the attitude with arnie arnesen the thurs edition noon to 1pm EST Oct 30

[Arnie Arnesen]

The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen

opening thoughts: Peter York on Donald Trump’s dictator-chic White House. A style guru muses on the links between tackiness and tyranny

 producers: Dave Scott and Stephanie Collins

Chloé LaCasse (the best of the attitude)

streaming live at wnhnfm.org noon&7pm EST on the dial-94.7FM Concord NH

podcasts available at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/attitude-with-arnie-arnesen/id1634055179

opening thoughts Peter York on Donald Trump’s dictator-chic White House

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/10/28/peter-york-on-donald-trumps-dictator-chic-white-houseIT ALL STARTED with the multiplying golden blobs over everything in the Oval Office. The room is typical of the White House, a restrained building completed in 1800. The city around it is deliberately low-rise and “classical” by design, a capital built to express the “no kings” dignity of the late-18th-century republic.Design geeks like me watched the constant Trump shows in that office with our jaws on the floor. The president and foreign leaders, from Volodymyr Zelensky to Sir Keir Starmer, sat on either side of the formerly plain white-marble chimneypiece. Over months of meetings more of these gilded mouldings appeared, some round, some rococo flourishes (made from resin, plaster, or what exactly? Ordered from Home Depot, said the comedians). It was riveting; they sprouted around the chimney piece and also, shockingly, were stuck onto the fireplace marble itself—an act inconceivable to architects and designers of the kind who advise on historic houses. But the White House has moved into its own new Gilded Age. By mid-October, when Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general, visited, the Oval Office was covered in yet more bright new bits. Gilt vases on the chimneypiece, shiny cartouches under the historic pictures, which were themselves reframed in gilt, rather than wood. It couldn’t have looked less Preppie, less Establishment, less Washington. It couldn’t have looked more like Dictator Style, the look of absolute rulers around the world.On July 31st the whole thing moved up a gear: the president announced that a beautiful ballroom would be built for the White House. There were no problems with planning or cost, he said, because it would be built near to but separate from the East Wing, leaving it unharmed but “modernised”; and rich friends would pay.But on October 20th the demolition gangs arrived with their bulldozers and began knocking down the East Wing, which had been built in 1902 (making it historic by American standards) and contained a number of familiar offices including, notionally, the First Lady’s. The whole thing was mostly rubble within days. After squeals of outrage Mr Trump changed his tune. He said that the East Wing had never been anything special anyway and after a “tremendous amount of study with some of the best architects in the world” (he didn’t say who) they’d decided it all had to go, like unsavable rotten teeth.The beautiful new ballroom would hold nearly a thousand people and cost over $300m. In the polystyrene model you could see that the familiar plan—the original house with its two later wings—was banged completely out of shape by the loss of the East Wing and the addition of a 90,000-square-foot room that looked like something attached to a Dubai hyper-hotel. A good comparison would be knocking down 11 Downing Street and replacing it with a mock 18th-century high-rise double the size of Number 10.I was appalled, but not remotely surprised, because I’d literally written the book on Dictator Style back in 2006. My book described the interior style of 20th-century absolute rulers, from the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz through to Saddam Hussein, via Hitler, Mussolini, Marcos and Mobutu. I codified the style similarities of very dissimilar people in a parody of the “Get The Look” guides seen in smart design magazines.

he ends this way: Paul Krugman, an American economist, recently wrote that “tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand”. One of Mr Trump’s latest plans is for an overscale Arc de Triomphe in central Washington to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. According to CBS News, when a White House correspondent asked the president who the arch was for, Mr Trump pointed at himself and said “Me”. ■

part one with Professor Inglis:

10 effective things citizens can do to make change in addition to attending a protest

https://theconversation.com/10-effective-things-citizens-can-do-to-make-change-in-addition-to-attending-a-protest-266432

Shelley Inglis is a Senior Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) at Rutgers University. Until July 1, 2025, she was a Senior Policy Advisor with the Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Bureau of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

part two:

Race Class a week later but we are still hanging in October

Legislation restricting the teaching of race and racism in public schools and government entities has spread across the country. In an effort to respond, Boston University Law Professor Jonathan Feingold and The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen  are offering "Race Class" - a once a month course/conversation where listeners can hear what it is like to approach race and racism from a place of curiosity and history rather than fear and anxiety....In describing the foundational purpose of "Race Class," Arnesen and Feingold note, "We know racematters.  Part of this project is to make sense of what that means."

Ep. 46: A Teach-In at the Smithsonian

 

In this episode, Jon shares why he traveled to Washington, D.C. for a teach-in at the Smithsonian with fellow scholars, artists, activists, podcasters and others. The teach-in was a collaboration of two historical podcasts, This Day and The Memory Palace, and drew inspiration from the teach-ins that academics organized in the 1960s to deepen and support anti-war movements. We also explore how the Trump regime’s assault on the Smithsonian follows a fascist playbook that requires constructing a “mythic past” – that, in the American context, requires erasing the racial violence and terror that defines America past and present.

Why we’re holding a teach-in about American history at the Smithsonian 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/24/smithsonian-teach-in-trump-war-on-history

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KEEPING THE POT STIRRED SO SCUM DOESN'T RISE TO THE TOP -  Anonymous 

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