Lobenthal.com

Those words are painted on the 16th street facade of ex-Stuyvesant High School, now home to no fewer than three separate schools. Stuy is an alma mater of mine, and I always walk by it entertaining a backward glance in the mind.

I wish the Dems would adopt that priceless homily as a campaign slogan, to blunt the privileging of ignorance that has become a standard tactic of those across the aisle.

Knowledge is power, and ignorance, if perhaps a form of bliss, is also a path to ruin, producing the credulous public that Trump as well as his GOP rivals count on to countenance a platform that runs counter to the continued survival of the species, and thus, to put it mildly, counter to the interests of the electorate.

And the right-wing’s attacks on literary and culture are part of the strategy of disabling through ignorance. And our defunded arts world, our deprogrammed public school arts curriculum, all play a role in making our population less and less able to think realistically, let alone constructively, creatively, imaginatively–or even, dare we mention it, poetically–a word that, if any politico dared mention it today, would be seized upon by the economic-political elite as a surefire giveaway of “elitism.”

Remember that nice bagel store at the south west corner of B’way and 79th Street? Hadn’t been there for some months–saw today that it’s now a Verizon Wireless.

Why are Les Moonves and CBS allowed to use our airwaves for free as they actively promote for their financial gain the campaign of a dangerous demagogue whose deranged egomania has and will continue to do great harm to our country?

No, democracy in the U.S. would very likely not be able to survive a Trump presidency, but can democracy in the U.S. survive the GOP’s outright refusal to obey a crystal-clear Constitutional mandate concerning the judiciary?

Thank you, Jen Hayden at dailykos.com for locating what is apparently the first New  York Times reporting on Hitler. Talk about going back to the present!

The Times reported in 1922 that “several reliable, well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded. . .”

The mind reels. The mind recaps the way that the GOP’s increasing extremism, of which Trump is simply a particularly grotesque embodiment, has been normalized and sold to the public by so much of our “mainstream” media. Perhaps some of it is simply denial–but the outright encouragement of Trump by the TV networks is unconscionable. Again, as so much of what is now accepted behavior by elites in this country, it is treasonous.

He is the logical and inevitable culmination of the softening up and stupidification practiced on the American population over the last forty years.

Part of the degradation involves making celebrity the be-all and end-all, the one undying, ubiquitous cathexis of the “mainstream” media.

Andrew Bacevich writes at The Nation.

“To an extent unmatched by any other figure in American public life, Trump understands that previous distinctions between the ostensibly serious and the self-evidently frivolous have collapsed. . . in contemporary America, celebrity confers authority. Mere credentials or qualifications have become an afterthought.”

Speaking of Hallelujah, Baby!, Robert Hooks on his Facebook page says he’s written a memoir. I can’t wait to read it. His career is fascinating and I hope it’s published soon.

Robert Reich describes “a  respected political insider”‘s take on the U.S. today.

“The economy is in good shape,” he said. “Most Americans are better off than they’ve been in years.”

Reich writes that “The establishment doesn’t see what’s happening because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. It also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in bringing all this on.”

On youtube, a fabulous performance by Leslie Uggams, Lillian Hayman, and Robert Hooks at the 1968 Tony Awards: Styne-Comden & Green’s “Smile, Smile,” from the musical Hallelujah, Baby!

Could Broadway handle this today?

I sent someone a link to a Violette Verdy tribute on youtube and received this response:

“Thanks for the link.  I just watched it, plus a few of the others.  Most of us leave behind a few good memories with friends and family. But she also leaves all this talent and beauty. How wonderful!”