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The Roganing

In 2020, Joe Rogan did an episode of his podcast, a 5 hour conversation with Alex Jones. In 2015, he did an interview with Milo Yiannopoulos. 

They are among 42 episodes that - surprise! - vanished from the collection when Spotify paid over $100 million to Rogan for rights to his podcasts.

Keep that in mind when Spotify acts shocked to discover that Rogan might be doing things which are... controversial.

Rogan is sort of emblematic of the hard road many ambitious folks have in show business. A modestly successful comedian and entertainer, Rogan had a small role on the series NewsRadio in the nineties, a somewhat longer gig hosting Fear Factor on NBC, and some niche success as a standup comic - it's hard to quantify success with comics these days, in part because while they may do well enough playing the 2nd or 3rd largest club in Phoenix, the streaming service level of desperation for comic content provides many opportunities to be filmed.

I'm not trying to minimize his success, but as careers go, it may not have been the kind of thing you planned on when you started out.

I mention all of this because Rogan has always been something of a specific draw - not so much a runaway success as a solid, reasonably well liked genre specific star, that genre being a sort of scruffy, working guy icon, with some appeal in his own demographic of 25-54 white guys (hence the added gigs hosting, say, MMA fights on tv), but not necessarily a lot outside of that.

There's a defense of Rogan's podcasts - I'm getting to them - that insists that critics are attacking Rogan's audience, a putdown of all white men wrapped in the takedown of a widely followed (perhaps even wildly liked, though I'm not clear on what that even means) podcast. So let's be clear: I don't blame the audience.

The problem with the podcast is Rogan himself.

Rogan hosts the podcast much the way one would expect for a middle aged comic/reality show host to do (don't take my word for it - watch Andy Cohen) - bring up a topic, bring out a guest or two, ask some questions, bing bang boom, you've got a podcast. Get in the game early enough, promote the hell out of yourself, grab some ziz by mouthing off a few times... and you too could be sitting on the podcast that attracts millions.

But you're late and you don't, and that's kind of the point: what Rogan's doing isn't genius, or even especially hard. It isn't, really, all that different from his overall career. It just happens to be the platform where he's managed to achieve the most reach, ever, of his - again, not being critical - modest success of a career. That's what Spotify paid $100 million for. It's also why we have a little bit of a problem.

The problem, really, is Rogan's minimalist approach to hosting and topics. The whole shtick, really is "I don't know a lot about this, let's talk to someone who does" and it has, as a rising total of pulled podcasts demonstrates, led to Rogan blithely allowing quacks, frauds, Nazis and racists to share, uncontested, questionable information and views which turn out to be, inaccurate, invalid, or simply too much. It has allowed Rogan himself to casually offer up insulting slang as, one supposes, he probably thought was no big deal in smaller setttings. It's a predictable problem that could have occurred to Spotify prior to purchase had Spotify's billionaire owner seen himself (who does, these days) as not just a pass through to audiences but a content provider with a role in determining the quality of the content.

The bottom line point - and it's breathtakingly obvious - is Rogan needs an editor. A supervising producer. Someone, really, whose job exists to plan content, research guests, help prepare the host with questions, and identify potential potholes. It's the way GOOP needed actual medical advisors to point out that jade eggs might cause serious health problems inserted into your cooch. 

This isn't hard. It's not world ending or anti-white guy to point out, in passing, that unsupervised, unmoderated Joe Rogan just spitballing on an interesting topic is likely to be what it, well, is: inaccurate, embarrassing, tactless, even offensive and dangerous. It's the problem created by social media where we all just assume we can do the same thing Chuck Todd does for NBC with a budget, a staff, and a Senior Producer. Content creation is hard, it needs structure and it needs, desperately, expertise. The alternative, as the Roganing of our discourse demonstrates, is a messy, often inaccurate, frequently maddening morass of dubious vitamin cures, "i'm no expert but" opinionating, and a lot of, as it turns out, dangerous misinformation.

It's not the audience, and, I'll say it... the problem ultimately isn't necessarily Joe Rogan - though I do think, as a grown person, it's fair to ask why "maybe I don't know a lot about this and should consult people who do" isn't simply a reasonable expectation of those who wish a central role in our discourse. But, hey, that's me. What I do know is, at some point, Spotify has to move to rein in the free for all of its podcasting plans, or continue, as Rogan demonstrated, to reap the whirlwind of every loose comment and off the cuff rant. Our discourse could use grown ups. And "I hate grown ups" looks fine on a college comic at an open mic... but it may be time for Joe Rogan to think about what maturing means.

Melania Trump Is Selling A Hat

There's a lot going on in the world, but I find myself stuck on the strangest, if not smallest, of news stories: that Melania Trump is auctioning off her hat.

The hat - one she wore to meet President Macron and his wife - is part of an online auction where Mrs. Trump is also selling NFT's of photos of the hat for cryptocurrency.

According to the press release, the starting bid is $250,000.

While much of her husband's family, including his children from his first marriage, are embroiled in a series of financial and political scandals, Melania Trump has managed to find a fairly private life in the post presidency. She is rarely seen. She does not speak, and only occasionally nets public attention, particularly, it seems with auctions. This is her second foray into NFTs.

There are of course, all sorts of questions to be asked over this turn of events - why does she need the money? Is she unhappy? Does she have, as most former First Ladies do, an office and a staff? What do they do, anyway? Sell off her possessions?

And again... why does she need the money?

Myself, I have more questions about the hat. It's a Herve Pierre hat, by the way, and while many may not know, Pierre - a veteran of Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera - designed Mrs. Trump's Inaugural Ball gown and has been a stylist to her for a number of years. The hat was the topper to a severe white suit Mrs. Trump wore, which complemented the white Chanel suit Mrs. Macron wore that day. The hat, however, was wide brimmed and oversized, and generally blocked most views of Mrs. Trump's face. Mrs. Macron, one might note, did not wear a hat. One might also observe that, in general, outside of the British nobility, hat wearing has largely fallen out of favor.

