Why Can't It Be the Way It Was?

 

The more I think about it, the more most of our human problems and dilemmas come down to one wish/desire/demand/yearning: ‘Why Can’t It Be the Way It Was?’  I’ve got one of those going on at the moment. Walking—which I’ve always done (after I could no longer run long distances, that is) has been my preferred exercise for years. It not only keeps me relatively sound physically and improves my mental state; it is also the way I’ve been controlling my blood glucose (I have diabetes, and so, walk after dinner), and more or less keeping my blood pressure in check. So I do it not only because it feels good, but because it may be saving my life. 

            Recently, however, a left knee that I injured running years ago, and have always managed to keep relatively OK via said walking, has begun to act up in a different way. Due to my stroke in 2019, my right-side function checked out. So, naturally, even after recovering some right-side capacity, I’ve had to put a lot more stress on that ailing left knee. That has worked reasonably well for a couple of years. But sooner or later, as we hate to admit, the imbalance begins to take its toll. I think that’s what’s happened, recently. A few weeks ago, my left-knee pain flared a few times when I came down on it awkwardly, perhaps, though I’m not even sure what the precipitating event was. Whatever it was, my body reacted automatically to that sharp pain in the front meniscus area, I think, by compensating. That is, I began to put more pressure on my left knee by leaning more on the back part of the knee. Though I worried about hyper-extension, I was told by my PT guy that I’m not really hyper-extending, but I know it’s in that direction. A few days or weeks of that, though, and now that pressured back of my knee hurts like hell. It hurts when I change positions from standing for awhile to sitting down: that is, from straight leg to bending. It hurts in the opposite direction too—from sitting for a time to standing and walking. And it hurts when I do my longer walk in the morning, and short one in the evening. Just in the last few days, the pain has even extended down into my left foot, sometimes causing my leg to buckle—a very worrisome development. Everything is connected, as they say. 

            My response is both despair—about whether and how long I’ll even be able to walk as I now do; or worse, whether I’ll fall—and desire: Why can’t my body keep going the way it always has? Why does it have to deteriorate in this way? Why can’t I take a pill to make the past return, or the present disappear? Or do exercises that will restore me to my former strength and health? Why, indeed. Time does not go backwards. And this is the point: no matter how fervently we want to go back to what we remember as our stronger, more capable days, it does not, can not happen. 

That’s the general situation we now face on several fronts, especially politically. Think of the MAGA zealots who unconditionally support our former President (even as the revelations regarding Jan. 6 become more damning by the day). What motivates them? Getting back to what they perceive as the “good old days,” that’s what. MAGA, in fact, stands for “make America great again”—i.e. let’s get back to when we were ‘great.’ But when we examine this ‘truism,’ we find that what these deluded folks really mean is “let’s get back to when it was great for me, for us, for white people.” We white people ruled then, before all these underlings of color began rising up to claim their (really our) places—'taking our jobs, our homes, our neighborhoods, even our Presidency. Before all these foreigners started invading from south of the border and coming here illegally to take our jobs, flooding the labor market with low-wage workers who depress the salaries of even those jobs we still have. Without question we ruled before that; and those of us who didn’t rule, no matter how low on the totem pole we were, could still say: “At least I’m not as low as those people; at least I always know I’m better than they are or can ever be.” 

            The ones who are more overt in their fervor make it even plainer. Groups who have been emboldened, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and the Patriot Front and all the neo-Nazi groups (like the AWD, the Atomwaffen Division, aka National Socialist Order), by President Trump’s overt praise for the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, now parade their arms and their hatred openly. They did this most vividly when they coordinated and led the assault on the national Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. More recently, the young punk who killed 10 Black shoppers in a Buffalo, NY supermarket openly espoused what is at the heart of all this hatred and murder and mayhem: The Great Replacement Theory. This is a theory first promoted in 2012 by French writer Renaud Camus, who opined that black and brown immigrants were being brought into Europe and America by nefarious forces, ‘reverse-colonizing,’ and wiping out the white-dominant culture in the West. In short, the root fear among white nationalists is that the White Race is being replaced by blacks and other people of color, whose greater birth rates threaten their hegemony; meaning they must fight back. And, as noted by Robert Bowers, who killed Jews in the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue attack, this replacement is being promoted and implemented by Jews and other liberal-socialist-communist sympathizers who assist and enable immigrants to ‘invade and kill our people.’ In other words, ‘we yearn to go back to the white-dominated world we remember, and will do it by force if we have to.’ 

            One could go on. But the basic dynamic, here, is Change. And resistance to that change. 

We all remember, to be sure, when it was different. When, as children, we couldn’t wait for changes—in our bodies, in our height, in our status that would change us from kids with no power to grown-ups who could drink and drive and do whatever they wanted. We yearned for those changes, that growing up. Until, that is, we got there and then beyond it, and one day realized that the same process that had made us allegedly-autonomous adults was now working in the opposite direction. And we noticed the flesh of our faces and arms and legs and bellies beginning to sag a bit, and muscles in our arms and legs no longer enduring as long as they once did, and minds forgetting little things like names, and the location of keys or phones or turning off the gas jets when done cooking. Change, in short, became the enemy. 

            That is the way it is. We welcome change when it seems to work to our benefit. We hate it and try to reject it, especially when (and if) we realize that change is not only a some-time thing. Change is ubiquitous. Everything changes, and not just occasionally, but constantly. We can usually ignore this; can usually think we see objects that are solid and persist in their ‘true’ form forever—or at least as long as we need them to persist. But sooner or later, those of us who carefully observe life begin to realize that what we have always thought was stable and unchanging (like all material objects) has, in fact, been changing all along. Has never, in fact—not for a millisecond—stopped changing. And that realization extends with particular force to us, to our bodies and minds, to our very being—which must change and dissolve and disappear like everything else under the sun. 

            Still, there are those, and we see more and more of them in our U.S. society these days, who simply do not, will not accept the great law of change. They think that by shouting, and arming themselves, and gathering with their silly hats behind silly leaders who assure them that the ‘glory days’ can be recaptured, they can turn back the clock. America can be made Great Again. Mussolini in the 1930s followed this same delusional playbook: ‘Italy can be great again, can be the Roman Empire again.’ Hitler did something similar: ‘Germany can be great again, the Third Reich can conquer and rule the world.’ All tyrants, from Mao to Stalin to Napoleon to Putin; all political hacks—no matter which side of the political aisle they stem from—act on the same delusion: ‘The past can be recaptured.’ And they are always wrong. 

