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Someone once told Hester that memories hurt, the good ones most of all. As she got older, Hester realized just how true that was.
A child comes out hardwired. That was what you learned as a parent—that your kid is who he is and what he is and that you, as a parent, greatly overstate your importance in his development. A dear friend once told her that being a parent is like being a car mechanic—you can repair the car and take care of the car and keep the car on the road, but you can’t fundamentally change the car. If a sports car drives into your garage for repairs, it isn’t driving out an SUV.
Studies show that parts of our brain—the hippocampus (the region used for navigation) and the prefrontal cortex (associated with planning) are already changing, perhaps even atrophying, because we now rely on GPS navigation.
There is a theory, introduced by psychologist Anders Ericsson and made popular by Malcolm Gladwell, that ten thousand hours of practice makes you an expert in a given field. Wilde didn’t buy it, though he understood the appeal in the simplicity of such encouraging pop slogans.
In the end, man is an animal. An animal does what it has to do to survive.
At least other animals kill because they need to, to survive. Human animals are the only animals that kill for “fun.”
Rusty Eggers
Why do I see this name but hear Donald Trump?
We both believe that the current system is rigged. We both believe that the system has failed the American people. We both believe the only way to fix it is to first upend it.”
Yep.
Rusty Eggers was also, Gavin Chambers knew, brilliant.
Never mind. Trump is as far as you can get from brilliant.
My grandfather up in Maine turned ninety-two recently. I asked him what that was like—reaching that age. He said it’s a finger snap. He said, ‘One day I turned eighteen. I joined the army. I headed south to basic training. And now I’m here.’ That fast. That’s what he said. Like he got onto a bus with his duffle bag in 1948 and he got off now.”
It is truly amazing how quickly life goes by.
You move forward in life. You may give the old you a nod every once in a while, but the old you is gone and not coming back.
“Do you want me to yell, ‘Yippee’?” “Naomi’s mother won’t talk to me.”
There should be something here to show the same person is talking. Like “ marks only at the beginning and end.
He’s hoodwinking this nation with his charisma, but his supposed ‘manifesto’ is really a call for anarchy. It’ll lead to food shortages, worldwide panic, constitutional crises, and even war.”
I see Trump again.
“The Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops.” “Whoa,” Chambers said. “Label me impressed.” The Twenty-Third, aka the Ghost Army, were an elite force of artists and special effects soldiers who worked “tactical deception.” They’d use stuff like inflatable tanks and rubber airplanes and even create a soundtrack of war, all to create the twentieth-century version of a Trojan horse.
Wilde didn’t suffer from PTSD—at least, not the kind that could be clinically diagnosed, but there wasn’t a guy who served over there that didn’t cringe at this sound.
the old proverb about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer echoed in his head.
“A man thinking with his dick first,” Hester said. “I didn’t know such a thing existed.”
“Exactly. He constantly berates them and so they cringe and get scared, to keep within the metaphor, to blow the whistle. All politicians do it, of course. Rusty is just better at it.”
He’d have a hard time besting Trump.
“We talked about how most Americans used to be in the middle, relatively speaking. That’s how America kept its balance all those years. The left and the right were close enough to have disagreements but not hate.” “Okay.” “That world is gone, Gavin, and so it will now be easy to destroy the social order. The middle has become complacent. They are smart, but they are lazy. They see the grays. They get the other side. Extremists, on the other hand, see only black and white. They are not only certain that their vision is absolutely correct, but they are incapable of even understanding the other
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He said that America was waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of our people will kill one-third of our people while one-third of our people watches.”
You aren’t blind or as blasé as you pretend. You know what kind of destruction Rusty Eggers is capable of unleashing.”
Every time I see “Rusty Eggers,” I hear “Donald Trump.”
had to.
had to be.
“So in the end, I don’t care if he’s lying or you are. You are scum either way, and I hope you never have a moment’s peace.”
“Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains,” Saul said, quoting Arthur Conan Doyle, “no matter how improbable, is the truth.”
it became clear that Rusty doesn’t want to rebuild. Rusty wants to destroy this country. He wants to pull us apart by the seams.”
You must have based this character on Trump.
important,
importantly,
