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Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
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21 Jan, 5 tweets, 1 min read
I'm here to say that the last four years diminished me. I've spent that time in a defensive crouch, fight or flight too much of the time, with COVID over the last year shrinking social connection; I'm less kind, I fear, and narrower in my thinking....1/
2/ I'd hoped, knowing that hope was foolish, that all that would discernibly fall away at noon yesterday. And, yeah, stuff changed; I could feel that change myself.

But four years of fear and anger and, lately, loneliness don't just evaporate...
3/ So the joy I want to feel in the real change, the real hope that I did see beginning to unfold yesterday ain't there yet, and isn't, ISTM, likely to blossom fully for a while.

I want to be happier for my wife and kid, dammit...and it ain't close to all there yet...
4/ So (and yes, I was talking to my therapist this morning, why do you ask?) I guess I'm saying that I doubt I'm alone in this frustrating sense of not OK-ness, when (again, despite my certain knowledge of the contrary) I had let myself dream of a magical OK descending upon me...
5/ And if I'm not alone, well, there's strength and consolation in company, and I make this promise, to myself and others: I can't fix the way my mind and heart react to the moment, but I can consciously try to be kind to others and myself as I and we climb up.

/fin

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More from @TomLevenson

Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
14 Dec 20
@curiouswavefn Rhodes, yes. Pinker, not for me; I find him conventionally contrarian and I am in the minority that does not find his style to my taste.

My list would a) change depending on what I'm thinking about and with the passing of years and b) would be eclectic...
@curiouswavefn For example. It would likely include Middlemarch, MacLean's A River Runs Through It, Heschel's The Sabbath and Seth's The Golden Gate, all of which had a real impact at the point when I read them. Shroedinger's What Is Life would be on the list at least some of the time...
@curiouswavefn Guy Davenport's The Geography of the Imagination and Kenner's The Pound Era make me think every time I dig into them. Lewis Thomas's Lives of a Cell opened my eyes to ways of seeing and writing; so did Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek doesn't...
Read 5 tweets
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
16 Oct 20
It really is fascinating watching every Republican office holder ignore the fact that they personally and their party have uttelry failed their biggest test: 220,000 Americans and counting have died on their watch--and their actions have steadily made that toll worse.

1/
2/ Most important; it's not just individuals who bear the blame, though FSM knows they do, from @realDonaldTrump on down. Republicanism itself has failed. Its core, default ideas have been tried and found wanting. No. Private enterprise didn't get PPE to hospitals in time...
3/ No: individual choice in the face of a collective emergency won't keep people safe. No: crony capitalism really does impede the response to a crisis. No: public health--socialized medical response--is vital to the security of the US. No: viruses don't care about your racism...
Read 12 tweets
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
21 Aug 20
Got an email from @nytimes, and I'm reminded that the problem w. elite coverage of US political life is systemic, not bad individual actors.
@llerer is ot a bad reporter. But when she says "“ I do think voters like to know what they’re getting with a candidate..."
1/
2/ Lerer complains that "I’m not sure this convention answered that question”--what policies Biden would advance, beyond simply being not-Trump.

There are at least 2 problems with this. 1 is that she acknowledges that Warren, Bill Clinton and Biden addressed exactly that...
3/ I mean--when Biden himself tells you what he's going to do, echoing many others who talked about everything from child care to climate change (and pandemic response!) it seems like willed ignorance to say that the DNC audience doesn't know what they would get w. a Biden win...
Read 12 tweets
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
19 Jul 20
Just read an @radioopensource email on their "cancel culture" program in which Yale professor David Bromwich displayed a level of historical illiteracy that made me wonder if Clio herself appeared to whomp him upside the head.

Quote and exegesis to follow 1/
2/ Here's the quote: "Bromwich says...that universities are on the way to becoming much less free than they were 'let’s say from 1945 to 1995 or 2000 or so. Universities were the freest part of American life for all those years . . . places like U. of Chicago, Yale, UCLA, U MI."
3/ Lemme tell you (and Professor Bromwich) a story. In 1951, UC Berkeley wanted to hire my father, Joseph R. Levenson, w. his new Ph.D. in Chinese history. His name had to be hidden from the CA legislature. Why? Because he'd been one of John Fairbank's students...
Read 18 tweets
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
17 Jul 20
1/ More from this must read, balloon-juice.com/2020/07/17/the…:

Unfortunately, the US political system, beginning with the Constitution, is not built to respond to, handle, and/or deal with an irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional insider threat...
2/ "that recognizes no authority other than that of their own power and sees every law, rule, norm, and tradition solely as a means to obtain power, maintain power, expand power, or direct power to reward allies and punish opponents....
3/ "The President’s actions; those of his two primary protectors Attorney General Barr and Senator McConnell; those of his other protectors like new DNI Ratcliffe, former Acting DNI Grennell, the Republican caucuses in the Senate and the House, the Republican governors...
Read 14 tweets
Thomas Levenson, Zṓiarchos Profile picture
28 Jun 20
So, we may have reached peak @nytdavidbrooks. In another of his grand(iose) attempts at sweeping cultural pronouncements, he lists 5 crises we're facing now...and then decides that the critical one is the problem of social justice advocacy...1/
2/ Yup: He lists #COVID19; "a rapid education on the burdens African-Americans carry every day." (how is that a crisis?--ed.); political realignment as the public rejects Trump and his party (again-a crisis?); risk of economic depression, and, wait for it...
3/ "4th, a quasi-religion is seeking control of America’s cultural institutions. The acolytes of this quasi-religion, Social Justice, hew to a simplifying ideology: History is essentially a power struggle between groups, some of which R oppressors & others of which R oppressed...
Read 17 tweets

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