January 20, 2017
Dear Bub & Liv Bear,
I’ve been meaning to share my thoughts
and feelings with you since the day after the election in November. I’m taking
some time off on this cloudy & gloomy Friday afternoon – the day of the
inauguration – to speak to you both from my heart about my hopes and fears for
your futures in light of the worst thing that has happened to our country in a
very long time. (Yes, worse than 9-11).
This was not an ordinary election. Before now, I would never in my life have gotten
so worked up about something so ultimately unimportant as politics. But I think time will prove that we are in
world-historically different circumstances now.
Of course, I hope we will look back in a few years on Donald Trump’s
election and have a good belly laugh at how goofy and paranoid your old man was. In the meantime, I have these pretentions –
as your overly bookish and aging father – that I can offer some parental
guidance and wisdom for the years ahead.
I have no special claim to wisdom; just lessons learned from many mistakes
made over a half century.
Donald Trump’s surprise victory left me with such a
profound sense of depression and disorientation that I was unable to look at a
newspaper or my Twitter feed for several days. (I have found it impossible,
again today, to look at the news; I cannot bear the sight of that man’s self-satisfied
face or the sound of his inarticulate voice.)
For days after the election, I would walk into grocery stores and coffee
shops, scan the crowds, and wonder who among my fellow countrymen could have
been so foolish and reckless to cast a vote for that transparently fraudulent
and ostentatiously unqualified bully. I
even found myself welling up with loathing for anyone who could have fallen for such an obvious con-man. I wanted to
punch the smug smiles of people wearing Trump tee-shirts emblazoned with that
inane slogan. I’m not proud of that; and
I can say that these ugly feelings have passed. Yet I still find it difficult
to understand anyone who could have been so clueless as to miss (or ignore) the
obvious danger represented by this repulsive and over-rated primate. I find it is the understanding part that is
the hardest. It still seems like a
nightmare we should be waking up from.
I say all of this as someone who – I guarantee you –
despises Clintonism more than anyone you know or will ever meet. Think of the person you’ve heard attacking the Clintons the most during the election season, assign a very big number to that
person’s animosity, and then square (or cube) that number. That would be your Dad. And unlike so many people who just opposed Mrs. Clinton for being on the other team, for wearing the wrong color shirt so to speak,
I’ve actually read the books. They tell
a very ugly story. She and her husband epitomize our corrupt
establishment. I would go so far as to
say they are evil people. They are at
the very least common criminals. (As is Trump.)
In fact, I reserve my greatest anger for the corrupt Democratic Party establishment
that picked Hillary Clinton. (Their
excuses for why she lost – the FBI!, Putin!, Wikileaks!, racism! – show they
have learned nothing.) But alas it turns
out Cooked Hillary was the only thing standing between Donald Trump and the
world’s most powerful office. I really,
really, wish it could have been otherwise. But those were the choices vomited
up by the electoral process this time around.
In the end, the choice was an absolute
no-brainer for all thinking adults. How
could 63 million people have been so easily conned?
And so I am really worried about the world you kids will
be coming to adulthood in. As of today,
the American Presidency is in the hands of an egotistical clown. A cartoon character. A man who mocked a reporter’s physical disability
on camera. A man who suggested “2nd
amendment people” should assassinate Hillary if she won – then lied about it
(he was on video!). A man who bragged on
tape about sexually assaulting women and who admitted to intentionally walking
in on the dressing rooms of beauty contestants less than half his age. A man who cheated thousands of people out of
their savings with a phony university selling bogus “get rich quick” schemes
and who achieved his own wealth and celebrity though sleaze, corner-cutting,
and ruthless, sharp-elbowed business dealings. A man who has been endorsed by the KKK (and
who failed to categorically disavow that support). A man who provably lied hundreds of times
during the election and who refuses to observe the most basic norms of decency
& civility. A man with obvious (and
disturbing) impulse control problems. A
man who could barely string two intelligent sentences together in the
debates. A failed (!) casino owner who
lost a billion dollars one year operating a business whose customers are
addicted to flushing away their children’s college funds. A thin-skinned bully
who tweets insults to his critics at 3 a.m.
A narcissist. A sexist. A racist.
A boor. Perhaps worst of all, he gives
every impression of being someone who has not read a book in his entire adult
life. (Possible exception: celebrity
kiss-and-tell memoirs.) He has no business being anywhere near the White House or
the nuclear codes. And yet, here we are.
