Does the personal collapse of the individual who happens to be president of a great power imply the collapse of that power? Or is his descent into chaos and mania a clarifying, galvanizing national humiliation that inspires the country to higher purpose and unprecedented reform? I’m feeling better about our prospects for the latter as President Trump melts down in front of our eyes in the weeks before the historic 2020 election. And since we have to work with what history hand us, and because I’m looking for any way out of the darkness I can find, I tell myself the country’s actually in better shape today than if Trump were comporting himself like a remotely functioning chief executive. Recall that in 2016, Trump kept his Twitter fingers in check and didn’t do anything truly stupid and attention-getting for the last two or three weeks of the race, which (inexcusably) kept the media’s attention on Hillary and her caricatured issues. This time, with voting underway, it’s an extremely different situation. The mad king rants for hours at talk show hosts while crises unfold on his watch. He outrageously demands the “arrests” of Obama and Biden. He dares his followers to risk a deadly pathogen so that they may gather to worship him, and he let himself get Covid and spread it to key members of his party. As Lonesome Bob sang, “It’d be sad if it weren’t so funny. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad.”
A landslide win for Biden and Democrats is the story the country absolutely needs to restore something like normalcy from which we might build a moral, political framework for better, active 21st century government. And yes, we should be guarded and work hard to turn out the vote, but with record-shattering numbers of early voters lining up and doing their duty, that scenario looks more likely by the day.
“He’s mishandled the coronavirus, he’s never been popular, and he’s gonna lose badly. I think it’s pretty simple,” said one unnamed advisor. Trump’s not bulletproof it turns out. “New polls show Mr. Trump’s support is collapsing nationally, as he alienates women, seniors and suburbanites,” the New York Times reports. “He is trailing not just in must-win battlegrounds but according to private G.O.P. surveys, he is repelling independents to the point where Mr. Biden has drawn closer in solidly red states, including Montana, Kansas and Missouri, people briefed on the data said.” You don’t see the word “repelling” deployed too much in political reporting. It’s not generally considered the goal.
Despite this exciting turn of events, Democrats and America’s coalition of decent human beings are worried - not without reason - about the election itself. For the first time in our lives, we have reason to be concerned that 2020 will not be entirely free and fair. We read heated reporting about Trump’s volunteer army of “poll watchers.” There’s a perception becoming fixed that not enough Americans will trust the results to have an orderly transition of power. But we have the power to keep this at bay by not overreacting or catastrophizing. Cynicism and resignation are the opposite of what’s needed. The national security writer Molly McKew made this case really well this week, observing that “sowing discord” is something we can neutralize by standing up for process and being champions of normalcy.
“I’m not saying that clear-eyed threat assessments aren’t necessary, or that the tensions in American society aren’t real, or that there isn’t the potential for (likely small pockets) of unrest around the elections or before the inauguration. But our descent into chaos is not a given, and we need to stop inflating its potential in how we discuss it.”
Another voice worth heeding I think is conservative NYT columnist Russ Douthat, who writes “There Will Be No Trump Coup.” Trump, he argues, is an incompetent who’s already shown us he won’t impose martial law because he could have easily turned the Covid crisis to his authoritarian will but did not. He’s “a noisy weakling” whose actions are now patently outrageous to most of the country.
“It’s also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianism he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. He lacks power over the media: Outside of Fox’s prime time, he faces an unremittingly hostile press whose major outlets have thrived throughout his presidency. He is plainly despised by his own military leadership, and notwithstanding his courtship of Mark Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley is more likely to censor him than to support him in a constitutional crisis.”
My encouragement comes from two places. Trump is at last completely losing control of the electorate, and the cavalry he thought was coming in the form of Barr’s DOJ and the Russiagate investigation are big, hilarious duds. Every October surprise has only made him look more absurd. Second, elections are managed and sanctioned by the states, and Trump can’t touch that process. Even Republican led states have incentive to run clean elections, though I think we all have reason to be concerned about Kemp in GA and DeSantis in FL. I’ve heard enough from FBI Director Christopher Wray to believe he’s got his eyes on domestic and foreign interference. Americans are more on guard against chicanery than in 2016, when we barely knew what was happening. Civic habit and procedure have a momentum of their own. At the policy level, a lot of us want big change. We must fervently want the machinery of democracy to resemble its boring old status quo. It is indeed our right and duty as Americans to expect it.
Now VOTE.
CH 10.14.20
The Deal of the Art: The Morning after the Storm by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851). 1840-45. Photo by Jacqueline Banerjee for the National Museum of Wales, via The Victorian Web.
