The Angina Monologues

It’s been said that the difference between a dialogue and a monologue is that a dialogue is something two intelligent people have in order to seek common ground, while a monologue is something one mentally ill person does on a street corner where he’s sleeping on the ground.

That isn’t quite true. I’ve found that His Majesty is actually quite fond of monologues at breakfast, at least so long as he’s the one delivering.

I’m not quite sure what set His Majesty off. It might have been Drudge reporting that Rand Paul is almost definitely going to run in 2016, for sure, probably. But that’s not where the monologue actually started.

 This planet we’ve retired to is, if nothing else, highly entertaining. Everything is theater. Everyone is playing to an audience. This is particularly true in politics, of course, but you increasingly see it in ordinary daily interactions.

Of course, this is nothing new, here or on any other planet. Genuine modesty, which is the virtue of not playing your life for an audience, is as rare as any other virtue. — Don’t go talking to me about modesty as a Christian virtue; this “city on a hill” business is nothing if not pure theater. The Amish are probably the worst about it of all the Christian sects I’ve encountered; their whole community reminds me of nothing so much as Colonial Jamestown or Nauvoo, though these at least have the virtue that the players and audience are both straightforward about their theatrical nature as historical reenactments.

I’m not quite sure how to respond to His Majesty’s comments touching on the Great Commission. I have a deep sense that Christ was thinking of something very different than what He condemned in the Pharisees, and that this difference is vitally important, but articulating this properly is going to take some time and some thought.

Incidentally, I apologize for the stream-of-consciousness flavor of all this. I’m trying to capture the real feel of one of His Majesty’s rants discourses, and this is the way he talks.

As entertaining as religious theater is, though, it can’t top political theater. In fact, political theater is in serious danger of putting Hollywood out of business. Though perhaps it is a mistake to speak as if Hollywood had not already become second-rate political theater.

Take the debate over voter identification. The Democrats accuse the Republicans of trying to put voting obstacles in the way of some of the Democrats’ most reliable voters. The Republicans in turn accuse the Democrats of trying to keep in place a system full of potential exploits for election fraud. Both are right, of course. Occasionally you will even hear a Republican let slip that that he is not too concerned about voters so unmotivated that the slight burden of securing suitable ID will keep them away from the polls. The Democrats seem to have been much better about not revealing their true feelings,  but that’s unsurprising given that any intelligent person knows in his heart that voter fraud is intolerable, and also knows in his heart that the kind of voter who will be kept away from the polls by an ID requirement is unlikely to be either sufficiently motivated or well enough informed to make any great contribution to the creation of a robust and intelligent public consensus.

His Majesty had to pause to take a breath here. I thought about jumping in and pointing out that process is sometimes more important that specific results, but one does not interrupt His Majesty. Anyway, I’m not sure which side that argument actually favors.

Nothing recent has been more entertaining that Shirtstorm. I haven’t bothered to actually watch this video — I’ve no time for that sort of nonsense — but I must say the costuming is absolutely delicious.

Incidentally, one must not make the mistake of thinking that because it’s theater, the players are consciously playing roles they don’t actually believe in. It’s certainly true of some, particularly the more high-profile players, but for most it’s genuine method acting. The players have thoroughly internalized their roles, and they can be quite sincerely passionate about them. Not that sincerity matters. As Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, sincerity is the most overrated of virtues, since very few remember St. Irenaeus’ dictum that fortitude in an evil cause is no virtue.

I am dumbfounded to learn that His Majesty reads Jonah Goldberg.

I can feeeeel your dumbfoundedness, Lord Vader. I much prefer John Derbyshire, but his essays are becoming harder to find and have lost some of their edge. But there’s still Mark Steyn and Theodore Dalrymple.

Derbyshire jumped the shark quite some time ago, as far as I’m concerned. Somewhere along the line, he made the fatal jump from pointing out statistical tendencies in broad demographic groups to advocating approaching individuals from those groups with strong presumptions about their character. This is the very definition of prejudice.

Steyn and Dalrymple haven’t made that mistake, and it seems unfair to lump them with Derbyshire. But His Majesty has a deep-seated unfaith in human nature that leaves him inclined to think it’s only a matter of time.

Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin have had some good thoughts, occasionally, but they come across as harpies out of Hell. — No, I take that back. Malkin is a harpie; Coulter is more properly described, at this point, as a harridan.

But this is hardly a Republican monopoly. Two words: Wendy Davis.

At this point, I had to leave for work. Death Star, Inc., really needs more men, but we’ll have to make do with finding new ways to motivate the ones we have.