Talia Lavin: A Country That Devours its Children

[Nevilledog]

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muriel puce
@fisty
"[A] country feeding off its future, a country whose flaccid gerontocrats, duly supping on more wealth than a body could spend in a lifetime, evince an avidity for more, and no other animating principle."

@swordsjew capturing my feelings.

theswordandthesandwich.substack.com
A Country That Devours its Children
21 dead in Texas, and a no hope in sight
12:31 PM · May 25, 2022

https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/a-country-that-devours-its-children?s=r

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes painted “Saturn Devouring His Son” in a period of madness that consumed his latter years. It was then that the Spanish master produced the fourteen canvases known collectively as the Black Paintings, a visual chronicle of a mind warped by disease—scientists have surmised it was syphilis, or lead poisoning from paint, or a disorder that caused his immune system to attack his own brain. If you walk through the Prado Museum in Madrid you can track the deterioration of his consciousness along the white walls: at first, there are orderly and light-filled scenes of aristocrats and maidens, plump putti hovering over bland Trinities, simpering little dogs. But in the years 1819-23 a darkness descends, soft moues become mad grins, what little light illuminates the ghastly faces serves only to further emphasize the blackness encroaching on the margins.

“Saturn Devouring His Son” is the most famous of these, and perhaps the most famous of Goya’s career, entirely eclipsing the placid decades of sun-dappled contentment. What is particularly striking about the figure of Saturn—who in myth swallowed his children whole, so that, later on, they could break free of his body and go on to rule from Olympus—is the surprise on his face, the shock in the bulging eye as the great black mouth gapes over the stump of what was once an arm, as the reddened hands dig into the headless torso. Saturn is surprised that he is devouring his own child, but he doesn’t stop. Perhaps he cannot. Perhaps he is surprised that he cannot stop, and is frozen in perpetual carnage and bewilderment.

I think of this painting because I live in a country that devours its children, and professes bewilderment each time.

I was surveying the bleak 288-page report released by the Southern Baptist Convention on its own negligence in doing anything to prevent decades of sexual abuse when the news broke of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and of nineteen small new corpses sprawled in schoolrooms. The smooth, predictable little operetta that is the American public response to notable mass shootings started without an overture. I need hardly recite it again—you are no doubt familiar with it by now, the injunctions not to politicize deaths caused by a politics of death; the professions of grief and heartbreak by those with the power to do more than grieve; the frisson of despair in the general public; the press conferences by authorities; the scramble for details about the shooter, in order to either weaponize or ignore his identity; the discussion of guns; the defense of guns; the hapless sense that nothing can be done in a political system so sclerotic no one expects anything anymore anyway.

There’s a nationwide shortage of baby formula, and the tax credit that halved child hunger expired alongside any public effort to mitigate the continuing pandemic, and laws are being steadily passed that will force women to birth children they don’t want or can’t carry into a country that, all claims to the contrary aside, treats them as target practice. This is a country suing school libraries for carrying the wrong books, and taking away children from their parents for being trans, a country whose response to the massacre of its children is to sell bulletproof backpacks and post policemen at every school, as if cops could move faster than bullets. A country devouring its children and surprised to be devouring its children, one that has done so before, and will do so again.

*snip*

[7wo7rees]

1. Found today...

[Nevilledog]

3. Your point?

[LiberatedUSA]

4. That is disgusting.

Who can stand drinking buttermilk straight? Yuck.

[CatWoman]

10. LOL!!!!

I know, right?

[LiberatedUSA]

14. If ever in my life...

…I say to someone, “You know what would quench my thirst right now? A glass of buttermilk”, that will be all the judge needs to order an observation period.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Found, eh? Huh.

[Nevilledog]

8. ...

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. ...

[Nevilledog]

7. Context

It was a poorly executed swipe about all the threats they get as a Jew.





You also might want to vet the accounts you're relying on...... here's your guy

[7wo7rees]

12. Eww

Last edited Sat May 28, 2022, 06:04 AM - Edit history (1)

Lesson learned.

Please let me, Ms7wo7rees apologize for 7wo7rees statements, I believe maybe one more drink may have been too much.

But I do have to tell you DU family, we are crushed.
We are crushed, we want to be there helping. We are tied here, held hostage by an 86 year person with dementia, getting worse, going into 5th year of relentless caregiving. But 1'st world issues.

Both 7wo7rees and I are wrecked. We are so very sorry.

[Brainfodder]

2. A country with many who want to force more births, no shame or smarts whatsoever on display?

[Irish_Dem]

6. Time for Americans to do some soul searching.

Can they do the right thing?

Can they muster the courage, grit, determination, sense of duty and responsibility needed right now.

Can we save the lives of our children?
Can we save our country, our democracy?

[Irish_Dem]

9. Brutal but accurate article.

Richest country in the history of the world and our children are sent into harms way over and over.

We devour our children and act surprised when it happens.

[Backseat Driver]

13. What an excellent analogous essay on our accumulations of grief and pain in the

madness that is the living of life lately, but I do take umbrage at the ageism though I plead guilty to not ever doing enough to stop the evils. A mental health counselor once added the burden of hubris to my already long list of more youthful sentient crimes for which others said both I "should have known better" and "I never did enough deceit?"...Thanks, Dr. D (PhD). Now how could I ever make a good versus bad discrimination again about myself or others' grief, pain and loss...our often undiagnosed madness. That's a cure?

Wish I was more artistic...seems there is might be expression enough of the loss many are feeling as each day evolves with new unexplainable horrors. Come to think of it, it was end of a 9th period art class when an announcement was made that President Kennedy had died that day in Dallas TX.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof?