"On the Ballot in Iowa: Fear. Anxiety. Hopelessness."

A NYT article.

I'm linking if only to marvel at the photograph at the top of the page. The faces! Caption: "Vivek Ramaswamy spoke to voters at a town-hall meeting at Wellman’s Pub and Rooftop in Des Moines. Credit... Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times." 

The  article, by Lisa Lerer, is subtitled, "As Monday’s caucuses approach, voters casually throw around the prospect of World War III and civil unrest, anxious of divisions they fear are tearing the country apart."

Key concept: Anxiety.

Four years ago, voters worried about a spiraling pandemic, economic uncertainty and national protests. Now, in the first presidential election since the siege on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, those anxieties have metastasized into a grimmer, more existential dread about the very foundations of the American experiment....

But isn't it this fearful fragility the real threat to democracy? Why do mainstream media stoke despair and anxiety? Why don't they — why don't we — build our resiliency and optimism?

"A base knowledge in history and civics is critical for students to become engaged, informed citizens, particularly amid misinformation on social media platforms..."

"... said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of... an organization focused on youth civic engagement. She cited a recent TikTok campaign against an Alaska oil project, which resulted in a misguided petition urging President Biden not to sell Alaska. 'You need some basics to understand what’s even verifiable: Does it even jibe loosely with what I learned?' she said, noting that the president does not have executive power to sell a state."

From "U.S. History Scores Are Falling, but It’s Not Just Because of the Pandemic/The latest test results continue a nearly decade-long plunge, as reading and math take priority" (NYT).

I think it's interesting that the NYT thought its readers needed that explanatory phrase, "noting that the president does not have executive power to sell a state."

It's hard to believe in the future of democracy in American when you realize how little grip voters have on even the most basic facts and concepts. Why are we asking ourselves who should govern us? We're idiots.

"As the backlash gains steam, a lot of feminism feels enervated. There had been a desperate hope..."

"... among reproductive rights activists and Democratic strategists alike, that the end of Roe v. Wade would lead to an explosive feminist mobilization, that people committed to women’s equality would take to the streets and recommit themselves to politics.... 'I don’t know that I’ve seen a new influx of energy, [said] Samhita Mukhopadhyay, co-editor of 'Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America.... ... Mukhopadhyay [used to be] the executive editor of the blog Feministing, which was once part of a vital feminist publishing scene. That scene is now mostly gone. Feministing closed a couple of years ago, and one of the last holdouts, Bitch Magazine, a publication devoted to feminist pop-culture criticism, is shuttering this month.... 'That type of earnest, identity-focused feminism has also grown out of style,' she said.... It is perhaps inevitable that a movement that was the height of fashion in the last decade would start to seem passé in this one. That’s how style works; the young and innovative distinguish themselves by breaking with the conventions of their predecessors.... The left, feminism very much included, needs people to be optimistic and confident about change.... But this is a fearful, hopeless and even nihilistic time."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Future Isn’t Female Anymore" (NYT).

If you have actual principles you don't need to worry about "fashion" and "style" and what's "passé." You just stick with it, your whole life, and it doesn't matter if you're winning or losing or how many people are crowding around you and generating a feeling of energy. 

Politics is a different way of life. If you choose that path, you'll have your big highs and lows. You can feel excited about your team and your heroes and fly into a rage when things don't work out. You can gush optimism and preen, then scream and spew pessimism. The Future Isn’t Female Anymore! What over-privileged foot-stamping. Look around the world. Look at history. Get a grip. Get some real principles and stay faithful to them without expecting to look fashionable or anticipating taking over the world.

"We could not imagine that Trump would become President, that he would sow disinformation and denial about a deadly virus, that he would attack the legitimacy of American democracy itself..."

"... rather than concede defeat. Over the past year, Biden has struggled with his own set of unimaginable challenges that became intractable realities. I lived in Russia for four years, where decades of life under the Soviet Union had taught a cynical population a truth that Americans only now seem to be learning for themselves: it can always get worse."

