Without reading Dante, Shakespeare, Montaigne, Cervantes, and their few peers, we cannot learn how to think. And if we cannot think, then the future belongs to the Trumps of the world—that is to say, to the apocalyptic beasts from the sea.

"That things 'just go on' is the catastrophe." ~ Walter Benjamin Ended his life on this day, in 1940 thanks to Samantha Rose Hill

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism." — Walter Benjamin

James Baldwin, 1968: “Every bombed village is my hometown.”

Learning about transubstantiation:

Kris Kristofferson on losing work for supporting Palestine: “if that’s the way it has to be, that’s the way it has to be”

It's midnight in Georgia...the moment we've been waiting for! Jimmy Carter is now officially 100 years old!! 🥳 Happy birthday, Mr. President!!! 🎂  The Carter Center

Reading Tolstoy is one of the best, most enjoyable things I think a human can do. Many people agree! To do it, you need a relatively large amount of control over your own time and attention. Why would a capitalist society spend tons of money to teach people that?

This is so sad. Browsing through the stacks is now a thing of the past. How do you know what you want to read if you can’t turn a few pages? Like that, literally millions of books fall into oblivion.

Somehow managed to churn out a poem yesterday on the election (with thanks to Celeste Marcus of Liberties for commissioning). Today will make self go to library to finish proofs. The show must go on I suppose. Coffee! (Poem can be found here:) libertiesjournal.com/online-article…

The thing about Nancy Pelosi is that she is to her very core a hater. One of the few truly great haters in contemporary US politics. An LBJ-level hater. I have to respect this.

350 years after the death of john milton, his legacy lives on in political losers depressed by the reactionary tendencies of the populace

The left needs its own Judge Holden, whose feet are light and nimble and never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.

if lear has 100 knights in his retinue, i’m one of them. if lear has 50 knights, i’m one of them. if lear has 5 knights, i’m one of them. if lear has 1 knight, i’m that one. if lear has no knights, that means i’m dead. if the world is against lear, i am against the world.

America's Rory Stewart weighs in

Dear March—Come in— How glad I am— I hoped for you before— —Emily Dickinson poets.org/poem/dear-marc…