We wake up and check his Twitter feed
and we can feel exactly what the pres-
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-
of their life by malevolence and in-
stability, in freakish possession of
This page, an exercise in identifying
customs in common - a phrase borrowed
affectionately from the late English
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
Year One
The New York Review
of Books
November 6, 2017©
Katha Pollitt
Year One
The New York Review
of Books
November 7, 2017©
Autocracy
The New York Review
of Books
November 10, 2016©
