String Theories, Inbox Edition

My Election Closing Argument, Americanafest 2024, Kris Kristofferson, Black Country Music, and more...

Unmentioned in this newsletter is my heartbreak over the damage done in my beloved Smoky Mountain region of North Carolina by Hurricane Helene. I’ll be traveling there soon, but I post this view from my parents’ house near Boone as a reminder of the beauty and soul in the region. Their place is basically fine. Towns I love like Black Mountain are not. Please contribute what you can to relief efforts.

Dear Friends,

Summer travels are over, but I’m walkin’. At least I’m tryin’. The 12 South/Melrose neighborhood has looked glamorously golden on these recent October afternoons. Not that I’m rigorous about my exercise, but how could somebody not get outside at this time of year? Last weekend especially - with a charming, kids-and-dogs-friendly Grateful Dead festival in Sevier Park - was soothing at a time when we could all use some of that. Amid the autumn leaves are competition-ready Halloween decorations, dotting my walks with skulls and scares. Speaking of scary, the election. 

We’re in quite a situation aren’t we? The year is in its homestretch, but unfortunately, to get to the holidays and all the delights that go with a new year, we’ve got to go through and actually experience the pivotal election we’ve been anticipating and dreading for years. Just over two weeks from now, we’ll start seeing the results of the only poll that matters and head into a period of contested power that could be as bad or worse than the tragic interregnum of 2021. Or it could be better. While I nurse my feelings of wary optimism and existential dread, I’ve got a few patriotic thoughts here on election eve, and then some links to recent work. Those may send you toward some music that will ease the emotional burdens of the times we’re living through. 

Now I realize that my elite and exclusive audience for these bulletins (that’s you) is somewhat self-selected for liberal minded folks. I’m probably not reaching many conservatives or Trump supporters, though all are welcome. If I’m about anything it’s rational dialogue. So if you are even now planning to vote for DT, maybe hear me out, though you must know by now that I think he’s America’s cancer and that giving him power is, to put it mildly, flagrantly irresponsible and a middle finger to the founding fathers and every soldier who ever died for this country. So before we vote (and bless you if you already have), I’d like to reiterate why, from my point of view, amid all the noise and chaos, DT is so dangerous and such an insult to the American idea. I allow myself three reasons, although there are more.

- The Dishonesty. Can’t we agree that a president (or any leader) should be a basically trustworthy person and not a fountain of self-interested, divisive bullshit? I doubt anyone’s lied so flagrantly to so many people (or about so many) in world history than DT, given his digital age reach and a full decade of deceit going back to his anti-Obama birtherism crusade. A darkly disordered man, his dishonesty begins with lying to himself. He’s clinically delusional, making up scenarios and situations and statistics at will to serve his tactical and psychological needs. Self soothing lies are one thing, but he goes ten degrees darker by bearing false witness against his fellow Americans - including poll workers, teachers, civil servants, FEMA aid workers, and his political opponents - with the aim of instilling anger and fear in his supporters. When people lament that our country is “divided,” this is the heart of that problem - not policy or ideology, but an egomaniac who accuses without evidence and doesn’t care about defaming good people. Further, he requires others in his circle to endorse and propagate his slanders as a sign of loyalty to him and the movement. Nowhere did that prove more sinister than what the media called the “big lie” about the 2020 election. Don’t get me started about Jan.6. 

- The Misogyny. I’m mortified that my fellow American white men appear to be the only major demographic group heading into Nov. 5 ready to back DT by a solid majority. Women will crush him, and we ought to be listening to them and helping. A vote for the 2024 GOP with Trump and JD Vance on top will not only continue to crush women’s rights and autonomy, it will kill many more of them, and we know this because it’s already happening in anti-abortion states. (Forgive my lack of evidentiary links; no time; it’s all out there to read and hear.) While we know that MAGA is rife with racism and nativism, I think that antipathy pales compared to the movement’s need to control women. Because it’s been key to the new right’s core belief system for decades. Think of Rush Limbaugh’s sick coinage “feminazi” back in the early 90s - virtually launching his crusade with induced panic that women had become free and expected to be treated as equals. Today, elected officials openly propose repealing the 19th amendment. Christian Dominionism, with its foundation of patriarchy, home “schooling,” and men who want to “marry” young teenage girls, is a key part of the Trump coalition (explaining many of the votes from women he does get). Project 2025 is a fiercely anti-woman agenda, pining for the end of no fault divorce and some forms of contraception. Meanwhile The GOP and DT have made macho bro masculinity a feature of their movement and they’re harvesting votes from impressionable online guys who’ve rarely voted before. A network of “manosphere” podcasts and social feeds prey on unprepared men with anti-feminist doctrine disguised as self-actualization and mentorship in manhood. Ick.

