Where Are We Now?

I am looking for some direction and comfort like I think most of us are, and on days when it becomes very, very hard to keep track of how best to continue being human and not give in to anger, despair, and doom, it's good to remember music. 

I've spoken before of what David Bowie's music meant for me growing up and how it influenced my outlook on life. I don't play his music as often as I did when he was alive, although I don't there's anything wrong with doing that--did anyone only play Beethoven when he was alive? But on reflection today I realized one song that gives me hope.

It's probably fitting that, as important as his early work was for me when I was a pup, his final works hold some resonance for me as I age. I recall that Bowie had sort of disappeared from the public when "Where Are We Now?" dropped into rotation. Here is a history of that period, mostly per Tony Visconti. I heard about the song before I heard it, and I had to look for it online. 

There's much I can say about the song and its haunting refrain, but others have said it better. I want to focus for a moment on why it gives me hope. 

This is from Bowie's penultimate album, when he knew he had cancer and he only had so much time left. He looked back to when he was, he said, probably happiest up to then, during his Berlin period when he produced Low, Heroes, and Lodger. In doing so he also notes in the song the incredible image of "twenty thousand people cross[ing] Bosebrucke."  What makes this an indelible image is that it is the moment in history when an error in communication between authorities and the boots on the ground allowed for the crossing of so many from East to West Berlin, leading to the destruction of the Wall itself. Why it resonates with me? The following lyric: "[their] fingers are crossed just in case." They were afraid they would be cut down (and perhaps any other day they might have) but they bundled their dignity and crossed not only their fingers but the bridge too. We should have as much courage.

Another reason? The hope suggested in the lines "As long as there's sun.../As long as there's rain.../As long as there's fire.../As long as there's me/As long as there's you." As long as there's a world and an us there's life. And as long as there's life there's hope. 

Nixon/trump

I recall, although not very well, the presidential election of 1972, when Nixon, despite having been implicated in Watergate, was the clear winner over George McGovern. Less than two years after the vote, he removed himself from office after it became clear he was going to be made to leave.

Donald trump doesn't even have the few blessings of Nixon's first administration. In his first year of office, Nixon oversaw passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency; he instigated the peaceful desegregation of southern schools, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, and ended the draft. He was the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China. 

Nixon was a popular president, and I admit, as a 12 year old proto-conservative in 1972, I made sure my parents were voting for him. But as the country improved socially over the decades, I also improved, seeing Nixon and what he represented for what it was: Greed. For money, for power, I'm too small a person to see high enough to work that out. But it was to our everlasting pride as a nation that, when it came to punishing a criminal executive, we did so. 

Which is why so much of why the return of trump and his rethuglican party to power hurts. We had achieved so much--abortion safety, protections for voters and the marginalized among us, more consistent employment--and in the years of his reign and after, saw so much of them eroded. There was more work to do, of course, harder work. But does anyone think a trump administration will prioritize anything but the dismantling of what remains?

What did we trade marginal improvement for? What did trump do in his four years that suggest he has any clue, beyond thoughts of vengeance against his enemies, what he wants to accomplish? Is this why he received slightly better than 50% of the vote, so his followers can watch the spectacle he promises to make of the political landscape? Are they hoping that somehow watching their behemoth battle whatever false enemies he has trumped up will somehow benefit them? That promises to be at best a pyrrhic victory for rethuglican voters, because in any fight between King Kong and Godzilla the losers are always the people who are on the same island. 

Poem Toward an Aroma Map of New York City

[After a recent trip to New York City, I tried to recall the odors I experienced as I walked from Grand Central Station east to Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. In looking up previous attempts to do such things, I’m struck by the omnipresent dismay at the odors New Yorkers, especially Manhattanites, seem to experience. Notably, the effort has not been made in poetry. For myself, having been away from the City for decades, the scents were almost uniformly comforting. I walked the four mile route at least partly because I felt at home and wanted to reconnect with my home base of many years ago.]

 

Grand Central Terminal:

Diesel, oil, steam, human piss, perfumery scent

Park Avenue:

Carrot cake, hot pretzels, ditchweed, spiced halal meat

Union Square:

Ditchweed, roast lamb, hot coffee

Bowery:

Better cannabis, piss, coffee, damp wool, hot pork

Chinatown:

Vinegar, sweet coffee, steaming rice, strong herbs

Manhattan Bridge:

Wildfire Smoke, salty water, cannabis, coffee

Dumbo:

Coffee, cannabis, spiced meat, mixed Chinese herbs

Jay Street:

Exhaust, dust, piss

Walt Whitman Park:

Take out coffee, cannabis, yew pines

Tillary Street:

Hidden beer, coffee, dogs, scent

Flatbush Avenue:

Hot pretzels, cannabis, exhaust

Juniors Restaurant:

Percolating coffee, good beer, warmth, fresh Cole slaw, hot beef

Should We Cheer On the Lone Ranger?

 

[Quick note: This was published this morning prior to reports a suspect had been found and detained in Altoona, PA. Some answers may be forthcoming.]

I've been thinking a lot about the unsettling murder of Brian Thompson. It is a murder and it unsettles me because I only have guesses, and they aren't very reliable ones, for its cause. Putting aside the possibility that it was done with no connection to what he did for a living (!), should we be comfortable with a murder done on a person whose fortune came from essentially deciding who lives and who dies? (The words inscribed on the bullet casings imply Thompson was killed because of his work, but we've all watched mysteries where such clues are red herrings.)

