As I type this, I’m laying on the couch in our living room, silently watching the family cat slowly disembowel a naugahyde chair on the other side of the room, as I try to assess just how broken I am. As I was able to walk on my own from the bottom of the staircase to where I now lay, I’m pretty sure I didn’t break anything, but I’ve clearly done damage to my elbow, ankle, hip, and knee, which are now competing with one another for the attention of my brain’s currently overloaded pain center. [As of right now, the hip has a pretty significant lead.] I’ve been living in this 175 year old house of ours for the past 17 years, running up and down the well-worn wooden stairs in my socks without incident, but I guess it was just a matter of time before my luck ran out. And it ran out in a big way, with me slipping on the very top step earlier this evening, sending me crashing the whole way down.
[I tried to find a fitting image for this post, but everything that came to mind was too dark… the staircase death scene from the Exorcist, the scene where Martin Balsam gets stabbed in the face and falls down the staircase in Psycho, the famous scene from Battleship Potemkin, etc. Finally, though, I settled on the above image from a Japanese game show in which men race to the top of a slippery staircase. The circumstances of my accident were somewhat different, but I suspect that the video would be just as funny.]
Arlo just counted the stairs for me. He says there are 15. I can’t get up to check, but that sounds about right. Assuming it is, I’d say I hit about 10 stairs before I came to a stop, approximately four steps from the bottom of the staircase, against a stack of suitcases and Lego boxes that Arlo had just gotten for his birthday. [Arlo turns 6 next week, but we just celebrated a bit early, taking advantage of the fact that most of my relatives were gathered in Kentucky over Thanksgiving.] And each of those 10 stairs hit my elbow, ankle, hip, and knee like a sledgehammer as I made my way toward the earth like Icarus.
I don’t know how it works for the rest of you who live your lives divided between two floors, but our staircase serves as a kind of staging area, as it sits between these two distinct areas of our home. Dishtowels and the like, after going through the laundry (which is on the second floor), get folded and stacked on the upstairs banisters, alongside dirty dishes that need to make their way back down to the kitchen. And everything we gather up when cleaning downstairs, that needs to eventually make its way back up to the second floor, where the bedrooms are, gets stacked on along the righthand side of the staircase, starting on the bottom step, and moving upward. And, at least in theory, when one of us goes up or down, we take a load with us, putting whatever it is where it needs to be. Of course, sometimes, the stacks on both ends grow to the point of being Suessian, with teetering towers of teacups and cutlery and the like, growing taller by the day.
In this instance, if memory serves, I was mid-stride onto the first step, at the top of the staircase, when it crossed my mind that I should take the clean dishtowels stacked on the banister down to the kitchen with me. So, I turned to my left to grab them, at which point I felt me feet fly out from under me, sending my left hip crashing into the hard edge of what was probably the second step down from the top… From that point onward, everything was in slow motion. I remember stretching out above my head with both arms, trying to grab onto a stair above me to keep from sliding. But, apparently, when you weigh about 200 pounds, and the stairs are slippery, gravity is pretty difficult to overcome. So, stair by stair, I made my way down, with my inside left elbow, left hip, left knee and left ankle hitting every one with a loud crack that sent my family running.
Linette was convinced that I must have tripped over one of the books, toys, or piles of dirty clothing that we’d stacked along the right side of the staircase when unloading the car. The truth is, however, that’s probably what kept me from hitting the final five stairs, and going on to crash through the front door like a bloated, pink Kool-Aid Man.
Thankfully, it wasn’t all that serious. Had it happened a few years from now, I have no doubt that I would have broken a hip, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be up and around in a few days. I’ll probably be limping for a while, and I’m sure I’ll have some pretty nasty bruises, but I’ll be OK. It does make one think, however, how things may have gone differently, as I personally know of people, not much older than myself, who have actually died after similar slip and fall accidents. So, as bad as I feel right now, I’m thankful.
Anyway, what this means for you is that you’re likely going to hear a lot of venting as I lay here, reading the news between searches for “stair runners” and movies like All The President’s Men.
