The lifeboat seems to be keeping us afloat. Let’s punch a few holes in it and see if that makes any difference.
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) April 17, 2020
Alexandra Petri, national treasure, in the Washington Post — “Give me liberty and give me death!”:
Yes, I would like things to be worse, please. I do not think things are bad enough, and I would like them to be worse. I look at the number of people who have died in this great state, and I think, frankly, it is a little low. People, if you want to be technical about it, who will never see their families again; people who were not done living; people who cannot be replaced and whose absence will bore an echoing hole through countless other lives — but what is that, weighed against my own convenience and my sense that things should be open rather than closed?…
Given the choice of saving thousands of lives, including, possibly, my own, or getting to buy a can of 730C-2 Sandstone Cove paint now rather than later, I will not hesitate to choose the latter. Do not ask me how many lives I would trade to avoid minor inconveniences, or you will see what a sea of bodies I would be content to wade through to my morning coffee. If I’m willing to die, that should be enough for everyone. No one — as I have established during COUNTLESS interactions with customer service professionals — is worth more than me.
I just want nothing about my life to change, including my indifference to the lives of others. So please stop demanding that I bend to the will of the people or their elected officials. The last time I checked, this was a democracy.
Have you considered that, actually, I don’t want to be safe? You think you are protecting me, but whom are you really protecting? Others? If I am willing to take this risk for myself (my top favorite person!), why do you think I would not be willing to take it for “others,” many of whom I don’t even know personally and some of whom are the very people who once asked me to escort myself out of a Red Lobster because I was making a scene?…
There's a tiny part in me that wants Trumpist governors to announce A Grand Trump State Reopening™ and then watch as 1) thousands more die and 2) the economy doesn't improve because people are terrified. And dead.
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) April 17, 2020
“But my turnips!” is the new “But her emails!”
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) April 17, 2020
Toddler-in-Chief wants his rallies!…
It’s an incredibly morbid thought but..if the campaign is wrong about their judgment about the safety of this, it could really cut into Trump voters’ turnout numbers on Election Day. https://t.co/mszh7NkUQf
— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) April 17, 2020
Darwin nods, judiciously.
trollhattan
Give me liberty or give me Dench.
We’ve always known they’re a suicide cult The difference is David Koresh and Jim Jones weren’t dedicated to taking the rest of us with them.
West of the Rockies
If the virus were to eliminate the mouth breathers who want their prosperity gospel jubilees and Guns for Jeebus rallies, well, so it goes.
BTW, has Martin popped in lately? I find his data dumps edifying.
Major Major Major Major
Ooh, that’s a good Petri column.
cain
“Aides have discussed holding rallies in states that are low risks” – yeah fuck that.. that would be all the fucking states with Democratic governors. Cuz you know, they’ve actually listened to experts and have been flattening the curve only to have MAGAts showing up ready to spread it again with Trump man showing up. Also, you know that Trump will charge up the grievance factor while there – bashing the very governors who have helped make it a low risk place to hold a rally.
Fuck these people.
Major Major Major Major
gah
SectionH
@trollhattan: Love Dame Judi!
cain
@West of the Rockies:
It is such a scam, and it has been working for 40 years. Republicans fuck things up, Democrats come in an fix things, Republicans demagogue everything and then get back in again and then proceeds to fuck things up again.
The scam depends on the Democrats to show up and fix things – while Republicans get rich. Sometimes I wonder what happens we decide.. fuck it.. this ain’t work it, let’s see where it goes when shit goes down hill.
Republicans only have one solution to everything – tax cuts to the wealthy.. until there is no more tax cuts to give. I wonder what happens then? Take money from all of us and give all of them extra salaries? MAGA people will cheer..
ETA – I can’t believe I am sober while writing this…
cain
@Major Major Major Major:
Atlas Shrugged???! WTF… I think that is a disqualifying comment.. I can’t take anyone seriously if they actually like that fucking book. Even Ender’s Game is kind of a right wing bullshit book.
