mindless, driveling, delusional/ The beautiful ideal

i. a bad man 

And here's why I spend all that money subscribing to The Economist--the way they deliver bad news weirdly cheers me up. Usually rather dry, they aren't afraid to juice it up:

"It's hard to know which is more unsettling, that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel....
Or the fact that... spurred on by his delusions, DT ... committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error...."
[italics mine]

I met the Economist when I was writing geography books for middle schoolers, because they cover nations the US press never mentions. (My second book was on Zimbabwe.)

I decided to subscribe for myself after reading their obituary of Milosevic, which concluded with a simple sentence along the lines of,
"He may have had some good reasons for what he did,
but he was a bad man."

I won't be renewing in August, though I'd love to-- it's now more than $300. I could/should read it at the library--at least the obits and the book reviews.
In fact, I often don't read (or, not carefully) the front half, where the hard news and economics is.
_______________
ii. “ everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things”

Two people have told me that Saturday's protests were not "effective".
I entirely disagree.
There are lots of ways to be effective. The protest rallies weren't about direct action, they were about gathering strength, socially and emotionally--and simply displaying our numbers.
BODIES count.

k sent me an article that makes the point:

"Broad, nonviolent, nonconfrontational protests aren’t likely to overthrow fascism on their own.
But this kind of mobilization helps to build power and solidarity for a range of ongoing battles—in universities, in the courts, at the ballot box. Protest isn’t the whole fight; neither is voting, neither are lawsuits. But every little bit helps—and the massive protests yesterday [April 5] were more than a little bit."

-- everythingishorrible.net/p/yes-protests-matter
(Thanks, k!)

Further, I would say, FUN counts.
As Emma Goldman almost said [paraphrased here],
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

I may have had the button in the Reagan 1980s.

What Goldman actually said, from her 1931 autobiography, "Living My Life" [bf mine]:

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside.
With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face.

I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy.

I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.

"I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."

Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world--prisons, persecution, everything.
Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades
I would live my beautiful ideal.

[Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56]