Resisting Conceits of Revolving Turnstiles

Is this what you're afraid of? -- Jeremy Childs

James Hamblin makes the usual devastating and classically liberal argument for which The Atlantic is known, in his dissection of Trump's linguistic foibles. It is the type of feature which readers of the old media periodical appreciate. And I am, admittedly, a dilatory supporter of the publication. Early on in my starving vocation, I sent them poems, fiction, like thousands of aspirants, then stopped, and now only pitch to them when I am in a caffeine overdose of brilliant topic effort. Twenty years ago, I would have trusted Hamblin's byline and expertise, but do not take this to mean I can refute or undermine him with the same detail he utilizes to undermine the president. I used some of his same examples to push back against George Will's "Dangerous Disability" column, which trended on social media late last spring, in a more rapid, cursory fashion, and couldn't give it away. This has made me terse and caustic, because I still know how to do what journalists do, but I always have it harder, with a not quite figurative hand tied behind my back. I thought I could break the glass ceiling. I thought I could have a normal self-sufficient life, but no, the assholes in my state look at my age, my chronic condition, and say I have to categorize myself as "nursing home eligible" in order to maintain independence. I am not being off topic. Hamblin undermines himself without realizing it. Septuagenarians represent an expendable class, not that this is shocking. It is biologically easier to have a medical crisis at 70, or 69, than it is at 36, but he is, essentially, making a meritorious relegation of the aged. Pope Francis would certainly cry foul to that. In my piece, I cited evidence that Roosevelt would die in office, and did not have the time to burrow through microfilm in my battered chair to use the examples Hamblin does to buttress what we already know: FDR was a great Liberal, and but for the grace of god, if the public knew how sick he was as a paraplegic, closing out the ambitions of the Axis powers would have been much more complicated.

As a side note, if you believe my militancy is an aberration, who interred the Japanese? None other than the most powerful, and one of the wealthiest, cripples in the world. I cited more examples than Hamblin does, but my point was that whether or not FDR would drop dead, or JFK was spaced out on narcotics for degeneration, etc, we got through it without the merry Congressional nightmare of applying Amendment 25, and we've survived perfectly fine without Julian Assange revealing Angela Merkel's secret plan to conspire with Elizabeth Warren to remake the west in Castro's image, our birdseed perfectly apportioned.

I do not like Donald Trump, and would have preferred Governor Bush or Rand Paul, but the very charges the left deploys against him exposes why liberalism is ultimately untenable: disability is suddenly the hot button, but no one breathes a word about disability law and what reasonable accommodation means, with appropriate support. I may also agree with Hamblin about Reagan. I knew the old stage hand had dementia during his Iran Contra testimony, but both the country and President Reagan still functioned. Alzheimer's isn't a fucking movie. My grandfather lived with it for years before he effectively lost his mind. In essence, James Woods is accurate. Scratch a liberal and beneath their epidermis, ultimately you'll find a Nazi staring back. Cillizza wins this round, chicken noodle soup notwithstanding.

The Price of Lazarus

"He's like ice!"-- Alain Absire, Lazarus, a novel, page 101, 1988 edition

There is a price to autonomic function we dread, such as the discovery that Sweden maintains a royal family in a relatively permissive Marxist society. Who knew? Who even bothers to apply themselves to European parliamentary systems when so few of us are literate in the American primary process? There is a political drama on WYBE, fairly contemporary, partially eschewed; this is due in part, to the fact that, in Sweden, a conservative in the American political idiom means you wind up with the Clintons. 

Beneath the surface, the American power couple who've been around too long are scorned by everyone, and everyone knows it, just as everyone knows, come January 20th, 2017, Bill Clinton will have achieved the impossible, essentially doing an end run around the 22nd Amendment. You don't truly believe Hillary will actually run the West Wing, do you? This partially eschewed drama is wearisome, wearing on my skeletal brutishness, its title a pun on the actual Crown Princess Victoria. It is a sequential roller coaster on the political fortunes of  Ms. Elkblad, a woman who will invariably climb to the top because of the glaring flaws around her, villainous political advisers, wife beaters. That segment, the Regiscide, the dowager mostly skipped. The Swedish actor cast, a credible veteran, is many things, but a wife beater, no.

