Take This Pill and The World Will Change

 One of the The Nation's headlines today reads:

"The Smug and Vacuous David Brooks Is Perfect for The Atlantic”  

and 

"The former New York Times columnist is a one-man cottage industry of lazy cultural stereotyping."

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It seemed to me that Chris Lehmann was being gratuitously critical of Brooks as he departs his two decade job at the New York Times.

Then, I read Brooks' lengthy goodbye column, and I see where Lehmann is coming from.

Brooks is critical of Trump on moral grounds, and he sees America's current state primarily as spiritual malaise.  Nowhere does he mention the fact that the richest 1% of the country own over 30% of the nation's wealth.

Rather, according to Brooks, an attitude change on both sides of the political spectrum is all that is needed to take us back  to unity and a renewed faith in the American Dream.

My guess: 

Musk is thinking of the Brooks column and laughing all the way to the bank.

Survivor

I just finished reading another book by one of my great favorite writers, Arundhati Roy.  Mother Mary Comes to Me is autobiography, telling what it was like to grow up in India in the care of a mother who provided life lessons embedded in nightmares.  The story is an excellent example of how some children endure horrific life conditions and yet seem to arrive at adulthood with functional personalities supporting often successful and rewarding lives. 

Roy left home as a teenager, unable to support her mother's continuous abuse.  She got herself through school to a degree in architecture, but it still took her many years to climb out of poverty.  She spent four years writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize and made her wealthy.

Beyond recounting her personal story Roy also provides a first-hand account of India's  history which cannot be found easily in journalistic reports.  Roy lived through Ghandi's era and the following genocidal clashes of Hindus and Moslems, and the rise of the current authoritarian Hindu state under Narendra Modi and the BJP.

In the face of those challenges Roy became an activist supporting resistance against giant dams which displaced vast numbers of rural people, as well as reporting about the on-going persecution of the Moslem population of Kashmir, about which she wrote another of her popular novels.   Roy, like her mother, has also been a champion of women's rights in India.  That and her political  activism has made her the target of constant threats and governmental persecution.  In spite of that, when she could live in ease in any part of the world, she continues to live and work in Delhi.

As I wrote in one of my previous posts about Arundhati Roy, 

"Americans don't pay a lot of attention to what is going on in India,  but we make that choice at our own peril."

Mom

 I recently received some family pictures I had not seen before.

On the back of the little 6x9cm sepia shot my mother and her brother are identified.  Under their names the location and date are noted, Wisconsin - 1928.  If the date is correct my mother looks old for her age, which would have been 10 or 11 at the time.  That is probably the family car in the background.  Tough times.

The family left Wisconsin, probably soon after the above picture was made and drove to Idaho.  Living in Winchester, my uncle grew tall and became an accomplished highschool athlete.  He went off from there to become a WWII aviator.  My mother went to work for the phone company as an operator in Lewiston, where I was born.  She stayed with the phone company after the family moved on to Seattle.

The picture on the street was shot in Seattle in the mid-1940s.  It was very likely made by one of the photographers who lurked on the streets in those days, snapping photos of pedestrians and then giving them the address of the photo processor, usually a drugstore, where the photo could be retrieved.  The quality of this shot must have been disappointing, though it does portray a pretty good representation of the style of the time.

Solidarity

 On Friday a lot of Minnesotans will be staying at home rather that going to work, to school, or shopping.  The purpose is to protest the ongoing disruptions by ICE in the State.  Some organizations like United We Dream have promoted the event as a general strike and called for  nation-wide participation in the Friday event.  

A strike with a predetermined ending doesn't seem like a strike at all, but perhaps terminology should not get in the way of any effort to raise awareness and offer an opportunity to express rejection of Trump's war on the people.

I'm game. 

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Jacobin provides a brief history of the General Strike.

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The New Republic has an essay on Minnesota character,

The Key to Minneapolis’s Successful ICE Resistance

South of Hatch

2026

Venezuela

 Trump read the lengthy statement that had been prepared for him on the invasion of Venezuela.  When he then began to speak for himself it was his usual litany of fantasy and lies, with little reference to the subject of the press conference.  He droned on about the use of the military in American cities, declaring among other things that Washington D.C. was now the safest city in the country.

Trump declared an intention to run Venezuela and to take over and profit from Venzuelan oil.  He was dismissive of a possible role for opposition leader Maria Machado and indicated that the Venezuelan Vice President might be made the country's puppet president.  The likelihood seems high that the fifteen thousand troops on ships now off Venezuela will be used to secure the country's oil infrastructure.

Rubio, standing to Trump's right looked uncomfortable and impatient throughout Trump's statement.  His own brief contribution was as a cheerleader, without reference to the looming disastrous diplomatic fallout in Latin America and around the world.  Trump, during Rubio's presentation, looked like he was asleep on his feet.

Trump's action in Venezuela is not unparalleled in U.S. history, but perhaps the closest resemblance is to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.  Trump's historical awareness probably does not extend that far back. 

 

 

  It also seems doubtful that he is conscious of the fact that in 1945 it all ended badly for il duce.

See Paul Krugman's take on Trump's prospects of getting what he wants out of his Venzuela adventure.

A New Year