Monthly Archives: June 2018

spink spink spink

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Okay, I’ve come up with a plan to put an end to mass murder events. After the most recent mass killing (and it’s the sad nature of mass killings that the phrase ‘the most recent’ becomes meaningless almost immediately — so just to be clear, I’m talking about the mass murder of journalists and support staff at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, MD on 28 June), I knew we had to do something. I mean, thoughts and prayers just aren’t getting the job done.

I think we need to try a new approach. Bracelets of Submission.

Okay, I admit, I see some branding issues there. That ‘submission’ business would make it hard to market. But you see, that’s the actual name for Wonder Woman’s cuffs. The Amazons of Paradise Island wore them as a symbol of their loving submission to the goddess Aphrodite. They also served as a reminder to the Amazons ‘of the folly of submitting to men’.

So yeah, that goddess and submission business might discourage some folks. But I think we just need to shift attention to the bracelets’ awesome ricochet properties. I mean, these things are made from Amazonium, which everybody knows is the industry standard for deflecting projectiles. Not only that, the bracelets are imbued with magic that makes them impermeable to fire, invulnerable to traditional weaponry, immune to blasts of energy, resistant to deceleration trauma (as a result of, say, falling from a great height), and can repel ticks and prevent insect bites. Plus, can you say fashion forward?

But granted, we’d have to rebrand them as something other than Bracelets of Submission. Maybe we could call them Second Amendment Cuffs. Or what about MAGA Bangles? No, wait, I’ve got it. Freedom Gauntlets. Yeah, that would work. 

So I propose we issue Amazonium Freedom Gauntlets to every citizen of school age (at the very least, to those who have health insurance coverage) and hey, bingo, problem solved. Angry white guy breaks into school and starts shooting? Spink spink spink until the police arrive. Angry white guy walks into your place of employment? Spink spink spink and a bit of patience and it’s all over. Angry white guy attacks a women’s health clinic? Spink spink spink and maybe a couple more spinks. Angry white guy shoots up a gay nightclub or a mosque or a pizza parlor? Spink spink, bitches.

Spink spink spink, bitches.

Now, some folks will say this is silly. Some folks will say I’m making light of a terrible situation. Some folks will say I’m mocking the notion of thoughts and prayers.

All of those folks are right. It is silly, it is making light of a terrible situation, and I’m totally mocking thoughts and prayers as a response to mass shootings. Thoughts and prayers are no more effective at mass murder prevention than magical Amazonian Freedom Gauntlets. The response of the United States to gun violence deserves to be mocked.

Because we know this to be true: five men and women were killed couple of days ago by yet another angry white guy who legally purchased the weapon he used to kill them, and aside from the ritual thoughts and prayers, absolutely nothing will be done to reduce the likelihood that it will happen again tomorrow. Nothing.

civility

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It all goes back to ancient Rome. It was the first real city of the Western world; it’s been a city for twenty-eight centuries. In the early days of Rome, its citizens were known as cives. To be a citizen of Rome was a big deal. A huge deal. An absolutely massive deal. Being a Roman citizen meant you had civitas — you belonged to collective body of all citizens, you were an integral part of the social contract that bound all cives together.

Being a citizen conferred both rights and responsibilities on a person, and one of those responsibilities was to be civil — to behave in public life in a manner befitting of a Roman citizen so as to maintain civic order. As the Roman empire stretched out across Europe, it spread the idea of civitas — a process by which other peoples in other lands were civilized. Important people in ‘client’ states could become civitas sine suffragio, citizens of Rome (lacking only the right to vote). It was said a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world without any fear of molestation, shielded by the words Civis Romanis — “I am a citizen of Rome.”

It was largely bullshit, of course. The Roman army was full of murderous bastards who engaged in all manner of appalling war crimes. Roman politicians were as greedy and corrupt as any. Those ‘client’ states undergoing ‘civilization’ all began as conquered nations. The glory of Rome came at the expense of subjugated people.

But the concept of civitas was, and still is, important. The concept helps make the world a better place — a place where people treated each other decently, with respect and courtesy, with civility. That’s a fine thing.

Today, a member of the Trump administration can’t walk the face of the known world without molestation; they can’t even order a meal in a decent restaurant without being harassed. A lot of folks today are decrying this lack of civility. They’re right to do so.

But they need to remember that civility — that civitas — is a social contract that begins at the top of the social food chain. Civitas confers rights on its citizens, but it also burdens them with certain social responsibilities.