            To sum up what could be a very long and complex argument, the only genuine way to confront change is to accept it. Change is. No matter how fervently we yearn for a different reality, or ignore the evidence, we can never go back. Which is as simple to understand as it is hard to accept—personally or societally or politically. Difficult or not, however, there are no alternatives. All others lead to bitterness or idiocy or Armaggedon, or all three. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

Truth, Again

 

I have written several times in recent years about the decline of simple truth in our time. Now I am prompted to write about truth and falsehood again because the situation is leading, and has led to both war, killing, and the complete collapse of even an elementary sense of ethics in one of the major nuclear nations and in one of our two major political parties. I am referring, of course, to Putin’s attack on Ukraine, with its attendant losses of life and civilian structures, and the outright lying in public from both this puta-tive leader, and the plague of lying which has overtaken the entire Republican Party. The latter is promoted, of course, primarily by Donald Trump’s confounding control over his “base,” which demands that his most egregious lie to date about winning the 2020 presidential election—which he claims was “stolen” from him by massive Democratic party fraud—be corrected by overturning the election, evicting Biden from office, and declaring Donald Trump President. This would be remarkable even if Trump were the only one subscribing to this whopper. But he is not. Millions of his American supporters believe this self-serving crap. Still more astonishing, large numbers of Republican office-holders actually insist that it is the truth. We seem to have entered Donald’s Wonderland. 

            There was a time—and I am old enough to remember it—when such a transparent lie coming from federal office holders would have prompted outrage from voters, public shame and humiliation for the liars, and calls for their resignation. No more. In our confused and benighted time, we have members of Congress, leaders of major parties, and countless state officials willing to repeat this outrageous lie, one that early on and repeatedly has been exposed as having no merit whatsoever. With almost no one in the entire Republican party, save Liz Cheney, willing to call what it and the Jan. 6 assault on those trying to certify a fair election, actually is: an assault by a mob on the most basic elements of our democracy. The peaceful transition of power from one president to the next. The constitutional duty of every member of Congress to certify electoral votes duly submitted to it by the states for approval and verification. Instead, most Republicans, including the leadership, have cowered in fear of Trump’s base, and denigrated and excoriated the Committee trying to investigate the Jan. 6 events, claiming that the rioters were simply exercising their right to visit the Capitol, and protest. Any news, such as that emanating from the New York Times or the Washington Post suggesting otherwise, is dismissed as “fake news.”

            What Trump has done in America finds its more sinister and lethal echo in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and his invasion of Ukraine. The lies are just as preposterous: Ukraine has never been a “real” nation; the war of invasion Russia has launched is not a war, but a ‘special military operation’ to oust the Nazis seeking control there; the destruction of cities and the slaughter of civilians is actually carried out by the Ukrainians themselves to make Russia look bad. Given Putin’s more thorough control of the state apparatus (which Trump openly envies), he can also control more completely what the Russian people can see and hear. So they see peaceful scenes of Russian troops being welcomed by their Ukrainian ‘brothers’; none of the scenes of the rubble-ization of Mariupol and other Russian cities whose apartments, theaters, and infrastructure have been terror bombed to a point not seen since Nazi destruction in WWII. Any Russian who questions this “truth” is branded a traitor to the nation, and subjected  to fines, arrest, and worse. Any news that contradicts this official truth is “fake capitalist news.” And all is backed by thinly-veiled threats to use the ultimate weapon if Russia’s sacred territorial integrity should be threatened. 

            The truly astonishing thing about the perpetration of such egregious lies is that, for a sizable and not-insignificant portion of the publics in each nation, this bullshit works. Recent news articles (see NY Times, Mar. 6, 2022) have shown that Ukrainians with relatives in Russia have been unable to penetrate the beliefs of even their parents about what they have experienced: that the Russian military is waging a brutal aerial, artillery and rocket-led assault amounting to a terror attack on civilians and their living spaces meant to demoralize the population. Instead, those in Russia believe what their media says: that the Russian ‘special military operation’ is saving Ukraine from drug-addled Nazis in power there. And as Ukrainian defenses have put up stiffer and stiffer resistance, the apparently-frustrated Russian military has resorted increasingly and more ferociously to indiscriminate bombing and artillery campaigns that many have labeled war crimes. With Russian officials and news media hiding the mounting deaths of their troops which, if publicly known, might blow the whole cover. 

To be sure, Aeschylus’ line that ‘truth is the first casualty in war,’ pertains as much today as it did in ancient Greece. But the demise of truth in our time has reached another and more dangerous dimension. That is because, with the rise of internet-based social media platforms, and the ability of governments to either control those internet outlets, or ban them outright, or provide others that contradict what major media choose to report, the labeling of any contradictory evidence as “fake news” becomes easier. Or, at the least, more confusing for the average citizen. In America,  those who have been addicted to the simplistic version of politics promulgated by Fox News, seem to find such simplicity both easier to digest and more consistent with their preferred narrative of events. 

The upshot of all this fakery and subterfuge is that elementary facts, which once provided the basis for what we might call “consensus reality,” no long pertain, and can no longer be taken for granted. Where once Walter Cronkite could intone on nightly TV his mantra “And that’s the way it is,” and count on most Americans taking his word for it, now millions can find their own preposterous version of “the way it is,” and feel more righteous than those who believe mainstream “fake news.” This amounts to a serious state of affairs, and a dangerous one. Democracy depends on a rough consensus among its citizens. It depends on most of its citizens agreeing, if not to the interpretation of major events, at least agreement on what those events are. Not any more. I have talked personally to a cousin who insisted that the Q-Anon-promoted canard about Hollywood child-abuse rings was the major issue of our time—one that Donald Trump was the only person with the moral authority to address. This about a proven narcissist and pervert who once spoke on the record about grabbing women’s pussies with impunity. It is simply mind-boggling. And anything that contradicts such a person’s “facts” can be met with what I was met with: “do some research.” With such a conflict about basic facts, a democracy cannot function, cannot reach consensus about what matters and what should be legislated. The rule of law, likewise, depends on a rough consensus—that most people will agree with the fact that everyone needs to stop at a traffic light, for example, or that murder is a capital offense that demands adjudication, abiding by proof and evidence, and punishment if warranted. Or that racism and lynching are unequivocally wrong, and cannot be permitted. If a society cannot agree on such basics, it cannot function as a society. 

But in our time, we increasingly have the collusion between power and truth that promotes, too often, the condition that power can make its own truth, create its own facts. This is precisely what is happening in Ukraine at this very moment. Vladimir Putin is creating his own reality, and insisting, with the power he has assembled, that the Russian people—and more generally, the whole world—accept that reality as the truth. Russian troops are not killing civilians; his brutal invasion is not a war; the destruction of apartment buildings and other civilian infrastructure witnessed by the entire world is not his military’s doing but that of the Ukrainians themselves. Trump, likewise, though with far more resistance, can insist that he had nothing to do with inciting or planning the Jan. 6 riot at the capitol; but, in any case, that the violent attempt to stop Congressional certification was more or less justified by the theft of his “victory” in the 2020 presidential election. Or that Americans might try ingesting bleach to protect  themselves from the Covid-19 virus. And those who report on these things, or demand some accounting, are simply the victims of the large, liberal conspiracy of the “fake new” media. What’s worse is that this nonsense can be openly admitted by those with power. During the George W. Bush administration, for example, journalist Ron Suskind in 2004 attributed the phrase “reaity-based community” to a Bush aide (thought to be Karl Rove) who said, in part: 

… that guys like me (Suskind) were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” [...] “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…” (Wikipedia, accessed 3/30/22)

 

Or, we might recall the inimitable Kellyanne Conway’s evocation of “alternative facts,” in a Meet the Press interview on Jan. 22, 2017, where she tried to defend Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s lie about attendance numbers at Trump’s inauguration. This might have been considered a joke, were the words not uttered and defended with incredible zeal. 

