Wednesday, November 18, 2020

The Trump Plague

Early yesterday morning, our outgoing president Donald J. Trump, tweeted: "I won the Election!"

It was at this point that I decided I had had enough. What? No -- I had enough of that other stuff a few years ago. What I have now had enough of is the people who refer, condescendingly, to the opinion of anyone who dislikes Trump, as "the politics of personality." By this, they imply that (or outwardly state that) you don't have to like the president and that complaining about what kind of a guy he is is childish. 

To me, this argument is something of a "straw man." It reduces how I and many others feel about Trump to a mere impression. It is an attempt to cast our distaste for the man as a superficial thing that is a step above not voting for him because of his face.  

I would have a hard time listing politicians I have liked, to be honest with you. John McCain is one of the rarities. I liked President Obama very much, even when I often disagreed with his policies. As a guy, I liked George W. Bush, though I thought he was a poor president. Bill Clinton? I think he is a cheating, immoral creep, but he was, to me, a decent president, practically speaking. 

So what I don't want to hear when I complain about Donald Trump is that I am engaging in the "politics of personality." Donald Trump is worse than unlikable and rude; his personality and behavior is a virus that has been here long before COVID-19: The Trump Plague. His personality has been and continues to be a disease that has infected the collective psyche of the American people. 

Consider that Tweet: "I won the Election." Putting aside the energy he is putting in to tweeting about the election at the expense of, oh, working as the president, look at what he is done: only through an extended program of legitimizing whining, on the highest level in our country, could he not be called an unmanly ass by an overwhelming number of Americans. 

The image I see is him on the floor of the presidential bedroom, pounding his feet and hands and screaming in a toddler-like rage "I won the Election." He is behaving in the way my father taught me not to. A man, my dad said, does not throw aside all dignity and whine about his losses. 

(By the way: contesting one's losses? Sure. No problem. I support Trump's right to ask for recounts anywhere he wants. The truth is most important. To me. I'd rather suffer through four more years of his antics than have a president in office who was not truly selected by the American people. But, when the proverbial obese woman sings, will Trump accept the conclusions of court and investigations? No. He will continue to argue his case, regardless of evidence...and his followers will believe him over everyone else. Why? Because they believe, now, that it is more likely that one man is telling the truth -- just because they have decided for some reason that this person they never met is 100% trustworthy --  than that scores of courts and thousands of election officials are. This is he Trump infection.) 

At any rate, my dad taught me, as I said, that whining about losses is unmanly. The scary part is that the same thing was taught by parents all over the country in my generation. Yet, somehow, Trump has managed to infect those who believed in such conservative principals about manly (and mature, womanly) behavior into forgetting all about it. What has caused people who traditionally have despised behaviors like his to laud those behaviors when it comes to him is a mystery. It is, if you will, The Trump Plague that seems not to have a vaccine. They simply can't see how this guy is the very opposite of everything they have stood for for decades... He simply is not a champion of true conservative values, yet they think he is. It's like declaring Michael Jackson the poster boy for positive body image.  

Many others have talked about how he has destroyed the norms of the presidency; how he has reduced the Democratic principals to rubble while, at the same time, trumpeting about upholding the Constitution. I won't get into that, especially since I am not as savvy about politics as they. 

His "fake news" tirades ("fake news" being any news he doesn't like) have destroyed the legitimate complaints about the media that I have always had but that I once communicated with a certain level of nuance: the news has always been biased and more interested in headline draw (and money) than in informing the public. But he has destroyed my ability to talk about that because of the black-and-white infection he has caused. If I point out "fake news" people in MAGA hats will be embracing me and liberals will label me as a moronic, rabid Trump follower. He has appropriated and warped the idea of criticizing the media. 

Science? For a long time I have held the opinion -- and written about it -- that science has been slowly transformed into the new religion; that people worship and will not question science, even when science itself admits that it doesn't know all everything; that there are more mysteries than answers in the universe. But Trump chooses to ignore science completely and his followers fall, lock-step, into line. My criticism of science-worshippers probably looks identical to his in the minds of the MAGA hoards. The liberal side? They -- unless they read my work carefully -- are now most likely to see me as an ingnorant dismisser of scientific evidence, which I am not. Again, he has destroyed nuance and reason; he has made buckets into which all people fit -- but only two buckets. 

Through his crassness and artless tenacity, he is now able to say that 2+2 = 5 and within minutes it will be the trending hashtag on Twitter. 

