“445. It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1958, third edn w.index, 1967, p.131e.
there have in fact been worse
11:57am, 28 August, 2008: 100 today
Yes yes Vietnam (which he inherited)
But also:
1964: Civil Rights Act
1964: Urban Mass Transportation Act
1964: Wilderness Act
1964: Nurse Training Act
1964: Food Stamp Act
1964: Economic Opportunity Act
1965: Higher Education Act
1965: Social Security Act
1965: Voting Rights Act
1965: Immigration and Nationality Services Act
1967: Age Discrimination in Employment Act
1967: Public Broadcasting Act
1968: Bilingual Education Act
1968: Fair Housing Act
He was pure politician to the bone of his bone, as the Robert Caro book exhaustively shows. And yet...
rose alert
11:01am, 10 August, 2008: I didn’t think: the US were blindsided here--see, maybe they were but I didn’t think that. I thought: why did the US greenlight this? To give Putin a bloody nose? How was that ever going to happen? Why, in an election year, would the Bush administration be quite comfy to see a small, far-off, not-very-democratic ally--with an evocatively close-to-home name--be pummelled and humiliated?
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