Can’t explore a coral reef? Try a discount fabric store

 

     One big benefit of never going anywhere is that when you finally do go somewhere, it’s really cool. I probably would have been happy just to enter an interior space and be surrounded by walls other than my own. And here I was, wandering this incredible brilliant soft world of fabric in Pilsen. And not just cloth: spools of ribbon and thread, buttons and glittery fringe. But mostly fabric, in big log-like bolts, in scraps on the floor, pulled out in dizzying sheets for inspection. 

     I wish I could say that I went because of my relentless journalistic curiosity, exploring every corner of the city, seeking out the new and fantastic. But you don’t need to go anywhere for that: a firehose of the incredible — mostly incredibly bad news from Washington — hits you in the face every day. Hard.
     The reason is ordinary. Many are remodeling the homes they’ve been stuck in for six months and will remain stuck in for God knows how long. My wife and I, despite my pretensions to the contrary, are ordinary suburban folks. We’re remodeling the TV room, which has the same grim white linoleum floor and mournful blue walls it had when we bought the place 20 years ago.
     Over the past half year, we finally took a good look at the two sofas the boys spent 15 years jumping on and squirting juice boxes over. One had to go immediately. When I dragged it to the street, and saw its tears and stains in daylight, I was sincerely ashamed, embarrassed to have it sit on the curb, evidence of our unseen interior lives. I worried that the neighbors would think less of us. “Look what the Steinbergs had in their house!” We North Shore types can be so judgmental, and no judgment is more welcome than one confirming superiority over somebody else.

To continue reading, click here.

Don't Fear the Reaper

The line in Latin is Ecclesiastes, 12:1: " Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the time of affliction comes."

     "Don’t be afraid of Covid," President Donald Trump tweeted shortly before he left Walter Reed Medical Center Monday. "Don’t let it dominate your life."     

     Silly us. And here we were doing exactly that, being afraid of COVID, letting it dominate our lives. When all we had to do was simply the opposite. Not be afraid; don't let it dominate us.

    We feel sorta silly, now, with all our habitually wearing masks and avoiding enclosed spaces and such, as if our lives depended on it.
     Maybe our lives did. There are those 209.000 Americans who died since Valentine's Day.
    Old, right? They were old, half of them anyway. Practically begging for death. And the rest with all sorts of pre-existing conditions, diabetes and whatever. Which doesn't exactly make their lives forfeit. But really, if they didn't want to die of COVID-19 they should have taken better care of themselves, or at least been born more recently.
     Like Donald Trump. Honestly, while my friends were imagining his getting sick and dying, I had dismissed that along with winning the lottery, and focused on this: his striding out of the hospital and doing a France-has-fallen jig. Which is exactly what happened. Declaring himself "an invincible hero."

     Does the fact that he was quoting some groveling sycophant at the New York Post lessen the sting of that? I don't think so. 

      "An ... invincible ... hero." The vengeful God of Deuteronomy must be busy, must be distracted, perhaps molding distant galaxies, or otherwise there would have been a smoldering spot of grease where he stood on the White House balcony, whipping off his mask for his photo op. Maybe that's coming. 

   "Don't be afraid of COVID."
    There's so much packed into that sentence. 

No, I'm not linking to her site.

    Oh heck, we've got time on our hands. What's anybody doing but checking Twitter every two minutes and waiting for the next godawful shoe to drop. Let's unpack it.
   "Don't..."—a directive, from your leader. From your king, to some. Have you seen the "Trump is my king" t-shirts that weaponry wacko Kaitlan Bennett, the pride of Kent State University, is selling? Ooo, you must. 

   "...be afraid..." which is funny, because being afraid is what Donald Trump has sold so successfully, the central operating principle behind all of this—fear of minorities was only the start. Of science. Of change. Of anybody other than themselves, and I would imagine, push come to shove, they'd be pretty afraid of each other if there was no one else around left to demonize.

   Afraid of everything but the stuff they should be afraid of. Like COVID-19. Which if it isn't about to scythe through the Trump administration ... well, let's say we won't be surprised.

   In their defense, sometimes Democrats seem to be not afraid enough. If I hear one more person speculating that, gosh, these drugs might affect Trump's judgment, that we have no way of knowing now if he is fit to be president I'm going to scream.

