A massive general strike is the next logical step.
Trump is running a criminal enterprise. His dregs of society Gestapo wanna- be goon squads are executing Americans in cold blood.
Your reaction cannot be, “But how will it work? Will others join? I can’t afford it.”
Right now, after all the evidence we have seen in Trump’s first year, everyone should see the writing on the wall. America has been hijacked by agents of chaos. The regime is a willing partner with Putin and other authoritarian leaders around the world. Trump is on a rampage to destroy, rape and pillage at home and abroad. He has always been the same person, fuelled by greed and criminal instincts, that convince him that he alone is deserving of whatever he desires. He has always been a felon, a racist, a bigot and a selfish prick, whose first and last concern is himself.
He managed to amass his varying groups of followers by pandering to their differing offensive mandates. He unified his rabid base because he promised to deliver to each group, despite the fact that their very varied ideals will eventually force them to battle amongst themselves.
In reality, Trump is a charlatan. He is the ultimate con man, and he will end up betraying even those aligned with his convoluted policies over time.
How can the Christian zealots supporting Israel not see that the Nazis will come for them eventually. How can the broligarchs enriching Trump not see that his nature will demand that he comes for their power and wealth.
They are all blinded by the mirage of pending victory, with the useful idiot President’s charade, of appeasing them, to achieve his own agenda of complete dominance. Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of his supporters causes or beliefs. He wants to be King of more than America, and he wants to name the heir to his stolen throne, to continue his legacy.
You may be thinking that the battle for democracy and your basic rights has been difficult thus far. You may be thinking you are exhausted and depressed by the overwhelming barrage of daily indignities and assaults on your liberties. That is understandable.
But understand this: The fight has just begun. You need to dig deep in your resolve and realize that surrender is not an option, unless you want to be merely enslaved by the demented dictator and his corrupt accomplices.
The only force that might possibly correct this aberration in power is you. You must be willing to suffer the discomfort of an extended strike, which may last weeks or months, if you wish to eliminate the possibility of living under authoritarian rule for decades to come.
As of today, there is no more normal. There is only a crazed psychopath wielding indiscriminate power to subjugate America and beyond. Only you can alter that course.
You can use whatever motivational disgust you need to enrage yourself, be it the execution of innocent protesters, the inhumane treatment of immigrants, the destruction of healthcare, the attacking of allies, the disregard for veterans, or the coverup of the Trumpstein files, but there has to be one collective goal and demand.
Donald Trump and his criminally corrupt cabinet and the complicit politicians who allow the atrocities to continue, must be removed from power. Period.
Complete regime change is the only acceptable outcome, and you must be prepared to fight for that goal with every ounce of resolve you can muster. Sitting back and praying for a correction in the midterms is a fool’s gambit. The emergency is NOW!
Greg, your narrative weaving of literature and socio-political affairs is always brilliant yet somehow this piece not only speaks to the moment, it transcends it--helps us to rise above the moment to take in a different perspective integrating exceptional pieces of literature to which we can all relate. Something has shifted in me after having read it (and actually I listened to the audio which seemed to make it even more powerful). I don't know exactly what has shifted, maybe hope, maybe resolve-- but something related to the fact that the events taking place are part of a larger landscape and in this understanding, there is still scope for the possibility to prevail, to gain ground, to stop the evil. It helps expand the aperture of our vision out.
One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes is “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.” Trauma and acute stress tend to create tunnel vision on the immediate and our immediate right now is incredibly dire. And, as much as we need to focus on it and stop the destruction and killing, it is also helpful to picture oneself within the larger context.
"I know that in time, the mercury will rise. The ice will melt, the cold will abate. And even if we don’t see it yet, there is a way out of this." The way out is solidarity, the way out is holding with both hands onto our deeper humanity, the way out is to continually highlight those in power who are accountable, the way out is to take care of your neighbor. According to Heather Cox Richardson 63% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of ICE. This is the way out.
Thank you Michelle, Weaving. I have copied and pasted your note, as you have articulated my thought reading this essay. "Greg, your narrative weaving of literature and socio-political affairs is always brilliant yet somehow this piece not only speaks to the moment, it transcends it--helps us to rise above the moment to take in a different perspective integrating exceptional pieces of literature to which we can all relate. Something has shifted in me after having read it "
Thank you, Sara. Appreciate you. And always grateful to Greg for the incredible service he provides all of us through his writing and building this supportive community.
As I was reading this morning’s essay I felt the threads Greg was weaving, literature, politics, the things that we value as important. Quite beautiful. Best regards to you Michelle
It was in her Jan 22 letter before this most recent heinous execution. I would hope that it has changed... I'm sharing her full analysis on the polls--I've also edited my comment above which had misquoted the number:
A new poll out today from the New York Times and Siena University shows that nearly two thirds of Americans, 63%, disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while only 36% approve. Even among white Americans, 57% disapprove, while only 42% approve. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 19% of Republicans, think that ICE agents have gone too far. There is more polling included at the end which includes Epstein and other topics.
In terms of your question about ignorance-- I think we are very much underestimating how dramatically different our information channels are and how very siloed they are. People reading truth social have a fundamentally different understanding of events and the algorithm reinforces it. I would like to think that seeing this latest video will make it absolutely clear but even then, they may only discredit these agents and not the administrations authoritarian politicization of ICE. I know it seems like a disappointing number but given how polarized this nation is, it's an important one and is more of a mandate than if it were below 50%.
It was instructive how quickly the narrative warfare began, trying to demonize Pretti, who was pretty obviously a lovely human. Their hatred mirrors that of the viewer who tunes in for that crap.
But this does feel different. A lot of the RW influencers have called it out. So has the NRA. Governor Hochul was on TV calling for Noem's resgnation and the arrest of Bovino...she's more careful about when she weighs in.
If we get the 65 to 70, this is all over. Isn't that the magic number?
wow-- the NRA called it out. Rogan called ICE the Gestapo after Good's killing and the RW influencers need to take it a step farther to stopping ICE and honestly discrediting the whole administration. My fear is that Trump's voters will denounce this and still think the administration as a whole is fine.