That is, when you come right down to it, the job of every insurance executive. Their decisions are based on what will generate the most money for their stockholders, and that isn't damning in itself, because that is the reason companies like United Health exist. The rules they operate under, admittedly mostly self-defined, are often Byzantine and designed for profit rather than an individual's health, and that is how capitalism works. Whether that's justifiable is a different topic.

This is the world we are in and we need to maneuver in it, preferably keeping our sense of right and wrong intact. So I guess the question is, How should we react to a murder possibly done for vengeance? 

The overwhelming consensus expressed online is that the act is understandable, if not justified. That assumes a lot of background that we might find is wrong. But let's say all these guesses are true: That the murderer lost a loved one due, at least in part, to the unthinking juggernaut of the capitalist healthcare system, and he is acting, in the best Levitical tradition, on the basis of an eye for an eye. In this way he's acting as a stand in for justice, and I've seen him compared to the Lone Ranger or the Equalizer. 

The Equalizer deaths are gorier and nastier than a quick bullet to the back, so let's say he's acting like the more romantic Lone Ranger, albeit with the caveat he shot Thompson in the back. The Lone Ranger, of course, never shot anyone in the back. In fact, according to canon, the Ranger never killed anybody, always aiming to disarm, sometimes by wounding. 

But again, we're in the world in which guns are used more often to kill than to wound. We might not even be having this conversation if Thompson had only been wounded. There might have been a news blip, a short unsuccessful search for the shooter, and we'd hear no more about it. Presumably, executives would rest easier and there would be a lingering question whether their own insurance claims cover being shot, but in the end nothing more. 

Instead we have what Aja Romano and Sigal Samuel in Vox call "people [who are] posting vitriolic comments about Thompson feel justified in being smug about the death of this human in particular." There are some funny ones, I won't deny it--the "thoughts and prayers" and "my empathy is out of network" memes being two of the most clever if also the easiest--but the overall response by many people I'd consider comrades is exactly that, a smug assertion that Thompson got what he deserved. 

Here's why that gives me pause. Romano and Samuel recognize "The humanity we show each other is a complicated thing." Their solution suggests we expand our compassion so that we align with both Thompson's family and those families affected by his decisions, and that's one way to accept it. But in that rationale there's no reason to change anything, it's a "tut tut, isn't that terrible" response, and it's like saying everyone is responsible and no one is responsible. 

Part of the reason I'd consider many of these smug posters comrades is because we reacted together in horror at the fact that Donald Trump won the popular vote (yes, I accept it), that a majority of people accept and relish his view that people they don't like need to be brought to justice in some way, that laws need to change to make them pay, either by exile or prison, fines at the very least. 

Trump, on the other hand, was found guilty in a court of law of at least 34 felonies, and there might have been more had he not won the election and will definitely negate his convictions and trials to the extent he can, whether through Constitutional means or not. Trump is the opposite of what Lincoln called "the angels of our better nature." He has voiced his primary desire (and many of his supporters echo this) as vengeance on his perceived enemies, the people who would hold him to the laws. 

To cheer on Thompson's killer is to join sides with Trump, only changing the list of the deserving punished from right-wing enemies to left-wing enemies. Do not join his side. The urge to punish, poetically justifiable or no, sits in the cavern of our hearts where anger and frustration and hatred reside. They are angels of our baser nature and we must have the courage to refuse to give in to them.

May We be Overreacting

In conversation—okay, an argument—with someone I know who, while not necessarily a voter for trump, is nonetheless willing to give him the benefit of whatever doubt she still harbors, she said I was overreacting because of the "hyperbole and rhetoric" of the opposing campaign. "This has," she wrote, "caused policy disagreement to elevate to terror."

She is, of course, a lawyer who has long spent time making big things out of little ones, so she knows of what she speaks when it comes to hyperbole.

But I hope she's right. While I don't recognize these "disagreements" she mentions, which seem to me more like fiats, I do recognize the terror people feel about them. I know folks who fear for their livelihood, their housing, their health needs, even for their lives, because of things trump and his toadies have said they will do. 

But I would like to be wrong. I would like to wake up one day and realize, "God, what was that all about? Why was I so worried?" In this world, trump is no worse, if no better, than any other president, having made no real inroads into the American psyche or legal structure. As a result, he goes down in history, not as the King Joffrey of our political structure, but as the Claudius of it, being no more memorable or despicable than Millard Fillmore. And maybe played by Derek Jacobi.

Of course, his first term eradicated that possibility. This one has all the earmarks of being worse given what we're already seeing of his choices (RFK Jr at HHS? Matt Gaetz as AG?). But I would still like this to be an overreaction on our parts, projecting all our fears and worries onto a politician (and he is one now) as pliable and loveable as your grandfather with the initial stages of dementia. 

From my lips to God's ear.

I also really, really doubt that. 

Rule Number One: Don't Isolate

This is an issue I'm particularly prone to. I feel embarrassment after a political loss, as if I somehow failed the people I worry for. As a result, I would self-isolate if I could. It's a hard thing, dragging myself to meetings and church services and even work when all I want to do is hide in the bed for the next four years. 

But we know that's not productive, either on a communal or personal level, and I know from past experience it doesn't leave you or the people you love any less a target. As the author writes, "you just need to show up consistently. How else do we get to know the people around us if we don’t make the effort to get together?...[Every] interaction and every group meeting is an opportunity to get to know one another and create trust." 

And trust is our weapon the opposition can't replicate. 

I Will Not Give Those People One Tear

I'm in the process as I'm sure many of you are looking for as many allies and good people as I can. To that end, I'm going to share them with you. 

Nana Tuckit is a drag queen on Instagram (for now? perhaps) who brings her A game to the results of the election. As she says, You can stand behind me.