Resistance moon: Prize witlessness

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how a crude lecher somehow captured the support of the evangelical Taliban of the South and Midwest. I mean—a guy whose adulteries are legion and who has been married three times so far is the hero of Old Testament Bible thumpers who claim to be upholding Godly values.

Well, I suppose the commonality is that their collective values—Godly and otherwise—center around very narrowly-circumscribed roles for women in society. And none of those roles involves control over their own lives, their own bodies, their own finances or pretty much anything. Already in the short period from 20 January, the current administration, gleefully aided and abetted by the Repugnants in both Houses of Congress, has pulled funding for global women’s health services, repealed measures that ensured fair treatment for women in the workplace, attempted to enact a new healthcare bill that eliminates reproductive health coverage, and initiated exceptionally cruel immigration policies that rely on the separation of mothers from their children as a deterrent.

They are hell-bent on returning us all to the bad old days when [white] men were men, and everyone else shut up and made sandwiches.

So I thought that for today’s entry in National Poetry Month, we might have something that speaks to this. I cast about and found Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

I first met Sor Juana (“Sor” means “sister”, as in a religious sister) in a high school Spanish class. (Along with Maimónides, Carlos V and some others, but those would be another post.) Born near Mexico City in 1651, she was the illegitimate daughter of a Spaniard and a mestizo, a polymath who learned to read and write at age three, and who was teaching Latin to other children by age 13. She asked her mother’s permission to disguise herself as a boy so she could go to university, but was unsuccessful. Nonetheless, by age 17 she impressed a convocation of theologians, philosophers, poets and jurists with her intellectual capabilities.

In 1667 she entered a convent of Discalced Carmelites (a very strict order); two years later she joined the monastery of the Hieronymite nuns largely because it allowed her to pursue her studies. Sor Juana’s writings got her into trouble with the male establishment of the Church and the state. The Bishop of Puebla famously told her to shut up and make sandwiches (more or less), and she replied that “one can perfectly well philosophize while cooking supper.”

Well, she wasn’t going to win that one, and she was eventually forced into silence, selling all her considerable library and collection of scientific instruments and retreating into prayer. She died during a plague in 1694, but we are the better off for her body of work that she did leave us.

Viz.: “You Foolish Men”. In this poem, Sor Juana captures and skewers the male propensity to project their own base thoughts onto women, and to refuse to own up to their own actions. There is no mincing of words here; spades are not dressed up as garden implements. She’s got the acid of Dorothy Parker under her Hieronymite wimple, and she’s not afraid to use it to lay bare their outrageous and unjust sexual hypocrisy—“you whimper if you’re turned away, and sneer if you’ve been gratified.” Seriously: this is the GOP platform in a nutshell.

Is Sor Juana a Nasty Woman? I believe she might have turned this one over in her mind, probed the implications, explored the current environment, and given us a well-reasoned, thorough and stylish reply.

“You Foolish Men”

  You foolish men, so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

    After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

    You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

    When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

    Presumptuous beyond belief,
you'd have the woman you pursue
be Thais when you're courting her,
Lucretia once she falls to you.

    For plain default of common sense,
could any action be so queer
as oneself to cloud the mirror,
then complain that it's not clear?

    Whether you're favored or disdained,
nothing can leave you satisfied.
You whimper if you're turned away,
you sneer if you've been gratified.

    With you, no woman can hope to score;
whichever way, she's bound to lose;
spurning you, she's ungrateful--
succumbing, you call her lewd.

    Your folly is always the same:
you apply a single rule
to the one you accuse of looseness
and the one you brand as cruel.

    What happy mean could there be
for the woman who catches your eye,
if, unresponsive, she offends,
yet whose complaisance you decry?

    Still, whether it's torment or anger--
and both ways you've yourselves to blame--
God bless the woman who won't have you,
no matter how loud you complain.

    It's your persistent entreaties
that change her from timid to bold.
Having made her thereby naughty,
you would have her good as gold.

