Trump flips over the board when he's losing

"Checkerboard and Playing Cards," by Juan Gris (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Simple question:
     Remember the presidential election?
     Of course you do. 
     Might take a moment, with all the craaaaaazy bullshit that has happened since. Hard to think this is still the United States of America.
     But it is.
     Anyway, think back to the end of the campaign, oh, 18 months ago.
     A lot of people thought Donald Trump would lose.
     Including Donald Trump.
     And what did Donald Trump do when he thought he would lose? What did he say? 
     Remember?
     He claimed the system biased against him.
     "Election is being rigged by the media," he tweeted, "in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign, by putting stories that never happened into news!"
     He said that over and over and over and over.
     Until some people believed him.
     The election was a fraud until he won it, barely. Then it was great.
     It's happening again.
     This time the FBI and the Justice Department are in league against him. He's striking out at them because he feels he's going to lose.
     Almost as if he knows he's guilty. 
     And Republicans, to their undying shame, generally support him.
     Even though a lot of them must think he's guilty too.
     For one simple fact:
     He is guilty. 
     I certainly think so. He acts like someone who's guilty.
     If he succeeds in selling this latest spin, and the investigations are scuttled, then suddenly the FBI and the Justice Department will be fine again. 
     He's like a toddler flipping a game board over when the game goes against him.
     An embarrassing quality in a child. Disturbing in an adult. Unacceptable in a president, even a president as spurious as this one.
     Though a lot of folks seem eager to accept it.
     It's so obvious, it hardly needs to be pointed out. To half the country. To the other half, or 40 percent, or whatever, you could write it on a 2x4 and hit them between the eyes with it and they still wouldn't get it. 
     That is, to me, the most disturbing part of the whole Trump phenomenon.
     Not that the man's a fraud. He is. Big time. And a liar. Continually.
     But that he is a not-very-good fraud. And a shabby, flimsy, obvious liar.
     Yet people fall for it.
     Not so much fall. But dive for it. They lunge to believe Trump. And having believed, they stick with it. Through everything. 
     I'll never understand why. 


     

It's mailbag time, unfortunately

The World Perishing Together with Knowledge and Love, by Dirk Volckertsz Coornhert; 1550 

                                                  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

     God, Friday was depressing.
     Just reading the emails in reaction to my column on Trump slurring immigrants in his State of the Union speech.
     All day long. Snide, confident Republicans regurgitating Fox talking points. I could barely read them, never mind react to them. It just gets wearying, and what would be the point?
     Every once in a while, though, I just couldn't resist.
     Such as this email, from Thomas P. Cernek. A single sentence:

     "We enjoy our freedoms, because it was the White Male who won WW II."

     I replied in kind:

     "It was also the White Male who started World War II. Something to think about. If possible."

     It deteriorated from there.  He seemed to think that the Japanese began World War II, and that the Germans were our allies. It's hard to tell, and I'm not sure I want to understand his point. 

     Moving onward, there was this, from David Kozak:

     "I read your article this morning and it contains the same old line that immigrants are vital to America. Never mentioning illegal. No country in this world can let people flood into a country unchecked and undocumented. They have broken a law. I believe any citizen arrested for any crime in this country should sue the U.S. until all laws are upheld. Why have any laws if they are not enforced."

     That too enticed me to respond:

     "Your concern for the law is touching. Shame it doesn't extend to treason with Russia. 'Illegality' is the word people throw around until someone tries to fix the system. Then they switch to 'amnesty.' I wish I had the power to make you understand. Alas, I don't."

      That should suffice. Enough is as good as a feast, as the Irish—also despised as unfit interlopers—like to say. Although I will add this, to those who think that Trump supporters have to be wooed, that their fantasies must be clucked over and their fears massaged: you are living in a dreamworld. Poisonous people loaded for bear. Nothing to be done but defeat them, ignore them, and let time bring her revenges. Stop your ears against their cries of righteous agony as we link arms with the future and march briskly away, leaving them to decay with their hallucinations and hatreds. They never will grasp what they've done to the country. They think all this is great. 

