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The Curious Case of George W Bush

Speaking of guys who offered up some eyebrow raising remarks on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, we also have the bracing words of George W Bush:

"On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith. That is the nation I know," he said.

"At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome of immigrants and refugees. That is the nation I know," he said. "At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action. That is the nation I know."

It was, yes, a lovely speech, and a graceful, not to mention, pointed, reference to the events of January sixth. Bush's remarks were welcomed as a strong corrective to the tendency among conservatives these days to try and whitewash 1/6 and continue to play Trump's apologists. Bush, for his part, was yet another Republican refusing to mention Trump by name when discussing the bad aspects... but his language was surprisingly direct.

All of that said... no one should let Bush get away with absolving himself of either his behavior after 9/11 or the way his actions and of the people around him also helped get us to exactly where we are now.

"At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely..." really? Do we really want to reexamine the arrests of random people with arabic names after 9/11? The rounding up of people? The immediate increase in threats to mosques in the days weeks and months after 9/11? The work of the Bush administration to insitute permission to torture suspected terrorists? How about the Iraqi prison where they were tortured? Or the Black sites? Or bloody Guantanamo Bay...WHICH IS STILL THERE???

How about Bush's cowboy mentality and his threats to hunt down and kill terrorists in caves? How about starting a war in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with 9/11? How about starting a 20 year war in Afghanistan with no clear sense of the mission to be accomplished or plan to leave? How about "Mission Accomplished" and Bush landing on an aircraft carrier?

George W. Bush would like nothing better than for you to forget that 9/11 both happened on his watch and led to the kind of anti-Muslim paranoia on the right that Trump managed all too easily to exploit on his way to winning the White House. Bush would probably like, even more, to forget that he helped create a Republican Party aimed mainly at propping up his fragile ambitions, over anything resembling a coherent approach to governance of any kind... or that the hollowing out of the Republican Party (firmly accomplished by Karl Rove on the way to winning 2004) left a party scrambling to find its way and left open to the repeated work of opportunists and their personal interests.

As I said (rather presciently), in 2009:

By sheer force of emotion - not will - he remade the Republican Party in his image: anti-intellectual, inconsistent, too concerned about the image, and not enough about the details. He replaced conservative ideals with cant, and then doubled back and destroyed the cant by, as his family does, wavering in the face of failure.  He called himself a strong believer in free markets... and engineered the largest government takeover of the banking industry. He called himself a compassionate conservative... and then let the Gulf Coast drown.

And he lied. He lied about getting into war, then he lied about staying in the war, then he lied about getting out of it. He lied - and still lies - about 9/11 (Saddam Hussein... not involved). He lied when it would have been just as easy to tell the truth.

And really, I suspect... he lies to himself. It's easier that way.

I welcome anyone, including and especially the former President, who wants to call out the current conservative movement and insist that it has to be better and do better. I will not, however, stand idly by and let George W Bush recast himself as some kind hearted warrior for justice who had no hand in creating the Republican Party as we see it today. This is very much his fault. He was there, and he had a hand in making it what it became, and how it became the party of Donald Trump. 

Just because we were united in grief doesn't mean that we deserved a needless, preventable tragedy. Or so mcuh of what came as a result of it. And no one bears the responsibility for how we got here the way George W Bush does. Never forget that. And never let him get out from under it. 

Instant Gratification Takes Too Long

The one thing that won't die in the internet age - the instant, and wrong, hot take - for me is actually the hopeful sign that our way out of the pandemic year isn't in fact written yet. The nearly cataclysmic changes we've all experienced in the past year aren't minor, aren't things you just "get over"... and the massive implications for our society and our economics (never mind our politics) are things we can only begin to start figuring out.

And that's why I don't mind the "jobs will instantly return to normal" and "everyone has to stop wearing sweatpants and put on real clothes again" type hot takes. The instant gratification culture of immediate analysis and pronouncements has been thoroughly up ended, even if the media may be the last to really understand what hasn't happened, and what isn't happening, and even start beginning to make sense of where we actually are.

At the most base level... people died. I've been stunned at the number of conversations of the past few months - you know, those reconnecting "hey, we haven't seen each other for a year" post vaccination convos, and dinners and re-gatherings - where that conversation veers into frank discussions of loss and pain and death. More than half a million people died of Covid (that we know of) - random, often pointless losses of family, parents, coworkers. But often, just as surprising, the losses people share turn out to be the other deaths - not covid, but the other stuff of cancer, heart attacks. The reckoning of these losses, over 18 months, has really only just begun, in part, yes, because Trump lacked the basic humanity to properly put the losses in context. But separation, and the near incomprehensibility of losses on this scale, is also a big part of it. No one in popular media, really, has yet found the words, the context, for all this loss. We're just beginning to grope for the words.

Then, too, I think of the enormous life changes so many have experienced as a result of this strange surreal, and yes, lost, year. People who have made major, significant life changes over the pandemic. All of the people who put significant life changes on hold because of it. And so many who have changed nothing... but for who everything has changed. Six months ago, I quit my job and embarked on this new course of writing and living differently. Only today, did it occur to me that perhaps expecting everything to be sorted after only six months is, well, not very realistic. Extrapolate that kind of major upheaval in so many lives... and really, our culture has no comprehension of what is and isn't happening in people's lives, and the ways those changes impact economic and social life. Are people "going back to work?" What does work even mean just now? What is "going back?" So much economic analysis just now is slapdash, lazy, and obvious. It will take months, if not years, to sort out all the forces in play, and what they mean.

