N.B. Written under the influence of wine and grief, so arguments may not be fully rational and explicated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSCWiO_yWuo
6 November 2024
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow...
— Paul Simon, Graceland
Well, loss of country is very much losing love. And for some, life, too.
Let me take a step or two back. On October 27th, the birthday of two of my favorite people, I found out that my good friend, the genius, sui generis Kathleen Hulser had suddenly departed this mortal plain. I had not seen her nor communicated with her in over a year, but I kept up with her via her writing and FB posts, as well as through our mutual friends. I found out on FB, whereupon I fell to my knees weeping, thinking that I did not want to/could not be in the world without her. To paraphrase the description of Falstaff from Wikipedia, Kathleen had a charisma and captivating love of life. As an historian and brilliant writer, she was, to me and many of my friends and her acquaintances, a bulwark, a defensive wall, to the world. Well-educated, insightful, sarcastic, angry, trenchant, pithy, and kind are among the many descriptors. She was the kind of person you counted on in your mind and heart, even if there were distance.
I spent several days bursting into tears about her. Mourning her. She was long a part of my New York life, having been one of the first persons I met. Irreplaceable. And essential.
On Thursday, I had a medical appointment, my yearly check up with my doctor, whom I quite liked. At the end of the appointment, we somehow wound up making political chit chat. To my enormous astonishment and even greater dismay, the doc was a Trump cultist. Not merely a conservative, but one who trumpeted (sorry) and repeated his belligerence, dismissiveness, and made light of his clear crimes. One by one, I gently introduced some of his atrocities, and one by one, she piped his words, saying among other things, that his sexual harrassments and rapes were long ago. As if that could exculpate him.
To say that I was aghast and despondent would only underestimate my emotional response. I had to call a couple of friends to ask if I were calibrating alarm properly. I even posted it on FB to an unanimous agreement that I needed to find a new doctor.
Do any of you remember the film Body Heat? Towards the end, William Hurt sees a clown car and begins to realize that he is the patsy being framed. Well, dear reader, it was after this encounter than the scales began to fall from my eyes. In my liberal, well-meaning bubble Trump cultists, were a marginal, if vocal, group. I very very foolishly and naïvely assumed that a female doctor who had many female clients, a doctor, a scientist, a person who believed in doing good, who seemed sane, could possibly support a person, a party, a movement that was(is) fervently and explicitly against science and medicine, not to mention the well-being of most of this country that cannot get health care without help. (That's me.)
This revelation was a terrible, terrible blow. But I began to see that sanity, kindness, and democracy hadn't a fucking ice cube's chance in hell. That Trumpests are all around us in folks that we like or love or deal with on a daily/hourly basis. That there is a cancer of delusion in these people that Trump can mean anything but chaos and evil. That even among the professional, educated there were many that were ill-informed, unanalytical, and maybe lazy.
I cannot imagine what the majority of this country thinks is democracy. I am pretty sure they haven't an informed clue and likely don't care. I cannot imagine what their vision of America is, or even their experience of America, Americans though they be.
Growing up in the fifties and sixties, a time of great prosperity, even for abjectly poor people like my father, I had no clue that we were gliding on the dopamine high of being righteous in World War II. I (we) believed in our "chosen-ness." Invincible and eternally righteous. True, unquestioning believers in USA propaganda that this was a meritocracy and that Horatio Alger was right about bootstrap ambition.
As I have looked back on this since Nixon was president, it has become more and more apparent that the high and the power were the important things to be an American. Maybe across the world, but particularly here, escapism and artiface replaced reality, education, and substantiality.
I have long thought that a particular set of insensitivity and crassness started in the 1970s, with the spread of television accessibility and the beginning of celebrity worship. Yes, people have been fervent about heroes and celebrities since the beginning of time, but, at least in my recollection, it was more admiration than universal and passionate belief that celebrities were better and that this was something to aspire to.
And also, a loss of meaning. Cocaine had a lot to do with how our culture shifted. Mass media was fueled and inspired by cocaine, both by the creators and the funders. How else would we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? I never found this trend to be anodyne. I found myself dismayed and depressed by the likes of shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Insubstantiality and shallowness became quotidian and laudable. Shows like Jackass frightened and appalled me.
Degradation is incremental, much like erosion. It is erosion. The USA went down that chute enthusiastically and rapidly. One thing led to another with any voice decrying shallow depravity being dismissed, just the way women's opinions and oppressions have been dismissed. And then, because of money, we got The Apprentice. And an idiotic lout, failed businessman, and moral moron was accepted, lauded, and believed.
Here we are. Any reality we thought we knew is mistaken. Any givens or assumptions we had about goodness, social well-being, honesty, support, kindness, intelligence are all gone.
You may think me alarmist and emotional, but the United States of America, formed on intelligence, and other not-so-good things is gone, done, and over. Mob rule has taken over. I anticipate that voting will end. The Republicans/Trumpists will be in power through the rest of the lives of many of us. Elections will likely be a thing of the past. I read somewhere that "democracy is unpopular world-wide".
Many of us will not survive to our natural end. And even those that do, there will be great suffering. No more Department of Education, no more NIH, no more CDC, no more National Weather Bureau, less FEMA. Leeches like Musk, Besos, and Thiel will be fatter, more powerful, and less connected to the population. "Soylent Green is people." Indeed, we are fodder for war and industry, now more than ever.
We used to play for silverNow we play for lifeOne's for sport and one's for bloodAt the point of a knifeNow the die is shakenNow the die must fallThere ain't a winner in this gameWho don't go home with allNot with all...
Robert Hunter/Robert Weir, Jack Straw
Now the die must fall.
For more coherence on some of my arguments, check out this link.
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