"Is it me, or do we seem to have a problem with sculpture today? I don’t mean contemporary sculpture..."

"... whose fashionable stars (see Koons, Murakami et alia) pander to our appetite for spectacle and whatever’s new. I don’t mean ancient or even non-Western sculpture, either. I mean traditional European sculpture — celebrities like Bernini and Rodin aside — and American sculpture, too: the enormous universe of stuff we come across in churches and parks, at memorials and in museums like the Bode. The stuff Barnett Newman, the Abstract Expressionist painter, notoriously derided as objects we bump into when backing up to look at a painting.... [S]culpture skeptics from Leonardo through Hegel and Diderot have cultivated our prejudice against the medium. 'Carib art,' is how Baudelaire described sculpture, meaning that even the suavest, most sophisticated works of unearthly virtuosity by Enlightenment paragons like Canova and Thorvaldsen were tainted by the medium’s primitive, cultish origins. Racism notwithstanding, Baudelaire had a point. Sculpture does still bear something of the burden of its commemorative and didactic origins. It’s too literal, too direct, too steeped in religious ceremony and too complex for a historically amnesiac culture. We prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on flat surfaces, flickering in a movie theater or digitized on our laptops and smartphones, or painted on canvas. The marketplace ratifies our myopia, making headlines for megamillion-dollar sales of old master and Impressionist pictures but rarely for premodern sculptures...."

From an essay by Michael Kimmelman, published in the NYT in 2008, which I'm reading this morning because I blogged it at the time with my tag "sculpture" and I'm going through all my old posts with that tag looking for things that deserve my new tag "destruction of art."

The new tag is something I'd thought about creating for a very long time. I've been interested in violence directed at art much longer than I've been writing this blog — at least as far back as 1974 — but somehow my resistance to tag proliferation kept me from breaking this subtopic out of my generic topics "sculpture" and "art." There was also the "protest" tag. "Destruction of art" is (usually) a subtopic of that one too. But the pulling down of statues of Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Key — last night in San Francisco — finally dragged me over the line.

Speaking of Junipero Serra, I remember Richard Serra and his "Tilted Arc." I was one of the workers of lower Manhattan in the 1980s who rankled at the hostility the artist expressed toward mere pedestrians. I've written about that a few times. The people in the plaza have feelings and interests and may richly resent the impositions of artist ego and elitist civic pride. Once art is in place, it demands admiration, and what happens? It might be ignored — that's what Kimmelman fretted about — and it might be attacked — the present-day rage.

I'd like to look up what the "sculpture skeptics" — Leonardo, Hegel, Diderot, Baudelaire, et al. — had to say. Oddly, they — at least some of them — expressed racism. The sculpture skeptics of today style themselves as anti-racists. But there's resonance in Kimmelman's summary of the skepticism:

Sculpture does still bear something of the burden of its commemorative and didactic origins. It’s too literal, too direct, too steeped in religious ceremony and too complex for a historically amnesiac culture. We prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on flat surfaces, flickering in a movie theater or digitized on our laptops and smartphones, or painted on canvas. 

We — some of us — prefer the multicolored distractions of illusionism on the flat surface of the embedded video on Twitter as protesters drag down another stately chunk of metal. 

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

Yes, Trump said that.*

Yes, it's hyperbole. The "nobody" is outrageous and false. It gets your attention, and it increases the power of his fame-making machine, further inflating the importance of Juneteenth, and further connecting it to Trump, where it never belonged before.

__________________

*Link goes to Jonathan Chait at NY Magazine, quoting this WSJ interview. Chait:

... Trump has caused more people to become aware of Juneteenth, just as he has caused more people to become aware of the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, narcissistic personality disorder, “democratic backsliding,” the two-thirds threshold required for impeachment, and other concepts that had largely been excluded from daily news coverage. This has not been an era of progress. But it has been a time of enlightenment.

