Tolstoy offers a primer on Trump's power and its limits

Leo Tolstoy

     "War and Peace" is a great book.
     That might come as a surprise, since most people have only one thought regarding the novel: "'War and Peace' is a big book."
     Also true. My copy, translated by Richard Pevear and Larisssa Voldkhonsky, is 1,215 pages long. The current thought is that such weighty classics as "War and Peace," written by dead white males such as Leo Tolstoy, are something of a scam, a burden unfairly imposed by society to keep young readers from sharper, more relevant authors.
     I promise you that isn't true, as somebody who has read it twice, the second time aloud to my older son. "War and Peace" is the original romance novel, filled with love, adventure, war and, umm, peace.
     The book sticks with you. I finished reading it last 10 years ago, the night before my son left for college. (I began the habit of reading aloud to him at bedtime, with "Alice in Wonderland" when he was about 2, progressed through a variety of classics, such as the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey." It was a real struggle to finish "War and Peace," not because of its length, but because he was staying up later than I did.)
     "War and Peace" is worth the effort. When Tolstoy writes about a horse, it's like an actual horse canters into the room, twitching and snorting, redolent of hay and sweat, and you remember Tolstoy ran a farm.
     When Natasha tucks herself into her mother's bed to tell the old countess about Prince Andrei, it could be any 16-year-old today gushing about her crush.
     And one section, toward the end, a rumination on power.
     How, Tolstoy wonders, did Napoleon — a character in the book — get 600,000 French soldiers to march 2,800 miles into Russia? In winter?
     "Napoleon gave orders to gather troops and go to war," he muses. "We are so accustomed to this notion, we have grown so used to this view, that the question of why six hundred thousand men go to war when Napoleon says such-and-such words seems senseless to us. He had power, and therefore what he ordered was done."
     Not physical power — the 600,000 soldiers have that. Nor moral power, certainly not with a Napoleon. Instead: "Power is the sum total of the wills of the masses, transferred by express or tacit agreement to rules chosen by the masses."
     Trigger alert: In groping for an answer, Tolstoy grows almost woke:
     "As long as histories of separate persons are written — be they Caesars, Alexanders, or Luthers and Voltaires — and not the history of all the people, all without a single exception, who participate in an event, it is absolutely impossible to describe the movement of mankind without the concept of a force that makes people direct their activity toward a single goal. And the only such concept known to historians is power."
     Being Tolstoy, he goes on for pages, evaluating various theories. But he keeps circling back to:
     "Power is based on the conditional handing over to rulers of the sum total of the wills of the masses, and that historical figures have power only on conditions of carrying out the programs which the will of the people has tacitly agreed to prescribe to them."
     Americans are beginning to realize — took them long enough — that electing a guy who will trash the economy, persecute immigrants, ignore law, scrap our government and set himself up as king, might not have been the best idea. This is not the program they tacitly agreed to.
     As his polls crater, you can see Donald Trump thrashing, shrinking, like the Wicked Witch of the West doused dowsed with a bucket. He's ready to prosecute the pollsters, calling them "Negative Criminals."
    We follow rulers because they follow us, leading us where we want to go. This is obviously true for Trump, who plays on the fears and resentments already bone deep. Not a cause, as I've said for years, but a symptom.

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' Do you attend library board meetings?'

     

    Yesterday's column on wanting to keep my Chicago Public Library card was supposed to be a fun ode to libraries. I had not considered the depth of class resentment. Living in Northbrook — which apparently is a Shangri La of wealth and privilege — I have no right to read the Chicago Defender archives online. Not paying Chicago taxes, I deserve no more expectation of enjoying CPL access than a visitor from the suburbs could hope to blithely drive down Halsted Street, walk unhindered into Grant Park or assume a response from a Chicago police officer...
    Oh wait...
    In addition to my being Louis XIV for wanting to use the CPL online resources, there was the wrath of librarians.  This letter, sent to me and to the paper's top editors, was the far end of the bell curve.  Notice how she drags in literally every issue facing libraries and lays them at my feet. The boldface was added by me to a sentence I felt you should notice. The author wanted her full name used, but I made an executive decision, and shielded it. Good library jobs are hard to come by, and by the time we finished communicating — there was much more — I felt some progress had been made. Though it is a stark reminder that the Left eats its own. Beaten by librarians AND thrashed by a university press — I'll be happy to say goodbye to April. The subject line was "Publishing Steinberg's Unverified Lies." 