    So where does the greater guilt lie
for a passion that should not be:
with the man who pleads out of baseness
or the woman debased by his plea?

    Or which is more to be blamed--
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

    So why are you men all so stunned
at the thought you're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like.

    If you'd give up pursuing them,
you'd discover, without a doubt,
you've a stronger case to make
against those who seek you out.

    I well know what powerful arms
you wield in pressing for evil:
your arrogance is allied
with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

Here it is in Spanish:

   Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:

    si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué quereis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?

    Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.

    Parecer quiere el denuedo
de vuestro parecer loco,
al niño que pone el coco
y luego le tiene miedo.

    Queréis, con presunción necia,
hallar a la que buscáis,
para pretendida, Thais,
y en la posesión, Lucrecia

    ¿Qué humor puede ser más raro
que el que, falto de consejo,
el mismo empaña el espejo
y siente que no esté claro?

    Con el favor y el desdén
tenéis condición igual,
quejándoos, si os tratan mal,
burlándoos, si os quieren bien.

    Opinión, ninguna gana:
pues la que más se recata,
si no os admite, es ingrata,
y si os admite, es liviana

    Siempre tan necios andáis
que, con desigual nivel,
a una culpáis por crüel
y a otra por fácil culpáis.

    ¿Pues cómo ha de estar templada
la que vuestro amor pretende,
si la que es ingrata, ofende,
y la que es fácil, enfada?

    Mas, entre el enfado y pena
que vuestro gusto refiere,
bien haya la que no os quiere
y quejaos en hora buena.

    Dan vuestras amantes penas
a sus libertades alas,
y después de hacerlas malas
las queréis hallar muy buenas.

    ¿Cuál mayor culpa ha tenido
en una pasión errada:
la que cae de rogada
o el que ruega de caído?

    ¿O cuál es más de culpar,
aunque cualquiera mal haga:
la que peca por la paga
o el que paga por pecar?

    Pues ¿para quée os espantáis
de la culpa que tenéis?
Queredlas cual las hacéis
o hacedlas cual las buscáis.

    Dejad de solicitar,
y después, con más razón,
acusaréis la afición
de la que os fuere a rogar.

    Bien con muchas armas fundo
que lidia vuestra arrogancia,
pues en promesa e instancia
juntáis diablo, carne y mundo.

Resistance moon: The slippery edge of lost faith

Ah, we lost a giant on Saturday. Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko died—in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had been lecturing at the university—aged 84. He was my first example of a celebrity poet-activist.

Back in the day, Yevtushenko walked a careful path, writing poems about the world around him, painting pictures that were not apparatchik-approved, yet still hobnobbing with the Politburo. It was his ability to schmooze with Soviet rulers that gained him a measure of freedom—travel to the outside world, rock-star adulation at home, and shining poetic light on things the regime pretended didn’t exist—even in the era of anti-modernism of the 1960s.

So, without being an official “dissident”, Yevtushenko was a persistent voice for resistance from the mid-50s until the collapse of the Soviet Union. If some of the power faded in later years, I think he lived up to a goal he once stated, “I shall be happy if just one of my lines helps someone of later generations.” This is the essence of resistance; it’s about the end-game, no matter how long it takes to bring about.

A few years ago I gave you his “Babi Yar”, which was the poem that introduced me to him. It is harrowing, searing nightmare images into your cortex from beginning to end. Today I’ll share a couple more, “The Heirs of Stalin” and “The Torments of Conscience.”

I particularly like “The Heirs of Stalin”, because Yevtushenko uses the image of taking extraordinary measures to ensure that Uncle Joe stays well and truly bolted down in death—extra guards, double weights over the casket. While I personally think it might be entirely possible that Stalin might rise from the grave (I’d have cremated him, myself), it’s what the Soviet Tsar stood for that the poet wants securely buried forever.

Along with all his henchmen, who stand ready to take over the family business—they lament the empty prison camps and the audiences for poets instead of propaganda.

