#but getting stuck in Washington with politicians and pushing papers

[yellowocaballero]

Bonus from Human Relations (Jello Salad, NASA, and Epic Jon Bitchery)

Short little thing thumped out in an hour last night. I was challenged to write a genuine argument and Elias eating Jello Salad. I succeeded in one of those things. 

TW for discussions of, as you can probably expect, 1950s racism and maladaptive relationships

“Reservation for…”

The host stared at Jon blankly. Jon silently struggled.

“Reservation for Jo - uh...John? No…”

“Perhaps you are in the wrong restaurant,” the host hinted, somewhat forcefully.

“No, I’m quite confident I’m at the right place. Hold on.” Jon struggled with his briefcase, withdrawing an invitation scribbled on stationary paper. A large, embossed header at the top read in sprawling letters US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, and the host blanched. Jon quickly scanned the paper, taking a minute to translate his own shorthand before brightening. “Ah! Yes, Salle du Bois, at seven pm, March 2nd. With...yes, a Sir James Wright.” Jon folded the paper one-handedly and stuck it into his jacket pocket. He smiled brightly at the flummoxed host. “Well? Will no one take my coat?”

“Reservation for…”

The host stared at Jon blankly. Jon silently struggled. 

“Reservation for Jo - uh...John? No…”

“Perhaps you are in the wrong restaurant,” the host hinted, somewhat forcefully. 

“No, I’m quite confident I’m at the right place. Hold on.” Jon struggled with his briefcase, withdrawing an invitation scribbled on stationary paper. A large, embossed header at the top read in sprawling letters US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, and the host blanched. Jon quickly scanned the paper, taking a minute to translate his own shorthand before brightening. “Ah! Yes, Salle du Bois, at seven pm, March 2nd. With...yes, a Sir James Wright.” Jon folded the paper one-handedly and stuck it into his jacket pocket. He smiled brightly at the flummoxed host. “Well? Will no one take my coat?”

The name must have been familiar, carrying its own power - honestly, a peerage, man was annoying every time - because a waiter appeared from nowhere very quickly to take Jon’s hat, coat, and briefcase. Jon took the opportunity to straighten his fine suit and tie, and glance around the room. 

Part of him couldn’t help but be proud: barely four years ago, it would have been impossible to step foot inside the finest restaurant in Washington, DC. Senators dined on these tables, creating backroom deals and manufacturing methods of state and politics, and Jon had been forced to rely on some creative means to work himself into those deals. These days, it was as simple as walking in through the front door. Of course, the entire room was staring at him extremely pointedly, but that was what the peerage, money, and reputation was for. Jon never much cared if people disliked him - he tended to only concern himself with people who could do something about it.

Everyone of import in Congress knew Jonathan Sims. A whisper on the wind, a knife in the dark: that had been Jon, always. It still was. But now, people looked at him with respect. Everyone did. 

Everyone except, of course, the young man sitting at the pristinely white table that the waiter lead him to. Utterly unrecognized, but dimly familiar in the way that the endless parade of Jonah’s bodies always was: a thin, emancipated type of look, in his early twenties, with a thin but healthy comb of blonde hair and light muscle that would soon go unattended under Jonah’s careful attention. Hilariously, he was still short - would that man ever find a body over five feet seven?

Jonah smiled as Jon and the waiter approached, waving aside the waiter’s silent question of if it was really Jon that he had been waiting for. Honestly, the more things changed. 

“Jonathan,” Jonah said warmly, “how long has it been?”

“Too long to say in polite company,” Jon said lightly, shaking his hand tightly. He was waiting for public hugs between men to go back in style. He missed it, slightly. “You look...different.”

Of course, Jonah noticeably preened. “I think this one has a nice, strong jaw, don’t you?”

“It’s...the jaw that the English peerage is famous for,” Jon said tactfully, sitting down on a delicate and fine chair. “What brings you to DC, Jonah? Normally you can’t be pried away from London with a crowbar.”

Jonah gleamed a bright white smile at him. “Can’t a man miss his close business partner after so long apart?”

“That would imply you’re capable of human emotion.”

“True, my mistake.” 

The waiter appeared, and Jonah ordered something carelessly expensive and good wine as Jonathan carefully ordered a very refined and dignified cut of filet mignon. The wait on the food was short, of course, and Jon and Jonah wasted time by chatting about their business ventures. Jon’s was going extremely well, obviously. Jonah’s was extremely boring and slow, obviously. 

“This industry boom is incredible. The technological innovation, the jump forward in progress, the persistent fear that it will all be taken away the minute we step out of the conformist line…” Jon picked up his fork as the plates of steaming and small portions were slid onto their table. “Mark my words, Jonah. 1953 will be our year.”

“My good man,” Jonah said sympathetically, “it’s well into 1957.”

“Years should be longer. Simon agrees with me.” Jon frowned, picking up a fork and cutting into his meat . “We’re investing in Simon and his projects, by the way.”

