Bad Boy

Posted on by

President Trump is in the middle of a trip to Europe whose stops include NATO, Great Britain, golf at Trumpa Scotia, and a Helsinki summit wth Putin — or, as an “Esquire” wag has it, his annual performance review.

Many of us find Trump alarming enough domestically, but even more so when he ventures abroad. Why? It took me awhile to analyze the source of the weird, queasy, familiar feeling of impeding doom such junkets inspire. But then it became obvious.

Trump’s behavior is that of a poorly brought up child, one whose mother never taught him to behave. That sort of kid is bad enough at home, but let loose on the world is a constant source of worry since he is likely to bring such disgrace upon the whole family that it may never live it down.

It’s possible that this worry about appearance is a middle-class thing. The lower classes often behave as if they can’t afford manners or regard them as an affectation, a waste of time. “Grub first, then ethics,” says a character from Brecht. Oddly, spoiled rich children are just as likely to transgress because they think the rules don’t apply to them. Trump plainly shares that view.

Did anyone ever teach him to treat women with respect, for instance? There’s no evidence to suggest it. Imagine him holding a door for a lady, or a chair. A whole lot of tabloid headlines, locker room boasts, lawsuits and MeToo victims show he is an adolescent pig who never got a talking to.

As kids, we are all taught endlessly not to lie, cheat or steal. Trump has made a career of such behavior and has put his name on ghostwritten books boasting of it. We are also admonished by father, mother, teacher, preacher to care for those less fortunate than ourselves. Trump has no philanthropic endeavors associated with his facade of wealth, even illegally using his trust as a slush fund.

As president, he has pretended to care for working people, but has set out to cut funding for programs to help the poor, has separated asylum seekers from their children just to watch them cry, mocked the disabled and dying, reveled in the misery of the disadvantaged, encouraged discrimination against minorities, and sought to deprive millions of healthcare.

We are told not to take credit we don’t deserve, but Trump not only takes credit for the work of others — as when he cribs his Supreme Court picks from the Federalist Social and Heritage Foundation — but he takes credit for imaginary things — biggest inaugural crowd ever, nukes in the hands of North Korea? Solved.

We are also told repeatedly to do our homework, to be prepared, but Trump is allergic to planning and study. He prefers to wing it, ad lib, trust his gut. He gets dubious information from like-minded friends, and copies his answers from the paper of the Fox News kid.

We are also repeatedly taught to be careful not to break things we can’t fix, but Trump thinks nothing of busting the budget, creating huge deficits, degrading the environment, shattering long-standing alliances and shredding trade agreements.

Children are also warned constantly not to hang around with the bad boys. Trump, however, yearns to be the leader of the pack. He has surrounded himself with troublemakers and thugs from an early age and as businessman, and president has empowered them — Roy Cohen, mobsters, Michael Cohen, Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Paul Manafort, Wilbur Ross, Tom Price. And when Tump leaves home he prefers the worst company he can find — Erdogan, Duterte, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin. He wants badly to be a part of the gang and beat-up on the well-behaved goody goody grown-ups.

We all know we hold our breath when our kids pay visits to other people’s homes, go on field trips, or take part in group activities. We have gone hoarse admonishing them to watch their manners, be polite, play nicely wth others, learn to share, and not bring disgrace on their parents, their town, their team, or their country, a shame that they will never live down.

But Trump habitually insults his hosts, pushes others aside to hog the limelight, insists on his way or the highway, loves to dominate the conversation, has no interest in hearing the other guy’s opinion, never waits his turn, talks trash, and if he doesn’t get his way threatens to take his ball and go home. And, of course, he has no respect for girls trying to play a man’s game — Angela and Theresa, this means you.

Trump was obviously never told that, if you re lucky enough to be invited to the grown-ups table at the countries’ club, learn the rules, avoid insulting the members or telling them how to run their own business or generally act the bully. After all, the club was created to keep the bully’s in their place and to provide a safe place for the members to meet.