What's "democratic backsliding"? I don't remember hearing that phrase before. I see it has a Wikipedia entry:

In political science, democratic backsliding, also known as democratic erosion or de-democratization, is a gradual decline in the quality of democracy.... Political scientist Nancy Bermeo has written that blatant forms of democratic backsliding such as classic, open-ended coups d'état and election-day fraud have declined since the end of the Cold War, while more subtle and "vexing" forms of backsliding have increased. The latter forms of backsliding entail the debilitation of democratic institutions from within....

Beginning in 2017, political scientists identified the United States under President Donald Trump as being in danger of democratic backsliding. In a 2019 journal article, political scientists Robert C. Lieberman, Suzanne Mettler, and others wrote that Trump's presidency presented a threat to the American democratic order because it simultaneously brought together three specific trends—"polarized two-party presidentialism; a polity fundamentally divided over membership and status in the political community, in ways structured by race and economic inequality; and the erosion of democratic norms"—for the first time in American history. Lieberman et al. noted that Trump has "repeatedly challenged the very legitimacy of the basic mechanics and norms of the American electoral process, invoking the specter of mass voter fraud, encouraging voter suppression, selectively attacking the Electoral College, and even threatening to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power" and noted that "Never in the modern era has a presidential candidate threatened to lock up his opponent; castigated people so publicly and repeatedly on the basis of their country of origin, religion, sex, disability, or military service record; or operated with no evident regard for facts or truth." In 2020, political scientists Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, wrote that "the Trump administration has consistently de-emphasized the importance of human rights and democracy in its rhetoric and while adopting language and tropes similar to those of right-wing, illiberal movements." Colley and Nexon cited Trump's praise of autocratic rulers, his echoing of ethno-nationalist rhetoric, his efforts to deligitmize journalism and journalists as "fake news" and his policies erecting new barriers to refugees and asylum-seekers as similar to politics "found in backsliding regimes."

The 2019 annual democracy report of the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg found that the U.S. under Trump was among the world's liberal democracies experiencing "democratic erosion" (but not full-scale "democratic breakdown"). The report cited an increase in "polarization of society and disrespect in public deliberations" as well as Trump's attacks on the media and opposition and attempts to contain the judiciary and the legislation. The report concluded, however, that "American institutions appear to be withstanding these attempts to a significant degree," noting that Democrats had won a majority the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, which "seems to have reversed the trajectory of an increasingly unconstrained executive."

"As the book nears publication and details spill out, many congressional Democrats quickly assailed Mr. Bolton for not telling his story during the impeachment proceedings and instead saving it for his $2 million book."

"Mr. Bolton explains his position in the epilogue, saying he wanted to wait to see if a judge would order one of his deputies to testify over White House objections. Once the House impeached Mr. Trump over the Ukraine matter, Mr. Bolton volunteered to testify in the Senate trial that followed if subpoenaed. But Senate Republicans voted to block new testimony by him and any other witnesses even after The New York Times reported that his forthcoming book would confirm the quid pro quo. Some of those Republican senators said that even if Mr. Bolton was correct, it would not be enough in their minds to make Mr. Trump the first president in American history convicted and removed from office. Mr. Bolton blames House Democrats for being in a rush rather than waiting for the court system to rule on whether witnesses like him should testify, and he faults them for narrowing their inquiry to just the Ukraine matter rather than building a broader case with more examples of misconduct by the president. 'Had a Senate majority agreed to call witnesses and had I testified, I am convinced, given the environment then existing because of the House’s impeachment malpractice, that it would have made no significant difference in the Senate outcome,' he writes."
From "Five Takeaways From John Bolton’s Memoir 'The Room Where It Happened' describes Mr. Bolton’s 17 turbulent months at President Trump’s side through a multitude of crises and foreign policy challenges" by Peter Baker (NYT).

ADDED:

Wacko John Bolton’s “exceedingly tedious”(New York Times) book is made up of lies & fake stories. Said all good about me, in print, until the day I fired him. A disgruntled boring fool who only wanted to go to war. Never had a clue, was ostracized & happily dumped. What a dope!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

"The administration has been working to pursue a narrow definition of sex as biologically determined at birth, and to tailor its civil rights laws to meet it."

