A Remarkable Thing

The rational news media and commentary have apparently gone full throttle in their dark visions of a Trump presidency.  All seem to be puffing a desperate sigh of resignation.  Each signifies a subtext of helplessness.  One could even say they have yielded to soft irrationality.  In his recent column deconstructing Trump’s musings on foreign policy, Roger Cohen lamented that such thoughts represent “a real recipe for cataclysm.”  And, in fact, I basically agree with Cohen.

But all of this mediated maundering has led me to consider a different set of circumstances.  Perhaps we reporters and opinionators (especially we opinionators) fail to look beyond the November election.  First, we can all agree that Trump’s “candidacy” has mustered a considerable number of fellow travelers.  And the pollsters and their employers have rushed to explain that those numbers certainly and factually do not represent a sufficient tally to yield an election victory.  OK.  Let’s accept that as a probable conclusion.  But, second, let’s consider what the consequences of a Trump defeat might look like.

Virtually all profiles of Trump’s fellow travelers share a commonality: They are prima facie evidence of the arrogance of ignorance.  What is that?  Ignorance is not necessarily a shortcoming.  I, for example, who have a fair level of intelligence, am fundamentally ignorant of most mathematics beyond simple calculations (addition. subtraction, multiplication and division).  I sort of learned geometry, but algebra remains a foreboding to me.  No.  Ignorance is not stupidity.  But the arrogance of ignorance is.

The arrogance of ignorance is the attitude that a person knows he or she is ignorant of something(s) and takes pride in that ignorance.  That person, in fact, feels superior to those who know something(s).  This feeling often leads to contempt for those who know something(s), a contempt fostered by their seething feelings of jealousy, envy and, thus, inadequacy (especially the men).  And when such people have the integrity of their ignorance challenged, they tend to lash out.  U.S. history has experienced bouts of multitudes seething with the arrogance of ignorance.  The most famous was the Know Nothing movement, formally the American Party, of the mid-1850s, which boasted nationalism, based in anti-ethnic and anti-immigrant sentiments.  Sound familiar?

Now, based on all the reports about Trump’s fellow travelers, we can see a profile of this arrogance of ignorance.  The question for me, reflected in the title of this post, is what happens when these people have their fervor frustrated by the democratic process; i.e., how do they react to a Trump defeat at the polls?  The Know Nothings had a great deal to do with what were known as the “draft riots” in New York City in 1863, which were long simmering expressions of fear grounded in loss of employment to immigrants and free blacks.  This could become our domestic cataclysm.

The rabble at Trump’s rallies are buoyed by the feeling that they are witnessing and participating in what they feel is Trump’s best, good feeling reality TV of 2016.  They feel like something is happening for them rather than to them, for a change.  They are winning apprentices, because Trump spouts all the empty truisms that give fleeting substance to their beliefs.

 But how, then, will they respond when actuality punctures those beliefs?  What happens when the child’s most cherished understandings are dispelled?  Where do these people go to receive the fantasies that Trump has projected for them?  The answers, I think, will be America’s next most remarkable thing.

A Ballad For Our Times

Mr. Wade died today

With a rabbit on his brain

And a green light beaming

Through his pale, blue eyes.

Mr. Wade died today

With his wife in the kitchen

Banging dishes, singing hymns

A smile of grace, in her place

Mr. Wade died today

His kids chasing glory,

Playing war in the yard

Screeching “bang” and “crash”

Mr. Wade died today

His Olds left in neutral

Drifting toward his shed

Near the blossoms, at the edge

Mr Wade died today

With a cool breeze blowing

Through his long straw hair

Over his cheeks, down his chin

 Mr. Wade died today

Bound up tight to his

Automatic tie rack, a hint

Of gimlet on his tongue, a faint

Grin for his dry lips, just a little

With his wife in the kitchen

His kids in the yard

His car drifting to an edge

His green light beaming

His fault in his dream.

