UD‘s beloved Don DeLillo will soon issue a new novel, The Silence, about New York City under a digital shutdown. Can’t wait.

Managed to lose six hundred million dollars; denied paternity of his children; at the end jumped out of a window.

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Only in America: “Steve recently sold his jet... and was very depressed.”

I mean, they do, don’t they? They voted for it. They will vote for it.

Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.

When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country who [has] ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.

It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.

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Why do people want barbarians? Read Cavafy’s Waiting for the Barbarians.

… night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
      And some of our men just in from the border say
      there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

This man is a solution. Like all primitive ideologues he shushes our anxiety about enlightenment and tucks us in to the dark. Around him, in our new America, range viciously authoritarian Harvard law professors and whorishly indifferent attorneys general – a whole pack of barbarians at the very highest levels to take us where we want to go. These people are a kind of solution.

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Recall Roger Shattuck’s words about Trump’s dada, Ubu the king.

[Ubu is] the representative of primitive earthy conduct, unrelieved by any insight into his own monstrosity, uncontrollable as an elephant on the rampage… [M]ankind in the shape of Ubu dredges the depths of its nature…

Can we really laugh at Ubu, at his character?  It is doubtful, for he lacks the necessary vulnerability,  the vestiges of original sin.  Not without dread, we mock, rather, his childish innocence and primitive soul and cannot harm him.  He remains a threat because he can destroy at will, and the political horrors of the twentieth century make the lesson disturbingly real… [Alfred] Jarry’s humor [in the play] may be regarded as a psychological refusal to repress distasteful images.  He laughed and invited us to laugh at Ubu’s most monstrous behavior, not because we are immune – we are, in fact, deathly afraid of the ‘truth’ of Ubu  – but because it is a means of domesticating fear and pain… [Humor] demands that we reckon with the realities of human nature and the world without falling into grimness and despair.

The sleep of reason produces monsters, doncha know. Donald Trump is the specifically American monster that happened while we were sleeping.

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Less artsy discussion here.

… Markus Braun sat on the Deutsche Bank (bank of presidents!) advisory board. Had a very close relationship with Deutsche Bank.

… Kinda sweetly reminiscent of Madoff, no? Madoff up to the moment of his arrest advised important financial and educational institutions; oversight agencies utterly failed to notice that he was stealing billions of dollars…

Yet even a cursory glance at his demographics – 55 years old, white, living alone, estranged from his children – puts him squarely in the highest risk group for suicide in the United States. Strong silent macho states – Alaska, Wyoming, Montana – consistently top the suicide lists; add an elite education, wealth, privilege, and good looks to that, and transfer it to a luxury high rise in LA, and nothing much changes. Everyone thinks money buys happiness, and maybe for lots of people that’s true; but for lots of people – especially those born to great wealth – it’s not true. In fact, the wealth can be a real burden. Gerald Grosvenor was a depressive.

Republicans up and down the ballot have also galvanized around a central 2020 messaging strategy focused on branding Democrats as far-left lovers of socialism. Months of that groundwork is now, at least in part, set back by the president’s own comments.

When you’re helping run what is arguably the worst public school system in America, openly shopping online for dresses during important school board meetings really says I want to make this situation better. And what a special role model for the children of your district you are as you lie about what you were doing.

Arthur Pania of Baton Rouge, who attended Thursday’s School Board meeting, took to Facebook Saturday afternoon to rebut Bernard.

“I personally watched her for about eight minutes, attempting to decide between a beige and red dress,” Pania wrote. “The only thing I had issue determining from my sight was if it was a short dress or nightwear.”

Of course anyone who teaches at a university that allows students to bring laptops to class knows what it feels like to be, say, sweating your way through a careful presentation of Kantian philosophy and notice some guy in the front row watching pornography while you talk. (What alerted you to something amiss? His erection.) So while the bruised and aggrieved and long-suffering people of Baton Rouge discuss racism, this school board member tries to decide between beige and red. As with the panting guy in the front row, it’s a spectacular way to say hey lol fuck you.

The simple expedient of telling school board members not to use laptops during meetings never occurs to the ninnies who run schools into the ground.

… flyover a week or so ago. Would have made a terrific additional visual in this.

… the webwork.

Go out of your way to attract violent people. Add innocent bystanders and shake well.