"Access to school bathrooms would be determined by biology, not gender identity. The military would no longer be open to transgender service members. Civil rights protections would not extend to transgender people in hospitals and ambulances. But the administration’s definition is now firmly at odds with how the court views 'sex' discrimination."

From "Supreme Court Expansion of Transgender Rights Undercuts Trump Restrictions/The ruling focused on employment discrimination, but legal scholars say its language could force expanded civil rights protections in education, health care, housing and other areas of daily life" (NYT).

Why is "sex" in quotes? I'd say the Court's case is also at odds with the effort to banish talk of sex and replace it with the concept of gender. I wonder, now will there be a new focus on sex?

Monday’s case was focused on employment law, a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s opinion used language that is likely to apply to numerous areas of law where there is language preventing discrimination “because of sex” or “on the basis of sex.” Under the ruling, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity ran afoul of the standard....

“They’ve ruled,” [President Trump] said. “I’ve read the decision, and some people were surprised, but they’ve ruled and we live with their decision.”

He's read the decision. Ha ha. Did anyone tell him it was 172 pages long before he concocted that lie? I assume it's a lie. And go ahead and bullshit that if you've read any of the opinion — a paragraph, say — you've "read the decision."

Anyway, I'm sure he doesn't mind the Supreme Court taking this pesky issue out of his hair.* "They’ve ruled and we live with their decision." If he really objected, he'd talk about how important it is to reelect him so he can appoint more Justices like Kavanaugh. Oh, but there is the complication that his #1 choice for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, wrote the opinion. He can't purport to have the power to control where the Court goes with all the legal issues.

But I don't think Trump is keen to hold back gay and transgender people. At most, he hopes to maintain the enthusiasm of the religious conservatives he needs to get reelected. But I don't think he is the slightest bit interested in reining in sexual — or gender — expression. Has he ever reined in his own?
______________________

* His orangified, poofed up, spray-spritzed hair.

"... without barely a wimpier..."

Interesting how ANTIFA and other Far Left militant groups can take over a city without barely a wimpier from soft Do Nothing Democrat leadership, yet these same weak leaders become RADICAL when it comes to shutting down a state or city and its hard working, tax paying citizens!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2020

How shocking is "And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter"?

Trump used that phrase yesterday at the Roundtable on Justice Disparities in America (transcript). Context:

In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell. And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything.... I said, “I’m sorry. We have to have [the National Guard] go in.” And they went in and it was like a knife cutting butter, right through, boom. I’ll never forget. You saw the scene on that road wherever it may be in the city, Minneapolis. They were lined up. Boom. They just walked straight. And yes, there was some tear gas and probably some other things and the crowd dispersed. And they went through it by the end of that evening. And it was a short evening. Everything was fine.... So I just want to tell you that we’re working on a lot of different elements having to do with law, order, safety, comfort, control, but we want safety. We want compassion. We want everything.

As I drove home from my sunrise run this morning...



... I had "Morning Joe" on the satellite radio, and he was riffing emotively on that phrase "it was like a knife cutting butter." Joe acted as though the phrase connoted murderously cutting into human flesh, and Who talks like that?!! In Joe's vivid nightmare, Trump is unfathomably evil. Joe said it's as if Trump were "running for President of the Confederacy" and Trump has decided to speak only to "angry white men — angry old white men."

Joe is 57, by the way, so that's a bit old, and he is also white and angry, so maybe he knows whereof he speaks, and yet he does not mean that he hears the siren call of Donald Trump.

But let's look at this phrase "like a knife cutting butter." It's an idiomatic expression! It means it was easy. You see the context. It doesn't mean the National Guard was sadistically injuring people. It means all they had to do was show up and walk straight in and everything worked out just fine.

It wasn't even a hot knife....



The inability to understand metaphor is, of course, highly selective. A commentator like Joe has to use what Trump gives him. He must scan the transcripts every day, looking for something to pretend to be anguished about.

"We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. Got to have some strength. You have to have strength."