    "...of COVID." Heck, at least he said it. That implies he figures it's real. Maybe that's the epiphany Trump had at Walter Reed: "Oh, this IS a disease, and a discerning and exclusive one, since it picked me!!!"

     Although he did declare himself ... what was the term ... "Maybe I'm immune, I don't know." Modest, as always.

     Altogether, "Don't be afraid of COVID."

    Not if doing so keeps you from going to work and restaurants, to movie theaters and bars, so the economy gets jacked back up in three weeks and Trump wins.

Catacombs, Paris, 2017

    Have I got it right? I believe I do. 

    As for the dying people ... the dying people ... well, they're dying out of sight, and you can't bake a big American is Great cake without cracking a few eggs. Am I right here? Of course I am.
    There was more of course. There is always more with Trump. He babbles like a brook.
     "Don't let it dominate your life."
     I guess wearing a mask counts as domination. These are the same sort of people who fought against seat belts because they rumple your tie. Who declared that, without smoking being permitted, restaurants would all go out of business. Do not submit to the yoke of the mask, Trump implies. I didn't and look at me. "I feel better than I did 20 years ago," he tweeted.

    Live the best life you can, by contracting COVID. I'm surprised Donald Trump hasn't figured out a way to charge people for getting it. Oh right, he has—pay $250,000 to attend a fundraiser and breath in his virus-laden droplets. I wonder how those people are feeling today? I wonder how Trump will feel once those drugs wear off? I wonder how many times he'll go back to Walter Reed? I wonder if Nov. 3 will ever arrive.

Don't fight monsters by becoming them.

 

     Most folks don’t proofread remarks tossed up on Facebook. But this was Nietzsche, and I didn’t want to get Nietzsche wrong, lest the forces of darkness he dabbled in come flapping out of a fissure in the earth and get me.
     I had posted my Saturday column about Donald Trump coming down with COVID-19. It skewed toward kindness. Sorry, I had to work quick, and find decency a handy default position, particularly now. You rarely regret kindness. Rarely slap yourself on the forehead the next morning and wonder, “How could I have been so decent?!?”
     Yes, it bothers some. “We’re showing him more empathy than he’s shown us,” complained an assistant professor at Loyola. “He has never called for any kind of remembrance of coronavirus victims or personally sought to console survivors.“
     True enough. But since when did Donald Trump become our moral pole star?
     “That’s how it should be,” I replied. “‘When battling monsters,’ Nietzsche tells us, ‘make sure that you do not become a monster.’”
     Quotes have a way of being distorted. So I checked the source, “Beyond Good and Evil.” Easy enough to find, aphorism No. 146: ”Whoever fights with monsters should make sure not to become a monster in the process.” 

To continue reading, click here. 

