NYCweboy

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.

 

Related articles

Amid rants, Trump tweets praise of ex-Marine 'Mad Dog' Mattis as possible Pentagon chief

Donald Trump Says Hamilton Is 'Highly Overrated.' But Ivanka Loved It

Watch Alec Baldwin Return to Saturday Night Live to Play a Panicked Donald Trump

Donald Trump to meet Mitt Romney amid reports he is being considered for Secretary of State role

Donald Trump meets US media executives in Trump Tower, high above Manhattan

Trump Demands 'Hamilton' Actor Apologize For Addressing Mike Pence

"Hamilton" actor on message to VP-elect: "Nothing to apologize for"

Mike Pence booed at 'Hamilton' musical as Broadway cast deliver message to vice-president elect

Trump's 'Hamilton' Meltdown Stuns CNN Host: 'I'm Speechless'

Trump Spox Calls Out CNN Anchor for Obsessing Over Tweets & Reminds Him What He Should Be Focused On

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?

Related articles

Trump protests continue

Protests continue in Philadelphia, LA, more

Protesters Take To U.S. Streets Over Trump Victory - Front Street

Thousands take to the streets to protest Trump win | Nepal Mountain News

Changing Zoning Codes for Urban Agriculture

Land Use Prof Blog

Planning Department says no to Montgomery Street tower

Yes, This Is Really Happening

"Oh dear, he's still President." 

I'm sure that, at some point, that will stop being the first thought in my head as I wake up, the whole "this is not a dream" quality of how off the world seems with a President Donald Trump. I had to turn off the TV on election night while several states were still finalizing their counts because the actual announcement that Trump had reached 270 was too much to take to bed with me.

But you wake up and there it is and here we are and you wonder how this happened and can it really get any worse... and of course, yes it can, as you watch the early rumblings and stumblings and realize, yes, he's going to put these sorts of people into cabinet positions and keep talking in that way he does.... and on and on.

I'd love to say the point of this exercise is to say there's a silver lining or it gets better... but I don't think it does. It's bad, really bad, and likely to get worse. We've seen the election of a man who is neither suited to nor capable of being President (a reality I do not say lightly), elected on a broad wave of hatred and resentment, surrounded by dangerous people who can cause serious, lasting damage to our country and many people's way of life. The upside of that? Not so much.

Still, I know I can't cry for 4 years straight, and I can't focus only on negatives.  I amazed myself that within hours of seeing how this would be, I returned to blogging with hardly a second thought. Of course it was time to write, to start moving... to do something. Like many, I'm heartened, and thoroughly unsurprised by the spontaneous protests around the country. Of course we would have to stand up.

So this isn't meant as a down post, a cry in the wilderness. Rather, it's the acknowledgement that yes, we've got it bad, and that means we've got to get up and start trying to make it better. In that vein, here are some things to bear in mind:

• The voices saying "we need to come together" or " we need to accept these results" are trying to enforce silence. We do not need to listen to them 
• Similarly, voices saying "you are causing trouble" or "don't make us mad" are an acknowledgement that our refusal to go quietly troubles and upsets them. They are no reason to stop
• A lot of bad things will happen. Not all bad things are equal. Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe is not necessarily in the same category as Mike Flynn getting to head the NSA
• On the other hand, a lot of where this goes will be built on things they do now - so Ivanka Trump meeting Shinzo Abe may add to the scandals yet to come.
• Each new day, each bad decision will bring new people to realize they are outraged too - there's already some pretty severe buyer's remorse in just a few days, even from those who voted third party. We should welcome them... but also bring them up to speed. We're all outraged. That's just step 1.

Yes, this is really happening. It really is this bad. That's how change works, and while this is change many of us did not choose, would not have chosen... there are people who did, who wanted this. I'm not sure they
realized what getting this actually meant - and one thing it meant, quite clearly, was not that people would accept these results with dull submission or even "quiet grace." Change, shaking things up, is unsettling. It's uncomfortable. Those who said we need to "blow up Washington" need to face what it means to set off an explosion. It's not pretty. There is damage. There is shrapnel. There are unintended consequences.

Many on the left, I think, overdid the embrace of Michelle Obama's well meaning, but incomplete thought "when they go low, we go high." The problem is, they're not just going low; they're going everywhere. And we will have to go there as well - low, high, and everywhere in between. That's not to advocate violent protest, rioting or looting; it's to say that the calls from the right to "accept the results" and "give him a chance" aren't calling for a graceful response. We don't have to be nice about this, how we deal with it, how we "handle" it, how we choose to take action. This is really happening. Something was broken, and the next part is going to be ugly. If that's not the result you wanted from this election... you weren't paying attention. 

