To Hang a Man

 The New York Times published an article yesterday about yet another botched execution in the United States—this time in Idaho. The officials administering the lethal injection apparently tried and failed several times to find a vein, eventually jabbing the prisoner in all four limbs, before giving up for the day. A line in the article stands out. The head of Idaho's prisons was quoted as saying, of the attempt: "Our first objective is to carry this out with dignity, professionalism and respect."

Dignity? Respect? What dignity and respect is there in trying to inject a person with lethal chemicals? What respect can there be in taking a breathing person, who wants to live, and forcing death upon them against their will. Respect? What about respecting a person's will to live? To be sure, if executions there must be, one would rather have them conducted with as much decorum as possible; but to characterize this as respecting the "dignity" of the prisoner seems an abuse of language. 

Hodgson's Prophecy

 The last few days brought unseasonably warm weather to the Midwest. I found myself yesterday morning wandering through the streets in disbelief, allowing the sunlight and warm air to seep into my skin as if I had to stock up on both before they ran out. "It feels too good to be true, for February," I told my sister. "Well," she said, "climate change." "Ah," I said. "So it is too good to be true." "Well," she replied, "it is true; but it's not good." "Oh right," I concluded. "It's too true to be good." 

Indeed, the unusual warmth and spring-like weather of the last month has been eerie. I've enjoyed it, to be sure; but it gives one the feeling of living on a precipice. This may feel good in February, one thinks—but what will this mean for summer? Will we be roasted once again in record heat waves? Will there be catastrophic flooding? Rampant wildfires? The answer to all those things—and it is sad to realize in saying it how much we have come to regard all this as normal—is almost certainly yes. 

Anticipated Reversals

 The most recent episode of the Omnibus Project podcast—of which I've been a devoted listener since its inception—focused on the shifting fortunes of the "Food Pyramid." Remember that thing? Those of us who went to school in the '90s no doubt have some memory of this fictional edifice. We surely recall that the base of the image was always a hefty block of grain, flour, and starch; and that, higher up—as the shape narrowed—one could find smaller helpings of meat, poultry, dairy, fruits and vegetables. 

The evolution of nutrition science in the years since has not been kind to the Food Pyramid. Most of us have probably noted that today's dietary advice is almost the exact inverse of the pyramid's implied recommendations. Instead of loading up on carbohydrates—we now are told—one ought to consume proteins. Far from being the bedrock of any healthy diet, sugar-rich bread products are now seen as the cause of all our problems. The pyramid has been flipped on its head!

Jarry's Scientific Romance

 Our present cultural moment, as we confront the rise of AI, bears more than one feature in common with the European belle époque of the turn of the twentieth century. Back then, as people adjusted to the appearance of electricity and new forms of communication, it seemed that the old limits of what was possible were breaking down. If this could be achieved, what else might be achieved? We seem to be facing a similar question today. We have pushed past the limits, in at least one regard, of what might have been regarded just a few years ago as science fiction. We now have machines that can convincingly speak and interact with us. And if this has become possible, what else might soon be possible? Teleportation? Intergalactic travel? What can still be safely confined to the realm of the impossible, if this feat now cannot? 

In that spirit, it is worth revisiting one of the less-acknowledged classics of the belle époque: Alfred Jarry's The Supermale. This 1902 work is a quintessential avant-garde novel, beloved by Gore Vidal and others; a work of proto-surrealist turn-of-the-century absurdism that, along with the rest of Jarry's output, inspired future generations of dadaists and researchers into the realm of the unexpected and the preposterous. Reading the novel today, however—in the Wright/Gladstone translation published by Exact Change—it comes across less as a milestone in the development of the experimental novel, and more as a characteristic product of its era of technological optimism and wonder. Whatever else it might be, The Supermale is also a quintessentially belle-époque novel, complete with bicycles, electromagnetic experiments, and other Wellsian touches. 

The Greenness and the Greyness

 My daily routine lately has a new element: about two hours in the late evening of video games. It's the first time in years, as best I can recall, that I've actually played a full contemporary video game through from start to (almost) finish. And I don't regret it. For months, I was casting about for some gratifying way in which to introduce some ludic element into my life. I tried watching sports: I couldn't stand so many pizza commercials interrupting the game every thirty seconds. I tried watching TV shows—some were better than others; and when I came to a bad one, it turned me away again. 

