The Long Road Out

There are so many despicable companies and brands in the world.   So it's hard to chose the absolute numero uno  when this much-coveted prize is awarded annually.  But the judges (me) have decided.  My choice is Monsanto--protected by the government, actively poisoning the food chain, guilty of predatory customer behavior, and literally violent to non-customers. Monsanto is still first in the "Worst Corporation of the Decade" ranking, which, surely, this year's victory will help.   They're kind of like the Chicago Bulls in their heyday. It's nice to feel so certain that Monsanto is the absolutely worst company on the planet.   Knowing this makes the judges (me) feel clearheaded and thoughtful, since it would be easy to be confused by the many categories and brands in the runner-up spots: All the defense contractors--whether General Electric or General Dynamics, these guys make money exporting death to bad people, and go out of their way to make sure...

We happened to be eating on Rue Oberkampf, on the same block as the Bataclan in Paris, the night of  those events.   And we happen to live on the West Side in Manhattan where not a day goes by without at least one trip on the West Side Bike path.   My work is based in Portland, Oregon where it's been OK to walk in and assault dark-skinned individuals for quite some time, including yesterday. Does proximity make any difference? Lack of proximity clearly makes it harder to understand how other "tribes" feel.   Just look at Trump's response to the bike path murders in New York yesterday--60% of the victims came from Argentina and it never occurs to him to even mention the sadness in Rosario.   Of course, he's a moron, but the point here stands.   We mourn our own.   It's in our genetics, often disguised as biased "empathy" rather than the true standard of "compassion." But if this psychopathic guy had just stayed in Passaic where he wa...

I offer, with appreciation, these few paragraphs from an editorial in the NYTimes today by Jill Filipovic.   One more coherent effort to make sense of how we ended up with Trump in office...a man of such repulsive mediocrity that his one accomplishment is being the perfect icon for all that is truly awful about the United States.  In Filipovic's words, "The president is a perfect figurehead for this bizarre moment: a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues, occupying the most powerful and exclusively male seat of power in the nation (and perhaps in the world), who ascended in large part because a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office. He is ego unchecked, narcissism in place of dignity. 152 COMMENTS In a 1961  essay for Vogue , Joan Didion wrote that people with “self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the p...