Remembering Midwestern Writers. Charting A Course to the Future?

 I heard of Lingering Inland at I heard about "Lingering Indiana" at Proof: A Midwest Lit Fest - the program put on by Indiana Humanities. I bought the book, and in the past few days ran across a review from The Chicago Sun-Times, A new book makes the case for the Midwest’s literary might

Reflecting on these large-scale demographic changes, Olivarez says in his forward for Lingering Inland, “Because no one is looking to the Midwest for innovation, it has become an excellent place to experiment. The worst has already happened. Our former industries have collapsed or are on life support. What is there to do but dream a new way of living?”

“Lingering Inland” editor Andy Oler says that conception of the future happens when humans connect stories with people and places.

“What this collection is trying to achieve is to take those individual, idiosyncratic stories and start to sort of create a whole mosaic, a much bigger picture of what the region is, of what Chicago is, of like, how we think about the Midwest,” Oler said.

He hopes readers engage with the works slowly, letting the words sit with them. Each essay is around 1,000 words.

“I hope that they don’t read it all at once. I guess maybe, which is maybe a weird thing to say, but the brevity of the essays leads people to, you know, pick up one, read one or two, and put it down and then pick it up again,” Oler said. “I think that it’s something that you can sort of pop in and out of while you’re reading your coffee, while you’re, you know, waiting to leave, like, whatever it is, I think that it’s, it’s a nice little hit, and it, it lets people access it at their own pace.”

The collection is available at University of Illinois Press.

Well, that is what I am doing with the book - nibbling on it. I started with the Indiana writers - Booth Tarkington, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Martone - and was pleasantly surprised by a non-academic approach. It is very much more oriented to what the Midwestern writer meant to the essayist, not a formal discussion of their literary output.

The choices are varied - Louis L'Amour is here as well as Toni Morrison. Oddly, no Hemingway or Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser. I don't think of Kentucky (Hunter S. Thompson) as Midwest. 

 

I do suggest buying the book for anyone interested in Midwestern writers, or just writers in general.

 

I make this suggestion not only because it endorses my idea that we out here in the Midwest have a license to experiment.

 

sch 1/24 

 

 

 

Prison Food - What You're Not Eating Tonight

 Since I returned home, people thought being a federal prison meant I was eating well. That's about as funny as people thinking Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution had air conditioning in our cells.

 When I first got to Fort Dix, there were these sausages - think kielbasa - that were pretty good, except for the bone chips that were dangerous to teeth and digestion. They finally got rid of them, probably too expensive.

We had chicken quarters Tuesdays and Thursdays, but they discontinued the quarters for Tuesday after a few years. The chicken tended to often be pink close to the bone. This bothered some people, but I thought it had been steamed enough to be safe. It certainly had killed the taste. Other than the occasional bird with pin feathers intact, it was tolerable. Most people thought they would never eat chicken again. I can tell you chicken tastes nothing on the outside, it has almost wiped away all the bad memories of prison chicken.

 Oddly, one thing they did well was liver and onions. That got ditched after my first year, if my memory is correct.

Eggs were the one thing I despised - I think they had to use liquid eggs or some such substitute. Again, eggs out here taste nothing like they did in prison.

The word was that local restaurants donated food. I think that is how we got turkey burgers. They were a welcome change, until they tasted of freezer burn.

Then there was the time someone stored garlic or onions with the skim milk. Garlic infused milk was served for weeks.

 Anyway, what I read this morning in Food In Federal Prisons Isn't Just Bad, Sometimes It's Dangerous — Here's Why Read More (The Takeout) reminded me of all that.

You'd be naive to think that food in federal or state prison is up to par with a gourmet meal by Bobby Flay. Honestly, you'd be naive to think the food is even slightly enjoyable. Food in prison is used to further punish inmates, lacking both nutrition and basic moral decency. Cell phone images smuggled out of American correctional facilities showcase the food being served in chow halls barely looks edible. This presents a slew of health risks for incarcerated individuals.

