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shytiff · 4 years ago

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Mar 2021 Wins

1 - Work againn except the medical record ran out. So we went back at 12 am. Relaxeddd at home. Fasted today (still got 2 fasting debts to go). Meeting with dr dafsah dr bayushi and dr debby at 20:30. I embarrassed myself lmao,,, and what you can say as "asal bunyi". Let the overthinking and fear begin. I actually woke up 3 times during the night, lmaoo is it anxiety? Never happened to me before.

2 - we need to take care of administrations to get more medical record so we did. Wasted almost half of the day but we finally managed. Immediately fell asleep at home lmao

3 - the usual day in harkit. Asked more medical records. Planned to go to cp to see slip ons but the tj i wanted to ride went straight to kalideres so like the sane person i am of course i went back home. Timing is very222 great sometimes in life. Zoom meeting with the ever so kind dr eva. Mahmud and dela joined the assistant gang

4 - magang. Met dr eva in pediatric icu. late late evening lunch was kungpao chicken sec bowl (which i exclaimed as sweet. And then my friend said kungpao is supposed to taste like that. Huh). I was picked up after maghrib. Laid down in bed, playing my phone until 22ish and i fell asleep. Damn i shouldve slept earlier yknow

5 - magang. Ate spicy salmon onigiri from lawson for lunch. Went to btkv basecamp with mahmud since RM was a bit crowded. Not even 10 mins in, and we excused ourselves because misuh2 btkv near the computer on our table. Went to nonama in le meridien after magang with ara ness gen cal hanin amal alya. The sushi was so so (too much rice). Yay for lots of sashimi. Salmon kushiage was tasty. Salmon aburi cheesy stuff was tasty. Soba so so. Takoyaki explodes in your mouth. While waiting for mom, saw live piano performance in the lobby. Shes playing alone. I hope she knows someone out there appreciates it *oddly melancholic*

6 - slept in. Felt good. Hurriedly showered and got ready bcs i thot it was getting a bit late and turns out i arrived in halte kalideres 9:11 am lmao. Breakfast slash lunch was penyetan cok ayam. The sambal was not THAT spicy but my tongue has weakened now. Picked up some data in RM. Went to central park with my heavy ass bag to search for slip ons. Didnt find one yet. Went to kkv for the first time. Went back home and its heavy rain on the tj but dry in kalideres. Snacked on fitz cookies (its basically vegan tuffis) on the bus since i felt hungryyy. Juan bought chicken satay and when i arrived theyre all eating but i didnt feel like eating with them lmao (its been a while since i last did) so i just went upstairs, finished that fitz cookies, fell asleep in my mukena (after maghrib) and skipping isya :(

7 - didnt feel like doing anything when i woke up, but forced myself to open laptop for nemo. Played a bit of keyboard. Ate last nights satay. Rly was in a rut until i managed to shower (i last showered yesterday morning,,,) and felt a bit better. Even did night skin care and mask (which i didnt do lately)

8 - magang as usual while listening to curhat babu. I was still feeling "off" even though i was outside already. Felt a bit more normal after i had lawson's ice arabica gayo covfefe. Lunch was spicy sec bowl with extra chicken. Coffee's effect is amazing im just blown away. Like im not tired. I feel normal. I dont feel like immediately going to bed when i arrive at the house. Read and finished starving anonymous before bed. Its... A lot to take in. Especially before bed lmaoo

9 - mencret2 in the morning and i blame it on spicy sec bowl. my pace in magang is so slow why :( lunch is carbonara spaghetti from Barilla (29k with discount). It does make you feel full, and it is creamy. But the beef bacon is so few 😐 it will be more delish if it has more bacon. Picked up by mom after maghrib today. At 19:30 ish my stomach hurtedddd bcs of rising acid.its been a while since it happened. Thankfully mom bought tan ek tjoan and brownies. The ache dissipated after i finished my bread. Its so cold in the car tfff or is it my poor metabolism

10 - magang til after isya since tomorrow is a holiday. powered by lawson’s arabica gayo after lunch (good habit’s minimal-taste fried rice lol). while on the way back, kapjagiii ukmppd result announcement. alhamdulillah i passed. congratulated by some. slept late seeing people’s social media update.

11 - woke up late. didnt feel hungry, so i ate at 13:00 ish (tuna, peanut-chocolate sandwich). slept after eating. ghosted mahmuda calling me regarding after zuhur liqo. didnt pick up atikah’s calls. cant seem to talk lmao. rly rly tried to do dr dafsah’s excel this day, but cant seem to start my day. i was like “i’ll take a shower” but i didnt. “i’ll start the excel at 20:00″ i didnt. i just slept. and woke. and slept. dreamed about going to dufan with clara but we bailed since there was no promo. i practically didnt no anything today lol

12 - finally showered (that was supposedly done yesterday lmao). my pink flats broke down. i was the only one who come lmao. did dr dafsah’s excel and finished at 10. went to TA and tried popolamama’s ayce. tried chicken arabiatta (very tomato-ey taste, not a fan), pepperoni, bolognese and banana caramel with vanilla ice cream. Managed to eat 4 small pizza out of 9 flavor choices. While eating i remembered i came to celebrate passing ukmppd. so in my mind i pat myself in the back and said (not out loud) congrats for passing ukmppd. it felt bittersweet, but a nice validation. tried to search for slip ons again but didnt find one. bought a black top in uniqlo. started reading here you are

13 - lazed and lazed and jhs friends wanted to meet up but i cant even muster the courage to shower lmao. after zuhur was the meet up time but i slept at 12. lets go. come on. out. suddenly i have to build up a will to socialize just like with running. and i managed. left the house at 13:30-ish. went to ali kopi dm and got thai tea. slowly warming up my social battery. and then things felt a bit better. and we moved to flavola (got the somay). and talked we did, until suddenly its near isya. and then i had to go back bcs mom was being restrictive as usual. if it werent for that i would stay longer w atikah and pupuy. felt energized afterwards, read more of here you are and slept at 00:00 ish

14 - woke up, played some keyboard. im not prepared for another monday. Mangago is down. Unboxed my knockoff airpods that arrived couple of days ago. The sound and function was ok. Showered near the end of zuhur.

