Michael Prescott's Blog

Memento mori, or love in the age of corona*

In recent weeks, I’ve learned not to post anything on Facebook, because people decide I’m a hater if I so much as suggest that there might be another metric worth considering besides the coronavirus mortality rate. So I won’t open that can of worms here, except to say that risk management entails looking at a variety of factors, not exclusively public health. The strength of the economy, the stability of society, the prevalence of psychological illness, and the death tolls of other diseases – all these are relevant factors to take into account. A purely epidemiological approach is necessarily narrow-minded. It doesn’t do us much good to save, say, one thousand lives from COVID-19 if we’ve condemned our nation to a decade or more of grinding poverty. Chronic unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure, the loss of businesses and the lifetime of effort they represent ... these are not trivial outcomes. And they do have public health consequences. Look at the epidemic of opioid addiction among the chronically unemployed in the Rust Belt.

This too shall pass, though it may leave a Great Depression in its wake. (And those who believe that economic numbers are “only statistics,” as I’ve been told very heatedly online, will soon learn how real these statistics can be.)

What interests me, in the context of this blog, is that vast numbers of people in the Western world seem absolutely flabbergasted to discover that they are, in fact, mortal. The reality of their own demise evidently had never been quite clear real to them before, and now fills them with existential dread.

This is where a study of the afterlife proves useful. Many people like to say:

What’s the use of worrying about life after death? I’ll find out when I’m dead.

But the problem with this attitude is that it leaves you ill-prepared to face your own more death (however remote a prospect it may be – and given the mortality figures on COVID-19, which are constantly being revised downward, it’s pretty clear that this is, in fact, a remote possibility at present).

We live remarkably comfortable and insular lives in the 21st century, at least in the developed world. We seem to assume we will live forever, or at least until we are pushing 100 – although why anyone would want to live that long, with the inevitable decline of one’s mental and physical faculties, is hard for me to fathom. I've spent enough time around senior citizens with dementia to think that this outcome is one to avoid at almost any cost.

Now this virus, however much it has been overhyped as the Black Plague and Ebola and the zombie apocalypse all rolled into one, is focusing our minds on our own all-too-human limitations. And many people, quite obviously, are unprepared for this revelation and are freaking out. The sheer level of panic over a virus with roughly a 0.6% mortality rate, concentrated in the elderly and infirm, is ridiculous. But it’s understandable if we realize that we are emotionally, psychologically, and socially unprepared to deal with our own mortality, because we have avoided this issue so assiduously for so long.

In the medieval world, people used to wear medallions inscribed memento mori, often with a skull appended to the design. The translation is: Remember your own mortality. One would not think that people in the Middle Ages, who faced chronic plagues and famines and had a life expectancy of less than forty years, would need such reminder. Maybe they didn’t. But surely we need it today.

 

 

To all the skeptics, materialists, cynics, and assorted assholes who say that a focus on life after death is morbid, neurotic, and unproductive, I would say this:

Some of us have made preparations for our inevitable demise and are at peace with it. Others are in constant denial. Which of us is better prepared to deal with the current panic? Which of us can keep it in perspective? Which of us is already comfortable with the fact of our mortality (yes, IT IS A FACT), and which of us is paralyzed by fear?

There is a real advantage to studying the evidence for life after death. It becomes apparent only when the rest of society, drowning in materialism, hedonism, and narcissism, suddenly discovers that death is not just for "other people," but for them, too. In these circumstances, those of us who are intellectually and spiritually prepared can follow Rudyard Kipling’s timeless advice:

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...

Keep calm and carry on. You’ll probably survive COVID-19. If you don’t, you can look forward to a better world.

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*With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez. 

Civil war, part deux

A little while ago, I posted my opinion that, despite increasing speculation about a new civil war in the United States, it was very unlikely that such a thing could happen. In fact, I could see no plausible path to that outcome.

That's changed a little. Now I do see a possible path, though I still don't expect it to happen.

The pathway in question is essentially a worst-case scenario. Happily for us all, the worst case rarely comes to pass. This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it's not the worst of all possible worlds, either.

Still, occasionally the perfect storm does happen. That's what it would take to bring about the cataclysmic outcome of a new civil war or, at the very least, massively increased civil strife.

As you know, the Democratic controlled House is moving forward with an attempt to impeach President Trump. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has put the hearings on an accelerated timetable with an eye toward holding a final vote on impeachment as early as Thanksgiving.If a majority of the House votes to impeach, the indictment moves to the Senate for adjudication.

Meanwhile, President Trump and his lawyers insist that the process is illegal, because Pelosi has not held a vote formally authorizing an impeachment inquiry. Therefore, they say, subpoenas issued by the house with regard to this matter will be ignored. The president's lawyer yesterday issued a combative eight-page letter laying out this position.

I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of this debate. I'm no legal scholar, and it's irrelevant to the main point of this post. The point is that we have a deadlock between two branches of government, with the legislative branch insisting it has the right to subpoena witnesses and the executive branch refusing to comply.

Now we come to our worst-case scenario. Suppose the House does vote to impeach, which is likely, because only a simple majority is needed. Then suppose that the Senate votes to convict Trump and remove him from office. Trump is already on record as saying that the whole process is illegal and unconstitutional and constitutes an attempted coup. He would be unlikely to agree to leave office in response to an impeachment and conviction that he regards as fundamentally corrupt and unlawful.

That's when all hell breaks loose. In effect, we would have two governments – the Trump White House and a parallel government set up by the Democrats, presumably with Pelosi in charge (since she is next in the line of succession after Vice President Pence). Each would accuse the other of being illegitimate. Partisans around the country would be sharply divided. It's a near certainty that violence would break out in the streets as radical groups like Antifa and Proud Boys battle it out. Mass demonstrations in support of each "government" might start out peacefully, but could easily degenerate into chaos.

The military might even be called on to oust Trump from the White House and place him under arrest. But what if some factions of the military side with Trump instead? Then you have a real civil war.

