Peasant Theology

 In the first chapter of his classic book of cultural history, The Great Cat Massacre, Robert Darnton studies a handful of folk tales in their earlier renditions, in order to get a glimpse into peasant mentalités under the Old Regime. 

He takes from these stories the conclusion that peasant life in the seventeenth century was brutish and short—that the world for these men and women was unforgiving and remorseless, and so the tales serve primarily to warn against the dangers of naively trusting one's fellow people. The only virtues they applaud—in Darnton's telling—are those of low cunning; a sort of hostile pawkiness in the presence of one's neighbors. 

Their Own Affairs

 The Russian government—that great exemplar of "Christian" and "Western" values, according to our neo-fascist Putin admirers in this country—recently sentenced a woman to eighteen months in a labor camp. Her crime? Writing K-pop fan fiction with a gay theme. 

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., our own Putin-inspired fascists are sending out criminal subpoenas against trans health care providers. The march of regress carries on. 

Lower for Proof

 Back when the Trump administration dismantled USAID—including its global health programs—many people sensibly asked: what happens if there's another major disease outbreak in the Global South? Who will monitor and contain it in its early stages? 

Now, we appear to have our answer. Southern Africa is witnessing another major outbreak of Ebola. The World Health Organization has already declared it a global health emergency. And early reports indicate that the virus spread far past the point at which pre-existing monitoring agencies ought to have detected it. 

Lordling

 Yesterday, the New York Times published an analysis article that places a few recent items of Trump's behavior in telling juxtaposition. 

Let's see, he is obsessed with funding his ballroom construction project at the White House. He has used the privileges and powers of the White House to enrich himself and his family. He has publicly announced that he "doesn't think" about "Americans' financial situation" at a time of rising prices for basic commodities as a result of his war in the Middle East. 

The To-Be-Forgotten

 We all recall when ABC killed the polling aggregator and political analysis site FiveThirtyEight last year—in a move they described as a business decision at the time, but which seemed eerily to coincide with the general trend of the "Great Accomodation" during the early months of the Trump administration. 

Now, having already died once, the website appears set to undergo what Thomas Hardy called the "second death"—that of "oblivion." Even after it stopped generating new content, after all, FiveThirtyEight lingered on as a searchable archive. People could at least link back to old articles. Now, that too appears to be gone. 

Weakness of Will

 A friend of mine a few months back was taking me on a FaceTime tour of his room. He showed me all the library books piled up on a shelf that he had not returned in years.

"If you add up all those late fees," I said, "it must be in the thousands of dollars!"

My friend explained that San Francisco had abolished overdue penalties at libraries. 

Plank of Standard Pinkness

 The Guardian published a new list of the 100 greatest novels of all time this week. 

What immediately strikes one about the entries is how familiar they all are. How predictable the list is. How much it consists of all the obvious works still in print that you can find in any "classics" row at a standard bookstore.