His "personality" spreads like a virus. It is The Trump Plague. Bill Clinton is a worm, but he was not an infectious worm whose disease brought out irrationality and ignorance like a rash on people's souls. To moral people, he was just a pathetic womanizer and a seedy politician. 

No other president has caused such disharmony -- a disharmony that is rationalized by his followers as a result of his "going against the grain" of the establishment. But if Trump had fought the good fight against the "deep state" with any outward degree of dignity or humanity, I'd have been more likely to believe in him. I, too, have, longed for politicians who are more "real." But he is not more real; he is a rude embarrassment whose behavior has been embraced by and that has amplified the worst parts of human nature. 

All of this said, I have friends who, though they despise him as a man, think he has done good things as a president. Our difference is that they think his awfulness is worth it; that the outcomes make his sleazy immorality and obnoxious narcissism a non-issue (or less of an issue than I think it is). In short, they see him as infected, but not infectious -- more of a Clinton. Those people are not his sheep...they just see things differently than I do. I think they are wrong, but I respect their position. I like to say that even if Trump has been good for the body of America, he has been devastating for the spirit. 

So, please, don't say I am engaging in the "politics of personality." That's a cute little deflection but it's about as effective as calling Biden "sleepy Joe." I don't want Trump out of office becuase I don't like him; I want him out of office because I've never seen a Presidential Plague like him. All over the soul of America, the cancer has spread; a cancer caused by arrogance, lies, meanness, and a total lack of human dignity. In the end, it has brought out the worst in all of us. 

I don't hate Donald Trump. I am eminently embarrassed for him and I have a hard time seeing why everyone else is not. Can you picture the moment? He is sitting there with his phone... Was he afraid it had been too long since he posted? Was he trying to think of something clever to say? Was he red with anger? Whatever the situation was, he decided to send out the weakest and most pathetic of statements, after all the bluster and after all the days and days of legal challenges: "I won the Election." And, up to this moment, 251, 000 have seen that worthy of a "like" and 56, 000 have retweeted it. 

That statement impressed them. How do you fight against that?


Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The Incredible Tale of Phineas Schmidt (a Parable)

The world was simmering in a new plague called COVID-19 and people shambled about with masks covering their mouths. Neighbors fell ill and the news buzzed with gloom, contradictions, and fear. 

Phineas decided it was time to run, so he sold everything he owned, gave the money to charities for children, and spent the rest on a plane ticket and a backpack so that he could access the most remote wilderness on Earth. Better to die in the age-old struggle for survival than to perish a the hands of some unseen spectre conjured and sustained by the irresponsibility, ignorance and mishandlings of others. And, perhaps, he might even find happiness some in thre embrace of primeval, shadowy glade, immersed in silence...

The forest was thick and deep, and Phineas took only ways that were unmarked by the boots of men or the hooves of beasts. Some days, he moved mere yards forward, but what did it matter? He'd never have to be on time for anything again. The goal of each day was to simpy to live -- to survive, then to sit by a fire and ponder this most human of accomplishments: another day enscribed in the journal of Time. 

For many days he moved through the bush, knowing, per the map of his mind, that he must be approaching the belly of this forest -- a stretch of uninhabited land that spanned millions of square miles...

One day, he reached a little pond that was shaped very much like a grizzly bear. (In fact, in centuries past, the natives had called it "Bear Cub Lake," but Phineas did not know this.) He took off his pack and paused to drink. He smiled at the shape of this placid tarn. 

Before he put on his pack again, he bent to find a small, white rock, which he picked up and tossed into the cobalt blue. 

As he turned to walk away, a mosquito landed oh his nose, so Phineas squashed it with his hand. He then rubbed his face to be sure there were no more bits of bug gore upon it. Then, he walked away. 

A few weeks later, Phineas lay dead in a field of flowers. At first he'd felt hot; then, he had started coughing and, in his last few moments, gasping for air, he'd fallen in this field of flowers, amazed, as he was fading away, that he could smell none of them, though they surrounded his head in radiant abundance...

How could Phineas have known that, only a few hours before him, a young man who had also fled civilization, had passed that same "Bear Cub" pond, moving through this brief intersection of paths -- the Cartesian X to Phineas's Y; or that said young man had stood there, also admiring the water, and that a bug had flown into his mouth, causing the young man to spit; or that some of the young man's spittle would land on the very rock that Phineas would later pick up, with his bare hand, and throw into the pond before rubbing his face to clear way the body of the smashed mosquito?

Anyway, the last thing Phineas saw was the sky in which he saw a cloud in the shape of a bear. 

