Morbid Thoughts in Time of Trump

Trigger-warning: some morbid thoughts here, wrought by the day’s events.

The one thing that’s made me super-nervous since the election, the major thing that has given me the kind of anxiety a lot of folks have been feeling nonstop since election night, is the possibility of him leading us into war. Not a 9/11-type event but the more old-fashioned escalation to battle, where reckless rhetoric leads nations to stumble or bumble into war.

If I’ve had any precedents in my mind for the worst that may lie ahead, it’s not been Hitler, Mussolini, Berlusconi, and all the rest. It’s been World War I. It’s been senseless murder on a grand scale, of the sort the United States is more than capable of. And then I start thinking about the seeming irrationality of it all, the way men and women allowed themselves to be led to their own destruction, which led Freud to start thinking about a death drive in European civilization if not in humanity as a whole.

And I start thinking about the way we’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into our own slow-motion destruction in the form of climate change, where we watch our futures and our children’s futures being held hostage, being mortgaged, not only to our corporations but also to our complacency, our corruption born of comfort.

And I look around for any sign of leadership from the political class, and see nothing at all. They all seem so reactive, so frightened, so cowed, so clueless. They can’t stand up; they’re too used to sitting down.

And then I read today’s headlines, from his threats to Mexico to his dressing down of Australia to the saber-rattling around Iran.

And I think: We’re on our own. No one is going to save us from these people. I’m glad we’re fighting so hard. I believe there is more intelligence, more grit, more vision, more power in all of us than in all of them. We are all leaders, we must all lead. Keep fighting. Keep fighting. They must be stopped.

27 Comments

  1. Vicky Brandt February 1, 2017 at 10:21 pm | #

    I’m not able to comment on your FB feed, but I want to thank you for being a constant source of incisive analysis and–perhaps paradoxically, considering your preface that this was a dark post–hope. It helps to know that people like you, Greg Grandin, Doug Henwood, Alex Gourevitch, and Jedediah Purdy are fighting the good fight; it helps even more to be able to read the threads and gain a deeper understanding of the issues than would be available just from the news [sic]. So, again, thanks.

    • Michael Brown February 2, 2017 at 2:38 am | #

      +1, Prof Robin. I’m now a Facebook exile, and miss your online salon there, but I still find you elsewhere, and it always helps when I do. Sincerely, thank you.

  2. msobel February 1, 2017 at 10:24 pm | #
  3. realthog February 1, 2017 at 10:35 pm | #

    And I start thinking about the way we’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into our own slow-motion destruction in the form of climate change, where we watch our futures and our children’s futures being held hostage, being mortgaged, not only to our corporations but also to our complacency, our corruption born of comfort.

    And I look around for any sign of leadership from the political class, and see nothing at all. They all seem so reactive, so frightened, so cowed, so clueless.

    Except for, for example, Al Gore. But then, although the American people voted for him as their president, the Supreme Court, to its eternal disgrace, didn’t.

  4. kim Kaufman February 1, 2017 at 10:39 pm | #

    Al Gore was a total wuss. He didn’t fight back. At any rate, what I’m afraid of right now is: martial law in the U.S.

    • realthog February 1, 2017 at 10:47 pm | #

      Al Gore was a total wuss. He didn’t fight back.

      Yes, he was a total wuss as concerns fighting back against the antidemocratic and totally corrupt ruling of the Supreme Court. But he’s been exactly the opposite of a total wuss on the subject of climate change.

    • Brett February 1, 2017 at 11:10 pm | #

      He made one devastating mistake, which was not calling for a state-wide recount. After that, there wasn’t much else he could do – things snowballed, the Supreme Court made was is still a strong candidate for the worst decision of the past 30 years, and there was little else he could do.

      • Tom February 2, 2017 at 11:13 pm | #

        Snowballed, no. Railroaded is more the case.

  5. Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda February 1, 2017 at 10:56 pm | #

    Knowing so much about the past really does make it even scarier and more frustrating.

  6. John Maher February 1, 2017 at 10:57 pm | #

    Someone’s been reading too much into the Zimmerman Telegram

    Trump has already killed the planet by pulling out of COP 21 so all this human-centric concern is a bit late. Maybe humans deserve Trump for what they have done to other life

  7. Brett February 1, 2017 at 11:08 pm | #

    I don’t know whether it’s comforting or dismaying, but at least we probably can’t get a great power war like they used to because of the nuclear weapons (I hope). Of course, there’s plenty of stupid lesser conflicts that we could get dragged into.

    And I think: We’re on our own. No one is going to save us from these people. I’m glad we’re fighting so hard. I believe there is more intelligence, more grit, more vision, more power in all of us than in all of them. We are all leaders, we must all lead. Keep fighting. Keep fighting. They must be stopped.

