"No king he"

     

     

     The Washington Post did a poll this week, asking 1,000 Americans whether it is a good idea for the president to send the California National Guard and the United States Marines into Los Angeles to quell violent protests that broke out over the increasingly common practice of masked immigration police snatching people off the street, dispatching them to unknown dooms in foreign hellholes.        
     Forty-one percent think it is a good idea and support the policy; 44 percent oppose the suspension due process and the rule of law, and 15 percent just aren't sure.
     I read that, and thought: I've got to dig that yarn out of my closet and begin focusing on knitting. Because really, if that's where we are, in 2025, then why bother addressing issues at all? The same 40 percent of the country that have been huzzahing Trump since he went down that escalator in the peach-toned hell of Trump Tower almost exactly 10 years ago are with him still, the same bare half majority puts up an increasingly exhausted, dispirited and failing opposition, while a staggering 15 percent strokes its chin and thinks, "Golly, I just don't know what to think...."

     If you're looking for a bright side — and at this point any kind of optimism might be part of the problem — 52 percent of the respondents to the poll said they disapprove of Trump's immigration policies. With 37 percent — a solid third plus change — saying they're all for kneecapping our economy and nation by enacting a cruel policy of isolation and xenophobia. So long as that bare majority doesn't go into the street and raise their voices...

    We're allowed to give up, right? Maybe because I turned 65 on Tuesday, but it struck me that this swine of a man, this jabbering dupe of a president, to paraphrase Hunter S. Thompson's sharp description of Nixon, will be the sun in my sky for years to come. Maybe forever. Because even after the corporal human being, to stretch the term, is no longer with us, the concept of a president as dictator, as king, as unopposed figurehead, will continue. I have a hard time believing J.D. Vance can just pick up where he left off. 

    But then again, I have a hard time believing any of this. Always have. Which might be why he wins. The American media, slow on the uptake, raising a finger and offering a weak, "hey!" as MAGA world rushes by to ravish and destroy our country.

     Knitting. He hadn't been campaigning a month when, dispirited, already, I suggested it might be time to divert myself from the parade of bad news and focus on yarn craft.

     "I could be the knitting reporter, covering the yarn arts beat," I wrote on July 6, 2016. "As the presidential campaign veers deeper into farce, a bone deep revulsion sets in at the prospect of reaching my hands into the mess and trying to arrange its gloppy, putrid contents into some kind of order. Knitting seems so pleasant by comparison."

    I'm tempted to apologize for that — preemptive surrender. Or maybe I should be proud. Nothing was working. This entirely unfit buffoon was striding toward the presidency, and I was groping for a new way to register dismay and desperation. It wasn't true surrender, but desperation disguised surrender. Didn't matter. 

     Anyway, it's 3 a.m. No wonder I'm tired. Saturday is "No Kings Day." Welcome to the club. Here's something I wrote on the subject, reflecting on the "TRUMP" sign going up at Trump Tower by remembering Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias."

     Shelley notes the stone pharaoh’s face: Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command.
     “Sneer of cold command” sort of evokes Trump, the man, does it not? I only met him once, when he was in town drumming his Atlantic City casino. No king he; Trump needed a shoe shine and a haircut.

     I wrote that 11 years ago, in 2014. Before the man was even running. Then, in the giddy optimism of youth, I predicted the sign would be down in 12 years. Now, it seems more likely that, by next year, all the buildings in downtown Chicago will have Trump signs. He's never going away.

     So yes, last night was one of the rare days I went to bed without a blog post for the next day. Not sure why I didn't write anything. Following the news from Los Angeles, I didn't see what there was to say. That this is bad? That it's a dry run, and if the president can send the Marines into a city, over the objection of the mayor of Los Angeles and the governor of California, then he can send them into Chicago to arrest J.B. Pritzker for saying something mean. You don't need to be paranoid to see that coming, just look a little ways down the road.     

