Everybody’s folding
Tidying up in Zits.
Hipster look-alikes
An amusing item from The Washington Post: “Hipsters all look the same, man inadvertently confirms.”
About yesterday afternoon
To take one person’s experiences with Donald Trump as evidence that Trump is not racist is intellectually dishonest or, at best, painfully naïve. And to take one person’s experiences with Trump as evidence of Trump’s attitude toward a group that person is meant to represent — well, that’s racist.
From John Dingell’s last words
“In democratic government, elected officials do not have power. They hold power — in trust for the people who elected them. If they misuse or abuse that public trust, it is quite properly revoked (the quicker the better).”
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.
Two minutes
Donald President Trump spent two minutes at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington today.
MLK
Colbert I. King (no relation), writing in The Washington Post: “The greatest contrast between the time King led the struggle for America’s legal and social transformation and now is a White House occupied by Donald Trump.”
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.
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in the news
It’s a wonderful song, especially when performed by Ray Charles and Betty Carter, but yes, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is problematic indeed.
“Reserve your strength”
Brooke Gladstone: “Preserve your outrage for issues that reflect your values. Reserve your strength.”
Giving Tuesday
Did you know that today is Giving Tuesday ?
“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?
Patriotism vs. nationalism
Emmanuel Macron, president of France, speaking in Paris at the Armistice Day centenary: Le patriotisme est l’exact contraire du nationalism.
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.
Another
How many more victims must there be before there can be an honest examination of gun violence in American culture? That’s not a rhetorical question.
Barbed wire
An American president: “Barbed wire, used properly, can be a beautiful sight.”
“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.
Unity Day
An anti-bullying initiative.
Rolling back existence
Re: the Trump administration and transgender people: This initiative seeks to roll back existence, erasing identities and insisting that persons are who the government says they are. I think of Syme in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?”
Hand wash cold
From Smithsonian: “If Americans turned down the heat when washing their hands they could save 6 million metric tons of CO2 every year.”
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.
The art of the deal
Wal-Mart is remaking Mr. Mom. Our culture is in good hands.
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.