This guy is more interesting than Weston:

“A guy like Monzer is a work of perverted art. He is in every way as elaborate as the Mona Lisa, if the devil and not Da Vinci were the painter. And evil at that level knows what you’re thinking; entices you; laughs with you; upbraids you for your petty prissiness.”

Weston though, is more common, a thin man “filled with passionate intensity.” The intensity is there because what is thin is easily heated. It is passion –passionate conviction– because in such passion is pleasure; what fills the void of an otherwise empty soul is a pleasure.

But what is the conviction? It doesn’t much matter, as long as it’s in opposition to the present. All such passion seeks salvation. It’s only through “hope”, through “moving beyond” that there can be this salvation, this individual transformation. And of course the most immediately satisfying first stage in that transformation is righteousness; one certainly is righteous when one is remarkable enough to recognize that the present is rotten.

But what to believe when the soul is thin and there’s nothing inside solid that forms a struggle that finally forms conviction? Well, whatever the leader says. That’s good enough; it seems common. In our nation, if it’s liberal and it’s change it’s righteous and it’s good.

And from where is it that the deep thinking and dear leader draws this eloquent conviction? –It’s my conviction (I see I’m not the only one)that it’s straight from Chicago.