Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

We are all afraid. It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.

— Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK) / “A Startling Admission From a G.O.P. Senator: ‘We Are All Afraid’” / The New York Times

He’d like to be at one with his new self
but memories sit in him like eyes.

— Jana Prikryl / “The Moth”

They use this “anti-woke” talk to justify the destruction of the infrastructure of a functioning government. Because expertise and rational governance, subject to ethics rules and a democratic process, is the enemy of autocracy and unearned wealth. Modern democracy relies on specialized knowledge. It relies on expertise and rational accountability to function. Trump’s people understand intuitively that this kind of rationality is inimical to their efforts to gain power. So they have set about destroying centers of expertise within the government. And they have continued to lie and spread disinformation as vigorously as possible. Very simply they understand that the truth is their enemy.

— Christopher Ketcham, in conversation with Katherine Stewart / “Burn Down the House” / The Baffler

I ate the fruits of loss and shame, not knowing
they marinated for weeks under the tree bark out back,

poisoned with words I was too young to understand . . .

. . . I leaned over the sink to wash out my mouth, I caught Loss

staring at me in the bathroom mirror, or at least a girl who looked like Loss.

— Nora Gupta / “Poisoned Elegy (Green Apples)”

The anti-woke derangement syndrome, as I call it, points to the role of scapegoating and demonization in authoritarian movements. These movements always thrive by targeting a specific group and blaming most or all social ills on them. In its first stage, the anti-woke movement targeted the alleged beneficiaries of wokery as scapegoats: LGBT and black people. But as the movement has evolved, it actually has made a scapegoat of the “woke” liberal, who allegedly represents a kind of insidious insider threat that has a disproportionate amount of power. This group is represented as global, secretive, with lots of money, and part of an international conspiracy against the ordinary “folk.” Sound familiar? The “woke liberal” serves the same function as Jews and other groups have served in previous fascist movements.

— Christopher Ketcham, in conversation with Katherine Stewart / “Burn Down the House” / The Baffler

Because I breed.
Because I breed what I claim

I breed what I do not understand.

— Amanda Auerbach / “Rights”

The nihilism is also evident in the moral cowardice of leaders of the Republican Party. The Hegseth Signal chat is a case in point. The members of the administration are flat-out denying what we can all see with our own eyes, which is that they engaged in an incredibly dangerous breach of security, and they did so without following lawfully prescribed processes. They lie to our faces about this, and no major Republican leader, as of this writing, appears to be standing up for the national interest. They all cave, just as they caved when Trump started backing Russia against Ukraine; just as they caved when the attacks on federal judges undermined the rule of law and the constitutional order. This is the behavior of people who appear to have contempt for democracy and believe there is nothing of value apart from power.

— Christopher Ketcham, in conversation with Katherine Stewart / “Burn Down the House” / The Baffler

What I’m Listening To: 

My mother said
Why must you drag all the hopes out of bed
I blame the seasons
We all have our reasons, I meant

— Aldous Harding / “Damn”