Ta-Nehisi Coates (once again) Knocks It Out of the Park

If I had been able to, this is what I wished I could write to explain my bitterness, my sense of betrayal and wariness and living behind enemy lines that I've felt since the election.  Somewhere in an earlier post I told the story of my blurting out to a co-worker after hearing another co-worker insist that we all read J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, "I don't owe those crackers shit," and how tired -- so very tired -- I am of the assumption that the working class that the press writes about and opines about is the white working class, as if American blacks in particular are only jobless ghetto-dwellers or former presidents of the United States.  Coates dissects the edifice upon which much analysis and understanding of Trump, who he defines as "The First White President," is based.

A Vacation Reply

I have been out of school since the end of June.  (And what an ending it was -- finishing the last of the coursework while sitting in airports as I flew to California to celebrate a friend's 90th birthday.)  Ordinarily being out of school is license for writing.  As in:  my workday went from 10 hours to 8, let's blog!  But I just haven't felt like it.

And, yes, like any other person who was horrified and outraged by Trump's election, there's plenty to write about.  Daily.  But I haven't.  Despite the fact that the hits just keep on comin'...

Tomorrow I fly to Amsterdam.  I have been bitching more than usual that I would rather just stay home and quilt and pull up weeds, but when you are married to a European who believes a 5 week vacation is a human right, well let's just say that refusing to leave home is not an option.  This evening will be chasing down electronics, books, clothes, meds, lotions and cremes enough to keep me for a couple of weeks.  Never been to Amsterdam.  I hear there's art.

Apropos all things political/cultural, one of the blogs I read is Rod Dreher's at The American Conservative.  I probably started reading TAC during Obama's first run, following the work of Daniel Larison who's beat is foreign affairs, and have stayed ever since.  Dreher is a big deal in the conservative world, and a joke to many liberal lefties -- both assessments have merit.  I mostly read the blog for the subject matter -- American cultural mores as seen through the eyes of a Southern (Louisiana-born), orthodox Christian; and for the commentary, commbox, as I've learned it's called.  The commenters are often well trained in theological and philosophical discourse, so that even if I disagree -- and I do, a lot -- it's worth engaging.  Some commenters are astounding to me for their callousness, paranoia and racism.  And I'm no virgin to the ways of white folks having grown up in Iowa.  (One of these days I'll write a pamphlet:  "Shit Those Crackers Said".)  But man, even for someone like me who's seen, heard and endured a lot, some of those folks can get ugly, and they ain't playin'.

Nevertheless, this armchair traveler always winds up at Dreher's house.  I wanted to publish what I thought was a particularly thoughtful and cogent rebuttal to one of his recent posts, "The Curse Of Identity Politics".  

EngineerScotty says:

August 13, 2017 at 3:52 pm

And if you were to ask the ghost of Josef Goebbelsm he’d happily give you reasons why the Final Solution was ultimately the Jews’ own fault. I’m not at all comparing you to him (or to any other Nazi), but you can only summon demons that are there.

And this notion that the resurgence of overt white nationalism in our politics is primarily the fault of Democratic identity politics–the “they pushed us too far!” theory–is utter horse manure.

Identity politics was not something invented by the modern-day cultural left, either last year, or ten year ago, or fifty. The term has only recently entered the mainstream political lexicon, but it has been with us–good and bad–since before the founding of the Republic.

Identity politics, of a sort, was used to justify the enslavement of Africans and the conquest of Native Americans; both of which were held to be inferior to the white man and thus unworthy of full humanity, let alone civic inequality.

Identity politics fueled Jim Crow. When George Wallace remarked that he had been “out-ni**ered” in a political campaign, and vowed it would never happen again, it was both an acknowledgement that white supremacy was the political currency of the realm at that time place, and a promise not to be outspent.

And yes, identity politics of a sort fueled the civil rights movement. The difference between Dr. King and his opponents (and the difference between Dr. King and the various black nationalists of his time) is that he was seeking equality, not supremacy.

Right-wing media has been engaged in a constant stream of identity politics for the past thirty years–ever since Morton Downey Jr. discovered it was profitable to invite the Louis Farrakhans of the world on his to be ridiculed by an audience of hootin’ and hollerin’ working class folk, who would never fit in Donahue. (Farrakhan, for his part, enjoyed the exposure of mouthing off on national TV–even if he was essentially starring in a minstrel show–and Downey would later show quite a bit of regret before he died). Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage, Malkin, and the rest all studiously avoid the N-word, but nobody is fooled as to what they are talking about.