            What’s even more baffling is that large numbers of the population, both in Russia (where they are compelled to) and in America (where the compulsion is internal), take this idiocy for the unvarnished truth. For the way things should be. Alternative facts? We create our own reality? Have people lost all touch with what used to be called “the real world?” Apparently they have. And the sum total of this willingness of those in power to “create their own reality,” can leave millions of ordinary citizens at sea in a swamp, a miasma of uncertainty, if not outright bedlam. 

            The question is, can democracies, which depend on the consent of the governed (all governments, ultimately, must have popular consent to stay in power), still assemble sufficient majorities on which to base that consent? Or disagreement? What will persuade enough people on this planet that global warming is not only real, but has very nearly reached the point of no return? What can persuade people to turn away from propaganda meant to serve a small, wealthy elite, and commit to vetted, scientific opinion that this crisis is real? That there are, in fact, substantiated facts? That the war in Ukraine is not only an actual war but a slaughter? That autocrats like Putin and Trump are both frauds and liars?

            I have to confess, the prospects from here don’t look good. Because in truth, the truth about reality is, even regarding normal facts, not easy to discern. Where power obscures it even more, it may be impossible for the average person, who doesn’t have time to pursue and tolerate the uncertainty that increasingly dogs our pursuit of the truth, to ferret out. This is why populist leaders and their simplistic solutions appeal so broadly. For many people, perhaps a majority, anything, no matter how unfair or preposterous or brutal, can seem preferable to uncertainty. All one can say is that care is needed. Patience is needed. Ability to read and discern mere opinion from that which is based on real evidence, is needed. And a healthy skepticism about information coming from authoritarians who “make their own reality” is desperately needed. Though actual attention to those recommendations may seem unlikely, they may be all we have. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

Some Thoughts on Anger

A Zoom group I’m in had a discussion about anger recently, and it brought up some thoughts for me. They began with the notion that not all anger is alike, or equally damaging, and may in some cases be preferable to the alternatives—especially suppression. In my experience, to be specific, with a real father and a stepfather, parental anger was handled in two very different ways. My real father, born in Italy, had a rather volatile temper. He got mad (that’s what we used to call it, never “anger” which would have seemed unnaturally formal for us) regularly, and expressed it freely with choice Italian curse words. He also got mad at us children, sometimes gave us a swat for misbehaving (though it was usually my mother who administered physical punishment), and then could often not help laughing about the whole thing shortly after. In short, the swat ended the trouble and the punishment, and that was it. 

            My stepfather, whom my mother married after my father died, was fully American, of French-Canadian descent. He typified suppression. We knew he got “mad” because of the threatening atmosphere he created, but he never expressed it. Never yelled at my brothers or sisters or me, at least not publicly. The same with my mother: he clearly got annoyed at some of what she said or did, but he never expressed it (other than obliquely) in front of others. We learned later that he was pretty hard on her in private, but none of us knew that, except perhaps by inference. What we did know was that she never crossed him, and we assumed it was out of the fear we could feel. Towards the end, she did leave him once, to live with my sisters in a house they had rented, but after a short time went back; he kept pleading that he couldn’t live without her, and that his health was failing. Even though it wasn’t, she yielded, and remained with him until her death from pancreatic cancer. A few years after that, when he had sold their CT house and moved back to Lowell, MA to live with his sister and her husband in a mobile home, the situation in that enclosed pressure cooker produced its bitter end. We read it in the newspapers: the man we had lived with for years had shot and killed his sister and her husband, and then turned the gun on himself as police closed in. I and my older three siblings were stunned. But my younger brother told us he wasn’t surprised at all: “Didn’t you know he always had a .38 caliber pistol in his safe?”  

            So: two fathers, with different styles regarding anger. One expressed it freely, verbally and sometimes with a smack, but that was it. It was over and done with. The other brooded in silence, and laid down an atmosphere of dread that went on and on. And that brooding, that suppression, finally ended with three deaths via his gun. For me, at least, the quick acting out of anger was far preferable to the quiet, brooding suppression of it that always felt as if it could—and finally did—explode. The immediate expression seemed healthier for all concerned, including for the one that gave vent to it. 

            Sigmund Freud, as I recall, had a lot to say about instinct suppression (killing anger being one of these instincts) in Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Civilization, that is, makes the expression of both the sexual instinct and the killing instinct with which all humans are equipped, unacceptable in most societies, and Freud saw that necessary suppression as dangerous. (It should be said here that the expression of rage cannot be lightly dismissed, as Jared Diamond [Guns, Germs and Steel] shows in his examination of primitive cultures, where encounters among males often lead to violent death). Such extreme suppression is toxic in the long run, Freud said, and can lead to blowouts such as wars or other conflicts that can do widespread damage. My stepfather’s case is instructive. More to the point, I years ago met a psychotherapist named Zaslow who had developed a therapy called “rage reduction” meant to treat the suppressed rage Freud wrote about. In Zaslow’s view, the suppression of rage was just as toxic, if not more so, than the suppression of sex which had been given far more attention. To treat this rage, he would encourage its expression in a controlled treatment where the patient was held firmly in the laps of eight or so helpers, so that the patient could give vent to  extreme rage without the risk of harming others or him/herself. I witnessed one or two of these sessions (they could go on for as long as eight hours in order to elicit this rage, which is so deeply repressed), and they seemed helpful. Unfortunately, a few patients did not do so well long after treatment (at least one committed suicide), and the therapy came under such intense criticism it had to be abandoned. But the point remains: the suppression of rage or anger in modern society can lead to deep psychological, physical and societal problems. 

            This brings us to the present. The alarming rise of guns in the hands of so many millions of Americans swiftly comes to mind. But guns themselves are not the real issue here. It is the anger that arises so often in mass culture, and which can, and increasingly does, result in mass gun violence, and more. The recent case of a large Black man pummeling a Chinese woman in the entrance to her New York apartment is a case in point, and it asks the question: what could possibly elicit such monstrous rage?  In my limited view, such outbursts stem largely from one main issue: the feeling on the part of most individuals that they cannot control their environment or their lives (in some cases leading to the feeling that such a life is hardly worth living). Whether most humans have ever been able to control these things is not obvious, but it certainly seems that it would have been easier to control one’s life circumstances when the group one belonged to was a village or small town where most people were known. Interpersonal problems might be addressed directly with the person or persons involved; larger problems with a local priest or local official or council. In mass culture, of course, this is no longer an option. We are forced, most often, to deal with entities that are remote, and impersonal, and often mechanical. We dial a number to solve a problem, and we get a machine-answering system. The “person,” driven by an algorithm impervious to our frustrations or our specific human needs, mindlessly goes through the options available; and if those options do not fit our situation, we are left with the ridiculous option of screaming at a machine. And even if we finally succeed in reaching a real person, the ones we get to speak to are often just as mechanical. We are left with anger and rage that literally have no outlet. So we smash the phone or kick the dog. 

