From RG re my piece on NYC in the Sept. 5 issue:
“I have a gut feeling what you said is the truth in most places. The touristy places in NYC are probably as safe as anywhere in the world. The other places, not so much. Wealth gap and all that. I’m afraid jealousy anger and fear are only going to grow as the wealth gap gets bigger. It’s a powerful psychological force. Hard to suppress when it’s so easy to see (news, social media, etc.)”
A few of the many comments on my Sept. 13 essay about the Charlie Kirk assassination:
“I was waiting for your piece to get your take on the Charlie Kirk assassination and I was not disappointed…. My thoughts have been rumbling around in my head since it happened and you pretty much covered it all. I might have put it slightly differently or added a thing or two more, but I would be quibbling with great to get perfection. Thank you for that piece.” – FC
“Excellent and timely piece. You did right, except the part about getting in an argument with Kathy! I especially like, ‘these dark and deranged Orwellian glasses.’
“Thanks for turning me on to Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, et al. I listened to him on Bari Weiss’s podcast yesterday about Charlie Kirk.
“Now that I’m in my 70s, I’m more aware of what I call presentism. That is, the cognitive bias of considering our present time to be uniquely special. It is special to us, for sure, since it is the time we are living in. And it is unique in some objective ways, but it is also more like the past than any of us know, both because of the limits of our life spans, and the relatively low knowledge of history most of us have.
“I hear presentism in Bari Weiss when she asks, ‘how can we bring America back from the brink?’ We hear presentism in such tropes as ‘now, more than ever’ and ‘never has the country been more divided.’ It was presentism, luckily, that got the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to set their doomsday clock at 5 minutes ‘til midnight – for years.
“But I’m also old enough to recognize the beneficial effects of presentism. The fact that Bari Weiss really believes that the country is at the brink energizes her. She feels the vital importance of the choices and actions taken by her fellow citizens. And that’s good, because I think her heart is in the right place.
“I believe our country is more robust and durable than the chattering class would have us believe. The incentives of news organizations lean towards painting our times as perilous.
“Presentism has probably always been with us and so perhaps it’s part of the elixir that keeps the species going, despite the perils – real and imagined.” – SL
“I thought your essay on the murder of Charlie Kirk was well-reasoned and well-balanced. Reading it was welcome relief from reading so many partisan pieces.” – PF
