Rita Dove, "Little Town"

This little, haiku-like poem by Rita Dove got me thinking about a lot of places I've been. "Cobble your streets and no whining: / Stones are abundant here, / Stones and weather and air." When I was growing up, my family took trips to tourist traps in various states. The ones in the mountains or near a national park weren't cobbled, but they were basically stones, weather, and air with a gift shop attached. There was something rough about them, but rough like you were uncertain who lived there, like the town was an unfinished project.

Little Town (from Playlist for the Apocalypse)
Rita Dove

Cobble your streets and no whining:
Stones are abundant here,
Stones and weather and air.

I don't know if that's exactly where Dove's words lead me. Europe has plenty of tourist trap towns, too, but they have names like "Assisi." They're a little different than ours. Stone paths abound, forming knots well before any people crowd them. There are vistas, there's an openness to weather and air. Still, a moment's reflection on how much was built after the war gives pause. Many of the streets were reconstructed because of the Marshall Plan. This includes places which are not tourist traps.

Really, this poem evokes the towns I saw in the Ozarks. There weren't stones, but rather the ruins of industry. No one whines–there's always someone else who whines, who doesn't work–but the towns run despite the wear of economic collapse. Something is forged from the landscape, something from a silent abundance. I don't know if I saw it in the way Dove sees stones. What I remember were fields of grass in the shadows of hills and mountains. Forests holding their own little world, their own light.

Need motivation? Encouragement?

Mariame Kaba recommended her audience this post by Dan Blank, "To be seen as a writer or artist." It's about creating something and then dealing with a less-than-optimal reception. Blank shares stories of an artist whose exhibition goes unvisited and a meet-the-author event that's empty except for one reader. The stories are extremely effective. I think you'll read them and be completely convinced that being someone's biggest fan in tough times is one of the most powerful things you can do.

How does TV manipulate us?

As I read "The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice," I thought about all the small ways we are pushed into persuasion. Something as simple as a voiceover explaining what's happening gives a narrator an authoritative persona. When you give a con-artist that aura of credibility, wild things happen. This passage, demonstrating the slickness of how Trump was introduced to America, needs to be in textbooks:

When it comes to the long con, the cherry on top is the prologue to the premiere. It’s a five-minute-long soliloquy delivered by Trump at the beginning of the first episode, the one titled “Meet the Billionaire.” Over a rousing score, it features Trump pulling out all the stops, calling New York “my city” and confessing to crawling out from under “billions of dollars in debt.” There’s Trump in the back of limousines. Trump arriving before throngs of cheering crowds outside Trump Tower. Trump in his very own helicopter as it banks over midtown—the same helicopter with the Trump logo that, just like the airplane, is actually for sale to the highest bidder. The truth is, almost nothing was how we made it seem.

It's probably not possible to emphasize how important it is to introduce yourself. I feel like if you fail to tell what you're about and what you stand for, someone else takes that space. Maybe they'll hit it out of the park, maybe they won't, but initiative and agency stays with them. In this case, 18 million people watched "Meet the Billionaire." Perhaps what I'm saying is that the way TV manipulates us revolves around our passivity.

Is there a way to institutionally pressure SCOTUS?

Jaime Raskin very politely says what we've all known to be true (and that the Trump jury in NYC made even more clear)– Merrick Garland is pretty much useless. Here's Raskin, a Constitutional lawyer, laying out in The New York Times exactly what Garland needs to do regarding two insurrectionist justices:

The U.S. Department of Justice... can petition the other seven justices to require Justices Alito and Thomas to recuse themselves not as a matter of grace but as a matter of law.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland can invoke two powerful textual authorities for this motion: the Constitution of the United States, specifically the due process clause, and the federal statute mandating judicial disqualification for questionable impartiality, 28 U.S.C. Section 455.

That link might not work. If not, I saved Raskin's op-ed to .pdf and am happy to share.

The corruption of the Supreme Court is worth paying close attention to. The scale of the "gifts" Justice Thomas has accepted is mind-boggling. You can skim this ProPublica report and glimpse the superyachts and invitation-only resorts Thomas has enjoyed when not flying on private jets. Also, Alito has been influenced by a hedge-fund manager he ruled in favor of at the Court. I'm not clear why Alito is so fond of insurrection when he profits so handsomely from his appointed role.