Park district shuns an anti-hate ad — and ketchup on hot dogs

     Regular readers know that I belong to a widely reviled minority; contempt is increasingly heaped upon us without letup or shame.
     I'm referring, of course, to people who put ketchup on hot dogs.
     Not that I do it all the time — Friday I biked over to Little Louie's, the beloved Northbrook frankfurter joint, and ordered two chardogs, one with mustard, grilled onions and relish, for my wife, and one with mustard, grilled onions and a pickle spear for me. I don't relish relish.
     So not habitual with the ketchup. But I do reserve the right. And I push back against those riding the you-can't-be-a-Chicagoan-and-put-ketchup-on-your-hot-dog hobby horse. It's an old joke — Bugs Bunny goes to the steakhouse, slathers his steak with ketchup, and an incensed French chef in a tall toque chases him out of the restaurant with a cleaver.
     It isn't that Chicagoans don't put ketchup on hot dogs — some obviously do. It's that certain Chicagoans pretend to care about it, deeply.
     Why? A stab at sophistication — afraid of being considered rubes, Chicagoans insist upon their gustatory refinement. And a kind of parody of prejudice — we might not be able to mock the folks we once loved to mock, but we sure can still mock you, you loathsome ketchup lover you.
     This is a popular gambit among New York advertising agencies trying to spray a whiff of authentic Chicago on their puffery like someone dosing an outhouse with a blast of Febreze.
     Which is why I was surprised to see the Jewish United Fund, a venerable Chicago organization — founded in 1900 — launch an ad showing a frank with a single zigzag of ketchup.
     "Hey Chicago," it taunts. 'Antisemitism is up 400%. Don't just hold the ketchup. Hold the hate."
     Et tu, JUF? We ketchup lovers don't get enough grief? Is JUF now lumping us with antisemites?
     "No, no, no," said Elizabeth Abrams, a spokesperson for the JUF. "It's not saying if you put ketchup on your hot dog you are an antisemite. We want to remind and inform the greater Chicago community that antisemitism is a pervasive problem."
     They've got that right.
     To imagine that the Trump administration is fighting antisemitism by going after universities for their anti-Israel protests is like pretending Donald Trump is against insurrection because he sent the Marines into Los Angeles. (Trump actually called the protesters "insurrectionists," which is world-class gaslighting).

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The plan is working, so far...

 

"Bust of the Collector," by Damien Hirst

      Not to try to find any kind of silver lining in our nation's collective stagger toward totalitarian dictatorship.
      But it does make the always relevant Juvenal even more spot-on.
     Looking around the chaos, decadence and folly of Rome 2,000 years ago, he observed, "it is difficult not to write satire." 
     I feel you, brother.
     Though sometimes the acid-witted Juvenal — born Decimus Iunius Juvenalis — can cut too close to home. Such as today, my 65th birthday. Over the weekend I was poking around his 10th Satire (there are only 16 that survive),  checking its famous "bread and circuses" line. (In my edition, it's "bread and games.")
     I happened upon this:
     "'Give me length of days, give me many years, O Jupiter!' Such is your one and only prayer, in days of strength or of sickness; yet how great, how unceasing are the miseries of long old age!"
      I don't know. My dad is 92. He might not know his children anymore; but he doesn't strike me as miserable. When I ask him if he's happy, he says he is. True, he has no volition, and lacks any interest in anything. Not the usual requisite for happiness. But he doesn't seem to suffer by it. Or even notice. If you ask him how he spent his day, he won't say the sad truth, "Watching television." What he will reply, every time, is, "That's a good question." A good question he can't answer and doesn't try. He lets the matter drop.
    Juvenal continues:
     "Look first at the misshapen and ungainly face, so unlike its former self; see the unsightly hide that serves for skin; see the pendulous cheeks and the wrinkles like those which a matron baboon carves upon her aged jaws ..."
    Big on appearances, the Roman were. And people are. Me, well ... here never having been especially gainly is an asset. Not that far to fall. 
   "The young men differ in various ways: this man is handsomer than that, and he than another; one is far stronger than another: but old men all look alike. Their voices are as shaky as their limbs, their heads without hair their noses driveling as in childhood. Their bread, poor wretches, has to be munched by toothless gums; so offensive do they become to their wives, their children and themselves..."
     Here Juvenal is perhaps led astray by the aged as seen in the crowded streets of Rome circa 95 A.D. No fluoride in their water pitchers. No C3-7 laminosplasties and hip replacements to straighten their posture and steady their gait. Juvenal himself died about age 40.
    "Their sluggish palate takes joy in wine or food no longer and all pleasures of the flesh have been long ago forgotten..."
     Not true. Well, yeah, the wine part is true, though Fre NA winelike liquid is a passable approximation.  And food is holding its own. True, a challah roll will spike my blood sugar. But I had one Sunday. As for that last part, well, umm, not yet forgotten.
     There's more. The old are deaf, unable to enjoy music or the theater — I did have my first audiologist appointment at Costco last week. No hearing aid ... yet. Noise damage in the left ear. All those NU frat parties, standing with a red cup of beer, my head three feet from a throbbing speaker. And I don't go to theater or concerts the way I used to, because that involves conveying myself somewhere, and why bother?
     "The little blood in his now chilly frame is never warm except with fever; diseases of every kind dance around him in a troop."
      Juvenal does seem to have been listening in on recent conversations with friends and family.
     "One suffers in the shoulder, another in the loins, a. third in the hip; another has lost both eyes, and envies those who have one; another takes food into his pallid lips from someone else's fingers."
      Brevity is not Juvenal's strong suit. He goes on, spiraling toward the heart of the matter.
     "But worse than any loss in body is the failing mind which forgets the names of slaves and cannot recognize the face of the old friend who dined with him last night, nor those of the children whom he has begotten and brought up."
     Worse ... for those unafflicted, so far. Though at 65 torturer time has certainly laid out his grim devices and I am paraded past them, like Galileo forced to view the Inquisition's flails and pincers and spikes. Sadly, I don't think renouncing my heresies will get me off the hook.
     Being Juvenal, he dives deeper, and finds worse — he has his tottering old fool disinherit those forgotten children to bequeath his estate to a streetwalker. Don't see that happening in my case; then again, you never do. 

