The Revoltingly Horrid Year Continues….

 

Could we have a worse start to a year that follows the worst year in memory?

A quote President unquote, whose name I cannot even speak, continues behaving like an unhinged mobster boss.  His attempts to coerce the Georgia Secretary of State to throw their lawful election is just one more manifestation of his never-ending quest not to be labeled a loser, which he is and has always been.  His behavior then was criminal, impeachable.

But wait, that has been forgotten now as this deranged man stood safely behind a bullet proof shield and urged his slavish rabble to storm Congress just as it was ratifying the Electoral College Vote to name Joseph Biden the next President.  He yelled, Stop the Steal!  He promised he’ll be there with them every step along the way.  He didn’t clarify that he meant that metaphorically, as neither he nor his followers know the meaning of the word.  Instead he retired to the security of his White House Media Room with family members and sycophants to enjoy the siege of his insurrectionists in what we would consider a coup attempt if we were watching a 3^rd world government.  It was like a Super Bowl party to them as they watched his minions do his dirty work.

Criminal, inciting sedition.  This by a sitting President.  Unthinkable.  Punishable, impeachable,

So his job of demolishing the last vestiges of democracy and decency is complete.  He is a deluded anarchist and by pandering to that base he has created a populist persona with a dedicated following, ready to die for him.  It could have been a greater loss of life during the siege had those pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails been detonated.  Perhaps the deep rumble of explosions and their accompanying terrifying bright lights was what he was waiting for. 

We’ve all seen this coming and with every despicable act we (and many elected representatives) have given him more and more latitude.  After all it has been reasoned, he doesn’t understand the consequences.  He doesn’t understand how government really works. 

Early in his Presidency, almost four years ago, I wrote an article presciently entitled Barbarians IN the Gate.  I’ll quote the beginning of the article as the defacing of Congress completes the circle of what he began in the White House:

It didn’t take long to deface The Office of the Presidency, celebrity triviality “trumping” expertise and dignity.  To the victor belong the spoils and it is no more in evidence than the recent White House fête personally hosted by Donald Trump, his guests being Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, whoever the latter two are.  Supposedly, Sarah invited Ted and Kid because Jesus was busy.  During their four hour run of the White House including a white china dinner they apparently discussed “health, fitness, food, rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, secure borders, the history of the United States, guns, bullets, bows and arrows, North Korea, [ and ]Russia.”  It is reassuring to know our President is getting such good advice.

According to NPR, Mr. Nugent described the visit as follows: "Well well well looky looky here boogie chillin', I got your Shot Heard Round The World right here in big ol greazya— Washington DC where your 1 & only MotorCity Madman Whackmaster StrapAssasin1 dined with President Donald J Trump at the WhiteHouse to Make America Great Again! Got that?"

It is the full circle.

Hillary Clinton called them “deplorable,” just another name for people who live in a world of popular culture, and ignorance.  It is a Civil War and this may be only the opening volley of violence, no matter whether he resigns (the decent option, but the least expected unless he negotiates a pardon from Pence), impeached, or removed via the 25^th amendment. 

How easily the behavior of one tragically flawed person can obfuscate so many serious issues which are tossed by the wayside, the pandemic and distribution of the vaccines, the climate, racial issues, gun control, voter suppression, and a national debt from which the nation might not recover.  Meanwhile Bitcoins and the stock market rage on while the nation burns, and we wake up each morning, fearing the next disaster du jour.

Good riddance to our Mobster President who, unfortunately, will still be part of the cancer that erodes our society from within, no matter the degree of his exile.  Mar a Lago may be his Elba. 

 

Farewell to a Horrid Year

 

Aging is a cruel master. In 2020 it has been particularly unforgiving.  More change, chaos, and suffering have been thrown our way, collectively and personally, than I can remember.

Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and no one would do anything about it.  In the case of COVID vs. Donald J. Trump this is not a figurative, innocent person on Fifth Avenue, but hundreds of thousands of real American lives.  History will record many of the deaths and suffering as avoidable.  By politicizing the wearing of masks and holding his “rallies” with no social distancing, he has blood on his hands. Ask the family of Herman Cain, who was diagnosed with COVID nine days after attending a crowded, face-maskless Trump rally in Tulsa.

It has been a surreal agony to witness this.  As an aging person this entire experience has increased our risk and ratcheted up anxiety; merely to survive this period, essentially in isolation, is so far something of an accomplishment.  And in the wake of this health crisis is the enormous economic suffering rivaling the Great Depression.  For many hard working people, particularly those connected with the travel and leisure industries; small shop owners and independent restaurateurs, this pandemic has seen hardships that can’t be measured.  An American Tragedy.  So much of it could have been mitigated.