Trump demonizes ‘passionate, caring, compassionate’ health care workers

Nurse in Distress, by Gordon H. Coster (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

  
      Let’s say I want to convince you that most dogs are German shepherds. So I buy a pair and parade them around the block, and pepper my conversation with tales of police K-9 units and Rin Tin Tin.
     Does it work? Or at some point do you reflect back to your own experience and think, “Gosh, you know, most dogs actually aren’t German shepherds. Most dogs are other breeds.”
     It’s an important question, because the logic above, so easily seen as flawed — well, easy for some; others just don’t get it — is what elected Donald Trump president. He tarred Mexicans as rapists and criminals with his first words as a candidate, and rode the deep fears and hidden hatreds — and not-so-hidden-hatreds — of half the country right into the White House.
     This cracked reasoning permeated his first State of the Union speech Tuesday. Lauded for lacking the malice and pettiness of his endless tweets, it was also a thinly-disguised appeal to racial hate. Frankly, I prefer when he’s candid.
     Trump spotlit the weeping parents of youngsters murdered by immigrant gangs. Exhibit A and the last word in his argument to slam the door on immigration so we can all live in the white country club country where Trump and his ilk feel most comfortable.
     He mentioned the word “safe” or “safety” 11 times, four attempting to justify barring immigrants.

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Stop thief!

     A monkey grabbed my iPhone.
     Just after I snapped the above photo, it reached out and wrapped its lithe little fingers around the brushed aluminum case. 
     A brief struggle ensued.
     We were in Belize, at the Community Baboon Sanctuary, so named because it is run, not by the government, but by seven communities which banded together in 1985; 240 landowners agreed not to cut down trees that house howler monkeys. 
     Now there are thousands of them. The sanctuary is run by a women's cooperative. The monkeys are called "baboons" in the local Creole, even though they are not what the rest of the world considers baboons.
      Our guide was a woman with an official-looking ID tag who approached us in the parking lot. She identified herself as "Geraldine the Jungle Queen" and escorted us to a spot just within a wood, across the street from the parking lot. 
     A half dozen monkeys, one with a baby clinging to her dark brown fur, appeared above our heads. Geraldine instructed us to take leaves and feed them to the monkeys, which we did. She also imitated their distinctive roar—they're called howler monkeys for a reason—and the dominant male answered back. Later, I recorded the sound at the Mayan ruin at Caracol, and you can hear it here.
    Geraldine was one of several guides in Belize to tell us that the howler monkey cries were used to vocalize the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park," though a bit of digging showed that to be a slight exaggeration: howler monkey cries were used for only for one dinosaur, the Dilophosaurus, and then they were mixed with hawk screeches, rattlesnake hisses and swan calls.
     Most of the monkeys tentatively accepted leaves from the others in our party, but mine got down into my face. I'm not sure if it was because he identified me as strong or weak, the Alpha Male or a straggler from the herd. Maybe he just liked the phone.  
     The monkey grabbing my phone was strong. Geraldine said that howlers are known to take a 16 gauge shotgun and bend it in half. I don't believe that—the creatures can't weigh more than 15 or 20 pounds—but the guy did have a tight grip. I must have wanted the phone more, however, and after we met eye to eye a moment, gazing at each other in mutual incomprehension across a chasm of biological time, I pulled the phone away.
    Relief that my iPhone wasn't being born up and away into the trees was replaced in a moment with a kind of regret. Losing the phone to a monkey would have made a better story. Imagine explaining that to the tech folks back at the Sun-Times. "I need a new phone ... because a monkey stole mine." I'd have to get a new iPhone, the 8, with its vastly improved camera. As it was mine had difficulty photographing the very dark monkeys against the light leaves, seeing their faces and small hands.  
    Thankfully, my older son has an actual camera, and captured me with the monkey. No doubt humans interacting with monkeys is bad for reasons that will be explained, huffily, to me very soon. But we felt thrilled and grateful to make their acquaintance. And I was relieved and sorry to still have my phone.

