"Words are all we have."
A perfectly bleak December morning in the Twin Tiers.
I almost wrote "Southern Tier", which would exclude our benighted neighbors down in Pennsyltucky. But their northern tier and our southern tier met and loved each other very much, leaving us with the Twin Tiers.
Jim turns 32 today, the second thing I thought of this morning after the moment of panic when P and I realized we'd turned off the alarm and both fallen back asleep. Thankfully, we were only fourteen minutes off our usual schedule, and I managed to get Peg out the door with a little breakfast and coffee, only a couple minutes late.
Then I fell back asleep for forty-five minutes, a luxury I can ill-afford as I struggle to get ready for finals and meet all the drafting and filing deadlines that crowd this December. Yesterday's Zoom review session with the prof in my Taxation of Property Transactions brought a bit of panic, with my classmates (maybe ten of them, mostly with their cameras off), asking very technical questions about the application of statutes and treasury regulations I struggle to navigate. I've looked up several, and it turns out they were former CPAs or have undergrad degrees in related fields like accounting and finance. The good news is that our affable prof seemed as flummoxed by their questions as I was, and he's writing the exam.
We'll see how it all goes. Thirty years ago I was terrified I might graduate below the top ten percent of my class, thereby closing the door to the opportunity to be recruited by big Atlanta law firms with loathsome, avaricious partners and the siren song of eighty hour work weeks and serial monogamy. This time I'm here for the t-shirt, not the trophy, too old to care so long as I pass. Good news for all the apple polishers, I guess.
Yesterday I tried to do my part to maintain the 501(c)(3) status of this blog by teaching everyone a new word: enshittification. It so perfectly captures the moment in which we live, with technology that seems designed not to meet the customer's needs, such that I find myself feeling nostalgic for, say, the old Facebook. But Peg and I use the word more broadly, to encompass the entire terrible customer experience that is 2024, unless you bought a lay-flat seat on Virgin Atlantic, in which case life is pretty groovy.
But is it really that bad? We've been in a perpetual sulk since November 5th, punctuated with waves of anger and pinpoints of rage. It's made this holiday season distinctly unfun, leading me to start dragging out old movies in the hope of capturing a little of the lost magic. Last night was White Christmas, one of P's favorites. Normally I'd work Die Hard into the lineup about now, but this may not be the year. Besides, Peg strongly dislikes the scene with Willis running through broken glass barefooted.
This morning, in my continuing quest to broaden everyone's vocabulary, I'll start by directing you to Paul Krugman's final essay in the NYT this morning:
There's been lots of conjecture about why he's hanging it up now. Disgust over the election, or maybe recognizing that the Gray Lady's days of shaping American public opinion are mostly past. Perhaps he's worried Patel's going to arrest him--was he on the "enemies" list? Either way, even though I didn't always agree with him, I'll miss his wit and insight. I always learned something.
And this morning I learned from Krugman a word perfectly suited to the moment, one you can use at Christmas cocktail parties to impress your non-MAGA friends with your stunning mastery of the English language (no point bothering with your MAGA friends. Judging from DJT's documented inability to stray beyond a handful of words, any technically precise word choice is just going to bring bemusement and the conclusion that you're a pointy-headed liberal).
The word is "kakistocracy", which Krugman sums up correctly as "rule by the worst".
I've struggled over the last few weeks for a way to describe what's about to happen in Washington. Plutocracy? Sure, that's part of it. Kleptocracy? True once they get control and have something to steal. Autocracy? Well of course.
But kakistocracy hits the nail on the head. A candidate goes out of his way to prove his utter lack of character and qualification for the job, fellating a microphone, holding a rally that consists only of playing his renowned Spotify play list, suggesting he'd like to see a whole swath of his neighbors shot or deported.
And he wins anyway.
Then he cobbles together without a doubt the most jarringly inept and insane group of cabinet and agency head appointees imaginable, from conspiracy theorists to apologists for our enemies to drunken sex offenders. The sex offender thing in fact seems a condition of being considered for the job. The only reason Musk and Vivek made the list as mere plutocrats without a single sexual assault on their resume was that the made up agency they'll head isn't actually part of the cabinet.
Kakistocracy. Yep, let's go with that one.