Trust Fund Babies

 He had a lifelong desire to earn a living,
which helped keep him grounded.

— Julian Baggini

"Let me tell you about the very rich," F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote. 

"They are different from you and me. 

"They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. 

"They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are."

Outside of trust fund babies, who doesn't loathe trust fund babies?

They're loathsome because they're born with immunity to all quotidian hardships.

While the rest of us worry what the boss really thinks, how much longer the car will last, and whether to pay the whole credit card bill this month, they worry about the currents next week off Barbados, whether to hang the Basquiat alongside the Beeple, and what to wear to Saturday's steeplechase.

They're not immune, of course, to overdoses, cirrhosis, cancers, or car accidents.

That, at least, is satisfying.

Numerically, trust fund babies are small in number.

Almost 75% of the super-rich 1% have earned their wealth; and only 16% have inherited "old money" (earned two, three or four generations ago).

Nonetheless, that 16% represents 527,000 people to loathe.

These loathsome people have inherited, on average, $2.7 million, according to the Federal Reserve. 

That's $447 for every $1 inherited by the poor.

And not all trust fund babies are, of course, airheaded wastrels. 

History is rife with trust fund babies who worked hard and changed the world.

Buddha. St. Francis. Lafayette. Cézanne. Tolstoy. Bertrand Russell. Edith Wharton. FDR. JFK. William S. Burroughs. Gloria Vanderbilt. Anderson Cooper.

The list is long.

But we tend to stereotype trust fund babies.

Unfairly advantaged in almost every stage and walk of life, they're spoiled and lazy; vain and vapid; aloof and self-righteous; petty and paranoid.

Bolstered by wealth, they are directionless, and know nothing of failure and hardship.

Perpetual child actors, "their life is a series of highlight reels," says writer Tim Denning.

But the trust fund baby would tell us we're guilty of envy, and that envy's a sin.

"Envy rots the bones," Proverbs says.

Envy is insecurity masquerading as resentment: it invites you to compare yourself to others who, by dint of good luck, enjoy status you lack—and to cultivate hatred for them.

"Envy is a mind game with our sinful nature," says Christian writer Quinn Jackson.

"At its core, envy comes from the lack of belief that God is all powerful, cares about you deeply and has wonderful plans for your life."

Envy is in fact so sinful, Jackson says, it's practically inadmissible. 

To admit to being envious is to admit you're "ungenerous, mean, and small-hearted."

Hogwash.

At its core, envy seeks justice.

Envy resides within the heart of democracy.

Envy isn't hate; it's contempt, targeted, in this case, at unearned moneyed privilege—and the power it wields over us, even if only potentially.

As a member of the trust fundless, that contempt is my right.

You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.

A Horse Named Charley

Charley Horse. A muscular pain, cramping, or stiffness that results from a strain or bruise.

— Webster's Dictionary

In March 1886, a sportswriter for The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that a local baseball player was suffering a "brand new disease" called a Charley Horse.

In fact, sportswriters around the country had been reporting many instances of the new disease.

A writer for The Boston Globe reported that the disease would cause a ballplayer to run around the field "after the fashion of a boy astride of a wooden horse, sometimes called a Charley Horse."

But what, readers wondered, was a pro baseball Charley Horse?

A writer for The Wheeling Intelligencer unearthed the answer:

"The disease consists of a peculiar contraction and hardening of the muscles and tendons of the thigh, to which ballplayers are liable from sudden starting and stopping in chasing balls. 

"Shortstop Jack Glasscock is said to have originated the name because the way the men limped around reminded him of an old horse he once owned named Charley."

While they agreed on the symptoms, not all sportswriters accepted the name's origin story.

A sportswriter for The Chicago Tribune attributed the name to horse racing, where a lame horse was called a "Charley."

A writer for The Grand Rapids Daily Democrat said the name came from manufacturing, where lame horses called "Charlies" were used to pull carts.

