Over at The Epoch Times, the good doctor warns us of the latest politically correct, leftist censoring of a deceased writer’s books—this time the Woke commissars have come for Dame Agatha Christie’s oeuvre.

This precludes the absurd, but also sinister, retrospective editing of books such as those that Roald Dahl wrote for children, and now Agatha Christie’s detective stories—all in the name of sensitivity to people’s feelings, but in reality to exercise power and control over the population’s thoughts in the best Stalinist manner.

In the April edition of New English Review, our critical doctor reviews a book on an 18th-century English architect, while considering the uglification of much of modern global culture.

Lack of elegance to the point of ugliness has its own virtues: that is to say, its political virtues, which these days are the only virtues that count. Ugliness is democratic, or at least demotic, because it is so easy to achieve and is within the reach of everyone. Indeed, in a universe in which the second law of thermodynamics reigns, the slide to ugliness is the natural tendency of things, while beauty demands constant maintenance and a perpetual struggle against dissolution. Moreover, ugliness is cheap, but beauty tends to be expensive, or at least time-consuming.

In this week’s Takimag, the grateful doctor reminds himself—and his readers—of the need to occasionally look around and be thankful for the life that he has been given.

It is difficult—impossible would probably be a more accurate way of putting it—to be always counting one’s blessings, however great they might be. Nevertheless, it is important to try to do so at least intermittently, or else one would lose sight of them altogether and give in to self-pity, one of the few emotions that can, and often does, last a lifetime.

The dubious doctor informs us of the Parisian Left’s new lofty mission to overturn the deeply ingrained societal stereotypes concerning rats—as the city’s rat population multiplies by the hour.

It turns out that not everyone in the population or on the city council is unequivocally opposed to rats, according to an article in Le Figaro. The rat problem has become ideological, like practically all others. This broader development may be indirectly related to the downfall of the Soviet Union, after which the ideologically minded had to satisfy themselves with a cause other than Marxism, and found one wherever they could.

In his Takimag column, Theodore Dalrymple ponders which taboo will be knocked down next or sexual perversion normalized by radical progressivism in light of the Spanish government’s shocking recent decision to decriminalize bestiality. God help Spain!

Transgression has long been a term of praise for art and other critics, without much regard to what is being transgressed, but now transgression is something that has become desirable as social policy also. Find a taboo and transgress it, seems to be the way we “progress” today.

In the winter edition of City Journal, the concerned doctor reflects on the shocking Rotherham sexual abuse scandal, which was largely swept under the rug by the criminally negligent local authorities.

The toxic mix of two degraded cultures intermingling in the context of a public administration that is bloated, cowardly, unsure of itself, and rotted by ideological stupidity resulted in child abuse almost on assembly-line principles. The Rotherham scandal was some years ago now, but it was far from unique.

In his latest Quadrant piece, our critical doctor shares his thoughts on graffiti, tattoos, noisy restaurants, and the lack of creativity in modern hotel room designs.

Few things reveal a man more than his aesthetic judgments, which is why so much art and architectural criticism, at least of contemporary art and architecture, fails to make any. A whole vocabulary is employed to avoid them: they are as much to be avoided as rude remarks at a garden party. Which of the desiderata of truth, beauty and goodness remains standing after the postmodernist assault?

In last week’s Takimag, the doubtful doctor lambastes the latest addition of hideous modernist architecture blighting Oxford’s cityscape.

The story of the modern addition to Pusey House in Oxford is a case in point. Only three years after it was completed and opened, it has had to be closed because it is cracking up, but not with laughter. At the time of its opening, it was lauded by the usual suspects as being “innovative” in design, but we have enough experience of innovation by modern British architects to know that the word in their mouths means ugly, dysfunctional, and improvable only by demolition.

Our favorite doctor castigates a new oath at the Minnesota Medical School, and warns us against the dangers of the increasing politicization of the medical profession over at Law & Liberty.

Political propaganda has never been intended to inform, and under totalitarian regimes, it is not even intended to persuade. In conditions in which it is obligatory to assent to, applaud, and even repeat and intone it, doing violence to the truth can itself become an aim. The less truthful propaganda is, the more it is at variance with common sense and common experience, the better: for by forcing people publicly to assent to what they know to be false, the propagandists humiliate them and do violence to their self-respect. Such people are easy to herd and dominate: their locus standi to resist future impositions has been destroyed in advance.