“There are people who believe that things are ‘inside jobs.’” That’s how I begin my Impromptus today. In the minds of some, 9/11 was an inside job. January 6 was an inside job. On social media, there is a meme going around. It shows the storming of the Capitol and says, “January 6 will go down in history as the day the government staged a riot.”
Big deal, right? The world is full of loons, nothing to get too excited about. But Donald Trump circulated this meme. He was president on January 6; he may well be president again next January. This matters, to some of us. It is important.
Anyway, I begin my Impromptus with that subject and go on to myriad others. My column is here.
In a column a few weeks ago, I spoke of populism, in the context of the new president of Mexico. I described Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan, as “maybe the foremost populist of them all.”
A reader writes,
. . . I would have said Juan Perón. Although Chávez has proven to be a more acute problem for the United States, I believe that Perón wrote the playbook that all populists, particularly Latin American populists, follow.
As for American populists, I’d say Huey Long was the foremost. That Long’s influence did not survive him outside Louisiana can be explained by two things: World War II changed the discussion, and Long did not have successors.
I hate to think where this country would be if Donald Trump had even a fraction of the drive, discipline, and political intelligence that Long had. But Trump, unlike Long, clearly has followers who will carry on his brand of politics.
According to some accounts, Franklin D. Roosevelt feared only one other politician — only one other politician in the whole vast United States, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean: Huey Long. FDR knew the power of populism, and Long’s wizardry at it.
Some years ago — 2018? — a conservative professor of political science told me that he had begun to assign his students All the King’s Men, the classic novel (1946) by Robert Penn Warren. (It is about Huey Long, lightly disguised as the politician Willie Stark.) This book, said the professor, goes a long way toward explaining our era.
In a column last Tuesday, I had a dark item, about men who abuse their power to abuse women. Maybe I can put that a little better: men who exploit their power — their wealth, status, and influence — for the purpose of abusing women. I’m talking about men such as Harvey Weinstein, Mohamed Al Fayed, and Jeffrey Epstein.
Are they especially bad, these guys? Or are they simply in a position to exercise ordinary, common, badness?
A reader writes,
I think of Mike Pence, who was subjected to grief and mockery over his policy of never dining alone with a woman other than his wife. I also think of Ta-Nehisi Coates — favorably! I encountered a statement by him in a column by David French.
David’s column comes from November 2017: here. He quotes an essay by Coates, published in December 2012. Here is that quotation:
I’ve been with my spouse for almost 15 years. In those years, I’ve never been with anyone but the mother of my son. But that’s not because I am an especially good and true person. In fact, I am wholly in possession of an unimaginably filthy and mongrel mind. But I am also a dude who believes in guard-rails, as a buddy of mine once put it. I don’t believe in getting “in the moment” and then exercising will-power. I believe in avoiding “the moment.” I believe in being absolutely clear with myself about why I am having a second drink, and why I am not; why I am going to a party, and why I am not. I believe that the battle is lost at Happy Hour, not at the hotel. I am not a “good man.” But I am prepared to be an honorable one.
Something a tad lighter? I linked to a news story headed “Cities are using sheep to graze in urban landscapes and people love it.” My comment:
I think of J. S. Bach, more specifically of his cantata catalogued as BWV 208, more specifically of an aria from it: “Sheep may safely graze.” Listen here.
A reader writes,
U.S. military bases often keep a herd of sheep at their ammunition dumps. These dumps are usually buried bunkers covered with grass out away from the barracks. The sheep keep the grass cut — the fear being that lawn mowers could spark a fire.
Very interesting. I never knew. Thank you, one and all.