There should be a division between democratic self-government and the violence of the mob.
Was Joe Biden's speech about January 6 political? Of course it was. The violence of a year ago was political violence with a distinctly political goal. The president's trade is politics. What did people expect, a novena? Was the speech divisive? God, I hope so. It should have been. There should be a division between democratic self-government and the violence of the mob. That division should be stark. That division should be permanent—or, at least, it should continue to exist until political violence again is delegitimized. There's no need to compromise on style, sound, or comfort with the audio tech this year has to offer. The T-shirt's older cousin is here to stay. Deep in the wide expanse of Montana, there lives a fictional character more terrifying than just about any other figure previously spotted on TV. The doll from Squid Game? A hoard of zombies from The Walking Dead? Neither are as intimidating as the physically- and emotionally-scarred force that is Yellowstone's Beth Dutton, played by Kelly Reilly. As the fourth season of Paramount Network's smash hit came to a conclusion, Beth found herself in a menacing place: newly married and with blackmail to collect—or, as Reilly puts it, "the darkest thing she's ever done." Any '90s kid with a computer and a CD-ROM of "Madden NFL" could tell you about the man who taught them how to love the sport. Update your closet, bar cart, and shaving game from the comfort of your couch. Humanity has paused on Jones Street near the summit of Russian Hill in San Francisco. Tourists, businessmen, café workers, the homeless—all seem to have taken a collective breather at this steepest of places, a city peak where stairs are carved into the sidewalks so people don't topple. Only one person keeps climbing, and he's talking, too; he's saying that you can't stop here, that if you just keep pushing, you'll see things no one else will see. Mike May keeps climbing. He is fifty years old and sweeping a red-tipped cane in front of him, a blind man's cane. He lost his sight at age three, blind for life at three. He learned as a boy to listen to his cane echo off cement curbs and street signs, but now he doesn't hear a thing. There's not so much as a pebble in his way, and it doesn't matter that every person seems to have stopped to catch his breath; he won't stop climbing until he reaches the top. |
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