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jadelotusflower · 3 years

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Robin Hood Rewatch: 2x08 Get Carter!

This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the season, partly because I really enjoy relationship angst, but mostly because we get multiple characters dealing with their trauma/grief. If we can't get these guys and gals into therapy, at least we get to see them talk (and hug) it out.

Also the best episode title they're had for a while - I have no doubt one of the writers is a fan, and Carter is so named only because they wanted to make this reference. The assassin seeking revenge for a dead brother is wholesale lifted from the plot of the film, and Joseph Kennedy almost has a passing resemblance to Michael Caine's look in that role.

"Get Carter - before Carter gets you!"

Carter is one of the only guest stars they actually will bring back later, and for good reason.

"Why don't you ever kiss my ring?" Vaisey, always making things creepy.

Marian is simmering with unrestrained anger, eager to get into the fight, while Robin is the one advocating for the watch and see approach, and it’s quite the role reversal.

The gang's reaction to her charging off is quite funny though, she knocks John over completely and Djaq throws her hands in the air.

Robin’s now getting a taste of what the rest of the gang have to put up with dealing with his recklessness.

Tying Marian up in the middle of a melee, however, is disgusting behaviour - while Marian was hot-headed throwing herself into the fight (nothing Robin hasn't done before himself), he knows that she can hold her own with a sword and doesn't need protecting. Tying her hands is the absolute worst thing he could have done, because how is she meant to defend herself? I can somewhat understand where Robin is coming from in this episode (even if he goes about it badly), but this is unjustifiable.

Clearly she gave that guard she clanked on the head amnesia, because he never reports back that Marian was fighting with the gang.

“I owe you my life”/“I won’t take it just yet.” Nice.

Scimitar is still missing in action.

Robin doesn’t want Marian to be seen in case she needs to return to the castle, when he’s spent the whole season urging for her to join the gang. I think he realises he made a mistake asking her to flee last episode without giving her time to deal with her grief, and wants to leave her options open. But telling her that she’s not ready to make the decision (about whatever she wants to go back), however correct, is patronising.

There's a fundamental conflict that Marian wants to be treated like a member of the gang, but doesn't want to cede to Robin's authority like the rest of the gang - in turn Robin expects her to follow his orders like the others, but isn't treating her like he would the others either - he would never tie them up to keep them out of a fight, and Marian has every right to pissed at him about it.

Djaq and Much having a little tête-à-tête about Carter - I just really enjoy that they’re often paired together in these gang scenes, they balance/play off each other so well. Just this pure platonic frazzled vs calm vibe.

Much just has this really great memory for faces - he was able to recognise fake Richard last season just from his profile despite wearing a helmet, and now he knows he remembers Carter's face from somewhere (or as it will turn out, Carter's brother).

Much really just does not let up, and I love that about him. "You'll be disappointed though, with uh, today's wound. I mean if you're planning to go back to the Holy Land and, uh, kill him." That not so subtle probing for information and Sam Troughton's delivery is always perfect.

"Wasn't me, was it?" Oh Much, so close.

“The crusty one” - lol

It's not explicit, but implied that Vaisey and Guy believe Edward was the one passing information to Robin, and Marian is cleared of any suspicion (paving the way for her return). Guess Guy never showed the Sheriff that hair dagger after all.

Vaisey is actually giving Guy some really good advice here, albeit laced with his usual cruelty and getting all up in Guy's personal space.

"Grow up Gisborne" - now I don't think it's deliberate on Vaisey's part to invoke a Marian parlance, seeing as she really only says this to Robin (and once to Much), but it's a nice little callback, however unintentional.

Marian asks for an apology (and deserves one), but Robin doubles down and doesn't come out of this exchange well.

Because his delivery is terrible, but he's otherwise quite correct - as skilled as Marian is, she’s used to relying on (and having to worry about) only herself and not work in a team, and look to a single point of command. But both of them have their backs up - they're two strong personalities and neither is going to give ground, reverting to the ideological clashes of season 1, except now in much closer quarters.

Robin's also not used to being challenged in this particular way, and in his frustration is reacting like a captain disciplining a soldier, not a lover helping their partner through their grief. I do wonder if the conversation would have gone differently if they'd been alone.

lol at the gang awkwardly standing around listening to Robin and Marian fight. Djaq trying to busy herself with her mortar and pestle as Robin and Marian argue around her.

