Corona Jottings: Intermittent Speculations(#20)

Well, it’s come to this. American Carnage. In the Capitol. The swarm of humanity, often seen in sci-fi horror films, breaching the walls. What was surprising was the ease of the take over, the small resistance of the building’s protectors. It stank of planning, cooperation, either foreordained, or incompetence on display. With the Trump Administration it’s likely to be a mixture of both. The Donald, to the last minute, continues his “reality” show with aplomb, staging, at public cost, a competing spectacle to the certification of the Electoral College vote, reaping what he has been sowing since the election, that he won in a landslide, his unending delusional cry. Trump summons the hordes and then retreats to the White House after sending them to plunder and preen. As ancient as this mob looked, it was as up-to-date as it could be. Half of marauders seemed to be holding pikes and other medieval accouterments, the other half brandishing Smartphones, recording their ne’er do welling, later giving testimonies of their felonious accomplishments. Though I doubt all their intelligence quotients, they all did seem to have an adolescent pride in boasting about what they pulled off, wanting to broadcast as soon as possible. To certify their victory. Because, now, a day before the Biden/Harris inauguration, Washington is an armed camp, on lock-down, a demonstration of Trump’s prediction and curse, American Carnage. Trump, himself, claims to be on the verge of a formal military sendoff to applaud his last free flight to Mar-a-Lago, his property that resembles any number of South-of-the-Border dictators' idea of a good time. I, for one, never watched The Apprentice. According to reference sources, it premiered in 2004, with Trump the star, and he “helmed” (as the nitwits say) it for fourteen years. Never saw it. I have seen clips, once Trump emerged as the front runner for the Republican nomination. I first wrote about The Donald as a candidate in March of 2016. I wasn’t friendly: “Now that Trump’s pictorial similarities to Il Duce have been widely noticed, The Donald, our own Herr Mousse-olini, has his followers doing stiff-arm Sieg Heil pledges. It is a little much.” This, along with other criticisms, appeared in the columns I did on the campaign for the Huffington Post, and are now reprinted in my book, Politics and the American Language, which was published without fanfare, given the circumstances afoot, Covid, etc., in March of 2020. Trump himself was no mystery in 2016, nor now, though he turned out to be worse than even I thought he could be. He outdid himself, thanks to his despicable enablers of the GOP. And now we await the predicted example of the autocrat, followed by the certified citizen Melania, his Evita (though seemingly one without any discernable talent), hopping on Air Force One to (almost) leave the country, clinging to a Southern-most margin. Again, Trump leaves Biden/Harris with a paradoxical symbolic setting to start their term, one fit only for television, displaying a military takeover, arranged by The Donald’s demented disciples. And middle-Americans were once worried about Hippies! The new right-wing Hippies of 2021 trashed the Capitol. The lumpen in the U.S. share a number of similarities. I should know, because I was one in my prolonged youth, especially in hairstyles and wardrobe. Merriam-Webster gives an interesting definition of lumpen: “of or relating to dispossessed and uprooted individuals cut off from the economic and social class with which they might normally be identified.” It’s almost philosophical. They’re strivers of a sort. But it’s their sense of dislocation, being untethered, that allows them to flock to an authoritarian (and rich) leader. Trump might be a bogus millionaire, but he struts the look. The Donald is a guy who wants to be first. It’s an impulse. The first monk to burn himself to death in Viet Nam, the first sniper to kill over a dozen from a high tower in Texas. Anything to be the first. What passes for Trump’s intelligence is reactive: to do the opposite of what everyone else has done. To be new. A president boasting continuously that he won the election by hu-u-u-ge amounts, that somehow it was stolen from him, to promote the untruth endlessly. I go back and forth about whether he actually believes this, or that he has just swallowed enough of his own kool aid to be convinced. It’s been a terrible four years, the last one visited with a Biblical plague to top off the Trump reign. And, for all I know, there’s enough deluded – the dispossessed and uprooted – no-nothings to presage another season, fit only for TV, of the rolling apocalypse that has been the Trump years. Ready for a Restoration? Imagine the Republican ticket for 2024. It could be worse. A Trump with brains.