In short, the whole modern world, which turns most of us into non-entities forced to deal with robots, contributes greatly to the frustration and anger we are left with (which is not to say that no other causes or incitements to anger exist. The constant need of humans to assert dominance, and the reaction to it, is certainly one.) Our lives seem increasingly meaningless in the greater realm of things, where we seem helpless to affect the majority of our world. And it now seems clear that this frustration with having no control, with being non-entities, has led in recent years to more and more Americans (and people world-wide) opting for authoritarian alternatives like Donald Trump to, if nothing else, shake up or thumb a nose at those in charge. The dangers in this case need not be enumerated. 

            And what do our helpers, psychological or spiritual, offer? Reason. Patience. We are advised to either take nonviolent action, such as writing letters to our representatives, or, more generally, consider the person(s) we are angry with, and try to have compassion for their plight. Or understand that they are not at fault; their passion is. Therefore, we should empathize, and treat them with love. All of which are nice ideals. But how effective are they in dealing with the likes of Vladimir Putin, and his mass murder of Ukrainians? Or Donald Trump and his violence-prone minions? And worse, what if such ideals help only in suppressing our rage? What results if we end up never dealing with them, but pushing them beneath our supposedly wise exterior? Will they fester and grow larger and blow along with us, making us ‘go postal’ eventually?

            I am afraid that, for me at least, there are no good answers to all this. In our wired world, we are not only exposed to more of the troubles in the world, from global horrors (such as Putin’s vicious invasion of Ukraine) to murders in the smallest hamlet, but are also increasingly removed from anything like an effective response or remedy. No places to make such a response. Our letters and posts seeming to fall on deaf ears. Our screams at the TV audible only to us and perhaps our families. Leaving us left only with the personal, self-regarding response. Is there a good way for an individual, that is, assailed constantly in every media forum by all this, and assailed by interpersonal conflict as well, to respond? 

            Perhaps what Zen practice teaches us works best. Take pains to be fully aware of how we are feeling, how our bodies and emotions are reacting, and where in the body and how strongly; and then making the decision not to act upon those powerful feelings. That is to say, pretending that we do not have strong feelings, such as anger, about what is happening in our offices or relationships or in Ukraine, pretending that we don’t have to feel any upset but can adopt feelings of  “calm” and “equanimity,” is only feeding the beast with denial. No, feelings of anger, if they occur, are better admitted, acknowledged as human, and thoroughly examined. What does not need to happen is our acting upon them. That is to say, we can feel anger without expressing that anger physically. We can hold that anger in our awareness, and be aware of each impulse to strike out. But not strike out. Eventually, we can become better aware of what triggers anger in us, see what in us feels out of control (including  whether it really is or should be in our control in the first place), and better able to manage it when it arises. Eventually, too, we may come to see more sides of each situation (including the position of the “other,” who is usually just like us) before it arises. 

            All this, to be sure, takes time, and practice. And we must admit that. We must also admit that, in the short run, instantly giving vent verbally or physically to our anger can seem much more satisfying. But in the end, we can come to see that it truly is not; that the expression of anger, pent up or not, can harm not just others, but ourselves, often leading to a greater inclination to express that anger in more and more violent ways. The spiraling results of which we can easily see, vividly appearing in our own troubled world, every single day. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

 

Perfection

 

I got to thinking about perfection and perfectionism this morning, after a zen zoom meeting in which it came up. The idea is one with which most people are familiar: the desire or felt need to do things perfectly, or, as perfectly as we can. It is usually accompanied by the feeling that we have fallen short of our ideal. This can happen with our performance in any number of activities, such as playing an instrument, or playing a sport, or doing math, or writing an email or essay or book, or giving a talk, or preparing a meal, or cleaning, or driving a car, or fixing a roof, or any of the activities we engage in, ad infinitum.  We are always aiming, though rarely succeeding, at reaching perfection. 

            The question that comes up is why? Why this mania, this desperation to be perfect? 

            The answers, if there are any, are of course complex. First has to be its source—striving to please or get approval from our parents. Nearly all of us would admit that, deep down, the person(s) we’re always eager to please, regardless of the current form they take (teacher, boss, critic, reviewer, the public, posterity, etc.), is our father and/or mother. And of course this makes sense, for if we do not get the approval of the source of our life and well-being—our parent(s)—our very survival could be at risk; and, not incidentally, our sense of worth. This is clearly why “unconditional love” is now considered so important, why so many parents now say, ad nauseam, “love you.” Even so, the message that most of us get, or hear as the message, is conditional: ‘I’ll love you if you do this, and do it well.’ Which means to most of us: ‘get it right, get it perfect as I see it, or you will not only not be loved, you will be unworthy.’ No parent actually says this. But most of us interpret the message in this way—if only subconsciously. ‘If you will do as I say, if you do it perfectly, only then will you get my approval and love; if you do it wrong, you will lack my approval and be abandoned, worthless.’ No wonder we all want to be perfect. 

            In modern America, there is an added condition or two to this drive toward perfection. We in the land of “equality” bear the added burden of having to prove our value, our place, earn our love and sense of worth, in the marketplace. That is to say, in more traditional cultures, where social positions are more or less fixed, average people do not have to prove their worth by “doing;” they are considered worthy regardless of what they do or don’t do, simply by the fact of being human. The Dalai Lama was said to have commented about this lack of a fundamental sense of worth in Americans. While he knew that Tibetans had this as a kind of birthright, Americans he observed did not; Americans somehow felt that they had to earn a fundamental sense of worth. And it’s true: we Americans feel we have to “make something” of ourselves. Then, with either our earnings or fame or possessions or the celebration of our colleagues as proof, we can feel worthy—worthy of any social position to which we might aspire. The drive to perfection gets exacerbated by this. It also gets exacerbated by the related fact that most of us live in highly urbanized settings totally unlike the village cultures from which many of our forebears came. And in those small village cultures, embedded in societies similar to the Tibet of the Dalai Lama, one’s sense of worth derived, similarly, just from being known, and accepted/respected as a human being. As such, one was worthy without having to prove anything, without having to makesomething of oneself. One was worthy and known and loved from the outset—unlike those of us in America, where worth must be proven by our accomplishments.

            There is an added burden that we moderns share. That is the burden of being, almost always, watchers rather than performers. We have TVs and CDs and DVDs and smart phones that display for us, always, the most perfect performances—in sports, in music, in scholarship, in talking even—known. Where in prior cultures, one had to attend a live musical or sports event where the risk of mistakes was always on display, and everyone knew it, we always watch or hear on our devices perfection—performances where errors or blunders are easily edited out. And those doing the performing are, to begin with, the best the world can offer: be it Valentina Lisitsa playing Beethoven, or Tom Brady throwing perfect passes. The standards we measure ourselves by are, therefore, these super performances, rather  than the communal games or singing fests that more often prevailed in previous times, and which we could all join. 

