Category Archives: Life

Part 1: Trumpism as a Chronic Condition

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What follows is a meditation on Trumpism written by Philip Kennicott, an art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, a few days after the election. Later I’ll post what he wrote after the attack on the Capitol:

No matter what happens to Dxxxx Txxxx or who assumes the presidency in January, we can say this: He brought the truth of America to the surface. I’ll leave his policies and his politics — to the extent that he ever had policies or coherent politics — to the pundits. As a critic, I can say that he embodied, embraced or inflamed almost everything ugly in American culture, past, present and perhaps future. He made it palpable and tangible even to people inclined to see the bright side of everything. That this week’s election wasn’t a repudiation of Trumpism, that some 6 million more Americans believe in it now compared with four years ago, is horrifying. But it’s also reality, and it’s always best to face reality.

He also gave our unique brand of ugliness — rooted in racism, exceptionalism, recklessness, arrogance and a tendency to bully our way to power — a name. Trumpism is now rooted in the lexicon, and although white supremacy may be the better, more clinical term for what ails America, Trumpism is a useful, colloquial alternative. It encompasses an even wider category of people that includes not just avowed racists who have publicly supported the president but also those who downplay the problem, or align with it for personal gain, or are simply unwilling to acknowledge its history and persistence. Naming a thing is an essential first step to understanding it . . .

In moments of despair, it’s easy to think that the past four years were a failure of civic discourse, that slightly more than half of America simply failed to convincingly argue against Trumpism. America, in the aggregate, seems just as stupid as it was four years ago, when it became clear that we would have to learn some painful lessons, and learn them the hard way, through the collapse of competent governance, the destruction of civility and, now, the ravages of a grossly mismanaged pandemic.

But if we are stupid in the aggregate, many individual Americans are more clear-eyed and conscious than four years ago. The 2016 election proved that the argument against Trumpism had largely failed, but although losing an argument is maddening, it also makes your argument stronger, clarifies your reasoning and orders your logic. Half of America may be right where it was four years ago, still mired in Trumpism, but some part of the other half of America isn’t just opposed to Txxxx but also smarter and more cognizant of how Trumpism has rooted itself in the society. That’s not a negligible accomplishment.

Grappling with white supremacy, or Trumpism if you prefer, was never going to be easy, because it exists not just in a handful of ugly epithets, the caricatures we see in old movies and statues scattered across the landscape. It is existential, precognitive and pervasive, as fully present in how we conceive of beauty as it is in the assumptions we make about that driver who just cut us off while swerving between lanes.

Changing how we think would be difficult even if we all agreed on the necessity for change. It is even more difficult given that 48 percent of the country resists the project entirely. But for all the damage Txxxx has done, much of which may never be undone, he has inadvertently, accidentally and unintentionally left us with a model for what needs to be done.

Trumpism is embedded in America and can be fought only through rigorous self-discipline, through constant surveillance of the thoughts we think, the words we use and the assumptions we make. There was White supremacy before we started thinking of it as Trumpism, but before Txxxx, there also was a tendency to think of it as “out there” rather than “in here.” Now we know it not as a perverse blemish on American culture but as foundational to American culture. That’s progress.

On a summer morning in 1861, holiday makers, the picnic crowd, the Washington swells went out to the battlefield at Manassas to watch a quick and decisive battle bring an end to the Civil War. Head east past the battlefield on Interstate 66 and you’re roughly retracing the holiday crowd’s steps when they fled back to Washington in panic and disorder after Confederate troops routed Union forces. Some of them, safe again in the nation’s capital, were perhaps slightly less ignorant about the magnitude of the war that awaited them.

Disillusionment isn’t an event — it’s a process. It doesn’t arrive and do its work all at once, like an epiphany. It is a way of living, a perpetual vigilance, a habit of mind. We may wish that Trumpism could be defeated, like an external enemy. But reality requires that we think of it as a chronic condition of American public life — not a virus that can be quarantined and perhaps cured, but a lifestyle disease rooted in sedentary thinking.

Deadly Serious Nonsense

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Two days later, more stories are coming out about the terror his supporters inflicted on Washington, D.C. Reporters and photographers, doing their job, documenting the scene, were particular targets. A few of the criminals who had such a gleeful time this week are finally, slowly, being arrested. A Capitol police officer has died of his wounds, while three of his bosses have resigned in disgrace.

Dan Zak of The Washington Post writes about that day:

On Wednesday, during its season finale, the Dxxxx Txxxx Show finally leaped off the screen and into the laps of the people in power. The finale started with Republicans in Congress debasing themselves to soothe the wounded ego of the main character, the man who is vandalizing their party and their legacies, the man whose family is prolonging a grift disguised as a chintzy brand of fascism that many people are taking very, very seriously — so seriously, in fact, that an army of delusional insurrectionists sacked the U.S. Capitol as legislators were engaging peacefully, if disagreeably, in the transfer of presidential power.

“If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral,” said outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) around 1:30 p.m., finally breaking with President Txxxx and his remaining enablers, who were objecting to counting the electoral votes from several states. Within an hour, the presiding officer’s chair in McConnell’s beloved institution was occupied by a bare-chested, face-painted hooligan who wore horns and animal pelts and believes that Txxxx is a god-king sent to vanquish phantom traitors and baby eaters.

It was a day of profound national humiliation, and it had been coming for a while.

A plurality of Americans voted against Txxxx in 2016. A majority voted against him in November. His incendiary behavior was tolerated, excused, ignored; there was his feeble response to the neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, the programmatic hatred of his countless rallies, the storming of the Michigan Capitol last year after his indirect encouragement. And now his extremist followers were allowed to lay siege to a building that hadn’t been molested since 1814, when the British burned the Capitol in the name of their own god-king.

Some people who could have spoken up long ago finally found their voice.

“Today’s tyranny, an effort to subjugate America’s democracy by mob rule, was fomented and directed by Mr. Txxxx,” said Jim Mattis, Txxxx’s first secretary of defense. “His effort to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”

Mattis predicted that Txxxx will be “a man without a country.”

He will not, however, be a man without a following. The violent insurrectionists, bedecked in the name Txxxx, scaled and smashed their way into the Capitol, stalked and chased police officers up marble staircases, looted and ransacked members’ offices, ascended the dais in both the House and Senate for the perverse photo op. Members of Congress were hurried to undisclosed locations as staffers ducked in the galleries and prayed. . . .

It was all nonsense, and it was deadly serious. It was a furious pageant in which people were injured and killed. It was Washington turned into the Roman Empire by way of Atlantic City: corrupted, bankrupted, prostituted by Txxxx for a self-mythologizing spectacle and a quick buck. . . .

TV anchors, agog, kept saying they could not have imagined this. Politicians, bunkered, released statements of shock and outrage. They had not been paying attention. For some people — immigrants, Americans of color — the Dxxxx Txxxx Show was never just a show.

For the privileged, the past four years have seemed like shock-jock entertainment. Sometimes it was funny. Sometimes it was unbelievable. For the party in power it was an opportunity to laugh, to fret casually, to fundraise, to confirm some judges, to fast-track a career as a toadie or a righteous scold. Now, as the Capitol’s security gave way, the bitter reality of America’s civic tragedy finally materialized in the “citadel” of democracy, as Biden referred to it in a brief, somber statement.

Long after things got ugly, Txxxx released some tweets, as well as a video from the Rose Garden, addressing the monster he had brought to life.

“We love you,” he told the violent insurrectionists.

“You’re very special,” he told the violent insurrectionists.

“Remember this day forever!” he told the violent insurrectionists. . . .

Txxxx’s incitements had been heard loud and clear elsewhere, too. In Olympia, Wash., a mob stormed the gates of the governor’s mansion. In Atlanta, Georgia’s secretary of state was evacuated from his office. In Denver, the mayor ordered city buildings closed. Outside the U.S. Capitol the insurrectionists waved JESUS flags, erected an executioners stand with a noose, carried a sign that said “PELOSI IS SATAN,” wore clothing that invoked Nazism. . . 

Many of the insurrectionists were young men spoiling for a fight, adrenalized by chaos. During the campaign, Trump had told people like them to “stand back and stand by,” and then, after he lost the election, urged them to come to Washington on the day Congress was slated to make that loss unsalvageable. On Wednesday, with his family, he lit their fuse and retired to the West Wing to watch the explosion on television. . . .

As night fell, and the Capitol was retaken, . . . the insurrectionists moved westward and were allowed to violate a 6 p.m. city curfew, in stark contrast to the Black Lives Matter protesters who were assaulted by law enforcement here over the summer. Under the supervision of SWAT teams, the House and Senate reconvened to carry on their disrupted formality. . . .

Senators made sanctimonious speeches about rules, about comity, about how “this is not who we are,” as if what had just happened had not happened at all. . . .

The Trump Show resumed, with supporting characters auditioning for the lead role. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) doubled down on his objection to counting Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. (Back in his home state, the Kansas City Star’s editorial board had already written that he had “blood on his hands.”) . . . 

Just past 3:30 a.m., Congress finished its work. “The report we make is that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be president and vice president,” announced Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Now there was a standing ovation in the House chamber. Pence responded that this was a “sufficient declaration.” He then handed things off to the chaplain for a prayer.

“We deplore the desecration of the United States Capitol building, the shedding of innocent blood, the loss of life and the quagmire of dysfunction that threaten our democracy,” prayed the Senate chaplain, Barry Black. “These tragedies have reminded us that words matter and that the power of life and death is in the tongue.”

