On why it isn’t possible to sound like P.G. Wodehouse and talk about Trump (a lament)

Okay, so a while back, I did a little piece on the kind of science fiction I’d like to do about the Trump administration. One of the people who bravely suffered through my turgid prose, “La Dona,” very kindly suggested that I might want to try to actually, well, write the aforesaid story...instead of just talking about writing it.

As I say, La Dona was being very kind and I deeply appreciated the encouragement. Yet, I realized, upon reflection, that there is a real problem with writing about American politics today. To wit, I have an urge to make it funny. To be precise, I want to write like the great British humorist, P.G. Wodehouse. To be even more precise, I would like my prose to sound a bit like the nasal intonations of one of his most famous characters, Bertie Wooster.

As I’m sure you know, Bertie’s a charming young Johnny of the upper class who’s nice enough...quite the dickens of a fellow...but he’s got all the brain power of your average cherry stone clam after a lobotomy. I mean, basically short on the jolly old brain cells, if you know what I mean. A bit thin in the cerebellum, as they’d say down at the Drones Club. (But, not to worry. For general sagacity and profoundity, he relies on Jeeves, his butler, who is positively dripping with the stuff. Never can tell who’ll get a big one. Brain, I mean.)

Anyway, that’s who I want to sound like while I’m doing fiction about Washington. I mean, good old Bertie is just the chap. Dead solid cinch and all that.

Except...except...then I tried to do it. I mean, I tried to write like him. And, the result? Well, the term “total, full-speed, fourteen carat debacle” drifted into the frontal lobes. With a side order of abject disaster.

Here’s the rub, as the poet chappie would say. Suppose you sat down to your high powered, fuel injected, German engineered word processor and set out to write a funny story about American politics today. Well, you could start out with the DNC being handed on a silver platter a candidate (one Bernie) who could raise billions with the twist of a nostril, and who packed ‘em at the campaign meetings like Billy Sunday on a Tuesday. Somebody bound to win, in other words.

But, then, lo and behold, the Powers That Be decide instead to throw the election to a candidate who may or may not be just ducky...personally, I’m rather keen on her....but she’s about as popular with a certain (large) class of voters as a plutonium enema and so, basically, bottom line, viz., therefore, and thus...they snatch Defeat from The Bicuspids of Victory and guarantee themselves a loss.

Boffo stuff, to be sure. But it’s been done! I mean, someone has beat us to the punch. It’s been on TV and everything.

Okay, so let’s try another approach. Let’s say that the RNC finds itself confronting a candidate so vile, so vulgar, so fascistic, and so basically ridiculous that he campaigns on a slogan of “grab ‘em by the pussy” and openly talks about walls and storm troopers. Oh, and he also brags about all the help he’s getting from our friends, the Russians.

But, rather than unite against this ranging loony tune who’s an existential threat to the nation if not the entire Western world, the GOP cheerfully says, “so long as he cuts taxes on billionaires, snuffs Obamacare, and makes the world safe for oil companies...well, that’s terrific. And what the heck if whole bunches of poor people die in the street, and Putin’s in the White House, and China takes over the Pacific and crushes our economy, so long as we get ours...”

Hysterical, to be sure. Laughable as all get out. But, again, we’re just too late. We’re coming in three lengths behind on the outside rail while everyone else is popping corks at the winner’s circle. I mean, someone else has already milked the gag for all the laughs that could be squeezed, pasteurized, and shipped to Piggly Wiggly.

Fine...

So suppose, instead, we do a story where the aforesaid Luna Tuna is now in the White House and he then proceeds to alienate America’s friends near and abroad, proves utterly ineffectual at working with Congress, communicates chiefly via tweets (which he sends while on the toilet in the early hours), talks about modifying (or scrapping) the constitution to increase his own power, terrorizes the White House staff, appoints cabinet members whose real job is to undermine the very agencies and causes they’re meant to promote, and then wraps it all up by haranguing  boy scouts and bashing trans-gendered Navy Seals and Marine Corps officers.

Yes, yes. I know. Knee slapping. Roll ‘em in the aisles. Tears of mirth, a cert, an absolute cinch and all that. But, once more into the breaches (or at least lederhosen) dear friends, ‘cause someone’s beaten us to it again. They rode up to the carousel on a Harley and made off with the old brass ring before we even got out of the gate. Danged frustrating, if you ask me.

