Nah...

This is what I’m dealing with, this morning:

 

 

It’s The New York Times, and it’s an essay by someone called Oren Cass, and it would be easy to dismiss him as just a plain damn fool, in the words of my youth. But he’s young—barely out of his 20’s, by the look of his photo. He is, and I quote, “the chief economist at American Compass, a conservative economic think tank, and writes the newsletter Understanding America.”

 

I’m tempted to ask whether, in addition to understanding America, Mr. Cass understands Donald Trump—but really (and horribly) if you understand America, you understand Trump.

 

I think we think too much. Cass says, essentially, that we’ve now seen how very effectively Trump destroys things. He’s happy, presumably, that the government has been essentially hobbled. All of our agencies have been gutted, the Education Department no longer exists, the CDC is in turmoil with directors resigning left and right, and the Justice Department has become Trump’s enforcer. Mr. Cass thinks, he hopes, that the rebuilding of the government will begin soon, under the careful and seasoned hand of Donald Trump. That’s what we think will happen. That’s what should happen?  But will it?

 

Has it ever been about anything more than grift and sex? A normal politician has an agenda, which would involve a strategy or a plan. But Trump has no interest in structures, rules, or laws. That’s not where the money is: it’s in the chaos, which can be used to stoke fear. And fear is very much what Trump wants.

 

I think it’s about sex and about money because yesterday, ten victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell spoke out on Capitol Hill. They spoke out while Trump was doing his show in the Oval Office, this time with the president of….let’s see, Poland!

 

Or they tried to speak out, but they were drowned out (in the media) by Trump, who had nothing to say about Poland but plenty to say about this “Democratic hoax.” If Trump wants to change the topic, he should stop talking about it. But as for Mr. Cass, and all the other “intellectuals” who know about everything except real life—well, why don’t we summarize it?  

 

The Epstein / Maxwell survivors were drowned out as well by the flyover that Trump had arranged—ostensibly to honor a Polish pilot who died in an airshow. Forget the fact that the Poles, in fact, have a very honorable history of supporting the resistance efforts in World War II. The Poles had a wartime government in London; they also fought alongside the Allies in the Polish Armed Forces, which might have been a plausible justification for a flyover. At any rate, the victims of Epstein had to stop and gaze heavenward, no doubt suppressing cusswords at the same time.

 

Getting back to Mr. Cass, who was perhaps too young to have endured the first Trump administration—why don’t we stop the abstruse journeys into what we hope is the subtle mind of a political genius, and focus on the much-more-likely?

 

1.    Trump is a moron about anything related to the world or the nation

2.    Trump is a genius at sowing chaos

3.    Trump loves to fuck (or did)

4.    Trump loves to “make deals,” and thinks he’s good at it

5.    The Russians, as part of a decades-long strategy, identified a group of people who might be useful to them. 

6.    Trump was one of those guys

7.    The Russians also look for dirt, and while it can be financial, it’s often the oldest story in history—men away from home behaving badly

8.    The dirt the Russians have on Trump could be either financial or personal, or it could be both. In addition, the Russians may not have told Trump what they have over him, but are simply letting him sweat

9.    They had the dirt, now they had to get him to play. It wasn’t hard to convince Trump to get involved in politics, to run for president. It was how Putin got rich, and have I mentioned that the only gods in Trump’s pantry are sex and money?

10. The first administration was marred by having adults in the room. True, some of them were crooked as hell (Bill Barr springs to mind) but they were adults. Pam Bondi? Pete Hegseth? C’mon…

11.Trump lost the 2020 election, and no adult could ever go work for him again. That was perfect for Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who could then install J. D. Vance (who has done nothing professionally except be Thiel’s lapdog), institute a theocracy / oligarchy, gut the government and strip it of its regulatory power.

12.Trump has been happy to go along, and anyone who needs sneakers, cryptocurrency, watches, or Naugahyde bibles has a wonderful variety of Trump merch

13.Trump is now senile—which Thiel and Musk certainly knew months before the election. They got him elected, they’ll use him to destroy the government, and then they’ll throw him under the bus. 