"You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle. We just came in. We just see over the screen and we’ve been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it. The law and order, look at what happened in Seattle. They took over a city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen. That couldn’t happen here I don’t think in the state of Texas. I don’t think so. I don’t think so."

Shockingly short sentences and sentence fragments began Donald Trump remarks at the Roundtable Meeting on Justice Disparities in America yesterday in Dallas, Texas (full transcript).

A city, a city, a big city, Seattle, a chunk of it. A big chunk. Can’t happen.

I wonder why he's doing that. Perhaps he can't help it, but I think he's choosing it. It's political poetry. It says: LAW AND ORDER. It's the simplest theme for a politician. He's there. On that theme. You know it. It's everything. Got to have law and order. Or you have nothing. Nothing.

The speech becomes somewhat less staccato:

Politicians make false charges and they’re trying to distract from their own failed records. They have some very bad records and these are usually the ones that cause the problems or can’t solve the problems. These are the same politicians who shipped our jobs away and took tremendous advantage of all Americans, but African American middle class. So much of that wealth and that money and those jobs went to China and other countries and they get trapped. They get trapped. They get trapped in a government morass. They get trapped in bad government schools. So I’m going to be announcing four steps to build safety and opportunity and dignity.

There had better be 4 steps. The steps involve law and order ("safety"), economics ("opportunity"), and something more psychological ("dignity"):

First, we’re aggressively pursuing economic development in minority communities. We’re doing it very powerfully. We’ve done it with opportunity zones, but we’re going to go above that. At the heart of this effort is increasing access to capital for small businesses and that’s with minority owners in black communities and we’re going to get it done and it should have been done a long time ago. It’s been very difficult, very, very difficult for some people, been unfairly difficult.

Second we’re confronting the healthcare disparities, including addressing chronic conditions and investing substantial sums in minority serving medical institutions. We have medical institutions in some areas of our country that are a disgrace. I was going to say not up to standard. They’re much worse than not up to standard. They’re a disgrace. Take care of it.

Third, we’re working to finalize an executive order that will encourage police departments nationwide to meet the most current professional standards for the use of force, including tactics for deescalation. Also we’ll encourage pilot programs that allow social workers to join certain law enforcement officers so that they work together. We’ll take care of our police. We’re not defunding police. If anything, we’re going the other route. We’re going to make sure that our police are well-trained, perfectly trained, they have the best equipment.

The solution for the police is to "make sure" they're "perfectly trained." He's picked up the Democratic candidate tic — "make sure." They purported way to do something it to state the desired goal and then insert the phrase "make sure" in front of it. But these are 3 good, moderate ideas about "justice disparities."

He never says "fourth" or "four," but maybe the fourth step was in this somewhere. What I see in the transcript is a switch to talking about the violence...

There are violent people around, Pastor. Even, you will admit that, right? We want to think the best, but you have some very violent people. And when they’re breaking into your house at 12:00 in the evening and you’re sitting there and you don’t have a police force, they’re actually talking about not having a police force. Well, that’s not happening with us. We’re going to have stronger police forces because that’s what you need. In Minneapolis, they went through three nights of hell.

And the answer to the violence is LAW AND ORDER — provided by Trump:

And then I was insistent on having the National Guard go in and do their work. It was like a miracle. It’s just everything stopped. And I’ll never forget the scene. It’s not supposed to be a beautiful scene. But to me, it was after you watched policemen running out of a police precinct. And it wasn’t their fault. They wanted to do what they had to do, but they weren’t allowed to do anything. It wasn’t really their fault, but they were running down the street. They weren’t allowed to do what they’re trained to do. And they took over the precinct. They burned it, essentially burned it down.

And the answer to the destruction is CONSTRUCTION — and Trump is the expert....

I’m pretty good at construction. I want to tell you that was almost what we call a complete renovation, if you’re lucky.

Hmm. Is that some kind of construction industry joke? Demolition = renovation?

I'll stop here. It's a long transcript. Read it yourself. Or did you actually watch the event? I tried for a couple minutes.