Related articles

Japan PM Shinzo Abe has 'great confidence' in Donald Trump as leader after meeting in New York

REPORT: Trump picks Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions for attorney general

Ivanka Trump sat in on landmark talks with Japan's prime minister

Van Jones just summed up why a Trump win would be so painful

Will Trump children get security clearance?

We Run A Class (and Classist) Establishment

The least surprising development of this election, as far as I can tell, is the revelation that we have some enormous divides in this country, particularly around class (also around race... but just for a moment... bear with me). The hard part is, we're terrible at talking about it.

As an American, what I love about our either/or dilemmas is how we maneuver in between our contrary impulses. Striving to be good, but acting, collectively, in ways that are often vindictive and spectacularly mean. A peaceful nation with the world's largest army. And, of course, the nation of equals with the widest distance between extreme wealth and deep poverty, where in Lake Woebegone fashion, everyone is above average. And part of the middle class.

I gave up on "middle class" as a useful term some time ago, and this election, like some, I've come to eliminate "working class" from my assessments as well. "White working class" doesn't really describe the Trump victory, not even with "uprising" attached at the end. In terms of exit polls, when Americans are separated by income, Mrs. Clinton found her greatest success among people with incomes under $50,000 a year, while Trump enjoyed better results over $50,000. Median income in the country is around $52,000, so Trump and Clinton effectively split the "middle class" of those around the median. 

"Working Class" is an even more amorphous term, since income is usually, you know, based on employment, especially here in the US. It's meant to imply people who are, or see themselves as, somewhat worse off than educated professionals, but none of that is especially well defined or demographically useful.

Again, from a measurable and defined group perspective, Donald Trump's largest lopsided majorities came from white people, especially white men, living in more rural parts of the country. The further away from an urban center you go, the larger his majorities became. In places with smaller cities, with less of a well defined urban center, Trump's wins among whites extended into those centers. And in less urbanized areas with higher minority populations, Trump did worse. Trump also did worse in the counties where major universities are located, both because he did worse among young people and among the college educated professionals (virtually by definition) who work at them.

Polling has shown, repeatedly and over long periods, that most Americans choose the definition of "middle class" for themselves, even when, by income, they fall well outside the median. Few people want to identify as poor. People hesitate to admit they are rich. Class distinctions make us uncomfortable, yet we are, as a nation, highly aspirational in our thinking. And culturally, it's a mixed bag just how we want to see ourselves in popular media - TV and films distort the size of the homes and apartments where most Americans live; characters portrayed are rarely something other than white collar professionals, like a lawyer or doctor.

As I said, we live within these amazing contradictions - who we are, who we'd like to be, how we see ourselves and others in the mix of this country. So on the one hand, this election revives an interesting, and at times necessary discussion of how people feel who are living amongst, and possibly with, major economic distress. On the other, by talking about the results in terms of "the forgotten working class" we are creating  instant tropes with little real grounding in hard facts. 

And yes, the big unmentioned elephant in this has a lot to do with race. A nation that has struggled for years with a complicated history around the treatment of African Americans can't really be expected, overnight, to master looking in the other direction. "White working class" has become itself a preferred slippery phrasing, meant in part to try to soften a value judgment implied in discussing the economic hardships of whites without college degrees, because "the less educated" just drips pejorative. And that's fair. This election has a lot of terms that can be benign, but sound loaded - the working poor. High school graduates. Rural whites.

What we're trying not to talk about, because it's uncomfortable, are the very real elements of class distinctions and resentments we live with and avoid all day long. We live, most of us, in enclaves of people of similar backgrounds, wealth, and race. We interact with people of different backgrounds, gingerly avoiding areas of conversation and information that would suggest value judgments - oh, you took the bus here. You live in [other neighborhood, other town]. What college did you go to? As a mixed race person from a well educated family of professionals, I've run into, and lived, all sorts of permutations of the uncomfortable divides we navigate. And what I know is, we generally don't do it all that well. And our failure to hide, really, our own feelings about class distinctions, while fogging our conversations in the language of vague egalitarianism, is why we're here. Here being the point of an election tied up in a lot of ugly revelations about race and class and how we "really" see and feel about one another.

In the aftermath of the election then, as we struggle, all of us, to put back together a sense of national comity after 18 months of especially harsh rhetoric - much of it stoking anger and fear and class resentment - it will be useless to have this discussion in vague terms. Democrats are already hand wringing over the need to reach out to the "white working class" and conservative pundits chortle at the "takedown of liberal elites." "We've rejected the establishment" we are told of this election, while the same educated professionals as ever prepare to assume leadership roles. Less protests, we need unity, the cries go as protests fill the street. Keep it classy, America. Just don't bring up class.

