Happy New Year from 1988.
What Really Happened at The Dinner
Trump: Ye, my friend, so glad to see you again. Your view of things is so unusual.
Ye: Well, I like Hitler. You know, every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler. I just said that on an interview with Alex Jones, one of our good guys. Why isn’t he here? He knows the Holocaust was fake news. That’s why I brought my dear friend with me, Nick Fuentes. I think you know him.
Trump: Never saw him before in my life. Oh, wait a minute . . . Charlottesville.
Ye: He’s been a good Jew hater from the early days. Now y’all need to get into my campaign to run for president. Don, I want you to be my vice president.
Trump, screaming: You out of your fucking mind? You got no chance at the presidency, bro, not while I’m running. . . .
Of course, what they really said at the dinner is largely beyond imagining and beyond satire. One could just as well try to imagine what Xi Jinping said when he was informed of the recent massive protests. Axios made an attempt to render what the fawning Fuentes said by talking with “sources” present—but never succeeded in finding a smoking gun, just a bunch of servile compliments to Trump.
I do have to give credit to Andy Borowitz, who wrote that white nationalists gave “scathing Tripadvisor reviews” of the service and food at Mar-a-Lago: “too many ethnic dishes,” they said.
A Slight Loss of Control
Some fans have urged me to write more about aging. It is a rich topic, especially for one at my age (88). I offered my general thoughts on the matter a couple of weeks ago, but that was the tip of the iceberg, so to say.
Every aspect of aging seems to have three components—physical, psychological and social—and they’re all interlinked. There’s a very thorough and intimidating treatment of this on Wikipedia. Read it while you have your late afternoon cocktail. (Why do all discussions of aging always recommend easing off the booze? They totally ignore the psychological and social benefits.)
So today I want to talk not about dementia but about mental deficiency as it creeps up on you. This is normal yet disturbing. Myself and many friends have experienced loss of short-term memory. You know, forgetting your keys, the last name of a friend, where you put something. This is so common that it’s unremarkable. Yet it upsets a lot of us.
Often when you’re trying to recover a forgotten name it will come back to you a few moments later while you are thinking of something else. So your memory is still functional; it’s just taking its time to sift through all those long-unused cells in the mental library.
And sometimes the name or the word doesn’t come back. Well, calm down and search out related aspects of the word on Google. This will often trigger an association that can make the connection and turn your light bulb on. The usual fear and distrust of technology in elders is well-placed. But you have to learn to make tech work for you. I talked about some of the problems here in “Computer-Assisted Headaches.” We elders have to stop being intimidated by technology and learn simply to ignore what we can’t understand.
Keeping your mental alertness is key to solving many problems of aging. I have IBS, a too-common bowel disorder. So I complain again to my doc, who says that after all these years “you know more about this than I do.” I’m skeptical but as I experiment with treatments, nostrums, remedies natural and unnatural, I find some success in dealing with it. And I use the internet a lot.
Bottom line: your apparent loss of mental (even physical) control can often be compensated by using what’s left of your brain.
What we all worry about is keeping our mental acuity. Well, you’re never going to keep the edge you had at age 20 or 30. After 70, we all decline, so what can help? The usual advice is to exercise more, learn a new skill, play games and solve puzzles, dance, meditate, eat a good diet, and so on.
I think the most important way to keep sharp is to involve yourself regularly in a mentally challenging activity you love. For me it’s writing; for someone else it’s hiking or volunteer work or cooking. When you feel depressed, anxious, irritated with someone, or too isolated, don’t give way to it. Get back to something you really treasure doing.
That’s not just a bromide, folks. Example: when the blues take over, I turn to the music I love and I can regain an equilibrium from that. We need to remember to engage with the things we love.
Retreat of the Elders
This is for those of you who have reached your advanced years and are now flirting with the attractions of solitude. Sometimes, it seems, this can be more than a flirtation.
Here are the symptoms: a penchant for eating at home; fewer visits with friends; a preference for books over TV; souring on politics and current affairs; pique with the common culture; suffering fools gladly; and so on. Covid, of course, made things worse.
You go to a party where most of the folks there are your friends. The conversation is the usual chit-chat about local happenings, friends who are ill, movies you’ve never seen, restaurants you never visited, travel plans you’re not concerned about, political opinions you don’t agree with. You drink too much and leave early.