Well, all right, if we gotta...let’s try again. This time we’ll make the White House a nightmare sitcom where the long suffering White House Press Secretary, Sean (“Melissa’s Mini-Me”) gets used like an errand boy until finally he can’t take it any more and quits when President Looney Toons hires Anthony (“Scarface”) Scarmucci,  who, in turn, launches off into an expletive laden rant about his boss, Reince (“And Repeat”) Priebus, who then gets tossed out the window a few days later...only to be joined by Scarmucci himself who gets canned after ten days, or actually, before he technically starts work ... which means he had a tenure measured in the negative numbers.

Ah...but...wait for it. You know its coming. As utterly absurd as this story may seem to you, me, and, of course, Gussie Fink-Nottle... and as silly a piece of ye olde theater of the absurd as we could wish...alas, it’s old hat and older underwear. Another wordsmith has hammered and tonged his way into the same plot ages and ages and ages ago. As in, on July 31. Or, as I write this on Wednesday, day before yesterday.

So, you see my problem. I just can’t keep up with the competition.

Ergo...sadly, alas, and regrettably, when it comes to modern politics, I’ll just have to abandon Bertie, and comic writing.

We need, you see, someone else...someone whose style...and subject matter... really matches the administration at hand.

Someone like, uh...er...

Stephen King springs to mind...

Wouldn’t you say?

Until next time, onward and upward.

LIke A Business: A Short Story

So, the other day, for no real good reason, I thought about writing a bit of science fiction about our current administration and where it would like to take us. I won’t actually write it, of course. It is beyond, I fear, my limited abilities as a writer. But, it is interesting to amuse myself with, if nothing else.

Anyway, the story revolves around the fact that one of the underlying themes of the Trump administration is that government needs to be run “like a business”—i.e., with efficiency and dispatch, avoiding waste, and making a real profit.

Of course, this idea is not restricted to Trump himself or even just his close associates (those that are left, that is, after his periodic purges), but also the whole crew of individuals who are behind him --  for example, the “dark money network” of wealthy men and women (the Koch Brothers, for example), Fox News and its Supporters, the self-described anarcho-capitalists and their ilk...the whole, in short, cadre of Right Revolutionaries who clutch their copies of Atlas Shrugged and James Buchanan, and dream of a world where liberals and socialists are kept in cages, and billionaires are properly recognized as the only true children of God.

So, for the moment, let’s say they succeed in their goals. What sort of government would they construct? Well, I think you would have the Constitution revised, or wholly replaced, so that the President is more like a corporate CEO, his/her powers no longer so very limited by what Trump has famously called the “archaic” nature of our system. Then, Congress would be supplanted by something like a board of directors whose purpose would not be to legislate but rather to make certain the CEO remained efficient and effective, and that share-holder value was increased on a daily basis.

And the Supreme Court? Well, it is hard for me to see what role that institution would have in this new, improved, business-oriented world. It would get in the way, you see, of effective action. But, maybe, it could be replaced by a sort of central accounting office, a new body whose purpose would be to limit unnecessary expenditure.

The independent press, meanwhile, would cease to exist—replaced by some sort of Department of Public Relations. Social services would be drastically cut or eliminated entirely. The police and the military would still exist and, indeed, be enlarged...though, their purpose would subtly change. The former would no longer be quite so concerned with defending the public and would be rather more interested in keeping that public in line. The latter would be less focused on national defense, and more on expanding the overseas power of financial interests...corporations, banks, and so on.

And even they, the police and the military, would find their autonomy gradually eroded, and their functions slowly privatized. The Navy Seal would be replaced by the Black Water mercenary.

Okay, so that’s the setting. Where do we go from there? Where does the story go?

Well, in it, there is a new dawn in America...an age when James Buchanan’s “economic liberty” trumps (no pun intended) all other kinds of freedom. All the organs of government (those few that still exist) adopt a sound business model.

And, for a time, it works. One national CEO is gracefully replaced by another, and then a third. There is an economic boom (at least for some people) as regulation is itself regulated to the scrap heap of history.

But, then, gradually...very, very gradually...strains and stresses appear. For, of course, governments are not businesses. The art of governing is not identical to that of business management. The possession of an MBA does not make you an expert in everything.

Privatized schools and universities... where “education is a business like any other”... fail to genuinely educate their charges. The “shareholders” and “customers” ...the wealthy and the powerful...seek more profitable investments elsewhere (in nations that still have a tax-supported infrastructure). The “employees”...everyone else...grow ever more restive and dissatisfied.