     I am writing because I am incredibly disappointed in the literal lies recently published in Neil Steinberg's article "Why should suburbanites have to bang on the Chicago library door, pleading to be let in?" The library's reciprocal borrowing policy has been and remains the following: "Reciprocal cardholders can check out books, DVDs and other materials, and use our online resources. Reciprocal cardholders cannot check out Digital Museum Passes or Internet to Go WiFi hotspots, or use OverDrive eBooks, audiobooks and magazines or hoopla videos, music and audiobooks."
     The library is discontinuing eCards, which were never available to suburban borrowers in the first place. Any suburban borrower who has an eCard has one because they falsified their address when filling out the eCard form. The form would not let you create a card without a Chicago address. And I know this because I work in the library where I had to deny renewal to thousands of eCards created with the addresses 1060 W Addison St (Wrigley Field).
     I also know that Neil contacted the library on April 22nd via email and a library staff member clarified that there would be no changes to reciprocal borrowing privileges, so I'm wondering he went ahead and wrote this strange attack piece on the library when he was already told that he can continue to use it access physical books and the online newspapers he falsely laments about losing access to.
     If Mr. Steinberg was truly a "library geek...who takes his libraries very seriously," then he would know that libraries are currently facing an unprecedented barrage of attacks from the far right and federal government. As of April 28th, 2025, there are 130 bills proposed in state legislatures throughout the US that threaten access to library materials. (Source: Legislation of Concern in 2025 - EveryLibrary). In Illinois, there are currently two proposed anti-library bills, IL SB1783 and IL HB2817. These bills claim to be about protecting minors for "pornography and obscene materials," which any librarian knows is dog whistle for any book that includes LGBTQ content or provides grade appropriate sexual education. Mr. Steinberg's own home library of Northbrook was part of a large controversy last year where pro-censorship advocates tried to prevent a screening of the film Israelism and successfully delayed it twice. On March 14th 2025, the Federal Government issued an Executive Order to severely cut IMLS funding, which will put the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at risk. Unlike Mr. Steinberg, whose library privileges will remain exactly the same, the disabled citizens who rely on the Talking Books program may completely lose access to accessible materials. Those are the real tragedies and threats facing our libraries.
     While Mr Steinberg sits at his desk and writes false information he didn't bother verifying, as a librarian, I'm personally gearing up for the inevitable hate messages we will receive once the library releases its Pride Programming schedule in the next month. I'm hoping that none of them are threats of violence, though if they follow in the footsteps of years past, they will be. Later today, I'll be teaching a class on computer basics to patrons who are building the skills to complete tasks like sending an email or uploading a resume to a website - skills that a very large portion of our library users do not have. These classes are free and open to anyone — no need to have a library card or be a Chicago resident. On the seventh floor of Harold Washington Library, social workers are helping connect patrons to housing, food stamps, medical assistance, and free legal help. No card required. We offer study rooms and music practice rooms, public computers with internet access and basic programs like Microsoft Word, and 10 free printing pages a day. Once again, none of these services require a library card or Chicago residency. The Chicago Public Library system provides a plethora of resources to anyone who walks through our doors, no matter where they are from. We are simply asking that eBooks and eAudiobooks, which cost more than double the price of a physical book and can only be purchased for short term contracts (the library cannot outright purchase an eBook), are only circulated to tax paying residents. It would be nice if instead of attacking those of us on the front lines of the war on information and access, Mr. Steiberg took his energy to fight for the library. It seems like many people take for granted the fact that libraries still exist in a world where those in power are trying to gut every single service that can't be milked for profit.
     So my question to the Sun Times is, why did no one bother to research this policy change closely enough to realize that Neil made false statements about policy changes? And even if Neil's piece was accurate, why would you publish something so incredibly tone deaf while public librarians are facing some of the worst working conditions they ever have in this country? This piece is an entitled temper tantrum. While I would expect nonsense like this from the Tribune, I thought more highly of the Sun Times.
     And my question to Neil is, what are you doing to support libraries besides using our free services and then complaining that we're not doing enough for you when you're not even a resident of this city? Do you attend library board meetings? Do you use your position as a journalist to advocate for more library funding and social service funding (which directly affects the conditions inside the library)? Did you speak out against censorship at your own public library? Will you show up to defend CPL if protestors try to sabotage LGBTQ programming at the library? Every day, libraries get less funding while both the public and the city ask us to do more, but we cannot do more with less. And unless the public starts standing up for libraries, you might find that the information you treasure so much isn't accessible to anyone anymore because of censorship and funding cuts.
     Sincerely,
     GAR., disappointed public librarian

