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Gavin Newsom's Electric Kool Aid Recall Test

One of Gavin Newsom's biggest flaws - which, I suspect, will turn out to be key to this California recall vote - is that he has been, up to now, one of the more generically forgettable politicians of his time. Vaguely handsome, absolutely unmemorable, Newsom has casually coasted through success on the Left Coast by being less visibly flaky than Jerry Brown while catering to the needs of the deeply progressive base of California's Democrats... and somehow, leaving next to no trace of mostly being there at all.

Quick - quote me a memorable Newsom speech.

Newsom works best, as politicians do, by never being too risky, and it largely paid off. Even when he had to get tough during the pandemic, for much of it he was acting in the shadow of Andrew Cuomo and Jay Inslee - Inslee because Washington state got hit first, and Cuomo as New York got hit harder. Newsom probably needed to respond sooner and more forcefully, but his failures on that score were subsumed by the ultimate scale of the pandemic, and more than most, he was able to have the kind of success you can only have when every level of government in the state largely falls in line and works for the same goals.

But one fancy dinner at French Laundry, and a restive population that has long equated their state with breezy openness, and Newsom looked a bit, well, cavalier. Decisions about reopening were bound to be complex, but Newsom embodied the "Do as I say, not as I do" hypocrisy that, frankly, has become a struggle for almost all of us who care about public health. When to unmask, when to go back to restaurants... our choices have been a confused mix of Listening to Science and Deciding to Do It Anyway.  It's worth noting, for instance, no one involved in the French Laundry episode got sick. But that just kind of underscores the "well, why do we have to isolate so much" aspect of all our conversations, these days.

Recalling Newsom took on a life of its own once national conservatives and Fox News decided Newsom was weak enough to be beatable... whether that ultimately pans out is still a tossup of sorts, but so far, that choice looks ham handed, at best. Newsom has run a generally low key, below the radar effort to lock down a no vote on recall (from choosing an obscure September date to do it to quietly enlisting the known liberal universe to stump for him). So far, that seems to be working: polls have "no" consistently beating "yes" on recall, and while turnout is as low as expected, it's not clear that Republicans in CA have overcome their built in disadvantages to get anywhere near where they would need to be to succeed.

Partly, that's because the California GOP remains in tatters: lack of statewide leadership, indeed, any clear leadership of any kind, has been the hallmark of this effort. Driven by faceless pressure group interests, the Recall zombie walked right up to its signature deadline not knowing if they'd hit it. Once they did, no one emerged as a real potential hopeful to replace Newsom. The largely hilarious failure of Caitlyn Jenner to work up more than a vanity driven, reality show style of a campaign hurt considerably. And at this point, the GOP hopes rest on Larry Elder, a fringe-y outsider with loads of bad baggage and no real sense of what it would take to govern the largest state.

Yes, the prospect of Elder should scare people... but that, too, just plays effectively to Newsom's shambling "oh no, I'm in danger" approach to the whole thing. Everyone's worried, democrats are terrified... and yet, Newsom still has spent much of this recall campaign largely low key, barely in public, trying less to draw attention than to avoid it. That's probably, from a political strategy standpoint, the smart play: Elder flails especially for lack of a true foil, and conservative news outlet struggle to give the whole recall enterprise a sense of real urgency. Still, as I said from the start, Newsom's generic blandness has been his secret weapon all along, as well as his Achilles' heel. He will likely survive a recall... but it's hardly the most inspiring effort anyone has ever seen... and that's partly why he struggles to be seen positively at all.

A smarter, saner Republican party - or a less crazy conservative movement, at least - would probably have seen the Recall for the fool's errand it's turning out to be. Newsom isn't a political superstar... but he's also no abject failure a la Grey Davis, either. And again, frankly, Republicans have no secret Arnold Schwarzeneggar this time to swallow up the celebrity oxygen, either. No, this is just another flaky, only-in-California moment that underscores both the fecklessness of the public and the confused panda notions of what passes for state government in the Golden State. Tightening the recall process, really facing up to the state's internal issues... these are probably the real lessons of what is, and isn't happening with this Recall, and why. But seeing that would require seeing past the electric circus mentality of national conservatives, flailing through the initial moments of post Trump existence with no real sense of who they are, what they want, or how even to start. Gavin Newsom, even in their equation, is a handsome, generic detail. One widely disseminated dinner party does not a revolution make.

And sure, there may be more recalls (though most states have much higher barriers to them) and more falderal from the far right now that desperation has long since taken over good sense. But failing to oust Newsom is, well, failure. If conservatives can't turn their fanciful, ginned up narratives into political success - and so far, it's not looking great on most fronts - that's just another proof that their marginalization is more real, and less scary than as has been over advertised since the failed "insurrection" of January sixth. The foolishness is not pointing out how absurd, wasteful and dangerous conservatism has become... but how we imbue it with more power than it actually has, more triple A batteries in a flashlight than full on electric klieg lights. And if you can't beat Gavin Newsom with a flashlight... just how badass are you, really?

Got Til It's Gone

A day later and it can seem light years away, but try and recall that until he ducked out early yesterday morning, we did indeed spend 4 years with Donald Trump in the White House. He may have ended much the way he began - in chaos, disarray, and like a thief trying to get away with something - but if there's one thing we came to learn under Trump, it was that what you see is what you will always get.

A day later, it's hard to ask just what we got, since we want to pretend, as we often do, that nothing at all matters before yesterday. By noontime, with the assembled guests in their usual spots (or something like it, under Covid) we once again paraded out an Inauguration, hit the reset button, and gratefully welcomed the return of normalcy. You know, where you can't leave your house, masks are required at the store, and vaccines are impossible to find. That's okay, stay home and watch another chorus of randos sing that song from Rent you didn't need for the umpteenth time. Liberalism means never having to apologize for the theater kids.

A day later and we have our sense of humor back, our divisions, our obstacles to progress as firmly in place as ever... and that's good, isn't it?  Isn't it swell, isn't it?  Well, it's heaven, nowadays (sorry, I was those theater kids, once)... but we may, by day three, already feel deeply disappointed watching Democrats in Disarray. Because why change anything, when all we wanted back was our same old, familiar narratives?

Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and by the end, Trump was nothing if not familiar. Even on his way literally out the door, stopping to harangue the reporters, dutiful as ever, gathered at their rope line for one final word. And then, sharply dressed wife at his side, he toddled off (Melania swapped her severe black Chanel for a colorful caftan on her arrival in Palm Beach, and literally never looked back as she got in her car to head into private life). It's remarkable, really, that Trump seems to have exited the national stage in a way similar to other ex Presidents, could we be that lucky? I think not... but it's hard to tell what outlet he would have available to pop up on, even if he wanted.

It's hilarious, this game we're playing of treating Trump as He Who Shall Not Be Named, just one day after he leaves the presidency, whether because it serves Joe Biden's "let's move forward" storyline, or the Republicans' need to pretend they never heard of him, or our own sense that if we just don't talk about him it will be like this never happened. It's another piece of family dysfunction after all - not talking about the bad stuff. Pretending everything is fine. They paved Paradise, and put up a parking lot... but it's fine if we just agree it's nice to have the extra space to park.

The reality of course is that it's not that simple, or that easy, and pretending won't make this go away. Trump will linger in our culture, whether we determinedly try to exile him or not, whether he tries to force his way back onto the stage, or not. Trump may be relegated to the interior pages of scandal sheets and gossip rags, the story may move to lawsuits and investigations and financial failure... but he won't just be gone. Even today, Republicans are grappling with one last piece of political mischief, as they try to tamp down his "I could start my own political party" - an idea so half baked and deviously destructive, we can only hope he sees it through, Surely, it's the best next long con he could possibly have created, a grift that could make him millions long before anyone realized it was a complete sham.

Then, too, there's Impeachment, a trial to be held that apparently is the magic key to figuring out how the 50-50 Senate will finally set up shop and get down to business. Because no one is "concerned about ending the filibuster" - that won't happen and doesn't have the votes to pass, anyway. But the timing of a trial, the need for Republicans to get rid of Trump without angering the base... there's no real answer about when a trial could be helpful, or what verdict brings actual justice (at least, not for their side - we know he's guilty as sin). The struggle is real. The answers are elusive. And it's only one half of an entire branch of government that gets held up trying to figure a way out.

Good luck with that, I figure. Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got til it's gone? I don't mean Trump = we knew what we got, with him. No, what we haven't begun to face - in our perfect, don't talk about the dysfunction way - is all the other stuff we got. From literally getting sick to all that's been broken, to all the disarray in putting our government back together, all the aftermath we have yet to unpack... and on and on. We are remarkable, as Americans, at all the things we can refuse to face when we out our collective energy towards it. We put him on a plane, we sent him away... a big yellow taxi came and took away our old man. Can't we just enjoy the Tree Museum and that shiny new parking lot?

Parler Games

Nothing quite says "the spell is broken" more than Twitter's decision to impose a lifetime ban on Donald Trump. If one had to point to the one thing that defined this Era of Trump Madness, it was those omnipresent tweets (ones I explored daily and tagged with #EverythingHeSaysIsALie ) which substituted for any and every aspect of an actual presidency: policy conversation, press conference, daily schedule and insult magnifier rolled into one, ugly, endlessly venal hopelessly untrue steamroller of disinformation. Without it, really, was there anything there at all?

Just days later, it's abundantly clear.... not much really was there at all. A silenced Trump may rage alone in the darkened halls of the White House, but without amplification, his sycophants grow restless, his party is rudderless and his opponents know the sweet air of freedom. How much different would our world be, or have been, had anyone had the nerve to take these actions years ago... when, just an aside, it would have been more than appropriate.

Within minutes of the decision - and the parallel, not exactly simultaneous decision to block Trump on Facebook and all of its associated properties - the right wing pundits had their instant storyline, one which thankfully absolved them of facing the aftermath of insurrection head on. Instead, we were gifted with a storyline about the Death of the First Amendment, the Unreasonable Censoring of Conservative Voices, and the "who, us?" excuse making of trying to argue that no one, really, could call Trump, or any of his minions, directly responsible for inciting a riot.

The decision fixed a heavy, awkward spotlight on the fledgling alterna-network for the right, Parler. Hastily assembled and built, according to the tech savvy, mostly on the "paperclips and string" approach to coding... Parler was already a bit of a stumbling mess as Trump's access went down - a hub of privacy invasion, bad infrastructure, conspiracy theorists pushed off legitimate forums... and the odd convergence of QAnon and Saudi exiles too eager to push the propaganda needs of the Crown Prince. Any port in a storm? More like Port of Last Resort.

In a rational world, Parler might have been able to buy itself the time needed to get itself together and to get serious... but this is the age of Internet Madness, and Trump's implosion only made Parler's underlying problems that much more stark. Having spent months trying to fend off reasonable requests from Amazon (its cloud server host) to better police the content floating through its social network, Parler's role in the January 6th events was bound to come under scrutiny, and it's failure to offer even a modest "lick and a promise" intention to clean up left Amazon little choice. Parler's arguably in over their heads leadership has tried valiantly to spin their disasters as that much more Unfair Censorship to Silence The Right, but even a minimal amount of research suggests a company that was simply overwhelmed by its users interest in a forum that let any and every crazy rant run free. And that's being charitable, since Parler even now can't seem to indicate what content it would moderate if it even knew how.

The reality is that this era we've been living through is, in many ways, the cusp of en ending, not the beginning of a New Age: a "wild west" of disinformation and questionable content, the various social networks have been struggling for years, particularly after the 2016 election revealed a debacle of Russian interference, fake stories, false accounts and deliberate propaganda aimed at fomenting civil unrest. There are no heroes here; only corporate entities with too much influence and too little oversight, gamely attempting to put several genies back into bottles. And while conservatives may have a point that some innocents may be caught up in the new oversight, that too is a tangent to a problem they've had for too long and done too little to police - a refusal to draw lines, and rule out obvious problematic actors and content pushing White Supremacy, Militia based talk of Revolution, and QAnon conspiracy fantasies. Yes, it's true Facebook and Twitter have all sorts of problems, failed enforcement and bad content moderation... but that's with at least a modicum of effort. Parler, god love it, wasn't even trying. And that failure to even adopt a fig leaf of "please stop, that's bad" just made the failure especially stark. No one's going to race to your alternative social network for more puppy videos. They want the hard stuff, the mean stuff... the stuff nobody else will let them say.

