It may serve a good purpose to share some notes on bone marrow aspirations. I've had four so far.
You lie face down and have marrow drawn from a hip bone for testing. The whole procedure takes about half an hour, followed by another half hour of rest on your back before getting up. It's good to have a book along for that.
My doctor explained that despite local anesthesia I'd feel sharp pain three times for one or two seconds each. And so I did. In contrast, if I stub my toe while barefoot I see stars for about ten seconds and endure slowly diminishing agony for a minute or so. With a typical bone marrow aspiration, three short jolts and you’re in the clear. My first two were typical.
It's only fair to report that the third went wrong. The needle must have struck a nerve, or so the doctor speculated when we compared notes, because it was a royal pain in the hip for most of the hour. Not quite a crisis, and yet a passage of heavy breathing and dark thoughts.
But you must hear about the fourth. This was done by my thirty-something outpatient chemo doctor, who had met my sallies on the subject of Stage IV with unerring tact. I knew her competence, but it began to seem that she’d take forever preparing to do the deed. Then, just as I re-tightened my grip on the end of the mattress, she said it was over.
I have no reason to doubt that she jabbed me; after all, I got the biopsy report. But I can't say it made much of an impression. May others be so fortunate.
Finally, here are my two best tips on bone marrow aspirations:
If you learn that you must have one, plan something fun to do afterward and keep your mind on that.
If you’re granted a life free of bone marrow aspirations, don't go and spoil it by stubbing your toe.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Reconciled but Hungry
After the family doctor pronounced my test results “awful” and sent me in search of a diagnosis, I made the rounds of specialists as many people do, learning along the way that a doctor's eyes might be made to bulge by the merest lab report.
Finally, a veteran hematologist and old acquaintance got to the root of the matter. A bone marrow biopsy showed twice the normal number of lymphocytes, half of them malignant. This was the work of a lymphoma which treatment can only set back, not cure. A CT scan painted a clear picture of Stage IV.
Early in adulthood I had fallen into the habit of visualizing my life as a finite arc in time. I never entirely forgot that I was headed somewhere on a constantly shortening journey. Mortality was my acknowledged lot. So I couldn't say this allusion to it came as a shock, though it did make a riveting tap on the shoulder. I accepted that I would very probably break with the family tradition of longevity and must put my affairs in order. At the same time, I felt that a settled, fatalistic spirit of gratitude for life was the best ground on which to make a stand. I still do.
Hospital mattresses proved excellent. Nor was the blood patient's unrestricted diet lost on me (though I can say so only because I escaped the severe side effects of treatment that many suffer). A stroll past the other wards, with their genres of malady posted in the corridor, always brought me back to mine untroubled by envy. Meanwhile, the sense of contented reconciliation to mortality bolstered my spirits; and my spirits, as I believe, bolstered my prospects.
The good doctor’s concoction of chemotherapy and monoclonal antibody cleared me of detectable malignancy in short order. Still it was understood that the disease would be lurking somewhere even though it no longer showed up. When, on leaving the hospital to continue treatments as an outpatient, I asked whether there were any cautions to observe in my daily life, the doctor gently replied, "Just do what you want to do." And with that valediction to ponder, off I went. The lymphoma is supposed to reassert itself eventually, but after five years in remission I got the news that with any luck I’d die of something else first. My wife and I went straight to a nice restaurant for a little celebration.
Recent tests show that the cancer is no longer in remission, but in a “smoldering” state at a level that does not call for treatment. My first doctor, whose own cancer proved more insistent, will not see how the journey ends. However, his memory will go the distance in a couple of grateful hearts. My affairs now drift in and out of order, and the two of us continue to enjoy our garden, our occasional travels, our children’s lives, and our own appetites.
Finally, a veteran hematologist and old acquaintance got to the root of the matter. A bone marrow biopsy showed twice the normal number of lymphocytes, half of them malignant. This was the work of a lymphoma which treatment can only set back, not cure. A CT scan painted a clear picture of Stage IV.
Early in adulthood I had fallen into the habit of visualizing my life as a finite arc in time. I never entirely forgot that I was headed somewhere on a constantly shortening journey. Mortality was my acknowledged lot. So I couldn't say this allusion to it came as a shock, though it did make a riveting tap on the shoulder. I accepted that I would very probably break with the family tradition of longevity and must put my affairs in order. At the same time, I felt that a settled, fatalistic spirit of gratitude for life was the best ground on which to make a stand. I still do.
Hospital mattresses proved excellent. Nor was the blood patient's unrestricted diet lost on me (though I can say so only because I escaped the severe side effects of treatment that many suffer). A stroll past the other wards, with their genres of malady posted in the corridor, always brought me back to mine untroubled by envy. Meanwhile, the sense of contented reconciliation to mortality bolstered my spirits; and my spirits, as I believe, bolstered my prospects.
The good doctor’s concoction of chemotherapy and monoclonal antibody cleared me of detectable malignancy in short order. Still it was understood that the disease would be lurking somewhere even though it no longer showed up. When, on leaving the hospital to continue treatments as an outpatient, I asked whether there were any cautions to observe in my daily life, the doctor gently replied, "Just do what you want to do." And with that valediction to ponder, off I went. The lymphoma is supposed to reassert itself eventually, but after five years in remission I got the news that with any luck I’d die of something else first. My wife and I went straight to a nice restaurant for a little celebration.
Recent tests show that the cancer is no longer in remission, but in a “smoldering” state at a level that does not call for treatment. My first doctor, whose own cancer proved more insistent, will not see how the journey ends. However, his memory will go the distance in a couple of grateful hearts. My affairs now drift in and out of order, and the two of us continue to enjoy our garden, our occasional travels, our children’s lives, and our own appetites.
Saturday, January 20, 2018
The Voyage to Restoration
It's almost a curse, this flood tide in the affairs of Democrats. It's like being promised a handsome legacy on condition that you prove yourself worthy, and not getting a chance to reply, "Define worthy." With America’s midterm election campaigns in the offing, the Democratic Party is apt to raise its cup of opportunity with a trembling hand for fear of a slip ‘twixt that and the lip.
This is not superstitious perversity. Since the debacle of 2016, Democratic politicians and their supporters have been publicly debating the way forward, with good reason. American democracy is in crisis. The health of the political system (never good) and the integrity of the federal government stand in need of restoration without delay. The tide is running in the Democrats’ favor, but an ill-judged strategy for seizing it could leave them becalmed in shallows and in miseries for a long time. Should they tack to the left? to the right? On which coordinate should they move: cultural, or economic? Whom should they take on board?
Before proceeding to the now-inevitable metaphors of weighing anchor and setting sail, let’s clear away some clumps of Sargassum.
Zero Tolerance
This rash and opportunistic position on sexual misconduct could very easily blow up in Democrats' faces. No doubt you're 'way ahead of me, if you remember the vogue of Zero Tolerance that burst upon the American scene about twenty years ago. School administrators seized on it as the ultimate commitment to keeping weapons out of classrooms. The word draconian inspired hope in one set of law-abiding citizens and horror in another. Sure enough, it was only a matter of time till we had a ten-year-old girl being taken away by the police -- actually in handcuffs -- for having brought an unauthorized pair of scissors to school for a project.
