“Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming,” Friedrich Nietzsche warned in 1885’s Also sprach Zarathustra, “he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man:
‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ thus asks the last man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.
‘We have invented happiness,’say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth…
One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
‘Formerly, all the world was mad,’ say the most refined, and they blink…
One has one’s little pleasure for the day and one’s little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
‘We have invented happiness,’ say the last men, and they blink.”
“Anthony Weiner Is a Modern Human Being,” writes leftwing pundit and part-time actor Alec Baldwin at the Huffington Post.
Related: Mark Steyn surveys “High Function Junction;” does not like where the tracks are headed:
In what bizarro universe can even Alec Baldwin type the words “high functioning men like Weiner”? He’s a minor elected official. Thinking of the governing class as “high functioning men” is a big part of what’s got us into the mess we’re in. During my troubles with the thought police up north, Stephen Harper gave an interview and said he had no plans to reign in Canada’s “human rights” commission. One newspaper reported this as: “Principal Harper Ends The Free Speech Food Fight.” I wrote:Each to his own. I don’t happen to think of the Queen’s first minister as the ”principal” with me and the rest of the citizenry as his charges. The head of government is no more or less than just that: He is not my “leader”, and certainly not on inalienable rights.
I would have thought that such a notion would be even more repugnant to a republic. The governing class are not “high functioning men”. Function-wise, they’ve been abysmal: Collectively, they’ve beggared the nation.
They’re only high functioning when compared with the world of Hollywood, where Weiner continues to draw boffo support.
Related: Word.
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