Apologists
Oliver Herford:
The Goat, for "The Crocodile," by Oliver Herford (1891)
"When you're President, the Apologist supply is infinite."
Whenever a new incumbent ascends office, a crowd of true believers quickly encircle the new President. Their primary purpose might be the opposite of their apparent one, for they might seem to be there to ward off any serious misperceptions and set the story straight from the outset, though they're likely also defending their delicate egos lest some inconvenient truth slips out. It's important to understand that everyone engaging in the following farce already knows the worst about the incoming President. They know most of his most serious shortcomings, for he'd been featuring them as evidence of his superior experience for the position throughout the campaign. Seriously, anyone still able to stand in public and spout self-importance after being convicted of rape and fraud might have curiously earned his place as the leader of the free world, a role that might require an egregious amount of shamelessness.
The Apologists have a ready response to every criticism.
Rationalizing
Helen Hyde: In the Rain (1898)
"The result will mete out its own punishment. Vengence was never mine to deliver."
Slightly more people voted to elect The Oldest President (TOP) than voted against him ever holding public office again. He had abused his privileges during his first turn. He had been promising ever greater abuses if returned to office, so those who couldn't see any attraction to him as either candidate or ex-president were baffled as to why anyone might feel moved to waste their franchise on such a clearly unworthy character. Their vote amounted to an act of self-abuse, I suspect, or maybe it was just a mistake. Ask, though, and one acquires a fresh lesson in the human power of Rationalization, the attempt to make some irrational act seem reasonable in retrospect. Every terrible public servant has trailed a long line of Rationalizers behind them. They've attracted the Lesser Of Two Evils Crowd, who always seem to see only the worst in anyone representing an opposing party. They'd vote for Hanibal Lecter if he were a Repuglican running against anyone enjoying a more conventional diet. They also attract the partisan who never even investigate alternatives. They vote without reflection, choosing not to choose, a part of this country's sometimes overly-proud suffrage tradition. Democracies include even those opposed to democracy.
Then there are the Pig Shavers, the ones who split hairs.
DogEaters
Adriaen van de Velde: Dogs (17th century)
" … they will insist that they represent the real spirit of the laws …"
We speak of the Republican'ts and the Democans as if our society's essential divide lay in mere political labels. It likely lies much deeper than that, as deep as belief and perspective might lie. On one side, we have a cadre who, try though they might (they don’t really try at all), still firmly believe they inhabit a zero-sum world. Conversely, we have those who understand it needn't necessarily be so characterized. It can be a zero-sum world if we insist that it must be, for the world, indeed, our universe, seems poised to be responsive to whatever belief we bring when considering its nature. When it comes to universes, it's not believe-it-when-we-see-it, but we see what we believe—it cooperatively becomes whatever we believe. The eyes we bring to the inquiry make all the difference. Of course, we're always blind to the eyes we cannot bring to an investigation. The Republican'ts, like the Southern Confederates a century and three-quarters before, experienced a zero-sum world of their own projection, where one person's loss was necessarily another's gain. They seriously entertained the notion that force alone could secure their future. They held hostage the means for securing their fortune, believing they could hold justice at bay indefinitely, infinitely.
The zero-sum people see a dog-eat-dog world, where every newborn puppy's destiny must be to either master the skill of puppy killing, or they will undoubtedly be killed and eaten by another puppy.
Inconstancy
Allart van Everdingen: Reynard disguises as monk and distracts cock (17th century)
"Hail to the chief."
[Author's Note: I draw this story from various archetypal descriptions of a psychological type: this one, the eternal eight-year-old who cannot successfully focus upon anything for long. The particulars might misrepresent, though I feel confident that these patterns paint quite an accurate portrait. When dealing with Inconstancy, any opponent can feel confident that their opponent will be their opponent’s most effective opposition, for they cannot maintain their focus or attention long enough to achieve any strategic objective. Hell, they rarely maintain focus long enough to settle on a coherent strategic objective. They mainly pursue warm air, not possessing adequate attention to heat their story to the point where it truly qualifies as hot air.]