And sure, it seems frivolous to relate these near existential issues - life and death, work and purpose - to the more superficial parts of our lives, the daily business of consumerism and consumption that make our American culture hum. But that's the point, isn't it? So much of the frothy, frivolous exercises merrily rolling along in early 2020... are just gone. if nothing else, the pandemic was a forced pullback to "is that really important" that offered many a chance to reassess all sorts of choices And that's just the beginning. Stores have closed that will never reopen. Dining has changed. Vacations have changed. New routines are part of all of our lives. And it's routines and habits that really guide our interests and choices. And again... we're only just beginning to figure out what these look like, what they might mean.

Just one obvious practical example to finish: "planes are full again." It's the hopeful, meaningless, deceptive storyline that will drive this summer's coverage of travel and leisure. Domestic air travel is still well below half of what it was before the pandemic, losses that have nothing to do with leisure or vacation travel (and don't even start on the embers of international). It's business travel that was the backbone, and profit center, of airline revenue. Will it resume? Sure; some of it will seem essential, some will argue that face to face beats Zoom and win. But many won't. At a moment when the whole concept of the "downtown office" is in flux, major city to city air travel looks like a relic.And again, that has economic implications no one wants to face and has gone largely undiscussed.

It's an odd moment, this juxtaposition of the "now now now" internet world we have and the almost luddite realities the pandemic placed on our existence. It's an odd, fascinating place none of us expected to be, and trying to intellectually sort out what it means is useful, and necessary... and all but impossible when we also want it all figured out, entirely, as of yesterday. As you peruse that Vogue telling you to get out of those sweatpants, and take in those reports that lazy workers are reluctant to give up unemployment to go back to work... just remember, no one, really, has figured any of this out. Instant gratification takes too long... and maybe the problem isn't "instant"... it's that maybe we're beginning to figure out this life needs more than just... gratification.

Coming Home

About six months ago, I made a strange, and wondrous, and scary decision to do the thing I'd always wanted to do: work from home, focus on writing, and see how that works out.

Obviously, it wasn't an entirely voluntary decision - in the sense that, it's not a decision that would have made nearly as much sense had we not been in the middle of absolute crazy time. 

It's weird, living through a pandemic. It's remarkable, to me, how clarifying the past year has been: how quickly it separated the things that are absolutely necessary (say, to stay alive) from the less than essential (going to the movies, for instance). In almost an instant, everything I'd based my decision making on - is that fun? do I want things? - was replaced with "what will keep my mother from catching a deadly infection." Ordering groceries to be delivered. Going to deserted parks. Life became, in so many ways, so much simpler.

Even when I went back to work (after a 3 month leave, essentially, to make sure mom was as safe as possible), I found trying to resume old routines was impossible without applying my newfound clarity. And, within months, that same newfound clarity was finding myself asking "what work really is most important and ultimately, most satisfying?" 

And so, I came back to what I've always wanted to do most - be here, and write.

I haven't done much. if any, specific pandemic posting; it's not what I think of as "my blog." Plus, I'm not sure it's exactly fascinating - we've all been at home, more or less. It's not easy. But somehow... we carry on.

But what was really interesting to me, what has been interesting in a voyage of discovery that, to my surprise has been generally positive, is discovering life at home. This life is not what I expected or planned. And it has been eye opening. 

For years, I threw myself into work. I went in early, stayed late, worked hard, Laundry, cleaning... home tasks came a distant second. My day off was "catch up on projects." I would tell myself that, one day, I would tackle some bigger plans, really "get organized." Somehow, the time for that was never quite there.

When I got home this past November, and began tackling those very projects... I quickly realized that I had been kidding myself. For years. These were not small projects. Getting my room together, organizing clothes, really making my desk a proper writing pace, starting to do research.... this was a lot of work. It was the work I'd put off to do... other work. And, as it turned out, tackling these 'minor home projects" was also valuable. And satisfying, And required attention and care.

This past Christmas was the first in years where we had a reasonable time to prepare. It was relaxed and festive and I didn't feel, for once, as it was rushed or ended too soon. I discovered the time to invest in making great coffee every morning, making that healthy fruit smoothie I was starting to like having around, to show up for volunteer activities I'd been missing. And, working on the book project that fueled this switch, I'm discovering that writing and editing is really work I love and love to pursue. 

It's easy in this pandemic to focus on the privations, the limitations, the struggles... the losses and the distance. I'm not made for that - life is too full of possibilities and hope and the chance to grow. There has got to be some good to find in all of this. Or we will just have to make it.

And this isn't to dismiss the work I used to do. I ran into a young woman at my old store the other night. She had started a month before I left, it was her first job, and her second day it rained badly and she got soaked walking to work. She was in tears, felt defeated and wanted to quit. I sat her down, talked to her, and eventually told her to go home and I would cover her day out. Now, happily, she's working there full time, and she knows that my assistance is what kept her there and she thanked me.  I miss the opportunity to be a part of that.

Growing up, I read Erma Bombeck a lot; her essays on life, suburban living and homemaker based feminism was humorous and inspiring; I recommend her highly. And, just like some man, I find myself writing about discovering laundry and cooking as if it was some sort of mystical land, and of course, it's not. But I will credit the pandemic with the opportunity to step back, reassess life as I've known it, and discover things I never quite knew. Coming home, being home... it does feel right, and okay. There will be time to figure out what life looks like after a pandemic, when we get there. And I know it's not possible for everyone... but we have been given, by fate and by disease, a real chance to reassess what life in America looks like. At the very least, we ought to explore what that might look like.

