Pulled into NYC yesterday after two+ weeks on the road, wanting not much more than to sleep 14 hours. Nope! There are pies to be baked - birthday party for this one tomorrow night - and cogitating about the next piece, about a certain flaccidity among protesters and why that might be and what we might see when school starts up again next week.
Until then, a reading from one Reason piece, “The Anarchist Dreams.” And here he is!
I thought this guy’s enthusiasm was darling. I know that might sound wacky, but he was so candid and excited. Someone later asked whether he knew I was press. I have no idea, and he was so caught up in the possibilities of the moment I don’t think he would have cared. A clip of our exchange:
"Come on everybody! Come on!" shouted a tall lanky guy all in black, with a garbage can lid painted with the anarchist A strapped to his back. What was he wanting everyone to do?
"I want to get all the way inside the DNC!" he said, pointing toward the United Center. "I mean what are we doing here? Isn't this what we came here to do?"
Maybe not everybody; maybe not the 70-year-old lady peace activist who I'd watch gasp as the fence came down. Maybe this kind of bravado was not for her.
"I've seen 70-year-olds do it!" he said. "We can do it if we do it together. If we can dream it, we can do it!"
He was clanging his garbage can lid when someone shouted, "Cops on all sides!"
I told you in the last post how I got pushed around a little by the cops, and how when I was extruded back into the protester-approved side of the fence a friend was there looking as unruffled as if I’d offered him a piece of gum. And here he is.
As mentioned (in the free portion), we all worked our asses off, which Matt Welch chronicles in this week’s “Fifth Column Firehouse #107: About Last Week.”
I’m burying the lede here, well, two: my first piece for The Atlantic published on Thursday. The opening of “The Democrats’ COVID Amnesia.”
If it weren’t for Americans’ collective amnesia, politicians would have to spend considerably more time taking pains to tell the truth. But, unburdened by what has been, President Joe Biden claimed on Monday night with a straight face that his vice president and designated successor accomplished a task that surely escaped your notice.
“Well, during the pandemic, Kamala helped states and cities get their schools back open,” the president said.
In fact, America’s public schools were kept closed in Democratic-run cities and states well into the Biden administration, as a direct result of Biden-administration policies. Democrats might count on Americans to be forgiving, but they are not stupid, and they would do well to not let the pageantry of televised politics obfuscate the fact that they are being lied to.
Second bit of news, which some of you have been told of and the rest of you better get ready to hear more about it: my new book, Forty Bucks and a Dream: Stories from Los Angeles is out September 17 and available now on Amazon for Kindle pre-order. (You do not need a Kindle - in fact I threw my last one in the garbage - to read on the Kindle app.) Our brave new world of publishing allows small publishers to see how many copies are selling so let’s see what you all can do! Paperback drops the 17th.
We listened to lots and lots of tunes on the meandering round-trip to and from Chicago, including from Elvis Costello. Seeing as its his 70th birthday today, and seeing as I listened to this album at least 500 times in high school, he gets the outro.