And finally, there is a disaster. There is some sort of crisis—an outbreak of plague which the disbanded CDC can no longer oppose, an excess of corruption on Wall Street which the SEC was not there to forestall, a war...with a nation which still believes in nationalism and the loyalty (or otherwise) of whose military is not up for sale.

And the whole Grand Prix down Fifth Avenue comes roughly to a halt.

How does my little story end? I think it concludes with the national CEO, and the Board of Directors, and the other members of our Power Elite, confronting this debacle...and suddenly realizing that (by God!) there is, in particular, one way in which government is most assuredly not like a business.

To wit, in business, failure...even catastrophic failure...is an option. You declare bankruptcy, the stockholders eat the cost, and the chief officers retire to Caribbean islands with their “performance bonuses.”

However, in government, when there is an invading army at your gates, or an insurrection at your door... consequences are swift, and fierce, and very often, fatal.

But...still...

As I say, this is only my fiction. And I have already revealed that I am not a talented writer. I lack the skill to write the piece. So we will simply leave it there.

Though, maybe, perhaps...some other, more potent author than I will adopt this tale, and tell it.

With details that are most concrete. And vital. And critics will applaud its refreshing, if distressing, brutality.

Almost as good as American Psycho, or even Blood Meridian.


~mjt

The Secret Life of Stephen Bannon

The other day, I saw yet another article about the books you need to read to understand Stephen Bannon, the current White House’s ideologist-in-chief and resident Jabba The Hut impressionist. Specifically, the piece was an excerpt from an upcoming book by Joshua Green, and ran under the title “Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steven Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia.” I saw it in the online version of Vanity Fair.

In the excerpt, the author, Joshua Green, makes the compelling argument that Bannon may be considered a radical traditionalist, and that his thinking can be traced back through authoritarian political Catholicism, through the Italian national-racialist, Julius Evola (1898–1974), and finally to “René Guénon, an early-20th-​­century French occultist and metaphysician who was raised a Roman Catholic, practiced Freemasonry, and later became a Sufi Muslim who observed the Shari.”

I’d heard of Evola, but Guénon (1886–1951) was completely new to me. According to Green, Guénon, like Evola, believed the West has been sickened by materialism and modernism. Thus, we need to return to a purer, more simple age, when spirituality was a living thing among us.

I rather enjoyed Mr. Green’s writing. It was informative and interesting. But, it struck me that the excerpt is actually part of a larger genre—that is, texts which try to figure out Bannon by looking at his reading. I’ve seen a good many such pieces in the last few months. In February, Neil Howe wrote in the Washington Post, “Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book.” Howe says that Bannon is “enthralled” by The Fourth Turning, the book Howe wrote along with the late William Stauss proposing that American history runs in roughly 80-year cycles spanning prosperity and crisis, with us very much due for a crisis in the near future.

Meanwhile, last March in the Huffington Post, Paul Blumenthal  and J.M. Rieger, say that you can’t make sense of Bannon without reading The Camp Of The Saints by Jean Raspail. This, they say, is key to understanding Bannon’s conception of race. It is a dystopian tale in which Europe (and white people) are overwhelmed by hordes of economic migrants from the Third World.

And, I could go on, naming article after article. I’m sure, too, that such works are useful things, and that they really do help us understand what is happening in Washington, and the world, at this particular moment. After all, if we are to understand and oppose our adversaries, it is necessary to get into their heads...know what they are thinking, what ideas they hold dear, and what ideologies. Given that Bannon seems to be the closest thing to an official ideologist that the Trump cabal has, it is therefore important to understand him and his intellectual underpinnings.

Still...

Sometimes I wonder if all of that is quite as useful as we think. People on the Left tend to be....not exactly bookish, but at least reflective and self-aware. We tend to take ideas seriously. So, we assume that other people do so as well.

However, in the case of Bannon...or, rather, in the case of Trump’s inner circle...

Consider the Great White Shark. From one perspective, it could be considered the supremely philosophical beast. It is perfectly attuned to its world, it knows neither guilt nor shame, it suffers not from self-doubt, it never feels ennui, is never neurotic or maladjusted...always lives life to the fullest, always seizes the day.

