(Roughly) Daily

I don’t normally deal with current politics, and certainly not two days on a row. But these are tumultuous times. As we look forward, we’d be wise to heed Marilynne Robinson…

… I have devoted a good part of my life to studying American history and literature. And I have regretted the habit of self-disparagement that has caused things of great worth to be undervalued, including the habits of respect that make debate possible. I mention this because there is a baffled cynicism abroad in the country, a sense that we will and must fail at everything except adding wealth to wealth and influencing other countries to their harm. We have the war in Gaza to remind us how suddenly horror can descend on a region, how a provocation can unleash utter disaster, and how the contending pathologies of a few men can destroy lives by the scores of thousands. A profound alienation has set in, regularly expressed on both sides in contempt—contempt for Trumpists and those who vote with them on one side, and on the other side Trump and his allies’ contemptuous rejection of the entire project we have called America. In contemporary parlance this rejection is called conservatism…

… my subject is the rage and rejection that have emerged in America, threatening to displace politics, therefore democracy, and to supplant them with a figure whose rage and resentment excite an extreme loyalty, and disloyalty, a sort of black mass of patriotism, a business of inverted words and symbols where the idea of the sacred is turned against itself. I will suggest that one great reason for this rage is a gross maldistribution of the burdens and consequences of our wars. If I am right that this inequity has some part in the anger that has inflamed our public life, in order to vindicate democracy we must acknowledge it and try to put it right.

It is taken to be true that the Trump phenomenon reflects the feeling in a large part of the population that they are “left behind.” This view is obviously too smug to deserve the acceptance it enjoys. Why does this movement have no vision of a future, beyond the incarceration of whomever Trump chooses to vilify? Why have its members proposed no reforms to narrow the economic divide? Why is there no response to the ambitious investments President Biden has made, designed to stimulate the economies of struggling areas? A “populism” whose lieutenants have an impressive number of Yale Law degrees and whose idol is a Manhattan moneyman is not to be understood as a flaring up of aggrieved self-interest. Nothing we normally think of as profit will accrue to these foot soldiers.

An anger that is too intense and immediate to pause over possible consequences, whether desirable or not, seems to make a better account of this movement. Having no vision, it would certainly have a future. Trump is an old man, and he will soon go the way of his ancestors. But the very arbitrariness of his being chosen as the hero of the disaffected means that when he goes he is likely to be replaced in their angry adoration by someone equally improbable, perhaps Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This is truer because Trump has proved that law can be scorned without consequence. He has shown us that there is a kind of loyalty that neuters outrage, and he has established a breadth of latitude for scurrilous and threatening speech that can only be of profound use to every scoundrel who succeeds him.

This anger is entangled with resentments and revanchism and varieties of opportunism, including Trump’s, that are readily seen as discrediting the entire phenomenon of unrest. But this is the kind of mistake that comes with the idea that the old symmetry of opposed parties is in play here. The MAGA side really has no politics. Its broad appeal lies in its galvanizing resentment, which is what anger becomes when its legitimacy is not acknowledged. Trump can reverse himself on any point, and his followers will simply realign themselves as necessary. If he were dealing with his followers in good faith, Trump would be offering them policies addressed to the relief of their grievances. Instead, he recites his own.

I will suggest that, in the very fact of making no sense, the movement has enormous meaning. Something has enraged a great many Americans, and a democracy worthy of the name should make a serious effort to understand what it is. The pocketbook metric we apply to everything is not sufficiently respectful to be of use…

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… All the flags and chants give the Trump rallies the look of traditional nationalism. Trumpism is in fact very singular, however, in its insistence that America is a failed country, a scene of hideous crime, invaded by depraved aliens and betrayed by depraved liberals, all of whom should be jailed or worse. Trump’s America is a thing of sham institutions and fake information—this should be a joke, considering, for example, Trump University and the fakery of the National Enquirer—and is altogether so fallen that it must defer to the wisdom of Vladimir Putin and autocrats in general. All this seems less like love than loathing. By every measure I know of, the country is doing well. Comparisons are always difficult. We know from the reportage of Tucker Carlson that Moscow has one highly polished grocery store. How appropriate it is to generalize from this fact we cannot tell. And, of course, what should it matter to anyone who prefers a little democratic clutter to an (apparently) immaculate authoritarianism? This choice has presented itself before.

In any case, this “nationalism” departs from tradition in that its foreign enemies are the desperate immigrants trying to cross the southern border—for all the excitement, an appropriate adversary for a bully only. Trump’s militaristic fantasies involve calling up the army to crush resistance on the part of Americans. I cannot account for these passions he seems to channel for his crowds except as a fusion of disillusionments, a sort of plasma not accessible to conventional political or economic analysis. I am far from dismissing it on these grounds. With the proviso that the part of the population that might show up at Trump rallies is small, and that many might be attracted by the febrile showmanship, even by the certainty that their own primal screams would startle no one in all that noise, opinion makers assume that these people do tell us what our future might be, beginning as soon as November.