And even if it doesn't get that far, you'd have something very much like the situation in Kansas in the years prior to the first Civil War, when two rival governments were set up by pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, leading to raids into each other's turf, with lynchings and other violence. The territory-turned-state became known as Bleeding Kansas; it was a wound that would not heal. Imagine Bleeding Kansas on a national scale.

Now, as I said, this is a worst-case scenario. Our saving grace is that the Senate will probably perform the duty envisioned for it by the founding fathers, who saw the Senate as the saucer that cools the steaming hot cup of tea. The contentious, hotheaded House stands for the steaming tea in this analogy, while the Senate, with its arcane rules and gentlemanly traditions, is meant to slow things down and allow cooler heads to prevail.

Specifically with regard to impeachment, the Senate procedure requires an actual trial, which would have to conform with rules of evidence and other legal precedents. More important, conviction requires a two-thirds majority, meaning that 67 senators would have to vote to remove Trump from office. Given that Republicans have a majority of the Senate, it's almost impossible that the magic number of 67 can be reached. One or two Republicans, like Mitt Romney of Utah, might defect, but then again one or two Democrats from conservative states, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, might choose to stand with Trump. It seems unlikely in the extreme that anything close to 67 senators will agree to evict Trump from the Oval Office, especially with a presidential election less than a year away by then.

And we should be glad about this, no matter what our partisan leanings. It's far better for the country to have the impeachment effort fizzle out in the Senate than to have a Bleeding Kansas or civil war scenario play out from coast to coast.

Ultimately, I think the impeachment kerfuffle will come to little or nothing, but there's always the chance of a perfect storm. Already some Democrats, like Rashida Tlaib, are openly speculating about how they would hunt down and incarcerate Trump in the event of a conviction. Others have imagined first impeaching Pence, and then forcing Trump to resign so that Pelosi could become president. These speculations are, to put it mildly, unhelpful. Whether they know it or not, these people are pouring water on a grease fire and risking an explosion.

Both sides are caught up in a dangerous contest, escalating the stakes, essentially playing a game of chicken. Sometimes that game ends in a disastrous collision. Let's hope this time it doesn't.

Civil war, what is it good for?

I don't post much on politics anymore. The subject is divisive and depressing. Politics seems to be a "low-vibration" endeavor, attracting office seekers of generally poor character and bringing out the less desirable traits in observers. Our national obsession with politics is one reason for the dubious state of our collective mental health. In one of the wealthiest and freest countries in the world, too many people are obsessed with negativity, fixated on imaginary apocalypses, and stewing in their own juices while banging away at computer keyboards. 

Even so, I did post something political on Facebook yesterday that I thought was worth reprinting here, with a few edits and some photo illustrations. 

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With all the Sturm und Drang about our deteriorating political discourse, some people have taken to speculating about a second American civil war. I think this is extremely unlikely to happen, though a lot of people seem to enjoy thinking about it.

For one thing, there are no clear-cut geographical divisions in the country, as there were in 1860. The Electoral College map makes it look as if nearly the entire heartland is solid red, but many of those red states have significant blue enclaves, while even the bluest of blue states, like California, have red enclaves. Who are we going to go to war with – our next-door neighbors?

 

Electoral college map of the 2016 presidential contest

 

Map of the 2016 presidential election results in California (a "deep blue" state) as divided by county

 

Map of the 2016 presidential election results in Texas (a "deep red" state) as divided by county

 

In 1860, many Americans felt more loyalty to their home state than to the national government, making it easier for Southern states to secede. Today, most Americans feel little attachment to their home state and move as required from one part of the country to another. We identify as Americans primarily, not as Californians or New Jerseyans.

Life was a lot tougher in 1860. Lifespans were shorter, and creature comforts were hard to find. Many people grew up with a gun in their hand, hunting their dinner. Such people don't find it too hard to organize themselves into militias. Most of us moderns have never served in the military and have little experience with roughing it. We may be keyboard warriors, but we wouldn't last two days in the field. We would miss all our favorite TV shows!

 

Cider Making, by William Sidney Mount, depicts life in Setauket, Long Island in the 1840s

 

Contemporary home in Setauket, Long Island

 

Finally, it's easy to exaggerate the novelty and significance of today's overheated political rhetoric and the acts of violence we see from groups like Antifa or from deranged individuals on a rampage. The truth is, America has always been a violent country, and much of that violence has been politically inspired — notably the bombings, riots, and assassinations carried out by the anarchist movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of us are old enough to remember the same kind of violence in the 1960s. There's always been a chaotic element to America's freewheeling democratic culture.

And this chaos has been reflected in political rhetoric from the very beginning. Brad Hart notes that the presidential election of 1800 between incumbent John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson grew so heated that many Americans believed Jefferson was a monster. One contemporary source predicted what a Jefferson victory would mean:

Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest [being] openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes.

Another went further, foreseeing: 

Female chastity violated [with] children writing on a pike.

Martha Washington declared Jefferson to be "one of the most detestable of mankind and a threat to our way of life." Others labeled Jefferson "an enemy to his country and his God. 

 

Anti-Jefferson ad from the election of 1800

Jefferson responded with heated rhetoric of his own. His operative James Callender, hired as a hatchet man, described Adams as "a hideous hermaphroditical character with neither the force and firmness of a man or the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." 

Closer to our time, in the 1944 election, supporters of Franklin Roosevelt characterized his opponent, Thomas Dewey, as essentially a tool of the Axis powers, whom our troops were still fighting overseas.

 

Socialist pamphlet attacking Dewey in 1944

Michael A. Davis, in a 2005 dissertation on the wartime campaign, reports: 

Indiana Senator (and Permanent Chairman of the convention) Samuel Jackson described 1944 as a "fateful" election, and warned that ... a Democratic defeat would mean battleships for Hirohito and legions for Hitler. "Frankly," Jackson continued, "could Goebbels do better himself to bolster Axis morale than the word that the American people had upset this administration...? We must not allow the American ballot box to be made Hitler's secret weapon!" Jackson's speech was but one example of an aspect of the 1944 campaign often overlooked — Nazi-baiting by Democrats and other Roosevelt supporters. Throughout the fall, there were numerous references to Dewey's "Hitler mustache" in speeches and campaign literature....