Zero Tolerance is the refuge of exhausted minds and stampeded personalities. The open aim of the Democratic Party's internal stance of Zero Tolerance is to be above reproach when taxing the Republicans with their laxity, but there's no credit to be had for running roughshod over people and principles to gain political advantage. On the contrary, that purge-like spectacle and the uncritical embrace of a freewheeling #MeToo movement are liable to recall displays of blinkered missionary zeal that have made liberal politics anathema to many Americans in the past. Come election day, Democrats may find that they own a notoriously oppressive phenomenon in the midst of a broad backlash against it.
Socialism
Bernie Sanders got away with being an avowed democratic socialist in 2016 to the extent that he ran pretty well against Hillary Clinton while losing to her. The Republicans let it go because he was attacking the flank of their inevitable adversary. If he had become the nominee, it would have been a different story.
Democrats have an opportunity to win broad support among middle-class and working-poor Americans for policies that aim to bring economic security within the reach of all, but not for any project to repeal the national tenet of individual responsibility. Each policy must satisfy more circumspect notions of practicality and justice than would animate "the masses" in the America of socialists' dreams. However, people who stand to benefit from social programs, or who already do so, must be made aware of their stake so that there's nothing like the scorning of "Obamacare" which Republicans managed to induce last time in beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act.
Personally, I think I could take a lot of democratic socialism before I got tired of it. I only regret that I have but one vote to cast for my country.
Secularism
The devil is in the "ism". There's no need for secular Democrats to feign religiosity or for religious ones to flaunt it. All that’s required is the thinking person’s urbane appreciation of multiple belief systems and the recognition that materialism, too, is such a system. This makes the difference between a self-righteous, amoral, wholly political liberalism that must bend society to its will and a liberalism that can help society find its way along the moral turnings of issues like abortion.
Identity-first politics
In 2008, the American people elected an African-American president for the first time. However, Barack Obama was not propelled by any movement to change the political game and create the First Black President. He had the personal attributes to take game-changing in his stride on the way to victory. Next time, would I vote for a Latino? a woman? a Muslim? an LGBTQ person? With all my heart, but not on account of such categories. I'll be looking for an outstanding candidate, first. The Democratic Party must take back both Congress and the White House without fail.
Disruptive demonstrators
Even as demonstrators made the White House too hot to hold Lyndon Johnson, they rubbed much of the American public the wrong way. When progressives have subsequently rumbled in the streets, whether to trash Starbucks at the 1999 WTO conference or to rage at the lamentable but legitimate election of Donald Trump, they've only stigmatized themselves as tantrum-throwing children of privilege. If the student activist-hystericists who have been silencing discourse on their own campuses obtrude themselves on the national scene, they'll pose one of the greatest obstacles to the political work that must be done now in defense of democracy. They are to be regarded as nothing less than agents of the Right.
Supportive entertainers
Public support from entertainers, no matter how sincere, is unprofitable to a liberal candidate. The experience of the late Clinton campaign set the seal on that lesson. Conservatives can benefit from such support if they choose to do so, because any show-business people in their camp can be portrayed as rebels against a decadent cabal. When the beneficiaries are liberals, and especially when they bring entertainers onstage for hugs and handshakes, the opposition will deride it as the irrelevant shilling it is and will mine it for barbs about the vanity of coastal elites. That response will carry the day. The votes of actors and singers are of course welcome along with those of film editors, recording engineers, and other Americans.
Hothouse liberals
It does no good that one's heart goes out to the People, if it's a type of heart they'd rather you kept. This is the classic paradox of leftist politics: the temperamental mismatch between Platonist intellectuals and the objects of their affection. Rarefied atmospheres and sheltered habitats breed poor political emissaries -- for the liberal cause. In America today, conservatives can be thoroughly isolated from the workaday world and yet win acceptance there by contrasting themselves with condescending eggheads and fragile bleeding hearts. Liberals could hardly disavow the compassion and thoughtfulness that inform their politics, even if they wanted to. However, they can be sturdy souls. They can be critical thinkers, not didactic obsessives. They can be frank speakers, not canting or calculating ones. They can be worthy listeners. On occasion, they can forget politics and be warm human beings.
Very well. Soon, Democrats in their many vessels must weigh anchor and set sail. May they steer by such beacons as these:
Sanity
It seems little enough for a nation to ask of its leaders, but it's at a premium now. Whether the President of the United States has a mental disorder or not, the fact that reasonable people debate the question is telling. Donald Trump's behavior does bring the word abnormal to the tip of the lay tongue. He makes it necessary for psychiatric authorities to insist on the distinction between mental illness and mental instability. Leading Republicans who once viewed Trump's mentality with disgust, and who reportedly continue to do so, offer no escape from it.
America is thirsting for steady, mature, civilized conduct in government. Democratic candidates in 2018 and beyond must satisfy that thirst by personal example even more than by the political visions they describe. It's to be hoped and expected that many young people will run for public office in this hour of national distress. Let them put their elders to shame with their sanity and their temperate language. They might, for example, save words like Armageddon and “the end of the world” for nuclear war and — the end of the world.
Competence
One can have a brain that is sound and a personality that is free of disorders, and yet have a mind that is stunted or atrophied. Incompetence will result. This is where we stand with Donald Trump and the administration he has gathered around him as an extension of himself.
It's often observed that Trump's incompetence at least keeps him from working his will to more disastrous effect. However, any such negative virtue hardly compensates for the governmental deterioration that is taking place. Most Americans are capable of recognizing this as no sensible return to small government, but the falling to ruin of their national estate under poor caretakers. Democratic candidates should not only talk about the deficiencies and demoralization that are occurring, but also make voters aware of the consequences to be expected. Diplomacy, justice, public health, the environment, the still-neglected infrastructure: in these areas and others, Trump and his Republican protectors are letting America rot.
The true story, calmly told in facts
Even before Donald Trump, Republicans too often got by on the sound of their words. Now the impudent emptiness of Trump's slogans, claims, and insults presents Democrats with the best chance they'll ever have to meet spieling with straight talk and to test words against meanings.
Many Americans should be receptive. They've heard, for example, that climate change is a hoax; that they don't need the Affordable Care Act; that the new tax law hurts Donald Trump but he gave it to them for their benefit; that he has saved manufacturing jobs, including 1,000 at Carrier Corp. They're noticing some divergences, and they're ready to listen to informed talk about what's really happening. In many regions, the subject of climate change will be a good place to start, especially if Democrats augment their leadership in preventive policy with leadership in managing those consequences that are already inevitable and increasingly palpable. There's little to gain by having been right years ago, and less by rubbing it in.
Constituency reform
White working people as a voting bloc have become Trumpist Republicans. No doubt there’s truth in the observation that those people’s view of their own interests varies with the part of their class identity that is addressed: white or working. However, it’s hard to see what can be made of that. Democrats may address the working part more than before, but they can’t keep the opposition from bearing down on the white part. The potential for winning this tug-of-war will depend heavily on external factors such as demographic shift, which must increasingly exercise the white part of white working people’s identity. Some personalities that responded to white nationalist agitation in 2016 may remain in a balanced state of flux between different interests, but others have been pulled into the vortex of racial politics for the rest of their lives.
