The title to this post may surprise long time readers of this blog, but as repugnant as Donald Trump is, in his coy pitch to White Supremacists, asserting that dark skinned people from "shit hole countries" are invading across the Southern border, infesting, and infecting the pure blood of our nation, and despite his habit of stating as fact things he's "heard people say," like the wild fires in California are the fault of the liberal Democrats, and despite his willfulness in appointing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, whose worm infected brain drives him to condemn vaccines, there are some things Trump stumbles toward which I find something of a relief.
One is the demolition of "Diversity, Equity, Inclusion" thing. Reading the testimony of a professor of engineering who applied for a job at UCLA and was asked to write an essay about how he would support the ideal of diversity, equity and inclusion in his engineering class, I thought. Oh, this has gone way too far.
I like the idea of a diversity of opinions and experience in a classroom or at work, but being Black or American Indian is not a merit, and if we care about putting people into medical school on the basis of merit, then it shouldn't matter if we wind up with a class of 100% Asian Americans.
The problem, of course, is "merit" is such a slippery thing. It turns out you don't need to be a genius to be a physician or a surgeon--you need to be obsessive compulsive and hard working, but you don't have to be able to solve differential equations, be an ace at calculus or physics. There are way more people with enough intelligence to become good physicians than there are spots in medical school, so the real differentiation by merit comes down to how much you want it and how hard you are willing to work in your late teens and twenties to win a spot.
But having a Black or a White face is no more relevant than having blue eyes or straight hair.
Meritocracy is a wonderful idea, but, in practice, it's a thorny knot, because first you have to know what "good" is and that is almost always a problem.
Tom Brady was not recognized as having merit.
People who audition behind a screen to be selected for the orchestra make the cut on merit, but there are precious few lines of work with that pure a meritocracy.
And DEI is an abnegation of meritocracy. And Trump, in his rambling, chaotic and vapid way mumbles about wanting to go back to meritocracy and rejecting DEI and he's not wrong there.
And then there is the famous Trumpian cant about sending your son off to school and having him come home a girl. And he rasps on about how this has happened, or maybe just could happen, but to Trump it's all the same, because you know, on some level, he doesn't really believe anything he is saying. It's all just something he's heard that caught his short attention.
But he has absorbed enough from the goons around him to know he can sell, "There's only two genders" to the crowd, and he knows he won the election, at least partly, because he pushed that button. And it was a button which was so misunderstood by "the woke crowd." Whatever that may be.
Let me make clear, I think every patient who has gender dysphoria should be treated kindly, with respect and sympathy, but I have grave misgivings about "Transgender Clinics," as they are currently constituted, and I'm with Dave Chappelle when he says, "I support anyone's right to be who they want to be. My question is: to what extent do I have to participate in your self-image?"
The whole transgender issue has been an area where free and open discussion has been shut down even at scientific meetings and in some medical schools, where "gender confirming therapy" has become a matter of faith and any objections to the approach has been shouted down. Democrats, who once were the champions of free and open discussion, who were diligent about allowing for contrary but unpopular views to be fully examined and expressed, jettisoned those values and became guardians of orthodoxy, and intolerant of dissent.
 |
| Competing as a Woman after a Male Puberty |
Trump has often been compared to Hitler, and I can see why, but having read Mein Kampf and watched enough History Channel, I think it's not really an apt comparison. Trump is simply not an ideologue. He could never have written Mein Kampf, or any book, actually, on his own. He is simply a business guy who doesn't really get abstraction.
His knowledge of almost anything is simply superficial and he really has no deeply held convictions--he's entirely given over to the pursuit of his own pleasure, which entails feeling he has power and is potent.
He is happy to surround himself with Blacks and Hispanics, as long as they kiss his ring. So he dog whistles racists, and he's happy to have them on his side, and he pardons White Supremacists, like the Proud Boys, but you never get the feeling he actually cares much about race, beyond how he can use it to his own benefit.
He has been compared to Don Corleone, the Godfather, but the Godfather had a code, a sense of where to draw the line and of morality: He insisted on Johnny Fontane's spending time with his family, and he would not get into the drug market, thinking prostitution and gambling were victimless crimes, less morally fraught. Trump would never make those calculations; he is quite open about what matters to him: how to make more money for himself.
In that, he is like Shaw's Undershaft of "Major Barbara," the man who has become fabulously wealthy making dynamite. bombs and armaments--he doesn't care about what harm his business does; he is indifferent to the fact his bombs kill babies--He says the first and only thing for a human being to care about is to not be poor. That is his creed.
Trump is not religious. He doesn't quote scripture. He doesn't read the Bible, but he'll sell you one. And that's funny, too. He'll sell you steaks or bit coins or a college diploma, really, anything.
He's not really a President, he's a marketing machine.
He doesn't know much, if anything about the Constitution and thinks all he has to do to overturn the 14th amendment and it's rule that if you are born on American soil, you are automatically a citizen is to say he doesn't like that. The man who would be king. It's such fun. He heard some people say birthright citizenship is BAD and he's going to void that. Dred Scott, the 14th amendment, he's never hear of either. He just knows what sounds right to him.
But people love that. They buy his golden tennis shoes. They know World Wrestling is not real, but they love the antics, and the personalities, and he comes right out of that world of make believe, where everyone knows the game is rigged but they love the show.
