Excuse the archaic language from my beloved Patrick O’Brian novels, but I enjoy that way of saying that today marks 50 years of marriage to my true, original, and eternal beloved, Juanita!
It just means “congratulate us.” Even lubbers should know that.
It’s been quite a celebration, and it will continue through the day. But it’s not just today. We’ve been celebrating since July 10. We have celebrated in England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. We came back, and almost immediately ran off to the beach for a few days with the whole family — or most of it. In between those things, I crammed in what little paid work I could. At the moment, I’m sitting in an AirBnB that our kids rented at Lake Murray for today’s family party. The two of us spent the night here, and we’re waiting for the first of the kids and grandkids to arrive in the next hour or so, which is why I have a few minutes to send you this.
I still haven’t gone through email from July. I tell you that so you know why I haven’t been blogging.
Anyway, I’m going to go in a minute, because even though the kids are in charge of this, there are things to do. I don’t have time to tell you of my love for my wife — which would take something like Proust’s magnum opus. I’ll just note the obvious: longevity speaks to commitment, and commitment like that comes from the heart. I cherish every moment of it.
Gotta run. The picture at the top was taken on our wedding day. Juanita’s maid of honor had driven us from the reception to the parking lot of her mother’s condo, which is where we had parked the actual car that we were taking on our honeymoon from Memphis to the Grand Strand. We did this to keep Juanita’s four brothers from “decorating” it. It worked, which was good, because that was a long way to drive covered in shaving cream or whatever. Anyway, the version you see above was one in which I dropped out the background in Photoshop and added hearts to turn it into a Valentine a few years ago. Yeah, I know I look like a goof. It was the ’70s.
No, this isn’t a picture of Paul DeMarco. It’s Mr. Rogers. But they are alike in some important ways…
By Paul V. DeMarco Guest Columnist
When our family moved to Marion in 1993, we knew very little about the place. We had visited to interview for what would become my first job, but had little time to search for a home. Without the benefit of internet browsing, we ended up renting a house we had only seen in a video (shot with an old-fashioned video camera). Once we moved in, we discovered that our neighborhood was all white.
This was, of course, not unexpected. Many neighborhoods in our country remain homogeneous. I never saw a black person in the blue-collar neighborhood in Charleston where I grew up.
But I didn’t choose the neighborhood where I grew up. I had chosen, albeit hastily, this one. Not that we had many other choices. Few small towns have neighborhoods that reflect the racial and economic diversity of the population at large. Many towns still have recognizable dividing lines. In some places it is the railroad tracks. In Marion, it is one of the main thoroughfares, Liberty Street, that marks the invisible line, once strictly enforced, between the black and white sides of town.
My hope when we moved in was that the neighborhood would grow more diverse over time, and that hope has been realized. Slowly, more and more black neighbors have moved in. In 2018, a retired black woman bought the house across the street from us. She is a good neighbor. We see each other in our front yards and speak. We enjoy looking at each other’s flowers.
During her first Christmas season, I carried over a small container of goodies, something we have done every Christmas for our closest neighbors. A few days later, as the sun was setting on Christmas Eve, she came to our front door and reciprocated. As she handed us her gift, she said, “Thank you for accepting me into the neighborhood.”
I think often of those eight words and all they say about American society. It is a sentence foreign to me. It would never occur to me that my neighbors might not accept me. But this was her first time as a homeowner, coming back South after a career in the Northeast. She knew our nation’s history – redlining, white flight, resistance to blacks moving into all-white spaces (exemplified most violently in 1951 in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago). She understood that she was a pioneer in our white neighborhood. She knew, in a way that I could never know, the fear of being ignored, rejected, or despised because of who she was.
It also was a personal affirmation for my wife and me. We had done nothing special. We had treated her like any other neighbor – usually a brief greeting and a smile, sometimes walking across the street for a longer chat on a Saturday morning, watching the house and taking the mail when the other was away. But those mundane kindnesses were magnified to her in a way I did not recognize until she visited us that Christmas Eve.
I still have much to learn, as was demonstrated at her housewarming the next spring. She was very excited to have her neighbors, friends, and family share her joy as a homeowner. She worked for months redecorating and preparing. She put in an above-ground pool in the backyard. Finally, the day came. Upon arriving, every guest was invited inside for a tour. Then we congregated in the garage, and the inevitable happened. All her white neighbors were gathered in one corner, while her friends and family were in the other.
Her sister told me clandestinely that her birthday was in a few days and that they had, unbeknownst to her, bought a cake and were about to present it to her. Here was my moment, I thought. I would unite us all in song by leading “Happy Birthday!” But as the cake arrived and I opened my mouth to sing, after the first syllable I discovered that the black partygoers were singing a different “Happy Birthday.” I learned that day that there is another version of “Happy Birthday” that was written in 1980 by Stevie Wonder to promote adoption of the MLK holiday. The chorus of Wonder’s song is a marvelous, up-tempo tune, much more melodic and fun than the dirge that I was accustomed to singing.
It was painful to grasp that this song, an important part of black social life for decades, was something about which I was ignorant. But the reason was obvious. I’d never had a black neighbor or close black friend. So I was never invited to any birthday parties where that version would be sung.
In the five years since the housewarming, the neighborhood has continued to diversify. From my side yard, I can now see three other homes owned by black or mixed families. Seeing black neighbors walking past our home is no longer a rarity.
Bit by bit, the kind of diversification that my neighborhood is undergoing could lead to a society that is, well, more neighborly. If we live near people who look different from the way we do, we will know them as human beings. We will be better equipped to resist relying on caricatures of them drawn by those politicians and media whose livelihoods depend on us fearing each other. I’m confident that if Mr. Rogers could visit my neighborhood, he would be cheered by the changes.
A version of this column appeared in the June 20th edition of the Post and Courier-Pee Dee.
As we approached JFK on our return, I wondered why a guy can’t take a little time off from the madness down there…
What, a guy can’t go spend two or three weeks traveling abroad without the whole country going stark, raving mad behind his back?
Apparently not.
I’ll write about the trip later. I’d rather write about that, because the topic is more pleasant, and it interests me more. But this is sorta kinda a political blog, or was. Frankly, I’m less and less interested in that stuff every day, because politics has gotten so insufferably stupid. But most of the craziness back in the States had to do with presidential politics, and that seems to be all that occupies the country’s collective hivemind in years bearing numbers that can be divided into whole numbers by four — no matter what’s going on in Ukraine, or Israel, or China. Or Venezuela, for that matter.
So let me try to get it all out of the way, and once we’re caught up, we’ll move on to other matters.
Oh, one other thing — the years numbered as I described are also known as “Olympiads.” And that was going on, too, during our travels. I was reminded vaguely of it when we turned on a TV in our waterfront room in Calais (I think that was the only time we touched a boob tube during the trip), and saw apparently unending coverage of some event having to do with the Olympics. The arrival of the torch in Paris or something. Huge crowds in the streets and uninteresting popular music performed on an outdoor stage. Which, we recalled, was why we had decided to avoid Paris on this trip. (I mean because of the crowds, not so much the blah pop music.)
“La grand soiree” goes on and on about “la flamme olympique.” Which was why we were avoiding Paris…
But onto the politics. Now mind you, we’re not talking “politics” as the word was used during the first 60 or so years of my life. You know, relatively sane candidates vying seriously for serious offices by offering their credentials and their character to a discerning electorate. It’s a far weirder thing now. But you know that already. Social media, and all that. So on with it…
Trump weirdness goes into overdrive
Let’s take it in chronological order. Nothing back home intruded upon my vacationing consciousness while we were in London. But then in Canterbury, just as I we were trying to drop off to sleep (it being five hours later than here), the news popped that someone had taken a shot at Donald Trump, clipping his right ear. Which, you know, was like all we needed. I turned off audible notifications on my phone and iPad, and being extremely tired — as tired as if we’d walked all the way there with Chaucer’s pilgrims — went to sleep.