From "Joe Biden’s Year of Hoping Dangerously/It was a brutal start for the new President" by Susan B. Glasser (in The New Yorker).

"That this vision appeals to so many viewers, especially young ones, suggests a chilling and bleak perspective — on capitalism, on 'freedom,' on individual agency..."

"... that should stop us in our tracks.... Maybe the viewers of 'Squid Game' just thrill to the bold, cartoon-colored shock of it: Its visual and spiritual aesthetic are what you’d get if you crossed an episode of 'Teletubbies' with a highlights reel of Quentin Tarantino at his grisliest.... Then there’s the indiscriminate manner in which a huge hit becomes an even bigger phenomenon — a trend — divorced from its actual content.... The Times also published an article by Vanessa Friedman about how track suits were newly 'hot' because the 'Squid Game' contestants wear them (as a kind of prison uniform, mind you). The Times published another article, by Christina Morales, about the history of dalgona candy, which is a deadly prop in one of the series’s elimination contests. There was a link to instructions, by Genevieve Ko, on how to make it. In a week and a half, on Halloween, we’ll be bombarded by 'Squid Game' costumes.... To some extent, 'Squid Game' is big because it’s big, its first-burst popularity generating attention that begets even greater popularity as everyone wants in on the action and as a curiosity’s slippery tentacles reach farther and farther into people’s consciousness. But its commentary on class, greed and savagery is much too central to be incidental... [T]his portrait of life as a sadistic lottery and poverty as a hopeless torture chamber has resonance...."

From "Why the Popularity of ‘Squid Game’ Terrifies Me" by Frank Bruni (NYT).

1. Young people have been watching horror and violence for decades. Consumers have a taste for what they've consumed in the past. It's the kind of thing where to give more of the same, you have to give it more intensely and in a greater dose. The manufacturers of violent material do what they know they need to do to keep shocking.

2. But maybe it's not just a taste for horror and violence. Maybe it's the critique of capitalism that "has resonance." Bruni assumes that viewers begin with a gloomy attitude and that the show is confirming their pessimism. He does not consider the possibility that the show is anti-capitalism propaganda, designed to infect the mind of the young — not just to play with their pre-existing angst, but to direct their thinking.

3. Bruni provides some criticism of the New York Times. Once something is popular, it generates life-style articles that ride on the trend. He gives us some evidence, but doesn't observe the genderedness of this phenomenon. I can't help observing that his examples are articles written by women and the subjects — food and fashion — are stereotypically female. 

"Franzen’s position is a common one among liberal intellectuals: He concedes the threat to free speech norms on the left is real, but..."

".... insists it is too insignificant to merit criticism....  Franzen’s position, a common one on the left, implicitly concedes that there could be a point at which the problem grows to a level that it does merit criticism... Franzen takes the clarifying step of making that level explicit: when 'people start being sent off to Lubyanka' — the headquarters of the Soviet secret police — 'for having said the wrong thing to the wrong person.' I would suggest that, once we have gotten to, or anywhere near, the point at which stray comments result in abduction, torture and execution, it will be a bit late to speak out. Yet that is apparently the point at which Franzen is willing to start complaining publicly... Franzen’s mind seems to have particular difficulty calibrating and ordering multiple problems; the same befuddlement once inspired him to argue that environmentalists should focus on saving birds because mitigating climate change is hopeless."

From "What Jonathan Franzen and the Left Get Wrong About Free Speech/Don’t wait for an emergency to criticize dangerous ideas by your allies" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine).

Franzen refused to sign a letter. I'm not going to accept Chait's characterization of why he refused, because I can see that Chait is misinterpreting the Lubyanka statement, which I'd read as hyperbole. People who say "It's not the end of the world" don't mean it's not worth worrying about if it's not the actual end of the world. 

