He is Wrong and Dangerous

Of course, Brett Kavanaugh is wrong, and his mistaken (and erroneous) statement only serves to display Kavanaugh’s radical misunderstanding of the democratic process and of the governing principles of the nation. His statement is a defense of his ideological position and does not reflect an understanding of the law. In her argument in the case before the court, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar declared that overruling the precedent known as the Chevron principle would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.” Adam Liptak writes in The New York Times, “The doctrine known as the Chevron principle says that judges must defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. In many cases, and there are many,” Liptak writes “the views of the agency take priority even if courts might have ruled differently.” Overturning Chevron will make judges rule on matters in which they possess at best marginal knowledge. 

            Responding to Prelogar’s warning that to overturn Chevron would be a shock to the legal system, Kavanaugh responded that shocks to the system occurred “every four or eight years when a new administration comes in, whether it’s communications law or securities law or competition law or environmental law.” But he is wrong: there is no shock to the system with a change of administration because an electorate has known exactly what their vote has meant for the system, and the peaceful transfer of power guaranteed by the United States Constitution obviates any potential shock to the system. Trump’s attempt to not transfer power in 2020 is an example of a shock to the system, and it would seem to me that Kavanaugh’s statement seems a defense of Trump’s actions. If the system receives a shock every four or eight years then certainly Trump’s shocking illegalities are equal to any shock of a new administration.
            Whereas the protest in Israel over the Knesset’s attempt to wrest power from the Supreme Court led to widespread protest and finally a decision by that Court declaring the Knesset’s actions unconstitutional, then ironically a repeal of Chevron will be the Supreme Court’s attempt to grasp power to the court system and take that power from Congress and the federally and legally elected administration.

Kavanaugh is not only wrong, he is dangerous.

Stages

Of course, this posting is all about me though I am using the plural pronouns as a mask. And since what I write about is about me me I want to begin by acknowledging that I am an admittedly somewhat privileged life-long middle-class now retired academic with two pensions and social security income. Mea culpa! I have some investments that should take me to my demise as long as I need not enter assisted living or a memory care unit. In the event it becomes necessary, my children have generously guaranteed me an occupancy in a basement apartment. At my death all of the monies (and hell, there isn’t all that much) will go to the daughters.

I reflect: In my adolescence, well, the talk was usually about sex: about who was having any and who wished they were getting some. I suppose it would have helped me if I actually talked to girls who were at least within my reach. The conversation was certainly about lust and hunger. Then as I moved into my twenties I guess I added to my conversations about sex—always a concern—issues concerning meaningful career choices and moves. People I knew chose a path: doctor, lawyer, academic, astronaut. For some the choice was not necessarily theirs to make: they went into the armed services and some came home. Our thirties were spent trying to succeed in that chosen career path: how to rise in the companies and departments we were in. Graduate schools entered into our consideration. Some enrolled. In our thirties we also began to consider the possibilities of family, marriage and children. Some chose to settle down, marry, and even start a family. Others opted for surrogacy or singleness. Mortgages and their rates become central to the talk; we refinanced as the rates fell.  (And yes, I have begun to use the plural pronoun). Then, as we entered our forties our thoughts turned again to career: in our lives we had begun to feel restless and to consider whether it might benefit us to change course. Some—not a few— suffered from a mid-life crisis (I admit, a privilege for those in the middle-class and beyond) and at the bars and over drinks we complained to anyone who would listen, and we hoped that some of those listeners were sympathetic friends. We talked to our friends, our financial advisers and our therapists. We joined a gym and began to ride the stationary bike and lift weights. 

In our fifties we begin to attend to our investments, paid off our mortgages or refinanced them, and our thoughts turned to retirement and Social Security. Some talked to their financial advisers if they still had them, and others calculated their positions on paper with a pencil and a good eraser. In our sixties we signed up for Medicare and looked about for supplemental insurance. We considered if now might be the time to buy a cemetery plot and to write a will. Then, as we limped into our seventies we began to think about the arrays of medications that began to occupy our pantries and bathroom mirrored cabinet. We had pills for every ailment that has arisen and even for ones that we anticipated. Regularly we were careful to check which medications were due for refill. Our days were peppered with pill popping. With worry we talked to our doctors more frequently. We obsessed about our health and ratcheted up our inclination to hypochondria. We emailed our doctor more frequently and appreciated their patience. In our seventies we tended to complain more and chose to socialize with people our own age with whom we could discuss our aging issues. We purchased burial plots and made plans for the funeral. 

I haven’t arrived yet into my 80s but I know health issues and medicines will remain in the forefront of concerns, but I foresee that I might then return increasingly to concern about my legacy though it is too late to do anything about it. We even take to exclaiming “It doesn’t matter!”

And I note that I have begun to think and talk like an old man. My conversation is filled with complaint and not only about my health and wealth, but also about the state of the world over which I have had little or no influence and that I will at my demise leave behind. In the supermarkets I am pleased to discover what is on sale and am gleeful when I spy the sign for BOGOs. I carry home four tins of tuna fish, but I am a vegetarian and don’t even eat tuna fish; hell, they were on sale! I have lived in the Midwest for thirty-five years and have happily taken myself running on the roads in temperatures that dropped to -20 degrees with even a serious wind chill factor. But now I am no longer tolerant of cold, am reluctant to go out of doors with the temperature hovering around zero degrees; as I write this I am sitting before the fireplace where roars a blaze produced by fake logs. I look to see what films are now streaming. 

I head to warmer climates in February to weather out the winter in a place where winter does not enter. I am therefore packing a minimum of clothes and a maximum of medications and health aids.