            Everything leads us, compels us, therefore, to try for perfection. And what this naturally leads to is discontent—with ourselves for not achieving the perfection we hope is possible, and with others for embodying, at least from the outside, the perfection we wish were ours. Perhaps the most graphic example of this latter is found in the arena of feminine appearance. Women (and, increasingly, men) are constantly regaled with products and processes meant to enhance their looks in the marketplace of attracting a mate. Along with those products come the images, constantly before all of us, of impossibly slim and perfect models whose appeal is hyped in every forum: in parties and bars and marriages and sporting events and automobile outings and business meetings, all of which are made to seem perfect by the presence of beautiful, perfect people. No wonder so many teenagers are depressed, and so many attempt suicide. Who could possibly measure up? 

            With all this, there is, at the same time, an inner dynamic at work, forming resistance to the actual achievement of perfection—even if it were possible. This involves the phenomenon, widely seen in cultures where evil eye is prevalent, of avoiding perfection as a kind of danger. This is especially dramatic in traditional India, where mothers purposely smear the faces of their babies—especially if they are beautiful—to mar or disguise that beauty. Why? Because in evil eye cultures, the attractive child or possession is always at risk—from envious eyes that either lust after that attractive possession, or wish it to be harmed in some way. It is believed that this envious gaze can result in illness or death. The best way to avoid such dire effects (aside from wearing amulets to ward off the eye) is to cover over the obvious beauty or wealth by minimizing it in public. Avoid talking about one’s success or accomplishments. Minimize one’s wealth. Reduce the beauty of a child with dirt or rags. All in the belief that, if envy can be avoided, one will be safe. I myself experienced the latent effects of this as a boy, growing up in a family that definitely believed in evil eye (malocchio in Italian). When I had to perform in piano recitals, for example, and though I never realized it till I was an adult, there was always the inclination to perform well, yes; but dragging in the opposite direction was the impulse to make some mistakes. In short, to avoid looking too good or playing too well, which subconsciously meant attracting the envy of others and the damage of evil eye, I was impelled to fall well short of the perfection I was always striving for. (see my Mal Occhio: The Underside of Vision, [Sanniti: 2008] for more details.)  

            I have the feeling that more people than myself, whether they believe in or even know about evil eye, sabotage what they do in this way. That is, concurrent with our drive for perfection, we have an opposite drive seeking to avoid doing our best. If this seems like a contradiction, it is that confounding contradiction of which human behavior is so often made. 

            Perfection, then. We yearn for it more than anything else. At the same time, we seem to avoid it like the plague. Which brings us to the question: is perfection even possible in this world? And if it were, would we, as mere humans, want it? My guess is that most of us don’t really have to worry about this. Nothing we do, or are, is ever perfect. But what if we could approach it? Would any of us make that storied bargain with the devil, or with science, to achieve perfect health (DNA purged of all genes for disease) or wealth or competence or immortality if it were offered? I think not. Perfection, it seems to me, would take us out of the human realm, where “human” means, if we examine it closely, the arena of mistake, of error. Life itself consists mostly of mistakes. Mistakes, errors, failures are what make us human. Each of us, at some level of our being, knows this. I knew this (albeit not consciously) when performing on the piano. And so, we make mistakes; and so, we constantly fall short of our ideal of perfection; and so, we are at one with the rest of humanity, with the rest of life itself; striving to be perfect, driven to achieve perfection, but always knowing that we cannot get there—not least because perfection would be that ultimate end stop, that isolation that none of us truly wants—if, that is, what we mistaken creatures want matters in the first place. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi

The Crisis Coming in 2024

Bart Gelman’s recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly, “January Was Practice,” should alarm every American. It lays out in clear and chilling detail what very nearly happened in the wake of the 2020 election (particularly on Jan. 6), but also who, exactly, the people are who would support the overturning of an election (and democracy itself) should Donald Trump be defeated again in 2024. There are at least 20 million of these people, according to Gelman, who cites a recent CPOST (Chicago Project on Security and Threats) poll. And the vast majority said that Biden was an illegitimate president, and that violence would be justified to restore Trump to the White House. 

            This is astonishing in itself. But one other statement “won overwhelming support” among the 20 million respondents, about two-thirds of whom agreed with this statement: 

“African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites.”

This is a version of what has been called the “Great Replacement Theory”—an ethno-nationalist theory, popularized by French writer Renaud Camus, who warned that the white population in Europe was being replaced by non-European (i.e. black and brown) immigrants, in a process he called “reverse-colonizing.” A form of this Great Replacement Theory has taken hold in America; and what makes this belief even more alarming is not only that these are the very people willing to use violence to overturn an American election, but that these violence-prone crazies who assaulted the National Capitol on January 6 were NOT primarily from rural areas of the American South or Midwest as we might have thought. Rather, they were people with decent jobs in well-populated counties—but counties where “the white share of the population was in decline.” As Gelman writes, “for every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent.” In other words, the bulk of insurgents on Jan. 6 were white people who believed what they seemed to be seeing: that “their” country, like  the 2020 election, was being “stolen” from them by “non-whites”—aided and abetted, of course, by the government actions of the hated Democrats who (they believe) specifically favor those non-white workers. 

            These ‘committed insurrectionists,’ as they have been called by Robert Pape, form a virtual army of shock troops ready to use violence to support the ex-president if he runs again, and to start a new Civil War, if necessary, to preserve their white privilege. If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to some of the Jan. 6 rioters Gelman interviewed. One guy (Phil is the only name he would give) said:

“Civil war is coming…and I would fight for my country….Oh Lord, I think we’re heading for it. I don’t think it’ll stop. I truly believe it. I believe the criminals—Nancy Pelosi and her criminal cabal up there—is forcing a civil war. They’re forcing the people who love the Constitution, who will give their lives to defend the Constitution—the Democrats are forcing them to take up arms against them, and God help us all.” (Gelman, ibid.)

 

Another Jan. 6 rioter, Gregory Dooner, told Gelman something similar: “Violent political conflict…was inevitable, he said, because Trump’s opponents ‘want actual war here in America. That’s what they want.’” (Gelman, ibid.) Notice that the pattern here is the usual one in the Trump era: total reversal of the truth. The hated Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are allegedly forcing a civil war (I assume by not recognizing Donald Trump’s Big Lie.) They are forcing those who are “defending the Constitution” to take up arms. As is obvious to anyone not blinded by right-wing propaganda, exactly the opposite is the case: the right wing insurrectionists are the ones taking up arms, and, they hope, forcing those who respect the Constitution and democracy to fight a new Civil War. Such a war would be based in the same determination with which the Confederacy tried to overturn the Constitution (and the Declaration) by insisting that NOT all men, particularly enslaved Africans, were created equal. And, importantly, that states had the right to institute their own laws keeping those Africans slaves, in defiance of the federal government. 

