Tag: Bastille

When Kant Was Late

The day he learned of the fall of Bastille, the ever-punctual Kant was late for his morning walk. That’s what the frenzied pace of the French Revolution did to people’s experience of time. It’s now been almost a week since we were on the brink of nuclear annihilation with North Korea. I wonder how cultural historians of the future will record or register the changed sense of felt time in this era.

Shitstorming the Bastille

On Saturday night, I wrote a post about a curious argument I’ve noted among a subset of liberal bloggers. On the one hand, they claim Obama is radically constrained (by Congress, the Republicans, etc.); on the other hand, they claim progressive activists and citizens are radically unconstrained. I noted that activists and citizens are far more constrained than Obama and that a chief constraint they face is the federated and decentralized nature of the American state and politics. At least that’s what I thought my post was about. I went to sleep, checked in on the blog the next morning, and then went apple-picking with my daughter and some friends in upstate New York. I got back Sunday night to […]