America's loss of moral authority? the malefit of the doubt

though for many it was McCarthyism or the involvement in Vietnam, for other (the Long) Civil Rights (War), for some the assassinations of the 60s, "Watergate", for others eg "The College of the Americas",...onto the financial malpractices of the 2000s, and kindred international and domestic, but it is perhaps an irreversible change in attitudes, when the USA's "moral authority and leadership" is undermined, undermined now by what will be a tendency to skepticism, to disbelief...not the benefit, but the malefit, of the doubt,  influenced by such as "secret rendition", "torture" in other words, permanent detainees in "Guantanamo", and most recent and influential(?)...the spying of the USA secret agencies on apparently everyone in the world possible.
the demise of the USA both domestically and internationally has been predicted from various views, historical contexts and times, since the War of Indepence...but the loss of American moral authority, seems now to be an irreversible global pandemic.
who will simply believe and trust again?

music abuse

few may be sure whether God and the hierarchies are, even invisibly, extant, but perhaps only a few would question whether music and its power exist, though indeed there would be arguments about whether and how it is abused and trivialized, used to eg manipulate and control (eg in "commercials").
but music is often, in this writer's view, abused.

question to "Cathy of the Netherlands"...

...who I met in Beijing's Bookworm July 13, 2012:
is it correct to write: sic transit trivium mundi?"

self-befoolment?

studying in the history of ideas, religious...
mankind's willful, perennial self-befooling?

sound and fury, signifying...

history -- the story of mankind's self-deceptions?

Anthony of the Desert meets Goethe in der Campagna

Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, c. 1487-­88

Tischbein, Goethe in der Campagna, 1787

wax lyrical?

wane lyrical
wax poetic
wane poetic
wax prosaic
wane prosaic

plotless, Plotless, plot lost or Plot lost?

are we in a plotted or plotless story?
the search for its meaning.

sunlight in Moscow

the light from the sun the past two days here has had an extraordinary character. like it was 'whitening' all it touched. but what has made this so?

"the Arbat"

no intelligent and discerning individual could long be satisfied and pleased by the sights and visages on the obligatory walk along the Old Arbat.