And I suspect Franzen doesn't like signing his name to other people's writing. He seems to prefer to craft his own very particular statements. I've read a couple books of his essays, including one where he takes on the critics of his remarks about birds and climate change, and I don't think he would appreciate Chait's paraphrase — befuddlementization — of those remarks. 

I won't purport to paraphrase it myself, but here's what Franzen wrote in The New Yorker in 2019, "What If We Stopped Pretending?/The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it." It begins:

"I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. We have so much to look forward to... but right now, I'm scared."

"We have come such a long way...just please hold on a little while longer. I so badly want to be done. I know you all so badly want to be done. We are just almost there, just not quite yet." 

Said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky:

Not long after that, as the NYT reports:

President Biden on Monday called on governors and mayors to maintain or reinstate mask-wearing orders, saying that because of “reckless behavior,” the coronavirus was again spreading fast, threatening the progress the nation has made so far against the pandemic. “People are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing,” he said. “We are giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains.”...

Asked if states should pause their reopening efforts, the president replied simply, “Yes.” He said that governors, mayors, local officials and businesses should demand mask-wearing, calling it a “patriotic duty” that is crucial to the nation’s fight against the virus.

"Alienated Young Man Creates Some Sad Music."

That's the headline from January 1968 in The New York Times for a review of "Songs of Leonard Cohen," Leonard Cohen's first album. The headline is hilariously dismissive. 

The reviewer was Donal Henahan (1921-2012), whose obituary (in the NYT) says he was a WWII fighter pilot, and he began his NYT reviewing in September 14, 1967 with this:

“The American subculture of buttons and beards, poster art and pot, sandals and oddly shaped spectacles met the rather more ancient culture of India last evening at Philharmonic Hall. The occasion was the first of six concerts there this season by Ravi Shankar, the sitar virtuoso, whose instrument traces back about 700 years and whose chosen art form, the raga, is said to be 2,000 years old.”

Oddly shaped spectacles.... Here's the whole Ravi Shankar piece as it appeared on page 53 of the NYT that day. There's not much more to the article, but, my God, what you see on that page!

"Want to Flee the City for Suburbia? Think Again/The 20th century is full of examples of the false promise of suburban living."

I clicked on that headline in the NYT. It's a column by Annalee Newitz, a science journalist and author of the "Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age."

The 20th century offers object lessons in why fleeing cities for suburban and exurban settings can backfire — even if it seems like a good idea at first. In the early 1900s, many large cities were suffering from the side-effects of rapid industrialization: they were polluted, full of high-density housing with bad sanitation. Crime flourished.... There were disease outbreaks, too... In response, a new wave of utopian thinkers proposed moving to... “the garden city”... As the craze for these British-style garden cities grew in the States, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote about building a uniquely American version. ... Wright argued that the Usonian city wouldn’t be a flight from modernity.... Brand-new inventions like telephones, radio and automobiles meant everyone’s work could be done remotely....

Great! What's the problem? Why isn't this the answer today, when the ability to work remotely is much more well-developed?

20th century suburbia was not "Utopia." There were racially exclusionary policies, the houses were more expensive in reality than in theory, and people needed cars. That's the basis of Newitz's warning about "the false promise of suburban living." She concludes:

Ultimately, the garden city future is a false Utopia. The answer to our current problems isn’t to run away from the metropolis. Instead, we need to build better social support systems for people in cities so that urban life becomes healthier, safer and more sustainable.

Some designers expressed Utopian ideas, but that doesn't mean it had to be Utopia to be worth doing at all. You have to live somewhere, and the alternative is also not Utopia. There's a lot that Newitz isn't saying here. Underlying her conclusions is, I think, a recognition that the cities are in decline — perhaps even approaching a death spiral. For the good of the city and all the people who don't have the means to leave, the more well-off people are encouraged to stay. If they go, the place will collapse. So please, city people with the means to relocate, stay here, keep paying taxes and give your  wealth to the noble cause of making "urban life... healthier, safer and more sustainable."