And a writer for The Washington Post said that the name came from a ballplayer,  Charlie "Hoss" Radbourn, who often experienced leg cramps while running bases.

While it might seem odd that sportswriters of the 1880s would label Charley Horse a disease, keep in mind that physicians today say that frequent Charley Horses—especially the nocturnal kind—can signal other, fatal diseases, including alcoholism, ALS, cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, diabetes, kidney failure, Parkinson’s, MS, and lung cancer.

Photo by Rachel Morrison

Gundamentalist Mike

Not only do we have Second Amendment rights because
God gives them to us, but also the Gospel.

— Marty Daniel

Among the scores of abhorrent characters created by novelist William Faulkner, the small-town vigilante Percy Grimm was one of the most abhorrent.

Whenever justice needed a hand, Percy Grimm donned his National Guard uniform, holstered his automatic, and assembled a posse—mostly poker players from the American Legion hall.

In Light in August, while leading such a posse, Percy chases down the escaped mulatto convict Joe Christmas, shoots him, and castrates him, shouting, "Now you’ll let white women alone, even in hell.”

Faulkner created Percy Grimm in 1932.

Years later, the novelist would describe him as a "Fascist galahad," a two-bit storm trooper who's only tolerated by townspeople because they find his patriotism "quicker and truer than theirs."

"He's not prevalent," Faulkner said, "but he's everywhere."

Percy Grimm is indeed everywhere, even today; presently in the form of the gundamentalist.

Like the members of any cult, the gundamentalist simply cannot abide a mainstream viewpoint.

In the case of the gundamentalist, the mere hint of "gun control" unleashes a Grimm-like fear of miscegenation.

I'll give you an example.

This Wednesday, local police arrested a crazed gunman in a town near me, just 24 hours after the mass shooting in Texas.

Their report, posted on Facebook, identified one of the gunman's weapons as an AR-15.

The police report generated a heated discussion about the right to own AR-15s for hunting.

When stating her opposition to the weapon for that (or any) purpose, Diane mistakenly called the AR-15 an "assault rifle," instead of an "automatic rifle."

That provoked Gundamentalist Mike to scold Diane for her Liberal's ignorance:

"Good lord!," Mike wrote. "AR stands for 'Armalite,' not 'Assault Rifle.' 'Assault Rifle' is a fake, Democrat talking point used since the 90’s. Picture a stock Mustang or Camaro. Then picture that same car with 'accessories' designed to make it look more sporty, or badass, if you will... plus with engine/drivetrain work designed to make it perform better than factory. That’s all an AR-15 is. It’s a hunting rifle, with accessories."

Diane, ladylike, apologized for her error, prompting Liberal Tom to jump in and say to Mike, "What a bunch of nonsense! You are trying to tell me that an AR-15 is just a .22 bolt action with accessories. The AR-15 is not a hunting weapon."

After much insult-trading between Mike and Tom, I commented to Mike, "Well, you sure do love your guns. Guess they substitute for virility."

Mike replied, "Hardly. And a very typical, and pedestrian statement. But as a gun enthusiast, yeah they’re pretty cool. It’s OK to be scared, just don’t belittle everyone else who isn’t."

He punctuated his comment with a half dozen predictably puerile emoticons.

"Who's scared?" I asked.

"Apparently you," Mike replied, "if you think having a gun has anything to do with manhood. That’s just a stupid fucking statement. It’s OK to be scared of them, I just don’t happen to be."

I then offered gun-loving Mike—who looks like a biker—some food for thought. 

"Men experiencing SD are no more likely to own guns than men without SD," I wrote. "However, the members of the Second Amendment Cult work overtime to compensate for inadequate genitalia by decking themselves out as angels of death. The cult itself connects gun ownership with SD."

Mike responded, "That wins the Internet for the stupidest comment of the day so far."