Jonah smiled over the rim of his wine glass, raising a delicate blonde eyebrow at Jon. “Wonderful of you to make these decisions for us.”

“When you insist on spending all of your time in the crude and backward England, I shall do as I please,” Jon said haughtily, only to see Jonah snicker into his glass. “I’ve been working with him to push his little initiative through Congress.” 

“How quickly the prodigal son shuns his motherland.” Jonah ate slowly, never once looking away from Jon. He had never forgotten that tendency of Jonah - to keep his eyes always, always on Jon, as if keeping an eye on a dangerous predator. But in that hooded, dark gaze, a half-smile always tugged at his lips. In his better moments it seemed like fond indulgence; in his worse it appeared closer to a child watching his kitten chase a dangling piece of string. “A decade or two in the land of tomorrow and you’ve adopted a new home country?”

“It is a land of progress,” Jon hissed, jabbing at Jonah with his fork. “England is stagnant, putting on airs of civility and progress when it does little more than languish in its former greatness. Look what happened with the mess in India. What do we have left? A few impoverished African territories? Yemen? We have lost all ambition. The English still fancy themselves the greatest population in the world, when they’re little more than a bombed out shell. At least America had the decency to profit off war.” 

“War is fairly pointless if there’s no profit in it,” Jonah agreed mildly. He sipped his wine again delicately. “So you figure that space is the next frontier, then?”

“The pursuit of knowledge is always in our best interest,” Jon said primly. “I was skeptical too, Jonah. But I met this lovely young engineer, a Ms. Johnson, and she’s opened my eyes. NASA is the future, and NASA is here. Only habit keeps you in England, now.”

For the first time, Jonah’s eyes narrowed slightly. “A respect for history is far from a habit, Jonathan. Have some respect.”

“Your history, not mine. And you’re ancient history too,” Jon pointed out. He calmly ate his filet as Jonah sputtered. “Admit it. You’d walk around in the cravat you were buried in if you could.”

“The cravat is dignified. It’s hardly my fault if young men these days flaunt themselves in those dirty blue jeans.” Jonah sneered the word with marked disdain. “I can see their calves.”

Despite himself, Jon smiled into his filet. “Did it give you a case of the vapors?”

Jonah reversed his grip on his fork and held it casually within stabbing distance of Jon’s hand. “Do not get us kicked out of this establishment.”

“Were you forced to recline on your fainting couch with your smelling salts?”

“I have propiety,” Jonah hissed. Hilariously, his new body had the tendency to flush a little, and his ears were noticeably red. For the first time, Jon wished that he owned one of those camera things. “At least I don’t while away my hours with your harlot of a girl.”

Almost immediately, Jonah seemed to recognize that he had gone too far, and Jon was distantly aware that his neon green eyes had taken on a dangerous tint. Jonah leaned back a little from where they both had been unconsciously leaning in, and Jon carefully readied his grip on his steak knife. “Watch how you speak of my wife.”

“Wife?” Jonah crossed his arms, tone dripping with condescension. “When did you marry that gold digger?”

“Thirty years ago,” Jon ground out, and Jonah blanched. “You were there.”

“Ah.” Jonah paused a beat. “Well, you know how time gets away from us.”

“You were my best man.”

“Maybe we can Christmas together!” Jonah said, faux-brightly. “Christmas has become quite popular lately. I can buy her one of those dishwasher things suburban women are always losing their minds in Macy’s about.”

“We have people for that,” Jon said condescendingly. “And we don’t live together, anyway. She’s experiencing the beatnik lifestyle with that little gang she runs around with. I think they write novels.”

Jonah stared at him blankly. “What is a beatnik?”

“I believe they’re similar to bohemians? I don’t understand either.” Jon wiped his mouth with the napkin again, having cleared his plate. He replaced his napkin, carefully keeping the grip on his knife. On the other end of the table, Jonah’s grip on his fork was just as tight. “She expressed no desire to be a politician’s wife, and I have no expectation of her being so.” Jonah snorted - quietly, subtly, but visibly. Jon narrowed his eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re always a gas, Jon.” Jonah’s own plate cleared, he flagged a waiter to take their plates away and refill their wine. “A politician’s wife.”

“I am a politician,” Jon said testily. 

“Mm-hm.” 

“I pushed a large bill limiting freedom of speech just last month.”

“Of course.”

“I’m close, personal friends with Senator McCarthy.” Jon’s grip tightened on his knife until the wood bore into his palm. “Even if it’s in no - no official capacity, I’m making a real impact here. My service to ou - God has been extraordinary. Unlike you.”

There it was - a hit scored, a gauntlet thrown. Jonah narrowed his eyes. “Yes, because doing your job and collecting records for the Institute is a waste of time that has no relevance to God. As opposed to what, Jonathan? Wearing fine suits and putting on your own airs?”