Supporters of Dewey, including John Foster Dulles and Senator Gerald Nye, were also charged with being pro-Hitler. "U.S. Fascists Want. .. [Dewey] in the White House," declared a publication of the New York County American Labor Party.

They Like Dewey — and Our Enemies Too

December 6, 1941 ... Pro-Axis

November 7, 1944... Pro-Dewey

They Have Not Changed!

Talk about invoking Hitler ...

America is not a subtle or nuanced country. We tend to get carried away, and the Internet and social media make it even easier to do so. There may be skirmishes, and there will be nastiness galore, and the upcoming year is going to be pretty rough, with a lot of bruised feelings and strained friendships. But a civil war?

I don't think so.

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Update: For a contrary point of view, see Angelo Codevilla's article "Igniting Civil War," which I came across after posting this piece earlier today. Codevilla, a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, argues that "since the ruling class’s condemnations of conservatives as racists, environmental criminals, and would-be terrorists are becoming well-nigh universal, the probability of deadly attacks on conservatives ... rises to certainty....

"What happens when these [far-left] organizations organize mobs to harass their least favorite people? What happens when some of them wind up dead?

"At a certain point, the other side shoots back. Here as elsewhere, the several police forces may be expected to split and take opposite sides. Then the army’s special forces become the arbiters, and the war rages."

Something like this could happen in isolated areas, but I don't see it spreading to the nation at large. Most Americans are just not that politically engaged or motivated. And if "the army’s special forces" ever do get involved, I expect they will quickly bring an end to anarchy in the streets. I can't imagine either (left-wing) Antifa or (right-wing) Proud Boys posing much of a challenge to Army Rangers and Green Berets.

Fear itself

I have no interest in Marianne Williamson's presidential candidacy, because I think that even in our celebrity-obsessed age, she has no chance at the nomination. Also, I disagree with most of her policy proposals.

What does interest me are the reactions she inspires, particularly from Christians. In their commentary, we see the knee-jerk hostility to spiritualism and the paranormal that unfortunately characterizes many exponents of traditional religion.

 Marianne Williamson

A case in point is a recent opinion piece by Michael Knowles, bearing the subtle title "Marianne Williamson's Diabolical Heresy." Knowles quotes Williamson on "this dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred that this president is bringing up." He then writes:

... our political woes do indeed stem from a “dark, psychic force” — namely, the Devil. Not everyone believes in him, but he’s real. 

After assuring us that old Mephistopheles is still among us, just as Cotton Mather warned, Knowles goes on to dissect Williamson's theological message:

Williamson made her career proselytizing A Course In Miracles, a 1976 book written by Columbia University psychologist Helen Schucman, who believed the text had been dictated to her word-for-word by a spirit claiming to be Jesus Christ. The book contradicts virtually every teaching of Christianity, including the divinity of Christ, the fall of man, and the reliability of Scripture. It denies the reality of all that we experience, except for our desires. “The world you see is an illusion of a world,” writes Schucman ...

Whether the origin of A Course In Miracles is diabolical or merely psychological, the book proclaimed an anti-gospel of unreality and bred a cult of self-satisfaction for which Marianne Williamson has served as chief apostle. Enjoy the memes, but beware dark, psychic forces.

This conclusion is a bit of a letdown. We'd been led to believe that Williamson had conjured up the Devil, but at the end we are left in doubt as to whether her message is "diabolical or merely psychological."

But while Knowles may back off from definitively assessing Williamson and her source materials as instruments of the Devil, some of the more excitable commenters on the site feel no such reluctance. Here are some samples of their informed opinions.

As a young adult I studied "the Course" before I realized it was really "the Curse" and my father had a long talk with me, as I was starting to question it's message and teaching, that the New Age, which it was, was really being sold by decayed elites to draw people away from Christianity and promote Satanism in its place as a religion. The Curse is Satanism and it's clear now that Schucman was channeling demons and promoting heresy.

Satan disguised himself to Schucman and her final days sound like a total possession. Williamson is providing a new forensic of the link of the left, globalists and Luciferian ideology.

Oprah [Winfrey]  has always been a satanist

It seems pretty clear that some of these people draw no distinction between Satanism (which they take to be the actual worship of a demonic entity named Satan, and not a jokey, secular-humanist quasi-religion espoused purely to tick off Christians) and the phenomena of channeling, mediumship, automatic writing, psychic healing, etc. 

There is also at least one commenter who seems to have actually read A Course In Miracles: 

A Course in Miracles has nothing to do with demons. I don't understand why people feel free to comment upon things they know nothing about. Dare to open your eyes and read the book and you will see that it teaches that the ego is what keeps you lost in the woods seeking goals that have no real value, and that The Christ / Holy Spirit is like an older, wiser brother who can show you the way out of the dark wood and into the light of wisdom, forgiveness and love. Don't take my word for it. Read the book!

An intelligent comment, which naturally provokes an unintelligent response:

it has to do with delusions given to a possessed women to lead astray those like you. it has everything to do with demons. you do not know right from wrong, and so therefore you can be lead astray.

I've read only parts of A Course In Miracles, which I find pretty rough sledding. As far as channeled literature is concerned, I'm more partial to the Seth books produced by Jane Roberts. I'm sure Michael Knowles and his allies among the commenters would be equally displeased with them, and equally quick to suggest (or even to insist) that Jane Roberts was possessed by Lucifer.

