“Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program isn’t it- dismantle the New Deal, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity - I don’t like the way it turned out. I want it to be my way.” Pynchon in “Vineland,” 1990

Meanwhile, at the Christmas Adventurers Club command post.

A movie that takes place where you're from.

Zohran Mamdani is poised to become the most insufferable politician in America by banging on at every opportunity about the recent string of Arsenal clean sheets.

After 27 years of war, Sparta installed the so-called Thirty Tyrants to rule over a defeated Athens. With help from Thebes, Thrasybulus overthrew the oligarchs eight months later. A long, brutal period of Spartan rule, which must have seemed inevitable to Athenians, lasted less than a year.

First time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Looking forward to an endless series of "Catholic Church at a Crossroads" essays over the coming weeks. "Will Cardinals choose a new Pope who embodies the teachings of Christ or a new Grand Inquisitor who will promise to burn heretics in St. Peter's Square as American Catholics are demanding?"

“Many problems that had seemed insoluble to the Prince were resolved in a trice by Don Calogero; free as he was from the shackles imposed on many men by honesty, decency, and plain good manners, he moved through the forest of life with the confidence of an elephant

Visiting friends and family in London after the election. People hear the American accent, briefly stifle a smirk, avert their eyes momentarily, and after quickly regaining their composure quietly ask if you plan on seeing the Lesley Manville/Mark Strong Oedipus. Unpleasantness averted.

I will always wonder what more I could have done to protect my children and grandchildren from this moral degenerate. As for the latter-day von Papens and Hindenburgs who enabled his rise and support him today, your degradation is complete. What lies will you have to tell your own children?

The slightly tipsy woman next to me tonight at Oedipus at the Wyndham Theatre in London softly cried during most of the performance. I waited until the death of Jocasta to cry. Not just any Jocasta, but Lesley Manville as Jocasta. Shattering.

Paul Reitter’s new translation of Capital describes the capitalist thus: “For all I know you are a model citizen. Perhaps you belong to an association devoted to eradicating the mistreatment of animals. Maybe the “odor of holiness” wafts about you. But…with me you are a thing that has no heart.”

Inside this Flora Yukhnovich is a Watteau struggling to get out.