Desultory Diary, Episode 37: White Spite

Current events remind me of a biblical story, contained in Kings 3 16-28. Two women claim to be the mother of the same child. They both had given birth; one infant, however, died. One mother asserts that the other woman's child died from suffocation, having been 'overlaid' by her during the night. She is accused of switching the infants while the other woman slept. The latter wakes up with a dead child at her breast; she recognizes that it isn't hers; she realizes she's been tricked. They both come before King Solomon to decide which woman is the real mother.  He threatens to cut the living child in half with a sword, then give each one half. One agrees; the other says let the child live, even if she will not be able to raise it. The King realizes that the second woman is the true mother, for no one with sound parental instincts would ever allow her child to be killed, even though she would have to give it up. This folk tale is a traditional illustration of the wisdom of King Solomon.

How different is the behavior of would-be King Donald! He continues to divide the country with his little hands on his imaginary sword; the only thing that matters to him is the  continuation of would-be King's Donald's autocratic regime.

Trump was deaf to the ultimate cry of George Floyd, "I can't breathe!" He is equally deaf to similar cries of his countrymen, men and women of all races dying from Covid across the country. Instead of doing his best to help his fellow citizens, he continues to assert that the figurative angels of death plaguing the country do not figuratively exist. According to him, he is America, and America must come first.

It is said, by experts, that if King Donald stopped tearing the country apart, admitted defeat, and permitted President-elect Biden to gain necessary access to data to combat the virus better, many thousands of lives would be saved. His bungling of the epidemic has already caused thousands of lives; King Donald continues to kill.

I'm not surprised. In many of the political blogs I've written, beginning the day after his election in 2016, ("Small Hands Blues," November, 2016), I have asserted that King Donald is mentally ill. As a pathological narcissist, who, as part of his pathology, is so lacking in empathy that an  alpha male ape would appear to be downright Gandhian in comparison, Trump is simply unable to act like a mensch. 

In 1959, the once-famous football coach, Vince Lombardi, said, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing," quoting what a less famous coach declared in 1950. This view is bad enough when applied to a game--when that attitude characterizes how one plays the 'game of life,' however, the results, for the individual as well as for those around him, are poison dart in the quiver of untrammeled vanity.

It is said that Fred Trump, Donald's father, ruined his son by dunning the gospel of narcissism into his son's head. If so, the damage he did has been prodigious. He created a monster, an orange Godzilla who unwittingly has been stomping on Liberty's beacon of freedom, threatening to dim it into a will o' the wisp in an undrained swamp.

I must admit that I had his number down before the election. The racism and inhumanity of the birther movement and Trump's plea for the execution of the Central Park Five left no doubt in my mind that this man was an inveterate danger to democracy. His current inhumanity is just as apparent now as it was then.

I would have sympathy for Trump if he didn't have the power to cause such harm. Trump's pathology doesn't allow him to accept the greatest defeat of his life, namely, Biden's victory. His disappointment must be very great indeed, comparable to a fundamentalist, who, convinced that the end of the world was coming on Friday, wakes up on Saturday under a pagan, indifferent sun, still sending no message from a cerulean sky. His illness will never permit him to concede.

If King Donald gets his way, however, he will either get his kingdom back or the end of his world--and possibly ours-- will arrive before January 21st. We have reason to be anxious

It is my opinion, however, that the current farce will play out as farce. King Donald's jester, Giuliani, does not have enough hair-dye and pratfalls to keep us laughing for much longer. But the joke, of course, could still be on us.

I listen to news in Spanish nearly every night; recently, I learned a new word, 'berrinche' a word used to characterize Trump's post-defeat behavior. It means 'tantrum.'  Defeat has removed King Donald's panoply, revealing who he, figuratively, is: a full-grown baby in diapers, screaming for his daddy underneath.

Poem: My Favorite Color

 

My Favorite Color

    --for Kathleen Trestka

 

What would I do alone with a gun,

if both of us were loaded?

They’d find—one bloody, one empty--shells?

 

And if I shot up the TV,

they’d only find, hangovered, me?

What if I continued to lie and to be

 

next week—because I don’t drink?

When my cash is also spent,

what if I got up and went?

 

You’d have to come back. As an ant?

What if flesh macho-dressed

like a successful ape?