It's been said that traditional religion invented Hell in order to frighten believers into submission. This viewpoint seems borne out by the unthinking fear-based response of traditional religionists to anything novel or innovative in spiritual exploration. Regardless of what anyone thinks about Marianne Williamson or A Course In Miracles, or about spiritualism or psychic phenomena in general, it's rather sad to see people's intellectual horizons so narrowly constrained and their spiritual vocabulary so pitifully reduced. For them, if it's not in the Bible (as interpreted by their particular congregation), then it must be both false and Satanic. This is an attitude that would have been very much at home in 17th century Puritan New England, but seems weirdly out of place in the cosmopolitan, globalist, multicultural 21st century.

For a more balanced overview of both Williamson and the Course, try this New York Times article.

Medium uncool

As you may have heard, famed Brazilian spiritual healer "John of God" (aka João Teixeira de Faria) has been arrested and faces charges of molesting and even raping numerous women who came to him for treatment.

The Washington Post reports:

Zahira Lieneke Mous, a Dutch dance choreographer, made the pilgrimage four years ago, seeking to heal sexual trauma she said she had suffered in the past.... She recounted in an interview with Brazil’s Globo TV last week how she waited in line twice to experience his healing. On the first visit, he scribbled a prescription for an herb she was told would help her. The second time, he offered a private consultation — a “spiritual cleansing.” Mous agreed. “You’re made to feel special somehow,” she told Globo TV.

She waited until everyone else in line had their turns, until finally she was alone, and “John of God” invited her into his office. And then into his bathroom.

That’s where Mous said he raped her — all while leading her to believe it was part of her healing.

She is among hundreds of women who have recently come forward with sexual abuse allegations ...

There are said to be as many as 300 women claiming abuse, although of course it's impossible to know how many of these claims are well-founded. Making things even worse for the medium, he initially missed a deadline to surrender to authorities and is believed to have withdrawn millions of dollars from several bank accounts, presumably in a bid to flee the country. He is now in police custody.

Although I've occasionally run across accounts of psychic/spiritual healing that seem legitimate — for instance, the George Chapman case — it's fair to say that this area attracts a huge number of charlatans preying on desperate people. And of course there is no reason why even a legitimate medium could not be guilty of gross personal misconduct; as far as I can tell, there is no correlation between psychic or mediumistic abilities and personal character, just as there is no correlation between musical or artistic talent and personal virtue. It is also possible that a legitimate medium could be corrupted over time by the adoration of his followers, gradually changing from a sincere spiritual seeker to an ego-driven cult leader.

In this case, I have no idea what the real story is — whether John of God has always been a fake, or whether he once had (and possibly still has) legitimate abilities but succumbed to the temptations of money, power, fame, and sex. Conceivably, the allegations are untrue or exaggerated; it appears that roughly a dozen women have filed complaints, so I'm not sure where the estimates of hundreds of victims are coming from.

Overall, though, I'd say it looks very bad for John of God and those who believed in him.

Ban social media

Years ago I contemplated writing a blog post called "Usenet is hell." For those who don't remember, Usenet was an early bulletin board system that allowed people to chat with each other in unmoderated forums. I guess it's still around, but I haven't heard anything about it in a long time. But I did use it, back in the day. 

Until I decided it was hell.

Here was my reasoning. The heavenly planes, we are told, are self-selecting. People of similar beliefs, similar temperaments, similar levels of spiritual and emotional development cluster together in spheres manifested out of the collective unconscious of the inhabitants. Each community is essentially friction-free. 

Earth, by contrast, is a far more challenging environment. Souls at all levels of development are thrust into a shared reality. Advanced spirits and primitive, barely evolved spirits coexist. Though we can choose our friends, we cannot choose our relatives, our neighbors, our coworkers, or the people we rub elbows with on the street. Conflict, oppression, violence, and cruelty are the predictable results of disparate people bumping up against each other. 

And then there was Usenet. Here was an environment that seemed appealing at first, but ultimately struck me as being as unheavenly as possible. Anyone with access to a computer could join in any conversation. People with widely differing worldviews, psychologies, and levels of maturity interacted directly. In theory, this was a great opportunity to bring people together and expand everyone's horizons. In practice, it was a recipe for malice, intolerance, and abuse, as people who normally would never meet suddenly came in contact and discovered how much they disliked each other.

The conflict was exacerbated by the unique properties of online communication. People could post anonymously, allowing them the freedom to viciously mock, insult, and defame their opponents. The social cues that mitigate conflict in personal encounters — facial expression, tone of voice, body language — were absent, making misunderstandings and escalation of conflict far more likely. And the loudest voices, the most obnoxious, hateful, and crazy ones, inevitably dominated any discussion. In a variant of Gresham's Law (bad money drives out good), the bad commenters drove out the better ones. 

A constant babble of angry and spiteful voices all putting each other down, spewing venom, spitting malice — it seemed a lot like hell to me, and I mean that literally. If heaven is a community of likeminded souls in a "consensus reality," then hell must be a community of angry souls in perpetual conflict, trapped in a reality that reflects their lowest drives and crudest impulses. 

Usenet is largely irrelevant now, having been supplanted by more popular forums: Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms categorized as "social media." These forums initially promised more control over your personal community of online friends. You can friend or unfriend, follow or block. But the discussions are still unmoderated, and the reality is that conflict is still ever-present. The inexorable compulsion to take potshots at anonymous semi-strangers from the safety of our computer keyboards overrides all safeguards. Facebook and Twitter started out as rather benign environments filled with cat videos and cameraphone pics of tonight's dinner. Today they are hotbeds of controversy and acrimony, as people rake each other over the coals for differences over politics, religion, sexuality, TV shows, comic books — you name it. 

And it's tearing out society apart.

This sounds like an overstatement. But I don't think it is. Since the rise of social media, our society has become more polarized than I can ever remember. Of course there will always be strong differences of opinion in a democracy, but I can't recall a time when the two sides actively hated each other with such reckless passion. It used to be the case — and by "used to be," I mean three or four years ago — that only the most marginal members of society talked about a new civil war. Now the idea has gone mainstream, with many sober commentators observing that the lack of mutual respect or even basic civility between left and right is reaching the boiling point.

