My Dark Vanessa

This debut novel by Kate Elizabeth Russ is a very uncomfortable read, and should be.   It is the most discomfiting novel since The Dinner by Herman Koch or We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.  The plot is centered around the elicit relationship between a 15 year old adolescent and one of her teachers at Maine boarding school, a topic most writers would shy away from. 

Vanessa, a very smart, mature, yet out-of-the mainstream girl, with few friends and parents from whom she is mostly disconnected.  One of the reasons that the plot resonated with me is that it reminded me very much of a rumored relationship that a girl I knew in high school had with one of her teachers (they later married).   In the novel, the teacher Strane carefully grooms Vanessa, first paying a disproportionate amount of attention to her, then proceeds to ambiguous body contact.  And we know where this goes from there.

Despite the fact that Strane is not a sympathetic character (yes, he is pretty creepy), he does seem to have genuine deep feelings for her.   But what makes this novel truly interesting, is Vanessa’s relationship with him.  The book flips back and forth between Vanessa as an adolescent and Vanessa as a young adult, as she maintains a relationship with him after she leaves the boarding school.  While it does not appear that she enjoys the sexual relationship with him all that much, and, in later years, she is not physically attracted to him, she is drawn to him.  Indeed, she goes to great lengths to protect him and his job and reputation, even when it is clear that Strane does not deserve to be so shielded.

The intriguing aspect of the novel is Vanessa herself, and that is what raises issues in this book.  It’s clear that Shane is exploiting her for his sexual pleasure and he gets more out of that aspect of the relationship than she does.  Yet, Vanessa steadfastly refuses to permit herself to take on the role of victim throughout the novel.  Time and time again, she explicitly rejects victimhood, even when the truth of her relationship becomes known and all of society seems to be urging her to take on that role.  At one point, she says, “I don’t think of myself as a victim,” I say. “I knew what I was getting into.  I wanted it.”  Later, she asserts, “At fifteen, I wasn’t weak. I was smart.  I was strong.”  My Dark Vanessa is not only a challenge in this particular circumstance but the whole MeToo movement writ large.

This leads to some difficult questions.  What exactly was Vanessa getting out of the relationship?  What void did Shane fill in her life?  Was she so alienated from her family and peer group that this became so important to her?   Did Shane so distort her so that she could not have relationships with boys her own age?   Keeping in mind that she was mature for her age and that our culture today, there are bright lines with respect to ages that didn’t exist a century ago.  Vanessa is in a hazy area when this all begins. Indeed, when one woman calls Strane a pedophile, Vanessa corrects her and says, no, he is an “ephebophile” (a person attracted to adolescents).

And most importantly, while in most parent/teacher affairs, the teacher stands in a position of power in the relationship and that is part of the reason why it is universally condemned, and should be.

There have been several scandalous relationships that began when one person was a minor that continued.  Woody Allen married Soon-Yi Previn, his step daughter.   Gloria Grahame (who played Violet Bick in It’s A Wonderful Life and opposite Humphrey Bogart in In A Lonely Place) created a scandal when she married the son of her second husband and that relationship began when he was a teen.  Both Allen and Grahame were widely condemned in the tabloids. 

In My Dark Vanessa, you want to do the same with Shane- excoriate him as a monster.  And you want to cast Vanessa as the victim. But the Kate Elizabeth Russ finds ways to stop you just short throughout the novel and that is what causes the discomfort.  She raises enough ambiguity from Vanessa’s point of view to make you feel uneasy about boundaries all the way through.

My Dark Vanessa is a compelling read, and an excellent debut for Ms. Russ.  I expect to see more edgy, challenging and controversial work out of this writer in the future.

It's AOC's America Now

Well, how do you like it, so far?

I know some of you voted for Donald Trump in 2016, hoping that he would push back against The Swamp.  Many of my readers think he has actually been doing a pretty good job.  Despite some misgivings about the trade wars, and his penchant for “punching down,” and his periodic idiotic tweets, a lot of things were going pretty well.  The market was at an all time high, unemployment was at a 50 year low, and Trump was unafraid to push back against a media determined to unseat him.  After impeachment failed, the wind was pretty much at our backs.