As for us, I’ve been unusually silent during the past several weeks as we did the unthinkable, we moved.

The experience of moving is bad enough in one’s younger years but the accumulation of 50 years of living as if tomorrows are endless makes moving to another home even more traumatic. And during 2020?

The triangulation of circumstance led us to this at this time.  The plan was formulated this way: as boating became too demanding, physically and financially, we would move off the water, into a smaller home, into a gated community, where some of the responsibilities of home owning are absorbed by the HOA.

We had had our house on the market for some time with this thought in mind but at the beginning of the pandemic we took it off deciding we would stay put, try to be safe and wait this out.

Maybe it was cabin fever, but we impulsively rented a mountain-view home near Asheville for several weeks in September.  We figured we could pack our SUV with all needed supplies, and sit on a porch overlooking the Pisgah Mountain Range and read to keep our minds far from reality.  Shortly after we arrived our real estate agent called to tell us a fair offer, clearly out of the blue, was presented to him to buy our home, while it was off the market no less. The wise decision would have been to wait, but we rationalized that by hiring a full service mover, they packing and unpacking, some of the stress and risk would be minimized.  This was not well thought through.  Especially considering we had no idea where we were going.

Our main concern was how to do this and avoid COVID.  The moving company explained their protocols, masks at all times and the logical explanation that as their movers work as a close team, one member of the team would not expose the others if he did not feel well.  Also, when preparing for the move, a bit of serendipity, for I found a dozen N95 masks still in their wrappers tucked away in our garage which I had purchased years before for a sanding and stripping project.  Of course, long forgotten.  That gave us some measure of security while moving.

There were still risks.  In particular a free-lance Internet / AV person the moving company recommended who would be immediately available once moved in to connect and trouble shoot a whole new cable set up, and get our computer and TVs working, a challenge in this day and age.  He came, started connecting things, some unsuccessfully, and announced that he had to leave for an hour as he had a Doctor’s appointment but would be back to complete the job.  He returned, worked for another half hour with Ann, still not being able to connect everything.  He did however know how to wait very successfully while she wrote out his check!

That would be bad enough if it were the end of the story.  No, we found out two days later that his Doctor’s appointment was to be tested for COVID and he was positive.  Yes, he consciously put us at risk (we were both wearing masks, however).  The next ten days were a living hell of anxiety, my being tested twice and my wife once.  Masks do work, as we were both negative and completed the quarantine period.

Even now, weeks after moving, the house is slightly chaotic, but coming into shape.  I look forward to the days when I can return to real writing and the piano, although I’m slowly ramping up.

So how does one achieve any semblance of normalcy during such times?

Each person has had to find his / her own answer.  The basics must be covered, food, shelter, access to health care.  Shame on the US Congress that for many these cannot be taken for granted, but I’m trying not to make this a political invective.  It could easily turn that way.

For us, we are fortunate to have those.  So outside of family and friends, there are four major life purposes:  music, theatre, reading, and travel.  I used to include boating in that mix.  No more, a major phase in our lives, closed.  Travel is not remotely safe.  Reading, except for the news, has essentially been put on hold.  One has to have an inner sense of tranquility I think to leisurely enjoy fiction.  

FaceTime has been a life saver to see family and friends (as many, we have not seen our adult children since Thanksgiving 2019, except virtually).  Thankfully, Zoom and YouTube has kept theatre and music in our lives.

Music is divided into two parts for me, performance and listening.  My piano “gigs” at retirement homes and playing on opening night at Palm Beach Dramaworks have ceased now for nearly a year.  That usually meant preparing concerts primarily focused on The Great American Songbook.  Now, not having such venues has rendered me a vessel with no rudder.  So, I find myself just randomly going through my collection of thousands of songs and in the process finding pieces I’ve never played before – not many but I’ve found a few gems. 

The other part of our musical life has been to attend professional performances, primarily jazz.  Oh, what we took for granted before, the ability to go to a jazz jam at the Jupiter Jazz Society on Sundays, and special performances all around town and even going on a Jazz Cruise right before the pandemic hit. 

One of the performers on the cruise was Emmet Cohen, a young jazz pianist we saw several years ago at Dizzy’s in NY and have admired ever since.  He is gifted, can play all forms of jazz, personable, and reverent of jazz history.  He is the whole package.  In July I wrote about his innovative “Emmet’s Place,” a Monday night streaming jazz performance where he plays with his bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole as a trio, with frequent guest performers, at first all virtual guests and then in person, all of this streaming from his apartment in Harlem.