Parler Games

Nothing quite says "the spell is broken" more than Twitter's decision to impose a lifetime ban on Donald Trump. If one had to point to the one thing that defined this Era of Trump Madness, it was those omnipresent tweets (ones I explored daily and tagged with #EverythingHeSaysIsALie ) which substituted for any and every aspect of an actual presidency: policy conversation, press conference, daily schedule and insult magnifier rolled into one, ugly, endlessly venal hopelessly untrue steamroller of disinformation. Without it, really, was there anything there at all?

Just days later, it's abundantly clear.... not much really was there at all. A silenced Trump may rage alone in the darkened halls of the White House, but without amplification, his sycophants grow restless, his party is rudderless and his opponents know the sweet air of freedom. How much different would our world be, or have been, had anyone had the nerve to take these actions years ago... when, just an aside, it would have been more than appropriate.

Within minutes of the decision - and the parallel, not exactly simultaneous decision to block Trump on Facebook and all of its associated properties - the right wing pundits had their instant storyline, one which thankfully absolved them of facing the aftermath of insurrection head on. Instead, we were gifted with a storyline about the Death of the First Amendment, the Unreasonable Censoring of Conservative Voices, and the "who, us?" excuse making of trying to argue that no one, really, could call Trump, or any of his minions, directly responsible for inciting a riot.

The decision fixed a heavy, awkward spotlight on the fledgling alterna-network for the right, Parler. Hastily assembled and built, according to the tech savvy, mostly on the "paperclips and string" approach to coding... Parler was already a bit of a stumbling mess as Trump's access went down - a hub of privacy invasion, bad infrastructure, conspiracy theorists pushed off legitimate forums... and the odd convergence of QAnon and Saudi exiles too eager to push the propaganda needs of the Crown Prince. Any port in a storm? More like Port of Last Resort.

In a rational world, Parler might have been able to buy itself the time needed to get itself together and to get serious... but this is the age of Internet Madness, and Trump's implosion only made Parler's underlying problems that much more stark. Having spent months trying to fend off reasonable requests from Amazon (its cloud server host) to better police the content floating through its social network, Parler's role in the January 6th events was bound to come under scrutiny, and it's failure to offer even a modest "lick and a promise" intention to clean up left Amazon little choice. Parler's arguably in over their heads leadership has tried valiantly to spin their disasters as that much more Unfair Censorship to Silence The Right, but even a minimal amount of research suggests a company that was simply overwhelmed by its users interest in a forum that let any and every crazy rant run free. And that's being charitable, since Parler even now can't seem to indicate what content it would moderate if it even knew how.

The reality is that this era we've been living through is, in many ways, the cusp of en ending, not the beginning of a New Age: a "wild west" of disinformation and questionable content, the various social networks have been struggling for years, particularly after the 2016 election revealed a debacle of Russian interference, fake stories, false accounts and deliberate propaganda aimed at fomenting civil unrest. There are no heroes here; only corporate entities with too much influence and too little oversight, gamely attempting to put several genies back into bottles. And while conservatives may have a point that some innocents may be caught up in the new oversight, that too is a tangent to a problem they've had for too long and done too little to police - a refusal to draw lines, and rule out obvious problematic actors and content pushing White Supremacy, Militia based talk of Revolution, and QAnon conspiracy fantasies. Yes, it's true Facebook and Twitter have all sorts of problems, failed enforcement and bad content moderation... but that's with at least a modicum of effort. Parler, god love it, wasn't even trying. And that failure to even adopt a fig leaf of "please stop, that's bad" just made the failure especially stark. No one's going to race to your alternative social network for more puppy videos. They want the hard stuff, the mean stuff... the stuff nobody else will let them say.

In all of this Trump was more symptom than disease - simply the biggest, worst, most prolific and most profligate example of a systemic failure to take action against obvious disinformation and malicious content. Every day, week, month, that passed it was grossly, starkly obvious that Trump flouted every possible rule and convention for content. Twitter (and eventually, Facebook too) had to step in just to acknowledge that virtually everything Trump had said regarding the 2020 election was a gross falsehood, flat out misinformation or deliberate provocation. And even that did nothing to slow the manufacture of lies, the fomenting of violence, the egregious bullying pushing things ever further to the edge. And what edge? Well, we need not ask that, not after January sixth.

It will take time, and effort to get things under some modicum of control - to push the fringes back to the fringe, marginalize the marginal, undo the massive damage to our culture, our discourse, ourselves. Like everything else, this isn't about "going back to before" - we are in this new Internet landscape to stay. But we already know that Facebook and Twitter can and will evolve, that they will not be exactly what they were, and though it's not impossible, it is unlikely that one man will be able to construct what Donald Trump did with his unique combination of avarice, idiocy, falsehoods and self interest. I do tend to think that, for better and worse, Trump's incendiary rhetoric was never so much a brilliant plan as a dopey use of bombast and bullying to play with matches and gasoline everyone else could see as potentially disastrous, even as he couldn't, or wouldn't. Much of the defense of his actions on the sixth are of the "he probably didn't mean to" sort and they're right up to a point: I don't think he meant to create what actually went down. But mostly because, I don't think he had thought that far ahead. And that, really, is the definition of incitement.