Major Major Major Major
@cain: nah, Ender’s Game is good and ethically ok-to-like, but it’s not particularly “favorite book” material. It is not, as some people claim, essentially Hitler apologia.
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, I always love seeing what your formatting in the title does to the fly-out on the post that precedes it. Always mangled, but in such interesting ways!
Can’t wait to read the Petri column in the morning.
edit: That is not snark by the way, or subtle criticism. I seriously find it interesting.
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: Ender’s Game IS fantastic, though ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is just fucking awful in nearly every way :/
ETA: I should clarify that Ender’s Game was my favorite book when I was 12 or so, but it doesn’t really keep that status after you’ve read some better stuff.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Major Major Major Major: What!? The first two are horrible?!!!??!! I just…I can’t…..I can’t bear to click through. Does she explain why they are her favs?
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: it’s so terrible
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@cain: Enders Game is written by an elitist, racist, conservative Mormon twatwaffle. And don’t even get me started on Ayn Rand….
West of the Rockies
@cain:
Furthermore, Republican politicians and pundits (I suspect) do not give a hot diddly damn about guns or bibles. Those are tools to agitate the mouth breathing base to assure more dollars for the wealthy, baby.
CaseyL
Those are horrible favorite books, and I’m not sure I even believe them. Why would a liberal black voting activist like Ayn Rand, FFS?
MisterForkbeard
@Major Major Major Major: Atlas Shrugged is literally the worst book I’ve ever read. And I’m not counting the long 30-page essay in the back half.
The characters suck, the plot is offensively bad, the entire story is hugely unethical and the women are passed around like chattel to increasingly awful 1%ers. Bleagh.
Amir Khalid
@cain:
Trump will be unable to have rallies anywhere, that’s just the reality of it. I take it that his staff don’t dare tell him, but when Trump’s people come seeking permits and such for rallies, low-risk states that want to stay low-risk will tell them to go pound sand. And high-risk states are, well high-risk.
Darkrose
@Major Major Major Major: I would very much disagree that anything by Orson Scott Card is either good or ethically ok-to-like. Even the stuff written before Obama’s election stripped off the mask of reasonable conservative is problematic at best and downright creepy at worst.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: it’s literally astonishingly bad.
Anne Laurie
@MisterForkbeard: True story: Some — 40? (gah) — years ago, I went to a benefit reading featuring Samuel R. Delaney, Algis Budrys, and… Orson Scott Card, then a ‘new, rising’ sf writer. He explained to an appalled audience of college-based sf fans that he had always wanted to be an ‘adventure’ writer, but by the time he was ready to start his career, only sf/fantasy presses were still printing short-story pulp mags on a regular basis, so that’s where he decided to focus.
He then read an extract from ‘Songbird’, and while he didn’t actually have one hand in his lap during the most explicit torture scenes, it was pretty clear that’s how he’d written them. Some of the audience members actually walked out, even though most people had come to hear Delaney, who’d been saved for the last spot…
Omnes Omnibus
@MisterForkbeard: I think I have made two attempts to read it. I have never made it more than 20 or so pages before realizing that I needed to rearrange my sock drawer or perform DIY dentistry or fucking anything else.
Amir Khalid
@Major Major Major Major:
For my part, I did find Ender’s Game problematic: adults deceiving children into fighting a genocidal war is very not okay with me.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Enders Game, Speaker for the Dead and a couple others in the series are okay to read and even admire.
Scott Orson Card, the author of the books went full batshit Crazy RWNJ shortly after his first big paycheck cleared and he decided that “his stuff” must be protected at all costs from the rampaging hordes of communists and certain shades, genders and attractions lurking outside the walls of the gated community he could buy his way into.
Major Major Major Major
It’s not literature but I think it holds up. I’d put it sort of in Heinlein territory I guess, and there’s plenty of debate about him.
@Darkrose: I find Liu Cixin to be persona non grata, myself. The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy has got to be the most sexist thing I have ever read, and one of the most authoritarian. And it’s badly-written, at that. I can’t see how anybody could get past those, and people like Obama liked them. I read them, some interesting ideas, one great twist, but mostly just offensive and bad.