In all of this Trump was more symptom than disease - simply the biggest, worst, most prolific and most profligate example of a systemic failure to take action against obvious disinformation and malicious content. Every day, week, month, that passed it was grossly, starkly obvious that Trump flouted every possible rule and convention for content. Twitter (and eventually, Facebook too) had to step in just to acknowledge that virtually everything Trump had said regarding the 2020 election was a gross falsehood, flat out misinformation or deliberate provocation. And even that did nothing to slow the manufacture of lies, the fomenting of violence, the egregious bullying pushing things ever further to the edge. And what edge? Well, we need not ask that, not after January sixth.

It will take time, and effort to get things under some modicum of control - to push the fringes back to the fringe, marginalize the marginal, undo the massive damage to our culture, our discourse, ourselves. Like everything else, this isn't about "going back to before" - we are in this new Internet landscape to stay. But we already know that Facebook and Twitter can and will evolve, that they will not be exactly what they were, and though it's not impossible, it is unlikely that one man will be able to construct what Donald Trump did with his unique combination of avarice, idiocy, falsehoods and self interest. I do tend to think that, for better and worse, Trump's incendiary rhetoric was never so much a brilliant plan as a dopey use of bombast and bullying to play with matches and gasoline everyone else could see as potentially disastrous, even as he couldn't, or wouldn't. Much of the defense of his actions on the sixth are of the "he probably didn't mean to" sort and they're right up to a point: I don't think he meant to create what actually went down. But mostly because, I don't think he had thought that far ahead. And that, really, is the definition of incitement.

As for Parler and these semantic games the right would like to play about "free speech," I think time is running out on this "outrageousness dressed up as constitutional liberty" sales pitch. It's a tiring game of wrapping up age old prejudices in History Channel or Civics Class doublespeak that misuses faux intellectualism to sell the most anti-intellectual arguments imaginable. This isn't about free speech or even the outlines of a healthy debate; it's about one side's ability to mouth off without consequences and the other's to just take it. And that's just bullying, which is the ultimate point.

 The jig is up, the game is over... whatever metaphoric cliche one likes, where we are isn't where we were even a week ago, and even with only about a week to look at, it's clear that Trump's absence, alone, from social media is already having an impact in ratcheting down the chaos and slowing down the fuse on its way to the powder keg of further internal conflict. Which doesn't make Facebook or Twitter heroes, just slightly more socially responsible than they had been. And that, alone, is the indication of a tide turning, that modest sound of us being our better selves, trying harder to get it right. Conservatives have a choice about whether to follow that tide or get washed away. We can't make it for them, I can't guess which way they'll go, but these pointless Parler games aren't really worth playing on the way to an outcome.

Math and Aftermath

"Off guard" is one of those odd phrases - unless one lives in some state of perpetual vigilance, we are, generally "off guard." And yet, how can one talk about those moments and world changing events that suddenly up end our day, our week, our lives with a sudden, crystal breaking clarity? Who knew that could happen? Why weren't we "on guard?" How did we miss that?

Already, people talk about January sixth as if what happened should have been obvious - how could you not know that thousands of hyped up, angry protestors would turn into a riotous mob, storm the Capitol, nearly do bodily harm to our Congress, take hours to stop? In the modern phrasing... "that's just math." And yet, the events of the day came at us, really, out of the blue. If anything, the days since have been coming out of shock - shock that it happened, shock that it could happen, shock that what did happen was so bad, and could have been much worse. We are, as Americans, prisoners of our cheerful societal naïveté - we may seem like the girl who knows too much and Already Did It, but often we're just the rich kids in clothes that are too mature for us, pretending to a maturity we don't really have, never entirely earned. January 6th will haunt us because, really, We Should Have Known. We're shocked that we didn't.

Personally, I have had a plan to restart blogging in earnest that got, well, a little waylaid by Christmas and the holidays... but last week was my week to settle down and back into it. And I thought I'd start with some posts about Trump in his waning days... what's it all about, what a strange time... yada yada. And then, on that Wednesday, things just blew up. I had decided to catch some of the "Arizona debate" on the Electoral College count, flipping between House and Senate C-Span channels. Things had been slow, so I'd also flipped to coverage of the "Rally" the Trumpist folks were holding, waiting for Trump when it was apparent he would speak to them live, not really paying attention to his remarks. But then the debates started in earnest, and I was flipping between Paul Gosar and Mitch McConnell when suddenly... bedlam.

I've done the "where were you" discussions of 9/11 and other historic days, but January 6th will be, I think, kind of a Next Level on that: it's not just where we were (home, mostly), but how painful, and slow, and terrifying it was to watch. Trying to figure out what we couldn't see. Realizing that our very democracy could be in peril, not really having a "Plan B" on our whole System of Government... these are not everyday discussions. Not here. Not by us. People wanted to have whole debates about What It All Meant all afternoon... but what was immediately apparent is we couldn't even have that discussion until we did something more like basic... like stop this, and get it under control.

So... it's under control. Now what?

There are a number of ways to break down and pick apart the events of the sixth; and the point, I think, is that What Happened is not one discussion. It's several discussions, all important, all with a bearing on our future, as a nation, as a people, as a Republic. That, too, is just math. No one discussion can cover all of what this is, what it means, what it will mean. Over the next week or two, I'm hoping to break down and break out some of the themes that I think will be meaningful as we move forward. It's not the blogging I intended... but Aftermath is a funny place. One I never expected to see. So here, roughly, are four areas that I think will matter as we look back on January sixth and move forward from it:

