Circuses and more circuses

 

     Do adults really claw at each other, the way man-babies Donald Trump and Elon Musk were carrying on this past week?
     Trump claims to value loyalty, yet hits his straying best bro with both barrels at the first criticism ("What are you saying, Neil, that Donald Trump is a hypocrite?!?! Bwa, hahahaha.")     

     No restraint, God knows no kindness or humor. 0 or 1, friend or foe.  

     How basic. I've trained myself to meet scorn with silence. What's the point? Why would you, for instance, call someone "an idiot," because if you truly felt that way, you'd be trying to score a point against, well, an idiot. Where's the honor in that?

    Occasionally I will reply to a particularly venomous remark with "The scorn of traitors is praise to a patriot." But even as I do it, I'm aware I'm wasting my time. The eagle does not catch flies.

   And those are strangers. Fallen friends ... well, first, I tend to like everyone I ever liked, and when a friend does me wrong, I might upbraid them, privately. But then I try to make amends. Or as I put it:

     "Save feuds for 7th grade."

     If that doesn't work, let them go. Put them on the train to Siberia, emotionally. And even then I always leave the door open. I remember cutting through Grand Central Station in New York City and bumping into a former editor I was once close to. We had parted on bad terms — he's messed up something in one of my books, I'd chastised him about it, and he harrumphed off. That was it. Over. Done.     

     In the train station, I was instantly excited to see him — My old friend! Had we not gone to baseball games together, at Yankee Stadium and Wrigley Field? Had he not stayed at my apartment, and we shot pool and drank bourbon? Talking about how he'd conquer publishing while I pursued the will-o-wisp of literature. I can be a child sometimes.

     His cool reaction surprised me. Oh, right, we aren't friends anymore. Just people who used to be friends. I didn't call him names — though I cherished people who did. "He's just an asshole," a mutual colleague explained, meaning: He can't be fixed. I try to accept that.

     Sniping would be useless. As arresting a spectacle as the richest man in the world and the most mendacious locked in a catfight, I couldn't take much joy in it. Musk has too much money to truly fail. And Trump, a serial fraud, will simply sell the government to someone else, maybe even at a greater bargain than Musk got — access to the length and. breadth of our government for $288 million, less than $1 per citizen whose lives and information were placed into his greedy little hands.

      Or more likely a series of someones. We are seeing, boldly, in broad daylight and without shame, the largest explosion of corruption ever seen in this country. So enormous a shift that even the concepts of graft, bribery, simony, and self-dealing have been suspended, for Republicans anyway. The concepts do not exist. Trump could sell the Statue of Liberty to Qatar and half the country would sing the sheikdom's praise for letting us keep it.    

     Sure, a popular vote in November, 2026 could sweep this away. But by then the machinery of fascism will be well in place, assuming it isn't already firmly situated now. Not just in law enforcement, the military the media, Congress and the courts,, but in the public mind. They believe what they are told.    

     Here is an unedited email I received Friday from reader Tony Z. It wasn't a mass mailing, but sent to me individually. Try to read it to the end:

     Democrats Sacrifice American Citizens Lives for Criminal Illegal Aliens! Democrats Sacrifice Homeless American Veterans to give Free Five Star Hotel Rooms to Criminal Illegal Aliens! While Homeless Veterans who Fought for this Country live on the streets! Democrats Sacrifice Girls and Women by Allowing Men to compete in Girls and Women’s Sports! Democrats Sacrifice Children by Not only Allowing but Promoting Child Mutilation! Democrats Sacrifice Innocent Babies by Not only Allowing but Promoting the Slaughtering of Innocent Babies Any Reason Any Time! Democrats Sacrifice American Lives by Hiring DEI Pilots, Doctors,etc. Democrats are on the Wrong Side of Every Issue!

      That's the altar on which American democracy will be sacrificed. Ignorant sheep, their walnut brains jammed with rote Fox News talking points. As easy, and roughly accurate as it is to blame Trump, never forget he is a symptom, not a cause. Trump triumphs because he gives the people what they want: a circus. Remember my hero Juvenal's line about the secret to winning the hearts of the masses, panem et circenses —"bread and circuses." 
     Though I've also seen it translated as "bread and games." Perhaps we should read that famous phrase in context, in the 10th Satire:

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man. The People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

    Now that I read that again, I realize we are in some ways worse than ancient Romans. They had a reasonable expectation that their government would give them bread. Here, we settle for circenses et circenses — circuses and circuses.