EthicalDative

Truth Facial

Posted on April 1, 2026 by JMN

“His lifestyle is very different and kind of intriguing, although it would not work for me.”

(Bill Gates on Jeffrey Epstein)

According to his spokesman, Bill Gates was referring to Epstein’s décor. That reminds me, I need to vacuum the cat hair from my lifestyle.

When he dismissed blowback as “an inverted pyramid of piffle,” Great Britain’s former Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip proved there’ll always be an England ruled by a class of person able to toss off a Bullingdon clubbable sneer. Americans can only dream of such abuse.

“After the Trump era is over, much will be said about the lasting damage it has done to civic discourse. In addition to other reforms and acts of reconciliation, repairs will need to be made to the ways we engage in public argumentation and decision-making…”
(Aubrey Clayton)

Lately I realize that Clayton’s tweaks to civic discourse would address the sour gas issuing from America’s bowel while ignoring the infection. A broadly based reconciliation with factuality and truth-telling would be medicinal. Less is gluing bullfeathers on a jackass.

What ultimately makes Mr. Epstein a significant figure is not his personal pathology but what his career says about the culture that found him useful.
(Jacob Weisberg)

Causes, not symptoms. What makes our debased discourse significant is not its meanness but what it says about a culture that elects mean leaders.

The dread of war is not enough. If you don’t want the effect, do something to remove the causes. There is no use loving the cause and fearing the effect, and being surprised when the effect inevitably follows the cause.
(Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain)

Merton, a Trappist monk, took it to the divine place, saying the cause of wars is “sin.” He might have been on to something! If I can think of “sin” as “crime” I’m good. Wealth inequality is a sin. Citizens United is a sin. Algorithmic predation is a sin. Monopolies are a sin. Capital punishment is a sin. The list goes on. The wars go on.

Posted in Commentary, Quotations | Tagged language, rhetoric | Leave a comment

Two Writing Prompts

Posted on March 30, 2026 by JMN

Prompt 1
A bibulous fop, a pottymouth letch and a myrmidon in a greatcoat walk into an executive mansion’s pantry. One reaches for the ketchup, one for the Jack Daniels, one for the lemon Jello mix. What is the least predictable distribution of actions among the three, and why? Express your conclusion in a punchline. (Don’t worry if it’s lame; so is the prompt.)

Example:
The fop goes for the Jello because dandies attract blondes. The letch grabs the whiskey to inflame his lethality. The myrmidon seizes the ketchup he has craved ever since his mother shot the dog.

Prompt 2
Invent a fake WordPress account created by comment-bots launched from click-farms in Bulgaria or Belarus. The account name should be transparently bogus, but smack of the country’s linguistic culture. Simulate AI slop for a bogus “comment” that’s so generic it could work anywhere.

Example:
oxtohvrk: Impeccable reasoning! The substance is in the language of your mouth. You illustrate this so well, my friend. I hardly know when I have been this impressed by words. [saucy wink emoji] [flower emoji] [thumbs up emoji]

Posted in Anthology | Tagged blogging, language | 3 Comments

Android Mountburden-Windsock

Posted on March 26, 2026 by JMN

(Now pointedly referred to by the king… as though he were a distant relation rather than his mother’s much-indulged favorite son)…
(Fintan O’Toole)

“Alleged” does heavy lifting in criminal matters. Innocent ‘til proven guilty is the ruling standard. The Epstein class abounds with innocents. At issue here is naming. Monarchy is known for inventing names for itself, as well as titles, distinctions, medals, garb, domains, privileges, rituals and raisons d’être.

True to form, The Firm has graced its allegedly disgraceful dukester with a princely hyphenated moniker. For pity’s sake, instead of Mister Mountburden-Windsock at every breath, let pundits just say “the king’s brother.” We’ll know whom they mean. The whiff is real. The name is wind.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged journalism, language, rhetoric | 2 Comments

Bronze Age Vainglory (Re-posted With Correction)

Posted on March 24, 2026 by JMN

[In the original post I used the term “martinets.” I meant to say “myrmidons.” This version corrects that lapse.]

“Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today…! [etc.]”
Say What? Archive

Wild beasts of the wilderness, when war breaks into flame, follow me from the empty wastes;
Follow me, (and) you will see the blood of the foemen streaming between the hillocks and the sands.
Then return thereafter, and thank me, and remember what you have seen of my deeds,
And take sustenance of the skulls of the people for your little children and your whelps.
(‘Antara ibn Shaddād, 6th century AD, translation by A.J. Arberry)

Fakhr is a genre of Arabic poetry described as “vainglory.” It comprises both braggadocio and insult. Bellicose taunts were the mother’s milk of tribal warfare from earliest times. Ritualistic posturing, bluster and insult preceded bloodletting. When modern warfare mechanized bloodletting, trashtalk melted into the rank fissures of playground bravado, rough spectacle and frat bro crapulence.

No more.

A person surrounded by myrmidons and epigones of the miles gloriosus brandishes the art of the truculent rodomontade in splendid defiance of civilized norms while lighting off bombs and rockets like a kid throwing firecrackers. In rhetoric as in conduct, modalities of human behavior passed down from the 1950’s BC flourish in 2026 AD.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged language, rhetoric | 2 Comments

Bronze Age Vainglory

Posted on March 23, 2026 by JMN

“Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today…! [etc.]”
Say What? Archive

No more.

A person surrounded by martinets and epigones of the miles gloriosus brandishes the art of the truculent rodomontade in splendid defiance of civilized norms while lighting off bombs and rockets like a kid throwing firecrackers. In rhetoric as in conduct, modalities of human behavior passed down from the 1950’s BC flourish in 2026 AD.