Corona Jottings: Intermittent Speculations (#6)

Last week seemed to be a family affair. The Trump family set the tone. And the many family units displayed in bits and pieces during the Republican convention – how about that lovely St. Louis couple toting guns waving at the passing Parade? Then there was the cute mom and son duo, Wendy Lewis Rittenhouse and her pudgy son, Kyle, shooter of three, killer of two, and the random children shot in various yards and houses, homicides that are more perennial than seasonal. The First Family first. The Trump show was more of an extravaganza than the Biden show. More circus than circumspection, more “spectacular” than specific, more Fox than PBS. Though hard to do, setting aside the use of the White House and other government buildings, the Trump week had two or three events that were somewhat grounded in reality, though the four days that encased them was a mountain hard to overlook. We were in Never Never Land most of the time. The final piece de resistance, the last night climax of a sort, the super spreader evening on the White House lawn, below the grand staircases of the Evita side of the building, folding chairs full of Republicans, most mask-less, all disreputable (behind every fortune there is a crime, etc.), of self-satisfied citizens, sprinkled with a few plants of ordinary folk to be used as pawns (echoing the balcony victims often alluded to in State of the Union speeches), showing their mettle, daring Covid to cloud their lives. The event, more or less, was as ephemeral as the fireworks display in front of the Washington monument, that Egyptian inspired obelisk, beloved by many, that spelled out TRUMP 2020. It was there and then not there. But, Trump, who must be descending into his dumbest dotage, didn’t leave the stage, but made the participants turn to face the balcony (no Evita!) and made everyone one listen to semi-operatic renditions of various tunes, including “Hallelujah”, the Leonard Cohen dirge. An overworked tenor, tie-less, sweaty, crooned on – and using opera “stars” to sing pop tunes is a bad choice always – till everyone was about to go crazy – Trump really knows how to step on his endings. Hallelujah, indeed. The tenor is named Christopher Macchio. God knows Trump might have been attracted to him by his name, Macho Macho Man, etc. Macchio did perform at Trump’s 2015 New Year’s Eve bash in Florida. And he seems to be an upscale lounge singer, one to wow the rubes with arias, though I couldn’t detect the usual opera star’s resume in his past. No Met debut, etc. I didn’t know any of this as I watched him, but without a tie, the open shirt, his sweating, he did seem a bit Las Vegas to me. I have had a long history with opera, working, starting when a teenager, in 1964 at the Santa Fe Opera. But, Macchio wasn’t the problem, just the coda to a very strange day, week, first term, and so on. It’s not so much these days what Kellyanne Fitzpatrick (as I knew her when I described her TV appearances in my ‘96 Campaign book, before her marriage to George Conway) called alternate facts early on in the Trump administration, as an alternate world that has been created. It was on full display for four days, with two or three exceptions, one striking one being the appearance of the unhappy parents of a young woman (Kayla Mueller) who strayed into Syria, was “captured” by ISIS in 2013 and tormented by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and doubtless others. Their testimony was effective, given its tone and content. They were obviously unhappy with Obama and Biden, who did not manage to free their daughter (she was killed, it was reported, in 2015). Of course, neither did Trump, but soldiers in late ‘19 launched an attack on Al-Baghdadi’s compound and, cornered, he blew himself up. The raid was named after Kayla. Her body has never been found. Her dad said, "The Trump team gave us empathy we never received from the Obama administration...the Obama administration said it was doing everything it could. The Trump administration actually is...." Hard to counter aggrieved parents, however tragedy has distorted their vision. One other trip in the real world, at greater length, was from my distant relative – very distant – Melania, the Slovenian immigrant and First Lady. My maternal grandfather was Slovenian and was born in a village over the hill from Melania’s home town. Hence my claim to connection, however bogus. Melania is attempting to claim a transformation of sorts, one usually accomplished by older worldly women, who, after a lively life, retreat to the nunnery in old age. Melania is still too young for such metamorphosis, but in her Evita military uniform, marching alone – Trump had wandered out all by his lonesome before her speech – to the microphone, she was a picture of remorse, or, perhaps, seriousness. No easy smiles in this performance. Serious, earnest and measured, a mother’s speech. Empathy heavy. "My deepest sympathy goes out to everyone who has lost a loved one and my prayers are with those who are ill or suffering. I know many people are anxious and some feel helpless. I want you to know you are not alone...." Right on, Melania. She seemed alone. Her immigrant accent, her olive drab outfit, her frozen head looking forward, her serpentine, or, rather, lizard-like eyes locked for a few