A really great scene between Marian and John aka the camp dad. Marian really just needs someone to listen to her and appreciate what she's going through - Robin is too fixated on the dangerous way she's channeling her grief and not even trying to address the root cause. He trying to tell her what to do, not listen to what she actually needs.

On the other hand it's probably better coming from John, a neutral party without the emotional baggage she has with Robin.

Because Robin and Marian are really being driven by completely different motives - Marian by grief and therefore loss, and Robin by trauma and therefore fear. In her sorrow, Marian has lost all her fear of being discovered, in fact she wants to make it know she's with the gang, to finally be free to say which side she's on and fight openly, to make her father's death worthwhile, and can't understand why Robin is trying to stifle that.

"I thought you used to have your own men Little John?" So someone remembers Forrest and Hanton!

After Carter takes down the gang one by one, Robin takes down Carter in three seconds (including catching the long dagger Carter throws at him, and flinging it back) and it's lights out. Can you believe it's the first concussion of the season? (Notwithstanding the multiple head injuries Allan sustained last episode).

While Marian has been known to be punch-happy, the "he'll tell us more if he knows we're willing to hurt him" is just so (intentionally) out of character - it is however somewhat reminiscent of Robin in 1x08, wanting to get his punch and torture on with Guy. However rather than understanding where Marian is coming from, he pushes her away with the "go and cook something" jibe. This almost feels like he was going for familiar banter and miscued, but is also an asshole thing to say. When their positions were reversed in 1x08 Marian at least tried to reason with him - Robin is seems to be ill-equipped to do the same.

Allan just having a little snooze against the castle wall. He really seems defeated and depressed after last episode.

Marian's corset has a pouch to hold a dagger - or at least I hope there is because otherwise it's ouch time.

Leaving Marian at the camp is again a mistake on Robin's part - it excludes and isolates her from the gang, rather than trying to involve her so she can bond with them, engaging in their outreach to the peasants - who she helped as the Nightwatchman, but never really had the opportunity to come to know. It would remind her that they are not just fighting against the Sheriff but for the people, which in her frenzied grief she has perhaps lost sight of.

Instead, Robin's focus is on Carter, who he rather identifies with and so finds it easier to address his motives, and try and change them.

Carter is in many ways Robin’s dark mirror, what he could have become in the Holy Land if he chose a different path. It’s important that this happens right when Robin is backsliding - he’s trying to save his own soul as much as Carter’s.

Okay, let's talk about Marian’s forest gear - fashioned from the outfit she wore when she fled the castle the previous episode - but dear me it's awful. The grey culottes, rather than becoming trousers have now been turned into that corset, and her vest/skirt overlay have now become those trousers. Just baffling.

“I’m good with nuns” followed by Allan straight up knocking the Mother Superior over and stealing her ring is iconic.

Much gives Robin a sword to use going after Carter - still no scimitar.

I really love the confrontation/fight scene between Robin and Carter - it's very well choreographed and written, but we also see the best of Robin's character (after seeing some of the worst earlier).

Carter's brother is called Thomas - Allan's brother was called Tom. Lots of dead brothers in this show (including Djaq's).

The story of Carter's brother Thomas dying because he "stopped listening" and led a raid against orders is a little on the nose, but gives context to Robin’s fear for Marian’s safety in part triggered by his war trauma - someone charging in against orders and then dying in his arms.

But it shows Robin as a man who, even when Thomas' recklessness had cost not only his own life but others of Robin's men, was still moved to instruct the stretcher-bearers to make Thomas the hero, and himself the negligent captain, in order to comfort his family.

The fight is fairly even, and although Robin gets the upper hand in the end, it's only partly his skill - rather his true strength is in reaching the man inside the assassin, and then surrender and allow Carter to take his revenge if that's what he wants, and despite his fear, trust that there is good still in him, and that he can leave behind the life as a killer as Robin has done (tried to do).

This scene is the core of why I really love Robin as a character. He's riddled with PTSD and a reckless bravado, he's at time emotionally stunted with those he loves, makes terrible mistakes and often says the wrong thing, but he also has this great heart and compassion that allows him to reach people, to understand and help them, even at the risk of his own life. He's trying.

"He was a hero - just not on that day" is quite a poignant line.

Much and Djaq together again, just saying.