Neither the city nor suburbia is Utopia, but what happens when the city is virulently dystopian? How long are people supposed to tough it out? Perhaps Newitz's point is only a small one: Don't imagine suburbia to be any better than it is. You're always trading one set of benefits and problems for another.

But you're always taking your own selfish interests into account even as you want to support the good of the group. In a real disaster, of course, you will run. Is the disaster here yet... and when is it too late to run?

But don't you want to be optimistic? Ironically, if you're optimistic about the cities at this point, you're more like the theorists of suburbia, who dreamed of Utopia.

"Like most baby boomers, I’ve been a hope junkie most of my life. I rejected the Vietnam War and materialistic values..."

"... and worked for peace, civil rights and environmental protections. I believed that we were living at the dawn of a new age and that the world was getting more democratic, just and free through the power of love.... But at some point, boomers lost their way.... We bought into a system that we knew was wrong.... There’s no particular moment when I gave up hope; it’s been a gradual, inexorable process.... Some 25 years ago, a Tibetan friend told me his spiritual practice involved pondering death every day. This struck me as somewhat morbid at the time, but not so anymore. Now I, too, live with the thought of death daily.... I think we may even be on a path toward rapid economic collapse, climate chaos, social unrest, famine and near-term human extinction.... Life gets more precious when you live with the presence of death. Giving up hope, and facing my imminent demise, has been a kind of liberation. I’m now more alert for ways to love my loved ones, and everyone else, with as much grace and beauty as I can. I’m noticing the needs that arise around me.... I’m deep in the 'don’t know' phase about what’s next in life. But I feel strangely calm, more curious and interested than anxious. I find myself paying attention to synchronicities, to song fragments and random comments that move me and to my memories and dreams. I’m listening for what is needed and wanted, and what is mine to do. And I know that the joy and sense of purpose I feel now would not be possible without first experiencing hopelessness."

From "Feeling Hopeless? Embrace It. And then take action" by Eric Utne (NYT).

"There's never been a film before about a family that home educates its kids. Very few people in the movie world have had that experience..."

"... so I don't think it's a subject that would be treated objectively. It's a runaway, underground, counter-culture kind of thing - that's why it hasn't been done," said Charles Webb, quoted in "What happened next? (the author will let you know after he dies)," a 2005 article in The Guardian, which I'm reading this morning after blogging the NYT obituary for Charles Webb yesterday.

Webb, the author of the novel "The Graduate," signed away the rights to the characters in his story when he sold the movie rights, and the characters were based on himself and his wife. Webb did write a book about their later life, called "Home School." I was able to purchase this book at Amazon by paying a hefty shipping charge to have it sent from the UK. The 2005 Guardian article says that Webb didn't want the book published until after his death, because he had long ago signed a contract that would allow a film to be made without his consent.

Outrageous pessimism at the NYT: "On the Future, Americans Can Agree: It Doesn’t Look Good."

That's the headline — "On the Future, Americans Can Agree: It Doesn’t Look Good."

Hell, no. I won't agree.

This is a column by Lisa Lerer, a reporter, and David Umhoefer, a former reporter (and faculty member at Marquette University).

They say "The American experiment is teetering" and quote a random white man who says "It’s all screwed. It seems to me that we’re pretty close to a fall."

Further down in the column, they quote another random white man: "A lot of people are overreacting. We’ve been through tough times, and people thought it was the end of the world, but people come through." Yeah, that's closer to what I think. It's noted that this white man was "walk[ing] through Rittenhouse Square, a wealthy area," so we're prompted to think he's got the "white privilege" affliction and he's got it bad.

"... when assessing how voters evaluate Trump and where his approval ratings might go, it's perhaps important to note that both COVID and the protests involve profound disruptions to everyday life..."