Instead of trying to reconstruct the old alliance of liberal intellectuals and white blue-collar workers (with African-Americans regarded as a bloc defined entirely by race), Democrats should build a new alliance along lines suggested by two opinion pieces that appeared in The New York Times last summer: Thomas B. Edsall’s “Where Democrats Can Find New Voters” (June 15, 2017) and Steve Phillips’s “The Democratic Party’s Billion-Dollar Mistake” (July 20, 2017).
Edsall’s thesis, backed up as always by a wealth of data coherently analyzed, is that Democrats ought to turn their attention from the white working class to “a much larger bloc of voters, the roughly 65 million service sector workers whose partisan loyalty is up for grabs.” He explains:
Edsall cites detailed analysis by Richard Florida of the University of Toronto showing that this category comprises “about 45 percent of the work force” and has a varied makeup: “Majority women, multiracial, multiethnic.” As for its political tendencies, “Florida finds that this population currently splits its vote evenly between the two parties….” Talking about economic interests makes more sense with this set of working Americans than with one that is implicitly susceptible to white nationalism and that might, anyway, find a discussion of economic opportunity less than uplifting.
The costly mistake to which Phillips refers in his essay is the use of funds in 2016 to chase the votes of “wavering whites” and not to maximize the turnout of African-Americans. Further on, after noting the movement of many past Obama voters to the minor-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Phillips writes,
Black Democrats showed abundant inspiration on their own initiative in Alabama’s special senatorial election of 2017, with black women playing an especially crucial role in the victory of the liberal Doug Jones over the deplorable Roy Moore. Nationally as well, African-Americans form a core Democratic constituency that deserves the party’s full attention and close cooperation. This is not only a question of considering the interests of African-Americans in framing issues or fielding candidates, but also of putting resources into voter registration, turnout, and prevention of voter suppression.
Phillips’s and Edsall’s theses reinforce each other. As we have seen, service sector workers comprise a set of people that is multiracial and majority female. It makes better politics as well as better morality to engage that set than a conspicuously patriarchal set that is defined from the start as "white" something. The white working people who applaud Donald Trump's mischief are lost in every sense. Courting them will only feed their spite. They hate liberals as a type; they resent unsubmissive women; they persecute homosexuals; they fear and loathe other races. Let them keep their votes and gorge on their malice.
A sense of proportion
This is inseparable from a sense of humor in the most fundamental sense, but it's emphatically different from a tendency to crack jokes. In politics, few blunders do more harm in proportion to their triviality than an ill-considered joke. Something similar holds true of figurative speech. Even venturing beyond the first dictionary definition of a word can be a mistake, as John Kerry found with sensitive. Plain talk is best.
What is needed is a mind that doesn't take itself too seriously. This can be a challenge in liberal politics. Airless solemnity and overbearing self-righteousness are primarily pitfalls of people who see an urgent need to change the world. The kind of liberal most likely to succeed is one who, while appreciating the urgency of the need, inspires people to strive together with high hearts, good-natured resilience, and a mysteriously persistent love of life. It requires the kind of intelligence that sees life essentially as comedy and not as tragedy -- but don't say so, or you'll be venturing well beyond the first dictionary definition of comedy.
Community
The Republican metaphor for America is a gold field suited to fortune-hunters. Let the Democratic metaphor be a community suited to good neighbors. Yes, the community will be inclusive and nurturing. It will be a community of many parts, and it will be supportive where support is needed. But the main electoral appeal should be made to core interests that unite the parts and sustain the vitality of the whole.
The messengers making the appeal — both candidates and activists — should be clearly reliable partners: vigorous, competent, far-seeing, approachable. Essentially self-reliant people make the most reliable partners. For the liberal cause to win the competition for new adherents, the distinction between the conservative ideal and the liberal one should not be contrastive, but pivotal: a distinction between rugged individualism (whether real or phony) and robust individuality with fellow-feeling.
Even more than for most undertakings, a seafaring voyage does make a good rough-and-ready metaphor for the campaigning that lies ahead. It takes much more than the ability to conceive a destination and plot a course. It demands resourcefulness, fortitude, and the cohesion of reliable individuals. A sense of proportion, not to say humor, helps all hands keep their spirits up and increases the chance of success. Whether you'll catch fair winds or not, Heaven only knows. After everything has been done that can be done by skillful navigation and steadfast seamanship, and thoughts turn to all that's riding on the final tide, even the secular will grant that a prayer can't do any harm.
This is not superstitious perversity. Since the debacle of 2016, Democratic politicians and their supporters have been publicly debating the way forward, with good reason. American democracy is in crisis. The health of the political system (never good) and the integrity of the federal government stand in need of restoration without delay. The tide is running in the Democrats’ favor, but an ill-judged strategy for seizing it could leave them becalmed in shallows and in miseries for a long time. Should they tack to the left? to the right? On which coordinate should they move: cultural, or economic? Whom should they take on board?
Before proceeding to the now-inevitable metaphors of weighing anchor and setting sail, let’s clear away some clumps of Sargassum.
Zero Tolerance
This rash and opportunistic position on sexual misconduct could very easily blow up in Democrats' faces. No doubt you're 'way ahead of me, if you remember the vogue of Zero Tolerance that burst upon the American scene about twenty years ago. School administrators seized on it as the ultimate commitment to keeping weapons out of classrooms. The word draconian inspired hope in one set of law-abiding citizens and horror in another. Sure enough, it was only a matter of time till we had a ten-year-old girl being taken away by the police -- actually in handcuffs -- for having brought an unauthorized pair of scissors to school for a project.
Zero Tolerance is the refuge of exhausted minds and stampeded personalities. The open aim of the Democratic Party's internal stance of Zero Tolerance is to be above reproach when taxing the Republicans with their laxity, but there's no credit to be had for running roughshod over people and principles to gain political advantage. On the contrary, that purge-like spectacle and the uncritical embrace of a freewheeling #MeToo movement are liable to recall displays of blinkered missionary zeal that have made liberal politics anathema to many Americans in the past. Come election day, Democrats may find that they own a notoriously oppressive phenomenon in the midst of a broad backlash against it.
Socialism
Bernie Sanders got away with being an avowed democratic socialist in 2016 to the extent that he ran pretty well against Hillary Clinton while losing to her. The Republicans let it go because he was attacking the flank of their inevitable adversary. If he had become the nominee, it would have been a different story.
Democrats have an opportunity to win broad support among middle-class and working-poor Americans for policies that aim to bring economic security within the reach of all, but not for any project to repeal the national tenet of individual responsibility. Each policy must satisfy more circumspect notions of practicality and justice than would animate "the masses" in the America of socialists' dreams. However, people who stand to benefit from social programs, or who already do so, must be made aware of their stake so that there's nothing like the scorning of "Obamacare" which Republicans managed to induce last time in beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act.
Personally, I think I could take a lot of democratic socialism before I got tired of it. I only regret that I have but one vote to cast for my country.
