Here is Jamie Raskin commenting on the state of the presidential race with Brian Tyler Cohen last year around Thanksgiving week. Though Raskin is talking about Biden’s record and appeal as a candidate, his comments apply, in my view, to Kamala Harris. Once she became the candidate, Harris has had to distance herself from Biden, and she has done so gingerly. I don’t think this approach is a mistake, but the result is she gets less mileage out of the incredible accomplishments of the Biden-Harris record in producing an economy that is the envy of the world, with record achievements overall that far out-shadow any achievements of Trump’s administration. I appreciate Raskin’s calm. I appreciate his insight into our “big majority.” In these last days of the campaign, let us take heart that the democratic agenda, writ large and entrusted in capable hands (including Kamala Harris’s), has so much to recommend it.
Tuesday’s election will be a turnout election. We do have a big majority, but Trump’s side, I’ve learned recently, is motivated by a moral fervor that will produce turnout. Until Raskin’s insights and calm take deeper root, we need to sweat out the dynamics he comments on at the beginning of this clip.
From a text I sent to a relative who supports Trump:
One thing I truly appreciate is the way you have opened my eyes to another view of Trump. I mean, I’ve seen so much of Trump, and, when I’m alone, and with those who think as I do, I can come to no other conclusions than the worst ones. However, you have shown me that there are ways of looking at Trump that lead to other conclusions. When a person as good as you can have such sincere and profound support for him, my faith in 47% of our country is rehabilitated a bit. I won’t go so far as to say my faith is restored, since I’ve also seen a lot of stupid and uninformed and violent and racist and ugly support of Trump too. A lot. But the existence of principled and heartfelt and spiritual support is not something I could have apprehended without you. Next week, one of us is going to be deeply disappointed. But one thing I take away from our exchange is the conviction that both of us will process the results, and emerge ready to make the best of a bad situation. With God, all things are possible. :)
Love in the trenches…
My family member doesn’t fit any of the categories of Trump supporters that I have studied assiduously, (but indirectly and un-professionally), via the media (a lot of it MSNBC, as a reader of this blog well knows). My family member is a white male boomer, Trump’s bread and butter constituency. While he checks off many Trumpian supporter bona fides (anti-vaxer, deep state critic, anti-Democratic party, and more), he doesn’t quite fit the profile of the white Boomer Trump supporter typically described by liberals. For one, he is intelligent (though not college educated, so he does check off that box) and, while possibly not best described as “spiritual,” he is certainly soulful. He is a quester, a thoughtful pilgrim on a journey to a best life, a thought-out life, a deliberate, intentional life, filled with family and music and craft and conscientiousness, all in well-proportioned measures.
But he is intractable on the topic of Harris. In general, rather than defend Trump, my relative critiques Harris—mercilessly. I could refute most of the claims and counter the assertions. But this election is not about Harris for me; there is just no comparison of the one candidate to the other. The case for (or against) Harris—as for/against any opponent of Trump—is simply irrelevant in light of the massiveness of the case against Trump. The case against Trump blots out the sun; it must be dealt with above and beyond all other considerations.
Does Harris’s messaging matter? Is there anything she could have said, could have been, that might put to rest the critiques of her by Trump world?
From another angle, the success of Harris’s candidacy offers an intriguing study. In some ways, she has been masterful in stepping into her new, unexpected role. Some have said—after she wins—her campaign’s approach will be studied for years for the way she managed to position herself and build her movement. One thing that seems indisputable is that she has not made major missteps. There have been critiques (not giving interviews, not holding press conferences, some indecisiveness in response to questions, etc.)—but nothing that can be identified as a major misstep. In any event, it’s clear that her message is not working—at all—with Trump’s 47%.
She is now engaged in her “closing message,” and in a way that makes good sense: highlight the threat of Trump; mention your plans for the future; emphasize the need for you to “earn” votes; provide a sampling of clear policy plans. It’s all sensible, but I can’t help thinking this approach cannot move the needle for any of 47% who will be voting for Trump. Of course, the argument is that nothing can move that needle. However, my relationship with my relative; my hopes for an ongoing relationship with him; the absence of any public discourse on just what attracts him to Trump—all these thoughts leave me wanting another line of discourse from Harris.
