I Read To Make Myself Feel Awake.

When I Wrote That [donald] Trump Piece, I Had This Uncomfortable Experience Of Sensing A Lot Of Things That Were Nascent, That I Couldn't Quite Articulate. And One Of Them Was This Move Toward Anti-intellectualism. An Anti-love Move, Even.

Do Not Really Like Rich People, As They Make Us Poor People Feel Dopey And Inadequate. Not That We Are Poor. I Would Say We Are Middle. We Are Very, Very Lucky. I Know That. But Still, It Is Not Right That Rich People Make Us Middle People Feel Dopey And Inadequate.

I Like [barak] Obama. I Like Him. So How Far Does Rationality Help To Persuade Anybody? You Know, I'm Not So Sure.

On A More Technical Level, A Story Takes A Lot Of Words. And To Generate Words And Phrases And Images And So On, That Will Compel The Reader To Continue Reading - That Stand A Chance Of Really Grabbing A Reader - The Writer Has To Work Out Of A Place Of, Let's Say, Familiarity And Affection. The Matrix Of The Story Has To Be Made Out Of Stuff The Writer Really Knows About And Likes. The Writer Can't Be Stretching And (purely) Inventing All The Time. Well, I Can't, Anyway.

What Concerns Me Most Is The Horrible Degradation Our Notions Of Truth, Civility, And Decency Have Undergone. Also The Way That Language Has Been Malformed - We Have Been Overcome With Banality And The Cynical Misuse Of Language. When A Candidate Runs A Campaign On A Series Of Dog-whistles To Bigots, Then Turns Around And Talks About "healing The Wounds Of Division," That Is Right Out Of Orwell.