Entitlement Picture Quotes

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I don't think I am heartless. Do you?' 'You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,' answered Lord Henry with his sweet melancholy smile.
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just say it's pictures of people naked. For example, you have these primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot, and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of Northern Mali that you may be interested in." So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason naked, or whatever. But if National Geographic were to publish an article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography. But others would not. And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev. Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
Dave Barry
Nina continued staring at Carrie but didn’t say anything. How was it that this woman could shout out every thought running through her head? Why was it that Carrie Soto felt so entitled to scream? In that moment, Nina was not mad or jealous or embarrassed or anything else she might have expected. Nina was sad. Sad that she’d never lived a fraction of a second like Carrie Soto. What a world she must live in, Nina thought, where you can piss and moan and stomp your feet and cry in public and yell at the people who hurt you. That you can dictate what you will and will not accept. Nina, her entire life, had been programmed to accept. Accept that your father left. Accept that your mother is gone. Accept that you must take care of your siblings. Accept that the world wants to lust after you. Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina believed it was her greatest strength - that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable. Nina thought of herself driving to someone else’s house to scream on their front lawn while a whole party’s worth of people watched. It was so impossible that she couldn’t even summon a mental picture. But Carrie had this fire within her. Where was Nina’s fire? Had it ever been there? And if so, when did it go out? Her husband had slept with Carrie last night and then Nina had taken him back this evening. What was wrong with her? Was she just going to accept it all? Just accept every piece of bullshit thrown at her for the rest of her life?
Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising)
These are true stories told from memory – to which you are entitled to ask, what is truth, and what is memory to a creative writer in what we may delicately call the evening of his life? To the lawyer, truth is facts unadorned. Whether such facts are ever findable is another matter. To the creative writer, fact is raw material, not his taskmaster but his instrument, and his job is to make it sing. Real truth lies, if anywhere, not in facts, but in nuance.
John Le Carré (The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life: NOW A MAJOR APPLE TV MOTION PICTURE)
At the door, Smith said to Hickock, “No chicken-hearted jurors, they!” They both laughed loudly, and a cameraman photographed them. The picture appeared in a Kansas paper above a caption entitled: “The Last Laugh?
Truman Capote (In Cold Blood)
...I have read but little of Madame Glyn. I did not know that things like "It" were going on. I have misspent my days. When I think of all those hours I flung away in reading William James and Santayana, when I might have been reading of life, throbbing, beating, perfumed life, I practically break down. Where, I ask you, have I been, that no true word of Madame Glyn's literary feats has come to me? But even those far, far better informed than I must work a bit over the opening sentence of Madame Glyn's foreword to her novel" "This is not," the says, drawing her emeralds warmly about her, "the story of the moving picture entitled It, but a full character study of the story It, which the people in the picture read and discuss." I could go mad, in a nice way, straining to figure that out. ...Well it turns out that Ava and John meet, and he begins promptly to "vibrate with passion." ... ...It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam launches." -Review of the book, It, by Elinor Glyn. Review title: Madame Glyn Lectures on "It," with Illustrations; November 26, 1927.
Dorothy Parker (Constant Reader: 2)
Given that narcissists can often be quite vulnerable, again, because their self-esteem is so fragile and reliant on the judgments of other people, depression is not a surprising part of this picture. At times when they are depressed, especially for men, it is quite possible that their mood will be even more irritable than usual, or they will become more withdrawn, and seemingly more focused on themselves. The big-ticket symptoms we would like to see changed—the lack of empathy, the chronic entitlement, the grandiosity—tend to be most resistant to change, since they are linked so strongly to the core deficits of the disorder, such as an inability to regulate self-esteem.
Ramani Durvasula (Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist)
To lead is a privilege, not an entitlement. It doesn't make you better than anyone; it helps you bring out the best in everyone. Accolades don't inspire a leader's vision; they've set their sights on the success of others. Leaders bypass shortsightedness and focus on the big picture. Leaders who always stand righteously never stand alone.
Carlos Wallace (Life Is Not Complicated-You Are: Turning Your Biggest Disappointments into Your Greatest Blessings)
The Joy of Sex!—Elaine brought home that dreary tract one day, those tidings of comfort and joy by some Californicated Englishman, and we studied the ghastly pictures, the two hundred different positions. What a joyless book. That poor fucker the instructor-model, performing his gymnastic routines over and over, with slight variations, for three hundred pages, each and every time upon the same woman. No wonder he has that look on his soft hairy degenerate face of a bored he-dog hooked up on the street with an exhausted bitch, longing to leave but unable to extricate himself from what breeders call a “tie.” The woman in the book looks only slightly happier; somebody out of mercy should have emptied a bucket of ice water on the miserable couple. Technique, technique, technical engineering, curse of the modern world, debasing what should be a wild, free, spontaneous act of violent delight into an industrial procedure. Comfort’s treatise is a training manual, a workbook which might better have been entitled The Job of Sex.