Perhaps his sole superpower lies in his sheer Inconstancy.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 01/16/2025
John Singer Sargent:
Sketch of Sir David Murray [1849 - 1933]
and John Seymour Lucas [1849- 1923] (Jun 18, 1907)
This Seems Inevitable
Winter finally came in the middle of January. Its tardy arrival served as a lesson for me that all inevitabilities eventually occur, however delayed, and that I might depend upon this one principle. Hell might never freeze over, but nobody ever proposed that it should. It will be enough if the backyard pond freezes over, which it usually does, for a week or so before the end of February. Next week, another long-dreaded inevitability will occur when the least capable individual ever to be elected to the highest office twice is supposed to take an oath he has no intention of even trying to live up to. Warren G. Harding might have been less interested in the office, but he had the public courtesy to die before anybody proposed he run for a second term, and nobody would have. It's inevitable that our next incumbent's lies ultimately get the better of him, for he convinced a spare majority under decidedly false pretenses, and he will prove incapable of delivering on his many contradictory promises. I do not know where his sandcastle will first exhibit cracks, but I sense it won't stand long. He inherits an impossible act to follow, an economy in better shape than any odd anyone can remember, and an unparalleled-in-generations standing in the international order. It seems all downhill from here for him. This seems inevitable.
TakingCredit
Honoré Victorin Daumier:
Very High and Mighty Legitimate Brats.
Peoples, defend yourselves, tear yourselves to pieces,
sacrifice yourselves for these royals,
you belong to them, imbeciles, plate 19 (1834)
"He firmly believes he's smarter than everyone else, which renders him the stupidest …"
On inauguration day, the adults will leave the administration, and a malignant narcissist will move in. He started TakingCredit for good things his predecessor accomplished before he even took office. He seems to maintain such a high opinion of himself that he simply cannot help himself. He seems to firmly believe that he is, indeed, the greatest. He accomplishes this astounding feat of self-esteem by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge anything he might have attempted that didn't quite make the grade. Indeed, his actual track record shows him mostly failing, though if you listen to him and his minions tell the story, he never fails. He will rather quickly begin identifying people who disappointed him. He claims to pick only winners, but his choices inevitably prove faulty. He will fein surprise then and insist that this seldom happens to him and that it was actually somebody else's fault that he selected a faulty incumbent. He maintains a queue of even better candidates, though he insisted before that his original list comprised only the best and brightest.
I will have to get used to having a malign eight-year-old in the highest office in the land.
Disingenuosity
Anonymous, after a design by Hans Baldung Grien:
Tenth commandment:
do not give false testimony about another
[iende gebod: leg over een ander geen vals getuigenis af]
1539
" … the least qualified President in history about to begin his second term."
It would simplify the situation if certain nominees would appear to testify wearing orange jumpsuits. Some of these guys seem like they're interviewing to be included in the Colorado Supermax Class of 2030. They quite transparently lie or withhold or deny. Their clever attorney clearly counseled them to go ahead and be disingenuous. They give Disingenuosity a bad name. History will remember them, but not kindly. Those disseminating straightforward questions become infamous, especially when 60 Minutes replays the juicy part of their testimony after the future incident. There will always be a future incident with these clowns. There always has been. They are uniformly unqualified for whatever role the incoming executive has nominated them to fulfill. Everyone in the hearing room understands they are not voting for or against the clown before them but the impending executive who chose him. Partisans need to appear supportive. Opponents must appear fair and balanced, which is always tricky in a context where the clown in question won't answer even the most straightforward question. This one's mom submitted testimony against him.
He calls known facts with sufficient evidence anonymous rumors and innuendos.
Ineptitude
Israel van Meckenem the Younger:
The Fight over the Trousers (c. 1495)
" … the patience of Job and the countenance of Greek statuary …"
Through his first foray into The Presidency, our impending incumbent proved incredibly, if intermittently, inept. Usually, his operation proved capable of producing run-of-the-mill cruelty and only managed anything more significant by accident. Many attempted initiatives got away from their initiators to take on their own lives, seemingly without meaningful external control. They proved the adage that a broken clock works twice each day, even though it's ordinarily so wrong as to be useless. Those of us opposed to those initiatives learned that we could usually rely upon that administration's inherent Ineptitude, which would have been humorous had it not also been occasionally so disastrous. It was as if the incumbent brought no executive experience into his role, for he seemed incapable of even the barest executive performance. He exhibited little strategic influence, frittering away his time on initiatives that could no more than temporarily annoy his opposition. His opposition would occasionally register outrage when something especially egregious occurred, but they primarily focused on building their coalition and expressing gratitude their opponent was so poorly resourced.