Yet in the space of a month or so, we’re not actually living in Trump’s America anymore.   We’re living in  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's.  We’re actually living exactly the way the half-wit from the Bronx would like us to live.  Yes, we all rolled our eyes at that semi-educated bartender cum congressional leader when she spewed out nonsensical P.C. /Marxist/Intersectionality dogma sprinkled liberally with Israel hatred.  We guffawed when she unveiled her Green New Deal, which talked about the elimination of air travel.  Yet here we are.  We mocked her embrace of reparations, and her hatred of “profits.” 

But in reality, we’re all now living in her world day-to-day.  And it all happened pretty darn fast.

•  We can’t gather in large groups.  Always the bane of authoritarians, the freedom to assemble has been completely abrogated.
•  CO2 emissions are way down.  There is no air travel to speak of.  Most people are off the road and are working out of their homes.  Industrial production has fallen off a cliff.  COVID19 is the de facto imposition of Green New Deal writ large.  Bloomberg reported today that with fishing fleets grounded, fishing stocks are rebuilding.  Wildlife is beginning to reclaim urban areas abandoned by humans.  The radical green folks are overjoyed.  Humans are subdued.·  
• The much maligned concept of profits?  Don’t worry.  That’s been taken care of.  Profits will be largely nonexistent.  JP Morgan Chase announced a 69% decline in profits.  Others will soon follow as the economy grinds to a halt.  As the lockdown continues, the dirty word of “profit” will soon become something to wax nostalgic about.
•  Shortages of basic goods.  The toilet paper shortage became somewhat of a national joke but other goods are sometimes in short supply.  The shelves in many grocery stores looked like something out of Caracas. 
• Government alone decided what is essential or nonessential activities.  Imagine that- government simply decides what is essential and nonessential to our lives.  Not us.  The State.
• Religion is shut down completely.  Kentucky ticketed and fined attendees and a pastor at a drive-in service. Some Democrats, like Bill DeBlasio have threatened to shut churches down permanently.  Ironically, liquor stores and Planned Parenthood are deemed to be essential services and are allowed to remain open.  Government neglects that for many people, our souls need to be nourished as well as our bodies.
•  AOC and her acolytes have long sought prison reform, and sought to reduce our prison population.  Now, many states are releasing prisoners (with predictable results) to keep them “safe” from COVID19.  Now we are condemned to home confinement, while a good chunk of of the prison population roams free.
•  Tech companies have partnered with the State to keep under surveillance.  City of Chicago admitted as such.  All of us conservatives and libertarians recoiled when we learned that Google assisted China with its surveillance system.  And we worried that it could happen here.  Well, it has.  Government didn’t even have to chip us.  We chipped ourselves with our smart phones.
•  Your $1,200 check is an experiment in Universal Basic Income, a dream of the Left and, now the Leftist Vatican.  Bet it won't stop there.
•   And in a real Stalinist twist, in some states, neighbors are urged to rat out people that do not comply with governments new “rules.
• Anthony Fausi and others are floating the idea of being required to show “immunity app” to be able to travel freely.  It is the modern version of an armband or papers of transit.

Alcohol consumption is up something like 55% and spirits have been deemed an essential business, rivaling the old Soviet Union.  Turning to self-medication in this environment is hardly surprising.  When humans are deprived of work, the ability to create, to associate freely, to worship, to enjoy life, they turn to other things to deaden their consciousness. 

What of the old guardians like the ACLU?  The ACLU is much too busy making sure that biological boys compete in girls sports and making sure that illegal immigrants cannot be deported to deal with such trivial matters such as the trampling of 1^st and 4^th Amendment rights.

We laughed at her, the bartender turned wannabe tyrant.   We mocked her silly ideas.  But Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is having the last laugh.  All she had to do was recruit a single ally, a tiny little pathogen.  And we all fell in line like sheep.  Trump may be your president but it’s her world now. COVID19 has partnered with AOC to shape our society, at least for now, more to AOC's liking than Donald Trump's and without a single vote from you.