That didn’t mean it would leave me alone over the next couple of days. I kept seeing this kind of stuff:
I found out that kid with the rifle, who couldn’t hit his target squarely despite being given minutes to aim in an ideal sniper’s position — but tragically managed to kill an innocent bystander, and seriously wound others — was also dead himself. I guess that’s the way it goes with deadly weapons fired from four to five hundred feet by someone who never received Marine training….
Oh, hang on — don’t get the impression I wanted him to kill Trump. No way. Total nightmare scenario, that. Worst thing that could have happened. Things went plenty crazy enough without that. Meanwhile, we were hearing how much the whole thing would help Trump get elected. Which I suppose we should expect, since “sympathy voting” is an old tradition. Voters in general are easily swayed by emotion, that goes especially for voters who might be susceptible to voting for this guy.
Where we were, the usual response tended to be “those crazy Americans and their guns,” from a column my wife read in Le Monde to the African Uber driver who took us across Amsterdam several days later. (We’d left England, and were not subjected to The Guardian, which adores that line of discussion.) We could ignore Le Monde (I could especially, since I don’t do Paris talk), but we felt we had to be polite to the driver — he was a very nice, intelligent guy — so we said things like, “Yes, you have a point, and it’s hard to explain, and no one knows what to do about it,” while thinking, Can we talk about windmills or something?…
That mass of crazy sort of blotted out our awareness of the GOP Convention over the next few days, although at one point I did stop to think, wasn’t he supposed to be sentenced by now? Wasn’t the sentencing date just before the convention? I even looked that up briefly, and saw an explanation having something to do with the recent Supreme Court decision, which made no sense, and I moved on. Fortunately, I had lots to distract me…
Wow, this post is taking some time, innit? That’s why I hadn’t written it yet. But to move on…
Joe drops out
Well, I had sort of expected this to happen before I got back. The pressure bearing down on my main man Joe, no matter what he did or said, was reaching a level that no one could withstand. Not even the kind of guy who would step up to save his country — and knew how — despite being at an age when he had served enough, and richly deserved to stay at home and enjoy his grandchildren.
But people weren’t interested in that anymore, if they ever had been. They were too busy twitching in response to things that mattered more to them than the unavoidable fact that a qualified alternative hadn’t emerged in 2024 any more than it did in 2020. And Kamala Harris, who would be the obvious replacement at this date, had been about halfway back in that pack of 2020 also-rans, in terms of qualification for our highest office.
Y’all know very well what my position was: The country, and the world, needed him to stay in office. Not that it would have been good for him — it was the worst possible thing for him personally, and I’ve felt guilty for years for my willingness to exploit his willingness to put himself through it. But Americans, and the rest of the world, needed him to keep his hand on the tiller. Because there was no one else.
It might help you to understand my long-held position if you reflect that my mind doesn’t center around such questions as “Who can win the election?” For me, the question was “Who should win the election?” Of course, you need someone who both should, and can. That’s the trick, and Joe knows it as well as anyone. Which was why he dropped out.
Which means we now ask ourselves other questions… but I’m going to have to take a break and do some paying work, or none will get done today. I’ll try to get back and finish this before the day is over, because I really want to put this stuff in my rear-view mirror…
…OK, I’m back, and now I want to correct what I just said. We don’t need to ask ourselves any questions at all, old or new. The world may be nuts now, but it’s a lot simpler.
Now, the choice is between Donald Trump and… somebody else. Kamala Harris, with close to zero experience that applies to the job of president, is a bit of an unknown quantity. But that’s OK, because it clearly brings us to a simple point. I’ve often said that anyone would be better than Donald Trump. Kamala Harris doesn’t quite qualify as “someone chosen at random off the street,” but she shares a characteristic with that person — I don’t know anything bad about her. She’s basically a neutral character in this situation.
Well, I do know one bad thing — the way she stabbed Joe in the back in that first debate in 2020. Major cheap shot. But Joe forgave her, so I feel obliged to do the same.
So, no bad things (maybe you know some bad things about her, but I don’t). And she’s running against a guy with more bad qualities than anyone who has ever reached this point in American politics.
So there’s nothing to think about. You vote for Kamala, and you hope she keeps Joe’s team in place — people like Anthony Blinken and Merrill Garland. People who know the job. That way, there’s a chance for things to be OK.
Whereas, with the other guy, nothing — at home or abroad, on any level — will be OK.
So there’s not a lot to discuss. Vote for Kamala.
To be more encouraging…
That’s not sounding like a really enthusiastic endorsement, I realize. Let me try to offer something better.
Back before we headed to London, some smart, thoughtful people — not just the freakout crowd, or the people who never liked Joe anyway, like the Bernie Bros and the editorial board of the NYT — were starting to suggest that maybe someone else could take Joe’s place, and it wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Sometime way back on July 5 — a few days before we left the country — he did a podcast titled, “Is Kamala Harris Underrated?” This being based on the assumption among smart, thoughtful observers that she hadn’t shown us much yet. But he suggested that now that we’re in this fix of the abundantly qualified and accomplished incumbent’s numbers plummeting, maybe she possessed qualities that made her better than we thought. Among other things, he said:
There are ways in which Harris seems perfectly suited for this moment. She’s a former prosecutor who would be running against a convicted criminal. She’s the administration’s best messenger on abortion by far, running in the aftermath of Dobbs. She’s a Black woman with a tough on crime background, running at a moment when crime and disorder have been big issues in American politics.
And unlike Joe Biden, who I think has very little room to improve from here, the American people don’t really know Harris. The opportunity for her to make a different impression if she was speaking for herself, rather than for the administration, is real. Now, that doesn’t mean she’d be able to pull that off. That’s a hard political job. But she’s a lot sharper in interviews and debates than I think people are now prepared for.
She has a résumé and some skills quite well-suited to this moment. It definitely doesn’t seem impossible that she could rise to the task. There is a reason she was considered so strong in 2019 and in 2020. Wouldn’t you want to see her debate Donald Trump?…
OK, that’s not a really ringing endorsement, either. But he said enough good things — or at least potentially good things — about her that I felt a little better about the situation as we prepared to take off. I felt like Joe might not be running when I got back, and I was glad I was going to miss those last days before that happened. And Klein made me feel like maybe things would be OK. At least, after January, Joe will finally get the time off that he has so richly earned. (About time he had a little Joe time.)
And so far, they have been pretty OK. She seems to have done OK with her first big test — picking a running mate. I’ll probably write more on that subject in coming days.
But I don’t think I’ll be writing as much about the presidential election as I might have otherwise. Maybe because it’s all so simple now. We’ll see. In any case, I look forward to writing about other things. And now that I’ve dealt with this stuff, I can go on and do that.
I don’t think it will be another month before you hear from me…
I’ll come back soon to tell you about our trip. Until then, enjoy the flowers…
In “Office Space,” there’s a scene in which the three computer engineers, having sort of backed their way into a serious crime, are talking about laundering their ill-gotten money. But they don’t know how. They are reduced to looking up “money-laundering” in a dictionary. And Michael Bolton complains,
How is it that all these stupid, Neanderthal, Mafia guys can be so good at crime and smart guys like us can suck so badly at it?
