Moby Dick was not simply a whale. He was a symbol.
I am now coming to understand the hold Donald Trump has on the 40% or possibly the 51% of the country he holds under his spell. It was all so obvious, hiding in plain site. His call for a wall coupled with his battle cry, "Make America Great Again," is simply a call to return to what things were, when white guys who stopped going to organized school after the 12th grade, at age 17 or 18 could walk down the street or take a bus across town to the plant and get a job for the next 30 years working in the plant and save enough to buy a house, could support a family and take paid vacations and retire on the company pension, as people did in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Gary, Indiana.
If you were "working class" all that slipped away forty or fifty years ago and now your kids are looking at their lives and realizing although they left high school at age 17, as their parents had, their lives will not be nearly so successful. They will live in trailers on the scruffy side of town and when they go to see the doctor she will be Indian or Pakistani or maybe even Black and when they drive their F 150 pickup along the highway, they see dark skinned coloreds driving BMW's and Mercedes, headed to the gated communities.
These white people have lost power but Mr. Trump, who is a puffy white guy promises to give it back to them, to make America White again. The reality of the moment is not important: It's the fantasy of turning back the clock, of reversing this thing called globalization, of bringing back those lunch pail days of good factory jobs, of throwing out all those dark skinned people we see among us, of going white again which animates Mr. Trump and his followers.
He looks at the reality of an America which is changing which will no longer be majority white, and the most potent symbol of that change, that shift of power, Barack Obama, and he roars: That is not America! That man is not American!
Mr. Trump, like the fabled ancient king, walks down to the shore and commands the incoming tide to stop.
Ken Burns has, in one of his most canny executions of timing, focused a new film on the story of Mr. and Mrs. Sharp, who rescued Jewish refugees, children mostly, from the devouring maw of the Third Reich. He raised the image of people who saw desperate children, terrified parents and these people hid the hunted, took risks with their own lives and their own families on behalf of the "other."
Of course, Mr. Burns knows how to tie the past to the present.
Of all the stories of the holocaust, the one which most disturbed the generation of Germans who lived in Germany and Austria during those years was the story of the people who sheltered the Jews rather than turning their backs on them, as 99% of Germans did. The stories of those sympathetic, heroic (there is no other word for it) people is memorialized at every Holocaust museum, the Christians who were not in the cross hairs but who chose to place themselves in danger.
And Burns is asking: Which type of person are you, in today's edition of this story?
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| Ken Burns: Sharps' War |
Here's today's quiz: Which home is scarier?
This is from my Hampton/Hampton Falls/Kensington, New Hampshire bike ride.
A.
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| click photo to enlarge |
B.
C. Both A and B, but for entirely different reasons.
You don't choose your heart surgeon because he's entertaining; you don't decide to go to a neurosurgeon because he makes you laugh. When it comes to people who you need to be competent, you don't care if they are nerds or boring or seem un-forthcoming about themselves.
But when it comes to a President, who carries the nuclear codes, oh, no special qualities really matter, just "authenticity." Someone who will "shake things up."
Gary Trudeau got to the problem today:
http://doonesbury.washingtonpost.com/strip
Close your eyes next time you hear Donald Trump speak and tell me you do not hear Archie Bunker talking.
"My doctor tells me I got a communications disease."
Tell me truthfully, who said that? Donald or Archie? If Donald never said it, he should have, is all I can say.
Has the Donald not objected to the whole neighborhood turning into a smelting pot? Or did he say, sweltering pot?
He has defended himself against the charge of excitement to riot, as well he should have.
He claims his testosterone levels are really excellent, the best testosterone levels of anyone who has ever been President and way better than Crooked Hillary's.
Ifso fatso.
He just can't find a receptive audience among those Black people in Flint. It was like casting pearls into wine.
The one thing he insists is that he is a red blooded male, and you know, men have waddya call, a carnival instinct. If Mr. Trump does not have that, I don't know what he has.
And he is making progress about defining his policies now. He's working on position papers, taking positions, because, as he says, "position is nine tenths of the law."
What he really can't stand is when anyone insults him. You know what they call that: Definition of character.
Signs are we may well be faced the night of November 8 with a President Trump, and we will all go to bed exhausted, depressed and wake up the next day to face the consequences.
Trying to imagine that future inevitably one looks to the past.
November 9 will likely not see an unleashing of the nasties, no Kristallnacht no bands of marauding thugs roaming the streets, burning mosques, beating up immigrants. It will likely take a little while for the Trump version of the KKK to organize, to choose targets: setting fire to Lawrence, Massachusetts where there is a concentration of Hispanic immigrants, or throwing Molotov cocktails around Dearborn, Michigan, where the Muslim population is dense.
The figure most like Mr. Trump in recent memory is Spiro Agnew, who was a wheeler/dealer from Baltimore, who became Richard Nixon's choice for Vice President and Nixon regretted it almost immediately.
Agnew had the same taunting, irreverent style as Mr. Trump, describing liberals as "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."
He became the darling of the right wing and soon after he emerged in the national spotlight, newspapers across the country got inundated with frothing antisemitic and racist mail. It was as if his victory signaled all the creepy crawlies out there to pop out of their underground shelters, but they never did start rampaging. Of course, he was only Vice President.
As it turned out, Agnew was really a two bit grifter. I don't know the story of how they finally got him, but I do know from people who knew him in Maryland, he was dirty as they come. A developer who built shopping malls told me most of the officials he had to deal with in Maryland were squeaky clean, but Agnew was simply a guy who demanded a bribe without dancing around what he was asking for. He was elected Vice President twice, but did not make it through his second term, when they finally caught up with him.