15 - magang as usual. Got out of my gloomy (felt a bit better) after going out. Lunch was ayam pedas lawson with added fried chicken. Also bought arabica gayo. Went back home before maghrib. Why must i be here while my dad talk about whatever before sholat maghrib. I hate it here. Ara and redita stayed over bcs theyre 'supposedly' going to rsut to pick up samples. Except it was cancelled and in the morning they went back to rscm,,,

16 - its only morning but i yapped abt worrying in our future to poor ekal who just sat there lmaoo. I told him how i realized im easily bored. Tried K-Chop for lunch, bought kimchi bokkeumbap, pajeon and kimchi jeon. The fried rice tasted like fried rice but with a hint of kimchi. Kimchi jeon was good and refreshing. the pajeon was basically egg with added ingredients. But it did make me feel full. Suddenly felt like singing life goes on with the keyboard.

17 - tried fitfut for lunch. Got mushroom chicken steak and katsu wrap. Their katsu is,,, simply put, tasteless. Like those HEALTHY healthy foods. The (small) chicken steak was ok. The mushroom sauce tasted good. Zoom call with dr dafsah at 12 am. More work i guess,,,

18 - fasted today. Still got 1 debt to go. Sahur was indomie, banana and protein shake. Did not feel hungry in magang but i kinda felt lightheaded. And then i cant take it anymore and went home at 2 pm. Arrived after ashar. Theres PLENTY of time to do stuff, right? Nope. I just laid in bed playing my phone til maghrib (iftar was chicken noodle) and continued until i fell asleep. My dream was absurd lmaoooo

19 - had custom salad hut for lunch. felt suuuper fult. bought pop cookies since it was the last day of grabfood’s 50% promo. was picked up after isya by mom. we talked with the resident who’s doing his thesis stuff and it turns out he’s from the same shs as mahmuda lmao. he bought kopsus and donat kampung for us, how kinddd :”) i said “mantap ni kakak kelasnya mahmud” and he said “kamu kan adek kelas saya juga”. kind seniors. i hope they have great careers and be successful and im learning to be kind from kind people. i dont know, im just easily touched by simple gestures lmaoo. first time trying tuku’s coffee. it’s smooth and creamy (like the milk and coffee unites (?)) and it doesnt separate when you leave it. its milky but has a strong coffee taste. Slept at 11 pm-ish, playing my phone

20 - lazed. saw long covid webinar. ate mom’s salmon mentai, pop cookies matcha cream cheese and dark chocolate. the dark chocolate one, especially a bit cold, taste soooo good wtf. concentrated sugar and chocolate at its finest. played some keyboard. saw youtube vids about the genius jacob collier. lent my byu phone number so ara could use it to catfish in coffee and bagel lol. bought sbux green tea and caramel macchiato 1 L for 100k + delivery fee and my bro said it tasted good

21 - tried pop cookies red velvet this time. Its super sweet yall and i thought martabak orins was the epitome of d40 bolus. did pamela reif 10 mins calorie burn that wont kill you. except i got doms WITHIN the day of work out. also attempted sun salutation and my leg is so damn stiff. did some work on sunday!!! wow!!!! (after wasting 2 weekends) finished skimming air gear lol. it still made me feel glorious.

22 - volunteered to help vaccination at rptra planet senen w akis els yud kind. Finished at about 13:30. We got chicken noodle, nasi padang and mcd lol. Went to senen bus station. Prayed there. Called mahmud and turns out theres no new medical record so i went straight home. Ate the mcd and lazed in bed

23 - vaccine volunteer again, this time in sd 01 kramat, w regen nagit red adita. Observation table again. Except its twice the amount of pt compared to yesterday. Nebeng redita to gang IX and walked to nessa's place. Went to GI and we watched violet evergarden (tif gen ness kris indah ara). The ac in the screenX cgv theater wasnt even on. Picked up by mom at 20:30 ish so i hurried down. The movie was hilarious w indah's commentary

24 - sooo sleepy and lazy but finally went to harkit. Waiting for pak oji to get medicak records, i shopped at sociolla lol. Bought eyebrow pencil, eyeshadow palette, blush since i dont have those (i only have cheap 3 color mizzu eyeshadow). Did some work. Met kiki in RM. "planned" to do the rest of magang work at home and arrivd back at 3-ish pm but we all know thats a lie. Lazed. Maghrib. Bought sbux 1L to have some caffeine through the green tea. Sinau airway class by dr zeta (focused thanks to the caffeine). Had some "awake time" left and did not feel sleepy til 10:30ish pm but i had to sleep since i got 1 more fasting to go 2mrw. No progress on magang work aaaaa

25 - had indomie, boiled egg, banana and protein powder for sahur. magang. emir took a while to pick me up even though i already told him the time im arriving and i ended up ordering grab lmao and he showed up right before the grab. liqo w kak kartika and mahmud while sipping caramel macchiato. did some translation (job by dr triya)

26 - picked up pld medal, gown and buavita (lol) at salemba and then went to harkit. met kiki again. lunch was k-chop. quite good and fulfilling. waiting for mom to pick me up before maghrib. Was lazying around at night and it turns out clara came w kefas. She called but dumb ass me had my phone on silent. She surprised me and came all the wayyy with a little tayo cake and a line friends pillow. I was awkward w kefas bcs im awkward w new people :):):) she went back and then i cried afterwards in my room. Fianti sent me a wish before midnight (somehow havent fell asleep) and then i close my eyes and go to the dream world

27 - had mie goreng for breakfast. fell asleep again. woke to silvi and racheel calling me and as usual my phone was not ringing. there’s racil silvi devi reza outside the door lmao. they (including atikah) surprised me with gift (a bag). i asked them to come with me to gi since im gonna eat w regen. we tried yakiniku like and the meat was juicy and yum, better then kintan. racil dkk ate marugame udon just below. wanted to get banban but it was so crowded. went back by grab. racil and atikah stayed over. talked until like 12 am. forced myself to pray isya.