In 2020, Impact Justice conducted a study of food in American prisons. The study produced many unfortunate statistics, like 62% of inmates stating they rarely (if ever) were given fresh vegetables and 94% saying they did not receive enough food to feel full. The report additionally found that, on average, American prisons spend $3 per day on food per inmate. The food prisoners did receive was of the poorest quality. A 2021 federal lawsuit from Mississippi alleged food was "spoiled, rotten, molded, or uncooked" and contaminated with rat, bird, and insect feces. Shockingly, formerly incarcerated individuals reported seeing "not for human consumption" labels on food boxes. These boxes contained "chicken" as well as "deli meats" such as bologna, ham, and salami.

I never saw the boxes marked not for human consumption, but I heard of them.

The article mentions the commissary:

Prisoners gather food from the life preserver that is the commissary (aka the canteen). The commissary offers food to prisoners we on the outside would purchase in grocery stores — think ramen, snack cakes, and chips. Because inmates make less than $1 per hour, unless you have support from the outside the commissary is often unattainable. Even if one is able to purchase a pack of ramen noodles, a typical bowl of ramen comes with over 1,500 grams of sodium, which only exacerbates the rampant health issues found in correctional facilities. Nevertheless, the Prison Policy Initiative found that inmates spend $947 per year at the commissary. Prison food suppliers, like Aramark, supply both chow hall food and commissary food across multiple prisons, thus incentivizing the suppliers to drive commissary sales by providing low-quality food elsewhere.

We did not have food from Aramark, but from vendors who marketed to the federal prisons. I have forgotten the names now; it was assumed the vendors were politically connected.

Relying on the commissary was called "eating out of your locker". I did not, but plenty of others did. It was a sign that you had more money than others. The hooch makers, the ones running the gambling, the ones selling tobacco or drugs, the organized crime types did this as well as those with money on the outside, or with friends and family who sent them money. I did not do this. Most of my roommates assigned this to me being crazy. I was not going to let my family and friends subsidize the federal government,

 The article is correct about how little bought at the commissary was healthy.

Unmentioned is how the BOP used commissary to punish unit buildings. 

The article mentions prison cookbooks.

Prison cookbooks have burgeoned from intrigue about prison life. Popular prison cookbooks include Albert "Prodigy" Johnson's "Commissary Kitchen" and Wisconsin Books to Prisoners' "Canteen Cuisine." Although written by different people who shared different experiences behind bars, these books display creativity at its finest and how food persists as a source of light in the darkest of places.

The links in the above paragraph did not translate, so here goes Commissary Kitchen Paperback – October 11, 2016, and What Martha Stewart Thought About The Food In Prison.

There was ingenuity in cooking in prison. The Puerto Ricans made a rice dish in cut down pickle buckets (the buckets stolen from the mess hall) in our unit microwaves. I had pizzas and cakes made the same way. If I recall correctly, Fort Dix let the microwaves breakdown without putting in replacements. This eliminated the cooking in the unit buildings, a source of income for many. By the time COVID shutdown trips to the mess hall, what we were left with was the hot water supply. It was good enough for ramen noodles and coffee.

Some of the bright boys in another unit building thought they could do a hunger strike over conditions Now, the United States Bureau of Prisons has made their operations as secretive as any Soviet Gulag. Maybe more so, no general media outlet takes an interest in the federal prisons. What Fort Dix did was empty the unit building and send them elsewhere. The conditions did not change.

What I noticed was that mess hall depended on it not having to feed all the inmates. Even at the best of times, if your unit was the last to the mess hall (and there was an order in how the units were released to meals), there would be empty pans (of beans, rice, oatmeal - depending on the meal) at the steam tables. Then one month, the prison had banned most units from commissary, then it was closed for inventory. Food service collapsed. The word coming out of prisoners working food service was that the guards running food service begged for commissary to be reopened.

 We also lost a lot of fresh fruit because people were making hooch. Hundred of gallons, in more than one unit building.

Any vegetables were canned, not fresh. And cooked well-nigh to mush.

I close with give you a link to the national menu for the Bureau of Prisons. I will make two notes: 

1. Not every prison follows this menu
2. Understand that if you see something like fajitas or having a foreign name, it is not what you think, but it is there to make you think better of what the federal government feeds its inmates.