Bright, sparking irritation flashed through Jon’s chest, but it was laced with something more. A hard defensiveness, bared teeth, curling up to prevent a weak belly. “I’m allowed the fine suits, Jonah! I am allowed to have this!”

“They’re just suits, Jon,” Jonah said condescendingly, eyes a mirror of false pity. Always pity, always false, always pretending he was weak, or - or -

“I have fought for everything, and -”

“Oh, not this drivel again.” Jonah wiped his hands on a linen napkin and balled it up, throwing it on the table and leaning back. “Yes, yes, you suffered, whatever.”

“Whatever?”

“You’re so boring. Maybe it’s the nature of Archivists to be incredibly dull. My new man, Angus...whatever, he’s unbearably bland.” A glint of humor shone through his casual airs. “We’d benefit from you.”

“Oh, here it is again,” Jon said, perhaps a bit too loudly. He threw his hands up. “Every time, you harangue me, tell me my work is meaningless, and try to drag me back to your boring and tepid old library -”

“Who are you fooling, Jonathan?” Jonah retorted, also perhaps a bit too loudly. “Nobody but yourself, and you know it!  You aren’t a politician. You aren’t anything.” At Jon’s deranged look, Jonah quickly backtracked. “You aren’t anything without God. Everything you have is because of it.” It was something that couldn’t be argued, and Jon huffed out a breath as he untensed. Jonah smiled faintly, lowering his hands as if he was placating Jon. “Not to say that you aren’t doing any good. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can. But aren’t you more interested in being where you can do the most good? In being in the place of your highest productivity, your most effective worship? I understand America is...new, but it’s a dalliance. An infatuation. Which is more meaningful, Jonathan? A summer fling with an attractive woman, or a faithful wife who maintains your home and heart?”

Jon squinted at Jonah. “Georgie doesn’t like maintaining homes.”

“I do not understand your relationship with that woman. She hasn’t even given you any children, for lord’s sake.”

They were both incapable - how could an Avatar of the End give life? - but it was another tasteless thing to say, so Jon glared Jonah into submission over it again. For all Jon constantly heard praise over how impressive and charismatic and charming Jonah was, he was insufferably rude and tactless in reality. “Neither of us are very much in the business of allowing society to tell us how to live our lives. Society will pass, age, and die before we do. Why bow to it?” Jon smiled coyly. “Why bow to anything that ages?”

“You’re lucky you’re useful, you slimy little -”

But Jon just laughed, because he had won: Jonah had raised his voice in righteous anger that echoed across the suddenly deathly quiet restaurant, and the maitre’d was walking towards them very quickly. Jon laughed even longer as the waiter spoke in smooth, ubiquitous, but firm tones to Jonah: do try not to cause a disturbance with your companion, sir, this is a respectable establishment -

“As respectable as you when you cheated on your wife with the housekeeper?” Jonah snarled, and the maitre’d blanched. “Get out of my sight. Don’t come back unless you’re bringing us a plate of Jello salad.”

Jon laughed harder as Jonah sat back down, huffy and embarrassed. His ears were red again - how quaint. Jon had the feeling he’d grow to enjoy this James Wright body - as much as anybody could enjoy Jonah, of course. “Jello salad? Is that the nasty preserved food you people are all eating?”

“It’s modern cuisine,” Jonah said stiffly. “It’s quite good. Aren’t you the one who’s so fervent in preaching the gospel of modernism?”

“Not if it comes in Cool Whip and bologna, I don’t.” Jon pulled a mock sympathetic face. “You ought to be more careful, Jonah. It’s worth keeping an eye on your health. I heard that bologna helps promote aging.”

“I will spear you with this fork and cook you over a fire,” Jonah said pleasantly. 

“My, are you balding so soon -”

In the end, they were thrown out anyway. It was for the best, anyway: Jon had no intention of eating that suburban trash. 

That day was the last he ever saw of James Wright. It was the last he saw of Jonah Magnus, too - at least, until he received a phone call in 2015 saying that Gertrude Robinson was dead, and that he was required home to select a new Head Archivist. 

It stood to reason that Jon wasn’t really necessary for the process. He had no part in choosing that woman Archivist - why would he be necessary for the next one?

“I am beginning to think,” Jonah said over the phone, voice strange and uncanny with Jonah’s familiar cadence in a reedy and light voice, “that I am incapable of appointing controllable Archivists. Every one you’ve picked has been blissfully, wonderfully boring, and the ones that I pick defy me, ruin my plans, and try to kill me. Get back here and choose one yourself.”

“But Jonah,” Jon had said, delighted, “you choose me as your Archivist.”

“I said what I said. Get back here, now. Please.”

And that, in the end, was what brought Jon home: the fact that Jonah hadn’t cajoled, manipulated, or tricked. It was the fact that he had asked. Had said please. 

He had never said please to Jon before. 

But maybe it was pointless anyway: Sasha James was no more malleable than her predecessor had been. 

[politicaltheatre]

In A Clearing

So, here we are. At last. At long last.