"I had a great mom. I loved my mom and she loved me, which... is probably not easy to do."

"She was so good to me. I couldn’t do any wrong, which is a big problem. Maybe that’s why I ended up the way I ended up. I don’t know. I couldn’t do any wrong in her eyes."

Said Trump, quoted at AP.

I like his comical use of "which": "I loved my mom and she loved me, which... is probably not easy to do.... I couldn’t do any wrong, which is a big problem."

He uses "which" to signal a change in voice, from serious/positive to comical/self-effacing.

"That seems to be more of this 'stuff has agency' trend that is going on. I did not do it, the gun just went off."

Says Todd in the comments to the post that talks — the post that talks! — about using the expression "release weight" instead of "lose weight."

It is NEVER ever MY fault. Stuff just happens, bad stuff anyway. Everyone owns the good stuff but bad stuff just happens.

In this case if the weight doesn't leave, well "it" chose to stay and it is NOT your fault!

But this made me think about the virus. It's just a thing. It has no mind. But we're encouraged to think of it as stuff with agency. Here's Trump, yesterday:

I view the invisible enemy as a war.... Hey, it’s killed more people than Pearl Harbor, and it’s killed more people than the World Trade Center. World Trade Center was close to 3,000. Well, we’re going to beat that by many times, unfortunately, so yeah, we view it as a war. This is a mobilization against the war. In many ways, it’s a tougher enemy. We do very well against the visible enemies. It’s the invisible enemy. This is an invisible enemy, but we’re doing a good job.

"... used them beautifully... dumped them nicely..."

“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2020

I don't know what he's talking about or how that #OPENJOECOLDCASE hashtag is doing. I see the top trending hashtag this morning is DON LEMON, and I know what that is....

Don Lemon with zero fucks left.pic.twitter.com/kbC0zghhzB

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 4, 2020

Anyway.... "used them beautifully... dumped them nicely" — that's pretty cruel. And what the point of stating something "on the record" and then using quotes — "nuts"?

Ah... here's an article explaining what that "Florida Cold Case" is. From Mediaite:

The “Florida Cold Case” here is the death of Lori Klausutis, the 28-year-old intern found dead in Scarborough’s district office when he was still serving as U.S. Congressman for Florida’s 1st Congressional district. An autopsy concluded that Klausutis’ death happened after heart problems caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk in 2001.

Even though there were no indications of foul play or suicide, the tragedy prompted a number of conspiracy theories....

I've got to say, Trump's tweet this morning is some really trashy trash talk. Psycho... Crazy... "nuts"....

"It could be false accusations. I know all about false accusations. I’ve been falsely charged numerous times. And there is such a thing. If you look at Brett Kavanaugh, there’s an outstanding man. He was falsely charged...."

From yesterday's press briefing:

Speaker 7: Follow up regarding the Joe Biden, your campaign and surrogates going after him pretty hard with regard to these allegations from Tara Reade, what do you say to Joe Biden-

Donald Trump: I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re going after him hard with regard to Tara.

Speaker 7: What do you think of the allegations and what do you say to Joe Biden?

Donald Trump: I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know exactly. I think he should respond. It could be false accusations. I know all about false accusations. I’ve been falsely charged numerous times. And there is such a thing. If you look at Brett Kavanaugh, there’s an outstanding man. He was falsely charged. What happened with him was an absolute disgrace to our country. And I guess three of the four women have now admitted that. And of the fourth, give me a break. I mean, take a look. 36 years. Look, this is a fine man. I saw a man suffering so unfairly. I’m talking about Brett Kavanaugh. But I don’t know, I can’t speak for Biden. I can only say that I think he should respond. I think he should answer them.

Here are some question to ask Democrats who are supporting Biden in this: In retrospect, do you regret the way your party treated Brett Kavanaugh? What do you say to people who believe in equal treatment for anyone who faces accusations like this and who see your different treatment of the 2 men as nothing but partisanship?