Of course, Donald Trump is just one man – even if he
is now, as of today, the world’s most powerful and dangerous clown. I’m sorry to say it, but in many ways he is a
perfect mirror held up to contemporary American society. Loud. Showy. Vulgar. Garish. Arrogant. Celebrity
obsessed. Television obsessed. Ignorant.
Attention span of a gnat. Militantly
anti-intellectual. Anti-science. Instant gratification seeking. Frighteningly unaware
of his limitations. We really are living
in Trump Nation. Indeed, we were Trump Nation long before November 8th. And so in some respects, our democracy has
produced the leader we deserve. James
Howard Kunstler used to be fond of saying: “we are a wicked people that
deserves to be punished.” Jim, I give
you Donald John Trump. Roost, allow me
to introduce chickens.
My greatest hope – I’m not totally without hope, kids
– is that Donald Trump’s presidency will be a wake-up call to a population that
has been somnolent for far too long – too busy sitting on our sofas with our
eyeballs glued to reality TV and gladiatorial sports. Heaven knows I’ve wasted too many brain cells
and unrecoverable hours in this way. Maybe
there is some kind of mad logic at work in all of this surreal craziness. I
would pray for that, if I were inclined to initiate conversations with
imaginary friends.
Speaking of reasons for hope: I went to a memorial service last night for
Murray Ross who died rather suddenly on January 3rd. He was Nana’s age. A thousand people showed up. Forty years ago, Murray founded the
TheatreWorks program at UCCS out of nothing.
It has grown into one of the most celebrated and successful small-city
theatre groups in the entire country.
Listening to all the speakers and family members, I was so inspired by
this man’s life and accomplishments. Murray directed hundreds of productions
over the years – the classics, Shakespeare, contemporary plays, etc. Several speakers testified to his insistence
that every actor understand every word of every line in every play. This, of course, required an even greater
level of understanding and engagement with the text on Murray’s part. In other words, the man spent his life
immersed in the very best of what the greatest artists have had to say about
our common humanity. His great project
was to spread Truth, Beauty, Understanding, and Compassion to his fellow man. He touched tens of thousands of lives for the
better with humility, grace and charm. He
was also a brilliant writer, a woodworker, a chef, a wine connoisseur, a
professor of English and a beloved father and husband who stayed married to the
same woman for forty years.
I had a tough time sleeping last night. I was dwelling endlessly on the stark
difference between what Murray Ross stood for and what the new American President
represents. One of these men will be
studied and written about for centuries to come – if civilization survives that
long. The other will be forgotten after
his grandchildren have died. (Ninety-nine
percent of humanity is forgotten after their grandchildren are gone.) It is unfortunately the way of things that
Donald Trump – the bully, the fraud, the narcissist – is in the former camp while
Murray Ross is in the latter.
I left the service last night reinvigorated and
inspired to live each day more fully. If
we stay focused on the good we can do in our own lives and try not to worry too
much about the noise and spectacle that the next four years is certain to
bring, we can live Murray Ross’ example of a true “bon vivant” [roughly: “good liver of life”].
And yet, I’m writing because there seems to be so much
that can go catastrophically wrong “out there” as you kids move into your 20s
and 30s. I know how paranoid and
apocalyptic that sounds. But most of the
big moving pieces are unambiguously ominous. Debt levels – personal, corporate,
and governmental – are crushing and totally unsustainable. (This is the price of organizing society
around the principle of getting something-for-nothing which is our national
religion; and you thought it was Christianity?)
An economic crash is coming – the only question
is when. The planet is warming in very
dangerous (and probably irreversible) ways.
About half the population is in denial about it. Demographically, western secular populations
are getting older and smaller while the populations of religiously fanatical
countries are exploding. Too many of us are fat, lazy, tattoo’d, body-pierced, entitled,
addicted, uncurious, and dumbed-down almost beyond any hope of recovery. Largely as a result of that last sentence, our
democratic institutions are in crisis (as this recent election proves beyond
any doubt). The Middle East is in chaos
– thanks to a war-of-choice started to satiate our addiction to oil and our stubborn
refusal to live simpler, more Thoreauvian, less car-dependent lives. The
resulting flood of refugees is tearing Europe apart and weakening its
commitments to liberalism and tolerance.