I want her to acknowledge that, aside from Trump qua Trump, a great many millions of people in this country support him. I want Harris to recognize these people, and not simply conclude that they are ignorant, duped, or immoral. A large number of supporters are members of the Christian right; they do not feel they’ve made a “bargain with the devil.” A lot of his supporters are motivated by a distrust of the Democrats—and this group subdivides, on one extreme to Q-Anon conspiracy theorists, and, on another side of the spectrum, to more traditional Republican, small government advocates. There are those who fit into the category described by Reince Pribus when he explained that Trump’s first election was a middle finger of the 47%. Can Trumpism be explained this simply—a rising up of a near majority of Americans who feel angry and powerless (or disempowered) by new developments in our culture and society? So, yes, some are just angry and pushing back … desperately trying to hold onto privilege, to conserve what they had always had.
Then there’s the xenophobia, the anti-trans fixations, the racism—the appeals to all the fears associated with change. These preoccupations and pathologies do explain some of Trump’s appeal. But these darker and more extreme attractions are all that my MSNBC compatriots seem to train their sights on.
I want Harris to make a distinction in her closing argument, maybe along these imagined lines:
Interviewer: What is your closing statement on Donald Trump?
Kamala Harris: We have to get a little more nuanced in our discussions on Trump. While I do believe that Trump is a deficient person—unserious, immoral, mean, and many other disqualifying things (cue the list: a sore loser insurrectionist, a creep, a bully, a criminal, a predator, and on and on)—he nonetheless, has the support of millions of Americans, almost half the country. I have to recognize this fact better. This reality must not only be studied, it must be understood. It must be accounted for in the next presidency, whoever wins. I pledge to take into account that Donald Trump has the respect and admiration and gratitude of so many Americans.
I need to understand why he is given a pass on behavior that many of us feel is beyond bad … and almost indescribable.
But also: I want us to lower the temperature in our discussions. I need, we need, to lighten up a bit. Trump is a bad person, but the focus in regards to him per se, should rather be on our mercy, our forgiveness, and our commitment to make the best out of our dealings with him. More to the point, our focus should be more on those who support him and why. We have to get our discussions to that starting point. With all the endless analysis and argumentation on all things Trump, we really haven’t started on that task.
Next week, either he will win, or I will win. If he wins, we must all work together to offset his most dangerous capacities (and we will, despite the absence of so many guardrails); if I win, we must do the same, and we who have opposed him, must do so in a way that dials down the extremity of our reactions. We must work to understand and respect the best versions of the motives that led so many supporters to his side. [Note to self: this is a different agenda than simply saying, as I often do, “I will focus on those things that unite us, rather than divide us.”]
Some are living with the apocalypse right in front of them. Others seem to be able to put it in their peripheral vision.
For the latter group, the apocalypse is something to be reminded of, as a caution, while they go about their lives, which have organizing principles and purposes that propel them and carry them along. These are the people who are raising children, doing essential jobs, basically, keeping the world on track amidst the hubbub of things. The former group, though, have been immobilized by the apocalypse. All has been lost, already, always already, and nothing is possible.
I put myself in the first group, because, I suppose, I feel I have experienced a loss so absolute that there’s no recovery from it, no way of pushing it to the side, no way of restarting and hitting my stride. That loss, of course, is Angelo. But death is something every human has to deal with; what I’ve experienced, everyone has, or will, in some version. Of course, everyone will experience it in a very personal, immediate way in their own death, if not through the loss of a child.
The apocalypse of a single death is as absolute, as devastating, for each individual as any other apocalypse, be it the Holocaust, a nuclear war, or end of the world through climate change or an asteroid strike. It’s weird to say that everyone will experience a loss equally as devastating as world-wide annihilation. But the stakes are high for each of us; rather, the stakes are beyond high; they are “all in,” always and everywhere. How does one function facing such an extremity? Clearly, we must learn to focus on other things.
This week I edited my screen saver. For some time, I had had only the Julie London quote about her singing: “It’s only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.” Julie’s words were a friendly reminder to me, on a daily basis, of something I tried to describe some months back in my blog: “Such confidence, expressed with awareness and humility and precision. Not to mention, a good dose of sensuality, along with the promise of being together through it. The woes of the world would be lessened, I’m convinced, if we all just listened to, and spent time with, Julie London.” I would smile each time her words appeared on my screen.
I found myself this week needing, however, other reminders—or at least some glimpses of a non-apocalyptic lifestyle. I happened to come across St. Paul’s words, and it occurred to me that I needed to see them more often. I needed these words as an incantation, as an invocation to a better life than the one I had been living. Could this be my equipment for living, my distraction from the apocalypse? So I put them on my screen saver.
Then, with St. Paul and Julie London sitting there alone, I felt a need for some kind of connector—some statement that might round out the wisdom. These thoughts brought me to Kenneth Burke, and all the influence he has had on my life. That influence can’t be reduced to a single quotation, but his description of the “comic frame” in Attitudes Toward History does seem to partake of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and the humility of Julie London’s celebration of her voice on the other.