14.The American people have been lied to, yes—but let’s not pretend we’re not culpable. We all saw January 6^th, and the Trump administration has been nothing but transparent. For a dishonest man, Trump has been remarkably consistent with following through on plans. Project 2025 was executed perfectly. We’re all set to go. Democracy is out, Trump is in. And for the people who want to hate, that’s just fine.

15.Democracy is over, and it didn’t even last 250 years

 

Mr. Cass must have a clever, sophisticated worldview, but does Trump? We’ve never gotten him right, because we’ve never been able to see him as he is. He’s a fraud, he’s a moron, and he’s not dangerous. Until, of course, we let him have his way. Every politician has recognized this, and every Republican has caved. And now, as Susan Collins (Republican senator from Maine) says, we’re all living in fear.

 

With good reason. One of her colleagues got “arrested” and put into handcuffs. The governor of Virginia had his house torched while he was sleeping in it. Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota are shot by assassins posing as cops. The military is “patrolling” the streets of Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. 

 

The Epstein victims say that they are creating a list, and I think that’s great. I’d like to compile a list, too. And I’d like to start it today, and finish it by tomorrow, at 5 PM. I’d like a list of every American who voted for Trump, who supported Trump, who relished all the pettiness and the retribution.

 

I’d like a list of all the persons who support President Trump—right now. Yes or no—are you in or out?

 

I’m not giving myself the option of saying, ‘well, I just didn’t know! I was utterly shocked and horrified when the true nature of Donald Trump’s crimes was revealed.”

 

Nah.

 

The Germans knew nothing about the death camps?

 

Nah, burning flesh stinks.

 

Alligator Alcatraz was an aberration?

 

Nah, it was all over the news.

 

We knew he was a crook, we knew he was dishonest, but we really thought that God had chosen this imperfect vessel to usher in the glorious days of his Second Coming?

 

Nah.

 

Wasn’t God, it was Putin.   

 

Not Saving Democracy Today

Yesterday was a day when it all fell apart. I had written a post, gone to Walmart to buy cardstock and ice cream, and then come home. A wave of fatigue hit, and I slept for an hour. Then the fatigue turned to weakness and exhaustion, which was especially bad when I stood. It was annoying, because I was also peeing like crazy.

 

It was time for the alcoholic discount, which basically means I can do anything I like (barring illegal activity) as long as I go to bed sober. I can waste a day; I can’t waste a life.

 

So I spent the afternoon rereading Travels with Charley and discovered that though I had read the book several times thirty or forty years ago, I still knew whole passages virtually verbatim. I knew about the drunk / hungover vet that Steinbeck took Charley to see, but had forgotten that it was in Spokane. I remember about the young man living with his father—the kid wanted to be a hair stylist (this was North Dakota, perhaps), the father was scornful. Steinbeck was in the middle, as we all were, in a sense. Without saying a word to suggest it, the picture of a young, confused, homosexual-but-doesn’t-know-it-yet (or does he?) boy who wants the intimacy of women emerged plainly. For me, at least, now. Back then, did I pick that up?

 

I’ve probably watched Downton Abbey as much as I’ve read Travels, but really, I remember nothing of the series. Is it that I was drunk at the time? That I was older?

 

I have another theory, that conveniently excuses the fact that I’m an old drunk. There’s surprisingly little research on this topic, but neurologically, it seems that reading books activates different parts of your brain than reading the same text on screen. That, at least, is what I remembered from when I was anguishing over the fact that I couldn’t proofread a book I had written on the computer. I had to go off and print the damn thing, filled with grammatical / syntactical errors and all. Why couldn’t I just do it at the computer?

 

I can’t find the article, of course, but I have lived the experience, and yesterday was no exception. Except for the fact that I was trotting off every ten minutes to stand fainting and breathless over the toilet, it was a delightful afternoon. Here I am, sober, and back in the fight. And here’s what I did find, that backs up (sort of) my conclusion:

 

“There’s not much [neuroscientific research] on the reading of actual texts,” Mangen says. However, existing research does offer some clues. In a 2009 study, the marketing research company Millward Brown found the brain processes physical and digital materials differently. Participants viewed advertisements on a screen and on a printed card while undergoing an fMRI scan. Print materials were more likely to activate the the medial prefrontal cortex and cingulate cortex, both involved in processing emotions. Reading print also generated more activity in the parietal cortex, which processes visual and spatial cues.