Secularism
The devil is in the "ism". There's no need for secular Democrats to feign religiosity or for religious ones to flaunt it. All that’s required is the thinking person’s urbane appreciation of multiple belief systems and the recognition that materialism, too, is such a system. This makes the difference between a self-righteous, amoral, wholly political liberalism that must bend society to its will and a liberalism that can help society find its way along the moral turnings of issues like abortion.
Identity-first politics
In 2008, the American people elected an African-American president for the first time. However, Barack Obama was not propelled by any movement to change the political game and create the First Black President. He had the personal attributes to take game-changing in his stride on the way to victory. Next time, would I vote for a Latino? a woman? a Muslim? an LGBTQ person? With all my heart, but not on account of such categories. I'll be looking for an outstanding candidate, first. The Democratic Party must take back both Congress and the White House without fail.
Disruptive demonstrators
Even as demonstrators made the White House too hot to hold Lyndon Johnson, they rubbed much of the American public the wrong way. When progressives have subsequently rumbled in the streets, whether to trash Starbucks at the 1999 WTO conference or to rage at the lamentable but legitimate election of Donald Trump, they've only stigmatized themselves as tantrum-throwing children of privilege. If the student activist-hystericists who have been silencing discourse on their own campuses obtrude themselves on the national scene, they'll pose one of the greatest obstacles to the political work that must be done now in defense of democracy. They are to be regarded as nothing less than agents of the Right.
Supportive entertainers
Public support from entertainers, no matter how sincere, is unprofitable to a liberal candidate. The experience of the late Clinton campaign set the seal on that lesson. Conservatives can benefit from such support if they choose to do so, because any show-business people in their camp can be portrayed as rebels against a decadent cabal. When the beneficiaries are liberals, and especially when they bring entertainers onstage for hugs and handshakes, the opposition will deride it as the irrelevant shilling it is and will mine it for barbs about the vanity of coastal elites. That response will carry the day. The votes of actors and singers are of course welcome along with those of film editors, recording engineers, and other Americans.
Hothouse liberals
It does no good that one's heart goes out to the People, if it's a type of heart they'd rather you kept. This is the classic paradox of leftist politics: the temperamental mismatch between Platonist intellectuals and the objects of their affection. Rarefied atmospheres and sheltered habitats breed poor political emissaries -- for the liberal cause. In America today, conservatives can be thoroughly isolated from the workaday world and yet win acceptance there by contrasting themselves with condescending eggheads and fragile bleeding hearts. Liberals could hardly disavow the compassion and thoughtfulness that inform their politics, even if they wanted to. However, they can be sturdy souls. They can be critical thinkers, not didactic obsessives. They can be frank speakers, not canting or calculating ones. They can be worthy listeners. On occasion, they can forget politics and be warm human beings.
❖
Very well. Soon, Democrats in their many vessels must weigh anchor and set sail. May they steer by such beacons as these:
Sanity
It seems little enough for a nation to ask of its leaders, but it's at a premium now. Whether the President of the United States has a mental disorder or not, the fact that reasonable people debate the question is telling. Donald Trump's behavior does bring the word abnormal to the tip of the lay tongue. He makes it necessary for psychiatric authorities to insist on the distinction between mental illness and mental instability. Leading Republicans who once viewed Trump's mentality with disgust, and who reportedly continue to do so, offer no escape from it.
America is thirsting for steady, mature, civilized conduct in government. Democratic candidates in 2018 and beyond must satisfy that thirst by personal example even more than by the political visions they describe. It's to be hoped and expected that many young people will run for public office in this hour of national distress. Let them put their elders to shame with their sanity and their temperate language. They might, for example, save words like Armageddon and “the end of the world” for nuclear war and — the end of the world.
Competence
One can have a brain that is sound and a personality that is free of disorders, and yet have a mind that is stunted or atrophied. Incompetence will result. This is where we stand with Donald Trump and the administration he has gathered around him as an extension of himself.
It's often observed that Trump's incompetence at least keeps him from working his will to more disastrous effect. However, any such negative virtue hardly compensates for the governmental deterioration that is taking place. Most Americans are capable of recognizing this as no sensible return to small government, but the falling to ruin of their national estate under poor caretakers. Democratic candidates should not only talk about the deficiencies and demoralization that are occurring, but also make voters aware of the consequences to be expected. Diplomacy, justice, public health, the environment, the still-neglected infrastructure: in these areas and others, Trump and his Republican protectors are letting America rot.
The true story, calmly told in facts
Even before Donald Trump, Republicans too often got by on the sound of their words. Now the impudent emptiness of Trump's slogans, claims, and insults presents Democrats with the best chance they'll ever have to meet spieling with straight talk and to test words against meanings.
Many Americans should be receptive. They've heard, for example, that climate change is a hoax; that they don't need the Affordable Care Act; that the new tax law hurts Donald Trump but he gave it to them for their benefit; that he has saved manufacturing jobs, including 1,000 at Carrier Corp. They're noticing some divergences, and they're ready to listen to informed talk about what's really happening. In many regions, the subject of climate change will be a good place to start, especially if Democrats augment their leadership in preventive policy with leadership in managing those consequences that are already inevitable and increasingly palpable. There's little to gain by having been right years ago, and less by rubbing it in.
Constituency reform
White working people as a voting bloc have become Trumpist Republicans. No doubt there’s truth in the observation that those people’s view of their own interests varies with the part of their class identity that is addressed: white or working. However, it’s hard to see what can be made of that. Democrats may address the working part more than before, but they can’t keep the opposition from bearing down on the white part. The potential for winning this tug-of-war will depend heavily on external factors such as demographic shift, which must increasingly exercise the white part of white working people’s identity. Some personalities that responded to white nationalist agitation in 2016 may remain in a balanced state of flux between different interests, but others have been pulled into the vortex of racial politics for the rest of their lives.
Instead of trying to reconstruct the old alliance of liberal intellectuals and white blue-collar workers (with African-Americans regarded as a bloc defined entirely by race), Democrats should build a new alliance along lines suggested by two opinion pieces that appeared in The New York Times last summer: Thomas B. Edsall’s “Where Democrats Can Find New Voters” (June 15, 2017) and Steve Phillips’s “The Democratic Party’s Billion-Dollar Mistake” (July 20, 2017).
Edsall’s thesis, backed up as always by a wealth of data coherently analyzed, is that Democrats ought to turn their attention from the white working class to “a much larger bloc of voters, the roughly 65 million service sector workers whose partisan loyalty is up for grabs.” He explains:
The category of service class employment — as distinct from the goods producing or manufacturing sector — encompasses an exceptionally broad range of workers, from home care aides ($23,490 mean annual income) and fast food cooks ($20,510) to teachers ($54,341), loan officers ($75,170), real estate brokers ($79,140), accountants ($81,850) and securities and commodities brokers ($102,240).
Edsall cites detailed analysis by Richard Florida of the University of Toronto showing that this category comprises “about 45 percent of the work force” and has a varied makeup: “Majority women, multiracial, multiethnic.” As for its political tendencies, “Florida finds that this population currently splits its vote evenly between the two parties….” Talking about economic interests makes more sense with this set of working Americans than with one that is implicitly susceptible to white nationalism and that might, anyway, find a discussion of economic opportunity less than uplifting.