I know how they will try to answer. They'll say Christine Blasey Ford was credible in a way that Tara Reade is not. Meanwhile, anti-Biden partisans say the opposite — Tara Reade is credible in a way that Christine Blasey Ford was not.

President Trump doesn't want to "cast any dispersions" on China.

I saw it in the transcript — "dispersions" for "aspersions" — but checked the video before believing he said it:



It's not a transcription error. He said "I don’t want to cast any dispersions."

But enough of that. Let's consider what he was invited to cast aspersions on China about and whether he did, in fact, refrain from.... Or do you want to keep talking about "dispersions"? Maybe you are champing — or chomping — at the bit to defend your President. What are "aspersions" anyway? And it's not as though "dispersions" isn't a word. Is there some requirement that a speaker use the most obvious cliché? Does "cast" demand "aspersions" the way "scantily" demands "clad"? But you can choose to say "scantily dressed" — it's not wrong — so why not say "cast dispersions"?!

To "disperse" is to throw things about, and to "asperse" is to sprinkle things. "Dispersion" is the act of throwing things about, and "aspersion" is the act of sprinkling things about. To "cast" is to throw, so it might look as though we're dealing with a redundancy, but the word "aspersion" also means that which is sprinkled. So to "cast aspersions" is to throw the things that are thrown. But "dispersion" is not defined (in dictionaries that I looked at) as both the throwing of things and the things that are thrown. That's why "casting dispersions" sounds wrong. You're saying throwing the act of throwing.

If I wanted to defend Trump here, I'd try to find a dictionary that gave the necessary other meaning to "dispersion" and, failing that, I'd say that "dispersion" is easily understood to mean, in context, that which is dispersed and, as such, "casting dispersions" makes just as much sense as "casting aspersions," and the people who want to hear the most predictable combinations of words are very boring.

Now, on to the substance. From the transcript of yesterday's Coronavirus Briefing:

Speaker 2: Mr. President, you have said that China is doing everything they can to make sure you don’t get reelected. What specifically are they doing?

Donald Trump: Well, China doesn’t want to see me elected and the reason is that we’re getting billions and billions of dollars, many billions of dollars a month from China. China never gave our country anything. China gave us nothing, not 25 cents. And whether it was Biden in charge of China, which was a joke because they ripped off our country for eight years. And in all fairness to Biden and Obama, this went on long before they got into office. And you can go through many administrations until I came along. Then we signed a trade deal where they’re supposed to buy, and they’ve been buying a lot actually, but that now becomes secondary to what took place with the virus. The virus situation is just not acceptable.

Speaker 2: Do you think that withholding information about the virus is related to them trying to undermine your reelection?

Donald Trump: I don’t want to cast any dispersions. I just will tell you that China would like to see sleepy Joe Biden. They would take this country for a ride like you’ve never seen before.

"'Haters keep saying they hate Diamond and Silk, but you can’t hate what you ain’t never loved!' the sisters, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, wrote..."

"... on their shared Twitter account Monday evening. Trump shared that message Tuesday morning, writing online: 'But I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people!' The president’s social media post came after CNN reported Saturday that Fox Nation, Fox News’ digital streaming service, had not uploaded a new episode of Diamond and Silk’s weekly show since April 7, and they had not appeared on the network’s broadcast since March.... Although Fox News retains a stable of pro-Trump commentators, the president has grown increasingly frustrated with the network, despite its opinion hosts’ almost unflinchingly positive coverage of his administration. '@FoxNews just doesn’t get what’s happening! They are being fed Democrat talking points, and they play them without hesitation or research,' Trump [tweeted on] Sunday."

Politico reports.

But I love Diamond & Silk, and so do millions of people! https://t.co/RBX9bmFIwH

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 28, 2020

Was there an existing saying "You can’t hate what you ain’t never loved" (or "You can’t hate what you never loved")? If not, great aphorism. But is it true?

I found a discussion on Quora: "Can you not hate what you don't love? Why or why not?" The top answer, written in March 2018, brings up Donald Trump, whom the writer hates:

For example, I utterly loath Donald Trump.... Even with all that, I can honestly say I do not hate the man. The way I see it, hatred is the first step to dehumanizing somebody else. Trump may be a shitty example of a human being, but he is still human...

