Tuesday, November 14, 2017

A rhetorical question

Who among us has not felt intimations of a certain permanent nausea, a nausea of the brain cells, during this ice age of reaction in which we live, cocooned in the ephemerally invulnerable systems erected since the beginning of the Cold War, feeding our intellects on our irritation and imaginary apocalypses? Imaginary, I say, for us – not for, say, your average Yemeni.  And of course, for those who have eyes to see, the minor apocalypse – to give it its true historical scale – of an American middle class that has been persuaded, in the age of Reagan, to cut its throat and think, while it is lapping up its own blood, that it is enjoying the very champagne of capitalism. 

1 comment:

davidly said...

Indeed. I take every opportunity to deposit my aphorism, "Eschatological paranoia is fueled by an awareness that others are enduring a personal apocalypse now and that none familiar with its cause should remain immune to its effects."

It’s just that demon life has got you in its sway…

    In Fathers and Sons, Bazarov, the nihilist hero and the son of an old army doctor, makes a remark to his friend and disciple, Arkhady,...