The costly mistake to which Phillips refers in his essay is the use of funds in 2016 to chase the votes of “wavering whites” and not to maximize the turnout of African-Americans. Further on, after noting the movement of many past Obama voters to the minor-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, Phillips writes,
The Democratic Party and its allies are likely to spend more than $750 million on the 2018 midterms. Will they spend it fruitlessly trying to lure Trump voters, or will they give uninspired black Democrats a reason to vote and offer disaffected Obama-Johnstein voters a reason to return to the fold?
Black Democrats showed abundant inspiration on their own initiative in Alabama’s special senatorial election of 2017, with black women playing an especially crucial role in the victory of the liberal Doug Jones over the deplorable Roy Moore. Nationally as well, African-Americans form a core Democratic constituency that deserves the party’s full attention and close cooperation. This is not only a question of considering the interests of African-Americans in framing issues or fielding candidates, but also of putting resources into voter registration, turnout, and prevention of voter suppression.
Phillips’s and Edsall’s theses reinforce each other. As we have seen, service sector workers comprise a set of people that is multiracial and majority female. It makes better politics as well as better morality to engage that set than a conspicuously patriarchal set that is defined from the start as "white" something. The white working people who applaud Donald Trump's mischief are lost in every sense. Courting them will only feed their spite. They hate liberals as a type; they resent unsubmissive women; they persecute homosexuals; they fear and loathe other races. Let them keep their votes and gorge on their malice.
A sense of proportion
This is inseparable from a sense of humor in the most fundamental sense, but it's emphatically different from a tendency to crack jokes. In politics, few blunders do more harm in proportion to their triviality than an ill-considered joke. Something similar holds true of figurative speech. Even venturing beyond the first dictionary definition of a word can be a mistake, as John Kerry found with sensitive. Plain talk is best.
What is needed is a mind that doesn't take itself too seriously. This can be a challenge in liberal politics. Airless solemnity and overbearing self-righteousness are primarily pitfalls of people who see an urgent need to change the world. The kind of liberal most likely to succeed is one who, while appreciating the urgency of the need, inspires people to strive together with high hearts, good-natured resilience, and a mysteriously persistent love of life. It requires the kind of intelligence that sees life essentially as comedy and not as tragedy -- but don't say so, or you'll be venturing well beyond the first dictionary definition of comedy.
Community
The Republican metaphor for America is a gold field suited to fortune-hunters. Let the Democratic metaphor be a community suited to good neighbors. Yes, the community will be inclusive and nurturing. It will be a community of many parts, and it will be supportive where support is needed. But the main electoral appeal should be made to core interests that unite the parts and sustain the vitality of the whole.
The messengers making the appeal — both candidates and activists — should be clearly reliable partners: vigorous, competent, far-seeing, approachable. Essentially self-reliant people make the most reliable partners. For the liberal cause to win the competition for new adherents, the distinction between the conservative ideal and the liberal one should not be contrastive, but pivotal: a distinction between rugged individualism (whether real or phony) and robust individuality with fellow-feeling.
❖
Even more than for most undertakings, a seafaring voyage does make a good rough-and-ready metaphor for the campaigning that lies ahead. It takes much more than the ability to conceive a destination and plot a course. It demands resourcefulness, fortitude, and the cohesion of reliable individuals. A sense of proportion, not to say humor, helps all hands keep their spirits up and increases the chance of success. Whether you'll catch fair winds or not, Heaven only knows. After everything has been done that can be done by skillful navigation and steadfast seamanship, and thoughts turn to all that's riding on the final tide, even the secular will grant that a prayer can't do any harm.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
The Three Rings of Castle Trump
A Japanese castle doesn't look at all like one of those haunted Scottish castles, nor yet like that swooning mad-king affair in Bavaria. Seen from ground level, it may strike you as a cross between a pyramid and a pagoda.
From above, you can tell that this effect is due to its having been designed, not as an edifice, but as a huge compound with concentric stages of fortification, each looming above the one before it and fronted by a roofed wall. The first line of defense was an outer moat immediately overlooked by the sannomaru or third ring of fortification, counting out from the center. Farther in, attackers would face the second ring and then an inner moat overlooked by the main ring. In the center of all this stood the keep, where a besieged lord of the domain would do whatever seemed important in the days before Twitter.
President Donald Trump's political defenses happen to take the same form. The outermost ring consists of dispirited Americans who thought they had nothing to lose by taking a flutter on a fleabag in the late presidential race. This ring will disintegrate first and seems to be in the process already. Here are people losing heart they didn't know they had as they watch their champion go from marveling that health care could be so complicated to slashing various programs they need, to digging the ground from under his own feet in search of new and bigger lies. Some of these people, the ones represented by the water in the moat, will quietly evaporate and re-condense at a safe distance from Castle Trump. Meeting them for the first time, you won't know they ever supported such a dolt. Others will manfully or womanfully admit that they made a bad choice. They can't be expected to remember what possessed them to make it, but let us hope they don't say, "Nobody knew that seeing through Donald Trump could be so complicated."
Once the outermost ring has fallen, Trumpist Republicanism is doomed, with or without Trump himself. The votes won't be there. America may get more demagogues, but their hopes will lie in running against the compromised Republican brand.
It's only a matter of time, then, till the second ring falls in its turn. Here we have an assortment of long-haul Republicans and fellow travelers: cynical but plausible politicians and party hacks joined by individual Americans who look to get rich or richer through Republican control of government. With Trumpism recognized as a fluke, these people will no longer tolerate the president's heresies and will probably use their congressional committee chairs to appear in the forefront of opposition to his misdeeds. It may not be possible for them to rehabilitate their brand in time for the mid-term elections or the next presidential election, but they'll start trying in short order. To know when Trump's second ring of fortification disintegrates, you'll need to be listening for a crisp snap.
That brings us to the one ring that will hold forever though it becomes a forgotten island. You'll recall that the Japanese-castle model includes an inner moat -- just the thing for last-ditch efforts. Within this is the main ring (honmaru) containing the castle keep, above and beyond which there is nowhere to go. Here, bitter-enders will hole up with their hero. The more privileged among them will shelter in the keep while the red-capped legions huddle on the ground in all weather, full willing to eat their hats literally but never figuratively. No doubt these legions will still be there after the occupants of the keep have taken the money and run. It's like this:
The 1970s American TV series Project UFO dramatized actual US Air Force investigations of UFO-related cases. In one, a woman reports that her husband has invested all their savings in a dubious company that claims to be developing a flying saucer. The investigators expose the scam. They show the couple that the prototype "flying saucer" is only a hollow prop once used in a movie. They even get the people’s money back. The wife thanks them, but the husband becomes furious -- saying the investigators have kept him from getting rich and traveling in outer space!
Foolish pride springs eternal in the human breast. So does bigotry awaiting its night to howl. So, since the twentieth century, does the dream of sitting in a television studio audience and paying court to a king of glitz, maybe even getting pointed at by the smirking despot as he makes his entrance. To leave when the show was over would be to leave behind the camaraderie of the dazzled and return to bleak square one. For all these reasons the smallest and bitterest of the bitter-enders will stay on, and Castle Trump will settle down to being a mad-king affair without the king.
