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Dances With Wolves
"I see you got the pink one."
We'd just settled into a table at a bustling fusion spot near Times Square. He was scrolling aggressively on an iPhone dressed as a flamingo.
"Rose," he corrected me, without looking up. "Rose gold." He was C1 proficient at least, but retained a thick Eastern European accent which imparted an air of grandiose finality to everything he said in English. Everything was a declaration.
Rose gold was all the rage that year. Apple rode the wave. "Nah, that's pink," I th
I am waiting (maybe 2028?) for candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties to surface that are focusing on and suggesting solutions to the issues that the centrist 80% of the US population are facing. We do not need more politicians who are focusing on the issues that the 10% on the far right or the 10% on far left are concerned with.
Sure, I wish the media would do a better job of reporting facts and clearly labeling opinions, but really what the US really needs is for our schools to get back to teaching critical thinking and healthy skepticism/fact checking.
Your ability to intertwine multiple issues- political, international, societal and personal in the same piece sure does make for great reading.
The hardest thing about these Monthlies is overcoming the auto-correct. I’m usually tired by the time I finish them and then I have to comb through 4,000 words to see what was “corrected.” I always miss one (or two or three) and it drives me crazy when I see them the next day. This time, it turned “withdraw” into “withdrawal” there towards the end and I didn’t catch it until this morning.
Other than that, I love writing these.
I think you found a feature that may be worthy of a programmers time. If the autocorrect replacements were stored then flagged when a toggle is turned on then you could easily find the autocorrected text. I do not know what tool you are using that does autocorrect replacements.
I use open office for my text writing most of the time. It does not replace with autocorrect. My writing is not as good as yours.
I have been waiting on this- It was a great read. Thanks as always
This resonated with me on a number of levels. From having spent my fair share of money on overpriced drinks in Times Square strip clubs — that’s right, Times Square strip clubs, I’m pre-Giuliani, although you were more likely to find me at Billy’s Topless down on 23rd — to the fact of that a close family member has now for 40 years been partnered with an immigrant from beyond the iron curtain, who, as so many of them do, swung hard to the racist right and calcified there after being freed of what the left did to him as he was growing up, and who seethed about a lot of today’s currents long before they became popular, much as your acquaintance did. These attitudes have been around for a long time, and often held by people who would be more likely to suffer under their widespread adoption than benefit from it. They eventually moved to the rural South, where he was thrilled that he could go to a bar and openly use the N-word and not be criticized for it—by people who, I have to imagine, probably called him by it behind his back. I grew up listening to his stories of life behind the iron curtain, and I have a lot of sympathy for what he experienced, but I also can’t fully understand how it produced what he is today, because what he is today fundamentally doesn’t make sense, he’s fundamentally opposed his own best interests at times.
I do particularly appreciate your insights on how foreign disinformation efforts played into this. I’m always quick to lay blame squarely on domestic partisanship-drunk villains like Newt Gingrich and those who followed him, but in a way I haven’t even quite rationally put together yet, in my gut, what you’re saying sits well, it makes a lot of sense.
I wonder what can be done. I’ve always believed ardently that the pen is mightier than the sword, I think you, here, writing about this stuff is probably doing more constructive good than… pretty much any other practical effort I can think of, to be honest. But it still feels like trying to write away a tsunami or a hurricane. It reminds me a little bit of “The Plague”, according to a favorite writer of mine an allegory about Nazism, likening the forces behind it to the forces of natural disease, something you can’t fight, you can only hunker down and try to survive.
One thing I’ve felt for a while, even before I was consciously aware of the existence Russian or Chinese influence in social media, is that far too many Americans are eager to hop on board with the destruction of their own country, just for their own feelings of inclusion or social identity or imagining their Tucker Carlson will give them a scritch on the belly and call them a good boy. They love to hate their fellow countrymen, and call it “patriotism”, the opposite of what it really is.
It’s depressing. I don’t know, H, I don’t know. This was a terrific piece. But it leaves me feeling helpless.
I did get a kick recently, I can’t even remember specifically what I was responding to, but somebody on social media was so obviously waving the US flag as a cover for furthering Russian interests, intentionally or not, that I asked if I smelled vodka and piroshkis and addressed him in Russian as “tovarishch”. His only reply was “lol” before moving off to stir up trouble elsewhere. That was sort of a fun exchange. Buy it sort of underscores the problem… I feel like one has to careful, I feel like too many people going around accusing people of being Russian agents kind of plays into their hands, as well, it’s more of the sort of chaos that they want to see. We risk getting into a sort of “the Monsters Are Coming on Maple Street” type of situation where all they have to do is flip the lights off and on a couple of times and we destroy ourselves in a panic.
Like I said, depressing, and I feel helpless to save the things I care about.
“They love to hate their fellow countrymen, and call it “patriotism”. I haven’t heard that before, but it really caught my attention. Sadly, it’s an accurate description of much of the US social fabric. Putin and Xi probably drink toasts to it when they meet.
Many of my friends send me articles to read that are pure dupery. I often research and find the author is a bot, the research is totally misquoted or didn’t exist, etc. I let my friend know what I find – usually no response, a while later I get another one. Worse, many articles are written so poorly, appears English is a second language. Yet several of my friends believed the content. My own confirmation bias has allowed inaccurate information in, a dis-service to discourse when I used it. I try to stay vigilant, not easy, so much of it.
I enjoyed the article, thank you.
Now that Tulsi Gabbard’s tapped for Director of National Intelligence, maybe it’s time to re-read this Monthly…
This does do a better job of explaining how Trump won than anything else. Propaganda needs fertile ground and we have uneducated and disaffected in spades.
Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence…I’m speechless.
I’m telling you… of all the dangerous people I’ve been around in my life, the wolf in this piece was the most dangerous. And it’s not close.
How can we be sure you aren’t pulling a Keyser Soze on us and you are actually the wolf pretending to be an alcoholic turned blogger?
“And like that… he’s gone.”
It is apparent that the desire of people to debase themselves in pursuit of power is limitless. The ability to understand one’s limitations is apparently not an innate quality in their psyche. Imposter syndrome is not one of their psychological shortcomings.
The corpulent clown does not need experienced, rational people as his court of lackeys, because he knows all. He rubs his belly and listens to the rumblings of his gut. Onwards to McDonalds to feed his intellect.
Let them eat cake.
Turkish Proverb – When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.
I would say proper background checks would root out some of this during confirmation hearings, but given that loyalty (or fealty if one prefers) seems to be the qualifying trait of the day, I am skeptical.
It won’t be long until “background checks” become extremely pro forma ( has the nominee kissed Trump’s ring?), if they exist at all.