Robin finally finds out that Roger of Stoke was intercepted. I had assumed he'd figured that out once he knew Allan was a traitor but okay.

Poor Much crying out for Robin's attention - he's got his own trauma from the war and wants to talk about it, to commiserate with Robin about what they went though, but Robin can only cope by not talking about it, not even thinking about it.

Much makes a good point that Robin should have listened to him about recognising Carter, but it comes across as jealously over Marian and Robin misses just how deeply Much carries his hurt.

One of Robin's biggest flaws is that he's overwhelming in his affection, compassion, and understanding for strangers, but takes those he loves for granted - Carter's response to grief was the same as Marian's, but Robin listened to Carter, consoled and comforted him, while keeping Marian at arm's length. Perhaps because strangers don't ask for anything beyond that - it is the granting of kindness, but not the sharing of self. It's the latter Robin truly fears, but what Much and Marian deserve (although tbf Marian has problems with this as well).

“Either I’m part of your gang or I’m not” is a valid point, and Robin's still not happy even when she agrees to stay behind!

But she disobeys him, and saves his life. It's a rite of passage - almost all of the members of the gang have this.

Allan looking rather distressed as Guy is about the chop off Robin's head, and he makes a small movement just before the swing (as does Much).

Guy again pushing Marian past the point of discomfort - she left, wrote him a letter asking him to leave her alone, straight up told him to his face to leave her alone, and still he persists.

Her kissing Guy (to distract him from seeing Much and Will) is really the only time she sends mixed signals, but Guy's whole energy seems to be just to wear her down until she agrees to be with him and it's gross. It is however kind of amusing that he tries to be authoritative and forbid her from leaving, and she immediately walks away.

Robin and Marian are back in playful banter mode, although I wish there had been a deeper discussion (and that Robin had apologised in return). It doesn't quite feel like the conflict between them has been resolved, it really is just a "truce".

But I do like that it's Marian who reaches out to Robin at the end of this episode, because up until this point it's Robin who has been (somewhat) the one making overtures - asking her to join the gang, telling her he needs her, telling her he loves her, while Marian's been more reserved. This feels like her acknowledging that sometimes she needs to take the first step.

This was a long one - but as a I said, I really love this episode!

#robin hood bbc #robin hood rewatch #rewatch #2x08 #get carter!#long post #lots of rambling here sorry

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breathofaknight-blog · 7 years

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Question: How does the Hyrule Military Operate?

Answer: It’s complicated.

No, really, it is. We’ll break it down from the top.

///Part I: Who leads?

The commander in chief is always the sovereign, whether that be a king, queen, or princess, theoretically. It can sometimes be a steward if the princess is unprepared to be a king/queen/unfit to take on that responsibilitiy. This sovereign commands absolute authority over all subsections of the military and can, if need be, very rapidly exert total control over any military force; to object would mean treason, and civil war.

From there things instantly become murky, as there are three layers of nobles who would command military power:

-Professional Military Commanders, likely holding the actual rank of General, possibly with some specific ‘high-general’ title, like ‘Master of Infantry’ or ‘Master of Horse’ etc.

-Provincial Governors/Lords, who would command their own local troops and have the ability to requisition military assistance from the crown by right.

-Household Nobles that maintain private armies recruited and trained to Hylian Army specification but are paid and commanded solely by specific noble houses.

The first kind of noble is easy to control and predictable, and in theory is most loyal as they are tied to the crowns forces and technically may be of the royal house, or related in some fashion to it.

The second kind requires good leadership but is understandable and can be worked with; obligations made both ways ensures that orders will be followed albiet with grumbling.

The third kind is entirely unreliable and must be either eliminated or controlled to prevent possible civil war.

From these groups you get your generals.

From Generals, you go to Captains, leaders of either pre-arranged companies or ad-hoc units, possibly of many regiments strong. Captains will command between one and five hundred men on average.

From Captains, you go to knights, who may be granted a single company of warriors to lead, or will simply lead a lance of men (one cavalryman, one infantryman, one archer) outside of their battles.

From Knights, you go to Sergeants, who are really just senior infantrymen, and categorize a vast number of soldiers, of whom a few may be picked to lead the others.

From Sergeants, there are Soldiers, whose orders can override conscripts and guards. Etc.

///Part 2: How do they lead?