From above, you can tell that this effect is due to its having been designed, not as an edifice, but as a huge compound with concentric stages of fortification, each looming above the one before it and fronted by a roofed wall. The first line of defense was an outer moat immediately overlooked by the sannomaru or third ring of fortification, counting out from the center. Farther in, attackers would face the second ring and then an inner moat overlooked by the main ring. In the center of all this stood the keep, where a besieged lord of the domain would do whatever seemed important in the days before Twitter.
President Donald Trump's political defenses happen to take the same form. The outermost ring consists of dispirited Americans who thought they had nothing to lose by taking a flutter on a fleabag in the late presidential race. This ring will disintegrate first and seems to be in the process already. Here are people losing heart they didn't know they had as they watch their champion go from marveling that health care could be so complicated to slashing various programs they need, to digging the ground from under his own feet in search of new and bigger lies. Some of these people, the ones represented by the water in the moat, will quietly evaporate and re-condense at a safe distance from Castle Trump. Meeting them for the first time, you won't know they ever supported such a dolt. Others will manfully or womanfully admit that they made a bad choice. They can't be expected to remember what possessed them to make it, but let us hope they don't say, "Nobody knew that seeing through Donald Trump could be so complicated."
Once the outermost ring has fallen, Trumpist Republicanism is doomed, with or without Trump himself. The votes won't be there. America may get more demagogues, but their hopes will lie in running against the compromised Republican brand.
It's only a matter of time, then, till the second ring falls in its turn. Here we have an assortment of long-haul Republicans and fellow travelers: cynical but plausible politicians and party hacks joined by individual Americans who look to get rich or richer through Republican control of government. With Trumpism recognized as a fluke, these people will no longer tolerate the president's heresies and will probably use their congressional committee chairs to appear in the forefront of opposition to his misdeeds. It may not be possible for them to rehabilitate their brand in time for the mid-term elections or the next presidential election, but they'll start trying in short order. To know when Trump's second ring of fortification disintegrates, you'll need to be listening for a crisp snap.
That brings us to the one ring that will hold forever though it becomes a forgotten island. You'll recall that the Japanese-castle model includes an inner moat -- just the thing for last-ditch efforts. Within this is the main ring (honmaru) containing the castle keep, above and beyond which there is nowhere to go. Here, bitter-enders will hole up with their hero. The more privileged among them will shelter in the keep while the red-capped legions huddle on the ground in all weather, full willing to eat their hats literally but never figuratively. No doubt these legions will still be there after the occupants of the keep have taken the money and run. It's like this:
The 1970s American TV series Project UFO dramatized actual US Air Force investigations of UFO-related cases. In one, a woman reports that her husband has invested all their savings in a dubious company that claims to be developing a flying saucer. The investigators expose the scam. They show the couple that the prototype "flying saucer" is only a hollow prop once used in a movie. They even get the people’s money back. The wife thanks them, but the husband becomes furious -- saying the investigators have kept him from getting rich and traveling in outer space!
Foolish pride springs eternal in the human breast. So does bigotry awaiting its night to howl. So, since the twentieth century, does the dream of sitting in a television studio audience and paying court to a king of glitz, maybe even getting pointed at by the smirking despot as he makes his entrance. To leave when the show was over would be to leave behind the camaraderie of the dazzled and return to bleak square one. For all these reasons the smallest and bitterest of the bitter-enders will stay on, and Castle Trump will settle down to being a mad-king affair without the king.
Monday, March 6, 2017
More Awful Than Trump's Ego
It dawned on me and plunged me into darkness all
at once, if you know what I mean.
There I had sat for months, thinking and
talking about the danger to America and the world posed by Donald Trump's ego.
I had seen the narcissism, the vanity, the craving for adulation, the
selfishness that blots out other claims on his care. I had worried that the office of President of the United States would cease to function because the current occupant could not be dragged away from his reflecting pool.
Then the blow fell. It was not the first
such blow by any means, but it was the one that finally brought the dawn and
the darkness in quick succession and made me think, "Oh, right!" Donald
Trump, in one of his early-morning screeds via the Internet, accused Barack
Obama of having tapped his phones. Here was a bombshell of an accusation, hurled
by the President of the United States in a cryptic message on social media (and
not even his official account) without a hint of evidence to back it up. And
the sign-off? Not the usual Trump boilerplate of "Sad!" or "Not
nice!":
How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!
That's one president writing publicly about
another. He might at least have made a Freudian slip in the direction of
reality by typing, "the very scared election process."
Though much of Freudian psychology has gone
the way of the five-cent cigar, it retains the key to spotting the source of
greatest danger with Donald Trump. It's not his ego, which distorts his sense
of values, distracts him from presidential business, and makes him prey to
flatterers. It's his id.
The ego has acquired a bad name over the
years, but it's a friend to man compared with the id. As long as Trump follows
his ego, he'll remember to do what's good for him, and not just anything he
feels like doing. While it's not altogether true that what's good for Donald
Trump is good for the USA, that kind of thing is better than the possibilities
that arise when he follows his id. The id, if Freud is to be believed, produces
things like rage and the urge to deliver crushing blows right and left. The ego
knows just how the id feels but worries about getting hurt. It looks for the
lasting gratification of a net gain and skips the more fleeting gratification
of a tantrum that breaks all its toys. Now, the superego yearns to do the right
thing regardless of self, but never mind that. We're talking about Donald
Trump.
When Trump abruptly made a grave accusation
against his predecessor without any reference to evidence and apparently
without having consulted anyone who is supposed to be working with him, he was
in mid-tantrum. He wasn't egoistically demanding notice, much less was he
craftily scheming to gain an advantage over his enemies. He was mentally rolling
on the floor of the nursery, all alone but for his id.
This is bad. Watching a president waste
four years in narcissistic distraction is not good, but this takes us into the
realm of the bad. There's no need to survey the harm that can be done by such a
person armed with such power. What we need to do is promote self-interested
solidarity among the rest of us, regardless of our usual differences. We needn't
trouble our superegos about this. Our egos can handle the job nicely. Survival
is the order of the day.
While an id-driven presidency is -- for
want of a better word -- bad, it's probably also self-correcting if other
powerful people will just act in timely fashion (before the button is pushed, and not
after). It's quite possible that this latest, most extreme incident has already
tipped the balance and started the wheels turning behind the scenes in
Washington. So many people have so much to lose by waiting too long. What's
most important, Republicans must see that any further attempt to harness Donald
Trump to their own purposes can only end in a wreck. People in the
administration, if they're not afraid for their lives and their souls by now, must
at least see that their careers depend on emerging as noble conspirators who
saved the day.
The obvious solution is to invoke the
Twenty-fifth Amendment with an unanswerable show of bipartisan solidarity. If
that move is successful (after the president contests it), we'll be faced
with a President Pence. But that will at least take us back into the realm of
the not good.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
His African-American Cousin
First, some explanation.
