Keeping the Present Inevitable

Your exchange at the end regarding French media was interesting... Le Canard Enchaîné remains a miraculously good source for what's really going on in the bowels of the 5th Republic.

Although I live in Paris I hadn't come across XXI magazine — went out this morning and bought a copy: from a first glance, it looks to be a top quality production.

Super! If we just had a few more of him, we might be able to get this ship turned around. He represents what isn't decadent. Thanks, George!

Excellent podcast.

Another fine interview with Rick.

George, I think you should have stood your ground on the necessity of the Senate.

I was with him until he blamed video games for declining creativity (sigh). Since time immemorial, older folks have been claiming the young are going to rack and ruin. In the early part of the twentieth century, it was alcohol and (gasp, the horror!) dancing that were corrupting youth. In the early 50s, there was the hysteria surrounding comic books, that gave us the insipid Comics Code, which culturally impoverished my childhood in the later 50s. Then the problem was rock n' roll, then it was drugs. There is always, always something that is giving elders conniptions.

I would think that if there has been a decline of creativity since the 90s it has a lot more to do with the declining economic situation of much of the middle and almost all of the working classes. In other words, blame Reagan, not video games.