MONDAY, MARCH 30, 2026
Truth beauty, beauty truth: "Truth is beauty, beauty truth?" Or was it the other way around?
We couldn't quite remember! We've never ingested the poem in question, but that bromide has been banging around inside our heads over the past few days.
Today, we finally googled it up. There Keats had gone again, at the end of a famous ode, addressing some ancient pottery:
Ode on a Grecian Urn
[...]
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
That's the way the poem ends. Aside from its famous bromide, we wouldn't necessarily recommend it.
Truth is beauty, beauty truth? The misordered saying had been banging around in our heads because of what we got to write about on Friday afternoon, after spending some time down at the medical mission.
We had taken two books along to combat the hours of sitting around. As we noted in Friday afternoon's report, the two books in our satchel were these:
Mary L. Trump
Too Much and Never Enough
Simon & Schuster, 2020
Francine Prose
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
HarperCollins, 2009
Until that very day, it hadn't occurred to us that there's a type of connection between those two books. The connection is lodged in the first thing Prose includes in her endlessly fascinating book.
Prose starts with something John Berryman wrote about Anne Frank's extremely famous book way back in 1967:
I would call the subject of Anne Frank’s Diary even more mysterious and fundamental than St. Augustine’s, and describe it as the conversion of a child into a person….
In fact, each of the books we scanned that day involve "the conversion of a child into a person"—or perhaps, the way that conversion may fail to occur in the case of the unfortunate child who is raised in a profoundly unhelpful way.
Mary Trump's book describes the disordered upbringing of her uncle, starting at age 2 and a half. There is also a passing mention of the fact that certain kinds of (serious) "personality disorders" can be inherited—can be passed along right there in the genes.
Mary Trump describes a tragically disordered upbringing. As Prose describes Anne Frank's upbringing, she describes something quite different.
On Friday, we posted a pair of anecdotes from Prose's book. We didn't want to post on Saturday morning—didn't want to leave those captured moments behind.
There ain't no truth or beauty when the fat orange yam opens his pie hole. Jesus we are so fucked by these clowns.
ReplyDeleteThis is what the maggots voted for, and anarchy.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing the 2 books have in common is that they are both books.
ReplyDeleteTrump administration to pay Michael Flynn in settlement over earlier prosecution.
ReplyDeleteBecause fuck you, what are you going to do about it!
Catch-22, in its most general formulation, says that they can do anything you can't stop them from doing. Or, as you say, "Fuck you, what are you going to do about it?!"
DeleteYes and we’re now waiting to see how much Trump decides to pay Trump to settle the Trump suit
DeleteI’ve read Mary Trump’s book. The bulk of it is about her father not her uncle. You’d never know that from Somerby’s discussion of it. She blames her grandfather for turning her dad into a drunk, by denying him the chance to become his own person. It is a book about grievance.
ReplyDeleteAnne Frank never would have written and had published a journal if it were not for the madness of her captivity. That result does not justify the torture of a little girl, much less the six million or more others who died with her.
ReplyDeleteSomerby is an asshole to make a fetish of her life this way. His raising of diary to some ridiculously inflated status prevents all of us from seeing the humanity that was obliterated by Nazi Germany, an organized system of tyranny and abuse that touched the lives of everyone who lived through that time, not just those who died.
Now we are faced with the imminent creation of a similar system in our own country. Calling it madness is not enough. It is evil and it must be resisted. Somerby ignores that entire aspect of Trump's presidency to focus on Trump's mundane idiocies. But there are people being killed on our streets by our government, people being imprisoned and removed from their families and their lives through a bureaucratic neglect that they are people. Just as occurred to Anne Frank. How many are afraid to leave their hiding places, as Frank and her family were? What disease will they die from in ICE detention? Who is our army fighting in another country, while Hegseth bombs another school and sports complex?
Meanwhile, Somerby cannot decide whether to read Prose or Mary Trump's diatribe against Fred Sr so he choose Keats and cannot make good sense of his poem because the title has the word "urn" in it. Whatta guy our Somerby is!
Who carried two hardcover books in a satchel if they don't have to, to a medical appointment? Books are heavy. I don't believe he took either book with him anywhere. This is all made up. But why? To tell us to pity Trump? What good does that do anyone? Trump needs to be stopped, not pitied.
Delete"His raising of diary to some ridiculously inflated status prevents all of us from seeing the humanity that was obliterated by Nazi Germany"
DeleteAre you sure? I think I'm still capable of seeing it.
Do you see Anne Frank's humanity? Somerby doesn't. He sees her in the form of a larger-than-life figure in Prose's book, the figure Frank's surviving father created, not the little girl she actually was.
DeleteYou don't seem to think young Anne is worthy. Why is that?