Before taking the oath of office that he will have no intention of upholding, he's been busying himself with selecting prospective cabinet members.
IntoFamiliarity
Rembrandt van Rijn: Peasant Family on the Tramp (c. 1652)
"I might even rediscover who I always was …"
Trump's election as President for the second time left me peering into a dreaded future. I felt curious and confident that he would once again prove himself not nearly up to the task and dreading the inevitable failures he would most certainly produce with his inept attempts. His successful campaign rendered him no smarter or more popular, and it seemed inevitable that he would be dragging his familiar ineptness into everything he attempted to accomplish. I most dreaded that impending bumbling, for he would set about attempting to reinvent wheels his predecessors had already successfully invented, leaving us worse off for his efforts. It seemed a certainty that he would leave us all worse off. We liquidated our stock portfolios and hunkered in, though that's not all we did in response. We also fled IntoFamiliarity as an antidote to the dread.
Finally, almost three years after returning from Exile, I began organizing my tools and basement workshop.
SelfRecrimination
William Blake:
To annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit & false Forgiveness
(1804-08)
"The usual answer will be, "No, there wasn't," but only because there never is."
After any significant loss comes a period of SelfRecrimination, I suspect that the healthiest might engage in the deepest reconsideration of their former positions, for a loss should properly bring some of anyone's basis into question. What of what then seemed so right was so wrong? Could I have credibly owned any alternative position? Would I have agreed to pursue any other end with anything resembling a similar passion? Were my convictions wrong enough to warrant a reconfiguration of my perspective? Each of these questions should rightly feel unsettling, for these challenge the very basis upon which any thinking person holds any position.
Contrary to popular opinion, the best team does not always win.
Pherocity
Spex:
The sovereigns offered their subjects entertainment and fierce beast fights in circuses
[Les souverains offraient à leurs sujets des divertissements et des combats de bêtes féroces dans les cirques]
(1882 - 1884)
" … we cannot help but hear their disturbing noises."
Outrage, outward rage, might be the signature emotion of the MAGA movement. They seem consumed by theatricality, always performing as if they were cast in a production from Ancient Greece where the actors needed to artificially project their voices so the backbenchers could hear their lines. Their every expression seems cartoonish and caricatured. They seem incapable of thoughtfulness or gentleness. They never seem to be merely disappointed with an outcome but enraged. Their emotional content seems unsustainable, but with each new performance, that same familiar character emerges. Whatever the role, they seem to overplay their part. They seem decidedly self-conscious, not just in role but hyper-aware that they're in that role. They rarely, if ever, let down this facade. Some speculate that they're deep down shallow. A seething frustration lies just above their surface. They have an unscratchable itch. They bitch about everything. They would seem ferocious if their performances were in any way believable. They project a phony-seeming form of ferocity instead, mere Pherocity.
They seem to believe everything's a life-or-death matter and a zero-sum game.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 01/09/2025
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo:
Punchinellos Cooking and Tasting Gnocchi
[Punchinellos’ Repast] (1740/52)
Stay My Course
This week, I saw inklings that we are moving back into a post-truth era with Zuckerberg deciding to stop fact-checking on his Meta platforms. Also, President-Elect Unmentionable released a fresh stream of whoppers. I suspect he's warming up for his inaugural speech, which should set fresh records for fictional content. The need for reliable witnesses has never been greater. In my eighteen years of posting here, I have tried to avoid sharing lies and advice. This hasn't been much of a stretch. I've thought of myself as a principled contributor. I have occasionally, like anybody, been caught echoing what turned out to be false stories or lousy advice. I've quickly taken them down when notified of my error. I look back and wonder how that one slipped through my defenses. I come to the same conclusion. I want to believe the best of everyone. I find it incredible that anyone might want to deliberately spread false information. My nature has made it difficult for me to create this present series, where I'm striving to describe patterns that often violate what I consider to be moral and ethical boundaries.