minutes on one clear prompter, then they would slide over for the same amount of time to the other, a back and forth that became decidedly discomforting as she went on, my phantom relative. She does have my grandfather’s cheekbones; or, rather, he has hers. Well, at least she seemed to occupy planet earth, or a recognizable populated one. Her audience was the typical Trump mask-less crowd, highlighted by the extravagance of the last night to follow, Trump’s own low-energy hour long rehash of his far too many speeches. Melania has never sounded more like an immigrant in her address. Jackie Kennedy had a distinctive voice, cosmopolitan in its way, worldly, but its undertones were American, the Marilyn Monroe breathy-ness, but not Melania’s static discourse. Her outfit was telling. Its slightly authoritarian cut was, is, echoed, in her voice. Somewhere from beyond, not the rainbow, but the Iron Curtain. That semi-oxymoron, Iron Curtain, seems to capture Melania. I wouldn’t ever refer to her as soft. Melania seems to be open game these days, given a new “tell-all” book just published that contains transcripts of her phone calls, catching her in her catty glory, talking to Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a friend, author of Melania and Me. Perhaps Melania will get herself to a nunnery quicker than I thought. With friends like these.... Wendy Lewis Wittenhouse, another mother with a young boy, remains at large, a mystery of sorts, given the limited info floating around. Her son reminds me of another killer, the child killer of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, though Adam Lanza was at least 20. His mother, who came to an unfortunate end, shall we say, encouraged Adam’s eccentricities, as Wendy has obviously promoted Kyle’s enthusiasms, the burden, I suppose, of a lot of “single” mothers. We do have one cute picture, Wendy beaming next to her officer be-suited, besotted, son, Kyle’s youthful face betraying the absence of much lived experience. WE BACK THE BLUE festoons a bunting stripe defacing the photo. But Kyle was going to catch up and Wendy was there at his side. Now Adam was convincingly out of his mind and grandiose in his actions, whereas Kyle was, is, much more modest; his fellow gun lovers are attempting to make a right-wing hero out of him. There aren’t many teenage young men ready for such an honor and they jumped at the chance, perhaps prematurely, but since Kyle is very premature, they have a lot to work with. Since a large percentage of protestors in Kenosha seem to be from out of town, especially those who prowl the streets around midnight, it’s hard to tell who’s who without a scorecard. If Kenosha was Beijing the Chinese would doubtless be able to identify every face through the ubiquitous cameras available. But our computer geeks are working on it. Trump, of course, showed up a couple of days ago in the daylight, attempting and succeeding at setting the news, directing the cameras in his direction. Biden came and went, too, with a speech in Pennsylvania, trying to be the reasonable guy compared to the red-tied lunatic. This is thankless position to be in, the Republicans always getting to be pro, the Democrats con. Television tends toward spectacle, not reason. The moderate has no place on the tube, or flat screen. If you arrive at the correct answer, the question is over. Biden is moderation personified, except when he goes off the rails. Trump has abandoned moderation in all its forms, except for his curious fear of alcohol, from which he abstains, replacing it with pharmaceuticals. Biden finally made it to Kenosha on mission to do the opposite of Trump, talking with the victims. The longer Biden talks the more one holds one’s breath, waiting for him to go off the rails. In a church lecture going on at length about taxes, he did, saying if he didn’t stop talking his host would shoot him. Oh, well. It’s not so much age-related, since Biden has always done this. But his handlers should give the hook after a half hour. Here at home we have seven year olds shot in the head at birthday parties. There has always been kids killing kids, playing with guns, but this was a drive-by, a big crowd outside, shots fired. We’re some ninety miles from Chicago, where, for many years, even before I became a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, back in the last of that paper’s heyday, I would read the Chicago Tribune, which seemed to exist to report the number of children who had been killed one way or another in the city the day before. But, slowly, over the decades, South Bend has become a suburb of Chicago and its bad habits have come this way. A couple of kids were killed the last two weeks, one the usual way, one child shooting another after having latched on to some adult’s gun. But, more recently, less than a week ago, there has been the drive-by, the party murder, a Chicago staple. It, too, was a weekend killing, a popular time of recreational activity. The seventy or so people at the party would lead one to believe that some reveler might have recognized the car and occupants. It was still light out. But the See No Evil crowd still exists. In any case, all the family activity of last week was exhausting and much of it disgusting. [To be continued.] I am not bothering with links. I might supply them eventually.

