Don't fight monsters by becoming them.

 

     Most folks don’t proofread remarks tossed up on Facebook. But this was Nietzsche, and I didn’t want to get Nietzsche wrong, lest the forces of darkness he dabbled in come flapping out of a fissure in the earth and get me.
     I had posted my Saturday column about Donald Trump coming down with COVID-19. It skewed toward kindness. Sorry, I had to work quick, and find decency a handy default position, particularly now. You rarely regret kindness. Rarely slap yourself on the forehead the next morning and wonder, “How could I have been so decent?!?”
     Yes, it bothers some. “We’re showing him more empathy than he’s shown us,” complained an assistant professor at Loyola. “He has never called for any kind of remembrance of coronavirus victims or personally sought to console survivors.“
     True enough. But since when did Donald Trump become our moral pole star?
     “That’s how it should be,” I replied. “‘When battling monsters,’ Nietzsche tells us, ‘make sure that you do not become a monster.’”
     Quotes have a way of being distorted. So I checked the source, “Beyond Good and Evil.” Easy enough to find, aphorism No. 146: ”Whoever fights with monsters should make sure not to become a monster in the process.” 

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Hope is the thing with feathers

     Wishing on a star doesn't do anything. Maybe remind yourself what you are hoping for.  And a little contact high, a whiff of the thing you want and probably won't get.
     Hope certainly does not exert control over the world. It says something about you, probably something you already know. But that's it.
     In the two days since it was learned that Donald Trump has COVID-19, a lot of my friends, in the living world and on social media, have either expressed their hopes for his recovery, sincere or half-hearted, or spoken aloud their hopes for his suffering or worse, sometimes then castigating themselves for those hopes.
     I've tried to sidestep that exercise in futility. Not that it matters, but I hope he gets his ass kicked Nov. 3 and slinks off to prison in shame. But like any other hope, that doesn't make the related possibility any more real. Truthfully, I try not to even do that. Maybe, after writing eight books, the shine has gone off hope. Maybe because it seems so weak. Hope, Emily Dickinson wrote, is the thing with feathers. That's sweet and maybe sometimes true. To me, hope is the last coin in our pocket when all the money's gone. 
     Maybe because I'm less optimism driven, more fear oriented. What I fear is that the president will shake off his virus tomorrow, or later today. as can happen, and bounce back into the White House, potching his palms together and announcing that thanks to his iron constitution—a superman, really—and the overblown assessment of so-called "doctors," he has flicked the virus away, crushed it like a rock in his large and powerful hands, and is now ready to spread his wings and fly in his second term, as soon as the hopelessly corrupted and illegitimate election is put behind us.
     I can see that happening. Hope is a dim, distant star compared to that. Hope is a splash of feathers on the lawn where there used to be a bird.
     What I couldn't see—what most people didn't seem to see—was Trump getting sick in the first place, and I want to talk about that, because that's amazing, and speaks to the power of deceit. We all know—well, half of us anyway—that COVID-19 has killed more than a million people worldwide. And we know that 208,000 of those were Americans. And we could see that Trump didn't wear a mask and went around in maskless groups, rallies and meeting and rope lines. Day after day, in general disdain of self-preservation as weak and timid and girly and beneath his massive manliness. And while we didn't think it true, the fact was that he hadn't gotten sick, up to now, and speaking personally I just sort of assumed ... I'm not sure what. That it was all a show, that his minions and underlings—the United States government, remember—had created this antiseptic bubble around him. The president's daring was an illusion, a magic trick, and he was really as safe as a newborn swaddled in an incubator behind glass in a nursery.
    See? That's why he lies. Because lying works. Even among the vigilant and the skeptical. That's why there are so many lies. Lie after lie after lie. It wears us away like water over a stone. That's how I feel lately. Worn away.
     The lies get past our defenses, like the virus itself. Just as COVID-19 tricks the body, the president's lies trick the mind. Even though a person is stained as a liar, with 20,000 certified lies over the past four years, it is just so hard to accept. We keep forgetting. We keep insisting this is the new normal then going back to the old normal to sit in the ruins and sift the ashes. The media still asks him questions, provoking more lies, and nobody ever yells, "Stop! Why bother? Because he isn't telling the truth, ever." If Trump does die, you know it'll be two hours after his doctors have a press conference and give him a clean bill of health. Not only someone who lies, but someone who encourages deceit in others.
     The weekend—if we can call it that—was strange, a sort of waiting, ear cocked, for a sound that might not come, compulsively checking the news even more than usual, which is really saying something. Staring in silence at our phones, scanning the skies for a sign, a portend, a wonder. Waiting, hope stuck in our throats.