Yet, were it somehow possible to enter its brain, I doubt you would find there thoughts of Nietzsche or Adorno...or even of Evola and Guénon...but something rather less. Say, something more like elemental passions—hunger, fear, rage, the siren scent of blood in the water.

I draw no parallels. However, should you wish to do so, you would have my truest encouragement and fullest consent.


Addendum

In the piece above, I (entirely unoriginally) use the metaphor of the shark. It’s amazing how much things have changed with that particular animal. When I was young, it was regarded as the quintessential apex predator, to be feared and hated and perhaps destroyed. Now, forty-something years on, the shark is very much under siege. Overfishing and shark fin soup have begun to seriously endanger its populations and men and women of good will are now working to protect them.
But, of course, “good will” is not a term I would use for the Trump administration. Which worries me.
I wonder, do they...those genuine apex predators, those suits and ties at the top...have any idea what they’re doing? And how grim and sad and empty a world it would be, should we not learn to practice restraint?

---

Sources:

“Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia,” an excerpt from Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green . Vanity Fair. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/07/the-strange-origins-of-steve-bannons-nationalist-fantasia

“Where did Steve Bannon get his worldview? From my book,” Neil Howe, The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/where-did-steve-bannon-get-his-worldview-from-my-book/2017/02/24/16937f38-f84a-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html?utm_term=.f1c725a4baf5

“This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” by Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger. Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03


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An Alternative History of Sean Spicer

So, like everyone else in the populated universe, I’ve watched with considerable fascination the departure of Sean Spicer from his sublimely agonizing role as White House spokesperson these past few days. I gather, from what I read on the web, that he left as he came in—with a final snarl at the press he was supposed to be wooing.

It is hard to have sympathy for him, of course. He knew the job was going to be horrible when he took it. And he clearly lacked some of the fundamental skills required to be a PR person. Likability, being one of them. Yet, in spite of that, I (like, I’d guess, a lot of people) still found something sad in his departure, and even felt a little sorry for him. His task was, after all, impossible—to make the rantings of our current commander in chief something like a coherent statement.

So it is that I like to envision a different future for him. Yes, I know it will not happen. I know it is impossible. Yet...what a wonderful thing it would be for him, and for us, if rather then slink off in a sulk to seek that final and total obscurity which is the normal lot for such men, he had instead left the White House, hailed a cab, and gone directly to the offices of the Washington Post. And that, once there, he’d sung like a canary. Or, rather, not a canary, but like the entire, combined cast of Wagner’s Ring cycle, from Wotan to Fafner to Brünnhilde and back again, complete with thunder, hail, and gargling Gibichungs...

And, after that...he’d caught a shuttle north and shown up, unannounced, at the offices of SNL, with a bouquet of roses for Melissa McCarthy, and, for the writers and producers, an offer of one free episode, with himself as a reporter, and her, as himself, in that former, sadder, and more torturous role.


*

BTW, I read today that in his first post-resignation interview, Mr. Spicer said he rather enjoyed Ms. McCarthy’s impression of him, though sometimes she went “too far.”

So, who is to say? Maybe the above scenario is not completely impossible. Merely almost so.

And, for him at least, therefore all the more sad. For you see, revenge may or may not be living well. But it can certainly be found in a guest shot, and making your choicest enemies appear the most exquisite of all possible idiots.

Download these and see if they work

Hi, Everyone,

So I am trying out something new. I've started playing around with visual novels written in the Ren'Py language.

I have just finished my very first such effort, a witty little piece (and I mean little) called "The Luminiferous Aether."

So, could you do me a favor?

Below you'll find the thing set up for either a PC or a Mac. The files are hosted on dropbox.

Could you download the one that you can use and then tell me if works on your system. (And it may not, alas. Still figuring this all out.)

These are compressed files so you should be able to just download 'em and open 'em.

Also, I've put more detailed instructions on downloading and running the game on dropbox as well. It is a pdf, so you should be able to read it on any system.

A thousand thanx in advance.

Anyway, here's the links to the game files:

For Macs

For PCs

And here's the link to the pdf of instructions:

Instructions


cheers
mjt

My parents, my nation

A curiously symbolic day.

Today, I closed down the two remaining bank accounts that had been in my parents’ name. There wasn’t much in them, actually. We had transferred the bulk of the funds long before. But we had to keep those accounts open to deal with a few outstanding expenses, and a few incoming checks, that were in their names.