And as Yevtushenko knew, those heirs can wait a few generations, and franchise that business out to other locales.

“The Heirs of Stalin”

Mute was the marble. Mutely glimmered the glass.

Mute stood the sentries, bronzed by the breeze.

Thin wisps of smoke curled over the coffin.

And breath seeped through the chinks

as they bore him out the mausoleum doors.

Slowly the coffin floated, grazing the fixed bayonets.

He also was mute- his embalmed fists,

just pretending to be dead, he watched from inside.

He wished to fix each pallbearer in his memory:

young recruits from Ryazan and Kursk,

so that later he might collect enough strength for a sortie,

rise from the grave, and reach these unreflecting youths.

He was scheming. Had merely dozed off.

And I, appealing to our government, petition them

to double, and treble, the sentries guarding this slab,

and stop Stalin from ever rising again

and, with Stalin, the past.

I refer not to the past, so holy and glorious,

of Turksib, and Magnitka, and the flag raised over Berlin.

By the past, in this case, I mean the neglect

of the people’s good, false charges, the jailing of innocent men.

We sowed our crops honestly.

Honestly we smelted metal,

and honestly we marched, joining the ranks.

But he feared us. Believing in the great goal,

he judged all means justified to that great end.

He was far-sighted. Adept in the art of political warfare,

he left many heirs behind on this globe.

I fancy there’s a telephone in that coffin:

Stalin instructs Enver Hoxha.

From that coffin where else does the cable go!

No, Stalin has not given up. He thinks he can cheat death.

We carried him from the mausoleum.

But how remove Stalin’s heirs from Stalin!

Some of his heirs tend roses in retirement,

thinking in secret their enforced leisure will not last.

Others, from platforms, even heap abuse on Stalin

but, at night, yearn for the good old days.

No wonder Stalin’s heirs seem to suffer

these days from heart trouble. They, the former henchmen,

hate this era of emptied prison camps

and auditoriums full of people listening to poets.

The Party discourages me from being smug.

'Why care? ' some say, but I can’t remain inactive.

While Stalin’s heirs walk this earth,

Stalin, I fancy, still lurks in the mausoleum.

As for “Torments of Conscience”—well, it rather gives me hope. “Dying is not our business”, he says, and conscience stands guard in our behalf at every crossroad. It’s not exactly the Red Army, but conscience darts in to even the most corrupt beings.

It may well be conscience that keeps Stalin buried. I hope so.

“Torments of Conscience”

We live, dying is not our business,

shame is another lost episode,

but like an unseen madonna, conscience

is standing at every crossroad.

And her children and her grandchildren,

the torments of conscience-strange torments-

with vagrant’s crutch and bag are wandering

a world which is everywhere dishonest.

From one gate once more to the next gate,

once again from doorstep to doorstep,

chanting like old Russian beggars,

they travel with God for their heart’s help.

Surely it was they who always haunted

the serfs, tapping with one finger

secretly on their windows, and who pounded

with their fists in the palaces of the Tsars?

Surely they hurried off dead Pushkin

on a sledge in the snow from a black sky,

it was they who drove Dostoievsky to prison,

it was they who whispered to Tolstoy: 'Fly! '

The executioners understood it thus:

'He who torments himself is a troublemaker.

Torments of conscience-this is dangerous!

Conscience itself must be liquidated! '

But like the clanging of an alarm bell

rattling their houses at night time,

torments of conscience-terrible-

frightened the executioners with their crimes.

For even the guardians of injustice,

who abandoned all honor long ago,

may no longer know the meaning of conscience,

but the torments of conscience they do know.

And if in this wide world where no one,

no one is guiltless, someone has heard

within himself the cry 'What have I done? '

then something can be done with this world.

I do not believe in the prophets construing

the coming of the Second or the Thousandth Rome,

I believe in the words 'What are you doing? '

in 'What are we doing? ' bitterly spoken.

And on the slippery edge of lost faith

I am kissing your dark hands,

for you alone are my last faith,

torments of conscience-fierce torments!