The kinship alluded to in the title is sociopolitical, not biological. For something more in the way of an ancestral conspiracy theory, you might have a look at a playfully doctored photograph of Ghana's new president (which, however, was not intended as a hoax). This will be a comparison between Donald Trump and a certain American politician of the past as regards behavior and popularity.
The parallels to be noted here are, alas, not uncannily numerous and exact, but few and approximate. The devil is indeed in the details, which differ and thus distract. There is no mischievous intent in what follows. There never should be in political commentary, but our times are full of things that should not be and yet are. Hence all the explanation. Now our little story can begin.
In the bosom of one of those crowded concrete enclaves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, some miles below that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, there lies a devout but swinging neighborhood which is known by the name of Harlem.
Though the river and the concrete have remained admirably constant over the years, the neighborhood has found itself first in one congressional district and then another. At any rate, its residents have long been instrumental in choosing a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The member they chose for a quarter of a century starting in 1944, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., had star quality. He also had an excellent mind, a firm grasp of politics and government, a record of accomplishment, and a legitimate sense of grievance on behalf of his constituency and millions of others, but those facts do not advance the comparison at hand. Here are the ones that do:
Like Donald Trump, Adam Clayton Powell was wealthy from birth and yet enjoyed the intense loyalty of poor people. The sight of any other politician at the wheel of an expensive convertible might have filled Powell's supporters with resentment, but when it was their own star and champion they loved it. They might go home to spartan tenements while he went home to luxury, but his luxury was their pride. It meant having a Big Man working for them, and not some threadbare saint. Trumpites would identify with those people in spite of themselves, if reminded of their existence.
Like Trump, Powell seemed inclined to throw off the common yokes of ethics and responsibilities. In his case, that brought an indictment for tax evasion, notoriety for chronic absence from the House, and criticism for taking trips abroad at the taxpayers' expense, at least once accompanied by two young women.
Like Trump, Powell responded to criticism with unrepentant arrogance bolstered by alternative facts. Instead of either denying wrongdoing or expressing remorse for it, he dismissed it as doing what "every other congressman" did.
The kinship, though, is less between the politicians themselves than between their core constituencies: poor people who lionize a rich one, people with the odds stacked against them in the game of life who look to beat the house vicariously through an impudent rule-breaker. Of course Trump's mostly white working-class supporters have the advantage of being free from racial discrimination, slightly offset by the indignity of going unrecognized as downtrodden people. This parallel, too, is imperfect.
As for the two men, they must not be left standing here on anything like an equal footing. There are some crucial differences:
Long before running for public office, Adam Clayton Powell began striving to right a monumental wrong and to secure equality of opportunity for the most oppressed members of American society. Donald Trump, at a comparable age, was keeping blacks out of the family's rental properties. If he has ever striven to do anything but increase his wealth or feed his vanity, he has been uncharacteristically reticent about mentioning it.
In office, Powell worked effectively within a Congress rife with antagonism to his aims, even from members of his own party. He did not wield the power of the presidency, though he had fruitful relations with Democratic presidents and congressional leaders, and yet he succeeded in doing much good. At present it remains to be seen whether President Trump will succeed in doing anything at all. However, he shows neither the ability nor the will to be an effective political leader.
Powell retained the approval of his constituents for many years. This champion of poor black people was at last brought low by the hubris of a personality formed in the lap of almost-white privilege. Trump, who displays a spoiled rich boy's hubris like no one else, entered office with an approval rating of only 40%, compared with 84% for Barack Obama. Now his administration is twenty-six days into a breathtaking career of blunders and misdeeds (the capital is reeling from Michael Flynn's resignation and watching Kellyanne Conway teeter on the brink). What degree of approval President Trump might enjoy four years in the future defies imagination if not arithmetic itself.
Powell arguably comes out ahead on the score of absenteeism as well. True, he should not have said, "You don’t have to be there if you know which calls to make, which buttons to push, which favors to call in." But Trump is absent even when he's there.
The kinship alluded to in the title is sociopolitical, not biological. For something more in the way of an ancestral conspiracy theory, you might have a look at a playfully doctored photograph of Ghana's new president (which, however, was not intended as a hoax). This will be a comparison between Donald Trump and a certain American politician of the past as regards behavior and popularity.
The parallels to be noted here are, alas, not uncannily numerous and exact, but few and approximate. The devil is indeed in the details, which differ and thus distract. There is no mischievous intent in what follows. There never should be in political commentary, but our times are full of things that should not be and yet are. Hence all the explanation. Now our little story can begin.
In the bosom of one of those crowded concrete enclaves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, some miles below that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, there lies a devout but swinging neighborhood which is known by the name of Harlem.
Though the river and the concrete have remained admirably constant over the years, the neighborhood has found itself first in one congressional district and then another. At any rate, its residents have long been instrumental in choosing a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The member they chose for a quarter of a century starting in 1944, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., had star quality. He also had an excellent mind, a firm grasp of politics and government, a record of accomplishment, and a legitimate sense of grievance on behalf of his constituency and millions of others, but those facts do not advance the comparison at hand. Here are the ones that do:
Like Donald Trump, Adam Clayton Powell was wealthy from birth and yet enjoyed the intense loyalty of poor people. The sight of any other politician at the wheel of an expensive convertible might have filled Powell's supporters with resentment, but when it was their own star and champion they loved it. They might go home to spartan tenements while he went home to luxury, but his luxury was their pride. It meant having a Big Man working for them, and not some threadbare saint. Trumpites would identify with those people in spite of themselves, if reminded of their existence.
Like Trump, Powell seemed inclined to throw off the common yokes of ethics and responsibilities. In his case, that brought an indictment for tax evasion, notoriety for chronic absence from the House, and criticism for taking trips abroad at the taxpayers' expense, at least once accompanied by two young women.
Like Trump, Powell responded to criticism with unrepentant arrogance bolstered by alternative facts. Instead of either denying wrongdoing or expressing remorse for it, he dismissed it as doing what "every other congressman" did.
The kinship, though, is less between the politicians themselves than between their core constituencies: poor people who lionize a rich one, people with the odds stacked against them in the game of life who look to beat the house vicariously through an impudent rule-breaker. Of course Trump's mostly white working-class supporters have the advantage of being free from racial discrimination, slightly offset by the indignity of going unrecognized as downtrodden people. This parallel, too, is imperfect.
As for the two men, they must not be left standing here on anything like an equal footing. There are some crucial differences:
Long before running for public office, Adam Clayton Powell began striving to right a monumental wrong and to secure equality of opportunity for the most oppressed members of American society. Donald Trump, at a comparable age, was keeping blacks out of the family's rental properties. If he has ever striven to do anything but increase his wealth or feed his vanity, he has been uncharacteristically reticent about mentioning it.
In office, Powell worked effectively within a Congress rife with antagonism to his aims, even from members of his own party. He did not wield the power of the presidency, though he had fruitful relations with Democratic presidents and congressional leaders, and yet he succeeded in doing much good. At present it remains to be seen whether President Trump will succeed in doing anything at all. However, he shows neither the ability nor the will to be an effective political leader.