 

Reading a book, of course, is utterly different from reading at a computer. But what about reading on my iPad? I can take it, open the Kindle application, sprawl on the couch, drink some coffee—and the experience would be just the same as if it were a book, not some electronic device Steve Jobs dreamed that we all needed. They’re basically the same size—if anything, the iPad is lighter and easier to manipulate.

 

Not so, and if I have the patience to do anything—like sit down at regular times during my week to scramble / unscramble my thoughts onto a screen that may someday be a book—it’s probably because of reading books. They slowed me down, and they allowed me to do that most wonderful thing—mull.

 

To mull (the word, by the way, comes from the Latin verb “to chew,” and cropped up for the first time in the 19^th century) is just another word for woolgathering (another wonderful word). I learned it from my mother, who taught it to me over breakfast at her house in the woods. She and I needed to titrate the level of caffeine to nutrients before any speech was possible—and so I watched her, as I drank my coffee and she ate her yogurt and granola. She would peer into the middle distance of her woods, and enter a meditative state that even I could feel, groggy and often hungover. The French would call it une rêverie, but it was a working dream, if that’s possible. It made the rest of her day possible, and on those rare occasions when the rêverie was impossible, we all felt it.

 

I do it still, for twenty minutes or so, after the cat has been taken care of and some minimal grooming gets done. Then I go off to my meeting, and I can face the day. Are any kids woolgathering, these days? Or are they too busy with their phones?

 

I learned a couple of new words that Steinbeck obviously assumed I knew—“tarn,” which is a small mountain lake, and “sough,” the sound of wind through trees. I remembered a different time, that we imagined would never end. I thought of how unconnected we were, and how hard and wonderful it was, at various times.

 

Steinbeck was lonely, which is part of the journey. He couldn’t call, of course, because calls and telegrams at that time meant that someone had died (telegram) or that somebody was near death in the hospital (that was a call). Phone calls cost FIVE DOLLARS to call New York for three minutes. A local call was a dime. (Hamburgers were 50 cents at Mc

Donalds...)

 

So Steinbeck wrote letters to his friends and his wife , as he said, to spread the loneliness around. He had been bored, but he may have been something else, as he parked his van by the side of a tarn (we all know that word, don’t we?) and her the sough through the trees.

 

In fact, the sough by the tarn must have been especially (brace yourself) “impactful*” because it was surely in the dark, alone, in nature. He was probably out walking Charley, whose bladder is just as bad as mine. How many people have spent the night alone, in a cabin or tent, in the woods? How many people know that deer, when they are moving slowly, calmly, often pause and snort? It was a primeval sound, I thought, when I first heard it. And even though the sound may be exactly the same, emerging from my cell phone under fluorescent lights, the experience wouldn’t.

 

Very few people know what darkness is, nowadays.

 

Very few people have heard true silence.

 

And very few of us, still, have had the experience so familiar to our ancestors—being alone, unprotected, in total darkness while hearing… an animal? 

 

A MAN?

 

A MAN WITH A GUN????

 

For many more millennia than cell phones have been around, men and women have cowered in the darkness, assailed (hopefully) by nothing more terrible than their imaginations (and that was quite enough). They lived with fear as much as boredom. They learned courage, perhaps, from the terror, and the relief of seeing it drain away into the dawn.

 

I should be courageous, too—since I have passed the night and entered the day alive. I’ll also know fear, of course, and might well feel it if I were in Los Angeles. There, 300 National Guard soldiers remain from their early deployment in June (it’s now September), during which time the legal system has been grinding ever so slowly. But now we have a decision from a judge who happens to be the younger brother of a Supreme Court justice, now retired.

 

The judge, Charles Breyer, swatted Trump down in the first two paragraphs of the 52-page ruling. He said that Trump was trying to create a police state, and that the whole damn thing was illegal. It was a wonderful, wonderful victory indeed for all of us who would read, comprehend, and obey a court order.

 

Will Trump?