They did trash him in a nanosecond, suspicious from the gitgo. Almost like the whole thing was planned. The evil nature of the actions is as deliberate as any Nazi action.
A lot of people are stupid, a lot are cruel, a lot are making bank off this jerk, but I think the majority are just the victims of a military-grade psy-op run by Facebook and Foxnews.
Exactly, a mixed bad. Stupid, ignorant and cruel sort of hang together and describe some I know well. Some love the power and easy money and the feeling that is proof of their superiority. Guess that’s the core of the cult as I write this.
Thanks so much, Michelle. I appreciate that so much, and I'm glad it moved you.
This is all part of an ancient battle for the soul not just of America, but humanity.
Great Vonnegut quote...the writer Helen Kingston had a great tweet the other day: "Orwell gets mentioned a lot but a leader starting World War III because they didn't win a peace prize is the most Vonnegut ending to humanity I can possibly imagine."
And yes: solidarity IS the way out, the only way out.
You are not alone. There is an anecdote about a scientist who met Frost and was asked about how the planet would end...and he told him either it would be subsumed by the sun and burn or else drift into outer space and freeze...and then, a few months later, there was the poem.
We didn't have nukes in 1920, so once again, Frost seeing the future...I always forget, I think because he lived so long, how old Frost was, how long ago he was born.
Well, I guess I read into the poem what was much on my mind when I first encountered it. Perhaps I also have that forgotten anecdote bouncing around in my oftentimes faulty memory and have mixed the two together.
Frost may not have intended it that way, but the poem can certainly be read that way. And who knows, maybe the scientist knew that a weapon could be made like that one day soon. I had the same thought as you when I first read the poem.
(another) Excellent column: equal parts intellectual and visceral. As an antidote to the ICE, I listened again to Dolly Parton’s rerecording of a song about better days to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McaD2PG8jOE
But for Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash, I do not think I would have been open to country music. As a "bleeding heart liberal" from NY, my view of country music from my childhood/teenage years was to stereotype it as the soundtrack for all things right-wing. Admittedly, that was both inaccurate and intolerant. Today, country music singers/songwriters are far from monolithic in their views and I do believe Dolly and Johnny who believe(d) in the dignity in all human beings and in welcoming the stranger are role models for this new generation.
I think humans invented Hell not to scare each other to behave, but to visualize a place where the evildoers were actually punished for their sins. It doesn't happen often enough on earth.
Great discussion of the mirroring of Frost and Dante I am actually Team Wallace Stevens over Frost most of the time, but I do like a lot of Frost. (I am actually team Dante for the Inferno over Boccaccio because I've tried to read both in Italian and Bocaccio is much harder, more convoluted, to follow. This doesn't really come out in translations. Prose is much easier to "clean up" in translation than poetry For the Purgatorio and Paradiso I'm not on the team at all).
Fire and Ice has come up constantly over the trump years: the Muslim ban, the constant urging to hate those not just like you, the demonizing of Democrats. But you are right: it has never been as spot on as this. Did the ghost of Frost steer towards the acronym to make his poem live once again?
Thanks, Susan. It's also interesting that his last name is sort of an in-between point of the two extremes.
With Purgatorio and Paradiso...like with Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Matrix, we only recognize the first...parts two and three never happened! : )
Prose is much easier to clean up, and it's obviously impossible to do the terza rima in English, because none of the translations even attempt it, at least not that I've seen. A lot more words rhyme in Italian, of course.
Greg, I am sure this is another wonderful Sunday piece. Sadly I could not concentrate, such is the rage within me over what can only be called the execution of a US citizen. Forget US citizen, a decent person trying to aid another person. Is there no end to the levels of evil this administration will go to?
I am most outraged at myself as all I can do is, well nothing meaningful. I write to my useless representatives in Congress, call only to get answer machines. Express my anger, outrage on forums such as this. The knot in my stomach is so big, eating is almost impossible. Yet I stumble through my day, doing what I must. Never have I felt such despair. Shall we Prevail? For the first time all I can think is who knows?
They have both always been traitors. They know the truth but sing the Nazi anthems anyway. Ninth Circle for both of them. Cornyn should burn just for tweeting the picture of the Corona beer during the early days of the pandemic.
Old Man, the events are so sad and so rage-inducing, yours is a proper and fitting response. We, who pride ourselves on our exceptionalism and our intellect, have fallen for the ruse of a cheap conman and a gaggle of dumb Nazi cosplayers who now get to enact their sick dreams. This is not what we expected evil to look like, but evil it unmistakably is.
When I feel rage like that, I shut the laptop and go outside or otherwise distract myself, until I can focus it or burn it off.
As for this regime, it will fall, as all dictatorships do. The question is what comes after.
Greg, thanks you. Shut the laptop, certainly. I must importantly for my sanity management the device that invades every moment of my existence, my mobile phone. I have shut down notifications at the risk of missing something from Mrs OM and daughter. Only what they have to say matters.
Yes this regime will pass. As you say, what next is a real source of concern. I am taking life in half day increments, looking beyond that horizon increases my angst.
Old Man, not sure how androids work, but if you have an iPhone, you can set it to do not disturb but exempt notifications from your wife and daughter, so you won't miss anything. I do that sometimes...
As always very thought provoking. I did also believe the LA fires was a sign of what was to come. Will the artists and poets and soft hearted kind people ever have a place in this country again? I am not as hopeful as you are for a turn around at least in my lifetime.
Anita, as you can see from my comment, I also am not as hopeful as Greg either. As a 72 year old, I fear in my lifetime, evil may still be ascendant, even with the clear and obvious insanity and cruelty and criminality and terror of today…..will never understand people, never. If THIS does not awaken the conscience, NOTHING will. And it has not.
These MAGA cannot be saved. And that's okay. They were always among us. But we have to drive them out, back down under the rocks they crawled out of, and deny them entry to polite society. The ICE agents must wear the shame of this like the SS in Germany did, the rest of their days.
Being hopeful is exhausting. I am not hopeful as much as I refuse to abandon all hope.