For too long, we’ve felt as if we’ve been lost in the woods, blindly tripping over roots, stumbling through muck, fearful, frustrated, angry, not knowing which step would put us in the right direction and not knowing how long it would take us to reach open space, sunlight, and safety.

But we’re here. We’ve arrived. We see light ahead of us and darkness behind, and, if we aren’t careful, we’ll convince ourselves that we’ve made it out of the woods, that it really is all behind us.

That’s the trap. That’s the lie that we long to hear. But we know better. Or should.

Yesterday, the Electoral College voted to confirm the victory of President-Elect Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. and Vice President-Elect Kamala Devi Harris. After four years of naked corruption culminating in a campaign of naked racism, hatred, and fear, the arrival of a president seemingly in it to serve rather than only in it to help himself should have us elated. But we aren’t. We can’t be, and we know why.

The Electoral College itself is emblematic of where we are and of how far we still have to go. As a system, the use of electors is obsolete, like relying on a video store when you’re already paying to stream high-definition videos. The electors, representing only the major political parties, are gatekeepers, a class unto themselves who are chosen from among a select, well-connected few.

It’s one more remnant of a world in which being a wealthy, white, male land (and people) owner meant you had the moral character to decide whether or not those allowed to vote had chosen well. However much Alexander Hamilton and others talked up checks and balances, this was one thing seemingly designed to maintain imbalances of power, for that is what it has come to do.

It badly needs to go. Even some of the electors say so. Unfortunately, that will require a constitutional amendment, which will require states to ratify. And wouldn’t you know it, the states needed to reach the 75% threshold for ratification are the ones benefitting from it still: sparsely populated, rural states.

To be fair, a country dominated by the economic interests of heavily populated cities isn’t a country any of us should want to live in. We need balance (and checks), and rural regions have good reason to fear that without something to force attention onto them, they wouldn’t be heard, let alone listened to.

And yet, the electoral college isn’t the means we need to that end. It forces attention, yes, but it also enables abuse of power by the few over the many and, as the past two presidential elections have shown all too well, it encourages bigotry as a means of maintaining regional identity and securing (or suppressing) votes.

The road to eliminate it is so far out in front of us that we can’t even see it. It would require convincing small states to vote for it or creating newer small states - D.C., Puerto Rico, splitting California - to push the margin. There’s so much we have to do just to get to it, and knowing that is what should tell us where we are, not at the edge of the woods but in a clearing, still deep within.

The seemingly easy solution is simply to go forward in the direction we took to reach the clearing. Just keep going. However, without knowing what we face in the woods beyond the other side of the clearing, how will we know where it leads?

What we should do, as always, is stop to get out bearings, to know where it is we actually are, and then to ask the questions we should know to ask.

The first question upon entering the clearing is: What were we escaping from? That, of course, only leads to more questions. For example, 81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden, but how many of them were just voting to get rid of Donald Trump? If just getting rid of Trump was all they wanted, how many of them are committed to getting rid of the culture that gave rise to Trump? How many would just be satisfied to return to the world as it existed January 19, 2017? Or November 7, 2016?

The uncomfortable truth of this moment is that the answers to those questions are probably: Trump in the White House; The majority; Few even think about it; and, Way, way more than is good for us long term. If facts matter - and do they ever matter - the most simple fact of all is this: There’s a pandemic going on and people want certainty, first and foremost that the pandemic will be ended soon by competent, compassionate human beings.

That, voters of America, might as well have been Joe Biden’s campaign slogan. If you’re looking at him nominating one Washington and Wall Street insider after another and pulling your hair out, keep in mind that metaphorically turning the clock back four years was his entire campaign promise and is exactly his goal. To him and those working with him, this is what the world needs to see. He wants to reassure banks and to reassure the militaries of both allies and foes.

“We were sick,” he’s saying. “But we’re healthy again.”

That Biden is sending this message just as the first COVID-19 vaccines are arriving around the world is a little ironic, but only because the drive to release them was as much a political one as anything, pushed by a man who cared less that the vaccines worked than that they came out in time for him to claim credit. And credit will only really be due if they actually work, which we won’t know for months, possibly even an entire year.

What, then, of this coming year? Well, if you thought getting Trump out of the White House would be enough to get rid of him and his influence, you were deluded.

As much as 81 million Americans just wanted Trump gone, 74 million took a good, long, four years to look at who and what Donald Trump was and what he did and what he said and what he was doing to this country and thought, “That’s the one for me!” They’ve tied so much of their identities up in seeing him succeed, that, like die hard fans of a losing sports team, they just keep coming back for more.

If you’ve been wondering how and why 126 Republican men and women and 19 Republican Attorneys General would sign on to a lawsuit filed by the Republican Attorney General of Texas to invalidate votes in States that were not Texas, well, you have 74 million reasons, all of them potential campaign donors and voters in just two years. Of course, they all knew the lawsuit was a joke, that it would fail.