With Percy Grimm in mind, I replied, "The failure of a mythical America to materialize has resulted in a flight by White men into predictable defense mechanisms: regression into childlike tantrums and abject dependence on unquestioned authority; the projection onto the historical victims of violence—including castration—the desire to perform symbolic castration by taking away 'our guns;' the projection onto the victims of sexual predation, whose supposedly dangerous sexuality must by controlled by laws and police power, the desire to take 'our' women; the seemingly natural identification with the real oppressor, whose interests his victims force themselves to believe are their own, and whose bidding they will willingly do, if it gives them an opportunity to assert illusory power. This can be understood to be, at least in part, a psychosexual disorder, common to modern men struggling to survive contemporary capitalism in multicultural societies."

That quieted Mike.

And with that I feel it's now time for coffee.

Thoughts and Prayers

I am a proud supporter of the Second Amendment and will do everything I can to oppose gun grabs by the Far Left.

— Rep. Tony Gonzales

Tony Gonzales represents Uvalde, Texas, where the morgue is stuffed this morning with young children.

Most are so badly shot up, the coroners can't identify them.

Gonzales used Twitter a few hours ago to provide constituents an 800 number to call, if they feel distressed and "need to talk." 

A call to the number will be answered by a federal employee who works at one of the 180 "Lifeline" call centers operated by the US government. 

Each call costs taxpayers $82.

If every adult in Gonzales' district were to call the 800 number just one time, taxpayers would owe nearly $63 million.

That's how Republicans spend our money?

Anyway, from his biography, Gonzales looks like an admirable guy.

He used the US Navy to climb out of poverty and today champions hard work and education. He's married to a woman named Angel and has six children.

My thought for the day is that, although his fellow party members would deny it, Rep. Gonzales and the GOP stand squarely behind the Uvalde shooter. You could say the GOP's finger was on the trigger.

My prayer for the day is that Gonzales finds the words to explain to his six children why so many other kids have to die every month to prevent "gun grabs by the Far Left."

Good luck with that, Congressman.

Fake News' Forerunner

When you strike at the morale of a people,
you strike at the deciding factor.

— William "Wild Bill" Donovan

You may recall that, in March, a web video circulated in which Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked fellow Ukrainians to surrender.

Forensics experts within hours identified it as a "deepfake," and the major platform providers deleted the video—but not until this Russian-made propaganda piece had reached millions.

When we think of fake news, we tend to think of Russia, Q-Anon, and—first and foremost—Fox News.

But the US government perfected the art of fake news—at the time called "black propaganda"—80 years ago.

In March 1943, against FDR's wishes, Colonel "Wild Bill" Donovan formed the Morale Operations Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

Forerunner of the CIA, the OSS had been Wild Bill's brainchild. 

He modeled it after Britain's MI-6 to function as an immense spy ring comprising 13,000 soldiers and civilians, including celebrities like John Ford, Sterling Hayden, Stephen Vincent Benet, Archibald MacLeish, Robert E. Sherwood, Paul Mellon, Carl Jung and Julia Child (over a third of the spies were women).

But the Moral Operations Branch was something else. 

It was specialized.

A distant admirer of Joseph Goebbels, Wild Bill fashioned Morale Operations to be the US government's propaganda arm. 

Its mission: to sow doubt and distrust within the armies and civilian populations of the Axis nations.

You win a war, "by mystifying and misleading the enemy," Wild Bill said.  

"When you strike at the morale of a people, you strike at the deciding factor."

To this end, Morale Operations manufactured and delivered tens of thousands of pieces of fake news during World War II:

• It airdropped into Germany fake newspapers that claimed anti-Hitler resistance was on the rise.
  
  
• It airdropped flyers that showed the US produced a new warplane every five minutes—far more than Germany.
  
  
• It printed facsimiles of an official Nazi flyer after D-Day, changing the text to instruct German soldiers to shoot their own officers, should they order a retreat. The Germans unwittingly circulated the fake flyers among their troops.
  
  
• It mailed fake letters to the families of German soldiers that claimed their deceased sons were victims of mercy killings by Nazi doctors.
  