Refusing to give up hope is not the same, alas, as being hopeful. We are so far down this path, and every day it gets harder and harder to imagine a way out without violence. And now we are starting to see the violence.
Greg, you knocked it out of the park again today. Love your Sunday literary efforts. And today’s may be my favorite. “Fire and Ice.” We are in a very, very, very bad place in this country. I live in Texas, and sadly travel in “conservative” and “Christian” circles(in quotes for a reason) mostly. If you could read the Facebook posts of way too many of my supposedly normal acquaintances, you would freak out as I do. These people are out of their ever loving minds, and are totally and completely brainwashed by Fox and the right wing machine. It is terrifying and shocking and depressing beyond belief.
Tens of millions of allegedly sane and decent individuals are all in 100% on murder and evil. They truly are. We are quite near to absolute anarchy and chaos. And my “good Christian people” are the champions of the cruelty and murder. My God, what have we become?
What you wrote, Rick, made me think again of the only solution I see: time for a divorce.
Left coast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and hopefully the Great Lakes secede at the same time: too much for even Trump's good squad or the military to deal with. Hopefully Alaska would join Canada. Hawaii might be able to make it alone. That would leave the Neo-confederacy, and the rest of the red states to form 2 or more new nations. Texas might secede as they wanted to when Obama was president; they are the LONE star state. Florida might as well. There would just need to be an agreement to let Black citizens resettle in the north or west, and MAGAtes in the blue states to go south.
I think we would be better off. Each nation would form its own constitution in accordance with their very different values from other nations formerly part of the U.S. We could throw the outdated U.S. Constitution in the bin of history where it belongs.
I know this is probably exactly what Putin wants, but I think we would all be better off. The world would be better off for sure. I also know there are many practical difficulties (national debt, administration of social security, the military resources), but what we have now is unbearable. Can breaking up into at least a half-dozen and maybe more new nations be worse?
Lincoln, I have spoken about this with my friends many, many times. The entire NE US would be called American Coalition of Eastern States, or ACES for short. We would join the EU and NATO. That is preferable to the whole country going Nazi.
But I don't want to abandon my friends in Texas and Florida and Georgia. And there are still plenty of Nazis here, too. Depriving Trump of the economic engines of NY and CA would hurt him. A lot.
And will get more unbearable. I have thought much of that as I have seen churches and so-called good people become cruel and proud of their self-righteousness. The national sickness won’t end well, cults never do.
It's not just Texas. It's also suburban NJ, which is not nearly as conservative or religious. People are just slaves to whatever the yowling morons and bleach blondes on FoxNews or Newsmax tell them. The echo chambers of social media perpetuate the lies and the hate.
And people are very much against their own interests. I have a family member whose lone grandson was born in Peru -- a US citizen, but born in Peru -- and she thinks this is all wonderful. It's like she can't make the very small leap necessary to imagine ICE taking him away. And then apply that outwardly.
We don't need a general strike. We need to shut down Fox News.
Greg, I agree 100% with this last comment from you to me, especially about Fox. I know I am talking like we are friends, but the stupefying insanity has drive me insane too. Just writing it down is helpful and therapeutic.And most here in Texas are clearly and willfully on the side of evil OR pretend everything is as it was, both sides bad, business as usual, etc., etc. IT IS NOT NORMAL. Fox News+ Facebook =the end of the grand and noble 250 year experiment. I fully believe it is over.
3 quick examples that happened this week in my little world.
1. Mark Andrew Olsen—personal friend, went to church together a few years ago, creative writing college professor of all things, supposed great Christian, late 50’s or so in age, he and wife adopted two girls from China too(!!!), justifying murder and more on Facebook.
2. Howard McDaniel—-old acquaintance from high school over 55 years ago, also on Facebook justifying Trump, the murders and more with a 6 point screed straight from Fox about Biden and MILLIONS of illegal criminal aliens invading, etc. and people commenting agreeing wholeheartedly with murder.
3. While getting a pedicure on Wednesday(Trump Davos day) with every single employee and I expect owner being Vietnamese and only one spoke ANY English, the tv was on Fox News!!! It was turned down low thank heavens so could barely hear the commentators, and no one was even watching. But the headlines and chyrons on screen(every time I looked up) were “european temper tantrum” and the like. It was 100% lies and/or pure propaganda and sick and untrue stuff.
It was surreal and freaked me out. Do these workers and the owner not know Fox would deport every single one of them in a second, legal or not, citizen or not???? Our country is in a mass psychotic break and terminally insane. Fox should be banned—really. We are committing national suicide.
That was the Reagan plan when they were celebrating his arrival in Jan 1981. Article in WaPo quoted repubs as saying that Rupert used the front page, the back,page, and every page to get Reagan elected. Rupert is, and has been, the silent instigator in more evil crap than most know about. He likes to, as he said, have the phone answered by the powerful when he calls. Chump likes to be the devil on display, Rupert the opposite.
Another master class which I knew almost nothing about, but which I sobbed through, considering the news of the day. The thought of these vipers frozen in hell makes me smile and I worry that it makes me hate too much. For a reluctant optimist, I appreciate your ray of sunshine. Badly needed…
So many mixed emotions, so sad, so pissed off, so mournful, so proud, and yet so disillusioned. All deliberately set in motion by the worst of the worst…
Greg, thank you for all the treasures of thought and perspective you bring forth for our reading pleasure. For me, every characteristic of your writing is an educational and inspirational experience. The maps have been drawn and presented to end this regime if Congress would just do their jobs, and it could end before mid-terms.
I have it on good authority (Lucifer's) that Trump has certainly checked off each of the nine, descending circles of hell. Mind you, Lucifer tells me that he only threw in No. 1 as a sop to the Borgia popes who were his friends:
1. Limbo (Unbaptized/Virtuous Pagans)
2. Lust (Desire)
3. Gluttony (Excess)
4. Greed (Hoarding/Waste)
5. Wrath (Anger)
6. Heresy (Unbelief)
7. Violence (Brutality)
8. Fraud (Deceit)
9. Treachery (Betrayal)
But Lucifer - who had retired to a Caribbean island of his own since he has others to do all his work for him - tells me that he is unleashing fire and ice across our land as an expression of his disgust at the willful stupidity of our electorate for putting Trump back into office.