And - this is really only my opinion - it was kind of an ugly hat. I may not be a huge fan of hats, but I enjoy a dramatic picture hat as much as anyone, or the "fascinators" of Britain, cloche hats, cowboy hats... I'm not hard to convince. But the Trump/Macron hat was the sort of hat that, well, annoys me: too big yet not big enough to be a dramatic statement; droopy, rather than jaunty; limiting things like sight and hearing, which seems counterproductive in a social setting. 

So, on the one hand, I get it: why not unload an outfit specific, already worn hat that, frankly, only sort of worked? On the other hand... if you're going to auction off First Lady items, ostensibly "for charity" (vague "scholarships" are promised), why not pull together a substantial, wide ranging representation? Why just... well, you know... a hat?

By virtue of her silence, Mrs. Trump remains largely a cipher. It's why, aside from being well written, that the two books about Mrs. Trump - Stephanie Winston Wolkoff's and Stephanie Grisham's - have been the most intriguing looks behind the Trump curtains. Mrs. Trump, it is suggested, feels the press is unfair to her. Yet this could easily be addressed in a friendly interview. There is of course the fact that she does not seem entirely confident of her English (though her facility in a number of languages was touted frequently by Trump press agents), why not surprise everyone and do the interview in French? Or Italian?

Aside from the Trump family claims of press mistreatment, there's the similar, but not the same feeling across the conservative right that 'Liberal media" is deeply unfair, even disrespectful to Mrs. Trump, and her role as First Lady. This is, yes, a bit rich, coming from the folks who coined "Pig in a Pants Suit" and suggested, repeatedly, that Michelle Obama was a man. But then, too, the "support" for Mrs. Trump is itself kind of odd - a kind of force fitting of a few thinly known details into a blown up, largely fictional presentation of the former First Lady as a folksy, classy mom just trying to stage tasteful events. And indeed, though Mrs. Trump has been dogged by some fairly salacious photos she took as a model, the idea of widespread liberal disrespect for her is a bit extreme. One would have to have a much better sense of her to really even know where to begin or what to criticize.

As it is, Mrs. Trump largely sailed through the Presidential years largely unseen and undisturbed - arguably bringing a rarified, if occasionally severe sense of high style to White House decorating, and occasionally raising controversy with outfits like "I really don't care... do U?" and $75,000 Dolce jackets that were perhaps a bridge too far. And continuing that largely private life appears to be her plan. Which only brings us back to the overall weirdness of this story: why is Mrs. Trump selling that hat?  

 

What The Heck Is Happening?

The truly off kilter thing about the politics we're experiencing these days... well, how many FB posts and Twitter stories start that way, actually? I have one friend who insists we have to make clear, always, how not normal this moment this is... yet I feel (still) the not normal part pretty much speaks for itself. Every day it seems, is a new round, of "What is this?" and "Why is this happening?"

I wondered, for a hot moment, if the arrival of John Kelly as Chief of Staff really did signal some sort of new phase - as if, somehow, 6 months of an Administration constitutes a "phase" - and while that idea seems out the window (such a short time, too!), losing Sebastian Gorka and... what was his name? Bannon? did seem like a shift, if not to us, then surely to the ardent believers of... whatever it was Steve Bannon and folks like Gorka were trying to sell.

There's nothing I find quite so ludicrous in all of the politics of the "Trump right" than the notion that Bannon serves, somehow, as the movement's "deep thinker." Trump, obviously, has no fixed ideology, no clear core of beliefs to animate him except, apparently, "mine" and "more." Bannon, it was suggested, filled that (vast, gaping) emptiness with something termed "economic nationalism" and some sort of "America First" approach to our standing in the world - even more oddly, as if the concept were somehow new and untried. As I suspected, without Bannon, much of this grand spell making has collapsed like a house of cards (no, not "House of Cards" - which seems cheerfully quaint to watch now that the madness has taken over DC).

Much of what Bannon was trying to sell - which he has taken back, incoherently, to Breitbart and plans of further electoral mischief on the right - would be interesting if he knew even a smidge of what he was talking about. Though aimed at domestic prejudices, like anti-immigrant fervor and class resentment, Bannon crafted a worldview that was disgusted, most, with a kind of global groupthink that has, admittedly, seized much of the developed world's political establishments. Corporate and "global," the Establishment view favors epic trade agreements, easy cross border "free" trade, and rationalist approaches to international conflict, preferably addressed in coalition. 

And for the good it's done - isolating a number of bad actors; providing, yes, a steady stream of inexpensive goods for mass consumption across international markets; crafting several interesting and even effective diplomatic solutions to complex issues (such as the Iran nuclear deal) - it's worth pondering what it hasn't: wealth is ever more concentrated in the hands of a few; those isolated bad actors (Russia) have little choice but to fight back by any means necessary; and truly intractable international problems (such as Syria) simply won't bend to international plans. More to the point, Bannon and various European actors have identified an equally pernicious weakness: in the absence of a healthy debate between traditional Left and Right, those who feel unrepresented, or poorly treated in this scenario have little choice but to go to the edges and extremes of political discourse.

Trump, in this scenario, may serve as the international example of what can happen when a nation doesn't pay enough attention to the threat posed by extremism. Since his election, France has rejected Marine LePen, while Germany and England returned women leaders to familiar roles while serving their parties with double digit losses in seats and political support. In Germany, this has Angela Merkel struggling with a resurgent far right; In England, while nationalism has folded in on itself, a youthful far left has arisen to reject Teresa May's muddled middle, yet lacking anywhere near the support to claim a majority of its own. 

In part, Europe's troubles are uniquely their own, the fallout of creating an EU superstructure over nation states whose populations don't necessarily see the utopian benefits initially promised. In that, "Brexit" is simply the abreaction of the nation least  committed to the ideal in the first place. But one could point to Sweden, for instance, which has routinely rejected diving head first into the common currency, or the non-Brexit, messy, will-they-or-won't-they nailbiter elections various countries have had accepting or rejecting provisions of EU membership over its lifespan. Fundamentally, even unsurprisingly, the EU doesn't necessarily sell itself, despite what the intellectual class insists to those who Just Don't Get It.