I’ve often thought something like that, only I don’t think those guys are stupid. I think maybe I am. I couldn’t begin to follow a scam I once heard described on “The Sopranos.” I forget the deal. Maybe it was selling phone cards to Mexican migrants. Whatever it was, I could not see at all how anybody made money from it.
And I really, truly can’t figure out how something like the scam text above, which I got tonight, is supposed to work. It seems to me to be predicated on the recipient getting all worried, thinking:
OhmyGod! My transaction for $292.55 got rejected! Now I’m not going to get that thing I just tried to buy for $292.55!
Suppose someone does think that. What’s going to keep him from then thinking…
Wait. WHAT thing I bought for $292.55? I didn’t buy anything for $292.55!
Also:
And when did I ever do business of any kind with Wells Fargo? No, excuse me, with “W3lls Fargo?” And if I did, what kind of business can’t spell its own name?
And then:
Apparently, I’m supposed to reach out in a panic to the sender of the message. But they didn’t tell me how to do that. Where’s the link they want me to click, so they can steal my identity or whatever?
Maybe this deal is so brilliant that I can’t suss it out. Or maybe this is legit, and the sender was so anxious to help the recipient that he forgot how to spell “Wells,” forgot to provide the contact, and sent it to the wrong person.
But I don’t think so. I suspect there’s a bot out there that’s missing a few lines of code…
I was afraid for a moment I had worn the app out. I had been pounding away at my lessons, day after day, for weeks, doing all I could to learn Dutch.
Then suddenly one day — early April, I think — the icon for the app went from this:
To this:
Screenshot of my iPad screen on April 6.
Had I broken it? It seemed to be the most obvious answer, given my relentless activity. But it turns out just to be something Duolingo does to attract attention from time to time. And it appears to work.
The icon soon returned to normal, and I continued my efforts, sometimes doing as many as 20 lessons a day.
Why? Because one of my granddaughters is doing a summer ballet intensive in Amsterdam. Her mother will be there with her for the start of the program, but then my wife and I will be there for her for the rest of it, and accompany her back to the States. That’s where we’ll be based in the latter half of our upcoming trip.
But we’re doing more than that. As a celebration of our upcoming 50th anniversary, we’re flying first to London, and we’ll stay there a couple of days. We haven’t been to town in some time (since the beginning of 2011), and one must go occasionally.
Then, we’ll have a couple of days in Canterbury, to see what the Anglicans have done with the place since Becket’s day. Then on to Dover, and then we’ll look over our shoulders at the white cliffs while we cross to Calais. That’s what the Germans expected the Allies to do in 1944, but we faked them out and went to Normandy. I’d like to go there and visit the beaches, but it will be in the wrong direction. After Calais, we’ll go to Dunkirk, Lille, Ghent and on to Amsterdam.
We’ll mostly stay there until we fly back, but will take the odd day trip to places like Bruges and Nijmegen. While in Nijmegen, I hope to catch an Uber or something into Germany, just so I can say I’ve been there, too.
You see, I’ve never been to Europe before. Ever. There’s been no occasion to do so in my 70 years. I’ve done South America, the Caribbean, Asia, Hawaii. And as y’all know, I’ve been to England and Ireland. But never crossed the channel to the continent.
My wife’s been. She and her friend Mary backpacked across the continent for a month or so just before she met me in August 1973. They had a great time. But she hasn’t been since then, and she is taking preparations for this invasion very seriously. I mentioned 1944. Well, my wife is very organized — there has to be somebody like that in every organization, and she is definitely the one in this outfit. Ike would have approved of the way she has sought to effectively deploy our finite resources upon each objective at the right time, with maximum effectiveness.
And while I have been able to make strong contributions to the planning (contributions that consist of saying, “I wanna see this! I wanna see that!”), most of my effort has gone into learning Dutch — as much as I can, anyway, in these short months of preparation. Yeah, I know most people in Nederland speak English. But I figure I’m bound to run into someone, somewhere — perhaps out in the country — who does not, and I want to be ready. My wife will handle the French — she’s been there and she studied it before that, and she’s brushing up. I’m learning Dutch, from scratch.
Fortunately, Engels is moeilijk, maar Nederlands is gemakkelijk. Or so Duolingo keeps telling me. But it’s a bit of a slog nonetheless. Becoming fluent in Spanish was as easy as falling off a log when I was 9 years old. I think I read once that that’s pretty much the end of the period of life when learning a second language is as easy as learning the first one. My brother was only 3, and I’m not sure he noticed there was a difference between the two tongues.
My Spanish (most of which I’ve forgotten, anyway, to my sorrow) is of no help here. Of course, English is a help with this one. I certainly know right away what is meant by such Dutch words as “park,” “fruit,” “week,” “weekend,” and such — although they’re pronounced quite differently. The tiny bits of German I remember from high school are sort of a mixed bag. Sure, much of the language obviously comes from common roots, but that frequently tricks me into using the German version instead, and getting the word wrong.
The hardest is the article “een” — meaning “a” or “an” — and for many weeks I had trouble stopping myself from saying “ein” instead. Also, when an S comes before a T or a P, I want to pronounce it “SH,” which I think is the way it’s done in German — at least, I got it from somewhere (we have a one or two German speakers here; maybe y’all can tell me whether I remember that right), and I think it was German. But if the readers on Duolingo have it right, that’s not the way it’s done in Dutch.
Of course, Dutch people are as likely to speak German as English, and are likely to understand. But I want to get it right.
And I’ve made a good bit of progress. One sign of that is that recently, I’ve cut back on using the button that slows down what is being said to me, as I’ve gotten impatient, and often get the faster sentence the first time. To me, that means more than having a tremendous vocabulary. It means I’m starting to grok the language (or at least, the simple bits I’ve been taught) holistically. And to me, being an intuitive sort, that is pleasing.
I don’t expect to carry on any deep conversations. But maybe I can order food (something that is a huge minefield for me with my allergies), handle simple transactions, and the like.
Besides, it’s fun to learn something new. Anyway, I’ll keep tackling the lessons for the next few days, and hope for the best. And enjoy the cooler weather. Today, the high in Amsterdam is 68 and the low is 56. In London, it won’t get above 62. I’m looking forward to that.
If it gets hot, I’ll just sit down and order een glas bier. And of course, if I forget and say, ein Glas Bier, they’ll probably bring it to me anyway.
Which reminds me. I won’t be interested in Dutch cheese or Dutch chocolate. They’re poison to me. But I do want to sample the beers, and I don’t know squat about them, beyond Heineken and Amstel. And I don’t want to order those, because then they might think I’m a tourist or something.
So if you have any advice on that front, now would be the time to share…
Well, it’s over. The campaign started on May 22, when the now-outgoing P.M. called a snap election.
And now, the Tories have suffered their worst defeat in their 200-year history. They are a sorry spectacle, so let’s be kind and look away from them.
The good news is that Labour’s overwhelming victory means Keir Starmer is the new Prime Minister, officially invited by the king to form a new government (see image above).
The British people wanted a change, and they got it. Right away. Will it make a difference? I hope so. I’ve been hearing so many sad stories lately about the state of Albion.
Last time I was there, the Tories were in charge. Next week, I will be in London, and am curious and hopeful as to whether I’ll see a difference. Oh, not in terms of infrastructure or a cure for the nation’s fiscal problems. I’m looking more for a different mood, a happier one.
And it all happened so quickly. Fourteen years after this sorry string of Conservative prime ministers (one brief, flickering failure after another) began, in a handful of weeks we have something new.