I realized that...well, this is hard to explain...but somehow, it was the final act for them. It was the last of their business. It was the moment that they were genuinely gone. They exist no longer now even as a legal fiction...as names on pre-printed checks.

It makes me sad, of course. Though, also, it is fitting, for they were of the “greatest generation.” They were not old enough to fight in World War II, but they participated in it on the home front. And, afterwards, my father served on shipboard during the Korean conflict. Then, both of them were involved in that great labor which made America the wealthiest nation in the world.

And now they’re gone.

Gone on the very same day the Electoral College confirmed Donald Trump in his presidency. Gone, indeed, on the same day that Liberalism died in America, and the New  Deal was finally euthanized by billionaires and plutocrats. Gone on the day that so many of the things which they valued and fought for...came to an end.

And I think it is in fact an end. A transition. Today, we ended our great experiment with the Enlightenment tradition. Perhaps, forever. Or, if we are lucky, then maybe we, as a culture and a nation, may some day return to democracy, and reason, and science, and compassion. But I very much fear it will not be as the same nation we were before...not the United States we knew.

And I fear, too, that that future nation, that coming America, whatever it is called, ...will not be quite so great nor entirely so wise as the one constructed by people like my parents...built by their labors...and then abandoned with such ease and eagerness...by  those who are truly, and fundamentally unworthy...

To be their heirs.

In memoriam...Mom and Dad.

Nancy Pelosi...if only you were joking

Okay, is it just me, or is this really scary?

Apparently, newly returned House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was on Face The Nation the other day. And, also apparently, she indicated that she saw no reason for the Democratic Party to do anything differently. She is quoted, at least in the transcript, as saying, “Well, I don’t think that people want a new direction.”

In a word, whoa.

We are sitting here after one of the greatest defeats in our history as a party and a movement, with an out-and-out fascist about to take over the government, with a solidly red House and Senate, with a Supreme Court that is certain to be packed with hyperconservative fanatics...and she doesn’t feel some sense of urgency? Some sense of a need for change?

And, about those people who “don’t want a new direction.” She says this after millions of voters supported Bernie Sanders. Voters who are still fuming about what they saw as a rigged primary? She doesn’t include such people in her calculations? She chooses to ignore them? So, she saying, in other words, that those “people who don’t want a new direction,” are the people she knows, and who therefore matter.  The rest of us...we don’t.

I am at a loss to explain this remarkable, almost chilling quote of hers. But a friend of mine, Rick, may have come up with the proper interpretation of her position. I posted an article about Pelosi’s quote to Facebook with the despairing comment, “Oh, F*cking H*ll.” And Rick replied with something sage. He quoted Harry Reid, a man of considerable wisdom, and then noted that Pelosi, and the scores of DNC mandarins like her, have no particular reason to want change...or to see or hear those who do.

After all, Rick went on, they... Pelosi and her tribe...will not lose their jobs. They will not lose their health care. They will be warm in winter and air conditioned in summer. They will remain members of the American power elite. Even under Trump.

And so, he concluded, they really don’t have much motivation to do anything different. Or even, particularly, to oppose Trump.

Is my friend right? Well, it would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

Which is a terrifying thing, indeed.

The Professor Who Wasn’t There

 A brief meditation on a professor who really wasn't there at all.

https://vimeo.com/169623455

My videos

So I haven't been here in a while. Just haven't had the time.

But...I guess I should start up again. Over the new few days, I'll be posting links to all my most recent video experiments.

Stay tuned :-)

What a nightmare!

Haven't been here in a bit. But I felt the need to be so now...

This election?

What a nightmare.

The Smartest Kid In School

A brief meditation on a young and gifted academic who was, alas, so obsessed with being the most intelligent person in any room that she became, in the end, very much the fool.

The Sad Professor

Submitted for your approval, a professor who was in agony...because of his own narcissism.

The future belongs to her

A little meditation on a extremely annoying theorist I once met in passing...who was very sure that the future belonged to her.

Note To The 1%: The Alternative

Note to the rich and powerful, here are your options...

Choose carefully.

On The Morning Of The Coronation

I woke up this morning to find that Hillary Clinton had won not only the primary in California but also in several other states, including the one in which I live, New Mexico. As a good Bernie supporter, this disappointed me. But I can live with it, so long as there is not a Trump presidency in November.

What does disappoint me, however, and genuinely concerns me, is the media coverage so far. I don’t just mean the failure of the major news networks to notice the Sanders campaign for, like, ever. We’ve known all along that was happening—the vast crowds at Bernie rallies that somehow didn’t get televised, the primary victories that somehow were reported as defeats, and on and on and on.