As for Parler and these semantic games the right would like to play about "free speech," I think time is running out on this "outrageousness dressed up as constitutional liberty" sales pitch. It's a tiring game of wrapping up age old prejudices in History Channel or Civics Class doublespeak that misuses faux intellectualism to sell the most anti-intellectual arguments imaginable. This isn't about free speech or even the outlines of a healthy debate; it's about one side's ability to mouth off without consequences and the other's to just take it. And that's just bullying, which is the ultimate point.

 The jig is up, the game is over... whatever metaphoric cliche one likes, where we are isn't where we were even a week ago, and even with only about a week to look at, it's clear that Trump's absence, alone, from social media is already having an impact in ratcheting down the chaos and slowing down the fuse on its way to the powder keg of further internal conflict. Which doesn't make Facebook or Twitter heroes, just slightly more socially responsible than they had been. And that, alone, is the indication of a tide turning, that modest sound of us being our better selves, trying harder to get it right. Conservatives have a choice about whether to follow that tide or get washed away. We can't make it for them, I can't guess which way they'll go, but these pointless Parler games aren't really worth playing on the way to an outcome.

Math and Aftermath

"Off guard" is one of those odd phrases - unless one lives in some state of perpetual vigilance, we are, generally "off guard." And yet, how can one talk about those moments and world changing events that suddenly up end our day, our week, our lives with a sudden, crystal breaking clarity? Who knew that could happen? Why weren't we "on guard?" How did we miss that?

Already, people talk about January sixth as if what happened should have been obvious - how could you not know that thousands of hyped up, angry protestors would turn into a riotous mob, storm the Capitol, nearly do bodily harm to our Congress, take hours to stop? In the modern phrasing... "that's just math." And yet, the events of the day came at us, really, out of the blue. If anything, the days since have been coming out of shock - shock that it happened, shock that it could happen, shock that what did happen was so bad, and could have been much worse. We are, as Americans, prisoners of our cheerful societal naïveté - we may seem like the girl who knows too much and Already Did It, but often we're just the rich kids in clothes that are too mature for us, pretending to a maturity we don't really have, never entirely earned. January 6th will haunt us because, really, We Should Have Known. We're shocked that we didn't.

Personally, I have had a plan to restart blogging in earnest that got, well, a little waylaid by Christmas and the holidays... but last week was my week to settle down and back into it. And I thought I'd start with some posts about Trump in his waning days... what's it all about, what a strange time... yada yada. And then, on that Wednesday, things just blew up. I had decided to catch some of the "Arizona debate" on the Electoral College count, flipping between House and Senate C-Span channels. Things had been slow, so I'd also flipped to coverage of the "Rally" the Trumpist folks were holding, waiting for Trump when it was apparent he would speak to them live, not really paying attention to his remarks. But then the debates started in earnest, and I was flipping between Paul Gosar and Mitch McConnell when suddenly... bedlam.

I've done the "where were you" discussions of 9/11 and other historic days, but January 6th will be, I think, kind of a Next Level on that: it's not just where we were (home, mostly), but how painful, and slow, and terrifying it was to watch. Trying to figure out what we couldn't see. Realizing that our very democracy could be in peril, not really having a "Plan B" on our whole System of Government... these are not everyday discussions. Not here. Not by us. People wanted to have whole debates about What It All Meant all afternoon... but what was immediately apparent is we couldn't even have that discussion until we did something more like basic... like stop this, and get it under control.

So... it's under control. Now what?

There are a number of ways to break down and pick apart the events of the sixth; and the point, I think, is that What Happened is not one discussion. It's several discussions, all important, all with a bearing on our future, as a nation, as a people, as a Republic. That, too, is just math. No one discussion can cover all of what this is, what it means, what it will mean. Over the next week or two, I'm hoping to break down and break out some of the themes that I think will be meaningful as we move forward. It's not the blogging I intended... but Aftermath is a funny place. One I never expected to see. So here, roughly, are four areas that I think will matter as we look back on January sixth and move forward from it:

• The Mob - Trump Supporters, "the Insurrectionists," "The MAGA Crowd"... whatever we call them, whatever we thought of them before... this event changes that completely. Understanding what drove this, who drove this, their goals and beliefs, will all be hugely important, of course. Knowing their names, seeing, as we already are, the famous and the unknowns in that crowd, is a big story. I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in that we want to do this in order to isolate them and expunge them. But I think they will begin to realize that's what's happening, soon enough.
• Republicans and The Conservative Movement - The events of January 6th have enormous implications for the Right, as any have already started to note. But I think the early process we are seeing, the Anger, the Bargaining... signal that, in fact, something has died. I don't think anyone knows exactly what that means or just how it will play out... not yet, anyway. But a Republican Party that had to unwind the Trump Years anyway now has a much bigger soul to search - the Law and Order Party that enabled the Lawless in their midst, the Standard Bearers without standards... this is not a small earthquake. And it will not be neatly resolved and put away in short order.
• Security, Safety and the role of Law Enforcement - another obvious element of "how did this happen," we are bound to see months of Commissions, panels, in depth reviews and more trying to unwind the failures of the day. And this could be a healthy conversation about improving our sense of safety and yet another step towards engaging a broader conversation on Policing, generally. But... a whole lot of this could go very, very wrong. And that's not reassuring.
• Donald Trump, his family, and all the hangers-on. Impeached while Pence dithered on the 25th Amendment, events have moved quickly to sideline Trump if not remove him completely for his role in this mess... but we're nowhere near a full assessment of what 4 years have wrought, the aftermath of his lies, bullying and chaos-stirring. Nor have we unpacked the roles his family have played, or the (literal) Rogues Gallery of Accomplices, Apologists and Sycophants who also have earned their moments of deep scrutiny. "Justice" is no longer the only issue. As a nation, reclaiming our decency means looking hard at The Indecency among us. A good, hard look.

