A gift we might have done without

We wake up and check his Twitter feed 

and we can feel exactly what the pres-

ident is thinking, said Thomas Binion, 

director of congressional and execu-

tive branch relations at the Heritage 

Foundation. That’s brand new to Amer-

ican politics. We haven't had access 

to a president's mindset and emotions.

Novelty is not everything it's crack-

ed up to be, in the assumption of the

Executive Branch of the American gov-

ernment. In her first year of madness

rampant over head, the United States

is not the only entity which has been

changed, as has been noticed well, in

the reports cited below. Her people,

and the natural world, itself, have

undergone the imprint of his madness,

the stab of Ahab's extremity on the

slimy deck of his Samsung abbatoire.

Great, frantic and terrible waste has

only begun. We have seen, there is no

distance between American captives of

this anomaly, and those situated else-

where in the world, to look on in hor-

ror at the degradation of the context

of their life by malevolence and in-

stability, in freakish possession of

so much necessary power to do good.

This page, an exercise in identifying

customs in common - a phrase borrowed

affectionately from the late English

historian E.P. Thompson - has adopted

the label, ain't we got fun, for en-

tries addressing this condition. That

reference goes on, for continuity's

sake, and with rededicated satire. It

is the hopeful mode. Despite alarm of

cause or bearing, it preserves play.

It remains, then, to defy his corrup-

tion of play, resourcefully refusing

his game, without ever ignoring its

vile intents. He feints to exhaust -

as he has been, by decades of practic-

ing the jests he hawks to his horde.

This is a man who must never have
won or lost fair, and knows he hasn't.
How wonderfully he deserves the high.

Hermelindo Fiaminghi

Alternado 2

1957

Charles Simic

Year One

  Our President Ubu

The New York Review

  of Books

November 6, 2017©

Katha Pollitt

Year One

  My Anger Management

The New York Review

  of Books

November 7, 2017©

Masha Gessen

Autocracy

  Rules for Survival

The New York Review

  of Books

November 10, 2016©