Gratitude Monday Resistance moon: Nothing is so beautiful

Saturday a friend and I went to a nursery in Northern Virginia—she needed to buy a bag of dirt, and I just wanted inspiration for a future garden. The day was quite cold, windy and grey, but my soul came alive as we wandered up and down the aisles in the greenhouse and then outside.

Herbs! Ground cover! Indoor-outdoor dwarf lemon trees! Hedge material (“Get something with thorns”)! Oh, it was like going to the animal shelter—I just wanted to hug everything and bring it all home.

And, oddly, for the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel a lot of joint pain after all the walking. There’s just something about the beauty and resilience of plants that restores your equilibrium. Despite the best efforts of humans to destroy it with war, pollution, urban sprawl and just plain arrogant destruction, nature does her best to resist and persist, showing us every Spring that she’ll take whatever bit is available—even if it’s just a weak place in concrete—to push up life.

So today, in grateful recognition of the recuperative power of gardens (whether designed by mortals or immortals), I’ll share a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite poets. Convert to Catholicism, Jesuit priest, exceptional poet of any age.

In the past you’ve had some of his sonnets for Easter, and his “Pied Beauty”, which takes delight in the parti-colored elements of nature. But for Gratitude Monday today, here’s “Spring”. Just “Spring”.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.      

Resistance moon: Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

We’re in an ongoing struggle against fear these days. I believe it was fear more than anger that propelled the Kleptocrat into the Oval Office. At the very least, fear was the underpinning of the ugliness we saw at rallies as swastikas and Confederate flags flew proudly, journalists were physically and verbally threatened, and protestors were beaten.

It’s said that the opposite of fear is love, and I tend to agree with that. Love is certainly an evergreen focus of poetry. Every poet since the beginning of writing must have cut his or her teeth on some variant of I-love-my-love-but-my-love-loves-me-not. Either the first blush, the afterglow, or the bitter aftermath.

So let’s have something today from William Carlos Williams, whose day job was as a medical doctor, and who hung about with the likes of Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. 

Williams focused on the small things of daily life, and sought to build up a thoroughly American take on poetry, in the face of others he thought were too Euro-centric. He influenced later poets like Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, as well as Denise Levertov.

Here’s his “Memory of April” to get us going.

You say love is this, love is that:

Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

the wind and the rain comb,

tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip—

branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

Resistance moon: A voice from the dark

Given the current climate of cut-price jackboots marching over education, scientific advancement, human decency and the arts (among other elements that mark a civilized society), we need to hunker down around things like the Pythagorean Theorem, Baroque polyphony, the Oxford comma debate, Expressionism and, yes, poetry, as a way to keep bright the fires of sanity, grace and compassion.

So let’s think of National Poetry Month this year as a necessary component of the spirit of resistance, persistence and perhaps a few victories over ignorance, fear, greed and buffoonery.

To get us going, then, let’s have a poem from British-born Denise Levertov. Levertov was the daughter of a Hasidic Jew who left Russian Poland (Poland having been part of Russia until 1918) after World War I and emigrated to England, where he became an Anglican priest. The entire family campaigned for human rights, which on its own would have kept her from being allowed into the United States under the current administration, but she came here in 1947, so she spent most of her career as an American.

Levertov was one of many writers and artists who spoke out against the Vietnam War. She was among those who did more than just speak out—she withheld tax payments, and she was one of the founders of the group RESIST, a philanthropic non-profit that funds grass-roots activist organizations. RESIST was created in 1967 in response to the anti-war proclamation, “A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority”.

So let’s start out the month with something appropriately titled.

“Making Peace”

A voice from the dark called out,

             ‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

                                   But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

                                       A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

                                              A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

                        A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

Mr. Blandings and I

Home ownership is supposed to be the ultimate American Dream, but I have to tell you, right now I am just not feeling the love.

