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Trump, scha·den·freu·de, and righteous anger

~ Greg Beckman ~ 1 Comment

I’m working something out.

Until very recently, my Republican (not Conservative) acquaintances have felt perfectly comfortable mocking my liberal friends for wearing masks during the world-outbreak of “the novel coronavirus.” Their contempt fit. It made sense, given that Republicans have allowed Trump to mock disabled Americans; women; indigenous Americans; Latinos; all minorities; immigrants and the countries immigrants fled; overweight women (truly ironic, given his obesity); people whose “genes” might not hold up to the scrutiny of Minnesotan Trumpers; women in professions like journalism.

Republicans let Trump run wild, and eagerly took up his cause. They refused to wear masks. Not wearing masks became, as I recently read, the equivalent of a MAGA hat, a sign of political opposition to “lib-tards.” Grandchildren in arms, mask-less Republicans patiently explained to me that “people die.” They wanted their stores opened! They wanted to Restaurant! Grandchildren not in arms, they screamed at essential grocery store employees about their rights, about produce workers trying to take away freedom. In the privacy of their Facebook worlds, they posted images of Jews being loaded onto trains in Germany with captions that read, “Now I know how this happened.” Because public health = deep-state final-solution.

They promoted Civil War. “Locked and Loaded” read many Twitter feeds, particularly in the South or anywhere David Nunes and Kevin McCarthy stepped foot in California (they don’t come to LA or San Francisco very frequently).

So. Now. Something’s changed. I wonder what.

President Trump has COVID – 19. He and his wife. Potentially, Sean Hannity. Chris Wallace. His primary political opponent. Anybody whose come to his mask-less events. Other legislators. Reporters. Those he ridiculed for caring about other people’s health.

True to form, there has been an avalanche of “appropriate commentary” from liberals who just recently considered him an Enemy of the State. “I wish him a speedy recovery.” “Let’s not engage in schadenfreude — he’s a man, first, and we shouldn’t wish sickness on anyone.”

How moral…and how correct. We shouldn’t…be happy.

Republicans wouldn’t be so moral, I don’t think. Remember when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died? According to the Washington Post, the President’s aides didn’t tell Trump before a rally performance she had passed because they were afraid he would tell his adoring crowds and they would cheer. On my own Facebook feed, one of my acquaintances suggested RBG’s death was an act of God, and wrote “Thank God she’d dead.” If Biden had COVID, Republicans would be prepping stakes to put him out of his misery. Just imagine Tom Cotton carving a stake, and see how real that image is.

But this doesn’t matter, not really. Judging my actions with a Republican yardstick is…not wise. Even though Trump has now been struck by the very disease he discredited, and pointing out that irony in ways subtle and gross would give me much pleasure, there is something stopping me.

What?

Those very people who support this walking disgrace to the Presidency stop me from being happy. This is what I’m working out. His supporters/enablers/complicitors (which is evidently becoming a word) are probably hurting. And maybe scared. They now have existential proof that not taking nature seriously…is a serious mistake. Their icon and idol will probably get better, as he’ll have much better care than Black America has had with respect to COVID, but that doesn’t compute in Red America right now. It hurts to have your gods de-godded. As Gustave Flaubert said in Madame Bovary, you have to be careful in dealing with golden icons; the gilt surface rubs off very easily.

Consider Trump rubbed clean. That’s got to hurt those who trusted the plating.

Which is why scha·den·freu·de is wrong. The word means, literally, “harm-joy.” Taking joy in some else’s suffering. Let’s be clear here: schadenfreude rarely occurs outside an atmosphere of hypocrisy; getting happy at the suffering of an ethical person doesn’t usually make much sense. But “watching,” say, the President of Liberty University get strung up in a sexual threesome (ooops, audienced twosome) makes sense when you remember that the Falwells have been carving moral judgement into bludgeons for decades.

Honestly, there is hypocrisy here in Trump’s case. There are lies and misinformation, and Trump seems to have been felled by his own world-view (or weltanschauung): he’s a man, men are strong, etc., etc. But I am not happy he has been infected, and not because he matters to me. Consonant with public Republican pronouncements, not every human being matters; remember, they were the ones who want to storm-open the economy because “PEOPLE DIE ANYWAY.”

No. I am not happy Trump is sick because I still have some affection for some of his supporters. I don’t want to see them in pain. I’m working through this. But as it stands, schadenfreude is out. I hope Trump gets better. It does feel wrong to want anyone to suffer, even those people who have caused so much suffering. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m working through it.

But on another point, I’m crystal clear. While I’m not happy he’s sick, I am very very angry that he has caused so much suffering, reflected rather than assuaged our country’s divisions, given shout-outs to ProudBoys even as he mocks a candidate for wearing a big mask. Trump doesn’t deserve my joy that he has a potentially deadly disease. I know what it’s like to have people look on disease and wish it on others (Republicans during the AIDS crisis); I never want to cause that kind of pain, and a small part of me still believes in redemption.

That is where anger comes in. Trump does deserve my anger. He has done horrific things, many of them to people who cannot fight back. He deserves the anger of a nation he lied to. He deserves our anger for becoming an icon of modern civil war. (Make no mistake, Republicans: he is not a mirror, as you claim; he is mirroring America’s divisions, and like a funhouse game blowing us out of proportion.)

My anger is healthy. Anger is necessary. Anger is redemptive. I’m angry this stupid man was allowed to inflict his moronic ego on the nation, which means I’m also angry at Trump’s enablers. I wish him a speedy recovery. But if I’m honest, I wish him that recovery so that I still have the chance to make him — and his supporters — pay for what they have done to the country.