28 - talked for hours like we usually do, tried some makeup bcs i need to practice for pld lol. tarik tiga to their place bcs i needed to borrow pld clothes lol. rearranged my room and i was sweating. i should’ve drank macchiato and did some work but i cant bring myself to so i just sleep. hangovers post feeling normal are never the best feeling

29 - woke up super late. cant bring myself to go to harkit. i feel like shit. sick and tired of feeling sick and tired ((quoting jhene aiko)). mustered some will to shower. rode my on bike pretending im going to harkit except im going to mcd. got big breakfast and lemon tea. went to flavola, ordered kopsus coklat and indomie + telor. Went back home after isya.

30 - Binge watching sean and kaycee’s vids lol it all began with their leave the door open dance :). went to harkit by TJ after the redcap was unaccessible at 09:30ish. lunch was truffle belly chicken mushroom (somehow there’s 50% disc). Took some needed data and went back home at 14:20. did (new) translation for dr Triya. finally drank homemade matcha latte after a while.

31 - originally intended to go to flavola after zuhur, but i just cant muster the strength. did dr triya’s translation work. didnt do any ecmocard today. felt like shit. ate the tayo small cake from clara. quite good and not too heavy. gladi kotor pld today. did green screen using mukena lol. fell asleep. skipped isya and the next morning’s subuh :( basically i ended march feeling like utter shit lol

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years ago

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White man pathology: within the fandom of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

Stephen Marche goes on a superhighway expedition and enters the fray at back-to-back Iowa conventions and gets a view of US politics from the perspective of his whiteness

The perimeter

You find your whiteness properly at the American perimeter. Most of the time being white is an absence of troubles. The police dont disturb you so you dont notice the police not riling you. You get the job so you dont notice not getting it. Your children are not confused with crooks. I live in downtown Toronto, in one of the most liberal neighborhoods in one of the most open metropolis in “the worlds”, where multiculturalism is the dominant civic importance and the inert virtue of endurance is the most prominent endowment of the British territory, so if you squint you are able to profess the ancient categories are scattering into a cloud of enlightenment and intermarriage.

Not at the border.

My sons Guyanese-Canadian teacher and the Muslim Milton scholar I went to high school with and the Sikh writer I squabble about Harold Innis with and my Ishmaeli accountant, we can all be good little Torontonians of the middle class, avoiding the differences we have been trained to respect. But in a auto in the carbon monoxide-infused queue waiting to enter Detroit, their beings diverge drastically from mine.

I am lily-white. They are not. They are susceptible. I am not.

Heres the thing: I like the guards at the American margin. Theyre always friendly with me, decent, even pleasant firm. At the booth in between the never-was of Windsor and the has-been of Detroit, the man I happened to draw had a gruff belly and the mysterious air of intentional inscrutability, like a troll under a connection in a fairy tale.

Where are you pate? he asked.

Burlington, Iowa.

Why would anyone ever choose to go to Burlington, Iowa? he requested philosophically.

Im going to see Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Then, because it did seem to require an explanation: Theyre handing rallies within got a couple of dates of each other.

Why would anyone ever choose to go hear Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders?

I didnt argue, because it was the border, but I could have said that the police chief of Birmingham estimated that 30,000 beings evidenced up in Alabama to see Donald Trump in August and that in Dallas, he had replenished the American Airlines Center, and that his equivalent, Bernie Sanders, has generated equally unprecedented quantities enormously more than Barack Obama outlined at comparable instants in the 2008 campaign.

Im strange, I said instead.

At this detail he asked me to roll down my opening. But it was all fine. Like I replied, Im white.

As I drove through the suburbs of the spoils of Detroit, across the I-9 4, one of the ugliest freeways in the United States, the old-fashioned familiar lightness fluttered to my mettle. I enjoy America. America is not my mother. Canada is my mother. But America is an unbelievably splendid, amazingly sugared rich maid who lives next door and believe that there is falling apart. I cannot help myself from loving it.

For people who love to dwell in contradictions, the US is the greatest country in “the worlds”: the country of the free is built around bondage, the member states of law and order where everyone is entitled to a gun, a region of unimpeded advance where they cling to backwardness out of sheer stubbornness. And into this glorious morass, a new inconsistency has recently announced itself: The white people, the privileged Americans, the ones who had the least to fear from the powers that be, the ones with the most wonderful directions to brighter futures, the ones who are by every metric one of “the worlds largest” lucky groups in the history of “the worlds”, has begun to croaking off in stunning numbers.

The Case and Deaton report, Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21 st Century, describes an ever increasing death rate for middle-aged American lily-whites comparable to lives lost in the US Aids epidemic. This spike in mortality is unique to white Americans not find work amongst other ethnic groups in the United States or any other white population in the developed world, a mysterious blight of despair.

In one style, it was easy to account for all this white American fatality medication and alcohol poisoning, suicide, and chronic liver illness and cirrhosis according to the report. It was not so easy be held accountable for the accounting. Why were middle-aged white-hot Americans boozing and medication and shooting themselves to death? The explanations on offer were pre-prepared, fully plugged into confirmation bias: “its been” their own economies or it was demography or “its been” godlessness or it was belief or it was the outage of their own families or it was the persistence of antique qualities or it was the lack of social programs or it was the dependence on social programs.

Case and Deaton call it an epidemic of hurting. Fine. What does that signify?

On the I-9 4, you do find yourself questioning: what the fuck is wrong with these beings? I symbolize, aside from the speedy slump of the middle class certainly. And the rise of precarious run and the fact that the basic way of life requires so much sedation that nearly a quarter of all Americans are on psychiatric drugs, and somewhere between 26.4 and 36 million Americans mistreat opioids every day. Oh yes, and the mass shootings. There was more than one mass hitting a period. And the grey terrorists targeting black churches again. And the regularly exhausted videos evidencing the police assassinating black people. And the police in question never being indicted, let alone being sent to jail.