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The Moon And Mars - And Our Daughter’s Future
The coincidence wasn’t perfect, but it felt auspicious. October 1 was the Chinese Autumn Festival or Moon Festival, whose central figure is a goddess named Chang’e who is said to live in the Moon and be visible in its surface. She has a pet rabbit by the way, long story. The holiday is roughly analogous to Thanksgiving, in that it’s grounded in the autumn harvest and family gatherings that affirm bonds of blood, community and gratitude. On October 2, the same day that Donald Trump was airlifted at golden hour from the White House lawn to the hospital, the nearly full Moon appeared in our night sky closely attended by the planet Mars. I read this in the news and reminded myself to have a look, thinking it would be interesting.
I was surprised by my reaction. On one hand, they’re just two familiar lights in the sky, one milky pale gray and large, as celestial objects go, and the other burnt orange, the size of a bright star. I see them all the time. But with only one or two degrees of sky separating them, they took on depth and charm and beauty that made me exclaim out loud and laugh. This was a no-telescope, naked-eye experience. As astronomical sights go, it was low-hanging fruit. But it was magic, making the orbital plane of our Solar System palpable, I suppose because any spatial relationship becomes more vivid with three points of reference, as opposed to two.
This juxtaposition of the sky and calendar was more portentous than I first realized.
READ THE REST OF THE ESSAY HERE…
Working On My Tinnitus
Tomorrow, after many months of putting it off, I’m going to see some audiology/neurology specialists at Vanderbilt about my tinnitus, a condition I’ve had at a low level all my life, but which has gotten worse since turning 50 and worse still in this stressful year. I thought it would be wise to write down a kind of case history to make sure I don’t forget to tell the docs anything and to share the experience in case anybody who reads this has similar stories. READ ON FOR ORIGINAL POST…
Update: I wrote the linked post on October 7 and saw audio specialists at the Bill Wilkerson Center the next day. Here’s what I learned. My hearing is good for my age, but we saw some striking asymmetry between my left and right ears. It’s nothing I’m conscious of, but my left ear has more fall-off in high frequencies than my right, which is interesting because more of my high-pitched ringing is (usually) in my left ear. I signed up for an MRI to rule out neurological problems. And while I’m not surprised they told me there’s no medical intervention per se for this rather common ailment, we agreed I’d wean myself off caffeine for the first time in my life and that I’d enroll in a mindfulness meditation class at the Osher Center.
I also am excited to share this with you, because it’s good for anybody. The website MyNoise is an amazingly well designed and almost endless source of sound generators that have become my favorite background soundtracks for writing or concentrating on something other than music. Each sound world has sliders allowing you to mix your own custom sounds and save them. I spend a lot of time in the Japanese Garden. Click the image to go there!
Most useful for my tinnitus is the “Neural Symphony,” a set of random sounds designed to disrupt the spasmodic neurons that produce the steady tones of my affliction. I have worked on a custom setting with lots of high pitched warbling and tinkling chaos. It sounds a bit like experimental electronic music, but it’s soothing and then when I turn it off after a minute or two, my 8k ringing is remarkably attenuated, and I’m left with what feels to me like only the inner ear tinnitus that I lived with fine for decades. The unfamiliar, blessed calm doesn’t last very long, but it gives me a few minutes of relief whenever I need it. Finally, I had a musician I admire very much reach out to talk to me about his years with tinnitus and it helped a lot to compare notes.
WMOT Features:
This story is among my favorites of this year. It’s a profile of Nashville veteran voice Wendy Moten, a Memphian who has sung in a huge varieties of settings from solo pop R&B to harmony backup to now, being the female lead singer of the amazing Time Jumpers. We also did a String episode where you can really grasp her remarkable personality. Please check this one out in full.
New Grass Revival was one of the bands that showed me just how rich and expansive bluegrass music was and helped stir my interest in Nashville. I never got to see them live, but having seen all of the guys play in various incarnations in the years since has given me a feel for their genius and access to their minds and voices as I’ve learned about this music. I was fortunate to sit down individually with all four 1980s members and produce this feature and an episode of The String dedicated to the great NGR. Click the photo to go to the story at WMOT.
Discovery: Rumer
The English singer-songwriter Rumer is making her own thing out of classic 70s pop. It’s earned her admiration from Burt Bacharach and Richard Carpenter, who wrote her a fan letter. I’m far from the first to have heard strong shadings of his late sister Karen in her gorgeous voice. I’d not heard of Rumer until I saw a review of her newest, Nashville Tears, The Songs of Hugh Prestwood, and with the strong local angle I had a listen. It’s not my usual fare, but it’s giving me deeply serene vibes at an addled time.
I love songbook style albums as a vehicle for great singers, and Prestwood, who wrote Alison Krauss’s big “Ghost In This House” and Trisha Yearwood’s “The Song Remembers When,” is a master worthy of deeper listens. Rumer’s already done a Bacharach album, and Nashville hall of famer Prestwood offers that kind of seriousness and variety for a singer, and Rumer, given name Sarah Joyce, interprets with freedom and sweet, sweet tone. The Nashville string work is classic and world class. Check out this Music City project with many moods, all of them elegant.