Edward Abbey (The Fool's Progress)
I reached the privy and emptied the slop pail, and so forth. And so forth, Grace? asks Dr.Jordan. I look at him. Really if he does not know what you do in a privy there is no hope for him. What I did was, I hoisted my skirts and sat down above the buzzing flies, on the same seat everyone in the house sat on, lady or lady's maid, they both piss and it smells the same, and not like lilac neither, as Mary Whitney used to say. What was in there for wiping was an old copy of the Godey's Ladies' Book; I always looked at the pictures before using them. Most were of the latest fashions, but some were of duchesses from England and high-society ladies in New York and the like. You should never let your picture be in a magazine or newspaper if you can help it, as you never know what ends your face may be made to serve, by others, once it has got out of your control. But I do not say any of this to Dr. Jordan. And so forth, I say firmly, because And so forth is all he is entitled to. Just because he pesters me to know everything is no reason for me to tell him.
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
why is it that I cannot feel this tragedy as much as I want to? I don’t think I am heartless. Do you?” “You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
... He was a bad courtier and painted an ambiguous picture entitled La Menzogna or Falsehood, to show what he felt about the need for dissimulation to achieve success; a man holds up a mask to indicate to his companion that he must adopt it if he wants to make progress at court... ... The clear message was that Rosa was not prepared to demean himself in that way.
Jonathan Scott (Salvator Rosa: His Life and Times)
I waited for years for my infatuation to blow over, managing it like a chronic illness. But suppression only sustains and intensifies passion instead of letting it peter out into domesticity, the way the narrow glass canyons of Manhattan Venturi the winds to a pitch that rips umbrellas inside out. Kati Jo used to say she wished Lauren and I could just fuck so I'd get it out of my system, but I never wanted anything as feasible as an affair. I never imagined that Lauren might leave her husband, or entertained shameful little daydreams about his death. The only scenario I could plausibly picture that would bring us together was not Lars's death but my own. I would contract some painless terminal illness that would entitle me to ask Lauren to sit at my bedside in my last months and read to me or bring me little sandwiches. I couldn't envision any realistic way of changing this world; what I wanted was to live in a different one. I was never really a reformer, but a utopian.
Tim Kreider (I Wrote This Book Because I Love You: Essays)
The following work, in which, at the outset, nothing more was contemplated than a temporary jeu-d’esprit, was commenced in company with my brother, the late Peter Irving, Esq. Our idea was to parody a small hand-book which had recently appeared, entitled, “A Picture of New York.” Like that, our work was to begin an historical sketch; to be followed by notices of the customs, manners and institutions of the city; written in a serio-comic vein, and treating local errors, follies and abuses with good-humored satire.
Washington Irving (Knickerbocker's History of New York)
Ask Mrs. Pontellier what she would like to hear me play,” she requested of Robert. She sat perfectly still before the piano, not touching the keys, while Robert carried her message to Edna at the window. A general air of surprise and genuine satisfaction fell upon every one as they saw the pianist enter. There was a settling down, and a prevailing air of expectancy everywhere. Edna was a trifle embarrassed at being thus signaled out for the imperious little woman’s favor. She would not dare to choose, and begged that Mademoiselle Reisz would please herself in her selections. Edna was what she herself called very fond of music. Musical strains, well rendered, had a way of evoking pictures in her mind. She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle played or practiced. One piece which that lady played Edna had entitled “Solitude.” It was a short, plaintive, minor strain. The name of the piece was something else, but she called it “Solitude.” When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him. Another piece called to her mind a dainty young woman clad in an Empire gown, taking mincing dancing steps as she came down a long avenue between tall hedges. Again, another reminded her of children at play, and still another of nothing on earth but a demure lady stroking a cat. The very first chords which Mademoiselle Reisz struck upon the piano sent a keen tremor down Mrs. Pontellier’s spinal column. It was not the first time she had heard an artist at the piano. Perhaps it was the first time she was ready, perhaps the first time her being was tempered to take an impress of the abiding truth.
Kate Chopin (The Awakening)
I looked at the photo. "Your father was a man torn between two halves," Rahim Khan had said in his letter. I had been the entitled half, the society-approved, legitimate half, the unwitting embodiment of Baba's guilt. I looked at Hassan, showing those two missing front teeth, sunlight slanting on his face. Baba's other half. The unentitled, unprivileged half. The half who had inherited what had been pure and noble in Baba. The half that, maybe, in the most secret recesses of his heart, Baba had thought of as his true son. I slipped the picture back where I had found it. Then I realized something: That last thought had brought no sting with it. Closing Sohrab's door, I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.
Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)
Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend of Margaret Fuller’s in Concord who followed her path to the Continent several years after her death, undertook an experiment in fictional form when he put aside writing stories in favor of longer narratives. He preferred to call his books “Romances,” not novels. “When a writer calls his work a Romance,” Hawthorne explained in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables, “he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.” The novelist, in Hawthorne’s terms, aims to achieve “a very minute fidelity” to experience, whereas the author of a romance may “bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture” while still maintaining strict allegiance to “the truth of the human heart.
Megan Marshall (Margaret Fuller: A New American Life)
In short, in contrast to the magician - who is still hidden in the medical practitioner – the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.