• The Mob - Trump Supporters, "the Insurrectionists," "The MAGA Crowd"... whatever we call them, whatever we thought of them before... this event changes that completely. Understanding what drove this, who drove this, their goals and beliefs, will all be hugely important, of course. Knowing their names, seeing, as we already are, the famous and the unknowns in that crowd, is a big story. I'm not sure it's entirely sunk in that we want to do this in order to isolate them and expunge them. But I think they will begin to realize that's what's happening, soon enough.
• Republicans and The Conservative Movement - The events of January 6th have enormous implications for the Right, as any have already started to note. But I think the early process we are seeing, the Anger, the Bargaining... signal that, in fact, something has died. I don't think anyone knows exactly what that means or just how it will play out... not yet, anyway. But a Republican Party that had to unwind the Trump Years anyway now has a much bigger soul to search - the Law and Order Party that enabled the Lawless in their midst, the Standard Bearers without standards... this is not a small earthquake. And it will not be neatly resolved and put away in short order.
• Security, Safety and the role of Law Enforcement - another obvious element of "how did this happen," we are bound to see months of Commissions, panels, in depth reviews and more trying to unwind the failures of the day. And this could be a healthy conversation about improving our sense of safety and yet another step towards engaging a broader conversation on Policing, generally. But... a whole lot of this could go very, very wrong. And that's not reassuring.
• Donald Trump, his family, and all the hangers-on. Impeached while Pence dithered on the 25th Amendment, events have moved quickly to sideline Trump if not remove him completely for his role in this mess... but we're nowhere near a full assessment of what 4 years have wrought, the aftermath of his lies, bullying and chaos-stirring. Nor have we unpacked the roles his family have played, or the (literal) Rogues Gallery of Accomplices, Apologists and Sycophants who also have earned their moments of deep scrutiny. "Justice" is no longer the only issue. As a nation, reclaiming our decency means looking hard at The Indecency among us. A good, hard look.

Two things that I don't think are major parts of this story of The Aftermath? "The Media" - who do need to show that they can take up these multiple threads, organize them, and look at them seriously, and who, yes, may well fall short. But trying to pin the events of January 6th on "culpable" or "complacent" media, I think, is to lose focus on the actual people in the actual mob that perpetrated the actual riot. Similarly, none of this is, or should be, about liberals, The Left, or the incoming Biden Administration. We have our own issues, our own story, our own role to play. And there's plenty of time to look at all of that. But this, this moment of real threat to Our Democracy, and to Our Way of Life is on their side, it's their problem, and they need to do the work. We cannot do it for them. But we can move to hold them accountable to do that very work.

One more thing: Be Unafraid. Yes, these are difficult, uncertain times. We have many problems. Bad things, very bad things, may yet happen. But if the January 6th Insurrection showed us anything, it showed us most how pathetic this whole exercise was. How sad and small, how incapable, how unserious. These bullies and miscreants are not something to fear; they are people to be pitied, marginalized, and brought to justice. They do not deserve to be given the power to scare us, to haunt us, to drive us into responding to fear rather than rising to our sense of Justice, Decency and doing right. They tried to break something at the very heart of who we are as Americans, it's true. But they only win if we act broken. We are not broken. We are many. And we are strong. And that... well, that's just math. Not Aftermath.

The New "Normal"

For me, it was during Biden's press event for his new HHS secretary and various other members of his health team: there he was, taking questions, giving thoughtful answers, outlining policy proposals, laying out a possible agenda for the first few months of his term... and there, I could see it. This was what we had been missing. This could be a return to normal.

Of course, we're not there yet, and 4 years of incredible dysfunction definitely leaves a mark. Our American instinct to instantly pretend we don't remember the bad, awful things minutes, months, moments after we have passed them is more of a curse at this point than a blessing. Painful as it is, we will need to talk about What Just Happened even as we "get back to normal" or really "getting back to normal" won't be any kind of normal at all.

Throughout Trump's farcical, damaging presidency, my metaphor has been "it's like your mom married a violent drunk, brought him home and said he was going to be your new dad." Your old dad, your real dad was a kind caring person... but dysfunctional dad is a nightmare. He rants and raves, he's wildly paranoid, you quickly begin to lose sleep fretting over what could happen next, you're embarrassed when he mouths off in public... and on and on. America has accepted the thinking of codependency and recovery, the worlds of AA and Al-Anon... but still, only a minority of families have experienced the deep dysfunction of alcohol, drug addiction and other traumatic mistreatment on a daily basis in their own homes. At least... not until Trump became President.

The dysfunction of Trump, the chaos around him was destabilizing, debilitating to our national psyche in so many ways. While that was immediately apparent to some, it eluded many at first, only becoming clear by degrees. They were the people who said, "I never thought it would get this bad" or "I never imagined he would..." at some further degrading of our national discourse, or finding kids in cages, or telling people to inject bleach.There were those who woke up, suddenly and said "I can no longer be a part of this," ad left the Republican Party, their job, their family, realizing that they needed to speak up. These are all steps on dealing with dysfunction. And there are those, as there will be, who simply refuse to see, or refuse to take action. Those who say "it's just like the flu" and "I'm sure there was massive voter fraud..." because it's better to be on the side of the bully, or because they're afraid, or because, really, they don't understand how wrong and how dangerous the dysfunction is. 

I always hesitate to share too much in the way of personal detail, but a lot of that fell away during these crazy years. I grew up in a dysfunctional household, my father was an alcoholic prone to mood swings and wild late night episodes of out of control behavior. You develop ways to cope with this because you have to cope. I learned how to pretend everything was fine, to treat crazy as normal, while always fearing the worst. And I learned to survive. 

Unlike many naysayers, I always figured we would reject Trump at the first opportunity, when enough people knew they had had enough. I thought it might be impeachment - I didn't even rule out Trump resigning - but in the end, the solution we chose was the simplest: we held an election and voted him out of office. And still the dysfunction rages. Of course he would claim fraud. Of course he would try to pervert every established venue to achieve his dysfunctional ends. That's what he does. That's who he is. Yes, he has succeeded in corrupting an entire political party while attempting to achieve his warped ends, and probably the GOP is beyond saving. But it's not mine to save, or to judge. Time will tell.

The dysfunction doesn't end when mom decides to throw dad out, or when dad finally, eventually goes. I say that from experience. The dysfunction starts to end when we - each of us, all of us - stand back and assess the damage. When we sort out what happened, and why, and learn from the experience. It can take months, or years, and even a lifetime. The first step was defeating Trump's reelection. The next step is removing him. And neither one should be thought of as the last step. This is just the beginning. I'm not sure we, as a nation, still fully appreciate that January will only be a start. Not an ending.

It is heartening to see Biden calmly and effectively assume control. It's a relief seeing the competent, professional team he is assembling, and resume the sense that official entities may get back to the business at hand, and not the whims of paranoid narcissist who lies all the time. It's nice to come home and not be worried that there's no dining room furniture because dad has thrown it onto the lawn and set it on fire.... but, I kind of had you there, for a moment, right? Life was better when you didn't know how that dining room furniture thing felt, wan't it? Well... welcome to the new normal. It's a lot like the old normal, except for that lingering sense of unease. 