And of course, the election of Barack Obama dropped the contents of the Augean Stables into a rather large fan. Having an African-American president, no matter his actual politics, seemed to awaken something terrible in a whole lot of people. Long before Trump entered the political scene, things were being said in our national politics that we hadn’t heard for a generation.

The problem is, the fight for equality isn’t entirely over, even if the vast majority of the legal barriers were torn down last century. You may righteously vent all you like about trivia like “SJW”s objecting to bad sushi, or about campus arguments over which pronoun to use, or about “cultural appropriation”, and such–and I would be sympathetic–but many of the issues advanced by the broader left, such as police brutality, or continued discrimination in housing and employment, are nottrivialities, not petty concerns of woke yuppies who have little to fear from the law or anyone else, and are secure in their own homes and careers.

And yet this blog–and many other parts of the conservative media sphere–routinely conflate legitimate grievances, which still very much exist, with the obnoxious behavior of petty campus revolutionaries.

The left certainly has a share of the blame. But the rise of the “alt-right” ultimately remains the responsibility of the mainstream right, which for the past thirty years has tried to ride the tiger of white resentment to electoral victory–and now finds itself dinner.

This. When asked (not that I am) why I don't get enthused about quixotic campaigns (see Nader, Ralph, 2004; Sanders, Bernie, 2016) it's largely because I've been an eyewitness to the political re-alignment that's been going on since Carter lost his bid for re-election and have known for a long time how reactionary this country can be.  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  They.  Ain't.  Playin'.  Enter stage right, Donald J. Trump.

Dance with the Revolution What Brung Ya, Part II

From an e-mail reply I sent a friend who, like many others, is passing on much of the ink that's been spilled as she tries to figure out what to do:

It was undeniably grief that I felt by late Tuesday evening, like millions of others.  I have urged friends that I talk to submit to it for the time being, and resist the urge to get into frenzied action.  By yesterday I was able to pick the scab and read blogs (including the excerpt from Rorty’s work) and online news accounts of What Happened, but soon tired.  I don’t know if it’s my age, or my temperament, or the fact that I grew up in an environment where my family and I were a tolerated novelty so have always been an outsider, but for whatever reasons I am not despairing.  Angry, yes.  Disgusted, yes, but not despairing.  In what age and in what nation-state have people not suffered and died unjustly as one regime ends and a new one begins?

I disagree vehemently with Masha Gessen – outrage on the level of what is happening in the streets of our cities cannot and will not be sustained.  White-hot anger is a force that eventually gets spent because it can kill the host.  Unless we are willing to elect radical politicians to the Statehouse and Congress; and unless we as a liberal polity learn to tolerate that our elected leadership will become comfortable, and more conservative, and eventually accede to legislative decisions that stink of betrayal, then we are fooling ourselves.   By the time someone is elected to office they have to be willing to “do the nasty” of politics or they will be ineffective.  And who is willing to be the next Lyndon Baines Johnson, who by all accounts was a son of a bitch’s son of a bitch?

Surely There Are Special Places in Hell

for Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, Jeanne Kilpatrick, Elliott Abrams, Martin Peretz, Tony Blair (who is certifiably barkin' mad) and the rest of the day-old fish called the punditry, the intelligentsia, the Western diplo-political elite who view Egypt's revolution primarily through the prism of realpolitik and "America's interest" and "strategic alliances" and "cold peace with Israel" and the list goes on of those who easily ignore the human suffering and dignity that all the above costs.  (If I link to some of their recent statements my head will explode which might not be a bad idea if it melts some ice, but still ...).

Egypt and Clinton had already been co-joined for me.  Below is an excerpt from a letter to Rita Parker, a friend who lived for several years in Lebanon:

13 March 2008

Mark and I went to Egypt for the first 15 days of September last year.  The genesis of the trip was a conversation with my friend, Fred, who had traveled there a few years prior and had a great time.  Almost 2 years ago Fred was diagnosed with Stage III colon cancer, and one day when we were talking I said wistfully, “Well, after you get through this cancer, why don’t we go to Egypt in 5 years?”