The world has yet to take the measure of Mr. Starmer, but I’m hopeful so far. For all these years, Labour had been held back by the disastrous, repellent Jeremy Corbyn. Now we have someone very different, and I’m picking up vibes of my main man Tony Blair. Is New Labour back? I hope so. We’ll see.
And again, it all happened so quickly.
I think we can agree that this seems to work better than our own painful system. This current election has been going on since when? I suppose since that moment in 2015 when Donald Trump came down that escalator. And instead of laughing at him and moving on, the nation has been engaged for nine years in an incredibly absurd and debilitating argument over whether he, or some normal, qualified person should be the most powerful person in the world.
Of course, quick and decisive elections aren’t always everything. Look at what just happened to poor Emanuel Macron. But at least he gets to keep his job, for now. It’s debatable whether he or Rishi Sunak is the lucky one, though. At least Sunak gets to move on.
But they are both more blessed than we in that our ordeal continues. At least I’m about to take a break from it. And on this break, I will also visit France. But I don’t expect to notice many changes there, one way or the other. I’ve never been there before…
I’ve been extremely busy Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday on an important matter that’s not only a work thing, but a personal thing — my deep concern about the situation at Alvin S. Glenn. Here’s a release about what’s happening tonight. Very little of my time was spent on the release, of course. Mostly it was reading documents catching me up on the case, and harassing various media to let them know what was happening tonight.
I’ll be glad to elaborate further on the matter, but right now I’m caught up with communicating with media about the jail, but I think I have a few minutes to address what the rest of the world has been yammering about for days.
Everywhere I’ve gone the last few days — my walks (I’m going to get in my 10,000 whatever else I’m doing, even if I don’t sleep), Mass on Sunday, what have you — everyone has wanted to talk with me about it. I was no more interested in talking about it than I was before the “debate.” An alternate scripture reading from Friday kind of sums up my attitude toward these silly spectacles over the last few election cycles:
Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace,
along with those who call on the Lord with purity of heart.
Avoid foolish and ignorant debates,
for you know that they breed quarrels…
I read that and thought, yeah, that’s what I keep saying. Avoid stupid and ignorant debates (has there been any other kind in recent years?) indeed.
I’ve covered and organized and participated in these things we call debates over the decades. I covered the GOP presidential debate in early 1980 in Des Moines. I’ve been a panelist asking the questions several times. Once, when my newspaper was sponsoring a U.S. Senate debate — in 1982, I think — I found myself outside of the venue explaining to anti-abortion protesters why they couldn’t come in and disrupt the event. The woman leading them was a friend — we were both in the folk choir at our church — and she was in my face and screaming at me. Something I remember more vividly than the debate itself.
For years, I generally ignored the purists who insisted these media events were not “debates” at all. I felt they served a purpose. Over time I increasingly had my doubts about their value in national elections. The superficiality was painful. The evidence leading me to doubt has been piling up for a long time. Remember Lloyd Bentsen’s zinger, directed at Dan Quayle in 1988? And do you remember anything else from that event? Increasingly, debate prep was about memorizing zingers and avoiding gaffes. No more boning up on details about Quemoy and Matsu.
I still think there can be some value in letting people hear from candidates for lesser offices, involving folks they may never have seen or thought about before. I was disappointed as a voter recently when a debate held between Russell Ott and Dick Harpootlian was not televised live. Never mind “live;” I couldn’t find a full video of it anywhere after. Maybe it was out there, but not terribly accessible. But no matter. The right candidate won anyway.
A decade ago, despite the mounting evidence, I was still enthusiastic about debates. The enthusiasm was fueled by the novelty of social media. I loved tweeting about 30 or more times during a debate, and the energetic discussions this would engender. It was fun. But that’s about it. Not much of substance. It was entertaining to chortle at stupid things people said at the podium. But not what you’d call enlightening. And the novelty wore off.
As last week’s event approached, my enthusiasm was deader than usual. There was nothing to be gained from the event, either by my candidate or by the country. Trump, of course, would say stupid, offensive, embarrassing stuff from start to finish, and it wouldn’t cost him a single vote — his supporters love that stuff. The only person who could “lose” would be the one man — the infinitely better man — who stands between him and his planned dictatorship. Of course, he wouldn’t lose on substance — on any matter of character or understanding of policy. But he would lose if he slipped — committed a gaffe — even slightly. And God forbid he should “look old” on camera, because the country is full of people who think that’s important in his contest against a deranged 78-year-old.
So I wasn’t looking forward to it, and when I had initial trouble keeping it on my screen via a couple of sites (I don’t have cable; I have to stream), I was pleased to stop trying and do pretty much anything else. But I saw enough to agree that Joe had a bad night. He didn’t look good or sound good. In other words, my assessment agreed with those of people across the spectrum who said that — the chortling Republicans, the horrified Democrats, and others. I agreed also with the president himself. He had a bad night.
And none of that bore in any way on the question of which of these men should be elected — which is the only question that matters. I’m not going to go off on a long digression on the reasons why one of these men will be elected, but that’s the case — unless one or both of them succumb to the grim logic of actuarial tables sometime between now and Election Day. So that question is what matters. And all that matters.
Let’s consider one slice of the set of people currently in the “Biden must bow out” camp: I have zero patience with the editorial board of The New York Times. These are the sophomoric hammerheads who, in 2020, despised Joe — the only Democrat who could win — so much that they wanted to endorse anybody else for the nomination. Trouble was, their weak collective mind was incapable of assembling a consensus on exactly which of the zero-chance challengers to choose. So they picked two of them, thus disqualifying themselves from being considered seriously regarding such matters for the forseeable future.
So where do I stand? Well, for a concise description of my position, I refer you to President Obama:
Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…
That’s pretty much what Joe himself has been saying. To quote from a fundraising text I received, which summarizes what he’s been saying elsewhere in recent days:
Hey folks, it’s Joe. On Thursday, I spent 90 minutes debating on a stage with a guy who has all the morals of an alley cat.
I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to.
I also know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.
And I know — like millions of Americans know — when you get knocked down, you get back up.
I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job. Because quite frankly the stakes are too high…
Yep. I agree with all that. And I can identify. I’m only 70, but when I’m on video, I come across like Methusaleh’s uncle. See this video from this past Friday, in which I’m introducing a speaker from the Relic Room. I’m the stooped old guy at the very beginning.
Anyway, that’s about it. This has taken more time than I had to spend. I’ve been handling calls and texts from reporters and attorneys while writing it. I’ve got to go. When I come back, it will be to write about something else — there are a number of topics I’d like to address before I leave the country next week (that’s actually one of the things I hope to write about, if things calm down)…
So… where’s the astronaut? See item 4. This is from the
I just got tired of saying, “Open Thread.” But to be true to the headline, I’ll try to stick to things that either happened, or I read or heard about, today:
SCOTUS rules for Biden administration in a social media dispute with red states — I didn’t realize this was actually before our nation’s highest court. I had heard about the nonsense, though, on the podcast Hard Fork, I think. As I recall, somebody saw oppression, or something, in the fact that some social media outlets have rules against disinformation, and some people with the government had notifed the sites about disinformation that they might want to look at. That was the big conspiracy. The court gave the claim the heave-ho. Good.
Assange Agrees to Plead Guilty in Exchange for Release — OK, so this broke earlier, but I was reminded today after he got home to Australia. Lucky Australia. As much as I might dislike seeing this guy leave custody, I’m happy that he admitted that what he did was a crime (watch; he’ll say he didn’t), and that he’s left Britain. Because I’m going there soon, and I’d just rather not even hear about him. But justice required that he plead that way, because to quote Doonesbury, well, see the image below… I actually have that book, somewhere.
