Careful readers will note that I took last week off from this newsletter/blog/thing. The Kitten and I vacated our place on the Eastern Shore while her brother and his family frolicked there, and we headed up to Vermont to a beautiful spot on Lake Champlain in the town of Charlotte (pronounced char-’lott), where a friend keeps a rustic “camp” house on the lake, a house that he graciously lent us. We meandered our way northward, stopping first in Philadelphia where we overnighted at a wonderful hotel called “The Study” near Penn and supped at “The White Dog” where I continued my to do great injury to the fine eating habits I had developed over the previous year plus (a practice that continued through Saturday past—although I have things under control now). From there we continued north to visit with The Kitten’s aunt before eventually making our way to Charlotte.
The camp we stayed in had all the comforts of home and provided us with delightful views. About a half hour south of Burlington, we only made it up to the big city together once for a couple of hour meander down the main shopping drag. I returned again solo to meet up with a fraternity brother who lives there, ostensibly to watch the Virginia v. Texas College World Series game, but it was rain delayed and I left before it started.
The trip wasn’t a true vacation, as I got up and worked for 2-3 hours each day whilst my companion slept, and then I had at least one or two meetings a day thereafter. But it was refreshing and slow-paced, a great opportunity to recharge.
We left late in the week for Jamestown RI to meet up with friends of the Kitten (FOK) for a cookout, and then continued back to Philly where we celebrated my birthday a day early. On my birthday (Sunday, thank you for your birthday wishes) we got up, drove the remaining two hours to Easton, where I exchanged suitcases for the pre-packed one sitting there waiting for me and then hopped on a plane for some business travel. Some thoughts on my travels follow:
—I-95 is a hateful, terrible road, and the stretch of it that runs through Connecticut is particularly horrific. I’ve been making the trip back and forth to Newport RI since the summer of 1987, and there are three or four places in CT where there are ALWAYS traffic jams that are inexplicable. You creep for fifteen or twenty minutes and the VOILA, you’re doing 65 again. No accident. No road construction. Just how it is. Terrible. The parts in and around Philly are also putrid.
—Vermont has a reputation for “crunchiness” and left-wing politics. Both are well earned. It is also beautiful. There are a lot of red barns in Vermont, which got me thinking that there must be some reason that red is a popular color for barns, and since we live in the magical age of the Google machine, I’ll pass along one link that puts forward a seemingly sensible reason why.
—On a completely different track, there is something about a big, brawny city in the early morning, before it is awake. I woke Sunday in Philly at about 0530 and went for a walk to the closest Dunkin (which the Google machine—-and the sign on the door—told me opened at 0500. It was closed) and then the second closest Dunkin. The only people on the streets were snoozing homeless and various joggers. I love this time of day. New Orleans very early is particularly beautiful.
—As stated above, we stayed at one place in Philly (the Study) that I’d never been before or stayed in elsewhere, and it was wonderful. We had a great corner room, full of light, roomy, and well appointed. For the “special occasion” on the night before my birthday, we stayed in a well-known, high end property in Center City next to City Hall. Located in a beautiful, historic building, this place cost twice as much for a nice but small room. Definitely not worth the money.
An Exchange on Trumpism
A few days ago, I posted the following two threaded tweets:
I did so in response to someone who took issue with a previous tweet in which I took a garden variety conservative position which did not sit well with this person who presumably followed me for other reasons.
None of this is important though. What is important is the Twitter Direct Message I got soon thereafter from a person I know who served in the Trump Administration. It read thusly: “I don’t want to pick a fight in public - want to understand your terminology. When you say you hate Trumpism- what do you mean? I understand your opposition to Donald Trump the person- but what part of the policy program of his four years in the WH to you find so objectionable? Is it the way he left office? Not conceding that Biden won the election…so my question- what do you mean when you say you hate Trumpism? ” I couldn’t respond thoughtfully right away, so I sent a response that ended “…But Trumpism <in my view> has precious little to do with policy. This is that upon which I will expand.”
I then sat down this week and thought about my answer to what I thought the central question was…how do I define Trumpism. As I thought about it, I realized this might be an interesting exchange for my readers, so I asked this person if I could post my response, scrubbed to remove this person from it. He agreed. Here are pertinent bits of the response.
Trumpism is a behavior, a habit of mind, and a cult of personality. It is an approach to politics and governing that seeks to build a constituency by connecting darker impulses that exist within every human heart. It does this though mastery of media, through disinformation and outright dishonesty. It values confrontation and opposition, a never-ending series of “us vs. them” scenarios where someone, somewhere, is trying to threaten something of value to adherents. Trumpism is the collective wallowing in misery of the aggrieved, unleashed in their complaints by a man who gave great cover to their pathologies, who made it “ok” to feel like they do, and who connected them with millions of others who felt just like they did. Because incivility, inhumanity, dishonesty, and narrow-mindedness were shown to be so widespread, Trumpists began to believe that those things should be celebrated, rather than repressed.
