A Few Thoughts about Empathy

Curmie came across the meme you see here a few days ago, and was struck by its timeliness.  For one thing, it provides a stark contrast between the ideology of MAGA and of one of the seminal thinkers of the twentieth century.  If nothing else, there are few if any better representations of what Arendt called “the banality of evil” than the Pompous Plutocrat, or at least his acolytes. 

Musk is no deep thinker; his weltanschauung is founded on little but greed, hypocrisy, and a little warmed-over Nietzsche, who was at least honest enough to state forthrightly that he was in fact arguing against the fundamental principles of both classical and Judeo-Christian thought.

Musk is, in a word, sadistic.  Nothing makes him happier than hurting or humiliating someone who isn’t like him: those who are interested in literally anything but the accumulation of material wealth or political power, those who care about justice or truth or even security, those who think elections are not commodities to be bought and sold.  Unfortunately, Donald Trump, who used to be simply oblivious to the damage to others (or to the country) if it benefited him personally, is now trending towards Muskian malevolence.

But this essay isn’t about Trump or Musk or anyone else in that evil cabal.  It’s about us.  By “us,” here, Curmie is referring to the overwhelming majority of the folks who will read this blog: people who, like Curmie, would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket before they’d vote for the Manchurian Cantaloupe. 

There are some readers, of course, who may have even voted for Trump, seeing him as the lesser of two evils.  Let’s face it, Kamala Harris was, to put it kindly, way over her head, and the unwillingness of those in the know to convince Uncle Joe to step aside when his mental decline became obvious does not speak well of the leadership of the Democratic Party.  Nor does the anointing of Harris as the nominee without any opportunity for the party faithful to have any say at all in the process.

Curmie doubts that many actual MAGAs will find their way here, but they are welcome, and if the have arguments superior to those one would hear from a fourth grader, Curmie would very much like to hear them. 

In the piece linked above, Curmie wrote “Is it likely that a second Trump presidency would destroy the democratic (lower-case ‘d’) principles on which the nation was founded?  ‘Likely,’ no; ‘plausible,’ yes.”  Curmie miscalculated.  Less than two months into this regime, we’re already past “likely” and into “probable”; the hope is to prevent “inevitable.”

It’s not worth attempting to enumerate all the stupid and authoritarian actions undertaken by this administration.  Let’s just say that if it seems to you, Gentle Reader, that every fucking stupid idea Trump yammered about in the campaign has already been put into action and everything actually positive he said he’d do is already a broken promise… well, then you and Curmie are on the same page.

But.  And as they used to say in burlesque houses, it’s a big but.  It used to be that lefties were very much proud of the fact that, unlike the nonsensical proponents of “owning the libs,” we actually cared about everybody.  It is certainly true that a lot of MAGAs share at least some of the lack of empathy embodied in their heroes: they’re all for slashing budget lines that don’t affect them personally.  That said, a lot of them are feeling the pinch now.  They were taken in by a grifter and, unlike some diehards who still think Trump is a hero (and a fair number of GOP pols who know better but pretend not to), they’re regretting their foolishness.

They got suckered.  That happens to everyone.  All of us have voted for someone who turned out to be an idiot, or bought a stock that proceeded to plummet in value, or taken any kind of stance we later wish we hadn’t.  Trump is a skilled and experienced con man, and his romanticized vision of American exceptionalism has its superficial appeal.

It’s true, of course, that those folks bear no little responsibility for the mess we’re in right now.  Still, all the jokes about face-eating leopards and the like are ultimately counter-productive.  Real people, our fellow travelers, are hurting, and they’re openly regretting their past actions.  This part, the realization, should be applauded.  Yes, they made a mistake, but now they’re trying to set things right to the extent that they can.

We ought to be applauding their new awakening, but too many of us aren’t.  Humiliating them because they voted for the wrong candidate and now have come to realize that fact is akin to teasing the fat guy at the gym.  It accomplishes nothing good, and in fact discourages others from also speaking out.  Arrogantly strutting our perceived ethical and intellectual superiority succeeds only in alienating erstwhile Trump supporters.  We come off as assholes.  That’s not to anyone’s benefit.

A variation on the theme can be found in the brouhaha about Slava Ukraini protesters in Cincinnati.  JD Vance tweeted, “Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of ‘Slava Ukraini’ protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared… if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a shit person.”