So, let’s begin, shall we? And if you know of anything to add to my ever growing list of things to be outraged about, please share a link. Anything to take my mind off my left hip right now is a good thing.
MERRY CHRISTMAS… THE TRUMPS ARE CASHING IN
I know the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, strictly speaking, says that elected officials cannot profit from their office by accepting payments, or gifts, from foreign governments. And I know, when it comes time for indictments, there will be ample evidence that Trump has violated the law in significant ways, not only having accepted the assistance of the Russian government to win the presidentcy, but having used his position to steer international business toward his D.C. hotel and other properties. With the said, though, I think it’s worth noting that he and his family of grifters have continued, in both large and small ways, to push ethical boundaries and established norms in hopes of further cashing in on what’s left of their White House residency. Yesterday, the Trump campaign texted out a Black Friday special offer under the headline “President Trump has a GREAT DEAL for you!”, and, today, Don Jr. has begun tweeting out about deals to be had on the shitty wines of the Trump Winery. This, of course, is exactly what we should have expected when we elected the man that gave us Trump-branded water, steak, and ties, but that doesn’t make it any less embarrassing or infuriating when, after telling his white power base about his efforts to protect the sanctity of Christmas, he uses it as a platform to move more shit.
As vile as i find this (see emoluments clause), i do take some pleasure in the fact that, any profits you’re able to keep once the trials are done, will have to be spent one dollar at a time at the prison commissary.
— Mark Maynard (@MarkAMaynard) November 25, 2017
Oh, and speaking of Black Friday, according to the FBI, they got a record-breaking 203,086 requests for gun background checks… So I guess we’ll all be a lot safer in the coming year, right?
THE NORMALIZATION OF NAZIS
For whatever reason – maybe to prove to the world that they’re not elitist, and that they have their finger firmly on the pulse of the American heartland – the folks at the New York Times today chose to publish a charming little profile about a cool Nazi in Ohio who likes Seinfeld, has a Twin Peaks inspired tattoo, and even tolerated the presence of a bi-racial couple at his wedding. Well, as you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with some, who apparently feel kind of strongly that we shouldn’t be normalizing the far right, so much as reminding people where such beliefs, if left unchecked, ultimately lead. After saying “the election of President Trump helped open a space for people like him,” the article then dives into an exploration of just how normal the guy is, eating at Applebee’s, shopping at Target, and just living his life like the rest of us. Here, if you can stomach it, is a clip.
…On a recent weekday evening, Mr. Hovater was at home, sautéing minced garlic with chili flakes and waiting for his pasta to boil. The cats were wandering in and out of their tidy little rental house. Books about Mussolini and Hitler shared shelf space with a stack of Nintendo Wii games. A day earlier, a next-door neighbor, whom Mr. Hovater doesn’t know very well, had hung a Confederate flag in front of his house…
I suspect the folks at the Times would say it’s important to know what’s going on in the world, and that there’s this growing far right movement that people need to be aware of. The feature did, however, strike me as odd in tone, almost as if it were born from a grudging acceptance of this new reality, as opposed to sense that we need to defeat it… I’ll have to go back and check the Times archives to see if they wrote anything like this in the 1930s. Maybe, I’m thinking, there’s a piece somewhere that says, “Hitler, with a good-natured chuckle, refers to me as a member of the Lügenpresse, placing his hand on the small of my back and guiding me to a window overlooking the Alps, where he begins talking passionately about the ‘international Jew.’ I smile politely, and remind him that I’ve come to talk about his landscape paintings.” Regardless of intent, now that I’ve read the New York Times piece, I’m wondering if maybe it’s me that’s closed-minded. Should I be seeking out Nazi friends? If I just gave the Nazis a chance, would I come to see that they’re pretty much just like me, except, of course, for the stuff about hating democracy, people of color, etc.?