Two things that I don't think are major parts of this story of The Aftermath? "The Media" - who do need to show that they can take up these multiple threads, organize them, and look at them seriously, and who, yes, may well fall short. But trying to pin the events of January 6th on "culpable" or "complacent" media, I think, is to lose focus on the actual people in the actual mob that perpetrated the actual riot. Similarly, none of this is, or should be, about liberals, The Left, or the incoming Biden Administration. We have our own issues, our own story, our own role to play. And there's plenty of time to look at all of that. But this, this moment of real threat to Our Democracy, and to Our Way of Life is on their side, it's their problem, and they need to do the work. We cannot do it for them. But we can move to hold them accountable to do that very work.

One more thing: Be Unafraid. Yes, these are difficult, uncertain times. We have many problems. Bad things, very bad things, may yet happen. But if the January 6th Insurrection showed us anything, it showed us most how pathetic this whole exercise was. How sad and small, how incapable, how unserious. These bullies and miscreants are not something to fear; they are people to be pitied, marginalized, and brought to justice. They do not deserve to be given the power to scare us, to haunt us, to drive us into responding to fear rather than rising to our sense of Justice, Decency and doing right. They tried to break something at the very heart of who we are as Americans, it's true. But they only win if we act broken. We are not broken. We are many. And we are strong. And that... well, that's just math. Not Aftermath.

The New Normal

Hello, yeah, it's been awhile...

At first, it seemed like a weird, interesting foreign news story gone terribly wrong. When reporters first described an epidemic in the Wuhan province of China spreading rapidly and causing concerns, it was hard to see what was coming.

The things you realize, after the fact.

I think of Phuket, Thailand and the tsunami, the people who headed out into dry seabed as the ocean receded so far out that people couldn't believe the water had vanished from the shore. It means "run" but who knows that, in the moment?

I now feel like, maybe, I would have been one of those standing on the beach. Maybe a little too long.

As things go, I was maybe sort of lucky. Yes, the panic shopping was already underway, the virus most likely already out and about in my Westchester community, north of New Rochelle. As international travelers came home and cruise lines started to implode, it's hard not to realize that the people who live those lives and take those trips... are your neighbors. Like maybe we should worry. Like maybe we need to take some steps. We were too late. I see that now. Asking questions days, weeks after they needed to start being asked.

(And still, yesterday, the Governor of Florida finally thought, hey, maybe it's time we told that state to stay at home. Yesterday.) 

Still, as I often do, I had a vacation planned for my birthday, the second week of March. Maybe a side trip to Boston to see old friends. Needless to say, that didn't happen as "the Biogen Meeting" blew up. And come the end of that week, staring down the obvious implications of an epidemic now underway in my state, in my county, in the town three towns away... suddenly, living with an 85 year old mother with complicating conditions didn't seem incidental. Not anymore.

Three weeks (and counting) later, the world is... different. In so many ways. Life is lived at home, as we do now, communicating by phone and videoconference and Zoom and watching cable news with agitation and alarm.

There are, of course, many things to be said, many observations to be made. And suddenly, again, I find myself with all the time in the world to write them down. Interesting, that. Some have suggested that Gen X is uniquely equipped to handle this epidemic... I don't feel as confident as all that. I can say that, much like Rachel Maddow and numerous friends of a certain age, living through 9/11 and the early days of the AIDS epidemic does at least give one some markers to work from as this unfolds... not necessarily good or happy ones. You learn some things about people, and groups, in emergencies. Not a lot of them are good.

I think of And The Band Played On (I really must dig up my copy from the basement) -- the story of Anthony Fauci's other big job -- and that moment when one of the CDC shouted at Blood Center execs "how many dead bodies do you need, because we can come back then" about instituting testing controls over blood donations. I think of the leaders putting off stay at home orders, keeping all kinds of falderal open, not doing enough to convince people they, too, are at risk.

I think of those panicked calls on 9/11, when people didn't know where friends, family, spouses were - on a plane, in the Tower, somewhere in Manhattan. How empty Times Square was on the morning of 9/12 (I was there, virtually alone). I look at that empty Times Square and those darkened theaters and empty hotels and I know they come back... eventually. But we are different. We are changed. We just don't know quite how. Not yet.

We try to find the light in this darkness - it's Christmas for introverts! Your cat never wanted you home this much! - but there's a lot of darkness, and so little light. We can't begin to admit, even to ourselves, a lot, how long this could go on, how bad it will get, the people we may very likely lose. Keep calm and carry on. Try to order the groceries online. Try to remember what six feet apart looks like. Try not to panic when you cough. Or someone else coughs. Try not to lie awake, mentally ticking off every cramp, every breath... because who knows if we got it. Or have it. Or will get it.

Gloria Gaynor showed us you can sing I Will Survive when you wash your hands. I mean... we will, right? And so I'm back, from outer space. Back at my desk. Back to the future. Back against the wall. I have no idea how we get through this, how we get used to the new normal. I wasn't really all that keen on the old normal. But like 9/11, like life before AIDS... it does always seem to go that you don't know what you... well, you get the idea.