If my analysis has any merit, one side in this opposition has a far richer and more nuanced geopolitical insight. A population more likely to provide troops for the military would have a livelier awareness of the fact that they are deployed all over the world, in places that are or at any time might become very dangerous. This might yield a different definition of globalism. On the other side, that regrettable gift for forgetting is a factor, forgetfulness of the weight of this burden. Trump’s utter lack of foreign policy beyond a resentment of Europe, his hinted readiness to capitulate in the face of what he constantly represents as superior strength and “genius,” seems never to thin his crowds. His antagonism toward NATO is expressed in mercenary terms, though the economic consequences of the fraying of the West would be unimaginably great. An era of smash-and-grab would benefit those inclined that way and well positioned for it. Trump never describes a future, which is sensible, since no policy he suggests would be less than disastrous.

All this is beside the point in the minds of his followers. Perhaps their zeal is driven by the thought of shaking the foundations of the existing order, which they passionately insist is not the legitimate order that would be restored by institutions and elections they accepted as having integrity. The problem is that they will never be satisfied as long as their resentments are channeled without definition, and without hope or purpose, into a political system that was designed and has functioned to produce a government. If their grievances could be made political, could be spoken of in terms of policy, in terms of justice and reform, of democracy, then Trump could concentrate on selling sneakers and Bibles. And the press and public should stop seeing his hectic road show performances as proof of health and vigor.

I have done the thing I deplore. I sat down to write about Joseph Biden and ended up writing about Donald Trump. President Biden is looking back on a long life, imagining a future that will return the country to its true work, of achieving fairness and mutual respect as norms of American life. The personal tragedies he has suffered are well known. It should be noted here that he lost a son to illness apparently related to military service.

Why does President Biden not receive credit for his remarkable legislative achievements? Whenever he announces a policy that is designed to benefit a particular region, this is interpreted in the press as a lure meant to attract swing state voters, which if true would only mean that the policy is welcome and likely to produce good results. Cynicism is an excuse for the failure to actually look at the substance of a presidency, and can only be a major contributor to the general sense that the country is adrift. Add to this the erasure of differences between parties and candidates that comes with cynicism, and the idea that voting is an empty exercise is reinforced. All this tends to delegitimize government, making it a thing of ploys and impositions no matter how wise and well-intentioned it may in fact be.

There is a tone of implied dissatisfaction among the commentators, in the absence of specifics, that functions in the public discourse as if it were weighty and considered objection. It is an attitude, not a reaction to actual circumstance, so there is no possibility of rebuttal. Jimmy Carter, now revered, his brilliance acknowledged, fell victim to this same hectoring. It is fair to wonder what the state of the environment might be if the press then were not so distracted by his cardigans and his southernisms. President Biden is old, and there is concern that his health might decline, leading to some disruption. But this consideration should be weighed against the fact that Trump promises only disruption. That he might pursue bad policies with enormous vigor should reassure no one.

The twentieth century left the world in a parlous state. Our foreign entanglements have passed through permutations that have made them truly baffling. We have always supported Israel. Now our strength is shackled to its weakness. The consequences of our even seeming to be about to abandon Israel could be cataclysmic, for it and for that region, at very least. So Netanyahu has a free hand, to the world’s grief and, it must be feared, ultimately to Israel’s. This state of things has been developing over many years. There is no simple, obvious solution available to an American president.

Americans have special obligations to reality. It is true and manifest that we will have an outsize part in determining the fate of the planet. If it should be that big problems cannot be solved and that we are left with the tedious business of managing them, we should discipline ourselves to patience and deliberation, the old courtesies that have made democracy possible. We have at hand the best resources that can be had to deal with our situation, if we can agree to respect them…

Eminently worth reading in full. We ignore at our peril the rage that animates Trump voters: “Agreeing to Our Harm,” in @nybooks. (With apologies to The New York Review of Books, to which I subscribe, I have broken my usual habit of sharing direct links, even when the source is behind a pay wall. Because I hope that everyone will click through and read the entire essay, I have linked to an archived copy, freely available to all.)

See also: Richard Slotkin‘s “The conflict between Red and Blue America is a clash of national mythologies” from @yalereview.

* Allen Ginsberg, “America”

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As we take stock, we might recall that it was on this date in 1972 that the Supreme Court– a very different Supreme Court than today’s– unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and ordered him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.