SD enterprise: I Do Not Recognize American Politics

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I Do Not Recognize American Politics

On March 4, 1801, The new federal city on the banks of the Potomac held its first presidential inauguration. The incumbent president, John Adams, declined to attend. In fact, he and his wife, Abigail, beat feet out of the White House in damn near record time. Part of their haste can be attributed to the fact that the White House was a dump and Washington was still half-swamp. Another part of it was the fact that Adams was a cranky old coot. But the biggest part of it had to do with the campaign that he'd lost the previous November. It had been an angry, dirty campaign, the first truly partisan presidential election in the brief history of the country. The Founders wrote nobly about the dangers of political parties. But, the first chance they got, they took to partisan politics with a vengeance.

During the 1800 campaign, the incumbent was called, among other things, a hermaphrodite. His opponent was called a godless American Robespierre. The challenger's campaign was run by his vice-presidential candidate, who was Aaron Burr, which said something. The president of Yale charged that the challenger would pimp out the country's wives and daughters. Ultimately, Adams was turned out and, furious, decided he would not stick around to see the installation of his successor, who only happened to be Thomas Jefferson. Among other things, Adams missed a helluva speech.

Now that the grubby business of winning the election was over, Jefferson was free to let his idealistic side take flight again. He sought to heal the wounds of division in the country, for many of which he and his campaign had been responsible.

During the contest of opinion through which we have passed the animation of discussions and of exertions has sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost liberty.

Poor Adams, who was not a hermaphrodite, must have read these sentiments and taken to his bed for a week.

We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

On Monday, through the infinite wisdom of the American voter, Donald Trump will begin his second term as president of the United States. He will do so with a kind of shield of legitimacy that he didn't have in 2017, and his first inaugural address was so angry and strange and divisive that even George W. Bush reportedly said to those seated around him, "That was some weird shit."

Prepare for more, in this government that, contra Jefferson, seems to lack the energy to preserve itself.

The first one I attended was Ronald Reagan's in 1981; I sat way back on the lawn of the Capitol, next to Ron Bair, the mayor of Spokane.

On that beclouded January day in 2017, I was sitting with some journo friends below the podium as the once and future president delivered what has come to be known as his "American Carnage" speech, Most of us shared the reaction of former president C-Plus Augustus. Inaugurations, bizarre spectacles that they unquestionably are, still are supposed to be happy celebrations of national unity. They should at least pretend to be that. The first one I attended was Ronald Reagan's in 1981; I sat way back on the lawn of the Capitol, next to Ron Bair, the mayor of Spokane. Mayor Bair was an interesting cat. He was a former local television newscaster who'd surprised everyone by winning the mayoralty in his first political campaign. Later, I learned that his personal economy had cratered and he'd moved to San Diego, where he took several jobs to make ends meet. (For a while, he was an announcer at Sea World.) He died of cancer at 62 in 1992.

On that day on the lawn, we listened as Ronald Reagan first set the Republican Party on the long road that led, inevitably, to the American Carnage speech 36 years later.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

Wow, I said.

Jesus, replied Mayor Bair.

Nevertheless, the event itself had some celebration to it. Frankly, it mystified me. And this is part of what I wrote, several days later.

There are those whom this particular inauguration represents the rising of the fullest moons. In their minds, a strange metamorphosis has overcome American politics. Its fingernails shorten, as does its hair. The former take on a manicured luster; the latter turns white. It walks the night howling for gin and missiles. Its bite infects the unfortunate victim, plunging him into hallucinations involving blazers and Arizona.

What going here? the survivors ask.

Who the hell are these people?

Little did I know what was coming, four decades later.

I am as confused today as I was then. I do not recognize American politics any more than I did on that weekend long ago, when the people I didn't understand were at least amiable good company. This new bunch is grim about the mouth, as Ishmael describes himself when he knows it's time to go to sea again. There is nothing like going to sea for these people. They only grow grimmer and grimmer around the mouth. There is no joy in their victory, There is only desiccated anger and parched vengeance. It is a burdening thing, this politics. There is a miserly dread attending their triumph, a psychological torment that, at any moment, liberal brigands will make off with their gains the way that, they believe, the brown people have come to steal their country. This is the politics of the vault, the safe room, and, ultimately, the tomb.