Most of them probably also knew that seeking to invalidate votes and install the loser of a presidential election could be seen as sedition or treason, but how many of them sincerely believed the lawsuit would go anywhere? To them, it was just another empty campaign promise made to suckers and losers. And to Ken Paxton, that Texas Attorney General, it was little more than a valentine to the man who, for the next four and a half weeks, has the power to pardon him for multiple federal crimes.

Which raises another question: How many of those 126 believed that they would ever be brought up on charges in this political culture? Is anyone charged with anything anymore? Certainly, no one ever goes to jail. And if they do…well, maybe there’s a pardon, from this president or whichever Republican wins in 2024. Just because they’re cynically using Republican voters for profit doesn’t mean Republican politicians can’t be just as deluded as their marks.

We live in a cheating culture. Electing Joe Biden does nothing to end it. Mitch McConnell and his House counterparts are counting on that. So, too, are current White House staffers, from outgoing Attorney General William Barr down to the lowliest interns manning the paper shredders this Christmas. They all see this moment and think, “This won’t last. We’ll be back.”

They may be right. Hell, even the Houston Astros coaches and executives who cheated their way to a championship a few years ago have jobs in baseball again. The sport entered that particular clearing, one in which cheating and cheaters were publicly shamed, turned around and walked right back where they came from. Of course, they have some experience with this kind of collective amnesia, and there’s so much money to be made.

That’s why the Republicans are acting like this moment is just that, a moment, a pause, a break. They fully expect us to turn around and go right back into the woods we just escaped. That’s how they make their money. They expect us to see Joe Biden in the White House and lose our way, either to confusion, frustration, or complacency. We’ll look around ourselves and see woods in every direction, with no sense of which path to take or how far the woods go in any one direction.

And there they’ll be, at the edge we just left, beckoning us back, telling us how foolish we were to allow ourselves to be dragged out into the open where we are vulnerable. The longer it takes for us to get vaccines, the longer we go without jobs and stuck at home with our kids, the more they will play this game. To them, that’s exactly what it is, a game with only winners and losers, and the more they play, the more uncertain the results will be.

That’s how they win, and it’s the specialty of Mitch McConnell. It’s what he did to obstruct Barack Obama and, given that Joe Biden will undoubtedly negotiate exactly the same way he did as Vice President, it is undoubtedly what McConnell will do again. Anything he can do to delay relief to those who have been made most vulnerable by the pandemic, he will do in order to extract more profit for himself and his benefactors.

That anything includes enabling and encouraging right wing violence, which has increased in lockstep with the Republican Party’s dismantling of functional governance and which will very likely increase even more now that Trump’s roadshow circus of lawsuits have resulted in comical defeat.

Trump is doing it for the obvious reasons: adulation, power, and, most important, to leech every last penny he can from his devoted followers. McConnell and the rest of the “we don’t know who won” Republicans in Congress are doing it for those reasons, too, but they have one other reason: the two Georgia runoffs on January 5th. They have two candidates battling accusations of insider trading (and cozying up to white supremacists), and desperately want Trump voters (including those white supremacists) to vote Republican.

Which takes us back to the newly-re-re-re-christened president-elect, who has until today resisted visiting Georgia to help the Democratic campaigns. He’s still been a presence there - How could a president-elect not be? - but only as a distantly reassuring face for Democrats and a menacing bogeyman for Republicans. Think the attack on Dr. Jill Biden has nothing to do with Georgia? If Republicans can’t run against “socialists”, they’ll run against “uppity, liberal elites trying to tell everyone how to live their lives”, which amounts to the same thing: “Freedom!”

All of this is to say, we can’t expect the right wing to learn the lessons we want them to learn from defeat. They never have, and they never will. If they could learn those kinds of lessons, they wouldn’t be right wing. Their instinct isn’t to accept defeat and be humbled by it, it’s to figure out ways to get around it without having to admit they lost at all.

When Nixon was forced from office, his closest supporters didn’t take the lesson that corruption and an illegal war were wrong, only that he failed to get away with it. Thirty years later, two of them, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, led the United States into a still ongoing war in Iraq from which they and they friends made billions. Their push for deregulation led in no small part to an economic crisis, for which they and their friends were bailed out. What lesson do you think they learned from that?

And almost fifty years after Nixon initiated the “Southern Strategy”, one of his most faithful acolytes courted white supremacy to gain and then attempt to hold onto the presidency. The Southern Strategy was something of a revival of Jim Crow - a mutated strain, if you will - which was a revival of the Confederacy, which was an attempt to hold onto slaves, which at its root is an economic system built on an imbalance of both power and accountability.

There is no permanent cure for things like racism and sexism and bullying, because it is the motivations, such as the craven desire not to have to be accountable to others, that drive such behavior. If I am not accountable to you, I can take from you, I can hurt you, I can humiliate you, and I can enjoy it. The abuse not only is the behavior, it is its own justification for the behavior. That is what hides waiting for us in the woods. That is what we have escaped from - or tried to - as we entered this clearing.

