Weekday Reading: 2016 Election Day Special Edition

On November 8, 2016November 7, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Feminism and Tim Kaine as the anti-Trump.
Maybe everyone is wrong except for this guy.
What happens when a conservative radio host goes Never Trump.
Apres Trump, the deluge?
A case of actual voter fraud.
Don’t worry, America, the militias are here to keep things nice and weird after the election.
Even The Onion isn’t sure how to handle this one.
Somehow, the GOP leadership is getting even whiter and male-r.
Assad to Putin: What dictators think about the election.
So what about all those Trump voters too shy to tell pollsters what they think?
The “Big Sort” and the growth of “landslide” counties where a supermajority of people vote one way or the other.
If it involves gun-packing thugs intimidating minority voters (it won the GOP an election in 1981), can you really call it a “ballot integrity initiative“?
Even back in 2014, conservatives would prefer to never speak or deal with a liberal, who are generally far more in favor of compromise. That’s what they call “asymmetric polarization” and it hasn’t changed in the last two years.
Maybe the guy just can’t read.
Break in case of emergency: The rogues’ gallery that would be a Trump cabinet.
It’s happened here before; a brief historical guide to election violence in America.
Well, when so many other journalistic norms have been broken, why not the tradition of not reporting on voting results while the election is still happening?
Print and read: At one point during the campaign, even the Russians thought Trump proved himself so unfit that they suspended their anti-Clinton hacking operations. The Russians.

Weekend Reading: November 4, 2016

On November 4, 2016November 2, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Vertical farming, coming soon to a Target near you.
If I can’t have the presidency, then nobody can.
Here’s how Trump is trying to actually suppress the vote.
John Dean (who would know): Trump is more Nixonian than Nixon himself.
Not even this yogurt company is safe from the new Nazis (they hire refugees, you know).
The other side of Chicago.
Coming in 2017 near Dubai: Publishing City.
Nope, books aren’t going anywhere.
So the FBI might also be looking into Russia’s years-long attempts to co-opt Trump; no letter from Comey on that, yet.
Where is America getting more diverse the quickest? The Great Plains and Appalachia.
Arizona Republic gets death threats for endorsing Clinton; responds with class, dignity, and patriotism, darn it.
The Boston Archdiocese is spending $850,000 to defeat a marijuana legalization ballot; and yes, they’re still having financial problems.
Did you hear the one about Clinton and ISIS? Well, China has.
Print and read: Today’s American upper middle class, obsessed with taste, self-improvement, and productivity, are the new moralizing Victorians.

Weekend Reading: October 28, 2016

On October 28, 2016October 28, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Remember, guns don’t kill people, toddlers do.
281 things, people, places that/whom Donald Trump has insulted (so far) in graphic form.
Attention deniers: the first reports linking pollution and climate change started hitting the media in about 1883.
Frank Serpico: Americans are more likely to be killed by their own police than terrorists.
Nasty women vote.
As fails Trump the man, so fails Trump the brand.
Print and read: ISIS, Putin, and the PR flacks pushing the new Taylor Swift album have all adopted the same social media tactics.

Weekend Reading: October 21, 2016

On October 21, 2016October 20, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

The Iranian refugees to Germany who are converting to Christianity.
Trump-emboldened misanthropes now even ruining Second City shows in Chicago.
The 2016 election is a Rubicon that can’t be uncrossed.
Fox News’s Shepard Smith says Roger Ailes never hassled him about being gay.
Between all the new Star Wars and Fantastic Beasts films, we’ll soon find out just how far fan attention can be stretched.
Even if a conspiracy did exist to steal an election by having people vote multiple times, it would be literally impossible for that to happen. Impossible.
Wall Street Journal: Trumps’s candidacy “is manna to every Jew-hater.”
It’s all over but the shouting.
What happened when Pharma Bro tried to take his “fans” out for a drink in Brooklyn.
Patriotic squirrels, martini plans, and other awesome goodies from the National Archives.
Review is in for the Chicago production of Hamilton.
Print and read: Ferguson and Trump’s racial rhetoric.

Reader’s Corner: ‘Strangers in Their Own Land’ – Fury and Crisis in Trump’s America

On October 17, 2016October 17, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, OmniculturalLeave a comment

donald_trump_with_supporters_30040691671 — *(photo: Gage Skidmore)*

It’s hard to look at today’s chaotic political and cultural landscape and not wonder—among many, many other things—in deference to Joan Walsh’s book from a couple years back: “What’s the matter with white people“?

