11 III 1017: The Din of Dinner

A kind friend invited us to have dinner recently at an upscale restaurant. The food was good, the service acceptable, the ambience purgatorial. We were seated in a dining room under a Maginotesque concrete vault that echoed and augmented the ear-splitting roar of the semi-intoxicated guests at the nearby bar and surrounding tables. Alas, it has been my sad experience that there is more peace and quiet conducive to conversation in fast food restaurants than in most clip-joints. Why is this, I wonder? Haven’t the upper-crust restaurateurs the prudence to employ an acoustical engineer to optimize their premises for civilized dining? Or could it be that these venues are riotous by design?

I have observed that my fellow American cannot be sure they are having a good time unless surrounded by noise that numbs the mind and prevents truly social conversation. For instance: in the city park across the street, every fun event is heralded and accompanied by obstreperous music from loud speakers, gyrating, dissonant music that accompanies singing that is a series of wails and shrieks. Or, at the ball park, the silence and tension between plays that make baseball the queen of sports are a thing of the past, that contemplative space now being filled by thunderous music or vulgar announcements. I watch the people in attendance there and see that most of them cannot shut up and pay attention to the game, but are busy talking, no, shouting to one another over the din of the music and the shouted communications of people who surround them.

Contemporary society has, I think, a horror ritus, sc., a horror of formality, and must diffuse any hint of formality with a barrage of first names and banal folksy humor. Similarly, contemporary society has a horror silentii, a horror of silence, and must prevent or expel silence with anesthetic pop-culture music and bellowed pop-culture prattle.

10 III 2017: Trumperbund rallies

The news has reported from a recent meeting at the White House that the President is going to bring intense pressure to bear on Congress to support Trump-Ryan Care:

“Trump said he will have football stadium events in states where he won by 10-12 points and he is going to dare people to vote against him,” a source at the meeting said.

He wants to hold football stadium events, mass celebrations of mindlessness, pep rallies where he can work up his fans and bask in their adulation? Haven’t we seen this sort of thing before?

8 III 2017: Trump a Russian saboteur?

My associate Massimo is excitable and too quick to draw conclusions. For example, he maintained that the Bush administration was responsible for 9/11 because (cui bono?) they benefitted from it more than anyone. Now he is wondering if Trump is a Russian plant, imbedded in the American government to undermine and if possible destroy the United States. He thinks that the Russians have something on Trump. Not the prostitutes and pee-pee business; there’s no handle for blackmail there since lots of playboys do that sort of thing. Rather, Massimo believes the answer might be found in the Trump income tax records. Has collaboration with Russian capital saved Trump from financial embarrassment or even collapse? Did the immensely wealthy Putin pick up some of Trump’s debts? Has Trump invested in lucrative and semi-legal Russian enterprises?

But Massimo’s surmise that Trump may be under the Russian thumb is not based on these speculations about the cause of his subservience, but because of what Trump has done during the election campaign and in office. He created broad fissures in American society by appeals to racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, religious bigotry, in short, by appeal to any fear of the other or imagined grievance. He has mesmerized the media by his absurdist behaviors. He has so frightened the dominant Republican Party that they back him up, much as the German right wing backed up Hitler. He is collaborating with Congress to sabotage the public health system. He has closely identified himself with a variety of right-wing crazies, acting on their advice and information they provide; he has encouraged and enabled their anti-social pathologies and thus created a new political party loyal to him alone. He plans to destroy the American economy with his Great Wall, military buildups, tax cuts to the rich and corporations, and abolition of international trade. He has declared war on the environment, removing any legislation or agency that would inhibit the all-out polluters. He has attacked the press and the intelligence agencies so that his regime can work in tightly maintained secrecy. He has begun a program of mass deportations, using his secret police, the enlarged ICE, to arrest, imprison, and deport people without due judicial process. He has appointed a cabinet that consists mostly of incompetents or subversives He has systematically alienated America’s neighbors and traditional allies. So reasons Massimo. As Kellyanne might say, “I hope it’s not true.”

7 III 2017: The State Legislators, for their next act …

Congress may be self-serving and stupid, but they can always point to state legislators to show us how crazy deliberative bodies can be. I’ve read that Oklahoma state senator John Bennett, a compulsive Muslim baiter, has imposed “extreme vetting” (a Trumpism?) that includes a religious test on any Muslims who want to see him. Why would any Muslim want to see him? If people in Oklahoma ever find out what Islam really is, they are going to be embarrassed. Right now, they probably believe it is whatever this two-bit demagogue tells them.

