Lunching in Anderson; Law & Morality; Watching For The End of US

 9:03 AM:

Not blinded by the light this early in the morning, but damn it is hard to be a saint in the city - unless you don't leave your apartment.

2 hours of being awake, and don't ask me what I did. Because I am about to tell you. I finished the box I did not finish last night. Ate some yogurt. Getting hopped up on nicotine and caffeine. I found a ton of letters to you - is there any moral reason to keep them? I have one more box to finish. Then I will have the journal organized. Not typed, just organized. I get the trash out, I will have the min room almost set up. That leaves the bedroom. That has been on hold because more stuff is out here, and I can keep wearing the same clothes, if I do not go anywhere. I need to get in the change of address form, which means I need to fill it out in the next hour or so. I am going to Anderson for lunch with MW. Last night, I found a few more segments of "A Lynching" - and a bunch more that needs to be typed. Also, the second Mark and Stacy novel!

Why We Must Resist (Sheila Kennedy)

It’s hard for me to get my head around the fact that so many of our neighbors are perfectly willing to support a lawless and increasingly vicious regime, willing to ignore or excuse or even support the reality of the summary with which I opened this post. Many of them, no doubt, are unaware of much of it–they live in bubbles, getting their “information” from Fox and multiple other propaganda sites. To the extent that they are aware, they are evidently supportive of what they see as an exchange of constitutional civic equality for the White Christian male dominance they would prefer.

Historians tell us that the effort to turn America into a Christian theocracy–an effort summarized and documented in Project 2025– began decades ago. Normal Americans have largely been unaware of that effort as they’ve gone about their daily lives.  It’s understandable that the majority are only now waking to the magnitude of the threat. (The pace of that recognition has actually been abetted by the sheer buffoonery and incompetence of the Trump administration.) 

There are a number of signs, large and small, that the majority is finding its voice: the increasing number of spontaneous protests; the huge Jimmy Kimmel response; the efforts by lower court judges to hold the constitutional line and protect the rule of law… and the fact that Amazon is selling lots of pre-made protest signs, suggesting there’s a substantial market.

AOC keeps surprising me, who once dismissed her as being a product of her Congressional district:

 Shirley Jackson and the Eerie Omniscient Narrator (Counter Craft) - talks about a book I have heard of, never rad, and makes really great points about narration.

I spent some time with poetry this morning: Bukowski Bench to Bed (Roanoke Review)

I cannot escape politics: Bondi to Congress: 🖕(The Bulwark). I watched AG Bondi's testimony and I have to say I was not impressed. It was like watching a child trying to sit at the adult's table.

There’s no reason, after all, why an AG as slavish as Bondi couldn’t at least pretend to maintain some semblance of impartiality during high-profile public appearances. She could pay lip service to the concept of Justice Department independence. She could answer (or dodge) Democrats’ questions more respectfully. When Sen. Dick Durbin asked who had signed the order to have the FBI flag any mentions of Trump in the Epstein files, it’s hard to imagine anyone but the biggest MAGA dead-enders finding her snide response compelling: “I’m not going to discuss anything about that with you, senator.”

A more measured approach may have actually served this administration well—at least down the road, should the balance of power change in Congress..

But that wasn’t the play the boss wanted to run Bondi’s contemptuousness before the Senate Judiciary Committee was designed to send a clear message: You have no power to stop us.

9:36 PM

I went to Anderson, had lunch with MW, and came back to Muncie. I drove back on county roads, went by the place I lived during my high school years, and found much, again, that has changed. Behind the old house, there appears to be trees that were not there 44 years ago. That is enough time for much growth. The trees have some small changes of color; even more, they seemed so fully grown and alive.

Back here, I went through the email before napping. I hate to admit how the little amount of traveling made me tired. When I awoke, it was close to 8. PM.  I walked down to the convenience store on University for cigarettes. After my little walk, I finished off the one box remaining, and now the journal is organized. 

I read 8 Books About (Literally) Divided Countries (Electric Lit) by Tamar Shapiro, and wondered if these books might shine light on William Faulkner and the other Southern writers. Considering how the South has poisoned American politics even unto today, those writers could be writing about the loss of their country, of their distinction from the remainder of the union. Northern writers do not - to the best of my knowledge - think along these lines. We won the war, we were the nation; there was no reason to see ourselves as anything but the nation - the South was backwards in certain ways hidden under rural quaintness, but they were us and would become more like us as time went by. We were wrong in our self-satisfaction.

The Moral Stupefaction of the American Public by Joseph Margulies (The Boston Review) does something that needs to be done - something often ignored by lawyers and law schools - is that morality and law are not the same thing; that law can be used for immoral purposes.

Finally, reducing this controversy to a debate about the law intensifies the ongoing moral stupefaction of the American public. In a theocratic society, disputes are resolved by invoking a holy book; in our society, which claims to worship the rule of law, disputes are resolved by invoking the legal authority to act. The ultimate touchstone of this authority is the Constitution. In the United States, when people wonder whether something is right or just, they are not met with an answer that proves rightness or justice. Instead, they are told that it is legal, or even better, that it is constitutional (or, for some partisans, that it was or would have been approved by “the Founders,” a nebulous group that is treated with God-like reverence and imbued with God-like infallibility). Law-speak thus substitutes for moral judgment.

In other words, we are sold the myth that the language of legality is preferable to the language of morality because it is impartial and fixed. But as this whole dispute makes plain, that is least apt to be true precisely when it matters most. As the voice of bald power, law in this instance has no more legitimacy than any political act. Unfortunately, the longer Americans indulge this mindless preference for the language of the law over morality, the weaker their moral voice becomes. In time, they lose the ability to say, forthrightly and without fear, that what the Trump administration has done is cold-blooded murder for which they and their partisans should be ashamed. They are forced to say, pathetically, that what the Trump administration has done is unlawful, instead of insisting, without hesitation or equivocation, that it is wrong.

I suggest any sane person interested in American politics read Sheila Kennedy's Teams Versus Tribes.

Back in that day, Republicans and Democrats were two teams. The thing about teams is that they are playing the same game and obeying the same rules. That political “game” was governing, and the goal was to score policies that benefited your constituency. (Yes, both teams had players who were all about themselves, or in the pocket of some moneyed interest, or embarrassingly dumb, but those were the exceptions. The majority really did care about legislating policies they believed were sound, even if they disagreed about what those policies were.)

Those days are over.

Over the intervening years, the “Red team”–the Republican team I played on back then–has morphed into a tribal cult. Its more liberal, moderate and thoughtful members have been ejected, leaving virtually everyone unwilling to accept the new tribal identity without a team. Some of us became Democrats, others, disenfranchised Independents.

The problem with that change from teams to tribes should be obvious. While teams are competing to win the same game, tribes aren’t interested in either competition or the game–instead, they are intent upon clearing the playing field of those despised “others.” Rather than engaging in policy debates–the “game”–or concerning themselves with issues of governance, they are focused on defeating those not in their. tribe. They are intent upon establishing dominance.

I have had Gore Vidal lurking in a Zen browser tab for several days now, but I want to do a separate post on Will Lloyd's Gore Vidal: American prophet (The New Statesman).

Ah, Dame Diana Rigg:

That brings me up to date.

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