CSotD: Unequal and Opposite Reactions
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I suppose we should have seen it coming a half century ago, when people started buying “Archie Bunker for President” merchandise. As I’ve said here often, I watched “All in the Family” for several weeks before deciding that sitting through 20 minutes of racist, sexist jokes wasn’t worth the three-minute “Aw, Archie! You’re so wrong!” conclusion at the end. And as I’ve also often noted, Norman Lear could have filed cease and desist orders against those merch vendors if he’d wanted to.
Well, never mind: Archie Bunker is president, elected by people who admire his spunk. As for merchandise, he’s putting his name on everything he can, and his face on giant posters reminiscent of the enormous portrait of Mao hung over Tiananmen Square, and, as Ostrove notes, there isn’t a lot of difference.
It is very much a cult of personality; Stalin, the man who inspired that term, liked having statues and portraits of himself everywhere as well, and had the city of Tsaritsyn renamed Stalingrad in 1925, as he was seizing power. We haven’t seen a major city renamed for Trump, but stay tuned. It’s not that wild a concept.
He’s named himself permanent chair of his Board of Peace and, as McKee points out, he remains dedicated to peace, or at least to claiming to have stopped wars a few of which actually existed, but it hasn’t halted him from threatening Iran. Or, for that matter, Denmark and Canada.
It seems to put “Board of Peace” in the same category as Oceana’s “Ministry of Peace” though at least he calls the Department of Defense the “Department of War,” a bit of refreshing honesty amid all the doublespeak.
The problem comes when his response to one set of frustrations is the sort of distraction that gains praise from his supporters, particularly those who have no commitment to peace and, specifically, those who fear and hate people of different religions, not that they seem dedicated to following their own.
Whether by instinct or by clever planning, there is nothing like a war to rally people behind their leaders, and you have only to look back at the invasion of Iraq to see how the nation pinned flags on their lapels and rallied behind George W. Bush, despite the clear facts that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11 and that inspectors inside the country insisted that Saddam Hussein did not appear to possess weapons of mass destruction.
There seems, if polls are correct, currently little support for war, but that could easily change once the first bombs fall and the first casualties are in the news, even if, like Jessica Lynch, their stories are largely invented.
Nor does science stand much of a chance against emotional appeals. Bunday has no doubt infuriated history buffs by repeating the common misconception of King Cnut’s famous attempt to stop the tides.
Canute was attempting to prove to his courtiers that there were some things even the king could not accomplish, but it has come down, instead, as a prideful, futile gesture, and Dear Leader’s insistence that climate change doesn’t exist is indeed just that.
There being nothing Dear Leader believes he cannot accomplish simply by executive order.
The Supreme Court disagrees with Dear Leader’s grasp of his powers, but we’ve heard how Trump feels about their opinions, and in analyzing his understanding of the Constitution which he swore to uphold, we need only recall how he failed to accurately describe the Declaration of Independence — a much simpler document — to Terry Moran.
He doesn’t read, and in his first administration, his staff learned to put his name in documents so he would at least glance at them. Like Chance the Gardner, he likes to watch, and seems to get more input from Fox News than from his own staff members.
Toro’s humor is only slightly absurd; Trump has been known to wander out of the room during briefings and dozes off in meetings. Holding his attention is a challenge, which may explain the fulsome praise directed at him by his Cabinet members in their meetings.
His devotion to petroleum is transparently understandable; During his campaign, he promised oil executives that if they donated a billion dollars to his election coffers, he would end support of electric vehicles, wind power and other green policies.
It appears to have been a promise kept, and the Trump administration has also ended the EPA’s primary mission of protecting the environment in favor, instead, of making regulations that ignore health and environmental issues in order to maximize industry profits.
His love of “clean coal” — an oxymoron — is less directly traceable, but Granlund doesn’t stretch the truth much in suggesting that he’d bring back coal-fired trains. His promises to reintroduce coal-fired generation plants ignore the fact that it would require replacement of generators designed to be powered by natural gas. It’s not just impractical but ridiculous.
But it was only an issue in his first administration, in which he struggled to get competent cabinet members to adopt his eccentricities. This time around, he has been careful to assemble a team of people who share his views, or at least are willing to adapt to them.
This is how you wind up with an Education Secretary who mistakes artificial intelligence for steak sauce, and a press secretary with jaw-dropping loyalty to alternative facts.
Logic and science have only a limited place in current society, and not only is ICE monitoring social media of critics, travelers and immigrants, but the government is reaching out to spot and track disloyalty across the board.
It’s important that you know your rights.
So you can tell your grandchildren what life was like when you were their age.
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