These Awful, Awful People

A little over 12 years ago, I started a modest effort at blogging, one that these days feels even more modest than when I began, with a brief, zig zaggy interlude of greater public prominence (as a Hillary supporter) than I ever expected. From there, it was mostly a slouch through the Obama years to... well, apparently, what's been happening is beyond words.

A loss for words: there are fewer, more apt phrases for the current state of affairs in politics (at least, ones that don't devolve quickly into foul words and cruel epithets... on both sides!). I'll admit, much of what's happened leaves me, usually, in stunned silence, or sadly mute. Or both. All the time, at every turn, this Presidency is exactly what it appears most to be: a compendium of lies and exaggerations, a chronicle of ineptitude and inexperience all overseen by a dangerous, criminal mix of lifelong self absorption and personal gratification.

More than anything, what most distresses me, in this time, is the exaltation of awfulness. Immoral, indecent behavior by awful people is excused or enshrined; the feeling that someone (or possibly everyone) involved is "getting away with it" is inescapable. And that's even when, occasionally, justice, or at least some small amount of common decency, suddenly appears to prevail.

Sometimes, the indecency just seems sad, or at least sadly comical - the grasping, greedy habits of various cabinet officials; the willingness of conservative politicians and Fox news habitues to surrender the last shreds of their independent thoughts and what remained of their moral character. In retrospect, the quick flameout of Tom Price, or the somewhat longer collapse of Scott Pruitt seem like welcome mercy killings compared to the extended damaging presences of Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos and others. It's easy to conflate the truly dangerous actions wrought by Jeff Sessions with the more cheerfully inept exercises of a Kirstjen Nielsen, but both are set to ruin lives in ways Carson or DeVos can't possibly hope to achieve. It's hard beating Skippy... but it's easier the more you try not to care.

Then there is the White House Inner Circle, a road map of enablers and hangers-on who long ago gave up even a shred of self awareness of the disaster around them. The colorful fabulations of Kellyanne Conway. The surly hateful approach to press relations embodied in Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The inert, impotent attempts at control by John Kelly, unmasking his own troubled prejudices. Those long slow burnouts are as remarkable, in their ways, as the way the Administration so quickly used up and spit out the likes of Hope Hicks, Omarosa, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer or the abusive Rob Porter. These are the moments we wonder whether Bill Shine or John Bolton and Larry Kudlow are the kind to collapse quickly... or if the moral decay and rotting values will take longer to fully destroy both their present and future.

As for the man himself - and the family that, still, surround him like a protective, but not really, cloak - what's left to say? Perhaps the proverbial - is it anything else - last straw was a President who literally excused the murder of a person, a fellow American, for the sake of a financial and strategic relationship with the cruel despot of a foreign power. No, not Putin or Kim Jong Un. Just the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the saving grace - as I do so often try to tease out something hopeful in the darkest of clouds - is that Trump is so much of who he is that he lays bare what America is, or at least can be: little more than the cruel acceptance of savagery and indecency for personal economic and political gain. This presidency is a test for us, for our nation, of just who we all are or want to be. To surrender to this lot - with their lax morals, self dealing, petty cruelties and endless vanities - is to give up on all that we can be. We are entirely capable of being better, more decent, kinder, more concerned for others. Or, we can try to hurt anyone we dislike with cruel words, terrible actions, and a refusal to step in.

So often, in these times, it's true... there are no words. There's no adjective dark enough, no adverb strong enough, to modify the descriptions of things happening on a daily, if not hourly basis. So much random cruelty, casual insensitivity, deliberate greed and grasping by so many of these awful, awful people. But we can't look away, and we can't just say nothing. We may never, entirely, be able to wash off the stench. But it's worse, isn't it, if we don't even try. Isn't it?

Bad Milo. Bad, Naughty Milo.

Even his name - "Milo Yiannopolous" - is something of an alternative fact: he changed it from "Hanrahan" which was the name of his father, who left when he was six.Yiannopoplous comes from his maternal grandmother, who raised him.

There was never much reason to pay attention to Milo, a bratty British schoolboy eager to spread his opinions, calling it "journalism," in that way conservatives do, repeating twice told tales to justify their negative views of others. Being British, and snide, was about all that differentiated Yiannopolous from the other far right voices - slap a dress and a blonde wig on it and you've got Ann Coulter. Or Monica Crowley. Or Kellyanne Conway. Or...

He'd made himself something of an internet star, mouthing off about "Gamergate" - which boils down to teenage boys trying to put a "No girls allowed" sign on video game playing, with just the sort of especially ugly, hateful results one would expect. For no particular reason, he decided to turn his negative energy - and that of his teenboy fans - on Leslie Jones, resulting in that much more negative attention and a lifetime ban on Twitter.

As Andrew Sullivan noted, the kind of bratty conservatism espoused by Milo (and Sullivan, from much the same background) thrives and grows on the negative response. It's political theory as reaction formation, why I've been clear on what Coulter and Malkin et al actually are since college - what was "Dartmouth Review" but the "politically incorrect" screed of kids eager to express opposition to feel good slogans of liberal activism? And 30 years on that's what conservatives have to offer: not ideas, but something outrageous, designed to oppose perfectly reasonable proposals meant to help others. It's not what you're for, but what they're against.

Since the Jones imbroglio, Milo enjoyed a rapid rise to that curious kind of American stardom that only happens in the fevered circles of the angry right - he got a book deal, and speaking gigs... and last week, he popped up on Real Time with Bill Maher, and got announced for a speaker role at CPAC, where the show always needs the fresh ziz of the latest hateful thing.