 

 

The New Normal

Hello, yeah, it's been awhile...

At first, it seemed like a weird, interesting foreign news story gone terribly wrong. When reporters first described an epidemic in the Wuhan province of China spreading rapidly and causing concerns, it was hard to see what was coming.

The things you realize, after the fact.

I think of Phuket, Thailand and the tsunami, the people who headed out into dry seabed as the ocean receded so far out that people couldn't believe the water had vanished from the shore. It means "run" but who knows that, in the moment?

I now feel like, maybe, I would have been one of those standing on the beach. Maybe a little too long.

As things go, I was maybe sort of lucky. Yes, the panic shopping was already underway, the virus most likely already out and about in my Westchester community, north of New Rochelle. As international travelers came home and cruise lines started to implode, it's hard not to realize that the people who live those lives and take those trips... are your neighbors. Like maybe we should worry. Like maybe we need to take some steps. We were too late. I see that now. Asking questions days, weeks after they needed to start being asked.

(And still, yesterday, the Governor of Florida finally thought, hey, maybe it's time we told that state to stay at home. Yesterday.) 

Still, as I often do, I had a vacation planned for my birthday, the second week of March. Maybe a side trip to Boston to see old friends. Needless to say, that didn't happen as "the Biogen Meeting" blew up. And come the end of that week, staring down the obvious implications of an epidemic now underway in my state, in my county, in the town three towns away... suddenly, living with an 85 year old mother with complicating conditions didn't seem incidental. Not anymore.

Three weeks (and counting) later, the world is... different. In so many ways. Life is lived at home, as we do now, communicating by phone and videoconference and Zoom and watching cable news with agitation and alarm.

There are, of course, many things to be said, many observations to be made. And suddenly, again, I find myself with all the time in the world to write them down. Interesting, that. Some have suggested that Gen X is uniquely equipped to handle this epidemic... I don't feel as confident as all that. I can say that, much like Rachel Maddow and numerous friends of a certain age, living through 9/11 and the early days of the AIDS epidemic does at least give one some markers to work from as this unfolds... not necessarily good or happy ones. You learn some things about people, and groups, in emergencies. Not a lot of them are good.

I think of And The Band Played On (I really must dig up my copy from the basement) -- the story of Anthony Fauci's other big job -- and that moment when one of the CDC shouted at Blood Center execs "how many dead bodies do you need, because we can come back then" about instituting testing controls over blood donations. I think of the leaders putting off stay at home orders, keeping all kinds of falderal open, not doing enough to convince people they, too, are at risk.

I think of those panicked calls on 9/11, when people didn't know where friends, family, spouses were - on a plane, in the Tower, somewhere in Manhattan. How empty Times Square was on the morning of 9/12 (I was there, virtually alone). I look at that empty Times Square and those darkened theaters and empty hotels and I know they come back... eventually. But we are different. We are changed. We just don't know quite how. Not yet.

We try to find the light in this darkness - it's Christmas for introverts! Your cat never wanted you home this much! - but there's a lot of darkness, and so little light. We can't begin to admit, even to ourselves, a lot, how long this could go on, how bad it will get, the people we may very likely lose. Keep calm and carry on. Try to order the groceries online. Try to remember what six feet apart looks like. Try not to panic when you cough. Or someone else coughs. Try not to lie awake, mentally ticking off every cramp, every breath... because who knows if we got it. Or have it. Or will get it.

Gloria Gaynor showed us you can sing I Will Survive when you wash your hands. I mean... we will, right? And so I'm back, from outer space. Back at my desk. Back to the future. Back against the wall. I have no idea how we get through this, how we get used to the new normal. I wasn't really all that keen on the old normal. But like 9/11, like life before AIDS... it does always seem to go that you don't know what you... well, you get the idea.

These Awful, Awful People

A little over 12 years ago, I started a modest effort at blogging, one that these days feels even more modest than when I began, with a brief, zig zaggy interlude of greater public prominence (as a Hillary supporter) than I ever expected. From there, it was mostly a slouch through the Obama years to... well, apparently, what's been happening is beyond words.

A loss for words: there are fewer, more apt phrases for the current state of affairs in politics (at least, ones that don't devolve quickly into foul words and cruel epithets... on both sides!). I'll admit, much of what's happened leaves me, usually, in stunned silence, or sadly mute. Or both. All the time, at every turn, this Presidency is exactly what it appears most to be: a compendium of lies and exaggerations, a chronicle of ineptitude and inexperience all overseen by a dangerous, criminal mix of lifelong self absorption and personal gratification.

More than anything, what most distresses me, in this time, is the exaltation of awfulness. Immoral, indecent behavior by awful people is excused or enshrined; the feeling that someone (or possibly everyone) involved is "getting away with it" is inescapable. And that's even when, occasionally, justice, or at least some small amount of common decency, suddenly appears to prevail.

Sometimes, the indecency just seems sad, or at least sadly comical - the grasping, greedy habits of various cabinet officials; the willingness of conservative politicians and Fox news habitues to surrender the last shreds of their independent thoughts and what remained of their moral character. In retrospect, the quick flameout of Tom Price, or the somewhat longer collapse of Scott Pruitt seem like welcome mercy killings compared to the extended damaging presences of Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos and others. It's easy to conflate the truly dangerous actions wrought by Jeff Sessions with the more cheerfully inept exercises of a Kirstjen Nielsen, but both are set to ruin lives in ways Carson or DeVos can't possibly hope to achieve. It's hard beating Skippy... but it's easier the more you try not to care.

Then there is the White House Inner Circle, a road map of enablers and hangers-on who long ago gave up even a shred of self awareness of the disaster around them. The colorful fabulations of Kellyanne Conway. The surly hateful approach to press relations embodied in Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The inert, impotent attempts at control by John Kelly, unmasking his own troubled prejudices. Those long slow burnouts are as remarkable, in their ways, as the way the Administration so quickly used up and spit out the likes of Hope Hicks, Omarosa, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer or the abusive Rob Porter. These are the moments we wonder whether Bill Shine or John Bolton and Larry Kudlow are the kind to collapse quickly... or if the moral decay and rotting values will take longer to fully destroy both their present and future.