Watch World Wrestling sometimes and you'll get a true appreciation of the world Trump lives in and creates for his fans. Sheer escapism. Doesn't work so well when you have real problem to solve, like a virus which is ripping through a susceptible population on it's way to killing 3 million Americans. Then you need people who deal in the real world, in science and technology and engineering. But until that happens, Trump is your man.
Trump called John McCain a loser for having been captured. Doesn't matter McCain got shot out of the sky, endured years of abuse, major injuries "in the service of his country." He got shot down and captured. He's a loser, as far as Trump is concerned.
It took some courage, or some would say "gall" to go down that line, but he did and it worked for him.
What Trump was saying was clear enough to his fans: "Serving your country" is a scam; it's what you say when you are trying to dress up your desire to have a career, to play war and to sound noble. But that is not a thing with Trump. He's saying all that is garbage. No politician I can remember would ever go after "war heroes" for fear of bringing righteous sanctimony down upon his campaign. But it worked wonderfully well for him. Made him look tough, and bold and honest and different.
He's more like the mafia boss: You don't serve your country. You fight for yourself, and possibly for your family, to get richer. Everyone else is just losers.
He thinks soldiers are losers, too, because the best they can be is hired mercenaries, and he says it's fine for Presidents to kill people, that Presidents have done this all the time.
Tom Clancy, the author of "Hunt for Red October" dissed Congressman because they only made a six figure salary and he was making millions with his novels, so he had no respect for those bottom feeding Congressmen. The measure of a man is his dollar worth.
Hearing that cynicism applied by Trump to the Presidency is refreshing. Presidents kill people, like mafia dons. They issue a kill order and a drone kills the target and maybe some innocent civilians. It's what we do as Presidents. We are tough guys. You don't have to love us, but you have to respect us.
Woodrow Wilson posed as a saint, and every American high school student learns about his courageous but doomed campaign to unite the world in a League of Nations, when in fact, he expunged all colored folks from the federal government, found the notion of women voting abhorrent, presided over a nation where people were thrown into prison for the simple act of speaking out against the draft for WWI, and not even speaking, but simply pamphlet-erring.
 |
| What's Wrong With This Picture? |
That famous phrase from Oliver Wendel Holmes that freedom of speech is not absolute, that falsely crying "Fire!" in a crowded theater presents a "clear and present danger" was in a case where some poor schmuck named Schenck had printed up leaflets--in Yiddish!-- opposing the WWI draft and the Court sent him to prison for 10 years. That was the country Woodrow Wilson gave us.
People are dismayed because the American electorate gave us Trump, but the American electorate has a long history of being nasty, intolerant and spiteful and giving us real terrible people for President.
Emma Goldman was imprisoned and deported for opposing conscription. Her great crime was to speak freely for sexual freedom, women's rights, workers' rights, and against violent authoritarianism and against the First World War, a war where a bayonet was weapon with a worker on either end. That was punished by the American voter who put in office authoritarians and who loved to talk about glory and serving one's country.
Teddy Roosevelt said that allowing non whites to immigrate to the US was "racial suicide" and although he was out of power, he tried with all his might to get America into World War I, and he wanted to be commissioned to lead another regiment into the fight, so he could recreate his famous charge up San Juan Hill. And when he was told this war was going to be fought with tanks and nerve gas and he was too old, he pushed his son into volunteering for glorious combat, and his son was promptly killed. He endorsed the Spanish American War and the acquisition of an American Empire. Law did not matter. Power mattered. And the American public loved him for that.
Teddy, you must always remember, a woman who knew him well once said, is always going to be six years old.
And that is what Trump is, really. He's a child. A case study of arrested development. At best he's twelve years old.
He's a goof who expostulates at a press conference that he's got this great idea about injecting bleach in your veins to cure COVID, when he's got Tony Fauci on stage; Fauci who'd been working with serious folks to launch a vaccine that actually works and will not harm people.
He thinks he can make a hurricane change course with a magic marker, or maybe an atom bomb. Funny, right?
He loves the idea of tariffs but he doesn't know why.
Clearly, the reason he wants to slap Canada has nothing to do with the legions of immigrants flooding across the Canadian border, or with Fentanyl.
The Canadians are mystified why he would want to alienate them. They are America's biggest trading partner. How would slapping a 25% tariff on Canadian goods help America?
And why would you want to hurt your biggest trading partner?
Because of Fentanyl? Not likely.
Because we have a trade deficit with Canada?
What's wrong with that?
And besides the deficit is only because of all the oil we buy from Canada; otherwise we have a surplus. And we wanted that Canadian oil so we wouldn't have to depend on Iranian and Saudi oil, but now Canada is the bad guy?
Makes no sense. Doesn't have to. But it's FUN, isn't it?
Doesn't have to make sense. He just growls about wanting to make Canada an American state.
It's funny, right?
And he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico and to acquire Greenland.
Of course, it's not Trump, as we all hear. It's the people who voted for Trump. But, you know, the more history you read--try Emma Goldman's "Living My Life," or Daniel Okrent's, "The Guarded Gate,"--the more you realize: "This America, man."
We've always been like this.
The real aberration was Obama, not Trump.
Trump's just so looney, it's impossible to take him seriously.
It's not just a matter of taking him literally. You can't take him seriously or literally.
He's just too much of a flake.
He's a sixties hippie aged in a blue suit and a long red tie. He's all about what's happening and where's the best stuff? He's a World Wrestling Association hero.
 |
| Trump World |
If he didn't have the nuclear codes, it would be fun to watch.