If I'm surprised by the fall Milo has had in only 4 days, it's only that I figured he'd at least get to give that CPAC speech. As it was, the only thing that could embarrass CPAC (and it's leader, the smooth talking Trump supporter and Fox "contributor" Matt Schlapp) was new exposure to old interviews Milo had done, applying his bratty British humor to gay sexuality and the priest sex scandal. That was enough(!) to lose Milo the book deal, the speaking gigs, and his job as Associate Editor at Breitbart.com. Because, naturally, where else would Milo  be working, but Breitbart?

It's easy to get hung up on Milo's outrageous comments around sex - and it's not as if that particular element hadn't been swirling around him all along. Part of Milo's shtick was wearing his status as a young gay man on his sleeve, touting his (reductive, racially insensitive) love of black men and hinting at his own sexual prowess. (It's especially amusing, given CPAC's checkered past with gay conservatives, that they blustered into booking Milo anyway.) And it was, in fact, the cavalier way Yiannopolous described his own experiences of priest sex abuse that drove much of his downfall, given that, as even he admitted in his Tuesday press conference, that abuse goes a long way to explaining his bratty public persona since.

But let's not get too lost in focusing hard on Milo: the real lesson here is about conservatives, their role in propping up and pushing hateful rhetoric like Milo's, and the endless need to find fresh flavors of the month expressing all that hate. Let's remember CPAC played that role in launching Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin, and numerous others (hey, Ben Carson!) as well. Let's point out, as well, that this flameout illuminated yet more clearly all of what's wrong with "news outlets" like Breitbart, which never called Yiannopolous to account for many outlandish things he wrote and said - and indeed, never raised a peep about those sex comments at the time they were made, nor in context of his overall persona. One can only marvel out how dysfunctional a work environment could be that a "half dozen" staffers at Breitbart threatened to quit this week if Milo were allowed to stay on. This week!

Conservatives would like, of course, to isolate Milo now, now that the cat's out of the bag, that he's "gone too far" despite the reality that "too far" was an interview he gave last year, and ignores years (and years) of examples of Milo's excessive, hateful words and actions. It was too much for Twitter... but conservatives still clung to him (and arguably, too, Twitter's actions were years past due as well). Simon and Schuster lost authors over holding onto Milo's book... but still they held on. Until this week. Conservatism didn't become "like this" yesterday. And Milo is a symptom, not the disease. Removing him addresses neither cause, nor cure.

So CPAC will offer up "President Trump" and plenty of other familiar lines of conservative anger and hate... and pretend Milo was a bad dream that maybe never even happened. That's what they do, over and over, as these once hot flavors "go too far" or the lies catch up to them. And suddenly, there's no speaking space for Ann Coulter. Or Sarah Palin. What a shame Milo couldn't hold it together long enough to provide another Outrage Du Jour...

Because, of course, what passes for conservatism these days is so utterly bankrupt and bereft of intellectual heft and interesting ideas that it is simply beyond embarrassing.  Literally. Everything about Milo's rise, his career, his galloping leaps toward greater fame... all of it was an embarrassment, a waste, a pointless exercise in watching a bratty child act out for others' amusement. Watching Milo's smirky, childish appearance on Maher - what little I could take - I figured it was a matter of time before something would wipe that smirk off his face. Two days later, no smirk. And a month from now, or a year... it's just another chance for another flavor of the month to rise.

If any good can come of this, I'd like to hope it comes from Milo reckoning with his own demons, working out his issues, finding some measure of personal grace. I wouldn't even necessarily mind the "I was a bratty jerk, but now I've changed" book he'll be pushing in a year, or two, or five... if he comes about it honestly, and expressively. That would at least show that someone is capable of growth and change. Because Lord knows, growth and change isn't going to come to the Conservative movement. Just another naughty bad boy, or girl, looking for attention. And getting it.

There Is Nothing We Won't Try, Never Heard The Word "Impossible"...

I recently celebrated ten years of doing this blog thing, and I somehow managed to do it quietly, with basically no fanfare (or, more accurately, self-aggrandizement), because I felt perhaps I wasn't entitled to claim it.

Well, it's a new year, so I think I'll just embrace it.

Today I resumed my (fruitless) search for a piece - I know I wrote it - which included a passing review of Oldboy, the Park Chan-wook film I mentioned yesterday. It was part of a piece, I think, about my friend Ray and I traveling by train and regretting my entertainment choices... or something. Anyway, I can't find it, so there.

But, as happens every so often when I embark on these searches, I am faced with returning to the scene of the crime - rereading pieces I wrote and thinking... well... "what was I thinking?"

The search today was especially deep, and I went back to pretty much the beginning, pieces from January 2007 which were about 4 months into writing this thing. Some of it was politics, there were some film pieces (I was big on doing my Oscar predictions in January - never thought I'd just give up on that), and a lot of pressure on myself to keep writing nearly every day. (There's a whole archive list, by month, on the right, at the bottom. Try it.)

I regret that; I realize there are things about my writing I regret. A lot of things. I wish I'd been more thorough with the copy edit (or had a nice person to do it for me), I wish I'd been less personal, surely less "I, I, I..." (but why stop now?). I like to believe I live life without carrying a lot of regrets, but oof, the things I've said... 

