Words of wisdom: Unpopular Essays, by Bertrand Russell

"The idea that falsehood is edifying is one of the besetting sins of those who draw up educational schemes. I should not myself consider that a man could be a good teacher unless he had made a firm resolve never in the course of his teaching to conceal truth because it is what is called ‘unedifying’. The kind of virtue that can be produced by guarded ignorance is frail and fails at the first touch of reality. There are, in this world, many men who deserve admiration, and it is good that the young should be taught to see the ways in which these men are admirable. But it is not good to teach them to admire rogues by concealing their roguery. It is thought that the knowledge of things as they are will lead to cynicism, and so it may do if the knowledge comes suddenly with a shock of surprise and horror. But if it comes gradually, duly intermixed with a knowledge of what is good, and in the course of a scientific study inspired by the wish to get at the truth, it will have no such effect. In any case, to tell lies to the young, who have no means of checking what they are told, is morally indefensible."

I frequently forgot I was reading "philosophy" here. Philosophy is supposed to be dense, difficult, and ultimately nonsense.  I included most of the 'great" philosophical works of the ages, from Plato to Wittgenstein, in my decade of Western Canon reading, and very little of it struck me as  entertaining or persuasive.  Russell is very much both. In fact, he strikes me as personifying intelligent common sense, with a very pleasing wit reminiscent of GB Shaw.

I had a hard time choosing just one part to quote here, and so I settled on the part above, which is Russell's answer to the current nonsense about "American exceptionalism" and republicans who want to trust today's children with guns but not with books or accurate history.  Russell, speaking not quite a century ago, argues that American students are taught a false picture about the ideal way in which politics is supposed to work, and then when they grow up and learn how it actually works, they become cynical and are turned off from the concept of government in general.  Which is precisely what is happening now.

Lake Wobegon Without The Excitement: Main Street, by Sinclair lewis

"She had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemble frontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hills are covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and the creeks lined with dumping-grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more mean by comparison.

"The universal similarity—that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another. Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more conscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the same bungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shops show the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers of sections three thousand miles apart have the same “syndicated features”; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmise which is which."

For my money, this is Lewis's masterpiece. It wickedly satirizes American small towns, but not in a way that makes them seem entirely banal and vapid. There are good qualities and love shown here too.

The protagonist is Carol Milford, soon Carol Kennicott, an educated young woman who wants to go to the big city and make things happen, and who instead marries the town doctor in Gopher Prairie, a Midwestern town reminiscent of the one in "The Music Man". general stores, striped aprons, hate-based churches, and a general distrust of that Sodom and Gommorrah, the twin cities.  You can pinpoint the time period, as the jingoism of WWI passes through long enough for the town to oppress German-Americans for a while before abruptly shifting back to normal; but for those chapters and the technological anachronisms, you might think you were looking at Pleasantville.

There is not so much plot as a series of vignettes showing Carol's slow transition to conformity and acceptance, as millions of promising young women of her era and prior and subsequent eras experienced. The attempts at improving the library and starting a drama club thwarted by the philistine tastes of most of the town.  The vapid marriage and equally vapid something on the side. what passes for friendship and patriotism. The dingbat politics of local business and booster clubs.  In my mind, Garrison Keillor narrated, with an air not so much of "Look at these stupid hicks" as "These are the foibles of humankind." And there is affection for the lifestyle, similar to the affection one might feel for one's fantasy of a fascinating historical era, even when looking at it in the unflattering light of what it was really like.  Very high recommendations.

Art and War: Rites of Spring, by Modris Eksteins

"And so it went. The moderns were as entranced as the ancients. Both adopted this Homeric individual from small-town, midwestern America as one of their own. In that enthusiasm, however, both sides talked past each other. Nor could anyone really explain with conviction why Lindbergh had excited imaginations and yearnings to such a degree."

This is a quirky history of WWI, followed by a briefer history of the start of WWII, with an emphasis on the role that culture played in the inevitability of the war, and how the war changed culture.  The brief version is that zest for life in fin de siecle Europe, especially in Paris and Berlin, segued into zest for energy and vitality, which segued into romanticizing war, confidence in the perfection of one's own nation's culture, and finally that war would be a fun aerobic workout that would be over in a few weeks.

And then--the misery of trench warfare and poison gas, the spectacle of a large percentage of a population's youth cut down or shellshocked, and the descent of culture into twisted absurdism and nonsense.  we see dance before and after, literature before and after, patriotic sentiment and philosophy before and after.  Eksteins, who wrote in the 1980s, believes that WWI was a clear and distinct line separating earlier eras from "the modern era", and the distinction drawn here is vivid and thought-provoking. high recommendations.

That was Zen; This is Tao: Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse

"Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back."

I first learned of this book in the Summer before AP English, when it was assigned to be read before the first day of class--and then never alluded to at all. I was told that the central character was The Buddha, which was incorrect--the incarnation of the Buddha is presented as a great teacher who appears peripherally in a couple of chapters, and who Siddhartha chooses not to follow, although his friend Govinda does.

It is hard to create a compelling story about a person's search for a comforting philosophical view of the universe.  Most such stories involve gradual dissatisfaction with the quest for worldly wealth and pleasures, and a retreat into meditation and spiritualism. Siddhartha gets through this part in the first chapter, and goes on to experience and criticize asceticism, Buddhism, and human love before finding contentment in a simple existence. The Susan Bernofsky translation came with an introduction by Tom Robbins that put me in a suitable head-space for appreciating simple existence.  It felt mature and deep for a while there, and in a day or two, it was all forgotten.

Disappointing Mysteries: The Documents in the Case & Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy Sayers. Max Carrados, by Ernest Bramah

The blurb on The Documents in the Case assures us that a clue to the mysterious murder lies hidden in the series of letters written by the characters.  And yes, there IS exactly one "hidden" clue that gets pointed to at the end--but it's something so obvious that I took it for granted and didn't think it was hidden.  Moreover, there are exactly five characters other than the corpse, only two of whom count as actual suspects.  I read through the book three times, trying to find a hidden detail, preferably one that supported a clever theory that the killer was one of the people the main characters were writing to--but no, it was the obvious killer with the obvious motive, means and opportunity.