Our A.D.H.D Nation

Symptoms:  Easily distracted, difficulty staying focused, prone to physical hyper-activity.  And who was smart enough to tap into this trend in our cultural body?  That's right, Donald Trump.

I don't think anyone can honestly say we're a particularly cerebral or contemplative people.  We like our experiences quick, easy and often...and we don't like to be required to explain what we're doing and  why.  We like the surfaces of things and thoughts.  We've always been in a hurry to get to the bigger and better, but now we don't much care about the substance of the bigger and better.  If they have an appropriate veneer of strength and in-your-face that challenges whatever is opposed to what we think we want, then that's our next bigger and better.

We like all the institutions of society—religion, government, education etc.—to be easy to understand and quickly realized to our personal benefit.  If we need to think about any of these things, we regularly turn to something less thoughtful, like a 240 character message or the most recent smooth-it-away prayer sent via Facebook by one of our latest and distantly vague "friends."  Or we scan Youtube to get some yuks and Instagram to get some cutes.  Or flick on the latest installment of NCIS to enlist ourselves in their 15+ million audience.

We tend to be both physically and mentally slack-jawed.  Thus we accept our newly acquired oscitant countenance.  We like to shout and laugh loudly wherever we are at whomever has behaved more uncivilized than we are.  For that reason virtually all our overly abundant entertainments are keyed to provoke the noisiest response from us...no matter where we are.

These keys have evolved into our 21st century shibboleths.  We react quickly and loudly to "socialism," "Muslim," "politically correct," "immigration," "free trade," and so on.  And we feel the need to cover these keys with some sort of grand negative behavior, loud booing and stomping, turning public information venues into gobsmacking mosh pits.  We follow the leader who provides the least amount of information and the most amount of entertainment, the greater distraction from the spiritual ache and pain of our psyches.

If the throngs who jam themselves into public spaces to worship at the Trump altar and the millions who watch the "debate" debacles to see the latest outrage in real time (and boost the coffers of the 24 hour "news" programs)...if these people were in a school they would be required to attend behavioral counseling and therapy.  And they would probably require various forms of stabilizing medications.

But we can't look only to Trump for our cultural slough.  We have been nurturing this for a long time and under varieties of huckster and trickster types.  Ronald Reagan was our first media con man.  Then came Bill Clinton.  Then came the absurdist version, George Bush.  And we bought our merchant of peace version, Barack Obama, who entertains our lust for glorious vengeance with sanitary but indiscriminate drone wars.  Given this recent history and our penchant to believe the various cons, we ought to feel some sort of fay sympathy for Bernie Sanders' trumpeting a revolution to the ears that are shuttered by ear buds.  Do we dare consider what new distracting con will be offered to assure that we keep from focusing and asking?  I don't think so.  We're very proud of our willful ignorance.

So Fun

We hear that, don't we?  And it rolls off most of us.  But not me.  For me, it acts like those mini-shocks you get during very dry weather, when you forgot that you're wearing something synthetic, and that synthetic something generates an electric charge in the dry air.  This is that pinging reminder that I'm a 20th century person, far removed from the bosom of my 20th century childhood home.

My mother was a strict adherent to traditional English grammar's rules of usage.  Thus, each time we kids opened our mouths to speak, we were subject to a testing of our understanding of those rules.  I'll go way out on a limb and assume that few American households in the 21st century hew to the subjunctive mode in their common conversations.  So that if people in those households heard me say, "If I were he..." I might get a raised eyebrow or furrowed brow.  Or if someone from that other time said, "I hope if anyone wins, I hope that it be she."  I heard a news anchor recently say to a guest, "Thanks for stopping by and sharing with Bill and I."  Ping!  I closed my eyes and let it pass.

