Be resolute

One of the smarter pundits around, Josh Marshall, put into words a sentiment that has been percolating, wordlessly, in my head for a month or two: "The Case for Not Being Crybabies".

Donnie is President. A majority of us didn't want that to happen, and we're frankly aghast at the appalling reality of it. But it's more than past time to get over it — not in sad resignation, but in calm determination to contain the damage.

Marshall's piece addresses his fellow journalists, who, as I've complained before, have done an embarrassingly bad job of handling Donnie by letting him handle them. He bluntly reminds them:

We know Trump's MO. He will bully people until they're cowed and humiliated and obedient. He'll threaten to kick the reporters out of the White House and then either cut a 'deal' or make some big to-do about 'allowing' the reporters to stay. These are all threats and mind games meant not so much to cow the press as make them think Trump is continually taking things away from them and that they need to make him stop.

But all the brouhaha about "access" profoundly misses what journalism is all about and what journalists are supposed to be doing.

That access isn't necessary to do their jobs. And bargaining over baubles of access which are of little consequence is not compatible with doing their job. Access can provide insight and understanding. But it's almost never where the good stuff comes from. Journalists unearth factual information and report it. If Trump wants to turn America into strong man state, journalists should cover that story rather than begging Trump not to be who he is.

Marshall speaks for me when he writes:

I've been surprised at the extent to which right-thinking people are all but threatening themselves with what Trump might do to, collapsing into their own sense of powerlessness.

For the press, the remedy is simple:

Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He's told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook. The big corporate media organizations may not be able to use those words, I understand, but they should employ that prism. ... Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don't surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.

That's smart advice not just for journalists, but the rest of us.

Don't surrender your dignity. Don't let Donnie goad you into forgetting who you are.

Keep your eye on what matters: "Ignore everything Donnie says. Pay attention solely to his deeds." And don't let him distract you. As I wrote more recently, "Work toward a better future in spite of him".

Most of all, be resolute. We are going to have a rough time of things on the political front for a long time. We already have a hostile administration and Congress; we are going to have a hostile Supreme Court majority as soon as Donnie and the Senate act. A lot of bad governmental actions and inaction are coming down the pike. We can (and should) decry these things and work to change them, but we have to keep our spirits and our strength up to do so. We know how to live with integrity and honor and decency. Don't let Donnie and the troubles these times will bring change our hearts. We are better than him and the worst impulses of his followers.

So are a lot of his followers, too: don't forget that. They are our neighbors. To change the country, we have to reach out to them. We must see their humanity, and help them to see ours. Then we have to learn how to talk to each other again. That is the great challenge of our time. We're never going to have functional electoral politics until we find common ground on which to call ourselves "Americans".

Be resolute in the face of trouble. We're going to get through this.

Harvey apologizes

Steve Harvey made a joke recently that played on the stereotype that Asian men are sexually undesirable. I haven't mentioned it before because I've been laughing too hard. Or, well, no, I didn't mention it because it's merely the latest in a long line of dumbass "jokes" by a long line of clueless people who can't be bothered to wonder if they are clue-deprived.

Well, Harvey apologized. The text of the apology:

I offer the humblest apology for offending anyone, particularly those in the Asian community, last week. It was not my intention and the humor was not meant with any malice or disrespect whatsoever.

I give Harvey credit for not mealy-mouthing the apology with that bullshit "if anyone was offended" formula so many celebs use.

I wonder, though, why it took so f**king long for him to make it?

In a way, I find hope in the delay. Maybe he was resistant and somebody had to work long and hard to get through to him. A delay this long might mean he did some hard thinking and learned something.

I prefer to believe that, than to think he was forced by his PR flacks to stem the damage to his reputation. I'd like to think that his heart has changed.

The Trump trap

Teh Donald is a prick. He would probably beam if he heard me: it's a tacit admission that I know and at some level fear him. And yeah, I do fear him. How could I not fear an emotional toddler who will command the U.S. military and federal law enforcement?

Even so, I have a suggestion for pundits, journalists, policymakers and responsible citizens: don't personalize his presidency.

Disagree with and resist the policies that you find repugnant. Robustly criticize and resist the actions that defy reason and comity. But with just as much resolve, resist the urge to hurl ad hominem attacks (e.g., "Teh Donald is a prick"). These only harden his supporters' hearts against the rest of us, and we need to reach them. Worse, mixing it up with him distracts us from substantive issues, and he's a master at distracting the crowd. Stop falling for this trick!

When he goes after those who criticize his administration (and he will — look at how he has reacted to Rep. John Lewis and Alec Baldwin), look carefully for any substantive objections and respond to them, but as for his schoolyard taunting, simply assert, "Donald Trump's personal smears are not worth answering" and leave it at that.

Does it feel like he's getting away with something? Suck it up. Stay focused.

Teh Donald is a handy target if you want to lash out at the regressive trends we seem to be seeing in the country. If, however, you want to change those trends, you have to keep reminding yourself that he's not fundamentally the problem. The problem is that we do not understand each other in a way that will allow us to acknowledge our shared humanity when we disagree. Finding the center is crucial to our politics, but we're perilously close to not having a center any more. Hell, we don't have shared facts any more. Consensus requires coming to a shared understanding of how things are and we're not talking in a way that lets us hear each other.

