July, 2025

July 12, 2025: It has been announced yet again: the official death of satire. This time around, it drowned in its own upchuck. What brought this on? Netanyahu, that is what brought on the heaves. The man would offer Trump’s name for the Nobel Peace Prize. He opened his mouth; all sorts of winged things flew out. Satire gave up the ghost right there. (It is said that the president who likes his flyovers and miitary parades does not like war; could do bad things to people.) A coroner’s report is pending, but it is pretty clear: disbelief to the point of all-life-is-meaningless-vertigo followed by paroxysms of some sort or other.

And yes, Gibbon (as in Edward all decline and fall, the very same) – the way Gibbon, in the dead of night, CD audio), goes on about Didius Julianus, and one could be forgiven for thinking on the Current Regime. The Praetorian Guard had put the empire on the auction block and Julianus bought the throne at so many sesterces per soldier. For the moment, Trump has no Praetorian Guard to pay off, but he is getting there. The first Caesars were venal enough, sure, but then the price of acquiring office was steep. Eventually some Caesars got into the game just for the perks (money), forget governance. And that day is nigh on our horizon. It is probably 50-50 whether or no there is a “client list” as per Epstein, but the odds are even that White House staff members daily compile a list of those they can feed to Trump’s need to humiliate some sod or lass before his power nap. Stuffing the Minotaur, say what? But you know this. We, here, know this. Podcast after podcast states and restates it, some with voices that are too enamoured of their own cleverness and the cute ways with which one might fool around with language so as to score high-fives. Incoming: Ivy League trash talk at two o’clock. Byzantium, and there were ways in which a single afternoon could pass for the eternal, hot sun, long shadows, and Greek chatter the everlasting standbys, the baker arguing with the candlestick maker as to the essence of God. I am beginning to see the current administration and the people it would govern (fleece) in such a light.

Postscript I: … …. And it is that time again – Lasagna Awareness Month, get out your bibs, and when squared away, tuck into some Carpenter

Postscript II: Lunar has had a change of heart. Something or other to the effect that the f-word ending with ism really does have some application to what gives to the south of here, but that otherwise he is waving weakly and will not be gracing us with his presence at this juncture, he having had a lovely tea with somebody all the same, all the horrors (Gaza among them) temporarily on hold, and whether the midges are thick this year in riverside Hammersmith, he will not tell me, he possibly Starmered, or still feeling the effects of the Brexit Effect. But wait a minute. Something is coming through: … …. ‘I've just signed a petition for the Nobel Peace Prize to be awarded to Francesca Albanese which in so many ways strikes me as a shrewd choice. It will drive the Orange Beast up the wall were she to get it. What else? I was lucky to have missed the opera, Handel's “Semele”, the gods in business suits and plenty about sexual exploitation, just what Handel intended. We are now swearing off most productions as we are sick to death of being preached to by philistines. Hot, hot [… ….]’ … …. Same old Lunar…

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you have a bout of buyer’s remorse coming on. The political equivalent of OxyContin, as per Frank Gallagher of Shameless, would be this: you are passed out in the snow and then you come to in Mexico: … …. ‘A key reason I'm looking forward to winging my way out there is to escape the oppressive madness of this country for 3 weeks. If things work out maybe I'll become an "illegal alien." (How is it, precisely, that a human being can be "illegal"?)’ … …. Just off the top of our heads: a Certain Entity, in violation of everything written and unwritten and getting away with it, in this way renders himself more “legit” than anything else legal, and from this vantage point, is able to get fulsome about “illegals”. And every night, a mushroom cloud of a post, and who knows what the man has for breakfast? What body parts go down well with orange juice?

