Shame

Balogun

William Timberman18 Comments

Three things need to be said:

  1. Folarin Balogun wanted to play. He’s devoted his young life to the pursuit of excellence in his sport, and shouldn’t be blamed for the corruption of those who govern the tournaments he and the national team participate in.
  2. The foul was serious, but did not appear to have been intentional. He probably shouldn’t have been shown a red card. For better or worse, though, the referee is the referee. That should have been the end of it.
  3. FIFA is, at best, a rickety institution, and Donald Trump could fuck up an anvil. We may not be able to stop him from wrecking things he doesn’t understand, but not even a comic book patriotism requires us to endorse his desecrations.

The Emperor of Filth

William Timberman

No, Donald Trump won’t succeed in pulling the temple down on his head when he goes, as Samson supposedly did, but with any luck he will terminally embarrass the priests of American Exceptionalism, who’ve attempted since our founding to ban all history not in service to their myth. If the United States of America has been remarkable for anything, it’s been for its aspirations rather than its achievements, and no one has made that truth more inescapable than Donald Trump, the emperor of all the filth our apologists have tried, since our Constitutional Convention, to sweep under the rug of their self-righteousness.

Days Of Infamy

William Timberman4 Comments

The only thing that’s saving Trump’s attack on Tehran from more apt comparisons to Pearl Harbor is the observation that the Khamenei regime was an order of magnitude more odious than his own. The fact remains that Trump likes taking things that don’t belong to him or to the United States, including the lives of innocents. He needs to go.