A part of the answer can be found in Arlie Russell Hochschild’s fantastic new book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. It came out last month and is necessary reading to understand what is and has been going on in America for the past couple decades.

My review is at PopMatters:

When Arlie Russell Hochschild set out in 2011 to research her perceptive ethnography of the frustrated white American conservative, Strangers in Their Own Land, she didn’t realize how many of her subjects would later be driving off a cliff in a fume- and insult-spewing conveyance with “Trump 2016” stenciled on the side. How could she? Few of us knew it would come to this…

Here’s an interview with Hochschild from Vox. where she talks about spending five years among the people who would form the base of Donald Trump’s nationalistic insurgency.

Weekend Reading: October 14, 2016

On October 14, 2016October 14, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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There might be a large “Planet 9” at the outer edge of the solar system.
This is how you get murdered in today’s Philippines.
National Museum of the American Indian and other awesome buildings never built.
Modern creepy clown hysteria got started in Brookline, Mass. back in 1981.
Gauntlet thrown by conservative woman: “Some Trojan horse nationalist sexual predator invades the @GOP, eating it alive, and you cowards sit this one out.”
A portrait of a descent into madness.
The women who want to repeal the 19th Amendment.
Oh mutts, De Niro, Trump, and face-punching.
Ken Burns on “the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War.“
As goes Missouri…
Evangelical flagship Christianity Today: “[Trump] is, in short, the very embodiment of what the Bible calls a fool.“
The point at which whining can become dangerous for democracy.
George Will: “[Trump] can simplify the GOP’s quadrennial exercise of writing its post-campaign autopsy, which this year can be published Nov. 9 in one sentence: ‘Perhaps it is imprudent to nominate a venomous charlatan.‘”
Unshelved, the library comic!
Here’s a thought: The four-day work week would be one big way to stop climate change. Plus: three-day weekend.
Print and read: “I’m the last thing standing between you and the Apocalypse.“

Quote of the Day: Trump and “the Women”

On October 8, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

As reported in the July 12, 1999 New York Post, Donald Trump on Hardball:

People want me to [run for president] all the time … I don’t like it … Can you imagine how controversial I’d be? You think about him [Clinton] and the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?

(h/t: Political Wire)

Weekend Reading: September 16, 2016

On September 16, 2016September 15, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Trump and 9/11; a sad spectacle of lies.
Flashback, Lt. Gen Michael Flynn (ret.), last heard from being restrained by Chris Christie during Donald’s intelligence briefing, was several months ago making unsupported accusations on the final episode of Serial.
When the temperature goes up, tempers fray, students do worse on tests, and more “witch killings” occur in Tanzania.
Pennsylvania Dutch superstitions and the “Hex Murders” of Rehmeyer’s Hollow.
If this is civilization, you can keep it.
The people who think that mountains are actually the remains of great forests.
Netflix spends $6 billion a year on content, are they taking over?
Colin Powell is angry – heed his words.
Print and read: Of hillbillies, poverty, drugs, and who’s to blame for it all.

Quote of the Day: Nostalgia Kills

On August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

From Peter Pomerantsev’s Granta essay, “Why We’re Post-Fact“:

‘The twenty-first century is not characterized by the search for new-ness’ wrote the late Russian-American philologist Svetlana Boym, ‘but by the proliferation of nostalgias . . . nostalgic nationalists and nostalgic cosmopolitans, nostalgic environmentalists and nostalgic metrophiliacs (city lovers) exchange pixel fire in the blogosphere’. Thus Putin’s internet-troll armies sell dreams of a restored Russian Empire and Soviet Union; Trump tweets to ‘Make America Great Again’; Brexiteers yearn for a lost England on Facebook; while ISIS’s viral snuff movies glorify a mythic Caliphate. ‘Restorative nostalgia’, argued Boym, strives to rebuild the lost homeland with ‘paranoiac determination’ . . . In extreme cases it can create a phantom homeland, for the sake of which one is ready to die or kill. Unreflective nostalgia can breed monsters’…

Weekend Reading: August 12, 2016

On August 12, 2016August 11, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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“Donald Trump” as literary critic.
So how come coffee shops have to look the same everywhere in the world?
Coming soon: new Love and Rockets comics!
Marlon Brando to Jared Leto: Is Method acting really just more macho nonsense?
Apple move into the utility business.
Two years of airstrikes on ISIS cost about $12 million per day.
How come people in Arkansas and Kentucky are healthier than Texans?
Is that it for the election? Already?
Also: Setting the stage now to claim that the election won’t be legitimate.
Even Jill Stein and Gary Johnson have more support from black voters than Donald Trump.
Study finds that 1 in 10 Muslim doctors have had a patient refuse their care because of their religion.
Yet another reason why every politician should stay far, far away from Henry Kissinger.
Print and read: The introduction to Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America – “The idea persists that America is a moderate nation and most Americans are moderates. That is a myth.”