 

A newspaper’s banana stain

and a pocket handgun beside trash

prove Tarzan dropped off during lunch?

 

I’m kidding. As long as neurons convert

wavelengths to hues, I’m content;

yellow is enough.

 

 

                                  Thomas Dorsett

                   --first published in Blue Unicorn, Fall 2020

Desultory Diary, Episode 36: No More Small Hands Blues! Orange is the New Orange!

1. 

"Thank you!," I said to my son over the phone. 

"Well, you're welcome," he replied. But why are you thanking me?"

"Thank you for electing Biden! You belong to a community which came out in force; its members overwhelmingly voted Democratic. Without its support, Trump would have won! 

It's true. The African-American community voted in large numbers. Well over 80% chose Biden. Blacks are the only group who really got Trump's number. One in three Blacks live in  swing state and were thus crucial in achieving a majority for Biden in these states. If non-college educated white males somehow replaced the Black population in Georgia, the largest of any state in the country, you know what would have happened. The king of the birther movement has been unveiled, revealing a babbling old Ego, a Fool with his bauble, a shameless, fey orangey head.

Comunidad latina, che pasò?  Too many of you voted for him. 

I recall seeing an elderly Black lady on TV, who said, "If Trump were running against a flowerpot, I'd vote for the flowerpot." That's what she said. And that's the way my son, wife, and I feel as  well.

How could one support a man who wanted to bring back the death penalty in order to execute five mostly Black teens, who were railroaded into confessing a crime they didn't commit? (Even worse: when their innocence was proven after years in jail, Trump didn't want to let them out.) How can one forgive a man who promised to 'drain the swamp' of human beings, only to replace them with alligators? How can one still believe this inveterate liar? (I recall what Mary McCarthy said about Lilian Hellman: 'Even when she says a or the, it's a lie.') What else has this orangutan done? He withdrew our nation from W.H.O. and the Paris Accord; he's done nothing, with little time left, to combat climate change; he's has embarrassed America before allies; he has cozied up to dictators, etc. I could go on, but will end this list of his malfeasances with Covid! Covid! Covid! If he hadn't bungled the Covid crisis, thousands of Americans would be alive today.

2.

Many people thought there would be violence after the election. So far, there has been little.

I did my best  not to pity Trump while he was in office, since he was doing such damage to our country. I imagine being a narcissist, and a particularly needy one at that, isn't easy. He certainly didn't look like he was enjoying those last press conferences.

Trained by his father to win at all costs, he sacrificed everything in the service of ego, his shameless little  god with a gargantuan mouth. As president, until the epidemic hit, he had been extraordinarily lucky. The economy was good and the unemployment rate was low for most of his term. For this reason much of his nonsense and lies were glossed over.  A good example of this was his insistence that  he received the popular vote and that the size of the crowd at  his inauguration was larger than Obama's.  In the first case, he insisted that millions of illegal aliens voted for Clinton; in the second case, well, anyone who looked at the photographs could see that Obama's inaugural crowd was much larger. Liberal pundits, for a while at least, enjoyed pointing out Trump's  spoiled-childlike denial of reality. Then life went on. Now that he lost the election, his inane claim that there was widespread voter fraud, is something he can't get away with; no one can alter the reality that he is eventually going to have to vacate the White House. 

This is the biggest defeat Trump has had in his life; it is now part of history. Pathological narcissists can't accept defeat. I doubt if he will concede the election any time soon. I also doubt that he will ever give a concession speech. Is is not in his nature to do so. 

He will go on claiming that the election was stolen from him; maybe he'll go back to "reality" TV. His claims will continue to be preposterous, but one look at him will convince a perceptive person that he knows that a rousing defeat has come to the Donald. (Another real possibility: he's going to jail.)

A narcissist's life tends to end badly, if he lives long enough. Now he's just a fat, old, angry man with a gold club. There are many such in Florida; his retirement, however, will not be a happy one.

I've written many blogs over the last four years, chronicling America's decline under Trump. I look forward to writing more on other topics. After the debacle of Vietnam and Iraq, America has little buffer room left to prevent a sad decline. We can't afford another childish, ignorant, boorish, liar like him in the White House ever again. 

3.