Since I wrote an entry about his virtual performances, he has expanded his technology to include multiple fixed cameras and a producer to switch back and forth from the appropriate camera angle.  All of this free on YouTube and Facebook!  Well, nothing is really free so we’ve become and probably (hopefully) along with thousands, members of “Emmet Cohen Exclusive,” a means for him to raise financial support for his group and for what he is doing.  One of the benefits is access to some private concerts, but the mainone is supporting an upcoming superstar of jazz and his colleagues.  

The other solace has been the regular Palm Beach Dramaworks play readings and interviews.  That’s another twice a week event and they are free if one registers with the box office for tickets.  They even did readings of a trilogy by the award-winning Lynn Nottage and then Producing Artistic Director, Bill Hayes, followed that up with a live interview with the playwright as part of their Contemporary Voices Series.  To sign up for their free readings and interviews, check with their box office 

PBD of course is not the only theatre offering Zoom readings or YouTube “productions.”  This brings up a dilemma for me.  I’ve been reviewing plays in my blog and published a collection of them in Explaining It to Someone: Learning From the Arts.  In fact, this book contains 10 years of Palm Beach Dramaworks reviews. 

Here’s the conundrum: How does one “review” a reading?  Theatre is made up of so many elements and in reviewing a performance, the reviewer is evaluating the gestalt.  It’s the overall experience, right down to the audience’s reactions as they are part as well. 

While I was in college, I took a course that focused on theatre as literature, as philosophy, and when you peel away all the elements, that is what you are left with.  If the play isn’t meaningful to the audience in some way, it could have all the other elements, great acting, directing, staging, etc. and it could still fail.  I think the future of reviewing will be more dependent on the core of the theatre although as the technology of producing virtually improves so will all the other elements come into play, but never the way live theatre does.

So my hope for 2021, under a new administration, and with effective vaccines, that there is a chance to reclaim a semblance of “normal.”  Meanwhile, for us, virtual theater and music have buoyed our spirits.

At this time of year I normally try to post a video to celebrate the season, seeking “holiday music” which is somewhat overlooked.  As we just moved I’m weeks or months away from being able to post performances.  But to mark the season, I’ll include here something I posted six years ago, “It's Love -- It's Christmas,” my most viewed Christmas piece.  No wonder, it’s by the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, an unlikely composition for him.

May 2021 be a year to celebrate.  2020 will go down in infamy. 

 

 

THE Election

“The” is all in caps intentionally.  Yes, it was razor thin in the swing states, but a 4 million plus popular vote plurality demonstrates that the American people made a choice to remove Trump from the Presidency.  His illegitimate claims the election was “stolen” from him is belied by the fact that Republicans actually made headway in reclaiming some House seats and as of now haven’t lost the Senate.  The message is clear:  Republicans showed up to vote but many decided enough is enough as far as Trump’s behavior is concerned, with the commensurate loss of America’s reputation among our allies throughout the world.  The pandemic certainly fed into the lateness of the count, so many people wisely choosing to vote by mail, but that does not involve “stealing” the election – it gave more Americans the opportunity to safely vote, under the umbrella of each state’s Supervisor of Elections, ballots being counted by teams of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.   And that’s what it is all about: the voice of the people. 

What struck me the most about Joe Biden’s speech last night was its Presidential tone, both in content and delivery.  Yes, it came off a teleprompter, but Trump’s speeches, with few exceptions, even with a teleprompter, veer off into a fantasy land and sound like a third grader speaking, using Hollywood adjectives over and over.  Four years of having to listen to that level of speaking, not to mention his Tweets, has inured us to the true power of the English language, and no doubt left us the laughingstock of the English-speaking world.  Even foreign leaders who use English as a second language are more coherent. 

Biden’s message of governing on behalf of ALL the people was conciliatory.  One can only hope that Trump’s supporters will give him a chance.  Most of all, we should all look forward to joining the world community again, to battle climate change, the pandemic, and in general to allow science rather than conspiratorial fantasies lead us into the future.   We’ve allowed the needle of nationalism to tip into the territory of isolationism.  We’ve precariously allowed democracy to teeter into despotism.  I will give the Trump administration some credit for exposing the extreme to which we allowed the concept of globalization to expose our vulnerability to critical elements in our society – case in point, personal protective equipment.  Some manufacturing must be brought back here.