More to the point, I'm not sure we can have a conversation across or about these class divides because we really don't know how to discuss them, to acknowledge what's real and what's false in how we see one another, even how we see ourselves. As a nation of either/or dilemmas, though, I'm not sure we have a choice, and the discussion, such as it is, will be painful and awkward and at least initially may not seem like we're getting anywhere at all - but none of that is reason not to try. Given that Trump's success attracting angry and fearful voters may not translate into any kind of solutions for their (or anyone's) problems, the choice we face is starting to unpack and figure out our very real class divides... or just watch them get exploited, again.

Related articles

Revenge of the Yahoos

We Left White People Behind

Donald Trump Won. Republicans... Not So Much.

This election has been a not so proud moment for people who confidently predict things (when you can add a clause like "except Ann Coulter" you know we're really off the edge), so I know it may seem weird to say that this election continues to confirm a theory I have about the death of the Republican Party... but bear with me.

Donald Trump's victory has no doubt been a setback for liberals, coastal confidence, and bolstered the GOP, which sits now is the long desired position of controlling both houses of Congress and the Executive Branch. Still, as saddened and angry as I've been lately - feelings that are widely shared - I think Republicans would (and likely will) be foolish to think that this election was anything more than the frustrated, desperate cry of scared and fearful people urged to vote their rage and resentments.

The winning coalition in this election was, basically, built on one cornerstone: heavy turnout by white rural votes, mainly men. They are the most lopsided portion of the electorate in this election, according to exit polling, whose downbeat views of immigrants, the economy and safety and security drove the narrative, but run counter to voters who chose Hillary Clinton.

It is, no doubt, important for everyone, left and right, to take this seriously and try better to assess the underpinnings of this rage and resentment. And many liberals, even in the immediate aftermath of the election, are reluctant to even try. But in these election results, one key factor to contemplate is that while this angry voter picked Donald Trump (possibly, I and others would argue, for a host of wrong reasons), trying to divine a consistent statement in the results is really very difficult.

That's because , while many talk about the appeal of an "economic populist" message and a "throw the bums out" mentality... almost no bums were thrown out. Republicans retain control of both houses, in essence, because incumbents won, strongly, pretty much everywhere. What small changes there were happened on the margins, and those changes, at the national level, favored Democrats, however slightly. Some have argued - I'd say persuasively - that Donald Trump represented a third party candidate whose race was against both parties. And that, I think, does go a long way towards defining his success. But beyond that, little really changed. And that, ultimately, is worse news for the GOP than it is for Democrats... even if Democrats, just now, don't fully realize it.

Consider these milestones of the election:

• Democratic turnout operations appear to have been fairly successful, giving Clinton the majority of the popular vote, and an overall vote total likely to be the third highest ever, behind both elections of Barack Obama. That means, to put a point on it, there is no actual Republican supermajority
• Republicans failed to save Pat McCrory, the Governor of North Carolina, or Kelly Ayotte, Senator from New Hampshire, despite Trump's wins in both states
• Republicans couldn't turn any race in a blue state - allowing Catherine Cortes Mastro to succeed Harry Reid and displacing Mark Kirk in Illinois with Tammy Duckworth
• More pointedly, Republicans couldn't even field a statewide candidate in California, where the Senate race was a choice between two Democrats
• With losses in both houses, both are likely to continue to struggle to unite their internal factions to achieve long sought conservative goals... and in the Senate especially, little can be accomplished without finding a substantial number of Democrats to go along - and one big recipient of Trump's largesse over the years will now lead them: Chuck Schumer

My long held - and still holding - theory about the GOP is that the party reached a major turning point when George W Bush's team ran a scorched earth approach to achieve reelection in 2004. Despite the fact that many Americans were not happy with the country's direction, the Bush team ran roughshod over objections to get victory, and in particular stopped listening to their own base and constituents. More than a "revolt against Obamacare," the rise of the Tea Party turned out to be a wildly uncontrollable internal revolt of the GOP base (which had already caused enormous congressional losses in 2006 and 2008), which in turn caused a breakdown in the party's national leadership. In 2012, internal divisions all but derailed Mitt Romney's run to the nomination, and contributed to his loss. And in 2016, the party's leaders watched in shock and horror as Donald Trump effectively steamrolled over a lackluster field of 17, including Senators and Governors seen as rising stars, as well as the scion of a right wing dynasty (Jeb Bush, in case you forgot) considered the Establishment's best hope.

