No Sense Here

Trump. Where do I begin? I feel as if I’m living in an absurdist novel. I can’t digest what’s going on in my country. Sure, I’m angry, but it’s more than that. Disbelief, and I’ll admit, something resembling fascination with how fucked up it all is.
 
Let me offer just a taste of the events and actions that have me ready to don my black garb, shove a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in my back pocket and blow shit up. No logic, no compassion, no common sense.
 
Last week, the U.S. Congress voted to repeal a regulation meant to stop coal companies from dumping potentially toxic mining debris in streams. The rule was complicated, but suffice it to say that coal companies in the business of mountain-top removal mining (absurd enough in itself) will no longer be required to determine if their dumping policies will damage the ecosystem of the stream where they’re tossing their foul, cancerous crap. They will no longer be required to restore streams to their former state after they’ve blown the top off a fucking mountain to make some money. Read the story by Brad Plumer for Vox here:
www.vox.com/2017/2/2/14488448/stream-protection-rule.

And get a load of this. Trump also directed his administration to stop implementation of a rule that says financial advisors have to act in the best interest of their clients when recommending retirement products. So, beware grandma. That nice young man in the suit and tie may be selling you a risky product that is more designed to net him nice fat fees than to safeguard your golden years. Yep. Let’s make America great again! Charles P. Pierce captures the absurdity quite nicely in this Esquire piece:
www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a52809/trump-financial-deregulation. I would be remiss if I did not mention the move that is sure to bring a tear of happiness to the eye of our esteemed Secretary of State, lately the CEO of ExxonMobil. According to a story by Lisa Lambert and Sarah N. Lynch for The Huffington Post, the Republican-controlled Senate has repealed a key anti-corruption rule that required oil and gas companies to disclose the taxes and fees they pay to foreign governments. Woohoo!

Now our corrupt oligarchy can spread some cash around the corrupt oligarchy of a developing country. And they're off! It's drill-baby-drill, with no environmental or labor protections, therefore heaping more misery on the backs of people who already shoulder too much of the burden of this darkening world. Read the details here:
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senate-regulations-sec-oil_us_58947228e4b040613136476d?section=politics. 

I’ll confess to being at a loss. Oh, I won’t remain passive. I will listen to wise people. I’ll call my Senators, for all the good it will do. I’ll give money to environmental organizations for their court battles. Occasionally, I will march. I will also turn to books, not only for escapism but for cathartic experiences that tell me, “You see, these writers, these characters, have felt what you are feeling. Through this story, you know you are not alone.”
 
I don’t know about you, but this always makes me feel less hopeless, less helpless.
 
Now, there’s been talk about how George Orwell’s 1984 has become a best seller. I’ve also heard many a person—including myself—whisper about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid’s Tale becoming reality as Mike Pence salivates over rolling back women’s reproductive freedoms. But my impulse is to turn not to novels about authoritarian regimes, but to absurdist stories. ‘Cause ain’t none of this shit make sense.
 
According to Wikipedia, absurdist fiction calls into question the "certainty of existential concepts such as truth or value.”
 
So, when the my country has been poisoned by misinformation, here are a few books I’ve read that capture the brew of dread and black humor bubbling in my head right now. Naturally, each of these has a lot more going on than is conveyed by my impressionistic blurbs. The writer Joseph Grand agonizes over the opening sentence of his novel. His ambition is to write the perfect sentence, but what he’s come up with isn’t even close:

One fine morning in the month of May an elegant young horsewoman might have been riding a handsome sorrel mare along the flowery avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.

Grand muses and sweats over his sentence. He’s convinced a tweak or two will create a master work. Meanwhile, a deadly epidemic ravages Oran, a city on Africa’s Mediterranean coast. Just as Grand denies his sentence is terrible, the authorities deny the sickness is a problem, even as people die in droves. When they’re forced to acknowledge what is happening, people retreat into their own suffering and petty concerns, without realizing that they must come together if any of them are to have any hope of survival.
 
The whole thing reminds me of the way we’re destroying our own environment. A man is tricked into joining a woman in her home at the bottom of a sand pit. Her job is to perpetually shovel away the sand that threatens to engulf her small house. The sand is ever shifting, ever falling, and her task is never done. The man thought he was to stay only for a night, but the next day he discovers that the villagers have taken away the ladder, the only way out of the pit. The man is condemned to stay there with the woman, to make a life and family with her while working at this never-ending task. He never receives any explanation as to why the villagers want this woman to continuously shovel the sand away from her home, why they won’t let her leave, or why they want him to stay with her. It is endless toil with no goal.
 
I'll share a famous quote:

There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.

Abe’s novel is haunting, beautiful and filled with dread. I’d also recommend his novel The Ark Sakura, if you like a little dystopia mixed in with your existential crisis.
I first read this book in high school, and it has stayed with me. Filled with Vonnegut’s signature black humor, this novel revolves around a substance called Ice-9 that crystallizes water at room temperature. As you can imagine, Ice-9 could destroy almost all life. The man who invented it was completely indifferent to its possible consequences. It could be invented, so it was invented. Then his children got rich off selling the deadly isotope to whomever would buy it.
 
The story also involves a farcical religion that the leaders of the poorest country on Earth have foisted on its citizens as a tool of control. The religion preaches the inevitability of all that occurs and the leaders go so far as to ban its practice so the people will feel like they’re doing something meaningful and brave just to follow it.
 
Back when George W. Bush started a war for no fucking reason I started thinking about this book again. The Trump nightmare has put me in mind of one of my favorite quotes:

“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s . . .”
“And?”
“No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”

I hope you got something out of my spasm of absurdity. I'd be interested to hear your recommendations in the comments for similar stories, whether old books, new books, TV shows or movies.