Yesterday

morning early I went to Hélène Cixous's first fall seminar at the Maison Heine at the Cité universitaire. I met a friend at the Luxembourg metro stop, and to get there I cut through the Luxembourg Garden. It had just opened. The morning was crisp and sunny and the sun was shining through the yellow leaves still on the trees and shining on the brown leaves puddled on the ground. The Medici Fountain glimmered, chairs were already set at tables outside the café on the Latin Quarter side of the Garden--not my usual side--where the style is formal and French (my usual side, the western side, is dotted with lawns in the "English," more "natural" style. There were joggers...

The seminar, with a text from a letter Kafka wrote to one of his sisters, focussed on the "Familyanimal" (Familientier) and the US election and the archaic, mythological character of the Trump persona.  "He comes from under the earth," HC said, "terrifying, but fascinating."

Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the NYReview of Books on the Chilcot Report on Blair and the Iraq War: if Gore had been declared--as he should have been--winner of the election in 2000, no Bush, no Iraq War, no Syria...

The chaos that can be brought about by incompetent--or worse--leadership is criminal.