Hope is the thing with feathers

     Wishing on a star doesn't do anything. Maybe remind yourself what you are hoping for.  And a little contact high, a whiff of the thing you want and probably won't get.
     Hope certainly does not exert control over the world. It says something about you, probably something you already know. But that's it.
     In the two days since it was learned that Donald Trump has COVID-19, a lot of my friends, in the living world and on social media, have either expressed their hopes for his recovery, sincere or half-hearted, or spoken aloud their hopes for his suffering or worse, sometimes then castigating themselves for those hopes.
     I've tried to sidestep that exercise in futility. Not that it matters, but I hope he gets his ass kicked Nov. 3 and slinks off to prison in shame. But like any other hope, that doesn't make the related possibility any more real. Truthfully, I try not to even do that. Maybe, after writing eight books, the shine has gone off hope. Maybe because it seems so weak. Hope, Emily Dickinson wrote, is the thing with feathers. That's sweet and maybe sometimes true. To me, hope is the last coin in our pocket when all the money's gone. 
     Maybe because I'm less optimism driven, more fear oriented. What I fear is that the president will shake off his virus tomorrow, or later today. as can happen, and bounce back into the White House, potching his palms together and announcing that thanks to his iron constitution—a superman, really—and the overblown assessment of so-called "doctors," he has flicked the virus away, crushed it like a rock in his large and powerful hands, and is now ready to spread his wings and fly in his second term, as soon as the hopelessly corrupted and illegitimate election is put behind us.
     I can see that happening. Hope is a dim, distant star compared to that. Hope is a splash of feathers on the lawn where there used to be a bird.
     What I couldn't see—what most people didn't seem to see—was Trump getting sick in the first place, and I want to talk about that, because that's amazing, and speaks to the power of deceit. We all know—well, half of us anyway—that COVID-19 has killed more than a million people worldwide. And we know that 208,000 of those were Americans. And we could see that Trump didn't wear a mask and went around in maskless groups, rallies and meeting and rope lines. Day after day, in general disdain of self-preservation as weak and timid and girly and beneath his massive manliness. And while we didn't think it true, the fact was that he hadn't gotten sick, up to now, and speaking personally I just sort of assumed ... I'm not sure what. That it was all a show, that his minions and underlings—the United States government, remember—had created this antiseptic bubble around him. The president's daring was an illusion, a magic trick, and he was really as safe as a newborn swaddled in an incubator behind glass in a nursery.
    See? That's why he lies. Because lying works. Even among the vigilant and the skeptical. That's why there are so many lies. Lie after lie after lie. It wears us away like water over a stone. That's how I feel lately. Worn away.
     The lies get past our defenses, like the virus itself. Just as COVID-19 tricks the body, the president's lies trick the mind. Even though a person is stained as a liar, with 20,000 certified lies over the past four years, it is just so hard to accept. We keep forgetting. We keep insisting this is the new normal then going back to the old normal to sit in the ruins and sift the ashes. The media still asks him questions, provoking more lies, and nobody ever yells, "Stop! Why bother? Because he isn't telling the truth, ever." If Trump does die, you know it'll be two hours after his doctors have a press conference and give him a clean bill of health. Not only someone who lies, but someone who encourages deceit in others.
     The weekend—if we can call it that—was strange, a sort of waiting, ear cocked, for a sound that might not come, compulsively checking the news even more than usual, which is really saying something. Staring in silence at our phones, scanning the skies for a sign, a portend, a wonder. Waiting, hope stuck in our throats.

Cover ‘Trump gets COVID’ on your Disaster Bingo card

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey is taking the day off; she'll return next Saturday. 

     It’s terrible to be sick.
     Even when you have good health insurance and the best medical care. Even when you’re the president of the United States. Even when contracting this particular illness reeks of karma, of payback, of divine justice, the way it does for President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, who announced early Friday they have tested positive for COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has killed a million people worldwide, including 206,000 Americans.
     There will no doubt be a certain amount of gloating, of snide “thoughts and prayers” chortling. Guess that hydroxychloroquine didn’t do the trick after all, huh?
     I can see why. Only Tuesday Trump was in full bore bullying mode at the first presidential debate in Cleveland, speaking over his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, insulting him and the rest of us.
     “We’ve done a great job,” Trump said of his delayed, botched reaction to the pandemic, which he initially trivialized and ignored. The one thing Trump did do — haphazardly restrict travel with China — was again held up as if it had been adequate. He again pretended he was the one on top of the situation while his opponents dithered, Trump’s trademark move of blaming others for his own deficiencies.
     “It’s China’s fault!” he complained, as if that matters. As if America’s response to the virus didn’t at least match their blundering, if not surpass it.
     But the quality that ties one hand behind the back of Democrats in this fight is our ability to empathize with other people, even bad people. And in truth I have always felt sorry for Trump, clearly a broken man, his ego so damaged it must be constantly stroked. Living proof that you can be rich, famous, powerful and still a pathetic excuse for a human being who just can’t stop talking, mostly about himself.
     “They give you good press,” he sniveled to Biden Tuesday. “They give me bad press.”
     Boo hoo.

To continue reading, click here.

Let Mr. COVID Answer Man help you cope during the pandemic

  

   Because there are only so many earnest, well-reasoned columns a body can write...


Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: I’ve realized there are certain friends I haven’t talked to since March. Is it too late now to reach out? — Lonely

                                                                                         

Dear Lonely: Yes. The truth is, if you haven’t spoken to someone in more than six months of the most intense crisis to grip our country in living memory, you never need to speak again. This is sad, of course. Think of them like a neighbor you really like who moves away. You hug and swear you’ll stay in touch. Then you don’t, because you aren’t living next door to each other anymore. That’s how life goes.

Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: I work in a small store, where I’m required to wear a mask. But it gets claustrophobic, so I slip it below my nose. Occasionally a customer will say, “Would you mind putting your mask on properly?” This makes me very angry. Am I wrong to feel this way? — Miffed

Dear Miffed: Of course not. Tell yourself, you are WEARING a mask, technically, just not in the precise fashion that pleases every germaphobe fussbudget who walks in the door and starts issuing orders like they own the place, just because they don’t want to die a horrible death. The good news is that most customers are too inhibited to actually complain. Try saying, “Oh sorry, it slipped,” in a sarcastic tone, the way you would say, “Mind your own business loser,” and without moving the mask. That will convey your point in a witty fashion.

Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: Before the pandemic struck, I used to scream at my children for staring at screens too much. Now that they’re remote learning, I scream at them for not watching screens enough. They fight and misbehave and I find myself hating them, sometimes, wondering why I didn’t move to Thailand and open a grass shack bar on the beach when I was young and might have. What should I do? — Regretful

To continue reading, click here.

Why won't the lying liar lie?

 

     So here's the mystery.
     Given that Donald Trump is a liar—a continual, habitual, reflexive, pathological liar. And given the ease with which he mouths whatever untruth will reflect the greatest unearned glory upon him at any given moment or grease his way out of some self-imposed jam, secure in the knowledge, or maybe completely unaware, that he can always reverse himself should circumstances dictate, how do we explain this:
     Why didn't Trump just condemn white supremacy when called upon to do so, rather pathetically, by Fox News' Chris Wallace at the presidential debate in Cleveland Tuesday night?
     Could it be he believes so strongly in the superiority of the white race that he cannot publicly denounce it? That doing so would be like some Christian martyr forced to renounce his faith by some pagan tyrant? He would rather die.

     That's hard to imagine. Trump doesn't believe in anything except his own superlative greatness. He turned his back on New York, the city that created him. He drop kicks longtime aides at the first sign of trouble. It can't be loyalty to white supremacy. Not from the man whose entire mechanism is greased by disloyalty, hypocrisy and betrayal.
     So what it is then? It isn't as if such a condemnation would matter in the slightest.  As Hazlitt reminds us, "The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."
     Maybe because Chris Wallace, a member of the despised media, albeit the weak tea Fox version, was urging him to do it. Trump can't denounce white supremacy for the same reason he couldn't wear a mask for the first four months of the pandemic, even when doing so would be painless, help him politically and, oh yeah, save lives: because he was supposed to do it. And part of the oxygen that keep Trump and his base alive is their image of themselves as Harley-straddling rebels, Robinson Crusoe noncomformists, AR-15 in one hand while the other flips off any and all, on general principles. What is denouncing hate versus the the visceral pleasure of emitting a long, loud, deeply felt, "Fuuuuuuck yooooooouuuuuuu!!!" in the general direction of everybody who isn't on their knees, adoring the godhead?
     Ridiculing their enemies is an essential part of Trumpism. Mexicans are rapists, Muslims terrorists. Think of all the effort conjuring up pants-wetting liberals, casting them as traitors and cowards and idiots, then imaging their eye-goggling shock at whatever dull repetitive inanity Trump et al are babbling. The fact that most liberals are already bored and disgusted and at this point have to force themselves to notice, think about and if possible care, doesn't register. In their minds, they shoot, they scoooore!
     Haters define themselves by the people they hate. They sit in cathectic contemplation of what in theory so disrupts their lives but, in fact, give them the meaning they otherwise lack. This is counterintuitive, and can be very hard for non-haters to understand. They give the objects of their hate power over their own mental states, then resent and fight that power. Think about your marriage. Now try to imagine feeling that the marriages of gay people you never met somehow affect yours, never mind undermine it. Hard to do, right?

      You want to laugh, but none of this is funny. The Department of Homeland Security called white supremacism will be "most persistent and lethal threat" facing the United States over the coming year when it comes to terrorism. Donald Trump can't even pretend to condemn it. He won't acknowledge the danger that white nationalism poses, never mind do something about it. Only we can.