            Gelman goes on to show that this is precisely what Trump, his advisers, and now the entire Republican Party, is intent on doing in 2024. It was “the main event,” as he terms it, in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election: “a systematic effort to nullify the election results and then reverse them.” This plot—and it must be called a plot, in light of the revelations that have now surfaced about specific plans by Trump and his advisers (the scenario for this election overturn came from adviser John Eastman, an arch-conservative lawyer, who wrote a detailed 6-point memo outlining how it would work, with VP Pence playing the main role) on how to nullify Biden’s victory. Indeed, one of these plans is now known to have emerged on Nov. 4 before the results were known! (“Why can't [sic] the states of GA NC PENN and other R controlled state houses declare this is BS and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the SCOTUS”)—a plot that would require “GOP legislatures in at least three states to repudiate the election results and substitute presidential electors for Trump.” That is, the pro-Trump plotters needed a mere 38 electors to reverse the election results, and they carefully selected six states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—where they might get those electors. Why? once again, because the state legislatures in those states are controlled by Republicans. And this very plot was actively promoted by the conspirators we now know had gathered at the Willard Hotel in DC (Eastman, Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, Bannon, and others), and were in constant communication with Trump and his White House.

            Fortunately, these efforts, including the appeal/command to VP Mike Pence to delay the counting of the votes, alleging that there was fraud in some state results, did NOT work. But it was not for lack of trying. Those attempts included an appeal to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito to stop the count and throw the issue into the Supreme Court, as in Bush v Gore. But even Alito did not respond to this desperate attempt. Neither did Pence, who was threatened with  lynching as he tried to fulfill his Constitutional duty to certify the electoral votes. And, as it became clear that neither Alito nor Pence would stop or even delay certification of Biden as the winner (and Trump as the loser—a position that is akin to death for him), Steve Bannon on his podcast played the only card left. On January 5, he summoned his troops: 

“Tomorrow morning, look, what’s going to happen, we’re going to have at the Ellipse—President Trump speaks at 11.” 

This last-ditch effort, advanced at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, would comprise an invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters to stop or delay, by violence if necessary, the dreaded count and certification of the electoral vote. This invasion was not just a tour of the Capitol as some have claimed. Its purpose has been clearly outlined a number of times, as for instance in the words of one of the rioters, Ali Alexander:

“I was the person who came up with the January 6 idea with Congressman Gosar” and two other Republican House members. “We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.” 

We all know what happened on that certification day, Jan. 6. Except, that is, for the right-wing version, which has raised the issue of rioter Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death by an officer (as she attempted to enter the Capitol through a window she had broken) as evidence that yet another deep-state, left-wing plot was at work. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the violent Proud Boys militia, claimed that the shooter was a black man: “This black man was waiting to execute someone on January 6th. He chose Ashli Babbitt.” Another crazy has alleged that making the police officer who stopped Babbitt a hero was yet another example of the “only injustice in America today—anti-whiteism.” Though the accusation is totally false, it fits the narrative that the rioters feel comfortable with: that the white race is being sacrificed and replaced by people of color.

            This is the situation we now face. Gelman makes the point that 2020 and the subsequent Capitol riot were attempts (that nearly succeeded) to stop the electoral count and declare Trump the winner—when he had clearly lost. Trump, his millions of supporters (all believers in his “fraud theory”) and the entire Republican Party do not intend to allow their scheme to fail again. They are, according to Gelman, “fine-tuning a constitutional argument that is pitched to appeal to a five-justice majority if the 2024 election reaches the Supreme Court.” Their scheme involves one they have been implementing for years—cementing Republican majorities in the legislatures of several key states (they now have legislative majorities in 30 states, and hope for more in 2022). With these majorities, they will promote the independent state legislature doctrine. This doctrine, very much like the one the Confederates used prior to the Civil War, “holds that statehouses have ‘plenary,’ or exclusive, control of the rules for choosing presidential electors.” This differs from the current Constitutional system, in which each party chooses its electors; and whichever party candidate wins the popular vote gets ALL the electoral votes of that state. But if any state legislature can substitute its own slate of electors, discarding the popular vote for a bogus reason like fraud, “it could provide a legal basis for any state legislature to throw out an election result it dislikes and appoint its preferred electors instead.” Alarmingly, Gelman points out, there are already four justices—Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas—who “have already signaled support for a doctrine that disallows any such deviation from the election rules passed by a state legislature.” In other words, the “independent state legislature” doctrine. 

            The end game, then, is that the stage is set for the 2024 election, in which Donald Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee happens to be, will not be allowed to lose. If the electoral college vote, determined by the popular vote, does not go his way, several state legislatures (already busy passing voting rules that disenfranchise millions of normally Democratic Party voters), can simply claim fraud, substitute their preferred slate of electors, and appeal to the Supreme Court to sanction their theft. And if, as often happens, Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 elections, and  take control of the entire U.S. Congress, they will be in full control, at the national level as well, of the vote count and certification. 

            Gelman adds this statement by Nate Persily, an election law expert at Stanford: 

“If a legislature can effectively overrule the popular vote, it turns democracy on its head.” 

Indeed it does. So we must again wait, as during the Civil War, to see if, in these United States, a government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people,’ can long endure the assaults upon it—not, this time, by southern secessionists, but by the millions of loonies whom  Robert Pape has called “insurrectionists,” and who have been unleashed and driven on to battle by their recently-found Messiah, Donald Trump.  

And very much related to that is this critical question: do enough Americans care whether Democracy— that is, their electoral decision about who governs them—survives? Or are they more concerned, as some recent polls suggest, about the price of gasoline, or eggs, or where they can be “free” to go without a mask or a vaccination? 

 

Lawrence DiStasi  

Vultures

 

The other morning on my daily walk, I encountered a dead skunk on Elm Road in Bolinas. At first, I couldn’t identify it, but then the black fur and large white tuft (and the stench) told me it was a skunk. I held my breath as I passed and warned several cars and bikes not to hit it—remembering what I had heard, that once you hit a skunk with your car, you can never get the smell out. 

The next day, on the same walk, the skunk was no longer in the center of the road, but on the roadside amidst browned eucalyptus leaves and road detritus. And hovering over it was a large black buzzard—aka a turkey vulture, of the order Cathartidae, from Greek cathartes, which means “purifier”—tugging at what I took to be a long trail of crimson innards. “Ugh” was my first reaction: ugly carrion eater going about its grisly work, adding to the disgusting smell with a disgusting sight. And as I continued walking, I began to reflect on my reaction. And the question arose, “Why do we view carrion eaters as the lowest of the low?” As not noble like the great predators (including us), or even raptors like hawks to whom they’re related, but as nature’s bottom feeders: eaters of putrescent flesh. But then I also remembered reading that humans, when they first began to prowl the open savannahs, were also scavengers, of necessity—not equipped by nature with the teeth and claws of lions or leopards, or even dogs or hyenas, to bring down their own prey. So who are we to condemn scavengers, when that’s probably how we humans began our flesh-eating journey? 

