Power-with — Susan Corso's Blog

Day 80 Everyone Answers to Someone; and, A Common Denominator for a New Day

The Quitter-in-Chief resigned the United States’ membership in the W.H.O. “‘We helped create the W.H.O.,’ said Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has worked with the organization since its creation in 1948. ‘Turning our back on the W.H.O. makes us and the world less safe.” No wonder the Accuser-in-Chief is scrambling; he’s killing off his dragons faster than they can appear. Now he no longer has the W.H.O. to blame. Now you and I know that W.H.O. stands for World Health Organization, but what if it didn’t stand for anything? Except the word that the acronym spells: who. Because the irony doesn’t escape me at all. Of course. The I’m-the-Most-Important-and-Only-Important-Person-in-the-World-in-Chief has resigned from all the who[s] in the world.

Day 79 Rise Up, Rise Up for Justice; and, Outrage and Fury for Peace

Larry Kramer is dead. Larry Kramer. It seems impossible. He was eternally accused of being too ornery, too angry, too stubborn to die. Artist and peacemaker Brad Heckman posted his portrait of Mr. Kramer on Instagram this morning: hecksign Be outraged, offended, angry and intolerant of any discussion or any one who describes you as unequal, undeserving or unnatural for being just as you are. RIP, #LarryKramer His quote applies to so much in the news right now that I’m shaking. Unequal. Undeserving. Unnatural. Epithets hurled round the world. For all sorts of spurious, specious reasons.

Day 78 Heroic Narrative Becomes Passé; and, Its Replacement Can Only Be Power-With

I always appreciate Letters to the Editor from The New York Times. Rachel Lucas from Hickory, North Carolina weighed in this morning. “When I read President Trump’s recent tweets insulting Nancy Pelosi, Stacey Abrams and Joe Scarborough, it occurred to me that given our leader’s great skill in attacking others, he should write a sequel to ‘The Art of the Deal’ called ‘The Art of the Insult,’ describing how to pick on people for their physical traits. “One chapter could focus on ‘Assigning Nasty Nicknames’ and another on ‘Fabricating Crimes.’ He could complete his trilogy with ‘The Art of the Lie,’ with chapters including ‘How to Rewrite History’ and ‘Never Admit a Mistake.’” I couldn’t have said it better myself. What a mish-mash of a horror show is the news this morning. Everywhere I went in the media, I found ratcheting reports of, as another letter-writer had it, “President Trump ... outdoing himself on the depravity index, if that’s possible, simultaneously checking a number of boxes as to how a monumentally failed leader and malevolent human being behaves when cornered, and in a time of crisis.” I wonder what a rodentologist would say about the Vermin-in-Chief?