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘There’s been a beauty pageant for goats here on the island. A man garbed up like Pan officiated. Percival was a runner-up. He says hello, by the way. The Americans have a way of turning every tragedy into an episode from Dr Phil. Been wanting to say that for a long time. Having said it, I can also say that I cracked my Solzhenitsyn open again (August, 1914, The Red Wheel), and it’s pretty much where I left off: two officers exchanging notes, caught up in a maelstrom of military incompetence some of which may or may not carry over into the revolution on either side of the equation. Will that do you for now? Do you know what else I’ve been dying to say? Sufferin’ succotash. Feels good. Beats any doctoral thesis on languidge-is-power anytime.’ … …. We are so advised…

Postscript V: Rutilius … …. ‘If you’re going to mess about with Byzantium and eternity, you’re going to have to mess about with this, as follows (though we be anything but golden birds, you and I, and if we’re sailing to Byzantium, we’re doing so on some interstate to hell. From Michael Psellus, 11th century, I believe):

Do not place the mighty measures of the land into your mind,
Nor measure the measure of the sun by joining measuring-rods together;
It is borne by the eternal counsel of the father, not for your sake.
Let the rush of the moon alone; it always runs by the work of necessity,
The starry procession has not been brought forth for your sake.
The flat wing of birds in the open air is never true,
Nor the entrails and cuts of sacrifices. All these are playthings,
Supports of commercial fraud. Flee these things,
If you wish to throw open the sacred paradise of piety,
Where virtue, wisdom and good order are gathered together.

Top of the marnin’ to you, though in your time zone it’s the dead of night, an existential whizz in the offing…’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn shined up, but you’ve otherwise got me, got me fair and square. I had Peru on the mind, some recent archaeological finds, and you go and occlude me with that Yeats poem (“Sailing to Byzantium”) with which I had to contend in university, me a young woman who had to somehow feel something for an old geezer looking to escape his mortality by turning himself into a piece of art, and I felt nothing. Why the hell should I have? But over time, that passed.) Besides, I like men, even old geezers in leaky boats, just don’t want to have to live with such. I suspect that the likes of you and me (and we're, as it were, straight) will have no political representation, ever. Come to think of it, maybe that’s a good thing. Alienation doesn’t make the buses run on time, especially when it’s minus 25 out. Paradise was situated in southern Iraq, you know. Thereabouts the first metropolis came to be. Those city-slicker Sumerians – they were pessimists. This speaks to their intelligence. The high life (city life) by all means, but don’t expect it to last. &c. As they say, just saying. I can hear your foot tapping.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Look, I don’t know if comparisons can be drawn between young master “Lip” Gallagher (of Shameless fame) and young Barry Lyndon, William Makepeace Thackeray’s hero or un-hero in his The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon sometimes called The Luck of Barry Lyndon. They’re both, as young males, determined to make their way in the world on their own terms. They both scam when it suits them. They both distrust authority and despise pretentious gits who haven’t earned their perks. They both fall in love and sour on love. If current trends hold, they’ll wind up treating women badly. They’re headed for a lifetime each of full-blown cynicism. Still, the one is an only child, and the other is the second eldest of an extensive sibling-unit fathered by a deadbeat booze dad who, on rare occasions, has unsuspected depths. The one gets about in a TV series, the other in a Victorian era novel. At any rate, yes, “Sailing to Byzantium”. Thrilling to read it again after all these years. One asks: “Where did this come from, the poem, I mean?” Man, nothing could be more ill-suited for this time of ours and its sensibilities all pseudo-Versailles. A meteor landed in Lac Brome last night. For a moment there, I thought it might’ve been an old poet friend of mine, but he’s yet to have his apotheosis. I’m sitting under a basket of hanging flowers. Warm wind breezing over my local. Maybe I’ll lobby to bring the word “eternity” back from its exile, now that it’s paid for its old literary sins and then some.’ … ….

