Painting Fakes

While I was reading Bob Woodward's accounts of the Trump presidency , I came across a reference to Jeff Sharlet's wonderful and terrible book, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War.   I just had to read it, although it took me a while to get to the top of the holds list at my local library. Published in 2023, The Undertow  is a series of essays which explore the nether regions of the American Right, Trump's base. They were written over a number of years as Sharlet travels around the country talking not to politicians but to ordinary punters who are sold, not just on Trump as a person, but on the whole package - the conspiracies, the misogyny, the guns, the end of abortion, the stolen election, you name it, they believe it. He goes to various events - Trump rallies in which journalists are kept in a cage for Trump to humiliate at the appropriate time; the International Conference on Men's Issues, relocated at short notice from the swanky Detroit Hilton to the decide...

I'm sure you all know the story of Pandora's Box. It's an ancient Greek tale, found in Hesiod's Works and Days.   Pandora was the first woman on earth, wife of Prometheus' brother Epimetheus.  Zeus, who was angry about Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, gave her a beautiful box as a wedding gift, with the instruction that she was never to open it.  What would you do?  Of course she eventually gave in to the temptation. Inside were all the evils of the world, in the form of flying creatures that I have always imagined as tiny, vicious wasps.  They swarmed out of the box, stung Pandora all over and then flew off into the wide world.  Once out, they could never be recaptured. This is, of course, a Fall story, much like the story of Adam and Eve .  It provides a metaphorical description of the entry of evil into the world and the irreversibility of the process.  But I have a feeling Hesiod got it a little bit wrong.  I'm not convinced th...