If only we could stay here. We have this brief moment, out in the center of the clearing, out in the sun, safe and warm, but in a few short weeks it will be time for us to choose a direction. The risk we face by stopping is that we may get turned around. From the center of a clearing, the woods look the same in every direction, just trees and shadows and whatever dangers they may hide. Lose our way and we may end up right back where we started. We can’t allow that. We can’t settle for it.

This is an inflection point. Things can go in any direction. We are the ones who have the power to decide, not the gatekeepers and not anyone preying on the worst of our nature.

Choose accountability. It may not be the fastest way through the woods, but it will be the only way out.

- Daniel Ward

[fieryfurry89-blog]

Course Post #13: Finding a Way In

There’s a scene in the first season of Mad Men when Don and Betty are playing Bridge with friends Carlton and Francine in the living room. It is nighttime, and the children (supposedly) have gone to bed. There is an excellent flat angle shot. On the left, there are the card playing adults, and on the right half of the shot, there are the children, Bobby and Sally, sitting on the stairs, listening. Bobby comes into the living room and starts to grab some candies. Don gets up to put Bobby away. When he comes back, Betty begins a conversation with the friends about how their son Bobby had won the class prize for drawing a lifelike portrait of George Washington. The teacher had even called the house to congratulate him. When Betty went into Bobby’s room, she found a textbook with Washington’s face on one of the pages. The similarity to Bobby’s drawing was uncanny.

“He had traced it,” Betty says.

Don throws a card down, leans back, pulls a cigarette out of his shirt pocket.

“My art department is run on tracing paper,” Don says. “Why reinvent the wheel?”

It’s a beautiful scene for a lot of reasons. Don Draper is a traced man of sorts. His real name is Dick Whitman, and he has made it big in America by erasing his past and stealing another man’s name.  He seems to have little problem with Bobby’s strategy. To him it seems clever, because he himself is doing it. Betty, the golden woman, has always been reticent to cut corners when it comes to tradition, decor, and her ideas of success. She begins an affair with Henry Francis, a politician with a golden heart, who almost cannot help but love Betty despite her erratic behavior. We could talk about Francine’s fascination with the Drapers’s life, their house with the red door, their perfect existence, and how it is built up on suburban ideals that will one day wilt and die, but for the moment, it seems to do these upper New York white people just fine.

We could also talk about Bobby’s behavior as a cry for help in terms of desiring attention. But that is a story for another time. (And nobody likes Bobby anyway).

The tracing paper is important. When I was Bobby’s age, I felt tracing to be cheating. It was fun, but I did not consider it art. I firmly believed that artists kept to form, were intellectual about their reasoning for technique, and were painstakingly adept at pursuing an idea to its limits. One time before a church camp, I traced a Dragonball Z character to give to the counselors. But there was a problem with the length of the image compared to my piece of paper, so I had to hand draw his right arm myself. The results were absurd. His profile was slightly turned, and even when his left arm was away from the viewer, it was still larger than the right arm, which looked emaciated and shrunken. When I handed the photocopies to the counselors, either they did not notice, or did not want to upset me. But I knew. It was the right arm that kept it from being what I felt to be perfect.

But lately, I have learned a great deal about who artists are, how they do it, and why they make those decisions to produce great works. The one thing I am most stunned by, each time without question, is the rate by which artists cut corners, cheat, and cover up insecurity with technology, materials, and an eye for the look of the world. I have already spoken about Hockney’s archaeology, so I will not burden you here yet again. But I will say that these words and idioms, though they have a negative connotation, have actually been a delight to me, and have set in motion some ideas for the future of art and creating artists that I would like to share.

I have an Oculus Rift headset. This should not be surprising: in marketing for the 2017 year, a year after the Rift’s release, it turned out that I am the leading demographic: young, white, players with a gaming history. But, to be honest, I did not want the headset for games. No, I wanted it for art.

Oculus Quill, a three-dimensional painting app, is something else I have mentioned in the past as a defense of virtual reality. Its beauty when discussing technology in the 21st century is, in my opinion, unparalleled. When we speak of groundbreaking ideas for mediums and subjects, virtual reality will be remembered as producing new professionals in the same way that Bill Gates established in his years at the Lakeside school. It is a thing difficult to understand unless you are in it. A person can form a loop over and over with their hands, like twirling a ribbon, and can put their head through it. It is an infinite canvas, where I can zoom in and create fleas bouncing up and down on the back of a dog that happens to be inside a snow globe that a man is presenting to his wife as a gift. It is a thing most beautiful.

It can also be dense and difficult and frustrating and altogether lonely. For weeks now, months even, I have pounded my physical head on virtual walls, trying to push myself and getting nowhere. My strategies were freezing up the computer, producing glitches that would have me reeling and sitting on the sectional in an attempt to recover. I couldn’t understand the controls, but I also could not understand the implications of the controls. Okay, so I could have a select button, what would I use it for? I could place my palette statically on the canvas, but why would I do that when I have it on my hand? I was stuck, I had plateaued. I remember very specifically apologizing to my wife that $350 had gone down the drain to purchase the headset. I felt doomed.