Bolivian Military Tries to Storm President’s Palace in Apparent Coup Attempt — Well, I suppose they should be applauded, because that Morales has got to go. No, wait. Morales has been out for five years. I didn’t realize. I’ve really got to do a better job of keeping up with Latin America, especially the Andean countries, since I used to live in one…
Jamaal Bowman’s Loss — Fitting. The one bad thing about it is that his loss brings the Squad back into the public spotlight, if only momentarily. It’s been awhile. I didn’t even know any dudes had been admitted…
France’s Far Right at the Gates of Power — This was The Daily today. Very interesting, although listening to a breakdown of current politics in France… or Britain… or the United States, for that matter… can be kind of creepy these days. Y’all keeping up with that? I’m trying to. I don’t want another Morales situation on my hands. Oh, yeah — I’ll be in France soon, too. More about that later…
Jason Guerry to face Russell Ott — You probably didn’t pay any more attention to this than I’ve been paying to Bolivia, but I sort of kept an eye on this runoff because I’m hopeful for Russell, and because my neighbor across the street was a big supporter of Guerry’s oppponent, Chris Smith. Can’t say I know much about Guerry beyond the fact that he’s married to the Lexington County Register of Deeds. And wait — I just realized, he’s the son of former Lexington County Councilman Art Guerry. Anyway, maybe we’ll hear more from him now that he’s not overshadowed by the more interesting Ott-Harpootlian contest. Not that local media exactly set the world on fire covering that…
One of the various newspapers to which I subscribe had a story this morning about people who have done an extraordinary job of sticking to ambitious resolutions. I can’t find that story now, but who cares about those slackers? At the moment, I’m more impressed at what I did.
In early May, I reported to you that, having dropped down to 167.9 pounds, I was at least theoretically eligible to wrestle Shute. That was nothing.
I’ve now dropped below 160, which was my goal all along. I thought it was kind of crazy when I first told my wife I was going to do that, late last year, and she probably thought so, too. I was in the low- mid-180s then, and sick and tired of all my pants being too tight, and having to buy new ones. At Christmas, I was wearing new pants with a 36-inch waist. Which was unprecedented.
Now, I’m back in my old 34s, and most of them are a bit loose. The looseness is OK — it’s way better than being tight, and I figure at some point I’ll relax discipline and put back on a few pounds. Almost anywhere between 160 and 170 seems like a comfortable, healthy weight. And entirely doable.
Speaking of relaxing discipline, I now know I can do that without disastrous results. I first got down to 159.9 on June 5, and was a bit lower on D-Day. But then, we spent last week down in the Tampa Bay area, and since I was traveling, I allowed myself to eat pretty much what I wanted. And with my routine disrupted, I only managed to achieve my usual daily goal of 10,000-plus steps once.
But I still only gained back a pound or so. I weighed in at 161.5 yesterday. But today… and here’s the good part… I was back down below 160. The photo above of my scale was taken this morning.
For anyone who cares, here’s how I did it:
Smaller portions, on smaller plates.
No going back for seconds.
No snacks of any kind at any time.
Walking at least 10,000 steps a day. Last month, my average was 12,000.
So, in other words, it wasn’t that hard. And I’m glad to see the new weight isn’t all that hard to maintain. I had been wondering.
I know it’s harder for other people. I was always a skinny guy, and when I was young, I lost noticeable weight any time I skipped a meal. The hard thing was gaining.
That has changed in recent years, and I found the way I felt last year kind of a drag. So I did something, something I had never tried to do before. And I’m pleased with how it turned out…
My experience with injustice has, fortunately, never been personal. I’m a white, married, straight man who attends a Protestant church, so no one has ever denied me a seat at any table because of who I was. I was born in New York, but when I was 7 years old, my family moved to Charleston, where I entered second grade. It didn’t take me long to understand that not everyone was accepted as readily or treated as well as I was. Racism was easy for even a child to spot. When I was taken shopping at Belk, I saw a cross-section of the community that was missing in my neighborhood, school, and church.
I’m not sure when I first became aware of anti-Semitism. I would guess I learned about it in middle school when we studied the Holocaust. I had the advantage of attending a private school during the 1970s that had a substantial population of Jewish students. I was impressed by the discipline of some of my Jewish friends, who after a full day of regular school then attended Hebrew school. One Orthodox classmate once showed up late for an extracurricular meeting on a Saturday morning. “Sorry, I’m late,” he said sheepishly, “But I had to walk.” (Orthodox Jews are not permitted to drive or ride in cars on the Sabbath). I do remember occasionally hearing my classmates make comments disparaging Jews, but these were few and far between. I think it’s fair to say that my Jewish friends felt safe and respected at our school, although not necessarily celebrated. I graduated from high school feeling that Jews my age would have essentially the same opportunities I had.
In December of 1982, during my second year in college, that belief was challenged. I attended a debutante ball at a South Carolina country club with the woman who would eventually become my wife. I didn’t know most of the other guests, so I made many introductions. When curious partygoers asked from whence I came, I proudly told them “Brooklyn.” Some of the members of the club left our conversations worried that this loud kid from Brooklyn with the big nose and olive skin might be Jewish (I’m actually Sicilian). Jews, of course, were prohibited from being members.
The next day, my future mother-in-law told me that questions about my origin had gotten back to her. She had assured all those worried that a Jew might have polluted the WASP-y ballroom atmosphere that, no, I wasn’t Jewish. However, since then, I generally respond to the question “Where are you from?” (which in the South means “Where were you born?”) with a dodge. I tell people I was raised in Charleston, which is better received from those who might harbor misgivings about Yankees or Jews.
Jews (and, of course, blacks) were not welcome at many Southern private clubs until recently. For example, Forest Lake Country Club in Columbia, which was founded in 1923 and counts Governor Henry McMaster as one of its members, did not admit its first black member until 2017.
I’ve been revisiting my debutante experience as anti-Semitism has resurfaced around the war in Gaza. My naïve sense prior to October 7th was that the anti-Semitism that I encountered in 1982 had gradually atrophied to the point where it would continue to decline and die. But sadly, anti-Semitism seems impervious – it’s like the fungal spores that can lie dormant in the earth for years only to spring to life as a carpet of mushrooms in favorable conditions.
My one night as a Jew has helped me form my current opinion of the conflict in Gaza. First, Israel must continue to exist. Second, Palestinians must also have their own state and the right of self-determination.
I fully support the rights of those who protest peacefully in support of the Palestinians and against the war which is killing so many civilians. Before the war there was already growing opposition to the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu’s provocative policies such as settlement expansion, the killing of Palestinian demonstrators, and restrictions on Palestinian trade and freedom of movement were staunchly opposed by many in Israel and the United States.
But what hasn’t come across in any protests I have seen is any sense of shame or regret for Hamas’ brutality on October 7th, not to mention years of suicide bombings, indiscriminate rocket fire, or their grotesque tactic of using their own people as human shields.
Despite our hope for peace and justice for the Palestinians, most Americans rightly find it impossible to be sympathetic toward Hamas. The attack on October 7th will surely be one of the most evil acts of my lifetime. The barbarity of invading homes, of meticulously killing entire families, and of raping and mutilating the victims, is some of the most base behavior of which humans are capable. No one should cheer for this.
The key to many successful protest movements is their ability to find and elevate principled, sacrificial leaders. The Bible provides examples in Moses and Jesus. More recent examples include Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela. Neither Netanyahu nor the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, fit this mold. The current conflict cannot be resolved until both the Palestinians and the Israelis elect new and better leaders. That is a rallying cry that would unite campus protesters from both sides and point toward a solution.
