"You can read Ivanka’s inane musings below, but they’re not the real point. She turned 43 on October 30."

"There is no reason to post this thread on November 4, the night before Election Day, other than to emphasize that she’s not even thinking about Donald Trump’s reelection bid. Ivanka basically found a way to tell her dad, 'I really don’t care, do U?' via Twitter thread, rather than donning an ugly jacket...."

Writes Margaret Hartmann in New York Magazine, reacting to Ivanka's stoicism-studded thread on X.

What's up with Ivanka? Who knows? She was the favored child, it always seemed, or at least the favored daughter. Maybe you're wondering Should I care? Just consult Marcus Aurelius — "You have power over your mind—not outside events" — or Epictetus — "Anyone capable of angering you becomes your master."

"To be creative, you want to feel like you're getting away with something."

Also: "You spend all your life trying to save time, but when you get to the end of your life, there's no time left, and you'll go to heaven, and you go 'But wait, I had velcro sneakers, no-iron shirt, clip-on tie. What about all that time? It's gone.'"

And, though Seinfeld won't show you his Star of David necklace, he says "Yes, I wear a Star of David necklace, because it makes me feel closer to the people of Israel that I feel close to and that's why I wear it."

He reveals his favorite word: "quintessence." He discusses the meaning, but I wanted the OED meaning: "The most essential part or feature of some non-material thing; the purest or most perfect form or manifestation of some quality, idea, etc."

But that's the figurative meaning.

Gad Saad talks with Joe Rogan about Marcus Aurelius.

ADDED: Joe takes a druggy off-ramp midway through.

It's here at last!

Today is the publication date of the new David Sedaris book, "A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020)"

I am, I think, the world's biggest fan of the first volume of David Sedaris's diaries, "Theft by Finding," so this is a huge event for me. I've been watching the calendar for months. 

This is funny — It's #1 (and #3) on Amazon's "Best Sellers in Classic Greek Literature":

"Don’t set your mind on things you don’t possess as if they were yours, but count the blessings you actually possess and think how much you would desire them..."

"... if they weren’t already yours. But watch yourself, that you don’t value these things to the point of being troubled if you should lose them." 

Wrote Marcus Aurelius, quoted in "The Daily Stoic," an audiobook accompanying me as I take a walk — away from all TV sets and computers. 

We're having a frabjous Indian Summer right now here in Wisconsin, USA.

"In the current chaos, I’ve come to appreciate Marcus Aurelius’s maxim that 'The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.'"

"And I have to say I’m horribly conflicted on some issues. I’m supportive of attempts to interrogate the sins of the past, in particular the gruesome legacy of slavery and segregation, and their persistent impact on the present. And in that sense, I’m a supporter of the motives of the good folks involved with the Black Lives Matter movement. But I’m equally repelled by the insistent attempt by BLM and its ideological founders to malign and dismiss the huge progress we’ve made, to re-describe the American experiment in freedom as one utterly defined by racism, and to call the most tolerant country on the planet, with unprecedented demographic diversity, a form of 'white supremacy.' I’m tired of hearing Kamala Harris say, as she did yesterday: 'The reality is that the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human.' This is what Trump has long defended as 'truthful hyperbole' — which is a euphemism for a lie. But here’s one thing I have absolutely no conflict about. Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue.... One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: 'Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?' A cheap shot, yes. But in the current context, a political bullseye."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into/If law and order are what this election is about, they will lose it."

IN THE COMMENTS: People are not buying that it was a “cheap shot” or a “trap.”

"In reaction to the growing globalization of the Roman Empire, elite corruption, the banality of bread-and-circuses, and the end of the agrarian Italian Republic, the Stoics opted out..."

"... choosing instead a reasoned detachment from contemporary life. Some, like the worldly court philosopher Seneca, seemed hypocritical; others, such as the later emperor Marcus Aurelius, lived a double life of imperial engagement and mental detachment. Classical impassiveness established the foundations for the later monastic Christians, who in more dangerous times increasingly saw the world around them as incompatible with the world to come — and therefore they saw engagement as an impediment to their own Christian belief. More and more Americans today are becoming Stoic dropouts. They are not illiberal, and certainly not reactionaries, racists, xenophobes, or homophobes. They’re simply exhausted by our frenzied culture.... Monastics are tuning out the media.... When everything is politicized, everything is monotonous; nothing is interesting... For millions of Americans, their music, their movies, their sports, and their media are not current fare. Instead, they have mentally moved to mountaintops or inaccessible valleys, where they can live in the past or dream of the future, but certainly not dwell in the here and now...."

Writes Victor Davis Hanson in "Monasteries of the Mind," which I'm reading because because it was recommended in the comments to a post I'd put up earlier today. The commenter, Jeff Kuebler, said:

Standing off, interesting--I clicked here right after reading Victor D Hanson's column on people tuning out.

What I'd written was:

Speaking of very, very ugly,* I feel myself drifting away from politics. In the early years of this blog, I had a subheading under the blog title "Althouse" that read: "Politics and the aversion to politics, law and law school, high and low culture, and the way things look from Madison, Wisconsin." The aversion to politics had kind of been the story of my life, and blogging had me just dabbling in actual political opinion. The opinion has always been tinged with the aversion. I'm standing off at some distance observing how other people are political.

_______________________

* The post began with a quote from Joe Biden imagining the world turning very ugly, very, very ugly.