Fake News
Last week I broke my sabbatical seclusion to attend a panel that my colleagues in the Department of History had organized on "Understanding the Trump Phenomenon." The panelists covered a range of themes: climate change denialism, white nationalism, the global failure of capitalism, the latent illiberalism of American culture, and world-wide yearnings towards totalitarianism--all the usual -isms. And then they opened the floor to questions. Like a good fencer, I got my hand up first and said something about the need to think of American culture in more regional and long-range terms, particularly the differences in conceptions of liberty that David Hackett Fisher has shown to be in play, but it was already too late. The room was primed to descend into pessimism and despair, although since we're talking academics here--fellow professors and graduate students in History for the most part--it was subtle and came out mainly in the kinds of questions asked. One question in pa
Something to think about, who are the sea and earth beasts referred in Revelation?
ReplyDeleteWhat are your conclusions?
ReplyDeleteI am still mulling, but it looks to me like there are deep structures at play, don't you think?
DeleteYes. My husb pointed out to me that it is interesting on the old maps both routes were not going through the Byzantine Empire as it then existed. There are similar dynamics going on now both with oil pipeline fights and the Belt and Road initiative
DeleteI have tried repeatedly to reply and Blogger keeps throwing me out
DeleteMy husb pointed out that these maps indicate that at these times the Silk Route was not going through the Byzantine Empire
It seems that today a similar conflict is going on over pipeline routes and the route of the Belt and Road initiative, with the descendants of the Ottomans at front and center in terms of very aggressive activity in this respect
My spouse is a prof of network economics/industries -- he found this very interesting, thank you
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