If this sounds like I'm getting on board the Bannon crazy train, think again. Bannon's incoherent mix of rejecting trade deals, reliance on racial tensions and resentments, and vague notions of closed border bliss make no sense and serve little purpose but to pump up fear and and anger and internal conflict. Blinkered notions of "nationalism" are worse, it turns out, than no answer at all. And Bannon's extreme incoherence is yet another indication that the real rot here is within the American conservative movement, which long ago gave up intellectual arguments and policy development in favor of sloganeering, populism and finger pointing. Even "moral decency," the old tropes of the religious right, have fallen away.

By removing Bannon and Gorka and others, like Flynn, who represented a truly frightening prospect for American leadership here and abroad, Trump probably managed to take himself from genuinely dangerous to merely hopelessly ineffective. Yes, he's appointing judges, eviscerating recent regulations, and threatening so much worse. But resistance, rejection, and Trump's seemingly endless skill to mess himself up are providing something of a backstop to the ground under us completely giving way. Right now, blinkered and bruised as it is, my own sense that we can survive this and fix what he breaks remains largely intact. I don't blame anyone for rejecting me as too Pollyanna for belief... but we're gonna need something to hold onto in this turbulent, chaotic, time. I choose to believe much of this, while bad, is temporary. But that hope, in the end, rests on faith in people to find a better way out of this. And that, even I'll admit, seems especially elusive just now.

It's worth remembering that at the heart of the dissatisfaction with globalism, free trade and international economics is rage and disappointment that is real and unlikely to go away... and that's because the dissatisfied are, in ways large and small, right about the problems they see. The economic injustices are real, the mistreatment of the masses is real, the obliviousness to the suffering of those being hurt is all too real. We do need a greater sense, among the "smart set," the Establishment, those doing somewhat better than those worst off... some awareness that debate is not just an intellectual exercise, that anger left to fester is toxic, that failing to do something is not just stasis, but an actual failure.

Whatever the heck is happening, whatever it is Steve Bannon hoped to accomplish, it's no good to pretend that this is just about racist know nothings being fed a steady diet of lies and misinformation. Discontent abounds. Very real economic pain is all too visible, should one choose to look. Revolutions have been built on a whole lot less. And the damage that yet can be done letting problems fester isn't like anything we've seen so far.

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Stay Thirsty, My Friends

Jim Comey, apparently, is the most powerful man in the world.

I mean, honestly: who helped decide this past Presidential election more? Who is now in a position to provide the evidence that will get the man who won it removed? Who said, at his testimony this week "I thought maybe if the memo got out, we could get a Special Prosecutor"? And whose leaked memo did precisely that? And not only that, seems to have gotten him the Special Counsel he actually wanted all along, Bob Mueller.

Outside of J. Edgar Hoover, I'm not sure we've had a head of the FBI who managed to place himself so centrally at the nexus of law and politics and power in this country... and in that sense, bear with me, Donald Trump firing him, while idiotic and venal, may have achieved a goal that may never have been achieved by anyone else for years: Comey is no longer wielding immense power in a way that guarantees he cannot be touched.

What was remarkable at Comey's hearing with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was just how chastened he seemed - which is to say, not much, but just, somehow, enough. No longer ennobled by his Cloak of Official Power, Comey teed up on his new sworn enemy (he's clearly no fan of the President, not now) and provided a series of exceedingly direct, and even revealing answers of the sort he'd likely have avoided were he still Director of the FBI. Power, after all, lies not in what you know, but how and when you let others know. And Comey's power, now, rests in letting the knowledge run free, not in carefully hoarding it.

The terrifying thing, after all, is how boxed in those who would nominally be in charge of Comey were, or would be, were he still in  charge. President Obama had myriad calls to relieve Comey, and seemed, by the end of his term to have realized the buyer's remorse of appointing him to begin with. But there was no way Obama coul fire him without looking like a partisan protecting Hillary Clinton. And had Clinton been elected, she certainly would have been in a similar box. And then there's Trump, who should have understood that while he might have been able to fig leaf firing Comey right upon taking office as a "necessary housecleaning" would look atrocious, and  dumb, to fire Comey as the drip drip drip of revelations began regarding Flynn, Russia and a hose of questionable contacts and acts by his campaign and nascent Administration (actions and contacts, which, despite conservative mythmaking, seem to clearly point to a major, troubling level of meddling in US affairs by a foreign power).

That Trump's firing of Comey will likely lead to his undoing - impeachment, resignation, charges, jail time... whatever - doesn't negate the serendipitous side effect of separating Comey from the absoliute power that was clearly getting out of hand. The kind of power that had him overruling a sitting Attorney General in the conducting of the Clinton investigation - behavior he continues to justify, even as he admits that there's literally no there there with the case. The kind of power that left Presidents beholden to his whims. The kind of power that made people quake when he merely said "I cannot confirm or deny..." whether vaguely made allegation of wrongdoing was under investigation.

There's a healthy, even necessary conversation we ought to be having about this kind of power. About the problematic history of the FBI, and the uneasy compromise we've made that projects the shadow of Hoover and his tactics over American life long after he's left the stage. "Director of the FBI" is the federal government's strangest made up role - there's nothing in the Constitution that suggests a federal role in law enforcement - and we accept, somehow, that it's real and deserves to be left with virtually no direct control... and we wonder, often, how that power winds up being corrupting.

Without Comey, we're avoiding that conversation. Any Trump appointee - assuming, absurdly, one can be confirmed - will be damaged goods, an instant question mark, an easy scapegoat. The power of the FBI willl be checked, in part, because Comey ran amok, and because without him, this Administration's options to run amok seem worse. We will not have Comey's FBI, but we will want an FBI that's strong. And in that contradiction lies so much about who we are as a nation. The conversation can wait... but it shouldn't. We'll wait, and somewhere, down the road, we'll probably get another person drunk on power who can't quite be stopped. Just don't pretend we don't know that this can happen. Or why.

As for Trump, our hopes really do rest on... well, Jim Comey. Not just on those revelations he shared and what is left to reveal, but the discipline and effectiveness of the organization he shaped and now leaves behind. It rests in all of us - the ones not in the tank for Trump - continuing to insist that questions be asked, laws be followed, and justice be swift and sure. He may not be the ally we wanted... but he is the most powerful man in the world. Stay thirsty, my friends.