Busman's Honeymoon is a Peter Wimsey play with a fair plot and a crime one can solve if one pays attention to the descriptions of scenery and stage directions. Again, only three actual suspects, and I solved it at the end of act 2, but much better than The Documents in the Case.

Max Carrados is a collection of Holmes-like stories, the gimmick of which is that the detective is blind and solves crimes via the use of enhanced other senses. He can handle a rare coin and detect not only that it's a forgery by weight because he handled the real one years earlier and never forgets a thing, but also tell you the name of the counterfeiter and where and how he's likely to strike next.  As with much of Holmes, there are some episodes where you can figure out the general plot from Max's actions, but the details are withheld from you until Max decises to tell you what he touched and you didn't.

Things that make you go "Meh": Night and Day, & Jacob's Room, by Virginia Woolf

Night and Day is a love-pentagram in which some couples change partners frequently, and Jacob's Room is a coming-of-age book in which two-dimensional Jacob grows up, as seen by the women in his life. I was unimpressed with any character in any book, but I soldiered on.  I feel guilty about Virginia Woolf. I'm told that her writing is for women, about the things that men don't see, and--I guess I don't see them.  I would have liked to see them, but apparently my maleness is obtuse that way.

I tried.  I persisted through so many dull male Western Canon writers who promised wisdom and delivered platitudes, and now that I've reached the point in history where women were contributing to the Western Canon too, I will read their offerings, even if I'm too obtuse to see what makes them great.

That's a Mood: The Garden Party, and other stories, by Katherine Mansfield

"On her way home she usually bought a slice of honey cake at the baker's. It was her Sunday treat. Sometimes there was an almond in her slice, sometimes not. It made a great difference. If there was an almond it was like carrying home a tiny present–a surprise–something that might very well not have been there. She hurried on the almond Sundays and struck the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.  But to-day she passed the baker's by, climbed the stairs, went into the little dark room–her room like a cupboard–and sat down on the red eiderdown. She sat there for a long time. The box that the fur came out of was on the bed. She unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. But when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying".

Unlike Virginia Woolf, Mansfield is a writer who can really move me with a textured image and a mood that captures the importance and universality behind some everyday events, especially when an event changes the entire mood.  A young woman in a well-to-do family prepares for the garden party, and is shaken when she learns that someone in the slum near the end of their driveway has just died.  A recently deceased domestic tyrant's daughters come to the realization that they need no longer walk on eggshells around him.  A teacher gives music lessons, first under the impression that her fiance has broken the engagement off, and then under the understanding that he is not.  A not-young woman's outing in the sun is spoiled by the rude comments of a young couple in a way that made me cry right along with her fur.  Very high recommendations.

Feckless Old World: Antic Hay, by Aldous Huxley
Zoe ended the discussion by driving half an inch of pen-knife into Coleman’s left arm and running out of the flat, slamming the door behind her. Coleman was used to this sort of thing; this sort of thing, indeed, was what he was there for. Carefully he pulled out the pen-knife which had remained sticking in his arm. He looked at the blade and was relieved to see that it wasn’t so dirty as might have been expected. He found some cotton-wool, mopped up the blood as it oozed out, and dabbed the wound with iodine. Then he set himself to bandage it up. But to tie a bandage round one’s own left arm is not easy. Coleman found it impossible to keep the lint in place, impossible to get the bandage tight enough. At the end of a quarter of an hour he had only succeeded in smearing himself very copiously with blood, and the wound was still unbound. He gave up the attempt and contented himself with swabbing up the blood as it came out.

“And forthwith came there out blood and water,” he said aloud, and looked at the red stain on the cotton wool. He repeated the words again and again, and at the fiftieth repetition burst out laughing.

Huxley has written a novel of ideas...bad ones, and so many of them that they’re overwhelming. The overall impression is that of an explanation of how the British Empire came to die as its best and brightest were overcome with navel-gazing, aimlessness, indolence and paralyzing self-contradiction.

There are many characters, none of which are particularly likable, which is always strike one in a story. They argue and sulk and have extramarital affairs out of boredom and neglect their children and fritter away their lives on useless things and occasionally commit murder without really knowing why. Their problems range from mere foibles to serious character flaws. Huxley tries to do too much with them, making every character a symbol of a different kind of decay of the soul, and apparently basing them on real-life celebrities of the day, several of whom I’ve never heard of and none of whom I really care about. There may have been a scandal about it when it was first published, as none of the portraits are flattering; if so, the scandal has long since faded away.

People Suck: The Devil in the flesh, by Raymond Radiguet
Now that I had nothing left to desire, I felt myself becoming unfair. I affected myself that Marthe could lie to her mother without scruples, and my bad faith reproached her for being able to lie. Yet love, which is selfishness for two, sacrifices everything to itself, and lives on lies. Driven by the same demon, I reproached her again for having concealed the arrival of her husband from me. Until then, I had subdued my despotism, not feeling I had the right to reign over Marthe. My hardness had lulls. I moaned: "Soon you will hate me." I'm like your husband, also brutal. ”“ He's not brutal, ”she said. I resumed all the more: "So you are cheating on us both, tell me that you love him, be happy: in a week you can cheat on me with him."

The blurb on the back calls this "one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written".  Whoever said that probably thinks the same of Romeo and Juliet.

This is a tragedy set in WWI, narrated by a teenager in France, too young to fight in the war, who refrains from declaring his love for an older woman until after she marries someone else, who DOES go off to the front, at which point they commence their affair, hope that the husband gets killed in the war, and feel guilty about hoping so.  He loses interest in her and mistreats her, and then has regrets and loves her again, because of course he does.  He impregnates her, fortunately not long after the husband was home on leave and intimate with her.  she names the baby after the narrator, and in the final pages of the book, she abruptly dies of post partum complications, calling the narrator's name, and the husband thinks she's calling the baby's name and raises the child lovingly because it was his wife's last request. And the narrator has a philosophical about it and, presumably moves on.  How festive.

