2025: Year of The ‘Imperial Me’

 

Peter Sellers as The Imperial Me

I’ve written several “New Year” entries, some hopeful, some less so, such as this one after the Trump-inspired violence and invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6,2021.

 

Also, this is not the first time I found a profoundly eerie prescient message in an old movie such as the dialogue from the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd , written by Budd Schulberg and Directed by Elia Kazan, about the power of a megalomaniac. There are parallels to Trump’s first run at the White House.

 

On Christmas Eve Turner Classic Movies carried Carol for Another Christmas, Ron Serling’s warning to the world about the consequences of a nuclear holocaust modeled after the Dickens’ Christmas classic.  

 

While Serling’s 1964 TV movie is focused on the doomsday clock, a portion of the film directly relates to where we seem to be going in a 2^nd Trump administration: controlling the masses for the benefit of a few while abandoning decency and honor and lawfulness.  It is also ironic that the main character in the film is named “Grudge” as grudge seems to be a motivating factor in Trump’s Cabinet choices, all seemingly designed to destabilize societal norms.

 

The film portrays a wealthy industrialist, Daniel Grudge (Sterling Hayden), who like Scrooge, needs a lesson in ignoring the needs of mankind. As Wikipedia details,  Grudge emerges into destroyed ruins that he recognizes as having been his local town hall, where he encounters the Ghost of Christmas Future (Shaw). This Ghost explains that the town hall was wrecked in a disastrous nuclear conflict that killed most of the world's people. A handful of survivors enter, led by a demagogue called "Imperial Me" (Sellers) who wears a Santa suit and a cowboy hat cut into a crown. The crowd cheers as Imperial Me is paraded in and gives a speech exhorting each person to act as an individual in their own self-interest. Grudge watches his butler, Charles (Rodriguez), try unsuccessfully to convince the crowd that acting collectively for the greater good of all is essential for humanity's survival.

 

It is the dialogue that begins with Peter Seller’s appearance, playing a cult leader (sound familiar?) by the name of “Imperial Me” (sound familiar?) who gleefully whips up the rage of his followers to abandon all vestiges of civility and law (sound familiar?)

 

Here’s the part that can serve as a metaphor for Trump’s role in January 6:

 

IMPERIAL ME: Now, folks, the first item on today's agenda is this business of the people from down yonder and the people from across river wanting to come in here and talk about what they call our mutual problems, our common differences.

[ Crowd murmurs ]

Now, they want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk about our problems. They want to debate, debate, debate about solutions until somehow they get their problems solved. They want to waste our time. They want us to commit ourselves to that kind of surrender.

[ Indistinct shouting ]

Unpatriotic!

They're...

They're insane.

Unpatriotic!

[ Shouting stops ]

Now, then. They don't come out in so many words and say that they want to take us over.

[ Chuckles ]

They're too clever for that..But that's what they want. They want to take over us individual me. And if we let them seep in here from down yonder and across river, if we let these do-gooders, these bleeding hearts propagate their insidious doctrine of involvement among us, then, my dear friends, my beloved mes, we'se in trouble...Deep, deep trouble.

[ Laughter ]

And because...Because we have now reached a pure state of civilization, the world of the ultimate me is finally within our grasp...This world where only the strong will exist, where only the powerful will love, where finally the word "we" will be stamped out and will become "I" forever. Because we are each the wise...We are each the strong...And we are each the individual mes!

[ All chanting "me!" ]

[ Chanting continues ]

CHARLES: Listen! Listen! No, listen!

CROWD: No!

CHARLES: Please!

CROWD:  No!

CHARLES: Listen! Listen to me!

[ Chanting continues ]

Please, let me speak!

[ Chanting stops ]

IMPERIAL ME: Let him speak.

CHARLES: To the best of our knowledge, we are all of humanity who remain alive, all that's left. Now, we have survived the Holocaust, and if we are to go on surviving, we must work together now. We must talk together.

[ Light laughter ]

And if other people want to join us, if they want to talk with us, we... we must listen to them.

[ Laughter ]

And we must respond to them. We must begin again. We must have law again and  ethics and honor and decency.

[ Laughter ]

These things were not destroyed by the bomb!

[ Laughter continues ]

This time, they must be made real! They must be made facts!  Only these things can guarantee our survival!

[ Laughter continues ]

The potential goodness of man.

[ Laughter continues ]

The potential morality of man.

[ Laughter continues ]

The capability... that's it! The capability of human beings to achieve dignity and decency. Together! Not "I" or "they," but "we." Don't you understand? The only alternative to that is nothing! Don't you see that, people?!  Don't you see?!

[ Laughter continues ]

[ Microphone bangs ]

IMPERIAL ME: That's enough. Bring him over here. Come. Bring him over here. You are charged with the treason of involvement. You are charged with the subversion of the individual me. How do you plead?