 I recall the fajitas as mostly onions and green pepper with bits of tough meat; not what you will get at Applebee's. They did a lo mein that was boiled, greasy turkey meat tossed into spaghetti; it would have gotten a good laugh from anyone knowing lo mein.

 The BOP National Menu

I have written far more than I expected. Maybe there is more resentment in me than I have acknowledged, or I am acting out a delusion. What delusion? That any American reading this will care what they are doing to their prison's inmates. You probably think we deserved to be treated this way. However, answer this: what do you get if you treat people like animals instead of human beings?

sch 1/24 

 

Two For Writers (One for Philosophers)

 I am amused by those who do not know me, but wish to put me into some ideological straight jacket. To myself, I am a conservative pragmatist. If you want to understand my politics, I have two suggestions.

First, listen to The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society. 

Second, consider John Stuart Mill's essay on Coleridge:

But I must close this long essay—long in itself though shortin its relation to its subject and to the multitude of topics involved in it. I do not claim to have given a sufficient account of Coleridge; but I hope I have proved to some who were not before aware of it that in him and in the school to which he belongs there is something that they would do well to know more about. I may have done something to show that a Tory philosopher cannot be wholly a Tory, but must often be a better Liberal than Liberals themselves; while he is the natural means of rescuing from oblivion truths that Tories have forgotten and the prevailing schools of Liberalism never knew. 

(Searching for that quote turned up Mill on Coleridge from Harper's Magazine, and this passage:

For Mill, the liberal is hard to imagine without the conservative, the two are an inevitable pairing, living in a sort of political symbiosis. Liberalism seeks inevitably to define itself through an interaction with conservative thought; that process is in fact essential to understanding it. ) 

Here is my conservatism showing -

 Guarding the Gates of Our Language (Quillette)

When it first appeared in 1926, Modern English Usage was celebrated as an essential guide, but also a terror. Every writer feels a sense of alarm on reading the book, as one reviewer noted: “His previous light-hearted impulses, in selecting his vocabulary, wilt under the searchlight that Mr. Fowler’s articles turn on his usage.” Indeed, the joke goes that Fowler’s main contribution was to rid the world of bad writers by shaming them into silence. The London Times wrote a wounded editorial warning that the book would cause the average writer to suffer a crisis of confidence. “He is like the centipede in the poem, which lost the power of walking as soon as the frog asked him which leg he moved first.” 

*** 

Perhaps sensing the winds of reaction, Oxford University Press re-issued the original in 2010, with an introductory essay by a professor from Bangor who celebrates its wonders despite its inconsistencies. Do we detect in this reissue a return to cultural gatekeeping, or at least a recognition that the English language, the culture of the English-speaking peoples who invented it, is not some open source code for the world’s “diverse” peoples to ransack but a precious inheritance whose preservation requires more, not less, effort because of its success?

The rub, of course, is that we can no longer consult “the conversational usage of educated people” as a guide to our cultural patrimony because that cohort has now become the problem not the solution. The US-based Conference on College Composition and Communication issued a denunciation in 2021 of what it called “White Language Supremacy,” calling standard English a tool to oppress those “whose dynamic language practices do not fit monolingual white ideologies.” Many educated people today would have us all sounding like a cross between an HR manual and Kamala Harris. All the more reason, then, to revive a determined, punctilious, and judgmental culture of correct English among those interested in cultural preservation. The point of gates, after all, is not just what they keep out but what they enclose within.

 Prose serves to communicate. Formal prose has its rules so that we can communicate to all English-speakers. What I would do in formal prose, or even in narrative prose, is different from what I would do in dialog. KH wants me to use more contractions, and I do except when I want to make out a formal speaker - while also trying not to drop into dialect. The only writer I know who writes dialect in a way that is readable without denigrating the speaker is Zora Neale Hurston. She was an anthropologist; I am not. She is a great writer; I am not.