OK, leaving aside the misplaced modifier (Curmie couldn’t resist pointing that out), this is an interesting tweet.  Is it possible that Vance made up the whole bit about his daughter being scared?  Absolutely.  Indeed, the protesters claim otherwise, also saying they happened upon Vance; they weren’t following him.

Vance is, to be sure, dishonest even by politician standards, and certainly not above the Elon Musk technique of using his kid as a human shield, albeit a little less literally.  There is, however, a video of a conversation between Vance and the crowd of protesters.  He is indeed accompanied by his daughter, although we barely see her, and it’s impossible to tell whether she’s upset, although she very well might be.  The audio isn’t always as clear as one might hope, but Vance does say something at the end about his having traded five minutes of conversation in exchange for the crowd’s not shouting at his daughter. 

The chances are pretty good, then, that Vance isn’t completely making up the story.  Yes, he’s a despicable human being, and yes, as a number of leftie talking heads have claimed, three-year-olds in Ukraine experience a lot worse on an ongoing basis than having their fathers yelled at a few times.  But the daughter is an innocent.  She didn’t choose her parents and wasn’t consulted when her dad accepted the VP nomination.  Nor is it her fault her father is a lapdog to a lapdog.  Making her uncomfortable isn’t the worst thing in the world, but neither is it acceptable behavior.

By all means, exercise those First Amendment rights of free assembly and free speech.  Rage against the machine, to coin a phrase.  But don’t glory in the woes of others, even if they voted for someone you despise.  Don’t harass your fellow citizens for being led astray, especially if the reason you can do so is that they are admitting their mistake.  And leave the kids out of it.

We’re better than that.  Or at least we damned sure should be.

Questions. Curmie’s Got Questions.

One of Curmie’s current research projects is trying to determine who directed a terrible but historically interesting play that premiered in Dublin over a century ago.  He doesn’t know exactly what happened—he’s hoping for some archival assistance that hasn’t yet been offered—but he’s about 98% certain that a host of big-name scholars are wrong. 

He experienced a similar phenomenon in considering the events in Butler, PA on Saturday.  He doesn’t know what happened, but has some suspicions that what didn’t happen was that Thomas Michael Crooks, acting alone, attempted to assassinate ex-President Trump with an “AR-style weapon” from a rooftop 150 hundred yards away.  Were it not for the four other casualties (including Crooks), Curmie would be ready to declare unequivocally that it was all a hoax.  As it is, he’s at the “eyebrow raised in suspicion” phase.  That, Gentle Reader, is still a fair distance from “we’re hearing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Not a few of Curmie’s theatre friends reacted immediately to the news of what has been described as an assassination attempt, suggesting that it looked staged (Curmie agrees).  A number of folks experienced in military and security operations have also expressed doubts.  Curmie had a link to a meme/quote from such a person, but it has vanished into the ether.  Thanks, Facebook!

Curmie generally detests conspiracy theories, and he’s not pushing one here, but before subscribing to the official version of events, he’s got some questions that need answers. 

1. How did this kid who’s not military, CIA, or anything like that, and who has no relevant training, get into position where he could even get a shot in the general direction of someone with Secret Service protection?  Why would the security detail leave such an obvious space accessible?  And how did Crooks know it wouldn’t be secured?  Curmie is more than a little skeptical about that whole “outside the security perimeter” business.

2. Did the Secret Service intentionally allow this to happen?  Because they wanted Trump dead?  Because they knew it was a ruse?  Or are they just terrible at their jobs?

3. What was Crooks’s motive?  He’s a registered Republican.  Is he a Liz Cheney kind of Republican, harboring a grudge against Trump?  Does the fact that he once gave $15 to a progressive get-out-the-vote cause mean anything?  Did he join the GOP just to disrupt the primaries, as someone on the right has tried to claim?  Was his motive political at all?  He certainly wouldn’t be the first prospective assassin to have an altogether apolitical reason for attempting the life of a politician.  Perhaps there’s a latter-day Jodie Foster to impress out there somewhere.

4. He’s got an “AR-style weapon.”  Those things fire about 10 rounds per second.  If he really wanted to kill the ex-President and (apparently) didn’t care about collateral damage, why did he get off only 8 rounds?  Wouldn’t he have sprayed the stage?  Instead, we hear a series of pops (see about the 14 second mark here).  If you’ve got a semi-automatic rifle and you’re trying to shoot someone, why don’t you use the weapon the way it’s intended to be used? 

5. It’s also a little hard to believe that the Secret Service identified the source of the gunfire, took aim, and shot Crooks dead in less than a second.  Or, if the Secret Service was indeed in position to respond that quickly, why didn’t they either shoot Crooks before he fired or radio to their colleagues on the stage to get Trump out of harm’s way?  Or, you know… both?