This is really pretty simple. If you belong to a political administration that enforces cruel policies on its people, a political administration that routinely lies to the people about matters large and small, that protects and enriches the powerful at the expense of the weak, then you’ve violated the concept of civility and you aren’t worthy of its protection.

If Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to be treated with civility, then she has a moral duty to treat others with civility. That’s the contract. Civility has to work both ways.

just say no

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That’s what you can do. Say ‘no’. There’s an enormous amount of bullshit taking place in the U.S. today. And let’s face it; you can’t do anything to stop it immediately.

But you can say ‘no’ to it. You can help obstruct it. You can resist, you can hinder, impede, throw sand in the gears, interfere, you can block and delay, stall and encumber, gum up the works, you can frustrate and hamstring the motherfuckers. You can be disobedient.

Just say ‘no’ to separating families.

You can march and make phone calls to your representatives. You can donate time or money. You can keep talking and sharing information (but please please please take a moment to make sure your information isn’t bullshit; you can’t win a bullshit fight by flinging bullshit at bullshit). You can call out your friends and family members if they offer up bullshit. If you’re uncomfortable with that, you can remove yourself from situations in which bullshit is flung. You can get up and leave (and when they call you ‘snowflake’ you can point out it’s not about your feelings; it’s about theirs; it’s about not wanting to see people you care about embarrass themselves).

Just say ‘no’ to deliberate, willful ignorance.

You can tell Sarah Huckabee Sanders to her face that she’s not welcome in your restaurant. Not because she calls herself a Christian; this isn’t about religion. Not because she identifies as a Republican, because this really isn’t about political parties anymore. Not because she’s a woman or because she’s Southern or because you really dislike her eyeshadow.

You can tell her she’s not welcome because she’s willingly allied herself with a cruel, corrupt, deceitful White House administration, and willingly supports and perpetuates cruel, corrupt, deceitful policies by being personally cruel, corrupt, and deceitful.

Just say ‘hell no’ to limiting the rights of women.

You can’t stop all the horrific bullshit immediately, but you can say ‘no’ to it. You can say, “No, I will not be complicit in this bullshit.” You can say, “No, I will not cooperate with this bullshit.” You can say, “No, I won’t be polite about your bullshit.” You can say, “No, just take your bullshit and fuck right off.”

You can say ‘no’ and keep saying ‘no’ and acting on it until November. THEN you can stop the bullshit.

a deep and visceral hatred

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A couple of days ago I wrote about the Inspector General’s report on how the FBI handled the Clinton email investigation — the report that Republicans are claiming ‘prove’ the FBI was complicit in a conspiracy to prevent Comrade Trump’s election. I pointed out there were contemporaneous new reports demonstrating the exact opposite — that senior FBI agents were suspected of deliberately leaking anti-Clinton material to Trump supporters (and specifically to Rudy Giuliani). I also confessed that after reading a couple hundred pages of the 500+ page report, I started skimming.

It’s too bad I started skimming. Because it turns out on page 387 there’s a long section of verbatim testimony from Loretta Lynch, who was the Attorney General of the United States during the FBI investigation. And among the things she said was that the New York office of the FBI was a roiling cauldron anti-Clinton fury. Not in those exact words, of course, but…well, let’s just cut and paste what she said.

I knew that the laptop had been handled in a case out of New York. And so I said, you know, we have to talk about the New York office…and the concern that both you [McCabe] and I have expressed about leaks in the past. And I said, do you think that this was the right way to deal with the issue, the concern about leaks?… He didn’t have much of a response. But we were having a conversation…. And I said, you know, I’ve talked, you and I have talked about that before….

And then I said, now, we’ve got to talk about the New York office in general. And he said yes. And I said we both work with them. We both know them. We both, you know, think highly of them. I said, but this has become a problem. And he said, and he said to me that it had become clear to him, he didn’t say over the course of what investigation or whatever, he said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton. And he said it is, it is deep. It’s, and he said, he said it was surprising to him or stunning to him.

You know, I didn’t get the impression he was agreeing with it at all, by the way. But he was saying it did exist, and it was hard to manage because these were agents that were very, very senior, or had even had timed out and were staying on, and therefore did not really feel under pressure from headquarters or anything to that effect. And I said, you know, I’m aware of that…. I said, I wasn’t aware it was to this level and this depth that you’re talking about, but I said I’m sad to say that that does not surprise me.

And he made a comment about, you know, you understand that. A lot of people don’t understand that. You, you get that issue. I said, I get that issue. I said I’m, I’m just troubled that this issue, meaning the, the New York agent issue and leaks, I am just troubled that this issue has put us where we are today with respect to this laptop.

What she’s basically saying is this: 1) the senior staff of the FBI’s NY field office hated Hillary and supported Trump, and 2) it was the NY field office that investigated Anthony Weiner’s laptop on a matter unrelated to the Clinton email investigation, 3) but when they discovered that Weiner’s former wife, Huma Abedin, Clinton’s close aide, had backed up some work emails, they 4) notified the agents who investigated the emails, AND 5) leaked the information to Republican members of Congress who were Trump supporters, which 6) led Comey to re-open the investigation a few days before the election, which (according to Nate Silver) probably cost Clinton the election.

Comrade Trump’s claim that the FBI favored one candidate over another is accurate. But, as usual, he’s also lying about it. They were actively sabotaging the Clinton campaign. Trump is almost certainly POTUS today because of political interference by the FBI.

Heads should roll — but sadly, the wrong heads are on the chopping block.

one strzok and you’re out

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Odds are you won’t read the 500+ page report by the DOJ’s Inspector General (and nobody would blame you, because mostly it’s pretty dull and repetitive), but here it is if you want to. I intended to read it, but I couldn’t take it. After the first couple hundred pages, I started skimming.

Seriously, it’s a job of work. The name of the department that published the report is a job of work in itself: the Department of Justice Inspector General Oversight and Review Division. And the title of the report? Prepare yourself:

A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election

There are a lot of interesting little details in the report, but almost all the attention will get focused on two points. Point One: Comey gets spanked. Point Two: Peter Strzok gets spanked. Comey, though I think he’s an honest guy, deserves the spanking because he acted like a sanctimonious prig (well, okay, he wasn’t acting; he IS a sanctimonious prig). Here’s what the report says about Comey:

Comey’s unilateral announcement was inconsistent with Department policy and violated long-standing Department practice and protocol by, among other things, criticizing Clinton’s uncharged conduct.

In other words, he fucked up by issuing the statement that said Clinton hadn’t done anything that merited prosecution, but she was still negligent in the way she handled her email. The report also stated that:

…in making this decision (to notify leak-prone Republicans that a search warrant had been issued for a computer indirectly related to Clinton a few days before the election), Comey engaged in ad hoc decision making based on his personal views even if it meant rejecting longstanding Department policy or practice.

In other words, he fucked up again by being a sanctimonious prig. However, the IG also found that neither of Comey’s fucked up decisions were “influenced by political preferences” for or against either candidate.

Not that it matters to Comrade Trump or Republicans in general. They’re still claiming the report showed Trump was right to fire Comey (despite Trump having admitted on national television that he fired him because of “this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia”).

Here’s the thing: just about everything you’ll probably see in the news media for the next couple of weeks will be Republicans claiming the IG’s report proves Comrade Trump’s claims of a FBI ‘witch hunt’ are legit (HINT: they’re not). They’ll base those claims on two pieces of contradictory information.

First, the report spanks James Comey for his statement about the Clinton email investigation (that while there was nothing criminal about the way she handled her email, he was of the opinion that it was negligent). Trumpettes will argue this validates his decision to fire Comey. (HINT: it’s a bullshit argument since Trump admitted on camera that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.)

So yeah, Comey deserves his spanking. FBI agent Peter Strzok, maybe not so much (in my opinion, of course). Comrade Trump and other Republicans have been claiming Strzok was part of some shadowy Deep State FBI cabal determined to sabotage the Trump campaign. Why? Because of text messages he shared with Lisa Page, who was 1) his lover and 2) Special Counsel to the Deputy FBI Director. Strzok and Page weren’t pleased with the idea that Donald J. Trump might become POTUS, and weren’t shy about saying that in their private text exchanges. Here’s what Trump and the Complicit Republicans consider to be the money shot:

Page: He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!

Strzok: No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.

The IG report states this exchange “implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.” I suppose it could imply that. IF Strzok and Page were the leaders of a desperate but plucky band of anti-Trump commandos operating deep within the halls of the FBI. But I’m inclined to think it’s more likely he was simply saying ‘We the voters of the U.S. will stop it.”

One of these guys has spent his life serving his nation in the military and in the FBI as a counterespionage agent. The other is a malicious twit.

And, in fact, the IG report also says this:

“[W]e did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed.”

Trump and the Complicit Republicans aren’t mentioning any of that, are they. They’re too deeply committed to the notion of politically motivated sleeper cells lurking in FBI offices all across the nation.

And hey, guess what. There IS evidence of politically motivated FBI agents trying to influence the election at that point in time. The Strzok-Page text was dated August 8, 2016. If we look at actual headlines from actual newspapers and actual news sites around that time (November, 2016), this is what we see:

The anti-Clinton insurgency at the FBI, explained.

The FBI is Trumpland: anti-Clinton atmosphere spurred leaking, sources say.

Has the FBI Gone Full Breitbart?

Rudy Giuliani Confirms FBI Insiders Leaked Information to the Trump Campaign.

FBI is ‘Trumpland’ and agents are leaking to harm Clinton.

All of these contemporaneous articles, without exception, are about how much the FBI distrusted Hillary Clinton and were actively trying to help the Trump campaign. There’s your Deep State FBI conspiracy, right there. And note that in at least one of those articles we have Rudy Giuliani bragging about how FBI agents had leaked privileged information directly to him and to the Trump campaign.

What is Rudy Nine-Eleven saying now? This:

“Mueller should be suspended and honest people should be brought in, impartial people to investigate these people like Peter Strzok. Strzok should be in jail by the end of next week.”

Is anybody in the news media suggesting Rudy should be investigated about FBI leaks? Is anybody saying Rudy should be in jail? Sadly, no.

What it comes down to is this: the Inspector General is doing exactly the same thing it spanked Comey for. It’s being a sanctimonious prig. The IG report essentially says ‘There’s nothing actually wrong here, but we can see how it might appear that way, so we have to do better.’ And, just like they did with the Comey announcements, Comrade Trump and his Complicit Republicans will twist that into an admission by the FBI that they were guilty.

What gets lost in all this, of course, is the fact that one candidate was actively colluding with a hostile nation to sway a presidential election. We’re so busy making a fuss about not coming to a complete halt at a Stop sign that we don’t see the bank robbers in the getaway car.

 

a much different president

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Okay, let me get this straight. Comrade Trump (noted author of How to inherit Millions from Your Daddy and Still Go Bankrupt Like Half a Dozen Times and POTUS) met with Kim Jong Un (noted evil dictator, fratricidal rocket fetishist, and open friend of Dennis Rodman) in what journalists called a ‘summit’ and Trump called ‘another great historic deal which many people say is what I do better than anybody else ever, I can tell you that, believe me.’

Here’s what Kim got by meeting with the former leader of the free world:

  • Legitimacy as a world leader.
  • A weaker relationship between the U.S. and South Korea and Japan .
  • A cessation of U.S.-South Korean military exercises.
  • A rift between the U.S. and NATO.
  • A free ride on human rights violations.

Here’s what Trump got by meeting with a brutal dictator who has starved his people in order to afford more rockets:

  • A one page document re-affirming the same vague commitment to denuclearization that DPRK has made seventeen times since 1985.
  • A promise to return military remains from the Korean War.

It’s not exactly bupkis. Let’s call it it bupkis-lite. I mean, it’s nice that DPRK has agreed in principle to return the dead bodies of U.S. troops killed half a century ago. But we probably could have got them to agree to that in exchange for, say, letting them buy a bit more grain to feed their people (which would also allow U.S. farmers to earn a little extra coin).

Tweedle Dum and Tweedle I Don’t Know What the Fuck.

Still, we’ve got that one page document. Does it include, say, a timetable for denuclearization? Nope, nothing like that. What about a system of verification? Nope, not even hinted at. Maybe a shared definition of what  denuclearization is? No fucking way. But Trump apparently thinks if we show KJU and DPRK a little trust, it’ll all work out.

Here’s a telling example from the post-summit news conference:

Q: Mr. President, the joint statement does not talk about verifiable or irreversible denuclearization. Is that a concession on the part of the United States?

A: No, not at all. If you look at it, it said we are — let’s see here. It will be gone. I don’t think you can be any more plain.

I don’t think you can be any more fucking stupid. It will be gone. A few months ago Comrade told his supporters that ‘Little Rocket Man’ was unstable, a madman who murdered his own people and a serial liar who couldn’t be trusted, so there wasn’t any point in even talking with him. And they agreed. Now, after a couple of hours of photo ops, Trumps says he totally trusts KJU to keep his vague promises. And they agree.

Comrade Trump engaging in the Pull-My-Finger mode of international diplomacy.

If Trump says it, it must be true. Which leads me to another exchange in the news conference:

Q: What do you, President Trump, expect Kim Jong Un to do about the human rights record regarding the North Korean people?

A: They will be doing things. I think he wants to do things. You would be surprised. Very smart. Very good negotiator. Wants to do the right thing. He brought up the fact that in the past they took dialogue or never were like we are which has never been like what has taken place now. They went down the line. Billions of dollars were given and the following day the nuclear program continued. This is a much different time. This is a much different president in all fairness. This is very important to me. This is one of the, perhaps one of the reasons I won.

There you have it. DPRK will be doing things. And let me repeat Trump’s most salient argument. In the past they took dialogue or never were like we are which has never been like what has taken place now.

Nobody could be any more clear than that. Only Comrade Donald J. Trump could have negotiated this deal. This is a much different time, and in all fairness, he’s a much different president.

 

punch bowl

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Okay, let’s just acknowledge this right up front: Canada is nice. If Earth handed out a Miss Congeniality prize, Canada would win. Canada is the neighbor everybody wants. Canada wouldn’t just lend you their shovel if you asked to borrow it, they’d offer to help you use it — then, when you failed to return the shovel, they’d wait for a few months then ask to borrow their own shovel back so they could help a Nigerian orphan hold a funeral for a beloved stuffed Koala bear named Tulip. Canada is the type of nation that comes to a complete halt at stop signs, even when there’s no traffic. If you ask Canada how it’s doing, it’ll say “Just fine, thanks” and mean it. And then Canada will ask how YOU are…and it’ll mean that too.

You have to be a total jackass to piss off Canada. It’s pretty easy to piss off France and Italy, and it’s really not hard to get Germany to make a face at you. The U.K. is fairly piss-offable, but that’s partly because they really enjoy making harumphing noises. It’s hard to tell if Japan is pissed off or not; Japan can play poker. But Canada? You have to be a total jackass and work hard to piss off Canada.

Comrade Trump, unfairly forced to listen to somebody talk about something other than him.

Comrade Trump did it. Did it easily. Trump’s super power is the ability to drop a turd in the punch bowl. And let you know he did it. And that he did it just because he knows it pisses you off, and because he’s sure he can get away with it. In other words, Trump is a total jackass.

At the end of every G7 summit for the last 40 years, they’ve issue a statement “guided by our shared values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and our commitment to promote a rules-based international order.” It’s a general affirmation of their common principles and economic aspirations. The language of the statement is nitpicked by policy experts from all seven nations, making sure there’s nothing in it that will offend anybody while still being hopeful. All seven nations agree on the statement and sign it. You can read the 2018 joint statement here.

After arriving late for the G7 breakfast, Trump arrives late for a Gender Equality meeting.

Comrade Trump signed it. Well, wait…I don’t think Trump actually signed it himself, because he left early. He came late to meetings, told the G7 leaders they ought to allow Russia back into the group (they’d kicked Russia out after it invaded and seized Crimea along with a big chunk of Ukraine), imposed tariffs on their goods, got pissy when they said they’d impose tariffs right back, refused to wear headphones for translation when other G7 leaders spoke, then left the summit early. And Canada was fairly polite through all that. At the news conference at end of the summit, Prime Minister Trudeau answered a question from the press about imposing counter-tariffs against the U.S. He said:

“I have made it very clear to the president that it is not something we relish doing. But it is something that we absolutely will do. Because Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.”

Comrade Trump believes he has the right — even the obligation — to push people around. He…get this: he ordered his people still on the ground in Canada to officially rescind the U.S. signature on the joint statement. Seriously, after hearing Trudeau say Canada won’t be pushed around, Trump (who’d been complaining that the U.S. was tired of being pushed around) had a tantrum and said he’d unsign the joint statement. Not only that, he had his cadre of spokespersons accuse Trudeau of ‘back-stabbing’ and ‘betrayal’.

Total jackass. Trump went to a summit with an incredibly receptive and friendly group of nations who’ve been allied with the U.S. for decades, and managed to alienate them. After which he insulted them. He essentially dropped a turd in the G7 punch bowl then got pissed off because they didn’t like it.

And now Trump is about to hold another summit with the Aggressively Reckless and Paranoid Boy King of North Korea (a nation which, let’s face it, unlike the members of the G7, isn’t disposed to be friendly to the U.S. to begin with). A summit for which Trump said he didn’t really need to prepare. A summit with a hostile nuclear state that’s threatened “unimaginable” destruction of the U.S.

I don’t know. Maybe it’ll turn out okay. But I’m not confident. It’s one thing to drop a turd in the punch bowl when you’re among friends. It’s another thing altogether to drop a turd in the atomic stew when you’re meeting with an unstable dictator you called Little Rocket Man. I figure the best case scenario will be that Trump agrees to give Kim Jong Un a nuclear submarine in exchange for a chance to run a beauty contest for the ‘Army of Beauties’ that cheered on North Korean athletes in the Winter Olympic.

I don’t even want to think about the worst case scenario.

 

suicide

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Kate Spade a few days ago. Anthony Bourdain today. I’m rarely surprised when I hear somebody has committed suicide. Saddened, yes, to be sure, but hardly ever shocked or surprised. Why? Partly because there are so many reasons for folks to want to kill themselves, and partly because thoughts of suicide are universal, and partly because the thought of nonexistence can be so strangely attractive.

I doubt I know anybody who hasn’t, at one point or another, thought about how nice it would be if you could just remove yourself from existence. All your problems, all those life complications, all that stress and anxiety and pressure — all of it, just gone.

For some folks there might be some measure of vindictiveness in the thought; that whole ‘They’ll miss me when I’m gone‘ thing. But I suspect most folks who indulge in the thought of suicide are more likely to be thinking something like ‘I wish I’d never been born.’ It’s not death itself that’s attractive, it’s deletion. It’s not being whited out or erased from the page so much as having never been written onto the page in the first place. That way nobody misses you when you’re gone, nobody suffers.

Kate Spade

Most of us never act on those thoughts, of course. Some do. Some succeed. But here’s the thing: everybody has a reason to commit suicide. Everybody. Most of us also have reasons not to do it.

Here are my reasons for suicide: 1) I’ve witnessed/done way too many ugly things in my life; I have way too many ugly images in my head, and not a day goes by without at least one of them popping up, 2) I’m getting old and my body is beginning to fail; I hurt a lot; my knees are crap; I can no longer do things I used to do easily, which is sometimes comical and sometimes terribly frustrating, 3) I’m moderately poor; I never expected to live this long, so I took no steps to insure I’d have enough money to live comfortably as I aged (in the same way I took no steps to insure I’d be healthy). I’m not so poor I’ll ever miss a meal, but more poor than I ever expected to be.

I don’t regret any of that. I may not like the images in my head, but I’m glad I’ve lived the sort of life where I experienced stuff most folks haven’t. I may be beat-up physically, but I’m glad I’ve lived the sort of life where fear of pain or suffering never stopped me from doing something. And I may be poor, but I’m glad I’ve never felt the need for financial security and I’m glad I’ve never made a safe career choice or taken a career path for a steady paycheck.

Anthony Bourdain

Here are my primary reasons for NOT committing suicide: joy and curiosity. Every single day — hell, several times each and every day — I find something fascinating to see, think about, watch, study, enjoy. Every day — several times a day — something happens that makes me laugh, that delights me, that makes me stupidly happy. Every day, several times a day, I’m glad I’m alive. All that far outweighs any passing desire to delete myself from existence.

Besides, the convenient thing about suicide is that you can always do it tomorrow. It’s almost always an option. There’s some weird comfort in that.

I need to acknowledge, though, that I’ve never experienced actual depression. I’ve been deeply sad, I’ve been desperate, I’ve been terrified, but I’ve never felt any sort of sustained depression. That’s a closed box for me; I can understand it intellectually, but I’ve no idea what it’s like to live with any more than I know what it’s like to be blind. But if depression makes a person blind to beauty and joy and curiosity, I understand why it would seem to close any option for living.

So I’m sad about Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. I’m sad for their friends and family. I’m sad they felt they’d run out of options. I wish they’d been able to find a reason to delay the decision to kill themselves. I wish they’d continued to find reasons to delay that decision. I’m not surprised by what they did, and I think the world is a slightly lesser place without them in it — not just because they were celebrities or accomplished in their chosen fields, but because their continued existence was part of what made being alive worthwhile for others.

I think that’s probably true for almost everybody who considers suicide.