In Defense Of Indifference

We’re a quarter of a century into our new millennium. The Germans are eating less sausage, the French are drinking less wine, the Russians are trying to reverse-engineer 1991, and in the United States, our self regard has been abruptly terminated by an opera buffa Mussolini with a mouth like a guppy, and a face dipped in what looks like orange finger-paint. (Mussolini was an opera buffa character himself, of course, but the Italians invented opera, and they’ll always be better at it than anyone else.)

Despite what our newly-minted neofascist pundits are screaming at us these days, it isn’t time to re-think our principles, especially not at the behest of people who openly despise both thinking and principles. We already know what we need to know, namely that while we may not outlast them, our principles most definitely will. The rest is just noise.

The Hillbilly Pygmalion

George Packer seems to think J. D. Vance may still have a future.* I’m not so sure about that. J. D. made his bid early on, trading his shuck for Donald Trump’s jive, but he may not find it so easy to reverse the process when he needs to, and given the current state of US politics, at some point he’s definitely going to need to.

Not so many years from now, when Peter Thiel is safely tucked away in his New Zealand bunker, Musk is on his imperial pilgrimage to Mars, and the Donald is dead, the Sons of Trump will surely have no further use for J. D. He’s smarter than they are, to be sure, and he seems to have convinced the MAGAsphere that he’s as big an asshole as they are, but in the end he lacks the Trump boys’ financial resources.

Besides, even Fox News seems to have noticed that a Julio-Claudian-style War of Assassins may already be more in vogue in Washington than the fascist frenzy of Trump’s first hundred days. J. D.’s currency is still good at the Times, the Post, and—Packer’s stylish hit piece aside—The Atlantic, but there’s still many a banana peel left between him and the White House, every one of them with a Trump logo stamped on it right next to the Chiquita sticker.

*The Talented Mr. Vance, in the July, 2025 issue of The Atlantic

Stereotypes

In search of Lost Angeles, May 18, 2025

My daughter was 13, a latch-key kid coming of age in San Jose in the late 80s, and she needed regalia. LA had regalia, lots of regalia. LA was the queen of regalia.

“Daddy,” she said over the phone. “Na Na? I’ve heard good things. A care package would be welcome.” And so the journey began….

Na Na was in Santa Monica, a block or so up Broadway from Ocean Avenue. It’d been over 20 years since I’d lived in nearby Venice, but thanks to frequent visits to the metropolis I still thought of as my spiritual home, I hadn’t completely lost my neighborhood chops. Besides, even that late in the 80s, finding parking on the street in Santa Monica wasn’t totally impossible, especially if you knew where to look, and you didn’t mind walking a little.

Since I absolutely did know where to look, and I’d never minded walking, one Saturday afternoon shortly after my daughter’s Obi-Wan call I found myself standing just inside the entrance to Na Na, nervously checking my teenage punk/goth shopping list, feeling as though I’d just disembarked on another planet for the first time, totally unprepared for the sensory assault that awaited me.

First came the smells—aromatherapy candles, soaps and essential oils, an amalgam of herbal, floral, quasi-culinary scents that defied classification. It reminded me more of the potpourri of spices, ghee, and mustard oil at my then favorite Indian market in Northridge than the clothing department at the Broadway or I Magnin’s. It was otherworldly in its own dark way, but like Bombay Spiceland, it hinted openly at hitherto unexplored possibilities.

The music too was impressive—very non-elevator, very anti-elevator, in fact—although in the interest of commerce, it was more sonorous than loud. I don’t remember what specifically was playing—a track from Peepshow, maybe, or from Disintegration. Something very like them, anyway.

Architecture took over the introduction then, or more accurately a blend of architecture and set design. It began with the naked walls and exposed ductwork of the building itself, and ended in flourishes of chain link-fencing, acetylene torch-cut steel partitions. and bare-bulb lighting fixtures suspended on chains and shielded by galvanized sheet-metal hoods. Regarded purely as a stage it appeared to be part junkyard, part 19th century waterfront warehouse, and part social club for affluent suburban vampires. I felt right at home.

I didn’t look it, of course—a man in his mid-forties, in his gimme cap, jeans and denim jacket phase—I could see the help wondering if I’d taken a wrong turn at Bakersfield, maybe, or decided to pop in for a visit on my way to a casting call.

The help. All beautiful young women, as one expects behind the counters in such upscale outlets everywhere, but doubly so in LA. Since Na Na was more Siouxsie than Barbie, dark hair was the look here, not blonde, and fiercely petite, warily cosmopolitan rather than bouncy was the mode.

As I folded my list and began my march to the interior, the nearest salesperson peeled away from her counter and came toward me with a straightforward “May I help you?” There wasn’t the slightest hint just how irretrievably beyond anyone’s help she’d already judged me to be.

I was grateful for her forbearance, especially since it took me a moment to recover my composure enough to answer her. The dress code at Na Na was both elaborate and precise. My prospective guide on this adventure had a frosted-tip sunburst magenta hairdo that could have inspired the iron throne, a spiked patent leather dog collar, black lipstick, white eyeshadow, a sheer spider-web silver and black blouse with onyx skull buttons that matched her earrings, and a brocaded shadow panel bustier underneath. Also a miniskirt and hose with a net pattern that echoed her blouse, and knee-high lace-up black boots with what looked like at least thirty pairs of eyelets. I had to remind myself my role here was remote shopper for a teenager with dreams, not understudy in the epic remake of the Judgment of Paris.