"What a Dump!" The Presidency, that is

During the last two or three presidencies (starting with Bill Clinton) there has been talk of the “permanent campaign,” campaigns that never end. Continuous fund-raising, etc. Usually, this sort of talk dies down, especially when it comes to the presidency itself. But, lately, we have crossed over into so many new, unsuspected, realms it is clear that the presidency itself is leading the way without any surcease of campaigning.

The Donald has not stopped his campaigning, because it is the only political experience he has. Never elected to nothing was his calling card and the other suspect preceding presidents (principally Ronald Reagan) had some electoral success in their pasts, besides their celebrity. One needs to go back to the generals to find a novice, Dwight David Eisenhower. Trump has surrounded himself with generals, though that displays his authoritarian impulses, more like the typical Banana Republic administration, where military power props up despots.

As any number of folk have noticed, Trump is, was, more or less, an open book. He hid practically nothing of his inner self during the campaign. The only truth Trump consorts with is Truth in Advertising, meaning most everyone, except for the deluded ( not that a large number – see Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin election margins) knew who they were voting for.

When Trump and Melania first visited the White House, before the Inauguration, hosted by Obama and Michelle, I told anyone who would listen at the time that Trump’s first thought during the tour would have been “What a dump!” I doubt that Melania would have known of Bette Davis’s famous coinage, so she was likely just mildly appalled. No spa! Old plumbing! Even a cursory understanding of The Donald would have prompted this insight. And, recently, not to my dismay, he even said it aloud (“a real dump”), to his golfing buddies. Trump is not a complex personality.

What is surprising to me is that Trump manages to best himself week after week, meaning that he finds a way to be freshly outrageous and inappropriate. (See yesterday’s “impromptu” presser, revealing yet again his shallow understanding of history, much less his racist inclinations.) I was in Cuba at the end of the Obama presidency and the start of the Trump era, so I did not get to hear his Inauguration address. Sitting on the patio of the Hotel Nacional I couldn’t imagine what that speech would be, because Trump seemingly is incapable of eloquence or sincerity. After I returned and heard bits of the “American Carnage” diatribe, I realized his speech writers went the only place they could, to a dark, dangerous place, full of invective and doom.

David Brooks, who has gone on his own strange journey since being hired on by the New York Times, from an early comedic conservative writer to his pompous new-agey book-report fetish columns (Look what I read last week!), wants to wash The Donald out of his hair, but, unfortunately, none of us will be able to do that for another three years. I’ve always held he will be a one-term president, given that the job, the actual work of the presidency, won’t be much fun for him. And, decidedly, it doesn’t look like he’s having much fun.

Yet, behind the gaudy scrim of The Donald himself truly terrible things are happening. Look at his Cabinet of Deplorables, what they are doing to their bailiwicks. Justice, EPA, Education, etc. And Republicans in Congress are getting to play out their repressed economic and social fantasies of the last half of the 20th century, attempting to dismantle all that the Democratic Century (the 20th) had managed to create.

In a review I once wrote of a book (Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century) that covered the period, I dejectedly prophesied that if progressive people didn’t look out, the 21st would become the Republican Century, and that appears to be the case. At this point, it seems unlikely Democrats will win back the House of Representatives and add to their count in the Senate. What Mitch McConnell did to Obama, making him a seven year president, rather than an eight year president, was an act of racism just as blatant as any that was seen recently in Charlottesville.

And, in permanent campaign mode epitome, President Trump has continued to be the president of only his base, all the rest of the country be damned. And it is apparent he will get away with it, given that barely fifty percent of the country bothers to vote in presidential election years and less in off years. And that circumstance continues to be promoted by state Republicans everywhere, making it more difficult, rather than easier, to vote. The notion of false equivalency has become popular the last few years, but one false equivalency is that this country is run by a two-party system. Democrats and Republicans are not equal. Trump’s win was proof of that, given the third-party candidacies (including Bernie’s) doomed Hillary Clinton.

Looking back on the history of presidential campaigns, Trump’s victory, though shocking, is only the culmination of a trend line that has been trending for a long time. And if he is the nadir, which he may well not be, what will come next? Of the many frightening things to contemplate, add that one to the list.

