The Carpentariat

On the sociopolitical upheavals of Morrison's Beloved, and two literary critiques

Earlier this week I read Toni Morrison's Beloved, for which I must thank the demagogue Glenn Youngkin and the appalled, Virginia mother-son duo of excessive, Victorian sensibilities.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel borrows from historical events — those in the horrifying life of one Margaret Garner, who in 1856 escaped Kentucky slavery to Ohio, where she was apprehended under enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, just after she had killed one of her children, a two-year-old daughter, to spare her a subsequent life of enslaved misery. This established Morrison's basis for 300+ pages of cruelty, beastiality, assorted barbarities and other dehumanized acts of oppression.

My reaction to Beloved was the same as some contemporaneous critics'. Despite its legitimate status as essential reading, it also struck me as mildly overwritten. For a superior fictionalized account of American slavery and its psychic effects, there is always William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. In nonfiction, Frederick Douglass' Narrative. For slavery's legacy, there is the indispensable Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man.  Backing way up, the finest nonfiction work on the origins of American slavery is Edmund Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom.

Stylistically, too much of Beloved too nearly approaches the stream-of-consciousness manner of some of Faulkner's works (The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August) and what is known as Samuel Beckett's — for my taste — less appealing "middle stage" (Molloy; Malone Dies; The Unnamable). The Anxiety of Influence indeed, Ms. Morrison.

Other authors of this style whom I find preferably restrained are Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway), James Joyce (A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; I'm a disagreeable outlier when it comes to Ulysses) and Marcel Proust (his magnificent, multivolumed In Search of Lost Time, which too many readers seem to believe begins and ends with Swann's Way).

Having referenced authorial "anxiety," I note that I spent some time seeking what turned out to be the rather hard-found insights of my beloved Harold Bloom († 2019), innovator of Anxiety's enormous influence on the discipline of literary criticism. Thus I quote him at some length from 2004, for when it comes to Bloom, there is no such thing as a too-lengthy quote:

"Beloved purports to be a true history of African-American slavery. The critic Stanley Crouch, disputing Morrison’s version of history, rather unkindly termed Beloved a soap opera of the Black Holocaust.... Perhaps Beloved is a permanent work, perhaps not. In time, it may be regarded as a brilliant period piece, perfectly revelatory of the cultural age of Ideological Resentment.... Beloved divides many of my acquaintances who possess critical discernment; for some of them it is a masterwork, for others it is supermarket literature. I myself am divided....

"There are virtually insurmountable aesthetic problems in the representation of any Holocaust, whether of six million Jews or of the 'sixty million' African Americans to whom Morrison dedicates Beloved. Something in our psychic defenses is activated by a litany of atrocities that comprehends mammary rape, a mother’s cutting of her baby’s throat, whippings, dreadful prison treatment on chain gangs—I stop arbitrarily, rather than complete the catalog. However veiled by indirect style or supernatural intercessions, this profusion of torments may numb any reader’s sensibilities. 'Guilt' ... is not necessarily a formula for aesthetic achievement."

On being "divided" I agree with Bloom, which is nothing unusual, since for years I've agreed with his literary takes on everything except his deep admiration for the poet Hart Crane. He considered Morrison's Song of Solomon to be her true "masterpiece," which I have yet to read. So on that, I can neither agree nor disagree.

What bewilders about Beloved, though, were the parental and especially suburban histrionics over it in Virginia. I can't say for sure the upheavals were authentic or inauthentic, since I can't read minds. Mighty suspicious, however, was that their daggered sensibilities just happened to be bloodiest upon Youngkin's much-advertised discovery of Terry McAuliffe's scandalous intent on morally and aesthetically corrupting Virginia's youth.

Next year, throngs of Youngkin-replicated demagogues will discover that McAuliffe's past demonic designs are in fact Democratically present in all 50 states and all 435 congressional districts. With no little political justification, the way Republicans figure it is that roads, bridges and child care are for saps. All real Americans are dead-centered on and hyper-aggravated about Toni Morrison et al.'s novelistic musings.

Two tales from the table-waiting crypt

Bright gal.

Daphne Crawford is a high school senior in Bogart, Georgia, renamed from Osceola in 1892 in proleptic honor, I've no doubt, of my bromanced Hollywood-noir icon. She's taking four advanced-placement classes, is enrolled at a nearby university, is busy with college applications and shiny résumé-boosting extracurriculars and, because she also waits tables, has published a Washington Post op-ed — "This one goes out to every whiny brat restaurant customer" — something I've never accomplished, and I've a few years on her.

As Daphne pointedly notes in said op-ed:

"From customers berating me and my co-workers because we’re out of ranch dressing for their takeout order (we all know you have some at home) to being yelled at for things I can’t control (I didn’t overcook your steak; I’ve never cooked a steak, period), to closing up after a double shift at 11 p.m. and getting less in tips than you’d see in a street player’s guitar case on a Tuesday afternoon, I’m quickly running out of patience and the willingness to work."

I hear ya, Daph. Decades ago, facing poverty and thus impending starvation in the Missouri Ozarks, I too took a job waiting tables. In the span of what seemed about 15 minutes, my patience ran out, along with my willingness to work the wretched job of seeing to the "needs" of unappreciative dining deadbeats who had just paid an exorbitant price for some awful country-western show in Branson. In about 16 minutes — and here I scarcely exaggerate — I quit. Starvation seemed more attractive.

What has stayed with me over the years was the dreadful, nightly phenomenon of waiting on, say, a party of six, clinically obese, late-middle-aged rustics whose ear for music equaled their excessively tasteless way of dealing with an underpaid waiter. There I was, attentive to a t, doing this or that for them. Two hours of this and that and mercifully they would leave — after leaving a $2 tip.

