Into the Woods

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I apologize for not having posted for a while. For now, here’s a cat picture, because I don’t think I’ve posted a cat picture for a long time.

It’s shocking to me that Lily, who still thunders up and down the stairs like a kitten, is almost 11 years old. In this photo, she was sitting with me while I was reading (she often does), and I caught her in a contemplative moment with the iPhone camera. I regret that I’ve never had the experience with other domestic animals such as horses and cows, but with cats and dogs, if you raise them from infancy, converse with them constantly, give them every possible privilege and the same dignity a human being deserves, they become people. In fact, they become better people than a lot of people. The older they get, the more language they learn, and the more they talk back. The briefness of their lives is a great pity. I can imagine what a 70-year-old cat raised from a kitten in a good home would become.

On other matters: I decided not to write a post about this, because I try to avoid posting when I’m angry, but here’s a link to a New York Times story on the rogue Navy Seal Edward Gallagher and how he has become a right-wing celebrity after Trump pardoned him for war crimes. It is extremely difficult for decent Americans to understand how a criminal sociopath got into the White House and why so many people make heroes of men who are cruel and depraved. I stand by my argument that the entire conservative spectrum, especially when it is socialized, is a cognitive and moral impairment, not just another way of being, and that authoritarian personalities are both sick and dangerous. Decent societies normally can contain and manage these people, but we are living in yet another era in which demagogues and predators have overwhelmed the safeguards.

Reviews to come: I am working my way through Katrina Forrester’s new book about John Rawls, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy. It’s a book that must be read slowly, but I’ll have a review before long.

“His Dark Materials“: I’ve watched one episode and found it interesting enough that I’ll watch another. I may have a review. It’s an eight-part series produced by the BBC and HBO, and you can stream it from HBO.

No-meat meat pies in Scotland, from Herald Scotland: Greggs launch vegan steak bake.