But he doesn't get into the meat of the question. Is love the precondition for hate? If it is, we are strongly defended from hate! And we have fantastic insight into the haters. Do all those people who really hate Trump actually have love in there somewhere?

It's hard for me to answer, because I don't feel anything that I would call hate. Hate. I do sometimes feel an unaccountable love for Trump — perhaps because I'm seeing him hated, perhaps because Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love (agapēseis) your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love (agapāte) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? — Matthew 5:43-46, RSV

But back to the Diamond and Silk aphorism "You can’t hate what you ain’t never loved." It had a ring of truth for me. I'm thinking hate is such a strong emotion that it only counts as real hate if it's a reversal from love. They're saying your rejection of us is nothing because you never liked us in the first place.

"If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?"

That was the last question at yesterday's Task Force press briefing. Transcript. The reporter was Olivia Nuzzi of New York Magazine.

Here's the response it provoked from Trump:

So yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people, but if you look at what original projections were, 2.2 million, we’re probably heading to 60 thousand, 70 thousand. It’s far too many. One person is too many for this. And I think we’ve made a lot of really good decisions. The big decision was closing the border or doing the ban, people coming in from China. Obviously other than American citizens which had to come in. Can’t say you can’t come back to your country. I think we’ve made a lot of good decisions. I think that Mike Pence and the task force have done a fantastic job. I think that everybody working on the ventilators, you see what we’ve done there, have done unbelievable. The press doesn’t talk about ventilators anymore. They just don’t want to talk about them and that’s okay. But the reason they don’t want to talk… That was a subject that nobody would get off of. They don’t want to talk about them. We’re in the same position on testing. We are lapping the world on testing and the world is coming to us. As I said, they’re coming to us saying, “What are you doing? How do you do it?” We’re helping them. So, no, I think we’ve done a great job and one person, I will say this, one person is too many. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

That was a good, moderate answer, never mentioning the election, only taking the cue to discuss the basis for thinking that he is deserving. Importantly, he resisted the temptation to speculate about whether his opponent would have done better. Who knows what Joe Biden would have done in the same circumstances?

But that's the comparison. That's what I think about when I hear the question, and I'm going to assume that President Biden also would have lost more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War. If losses to a sudden contagious disease are the test of whether a candidate deserves our vote, then we'd just be voting based on which person happened actually to be President at the time the disease hit.

I suppose many people like to think a different President would have done better. Theoretically, things could have been done better. Our dream President would have done better. But would Joe Biden have done better? Anyone who answers yes is, I suspect, someone who was already going to vote for Biden for some other reason.

Anyway, Trump got the question he got, and he didn't get bogged down in the kind of speculation that I'm blogging about here. He just made the pitch that he's done a good enough job — which is, in Trumpspeak, "a fantastic job."

"Kim Jong Un? I can't tell you exactly. Yes, I do have a very good idea, but I can't talk about it now... I do know how he's doing, relatively speaking... You'll probably be hearing it in the not too distant future."

"I do know how he's doing, relatively speaking" — I take that to mean Trump knows relatively more than the reporter. And he has "a very good idea," which suggests he knows quite a bit more than just relatively more than the rest of us. But he "can't talk about it," though to say that is to talk about it.

So what do you think Trump knows — that Kim Jong Un is dead (or in some near-death condition)?

"Both waiters and customers wear masks. Diners can remove them to eat and drink..."

"... tucking them safely into an envelope the restaurant provides. Every surface is sanitized every half-hour. Customers have accepted the protocols, [one restaurateur] said. They’ve had to turn away only one for having a slight fever, and sent off a grumpy party of six that wanted to sit together. 'People are honestly much more understanding about everything now,' she said. 'They’re grateful they can go out and feel comfortable.... If you’ve managed to build a brand and built and cultivated integrity, people will trust you when you are allowed to open the door again.'... Is the urge to sit in a restaurant so great that customers will endure an experience that is more like a trip to the dental hygienist? Will they risk infection, even in a place with the safest protocols?... 'At the end of the day, we’re problem solvers and we will find a way to do this,' [said another restaurateur]. 'The restaurant industry is about constant chaos and writing a ballet out of that chaos. We’ve spent all of our careers preparing for this moment.'"