     We eventually get to the crux.

   "He lives in a world of sorrow, he grows old amid continual lamentation and in the garb of woe," and "asks of every friend around him why he has lived so long, what crime he has committed to deserve such length of days."
     Is that coming? I don't know. Sometimes I think I can avoid it, because I am the king of the ordinary. Nobody enjoys walking a dog more than I do, or sipping that first cup of coffee, or savoring a tablespoon of Smucker's Natural Peanut Butter. 
     Yes, the dog, at 15, an old lady herself, is not a permanent fixture, much as I fervently wish her to be. The coffee can stay though, like most things, it doesn't seem to give me the kick it once did.
    I am not yet into deep age — check back at 75 — because I still consider myself very lucky. Healthy, with continual injections, not in pain, generally, blessed with a wonderful wife of nearly 35 years whom I love and sons and daughters-in-law who thrive, for now, whose company I enjoy and fancy maybe they do too. A grand-daughter arriving any minute — maybe this afternoon, a present beyond measure. A job I find satisfying — though yes, in a footrace with the dog to see who goes first — and some people appreciate. A big old rambling home, and an office with hundreds and hundreds of books — it isn't as if "Juvenal and Persius", translated by G.G. Ramsay and first published by the venerable Loeb Classical Library in 1918 is the only work of a Roman handy. 
    There are still good days ahead, and in honor of those, be they many or few, we find is meat more tender in "The Odes of Horace" translated by David Ferry. It contains a poem I feel entitled to end with — it my birthday after all. It's called "A Prayer."
     "What shall I ask for from the god Apollo," it begins. "As on his day I pour the new wine out."
     It isn't gold or ivory, not lavish harvests or grazing cattle.
    Horace — born Quintus Horatius Flaccus — dismisses the wealth of rich traders who ply "the dangerous Atlantic," then ends.

         But as for me, my simple meal consists

         Of chicory and mallow from the garden
         and olives from the little olive tree.

         Apollo granted that I be satisfied
         With what I have as what I ought to have

         And that I live my old age out with honor,
         In health of mind and body, doing my work.

     Yeah, that sounds like a plan. 

     Though as the great contemporary philosopher Mike Tyson points out, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Until then...
     