Many factors no doubt have contributed to the rise of incivility in our national discourse, but social media may be the dominant one. It's not just a question of being constantly confronted with opinions contrary to your own, thrust at you and demanding your attention. It's the angry, personal tone of much of the messaging. You open your Facebook or Twitter feed, only to see yourself characterized as a moron, a monster, a terrible human being, a fascist, a racist, a communist, another Hitler, another Stalin, a loser who lives in his mom's basement, a paid tool of corporate or collectivist interests, a liar, a scumbag, a clown, an ignoramus, an illiterate, a redneck trailer-trash rube, a welfare-cheating leech, a garbage human being, a piece of shit. 

It's almost impossible not to respond in kind. We are not hardwired to turn the other cheek indefinitely. The fight-or-flight reaction kicks in. We either leave the forum or we start to hit back. And the more we hit back, the more "triggered" the other guy gets, and the more he lashes out at us. 

Multiply this encounter thousands of times over the course of the year for any given social media user, then multiply that result by the number of users in our society. Is it alarmist to suggest that it's having an impact? Or unduly negative to suggest that the impact is predominantly bad? 

I think we have become addicted to a technology that is demonstrably detrimental — detrimental to ourselves as thinking, caring persons, and detrimental to society as a community of shared values and mutual respect or, failing that, at least mutual restraint.

And I don't think the worries about Civil War 2.0 are necessarily overstated — or at least not much. We may not be on the verge of a new Fort Sumter incident, but it's entirely possible we are entering the territory of Bleeding Kansas, on a national scale. 

What to do? I'm doing my best to cut back on social media. I've deleted my Twitter account, but this was no real hardship, since I rarely used it. More difficult is restraining myself on Facebook. The goddamned site really is adductive — literally so. I believe that getting positive feedback ("likes") gives you a small jolt of pleasure, which then prompts you to seek more "likes." Eventually you're always thinking of pithy things to post that will earn you more of those all-important thumbs-up. As "likes" become more important to you, negative and hostile responses loom larger also. Your ego gets increasingly caught up in a meaningless, pointless  game of oneupmanship. You're like a gambling addict pumping quarters into a slot machine; you know you should stop, but not yet — you just need to pull the lever one more time ...

If quitting is hard, and participating is destructive to self and others, what is there to do? My modest proposal: ban social media.

Outlaw Twitter, Facebook, and similar forums. Dissolve their parent companies. Delete everyone's account. 

A drastic measure? Yes. Practical? In theory, sure, though I'm not holding my breath for our political class to take on multibillion-dollar compilations, especially since these platforms are so easily weaponized for use in political campaigns. 

Would such a ban be an unconstitutional infringement on free speech? Many people would say so. My view is that banning a platform is different from banning speech. People would still be free to vent in many other forums; they just wouldn't have the particular forums offered by social media companies. As an analogy, many communities have banned billboards because they regard signage as detrimental to the beauty of their neighborhoods. This is an inconvenience for advertisers who wish to use billboards as a promotional tool, but it's not a violation of their rights; they are still free to advertise in other ways. One platform has been outlawed, but others are available. The judgment has been made that the negatives posed by billboards (they're ugly, they obstruct views, they distract drivers, etc.) outweigh their positives. 

I've come to believe that the negatives of social media likewise outweigh the positives, and in a far more serious way. The incessant drumbeat of online conflict is ripping at the seams of our social fabric. Life without Facebook and Twitter might be marginally less convenient for some of us, but societal breakdown, open warfare, and blood in the streets would be an inconvenience of considerably greater magnitude. 

Do I think such a ban will actually happen? Not a chance. But it's the most straightforward way out of the digital hell we've unwittingly constructed for ourselves. And as our online anarchy continues to escalate, real-world chaos can't be far behind. 

The drunk at the bar

Not too long ago I wrote a post about how the Internet may be subtly changing our brain function and creating anxiety in the process. Recently, however, it occurred to me that there’s another, much more obvious factor at work in producing the edginess and unease that characterize modern society – an unease that makes little sense when you consider the unprecedented safety, affluence, and comfort that most people in developed nations enjoy.

When the Internet made its debut, it was hailed as a revolutionary communications technology that would allow us to get in touch with people from all parts of the world and to be exposed to all points of view, thus leading to greater international understanding. This was a wonderfully idealistic way of looking at things, and like so many idealistic dreams, it has foundered on the sharp rocks of reality. While undoubtedly the Internet has fostered some degree of global understanding, it has probably done more to introduce us to points of view that we would be better off not encountering. The egalitarian nature of the Internet, where anybody’s comment counts as much as anyone else’s, has led to a peculiar situation in which all too often we find ourselves hemmed in by idiocy.

Think of it as the “drunk in the bar” syndrome. Everyone is familiar with the movie trope of a drunken bar patron spouting off a bunch of nonsense while the guy on the barstool next to him listens uncomfortably. In real life, nobody takes the drunk at the bar seriously, for two reasons. First, since we are up close and personal with him, we can see that he is just an inebriated slosh whose slurred ramblings can be safely disregarded. Second, we encounter him in a social context, surrounded by other bar patrons who are presumably better grounded than the drunk and able to see him for what he is. Our own skepticism is thus reinforced by the healthy skepticism of those around us.

But on the Internet, everything is different. The crank, the loon, the angry drunk, the mentally disturbed loner is not always immediately identifiable as such. He can seem pretty rational. All we have to go on is his typewritten words and his avatar. We are seeing only what he wants us to see. We aren’t seeing the whole person. We aren’t reading body language. We aren’t hearing tone of voice. One set of typewritten words is very much like another. As long as the errors of grammar, spelling, punctuation are not too egregious, we are inclined to assume that whoever produced them is a basically reasonable person – by which we mean, of course, a person like us.