Out of combat generals lead through a series of obligations to lesser officers and commanders tied to social physical and national consequences. Or in other words, men obey because they must. However ‘how’ they accomplish basic command and control is unique. In general, essential reports are handled either by Sheikah or mage units. These reports contain war changing information or intelligence, and are used to inform and also command subjects.Less pressing matters are handled by the Royal Army messenger service, a mounted organization of armed mailmen that deliver missives to and from headquarters around the country. They work closely with border and interior guard units, using their facilities and erecting way stations of their own to help move information around quickly.In combat generals will give basic orders, but more complex commands must be carried out through a series of banner movements and instrumental calls, such as horns for a cavalry charge. For this reason each regiment has a battlefield musician, or multiple musicians, and a regimental standard, usually with its unique appearance. Sometimes, although uncommon, specific units of soldiers will alter their uniforms to stand out as well. All of this makes it easy for officers to see and hear commands and army status reports in combat without distracting from the fight. It also means fighting a Hylian army sometimes looks and sounds like going to war against a symphony, and the usefulness of some things, like drums for infantry marches, have been copied by other races over time.If a very specific order must be given that does not have a musical or banner call it must be done by HQ staff on the battlefield running to officers engaged in combat to inform them of the order; very impractical, dangerous, and often impossible.Another matter is battlefield organization and formation. Hylian officers obsess over formations and exacting specific details about battle lines. The following three are classics of Hylian doctrine:

‘Power’

The Power formation, named like the others, after a triforce piece, is meant for an assaulting force. It is best used in a field battle, but can and has been modified for siege as well. Troops adopting this formation instantly know the battle will be a hard fought slog.Power breaks the Hylian line into three arrow shaped columns, with the head of each arrow being two-to-three companies of knights, and the body being of standard infantry. The knights will smash into an enemy formation on foot, allowing the rest of the column to move into the disrupted formaiton of the enemy and push through, or break off and surround if the knights report the enemy has dug their heels in. Meanwhile, ranged combatants move on the flanks to fire into the engaged enemy lines while Cavalry either repeatedly charges the enemy’s center and flanks, or moves for a pincer assault around the sides, possibly to kill enemy commanders or ranged elements. Sometimes commanders create smaller sub-units of infantry to support the assault around the flanks and create a ‘battle cauldron’ or a frontline that extends around the enemy’s flanks. Recruits and conscripts either join the column, serve as flank security, or assist the cavalry with outflanking the enemy and forming the cauldron.

‘Wisdom’

The Wisdom formation is promarily defensive, although it leverages the Hyrule knights as excellent frontlines against missile attacks. Wisdom saps the enemy of energy and goades them into long charges by deploying siege artillery in a field battle formation, along with as many ranged warriors as Hyrule allows. The formation is also unusually mobile, willing to cede ground to lure enemies into killzones. To speed up army movement, wisdom divides its battle line into three ‘battalions’ which seperate and reform easily thanks to individual commanders being responsible for each, which are able to micromanage their troops. Here the Knights are kept as a frontline unit for only as long as the enemy wishes to try to out-shoot the hylian army, as the standard Hylian shield can absorb almost any form of punishment with no issue, thus rendering such efforts largely moot unless their archers dared try the more difficult and less effective ‘high-shots’ aimed above and beyond the knight line.In any case when the battle is about to join, the knights melt back into the body of the army, and the infantry counter-charges the enemy just as their charge is about to connect. Because the enemy charged longer, they will be more exhausted, wounded from the incoming fire and artillery, and have less kinetic energy than a properly timed Hylian counter-charge. Cavalry units are tasked with destroying other cavalry, skirmisher units, and watching the flanks.It is a brilliant strategy that frustrates hostile commanders, for it seems that it has no weakness unless one can outshoot the Hylian army by a considerable margin.

‘Courage’

The most standard formation from which all others are derivered, Courage is a three line system wherein the main infantry take the first line, the recruit reserve adopt the second, and the elite dismounted knights take the third line. The second line supports and relieves the first during long combats and provides flank security. The third line sits in reserve until the battle is won or it is needed to turn the tide, in which case it normally pincer-attacks on the flanks. Archers form up with the third line and on the flanks. Cavalry supports flank efforts. Although it is simple it is flexible, adaptable, and equally good on the attack and defense; a perfect choice for the commander who is uncertain of the opposition or is wary about the advance.

