Is it a good thing or a bad thing that I’m not writing today?
It feels good not to write, since that’s what I’m not doing. True, I’m sitting at the computer, and my fingers are flying over the fingerboard (since I’m not writing I don;’t have to think—and should I leave that typo on “don;’t” back there? Think so, since I’m not thinking and I’m not writing.)
So I’m typing this morning—just little Marc at the keyboard. I don’t have to tell you that Trump is in Britain, making an ass out himself and us. Melania has turned up as well. Oh, and a guy named Jimmy Kimmel just got fired from his late-night show at ABC. He said something mean about Charlie Kirk.
Oh wait—he was just quoting.
Anyway, Disney owns ABC, but wants to own Nexstar, which is located in Texas. So they fired Kimmel, who was funny (which we always like) and truthful (not so much). So now it’s Kimmel who’s out, and Steven Colbert as well, and nobody has any doubts that the next person on the line will be…
…who?
Ah, who!
That’s the big question, and the central question. The seemingly random, capricious nature of the attack on individuals by our country isn’t random at all. It’s quite intentional—make sure that everybody knows that you could be next. A Mexican waiting for someone to swing by Home Depot and hire him for a day, a Tufts student named Rümeysa Öztürk, a superstar comedian like Kimmel—no one is safe. Get over the idea that anyone is safe, and get over the idea that you will even know if you’re safe or not.
Look at me. I’m an old drunk living in Puerto Rico, who has a blog with less than 600,000 hits. I am nothing, as unimportant as a Tufts student. Rümeysa Öztürk never imagined that anything would happen to her, and that if it did, people would surely come to the rescue.
What—stick my neck out for a grad student from Turkey?
Well, she’s gotten quite an education, here in the United States, and very likely at Tufts as well. Great school.
Used to be a great country.
Rümeysa Öztürk walked out of her apartment several months ago to go have dinner with a friend. Or maybe she was off to a religious event—I can’t remember, and since I’m not writing here, I don’t have to find out.
The point is that I also left the house this morning, and nothing more dramatic happened than spilling some coffee on the way to the bus station. But I don’t know about tomorrow. I don’t know, you don’t know, and the worst thing about it is that they don’t know.
This has all been carefully planned, this overthrow of their democratic system. The Americans have overthrown their system of government with their characteristic energy and efficiency.
You did pick up on those “theirs,” didn’t you?
If I am picked up, it’ll probably not be intentional. I’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, probably saying the wrong things, as I always do. No fisherman sets out to net one particular fish. He just throws the net out and sees what gets trapped in it.
Those Americans!
They’re as impersonal as they are efficient.
But we are nice, as D. H. Lawrence once said:
It’s a serious charge, to be nice. It makes me think of another quote that I got from Muriel Spark’s novel about the Abbess of Crewe: Virtue she finds too painful an endeavor, Content to dwell in decencies forever.
That turns out to be from Alexander Pope. Not that I’m writing, or anything. But I was curious, and happy to track the quote down. Now I can say, without being utterly dishonest, that I have read Alexander Pope.
And I can say that I’ve sat down to do the daily typing. I can’t save this damn country that I love…
…but I can type!