Traditional grammar is as much a part of me as my bone marrow.  And unfortunately for me, I have lived long enough to have experienced the contortions American English usage has suffered.  One such suffering has been what has happened to the pleasant and innocent word fun.  This word, like some other English words has viability as various parts of speech.  Commonly people use it as a noun: "We had fun with them."  And that has been from its start, arrived into English from German.
Here's how that  happened and the morphing followed:

"fun (n.)  'diversion, amusement, mirthful sport,' 1727, earlier 'a cheat, trick' (c. 1700), from verb fun (1680s) 'to cheat, hoax,' which is of uncertain origin, probably a variant of Middle English fonnen 'befool' (c. 1400; see fond). Scantly recorded in 18c. and stigmatized by Johnson as 'a low cant word.' Older senses are preserved in phrase to make fun of (1737) and funny money 'counterfeit bills' (1938, though this use of the word may be more for the sake of the rhyme). See also funny. Fun and games 'mirthful carryings-on' is from 1906."   (from Online Etymology Dictionary)

I'm fascinated that the word had its origins and some subsequent usage as a negative signifier. That seems to have been maintained in its verb usage (to cheat).  So fun, in its seeming simplicity, in fact has a very complicated lineage (the wrong kind of lineage for Dr. Johnson).

OK, and now we're in the 21st century, and we're confronted by the so fun construction.  The simplest way to deconstruct this is to observe (a la the 20th century) that a word (for purposes of speed and comfort) has been deleted from the normal expression so much fun, revealing just another ellipsis regimen so popular among American speakers.  We are known internationally as stingy speakers—we speak mostly in single words or brief phrases, very rarely in complete sentences.  For example:  "Are you ready to go?"  "Yep.  All set.”

My guess (based on a professional life studying the language and its changes) is that the ellipsis regimen explains the issue.  But what of the actual grammar?  (For those who might be interested.)  So is commonly an adverbial intensifier (intensifying the meaning of a verb, adjective or adverb).  The logic of traditional grammar would suggest that fun is not a noun in this construction (i.e., a pleasurable experience, perhaps) but rather some form of displaced adjective (displaced from We had a fun time?).  

In any case, as I would say to my writing classes, we should all be aware that if a word has a broad reach of meanings, it actually ceases to function as a channel of communication.  Fun is, so to speak, in the experience of the user of the word.  Some people ask me if I had fun going somewhere or doing something.  In fact, as I've been told, I'm not a terribly joyful person.  I do laugh about and at things, but I usually do that, because those things are absurd, not because they are pleasurable for me.  So, when someone smiles at me and says, "Will you be doing something for fun, today?"  (Though they typically say something fun today.)  I don't really know what to say, because I know that we would not be communicating in the same experiential universe.

When I was in elementary school, I had to be diagnosed by what was probably some sort of speech pathologist.  The diagnosis was "lazy speech."  I guess I mumbled a lot.  This gave my mother something else to focus on in addition to my grammar.  Now we could be careful not only to select the correct usage but also to enunciate more clearly.   (I learned very early the meaning of enunciate.)  And people wonder why I lack a sense of joy.

Well, this has been a nice experience for me, and I hope it has been for you.  I'd even say it has been so fun!

Trump And His No-Sense Metric

As the 2016 presidential campaign season slithers toward November, we hear phrases from observers, citizens and info-media people that refer to the popularity of Trump's candidacy not "making sense."  Let's pause and ponder that assertion.

I'm calling this the application of the sense metric, the way normal people try to understand the actualities of the world they live in.  They observe, they read, they listen, and they apply the measurements of logic, rationality and norms.  They do this not so much according to scientific principles (though that might not be a bad idea), but rather according to their experience in the world, especially the world of ideas.  And they ultimately screw up their faces and say, "Wait, what was that?"