            Then I began to recall that carrion eaters are actually a key part of the eco-system, clearing away the disease that resides in rotting flesh. So these ugly, ungainly birds (there were two more perched on a wire, eagerly awaiting—I imagined them salivating—their turn to dig into that skunky, putrescent flesh) did have a critical function. And that led to reflections on why we are so eager to bury our dead—clearly, at least in part, to keep our precious flesh from becoming a meal for one of these vile creatures whose tiny, raw-looking, red heads seemed to symbolize their lowly, repugnant status. And that in turn led to reflections about why, in fact, we are so anxious to embalm and then entomb our dead; which must come from the notion that the material body is really all we are, and keeping it inviolate is key to something—our hoped-for survival as everlasting beings, perhaps. 

            Then I discovered some fascinating facts about vultures. When vultures feed in a group, as they did on my skunk, they are called a “wake.” Again, this name evokes the idea of death, or perhaps more precisely, a death watch. There are also biological reasons for some of their most revolting  traits: that un-feathered bald head, for example, helps keep their heads clean while feeding, and also helps prevent overheating. Peeing on themselves is yet another somewhat-disgusting (to us) means they use to keep themselves cool. And while Old World vultures locate their prey using their keen avian vision, many of our New World species do not, but rather employ a keen sense of smell, unusual for raptors, to locate carrion. They can smell a good meal from heights of a mile and more—which explains why we see them most often gliding and circling effortlessly on air currents, always signifying to us that a dead carcass must be nearby. 

            Their close relationship to humans goes deeper than that, however. First, they seem to know about us and our wars, and what a great opportunity are our battlefields, where large numbers of eager vultures have regularly been seen feeding on the numerous dead (again, ugh). We also have learned, via scientific investigation, how valuable vultures are to humans, particularly in hotter regions. For we now know that the stomach acid of vultures is exceptionally corrosive—which is what allows them to detoxify and digest carcasses infected with such poisons as botulinum, cholera bacteria, and even the bacteria that causes anthrax. In this way, they help remove these lethal (to us) bacteria from our environment. 

            This helpful function must be what has led to the adoption and near-worship of vultures in ancient cultures. The ancient Egyptians, for example, believed that all vultures were female, and were spontaneously born from eggs, with no need for male fertilization. It was for this reason that they linked vultures to purity. Perhaps more important, the vulture’s ability to “transform” the dead matter on which they feed into life, made them symbols of the recurrent cycle of death and rebirth so important to Egyptians. It is probably for this reason, too, that many of the great royal wives in Egypt actually wore vulture crowns, said to signify the protection of the goddess Nekhbet, a tutelary (patron) deity of Upper Egypt depicted as a vulture. Nekhbet thereby became the symbol of the rulers in ancient Egypt, progressing from that to become the protector of mothers and children throughout the land, worshipped as a goddess. Nekhbet’s headdress always boasted the image of the vulture. 

            In India and Nepal, too, vultures have always been highly valued, but the species has declined dramatically in recent years. The cause has been found to be the presence of the veterinary drug Diclofenac in animal carcasses. The government of India has finally recognized this toxic effect on vultures and banned the drug for use in animals, but it could take many years for vultures to return to their earlier population levels. And without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabid dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carcasses instead of the vultures, and multiplying the prevalence of rabies—thus demonstrating once more the crucial role vultures play in keeping the environment clean and the human population healthy.  

            Perhaps most dramatic are the so-called “sky burials” of the Himalayan region, particularly Tibet and the northern-Chinese province of Qinghai. Sky-burial practice is very old (in Tibetan it is called bya gator, meaning “bird-scattered”), and was also practiced among the Parsees of India. In sky burial, a human corpse is placed on a mountaintop to be disposed of—either by natural decomposition, or through consumption by animals, especially carrion-eating birds like vultures. It is part of a practice called excarnation—that is, removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Its function is to dispose of human remains in as generous and practical a way as possible—practical because in much of the Tibetan plateau, the hard and rocky ground makes it nearly impossible to dig a grave, and with so little timber for fuel, difficult to use the traditional Buddhist method of cremation to dispose of the dead. 

            Buddhism is also key in my final reference to vultures, Vulture Peak, also known as Holy Eagle Peak (apparently because of its shape). Gadhrakuta (Sanskrit for Vulture Peak) is said to have been one of the Buddha’s favorite retreat and training sites. It is located in Rajagaha, in Bihar, India. It is often mentioned in Buddhist texts as the place where the Buddha gave sermons—such as the key one in the Heart Sutra, and the equally-critical sermon in the Lotus Sutra (specifically chapter 16). Again, the link to vultures and purity is reinforced in this latter sutra, with mention of the pure land. 

            In sum, though we moderns tend to link vultures to revulsion, filth and disease, many cultures before us linked them to just the opposite—to purity, to the indispensable function of maintaining the health of human society by keeping it free of deadly pollution from rotting flesh. Perhaps, more generally, that should lead us to become more aware of our modern fetish for cleanliness, our quick response to that in nature which seems disgusting to us, but which functions, rather, to help preserve our health and our lives.

 

Lawrence DiStasi 

 

Donald Trump, Traitor

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, Donald Trump, the 45^th President of the United States, is a traitor. As president, he swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States by faithfully executing its laws. These are his publicly-recorded words:

 

I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

And yet, in at least two major ways, he has violated that oath. First, he has perpetrated the Big Lie that he actually won the Presidency in the 2020 election, and that he was deprived of his victory by fraud. In pursuit of that claim—rejected by every court and every state that heard it, including Arizona—he and his cohort organized and instigated the January 6 assault on the nation’s Capitol. This resulted in five deaths, with 140 more wounded, and endangered the lives of hundreds of Senators and Representatives, all in the brazen, violent attempt to prevent the assembled Congress from doing its Constitutional duty—e.g. to certify the election. Perilously for our democracy, this attempt to overturn the 2020 election has never quite abated, nor has Trump’s insistence that he is the legitimate president who should be re-instated in place of the “fraudulently-elected” Joseph Biden. 

Second, the migrant conflict on the border of Poland, created by the dictatorial president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, is a blatant attempt to cause a crisis in NATO by weaponizing migrants. Both Russian President Putin and Pres. Lukashenko know full well that migrants incite right-wing opposition: Viktor Orban took power in Hungary by inflaming popular fears of migrants, and Donald Trump followed the same playbook to take the U.S. presidency in 2016.  Nor is this mere speculation: Lukashenko has publicly promised to “flood the EU with migrants and drugs”— this in response to international sanctions following his downing of a plane that was crossing Belarusian territory carrying dissident journalist Roman Protasevich (see Heather Cox Richardson, “Letter from an American,” Nov. 10, 2021). This, of course, follows the many signs of fealty that Trump gave to Putin, both before and after his election—not least by criticizing and denigrating NATO members and leaders nearly every time he had the opportunity. He is the first US president in memory to have done this, and many critics consider this cozying up to our avowed adversary, while denigrating our perennial allies, as tantamount to treason. Lukashenko’s current move with migrants plays this same game. 