Critical Race Theory: Warriors Don't Cry, by Melba Pattillo Beals

"The crowd is closing in. They've broken the barricades.  The kids are trapped in here.....You're right. We may have to let the mob have one of these kids, so we can distract them long enough to let the others out."
Hang one of us?  They were talking about hanging one of my friends, or even me. My knees were shaking so badly I thought I would fall over. I held my breath, trying not to make any noise. The two men discussing our fate were just on the other side of the door. "

This is the autobiography of one of the Little Rock Nine, the kids who integrated the formerly all-white Central High School for one school year before disgraced governor Orval Faubus shut down the whole school rather than let it stay integrated.  The ones whom local police closed ranks to prevent from entering the school, until Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to protect the children from being murdered by racists; who walked through gauntlets of screaming white adults threatening to kill them; who had soup poured over their heads in the cafeteria; were suspended from school for "disruption" when white kids beat them up; who sometimes ran for their lives to get home.

And Republicans want to ban this book from schools on the pretext that it implies that white people and black people are different from each other and experienced history differently.  I found and read the book because it was on a banned list, with karens challenging it because it made their sensitive white daughters cry and feel ashamed.

In fact, all Americans of all races should read it, to learn modern history, to remember Jim Crow and to see the pain gleefully inflicted on their fellow citizens by Southerners, and to vow "Never Again."

In 1987, Little Rock erected statues in front of Central High, honoring these students.  And today, Arkansas sends Tom Cotton and five other Republican white supremacists as their entire Congressional delegation to crack down on the right to vote and to try to ban accurate history from being taught.

DID YOU KNOW??--White people in Arkansas don't have to work for a living!  I know this because mobs of them were free to surround Central High School all day, every school day, shouting racist slurs and disrupting the entire school.

I have a friend who challenges white people to answer the question: if sub-Saharan Africans had colonized North America with Caucasian slaves, how would the white race have held up?  My answer is that we would have likely broken much worse. I was bullied in elementary and junior high school, beat up by groups of boys under the approving eye of Umbridge-esque teachers and punished for "fighting" while the bullies were not punished, and I'm still in therapy, coping with trauma from that. I gazed down the abysses of suicide and delinquency.  And that was from mundane bullying.  Melba Beals was physically harassed by the entire school, threatened with murder, needed a military escort to get in the building.  And she held up.  Because warriors don't cry.
 

Batting One For Two:  She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

"Social attitudes were shifting, and there were dramatic accusatory headlines almost daily, but the fundamentals were still largely the same. Sexual harassment laws largely were outdated and spottily enforced, and aside from some revisions in a few states, they did not appear to change any time soon. Secret settlements were still being paid--in fact, some lawyers said the dollar amounts were higher than ever--allowing predators to remain hidden. Race and class often had an outsized influence on how cases were handled."

Cantor and Twohey are the Woodward and Bernstein of #MeToo, and She Said is their account about how their journalism brought down Harvey Weinstein but failed to prevent a rapist from getting a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Hollywood is liberal enough to care when forced to look at the problem. Republicans rejoice in opportunities to further abuse survivors for coming forward, and to pretend not to believe women while secretly admiring rapists because they are rapists.

The Weinstein part is the most fascinating; the transition from Weinstein appearing to be an untouchable, unreachable King, to becoming a contemptibly small worm of a man as his own enablers, confronted with the light of truth, decide they've had it with him and throw him under the bus.  The sense that a simple, vague "apology" would have kept him out of jail while his continuing double-downs and threats pretty much destroyed himself.

Meanwhile, the take-away from Kavanaugh is that you don't even have to believe Christine Blasey Ford.  I do believe her, but I don't have to. beer Bong Bret himself, through his own uncontrolled, shrill meltdown, demonstrated himself to be unfit to sit on the bench.  He and his lickspittle Lindsey Graham were so bad that they raised questions about whether men in general are too emotional to be trusted with political power.  but republicans--and America--do not care.  Not only was Kavanaugh rewarded for his rape with a lifetime judicial appointment *because* he was a rapist, but republicans gained senate seats in a republican midterm because Americans backlashed against feminists for speaking out about rape.  that is where our country is at this moment.  maybe it will change some day.

 

Intervention:  Ten arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, by Jaron Lanier

1. You are losing your free will.
2. Quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the inanity of our times.

3. Social media is making you into an asshole.

4. Social media is undermining truth.

5. Social media is making what you say meaningless.

6. Social media is destroying your capacity for empathy.

7. Social media is making you unhappy.

8. Social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity.

9. Social media is making politics impossible.

10. Social media hates your soul.

This book made me feel like an alcoholic confronted with the effects of heavy drinking on my friends, family, and capacity for living well.  Lanier makes it all seem true, and yet I don't really care.

Really, the "ten arguments" boil down to two.

(1) social media is run by fascists like Zuckerberg, who use insidious propaganda techniques to make Republicans into dangerously unhinged terrorist fanatics and Democrats discouraged from voting out of sheer despair (and I know; I have felt the despair personally and had to force myself to cut off what few right-leaning people I had previously had as friends, due to their increasing militance and my need to protect my own sanity; and

(2) the "influencers"--not the kids on reddit with a million followers, but the REAL behind-the-scenes godzillionaires--pay billions to mine your data and fuck you over with targeted propaganda.  This is why i now charge a $50 fee to divulge my phone number or to take a survey, and why I make shit up in the rare event that i take an Internet "quiz".

And yet---I have a friend network via social media.  I have in fact PRACTICED, not lost, empathy by interacting with them. I get to have friends in Colorado and Ohio and Florida and England, who I would never interact with at all, but for social media.  And I have my own small forum for maybe, just a little, having a bit of influence over others with my thoughts, my songs, my world view, which would never go out to anyone but for social media.  And so in some ways, it seems to me that it's all worth it.

Or maybe I'm just in denial.  Listen to me. Listen to Lanier. then make up your own mind.

Still the best:  Persist, by Elizabeth Warren

I'm moderately content with joe biden, but I still wish Elizabeth warren had made it to the Presidency.  #Persisterhood

her autobiography cleverly merges Warren's agenda with the various stages of her life.  Warren self-identifies as "A mother, a teacher, a planner, a fighter, a learner and a woman" (the six chapters of the book), and each aspect highlights one or more issues central to her 2020 Presidential campaign.  The chapter on being a "mother", for example, preaches America's failure to make childcare affordable , while "teacher" discusses the shameful way America's teachers are treated, as well as the shameful American policy of burdening the educated with student debt for life, to punish them for trying to better themselves.