Sadly, it takes a tactical genius to reorganize battle doctrines in the middle of a fight. Usually the army adopts a style, or a variation of a style, and commits to it for the entire battle.Battles tend to last one to nine hours, depending on enemy strength, willpower, and determination.

Extremely large battles can take days, with breaks in between engagements to rest, with skirmishing units harrasing each other during these times. A siege can last four months to three years, depending on the defenses and preparations from the attacking force. Settlements without walls can be taken in 8-12 hours.

///Hyrules army at Peace

During peacetime most of the army is disbanded, except for a corps of professional trained soldiers. These men are kept well fed paid and trained, and are deployed as garrison units to forts throughout the land.Lighter units are organized into border patrols, which are subsidized by provincial lords and tarriffs, allowing for these mounted untis to continue to exist. Naturally, knights go back to their important social duties of organizing estates, government offices, or desk-based military positions. Those knights not occupied with these duties will find themselves in Knight-houses, or chapters, which are social gatherings of like minded knights within a lords fief, who generally keep to themselves, go drinking, participate in tournaments, train, and live a good life in a communal lodging, kind of like a fighters guild. They may also take contracts for extra pay, so long as it does not conflict with their vows. Sometimes knights simply retire, maintaining their skills privately and settling to form a family.They are tested in yearly games to ensure their skills do not decay to the point where they are no longer knights.

All conscripted units that survive are given a payout and dismissal from the army with the option of continuing service in the regular army proper.All disbanded infantry units, if any disbanding does occur, receive small veterans payments on a yearly basis for service, the same applies to those units that retire of their own will once a set number of years has elapsed. The pay is not enough to live off of; it is meant to supplement a new income stream. These old timers are on lists to call up in times of dire conflict for their experience and expertise.Militias and Guards adopted into the service are given a slight payout and returned to their former lives without much consideration given to them.

The army’s duties during peacetime are the elimination of monster populations, messaging services, road patrols, escorts, guard duty, maintaining military industries and facilities, maintaining and making new weaponry, and defending the realm against external threat. It is highly unusual for the army to leave the province during peacetime for any means other than escorting an important official, or for diplomatic reasons. During times of unrest, the army will enforce order, through violence if necessary.

Joining the army during peacetime is usually an easy way to avoid a had life on the streets, but is a dead end job with little hope for commoners to be promoted beyond a professional infantrymans pay-grade, so service is sometimes viewed as a waste of potential for young men, or as an escape. Many country boys dream of joining the army to see the world and have a better life than their equally meager prospects in the countryside.

#of Hylian Purity #Hyrule's word #trigger warning: wall of text #zelda roleplay #zelda rp #botw rp #legend of zelda roleplay #legend of zelda rp

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years

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2020: The Year We Confronted Decline

“Certainly I must not forget that I am writing for posterity,” says the narrator in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. And certainly right now a lot of us feel the same way.

That isn’t to say the world is going to remember what we write here, much less care. But our children just might. We are, after all, living through a year that future students will study in high school history classes. It’s too easy to say that 2020 is the new 1968—history doesn’t copycat itself quite so neatly. But certainly those four numerals will one day come to connote tension, strife, even transformation. A below-average miniseries will be made, probably called Corona, with episode titles like “I Can’t Breathe” and “Captain Crozier.” Decomposing bourgeoisie radicals will stroll around robot-dusted sociology departments invoking the “spirit of ’20.”

As for those of us still living through this pyromaniacal year, we can only wish we had the blessing of hindsight, the ability to know how it will all end—and how long it will take. The most terrifying thing about 2020 is that it may outlast 2020. The challenges we face—a coronavirus pandemic, social unrest—are so extensive and stubborn that they could easily wear on past December. On top of that are other problems that have been brewing for decades, which have now either come to a head or been dangerously exacerbated. This year has felt like a perfect storm, and it’s left an almost foreign word on the national tongue: decline. Polls find that Americans, ever a sunny bunch, still hold out some hope for the future, but they’re anxious, unsure. They worry life may never return to the way it used to be.