Ever since, I've left a 20% or 25% or perhaps a 30% tip for a dinner tab or, barring eats, $5 for so much as one drink or a mere cup of coffee (which is rare, since I'm mostly a hermit). The waiter must still wait, must drop by now and then to ask if I'd like anything else, must still be on his or her feet — and above all, the waiter too must eat, and pay the rent.

In no way do I divulge my tipping habit as a self-celebratory, look-at-me invitation for applause. Generous, or rather, appropriate, tipping is just the right thing to do — unless of course you have a surly bartender or otherwise dinner attendant who deserves instead a more appropriate lesson in manners.

Ms. Crawford writes that she still waits tables. My advice to her in the gun-happy South: the above's reverse. No one would fault her for it. Be all you can be, Daphne.

In 2022, it's gerrymandering over election subversion. Pushback, anyone?

Of the House's 435 seats, roughly 60 are now deemed competitive. Republicans wield state-redistricting power over 187 seats; Democrats, 75. The Rs are already positioned to gain five seats in 2022 — an ominous number, given the current balance of 221 Democratic seats to Republicans' 213. To date, only a quarter of all seats have been redrawn.

Election subversion, election nullification or, most candidly, election theft by Republican state legislatures looms as the antidemocratic cauldron of 2024. Republican gerrymandering will do the earlier, dirty work in the midterms — although election subversion is sure to play its part in certain Senate elections: Georgia, specifically, we're looking at you.

Independent commissions in some states were to be the cure for partisan rigging of congressional district lines, and so far, in Colorado, for instance, it has come to pass. Elsewhere, independent commissions have fared less successfully. Last month in Virginia, to name one state, the independent panel gave up after near fisticuffs broke out. The panel turned the whole mess over to the state supreme court, which was the last thing the court wished to decide.

More common is Iowa, where Republican lawmakers threw out the initial map in favor of a second; each of the state's new districts — four in all — just happened to be carried by you-know-who in 2020. Or Ohio, where Republicans spit on the independent commission's map and proceeded to draw their own. Other commissions have been similarly abused, such as in Arizona and Michigan, where party-aligned lobbyists — organizing astroturf campaigns — have made a joke of the word "independent."

North Carolina deserves perhaps the most fiendish credit when it comes to gerrymandering. In 2011 the courts ordered the state to redraw its grotesquely designed "White" map. This month, the state reinstated it. For that, North Carolina's Republican lawmakers can thank Chief Justice John Roberts, who with his deciding vote in 2013, in the Shelby County v. Holder case, gutted the Voting Right Act's preclearance provision. Discriminatory skulduggery was a thing of the past, don't you know.

Not to be outdone by such witless indifference to American democracy, six years later the U.S Supreme Court ruled that the land's highest tribunal — the nation's alleged protector of constitutional rights — had no business, literally, interfering in states' rights to corrupt the bejesus out of U.S. congressional or any other districts. I haven't checked Ripley's latest Believe It or Not, but that is surely on page one.

Given all this rather well-known recent history, what's my point? I'll start with Wisconsin, where Republicans rule the state assembly with a 61 to 38 majority and 21 to 12 in the state Senate, even though in statewide elections, Democrats prevail. The state assembly has rejected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' People’s Maps Commission, and lawsuits are already flying in state and federal courts. As far as the latter goes, see: U.S. Supreme Court decision, 2019.

Anyway, a horde of worried citizens turned out for a public hearing on Wisconsin's freshly partisan redistricting by the Rs. An outside "protest," however, consisted only of an anti-gerrymandering group that gently offered symbolically sliced-up pizzas to the assembled crowd. It also offered speeches. Nothing more.

In Utah, where Republicans simply ignored an independent commission's proposals, one guy — one — a 36-year-old grad student, laid himself before the state capitol's doors in protest, where he was quickly handcuffed by a State Patrol officer. I repeat, since this is enormously, tellingly repeatable: just one guy showed up to inveigh, sort of, against Republicans' blunderbuss of redistricting.

Where Democrats control the process, they're doing the same, of course. The vital difference is that Democratic pols have consistently and uniformly stood for fair, nonpartisan redistricting.

Yet there's another vital difference between the parties. As Republican pols giddily hack away at whatever vestiges of fairness remained, with, obviously, the full support of their base, Democrats at large are taking it lying down — and not in the manner of that one Utah guy.

Were the national situation reversed, the Republican base would be swamping Democratic statehouses, perhaps in Jan. 6 style. Their outrage would be palpable, present and immensely pressing. Middle-class housewives would join AR-15-packing ruffians in wild and possibly violent protest, using Virginia's recent school board blowups as a guiding, though softer, template.

The opposition? It sits and reads the news or gawks at cable, shaking its head in despair. What can we do? Whatever can we do? For Christ's sake, people, the deployable template is staring you right in the face. It might not obstruct Republican gerrymandering everywhere or even anywhere. But it would exact a massive political toll and render the 2023 House, in the eyes of the larger public, illegitimate, undeserving and utterly worthless. It would, in short, be a start.

I know. Democrats. But one can dream. And who knows? Someday, the dream might materialize. 

Is our socialist children learning?

I was delighted, at least initially, to read Fredrik deBoer's cri de coeur against his "fellow travelers," as he puts it in "Democratic Socialists Need to Take a Hard Look in the Mirror."

I am among them, but not of them. I'd venture that most D.S.s — deBoer settles for "too many" — are imbued with the pitiable notion that socioeconomic "justice" shall soon prevail, sweeping into power alongside a majoritarian American army of voters wholly sympathetic to democratic socialism's ideals. In the movement's mind, the army already exists. What's more pitiable than that?