Warren won't be President, but she is senator for life for Massachusetts, and i for one hope she sticks around long enough to chair commerce or appropriations or whatever powerful committee she chooses.  We need more smart women with a plan.

Mystery game:  The Floating Admiral, by "The Detection Club"

I read this one because it was listed in Dorothy Sayers' list of novels.  In fact, only one chapter is by Sayers.  the other chapters are by GK Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts, and other mystery fiction writers from the "golden age".  After determining the order, the author of the first chapter submitted it to the one who would read it and then write chapter 2 and submit both chapters to the third author, and so on.  Anthony Berkley drew the short straw and had to come up with the official solution after reading contributions from eleven others---and it is every bit the mess you would expect.  The proposed solutions of each writer are included in the back of the book, and between them they had five guilty parties, so if you're like me and play along with the challenge of "whodunnit", you're very likely to agree with at least somebody.

The Autobiography of a Nebbish:  Zeno's Conscience, by Italo Svevo

The given circumstances are that Zeno was persuaded to write his memoirs as therapy, and that his therapist subsequently had them published as revenge for not having been paid. Supposedly, we are reading the memoirs of a fool.  I'm not so sure.

Zeno believes he is a fool. he is unhappy, believes himself to be deeply neurotic, and cannot quit smoking--a frequent motif is his claim to be having his "last cigarette", which is never, in fact, his last.

On the other hand, he's not really such a failure as all that.  He is better at business than most or all of his friends and family, and ends up comfortably middle class.  He marries a woman who is not the one he loves, and has an affair on the side, but eventually settles down to as comfortable a marriage as most people have, at least.  And, he may be an unreliable narrator, but most of the rest of the characters, and most people you and I know, are at least as neurotic as he is.  Zeno may be a fool, but he's no idiot.
 

Life, the universe, and everything:  An Outline of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell

Russell is still one of my favorite philosophers, and one of the easiest to read, but this book, which reads like an extended version of The Problems of Philosophy disappointed me.  Especially the part where he dutifully devotes one small chapter to ethics after declaring that he doesn't really consider ethics to be part of true philosophy. Russell has written some wonderful books on ethics, but this is not one of them.  It's mostly about epistemology, metaphysics, and the process of thought, and as interesting as Russell can make it, but dull.

Not So Innocent Abroad: The Plumed Serpent, by DH Lawrence

Set in Mexico, The Plumed Serpent is a book apart from the rest of Lawrence's work.  He mostly wrote about romances threatened by class divisions in early 20th century Britain. Here, he writes a lot more character and atmosphere than plot, and the real protagonist is not the main character Kate so much as a European's concept of "the Spirit of Mexico".

Not long after the Mexican revolution, Kate, an Irish tourist, finds Mexico City to be too politically unstable, and takes up residence in a hacienda in a remote area where the traditional Quetzalcoatl-centered religion is resisting Christian missionaries and the shirtless, reckless, earthy peasants with their careless enjoyment of life make her heart go pit-a-pat.  there are always cliched dark, primitive stirrings in the air, the natives are not to be trusted, and I was frequently aware that this was what I had always been taught Mexico was and also that my vision was anything but authentic, but utter bullshit filtered through the sensibilities of a long-dead white Englishman.  I found it romantic, atmospheric, and probably of limited use in this day and age.  there's a reason you have to be pretty steeped in English literature to come across a book like this these days.

DIGITAL MINIMALISM, BY CAL NEWPORT

Another book for people who might be concerned about the impact of social media on their lives, a little less strident than last month's TEN ARGUMENTS FOR DELETING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS RIGHT NOW.  Cal Newport is into Simple Living, into Mindfulness, into Thoreau and All Things In Moderation.

Newport doesn't want you to give up Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, so much as limit your hope-questing/doom-scrolling time to, like, an hour a day, four days a week.  and do it from your home computer, not from a bunch of apps on your phone.  And also, take up woodworking, or a musical instrument, or gardening, or some traditional hobby like that where you're creating something useful.  Go on long walks.  Eat fresh fruit with every meal.  Do Swedish exercises before breakfast.  Open up to your inner abundance.  Move to Portland.  You know this is good for you, so do that, and your cravings to be online all the time will fade of themselves.

THE COST OF LIVING, BY DEBORAH LEVY

Somebody recommended another book by Levy, SWIMMING HOME, but this was what the library had and so I checked it out instead. It's autobiographical, one of those very short books with several chapters three pages long, with paragraphs spaced far apart from one another.

She's trying to write herself as a main character, find her new self, pin the tail on her inner donkey, process trauma, and shake the boundaries of what it means to be a woman in today's world.  She makes her friend's shed into her main writing space.  She gets an electric bike. She listens to conversations in bars and concludes that women are telling stories about themselves as a cry for help, while the men they tell them to resent that they talk so much.

You might well conclude that it made me slightly uncomfortable, prompting me to affect an air of detached bemusement.

FIERCE LITTLE THING, by MIRANDA BEVERLY-WHITMORE

Saskia spends her life processing trauma.  The chapters, some of them one paragraph long, several of them less than a page, whipsaw between milestones.

Every even-numbered chapter is about her past struggle in a cult in the middle of the forest, with a few teenage friends and irresponsible, flaky adults and an untrustworthy, dangerous, charismatic leader.  Ruby Ridge and Waco happen during this time, and are interpreted by the cult as innocent civilians targeted for death by the police state for being different.

Every odd-numbered chapter is in "the present", where grown-up Saskia, now a recluse in her inherited Grandmother's big old house, is visited by her childhood friends, who are being I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summered about the Bad Thing that happened at the cult all those years ago.  so is Saskia, but she doesn't know, because she doesn't open her mail, just leaves it in a pile of mostly catalogues in one of the big house's rooms.

And then there's the other trauma, from before the cult days, that destroyed Saskia's family and left her communing with what she thinks is the spirit of her dead little brother, and which influences both timelines.  every time a feather falls out of the sky, it's him, trying to tell her something.

