I don’t often read my contemporaries. For decades I tried to be “updated,” and you waste most of your limited time. But I admire the poets Charles Simic and Adam Zagajewski. I admire Alice Munro so very much. I admire the novelists Patrick Modiano (who was first published in Spain at my recommendation, in the 1980s) and Julian Barnes. I admire the historian Antony Beevor. And many others I can’t recall now.
Americans are strong believers in what psychologists call a “just world,” one where people get what they deserve and deserve what they get, he said. “If you’re poor, you must have not worked hard or are lazy, and if you are rich, it must be due to your own merits, efforts and talents,” he said. “Europeans think it’s much more due to luck.”
The deployment would increase the number of American forces at the southwestern border by more than 45 percent, with the additional 2,100 troops joining roughly 4,500 personnel currently stationed there. The plan was approved on Tuesday night by Richard V. Spencer, who assumed the role of acting defense secretary on Monday while Mark T. Esper, President Trump’s latest nominee for the position, faced confirmation hearings this week.