Cover ‘Trump gets COVID’ on your Disaster Bingo card

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey is taking the day off; she'll return next Saturday. 

     It’s terrible to be sick.
     Even when you have good health insurance and the best medical care. Even when you’re the president of the United States. Even when contracting this particular illness reeks of karma, of payback, of divine justice, the way it does for President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, who announced early Friday they have tested positive for COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has killed a million people worldwide, including 206,000 Americans.
     There will no doubt be a certain amount of gloating, of snide “thoughts and prayers” chortling. Guess that hydroxychloroquine didn’t do the trick after all, huh?
     I can see why. Only Tuesday Trump was in full bore bullying mode at the first presidential debate in Cleveland, speaking over his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, insulting him and the rest of us.
     “We’ve done a great job,” Trump said of his delayed, botched reaction to the pandemic, which he initially trivialized and ignored. The one thing Trump did do — haphazardly restrict travel with China — was again held up as if it had been adequate. He again pretended he was the one on top of the situation while his opponents dithered, Trump’s trademark move of blaming others for his own deficiencies.
     “It’s China’s fault!” he complained, as if that matters. As if America’s response to the virus didn’t at least match their blundering, if not surpass it.
     But the quality that ties one hand behind the back of Democrats in this fight is our ability to empathize with other people, even bad people. And in truth I have always felt sorry for Trump, clearly a broken man, his ego so damaged it must be constantly stroked. Living proof that you can be rich, famous, powerful and still a pathetic excuse for a human being who just can’t stop talking, mostly about himself.
     “They give you good press,” he sniveled to Biden Tuesday. “They give me bad press.”
     Boo hoo.

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Let Mr. COVID Answer Man help you cope during the pandemic

  

   Because there are only so many earnest, well-reasoned columns a body can write...


Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: I’ve realized there are certain friends I haven’t talked to since March. Is it too late now to reach out? — Lonely

                                                                                         

Dear Lonely: Yes. The truth is, if you haven’t spoken to someone in more than six months of the most intense crisis to grip our country in living memory, you never need to speak again. This is sad, of course. Think of them like a neighbor you really like who moves away. You hug and swear you’ll stay in touch. Then you don’t, because you aren’t living next door to each other anymore. That’s how life goes.

Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: I work in a small store, where I’m required to wear a mask. But it gets claustrophobic, so I slip it below my nose. Occasionally a customer will say, “Would you mind putting your mask on properly?” This makes me very angry. Am I wrong to feel this way? — Miffed

Dear Miffed: Of course not. Tell yourself, you are WEARING a mask, technically, just not in the precise fashion that pleases every germaphobe fussbudget who walks in the door and starts issuing orders like they own the place, just because they don’t want to die a horrible death. The good news is that most customers are too inhibited to actually complain. Try saying, “Oh sorry, it slipped,” in a sarcastic tone, the way you would say, “Mind your own business loser,” and without moving the mask. That will convey your point in a witty fashion.

Dear Mr. COVID Answer Man: Before the pandemic struck, I used to scream at my children for staring at screens too much. Now that they’re remote learning, I scream at them for not watching screens enough. They fight and misbehave and I find myself hating them, sometimes, wondering why I didn’t move to Thailand and open a grass shack bar on the beach when I was young and might have. What should I do? — Regretful

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Why won't the lying liar lie?

 

     So here's the mystery.
     Given that Donald Trump is a liar—a continual, habitual, reflexive, pathological liar. And given the ease with which he mouths whatever untruth will reflect the greatest unearned glory upon him at any given moment or grease his way out of some self-imposed jam, secure in the knowledge, or maybe completely unaware, that he can always reverse himself should circumstances dictate, how do we explain this:
     Why didn't Trump just condemn white supremacy when called upon to do so, rather pathetically, by Fox News' Chris Wallace at the presidential debate in Cleveland Tuesday night?
     Could it be he believes so strongly in the superiority of the white race that he cannot publicly denounce it? That doing so would be like some Christian martyr forced to renounce his faith by some pagan tyrant? He would rather die.