Why Try to Get Rid of Him Now?

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He is scheduled to be removed from office 13 days from now. Any attempt to strip him of his powers would require a number of Republican officeholders to agree. Given the nature of almost all Republican officeholders, it’s unlikely they would cooperate. But there are reasons to make the effort anyway.

First, it’s the right thing to do. Heinous actions should have consequences, either as retribution or as a way to limit future bad behavior.

Second, it reminds everyone that the federal government has procedures in place to deal with presidents who are unfit. Following those procedures when appropriate emphasizes their reality. It gives them weight.

Third, a failed attempt would show the public which Republican officeholders refused to do the right thing. Most of us already know who is likely to resist removing this particular unfit president, but it’s worth making their refusal public knowledge, making it clear to even more of us that they shouldn’t be given the benefit of the doubt or entrusted with responsibility in the future.

Finally, it’s possible that the attempt to punish this president would succeed. Since the president incited a riot that endangered Vice President Pence and members of his family, in addition to all the other people who were put at risk, and furthermore called Pence disloyal and weak when he failed to engineer a coup, the vice president might conceivably get a majority of the president’s cabinet members to approve the use of the 25th Amendment, making Pence the acting president until January 20th. If Democrats in the House of Representatives impeach the president again, as they seem likely to, roughly 17 of the 50 or so Republican senators, including Majority Leader McConnell, might conceivably agree to convict him and bar him from ever being president again.

This is why it’s encouraging that leading Democrats. a few Republicans and other observers have called for action against this incredibly unfit president, unlikely as it may be.

It Wouldn’t Be Hard to End Poverty in America

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If we were willing to share the wealth. From Jacobin Magazine:

The poor in our nation are often blamed for their own crises, with lawmakers and even service providers citing bad behavior or ignorance as the cause of individual poverty.

In Broke in America, Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox reject that narrative. US policies that benefit the wealthy cause poverty, they insist — and changes to those policies can end it.

Fran Quigley interviewed Goldblum and Shaddox for Jacobin.

FQ

Almost immediately in this book, you confront the maxim, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”: “Antipoverty efforts should stop making assumptions about people’s fishing abilities,” you write. “It’s past time to stop judging and give that hungry person a fish.” Why did you take that on?

CS

That saying summarizes everything that’s wrong with how the United States addresses poverty: we say the problem is the person, so we need to fix the person and what that person lacks in skills. But does he even have a fishing pole? Is he too weak with hunger to go fish? Is the “he” in question actually a woman, and women aren’t allowed to fish there?

It’s so paternalistic and so horrible. Yet people say it all the time, like they’ve said something wise and caring.

JG

At the policy level, we create systems that actually make it harder for people to be self-sufficient.

For example, many people who are part of the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) or workforce development programs are trained to become certified nursing assistants, CNAs. That’s a very important job that we need to do. But it is a poverty-wage job. By and large, people who work in those positions don’t have workplace benefits and are not paid a living wage. But the government trains someone to be a CNA and then it can feel like it’s done something because it’s gotten that person off of the rolls.

FQ

You devote a good deal of the book to reviewing the data and the stories that describe US poverty, but you always circle back to solutions, refuting the idea we often hear that “the poor will always be with us.” Why do you think we can, as your subtitle promises, end poverty in the United States?

JG

Because poverty is simply not having enough money to meet your needs. There is nothing more complicated about it than that. And we live in the richest nation in the world, where there is plenty of money. So if we have the political will, we could end poverty.

There are lots of different ways to do it. A living wage is necessary . . . We talk in the book about universal health care, housing supports, about making water and electricity and heat a public good. Other countries do all this, and there is no reason we could not do so as well. If we just tax people appropriately, we can have the money to do all this.

CS

We write about challenges in affording car insurance in places where you need a car to get to work, the difficulty in keeping the lights on, not being able to afford medicines. Being in poverty is like walking across a rotted floor — there are so many ways you can fall through. And it all comes down to money.

[There] is a lot of money that’s churning around in our economy, but it’s not being shared appropriately. And by “shared,” I don’t mean some generous act. I mean that the worker in the warehouse who is making everything run deserves a fair share of the revenue he is generating. We don’t have that now.

FQ

You both have worked with poor people in the United States for a long time. But you write that it took a while for you to come to your own realizations that our approach to confronting poverty is fundamentally flawed.

JG

I was a social worker doing direct service with chronically homeless families. When they did have homes, they often did not have heat and hot water. One mom who I worked with never had toilet paper and often did not have clean diapers. . . . It turned out there was no choice involved: there was nothing more than the fact that she couldn’t afford these basic necessities. . . .