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Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Like many, I chose not to watch (much) and I don't regret that choice one bit: the coronation/ascension ceremony of Donald Trump had all the feel of a sham celebration in a third world territory, minus the forced attendance of "adoring" crowds. Mr. Trump is, already, adored by thousands. Millions more seem fairly nonplussed.

Mr. Trump's big day featured thin crowds and the famed "orderly transition of power" that Washington desperately needs to reassure itself that all is not lost. It's one of the ways that - and just the beginning of how -  DC, which would love to be seen as the most major of cities,remains slow to accept change of any kind... even when it's being wrested forcibly from its own grip.

Inaugural addresses are overplayed in importance - they occasionally offer the inspiring phrase, but rarely give good insight about the Presidency ahead of us. Our glorious institutional memory notes the high points (we love our own best moments so) of Kennedy and Roosevelt and such... but Nixon gave two of the things, and no one really wants to talk about them all that much. 

Trump's speech, such as it was, turned out to be mercifully short, and was a vast improvement on pretty much anything he did during the campaign, but as a marker for what's ahead, he did himself no favors - though not for the reason, I suspect, given by popular media pans. Sure, the thing was, as Trump is rhetorically, a bit dark, but the real problem - a shockingly obvious one based on his approach to winning - was the pained attempt to pivot off of fear, anger, and resentment.

As much as anything, Democrats really need to unpack the complex mix of these fears anger and resentment in the white... well let's say "underclass" though that's not exactly politic. These are not expressions marked by coherence or intellectual rigor, as has been demonstrated repeatedly in post election interviews and strolls to coffee shops in smaller towns. Arguably, that's not really how fear works, anyway. What scares us isn't especially rational, or clear. Yes, there's the unifying, somewhat, dislike of Obama to unite the crowd that supports Trump. But to focus on that exclusively neglects the powerful fear of terrorism, the anger at perceived and imagined loss of a "way of life", and the resentment of others having, or seeming to get, more.

Trump's attempt to answer these fears and resentments on Inauguration Day was, ultimately where the speech didn't really work. It was a mix of "you won't be afraid again, because I said so," combined with vague assertions that by putting "America first" fear and anger about job losses and business closings across the country would cease. The latter is a condensed rehash of Trump's confused logic that ending free trade, and changing corporate tax policy will reignite American manufacturing, which is simply untrue. The former repeats Trump's "only I can fix it" logic from the GOP Convention that he somehow possesses unique insight and skills others don't to combat terrorism and restore America's place in the world, at least as many of the right would like it to be, militarily muscular.

The problem isn't just the inherent falsehoods and exaggerations of Trump's own importance; it's that Trump is no more likely to assuage the fears he himself played up than Republicans have been generally in basing nearly twenty years of electioneering on just such expressions of collective rage and resentment. The voters who turned to Trump, it's very clear, took to him because the "establishment" base of Republicans had exhausted their patience and their trust. The problem for Republicans is that they have had no better answers for the enormous economic changes in the world, no real resistance to the winds of social change, and temerity in the face of the deeper racist undertones to hatred of immigrants and Muslims. Trump, in this way, is simply the natural, logical, dead end to years of Republicans stoking an angry crowd, exhorting them to think the worst. He's here. And it's as bad as we ever thought it could get.

Trump's speech - short, tense, and provocative - left the thin veneer of his ostensible political philosophy badly exposed. His descriptions of life today continue to paint a picture of America better suited to the late sixties or early seventies, and his attempt to paint the coming era as one of hopeful progress couldn't point to any specific positive result, and much of it, too, felt hopelessly out of date. Many opponents of Trump (and in this, Steve Bannon), suggest that his beliefs are especially negative. I think it's simpler: the alt-right philosophy we are getting fed is cynical, distrustful of traditional institutions, and nihilistic. It's not believing in something... it's believing, in the end, in almost nothing.

With so little to offer, it's no wonder Trump's speech was seen as a dark, grim, letdown. The trouble, I think, is that what Trump is likely to do - ratifying a string of extreme right wing actions that cut taxes, decimate spending for people in need, and protect the interests of a small group of the wealthy and well connected - will prove what he actually believes. The trouble with the nihilism of the alt right is that it's a dead end in itself - faith in nothing will, literally, get you nothing. Trump isn't deeply committed to anything so thoroughly dark - he simply craved attention and approval. Lacking a clearly defined moral center or purpose, he's flailing around, trying to turn empty campaign rhetoric into an actual course of action. His Inaugural Speech was immensely revealing that there is, really, nothing there - except distrust, and more fighting.

None of this will assuage the fear and resentment and rage... and indeed, when Trump either fails to take action or takes the wrong actions that make things worse for his cause (and theirs) - an all too likely scenario - they will simply have more anger, more rage, and more fear. We would of course, be better served by the kind of Presidents we've had in dark moments who exhorted us to resist "fear, itself" or to "ask not what our country can do for you." But what we have is Trump, and his collection of fears and his hopes for a brighter 1962. That's no answer at all. And it is a good reason to be mighty, mighty afraid.

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As Long As It's About Me: Donald Trump And The Bully's Pulpit

How does one describe the feeling on election night, as the reality of a Trump presidency shimmered into view? 

It's simplistic to say people were shocked or enraged. Or that this, the impossible outcome, had actually happened. For me, it was the enormity of knowing just how dreadfully bad, how incompetent and how destructive, the Presidency could be. And how avoidable all of what is to come could have been.

Trump supporters immediately tried to paste calls for unity over this election debacle - as if, somehow, 18 months of vitriol, hateful rhetoric, never mind the wild assemblages of half truths and falsehoods could be washed away, or deemed appropriate. They were aided by that unique need of conservatives to not just win, but to crush. For a moment, in our stunned faces, conservatives had their wish of how it would feel to not just prevail, but to destroy the liberal ideal.

It would be enough, really, for conservatives to take their win for what it is - a solid rebuke to Democrats and the Obama years laced, in a deeply unfortunate way with the appeals to anger, resentment, and prejudice that have been simmering around the first black President. To try and overplay a bare majority, a loss in the popular vote and poor performances in key races and among important subgroups will be - as many of the transitional choices have been - a bad mistake with unanticipated repercussions.