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: Yes, it’s super fucked up, and the character spends the rest of his life in deep contemplation about what he’s done and what they’ve done to him, and trying to bring back the species he genocided.
Poe Larity
Where would I go to get, say, a semi full of locusts for these protests? Extra if I can get them in red, white and blue.
Mallard FIlmore
@MisterForkbeard:
Why so negative? It does foretell, with astonishing accuracy, the activities of today’s Republican Party.
Jay
Anyone who says that one of their favorite books is Atlas Shrugged has:
A) never read it,
B) read it but didn’t understand it,
C) read it, understood it and is a sociopath,
D) is using the symbolism that the book has become to “virtue” signal, either to the sociopathic narcassistic plutocracy that dominates US politics and Cororate Culture that they are “one of them”, or to attempt to calm and reassure that the tumbrels and guillotines are metaphorical,
Kent
Enders Game was the favorite book of the US Marine Corps intellectual types. It was on all their reading lists. Meh.
joel hanes
@Major Major Major Major:
Every candidate has flaws.
If those are the worst things I ever learn about Abrams, that’ll be great.
Jay
@Mallard FIlmore:
funny how all the “Atlas’s” “going Gault” by going all “The Mask of the Red Death” to avoid The Covid, in the Hamptons, on their Yachts, on their Private Islands didn’t even cause a bump in the markets or the economy,
but a couple of cleaning staff coughing in the Ilse of Walmart has brough the entire economy down.
so much for the premis of “Atlas Shrugged”,……
Poe Larity
Nobody has ever finished Atlas Shrugged. My cousin’s kids were all anarcho-glibertarian so I sent them a copy. Fixed them right up after a couple hundred pages.
Now, The Fountainhead, at least Architects should read that. We need more Frank Lloyd Wankers.
(((CassandraLeo)))
@Amir Khalid: In Card’s defence (not that I’m particularly fond of defending him since he went full hard-right whack job), that’s basically the whole point of the book. Speaker for the Dead is about the guilt and trauma that the title character holds over the genocide he was deceived into committing and, as Major^4 points out, his attempts to undo it. It’s an incredibly compassionate book… which is why it shocked me so much when I discovered what a nightmarish authoritarian OSC is overall. The art and the artist can’t always be reconciled with one another, I guess.
In any case, if you do choose to read those books, do yourself a favour and stop after Speaker… just trust me on this one.
I have no idea why the hell Abrams likes (or claims to like) Rand, and I’m not sure I want to know. :V
Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpublicānam esse dēlendam.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Those are some weird choices. Though apparently “The Institutionalist” is very good?
joel hanes
@Poe Larity:
Nobody has ever finished Atlas Shrugged.
I did. Hated it, but finished it.
But I’m a slogger. I’ve read the entire KJV Bible straight through, and read all the books of Neil Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle (enjoyed the Stephenson, enjoyed parts of the Bible)
Didn’t finish Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, though; became annoyed and then apathetic and quit.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Argh, I botched that title — it does seem to be Colson Whitehead’s “The Intuitionist.”
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/189757/the-intuitionist-by-colson-whitehead/?ref=PRH33143F5701&aid=randohouseinc49099-20&linkid=PRH33143F5701
Maybe in Georgia she has to name two of the whitest books ever before she can put an African American author’s book on her list?
Poe Larity
Mark Cuban says he’s leaving the door open for a Presidential run.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
I read The Fountainhead at the urging of a friend, and kinda liked some of it, especially the well-designed fire escapes, but my friend kept telling me I would really, really love Atlas Shrugged, so I did indeed read the whole thing (although I speed-read a bit through The Lecture, which I recall as being about 90 pages long). I kept waiting for it to finally get good, and also, I was still at a stage in my life when I was compulsive about finishing any book I started. That may have been the first time I ever deeply reflected on the notion that I would never get those hours of my life back.
