Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  “I celebrate myself, and sing myself, "And what I assume you shall assume, "For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” I was thinking of this passage of "Song of Myself" recently in connection with a 1949 book, THE VITAL CENTER, by political historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. The second world war was a recent memory. The Cold War was a new and dangerous reality. Schlesinger, a Cold War liberal, presented Roosevelt-Truman liberalism, and democracy with a small "d" in general, as a vital center, between the horrors of Stalin on the one side and those of the fascists on the other. He saw the then-recent split in the Democratic Party as symbolic of this. The progressives under Henry Wallace left the Party in 1948 to run their own campaign. The segregationists under Thurmond left the same party for their very different reasons. Schlesinger was rather hard on both of them, in praise of Truman. Indeed, Schlesinger is harder on the two dissident Dems ...

 The year's movie THE WHALE, starring Branden Fraser as Charlie, won a lot of awards in this year's awards season, include a Best Actor for Fraser. I recently saw it and, in general, I approve. SPOILER ALERT. If you don't want to learn certain facts about this movie and its plot, stop here. ------------------------------------------------   Charlie is morbidly obese and, in the course of the plot, he effectively kills himself by continuing to overeat while refusing medical treatment.    Charlie is also, importantly, an English teacher, assisting college students (by internet connection -- in his condition he cannot leave his home) as they develop their critical writing skills.  Charlie would perhaps rather be teaching literature than composition. The screenplay is full of references to the great American romantics, especially Whitman and Melville. The movie's title is a reference not only to the cruel term often used for obese humans, but to Ahab's nemesis....