Posts Tagged ‘Trump’
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves”*…
When you think about politics these days, it’s hard to avoid focusing on Donald Trump’s remarkable rise to power and his even more remarkable presidency. It’s even harder to avoid thinking about the scandals swirling around him day to day. It’s not that I don’t think these are important. But they are not the subject of today’s talk. In this talk, I want to look at the big picture. In this picture, Trump is merely a symptom. He is a symptom of a serious problem with our political and constitutional system.
Because Trump’s method is to provoke outrage and fluster his opponents, many people have wondered whether we are currently in some sort of constitutional crisis. We are not. Rather, we are in a period of constitutional rot…
Yale Law professor Jack Balkin on the importance of not missing the forest for the trees: “Trumping the Constitution.”
[image above, sourced here]
* “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” – Thomas Jefferson
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As we batten down the hatches, we might recall that it was on this date in 1788 that the eleven states voted to adopt the new U.S. Constitution, and it was formally ratified; it went into effect on March 4 of the following year. The two remaining states ratified by 1790.
Page one of the original copy of the Constitution
“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand”*…
Cultural critique is in a tricky spot. Living as we do under an extremist government, it is hard to know what to do with criticism, or how to consume art that does not carry a big rubber stamp declaring it “political.” It’s hard to defend doing anything except being in the streets…
Cultural criticism is not self-indulgent: It is a service to the community… Painting, music, television, the visual culture of the internet, poetry: These art forms and their consumers and critics represent an aesthetic space whose boundaries are not defined by the president. Unless we believe in and nurture this space, the critic is stuck forever explaining how this or that book is crucial reading “in Trump’s America.” But this type of reviewing hobbles thought, because it reduces all art to the structure of satire. It is as if Trump is a spider in the middle of a web, and every review that tethers the meaning of a pop song to his régime strengthens it…
Art as society’s hope chest: “In Defense of Cultural Criticism in Trump’s America.”
* Bob Dylan, “The Times, They Are A’-Changin'”
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As we think for ourselves, we might recall that it was on this date in 1839 that Charlotte Brontë, eldest of the three literary Brontë sisters, and author of Jane Eyre (among other novels), wrote to The Reverend Henry Nussey, the brother of Ellen Nussey, her long-time friend and correspondent, refusing Henry’s proposal of marriage. Charlotte found Henry desperately dull. Still, she let him down diplomatically. “I have no personal repugnance to the idea of a union with you,” she wrote in her unenthusiastic reply, going on to cite altruistic reasons for her demurral: “mine is not the sort of disposition calculated to form the happiness of a man like you.”
Trump Card…
As Donald Trump’s ruminations on a run for the White House gain form, as his thoughts on an agenda when he’s there solidify (build a $100 million ballroom in the White House, threaten China, appropriate Iraqi oil fields to pay for our invasion, etc.), and as he begins to attract endorsements (Gary Busey!), it’s surely time to contemplate a future in which The Donald could become Commander-in-Chief Donald. Happily, the good folks at Team Coco have developed a simple infographic to help voters navigate the inevitable confusion created by an embarrassment of famous Donalds…
As we remember that if we don’t cast our votes wisely we get exactly what we deserve, we might recall that it was on this date in 1918 that Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shot down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death-in-a-dogfight the following day.
Richthofen in 1917, wearing the Pour le Mérite, the “Blue Max”, Prussia’s highest military order (source)
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