Donald Trump, of course, can't be bothered with the level of nuance required to see his win for what it is - the modest success of appealing to a base of white, rural, high school educated mainly male cohort steeped in anger and resentment and a feeling of being left behind. Despite the breathless hand wringing post election, the demographic realities on display in the vote were not, really, news. What was remarkable in one sense was yes, the white majority, though slim, still can prevail; what was equally remarkable was just how desperate the appeal had to be to make that happen.

"Make America Great Again," he bleated over and over. "Drain the swamp!" he cried in the late phase of the campaign... but mostly, Donald Trump put on a show. It was a brutal show, to be sure - shouty and hateful, accusatory and blame filled, thin on actual policy or any understanding, really, of the nature of divided government in this complex country. Trump made a host of mistakes, some built on the natural abrasiveness of his personality, some the neophyte mistakes of someone new to politics, never mind presidential politics. But ultimately, what saw him through, was his real gift as the ultimate huckster - the desperate story of saying and doing anything, yes anything, to make the ultimate sale.

His campaign promises, as such, literally make no sense - virtually no aspect of our immigration dilemmas is solved by  building a wall along the Mexican border. "Repeal and replace Obamacare" is a right wing pipe dream that lacks any coherent sense of what "replace" looks like, never mind the damaging effects of immediate repeal, if it could be done, which it actually can't. Foreign policy... what foreign policies, really? A penchant for dictators and a romance with Russia does not coherent policy make. Sabre rattling the destruction of NATO, threatening the long standing interests favoring free trade... none of these are answers, even to questions nobody thought to ask.

No, Mr. Trump was elected as a "black swan" - a chaos event meant to "shake up" the status quo, built on the incoherent resentments of some of the least informed voters in our body politic, for reasons that should be acknowledged as not nearly as off as they might seem. Legions of lobbyists, cozy insider relationships, sweetheart deals... Trump is the terrible solution to an actual, well defined problem that official Washington cannot fully comprehend - try harder, do better, help the people with their actual problems.

Even if Trump were serious - which he's not, has never been, and never will be - and even if he could get beyond that unfortunate habit of simply lying with every sentence he speaks (or tweets), he lacks the kind of thoughtful approach needed to achieve anything close to the results he barely understands he promised. For the occasional good in some of his less than awful appointments - General Mattes perhaps, Mike Pompeo, maybe - Mr. Trump has, with each passing day of transition, reinforced the impressions that he means almost none of what he said. A cabinet of inexperienced loyalists, full of ethical conflicts, financial self interests and wild ideas supporting the Presidency of a serial liar whose poor business practices were legendary 30, even 40 years ago, and have only hardened since.

Get angry? Fight back? Is there really a choice? It's been almost quaint, watching everything people seemed to value - decency, fair treatment of others, the reasonable discourse of competing ideas - seemingly fall away. At this point, even in this day of his ascension moment, we're beyond the "who's normalizing Trump" discussion and simply watching the divide between Those Who Have Figured It Out and Those Who Are Still Catching Up. Reporters, pundits, experts... it's past time to come to terms with the new reality. These are not nice times. There will be no casual acceptance. Just Shout, Shout... and let it all out.

This isn't personal - none of it's personal, really. Trump doesn't have empathy or really any concern for the feelings or fate of others. It's been All About Him since he was a boy and why stop now? His need to be popular, and powerful, and perceived as successful overrides virtually any other concern. I don't care what you think... as long as it's about me. Is he dangerous? Of course. Is he also pathetic, easily ridiculed, and likely to fail? Absolutely. Despite how it sounds, I don't hate him, largely because I don't find him nearly interesting enough to care that deeply. In this age of politics by National Enquirer, though, politics will be played as personal. Who do you like? Who's nice? Who's good? I say, don't fall for it. It's not who you like... it's who should be governing, and how.

Yeah, it's bad, and likely to get worse, even as things often slip into farce. Between Trump's lax morals and the army of sycophants and opportunists coming to Washington, there's little doubt that "Drain the Swamp" is actually shaping up to be #BuildABetterSwamp as only Trump can - big, shiny, and spray painted gold. Republicans will be lucky to extract even the bare semblance of an organization out of this debacle (and good luck to the Wisconsin boys Ryan and Priebus who've decided to ride this thing to the bitter end), and if there's any justice, they will reap what they so richly deserve. As for the rest of us, hang on to your hats - the not red ones that don't say "Make America Great Again." If we're lucky - or maybe resistant enough - we can get this thing back before the damage is permanent. It's not much, I know, but for now it may be all we've got.

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Sexy Rexy

It's hard not to see the obvious petulance in Trump's selection of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Barely a week of serious attention to his potential nomination, already raised red flags all over the place that Tillerson will face major hurdles just trying to get confirmed. (Then again, what is the forthcoming Trump presidency but one giant scarlet scarf waving in the wind?) Trump long ago ceased being anything but what he appears in the press, and "never back down" is clearly a big piece of his storyline. 

So Tillerson it is.

There's plenty to fear, and loathe, in Trump's cabinet selection process, but what I find fascinating is Trump's apparent approach to his slogans of a "fresh start" and "draining the swamp." There's a sense in which it would be refreshing, challenging even, to approach the business of Washington by looking beyond the circle of "Old Washington Hands" - a circle that did seem, somehow, smaller and even more insular under President Obama, who was especially taken with "meritocracy" appointments, usually from the small collection of Ivy League grads and the similarly small group (MIT, Stanford, U of Chicago) of related top drawer schools. More than a few outsider observers of the Obama world pointed out that the President would benefit from shaking up his input and moving beyond a core group of especially loyal confidantes. It's also telling that, while he twice acknowledged the need to rethink his advisors after major electoral losses, he actually never did in any significant way.

It would be easier to feel good about Trump's choices as breaking a mold if his choices didn't move from the small insular world of DC insiders and like minded intellectuals to selections from even more insular worlds: the "C-Class" of boardroom magnates, along with top drawer Generals, and a loyalist coterie of highly wealthy members of the donor class. It belies Trump's own myopia in overvaluing family ties, personal discipline and sense of self made success, without showing a real awareness that really shaking things up would mean reaching beyond your own comfort zones. In that sense - and this will matter, I think, in many ways many people don't see - the built-in failures of Trump's coming Presidency won't be all that different from the "boomer generation" self centeredness of both George W Bush and Barack Obama. Trump's example is extreme, to be sure; but both Bush and Obama could have used more insight from outside their familiar circles, and Trump, surely, is making choices that make his circle even tighter.