Photo by Ross Steinberg

   

Washington woes dissolve at your favorite Chicago restaurant

  

     Food is comfort. And my guess is, a lot of Chicagoans will wake up Wednesday morning and want nothing more than to drop their faces into a plate of warm solace and briefly forget the travesty unfolding in Washington.
     Luckily, it’s Chicago Restaurant Week.
     The event, now in its 11th year, paradoxically runs two weeks, and focuses on the new and the hip. I’m not much help there. I never want to go to a new restaurant. I prefer the same old restaurants. New places tend to be split between those I can’t get into and those I’m sorry that I did.
     So allow me to share my top seven Chicago restaurants — I tried to do a Top 10, but couldn’t jam them in, so plucked out my favorites from the suburbs. (Sorry Prairie Grass; apologies Psistaria). In alphabetical order, so no feelings are hurt though that might be inevitable, since I’m including a downside for each, lest this devolve into press-agentry.
     Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co., 2121 N. Clark: Can you love a restaurant just for its salad and bread? That’s the main meal when my family rush here to celebrate being all together again. The Mediterranean bread, a warm disk of Parmesan-dusted freshness overflowing the plate. Poppyseed dressing. This one of two restaurants I go to knowing we’ll have to wait 45 minutes to get in. Downside: the “pot pie pizza,” a cheesy, overturned bowl of glop.

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What do Ohio and Belize have in common?

     Knowledge imparted second-hand—through books, say, or photographs displayed in airports—is inferior to knowledge that is imparted directly, through experience in the living world.
      I encountered a noteworthy example of this during my visit to Central America last week.
     One of the first things I saw in Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport in Belize City, steps away from the tarmac, lining up to go through security, was a large photograph, suspended from the ceiling, of what looked like Amish children.
     Being as instinctively arrogant as any American, I automatically assumed it was some kind of general photo of a scenic local, a banner from Pennsylvania perhaps, somehow scavenged, mis-directed here, and repurposed to decorate this very Third World airport.
      But I passed under it, a caption said something about Mennonites in Belize. 

      I thought no more about it until a few days later, driving out to the Mayan ruins at Lamanai.
     Suddenly the road was busy with horse drawn carts. On either side, fields being tended by men in beards and suspenders, by women in long, homespun dresses and bonnets. 

     And I thought, with genuine surprise: "Oh, there are Mennonites in Belize."
    You'd think that the big honking photo at the airport would have been a subtle tip-off.

     But wasn't.
     The obvious first question is: how did they get there. 

     The short answer: circuitously.

     What started as an offshoot of the Anabaptists in Europe in the 16th century found their way to Russia, then Canada and the United States which, in the 1950s, tried to get the Amish, et al, to enroll in their Social Security program. 

     Which inspired communities of Mennonites to emigrate to Belize in 1958, where they farm and raise animals, as well as build vessels. There are some 12,000 living in Belize now, and I saw quite a bit of them, even at resorts, family groups hanging together, the father with his inevitable beard and suspenders, mom in her handmade dress and bonnet, and a few boys with big straw hats, staring in unashamed, slack-jawed curiosity, almost wonder, at us, as if they had never seen outsiders before.

     Leading to a second question that had never crossed my mind before. I knew of Amish from travel in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And I had heard of Mennonites. They obviously shared social traits—in dress, in speech. Both speak Pennsylvania Dutch or Low German. But what is the connection between the two? Are they rivals, like Shi'ites and Sunni? My uninformed guess was that "Amish" was the larger, general term, and Mennonites were a subset of that, the way that Hassids are part of general Jewry. 

      The truth, as usual, is complicated.