When our leaders lack moral foundations and ethical edges, their only recourse might be to spread more lies. Hence, another post-truth era. I will not be vacating Facebook, though. I intend to stay and remain the bastian I believe I have always been there. The Muse promised to show me how bluesky works. I might dabble there as I dabble on SubStack and LinkedIn. If I stay in one place, the world will undoubtedly slip by me. It has slipped by me before. Whatever I do, this world will eventually learn to slip by me. For now, though, I will stay my course. Leaving FaceBook would abandon my audience. Why would I do that?
Pretexting
Charles WIlliams: A New Mode of Presenting Two Addresses at Once
(published February 1818)
"We must be their enemy."
When one feels called to save the world, one must find some Pretext for engaging because nobody would ever recognize their savior should they happen upon them. Vonnegut described The Second Coming as featuring an undescribably ugly alien who appears at a suburban shopping mall and communicates exclusively through tap dancing and farting. Rather than recognize salvation in their midst, a disgruntled crowd beat him to death. One might choose to dress themselves up in any costume, but whichever one they choose, it will be a mere Pretext, a cloaking mechanism primarily intended to prevent others from understanding one's agenda. This charade must occur if the means don't matter. If the ends truly justify whatever must be done to achieve them, then deception becomes job one. Making America Great Again, for instance, must involve tearing down America's reputation. The best economy in the world must be characterized as failing. Justice must be framed as fundamentally unjust. Wrongs become violated natural rights. Up must always be referred to as down.
Educating a population in this kind of negative thinking also involves continuous Pretexting.
Threatenings
Attilio Mussino: Harlequin and Pulcinella...
were threatening each other with sticks and blows. (1925)
"That's a promise, not a threat!"
Another common aspect of the MAGA style seems to be a fierce vacuity. They spend inordinate amounts of time threatening people, places, and things, even nothings. They always seem ready to interpret any butterfly's shadow as a mortal threat and overreact. This comes across as needlessly theatrical, maniacal ravings rather than well-thought-out intentions. These performances might primarily serve as distractions because any attempt to parse any deeper meaning or significance or, heaven forbid, pattern out of them will leave one grasping hot air. There's rarely anything there, and whatever manages to manifest bears little resemblance to the fire and brimstone characterizations that utterly fail to describe what was supposed to be coming. These performances almost always prove unsatisfying both from a content perspective as well as from any resulting action that might have been expected. In retrospect, they seem like Daffy Duck or Donald Duck rants: many feathers, little consequence.
They do seem to satisfy themselves with this barking, though.
Newness
Attributed to Philip Dawe: The New Fashioned Phaeton (1776)
ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
Devoting less effort to the fabric textures and pearly luster of high-society mezzotint portraits, publishers also mocked sartorial excesses, especially those with foreign sources. In 1770s London, the epithet macaroni was directed at dandyish men and overdressed women who adopted an outrageous, European style and acted in an affected manners that their genders were said to become indistinguishable. Such costumes evidently even made leaving home difficult. This print’s subtitle, “Sic Itur ad Astra” (which translates as “Thus one goes to the stars”) comes from the Roman poet Virgil and suggests that the wigs and expanding carriages shown here have reached astronomical new heights.
—Art Institute of Chicago
"There was never a prescience half as satisfying as projection."
Newness is getting old. As I have aged, the new has increasingly lost its attraction. The information age might have finally done it in, what with the daily builds and too-frequent upgrades. I can't hardly start my laptop without some update needing to be installed, and the old, once-reliable app suddenly behaves differently, never to regain its former utility. We seem too anxious to abandon what was in favor of what never quite is yet. We speak of evolution but experience near-constant revolution. What might I depend upon now?
I struggle even to imagine replacements when an old and once-reliable falls by some wayside.
