No, it's not about the public demonstrations that are now sweeping the country. That grand movement to build a society free from racism is anything but anarchic. The destruction and looting that have sometimes attended it are fits of chaotic lawlessness, but not anarchy.
Anarchy in America today is slothful, cynical. Muttering, chuckling, sullenly settling like a doomed old house that mocks its inmates. Its embodiment is a political party that has come to resemble an antebellum mansion waiting for decay to run its course. On the shuttered upper floors, grandees guard their treasure and conspire to salt the earth for miles around before they sleep. In the cellar, wayfarers who once stumbled in delirious now pass the time in tapping casks of forgetfulness.
The authorities flouted by this kind of anarchy are fundamental ones: not only principles of democratic government that one discards at one's own future peril, but also sources of accurate, comprehensive information; learning; science; reason itself; even common sense, that rough but serviceable guide that generally kept our ancestors from swallowing arrant nonsense or trusting obvious phonies. The usual anarchist's gamble on improvement through demolition has given way to something more akin to nihilism. Partisans of slothful anarchy are not looking for a way forward, but for a way down and out that will let them casually scar the world as they go. Since they can't prevail, they'll try to leave behind a disabled government, a poisoned society, an intellectual wasteland, and a planet deprived of its last hope.
In America, anarchy has become the province of those who can't abide any change but rot.
Friday, June 12, 2020
Friday, November 15, 2019
Lumping Together, Pulling Apart
As surely as the American body politic has seams, it now appears bent on coming apart at them. The centrifugal force of a blood feud between conservatives and liberals is only half the story. The other half is the displacement of inclusively-minded liberals by exclusively-minded progressives.
The main liberal party of the twentieth century, the Democrats, were always known for disarray. The array of interests represented by the party assured that. Blocs, in the course of vying for influence, were bound to rock the boat. Those Democrats who had no need of a bloc were liable to find the rocking a bit much. Still, at the end of the day, there was a sense of being Democrats all. Underlying shared values were sufficient for cohesion.
All the while, however, something was happening that would lead to a crisis of value-sharing. More and more liberals were casually becoming amenable to the concept of class struggle. People who would never have thought of espousing Marxism itself seem to have thought nothing of picking up Marxian tropes. As they did so, they gave liberalism an aspect of slavishly canting piety. For example, the reflex of depersonalizing responsibility for antisocial behavior and looking for root causes in society got to be so compulsive that the phrase “root cause” became a running joke among the unsympathetic. Some legacy liberals turned away in disgust. They would soon receive the derogatory new label neoconservative from erstwhile peers who, for their own part, were turning to the dogmatically progressive left.
Next the American vision of society as one big assemblage of individuals came under pressure from multiculturalism, with its premise that ethnic identity groups ought to be affirmed, celebrated, accommodated, and given a wide berth; not expected to dissolve in the fullness of time. The liberal abhorrence of lumping people together, founded on the recognition that it's the groundwork of bigotry, became untenable for progressives. Not only did it fit badly with multiculturalist assumptions, but it collided head-on with Marxist ones. Marxist thought doesn't really get rolling until it has lumped people together and designated certain lumps the enemy. Liberals oppose prejudice as a matter of principle. Marxists have less time for principle than for useful prejudice.
Modern progressive politics made a ready basin for a confluence of two dynamics. One was this Marxist imperative to submerge individuals in classes, lest minute particulars make a mess of political clarity. The other was the universal tendency for schools of thought to seek their strong forms over time and for movements to take on the character of their firebrands. Those who are most militant in agitating for racial justice will tend to villainize whites indiscriminately. Those who are most militant in agitating against entrenched ways will tend to villainize elders indiscriminately. The tendency runs to an extreme in the case of feminism, a movement that was bound to act as a magnet for women inclined to misandrous sisterhood. And so, among today's archetypal progressives, political engagement has become war on biological class enemies.
Males. White people. White males. Old people. Old white males. Or old white heterosexual cisgender males. The categories expand and contract, merge and split and morph from moment to moment as progressives improvise exceptions for their perceived clients, traps for their adversaries, and shelters for themselves. Personal virtue is beside the point. Every young white male, be he ever so woke, is in for it when he becomes an old one. Ostracism will come when newly ascendant progressive powers decree it. It came two years ago to one who was not male or particularly old or the least bit backward in her politics. It was sufficient that she was white, and the fact that she was Jewish clearly told against her in the unguarded early moments.
