Opinions, art, debate
Every couple of months something like this happens:
There are no protests, no outcry, no #MeTootery.
Before that, it was Iryna Zarutska. A few months previously, it was Emily Carlson:
Compared to George Floyd, it’s quite remarkable how little attention these law-abiding, completely innocent, productive women get.
In Wallace Stegner’s novel Angle of Repose, the marriages of three different generations fail. The marriage of the Western pioneer geologist and his writer-illustrator wife fail because, if the wife contributes both the children and the income and the husband doesn’t provide, then what is his role? The husband and the wife are both good people but they run into the unanswerable question of what makes a husband if he can’t provide, organize, protect, and shelter.
The youngest generation of the early 1970s fails for a diametrically opposite reason. Here, it’s the women who can’t find a role for themselves. Once a woman contributes nothing womanly—no children, no comfort, no gentleness—what happens? The young woman in the novel gets passed around sexually by her husband like a bothersome receptacle with no purpose. She consents because she can’t find any other role for herself.
The generation in the middle is that of the narrator. His relationship fails, too, but since he’s part of his own story, he can’t understand why. It’s only by the end of the novel that the narrator and the readers start figuring it out.
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.
OK, so see the cabañas?
N loves the cabañas. He doesn’t want to travel anywhere that is devoid of the cabañas. But here at our favorite place, they are only available between mid-November and April. In summer, there are only beach chairs with umbrellas, and those are uncomfortable and provide barely any shade.
Does anybody know why there’s a summertime absence of cabañas?
There’s an announcement up saying that the cabañas don’t appear outside of the winter months, so I’m not inventing it. I want to ask the rental guy but I’m not managing to coincide with him.
Why does the idea exist that you can mix together people from different cultures and get great results? Why was the belief that “diversity is our strength” advanced when it’s clearly not true?
Multiculturalism was invented by people who live in a monoculture they mistake for diversity. These are wealthy, hyper educated people who are members of the intellectual and financial elite. They don’t have culture in the either good or bad sense in which regular people have culture. They are completely deracinated, severed from any roots. They have a supporting cast of shrinks, coaches, and shamans to offset the costs of the deracination. It’s a nice life. But it breeds terrible cluelessness as to what happens to the brains and the souls of people who are torn away from their culture, language, food, community, familiar air, etc. Of course, it’s also profitable not to notice.
As the sexual revolution is crashing around him, a crippled middle-aged professor of history Lyman Ward is grappling with the casual abandonment of his freshly liberated wife by researching the life of his talented grandmother.
In the 19th century, Susan Ward, a gifted writer and illustrator, sacrifices her dream of living the life of an East Coast intellectual in order to follow her husband Oliver on his geological ventures in the American West. Oliver has neither Susan’s gifts nor her connections. He’s perennially unlucky and creates endless trouble for Susan and their three children.
As Lyman researches his grandmother, he wonders how Susan’s life, with its self-discipline and sacrifice, compares to that of the liberated women not only of his but of the younger generations. Angle of Repose is truly a great novel, which means that it provides no easy answers.
This is one of the best reading experiences I’ve had all year. Stegner is probably the most important American novelist of the second half of the twentieth century, and this is one of his greatest novels.
I swear, I’m going to quit watching the news because it’s only spoiling my mood. Look at this:
These absolute bitch bastards, I swear.
In positive news, we are in Florida. I’m seeing a strikingly large number of people, including children, reading paper books by the pool and on the beach. So far, I’ve seen a grand total of two kids with a device. Everybody else either plays or has paper books.
The people of this country are so much better than its politicians, it’s almost funny.
OK, what needs to happen for Trump to drop this talking point? It’s horrible, it’s losing him support, yet he persists with the intensity of an alcoholic reaching for a bottle.
Read the room, dude. Your base hates this endless drumbeat of how America’s greatest problem is Americans.
Is there anybody on any side of the political spectrum who doesn’t subscribe to the Magic Dirt theory? Is there anybody who realizes that a country is its people and not a landscape, populated by whoever is more convenient to drag over to save a buck?
I’m growing increasingly desperate to find any political representation for my views.
JD Vance is asking Americans to have patience until the economy improves. In the meantime, Trump pursues yet another harebrained scheme for a “peace deal” in Ukraine. Can anybody point towards the electorate that voted for Trump so that he can dedicate most of his time to chasing these fictitious peace deals overseas? It’s been months now, and what exactly have Americans gotten out of all this peace-dealing?
This is what I mean when I talk about the withering away of the nation-state. Nothing can be achieved nationally (or internationally), so these fake shows are put on to pretend there’s a flurry of Very Important Business being conducted.
Walsh is absolutely right, and his 6 children are very fortunate to have such a father. Whatever defect parents want to eradicate in their children, they should first eradicate in themselves. Whatever virtue they want to inculcate, they should first develop it in their own personalities.
The mom in the video is exactly what N’s mom was. It’s horrible to be like that. It’s self-indulgent, it’s wicked, it’s immoral.
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