Whitcomb: Take a Hike! Democracy Goes Into a Nursing Home; New R.I. Celebrity
Robert Whitcomb, Columnist
Whitcomb: Take a Hike! Democracy Goes Into a Nursing Home; New R.I. Celebrity
“I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,
Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
The naked, silent trees have taught me this—
The loss of beauty is not always loss.’’
-- From “November,’’ by Elizabeth Stoddard (1823-1902), an American poet who was born in Mattapoisett, Mass.
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“Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.’’ {Think American TV evangelists}
-- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), American-born English essayist.
“If Trump somehow prevails, America will be well on its way to failed statehood, with a corrupt and incompetent administration that continues to be opposed by a majority of citizens. If Biden prevails, as seems increasingly likely, and the Republicans hold the Senate, Republicans will devote themselves to using the Senate to destroy Biden’s presidency.’’
-- Francis Wilkinson, in Bloomberg News
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And good news for recluses! There will be few social events this holiday season and many of those that are held will be very small and held in virtual secret.at
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How timely that a new, one-mile-long hiking trail has opened in South Kingstown’s Alewife Brook Preserve. Walking through its woods, with many species of birds flittering around, would be a joy, especially during this claustrophobic pandemic and after a bitter election. And this week will be mild.
The land trust reports:
“The Alewife Brook Trail traverses a fine example of typical southern Rhode Island forest. Approximately 79 percent of this property hosts an upland forest canopy of scarlet, black, and white oak, red maple, white and pitch pine, hickory, beech and gray birch. The remaining 21 percent to the south along Alewife Brook is gently sloping wetlands with dense thickets of mountain laurel, rhododendron, sweet pepperbush, red maple, and alder. Both upland and wetland habitats can be observed from the trails here.’’
“The Preserve is a wildlife haven for mammals, amphibians, reptiles, fish, and birds. Animal tracks crisscross the property. Over 50 bird species use the area for feeding, nesting, migration stopovers, or wintering habitat.’’
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way throughout political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’’
-- Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), American writer and a professor of biochemistry at Boston University.
Despite his endless personal and public corruption, megalomania, psychotic narcissism, dictatorial ambitions and incompetence (except as a demagogue) Trump retains a tight, almost hypnotic hold on tens of millions of Americans – a minority, but one that will remain large enough to ensure that the country’s moral decline continues. But hey, the only business this multiple-bankruptcy con man made money in was as a performer on that oxymoron called “Reality TV.’’
The Fuhrer in 1930s Germany also retained an astonishing hold on his followers, aided, of course, by terror. But Mussolini, the late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, Juan Peron, Huey Long and Fidel Castro might better evoke Trump’s charm. All were well-practiced “populists.’’
As usual, the Democratic presidential candidate has won more votes than the Republican. But then, this country has long been mostly run by powerful economic interests kept in power by a minority of voters, often blinded by their obsessions with guns, abortion, some conceptions of “Christianity’’ impossible to find in the Bible, and other social issues, but also by tax-cut promises and goodies for favored old industries, such as fossil fuels and agribusiness. The structure of the Electoral College, the Senate and the Supreme Court, along with rapacious Republican gerrymandering of U.S. House seats, almost ensure the perpetuation of this minority rule. When I was young and a Republican, I thought that the Democrats were tougher. But they can’t hold a candle to the ruthlessness of the current national GOP.
A sign of the times – and where Trump has brought us – is the armed, screaming, crazed-looking Trumpists menacing offices in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere where votes were being counted last week. Increasingly, they’re acting like Hitler’s thugs on the streets of Berlin in the early ‘30s. They’re pumped up by Trump’s propaganda against “coastal elites’’ – who are, among other things, those who oppose Banana Republic-style dictatorships and respect science and facts in general and the rule of law.
Meanwhile, look for Trump to demand that his carefully selected servants (hand-picked by the Federalist Society subsidiary of the Republican Party) on the Supreme Court steal the election for him.
The idea that most citizens expect at least minimal standards of behavior by our public officials is passe. In the end, corrupt leadership in a decaying quasi-democracy like ours represents a corrupt and willfully ignorant citizenry. I feel sorry for the kids who will inherit this mess.
The decline of rigorous public education – whatever happened to the teaching of civics and history? -- the shrinking of the general public’s fact-based knowledge, the acceptability of ignorance and easily ascertainable lies, the misinformation and disinformation spewed by amoral, money-grubbing, sensationalistic social-media and cable-TV operators (think Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Fox’s Rupert Murdoch) all ensure that our civic and political culture – and America’s influence in the world -- will continue to decline. And so deep are the divisions in how Americans see their country and their role in it that I’d guess, as I have said before, that the nation will break apart in the next few decades. (It would have been better for the rest of the country in many ways if the South, at least, had been allowed to split off in the 19th Century – except, of course, that would have allowed slavery to continue there for even more decades.)