  
• It produced a fake weekly economics newsletter that suggested German businesses would prosper if the Nazi Party were removed from power.
  
  
• It instigated rumors designed to incite rebellion in Nazi-occupied territories. The rumors described successful revolts and assassinations that had never happened.
  
  
• It broadcast music programs on a fake radio station, embedding news reports of German defeats every hour on the hour. After Operation Valkyrie, the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, newscasters announced the names of hundreds of "suspects," hoping Germans would conclude that the plot was widespread than it actually was. The Gestapo executed 2,500 of the "suspects."

Even though FDR deplored such tactics, "Wild Bill" outlined them in the Morale Operations Field Manual, a 60-page handbook he published in January 1943.

The top secret manual stated that field personnel engaged in Moral Operations must be reliable Americans with "demonstrated proficiency in administrative affairs and the theory and practice of influencing human beings."

In their jobs, all field personnel would "within the enemy's country, incite and spread dissension, confusion, and disorder; promote subversive activities; and depress the morale of his people."

Monetizing Mania

The grief, trauma, and physical isolation of the last two years have driven Americans to a breaking point.

— President Joe Biden

Marketing guru Mark Schaefer thinks businesses can cash in on Americans' mania.

Mania may be "the biggest marketing megatrend of the decade," he says. "It’s bigger than the metaverse because it impacts almost everybody."

Businesses can monetize mania in any number of ways, Schaefer suggests. They can:

• Offer customers spas, massages, and "stress-relieving activities like yoga, meditation, and running;"
  
  
• Provide them sleep aids, alcohol, comfort food, and games;
  
  
• Offer psychological counseling (both online and in-person);

• Support customers' hobbies (painting, knitting, cooking, woodworking, etc.); and
  
  
• Deliver products and services that capitalize on nostalgia.

"If you think this through," Schaefer says, "the changes being forged by stress and mental health could impact how, when, and where customers shop, how they consume content, and who they trust."

I think Schaefer is onto something. 

The pandemic has brought about a sea change. 

Every day is now a Manic Monday.

In response, I believe, businesses can take steps now to attract and retain crazed customers:

• First, redesign your frustrating telephone tree. Allow customers the option of skipping all announcements and dialing the CEO. Encourage them to leave him verbally abusive messages and offer weekly prizes for the most creative ones.
  
  
• Retrain all customer service reps (CSRs) to impersonate Mr. Rogers. Retain only those whose impersonations are dead on.  
  
  
• Provide cannabis-laced cookies and brownies in your reception areas and waiting rooms. Serve customers only CBD-infused coffee and tea.
  
  
• Imprint punching bags with the faces of your senior executives and place the bags throughout your offices.
  
  
• Send post-purchase surveys that allow only complaints.
  
  
• Instead of tee shirts, give away branded straight jackets.

Mania represents the marketing megatrend of the decade.

How will you cash in on it?

POSTSCRIPT: I don't make light of America's mental health crisis, only marketers' urge to monetize it. Should you be suffering, find a quiet room, grab a cool beverage, and sit down and read Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. 

Target

I know how it feels to be the Kremlin's target.

After establishing that I'm a homosexual (although I'm straight), the Kremlin engineered my lifetime erasure on LinkedIn. All because I spoke in favor of limited gun ownership.

Don't cross these boys, as Nina Jankowicz also learned this week.

A graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, a Fulbright scholar, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a noted author, Jankowicz was removed Wednesday by Homeland Security from its new Disinformation Governance Board.

The Kremlin doesn't care for her, because she served while a Fulbright scholar in the foreign ministry of Ukraine in Kiev in 2017 and wrote a book in 2020 titled How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News and the Future of Conflict.

Worse yet, Jankowicz advised Volodymyr Zelenskyy on matters of Russian disinformation.

So when President Biden announced in April that she would head the new board, the Kremlin went into overdrive, deploying all its favorite mouthpieces (including Tucker Carlson and Senator Ron Johnson) to belittle Jankowicz.