This might be funny if the spoiled child was still just a serial bankrupt, real estate heir and TV clown, but what’s now at stake is thermonuclear war, trade wars, the survival of democracy, the economic well-being of the world, the air we breath, the water we drink, the earth we call home, and the country we love.

So, grow up, Mr. President, mind your manners, listen to your elders, learn to play with others, and quit idolizing the bad boys. They aren’t your friends, and don’t want you in their club.

Podunk And Its Discontents

Posted on by

The cost of living where I reside is relatively low, drives to needed amenities or one’s job tend to be short. For over a decade I could more or less roll out of bed and into my office chair since my commute was ten minutes, tops. Now I’m more or less across the street from shopping and hospital.

The downside of this small city ease is a relative paucity of entertainment and culture. Yes, colleges and universities within a sixty minute radius offer plays, musical performances, classes and speakers. Road shows of big city drama and name brand musical acts come to call, though some names never darken our doors.

Still, the general level of the work is a cut or two below professional and the choice is limited. No major league playhouses, for instance, safe choices rather than classics or edgy fare, and only one major league sports franchise within 100 miles. We are in farm team territory.

Perhaps I was spoiled by growing up in a small college town that a river ran through and corn fields abutted, with its coziness, that was also only 20 minutes by car or rail from what was then one of the ten largest cities in the country. And in those days, the great engine of the robber baron’s industrial belt was going full stream, before the rust set in. And they supported cultural institutions.

So, we had at hand the Cleveland Playhouse, the Hanna Theater, a couple of art house movie theaters during the heyday of the New Wave, Fellini and Bergman, The Cleveland Symphony, The Cleveland Art Museum, a kid’s paradise in a Natural History Museum with planetarium, fine libraries, a fantastic park system, and pro hockey, football, baseball, you name it.

We were rich and didn’t know it. Especially since many of the museums were free to the public, or available at very low prices, as befit a blue collar town. I miss all that, but life is trade-offs unless you can afford to have it all. In this regard, the narrowness of a creature like Donald Trump is astonishing.

If I had a fraction of his dough and could take the elevator to Broadway, Off Broadway, Lincoln Center, clubs, cabarets, Madison Square Garden, The New York Public Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA, the Guggenheim, and on and on, I would. Day after day.

I am willing to bet he’s never attended a cultural event or contributed to the arts or sciences in his life, unless you count the discos of the 1970s where he picked up women who valued money over self-respect. But this is nothing new. I quote from memory, a mot by some wit, Shaw or Wilde perhaps, to the effect that many a duchess is born with the taste of her scullery maid and many a scullery maid with the taste of a duchess.

I console myself for the privations of Podunk by the new world in which we live. Today, even hermits living like the Unabomber can order a million books online that will be delivered to their hut in days or to their e-reader instantly. We can now stream videos from hundreds of channels. At our fingertips are classic films or the latest releases, documentaries, news, instruction.

I await impatiently pay-per-view access to Broadway Live, National Theater Live, concerts from far-flung venues featuring performers who will never put a toe near my town. Even a browse through the latest blockbuster art exhibits ought to be possible, though the picture quality may not match being there in person. But it will be a lot less wearying and costly than a trek to the nearest world-class venues in Washington or New York. The rural Planation aristocracy of the South did not leave the region as well endowed as the robber barons did the cities of the North and Midwest.

One dark cloud overhangs this scene of abundance. Public Television, which was supposed to provide food for the country’s soul, in the sense argued by Ellie Dunn in Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.” She said, “Old fashioned people think you can have a soul without money.” The literal-minded Captain Shotover thinks this is absurd. How much can her soul eat, he asks. “Oh, a lot. It eats music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with. In this country you can’t have them without lots of money: that is why our souls are so horribly starved.”

In my state, at least, Public Television may be slowly subjected to deliberte starvation. It appears to be less well-endowed than before. The Republicans nationally have long opposed subsidizing a service that they regard as subversively liberal. And now that my state has been captured by anti-government forces, funding may be reduced.