Joe's Folly? Ted Lasso has some insight into proposed South Loop soccer stadium

 

     Old habits die hard.
     When I read in the Sun-Times that Joe Mansueto has agreed to personally finance construction of a 22,000-seat soccer stadium in the South Loop, my immediate response was to smile at another rich man's folly. Soccer? Really? Who wants to watch a soccer game?
     But then a certain mustachioed coach wandered into mind.
     "Be curious," Ted Lasso said, in that folksy Kansas twang. "Not judgmental."
     Yes, Ted claimed to be quoting Walt Whitman, which is ridiculous. "Judgmental" is a 20th century word.
     It wasn't even coined until 1873, which happens to be the year Whitman had a stroke — I'm assuming the two events are unrelated — and he spent the rest of his life molesting his 1855 "Leaves of Grass."
     "Judgmental" isn't even an entry in my 1978 Oxford English Dictionary. Suggesting Whitman used the word "judgmental" is like claiming Lincoln said, "Transgender rights are human rights."
     But I digress, a folk illness among those with a fondness for words.
     "Be curious; not judgmental" is still good advice, even if coined by Jason Sudeikis, who along with Brendan Hunt — cast as the dark, deep-watered Coach Beard — are the masterminds behind Apple TV hit "Ted Lasso." The pair developed the show to reflect their own growing soccer interest as improv comedians at Boom Chicago, a Second City clone in Amsterdam.
      I became curious, learning that Mansueto is sinking one-tenth of his personal fortune into this project. Mansueto is worth $6.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Building this stadium — taking the $650 million price tag at face value and ignoring the inevitable cost overruns — means he'll only have $6.2 billion left. Bold.
     My curiosity centered around this question: Did "Ted Lasso," which lent much-needed humanity to the first, awful COVID year, also boost the popularity of soccer?
     In ancient times, when I was growing up, American kids played soccer, informally, but it wasn't a sport we followed professionally. Nobody traded soccer cards. Soccer, like the metric system, was something happening far away, in Europe and South America.
     As recently as 2014, only 4% of American adults answered the question, "How closely do you follow Major League Soccer?" with "very" or "somewhat closely" while 80% said "Not at all."
     When "Ted Lasso" — a show about a small-time American college football coach improbably brought over to England to lead a fictional, hapless soccer team, AFC Richmond. — debuted in August 2020, the proportion of American soccer fans had soared to 5% while only 70%, like me, completely ignored the sport. I'd heard of Pelé, but wouldn't recognize him if he kicked me in the shin.
     As "Ted Lasso's" popularity grew, so did soccer's. Today, 12% of Americans — triple the number 10 years ago — follow soccer, while only two-thirds ignore it.
     But to credit "Ted Lasso" for the change is an post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) error. Twelve percent of Americans is 40 million U.S. soccer fans.
     The Season 3 opening episode of "Ted Lasso" drew 870,000 households. If an average household has about two viewers, that means the United States has over 20 times the number of soccer fans as it does "Ted Lasso" viewers. If anything, soccer boosted "Lasso," not the other way around.

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Circuses and more circuses

 

     Do adults really claw at each other the way man-babies Donald Trump and Elon Musk were carrying on this past week?
     Trump claims to value loyalty, yet hits his straying best bro with both barrels at the first criticism ("What are you saying, Neil, that Donald Trump is a hypocrite?!?! Bwa, hahahaha.")     

     No restraint, God knows no kindness or humor. It's all zero or one, friend or foe, kiss or kill. 

     How petty. I've trained myself to meet scorn with silence. What's the point? Why would you, for instance, call someone "an idiot?" Because if you truly felt that way, you'd be trying to score a point against, well, an idiot. Where's the honor in that?

    Then again, thinking things through is not a value in TrumpWorld.

    Occasionally I will reply to a particularly venomous remark with "The scorn of traitors is praise to a patriot." But even as I do it, I'm aware I'm wasting my time. The eagle does not chase flies.

   And those are strangers. Fallen friends ... well, first, I tend to like everyone I've ever liked, and when a friend does me wrong, I might upbraid them, privately. But then I try to make amends. Pour oil on the waters. There is a joy in that — another reason Trump and his camp, while continually jubilant, in the manner of bullies, are never joyful.