Weekend Reading: August 5, 2016

On August 5, 2016August 4, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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“Chicken soup for the anti-racist soul.“
National Review: “Here’s a handy rule of life — always honor Gold Star families.“
Max Boot: “It is genuinely terrifying that [Trump] could win the nomination of a party once led by Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote more books than Mr. Trump has probably read.“
Barry finally says it: The guy is unfit to be president.
Harlequin goes “literary”? Why not?
Now on Netflix: All the Norwegian knitting you can stand to watch.
DC comics fans lobby (who, exactly?) to shut down Rotten Tomatoes, forgetting perhaps that those critics would still be able to say mean things about Suicide Squad.
Language takes yet another dive.
An inventive solution to the public defender crisis in Missouri: Hire the governor!
Print and read: How Ferguson, fear, and law and order are burning in the Missouri (and Missour-ah) gubernatorial election.
Bonus print and read: On the current infatuation with isolationism and Christian nativism, “In the 1930s, authoritarianism arrived hand-in-hand, as it often does, with demagoguery.”

Quote of the Day: Trump Say Newspaper Bad

On August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Omnium Gatherum, Publishing / Media, WritingLeave a comment

Writers, take note: A certain presidential candidate opined today on an apparent lack of standards over at the paper of record.

According to Politico:

They don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t — they don’t write good,” he said. “They don’t know how to write good.

We are sure that the tiny-fingered tycoon meant to say, “They don’t write well.”

Screening Room: ‘Zero Days’

On July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

With all the news the last few days about not just the thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee but the possibility that the hack was directed by a foreign power (and a certain presidential candidate’s request that that power do yet more hacking), the as-yet mostly theoretical idea of cyberwar has suddenly hit the mainstream.

In a rare convergence, Alex Gibney’s prescient documentary Zero Days hit theaters just a couple weeks ago. My article, “DNC Hack Could Make Zero Days the Year’s Most Prescient Film,” is at Eyes Wide Open:

Zero Days does not directly relate to the kind of offensive cyber operation that is alleged to have happened with the DNC. However, in his deep-undercover, whistleblower-thick narrative, Gibney does paint a picture of the types of motives and capabilities that directly relate to what is potentially happening now. It serves as a kind of road map for the new geopolitical battleground that many of us might have just gotten a glimpse of in this sweltering summer of unease…

Here’s the trailer:

Weekend Reading: June 24, 2016

On June 24, 2016June 22, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

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Taxes? What taxes?
The Brexit inspires … Texit.
Congressman finds new way to ensure that people will keep not liking him.
If you’re carrying a gun, you’re more likely to think somebody else is, too.
Niall Ferguson connects World War I, Brexit, and the Treaty of Versailles with his marriage.
Nine out of ten Venezuelans can’t afford to buy enough food to live on.
The Onion: U.N. warms that Trump could be just seven months away from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Print and read: Fear, vulnerability, slick marketing, politics equals more and more and more guns.

Writer’s Desk: Freedom to Offend

On May 22, 2016May 23, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

It’s an intolerant world. All writers know this. There’s nary a one of us that hasn’t been on the receiving end of some kind of attack based on what we’ve written. The hate comes in all forms, from a simple “you idiot” screed to something more devious, hate-filled, and agenda-based.

That doesn’t mean that we censor ourselves.

It also doesn’t mean that we try and censor others.

When J.K. Rowling, who used to work for Amnesty International, spoke at the PEN America Literary Gala earlier this week, she talked about how “flattered” she had been to find her work so frequently banned and excoriated by religious zealots.

But she refused to countenance the repression of “alternative viewpoints,” even for the likes of somebody like Donald Trump. When an audience member clapped at her mention of an online petition to ban Trump from England, here is what Rowling said:

I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot … If my offended feelings can justify a travel ban on Donald Trump, I have no moral ground on which to argue that those offended by feminism or the fight for transgender rights or universal suffrage should not oppress campaigners for those causes. If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on them grounds that they have offended you eat, you have crossed the line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justification…

To put it another, more bumper sticker-friendly way: Mean people suck, especially when they hate your writing. But the alternative is always worse.

Chris Barsanti

Tag: Donald Trump