Banging on the library door

   

The Richelieu Reading Room of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, or French National Library, in Paris.

     They're taking my Chicago Public Library card away?!?
     Were you to evaluate the range of bad news in last Tuesday's Sun-Times, from the death of a courageous, liberal pope to the prospect of an impoverished city of Chicago laying off employees, you might not choose Shannon Tyler's story on page 15: "E-cards to be discontinued by library."
     Then again, you are not a library geek, like me, who takes his libraries very seriously.
     The CPL and I go waaay back — heck, I was involved in the decision-making process that selected the building for the Harold Washington Library Center. (OK, OK, the public was invited to vote on a variety of design options. I voted and my favorite won — I liked the elaborate frou-frou at the corners and didn't know they made patrons go through a maze to get into the place.)
     Then again, libraries tend to make you jump through hoops. But I'm always up to the task. From the British Library in London to the New York Public Library to the Library of Congress in Washington, I've gotten in, received library cards, roamed the subterranean stacks, consulted books and, in general, reveled in their bookish splendor.
     The British Library gave me a card good for five years. The Newberry Library not only gave me a card but a shelf to put my checked-out books on. And now the best Chicago can do for non-residents is issue a chit good for 90 days, non-renewable?
     Have you ever researched a topic? Ninety days is a start. Ninety days is clearing your throat. I've stepped over a book on the floor for 90 days before cracking the cover. These things take time.
     I use the CPL website continually, simply because it's the easiest way to search historic newspapers — the Chicago Defender, the Chicago Inter Ocean. Have you ever read the Inter Ocean? Its reporters were so sharp, I want to disinter their bodies and shake their clawed hands. Even the Tribune archive — in fact, I consult the Trib from decades past far more than I read today's Tribune.
     And you want to take that away? Just because I live in Northbrook? You monsters!
     I phoned the library. What, I wondered, have I ever done to you to deserve this? Being besieged by suburbanites trying to consult the Chicago Examiner online, are you?
     "We have such a demand," said Patrick Molloy, director of government and public affairs for the library. "Not so much from the suburban people, as we have people from all over the country and even internationally, creating online cards, checking out ebooks — they've got 15 things on hold — and people are waiting a really long time to get ebooks."

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A whole new meaning to "It's cheaper to keep her"

Ruth Snyder in the electric chair

    I complain about being surrounded by lawyers — two sons, a daughter-in-law and a wife — but there are advantages.
    Yes, conversation quickly devolves into .... well ... I couldn't tell you exactly what they're talking about, and I try to listen, hard. For a while. at least. Something about monopolistic practices, for the older boy. About motions to dismiss, for the younger. And landlord difficulties, for my daughter-in-law at Legal Aid (when can I drop the "-in-law" part? It seems unnecessarily specific. I love her like a daughter). 
    But one does pick up truths, as if by osmosis. 
    For instance, Saturday I received an email under the very promising slug "Good column yesterday re: Crimo..." that read:

      But too bad CP is not legal in Illinois. How much will the taxpayers spend housing and feeding this vermin, for what, 60 plus years possibly.
     Meanwhile millions of people in our country are homeless and/malnourished. Diverting funds from housing and feeding miscreants like Crimo should be diverted to help those less fortunate in our society, in my opinion.
     Consider me a pro capital punishment, far left liberal. Hopefully, one of Crimo’s fellow cell mates will ‘Off him.’ And the sooner the better. Happy weekend. - L. from Glenview