 Why Writers Need a Sense of Wonder in Fiction More Than Ever (KM Weiland)

We live in a storytelling moment deeply fascinated by darkness—and for good reason. Stories have always descended into shadow to help us metabolize our fear, trauma, and moral failure. They name the monster, bringing it out of the shadows where it can be faced and perhaps integrated or understood. But stories don’t just explore darkness; they also orient us within it as part of a larger narrative. This is why writers need to continue exploring a sense of wonder in fiction more than ever—not as escape or denial, but as a way of completing the arc. Wonder, hope, and other life-affirming paradigms are what allow stories to move through the descent rather than getting stuck there, which in turn shapes how both individuals and cultures imagine whether the journey is ultimately worth it.

sch 1/23 

 

Lingering Political Topics

 Trying to get caught up - I have been trying to delete most of my political related emails so I can concentrate on my novel. Please excuse the brevity of this post - the last one ought to be long enough!

sch 1/23

Bari Weiss suuuuuuuuuuuuucks (SFGate)

Horribly. Now we’re getting to the stuff you’ve probably read about. Weiss personally spiked that initial “60 Minutes” report because, the “additional reporting” she wanted in the original piece was comment (a rebuttal, really) from the Trump administration, which that administration repeatedly refused to provide despite CBS’ initial outreach. The report finally aired recently with a handful of extra details on the prisoners’ criminal records, numbers provided by — QUELLE SURPRISE — Trump’s people. 

Philadelphia sues over removal of slavery exhibit at Independence National Historical Park  (SFGate)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Outraged critics accused President Donald Trump of “whitewashing history” on Friday after the National Park Service removed an exhibit on slavery at Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park in response to his executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history” at the nation's museums, parks and landmarks.

Empty bolt holes and shadows are all that remains on the brick walls where explanatory panels were displayed at the President’s House Site, where George and Martha Washington lived with the people they owned as property when Philadelphia was the nation's capital. One woman cried silently at their absence. Someone left a bouquet of flowers. A hand-lettered sign said “Slavery was real.”

Workers on Thursday removed the exhibit, which included biographical details about the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the presidential mansion. Just their names — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Oney Judge, Moll and Joe — remain engraved into a cement wall.

Seeking to stop the display's permanent removal, the city of Philadelphia on Thursday sued Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and acting National Park Service Director Jessica Bowron.

The Unbanned Book Network is a new initiative fighting for diverse books in the classroom. (Literary Hub)

A new program called The Unbanned Book Network is stepping in to counter the increased threat of book bans in schools across America. The new initiative was launched this week by the team at We Need Diverse Books, and aims to build partnerships between schools and teachers to improve literacy, support diverse authors and books that have been targeted by book banners, and create a nationwide community of teachers and students.

“We’re not only facing an ongoing literacy crisis in the U.S., we’re also battling increased rates of censorship, which is infringing on our students’ right to read,” Dhonielle Clayton, the CEO of We Need Diverse Books said in the AP.

 

 

 

Greenland - Minnesota - Bravo Mark Carney! Watching Us Go Down The Garbage Disposal

 I continue to be delusional or lost in an illusion - Trump represents not us, but only himself. That he is the worst that America has produced, instead of what the majority of the country believes.

Today in the group session, the program is back to discussing either/or thinking and tribalism, He mentioned left and right for politics. I do not think that applies nowadays. I think the difference is between those with empathy and those without.

Some of these items have been hanging around in the tabs of my Zen browser, so I am putting the dates I came across them. 

Atlas No More (Quillette, 13 Jan 2026)

It’s important to understand that this looming abdication was not forced on the United States by forces beyond its control. It has been wilfully chosen by its highest officials, as the administration’s recent National Security Strategy makes plain. Until quite recently, such an insouciant announcement of a reduced American place in the world would have been hard to fathom. It was only eight years ago that President Trump, guided by seasoned foreign-policy hands and a clutch of Republican internationalists, laid out a National Security Strategy that acknowledged the need for vigorous global activism to check the authoritarian bloc of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. A world of great-power rivalries threatened to bring down the liberal order and replace it with one that, it was still assumed, would be far less conducive to American interests and American ideals. 