Partly too, I suspect, the handwringing over Trump's choices as ethically dubious - along with the looming questions of his own ability to separate his business interests from his role as President - reflect the sunset of progress made since the presidency of Richard Nixon. Few people under the age of 50 will have any real recollection of life before or during Watergate, and how crucial it was to  set higher and better standards of expectations in Presidents and those who serve them. A lot of what we're talking about as "concerns" with the cabinet or with Trump - the idea of having vested, material interests in the outcomes of various choices and and policies set by the President or the Executive Branch - seem quaint, really. We all know that businesses and lobbyists already have outsized influence in many areas; why does it matter, really, if the President owns a hotel operation in Kuala Lumpur (or more to the point, Manila)? Do we really care that the incoming Secretary of State has only dealt with foreign leaders, in the course of a near 50 year career at one company, in terms of that company's business goals?

Well... yes. And yes. The trouble is that these ethical issues don't resonate like they used to, when the President's reelection committee ran it's operations in a White House office and the President's top advisors were also his primary Bag Men for campaign tactics. We've had a generation plus to learn the right words, calm the right anxiousness, pretend we're all trying really hard to be scrupulously fair. It's not surprising, really, that we've forgotten, in many ways, why the need to be vigilant never goes away, why so many people just assume, blithely, that there must be an acceptable way for Trump to paper over his business issues or Rex Tillerson to simply set aside a lifetime of work for Exxon as little more than stock options on paper. We don't just think the rules matter; we believe, earnestly, that people understand why we have the rules. 

That awakening is likely to be rude, and enormous ('Big League", that's the phrase, right?) and, I'm convinced, probably inevitable. Whether it's the naïveté of the "Let's give him a chance" crowd, the dithering of DC types trying to pretend that this just another regular transition, or the bully boys refusing to brook any dissent to the ascension of their awesome leader... all the pieces are in place for a massive failure of public trust. And I tend to think Cassandra like wails of impending doom just won't get the job done. If so many can't see the collapse awaiting us... then we may just need to accept that what's about to happen, much like this election, was simply the kind of bad turn we had to take to realize we should take bad turns.

Soon enough, we will not be re-litigating the events of this past year - Trump can't keep running against Hillary forever, no matter how he'd prefer it - and we will be full bore into what comes next. And Trump, it's worth remembering, isn't just a narcissist blowhard (as bad as that seems): he's also an inexperienced, in many ways inarticulate, newcomer to a job that is not generally forgiving to rookie mistakes. And, in his first set of major choices, Trump has put in place a large group of similarly inexperienced newcomers with little or no thought to explaining his thinking, or trying to win over his many skeptics. All of that matters. 

There may be a case to be made for neophytes like Tillerson, or Betsy DeVos, or Seth Mnuchin; Trump hasn't made them. It may be that he doesn't realize that he's moved from one sales job into another, larger one; it may be that the kind of skills he needed to sell real estate don't actually translate well into the selling of public policy. I tend to think if Trump were more adaptable, more flexible, had more ease with changing up his approach, he could make the case for Rex, really sell it, get more people to buy the Sexy in Rexy. And the others. But he's not and he hasn't and it's a recipe, even now, that doesn't bode well for where all of this is headed, and I don't mean just Bad Things For Liberals To Disapprove.

We forget, in these changing times, that people dislike and fear change, especially change that is offered with no rationale or explanation. Trump is already laying the foundation for an Administration of wrenching change, and making no case for it that most Americans can or will sign on to support. I would at least think he knew enough to try and sell Change as the new Sexy. And instead... nothing.

Trump is, even now, deeply unpopular for a soon to be President. He starts, more than even George W Bush, with low approvals, half the country in no mood to even think about supporting him, and an electoral loss in the popular vote that calls his legitimacy in many ways into serious question. A savvy politician, really, would see that (a genuinely great politician would have never won in this manner to begin with). There are reasons to fear who Trump is and what he will yet do, but politically, I wouldn't overestimate him as a genius or capable of achieving the most modest of goals. All he's had to do over the past few weeks is sell the nation on the assembly of a team of advisors and department heads... and he can't even do that. That's not even the hard part. The hard part is what happens next. And I don't mean that in a sexy way at all.

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The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

On nearly every level, from nearly every angle, in just about every way... what's emerging about the contours of Russian involvement in this election has everything to do with the farce and failure that remains of the Republican Party.

Sure, this is a horror story starring Donald Trump, and 18 months of selling out and capitulation to a lying egomaniacal narcissist, but what's also involved is the much longer story of a reflexive red-hating commie naming right wing, which collapsed on itself as the Cold War came to an end. Without their easy to name enemy, the right has floundered, struggling to accept a Russia that tried, glumly, to reverse years of autocratic rule from a Communist dictatorship, only to watch a new, and more dangerous oligarchy take shape under a well trained former KGB operative named Vladimir Putin. 

Republican admiration for Putin has always been a strange and wondrous thing, a "we know he's bad, but somehow he does it so good" well of admiration and unease that conservatives can't seem to shake. Like many liberals, I don't especially see the appeal - it appears to be an element of the conservative DNA that simply finds authoritarianism appealing, no matter the source.  

I tend to think that it's in that context of the guilty, even dirty, conservative love for Putin that we have to understand why Putin's putative involvement in this year's election is causing them both heartache and denial. They know he's bad and wrong... but they just can't bring themselves to quit him. 

And the icing on top of that is... without Putin, did they really even win this election at all?

This isn't some fear mongering piece of tinfoil hat conspiracies; the election is over and the result we have is the result we got. But Russian attempts to hack US computer systems, with the express interest of affecting this election and even attempting to alter the result has to be deeply concerning on several levels. At the very least, it's naive not to acknowledge the role leak after leak of internal e-mails and communications from within the Democratic establishment had on the overall outcome; even on a small level, it's clear minds were hanged and votes affected by the revelations in those private communications, most of which were shared without context or clear understanding of their overall place in a longer discussion.