And you know what Americans were worried about while all this shit was raining down on them? While all this insanity was wounding their beloved country? You know what their number one perturb was, according to referendum after poll after referendum?

Muslims. Muslims, if you can believe it.

The American fantasy is dead but Im going to make it stronger!

My body is white and it is male. It is six hoof towering and weighs 190 lbs. It is 39 years old and it has had to start flowing. It has had to start weighing calories. There is a tingle in the joint of my right thigh, so I try not to think about my torso. The tingling emanates and moves. I know my person is going to kill me.

A man who horror suffering already sustain what he fears, as Montaigne mentioned. Thats one on why males expire very young than dames six years younger on average in America. Ninety-two percent of men say they wait at least a few dates to see if they feel better before they go to a medical doctor, but I know what they mean by a few days. They represent a few more dates that forms sense. It is hard to have a male and lily-white torso and to conceive of its weakness. In the same sigh, my mas cannot accompanying itself to believe it is the personification of power, although it was undoubtedly is in any rational accountancy of social status. It feels like a mere body. It experiences mortal.

Ive never been to a residence as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Picture: Darren McCollester/ Getty Images

Ive never been to a place as white-hot as Iowa. Thats the honest truth. Whenever I go to America its New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or Florida. In Burlington, at Jerrys Main Lunch, the signature dish is the red-hot mess, eggs and bacon cooked right into the hash chocolate-browns. The carbohydrate shakers all have white crackers in them, to prevent clumping a classic bit of common-sense American know-how. The hot mess is yummy. Why dont they construct these everywhere? Why isnt there a series of Jerrys Main Lunches providing hot mess all across the midwest?

The answer is in the rest of the town: everything thats going to leave have so far been left Burlington. The beautiful brick houses downtown are mainly vacant. The most interesting street is the road out of town.

The Memorial Arena, on the banks of the Mississippi, filled up early. Trump wasnt communicating until 6pm but by 4.45 the parking situation was gruesome. Outside the building, the hawkers who follow Trump on the road, occurrence to contest, sold T-shirts and buttons, three for $10. We shall overcomb. Cats for Trump, the time is Meow. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

Inside, every fanny had been taken and the storey filled soon with a standing room only bunch. Burlington is 10% pitch-black. The rallying was 99.99% white.

The people who attend political rallies in America are a specific genre of humanity, like the ones who stand outside in lines for nightclubs. They know where theyre supposed to go and how theyre supposed to behave when they got to get. They have gear.

An elderly dame sat beside me wearing a sequined stars-and-stripes-hat she clearly takes out for precisely these parties. Yall from Illinois? she questioned. Im not but I can extend. She goes to all the rallyings, she justified. Shes been a Republican her whole life, an active Republican, an Iowa Republican. For 30 years, shes been in crowds like this one. She plans to go, one time in their own lives, to the national gathering. Like going to see the Stones. When the organizers delivered around mitt signeds speaking The Silent Majority, she grabbed a dozen so she could overtake them around to others.

Cheerful helpful maidens were half the crowd. Furious and absurd followers were the other. They wore T-shirts with whole paragraph written on them: I am a United States Armed Veteran. I formerly took a SOLEMN OATH to represent the CONSTITUTION against ALL enemies, foreign and Domestic. Be advised No one has ever allayed me of my functions under this Expletive!

There were cars in the parking lot slathered with bumper stickers. We the peoples of the territories are 100% FED UP! So if firearms kills people, I guess pencils miss incantation statements[ sic ], automobiles drive drink and spoonfuls see beings fat. Im straight, republican, Christian, and I own a handgun. Is there anything else I can do to piss you off? A picture of Obama with Does this ass stir my gondola look big? The Republican mode for 2016 is furious aphoristic feeling. Behind slapstick, nonsensical storm: America is the greatest country in the world but America is falling apart, government is the problem which is why authority must solve it.

This was a Trump production so naturally there was a VIP section. A door guarded by bald, unsmiling mortals, the bouncers who stand forever as the bored sentinels of indifferent fame. A swinging door at the side of the stage received and gave the best-looking parties, the ones with the buffed neutrality of political professionals, the women whose faces have been tautened to a perma mope, the men who get their whisker slash before every event.

The woman beside me Stars n Stripes Hat was wearing a pewter elephant pendant. A young girl in a shining orange dress passed out of the VIP entrance wearing an elephant pendant encrusted with diamonds. Elephant chandeliers were a theme, I noticed, and elephant pins and elephant sounds and elephant T-shirts. They came in all different rate objects and in all different styles: round elephants suggestive of French cartoons from the 1960 s, and strange pseudo-sexual shimmies, and with 1920 s straw boater hats conducting processions. There was one kind of elephant you couldnt meet. An elephant that actually looked like an elephant. A realistic elephant might serve as a memento to the hundred elephants killed for their bone every day. A naturalistic elephant would be inherently environmentalist. The elephants must all be fabulous.

Like any good show, there was a warm-up behave. In reality, there are two three if you count the recitation of the assurance of devotion. The first was Tana Goertz, an Iowa woman who had been runner-up on the third season of The Apprentice. What a good-looking army, she pandered. She attested for Trump as a woman( He enjoys girls !) and as someone who had returned to Iowa( How could you live in New York City if you didnt desire parties ?). She promoted the idea which is at the core of every last event that Trump does, that simple contact with the man draws boom. When youre in the Trump train youre going places! She marched off to polite Iowan applause. The mob are more likely to, all things considered, instead have listened to the Elton John music playing on the speakers instead, but at the least she made international efforts.

