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What To Talk About When Politics Is Too Grim

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In the Age of Trump This Is Becoming a Real Problem

With most of my friends, I tend to avoid any discussion about the current political situation. That becomes a sticky issue when so many people are glued to news programs. In fact, the only person with whom I am comfortable discussing the news is my brother Dan. And that is because we generally agree on most of the issues.

I am a strange kind of hybrid who is at one and the same time a liberal and a fiscal (but not a cultural) conservative. I do not belong to any political party and have even gone so far as to vote for some Republicans for local (but not national) office. As a result, any political discussion with a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat or Republican is likely to end in discord. For example, my dislike of the tent-dwelling homeless in Los Angeles has made me notorious among the woke Liberals of my acquaintance.

When I was a child in Cleveland, I was raised in a family where there were broad political disagreements. My father was a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s campaigns for the presidency. In 1980, my mother voted for John B. Anderson for the top office. Only my brother and I tended to agree. (In 1968, however, I was so disgruntled about choosing between Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey that I did a write-in for Otto Schlumpf for president.)

So do I watch the news at all? Not really, unless we are talking about the weather. There are so many television channels with news all or most of the time that they really don’t have much to say, so they tend to repeat their “breaking” news ad infinitum ad nauseam. Martine watches the news a lot, but I think her problems with insomnia are attributable to her news habit.

Victor Hugo on the Patience of the People

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A Drawing by Victor Hugo

The following poem by Victor Hugo is relevant to today’s political situation with President Trump attempting to test:

The Patience of the People

How often have the people said: “What’s power?”
Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour
Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream,
Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme—
Austere but just, they contemplate the end
To which the current of events must tend.
Self-confidence has taught them to forbear,
And in the vastness of their strength, they spare.
Armed with impunity, for one in vain
Resists a nation, they let others reign.

Objective: Zero

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Can You See Three Ayatollahs in This Picture?

Oh oh, there I go again! I said I wouldn’t write about politics, and a few hundred bombs and a thousand casualties later later I got so upset that I couldn’t help myself.

I have just finished reading a book about the Second Punic War, in which a Carthaginian force under the generalship of the brilliant Hannibal Barca, invaded Italy and for seventeen years fought the Roman Republic. In his book Hannibal’s War, British Military Historian John Peddie writes:

Wars, historically, wear many different complexions: they may be ideological or defensive, punitive or vengeful. They may be fought for economic or social causes or for reasons of aggrandisement. But however they may rise, of one thing we may be certain: they cannot be successfully fought without a clear-cut, grand objective [italics mine], within which will lie other, minor, objectives, each one a stepping stone, culminating, hopefully, in victory.

Since the end of the Second World War, the United States seems to have lost sight of this simple fact. What was our objective in Korea? Vietnam? Nicaragua? Iraq? Afghanistan? In every case, we just decided it was just eating up too much in time and resources and just declared a victory. But in every case, was it a victory?

The same is the case with Benjamin Netanyahu’s block by block destruction of Gaza. What has he accomplished to date? Oh, and yes, he is with Trump in invading Iran. And how will that end?

I can just see gas prices rising so quickly that Trump will have to declare a victory prematurely. Wars used to be pretty popular, until we started losing all of them.

Talking Politics at Home

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It Has Become Dangerous to Talk Politics, Even at Home

I learned the lesson early in life. My father, otherwise an excellent man whom I loved, was a member of the American Independent Party and a supporter of Alabama Governor George C. Wallace’s politics. There have been presidential elections when my mother, my father, and I voted for different presidential candidates. I got used to loving members of my family irrespective of their politics.

Then, in 1987, I fell in love with Martine Hedges. Born in France, Martine is a typical stubborn Norman, with what the French call a tête Normande, a “Norman head.”. When Martine takes a position, there is no moving her from it. As it happens, she is a Republican who supports many positions taken by Donald Trump.

Do Martine and I talk politics at home? Not unless we want the temperature in our apartment plummet to freezing. She knows my politics, and I know hers. ’Nuff said.

As a result of traveling extensively in South America to countries which have suffered through heinous dictatorships and bloody insurgencies, I have learned not to take positions. In Argentina, there was the rule of the generals and the “disappearances”; in Chile, there was the rightist rule of General Pinochet Ugarte; in Peru, there was the insurgency of the Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path; and in Uruguay there were the Tupamaros.

And now the United States has become one of those countries where talking politics could be dangerous. There are guns everywhere, usually in the hands of people who are mentally disturbed. Back in the 1960s, I actively participated in protests against the Vietnam War. At one time, I was in a protest on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles that was attacked by Cuban rightists who converted their signs to clubs and commenced cracking skulls. Now I prefer to be more peaceable.

Although I have strong feelings about politics, I don’t write much about them in my Tarnmoor blog. Why should I? My readers will have no trouble finding vituperative blogs of different shades of opinion. I would prefer to write more about things that interest me.

England in 1819

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English Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1790-1822)

In his sonnet entitled “England in 1819,” Percy Bysshe Shelley evinced as great a disgust of what was happening in England during the last days of George III as I do when I look at Trump’s America. Sadly, Shelley did not outlive George III by much: He died in an 1822 boating accident off the coast of Italy.