These Kremlin mouthpieces threatened to rape her, kill her, and murder her family members. They called her mentally ill, a whore, a propogandist for the "great replacement," and—worst of all—a "nasty Jew" (Jankowicz isn't nasty or Jewish, just as I'm not homosexual).

They pulled out all the stops and the hatchet job worked in under three weeks.

One thing you can say about the Kremlin and its American mouthpieces: they may be effective, but they're not terribly original.

Womb with a View

Claiming to be a victim is not a sign of virtue.
It's a strategy for narcissists.

— Adam Grant

The day after the news broke that the Supreme Court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade, Stephen Colbert quipped, "Congratulations, ladies, your decisions are being made by four dudes and a woman who thinks The Handmaid’s Tale is a rom-com."

That pretty much sums things up.

In this week's edition of Crisis Magazine, walking womb and resident wacko Samantha Stephenson argues that the two of three Americans who want the Court to uphold Roe, by disagreeing with the Court's decision, are "persecuting" pro-life Catholics. 

Poppycock.

Pro-life Catholics are not the victims of persecution; they're narcissists claiming to be so. If they want dominion over women, they should move to Afghanistan.

Not content with martyrdom, Stephenson further argues that Roe is "deeply damaging to women," because the right to an abortion is damaging.

"Abortion is not an equalizer," she says, "but an assault."

Again, poppycock.

Has any female patient ever said she felt assaulted by an abortionist?

Stephenson grounds her arguments on an essentialist claim: women are by definition child-bearers. 

Given this, any law that suggests otherwise must be "oppressive" and "coercive."

Roe not only sanctions abortion, Stephenson says, but makes it "increasingly difficult to opt out of its use." 

The law's real purpose, she claims, is to compel women to have abortions and "forgo childbearing."

"Instead of fighting for the freedom of women to be women—whose fertility and desire for motherhood are integral parts of their identity—abortion advocates insist that our liberty can only be found by muting our fertility and forcing our healthy bodies to mimic those of men," Stephenson says.

And there you have it: essentialism at its finest.

Women are by definition mothers. 

Roe compels them to be otherwise.

Therefore, Roe is wrong.

Essentialism has a long history of abuse by narcissists like Samantha Stephenson.

In fact, two and a half millennia of abuse.

Essentialism has been used to defend religious wars, slave-trafficking, colonialism, pogroms, and segregation. 

Now it's defending the overturn of Roe.    

Essentialism holds that everything has an essence—a set of attributes that make it what it is.

In other words, for any kind of thing, there exists a set of attributes all of which the thing must have to be correctly called by its name.

A man, for example, by definition walks on two legs, not four; uses tools and language; and is born, grows old, and dies. 

Those attributes define a man—and, by extension, every man. Every man shares in common what we call "human nature."

Ethical essentialism insists there are "essential rules" (absolutes) by which we live. 

The moral absolutism Samantha Stephenson favors claims that a law like Roe is wrong absolutely, because it contradicts a natural law and victimizes a whole class of citizens.

I don't buy that.

Women—non-Catholic ones, anyway—aren't just walking, talking wombs.

They're citizens. 

Roe protects their rights; it doesn't restrict them.

People like Stephenson who cry victimhood simply feel entitled.

In her case, she feels entitled to have children—three so far.

That's fine.

But she wants a trophy for it.

Narcissism engenders her feeling of entitlement. 

And narcissism makes Stephenson an aggressor and predator.

Not quite a wolf in sheep's clothing—more like a psycho in sackcloth.

What an insult to women's dignity.

Unwritten

Sometimes we regret our failure to write
about things that really interest us.

— E.B. White

Leaning on mutual experiences, writers often neglect to describe what's most vivid to them, because those things are usually trivial, ephemeral, and even embarrassing:

The blueberry and lemon pie that was baked in an Amish woman's kitchen. It remined me why humans have 10,000 separate taste buds.

