Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  In a special election Tuesday, February 13, called because of the expulsion of former Congresscritter George Santos (R), the seat in the US House of Representatives for the 3d district from New York went to a Democrat, Tom Suozzi.  This drew a lot of attention: because the Republican margin of control of the House is already very thin, and this makes it thinner. There are possible worlds in which the Democrats end up taking control of the House before this session is over, and Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker. This election brings the actual timeline at least a little closer to one of those possible timelines. What came to my mind, though, while I was watching the returns come in, was that this is Gatsby territory. The district maps clearly show the two peninsulas that qualify as real-world analogs of East Egg and West Egg. Somebody should be able to make great symbolic hay out of that fact. I can't come up with anything good, though.  It was Santos who seems almost a Ga...

  Is it just me, or is it difficult for anyone else to bat away the feeling that George Santos is Donald Trump's mini-me. This makes perfect sense if we are all in fact characters in a gigantic Simulation created by computer programmers in some other world, the prime world.  Their algorithms are complex, but recognizably fractal. Donald Trump's character arc could not appear just once: it had to appear in an oddly overlapping way and in miniature.  Even Santos' drag-queen persona seems to be a miniaturization of Trump's time in show business, as the decisive CEO telling apprentices "you're fired." His life as a real-estate wheeler-dealer was nothing like the Hollywood fantasy of board room re-hashes and confrontations. It was a drag show. Publicly owned exchange listed businesses have the sort of big board room portrayed in those scenes. Trump has never run one of those, and didn't have such a room available. So the television production company creat...

 The newly elected Congresscritter for New York's 3d district to the US House of Representatives is George Santos.  As most of the literate world knows by now, George Santos is a liar. Bigly. Wherever his account of his life can be placed up against documentable facts, his account falls apart. His response to the disclosure of some of his lies is that, yes, he did tell untruths, create "embellishments" etc., but no he is not a fraud and did nothing criminal.  Okay: Santos' lies are what we have come to expect from politicians and are not the biggest story in recent history. It is not even the biggest story of this hour concerning the still-unorganized House of Representatives of the 118th Congress. But I do have to say a few words about Santos. Or, specifically, TWO words with a little embellishment. The two words are: Goldman Sachs ?  I am surprised that anyone would tell the lie that he told about having worked at Goldman Sachs. Republicans of "the base" h...