Towards Year's End
I applaud the op-ed writers who decry the horror of the
Trump administration and the Republican lackeys who sycophantically lick his
dirtied shoes. Today’s columns in The New
York Times, by Roger Cohen, Michelle Goldberg and Paul Krugman are representative
of the thoughts of those who have thoughts. Charles Blow offers always a
scathing indictment of the racism central to Trump and his administration.
But I am not comforted as we head into 2018. There are three years left of the terror and still a year from the mid-term elections. Recent electoral events portend a Democratic resurgence, but since the last election I have lost faith in the American electorate. Anti-intellectualism in the United States has been a topic of study for long years, and over the years of the Republic this strain in American society has produced not a few idiots to govern, and these few have appointed not a few incompetents to serve. Roger Taney and the Dred Scott decision. Or Justice Brown who wrote in Plessy v. Ferguson, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Who could reason like this and claim intelligence? And note the withdrawal this past week of Trump’s three appointees to the Court system for their incompetence.
And while we wait for the next elections Trump tears down the country. To pay for the tax benefits to the wealthiest the tyrant takes away monies from the health care for children. American First? If this be America, who would desire it? Trump will rule over the destruction of the Republic and walk away himself intact. He may even destroy the world to buttress the ego that some call enormous but I would think so fragile that without constant reinforcement threatens to collapse. In his rhetoric of defiance I hear a weak echo of Melville’s Ahab who cries that he would destroy the sun if it defied him—but Trump is no Ahab who “looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness...." Trump is a bloated gaseous Malvolio; there is nothing heroic about him. But for the threat he poses to us, he would be no more than a target of harmless jokes. As it is he is the butt of witticisms and storied commentary, but there is often underlying it all a sense of panic. I believe we worry about the possibility of a future now.
And so we head into the end of this horrible year only to anticipate a decline still, and hope with little faith that this too shall pass.
But I am not comforted as we head into 2018. There are three years left of the terror and still a year from the mid-term elections. Recent electoral events portend a Democratic resurgence, but since the last election I have lost faith in the American electorate. Anti-intellectualism in the United States has been a topic of study for long years, and over the years of the Republic this strain in American society has produced not a few idiots to govern, and these few have appointed not a few incompetents to serve. Roger Taney and the Dred Scott decision. Or Justice Brown who wrote in Plessy v. Ferguson, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Who could reason like this and claim intelligence? And note the withdrawal this past week of Trump’s three appointees to the Court system for their incompetence.
And while we wait for the next elections Trump tears down the country. To pay for the tax benefits to the wealthiest the tyrant takes away monies from the health care for children. American First? If this be America, who would desire it? Trump will rule over the destruction of the Republic and walk away himself intact. He may even destroy the world to buttress the ego that some call enormous but I would think so fragile that without constant reinforcement threatens to collapse. In his rhetoric of defiance I hear a weak echo of Melville’s Ahab who cries that he would destroy the sun if it defied him—but Trump is no Ahab who “looked like a man cut away from the stake, when the fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them, or taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness...." Trump is a bloated gaseous Malvolio; there is nothing heroic about him. But for the threat he poses to us, he would be no more than a target of harmless jokes. As it is he is the butt of witticisms and storied commentary, but there is often underlying it all a sense of panic. I believe we worry about the possibility of a future now.
And so we head into the end of this horrible year only to anticipate a decline still, and hope with little faith that this too shall pass.
posted by Alan A. Block at 9:14 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home