Month: June 2025

You Get Out

“It’s all almost too stereotypical,” Shore reflects. “A 1930s-style military parade as a performative assertion of the Führerprinzip,” she says, referring to the doctrine established by Adolf Hitler, locating all power in the dictator. “As for Los Angeles, my historian’s intuition is that sending in the national guard is a provocation that will be used to foment violence and justify martial law. The Russian word of the day here could be provokatsiia.”

Yes, “the lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later:

Last month, Shore, together with her husband and fellow scholar of European history, Timothy Snyder, and the academic Jason Stanley, made news around the world when they announced that they were moving from Yale University in the US to the University of Toronto in Canada. It was not the move itself so much as their motive that garnered attention. As the headline of a short video op-ed the trio made for the New York Times put it, “We Study Fascism, and We’re Leaving the US”.

Starkly, Shore invoked the ultimate warning from history. “The lesson of 1933 is: you get out sooner rather than later.” She seemed to be saying that what had happened then, in Germany, could happen now, in Donald Trump’s America – and that anyone tempted to accuse her of hyperbole or alarmism was making a mistake. “My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, ‘We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.’ I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying, ‘Our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship.’ And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

—The Guardian

It’s great if you can get out, but like in 1933, not many of us can leave. Would Canada take us? Nearing retirement, no money, not famous, not Ivy League professors, not … anything? Just like the United States in 1933, most countries would reject us. Oh, yes. But we would go if we could.

Everything Old is New Again

Williams Shirer on editing his college newspaper. We’re still experiencing the same stuff today.

Williams Shirer on editing his college newspaper. We’re still experiencing the same stuff today. My own mother told me in 2024 that “You can’t be a Christian and vote for a Democrat.”

Same ol’, same ol’.

Nothing to Say

I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. It’s my epitaph, along with “Yet Another Patron Saint of Mediocrity.”

I have nothing to say. On paper. Probably in person. Mute all my life except brief bursts of productivity. Newspaper/school PR work 1088=1994. Northpoint Communications internal PR 1998-2000. That’s work. But what can I write personally? There’s a story about eternal life I’ve worked on for years. Another book about plane crashes— midairs this time. That’s it.

I don’t need immortality. No problem with dying. Just want to express … something.

I am Salieri (in Mozart). Many loved Mozart, wanted to be him. No one wanted to be Salieri, especially not the one in the movie. I would love to be even that good. Be at least the patron saint of mediocrity. I loved that line. Of all I remember of Amadeus, that’s the line.

I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. It’s my epitaph, along with “Yet Another Patron Saint of Mediocrity.”

No problem doing a variety of things through life. I am not just one thing. But it would have been nice to be good, even great, at one thing during a lifetime.

“The potential for greatness lives within each of us,” said American track star and Olympic medalist Wilma Rudolph

Well, it might live there within us, but it rarely goes from potential to actual greatness. Especially in folks like me. Or in 99.99% of us.

I’m the “Incredibly Average Vernon Persons” from M*A*S*H, the hometown mediocrity who was always in the newspaper from Hawkeye’s Crabapple Cove. Hawkeye hated that guy. Except I don’t get even Vernon Parson’s recognition (Not that I need it-I just want to do anything that would would be worthy of anyone’s notice. I’m not even average and recognized. Just average.

In a majority of deaf, dumb, blind, scentless, touchless  people often incapable of feeling even adequate in life.

So yes, without hearing, sight, taste, touch, smell. That’s me.

I don’t want to “just feel something.” I feel too much already, but I don’t feel with greatness. I don’t feel anything of greatness.

“Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude,” said writer and entrepreneur Ralph Marston, who is probably incredibly average, but gets quoted in books.

Excellence is attitude? No, it means actually excelling at something. Actually doing it.

I’m not competitive. I don’t have to be the “best” at something. Best whatever is often fabricated, artificial.

I hate competition, actually. And “excellence” is subjective as hell. Just as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so too is it that one man’s “Excellent Best” is another man’s “You suck.”

Which puts me on another old man tangent: To us gays, “You suck” is a compliment not an insult. Yes, I suck, but I also SUCK. It’s fabulous. But to straight boys, it’s the feminine role, it’s submissive. And real straight boys don’t do that, they believe.

I seriously don’t understand straight guys. They’re kinda filthy all the time. Now I’ve met a couple of gay slobs over the years. But they can’t hold a candle to a straight guy. When they live alone, they have no taste for creating a comfortable environment whee=re they live. Their laundry probably hasn’t been done in weeks. Dressing means a sniff test. Which rarely passes, but they wear it anyway.

But the biggest question I have is, “Why do straight guys think we gays just want to get in their pants?” What is their obsession with butts and their terror that something is going into their butts? I don’t get it. First, they’re missing out on some really awesome fun. But why, with so many gay men around, would I want to violate a straight guy? Good god, boys, get a grip.

The very large majority of us want nothing to do with straight guys. We’ve been bullied by them all our lives. They grow up and try to get us arrested, eliminated through legislation and terroristic assaults. Some of them are admittedly pretty. But you, the gay guy, will always get stung if you touch. Stay away.

More quotes: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity,” said Albert Einstein, who is described in the notebook as a “German-American physicist and Nobel Prize winner.

Yes, the opportunity to fail or succeed. The opportunity to just roll with whatever result comes from the difficult moment.

Another quote: “Always do right.  This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest,” said Mark Twain, described simply and without excellence, as an “American writer.” I can get behind this one. Do the right thing is more important to me that doing what others perceive as the “excellent” or “best” thing.

It is good to do right. That’s all the best excellence I need.

I guess that’s the end of tonight’s stream of consciousness. As usual, drying up. And as usual, I suck.