I Edit the Cosmopolitan Globalist

Ask Me Anything

Camylla Battani via Unsplash

Longstanding readers will remember when I wrote this:

I’ve been having a series of neurotic days—admittedly, not entirely a rare occurrence—in which every word I write bores or annoys me. I’ve written about fifteen newsletters, considered them, and thought, “Man, that is stale.”

This doesn’t actually mean that what I’ve written is no good. I’ve gone back, years later, to things I’ve written that at the time struck me as the work of a talentless hack and discovered that they were just fine. It’s just a mood that overcomes me, from time to time—a sense that I have no new ideas, that I’m repeating myself, and that everything worth saying has been said.

This is getting ridiculous, though, because with every day that I don’t send out a newsletter, it raises the standards for the next day: I think, “This one has to be an absolute blockbuster so that everyone thinks it was worth the wait.” But with every day, I’ve disliked my own writing more, so this isn’t working.

That’s me. That’s been my week. All week.

It was comforting, though, to re-read that and see that no, this is not the first time in history this has happened to anyone, nor even the first time it’s happened to me.

The strange thing about this psychological state is that it always feels absolutely novel and bewildering. If I didn’t have written evidence to the contrary, I’d be capable of convincing myself that I’ve suffered some kind of mysterious cerebral accident and I’d best go look for another job, because clearly I’ll never again write another word.

If you recall, the last time this happened to me, we played a game of Ask Me Anything. And it really helped. I remember being astonished by how effective it was. It was like magic.

So once again, today is “Ask Me Anything” day.

WOKANDAPIX via Pixabay

I am on call. I will answer every single question I receive from a subscriber, so long as you leave it in the comment section below. (Please don’t, however, send your questions by email, because I want to have one single list, in one place. If you send it by email, I probably won’t even see it; at least half of my email winds up in my spam folder.)

Here are things I might actually know something about, but I’m happy to try my hand at things I know nothing about, too:

• American arms transfer policy to the Middle East between 1967-1988. (I am actually a bona fide expert in this topic. I wrote my doctoral dissertation about this.)

• International Relations (I passed my graduate exams).

• Modern European history (I read this at Oxford).

• Philosophy (I majored in philosophy at the University of Washington).

• Political Science (I took a few classes.)

• Art History (I only took one class, but I got a good grade).

• Bangkok (I used to work at the original, print version of Asia Times).

• Cats.

• Seattle and San Francisco in the 1980s (That’s where I grew up).

• The Cold War.

• Margaret Thatcher (I wrote a book about her).

• Kittens.

• Modern European politics and culture (I wrote a book about that, too).

• Spy novels (I wrote two of them).

• Any book you think I might have read.

• Journalism and its discontents.

• Anything I’ve ever written an article about.

• Elderly cats.

• Istanbul (I spent a decade there).

• Turkish culture and politics.

• Dogs.

• Where to find the best things in Paris. (I live here).

• French culture and politics.

• Writing and editing.

• Animals and their emotions.

• The New Caesarism.

• Liberal democracy.

• Editing the Cosmopolitan Globalist.

If you ask about any of those subjects, you’ll probably get an informed answer. But you needn’t limit yourselves. Ask me about anything in the news. Ask me about anything you’ve been thinking over lately. Ask me about anything that strikes your fancy. Like Oscar Wilde, I will discuss any subject, at any time, prepared or not.

Meanwhile, I’ll start working on Global Eyes, because that’s not so hard to do.

I await your questions eagerly. Let’s get my fingers typing again.