    I hope so.

  8. Preston February 1, 2017 at 11:34 pm | #

    Isn’t the real danger a new attack like 9/11 (courtesy of some ISIS group), which will unleash a new security state with outrageous powers of repression, with the full support of the “population”?

  9. Alex February 2, 2017 at 12:19 am | #

    Great post – I’ve been feeling the same way about his recklessness on all fronts. It seems to me what he (and more likely his advisors are doing l) is testing the limits of executive power (knowing their will be push back and roll back) whilst removing those in positions of power that disagree with his agenda.

    Although I fear what may happen could it be worse than bumbling into Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria – decimating the region and its people?

  10. Dene Karaus February 2, 2017 at 1:02 am | #

    It has only taken us 12 days to realize this is not a poorly organized “not ready for prime time” administration, but a political coup. The State Department will become the center of the struggle, as it is unclear whether the 1000 dissenters will be purged regardless of the supposed protections of the dissent structure. This will be the struggle for America’s soul, and we have realized it’s already begun.

  11. Thomas Rossetti February 2, 2017 at 1:44 am | #

    It occurs to me that American political thought has been able to discern our evolution into a banana republic but I can’t think of a work that deals in a serious manner with the necessary politics of gulpe, or coup strategies for the survival of the body politic. I remember reading a good biography of Trujillo by Robert Crasweller that illuminates the dire nature of the problem. Always easy to believe the cure is worse than the disease, but if the disease is fatal without a sudden intervention. Hard thoughts.

  12. mark February 2, 2017 at 4:23 am | #

    Having read ‘The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848-1914 (Yale Intellectual History of the West)’ by J. W. Burrow, which looks particularly at Germany in the long 19th century, what you see is a set of intellectual movements, artistic, scientific, and philosophical, warped by their inability to gain democratic expression in a divine right monarchy-cum-empire.

    Reading RONALD RADOSH’s article at thedailybeast.com, ‘Why has the Trump campaign taken as its new head a self-described Leninist?’ on Steve Bannon:

    ‘”He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed. Shocked, I asked him what he meant. “Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment”…I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded: “I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.”’

    Bannon now is the state. He does not need to be smuggled into Russia on a German train during WW1 as Lenin did. And Bannon is not bolstered by much in the way of frustrated intellectualism.

    The American kulturkampf is there but it will be different to the conditions creating the onset of WW1. That is not to say giving the Trump nuclear codes makes anyone feel equanimous.

  13. mistah charley, ph.d. February 2, 2017 at 8:48 am | #

    bill black, author of ‘the best way to rob a bank is to own one’, says he was inspired by a saying that the dutch came up with during their long struggle against their spanish overlords – it is not necessary to be hopeful – it is only necessary to persevere

  14. Bill Barnes February 2, 2017 at 11:17 am | #

    If nothing else, the coming year will provide unending grist for the mill. As I wrote to Masha Gessen some weeks ago (worth repeating I think, even if you read it the first time):

    For the generations that came to adulthood over the last 50 years, the moral dilemma you write about so movingly in today’s New York Review Of Books on-line, the moral dilemma of this “moment,” is not really new or unprecedented, nor really the first (or second or third) world-shaking recurrence of the classic moral challenge faced by your great grandparents. Most of us have been “collaborators” or “good Germans” to one degree or another, varying over time and circumstance, throughout our adult lives. And we have been on track toward a monumental crisis for at least two decades, largely refusing to recognize or acknowledge our situation. I reference, of course, the consequences of climate destabilization and environmental degradation. Trump’s election and four years of his presidency will be the two-by-four that breaks the camel’s back. The silver lining is that this, hopefully, will serve as a more powerful and effective wake-up call than anything else that might have befallen us this soon. And it is already almost too late. Thank you Donald Trump?

    Accordingly, Manos a la obra. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Etc

  15. Roquentin February 2, 2017 at 1:14 pm | #

    I agree, especially about us being our own. Washington isn’t going to solve this for us, probably not even elected officials at the local level. I don’t know if you ever read The Invisible Committee’s “To Our Friends,” but there’s a really great part that goes like this:

    In 2007 we wrote that “what we are faced with is not the crisis of a society but the extinction of a civilization.” At the time, this kind of statement got you taken for an Illuminatus. But “the crisis” has gone down that path. And even ATTAC acknowledges a “crisis of civilization”—which goes to show. More dramatically, an American veteran of the Iraq war turned “strategy” consultant, wrote in the autumn of 2013 in the New York Times: “Now, when I look into our future, I see water rising up to wash out lower Manhattan. I see food riots, hurricanes, and climate refugees. I see 82nd Airborne soldiers shooting looters. I see grid failure, wrecked harbors, Fukushima waste, and plagues. I see Baghdad. I see the Rockaways underwater. I see a strange, precarious world […] The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead.” In the days after the First World War it still only called itself “mortal,” which it certainly was, in every sense of the word.