Sure, in the wake of this stunning result, Republicans now claim to have planned this all along... but this is a party that barely managed to muster a coherent unified approach to a campaign, many of whose success stories - most obviously Marco Rubio and Rob Portman in Ohio - were campaigns directly aimed at standing apart from the party's nominee. Trump's closing campaign slogan - "Drain The Swamp" - is already being subjected to ridicule in the wake of returning leadership n both Houses that will not have changed one bit. And that will only grow as Trump, a neophyte who is poorly prepared to be President, relies on a cast of familiar, establishment conservative names to fill out what will likely be more Rogue's Gallery than Cabinet.

Much of the failure dressed as success here comes from the lack of a central organizing principle for the GOP - other than ginning up white rage and playing to long held resentments, there's basically no positive agenda from the right that really has popular support. Majorities of Americans oppose punitive immigration crackdowns, heavy restrictions on women's right to choose, and economic policies that reward the wealthy and punish the poor. It's no doubt true that we have an enormous economic disaster that's hit rural America especially hard, however the macroeconomic forces involved in that painful turn are forces way beyond the power of Trump, never mind the right more generally, to stop. And it's far from clear that in any coherent sense, conservatives really have any interesting fresh ideas to apply, in any case.

Perversely, as many of the most radical, often third parties lefties suspected, a Trump election may well have the consequence of hastening  the death of the GOP more than a decisive Clinton win ever could. The rage that developed and was stoked under Obama would surely have remained the organizing principle of an more embittered right, and who knows how that might have expressed itself (given the protests and other developments in the days since this election, anything, really is possible). Perhaps Republicans needed this setback disguised as a victory to really try their unpopular policies and see them go up in flames...

Perhaps. As many of us chided those lefty rabble rousers at the time, wishing for failure, overlooking the very real pain and suffering of others, is not one of the radical left's best qualities. If Republicans pursue a series of Draconian initiatives, reward wealth and power, consolidate the control of the 1%... not only will they reap the whirlwind, they will do a better job of showing those angry rural white men something we've been saying all along than we ever did. Personally, I have every expectation that all of this is exactly where we're headed. I take no joy in it, I barely feel safe knowing what's to come. Republicans have been denying the realities of their own internal collapse, I believe, for ten years. And in some sense, how else could they finally collapse except in a spectacular fall from amazing heights? Who else could snatch total disaster from the illusions of victory? Apres Trump, Le Deluge.

What Will We Tell The Children?

Within moments of the election results sinking in, a plaintive - and very beguiling - cry went up in the school pickup lines and Trader Joe parking lots of coastal suburbs... "What will we tell the children?"

When I started this blog some - eek - ten years ago, I was the Uncle of a lively 5 year old, and shortly after, an adorable newborn. Today, I am the uncle of a moody 14 year old, a rambunctious 9 year old, and an inquisitive 3 year old. And not until we landed in Israel (where the nephews now live) the week after the Access Hollywood tape, did it occur to me that talking about this election with kids was a dicey, uncomfortable affair.

These are the days of Mom Blogs and Helicopter parenting, and child rearing is never very far from the discussion of lefty politics these days. Generations X and Y have both moved into the marriage and family phase, and it's hardly surprising that, on white people, it's like thirtysomething brought to life. Sensitive dads trying to forge a new role for men as parents; modern moms balancing work and life interests of their own with raising thinking, active, aware kids. The campaign of Donald Trump was bound to roil these wholesome waters. It's uncomfortable, and surely, uncharted territory. Quick, find me a child rearing expert with a PhD to offer professional advice!

The notion of a protected, sacred childhood comes largely out of the Victorian era, a response to some of the horrors of the Industrial Age, and a companion to the enshrining of women's roles as keepers of the home and caretakers of the domestic sphere. It's primarily an upper middle class notion, aimed at women with successful, financially secure husbands, and quite possibly domestic help. And, naturally, it's these "traditional" notions that still haunt how we see children, and women, even as times, and cultural notions, shift. Feminism brought women into the workforce, up-ended the traditional family through divorce and sexual freedom, and led to the economic reality of 2 career couples. Through it all, we continue to carry notions of the protected childhood forward.

We do this even though we know that children see, hear and are exposed to all kinds of ideas and notions and images. We do this knowing that children are not, often, safe or protected. We do it knowing that children often chafe over it. And we wonder, these days, why children seem to struggle so with understanding when it's time to grow up.