Trumpism in action at the political level means winning confrontations and oppositions. Victory is defined as that which Donald Trump prefers at the moment, or what he believes to be in his personal, political interest. Dishonesty and manipulation are routinely employed in service to these contests, as is a decided anti-intellectualism that applies narrow (and sometimes valid) criticisms as blanket indictments of entire systems.
Trumpism is a reflection of the personality of Donald Trump (hence the “cult” description earlier), and Trumpists applaud and embrace his bombast, aggression, and chaotic leadership. He convinced them that the status quo was broken, that only he could fix it, and they agree with him.
Trumpism is not a political ideology, it is a communications strategy to reach those whose votes and support are essential to the sustainment and advancement of the personal preferences of Donald Trump. Committed ideologues (like me) are befuddled by Trumpism because whether one is conservative, liberal, or libertarian, you can find things to like and dislike in his stated policy preferences. Put another way, Trumpism has NO political principles. Whatever Donald Trump’s opinion on a matter is constitutes the policy preference of the Trumpist. There are no “first principles” to fall back on, there is only today’s view of the matter expressed by Trump.
This is why—in my initial response to you—I lauded the policy achievements you cited, even as I said that Trumpism was unconcerned with policy. Your question about what I meant by Trumpism was preceded by the recitation of policy achievements. I take that to mean you associate those achievements with Trumpism. I find there to be no relation between them, because Trumpism is unconcerned with policy outside of the degree to which a stance on a certain matter serves to advance the personal political objectives of Donald Trump.
I despise Trumpism because it has destroyed the Republican Party I supported for many years and worked hard for in two elections.
Do not take that to mean that I think the GOP is destroyed. Quite the contrary. I think the GOP is in excellent shape going into the 2022 off year election.
What I mean is that the GOP that I grew up in and believed represented MY brand of conservatism—is gone—and it has been replaced by a party that has been shaped by Trumpism to an extent that I cannot be associated with. Therefore, I am a man without a party.
Trump and Trumpism animated the 6 January insurrection. A corrupt and dishonest President, aided and abetted by corrupt and dishonest sycophants, conjured, summoned, rallied, instructed, and then led an attack on the legislative branch as it performed the final step in the process of the 2020 Presidential election. For the six months preceding the election, Trump and Trumpists fertilized the fields of ignorance by creating the predicate for the big lie, and then when the President was defeated, they amped up the lies to the point where recent polls indicate that 70% of registered Republicans believe that last election was not “free and fair”.
Trumpism, and the fear of Trumpists, is the single most salient descriptor of the modern GOP. An entire political party is held in thrall to the personality of a single man. The story over the weekend in which Bill Barr attempted to sanitize his reputation makes this clear. The Attorney General of the United States believed that the entire “stolen election” meme was “bullshit”, even as the Majority Leader of the Senate lived in fear of pissing the President off and losing the Georgia Senate races.
Now the ex-President has begun a series of rallies designed in no small part to COMPOUND that fear. It is unclear whether he will have the same sway that he once did, but the party certainly acts like it thinks he will. Thousands of people attend those rallies who truly believe that the election was stolen, and they continue to believe that because he tells them so.
Putting Away Childish Things
The Ford Mustang is one of America’s iconic automobiles, and it has always been very appealing to me. Ok. I’m lying. The Mustang II was an abject failure and one of the more hideous automobiles ever manufactured. But I digress.
My teen years brought the end of the Mustang II line and the return of the GT variant, a true muscle car that has anchored the line since. In these years and into my 20’s, I entertained owning one but never did. I’ve continued to see them on the road and have admired the way Ford kept them looking good, but my tastes moved steadily away from them and I could never see owning one now.
But renting one? Well. That’s another story altogether.
When I landed on Sunday night and proceeded to the Hertz corral, I saw that among the cars that I could drive away was a Mustang GT. I usually grab something nondescript and serviceable, but that’s mostly because that’s what they usually make available to me. This time things were different.
Never having driven one of these beasts, I really didn’t know what I was in for. When I closed the drivers door, I was surprised how heavy it was. When I pushed the igniter, I was downright shocked at how loud it was (throaty, like Mustang enthusiasts like it). The seat was among the most comfortable I’d ever sat in, irrespective of make and model, but as I began to drive, I had the feeling that I was driving a very fast tank, not an automobile. The car just feels heavy. Really heavy.
I’ll turn the car back in tomorrow evening when I start my journey home, and now I know what driving a Mustang GT is like. I can cross the experience off my list and happily grab the black Hyundai Sonata next time.