However, one never knows about these things, and "The Sacrifice" became relevant out of nowhere. One of the prominent ministers in the social democratic run has Alzheimer's, and she's a secular Jewish liberal to boot, a group which loves to dictate its moral values to hedonists playing dangerous games, and of a sudden, the spastic dowager is caught with her pubic hair in her zipper as European drama serves up a Ronald Reagan dish. All the sudden I mind the mentor of Sweden's perky little idealist, Charlotte, mind the wound of the fundamental unfairness of a woman denied her turn.

Golden Bonds

'I don't know about her features,' a very discerning observer had answered, 'but she carries her head like a pretty woman!'-- Henry James, the beginning of The Europeans

  

The Anthony Head Sharon Maughan commercials for Taster’s Choice arguably embodied something more than cosmopolitan chemistry making generic coffee seem upscale and understated with chic. The subtle romance was also about a culture imbued with the optimism of second chances, a cultural mode still able to believe in itself, capable of offering a rewarding life for those who took chances and still strove. We need that sense of the enchanting in delayed anticipation, quite a stark contrast from the David Whele of the boldly crass Syfy’s Dominion, believing in his own entitlement because he survived a savage destruction of the Las Vegas he knew as a televangelist. Although I am not a consumer of romances in the generic sense of the term, I followed the serialized story with the same delight as the audiences who watched commercial television, and it is a rare moment indeed where I would find consummation between elegant people to be beautiful. One might have believed it here. Pubic hairs dyed wheat blond, nails lacquered to reflect a casual and intimate dinner; whatever the tensions reflected in 21^st century dystopias, even someone such as I can mourn the loss of the magical embedded in our senses. Everyone’s busy pontificating. Pleasure in the world around us seems to have gone the way of Reagan’s state funeral, with Nancy’s privileges sorely tested by Joe Plumber’s unwillingness to offer her the appropriate deference due to a former first lady. Should our fairytales be so grim?

Two Corners, Many Shades

I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Through it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does affect it. --Measure for Measure (1.1.67-72)

Foster's forgettable reticence is interesting. Fathomable? This is something that has preoccupied me for the two and half thankless years I have had a blogging account. She is not merely my contemporary, of course, and would not be the actor she is if her talent did not in some sense speak to the American soul. The pretty tomboy, the man girl who dares to transmute a vibrant sexuality, a fast-paced self-reliance that flows with her wit. I tend to think the media backlash she received over Hinckley was a form of moral castigation otherwise unfair to the woman. Taxi Driver was a Scorsese vehicle thick as thieves with Actors Studio methodology and experimentation that doesn't quite pan. Let me put it this way: I have been socially inappropriate with men in order to get laid, and the end result is I am alone with weak legs and a colon which has a mind of its own. Bickle's disturbed mind just doesn't seem consistent with his action of taking a golden girl to a sex education movie. It is akin to me rolling down to the lobby naked after I had enticed the husband, and that isn't an end game, even for a war veteran who is a wounded lone wolf. I have not approached Foster's publicist yet, and perhaps there is no way I could get around the formulaic industry promotional interview to do something different, and this includes the fact that I do not give a flying fuck what she thinks about Hinckley, an assassin of pretend who is notorious for attempting to murder a B-grade actor who had a chimpanzee side kick, an actor who believed in the blacklist during the tenure of his presidency of the screen actors guild before he was senile in the office currently held by a law student who needs to dismiss our highest federal law enforcement official.

I do not agree with McCain about much, but he is an astute politician enough to know when Principals mortally wound themselves. Did you notice Holder's hand shaking in his recent congressional testimony? I did, but in fairness to the Clintonian, I cannot remember any attorney general who was capable of running the DOJ. Holder's competence has been a steady spear in Barack's side since those giddy post-election days in 09 when he opened his mouth about race relations. He just doesn't embody the command and the ability to administer, to adjudicate terrorism, to hold his officers accountable for mismanaged operations.

Near midnight defecation disaster fortunately avoided, I did consider killing myself during the turn of the century. I am not quite sure what force of will stops me, what belief. Defiance has a great deal to do with it. My mind is focused on my leg strength. The level of pretense surrounding Hinckley's nearly successful attempt almost places us in Chesterton's landscape, now that I focus on it. Young Foster was pretending to be Martin's Lolita; Hinckley was pretending anarchy for the pretend kiddie hooker, and Reagan pretended his mettle had solid foundation. I wrote an essay supporting Reagan over Carter and bumped my GPA up significantly.