If we (my wife Ann and I) were not in the middle of a move, the disassembling of twenty years of our lives and trying to put “things” back together I would be able to spend more time on describing my feelings and elation at this important moment in our history.   One of the benefits of writing a blog such as this over such a long period of time is that it allows me to look back and understand my feelings and thoughts during these pivotal points in our history.  On the eve of President Obama’s inauguration after his election in 2008 (can it be, 12 years ago?) I wrote this piece.

It reminded me that he was facing the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Although one may argue that wrong turns were made at times, under his (and Joe Biden’s) leadership, we survived that crisis and Trump inherited a booming economy (although he will never admit it).  Now, Joe Biden, and our first VP-Elect who is a woman of color (another remarkable step forward for this nation) Kamala Harris, must confront a pandemic which is equal to or even greater than the economic crisis of 2008.  Science must be followed, and we can’t rely on a single Hail Mary pass of a vaccination.  I am confident that this will be their immediate mission, besides rejoining the world community.  As I felt when Obama was elected, there is hope.  Hope is a mighty word  

I’ve written enough Trump pieces to fill a book and last year it was published (Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense).

After Trump’s inauguration, I wrote although I had severe reservations that he would ever preserve the dignity of the Office of the Presidency (after all, it was his avowed objective to “drain the swamp,” ironically more of his advisors having to be fired, or imprisoned than any administration in history), I concluded by saying  “I hope President Trump transcends all these concerns.” 

Perhaps this was disingenuous, never expecting it, and indeed, getting a worse President than the candidate himself. I truly had expectations the Office might change the man.  It did not from the start.  His first Cabinet meeting, where his members lavished praise on him was one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve ever witnessed in government.  I’m afraid it set the tone for what would follow for the next four years and of course, most of those supplicants are no longer there.

I ended my Obama piece quoting the entire poem I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman.  I am now again hopeful as Langston Hughes wrote in his 1935 poem Let America be America Again.  We have made progress since then despite the last four dark years.  The last stanza of his poem echoes what the American people have just said with their precious vote:

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

 

The Sound of Silence

 

It’s like the eye of three different hurricanes I’ve lived through, Carol in 1954, Jeanne, 2004, and Wilma in 2005.  A hurricane eye is other-worldly.  After hours of destruction, the sun comes out and everything is still, with hardly a breeze.  We emerge from our homes to inspect the damage, knowing there is more to come on the backside, yet grateful for the reprieve.

I view President Trump’s departure for Walter Reed Hospital similarly.  First, I will make clear that I hope he and the First Lady recover, and it is a recovery with wisdom and humility.  So nothing I write here is to wish him ill.  We are in the eye of the storm while he and the finest physicians battle his illness.  Meanwhile, there is blessed silence, a reprieve from hearing that voice, the tweets, his endless invectives, the brandishing of the Trump brand.

He said it during the 2016 election:  He could shoot someone on 5^th Avenue and no one would do anything about it.  One cannot prove an alternative reality, but what if, rather than his branding the mask as a symbol of weakness; he had promoted it and worn it as a symbol of American unity?  How many thousands would not have died in this country, maybe a hundred thousand?  That needless, wanton loss of life, Mr. President, will be your legacy, as well as your hurricane like destruction of traditional norms and long held foreign alliances. Your denial of science has set us back years in addressing urgent changes in environmental policy, and has leavened the seriousness of COVID beyond that of any other nation.  Your rhetoric has divided the nation and we remain on a tethered lifeline of emergency funding and unimaginable actions by the Federal Reserve to temporarily prop up markets and the economy.  It all must come crashing back to the real world. 

It was unnerving to watch the theatrics yesterday on the news, broadcasters focused on Marine 1, will he come out that door, or not in our view?  This is what you’ve always wanted, Mr. President, a nation of voyeurs and followers; cult worshipers.  Finally, the “official” tape was released of you getting on the helicopter and a Marine in tow carrying the secret nuclear codes suitcase, another reminder that this is more than a reality TV show, the one thing in which you excel.  Again, chilling that someone who is so uneducated in the matters of diplomacy, government, and the rule of law has that responsibility and is being air lifted to a hospital with a disease he himself promoted as “fake news,” ignoring every scientific advice to wear masks.  The last image I recall in the news coverage was White House aides gathered together pecking at their iPhones, all wearing masks, as if suddenly they got religion.

It didn’t have to be this way, but as I said at the onset, may you and your wife have a full recovery and may you return with the religion as well, wearing a mask, requiring everyone else to do so, and discontinuing your disease spreading rallies and self-promoting ceremonial meetings. 