"... in a way that say impeachment didn't. The protests perhaps slightly less so if you're not living in a major city, although there are also a lot of protests in smaller cities. But the images on TV will instantly remind Americans everywhere that 'this is not normal.' But there are a lot of voters who, in ordinary times, are softly pro-Trump. They may not like his conduct. But they think 'politics is silly,' 'both sides are so partisan,' 'this stuff is overblown.' LOTS of people in this bucket and they are underrepresented on social media. This is usually contingent, though, on their financial circumstances going OK and basically being able to live life as normal. They may be forced to reassess when there are big disruptions. It's these people Trump should be worried about."

Tweets Nate Silver.

I was reading that slowly and thinking about each step, and I can honestly say that I was surprised by the last statement — "It's these people Trump should be worried about."

It's these people Trump should be worried about? I think if you're softly pro-Trump, you want things to be getting back to normal — emerge from the lockdown, restore order along with more harmonious racial relations, and build the economy back up. You want to see that happen and you want to believe that is happening. I'm thinking that these people won't be receptive to Democratic Party arguments aimed at exaggerating and increasing the disease-and-racism negativity we've been experiencing.

"I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and his — shall we say weight group — what is 'morbidly obese'...."

Nancy Pelosi — second in line for the presidency if Trump dies — expresses concern for our President, after he says he's taking hydroxychloroquine. Transcript.

Trump would need to weigh over 300 pounds to be morbidly obese (even assuming he's shrunken with age from his peak height of 6'3"), so Nancy is either taunting him or badly misinformed. Isn't it enough to call someone obese? There's some question whether Trump is even over the line to obese, so stretching it to morbidly obese is mean, and I think a person with such a high stake in Trump's death should not look eager to refer to his dying.

But is "morbid" really a reference to death? That's how I've heard it, connecting it to the French "mort" (death) and "mortality." But what explains the "b" in the place of the "t"? Maybe I have this wrong.

"Mortal" traces back to the Latin mortālis, which means "subject to death, human, transient" and — post-classical — "causing death" or "relating to death." (I'm quoting the OED).

But "morbid" goes back to the Latin morbidus, which means "diseased, sick, causing disease, unhealthy." Strangely, there's an Italian word "morbido" which refers to the "refinement of colours, or harmony of proportions" and, earlier, meant "having a soft, yielding, or doughy consistency" and also was used for the "body or face of a woman or child" to mean "beautiful, delicate."

When we call someone "morbid," though, we mean that their thoughts are grounded in death, don't we?

The OED defines "morbid," when used to describe a person's mental state, as "characterized by excessive gloom or apprehension, or (in later use) by an unhealthy preoccupation with disease, death, or other disturbing subject; given to unwholesome brooding."

But obesity is not a person with a mental state, so the applicable definition of "morbid" is "Causing disease; characteristic of, indicative of, or produced by disease; of the nature of disease; of or relating to disease." So "morbid" in "morbidly obese" is about the causation of disease, not death.

Anyway, is Trump really taking hydroxycholorquine? Or is this more of his sarcasm that nobody understands? From the transcript:

I’m taking it, hydroxychloroquine. Right now. Yeah. Couple of weeks ago I started taking it. Because I think it’s good. I’ve heard a lot of good stories. And if it’s not good, I’ll tell you right. I’m not going to get hurt by it. It’s been around for 40 years for malaria, for lupus, for other things. I’d take it. Frontline workers take it. A lot of doctors take it. Excuse me. A lot of doctors take it. I take it....

Did the White House doctor recommend that you take that? Is that why you’re taking it?

Yeah, White House doctor. He didn’t recommend it. No, I asked him, “What do you think?” He said, “Well, if you’d like it.” I said, “Yeah, I’d like it. I’d like to take it.”...

Much more at the link, and much more discussion of it in the media. I'm only quoting one commentator, Nancy Pelosi, because I thought it was rich that she called him "morbidly obese." But I like to talk about Trump rhetoric too, and I need to throw it out there that he's just lying. He's counterpunching against all those people who've criticized him for talking up hydroxychloroquine in the past, and he's forcing everyone to talk about hydroxychloroquine and not whatever else would have been the subject of the day. He's injecting optimism into the discussion. Everyone loves to think there is a pill that can save us from the big disease, and he's saying something that people want to believe and backing it up with his own (purported) behavior. Commentators who want to oppose him are forced to sound pessimistic: No, there is no pill... it's foolish to hope there's a pill. People are hungry for hope, hungry for pills. Eat those pills! The President does. If he does. I don't know that he does, but he does want to say he does, and I can see why.

