A little monumental, savage treachery, anyone?

The New American Government has waived
its long-standing strategic fastidious-
ness of opposition toward the Turks'
long-standing genocidal disdain toward
Kurdistan, with a more immaculate per-
fection than ever of strongman fury a-
gainst creeping cultural pluralism. If
the unintended consequence is the be-
trayal of three national interests in
a single gesture of savagery, who will
be the one to protest the abandonment
of anti-terrorist allies, of a critic-
al component of Iraqi territorial in-
tegrity, and of this nation's reliab-
ility in international commitments,
for who could ever dream of refusing
the affections of a vicious tyrant?

Eric Schmitt and

  Maggie Haberman

Trump endorses Turkish

  military operation ...

The New York Times

October 7, 2019

Saturday commute clxxvi: Carbon footprints we have known

I guess the implications of the ex-
tinction now being foretold are that
when our mesquite smokers and grills
are discovered, centuries after this
next Pompeii, they'll be exhumed by
some unprecedented species, at best,
and not just by some unforetold it-
eration of our own. This is almost
too troubling to contemplate, for
fear that our cauldrons and metals
and igneous kettles may, unlike the
classical crockery entombed by Vesu-
vius, in all their decorative narra-
tive, be doomed to inscrutability,
a testament of Usage, untranslated.

Maynard Dixon
No Place to Go
1935

Order to dazzle

New York's Museum of Modern Art,
having made itself great again,
is readying a reception for the
flag of Jasper Johns (1954-55).
Advance publicity suggests that
the curators have entertained
themselves no end, with the de-
light of proposing new juxtapo-
sitions of the wittiest impli-
cations of the age. Now, it is
difficult to suppress a slight
anticipatory squeal of one's
own, at such innocent reshuf-
fling of familiar iconography,
at the very moment when the
playful American President is
outdoing himself with novel
rearrangements in the separa-
tion of powers by a similarly
coy curatorship. Readers, too,
should one have a flag to sus-
pend, or a President, are ad-
vised to extend an experiment-
al sense of play to their own
re-conceptions of order.

i  Jeenah Moon, photography
   The New York Times©

Specie of consent

Robert Frank, studying a roll of 35mm negat-ives in 1956, raises the question of how information is processed for purposes of communication. Now we ponder the American President, and this subject of his mastery.

Ukrainians demonstrating in Kiev in 2015, against their corrupt State prosecutor and his cronies, raise the question of why the American President would claim that his own domestic political rival had labored to quell an investigation there which had never taken place. 

Which is the greater riddle: how, with the most omniscient intelligence service in the world at his instantaneous disposal, the American President ignores their information in favor of lunacies disseminated by his flock; or, how he literally does not choose to share information, if he can furnish psychotic stimulation, instead?

i    Wayne Miller, Magnum©

ii   Sergei Chuzavkov, AP/The New York Times©

iii  The New York Times©

Note to Americans

   

   In many ways it is shock-

   ingly shameful, that one

   privileged observer might

   finally portray the palp-

   able upheaval with which

   we all quiescently have

   lived, whether with com-

   plaint or exultation. To

   be 'roused by some anon-

   ymous prophet to confess

   the necessities of res-

   ponsibility, is unusual.

   What is the measure of

   consent in the governed?

But let's not lose our sense of humor

I, for one, have never been less than

delighted whenever the American Pres-

ident dismisses one of his more appal-

ling depredations of speech, as mere-

ly sarcastic. Who can object to even

the most abject desperation to deny

his own intentions, when they are so

immaculately exposed? Not for a mo-

ment, could anyone suggest that such

self-exculpation should deprive one

of a narcissistic claim of exemption  

for cheeky blondfanny, as opposed to

being seen for the worst ass around.

All this quivering, getting to you?

I was thinking, it might just be

timely for the Speaker to accept

one of those speaking engagements

which are the bane of a San Fran-

ciscan's existence, to mollify

the unseemly vibrations coursing

through her Party from the unend-

ing teases of the President. He

plays their strings of righteous

moral compulsion as the gift they

are to himself, from his spoiling

Office of infinite prerogatives;

and there is cause to soothe this

quivering with a little demonstra-

tion of sang froid that's seen it

all. At least she, of all obser-

vers, will understand how sumptu-

ously it suits the President, to

be chided on arms concessions to

someone unlikely to employ them.

A head fake, contrary to inter-

est, is a bauble to polish as

fondly as Yorick's skull, in the

pageant of histrionic vengeance.

So much eloquence, so little time

I've been interested in The Aeneid again lately, so I've been less attracted to the prospect of achieving moral satisfaction, offered by people who advocate the impeachment of the American President, when the commitments of translators of that poem fur-nish so much of that fleeting peace by their example. The rendering of that work into English is one of the great struggles the mind can undertake, and we have seen how the ordeal yields an appreciation of an impossibility revealed even in the original. Inevitably, to witness this dilemma's exposure is to undergo the seeming urgency of experiencing its consequence, a trust in the limits of the intellect against impassioned certitude.

Human beings appear to have no choice but to strive for beautiful, orderly explanations of the ugly things we do. These explanations may also represent a basic drive - and in one way a more painful one. We have chances to get land, livelihood, and security for the next generation, pretty much in the forms we imagined or even better, though the cost will be high. We cannot match in reality our vision of what we need to create from our minds. Virgil couldn't, and I certainly couldn't in my efforts to translate his glorious poem.

Anything like a zeal for an impeachment verges on a vain matching of this awe-somely fateful need to create, with reality. Who sees its consequence?

James McNeill Whistler

The Ocean Wave

1883-84

  Whistler in Watercolor

  On exhibition at the Freer

    through November 3

Virgil

The Aeneid

Sarah Ruden

  translator

  fragment from her

  essay of introduction

Yale University Press, 2008©