***

With revisionist powers collaborating in both word and deed to mount a strategic challenge to American hegemony, the meaning of the new NSS is that America will prematurely bow out of that contest. Henceforth, Washington will have little inclination to cooperate with our erstwhile friends to prevent military aggression. It will not forswear destructive tariffs that encourage a beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilism. Instead, global territory and interests will be demarcated between and among great powers, divvying up this geopolitical harvest on the basis of spheres of influence. As Anne Applebaum has observed, a striking feature of the emerging Trump doctrine is “its absolute refusal to acknowledge the existence of enemies or to name any countries that might wish America ill.” Competition is out, collusion is in. 

Only strength can save Greenland (The New Statesman, 14 January 2026) proved prescient.

After the downfall of Nicolás Maduro, Europe’s leaders seem finally to have grasped that Trump is not kidding about his determination to “get” Greenland. The provisional strategy is twofold: convince the US president his security concerns can best be resolved within the existing alliance, and that if he attempts a military takeover, he will be responsible for bringing down Nato.

The problem with this approach is that if Trump was genuinely motivated by anxieties about Arctic security, he would not need to buy or seize Greenland to bolster America’s military presence. Under the existing agreement with Denmark, signed in 1951 and renewed in 2004, the US already has the right to surge forces to Greenland and even build new bases there. Instead, Washington has reduced its footprint from more than 10,000 troops and dozens of facilities at the height of the Cold War to around 150 troops at the dilapidated Pituffik Space Base in the north-west of the island. 

 ***

So it is probably a mistake for Nato allies to put too much faith in Trump’s interest in preserving an alliance he has repeatedly derided, when weighed against what he appears to regard as a legacy-defining opportunity to redraw his beloved maps in America’s favour, and exploit the mineral wealth buried beneath.

The most optimistic scenario for Greenland is that Trump gets distracted by his many other foreign policy priorities, such as bringing down the regimes in Iran and Cuba, and his new role as “acting president of Venezuela”. Trump’s greatest constraint has often been his own attention span. But the other consistent feature of his leadership is that he prefers quick wins. When China punched back against his trade war, he backed down.

Trump like to denigrate the IQ levels of others, but this threatening to destroy NATO over Greenland is truly dumb.

Morning Bid: US picks a fight with its biggest creditor (Reuters, January 19, 2026)

Linking the tariffs directly to sovereignty, and all that entails for nation states, makes it harder for either side to TACO on this one, and throws into doubt all the trade deals already agreed. The EU has already paused ratification of the U.S.-EU agreement, and the U.S.-UK deal has to be in doubt.

At least Trump is using tariffs rather than an actual military invasion against a fellow NATO member, risking the end of the alliance, the loss of U.S. bases and air access in Europe, intelligence sharing, billions in defence sales etc etc.

The market reaction has been moderate risk-off, with S&P futures down almost 1% and EU stock futures 1.1%. Gold and silver scaled fresh peaks, while the dollar lost ground to the safe harbour Swiss franc and yen.

It's even down on the euro as analysts note European investors own $8 trillion in U.S. stocks and bonds. Starting a trade war with your biggest creditor is a bold play, Cotton.

 What did we for all of Trump's blather? Nothing we didn't have before other than alienating our allies.

Greenland PM Tells People to Prepare for Possible Invasion (Bloomberg, January 20, 2026)

Meanwhile, Canada’s military has modeled how it would respond to an American invasion after Trump publicly talked about the country as a potential 51st state, according to a report in the Globe and Mail, which cited unidentified officials who stressed they consider a US invasion to be highly unlikely.

In a move to shore up security of the territory, Denmark and seven other NATO countries last week deployed a handful of officers on the island as part of the Operation Arctic Endurance. Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command will now expand the military exercises to potentially run year-round, a Greenlandic newspaper reported on Tuesday. 

