Again, when can we accurately say our country is in a "crisis" or a "mess"? Well, I'm pretty sure it's in a mess when its out-matched soldiers and sailors are spread around the world desperately holding off two veteran war machines until its machine can be built and gotten to them. And when it has an adversary with thousands of nuclear-armed missiles ready to launch at it. And when it has to struggle to keep allies in line to meet the threat from that adversary and struggle to keep young men in line to be drafted. And when it has to calculate the risk of starting World War III in every conflict with that adversary's clients. And when adversary-fear puts it in a quagmire in Korea. And when the same fear puts it into a really big quagmire in Viet Nam.
Do we have to have lived through the Depression and
World War II and the Cold War and the Korean War and the Viet Nam War and the
Nation-Shredding Sixties to know that "crisis" is a laughable word to
apply to the present time?
This time when we haven't fallen into the Depression
every informed person knew we were hair-raisingly close to; when we haven't
(since the administration of Trump's party) plunged into any more Middle East
quagmires; when we haven't continued pushing NATO closer to Russia, and the
risk of her lash-back; when we haven't made any foolish commitments to Ukraine;
when we haven't listened seriously to our humanitarian aggressors.
"Crisis" is Trump's word; "mess"
is the word with his followers. And
they are the big problem, not he.
(Demagogues themselves seldom are.) All that excitement, all those votes. Our country is "in a big
mess." Now, when in
comparison with what came before the sixties, we are unbelievably
prosperous. At a Fulbright party
in Japan in 1966 I overheard a foreign service officer's report on the home
country to his colleagues on station.
In two words: "They're fat." The first layers of fat. Think how many have been added since. Think what we have to spare in case we
have to diet.
What Trump has to fear is the moment of calm, when
they think about the words they're using.
When they match them up with the external world. You know, when they quit saying how
deeply different their feelings are now from what they were when they felt
great about America.
But they keep saying it and that lets us say that
the whole mess is in minds. Excitable
minds responding to expert mind-exciters working up big scenes on little
screens. They have produced the
mess. And then, echoing each
other, pumping up what the screens make them feel, they see a
nation-endangering crisis.
In the press, in print generally, America had gotten
away from that sort of pumping,
Remember William Randolph Hearst's inflating, in his yellow way, an
explosion on the USS Maine? Now, though
the technology is different, it's back.
Is the Trumpists' excitement too great by this time
to allow them any moment of calm?
Might they find time just to listen to an unexcited voice? You know, like the ones we used to hear
coming out of the Pentagon, or Foggy Bottom. "'Adversary,' you say? Where? what capabilities? How many divisions, now or on the way? How many missiles with what
range?" Adversary strength sets limits to a possible threat to our
security.
So now, if it gets quiet enough to listen, we (they)
just might hear that analytic voice reporting on the Islamic State. And comparing it with former
adversaries. USSR compared to IS. You'll have to forgive a laugh. (Elitist bloggers can lose control of
themselves too, you know.)
What we soberly hope is that when the listening
Trump enthusiast next hears "crisis" or "mess" he will have
some doubts, which we hope will grow with memories of his history courses. Our greatest hope is that before
election day he will see that if we are in a "mess" now there are no
words left for what we were in in 1961 or 1968.
What they need to do is (ha) read The Economist. From the latest issue (9-3-16) comes a cool, analytical
voice that hits just the note they need to hear. It delivers facts like that in the decade up to 2013
the "likelihood of an American being killed in a terrorist attack"
fell to "one in 56 million."
Confirming what Barack Obama, our fightingly cool leader, had said
earlier, that "the danger of drowning in a bathtub was greater than that
of being killed by terrorists."
But under present conditions, goes the piece, "cost-benefit
analysis becomes almost impossible."
Are even Elitists fully aware of those present conditions? The Economist
points out that according to a recent poll "no less than 77% of
Americans....who said they followed Islamic State news closely" agreed
with the statement that the group was "a serious threat to the existence
or survival of the United States."
Hillary Clinton must not be aware of them. Friday night, on Wall Street, she put half of Trump's
followers into a "basket of deplorables" (NYT, 9-11-16), thereby cutting
herself off from them and their friends — just the people she needs, those
friends.
There are apparently more populists, or
populist-leaning, or soft-on-populism, or fellow-travelling non-populist,
voters than the Democratic elite ever dreamed of. Seventy-seven percent believe
a baseless claim, or, to go populist, believe crap. Those are the conditions that Donald Trump has taken
advantage of to rise within two percent of Clinton in the polls. Conditions no college teacher, looking
at the numbers of graduates accumulating in the electorate now to over 31%,
would in their wildest dreams ever have predicted.
Why do they try? Why fiddle with words, trying to get the populist crap out
of them? There in a college or
high-school classroom. When in a
few years they'll so easily open their mouths to a populist feeding them crappy
words like "existential."
Yes, that's what they think the IS terrorists are, a threat to the very
existence of our once-great country.
In the words of a contrarian populist of an earlier time, "Teachers
shoulda stood in bed."
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