Hour of Schopenhauer

Oop

If I do it at all I must delay no longer.

Let my work begin here.

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It is a fact that the people is sovereign: but this sovereignty never comes of age and therefore has to remain under the permanent care of a guardian: it can never exercise its rights itself without giving rise to limitless dangers, especially as, like all minors, it is easily fooled by cunning impostors, who are therefore called demagogues. — Schopenhauer

“But how are you doing?”

My girlfriend and I are asking each other with unusual frequency.

In part because Kamala lost. And in part because it is easier asking someone else how they feel than it is to describe one’s own feelings.

Today our feelings are bad.

But I have a hard time saying that I feel bad. Insanely, it feels to me like failure—even though admitting difficulty is the path to surmounting it. Luckily, it’s the only neurosis I have.¹

“Galvanized.” That’s what I keep saying. When the celestial Theodóra asks me how I’m feeling, I say feel galvanized.

And I do.

Feel galvanized.

Among other things.

(Bad’s one. That my hair looks spectacular even though I’m off work today and there’s no one to see it, is another.)

But if you’ll permit me the lowest form of rhetoric²—etymology—the origin of the word “galvanize” is an Italian scientist, Luigi Galvani, whose investigation of the effects of electrocution on animal carcasses inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

That’s actually true.

Am I Italian?

Yes.

Am I jolted?

Yes.

Less clear is whether I’m Dr. Frankenstein or his monster (or the pitchfork-wielding mob).

When Hillary lost in 2016, both sides had cause for vindication; she won the popular vote, Trump won the election. That’s why 2024, not 2016, is the American Brexit. We went to bed Tuesday as the common-sense majority and woke up Wednesday surrounded and outnumbered, with aliens for neighbors.

William F. Buckley said we should replace the Senate with the first hundred names in the Boston phone book. He felt they would govern more wisely than our actual Senators. Actual Senators are, after all, out-of-touch elitists by definition.

What if we instead handed the reigns of power to the next person who walks into Dunkin’ on Route 1?

With the re-election of Donald Trump, this time by emphatic popular majority, Operation Dunkin’ groans to life.

We can look forward to four years of vicious infighting on the left. The funny thing is that that would have happened anyway.

1. 😉

2. Next time I hear a wedding toast begin with “Webster’s dictionary defines ‘commitment’ as…” they are getting heckled and tomatoed and denounced.