Europe must break from America  (The New Statesman, 19 January 2026)

If Brexit was the first blow against the EU from a new Europhobic movement in America, we now face a second and far more serious attack. As the ideological worldviews prevalent in Europe and America continue to diverge, there is an obvious risk that the military and technological dependencies Europeans have allowed to develop may be used against them. For many decades, the West functioned as both a political and emotional community. In such a community, mutual dependence is not exploited, and partners refrain from anything that could jeopardise a shared destiny. But without the West as a political community, that logic disappears. I am told that German policymakers now lie awake at night worrying about what would happen if Trump decided to turn off the spigot of liquefied natural gas crossing the Atlantic. Germany is now more dependent on the US for energy than it ever was on Russia. 

 ***

The alternative scenario is that Europeans recognise the threat and respond accordingly. This could trigger a chain of events capable of fostering a common European consciousness and, perhaps, even the birth of a European civilisational state. In reality, national or civilisational consciousness tends to emerge in opposition to other nations or civilisations – and neither Russia nor China fulfils that role. They are too distant, too weak to present what the historian Arnold Toynbee called a historical “challenge,” the psychological mechanism by which new civilisations are born. They are too foreign, too removed from European life, to compel a reckoning with fundamental questions of identity and values. America, by contrast, is a challenge – perhaps the preeminent challenge facing Europeans today, forcing them to ask what values they stand for and what sets them apart from the rest of the world.

It is in this effort to preserve itself against American power that Europe can, at long last, become Europe. First, it would need to affirm its full sovereignty in the face of the threats and ultimatums emanating from Washington. Events last year – particularly the American climbdown on tariffs on 12 May – demonstrated that only China, and perhaps India, were capable of such a stance. Scale matters: only a united Europe can safeguard European sovereignty. Second, a strategic break with the US would compel Europeans to take every existential decision into their own hands. Suddenly, the narcissism of small nations, to paraphrase Freud, would have to give way to a genuinely shared sense of belonging. American protection and tutelage have long prevented this process of consolidation.

The Great Divorce (The Atlantic - 1/23/26)

A more adult kind of relationship between the New and Old Worlds is possible and desirable. Providing that affection and mutual respect persist, unillusioned marriages are often the most durable ones.

 Greenland galvanizes Europe to confront new US reality (Reuters, 1/23/26)

European leaders believe Trump backed down in part because - in contrast to their more accommodating stance in last year's tariff negotiations - this time they made it clear he was crossing a red line by asserting that Greenland's status as an autonomous territory of Denmark was non-negotiable.

"All this shows that you cannot let the Americans trample all over the Europeans," said a European Union official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about U.S. ties.

"We did the right thing to push back, to be firm in what we said, but it is ‌not over. My sense is that we will be tested constantly on issues like this," the official told Reuters.

While Europe may have learned the value of standing up ​to Trump, the challenge is ensuring it is less exposed next time.

***

After the signing of the EU-Mercosur pact this month - the largest in EU history - European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it is now "on the cusp" of ​a deal with India.

However, nobody is saying Europe can redress the imbalance with the U.S. overnight, particularly on security.

Despite European commitments to a ‍defence spending surge and even calls for an EU army, analysts say it will be years before its military might is up to tasks which now include bolstering Arctic security.

The question is whether the past few weeks provide a catalyst for Europe to start reducing its U.S. ​dependencies.

"All this is not surprising," Swedish deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch said of Trump's showing in Davos.

"The EU needs to toughen up," she told Reuters.

Destruction for the sake of destruction, without profit to the country, is what Trump has accomplished in Europe. He is also turning that destructiveness onto this country.

Mark Carney has made his mark on world history as no other Canadian Premier has.

Read the full transcript of Carney’s speech to World Economic Forum (World News, January 20, 202, video)

Canadian PM Carney fires back at Trump over claim that 'Canada lives because of the United States' (Fox News)

During his address on Tuesday, Carney did not mention Trump by name, but rather he said that "rules-based order is fading," referencing the U.S.

He admitted that there were benefits to US. leadership on the world stage, but painted the entire concept of a rules-based international order as a falsity that is actively failing. Additionally, in his address, Carney urged middle powers, like Canada, to assert themselves and take the opportunity to "build a new order that embodies our values."