The HuffPost version (8/16/17) can be found here.

Trump Monkeys

The Trump administration puts to the test the “infinite monkey theorem,” since so many journalists are typing away chronicling the daily saga of the new president. Very little Shakespearean prose has yet resulted, but we have to consider the source. Trump’s address to the “joint session” of Congress produced amazement at the new Trumpian focus, his ability to read – and stick to – the Teleprompter for an hour or so. Two times, though, he did deviate, letting the inner Trump ooze out: claiming some sort of record for applause had been reached and the soul-churning idea that the deceased Seal, William “Ryan” Owens, was looking down at the assembly and smiling. Perhaps Trump was channeling the apostate Mike Pence sitting smiling behind him.

This brings me to the chief spectacle of that night, the sight of the Seal’s widow, sitting, standing, crying, mumbling, suffering. It is cheering that the earliest critics of that display were other military people calling this for what it was: exploitation. Trump, understanding television if nothing else, along with his obsession with ratings, knew he had a winner: Who can not be riveted by the sight of a good-looking woman in extremis?

I tried to imagine which American actress (or British, French, etc.) could have done what the widow was doing so convincingly. What the viewer got to witness was, seemingly, minutes of high-quality grief porn. Always a big draw, though only if the woman involved is attractive. In this case, a willowy blonde in a black dress.

Why did she consent to be used this way? Evidently, she has a military background herself and when the commander in chief asks, she responds. But, she was obviously still traumatized by the recent death of her husband, but Trump knew she would be a good show.

Trump’s treatment of women was already well broadcast during his campaign, but since he assumed the presidency he still is treating women badly. On his inauguration day, pictures showed him neglecting his wife repeatedly, and the largely absent first lady was hauled out finally in Florida on Feb. 18th , ten days post the news of her libel lawsuit against the British tabloid The Daily Mail broke, detailing how it would cut into her future income, to give her brief I-am-not-a-hooker speech. Her remarks began with a recitation of the Lord’s prayer (aka, the Our Father), the protestant version, which no one could accuse her of plagiarizing. Yet another weird spectacle.

(Though it needs to be said that Michelle Obama took a while to get her footing. Back during her first year as FLOTUS, she was stuck hoeing that godforsaken garden built at great cost on the White House lawn. Even I wrote a column back then claiming I would lose my mind if I saw another picture of her holding a yam in her fist.)

But the prize this past week goes to Trump’s tweets on Saturday morning, calling President Obama “sick”, a bad guy, for ”tapp”-ing his phone in Trump Tower. As they say, these tweets dominated the news over the weekend and into this week (below is the last):

“How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy! 7:02 AM - 4 Mar 2017.”

How low can he go? Good question. We’re now back to Trump the unhinged, rather than Trump the presidential, according to the rounded-up usual suspects among commentators. I did like the continuation of Trump’s new evangelical rhetorical streak, given his “very sacred election process” characterization. In the same vein as the dead Seal smiling down at us. See, Mike Pence is exerting influence.

Speaking, as did Trump, of the former president, contrary to the gushing coverage, Obama’s “last” speech as president in Chicago was completely delusional – it can be summed up in this paraphrase: We’re doing swell and the rest of you are screwed. And given his vacation photos and the family’s alleged $65 million book deal, it appears that he is. Obama, ironically, is enjoying the traditional honeymoon period, not Trump the nut.

One reason Trump was apparently comfortable during his speech to Congress was that he was speaking largely to an audience of millionaires. Consult the statistics of the average wealth of the typical Senator or Congress person. It’s somewhat like the crowd at Mar-a-Lago.

But as the news cycle speeds up, the attention span of the audience slows down. Trump monkeys have to keep feeding the beast and can barely stick to a story beyond twenty-four hours. (On to The American Health Care Act! – Trump, I expect, will want to tweet that Obamacare should be renamed The Kenyan Health Care Act.)

We have all lived with “false equivalency” for a few years now and Trump’s “Obama bad” tweets seem to have worked their dark magic and Republicans are already to drag Trump’s wiretapping accusations into their investigations into the Russian campaign hacks. False equivalency rises in committee hearings, costing money, time, and attention. The Swamp needs more muddy waters. It wasn’t enough for Trump’s drained swamp to end up in his cabinet.


The Huffington Post version appeared on March 8, 2017, and can be found here.