 

If he’s smart, he will, I think, but who am I to say? No one—and I can tell you that because I now know a lot about The Prince, by Nicolo Machiavelli. I’ve never read the book, but it’s clear that I have to. The very fact that I am uncomfortable with power, and am horrified by the apparently clinical and value-free appraisal of what it is, how to get it, and how to keep it…well, I should read it. I could join quite a diverse company: Tony Blair (no surprise) and a rap singer called 50 Cent. 50 Cent attributed his phenomenal success to Machiavelli, since the world of rap music is apparently even more fraught than 16^th century Florence.

 

Who knew?

 

So now I have a book to bind, and a music clip to listen to that is not Palestrina, something that would be utterly familiar and pleasing to Machiavelli’s ears . (And the Missa Papae Marcelli is glorious.) And I will probably know the answer to the question: can Trump be Trump and still hang on to power? Does he have the cunning wit and the self-discipline, to make a strategic retreat? Or will he send even MORE troops in, just because?

 

Whatever—I may never know. I was terrified when I heard the abrupt snort of deer ripping the silence in the pitch-dark woods. I didn’t know what it was.

 

Today, I know it’s Trump, and I’m just as scared.     

 

Far more, actually. 

(*The word "impact" is a noun, not a verb or an adjective.)

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

Tuesday Morning Thoughts

Well, the big question is whether democracy is like virginity. Once you’ve lost it, can you ever really get it back again?

 

Or do you have to lose it to know that you had it?

 

And do you value it more, having found out how fugitive and fleeting it is?

 

Questions for a Tuesday morning after a Labor Day weekend…and of course, questions I can’t answer. I could, with a heavy heart, look toward Germany. The Germans bought into their myth, as we have bought into ours. They were the great civilizing nation: they brought us Beethoven and Bach, Thomas Mann and 
Goethe.

 

In the days of my American Exceptionalism youth, Germany’s descent into madness was both inexplicable and unforgiveable. You don’t erect concentration camps like Auschwitz, and the work of every German was to get up and do something about it. All the time. Until the concentration camp is shut down, the prisoners are sent to rest on the French Riviera, and the government apologizes fulsomely.

 

Wonderful—and what am I doing about Alligator Alcatraz?

 

It was exactly what I feared. There’s not much left of Trump, beyond the bitterness and the hate. There’s certainly no plan or even a guiding set of principles. At this point, Trump is nothing but a pawn for the very rich, and they’re not fools. They have moved with breathtaking speed, and they have won.

 

Tuesday morning after Labor Day, and what are we worried about? That Trump will send in the troops to Chicago, just as he has sent them into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The troops are there because the cities are “awash” with violence, in theory, but we all know what crime is. Crime, to a Republican mind, is anything that will lead to the removal of poor and black / brown people from sight.

 

I have gone to New York a couple of times a year for most of my adult life. My brother and sister live there, on the upper West Side of Manhattan—I remember New York in the 80’s and 90’s. The city now is Disneyland compared to then.

 

What’s wrong with New York, and with the entire country, is income inequality—though that may be only the symptom, not the disease. Two years ago, I witnessed the most chilling scene on the corner of 110^th Street and Broadway. Because of its scale, that part of New York has amazing supermarkets and stores. Westside Market is one of them, and the amount and quality of the merchandise is astonishing. The store’s customer base is huge, since you can put a lot of high-powered doctors, lawyers, and musicians in those high-rise apartment buildings. So it’s not surprising that the store sells ten different types of smoke salmon, nor is it any wonder that I want to try them all, and that I can’t. The high-powered doctors and lawyers have considerably more purchasing power than I do.

 

But wait—maybe it’s not the time or place to get too sorry for myself, because outside of the store, directly on the sidewalk, five feet directly in front the store, a man is kneeling.

 

Yeah—he’s kneeling, but it’s more than that. His hands are clasped together in prayer, his eyes are cast upwards, and the only word that comes to mind is “supplication.”

 

He’s an older, black man. His possessions are scattered all around him. He kneels motionless for ten minutes while I watch him.

 

I am the only one watching, as people swerve automatically past him to get into the store. The man is an obstacle, nothing more—they’re busy with their lives, and I get that. Whatever is wrong with the life of this man—well, it’s not their problem. They have kids to raise and briefs to submit. They’re just trying to get to the supermarket, for God’s sake.

