The Low-Bar Trope

Democratic Primary Debate Participants, 27 June 2019: Michael Bennet, Joseph Biden, Peter Buttigieg, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, John Hickenlooper, Bernard Sanders, Eric Swalwell, Marianne Williamson, Andrew Yang. (Credit: DonkeyHotey / Wikimedia Commons)

You have heard it said before. I’ve said it myself. As a colleague recently grumbled: “The bar is low. All I want is a return to the rule of law.”

Indeed, the bar is set low for the 2020 presidential election if it means Democrats should nominate the person most likely to defeat Trump, that candidates competing for the nomination should do no harm to one another in the primaries, and that they and their supporters should rally behind the Party’s eventual nominee on the assumption that winning the election will return the nation to the status quo ante.

Is a reset enough? Is restoring the state of affairs as it existed before Trump’s presidency the right goal and the likeliest way to win the election?

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Hello, Satan, Part 2

The John C. Lincoln Medical Center in Sunnyslope, Arizona. Named after John C. Lincoln (July 17, 1866 – May 24, 1959) an American inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Friday

On Friday, 8 February 2019, I checked into the John C. Lincoln hospital in North Phoenix for an angiogram—a one-day medical procedure that would determine treatment for heart disease. Ten minutes into the procedure, the hospital staff attending my cardiologist began to shut down equipment and put away medical instruments.

From here on, I do not know if I write about events that actually happened or from my memory of those events; I only affirm that what I write is true to my memory of what happened—except for the scars.

Obliteration

Mushroom cloud of ‘Gadget’ over Trinity, seconds after detonation, 1945. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

In these hyperbolic times, we should pause occasionally to reflect on the casual use of dangerous language.  President Trump’s choice of the word “obliteration” in the present context of tensions with Iran is a case in point.  It is a term fraught with deadly implications, especially in the midst of a heated dispute between adversaries.  That, by itself, is worrisome, even if it were an isolated instance of inflammatory language.  The fact that it is characteristic of this president is all the more disquieting.  “Obliteration” reflects an ingrained pattern—the rhetorical mannerism of his volatile disposition.  Beyond that, it invokes a cultural fantasy of nuclear extermination.

Hello, Satan

“Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils” by William Blake, circa 1826. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Early this morning

     when you knocked upon my door

And I said “Hello, Satan

     I believe it’s time to go.”

Robert Johnson, “Me and the Devil Blues”

I’ve been walking with my friend the Satan for a spell. I’d like to tell you some of what I’ve learned, if you care to listen.

Playing Chicken

ARABIAN SEA (March 6, 2012) The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and the British Royal Navy Duke-class frigate HMS Westminster (F 237) transit the Arabian Sea. Abraham Lincoln is deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of responsibility conducting maritime security operations, theater security cooperation efforts and support missions as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jerine Lee/Released) 120306-N-QN361-034

We’ve all seen video clips in recent news reports showing the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group (with a B52 bomber task force) dispatched to Iran for the purpose of sending a message.  It is an unsettling sight.  As a worried friend said to me last Tuesday morning, “I hope Trump doesn’t get us into a war with Iran.”

Yes, this is a worrisome development, not just because a war with Iran could happen on purpose (with war hawks John Bolton and Mike Pompeo wielding influence within an unstable administration), but also because it could happen accidentally.  The game the President is playing is commonly called Chicken.

Death of Billy the Kid

Art by J. Thomson.

(At HUNT THE DEVIL, we focus on critiques of political myths. Occasionally, we post versions of foundational American myths that have shaped our culture. The following retells Pat Garrett’s account of the death of Billy the Kid as found in his book, The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid. Tainted by the spirit of Sam Peckinpah’s great western, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and by the fatal airs of Bob Dylan’s musical score, it narrates the story of Youth killed by Old before Old settles into a new station in life. Highlighting this theme, in Peckinpah’s film the law and order officers are played by old actors who frequently appeared in westerns (Coburn, Chill Wills, Slim Pickens, Katy Jurado, etc.); young rock stars from the 1960s (Kristofferson, Dylan, Rita Coolidge) play the outlaws.      

The myth considers Billy a hero not because he was an outlaw, but because he was young.)

Specter of Infinite War

From “Stories of Gods and Heroes” (1920) by Thomas Bulfinch with color illustrations drawn by Sybil Tawse. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

I am among the apparent majority of American voters opposed to Donald Trump’s election and re-election. The majority wasn’t big enough in 2016 and may be too small in 2020 to overcome the negative effects of indirect election, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and foreign interference. As a citizen of a decidedly red state, I register my vote in full knowledge that it will not count in the final tally, since the presidential candidate with the most popular votes in Indiana, even if just a plurality, receives all eleven of the state’s electoral votes. Winner-takes-all rather than proportional allocation is the case in 48 of the 50 states, red or blue, big or small. It allows a candidate who loses the popular vote to win the office. If the electoral college was supposed to prevent the selection of a manifestly unqualified candidate, recent experience suggests that choosing the winner directly by popular vote might serve the country as well or even better.

Toxic Language Alert for Campaign 2020: Confounding Populism with Demagoguery

Note:  This essay first appeared in Public Seminar, April 26, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to supporters at a rally at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, 7 March 2019. (Credit: Matt A. Johnson)

In early April, Washington Post’s adversarial columnist Dana Milibank dubbed Bernie Sanders “the Donald Trump of the left,”  noting perfunctorily at the end of his column that his wife, Anna Greenberg, “works for John Hickenlooper, a Democratic presidential candidate.”  One can assume that Milibank is entering the fray over whom to select to run on the Democratic Party ticket.

As the Democratic Party struggles to work through internal differences, including how far left is too far to defeat Donald Trump, a robust debate can be productive and even contribute to coalition building. Yet the chance of a constructive outcome decreases to the degree that caricature substitutes for characterization and, in the present case, populism is mistaken for demagoguery.

Ghostly Metaphor: War at a Bargain

Creditor’s Ledger Payments Book detailing creditor payments between 1958 and 1977 by companies commissioning work from Holmes McDougall. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Like a ghost, the metaphors embedded in war talk go largely unnoticed. They are a specter haunting our speech and thought, just below the threshold of awareness. Calling attention to them can reveal an unexamined pretext for continuing to fight an interminable war.

Ghostly metaphors do not call attention to themselves as figures of speech. They operate furtively as though they are just ordinary words conveying literal meaning. With guard down, we allow them to shape the message and form our thoughts. When we draw on the literalized language of accounting to think about military matters, for example, we reason figuratively, drawing a tacit analogy between conducting business and fighting wars.

US Imperial Decline in Geopolitical Perspective

Eurasia (orthographic projection). Credit: Keepscases / Wikimedia Commons

Historian Alfred McCoy has quickened my interest in the discourse of geopolitics applied to the waning state of US empire.  His book, In the Shadows of the American Century:  The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Chicago:  Haymarket Books, 2017), makes a clear case that the end of global dominance is near.  The question is what kinds of disruption and what degree of violence the imperial fall will occasion.  What might a post-imperial era mean for Americans and others caught up in the transition?  From the perspective of geopolitics, McCoy sees a number of mostly disturbing possibilities.  His observations are valuable for indicating the challenges ahead.