When Your Country Hits The Skids
It's time to stay true (and to read your Thomas Merton)
George Orwell to the world: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
Americans to themselves: “If we close our eyes tightly enough, maybe reality will go away.”
Don’t worry. Despite the suggestion from that epigraph, I’m not going to bludgeon you with a truth truncheon from that great honesty scold, Orwell. Not because I’m above it. But because I already did so a year-and-a-half ago in a piece titled, “Our Lying Problem: And How George Orwell Can Stop It.” Spoiler: he didn’t stop it. Everyone is still lying themselves silly. Thanks for nothing, George, if that’s even your real name. (Eric Blair, it turns out, white-lied, too.) Though we’ll let him slide for not setting us straight, since at the time of my writing, Orwell had already been dead for over 70 years. He did his part for truth-telling in his time.
But are we doing our part in ours?
Well, I’m trying my level best. But, and not to whine — even if whininess is the coin of the realm nowadays — it is challenging, sometimes, to keep finding new words to condemn old evils. Though the evil genius of Trump — along with the assistance of his neurodivergent nihilist, fellow faux populist billionaire, and vandal of our once-great republic, Elon Musk — is that he keeps committing so many fresh evils, that people are unable to process them all. Much the way the body, when it is overwhelmed by severe injury, goes numb and shuts down. What should be painful ceases to feel like pain, and becomes paralytic shock.
Because we’ve always been the Land of the Free (aside from all the slaves we kept for 246 years), too many assume soft despotism can’t happen here. That we are better than that. Well, American exceptionalists, it turns out, we’re just like everybody else: susceptible to conmen and tyrants and kleptocrats. It is happening here, right before your eyes, even if yours are shut tight.
The free press is getting marginalized, the Justice Department/FBI is being hollowed out in accordance with Trump’s revenge fantasies for them investigating his corruption, Congress has been gelded (the Republican Senate, by actual self-castration), and the judiciary has become a feckless shell of itself, leaving Donald Trump to mostly do whatever he wants, with next-to-no blowback. It’s unclear whether he’ll even honor court orders attempting to harness him anymore, and who will enforce them if he doesn’t?
Though for those of us who haven’t shut down — who still acutely feel pain — this point in time does have its upsides. I’ll admit that the first two-and-a-half weeks of the second failed Trump administration (it’s never too early to pass judgment when you’re in the judgment business) have been a keen reminder: I’d forgotten, during the Sleepy Joe years, how invigorating it was to be angry all the time. Though maybe I’m overstating my anger (he said, as he punches a hole through his refrigerator). I tend not to sleep angry. I’m too busy dreaming about world peace and/or the Mandrell Sisters reuniting. (Louise Mandrell was not only easy on the eyes, but she could also play a mean fiddle.)
But how bad have things gotten, and fast? Well, as I sometimes do in this space, I’m sampling Drudge Report headlines as a reliable barometer of the current chaos. This, being the longest litany ever, even if everything here is drawn since just our last meeting (January 28). It goes on for a while, so skip ahead if head-on collisions bore you. Otherwise, the following provide vivid crash-cam footage of our Dysfunction Junction:
RFK SHOWDOWN ON HILL FORMER HEROIN ADDICT UP FOR HEALTH BOSS…..Priest Throws Nazi-Like Salute at Pro-Life Rally in DC in Trollish Nod to Elon Controversy... Billionaire brigade poised to upend Washington... USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying firing... ... ALL FEDERAL WORKERS OFFERED BUYOUTS….Republican Suggests Kids Work at MCDONALD'S Instead of Getting Free Lunch... Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Shot Dead by Police After Allegedly Resisting New Arrest... Record-high egg prices become big Trump problem... Top FBI officials told to resign or be fired... MAGA CHAOS: AGENCY HAS NO LEADER... Musk 'pressured' FAA boss to quit one week before Potomac river plane crash... Favors for Musk?.... Pentagon Removes Milley's Security Detail and Revokes His Clearance... FCC Chair Opens Investigations Into NPR, PBS... Elon Sleeping in DOGE Offices in Eisenhower Executive Building... ... CONFUSION: White House says funding freeze in effect despite rescinding memo... USDA inspector general escorted out of office... 'Headed for technofascism'... ALEX JONES: I'M GOING TO THE WHITE HOUSE!.... Dems want more security after pardoned Oath Keeper returns to Capitol... 30 Jan. 6 prosecutors in DC canned... Trump Fires FBI Agents Who Worked on Cases Against Him -- Including 20 Heads of Field Offices... FCC demands CBS turn over '60 MISN' interview amid Trump lawsuit... Elon aides lock govt workers out of computer systems... Kudlow Admits Tariffs Could Bring 'Price Increases' For Americans... Highest-ranking Treasury official to exit after rift with Elon... UFC fighter says Hitler was 'good guy' in shameful rant... Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter sentenced in wrong-way crash that killed mother of two... We do not know what exactly Elon is doing to the federal govt... Musk aides gain access to sensitive Treasury Department payment system... Rubio embarks on mission impossible: Retake the Panama Canal... Trump to send Venezuelans back to Maduro's repressive state... President Fires Consumer Financial Watchdog Who Drew Ire of Banks... 'There will be many casualties': Panama girds for war as Rubio opens talks... FBI Agents Involved In Trump Cases Escorted Out of Offices in Friday Night Purge... Rival 'ICE Barbies' Go Head-to-Head in Vests and Lip Gloss... Musk aides lock workers out of computer systems... Trump Facing Two Crises in Second Week, He Spreads Blame Around... CBS News Staffers Irate Over Talk of PARAMOUNT Settling Trump '60 MINS' Suit... REPORT: Pardoned rioter wanted by police for soliciting minor... He launched air controller diversity program he now decries... Controllers were offered buyouts; Told to consider leaving... Marjorie Taylor Greene Questions Reporter's Accent: 'American Media First'... Pump prices set to rise... Ed Dept employees placed on leave for attending diversity training... SEC now required to seek permission from political leadership before launching probes... Trump claims Canada will 'cease to exist'... U.S. attorney in D.C. backs Musk, warns against resisting DOGE... USAID staffers told to stay out of HQ after billionaire closes it... PRESIDENT WARNS AMERICANS WILL FEEL PAIN... Trump, Musk wage two-front war as donor does president's 'dirty work'... Key DC Lieutenants Is Teen!... Given unfettered access to private data of govt employees...LATIMES owner boosts RFK Jr. online, as writer says paper cut his critique... USA NATIONAL ANTHEM BOOED…..New Official Declared 'Competent White Men Must Be in Charge'... Gas to rise... Car Prices Face $3,000 Increase!,…… WSJ: The Dumbest Trade War... Lawyers see increase in people cutting ties with USA... Applying for Canadian citizenship...EPA Tells More Than 1,000 They Could Be Fired 'Immediately'... Trump Official Warns 'Almost No One Can Control' Elon...DOGE hacking the govt; Actions unlawful?...
Republican Senators Fine Handing Their Power to World's Richest Man... FBI turns over details of 5,000 employees who worked on Jan 6 cases to DOJ...PUTIN PRAISES 'MASTER' DON...
And that’s without even getting to Trump’s latest caper: expressing his desire to take over Gaza and ship out all Palestinians to make it an appealing waterfront property, presumably complete with pink marble, waterfalls, and gold toilets, not unlike Trump Tower. Let’s make ethnic cleansing classy again! (Are we sure Trump doesn’t drink?)
I deliberately belabored the headlines point to illustrate how, in the last couple weeks, hardly two hours pass without new violence being committed against our system. Which has surprised even plenty of Trumpsters, most of whom didn’t, say, vote for a tariff war against Canada (why would we do that – because too many SCTV comedians were taking our entertainment jobs back in the eighties? — John Candy’s been dead since 1994). But none of this norms-stomping should come as a surprise. Elect an erratic criminal, expect erratic criminal behavior.
