Introduction: The Enigma of Mar-a-Lago
Following the Mar-a-Lago search and aftermath, I think of Abraham Lincoln. “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” And I recall the current ex-president once bragged that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC and get away with it. Or did he? I recently read that he may not have uttered those words after all, though most folks assume he did because it’s so much in character. But then even the doubts fit too. Keep ‘em guessing.
Trickster Figures: A Historical Trope
While the plot not so much thickens as curdles, I’m reminded of trickster figures in folk tales, who bend the rules and play slippery and often spiteful/malicious pranks. It’s a trope that extends far back in human history. Our species has an innate/baked in need for dramatic tension. And some among us have an inherent need to serve it up. Checking for synonyms, I find swindler, charlatan, fraud, con artist. So, don’t think cute, cuddly, chubby-cheeked and a bit cheeky, Disneyfied imps. Think more Loki in the old Norse Eddas, a shapeshifter, with a grudge against the gods, and plotting to tear and/or burn everything down to get even. After famously reappearing in Richard Wagner’s opera Gotterdammerung (“twilight of the gods”), he’s lately resurfaced, classic bad boy in numerous sci fi books, films, video games. That makes sense: I always thought the January 6 rioters acted as if they featured themselves heroes in a massive video game, even wearing costumes. And, lightly anchored in reality, probably engaged in magical thinking, they somehow expected no real-world consequences.
Fresh Air Insights: The Destructionists
Two days of Fresh Air on NPR radio offer insights. Day 1 (August 21, 2022): The Destructionists is the title of Dana Milbank’s book on what’s happening in the Republican party. Former political reporter and now Washington Post columnist, he took the story back to the 1990s, when no-compromise opposition became standard practice, shunning across-the-aisle dealmaking, casting Democrats as enemies, provoking crises like budget standoffs leading to government shutdowns. It’s a contrarian strategy, a term defined by Wikipedia as literally “being against.” Looks like another trickster synonym. Not that these tactics always work as planned. McConnell’s announced intention to limit President Obama to one term failed. Repeat challenges constrained but did not eliminate the Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”). And, in hindsight, leadership probably miscalculated in refusing to sanction any official membership on the House Committee investigating the January 6 riot/insurrection.
Diminishing Returns: Searching for a Positive Identity
Some on the right have started to recognize diminishing returns. Joseph Epstein wrote an op-ed for the conservative, Murdoch-owned, Wall Street Journal: Republicans Should Stand for More Than Opposing Democrats. (Aug. 30, 2022). Taking a positive view of motivations, he even used the term “loyal opposition.” Really?! But he apparently understands the contrarian approach can carry seeds of its own defeat. “Democrats are for particulars…among other things, fighting climate change, eliminating student debt, taxing corporations more heavily;….Republicans [are on] the defensive, seeing it as their chief task to block costly Democratic bills and other attempts at radical change. …What, apart from … opposition, does the party stand for that American voters can get behind in the passionate way that wins elections?…The lack of positive policies or programs leaves Republicans open to the old argument that the party stands for little more than the defense of the rich and the maintenance of the status quo. In this scheme…the Democrats stand for progress, they are the party of the people, holding the torch of social justice high, while the Republicans stand for regress, the continual enrichment of the 1%, a deep insensitivity to injustice and suffering.” It’s ironic that this is very close to George Lakoff’s summary of progressive values, which he views as being on the defensive. (Don’t Think of an Elephant. Chelsea Green Publishing. C2004, c2014). So, which party is the victim here?
Dirty Tricks and Political History: A Darker View
Day 2 of Fresh Air (August 22, 2022) offered a darker view focused on “dirty Tricks,” a long, though certainly not honorable, fixture of our political history. Remember Watergate. And some are breaking from the ranks. Tim Miller, a former Republican operative, in his book Why We Did It: A Travelogue from the Republican Road to Hell, offered an insider’s perspective as a self-described [confessed?] “hatchet man,” who “helped create the conditions that enabled the rise of Trump.” This included cooperating/colluding/lending mainstream credibility to extremist folks/sites/outlets he knew spread destructive untruths and hate. Miller spoke about what it meant to “get it,” that the whole point was to win, whatever it took. He interviewed former colleagues he knew well, who privately condemned the ex-president, but still found reasons to support him. Typical profile: arriving in Washington as young conservative idealists in their 20s, they were drawn to the centers of power, and enlisted in the attack regime, probably (I assume) because that’s where the jobs were. My experience as a NYS Senate fellow earlier in my career gives me a smaller-scale sense of the dynamics and attendant impulses/choices/temptations. Interviewees admitted they didn’t believe the “alternate” messages they crafted and pushed, but they rationalized. A common theme seemed to be underlying resentment of liberal’s assumptions of moral superiority. All politics can get very personal too. And it turns out Miller himself is gay and was in the closet most of the time he did that kind of work. So, how many versions of layered reality are we dealing with here?