    "CP" being, I realized after a moment, "capital punishment" (As opposed to what's going on in Washington now, which we can consider "capitol punishment").
     I knew my response immediately. Checked it online at the U.S. Department of Justice's web site (which I hate to ID, lest they scrub that information too. I guess it's safe, because it doesn't deal directly with race. (Though you can't talk about capital punishment without getting quickly to race: a third of the Americans executed since 1976 are Black, double their representation in the population — though I should also observe they're responsible for half the murders). 
     I linked to the page in my reply:

     Ah L., you must not be surrounded by lawyers, like I am. Capital punishment is far, far more expensive than keeping someone in prison for the rest of his life, when you factor in the legal costs. It's cheaper to house 'em for 40 years than to fry 'em once and — if you ask me — a more terrible punishment. There's a former colleague who was sniffing around, begging for his old job back, and I mentioned, just the other day at the office, "I couldn't conceive of a worse fate than being him is." That would go double for Crimo. Thanks for writing.  NS

     Alas, the reader didn't bother clicking on the link, nor could he grasp that the legal appeals around capital punishment quickly dwarf food and housing and medical care for a prisoner. He seemed to think the choice was shooting Crimo the day after sentencing, or 40 years in prison. I observed that, had the death penalty been on the table, Crimo might never have pled guilty, and the trial would be grinding on right now. 

Independent Bookstore Day.

The Book Bin's new location, 1929 Cherry, Northbrook

     Happy Independent Bookstore Day! When I heard that the last Saturday in April has been designated a holiday to celebrate the tenacity of small bookstores, my first thought was, "Isn't every day independent bookstore day?" Not that I go every day — at this point, with the mesmeric lure of social media, I'm lucky to crack a book every day, never mind buy one. But I'm one of those people drawn into bookstores as if by gravitational pull. How can you pass one by?

     Holding a special day for small bookstores is sort of gilding the lily at this point. Once upon a time, independent bookstores were endangered by the peril of big box bookstores — Borders (remember them?) and Barnes & Noble and such.  Now the giants have largely gone the way of the dinosaurs, missed in their own right, while small bookstores, like the hardy voles, have survived the apocalypse and continue to thrive and evolve. Amazon might be handy in certain circumstances, but you seldom have a conversation there, and part of the money spent on Amazon ended up funding Donald Trump's inauguration.
     I'm lucky to live in Northbrook, whose Book Bin has been a social hub since 1971. The news is that  in February it moved into bigger quarters at 1929 Cherry Lane — and closer to me by a  hundred yards or so. They've always been busy — I'm always amazed to find four or five clerks working whenever I stop by — and supportive of my books. For the last one, we developed a fun symbiosis — anyone who wants a signed copy calls the Book Bin, which texts me. I stroll over and sign their copy, and the Book Bin ships it out. Do it now, if you like — 847-498-4999 — I'll be there in a few hours, can sign your book, and the Book Bin will speed it on its way. Gift-wrapping is free.
    Now that I think of it, walking over to the Book Bin to sign a book for them probably takes more time and effort than just packing it up myself. But it's a lot more fun — you see the latest titles, chat with owner Alli or her sister Amy, take the air on the way there and back. I feel like I'm a character in a Richard Scarry book.

    On Saturday, not only is the Book Bin celebrating Independent Bookstore Day, but it's also having a grand re-opening in the new location. There are snacks, music, fun.