But here is Goro Fujita, renowned digital artist, to save the day. This video alone was so revealing that I instantly went to his Patreon and began to follow him.  All those years and history of tracing, cutting corners? You had better believe that Oculus Quill artists are just as bad. Goro Fujita makes one stroke, and then duplicates it repeatedly to make the floor of the forest. He makes one tuft of grass, then he shades it, then he duplicates it to create density. He copies trees to add lighting and shadow easily. He copies arms to use as legs! His workflow is so fast and efficient because, although he loves the intuitiveness of Quill, he actually takes his body out of most equations. The times he does use his body he loves, and it’s for the same reasons as me. When you want to animate a butterfly, I love that you have to move your hand up and down just like one to imitate its fluttering. I love when you have to animate leaves falling, you have to move your hands in ways that a leaf would when approaching new winds. When was the last time you pretended and the thing you were imagining happened?

But he also discusses the power of Quill, and I will paraphrase. With certain two-dimensional toolsets on a computer, it would take you months, sometimes years to become fluent in the technology in order to produce something artistically pleasing. Here, he is able to pick it up in mere hours. I too, once I saw this video, saw my artistic expression increase dramatically. When my wife left for a treatment in Houston, I presented her with flowers.

Tulips, daisies, stargazer lilies, all inside a translucent vase filled with water. I did this in forty-five minutes (don’t tell her that).

This is the demand for the twenty-first century: reducing the time to self-actualization. Before, I was a hack. Now, I am a beret wearing artiste who intends to start a gallery and send drawings to my friends as presents. Audacious and egotistical as it is, I love sharing letters, paintings, and other expressions. It seems to me that each person has an obligation to find in each other the path of least resistance when it comes to creativity. We have a lot of untapped human energy that we could use to express plights, complications, worries, fears, and intense bouts of happiness and care. Why should we have so many people on the outside? The future should not be boarded up. On the contrary, we should be finding as many entrances to happiness as possible, virtual or otherwise. Trace like Bobby, until you can draw like Dali.

[actutrends]

Trump vs. John Roberts: A 2020 battle for the Supreme Court’s reputation

But his function prior to Congress is uncertain at finest. The Constitution says only that “the Chief Justice shall administer” prior to the Senate as it thinks about whether a president impeached by the Home ought to be founded guilty and gotten rid of from workplace.

And past primary justices have had opposing interpretations of that mandate.

” I did nothing in specific and I did it effectively,” Rehnquist told interviewer Charlie Rose in2001 Rehnquist took the line– and the gold stripe decorations he contributed to his judge’s robe for the celebration– from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta ‘Iolanthe,’ which he appreciated.

On and off Capitol Hill, expectations are high that Roberts, himself a previous Rehnquist Supreme Court clerk, will follow the more current Clinton trial design while still leaving his own imprint on the proceedings.

” My read of him is he appreciates the institution and he appreciates there being a belief that the organization is an independent organization and not one that’s subordinate to any specific individual or president,” said Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential candidate.

Roberts will likewise have a big say over the trial’s schedule, a task that may sound logistical however will have him suppressing rambling senators and forcing them to stay seated for long stretches– senators can’t leave their seats throughout impeachment trial sessions.

Rehnquist was a stickler for time during the Clinton debate. He gavelled down West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, then the chamber’s most senior Democrat, when he exceeded his limits throughout a speech. And Rehnquist also overthrew the Senate bulk leader on several celebrations by keeping everyone in their seats into the early evening hours when they ‘d asked to be sent out house.

” I believe the chief justice is his own guy, and he’s a good male and he’ll be really fair,” stated retiring Kansas GOP Sen. Pat Roberts, who elected Clinton’s conviction in1999 “I think that’s the crucial thing. He’ll be strong.”

While the Senate’s nonpartisan parliamentarian will be just a few steps away, with simple access to help Roberts navigate the chamber’s arcane guidelines and two-plus centuries of precedent, the chief justice does retain the power to render his own choices that can affect the trial’s trajectory (although a majority of senators can always overthrow him). Longtime Senate veterans don’t see Roberts pushing that envelope.

” He most likely doesn’t want to be embarrassed that method,” stated Don Ritchie, the Senate historian emeritus. “It’s going to be very informing for him. He’s going to get to listen a lot.”

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, stated he expects Roberts will be “correctly deferential to his minimal constitutional role” throughout the trial. Republican Politician Sen. Ted Cruz, an ex-Texas solicitor general who has actually argued 6 cases prior to Roberts, predicted the chief justice would be “non-political, to leave political determinations to the Senate, which is elected to make those sort of decisions.”

