How to think about judgment in aesthetic matters?

From The Good, The True & The Beautiful:

At minute 1:01:45, Scruton, in response to a question, mentions a James Joyce short-story:

Scruton: ‘They are directing all of their emotions through kitsch objects and kitsch language, and yet the story itself is completely redeemed from kitsch.’

From ‘The Dead‘:

‘Gabriel’s eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl. Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had been taught for one year.’

Scruton again, ‘People can latch their emotions onto unworthy objects. We aesthetes who see through them are perhaps not such good people as the people who love those things.’

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One experience from years ago: I’m waiting in the Philadelphia airport, recently back from a study-abroad program in Spain. I’m worldly. I’m cultured. My brain has transformed to process overheard conversations around me in Spanish.

From the terminal windows, my country looks smaller, less substantial…different. I’m processing the experience.

Across the lounge, a man with a Stars and Stripes T-Shirt yells enthusiastically for the awaited return of his daughter (I’d observe later). His bald head is baked by the sun. He’s waving a little American flag. He sees me looking at him, and sees me look away.

He averts his eyes for a moment. I find myself ashamed at my own shame.

A recent experience: A group of aging Seattleites holds a Sunday morning meetup in a coffee shop. They seem mostly kind and good to each other. Their discussion moves from electric vehicles to hotels in Costa Rica to black lives still mattering.

They casually ignore the group of Fentanyl addicts just outside, frozen in grotesque poses.

Before long, they end-up talking loudly about politics; the recent civil suits clearly indicating Trump is wrong. Across the country, in some restaurant, a group of equally opposite folks takes the opposite position, no doubt. I feel anger, then a kind of pity and embarrassment.

Out of shallow soil, quick judgment, I say to myself, leaving the shop. Today, I find myself thinking about these words…