JUNE 11, 2024 – The springboard for this post, which . . . I promise, is not simply another predictable harangue into the wind . . . is not the jury verdict against Hunter Biden. No, the point of departure is the recent “speech” by the Duly Defeated at a campaign rally in Las Vegas. I watched and listened to the entire 62-minute video of the event. You should too, no matter for whom you intend to vote—Biden, Trump, or a third-party candidate. (Note: the foregoing sentence assumes you intend to vote. (Ahem.))
In large part the video was boring. Yes, boring. It imparted nothing new, nothing I haven’t already seen or heard, and at 8:00 in the morning, I had far better and more pressing matters to address. Yet, though I wanted to move on, I realized that the video struck at the heart of “what’s happening” in the larger world; the enormity of an unfolding development that will affect not only that larger world but by turn, my own little world.
In that revelatory moment I was most disturbed by the simple fact that I’d found the video boring. I tried to imagine myself watching it four years ago or any quadrennium prior to that back to 1964, the year in which I became fully aware of politics. As a fifth-grader, as a 20-year-old, as a 40-year old . . . and so on . . . how would I have reacted? Not bored, I can assure you. Shocked, bemused, disbelieving, outraged, but not bored.
Our political past is replete with all species of political clowns, buffoons, hawkers, hucksters . . . and worse—dark souls—but for the most part, political fringe players have remained where they belong; loose threads or dangling shoe-laces who were viewed even by the scruffiest constituencies as wholesale outliers if not retail outliars.
But today we’ve grown immune to our own regression. The outlandish and outrageous—ever present in any culture, any nation, any epoch if you wait long enough and look hard enough—have now become the norm at center stage of one of our two major political parties. Repeat superlative falsehoods to the point of monotony, and they’re no longer superlative or falsehoods. Demonize your opponents repeatedly and your own demons dissipate. Create a herd of scapegoats, and you escape accountability. Disrespect institutions foundational to constitutional government and those institutions become disreputable—along with constitutional government.
I remember the days when Americans feared the Red under the bed and Al Qaeda on the airplane, but as our society has evolved, topping those long-forgotten threats is the “paradigm shift” in our nation’s political norms. Among those adjusted standards is the patented hour-long inarticulate, unorganized undressed word salad of trash talk by a major candidate for the solemn, powerful office of the President of the United States of America. What has befallen us—us; you, me, our families, friends, and neighbors; our work associates and business partners; our fellow motorists, passengers, members of our faith and other faiths, fraternal organizations, bowling leagues? What has happened to us Americans? How is it that we’ve allowed ourselves to plunge headlong into such an appalling degradation of standards?
This is not a case of bait-and-switch; a silver-tongued orator promising this, that, and the other, thereby hoodwinking the masses, then immediately after being sworn into office, removing the mask and taking action that defiles the inspirational words of the campaign trail. In that case, people could be blamed for their naivete, their simple-mindedness, and the snake-oil salesperson could be charged with fraud in the inducement. But here we have a far different scene. Everything about the Duly Defeated is patently transparent. Everything. (Some of us fans of The Emperor’s New Clothes fable would even say his clothes are transparent.) Moreover, this is not 2016, when already present was abundant evidence of his lack of leadership skill and proclivity. This is eight years later and who knows how many critical books by former Trump enthusiasts and “team members,” how much testimony under oath by same, how much damage to the federal bureaucracies[1], how much retrogression in women’s reproductive rights, and how many trash-talking rallies . . . later.
Yet we hear another “rally rant” to which my high school speech teacher would have assigned a giant red F – considering substance, delivery, and preparation, and we are either (a) upset but no longer surprised; (b) not enthused but tolerant; or (c) actively supportive.
This state of affairs does not bode well for the body politic, and like it or not, the health of our country, our society, our communities, our households correlates—sooner or later, directly and indirectly—to the health of the national body politic.
We’ve floundered into rough seas, but there is a three-point course to calmer waters:
The first step in our national self-salvation is to grab ourselves by the lapels and depending on which camp we find ourselves, shake off our “boredom” or shake up our standards. The next step is to remind ourselves of much higher standards past: Washington’s Farewell Address; Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech; FDR’s First Inaugural Speech; and JFK’s Inaugural Speech, and of course, MLK, Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech—to name a few of the many gems in the canon of American political rhetorical elegance. The third step in the process of restoring our self-respect and mutual respect for one another is to give Democrats a decisive victory[2] in November (nearly the entire Republican establishment having lowered their standards to those of the Duly Defeated), bearing in mind that in a pluralistic democracy, “perfect” is most often the enemy of “good.”
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] “Bureaucracy” has long been assigned negative connotations by the opponents of “big government.” The reality is that no organization of any consequence can function without a bureaucracy. Early on in the Trump Administration, a number of federal agencies were gutted in an effort to “reduce the size and reach of government.” Fine, except when a business concern or individual needs someone to answer the phone to give direction, process an application for a permit, provide assistance after a natural disaster. This is not to suggest that there isn’t redundancy and inefficiency in government offices or that the statutory purview granted federal agencies by Congress is always “reasonable,” but unless we’re prepared to completely re-order our country and our priorities—and pull the rug out from multiple constituencies (including retirees, farmers, the military, and everyone who benefits directly or indirectly from the home mortgage interest deduction, to name just a few of the countless)—we will continue to want and need, an army, a navy, an air force, and a coast guard; the Veterans Administration; the Social Security Administration; the Federal Drug Administration; the Center of Disease Control; the Bureau of Labor and Statistics; the IRS; the State Department; the National Parks; and so on.
[2] One of the most troubling (least “boring”?) elements of the Las Vegas rally ramble was the explicit assertion that “only by cheating” can Biden win. This is an obvious set-up—should Trump lose again—for a redux of the highly damaging “election denialism” that followed Trump’s loss in 2020. A decisive victory for Biden in both popular vote and the electoral college reduces the potential traction of another “stop the steal” initiative that undermines trust in the cornerstone of a healthy democracy: free and fair elections.