            It is hard to think of more that any president could do to qualify him for treason. In spite of this, Trump retains millions of die-hard supporters throughout this nation. Not only are they supporters, but many of them seem ready and eager to foment a revolt to overthrow the legitimate and now-certified election of Joe Biden, and install their great leader in his place. It is, for me at least, impossible to imagine that most of them are fully aware of what his means. Perhaps they consider the similar attempt to fight a war with the Lincoln-led Union in 1861 as a good precedent for their plans. But that secession-driven attempt, which caused the death of more Americans than all our other wars combined (until the War in Vietnam), was clearly treason. This little detail seems not to matter to Trump’s supporters. Some of the latest evidence for this comes from the now-notorious memos from John Eastman, conservative lawyer (one of Trump’s senior advisers to promote and validate the Big Lie), outlining how VP Pence, acting to supposedly count the votes, could recognize that several states have alternate slates of electors, and thence turn the electoral decision either over to the Congress, where Republican senators could use the filibuster rule to prevail, or to the state legislatures, where Republicans control a majority of state delegations. Either way, Pence, if he went along with the plan (which praise be, he did NOT), could, “without asking for permission,” declare Trump the winner. Subsequently, Subsequently, Eastman also “co-wrote a blueprint for how Trump could use the military, the police, and criminal gangs to hold onto power after a disputed election” (Lindsay Beverstein, “The Evidence We now Have is Utterly Damning,” Raw Story, Nov. 18.) The Jan. 6 insurrection followed. 

Even more astonishing than the collusion of Trumpistas, is the collusion of almost the entire Republican Party. Every member of that party in the current Congress, with a few glaring exceptions like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, as well as thirteen outliers who took the risky step of voting recently for the Infrastructure package sponsored by the hated Democrats (earning them vilification and death threats), has genuflected at the altar of Trump to follow his lead. This includes that arch-hypocrite, Senate majority leader McConnell, and House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. How is this possible? What of the party of Lincoln? What of the alleged conservative commitment to Constitutional originalism? It’s as if we’re in the topsy-turvy world of Alice in Wonderland, and makes one wonder:  Have any of these people ever read the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence? 

            Let’s quickly review those two revered documents. The Declaration has these words in its second paragraph:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… 

 

This does not say “some men” or “only men of noble birth or white skin color.” It says all. Jefferson goes on to enumerate all the violations committed by the British King as reasons why “these sovereign states” are cutting their bond with him—essentially because of his behavior as a  dictator who considers himself superior to common settlers, e.g. the people of America. In other words, the polar opposite of a leader in a democracy.   

As to Amendment XII of the Constitution, reflecting Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3, it says:

The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed… 

 

That is about as clear as it gets, and means exactly what it says: the president of the Senate, that is, the then-sitting Vice-President, Mike Pence, must open the votes from the Electors of each state, and count them. The entire Congress—not the president, he is not a King—then certifies the election. This is its Constitutional duty, as it was Mike Pence’s duty, which he faithfully carried out on Jan. 6. 

But, the Constitution notwithstanding, Trump has continued to express his rage at Pence, the same rage that his minions expressed by screaming “Hang Mike Pence” as they invaded the Capitol on January 6. Though he was protected by the Secret Service, and escaped lynching that day, it was clear that the Vice-President of the United States was shaken. Trump, meanwhile, has continued to complain (as if he were King) about this alleged betrayal by his Vice-President and supposed ally in not following John Eastman’s script. The latest twist in this nearly-unbelievable episode of a president turning on his own vice president, is his expression of approval of the insurrectionist behavior in an interview conducted in March by Jonathan Karl of ABC news. In Karl’s rendering of that interview, to appear in his forthcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, he quotes the former president as follows:

“It’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect…How can you, if you know a vote is fraudulent, right, how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress?”

 

What this means is that Donald Trump defended the invaders’ chants of “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6  attack, saying it was “understandable” because they were angry that the legitimately-conducted election hadn’t been overturned(quoted by Jesse Rodriguez and Rebecca Shabad, “Trump Defends Jan. 6 rioters’ ‘hang Mike Pence” chant in new audio,” nbcnews.com, Nov. 12, 2021.) One comment about this, among many, is that of CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, who said on Nov. 12:

"Big picture: first of all, this is a constitutional nightmare. This is a constitutional worst-case scenario. The utter madness of a president… who is endorsing, supporting these people who are attacking his vice president.” 

 

As if the unhinged behavior and comments of the former President were not enough, one of his former principal advisers, Steve Bannon, has added to the fire. Bannon, like many of Trump’s inner circle, refused to honor a subpoena from the House Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Assault on the Capitol (the committee had asked Bannon for documents and testimony). Charged with criminal contempt for defying the subpoena, he was taken into custody by the FBI, defiantly alleging that his people would take action. But even before being charged, Bannon had clearly stated, on his War Room podcast (the war room is what the Willard Hotel meeting on the eve of Jan. 6 among Trump conspirators, including Giuliani, Bannon, and Eastman, is also called), what he and the right-wing Trump minions were trying to do: do away with democracy to reverse the results of the Trump loss in 2020:

“‘We’re taking action. We’re taking over school boards. We’re taking over the Republican Party with the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections,’ Bannon said.” (Peter Wade, Rolling Stone, Nov. 12, 2021)

 

Not content with that, Bannon added to this defiance when he was taken into custody by the FBI: 

 

"I'm telling you right now, this is going to be the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden," Bannon told reporters after the hearing, swearing his team is "going to go on the offense." (cnn.com, Nov. 15, 2021)

 

How much more offensive the Trumpers can get is not immediately clear. But it is clear that Donald Trump and his minions have little regard for either the law, or democracy itself. 

            One more element has recently surfaced. Tom Boggioni writes that Max Boot, the conservative military expert, referenced a memo to Donald Trump “making the case to fire Defense Secretary Mike Esper” as evidence that Trump wanted to find some other head of the military whom he could control. The said memo, written by Trump’s director of personnel, Johnny McEntee (formerly his baggage handler) was “both sinister and ludicrous.” It made the case for getting rid of a Cabinet officer because of “insufficient loyalty to the president.” Boot goes on to say that Trump “appears determined to turn the military into his personal goon squad.” Further, if he manages to get another term as president,  “Trump would want to ensure that the ‘guys with guns’ are on his side” (Raw Story, Nov. 15, 2021). In short, Donald Trump has had no compunctions in the past, and certainly would not in the future, about using the U.S. military (before him, mostly kept from use as a political actor) to compel domestic compliance with his dictates—very much like the kings and dictators he admires most. 

            Enough said. The former president seems to take pride in breaking with America’s most hallowed traditions, up to and including behavior that seems, and, in my opinion is, treasonous. That he has been able to get away with this, so far, is an indication of how far the United States has strayed from the democratic republic that was once the envy of the world. And also, how huge portions of the public seem totally unaware of the danger that inheres in that departure, and/or how little they seem to care. Let us hope that the danger is forestalled before it is too late—before, that is, a real dictator steps on stage. 

 

Lawrence DiStasi