But unleashing fire and ice storms are simple enough for someone of his caliber, Lucifer adds. However, he hates Trump with a vengeance since the sick son-of-a-bitch has forced him out of retirement in order to undertake the back-breaking work of digging even deeper to create a 10th circle:
Love another literary Sunday, Greg, although poetry has always been my weakest genre. But, as it happens, I twice taught Dante's "Divine Comedy" (the 2nd time with Musa's translation--so good) and also taught Frost a couple of times (early in my career when our teaching load was 4 courses per semester rather than the current 3, and our department was so overstuffed with English majors I couldn't just teach my specialty of dramatic literature). I enjoyed reading and discussing both poets with my students. They are opposites in a way: Dante incredibly complex (everything in 3's to parallel the trinity), Frost deceptively simple (stubbornly ambiguous, as in "Stopping by Woods..." and "The Road Not Taken" and many others).
As for your application of both poets to our times: yes, we are in hell. (But let's hope it only seems that way and it turns out to be purgatory [we get to paradise eventually], as I said of my doctoral program. :)
As a Christian, I stopped making pronouncements about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell long ago. We all will have to answer for our sins; which of us is shown grace and which are not is up to God.
So while it's tempting to imagine Trump and his cronies in the 9th circle, I can honestly say I would much rather he experienced a true conversion and started undoing all the harm he has done. Wouldn't that be miraculous and a powerful testimony that God exists?
But for all those who would chafe at the idea of Trump getting off after a lifetime of greed, corruption, etc. (same for those who object to the idea of death-bed conversions), you can always hope Dante and Catholicism in general is right that there is a middle-ground afterlife of purgatory. Trump would be there a long, long time, and if you read the penance those in purgatory go through in Dante's imagination, it's no Elysian Fields.
If ever there was a time we needed divine intervention, now is it: at least a Moses figure to rise up and scare Trump into reversing course with a series of plagues (hopefully stopping short of the tenth one in the Bible). But I imagine many people were thinking the same thing during the 1930s and WWII with Hitler. Doesn't seem like there was any divine intervention then. So I guess someone, some group will have to figure out how to defeat Trump and his Nazis. (Putin too, for that matter.)
Isn't it amazing how one person (or one person and his followers) can make the whole world a worse place in such a short time? Alas, it seems like the opposite--making the whole world a better place--always takes much longer and requires many people acting toward a common goal to do so. (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, although historically speaking, that was rather rapid: from Rosa Parks to CR legislation passed was only 10 years, but that wasn't the whole world, and of course in some ways we have been suffering from the backlash to that ever since).
Since the means this week was poetry, I will end with this Emily Dickinson poem that can help us prevail:
Wow, Lincoln, I did not know that Dickinson poem! Amazing! Beautiful! Wow.
Ha! About your doctoral program comment.
I have never gotten through all of Inferno. But I read a bunch of it for this, and yes, the Musa is really good stuff. Dante himself seems to have been quite the character: stubborn as all get-out, standing on his principles, unable to be bought off, and of course imaginative as, literally, all hell.
I think humans invented hell, not to scare us into good behavior, but to provide a vehicle to imagine the evildoers on earth actually suffering the consequences of their loathsome behavior. I am way too empathic to want to see something bad happen to anyone...although in the case of Miller and Musk and RFK, to name but three, I might make an exception.
The novelist in me is always looking for sympathy and commonality with these people. But I don't think Trump is capable of conversion. He's not introspective at all. Even if he did reverse course, it would be for purely selfish reasons. When this was all happening, with the aftermath of the Pretti execution, Trump was in a tuxedo, at the private opening of his wife's movie. Nothing could be more banal. A few bad guys do repent, for sure...Steven Hoffenberg, for example, after getting out of prison for his Ponzi scheme, did use the rest of his time and resources to help the Epstein victims, and I think that was genuine. Even Lee Atwater had a death-bed conversion, and he was as bad as they come.
But I don't believe that there is good in everyone. Most, but not all. There are some people who just lack the chip, just like there are some people incapable of singing in tune.
This is one of my favorite Sunday Pages pieces because it deals—for once—with literary areas I’m reasonably familiar with: Dante’s Inferno and Robert Frost; and because it’s concise and not convoluted in relating to current events. The most thought provoking part of this piece for me is the relating of fire and ice to desire and hatred, respectively. I see fire and ice being put into parallel categories—two equally possible potentials. I’m trying to understand what relationship between desire and hatred pertains here. In what realm or context are they similar or in opposition?
And your last question there is exactly what we discussed in the poetry class. Because it's not immediately clear that hate should oppose desire, rather than love. Thinking through all of that is the point of the poem, in a sense. It challenges our assumptions of right and wrong.
Hate is a very narrow emotion, but desire is expansive. Contraction vs. expansion. Desire comes in many forms but it warms the blood. Hatred chills it.
DO YOU WANT TO STOP A U.S. CIVIL WAR?
THIS MAY BE YOUR LAST CHANCE TO DO SO.
A massive general strike is the next logical step.
Trump is running a criminal enterprise. His dregs of society Gestapo wanna- be goon squads are executing Americans in cold blood.
Your reaction cannot be, “But how will it work? Will others join? I can’t afford it.”
Right now, after all the evidence we have seen in Trump’s first year, everyone should see the writing on the wall. America has been hijacked by agents of chaos. The regime is a willing partner with Putin and other authoritarian leaders around the world. Trump is on a rampage to destroy, rape and pillage at home and abroad. He has always been the same person, fuelled by greed and criminal instincts, that convince him that he alone is deserving of whatever he desires. He has always been a felon, a racist, a bigot and a selfish prick, whose first and last concern is himself.
He managed to amass his varying groups of followers by pandering to their differing offensive mandates. He unified his rabid base because he promised to deliver to each group, despite the fact that their very varied ideals will eventually force them to battle amongst themselves.
In reality, Trump is a charlatan. He is the ultimate con man, and he will end up betraying even those aligned with his convoluted policies over time.