July 5, 2025: The humongous, splendiferous bill that Congress just passed, and we are talking here the American Congress, which is august, or getting on for a kind of antiquity (as when we have in mind the Roman senate and its centuries of deliberations), is surely a creature of intent. No? You mean a leprechaun just dreamed it up on a foggy-bottom night, and some of this and some of that was slapped together, and Caesar does not even know what is in the legislative hegemon, and Cicero has given up trying to remind him? You want point? You-Know-Who is the point, every iota of point. I doubt the Romans had a word for silverback, but I expect they had a word or two for full spectrum dominance (dominatum) as got along just fine with sandals and pilums, never mind cruise missiles and a shabby grasp of civics.

Otherwise, it is all rather nauseating, the gloating on the airwaves, the spectacle of men and women chest-thumping however sincerely or insincerely, the mummery, at times, exquisite, seeing as, come the mid-terms there will be blood, if the mid-terms are allowed to proceed, and if a plague of locusts does not gum up the voting machines. Besides, despite the displeasure the bill will incur, the Repubs will fix it so that the Dems catch the onus, wily animals be those Repubs even bigger on cigars than Bill Clinton. As for courage, why bring up the matter of courage? Who but for a very few persons as have been exposed to historical studies of any kind, cares deeply enough about sober-minded, slow and steady, indeed, downright boring governance, that is, if we would refer to both the House and the Senate (throw in a little judiciary and the minder of the Executive WC). Or else we would not be at this pass at which the only argument to consider is whether a dead republic should be buried with honours or chucked in a ditch. I, for one, have heard out those who say they are tired of doom and gloom, and, as bad as things are, they are not yet that bad, but even so, the logic of it all winks at only one horizon. It is not a horizon to be had on any compass, but it is there, and though there is no room to be talking of soul when talking of politics, soul is what is left, is one’s consolation prize, when the cowardice has batted around, and then it turns out the game did not count for anything anyway, the what-to-dos long ago decided, either by intent or misadventure.

I do not “do” writing-about-politics per se, being mostly literary-minded, hardly a political thinker. (Curtain call here for the PM Carpenters et al, most of whom do the thinking part of politics well, sometimes brilliantly). I do have a hazy memory, however, of a harangue I once made when I was foolish enough to indulge and had yet to learn not to encourage the bastards (politicians). Cue up a high school general assembly, and there I am, young nipper, at the podium, 1960 whatever, JFK not yet shot down. I am on about what it would feel like – the end of democracy and of something or other sacred, and God only knows what I have been smoking, and God only knows what I think I know and who I am endeavouring to impress. Perhaps I never got it all out of my system, “politics” that is, on that particular afternoon. It feels wretched, by the way, on so many levels, having been witness to the damn thing, the “constitution thing” as well as the “we hold these truths to be self-evident” thing dying over the course of the last 60-70 years. Barring a Social War or two, I just might take up smoking again, speaking of smoke, or start seeing transcendent value in the screen performances of Doris Day. Did your average Marlboro Man deem her “hot”? Your average Trumpian Mind? But the latter would not know transcendence if it was rammed up its you-know-what, and of “mind”, dog drool has the better part of sentience.

Postscript I: … …. The day the Roman republic died is most often given as March 15, 44 B.C. Which was the day Julius Caesar was shivved to death by a bunch of Roman senators who fancied themselves as guarantors of the health of the republic and their patrician privileges. I take it back as far as Sulla, the aftermath of the Social Wars, as some Edward Gibbon audiobook has on occasion whispered in my ear late at night, only I cannot be sure I heard correctly. But otherwise, Carpenter; … …

