The first of a series
Soon each of us will have to confront the question, “If you possessed a time machine, and could go back to 1889 and strangle the infant Hitler in his crib, and then get back in the time machine and go to 1953, and find the seven-year-old Donald Trump, and make him promise — promise — never to run for President of the United States, would you?”
Of course, it’s an empty exercise in moral/homicidal fantasy. So big deal, you go back in time. How do you get to Austria? Plus, time travel isn’t possible (yet!), and forget going back in time, we can’t even go back to Costco for that thing we forgot, because we’re all so damn busy. But it’s worth pondering.
But is it? Really? Or, rather, is “pondering” pretty much bullshit at this point? Because, seriously: who can go around “pondering,” when literally every day brings new reports, not of worrisome hints at objectionable policies or statements by what Obama discreetly refers to as “the president-elect,” but, rather, leering, troll-like attacks on decency itself?
Now, like you, we at the Review don’t really like the word “decency” — or, for that matter, “decent,” in a context of moral score-keeping. It’s okay to use “decent” when expressing mild, subjective aesthetic or pragmatic approval. To say something is “decent” is to say it’s good enough, and that there are other things more worth one’s implacable foaming hatred. “Josh Rogen does a decent job as Cassius.” “The Orioles’ new lefthander has a decent fastball.” “Carmichael’s Hoagies makes a decent tuna sub.”
But in describing the character of a human being, the word “decent” has traditionally been used by conservative thinkers to denote a sort of fundamental and unchallengeable moral goodness and piety that makes us (Jews, atheists, liberals, feminists, Sriracha lovers) nervous. “The counter girl at Carmichaels’ has no idea how to make an Italian sub, but she’s a decent, God-fearing person.” “The Orioles’ new lefthander’s curveball stinks, but he’s a good, decent family man.” “Josh Rogen may be a decent guy, but thank God he doesn’t play Marc Antony.”
And, of course, as regards “decency,” who can forget, or accurately remember, Joseph Welch’s famous, “At long last, sir, have you no decency?” Remember that? If only from documentaries, when Welch, chief counsel for the U.S. Army, challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy? No, you don’t, and neither do we, because in fact the quote is: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
Which brings us to the President-elect. It is distressing to see that, after having conducted an indecent campaign of lies, demagoguery, absurd promises, and outright bullying (arguably worse than covert, disguised bullying), Donald Trump has spent the first three weeks since his victory reaffirming his indecency. (Let the reader here imagine a list of all the hideous people Trump has appointed to his administration, and how “Drain the swamp!” has become “You know what? We’re not going to drain it. Because a) Eww, and b) there’s no money in it. So we’re going to redecorate it.”)
What “kills” us, and may one day literally bring about our demise, is how the guardians of decency seem to have pretty much given up. The good Christian people have rallied around Trump. The modest denizens of small-town and medium-town and large-town but not big-city America. The folk who take their pants off one leg at a time, and go to work, and when people say, “Hey, Earl, how come you’re not wearing any pants?” have the decency to say, “Oops,” and admit they blew it. The responsible, hard-working people, who eat their Thanksgiving turkey one leg at a time, and maybe help themselves to a little extra portion of stuffing, because the Pilgrims would have wanted it that way, and who —like the Pilgrims themselves — aren’t embarrassed to use the word “portion.”
“Would you like another portion of stuffing, William?”
“Yes, thank you, Mother.”
“I’m not your mother. I’m your wife.”
“But you are our children’s mother.”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Those people. They voted for that manifest asshole, whose latest gaffe/offense to reason/pathological entails tweeting the claim that he won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
It’s worth mentioning that whenever millions of people do anything — buy tickets to a movie; watch the new TV series about crime analysis in the Navy Diplomatic Protocol Section, N.C.I.S.R.S.V.P.; vote illegally, etc. — it leaves behind a certain something-in-the-air called “evidence.” That there is no evidence whatsoever of such illegal voting suggests that it didn’t happen.
Does Trump know this? Does he know it but not care? Does he think anyone actually believes what he tweeted? There are no good, reassuring answers to these questions. He is daring us to come to grips with the fact that he’s (pick one) dangerously stupid, compulsively dishonest, or barking nuts. The tweet and its implications are faits accomplis or, as spellcheck would have it, “fats accomplish.”
Worse, there is no reason on earth not to expect more of this kind of thing in the future. Some may believe America is experiencing an anomalous attack of delirium tremens, the DT’s that come from withdrawal from the use of alcohol or, in our case, from withdrawal from the availability of an intelligent, sane, admirable person as President.
Dream on. This behavior on Trump’s part isn’t unusual. The pussy-grabbing comment, the cracks to Howard Stern, the childish boasting, the cheating at golf, the open lying, the thin-skinned readiness to take offense and lash out: he’s always been this way. The only thing that’s changed is the stage he’s on and the spotlight he now commands.
So come on, physicists. Make that time machine. Don’t listen to the people — the decent, God-fearing people — who say it’s too late. As we always say — or, at least, as we intend to always say in the future — it’s never too late if someone invents a time machine.
Steve Wertz
http://tinyurl.com/p7mmo9f
