The Philosophical Optimist

  "Of course we will have fascism in America, but we will call it democracy.”—a prophecy attributed to Louisiana governor Huey Long by literary scholar Harold Bloom   “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?”—St. James the Just, bishop of Jerusalem, brother of Jesus called the Christ (James 2.15-16)   “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?   My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue [only], but in deed and in truth.”—St. John the Theologian, I John   3.17-18   “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic…”—John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, in a letter               Not long ago, I had an epiphany, l...

            Life is filled with interesting coincidences.   Two of those occurred in the week leading up to Independence Day this year.   I was catching up on some classic American cinema I had never gotten around to seeing, and as I was watching the little gem called Network from 1976, I discovered a speech that showed me that, 40 years before we elected a reality television star to the executive office of the President, we had already been told the truth about that deceptive medium, a truth even more true, in some ways, of our postmodern, post-truth, wired-up world than it was of the television-dominated world of 1976.               In that film, the following speech is delivered on air by newscaster Howard Beale, the tragic hero of the film.   The quote below is complete, minus a few of the less relevant passages, and a few unnecessarily profane ...