CSotD: Story Time in America
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I heard a story once.
As a matter of fact, I've heard a lot of stories in my time.
They went along with the sound of a tinny piano in the parlor downstairs.
'Mister, I met a man once when I was only a kid,' they'd always begin.
Pat Bagley cuts to the heart of the matter.
However much Trump may have tried to walk it back, however large or small a part it may be in his overall platform, this is what we're talking about.
Trump, as the bizarre transcript of his meeting with the Washington Post editorial board shows, doesn't simply shoot from the hip but prattles on in a disjointed stream of unconsciousness that, as Kevin Kallaugher notes, is nothing you can agree or disagree with because it makes no sense in the first place.
Matt Bors mocks the commonplace take on Trump, that he says what others are thinking, that his opinions are a refreshing change from scripted, calculated political speech.
As Bors suggests, he's simply a childish sociopath.
But I got in one of those foolish back-and-forths on Facebook last night — those things where you know you can't possibly persuade the person and yet you feel you can't let their statement go unchallenged — and realized that much of Trump's appeal is neither to the foolish nor the heartless but, rather, to the heedless.
Intellectually, I really like Drew Sheneman's take on the dilemma of the GOP, because, indeed, they are reaping what they have sown.
But the question is no longer "Where did all these alligators come from?" because here we are and here they are.
Now what?
As I went back and forth with this bloodless, arrogant, self-assured Facebook guy about abortion and punishment and Trump's statement, I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about.
Not that he didn't have statistics, not that he wasn't politically adept, not that he didn't understand the limits of legislation blah blah blah, but that he combines historical ignorance and a lack of empathy in a way that allows him to dwell in a cocoon.
A few days ago, Mike Peters drew this cartoon, and I liked it, but faulted it mostly for unintentionally furthering the idea that defunding Planned Parenthood is mostly about abortion when, in fact, taxpayer funding of abortion is already illegal, and what these showboat bans do is to cut off a host of other OB/GYN health services.
It's still a good cartoon, however, because, each time a PP clinic closes, that's one fewer place for women who do seek a safe abortion.
But last night, in this back and forth, I realized another problem: The coat hanger does not speak to Millennials.
This isn't a Boomer trying to accuse the younger generation of anything except not having the intense, gut-level experience that the image of a coat hanger invokes for those of us who lived through those days.
It's like showing someone a photo of a lynching. They can be properly repulsed and horrified by the story, but that's not the same thing as wondering if the mob will be coming after you next.
I was never knowingly a partner in an abortion, which is the most any man can claim with confidence.
Here's what I can say with assurance: Just as time has made coat hangers vague and distant, so, too, the entire topic is less immediate if you have never heard the stories, as this young fellow clearly never had.
I have. And if, in Rick Blaine's cruel quote, it was not to "the sound of a tinny piano in the parlor," it was still often from someone whose other choices had been shattered by that one.
Nor was it so much "Mister, I met a man," as "I've never told anyone this …" because the bulk of those stories are kept locked inside.
One of them involved a coat hanger, and a frantic, frightening, life-threatening trip to the hospital, and the likelihood of never being able to have children.
Others were less horrifying, or at least less detailed, but no less heartfelt, and no less heart-breaking.
The point is, Rick Blaine would find it a good deal easier to carry off his role as the tough guy who sticks his neck out for nobody if he hadn't heard those stories.
Which is, after all, the point of the movie.
In 1972, Ms Magazine burst upon the scene with a two-page spread in which 53 prominent women admitted to having had abortions.
It was a thunderbolt, because it gave faces and names to abortion; it stopped the matter from being about some vague other person in some vague other place.
But, after all, it was in Ms, and so the story only reached those who had begun to listen in the first place.
Still, the more often, and the more places in which, the stories are told, the more people – even people who were not trying to listen, even people who were trying not to listen – will hear them, will question their own easy, theoretical moralizing and will begin to consider the matter with their hearts as well as their minds.
And the stories should be told, not screamed. People who have not heard are not the enemy. Simply tell them again.
Speaking of which
It's easy to mock Trump supporters as bigots and idiots and fools, whipped up by talk radio and preyed upon by Trump and Cruz and a host of cynical rightwing demagogues going back to Gingrich and his crew.
But perhaps now you're the one who isn't listening.
David Horsey went to a Trump rally, talked to people, and listened, and the result is a gallery of real people with real voices and real stories.
I don't agree with all of them, or even any of them. Laura Facchini is simply wrong that illegal immigrants qualify for welfare. They don't.
But I'm listening to her story, and hoping one day she will hear mine.
Listening matters.
It might be the only thing that matters.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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