Today is Sunday, September 4, 2022. President Biden’s sobering speech last Thursday about fighting for the soul of our nation is analyzed today by Simon Tisdall in the online edition of The Guardian against the backdrop of several well-known national autocracies, those being Russia and China. Tisdall admits that the former “president,” or as he refers to the Orange Blob, as this country’s “dementor-in-chief,” whose appellation I particularly like, is conspiring to steal our democracy from his vantage point at his Florida retreat.

The writer then compares the situation in Russia with the recent death of former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died last week, at the age of 91 to the current existence of a “pint-sized usurper named Vladimir Putin,” and the situation in China when the country was “saddled with indefinite dictatorship under the dead hand of Xi Jin-ping.”

With an ever-present threat facing democracies such as ours, Tisdall wonders if there is hope of resurrection. He ponders, “The more the western democracies are threatened externally by totalitarian regimes and internally by populist extremism, the stronger they may grow.”

Tisdall feels that “the dangers posed by a rising tide of authoritarianism help free peoples realise how vulnerable and valuable their freedoms are – and strengthen their will to defend them.” Let’s hope so, especially, during the midterm elections.

Tisdall praises Biden for going on the offensive against his predecessor, when he furiously condemned the “semifascism” of ultra-MAGA Republicans” who seek power through violent means.

Despite the lies mouthed by the “dementor-in-chief,” the grassroots threat that he presents remains truly potent. This fact is totally scary as Tisdall cites, “His standing among Republican voters is actually rising,” according to one recent poll. We should all be disturbed by the percentage of repugnican voters who believe he “deserves reelection” in 2024: a whopping 59 percent! Boy, with this statistic, we must firmly believe that his loyal supporters have truly drunk the reality-altering Kool-Aid all the way and are willing to fall over the cliff with him!

Here in the United States, the death of democracy is still only a prediction; it can still be averted. But in Russia, it has already happened with the prominence of Putin. “Gorbachev was a sad reminder to Russians,” Tisdall writes, “of all they have lost and all they might have been.”

With respect to China, its autocratic leader has similar problems with Taiwan, which is in the words of Dan Sullivan and Daniel Twining in Foreign Affairs, “is analogous to Putin’s view of Ukraine.”

What distresses China’s little strongman about Taiwan is that it is a thriving Chinese democracy with free media, a vibrant civil society and competitive elections, which is living proof that the autocracy of the Chinese Communist party need not be China’s natural state.

Tisdall mentions two developments last week that illustrated China’s descent into the worst kind of dictatorship. They include a closed-door politburo meeting opening the way for October’s party congress to award Xi an unprecedented third presidential term and the second is the crazy moniker of calling him “great leader.” There are echoes here of Mao Zedong’s mad dominance and miscellaneous North Korean dictators.

In his own country, Great Britain, Tisdall decries the backsliding of his own parliamentary democracy in the selection of a new prime minister that will be neither picked by the people nor the House of Commons this week. He or she will assume office without a “ghost of a mandate.” Doesn’t sound right to me, does it to you?

Tisdall suggests that international opinion should be mobilized against the autocrats – in Ukraine, in Taiwan, and across the board. He says that “what’s needed is a western-led campaign to restate the vital importance of democratic governance for individual rights and collective progress.” By doing so, “this would help create common ground in polarised societies and curb the influence of those on the far right who, like Trump, excuse and emulate tyrants.“

Another strategy is to make electoral politics work better. “Stop taking freedom for granted.” Tisdall agrees with Biden that “the soul-wrenching global battle against authoritarianism is a defining 21st-century challenge.” It can only be won, Tisdall declares, “if trust and faith in democracy is restored.”

In another story this Labor Day weekend that shines a spotlight on senseless violence affecting every community, every country, on the planet, there is the shocking tale of 10 dead from a mass stabbing in Saskatchewan, Canada, our neighbor to the North. The story is just incomprehensible!

This terrifying story is covered in an online CNN report from Amir Vera, Jamiel Lynch, and Artemis Moshtaghian entitled “Manhunt underway for 2 suspects in connection with a mass stabbing that left at least 10 dead in Saskatchewan, Canada.”

Thus Canadian authorities re searching for two men in connection with a mass stabbing that left at least 20 dead and 15 injured across multiple crime scenes in Saskatchewan in central Canada.

The two men were identified by authorities who have advised the public to take appropriate precautions. The duo are believed to be traveling in a black Nissan Rogue with a Saskatchewan license plate.

The first stabbing report came at 5:40 a.m. local time (6:30 a.m. ET) and, within minutes, they received multiple calls reporting additional stabbings. Thirteen crime scenes have been identified where victims were found across the region. It appears that some of the victims were targeted and some were not.