How can the Christian zealots supporting Israel not see that the Nazis will come for them eventually. How can the broligarchs enriching Trump not see that his nature will demand that he comes for their power and wealth.
They are all blinded by the mirage of pending victory, with the useful idiot President’s charade, of appeasing them, to achieve his own agenda of complete dominance. Trump doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of his supporters causes or beliefs. He wants to be King of more than America, and he wants to name the heir to his stolen throne, to continue his legacy.
You may be thinking that the battle for democracy and your basic rights has been difficult thus far. You may be thinking you are exhausted and depressed by the overwhelming barrage of daily indignities and assaults on your liberties. That is understandable.
But understand this: The fight has just begun. You need to dig deep in your resolve and realize that surrender is not an option, unless you want to be merely enslaved by the demented dictator and his corrupt accomplices.
The only force that might possibly correct this aberration in power is you. You must be willing to suffer the discomfort of an extended strike, which may last weeks or months, if you wish to eliminate the possibility of living under authoritarian rule for decades to come.
As of today, there is no more normal. There is only a crazed psychopath wielding indiscriminate power to subjugate America and beyond. Only you can alter that course.
You can use whatever motivational disgust you need to enrage yourself, be it the execution of innocent protesters, the inhumane treatment of immigrants, the destruction of healthcare, the attacking of allies, the disregard for veterans, or the coverup of the Trumpstein files, but there has to be one collective goal and demand.
Donald Trump and his criminally corrupt cabinet and the complicit politicians who allow the atrocities to continue, must be removed from power. Period.
Complete regime change is the only acceptable outcome, and you must be prepared to fight for that goal with every ounce of resolve you can muster. Sitting back and praying for a correction in the midterms is a fool’s gambit. The emergency is NOW!
Stuck in the cold? Who defunded FEMA to give billions to ICE? Check this real time weather map.
https://arcg.is/1LjaKK4
Thanks, Deepak.
Greg, your narrative weaving of literature and socio-political affairs is always brilliant yet somehow this piece not only speaks to the moment, it transcends it--helps us to rise above the moment to take in a different perspective integrating exceptional pieces of literature to which we can all relate. Something has shifted in me after having read it (and actually I listened to the audio which seemed to make it even more powerful). I don't know exactly what has shifted, maybe hope, maybe resolve-- but something related to the fact that the events taking place are part of a larger landscape and in this understanding, there is still scope for the possibility to prevail, to gain ground, to stop the evil. It helps expand the aperture of our vision out.
One of my favorite Vonnegut quotes is “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.” Trauma and acute stress tend to create tunnel vision on the immediate and our immediate right now is incredibly dire. And, as much as we need to focus on it and stop the destruction and killing, it is also helpful to picture oneself within the larger context.
"I know that in time, the mercury will rise. The ice will melt, the cold will abate. And even if we don’t see it yet, there is a way out of this." The way out is solidarity, the way out is holding with both hands onto our deeper humanity, the way out is to continually highlight those in power who are accountable, the way out is to take care of your neighbor. According to Heather Cox Richardson 63% of Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of ICE. This is the way out.
Thank you Michelle, Weaving. I have copied and pasted your note, as you have articulated my thought reading this essay. "Greg, your narrative weaving of literature and socio-political affairs is always brilliant yet somehow this piece not only speaks to the moment, it transcends it--helps us to rise above the moment to take in a different perspective integrating exceptional pieces of literature to which we can all relate. Something has shifted in me after having read it "
Thank you, Sara. Appreciate you. And always grateful to Greg for the incredible service he provides all of us through his writing and building this supportive community.
As I was reading this morning’s essay I felt the threads Greg was weaving, literature, politics, the things that we value as important. Quite beautiful. Best regards to you Michelle
Thank you, Sara!
Only 65%, what a national shame. I am embarrassed beyond words. How can so many still be so ignorant for so long.
It was in her Jan 22 letter before this most recent heinous execution. I would hope that it has changed... I'm sharing her full analysis on the polls--I've also edited my comment above which had misquoted the number:
A new poll out today from the New York Times and Siena University shows that nearly two thirds of Americans, 63%, disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while only 36% approve. Even among white Americans, 57% disapprove, while only 42% approve. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 19% of Republicans, think that ICE agents have gone too far. There is more polling included at the end which includes Epstein and other topics.
Here is the link to the letter: https://substack.com/home/post/p-185508505
In terms of your question about ignorance-- I think we are very much underestimating how dramatically different our information channels are and how very siloed they are. People reading truth social have a fundamentally different understanding of events and the algorithm reinforces it. I would like to think that seeing this latest video will make it absolutely clear but even then, they may only discredit these agents and not the administrations authoritarian politicization of ICE. I know it seems like a disappointing number but given how polarized this nation is, it's an important one and is more of a mandate than if it were below 50%.
It was instructive how quickly the narrative warfare began, trying to demonize Pretti, who was pretty obviously a lovely human. Their hatred mirrors that of the viewer who tunes in for that crap.
But this does feel different. A lot of the RW influencers have called it out. So has the NRA. Governor Hochul was on TV calling for Noem's resgnation and the arrest of Bovino...she's more careful about when she weighs in.
If we get the 65 to 70, this is all over. Isn't that the magic number?
wow-- the NRA called it out. Rogan called ICE the Gestapo after Good's killing and the RW influencers need to take it a step farther to stopping ICE and honestly discrediting the whole administration. My fear is that Trump's voters will denounce this and still think the administration as a whole is fine.
They did trash him in a nanosecond, suspicious from the gitgo. Almost like the whole thing was planned. The evil nature of the actions is as deliberate as any Nazi action.
I’d like to think that we have a few more sane neighbors in the country that has been the love of my life.
A lot of people are stupid, a lot are cruel, a lot are making bank off this jerk, but I think the majority are just the victims of a military-grade psy-op run by Facebook and Foxnews.
Exactly, a mixed bad. Stupid, ignorant and cruel sort of hang together and describe some I know well. Some love the power and easy money and the feeling that is proof of their superiority. Guess that’s the core of the cult as I write this.