This recent blow to the town’s reputation may be the latest setback for residents and businesses who rely on a tourism industry that has already been hard hit by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

[Danielle] Keithley, her cousin and … three children didn’t end up staying the night in Ocean City.

They were trapped on the Boardwalk for no more than eight to 10 minutes trying to break through [a violent] crowd.

In that time, Keithley’s phone and wallet were lost when her bag was knocked from her shoulder, her 4-year-old nephew got a small scratch to the face and her 6-year-old niece ended up with a knot on her forehead that left her dizzy, Keithley said.

Her small group was finally able to escape down a side street, but she was forced to return to the Boardwalk to track down her missing items.

“It was just so many people. There were so many people sitting on the benches. They were crying. They couldn’t breathe. They had water. They were just like putting water bottles all over their faces, trying to clear their eyes … The whole entire town stunk, you know?” [The police sprayed chemicals.]

She was able to find the individuals who picked up her phone and wallet, but her cash was already gone.

Although their hotel room was already paid for, Keithley said she and her cousin decided to pack the children up in the car instead and head back across the Bay Bridge at about 1:30 a.m.

She’s a 33-year-old Maryland native who’s been to Ocean City for everything from senior week to car shows, but says she’s never cut short a trip. 

Despite crowds and busy events, she’s only ever extended her stays. Keithley expects it will likely be years before decides to return — if she ever goes back at all.

She was frustrated by the fighting, but also by the police response, which to her seemed “absolutely unorganized.”

She acknowledges handling that kind of chaos is no easy task, but wants to see a more structured plan to deal with it in the future — especially when there are elderly people and small children on the Boardwalk.

“I hate to say it because who doesn’t love Ocean City? But we won’t be going back,” she said. “We won’t be going back, not anytime soon, not anytime in this season or probably the next season.”

UD‘s father graduated from Ocean City High. Generations of her father’s side of the family have lived and worked in Ocean City. The place was never upscale, but had a pleasant rackety energy to it. In recent years, though, politicians who see only money have allowed it to become ugly and dirty and dangerous. This is about drug cartels, gun markets, gangs. Climbing out of this calamity will take a long time; it will take a deep cultural change. I doubt it will happen. Ocean City is devolving into a skeezy police state.

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Mayor Rick Meehan and Councilwoman Mary Knight said cheap hotel rooms needed to end immediately.

Listen to the cynical idiots who destroyed Ocean City; listen to them say things like cheap hotel rooms need to end immediately. Yes, tell the miles and miles and miles of cheap hotels that are Ocean City that a very few people in the political establishment have decided that you need to close. Now. Or hey maybe we should stop hosting major asshole events like H20i. Oh wait! We did! But they’re still coming every year, cuz there’s no place like Ocean City for cheap hotel rooms, cheap bars that never close, scads of other assholes just like us for us to fight with, and … I dunno… Just that ineffable history, that legacy, of town-trashing night after night, decade after decade, that makes it so special.

“I feel like a prisoner in my own home…”

“… there have been an overwhelming number of cancellations…”

“… everybody from the western side of Maryland and the north and south of Maryland come[s] here and it seems like their sole purpose is to destroy the town.”

… who, with her husband, did a Martin Shkreli and massively jacked up the price of a desperately needed commodity – in this case, hand sanitizer. Ellen was in charge of chatting up rich people in order to get them to give enormous sums to the university, but apparently OU doesn’t want to be associated with her any longer.

... Lincoln Project ads, carefully targeted to appear during Fox News shows the president watches, have so successfully enraged Mr Trump that his reaction has generated days of news coverage – in turn raising the group millions of dollars in grassroots donations.

Yesterday was Bloomsday, an event UD has in the past celebrated in very high style (see her posts about it); but this covid year has meant a much quieter commemoration. As in, she stood for around five minutes late last night in her new garden (dedicated to Mr UD‘s sister, whose willingness to buy our share of our country house freed up funds for the project)

and thanked whatever gods there be for James Joyce, for Ulysses, for the late night scene in Bloom’s garden when two damaged sensitive men pee together.

The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure.

I have said that the mad, sad world should never settle us into despondency; but, you know, easy to say that when you’ve been blessed by – those same gods? – with a silly, high-spirited disposition. Art and nature are, however, there for all of us, sorrowful and euphoric.

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I mean, man oh man. Listen to Saul Bellow read the end of Henderson the Rain King (start at 37:30) and try not to weep with joy.