Yes, it's simplistic to say "the Russians changed the outcome of the election" - the forces in play are multiple and complex, and it's not the Russians who made explicit appeals to racial fears and class resentments that drew an overwhelming number of rural white voters, mostly male, to vote for Trump in heavily lopsided numbers. It's not the Russians who convinced the FBI to run roughshod through Huma Abedin's e-mail inbox with wild claims of unseen e-mails that turned out to be totally nonexistent, creating seeds of doubt that probably drove white women back to Trump in large enough numbers to change the outcomes in close states. There are people who chose Trump clearly understanding the liar he'd been and the dangers he posed, and went ahead with him anyway. And that, ultimately, is on them, not on Russian interference of any kind.

But still. What's disturbing and so much more in all of this is both how we got here - that aforementioned weak sister element of the right whose secret shameful love of Putin paralyzes their ability to stand up to obvious wrongdoing - and how we can't move forward in a serious way to address a serious threat. Whatever Putin attempted to get here is beside the point: here we are, faced with the threat of a dangerous militaristic manipulator and all we've got is... an unpopular, inexperienced President whose flaws are manifest, who cannot remotely stand up on his own, or lead the world in standing up, to the obvious dangers we face.

Even now, we face the astonishing prospect that a lifelong oil executive with enormous business and financial connections to that same dangerous Russian leader will be blank checked into Secretary of State by a Senate too conflicted and too partisan to unite behind even the basic obviousness of foreign intervention into America's electoral process. Never mind the ever increasing evidence of just how awful on so many levels a Trump presidency will be to everything from the treatment of the poor to the protection of our natural resources to the basic notions of decency and mutual respect we've used to guide our interactions with one another. I'm not concerned because the Russians tried to manipulate our election. I'm terrified because apparently, it worked, and they didn't even try that hard. Most of it, apparently, we are all too willing to do to ourselves. And we don't even have the energy or the will to try and stop it, now that we know. And that's what we get for stopping Communism.

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Stop The Presses

Only a week or so in, and one of the main themes of this Trump Presidency (feel free to substitute "Trump Nightmare"... but remember, you're not dreaming) has surely revealed itself: the tortured role of the press and mass media in the age of a raging narcissist.

In addition to two painful meetings with various media outlets - an interview with the Times where he basically admitted his campaign was a big lie, and a name calling session with TV network hosts and executives - Trump spent the weekend berating the cast and audience at Friday's performance of Hamilton on Broadway, when the audience booed Mike Pence and the cast begged him to treat everyone decently. Oh, the humanity!

In the rush to sort out Just Whose Fault We Got Trump, "The Media" has been a popular choice. It's certainly true that the refusal to take on Trump in a serious way, to often broadcast him uninterrupted  at rallies laying out falsehood after falsehood, surely didn't help. Still, no one culprit really can take all the blame. I think - and this is a longer discussion - that one thing we all need to face is that in some ways, Trump was more inevitable than anyone would like to admit.

The question is, though, now that we've got him (at least, temporarily), will the media know what to do with him? 

There are some railing about the press "normalizing" Trump. There are others already building up conspiracy theories that every Trump move - like the Hamilton tweetstorm - is a brilliant trifecta of savvy mental manipulation by Trump against a gullible public. And through it all, there's Trump himself, just blathering away, looking endlessly foolish.

I think one thing that's not quite clear yet is what the media array of a Trump led USA really looks like. We forget that a lot of who and what dominates media now - from Lester Holt to Anderson Cooper to Megyn Kelly to even Rachel Maddow - are developments of, and partly because of, the Obama years. It's very likely that we will see new stars, and new shows, that arise because a different kind of media will be needed in the Trump, um, era (that sounds awfully permanent - ed.).

That the media we have can't quite cut it seems quite clear - I wouldn't call it "normalizing," but I think traditional Washington hands are truly flummoxed by what you do with an outlier like Trump, so beyond their sense of political norms. It's the way Mitt Romney is being discussed for Secretary of State - it's such a relief to hear a familiar, even "Establishment" name, that people aren't paying attention to perfectly reasonable reasons why Romney is completely ill suited to the task. Panel discussions that seemed entertainingly contentious prior to the election - oh look, they're ganging up on Jeffrey Lord! - now have an uncomfortable air of fear from one side, and excessive self satisfaction on the other.

It's also the case that the new opposition hasn't quite figured out how to effectively challenge Trump's obvious impending ethical failures and corrupt intentions. "Ivanka Trump met with Shinzo Abe!" plays great at a Chevy Chase dinner party - it's a little obscure and secondhand for the case against a man who apparently plans to let out his hotel in DC to foreign dignitaries eager to curry his favor. Proportion, people; clarity and outrageousness. These items are key.

Still, I wouldn't discount the fact that Trump, in these things, is his own worst enemy and best taken at his word. The Hamilton brouhaha was silly and - despite claims to fire up his base - mostly pointless. Keening at Alec Baldwin merely invites what will surely be heaps of scorn and derision from pop culture icons in comedy, music, theater, television and film. Hating Trump won't just be popular... I guarantee Hollywood knows it's profitable, too.

And then there's those meetings with news outlets, which seemed to catch the  people in them off guard at the depth - wrong word? - of his thin skin.  There's a delicate dance between public figures and the press chasing them - the fawning that's required to get access, but the distance to look dispassionately and even critically is rarely in the right balance. But my guess is Trump did himself no favors mocking people like Martha Raddatz and Katy Tur, trying to manhandle his way to favorable coverage. Trump is apparently in no media to give the media much of anything; and in turn, I'm not sure the news outlets owe him anything at all.

In part, Trump is parroting a right wing line railing against the "MSM" as conservatives love to do, saying they never get a fair, or positive shake. When he claims The Times is at death's door, he's not so much concerned about ad revenue (a business I'm fairly sure he doesn't really get) as he is that people make choices about news sources based on reading only what confirms the views they like. There will be media sycophants chasing Trump because it's easier, and more fun, to be liked. But The Times will make money regardless. And the people they really represent - the Upper East Side world of the owners and their close associates - are the very people who have made Trump's social climb the struggle he hates. They will never let him in, and he knows it.

