I’ve read “Ulysses,” “War and Peace,” some of Henry James and most of Faulkner — but not recently. I’m aware I’ve just bragged, and I’m ashamed of it in a manner of speaking. These four writers aren’t known for netting it out, which is part of my point.
I don’t know if it’s a sign of the times, or a sign of mental deterioration on my part, or a sign of attention span simply having bled off into interstitial space as a consequence of our planet’s progressive degradation — most likely it’s a symphony of all of those — but, if I have to PageDown more than once in your blog’s verbiage I move on and never finish reading, saving exceptions.
It’s me, not you. Humble apologies for what I’m missing. I realize to talk this way may seem a rejection of complex thoughts that merit elaboration. Not so. It’s only resistance to simple thoughts that don’t, as well as a plea to make it impossible not to follow your thread otherwise. Pass me by as I do you if I let you down. It’s only rant.
(c) 2019 JMN
EthicalDative 
Duking It Out With Regret
Parsing: The Duke regrets thinking what he thought, regrets not knowing that the probationed felon whose mansions he frequented wasn’t the “real” person. The Duke is at a loss to comprehend the “lifestyle,” presumably the pimping, prostituting and pedophilia part, since the rest conforms quite closely to the royal lifestyle.
In commoner words, it did not walk like a duck, nor quack like a duck, yet, cruelly for the chastened Duke, was a duck. The blinkered royal was blindsided for years by a stealthy, camouflaged predator!
This rebuttal which can’t quite name what it rebuts resembles that of a compromised man — rant, cant and flap. But in a world in which powerful men are gentlemen (except for the dastardly dead duck), who can doubt the Duke’s regret?
(c) 2019 JMN