- Feb 12, 2007
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Brilliant idea! The overwhelmingly annoying whinging angst of the TDS Progs can be cured with a very simple product: Cigarettes.
Americans – particularly Americans in positions of power and influence in politics, the media and the academy – need to start smoking again. The sourness and fury that has stalked these frustrated power-brokers and tastemakers ever since 2016 is past the point where it can be resolved by ‘self-care’. The moment when the upbeat, glittering Obama years curled away at their edges to reveal the grinning orange face of Trumpism was the exact time they should of swapped their iPhones for a few cartons of cowboy killers.
The derangement of the discourse every since then, which sees white supremacists in every tweet and fascism behind fairly modest proposals for immigration reform, has made it increasingly hard to read the Atlantic or The New York Times with a straight face. Practically the only sensible op-ed about Trump last year was written by Michel Houellebecq for Harper’s Magazine. To read a piece about the President that does not compare him to Mussolini or Hitler inside the first paragraph is a pleasure, if only because it is so rare.
Houellebecq does have a serious advantage over the lanyard wearing wonks who usually commentate on US politics: he is a serious smoker. Here is a man who looks as if he lights each cigarette with the butt of the last cigarette, somebody who began mainlining Gauloises – like every other Frenchman since time began – as a toddler. That he is able to understand Trump’s presidency with more clarity and style than the likes of Ezra Klein and Jonah Goldberg is a testament to the inspirational power of a fine, earthy, combustible tobacco blend.
Let us hope, for the sanity of the elites, if not for their health, that in the year to come we see the stigmata of the true smoker – yellow nails, papery skin and phlegmy coughing – come to replace the tedious health fashions and social media whinging that have gone on far too long. Then, perhaps, they will understand the wisdom of Robert Musil, who once wrote that ‘life is an unpleasant affair that we can get through by means of smoking.’ It’ll certainly help them get through the next two years of Trump....
Make America smoke again | Spectator USA
Americans – particularly Americans in positions of power and influence in politics, the media and the academy – need to start smoking again. The sourness and fury that has stalked these frustrated power-brokers and tastemakers ever since 2016 is past the point where it can be resolved by ‘self-care’. The moment when the upbeat, glittering Obama years curled away at their edges to reveal the grinning orange face of Trumpism was the exact time they should of swapped their iPhones for a few cartons of cowboy killers.
The derangement of the discourse every since then, which sees white supremacists in every tweet and fascism behind fairly modest proposals for immigration reform, has made it increasingly hard to read the Atlantic or The New York Times with a straight face. Practically the only sensible op-ed about Trump last year was written by Michel Houellebecq for Harper’s Magazine. To read a piece about the President that does not compare him to Mussolini or Hitler inside the first paragraph is a pleasure, if only because it is so rare.
Houellebecq does have a serious advantage over the lanyard wearing wonks who usually commentate on US politics: he is a serious smoker. Here is a man who looks as if he lights each cigarette with the butt of the last cigarette, somebody who began mainlining Gauloises – like every other Frenchman since time began – as a toddler. That he is able to understand Trump’s presidency with more clarity and style than the likes of Ezra Klein and Jonah Goldberg is a testament to the inspirational power of a fine, earthy, combustible tobacco blend.
Let us hope, for the sanity of the elites, if not for their health, that in the year to come we see the stigmata of the true smoker – yellow nails, papery skin and phlegmy coughing – come to replace the tedious health fashions and social media whinging that have gone on far too long. Then, perhaps, they will understand the wisdom of Robert Musil, who once wrote that ‘life is an unpleasant affair that we can get through by means of smoking.’ It’ll certainly help them get through the next two years of Trump....
Make America smoke again | Spectator USA