At long last I found a game. It has now lasted me for several months. I am only able to devote an hour or two in a given evening to it, so I have managed to stretch it out since all the way back in the previous semester's exam period. Now, though, as I say—I am at last nearing the end. I can sense it impending. And yet, I do not want it to come. This one game is the only thing I've found after months of searching that serves this particular need. Once it is over, I will have to begin the quest anew. I will need to find something else to plug the ludic gap in my life, which I need to quiet my brain before its nightly slumbers. 

Tess on Stonehenge

 At some point during the summer after the Dobbs decision came down from the Supreme Court, I started to write a post on this blog about how criminalizing abortion would mean the return of sexual terrorism in this country of an almost Victorian intensity. I was reflecting on some of the reading I was doing at the time—nineteenth century novels that explored the fate of heroines who transgressed the sexual codes of their era. I was struck that more than one of these books analogized the fate of women accused of adultery, in nineteenth century bourgeois society, to that of a live victim on a sacrificial altar. 

The same symbolism appears in both Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The heroines of both novels pause to regard stone relics from pagan antiquity, and experience a shiver of foreboding when they consider that these plinths were once used for human sacrifice. Effi can almost see the blood of the ancient victims streaming down them. And Tess is famously apprehended after spending her final night laid out on Stonehenge itself. It was striking to me that these two male authors came independently to the same image, and realized the same ugly truth: modern society—for all its fancied moral progress over its primitive ancestors—still made sacrificial scapegoats of women. 

Fear No Influence

 Some time ago, I sent my parents a link to an article from the New York Times about childrearing styles. "Omg," I said in the subject line—or something to that effect—"this is so our family." 

The article described an emerging generational divide between Millennial parents and their own boomer or Gen X parents. Millennial parents are drawn to approaches like "gentle parenting," which emphasize acknowledging children's emotions and talking them through a tantrum in a way that shows empathy with their experience. "You're angry," the gentle parent says to the bawling child. "You're frustrated. We have to go, but you don't want to go." 

The Gen X and Boomer grandparents, meanwhile, are often standing off to the side, waiting for this to be over. It's not so much that they disapprove of gentle parenting. It's just that—it takes so long! If they had their way, the child would already be bundled into the backseat of the car by now, whether they wanted to go or not. They might cry for a time, but eventually, they would get over it, and probably fall asleep on the ride. 

Poison Gas

 A few weeks back, I wrote a reflection on the news that Alabama had just executed a man by nitrogen gas (the first time such a method has been used in the U.S.). Since then, the New York Times has published a longer piece describing exactly what happened in the execution chamber, as Kenneth Smith fought for life, and gradually succumbed to asphyxiation. For 22 minutes, he reportedly protested and struggled. Then he expired. The universe for him ended; and it has continued since for all of us. 

Smith received the consolations of a spiritual advisor, who was with him in his last moments. This reverend deserves all our respect and admiration for being willing to minister to the most lost of sheep, at precisely the moment when the rest of the community had turned its back on him. Yet, it is not in the power of prison chaplains to save people's bodies from execution. They lack that authority. All they can do is try to comfort them in their affliction. 

Revisiting the Tractatus

 We can all agree that Wittgenstein invented logical positivism in the Tractatus. What's striking though, upon revisiting that work, is that—in the very act of creating that philosophical position, he also refuted it and transcended it. Quite a lot to accomplish in one roughly sixty-page work!

I'm fairly certain I picked up the Tractatus at least once in college or grad school. I must have even made it past Wittgenstein's stirring preface—only to sink down in the mire of his logical symbolism a few pages later. These days, though—years later—I am more comfortable with the fact that there are certain things that I just will never learn in my lifespan: formal logic probably being one of them. And so, I simply breezed through these sections without delay or despair, so that I could pick what meat off the bones I could from the book's more qualitative sections. 

Full Many a Flower

 At some point in one's thirties, one starts to look around oneself and realize that one is no longer in some stage preliminary to life, but in life itself. Whatever life is, this is it. One is no longer advancing through a series of initiations meant to prepare one for existence; this is whatever one was being prepared for. And a great many of us look around at our lives at just that moment and think:... but... I'm not famous yet. I'm not yet great. How can this be my real life, when I'm not important in this life? 