      There are dozens of sects of "Plan People" who avoid the modern world and embrace less complicated lifestyles. The Amish—followers of Jacob Amman, who felt that non-believers should be shunned—split with the Mennonites, who didn't, in 1693, and thus the Mennonites are more receptive toward modern conveniences such as telephones and electricity, and also have an evangelical aspect that tends to send them further afield. 

     I always thought that the Amish/Mennonite model is one that fundamental Islam might want to consider as it continues butting up against the West. Rather than trying to undermine what they consider a hopelessly sinful society, it might work better if they just formed their own enclaves, where they'd be free, more or less, to seek a life they consider ideal. 

Vacation's over.

     Upon reflection, of course a dusty grocery on a congested street in unlovely downtown San Pedro, Belize, was not going to have actual Cohiba Esplendidos sitting in a box on the counter for $10 a stick. 
     But in the moment, as I fingered the substantial cigar, that chip of larceny jammed in the heart of so many men gave a little shiver, and I ponied up $20 Belize—the smallest Central American country prudently pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar at a convenient 2-to-1 ratio.
   The cigar looked real enough, with its shiny label proclaiming "Habana, Cuba." And like dupes everywhere, I wanted to believe. The stogie was tucked away for the perfect moment, when the rains subsided Saturday afternoon, before the final dinner of our luscious 8-day excursion among rainforest, rivers and ruins.
     It was only when I popped the thing unlit in my mouth, and tasted a certain ... green sourness ... did I think, "Duh. Smart move Neil." Okay, I thought, deflecting self awareness, putting the bright spin on things, too mellow to allow myself to be annoyed. Nothing to do but shrug, snap it in half and throw the fraud away. A sophisticated man would have known better, but I am not a sophisticated man And anyway: what's another 10 bucks down the tubes in the cost of a vacation like this? In the money-burning potlach of squiring me, the wife, the two boys around the Yucatan peninsula, with drivers and guides and boat captains? Besides, what choice is there? Not too smart to smoke a fake cigar. God knows what's in it, chemicals and such. It could be dangerous.
     And yes, that's supposed to be ironic.
     But I didn't throw it away. I tucked the cigar in my shirt pocket. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said, and while it probably wasn't a Cuban, it still had a certain well-packed quality to it. It had to be good enough to fool people. I try to be fair, even to questionable cigars. Figuring it made sense to give this fellow a chance, I walked it out of the house, down the beach, and to the end of the pier, where the obligatory grass hut looked out over the requisite flat horizon. I settled in a white wooden chair and fired the charlatan up.

The author, in an uncharacteristic pose.

     Not bad. Not bad at all. It burned unevenly, and didn't seem what I remembered Cohibas to be. Yet a mild, serviceable cigar. I didn't fling it away. And a reminder that when the best isn't available, a reasonable facsimile will often do. 
     Just as the vacation might not have really been the rich man's idyll I pretended it was. Certainly an acceptable imitation. It would do. I'd always wanted a vacation where I did nothing, stared at the water, and relaxed. Thinking nothing is actually wonderful, and while I don't want to make a career of it—too many Americans have staked out that territory already—it does make for a welcome change of pace. I even took a cigar-smoking-selfie, as a tribute to my reader Chris Wood, whose Facebook page is studded with them.
     Not that the whole trip was sitting around doing nothing. There was the lovely family wedding that drew us all down there in the first place, and many memorable moments that might bear relating: the unexpected appearance of Mennonites. That larcenous monkey who tried to steal my iPhone. I'll see if my writing engine hasn't seized up from neglect and try to get the thing to turn over, setting a few of those down tomorrow. We got in late, after 10 p.m. Sunday. I wanted to say ... something ... to show I hadn't forgotten you ... at least not completely. I did forget you for long stretches, which was sort of the idea. I hope you didn't forget me too thoroughly, not so much that you won't wander on back. See you tomorrow.