Mozart's Don Giovanni, Act 1. Scene 1

The masked Don Giovanni has attempted to seduce Donna Anna. The scene opens as she is chasing him down the stairs. (She had screamed; the rape didn't happen). The noise awakes her father who duels with Giovanni, who kills him. Donna Anna, just before her father was killed, escapes. She returns and encounters her lover, Don Ottavio, who just happened to be walking by. (Things like this happen in opera frequently.) She explains what happens in a dramatic recitative. When she gets to high point, Ottavio believes that Don Giovanni has been successful and sings, "Ohime! Narrate--" which could be translated as, "O My God! Continue--" When he discovers that Donna Anna gave out a loud scream which sent Giovanni packing, he sings, "Respiro!" I translate this one Italian word into idiomatic English as, "I can breathe again!"

Trump  has done his best to rape Lady Liberty, but, thank God, he wasn't successful.

RESPIRO!!

Desultory Dairy, Episode 35: Trumpsters and the Birds of Prey

1.

I am writing this on November 3rd, 2020, on the eve of the American national election. It is certainly the most important election in my lifetime; it is no exaggeration to assert that American democracy is on the line. A very imperfect yet worthy struggle to establish a more perfect union might be coming to an end. Tomorrow--or perhaps as late as next week--we will find out whether we wake up in purgatory or in hell. (Hell if Trump wins, purgatory if Biden wins, for if the latter wins, the fight is just beginning, since serious problems, e.g. climate change, will remain. In purgatory, however, at least there is hope).

Today I was scheduled to have two injections, one in each eye. I knew that I would have to give reading a rest for a while after this procedure, so I decided to read as much as I could beforehand. One of the articles I read was, "The Great Con He Rode In On,"

 by Mark Donner, which appeared in the November 19, 2020 edition of The New York Review of Books. It was, forgive the pun, an eye opener; it confirmed my worst suspicions.

The author attended a Trump rally in Michigan and wrote the following:

The dynamic playing out before me was ancient: Already Nietzsche was calling it 'resentissement,' and had he been transported to Freeland, Michigan, the German philologist would have recognized instantly what he was seeing enacted before him, a kind of Mummers' revolt of the powerless:

"The resentissement of natures that are denied the true reaction, the reaction of deeds, and compensate themselves with imaginary revenge... This no is its creative deed''.

Nietzsche referred to the hostility of the powerless as "the resentment of the lambs for the bird of prey." Immortal words! Note that birds of prey carry off lambs only when they're small and vulnerable enough. Since we are talking metaphors here, I  interpret Nietzsche's quote as it applies to our current political crisis as follows: the Trump supporters must be powerless and vulnerable enough for the birds of prey to be able to continue to feed upon them

The German word for 'bird of prey' is Raubvogel, a much more law-of-the-jungle term compared to the English one, which comes across as being more taxonomic and abstract. I immediately googled "Nietzsche und die Raubvögel" and got the following excerpt, which, in my translation, follows:

That lambs detest birds of prey is not surprising; yet this doesn't hinder the predators from continuing to carry them off.

The metaphor is almost apt to the present situation; almost because American lambs have no idea who's controlling the skies. They are also armed to the teeth.

2.

Donner mentions that, during the rally, Trump, using the 'royal we,' claimed that 'we brought you a lot of car plants, Michigan. We brought you a lot of car plants. You know that, right?' The crowd went wild even though the statement is a blatant lie: there have been no new car plants in Michigan. But who's counting? Certainly not the crowds of people gathered together without social distancing, and for the most part, without wearing masks.

What has especially irked health care workers is Trump's recent claim, which he delivered at another rally, that doctors get paid more when a Covid patient dies.

Many pundits were outraged. But this normal reaction fails to understand what is really going on here. In one sense Trump's lies are the rants of a madman. But Trump is more clever than you might think; they are also the rants of a master populist. He knows what his base wants to hear. 

It is also a mistake to dismiss Trump supporters as mere racists. After all, many of them voted for Obama in the past. When you feel humiliated; when you feel lost; when you feel angry, you  often boost yourself up by putting others down. And racism, unfortunately, still remains a common font of scapegoating in the white working-class community. When a Trump supporter, for instance, hears "Black Lives Matter," he just might reply, "Don't we?"