A more standard promotion follower followed. Sam Clovis hosts a conservative radio substantiate and is a tea-party activist who has operated and lost a bunch of Iowa Republican postures. He precisely started right in with it. Trump was one of the greatest servicemen to ever tread the look of this earth, a good front the crowd could have tittered but instead they saluted, thus proving that “theyre not” paying attention or would immerse anything. Clovis compared Trumps recent speeches to Reagans A Time for Choosing at the Goldwater convention in 1964, which must have been, to his way of thinking regardless, roughly like equating it to the Sermon on the Mount.

Clovis knew what the crowd had come to hear and he gave it to them. America and Americans will be first again! A collective shriek shook the Burlington Memorial Arena. They so badly wanted to be first again. First in what was unclear but emphatically first.

After the thunder croaked, the crowd was ready for Trump. But, showmanship. Trump let the tension build; the indignant absurd men as well as the joyou, helpful ladies called. Trump! Trump! Trump! I could just suspect the amusement the softened din of his chanted appoint, from backstage, must have been bringing “the mens”.

When he ultimately took the stage, the crowd surged; their phones surged. It was an debauchery of phones. The humanities behind Trump examined the crowd with their phones. The cameras in the back were recording everyone preserving each other. Trump was the only party not hampering a screen, the absence that raised hunger. He started roaring, as everybody in the crowd stopped to check the footage they had assembled.

Trump started out with the time he knew would appear on the report the next morning Joe Biden had put out of the hasten and Trump approved of his decision because Biden never had a chance and Trump wanted to face Hillary. The mainstream media adroitly handled, Trump embarked his disquisition on the subject dearest to his mettle: his own success.

The Burlington rally labelled the 100 th period he had contribute the canvas. He spoke the polls, canvas after canvas. He paused only to ask the crowd how enormous the polls were. Beating Hillary nationwide do you desire that? The audience approved of his approval numbers. And so he moved on to the more qualitative aspects of his greatness. His adversaries precisely werent wins. I pronounce from the intelligence but I likewise pronounce from the heart, he spoke, rambling like a rich know-it-all uncle Im producing back the jobs from China! with brief digressions into self-pity: Macys was very disloyal to me. They dont sell my ties anymore.

He described, in twists periodically frank and self-deluded, the greatnes of his own capability for political manipulation. He talked to the people “hes been” spinning about how cleverly he was rotating them. So he affirmed Im a good Christian and that if he became chairperson were going to be remarking merry Christmas, but then he couldnt stop himself from recognise the cleverness of his Christian electioneering: I stepped onto a stagecoach with a bible, everybody likes me better. Trump introduced meta to Burlington, Iowa. And he did not disavow the crowd that preference of personality they wanted. What would he say to Caroline Kennedy, the ambassador to Japan? Youre fired! Youre fired!

A few spectators started to move out to beat trafficking in human beings and Trump shouted about the silent majority and about how he says what nobody else dares to suppose and about how he will end free trade and how Mexicans are car thieves( big shriek) and how he craves a piece of the action from the Keystone pipeline and how hes going to help womens health and how America used to be emulated. The American Dream is dead but Im going to make it bigger and stronger! he hollered. At this moment he appeared to me the route every fame I have met in the flesh does, like a living idolatrou idol awaiting sacrifice, a puff-faced Baal. Were going to acquire so much better, he predicted before leaving the stage to Twisted Sisters Were Not Disappearing to Take It.

Trump followers at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. Photograph: Scott Morgan/ Reuters

I remained to watch Trump work the line. Up open, in person, the fuzz is still much intricate than it appears on screen. Its building is tripartite, great significance polyvalent. First and foremost, there is the comb-over, although it can be called a comb-over simply in the sense that the mall in Dubai with a ski mound inside it can be called a structure. It is hair as state-of-the-art engineering stunt, with the diaphanous quality of a cloak out of Norse legend or some supernatural near-weightless metal are set out in an advanced German laboratory. It swims over the skull, an deed of disregard not only against aging and loss but against duration and seat, against reality.

Behind the technological presentation of the comb-over, as counterpoint, the back is as conventional and old-fashioned as a haircut is also possible. Its a classic ducktail. Its such a classic that I have just been construed it in movies set in the 1950 s. Not movies from the 1950 s I should be clear, but movies from the 1970 s about the 1950 s. In between the comb-over and the ducktail, between the two follicular cavities representing the modernistic and the atavistic, the fantastical and the wistful, there is a third tranche. Even in person you have to look closely to catch sight of it. It projection, somewhat but only slightly. It is the real the members of the fuzz, the human role, the actual mane. It is the hinge of Donald Trump.

As Trumps campaign for the Republican nomination has unfolded, in all its unlikeliness, he has shaken handwritings with hundreds of thousands of Americans, and posed with numerous thousands for hundreds of thousands of selfies. And among those many thousands , not one has reached up to mess up his whisker. Though he regularly raises up the physical figures of his antagonist , nothing of the other campaigners even mention the fact that he seems foolish. Trumps hair is an act of defiant social pre-emption: announce me a phony. I dare you. I fucking dare you.

A few hardcore followers lingered on the fringes, just like at a concerted effort. Everybody else had floated into the parking lot and the cities middle of Burlington was soon returned to its emptiness. A Trump show is good value for the money, specially since its free. They dont even ask for donations.

The thought from Fun City

The morning after the rally, it has become clear that Iowa may be the bramble in Trumps path. A gossip over an wayward tweet has cloudburst.

He accuses the offense on a young intern. But the eight-point rise of Carson must be galling. Trump possesses the weakness of anyone who lives by the strength of their results. Ensues go. When the results are down , where are you? Who are you? Trump is in the business of acquiring. Does Trump losing even subsist?

I had a daytime between Trump and Sanders, and all I had to read was a pdf of Ta-Nehisi Coatess Between the World and Me, which I had agreed to look at for a book of the month team. After another hot mess at Jerrys Main Lunch, and a run to blaze it off, I invested a era at the Motel 8 in Burlington reading, while across the street, the Winegard factory, manufacturing satellite dishes 24 hours a day, thudded like a center without syncopation. Did you know you can buy a six carry of brew and a bottle of bourbon for precisely a little over 20 bucks in Iowa? What a big country.

