It’s part of this (for sale!) wonderland.

‘As for Trump, I find it difficult to hold him morally responsible for anything. He’s a creature of appetite and instinct who hunts and feeds in a dark sub-ethical realm. You don’t hold a shark morally responsible for mauling a swimmer. You just try to keep the shark at bay—which the American people failed to do.‘

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Dark sub-ethical realm is beautiful. It’s very very good writing. Maybe all the way to poetic.

It’s banned in Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Tunisia,  China, Kyrgyzstan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. There are also tons of partial bans, in Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Burqa bans have regularly been upheld by the courts.

In short, however you personally feel about the burqa, its restriction has become a routine and largely uncontested part of the life of many countries and territories, and discussions about banning, or further banning, are ongoing in lots of locations.

It’s a thing, babe, in Morocco as much as in Italy.

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Now, UD‘s own US, largely because it’s so large (most people here don’t ever encounter burqas), hasn’t had anything to say about burqas; but, well, England. Now England…

England’s the big holdout; no burqa bans here!

Many of its neighbors, as we see, have gone the total or partial ban route.

And at the very least, these neighbors don’t consider mere debate about the burqa to be an abomination. How can it be, considering what’s going on in the world with the garment? Do you really want to hold yourself snobbily aloof from this widely shared/discussed concern?

Embarrassingly, yes. An MP brought the matter up in PM’s Questions the other day – the sort of thing one would expect to happen, and one would want to be prepared for – and got a fierce appalled Lady Bracknell put-down from the PM and others.

I mean how dare you. How dare you.

It is amusing – embarrassingly so – that England continues to feign indignation that anyone, anywhere, would have the nerve…

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Here’s the deal. The story is now all over the British press, which means the latent unhappiness in much of the population with full facial veiling is now being made manifest.

Dig. You’re supposed to shut up about the burqa and keep it out of the press precisely because the moment you break the uncomfortable national silence about it, millions of Brits will realize that now that you mention it they are quite unhappy with the thing.

I mean, uh, strong majorities, when asked, support a ban.

It’ll be interesting to see whether the government’s attempt to strangle vox populi through incredulous contempt will work.

‘[The garden’s director] once saw a man taking pods off the cacao trees, and when he confronted him, the man’s justification was that he’s a taxpayer and Brookside Gardens is publicly funded.‘

‘A man who overdosed on fentanyl in an Indiana Planet Fitness was dead inside a tanning bed for days before his corpse was found.‘

Twenty years old, spectacularly armed, with a long criminal history featuring repeated apparent efforts to kill lots of people gathered in public spaces, he was apparently one of the treetop snipers in Hickory NC who shot into a large house party. He’s so young, so precociously accomplished, and he lives in such a gun-lovin’ state, that UD sees far more slaughter from this li’l guy. His kill rate remains poor, true; but each outing teaches him something, and I’m sure he’s got far more murder in him. Best of all, he’s a team player — doesn’t go anywhere without fellow shooters.

… whose fall has pulled on the heartstrings of all New Yorkers. Recall this 2022 NYT paragraph:

He got rid of two jets and placed his 280-foot superyacht on the market for $106 million. Princeton University, to which Mr. Perelman had pledged $65 million to go toward construction of a new residential college, announced in 2021 that the building would no longer be named in his honor when he failed to meet the original payment schedule.

Things have only gotten worse since then. A fire at one of his homes so damaged five of his paintings that he has made a claim for their full value with his insurer. The insurer notes that there isn’t any damage.

Perelman in his reply points out that they have lost their “oomph” and he wants $410 million.

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Ah, the good old days.

In 2012, a volunteer firefighter who responded to a call from the Creeks, the investor Ron Perelman’s 58-acre estate in East Hampton, discovered that Perelman had constructed or renovated many buildings without permits, including a 5,800-square-foot habitable barn, a 4,200-square-foot carriage house, and a small synagogue. Attorney Leonard Ackerman, who represented Perelman and has been involved in many big Hamptons land-use cases, likes to say that he practices “forgiveness law.” For Perelman, forgiveness at the Creeks meant ripping six bedrooms out of the carriage house, tearing down part of a cabana, and revegetating 70,000 square feet of illegally cleared wetlands.