… is appalling. Keep in mind while reading this short chronicle of the last few days that the city has itself to blame for the escalating violence. (It’s sheer dumb luck no guns have been involved; but that luck will certainly run out.) It has done little to make the place unattractive to violent people. No curfews; plenty of late-night bars with cheap booze; insufficient police patrols.

Boardwalk violence used to be about crowds of drunk frat boys (see my posts about OC sister-city Myrtle Beach); but while that of course still goes on, the really scary stuff now is about gangs.

Around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 7, the OCPD responded to a fight involving multiple people on the Boardwalk between 6^th Street and 7^th Street. During that incident, one unnamed individual was stabbed and was taken to Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury. The victim’s status in unknown.

Last Tuesday, OCPD officers responded to two simultaneous serious assaults on the Boardwalk, one at 11^th Street and another at 15^th Street. Around 11:20 p.m., OCPD officers responded to a reported stabbing that had just occurred. The victim was transported to PRMC for treatment and severity of the victim’s injuries are not known.

Just after midnight last Wednesday, the three-day spree reached a crescendo when a fight broke out on the Boardwalk between large groups of young adults. At least one young man was punched repeatedly in the face while sitting on a Boardwalk bench to the point it appeared he fell unconscious. Other skirmishes broke out during the larger altercation which carried over to the beach area. A video of the incident captured by a witness and posted on social media went viral and left many in the community with more questions than answers…

Just after 5 p.m. last Thursday, two individuals entered a West Ocean City restaurant and were asked by employees to leave because they were not wearing masks or face coverings in violation of state COVID-19 directives. The individuals did leave as directed, but returned a short time later with a third individual and allegedly confronted employees and threw bottles and other items around the restaurant before fleeing on foot. One individual, identified as Roger Ja’Mil Brown, 19, of Severn, Md., was arrested a short time later and was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and disturbing the peace.

Around the same time last Thursday, another man was reportedly attacked randomly while shopping at the outlets in West Ocean City. The victim and his girlfriend were allegedly attacked from behind by five unknown assailants in broad daylight. The victim reportedly suffered multiple facial fractures including a broken cheek and a broken eye socket.

Back in Ocean City, the violence erupted again on Friday night with multiple altercations up and down the Boardwalk throughout the night. The situation reached a crescendo on Friday when law enforcement was forced to deploy pepper spray or a tear gas-like substance to break up the crowds.

On Sunday around 2 a.m., police broke up a fight among a group and apprehended at last two suspects on the Boardwalk.

On Sunday afternoon, the Alaska Stand on 9^th Street announced on social media it was closing its doors early due to customer problems. Additionally, some other downtown businesses, such as the Crabcake Factory Poolside, did not even open Sunday due to concerns over safety.

In its social media message, the Alaska Stand wrote, “We are closed! … we have had more than enough this weekend dealing with a whole new level of disrespect to our staff, our business and our town and we are tired of being the brunt of undeserved verbal abuse by the public when ordering and picking up … we will regroup and try again … get it together OC … we apologize to our beloved and well mannered customers, we cherish and appreciate you to no end.”

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By some measures, Ocean City has for some time been the most dangerous place to live in Maryland. Fixing the problem will make the place feel even less carefree and vacation-like: Extreme police presence; curfews; huge numbers of new rules; a general air of suspicion and threat. It’s sort of like what has happened to soccer (feast your eyes) in certain European countries: Organized gangs were allowed to proliferate, and now the game setting is one hundred percent male (women and families have abandoned the arenas; it’s only police and young male fans now) and way violent. Ocean City is getting there.

At 5:55 this morning, I watched from the bedroom as a hummingbird buzzed my new, just-blooming, red bee balm. Looked like this.

Ten minutes later, from the kitchen window, I watched a large red fox just there, just in front of me, in the middle of the garden, tiptoeing along the irregular-stone path. But then it suddenly cringed, looked at our bedroom sliding doors, and ran away.

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“I saw a fox from the bedroom,” said Mr UD five minutes later, as he made his coffee; “and I pounded on the window to make it get out of the garden.”

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If you’re a fox, you definitely want to be in our garden. Chipmunks abound; and of course birds and rabbits (though the rabbits prefer the large wild patch I’ve established on a nearby hill) and probably a raft of other rodents…