So while I am all in favor of taking sensible precautions, it’s time to talk about civil disobedience at the excesses.

We Need To Talk About China

As I write this, President Trump has announced that he is putting a hard hold on U.S. funding for the WHO.  Bravo, I say.  WHO has alternatively been inept and has acted as China’s propaganda arm with respect to the Coronavirus pandemic.  Indeed it declared in January that COVID19 could not be transmitted human to human.  It did not declare a pandemic until March 11 and by then COVID19 was raging across the globe.  But it was even worse.  As the New York Times and other news agencies thoroughly documented China’s suppression of information early in the outbreak, as they arrested doctors, destroyed samples and evidence, and Chinese journalists “disappeared” early in the outbreak when the virus could conceivably have been contained.  Worse, Dr. Tedro gushed with praise for China, stating that “China bought the world time,” and cited them as a “model” for how to handle and outbreak.  At times, it sounded suspiciously like the CCP had provided his script.  None of this was true, however, and anyone with a properly functioning central nervous system knew China was burying the truth, even going so far as to blame the U.S. military, which WHO did not comment on.  Trump is spot on.  If WHO is a propaganda arm of the CCP, let China fund its own propaganda.  The best summary of China’s culpability (and WHO’s complicit propagandizing) is the indefatigable Pat Condell – The Virus That Shames China.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgBCBEQwgwM)

But the question is what to do about China.  Its abhorrent behavior in the outbreak of COVID19 is just the latest and most devastating consequence of the totalitarian rule of the CCP.  It is Chernobyl to the 10th power.  After coronavirus burns itself out, our relationship with China cannot be status quo ante.  Here are some ideas of steps I would consider taking vis-à-vis China in the coming years.

COVID19  Commission
The consequences of COVID19 were so devastating, a magnitude much greater that 9/11 both in human costs and the toll on the economy.   It is essential that we get a bipartisan commission to examine the pandemic, its causes, and responses.  Most importantly, we need to determine to what extent China and WHO worked in concert to cover up China’s response, and whether COVID19 originated in a Chinese bioweapons lab or in a wet market as has been claimed.  Further, the COVID19 Commission needs to make recommendations about national catastrophes like pandemics, EMP, or nuclear attacks so that we can be as prepared as we can be. The Commission also should develop a comprehensive list of strategic products that will be prohibited from being manufactured in China.

Journalists
Following the expulsion of journalists by China, we should expel a proportionate number of Chinese journalists.  The Iron Law of Reciprocity applies here.  We know that the Chinese are misreporting cases and fatalities from COVID19.  But we have limited transparency.  We should not be asymmetric in this regard.

Students and Academia.
Normally, students and academia are off limits from diplomatic tensions.  I am especially loathe to punish young people for the crimes of a regime.  But the recent arrests at Harvard and Yale of faculty members for lying about their Chinese ties and the IP theft has been rampant.  We have no reliable way of vetting who is conducting espionage or IP theft for the CCP and both direct theft and the running parallel labs have been well documented by our intelligence agencies.  Finally, if Communism is a superior system, why should WE be educating their youth, only to be competitors.  Scott Adams proposed to send 1 student back for every Chinese fentanyl death.  I would go further.  Send them all home.

Set Off
In commercial life, it is often the case that you may exercise set off rights.  In other words if you owe someone money, but you are harmed by them, you set off the amount of debt by the monetized value of the harm.  The damage done by the Chinese criminal negligence and coverup of COVID19 is enormous.  People died; lives will be permanently altered.  We should consider telling the Chinese that we are setting off against U.S. obligations held in China; we will only pay, say, 75% of the obligation owed.  Sure, it would roil markets.  But our markets have already been roiled.

Taxing investments in China. – Private equity especially helped gut our manufacturing base.  Whole funds were dedicated to buying companies, outsourcing to China and then flipping it for a handsome profit (sound familiar, Mitt?).   I would propose an outbound capital tariff.  PE firms that do this would be subject to an automatic carried interest tax to end this game.  A parallel levy would be instituted on corporations.