6. When the shots are fired, Trump quickly grabs his right ear.  Yet the video of the event appears to show no signs of blood on his hand when he brings it down again a second or two later.  One of Curmie’s Dad’s friends paid his way through grad school by working as a professional wrestling villain.  One of his schticks, bloodying his opponent while pretending to bite his ear, was founded on the fact that cuts to the ear bleed a lot.  A small piece of razor blade serves the purpose admirably.  Curmie is not suggesting that’s what happened, but doesn’t rule out the possibility.  If he trusted Trump even a little, this thought would never even flicker across Curmie’s mind.

7. Why do the rally-goers immediately behind Trump show concern for their hero but little if any fear for their own safety?  As it happens, they probably weren’t in the line of fire, assuming Crooks was indeed a lone gunman, but they’d have no way of knowing that.  In theatre terms, Crooks was offstage right, and would be shooting past them (unless he was spraying the stage), but they’d have had no reason to believe that the threat was over.  The “shooter’s down” announcement doesn’t come until nearly a full minute after the first shots are fired.

8. Why was there an apparently reliable source who claimed that Trump was hit by glass fragments from a teleprompter rather than a bullet?  Stated otherwise, what would be gained, by literally anyone, if that report were to be believed?  (By the way, the direction Trump was facing as the shots were fired would make it impossible for him to be hit on the right side in this manner.)

9. Then, as Lieutenant Columbo in the meme at the top of the page wants to know, why would Trump behave the way he did after being shot (worried about his shoes?  really?  why weren’t they still on his feet?), and why, as the military veteran mentioned above (the one whose post was apparently censored by Facebook) wants to know, did the Secret Service let him get away with this bravado at the risk of his safety?  (Or was the incident all an illusion, with bravado to match?

10. Or was this somehow a “hit” orchestrated by the Biden campaign, as wackadoodle Congresscritter Mike Collins alleges without, of course, a whiff of evidence?  Yes, it sounds stupid, but insert something about stopped clocks here.  But if it was a hit, why hire a 20-year-kid instead of, you know, a hitman?  Maybe Crooks was the best they could find on Craig’s List?  

There are, indeed, questions.  Perhaps there are answers forthcoming: an explanation of the lapses by the Secret Service, a rationale for Crooks’s actions, a bullet fragment with Trump’s blood or tissue on it, etc.  The alternative to what now passes for the true story is terrifying indeed, as it would entail an elaborate plot in which multiple Secret Service agents would have to be complicit rather than merely incompetent.  

Yes, Trump is an accomplished conman a consummate showman, and there’s no question that he’s an amoral narcissist and, shall we say, not a devotee of truth-telling… but could even Donald Trump be willing to sacrifice a couple of his followers for an opportunity to grandstand?  That seems unlikely.  Not, alas, impossible, but unlikely.  Curmie does suspect, though, that Dolt45 might be sufficiently wily to seize on an opportunity to showboat when one presents itself and sufficiently stupid to do so even at the risk of self-endangerment.  His hubris is about all he has going for him, after all.

And there’s no question that the incident worked to Trump’s political advantage.  Jack Marshall at Ethics Alarms argues to the contrary in a comment, noting that it knocked Biden’s lack of acuity off the front pages.  But the most recent headlines were about what a totalitarian nightmare Project 2025 is, and Trump emerges from the event having shown defiance and what could be interpreted as courage.  In the minds of idiots—and the MAGA minions (as opposed to those who will hold their nose and vote for him as the lesser of two evils… as Curmie will do in the other direction) all fit in this category—he, unlike those dozens of schoolkids who’ve been killed by assholes with an assault rifle, was protected by the grace of God Himself.  The more the campaign is about literally anything other than policy, the better for Trump.

It may be true; indeed it probably is true, that the Conventional Wisdom is generally if not completely accurate.  But watching the video of the incident was rather like sitting through a particularly poorly directed episode of “Covert Affairs,” except instead of attractive actors like Piper Perabo and Christopher Gorham we’re stuck looking at a morbidly obese geriatric demagogue.  The entire nation must have been very naughty indeed in a previous life.