In addition, we read this Internet comments alone. Though there may be other participants in the online discussion, they are distant from us. We don’t have the advantage of a crowd of essentially rational bystanders who are able to instantly back up our own intuitive assessment. Each other person is at just as much of a loss as we are, and each one is dealing with the drunk at the bar in isolation.

None of this would matter if there weren’t so damn many drunks at the bar. One of the unsettling things about the Internet is that it has exposed just how many disturbed people there are. They were probably always out there, but in the pre-Internet age, we rarely noticed them. Most of them were never very social; their letters to the editor were probably not printed; their tirades against the TV news or the Illuminati probably went unheard. They existed apart from the rest of society, largely unknown, without a voice.

The Internet has given them their voice. That may be good for them, but it’s not so good for the rest of us.

It’s not so good, in part, because encounters with these people on a daily basis can become extremely trying. Dealing with craziness is hard. Just ask any psychiatrist. The rate of burnout in those parts of the medical profession that deal primarily with the mentally ill is extremely high. Not only is it frustrating, even exasperating, to try to handle crazy people, but it can also be mentally and emotionally destabilizing. The well-known “gaslighting” phenomenon comes to mind. If enough people try to convince you that your perceptions are wrong and your grasp of reality is shaky, you may start to believe them. Paradoxically, the crazy people can make you question your own sanity. Trained professionals at least have some idea of how to deal with this problem. The ordinary layman does not.

But there’s a larger reason why it’s not so good to give the drunk at the bar a megaphone. As more extreme and bizarre ideas flood our intellectual space, they tend to crowd out more sane and rational positions. In economics, there’s a rule called Gresham’s Law, which holds that bad money drives out good. On the Internet, it seems that bad ideas drive out the good ones, at least in many cases.

The exponents of crazy theories are not restricted by logic, facts, moderation, common sense, or consideration of other people’s feelings. They are not restricted by anything. This makes them annoying, but it can also make them effective. They simply shout down any objection, sweeping aside factual criticisms with wild inventions, and deflecting logical objections with personal attacks. Internet arguers are much like the people in Yeats’ famous poem “The Second Coming.” 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

The unrestrained, ruthless proponents of nutty ideas have a built-in advantage over anyone pleading for sanity. Sanity is boring. Sanity speaks with a quiet voice. Sanity is polite, self-effacing, willing to admit to self-doubt, open to criticism, and aware that its judgments may be wrong. In online debate, all of this comes across as weakness, while the ranting bluster of the drunk at the bar comes across – at least to many people – as strength. And so the crazy positions gain adherents, while the sane positions, humdrum and uninspiring as they are, slowly retreat.

The foregoing is not, of course, an original observation. It’s just something I probably should have included in my earlier discussion of Internet. The sheer power of this new technology to shape our culture and our national discussions is actually rather frightening and very poorly understood.

By the way, I don’t exempt myself entirely from the above criticism. I’m sure I’ve had my own “drunk at the bar” moments, both here and on social media. The very nature of posting opinions online seems to encourage shoot-from-the-hip punditry, which can often backfire. Blogs and social media mean that none of our thoughts, no matter how fleeting, need to go unexpressed. But many thoughts are probably better off unexpressed. And unfortunately, those with the self-restraint to stay quiet are probably the more reasonable and rational ones, while those who pop off at any opportunity are the more excitable and crazy ones. This is another way in which they dominate the conversation and seize more territory in our intellectual space.

I don’t see a way out of this situation. Barring some massive solar flare that wipes out electromagnetic communications for the next generation, the Internet is here to stay. And truly, I wouldn’t want to be without it. But there are times when I almost wish that it would go away.

Or at least that the drunk at the bar would finally shut up.

The Internet vs. the Zeitgeist

Many years ago I read an odd little book called The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain. It’s one of those desperately magisterial tomes like Julian Jaynes’ Origin of Consciousness — an overview by a nonspecialist attempting to assimilate a raft of information from disparate disciplines into a new overarching theory — and like Jaynes’ book, it’s worth reading even if most of its conclusions are probably wrong.

Shlain’s theory is that the advent of widespread literacy, especially in alphabetic languages, brings about changes in brain function, shifting the dominant hemisphere from right to left. He believed that the right hemisphere is associated with “female”traits while the left is associated with “male” traits; thus, the switch from one hemisphere to the other precipitated societal changes that worked to the disadvantage of women. In the original period of alphabetic literacy, the old goddess religion, matriarchal and pacific, was suppressed and replaced by new god-centered, patriarchal, militaristic faiths. In the much later period after the invention of the printing press, when literacy was rapidly extended to much of the population instead of being limited to an elite, there were further reactions against women, including the witch-burning manias that flared up unpredictably around Europe. Finally, Slain speculates that the rise of movies, television, and the Internet — all of which place more of an emphasis on visual information — will cause a shift back toward equality of the sexes and a more peaceful world.

I am skeptical of the gender assignments given to the two sides of the brain, and even more skeptical when Shlain extends his thesis to the cells of the eye, distinguishing between “male” cones and “female” rods. I am also skeptical that the goddess religion, as he describes it, even existed; while fertility statuettes with exaggerated female features turn up in many prehistoric sites, it’s a bit of a stretch to infer a matriarchal society, much less a time of Edenic peace. We don’t even know if these female figures were goddesses or simply charms, perhaps used to ensure a favorable pregnancy.

Though Shlain’s thesis is far from proven, one aspect of it has stuck with me – the idea that changes in communication technology can rewire the brain, with destabilizing societal effects.

Which brings us to what’s going on today.

Throughout much of the developed world, and certainly in the United States, we see intensifying polarization between increasingly extremist and uncompromising ends of the political spectrum. On a daily basis we’re treated to public displays of hysteria – wild outrage expressed by both left and right, though for different reasons. No area of life is off-limits. Escapist movies about comic-book superheroes give rise to charges of racism and sexism. Twitter and Facebook have become ideological battlegrounds. Restaurants offering ethnic foods are flashpoints for controversies about “cultural appropriation” (as if all culture is not appropriated from somewhere). Sports shows and teams are boycotted for political reasons. Everything is a hot button issue.