Dissolve NATO and Replace
It’s pretty clear that NATO has major issues.  It is a Cold War remnant.  Many members won’t live up to their commitments and Turkey clearly doesn’t belong but there is no mechanism to expel them. I would consider dissolving NATO and replacing it with a reformed hub and spoke concept, with branches in  Europe, the Middle East,  and Asia.   It would be anchored by Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in Europe, India in Asia, and perhaps Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East to push back against Iran.  We could call it the Association of Independent States or something and it would be a mutual defense and trading organization.

Stop the Stupid Stuff
The Paris Accord was probably the dumbest treaty I have ever seen.  It gave China a pass on emissions until 2025 while hamstringing the U.S. with harsh emissions standards.  Worse, it formed a “green fund” to develop “green projects” in developing nations that China was exempt from contributing.  Trump was absolutely correct in jettisoning this one-sided deal.  Likewise, he was correct in kicking the TPP to the curb.  At bottom, good trading partners don’t steal each other’s stuff. 

Asia expert Meredith Sumpter said she “fears the deterioration of U.S.-China relations” after COVID19.  But a more accurate term would be “realistically adjusted.”   We made a horrible strategic error in allowing China into the WTO in the mid 90s and assumed it would become a more responsible world player.  If anything, it has become more authoritarian, more aggressive and with COVID19 coverup, the regime has demonstrated that it is willing to violate norms of international behavior, and inflict enormous harm on the world.  Post-pandemic, it cannot be status quo ante.   Of course some of my ideas are very raw and would need lots of work but we need to take real, concrete countermeasures after the pandemic ends.

Shelter In Place Survival Guide

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

-Viktor Frankl

Now that we are a couple of weeks into the “shelter at home” order, we are all having to adapt to a vastly different world.  Our normal routines have been completely upended.   Places we normally frequent, people we associate with, our livelihoods and things that give us purpose have been unceremoniously dumped overboard for at least the time being.  Worse, the future looks dark and foreboding.  We are not yet at the peak of this crisis and the death toll is certain to rise significantly.  We worry about family, friends, and ourselves. The stock market has taken a tremendous beating, chopping away at our retirement plans and most economists are predicting a vicious recession.  Economist Nouriel Roubini tweeted out this morning, “ Greater Recession is now baked in and a done deal.  The only issue is whether it becomes a Greater Depression.”  Even our normal avenues of solace are closed off to us.  Houses of worship are off limits.  Therapists can only do teleconferencing.  Even the poor man’s therapist- the local bartender is unavailable.  Lots of things have been taken from us—graduations, kids sports, time with mom and dad and grandpa and grandpa.  The truth is that our world has likely experienced a permanent change and we do not yet know what it will look like on the other side.

The purpose of this post is to tell readers of my blog the strategies I am using to cope with this disruption, fear and anxiety.  Perhaps you are already doing some of these things, and some may not help, but I hope that at least some of these suggestions will be helpful in getting through this crisis.  It is not meant to be a pollyanniash set of platitudes; this is most serious stuff.  It is meant to help cope and share some of the things I have done so far to maintain personal stability in a very unstable world.

·       Look to the people that lived through hard times.  We have not had a disruption that so widely and profoundly affected us in 75 years.  Sure, we have had wars, recessions and 9/11 but nothing quite like this.  It is helpful to draw on those that experienced massive catastrophes.  Fortunately, I have read those that experienced the worst: The Holocaust writers: Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning), Primo Levi (If This Is A Man; Survival in Auschwitz), Writers of the Soviet Terrors: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago) and novelist Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray).  Closer to home, reading about how people got through very difficult circumstances puts a little perspective on our current crisis.  The life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl tell the stories of resilience and strength in the face of challenges on the prairie and during the dust bowl.  These writers have a great deal to say about managing the unmanageable, and I suggest reading some of these writers as a source of strength and perspective.  It’s been awhile, but we have been here before, and endured much, much worse.  Most of us have enough to eat.  There is no Nazi guard poking you with the butt of his gun to get in line.  No one from the Stasi is whacking you in the back with a truncheon to get information out of you.  In comparison, this is doable.

