Month: November 2024

Meditations on the New American Nightmare

It’s the Democrats’ fault for not nudging Biden aside sooner and allowing other contenders to be sifted through the primary process. It’s Kamala Harris’ fault for speaking in nebulous platitudes instead of outlining concrete policies. It’s the fault of “the elites” for not taking the concerns of plain old honest working families seriously.

These are the grim (or gleeful) explanations of the center-right pundits like Russ Douthat and Bret Stephens for the nightmare we now find ourselves in. And they contain grains of truth.

But there’s something missing in these arguments. No one forced any voter to pull the lever for the loutish vengeful convicted felon of doubtful mental stability over the bright empathetic woman with a lifetime record of public service. No one forced any voter to stay within the boundaries of Fox News, Truth Social, and Joe Rogan’s podcast, in considering what might be true or false. No one forced any voter to pick the party that looked the other way on January 6, that has vowed to pluck out the Affordable Care Act “root and branch” (in Mitch McConnell’s memorable words), that has treated global warming as a joke for the past thirty years, that has voiced only support for the proposal of “mass deportations.”

The Americans who voted for Trump saw the same man that I did, a man who (just to give some recent examples) publicly called former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi a “bitch,” promised to “protect” women “whether they like it or not,” and amused the audience at one of his final rallies by fellating a malfunctioning microphone.

And what was so awful about Kamala Harris, again?

But blaming the loser for the loss is a lot more comfortable than confronting the possibility that a majority of Americans are gullible, willfully ill-informed, insecure, and/or mean-spirited.

Trump believes that he escaped death in Butler, Pennsylvania because God wants him to be president. The possibility that God engineered the whole thing as a reminder to Trump of his mortality, and to give him a second chance to use his power to act charitably and with empathy towards the less fortunate, seems to have slipped his mind entirely.

But I don’t have insight into the divine. Maybe Trump has it right.  

What To Give That Someone Who Has Everything

Once again, we’re here to alleviate your gift-giving anxiety! Treat yourself to a great read and when you’re done, you have an awesome ready-made gift for that special friend, relative or colleague…you know, the smart, thoughtful one who likes to talk about interesting stuff! And support your local made-in-America writer or translator at the same time! Do it now, don’t even think about it!

From left to right: Gaetano Savatteri’s historical crime drama set in wartime Sicily, A Conspiracy of Talkers, translated by Steve Eaton; A Good Man for an Outlaw, the gothic western by Denton, Texas native son Jonathan Eaton, and its sequel, Outlaws and Worse. Also by J. Eaton, the steampunk sci-fi western The Prairie Martian, and its sequel, Metal Man of the Prairie. Finally, Emilio De Marchi’s 1887 masterpiece, the grandaddy of Italian crime fiction, The Priest’s Hat, based on an actual murder of a priest by a wastrel aristocrat in 1881, and translated by Steve Eaton and Cinzia Russi. All available in shockingy inexpensive paperback or Kindle editions! Enjoy!

Paths of Gloria

U.S. Senator and Yale law school graduate J.D. Vance

“If you are a, you know, middle-class or upper-middle-class white parent, and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, like, obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper-middle-class kids. But the one way that those people can participate in the D.E.I. bureaucracy in this country is to be trans.”—Senator J.D. Vance, on the Joe Rogan Show, 10/31/24

SCENE: Career counselor’s office, Upper Lower Middlebury Preparatory School

CAREER COUNSELOR: Let’s see now…Captain, lacrosse team…check!

Charles Stanton Herringbone III (senior, ’25): Got my letter jacket on!

CC: Eagle Scout…check! B-ish GPA…check! Safely Protestant religious affiliation…check! Gender: reassuringly masculine! Race: We don’t care about race here at Upper Lower Middlebury Prep! But still, white!

CSHIII: Is that a crime now?

CC: Father: Harvard ’89, current mega-donor!

CSHIII: Pop’s a generous, civic-minded guy!

CC: [darkly] With a sterling record like that, you should be a shoo-in for, say…Florida State or Texas…

CSHIII: What? I can’t go to a public school! Can you imagine me, years from now at a cocktail party or the Supreme Court cloakroom, starting a conversation with, “years ago, when I was an undergrad at Wisconsin-Muskingum….”?

CC: Well, back when America was great, before about 1967, or between 2016 and 2020, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But now, with this damned DEI business…

CSHIII: What’s DEI?

CC: It’s where they admit applicants based on their overall promise, even if they went to a crappy K-12 system in a poor school district and couldn’t afford SAT coaches…

CSHIII: But that’s horrible! That’s…

CC: Yes, that’s how they do things in communist China and California. But your case isn’t hopeless. There is…a way. If you were to apply not as Charles Stanton Herringbone III, but as Charlene…

CSHIII: You mean, I’d have to change my name to a girl’s name?

CC: Well, er, not just your name, son…

CSHIII: You mean they’d cut off my….

CC: Yes, son, I’m afraid so. That’s the price of greatness these days.

CSHIII: And I’d have to wear a dress?

CC: Well, not necessarily…I think you could still wear jeans. I need to look that up….

CSHIII: Hey, could I go into the girl’s restroom any time I wanted?

CC: Well, yes, I think so, except in Texas and South Carolina….

CSHIII: And could I still assault women and then deny it and escape punishment by slandering the reputation of my victim?

CC: Well, not “assault” in the traditional patriarchy-approved sense of the word, exactly…

CSHIII:  Hmmm…well, could I at least be the first trans Supreme Court justice?

CC: Uhh…not if we Make America Great Again!