So, here’s my screen saver in its current iteration:
Saint Paul, on letting God in: “Brothers and sisters: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed on the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.” Ephesians 4:30-5:2
Julie London, on her voice: “It’s only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.”
Kenneth Burke, on comic forgiveness: “The progress of humane enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken. When you add that people are necessarily mistaken, that all people are exposed to situations in which they must act as fools, that every insight contains its own special kind of blindness, you complete the comic circle, returning again to the lesson of humility that underlies great tragedy.” Attitudes Toward History, p. 41
Angelo’s Screen Saver
I now notice that my introductory characterization of two of the quotations could be debated. For instance, was Burke really speaking about “forgiveness”? Or was that a reading I had imposed? Was I progressing a step beyond “enlightenment” to forgiveness, possibly as a natural effect of understanding/misunderstanding, and contextualization, and the necessity of error for all? I want there to be forgiveness. Also: Was St. Paul talking about “letting God in”? Or was this my wish—the wish that I might be able to abide by Paul’s request not to “grieve the Holy Spirit”? Paul talks of the seal of God, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the fragrant aroma of Christ’s sacrifice in which we are all suffused and made beneficiaries (I do notice he imports the holocaust of Christ’s sacrifice in this otherwise upbeat message). To me, he implies that we are somehow resisting it all; I know I have resisted giving up my grievances. Are they not keeping God out?
I hope these words, my companions on my screen, can keep on casting a spell on me. I need to look away from the ultimate devastation at my feet and in my sight. Kindness, love, humility—and intimacy too—I hope the reminders keep me upbeat and moving forward. I hope I can learn to push the apocalypse to the side, at least for part of the day, for part of my days that remain.
Thinking about my car ride in, with the news clips of YouTube running their circuit through my phone playing on my car’s Bluetooth, I am comforted, and also disturbed, by the regularity, mastery, and devotion of the companions on my playlist: I’ve felt camaraderie in the apocalypse thinking all around me. What does one do with a sentence like that?
Trump. Climate. Pandemic. War. The end of higher education: Others are feeling the same absolute desperation I am feeling in these End of Days times. Fortified with new media, a modern person can “do apocalypse” in increasingly intense and coherent and focused ways. In the past, there was a time and space lag. As a pre-internet person in my youth, I would have to go to the library to find apocalypse thinkers; I would have to go back in time to philosophers and spokespeople addressing crises of such variety and tangential relevance that the overall effect would be muted and diffused. Each apocalypse was isolated from one another. Today, however, the immediacy, speed—and mania—of the YouTube algorithm has effected a true qualitative change.
Just 10, maybe 5, years ago, I would not have felt this camaraderie. Nowadays, the Unending Conversation is present to me in much more direct and constant ways than was ever possible before. The Algorithms of YouTube are now my conversations. The clips range from ten minutes to longer pieces, sometimes whole hours of programming. Most of the content is a single person like Ben Meiselas or Michael Popock speaking into his laptop camera offering commentary on the legal and political news of the day (or rather, that hour). There is a cycle of clips each day, including Colbert, Kimmel, and Stewart; there are the regular commentators—Joy Reid, Lawrence O’Donnell, Ari Melber. So it’s a lot of MSNBC, with podcasts by MSNBC contributors, Brian Tyler Cohen, Glenn Kirschner, Andrew Weissmann—and others like Tim Miller, George Conway, Sarah Longwell—even folks like Bill Kristol.
The forays are not dramatic, hysterical, or crisis-tinged. They are focused and reasoned. They have emotion and pointedness; they suggest a hope that discourse can matter, that rules can be followed, that intelligent, impassioned, linguistically-responsible involvement can be both practiced and sustained over time by individuals who bring both evidence and principled analysis to bear. I am hooked by these savants. I have not experienced such a thing in my nearly seven decades on this planet. It strikes me that such a mode of consuming/experiencing discourse has not been available to me—or anyone—prior to the onset of modern digital-social media. I’m in the throes of a wave that is sweeping past—a new, Addictive Alchemy of Algorithms. The clips come and go, with mini-ads I can skip after 5 seconds, with a fragility of the screen that can click away inadvertently because of my clumsy boomer fingers, but with such a wealth of endless content, that nothing is ever lost, or lost for good, though the clips tend to disappear in a way wholly against the grain of my essence, with my longstanding commitment to archiving and saving, storing and organizing. The YouTube interface controls the delivery and pacing, and it does so in a way that serves me. But I wonder if that sense of service is an illusion. Am I being pushed and shaped into something not of my making? Am I entrapped in an Algorithm of Compulsion?