The title of Between the World and Me comes from a Richard Wright poem called White Man, Listen ! and it was never going to get much whiter or more male than me in the Motel 8 sipping bourbon and brew, on my iPhone, with the Jays and Royals spotlights flickering in the background and the thud of the satellite dish factory in the background.

The urgency of the book, the vitality of the historic resource at play, rose like brandishes into crests of temper tumbling over their own force. It was all of a piece. And it all made extremely relentless sense. Between the World and Me is one of those notebooks that possess the strong certainty of a natural phenomenon as if it accrued out of the ether that surrounds us, a crystalline organisation of the scandalize that defines the moment. To criticize is beside the point. Its only there.

To me, the key section in Between the World and Me, originates after Coates has been on television justifying to the multitude the frantic consequences of yet another police assassination of a pitch-black son.

I came out of the studio and strolled for a while. It was a calm December day. Class, feeling themselves lily-white, were out on the street. Infants, invoked to be lily-white, were wrap in strollers. And I was happy for these parties, much as I was heartbreaking for the emcee and sad for all the people out there watching and reveling in a specious hope. I realized so why I was sad. When the journalist asked me about my mas, it was like she was asking me to awaken her from the most sumptuous reverie. I have seen that dreaming all my life. It is perfect homes with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, blocking associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but preferences like strawberry shortcake.

Right then, speaking that aisle, I knew that white people were going to cherish this volume. What white people implore more, they require it, they require it to live is an alibi from their whiteness, an flee from the unfairnes of their existence. There are numerous alibis available depending on how much idiocy you can tolerate. You can say to yourself or to others that black people are stupid and lazy; you can say that you dont experience pigment; you can call your uncle a prejudiced so everybody knows youre not; you can share the latest critique of brutality on Twitter with the word THIS; and now you can tell a pal that she certainly has to read Between the World and Me.

Because that Dream of Whiteness, the dream of treehouses and rookie scouts that smells like peppermint and can still smell the strawberry shortcake, is a perfect alibi. Who lives that dreaming? Somebody else are now living it but not me , not anyone I know , no one I could see in Burlington. Thats a dream that belongs to somebody else. Always to somebody else.

It certainly didnt belong to the Winegard factory workers who were drifting to their autoes at the end of their change. The whiteness of my macrocosm was my iPhone and the vapours of bourbon and beer, and video games from last-place night and the tingling in my thigh. The tickling in my thigh was my mas the reality I cant look at because Im too afraid of my fatality.

To me, best available doubt ever asked about race in America has always been the one that James Baldwin questioned, when an interviewer wanted to know if he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of America. What white people have to do is is an attempt catch out in their own centers why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, he enunciated. If you invented him, you, the white people devised him, then youve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that. The obsession of eggheads over issues of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr active or passive resistance was moot; the pressing question was why white people were blowing up churches filled with children.

Whiteness is a spiritual aberration, obviously by the return ye shall know the tree. And on the question of lily-white pathology, what good reactions has America induced since Baldwin would like to request that topic in 1963? And now that white-hot pathology has returned to waste away its legion, unexamined and strange, a golem.

In the evening, I finished the book and didnt want to think about my white-hot and male mas anymore, or the tickling in my thigh.

Across from my hotel, the Fun City complex contained an resemblance midway, a bowling alley, got a couple of bars, a replication diner and, tucked in between a inn and a spa, the Catfish Bend Casino. The poker chamber is dingy but serviceable. A game started at six. I wanted to play. I wanted to find out how much enjoyable can you have in a home called Fun City.

The youngest person at the table, Curved Baseball Hat, changed beans and corn. A male with an furious mustache led the conversation, a three-day whisker beside him contributing an occasional digression. The rest of us sat cooking softly in the juices of our addictions, like in any casino. Everybody at the table knew everybody else, except for me and a black welder in municipality for a specialist job. It was happy hour in Fun City, and brew was a dollar. Everybody told a mess of them. And I seemed just how luck it is to be in America, despite politics, despite everything. Cheap beer and frank beings and an honestly flowed activity in a clean chamber. Even compared to Canada, the unthinking prosperity of the place is dazzling.

Three Day Beard had appreciated Trump the night before, and Angry Mustache asked his opinion.

I think he could acquire, Three Day Beard suggested carefully, “as if its” a review, as if it were all you could allege of him, that he might have a chance to take the conference of presidents, for what it was worth.

Dont matter, told Angry Mustache. No content “whos got” in, Washington simply devastates them.

He might be different because he doesnt necessity the money.

Angry Mustache paraphrased a statistic, which I subsequently check and will prove to be bullshit, that all congressmen become millionaires by the time theyve been in power for a year. Everybody agrees with Trumps central advantage is that he comes pre-corrupted.

Its not even the money, Three Day Beard said. They get there. They all have these schemes and intentions. They cant do anything. Three Day Beard nearly pitied the legislators.

Its all interrupted, included Angry Mustache as a kind of dedicated, the style youd position any historic detail, like Germany lost the second world war or Frances Farmer was once a star.

The view of American politics in Fun City is snug despair. It is despair not just at who happens to be in influence but at whoever could ever be in power. It is despair not simply that the system is busted but that any organisation, imaginable in the present iteration of the United States, would turn out to be just as ruined. The choice is a alternative between frailty and dures. The reply was not change but a shrug.

Curved Baseball Hat, the person who originates corn and beans and who had fragile discovers of clay in the lanulae of his fingernails, requested information about an old gamble hall that used to be in municipality, and the recollections of the style Burlington used to be flowed constructs that had been knocked down, dames that were once beautiful and were now dead, riches made and vanished.

Eventually the pitch-black participate, who has said almost nothing except his calls and folds and develops, busted out.