     That's hard to imagine. Trump doesn't believe in anything except his own superlative greatness. He turned his back on New York, the city that created him. He drop kicks longtime aides at the first sign of trouble. It can't be loyalty to white supremacy. Not from the man whose entire mechanism is greased by disloyalty, hypocrisy and betrayal.
     So what it is then? It isn't as if such a condemnation would matter in the slightest.  As Hazlitt reminds us, "The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy."
     Maybe because Chris Wallace, a member of the despised media, albeit the weak tea Fox version, was urging him to do it. Trump can't denounce white supremacy for the same reason he couldn't wear a mask for the first four months of the pandemic, even when doing so would be painless, help him politically and, oh yeah, save lives: because he was supposed to do it. And part of the oxygen that keep Trump and his base alive is their image of themselves as Harley-straddling rebels, Robinson Crusoe noncomformists, AR-15 in one hand while the other flips off any and all, on general principles. What is denouncing hate versus the the visceral pleasure of emitting a long, loud, deeply felt, "Fuuuuuuck yooooooouuuuuuu!!!" in the general direction of everybody who isn't on their knees, adoring the godhead?
     Ridiculing their enemies is an essential part of Trumpism. Mexicans are rapists, Muslims terrorists. Think of all the effort conjuring up pants-wetting liberals, casting them as traitors and cowards and idiots, then imaging their eye-goggling shock at whatever dull repetitive inanity Trump et al are babbling. The fact that most liberals are already bored and disgusted and at this point have to force themselves to notice, think about and if possible care, doesn't register. In their minds, they shoot, they scoooore!
     Haters define themselves by the people they hate. They sit in cathectic contemplation of what in theory so disrupts their lives but, in fact, give them the meaning they otherwise lack. This is counterintuitive, and can be very hard for non-haters to understand. They give the objects of their hate power over their own mental states, then resent and fight that power. Think about your marriage. Now try to imagine feeling that the marriages of gay people you never met somehow affect yours, never mind undermine it. Hard to do, right?

      You want to laugh, but none of this is funny. The Department of Homeland Security called white supremacism will be "most persistent and lethal threat" facing the United States over the coming year when it comes to terrorism. Donald Trump can't even pretend to condemn it. He won't acknowledge the danger that white nationalism poses, never mind do something about it. Only we can.

Debate all crosstalk and confusion

     "Maybe 'debate' is not the word to use to describe tonight’s event," Princeton historian and CNN commentator Julian Zelizer tweeted a few hours before the brawl between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday. 

     Prescient. Although you didn't have to be Nostradamus to see that coming.
     Though "debate" might be the word for it. The first definition of "debate" in my Oxford English Dictionary is "To fight, contend, strive, quarrel, wrangle." 

     Sounds about right. The news networks certainly kept their questionable policy of treating the event like a boxing match.
     "A pretty well-matched fight," said CNN's Abby Phillip, ahead of time, introducing what she called "a slugfest."
     Though I wrote a column Tuesday morning, the paper asked if we could hold that so I could react to the debate. I was happy to be in the mix, but in doing so I had to whip together the following almost immediately. So if you're interested in what a column looks like written in 15 minutes, this is your chance. 

     In doing so, I saw how the national media tends to layer a kind of unfair balance over such situations. It's the default mode. The truth was that Trump's lying, bullying manner upended the civility required for real debate, and made it the stressful, unpleasant embarrassment it was.  But that takes five minutes' reflection, at least for me. The pros in immediacy were better at instantly nailing it.

    "That was a shit show," said CNN's Dana Bash, live on TV, and to illustrate just how true that assessment is, nobody seems shocked to hear her say it on air. Yes, yes it was. 

     I didn't quite come out and say that—I was too busy trying to get the words down in some kind of coherent order. I hope it comes through. Yes, good that Joe Biden stood up for democracy and handled himself admirably. Yet the affair leaves any thoughtful person not glad, but sad, and deeply concerned for our country. With two more shitshows left.