The book builds, via the alternating chapters, towards the climax of all three episodes at once.  The "big reveal" that ties the storyline together and is revealed in the title of the book itself, is obvious.  I figured it out early and spent the middle third of the book almost groaning about what was to come, before I made the decision to interpret the story as "processing trauma", and found myself wanting to be friends with Saskia and finding value in the story after all.

Highly recommended.  I would love for you to read it, and tell me what you think.

ONE, NONE AND ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND, BY LUIGI PIRANDELLO

A psychological novel of identity by a man more famous for his plays.  The title refers to the protagonist's obsession that his self is not merely his self, but also the way he is perceived by every person who has ever seen him, and also that he has no self at all.

He hears inaccurate village gossip about him, and changes his behavior to fit it, on the assumption that that must be who he really is.  He learns that his wife believes he fancies another woman, and so he reluctantly begins illicit communications. Eventually, he conforms to other people's ridiculous delusions about him, and madness and tragical farce ensue.

as with many psychological novels, I admit to seeing a greater than zero amount of my own inner monologue, and wonder how many other people do too, whether these thoughts are part of the human condition or whether I'm just weird.  In particular, the impulsive burning of bridges that one can't rebuild triggers and frightens me.  If your mileage varies, that's cool too.

QUICKSAND and PASSING, by NELLA LARSEN

Once again, America does a piss-poor job of celebrating its best Black authors.  Nella Larson was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and yet I'd never been told she existed before this year.  Her two short novels explore the tightrope that is life as a mixed-race person in a violently divided world.

Oddly enough, Quicksand is the one billed in the book blurb as a "horror story", when it seems to me to be more about existential alienation. The educated protagonist, Helga Crane, who has a black father and a Danish mother, is never presented as being in any physical danger; she merely has feelings of alienation and voluntarily leaves potentially solid situations at a HBCU, in Harlem, in Copenhagen, and then Harlem again, ultimately hiding her light under a bushel in an Alabama backwater.

Passing, on the other hand, is fraught with danger and suspense. It is a tale of two white-appearing octaroons. Irene plays Nick to Clare's Gatsby. Irene is openly mixed-race, while Clare has concealed the black part of her ancestry and married a vicious white bigot.  Will he or won't he find out?  The narrative focuses mainly on Irene's resentful reactions to Clare's increasingly dangerous behavior.

MEDIOCRE (The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America) by IJEOMA OLUO

This is a sometimes painful read for people who look like me, but if you're interested in racial and gendered justice, it contains things you need to know about the high cost of systemic and casual white male supremacy in America, not just to marginalized populations but to white males themselves.

Oluo (Who also wrote the highly recommended "So You Want to Talk About Race") points out how white male supremacy manifests itself everywhere; there are separate chapters on history, government, academia, workplaces, and professional sports, where the dissonance between putting black excellence on a pedestal and needing to shoehorn it into a subservient position is perhaps the most obvious.

We see how white guys, especially rich, connected white guys, essentially steal higher education admissions, job opportunities, promotions, praise and honors from better qualified women and PoC; how Democrats as well as Republicans are pressured to play the Race Card to scam votes; and Things Not To Do if you are a white progressive trying to help.

Necessary, bitter medicine.  Very high recommendations.

MIDNIGHT IN WASHINGTON (How we almost lost our democracy and still could), by ADAM SCHIFF

I had to wait a long time on the hold request list for one of the library's several copies to get to me.  By which time it was almost old news.  The truly scary part of the book, about 45's coup attempt, 1/6, and Second Impeachment, are almost an afterthought, scrambled into the final chapter in time for the book to go to press.  Schiff had started out to write a different book about First Impeachment, and history took place in real time as he wrote it.

Reading Schiff is like watching a train wreck happen from a distance, seeing everything coming and being absolutely helpless to stop it.  A few introductory autobiographical chapters about who Adam Schiff is and how he came to run for Congress and be the right person chosen to lead the investigation against the most corrupt, incompetent and dangerously unhinged President in US history.  A few more chapters about how the United States let America go without a fight and turned the White House over to an enemy of the united States who had lost the election, and how the House for two years enabled the terrorist because he was of their own party.  At one point, Kevin McCarthy tells the press a bald lie right in front of Schiff, attributing a statement to Schiff that Schiff did not make.  Afterwards, Schiff privately asks McCarthy what was up with that, he completely lied. McCarthy smirks and says "You know how it works." This is who Republicans are.

As it turns out, the bulk of the book, uncovering the former President's attempt to withhold military aid from the Ukraine unless Zelenskyy makes up shit to be used against Joe Biden, and Schiff's House investigations thereof,  is suddenly very relevant in light of 45's friend Putin's invasion.  Putin clearly expected to cheat his ally into the White House (again), in which case the Republican President would have pulled out of NATO and given Ukraine to Russia, as planned. Putin did not expect an actual American President who would unite the world against him, nor did he expect Ukraine to be armed and ready.

THE LAST SEPTEMBER, by ELIZABETH BOWEN

A character and atmosphere story, in which the typical English Country Estate romance with teas and balls and dinners takes place on an estate colonized in County cork, and it's 1920 and the Irish are taking Ireland back.  The upper middle class English occupants consider it "their" land, and they tut-tut and wot-wot about those silly peasants and how something must be done, as if it was happening thousands of miles away instead of just outside their gates.  They don't know they're the bad guys; they don't even consider that Ireland might ever not be English (at this point in history, India is still considered part of England, and they're hoping to civilize the Chinese), and all the offstage violence is made delicate, with petrol bombs blooming like red flowers in the night, unreal.

The closest parallel I can think of is the early chapters of GONE WITH THE WIND.  There is no war coming, and if war does come, it will be fun and over in time for the summer ball.

AMERIKA, by FRANZ KAFKA

The United States, as seen by a satirical European.  Very highly recommended. I have no idea why this book is not more popular in the United States, unless it's because it is glaringly unfinished.  I found it a lot more biting than the more esoteric, allegorical THE TRIAL,  THE CASTLE and THE METAMORPHOSIS.