Did you see that guys fingers? Angry Mustache expects when he had left. He gestured an inch past his centre paw. We were all, it was made very clear, in a chamber of grey humanities. You know what they say. My friend worked in the prison and he mentions its all true-blue. I guess thats why they say formerly you go black.

The residual of us nodded or smiled or said nothing, searching down at the cards. Now that we had all shown how white we were, it was a friendlier room. We knew that none of us would object to the misery of the others. What if the responses to Baldwins question is as banal as it appeared to be in Fun City? What if it white people draw the nigger to prepare themselves a little less lonely?

And I said nothing. I offered no fighting, though the line between “the mens” in Fun City and the cop killing a black brat in the appearance was not difficult to tracing. Here was my alibi that evening: I am Canadian. Which means I am a snoop from nowhere. Or perhaps I am a coward or something in between a coward and agent from nowhere. Its a reasonably threadbare alibi regardless. Whose isnt?

Conversation strayed back to Trump. It was more respectful.

I can see Trump, articulated Angry Mustache. Hes not the worst that Ive heard anyway.

Im starting to like that physician, Three Day Beard lends as an afterthought.

That doctor, Ben Carson, proposes a flat levy of 10% that would placed the US government, reckoning conservatively, in a$ 3tn-deficit. He believes that Joseph built the pyramids to store cereal, and he believes that Hitler never would have risen to influence if the German people were armed, and that Obamacare is worse than bondage, and that Americans are living in a Gestapo age.

I said that he hoped that Coates had some crazy programme, some utopian fiction for communards in Georgia, or the return to one motherland or another, but he only wants the end of white supremacy. He precisely requires white people in America to grow up, to yield their inhumane sense of illogical supremacy. I cannot imagine why they are able to. Its merriment to suck and to play placards and to dream what Donald Trump would say to the Mexican president the day after he was elected, or whether Ben Carson would prepare the flat tariff at 10 or 12%. The eventual alibi is stupidity it lies closest to innocence but if you cant cope stupidity, craziness does nearly as well.

I aim , nothing of its happens now anyway, right? Whoever gets elected, its just going to be stalemate and outrage anyway, right? Did I mention that beer payment one dollar? A single, lonely buck.

Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out!

The Bernie Sanders rally in Davenport was the exact antonym of the Donald Trump rally in Burlington and yet precisely the same in every detail. Make America Great Again was replaced by Feel the Bern. Hawkers sold bolts, three for $10. They read Bernie Sanders is my feeling animal and Cats for Bernie and I subscribed Bernie Sanders before it was cool. Davenport, at least near the Adler Theater, “re the same” Brooklyn-outside-Brooklyn that has quelled every corner of the world that is not a strip mall. The tattoo creators of Davenport do not go hungry. The cornfed hipsters at the Sanders rally look like they have probably attended “states parties ” at which person played a bongo. They may even have attended a literary learning.

Bernie Sanders at a town hall session in Ottumwa, Iowa. Photograph: Charlie Neibergall/ AP

There were hype servicemen as with Trump, more, although in this case the latter are twentyish women in glasses bellowing Feel the Bern! and Were Going to Improve a Change! Individual with a camera from NBC expected the working group who has brought their precocious juveniles because they want them to be engaged in the political process Can I get you guys to look like youre excited about Bernie? They carefully targeted their glass on the floor, out of see, to oblige.

The same specter of angry white people recurs Saunderss rally, the same appreciation of longing for a country that was, the two countries that has been taken away. The Bernie crowd made homemade signs instead of fabricated ones, because I guess theyre organic. They brandished them only the same. They were going to a display. They wanted to be a good audience.

The fundamental difference between the Trump and Sanders army was that the Sanderss crowd has more coin, the natural significance of the American incongruity system: rich white people can afford to think about socialism, the poorest of the poor can only rendered their rage.

Sanderss opening act was a congressional wannabe, Gary Kroeger. He hadnt been on The Apprentice but on Saturday Night Live, a forgettable lesser performer from the largest date between 1982 and 1985. He started off, naturally, with a half-assed gag: the fresh patchouli in the air is great. The sign language translator offered a mild smile to expres it was a laugh. Then, after a brief foray into left-wingery, calling America a social democracy also known as a republic, Kroeger took a big selfie with the crowd behind him: Ellen Degeneres, eat your heart out! he wailed. Everyones phones rose up to take pictures of themselves in a illustration mimicking a photo from the Oscars: such was American socialism in the year 2015.

A few desultory ensembles followed, performing an mixture of leftwing anthems from various historical leftwing pushes. They harmonized on The Auld Triangle, a prison ballad that was covered on Inside Llewelyn Davis. The vocalist from Alice in Chains( recollect them ?) did an electrical version of I Wont Back Down. An old The Clash song, Jail Clang Doors, was sung by the subject of the first verse, Wayne Kramer. And it was all, so obviously, a nostalgia number, the self-indulgence for a longing of a season when music inspired politics, when activism owned an artistic look, and vice versa.

Eventually Bernie strayed out. The phones disappeared up. The phones went down. Enough is enough, he wailed, leaving blank what theres “ve had enough” of. And then he talked about how he wanted to end the war on drugs and campaign investment improve and government that isnt for plutocrats, and how they were going to build a revolution( such an embarrassing term to listen expressed out loud ), and America was going to be a social democracy, by the people of the people.

Sanderss exasperation was the principal fact to be communicated, more than any political material. Trump was about winning again. Sanders was about having lost. The vagueness of American politics is what amazed the outsider. Its all about sensations and God and bullshit. Sanders actually emitted the following sentence out loud: What were saying is when millions of people are working together to rehabilitate both governments we can do astonishing situations. Nothing asks what he made. None asked for numbers. They applauded. Better to take it in the intent in which its thrown, like a Catskills resort comedian.

Sanders prompted me of a line from Seinfeld, perhaps because Larry Davids SNL parody was only a few days old. The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli. When Ben and Jerry make a Bernie Sanders ice cream, I hope its chili and ginger: the delicious hot smell of nasal-passage clearing outrage.