Walter Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: An Influential Essay of Cultural Criticism; the History and Theory of Art (Hardcover))
When Alice was young, she had no idea what a jag even was. In those early days of their love affair, Alice found Ted’s rogue demeanor attractive. He was a Snow. But he was a rebel. He stood up to his stern father, and no one in the Snow family did that. The Snows were all too afraid of losing their entitlements. Ted had a relaxed swagger in his walk. Alice loved his confidence, the fashion of his easy laughter. She had no idea, not even a suspicion, that it was drink that fueled his swagger as well as his gumption. He was almost always drunk. But she was a teenager and a dreamer, and she loved his seeming fearlessness. He was handsome as well, with soft eyes that had a happy mischief to them. His thick, curly hair bounced as he swaggered. He was a picture. She thought he was hardy and strong, but it was the heat of the alcohol that made his cheeks flush apple red. He appeared to be the picture of health, but indeed, he wasn’t. He never was.
Steven James Taylor (the dog)
They may talk rapidly and say things that will rip your heart right out of your chest. They can be very invalidating. Their conscience is diminished during the mania, so they may do or say things that seem unconscionable. In their normal state of mind, they may be quite personable and conscientious. If you have friends or relatives who have this imbalance, you really need to not take what they say personally when they are manic. Most of us think things we would never actually say, but mania can be a direct thought-to-mouth process. During the mania, the prefrontal lobe of the brain is diminished, so their judgment is poor, even though they may think brilliantly. They are not in tune to the bigger picture of things or the consequences of what they do. They may intellectually know what they are doing, but they are not engaged in the bigger picture. They feel good, and they may have what I call the trilogy operating: ego, arrogance, and entitlement. I know you might think that people can always help what they say, but if you do think that, refer to the section above on narcissism. Sometimes they really can’t help it. I am not trying to make excuses for them. I am merely trying to point out that it is not personal. What
Jay Carter (Nasty People)
She looked thoughtful. “Who knows? Perhaps now is the time to see through the habit. Accidents, illness, healing, they’re all more mysterious than any of us ever imagined. I believe that we have an undiscovered ability to influence what happens to us in the future, including whether we are healthy—although, again, the power has to remain with the individual patient. “There was a reason that I didn’t offer an opinion concerning how badly you were hurt. We in the medical establishment have learned that medical opinions have to be offered very carefully. Over the years the public has developed almost a worship of doctors, and when a physician says something, patients have tended to take these opinions totally to heart. The country doctors of a hundred years ago knew this, and would use this principle to actually paint an overly optimistic picture of any health situation. If the doctor said that the patient would get better, very often the patient would internalize this idea in his or her mind and actually defy all odds to recover. In later years, however, ethical considerations have prevented such distortions, and the establishment has felt that the patient is entitled to a cold scientific assessment of his or her situation. “Unfortunately when this was given, sometimes patients dropped dead right before our eyes, just because they were told their condition was terminal. We know now that we have to be very careful with these assessments, because of the power of our minds. We want to focus this power in a positive direction. The body is capable of miraculous regeneration. Body parts thought of in the past as solid forms are actually energy systems that can transform overnight. Have you read the latest research on prayer? The simple fact that this kind of spiritual visualization is being scientifically proven to work totally undermines our old physical model of healing. We’re having to work out a new model.” She paused and poured more water on the towel around my ankle, then continued, “I believe the first step in the process is to identify the fear with which the medical problem seems to be connected; this opens up the energy block in your body to conscious healing. The next step is to pull in as much energy as possible and focus it at the exact location of the block.” I was about to ask how this was done, but she stopped me. “Go ahead and raise your energy level as much as you can.” Accepting her guidance, I began to observe the beauty around me and to concentrate on a spiritual connection within, evoking a heightened sensation of love. Gradually the colors became more vivid and everything in my awareness increased in presence. I could tell that she was raising her own energy at the same time. When I felt as though my vibration had increased as much as possible, I looked at her. She smiled back at me. “Okay, now you can focus the energy on the block.” “How do I do that?” I asked. “You use the pain. That’s why it’s there, to help you focus.
James Redfield (The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Celestine Prophecy #2))
My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.