I need to understand what got me here. I worry that I am on a trajectory that is fueling itself into deeper and deeper echoes of a chamber I may never emerge from. But I have felt so desperate. The Trump phenomenon of dishonor-cum-popularity has pulled the rug from me—and when I listen to my fellow sufferers, they seem both to offer a way out from the despair even while they plunge me more fully into the clutches of it. I have often advocated the value of a “purification by excess,” so my death scroll, perhaps, has purpose and method. But such a method always carries with it the danger of the opposite: complete pollution by the excess.
This mode of being, riding the algorithms of YouTube is a new way of consuming, living with, engaging in world events. I feel a need to get it right—to fix the world. As if it were up to me to fix things; as if I could. The Trump phenomenon has revealed how different I am (we are) from so many people around me, from so many people in this country, from many people I love. I need to make sense of it. I need to have hope that decency matters, that we share some basic agreements about who/what/why we are; that something matters.
At the bottom of all this—my immersion in the algorithms, my search for a new set of foundations for my psyche and family and students and community—lies my need for purpose and hope. Those are the things that have been taken away. The current threats are so far beyond what they ever have been. Not really: I remember growing up fearing nuclear obliteration—the end of human existence, with the Tuesday morning 10:30 AM air raid siren reminder, the fallout shelter signs, and Cold War chill in the air. But with the sixties, seventies, and eighties, we grew somewhat around and beyond that fear. In contrast, today the climate crisis is more insidious and visible at the same time. The hopelessness of this planet on fire is deeper—since no solution seems nearly comprehensive enough, and the march on our path seems inexorable.
Against the pull of the algorithms, I rely on the simple correctives of fresh air and real life conversations with people close at hand. I derive such joy in accomplishing minor service projects that make me useful and employed. I can envision a life of getting up, keeping active, checking things off. I need the balance made possible by the diffusions and disorganization of non-technologized modes of interaction.
In closing, I must never forget that there may be healthy technologized forms of camaraderie outside the algorithm. Somewhere between the dictates of YouTube and the comforts of people close at hand, I must find, collect, and curate those people and statements that can nudge me closer to a happier balance. Now is a good time to recall (and thank) Terry Gross and Ken Burns, in replaying a portion of their conversation that I had happened to save a few years back, just after the release of Burns’s documentary, The Vietnam War:
Terry Gross: I want to quote something that the media critic, James Poniewozik, wrote in The New York Times. This was in a review, a very positive review, of your series, The Vietnam War. He wrote: “The saddest thing about this elegiac documentary may be the credit it extends its audience. The series, The Vietnam War, still holds out hope that we might learn from history, after presenting 18 hours of evidence to the contrary.”
Ken Burns: I think it’s a beautiful sentence and I will hold to my optimism. I think history has made me an optimist, despite the fact that it shows you that human nature doesn’t change, that the same venality is present, the same abstraction of war is present, the same greed is present. But so is also the same generosity, and the same … love. And war is human nature on steroids. And so, it’s an eminently study-able thing. And we assume that it’s just all negative. In fact, the same electrons that war gives off, in all the instances that I’ve tried to tackle it, reveal as much about the positive sides of human nature, and maybe the reason why we … you know, none of us is getting out of this alive, Terry, and we could reasonably be assumed to be huddled in the fetal position. But we don’t. We raise families. And we plant gardens. And we write symphonies. And we try to make films, and talk about history. And maybe there’s something that comes from that … that sticks.
None of us is getting out of this apocalypse alive, Terry, but yes, that little garden over there is oh, so beautiful….
For generations in Detroit and across our nation, the brothers and sister of labor have stood together to righteously demand fair pay, better benefits, safe working conditions. And let me say, every person in our nation has benefitted from that work. Everywhere I go, I tell people: “Look, you may not be a union worker—you better thank a union worker. For the five-day work week. You better thank a union member for sick leave. You better thank a union worker for paid leave. You better thank a union member for vacation time. Because what we know is when union wages go up, everyone’s wages go up. When union work places are safer, every workplace is safer. When unions are strong, America is strong.“
Kamala Harris, September 2, 2024, Detroit, Michigan
I continue to struggle with my role as a union supporter. I have not recovered from the phone call, during Covid, when the president of SXU (Laurie Joyner) and the Chair of the Board of Trustees (Trish Morris) informed me (Chair of the Faculty Union), and Jackie Battalora (Associate Chair), and Robert Bloch (our lawyer), that the University would no longer recognize our union, and would immediately discontinue its current round of collective bargaining.