And yet, even with all this tumult, comes the news that Trump, while still the most unpopular president ever, or at least since 1953 when such measures started being taken, has attained his highest favorability rating. Leaving me with some existential questions like: Who am I? Who are half these people I call countrymen? What alternative universe do they reside in, and is there any chance we could make them stay there, then build a wall and make the aliens pay for it? They often remind me of those stories we’d read during the worst of COVID, when patients who had been propagandized to within an inch of their lives after being told by their conspiracy-slingers of choice that it was all some giant hoax, would be in the ICU on respirators, their lungs failing, arguing with their doctors on their deathbeds that surely they don’t have COVID, since it doesn’t even exist.
As if often the case these days, the last two-week deluge had me not only feeling bewildered, but despondent and even bitter. And as is also often the case when low-grade soul-sickness sets in, I hit the books, in search of good medicine. I’m a big believer in seeking out those who are wiser than me— a lucky thing, in my case, since that gives me a large pool to choose from.
So I dipped into one of my regulars, hitting the journals of the late Trappist monk and writer, Thomas Merton, who longtime readers know I’m not shy about quoting, even if I’m a Protestant by training and temperament. (Unlike our Catholic friends, I’m not a big fan of centralized hierarchies, but then, neither was Merton, one of the many reasons I like him so much.) I’ll spare you his backstory since I wrote at length about it three years ago right here.
But as I was dipping into his journals from 1966 — hardly a serene chapter in our nation’s history — I had a moment of clarity. Mostly, because the journal entry I tripped over was titled “A Moment of Clarity.” (Subtlety is overrated.) And this is it:
A flash of sanity: the momentary realization that there is no need to come to certain conclusions about persons, events, conflicts, trends, even trends toward evil and disasters, as if from day to day, and even from moment to moment, I had to know and declare (at least to myself) that this is so and so, this is good, this is bad. We are heading for a ‘new era’ or we are heading for destruction. What do such judgments mean? Little or nothing. Things are as they are in an immense whole of which I am a part and which I cannot pretend to grasp. To say I grasp it is immediately to put myself in a false position, as if I were ‘outside’ it. Whereas to be ‘in’ it is to see truth in my own life and action, moving where movement is possible and keeping still when movement is unnecessary, realizing that things will continue to define themselves and that the judgments and mercies of God will clarify themselves and will be more clear to me if I am silent and attentive, obedient to His will, rather than constantly formulating statements in this age which is smothered in language, in meaningless and inconclusive debate in which, in the last analysis, nobody listens to anything except what agrees with his own prejudices.
Is this The Answer To It All? No, probably not. I could pick nits, if forced to. And I’m sure you will, too. And yet, it smacks of plenty of truth. And some truth is just what the doctor ordered in this Age of Falseness. For good or ill, we are not in control over everything, or even most things. But we have some control over ourselves. We have choices. And even if some catastrophic ones have already been made, that doesn’t have to stay the case. So we each must choose: to love our neighbors (even the ones we want to throat-punch), to stay “in it” with our own lives and actions, to stay true. That last being extra important, not just in spite of all the destructive falseness swirling about, but precisely because of it.
Bonus Track: No heavy anthems today. We need some feel-good music. And here’s what’s been making me feel good lately. A 1980 tune called “Lucky” by the soul songstress, Brenda Russell. I was reminded of it when it was played in Yacht Rock, a great HBO documentary, which I highly recommend (sue me, I like the Michael McDonald-led Doobies. “What A Fool Believes” is one of the most perfect pop songs of all-time.) And while I don’t think of Russell’s song as Yacht Rock — more like classic ‘80s skating rink music — it’s a song that should’ve gotten famous. It has it all: an infectious hook, soulful vocals, a Jackson Five-style descending bassline, chunky piano, and gospel organ slathered over it in the last third, which brings it all home.