Independence Day Contemplations on the Mythic, the Hallucinatory, and the Real

Independence Day posts have become something of a tradition for Curmie: not every year of late, but more often than not in the last few years.  In 2018 Curmie emerged from a writing hiatus to think of the day through Bruce Springsteen songs, especially “Independence Day,” which of course has nothing to do with the Fourth of July but does offer us this lyric: “Because there’s just different people coming down here now / And they see things in different ways / And soon everything we've known will just be swept away.”

Two years later, Curmie based his Independence Day musings on a line from the Aaron Sorkin TV series “The Newsroom”: the US is not “the greatest country in the world,” “but it can be.”  Two years later still, in 2022, Curmie headed his post with a quote from James Baldwin, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Last year’s “contemplations” included some stark observations about the state of the nation and the world, but ultimately expressed some hope that on this day at least we might start thinking of ourselves as Americans first and members of other taxonomies—political perspective, race, gender, religion, etc.—secondarily.

All of these posts revolve around the same theme: that our collective failure to achieve our aspirational goals for the country should lead not to despair but to resolve.  There was too much right about the USA to allow ourselves to be sucked into petty bickering and fear-mongering.

Curmie still believes in resolve, in fighting the good fight, but he despairs, nonetheless.  The two presumptive nominees for the presidency are both old men.  One is already an octogenarian, the other will be before the next presidential term expires.  Both spew incomprehensible word salads on a regular basis.  Neither is as sharp as he was even a couple of years ago, and neither was ever an intellectual giant.  Both are narcissistic, totalitarian, mentally suspect, and mendacious.  They manifest these traits in different ways and to different degrees, but all of them are strikingly obvious in both men.  In that 2020 piece, Curmie wrote that there are three fundamental criteria by which politicians ought to be judged: intelligence, integrity, and sanity.  Neither of these guys is even average at any of those standards.

We are left with fear, and perhaps a little whataboutism.  Seriously, Gentle Reader, what is the case for either of these candidates other than protecting the nation from the other guy… an other guy who threatens the very freedoms this fledgling nation sought to guarantee?  The problem is that both candidates are right about one thing if nothing else: the other guy is unfit for office.

Does Curmie think one of these guys is even worse than the other?  Sure, but that’s hardly the way things ought to work.  Eightyish years ago this country cast its lot with Josef Stalin in opposition to Adolf Hitler: not a happy choice, and one whose downside manifested itself for decades… but it was nonetheless the right call.  An alliance with Winston Churchill, whatever his faults, was still a lot more palatable.

Seventeen months ago Curmie surveyed the political field in the light of a then-recent poll showing that the majority of Democrats didn’t want Joe Biden to seek re-election.  The fact that Curmie titled his piece “2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid” should tell you all you need to know.  As Curmie said at the time, “The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa.”

Had Biden chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have dropped out of the race a year ago.  He might have even moved closer to securing the southern border, as Trump’s minions would have have less incentive to scuttle a bipartisan bill lest it give Biden a victory.  Much better, in their minds, to have a campaign issue than to solve a problem, after all.

Had Trump chosen to do what’s best for the country, he’d have accepted the rather resounding defeat he suffered in 2020 and faded away.  (Yeah, like that could have happened!)  Oh, and the Republican Party would have chosen someone at least a little less offensive to sane people.

Those rich white Christian guys who adopted the Declaration of Independence 248 years ago today did not succumb to either the negativity or the cowardice we see today.  They saw a vision of a glorious new nation, and they were ready to take on the greatest military power in the world to get it.  They knew that the fight, literal and figurative, would be long and intense.  And they were ready to take up the challenge.  We need to be the same. 

But how to do that?  By rallying behind a mentally declining old man because he may be less than honest but at least not malicious or evil?  “Our candidate sucks less than yours does” is less than an ideal rallying cry.  Communication theory suggests two kinds of persuasion: positive connections (X will lead to a good Y, and we therefore need to seek X) and negative connections (X will lead to a bad Y, and we therefore need to prevent X).  The campaigns so far are 90% (or more) negative on both sides.  We fear the consequences if “our side” loses rather than looking forward to the brighter future if we win.  This is both unsurprising and disturbing.  Alas, it’s also inevitable, as there isn’t a lot positive to say.

One of Curmie’s favorite new (in this context) terms is “hallucinatory,” referring to AI programs’ willingness, when the alternative is to admit that they don’t have an answer, to just make shit up.  It’s not exactly intentionally false; the program would have told the truth if it could have; it’s just that, like a politician, it doesn’t know how to shut up when it’s got nothing relevant to say.  Nor are all the untrue statements currently being hurled around by the pols and the pundits mendacious; some, perhaps many, are merely hallucinatory.  This is small consolation.