It was my mother who pointed out to me that these notions of protecting children are probably not all that useful, that it's better probably to make sure they do understand how the world works, that it can be harsh or unpleasant, and help them to find the maturity they'll need to face it. Ata time when we are all so polarized and politically divided, it's children who may be insulated and isolated most from seeing, or hearing, others who are not like them, with parents who think differently, have different beliefs. At a time when we need greater understanding and more communication across our divides, our children are the reason we build the walls and look inward. That can't be good.

And given Donald Trump's candidacy and its success, it's worth remembering that not everyone is teaching kids diversity. Or tolerance. Or notions of consent. What do you tell children about how men talk about women and joke about taking women without consent? Well, God knows, that's as good a moment as any to teach boys that girls are not objects and girls that it's important to speak up and say no, and no one has a right to force themselves upon you.

This election did not "rob kids of their childhood." "Childhood" is a created construct, an often unrealistic fantasy and creates an unrealistic expectation parents can't ever meet. Wanting kids to have nurturing environments, to feel safe, to have room to grow and explore... these are great things to strive for. But kids, especially the children of wealth and privilege, also need to see and understand the world, and to go out into it. And know that it will not always be safe or welcoming. And, I would hope, that children of privilege realize that seeing beyond privilege is crucial and necessary - that we have a responsibility to our communities, to each other.

"What do we tell the children?" isn't ultimately a question about kids. It's a question that deflects the hard things we need to tell ourselves, the work we have to do, the ways we all let each other down. Donald Trump's foul language and hateful notions weren't an assault on children; they were an affront to us all. As I looked at my nephews, wondering what to say, and how to say it... i did wonder what I was trying to shield them from. And today, I think it's largely that I didn't want them to know, as I did, how horrible people can be. But they are. And if we're going to deal with that, we probably all need to grow up. At least a little. 

 

Too Late, Too Soon

My habit, after each election, is to think about those categories of "winners and losers" - it goes along with thinking post mortem thoughts about what my side did good and bad, and the other side, too. 

And then, this... thing... happened.

So, I'm a little late to the winner and loser phase. And still, it feels a little soon for the post mortems. Democrats are already off on a wave of self flagellation, wishful reimagining of the election, and the early phases of a circular firing squad. Republicans , naturally, now believe they've solved at least 10 years of painful implosion with a lucky break. None of that seems especially necessary or true. And so, as I shake off the sadness, regain a sense of humor, and let my rage reignite my instincts to put words on paper... let's at least start with my own quixotic view of how this all went down.

And, since this year is topsy turvy, let's go bottoms up:

LOSERS:

Donald Trump - You can see it in his eyes - that sudden, overwhelmed look that "this is serious" and "get your sh*t together" of someone who himself never entirely believed this would really work. We know what he wanted - a loss that he could ride to new financial success, reinventing his brand, and selling himself as the ultimate sore loser to an audience of sore losers. And then... oops. He's not ready for this, he's not up for it, he hates to be criticized and he needs mass love. This job will wreck him. Warren Harding had higher morals and Richard Nixon wore villainy better than he ever will. This disaster has only begun to reveal itself.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi - at some point, people will notice that the leadership of the Democratic Party is stale, static and itself resistant to even the most mild energy for change. Then they might ask why 70 year olds with 20 to 30 plus years of their lives spent in government really represent the kind of fresh notions people want to see. When "blame the Clintons" fades as an easy excuse, Democrats will have to answer why a party that wants to sell the idea of "change" has party leaders who never do. And that might have something to with why, lately, they don't seem to win that much, either.

The Others - there's no nice way to put how damaging this election will be for some of the country's most vulnerable populations - Muslims, Hispanic immigrants, LGB but especially T, even many women, certainly poor women with families to raise and healthcare needs of their own. Lets not sugar coat it. Let's not pretend this will somehow be okay. And then let's get angry enough to stand up and start doing something about it.

Joe Arpaio, Kelly Ayotte and Pat McCrory - Lest Republicans crow gleefully about a wholesale endorsement of their hateful ways, this election had at least a few bright spot examples of the reality that this electorate was not on a wholesale endorsement of the right. Arpaio finally paid the price of years of immigrant bashing and harassment; McCrory went down for at least that horrendous "bathroom bill" attack on transgender people, though a litany of scandals related to his past life as a power company executive and that company's role in polluting NC's rivers surely added fuel. Ayotte was in many ways the ultimate get - a hard talking foreign policy chickenhawk who flailed embarrassingly as the Trump debacle unfolded. These are the races to study to understand how hate and fear can be beaten.

Common Decency - these are unpleasant times, made worse by an ugly campaign season in which nothing was off limits, no words were left unsaid, and fear and hatred ruled. "Let's come together for unity" cooed the most naive of Trump's supporters in the days since the election, as if 18 months of brutal incitement meant nothing, as if hard feelings are something only for Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to gin up every afternoon on the air. That's not how this works - people are angry, sad, and in no mood to make nice. And we will all be a little less as a result.