Whatever promises are made, a tour of history and indeed of today’s world shows that power-hungry and kleptocratic authoritarian regimes like Trump’s ultimately lead to social disorder and economic impoverishment for the masses. The loss of honor and trust in a society is bad for business.
His fans may love the Trump show, but they’ll miss democracy when it’s too late to save it as we move deeper into QAnon America. Enjoy the ride!
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With Washington headed for more gridlock, about the only thing that most public-spirited people can do is participate in local and state affairs to try to improve life close to home. For the forseeable future, national politics are close to hopeless.
Emphasize the Serious Cases
It seems to me that a better way to measure the pandemic is to focus more on the serious-case numbers – that is, COVID-19-associated deaths and hospitalizations – and a tad less on the virus positivity rate since most people who test positive show no symptoms or only very mild ones. And remember that the positivity rate only includes people who chose to be tested. Of course the asymptomatic can be very contagious if they’re not wearing masks.
Time to cool the hysteria.
The victory of Republican Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung in a Cranston state representative race, ousting House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, a conservative Democrat, makes her one to watch as the GOP looks for candidates for Rhode Island general office in 2022. (Or maybe she’ll run for Congress.) She won because she’s smart, plucky, a hell of a campaigner and had the good luck to run against Mr. Mattiello while he was embroiled in a corruption trial involving his dubious 2016 re-election race. It reminds me of Napoleon’s purported line when asked what kind of generals he wanted working for him. He answered: “Lucky ones.’’
Of course, Ms. Fenton-Fung also had the benefit of being married to Cranston’s popular and successful Republican mayor, Allan Fung. He ran for governor twice and lost. But his wife might make it.
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Perhaps the most-watched political event in New England in this political cycle was Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s re-election victory over Maine House Speaker Sarah Gideon, a Democrat, which didn’t surprise me. Senator Collins, a cynic with very plastic principles, or perhaps none at all (recalling her deeply amoral Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, for whom money and power are all), won because she has provided very good constituent services and had deep support in the Trumpian northern part of the state, where she’s from. Her victory will help ensure that a President Biden will have a tough time getting his judicial and other nominees confirmed and make it more difficult for New England, as a region, if not Maine, to get its fair share of federal programs.
I always thought that Rhode Island’s official name was charming – “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,’’ with “Plantations” simply referring to the colonial settlements on land that the English were enthusiastically stealing from the Native Americans. But these are very sensitive times and “Plantations” is evoked to mean agricultural land (especially for cotton, tobacco and sugar) worked by slaves. Of course, we should never forget that much of the American slave trade was run out of Rhode Island.
Okay. The people have spoken. Still, I’ll still miss the old line about “the smallest state and the longest name.’’ And I wonder how much it will cost to change all the state’s stationery, etc.
“We don’t pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes.’’
-- Leona Helmsley (1920-2007), American businesswoman and wife of the late New York real estate mogul Harry Helmsley
As the federal deficit swells and our infrastructure crumbles, taxpayers who actually pay income taxes, unlike many members of the plutocracy/kleptocracy who run America, would do well to push Congress to enact legislation to increase the number of IRS agents who audit returns, both to collect previously uncollected money and to discourage fraud. As things stand, poor and middle class people are as apt to be audited as much as the very rich, and the latter are heavily armed with tax lawyers and accountants to fend off the IRS.
With Republicans for years slashing the IRS budget, the agency now audits only one in every 222 returns, down from one in 90 in 2011, reports The New York Times.
This has led to more and more tax cheating and so a big hit to federal finances. The dwindling number of honest citizens has to make up some of this.
Of course, with the national GOP, whose main allegiance is to the plutocracy, apparently retaining control of the Senate, don’t expect any more money for the IRS -- though it would bring in far more money than it would cost.
An Engaging Essayist
In his prime, critic, novelist, playwright and all-around man of letters Gore Vidal was in my view America’s most interesting (and often funniest) essayist, as you can see in his collection At Home: Essays 1982-1988. His witty, mordant and impressively well-informed takes on the likes of the Reagans, born-again “Christians,’’ places such as Mongolia (!) and Rome and famous and not so-famous writers are a joy to read, as well as providing reminders of how we got into our current national swamp.