"According to a CNN poll released this week, nearly three-quarters of Democrats said the worst of the crisis is still ahead of us..."

"... while only about a quarter of Republicans said the same. This marked a 15 percentage-point drop among Democrats since CNN last asked the question in April, and a 44-point drop among Republicans. A YouGov/Economist poll also found a similar divide this week; 58 percent of Democrats said the pandemic is going to get worse compared with only 20 percent of Republicans...."

FiveThirtyEight reports.

Why should predictions about what a virus will do have so much to do with political orientation? I might be missing something, but I see 2 types of reasoning:

1. Optimism or pessimism is a psychological orientation that is more fundamental than political affiliation. It affects which party you feel drawn to and how you see the virus going in the future. Pessimists picture things going wrong, so they want more help from the government, and the Democrats are there to offer to help. Optimists think they can make good things happen and the Republicans offer to get government out of the way.

2. A Republican is in the White House, and Democrats don't trust him and assume he's screwing things up, so they're more likely to picture bad things happening in the future. There's also wishful thinking: They want him to fail, and more death and sickness is something that — in a perverse and unacknowledged way — they want. Republicans are the opposite. They're more able to trust Trump, and the ordinary wishful thinking that the virus will go away aligns nicely with the hope that Trump will triumph.

"And how have I taken all of this? And why is it when attacked I rarely spoke out or seemed overly upset?"

"Well, given the malignant chaos of a purposeless universe, what’s one little false allegation in the scheme of things? Second, being a misanthropist has its saving grace — people can never disappoint you."

From Woody Allen's new memoir "Apropos of Nothing," quoted at Madison.com.

Also: "One of the saddest things of my life was that I was deprived of the years of raising Dylan and could only dream about showing her Manhattan and the joys of Paris and Rome. To this day, Soon-Yi and I would welcome Dylan with open arms if she’d ever want to reach out to us as Moses (Farrow) did, but so far that’s still only a dream."

I read the first few pages (at the Amazon link) and loved the writing style — full of vivid images and quick observations that are serious and comical. So I put it in my Kindle.

Some weary sighers and defeated shruggers are telling The Atlantic that only a shocking disaster can end the shutdown.

I'm reading "Waiting for a Shutdown to End in Disaster/Aides on Capitol Hill fear that a dramatic government failure may be the only thing to force President Trump and the Democrats back to the table", from McKay Coppins:

The basic theory—explained to me between weary sighs and defeated shrugs—goes like this: Washington is at an impasse that looks increasingly unbreakable.... For a deal to shake loose in this environment, it may require a failure of government so dramatic, so shocking, as to galvanize public outrage and force the two parties back to the negotiating table.

[T]he one theme that ran through every conversation was a sense that the current political dynamics won’t change until voters get a lot angrier.... [O]ne congressional staffer who wondered aloud whether it might take a stressed-out air-traffic controller causing a plane crash to bring an end to the shutdown. And several aides worried that some kind of terrorist incident would end up serving as the catalyst to get the government up and running again....

If one thing unites most Republicans and Democrats on the Hill these days, it’s that there is little use in trying to negotiate in good faith with the Trump White House. The president is simply too volatile, too prone to change his mind in a fit of pique, too apt to reverse course after watching Fox News....

ADDED: I'm trying to understand "little use in trying to negotiate in good faith." I realize the author must want to say that Trump is in bad faith. But being "volatile" — or, redundantly, "prone to change" and  "apt to reverse course" — is not in itself in bad faith. It's a style of negotiating, and I suppose it's annoying and hard to match and beat, but "bad faith" entails deception and fraud. Perhaps the author means that Trump's negotiating style is so effective that those on the other side of the deal feel that if they "negotiate in good faith," they'll lose, and that's why there's "little use in trying" their usual techniques. 