If you’re a newspaper editor, you know that if you don’t say something about major historical events on their anniversaries, you will catch hell from some readers. And good for those readers; ignorance of history is one of the many things wrong with our country.
I don’t have to worry about that these days, but I hate to let June 6 pass without an acknowledgement. Some would call that day in 1944 the pivotal point in the past century. To some extent, that’s just Western-centrism. The Russians were keeping the Germans pretty busy on the other end of the continent. In fact, many of the “Germans” on those bluffs defending Normandy were from Ost battalions — conscripts from Eastern Europe forced into their conquerer’s service. But even Stalin had impatiently waited and nagged us to open our Second Front, because he expecte it to make a monumental difference. And it did.
But even if you set aside the huge strategic significance, it was an impressive feat. To put 175,000 men on the beach in one day (at least that was the plan, I’ve seen different numbers as to how many did land, but the lowest I’ve seen is 133,000). I’m no great scholar of military history, but I don’t think there’s anything in the annals to match it. Anyway, there was plenty of hard fighting ahead after that day, but the Germans were basically on the retreat from then on.
So I certainly wanted to say something. But it seemed corny to put up yet another clip from Band of Brothers, as much as I love that show.
Then I saw a tweet from Richard M. Nixon (one of my favorite feeds on what’s left of Twitter), and was moved to answer it, so I thought I’d share it here:
Well, as your old boss said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Thus we had the logistics to put 175,000 men on the shore in one day. But at Omaha, lieutenants and sergeants saved the day… https://t.co/VIKR7gMwxb
What Ike was talking about was the fact that all that planning that he and so many others labored over for two years was essential to winning Normandy. But the effort would have failed on that first day — at least on the one beach, which would have had a terrible effect on the overall operation — if not for the fact that American junior officers and non-coms could think, and act, for themselves.
Once the action starts, you can ball up the plan and toss it. Because not only does the enemy get a say in what happens from that point, but you have an uncountable number of other unpredictable factors that change the situation radically from moment to moment. You have to deal with those, not the events you had anticipated.
At Omaha, especially on Easy Red Sector, the defenses were just too strong for the plan. All those guns, presighted upon every square inch of sand. By midmorning, the landing was a shambles, our men were either lying dead at the water’s edge or cowering and confused behind any bit of cover they could find.
Out on the cruiser USS Augusta, Gen. Omar Bradley watched and listened in horror as the reports came in: “disaster,” he heard, along with “terrible casualties” and “chaos.” He began to consider, privately, withdrawal. But that would have been impractical, and perhaps impossible. “I agonized over the withdrawal decision, praying that our men could hang on,” he would later say.
The guys on the beach were stuck there, with death and confusion all around them. They knew their only way out was forward, and the lower-ranking leaders started giving commands based not on any plan, but on what they were facing. And their men got up and followed. A few at a time at first, they got off the beach and triumphed.
You can draw all the lessons you’d like about American initiative and ingenuity, and there would be a lot to that. American infantry troops are trained to think, and improvise as necessary. Not all armies train that way. And obviously, flexibility and initiative are not words you think of to describe Ost defenders standing at their guns with German sergeants pointing pistols at their heads to ensure they stayed at those posts and kept firing.
So “Nixon” was right in his tweet. And so was his old boss Dwight Eisenhower, all those years before…
What’s the Tweet for? I dunno. It’s an ad for a site that has something to do with medical information and AI. I clicked on the link, but wasn’t interested.
I’ve been hearing from a lot of you the last few days that you’re having trouble commenting.
Well, that might be because I turned on something in the settings of the blog that said, “Users must be registered and logged in to comment.” I happened to find it while trying to solve a separate problem identified by an alert reader — the whole comment function was being turned off on many posts. And I think I fixed that.
Having found the registration thing, I tried it because I wanted to see what would happen. What happened was that almost everybody had a problem commenting at all. So I just turned it off. Let me know what happens now.
As to what happens to comments going forward… well, perhaps this is a good time to say I’m right at the point where something is going to change soon, and it will not be accidental. I’ve written a lot over the years, and earlier this year, on the fact that I’m dissatisfied with the quality of discussion on this blog. It’s nowhere near as interesting, and certainly not as constructively engaging, as it was in the past. Maybe it’s me and maybe it’s you, but I think a lot of it is the nation’s Rabbit Hole problem — our whole society has largely forgotten how to engage in civil discourse with people with whom they disagree.
But a lot of it is on me, because I don’t post as much — or at all, some weeks. That’s mainly because I find it hard to find the time. But maybe I’d try a lot harder to find it if the discussions that resulted were more worthwhile, as they once were — and occasionally still are. Which is cause and which is effect? Did the chicken or the egg come first? I dunno. I’m allergic to both chicken and egg, so…
Anyway, I hope I have solved the immediate problem…
Waht is there to say about Trump’s conviction on all charges in his New York hush-money?
There is so much that can be discussed, and at some point, I suppose we’ll discuss them, although I don’t have time to explore any of them thoroughly right now. Such things as:
Will he serve time? I hear the interviews with various “expert observers,” and it’s intriguing. On the one hand, it seems unlikely, because it is a first offense — or rather, first conviction — on a nonviolent charge. On the other hand there is a bunch of stuff that might is some cases cause the judge to sentence him to maximum time: His stupendous lack of remorse, all the times he had to be cited for contempt during the trial, the relative quickness with which the 12 jurors decided he was guilty on all charges (which speaks to the striking weight of the evidence against him), and so forth.
Should he serve time? An entirely different question. Given the utterly unique situation of who the convicted man is and the fact that he will be handed the Republican Party’s nomination for president four days after his sentencing, it’s very difficult to say. You also get into the murky area of whether the court should consider such things. Frankly, I don’t even know whether I want him to serve time (yet another question we could ask ourselves). My fondest wish is that all his supporters would wake up sane one morning and our long national nightmare would be over. Then we could just send him home and forget him. Failing that, I don’t know what is best for the country.
The stupendous lack of any sense of leadership responsibility on the part of Republican officeholders. A leader who actually believes in this nation of laws and not of men would be rushing to explain to Trump voters aping the nonsense their man is pumping out — cursing our legal system and all who sail in it — how profoundly wrong they are. But so much for my fantasies. I set my sights lower when I read this piece in The State this morning, headlined “Trump guilty verdict sparks SC politicians to blame Biden administration.” Rather than contradicting the absurd things Trump said, they are saying these things themselves. My reaction on Twitter was “No, I don’t expect much from these guys. But a more optimistic person would at least expect members of Congress to have a grasp of the difference between federal and state….” If my meaning is not clear, I call your attention to the fact that — as anyone who has paid the slightest attention knows — this was a state trial on charges relating to the violation of state laws. These comments are about as off as commenting on a baseball game by saying you wish the home team had scored more “touchdowns.”
But as I said, I don’t have time at the moment to dig into any of those things sufficiently. I just want to comment briefly on one small thing you may or may not have noticed.
In the early hours of all this, right after the verdict came down, I heard the same interesting thing from a couple of places. Coverage was still in the very early stages, and respectable organizations that report via audio — NPR and NYT audio — were doing brief interviews with reporters who had been in the courtroom when the word “guilty” was pronounced 34 times in quick succession.
And what I was struck by was this: the quietness of it. The reporting of justice being carried out in an orderly manner — a feeling imparted of this development being almost routine, despite its unprecedented (the most overused word of the past eight years) nature.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find transcripts of either of those reports I heard, and I haven’t found the full actual original audio I heard on NPR — although this link touches briefly on the “inside the courtroom” report I’d heard.
