The Impotence of Being Earnest

This is Ernest--
unburied from the ruins of Pompeii
Since the fateful presidential election of 2016, I’ve been extremely discriminating in what words I let pass before my eyes or into my ears. I have totally given up televised news…even satirical TV news, including such long time favorites as Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. I have totally abandoned my morning routine of perusing Slate, the NYT, Boston Globe, HuffPo (for the zeitgeist rather than substance). My reasons for the blackout are twofold. First, all that former news consumption not only failed to prepare me for the election results, but turned me into a fool in the process. On the very day of the election I watched MSNBC interview a Trump supporter in Michigan who was asked how in the face of all available evidence he still believed his candidate would win. The voter answered that on election day Trump supporters would surprise everyone by showing up in unexpected numbers just like the anti-EU Brexit voters did in England. From deep in my own certainty, stripped of my usual skepticism, I laughed at the fool and loudly announced to Lorna that these people are totally delusional.
My second reason for no news is no Trump. Not just the policies, not just the manifest unfitness for high office…as many have pointed out, the nation endured the conniving, paranoid Nixon and the grossly incompetent George W. Bush (though just barely in both cases). Trump takes loathing to a whole other level...and I felt this way long ago when his totally amoral, shifty politics were more in alignment with mine. I just have no appetite for confronting his transparent fraudulence, unbound narcissism, and simple nauseating physical presence every day for the next four years as “the news”…nor do I want to spend a whole lot of time trying to fashion coherent paragraphs like this one to communicate my deep and abiding hatred of him, disgust with his supporters, and embarrassment at living in a nation that would have him as its leader.       
What to do then? My hubris about the election’s outcome led me to vow that if he won, I would give up my precious Nobby Works. I was off to a good start in keeping that vow…having not written a post since Election Day. But words have wings and some have managed to fly under my radar. Two lines in particular have scored a direct hit at my core. The first was from Facebook friend Charlotte Canelli who, about a month ago, left this comment on my timeline: “Ugh. Can't stand our impotence.” That word impotence, paradoxically, packs a real punch, especially for those of us of a certain gender. I never planned on being what, during the rise of German fascism, was called “a good German.” I was not going to hide out in personal comfort and weak excuses while this fascism takes over my country. But I do admit to dithering about what to do about it. I’ve been positively Hamlet-like in my melancholy ambivalence:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them?  
There’s a reason that speech has lasted more than four centuries (and let's not take for granted its chances for survival if fascism prevails). I’ve actually wrestled with whether to take up arms against this rising fascism, even though I am most definitely not a gun guy. Like the troubled Danish prince, madness has led me to contemplate a range of actions…from the civil disobedience of a Thoreauvian tax strike to the unvarnished vandalism of unleashing a bed bug attack on Trump Tower. Some action, any action, seems in order, beyond mere earnest words, which often appear impotent. After all, this is an action culture. We extol action verbs, cleansing action, action pictures, action figures, and men and women of action. In fact, I would argue that for every bit that racism, misogyny and simple ignorance contributed to Trump’s win, America’s mythic elevation of the emotionally unbalanced billionaire from Marvel comics to presumptive savior was just as big a factor. Trump as Bruce Wayne…Trump as Tony Stark…the culture’s been gorging itself on the fantasies of 14-year olds for about 40 years now, is it any wonder that when given a chance a significant mass would succumb to the fantasy?   
It wasn’t always so. One of my refuges from “the news” has been Turner Classic Movies. One of the things you learn about this culture…or for those old enough, reminded about this culture…is that words were once more heroic than weapons. Last night I watched The Moon is Down, a Hollywood B picture based on a John Steinbeck novel about the Nazi take-over of a Norwegian town. Over its full running time, all the most sympathetic characters are relentlessly killed one after another, with no clever ruse, no hidden techno gimmick, no caped crusader coming to their rescue. But just about every killing is punctuated by a speech about courage, hope, mutual responsibility, Democracy. It’s a civics lesson, not a thrill ride. Even in old John Wayne shoot ‘em ups, violent action is couched in words of reason, contemplation, reflection so as not to exist for its own sake. In recent days my friend Susan Gray has reminded me of two of the most iconic moments in movie history…the singing of La Marseillaise from Casablanca and the “I am Spartacus” scene from Spartacus. In Hamlet, too, words do trump impotency in that it’s “the play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”     
For better or worse, words have been my weapons of choice most all my life. Without them I feel far more impotent than I ever did with them.  But my vow was an earnest one…and like most liberals, earnestness is often my worst enemy. Will earnestness continue to be our tribe’s undoing? I, for one, do not intend to let that be the case, and I don’t mind playing all the angles necessary to assure that American fascism is the ultimate loser. With that in mind I’ve gone back to review the vow I made to quit The Nob and found a lovely little loophole. I wrote:

I believe that the majority of my fellow citizens are too smart to turn the reins of power over to the very worst person among us. If I am wrong on this, I will retire The Nobby Works--my bliss & my passion--on November 9 because, truly, a new dark ages will be upon us.

By updating myself on “the news,” I realize that a majority of my fellow citizens were indeed too smart to turn the reins of power over to the very worst person among us. In fact, nearly 3 million more of those citizens voted for Hillary Clinton than the Fraud-Elect.* (And just a word here on HRC…gunshy as I am about making predictions these days, I feel fairly certain that when historians look back from a distance on the treatment she received from the right, the left, the media and the comedians, they will accurately place it among the Salem witch trials and the Hollywood Blacklist in the shameful annals of American injustice). 
Now, as to how I will exercise my regained potency while ignoring Trump-made “news” as much as possible is still unclear to me. But aside from Charlotte Canelli’s line, the other one that struck me so hard in the past few months was (surprise!) from Dylan when I watched Patti’s Smith’s remarkable revival of his classic A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall at the Nobel ceremony: “I’ll know my song well before I start singin’.” 

And so I will...no matter how hard the rain falls. 


* And please, Academia, spare us any more scholarly treatises on the hidden wisdom of the Electoral College...that third nipple on the body politic has now managed to deliver the presidency in two of the last five elections (3 if we count '04) to two truly awful candidates. It is now as big a threat to American democracy as the Citizens United decision.