The Post-Partisan Emporium

  Civility, Still, in this Serene Spot LINH DINH My room at DC Homestay is the best I’ve had since mid 2018. I have air conditioning, a fridge, a TV I don’t watch, a two-burner stove, an electric kettle, a good sized table and a smaller one just outside my door, where I’m sitting. At least three types of birds are chirping among the trees, plants and flowers right behind me. That seemingly unchanging ocean is a five minute walk away. For all this, I’m paying just six million dongs [$246.20] a month, plus electricity. Twice a week, a cleaning lady comes in. I had tried to get out just before 6AM, but the gate was uncharacteristically locked. Guests arriving with motorbikes can be paranoid. Thus trapped in this garden of eden, I must check my longing for all those thrills and sufferings percolating just outside. I have access to a swimming pool, at the end of which there’s Michelangelo’s David. Behind him is a mural of the Italian coast. It’s not quite Cinque Terre, but picturesque e...

Understand the thoughts that a person or a nation won’t allow itself to think and you grasp something crucial about that person or nation. Find the source of the barrier that keeps either one from entertaining those forbidden thoughts and you know something even more important. As America stumbles blindly forward into an unwelcome future, the self-imposed cognitive deficits that keep so many of its inmates from doing anything constructive about their current trajectory have become a massive political fact.  Anything that allows even a little additional clarity about those deficits is thus a gift worth having. With this in mind, I’d like to suggest that some of the most crucial of the self-inflicted blind spots that burden Americans just now have a very straightforward source. They follow on the gargantuan cultural impact of a work of fiction,   The Lord of the Rings   by J.R.R. Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien. It really isn’t his fault. I hasten to say that none of the blame belo...