"The Kate Spade brand was like a ray of sunshine — an antithesis to pessimism, self-conscious ennui..."

"... and even the sarcastic humor of her brother-in-law David Spade during his “Saturday Night Live” heyday. The company’s calling card was unabashed optimism."

Robin Givhan writes (in WaPo) about how Kate Spade's designs (handbags, etc.) were so nice at "a time when much of the highbrow fashion industry was fixated on minimalism and the washed-out, dour aesthetic known as heroin chic."

And then Kate Spade killed herself. Was the fashion always a facade, some desperate grasping to climb out of horrible darkness? Were the women who wore "heroin chic" happier than those who went for Kate Spade's clear colors and happy shapes?

It's interesting to think of these questions after blogging about Miss America's effort to get away from "outward appearance." What are other people really like on the inside? Well, the inside is private. We get to choose how much access to give to our inner selves, and to show what's on the inside, we need to let it out — by actions and gestures and by words but also by how we look. We've got to wear something, and we can choose to reveal what we are inside through what we wear, but we don't have to tell the straightforward truth.

You can wear yellow-and-white polka dots when you are gloomy and nothing but black when you're doing just fine.

This made me think of the Teri Garr character in "Afterhours":

"Afro-pessimism and its treatment of withdrawal as transcendence is no less pleasing to white supremacy than Booker T. Washington’s strategic retreat into self-help."

"Afro-pessimism threatens no one, and white audiences confuse having been chastised with learning... My father used to say that integration had little to do with sitting next to white people and everything to do with black people gaining access to better neighborhoods, decent schools, their share. Life for blacks was not what it should be, but he saw that as a reason to keep on, not check out. I had no idea how much better things were than they had been when he was my age, he said.... A couple of decades later I was resenting my father speaking of my expatriate life as a black literary tradition, because I understood him to be saying that I wasn’t doing anything new and, by the way, there was no such thing as getting away from being black, or what others might pretend that meant. Black life is about the group, and even if we tell ourselves that we don’t care anymore that America glorifies the individual in order to disguise what is really happening, this remains a fundamental paradox in the organization of everyday life for a black person. Your head is not a safe space."

From "The Afro-Pessimist Temptation" by Darryl Pinckney in the New York Review of Books, reviewing "We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy" by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Today's Kindle off ramp: "CONSCIOUSNESS IS NATURE’S NIGHTMARE."

I told you how I love reading a book in Kindle because words and phrases are like signs for off ramps, and you can take them anytime you want. Highlight the text and make it a Google search and you're out of the main thing and poking around the side roads.

You might remember that I was reading the David Foster Wallace story "The Suffering Channel" when I took an off ramp marked "squunched."

Well, I am still trying to get to the end of the highway called "The Suffering Channel," but today I took the off ramp at "CONSCIOUSNESS IS NATURE’S NIGHTMARE" — all caps in the original — which was said to be the "Registered motto of Chicago IL’s O Verily Productions."

I thought what a great aphorism and wondered what people had said about that. The first thing I saw was a song (from 2016) with that title by "a certain especially bizarre avant-garde black metal band: one of the most prolific one-man projects in metal, Jute Gyte." (What is "black metal"?)

I did not slow down for that, but the second hit, "Emil Cioran - Wikiquote"...

... drew me in for hours. "Emil Cioran (8 April 1911 – 20 June 1995) was a Romanian philosopher and essayist, who published works in both Romanian and French." The corporate motto from the David Foster Wallace story — "Consciousness is nature's nightmare" — began as an aphorism in Cioran's "Tears and Saints" (1937).

What a phenomenal collection of aphorisms on this page!

"One of the greatest delusions of the average man is to forget that life is death's prisoner." That's from "On the Heights of Despair" (1934).