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.

Swimming Towards The Light

Looking over my last four years of writing I note the gathering dyspeptic tone.  If I had to draw a graph of it there would be a steady downward “tone” line with a sharp descending drop at the onset of the pandemic.  Before that point, there was still theatre, music, literature, and travel to think about, enjoy and write about, a distraction from the Anvil Chorus of Trumpian Transgressions.

This is not my first self-assessment.  A few weeks ago I wrote “We are all in survival mode now.  "This has all sorts of practical ramifications and seems to rob us of other activities.  For instance, my reading of fiction, for which there should be more time during this pandemic, is nearly impossible as existential dread has supplanted my patience. “

That “existential dread” was one of the reasons I couldn’t bear to watch the virtual Democratic National Convention these past few days.  I feared the Democrats would do something spectacularly dumb to jeopardize our one and only chance to remove a spectacularly amoral, non-presidential person from office who lost the popular vote by 3 million four years ago, but managed to inveigle his way into office via collusion and the outdated Electoral College.

As Tyler Elliot Bettilyon explains in Are You Suffering From Existential Dread? I obviously have AED (Acute Existential Dread), “an intense feeling of inconsequentiality triggered by external stimuli.” 

There is enough anxiety in our lives now, a deadly cocktail of environmental degradation, racial inequality, pandemic and healthcare hazards, main street economic woes, Internet facilitated conspiracy groups, militant supporters of a mostly unregulated 2^nd amendment, and the decline of American participation in world cooperation, to indeed trigger AED.  When you add Trump’s vitriol to the equation, it is exponential.

Joe Biden had my vote a long time ago.  Anyone from the Democratic Party would have had my vote.  AED indeed blocked my watching most of the DNC, fearful that we might unintentionally alienate voters we need to show up in the swing states.  But, the last night of the convention, I felt it I wanted to see Biden’s acceptance speech, watching it as I would the 7^th game of the World Series, bottom of the 9^th, bases loaded for my team, one run down, and one out.  Any baseball fan now understands the depth of my AED.

First, I saw 13-year-old Brayden Harrington who met Biden on the campaign trail and talked to him about his stuttering.  Brayden, when you bravely took the virtual stage and said "He told me that we were members of the same club: We stutter,” my hopes were raised for Biden’s subsequent speech.

Biden's speech was the pinnacle of his political lifetime, and ours as we are all struggling, swimming in the muck towards the light.  My AED will never be gone until the swampster-in-chief, along with his criminal cronies, are gone, gone, gone.  But after Biden’s speech, particularly its tone of inclusiveness, there is hopefulness.  I really believe, for the first time in four years, that there is a chance to address the fundamental existential threats to our way of life and life itself.  Maybe indeed we can make America great again.

Unfortunately, we see how Trump is setting this up, undermining the Post Office and already questioning the legitimacy of the election, preparing to challenge the results, no matter what they are.  The more he can make this close and the longer the final tally can be delayed, the higher the probability he can throw the results into a chaotic challenge.  This will not be like the disputed Gore –Bush 2000 contest, where the Supreme Court made the decision and it was accepted by Gore (who really did win).  No, Trump might undermine this for weeks afterwards, trying to throw it into the House of Representatives where each state gets one vote (even through there are more Democratic Representatives, there are more states with a majority of Republican Representatives and therefore their one vote counts disproportionately).

I don’t know how they (the Republicans) always seem to have an unfair advantage, but it is even more reason why Democratic turnout MUST be massive and there can be no question of the results, although they will still be challenged by Trump.  We might all have to go to DC with pitchforks to remove him.  Ah, that’s my AED speaking again.

 

Pandemic “Blues”

In addition to its deadly physical health consequences, there is a certain kind of sadness which COVID19 transmits unlike other tragedies.  One never gets over 9/11 except that murderous shock, once absorbed, we frail human beings went through Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, arriving at some form of acceptance.  Not so with this virus as it a slow-motion tragedy, one of our own making, and now failing to manage, with no real end in sight, other than civil discord which just exacerbates the issue.  Thus we are stuck at the grief stage, almost like an LP record reaching the end and then skipping in a loop, skipping, skipping …skipping.

