The National Rifle Association Is A Domestic

Maybe I'm A Serial Regional Writer. First Here, Then There, Across The Map.

If Trump Was Just A Piddly-ass Little Hotel Owner Some Place, Having The Kind Of Character And Manners That He Has, He Would Not Be Worth Our Notice. But Because He's Now Been Based To This Huge Stage, Then His Dimensions Become Immense. He's Not A Tragic Figure Because He Doesn't Have The Capacity To Be Tragic. But The Consequences Of His Life And His Self Now Are Immense; They're Threatening To The World And To The Sanctity Of Human Life.

Paul Ryan, He Is The Real Evil Genius Of The Republican Party. He With His Little Hateful Widow's Peak And His Smirky, Snarly, Simpering Non-entity Self, That's Who I Detest. Trump's Just A Moron, But Ryan Is Ugly And Evil.

Construed As Turf, Home Just Seems A Provisional Claim, A Designation You Make Upon A Place, Not One It Makes On You. A Certain Set Of Buildings, A Glimpsed, Smudged Window-view Across A Schoolyard, A Musty Aroma Sniffed Behind A Garage When You Were A Child, All Of Which Come Crowding In Upon Your Latter-day Senses -- Those Are Pungent Things And Vivid, Even Consoling. But To Me They Are Also Inert And Nostalgic And Unlikely To Connect You To The Real, To That Essence Art Can Sometimes Achieve, Which Is Permanence.

For A Time After My Divorce Everything Began To Seem Profoundly Ironic To Me. I Found Myself Thinking Of Other Peoples' Worries As Sources Of Amusement And Private Derision Which I Thought About At Night To Make Myself Feel Better.