Here’s a link to the NYT Audio story, in case you have access. I just listened to it again, and heard again the reporter describing the subdued scene. No outcry, no shouting, no hoopla. Trump “was pretty much placid.” He looked at the jury, but said nothing for once. Then the jury left. They walked right by the convicted man, and his eyes went to the desk in front of him. Then things turned to “practicalities” — the scheduling of his sentencing, discussion of the routine procedures that will precede that, with a review of Trump’s personal history and a psychological evaluation, and so forth.
Just the American system of justice doing its job with regard to this criminal, as it routinely processes so many others. And his criminality had been been established by this court with impressive certainty, due to the strength of the mountain of evidence.
And that, of course, should be that. And would have been in this country, any time before 2016, when a huge part of the American electorate completely lost its perspective. Before that, the whole country would have, at this point, turned its back on this ugly chapter.
But those folks are still utterly resistant to facts, and Trump, being extremely anxious to feed that failing, went straight out and started heaping all the outrageous calumny he could upon the entire American legal system. He knew that many millions out there — ordinary folks who, unlike the ordinary folks who served as jurors, had not sat and examined the evidence without distraction or wishful thinking — would swallow every word of it.
Still, for a few minutes before the shrieking started back up, things were normal. The system was doing its job — as it has whenever Trump has been taken to court, for sexual assault, for financial misdeeds mounting into the hundreds of millions, for defaming a victim, and now for 34 felony counts. With more to come.
And I found what I heard about that brief moment encouraging. It was our system still working, in spite of how messed up our politics may be.
Early voting for the 2024 state primaries has begun, so I trooped over to the West Columbia Community Center to cast my vote. (I’m going to be out of town on the actual election day, June 11.)
And when I say “cast my vote,” I mean exactly that. “Vote,” singular. I voted for Russell Ott for state Senate, and no one else.
That’s partly because I live in Lexington County, and he was on the Democratic primary ballot, and in this area, you mostly only have Republicans running, and thereby offering choices. There was one other choice being offered on the ballot I took — I could have chosen between the two guys vying to lost to Joe Wilson in the fall.
I wasn’t going to do that. I had never heard of either of them before I saw them on the sample ballot, just a few minutes before I headed to the polling place. And as I’ve said many times, I don’t vote for people I know nothing about.
But I was glad to vote for Russell in his contest against Dick Harpootlian.
I’m not as optimistic as I’d like to be about the outcome on June 11, but my worrying could be a mistake. I just don’t know. The thing is, while I know Russell — and Dick — I don’t know this odd new district they’re running in.
You may recall that Dick had given the impression that he wasn’t seeking reelection from his current district, so the Republicans just drew him into the same district with my senator, Nikki Setzler. Then, weird things happened. Dick changed his mind, and Nikki decided to retire. So Dick ran in this new district, which somehow included not only his urban Columbia address, but Russell’s out in St. Matthews.
It would be city mouse versus country mouse — the lawyer versus the farmer — and in this case, knowing and observing them, I preferred country mouse.
And I think if every voter here in Lexington County knew both of them as I do, most of tthem would prefer Russell. He’s the one who’s more like Nikki, who has been elected and re-elected around here enough times to become the Senate’s longest-serving member.
But here’s the thing: They were used to choosing Nikki in November, and Nikki was too smart ever to mention his political party on his yard signs. Russell’s trying to get to the November ballot through a strongly contested Democratic primary.
And I don’t see a whole lot of my neighbors choosing the Democratic ballot when they go to vote. I asked a poll worker whether they had given out many of those today. They had not.
Which is why Dick, who has largely been a pragmatic guy in the Senate, is running this time like a zampolit, an enforcer of party ideology. You’d think he was running in AOC’s district or something. But I think that’s because he assumes Richland Country Democrats will dominate the contest, and that they want to hear that kind of stuff. Maybe he’s right. And maybe he’s wrong. I can’t tell.
We’ll see. But we’ll have to wait until June 11, at least. I’ll just keep hoping it will be Russell. I think he’s the better man for this district, and for South Carolina.
How about you? Have you voted? Do you plan to? Maybe not. While they handed out very few Democratic ballots at my polling place today, it didn’t look like there were all that many takers on the GOP side, either. People just don’t vote in these things. And that’s a shame…
This is what was on offer over on the Republican side.
Polls continue to plumb the depths of American idiocy. Which makes me wonder about something. I’m offering this as a serious question, really…
Given the current state of the electorate, would Trump be leading anywhere in the country against President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho? You know, the guy from “Idiocracy“…
It’s worth asking ourselves. My own answer is no, I don’t think he could. Mr. Camacho outdoes Trump on pretty much every quality it takes to win votes in an idiocracy, and the thing is, Camacho has actual muscles in reality, instead of them being an absurdly imagined fantasy like in the flag you see below. I’ve seen those flags at flea markets in recent years. I suppose people buy them to laugh at. That’s the only thing you could do when you regard that fat old man slumbering in the courtroom, and then look at the flag…
But arguments can be made for Trump in this contest. His hair is much weirder, but Camacho’s is fairly wild. And in Camacho’s defense, he is actually firing that automatic weapon, we are to believe. Trump is more an enabler — he wants to free up Putin to machine-gun people. On the other hand, Trump is less articulate, which is a winning quality with the constituency in question. But Camacho…
We could go on.
Like so many things in our current Identity-obsessed culture, the race would likely come down to a matter of race. There are people who would never support Trump who might support Camacho because he’s black. On the other hand, many Trump supporters would rather vote for — excuse my language — a Democrat before they’d support a black man. Not all of them are that way, of course, but a good many are. Remember those people marching in Charlottesville? That incident is what made Joe Biden — remember Joe Biden, that boringly sane man? — decide to run for president before 2020.
Of course, some Trump supporters have been training themselves to accept black people, as long as they kowtow with sufficient humility to all that is evil. They look at Tim Scott, and they tell themselves, “You know, there are some good ones.”
But I’m getting off on an Identity tangent here. I suppose that makes me “modern.”
Back to the original question: Could Trump beat President Camacho? Could anyone? In other words, to what level have we sunk, overall, in every category — intellectual, cultural, and so forth?
If you haven’t seen one of these, you probably haven’t been to a flea market lately.
Yahoo search engine is to me what Mexicans are to a Trump supporter. I want to deport it, and make sure it NEVER sneaks back in.
But whenever I try to find out how to do that, all I can find is simple instructions telling me how to switch the Chrome default browser back to Google, and then remove Yahoo from the options.
What am I, an idiot? (And despite that opening, I won’t let you get abusive in comments.) I freaking know how to do that! I’ve done it maybe 15 times now in recent months. And yeah, it always works — at first. But within days, the usurper is back on Google’s throne, and in its own castle — Chrome! That’s like a random Mexican guy crossing the Rio and making himself POTUS (which would not be good, but of course, better than having Trump).
I keep searching, with different wording in the search field. They keep giving me the same instructions I’ve encountered and so many times before.
Do y’all have any good advice to share?
(Yes, I’ll get to your comments and post something new soon, but right now I’m ticked off about this.)
You know, the shtick about how I was a high school wrestler, and there’s only one really great high school wrestling movie, and it’s “Vision Quest,” yadda-yadda…
Well, this is sort of about that, but more about the fact that at least I’ve kept ONE of this year’s resolutions. Or rather, I’m more than halfway to achieving it, with less than half the year having passed. Here’s the resolution:
Lose weight. This still feels new to me, although as you know, I have tried before. It still feels new because I was a skinny kid, and continued the tradition for several decades after I grew up. When I was little, I was also almost always the shortest kid in the class. I got over that in high school, reaching my present moderate height of 5’11” and a fraction. Which was satisfactory (although an even 6 feet would have been more so). But talk about skinny… In my junior year, I was this height, but in the 115 class on the wrestling team. The following year, I was in the 132. Now I weigh in the vicinity (sometimes more, sometimes less) of 13 stone. In the 180s, that is. In the past, I’ve tried and failed to get down to 168. This time I’m going for 160. (That way, maybe I’ll get to 168.)