Thanks so much, Michelle. I appreciate that so much, and I'm glad it moved you.
This is all part of an ancient battle for the soul not just of America, but humanity.
Great Vonnegut quote...the writer Helen Kingston had a great tweet the other day: "Orwell gets mentioned a lot but a leader starting World War III because they didn't win a peace prize is the most Vonnegut ending to humanity I can possibly imagine."
And yes: solidarity IS the way out, the only way out.
It is a battle for humanity in so many ways. Kingston is spot on. I love this quote. Thank you for building solidarity in so many ways!
I’ve always interpreted Frost’s Fire and Ice as a short explication of Nuclear Winter - a quick extirpation vs. a lingering chill to the marrow.
You are not alone. There is an anecdote about a scientist who met Frost and was asked about how the planet would end...and he told him either it would be subsumed by the sun and burn or else drift into outer space and freeze...and then, a few months later, there was the poem.
We didn't have nukes in 1920, so once again, Frost seeing the future...I always forget, I think because he lived so long, how old Frost was, how long ago he was born.
Well, I guess I read into the poem what was much on my mind when I first encountered it. Perhaps I also have that forgotten anecdote bouncing around in my oftentimes faulty memory and have mixed the two together.
Frost may not have intended it that way, but the poem can certainly be read that way. And who knows, maybe the scientist knew that a weapon could be made like that one day soon. I had the same thought as you when I first read the poem.
(another) Excellent column: equal parts intellectual and visceral. As an antidote to the ICE, I listened again to Dolly Parton’s rerecording of a song about better days to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McaD2PG8jOE
Thanks, Sue. I love me some Dolly!
But for Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash, I do not think I would have been open to country music. As a "bleeding heart liberal" from NY, my view of country music from my childhood/teenage years was to stereotype it as the soundtrack for all things right-wing. Admittedly, that was both inaccurate and intolerant. Today, country music singers/songwriters are far from monolithic in their views and I do believe Dolly and Johnny who believe(d) in the dignity in all human beings and in welcoming the stranger are role models for this new generation.
May the murderous actors of our country experience the depths of Dante’s Inferno; is a satisfying idea.
I think humans invented Hell not to scare each other to behave, but to visualize a place where the evildoers were actually punished for their sins. It doesn't happen often enough on earth.
Great discussion of the mirroring of Frost and Dante I am actually Team Wallace Stevens over Frost most of the time, but I do like a lot of Frost. (I am actually team Dante for the Inferno over Boccaccio because I've tried to read both in Italian and Bocaccio is much harder, more convoluted, to follow. This doesn't really come out in translations. Prose is much easier to "clean up" in translation than poetry For the Purgatorio and Paradiso I'm not on the team at all).
Fire and Ice has come up constantly over the trump years: the Muslim ban, the constant urging to hate those not just like you, the demonizing of Democrats. But you are right: it has never been as spot on as this. Did the ghost of Frost steer towards the acronym to make his poem live once again?
Thanks, Susan. It's also interesting that his last name is sort of an in-between point of the two extremes.
With Purgatorio and Paradiso...like with Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Matrix, we only recognize the first...parts two and three never happened! : )
Prose is much easier to clean up, and it's obviously impossible to do the terza rima in English, because none of the translations even attempt it, at least not that I've seen. A lot more words rhyme in Italian, of course.
basically, for the Paradiso, blessedness is really boring.
Greg, I am sure this is another wonderful Sunday piece. Sadly I could not concentrate, such is the rage within me over what can only be called the execution of a US citizen. Forget US citizen, a decent person trying to aid another person. Is there no end to the levels of evil this administration will go to?
I am most outraged at myself as all I can do is, well nothing meaningful. I write to my useless representatives in Congress, call only to get answer machines. Express my anger, outrage on forums such as this. The knot in my stomach is so big, eating is almost impossible. Yet I stumble through my day, doing what I must. Never have I felt such despair. Shall we Prevail? For the first time all I can think is who knows?
John Cornyn’s response made me hate him as much as Ted. They are traitorous worms…
They have both always been traitors. They know the truth but sing the Nazi anthems anyway. Ninth Circle for both of them. Cornyn should burn just for tweeting the picture of the Corona beer during the early days of the pandemic.
How he got the reputation as being more sane than Ted is a mystery. He is just as odious.
Old Man, the events are so sad and so rage-inducing, yours is a proper and fitting response. We, who pride ourselves on our exceptionalism and our intellect, have fallen for the ruse of a cheap conman and a gaggle of dumb Nazi cosplayers who now get to enact their sick dreams. This is not what we expected evil to look like, but evil it unmistakably is.
When I feel rage like that, I shut the laptop and go outside or otherwise distract myself, until I can focus it or burn it off.
As for this regime, it will fall, as all dictatorships do. The question is what comes after.
Greg, thanks you. Shut the laptop, certainly. I must importantly for my sanity management the device that invades every moment of my existence, my mobile phone. I have shut down notifications at the risk of missing something from Mrs OM and daughter. Only what they have to say matters.
Yes this regime will pass. As you say, what next is a real source of concern. I am taking life in half day increments, looking beyond that horizon increases my angst.
Be wishes for a peaceful next 12 hours.
Old Man, not sure how androids work, but if you have an iPhone, you can set it to do not disturb but exempt notifications from your wife and daughter, so you won't miss anything. I do that sometimes...
Thanks, will give it a go
As always very thought provoking. I did also believe the LA fires was a sign of what was to come. Will the artists and poets and soft hearted kind people ever have a place in this country again? I am not as hopeful as you are for a turn around at least in my lifetime.
Anita, as you can see from my comment, I also am not as hopeful as Greg either. As a 72 year old, I fear in my lifetime, evil may still be ascendant, even with the clear and obvious insanity and cruelty and criminality and terror of today…..will never understand people, never. If THIS does not awaken the conscience, NOTHING will. And it has not.
These MAGA cannot be saved. And that's okay. They were always among us. But we have to drive them out, back down under the rocks they crawled out of, and deny them entry to polite society. The ICE agents must wear the shame of this like the SS in Germany did, the rest of their days.
