I've never been a good barfer. I can count on one hand the number of times in my conscious (post–five year life old) life when I've thrown up.
Once was when I was on a bike ride for a DACA advocacy action for work, and I misjudged ahead of time my ability to bike several miles uphill without having the slightest prior physical training or exercise.
Jesus Christ! That was all I could think to say to myself, when I read the AP story this morning about Pete Hegseth's latest blood-curdling "prayer" to the troops.
Hegseth has a long history at this point of invoking God's name to defend his various wars and atrocities. ("Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks? To murder men and give God thanks!" as Robert Burns would put it.)
In the long weeks when Trump was telegraphing his coming Iran war, I argued against the idea of bombing another country on moral grounds. I said: the United States has no right under international law or justice to invade a country without any plausible theory of self-defense from an imminent threat. Nor did our government have any right to undertake an action that was so obviously fraught with risks to human life on both sides.
But what I didn't emphasize so much was the strategic or prudential case against going to war—largely because that's not the kind of thing I'm so good at thinking about. I didn't realize it would be such a disaster to the U.S. government from a purely self-interested standpoint too. I didn't realize it would play so terribly with Trump's own audience in opinion polling. I didn't realize that bombing Iran could upset the whole global economy. And so, now that all those things have come to pass, I feel I missed a chance to say "I told you so."
In that Erdogan Pizza book I've been talking about all week, John Dolan writes at one point about the perverse pride he takes in being a lapsed Catholic.
Emphasis on the Catholic. As in, it's not that he's proud to be a lapsed Catholic, so much as a lapsed Catholic. It's the specific confession from which he has fallen that constitutes the badge of honor.
I was quoting earlier this morning from John Dolan's excellent book Erdogan Pizza. And doubtless you will find me gushing about it again. The book is a delight. I was a fan of Dolan's "War Nerd" columns back in the day, and I was thrilled to realize that his prose has retained all its sparkle and wit over the years.
Dolan was and remains a brilliant writer. His secret? To make sure he is always saying something interesting. You'd be surprised how many "great writers" don't—or can't—accomplish as much. It calls to mind one of Bukowski's observations:
For more than a decade, I've maintained a little black notebook in which I record the names of all the books I've read. For extra dopamine reward, I even add a little circled star next to each one—to congratulate myself on having finished it.
I notice in the first pages of the notebook however—from back in 2012 or so—there are a lot fewer stars. This is because, back then, I would write down the name of the book before I had finished it.
In his one-of-a-kind travelogue/memoir, Erdogan Pizza, John Dolan writes at one point about the capitalist revolution that swept through industrial China in the 1980s—part of the country's Deng Xiaoping era of opening up—and set off a craze for new spiritual movements among the elderly and others suddenly confronted with unprecedented change.
"China in the first generation of restored capitalism must've been exciting as Hell if you were young and confident," he writes, "but terrifying if you were anything else."