There is, as the title of a course Curmie taught as a grad student 40 years ago suggests, such a thing as the “American myth.”  The term as applied in that context uses “myth” in an anthropological sense: not as a fiction, necessarily, but as that which is believed on the basis of faith rather than evidence. To say that there is a lot of myth masquerading as reality on both sides of the political aisle is merely tautological.

Today, Independence Day, is the time to nevertheless celebrate the myth, and to pledge to seek to merge it with reality.  If we could keep the hallucinations at bay, that would be a good thing, too.

Please forgive the wonkiness of the formatting if you’re on a computer (it looked OK on my phone).  Blogspot being Blogspot.  Curmie spent 20 minutes trying to fix it, to no avail.

2024 Election Preview: Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Prescient Analyst of 21st-Century Politics

Curmie was just reading an article about how most Democrats don’t want President Biden to seek a second term. Barely a third of party members want him to run again; that number drops to less than one in four among Democrats under 45. Curmie, well over 45, concurs. 

Biden’s performance so far has been underwhelming in both policy and political terms, albeit better than the most logical other choice for a 2024 run, Kamala Harris, whom Hillary Clinton described as lacking the political instincts to win primaries. She also polls, as of this writing at a -13.5% approval rating, which is even worse than Biden’s -9.1%. 

The only good news for Democrats is that former President Trump, who is perceived by many as the most likely GOP candidate, is worse still, at -15.9%. The other three Republicans whose names have been most bandied about—Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Greg Abbott—are nearly as repulsive as Trump. Curmie would vote for the Sauron/Voldemort ticket over any of that quartet. Perhaps there’s a latter-day Nelson Rockefeller or a pre-sellout John McCain out there somewhere? Curmie isn’t holding his breath. 

And who do the Democrats have to offer? We start by eliminating Harris, a lightweight who shows little interest, let alone competency, at anything other than advancing the career of Kamala Harris. Biden, whose presidency hasn’t been quite as bad as Curmie’s Republican friends would argue, has still been “meh” on his good days. Plus, he’s 80 now, and neither his mental acuity nor voters’ confidence in it is likely to improve over the next 21 months. 

Age is a particular problem for Democrats. Hillary Clinton is 75, John Kerry is 79, Elizabeth Warren is 73, Bernie Sanders is 81, Nancy Pelosi is 82, Sherrod Brown is 70, Chuck Schumer is 72, Henry Cisneros is 75… even Amy Klobuchar is 61, but she’s at least sane and not yet on Medicare, making her a potential front-runner. (Curmie would be inclined to support her, at the moment.) 

Could Hakeem Jeffries (52) develop into a viable candidate? Perhaps, but he certainly doesn’t have a lot of name recognition right now. Gavin Newsom is 55, but his principal attributes seem to be that he is tall and good-looking; plus, he’s from California, which is regarded by a fair share of the country as something of a lunatic asylum. Curmie doesn’t see a lot of gravitas in Cory Booker (53), but there’s at least some possibility he’s not a male version of Kamala Harris. 

Pete Buttigieg is only 41, but his performance as Secretary of Transportation has been, well, “less than impressive” would be the polite way of saying it. Beto O’Rourke (50), who has made a career out of losing statewide races to unpopular Republicans, is the Democrats’ version of Paul Ryan: an over-hyped mediocrity who somehow gets positive press coverage. 

And don’t get Curmie started on “The Squad,” now up to nine members, ranging in age from 33 to 49. None of them would make a good President (at least yet), but that’s okay, because none would stand a chance of winning, either. 

As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there is no there, there. Does the party turn, as some have suggested, to the likes of Michelle Obama (59)? The party could do worse, but it’s difficult to see someone that inexperienced being the nominee. The problem here is not that the Democrats might lose the next election; it’s that the Republicans might win. And, alas, vice versa. 

But the country has survived some pretty awful Presidents of both parties—Curmie would say the best grade of the last eight would be a B-, and there are a couple of D- grades that are that high only because the country was still standing when they left office. So the stakes are high, but it’s not yet time to move to Canada or fling yourself off a bridge. 

As one of the few folks in the country to have been registered to vote in both New Hampshire and Iowa (not at the same time!), Curmie looks forward to the caucuses and primaries with anxiety, but perhaps a little hope. We couldn’t get a lot worse, and there might just be someone we hadn’t thought of who’ll emerge from one party or the other. Just… uh… don’t bet the mortgage on it. And be prepared to vote for the less awful candidate.