- Tom Nichols on how nostalgia for the past tells us lies;
- More on JD Vance’s tribal morality and short-term thinking;
- Robert Reich on Kamala’s joy and Donald’s grimness;
- And the meaning of why Trump rallies open with Christian prayers.
Tom Nichols.
The Atlantic, Tom Nichols, 26 Jul 2024: The Lies Nostalgia Tells Us, subtitled “I was a child in the 1960s, and those days weren’t better—but in one way, they were sweeter.”
Before reading this: I too was a child in the 1960s, but I don’t have any particular nostalgia for that era. It was crucial for my own personal development — I discovered things like science fiction and astronomy. But I had no one to share them with. In retrospect I think my childhood was very constrained, not intentionally, but because my parents were small-town kids living in a big city, and we didn’t explore. It was years later until I heard, belatedly, the popular music of the 1960s. But enough about me…
Nichols begins by keying off the eternal desire for the supposedly better past.
So much of our current national strife is predicated on how much better things were Back Then. For younger people, “back then” is the time they can barely remember, before Donald Trump began polluting our politics. For some people, it’s the years just before 9/11. Others have fond childhood memories of their first game system, in the 1990s, or their narrow ties and big hair from the ’80s. My generation—call us Gen Jones, wedged between the Boomers and the Xers—grew up in the late ’60s, a nice time to be a child but a period of frightening turmoil for anyone older than us.
And then he goes on to discuss his collection of Batman trading cards, and sports cards in general. How he bought his cards at four various places in Chicopee, Massachusetts, where he grew up. The enthusiasm in his neighborhood for the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. And then collectible cards about assassinated politicians, like Bobby Kennedy.
But then he gets to the point. Like him, I remember the places where such things happened, and how they’re now all gone.
When I look at those old cards, of course I feel a flood of nostalgia. Most of the landmarks of my childhood have crumbled or closed. A highway overpass destroyed the center of Chicopee Street. Lapite’s and Knightly’s are long gone. Kane’s is a check-cashing store. Most of the other businesses have disappeared (a few are now storefront churches), although the bars have held out longer—one of my high-school friends was stabbed to death in one of them, right next to my house, shortly after our class reunion almost 15 years ago.
When people look back and feel loss, I understand. But I am old enough now to know that these were not good days, and that the nostalgia is mostly a lie.
I remember Batman and Barnabas and Bobby. I also remember the alcoholism and drug abuse that plagued our neighborhood (and my family). I remember rampant domestic violence, although as children we didn’t know what to call it. I remember hospitals and nursing homes that now seem medieval to me. I remember air-conditioning being a luxury.
…
We can cherish our memories, but we should be clear-eyed about the past. I do not want those days back, and I will not support the vengeful authoritarians who sell such nostalgic rotgut. Nevertheless, I still smile at some of those favorite acquisitions of my childhood, including the cards I proudly bought in 1969 after the moon landing. I particularly like a card of Micky Dolenz of the Monkees, because I remember the crisp fall day I bought it from Art Lapite nearly six decades ago.
I have equivalent memories, of buying science fiction magazines at the various drugstores nearby that sold them, for example. But otherwise, I led a sheltered life. I didn’t know what was going on in the outer world, except for occasional reports about famous people being assassinated. It took me a long time to become aware. Yet my nostalgia for those early days remains, as I presume they do for most people.
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Vox, Zack Beauchamp (I’ve ordered his book), 30 Jul 2024: Where J.D. Vance’s weirdest idea actually came from, subtitled “How Vance’s proposal to give parents extra votes illustrates the fundamental flaw in his politics.”
“Let’s give votes to all the children in this country and let’s give control over votes to the parents in this country,” he says.
It’s an old idea called “Demeny voting,” named after 20th-century Hungarian demographer Paul Demeny (a vocal champion of the idea). Typically, the argument for Demeny voting is rooted in fairness. Children are people who, like anyone else, deserve political representation. Since they lack the maturity to make informed choices about their interests, parents should vote on their behalf — much in the same way they make decisions about children’s medical care or education. To get a sense of how this argument works, I’d recommend a recent paper by two law professors at Harvard and Northwestern making the case at length.
But for Vance, the policy isn’t just about ensuring fairness for families: it’s about punishing childless adults. Vance sees Demeny voting as a tool for creating two-tiered citizenship, one where parents have more and better political representation than other adults.
It’s easy to rationalize the situation the opposite way, as I mentioned a post or two ago. Key points: First, this is the essence of tribal mentality: expansion of the tribe trumps every other consideration. Second: It cannot continue forever; the world is filling up, and humanity is destroying its ecosystem. But conservatives dismiss long-term consequences. They’re all about babies.
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Robert Reich, 30 Jul 2024: Kamala and the politics of joy, subtitled “Versus Trump’s politics of grimness”
The last few years have been so bleak — Trump’s disastrous four years in the White House, the police murders of George Floyd and other Black men and women, COVID deaths, climate crises, Trump’s big lie, Biden’s declining health — that I had almost forgotten politics can be joyful.
And then Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic candidate for president.
She’s filling politics with a hope and exuberance I haven’t seen since John F. Kennedy ran for president. Her smile is spreading cheer. Her laugh projects joy. Her joyfulness is igniting excitement and enthusiasm.
She is still deadly serious about what America is up against. But she’s combining it with a jubilance that tells us we can triumph.
Coincidentally, I read part of a book (by Sebastian Junger) today that discusses violence, as a part of human nature. Combatants, in boxing say, never smile. They are always grim. Any hint of a smile of a sign of weakness, of submission. That’s how human nature works. Is that the world most people want to live in?
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The Atlantic, McKay Coppins, 29 Jul 2024: The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally, subtitled “A close reading of the prayers delivered before the former president speaks”
A week before Christmas, an evangelical minister named Paul Terry stood before thousands of Christians, their heads bowed, in Durham, New Hampshire, and pleaded with God for deliverance. The nation was in crisis, he told the Lord—racked with death and addiction, led by wicked men who “rule with imperial disdain.”
“With every passing day,” the minister said, “we slip farther and farther into George Orwell’s tyrannical dystopia.”
Or course, Project 2025 sounds a lot like Orwell’s dystopia.
But because God is merciful, there was reason for hope. One man stood ready to redeem the country: Donald Trump. And he was about to come onstage. “We know what he did for us and how he strove to lead us in honorable ways during his term as our president—in ways that brought your blessings to us, rather than your reproach and judgment,” Terry prayed. “We know the hour is late. We know that time grows shorter for us to be saved and revived.” When he finished in the name of Jesus Christ, Amens echoed through the hall. Soon Trump appeared to rapturous applause and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Much more; it’s a long article. There’s only so much time. I’ll repeat what I’ve said before: the religious right’s support for Trump completely discredits (as if their theology hadn’t already) their entire campaign. Their claim of morality, all of it. They have no idea what they’re doing. Or what the world they’re living in is actually all about.