 

Alone and Loneliness

In the new streaming film Good Grief, the main character, Marc, says after his husband dies in an auto accident, that he is lonely and that he doesn’t want to be alone. I’ve been thinking lately about the experiences of being alone and being lonely. Marc’s grievance notwithstanding, the two states, though often used interchangeably, do not seem to be equivalent. D.W. Winnicott says, almost paradoxically, that one can only be truly alone when in the presence of another. For Winnicott the capacity to be alone signifies the capacity to relax, to be at individual ease, without having to be obliged to react to any external impingement or that of an introjected or even physically present person. In this alone state the individual becomes unintegrated—which for Winnicott signifies a state without purpose, a “state in which there is no orientation.” Unintegration and not disintegration, is a mode of being where the self is neither “a reactor to an external impingement,” nor subject to compliance or resistance from another’s interest or movement. To be thus unintegrated, one can have an id experience, which I understand to be the experience of inarticulable Desire before that Desire must enter language or confront the external world. Reality is  always a disappointment. But during this id experience nothing external impinges on the individual, and the internal feels real and authentic. This is the experience of the true self that may not be communicated with but demands to be seen. This id experience is the source of creativity. The narrator in W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn says, “Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work.” In this state the child and later the adult is completely alone. 
            However, the child and later the adult can enjoy this state of being alone only if an earlier experience of a protective environment had been provided by the good enough mother or mother-object. In this protective environment the individual may enjoy with confidence the state of unintegration and experience their internal feelings, their Desire. Winnicott says, “[S]uch an experience provides the individual a sufficiency of living, so that the individual temporarily . . . is able to rest contented in the absence of the presence of external objects or stimuli.” To enjoy the state of being alone then, the individual must first have developed a belief in a benign external environment gained through a repetition of satisfactory episodes of unintegration and the resultant pleasures of instinctual gratifications when in company with a good enough mother or mother-object. To be able to say I AM ALONE becomes possible when there is an awareness of and faith in the continual presence of a protective environment which makes it possible for the child and later for the adult to be alone: to become unintegrated. That protective presence is at first actual but later can be enjoyed without that presence being actual. I believe that this is the source state of creativity; all that is yet requited are objects in the world with which the individual might use.
            I enjoy my solitude and begin to recognize that I can feel most alone when I am writing whether I am in in the presence of actual company or not. As I write this now, I am alone. I am content. Unintegration is for me a briefly experienced state but a very satisfying one.

I think that loneliness is a very different experience than that of being alone. Loneliness might actually constitute an inability to be alone, to be I AM. Loneliness, unlike being alone, requires, even demands, the presence of another but this encounter must be ultimately unsatisfying because in the anxiety of self, the lonely person cannot fully enter the encounter.; the lonely person is too well defended to risk the vulnerability of the self. In A Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, the poet Pessoa says, “loneliness is the inability to keep someone or something with us company, it is not a tree that stands alone in the middle of a plain but the distance between the deep sap and the bark, between the leaves and the roots.” Loneliness is the distance between the source of life—our Desire—and the transient and inevitably compromised products that derives from it and its encounters with the objects of this world. Loneliness is the space between the outside and the inside, between the blood and what covers it, between the source of life and what comes out because of the roots.

Loneliness inheres in the meaningless work and empty relationships in which there can occur no engagement. In Good Grief Marc is lonely: he has friends to whom he cannot tell the truth of his loss. Loneliness occurs when the Winnicottian false self is so protective of the true self that one has no sense of or contact with that self; the objects of the world have no meaning. The False Self has had for its main concern a search for conditions that will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own. But if such conditions cannot be found then the False Self must create defenses to protect the True Self: drugs, drink, sex, smart phones and streaming services and myriad other protective devices. And when the true self comes to doubt that such conditions by which it can be found, then, Winnicott warns, suicide might be the result. Suicide is annihilation of all self to protect the True Self. It becomes the function of the False Self to organize the suicide. Or the false self develops external identifications, such as that of a nannie, parent, or some other relationship; this false self conforms to the personality of another and masks the true self. Rosa Burger’s struggle in Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter is to become a self other than that of being Burger’s daughter. 

In To Write As If Already Dead Kate Zambreno says, “I like the notion that the word persona stems from Stoics theater where the actor held a mask at a distance, a gap occurs between the self and the persona.” That mask allows the self to safely speak and to remain alone. A persona is a strategic mask of identity held in public: the persona is the public image of one's person, the presentation of the social role that one adopts, or the mask may be simply a fictional character. In Russel Banks Foregone, as he tells his story Fife demands darkness because if he can see another he will maintain the lie that is his life. He needs the camera and the microphone and the darkness. He won’t allow anybody to look at him. “The only way Fife knows how to tell the truth is to sit himself in darkness like this in front of the camera . . . without the darkness surrounding him, he would lie to her, the way he lies to everyone.” An entry from WordPress describes a function of the mask: “Any one actor might hold different masks for different roles, thus preventing the audience from identifying the actor to one specific character.” The mask would hide character at the same time it displayed it, though the revelation was in the service of role. The mask might also be considered "an intermediary between the individual and the institution." At the university I chose to wear a tie in the classroom to honor the profession though the necktie was constricting, uncomfortable and uncharacteristic. I suppose one can speak from behind the mask but then the question might occur as to who is speaking. 
            So, though Marc spends time and travel with his friends, he remains lonely and is also incapable of being alone. It is perhaps through the arc of the film that Marc gains the capacity to be alone—he returns to his painting and the production of art—and he no longer defines himself as lonely. He is in the end in the comforting company of his friends. He can be alone.