A Trump Thanksgiving

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas,
Everybody's looking for something.

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Hold your head up
Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on
Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up
Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on
Keep your head up, movin' on

Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something

Quote of the Week

Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.- C.S. Lewis

Saturday Video

Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand

I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long?

'Cause I have wandered through this world
And as each moment has unfurled
I've been waiting to awaken from these dreams

People go just where they will
I never noticed them until I got this feeling
That it's later than it seems

Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what you see
I hear their cries
Just say if it's too late for me

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky
Is this the prize
For having learned how not to cry?

The Instructive Nature of Pain

The past election proved to the American people that, as a nation, we are not yet post-racial. But arguably it did show that we may have, confirming years of predictions, finally become a post-Christian, secular society. When cultural conservatives and the Religious Right will take a wild gamble by backing perhaps the least moral presidential candidate ever, the lessons learned go well beyond base hypocrisy and voting out of fear rather than true devotion to a higher law. Human-made notions of race, class, and the always worrisome matter of money were a higher priority to many voters than the primacy of religion.

Now the Democratic Party wanders about in the desert like the Israelites of yore, seeking its true north. The Old Testament is full of tribes and societies who lost their path completely, deviated from belief in God, and pursued false idols instead. Granted our freedom by a loving, not punitive deity, we have as much right to act in ways that are harmful as they are healthy. Beyond superficial notions of winner and loser, one observes no clear direction for this country. Eight years ago, our cups runneth over with expectations. Now we pray for the least destructive course of action to follow.

The Enlightenment provided us an abiding belief in rationalism, that provided enough scrutiny and scientific precision, there was little the human mind could not discover. But by its conclusion it also kindled an extremely influential movement in thought and religious observance known as the Great Awakening. Its first period ran astride several concurrent philosophical and secular revolutions, most famously giving rise to the influential New England sect known as the Puritans, whose legacy we will celebrate in part when the annual Thanksgiving holiday is observed next week. The second Great Awakening of the late 18th and early 19th centuries gave us Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), Shakers, Seventh-Day Adventists, and many other professedly Christian denominations.

The context is now set before us. How then should we view the current day? I’ve learned the hard way in discussion with liberals and progressives that forming my arguments from a defensive posture is often the best tact. Using logic and specific, clear-cut examples isn’t merely an effective strategy for the debate team or academic discourse. It changes the dynamics of an argument. Done well, even skeptics have to concede that the opposition has a valid point to make.

Looking backwards into our past no more than fifty or sixty years ago, Americans regularly used biblical allusions in modern day speech. We had a strong cultural familiarity with Scripture, one that has faded a little with the passage of time, but is still strong enough to be revived, much like Lazarus. Apologetics is defined as a branch of theology concerned with the defense or proof of Christianity. I’ve adopted the technique myself to speak to many who fear the worst about the faith, to show that there is great good in belief and much helpful in times of turbulence.

Though I never identified myself as an atheist, I spent many years as an agnostic and most assuredly as a severe critic of Christianity in any form. I suppose in part I am wrestling here with my old self, the way I used to be. The ongoing debate exists foremost within myself and to some extent it always will. Still, I am far from unusual. This perpetual back and forth exists within the heart of everyone who cast a ballot or stated a strong opinion one way or another, if we are to be truly honest with each other. Every few years we are asked whether we need a course correction or should keep steady. Perception is reality. Objective fact can be difficult to discern.

One of the teachings of Jesus is known as the Parable of the Shrewd Manager. A corrupt and deliberately dishonest manager of money was caught red handed in the act. Charges were brought against him. His employer called him to account for his misdoings, intending to fire him on the spot. Realizing he was in a tight spot, the shrewd manager worked out crooked deals with the customers of his boss, carving out for himself a soft place to land. Deep discounts were worked out immediately, reducing payments and debts.

As the story concludes, a few verses of one translation in particular capture the essence of this pertinent parable.

The rich man [employer] had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?

Now we have elected a shrewd manager of our own, a man who could not correctly name and identify a book of the New Testament. In fairness, Howard Dean whiffed on this matter, too. Twelve years ago, the former Vermont governor was asked to identify his favorite book of the New Testament. The answer provided was Job, which is, of course, located in the Old Testament. At least he came close.