Grant Morrison (Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human)
Auto-Zoomar. Talbert knelt in the a tergo posture, his palms touching the wing-like shoulder blades of the young woman. A conceptual flight. At ten-second intervals the Polaroid projected a photograph on to the screen beside the bed. He watched the auto-zoom close in on the union of their thighs and hips. Details of the face and body of the film actress appeared on the screen, mimetized elements of the planetarium they had visited that morning. Soon the parallax would close, establishing the equivalent geometry of the sexual act with the junctions of this wall and ceiling. ‘Not in the Literal Sense.’Conscious of Catherine Austin’s nervous hips as she stood beside him, Dr Nathan studied the photograph of the young woman. ‘Karen Novotny,’ he read off the caption. ‘Dr Austin, may I assure you that the prognosis is hardly favourable for Miss Novotny. As far as Talbert is concerned the young woman is a mere modulus in his union with the film actress.’ With kindly eyes he looked up at Catherine Austin. ‘Surely it’s self-evident - Talbert’s intention is to have intercourse with Miss Taylor, though needless to say not in the literal sense of that term.’ Action Sequence. Hiding among the traffic in the near-side lane, Koester followed the white Pontiac along the highway. When they turned into the studio entrance he left his car among the pines and climbed through the perimeter fence. In the shooting stage Talbert was staring through a series of colour transparencies. Karen Novotny waited passively beside him, her hands held like limp birds. As they grappled he could feel the exploding musculature of Talbert’s shoulders. A flurry of heavy blows beat him to the floor. Vomiting through his bloodied lips, he saw Talbert run after the young woman as she darted towards the car. The Sex Kit.‘In a sense,’ Dr Nathan explained to Koester, ‘one may regard this as a kit, which Talbert has devised, entitled “Karen Novotny” - it might even be feasible to market it commercially. It contains the following items: (1) Pad of pubic hair, (2) a latex face mask, (3) six detachable mouths, (4) a set of smiles, (5) a pair of breasts, left nipple marked by a small ulcer, (6) a set of non-chafe orifices, (7) photo cut-outs of a number of narrative situations - the girl doing this and that, (8) a list of dialogue samples, of inane chatter, (9) a set of noise levels, (10) descriptive techniques for a variety of sex acts, (11) a torn anal detrusor muscle, (12) a glossary of idioms and catch phrases, (13) an analysis of odour traces (from various vents), mostly purines, etc., (14) a chart of body temperatures (axillary, buccal, rectal), (15) slides of vaginal smears, chiefly Ortho-Gynol jelly, (16) a set of blood pressures, systolic 120, diastolic 70 rising to 200/150 at onset of orgasm . . . ’ Deferring to Koester, Dr Nathan put down the typescript. ‘There are one or two other bits and pieces, but together the inventory is an adequate picture of a woman, who could easily be reconstituted from it. In fact, such a list may well be more stimulating than the real thing. Now that sex is becoming more and more a conceptual act, an intellectualization divorced from affect and physiology alike, one has to bear in mind the positive merits of the sexual perversions. Talbert’s library of cheap photo-pornography is in fact a vital literature, a kindling of the few taste buds left in the jaded palates of our so-called sexuality.
J.G. Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition)
The Director looked at Mr. Jones. His beard did not conceal the smile. Fair man? His delusion knows no bounds. The program thrived from the self-centeredness of these old men, the infection of false entitlements that comes from money and power. Their universe revolved around their petty concerns and anything that affected them. They couldn’t see the bigger picture, they couldn’t see opportunity when they looked in only one direction. Stay open to life, gentlemen. Let it unfold and the universe will provide you with endless paths on your journey. Fact is, they got lucky.
Tony Bertauski (The Annihilation of Foreverland (Foreverland, #1))
The Obama Administration has been trying to indoctrinate the public with its climate ideology in many ways and through a variety of agencies. This includes material on agency websites, advocacy of climate “education,”470 exhibits in National Parks,471 and grants by the National Science Foundation. One example is the $700,000 NSF grant to The Civilians, a New York theatre company, to finance the production of a show entitled “The Great Immensity,”472 “a play and media project about our environmental challenges.”473 A second example is a $5.7 million grant to Columbia University to record “voicemails from the future” that paint a picture of an Earth destroyed due to climate change.474 A third example is a $4.9 million grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to create scenarios based on America’s climate actions on climate change including a utopian future where everyone rides bicycles and courts forcibly take property from the wealthy.475 The general approach pursued by the Administration for arts and education-related climate propaganda appears to be very similar to the similar propaganda campaigns by Soviet and Eastern European governments to promote their political ends.
Alan Carlin (Environmentalism Gone Mad: How a Sierra Club Activist and Senior EPA Analyst Discovered a Radical Green Energy Fantasy)
A Professional Image The image you project begins with the first phone call you make. If you feel some initial anxiety, remind yourself that other people are calling too; you are entitled to inquire as well. Be professional, giving your name and the reason for your call, and then ask the name of the appropriate person to contact. At smaller establishments, the person who answers the phone may well be the person doing the hiring, so you should project a professional image from the outset. Your phone manner, including language, tone of voice, and level of assertiveness, is reflected even in a short telephone conversation. That first phone call is what may or may not get you in the door for an interview. If you don’t conduct yourself professionally, that may be as far as it goes. For example, I once received a phone call from someone interested in a position I had advertised. The man who called about the job—who may not have realized that “the boss” himself would answer the phone—was eating as he spoke to me. If he cared so little about the position that he could not make the effort to behave professionally, how would he act on the job? It wasn’t worth my time to find out! To prepare yourself mentally for the initial phone call, determine first of all how you would like to be perceived. This behavior rehearsal exercise will help to put you in the proper frame of mind for making the call. Sit back in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, take a deep breath . . . let go. Now, use the TV screen in your head to picture yourself making the phone call. See, hear, smell, touch the scene. See yourself being confident, communicating clearly, and receiving a favorable response. Above all, you are relaxed and natural.
