Re Our Addiction to Trump

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jonathan Levine <jonathan.canuck.levine () gmail com>
> Date: May 11, 2018 at 4:02:57 PM EDT
> To: Charles Pinneo <cpinneo () me com>
> Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Our Addiction to Trump
>
> Dave:  This is ranging out quite a bit, but you're welcome to forward
> it if you wish.
>
> > To Jonathan in Canada who has wise advice
> >
> > We are addicted to Trump news because tomorrow may bring the blockbuster
> > scandal that will put Trump away. I hear your compassion—you are obviously
> > more objective about our plight since you are safely across the border. You
> > are so lucky to live in Canada while the US is circling the drain.
>
> Charles:
>
> Thanks for your kind words, and I hope all of you living this nightmare
> appreciate how profoundly we empathize with you.  I spent nearly
> a decade commuting in and out of the Bay Area while working with a
> SF performance art group, and have a lot of close friends all over the
> States as a result.  You've got a pretty good country (even when it
> isn't firing on all eight) and more than your share of the world's really
> great people.
>
> By accidents of history, geography, and language, and regardless
> of the incessant worry-bead twiddling of those obsessed with the
> survival and maintenance of "Canadian culture", we are to a great
> extent a cultural suburb of America.  So we largely share your
> "daily news cycle" fixations, inevitably choosing sides just as do
> you, and tuning in every day in breathless anticipation of the moment
> that this amazingly-still-airborne flaming wreck hits the ground.
>
> But it's not all just voyeurism, because we're tied together in so
> many meaningful ways.  The old expression is "America sneezes,
> we get the cold", and it's true in a lot of respects.  There are special
> cases, like the dual citizens living in Canada who have been taking
> it in the neck for some years from the IRS.  But more generally,
> SCROTUS's arrogant and ignorant meddling with immigration has
> led to a wave of thousands of refugees heading north rather than
> risk being sent back to the war zones they escaped from.  Perhaps
> you saw Trevor Noah's piece on it last night.  He, of course, plays
> it for laughs, but there's nothing funny about the African men who
> lost all their fingers to frostbite fleeing over the border into Manitoba
> in the middle of winter (there have been a number of them, and even
> so they say they're glad they did it).
>
> God-knows-what is going to happen to NAFTA thanks to his
> narcissistic it-must-be-a-bad-deal-because-I-didn't-make-it attitude.
> Not that NAFTA was a prize to start with, but everyone's tooled up
> for it over the last 30 years and punching out now is going to bring
> chaos he's incapable of comprehending.
>
> The same attitude is fueling his pullout of the Iran nuclear agreement
> (not the best agreement, but better than all the other Iran nuclear
> agreements), and the ridiculous rod-length-check contest he's had
> running with North Korea - the one in which *Kim* has now become
> the sane and rational party.  I haven't confirmed, but I'm fairly certain
> that we (Calgary) are the nearest large (>1M) city nearest your biggest
> ICBM site at Malmstrom AFB.  So it's not even about Pax Americana
> anymore; when you're the only remaining superpower and rogue
> states want to start flexing their muscles, we have to think about
> how close to the bullseyes we are.
>
> But getting back to the media addiction...  I don't think there's an
> American who hasn't been surprised to find at least one friend
> previously thought to be somewhere in the sane and rational range
> of political views who finds merit in this monster, but you may be
> surprised to hear that we've experienced exactly the same thing.
> There's just something about this first truly punk-rock anarchist
> president that brings out the irrational reactionaries, regardless of
> nationality.
>
> One more thought:  Drug addiction is one metaphor for our present
> state, but I'm now wondering whether there might be others, such
> as a symbiotic parasitism.  I think there may be something in that
> one, but haven't yet found the parallel in it to the term limit - I'll work
> on that a little.
>
> In closing, a word from H.L. Mencken:  Democracy is the theory
> that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get
> it good and hard.
>
> Jonathan



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