On a personal level, I felt responsible. The negotiations had been long and embattled. Both sides were dug in. All the dynamics of power plays and personalities in such dealings were in evidence, and the protracted process, over two years in duration, came to a fruitless end. The conversations of our team had featured some of the best of colleagueship among the membership, but also some of the folly of striving and advocacy, with missed steps, missed opportunities, posturing, misguided kinds of assertiveness and power plays, and the like, all too common in labor negotiations.
The stalled negotiations conveyed a failure of the university I have not yet recovered from. The failure was a breakdown in communication; it was a foregone conclusion, where each side remained at the end exactly where they had been at the start. Persuasion was not an option. In my classes I teach of the Platonic dialogue, whereby the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, whereby perspectives, in coming together and against one another, all add to and correct the limitations of any single one of them; whereby a new entity, a “synthesis,” is possible and sought after. I had belief in such a thing, but in this episode, the reality on both sides was entrenchment. Nonetheless, internally, to our collective, there was goodwill and hope—honesty and charity—conflict and forgiveness; there was a sense of necessity that we had to put on a strong front (did we?), and so the style of advocacy we employed, one that was highly adversarial, was more or less believed necessary by all involved.
From the perspective of our negotiating team, our adversary had no intention to engage in a Platonic dialectic. The administrators were new hires, brought in by a potentially well-meaning board who, after years of benign neglect and worsening conditions found itself panicked that the institution might not survive, and that the main problem was “that union”—even though this accusation was something more of a trope than a reality. The president brought with her a high-priced union-busting lawyer, and every interaction reinforced an antagonistic dynamic, with variation in subtlety and aggressiveness, but never any chance for an opening that might lead to a genuine collaboration or sharing of power.
It is perhaps a very common tale in labor negotiations. Over the course of our two-year negotiation, our faculty group met with experts in the labor movement, such being the joy of the academic life, that we were eager to learn of the principles and practices of the labor movement while we were engaged in the activities of it. On a personal level, though, I had always hoped we could “change the dynamic”—and find a way to recognize how distinctive and remarkable our 40-year faculty union had been—how pragmatic and moral and effective the union and administration had been in looking out for what worked best for the institution overall.
The Hippocratic Oath rattled in my head. I had stepped into the role of chairperson with hope of serving, of possibly maintaining or improving conditions that for years were incrementally, gradually, evolving in win-win ways. But under my watch the union had ceased to be.
For years our union had operated on a bubble. The Yeshiva Supreme Court ruling of 1980, which suggested that university faculty might be classified as “management,” and thus could not partake in union activity, was made soon after our union was certified by the NLRB (in 1979). Throughout our history, Yeshiva hung over our heads. But the beauty of SXU’s union was that both sides—from the inception—operated on the premise that our union was legitimate; we would engage in collective bargaining as if we had all the protections of the NLRA. Over the course of the union’s existence, in those moments where agreements became strained, faculty hesitated to file an unfair labor practice—i.e., to act as a typical union—for fear that the Yeshiva question at SXU might be called and the whole premise of collective bargaining might be upended. In a way, SXU had transcended the exclusively antagonistic methods of collective bargaining in a great “as if”—we did collective bargaining “as if” we were a union like the UAW, even if we never pushed the process with any of the harder hitting tools of labor law. While some judged us not to be a “real” union, the process of collective bargaining and the respect shown by both sides struck many of us as exemplifying an ideal, even a purified version of labor-management methods of problem-solving.
The Joyner administration found a powerful ally in Donald Trump who appointed union busting leaders to the NLRB. After a few unfavorable decisions to faculty unions, SXU made its move. Divided and demoralized—and in the throes of a pandemic—the union was sapped of strength, and the University made its move on May 28, 2020.
From the perspective of four-plus years later, I’m left thinking how unnecessary it was to beat down the faculty the way the university did. Our negotiations had functioned as a version of shared governance—as a vehicle to achieve some modest concessions on the parts of all parties—where, as one of our esteemed founders stated, neither side “gamed the system,” and all prioritized the welfare and sustainability of the institution, even if only from a perspective of self-interest. I realize that traditional unions had never operated this way—that concessions and benefits were all hard fought, with one or the other party, ultimately, dragged to the finished line, more or less dissatisfied or even embittered. I just wish SXU avoided the nuclear decision to subjugate its faculty, even if, ultimately, their victory was Pyrrhic and largely impractical.
It’s about attitude and perception. I’m grateful for Kamala Harris’s rousing speech, even if only for the way it promotes a mindset opposite to that of busting a union, for the way it suggests the idea, the value, of a union. Or rather, the value of an adversarial process that is not about demonization and conquest but rather dialectic and transcendence—and possible mutual benefit.