Now personally, I shy away from definitions about what makes a man manly. I can’t think of a single trait of good character with meaningful gender roles. Integrity, courage, protectiveness, kindness, resourcefulness - the list goes on. These are human virtues, neither masculine nor feminine. But it hit me recently that there is an extremely important trait that only men can embody or practice. And that’s how we treat women or, for that matter, anyone of a gender that’s not male. As a man, I am responsible for how I regard and engage with women, and I embraced that long ago as one of the foundations of my character. I can’t be a decent man unless I’m decent to women and defend them, when necessary, from indecent men. Like Trump. My guys, anybody out there within the sound of my voice, I’m not saying you should vote for Harris because she’s a woman. I’m saying if you respect women, you can’t vote for Trump.

- The Treason. I resisted that extreme word for years, waiting for hard evidence, but now (post Mueller, post Senate hacking report) his disloyalty to US interests is clear as day to anybody who can read. First, “Russia, Russia, Russia” was and is Real, Real, Real. Everything we worried about (short of Trump being recruited as a hired Kremlin agent) has come to light in vivid, redundant detail. Bottom line: DT is a devotee, a fanboy, a jealous little brother, and a needy little bitch for Vladimir Putin. There’s no one he seems to hold in higher regard. I knew it when he buckled in Helsinki and told the world Putin was innocent of hacking our election. Later he went farther and backed the Kremlin narrative that Ukraine stole the DNC’s email in 2016. Few things have made me so angry. DT will betray Ukraine and leave those brave people to be crushed. He’ll pull out of NATO and do as much harm to it as he can on the way. There’s so much more, and the Republican Party buckled to all of it - his hostility to America’s leadership of the post WWII order, his disdain for our soldiers’ sacrifices, his lust to use the military for his personal vendettas. Not only has the GOP been corrupted ideologically in service to DT, it’s riddled with Russian money and influence, from congressional staff to podcasters. Then there’s the sycophancy before Xi, MBS, Orban and scummy anti-democrats around the world. If election theft was “the big lie,” then “America First” is an even bigger one. 

While walking, I watch the strolling tourists on bustling 12 South and the families in the park. And last week I had a disturbing flashback to just such a day in the Fall of 2016. I remembered thinking that in a few weeks, America would choose between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, and it felt just impossible that with such good energy in the air, strong employment, and growing cities like Nashville making people happy, America would actually choose an embarrassing, dishonest game show host as President of the United States. And of course we did. Here we are eight tedious years later knowing a billion percent more about him, none of it good or redeeming. He’s failed every moral test of leadership imaginable and disparaged our country and its people relentlessly. The majority of his White House associates in Trump 1.0 oppose him now. His own Vice President won’t vote for him! The GOP has devolved into a toxic waste site of operatives and opportunists. It’s just bewildering and tragic to an earnest, good government wonk like me that he’ll still get millions of votes. We are a broken civics lesson. But I don’t think he’ll do as well as last time, before Jan. 6 and before the Dobbs decision and the demented behavior of the past few months. Nothing in my gut or the country’s energy feels poised for a DT victory. And, with apologies for not spending time here on the virtues of our Vice President Kamala Harris, we have on our ballots an excellent and experienced candidate who’s made a clear, consistent, positive case for a better America. The economy is incredibly strong. A lot of DT’s voters have literally died off and our young folks have (mostly) figured out what the assignment is. If there is anything I can do to speak reasonably to the men or young men in your life who are dazzled by dictatorship, I’m available. 

Let’s do this. CH

My neighborhood understands the assignment.

RECENT WORK

Click on the story preview image to be taken to the full feature at WMOT.org.

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