The emerald-tinged background a Zoom caller used. It made her appear mighty and powerful, like a female Wizard of Oz.

The $300 check the state mailed to my house. It was a "gift" to help pay for gasoline. Delaware has more idle cash than Elon Musk.

A passage in The Searchers describing a harrowing skirmish with Comanches. "Sleep is good and books are better," R.R. Martin says. I love naps, but he's right: books are better. 

Speaking of books, the autographed first edition of Rabbit Run that I snagged off the web for $22. It arrived in the mailbox with the check from Delaware.

The Red Cross worker who spoke my first name every time she uttered a sentence. She either really liked me, or kept repeating my name to prevent her from labeling my blood-bag with some other donor's name. (There were four of us on her tables at once.)

The news from Odessa that Ukrainian soldiers digging a trench unearthed a trove of Ancient Roman amphorae, all in pristine condition.

The art teacher who told me that you're damned lucky to be married to such a beautiful woman.

The red fox in your backyard, out searching for a snack at twilight.

HAT TIP: This post was inspired by E.B. White's 1930 essay "Unwritten."

Words

It's only words and words are all I have to take your heart away.

— Barry Gibb

A stickler for words, I draw the line when you coin words to spare a group of people hurt feelings.

I'm not advocating the use of slurs and vulgarisms.

I refer to euphemisms.

Euphemisms are so Victorian.

So prim were they, Victorians couldn't abide mention of a breast or thigh at the dinner table. So they invented the terms white meat and dark meat. 

They couldn't mention the bathroom. They had to say restroom. 

They couldn't mention pants, only unmentionables. 

I'll take dysphemisms—straight talk—over euphemisms any day. 

Dog house over pet lodge. 

Stock market crash over equity retreat. 

Kill over pacify.

I've always been fond of comedian Jonathan Winters' famous dysphemism.

Winters, who suffered from bipolar disorder, was never committed to the psychiatric ward. 

He was sent to the rubber room.

Euphemisms are useful, of course, when we need to discuss taboo subjects or wish to shield others from unnecessary sorrow. 

They function in these instances as "verbal escape hatches."

But I lose patience with euphemisms when they're used dishonestly, whether by governments, corporations, political parties, or do-gooders.

When you say you plan revenue enhancements, do you think I don't know you mean higher taxes?

When you say new family size, do you think I don't know you shrank the amount of product in your package?

When you say climate change, do you think I don't know Earth's atmosphere is getting hotter?

When you say we need to aid the unhoused, do your think I don't know you mean the homeless?

Give me a break.

Your word substitutions are worthless.

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

There is always something new to be found in America's past that also brings greater clarity to our present, and to the future we choose to make as a nation.

— Eric Rhoads

I volunteer time and money to support a local "friends" group devoted to Cooch's Bridge Historic Site.

It's a labor of love.

A lifelong history buff, as a kid I never "got" why everyone wasn't equally enthralled by the past.

But I couldn't explain to anyone why—other than its romantic aspects—I found history so enchanting.

I had no explanation.

So I was delighted to discover in college that the 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had formed a theory of history that, for cogency, has never been topped.

Hegel thought that history is like nature: it evolves. 

Just as nature evolves toward more complex and harmonious systems, he argued, so does history. But where nature represents the material, history represents the spiritual.

History is the evolution of spirit (Geist).

Of course, that's a big leap from the record of events you'd find in a history textbook, or even the record found at an archeological dig. 

But Hegel distinguished three ways of understanding the past:

• Original history, which comprises eyewitness accounts of the past and historians' interpretation of those accounts. Hegel called this the "portrait of time."
  
  
• Reflective history, which comprises grand narratives of the past. Hegel distinguished four kinds of reflective history: universal, pragmatic, critical, and specialized. Universal history examines whole nations and peoples. Pragmatic history examines the past through the lens of an ideology, such as Christianity. Critical history examines the past with the aim of providing an alternative explanation of it (The 1619 Project is a contemporary example). Specialized history examines singular topics, such as furniture, art, munitions, or mass migrations.
  