Many explanations for this new intensity in our political life have been advanced. It is said that the middle class is being “squeezed”; yet statistics indicate that while both middle-class and lower-income shares of the population have shrunk over the past 35 years, the percentages of Americans defined as upper-middle class and rich have grown – suggesting the middle class is contracting mainly because some of its members are migrating to a higher tax bracket.



Source: Urban Institute study

Or it’s said that middle-class affluence simply has less to offer us than it once did. But this seems to be a case of looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. Recently, in doing research for a time travel novella that takes place in 1972, I was intrigued to discover how much lower the standard of living was for middle-class people in that era. Houses, for example, were significantly smaller and had fewer amenities, while many ubiquitous modern-day items would have been considered science-fiction. A computer you carry in your pocket, which connects you to databases throughout the world and incidentally serves as a videophone? Household robots that vacuum or mop your floor? Wall-size flatscreen TVs with hundreds of channels, many commercial free and uncensored, in high definition? Self-driving cars, prosthetic limbs almost indistinguishable from the real things, medical treatments using genetic engineering to target specific cells, an orbiting telescope that sees to the ends of the universe …?

No matter how you look at it, our opportunities for leisure, recreation, and discovery are greater than ever. And the average middle-class American today lives like a sci-fi character in a '70s TV show  

It is also claimed that people are frustrated by unchanging social problems such as race and gender discrimination; but again, this claim doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. There is far less discrimination in the developed world today than in any previous generation. As an example, a newspaper article I came across from 1972 reported casually that the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks had just voted to reaffirm their policy of not admitting blacks as members, a policy that was only rescinded in 1976 under intense legal pressure. The same newspaper regularly published the names of divorced couples in what I took to be a sign of the social stigma attached to divorce. (Mary Tyler Moore's groundbreaking sitcom of that era was originally intended to depict her as a divorcée,  but the network balked at anything so controversial.) Interracial relationships were illegal in many states and virtually unheard of anywhere. Gays had to remain closeted or face ostracism and abuse, including physical attacks. And on and on. No matter how you look at it, society has grown much more open and tolerant. A black president, a serious female presidential candidate, gay marriage – all would have been completely unrealistic 40 years ago.

Crime is down, too. Way down. Parts of New York City that were virtual no-go zones four decades ago are thriving now. Remember the scene in 1973's Live and Let Die when James Bond nearly gets killed in Harlem? That's right - in 1973, Harlem was too dangerous for James Bond. 

And let’s not forget that in 1972 draftees were being sent to fight and die in Vietnam. The casualties that the US accepted in that unpopular war were far higher than US losses in any recent conflict (58,209 American deaths in Vietnam vs. 4,497 in Iraq and 2,356 in Afghanistan), yet the war dragged on for years, and those who opposed it were labeled traitors.

America of forty years ago often seemed to be spiraling into chaos, with assassinations, urban riots, war, Watergate, the energy crisis, sky-high homicide rates, skyjackings, rampant prejudice and closed-mindedness, cult movements, apocalyptic predictions of the End Times, and TV fodder consisting almost exclusively of mind-numbing pap ("the glass teat," Harlan Ellison called it) ... and if we think our present conditions are worse, we are only fooling ourselves. 

But if the external circumstances – the economic, social, political, and cultural climate – have not worsened, and have in fact improved by any objective standard, then why are people becoming so upset about everything, to the point where it can reasonably be argued that we’re experiencing a “cold Civil War”?

People often point to cable TV and the Internet, both of which feed news consumers a steady diet of inflammatory stories while encouraging people to confine themselves to channels or websites that reflect their own biases; as a result, people become trapped in an echo chamber or bubble that reinforces and amplifies their opinions. This is clearly true. But I’m not sure it’s the whole truth, and this leads us back to Leonard Shlain and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.

It’s at least arguable that the advent of the Internet poses as big a social and psychological challenge as the advent of literacy did for previous societies. I’m not sure anyone yet understands how the brain is affected and changed by the constant processing of online information – not only when one is sitting at a computer, but when one is using a smartphone or any web-connected device. It may not be too far-fetched to think that literacy altered brain function by making the left brain more dominant. Is it possible that the Internet is altering brain function in some new way?

What if the intuitive process of clicking on links and following one link to the next while chasing down snippets of information tends to activate the intuitive faculties of the brain, popularly supposed to reside in the right hemisphere? Perhaps this very process, endlessly and obsessively repeated, has the effect of deemphasizing or inhibiting those qualities associated with the left hemisphere — notably logical reasoning, goal-setting, and objectivity. There is a widely publicized claim that Internet usage correlates with a decline in attention span; though this study may be junk science, it’s hard to deny that the rapidity and convenience of the Internet can make it intolerably frustrating to plow through the pages of a book in search of information. There may be other, more subtle changes in neurological/psychological functioning that are not yet understood or even recognized. Could the surge in diagnoses of attention deficit disorder, autism, and Asperger’s syndrome be related to widespread neurological reprogramming?

Let’s suppose so. Even if most of us aren’t affected that profoundly, we may still feel as if things are somehow getting out of control. The changes in our mental processing may bring on the same kind of anxiety, confusion, mania, and hysteria (think of the witch burnings) that Shlain sees as the historical result of rapid advances in literacy.

In other words, it’s just possible that we are undergoing a massive transition from one mode of consciousness (developed as a result of general alphabetic literacy) to a new mode of consciousness (currently developing in response to the new technology of the Internet). And because we experience this change as something alien, we look for a cause outside ourselves, even though actually it is the inner workings of our mental mechanism that are directly responsible. Feeling confused and lost, we latch on to any convenient bogeyman to explain our chronic insecurity. We don’t hunt witches, but we do harass anyone who thinks differently than we do. Alt-right types mock and insult their critics and spread vicious memes. “Social justice warriors” define anyone who disagrees with them as racist, misogynistic, fascist, etc. The problem is always Someone Else.

