarchical, gentle and impatient, extraordinarily charitable and extraordinarily judgmental. He sets impossible standards and then forgives the worst of sinners. He blesses the peacemakers and then promises that he’s brought not peace but the sword. He’s superhuman one moment; the next he’s weeping. And of course the accounts of his resurrection only heighten these paradoxes, by introducing a post-crucifixion Jesus who is somehow neither a resuscitated body nor a flitting ghost but something even stranger still—a being at once fleshly and supernatural, recognizable and transfigured, bearing the wounds of the crucifixion even as he passes easily through walls. The boast of Christian orthodoxy, as codified by the councils of the early Church and expounded in the Creeds, has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus. Its dogmas and definitions seek to encompass the seeming contradictions in the gospel narratives rather than evading them. Was he God or was he man? Both, says orthodoxy. Is the kingdom he preached something to be lived out in this world or something to be expected in the next? Both. Did he offer a blueprint for moral conduct or a call to spiritual enlightenment? Both. Did he mean to fulfill Judaism among the Jews, or to convert the Gentile world? Both. Was he the bloodied Man of Sorrows of Mel Gibson; the hippie, lilies-of-the-field Jesus of Godspell; or the wise moralist beloved by Victorian liberals? All of them and more….”
Ross Douthat, “Bad Religion”
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balioc · 5 months ago
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Back in 2016, when Trump was first getting big and scaring everyone, there was a lot of commentary -- especially on the frightened left -- about how he was this totally sui generis figure, with bizarre magic abilities (in the metaphorical sense), who could do things that no one else could even hope to do. Don't fight Trump on his own terms, you can't possibly win, no one can fight Trump on his own terms. Shit like that.
Recently I've been seeing a resurgence of that feeling. It's got a slightly different flavor, given the different context, but...basically the same thing. Writers from Sam Kriss to Ross Douthat are talking about how Trump is a Man of Destiny, how history bends around him, how his personal qualities make him a figure of grand and sweeping impact upon our historical stage.
And...no?
Trump is, in his heart, a B-list celebrity. He's a pretty good B-list celebrity. He has the celebrity skillset, which is very different from the normal elected-politician skillset, as it turns out. (Even if we liked to tell jokes, going back to the mid-twentieth-century, about how elected politicians were basically just tabloid celebs mugging for the camera -- that was wrong, it was a funny comparison but not an actual truth. Even Ronald Reagan had to learn real politics before he could be governor, let alone president.)
We have reached a point where the celebrity skillset is really just overpoweringly strong, compared to the normal elected-politician skillset, at least when it comes to winning the US presidential election. Playing to the crowd, and the camera, beats everything else. We can talk about the whys and wherefores some other time, but that is the thing that Trump has shown us. It's a damn shame, the new reality is even worse than the old reality, but there we have it.
Other people have the celebrity skillset. Other people have it more, and better, than Donald Trump.
If you really want to win by comfortable margins, more than you want anything else: run Taylor Swift. Or if you can't get her, run, like, Dwayne The Rock Johnson or something.
Y'know. If you're willing to make it clear that you care more about winning than about not looking like a joke. If you don't mind accelerating the slide into the awful new reality. There would be costs. The costs that the Republicans are already paying.
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