She briskly enumerates the speech’s jumble of platitudes - “‘Great Crusade’ (Eisenhower), ‘Freedom’s Altar’ (a Civil War song), ‘consecrated to history’ (bastardized Lincoln), ‘new frontiers’ (misappropriated Kennedy), ‘heat of battle,’ ‘fires of hell,’ ‘Nazi fury,’ ‘awesome power,’ ‘breathtaking scale,’ ‘cherished alliance,’ ‘undying gratitude’ (clichés) and ‘tough guy’ (ad-lib).” What Samet calls our “tin-eared age of tweets” can make it harder to distinguish soaring oratory from flimsy bombast, but “most of the sentences won’t bear the weight of careful reading,” she writes.Īnd “careful reading,” as Samet provocatively (and persuasively) argues, can in fact be a matter of life or death. But Samet, a professor of English at West Point who has previously written about teaching the literature of warfare, refuses to grade on a curve. Some listeners were so surprised by the solemnity of Trump’s words that they eagerly welcomed it as evidence that he was donning the mantle of dignified statesman. Samet’s discerning new book about the gauzy mythology that has shrouded the historical reality of World War II, she reminds us of the 2019 speech that then-President Trump gave at Normandy, on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Instead of trying to override it and treat it like a problem, I've been going along with it and then moving on without self-judgement.Toward the end of “Looking for the Good War,” Elizabeth D. Instead of second guessing emotions and trying to stop our reactions, we learnt to acknowledge the emotions, accept them better, and behave as if the feelings couldn't stop us from doing whatever. The best therapy I've ever done was in a group of intractable patients where we were taught to just act in spite of our feelings. I do tend towards anxiety and depression, with rumination being a symptom. By accepting it and letting it roll over me, I think it's less distressing. To have had so many memorable experiences, and to have such strong feelings about things that have happened, has given me a powerful sense of place and time. I have actually googled, "how to handle nostalgia" in as many iterations as I could imagine, and there's no results because it is either uncommon or it doesn't bother the afflicted too much. I have this strongly as well, and sometimes it's just a wistful feeling of times that have gone by, before I was even born or in a place I've never been. I fear that it would be harder and harder while growing up since there will be more and more moments you'll remember and won't experience anymore. The curious thing is that you know that you weren't especially happier back then, and you know you should enjoy every day as equal. Special mention when you listen to music you used to listen at a certain age, the emotion suddenly brings melancholic thoughts back. But nostalgia seems to have the upper end on the emotion in those curious moments. Of course I know that at every age you live specific things, so although you don't have things you had back then, you can enjoy new things you couldn't do before. I feel that I don't have this things anymore which is quite sad to notice. Whenever I go to a place where I grew up when I was underage, when I did my studies or whenever, I have this sad and melancholic feeling. I'm not even 30 and I'm often hit with a nostalgia feeling.
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