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
of the church in the distance, for which Millet used the church of Chailly-en-Bière in the Île-de-France as a model. Moments before, they had been busy at work harvesting their modest potato field, as shown by the pathetically small basket at their feet. Though it fetched only a small sum at the Salon of 1860, the work became wildly popular in the 1870s and eventually would be one of the most widely replicated images of the nineteenth century. Originally purchased for one thousand francs, it fetched as much as half a million francs just thirty years later, as a result of a bidding war between the Louvre and the American Art Association. Fig. 47. Jean-François Millet, The Angelus, 1859 While some interpreted The Angelus as a religious work, as an expression of simple and humble piety, others saw it as a socialist statement, in which Millet was supposed to have paid homage to the growing worker movement in France. It is unlikely that Millet intended either; as he later said, the picture was inspired by a childhood memory in which “my grandmother, hearing the church bell ringing while we were working in the fields, always made us stop work to say the Angelus prayer for the poor departed.” Dalí was fascinated by the picture. Like Vincent van Gogh, he used it as inspiration for his own work, including a series of paintings in the early 1930s entitled The Architectural Angelus of Millet and Gala and the Angelus of Millet Preceding the Imminent Arrival of the Conical Anamorphoses. He explained his fascination with the Angelus in an essay entitled “The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus,” in which he revealed that “In June 1932 appears in my mind all of a sudden, without any recent recollection nor any conscious association that lends itself to an immediate explanation, the image of Millet’s L’Angelus.” It made a strong impression on him, he continues, because for him it is “the most enigmatic, the most dense, and the richest in unconscious thoughts ever to have existed.” Fig. 48. Salvador Dalí, Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus, c. 1934 In fact, the painting did not strike Dalí as a rural image of devotion at all but as a source of great inner disquiet and a perfect example of what the paranoiac-critical process could discern that others didn’t. What he saw was a man “who stands hypnotized—and destroyed—by the mother. He seems to me to take on the attitude of the
Christopher Heath Brown (The Dalí Legacy: How an Eccentric Genius Changed the Art World and Created a Lasting Legacy)
She pictures his face, the way his jaw clenches together when he’s displeased about something, the way his fist comes down upon inanimate objects when he’s annoyed, the flare of his nostrils, the entitled tilt of his chin as he surveys the object of his displeasure.
Lisa Jewell (The Night She Disappeared)
In early 2018, Spacey’s American Beauty performance was even left out of an Academy Awards montage celebrating past Best Actor winners. By then American Beauty had become a perpetual target for critics, who questioned the film’s Best Picture bona fides: How could a movie about a bored suburban creep win in a year of Election and Being John Malkovich? But the elements that made American Beauty seem so fantastical back in 1999 make it all the more relevant in 2019: its self-entitled pervert; its angry, screen-addicted teen; its fuming Nazi-lover next door. Like many of the movies of that year, American Beauty plays like an accidental warning of what was to come. You just had to look closer.
Brian Raftery (Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen)
equanimity. We knew it would only be a temporary solution.” André was ambitious and very capable; he had even written a book entitled Swiss Confectionery: An Illustrated Manual for Progressive Pastry Chefs. Elsbeth helped him with the pictures for
Susann Bosshard (Westward: Encounters with Swiss American Women)
In their important masterpiece entitled When the Earth Nearly Died, Allan and Delair write: In Europe immense herds of diverse animals utterly vanished off the face of the earth for no obvious biological reason Coincident with this dreadful slaughter upon the land was the deposition of myriads of contemporary marine shells, and the stranding at great elevations of marine mammals, porpoises, walruses and seals In Siberia, the picture is everywhere one of appalling disorder, carnage and wholesale destruction, with countless animals and plants frozen in positions of death ever since the day they perished. As a result, their remains are amazingly fresh-looking and are frequently indistinguishable from those of animals and plants that have died mere weeks ago The magnitude of the biological extinctions achieved by the Deluge almost transcends the imagination. It annihilated literally billions of biological units of both sexes and every age indiscriminately. Only incredibly powerful flood waters operating world-wide could have achieved such results, and only a flood produced by the means previously suggested could have operated globally They comment on the preposterous Ice Age theories of their predecessors. Although these theories hold little water, they are accepted by supposedly intelligent people. ...it is astonishing that such an unscientific explanation ever came to be formulated, yet in a short time both it and the concept of immense thick ice-sheets descending from a hypothetical northern mountain system, to cover all of northern and eastern North America and western and northern Eurasia, was enthusiastically embraced...as virtually established fact The evidence is perfectly unambiguous. Along with the removal of an “Ice Age” like that which has been hitherto commonly envisaged, the evidence suggests that there is something seriously amiss with the last phases of standard geological chronology Evidence thus converges from numerous directions to support the conclusion that, on the testimony of radio-carbon and other dating techniques, immense physical and climatic changes occurred on earth some 11,000 years or so ago – when an Ice Age that probably never existed came to an end, and an apparently uniformitarian regime was abruptly terminated The gigantic worldwide tectonic disturbances of the ‘late Pleistocene’ times occurred almost simultaneously on a nearly unimaginable scale – precisely what could be expected from a powerful external influence but not from the ‘Ice Age’ conditions conventionally believed to have existed then They note the change in the magnetic fields that occurred during the cataclysmic period of Earth’s recent history: Significantly, a drop in the strength of the earth’s magnetic field appears to have occurred sometime between 13,750 and 12,350 years ago...attended by various other important changes, including earthquakes, vulcanism, water table fluctuations and large scale climatic variations. Of these, severe earthquakes in particular may even induce axial wobble, and polarity reversals
Michael Tsarion (Atlantis, Alien Visitation and Genetic Manipulation)
There is a widespread belief about quantum mechanics, as also about relativity, that it is something that one is entitled to ignore for most ordinary philosophical and scientific purposes, since it only seriously applies at the micro level of reality; where 'micro' means something far smaller than would show up in any conventional microscope. What sits on top of this micro level, so the assumption runs, is a sufficiently good approximation of the old classical Newtonian picture to justify our continuing, as philosophers, to think about the world in essentially classical terms. I believe this to be a fundamental mistake. What I shall be arguing...is that the world is quantum-mechanical through and through; and that the classical picture of reality is, even at the microscopic level, deeply inadequate.