NuthingBut
Honoré Victorin Daumier:
A Young Man to Whom Nothing is Sacred,
plate 8 from Professeurs Et Moutards (1846)
"We will be inaugurating the lamest duck in our country's history …"
In courts of law in this country, witnesses are compelled to swear to tell "the whole truth and NothingBut." Consequently, telling falsehoods can result in a perjury charge for lying to the jury. Outside of court, nobody holds anybody to such stringent expectations. We all can get a little loose with literal truths, but most of us work hard to avoid materially misrepresenting ourselves if only because few want to be fairly characterized as loose with the truth. We rely upon each other to fairly represent our experiences, so it’s scandalous, if not strictly illegal when a private citizen routinely misrepresents himself. Further, deliberate misrepresentation tends to introduce a parody of a response as repeated attempts to uncover the truth produce responses intended to cloak it further. These interactions resemble old I Love Lucy episodes from the fifties but are not nearly so entertaining.
As of this writing, our current President, Joe Biden, has kept his promise to tell The People the truth.
Statusing
Nicolas Toussaint Charlet:
Metselaar bij een muur [Mason at a wall] (1821)
"They despise themselves most."
With the MAGA crowd, I sense that I could never belong. Though I cannot delineate their selection criteria, they run a more exclusive operation than most country clubs. It seems backward and upside-down from more established segregations, though a few selection criteria seem obvious. They stand in apparent deliberate opposition to more traditional segmentations as if formulated to thumb their nose at an establishment. However, they seem every bit as exclusive as any old-school gentleman's club. Those granted entrance can seemingly do no wrong until they do. They remain blessed regardless of their sins, former or ongoing, much as their leader enjoys blind forgiveness from his followers. They do not perceive themselves as members but as loyal and devoted followers. They insist they're Christian, though apparently only in name. They also claim conservatism as a central organizing principle, which seems unlike any conservatism the good old days knew. It seems secret, though, as if its members were plotting the overthrow of something. Those not allowed into their club believe they represent a malign influence on our politics and treat them with the same respect they traditionally extended to the Klu Klux Klan.
The apparent obsession with status, though, baffles me.
BeingGrudged
Edvard Munch: Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones (1894)
" I'm hoping the arc of our collective experience turns toward enlightenment …"
Last week, I proposed five elements of what I referred to as The Stupidities that seem to be ascendent as we move into our impending NextWorld. These elements terrify me because they seem to reduce our polity's resilience. They amount to increasingly popular fallacies, mis- or dis-representations of our everyday reality. They undermine an individual's ability to agilely navigate together into our future. Gathered together as a common practice, the group engaging in these behaviors damages their abilities and hobbles their societies. As I explained before, those engaging in The Supidities tend to insist that they're certain about what nobody could ever be certain about, often about delusions and fictions. They engage in what The Muse refers to as The Sins of Self-Importance; they are vain and sincerely believe that everything was always actually all about them. They also exhibit a discernable addiction to common Inanities. They seem dependent upon and exclusively informed by unreliable sources that have few compunctions about just making shit up as news.
Another common presence in this mix engaging in The Stupidities seems to be, among a significant portion of the population, a sense of BeingGrudged.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 01/02/2025
Jan Goeree:
Frontispiece Design from Corpus Inscriptionum (c. 1707)
Gallery Statement: A weeping Minerva is depicted here near a dilapidated statue of the city of Rome, surrounded by all manner of ancient remains. The drawing is the design for the title page from a collection of Roman inscriptions compiled by J. Gruter and published in 1707. The engraving was used once again in 1726, with a different text, as the frontispiece for a survey of the monuments of ancient Rome.
—-
The Day Inexplicably Turns
Into the new year and still without a killing frost. My Magnolia tree is budding out and will bloom before the end of January unless some winter settles in. I'm now praying for what I so recently dreaded, though the extended rainy season has already answered many prayers. It still unsettles me to acknowledge that we utterly rely upon the rains, which come more or less randomly. Anyone still holding on to the conviction that we must have strong central coordination might have missed this underlying condition. The context within which we exist was not concocted by us, no matter how much we might have tried to reengineer it to do our bidding. Now that we're actively influencing age-old patterns, our world responds, coloring outside expected lines. Summer gardens extend into the following January. Winter might not come this year. Magnolias might bloom twice. Our NextWorld seems only tangentially related to our more familiar ones. It's a wonder I hadn't noticed much earlier. I might not have been paying close enough attention, but I suppose it's our nature to take much for granted. We might be more blessed than we could ever appreciate. As I've watched my world slink toward the dreaded upcoming inauguration, I have been paying closer attention. I suspect the tardy winter will arrive to inconvenience what might have been an early spring, and everything will become jumbled again as if that might constitute a difference. I anticipate everything becoming strange once the new administration begins with their abomination. I savor these final few days before the air turns gray and the day inexplicably turns into a long night.