Whereupon Mr. deBoer takes a righteous machete to such foolishness. He whacks not once or twice, but repeatedly, in case once or twice fails to sink in:

"It’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise," he writes. "So many on the radical left whom I know have convinced themselves that their politics and policies are in fact quite popular on a national level, despite the mounting evidence otherwise," he continues.

He's not done. "The inconvenient fact is that [Bernie] Sanders ... failed to make major inroads among the moderate Black voters whom many see as the heart of the Democratic Party. What’s more, he failed to turn out the youth vote in the way that his supporters insisted he would." And "the idea that most Americans quietly agree with our positions is dangerous"; it leads to complacency.

I applaud deBoer's scolding not only because I agree with its heterodoxy. I applaud it because his and my innumerable, thunderingly similar scoldings just happen to be dead right. Most or too many "young socialists and progressive Democrats" lounge in the lazy comfort of enveloping likemindedness, oblivious to the actual world around them.

So things were going swimmingly as I read deBoer's piece — until he wrapped it with this: "Americans have lived in a capitalist system for generations; that will not be an easy obstacle for socialists to overcome."

His concluding bluntness about a socialist overthrow of the "capitalist system," presumably in its entirety, is as unrealistic, quixotic and downright foolhardy as any activist leftist's (another deBoerean term) belief in a majoritarian leftist army waiting to pounce.

No one even knows precisely what American socialism, democratic socialism or at-large progressivism really means, let alone that together they mean the end of American capitalism. Which ain't gonna happen. It just ain't.

In fact, deBoer himself muddles the lexicon of "socialism" by outlining the "principles" he believes it stands for, those being "an insistence on the absolute moral equality of every person and a fierce commitment to fighting for the worst-off with whatever social and governmental means are necessary."

I'm clueless as to what the "moral" equality of everyone means, but what deBoer essentially means is an economic system perfectly accommodable by a mixed, capitalist-socialist market economy. You know, what we have.

Ironically, democratic socialism will be advanced by principled conservatism, which is to say, incrementalism, Democratic Party style, our only hope.

America's two greatest social programs, Social Security and Medicare, both began life straightjacketed by conservative impulses. But born they were. They then grew, provision by successive provision, into the vast programs we have today. And neither is done growing; someday, the income cap on payroll taxes will be lifted — merely one wound to wealth inequality — and Medicare's age eligibility will be lowered, ultimately, to zero.

These are inroads to capitalism, not its abolition. Loose talk about capitalism — as muddled a concept as socialism — being an "obstacle" deserving of eradication is unhelpful, even counterproductive. That's just another hard fact socialists, democratic socialists and progressives must come to terms with.

Sure, things are bad. Really bad. But don't despair.

Yesterday I read a piece that broke my heart. It was written by three Danish researchers who investigate the relationship between democracies and covid responsiveness. Being Danish, the researchers studied Denmark (other European nations and the U.S., too), where, after the government loosened social restrictions because of vast progress in battling the disease, the number of cases "increased rapidly."

This resulted in the reimposition of restrictions. The academics' findings: "More than 90 percent of Danes support the new measures."

Why such a sane, Danish response to fresh social limitations by their government? "Our continuing research," they wrote, "suggests that Denmark’s performance up to this point is due to three important factors." Which are:

"First, Denmark has high social and institutional trust compared with other countries ... along with a high willingness to be vaccinated. Second, Denmark has a low degree of political polarization and misinformation. And third, the country embraces 'samfundssind,' a Danish word that loosely translates to 'community spirit.' While the country struggles to include every resident in this dictum, especially immigrant populations, Denmark is generally a trusting society with a strong communitarian ethic."

The Danish government did its responsible part by emphasizing transparency "through regular, nationally broadcast press meetings ... [which] shared coordinated messages based on factual information about the coronavirus while underscoring Danes’ moral obligations to one another."

All that, I hasten to emphasize, is not what broke my heart. Reading of Danes' institutional trust, their minimal political polarization and healthy community spirit was a refreshing, needed reminder that not all humanity is reckless, hyper-suspicious, politically rabid, socially atomized and nuts.

No, my heartbreak came in the blitzkrieging form of our increasingly pathetic fatherland, where all the above reigns. I began pondering when they didn't, beyond and before Trump's vicious insanity, before Bush's torture regime and unprovoked war, before Reagan's racial and socioeconomic divisiveness and Great Society warfare and hippies vs. hardhats and then beyond McCarthyism, which seized the entire nation in unrelenting fear and paranoia.

It had been some time since I had spent any time remembering the time when America was more like Denmark today: trusting, unified, bubbling with a strong, communitarian ethic. My time spent was fleeting. In the flash of a thunderbolt I remembered the "Good War," not personally, merely historically, from assorted written words — that is, more than Terkel's. Our Second World War, domestically, was the worst but oddly the best of times and indeed the last time when Americans behaved like adults.

I don't mean to romanticize war and dismiss its unsavory homeland effects. There was, because of government rationing, black marketing betwixt public and mafia; the usual Republican sniping at who I would argue was America's greatest president; the cruelty of Japanese internment; vestiges of German-American sympathy toward our European foe. And God knows nearly three-hundred thousand heartbroken families.

Also, however, there was FDR's straightforward leveling — today we call it "transparency" — with the public about battlefield setbacks, material deprivations at home and the loss of so many American service members. In his other voice, Roosevelt offered a realistic vista of wartime progress, as well as a better postwar planet.

