Friday I somehow missed this New Yorker article on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when it appeared last year in observance of the novel’s 200th anniversary. Although anti-Trump pundits have frequently cited Frankenstein in recent years to capture how the GOP created a monster it couldn’t control (see here and here), Joan Lepore argues that the novel […]
Monday In an important debut article for the Atlantic, former New Yorker writer George Packer mentions a Bertolt Brecht poem to illustrate the threat that the GOP currently poses to democracy. The article contends that Donald Trump is the logical culmination of the Republicans’ 50-year descent into an authoritarian, white identitarian party. According to Packer, the descent […]
Tuesday The other day I detected one of Atlantic’s excellent columnists misusing a classical analogy. I flag Ed Kilgore, not to show off, but because the analogy is indeed enlightening if used correctly. See if you can find the mistake: This would suggest that the occasional efforts by individual Republican congressmen to show some distance from […]
Posted in Homer | Also tagged 2018 elections, Homer, Odyssey | An image of darkness and light grappling for ascendency in Silko’s “Ceremony” sums up my view of America at the moment.
Shelley’s monster classic is frequently cited in political discussions, especially regarding Trump. Dr. Frankenstein, however, does not enable the monster.
In failing to hold Trump accountable, the GOP is behaving like Jake Spoon in “Lonesome Dove,” who lacks a moral compass.
Few things are more traumatic that losing one’s privileges, as Amy Tan shows in “Valley of Amazement.”
Think of Putin as Satan, Trump as Eve, and Adam as the GOP in a reenactment of Paradise Lost.
If pro-choice Senate Republicans are like the hollow people described by Dante and T. S. Eliot, we can’t expect them to vote down an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice.
