Politicians Catching Bad Habits
- NAMI At UVA
- Mar 25, 2020
- 4 min read
I came across at night (last night, it is now very early morning on March 21), by accident, on my laptop, a story on CNN, which I rarely go to, and this time I went to an audio snippet, I wanted to, an exchange, no, that is the wrong word, an outburst by Trump, once again saying that the question of a journalist was nasty, that he was a bad journalist, a sensationalist, and he kept talking, talking?, saying these things more than two or three times, almost compulsively, as though after saying it the first time he wanted to, felt the need to, sensed the possibility, to say it again. It made him feel good, clearly, to attack someone else and feel that he was vindicating himself. I wanted to go to this snippet, this clip on CNN. I had read of an earlier time just a few days ago in which he had burst out at a journalist and also called her question “nasty.” That is a masculine word for him. Is that not the word he used during the 2016 presidential debates, so called, when apparently Hillary Clinton called for a bathroom break. A woman relieving herself was something “nasty,” something her could refer to as nasty and sense that there were many, many, men out there who would understand, follow him. Women too? Nasty. I am not sure that is the word he used. Well. The journalist from NBC has asked Trump (I do not want to write ‘the president,’) what he would say to the American people, who were worried and anxious, what he would say to them, to reach out and understand them (something like that) and clearly that is the last thing that this man can do, and as though instinctually, no, instinctually, immediately, he retreated into himself and lashed out at the journalist. Completely telling, deeply so. And I sensed that things were so much worse, so much more immediate, personal, up-close, for all those millions of Americans, Cecilia, who watch these things continuously on television. I am removed, as I have wanted to be, needed to be, since 2008 after the Obama administration started and Rachel Maddow started to plow into him, or so I felt at the time, after loving her attacks, and those of others against Bush. Since then I have not “heard” America. I removed my ears. I read, at a distance, with some measure of control I hear Radio IQ a bit when I drive to ACAC or somewhere close by here in town. Of course, that is less, a lot less now, too.
And then at much the same time last night, around 9:30, we got an email from a colleague who wrote, “The next time you or your students hear trump say nobody could have foreseen such a pandemic, remember this article.
I can tell you first hand that when I spoke to part of the Obama nsc transition team, I was stunned to hear the emphasis they placed on preparing for a pandemic.” This is the story.
Updated March 20, 2020, 9:49 a.m. ET
I had seen the headline in the NYT and did not read it, feeling I knew all that. And I pretty much did, but reading it last night, all the details, the specifics, the empirical facts, the description, made it all the worse, so much more so, for me and also for Cecilia.
I hit a point last night, and I think Cecilia did too, not quite sure what it was, what it is, not of being abandoned, not quite, or desolate, not quite, although there is that, but unmoored. There is no solid basis to the society I, we live in, few reliable institutions, few reliable leaders, so very little that we can count on to be led through this crisis. There is an inability here to deal with the details, as I have told others at times before, to plan, to think ahead. We are ruled by the short term thinking of the market metaphor. That is the central thought that I keep coming back to these days, and before too, but less urgently then, that we live in a society which is run by the idea, the expectation that invisible forces will take care of us, so much so that planning, human intervention, government action, will actually get in the way of those forces and screw things us. And then, earlier in the day, there it was, in full print, the idea of the current administration (administration?) and its Republican acolytes, believe that government action in the society is the wrong thing to do, that it goes against the conservative ideology that has been destroying this society, us, since Ronald Reagan and before, including the neo-liberal Bill Clinton, and not leaving Obama off the hook either. Here it is.
I figured I was not going to sleep well. But I did ok. Just exhausted. And got up nice and early again, to start another day.
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