Miscellanea

A few odds and ends.

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time on or waiting for buses, which allowed me a nice chance to catch up on some reading.  Along with some additional pieces I came across this week, I read an unusual breadth of material in that some was almost impossibly well-phrased and accurate, while other parts seemed almost deranged in tone, or at least disconnected from the thoughtful and strong analysis that lets pieces survive past one news cycle.

On the first front, a line from Adam Mars-Jones’ review of Sally Rooney in the LRB, describing a character followed from childhood through matriculation to college:

“In Dublin, Connell is intimidated by his fellow students, who express themselves passionately in seminars and launch into impromptu debates, until he realises that unlike him they haven’t done the reading and are perfecting the useful technique of making the projection of entitlement stand in for the work of understanding.”

Making the projection of entitlement stand in for the work of understanding.  When I read it I felt as though someone had put an extremely sharp knife in my hand, so that at a stroke I could cut away the wooly ways I have described so many things in the past.  Business school.  The behavior of bores.  That certain quality that makes you like one stranger more (or less) than another when you’ve only just met the two of them.  A champion description I will shamelessly pirate in the future.

It intersects with a much longer article, also in the LRB, looking at (heave a small sigh) Brexit.  I stand strongly against attempts to write “definitive accounts” of anything where memories and anecdotes form the basis of evidence, rather than closely analyzed work that has survived some vigorous review.  I think we are still far too close to Brexit for anything like a definitive account to be written, but James Meek’s close focus on the methodology of the Brexiteer vs. Remain campaigns kept him from stepping over the line.  Perhaps the Independence Day reference biased me in his favor, but his use of the Robin Hood versus St. George analogy was, I thought, spot on.  More to the point, the Brexiteers use of St. George matches up perfectly with this idea of the projection of entitlement.  The work of understanding, the work of Robin Hood stealing from the rich to give to the poor, are similarly allied.  Brexiteers’ message lacked depth and understanding (or, cynically, relied on others’ lack of understanding) but the Remainers were unable to condense their lengthier, more demanding message into something sharp enough to breach this brittle armor.

It’s easy, even fashionable at the moment, to condemn people (and their resulting gesalt populism) for being too lazy to embrace the work of understanding.  And yet when some of that supposed work is done in a half-assed manner, it becomes that much more difficult, or at least unappealing, to apply yourself to trying to learn more.

The recent New York Times piece on the origins of Donald Trump’s fortune and the extremely questionable tax maneuvers undertaken to grow and preserve it was, I thought, superb.  The sheer quantity of information it knocked into shape was impressive, and it made esoteric (and, this being taxes, illogical) laws comprehensible.  Without sounding strident, it pointed out the many irregularities about Trump’s wealth-building process and the outright falsehoods Trump has spread about his wealth.  I’m sure this took enormous amounts of time and effort, and stands as a strong example of the work of understanding.

Earlier this week, another Times headline had the whiff of a sequel about it – that Jared Kushner, son-in-law to the President, had also not paid taxes in years.  Eyebrows up.  But clicking through, we discover only that Kushner, as a real estate developer, benefits from depreciation.  Eyebrows down.  Nothing could be more common or indeed logical given how the tax code works.  And yet the narrative of the Times article is clearly trying to lump Kushner in with his father-in-law as a tax cheat.  This willful blurring of the lines undermines the work of understanding and attempts to turn this into a St. George rather than a Robin Hood myth.  (I notice that none of the authors of the original Trump piece contributed to the Kushner article, which makes me glad that they at least aren’t adulterating their own work with such fluffy follow ups.)

So, I’m off to continue my own work of understanding, but hope to be back soon to piece other hollow projections of entitlement.