Being hopeful is exhausting. I am not hopeful as much as I refuse to abandon all hope.
Refusing to give up hope is not the same, alas, as being hopeful. We are so far down this path, and every day it gets harder and harder to imagine a way out without violence. And now we are starting to see the violence.
Greg, you knocked it out of the park again today. Love your Sunday literary efforts. And today’s may be my favorite. “Fire and Ice.” We are in a very, very, very bad place in this country. I live in Texas, and sadly travel in “conservative” and “Christian” circles(in quotes for a reason) mostly. If you could read the Facebook posts of way too many of my supposedly normal acquaintances, you would freak out as I do. These people are out of their ever loving minds, and are totally and completely brainwashed by Fox and the right wing machine. It is terrifying and shocking and depressing beyond belief.
Tens of millions of allegedly sane and decent individuals are all in 100% on murder and evil. They truly are. We are quite near to absolute anarchy and chaos. And my “good Christian people” are the champions of the cruelty and murder. My God, what have we become?
Thank you for your work and your wisdom.
Churches were brainwashed by Rove and Bush in 2006. Then the Tea Party finished them off. Of course Rupert was singing the refrain throughout…
I wonder how Rupert talks, what with Judas, Cassius, and Brutus being chewed in his three mouths...
What you wrote, Rick, made me think again of the only solution I see: time for a divorce.
Left coast, Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and hopefully the Great Lakes secede at the same time: too much for even Trump's good squad or the military to deal with. Hopefully Alaska would join Canada. Hawaii might be able to make it alone. That would leave the Neo-confederacy, and the rest of the red states to form 2 or more new nations. Texas might secede as they wanted to when Obama was president; they are the LONE star state. Florida might as well. There would just need to be an agreement to let Black citizens resettle in the north or west, and MAGAtes in the blue states to go south.
I think we would be better off. Each nation would form its own constitution in accordance with their very different values from other nations formerly part of the U.S. We could throw the outdated U.S. Constitution in the bin of history where it belongs.
I know this is probably exactly what Putin wants, but I think we would all be better off. The world would be better off for sure. I also know there are many practical difficulties (national debt, administration of social security, the military resources), but what we have now is unbearable. Can breaking up into at least a half-dozen and maybe more new nations be worse?
Lincoln, I have spoken about this with my friends many, many times. The entire NE US would be called American Coalition of Eastern States, or ACES for short. We would join the EU and NATO. That is preferable to the whole country going Nazi.
But I don't want to abandon my friends in Texas and Florida and Georgia. And there are still plenty of Nazis here, too. Depriving Trump of the economic engines of NY and CA would hurt him. A lot.
They want us as slaves to the cruelty. Can’t be an amicable split, their mission statement is control.
And will get more unbearable. I have thought much of that as I have seen churches and so-called good people become cruel and proud of their self-righteousness. The national sickness won’t end well, cults never do.
Thanks, Rick.
It's not just Texas. It's also suburban NJ, which is not nearly as conservative or religious. People are just slaves to whatever the yowling morons and bleach blondes on FoxNews or Newsmax tell them. The echo chambers of social media perpetuate the lies and the hate.
And people are very much against their own interests. I have a family member whose lone grandson was born in Peru -- a US citizen, but born in Peru -- and she thinks this is all wonderful. It's like she can't make the very small leap necessary to imagine ICE taking him away. And then apply that outwardly.
We don't need a general strike. We need to shut down Fox News.
Greg, I agree 100% with this last comment from you to me, especially about Fox. I know I am talking like we are friends, but the stupefying insanity has drive me insane too. Just writing it down is helpful and therapeutic.And most here in Texas are clearly and willfully on the side of evil OR pretend everything is as it was, both sides bad, business as usual, etc., etc. IT IS NOT NORMAL. Fox News+ Facebook =the end of the grand and noble 250 year experiment. I fully believe it is over.
3 quick examples that happened this week in my little world.
1. Mark Andrew Olsen—personal friend, went to church together a few years ago, creative writing college professor of all things, supposed great Christian, late 50’s or so in age, he and wife adopted two girls from China too(!!!), justifying murder and more on Facebook.
2. Howard McDaniel—-old acquaintance from high school over 55 years ago, also on Facebook justifying Trump, the murders and more with a 6 point screed straight from Fox about Biden and MILLIONS of illegal criminal aliens invading, etc. and people commenting agreeing wholeheartedly with murder.
3. While getting a pedicure on Wednesday(Trump Davos day) with every single employee and I expect owner being Vietnamese and only one spoke ANY English, the tv was on Fox News!!! It was turned down low thank heavens so could barely hear the commentators, and no one was even watching. But the headlines and chyrons on screen(every time I looked up) were “european temper tantrum” and the like. It was 100% lies and/or pure propaganda and sick and untrue stuff.
It was surreal and freaked me out. Do these workers and the owner not know Fox would deport every single one of them in a second, legal or not, citizen or not???? Our country is in a mass psychotic break and terminally insane. Fox should be banned—really. We are committing national suicide.
That was the Reagan plan when they were celebrating his arrival in Jan 1981. Article in WaPo quoted repubs as saying that Rupert used the front page, the back,page, and every page to get Reagan elected. Rupert is, and has been, the silent instigator in more evil crap than most know about. He likes to, as he said, have the phone answered by the powerful when he calls. Chump likes to be the devil on display, Rupert the opposite.
Another master class which I knew almost nothing about, but which I sobbed through, considering the news of the day. The thought of these vipers frozen in hell makes me smile and I worry that it makes me hate too much. For a reluctant optimist, I appreciate your ray of sunshine. Badly needed…
Thanks, JD! It made me cry, too, when I read the poem again after deciding to write about it. And also the Dante.
So many mixed emotions, so sad, so pissed off, so mournful, so proud, and yet so disillusioned. All deliberately set in motion by the worst of the worst…
Greg, thank you for all the treasures of thought and perspective you bring forth for our reading pleasure. For me, every characteristic of your writing is an educational and inspirational experience. The maps have been drawn and presented to end this regime if Congress would just do their jobs, and it could end before mid-terms.
