If you’re going crazy thinking that dope will slip through the cracks, then you need this, from JustSecurity.org.
It’s their up-to-date tracker of every piece of litigation, civil and criminal, pending against Trump. (Not one case has been dismissed.) If you’re going to read it, and you should, better collect some snacks, because it’s a long, long list and will take you some time.
I’m somewhat surprised that I had such a large sense of relief over the results of the California recall nonsense, since I was pretty sure Newsom would be OK. But secretly, in the depths of my optimistic soul, I wanted the “OK” to be massively obvious.
And it was.
Subsequently, the rage.
As you all know — because I’ve repeated it endlessly for years — it’s my strong belief only 30 percent or less of this country is undergoing an episode of mass psychosis. Maybe even 25 percent. But even I yearn for some data, or only one datum (I’m not greedy) confirming my strong belief, and the California results gave it to me: 63.9 to 36.1.
Sure, 36.1 is somewhat higher than my belief but hey, it’s California. I grant a higher degree of, uh, eccentricity among Californians than New Yorkers. Something to do with the drought, the fires, the earthquakes. Hard not to go a bit nuts when your home is under constant assault from Mother and human Nature.
As for the rage? Well. Less than one-third of this country’s residents have taken it upon themselves to scream crapola louder than the rest of us can speak rationally. Ergo, they grab media ears with their dopey craziness. I.e., they get much more attention than their acts of violence and stupid pronouncements deserve.
Years ago, I walked from my house to a major intersection in the West Village. On a sunny day. Peaceful. Safe. Except on one corner stood a man yelling and swinging a machete. He belonged in St. Vincent’s psych ward and most likely wound up there shortly after several of us dashed across the avenue to avoid him.
Couldn’t ignore him. Can’t ignore someone flourishing a dangerous weapon. All we could do was run away from the menace while listening to the sirens, and — in my case — do the shopping I’d headed out to do.
It’d be irrational for the media not to do the equivalent of running across the street. They have to report on the dissolution of one-third of this country. They have to. But it makes me rage that they must. Because the media are forced to make a rational narrative out of neologistic screeching which presents no revolutionary point of view, no actual objections, no intelligence, no purpose any of us in the 66 percent can make sense of.
Unlike their Revered Leader, they can’t even articulate their delusions.
They are less a screaming mob than a screaming blob.
But isn’t that what the GOP has become? They don’t profess anything, they don’t do anything. Everything they mouth is…”No!” In effect, the GOP has been reduced to a party of two-year-olds, but unlike two-year-olds, they are not cute.
Last week, I walked from the Lower East Side up through Soho with a friend. Eventually, since she needed to catch a train at Grand Central, we took the 6 line up there.
She headed for her train and I headed to the market for fruit. Which was way too expensive so I bought Lilac Chocolates more or less instead.
My route home was via the IRT from Times Square. Two ways to get there: I could leave the station and walk on the street to Seventh Avenue, or I could take the shuttle, the convenient, yet grimly third world, rust bucket.
The shuttle has been so distressed for so many years, I’ve occasionally avoided it entirely by taking the BMT from Times Square up to 59th Street and switching to the East Side IRT. But last week I wasn’t yet at Times Square and I wasn’t going to the Upper East Side, so I headed for the shuttle.
One sweeps one’s Metrocard and descends the stairs leading to…
What is this? Where am I? Not the shuttle, this can’t be the shuttle. Not this sleek, gleaming platform, with pretty tile mosaics on the pristine walls — did I really see them? Instead of the dilapidated three tracks, there were only two. Both gleamed. A train waited on one of those tracks.
The shuttle, now designated not with a black and white S within a circle but with an S surrounded by a halo of green fairy lights, is awesome. (Here’s the link to the MTA’s shuttle project. The pictures are labeled renderings of the final results. I can report right now this is exactly what the shuttle looks like now, in real life. Except it’s even livelier, more exciting to the eye.)
The platform edging up to the trains is near-neon yellow textured rubber tiles. The platform itself is tiled in the same gray stone I used in my bathroom.
The cars themselves are brand new. No longer standard subway cars, there are seats only in the corners so we stand during the short trip, holding onto floor to ceiling bars, but they must have done considerable track work, too, because the ride is so smooth, we didn’t really need to hold on to anything.
And then comes the wild west of the Times Square Station…But no. Same elegant gray tiles on the platform, no tricky spaces between the cars and the platform, thus no hopping over.
As I walked out of this station toward the subway, my eyes were caught by the ceiling. Once damaged, peeling plaster, it is now exposed steel beams which look like Mark di Suvero sculptures.
Quietly, without blowing trumpets, the MTA built back better. Much, much better.
I am so pleased.