A penniless immigrant, outcast by his family, lands on the shores of New York, and American things happen to him.  All-powerful rich people treat him as a cute plaything, abuse him, and cast him off.  Scoundrels take advantage of his polite naivete to rob him.  he gets a job, devotes himself to doing it masterfully and at great sacrifice to himself, and his reward is to be summarily dismissed for a minor transgression he didn't commit, while his mentor bitterly blames herself for having trusted him. Kafka nails it.  Apparently, later chapters were to have taken the protagonist to the frontier wilderness of Oklahoma for the required Amenricans as Cowboys section, but that part was never completed.

MANHATTAN TRANSFER, by JOHN DOS PASSOS

Mostly a series of interlocking vignettes centered around New York City before and after WWI.  Dos Passos did the same thing with the entire country in the more popular and longer USA trilogy.  This one was maybe a dress rehearsal.

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, by DH LAWRENCE

The heroine, ironically named Constance, married a titled young Englishman for his wealth; he went off to war and came back "in pieces", paralyzed from the waist down, and so she has an affair with the gamekeeper.  His Lordship will look the other way because he wants an heir to the manor more than he wants said heir to be actually his; but if he learns that the father will be a servant rather than someone close to his own station, then Bad Things will happen.

This book was considered scandalous when published, and was banned in several countries when it first came out.  So were dozens of other, very tame books of the age and prior ages. I was surprised to find that LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER really IS a book of erotica, with steamy sex scenes and possibly the first uses in "great literature" of words like "fucking" and "bitch goddess".  it was also one of the few DH Lawrence books that managed to really hold my attention.  Highly recommended.

LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES, by JEAN COCTEAU

I became familiar with Cocteau though his plays, which were favorites among the student directors where I went to college.  the plays, like this short novel, were savage.

The young brother and sister in LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES are not explicitly incestuous, but their affection for one another crosses the line into weirdness. The father is long gone, the mother is bedridden and insane, and the children are barely supervised.  early in the story, the boy becomes bedridden for a long period, just from being hit by a snowball, and his sister becomes primary caregiver to both mother and son.  The children's room becomes a special space where the siblings play "The Game"...."The Game" continues into their teenage years, continuing as brother and sister have relations with other people, and then Bad Things ensue.

THE DECLINE OF THE WEST, by OSWALD SPENGLER

One would think such a title would be written in modern times, or at the very least after WWII when Europe seems to be yielding to cultures from surrounding continents, but no.  Spengler wrote immediately after WWI.  Or--not really--he wrote about half of it before the war, even, and had to hold off publication of Volume I until after the armistice.

Spengler's title is, in fact, clickbait.  He is not writing the history of how "the west" has declined in his day, so much as predicting that it WILL decline at some point  (you know, the way death is inevitable for us all), following the pattern he has detected in other great cultures.

Spengler says there have been seven or eight "great cultures" in recorded history, all of which follow the pattern from barbarism to civilization to decadence and decline:  Egypt, Babylon, "Classical" (Greece and Rome), Chinese, Indian, Arabic (Persia-Arabia-Turkish), "Mexican" (meaning everything in pre-colonial America from Incan to Mayan to Iriquois and Sioux, with Spengler's regret that nothing will ever be known about this one culture), and "Faustian", meaning the modern western hemisphere.  Like Hegel, Spengler extrapolates from Tacitus to the assertion that all of Europe since the Roman empire's conquest, as well as the colonies/nations established in north America and Australia, are ultimately German.
 

IRON WIDOW, by XIRAN JAY ZHAO

I suspect that this one will be the first of the year's Hugo-nominated novels that I read this year; possibly the winner; we'll find out eventually  (EDIT: The 2022 Hugo nominees list is now out, and IRON WIDOW was not nominated after all.  However, it had been nominated for a Lodestar award, in the YA category.  I did not see that coming).  The story is about an alternative China in which invading aliens are beyond the great Wall, and the heads of state have used the alien technology to fight them with huge war-bots fueled by human Qi energy.  Only instead of efficient yin/yang models, the Patriarchy has deemed men to have the stronger and better energy, allowing only men to pilot the war-bots, with women passively treated as human batteries for the men.  the greatest honor for a woman is for her to die, drained of energy in service to her pilot.

Enter Zetian, whose sister died in such a way, and who is preparing to find the pilot who killed her and say to him "Hello. My name is Wu Zetian.  You killed my sister. Prepare to die." Zetian is a flaming ball of feminist rage, her Qi levels are the patriarchy's worst nightmare, and by the time the story is over, she will have realized some things that will change everything.

Reader, I swooned.  If you do too, that's cool.

STATE OF TERROR by HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, and LOUISE PENNY

Louise Penny is a Canadian mystery writer.  Clinton, you know about already.  America may have proved unworthy to have her as President, but she's having fun in other ways.  STATE OF TERROR is a typical international intrigue potboiler full of Middle Eastern arms dealers, Russian spies, plucky office workers who find the clue to save the day, and hidden bombs that will go off and kill innocent civilians any moment unless found and disarmed in time by our intrepid heroes. Will they do it as the LED countdown hits the final seconds?  Our market research says yes!

The fun is enjoying Clinton's revenge, such as it is.  The heroine is a Secretary of State, appointed to the job by a President she had opposed for the job, who must clean up after the most corrupt, bumbling, ignorant Presidencies in American history.  One of the big questions to unravel is whether the prior President is actively in league with the terrorists, or merely played by them for the fool he is.  Any resemblance to persons living and dead is purely intentional.

SHE WILL RISE, by KATIE HILL

You may remember Katie Hill as one of the strong, asskicking women elected to Congress in 2018.  Hill was one of the rising stars, mentored by Pelosi herself and headed for a long and powerful leadership career until her abusive husband decided to ruin her by giving the Republican dirty tricks squad revenge porn pictures to publish, and she resigned after just nine months.

I was pissed off, and became much more pissed off reading SHE WILL RISE, Hill's autobiography so far and feminist manifesto.

Reader, she grew up in the 90s, and wanted to be Alanna of Tortall.  She was MY PEOPLE.  And because she married an abusive asshole who photographed her naked without her knowledge, and who revenge-porned her to the American Nazis, the congressional career that would have rivaled Pelosi's didn't get to happen, and she's reduced to trying to make a difference by writing books.

