Awake
It’s three-something a.m., the fourth night of a painful cold. I’ve switched from bedroom to livingroom because I don’t want my coughing to wake up Karin. The twerps, Ziva and Jasper – who’d been sleeping peacefully, obeying the human timetable – now wrestle at the fringes of my blanket and compete for my attention.
It’s distressful to be awake at this hour, but sleeping is worse. Asleep, I can’t stop thinking about tedious details of Spanish grammar. Awake, my mood is OK. I remind myself that I’m married now and that being sick and married is immeasurably better than being sick and single, which was how it was for me in grad school.
Lately, at the high school where I work (and from which I’ll be taking tomorrow off), certain English teachers have been assigning Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder.” In that story the carelessness of one man leads to the disastrous, apocalyptic election of a ruthless president named Deutscher.
People are taking this Trump business very hard.
Trump’s actions so far have not been to my liking. But I refuse to give in to despair. I’ll continue to think kindly of Trump, if only by dwelling on how lousy the opposing candidates were. For example, they did nothing to check the lie that America is great. Trump at least acknowledged the falsehood of that belief with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”
What? Trump the most honest of the field? Doesn’t the sheer frequency of his lying disqualify him from that?
It doesn’t. The other day, I read this passage by Mark Twain that puts the idea rather well:
It’s distressful to be awake at this hour, but sleeping is worse. Asleep, I can’t stop thinking about tedious details of Spanish grammar. Awake, my mood is OK. I remind myself that I’m married now and that being sick and married is immeasurably better than being sick and single, which was how it was for me in grad school.
Lately, at the high school where I work (and from which I’ll be taking tomorrow off), certain English teachers have been assigning Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder.” In that story the carelessness of one man leads to the disastrous, apocalyptic election of a ruthless president named Deutscher.
People are taking this Trump business very hard.
Trump’s actions so far have not been to my liking. But I refuse to give in to despair. I’ll continue to think kindly of Trump, if only by dwelling on how lousy the opposing candidates were. For example, they did nothing to check the lie that America is great. Trump at least acknowledged the falsehood of that belief with his slogan “Make America Great Again.”
What? Trump the most honest of the field? Doesn’t the sheer frequency of his lying disqualify him from that?
It doesn’t. The other day, I read this passage by Mark Twain that puts the idea rather well:
When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals? Why should we try to make it appear that abstention from lying is a virtue? Why should we want to beguile ourselves in that way? Why should we without shame help the nation lie, and then be ashamed to do a little lying on our own account? Why shouldn’t we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn’t we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? Why should we help the nation lie the whole day long and then object to telling one little individual private lie in our own interest to go to bed on? Just for the refreshment of it, I mean, and to take the rancid taste out of our mouth.