Americans refused to despair; they balanced their sadness with trust in America's leaders, a wholesome reliance on hope, and an appreciation of the worthy cost of the war's deadly slog. They came together, by and large, through a "strong, communitarian ethic."

Juxtapose that with this small item about things quite tragic and big: a Steve Schmidt Twitter thread yesterday that caught my eye in its precise encapsulation of America's infantile crackup over what Denmark has handled maturely and sanely: the covid plague, where this post began.

"Overwhelmingly," he wrote, "[our] reality is the fault of three people. Trump, Murdoch and Zuckerberg. Trump is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans because of his insanity." Murdoch and Zuckerberg then monetized and algorithmically exploited it.

The collective outcome has been a nation unhinged. The crazy is scarcely limited to covid, of course, but with that said, in Denmark, 471 people have died of this plague, while here, we're heading to 800,000. I did the math: Adjusting for lopsided populations, the body-count ratio is 0.000078:0.002.

And therein lies the immense heartbreak. Since the Good War's communitarian ethic, grounded in sacrifice, we have traveled from McCarthyism et cetera to a far uglier, more profoundly self-destructive ism — that of Trump's.

Clearly, America's rot goes beyond one man, or two or three, as I'm sure Schmidt would agree, once freed from Twitter's confinement. More than fair is to finger contemporary Republicanism at large – full stop. Its dyspeptic fits over Rooseveltism were nothing compared to its deep, chronic, modern sickness, corrupting nearly half the nation and rendering the other half despairing.

Whenever America's miserable, early 21st-century history is written with appropriate hindsight, taking center stage in our misery will indisputably be the Republican Party. It'll be no portrait of Dorian Gray, subtly putrefying away from public view, but rather a gut-wrenching series of America's most contemptible, publicly visible Kodak moments, courtesy the most unAmerican political party ever.

And yet, I for one do not despair, joining instead our stoic forefathers and mothers of the mid-20th-century. A mass of counter-confluences will someday arrive to exterminate the foul, fetid, burrowing stench of Trumpism. For here lies the deeper history of America: its stupendous ability to overcome even the mightiest of adversities.

Biden's woes: They all go back to Afghanistan

History caught up to Joe Biden.

True, correlation isn't always the same as causation. But 20 fucked-up years of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan culminated, with impeccable consistency, in our epic debacle of an August escape from the tribal hellhole. And Biden has paid the political price. Though executed poorly — unavoidably poorly — Afghanistan has been a 500-pound albatross molesting the president's every sinew.

In this instance, correlation was causation, or the other way around. In the Reuters graph below, scanning Jan.-Nov., witness the sudden exchange of presidential approval/disapproval ratings. The flip arrived in August's turn to September, when Biden's standing morphed from 51% approval to 51% disapproval.

Suffolk University's polling — which earns an A+ from 538 — is worse. Since August, Biden’s approval has plunged to 38%. When Suffolk asked voters in early November if he should run for reelection, only 29% said yes. (64%, no.)

When Biden vows that polls mean nothing to him, the assertion means nothing to me. And I can assure you his White House staff wakes with polls and with polls they go to bed. They're the standardized testing of publicly perceived, political performance.    

For sure, Afghanistan has not been the sole causation of Biden's rolling misfortune. Afghanistan was, however, the megatonnage trigger. This may strike you as too obvious to point out, yet the much-larger-than subtext of Afghanistan has receded in political coverage. Against this, once such negativity settles itself in the electorate's noggin, it's a hard thing to snap and disentangle from.

In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll we find another case of impeccable consistency: that of the body politic's muddled gray matter. More than 60% of Americans — including one-third of Democrats and 71% of independents — say "he has not accomplished much after 10 months in office." Yet Americans are by and large pleased about infrastructure's passage and they were downright giddy about his almost $2 trillion covid relief package. The potential passage of his climate-social spending plan — supported by 63% — would make for a legislative trifecta.

The incongruence of reality vs. recall is more than short-term memory loss. It's also the Afghanistan hangover.

Last month's 531,000 new jobs, upgraded previous hires, higher wages mostly keeping up with (probably temporary) inflation, and stock-market highs benefiting 401ks? The Wapo/ABC poll finds that Biden's approval on the economy has slipped to 39%. Afghanistan.

Of course Democrats' warm, cooperative, one-big-happy congressional family has done its customary job of spectacularly fucking things up. These Crystal City inhabs have managed to convert a 2020 sweep into registered voters now preferring a Republican Congress by 51%, vs. 41% for Democrats (Wapo/ABC). Still, logic dictates a reciprocal drag. As Biden's fortunes have depleted, so have the Dems'. The genesis: Afghanistan.

Far be it from humble, cliché-intolerant me to say I told you so, but if the shoe fits:

In late August I furiously urged that Biden sack his entire national security team. It made no difference that the team was sandbagged and blindsided by Afghanistan's internal chaos. Shit happened, and someone — a lot of someones — should have paid for it. That's simply the way accountable government works.

Nor did it matter that the commander in chief was determined to plow ahead — with good reason, I should add — notwithstanding whatever counter-advice he received. Biden made a decision and he stuck with it. But skimpily, perfunctorily taking "responsibility" for the Afghanistan fiasco, which, to Herculean confoundment, he then labeled an "extraordinary success" was an Olympic mistake.

A political fact is that Americans love a president who drops to his knees and boldly confesses his sins. The most-cited and indeed revealing example of this was President Kennedy's televised penitence after the swinish Bay. It "humanized" him. And his approval rating went up. Few presidents have followed his liberating lead since.

I can predict the future of Biden's popularity no better than a $2 tarot-card reader. But as for the past of August 2021, I believe tomorrow's historians will confirm this assessment of Afghanistan as the essential down-turning point in Biden's presidency — one fundamentally removed from voters' economic confusion, covid unhappiness and otherworldly notions of legislative failure.