     Or as I sometimes put it:

     "Save feuds for 7th grade."

     If that doesn't work, let them go. Put them on the train to Siberia, emotionally. And even then I always leave the door open. I remember cutting through Grand Central Station in New York City and bumping into a former editor I was once close to. We had parted on bad terms — he messed up something in one of my books through carelessness and neglect. I'd chastised him about it, and he, rather than being sorry, merely harrumphed off. That was it. Over. Done.     

     In the train station, I was instantly excited to see him — My old friend! Had we not gone to baseball games together, at Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field? Had he not stayed at my apartment, and we shot pool and drank bourbon? Exchanging confidences about how he'd conquer publishing while I pursued the will-o-wisp of literature. 

     His cool reaction surprised me. Oh, right, we aren't friends anymore. Just people who used to be friends. I didn't call him names — though I cherished people who did. "He's just an asshole," a mutual colleague explained, meaning: He can't be fixed. I try to accept that.

     Sniping would be useless. As arresting a spectacle as the richest man in the world and the most mendacious locked in a catfight. A shitshow, two apes flinging feces at each other. 

      I couldn't take much joy in it. Musk has too much money to truly fail. And Trump, a serial fraud, will simply sell the United States to someone else, maybe even at a greater bargain than Musk got — access to the length and. breadth of our government for $288 million, less than $1 per citizen whose lives and information were placed into his greedy little hands.

     Or more likely, a series of someones. We are seeing, boldly, in broad daylight and without shame, the largest explosion of corruption ever seen in this country. So enormous a shift that even the concepts of graft, bribery, simony, and self-dealing have been suspended, for Republicans anyway. The concepts no longer exist, except as more meaningless slurs to hurl at enemies, and of course the justification for their own crimes. Trump could sell the Statue of Liberty to Qatar and half the country would sing the sheikdom's praise for letting us keep it.    

     Sure, a popular vote in November, 2026 could sweep this away. But by then the machinery of fascism will be well in place, assuming it isn't already firmly situated now. Not just in law enforcement, the military the media, Congress and the courts,, but in the public mind. They believe what they are told.    

     Here is an unedited email I received Friday from reader Tony Z. It wasn't a mass mailing, but sent to me individually. Try to read it to the end:

     Democrats Sacrifice American Citizens Lives for Criminal Illegal Aliens! Democrats Sacrifice Homeless American Veterans to give Free Five Star Hotel Rooms to Criminal Illegal Aliens! While Homeless Veterans who Fought for this Country live on the streets! Democrats Sacrifice Girls and Women by Allowing Men to compete in Girls and Women’s Sports! Democrats Sacrifice Children by Not only Allowing but Promoting Child Mutilation! Democrats Sacrifice Innocent Babies by Not only Allowing but Promoting the Slaughtering of Innocent Babies Any Reason Any Time! Democrats Sacrifice American Lives by Hiring DEI Pilots, Doctors,etc. Democrats are on the Wrong Side of Every Issue!

      That's the altar on which American democracy will be sacrificed. Ignorant sheep, their walnut brains jammed with rote Fox News talking points. As easy, and roughly accurate as it is to blame Trump, never forget he is a symptom, not a cause. Trump triumphs because he gives the people what they want: a circus. Remember my hero Juvenal's line about the secret to winning the hearts of the masses: panem et circenses — bread and circuses." 
     Perhaps we should read that famous phrase in context, in Juvenal's 10th Satire:

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man. The People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

    Now that I read that again, I realize we are in some ways worse than ancient Romans. They had a reasonable expectation that their government would give them bread. Here, we settle for circenses et circenses. — circuses and circuses.

 

Mailbag

     Friday's column struck a nerve, and I was treated to a steady stream of emails. They were unusual in that they came from across the spectrum, even sectors that don't usually write in. I began to notice how they seemed to bunch together in pairs, with readers providing a kind of counterpoint to the email before. I thought I'd present two sets today as an illustration:

Jim M.  6:52 a.m.

