The unseen but clearly felt presence of Mr. Obama in particular has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.

… and VP Harris Trump.

Frank Miller.

Paul Berman weighs in.

The students want to chant these things, of course, because these slogans are transgressive. But no one wants to say what the transgression is because it’s too horrible. So we’re having a mass euphemism event: Horrible things are being advocated by people who deny that they’re advocating it.

… It’s very difficult for people with liberal ideas to recognize the extreme and frightening views that are actually upheld by totalitarian movements. In Hamas we have radical Islamists who’ve shown us in real life what they’re actually for by acting on their principles. And there’s an inability or reluctance to see that. So we have a mass movement in defense of Hamas that calls itself a mass movement in defense of human rights. It’s a blindness, but within the blindness is a seduction and a fascination. That’s evident in the transgressive thrill students feel in chanting those chants.

“Trust me,” he says, “I lived this, and friends of mine died because of this stupidity.”

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 “[T]hey’re playing into the hands of the right wing in this country. And what terrifies me is that this could end up bringing [Donald] Trump back into power.”

Mark Rudd speaks.

Scathing Online Stormy explains hyperbole to the defense.

The defense forgot that Stormy was editor of her high school paper.

When Necheles characterized Daniels’ e-commerce operation as “shilling,” the adult film star snapped back that Trump — who is currently hawking sneakers and Bibles with his name on them — does the same.

“Not unlike Mr. Trump,” she replied.

This passage, from André Gide’s novel, The Countefeiters, struck me when I encountered it as a Northwestern undergrad, and has stayed with me all these years. Of course I recognized this comical, poignant form of dissembling from real life, but I suspect this passage, on the fourth page of the book, was my first encounter with a lucid prose description of it. The ways we defend against the exposure of our strongest and most authentic passions intrigued and intrigue me; forms of emotional self-defense intrigued and intrigue me.

And why do we defend? Because precisely the places we feel the most are the places we can be hurt the most.

And also – see Adam Phillips – it disturbs us to think of ourselves as capable of volcanic affect; most of us cultivate what Stephen Dedalus called “the refrigerating apparatus,” and Isaac Rosenfeld “formo-frigidism.” We be cool.

We are too much for ourselves – in our hungers and our desires, in our griefs and our commitments, in our loves and our hates – because we are unable to include so much of what we feel in the picture we have of ourselves. The whole idea of ourselves as excessive exposes how determined we are to have the wrong picture of what we are like, of how fanatically ignorant we are about ourselves.

The cofounder of the Seasteading Institute is Peter Thiel, who is also currently attempting to develop remote property in New Zealand with the hope of establishing a haven for a “cognitive elite” of “sovereign individuals” (clearly inspired by Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged). As [Douglas] Rushkoff points out, these entrepreneurs have always regarded the public and civic sectors as “antagonistic to their grand designs.” The creators of projects like ReGen and Seasteading have no interest in sustainable living or alleviating economic inequality. What they want is their own personal sandbox, unrestrained by governments, judicial oversight, or the collective will. These start-up societies reflect, if nothing else, a desire to create a new world from scratch and then choose who gets to be a part of it.

Italian officials have refused a request from the German State Antiquities Collection in Munich to return a Roman statue bought by Hitler in 1938…  “This work was obtained fraudulently by the Nazis, and it’s part of our national heritage,” [Italy’s culture minister said].

“[P]rofound moral wretchedness.” Juan Gabriel Valdés, Chile’s US ambassador.

 “[A]n incredibly important figure in the breakdown of Chile’s constitutional order.” Historian Gabriel Salazar.

“Encouraging coups d’état in the region, justifying them, being aware that these coups implied a genocide against workers and students.” Argentine human rights lawyer Myriam Bregman.

[The] ultra-high-end Bentley with a 542-horsepower engine … [goes] from 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds… Why on earth would someone want to own a car—one meant to be driven on regular old roads in, for example, upstate New York, where its driver operated a small local chain of hardware stores—that can go a reported 175 miles per hour? That’s 110 miles per hour faster than the highest posted speed limit in the state of New York… The faster drivers go on the road, the more likely they are to suffer a crash and for that crash to be fatal—a point that is both bluntly, stupidly obvious and more or less ignored by plenty of drivers, automobile marketers, and road designers…  U.S. traffic deaths are skyrocketing because the cars that are going faster and faster on our roads are also bigger and heavier than ever before …

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You need something to go with your Szecsei & Fuchs Double Barrel Bolt Action Rifle.

Quote of the day. Giuliani.

… enjoyed this. His sister and UD, practically on top of each other.

Two items of interest:

1. Governor DeSantis has announced his first foreign policy measure if he gains the White House:

“I will immediately cut off all recognition of/cooperation with Latvia, which has just elected its first admitted homosexual president. Bad enough that this person is known to be an ‘ardent’ supporter of Ukraine; he adds insult to injury by poisoning the minds of our children with woke ideology. With friends like these, America doesn’t need enemies.”

2. Yale University has issued its first statement about its practice of favoring legacy applicants:

“Ron DeSantis was one of our few non-legacy admits his year at Yale. We’ll stick with legacies.”