The saddest part: It didn't have to be this way. Had he flamed his national security team while donning sackcloth and ashes, August might well have been his finest moment in the public's eye. 

Four years in the predictable life of Steve Bannon

I shall briefly don my television-lawyer hat and make the following legal prediction about Steve Bannon's "troubles."

The shaggy little stinkbug is, as you know, expected to turn himself (itself) in on Monday for being a monumental ass. That, and something to do with Congress. An arraignment date has yet to be determined by the federal court.

Subsequent to that whenever hearing, I predict that Bannon, through attorneys he likely won't pay, will finagle his way to a trial date sometime in the summer of 2022.

After the jury returns a guilty verdict in less time than it takes for his mafia boss to speechifyingly segue into victimhood, the pestiferous insect of a major national embarrassment will, I further predict, appeal and appeal until sometime in 2025 ...

by which time his mafia boss will be back in the White House, where he'll pardon Steve Bannon.

On Day One of America's last days.

***

Addendum, from Andy Borowitz:

An unhinged attack on progressivism, and a deliberate blindness on Trumpism

​​​​Writing for Quillette, ​philosopher and psychologist Peter Hughes straps on his ideological blinders and warns us of "The Temptations of Tyranny":

"If a tyrant relieves us of the burden of seeking liberation, and if we surrender our individuality to the will of the group, the rewards of that submission and the vengeance we can wreak upon real or imagined enemies will be worth the price of liberty. Currently, historically marginalised groups are attempting to restrict free speech, which was instrumental in elevating them to a position of cultural dominance."

Therein lies his focus: the immense danger of "marginalized groups" -- read: progressives, including guilted-out, shamefully privileged, upper-middle-class whites -- seeking to inhibit free speech.

Hughes prefaces his lengthy, not unreasonable reproach of leftist-American censorship with the wildly unreasonable, fatuously incomparable warning of Mao's Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 with Red Guards who "desecrated the graves of Confucius’s ancestors...; smashed coffins, plundered them for jewels and relics, and hung human remains from trees."

Such is the philosopher and psychologist's asinine endpoint of certain progs yelling down free speakers on college campuses, insisting on the violently ungrammatical "they" for "he" or "she," or demanding the reparation of professorship terminations in silly cases of presumed "safe space" invasions.

It'll all lead, warns Hughes in so many words, to America's social warriors hanging the human remains of First Amendment defenders from trees.

I stand second to no man in my contempt for progressive censorship, whether exercised or merely advocated, and so I have written. But, as our Uncle Joe would say, "C'mon, man."

Counterattacking by frightening America's right-wing children with bone-chilling tales of Mao's bloody cultural rampages, which resulted in the deaths of probable millions and sent millions more to brutal reeducation camps?

What's more, our good philosopher entirely and ironically overlooks the real, actualized danger facing America today: the tyranny of Trumpism, its relentless assaults on free speech and a free press, its dehumanization of all opponents, its promise of authoritarianism — spearheaded by a singular tyrant, backed by nomadic hordes of fascistic, cultural hall monitors — "reliev[ing] us of the burden" of freedom.

It is, of course, the tyrant and his pack who believe that "if we surrender our individuality to the will of the group [their group], the rewards of that submission and the vengeance we can wreak upon real or imagined enemies will be worth the price of liberty." Ultimately, the pack's liberty will also by consumed by the tyrant.

This rather obvious playbook gets somehow misplaced by Hughes in his essayed screed about illiberal progressives — though slyly, he never employs the word — and their intended "revolutionary overthrow of an entire social order," still inhabited only by Ozzie and Harriet.

As noted, I outspokenly detest the lengths to which some progressives have already gone in their preening, self-celebratory machinations to shut down free speech and in their somewhat laughable delusions about remaking America in OAC's image. But their priggish schoolmarming is ephemeral and so too shall their "moral panic" pass.

But Trumpism? Its empirical devastation to all that's American, and its "promise" of more? Much more? That defies the ephemeral, for authoritarianism is but the grinding way of too many liberal democracies, suffering from the burdens of freedom.

Yet, as is their wont, Trumpism's apologists simply cover their "intellectual" crimes by punching down.

Will Trump actually have a primary opponent?

To the following, my question is this: Why?

"He doesn’t actually say the name Donald Trump when he lays out what’s wrong with the Republican Party....

"While [Chris] Christie’s criticism of the party’s focus on the 2020 election results and subtle knocks on other aspects of Trump’s term are designed to create a distinct lane for him in the 2024 primary, he’s also courting confrontation with a former president who still commands the loyalty of the Republican base."

The passage is from Politico, whose article, as introduced above, explores Christie's possible path to a 2024 run, which I would alternatively label a road to perdition. Mr. Christie must know this. Nevertheless, he is making as many quasi-anti-Trump splashes as he can; for instance he also "obliquely" criticizes Trump's enormous deficit spending and avowed love of China's despot.

"Sources" tell Politico that "Christie thinks Trump’s influence in the party is waning.... They say that Trump has lost his mojo since being deplatformed from his once-mighty Twitter account and that Republicans such as Virginia‘s governor-elect, Glenn Youngkin, last week showed a way to win without directly embracing Trump."

Either Christie is lying about what he "thinks," or he's lost his political acuity. Trump's influence on the party is as strong as ever — he's a shoo-in for 2024's presidential nomination, if indeed he wants it and he isn't imprisoned — and Youngkin would never have gained the Republican nomination had he not fed the Big, familiar Lie during the primary. That's where the overwhelming, crackpotted power of political advancement resides in the GOP, more so than in the Democratic Party.