 

The occupation of Minneapolis: how residents are resisting Trump’s ICE 'invasion' – video (The Guardian, video, 1/23/26)

Clergy arrested, businesses shutter as Minnesotans protest Trump's surge in immigration agents  (Reuters, 1/23/26)

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Local police arrested dozens of clergy members who sang hymns and prayed as they knelt on a road at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport as part of a day of protests and walkouts on Friday against U.S. President Donald Trump's deployment of thousands of immigration enforcement officers in the Twin Cities.

The protest was part of an "ICE OUT!" day of action, with organizers and participants saying scores of businesses across Minnesota closed for the day and workers headed to street protests and marches in what they described as a general strike.

***

Trump, a Republican, launched the Minnesota crackdown in part in response to fraud allegations against some members of the state's large community of people of Somali origin. He has called Somali immigrants "garbage" and said they are to be removed from the country as part of his effort to expel more immigrants, including some admitted into the country to seek asylum and other lawful residents, than any of his predecessors.

Minnesota residents have responded with anger, making noise in the streets day and night with whistles and musical instruments. Some agents and protesters have yelled obscenities at each other, and agents have deployed tear gas and flash-bang grenades to scatter crowds. The Trump administration says some protesters have harassed agents and obstructed their work.

 American Psycho: How Donald Trump Brought the “Bateman Doctrine” to the World (Literary Hub, 1/23/26)

What Donald Trump has done to the Rule of Law, and to international relations more broadly, cannot be explained by ideology or even corruption alone. It makes more sense when viewed as narcissism elevated to doctrine. Not strategy. Not realism. Performance. Validation. Domination for its own sake. The self as the organizing principle of the state.

This is where Patrick Bateman stops being a literary monster and becomes a governing metaphor.

Bateman does not believe in rules. He believes in surfaces. Business cards. Reservations. Who is winning the room. The law exists only as background noise, something that applies to other people, lesser people, invisible people. When consequences appear, they evaporate under scrutiny. No one wants to see. No one wants to know. The system itself collaborates in his impunity because acknowledging the truth would implicate everyone.

Trump governs from the same interior logic.

***

This is not chaos. It is coherence of a different kind.

Bateman’s violence is not driven by rage. It is driven by boredom and entitlement. He hurts people because he can, and because doing so confirms his reality. Trump’s dismantling of legal and diplomatic norms follows the same pattern. He breaks because breaking proves power. He lies because lying demonstrates that truth no longer restrains him. He humiliates allies because humiliation clarifies hierarchy.

Foreign policy, under this logic, becomes an extension of the mirror.

International law assumes actors who at least pretend to believe in restraint. It assumes shame. It assumes reputation matters over time. Narcissism collapses time into the present moment. What matters is today’s headline, today’s crowd, today’s assertion of dominance. Long term consequences are abstract and abstraction is intolerable to a personality organized around constant validation.

Patrick Bateman does not plan futures. He performs scenes.

Trump’s approach to NATO, to trade, to diplomatic norms follows the same script. Loyalty is personal, not institutional. Agreements are revocable on impulse. Threats are theatrical. Praise is currency. Policy becomes indistinguishable from mood.

This is why attempts to explain Trumpism through conventional political analysis often feel inadequate. They assume motivation where there is impulse. They assume strategy where there is appetite. They assume belief where there is only self regard.

***

A society that cannot confront narcissism at the level of power will normalize it as character. A legal system that treats bad faith as noise will slowly surrender meaning. An international order that relies on norms without enforcement will discover that some actors never believed in the game.

Trump did not invent this condition. He revealed it.

Sooner or later, he will turn on MAGA. He will bring down Götterdämmerung on us all. Narcissism cannot get enough validation any other way.

 

 

 sch 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's Talk About Indianapolis, Muncie, History and the Brighter Lights

 While Trump spends our historical capital like a crackhead on a binge, let's not forget about some better things about this country.

The food in Indianapolis, for instance.

Several Hoosiers named James Beard Award semifinalists  

The James Beard Awards are perhaps the most prestigious awards in the food world. On Wednesday, the James Beard Foundation released the semifinalists for this year’s awards, which included seven different Hoosiers.