To top it off, instead of finding common ground with a secular, modern,
Western country like Russia to stem the tide of medieval religious fanaticism,
we seem bent on starting a new Cold War with a nuclear superpower for reasons
that just confound and exasperate me.
Civilizations rise and civilizations fall. There are no exceptions. I see no reason why the American-dominated
post-WWII global order should escape the fate of all other civilizations in
history. Our working classes and our ruling classes are of an
altogether different (i.e. worse)
character than those who weathered the Great Depression and the Civil War. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall. You kids are going to be starting careers and
raising families during difficult and unstable times. If you want a glimpse of how things could
look when / if basic services become unreliable (or unavailable), watch the
news footage from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Then put 300 million guns into the hands of
uneducated people jacked up on Jesus and right-wing ideology.
History will record, I fear, that the election of
Donald Trump was just the final catalyzing event of The Great Unravelling. In a decade or two, I think your children
will be cursing my generation and the generations before mine for our greed and
short-sightedness. I suppose there is
some cruel irony (and even some dark humor) in the fact that Donald Trump will
take 100% of the blame for the mendacity and cowardice of his predecessors: the
Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, and all their various clones and sycophants
in the media and other transmitters of conventional wisdom.
Here’s our situation: A statistically tiny number of
angry white people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have put your
futures in the hands of a man with the temperament and attention span of an
eight-year-old boy on amphetamines at a moment of history calling for calm
& sober judgment. His cabinet
appointees – to a person – are either clueless, openly antagonistic to the
agencies they will be leading, or religious whack-jobs. Some are all three. It is all utterly unprecedented. Fasten your
seat belts, kids.
Even when Donald Trump is right about something – for a
broken clock is right twice a day – he is right for the wrong reasons or
because of questionable motives. He is
correct that the United States and Russia should be improving relations and
working together to fight the barbaric & illiberal Parties of Allah (as
well as cooperating on a host of other fronts and issues). But his position seems driven by his own
craven self-interests, and possibly, by his having put himself in the position
of being subject to blackmail. Just
think of it: one man’s sick fetishes could turn the tide of history.
And so we witness the spectacle of otherwise sane and
intelligent people, including many writers and thinkers I admire, falling over
themselves to discredit Trump’s only sensible
policy for the sole motive of slaying the Kraken. The man is so vile & repulsive that smart
people are driving themselves into a frenzy – favoring policies that could risk
a shooting war with the planet’s only other nuclear superpower – just to avoid
having to agree with Cheeto Head on anything. This sort of thing keeps me awake at night.
How to live in such times? First, realize that other
generations in other places have lived through dark and difficult times. As bad as things could get, someone,
somewhere, has had it worse. Yet in all
of these times and places, people of good will and cheery dispositions have
managed to find Truth, Beauty, Understanding and Compassion. And Love.
When the Goths and Visigoths were sacking the Roman Empire, Latin-speakers
still laughed. A cold drink of water
still tasted refreshing on a hot summer day.
Flowers still bloomed and birds still greeted the sun with their exuberant
music. It takes very little, from the
standpoint of creature comforts, to experience joy in this life. And we tend to remember the good times. Things will be no different if The Great
Unravelling I fear comes to pass.
Now we come to the part where your Dad presumes to
impart Wisdom (note: I have violated almost all of these many times):
Avoid chasing the superficial. Desire fewer material
things. Simplify. Find what you love to do and do it. Get really good at a few truly
useful things. Accumulate memories, not stuff. Never stop learning, questioning
or doubting. Demand evidence. Change your minds when the evidence proves
you wrong. Be suspicious of the fickle
passions of the mob. Take the long view
of things – past and future. Leave everything
the way you found it or better. Take care of yourselves. “Eat food, not too
much, mostly plants.”[1] Gorge
yourselves on art, literature, music and life instead. Get enough sleep. Eschew
all poisons. Exercise your bodies and your minds. Dress as though you respect
yourself and others. Read. Especially, read. Conserve. Save ten percent. Resist
any urges to use profanity. Get out of
doors. See the world. Help other people
whenever you can. Try to see the best in everyone. That will sometimes be tough. Love family unconditionally and everyone else
according to their desserts. Choose your
life’s soulmate very carefully and only after you have achieved self-sufficiency. Do not love your enemies. They mean to kill you. Respecting their humanity and treating them
with justice will be sufficient. Forgive those who trespass against you – if they
genuinely seek your forgiveness. Live
every day as if it could be your last.
One day, it will.
Love, Dad
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