Inanities
George Wesley Bellows:
Dance at Insane Asylum (1907)
"I'm confident it's coming."
In the late 1980s, a relatively new phenomenon entered America's media landscape. A disc jockey from Miami found traction as a political commentator. He was never knowledgeable. His superpower seemed to have been his willingness to say anything on air. He was not careful to distinguish between fact and fiction. Indeed, almost everything he said on air was provably fictitious, but the delay between utterance and rebuttal rendered his utterances most memorable. Ordinary people were attracted to this doubtlessly entertaining programming, and very quickly, the vocabulary of political dialogue changed on Main Street. What had previously seemed unspeakable became common vocabulary. In this way, formerly arch-conservative opinions slid into more of a mainstream position.
A decade later, a media billionaire from Australia started an alternative news service patterned after the worst of the British Fleet Street rags.
Vanities
In the manner of Adriaen van der Werff:
Bubble-blowing Girl with a Vanitas Still Life
(1680 - 1775)
"He spends his wealth on the equivalent of candy and gum."
We were the first country founded on the principle that every citizen was granted the freedom to pursue happiness. Unsurprisingly, this freedom has not resulted in unbridled happiness. Like always, true happiness seems intermittent and the purview of a select few. Most seem to more or less content themselves with the understanding that they possess the right to pursue happiness, even if it continually eludes them. Happiness, under this freedom's influence, seems to have taken many curious forms, the Second Amendment right to bear arms among the strangest. Who would naturally correlate gun possession with happiness? The Beatle's tune Happiness Is A Warm Gun was intended as irony rather than a declaration of natural fact.
Happiness can be a tricky objective.
Certainlies
James Gillray: Election Candidates
(published May 20, 1807 by Hannah Humphrey)
ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
Despite its jovial hand coloring, James Gillray’s response to the 1807 parliamentary election in the district of Westminster caricatures real candidates with ruthlessness. Here, Gillray implied that the winner, the radical Sir Francis Burdett, had extra help. Burdett becomes the goose atop the pole, supported by a demonic figure with a pitchfork, while the agitated constituency below degenerates into a mob.
" … can't see how this latest experiment in degenerative Democracy can go any way but sideways."
The first of The Stupidities I introduced in yesterday's missive deserved to be Certainty; for Certainly, Certainty must be the primary difficulty of our age. Every age preceding us complained about the complexity of their situation, and should have. Each successive generation could rightfully complain about their age's complexity, which might mean that our world has become increasingly complex. Suppose the purpose of civilization was ever to somehow tame this native context each generation faces. In that case, civilization has utterly failed because it seems that it has managed only to amplify complexity rather than attenuate it.
Perhaps because of this, the urge for simple solutions seems to grow with each successive generation.
Stupidities
Jean Dubrayet*:
Minerva bindt de Domheid vast met een touw
[Minerva ties the Stupidity with a rope] (c. 1627)
Titelpagina voor een boek met tekenvoorbeelden.
[Title page for a book with drawing examples]
*"Jean Dubrayet was a print maker who is known for works such as Minerva ties the Stupidity with a rope and Portrait of Ajax." (Google AI experiment) I could find no other biographical information on this artist.
" … the trinkets with which our future was purchased."
It might be that history has always been a slave to the Stupidities. When I was still very young, I remember my more ancient elders wondering how their world would get along with the quality of young people coming up to eventually replace them. The young have always known nothing, and to those who knew everything in their time, they unavoidably seem relatively stupid. Youth tend to master stuff that seems meaningless to their elders. Our own Grand Other was showing off her gaming computer, a gift she and her dad built together as a Christmas present. She was proudly displaying the high-quality graphics, which I could barely see. I was thinking that the old text-based Adventure® game I used to play back on that 360 clone in the 70s had far better graphics, and it was text-based. I lasted a few seconds before I excused myself and went to wait for The Muse in the car. It disturbed me deeply that our Grand Other would somehow tumble to such stupidity! (She belongs to an after-school sports team at her high school. Her sport is, and I kid you not, competitive gaming!)
