JAMES LILEKS ON CLAIRE BERLINSKI VERSUS TED CRUZ:

Context: Cruz slammed the POTUS for rejoining the Paris Peace accords, said he cared more about the people of Paris than Pittsburgh.

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She’s right about Paris being the seat of arts and culture Paris is beautiful, but its beauty is an artifact of its past.

I know Paris has it all over most American cities in terms of beauty and urban wonderment, if you’re into centralized homogeneity or order — and I am, when it works as well as Haussmann’s Paris, but no one could ever do it again. The old standards of humane beauty and grace were tossed over for the usual post-war anti-human monstrosities, and this extended to all the other arts as well. So you have a culture incapable of creating a certain kind of beauty pronouncing themselves more enlightened because they have come up with some that fails to equal it on every possible level.

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