Matt Margolis

I can't remember the last book that I read, that was this incredibly boring. I feel like I've read this exact story too many times.

The magic in this story has strong vibes of that in Mistborn & Six of Crows, the cost of using your given skill being your memories. (but only sometimes?) The characters are predictable, and while everything is well written it's just boring.

The storyline, plot and themes are perfectly planned out, it's a by the book story of a black listed family, and a plot of discovering the truth to get their namesake back. So it's not that I hated it, it's just over done tropes and I forced myself through many parts of the story.

Michael is oblivious and child-like through many parts of the book, which doesn't really fit with the way he was raised. Many plot lines were left open, I assume to be resolved in the next book. I won't be continuing on, but hopefully others will discover the fate of like half the cast.

I received this book via NetGalley.… (plus d'informations)

The pussy grabbing admission caught on video kind of signalled that tRUMP was unlikely to feel compelled to conform to any standards of decency and morality. Seriously, if you were interviewing someone to be a teacher or a doctor and you overheard them boasting about sexually assaulting people and grabbing pussies, would you not begin to have doubts? Yet, no alarm bells rang in the heads of GOP grandees or the evangelicals who endorsed Trump. It is a sobering lesson in how easy it is for a psychologically damaged sociopath to smooth his way to a position of responsibility. That compromise and wishful thinking are the true enablers of evil. The role of the Evangelicals in this is worth remembering. They were very focused on maybe two things, abortion and sexual mores. Such was their determination to have a President who would promote "pro-life" and intolerant social policies they would excuse anything. I don´t see a lot of Jesus in pussy-grabbing or racism and I don´t see a whole lot of what is called the "radical love of Jesus" in Evangelical values. It seems mostly about hatred and self-serving stories of being "chosen" and justifications for materialism. It’s beyond belief that evangelicals voted for this monster in 2016 and still did in 2020. Imagine if Biden had been divorced 3 times, or any woman candidate! They’d paint them as the devil incarnate! Yet Trump pays off porn stars and is lionised! The hypocrisy of the right wing in the USA is utterly breathtaking. Of course, grabbing pussy is exactly what the republicans/evangelicals liked about him.

If trump hadn't been such an incompetent, ignorant buffoon and his enablers such intellectual midget unbalanced idiots, the coup attempt would have been successful and the losing candidate would have been installed as president. It's another proof that the Constitution that was created to address life in the 18th century is totally inadequate for the 21st century. If the Constitution was relevant to present times, the GOP would have been unable to become what it is now-a highly undemocratic criminal gang, much closer to the Taliban than to any modern western political movement.

It has been a long time since I read up on the work of political philosopher Leo Strauss who was influential in Republican thinking for a long time. However, I seem to recall Strauss claiming there were things higher than the explicit words of the law, implying one could subvert the law (or constitution) if it was in line with what it "really meant". This kind of thinking is what is behind the actions and words of Republicans who bend, break and ignore the law and who want to derail the election process. The underlying idea among Republicans is that *real* America is not a Democratic nation; *real* America, they think, is what the Republicans want and when American votes against that, it is a vote against *real* America. That kind of reasoning is essentially theological and by-passes the (sort of) neutral text of the Constitution that is only there to regulate the debates about what "real" American is like. It is like the conflict in Europe over what "real" Christianity was before the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. There are also some Republicans who are in a profound sense just opportunistic deceivers who want to retain power regardless. That´s a possibility too. Either way, the US is in grave danger when a substantial number of politicians and citizens generally believe the Constitution and legal norms are worth throwing aside.

Margolies is just another Trumptard.… (plus d'informations)