WINNERS

Hillary Clinton - She won the popular vote. She handled herself from start to finish with grace and class and the kind of strength you'd expect in... well, a President. She is free to follow her commitment to a life of service and helping others and showing everyone who doubted it that she was, simply, what her supporters said she was. Apparently, actual ability to do a good job was never going to be enough.

The Trump Handlers - History is told by the winners, and however grudgingly, the folks who put Trump over on the American public can't be denied. Unpack a basket of hatefulness, stoke a traditional batch of familiar resentments, feign surprise at the appeal of your message to extremists, turn up the heat and stir. Even I can't deny that the recipe will keep Kellyanne Conway employed as long as she wants to stay in the game. Though I like to think Steve Bannon will never enjoy this level of import ever again.

Tammy Duckworth (and Maggie Hassan and Kamala Harris) - Yet more evidence that Republicans down ballot couldn't really ride the wave of Trump class resentment to success, Duckworth proved an able campaigner, slowly eroding all of Mark Kirk's perceived advantages until he made one of the worst live debate miscalculations of any candidate this cycle (easy second: Kelly Ayotte). More candidates as strong as Duckworth, Hassan, and California's Harris and this might have been a different election. And that's the only hypothetical I'll begin to entertain.

Barack Hussein Obama - Nothing will ennoble our first black President like the man who follows him into office. However much reasonable criticism his presidency deserves - the kind of realistic assessment that might have helped liberals realize that not everyone loved his eight years in office more than they like to admit before the election was lost - he will look like a calm oasis next to the deserts that preceded and followed him. And he wears greatness so well on that cool, detached looking face of his.

White Rage - Let's take a moment and acknowledge the obvious overriding message of this election: a rage against change, against the triumph of urbanism, modernity and diversity, a rage that couldn't be reasoned with or argued against or stopped. Let's not pretend that a fantasy candidate (old white men like Sanders or Biden, promulgated by, mostly, other white liberal men) could have solved this - that way lies the wreckage of John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, and probably most of all, McGovern. Let's be honest enough to face that "economic populism" and "xenphobic jingoism" are simply ways to try and put racism and prejudice into a shiny new dress. Let's admit that fear is a powerful motivator, and it leads people, often, into poor choices. The rage is real. And this year, the rage won. And if Democrats want to change that, they need to work a lot harder to understand it, face it, and respect its power. Denying it, running from it, and wishing it away won't work. Surely we ought to admit we've at least learned that.

Related articles

DOWN-BALLOT FAILURE: HOW REPUBLICAN SEATS WILL GO DOWN WITH TRUMP TOMORROW! - OSUN DEFENDER

Democrat Tammy Duckworth unseats incumbent Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk

Captain Underpants

I wrote this post back in August when Amthony Weiner's new round of "sexting" came forth and Huma Abedin formally separated from her husband. A lot, of course, has happened in the interim - not least of which was an FBI investigation of Weiner's communications with a minor girl that led to the discovery of a cache of e-mails Abedin, possibly inadvertently, loaded onto Weiner's computer that were from her day tp day communications with Hillary Clinton. That revelation came out when I was overseas, but as I suspected within hours, nothing new or shocking turned up. In time, we may get a fuller picture of what happened and why. But like many, I thought, "this just underlines why she really needed to leave him."

As I just happened upon the piece, I realized it was still timely, and so I'm going ahead and posting it. 

 

I wish Nora Ephron were here to put Anthony Weiner in, well, his place.

Ephron's feminist approach to cultural issues was always bracing - don't believe me; go watch Good Girls Revolt on Amazon - but rarely more so than on the level of interpersonal dynamics. The obvious example is Heartburn, Ephron's lightly fictionalized account of the breakup and dissolution of her marriage to Carl Bernstein.

Like others, I thought specifically of Heartburn in relation to Weiner and Huma Abedin because Ephron made her book so pointedly about being a Jewish New Yorker. I also thought of the line about her son "being caught in some dopey conscriptive way" as part of the affair when Ephron discovers a children's book with an inscription from the woman having the affair with her husband, and the parallels, altogether unfortunate, to Weiner tweeting a picture of his son sleeping next to his dad's shorts.

Lots of people want to psychoanalyze Weiner - it's the times, and our nature to want to label conclusively - but I wish we had Ephron to remind us that the important thing here is not why he did it or how he feels. Perhaps, a better, more human focus is on the woman whose life just fell apart, and the things she counted on most - a supportive spouse, a caregiver to her young child while she pursued her work - were all taken away. News reports focused on "Abedin's absence from the campaign" and all I could think to myself was... "how's she gonna find the kind of childcare she needs to remain as Clinton's closest advisor?"