As for the man himself - and the family that, still, surround him like a protective, but not really, cloak - what's left to say? Perhaps the proverbial - is it anything else - last straw was a President who literally excused the murder of a person, a fellow American, for the sake of a financial and strategic relationship with the cruel despot of a foreign power. No, not Putin or Kim Jong Un. Just the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the saving grace - as I do so often try to tease out something hopeful in the darkest of clouds - is that Trump is so much of who he is that he lays bare what America is, or at least can be: little more than the cruel acceptance of savagery and indecency for personal economic and political gain. This presidency is a test for us, for our nation, of just who we all are or want to be. To surrender to this lot - with their lax morals, self dealing, petty cruelties and endless vanities - is to give up on all that we can be. We are entirely capable of being better, more decent, kinder, more concerned for others. Or, we can try to hurt anyone we dislike with cruel words, terrible actions, and a refusal to step in.

So often, in these times, it's true... there are no words. There's no adjective dark enough, no adverb strong enough, to modify the descriptions of things happening on a daily, if not hourly basis. So much random cruelty, casual insensitivity, deliberate greed and grasping by so many of these awful, awful people. But we can't look away, and we can't just say nothing. We may never, entirely, be able to wash off the stench. But it's worse, isn't it, if we don't even try. Isn't it?

What in the World, Matt Lauer?

Lest we get too carried to near tears as Savannah Guthrie was this morning, let's try to remember that there's a reasonable case to be made that firing Matt Lauer from the Today show could also be presented as overdue, and necessary.

Lauer, the highest paid anchor on NBC, at $25 million a year was the longstanding face of a cash cow, but beyond that... well, discussions of his role there were often kind to say the least. His immediate predecessors went on to host the NIghtly News (Brokaw) or be the face of NBC Sports (Gumbel), but no one ever suggested Lauer was good for any of that Indeed, it's hard to say, even now, just what he was good at. His interviews were never called "must see" or memorable, he wasn't the go-to person for major "gets," as they say. He wasn't especially insightful and did little in the way of political moderation (and when he did push his way into the format, last election season, his inartful pestering of HIllary Clinton was widely panned).

Lauer sat with several cohosts - Katie Couric's star power was undeniable, Meredith Vieira's quietly assured, Savannah Guthrie's enthusiasm widely admired. Lauer was none of these, and worse, really, in helping to wreck Ann Curry. Lauer was the face of endless self satisfaction, of having nailed the catbird seat on a money train no one was prepared to stop. He was the nonthreatening, disinterested, slightly sarcastic face of a show that gave up on hard news and settled comfortably into puff pieces and cross promotion, soldiering on through Olympic mornings and Macy's parades without ever rising above expectations. No wonder, on his watch, Today fell from first to third (briefly) in morning shows, the subject of endless backstage gossip and production team shakeups, full of senior executives too nervous of change or too scared of anger to point out that the thing most in need of a revamp was sitting at the main desk.

He started blandly handsome and never especially developed into anything more, and arguably helped immeasurably in making morning television exponentially worse. Weddings on beaches, travelogues from across the globe... and of course another day of diets and that book everybody's reading and that movie that opens at $150 million or more. Lauer's tenure turned Today into People and people into marketing ploys. Hard news? Why even bother?

And for all of this he was known and seen all over New York as one of those guys who had it all and expected more. The ever growing absurd salary. The helicopter to the Hamptons just to go to work. That house and the perfect wife and those puffy articles in magazines you never read at the doctor's office (like, erm, People, the print equivalent of Today). He was never especially loved - tabloids were all too happy to attribute internal strife at Today to his ever growing ego - but post enough publicists on the project and from a certain light, not examined too closely, he was just an ordinary guy doing another day's work. Or something. And hey, check out that mansion!

It took less than 3 hours for Guthrie's "we had no idea" innocence (and hey, how better to elicit that reaction than to tell her an hour or so before going on air) to be subsumed by reports that both Variety and the New York Times had been working, for some time, on reports of complaints against Lauer - and that NBC knew of those allegations. That's gonna sting, and gives some indication, still, of how on air female talent is treated next to male costars. I'm thinking less of Gayle King and Norah O'Donnell than I am of Kelly Ripa, who finally put her foot down after repeated attempts to be written off while carrying ABC's syndicated "Live!" NBC has wasted years perpetuating this TV "husband and wife" silliness of Today cohosts, despite a storied history of women - Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley through now - perfectly able to carry the show alone.

But more than that, more than the way Lauer's story dovetails so neatly with all the "we're shocked, shocked" responses to power male misbehavior, the real test it seems to me is if someone takes note of the way Lauer's endless mediocrity warped and degraded the very fabric of the Today show itself, into the fluffy, pointless, four hour monstrosity he leaves behind. It's that glossy, false fun patina of endless morning cheer that really deserves to die, sacrificed on the alter of the sacred monsters allowed to thrive in its fake living rooms and rope line courtyards. No more Matt Lauers. Is that really too much to hope?

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What Are We Fighting For?

Virtually no politics watcher - or talker - could ignore the obvious contrast by the end of the week: the Trump and Kelly vs. Grieving Widow show from the White House up against the two previous Presidents choosing on the same day to unleash fresh critiques of the ugly scene we're in right now. When punditry is this cut and paste easy, it's worth asking... what part of this are we not getting?

That part, I think, is where it's worth considering the two appearances Barack Obama made on Thursday, in New Jersey and Virginia, to bolster the two candidates for Governor in those states. These are the marquee races of the off year season, the ones everyone will use, rightly or wrongly, to draw indications for next year and beyond (it's the one secret power Virginia possesses, that they dominate these odd year affairs. New Jersey... not so much).  And Obama's quick, in and out, one and done moments can mean something big... or not.

In the case ofNew Jersey, it's hard to see where Obama makes much difference. The democrat is comfortably ahead, the Lt. Governor, Kim Guadagno is both closely tied to the worst of the Christie years, and somehow lackluster by comparison. Phil Murphy's gone on the air this weekend with a commercial meant to invoke "Bridgegate" which hits its points well. President Obama is a nice to have, and may help turnout, but ending the Christie era seems to be where this is headed, with or without him.