The other man hiked on to build a snug cabin in a primeval, shadowy glade next to a chuckling brook and he grew fat on salmon and venison and died in happy isolation -- instantaneously, of a heart attack -- at a very old age, completely unaware that the civilized world had destroyed itself, with weapons and political discord, decades defore... 



Friday, June 5, 2020

A Benevolent Letter From Warren Schmegiggie: CEO of Widgets-4-U, Inc.

W. Schmegiggie
Hi. I’m Warren Schmegiggie.

Here at Widgets-4-U, we are saddened by what we see going on in America today. Well, not really by what is going on, so much, but by what it is doing to our bottom line and by the fact that all the other companies are writing letters like this. So now we have to. I suppose we also should suspend sales for a day or something; maybe shift production to #blacklivesmatter T-shirts. We’ll see what the other companies do.

Anyway, we want you to know that silence makes you a racist, so we are speaking up. I know a white guy who dedicates his life to helping troubled black kids, but...NOT ONE POST. I guess we all see the truth now, eh? Dissembler. 

In short, we hire black people sometimes. And we love them. One is even a shift supervisor. 

Sure, we’ll be glad when this stuff isn’t in the news anymore and we can go back to just making money, but, for now, we are all united in the cause.

So, for God’s sake, do something. I mean, don’t, like, go anywhere if you don't feel like it... But say you are heartbroken a lot. If you can, get a stick hit and yourself on the back with it while chanting about your sins of white privlege. People like that, and it really, really helps things.

And, take my advice: Whatever is done in the protests, don’t complain; you'll dull the edge. If we learned one thing from this, it’s that the only way to defeat hate is with hate. The only way to get back at police is to burn down a Chinese restaurant. It's simple logic. If I may quote Dr. King: “Eff the police...and egg rolls, too, while I’m at it!”

And the police? Well, I'm no Roger Murtaugh ["I'm too old for this s$#t;" I love that guy!] but I have seen a few movies in my day. The best way to avoid a riot is to show up dressed for war. It's worked all this time, so why stop? Bottom line is police have been avoiding riots for years by showing up in full war gear. If it ain't broke...

What I am trying to say is we can get through this as long as the media doesn’t focus on snowflake nonsense like the peaceful teamwork of police and protesters in Camden, NJ and in Flint, Michigan. A bunch of morons walking together and being civilized to each other. Yeah, that's going to get a lot done. That's going to change things. Sure.

Anyway, one thing I know is that the only way for us to heal is to intimidate one another. So, let the tear gas fly and let the stores be looted! In the end we all will have learned who's the toughest and the toughest is always the happiest, if you ask me.

And, please, when this is all over, buy our widgets. (If I left anything out or said anything that is racist without knowing it, please don't be mad. It's hard to keep up with what is okay anymore.)

Warm Regards,
Warren Schmegiggie,
CEO of Widgets-4-U: Widgets for the Future!

Tuesday, June 2, 2020

On the George Floyd Riots, Morality, and Misrepresenting Dr. King

The only answer, from the great Fred Rogers. 
I happen to be one of those cats who believes that some some things are wrong and some things are right; that there are moral absolutes. But this would not stop me from doing some immoral things in particular circumstances. 

For instance, I believe killing another human is objectively wrong; however, if I needed to resort to deadly force to protect my family, I would. My conclusion would be that I did a wrong thing, but with justification. It doesn't make the act less wrong, but it might mitigate what consequences I should suffer for the act, both externally and internally. Regardless, I would regret that immoral act for the rest of my life, because, for me, killing is never an act of goodness, however necessary it may be.

This discussion about the riots is interesting to me; if, "interesting" is a metaphor for "heartbreaking."

The first thing we need to do is to take the Martin Luther King Jr. memes off the table. Why? Because he is universally accepted in American culture as a positive force in racial healing. What people are trying to do is to show, in the chopped memes, that even he supported rioting. Here's the meme:


In fairness, it is clear in the quotation that he is not condoning rioting, but I think that what visually illustrates the purpose of most people who post this is the bold-faced red line: "A riot is the language of the unheard." It's meant to skew the reader's focus. And some are posting that line on its own with similar intentions. It's important to understand that Dr. King is explaining riots, not condoning them. In the fuller context:
King...argues that worsening economic and social conditions that black Americans experience must be condemned as equally as riots. It is here he invokes the line: "A riot is the language of the unheard." (USA Today)
Right? King's pointing out hypocrisy. We need to see that we can't only start condemning things when they affect us. We need to condemn injustice toward our fellow humans even when it doesn't intrude upon us directly.

