MLK Talks Forgiveness

 I forgave my father two years ago. It was a sensation, forgiveness. A totally strange, totally wonderful, totally recognizable sensation, despite my never having felt it before. It's not just a formal act. It has a feel to it. 

I found this in my mail today. 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. considers the power of love that Jesus revealed at his death:  

Few words in the New Testament more clearly and solemnly express the magnanimity of Jesus’ spirit than that sublime utterance from the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” [Luke 23:34]. This is love at its best.… 

The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of revenge. [Humanity] has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, [people] continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.  

Jesus eloquently affirmed from the cross a higher law. He knew that the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy would leave everyone blind. He did not seek to overcome evil with evil. He overcame evil with good. Although crucified by hate, he responded with [forceful] love.  

What a magnificent lesson! Generations will rise and fall; [people] will continue to worship the god of revenge and bow before the altar of retaliation; but ever and again this noble lesson of Calvary will be a nagging reminder that only goodness can drive out evil and only love can conquer hate. 

My Lecture at UNT (this Saturday)

 It was such an honor and the Q&A explored such good things. 

Two Fascist Rallies at the Same Place (Madison Square Garden) at Different Times

Rallies at Madison Square Garden by Timothy Snyder

Quotations from October 27th, 2024, and February 20th, 1939

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Archaeology from the Future-Past

 

A Few Weeks from Now

Hey, tech bros: 

Make sure to carry plenty of cash. That is, if the cash machine will still let you get any out. 

You go to the gas station, but you can't fill up because the automated system in the station tells the manager you're not MAGA enough. So you have to bribe him, let's say double the cost of the gas you need.

You want to go to that AI conference in Singapore, but the conveyor is pissed because you didn't bribe *him enough last time, so he reckons, but you don't find out until you get to the airport and you're on a no fly list. So you have to bribe DHS a LOT, and the people at the gate, and eventually the convenor of the conference. In fact you have to kiss his ass so bad you spend two more days in Singapore wining and dining him just to be able to get out of there.

And that's your weekend.

Oh, also get ready to boil all your tap water, and overcook all meats and vegetables. 

Be sure to have a generator. 

Can't Wait to See You in Chicago

 If you're anywhere near, please come to the Seminary Co-Op, the best bookstore in the whole of the USA, for an hour of talk between me and Liam Heneghan, biologist and novelist and philosopher. 

It's at 6pm this Friday (October 25). 

Timothy Snyder on Signs that Trump Lost

 

The Loser Triad by Timothy Snyder

Three Signs that Trump Has Lost

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"Having Mercy" (my Kent State Lecture)

 This was a prestigious Veroni Lecture, to which I was incredibly honored to have been invited to give. 

At Kent State

 Frank Ryan, one of the professors in the wonderful philosophy department at Kent State, showed me and Treena on a pilgrimage to the site of the Kent State Massacre. He was just starting out himself at the University of Colorado at Boulder at the time. Frank's telling of the story was plangent and detailed and loving and suffused with passion and anger and grief. 

I'll try to say more about it here when I can. I am still absorbing the first shock of it. One of the biggest reasons to visit Kent State was to make this pilgrimage. 

But for now I'll say that bringing this event to consciousness and making it a part of the university's life, creating the visitor center with its incredible exhibit and video (and audio) footage, the research library devoted to studying it, is nothing but good. Relating to grief is nothing but good. It doesn't feel that way, sometimes, but it's true. 

For a very long time Kent State tried to ignore what had happened. But this only resulted in further pain. 

Tim Snyder: Why Fascism Is Bad

Why is fascism bad, Professor? by Timothy Snyder

Thoughts from the road, #1

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A Citizen Is Being Victimized, or, No Seriously, What Is It about This Guy?

It took me years to convince my best friend (forgive me, best friend) that my dad was a psychopath who had done me and my brothers a lot of harm. 

He came across, at first and in pieces and at a distance, as wonderful, radiant, charismatic, funny, different...the same way a product looks all shiny on the shelf. As a kind of ad about himself. 