For many of them feel they don't matter at all. 

3.

Many years ago I worked with a nurse who worked in a psychiatric hospital on the weekends. She told me that many of the men had abrasions on their penises; they spent a good deal of their time obsessively masturbating. They had nothing else left, except for a sexual fix.

Trump is like a whore telling her client during intercourse, "You're a man! You're bigly important! You're tough and sooo powerful!" It doesn't matter if what is being said is a lie; what matters is that it makes the exploited feel good. 

Pseudo sex as imaginary revenge! The master of imaginary revenge says, " Come, come, come..."

They keep on coming. And he keeps on getting richer.

Desultory Diary, Episode 35: A Letter from Germany

 Lieber Thomas!

I thought you might like to know the effect your elections are having on us Germans, at least the way I see it. (You guessed it. We're in shock).

I listened to the first debate between Trump and Biden. Then I listened to a speech our Chancellor, Angela Merkel, gave in 2015, when she addressed The World Health Organization. Chancellor Merkel was a scientist before she became a politician. Her speech had the no-nonsense approach of a professor giving a lecture on physics. Trump came across as a madman; he shouted and sneered, and interrupted his opponent countless times.

In Germany, by the way, no politician can behave the way Trump did that night. Such histrionics would remind the public of Hitler too much. I w a s reminded of Hitler a little bit, I must confess. Our dictator was admittedly much worse and presided over horrible crimes; your would-be dictator reminded me more or less of a boorish, clownish, pitiful imitation. Hitler, due to the lack of what you call "checks and balances", was able to declare a state of emergency and usher in a reign of terror--supported, I might add, by many Germans at that time. You still have a functioning Congress, independent judiciary, and Constitution, etc. But for how long?

I remember an old DEFA, East German, movie about a Jewish doctor in 1930 who worried about the disaster that coming. "Don't worry," his wife told him, "Wir leben in einem Rechtsstaat." We all know how that turned out.

In this world, especially after the horrors of the past century, one cannot afford to take freedoms for granted. Trump has been undermining them. Please do all you can to stop him!

Recent American politics have brought me to a new assessment of your country. Growing up after World War ll, I remember playing in rubble as a child; our country lay in ruins. Then came the Marshall Plan. We looked up to your country and acknowledged it as the leader of the free world, which sure as hell needed one. (It still does). You were the good guys; the Communists were the devils. There was, of course, strict censorship before we gained independence again in 1955, but we needed to trust you and continued to do so, because we had lost trust in ourselves.

We focused on the economy and succeeded, at least materially. Then came 1968. We realized that our country had not been purged of Nazis as East Germany had been. America looked the other way; they accepted former Nazis' help in their fight against communism. 'What did your parents do during the war?' 'Had your professor been a Nazi supporter?' These were the questions we began to ask; many of the answers were devastating.

We still looked up to you, however. Then came the Vietnam War. Many of us continued to support you, but to a lesser degree. 9/11, however, resulted in a tidal wave of sympathy among most Germans. Then came the War in Iraq. Many still looked up to you, but less and less and less. Then came Trump.

What are we supposed to feel now? Pity?

You still lack universal health care; your prison system is a mess;  you still deny climate change; your social safety net is full of gaping holes; Trump's constant lies remind us of Goebbels', etc. etc.

Do you realize the danger of the situation you're in? We share your danger by default, because as Kissinger said, Germany is too big for Europe and too small for the world.

We don't want to be world leaders; we want to be part of a coalition which helps make the world a little better. We want to look up to you again--we know now that you're imperfect, but, God knows, so are we. If America's democracy fails, how long will ours last?

I hope November 3rd brings the world good news. If it doesn't, God help us!

Dein alter Freund,

Michael

Meditation, A Poem

 

 

Meditation

 

O you used thimble lying in a dresser drawer.

O you used match.

 

Concentrate on rough and tumble;

lost become mythology:

 

Charybdis as a grain of salt, Scylla

as peppercorn. Which worse is which?

 

Let no soul bob up and down like a cork.

Suffer unborn children. It lasts,

 

do not forget as you run, it lasts.

The mind’s eye is a window to black holes.

 

Self is a loose ball of string.

You are the world; disconnect from everything.