For details, please refer to the article "Women’s March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-Semitism" in The New York Times (December 23, 2018). The gist is that one of the organizers of the Women's March, Vanessa Wruble, was morally isolated and then organizationally marginalized for her identity. The faction that accomplished this consisted of a black woman, Tamika Mallory, and a Latina, Carmen Perez, later joined by the Palestinian-American Linda Sarsour and "another woman named Bob Bland, a white fashion designer who created one of the first Facebook pages about the march". These four proceeded to lead the organization under a cloud of rancor until it was announced in September, 2019, that Mallory, Sarsour, and Bland were "moving on to other commitments".
Meanwhile, Wruble's antagonists had fallen back to the position of deploring anti-Semitism in principle and allowing that Wruble had one foot within the pale inasmuch as Jews had been victims of oppression. They downplayed their ties with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (who anyway complicates the puzzle of progressive solidarity by inveighing not only against whites generally and Jews particularly, but also against LGBTQ people). But come what may, these progressive paragons will never appreciate the spectacle they make in the eyes of mere liberals as they stamp through their activist careers, grimly totting up and doling out credit for victim status as if that were the currency of virtue and they the purse-keepers.
Fifty-five years ago, the black civil rights worker James Chaney faced death with two other young men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. They were white. They were Jewish. They were not the only whites or the only Jews who put their lives on the line in the cause of justice for black Americans. At the same period, black Americans' strongest ally in this world was the United States Government, personified by a white president who had made up his mind to see the battle through regardless of political consequences ("Well, what the hell is the presidency for?") and an equally resolute Department of Justice, a bastion of white males. America was that rare kind of country in which members of the ethnic majority will rally around a small minority. It's that kind of country today, even while its federal government languishes in piratical captivity. All along, Jewish white Americans, both female and male, have stood in the forefront of efforts to preserve civil liberties and to extend social justice. Yet they are now under attack from people who, if not merely ignorant or merely absorbed in the Palestinian cause (to the exclusion of the Uyghur cause and the Tibetan cause), are perhaps resentful of a moral example which they cannot hope to follow. For more, please see "On the Frontlines of Progressive Anti-Semitism" (The New York Times, November 14, 2019).
When progressives assign themselves and others to biologically determined classes, they escape the need to test their views against common standards of reason or to circumscribe their claims with common values, because they have denied commonality itself. Opinions from across a biological border can always be dismissed out of hand by saying, in effect, “Consider the source.” Fundamental notions of justice or of moral responsibility can, like the literary canon, be dismissed by saying they embody the interests of an oppressor class.
This trick of escaping may be a deliberate strategy, but it takes us on a wild binge at the expense of communal health. Of course, a civic organism as well endowed as American democracy may prove robust enough to experience a binge like the current one and still show up for work in the morning. It does have a history of rebounding from misspent nights to do better work than before. Maybe even this period of fevered lumping-together and pulling-apart will turn out to have been only a phase in the life of a growing nation. Then, if it’s not too late, we can give all our attention to the state of our undeniably common planet.
The main liberal party of the twentieth century, the Democrats, were always known for disarray. The array of interests represented by the party assured that. Blocs, in the course of vying for influence, were bound to rock the boat. Those Democrats who had no need of a bloc were liable to find the rocking a bit much. Still, at the end of the day, there was a sense of being Democrats all. Underlying shared values were sufficient for cohesion.
All the while, however, something was happening that would lead to a crisis of value-sharing. More and more liberals were casually becoming amenable to the concept of class struggle. People who would never have thought of espousing Marxism itself seem to have thought nothing of picking up Marxian tropes. As they did so, they gave liberalism an aspect of slavishly canting piety. For example, the reflex of depersonalizing responsibility for antisocial behavior and looking for root causes in society got to be so compulsive that the phrase “root cause” became a running joke among the unsympathetic. Some legacy liberals turned away in disgust. They would soon receive the derogatory new label neoconservative from erstwhile peers who, for their own part, were turning to the dogmatically progressive left.
Next the American vision of society as one big assemblage of individuals came under pressure from multiculturalism, with its premise that ethnic identity groups ought to be affirmed, celebrated, accommodated, and given a wide berth; not expected to dissolve in the fullness of time. The liberal abhorrence of lumping people together, founded on the recognition that it's the groundwork of bigotry, became untenable for progressives. Not only did it fit badly with multiculturalist assumptions, but it collided head-on with Marxist ones. Marxist thought doesn't really get rolling until it has lumped people together and designated certain lumps the enemy. Liberals oppose prejudice as a matter of principle. Marxists have less time for principle than for useful prejudice.
