Digest 18

Trumpism and other “Lost Causes”

This issue is being written during a time of unprecedented national crisis. Last week’s (1/10/21) Sunday Review section of the New York Times was devoted almost entirely to analysis of the historical roots of recent events and suggestions about what might be done and what should not be done in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. Since I could not hope to improve on what so many experts have already written, I have chosen to devote most of this issue to excerpts from those writings. But first:

A few lines from “the Second Coming,” by William Butler Yeats:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs…
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

Yeats wrote this in 1919, in despair over the First World War, and while his pregnant wife was desperately ill with the dreaded Spanish Flu, an earlier pandemic which killed an estimated 50 million people world-wide. One of the most famous and influential poems ever written, is has been the inspiration for many other works of art and commentary.

He could as well have been writing today. Pandemic, political unrest, end-times prophesies, we’ve got it all. Mike Pompeo and other Fundamentalists in the retiring administration have been promoting policies to isolate the Palestinians in hopes of precipitating a war in the Middle East (Armageddon), to fulfill their reading of the Book of Revelations’ prediction that only that will convince Jesus to come back and create “Heaven on Earth.” (The Second Coming? See above.)

Following are excerpts from “Will the Myth of Trumpism Endure?” (lead article in that Sunday Review Section of the New York Times) by David W. Blight, a Yale professor and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom:

“One hundred and fifty years after the emergence of the Confederate Lost Cause ideology, a new Lost Cause invaded the Capitol with the incitement of the president of the United States. Waving American, Confederate, Gadsden [?] and, especially, Trump flags, Donald Trump’s loyalists last week desecrated the greatest symbolic edifice of America.

‘Trumpism has already become a lethal Lost Cause… Mr Trump’s Lost Cause takes its fuel from conspiratorial myths of all kinds, rehearsed for years on Trump media and social media platforms. It’s guiding theories include: Christianity under duress and attack; large corrupt cities full of Black and brown people manipulated by liberal elites; Barack Obama as alien; a socialist movement determined to tax you into subservience to ‘big government’; liberal media out to crush family and conservative values; universities and schools teaching the young a history that hates America; resentment of non-white immigrants who threaten a particular national vision; and whatever hideous new version of a civil religion QAnon represents.

“An effective. enduring Lost Cause story needs to know what it hates…Trumpism knows what it hates: liberalism; taxation; what it perceives as big government; non-white immigrants who drain the homeland’s resources; government regulation imposed on individuals and businesses; foreign entanglements and wars that require America to be too generous to strange peoples in faraway places; any hint of gun control; feminism in high places; the nation’s inevitable ethnic and racial pluralism; and the infinite array of practices or ideas it calls ‘political correctness’”

Whew! A mouthful for sure. A lot to swallow. And impossible to process through that tightened mental sphincter—a symptom of fear I introduced in an earlier issue. But understanding the motivations of the mob that attacked our Capitol and the legion of faithful followers Trump still commands–and is likely to continue to influence, even if he is impeached, convicted and sent to Mar a Lago in disgrace–is essential if we are to have any chance to regain control of our society before it is too late.

Another excerpt from that Sunday Review: “Ugly Truths About America” by Roxanne Gay: “Politicians and pundits have promised that the guardrails of democracy will protect the Republic. They’ve said we need to trust in checks and balances and the peaceful transfer of power that the United States claims is a hallmark of our country. And many of us have, however tentatively, allowed ourselves to believe that the laws this country was built on, however flawed [in the last issue I described our Constitution as outdated and unable to deal with this situation] were strong enough to withstand authoritarian encroachments by President Trump and the Republicans. What the days and weeks since the 2020 elections have shown us is that the guardrails have been destroyed. Or maybe they were never there [my emphasis].”

Later in the same article: “In the coming weeks , we’ll undoubtedly hear the argument that now is the time for centrism, compromise and bipartisan efforts. That argument is wrong [again, my emphasis]. There is no compromise with politicians who create a set of conditions that allow such a violent incursion into the heart of government to take place, resulting in four deaths, countless injuries and irreparable damage to the country, both domestically and internationally.

“These people do not care about working with their colleagues on the other side of the proverbial aisle. The have an agenda, and whenever they are in power they execute that agenda with precision and discipline. And they do so unapologetically .

“Democrats should now use their power in the same way and not worry about how Republican voters and politicians will respond. Cancel student loan debt. Pass another voting rights act that will enfranchise as many Americans as possible. Create a true path to citizenship for undocumented Americans. Institute a $15 minimum wage. Enact ‘Medicare f0r all.’”

Amen! As I wrote earlier, I cannot hope to improve on these words of others, but I promise that my own voice will return in the next issue, on the subject of Morality.