  
• Philosophical history, which comprises the history of ideas. Here, events embody thought and are spiritual epiphanies. In other words, Hegel insisted, history is Geist manifesting itself. History is not a matter of dates and places, but of ceaselessly unfolding "logic."
  

Philosophical history reveals to us that history—despite the recurrences of greed, cruelty and sadism—is incremental progress. Looking back as philosophers, we see that the bad is always overcome by the good; that reason always prevails; and that freedom, the "soul truth of Geist," ultimately triumphs.

History, Hegel said, is Geist "in the process of working out the knowledge of that which it is potentially."

And that which Geist is potentially is personal freedom.

Above: Cooch's Bridge. Photo by Ann Ramsey.

Triumphs in Publicity #315

The art of publicity is a black art.

– Learned Hand

Publicists are dodgy by nature, but some handle it better than others.

A publicist who appeared on CNBC in October deserves a medal for his artful dodge.

He appeared on the weekday program Power Lunch to puff up investing in the tech firm Upstart.

The publicist was clearly addled when the host asked him a simple question.

"What does Upstart do? What kind of company is it?"

The publicist paused, frowned, then pretended his audio had cut out.

He never answered the question, leaving the host to confirm that Upstart was a great investment.

Triumph #315: 

Asked an unwelcome question, he claimed jiggy audio.

Postscript: CNBC has since declared Upstart a "disaster." On Friday, its stock price fell 55%, placing the company among the week's "top five biggest financial losers," according to Seeking Alpha.

Little Soul

Little souls who thirst for fight,

these men were born to drill and die.

— Stephen Crane

Like 190 thousand other Irishmen, Mike Folliard, my cousin six times removed, fled County Roscommon in the 1850s to escape starvation.

He wound up living on a farm outside leafy Franklin, New Jersey.

Mike was 18 in late July 1861, when Congress authorized formation of an army of 500 thousand volunteers—a call to arms that was immediately met by men like Mike, who enlisted for the thrill of marching into battle and the steady paycheck promised (Mike mailed all his army pay to Ireland, as boat fare for a widowed sister).

On August 27, Mike was mustered into the 1st New Jersey Cavalry (the "Jersey Cavaliers") at Trenton. At some point the next month, while stationed in Washington, DC, he visited a photography studio—likely that of Matthew Brady—to have his portrait taken in his handsome, new uniform.

That was the last time he'd do anything so civilized. 

Just a few weeks later, he found himself in Virginia, riding scout to defend the capital from Confederate takeover.

Cavalry was used throughout the Civil War as an infantry commanders' "eyes and ears," so Mike's regiment was nearly always exposed to enemy fire.

Mike's regiment fought in major battles at Cross Keys, Cedar Mountain, Brandy Station, Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station, Gettysburg and Bristoe Station.

During the latter engagement, in October 1863, Mike was captured by surprise outside a village known as Buckland. The cavalry officer who allowed Mike's regiment to be entrapped, as it had been, was none other than General George Armstrong Custer.

Mike was summarily transported to Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where he lived among 45,000 other Federal POWs inside a stockade surrounding 16 acres of land (the size of three city blocks).

As it was to many other prisoners, Andersonville was unkind to Mike.

He died of scurvy on July 25, 1864, six months after his capture.

A thousand other POWs at Andersonville died, as Mike did, of a disease brought on by starvation.

He was only 21.

Above: Little Soul by Robert Francis James.  Oil on canvas. 11 x 14 inches. From an 1861 photograph of Corporal Mike Folliard, who is buried in grave Number 3938 at Andersonville National Cemetery.

Vemödalen

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

— Ecclesiastes

A fellow artist expressed to me yesterday her disappointment that realist painters—even of the caliber of Monet and Van Gogh—never add anything original to our culture.

Photographers have a word for that wistful feeling: vemödalen.