But Dr. King also said:
"...if every Negro in the United States stands up against non-violence, I'm going to stand up as a lone voice and say this is the wrong way!"
This is unequivocal. His words, HERE further explain that he is not in favor of rioting, but that he understands where it comes from, as we all should.

Many are saying, with more argumentative nuance, that we should not draw attention away from the injustices that African Americans suffer by condemning -- at this moment -- rioting and looting. This doesn't work for me. I mean, it works -- I get the reasoning -- but, like Dr. King, I would argue that we need to condemn both racial in justics and violence; after all, part of the protest is against violence, which is a dark irony. (I didn't hit my kids when raising them because I couldn't get past telling them hitting was wrong and then hitting them; what are they, not worth what other humans are? -- they can't hit others but they are lower than others and, so, can be hit?)

When we see immorality of any kind, we should condemn it. Hypotheticals: If a woman in raped during the riots, is it not okay to talk about it because it will make the rioters look bad? Likewise, with an old man's bodega being destroyed? A young couple's first new car being set afire?

But are we fair? Should we not also speak of police arresting journalists in alarming numbers? Of police and National Guardsmen marching down neighborhood streets, yelling "light 'em up" and shooting paint cans at people who are simply standing on their porches after curfew?

I'll grant you one thing: the dystopian horror of acts like this and then of a president moving through protest crowds under cover of rubber bullets and tear gas so that he can pose infront of a church holding a Bible he's never read is WAY more horrifying than counrty-wide, directly violent anger. So fear not: I'm not ignoring anything while taking a stance against violence.

In the end, though, where are we if we start either cheering-on or turning a blind eye from destruction and opportunistic theft? Are we really better off in a world in which anger is directed at innocent shop owners? In which whole neighborhoods are beaten into submission? I see, on local news, each morning, Philadelphia neghborhoods full of sad African American people collecting trash and pushing brooms; today, citizens in West Philadephia (for non-locals, the "Fresh Prince's" pre Bel Air neighborhood) begged for help from the mayor. I actually wept for them.

We humans need to improve. All of us. People talk about unity. We are all one human race. Yes. We are. And we are all flawed. Even when we are the parents of good kids, we tend to correct more than we praise, don't we? This is out of love, but it needs to be balanced. We should tell our kids when they are doing good things, but we often forget, because being bad is scarier than simply not being good. 

So, I get to say that I think it is wrong to smash stores up and to steal things from those smashed stores without being accused of equating that wrong to the wrong of kneeling on a man's neck until he dies. Of course, they are not equally wrong. Smacking a six-year-old in the head and taking his bike is evil, and I condemn it. I also condemn burning down a building because of injustice. The latter is way worse, but evil is evil; wrong is wrong, even if there are levels.

We keep talking about empathy: we white people need to better understand the challenges of living as an African American -- as much as it is possible, which can never be 100%. But does this dissolve the reponsibility of protesters and rioters to empathize with their neighbors whose homes they are ruining? And in the case big businesses, not so much the corporate "suits," but the thousands they employ in neighborhoods across the country?

Let's face one fact: many people in riots are acting not in protest but in the window of opportunity. They are getting a free pass to break things and to aquire things. That's not okay and that is not accomplishing what protest is for: contributing to change; it only deepens social misery.

So, you want this to stop, white people? If you really care, keep at it, in a peaceful way, after the fires stop burning. I disagree with implications of the opportunistic prancers-about, especially among my fellow whites, who will energetically defend violence and theft during the riots and who will say that we who oppose such behavior are downplaying the plight of African Americans. Once again, I understand the point. But what really downplays that plight is forgetting all about it and beccoming silent when horrific things are not in the news. I emplore the prancers: KEEP PRANCING afer this is all over and stop pulling out your hashtags and your sloganed profile pictures only when the stuff hits the fan.

A satirical "joke" I posted on Facebook the other day. Spoiler: It's not funny):
I have a joke for you. A white guy walks into a bar. He sees a report about George Floyd on the TV. He starts telling everyone in the bar that racism is bad and that they are all to blame and then he goes home drunk on his own woke-ness. He wakes up the next day and doesn’t remember where he was the night before. Thank you!
This must conclude with important emphasis: Dr. King was against all violent protest; but he conceded that the cause rioting was when the establishment ignores the injustices and turns a deaf ear to peaceful protest:
"Certain conditions continue to exist in our society, which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots."
He, himself, condemned riots, but what separates the good person from the racist (or, at least, the racially insensitive) is that balance: If you are more disgusted by the rioters than you are by the injustices that occur every day, you are truly contributing to the boiling over that causes the unheard to speak out with fists and fire and chaos.