Thoughts from 26,000 feet as I fly from Columbus to Chicago, then onward to Kansas City.
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First, the political.
I watched a WWII documentary recently where some historian described Hitler as the most successful political leader in history whose career was based almost entirely on “grievance.” And I thought to myself, “until Trump.”
But that’s not quite correct; Trump isn’t really about grievance, I think. He’s about resentment (or at least his message is). He’s fostered it (with the committed help of the idiots in the Conservative Media Landscape (CML), and he’s benefited from it.
I found myself driving a few days ago, on my way from Ann Arbor to Athens, Ohio, through entire communities that seem (based on their signage) to support Trump, and I discovered I could almost feel the resentment residents there felt towards more economically vibrant parts of the country, towards what they are told and believe are “elites” on the coast, at what they are told and believe are crazy “woke” liberals, and so on. Towards everybody, essentially. Just unfocused resentment, spreading out in all directions.
I even found myself sympathizing with them to an extent. They are bombarded by messages from Trump and the CML that things are terrible and that it’s someone else’s fault, and it’s not surprising that people whose lives do not match up to the lives they see of the rich and famous, or of the characters they see on TV, believe they are being exploited, taken for granted, and forgotten.
It occurs to me that politicians — to be effective, at least — need to employ an “us vs. them” strategy, and Trump (again with the assistance of the CML, of course) did this magnificently, effectively characterizing the Democrats as the “them.” The failure of the Democrats was their inability to counter that with any kind of effective messaging that redirected that resentment towards a more appropriate “them”: the tech bajillionaires that campaign strategically and effectively against any efforts to tax them appropriately, the foreign powers that prioritize authoritarianism, expansionism, and a restriction of human rights over democracy and basic decency, and the politicians who repeatedly roadblock efforts to make life better.
Instead, the Democrats seemed to campaign on a platform of “we’ll keep the same stuff, and isn’t this great” … and against the powerful “you’re miserable” message promoted by Trump and the CML, that wasn’t ever going to work.
I sure hope the Democrats (and like-minded political parties outside America) can find a candidate able to reawaken the confidence and humanity of the so-many people who seem to have forgotten those characteristics, and can provide a compelling message that reassures the fear that so many people have that the world is spinning out of control that, in fact, it’s not. I hope they can find someone who can do it. But I’m not confident. Especially against the CML … it’s hard to cut through the static.
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| Full of hot air, and unconcerned with the people supporting him |
As for Trump himself … he’s just a child. That’s all he is. People who suggest he’s cynical, or that he’s purposefully creating political noise (Greenland, Canada, etc.) to distract us from the particularly pernicious policies he and his advisors truly want are mistaken. He’s a cruel and evil child, unable to understand complexity (and convinced that it shouldn’t exist), lashing out at anyone who opposes him, and he is only trying to impress the particular authorities which he admires (in this case, his MAGA supporters and various dictators around the world). Trying to analyze his motives or strategies is silly. He wants what he wants, full stop, and he’s mystified at the suggestion that anybody could want anything different than he does, so assumes they must simply be acting out of personal antipathy.
All that being said … and even though I’ve been trying my best to avoid reading the news about Trump, and I’ve stopped watching the nightly comedy shows to avoid their monologues, and I turn away from my NPR podcasts when they play clips of Trump’s voice to promote some new program of analysis … his recent actions regarding Ukraine — both his appalling treatment of Zelenskyy at the White House and his subsequent decisions both to cut off military aid to Ukraine and to deport Ukrainian refugees — have hit, and continue to hit me, right in the stomach, painfully.
It's funny. I grew up believing the same myths we all did, of course, about American exceptionalism and about us being the good guys, and I grew up believing we stood for something. "The last best hope of earth," Abraham Lincoln called us. And heaven help me, I believed it. I still believe it! So why are repeatedly electing people to represent us who so obviously don’t believe it?? It’s mystifying. I can see me being selfish and ignorant, but surely Presidents are supposed to be … better? Instead of consistently worse?
I don’t just think we should offer universal health care because almost every other country does, or support education because it makes us more “competitive,” or increase mental-health care, reduce mandatory-sentence minimums, and substantially reduce the incarceration rate because I’m “soft.” I want to do those things because I believe the United States can be the best! We have the resources to be the best! We were founded as the City on the Hill! What’s more, millions and millions of people around the world have looked at us that way too, from the very beginning!
And yet, for some reason, liberals and progressives — the very people who are trying to make us the best by living up to our ideals and fulfilling our potential — are repeatedly characterized as “hating America.” Meanwhile, so many "conservatives" (whatever that means) think either that “we’re the best” is simply a truism, and therefore that we can do whatever we want, or, even worse, believe we’re the best because we’re the strongest, God forbid.
I’m not suggesting just that those beliefs are offensive — though they certainly are — but that they’re nonsensical. Nobody would say that the Los Angeles Dodgers are the best baseball team even if they lost every game, or that they’re the best because, regardless of their skill at baseball, they can beat every other team up. To be considered as the best, treated as the best, you have to earn it. You have to show it.
Why are our politicians so afraid to ask that of us? Kennedy did, both with his "we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"” speech, and his “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” speech. Since then … our leaders have been consistently unwilling to even ask us to work to make our world better. They've given up! We're turning to the worse angels of our nature now, seems to me.
And the suggestion that we could lead the world in education, health care, life expectancy, and standard of living, is dismissed as naïve. But … why? Only because we're too timid to try. Some country has to be those things. Why not us? Who better than us?
It's gut-wrenching. We could be everything everyone, both Republican and Democrat, want us to be … but instead we grab the wheel and drive ourselves off the road and into the dirt. I despair.
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As for me and my ongoing visa drama … well, it turns out I was mistaken about the relevant time frame for my application. I had unknowingly been looking at the time frame listed on the website of the Czech consulate in Hong Kong, rather than the one listed on the website of the Czech consulate I had applied to – that in Los Angeles – and although the two websites are fundamentally similar (so similar, obviously, that I was unaware of my mistake), the relevant deadlines are phrased differently, with the former telling business-visa applicants that a decision will be made and conveyed to them after 90 days — or after 120 in “particularly complicated” cases — and the latter simply saying the decision will be made and conveyed “between 90 and 120 days.”
This is, in my case, an important distinction, because I had been worried that my failure to hear after 90 days meant my application had fallen into the “particularly complicated” category, whereas in fact, it means nothing at all. I assume, the Czech Republic being a highly functioning bureaucracy, it’s much more common to hear closer to 120 days than 90 anyway, so the fact that I still haven’t heard on this, the 115th day, shouldn’t be too surprising.
I believe the 120th day will be on Wednesday, March 12th. My plan at the moment is, if the consulate tells me my application has been denied, to fly immediately to Montenegro or Albania, file an appeal of that decision, and ride out the weeks until I can get a new Schengen tourist visa, as they’re cheap, European, warm, interesting, and somewhat familiar. Of course, if I do get the visa, I will fly to Los Angeles, pick it up, and immediately fly back to Prague. Indeed, I checked various travel websites, and it may even be possible to to all of those three things on the same day.
I’m anxious about it all, of course, but several times a day I find myself starting to imagine getting the good news, and I’m immediately flooded with energy and joy. The idea of going to the airport, getting on the plane, and heading home to my bed, my friends, Catalina, and my new life, is tremendously exciting. Fingers crossed, you know?
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