The Danger of Having Only One Idea

 I am profoundly confused as to why progressive groups and pundits are gearing up for another campaign to oust Chuck Schumer from Senate leadership (see this Substack post, e.g., and this petition from Moveon.Org). The guy just led our party to a historic victory in the midterms!

Meanwhile, candidates in the progressive lane turned in less than stand-out performances, in a field that was extremely favorable to Democrats. They didn't flip any seats in the Senate, and they managed to lose a House seat in Maine (Jared Golden's district). 

Check Your Wrath and Scorn

 A judge in Massachusetts yesterday apparently denied Lindsay Clancy's request to dismiss the murder charges against her, after a jury failed to reach consensus in the first trial. This means she could be tried again for the same alleged offenses. 

It's hard to understand the position of anyone who wants to punish a mother more after losing three children—even if allegedly by her own hand. 

God Help Us

 Over the weekend, Donald Trump and Ross Douthat apparently sat down together for a lengthy interview on the Bari Weiss-ified 60 Minutes. It was like a head-to-head match-up of my personal betes-noires. (To be sure, I don't actually put Douthat in the same moral category as Trump. I only make the comparison in the sense that these are probably the two men I've spent the most time complaining about of anyone—with the possible exception of J.D. Vance—since this blog's inception.)

Unsurprisingly—this being a Douthat interview—the conversation eventually came around to theology. In the Wall Street Journal's telling, Douthat at a certain point asked Trump: "What happens when you die?" and the latter apparently replied "that he hoped to go to heaven."

The Force-Fed Bird

 The gifts of the 2026 midterm elections just keep coming. Sure, it was great to win senate seats in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, South Carolina—and maybe even Mississippi and Alaska, if current leads in the vote count hold. But even the lesser-known ballot measures turn out to be full of positive surprises. 

True, to win Mississippi, Democrats may have had to go all-in on being the pro-beef party. But there was some consolation for the vegetarian (or pescatarian) voter in Washington, D.C.—namely, in the fact that the district finally banned foie gras—a traditional delicacy made through the forced-feeding of birds. 

Anti-Zionism vs. Liberal Zionism

 Of the many good things coming out of the sweeping, historic Democratic victories in the midterms last week, one of the minor but still significant ones is that they took people's minds—if only for a moment—off of the intra-party deadlock over Israel-Palestine issues that had consumed Democratic voters during the primary season (particularly in Michigan). 

I say this redirection of attention is a positive thing, not because I think Israel and Palestine are not morally important issues—they are. I say this because I see no realistic way in the world as it currently is to build a morally defensible coalition on either side of the issue that I could stand to be a part of. Therefore, I have no idea who to root for, whenever the Democratic Party is devouring itself over this issue. 

Ressentiment, or Metaphysical Rebellion?

I was reading about the role of mercenaries in Haiti's ongoing gang war the other day, and A.E. Housman's "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries" came to mind. One line specifically echoed through my brain: "What God abandoned, these defended." 

I've always thought this one line, more than any other, is what elevates Housman's short poem from the realm of jingoistic special pleading to universal literature. 

Dark Oblivion

 There are only so many memoirs written specifically about the experience of losing a father. Philip Roth's Patrimony is one. Paul Auster's The Invention of Solitude is another. 

Since my own father was diagnosed with brain cancer at the start of the year (he died on Memorial Day weekend in May), I've read them both.