It’s about feeling “out of tune,” as Wordsworth said in his poem “The world is too much with us.” When the vibes are bad it’s like you’ve come from a different world, captive to “a creed outworn.” You are out of tune with the common culture (or so it feels), with its emphasis on escape, schlock or shock in pop art, films, and more. To confirm this, take a jaundiced look at New York Magazine’s stories in The Cut and Vulture.
The urge to withdraw from it all, I think, is not just limited to us elders. People everywhere seem to be getting a bellyful of all the institutions of state, the customs and the verities we grew up with and trusted. Why else would so many swallow Trump’s patent medicines and hokum? What is MAGA if not an escape into a surreal fantasy? How did the craziness of Brexit take hold of so many Brits? All of this represents a kind of withdrawal.
We oldsters turn sour on so many things because we’ve lived long enough to lose most of our innocence. Yeats said it best in “The Second Coming.” You seniors may remember these lines.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
So many sages have told us that aging is simply a loss of innocence. I don’t entirely buy that. I still remain innocent to many things, open to ideas, good books and conversation, thoughtful people, art and music. There’s just a whole lot less to be open to now. And that, my friends, requires regret but no apology.
Speech for Mr. Biden
Back in the salad days of 1992 I wrote a stump speech for Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa who was then running for president. The campaign liked it, wanted to use it, but Harkin dropped out of the race shortly after. Great timing, John. So here’s another one for President Joe. The independents are frustrated with him, largely because he doesn’t really speak to their issues.
My fellow Americans . . . and all those who didn’t vote for me:
Today, let’s talk about some painful issues, things that have come about in your lives and mine that are a little uncomfortable to speak about. I’m talking about the personal costs of inflation, the global economy, and the dreadful state of our politics.
I’m not going to give you an “America the beautiful” approach today. Inflation, I know, is what’s affecting all of us. It can be brutal—especially for those with low incomes. And it continues to rise unabated. The Consumer Price Index has jumped at an 8.2 percent annual rate—and that’s a 40-year high.
Compared to a year ago, food prices have gone up 11.2 percent. What I want to tell you is that this isn’t just an American problem. It’s global. You’ve heard the stories about famine in under-developed countries. People in our own country continue to go hungry.
Fires, famine and floods don’t have to be part of the human condition.
But inflation affects the price of most everything, not just food. Rising rent costs are driving many protests. Healthcare costs rose nearly 1 percent in September, the most in two years. New cars and most consumer goods cost more. I know: I’m telling you what you already know.
How to fix this? It won’t be easy. The Federal Reserve is working to get more people employed, but that can be a long haul. Claims of unemployment have jumped dramatically in states hard hit by the recent hurricanes. The labor market is very tight. Republicans have offered no—I repeat no—provisions to deal with any of this. They’d rather scare you with talk about how crime has taken over the country. Yet our most immediate goal must be to stabilize the economy.
Pocketbook and life issues are central to that. Covid is not beaten and could be merely in recession. And rising American healthcare costs are going to cripple the economy. We have to get them under control, but frankly that depends on winning you over to vote with us in the midterms and beyond. The opposition has no plans to fix our healthcare. For them, it’s not a right but just another business.
Ditto with gun control and abortion, the personal freedom issues of our times. The upcoming elections will determine whether we can make abortion legal again through new legislation. We simply must do this!
What I’m asking is that you simply vote for freedom over obstruction. Republican opposition leaves no room for compromise. And their obstruction begins and ends with Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories. The Big Lie about the 2020 election basically proposes a vast conspiracy to defraud the voters. If you believe in that, I have another bridge to sell you.
I won’t berate you here with the accomplishments of my administration. That doesn’t cut much ice when many of you are concerned with putting food on the table. I also know that many of you don’t want to return to the chaos and anxiety of the Trump years. As Americans, you know that we can do better, much better.
With your help we will do better! Thanks for listening.
Herschel
I tried to get into the real story about this guy, but it turns into a labyrinthian tale of more and more compromised women, abortions, and unacknowledged sons. So much media attention (e.g., here and here) has followed the Walker revelations that it almost dulls the controversy.
