February 14, 2025

Saint Valentine.

Bach on Pandora

Last dream of the night featured P, of whom I lost track in the eighth grade, lecturing me on how my life has been, essentially, pointless, and how the confusing light beams that come from my glasses make people hesitant even to talk with me. 

Took DJ to the doctor. The waiting room was filled with misery, debility, fear, people helping one another in and out for door, waiting in the rain for uncertain rides. I compared this to moon-faced Musk cavorting on the TV, oily with health and stupidity. 

Each day brings new horrors from Washington. We are in not an incipient but a full-blown dictatorship, accomplished in two weeks by people who warned us every step of the way what they were about to do. One of the things one never imagined for oneself. Somebody will stop it. Law will stop it. An independent judiciary will stop it. A tradition of rationality will stop it. A tradition of country before self will stop it. Wrong–so far–on every count. If I thought guns would stop it, would I join in? I’m not sure at all of my aim, not having handled a gun since Boy Scout camp. I shock myself by thinking, “yes, as it appears now, it is that dire.” The NRA justified its otherwise blood-soaked existence by saying it would keep people ready in case of the rise of an oppressive government. Waiting. . . .

The felonious mayor of New York is released from penalty if he will agree to betray his own immigrant population. 

No single Republican is free of the onus of this. 

A curious line of thought, though, skirts the edges where I am, or had been, in the tinniest degree of agreement with the apparent ends of the putsch. DEI was a calamity for academia. Our former and eternally despised Provost ruined the English department (or maybe it was the whole university?) by declaring that all hires henceforward would be diversity hires. It’s not that we doubted the existence of excellent diverse employees, but knew, in the current atmosphere, we would never get them. We recognized a deliberate effort toward mediocrity, or worse, mediocrity being easier to control than excellence. Our long line of female Chancellors and Provosts need not have but did in fact illustrate the perils of diversity hires. It’s impossible to believe that in any case (except MG) that they were the best candidate offered. Serving on one search committee or another, I recognized that the appeal to diversity caused us to settle on the second–or third–best candidate. We were willing then, assuming a great injustice was being balanced by a little one. That acknowledged, The Trump scourging is like noticing your house needs a new paint job, and deciding therefore to burn it to the ground. 

Also, one acknowledges that none of this is in Trump’s mind or in the minds of any of his cadre. It is all about the seizure of power, by any means necessary, with any excuse widely palatable. Mitch McConnell, hypocrite and corrupt Machiavellian that he is, is now the lone man in the Senate. If you live long enough, you will end up doing some good thing. . . .