Vemödalen—the feeling everything has already been done—was coined by the Swiss blogger John Koening, whose Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines "emotions we feel, but don't have words to express."

According to Koening, vemödalen is "the frustration of photographing something amazing, when thousands of identical photos already exist."

Those thousands of precedent photos turn mine into "something hollow, pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself."

By this definition, vemödalen (a word doubtless derived from the Swedish vemod, meaning "melancholy") is a kind of weltschmerz that mistakes every work of art as another flat-pack item from Ikea.

It's easy to understand where vemödalen comes from.

Unoriginality is baked into human existence, as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger proved in Being and Time.

Heidegger calls the self of our everyday being the "they-self" (Man-selbst).

The they-self is a conformist and unoriginal way of engaging with the world.

Heidegger claims that I am not myself as I go about the tasks that preoccupy me every day. 

I am, instead, the they-self, a worker among workers, a productive citizen, a member of the crowd.

The they-self, he says, represents "concerned absorption in the world we encounter. 

"The 'they' prescribes our way of interpreting the world."

In other words, I don't encounter the world: they do. 

"It is not 'I', in the sense of my own self, that 'am,' but others, whose way is that of the 'they,'" Heidegger says.

While being a they-self feels comfortable, Heidegger insists, remaining one is a choice: a choice to surrender your soul to the "dictatorship of the they;" to surrender, sheepishly, to conformity, mediocrity, practicality, and ingenuousness.

In a real sense, Heidegger says, we wear a disguise our whole lives: the disguise of the they. And that disguise—that inauthentic self—tricks us into believing "there's nothing new under the sun" when, in fact, everything under the sun is new every moment of every day, if only we open our eyes to it.

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"It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die," Oscar Wilde once wrote. 

"Most people are other people. Their life is a mimicry."

Above: Orange. Oil on fiberboard. 8 x 10 inches.

Wokescolds

When the left becomes grimly censorious,
it incubates its own opposition.

— Michelle Goldberg

During an interview with a professor of English yesterday, I asked whether the late novelist John Updike belongs in the modern canon.

Wryly he answered, "It depends on whose canon."

The cause of his caution was obvious: not knowing who I was, the professor wanted to be spared another bashing by a possible wokescold.

Wokescolds—those busybodies who bash you for any show of disinterest in their causes—are the bane of the Democrats.

They're why the party will lose the midterm elections.

Wokescolds are dangerous because they're smug and obnoxious.

While they relentlessly shame us for our indifference to special-interest issues like "transgender equality," "microaggression," and "cultural appropriation," they remain blind to the fact that most of us care more about guns, gas, and the stock market.

They're dangerous because they make ready targets for right-wing hipsters, who can mobilize uninformed voters with post-apocalyptic visions of a Stalin-style government—even though 8 of 10 Millennial voters don't know who Stalin was.

So here's my two cents.

Wokescolds should take a vacation. 

A long one.

I recommend Mexico. 

With its tropical beaches, boutique hotels, and feisty cuisine, Mexico offers the ideal spot for a getaway.

Just ask Ted Cruz.

And while on vacation, I recommend that the wokescolds bring a little light reading.

Aristotle's Rhetoric would do nicely.

That's where they'll find these morsels of wisdom:

A statement is persuasive either because it is directly self-evident or appears to be proved from other statements that are so. In either case, it is persuasive because there is somebody whom it persuades. 

But no art theorizes about an individual. Rhetoric is concerned not with what seems probable to a given individual, but with what seems probable to a whole class of people. 

Rhetoric, too, draws upon the routine subjects of debate. The duty of rhetoric is to deal with key issues in the hearing of persons who cannot take in a complicated argument or follow a long chain of reasoning.

Got that, wokescolds?

And if Aristotle doesn't convince you to drop the smug and obnoxious rhetoric, maybe you should stay in Mexico—permanently.

After all, you'll love it down there. 

I hear the Mexicans are debating transgender bathrooms.