It isn’t that America is declining in the rankings. We’re still number one in many respects: biggest economy, most powerful military, largest immigrant population. It’s that for once the sheer heft of the challenges ahead seems to outweigh our ability to shoulder them. America’s ethos has always been that of a striving innovator. We don’t simply accept circumstances as they come, as, say, some Europeans tend to do; we seek to shape them and change them. Our civic religion tells us there’s no problem we can’t solve, be it the commies or stagflation or terrorism. Yet today we face so many hurdles, some of them deeply rooted in our own soil, that getting over all of them can seem impossible. That cheerful manifest destiny, that complacent “end of history” attitude that many of us grew up with during the 1990s, now seems like a relic of a distant time.

Let’s take stock. The United States is now an empire, no more pretending or posturing, ludicrously overextended across the globe. American troops are stationed in 177 countries, including places like Germany where they’re no longer needed yet can’t ever seem to leave. Their presence in the Middle East has not saved that region from chaos. Their presence in East Asia has not prevented a rising China. Yet on they linger, running up a ruinous national debt that recently reached an eye-watering $26.5 trillion, with more on the way as Congress mulls another round of coronavirus relief. The interest on that debt is chewing into the national budget. And China is targeting our ability to borrow as it seeks to displace the dollar as the global reserve currency.

Those two issues—empire and fiscal incontinence—would themselves be enough to draw nervous comparisons to late-stage Rome. Yet on the list goes. We are riven by inequality, both cultural and economic. The ghost of our racist past still clanks around in our attic, as George Floyd is killed by police and we approach the three-year anniversary of the violence in Charlottesville. Yet the enforced solution, critical race theory, is no solution at all, but a doctrine of surrender that cedes our essential equality. We are transitioning away from Christianity, undergoing the West’s most significant creedal shift since Constantine, yet we sleepwalk into it, oblivious to the void it leaves behind. Another world power is rising across the ocean, proudly anti-liberal and blatantly authoritarian, an ideological competitor to what we’ve long called “the American dream.” And while China has (allegedly) kicked the coronavirus, we can’t seem to, drawing pity from a world we once inspired.

That’s one portrait of America anyway. And while it’s hardly wrong, it’s also happily incomplete. As Steven Pinker or the website HumanProgress.org will readily tell you, no account of our present times should omit all the good. To take just one example, in spite of the pandemic, the world is currently producing more grain, an essential food staple, than ever before, with consumption expected to follow suit. Against a history rife with hunger and privation, that’s something to celebrate. There are always upsides, which is why people generally don’t trust those who preach decline. The modern-day Millerites have very often been proven wrong.

So it’s important that we don’t exaggerate how bleak our situation is. History isn’t deterministic; there isn’t some ticking time bomb beneath our country that we’re powerless to defuse. Good decision making has averted decline before and may yet do so again. But it’s going to take serious and committed leadership, men and women willing to make tough decisions sans the usual partisanship and desire to please. Irving Babbitt, discussing the French Revolution, wrote, “It is all a question of leadership; and the one serious doubt about democracy is whether it can show sufficient critical discrimination in the choice of its leaders.” Yet America today is led by a most unworthy man, a president who conflates sharp tweets with national stewardship. His Democratic opponent seems little better, at best willing to bend to left-wing hate mobs and at worst mentally unfit to lead.

If we’re going to arrest our decline, we need a new system of incentives for leadership, one that doesn’t just prize social media preening and winning the news cycle. We also need to admit we have a problem in the first place, which, given the swagger of that civic religion, can be difficult to do. The last time we talked seriously about decline was during the late 1970s, when the economy was a mess, the Soviet Union seemed coated in Teflon, lines snaked around gas stations, and the hostages were stuck in Iran. Back then, President Jimmy Carter warned, accurately but suicidally, that we were in “a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

Fortunately from there came a turnaround that was almost out of a conservative storybook. The U.S. hockey team beat the Soviet Union. A beaming Ronald Reagan was elected president. The hostages came home. Tax cuts and Paul Volcker juiced the economy. The Berlin Wall fell. The country swelled with pride.

Yet for all he got wrong, Carter was right that the “malaise” he confronted was in part a crisis of the soul, a listlessness and bewilderment after the revolts of the ’60s and the traumas of Vietnam and Watergate. And therein a final lesson for us today. Our national condition, as Babbitt would remind us, is an outgrowth of our hearts. Before we can restore our greatness, before we throw the bums out, we need to rediscover those qualities that can counter malaise—charity, restraint, liberality, good humor. To stop decline, we first have to fix our dispositions.

The post 2020: The Year We Confronted Decline appeared first on The American Conservative.

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