Monday, December 14, 2020

"... darkness at the edge of noon..."

Today I woke up and looked at twitter and saw there was important news.Today is the day when the electoral college gathers its members to vote and tally their numbers. By day's end the US should have a consensus on who their next President should be. Most people know it to be President-elect Joe Biden. This election though has not been an entirely regular process. Instead, the attendant activities performed mostly by the incumbent's partisans and his advocates across the country, in addition to the offices usually referred to as the outgoing administration, all follow rather irregular patterns. None of which follow previous patterns.

For instance, it's highly unusual that over fifty legal suits have been presented pressing and contesting various state's election tallies and their various bodies, all from the Trump factions. Of those suits decided, not any have yet to be won by the plaintiffs. There have been violent actions in the streets and various threats against public election officials, and others up to the level of governors, in the same party, in GA and AZ and PA. 

A couple plots of domestic terror against public officials are also extremely unusual, including a kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer in MI. These have been investigated and publicized and the culprits arrested. 

This morning an international breach of major internet platforms occurred disrupting access of popular sites and publicly available systems like google and youtube and facebook. Also big news this morning is the hack of US Dept of Homeland Security. That's highly unusual and rather worrisome but this follows late Saturday's news that an internet hack had compromised the US Dept.'s of Commerce and Treasury. Reuters confirmed the first elements of this story Sunday afternoon. Which means many are just today learning of the hacks and the compromised position of much of our publicly held personal information that has been affected. And many are saying of course that Russians are behind the hacks. If the Russian mob wanted to run our country they could largely do it on what those bureaus know. So there should be fallout from this story.

Of course there is a solar eclipse visible from South America today.

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The continuing death from the COVID-19 virus remains devastating. From six days ago:


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From December 1, 2020: 

As winter looms once again in the US, in the days following this year's muted, chaotic Thanksgiving celebration, a resettling of gloom slowly spreads. Not much of any dawning awareness or some scattered silver-lined boundary glitters much on the periphery. Not much to speak of anyway. All the concentric circles around the present moment seem hard, black, impenetrable, utterly opaque and without a bit of shine or polish, and still dusty.

The French were out this weekend to let everyone know that Black, is again, the New Black. Again.

In fact, a case could be made that the people in the street are just playing their role in the cycle. Souns simple enough but it is vastly more complicated then some high points I list here. Protests and demonstrations in France sprang in part from a brutal beating the previous week during strikes. On the 28th of November massive protests occurred all over France, this time in Paris over new guidance and surveillance orders set down from the government making it illegal to publish police in actions  anywhere. [ed. These state edicts have been somewhat curbed.]  These new edicts, of course, follow in part horrific attacks - including brutal beheadings - on peaceable citizens, in public in October. These attacks came following the publication of incendiary images published for the public which blatantly mocked the prophet Mohammad. It was just under five years ago that the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine was attacked killing twelve in a story that captured the world's attention. 

Never a good time but,


Across the Atlantic more hospitals and cities say their Intensive Care Units and morgues are full. El Paso, TX may be the worst case now. Can the Dakotas be far behind? 

The greater economies for the majority of the world's living inhabitants, is either in tatters or in the process of being meticulously shredded. Just in time for the Christmas season! But the stock market hit a new high topping 30,000 for the first time in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index. Bitcoin too is reaching its all time high hitting $19,000 this past Tuesday.

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But late last year I had instead decided to read more history this year of 2020, following a couple years having focused more on fiction. Still I didn't really put down the Dos Passos for very long except when things at work got too busy for the time. Then in March when the pandemic hit hard, and continued, and now it seems, I take more downtime since ...April. The writing habit fell by the wayside.

This last weeks (November 2020) or so my tight circle of focus has been reading early fiction of Dos Passos & Georges Simenon, & alternately, the Paris Review and the New York Review of Books in subscription. In September I saw an ad for a cheap subscription to both of the latter and looked up and thought, 'Oh! I used to love that and felt I learned so much! And look, it's twenty years on, and ... the world looks very different today."

Reading that avidly has been a blessing as a discipline in disguise for me since I quit my other job recently, as those should keep me mentally active with new stimuli. I had received that and Granta twenty years ago and loved them then when I lived downtown. Anyway, I had looked up and thought, it would be good to see how those many voices see the world today as those, as it turns out, still regular publications, still have their reach in topics and clarity, and both depth and breadth of perception. This week in particular I started looking at the archives of the Paris Review in their Interviews with writers and poets. For their techniques, and for what they listen for. That goes back some sixty odd years.

Last year, as I was saying, there was the Russian history I'd committed to read this year. Bios of Lenin, and Trotsky by Dmitri Volkogonov got finished with most of the Stalin one done too. A couple dozen short stories from Anton Chekhov followed a British history of Eurasian intrigue by Peter Hopkin. This led up thru WWI from the 1860's on. It focused on explaining the conflicts and aspirations among mostly western powers, the UK & Germany, but Persia, Russia & the Ottomans, all over central and west asia. Hero stories of spy networks amid competing paths to the Indian Ocean with the UK playing the dominant role (and therefore always a bit behind the ball) ... encounters with central Asian heads, the fight for Baku, how 1917 affected things,etc.

Once mostly done with the earlier bios (reviews to come later, maybe), I started A People's Tragedy, by Orlando Figes. Making a splash in the 1990's, it's a straight ahead narrative that pulls in lots of different walks of life and perspectives to establish multiple settings, and then steers a course through late 19th and early 20th c. Russian history up to the Stalin era. In just over 800 pages. I should be reading it right now and wanted done with it last month. It's a rich well-told story and gets all the praise in the western press as the accepted standard still. It's just so sad and so full of so much promise made so useless. A few chapters from the Will Durant series - on Peter, Catherine and Frederick II of Prussia - helped some for the basic background. I have to be careful with him though. He tells such a good story I have to remember he leaves out so much and de-emphasizes or prioritizes certain areas which create lopsided views. I have to remind myself it's just one 'viewing platform' among many, which is harder to do when there's so much in the Durant's telling. The Orlando Figes tome I started in July.

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