Hoosiers in the running for the so-called “Oscar of the food world” include an Indianapolis restaurateur, a pastry chef, and a husband-wife chef duo.

In 2025, only two Indianapolis restaurants were named as semifinalists. These restaurant owners say that’s a testament to Indy’s evolving food scene 

The semifinalists represent different cuisines and come from Indianapolis, Carmel and Clark County in southern Indiana. They say as the area grows, so does its food scene 

Or our arts scene.

Meet the Maker: 2025 DeHaan Artists of Distinction (Axios Indianapolis)

The inspo: Every year, the DeHaan Artist of Distinction awards Hoosier contemporary artists grants of up to $10,000 to pursue aspirational projects.

• The 2025 winners chosen by a panel of visual art professionals were announced last week.
• Their final projects will be shown later this year during a special exhibition at Gallery 924.

Zoom in: Meet the 2025 DeHaan Artist of Distinction winners.

Or the beauty of model railroads, Muncie Edition.

Muncie's 34th Annual Model Train Show Feb. 28 

Delaware County Fairgrounds will host Muncie and Western Train Club's 34th Annual Model Train Show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 28. 

The event is "Indiana's largest and longest-running single-day train show," according to a Jan. 9 event flyer.

Some weirdness from Muncie. Funny how I see art work in town saying "Keep Muncie weird".

Delaware County inmate charged over bid to kiss corrections officer 

An investigator who viewed a surveillance video reported Johnson "wrapped his arms around (the officer's) upper body from behind, then grabs her face in an aggressive manner attempting to kiss her."

Close out with a little history lesson from Indianapolis.

Blue Line crews uncover tracks from city’s electric railway  (Mirror Indy)

The first electric streetcar line in Indianapolis was built in 1890 along Illinois Street from Union Station to Fairview Park, a former 246-acre park that is now the site of Butler University. Traveling from one end of the line to the other took about an hour.

Over the years, the railway tracks expanded throughout the city and by 1920, the city’s streetcar system carried about 126 million passengers a year.

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The first car was built in Germany in 1886 and by the early 1900s, companies throughout the world were competing to build their own cars.

In Indianapolis, companies like Nordyke & Marmon, Duesenberg Automobile and Motors and Lafayette Motors worked to produce luxury cars on the west side.

City railways brought workers to manufacturing plants, like the American Foundry at 565 S. Warman Ave. and the General Motors Stamping Plant at 340 S. White River Parkway W Drive.

As the use of cars grew, fewer people used railways. By 1933, ridership had decreased to 52.9 million passengers a year.

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In 2014, the Indiana General Assembly passed a mass transit bill that prevents state funds from being used on certain light rail projects. In 2018, some legislators attempted to repeal it in order to make the city more competitive for Amazon’s second national headquarters, but that bill failed.

IU Health closed the People Mover in 2019, citing high costs, and replaced its functions with shuttle buses. Its elevated rails are still visible downtown.

That article led me to this notice of an exhibit at The Indiana Historical Society: The Electric Railway: Indiana’s Interurbans  

Yes, we once had a real public transportation system in Indiana.

 What we have to look forward to in the coming days:

 

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Slipping Behind On Time

 Yesterday, I spent five hours working on one chapter for "One Dead Blonde". Then I caught the bus to the grocery - 90 minutes there, more or less. But I was tired when I left and tired when I returned. I napped for like three hours. I spent the night on a Link Wray kick and working on another chapter.

 

Wednesday, it was around 7 hours working on a chapter. A few changes in the plot, having to deal with incomplete copies from an OCR's version of the original typescript; these take more time than I expected.

Not that I also did not pay attention to politics, but I have another post pending on that. It has been pending for days.

Awaiting snow and cold. Hard to type with cold hands.

I have a research project to start; a novella to revise. And the quotidian tasks of washing the dishes and cleaning up the apartment.

I have about 30 minutes before I need to catch the bus that will get me to the group session.

Onto other items for the day.

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