Just as embedded are lies themselves — big ones, little ones, middling ones, whatever strikes a Republican's fancy. To these guys, lying is always preferable to truth-telling, since truth is usually so — boring. In Christie's truth-telling case, however, he'll convert boredom to outrage.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins, who years ago displayed some semblances of political decency, eventually saw where his fortunes lay: as a thoroughly besotted, altogether malignant, superPAC Trumper. In this most peculiar instance of "What in fuck is Chris Christie doing?" though, Rollins was beholden to the rare truth: "To the Trump people he’ll come across as a traitor. And they’ll come after him, big-time." In short, Christie hasn't a prayer.

Yet there is an answer to my initial question of "Why?" — why is the real Conehead making noises about a 2024 run and kind of attacking Trump as his sort-of platform?

Well, it seems Chris has a book coming out next week. And that, as Paul Harvey used to say, is the rest of the story. He's teasing book sales.

I'm a bit unclear as to his target market. The Trumpers sure as hell won't buy it, the Never Trumpers aren't in need of it, and Democrats, by and large, are at once losing interest in politics and sick to death of hearing about America's original fascist. (Yesterday, in a C-Span "After Words" interview, I listened to George Will rebut the notion that, despicable as Trump is in so many ways, he's no fascist, since the ideology of fascism is race based. I failed to catch Will's exclusionary distinction.)

So my advice to Mr. Christie is this: run.

Run, even though you now see it as merely a publicity hook. Why? indeed — why not? Your candidacy would be jolly good fun for all — especially the Trumpers, for they love nothing more than to hate.

Turning around all the Democratic doomsdayism

Working at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, Kyle Kondik's charge is to peer into Sabato’s Crystal Ball, which, to Democrats' regret, is becoming less clouded and more ominously red each day. He also has a book coming out, which is sure to be a Fifty Shades of Grey best seller — a history of the U.S. House of Representatives. I applaud Mr. Kondik for his daily toils and authorial pluckiness, sarcasm aside.

In relation to his quotidian task, today he asks himself what may be a kind of counterfactual question: "How Likely Is a Democratic Comeback Next Year?" This is where you might want to stop reading and instead pick up your copy of Fifty Shades.

For Mr. Kondik's answer is embedded in his very last, op-ed word: The forecast is "bleak." While there's nothing new in that observation, he does fill it out in a most economical way.

He dismisses the political benefits of Democrats' passage of the infrastructure bill and, maybe, their ultimate passage of a Build Back Better package. There would probably be no "significant direct reward," he writes, since "new laws aren’t a magic bullet in campaigning."

Kondik's additional downers are particularly disheartening because they're circumstances essentially out of Democrats' control. Next year's most ungovernable situation is that midterms are commonly brutal to a president's party; here is a force of history that is nearly unstoppable.

He adds that Democrats "could be coming into the election under strong economic conditions," with an emphasis on could. Yet the economy is already strong, though most voters persist in seeing it as weak. Thus Democrats are left to hope, mostly, that inhibitors to an even stronger economy fix themselves, such as inflation and America's newest economic worry, clogged supply chains.

Two other factors concern Kondik: rising gas prices and the seemingly unshakable "trajectory of Covid" — one day we're over the hump, next day, we're at a fresh zenith. Again, these troubles could end, but, notes Kondik, they're "largely beyond the Democrats' influence."

As is Republican redistricting, which, in relation to 2022, the op-eder omits. Democrats do have some power here, though, if they can muster the will to break the filibuster and push back on Trumpian election rigging. Granted, that's one big if.

Disagreeing with Kondik's points would be a gargantuan challenge. On the other hand, I have offered alternatives to his and other analysts' sense of Democratic helpless and, therefore, acceptance of electoral doom.

I realize that many readers see me as something of an inveterate scold, what with my slashing hither and thither at Democratic marvels of what I see as egregious political ineptitude, from their self-destructive social warring to far too timid, upper-brackets tax restructuring.

Throughout the last week, however, I have pushed and promoted several positive swing-arounds, encapsulated in one central concept: a swift move to singularly claiming the mantle of Burkean conservatism, where most voters live. If you missed my earnest recommendations, you can find them here and here. No need to rehash them in this spot.

What I will add here is that not all Democratic candidates must warm their innermost hearts to the Burkean concept. Indeed, any inner resistance should not present a problem, since virtually all politicos live by the old adage, "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made." Hence my rather unusual proposal is in reality the most usual of all.

Some Dems, "progressive" Dems, will of course reject all sensible recommendations. But neither is that a problem. They come from blindingly blue districts whose seats are as safe as a mother's arms and they're heard only by the most non-sensible. So let them, both of them, be.

For all other Democrats, a vocal shift to what I propose would be a party godsend. And God knows congressional Democrats need a 2022 miracle. In tune with this religious theme, they must remind themselves that God helps only those who help themselves.

After weeks of having to pound the keyboard to produce an "s," "d," "f" and a few others letters, Sunday I had to give up, had to buy another laptop. Any help you can provide to help cover the cost — after all, my laptop is largely for the production of these posts — would be most appreciated. —PM

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Update: Thanks to the generosity of several readers, the laptop's cost was covered by a hefty 81 percent. You know who you are, and you have my lasting gratitude. Thank you.

Another "safe space" hideously trashed by creative, intellectual exploration

​​​​​I have mostly resisted writing about the ignominious currents of university "wokeness," believing they would diminish — out of exhaustion, if nothing else. I was wrong. The currents are, if anything, growing stronger. I cite this recent microscopic case within the run-riot macrocosmic madness.