Stephen T. DeBerry (Quantum Psychology: Steps to a Postmodern Ecology of Being)
In it he wrote on Wednesday, December 16, 1942: "Toward evening, Selma breathed her last." On December 17, 1942, he wrote: "Professor Doctor Gottlieb died of malnutrition. He and Selma were buried at the same time." As an explanation, he added that: "her real name was Meerbaum; the name Eisinger is that of her stepfather, I learned. She died of typhus, in her teens." On that page, he drew a picture of her body, wrapped in a shroud and mourned by people around. The original of that drawing is kept in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. It is entitled: "Pieta." Mr. Daghani wrote that her parents died soon after of typhus, too.
Pearl Fichman (Before Memories Fade)
The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another.
Theodore Roosevelt (An Art Exhibition)
Florianna Flamingo’s Flowers is the second book in a series entitled Friends on Pinfeather Street. This book is about a young girl, Florianna, named after her grandmother Flora, a woman who fancies flowers. Like her grandmother, Florianna develops a fascination with blossoms and buds of every size and shape. Grandma Flora presents her granddaughter with a book of flowers for her birthday. Florianna is mesmerized by the pictures of flowers in the book and begins to employ them as a method of bringing good cheer to other people. With her grandmother as a role model, Florianna draws on the enchantment of her flower book to foster kindness. The book helps children learn how they can model positive behavior and take steps toward growth and development. The author/illustrator conveys an endearing story in rhyme that is both enjoyable and educational for children. Featuring pictures, painted by the author/illustrator, this book is a must for children who like to have fun while they learn!
M.S. Gatto (Florianna Flamingo's Flowers: Friends on Pinfeather Series (Friends on Pinfeather Street Book 2))
Meanwhile, Facebook censors Palestinian groups so often that they have created their own hashtag, #FBCensorsPalestine. That the groups have become prominent matters little: in 2016, Facebook blocked accounts belonging to editors at the Quds News Network and Shehab News Agency in the West Bank; it later apologized and restored the accounts.30 The following year, it did the same to the official account of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.31 A year after Facebook’s relationship with the Israelis was formalized, the Guardian released a set of leaked documents exposing the ways the company’s moderation policy discriminates against Palestinians and other groups. Published in a series called “The Facebook Files,” the documents contained slides from manuals used to train content moderators. On the whole, the leaks paint a picture of a disjointed and disorganized company where the community standards are expanded piecemeal, and little attention is given to their consequences. Anna, the former Facebook operations specialist I spoke with, agrees: “There’s no ownership of processes from beginning to end.” One set of documents demonstrate with precision the imbalance on the platform between Palestinians and Israelis (and the supporters of both). In a slide deck entitled “Credible Violence: Abuse Standards,” one slide lists global and local “vulnerable” groups; alongside “foreigners” and “homeless people” is “Zionists.”32 Interestingly, while Zionists are protected as a special category, “migrants,” as ProPublica has reported, are only “quasi-protected” and “Black children” aren’t protected at all.33 In trying to understand how such a decision came about, I reached out to numerous contacts, but only one spoke about it on the record. Maria, who worked in community operations until 2017, told me that she spoke up against the categorization when it was proposed. “We’d say, ‘Being a Zionist isn’t like being a Hindu or Muslim or white or Black—it’s like being a revolutionary socialist, it’s an ideology,’” she told me. “And now, almost everything related to Palestine is getting deleted.
Jillian York (Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism)
But a child is entitled to quit piano without the entire world asking why she doesn’t practice anymore. She’s also entitled to nurse a passing crush that may end badly and take it all back without ceremony or official decree. This is obviously true for announcements of sexual identity as well—gay, straight, trans, whatever. A teenager may believe she is merely announcing herself an adult, but she’s also sending up a flare to actual adults who will immediately contact her and offer “support,” primed to take advantage. Send prom pictures in an email if you must, but don’t post them for the content-hungry eyes of internet strangers. Find some other way to stay connected with those you care about.
Abigail Shrier (Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters)
he question is whether science does, or ever could, present us with a picture of the world which is complete, self-sufficient and somehow closed in upon itself, such that there could no longer be any meaningful questions outside this picture. It is not a matter of denying or limiting the extent of scientific knowledge, but rather of establishing whether it is entitled to deny or rule out as illusory all forms of inquiry that do not start out from measurements and comparisons and, by connecting particular causes with particular consequences, end up with laws such as those of classical physics.
