2.12.16




yesterday he wriote 1212 hours  this afternoon 1313

the trees were twentyfive hours more bare  leaves exhausted by the wind and pelted by rain 

every plant in his yard stood taller rejuvenated despite the fall season and cold overnight temperatures

his outdoor cat bigfoot  his fur had grown thicker

himself  his skin thicker too

he seemed more adept at inhabiting it despite its stringency its lack of agility a weighty chainmail swinging against the back of his knees as he walked and at the ready to deflect the inevitable slings and arrows hurled against him which he expected from the misshapen incoming administration hobbled at its getgo

an ideology with only the sense of a schemer a huckster a paranoid a pretender to a pretending base while in reality the scales are tipped abundantly by two million more who can see that the want-to-be-emperor has no clothes

what Richard Hofstadler said in 1964 in his The Paranoid Style of American Politics has flowered like a bitter weed:

"In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.

Hofstadler wrote that it wasnt enough for the paranoid to have an opponent  it had to have an Enemy

"This enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman – sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will."


to be sure the next four years were going to be difficult

he hoped the patient survived the surgery and wasnt forced to recover for a generation or more


its always easier to destroy than create

   


1313,  Monday,  28  11. 16
1522,  Twosday,  29  11. 16

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