Posted in Commentary | Tagged language, rhetoric | 2 Comments

The Urgent Poetry Is of Brevity

Posted on March 21, 2026 by JMN

The time: a-passing; the clock: a-ticking,
The digilords at mind bone pecking.
Garrulity — double barreled, bore-hefty,
Dilatory, broad in the beam;
Lyric rifled, suppressed, curt but rich,
Penetrative, swervy toward lean.
Speak short intensely well, else
Lie pecked to death in din. Obscene.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language | Leave a comment

‘Tendrá que ser’ (It Will Have to Be)

Posted on March 18, 2026 by JMN

Painting by Remedios Varo — illustration from the blog LA BANCARROTA DEL CIRCO [Bankruptcy of the Circus] of Azurea20.

My translation of “Tendrá que ser” (It Will Have to Be) by Azurea20 follows:

IT WILL HAVE TO BE

I shoulder you
like an invisible flag,
or a great fire lily
blooming out of me
for bestowing on what’s not there yet.
No one sees you, I alone sense you.
You rescue me
and pin a diamond
on the white night.
Dogs play again in the sky,
coloring books get daubed with hues,
swings regain their innocent motion.
Sometimes you desert me,
as when the dance
of cuadrilateral steps
devours my heart.
I say “Insane!”
just to hear your name.
And you return:
put right
the writing done already,
kill the fear,
retrieve me from the floor
and end by buffing me
like a fancy mineral.
It will have to be.
It will.

Poem published on 9/11/2015 on [Azurea20’s blog] “Un puñado de canicas” [A fistful of marbles] WORKS/REMEDIOS VARO

Posted in Anthology | Tagged language, poetry, Spanish-English, translation | 2 Comments

From Whose Pulpit?

Posted on March 13, 2026 by JMN

… A majority of Protestant voters, the largest religious group in the United States, align with Republicans. And there are signs of weakening Democratic support among other religious groups, including Hispanic Catholics.
(Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias)

I’ll whisper something to the wind, see where it goes. You never know. Chicanery rife, fury rampant, decency starved, rhetoric is what there is. I’ll go further, won’t I? See if I don’t. Maybe it’s all there is.

FROM WHOSE PULPIT?

whencesoever:
stricture of prophet
command of anointed
preaching of messiah
insight of mystic
tenet of saint

by whomsoever:
chosen called appointed
prophesied beseeched denied

howsoever:
prayed proclaimed indoctrinated
thundered brayed evangelized

wheresoever:
spoken writ engraved
chiseled steepled carved
chanted hymned piped

resolved:
that life created
in the likeness of
Mighty all this all that

be worthily taken
by nought but
what did give it

is ever and always
by sundry and each
honored devoutly
in brazen breach.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language, rhetoric | 3 Comments

Squawk Transmission 1 & 2

Posted on March 3, 2026 by JMN

By this time I should have acquired enough sense to realize that the cause of wars is sin.
(Thomas Merton, The Seven-Storey Mountain)

GREENLAND FROTTAGE
The sub-scalpal domain north of the eyeballs
Is given to a chronic restivenessness
Sharp as a rhinoceros’s horn.
It knows that there be monsters to undress.
Confusion says, “Between extremes is me.
I spy with my middle eye mud bricks,
Immiserating, demoniacal
Perversion angels townhoused on the Styx.”

PERSIAN SHAH-NA-NA
Drunk on gospels, creeds and pentateuchs,
The beast with five backs televises havoc,
Absent without leave the prince of peace.
Stunned by gospels, creeds and pentateuchs,
The world at large sips bitter gall and pukes
As private banquets romp on the Potomac.
Bought with gospels, creeds and pentateuchs,
The beast with five backs, suckered, runs amok.

Couple of standup Brit cops in a functioning justice system doing their job without fear or favor.

There’s more distraction here if needed.

Posted in Anthology | Tagged doggerel, language, Triolets Come Tripping | Leave a comment

Glimpses and Manias (I’m So All About This Painting)

Posted on February 28, 2026 by JMN

Lee Krasner’s grid-like “Composition” (1949), featuring hieroglyphic-like forms, will be featured in the exhibition “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous,” opening Oct. 4 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With its visual complexity it opened new avenues for explorations in abstraction. Credit… Pollock-Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; via The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [New York Times caption and illustration]

This thumping doodle by Lee Krasner — whatever it is, I like it, not least because it looks like some kind of writing devised by a sensibility going for broke. For that matter it could be the shower tile of a Venusian. The “Jewish girl from Brooklyn’s” early influences are pegged as “Hebrew calligraphy, cubism, Mondrian and especially Matisse.”

Krasner’s artefact conveys well nigh infinite possibility as to what a painting can be or what could be a painting. Nothing adjacent to “pretty” or “ugly,” just intricacy tantamount to a perfervid tramontane hallucination. It makes her partner’s drips look lazy.

The tale of Krasner’s 1950s collages is one of those creation stories that love to tell themselves and be told. They acquire the status of deep lore surrounding deceased practitioners whose leavings accrete value trousered by museums and galleries.

At a dead end after struggling with some recalcitrant drawings, she ripped them in half and threw them on the floor. “Having finished this bout of destruction, I slammed the door and walked away,” she said. Days later, she saw the possibilities. She tore more, she pasted those scraps to paper — and later Masonite — and interlaced them with tangled, cursive, or thrusting marks.

Who hasn’t struggled with a “recalcitrant” drawing? The upshot in this case has the heat of annunciation: “Lo,” spake the angel, a connoisseur. “My jaw dropped. She was a really great painter.”

(Amei Wallach, “For Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Equal Footing at the Met,” New York Times, 2-25-26)

Posted in Commentary | Tagged language, painting | 8 Comments