OUR AMERICA: A Letter to my Republican Neighbor

- By Jim Hicks

Dear Don,

Figured I should write, for a couple of reasons. First, just to let you know that if you notice some bald guy wandering around inside my house, you shouldn't call the cops. It’s me. After it was clear that Trump would get elected, and that my home state would help make this happen, I shaved my head. Really. A ritual of mourning, common to many cultures … And it just didn’t seem that those little black armbands, favored by sports teams, would be sufficient. In short, I’m very deeply disappointed, and worried, about what’s in store for us and the rest of the world, in the years to come. Like everyone, I do hope that my response will prove to be an overreaction, but so far it’s hard for me to see evidence that it is.

One last thing. On the Massachusetts Review website, I’ve just launched a new blog series as well, one which we’re calling “Our America.” It will provide space for a variety of voices to respond and speak to their own abiding vision of the country. Most I suspect will be expressing outrage, anger, as well as deep-seated fear — and probably most wouldn’t even identify themselves as Democrats, at least not of the Clinton variety. In short, Leverett-style lefties. But I do feel it would be wrong not to invite at least one Republican to respond as well, and, well, I can’t think of another that I trust as much as I do you. So… think it over, and if you feel inspired, just 500-1200 words will do it.

Your neighbor,
Jim

Jim,

Hair growing back?

Sorry I didn’t write for your blog, but the attached 12-6-16 column by Jay Fleitman in the Gazette captures many of my thoughts regarding the election of Trump and my “never Hillary” sentiment.

Keep warm neighbor.
Don

Don,

Thanks for your email. With more than a month gone by, I’ve now progressed from a simulated skinhead look to something more or less military in appearance. Still in need of a thick wool cap for these Western Mass winters, though. And lately I’ve been joking about the next choice: whether or not to cut my hair at all during the next four years. With my receding hairline and bald spot, though, I suspect that would be an even worse look than the one I’m presently sporting. 

And thanks as well for the column by Jay Fleitman: I should read the Gazette regularly, but I confess I don’t. The boiled-down free news from the Amherst Bulletin is about all I manage to follow, so I hadn’t yet seen this piece. Given that you didn’t write it, I’ll have to guess as to which of your thoughts it captures, and, of course, how it explains your vote. (That, of course, is something of a leap, since you haven’t actually confessed how you voted, but I’m guessing that two references to your “Never Hillary” position, along with other sentiments expressed by Fleitman, indicate that you did end up voting for your party’s candidate.) 

So here’s my guess. Your opinions, ventriloquized through Fleitman, were mainly two: 1) that despite the coming reign of Donald, the world will not in fact end; and 2) that the character flaws of the Democratic candidate were greater than those of her opponent. Though one can never see fully into anyone’s heart (not even one’s own), I remain unshakeable in my opinion that this second point is a horrendous misjudgment. I will, on the other hand, willingly grant the world another four years. Though that, too, we cannot know, given that we have in fact possessed the power to extinguish all life on this planet for over a half century. And I should add that I do believe the Trump regime, through its environmental policies, will hasten us to this end. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether such worries still qualify mine as the sort of apocalyptic rhetoric Fleitman makes light of. I would be most happy to have my pessimism prove unfounded. 

What interests me more, though, is a point of agreement—or at least agreement about what we disagree on—between Fleitman and me, and thus perhaps between me and you. It seems that our votes were similarly cast on the basis of character. In his concluding remarks, Fleitman comments that Clinton “gave clear evidence of being able to cross any line for the accumulation of wealth and power” and that she is “a secretive and suspicious person.”

Since I’m actually not a great fan of either Clinton (or of neoliberalism in general), I won’t spend a lot of time defending a candidate I voted for only reluctantly. I will say, however, that I have a hard time imagining either of these charges not applying to almost any career politician; moreover, I have an even harder time imagining them counting as anything but compliments when used in describing male candidates, who tend to be admired for their ambition and for keeping cards close. To my mind, there is also a category error inherent in this argument. What sort of power and wealth could actually be accumulated, and what lines crossed, while seeking in a career in public service, compared with the track record of a billionaire who made his fortune from franchising, skyscrapers, luxury hotels, casinos, and golf courses? Here the immortal words of Willie Sutton come to mind: “Because that’s where the money is.”

Mainly I want to spend a sentence or two to describe, from my perspective, why so many people see the coming administration with such evident fear and loathing. The place to begin, I think, is with Masha Gessen. I do believe, as she has written, that Trump ran “not just for president but for autocrat—and won.” She comments, “I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect.” Rule # 1, she tell us, is “Believe the autocrat.” During the campaign, Gessen recalls, Trump “promised to deport US citizens, promised to create a system of surveillance targeted specifically at Muslim Americans, promised to build a wall on the border with Mexico, advocated war crimes, endorsed torture, and repeatedly threatened to jail Hillary Clinton herself.” Before the election, in the New Yorker, Evan Osnos reminded us that, though the public tends to remember broken campaign promises better, this doesn’t mean that candidates do most often break them. Osnos notes that, “In 1984, the political scientist Michael Krukones tabulated the campaign pledges of all the Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter and found that they achieved seventy-three per cent of what they promised.” As for Obama, Osnos cites Politifact’s observation that, "to the irritation of his opponents, he has accomplished at least a compromised version of seventy per cent of them.”