Merleau Ponty
Penelope Pinkerton’s Pink Polka Dot Purse is the first book in a series entitled Friends on Pinfeather Street. The inaugural book is about a shy girl and how the allure of her pink polka dot purse, along with the encouragement from others, help her to do something she didn’t think she could do. The book helps children learn how they can take first steps toward growth and development. The author/illustrator conveys an endearing story in rhyme that is both enjoyable and educational for children. Featuring pictures, painted by the author/illustrator, this book is a must for children who like to have fun while they learn!
M.S. Gatto (Penelope Pinkerton's Pink Polka Dot Purse (Friends on Pinfeather Street, #1))
Because toxic parents are rarely interested in their child’s well-being above and beyond their own, they may take you back to court if they find a new partner and believe the children will be a nice addition to that picture.
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
Ojih Odutola’s radical visual reversals function like thought experiments that take us beyond the merely hierarchical. By positioning the unexpected figure of the black woman as master, as oppressor, she suspends, for a moment, our focus on the individual sins of people—the Mississippi overseer, the British slave merchant, the West African slave raider—and turns it back upon enabling systems. It was a racist global system of capital and exploitation—coupled with a perverse and asymmetric understanding of human resource and value—that allowed the trade in humans to occur, and although that trade no longer exists in its previous form, many of its habits of mind persist. In “A Countervailing Theory,” the habit of thought that recognizes some beings and ignores others is presented to us as an element of a physical landscape, the better to emphasize its all-encompassing nature. That system is the air Akanke and Aldo breathe, the bodies they’re in, the land they walk on. For Ojih Odutola, it is expressed by one unending, unfurling charcoal line: The purpose of beginning the story from the perspective of Aldo, one who is subjugated, is intentional: to show how easily one can be indoctrinated into a systemic predicament. Between Aldo and Akanke, there isn’t a clear demarcation of good or bad with regard to their respective worlds and who they are. The system in which they coexist is illustrated through the striated systems in place—with literal motifs of lines throughout the pictures—representing how the system is ever present and felt, but not explicitly stated. The system is fact. How can such systems be dismantled? Surely, as Audre Lorde knew, it is not by using the master’s tools. “A Countervailing Theory” offers some alternative possibilities. Here love is radical—between women, between men, between women and men, between human and nonhuman—because it forces us into a fuller recognition of the other. And cunnilingus is radical, and seeing is radical, and listening is radical, for the same reason. We know we don’t want to be victims of history. We know we refuse to be slaves. But do we want to be masters—to behave like masters? To expect as they expect? To be as tranquil and entitled as they are? To claim as righteous our decision not to include them in our human considerations? Are we content that all our attacks on them be ad hominem, as they once spoke of us? If our first response to these portraits of black, female masters is some variation on #bowdownbitches or #girlboss, well, no one can deny the profound pleasures of role reversal, of the flipped script, but when we speak thus we must acknowledge that we can make no simultaneous claim to having put down the master’s tools. Akanke is in these images—but so is Aldo. He must be recognized. The dream of Frantz Fanon was not the replacement of one unjust power with another unjust power; it was a revolutionary humanism, neither assimilationist nor supremacist, in which the Manichaean logic of dominant/submissive as it applies to people is finally and completely dismantled, and the right of every being to its dignity is recognized. That is decolonization. - from "Toyin Ojih Odutola’s Visions of Power
Zadie Smith
In 1992, Murray gave a sermon at the Tolkien Centenary entitled “Tolkien and the Art of the Parable” where he said that one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that connects fairy story with parable is Tolkien’s concept of eucatastrophe. “Many of the parables represent persons coming to a moment of decision, the outcome of which has all-important consequences,” wrote Murray. “Undoubtedly Jesus intended, by picturing vivid examples, to confront people with a challenge to realize the reality of God in a new way, and to change their values and way of life.” 225 Tolkien defined eucatasrophe as a “sudden joyous ‘turn’” in the narrative, a “miraculous grace.” 226 Eucatastrophe “denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.” 227 The word “eucatastrophe” is a compound Greek word which literally means “good down-turn.” 228 It refers to the ability that only God has to bring good out of evil. According to Pearce, “Gandalf’s resurrection, like the resurrection of Christ, is indeed a sudden and miraculous grace, offering a tantalizing glimpse of the joy of the good news (evangelium) beyond the walls of the world.” 229 For Tolkien, eucatastrophe was the heart of the fairy story and its central function and gave the reader a glimpse of the gospel.
Michael T. Jahosky (The Good News of the Return of the King: The Gospel in Middle-earth)
Ghosts can be really out of line sometimes. It's one thing to come back for true love and cause a little hubbub. Or some unresolved revenge bullshit, fine. You're wrong, blah blah blah, but I get it. At least you have a good reason. But every now and then you get these real entitled-acting blowhards wanna come back and raise a roof just because--perfect example: because they like a house. Ugh. Can't even roll my eyes far enough back into my flesh-and-blood head to express how out of line that shit is. So you like a house. Fucking stay your dead ass downstairs and paint a picture of it. No one wants your house-loving ass wandering around pestering some city councilman, even if he does deserve it.