I’m proud to report that this morning, I broke the 168 barrier. See the image of the bathroom scale at right. Like Louden in the clip above, I, too, had to ditch my shorts — as I do every morning for weigh-in — but I found it unnecessary to blow all the air out of my lungs. So here we are. Ya ready, Shute?
It’s not 160, but I’m headed there. Which is pretty good for someone who weighed in the low 180s at the start of this thing.
And basically, I really just did it in the last month. I sorta kinda was losing weight there for the first few. I had managed to get too small for the 36-waist pants I’d bought at the end of 2023. I got a couple of pairs of 35s (which aren’t that easy to find), and they were sort of working, but then I kicked the project into gear…
It wasn’t that hard. I just went from simply avoiding seconds to fairly serious portion control on first helpings, plus zero snacks. And… while I kept up my 11,000 steps a day routine, I added ankle weights. That risks adding leg muscle and therefore weight, but it really ramps up the loss of fat. And waist reduction.
So now, the 35s are too big, and I’m back to the size I’ve worn for most of my adult life — 34. Just in time, too: All of my shorts are 34s, and it’s that time of year.
Since I had posted my resolutions, I figured I had a right to brag. A little. We’ll talk about those other resolutions another time.
Today I saw part of an old Jon Stewart video that had a couple of sharp bits, and it reminded me there was something I wanted to share with you a week or so ago…
It’s the video above, commenting on the idiotic spectacle of the breathless coverage of the first Trump criminal trial — before it started.
This is another one of those things that is a major flaw in today’s news media — particularly TV, which is what brought the term “media” into being. (Before, it was just “the press” — if you conveniently ignored radio.”)
This kind of nonsense is TV’s stock in trade. Not that the press isn’t frequently guilty of much the same. It just looks stupider, and more obvious, on TV.
Things have been like this since… the late ’90s, by my memory. In this instance, Stewart compares the breathless — and I mean gasping — coverage of nothing (occasionally elevated by “pretty much nothing”) to an “event” of that decade. I mean the O.J. Simpson Bronco episode. Stewart says the video image of Trump’s motorcade driving to the courthouse was no O.J. chase. (I forget exactly how he said it and don’t want to watch the whole thing again — this is why I should post these things right when I see them.) Well, the O.J. chase was no “chase,” and was in fact nothing even remotely interesting, beyond the fact that a celebrity was involved. If you care about that sort of thing. Which a shockingly large number of people do, alas.
I remember, in real time, the people who stood watching the stunningly meaningless O.J. scene with their mouths hanging open. My mouth was hanging open too, observing them, the watchers.
At this point I could go off on a long tirade about how this was caused by 24/7 cable “news.” TV news, like traditional press, used to cover news. But there’s not enough news to fill 24 hours. So ya gotta love a slow car chase, right?
But the breathlessness of it all owes something to another TV form — the “reality” genre. I wouldn’t mind people having talent shows, although I probably wouldn’t watch. What I mind is all the garbage between the performances — the dramatic, and yes, breathless, with the participants and those who love them, droning on about how this competition is the most important thing that has ever happened to this person, or ever will happen. In fact, NOTHING has ever been so critical, in the history of the world!
Or do I have it backwards? Does this style of “news coverage” get its breathlessness from reality TV, or was reality TV simply aping the approach of the “news coverage?” I dunno. I suppose they feed off each other.
In any case, it was a good, funny piece about a serious problem in the way we communicate today.
EDITOR’S NOTE: I started writing this on Saturday, April 20, right after posting the item before it — hence the play off that headline. It was just supposed to be a reflection on three things I’d read — or rather two things I’d read, and one I’d heard– that day. That was awhile back (I’ve been busy), but I still want to share those things, so here goes…
The parties mentioned in the headline figured out a way to keep the entire region from erupting into total war — with nukes, maybe.
Things looked really dark a week earlier, when those missiles and drones were on the way to Israel.
(Of course, in that region, the relative calm between Israel and Iran could also turn very dark at any time. But we’ve had nine days since I started this post without that happening, and that’s more than I would have bet on before the parties involved handled the situation more deftly than I expected.)
Israel had bloodied Iran with that attack in Damascus. Iran certainly deserved the bloodying, and it was refreshing in a way to see Israel go after the strong people who are behind the monsters of Hamas, rather than trying to get at Hamas itself through that organization’s favorite shield — the innocents of Gaza.
But of course, it may not have been the best thing to do, because naturally Iran felt obliged to retaliate. And since such incisive strokes as the Damascus attack are evidently beyond its capabilities, it went with the worst kind of escalation — hundreds of drones and missiles went flying at Israel.
Amazingly, Israel fended off virtually all of them, averting thousands of casualties among its civilian population. (It did this thanks in large part to help from allies.) But, by the logic of the region, it then had to strike back at Iran for this unprecedented direct attack. The allies who had helped prevent disaster strongly urged Israel to “take the win” and do nothing further. The world (at least, those small parts of it that pay attention) held its collective breath.
And Israel, amazingly, just “attacked” Iran in a way that did little more than kick up dust — but made its point by hitting spots right next to strategic targets. Basically, it said, “See what we could have done?”
Far more amazingly, Iran was cool about it — essentially acting like it didn’t happen.
That’s a stunning success for all parties involved — and for the rest of the world.
Anyway, I thought I’d share three things I read and heard (a podcast) on Saturday. Some folks who understood what had happened commented, and after that (as far as what I’ve seen), little has been said. I’ve tried to use those “share as gift” links, so let me know if you’re not a subscriber and the link works for you:
Thomas Friedman on Iran, Israel and Preventing a ‘Forever War’ — This is the “Matter of Opinion” podcast from Friday the 19th. The shocking ending — Israel and Iran both restraining themselves — hadn’t happened yet when this was recorded, but it’s a very good discussion between people who know what they’re talking about, and it sets out the stakes very well.
The unspoken story of why Israel didn’t clobber Iran — This is David Ignatius’ column from AFTER the Israeli response. It began, “One rule for containing a crisis is to keep your mouth shut, and the United States, Israel and Iran were all doing a pretty good job at that Friday after Israeli strikes near the Iranian city of Isfahan. Maybe the silence was the real message — a desire on all sides to prevent escalation by word or deed.”
Biden’s ‘bear hug’ with Israel pays off with a minimal strike on Iran — By Max Boot. An excerpt: “We saw the payoff from Biden’s ‘bear hug’ of Israel when Israel launched a pinprick retaliation early Friday for Iran’s massive attack last Saturday night on Israel. The risk of a regional conflagration had risen dramatically when Iran, responding to an earlier Israeli attack that flattened the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed three Iranian generals, launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel.”
This was a major diplomatic accomplishment, averting a disaster of global proportions. This had all been going in a phenomenally bad direction, and then it stopped.
I wanted to make sure to point it out, even after all these days, because you probably haven’t heard much about it since it happened. There aren’t all that many American journalists who understand these matters, so I wanted to raise the profile of these who do. Media have been filled with other things since then. Reporters write about what they think they understand, and after all, Taylor Swift just put out a surprise double album. And don’t forget the NFL draft!…