What could happen in Virginia seems less clear. Democrats have been generally successful statewide, and seem to have  a clear formula for winning. Republicans choosing to nominate Ed Gillespie, a party insider who has never held office, looks faintly desperate, and Gillespie hasn't polled spectacularly well, though the race is in single digits, generally. But that doesn't make this a slam dunk, and Democrats have chosen Virginia as emblematic of whether the forces needed to reverse Trump-ism can succeed or not. If Gillespie wins, there will be a lot of hand wringing. And some of that will, no doubt, blow back onto the last President.

One of the reasons, Washington types say, that Obama has largely refrained from commenting on Trump's obvious yen to undo any and everything Obama did is because he's concerned that his presence is catnip to Trump's base. Republicans have drifted into deep party division since the election, but can find common ground on things they hate... like policies Obama pursued, "Obamacare" chief among them, and that slew of made up or trumped up non-scandals, like Benghazi or, lately, the "Uranium One' business that refuses to die.

For democrats, this is all dicey politics, not simply because the "scandals" have an audience (if few facts that suggest anything like what the right wants to believe), but because democrats haven't entirely decided what they want to defend, and, more ominously, just what issues they want front and center in the national debate.

When Bush and Obama made their appearances this week, it was Bush who revived  the debate about how to see his presidency - liberals praised Bush for speaking out against Trump's politics, noting how they had disparaged him then... and it was Steve Bannon who served as voice for the right, slamming Bush's critique with assertions about him as a failed President. It's an assessment of Bush that's taken years to take hold within the GOP, where for years few wanted to admit how badly Bush failed, except, say, in Katrina. And it's been softened, somewhat, by liberals - me included - realizing that there was, in fact, something worse than the years of GWB. Bush was bad, but this... well...

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has faced no such reexamination, and it was telling, just in the few days since Thursday, how he remains a sacred object for the left (it's a big week for "sacred" - let's swipe it!). The literal 'amens" that accompanied his speeches, the revival of "he's the best orator on the left" encomiums, there was a lot of basking in glory going on, and not lot of hard questions. To the extent that anyone wanted to challenge the orthodoxy, it was conservatives who tried, generally rather gently, to point out that Obama's "this isn't the 18th century" and opposition to outright bigotry hadn't really stopped Trump from winning last year. And a year later, really, not much has changed.

Since the election, for her supporters, there's been a wealth of dismaying cries for Hillary Clinton to exit the public stage, even as she released a thoughtful, hugely successful memoir analyzing the politics of now and her stunning loss.In part, I think, the calls on the left to sideline Mrs. Clinton are an attempt to quarantine the feelings of loss (and, let's be honest, failure) to her and her alone. Doing that, in no small part, absolves fans of Mr. Obama - and they are legion - from facing his role in the 2016 loss, and what it means for the politics of liberalism going forward.

Avoidance, as usual, serves no purpose here. Avoiding the complexities of President Obama's role in the era of Trump - what he represents, what gets the right so riled - enables, among other things, blanket assessments of racial animus. Fear and Hatred of a Black President is no small part of this story. But it's not the only part. If it were, we'd be having a different discussion of the various rules, regulations, thoughtful policies and sensible progress being rolled over and back with every action of this Administration. It would, on the one hand, be a more thoughtful discussion. It would also, I think, be a discussion that centered more on the policies - and their actual popularity - rather than on the "if President Obama did it, I hate it" reflexology of the right, even now. Treatment of immigrants, plans for clean water, sensible approaches to urban policing - these are just a few issues where the policies being reversed by Trump not only damage the country, they don't reflect popular or even majority thinking on the topics. What they do, successfully, is remind everyone, left and right, that Trump primarily stands for smashing everything Obama stood, and stands, for.

As much as I get - and even share - the need to defend Obama on the left, I suspect that we are helping to supply the catnip. So long as the discussion of Trump and his Presidency centers on  Democrats being the Defenders of Obama, we've made this debate simple not just for us, but for the hard right. And, to be gentle but firm, Obama doesn't need us to do this fight - he's perfectly capable of defending himself. What we should be defending - and what we grope around to do, these days, somewhat messily but with growing solidity - is the policies. Those are things not only worth fighting for, they are things - clean water, decent treatment of immigrant children, justice that serves minority communities as well as majority ones - that get us the majorities we need to win elections.

From special election to special election, and into this fall's first major off year contests, one constant in the coverage is that it's unclear "what Democrats have to offer to voters." It's boilerplate political language for the lack of proposals, on the left, to take matters in hand. I like both of the gubernatorial candidates, and feel good about Democratic prospects... but what are these elections fighting for? I 'll be honest... beats me. And it's easy, in the vacuum, to think Democrats are offering pretty much, well, rage: "Don't like Trump? We certainly don't. And don't you wish we still had Barack Obama? We do."

Barack Obama is not going to need to win another election for himself. Encouraging voters to turn out for him or about him - or by extension, to "fight back against Trump" - may not get the results we need, and may encourage an ugly, already emboldened opposition with an especially ugly agenda. And Democrats need to face the opposite problem of a George W Bush - that Obama, while not a terrible President, was, as Presidents are, flawed, imperfect, and occasionally wrong. In order to get to what comes next, there's a need to let go of what's past. In ways big and small, I think the left is groping towards that reality. But this past week was a reminder of what a struggle remains: figuring out what we are actually fighting for, and not naming it Barack Obama.

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Kelly's Heroes

Nothing, really, changed yesterday. Nothing changed about how awful the President is, how cruel and thoughtless he is with words, or the near sycophantic way his close aides and supporters defend the all but indefensible. Nothing about yesterday was different than the day before, different from today, or tomorrow.

Still, I have to admit I was among those who thought, somehow, that Gen. John Kelly was better than this, better than most, better than those willing to sacrifice their own reputations in service to propping up the already dismal, failed Presidency of Donald Trump. Maybe it was the way he seemed to qualify his comments in the past, or the way he "took charge" as Chief of Staff both by installing order and by clearing out some of the worst of the worst whispering in Trump's ear. Without illusions that Kelly was anything other than a creature of the far right, I still figured, somehow, we were better off with him there than not.

Nothing changed... and yet where we are, now, is different.

