September arrives with typically selective self-importance. Yes, we need to catch up. No, not all of us have been away. But for a few who mistake loudness for leadership, the awkwardness stems mostly from the fact that it’s the unacknowledged new year.

For downtown Toronto, it also brings the Canadian National Exhibition’s Air Show: a pageant of rare skill, no doubt, but also insensitivity and ingratitude. Maybe let’s not buzz refugees with fighter jets, in their already precarious accommodations, or take for granted that we’re fortunate such sounds are not part of our life over here. “I love you,” says the patriarch from the series Succession to his halfwitted would-be heirs in the final season, “but you’re not serious people.”

While we’re on the subject of seriousness, let’s appreciate the lead editorial in the Spectator for both self-awareness and ownership:

In her memoirs, to be published on 14 September, Theresa May cites the net zero commitment as one of the achievements she would most like to be remembered for. This sums up the problem of the modern Tory party. Anyone can set a target without first working out how to get there, or how much it will cost. But to do that is the epitome of the vain, unserious politics that May takes aim at in her book. May's outlook is sadly bereft of any sense of what conservatism is–or should be.

This problem is not exclusive to conservatism, though; it may as well be the spirit of the age.

Here’s the best sentence that I read all week (which is just as excellent in context as it is here all by itself): “The goal is to have less in common with the Taliban, not more.” It comes from David Sedaris, in an essay entitled, “A Speech to the Graduates,” from his most recent collection, Happy-Go-Lucky (2022).