     A big Independent Bookstore Day event is something called the Book Crawl — like a pub crawl, only with books. They've printed passports, created special stamps, hired buses, and if you visit 10 participating bookstores, you get 10 percent off all year. 
    Some of my favorites are on the list: 57th Street Books, a sprawling subterranean (okay, a few steps down from the street) Hyde Park institution. New and used. Good Dante selection. Powell's too.
      Bookends and Beginnings, which took over Bookman's Alley in Evanston for many years and now has moved into a new space in participating. As is the Newberry Bookstore, which, in keeping with the library's mission, is heavy on design — I once spent $10 there for a little booklet designed for self-guided bike tours of Chicago's racial history, timed for the centennial of the 1919 race riots, not so much because I planned to ride it, though I should, but because it was such a neat little volume.
    Quimby's is taking part, a skateboard punk of Chicago bookstores (though its brother, Comix Revolution in Evanston, is not. I got my first Uglydoll at Comix Revolution, and they have the best curated new book table. I found Eddy Portnoy's essential "Bad Rabbi" there). 
    The Book Cellar, Lincoln Square's jammed shop, is on the list — the "cellar" part is for their wine bar.  And the Book Stall, in Winnetka... 
     You get the idea. Sorry I didn't give you more advance notice — I only found out about it Friday morning. I'm not hitting 10 bookstores. Saturday morning I'm conducting an interview — about a book, fittingly enough, the new Wrigley Building coffee table book — with one of the authors and the photographer. I'll write about that in a couple weeks. Afterward, I plan to stroll over to the Book Bin and see what I can find. So, figure about 11:30 a.m. Maybe I'll see you there.

Crimo isn't alone ignoring the pain of others

     When you stop caring about people, you can do anything.
     Ignore any suffering, endorse any wrong. Heck, you can, as Robert Crimo III did, cause suffering and inflict wrongs yourself. Show up at your own town's Fourth of July parade and fire 88 shots from an assault rifle into the crowd of your neighbors, killing 7, wounding 48 more.
     You're free to do that, then shrug it off afterward.
     We wonder how Crimo could do it, while at the same time imitating him, in our own small way.
     Part by necessity. The world is a terrible place. You can't mourn every bird nudged out of every nest, every child who dies anywhere. Life would be continuous agony. You have to be concerned about yourself, primarily, your family, next, if you're lucky enough to have one. Then a few neighbors, co-workers, friends. We make such a big deal out of the tiny fraction we care about, we completely ignore the majority who don't count.
     Some cause harm. For a lark. In Crimo's case, he pulled the trigger, he claimed, inspired by friends being shot by police — imaginary friends apparently. Lies are helpful that way, the grease on which our bad deeds slide. Crimo says he was a zombie, a sleepwalker.
     There's a lot of that going around. Those who aren't psychopaths prefer to let others do their harm for them. The reasons hardly matter. Our government hurts people based on their immigration status. Their paperwork. It's such a familiar excuse, we forget just how flimsy it is, how false. Just as baseless as other popular pretexts: the color of someone's skin, their religion, gender. Meaningless distinctions that become meaningful to those who want to oppress and hurt, or ignore oppression and pain.
     As if the 2022 Fourth of July massacre weren't close enough — a 13-minute drive from my house to Ross Cosmetics, the Highland Park store and social center Crimo chose as a sniper's nest — after the killing I noticed a photo I took at a Trump rally at the corner, within sight of my window.
     It was 2020, the COVID Plague Year. Northbrook activist Lee Goodman had taken to posting the COVID death tolls on a sign at the corner of Shermer and Walters — then under 200,000 dead. Trumpers began holding rallies at that corner to register their displeasure at anyone keeping track of something as trivial as Americans dying in a pandemic, the opening salvo of what, five years later, has become a general war on education, experts, data, information.
     Not only don't we care who gets hurt; we don't even want to see an official toll. Statistics are for losers.
     It might seem facile to draw a line from Crimo to the administration. Why not? Both are motivated by the same blithe unconcern for life. It's only a matter of degree. , and seven dead are a rounding error chump change compared to what's happening right now. Human Rights Watch just issued a paper: "100 Human Rights Harms in 100 Days: The Trump Administration's Assault on Rights in the United States and Abroad."
     No. 1 is "Children, adults, and whole families may find it more difficult to feed themselves as the administration eliminated over $1 billion in food assistance for school lunches and food banks in food insecure school districts and communities across the US."
     Are those kids going to die of hunger tonight? No. But it's a hint at what's going on — if you don't care about hungry kids, what do you care about? Trans high school athletes, apparently.