A friend and I, both confronting this mid-thirties crisis, realized that we had always somehow assumed we would be famous by this point in life. It seemed inevitable; self-evident that we were bound for some form of greatness. Maybe everyone feels this way. On the one hand, we know that for every one person who "makes it big," there must be millions who do not. But we always assume we will be one of the lucky ones. We will be in the column of the fortune few, not the column of the millions. 

"As a Man of Peace..."

 The eeriest thing about the return of isolationism on the American right is seeing one's own former anti-interventionist policy positions come back to haunt one, except now in nightmare form. After all, the idea of the U.S. pulling out of NATO is the sort of thing I might have floated as a far-out "wouldn't it be cool if..." scenario in progressive and pacifist circles ten years ago. It comports with the sort of knee-jerk dovishness I once took for granted. "Surely NATO has outlived its usefulness," we would have argued. "We should be working through peaceful international institutions, not militaristic ones."

And in fairness to us, the argument was actually more plausible a few decades ago than it is now. After the Cold War nominally ended (or at least, went dormant), it wasn't particularly clear what purpose the alliance could serve. Who was it now defending us against? And maybe it was true then that keeping the defensive pact in place was just an excuse to shovel more money toward military contractors, and needlessly escalate tensions with one-time adversaries, instead of making overtures of friendship. 

Trampling on the Fallen

 Well, so the House Republicans have managed to impeach Mayorkas, after trying and failing to do so a week ago. It's like it's become a Tuesday ritual at this point. I finish my late afternoon class, grab a tuna fish sandwich for dinner, and check the news on my phone to see that the House is once again trying to pillory Mayorkas. No doubt, they feel like this second vote is a kind of vindication for them, after their humiliating defeat last week, when House Speaker Mike Johnson elected to hold the vote apparently without actually having the support necessary to carry it through. Now, he can crow about how they finally managed to succeed in finishing what they started. 

But in truth, it is no vindication, as anyone can see. All the House Republicans have managed to do is to make themselves appear even more pathetic and ludicrous. They are like a group of clumsy assassins who botched their first attempt to stab someone, and scampered off in fear and flight, only to return at night to stab their victim while he slept. They are like a gang of bullies who set upon an innocent civilian who managed to fend them off, and then returned a night later with an even bigger gang of bullies to ensure the odds were in their favor. 

Machine Overlords

 We all knew an article like this was coming eventually. The Wall Street Journal published a piece yesterday saying yes, indeed, your fears are coming true: AI is already replacing white-collar jobs. Reading into the details, I'm not sure the evidence the article adduces is enough to actually sustain its attention-grabbing headline. What we're talking about here is more specifically a set of recent tech layoffs—in line with what we would expect in an era of high interest rates, when the Fed is still deliberately trying to tighten the labor market—plus some speculation from senior management in those industries that those jobs will never be coming back, because of AI. 

That is to say, the real evidence in that article, if one reads past the headline, is also consistent with a much more optimistic scenario: one in which AI incrementally improves the productivity of most white collar professions, increasing the profitability of their industries, and ultimately yielding economic growth and the creation of more, not fewer, middle-class jobs. In an economic world where productivity growth has actually slowed for decades, in spite of the vaunted claims for earlier rounds of the information technology revolution—as Robert Gordon has extensively documented—this is actually a pretty attractive prospect. It's reasonable to think we might all be better off, at the end of this, rather than out of a job. 

If Only The Little Father Knew

 Well, Trump's comments have once again created a crisis of intolerable cognitive dissonance among Senate Republicans. On the one hand, these are mostly people who have spent their political lives as defense hawks. They know, if anyone does, that the United States has a treaty obligation to defend our NATO allies, in the event of an any attack against any member of the alliance. On the other hand, they are members of the current Republican Party. As such, they know that they exist and hold office purely on the sufferance of His Majesty Donald Trump. And yet, here is Trump saying explicitly, just yesterday, that he would not defend our NATO allies. Indeed, he is saying that he would "encourage" Putin to attack them. 