The moral implications of Walker’s behavior have often taken a backseat to the political implications of his candidacy. And columnists love to quote him: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air, so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.”
The consensus is, certainly, that Republicans will never dump him because sanity and morality don’t count but votes do. Conservative commenter Dana Loesch said: “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”
Politico’s John Harris looks at Herschel and similar phenomena from a more global standpoint. He sees a widespread antipathy toward sexual freedom. “This movement—anti-sexual liberationism is a bit of a mouthful—is what unifies Putin, Meloni, the supporters of Herschel Walker and many other people. . . . It is a reactionary movement marked by all kinds of contradictions.” It may also signal a new virulent kind of identity politics.
But most practicing political commenters make the issue a moral one. They find Walker’s lies and breaches of basic decent behavior disgusting and vile, not to be borne in a Senate candidate. The Democrats are betting on this approach, hoping to enlist women in the fight against Dobbs and the Roe decision. No one is sure that will carry the day.
Republicans stress the economic issues as the real incentives that drive voters. Polls seem to support them. Herschel’s jumbled thoughts and word salad won’t deter them. He will parrot the party line where he can and the yahoos will stand up and cheer.
It’s pretty hard to confront these issues rationally. Climate change, race, and abortion won’t sell to those who challenge the fundamental nature of reality—or to those who find these things irrelevant to their lives. And yet, the GOP has blown its case on how such things matter to working people.
They have been into conspiracy theories since the days of Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan. One thinks about the Bush administration and Saddam Hussein. The predictable result is Alex Jones and a Herschel Walker.
Rescuing the Trump Papers
A big question nobody’s asking is: What was he going to do with all that stuff in the 15 (now 12) boxes? Another: are some of these classified documents still damp from the toilet? So many questions and so few answers yet. How quickly and thoroughly the DOJ has presumed Trump’s criminal behavior is a dead giveaway (getting the search warrant), all the more so given the rapid and rabid responses of the GOP.
Witnesses have told how he tore up, burned, shredded, flushed and pocketed many documents. It will be a treat to hear their testimony before the Jan. 6 Committee. Maybe there aren’t that many papers left. If only one box of papers is now considered classified, what will that do to the DOJ’s investigation? Who squealed to the FBI that the boxes were still there? More questions, of course.
What we do know is that the Houdini of Presidential Crime will now likely end up charged, if not convicted. He’ll shortly announce his 2024 presidential run, another way to blunt the inquiry and tear the country apart. Just like he shreds documents.
Will he escape from justice one more time? I wouldn’t bet on it.
A Plague on Both Their Houses
For Joe Biden, the sad sack who is turning into a liability for the Democrats, polls show that 64% of Democrats want him to step aside in 2024. With young voters, the figure is 93%. Top concerns are his age and job performance. If it’s Trump versus Biden again in 2024, I predict hordes of people will be moving to Mexico.
A recent NYTimes poll found that 10% would vote for neither one. I don’t think Trump could win if the Repubs are foolish enough to nominate him. (They have even asked Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to speak at the CPAC conference in August.) DeSantis in many ways will be worse.
Recent Supreme Court decisions on Roe and guns have riled up a lot of people. But the Dems show few signs of real outrage or responding to these issues in a way that relates to voters’ real agendas. As many have said many times, they don’t know how to fight. The White House issues its predictable talking points and shows, once again, that it doesn’t know how to engage persuasively with voters of different stripes. There’s no urgency or fire. And there’s no third-party candidate worth talking about.
The Democrats are like those in-laws that Carolyn Hax wrote about today in the Washington Post: they keep on bringing meat meals, one after the other, to a new mom who happens to be vegetarian. Fundamentally, that is harassment. For the White House, it’s plain pigheadedness and political ineptitude.
After the Highland Park shooting, Biden made a tepid, ill-timed patriotic speech with barely a mention of the disaster that had just unfolded. For me, that was almost unforgiveable.
For you, my readers, there’s no need to repeat the litany of worse-and-worse Republican treachery and folly. What we need now is people who know how to fight a most critical political battle.