As a result, Public Television offers less than it used to, has begun to drift to pop culture offerings and to provide less art or science. Gone are the days of classical music, dance, the complete plays of Shakespeare, “The Ascent of Man,” and the like. We know artists are politically suspect, but science programming may also trespass on political verboten territory — climate change or evolution.

As a result, the quality of original programming has suffered and the quantity also appears under threat. More and more weeks a year are given over to reruns and fund-raising, accompanied by middlebrow fare never seen on Public TV except when trying to attract infrequent viewers long enough to beg for alms.

Much of the content of Public TV is imported from Britain, either because there is no budget for creating the equivalent of Masterpiece Theater, with its Dickens, Trollope, Conrad, Waugh, for the works of Hawthorne, Melville, Cather, Twain, Howells. Thus, a great institution, created to use the power of government to bring the riches of the big city to thousands of small towns and urban dwellers without the price of a ticket, is at risk of slowly dwindling away.

Our people and the survival of our heritage are the potential losers. Podunk may be off the beaten path, but it doesn’t have to be a cultural backwater. Trump is like the almost-literate man — can read, but won’t. He’s starving in the midst of plenty. Kids awakened to all the world has to offer are the richer for it, but if not exposed early and often may be culturally illiterate for life. A soul is a terrible thing to starve.

Kavanaugh To The Rescue

Posted on by

I don’t normally favor pundits practicing the art of prophecy. Their track record is about as reliable as that of racetrack touts, but I’m making an exception. I think there’s a better than average chance that Trump will name Judge Brett H. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Monday. If not, someone who shares his views.

On what? Roe v. Wade, affirmative action, gerrymandering, same sex marriage? No, though that would obviously be nice from the Trumpian point of view. But in this case, about something a lot more important to Trump than judicial philosophy. That is, his own self-preservation. Call it not just executive privilege, but executive supremacy.

Kavanaugh is the author of a 2009 article for the Minnesota Law Review that would be a sight for sore eyes if Trump ever read anything. No doubt one of his legal elves has brought the jist to his attention. Kavanaugh isn’t on the short list by accident.

Though Kavanaugh was a deputy to Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton that took four years and whose report he helped draft, he now argues with a straight face that a president should not have to face “time-consuming and distracting” investigations or lawsuits because they “ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.”

Does Trump now share the view of many Americans that he is a financial and national security crisis (tariff, deficit, Putin collusion, treaty abrogation, alliance busting)? Probably not, but he’s sure to share Kavanaugh’s sweeping claim that he should be protected from everything from criminal investigation and civil lawsuits to mere questioning by a prosecutor or defense attorney.

In short, if you buy Kavanaugh’s argument, Trump is home free, until he leaves office. The only recourse no matter what the Mueller investigation finds is impeachment. So Trump has got a lot of reasons to put Kavanaugh on the court.

Even if he doesn’t, it would be a dimwitted candidate for the high court who wouldn’t get the message. Surely anyone Trump chooses had better share Kavanaugh’s views and be ready to contribute to a 5-4 majority to keep the executive free of pesky indictment, prosecution or conviction of high (or low) crimes and misdemeanors, so help them Trump. If not a get out of jail free card, he’d surely be happy to accept a defer jail and stay free card. Four More Years. Four More Years.

One slight roadblock in Kavanaugh’s rise to Supremacy, however, comes from conservative extremists, if that’s not redundant. They pronounce him insufficiently reactionary. His crimes include working for a famously compassionate globalist, George W. Bush. There’s also his rulings from the bench. It isn’t that opinions they cite weren’t right, but that they weren’t stridently far-right enough to satisfy the likes of pedophile-enabling, McCarthyite, former wrestling coach Rep. Jim Jordan and fellow travelers in the crackpot media.

Of course, talking trash about Kavanaugh fails to take into account that judges who talk trash, the way Freedom Caucus members and talk radio ranters do, can’t get other judges to sign on to their opinions, and that if they do the extremism of their opinions may prevent them from surviving on appeal. But red meat extremists often favor sound and fury over actual results.