And yet... as much as this feels like a sudden, final straw, the timing also feels curious. It's a slow news week; Clinton is largely offstage going to fundraisers and keeping out of the public eye, and Abedin was in the Hamptons, largely taking a break. "Friends of Abedin" appeared out of the blue in news reports to indicate that this separation had been in the works for weeks if not months, that they'd grown apart, and she was disillusioned with him. How convenient, then, that evidence appeared, as if on cue, to justify a clean final break.

Conspiracy theory aside, I highly doubt it's the case that Abedin wanted more humiliation for herself or her child this public or this upsetting. But it seems clear that Abedin was also more prepared than one might otherwise be to end things quickly the minute bad news surfaced. It's the readiness that says, I think she was onto him. It's about time; and in some ways, it felt overdue.'

People trying to speculate on parallels to the Clinton marriage miss the point that make these comparisons useless: every marriage is different, every couple makes their own set of compromises, some deal about what you live with, and what you can't. Nothing Bill Clinton has ever done suggests an instinct for publicly compromising images as Weiner has done; but that's really not the point. Give Abedin credit for trying to see the best in the man she married; and fault Weiner, as we all should, for not being that man.

In a presidential campaign season full of sideshows being portrayed as the Main Event, Abedin's breakup will surely seem beside the point in less than a week. Labor Day has a way of clearing the air, insisting that it's "time to get serious," and put away summer's colorful distractions. Hillary Clinton's campaign doesn't hinge on the state of the marriage between Weiner and Abedin, certainly now that it's over. And if the lasting resonance to the campaign is that even here, Donald Trump needed to opine on other's private business... well, if he doesn't want that rep, you know, he could stop.

As for Captain Underpants himself, what can be said? Weiner's triumph, and tragedy, is somehow making his flaws and bad behavior not just his own problem, but everyone's. Some people - we're looking at you, Kanye West - seem to have this instinctive need to be public and messy and somehow "larger than life." Being involved with these people, surely, is tiring (eh, Melania?). It's the mistake of equating notoriety with fame, and fame with being liked. There's a lot of that going around, these days. What a wonder it would be if Abedin can, like Ephron, transform her bad experience into something better, and be herself from a real place of living through experiences, both good and bad. At the very least, I hope she, like Ephron, finds the place where you look back on all this and laugh. Because you gotta admit... he's ridiculous.

Related articles

Did Anthony Weiner want to get caught sexting? | Jamieson Webster

Anthony Weiner's Twitter account disappears - POLITICO

Huma Abedin Has Finally Had Enough of Anthony Weiner

How We Regard Huma Abedin, And Why It Matters

FBI Re-opens Criminal Investigation Into Hillary Clinton's Duplicitous Use Of Private Emails; Watergate Reporter Calls It "A Real Bombshell" - Friends of Ours

Good Girls Revolt Shows How Far We Haven't Come

Swamp Thing

This election just past reminds me of the faith I have in America; less so the faith I have in fellow Americans. It’s an amazing thing, this experiment in participatory democracy. It’s also amazing how we survive some pretty incredible mess ups and mistakes.

America is a nation whose greatest accomplishments are often happy (or unhappy) accidents. We praise ourselves for our wonderful qualities, while often trying to ignore the wreckage in our wake. We’re the nation that came together after a Civil War (try not to think about the senseless death and destruction), ended slavery (pay no attention to that area at the back of the lovely plantation where the people they owned were housed in shacks), and gave women the vote (but will not enshrine gender equality in an amendment to the Constitution). When we’re good, we’re admirable, and when we’re not… it’s a really complex problem that’s probably too difficult for society to fix.

Already the media and our success oriented mindset is rewriting the history of the election. After a bruising, brutal campaign by Donald Trump, who came down an escalator on day one and said Mexico was sending “rapists and murderers… and some, I assume, are good people;” spent the primaries humiliating one opponent after another; and held rallies week after week marked by derisive jeers, random violence, and calls for things like a ban on the entry of Muslims into the US…. after all that, we can now be told that the election was about “economic populism and a desire to clean up Washington.