Teaching in a Troubled Time
Our present turmoils have brought me to remember how violent the Vietnam years were, how frequent and widespread the disruptions were, and how we protested and coped. We will likely be in for a lot more of the same now. Have we learned anything from those disruptive Vietnam times? I gave up teaching years ago but my students taught me some lessons.
I was teaching literature at City College in New York in the early ‘70s when the Vietnam disaster was at its height. I had been protesting against the war for years, but now many schools were shutting down, and I remember feeling disdain for the kids who would take over Columbia but without any kind of program. They had to have an agenda if they wanted to accomplish anything, or so I thought. It took a while for me to learn that protests don’t work that way.
It was a very heady and disconcerting time. Columbia was in the throes of protests and takeovers, and they spread to City College. When most of our classes were cancelled, my students still asked to meet in my apartment and other places. They wanted to discuss and learn about literature. So we carried on, for maybe four or five sessions, and finally classes resumed.
Discussing 19th century French poetry while the war was raging and anger in the streets was rising just seemed futile and absurd. Yet there was a sense that doing this provided us a modicum of sanity and substance. I was still trying to be the voice of rationality: when my students began denouncing Nixon, I said (rather smugly), “The nation gets the president it deserves.” Than we all took a break to listen to jazz.
The Vietnam war gave liberals a focus for action. It’s clear that the protests (and the losses) finally did have their effect, changing the political will of those in power. The situation today is much more complex and grievously more dire. There are literally too many fires to put out:
All these calamities (and which did I forget?) are on the cusp of plaguing us for years to come. There are no clear-cut, nicely defined ways to deal with any of them. The plague of Vietnam, we thought then, could be addressed with focused political action. That effort drove Lyndon Johnson from office. Now we have daunting polarization, shifting targets and much-reduced political firepower.
Somehow, I take from my teaching years a faith in the generations to come and their eagerness to learn about literature in the face of a world that they thought was collapsing. I was about ten years older than most of my students—not too old to learn from them. Among other things, they taught me that political order is never fixed, that protests finally can work, and that we ignore the humanities at our peril.
Send in the Clowns
The circus was actually under a tent when I was a kid. It featured wild animals jumping through fiery hoops, high-wire acrobats a hundred feet or more in the air, and of course the clown car. I loved watching a dozen or so people emerge from a small red coupe, and the crowd roared in delight.
You know where this is going, right? In the Select Committee hearings the Trump lackeys are bailing out, repudiating for the world the Big Lie they all formerly endorsed, emerging en masse from Trump’s red coupe. How they all could manage to fit in that car, with such doubts about their boss’s sanity, is the mystery. Yet finally it is no mystery that they are trying to save their skins.
Like so much of what passes for politics now, I find this full of comic overtones—like something Kafka could have written. Our late-night comedians have big problems getting laughs from Trumpian politics. So many clowns have jumped out of the car that the gag just isn’t funny anymore. “But there is also a sense, as the president talks openly about defying the results of the election, that satire has not accomplished what its champions believed it could. Even the professionals seem disillusioned.”
Satire works best as a dark form of irony that makes its object look ridiculous. The audience must be in on the joke, or the attempt falls flat. One can cite Jonathan Swift, as I did regarding guns, and most people either don’t know who Swift was or they find the comparison bogus. Such are the perils of irony. If you mock Trump with humor you’re up against some sixty percent of Republicans who continue to believe the Big Lie.
But I still like the metaphor of the circus. For those who pay any attention to it, politics has become entertainment for the masses. The media could not survive without it. The poet Juvenal said this in Roman times: “Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt.” Are the Select Committee hearings merely a distraction or a diversion for most people? They aren’t “blood sport” for most people, as in ancient Rome, though they might lead to that.
Folks like Rudy Giuliani can also be expected to provide comic relief, as when the old drunk urged Trump to contest the results on election night. Or the wonderful press conference he hosted at the Four Seasons Landscaping Service. John Eastman, chief clown to the president, kept pushing for a plan to kick the election back to the states, even while he acknowledged its illegality.
For many, the very gravity of the hearings indicates that real dangers are lurking. So do the words of the witnesses. Yet a strong sense of artificiality often pervades. We hope the acrobats don’t slip and fall, even as we expect that they might. That tension is part of the circus appeal. Here we hope the clowns will go to jail though we know they may not.