Thanks so much, Beverly. I appreciate that and am glad to hear it.
I have it on good authority (Lucifer's) that Trump has certainly checked off each of the nine, descending circles of hell. Mind you, Lucifer tells me that he only threw in No. 1 as a sop to the Borgia popes who were his friends:
1. Limbo (Unbaptized/Virtuous Pagans)
2. Lust (Desire)
3. Gluttony (Excess)
4. Greed (Hoarding/Waste)
5. Wrath (Anger)
6. Heresy (Unbelief)
7. Violence (Brutality)
8. Fraud (Deceit)
9. Treachery (Betrayal)
But Lucifer - who had retired to a Caribbean island of his own since he has others to do all his work for him - tells me that he is unleashing fire and ice across our land as an expression of his disgust at the willful stupidity of our electorate for putting Trump back into office.
But unleashing fire and ice storms are simple enough for someone of his caliber, Lucifer adds. However, he hates Trump with a vengeance since the sick son-of-a-bitch has forced him out of retirement in order to undertake the back-breaking work of digging even deeper to create a 10th circle:
10. Pedophilia (Child Abuse).
Homi, that is a FANTASTIC comment. No notes! Thank you!
Love another literary Sunday, Greg, although poetry has always been my weakest genre. But, as it happens, I twice taught Dante's "Divine Comedy" (the 2nd time with Musa's translation--so good) and also taught Frost a couple of times (early in my career when our teaching load was 4 courses per semester rather than the current 3, and our department was so overstuffed with English majors I couldn't just teach my specialty of dramatic literature). I enjoyed reading and discussing both poets with my students. They are opposites in a way: Dante incredibly complex (everything in 3's to parallel the trinity), Frost deceptively simple (stubbornly ambiguous, as in "Stopping by Woods..." and "The Road Not Taken" and many others).
As for your application of both poets to our times: yes, we are in hell. (But let's hope it only seems that way and it turns out to be purgatory [we get to paradise eventually], as I said of my doctoral program. :)
As a Christian, I stopped making pronouncements about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell long ago. We all will have to answer for our sins; which of us is shown grace and which are not is up to God.
So while it's tempting to imagine Trump and his cronies in the 9th circle, I can honestly say I would much rather he experienced a true conversion and started undoing all the harm he has done. Wouldn't that be miraculous and a powerful testimony that God exists?
But for all those who would chafe at the idea of Trump getting off after a lifetime of greed, corruption, etc. (same for those who object to the idea of death-bed conversions), you can always hope Dante and Catholicism in general is right that there is a middle-ground afterlife of purgatory. Trump would be there a long, long time, and if you read the penance those in purgatory go through in Dante's imagination, it's no Elysian Fields.
If ever there was a time we needed divine intervention, now is it: at least a Moses figure to rise up and scare Trump into reversing course with a series of plagues (hopefully stopping short of the tenth one in the Bible). But I imagine many people were thinking the same thing during the 1930s and WWII with Hitler. Doesn't seem like there was any divine intervention then. So I guess someone, some group will have to figure out how to defeat Trump and his Nazis. (Putin too, for that matter.)
Isn't it amazing how one person (or one person and his followers) can make the whole world a worse place in such a short time? Alas, it seems like the opposite--making the whole world a better place--always takes much longer and requires many people acting toward a common goal to do so. (e.g., the Civil Rights Movement, although historically speaking, that was rather rapid: from Rosa Parks to CR legislation passed was only 10 years, but that wasn't the whole world, and of course in some ways we have been suffering from the backlash to that ever since).
Since the means this week was poetry, I will end with this Emily Dickinson poem that can help us prevail:
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -
I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.
Wow, Lincoln, I did not know that Dickinson poem! Amazing! Beautiful! Wow.
Ha! About your doctoral program comment.
I have never gotten through all of Inferno. But I read a bunch of it for this, and yes, the Musa is really good stuff. Dante himself seems to have been quite the character: stubborn as all get-out, standing on his principles, unable to be bought off, and of course imaginative as, literally, all hell.
I think humans invented hell, not to scare us into good behavior, but to provide a vehicle to imagine the evildoers on earth actually suffering the consequences of their loathsome behavior. I am way too empathic to want to see something bad happen to anyone...although in the case of Miller and Musk and RFK, to name but three, I might make an exception.
The novelist in me is always looking for sympathy and commonality with these people. But I don't think Trump is capable of conversion. He's not introspective at all. Even if he did reverse course, it would be for purely selfish reasons. When this was all happening, with the aftermath of the Pretti execution, Trump was in a tuxedo, at the private opening of his wife's movie. Nothing could be more banal. A few bad guys do repent, for sure...Steven Hoffenberg, for example, after getting out of prison for his Ponzi scheme, did use the rest of his time and resources to help the Epstein victims, and I think that was genuine. Even Lee Atwater had a death-bed conversion, and he was as bad as they come.
But I don't believe that there is good in everyone. Most, but not all. There are some people who just lack the chip, just like there are some people incapable of singing in tune.
This is one of my favorite Sunday Pages pieces because it deals—for once—with literary areas I’m reasonably familiar with: Dante’s Inferno and Robert Frost; and because it’s concise and not convoluted in relating to current events. The most thought provoking part of this piece for me is the relating of fire and ice to desire and hatred, respectively. I see fire and ice being put into parallel categories—two equally possible potentials. I’m trying to understand what relationship between desire and hatred pertains here. In what realm or context are they similar or in opposition?
Thanks, Earl.
And your last question there is exactly what we discussed in the poetry class. Because it's not immediately clear that hate should oppose desire, rather than love. Thinking through all of that is the point of the poem, in a sense. It challenges our assumptions of right and wrong.
Hate is a very narrow emotion, but desire is expansive. Contraction vs. expansion. Desire comes in many forms but it warms the blood. Hatred chills it.
This all makes for lively discussion!
I wish I had the brain and the attention span to think the way you do, Greg. Such genius. I'm in awe.
Thanks, Sharon. You flatter me. And you're no slouch. : )
Coming from you, Greg, OMG!