What I do mean is that reading and watching the news this morning I was struck by the extraordinary uniformity of tone in the reportage. Commentator after commentator, news outlet after outlet, proclaimed that Clinton’s victory was total, and more, and that we should all be terribly proud of her, for it was “historic”—the first time a female candidate had gotten this close to the White House.

And if there was any notice at all paid to the Sanders campaign, it was to chide the man himself, and his supporters, for not doing the graceful thing and bowing out now. In fact, in several pieces I saw on the web, Sanders was portrayed as a rather mean old man, too stubborn to know that it was all over. And his followers? Infantile, entitled, and maybe even potentially violent. Oh, and via the marvelously effective but vaguely defined term, “Bernie Bros,” doubtlessly sexist as well.

Now, I’m going to skip over the issue of whether or not these interpretations of events are correct. I think they’re not. I think, in fact, that they’re so wrong as to be laughable. I want to focus instead on the reporting itself. It is stunning, genuinely stunning, to note just how universal these attitudes are in the media. Except on the odd fringe outlet, like the marvelous “Young Turks” Web-news service, you simply don’t see an alternative to this particular narrative.

It is so consistent, indeed, that it seems…let’s be blunt… a bit scripted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not saying that everyone in the national media is in on a secret plot to throttle the Sanders campaign and install Hillary in the White House. But, still this whole thing just feels creepy. There is something odd about so many people in positions of authority being on the same page at the same time, and reading in exactly the same tone of voice.

At the very least you have to suspect there is some groupthink going on here—that the pundits are talking way too much to one another, and not nearly enough to us unwashed masses outside the Beltway, Manhattan, and L.A.

And at the very most…well, there are only six major communications corporations in the country right now. Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, Viacom, and General Electric (NBC) own pretty much everything. I believe the term is “oligopoly,” which sounds distressingly close to “oligarchy.”

Either way, groupthink or worse, I’m worried. A democracy does not work without the free flow of information…and without a news media that actually reports something like news.

Though, there is a small bright spot in all this. To wit, this has been an instructive day for me. And maybe for us all.

Specifically, if this primary has proved one thing, it is that our electoral system is in deep trouble, and has strayed far from the basic principles of democracy.

And an excellent first step to fixing that would be to break up the media oligopoly that controls the news…and with that oligopoly, the insularity of media people it has bred.

Because the alternative would be rather horrible, with the great Fourth Estate transformed into…nothing. Merely the outlet of whatever shared conception (real or illusion) which the Great Powers have decreed to be, in spite of all evidence…

The Truth.

Judged

I am not exactly innocent, but there is a reasonable doubt of guilt.

Conjectural Demons

In which I meditate on the uselessness of many fears and most worries...

Revenge

A brief meditation on the fact that revenge may be sweet...but it is often (alas) not cost effective.

A word of explanation to the Republican National Committee

So, the other day, I read that the Republican National Committee, and the Republican establishment in general, just couldn't understand why Trump...a radical populist demagogue who openly employs quasi-fascist rhetoric...could possibly have become their party's front runner.

Shocked, they were, they said, just shocked...and utterly mystified.

I therefore did this little video to, shall we shall, explain things to them.

https://vimeo.com/166115668

A meditation on something dread-full...but meaningless

Today I saw an interesting thing. There was an article on the web…actually a personal essay. It was written by an extremely earnest young individual and published (as I recall) by a left of center website.

But what intrigued me was the topic. The author was a white woman, intensely opposed to the patriarchy and the system As It Is. Which is quite understandable and, indeed, in my opinion, praiseworthy. Even as a white, middle-class, middle-aged male, I can see that.

But, where the story gets complicated is in her topic. She had written what amounted to a mea culpa…because of her hair.

She had, it seemed, dreads—dreadlocks, I mean. She had adopted this style as a means of advertising her opposition to the white patriarchy in all its manifestations.

Okay, fine. I’m not particular fond of dreads on us white people. I think they look kind of ridiculous. But it absolutely none of my business how people want to their wear their own hair.

But, the woman wrote…and wrote with what I think was real anguish...she realized that her adoption of the hair style was “cultural appropriation,” that it signified her own white privilege, and that she should be truly ashamed of herself. As an act of contrition, she then promptly snipped off her un-curly locks.
I came away from the story just a bit astonished. Because, well, bluntly, it is beyond what good or bad was done here.

