Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories?

Some versions of patriotism come close to the tribal, which we all want to surpass, and some don’t.

Human inertia makes the everyday environment, the furniture, as it were, appear to be a given.

Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state.

All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.

There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.

The moguls are driven by their respective desires for profit - period.