What Trump wants from the press isn't really important - "Stop calling me a thief" he says, as if that will stop them from reporting every time he steals. He wants the attention, he just doesn't want to people to see who he really is amidst the glare. And that, really, isn't in his control. In fact, it's not really in the control of mass media. Certainly not in America. And Trump's just not careful enough (as that "hot mike" moment on Access Hollywood really showed) to understand that for the image to be the reality, you kind of have to really be it. Trump is President. That doesn't make him presidential. And he's not really ever understood the difference. Trump's need to be liked - his need for mass love - is actually the thing that makes him weak: he chases the press for attention and they, in turn, should realize they're the ones with power in this situation.

Regardless of that power, we will just be setting up unreasonable expectations if we expect the press to solve our national Trump problem all on their own - that they will magically produce the perfect scandal that ruins him before he can do too much damage. There will, over time, I hope, be less trying to explain away his worst actions and words, and a better ability to call things out for what they actually are.  But even so, all the reporting in the world will mean little to an audience that's in no mood to hear it. Trump doesn't need or want to stop the presses, but his real power, thus far, is like The Shadow of radio lore - he clouds men's minds. Even though there's some movement to buyer's remorse, Trump's loyalists are still defined most by hearing what they want to hear. That's not a media problem. That's all of our problem. And the solution is something more than black and white... and read all over.

 

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If You Build It, They Will...

"Westway" was the name of a long running public works plan in New York to turn the West Side HIghway - which was, in the seventies, an elevated roadway well down the length of Manhattan - into a major highway (much the way 90 and 95 run through Boston). That highway was part of Robert Moses' grand plan to run highways all through Manhattan, anther piece of which - a major highway across 14th Street - led to the rise of community organizer Jane Jacobs and a whole movement around the idea of the livable city. The community activism around that idea led to the collapse of the plan and the general diminishment of Moses' control over urban planning.

But Westway refused to die. For years and years after, various versions of Westway would crop up, be discussed and shot down. Much of the elevated highway was gradually dismantled and land reclaimed along the waterfront, an imperfect plan that has restored a good deal of waterfront parkland coexisting uneasily with cruise line docks and ferry terminals. But I remember through the eighties (especially in my college years) reading about various iterations of the Westway plan (which helped also end the imperial Mayoralty of Ed Koch), and the controversies that ensued.

I mention this because one of those plans, people forget, was related to Trump's Riverside Drive projects, which recently rose to prominence when the residents wanted the Trump name off their buildings. Those buildings were originally part of a plan for many more buildings, built out to the river, which would take the West Side Highway under them. That last bit, in fact, being part of another morphed plan to expand Westway. When Trump got the go ahead to build, the highway expansion was taken off the table, and Trump was forced to pay for a refurbishment and expansion of the 72nd Street 1-2-3 line subway station, a longstanding nightmare for commuters that is heavily oversubscribed at rush hour.

All of this, I'd suggest, is worth remembering as we ask what a President Trump means when he says he has massive plans to increase infrastructure spending.

Obviously, one reason to be concerned is projects like a Westway - big boondoggle projects no one wants and the public doesn't need, shoehorned on communities that may not have the clout to resist. Another reason for concern is that Trump wants a lot of private business involvement in these plans, from which you get ideas like burying a highway to improve luxury condo planning (just ask Boston about The Big Dig). Business interests don't necessarily mean ideas for the public good.

But another big point about Trump's plan is who would benefit from the spending... and that's a lot of coastal states and urban centers, whose infrastructures have been hobbling along for years awaiting an influx of money to do some useful ideas - like a public transportation overhaul and renovating popular stations, for instance. And private business isn't actually out of sync with local governments on wanting to make some of these goals happen.

All of which is to say, in the first of a number of considerations of what a Trump presidency might mean, I wouldn't dismiss the mischief in Trump's infrastructure ideas. Sure, there's handwringing about for profit toll roads and pricey bridges... but the real twist here is that what Trump is advocating could wind up being an extravagant gift to nearly everywhere that rejected his candidacy - billions to do the work on tunnels, roads, public transportation, and airports that's long overdue.  The problem is, that work isn't needed in the rural areas looking for revitalization - it's New York, and San Francisco, and LA, and Atlanta... and the list goes on.

This may explain why, already, the process of finding a coalition to pass infrastructure spending is allying strange forces in Congress. Many rural representatives get that the bulk of this largesse is going out of their districts; Democrats get that this is a boon for them. And a real boom in construction and other spending... will simply accentuate an already existing trend drawing young and productive workers towards America's urban centers, not out to the rural communities that have been dying as manufacturing leaves.

To be sure, there's work to be done elsewhere, and some ideas might set up conditions that make unexpected more interesting to business investors - bringing broadband to exurbs and rural communities would make for new opportunities to attract business, just for starters. And as noted, boondoggles are bound to appear (and Trump's already casual approach to ethics would clearly favor some loosey-goosey efforts to steer a gravy train here and there...). But if I just think of things NYC and the region would love to do - the Hudson rail tunnel, really building out the 2nd avenue subway, getting better radar systems to JFK LaGuardia and Newark, making adjustments to Metro North and LIRR and NJ Transit - there's billions just there, just for starters. Multiply that by 20 more major urban centers... you've got an exciting picture. Just exciting for the wrong people, if for the right reasons.

"Give Trump a chance" legislators are saying, and in this, at least, I can agree with Democrats; this really could be the break to a national logjam that we desperately need. It would also up-end a lot of the conventional wisdom about who Trump can help and whether he's the worst thing for liberal values. The questions are a) will Republicans just fall in line knowing the benefits are vastly weighted to their opponents' districts and states and b) if Trump's largesse won't reach those rural white communities, will they yet again feel betrayed?

And the question for the rest of us is, if Trump gives us this gift, will we our reflexive opposition to him go on? I'll take on that one - like Westway, I wouldn't give up on our ability to take the chance at improvement, while repurposing our passionate opposition against all the other things worth opposing. But Trump creating a lasting legacy as the guy who got America rebuilding again? Funny how that would work out, isn't it?

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