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
But leechlike to their fainting country cling
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
A people starved and stabbed in th’ untilled field;
An army, whom liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Pirates of the Caribbean

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Move over, Cap’n Jack Sparrow, you’ve met your match! Ol’ Fuzzywig has now committed international piracy by seizing an oil tanker off the Venezuelan coast.

Is it full of gold doubloons? Or possibly silver from the Cerro Rico of Bolivia? No, me buckos, it is full of all kinds of grief for our Presidente, who now has to be worried about being called to the International Court at the Hague to answer for his crimes.

Every day, a new outrage!

Going … Going … Gone

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The White House in Ruins 1814

I don’t like writing about politics, but not to react at all to what is happening to my country would be to suppress my fears and my rage at the second presidential term of Donald Trump, or, as I call it, the Revenge Tour.

With the shutdown of all government functions that our president doesn’t like—in effect, most of them—our nation is being diminished day by day. Here is what I see happening until the Devil takes the man:

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HE UNITE STATE F AMERIC
E UNIT STAT AMERI
UNI STA AMER
UN ST AME
N S AM
A
[NOTHING]

At present, flights are being delayed or canceled by 10%. Perhaps in a few days, it will be 20% How long before it becomes 100%

I am angry that ignorant voters could become a majority and unravel everything that made this country great. I can see it all now: Venezuela, Somalia, Myanmar, Haiti, and us. Ugh!

A Renaissance Man, Not!

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The Original (and Still Current) Logo of Cracker Barrel

The current occupant of the White House is a man with wide-ranging opinions and talents. (Snicker!) When Cracker Barrel wanted to change its logo, the Trumpster weighed in and set nyet! In addition to [mis]governing a large democracy, he also plans to take change of the 2028 Olympics in his favorite city (Los Angeles) and strike back at anyone who doesn’t like him.

I fully expect to go to the supermarket one day and find empty shelves which contained foodstuffs not liked by our presidente. The meat department will be all fried chicken and hamburgers. Fruits and vegetables? What are those?

Perhaps he will step in to break the engagement between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Not that he likes either of them: It’s just that they don’t deserve to be happy together. How could they be if they don’t like him? Mr. Likeability-in-Chief.

This presidency is a slow motion nightmare that just keeps going on and on and on …

Our Nero

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Roman Emperor Nero (AD 37-68)

Much as I dislike writing about politics, I have recently noticed some strange resemblances between the current occupant of the White House and the Roman Emperor Nero:

Actors. Nero appeared before the Roman public as a poet, musician, and charioteer; while our president was famed as the actor in a reality TV show called “The Apprentice.”

Wrecking. Nero purportedly burned down a large part of Rome so he could build a gigantic palace for himself called the domus aureus, “The Golden House.” Our president is destroying the institutions of government that he feels do not benefit billionaires like himself.

Praetorian Guard. Nero was murdered by his own Praetorian Guard. Our president, on the other hand, is developing his own Praetorian Guard called ICE. To date, they have not murdered him.

Low-Class Supporters. The provision of “bread and circuses” to the Roman masses made Nero popular among lower class denizens of Rome. Whereas the persecution of various minorities is popular among the red-hatted MAGA supporters of our president.

So far, our current president has not directly ordered any of his family murdered, but if I were Melania, Donald Junior, or Eric, I would not sleep well of nights.

The Pill of Murti-Bing

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“The Tower of Babel” by Peter Bruegel the Elder

When I used to write ads for the software company whose director of corporate communications I was, I was always running afoul of management, who always insisted that I put a positive spin on every point I made. Anything that could possibly be seen to be negative was to be avoided at all costs.

Being a bit negative is a part of my Hungarian heritage. When your country is on one of the two main invasion paths into Europe (the other being Poland), you can’t help a certain amount of negativity. It’s part of our nature.

I feel there is something wrong about always being positive. It tends to encourage the persons on the other end to be passive and accepting. Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, writing in The Captive Mind, a book about why people accepted the promises and lies about Communism, quotes an earlier Polish novel from the 1920s:

In this story, Central Europeans facing the prospect of being overrun by unidentified Asiatic hordes pop a little pill [the pill of Murti-Bing] which relieves them of fear and anxiety; buoyed by its effects, they not only accept their new rulers but are positively happy to receive them.

In an article entitled “Murti-Bing Conservatism” written for The American Conservative, Rod Dreher develops this idea:

For Miłosz, Polish intellectuals who capitulated to communism and Soviet rule had taken the pill of Murti-Bing. It was what made their condition bearable. They could not stand to see reality, for if they recognized what was really happening in their country, the pain and shock would make life too much to take.

This is why people who have no financial or status tied up in protecting abuse of corruption within an institution can nevertheless be expected to rally around that institution and its leaders. Those who tell the truth threaten their Murti-Bing pill supply, and therefore their sense of order and well-being. To them, better that a few victims must be made to suffer rather than the entire community be forced to wean itself from Murti-Bing.

In the United States, we are facing a similar situation today—all the way from the opposite end of the political spectrum. It is not Communism that is the cause, but Trumpism. Millions of voters who are either ignorant or disingenuous choose to believe that water runs uphill and that the current President is spouting truth when in actuality he is lying like a rug.

I recommend that anyone interested in what happens to this country read Milosz’s The Captive Mind. It is by far the best book about Communism I have ever read.

Oh, and the Tower of Babel? That’s what happens when our sense of reality has become so fragmented that our society begins to fracture.