Modern progressive politics made a ready basin for a confluence of two dynamics. One was this Marxist imperative to submerge individuals in classes, lest minute particulars make a mess of political clarity. The other was the universal tendency for schools of thought to seek their strong forms over time and for movements to take on the character of their firebrands. Those who are most militant in agitating for racial justice will tend to villainize whites indiscriminately. Those who are most militant in agitating against entrenched ways will tend to villainize elders indiscriminately. The tendency runs to an extreme in the case of feminism, a movement that was bound to act as a magnet for women inclined to misandrous sisterhood. And so, among today's archetypal progressives, political engagement has become war on biological class enemies.
Males. White people. White males. Old people. Old white males. Or old white heterosexual cisgender males. The categories expand and contract, merge and split and morph from moment to moment as progressives improvise exceptions for their perceived clients, traps for their adversaries, and shelters for themselves. Personal virtue is beside the point. Every young white male, be he ever so woke, is in for it when he becomes an old one. Ostracism will come when newly ascendant progressive powers decree it. It came two years ago to one who was not male or particularly old or the least bit backward in her politics. It was sufficient that she was white, and the fact that she was Jewish clearly told against her in the unguarded early moments.
For details, please refer to the article "Women’s March Roiled by Accusations of Anti-Semitism" in The New York Times (December 23, 2018). The gist is that one of the organizers of the Women's March, Vanessa Wruble, was morally isolated and then organizationally marginalized for her identity. The faction that accomplished this consisted of a black woman, Tamika Mallory, and a Latina, Carmen Perez, later joined by the Palestinian-American Linda Sarsour and "another woman named Bob Bland, a white fashion designer who created one of the first Facebook pages about the march". These four proceeded to lead the organization under a cloud of rancor until it was announced in September, 2019, that Mallory, Sarsour, and Bland were "moving on to other commitments".
Meanwhile, Wruble's antagonists had fallen back to the position of deploring anti-Semitism in principle and allowing that Wruble had one foot within the pale inasmuch as Jews had been victims of oppression. They downplayed their ties with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan (who anyway complicates the puzzle of progressive solidarity by inveighing not only against whites generally and Jews particularly, but also against LGBTQ people). But come what may, these progressive paragons will never appreciate the spectacle they make in the eyes of mere liberals as they stamp through their activist careers, grimly totting up and doling out credit for victim status as if that were the currency of virtue and they the purse-keepers.
Fifty-five years ago, the black civil rights worker James Chaney faced death with two other young men, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. They were white. They were Jewish. They were not the only whites or the only Jews who put their lives on the line in the cause of justice for black Americans. At the same period, black Americans' strongest ally in this world was the United States Government, personified by a white president who had made up his mind to see the battle through regardless of political consequences ("Well, what the hell is the presidency for?") and an equally resolute Department of Justice, a bastion of white males. America was that rare kind of country in which members of the ethnic majority will rally around a small minority. It's that kind of country today, even while its federal government languishes in piratical captivity. All along, Jewish white Americans, both female and male, have stood in the forefront of efforts to preserve civil liberties and to extend social justice. Yet they are now under attack from people who, if not merely ignorant or merely absorbed in the Palestinian cause (to the exclusion of the Uyghur cause and the Tibetan cause), are perhaps resentful of a moral example which they cannot hope to follow. For more, please see "On the Frontlines of Progressive Anti-Semitism" (The New York Times, November 14, 2019).
When progressives assign themselves and others to biologically determined classes, they escape the need to test their views against common standards of reason or to circumscribe their claims with common values, because they have denied commonality itself. Opinions from across a biological border can always be dismissed out of hand by saying, in effect, “Consider the source.” Fundamental notions of justice or of moral responsibility can, like the literary canon, be dismissed by saying they embody the interests of an oppressor class.
This trick of escaping may be a deliberate strategy, but it takes us on a wild binge at the expense of communal health. Of course, a civic organism as well endowed as American democracy may prove robust enough to experience a binge like the current one and still show up for work in the morning. It does have a history of rebounding from misspent nights to do better work than before. Maybe even this period of fevered lumping-together and pulling-apart will turn out to have been only a phase in the life of a growing nation. Then, if it’s not too late, we can give all our attention to the state of our undeniably common planet.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
On Bone Marrow Aspirations
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.
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 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.
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