Lyrical politics for vulnerable people

New possibilities to deal with the sheer nastiness and philistinism of populist politics today in teh Gru. It concerns Trump primarily -- but we all know he's just the same as Johnson. They're both blond men for example.

Any road up,here's the item:

Jenny Slate: 'For every bit of garbage Trump spews, I’ll write something beautiful'

The standup comedian is used to writing for public performance, but her remarkable book Little Weirds was written as private consolation

The assorted pieces aren’t essays, nor short stories; perhaps they are best categorised as amused musings [oh dear]  on the things that animate her. ...The book’s catalyst was multi-pronged [sorry?]. She endured “pummelling heartbreak” at the end of a relationship. When Donald Trump became US president in 2016, she felt exhausted, disempowered and “astounding loneliness”...She started to write the pieces privately as a way of voicing how she felt when Trump’s rhetoric became increasingly disturbing to her. In the face of near-paralysing powerlessness, she was finding her voice. “What I say changes my experience,” she says. “It is important to start on that personal level.”

So here's what to expect as we await for the Amazon delivery:

Slate is open in conversation, and makes herself even more vulnerable on the page. The book is about her place in the world, the word “I” appearing more frequently than in any other book that I’ve encountered...“For me it was wonderful to put myself back together but it was even more important to realise that to be alive is to be in flux.”

Excellent so far. Then:

her prose is much more poetic than journalistic. She often writes in abstract terms: “I was inclined to throw away my joy,” or, “The only thing left was the number zero.”...it is a book in which lines such as: “I will gulp clear water that used to have bugs and poop and poison in it but has been cleaned up so that it doesn’t make us blow chunks” can coexist with others such as: “I died after living more of my life with you than I lived with just myself.”

Don't think of this as indulgent narcissism. Oh no. It is politics:

Slate thought: “For every bit of garbage that this predator is going to spew into the zeitgeist, I’m going to write something beautiful and true about myself or for myself or about my life or for anybody else who wants to listen.”...she is frightened not only about the impact that language can have but also “how quickly we can forget to use it in a dignified way”. The opposition to Trump can be waged on numerous fronts, she thinks – one of which is the reclamation of gentle, thoughtful, beautiful expression. 

A cynic might ask when she is going to start developing this sort of expression instead of the banal crap quoted. Before we get too scornful though, inevitably, there is personal trauma and vulnerability too:

[Slate was] bullied at middle school... feeling that, as a child, perhaps I was a burden.... the question of whether or not I’m lovable..

Only a real bastard would criticise her now, surely? Meanwhile, what's the balance between the personal and the political overall? Is this book an intervention to press for the impeachment of Trump? To rally public opinion around a Democrat campaign? To organise grass-roots opposition to right-wing politics? Er no:

her opinion is the one that matters most to her. “I stand by my work,” she says. “I love it.”

I bet the comedy is great too.