Trump’s illness is a chance to remember our humanity. His recovery is a chance to exact justice. That won’t happen unless my liberal friends remember that it is completely necessary to be both humane toward and angry at a man who got burned by his own wildfire.

AfterQuestions

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment 
God keeps me alive
because I have questions
for “after.”
Serious questions.
Questions I know he can’t answer.

Like:

Why is my nose crooked?
Really?  You couldn’t give me something straight?
Anything STRAIGHT?

And why not save us from 
ALL of the Falwell’s — 
let’s go further —
all fundamentalists?
(If you say Free Will
I swear to you I’ll throw 
Crohn’s Disease
in your face.  
Free Will.  
Shit.)
They’re ruining the world
and my upstanding view
of pool boys.  Please!

And as long as we’re here,
not that I’m complaining,
— I’m totally cool in that department —  
but how come
skinny-skater Bodie
was given that dick?
Can you just answer me that?
Was it a reward?
Maybe recognition for his
Exceptional Contribution 
to Human Progress?
I’m sure he’s saved 
hoards with his Board —
it all seems just a little…
peculiar.

More:  

Did you have to let
America have the nukes?
You knew what we’d do,
and there were Canadians nearby.
And why did you let Republicans
happen?
Why are people in Bakersfield
so proud?
Henry Fonda for On Golden Pond?

(Free Will, again, right?)

And there’s this skater named Bodie,
maybe I mentioned him?
Why?
Just why?

See you in a bit.

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Cancel-Culture, Politics, and Sexuality

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment

From the New York Times: “This is the concern around a trigger-happy cancel culture, as it gives undue credence to the initial allegation without due diligence,” said Julian Cyr, a state senator in Massachusetts who argued shortly after the accusations surfaced that withdrawing support from Mr. Morse would set a bad precedent for progressive candidates, especially gay ones.

Art vs. entertainment. Finally.

~ Greg Beckman ~ Leave a comment

First, something from Gertrude Stein:

Then commenced the long period which Max Jacobs has called the Heroic Age of Cubism, and it was an heroic age. All ages are heroic, that is to say there are heroes in all ages who do things because they cannot do otherwise and neither they nor the others understand how and why these things happen. One does not ever understand, before they are completely created, what is happening and one does not at all understand what one has done until the moment when it is all done. Picasso said once that he who created a thing is forced to make it ugly. In the effort to create the intensity and the struggle to create this intensity, the result always produces a certain ugliness, those who follow can make of this thing a beautiful thing because they know what they are doing, the thing having already been invented, but the inventor because he does not know what he is going to invent inevitably the thing he makes must have its ugliness.

Stein, Picasso

I suppose it’s appropriate, and perhaps even artful, that the clearest expositions of artistic process is found in one of the most poorly punctuated essays I’ve read outside a high-school English class. Stein loved commas, but didn’t seem to know where to place them. I love poetry, but don’t know what I’m doing.

We’re both struggling. A perfect relationship.

What Stein is getting at — having had a front-row seat to the cubist drama — is the difference between that which comes first (which is art), and that which follows (which is entertainment). Or, put differently, Stein believes creation is distinct from understanding in the same way that inspiration is distinct from monetization. Her Picasso lived in the space of heroic vision, not in the sense that he believed he had something extraordinary to communicate, but instead something that was indelibly his — something that flowed through him rather than being produced by him.

This Picasso did not want to draw what everybody already saw; he wanted to express what he saw, almost how he saw. That vision, before it became an -ism, looked strange. Dark lines appeared on very warped faces. Nudity was not often ….provocative. While others competed in the realm of representational art, learning their crafts in structures which either applauded or denigrated fidelity to the aesthetics of the time, Picasso created. Not a movement. Something else, something Stein intimates he did not understand.

He put down, as clearly as he could, his focus, and kept moving forward. Later, his vision would be codified. Viewers now, having been trained to see what is suspiciously similar to a two-dimensional representation of (newly emergent) quantum physics, can finally see something more than what had been seen. But only after the artist created a path to a place he couldn’t describe until he got there.

Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash

That is, I think, the difference between art and entertainment — and by “entertainment,” I also mean much of academic discourse. Music. Stories. Anything that can be sold. Or claims to have a handle on a world that is constantly moving, but is really a progressively more polished (and boring) version of what is already understood. We read, or watch, or listen to the professionals, those who have perfected the technique of storytelling, or moviemaking, or songs. But — and this is important — we are not really reading, etc., in these mimes anything but ourselves. We’re not really seeing anything but what we’ve already seen.

This is entertainment. And it is fine, good, wonderful. I need to be comforted, every once in a while, by something that confirms my worldview. I can’t be challenged all the time. But it is also comforting, for me, to read that perhaps the value of art likes not in its perfection, but in its ugliness; that the first few sentences we strung together as children were not structurally perfect, but still beautiful to those listening; that I get a thrill out of listening to bands that are finding their way much more often than I do when listening to those that have become masters of their trade; and my best poems, like my best stories, are not the ones that I “techniqued” into perfection (like lectures I’d given a hundred times), but those off-the-cuff moments of honesty that seem ugly and imperfect even as they move.

The truth: I really did enjoy being infuriated at Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs more than applauding Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. And perhaps like Stein, I find more value in one ugly-but-unsettling sketch than I do in a reproduction that has been purified for public consumption. Which is why I love the fact that Stein is more concerned with content than punctuation. She’s repetitive, somewhat unstructured, a little dictatorial. But then she has to be. She creating a new view and all. Hers.

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