“Drain the Swamp” became Trump’s rallying cry in the final weeks, a popular rallying call of the right before he locked onto it, though beyond the slogan it’s always been hard to say just what this drainage project is meant to accomplish. It seems primarily aimed at assuming corruption and unchecked illegality are the sole products of Democrats, hence complaints about misuse of union funds for political purposes, lobbying by liberal groups, the political activism of teachers. Questions about corporate money, lobbying by conservative favored groups, the influence of major right wing billionaire donors, the misbehavior of Republican lawmakers… that’s a little less of a problem.Trump did suggest, admirably, that he wouldn’t be “beholden to special interests” because he was “self funding” his campaign. He said this less after raising millions of dollars from traditional GOP sources, and he seems oblivious to the fact that “self funding” does not mean “paying your own corporate entities from your campaign’s coffers.” But hey, drain that swamp!

Time will tell just what “Drain the Swamp” amounts to; like pretty much all of the Donald’s campaign rhetoric, his line was a slogan in search of policy detail, a big “TK” where the specifics will eventually be. The same is generally true of the economic populism - there’s some vague plans to rewrite tax law, maybe take a stab at infrastructure spending, some theoretical talk of upending US trade policies… but Trump’s plans were thin and vague throughout the campaign, a cloud of shouts and bluster mainly aimed at telling people everything they wanted to hear. Maybe “he told us everything we wanted to hear” could be the real reason he won?

Oh, and he says he’ll “repeal and replace” Obamacare. Let’s come back to that later.

In the end, Trump’s victory can, I suppose be explained away as that mix of economic populism and swamp drainage. That is the upbeat side. The downbeat side is all that stuff Trump said about law and order and cleaning up the terror filled inner cities, the lines about Muslims and Hispanic immigrants, and black people, and various comments about women and their bodies and those who wound up in his sights for criticizing him in one way or another. That’s the hate that drove his campaign, that created the sea of white faces at his rallies, encouraged white supremacists and the “Alt Right” online, and led to those rowdy cries, jeers, and scattered violence. Is that all his voters saw? Did they see it at all? Or is that just what the horrified people who opposed him saw?

Our history is littered with moments of backlash, the moments when the white, native majority resoundingly restated their majority rule over the rest of us. It’s the string of events that led to the Civil War, it’s the way Reconstruction went from a hopeful reconciliation to a reemergence of of the worst ways of the South, it’s the way hopeful signs of integration early in the twentieth century led to Jim Crow… and how the progress of the sixties led to the right’s Southern Strategy, Nixon and ultimately Ronald Reagan. Since the Civil Rights Act, the most racist parts of the nativist white crowd have hidden themselves in the corners of the right wing, every so often reminding us that they can’t win it alone, but they can help win it. It’s easier when you’ve got a Donald Trump, who ran with the “Obama birth certificate” nonsense to gain a political foothold, and felt little compunction to steer clear of appeals to the worst impulses of working class white voters. Blame the other. Blame the brown people. Blame the immigrants, and the Muslims (and less loudly, blame the Jews). Blame the gays. Blame those uppity women.

It’s all a cloud now, a haze, a blur. And some Trump voters express, as self aware Republicans often do, amazement that now, suddenly, accusations of racism, misogyny and bigotry fly. A year and a half of a hate-filled, name-calling campaign… and no, it was all about economic populism. Drain the Swamp. We’re not racists. How could you think that? Why is Trump’s victory based, pretty much entirely, on the votes of rural, less educated whites, mostly older white men? How did less educated white women move from consideration of electing the first woman president to resounding support for a billionaire? Could it be, even remotely, that appealing to base racial prejudices and class resentments can be excused by a few swipes at sky high promises of economic rebirth?

The point isn’t that white voters, these voters, are racist; the point is, really, that this story is not new. Faced, often, with the hard economic challenges of rapid change, America’s native population has often moved to rein in the others - immigrants, Indians, blacks… whatever “other” is convenient. It’s not that “economic populism” didn’t drive this election… it’s that “economic populism” is cover for the very appeal of those race and class based resentments. We don’t like to think we’re bad actors. In our American history, most of us think we’re the good guys. And often, we’re nobody’s heroes, except our own. It’s actually a thing I love about our nation - our good intentions and our faith in ultimately getting it right. Hope is our birthright, greatness is our mantle. We’d be so good, if we could just stop being so very very bad.

So here’s to draining the swamp. Who knows what we’ll find? Maybe a business man with terrible personal and business ethics is just the man for this job. We’ll see. Maybe the swamp we need to drain isn’t in DC - maybe it’s the swamp of resentments, hatreds and anger we foist on each other. Just something to consider, while we rewrite our history yet again and find a convenient spot to put a happy ending on this thing, the story of our greatness so far.

Related articles

Donald Trump's Gettysburg Address: Sexual Assault Accusers 'Will be Sued After the Election is Over'

Maybe Now We Can Talk About Who Lost