Then in Arkansas, Rep. Mickey Gates does not feel that the metal detectors and armed guards of the state Capitol are adequate protection. So he wants to bring his gun to work. He’s proposed that legislators licensed to carry a concealed pistol be allowed to bring their weapons into the Capitol and other public facilities (with the exception of prisons!). Is being a legislator in Arkansas really such a hazardous job, or does Rep. Gates simply want to have his pistol, like his pecker, with him at all times. I have long felt that many gun fanatics can’t tell their pistols from their peckers and are resolutely determined that the Feds will have to wrest both from their cold, dead hands.

6 III 2017: Well said, Izaak!

from Izaak Walton’s Life of Dr. John Donne:

It hath been observed by wise and considering men, that Wealth hath seldom been the Portion, and never the Mark to discover good People; but, that Almighty God, who disposeth all things wisely, hath of his abundant goodness denied it (he only knows why) to many, whose minds he hath enriched with the greater Blessings of Knowledge and Vertue, as the fairer Testimonies of his love to Mankind ….

5 III 2017: Trump: The Early Years

Little has ever been brought forward about Donald Trump’s years in elementary school. We know that he has an ivy-league degree, that he has the best words, etc., etc., but what was he like in his formative years? A psycho-historian I know might attempt to draw inferences about Mr. Trump’s schooldays from his behavior as an adult, along the following lines: Donald was a very unhappy and unpopular child. His ostentation of his expensive toys and outfits, his bragging about his father’s great wealth, and his pretensions to athletic and intellectual prowess probably alienated the other children, with the result that they avoided and ignored him. This would have led to a grave psychological crisis the gravity of which is suggested by the anti-social behaviors he would develop at that time. He would become an insolent braggart, constantly asserting and invariably exaggerating his successes. He would live in a dream-world in which he was ever superior, ever victorious, and this would lead to a pathological aversion to truth, probably with psycho-somatic manifestations, e.g., breaking out in hives whenever compelled to tell the truth. His fierce resentment of the children who recoiled from him very likely turned him into a bully (he was probably large for his age). Moreover, he is likely to have been hyper-sensitive to any real or imagined slight, and could let no insult or criticism pass without an immediate retort, however inappropriate. Nor was that enough, for constant resentment probably made him unable to let go of any imagined insult, and, holding a grudge, he would never cease looking for an opportunity to avenge himself. He would have had a deep resentment against schoolmates who were popular, whose fine qualities were generally recognized. Hence he may have developed a propensity to paranoia, as he imagined that this or that popular student, envying his own obvious precocity, was conspiring with others somehow to deny him a chance to succeed and win the recognition he deserved.

I do hope that Mr. Trump did not have so terrible a childhood as all this would suggest, for the woeful consequences for the United States and the world would be terrifying.

3 III 2017: Mediocracy in Missouri

Today’s newspaper carries a report that “The leader of the Missouri Senate [Mr. Ron Richard of Joplin] wants to dump the state’s nationally recognized system for picking judges.” Now Missouri’s system has so impressed other states that they have borrowed it. But this prestige threatens our Legislature’s plan to bring Missouri down to the lowest tier of loopy state governments – right there with Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Do not worry. Our Legislature will press on resolutely until they have introduced their mediocrity into all aspects of state government.

3 III 2017: The Spin Goes On

So Kellyanne Tweeted that she hoped that it was not true that Rep. Wasserman Schultz did not stand up during the ‘ovation’ for a Gold Star Widow at the State of the Union address. Then Wasserman Schultz provided a videotape that shows her standing. But now a website called RedState shows a second video “that clearly shows that they [Reps Wasserman Schultz and Ellison] must have sat down long before the rest of those present for the speech,” and finds that “Neither video seems to show the pair of democrats applauding.” So, though Wasserman Schultz did stand, she didn’t really clap her hands, and then sat down again too soon. Does this mean that she gets a low score on the enthusiasm meter, that though American, she is not American enough? Before jumping to conclusions, let’s consider an alternative explanation: Maybe she realized how hollow and insincere a spectacle was being presented.

27 II 2017: Silence reveals the thoughts of many hearts

I read that anti-semitism has been on the rise in the United States since 2015, and now we have had 66 bomb threats to Jewish facilities so far this year — and it’s only the end of February. These bomb threats are only the tip of the iceberg. The less dramatic but equally harmful manifestations of anti-semitism are numerous and so rapidly growing in number that many in the Jewish community feel we have reached a crisis. Who will provide the leadership to counter this scandalous trend? The President has been quiet about it. His single declaration that “anti-Semitism is horrible and it’s going to stop and it has to stop” is typical bluster. His PR people tell us that Mr. Trump cannot be anti-Semitic himself because one of his daughters is Jewish. This is a silly argument, but let’s let it go. The real issue is not whether the President is at all anti-Semitic, but the fact that many of his supporters surely are. He does not speak out regularly and energetically against anti-Semitism because to do so would alienate many of those who now support him feverishly, people who have been invited by Trump’s statements and his silences to “come out” with their prejudices and phobias.