In citing these particulars, I point to only a very partial list of the Trumpite policies I loathe. Policies aside though, as I said, principally I voted on character. And the proper word for Donald Trump’s character—even if that word was used too loosely by his opponent—is deplorable. To support such strong language, one needs only to cite the man himself, in both word and deed. Fleitman complains that reporters tended to take only “small sound bites … of the most inflammatory comments” from speeches that were otherwise “often complex and well-reasoned.” Yet if one agrees with George Lakoff, however, such press tactics actually did Trump’s work for him, and only reinforced his own primary messaging, which the candidate initiated with name-calling and other rhetorical frames, on Twitter and elsewhere. According to Lakoff, if one responds to the incessant repetition of “Crooked Hillary” and “Lock her up” by saying that Hillary is not a crook, all that is accomplished is the addition of one additional clause linking the name of the candidate yet again with the substantive “crook.” The frame remains.

Given that my politics are perhaps slightly to the left of Lenin, you won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t often follow Fox News. I did, of course, hear about the notorious exchange between Trump and Fox journalist Megyn Kelly during a Republican debate. Just to recall the specifics, Kelly asked:

“You've called women you don't like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ ... Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.

 Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”

Recently I also listened to Terry Gross speak with Kelly on Fresh Air; during the interview, this exchange was replayed, along with Trump’s interjections (“Only Rosie  O’Donnell” and “I think the big problem in this country has is being politically correct”). From the tape, it seems clear that the audience sided with the candidate, not his questioner; Trump’s retorts were accompanied by both laughter and cheering. In her interview, Kelly also described how Trump then responded on Twitter, and how his barrage of retaliation was quickly followed up on by his followers. She comments: “[T]he C word was in thousands of tweets directed at me. Lots of threats, you know, to beat the hell out of me and to rape me.”

Over a quarter-century ago now, Mike Godwin crafted the theory commonly known as Godwin's Law (“As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 100 percent.” Reflecting on the enduring success of his observation, Godwin himself commented that, “Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.” Clearly a worthy goal. (And, just for the record, the first sixteen blog posts in the Mass Review “Our America” series are indeed packed with historical references—to the Israelites in Egypt, to Kristallnacht, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to Mussolini, to South Africa, but so far none of our authors have really played the Hitler card.) These days Godwin’s Law is probably most often invoked to indicate that a discussion is over, and that the one who dropped this card clearly lost it. Yet Godwin himself would surely not want his law to prevent serious explorations of historical parallels between our time and one of the darkest periods of modern history.

As I said at the outset, much as I disagree with them, it isn’t the policies of the coming Trump administration that worry me most. The inconsistency of his record, not to mention his daily patter, make this clear: the real arc of the political swerve that has led to the present state of affairs is elsewhere. What we should expect, and prepare for, from a Republican administration led by President Donald Trump is precisely what we have always seen—of his words, his actions, and his character—ever since he came on to national prominence, way back when I was in grad school, and when the Donald was building himself a Taj Mahal in New Jersey.

I believe his response to Megyn Kelly is symptomatic: his incitement of digital (and potentially actual) violence against her we have seen time and time again, levied by him against all manner of enemies, from his political opponents, to other media phenomenon like himself, to minorities of all kinds, including the least powerful and the most disenfranchised. Though Fleitman is correct, of course, to note that Trump’s daughter married a Jew, converted to Judaism, and has borne the President-elect a Jewish grandson, he does not mention Trump’s talk of a Muslim registry, his demonizing of Mexican Americans, nor the celebratory meeting of the so-called “alt-right” that took place in DC, ten days or so after the election.

I imagine you will remember the brutal shooting, stabbing, and murder of the British MP, Jo Cox, by a man associated with extreme-right groups. Before her death, Cox had been active on behalf of refugees, she had nominated the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the “White Helmets” for the Nobel Peace Prize, and she was tireless in her opposition to growing Islamophobia in the UK and Europe. She was also a friend of my sister Peggy; Peg was asked to speak at one of the many memorials recognizing Jo Cox’s contributions and courage. Though the Brits do have their own politicians, such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, stoking the fires of race and nation, they have no one like Donald Trump. And they also don’t have the US military.

So, yes, I do worry, and it is the character of the coming administration that causes me the greatest fear. Here’s one luxury we can’t afford: we shouldn’t think it couldn’t happen here.

Your neighbor,
Jim