Postscript IL Lunar: … …. ‘Starmer is taking a major hit here and I wonder if he'll survive. You can bet your little booties Trump and Vance are playing the Farage card behind the scenes just as they won the election for the right-wing in Poland.’ … …. But I don’t wear booties…. …. Shush. Let the man have his say… …. Alright then, saying on: … …. ‘[Wales.] It is incredibly beautiful here, the forest walks, hills and streams. The immediate neighbour is a wildlife documentary filmmaker who because he has been freelance all his working life, working with the likes of David Attenborough, is now in line for the major BBC cutbacks. Youngsters clutching cameras come cheap these days and are increasingly expendable which I suppose you can apply to the whole bloody spectrum of things worthwhile. I'd say the biggest blow to have ever hit this country in terms of its people's complexion is when it went streamlined whereas the English had always been at their best as talented muddlers…..’ … ….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you see any loose alligators around come for birthrights: … …. ‘Here, file this in your Received Department: Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestickest. 1690… It was the name of colonial America's first newspaper, published once, 25 September 1690, shut down four days later by offended colonial authorities. [But mid-terms yes or no?] There will be [mid-terms]. It'll be held in what's called "competitive authoritarianism," a system in which the majority party allows the minority party to lose just enough elections to remain a minority. [And a little concurrence for you]: Anyone who still believes things are bad but not that bad is a fool. … ….. I tend to imagine that we'll crawl out of this sewer in the next decade, but imagination ain't a reliable prospectus. … …. [As for the upcoming summit meeting between us], we tend to see life and history as indistinguishable and that covers a lot. Maybe we could argue about Roth, whom I love and I believe you're rather indifferent about? I'd never given thought to the similarity between him and Richard Hofstadter, my most admired historian. I just read this in an essay by historian Michael Kazin: "Hofstadter and his fellow academics were seeking to accomplish in their field what Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan, Philip Roth and Susan Sontag were accomplishing in theirs: to unsettle verities about the powerful that most Americans took for granted." No wonder, then, my admiration of Roth. I think Kazin overdid it by group[ing] him with Ginsberg-Dylan, but I take his point. So put 'em up, Mac.’ … …. You mean dukes? Good golly, Miss Molly, why I never….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘As you may’ve surmised, I’ve been neglecting Solzhenitsyn. My bad. But I might be interested as to why your buddy Drake thinks that “Dusty” was Proust’s favourite novelist? (Dusty = Dostoyevsky.) I mean Dostoyevsky would have a man act on his beliefs, right? Proust’s coteries? Who among them has a moral vision? The aging Marcel maybe, just maybe. But try and do as little “acting” as possible, save for when it comes to gratifying your needs as time elsewise eats away your body. Who brings less pain into the world? Dusty’s Prince Myshkin? Proust’s Baron de Charlus? Cervantes’ Quixote? No one on this island fits the bill. But if a goat can shrug, Percival just shrugged. I don’t think he’d vote Republican. Nah. Would you?’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘A couple of Gibbon-isms selected at random and thought by a certain party here to bear a little on what fills your screens over there: Unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. Natch. Whereas: The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful… …. Which has the sound of a semi-healthy constitutional republic, those intrepid needn’t necessarily apply, check for the next submissions window. The weather here (Central Europe) has been, how shall we say, warmish.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven, French horn at the ready. It’ll have to get by on its own for a while as I’m planning a trip to Poland to buy art because whenever I go to Poland, I buy art. There’s culture in my background. My parents had no wall space: there was so much culture on their walls. Is it worth the while speaking about dead republics. Republics die; people still do their thing. Which is, you know, live, live and steal a few moments of happy time here and there. You’d gainsay me, sir? Does Ludwig’s “Moonlight Sonata” play any lighter (that moody first movement) in democratic airs, or is the allegretto any less frisky for a fascist Geist or have any less the feel of someone on a beer run? We won’t talk about Franco and the Romeros. I’ve read 100 Years of Solitude 738 times. It’s a boast, to be sure, but there’s truth in it. You can keep your Roth.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Funny you’d mention Doris Day. I was flipping through the channels the other night, came across something called Caprice, gave it a few minutes of my life. Doris Day involved in some intrigue – industrial espionage so I had it. Misadventures and the operetta of this-is-sex-but-it-isn’t-really. Lots of sunny smiles. Sensible shoes for getting into tight scrapes. And I thought: someone should novelize the woman. What did she really think of things, if she thought at all? And the rumour is she did do so. She had thoughts, they say. Took a dim view of Hollywood, for starters. Might’ve had more to say than Taylor Swift.’