Daniel José Older (Half-Resurrection Blues (Bone Street Rumba, #1))
I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too
Suraj
I'll Be There For You These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too
Suraj
I'll Be There For You" These words are etched on our hearts. but they're so much more than just words, they're a complete emotion. But it's all just an illusion, a utopia, for which we long. we trade in drinking coffee on a couch, with drinking at a bar. we utter more words to Alexa and Siri, than to people face to face. we can never have six people in one room without anyone looking at their phones. we trade in memories with pictures. we actively look for reasons to not be around people. a Chandler is considered too mean and sarcastic, Ross has too much baggage, who has the energy to deal with that. Phoebe is too quirky to handle. Rachel, that spoilt and entitled bitch. no way. Joey is the fuck boy that will cause you nothing but pain, and Monica with her OCD, that's way too high maintenance. no, we don't say these things when we watch the show, we say these about people around us who bear similar characteristics. we adore these characters, we envy their friendship, their bond, their love. we long for nothing else, yet when confronted with them in real life, we belittle, avoid, cut-off, ignore. we don't want to disturb the utopia, are terrified of bursting the bubble, because if we start recognizing the flaws in our fantasies, we'll be forced to recognize our own. we love to live an à la carte life, wherein we pick and choose the qualities and personalities of a person that we wish to see, and the ones that may simply be brushed away. Generation after generation, will watch that show and call it their utopia, and each will give up hope of ever attaining that, alas! It was a different time! what we long for doesn't require a time machine to achieve, it doesn't need for mobile phones to not exist, or for less bars to exist, or to live away from your parents. it's only as complicated as we try to make it, when it can be as simple as, "I'll be there for you, 'cause you're there for me too
Suraj
Consider how political campaigns are designed to appeal relentlessly to our personal preferences. Candidates and parties woo crowds with promises of a better life for you and your children. With an air of nationalistic pride, electioneers paint a picture of a superior and more prosperous country in which you can achieve all your individual dreams. As voters, we are inundated with messages about our rights, our opportunities, all the privileges we are entitled to possess, and all the comforts we deserve to enjoy. But do we ever stop to wonder if these election messages are actually dangerous for our souls? After all, where in the Bible does Jesus beckon us with all the privileges we are entitled to possess and all the comforts we deserve to enjoy? Where does Jesus woo us with promises of everything we want in this world? When does Jesus ever encourage us to promote our nation as superior or prioritize our preferences as supreme?
David Platt (Before You Vote: Seven Questions Every Christian Should Ask)
Knowledge of and definite relationship to his genealogy is therefore necessary for a child to build up his complete body image and world picture. It is an inalienable and entitled right of every person. There is an urge, a call in everybody to follow and fulfill the tradition of his family, race, nation, and the religious community into which he was born.
Betty Jean Lifton (Lost & Found: The Adoption Experience)
In short, in contrast to the magician - who is still hidden in the medical practitioner – the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather, it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art
Walter Benjamin (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction)
Cameron entitled the picture Alethea, truth, and the model was Alice Liddell.
A.N. Wilson (The Victorians)
The history of social reform is the history of horrifying pictures’...Such imagery ‘convinced the country that the victims were real people, fully entitled to rights of personhood.
Lila Rose (Fighting for life)
The history of social reform is the history of horrifying pictures’...Such imagery ‘convinced the country that the victims were real people, fully entitled to rights of personhood.
Lila Grace Rose
Here’s the painful irony: The big-picture economy, which is largely out of any president’s control, is the real source of this president’s political strength with voters who like him. The SSRN poll for CNN in June 2019 had a striking finding. Of those who approve of Trump, a plurality of 26 percent said they do so because of the economy, more than twice the next most-frequent answer. In the same economic issue basket, 8 percent cited jobs as a reason for liking him. On immigration, 4 percent said that’s the reason they like him. When it comes to other aspects of Trump’s persona, support falls to the single digits. Just 1 percent said they approve of him because he’s draining the proverbial D.C. swamp. A whopping 1 percent said they like him because he’s honest, which proves you can fool 1 percent of the people all the time. All of this is a sign of trouble ahead for Donald Trump, because his economic record is a rickety construction prone to collapse from external forces at any moment. A BUBBLE, READY TO POP The long, sweet climb in economic prosperity we’ve enjoyed for a decade comes down to the decisions of two men and one institution: George W. Bush in taking the vastly unpopular step of bailing out Wall Street in the 2009 economic crisis, and Barack Obama for flooding the economy with economic stimulus in his first term. The Federal Reserve enabled both of these decisions by issuing an ocean of low- or zero-interest credit for ten years. Sure, the bill will come due someday, but the party is still going. While Trump took short-term political advantage of it, every bubble gets pricked by the old invisible hand. In the current economic case, the blizzard of Trumpian bullshit will inevitably hit the fan. We’re awash in trillion-dollar deficits, the national debt is asymptotically approaching infinity, and we have a president who’s never hesitated to borrow and spend well beyond his means, or to simply throw up his hands and declare bankruptcy when it suits him. We never did—and most likely never will—tackle entitlement reform. Nations don’t get to go bankrupt; they collapse. The GOP passed a tax bill that is performing exactly as expected and predicted: A handful of hedge funds, America’s top corporations, and a few dozen billionaires were given a trillion-dollar-plus tax benefit. Even the tax cut’s most fervent proponents know that its effects were short-lived, the bill is coming due, and in 2022 or thereabouts it’s going to lead to annual deficits of close to $2 trillion.
Rick Wilson (Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves)