And then I wrote...

... that a friend loaned me a book about a month before the election, and I dearly wanted to quote some things from it, but did not at the time lest I be accused of trying to influence voters.

As if that could happen!

Anyway, the name of the book is An Accidental Life: An Editor’s Notes on Writing and Writers. It is by Terry McDonell and was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2016. McDonell was editor of a number of well known publications, and he discusses them and many of the writers with whom he dealt.

He quotes David Carr on what it takes to be an editor: “Educate yourself and then pass it on.”

What an editor needs is best covered by the French word sang froid, that is, cold blood - calmness, composure and coolness but also audacity in order to handle pressure, he suggests.

But it’s what the people he quotes said that could have been applied to the past election. For example, both president-elect Trump and outgoing President Obama ran on a promise of change. McDonell goes all the way back to Machiavelli in The Prince to quote: “He who introduces change will have as enemies those who were well off under the old order, and only lukewarm support from those who might be better off under the new.”

He liberally quotes from P.J. O’Rourke, who I used to enjoy reading in The Atlantic and elsewhere.

O’Rourke is quoted as saying that giving money and power to government is like giving whisky and car keys to teenage boys!

He says to think of God as a Republican and Santa Claus as a Democrat. God holds everybody responsible for what they do, while Santa Claus knows who is naughty and who is nice, but doesn’t care. So Santa Claus would seem to be preferable to God in every way but one. There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

And maybe of more recent application: “Liberalism at its core is the spoiled child, miserable, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless ... a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
Liberals say the good news is that the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is, they consider you rich.

There is more, but I quit.

To note that I find it ironic that the actor who plays Aaron Burr in the overpraised and over-priced hip-hop thing on Broadway called Hamilton took the occasion of a curtain call to insult the new administration. Remember Burr’s place in history? Perhaps the actor was still in character from the musical?