I was planning to riff on novelist Jennifer Weiner’s New York Times piece about the body disconnect and the phenomenon she calls “skinny women eating cheeseburgers in magazines” – and I will in a future post.
But events of the past few days make it impossible to put that on the front burner. How can we talk about our ambivalence toward the body when the body politic is being ripped asunder? ...
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The racial clashes that led to the death of three people, including two state troopers, in Charlottesville, Va. may seem complex but they’re actually sickeningly, frighteningly clear.
The white supremacists, protesting the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, were loaded for bear with torches, Confederate and Nazi flags and shields, evoking the Ku Klux Klan, a terrifying image from my childhood. They were met by counter-protestors, who carried the day – until a car plowed into them, killing a 32-year-old woman and injuring 19. In all, 35 were injured. (The troopers were killed when their surveilling helicopter crashed.)
President Donald J. Trump initially took to his favorite medium, Twitter, to condemn the violence, then expanded on the theme at a veterans’ event at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club, denouncing “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” ...
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It’s clear now that President Donald J. Trump is like the Lord: He giveth and he taketh away.
Just ask the Dow and the Nasdaq.
Trumpet said he was responsible for the Dow at 22,000. If that’s so, he’s going to have to own the 205 point drop today, to say nothing of the 135 point drop in the Nasdaq and the 36 point drop in the S & P.
But hey, for all of you who thought you could coast into September, Trumpet is just looking out for your interests when it comes to fellow narcissist and nutjob Kim Jong-un of North Korean nukes fame. “It’s about time somebody stuck up for the people of this country and the people of other countries,” Trumpet said from the comfort of his Bedminster, N.J. golf club. ...
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So one narcissist has decided to call another narcissist’s bluff.
Mess with the U.S., President Donald J. Trump told his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un from his Bedminster, N.J. bunker, er golf club, and the threats “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen….”
Ooh, did Steve Bannon – Mr. Apocalypse, Senor Armageddon – write those words for Trumpet? I’m sure Kim is quaking in his little boots. Whatever happened to the words of another famous, at times high-handed Republican, President Theodore Roosevelt, who adopted the West African proverb “Walk softly and carry a big stick”? ...
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How bad have things gotten?
So bad that people are now feeling sorry for Jeff Sessions.
The attorney general is the new President Donald J. Trump whipping boy. If only Sesh hadn’t recused himself from the Russia investigation, Trumpet wouldn’t be in the fix he’s in – so the twisted thinking of the president goes. In the world of the narcissist, the context has to keep changing to ensure that the narcissist is always right. Trump’s feeling the heat of Russkiegate but can’t blame himself for it and so has to find a vehicle, and a diversion, for his anger. Thus, Sessions is suddenly no good. I’m no fan of his, but how was he supposed to know when he recused himself that the Trump Administration would be investigated for its Russian ties? ...
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Some years ago, I saw an exhibit at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass. in which a male artist included an image of the Y chromosome. It’s much smaller than the X chromosome. And it’s been shrinking.
I couldn’t help but think of this on the death of Otto Warmbier, the young American imprisoned and apparently tortured for allegedly taking a propaganda poster off the wall of a North Korean hotel. Returned to his homeland in a coma, he died six days later on June 19.
Lost, however, in the geopolitical story – the barbarism of North Korea, the failure of the Chinese to contain it and the challenge this poses for America – is both the larger and deeper cultural and psychological story. It is a narrative that says simply no one does stupid like a stupid man. ...
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The year 2017 is not quite half over but it’s already shaping up to be an annus horribilus, to borrow from Queen Elizabeth II. If the trend continues, we may look back on this past week as one of the most miserable of a miserable year.
The London fire, the Congressional shooting, the Michelle Carter case, the latest developments in Russiagate all point to a ruinous selfishness. ...
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