 I am a big admirer of Hervé Guibert, as I explained in my essay “Sade in Jeans.” What I like about Guibert is that he was tough. It seems to me that in the English-speaking world the problem in AIDS writing has been sentimentality — a tearful, victimized, medicalized approach to AIDS and not enough defiance, anger, gutsiness. I don’t want to name names, but we’ve had everything from AIDS deathbed weddings to angels descending.

Of course this has been vastly admired by most people, and I feel like a cad not liking it. But I don’t like its sentimentality. It’s not that different from the death of Little Nell in Dickens. I think people living through AIDS probably get a lot of consolation from that kind of writing. But I think, as literature, it’s dubious.

Right. UD was amazed to read, in an earlier article about a North Carolina mass shooting, that shooters were apparently positioned in nearby trees. She had trouble believing this ambush scenario, since virtually all paid-admission, bullet-riddled, house parties generate the bullets from inside the houses, as drunk guests get into gunfights.

But here you are to envisage an organized little army having climbed neighboring trees (lucky neighbor!) for a clean invisible shot into the party house. Wowsa. “[P]eople attending the party were also armed, and returned fire on the original shooter or shooters.” Wowsa!

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This is an unfolding, evolutionary history that UD has long written about. Whether school or party or lounge shooting, we’re going to see larger and more organized, more planned, mass attacks. We’re going to see return fire (at least eighty shots were released as armed guests hit back), turning these scenarios into protracted skirmishes with greater and greater injury/loss of life/danger to communities. We’re gradually going to realize that Americans consider this activity fun and exciting (an extension of the party, if you like), and that they need no motive beyond this to stage bloody little civil wars in our towns.

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And listen. This ain’t quaint Hatfield/McCoy shit. Look what these sixteen year olds are packing. Look what Americans are packing.

Just steps from Harvard Yard, a group has been trying to … [make] space for [conservative voices] for years… It … has brought in speakers like … Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor who has supported the idea of a worldwide Catholic theocracy.

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F-u-u-u-ck. Has that ever been done before? I mean a worldwide Catholic theocracy? Did I miss the years before 1054 when Catholics bestrode the globe?

Okay they were doing well in Europe then, but THE GLOBE? Has pretty much anyone besides Adrian Vermeule thought about, much less lectured, on this unprecedented SOOOOOOOPERWILD thing?

You thought the idea that gender is socially constructed was radical. What about A FOR REAL WORLDWIDE CATHOLIC THEOCRACY? Maybe in his most buried dreams Savonarola’s unconscious generated images of A WORLDWIDE CATHOLIC THEOCRACY of which he would be the SOOOOPERBUSY executive in chief, but I can’t think of anyone, outside of Vermeule (including anyone within the territory of the Vatican), capable in our time of producing and then sharing with everyone the idea that from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar everyone gets to be forcibly Catholicized.

Which may help one understand why viewpoint diversity institutes, like the one honored to have this fanatic share his superpower fantasy, remain somewhat in disrepute.

Post-Trump grab, the place is tanking.

‘Following Trump Takeover, Kennedy Center Subscription Sales Drop 36%’

The arts institution has seen a $1.6 million year-over-year decline in subscription revenue, with theater subscriptions down more than 80% since Donald Trump’s takeover.

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My nephew, a spectacular singer (runs in the family), is in the Washington National Opera chorus, and will be part of their upcoming Aida. La Kid and I will be in the audience, but we wonder how many will be with us in the opera house. Will the troupe outnumber us?

Strange how everything turn turn turns. When I was a kid Bethesdans had to drive ten miles at night down the GW Parkway to see first-rate classical stuff at the Kennedy Center; since then, thanks in part to my uncle (my nephew’s grandfather), Les UDs have had a significant concert hall, Strathmore, a fifteen minute walk away.

Because of what Trump just did to the Kennedy Center, the significance of the Music Center at Strathmore has suddenly taken an enormous leap — several performers/productions that would have been in the city are now in the suburbs.

The suburbs that ain’t very suburban anymore. Seen downtown Bethesda lately?

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1932957330441906

https://www.al.com/crime/2025/06/mobile-kids-dance-recital-shooting-leaves-1-dead-1-jailed-gunfire-at-saenger-theatre-sparks-outrage.html

Barbeque in the local park, American-style!