The rest was all business. Pointy creepers of a certain size, with a particular thickness of translucent wavy gum rubber sole. The ones with the plain black vamp, not with the white or the faux leopard skin one. Two sheer scarves, one magenta, one chartreuse. One embroidered velveteen jacket with mini chains. Two pairs of spider web panty hose in a certain size, one pair of articulated skeleton earrings, one pair of safety-pin earrings—both pairs for pierced ears. Two tubes of lipstick, one dark magenta, one black, and hair tinting supplies (Has her Mom approved of this? Will I catch hell if she hasn’t?)

An hour of this. My guide was gentle with me, no smirking, no sighing, no raised eyebrows. The rest of the crew, those not serving other customers, kept a respectful distance, but I knew they’d have questions once the cracker apparition was finally out the door.

Years later, I asked my daughter if she remembered my intrepid solo trip to Na Na. She did. “What I’ve wondered ever since,” I said, “is why this young woman actually bothered to be nice to me.”

“One, she was getting paid to be nice, and two, maybe she decided to take pity on a cross dresser with ambitions so obviously above his station. You know, empathy—she’s a punk, you’re a weirdo, maybe there’s a little solidarity going on there.”

“Seems implausible, but it is what it is, I guess. Sometimes the illusion of sincerity works just as well as sincerity itself. Beats the hell out of stereotyping either way.”

The Trump Patrimony

An abused child speaks:

I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump,” posted Eric Trump. “The first to negotiate will win—the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life.”

—Eric Trump, as quoted in “China Called Trump’s Bluff,” from an Atlantic article by Jonathan Chait published online in Apple News, May 12, 2025

We know this movie. It’s the one where the sons submit unconditionally to the cruelty of their father. It appears to be as popular in the Trump family today as it was two generations ago. Elsewhere it gets decidedly mixed reviews. Check out the Bible, or the Taviani Brothers’ film Padre Padrone. (Like the Bible, it’s available in a dubbed version for you Trumps, who still steadfastly refuse to acknowledge that anything of interest exists in the world except America-first assholes and their medieval prejudices.)

Yes Eric, I know you’d rather travel to exclusive game preserves in Africa to shoot large animals than read a book, so it might surprise you to learn that history is made by the sons who defy their fathers, not by those who submit to licking papa’s boots in the hope that someday they might inherit papa’s money and papa’s puissance. (That’s a French word, Eric. Look it up.)

Let me do you a favor, kid. Let me recommend another Taviani brothers’ film to you, La Notte di San Lorenzo. Pay special attention to what happens in the end to young Marmugi, the son of the local Fascist party chief who’d assumed thoughout the film that following in his father’s footsteps was his key to a bright future of domination over everyone in his village. Above all, consider how easily his actual fate could be yours.

Egg Freckles

Siri is from Apple and is here to help us. We’re assured that it doesn’t spy on us like its relatives from Amazon and Alphabet do, so why do we hate it? Maybe being talked to like we were five years old by a machine the size of a grapefruit has something to do with it. Maybe being given answers that are either irrelevant or insane when we ask it a question does also. Artificial intelligence sounds like a fine idea. Being given artificial stupidity instead tends to confirm the contempt that we suspect the management of large corporations have for us. The tech bros fear the singularity. What they should fear is the Butlerian Jihad.

Quoted Without Comment

Rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of supreme importance …, not only in ages in which it easily prevails, but also, even more, in those less fortunate times in which it is despised and rejected as the vain dream of men who lack the virility to kill where they cannot agree.

—Bertrand Russell, as quoted in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, Chapter 23: The Sociology of Knowledge

Here again is that key insight we saw in The German Ideology: in totally changing a society, people must inevitably radically change their own ideas, and the nature of being human itself. Under communal ownership and democratic control, it would be socially impossible to be someone whose selfhood is predicated on the exploitation of others. A subjectivity that would desire such power would be meaningless, and have no social traction. Marx and Engels repeatedly stress that revolution is the transformation of people and ideas as well as social structures.”

— China Miéville, A Spectre, Haunting (analysis of The Manifesto of the Communist Party)

What We May Hope To Live Up To

<< Ainsi, dans l’ombre et dans le sang, la plus forte des Républiques s’est constituée. Chacun de ses citoyens savait qu’il se devait à tous et qu’il ne pouvait compter que sur lui-même ; chacun d’eux réalisait, dans le délaissement le plus total son rôle historique. Chacun d’eux, contre les oppresseurs, entreprenait d’être lui-même, irrémédiablement et en se choisissant lui-même dans sa liberté, choisissait la liberté de tous. Cette république sans institutions, sans armée, sans police, il fallait que chaque Français la conquière et l’affirme à chaque instant contre le nazisme. Nous voici à présent au bord d’une autre République : ne peut-on souhaiter qu’elle conserve au grand jour les austères vertus de la République du Silence et de la Nuit.>>

“Thus, in darkness and in blood, a Republic was established, the strongest of Republics. Each of its citizens knew that he owed himself to all and that he could count only on himself alone. Each of them, in complete isolation, fulfilled his responsibility and his role in history. Each of them, standing against the oppressors, undertook to be himself, freely and irrevocably. And by choosing for himself in liberty, he chose the liberty of all. This Republic without institutions, without an army, without police, was something that at each instant every Frenchman had to win and to affirm against Nazism. No one failed in this duty, and now we are on the threshold of another Republic. May this Republic to be set up in broad daylight preserve the austere virtue of that other Republic of Silence and of Night.”

—From Jean-Paul Sartre’s La République du Silence, published on September 9, 1944, in the first non-clandestine issue of Lettres françaises, republished in 1949 in Situations III