 

Nothing has prepared us emotionally for these times, its dangers and its disruption.  Although we can escape to streaming forms of the arts, for many of us it is difficult to bear for long periods of time.  It’s even hard to read and write as this stage of grief is a barrier to thinking.  I find my piano to be an escape at times but the programs I usually play were for other, better times, so increasingly I’ve been turning to uncharted territory, playing pieces I’ve rarely played before.  In the process, I’ve learned some about Broadway history outside my zone of familiarity.  These pieces are not the well-worn ones I’ve played throughout my life by Rodgers and Hart, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, etc. 

 

I recorded a couple on YouTube but, now, with some unease as a few view the platform as a form of competition.  I don’t pretend to be a pianist of any consequence, other than playing for myself, those who have enjoyed my work in retirement homes, and a few fund-raising luncheons I’ve played at.  My work in the theatre has been as a lobby pianist on opening night where background music was desired, not a performance.

 

So, although I know what I’m posting for this particular entry is not at the level that everyone has come to expect with current streamed performances, and we’ve seen some remarkable ones, YouTube is the only platform I can use for playing on all devices. 

 

First on my “COVID19 discovery quest” is a little known, but Tony nominated 1974 musical Over Here.  It derives its title from a plot involving WW II but was happening “over here.”  It played for a year on Broadway and was still playing to full audiences when it shut down over a salary dispute between the stars, the two remaining members of the Andrews Sisters, and the producers.

 

The song writers were the enormously successful team of the Sherman Brothers (Robert and Richard) who, previously unknown to me, may be the most prolific songwriting team of all time as they wrote mostly movie musical scores and in particular, when they were under contract with Disney for all of their hit musicals.  Over Here was their lone Broadway hit, and it included a number of good, solid Broadway melodies and one in particular hit me during these times, its title almost defining our unreal era as well, "Where Did the Good Times Go?"  Indeed, where did they go and will they ever come back in my lifetime?

 

It’s considered the musical’s “big number” sung near the end of the second act.  It’s plaintive melody and lyrics are perfectly married…

 

What fun we had, then laughter turned sad.

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

Our hopes and plans slipped right through our hands.

Oh, where, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Some place some-where, instead of despair is the love we used to know:

Why can’t we return?

Won’t we ever return?

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Those are the simple lyrics but with a poignant message for our times as well.

 

 

From there I move back in time (1959), to a much less successful musical, The Nervous Set, which was written by an unknown team, Jay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker, with lyrics by Fran Landesman, who was a poet of the beat generation, with music by Tommy Wolf who Fran Landesman met when he was a pianist on a gig.  The musical closed after only 23 performances.

 

Landesman had a fascinating, unconventional life which the New York Times’ perfectly captured in her obituary when she died almost ten years ago. 

 

Wolf began to transcribe some of her poetry to music after they met, culminating in this musical about a publisher (Fran’s husband, Jay) and his wife who leave their Connecticut suburb to visit Greenwich Village during the peak of its beat popularity.  Although the best-known song is undoubtedly “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” which is a jazz standard, I turn to the lesser known "Ballad of the Sad Young Men." 

 

These are the partial lyrics…

 

Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye

All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men, sitting in the bars

Knowing neon nights, and missing all the stars

All the sad young men, drifting through the town

Drinking up the night, trying not to drown

All the sad young men, singing in the cold

Trying to forget, that they're growing old….

 

This song, which has also been adopted by the jazz circuit, became a mainstay of gay bars.  It is mournful, and what can be sadder than the current time we are living through – pandemically, politically, and racially?

Where are We and Why?

When I began writing this blog I had little idea where it would lead me.  I imagined that it would be some sort of personal journal where I could express my thoughts, opinions, but not exactly detail my everyday life (who would care anyhow?) yet capture a sense of my personal history (more for family and friends and for my own recollection).  As it turns out, a large part of my writing migrated to politics and the economy and to plays and novels.  Those I recently edited, organized, tried to make some sense of, and published in both printed and eBook form. 

We are all in survival mode now.  This has all sorts of practical ramifications and seems to rob us of other activities.  For instance, my reading of fiction, for which there should be more time during this pandemic, is actually more difficult as existential dread supplants my patience for fiction.  No, instead, after getting through the New York Times, The New Yorker, and even our local Palm Beach Post, that precious commodity, time, has been consumed.  And although we are unable to go to theatre, or even out to eat, streaming the arts has taken that chunk of time, such as described in a previous entry on Emmet Cohen’s jazz stream, what PBS has to offer, and discovering the treasure chest of BBC PROMS.