    Metaphors involving zombie films follow soon after. But I think the point stands. The way Western society is currently organized is already kaput, most people just don’t realize it yet. I don’t claim to know the form this disintegration will take, whether it’ll be fast or slow, via a world war or collapse, which groups and ideologies will come out on top, etc.

    There’s that great quote which I believe was from Frederic Jameson that goes, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Pretty grim, but accurate.

  16. empty February 2, 2017 at 2:08 pm | #

    It is that time of the century (give or take a few years).

  17. jonnybutter February 2, 2017 at 2:44 pm | #

    No matter how grim, there always seems to be room for absurd bathos, or pretend-absurd bathos. Or something. This clip is supposed to be funny (or something), but it’s neither funny nor serious, just a fatuous, sort-of advertisement. Every asshole celeb/biz titan wants to run for pres now, and they would all be better than Trump!

  18. Chris Mealy February 2, 2017 at 5:07 pm | #

    Corey, I’m feeling the WW1 vibe too. I read Barbara Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower” last September was surprised by two things. First, how popular militarism was with elites worldwide (That time gave us the word “jingoism” so I shouldn’t be surprised). You don’t have to look for causes of WW1 because everybody was itching to fight. It was basically inevitable as long as the warmongers were in charge. Second, sane people at the time saw it all coming and tried to prevent it. I had never heard of the two Hague Peace Conferences before (1899 and 1907).

  19. jonnybutter February 3, 2017 at 12:55 pm | #

    More morbid thoughts (from n+1) about Trump repulsive, subhuman immigration policies:

    “It would be very surprising if a law to strip inconvenient people of citizenship were to not be issued in the near future; Trump, remember, suggested this offhand as a punishment for the First Amendment-protected act of flag burning.”

    The author is Greg Afinogenov and the piece is here

    All the things you don’t want to think about, but do, when you’re trying to go to sleep every night, things other people are thinking about too….like, is citizenship actually secure? Obama canceled Snowden’s passport, so the current WH has a readymade excuse (not that they need one). Republican voter suppression by other means.

  20. b. February 3, 2017 at 3:53 pm | #

    “I start thinking about the way we’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into our own slow-motion destruction in the form of climate change, where we watch our futures and our children’s futures being held hostage, being mortgaged, not only to our corporations but also to our complacency, our corruption born of comfort.”

    Nobody was lulled, this was, in the US and the Western world, a conscious decision. “Limits of Growth”, whatever flaws the model, however off the parameters might or might not have been, was just a confirmation of common sense. It takes a stunning amount of willful dishonesty to argue then – or now – that there is any difference between disaster in a N decades vs. disaster in N+M decades. In the 70’s, it was also on the record that the biggest machine mankind has ever build – the fossil fuel extraction, processing and distribution infrastructure – was producing enormous amounts of a pollutant that just happened to be invisible to the eye, and chemically inert.

    • b. February 3, 2017 at 3:53 pm | #

      This is Reagan’s true legacy – to give voice to the silent majority (and the vocal retainers of inbred wealth) in their unanimous rejection of the knowledge that their way of life, negotiable or not, was not sustainable.

      We haven’t mortgaged our children’s future, we have used it up. We have burned it. We have burned an irreplaceable resource – millions of years of sunlight concentrated over tens of millions of years into a malleable liquid – releasing the resulting gigatons carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Both sides of the ledger are damning.

      • b. February 3, 2017 at 3:54 pm | #

        The truly stunning part of this is that, as we learn more and more about the universe and our precarious place in it, we appear to be less and less willing to admit how thin the ice is on which we propose to dance, and we are less and less prepared to dedicate the enormous – but diminishing – resources we have left to addressing the issue of survival.

        I grew up with the Limits of Growth and Mutually Assured Destruction – another enormous machine we have built at great expense – and it is incredible to me how eagerly, wastefully, and thoroughly we are willing to prepare our own accidental or systematic demise.

        • b. February 3, 2017 at 3:54 pm | #

          I sometimes wonder whether the success – temporary or not – in reducing childbirth and childhood deaths following WW2 has changed the way we perceive reality. Previous generations grew up with the experience of siblings suffering debilitating disease and early death. It is hard to imagine a person with the life experience of an FDR acting like a Bush, Obama, or Trump.

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