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Coffee with the senator

     Sen. Dick Durbin announced Wednesday that he won't run for re-election. Of course he did. In an era when politicians leap to look out for themselves, first, last and always, clinging to power until it's pried away, Durbin is a man out-of-time, cleaving to the old standards of service to country before service to self. Who knows where we'd be today if Joe Biden had done the same in a timely fashion, although Durbin had the benefit of learning from Biden's bad example. I'll miss Sen. Durbin, for the good he did for our country, our state, and for how accessible he was — the kind of guy you could sit down with and share a cup of coffee.

OPENING SHOT

      Had a cup of java with my old pal Dick Durbin at a Madison Street coffee shop Thursday morning.
     "So you don't think Alito is so bad?" said Illinois' senior senator, alluding to a column I wrote suggesting that President Bush's current nominee to the Supreme Court wasn't the kind of towel-gnawing conservative crazy who would justify the Democrats kicking out the stops to block him. I assumed a filibuster was a flat-out political impossibility but Durbin — who is on the Judiciary Committee, and thus should know — disagrees.
     "I would have told you that last week," he said. "But after meeting with my colleagues, I'm not sure. We can't rule it out. I was surprised at the intensity of feeling."
     They are convinced that Alito will not only pitch Roe vs. Wade, but lead us into a world of excessive governmental power and reduced individual rights — a dark new Alito's America.
     Not that they got that across. A murderer's row of Democratic senatorial powerhouses, led by Ted Kennedy, had hours of choice TV time to tar Alito, and came off looking verbose and ineffective.
     "It wasn't an easy week, I'll tell you," Durbin said, with a laugh.
     To be fair, the Dems were in a bind -—anything resembling tough questioning would be seen as bullying a respected jurist, which doesn't poll well. So they were left speechifying and focusing on minutia.
     None of it added up to the impression that Alito was too conservative to serve.
     "We look back and say, 'What went wrong?' " said Durbin, who insists that the American people feel Bush won the election and therefore gets to pick his court nominee, but they didn't realize they would also be getting Alito's America.
     "Did he win the election saying he would appoint a justice to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade?" said Durbin. "This isn't what we bargained for."
     Durbin said Democratic senators will decide over the next several days whether they want to take the dramatic step of filibustering the nomination. It's still a long shot but, I'll tell you this: It would make great theater.

     — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 20, 2006

     Had breakfast the other morning with Sen. Dick Durbin and Dan Seals, the young Democrat who just might unseat Mark Kirk in the 10th Congressional District next week. We were discussing that age-old question of whether the current election really is the most mean-spirited in history or only feels that way. Conversation naturally moved to George Allen, the Virginia senator who, having pretty much dug his own political grave with his mouth, is desperately lashing out at his opponent, Jim Webb, by pointing shrilly to salty lines culled from Webb's war novels as if they were evidence of perversion. Durbin used a phrase I hadn't heard before.
     "George Allen is a spit tobacco senator," he said. "One of four in the Senate." Meaning that he dips and chews tobacco, a vile habit better left in the barn. But Allen doesn't leave it in the barn. Durbin entertainingly described a flight down to Guantanamo he and Allen shared on a military airplane, and the cringing revulsion the clean-cut, dignified and ramrod straight military hosts extended toward Allen, a drooling nicotine addict dribbling brown saliva into a plastic cup. That's a grosser image than anything in Webb's novels.

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Nov. 1, 2006

     For many years, my column took up a page and ended with a joke, often sent in by readers. Sen. Durbin shared what had to be a real occurrence

TODAY'S CHUCKLE ...

     Normally, you couldn't pry me off the couch on a Sunday afternoon. But this Sunday, Jan. 20, the first-ever 10th District Democratic Convention ... The public is invited, and the keynote address is by my old pal and regular reader, Sen. Dick Durbin who — completely unrelated to Sunday's convention — sent in this joke:
     The senior senator from Illinois was visiting an elementary school in Caseyville. Always eager to impart the importance of understanding our democratic system, the senator asked the children in a third-grade class whether anyone could name the vice president of the United States.
     There was a silence. Finally, a small voice from the back of the room ventured: "Judge Judy?"

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 18, 2008