I'm ordering handbaskets.
UnSerious
Cornelis Visscher after Adriaen Brouwer:
Hearing [De Fiool Speelder] (c. 1649-58)
"We seem poised to reenter kindergarten, where the bully holds the pulpit."
We console ourselves by remembering how inept he was the last time he was in office. He managed to use his office to be cruel to innocents, to unconscionably waste resources, and to inflate the deficit toward no discernable end. Still, he mostly proved incapable of inflicting long-term damaging influence. The office of the Presidency quickly snapped back into respectability once he was ousted, even with him endlessly whining that he'd been illegally overturned. He provided nothing that any court considered proof of his assertion. He proved to be an eminently ignorable distraction, a sore loser, and the most UnSerious candidate ever to seek re-election. That he won astounded everyone I know.
This time, he will be the most UnSerious President in the history of this nation.
Surrealizations
Dorothy Dehner: Landscape for Cynics (1945)
"Merry Christmas might take any of a variety of meanings in any NextWorld."
When The Muse and I bought our Villa Vatta Schmaltz, we imagined it would eventually become the center of many extended family gatherings. I imagined that when my kids had children, The Villa would naturally become the over-the-river-and-through-the-woods holiday destination of choice for them, as my folks' place had been for me and my family in my time, but it hasn't. Our twelve-year exile opened space for different patterns to imprint. By the time we returned, we remained as off the holiday radar as we had been when exiled in Washington, DC, and Colorado, both places too absurdly far away and lacking any history for the family to reasonably consider as holiday destinations. So, those generations imprinted on other places for the holidays, though I hadn't reimprinted on this NextWorld until this just passing Christmas.
My Christmas gift was the Surrealization that I had been living embedded in that past notion, that what I had tenuously believed would be the case twenty-some years earlier would likely still eventually come to pass.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 12/26/2024
Tobias Conrad Lotter:
Astronomische theorieën en uitleg
[Astronomical theories and explanation] (1749)
Adequately Chilling
The first week of Winter brought Spring-like weather with Chinook winds and more rain than we've seen since last Spring. We've had three bomb cyclone systems bump into our coast since Halloween, each bringing fierce wind and much-needed rain. The Winter Wheat, already sprouted in the fields, has gotten a great head start. Our wheatfields sport Spring Green cover while we continue waiting for our first killing frost. I still have last summer's petunias, geraniums, and roses, which are still blooming. I sank the fuchsias into a composter bin; they seem secure enough for now. Winter has not come yet. Moreover, our usual weeks of numbing fog mostly missed us as those wet and windy systems repeatedly scoured our valley. I began a new series this week that has yet to reveal its purpose. After the terrifying results of last Fall's elections, I needed something more positive than politics to focus my attention on. I anticipate a period of great upheaval, even tragedy. I needed to clean out my backlog before taking on another initiative. Winter might not come this season, but the events unfolding on the world's stage threaten to be adequately chilling. I worry about our NextWorld.
UnProcrastinating
Stuart Davis:
Advancing and Retiring Colors Diagram (1942)
" … I can accomplish virtually anything."
Almost four years ago, when we moved back into The Villa Vatta Schmaltz after a twelve-year absence, we just crammed some stuff into whatever corner availed itself, particularly in the basement. Then, life regained momentum, and we didn't find a reason to retrace our earlier decisions. Clogs resulted. Particularly in my basement shop/laundry room, the clutter predominated. I'd just splayed most of my tools along the vast workbench top and worked around that mess. A month ago, I took positive steps toward eradicating that embarrassment. I hired Kurt, our painter, to refinish a peeling back wall, and I pivoted some of the shelving ninety degrees to provide space along its backside for pegboard, where I imagined I could mount my hand tools for tidy and convenient access. Painting done, I've not yet started moving back into the freshly refurbished space.