WOMAN: Guilty, guilty!

ALL: Guilty, guilty, guilty!

[ All shouting ]

[ Microphone bangs ]

[ Shouting stops ]

IMPERIAL ME: You anything to say? It's your right as an individual me, you know. Just say anything that comes in your head. You don't have to think about it. Just say it. Go ahead. Oh, you want to use the microphone?

CHARLES: I may be all the sanity that is left. I may be all the conscience that remains on earth. I can't let you kill me!

[ Laughter ]

 

The “treason of involvement and the subversion of the individual me,” chilling in every respect.  This was the America when Trump left office and we voted for a reprise.  The death of Jimmy Carter and the impending passing of the baton, again, to DJ Trump mark the laying to rest “we” and the reemergence of “me.”

 

It will be the 4^th anniversary of the January 6^th insurrection tomorrow.  Indeed, the American Flag should fly at half mast out of respect for Jimmy Carter, but as well for abolishing justice for the events of January 6, 2021. At least there will be poetic justice: it still will be at half mast inauguration day.

January 6, 2021, also a day which will live in infamy

 

“Not with a bang but a whimper”

 

I quote the famous last stanza of T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men,” as it has such relevancy today.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper

This vile pandemic has claimed lives, the means of making a living, disrupting every aspect of our entire society.  The tragedies that ensue have been a tsunami of pain and heartbreak.  More than a half million lives lost in the US alone, and the impact on small business, and all the people they employ incalculable. Restaurants, the arts and all the other service industries have been particularly hard hit, rendering actors, technicians, waiters, kitchen staff, hairdressers, unemployed.  One such victim is our beloved Double Roads Tavern in Jupiter where we were regulars for years to enjoy their Sunday night jazz sessions.  I’ve written about the restaurant in these pages and my Twitter feed on Sundays frequently highlighted a brief clip of performances.  They give a sense of the restaurant’s community experience and the high quality jazz they sponsored on Sunday nights.  Vince Flora and his wife Kelly opened the restaurant in 2014.  Vince frequently played on the DR stage with his rhythm and blues band, Big Vince and the Phat Cats .

The Palm Beach Post tells the story at this link. 

I would be remiss in not covering the closing in this blog as it has been an important part of our lives, and so many others.  My wife, Ann, said it best in a heartfelt letter to Kelly:

Dear Kelly,

It was such a pleasure getting to know you a little and seeing that gorgeous smile during the several years we were regulars at your Sunday Night Jazz Fests.  You always saved our favorite table, right in front of Rick and the band.  I loved seeing Cherie too, who always gave us a hug.  We never knew who we were going to see, from little Ava Faith to an eye-popping, sophisticated Ava only a few years later belting out the standards like a pro.  We met Yvette Norwood Tiger there and still follow her very successful career, booking her Palm Beach International Jazz Festival from its beginning.

We met Mike and Linda at your Club, a very fortuitous friendship as they insisted we consider joining them on the weeklong Jazz Cruise in early 2020.  We did and it was the highlight of a most dismal year.  Thanks to them, we saw Emmet Cohen again on board the ship, a young brilliant and charismatic jazz pianist we had seen once in a NY Jazz club and totally flipped over.  He has held Monday night jam sessions in his NY apartment on YouTube which we never miss.  That lifted our spirits during this Pandemic.  And it’s all thanks to you guys and Double Roads!

Once COVID hit, Bob and I went into quarantine on March 12th and never left the house for most of the year.  That hurt us too, as it meant the end of our standing Sunday night Jazz dates.

Now I can only imagine what you and Vince are going through, closing what was a labor-of-love restaurant/dive/bar/music hangout.  Whatever you two decide to do, wherever you go, I’m sure your hundreds and hundreds of faithful customers will follow. I wish you good luck and good health.  You contributed so much to our well being that we will never forget you.

Fondly,

Ann & Bob

P.S. we LOVED your hamburgers!

I think of that tragedy as being emblematic of the larger issue, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and the infinite number of similar wide ranging effects of the pandemic with an overwhelming sense of sadness and anger: as a nation we failed.  Period.  While it would have been impossible to avoid the impact completely, it could have been ameliorated by not denying it and listening to science, and following their recommendations scrupulously.  How many lives were needlessly lost as a consequence?  Even one is too many if the result of negligence. We must hold our leaders accountable.

The saddest part is we are still fighting a cultural war using the pandemic as the battle ground, the anti-vaxxers taking up Trumpism.  How can we reach herd immunity when “leaders,” such as our Governor DeSantis, comes out against some form of “vaccination passport?”  One anti-vaxxer wrote a letter to the editor of the Palm Beach Post, asking that vaccinated people “respect” her “right” not to be vaccinated and not to segregate her from public venues. It was a reasonable letter, but the logic deeply flawed.  I tried to write an equally reasonable letter to the editor, but it turned into an essay so they published it as a “guest columnist.”  Here is the link but as they sometimes do not allow non subscribers to view, I include a photograph of the column.