·        Use the quiet time.  If you are now working from home, you don’t have a commute and that is a gift of time.  I have used it to set aside discrete and dedicated time to do very deep reading and listening to music.   Put the phone and laptop down and let yourself get absorbed.  I now dedicate a day to a performer and listen… really listen to an entire album.  Eric Clapton’s birthday was the other day, so it was Eric Clapton Day.  Yesterday, I did an album of Aaron Copeland’s work.  Finishing Janis Joplin’s biography a couple of weeks ago, I just sat and listened to her masterwork Pearl end-to-end.  Similarly, I will block out time to read, really read—deeply, paying attention to word choice, rhythm, cadence.  Focusing on a writer’s or musician’s work in that fashion is something we rarely get to do during our normal, rushed, chaotic days.  It allows you to really understand what the person is trying to get across and you will form a connection with the writer or musician that is more deep and gratifying than you have experienced before.  Put the commute time to good use.

·        No T.V. – I took a vow of T.V. celibacy.  Once the shut down occurred, and the market began to fall apart, I saw no benefit to the blathering talking heads.  Yes, I’m ordinarily a news junkie, but I see no benefit at this time to hearing Tucker Carlson’s latest outrage over AOC, and the less exposure I have to AOC, the better for my mental health.   I haven’t turned the T.V. on at all in 2 ½ weeks and frankly, I don’t miss it at all.  The insane partisanship won’t go away but seems small, petty and mean to me now.  I can at least blot it out and choose to turn away from it. The next to go may be Twitter (although the dark humor that pops up is sometimes delicious).

·       Rewriting goals and compartmentalizing.  I looked at my 2020 goals which I keep on my computer and shrugged my shoulders.  All gone, almost every one of them (well, maybe I can keep the one about the stubborn 10 pounds).  But most of them are out of reach now and with the future as cloudy, they don’t even make sense anymore.  What I’ve done instead is just put a hard hold on  them for now.    Instead, I’ve shortened them up.  Because the future is so cloudy now, it makes no sense to think about anything six months from now.  I’ve gone very short term, writing goals for the week and a small checklists every morning.  Since the horizon is obscured, I’m simply staying focused on the road right in front of me.  Since I’m working out of my home, my work space and down time space are mostly the same.  So I make a conscious effort to put work things away at the end of the day—files, papers, laptop, folders all get put away to turn that space into leisure space. 

·        Pacing.  The stress and anxiety of this new environment and the uncertain future are tiring.  Blurring work and personal space and time is a hard adjustment.  Things take more time and energy.  Social distancing and shelter in place are mentally exhausting.  I have made a conscious effort to make sure I do not overextend.  Recently I even turned down a project that had a ridiculously tight deadline, especially given the circumstances everyone is working in.  Now is not the time to stretch yourself.

·        Nourish and Develop Relationships.  It is supremely ironic that while social distancing has pushed some of us apart, it has deepened others.  The crisis has brought out a sense of community and cooperation in many places.  I reach out twice a day to old friends and family members either by phone, text or email.  I have reached out to lawyers I have worked with in Italy and Spain to be supportive.  I have probably had more intimate and candid conversations in the past month than I have in a long time.  And technology has provided multiple avenues to connect.  Email, texts and zoom are used most often.  I have even used zoom a number of times to have an after work virtual drink with people. There is something about a crisis of this type that allows people to drop pretenses.  

·    Outdoors.  We are supposed to be in our homes as much as possible.  But with gyms closed, the anxiety and nervous energy has to go somewhere.  I either take a long walk in the evening or do a circuit training routine or sometimes both, every day.  The closing of gyms has forced me to go outside and it’s actually been a benefit even in iffy weather to be in the outdoors.  I think I decided that if the requirements tightened and shelter at home was strictly enforced it would be time for some civil disobedience.

These are the things I’m doing to cope.  I hope at least some of these coping mechanisms are helpful to people that read my blog.  I’m sure some will change as this drags on but these are getting me through some of the dark nights.

And, of course, I'm drawing up a list of things I want to do once the all clear signal is given.  A White Sox game, a trip to the zoo and an architectural boat ride are on the top of the list.