C-SPAN reveals all

As with two-person political debates, the best place to see the Trump Fourth speech was C-SPAN, which cut away again and again for shots of the crowd. Whatever its size, too many of its members appeared distinctly unenergized by what they were hearing — just standing without clapping. And then leaving as a member of the military sang Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” — a song that also just happens to be played at Trump’s campaign rallies.

The Fourth

From 4 U.S. Code §8: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”

This Fourth of July, with its tanks and cages, is no ordinary Fourth. I am living in a country whose racist, xenophobic, predatory leader exhibits contempt for democracy and the institutions of government as he monetizes his office, demonizes his opponents, befriends autocrats and despots, welcomes foreign interference in elections, lies to the public and the press, and stages a cruel spectacle on the southern border. He is abetted by all those who cheer or shrug or whisper in dismay. Today’s flag is a signal of dire distress.

Arte Johnson (1929–2019)

The actor and comedian Arte Johnson has died at the age of ninety. Readers of a certain age will remember him from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. The New York Times has an obituary.

Arte Johnson appeared in these pages in 2018 in a screenshot from his big-screen debut.

An afterthought

Re: “argued forcefully”: I wonder if argue is about to become the new say. Compare the way speakers and writers use refute in place of rebut.

Garner’s Modern English Usage:

Refute is not synonymous with rebut or deny. That is, it doesn’t mean merely “to counter an argument” but “to disprove beyond doubt; to prove a statement false.”

To rebut is not to refute, and to say is not to argue.

A related post
Misused word of the day: refute

No argument

I turned on MSNBC for just a few minutes to hear Kelly O'Donnell say, twice, that Donald Trump “argued forcefully” for the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 census. That’s an odd claim, partly because it uses a near-Trumpian adverb (Trump might have said “very strongly”), partly because Trump's insistence has nothing to do with making an argument. To argue is “to give reasons for or against something.” To demand or insist is not to argue.

“Like a pair of trousers”

A planning session for the Parallel Campaign has ended. Diotima is alone in her apartment with Paul Arnheim, industrialist and writer. She realizes that no man other than her husband “had ever been so domestically alone with her that one palpably felt the mute life of the empty apartment.”


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Musil’s gift for metaphor and simile is unending.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

Futurliner

[“His Mind Is a Bus.” Zippy, July 3, 2019.]

Days of future past. A Wikipedia article says that “There are still two Futurliners unaccounted for.” I think that number is now done to one.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

The challenge and responsibility of personhood

John Green, from “Hawaiian Pizza and Viral Meningitis,” an episode of The Anthropocene Reviewed:

The challenge and responsibility of personhood, it seems to me, is to recognize personhood in others, to listen to others’ pain and take it seriously, even when you yourself cannot feel it.

These words are relevant at our southern border, and everywhere else.

Islands for sale

Two of them. Price: $13 million. Says their owner, “I thought I would have great thoughts out here.”

Committees, committees

It’s 1913. Diotima Tuzzi has a plan for the development of the Parallel Campaign, a public-relations project to celebrate Austria and the Emperor Franz Joseph in 1918:


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

[Committees and more committees: it all sounds mighty familiar.]