by Jonathan Wallace jw@bway.net
We are living in a strange hush: a period in which everyone on "our" side, Democrats, progressives, the left, knows what is coming, and yet almost no one is calling it by its name. Senators talk about what they need to do before the Republicans take the House back in November. People wonder whether Trump or an extremist player to be named later will be President in 2024.
Times op ed writers are playing Cassandra, talking of the "leeching" away of democratic goals world-wide, analyzing Putin's impunity about Ukraine in terms of the terrible weakness of the United States, so divided against itself that it cannot take a stand to prevent the violence. It is unbearable to me that there are people in Ukraine, who couldn't or wouldn't get out, who half-know they are likely to be murdered in the weeks to come.
Half-knowledge. What do we half-know? That the 2020 election was not a vindication or even a swerve, just a reprieve. That the madness in America is so pervasive, so persuasive, so implanted even in people one has known a life-time, that there is no stopping it, that all rhetoric abut "reaching out to the working class", rebuilding community and consensus, is hopelessly outdated, addressed to no one who exists, mere thumb-sucking.
Books have been written about our strange passivity, and more will be. Soon after the advent of Trump Universe, I read an interview with a union leader who said that, when he got out in the field to speak to his members who had voted for Trump, they really could not take in the fact that their President was out to break the unions, and succeeding: They are only concerned with their guns, he said. The fall into self delusion everywhere is astonishing: so many constituencies are voting for candidates who despise and are actively harming them: any African American or Latino voting for Trump; in fact, any Jewish person; women; workers; almost the whole demographic. But the frauds and depradations of Trump University were, which preyed on financially strapped unemployed and older people, obvious before the election, and we live in a time now in which, fueled by Internet chatter, we have more than ever before achieved the denial of the obvious-- the denial of what will kill us. Don't Look Up was a hoot, and a lot of the negative reviews were by people who wanted to deny, or at least elide, the Obvious: It should have been more "subtle"? More "ironic"? The Titanic is not in danger; that was not an iceberg.
Coupled with the obliviousness of the demographic I refer to as "the Lost Boys", is the strange passivity of the intellectual and chattering class. I believe that any reasonably intelligent person knows by now our world is ending. Actually--I never thought about this before-- it is coming to several ends: socially (this has arguably already happened); culturally (also); politically (after 2024); financially; possibly as a nation (both within a century or so); and eventually, of course, physically. But you still can't talk about this in polite company (people literally put their hands over their ears). Others get strangely inert ("the best lack all comviction"). People able to discuss what is happening lack any energy, or ideas about what to do; while the Cassandra-esque op eds give prescriptions which are already irrelevant (rebuild community; we might as well all be saying "be better people").
When I was growing up in the 1960's, our National Narrative (reaffirmed by all the World War II stories) was still about slapping down bullies, but today we either idolize them or at least, give them a pass. The astonishing impunity of Internet trolls, and the immunity of ex- and possibly future- President Trump, are two of the most important Instances. Who has not sat at a family or community dinner with someone brutal, and simply made themselves smaller, tried not to be singled out? It isn't much of a plan for living, yet it must explain much social behavior of intelligent and even powerful people. Why make yourself a lightning rod? Weimar, as trite as the analogy is, being invoked so often, gives a lot of useful information. When Hitler surged up, some people fought him in the streets; many more either thought they could do business with him, or worked on being ignored, or at least not murdered.
In the 2016 election, I was troubled that Hillary Clinton did not send out someone (Michael Moore perhaps) as her happy warrior, to say the things she would not; and every time she made a strong statement (such as the "basket of deplorables") she immediately after apologized, limited and explained. Our side has been weak since Nixon won in 1968, just as "our side" was weak in Weimar. I have a vision of Joe Biden, the weakest President of my lifetime, arguably more so than Jimmy Carter, standing in front of a hall of union folk and explaining to them, in strong language, exactly what they are voting for if they vote for Trump. Why isn't Biden, Senator Schumer, anyone out there loudly warning swing voters, and reluctant voters, about the world they are about to hand us? Which kind of the passivities I have listed is predominant? Are they trying not to be booed, or possibly assassinated?
I have let almost two months of 2022 pass without writing an essay for the Spectacle, yet I write for hours every single day, from 3 or 4 in the morning. It is just easier to Glean a work on the Ottoman Empire, Salomon Brothers or the Vietnam war (all of which are on my writing table before me) than to write this essay-- which is itself a Stopgap, because I really intended to write about the way the Constitution is being used as a weapon against democracy, like a cop being shot with his own gun. But that would have taken longer, required more research and made me sadder, I think.
On November 13, 2021, three months ago, I tore the front page of the Times, planning to use in an Essay here an article which begins: "At a conservative rally in Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats".
And that is why I haven't written anything until now. What can one say? If time machines existed, I could take a copy of the article back to 1948, and talk to, I don't know, Tom Dewey: "This is what you are creating. Please rethink this. Stop". But what do you say to the "young man" in Idaho? "Here's why you shouldn't?" Do you answer him defiantly, the way our heroes answered bullies in 1960's movies? Hunch down and try to be invisible? Slip out of the room?
I have been saying since 2016 that very hard times are coming. (Actually, I have been saying so since the first issue of the Spectacle, in January 1995; I merely picked up the pace, became more specific, in 2016.) My one consolation is that they didn't arrive nearly as quickly and emphatically as I expected. But the Chatter about the Ukraine these last few weeks provides a small, neat case study: there are still members of the chattering classes saying its all a bluff, all talk, Putin will never invade. We'll see.