Consequences and Accountability: Buck Stops Here?
Somerset Maugham said, “You can do anything in this world, if you are prepared to take the consequences.” Harry Truman, president 70 some years ago, put it more succinctly: “The buck stops here.” But does the buck ever stop when you keep spinning reality, because your sense of identity won’t accommodate admitting you could ever lose? And when you’re backed by influencer-apologists who fabricate reasons and excuses? Though far less articulate, this claque falls within the tradition of American oratory—Daniel Webster, Henry Clay (preeminent defender of slavery), Frederick Douglass (former slave). The list is a reminder that our true identity as a nation encompasses many different and often contradictory and even mutually hostile stories. Alessandro Portelli described a “Golden Age of American oratory” in the late 19th century, when speakers became “a chief source of political information, inspiration, and entertainment.” But by “making emotions audible and visible…” oratory also made itself suspect. “[I]n the very act of manipulation and controlling the sources of disorder—the crowd, the heart, the emotions—the orator is contaminated and tainted by them….” (The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, and Democracy in American Literature. Columbia University Press. C1994).
Oratory as Suspect: Manipulating Emotions
When viewed through trickster/contrarian lens, I suspect that much of our current dilemma stems from extrapolating on the kinds of stories we’ve traditionally told ourselves about who we are. As Elvia Wilks noted, “Western literary forms tend to focus on the story of a person against the backdrop of the world.” (Death By Landscape: Essays. Soft Skull. c2022). And Wilks continued, quoting Amitav Ghosh, “relying on such ‘individual moral adventure’ tales banishes the collective…..” That we’re all in this together. And in this time of climate change, etc., such narratives also distract us from real, as opposed to manufactured contrarian/trickster, crises. Meanwhile, banishing “the nonhuman world…to the background” puts us increasingly in “an untenable position—and that future generations will name our era ‘the great derangement’ because of our ‘collective suicide’ as opposed to collective action in response to the urgent threat facing the human species.” And with threats (real or imagined?) of armed civil war are floated, I circle back to Lincoln, who recognized existential risks of internal violence years before the real thing broke out. “At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected?….It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Trickster Perspectives and Current Paranoia
So, trickster/contrarian perspectives contribute to current free-floating paranoia. What and whom can you believe and trust? And that seems to lead to different versions of “final days.” Along those lines, Jonathan Rauch wrote a piece I find chilling. (Trump’s Second Term Would Look Like This. The Atlantic. August 29, 2022.) “The MAGA movement has been telegraphing its plans in some detail…overt embrace of illiberal foreign leaders;… behavior of Republican elected officials since the 2020 election; Trump allies’ elaborate scheming…to prevent the peaceful transition of power; and Trump’s own actions.” The template, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, much admired on the right, has declared, ‘We should not be afraid to go against the spirit of the age and build an illiberal political and state system.” Rauch concluded, “We can’t say we weren’t warned.” The certified actual president has taken up this theme, with a prime-time speech and on the mid-term campaign trail.
The Unraveling Template: Trump’s Second Term?
Then I find Steve Benen’s article Do Republicans agree with Trump’s demand for a do-over election? (MSNBC. August 29, 2022). Rather than staying focused on 2024, the trickster ex-president remains fixated on the election he still can’t/won’t admit he lost. He wants to rewind and hold the previous vote again or be immediately installed as rightful president. But again, the right not being monolithic, the idea has no credence with serious thinkers like Charles C.W. Cooke, author of The Conservative Manifesto and senior writer for the conservative National Review. “That is not how America works….American politicians do not lose their reelection races only to be reinstalled later on, as might the second place in a race whose winner was disqualified. This idea is otherworldly and obscene.” Not to mention ludicrous, like January 6 and Mar-a-Lago documents justifications.
Hopeful Conversations: Rebuilding a National Story
So, it seems trickster/contrarian narratives have done some damage. And, as per Wilks, “Symbiosis cannot be re-created where it has been lost…An ecosystem that has lost crucial elements has already adapted to the changes to the extent that simply re-adding what is lost might have harmful instead of restorative effects….” We might hope additional information– January 6 Committee and Mar-a-Lago—might change minds and hearts. But Miller didn’t end his book with the customary “how to fix things” chapter; he perceived little willingness to let go of the message. And yet, Benen suggested this might be the time to “help generate a worthwhile conversation.” And so, I remain hopeful, recalling the friend who said, just after the 2016 election, that maybe we needed to go through this. She meant we’d have the chance to recognize what we don’t want. Of course, that was before we had any idea how far it would go. Yet I still hope that those of us who are willing can start to work together to discover what we do want, beginning with a more inclusive national story, that has room for us all. And I find especially hopeful that our first president, George Washington, who “couldn’t tell a lie,” but who owned slaves, nonetheless set us on our democratic path when he turned down becoming king. Now, that’s a real American story.