      “This is not going to end well,” President Donald Trump said toward the end of Tuesday night’s debate — or should that be “debate,” since it was more of an exercise in crosstalk and confusion, the first of three.
     He was referring to the election he insists will be “a disaster” with “30, 40%” of the mail-in ballots lost.
     But after 90 minutes of his free-for-all with former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump might be talking about the American experiment itself. It’s hard to have watched the mud wrestle in Cleveland and not come away with a certain despair for our country, based on the low state of anything resembling discussion of the issues.
     I suppose I should point to parts as significant.
     Once again, Trump was pressed to condemn white supremacy. And again, he did the opposite, telling violent groups such as the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”
     Stand by for what, he didn’t say. Dog-whistled orders, perhaps.

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"A wild roller coaster ride through a dark tunnel"

 

     When I wrote last week, in a follow-up to my Sept. 8 Cologuard column, that the danger of follow-ups is there can be no end to them, I wasn't kidding. I thought I was done. I wanted to be done. And then I received this email from Timothy Hufman of Willowbrook. Tell me, what would YOU do? I really have no choice here:

Dear Mr. Steinberg:

     I have been reading your articles on Cologuard. I appreciate your mixture of humor and helpful information. Yesterday, you pointed out the pros and cons of using Cologuard as compared to getting a colonoscopy. One of the risks you mentioned with a colonoscopy was that its effectiveness depended greatly on the doctor who did the procedure. You pointed out that “Some doctors look harder than others. Some spend three minutes snooping around your colon. Others spend up to 14. The harder they look, the more they find.”
     I have come up with a technique to insure that my doctor does a complete examination – I join him (or her) in the examination. In essence, I have had a colonoscopy without taking any anesthesia. This allowed me to remain awake and alert during the whole examination looking at the same monitor the doctor was watching as he traveled through my colon.
      The experience was not painful as the colon has no nerve endings. “Meaningful discomfort” may be a more accurate description of the event. Most problematic was the initial insertion of the scope. All of a sudden, I got that “full” feeling similar to what one experiences seven hours after a huge meal when you are desperately looking for a bathroom. Thereafter, I was happily able to watch the show on the monitor from the comfort of my gurney with only mild cramping as air was blown into my intestine to inflate it for easy passage of the scope.
     Significantly, the procedure does not include an examination of the colon while “going in.” Thus, the scope quickly moved up my intestine with a view on the monitor similar to a wild roller coaster ride through a dark tunnel with only one small headlight illuminating the way.
     It was fascinating watching the scope make the hair-pin turns following my large intestine as it wound through my bowel cavity. Along the way, we came to one real sharp bend which the scope had a hard time maneuvering . As the doctor continued to struggle with getting the scope around the curve, I looked down at my abdomen, where the scope was stuck, to see my skin go up and down as if there was a finger in my bowel trying to push out.
     Finally, the scope reached the ileocecal valve which separates the small from the large intestine. At that point, the doctor began the examination by slowly retracting the scope as the camera, with its miniature light, illuminated the portion of my intestine that we were just leaving. At one point in our journey, I saw a dark spot on the colon wall. I cried out, “Wait, wait, what was that we just passed?” The doctor sighed and dutifully retraced his steps up the intestine to the dark area of my concern. It turned out to be a bran flake or some other debris that had apparently clung to the intestine wall during the preparation period when I flushed out my system. Having satisfied my concern, the doctor continued the journey.
     “Slow down” I said, when he began going too fast for me to carefully see the area we were passing through. Again, there was that sigh as he slowed down the retraction of the scope. Thereafter, aside from a few other pieces of partially digested food that we passed by, the rest of the trip was uneventful.
     Finally, at the end of the inspection, just before removing the scope, the doctor bent the camera around so that I could look at my hemorrhoids as they appeared from the inside. I think the doctor took a little pleasure in seeing my look of horror at what I was observing.
     With that, my journey was over. Although I was still cramping a little from all of the air still inflating my intestine, I was relaxed knowing that the examination of my colon had been thorough.

Yours,

Timothy Hufman