Did I mention I was 14?
Still bitter about those hours.
oatler.
Card wrote a book called “The Lost Boys” which involved a serial killer. What struck me as weird was not so much the Mormon underwear but how he described a Police song as an alien creation. Plus the son could get killed so long as they’d all meet in The Great Bye and Bye.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
When Obama was asked what was his favorite book he gave the greatest answer evah: Where the Wild Things Are.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Poe Larity: For which country?
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I hope when they ask Biden for his favorite books he replies, “The Motorcycle Diaries”, “Soul on Ice”, and “Fear of Flying“.
prostratedragon
@Poe Larity: Won’t he get chilly?
opiejeanne
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: And what year? Not this one, I hope.
Mnemosyne
@Poe Larity:
Bloomberg’s humiliating public defeat wasn’t enough of an object lesson for Cuban?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: This country.
@opiejeanne: This year.
I saw this on the local sports report last night.
Joey Maloney
@Poe Larity: Yeah, and I’m leaving the door open to marrying Dakota Fanning.
Archon
Seeing how lack of empathy for people outside their circle is the defining characteristic for American conservatives it should have been impossible for Orson Scott Card to write Enders Game and especially Speaker For the Dead.
i actually had a real moment of cognitive dissonance when I found out he was a right-wing loon.
David Evans
I couldn’t finish The Three-Body Problem because the science was flatly impossible. Not in a “we don’t know how to do that” way but in a “we know that’s not true” way. I can accept that in fantasy but these books pretend to be science fiction.
@Major Major Major Major:
SenyorDave
I think Cuban entering the race would be good for Biden. I can’t imagine many Democrats voting for him over Biden. But I can imagine some Republicans voting to for him over Trump. Independents, not sure, but don’t think it would favor either.
James E Powell
@Jay:
I think your D is probably the most common.
I never had any interest in reading Ayn Rand’s books because I saw her on Phil Donahue when I was in college and I thought she was an a-hole. Then, every person I ever met spoke with admiration about her books was also an a-hole. Eventually I read Anthem, Fountainhead, and about half of Atlas Shrugged. It all made sense, I could see why a-holes would like her books.
ThresherK
@Poe Larity: My favorite thing about The Fountainhead was that its movie is some pretty decent soapy goodness. It’s not great, but it goes on the list of “they made that out of that?” films made from awful books.
King Vidor directed it; he also directed The Crowd. That’s a helluva alpha and omega going on.
Gvg
Those don’t seem like very likely answers at all. I don’t believe them. I doubt the report. And I am not as impressed with Abrams’ as others here are, kinda meh, but maybe OK. I just think it’s time to look out for ratfucking memes on any possible democratic VP picks. Sure we want to vet them closely, because of Biden’s age, but keep in mind we are running against a Russian stooge.
Geminid
At one point in his career Paul Ryan would cite Ayn Rand as his greatest intellectual influence. Then a Democratic challenger dug up video of a creepy Ayn Rand telling an audience that of course there is no God, and ran a campaign ad featuring the video and one of Ryan claiming her influence. He won the election, but afterwards when asked about his greatest intellectual influence Paul Ryan would reply, “St. Augustine.”
geg6
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh lord. Takes her down a few pegs in my eyes.
different-church-lady
Look, it’s easy to make fun of cove paint, but I DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING INCOME FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE.
Uncle Cosmo
@Anne Laurie: I spent an evening in a tete-to-tete with Ayjay Budrys when he was GoH at Balticon many moons ago, polishing off 2 bottles of excellent Riesling and solving the problems of the multiverse. (The program we agreed on did not survive the hangovers.) One of my good memories from younger days on the respectable fringe of SF fandom.
