<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>Dear FRIAMMERS,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am off to the Mosquito-Infested-Swamp (Hereafter, “MIS”) soon and probably won’t be able to participate in THUAM this Thursday. I will try to rejoin you at least by the second week of June, if for only as long as my car battery can hold out. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I leave you with two podcasts from Ezra Klein. I can hear your eyes rolling because there can hardly be anybody more elitey than Ezra Klein. And nothing is more eye-roll inducing than elites-interviewing-elites. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Still, I think he is on to something here. The first interview is with a hard right notre dame professor, and the second is with Anne Applebaum,who I guess is a liberal historian. Both speak to a manner in which the right and the left might seem to agree. That all the talk about freedom both on the left and on theright misses the point that “freedom is just another word for nothin’ much to loose.” Modern society has become cytolytic and the internet has become a kind of centrifuge that spins out the cell fragments into an organization alien to their form. Universities are kinda like that. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-does-the-post-liberal-right-actually-want/id1548604447?i=1000561003813">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-does-the-post-liberal-right-actually-want/id1548604447?i=1000561003813</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anne-applebaum-on-what-liberals-misunderstand-about/id1548604447?i=1000561763183">https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/anne-applebaum-on-what-liberals-misunderstand-about/id1548604447?i=1000561763183</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Applebaum, channeling Arendt, speaks of “loneliness”, not as a phenomenon of not being around people, but of having lost a sense of common purpose in the people around one. Hence this atavistic longing for the Good Old America. Now what nobody in this conversationseems to remember is that these cells were often bound to gether by hatred of one another. When we moved into the MIS a half a century ago, there were two camps, two well defined THEY’S which were not accompanied by equally well defined WE’S. But one said was loosely catholic and the other loosely protestant, and so they each had a church to go an grumble in. Now, even those camps have been dissolved. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I am wondering if there was ever such a thing as a community that was not, in significant part, based on a hatred for the communities around it. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Nick <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><u><span style='color:#0563C1'><a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a></span></u><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>