It was impossible for my friend to discern the fact that this was ALL he had, that this was a common technique of psychopaths to lure people in, not even deliberate, but because it's ALL they've got...and once you see under the surface, it's American Psycho time (this happens several times in the novel if you've read it; Trump makes some cameo appearances).

The desperation I've felt over the years since 2015 at people looking on at Trump as this incredible being...thing is, his disinhibition looks incredible, like witty party guy life and soul stuff, in small doses. And if you're white and male and still watching the whole thing like it's on TV, it's all small doses, and you get off on his cruelty, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes fully consciously. 

And on that note, there is a whole masochistic thrill, of the "A Child Is Being Beaten" kind (Freud). The glee a child feels when another one is being punished, around the corner. The whole "enjoy your life and we will punish the other for you" is appealing to this basic basic psychic layer. 

So to recap: it's fascinating snippets, and glimpses of stimulating punishment.  

The truly demonic aspect is that these feelings have been marshaled forever in the service of enslavement and white supremacy, along with misogyny. This is some tired, deep old shit he's playing with here. The bargain basement bottom of the life toilet bowl of white western humanity. 

I'm going to watch The Apprentice now. I'll let you know what I see. 

Come to My Hell Book Launch in Chicago (October 25 6pm)!

 

PTSD Every Day (Complex PTSD in Fact) or, Now I Know Why Succeeding Makes Me Feel Terrible (Really Terrible; Really Really Terrible)

 ...hello. If you've been reading this for a while (started in 2007) you'll know this has never occurred to me before. 

I used to think I was an introvert. Then I think introvert is a suspect category, and what this actually is, is exhibitionism plus a phobia of it. 

But I have a much simpler explanation for my feelings after I do a  lecture or, in this case, right now today, finish doing an interview. 

Whenever I succeed at a task, I feel bad. I mean I feel like a bad person. The sense of being contaminated or evil is in direct proportion to the magnitude of the task, how successful it was, what it churned up .

I just did an interview with a Czech magazine that was without doubt one of the best interviews I've ever done. 

And now I get to feel like I'm a terrible bad person, possibly for hours, possibly for the rest of the day. Like really bad. Like I keep saying to Treena, "I'm a bad person." And she keeps saying no. At least I've learned to verbalize it. And she knows how to hold it and respond. 

Sometimes the PTSD is so intense and all pervasive, you don't realize it is what it is. Actually, Complex PTSD, to get technical. Links are to National Health Service definitions. 

It's not that I feel physically exhausted. I feel morally terrible. Like evil. Really evil. Like I should be deprived of property and money and a life and killed. 

Fascism as Brain Candy

 Let me get this straight. He has to destroy all of America and the world so he can not-shake his booty like the one time he ever let himself go, in a crowd, aka on coke in Studio 54 to Village People?

It's like Brain Candy, the film. Gleemonex reaches into your brain (chemically!), locates your happiest memory (chemically!), and freezes it (chemically!). The fascism locks on to his happiest memory and keeps him there.

We have to endure all this so as to act as a dubious antidepressant to Trump.

He does that dance at the very end of his rallies, with the volume turned all the way up to ear-splitting levels, presumably how a naive person would've heard the speakers in Studio 54 way back when. Regressive, too, the intensity of the sound. 

Footage from the time shows him dancing just that way, that jerk-your-arms-don't-whatever-you-do-shake-your-booty white man dance of racist homophobia. 

The one measly little bit of real enjoyment in his brain, the one little bit of being part of a crowd rather than the mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-ness of his entire existence, just look at his penthouse. 

Interview with Me in Texas Monthly

 I really enjoyed talking with Michael Hardy about the book and about a number of related topics. 

Read This. That's an Order

 

Fascist Hypnosis by Daniel Pinchbeck

Time to break it

Read on Substack

Autocracy and Poverty Go Together

 

Autocracy and Poverty by Timothy Snyder

Trump and Vance bring them together

Read on Substack