DeleteShe was a young teenager stuck in hiding, then shipped off to a concentration camp. She had no time to be anything except a victim. Her diary was not significant as a literary work. As I said, she was not a young Jane Austen (we have Austen's work from that age as a comparison). She was a kid. It offends me that her father and others since have felt the need to make her into something she wasn't in order to care about her. She should be cared about because the Nazi regime committed atrocities.
DeleteWhy isn't the same fuss made about her older sister who also died? Because she didn't write a diary that her father could publicize and use as a symbol of her loss. Perhaps her older sister might have been a concert pianist, but there was no piano in hiding and no record of her talent. Or perhaps she would have been a mom of a child who would grow up to become a famous scientist. You don't know what a child's potential might have been, but most of us live our lives without doing anything hugely wonderful beyond the circle of our friends and family. Why assume that Anne Frank's diary presaged literary fame when it was unremarkable and edited by her father before publication and the huge campaign to promote the book? She was a kid who shouldn't have died so young.
How many other, similarly or more talented people died at Nazi hands. We can presume that many more were killed. Anne Frank is no more sacred or talented because we know her name. That's why giving her such attention while ignoring the rest is wrong. And yes, Somerby does ignore the rest. He isn't venerating Anne because she was symbolic of loss, but because he thinks she was beautiful. And who finds a geeky looking 14 year old beautiful? A weirdo.
But, as I've said before, I think Somerby may be a neo-Nazi bro who is thumbing his nose at the rest of us by mocking Anne Frank and gloating over her death, the way current Nazi admirers do. There is nothing in Somerby's work her that rules that explanation out, and you would think that a sympathetic person would be aware of how his excess praise might come across in a context fraught with ulterior motives (over time).
YMMV but you did ask.
Grecian urns have beauty but this work of art has truth:
ReplyDelete"The Washington Post reported that a golden toilet seat on a faux marble pedestal was installed on the mall, accompanied by a plaque reading "a Throne Fit for a King." It was built just days after more than 8 million people across the U.S. participated in the nationwide "No Kings" protest.
“In a time of unprecedented division, escalating conflict and economic turmoil, President Trump focused on what really mattered: Remodeling the Lincoln Bathroom in the White House," the plaque reads. "This, his crowning achievement is a bold reminder that the president isn’t just a bussinessman (sic), he’s taking care of business. It stands as a tribute to an unwavering visionary who looked down, [aw a problem, and painted it gold.” [The Guardian via Rawstory]
Digby says:
ReplyDelete"We see this phenomenon all over our politics and the culture at large. Trump didn’t anticipate that Americans would actually resist his authoritarianism because he promised to bring the bread and circuses. He’s certainly brought the circus but it isn’t a fun one, at least for most people. And the bread is stale and expensive. He just assumed he could use lies, hype and bribes to make yet another of his “deals” with the American people and everyone would end up loving him. It turns out that many people actually care about something more than money and being entertained by hurting vulnerable people. Go figure.
These people do not understand how other people feel and think because they have no empathy. Our leading tech lord Elon Musk even likes to say “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy” so they are actually proud of it. They think it’s a brilliant insight. But he’s wrong too. It’s vitally important to have empathy if you need to understand your adversaries — and your friends.
This is a big reason why they are so incompetent at governance. They just don’t understand what motivates people besides fear and they assume that always leads to capitulation. They couldn’t be more wrong."
I have two big disagreements with Digby's comment, "These people do not understand how other people feel and think."
DeleteThere is no "these people." In terms of understanding how ordinary people, Trump and Must are very different.
Trump's successes show that he's a master at understanding how other people feel and think. Without that ability, he could not have become an international icon and get elected President. Even if you hate the things he has done, it's annoyingly stupid to deny that he has this particular ability.
Both are crazy sociopaths and malignant narcissists. Neither Trump nor Musk understands anyone except themselves because they don't care enough about others to consider them at all.
DeleteTrump and Musk share the ability to spend a lot of money to hire people to get them elected. Those people understand how voters thinks and how to manage campaigns etc. Hiring people doesn't make either man good at the jobs they hire others to do.
David, on Saturday, posted this:
ReplyDeleteJohn F. Kennedy's book, "Profiles in Courage" celebrates elected officials who did what they believed was the right thing for the country even though it was unpopular. Today, the war in Iran is unpopular. Nevertheless, Trump is courting unpopularity today by doing what he believes is the right thing for the country. If JFK were still alive and writing a sequel, Trump would be one of the heroes featured in the book.
Today:
BOSTON, MA – The 2026 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award® will be presented to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve, which is critical to the stability of the global economy, despite years of personal attacks and threats from the highest levels of government. The people of the Twin Cities of Minnesota will also be honored for risking their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members from an unprecedented federal law enforcement operation, peacefully defending the human rights and values that serve as the foundation of our Constitutional democracy.
Also: Haw!
DeleteGreat 👍 work
Delete