Benito Mussolini had the same braggadocio style as Mr. Trump, but he lasted a lot longer than Agnew--he ruled Italy over 21 years until they caught up with him. Things changed in Italy less explosively, but no less dramatically, as the Garden of the Finzi-Continis portrayed: The underlying hatred he fostered took a while to ferment and mature, and those who found themselves in the cross hairs of the social and political changes coming often chose to remain oblivious, until it was too late.
None of us want to be caught unaware, like the elegant, precious Finzi-Continis, but none of us can see the future. The constant among the victims, whether they lived in Ferrara, Italy or Vienna or Berlin or Amsterdam, was a conviction, a hope "this is just a passing cloud." That's the problem which Mr. Trump presents: Is he a passing cloud or a gathering storm?
Whereas Hitler had written "Mein Kampf" and it was clear where he was headed, Trump has no well delineated agenda, other than the fuzzy "Make America Great Again" and building a wall and reinstating torture for suspected terrorists.
Justices Gingsburg, Breyer and Sotomayor will not likely all die on November 9, 2016, but at 83, 78 and 62 they will likely all be replaced by Mr. Trump. Why Sotomayor? She is an insulin requiring diabetic and that means the underwriting on her longevity is severely limited.
It's hard to outline the sequence of the apocalypse.
When Reagan was elected, I thought, "Good, now those conservative idiots can fail." Every President disappoints; now it's their turn.
As liberals, we all had to endure the excesses and inanities of the liberal extremists who floated up when Lyndon Johnson came to power. Even today, in the wake of a hamstrung liberal presidency, we have to endure the ultra politically correct fools who argue for "safe spaces" at universities and who want warning labels on works of literature. Pandora's boxes abound on both sides, right and left.
But with Reagan, despite his astonishing failures: tripling the national debt, military debacles around the globe, his Hollywood marketing machine sold his 8 years in office as a Disneyland extravaganza of the golden age, with fluttering bluebirds and song.
It's hard to predict, but my bet is Mr. Trump will simply be another George W. Bush. Watching him posture and flounder and fail, may be Schadenfreude, but scant consolation.
Hillary's "deplorables" comment has been decried by media pundits as a blunder, compared to Mitt Romney's remark about the 47% of Americans who will simply never vote Republican. NPR's reporters have been saying how bad it looked for Hillary speaking to a well heeled crowd of affluent white women to denigrate Trump supporters and Mr. Trump has had a field day saying Hillary slanders hard working Americans.
Hillary's shrinking response shows she has learned nothing from Donald. When you say something outrageous and steal a few headlines, don't retreat, don't apologize: Double Down.
What I'd have loved to hear Hillary say is this: "Mr. Trump is trying to define that comment as the opening salvo in a class war. His supporters are white males with no more than high school educations, and he says I look down my nose at those people.
" Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Traditionally, those are the people who built cars on assembly lines, worked the steel mills and built the skyscrapers and the battle ships and the airplanes. Those are the core of the Democratic party.
"But as he well knows, it's not that demographic, that group I deplore. I deplore those people you see in his crowds who smile and nod and cheer when he says Muslims--and he doesn't qualify that by saying 'some Muslims'--he means all Muslims, hate America and want to destroy it. He uses that hate and bigotry to attack Mr. and Mrs. Khan who lost a son who serve fighting Islamic fundamentalists, and he says Mrs. Khan stood by her husband silently during the Convention because Muslim women are not allowed to speak in public. He gets cheers from the crowd when she says Mexican immigrants are rapists and when he says no judge of Mexican ancestry can judge him because no Mexican, even one born in Indiana can judge him. Notice what he says: You're not an American, even if you were born here, if your parents are from Mexico.
"This is a man who believes President Obama was born in Kenya and so cannot be a real American. Well, maybe he was born in Hawaii, but his father was born in Kenya, so like the judge, he cannot be a real American.
And let's not be coy here. What makes Mr. Obama illegitimate in Mr. Trumps eyes is Mr. Obama is Black. It's not that he's Kenyan or Hawaiian or any of the other things, to Mr. Trump, and most importantly to his supporters, Mr. Obama is disqualified because he is Black. And just like the judge who was born in Indiana, well he can't be a real American because his parents speak Spanish and were born in Mexico. Make America Great Again is just a dog whistle. You know the dog whistle: you use the dog whistle so only the one you want to hear it hears it. And Make America Great Again means 'Make America White Again.' And that's what Mr. Trump's most ardent supporters are hearing and that's what they're cheering for.
"Well, there will always be despots and bigots and hate mongers--nothing can stop those lunatics from existing. But the crowds who support those haters. Those are the real problems. Those are the real deplorables. And those who simply smile through those vile statements, who say, well I don't agree with everything he says, but he's honest, when he has hate dripping from his lips, those people, those deplorable people, those genteel haters, they are the real deplorables."
If she can say that, then she deserves to win. If she cannot, well, we get the leaders we deserve.
when Donald Trump launched into his cant on Crooked Hillary at a Black church in Flint and the Minister got up and cut him off with the words, "We did not invite you here to make a political speech." The Donald retreated, but the next visit to Fox News he bragged about his performance, saying the minister was a nervous mess.
Too bad the minister was not wearing a microphone, and too bad she was not more assertive. She was just a little too polite. Firm, but polite. It would have been nice to see her really launch an assault in the mode Donald launches his, and see how well he can take it. Looking at his quaking at a mild rebuke, one would think he wouldn't do well with a full blown assault.
The last time anyone challenged him full on was Megan Kelly and we all know how that turned out. Since then from Chris Cuomo to Matt Lauer, nobody has actually got in his face. His poll numbers reflect that.