But yes, for all the good it will do, she's speaking truth to power.  Like a thousand angry bloggers with her, she's talking about the pay gap, the lack of maternity leave, the insufficient protections against domestic abuse, the glass ceilings, the pink taxes, and all the other crap women continue to just put up with because there's no other choice.

Read it and scream, scream into the void.

SMACKED, by EILENE ZIMMERMAN

Half autobiography, half journalistic piece about drug addiction in America, SMACKED begins with Zimmerman's account of discovering her estranged ex-husband's dead body in the bathroom of his house. Cut to "20 YEARS EARLIER" with their courtship and marriage, their kids, his successful legal career, his increasing withdrawal, broken promises, asshole behavior, their separation, apparently absorbed in work at the office, his many health problems which they put down to stress.  The man acts like an utter, utter shit to Zimmerman and the children, and yet she gives him chance after chance, continues to love him as he throws his life away, and is clearly still agonizing, even as she writes her book, about whether she might have saved him if she had given just that much more of herself.

Compare and contrast with my own life experience, at that age, with women whose policy was "One strike, and I'm done with you forever."

And then we get to the shocking, shocking revelation that the husband was not an asshole at all, despite his unremitting asshole behavior.  He was on drugs the whole time, and was therefore a victim to be pitied.  followed by a few more chapters about all the poor, oppressed rich people who turn to drugs because of job-related stress, who don't have any agency despite their millions, and who hate the world and themselves.

my heart bleeds for Zimmerman and her children.  they deserved so much better.  husband can rot in Hell.

THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD; DEATH IN THE AIR; SLEEPING MURDER, by AGATHA CHRISTIE.

I am about to SPOIL the big reveal of THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD.  Because there's almost nothing to discuss about the book without taking it into account.  If you don't know it, it reads like a straightforward whodunnit without very memorable characters, and you wonder what the fuss is about, right until the final three chapters.  So read the book before reading any more of this, if you haven't yet, or don't bother. It is considered one of the better detective plots of all time, to the extent that it's kinda fun reading it again (like I just did), knowing the hidden truth and seeing the clues and nuances.

The murderer is the "Watson", the detective's sidekick who unreliably narrates the story. There are two or three throwaway lines that have double-meanings, but really, there are dozens of reaction shots in which the narrator is "disappointed" or "alarmed" at the detective (Hercule Poirot)'s suspicions, and many instances in which the narrator, a doctor, appears to be simply applying professional discretion and academic objectivity are in fact instances where he's deliberately concealing the truth.

If you're looking at it, knowing that the guy telling the story is the killer, there are many, many telling moments.  It's really well-crafted and deserves its reputation.  But WHY ON EARTH DOES HE TELL POIROT HE'S WRITING A MEMOIR ABOUT THE INVESTIGATION, AND THEN SHARE IT WITH THE GREAT DETECTIVE???  That is seriously one of the worst, most avoidable blunders in all of detective fiction. He reads 23 chapters from the murderer's point of view, including a telltale time discrepancy that could easily have been covered with a lie, and solves the case. Duh.

I used to read a lot of Dame Agatha in junior high school, looking for "the least likely suspect" and solving about half of them.  ROGER ACKROYD was one of the ones that fooled me at the time. Maybe if i'd been told how "great" it was, I'd have figured it out for want of any other possible solution that would have been considered shocking.  

The other two mysteries I read this month were standard.  I hadn't read them before, and solved them pretty quickly, although one of the motives eluded me and seemed far-fetched.  SLEEPING MURDER, in particular, was supposed to be a big one, "Miss Marple's last case ever", written well in advance of Christie's death to be published posthumously so that she'd go out with a bang, but...meh.

BEYOND MAGENTA: TRANSGENDER TEENS SPEAK OUT, by SUSAN KUKLAND

Sometime in the mid 1990s, I was able to take pride in having read all of the most frequently banned books on an official list.  Too bad they keep on writing more books that people want to ban.  the list that came out this year had many, many unfamiliar titles.  And then a FaceBook group centered around my old high school mentioned nine books that a bunch of asshole parents were trying to have removed from the school library as "not age-appropriate".  One of those books was LOOKING FOR ALASKA, by John Green, which I'd already read, and it baffled me that anyone would want to ban it.  It's a standard, well-written YA book.

Similarly, BEYOND MAGENTA may be many things, but "not age appropriate for teens" is not one of them.  Jeepers, it's a set of interviews with actual teens going through experiences that a lot of other teens will find compelling, familiar, or maybe unfamiliar but they'll learn things that people ought to learn, including what it's like to be trans, what it isn't like, and how to not be a dick.  If someone's a trans kid, they'll learn that they're not alone, and feel seen.  if they're cis, they'll learn that trans kids are kids not completely different from themselves, and with needs deserving of respect.  What could be more age appropriate than that?

I found myself reading a lot of YA this month, in two categories:  (1) Nominees for the Hugo/Lodestar award for YA, and (2) books that the Shit People are trying to get removed from school and public libraries.  I used to take pride in having read all of the banned books, back when FARENHEIT 451 and PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT were cutting edge.  But they keep writing more wonderful, controversial, mind-expanding, thought-provoking books.  and the Shit People just can't handle it.

Among the books they're trying to get rid of:

LAWN BOY, by Jonathan Evison.  I found it mostly wholesome and relatable to young people who aren't likely to go to college and are wondering what else is out there.  The protagonist, a recent high school graduate, lives in a trailer with his single mom, who is dating a man who wants the kid to move out.  He drifts from one dead end job to another, gets ripped off by bosses, and is too embarrassed to ask out the girl he likes because he's poor.

The reason Shit People want to ban it doesn't come across until late in the story.  It's a weak excuse to throw a wet blanket on what should be a positive story about making discoveries and finding one's niche.

THE HATE U GIVE, by Angie Thomas. This one is a riveting, very topical story about a Black girl trying to balance her life in "the hood" she lives in with the privileged, mostly white school her parents sacrifice to let her go to so that she can have opportunity.  And then she becomes the only non-police witness to the police murder of her best friend. Banned because accurate depictions of police behavior might tend to cause youth to lose respect for the police.

