The dangers of cynicism in the age of Trump

Vox's Constance Grady pans Zadie Smith's new collection of essays:

And when Smith turns her gaze to current events, to the politics of the pandemic, the results can feel downright facile. In “The American Exception,” she attempts to reckon with why America’s response to the pandemic has been so lacking on every level. Smith’s sentences in this essay can sometimes sing — “We are great with death,” she writes, devastatingly; “we are mighty with it” — but this question has been turned over and over and over so often by so many different thinkers over the past few months that by the time Smith takes her turn, the result feels almost empty. I know by now that my country’s elected officials have failed the country. I know that they are using the rhetoric of American exceptionalism to justify their failure. I know that people are dying as a result. What else you got?

I dunno. Seems to me the failure of American officials -- and the way they justify themselves through American exceptionalism -- is the one of the most salient facts about our country's political life right now. Reckoning with both the failures, and the scandalous use of patriotism and "greatest country in the world" rhetoric, does not have to be an original project because it is a necessary one. Let's not get jaded about this state of affairs. 

Coronavirus Diary: I am cursing a lot

Just a quick note: I think the relative isolation of not-quite-full quarantine is getting to me. I am cursing more these days, more likely to lose my temper than I have been for awhile. Most of the time, I don't even realize that I'm on the raggedy edge until I hear myself say something kind of shitty out loud. I don't like this. For the sake of my family and my own sanity, I need to figure out how to better let off steam.

I worry I am becoming this guy:

Common Book: Cornel West

"Intellect is an interrogation of the most basic assumptions and presuppositions. So intelligence makes immediate evaluations, intellect evaluates the evaluations."

Do Americans even know we're at war in Somalia?

NYT: 

The Pentagon has admitted for the third time that its bombing campaign against terrorist groups in Somalia, which has been underway for more than a decade, had caused civilian casualties there, a military report said on Tuesday.

“Our goal is to always minimize impact to civilians,” Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the commander of Africa Command, said in the report. “Unfortunately, we believe our operations caused the inadvertent death of one person and injury to three others who we did not intend to target.”

A couple of observations: First, I hate how the Pentagon language about a terrible tragedy that has caused grief for an innocent family -- or families -- is treated as a technical oopsie. This is horrific. It is not a clerical error. We shouldn't treat it as such.

On a related note: I do wonder how many enemies the United States creates -- versus the number it eliminates -- with these kinds of attacks. Do Americans even know we're at war in Somalia?

“If everyone around me is wrong, would I have the wisdom and courage to know and do what’s right?”

David French: "When the crowd says yes, consider the option of no. When the crowd says go, discern whether we should stop. And through it all, pray for God’s grace—that we’re not too foolish to know the truth or too weak to do what’s right."

Read the whole thing.

Personal update

Taking a little bit of a Twitter break right now to get my head clear.

Suicide and the passive voice

In the last few years, the way journalists write about suicide has changed greatly. We now say that people "died by suicide" instead of "committed suicide." Other measures are taken to try to prevent glamorizing suicide, blame the person who died, or to inadvertently encourage copycats.

This is all generally to the good, and well-intentioned. (I don't love all the guidelines, which urge journalists to avoid describing "personal details" about people who have died in favor of keeping the information general, because that renders an individual somewhat faceless, IMHO.) A story in the New York Times demonstrates a complication with the approach: It can obscure clarity.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

AMSTERDAM — One hundred and thirty years ago, Vincent van Gogh awoke in his room at an inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, and went out, as he usually did, with a canvas to paint. That night, he returned to the inn with a fatal gunshot wound. He died two days later, on July 29, 1890.

Scholars have long speculated about the sequence of events on the day of the shooting, and now Wouter van der Veen, a researcher in France, says he has discovered a large piece of the puzzle: the precise location where van Gogh created his final painting, “Tree Roots.” The finding could help to better understand how the artist spent his final day of work.

Now: If you know anything about art history, you know that van Gogh died by his own hand. The opening paragraphs obscure that fact. You know he was shot. You don't know who!

More than a dozen paragraphs go by before clarity is offered:

There has long been debate about which painting was van Gogh’s last work, because he tended not to date his paintings. Many people believe it was “Wheatfield With Crows,” because Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic “Lust for Life” depicts van Gogh, played by Kirk Douglas, painting that work as he goes mad, just before killing himself.

This is a story in which van Gogh's death is a critical element: Finding out where the painting originated probably isn't a big NYT story if not for the fact of his death. But it feels like that critical element is the object of hide-and-seek in this story. I suspect the recent conventions on how to write about suicide shaped this approach. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I don't mean to be insensitive. I would like to figure out a way forward that is sensitive and yet doesn't create confusion instead of clarity. Any ideas out there?