Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

The combined effect of rising inequality and economic stress, and the ubiquity of rich or seemingly rich people on the internet and society writ large, can result in people feeling poorer than they actually are, a concept called “money dysmorphia.”

— Janelle Nanos / “‘Still not satisfied:’ How the cycle of social media fuels middle-class discontent” / The Boston Globe

How terrible to entertain a lunatic!
To keep his earnestness from coming close!

— Witter Binner / “Madagascar [Opus 104]”

Of all the reasons Americans have been losing sleep recently – hunger, canceled flights, Democrats betraying them – the most ominous has to do with an institution usually absent from discussions about the fate of our democracy: the military. No need to be starry-eyed about US imperialism and what has long been criticized as an ever-expanding “national security state”; one can still appreciate that it is a good thing if generals do not take sides in politics – just ask anyone from the many countries around the world where they do. But a pattern is becoming clear: Donald Trump is purging the higher ranks based on his prejudices and demands for loyalty; the military is being turned into a partisan instrument and a political prop; more dangerous still, the president is instilling the logic of impunity that has come to characterize his entire approach to governance.

— Jan-Werner Müller / “Trump is turning the US military into a political prop” / The Guardian

When it was clear that my father
would not come back, my mother began
making lists: where to throw out
his clothes, where to get the pills,
the places his hands had been.
She substituted food for Virginia Slims
and at night tugged the phone off its hook.

— Matthew Gellman / “Snipe”

In Spanish America, in contrast, uti possidetis removed the imperative for genocide: the lines were fixed, and indigenous peoples—be they Mexico’s Maya, Chile’s Mapuche, or Gran Colombia’s Wayuu—could stay put. First peoples would continue to lose their lands, especially as export agriculture spread. And no matter what the new constitutions said, they would continue to be abused and misused, treated as second-class citizens. But, unlike in the United States, their dispossession, and their disappearance, wasn’t integral to territorial aggrandizement nor a requirement for the realization of national sovereignty.

— Greg Grandin / America, América: A New History of the New World

You are bombing the sea.
Did the fish declare
they’re Palestinian, too?

— Fady Joudah / “Concentric Circles”

But what we have isn’t peace. What we have is a continuing genocide, albeit one that has shifted gears and has—for now—moved into the slow lane. Rather than hundreds at a time, it is killing by twos and threes—an obscenity that has coalesced into a new normal. To quote a searing poem published last week by Fady Joudah: “After the genocide, the genocide.”

— Saree Makdisi / “After the Genocide, the Genocide” / n+1

What I’m Listening To:

Tied to the wheel, nailed to the ground
Put to the sword, fed to the hounds
All carved up, break them down
(Shake to the ground, shake to the ground)
(Shake to the ground, shake to the ground)
(A season in Hell
A season in Hell)

— These New Puritans / “A Season in Hell”