" ...future historians will inevitably...."

Dear Dr. Bones,

... future historians will inevitably wonder ... Will future historians NOT wonder how a democratic state--any democratic state--should presume to [whatever]? ... future historians will have better things to do than wonder about the narcissism of people ....

Speaking of ‘narcissism,’ here's a rather extreme example of the way publicists and tertiary-educationalisers take for granted that the court annalists to Princess Posterity will not -- ¡can not possibly! -- disagree significantly with themselves. What could be more patently silly and selfocentric than to be cocksure like this about any ‘future’ more than (say) fifteen minutes off? [1]

I guess it is a sort of virtual power grab: Rear-Colonel Armchair over at the Commissariat for the New American Innovation invokes a vast host of little imaginary friends from A. R. 1946/2510/6270 to redress all perceived fairness-and-balance problems of 1431/2010/5770.

Oh, well, Qui pauca considerat, facile pronunciat.! Life is far too short to waste any moments noticing that one would have to ransack the year 0916/1510/5270 to find much trace of proleptic agreement with Newhousism and Avishaianity.[2]

Happy days.


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[1] Let the Rev. Sidney Smith say it: "4th--short views of human life--not further than dinner or tea.


[2] I betcha zealot Avishaians and pious Newhousites have no use at all for the one literary genre where the notion that die Zukunft might actually turn out to be ganz anders is frequently recurred to: science fiction, so-called, even though Nat. Sci. proper has usually very little to do with the product.

(( Less unseriously, one might name this trendy brain disease in honor of the late Carl Becker, who unearthed and emphasized M. Diderot’s little zinger, La postérité pour le philosophe, c'est l'autre monde de l'homme religieux.

(( But Condorcet knows best. ))