A friend of mine once flattered me by comparing my writing to Samuel Pepys’ diary.  I make no such farfetched claim as Pepys wrote daily and at a time where a record of daily life in London (1660-1669) was unique.  Everyone writes today and I would imagine the output from everything written in one day would fill the entire Library of Congress plus.  No, mine is merely the thinking of an “everyman.”  Pepys also did not have to deal with privacy concerns as we now have to in the age of the Internet.  I wonder what he would think of today’s communication and how that would have curtailed the intimacy of his writing.

Pepys was witness to some of the major events of his time, such as the Great Fire of London of 1666 and, ironically, the Great Plague of 1665 (about which he commented “But, Lord!,  how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people”).  I now stand witness to our own Great Plague, its effects only to be understood when it is a thing of the past, and I have been witness to the “Great Fire” of fundamental changes to our society and politics during the first two decades of the 21^st century.

A while ago I had decided that I was mostly finished with writing about politics and economics as they seem to have entered the Twilight Zone of understanding.  I still feel that way, but at a certain point my blood boils and this is my only outlet, besides the endless emailing back and forth to friends, admittedly, ones who mostly agree with me, and thus, I am part of the problem.  Never in my recollection has this country become so blatantly divisive, as if the Civil War was never concluded.

Long ago I quoted the late preeminent science fiction writer Isaac Asimov who said in Newsweek (21 January 1980): “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life; nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

That is the heart of our existential crisis:  anti-intellectualism, anti-science, an acceptance of the transmutability of truth.  The traditional Republican Party, the one I grew up knowing, just no longer exists.  The intellectual conservatives that would be best represented by George Will (and would have included William Buckley if he were alive), have been usurped by Trumpians, born out of the “Tea Party” who have tapped into the vein of nationalism and anti-intellectualism which runs deep in this country. 

That was the knock on Adlai Stevenson in his 1952 and 1956 bid for the Presidency when he ran against Ike: he was TOO smart.  No, this country likes some traits of the common man, or at least the appearance of such.  Hey, Obama plays basketball well.  Our current President can identify an elephant, count backwards from 100 in increments of 7, and remember five words consecutively.  Based on such criteria, most people could be President as well.

He’s challenged Biden to a “Test Slam.”  How about taking a test for Antisocial Personality Disorder instead?  This would establish his sociopathic tendencies.  His blatant manipulative propagandist rhetoric, either on Twitter or delivered during so-called press conferences are manifestations of those.  Gustave Le Bon's classic The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind identified the essence of Trump’s so called “stable genius” way back in 1895: "The power of words is bound up with the images they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence. Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables as [if] they contained the solution to all problems. They synthesize the most diverse unconscious aspirations and the hope of their realization. Reason and arguments are incapable of combating certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity...and as soon as they have been pronounced an expression of respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads bowed. By many they are considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers. They evoke grandiose and vague images in men's minds, but this very vagueness that wraps them in obscurity augments their mysterious power."

He can turn a rational decision such as cancelling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month into one of his propaganda messages, “only I can save you,” framing it in the context of his going against “expert advice” that it would be safe to hold the convention, this, of course, after exposing untold thousands to deaths due to his turning the wearing of face masks into a political statement.

Among his more serious mass manipulative propaganda are his recent “I approve this message” media, one showing an elderly woman watching a TV “news report” about defunding  the police, in stark black and white photography, when suddenly she hears her front door being rattled by a shadowy figure, forcing himself into her home with a crowbar.  She dials 911 and it rings and rings with no answer.  Suddenly the phone is shown lying on floor with a message along the lines that this is Joe Biden’s future for America.  Manipulative Advertising 101, you don’t sell the product, you sell the emotion.  He and his team are masters at scare tactics which are deplorable. 

So is his culpability in fomenting unrest with the use or threatened use of Federal troops in States, and exposing more people to this pandemic than is and was necessary, his ignorance of history and distain for scientific knowledge, his instability, his racist tendencies, his totalitarian use of the Judicial branch, commuting Roger Stone’s sentence but sending Michael Cohen back to prison because he is writing a book.  These remain unchecked, mired in obfuscation.  It is tragic that he and his enablers can claim that flying the Confederate flag is a form of “free speech” while attempting to suppress Cohen’s book, indeed an issue of free speech.  Does he know the difference, or does he not care?

