I would like to think that nothing human is alien to me (as the Roman playwright and former slave Terence put it), but it is not quite true. I draw the line, for example, at rap music, which always puts me in mind of experiments I witnessed during physiology classes fifty years ago, in which electrodes were placed in the amygdala of cats and stimulation of which caused a reaction of insensate and undirected rage (in the cat). To change the analogy slightly, rap music is the noise that hornets, if they could vociferate, would make when their nest was disturbed.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Liars and Maligners”, Taki’s Magazine, 2020-11-13.