Will we be forced to live with this virus for the foreseeable future due to “perceived” personal liberties?  In a rational society, that would seem unthinkable, but we’ve lived with outdated gun laws for decades due to the same problem.  There are now so many of these mass killings that I’ve given up writing about more sensible gun control laws, particularly to eliminate military style weaponry (which was not the intent of the Second Amendment).  Is this America’s future, an uncontrolled pandemic, wearing masks, having high hospitalization rates, those injured by gun assaults lying next to those with COVID?  Mass burials?  Are we already spiritually dead as Eliot implies in his poem?

Perhaps this is how a once great society, a representative democracy formerly the envy of the world, finally implodes.  “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Trump Ennui

It is bad enough that he is omnipresent like a Cheshire cat on the airways, on line, wherever you turn, but to have him as a “neighbor” as well is pure overload.  I suppose he misses the gold-plated Mar-a-Lago and the opportunity to play on his own golf courses in the sun.  More likely, it is the procession which draws him here, the parade of pomp and preparation, and his brand being brandished.

Days in advance our local newspaper breathlessly announces his highness’ arrival, expectantly and cautionary as it causes total disruption in the area.  This coming visit involves Chinese President XI and his entourage who will be staying at the Eau Palm Beach which used to have the more hotel-like name of Ritz Carlton.  I once stayed there for a big corporate conference myself.  It’s palatial, but I suppose Trump’s Mar-a-Lago gives it a good run for its money.  So you can catch Xi at the Eau. 

Palm Beach County – and in particular Palm Beach itself – will be a traffic nightmare.  Thus far the expense of these numerous Trump visits is borne by the County.  Trump makes a big deal of donating his $78k quarterly salary to the US National Parks Dept, while cutting its parent Department of the Interior’s budget by $2 billion.  According to my math, it’ll take him more than 6,000 years of donating his salary to make up the difference.  Maybe I have an extra zero someplace, or missed a zero as it seems like a VERY long time but if he lasts 6,000 years in office, all the more power to him. It could happen as everything he does is amazing, big time, etc.

He refuses to pick up Palm Beach County’s expense of guarding him so he can play golf in the sunshine.  Perhaps the County’s officials should read “his” Art of the Deal and walk away from the table, go protect yourself, Donald.  It might be the only way they/we can get reimbursement for those expenses.  But the County officials like to delude themselves that as Trump’s visits put Palm Beach County in the limelight that will increase tourism and thus drive tax revenue.  Do you want to visit PBC because Trump is frequently here?  I guess Washington DC’s tourism is on the wane as the star is rarely there on weekends.

I can’t imagine why the Chinese delegation agreed to meet at Mar-a-Lago where Trump can flaunt his ego.  After all, there are very weighty issues to be discussed. Where does one get the idea that these can be easily discussed while teeing off on a golf course?  Why not stay in the White House where there is a bowling alley?  They can discuss the issues while joking about Trump’s 7-10 split.  Trump is a good golfer (my neighbor is one of his pros) and he probably wants to play games he can easily win.  Look at me!

This egomaniacal inexperienced President is now toying with one of the most serious international issues of his presidency, the growing threat of North Korea.  Making statements like, we’ll go it alone if China doesn’t act or Tillerson’s inexplicable dropping of the mike simply saying “the United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment," does not exactly inspire confidence.  We’re talking nuclear war here, folks, not jobs for coal-miners.  Not that the latter is unimportant but that is in an industry that is dying because of alternative energy supplies, including natural gas.  It’s going the way horse-drawn carriages when the automobile became dominant.  Focus on the right stuff!

The first 100 days are not yet over but it already seems like 1,000.  There are so many issues that keep me restless at night, day, whenever, the Syrian humanitarian crisis, the impending Korean disaster, decimating environmental budgets and regulations,  the gas lighting of fake news, Russia’s possible interference with the election and the general vulnerability that the Internet and social media create, the continuing inability of Congress to function, the callous consequences of misguided immigration and refugee proposals, impracticable building of a wall in the middle of the Rio Grande river while our Infrastructure is falling apart, tax reform which will inevitably favor the rich including the removal of the inheritance tax, unrealistic border taxes (and extremely difficult to articulate and manage), and I can go on and on, but what’s the sense? 

At mid-term elections I will cast my one vote, if we last that long – given the consequences of the ischemic seizure of our entire governing process and the self-serving dilettantes now at the tiller.  I’ve written often about DJT even though I mightily try to ignore him, my resolve weak due to ongoing embarrassment for our nation and, now, just plain fear. I write as a form of catharsis.