Fred, who is nothing if not assertive replied, “Why don’t we go next year?”  And that started it.  ...  In the meantime, Dailey piped up and said that she really, really wanted to go and so the 3 of us were trying to organize a trip.  ...[s] he couldn’t go until January 2008.  So while the family went to Egypt we did it in 2 legs.

[…] Mark is an experienced traveler – he lived in India, Germany, and southern France – and has trekked many other places in addition to driving through parts of the US.  He’s a great and patient companion on these trips.  We had a fantastic time both partaking of Egypt’s “greatest hits” and of the lives of contemporary Egyptians.

One of the seminal and bittersweet moments was on a trip to Alexandria.  The driver had worked for King Faisal (?) and went to Beverly Hills with him serving as a chauffeur.  He told us that he had been encouraged to get his green card but declined because he wanted to go back home.  (I can’t recollect the chronology, but my guess is that this happened after Nasser’s presidency.)  Considering what life is like for Egyptians today, he rued having made that decision.  He told us, and probably because we were in a van driving as opposed to sitting in a café, that if it weren’t prohibited in the Koran “all Egyptians would kill themselves…”

This was my first trip to an authoritarian country.  I should mention that I loved the country, absolutely loved it and made at least 1 friend there.  Of course there was a kind of kinship with the Egyptians.  (Although it was a hustler’s line “… welcome, my cousin” when we went shopping, I was still happy to hear it.  Having grown up in the US, especially the Midwest, it’s rare that I’ve lived somewhere were I felt at home.  That’s why New York City is my spiritual home.)  I’ve always been annoyed when American leftists talk about this nation as authoritarian.  Yes, there are definite elements of it, and particularly during the reign of Bush and Cheney we fearful Americans have submitted to government oversight like never before, yet we are far and away from being in the state of an Egypt.  One of the first impressions I got as I saw all the young men out is that Cairo resembles inner-city New York.  (I could probably say that of any American city where a great percentage of it’s young, able-bodied males are idle during the day.)  There was a familiarity I felt seeing the young men:  That crushing idleness co-joined with the presence of several kinds of police; the systemic corruption that squelches initiative.  Added to that is a Muslim culture that constrains and frustrates young people’s mating and forces them to delay marriage.  All those things lead to despair.  When a nation’s youth are in despair, I feel that a country cannot and will not grow.  The next generation feels defeated even before they have grappled with leadership.

[…] Years ago I said to friends that while I had no qualms about voting for Hillary Clinton as a senator (and I have twice) I would not vote for her as President.  I wasn’t able to articulate why thoroughly, and I doubt if I was even asked.  Lately, out of obvious necessity, I’ve had to flesh out my objection to her as a president.  My first answer is that both Clintons have a kind of amorality that is a necessary component of ambitious, driven and smart people.  (Necessary for “getting ahead”.)  That leads to a more elastic ethics, and over and over again I think I’ve seen that in the decisions that she’s made as a public figure.  (When people are being neutral about that trait, they call it “caution”.)  But, I disagree.  I’m a cautious person, and try to be prudent and thoughtful when making an important decision.  I can also examine and to some degree, understand the other side of an argument.  What I cannot do is throw my principles or values “under the bus” in order to curry influence, or to score a tactical victory.  And yes, since I can’t I’ll never get far in politics or corporate culture; but, I don’t pretend otherwise.  Hillary Clinton has – in the sense that she has rationalized decisions that are in conflict with professed values and acts as if there is no dissonance.  It’s that characteristic that’s at the root of what has and always will disturb me about her.  Secondly, and this is related to how I perceive her style of leadership, she, like many of our most recent presidents seem to subscribe to an executive style of management, where top-down leadership is the only legitimate leadership.  That, along with fear-mongering, has helped make the citizen body flaccid.  Mark, whose love of America is that idealistic love that immigrants who came here voluntarily as adults have, is so concerned about this country.  How all the initiative and belief in our ability to fix our problems seems to have been washed down the drain.  Hillary Clinton, as admirable as she is in many ways, does not inspire as a leader.  And, at this stage in my life, I’ve already had 1 boss too many.

I once said to to someone that the only thing that is greater than man's capacity for cruelty, is his capacity for rationalization. Now I'll add that a prerequisite to lusting for great power is an outsize capacity for amorality.