Haworth Academic Center

SPOILER ALERT: If you want to know in advance what life would be like under a MAGA tyranny, re-read the memoirs of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Get ready for the Gulag. Or don't! Vote blue. Please. Because I know that I would be one of the ones to end up there, along with any other voice for freedom...

ALERTING ALL CITIZENS OF HEAVEN: I've been hearing a lot of "Christian" voices lately trying to weasel out of responsibility for Donald Trump and the horrors that would follow his return to power. You can't get out of responsibility just by not voting and claiming some kind of mealy-mouthed spiritual "citizenship in Heaven"; a non-vote or a third-party vote is an active vote for Fascism. You should have learned your lesson in the 1930s. You do have a choice, and you will make a difference, FOR GOOD OR EVIL...

THE DICTIONARY DEFINITION OF SCHADENFREUDE: Watching the fifth inning of last night's World Series game multiple times....

No words or photo-shopping necessary...

IF THE FORCES OF DARKNESS AND FASCISM WIN THIS AMERICAN ELECTION, IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR US AS A FREE NATION?

The fact that almost one half of Americans are doing everything in their power to put an avowed fascist dictator in the White House means that we have ALREADY lost so much of what we represent, and win or lose, we need to begin immediately to rebuild belief in Freedom and Democracy.

The fact that Donald Trump even has the faintest chance of winning this election shows how far we have fallen.

The fact that Trump supporters are overwhelmingly poorly-educated means that we need to begin immediately to re-build a brand-new kind of education that teaches not only Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmetic, but above all, teaches Critical Thinking, how to distinguish the Good from the Evil, the Sound from the Stupid, how to read between the lines of phony logic and fake "information."

We have so much work to do, win or lose... We can't give up on Freedom...

HISTORY REPEATING: Make no mistake, this election is the American version of Germany's federal elections of 1932, 1933, and 1934. In other words, possibly our last chance to deny Fascism from gaining a deeper foothold on its way toward a total N**i takeover.

As a historian, I would never use those terms as name-calling, but only with clinical precision to describe real historical movements. America is wavering on the brink of the unthinkable, an actual descent into literal Fascism.

It's no exaggeration to say that the fate of Freedom is in our hands.

AMAZING MILESTONE: Congratulations to Han Kang (한강) and my ecstatic Korean friends for her reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature! She has become the first South Korean writer and the first female Asian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, a truly incredible moment.

Ms. Han graduated from the prestigious Yonsei University the year before I began to teach there, so I can't claim any faux credit for her achievement... :o) Sort of like I can't claim any credit for the work of Pak Kyongni (박경리), the illustrious author of "The Land," even though we were at Yonsei at the same time (regrettably, I never met her).

I believe that only four of Han Kang's novels have been translated into English so far: The Vegetarian, Greek Lessons, Human Acts, and The White Book, but hopefully the Nobel will spur the translation of more of them. Same with Pak Kyongni's The Land, a monumental work which has never been fully translated into English.

Han Kang has been virtually silent about this award, eschewing any inappropriate celebration of her Nobel prize, quietly announcing that her heart is too agonized for the people of Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Ukraine, and other people who are suffering terribly in war zones right now in real time. Anyone who has read her gentle, understated novels knows that this is the expression of her true heart...

A POWERFUL AND POIGNANT CHOICE:

Atomic Bomb Survivors Win Nobel Peace Prize, Say Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Years Ago Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-ytA Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears...

IN DEFENSE OF DONALD TRUMP:

Let me just get something off my chest to the five or six people who might read my posts:

i just can't sympathize with so much of the anti-Trump mockery that we allow ourselves, either among our friends, on social network, or on late-night comedy. I'm afraid that I've fallen into it many times myself.

It's true that Donald Trump makes it so easy to make fun of him, and there are many ways in which he is himself responsible for his own cartoonish behavior, but we anti-Trumpers have crossed the line with a lot of our mockery and ridicule.

We are supposed to be the good guys, so why, for example, do we allow ourselves to fall into BODY-SHAMING humor about anyone, Trump or not? Yes, he invites it by telling his rallies how "good-looking" he is, but that doesn't make it OK for us to mock his weight problem.

Plenty of us know how difficult it is to wage the weight battle for a lifetime.

Also, we are supposed to be the good guys, so why, for another example, do we make fun of the advanced COGNITIVE DECLINE so obvious in a person who is, after all, a senior citizen? Can you imagine how incredibly distressing it will be when you begin to lose the mental faculties of your younger years? I know that Trump shows no awareness of what is obviously his own descent into dementia, but that doesn't make it fair game for us to make fun of.

Donald Trump is not dangerous because he is obese or because he is aging. HE IS DANGEROUS BECAUSE HE IS A WANNABE FASCIST who wants to rule the world with his totalitarian buddies. Let's target the right things when we express our outrage. There are still plenty of DRUMPFY absurdities for us to make fun of, things that he and his followers CAN help and that are totally fair game for our ridicule.

Let's not mock the things that a person can't help.

Making fun of obesity or of the tragedy of cognitive decline is the sort of thing MAGA goblins do. Can't we be better than that? Don't try to excuse it by saying that the MAGA minions do those things so it's OK for us to do it. That doesn't make it OK.

Let's not let ourselves be turned into the kind of creatures that they have let themselves become with their eyes wide open...

Exploring the Bangor City Forest with my brilliant niece Alina. Feeling very flattered that she came all the way from Americus, Georgia to see me...

"ARE YOU A LIBROCUBICULARIST?"

One of my ten-year-old students reminded me this week of this word, invented by Christopher Morley in his delightful novel "The Haunted Bookshop." This word had somehow completely fallen out of my working vocabulary, even though it used to be a favorite. How can that happen?

It means, of course, as I'm sure you all know, "a person who is fond of reading in bed."

Christopher Morley also once wisely said, "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of a unanimity."

ORC INVASION: A big beefy bearded white guy, perfect stereotype of a MAGA hobgoblin, just this minute burst into the Haworth Academic Center ranting with lots of belligerent profanity about all the "Communist Propaganda" in our display windows.

Must have struck a sore spot somehow. Was it the word "obviously" that got to him?

RUNNING AWAY FROM RESPONSIBILITY: In 1941, psychologist, sociologist, and philosopher Erich Fromm published his classic "Escape From Freedom," in which he argued that much of humanity actually VOLUNTARILY submits to authoritarian control because we fear personal responsibility.

In other words, we SEEK dictators and submit to them willingly!

There could be no clearer proof of this than the election of 2024. Millions of Americans, knowing full well Donald Trump's announced plan to rule America with an iron hand, utterly demolishing American democracy in the process, are poised actually to vote for dictatorship! How is this possible? If we end up in a fascist dictatorship, it will be because WE CHOSE IT for ourselves, for our children, for our grand-children.

This is why it's so hard to find forgiveness in our hearts for the Trumpers of the world, who are absolutely keen on destroying our freedom and handing responsibility over to a self-proclaimed dictator. Time is growing short. Our days as a free nation may be numbered. Vote against Donald Trump and everything he stands for...