Shall we protract the Age of Helplessness?

The only thing we can see, really to
give pause to Sarah Saunders' revival
of the Age of Involuntary Servitude 
to Puberty's Disturbances Defense, on
behalf of the wakening boy from Brazil
about to ravish our higher Law, is its
implication of expiring into some self-
control. The price of invoking the an-
cient gold standard of adolescent en-
titlement is its promise of an emanci-
pation all profess to welcome, except
the American President - who exalts it
as Greatness, itself. Yet who could ex-
pect the President, almost elected by
the American People, to deviate from a
principal so defining, in infiltrating
our institutions with cloned vassals?

Thus the hoary Defense, hectic in its
design to distract from the scarcity
of its cover, is only more exhibition.

Tiger Woods is back

Numerous times rebuilt, the great

race meetings at Longchamp return

naturally to mind in heavy polit-

ical weather, having been bombed

in the siege of '70 and foully

besmirched with swastikas in the

early '40s. Manet and Dégas got

there before the Communards, Bon-

nard a generation after; and to

conceive of Longchamp with eyes

not steeped in Impressionism is

less an indecency than a gesture

of inexperience with its meaning.

Something about a sport such as 

this is never vulnerable to lit-

erality's intrusion, mortal as 

its exemplars are, even somewhat 

fickle in their followings. Tiger

Woods is competing in Paris this

week, numerous times rebuilt, in

a frame held together by the same

single breath. What else is on?

Pierre Bonnard

At the Races, Longchamp

Private collection

1894

Further news of our rollicking little goodguy

Mr Ronan Farrow, chronicler ex-
traordinaire of exhibitionism's
grownup years, has traced Brett
to a dorm party at Yale, at an
age of legal if not Republican
adulthood. A surviving, dazed
recipient of our Brett's self-
cherishing offer of his play-
thing in her face, has named
herself to Farrow as its un-
receptive hostess. Her memory
is very clear, of his hoisting
up his trousers after the fact,
which will probably exonerate
him on the grounds of respect-
ing its creases. The pants, we
mean. Small wonder, he would go
on to implore Kenneth Starr to
discover how a President had
dealt with the same challenge:
an entirely sensible preoccu-
pation in a pillar of the Law.

All of which leads one to hope,
when the present unpleasantness 
is past, our Brett will enjoy 
the recompense which is his due.
A good stiff one, on the House.

Hey, Judge, borrow your gag?

Who knew, the Senate would become

such a happening place, all of a

sudden, lunging to sanitize the

life of the Party under a gag or-

der of keeping what goes down in

school, in school. Genies in bot-

tles, that kind of thing. Just as

well, the failed St Paul's School

rapist isn't angling for the fish

story unfolding this week, of the

one that got away. No, we're indul-

ging that imaginary line between a

"No," and a "No" so smothered at

the time, and tormented in its re-

lease, that we can tease about it

to encourage male youth everywhere,

to have their way while they can.

Make it all great again, you know?

This Party is not going to relin-

quish, willingly, its nostalgia

to perpetuate all it can, of what

it so long got away with, only to

fashion an election on just that.

Let it discover a choice, denied.

Suppose it were Friday clxii: Be it resolved

We are assured that novel methods 

will be adopted, and when we see 

the originality of malice, the in-

genuity of aggression, which our 

enemy displays, we may certainly 

prepare ourselves for every kind 

of novel stratagem and every kind 

of brutal and treacherous maneuver.

Winston Churchill, in his speech

to the House of Commons on June 4,

1940 - one American Presidential

term of time, before D-Day - made

plain the quality of an enemy then

in a death grapple with civiliza-

tion as his language had come to

know, indeed to parent it. Famous-

ly promising to fight them on the

beaches, in the fields, and in a

cadence of permutations memorized

by generations of grateful school

boys since, he concluded by fore-

telling a rescue of the Old World

by the New. Recently, the whole

story was filmed again, and very

well. A soldier read his speech.

The Senate of the United States

is now the quisling of an unrep-

resentative and self-seeking pow-

er, frantic to deliver a third

branch of the national government

to its clutches for a lifetime.

Recalling Franklin, they had damn

well better hang together . .

A lifetime, thieved from the na-

tion by an originality of malice

and an ingenuity of aggression,

exploiting every kind of brutal

and treacherous maneuver embed-

ded in its arcane, self-endowed

procedures, seemingly beyond the

resistance of the People it must

dominate, to abuse at will. 

At the same time, Americans con-

template the confusion and chaos

which their government seeks to 

sow in the Old World, to cast it

into a Hobbesian abyss Churchill

described so long in advance. They

don't expect a rescue of the New

World by the Old. But they see,

they are an island, of a 'roused

and coincidental yeomanry of re-

sistance against misrule in the

subverted halls of their defense.

It's not a movie. It's a language.

Fionn Whitehead

You gotta love these guys

   It's getting so that our Senate Ju-

   diciary Committee Republicans have

   begun resorting to hand signals to

   profess their courtesy to that oth-

   er gender, in which they don't par-

   ticipate. Bending, one doesn't want

   to say, over-backwards, they frame

   this chivalry in points of an ill-

   clad ultimatum, to a claimant of 

   assault by their Supreme Court nom-

   nee, to show up or shut up without

   any neutral investigation of the

   events she has documented in writ-

   ing. Aren't they pretty, in their

   ostentatious solicitude for facts,

   if only she would just play along?

   They have a timetable to uphold,

   freighted with their right to rule.

   What's the more desperate condition:

   self-entitled aggression under the

   influence, or drunkenness on power?

   You gotta love these guys. They take

   the choice entirely out of our hands.

   

   

   

Origins of Wednesday lxxx: Oasis of the tough guy

It's out there. If one squints

one can see it. The excuse for

this new American government's

loss of credibility in interna-

tional relationships, where it

had been constructively instru-

mental, until being dismantled.

Nowhere respected, nor so much

as trying to be, the new Amer-

ican government's zeal to dim-

inish the nation's position is

at its most fulfilled, to haz-

ard a reasonable guess, in the

matter of Palestine - although

to be fair, it would advise a-

gainst the use of the term. E-

rase the name. Call it, peace.

Having doubts?

No, this is not about whether boys

get away with protests with an um-

pire, more than they should. It is

about a finding reported this week-

end in The Times, on an importance

of whiteness, to self-esteem among

adherents of the new American gov-

ernment. It is 300% more defining,

to Americans who don't identify as

churchgoers, than to those who do.

Leave aside, that no one could ev-

er sanely have conceded protection

of his faith to American Republic-

ans. Look, rather, upon the bright

side of faith as a bulwark against

their worst, ever hold upon power.

i   Charlie Auterac

ii  Tom Brenner, photo
     The New York Times
     15 September 2018©