” I would expect Chief Justice Roberts to follow and implement the guidelines, but with some reasonable degree of leeway,” added Cruz, who is likewise a former Rehnquist law clerk.

Regardless of the Senate trial outcome– a nearly specific acquittal on both articles of impeachment is expected– Roberts will not be out of the woods quite.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court given 3 petitions from the president’s personal legal representatives to hear cases in its March term that raise main concerns of the Trump period. One dispute centers around a prosecutor’s ability to impose a subpoena versus a sitting president under criminal examination. The other focuses on Congress’s capability to implement subpoenas as part of their oversight responsibilities.

Opinions are most likely by June, and the outcomes might go a long way towards identifying whether Trump’s all-out blockade of Congress over the last three years will get a legal imprimatur.

And if all that wasn’t enough, still more drama awaits that could strain the Trump-Roberts relationship. 2 more significant cases about forcing witness statement look to be by themselves direct glide courses to the Supreme Court– legal fights that raise yet more concerns about the separation of powers between the White Home and an analytical Congress.

House Democrats have actually prevailed prior to federal district court judges in both cases, winning rulings that lawmakers in the middle of impeachment procedures can question former Trump White Home counsel Don McGahn under oath and to review special counsel Robert Mueller’s many delicate investigative tricks.

The cases are now set up to be argued Jan. 3 prior to back-to-back federal appellate panels in Washington, D.C., and the losers there are nearly specific to pitch the Roberts court for yet another intervention.

While any veteran Supreme Court expert would caution against attempting to anticipate how the justices will rule on the Trump-related cases, nobody is doubting the significance of what those judgments could indicate for Roberts’ legacy and the court’s reputation.

Trump’s bold, confrontational design of politics has constantly appeared at odds with the chief justice’s background and his outlook on the court. Robert is fond of highlighting the justices’ collegiality and has worried the value of agreement judgments over 5-4 splits, sometimes aggravating his more doctrinaire conservative associates in the process.

However the varying viewpoints of the president and the chief magistrate became specific just before Thanksgiving last year, when Roberts publicly rebuked the president for utilizing the phrase “Obama judge” to deride a federal jurist in California who ruled versus one of Trump’s efforts to limit opportunities to look for asylum.

After sustaining months of criticism for staying silent in the face of previous Trump attacks on the judiciary, Roberts issued a declaration that didn’t directly reference the president however still acted as an apparent rejoinder.

” We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts stated in a statement. “What we have is an amazing group of dedicated judges doing their best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be appreciative for.”

It might have ended there, but Trump stuck to his brand and provided a pointed retort on Twitter.

” Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’ and they have a much different point of view than individuals who are charged with the security of our nation,” Trump composed “We require defense and security– these judgments are making our nation risky! Extremely dangerous and reckless!”

Still, Trump’s attorneys have taken an assertive path to get their disagreements in front of the Roberts court, believing they have a much better shot there than in the lower courts.

” Can we go to Supreme Court to stop?” the president then asked.

It’s a question no one in the president’s orbit is really thinking about, though Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg during an on-stage interview with the BBC on Monday in New york city snapped back when asked about the remark.

Trump, she stated, “is not an attorney.”

Court watchers say they’re concerned the Supreme Court– and the chief justice in specific– will undoubtedly get dragged into the president’s political battle.

” I can see Trump tweeting dreadful features of Roberts,” said a previous senior federal law enforcement authorities. “I do not think he has any barriers.”

Alan Dershowitz, the retired Harvard law teacher who is under consideration for a job on the Trump legal team throughout the upcoming Senate trial, said in an interview that he would urge the president and all of the justices to step back from their particular megaphones.

” I believe it operates both methods,” he said. “I believe both the justices and the president should leave each other alone.”

However Dershowitz likewise appears thinking about stirring the pot. He published in an op-ed in The Hill paper on Monday arguing that the 2nd post of impeachment against Trump– implicating Trump of obstruction of Congress– has really been damaged by the Supreme Court’s decision to use up the cases about congressional subpoenas.

Dershowitz urged legislators to vote the article down, saying it “really endangers our system of checks and balances and the crucial role of the courts as the umpires in between the legal and executive branches under the Constitution.”

In the interview, Dershowitz stated Roberts might be placed in an awkward spot ought to he be asked throughout the Senate trial to rule on a movement to dismiss the second impeachment article, considered that he’ll likely need to resolve the legal concerns surrounding the matter at the Supreme Court at some point next year.

” We’re in uncharted area,” Dershowitz stated. “Understanding Chief Justice Roberts for a long time from his days as a law school student, I think he’ll act very carefully, prudentially and in such a way to preserve the organization of the Supreme Court and the organization of the chief justice as a presiding officer.”

Richard Ben-Veniste, a prominent Washington, D.C., lawyer, and former Watergate special prosecutor, said Roberts is well aware of his constitutional obligations.

” I have every factor to think he’ll do so in a fair and unbiased way,” he said. “It comes with the area.”

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