One more commentary on the election
It’s by Rebecca Solnit: “Our mistake was to think we lived in a better country than we do.”
Paul Berman on slogans
“Bad faith is when you don’t like the truth so you lie about it. Then you lie about having lied about it. You might even convince yourself that in lying about lying you’re not lying. That’s bad faith. It’s a twisted consciousness. We’re seeing a mass movement for a twisted consciousness.”
Nihilism in disguise
Aaron Rupar warns of nihilism masquerading as leftism.
Paying attention
From yesterday’s installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American .
Performative again
Arts & Letters Daily recently linked to a short commentary on the word performative. The commentary is crotchety and overwrought, with talk of corruption and senseless violence and infestations of body lice. I’m not linking. It so happens that I wrote what seems to me a far clearer, more helpful, and less wrought commentary on performative back in March. That commentary I’ll link to.
Performative
In speech-act terms, a performative is a statement that does something. In current everyday use, performative describes a statement that pretends to do something, that is merely a performance, that substitutes for doing anything of substance.
Nail-biter and others
Peter Sokolowski of Merriam-Webster looks at words of the 2020 election.
The best thing I’ve read today
Philip Kennicott, writing in The Washington Post about Trumpism as “a chronic condition of American public life,” “a lifestyle disease rooted in sedentary thinking.”
Turtles all the way down
The paranoid style in American politics is never at a loss for explanations: another layer of theorizing can always be added to support a rickety conspiracy theory. It’s turtles, or theories, all the way down.
Trump*’s two plans
David Frum: “Both Trump’s Plan A and Plan B intend to turn American against American, in an ugly spirit of rancor and resentment.”
“Patently deficient”
A book title of the future?
“Political Teamsmanship”
A dispiriting story from WGBH’s Innovation Hub.
Pete Buttigieg on being gay and being married
“And speaking only for myself, I can tell you that if me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing that I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”
Oswald
A lying narcissist with a big tie. But any resemblance to a real person is purely coincidental.
Missing from the SOTU
Climate change, alternative energy, children in cages, the government shutdown, gun violence, violence against ethnic and religious minorities, violence against LGBTQ people, LGBTQ rights, the minimum wage, poverty, the cost of health care, student debt, affordable housing, educational inequality, income disparity, voting rights, opioids, xenophobia, white nationalism. It took me about a minute to create this list, which is probably longer than the president and his people thought about giving any attention to these matters.
Re: that governor
He had one chance to tell the truth. And he blew it.
WWLS
As I look at the photograph, I try to imagine: what would Lincoln say? Not about the food but about the huckster showing it off.
Alliances
Two excerpts from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s letter of resignation.
“Reserve your strength”
Brooke Gladstone: “Preserve your outrage for issues that reflect your values. Reserve your strength.”
“He did”
Stephen Colbert: “Did Donald Trump just provide cover for a murderous autocrat? Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.” And then, mouthing the words: “He did.”
“In any case”
Anyone who doubts that nationalism, so-called, is toxic to our moral values would do well to read the “Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia.”
Two comments
Are we safer for language like “evil empire,” “axis of evil,” “little rocket man,” and so on, or not?
Signage in the dark
At our end of the block, we had signs made with bright reflective tubing (courtesy of the organizers) that read, à la Burma Shave, NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.
Mueller Protection Rapid Response
Protests today, in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.
“Trump’s caravan hysteria”
Adam Serwer: “The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election.”
“Sully” Sullenberger casts a vote
“For the first 85 percent of my adult life, I was a registered Republican. But I have always voted as an American. And this critical Election Day, I will do so by voting for leaders committed to rebuilding our common values and not pandering to our basest impulses.”
Help Wanted
Our country needs help. Vote.
A meeting of the minds
Another step toward what I call the reality-TV-ification of everything : today’s Donald Trump–Kanye West meeting. How glorious to have two proud non-readers of books in the Oval Office at the same time.
What Susan Collins didn’t talk about
The White House’s limits on the FBI investigation, the many potential witnesses never interviewed (there’s no possibility of corroboration without a genuine investigation), Deborah Ramirez’s allegation (for which there are contemporaneous witnesses), Brett Kavanaugh’s defensiveness and evasiveness in responding to senators’ questions, his blatant dishonesty under oath, the many doubts about his ability to be an impartial and even-tempered justice.
Numbers
Four senators.