CS

At the soup kitchen where I worked, you would always have people after the meal asking, “Do you have 75 cents for the bus?” I used to think, gosh, we should teach them planning skills, how to think more long-term. Because they knew when they came to the soup kitchen, they had to get back home. Later on, I realized: they were hungry, and they got 75 cents somehow to come to the soup kitchen to eat in the first place. That was the wise survival strategy.

So often we make judgments about poor people’s motivation and cognition that are really a reflection of not having resources. I do a lot of work in the criminal legal system, and motivation is a big deal. Do they show up for their appointments? Do they return phone calls?

Well, to show up for an appointment, you need transportation and childcare. To return phone calls, you need a working phone. The written notices may be written in a language they don’t speak. And on and on. It’s very much like that woman who didn’t have toilet paper: she didn’t need a lecture on being a better parent; she needed toilet paper. And the guys at the soup kitchen that I was making judgments about — they needed 75 cents for the bus.

FQ

You have your own experiences addressing poverty, you spoke with experts, and you did your own policy research. Why did you consider it important to include in the book the stories of people living in poverty?

JG

These stories matter. There is a certain symbolic annihilation of people in poverty in this country. You watch a situation comedy, and everybody lives in a house with a glittering kitchen with granite countertops. We don’t represent poor people in the world in either nonfiction or fiction terribly much. And when we do, we often reduce them to stereotypes. Colleen really insisted that we interview people from all over the country, to make it clear that poverty exists everywhere in the United States, and that it is not one community, one group, one area, one city. You can go anywhere and find people who are experiencing these issues.

FQ

As frontline service providers who have dealt with these practical problems of poverty, why did you include chapters on racism, sexism, and denial of political power?

CS

When you look at any indicator of poverty — who doesn’t have water in their house, who has food insecurity, who dies sooner — you see that race matters. And you can say the same for gender. Women are more likely to be in poverty, more likely to be in extreme poverty. It’s not just that the world is unfair to poor people. It’s doubly unfair when you belong to another oppressed group. There were some communities that are not just left behind, but consciously excluded from prosperity.

JG

That means that part of ending poverty is taking down structures that block access to the political process, educational opportunities, and on and on. For example, we write in the book about redlining and racism in housing policy at all levels. Colleen and I were very intentional about saying these things out loud and clearly, so people cannot pretend that racism and other structural inequalities don’t impact the struggles we are talking about.

FQ

You mention other nations’ approaches to basic needs. The United States has a dramatically higher poverty rate than other wealthy nations and dramatically greater levels of income and wealth inequality. What are other countries doing right that we don’t do here?

JG

They establish some sort of floor. There is no floor in the United States — there is no depth of poverty that you can’t fall to. We have made TANF time-limited, we have enacted policies to make SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly Food Stamps] time-limited. You can be literally left out in the cold here.

One of the biggest things that’s different about the United States than most other countries is that you can become bankrupt due to medical debt. Not having guaranteed health care and the likelihood of accumulating debt related to health care is uniquely American and incredibly dangerous. . . .You talk to people around the world, and they just are gobsmacked that we allow this. . . .

FQ

What led you down the path of devoting your professional careers to anti-poverty work?

JG

From the time that I can remember, the work that I felt called to do was being a social worker. My mother was a social worker who focused on reproductive rights, and my father was an attorney who did a lot of pro bono work with the ACLU and other causes. . . .

I grew up in New Jersey and was very lucky to go to Hunter College School of Social Work, which teaches what they refer to as Jane Addams social work: not therapy in an office, but changing systems and working to support people.

CS

Probably the defining moment of my life was when I was a very young child, about five or six. My mom was a waitress who worked incredibly hard to support us all. At night, when her feet were just aching, she would put her feet in a tub of Epsom salts. One night I was sitting on the floor playing next to her and I saw the basin fill up with blood because her calluses and blisters had cracked. And I remember thinking: People don’t know how hard her life is, because if they knew they would help. When I grow up, I’m going to write stories about people like my mom. . . .

FQ

I know Colleen is an active Democratic Socialists of America member, and Joanne describes herself as “a little left of liberal.” How far removed from our current U.S. political reality are your prescriptions for ending poverty?

CS

I am a socialist. But you can have onions in a soup without it being onion soup, right? Many of the policies we’re calling for are things that could be labeled socialist, but they’re going on in other capitalist countries. For example, Japan is a very capitalist country where childcare is free. We have just taken capitalism to a really toxic extreme in the United States.

FQ

There have been a lot of books written on poverty, and certainly a lot of media coverage. Who were you aiming to reach with this book?

JG

We wrote this for people who consider themselves to be progressive and may be sympathetic to the poor. But they also have heard the line that poverty is an individual failing or think that it is unsolvable. It’s not.