Oh, and speaking of white nationalism, I also just read that, after a meeting of the University of Michigan Regents, it looks as though the prospect of a Richard Spencer speaking engagement on campus is now pretty likely. For what it’s worth, I understand the situation the University is in. Given the many statements University administrators have made in defense of freedom of speech, and the fact that, as President Mark Schlissel just pointed out, they’re “legally prohibited from blocking such requests based solely on the content of that speech,” it would appear as though, at least to some extent, they were backed into a corner, with no good options. Still, though, it strikes me as odd, to say the least, that we’ll likely be seeing Spencer on campus when, as of yesterday, he’s been banned altogether for a period of five years from 26 European Union countries including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Hungary, and Poland, where some 60,000 white supremacists just marched in a “Europe Must Be White” march.
One last thing. For what it’s worth, the New York Times wasn’t the only publication making questionable decisions today. The Washington Post ran an editorial about how we shouldn’t try to stop species like polar bears from going extinct.
PUTTING EVERYTHING ELSE ASIDE AND FOCUSING ON PRESERVING OUR DEMOCRACY
Benjamin Wittes, who is the editor-in-chief at the Lawfare blog, as well as a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has just posted something worth reading on Twitter… a political manifesto that suggests, for the good of our democracy, we put aside all of our disagreements concerning social issues, tax policy, etc., and just focus on the national emergency embodied by the Trump administration. I’d encourage you to read the whole thing, but here’s a clip.
TRUMP NEVER SAID THAT HE GRABBED WOMEN BY THE PUSSY
A full year after the Access Hollywood hot mic recording of Donald Trump talking about how, because he was famous, he could grab women “by the pussy” without their consent, became public, President Trump appears to be changing his story. According to a report in today’s New York Times, he’s recently been suggesting to people in his inner circle that the tape was fake, reversing his original defense, which was that it was just “locker room talk”. One wonders if perhaps he’s getting ready for the release of even worse tapes, laying the groundwork for a “fake news” defense.
TRUMP SHARES LINK TO CONSPIRACY WEBSITE
Earlier today, Trump tweeted out a link to a site called MAGAPILL.com, which he positioned as an anecdote to “fake news”. Here, to give you a sense of what MAGAPILL is all about, is a graphic they tweeted out a few weeks ago.
Here, if you can’t make out the detail, is a bit of background from the conservative Weekly Standard: “Among the conspiracies listed are: ‘false flag terrorism’, genetically modified crops, the use of ‘algorithmic censorship’ of social media, ‘rogue intel factions’ at the CIA and Mossad, a ‘network of global corporate control’, ‘Luciferian rituals’, secret societies like the Knights Templar and the Jesuits, and ‘trauma based mind control.’ At the bottom of the entire conspiracy are the ‘Overlords’ from ‘Bloodline Families’ that include the aristocracy and royalty, the papacy, and the banking families, all of whom apparently practice a Luciferian religion that worships ‘the Dark Side through rituals, including child/human sacrifice’.”
That’s right. The sitting President of the United States, after attacking CNN as “fake news”, just directed the American people to get their news instead from an entity promoting the idea that “bloodline families” engaged in “Luciferian ritual” are secretly ruling the world. Not too long ago, this would have, on its own, been an impeachable offense. Now, though, on a day that the President has actively started campaigning on behalf of an accused pedophile, it doesn’t even make the evening news.
[It’s interesting to note, I think, that this graphic shared by MAGAPILL has completely spun Trump’s concept of “the swamp” on its head. When Trump ran for President, he said that he’d “drain the swamp,” removing Washington insiders from power. Instead, though, he brought these people – the super lobbyists and the Wall Street elite – into his administration. In more sane times, people would see this as a broken promise. Under Trump, though, all we have to do is say, “By ‘drain the swamp,’ he wasn’t referring to lobbyists, but to the members of the ‘Dark Side’ whole rule from the shadows, ‘through rituals, including child/human sacrifice’.”]
OK, that’s it for me. I hope you’ve gained something from my nearly eight hours of sitting here on this couch, reading the news and venting.