Sanderss speech was much shorter than Trumps. There had already been the music, I guess. I had the impression, as with Trump, that I had traveled many hundreds of miles to look at a mortals mane. Bernie Sanderss hair is as much a statement as Trumps. It consider this to be the “hairs-breadth” of a tenured professor whose wife has stopped nagging him to get a haircut because the nagging doesnt handiwork. You couldnt muss Sanders hair. The ill is just as much an aesthetic as the comb-over. I symbolize it ever searches the same. Somebody is cutting it to sink that course over the ears.

The view from Tampico

As despair has suddenly spread like a fantastic mist over the white people of America, as the white people die off in their extraordinary quantities, the commenters are astonished, a little bit, but they have no plan of action. No policy proposals aim at reforming the lives of white people.

How could they? If you believe the Case and Deaton report, white people are victims of their own advantage literally. Their cherished claim to own guns, and the enormous increased number of the ownership of weaponry, means that their suicide strives are more effective. They have more access to opioids because doctors are more likely to trust white people with them. They have the money to draw themselves lonely and booze.

I recollect reading a piece from buzzer robs formerly, the kind that circulates on Facebook because it chimes somewhat unique in its predictable virtue. The first act of violence that patriarchy requests of males, she wrote, is not savagery toward dames. Instead patriarchy requisitions of all males that they involve is psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional specific areas of themselves.

Her compassion is admirable, glorious even, but also inaccurate. No one is more psychological than a piece-of-shit white man. They are sentimentality personified. How else can so many be moved to violence over the absence of a Christmas tree on a Starbucks cup?

That dream, that white reverie that smells like peppermint and penchants like strawberry shortcake, comes with a cost of shit. If you take shit, if you eat shit, if you live through the shit, if you live the stupid wars and the meaningless errands, you should be sure of who you are and what you deserve. And “if youre not” sure and you have not received what you deserved, why did you take and eat and subsist all that shit?

Un-harvested corn stands south of Council Bluffs, Iowa. Image: Nati Harnik/ AP

In the aftermath of that spate, the choice, I belief, is either to be proud to be grey, which is a word of lunacy, or to fantasize a post-racial cosmopolis, which is a kind of make-believe, or to be ashamed. So much easier to forget those choices, or to shelve endlessly the choosing, or to debate the difficulties of preferring infinitely, because grey male flesh is not under mortal threat, as the chassis of pitch-black men or the flesh of the status of women. Our organizations are safe. Our torsoes are the threat.

In medieval empires, the territory involved the existence of a doubled figure, one for the real world and one for the symbolic. There was the flawed and mortal person of the king, which sobbed and shat and screwed and died, and then there was the Body of the King, sacred, pure, indestructible.

Race generates us all double mass, double consciousness in WEB Du Boiss phrase, whatever you want to call having to live mortally through the judgement of others. The brand-new grey distortion, the sickness at heart, the pathology, may simply be the arrival of the awareness of two bodies: the dizziness and nausea that arrive with the onset of doubled eyesight.

Because they have to be like everybody else, their mettles are breaking in half.

The morning after the Sanders rally, I noted enough forte to look in the reflect at my grey and male organization, to probe its mortal and symbolic quality. At the angle of my groin, where it had been tingling, a dark-brown patch spilled like spoiled milk down my scalp. A wide-cut chocolate-brown spot determined like post-climate change Florida in the angle of my thigh. Instant, I knew I would die. And the next minute I started driving back to Toronto, to my bride and children, body of my flesh.

Bernie Sanders wants a revolution to overthrow casino capitalism but the problem, or maybe only the first trouble, is that the American beings enjoy casinoes. They cant construct them fast enough. On the road from Iowa, I transferred at least a dozen, a dozen Fun Cities of various types of shapes and sizings, enduring various gossips about Trump and Sanders. The highways of Illinois are a unique vision of the workings of human rights hope a roughly boundless mart for addiction and its dry. Strip clubs or fried chicken or gambling or faith or rehab or cancer treatment. The I-9 4 communicated right to the unwounded mas the promise of handled carbohydrate and pussy, or saving from them.

There was one other entertainment on the route dwelling: Ronald Reagans birthplace in Tampico. The glamour of the landscape around those towns, for some reason, has never been properly glamorize. There are no tourist buss to these fields, as there are to the ocean or the mountains, but the landscape is every bit as sublime. Reagans childhood extended in the loin of the Continent, the splendid hinge between the industrial core of the Great Lakes and the agricultural heartland. The historical recognition of his presidential tombstones has been consumed by fantasies of small town life but it is a landscape of whitewashed houses against the undulating emptiness, a country roiling with nightmares. You can depict Reagan as a boy in these fields, fantasy of movies and America vast screens on which he had been able to activity himself. The superhighway moves like a flow of praying through an ancient dream.

The ancient nightmares are still so vivid here. In the United States, 240 -year-old writings can be recited by soul by people who cannot be described as trained. Documents written by men who owned slaves are spoken of as if we are able to solve the problems of today and tomorrow and any imaginable future no matter how remote.

Thomas Jefferson was held that the Constitution should expire after 19 times, so that the dead would not have ascendancy over the living. That fate seems to have arrived. The Americans are in constant disputes with haunts and their the talks with dead beings are most powerful, most relentless, at precisely the points where they are most ludicrous. They nation defiantly that all men are created equal when any casual observer of life knows they arent. They claim that men and women should be judged by the content of their reference, when nobody can know the content of anothers character. These dreamings, these inabilities, are the absolute and real organization of their nation. And the reveries are so entrancing that its ambiguous whether the problem is that the Americans think you are, or that they dont. Its supremely childish, either way.

Back in Toronto, my bride took a look at the chocolate-brown spot on my groin and mailed me to a doctor, and medical doctors told me it was a rash from leading too much, and I had been given the greatest gift anyone can hope for, in this time and this lieu. I had been forgiven, for a while, for my body.