This problem would exist even if Teh Donald didn't. However, he poses a unique obstacle to coming to grips with the problem because he's so good at sucking the oxygen out of the room. As a private citizen his hogging of the spotlight was a nuisance. As POTUS it could be disastrous for the country. We have serious problems to tackle: we can't waste our energies making him the focus of our attention.

I'm not under the illusion that we can depersonalize Teh Donald's presidency. However, we don't all have to fall into the Trump trap — not all the time, anyway. Stop throwing invective at him. Work toward a better future in spite of him.

Start resisting now

The headline is "Trump Promises a Revelation on Hacking".

Bullshit.

Trump lies the way the rest of us breathe. He might even believe this bullshit.

The rest of us mustn't.

So let the resistance to bullshit commence.

No honeymoon

Traditionally a new administration gets a honeymoon period, a period of time in which it's considered bad manners to blast it for alleged bad behavior, malfeasance, bad faith, etc. We extend the new administration the benefit of the doubt on a lot of things.

Teh Donald thumbed his nose at most traditions in the course of his campaign and has continued to flout the norms of how a president-elect behaves in the run-up to his presidency. Never has Donnie showed he's worthy of the benefit of the doubt. It's therefore only appropriate that we, the people, follow suit by foregoing the traditional honeymoon period.

I had originally entitled this post "Resist". That's not right, though: we can't blindly obstruct him, as Senate Republicans blindly and stupidly obstructed Obama. Donnie isn't evil incarnate: he's just a raging, possibly clinically diagnosable narcissist. It's possible he'll do things that are actually defensible or even good for the country, just because they accord with his egotism. Stranger things have happened.

But it's a safe bet that most of the time his actions will be antithetical to the spirit of liberal democracy and corrosive to the freedoms and liberties we hold dear. When he tramples on those freedoms, then we have to resist — even if it's on Day One of his administration.

If ever there was a good fight, this is it.

My Obsession Now: The Old 97's, "How Lovely All It Was"

Most people listen to the Old 97's because of lead singer and songwriter Rhett Miller. I like Miller well enough as a singer and he has certainly penned his share of terrific songs for the band. However, the guy whose contributions I anticipate most eagerly is bassist Murry Hammond. From "W. TX Teardrops", my introduction to his vocal stylings, right on through today, I always look for his gem of a song on each album. I'm grateful as hell that he, at least, keeps the alt-country spirit alive in the band.

In the case of The Grand Theatre, Vol. 2, that gem is "How Lovely All It Was". I first heard this album during a long drive a couple of years ago. When this track came on, I almost forgot I was driving. I found myself hitting the "back" button so often, I finally pulled over and set the track to repeat. It accompanied me for the last three or four hours of the trip.

As with many of his numbers, I'm not quite sure what exactly he's singing about: the lyrics are a little oblique, just as the song's title is. The atmosphere, though, is reflective and a bit mournful, which suits my recent mood to a T.

This is my best guess as to the lyrics that resonate most:

If I don't see you again this way tomorrow
And my body doesn't break under the sorrow I swallow
I'll see you one old tomorrow
By and by

...

We're movin' on: you know that we've got to, man
How lovely all it was, how lovely all it was
The sun moves up and on, and so must we, my friend
How lovely all it was, how lovely all it was

(The ending, with just Murry singing to an acoustic accompaniment, sounds like it could have been a studio outtake from his solo album.)

I'm currently wallowing in the past and while it's kind of refreshing to dig up these particular memories, at some point I'll have to move up and on. How fortunate that Murry will be there to remind me.

The new journalistic principle

The United States' big media organizations did not cover themselves in glory with regard to their presidential election coverage. As always, they framed the election as a game, with innumerable polls serving as the scoreboard. Worse, though, was how consistently they let Donnie lead them around by the nose. Every tweet triggered a flood of breathless "reporting".

If it wasn't obvious before, it damned well should be now: they got played. Or rather, they let Donnie play us because his exploits made them a lot of money.

Come on! Every time Donnie needed to distract us from news that genuinely damaged his campaign, he shot off a handful of tweets that whipsawed the national conversation in a different direction. And every time, it worked. Our vaunted media elites ran after the fresh clickbait like junkies chasing their next fix.

Worse, we followed them. We all wound up in Donnieland, the crappiest place on Earth, where our fever dreams sound true. (They aren't, to be clear, but that's what Donnie wants us to think.)

If the big media outlets want to stay relevant in what promises to be the most dishonest, utterly shameless administration in history, they're going to have to make one radical adjustment to their rules of operation. It's the same radical adjustmment all of us will have to make on Inauguration Day.

That adjustment?

Ignore everything Donnie says. Pay attention solely to his deeds.

They — we — can't trust anything the Narcissist-in-Chief says. We can't even assume he's lying: he has no fixed relationship to the truth. If you listen to him you will get dizzy and throw up — or go nuts.

We must stop acting like every word emitted from one of his orifices for public consumption is worth mentioning. Got that, journalists? No matter how tempted you are to file several hundred words on last night's tweetstorm, don't do it.

As for us, the audience? Our job is, do no (more) harm.

Stop rewarding Donnie by retweeting him, even ironically. Stop rewarding anybody who enables him. That includes anyone or anything claiming to be a news outlet.

Again: ignore what Donnie says. Watch what he does.

And keep your hold on reality, because that's what Donnie wants: for us no longer to know what's true.