And Chip Delany is one of the reasons I never seriously tried my hand at SF – he proved to me that it’s damnably hard to write well, while other well-selling scribblers demonstrated that it’s all to easy to write badly & still find enough
suckersreaders to pay the utilities bills & get comped to the occasional con. (I still have no idea WTF he was up to in Dhalgren.)But Arseson Scoff Crud is another matter. The Ender canon is somewhat redeemed in later volumes by the protagonist’s remorse for earlier xenocide & attempts to make amends by finding a home for the Hive Queen…but nothing excuses his later plunge off the deep end. I’ve known a few Later-The-Same-Day Saints who were decent & reasonable folk; he ain’t one of ’em.
(I have a few other somewhat-interesting memories, including a couple of Roger Zelazny, I’ll share one of these days if someone axes me nice. :^D)
leeleeFL
@cain: I am disappoint. Ayn Rand did not write literature, she wrote fever dream BS.
Connor Cochran
@Uncle Cosmo: Asking nicely.
leeleeFL
@Jay: I quote that ALL THE FLIPPIN TIME!
LarrytheRed
This is the logic of John Roberts and pals gutting the Voting Rights Act – it worked so well that we don’t need it anymore.
Kattails
@Amir Khalid: Re: places telling T. to pound sand for rally permits. Fourteen cities are suing Trumplestilstkins’ campaign for millions of dollars for police protection owed them.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@Kattails: Yeah, If I was the Mayor of a city, and Covid-19 wasn’t happening, I would definitely say “money up front” before allowing a rally for Trump.
Anya
For the longest time I thought Alexandra Petri was married to Ezra Klein. And I gave him points for that.
SteverinoCT
I’ve liked Enders Game and (less) Speaker for the Dead since a lad, but the books after that not so much. OSC did one about time-viewers and Columbus that made me think, and a couple about Old Testament patriarchs that I found interesting. But you have to understand where he’s coming from: someone mentioned Heinlein, and as I re-re-read him I get a different perspective than I did when I was 17.
I just re-read Captains Courageous and hadn’t realized how Kipling threw around the N-word. He was a reporter, and that’s what he saw/heard.
sdhays
Maybe because at the end of Atlas Shrugged all the assholes lock themselves up on an island, leaving everyone else in peace?
(Disclosure: I haven’t actually read it.)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Unfortunately, this virus has been killing urban voters, especially African-Americans. It is killing Democratic voters more than Trump voters,
taumaturgo
@Mnemosyne: The temptation for those who are constantly sniffing for money and profits to become the king of corruption heaven is irresistible.
J R in WV
Orson Scott Card, in real life, is a raging homophobic hater.
I don’t actually see this in his fiction, where he avoids gay folks at all costs – they literally do not exist in his fiction that I can recall.
Which is his goal in real life. They should either get “cured” or move to another world away from him, or just all die so as to not squick him out so much.
A despicable piece of work. Once I learned that about him I abandoned reading his work and threw his books I had on the shelf away in the trash to reside in a landfill cell for all time. Probably should have burned them, stuff in a properly built landfill cell lasts for a very long time. I would hate for alien scientists to find those novels, 200 million years from now, decode them, and think we are all like Card.
JaneE
A group of these idiots in my state made the news yesterday.
At this point, if they want to congregate and go back to work, let them replace the pork processors in South Dakota, or the orderlies cleaning hospitals or the grocery checkers or anyone else who has to work and put themselves at risk, but don’t want to die.
If we only lost 1% of them to Covid-19, the world would be a better place.
John Revolta
So I looked into this……………..Abrams’ list apparently comes from an interview with Womanetics, which is or was a business development service in Atlanta. They seem to be defunct……I can’t find a date for the interview but she won an award from them in 2011 so it could well be from then. (The article that Eli Massey refers to is from 2015.) Long time ago, and she may have been trying to play up her image as a business-type person…………..I’d like to hear what she has to say about this today before I make my mind up.
eddie blake
@Uncle Cosmo:
the amber series was one of my favorite reads as a youth. any cool adventures or anecdotes about zelazny would be GREATLY appreciated.
Tehanu
That is not an improvement. I’ve hated St. Augustine since my first year in college, when I read that he justified the idea of original sin by pointing out that a baby crying distracts his mother from praying.