Seeing into the Sick American Soul

Just once in a while, a piece of journalism surfaces which is so prescient, and so accurately reflects the kind of truth we all recognize but never see in its entirety, and such is Wade Davis’ “The Unraveling of America: how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era”, published in The Rolling Stone

Davis is a Canadian and it takes someone from the outside to see the forest through the trees.  My own essays written since theCOVID-19 took center stage touch upon many of Davis’ points, but I deal mostly with the detail and not the big, big picture, the decline of American exceptionalism and the probable permanent demise of America as a world leader, our slide into 3^rd world status.

In a fairly recent essay I wrote “we have a full-blown culture war, not a new one, but intensified by [Trump’s] rhetoric and failures.  To what extent should individual rights transcend the need to follow measures to protect the greater good of society?  This is the essence of why other countries have had relative success after the initial battle [with COVID-19].”  However, I assign too much blame to Trump and not enough to us.  We brought this monster to life. It took decades of undermining our political system and values that brought this moment in time, which COVID-19 exposed in stark relief.

The American dream and what was supposed to facilitate its ability to be potentially achieved by all --individualism and capitalism -- have metastasized into a form of deadly social Darwinism in this country.  As Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd sings, “The history of the world, my sweet --Is who gets eaten, and who gets to eat!”  This is what a social net is supposed to eliminate.  We not only have no net, the alt-right is proud of it!

My wife, Ann, after reading the article said "oddly enough, it’s nothing that we didn’t already know. It’s just the surgical precision with which he exposes our ‘new norms’ that smacked me in the head.”  And it is indeed such a smack and major body blows of truth.

Here are some bullet points from the article which I hope will encourage the reader to go to the link for the full article:

*[What stands out] is the absolutely devastating impact that the pandemic has had on the reputation and international standing of the United States of America. In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

* In the wake of the war, with Europe and Japan in ashes, the United States with but 6 percent of the world’s population accounted for half of the global economy…. Such economic dominance birthed a vibrant middle class, a trade union movement that allowed a single breadwinner with limited education to own a home and a car, support a family, and send his kids to good schools. It was not by any means a perfect world but affluence allowed for a truce between capital and labor, a reciprocity of opportunity in a time of rapid growth and declining income inequality, marked by high tax rates for the wealthy, who were by no means the only beneficiaries of a golden age of American capitalism.

* More than any other country, the United States in the post-war era lionized the individual at the expense of community and family…. With slogans like “24/7” celebrating complete dedication to the workplace, men and women exhausted themselves in jobs that only reinforced their isolation from their families.

* At the root of this transformation and decline lies an ever-widening chasm between Americans who have and those who have little or nothing. Economic disparities exist in all nations, creating a tension that can be as disruptive as the inequities are unjust. In any number of settings, however, the negative forces tearing apart a society are mitigated or even muted if there are other elements that reinforce social solidarity — religious faith, the strength and comfort of family, the pride of tradition, fidelity to the land, a spirit of place.

*Though living in a nation that celebrates itself as the wealthiest in history, most Americans live on a high wire, with no safety net to brace a fall….COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken….[It] was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand. As a number of countries moved expeditiously to contain the virus, the United States stumbled along in denial, as if willfully blind.

*Americans have not done themselves any favors. Their political process made possible the ascendancy to the highest office in the land a national disgrace, a demagogue as morally and ethically compromised as a person can be…. The American president lives to cultivate resentments, demonize his opponents, validate hatred. His main tool of governance is the lie…. Odious as he may be, Trump is less the cause of America’s decline than a product of its descent.

*The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness.

* The measure of wealth in a civilized nation is not the currency accumulated by the lucky few, but rather the strength and resonance of social relations and the bonds of reciprocity that connect all people in common purpose.

* Evidence of such terminal decadence is the choice that so many Americans made in 2016 to prioritize their personal indignations, placing their own resentments above any concerns for the fate of the country and the world, as they rushed to elect a man whose only credential for the job was his willingness to give voice to their hatreds, validate their anger, and target their enemies, real or imagined. …But even should Trump be resoundingly defeated, it’s not at all clear that such a profoundly polarized nation will be able to find a way forward. For better or for worse, America has had its time.

While I’ve tried to distill the essence, the entire article merits a careful reading. 

My last blog entry expressed a sense of optimism after the Democratic National Convention.  I have to cling to that hope or my condition of Acute Existential Dread will reel out of control.  But, now, more than ever I am convinced that we need not only to throw Trump out of the White House, but regain Democratic control of the Senate as well.  It is the only hope for beginning the process of restoring American exceptionalism and rejoining civilized nations, such as Canada. It will take decades and commitment to repair.