His attempting to reopen schools while the pandemic rages in southern and western states is yet more tinder to be thrown into the flames of this pandemic.  Congress has adjourned without a package to protect the unemployed from being evicted from their apartments and or homes.  

He would like to blame China.  Maybe they are culpable for the virus’ origins, but that is one issue while dealing with its consequences both by China and then the rest of the world is another.  Why does such a large number of his followers fail to recognize the differences between how other countries have at least learned to live with this virus with lesser risk and our out of control lack of response? 

It is because we have a full-blown culture war, not a new one, but intensified by his 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.

I can always dip into my blog for examples and one that comes to mind was when we were “fighting” with ourselves over the use of scanning equipment at airports that reveal outlines of one’s body.  The analogy to the “constitutional right” to not wear a mask is not far-fetched, although the mask issue is more deadly, and science so clearly has demonstrated the benefits of wearing one during this pandemic.  The irony is those most opposed to wearing a mask most favor a fast reopening of businesses, not recognizing that mask wearing will facilitate the latter.  From ten years ago I quote my entry “Get Over Your Junk.”  Some things never change.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Get Over Your Junk

Get over it already! Having an implanted medical device for almost twenty years and having flown frequently both domestically and internationally during that period, I've had more pat downs than Tiger Woods has had lap dances. Furthermore, having endured the indignity of backless hospital gowns and medical procedures on a number of occasions, my being naked on a faceless image of a body scan sure beats being blown to smithereens at 30,000 feet.

Amazing, this "outcry" against thorough airport screenings is exactly the kind of disruption terrorists want and the American public is buying right into it. Instead of just going through this in an orderly way to expedite the process, we conjure up images of our constitutional rights being violated. It will take only one tragic incident in the air to silence these critics, something they are inviting by their protests.

Do I think these rigid guidelines are the answer to combating terrorism in the skies? No, but they are part of a solution, and an easy one if everyone simply cooperates. Ten seconds in a body scanner is not too much to ask. Your "junk" is not so sacred. Stay home and never go to a hospital if you think it is.

Evoking John Updike and Philip Roth

I woke up this morning and had John Updike and Philip Roth on my mind.  They are the writers I grew up admiring the most and I’ve made a point of that repeatedly in these pages.  So why am I now dreaming of them in the half light of dawn, both now gone?  The answer came as I was exercising in our pool this morning (one of the few pluses of being self quarantined in Florida): the pandemic of course.

I’ve discussed their attitudes towards death in past entries, almost as if being a dress rehearsal, and aren’t we all more acutely aware of our own fragile existence during these times? Roth’s preoccupation with death gathers momentum in his later works while Updike’s is less transparent, although Rabbit at Rest is fairly unambiguous, not to mention poems like “Perfection Wasted.”

Their demise leaves a void in serious American fiction.  Imagine what they would have to write today.  I mostly read fiction to understand our world, not to hear a “swell” story. There are other forms of entertainment for that.   Navigating COVID-19 without those heartfelt companions is almost like performing on a tight-rope without a net, such as the image from Delmore Schwartz’s “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me:” the “bear” (the body) “howls in his sleep because the tight-rope / trembles and shows the darkness beneath.”

This sudden longing for Updike and Roth made me curious about the progress Blake Bailey has made with the biography Roth authorized before his death, giving Bailey extensive interviews and documents.   Updike’s workman like biography was written by Adam Begley and published some six years ago.

But alas, after Googling the matter, Bailey (who I thought would write the Updike biography after writing magnificent ones of John Cheever and Richard Yates) is still working on the Roth biography and it is tentatively scheduled for publication in April 2021.  

 

However, there was an unexpected bonus in doing this research and that is coming across an absolutely breathtaking article by Charles McGrath who, as a former writer and editor for The New Yorker, knew both Philip Roth and John Updike.  His article, succinctly entitled “Roth/Updike” and published in the Autumn 2019 issue of The Hudson Review sheds a floodlight on their commonalities and clandestine competitiveness.  An abstract of this well written and impassioned article cannot do it justice, so here is a link.  Suffice it to say these two leading American writers will be remembered and studied for centuries to come.  No wonder they are on my mind.