“Woke”

One of my big pet peeves these days is right-wing sneering at Black people not wanting to get shot or unfairly policed as “woke.” Like the survival instinct, or wanting to be left alone, is merely a form of radical chic. 

Yes, Trump is a warmonger

American Conservative: "President Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, thanks to his role in brokering a historic peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and for breaking a 39-year streak of U.S. presidents leading the U.S. into a new war."

This "broken streak" idea is specious. Trump's early presidency included dropping "the Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan. He vetoed a measure to end U.S. involvement in Yemen's war. He had a top Iranian general assassinated. The list goes on, but you get the idea: No American president gets out of office without some blood on his hands. and Trump is not an exception.

Maybe the first step to peace is not starting new wars. Great! But the United States armed forces are still involved in conflicts around the world. And Trump bears a great deal of responsibility for that. Don't let the lack of *new* wars fool you.

A good walk just might save my life

 

Yesterday, I was so angry at the state of the world -- justifiably, I think -- that I actually thought for a few minutes I was giving myself a heart attack. I wasn't. But the rage I was feeling about everything manifested itself as, well, physical pain.

Since the beginning of August, I have been getting out every day to walk a couple of miles. Before that, I'd gotten very pandemic sedentary: My Apple Health app tells me I averaged 365 steps a day in July. That's bad. So I made a goal of 5,000 steps a day, and I've mostly stuck with it. It is the most consistent exercise I've gotten since 2002. (My body and I don't always have a great relationship. I'm kind of a "stuck in my head" guy.

Anyway, it was raining this morning. I walked anyway. Through the downtown of my suburbanish college town and back, through the park. And I felt something I hadn't felt in months, maybe years: Maybe it was joy? I don't know. It felt good, though.

The state of the world is cause for rage. And sometimes I have to live with that anger. But I am not capable of living with it so acutely. The walk let me listen to music -- I've gotten very deeply into comfort music of late (more on that later) -- but otherwise I wasn't staring at a screen, obsessing about things. I let my mind get to other places. Getting physical activity every day is good in its own right. But the mental health aspect is pretty important too. A good walk just might save my life.

The narcissism of small differences: Pew Research edition

Seems like a better way to put this would be: Large majorities of U.S. adults -- in both parties -- believe that social media is a distraction. Emphasizing that one party believes it slightly more than the other, when lots of people in both parties believe it, does more to emphasize our differences than our commonalities.

With his SCOTUS list, President Trump says the quiet part a little louder

When President Trump announced his shortlist for the Supreme Court during the 2016 campaign, it was a clear signal to conservatives to get on his bandwagon, filled as it was with Federalist Society-approved names. Now that his re-election prospects are sketchy, Trump has released a new shortlist. It worked the first time, after all.

The interesting thing about the 2016 list is that it still had the quality of being -- for Trump -- subtle. Unless you pay enough attention to the endless ideological maneuverings to control the courts, the names on the list (and its FedSoc provenance) might not've meant much to you. But if you were aware of those things, invested in those fights, and conservative, the list was a good reason to think Trump might not be a squish on issues important to you.

This time around, though, Trump is taking no chances with subtlety when it comes to motivating the base. It's one reason he's even more plainly appealing to white racism during this campaign. But the boldface names on his new SCOTUS list -- Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley -- are meant to get the attention of the most casual conservative. They're known culture warriors who appear regularly on cable news, not the coy legal eggheads known to insiders. Trump is fairly screaming that he'll appoint anti-abortion judges this time around. The man is known for saying the quiet parts out loud. The closer the election gets, it seems, it's saying the out loud parts even louder than he once did.

@TheWeek: "The most destructive single decision ever made by an American president"

My colleague David Faris:

It struck me anew how unfathomable it is, or should be, that the person entrusted with the presidency, whose actions and inactions can have terrible and unforeseen consequences for millions of people, purposefully concealed his own knowledge about the coming of one of the worst crises to afflict humanity in close to a century. The selfishness and the bad faith are staggering. While Trump couldn't have stopped COVID-19 from getting here, his lies and inexcusable inaction sent a lot of people to their graves and caused millions of others to this day not to take this virus seriously.

How all the latest news makes me feel

I think I'd help myself professionally, as a part-time pundit, if I weren't so publicly emo. The model for column- and opinion-writing is generally to have a take and to be confident in it, to be prepared to argue and generally look strong and authoritative. At least, if you're a man. None of that is my strong suit, and I'm fairly sure I invite some contempt for it. (Then again, maybe that's all in my head.)

So. Let me tell you how all the news today -- 

...about the fires in California...

...about the president's lying to Americans about COVID...

...about the White House ordering security officials to downplay threats from Russia and white supremacists...

...and so much more...

-- makes me feel.

It makes me feel helpless. 

I don't have a smart or analytical reaction. Mostly, I just feel (in the case of the fires) that we're reaping what we've sowed, climate-wise, or that too many of my fellow citizens like what our president is doing. Mostly I know that what is happening is bad and that there's almost nothing I can do to stop it or make it better.

And that feeling is even worse because I have a son who is going to have to live with the consequences of what happens now. We're giving him a terrible, terrible world, and I cannot protect him from it.

God help us.