What is a Senate Republican to do? How are they to preserve some shred of what was once for them a core political principle, while at the same time refusing to criticize Trump for anything? Many chose the approach of expressing slight displeasure, while at the same time downplaying the significance of Trump's comment. It was a "stupid thing to say," was Rand Paul's muted response. Others take the path of sheer denial. They insist that Trump somehow (and they never specify how) simply did not mean what he said. "[V]ery clearly, we’re going to defend our NATO allies," said Mike Rounds, according to Politico. But why is that clear? Trump said he wouldn't defend them; and he's running for president. Well, I don't take Trump "literally," replies Cornyn—dusting off an old stand-by. Rubio reportedly opined in a similar vein: "That’s not how I view that statement [...] He doesn’t talk like a traditional politician."

People Are Saying...

 A friend and I were talking this morning about the supposed blow-up this past week over Biden's age and mental fitness, following the release of the special counsel's report. It struck us that here was a perfect distillation of the media's tendency to create the very events that they purport to be describing. 

One breathless New York Times headline poured in after another. "The release of the special counsel's report raises new questions about..." But who is asking those questions, if not you, the reporter? "The special counsel's characterization of Biden is drawing renewed attention to..." Is it really the special counsel's report that is drawing that attention, or is it you, by talking about the special counsel's report? 

A Monstering Horror

"[A] monstering horror swallows...." That's the image with which E.E. Cummings begins his poem about the Soviet invasion of Hungary, in the dark autumn of 1956—and the United States' refusal to come to the Hungarians' aid. It remains a visceral way of phrasing it: one sees the gullet of the great Soviet leviathan opening wide, then closing down and carrying the restive smaller republic down into the silent depths. 

It's a poem I've quoted a great deal since Putin's invasion of Ukraine—seeing as both the Russian dictator's aggression and the craven acquiescence of the American right to his actions have obvious parallels to the events Cummings had in mind. But it was that first line of the poem that especially came to mind for me this evening, in seeing Trump's most recent comments on NATO. 

Hawks and Dreadnaughts

 So I guess I've become a diehard booster of Ukrainian military aid. But I admit I'm not entirely comfortable about that fact. After all, it does mean endorsing the more "hawkish" position, at least on this one issue. Which feels out of character for me (as it no doubt does for many other liberals who spent the Bush and Obama years seeing themselves as default "anti-interventionists"). 

Of course, there are many nuances to point out. I maintain that it's not so hard to see a moral distinction between funding Ukraine's defense and other, more expansionary projections of U.S. military force. Helping Ukraine fend off an invasion is very different from the U.S. hauling off and invading another country, as it did in Iraq—or as today's Neocons are urging us to do to Iran. 

No Pasarán Round 2

Updating my John Heartfield-inspired photomontage about Ukraine, to reflect the prominence that Tucker (a.k.a. Lord Haw-Haw) has assumed in the pro-Putin brigade. 

Lord Haw-Haw (Or, Tucker in Moscow)

So apparently Tucker is going to Moscow—thereby completing his evolution over the past decade from pro–Iraq War neocon to isolationist Kremlin stooge. The ex–Fox News host has long made clear his preference for the Putinist way of life over the American one. Now, he is apparently traveling across the world to cement his bromance with the Russian dictator. 

And let there be no mistake that this will be some sort of balanced interview, in which Carlson just tries to get the Russian perspective on the state of geopolitics. Tucker has expressed overtly on more than one occasion his sympathy for Putin's regime; and he has become a full-time apologist for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Just check his "X" page on any given day—you will find it full of talking points mainlined from Moscow. 

Iowa

The Furies

 I guess I had to go to law school to realize I didn't want to be a lawyer. Ever since I started here, I've been trying—and failing—to recapture my once-plentiful sense of the romance of the profession. 

Oh of course I knew that many people get "disillusioned" once they go to law school or start practice. But usually, this is discussed in terms of "selling out." The conventional story is the idealistic would-be public defender who ends up in corporate law defending big polluters. But this actually frames the dilemma as easier than it is. If this were the only problem, all that would be required is a small amount of moral determination, plus enough privilege (or a big enough scholarship) not to graduate with a lot of debt. Equipped with these two things, one could easily resist the siren song of corporate practice, and hew to the path of virtue. 

Another Vision of Judgment

 Or: "Tony Soprano in Heaven"

A poem; or—more properly—a rant with line breaks

***

The worst column Ross Douthat ever penned

Remains the one wherein he said

That Hell must exist because Tony Soprano must be there

Here are a number of reasons why that's not fair