Thank you for the support for the book reviews! I sometimes think that there are too many of them and it can get boring for people, so encouraging words about the reviews matter a lot.
As for Trump and Mamdani, I don’t think it’s a deliberate, thought-out strategy. I think it’s completely instinctive. But. Didn’t Trump hit on the very best way to discredit Mamdani? Calling him a Muslim Communist cost him zero supporters. But having him smile subserviently while Trump says, “yeah, I’m a fascist, haha” and slaps Mamdani playfully on the back?
Again, I don’t think Trump is playing 4D chess or any of that groupie rubbish. But I do believe he has incredibly good instincts for what works.
Why did Mamdani agree? Because he’s a very immature, very sheltered man. Consider that he never had to pay his bills, never had to wonder how to make a living, never had to clean his room. A 35-year-old (or whatever his age, I can’t be bothered to Google it) man who has always lived the life of a very spoiled little princess. His meeting with Trump is for Mamdani an encounter with a celebrity. And the celebrity was nice to him. So he acted like a little boy who has his baseball signed by a famous player.
Mamdani is not an adult person like you and I are adult people. Imagine if all the strength and growth and strategizing and self-control you have been exercising your whole life to make ends meet, pay the bills, stretch the paycheck, plan for larger purchases, etc never had to be used at all. You’d be a completely different person. I started doing paid translations at 14, and since then I always had to think about making money and covering my needs. I can’t even imagine who I’d be if I had my parents always there to provide everything as if by magic. Honestly, I wouldn’t even want that.
Clarissa's Blog 
Brilliant insight, as usual.
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“I started doing paid translations at 14, and since then I always had to think about making money and covering my needs. “
I wasn’t doing translations at that age but was a ‘pin boy’ – that was the person that set up the pins and returned your bowling ball. Did that for 2 years and then was a ‘pin chasser’ – the guy that took care of the AMF pin setters after automation and getting rid of pin boys – for 2 more years until graduating from high school.
Been making money and covering my needs ever since until I became a burden on society and started receiving Social Security payments. Wouldn’t have wanted to have had it any other way.
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This kind of journey invariably produces better-quality people than spoiled nepo babies kept by their moms well into the middle age.
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One of my favorite older relatives (sadly in the dementia ward now) started that same job at age 9, working the after-school hours. But where he lived, they called them “pin monkeys”.
-ethyl
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