Sunday’s violence prompted officials to issue a “civil emergency,” warning residents in the Regina area to “take precautions.” Hell, yes, these men would be considered extremely dangerous if they have succeeded in killing 10 people already.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement the stabbings are “horrific and heartbreaking.” Trudeau thanked the brave first responders for their efforts on the ground.

It’s anyone’s guess as to why these two deadly antagonists would lash out at 10 people in thirteen different areas across Saskatchewan.

This horrific story, if it occurred in these blood-soaked United States, with the same casualty figures, would hardly raise eyebrows since we seem to be totally resigned to hearing this news practically all the time. This is just so sad, one must admit. With the story coming out of Canada, it has to have more impact because of its unusual nature. Violence on that scale doesn’t appear to occur there with such regularity as it does here in the gun-obsessed United States.

Today I’m happy that I didn’t have to ride the New York subway system, given my trials with it yesterday when I rode to the New York Historical Society on the West Side to meet my New Jersey friend and his wife.

Instead, we used the car in the morning to drive to Jackson Hole in Jackson Heights where we had breakfast inside. I enjoyed banana stuffed pancakes, while Elliot enjoyed a bowl of strawberries and granola yogurt and fruit. Who ate the healthier meal here? I also requested Jackson Hole’s freshly squeezed orange juice. Naturally, I asked for hot coffee, while Elliot asked for iced coffee instead.

We then drove to Bayside where we shopped in Home Goods for some items for the apartment, then we entered Stop & Shop nearby for some food items.

Later in the day, we walked to our friend “Patricia’s” apartment building, Gerard Towers, to spend some time with her since she is home recovering from hip surgery. We had intended to order dinner from a nearby Chinese or Japanese restaurant. We spent a nice period of time bringing some cheer to a good friend. Our dinner decision consisted of Patricia calling a local Japanese restaurant that delivered to the door. I’m not a connoisseur of Japanese food usually, but what we ordered from Bamboo Ya, on Austin Street, was very delectable. Elliot ordered shrimp tempura, while I settled on chicken teriyaki that came with a salad. For dessert, we had the three slices of pastries I bought at Bonelle Pastry Shop, on Ascan Avenue, earlier in the afternoon.

In order to let Patricia rest, we stayed for not a very long time; we left a little after 6 after ringing her bell about 3:30 p.m. We ended the evening, saying that we would meet sometime in the near future to celebrate her recuperation at some restaurant outside.

We then walked outside in the muggy air and walked back to our apartment, which is about 10 or 15 minutes away. I stopped into Starbucks on Queens Boulevard to pick up a pound of Italian roast coffee for Elliot since I wanted to examine the books available on the bookshelves inside. I generally stop by here at least once or twice a week.

By the way, I’m proud to say that I actually finished a book, Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, her masterful examination of loneliness and isolation in the context of today’s digitalized culture. The book examines several well-known and not-so-well-known celebrities as they coped with looming loneliness amidst the plenitude of fame – celebrities like Andy Warhol, AIDS activist and artist David Wojnarowicz (generally pronounced Wonna–row-vich), and Henry Darger, who posthumously achieved fame as one of the world’s most celebrated outsider artists. This personage I was not familiar with – until I read Laing’s book.

He was born in the slums of Chicago in 1892 and had always lived on the margins of society. After he died, in 1972, it was discovered in his rubbish-filled apartment a vast body of work consisting of over 300 paintings and thousands of pages of written material. Darger wrote about an otherworld: the Realms of the Unreal. His masterpiece would eventually run to 15,145 pages, making it the longest known work of fiction in existence. The author examines her own feelings toward loneliness while living in various regions of New York, as a migrant from the United Kingdom.

The most memorable lines from the book, I feel, come at the very end, in which Laing writes, “I don’t believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it’s about two things: how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted.” Warhol, for all of his success, always seemed out of place for many reasons. The same is true of Wojnarowicz who eventually became an artist and writer after enduring a childhood of familial abuse and neglect; he subsequently was thrown out or ran away from his neglectful mother in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment in the 1970s in which he began turning tricks at the age of fifteen. How the streets didn’t destroy him was just amazing. Wojnarowicz came out as queer a year or two before the 1969 Stonewall riots. How this young street hustler became one of the stars of the East Village art scene is truly astounding, and Laing documents his life story very insightfully.

In her last paragraph, Laing offers her prescription as to how to live with these feelings of loneliness on this planet called Earth. She writes, “Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each other. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity.” Laing is telling us we need to stick together while we are alive, basically. My prescription to you is read the book, you might enjoy it.