I am in the process of UnProcrastinating, with the explicit intention of creating a fresh context, if not a NextWorld.
Distinctioning
Jan Luyken: Vrouw Wereld toont kinderen de brede en smalle weg
[Woman World shows children the wide and narrow road] (1699)
" … largely unexplored."
When might this NextWorld appear? From here, the answer to this question seems to depend upon what one considers a distinction between one world and a next. What change, one to another, might qualify as enough to accept it as a genuine difference? I know, this seems awfully subjective. Some people maintain stricter standards than others. It might be that those who acknowledge slight differences as constituting distinctions experience more successful lives, for they might more comfortably manage to "change the world." Those who hold the strictest standard when making such distinctions live in a world that, by self-imposed definition, must always stay the same.
But aren't some changes more obvious?
Faith-Based
Jehan Georges Vibert:
Trial of Pierrot (Not Dated - late 19th century)
"I will have levitated by the means of tugging up on my own shoelaces."
I might be one of the least religious people you could ever meet. I don't have much particular animosity toward religion, only that I don't belong. Their lore doesn't interest me much, and their metaphors tend to lose me. For instance, I will never understand the concept of a personal lord and savior. I cannot understand what that phrase means nor imagine what such a service if competently performed, would even look like in practice. I never bought into the idea of original sin, either. I appreciate the good works various religious bodies perform. I am rightly appalled by the evil organizations engage in, seemingly as a matter of course. Any collection of individuals organized together becomes capable of evil far exceeding any individual's potential. I believe that groups must be more careful lest they inflict unintended damage on others. The notion that one collection of people is necessarily superior to another due to their beliefs disgusts me.
All that said, I acknowledge that my life has been a Faith-Based initiative.
ThinkingIll
Lovis Corinth: Cain (1916)
"No whining!"
Two days into creating my Christmas Poem Cycle and halfway finished, I encountered a definite blockage to completion. I caught myself seething inside. I have been holding an anger, and the old, probably incorrect definition of depression was "anger turned inward." The idea apparently was that inward-aiming anger might fester into deep self-destructive sadness while anger aimed outward might at least dissipate, perhaps even harmlessly. But we live in an era when anger has turned outward, which has resulted in considerable carnage. School shootings seem to have become a daily occurrence, and what are those but outward-focused angst? You must have played hooky through those years if you were not seething through middle school.
My challenge as a poem writer involves poisoning the well.
WritingPoems
Yashima Gakutei:
Woman About to Write a Poem (c. 1824)
" … not the definition of insanity but of quality."
Every year, as Christmas nears, I find myself stuck to my desk WritingPoems. Years ago, I solemnly swore to stop buying presents in stores. I'd had it with that despondent shuffle exhibited by people hoping to find that perfect gift while having no real ideas about what such a gift might entail. That annual desperation of hoping a pre-Christmas miracle might appear in an overcrowded aisle. The passion play involving the eternal search for perfection, demanding faith and devotion yet often fruitless. It might be that perfection cannot be successfully sought but can only happen unbidden. Anyway, I'd had it and swore off that curious addiction. I would henceforth write poems and give them as gifts.
After more than twenty years of experience, I can't say that WritingPoems has necessarily been easier than shopping would have been.
NextWorld
Franz Marc: The Bewitched Mill (1913)
"I guess I'll keep watch and see if I can catch a NextWorld emerging."
The inescapable ignorance of youth and the inevitable arrogance of age conspire to mislead most into believing that youth possesses innocence and the elderly own prescient wisdom. What could prove to be further from the truth? Youth has never been able to hear its elders, let alone understand them. The elders innocently expect their broadening experience to amount to something when it rarely does. Youth insists upon making its own mistakes and elders have little with which to trade but their undervalued perspective. The NextWorld, the one continuously emerging, has never turned out to be as anticipated or similar to what came before. Forced to poke sticks into darkness, civilization continually moves onward, if not necessarily forward.
I have little to offer in the way of advice.
Good For A Goose
Fambly (93)
Grace (92)
Humor (2)
iAlogue (1)
Letters to the Editor (1)
NextWorld (32)
Personal (19)
Steam Festival (4)
Vaporized (6)
Work (16)
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