Powell retained the approval of his constituents for many years. This champion of poor black people was at last brought low by the hubris of a personality formed in the lap of almost-white privilege. Trump, who displays a spoiled rich boy's hubris like no one else, entered office with an approval rating of only 40%, compared with 84% for Barack Obama. Now his administration is twenty-six days into a breathtaking career of blunders and misdeeds (the capital is reeling from Michael Flynn's resignation and watching Kellyanne Conway teeter on the brink). What degree of approval President Trump might enjoy four years in the future defies imagination if not arithmetic itself.
Powell arguably comes out ahead on the score of absenteeism as well. True, he should not have said, "You don’t have to be there if you know which calls to make, which buttons to push, which favors to call in." But Trump is absent even when he's there.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Demagoguery in America
For Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, here’s a
piece that was written ten days after the US election of 2016. It appeared
first on The Stringer, a blog that punts around in its own little backwater
with no outlets to social media.
* * *
Let's hope this is wrong. It would be a
pleasure to re-read these lines in mid-November of 2020 knowing that the
American ship of state had righted itself after all and was on course to
inaugurate a normal president.
Already, people have begun hoping against
hope that Donald Trump's presidency will not do great harm to America and the
world — not necessarily catastrophic harm, certainly not overnight, at least
not if —. But it's another matter to hope that Trump's election will not prove
to have done great harm already. Let's review how that came about, in three
stages.
1) Trump publicized himself without
spending much money by being "good copy" of the worst kind for the mass
media, by rewarding cameras and microphones with spectacle and verbal violence.
2) He became a major political commodity
without submitting to any broker by means of grassroots activism, which was
dramatically amplified and elaborated into fanciful forms by social media.
Again, the mainstream media retailed his directly-marketed messages for free.
3) He exploited a demand for change without
telling how he'd supply it by whistling up a host of demons: racism, bigotry,
generalized anger and fear, fascination with the grotesque, and the fugitive
urge to poke a hole in the membrane of civilization and see what happens.
This is the story of a demagogue. The harm
in demagoguery is not limited to that which is done in office by the knave or
fool who used it to get there. The individual may be an efficient tyrant or an
inefficient one or no tyrant at all, but only an infant politician who
recklessly used the tricks of demagoguery for political gain. Those differences
are not trivial. But in any case the demagogue has done unforgivable harm,
possibly epoch-making harm, in the process.
The ten days following Donald Trump's
victory have brought hundreds of reports of hate crimes, some actually invoking
his name. His demons seem to think the witching hour is come. Though they're
probably mistaken if they believe that the federal authorities will be on their
side now, it's all too likely that the electoral process will be. After this,
what incentive will produce a field of candidates who soberly vie to prove
themselves the best prepared and most level-headed? What hope is there that
Trump's proven formula for success won't become the new standard and send the
Republic spiralling downward until a very painful lesson has been learned, or
until it's too late?
There is hope, but the way ahead can't be
painless in any case. The best hope of a speedy recovery lies in finding
President Trump to be neither more nor less than a harmful charlatan. It would
be foolish to hope and work for disaster, but it would be less than wise to hope
and work for a largely tolerable Trump Era. In order for America to get
demagogues out of its system in short order, people who reluctantly chose Trump
must come to rue the day. It's those people, precisely because they are not
fanatics or zombies, who bear the heaviest moral burden and also hold the power
to restore their country to political health. They must not come through this
with any sense of vindication.
Two days after the election, Senator
Elizabeth Warren (Democrat) addressed the AFL-CIO Executive Council. Many
people had wished that Warren herself would run for president. No doubt she is
worthy of that wish, but in her speech she made an ill-considered start on
retrieving the souls of marginal Trump supporters before they're ready. She said
they "did not vote for Donald Trump because of the bigotry and hate that
fueled his campaign rallies. They voted for him despite the hate." The
apparent idea here is to let those people save face as a first step back from
the choice they made last week. But the fact remains that they voted for a man
whom they knew to be an agent of hate and bigotry. They bartered acceptance of
those things for change. In other words, they sold their souls. Good people who
wish to remain good people will not do that. They'll accept any amount of
stagnation rather than accept bigotry and hate. By all means, let those
Americans who chose to follow in the dust of Trump's army turn their steps
toward home. But let them do so when they've had enough, in a spirit of
revulsion and eager self-redemption. These are adults. They should be allowed
to shoulder full responsibility for what they have done.
Trump's legions can boast that their prince
has won the presidency barring a mass revolt of swing-state electors, which
would throw the country into chaos and exalt the powers of evil all the more.
The boast they cannot make to their anti-Trump compatriots is, "There are
more of us than there are of you." It's clear now that Hillary Clinton has
a plurality of popular votes. The ballot-counting is still going on, albeit in
the context of a definite electoral victory for Trump. At this writing,
Clinton's margin is more than one million votes and growing. Trump won the
election because his smaller number of votes was spread across state lines more
advantageously. Still, these must be trying times for liberals who grew up
thinking of the People as a reliable wellspring of wisdom, goodness, and votes.
When the defeated Hillary Clinton spoke to
the nation, she unwittingly turned a spotlight on the greatest error of her
long quest for the presidency (as distinct from the errors of a lifetime). She
urged women and girls, as women and girls, to pursue their dreams and to
shatter "that highest and hardest glass ceiling" which has historically
kept women from becoming president. There's nothing wrong with that except that
it's irrelevant to the subject of Clinton's defeat. From the beginning, the
attempt to sell her candidacy to women as the Making of the First Woman
President was an insult to their intelligence. Women were expected to keep
their eyes on this political Nativity star and raptly follow it as a bloc — an
unbeatable biological bloc, if one assumes that human beings will consent to
behave like mere organisms. In the event, many women looked at Clinton herself.
They noted her character traits. They noted a relentlessly self-seeking,
issue-harnessing go-getter in contrast with Bernie Sanders, who clearly was
motivated by the will to right wrongs and make the world a better place. They
noted ties to Wall Street bankers and noted what the FBI called "extremely
careless" handling of classified information in email. On election day,
exit polls revealed that 42% of women and a majority of white women with
college degrees, whom Clinton and other marshals of women-as-women tend to
mistake for their own shadows, preferred Donald Trump. One wishes they had
swallowed Hillary Clinton in spite of everything, but they must have found her
too big a pill.
And so the world, through no fault of its
own, and America, through various faults of its own, are to see how things
change after an ignorant, lazy, irresponsible blowhard goes to Washington and
straight into the president's office. More troubling still is the change that's
already afoot because of his demagoguery. If Donald Trump were given to
reflection, a habit which he explicitly scorns, the thought of it might trouble
even him. Surely it must trouble his running mate, Mike Pence, a deeply
religious man who should know his Bible. He stood by, smiling through a grim
visage and mechanically clapping, while Trump sowed the wind. Now they and we
will reap a whirlwind of unknown force and duration.
As Martin Luther observed,
The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees.At this rate, the most inspiring slogan of the next election cycle could be, "Bees or hornets. The choice is yours."
* * *
To jump ahead three months for some observations on the way the whirlwind blows with President Trump in office, please see "Bound for Treason".
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