Specifically, I have a squad of little things—electrical, plumbing and installation tweaks—that need doing, which are beyond my skillset. I do in fact have a drill, and I know how to use it, but I generally speaking do not mess with electricity, and my record with plumbing is not what you might call stellar. So I want to hire a handyman (or woman; it’s a job category, not a political statement) to take care of this stuff.

But this, it turns out, is not a simple matter.

Handymen, it seems, are rather thin on the ground. (I’m talking about ones who’ve come via recommendations. You can find plenty of them, but the trick is to separate the sheep from the goats. Although, tbh, I wouldn’t care for either a sheep or a goat in my house, but I suppose that’s a different post.) And they're in as much demand as orthopedists at a tennis camp. I started with two recommended by my realtor.

One (the woman) did not return my calls at all, and the other keeps trying to reach me via my mobile phone, even after I TOLD him to call my landline. Even so, I worked from home on Tuesday because he said he’d be sending one of his minions out to the house to take a look at the jobs. Well, the minion arrived about 30 minutes after the specified time, walked around with me without taking notes in somewhat bug-eyed silence, and then mumbled that he’d have to “talk with my manager” to get an estimate. Then he promised he’d return in an hour to deliver said quote to me.

Ah, dear readers, I know you see what’s coming. I sat at home the entire afternoon, like Meg Ryan at that hipster coffeeshop in You’ve Got Mail. There was no return visit, no call, bupkis.

But the manager called me Wednesday, at work, on my mobile. There’s crappy mobile reception in that building, so the call dropped twice before he made it known to me that he’d have to come out to my house himself to create a proper estimate. (So why didn’t he come out in the first place?)

Well, but by this time, I’d collected a fistful of recommendations from my neighbors on Nextdoor.com, and I was practically robocalling right down the list.

Well, of the ones who’d call me back, many of them were booked through April. For handyman jobs. And then you start to wonder: if a guy is able to come over on short notice to spec the work, do you want him doing the job? Is there a reason (or many) why he’s got an empty calendar?

For example, one fellow said he’d drop by yesterday morning between 0900 and 1000. I worked from home again, and finally around 1020, I rang him to ask if he wasn’t coming. Well, he did, but by that time I just wasn’t massively confident in his ability to show up on time to do the work.

Then, it was interesting getting the quotes. One guy just said over the phone, “I can do that in a day. It’ll cost you $300.” Eh… Mr. Can’t-call-my-landline eventually did show up  (more than an hour late), walked around, made long faces about what might or might not be feasible, scratched on the handyman equivalent of the back of a cocktail napkin and said, “I’ll do it for $420.” Nothing in writing, no line items, just, “I’ll do it for $420.”

The fellow from yesterday morning had a form, in triplicate, but his best- and worst-case pricing parameters were scratched out and scribbled over so much that it’s really hard to tell where the outside numbers are.

In the end, I’ve gone with a guy who showed up more or less within two hours of his promise, who took a good hard look at everything that needs doing, didn’t seem to think I’d need to rip out all the tile in the shower cubicle to replace a leaking faucet, and gave me an estimate that’s not the cheapest, but seems in the ballpark.

Now we face the prospect of scheduling the actual work. This will be like getting on the books for cardiac surgery.

American Dream my ass.

Rallies. Bigly.

Okay, I have one more thing to share about Kleptocrat “rallies”. It’s from a couple of weeks ago, but it’ll hold true for weeks and months to come.

Questions?

Sorry, wrong numb...

There must be something about my new landline at home that just makes spam callers itch to call it. It seems like I’ve had more junk calls in the past few weeks than in entire years in the past. I’ve been blocking a few more of them each day. (And there’s a series of numbers from Bellevue, Wash., that just keeps trying.)

So, I’m glad that Comcast offers me a more robust call blocking capability than Verizon FIOS did. Their offering was so convoluted to set up that I got the impression that they actually wanted to encourage the spam calls.

Also—Verizon does not support NOMOROBO, the free platform to block actual robo calls, which rather lends credence to my suspicion.