From "Safe Dining? Hard to Imagine, but Many Restaurants Are Trying/Though widespread reopenings may be a long way off, chefs and health officials have begun studying how a post-pandemic restaurant might look" (NYT).

Health has always been something restaurants have had to worry about getting right. Whenever we've gone to a restaurant, we've trusted the place not to damage our health. They make substances in the back room that we inject* into our body. The servers go to the bathroom and we've been trusting that they wash their hands thoroughly. We're more alert now and paying attention. There's a specific new danger on the list of things that could find their way into your body from a restaurant.

Restaurants get to earn our trust all over again, and we get to think carefully about how much we're going to put our lives in their (presumably washed) hands. Some of us, I think, have developed stronger feelings about how much restaurants mean to us, and others are more wary than ever about the agents of disease that lurk there. We all change and adapt. I'd like to think that makes us better and stronger.

___________________

* I'm just needling you. "Inject" means "To drive or force (a fluid, etc.) into a passage or cavity, as by means of a syringe, or by some impulsive power; said esp. of the introduction of medicines or other preparations into the cavities or tissues of the body" (OED). I don't really think "inject" is an accurate way to describe eating (unless it's something like the way geese eat in the production of foie gras).

BUT: Etymologically, the original meaning of "inject" is to throw in. We do speak of throwing back a few drinks.

AND: We do speak of injecting a little humor. We might say that Trump was injecting a little humor when he (lyingly) claimed to have been using sarcasm when words ejected from him that seemed to suggest that disinfectant of the sort that you'd use to wipe down a tabletop could be injected into the human body.

A day after his inflammatory, incoherent disinfectant-injection remarks, Trump announces that his long press briefings are not worth his time and effort.

What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2020

"Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus? Ethnicity does not cause the virus?"/"It comes from China... I'm not a racist... I comes from (pause) China."

This is an exchange that took place at a recent White House press conference. It's become a meme on TikTok, where someone posted the original, and then — because this is how TikTok works — many other people have done their own little lip sync to the audio track. The original with Trump and all the variations are collected on this page. I'm reading these as supportive of Trump. I think!

I'll just give you 2 examples:

@alaskadude ##coronavirus ##covid19 ##president ##racebaiting what a stupid stupid question that is.
♬ original sound - heresjohnnyagain

@chey_chey90 ♬ original sound - heresjohnnyagain

"Both American and Chinese officials have raised questions about whether the virus was a manmade bioweapon, whilst Trump has dubbed it the 'China virus.'"

"'By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,' said Kristian Andersen, PhD, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and corresponding author on the paper.... The team analysed the molecular structure of the virus.... They suggested that it cannot be an artificial creation because its structure 'differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins.'"

From "Coronavirus is not a bioweapon created in a lab, scientists say" (The Herald).

Contemplate how much worse you would feel about all this if you found out that human beings had manufactured it as a weapon.

By the way, I don't like seeing coronavirus called the "China virus," but I think Trump is using that term to hit back after Chinese officials made accusations against the United States. I'd like to see both stop, and I'd like to see an end to naming diseases after particular places. Use scientific names, not place names or ethnicity names.

"I want all Americans to understand: we are at war with an invisible enemy, but that enemy is no match for the spirit and resolve of the American people..."

"...It cannot overcome the dedication of our doctors, nurses, and scientists — and it cannot beat the LOVE, PATRIOTISM, and DETERMINATION of our citizens. Strong and United, WE WILL PREVAIL!"

A Trump tweet, from within the last minute.

ALSO:

LIVE: Press Briefing with Coronavirus Task Force https://t.co/3WQV4egsWc

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 18, 2020