That said (and that... and that), I'm grateful, too - grateful for the friends I made along the way, grateful to the friends who were supportive and encouraging the way real friends are. I somehow encouraged my friends to take this journey along with me - and rereading their writing and reviewing their other contributions made me unreasonably proud of them.

High standards, of course, are fine; but I've most likely set my expectations too high and unreasonably in looking back at what I've done. I wrote those things, to get to the writing I do now - if anything, I write more confidently, copy edit (a little) more thoroughly, try (a little) less to put quite so much "me" into every piece... all because I made mistakes along the way. It's true, and I've always known, you won't be a better writer not writing. You will be better writing more, writing more often, taking chances and seeing where that takes you. And yet, the great lessons of doing this I've learned is not everything needs to be written, writing on topics that don't fascinate you just leads to boring writing, and writing every day is a nice goal, but not necessarily a requirement.

My blogging is driven in part by a brilliant, kind coworker who was explaining blogging back when blogging was new (before I jumped in) and said most blogs don't last six months. There were moments I thought this might just be worth stopping, setting aside... yet I don't. Partly to not be a statistic. Partly because I started this because I wanted a place to write. And that, really, is something I still want to do. And be.

And, along the way, I turn up pieces like this, just a little thing about fashion and writing and media and magazines... and I remember why I really love doing this, the things I see that most people don't, stuff I'm really rather proud of. It took three years of writing this blog to get to the place where I could synthesize all that. And seven years later, could I do it better or differently? Sure. But I was there, so I could get here.

A friend at work recently confessed to me that she was dreaming about blogging, about finding a place where she could out her writing out there. Talking to her, encouraging her, I was reminded that I am really doing this because I love to do it, because it challenges me, pushes me forward. It makes me proud to have something to point to, even prouder to see her venture forth and start to make the effort.  

And so, here I am, ten years after. If blogging hasn't been exactly what I expected - and I'm not sure, entirely, what I expected - if I'm not the magazine writer I dreamed of becoming or the movie critic who could surely outdo a lot of what passes for criticism these days... I am still quite pleased with what I have been able to create, and grow, and survive. And goodness knows, there's still plenty more to write about. At least, I still want to keep trying, however imperfectly.

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Yes, This Is Really Happening

"Oh dear, he's still President." 

I'm sure that, at some point, that will stop being the first thought in my head as I wake up, the whole "this is not a dream" quality of how off the world seems with a President Donald Trump. I had to turn off the TV on election night while several states were still finalizing their counts because the actual announcement that Trump had reached 270 was too much to take to bed with me.

But you wake up and there it is and here we are and you wonder how this happened and can it really get any worse... and of course, yes it can, as you watch the early rumblings and stumblings and realize, yes, he's going to put these sorts of people into cabinet positions and keep talking in that way he does.... and on and on.

I'd love to say the point of this exercise is to say there's a silver lining or it gets better... but I don't think it does. It's bad, really bad, and likely to get worse. We've seen the election of a man who is neither suited to nor capable of being President (a reality I do not say lightly), elected on a broad wave of hatred and resentment, surrounded by dangerous people who can cause serious, lasting damage to our country and many people's way of life. The upside of that? Not so much.

Still, I know I can't cry for 4 years straight, and I can't focus only on negatives.  I amazed myself that within hours of seeing how this would be, I returned to blogging with hardly a second thought. Of course it was time to write, to start moving... to do something. Like many, I'm heartened, and thoroughly unsurprised by the spontaneous protests around the country. Of course we would have to stand up.

So this isn't meant as a down post, a cry in the wilderness. Rather, it's the acknowledgement that yes, we've got it bad, and that means we've got to get up and start trying to make it better. In that vein, here are some things to bear in mind:

• The voices saying "we need to come together" or " we need to accept these results" are trying to enforce silence. We do not need to listen to them 
• Similarly, voices saying "you are causing trouble" or "don't make us mad" are an acknowledgement that our refusal to go quietly troubles and upsets them. They are no reason to stop
• A lot of bad things will happen. Not all bad things are equal. Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe is not necessarily in the same category as Mike Flynn getting to head the NSA
• On the other hand, a lot of where this goes will be built on things they do now - so Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe may add to the scandals yet to come.
• Each new day, each bad decision will bring new people to realize they are outraged too - there's already some pretty severe buyer's remorse in just a few days, even from those who voted third party. We should welcome them... but also bring them up to speed. We're all outraged. That's just step 1.

Yes, this is really happening. It really is this bad. That's how change works, and while this is change many of us did not choose, would not have chosen... there are people who did, who wanted this. I'm not sure they
realized what getting this actually meant - and one thing it meant, quite clearly, was not that people would accept these results with dull submission or even "quiet grace." Change, shaking things up, is unsettling. It's uncomfortable. Those who said we need to "blow up Washington" need to face what it means to set off an explosion. It's not pretty. There is damage. There is shrapnel. There are unintended consequences.

Many on the left, I think, overdid the embrace of Michelle Obama's well meaning, but incomplete thought "when they go low, we go high." The problem is, they're not just going low; they're going everywhere. And we will have to go there as well - low, high, and everywhere in between. That's not to advocate violent protest, rioting or looting; it's to say that the calls from the right to "accept the results" and "give him a chance" aren't calling for a graceful response. We don't have to be nice about this, how we deal with it, how we "handle" it, how we choose to take action. This is really happening. Something was broken, and the next part is going to be ugly. If that's not the result you wanted from this election... you weren't paying attention. 

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