Both of these examples prove that religious identification and proficiency with theology is no longer a strict litmus test for major candidates. The election of Trump shows that ideological persuasion speaks more loudly than almost anything else. Religious or not religious at all, millions of us voted for self-interest first and foremost. In theory, Christianity is a religion that encourages us to think beyond ourselves and our own narrow concerns.

Judaeo-Christian values would have us believe that adversity and pain are necessary means of humility, guarding against hubris. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes teaches that loss and injustice are inevitable.

What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again. I also noticed that under the sun there is evil in the courtroom. Yes, even the courts of law are corrupt! I said to myself, "In due season God will judge everyone, both good and bad, for all their deeds. I also thought about the human condition--how God proves to people that they are like animals.”

We will die as a civilization when we stop believing that change is possible. Even those who voted against their own interests yet again wanted to believe that their lives could improve. A desperately frustrated electorate chose a radical candidate, a move that was as audacious as it was reckless. But neither should it surprise us. In centuries prior to the current day, before the advent of democratic elections, many backed bad kings and emperors to the bitter end.

Any study of history shows that a confluence of events, some intentional, many not, shape the success or failure of any regime. This shouldn’t mean that we ought to be passive observers of what events will unfold in front of us, but it does mean that we, collectively as Americans, have far less control over the future than we may even recognize.

Quote of the Week

"The more unpopular an opinion is, the more necessary is it that the holder should be somewhat punctilious in his observance of conventionalities generally, and that, if possible, he should get the reputation of being well-to-do in the world."- Samuel Butler

Saturday Video

To pretend no one can find
The fallacies of morning rose
Forbidden fruit, hidden eyes
Curtises that I despise in me

Take a ride, take a shot now
'Cause nobody loves me
It's true
Not like you do

Covered by the blind belief
That fantasies of sinful screens
Bear the facts, assume the dye
End the vows no need to lie, enjoy

Take a ride, take a shot now
'Cause nobody loves me
It's true
Not like you do

Who am I, what and why
'Cause all I have left
Is my memories of yesterday

Oh these sour times
'Cause nobody loves me
It's true
Not like you do

After time the bitter taste
Of innocence decent or race
Scattered seeds, buried lives
Mysteries of our disguise revolve

Circumstance will decide
Nobody loves me
It's true
Not like you do

Class Envy and Trump's Role in What Comes Next

Part of the American Dream, at least starting at the beginning of the last century, is predicated upon the hope that each of us might attain a four-year college degree. Three quarters of a century ago, college was standard procedure only for those with elite financial means. Both of my mother’s parents, small-town Southerners raised lower-middle class, were told from a very young age that they too might matriculate someday.  They anticipated college with the eagerness of small children on Christmas morning, alongside the resulting climb up the class ladder and greater income they were sure would follow. It was the most profound collective disappointment of their lives that the Great Depression wiped out every penny of their college fund.

My grandfather had a habit of asking me, as a young boy, whether or not certain Presidents had achieved a college degree. I was interested in history and political science, even then. Often I guessed right. Sometimes I guessed wrongly.

Lying on his deathbed, his body ravaged by cancer, my grandfather asked me one final time. Did Harry Truman go to college? I wagered a tentative guess. Yes, I said, pensively. No, he replied, sadly. He did not.

The 2016 race has been dissected in a million different ways by now. We’ll be talking about compelling and entirely plausible reasons why it ended the way it did for at least the next two years. In my rough estimation, frustrated working class people handed this election to Donald Trump. But he has a tall order on his plate, a now empty lunch-pail of American voters, much like the former factory worker clamoring for happier days where, said entirely without irony, America can be great again.

Can President-Elect Trump really put the genie back in the bottle? For decades pundits and news reports informed us that we were quickly moving from an industrial-based economy to the service/information economy that becomes more and more of a force with every passing day. I am unconvinced in the success of Trump’s approach to this extremely complex problem, but do not enjoy seeing people in pain and anger. I am eager for something different, but I’m genuinely afraid of what “something different” is really going to look like for the next four years.

We’ve never really drawn up a sharp distinction in the United States about precisely how our jobs and career paths should be structured. Should we adopt a strict system of tracking similar to the UK? In their approach, early in life, every British citizen is directed towards either a university education or a career in trade. Systems of examinations are used to make individual determinations.

The approach has its detractors, those who feel that it locks in people unfairly. They argue that some individuals are late bloomers, who might change their minds and wish to reverse course. Furthermore, those who disagree adamantly believe that everyone ought to have full freedom of how they choose to make their living. These are valid points, but they lead to a much greater issue we have skirted over for decades.

