The Apostate

 Okay, so I thought Haley Stevens was perfectly entitled to her own opinions on El-Sayed's campaign in Michigan. I even thought it was legitimate for her to try to influence him to tone down or shift his rhetoric or positions. But to switch sides and back his MAGA opponent—as she did yesterday—just two days out from the election—is indeed what Sen. Chuck Schumer called it: a "despicable betrayal" of party and principle. 

There's something almost eerie about the psychology that could go back on one's own prior words so brazenly. Time and again, Stevens had denounced the GOP candidate for a host of valid reasons. Now, at the last minute, she declares that she wants him to be a U.S. Senator. As Lord Byron wrote of the erstwhile Jacobin-cum-Laureate Robert Southey: he "turned his coat — and would have turned his skin"—and that seems to be what happened here too. 

The Dewey Arch

 The New York Times ran a guest column yesterday that described the history of "triumphal arches," which Trump is obviously trying to imitate in the construction of his new so-called "Arc de Trump" in D.C. 

But the Times piece leaves out of the story one of the closest parallels from our own history: the Dewey Arch, which was built in New York's Madison Square in 1899 and demolished a year later. 

Calumny

 The New York Times ran an article yesterday in which they detail how, in the last few days before the midterm elections, Republican candidates are resorting to the most rancid possible personal attacks to try to chip away at Democrats' clear lead in the polls. In some cases, they are dredging up details from the opposition candidates' personal lives that ought to be treated as off-limits. 

But in other cases, they are simply making up outrageous and lurid accusations out of whole cloth. One Republican candidate calls his opponent a "groomer," based on no evidence whatsoever. Our vice president darkly implies that a Democratic candidate could only have stood up for the rights of trans children in the past because he has some creepy sexual fixation on the subject. 

Double Injustice

 The New York Times reported yesterday that the Trump administration is apparently planning to deport more than a hundred Afghan nationals to Pakistan—with the full knowledge and deliberate intent, as part of the agreement, that Pakistan will then subsequent force them back across the border to their home country. 

The planned group of deportees reportedly includes people who would be obvious targets for persecution or assassination if they are sent back to Afghanistan, including relatives of people who risked their lives to aid the U.S. war effort against the Taliban. 

Half-Truth

 I wish I could say that, since Donald Trump is totally wrong, that means that Democrats are always right, and that everything they do to prevail against him in this week's midterm elections is therefore justified—but unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. 

Obviously, the big story about election interference right now is the fact that Trump has turned the U.S. Department of Justice into an instrument of his personal authority, and is using it to sow doubt about the integrity of the vote for transparently corrupt and partisan purposes. 

The Conceptualists

 A group of rich kids and their hangers-on, none of whom seems to need to work for a living, get together for a weekend of sex, drugs, and ultra-violence in a country manor. One of them may be not quite what they seem. Such is the by no means unpromising premise on which Martin Amis constructs his insanely readable second novel, Dead Babies (1975). 

The plot of the novel has been compared to a parody version of an Agatha Christie weekend murder party. But the compulsive aspect of the novel does not stem from its mystery or suspense (though there is plenty of that too). As with other Amis novels, it derives above all from the virtuoso prose.

Schopenhauer vs. The Royal Danish Society

 Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Basis of Morality is one of the funniest books ever written. Long before I got around to finishing the whole book, I had read its immortal first edition preface, in which AS takes the Royal Danish Society of Scientific Studies to task for passing over his essay in a prize contest. 

We subsequently learn that Schopenhauer's contribution was the only entrant that year in the essay contest. The Royal Society still could not bring themselves to bestow this recognition upon it.