A COURT OF MIST AND FURY, by Sarah J. Maas.  Part of a standard fantasy series, where all the relationships are cis-het and the main racial difference is "fae" v. "mortal". Seems to me, if you'd want to ban this, you'd want to ban Tolkein and most of the entire fantasy genre. Because fae beings are Satan or something.  Then again, the protagonist is a strong woman engaged to a traditional male who sees himself as her protector and who therefore keeps her locked in his palace "for her own good", thereby making her feel the need to escape even though she loves him.  So---banned for "disobedient female"?

ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE, by George Matthew Johnson.  The autobiography of a Black gay man, with emphasis on the challenges he had in school and how he overcame them.  I found it tender, honest and uplifting, and so it definitely had to be silenced by those who hate those things.

JACK OF HEARTS AND OTHER PARTS, by LC Rose. And finally, one that really did take me aback and cause me to wonder whether it was age appropriate.  The protagonist has a lot of gay sex and  says a lot of fuck words, but he also has a sex/relationship advice blog that reveals a great deal of emotional maturity, and addresses issues that I really wish I'd seen addressed when I was that age.   Heck, I wish I'd seen them when I was in my 20s.  This book could be vital to some kids who have had the facts of life withheld from them, and to the people they date.  And, as my wife reminded me, everyone in high school knows those words whether the grownups are comfortable about it or not. So yes. Let it stay.

And now for the Lodestar nominated novels, which differ from the "banned" lists in that they all have a sci-fi/fantasy theme and the Shit People haven't discovered them to object to yet.  I was blown away. All six protagonists are women and girls, and almost all of the female protagonists are powerful warriors who are IN CHARGE. Witness:

VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH, by Charlie Jane Anders.  During the climax of the Battle for the Fate of the Galaxy, history's greatest space opera general fell, and her identity was something something garbanzo transformed into a teenage girl on earth where she could be hidden from the enemy until it was time to rise again  (just roll with it. Think of the origin of Dawn, Buffy's little sister. Like that. Sort of).  Except that when they reactivate her...they can't get the general's memory back, and she is just Tina, suddenly depended on to save the universe.

THE LAST GRADUATE, by Naomi Novik:.  An extremely confusing book about a protagonist named Galadriel in the most hellish Wizard School I've ever encountered.  As if Hogwarts was in the land of Tamsyn Muir's Locked tomb series.  It's all books, no teachers. Magic monsters are everywhere.  Kids are on their own, with no one but each other for help, and an effective way to live is to let someone else get killed, and if you're in the half of your graduating class that makes it through the final year alive, you'll probably die during graduation.

So, yeah.  Pretty much nailed my elementary school experience.

REDEMPTOR, by Jordan Ifueko: The protagonist has become queen of a land with an indigenous sub-Saharan African feel, and must prepare to go to the land of the dead to fulfill a bargain made with monsters that could rescue her people.

It's worth noting that the heroines of these three books, and Xiran Jay Zhao's IRON WIDOW (see my March 2022 bookpost), who run the agency gamut from Empress to slave, are tradition-defiers, continually told by men that they're doing it wrong, that they're going to get everybody killed, and that they must be crazy.  And yet they follow their own moral compass, not for themselves (every one of them is willing to die for the greater good, if necessary), but because their people are depending on them, and they're going to break all the rules if that's what it takes to save the people. All of them, not just the privileged few.  It's interesting to me that a theme like that recurs in so many books in this particular genre, at this moment in history when my country suffers the horrible consequences of having failed to put the smart woman in charge.

A SNAKE FALLS TO EARTH, by Darcie Little Badger, is about the intersection of our world with a parallel world of animals who can transform themselves into human form. the story goes back and forth between the perspectives of a girl in Texas who is trying to make sense of her dying great grandmother's last words and discover whether the rumors of animal people are true, and a snake from the other world who must visit this one to try to save a friend's life.

Which brings us to CHAOS ON CATNET, by Naomi Kritzer, the book I would pick to get the Lodestar if I was voting in the Hugos this year.  The others are badass, thought-provoking, and build incredible new worlds, but what brought me the most joy was the amazing adventure with a friendly AI right here in our own world.  The predecessor book, CATFISHING ON CATNET, which featured one of the more realistic and frightening villains I've encountered in fiction in a long time, won the Lodestar last year, so I am not alone in my praise.  

This then is the second adventure featuring protagonist Steph and her friends around the States who meet in the chat group Catnet, hosted by their special friend "CheshireCat", an AI who can access All Things Online, and who will keep our teenage heroes safe as they investigate a creepy religious cult and an online game that instigates players to perform increasingly problematic "pranks" in the real world to gain game points.  very highest recommendations.

Adulting
All The Feels
Alpha Male
Bidenflation
Bidenomics
Body Count
Cheugy
Chronivore
Cletus Safari
Cringe (adj)
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy  (particularly when applied to something that is in fact Arduous Harduous House-of-Cardsuous)
Frupidity
Fur Baby
Genocide
Grooming
Hoeflation
I was a lifelong liberal Democrat. Then.....
I'm just gonna leave this here
I'm not crying you're crying
Introvirtuous
Joe Biden's Katrina
Manipulated
Man-o-sphere
Paleo-[anything]
Pop-Tart Edible Mascot
Pressure test your idea
Pseudointellectual
Rapid Unexplained Disassembly
Ridiculously Easy
Self-Made Billionaire
So this happened
Sorry for the drive-by
The Progressive case for Trump
The Progressive case for Mike Johnson
The Progressive case for Hamas
The Progressive case for mass shootings
The Progressive case for government shutdown
The Progressive case for cutting Social Security
The Progressive case for billionaire tax cuts
The struggle is real
Thermonuclear lawsuit
Tighty Whitey Mighty Flighty
Tradwife
Twatopotamus
Unalived
Vagitarian
Vibeflation
Violently agree
What's a woman?
With the stroke of a pen, Biden could....
Womanface
Working on a path to green
Workwife/Workhusband
Wowzers
You've heard of Elf on a Shelf; now get ready for.....