I mean, honestly, exactly what real, honest-to-God, actual harm did her dreads do anyone or anything? Did they increase the probability of a young black man getting shot at random traffic stop? No, probably not. Those odds are pretty damn high as it is.  Okay, so did they cause more young women of color or otherwise to be raped and killed in their own neighborhoods? Again, no. That happens all too often, neither in spite nor because of anyone’s haircut.  So…let’s cut to the chase. Did her dreads mean that there were more drone strikes in Iraq, more innocent people blown to shreds in the Middle East, more people of color beaten to death in the backs of police vans…more wars or destruction or death or oppression?

Answer? No, no, no, and, for a change, no.

Okay, let’s play it back the other way. The author cut her hair. Did that do any good? I mean, real, material, physical good that you could see, feel, or measure? Did it reduce poverty in America? Did it feed hungry children in the streets? Did it put any serial killers, sadists, thugs, child abusers, terrorists, KKK members…or International Bankers…in jail?

Uh…no.

Very, very honestly, I am not sure that anything did happen here. I feel that it is complete non-event. Maybe it made the author feel better, which is fine. Maybe a few of acquaintances were no longer offended by her act of cultural appropriation…which is a good thing, I suppose. But, again, it seems a little irrelevant to the world at large.

Yet, clearly, this was an issue…for the author, and perhaps for the acquaintances I mentioned. And that concerns me.

The reason? If you really want something to be concerned about, if you want an issue, open your newspaper. Or turn on the computer. There’s lots to pick from, much of it perfectly horrible. In my own city paper, this morning, the headline article refers to a child, a Native American girl of just 11 years, who was abducted and killed by a stranger. They found her body on the mesa. The good news, if there can possibly be any, is that think they’ve caught the man who did it. (He won’t last long in prison, I suspect.)

Or, if that’s not to your taste, look over to the right side of the paper. We have news of Donald Trump’s more or less total victory in the GOP primaries. It is now pretty certain that he will be the candidate. That is a terrifying thing. I am one of those who believe that a Trump presidency could spell the end of the nation as we know it. But, then, none of the other Republicans were much less of a threat. (Can you genuinely envision a Ted Cruz in the White House? Or any of the puppets of the Koch Brothers?)

Still not enough? Okay, let’s flip open the paper. On the next few pages we have shootings and killings; stories on the increasingly bloody wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan; refugees turned back or beaten in Europe, or drowned off its shores; a feature on increasingly severe weather events, and the global warming which may make parts of the Middle East and North Africa uninhabitable before the end of the century; job losses and factories closing everywhere as the Neoliberal, Neo-Managerial, Post-Industrial Economy completes its disembowelment of the world…

There is, in short, not a place on the planet where you couldn’t find something…something real, something tangible, a genuine threat to life, limb, and liberty…to be concerned about.

In comparison to that, hair…or “cultural appropriation,” whatever the hell that really means…simply doesn’t cut it. No pun intended. It is, at best, irrelevant. At worst, it is a distraction from the real problems that we face as a civilization…from, in fact, the things which could result in our demise as a species.

That’s why this story of the author and her hair worries me. I don’t mean to focus on this one woman, or her essay. I don’t mean to personally rebuke her or discount her concerns. But, I have seen too much of this kind of thinking among the intellectuals, academics, activists, and others who should be at the cutting edge of social change, who should be the ones leading the charge, who should be fighting for inclusion, liberation, the end of oppression in all its myriad forms…

Yet, instead, they have focused on symbols rather than facts, on the abstract rather than the actual. Which means, in material terms, in terms of measurable good or bad, they might as well have never existed at all.

So, I beg you… all of you…idealists and activists and intellectuals…

For God’s sake, forget the hair, forget the “cultural appropriation,” forget the relentless hunt for slightest ideological imperfections in yourself and others… even, yes, for now (if not forever), forgive and forget the occasional “micro-aggressions” and insensitivities of even clueless white males like myself (well-meaning, but so dreadfully unaware of our privilege)…

And see the world as it really is…where they are much greater, much more dangerous dragons to oppose… far more deadly than dreads… even more perilous than men like me. Because dreads can be cut. I can be ignored.

But the deaths of children, of hope, of life…

Such things are horribly, terribly, unforgivably eternal.