Good Morning Neil,

I want to thank you for your thoughtful column today. Even though I am a Christian conservative, who voted three times for Donald Trump, I, too, am troubled by the general direction he is taking our country.

One of my great comforts these days is knowing our ultimate future is not controlled by men and women.

Thank you for your wisdom and passion.

In His Grip,
Jim M.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Romans 1:16 (ESV)

John E. 6:50 AM

Amen. One of your best ever! I cannot believe we elected an amoral, unethical, egotistical, pathologically lying, admitted and convicted sexual felon TWICE!! THe great businessman declared bankruptcy 5 times!

John E.
Palos Park, IL 60464

     Then there was this pair.

Pete K. 5:14 PM

Fuck you you fucking fuck. 

June 6 and December 7 and September 11 are nothing like Jan 6, and you know it. But your political piece of shit ass likes to think it matters to us, when you like to throw out that date, and it doesn’t, until you cross this line.

Fuck you you fucking fuck, and fuck your simile

I just couldn’t think of anything more appropriate than that.

Ray T. 4:47 PM

Afternoon Mr. Steinberg,

I have been reading your articles since you first started writing for the Sun-Times. Enjoy your point of view immensely. About 95% of the time I agree with you and the other 50% we can agree to disagree.

Todays article on D-Day was one of the best you have done.

Keep up the good work.

 

Ray T.

Commander 

American Legion Portage Park Post #183

D-Day is a reminder — we have to fight for freedom

     Friday is June 6. Those of a certain vintage will mentally add, "D-Day."
     It's not an official holiday; rather a solemn anniversary, like Dec. 7 or Sept. 11 or Jan. 6. One of the momentous events that shaped our world. If you're unfamiliar — and some are — June 6, 1944, was when the Allied Expeditionary Force hit the beaches in Normandy, France, beginning to push the Nazis out of Europe.
      Normally I'd put out the flag. But it's been displayed in front of my house since Memorial Day. Some shrink from patriotism, given the hard right turn into darkness our country is taking. Me, I lean into it with the fervor of a fight trainer urging his boxer, flat on his back on the canvas: "C'mon, get up, you mug! Get up!"
     So I keep the flag flying. I'll say the pledge and conduct my other little June 6 tradition — posting the opening clip of Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan." The surging ocean and steel tank traps. The little landing craft, motoring up to the beach, bristling with German machine-gun emplacements. The Americans, led by Tom Hanks, chewing tobacco, praying, joking, puking. The raw courage of the moment.
     You have to wonder if Americans would hit the beaches today. Why not leave the Nazis controlling Europe? We certainly seem willing to let the Russians have Ukraine.
     Were we different people back then? Not really. After the Germans invaded Poland and war broke out — Sept. 1, 1939, to throw another date you — a Gallup Poll showed 88% of Americans were against fighting to free Europe. Two-thirds didn't want to even provide arms to Great Britain, since doing so risked antagonizing Mr. Hitler.
     That changed, after the Wehrmacht rolled over France. Belgium. Norway, the Netherlands, Greece — 11 nations in all. We could see where this was headed. Totalitarianism always grasps for more. It never stops until it's stopped.
      America is slow to rouse. Two years after World War II broke out, we were happy to sit on our hands. Until Imperial Japan did us, and the world, an enormous favor by bombing Pearl Harbor. Even then, while prodded to declare war on Japan, we didn't include their allies, the Germans. Rather, the Nazis declared war on us. We didn't jump; we were pushed.
      Would we wade ashore into a blood red tide at Normandy Beach again? During COVID, millions of Americans rebelled from doing anything for the common good, no matter how small. Sacrifice infringed upon their personal liberties. How could anyone imagined we'd climb ropes up the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, into the teeth of the German machine guns, when we won't wear a cotton mask?
      We grew to hate the Nazis — vicious sheep following a murderous madman, who made these rambling speeches, raging against his enemies — Jews and just about any nationality that wasn't German. They had no freedom of speech, no redress in the courts. The Gestapo showed up and took you away, and you were never heard from again. We didn't want to live in a country where secret police pluck people off the street in broad daylight and drag them off to nightmarish prisons.

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