Bright Sheng, a Chinese-American professor of music at the University of Michigan and recipient of a MacArthur "genius" award, has surrendered his teaching duties for the time being. Instead he is spending his hours apologizing for having screened for students a faithful, 1965 production of Othello, in which the unequaled Shakespearean actor Laurence Olivier appears as the Moor in blackface, since the Moor was — you got it, black. Sheng’s aboveboard intent was simply to show how the composer Verdi adapted Shakespeare's play to his opera Otello.

(In something of a digression, I note that minstrel shows of the early 19th century and Hollywood blackface routines of the 1920s and 1930s were, in their deepest significance — and without the mimics even being aware of it — a profound recognition of Black culture as America’s most original, most creative culture, in song, instrumental music, dance, linguistics and civic religion. This remark is in no way a defense of modern blackface, of course, merely an observation from history.)

Again, Professor Sheng screened the film as an exercise in operatic adaptation. Nothing Moor. Some of his students, however, yelped that they were traumatized by the screening. The believable explanation is their theatrical inclination to over-the-top virtue signaling.

"I was shocked that [Sheng] would show something like this in something that's supposed to be a safe space," said one to the Michigan Daily. Others signed a letter demanding that Sheng be relieved from teaching, so as to "create a safe environment.” A professorial colleague, probably knowing the best way to secure that corner office, also condemned him for having committed a "racist act."

(Another brief digression: I must note that, in its story on the Sheng case, the NY Times presented a film photo of Olivier in blackface — with no "trigger warning." Did the Times, too, shockingly commit a "racist act"?)

Sheng, who survived Mao's cultural upheavals and senseless oppression of the educated class, has rejected accusations of racism, adding, in an email to the Times, that "facing criticism for my misjudgment as a professor here is nothing like the experience that many Chinese professors faced during the Cultural Revolution. But it feels uncomfortable that we live in an era where people can attempt to destroy the career and reputation of others with public denunciation."

And where university administrations willingly join in and thrust wrecking balls against the once-sturdy barriers of academic freedom. 

Dozens of students and faculty members have flatly refused his loosely framed historical context and proffered regrets. "'Professor Sheng responded to these events by crafting an inflammatory 'apology' letter to the department's students in which he chose to defend himself by listing all of the BIPOC individuals who [sic] he has helped or befriended throughout his career," wrote 42 of the aforementioned, unappeasable group.

Why his letter was "inflammatory" is something of a mystery. At any rate, the university's gutless administration has tied itself up in panicked knots, fingering Sheng for having sinned. (On the upside, roughly 750 faculty members and 60 School of Music students signed letters in support of Sheng and demanded that the university apologize to him. Still, he remains barred from teaching.)

Sheng has bled remorse and confessed his "mistake." Careerwise, that’s smart, if having no options can be classified as smart. He inadvertently invited the faux-victimized wrath of students who have no business sitting in an adult educational environment. But as a lesson in adapting a Shakespearean masterpiece for opera? You know, his job? Then no, screening the film was no blunder steeped in conscious or subconscious racial malignity.

Were I the dean of the University of Michigan's music department, I might gently suggest to the emotively traumatized that they seek enlightenment elsewhere. Perhaps Mel Brooks' Psycho-Neurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous.

Or maybe that they transfer their major to the drama department.

The GOP: from Goebbels to Goldwater to Trump and all the little Trumps

This post’s title says nothing new; it’s but a repeat of Republicans' chronic repetitions of reality molestation, which, while sickening, is also risible. Herr Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda had nothing on these guys, who, in turn, have conspicuously sat at the deformed foot and similarly disfigured mind of the failed literatus.

Nevertheless, this latest, run-of-the-mill Republican assault on reality is instructive and thus in need of further dissemination. The assault comes in video advertising form, which, says National Republican Congressional Campaign Chairman Tom Emmer, reveals that “Democrats' weak leadership and socialist agenda have led to chaos at home and abroad.”

Hence perhaps you would expect the NRCC ad to show Democrats’ chaotic, weak leadership. But you would be disappointed. Several of the ad’s clips instead show instances of chaos and leadership weakness that took place during our recent bondage under The Hapless Orange Reign. The chronologically confused video aired on Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network and social media.

The Molotov cocktail clip is in fact from 2020; the red-smoke/fireworks segment is also from 2020; and the "Black Lives Matter” sign surrounded by flames is, as the Washington Post's Dave Weigel noted yesterday, from 2020 as well. CNN says it has "independently confirmed the 2020 context for the images of the Molotov cocktail toss and the smoke-and-fireworks scene.”

Naturally, an NRCC spokesman was “unapologetic” to CNN about the video's magical 2020-was-actually-2021 conversion, since, as everyone knows, the Democratic Party at large avidly supports Molotov-cocktail hurling and the like. Seeking promotion and neofascistic fame, the spokesman also aped Immanuel Kant’s adage that "from such crooked timber ... nothing entirely straight can be made” by adding that President Biden "actively encouraged the protests.” 

I mean, why not? Who among the profoundly unsound minds of Fox News/OAN viewers and far-right social-media buffs would question that the sinister Joe Biden would actively encourage violent protests? When, that is, he is taking a restful break from hosting Satanic black masses in the service of cold pizza and pedophilia rings.

I wrote my dissertation in American political history in 2002. Its thesis was that American demagoguery, once practiced personally by Democrats and Republicans alike, has, since the advent of Goldwaterism, become a Republican partywide routine. Beginning in the mid-1960s and “New Right” '70s, I wrote, the GOP began speaking with one unified voice, uttering reams of bullshit aimed at the fleeceable masses. (My scribblings, in formal presentation, were a bit more sophisticated than that.)