Thomas Dorsett

First published in California Quarterly, 

Vol. 46, No. 3, Fall 2020

Reflections on the Current Pandemic

 How did we get into this mess? How do we get out of it?

Don't blame the virus--(You can if you want to, the virus doesn't care). Covid-19  is, of course, the necessary cause for the current epidemic; without it, no infections would occur. But what about sufficient causes that can make the epidemic worse? Things like weather, susceptibility of the host, etc., and, especially, failure of hosts' brains to combat the spread of disease, using proven methods to do so.

Viruses have been around a very long time; viruses and bacteria are thought to have evolved from a common ancestor, which lived about 3.4 billion years ago, shortly after life on Earth began. Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria, forcing the latter to replicate their genetic material, destroying them  in the process. One form of life devouring another in order to survive did not start with animals; viruses might not be red, might not have teeth, might not have claws, but they are "red in tooth and claws" as anything else in nature.

Humans have not developed antibodies against the Covid-19 virus to the degree that herd immunity (community protection) has been reached--only about 4% of the global human population has been infected with the virus to date; probably 60% or more would need to become infected to achieve herd immunity. Millions would have to die before this is achieved, underscoring the inhumanity of those who would like us to achieve herd immunity in this way.

Bacteria, however, have been around a long time, and have developed a defense, the so-called CRISPR-Cas9 system. Recently, we humans have developed a way to use this system as a form of genetic manipulation of genes, including human genes. For this, Jennifer Doudna of Berkeley has (very deservedly) won  a recent Nobel Prize.

Nature takes her own time in developing defenses, which is not human time. Who knows how many billions and billions of bacteria had to die, perhaps over millions of years,  before the CRISP-Ca9 arose to protect them?

The development of cures and effective treatments by science, however, have been a lot quicker.

One of the reasons Covid-19 is so contagious is because it is an aerosolized virus, that is, the unit of contagion is much smaller than droplets, which do not travel as far. Another aerosolized infection is tuberculosis, which is thus highly contagious as well.

Keats, Chopin, Kafka, are among the countless numbers of those who succumbed to TB. Like Covid-19, TB is a horrible death. ("I can't breathe," says the victim. "Who cares?" says the TB bacillus). Keats died this horrible death. Here's what Bryon had to say about the author of Ode to a Nightingale, who died at the age of 24:

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,

Just as he really promised something great,

If not intelligible, without Greek

Contrived to talk of the Gods of late,

Much as they might have been supposed to talk.

Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;

'Tis strange, the mind, that very fiery particle,

Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

In those days, that is, two centuries go, "consumption" was thought to be caused by an emotional crisis. (Keats did receive some bad reviews, but that's not what killed him! Viruses and bacilli may be indifferent to human suffering, but humans can be quite cruel, as Byron's darkly humorous lines attest).

We have come a long way. We know now how to avoid infections from aerosolized organisms, even before specific treatment is available. It's not rocket science, just science: wear a mask, avoid large gatherings, and maintain social distancing.

The United States is the richest country in the world. For those who can afford it, it offers top-notch health care. The virus is neither American, Russian or Chinese, white or Black, male or female--its indifference is much more ancient than any of these distinctions.

Before all this happened, one might assume that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, would have been among the world leaders in controlling the spread of infection. This isn't what has happened at all. How can it be that our country, which has about 4% of the world's population has about 25% of the world's Covid-19 fatalities?

The answer is obvious. It is due to the incompetence of our political leaders. They ignore--not to mention flout--science. Viral indifference combined with human incompetence can be a very deadly combination.

What if politicians in Keats's day knew what causes tuberculosis yet recommended that one should not keep a social distance from victims of this very asocial disease?  What would we think of Hamilton today if he advocated coughing in each other's face?

Even now, our incompetent president is holding rallies without requiring masks or adequate space between spectators. It is a national disgrace.

Cooler weather--it is now fall--is forcing people indoors, a sufficient cause for the current uptick in infections. Another sufficient cause is having a superspreader president.

I'm writing this about one week before our presidential election on November 3rd. If we elect Trump again, it is likely that many more will needlessly die from this controllable disease. This, combined with all the thousands of Americans who would still be alive today if those we elected had been responsible, is horrifying.

The virus is indifferent, but I'm not. Nor, I hope, are you.