Trump's extraordinary numbers, regardless of whatever region of the country, can be accounted for only by the no-sense metric, not nonsense, because that implies foolishness.  The no-sense metric is the motivating force behind the minds and feelings (especially the feelings) of the electorate who have abandoned the sense metric.  For example, one hears an independent or even Democrat interviewed who says, "I voted for Trump, because he's a very successful business person, and that's what we need to get the job of government moving."  First, placing the business of government and the business of business in the same thought bag is a suspension of logic.  The purpose of business is to exploit production and trade opportunities in order to extract the highest possible profit from the enterprise.  Second, the purpose of government is to keep the society operating in some sort of orderly fashion, so that things don't get out of control; profit is not a consideration of government.  The voter's comment does not fit a sense metric.

The no-sense metric can be applied to virtually everything Trump announces he will do.  And the reason he approaches his audience (i.e., the American electorate) with a no-sense metric is that he knows absolutely that his audience has been primed for a visceral response to their lives for at least the last decade.  One can observe this everywhere one goes in our society, from our roadways, to our supermarkets, to the slaughter of us by gun violence and neglect, to our abysmal concerns for what's happening to how people learn...we are an atomized disparate people, facilitated by various forms of media that serve to keep us that way.

And into this morass steps the con man, the strong arm salesman with his magical potions that will salve our psychic wounds and be a force of unity around his loud, angry mystique.  This no-sense style of the con man appeals greatly to people who are running in place and seeing their horizon grow dimmer each year.  The Clinton and Cruz and Kasich appeals to common sense, the sense metric, are very iffy strategies in our current political environment.  

Perhaps, at no other time since its first release, has the prescient truth of the film Network had so much actual application, has our society so accurately portrayed that film.  The audiences at Trump's rallies are all but repeating Howard Beale's proposal to his viewers to open their windows and scream out, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"  That was from a dystopian dark comedy.  So long as the citizens of our country continue to embrace their no-sense metric of Trump, this dark comedy—which we should have anticipated from all that's been happening in our "government"—will become our actuality...and dark comedies are not really funny.

Trump Is As American As...

Well, certain names pop easily to mind.  Father Coughlin, Huey P. Long, George Wallace, Joel Osteen and others.  Trump shares two concrete characteristics with these people: the veneer of success and the absoluteness of nationalism and isolationism.  These types also thrive on the cult of personalty, which during times of mounting social stress—such as we have been increasingly experiencing—become extremely attractive to the mass of our society, moreso now in our instant gratification, self-absorbed attention to distraction through various forms of cheap media access.

These types also share a flirtation with and/or steadfast affirmation of fascism.  Roger Cohen has indicated the fascist connections with historical Europe in this context.  But even more to the point is how clearly our society and its cultural manifestations have been sliding willy-nilly into a kind of (so far) soft fascist orbit.  When I use "willy-nilly," I don't mean to indicate that it has been accidental or haphazard.  The hard core connection between corporatism and authoritarianism has been quite deliberate.  What has been less conscious has been the general public's acquiescence with our metamorphosis from democratic republic to our "merger of state and corporate power," to quote from Mussolini's infamous definition.  We Americans have an infinite capacity to both ignore and bowdlerize history, so that we merge fascism and socialism as two sides of the same coin.  A simple way to distinguish the two is to recognize that in socialism government controls or regulates the means of production and in fascism unregulated corporatism determines the means and the benefits of production.  And because the state works in concert with corporatism, it determines the distribution of those benefits.

Now, as with the European versions of fascism, our fascism needs a culturally acceptable front man, a boisterous, a both deadly serious and humorous guy, who shares all the attributes and personal traits we identify with our mediated society.  To witness some linkages with the historical European versions, just Youtube samples from Hitler and Mussolini rallies.  You don't really need to understand German and Italian to feel what's happening.  Desperation and diminishing hope are the fertile soil for fascism to flourish and spawn.  And as Sinclair Lewis indicated in It Can't Happen Here, when and if it does, it won't take an invasion and it won't look like it does in Europe.  It will indeed be home grown.  And it will be as American as apple pie and our fondest dreams of success and the pursuit of happiness.  And it will be "terrific," "tremendous" and the "greatest thing you ever saw"..."believe me."

This is what is actually going on.