 

A person stops, coming out of the supermarket, and gives the man a sandwich and a Coke. The man pays no attention.

 

I get this, too. If you come at me with a problem, let it at least be about something practical. I can buy a sandwich; I could even take you home and give you a bed for the night. But I cannot, I absolutely cannot, give you what I think you need. I can’t listen to your problems, or share in your pain. I can fill your stomach but not your heart.

 

I “pay” for this by feeling guilty. I pay for this by buying sandwiches when I should be providing something that demands too much from me: real compassion. I operate, still, with the vestiges of a moral system. But can that moral system exist in this world? Can I cozen the weak and hearten the defeated and still raise the kids and write the briefs? 

 

The people hurry into the store, and I can tell you why: they’re New Yorkers, and they do everything in a hurry. But isn’t there something else? We are great at not seeing, and a man kneeling on a street corner would be invisible, of course. But a man kneeling in front of Westside Market is impossible to ignore. The fact that I have to veer, and look away (or even buy him a sandwich) tells me that I’m uncomfortable.

 

They hurry, the New Yorkers, and they’re uncomfortable, as I am, with someone whose needs are so much greater than mine, whose life is so much more difficult, who haven’t received the gifts that I’ve received, and often not appreciated. But sadly, not all the New Yorkers are operating on even that minimal scale. Nor is much of America, at this point.

 

We have always equated poverty with laziness, bad living, stupid choices. And we have always been tempted to say, “fuck you” to the people who make a demand (or so we think) of our compassion. Nobody stuck a gun to my head and made me drink a bottle of scotch every day. Nobody compelledyou to go out and put the needle in your arm. And nobody has to feel bad because I fucked up my life.

 

Oh come on, it’s worse than that.

 

Poverty is a sin in America, and what is sin? It’s something to despise, to avoid, to shun. Your job is to get off the sidewalk, shower and shave, get a job, and run your life the way I’m running mine.

 

Fuck you, man-kneeling-in-front-of-Westside Market!

 

The “cleanup” that Trump is promising has nothing to do with crime and only partially to do with racism. It doesn’t even have to do with eliminating “trash,” human or otherwise.

 

Trump offers a universe where your opponents are sick and evil. Not just that, but a universe where feeling sad for a man kneeling in front of a store deserves your scorn, not your pity. Trump has not only allowed people to be mean and selfish, he has applauded them for doing so. Here’s the Christmas message for me, from my president:

 

Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to              obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME. They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing," Trump declared on Truth Social. 

"Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky "souls" but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL! We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!" he added.

 

He was down with this, and I am down with this. We can be enemies, and we can hate each other. You can tear down the homeless encampments under the bridges and over the steam vents. You can send me to Alligator Alcatraz, though it would be a horrifying waste of money.

 

You can say that I’m just as bad as you, and mea culpa—I’ll feel bad about this, too. I hate what you are doing, and I hate the way you think.

 

But I’m not sure that I hate you the same way.

 

I don’t have to—I’m not working off any guilt.

 

The man kneeling in front of Westside Market wasn’t just kneeling. He was raising the middle finger to all of us, rushing into the store to get our smoked salmon. Buying him sandwiches. Assuaging our guilt. He was saying, really, that my life is not OK if your life is not.

 

He was claiming his right to exist. On his knees. In front of a supermarket. You have your kids to raise and your legal briefs to write. And if all I have done is to make you mutter, look the other way, and rush faster into the supermarket…well, so be it.

 

And we hate it.

 

So the troops are marching into Chicago, and they’ll be there for 29 days, since anything over 30 days means you have to pay benefits like overtime and health insurance. They’ll bulldoze the encampments and move the homeless somewhere else. The city will be no safer, though it might be cleaner.

 

And you won’t have to look at the horrifying sight of a man kneeling in front of a food store in one of the richest neighborhoods in the richest country on earth.

 

And you won’t have to look at yourself, rushing into the store to buy food that will not only sustain you but delight you. You won’t have to confront the inequity of having been given so much—a good education, great parents, material goods and possessions. 

 

You won’t have to veer out of the path of the praying figure.

 

You can just send him to Hell.

 

After all, the president did….