Well, yesterday I was waiting for a handyman to show up and in the middle of trying to activate NOMOROBO, when the phone rang with a Vienna, Va., number on Caller ID. I picked up because I was expecting the handyman, with an unknown-to-me mobile number to be calling, but “Jennifer” from some “vehicle warranty” outfit launched her spiel. Seems they’ve sent me several notices that the warranty on my “vehicle” is about to expire, and…

Well, dear reader, my Saab is 16 years old, and the warranty expired 13 years ago, so this was a wasted call on “Jennifer’s” part.

I’ve got NOMOROBO installed. Let’s hope it works better than the Do Not Call Registry. Someone on Twitter posited that the Do Not Call Registry sells the numbers we register with them to telemarketers. It certainly doesn’t seem to stop them.

Unless there are about 14,277 callers per day who aren’t getting through.

Meanwhile, if you want to talk with “Jennifer” about extending your vehicle’s warranty, give her a call. Her number is 571 474 1049.

Yo rally so skinny...

Evidently the Kleptocrat took time out from his busy golfing schedule this weekend to—yes, you guessed it—tweet. Viz.:

I wasn’t aware that there’d been any rallies, but then I’m not aware of about 87% of what this lunatic claims is fact, so I don’t put much stock in it.

However: the responses to this tweet (as to all of the ones I see, tbh) were cherce. Viz.:

Rehage and Zalben are regular trolls on the Klepto-timeline. They (unlike the Kleptocrat) never fail to deliver. Although, to be fair, this material pretty much writes itself.

Gratitude Monday: SAD!

We in the US had a bit of a NutriNinja® time of it last week. But it was the Repugnants in the House of Representatives, and the Kleptocrat, who were whirling around with the frozen bananas and kale.

And they were shocked, utterly shocked, to discover that their intent—expressed for the last seven years—to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something that came as close to no coverage as dammit—was not looked upon with favor by their constituents. Not even by those who ticked the boxes on the ballots that got them elected.

And, in fact, the Repugs up to and including the inhabitant of 1600 looked pretty much like The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, emphasis on gang, because all the flapping by Paul Ryan (R-19^th Century), and all the bullying that the Kleptocrat did—none of that could get enough Representatives of their own party to agree to vote on it to even bring it to a vote on the House floor.

Following the bigly failure, Kleptocrat started spinning on Friday afternoon—calling a reporter for The Washington Post, and then one for the New York Times (two publications he has characterized as “failing” and purveyors of “fake news”, SAD!), to explain that they were close, very close (they were 30 votes short on the Repug side), but no Democrat (“zero!”) would vote for it, so “they own this.”

(How the reporters managed not to bust out laughing at this, I do not know, because the Democrats never got a chance to vote at all, as the bill never made it to the full House.)

And the thing that accomplished this miracle was the unrelenting barrage of phone calls, faxes, letters, emails and visits to Congressmorons from voting constituents who expressed their outrage (in words of one syllable, and possibly with visual aids) at what they were proposing for a replacement for ACA. (And there were also members of the so-called Freedom Caucus who didn’t think this vicious and cruel proposal went far enough by way of cutting off Americans from healthcare or cutting taxes for the wealthy.) They also discovered that making jokes about how old white men don’t need mammograms so they shouldn’t have to pay for plans that cover them did not go down well, and they were unaccountably quiet when people countered their removal of women’s reproductive care as an essential health benefit with questions about how coverage for erectile dysfunction treatment should likewise be eliminated.

Well, we should be in for a world-class episode of finger pointing shortly, and we still have to find a way to get to the bottom of the matryoshka-levels of Russia-45 administration relationships, both to the Kleptocrat directly, and through his family and Gauleiters. Which means we have to find a way to get that cretin Devin Nunes off the House Intelligence Committee. And that’s going to be a lot of work.

However—we have shown that it is possible to hobble these monsters, to stop them in their tracks and to make them rethink how they go about trying to return us all to the Nineteenth Century. They are beginning to understand that they can run, but not far enough.

And I am grateful for that.