In 2002, little could I have known, as they say, just how godawfully wretched the entire Republican Party would be by 2016-2021. In a mere 14 years, its demagogic bullshit would tighten and exponentially zoom into unmistakable Goebbelsesque territory. The transatlantic circle and historical arc are now complete.

Necessary advice for Dems, part two

​​​​​Once again, sanity has been promoted and political practicality secured by the House's Congressional Black Caucus, as it has done for a half-century as the "Conscience of the Congress."

Friday, the CBC acted as a conciliator between a horde of safely seated, squawking progressives and a handful of at-risk, antagonistic moderates. The infrastructure bill, that long-suffering orphan of brain-dead obstructionists, finally found a welcoming home on the desk of President Biden — thanks to the CBC's mediation.

Its simple plan: Pass the overdue legislation to shore up a disintegrating America, then hold merely a "good-faith" procedural vote on the larger, social spending package.

Speaker Pelosi recognized the wisdom of harnessing the persuasive influence of the CBC's "low-key, soften-spoken" chairwoman, Rep. Joyce Beatty. Hours later, infrastructure passed. "It happened," notes the Times, "because faction-on-faction intransigence slowly turned to member-to-member cooperation — all in the service of what should have been an easy task."

More succinctly, it happened because the CBC’s grandmotherly Beatty and her team sat the children down and gently suggested they grow up. Nevertheless, or rather of course, "members of the self-styled 'squad' of far-left members from extremely safe big-city districts celebrated their six 'no' votes.” (Because of those votes, the bill’s passage also required the votes of Republicans, 13 in the final tally, many of whom are now being targeted for revenge by their base.) 

Prior to that act of pubescent buffoonery, members of Rep. Jayapal's Congressional “Progressive” Caucus had already diminished in opposition from 30 to 20 to 10. Meanwhile, Biden went to work on the few defiant moderates.

AOC, one of the Gang of Six, had one intelligent thing to say: "What is very pressing is the protection of voting rights and combating against gerrymandering…. If the Senate does not move on that, there’s no amount of material gains that we could deliver that will compensate."

Which leads me to suggest that Democrats do to the Build Back Better package what Stephen Douglas did to Henry Clay's "omnibus" 1850 Compromise: break it up into stand-alone bills, passing them one by one — each with great fanfare — throughout election year 2022.

BBB’s severance would be a concession to Manchin, whom Senate Democrats could then press — in exchange for services rendered — for support of federal provisions outlawing Republican state maneuvers to corrupt fair elections, especially nullification.

While they're at it, Democrats should work to deemphasize group-identity politics, promoting instead a kind of soft class warfare, stressing that poor and middle-class blacks, browns & whites are all in same socioeconomic boat. Republicans would shriek their usual "Marxist Democrats!" shrieks, but, outside of Bubba territory, would anyone give a damn?

Democrats must also flee from their devastating "open borders" image by taking an explicit stance against illegal immigration, while — to repeat what I’ve already written — advancing the American ideal of robust pluralism by disavowing woke, zero-tolerance, culture-warrior policing of discourse.

Democrats might also want to cease harping about certain redneck communities that demand parental control of education, such as banning a pedological practice — critical race theory — that’s not being practiced. Let them be; in general their children cannot become any more ignorant and enlightenment resistant than they and their parents already are.

Let these recommendations serve as addenda to my party-rebranding piece of last Thursday. The Democratic Party requires a screaming, primal revamping of what it stands for, and its approach to Middle America, where the votes are. Should it deflect fundamental shifts in stance and strategy, the party will be electorally roasted throughout at least the next generation.

Rebel Without a Cause; A Viewer With Bewilderment

I just rewatched Rebel Without a Cause. It had been years. Why, years later and once again, was I bewildered? Let's start with the accolades:  

Wikipedia's describes the film as "a groundbreaking attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth, critique parental style, and explore the differences and conflicts between generations." In 1990, the Library of Congress added Rebel Without a Cause to its National Film Registry, having deemed the film "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant."

Rather amusingly, continues Wikipedia, "Rebel was censored in Britain by the British Board of Film Censors and released with scenes cut and an X-rating. Most of the knife fight was excised and not shown on British screens until 1967. The film was banned in New Zealand in 1955 out of fears that it would incite 'teenage delinquency,' only to be released on appeal the following year with scenes cut and an R16 rating."

I might have banned the film too, but for reasons of excessive sappiness, excessive misportayals of 1950s teenage hoodlumism, and excessive parental stupefaction. Was all this excessiveness how director Nicholas Ray actually understood teenage angst, alienation (that perennially overused word), and most of all, delinquency in the age of Eisenhower?

Teenage delinquents were delinquents then mostly for the same reasons they're delinquents now: They're grossly uninterested in education, are captivated by false notions of masculinity, many come from impoverished environments, they suffer from delinquent peer pressure and, commonly, indifferent parenting (though not in Rebel). The cycles of ignorance and violence pass from generation to generation.

Dean does his usual routine of moping, whining, and indulging solipsistic tendencies. Why oh why can't the world understand him? It does, although Dean can't hear its understanding over his self-absorbed cries. It's all quite tiresome.

Which is why I'm bewildered by the Library of Congress's National Film Registry deeming Rebel "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant." Granted, historically it's significant for its caricatured roles — a bronzed example of how Hollywood, especially 1950s Hollywood, could take a serious subject and make a comic book out of it — except for Sal Mineo's superb, truly groundbreaking performance as a troubled, young gay man. But the film goes no further than that.

Then again, 13 years earlier the Registry added The Exorcist.