So long as Kelly maintained the fig leaf, the gossamer veil, of somehow standing outside of the ugly divisions in our politics, he seemed to serve as an example that we could, somehow, get through this. It wouldn't be perfect, people would disagree strongly, but we could survive this with some shred of our dignity intact.

As of today, it's the veil that has been ripped away. (Or, yes, was never there at all.)

Like many on the right - Kelly was seduced, I think, into asserting himself as arbiter. He stood in front of the White House Press - first mistake - just days after his first such curious appearance, claiming that the treatment of military deaths and outreach to grieving families should be above politics. While carefully and deliberately politicizing them. By picking sides. It's a hallmark of conservatism these days, this perfectly irony-free approach to the discourse, the mouthpiece who says no one is discussing this issue on a program where he's literally discussing it. It's the woman from Fox News saying Hollywood doesn't take sexual harassment seriously, ignoring the state of her own network.The think tanker who says we don't know what happened in Benghazi after dozens of investigations and reports.

We don't know, actually, what happened in Niger. We don't know why it's taken days for the White House to acknowledge this disaster, to even reach out in a pro-forma way to the grieving, still without an explanation or reason for their deaths. Is it really for the White House Chief of Staff to wade into this complicated, fraught set of events to climb on his high horse and assail everyone else as unworthy to even discuss or question what's going on? Probably not... but is anything sacred, really, these days?

Kelly's life as a true believer isn't hard to see: he unleashed the forces of ICE during his short tenure at DHS, took the reigns of that first laughable travel ban, and the second, also quite inept one. He seems stiff, hidebound, and, since yesterday, throughly stuck in that fantasy that the good old days were a vast improvement on where we are now. It's not a great look for a white Catholic Irish guy from Boston. Or anyone, really. 

The problem here isn't that it's depressing, or surprising, to see Kelly dive into the pit of muck that constitutes the political discourse now - jump right in, hope the water's warm enough for ya. And it's not some "new low" for the Trump folks - I'm not interested in retreating into yesterday myself. Maybe it's just that, like the rush of fall into winter, every day gets a little bit darker. Kelly's decision to sacrifice even the barest suggestion of being above the hatefulness - to politicize his own son in the process, to attack a black female public official without a trace of awareness of the optics, to confirm the literal worst of people's suspicions about Trump and his staff - becomes just another example of what we're losing and how bad it's already become.

This is what we're dealing with. It's helpful, I suppose, to realize just exactly who a person is, without pretending, trying not to see. No fool like a hopeful, naive, old fool. I suspect Kelly isn't even entirely aware of just what he gave away yesterday, how revealing it was to see his portrait of Dorian Grey for what it is. Seeing who Kelly's hero really is, giving away his credibility and his reputation for a pot of mythical gold. Is nothing sacred? No, sir, it is not.

 

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How Bad Do You Want It?

The singular liturgy of this presidency is about sinking to the bottom. All of these "we've crossed a new line," "This isn't normal," "He's reached a new low" (whether literally in polls or figuratively). If there's a reason so many seem so depressed and so anxious, surely it's the rampant negativity around charting just How Bad This Is and How Much Worse Can It Possibly Get.

As someone who's certainly right there as well - at best my "oh god, he's still president" thoughts have gone from every morning, to oh, about every other - I have to say, I think it's past time we think about something other than the depth of despair or the lowering of whatever bar we're using. By which I mean that it's getting to the point where we need, I think, to just accept that this is the President we have and the fact that he's terrible is just a fact to be lied with, not a constant search for how much more terrible he could possibly get. 

Because, let's be honest, he's already clearly dead last.

The past couple of days - with their startling, even for him, revelations of callous indifference to the suffering of the families of soldiers killed in action - have surely defined a "new low"... but what really is new? Trump has shown no particular capacity to show empathy or understanding of the suffering of others, whether it's hurricane victims, the casualties of mass shootings, or military deaths since the start of his presidency, if not before. While I'm hesitant to get all psychological about it, It's clear Trump's main thinking is about himself and his needs and his desire to be sen as successful and well liked. The needs of other, even those closest to him, never mind strangers, have never seemed especially paramount.

Similarly, bemoaning Trump's failures to understand the policies he's dealing with, in any and every area of government, seems to miss the point. His fans elected a blowhard who's main feature was mouthing off, incoherently, about the things he didn't like without offering much in the way of actual, practical solutions. The3 comedy of errors around his "Build That Wall" promise are not just indicative of his unseriousness, they are the prime example of it. And it's why, often, hand wringing about the possible outcomes of worst case scenarios Trump could create is misplaced... he's so incompetent and ineffective, he can't even succeed at ruining things, except those of his own making.

To be sure, there's a lot of bad things happening and plenty about which to be concerned. Those concerns, I'd argue, ultimately have less to do with Trump personally, than they do with the awfulness of say, his appointees, or the broken down, ineffective nature of Congressional leadership within the GOP. DACA's demise, or CHIP expiration are really about a failure of Congress to step in. Scott Pruitt's destructive path through EPA or Jefferson Sessions' reductive approach to Justice are more a function of their agendas, more than Trump's. By taking Trump out of some of these equations, and focusing on the real threats, it's possible to figure out when and where to take action. 

As it stands, this relentless focus on charting Trump as a downward spiral is a distraction with no endpoint and no real point at all. He is, simply, that bad. He is capable, it seems, of near limitless depths. But so what? Outside of impeachment (or a fanciful, if not impossible, hope for the execution of the 25th amendment), he is where he is and he is what we've got. As weary as I am of the "Trump hits new low" dynamic, my sense is the public soured on this at least over the summer. This narrative is obvious, and old. And we need to get on with figuring out how to move past it. Impeachment requires, most likely, a fundamental shift in the composition of the House. At the very least, harnessing the energy around hating Trump to wards progress in Congressional races is a practical step. And we could stand to make some of those, rather than raging, impotently, at How Bad This Has All Become.

When we get around to charting the - hopefully brief - history of this presidency, there's little doubt about how this failure will be seen, in all it's contours, horrific events, callous words, and thoughtless acts. Practicing a measure of acceptance about Trump, who he is, how he behaves, how inappropriate and unacceptable all of this is, doesn't take a near daily exploration of what depth he's sunk to now. Yup, he literally insulted the wife of a dead Army Ranger to the point of tears. That's what he's capable of. Shouldn't we figure out what we're capable of, instead?

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