Does every American need a college degree? A PBS report from two years ago claims that 40% of every citizen in the United States has received at least a bachelor’s. And yet, one would think that having reached this benchmark to success, it would be far easier to attain stable, lasting employment. Even these so-called elites find themselves routinely disenchanted and demoralized, realizing that the expensive degree they hold in their hands means far less than they ever dreamed. And it goes without saying that they are often stuck with thousands of dollars in student loan debt that they will often carry with them into middle age and even beyond. Society says we all ought to have a degree, as do well-meaning parents and high school guidance counselors, but is it finally time to question that assumption and others like it?

But we must also consider, somewhat more heavily, the non-college, working class, often rural-dwellers who effectively flipped this election. What were their motivations? Racism has proven to be alive in well in this campaign, yes, but I would make a case that a more profound impact drove Trump turnout: class envy. American identity is contradictory, as I suppose is true for every country. One is supposed to receive higher education to raise oneself up in station, a step up the ladder. It’s drilled into us from a very young age. Then we begin to recognize that there are social distinctions in life. With time, we learn that we fit into one of them and don’t fit into others.

As I began, a college education and upward mobility is a basic tenet of the American dream, but it often sets a standard that cannot be lived up to no matter how hard a person works and saves. Or, for that matter, borrows. It’s difficult to overemphasize the amount of jealousy and resentment that led many to reject Hillary Clinton wholesale this cycle. This election wasn’t rigged. It is possible for anyone to be President, but to be President, you have to bill yourself as part soothing salve for grievous wrong while ginning up natural prejudices based on economic inequality and simple tribalism. This has been the strategy of both parties over the years.    

If Donald Trump somehow succeeds in returning manufacturing jobs to this country, we will need to reverse course as a nation. It will be not just acceptable, but necessary to work a blue-collar job where having a college degree might be necessary, or might be utterly superfluous. The automobile plant that returns to the United States, in this hypothetical scenario, probably needs four months to train its employees for work specific only to its organization, not four years spent elsewhere learning how to binge drink.

My father’s parents were career textile mill workers. They had, at best, an eighth grade education between the two of them. Dad wanted more for himself, and due to his own hard work, he raised myself and my two sisters in a pretty typical middle-class suburb. Returning to his working class roots was never an option he ever entertained. One summer in the middle of college he worked at the mill, found it totally distasteful to every ounce of his being, and resolved to never return. He got out, and though he experienced some guilt about the people he left behind, he found life much better away from having next to nothing.

I’m not sure that sort of upward trajectory in American society exists anymore. How do we inform Americans that it’s okay to not be highly educated? Being highly educated is as much mindset as it fact. How do we encourage citizens to live in small towns without access to excellent medical care, unable to pick from a multitude of choices to best spend their money, among many other metrics, and be generally okay with what to many would be a step back, not a step forward? I recall a song popular one hundred years ago during World War I. "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)

Trump’s America is going to either thrive or fail dismally based on a concept that is very foreign to American ears. It is called class solidarity. Class solidarity by its very definition is antithetical to the American Dream. It asks for single-minded devotion and a sense of common purpose, one not constantly distracted by demands of self-interest alone, the possibility of making greater income for oneself. The United States has had pockets of this sort of thinking when unions were much stronger. I am not sure we can kill off this desire for greater individual social mobility and turn millions of Americans into happy warriors.

This election has proven that almost anything is possible. But unless Trump can deliver on the promises he has made, now validated by somewhat less half the electorate, his tenure will be a complete waste of four years. Americans do need unity, but it needs to be communal unity, not an expedient unity for the short term, always hungering for the next rung up the proverbial ladder. When fathers and mothers aspire for their offspring to work alongside them at Trump Steel and Rail Corporation™, not the promise of a rise in class status, then these lofty promises might conceivably work. But I’m not holding my breath.

Quote of the Week

The end will show the whole truth.-William the Silent

Saturday Video

Pack the bag, I'm goin' away
It's over, goin' home
Thank your people, but it's too much to stay
It's done now, I'm goin' home

Now I feel like I'm one
Now I feel like I'm due
Spent my time in some fun
And for that, I thank you

It's over, it's over, it's over, I'm goin' home
It's over, it's over, and for that I thank you