By getting wired up to an endless supply of digital information, we may be rewiring our own brains – and experiencing all the unintended side effects that go along with a neurological remodeling job. The trickle of information from books and magazines that we perused in our spare time has become a spurting garden hose of facts, opinions, memes, urban legends, “fake news,” lies, distortions, slanders, and insults, illustrated with vivid images and sounds, 24 hours a day. And our beleaguered brains are melting under the strain.

Again, this is only a speculative hypothesis. It may be all wrong. It’s almost certainly at least partly wrong. But it just might be partly right. It could help to make sense of the rapid and baffling descent into hyper-partisanship, political polarization, and escalating demands for safe spaces and trigger warnings (on the left) and border walls and authoritarian crackdowns (on the right). In an era of relative peace and prosperity, when the West faces no true existential threat remotely comparable to the Axis powers of World War II or the USSR of the Cold War, it is truly strange that we find ourselves coming apart at the seams. We live in what should be seen as a Golden Age, yet we’re obsessed with apocalyptic visions and paranoid fantasies.

Instead of scanning the cultural and political trends of the modern world to understand our anxieties, perhaps we need only direct our attention to the softly glowing screen in front of our face.

Eating crow

Okay ... so.

Looks like I might've been just a tad wrong in my last post. 

Let us count the ways, shall we?

(Oh, and I know I said the last one would be my final post on Trump, but that's because I thought he would lose. This one really will be my last political piece for a while. Pinkie swear.) 

I wrote: 

The election, of course, is not yet over – and yet it is. At least at the presidential level, the outcome is already known. Indeed, one bookmaking outfit is already paying out to its clients who bet on Hillary Clinton. There’s no reason to think the firm will regret its decision.

Yeah, well, best-laid plans, mice and men, yada yada. 

In coming months, there will be endless debate about whether or not Donald Trump, under other circumstances or following a different strategy, could have won this election. For me, the answer is simple: the Donald Trump we know, the Trump who exists in our universe, could not have won. He simply lacks the right stuff. [etc.]

Swing and a miss! 

This election was the Republican Party’s to lose – and lose it they did.

Or ... not. With a Republican President, House, and (almost certainly) Senate, as well as gains in governorships (the GOP now holds 33 of them), the Republican Party is as well positioned as it could possibly hope to be. At least for the time being, it has won back the fabled Reagan Democrats and recast itself as a populist party that is not the vassal of Wall Street arbitrageurs (even if its standard-bearer is an obnoxious Manhattan plutocrat). 

Most likely, a President Trump would not prove to be a dictator, if only because being a dictator requires a mental focus, determination, and courage that Trump doesn’t possess. ... Had he been elected, he probably would have spent most of his time goofing off on the golf course or on social media, while his vice president, chief of staff, and cabinet members did the heavy lifting.

At this point I have no idea what kind of president Trump will prove to be. His victory speech was surprisingly low-key and gracious, even if it did feature the usual unrealistic promises. 

... it could be argued that electing Hillary Clinton actually pushes us a tad closer to banana-republic status by cementing the idea that the rich, powerful, and politically connected are above the law.

This I still believe. In fact, throughout Election Day, as I pondered the looming reality (so I thought) of a Hillary victory, I found myself increasingly depressed and angry. The idea that this kleptocratic serial liar would be rewarded with the presidency after a lifetime of cheating justice and failing upward was infuriating and deeply discouraging to me. A four-year slog through a Hillary administration seemed like an almost unbearable prospect. Honestly, if I had voted on Election Day, I might have pulled the lever for Trump just out of sheer despair at the alternative — even though I still think Trump is dangerously unqualified and temperamentally unfit for the job. 

In such a discouraging political environment, it’s easy to give up hope. Some academics argue that, having crossed our own Rubicon, we’ve effected the transition from a republican system of government to an “elective monarchy” not too dissimilar from that of Imperial Rome ...

Not necessarily wrong, but last night the people reminded us that they are still in charge, and that the "elective" part is at least as significant as the "monarchy" part.

In this country there’s still enough innate suspicion of government to prevent a Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini from gaining power, and, for most Americans, life is still comfortable enough to make manning the barricades an unviable proposition.

I think this is true, and I sincerely hope it won't be put to the test. In fact, I hold out a smidgen of hope that Trump and the Republican Congress will rein in the imperial presidency at least a little. (Okay, okay ... it's unlikely. I said it was a smidgen.)  

Another unattractive feature of today’s politics is the assumption that one’s opponents have been hypnotized, duped, and brainwashed – assuming, of course, that they are not actually evil. The possibility of honest, intelligent disagreement is rarely broached.

I've been guilty of this as well — sometimes tarring Trump supporters in general with the brush of the alt-right white supremacist crowd, who represent only a small (I hope) subset of his voters. Most of the people who voted for Trump did so because they want a new direction, because they feel that the smug, self-satisfied elites are out of touch and out of control, and because they had no confidence in either the competence or the integrity of Hillary Clinton. These are valid reasons to support a candidate.

The truth is, the media and the #NeverTrump crowd (including me) made little effort to understand where Trump's support was coming from, outside of the spittle-flecked Pepe-the-Frog social-media trolls who were noisy and hateful, but probably not especially numerous. The more mainstream dimension of Trump's support largely eluded us, leaving us unprepared for his upset win. 

So there you have it. That's my mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Having been wrong in my forecasts of the last three presidential elections, I now confess I am hopelessly out of touch with the American zeitgeist. Just when I think I've got it figured out, everything changes. Sort of like life. 

For people (like me) who are still worried by the potential (large) downside of a Trump presidency, I'll add that, if nothing else, last night's outcome teaches us that our powers of prognostication are limited, and wildly unexpected things can happen. This can be a calming and even liberating thought. It reminds us that, even in our personal lives, the trajectory we believe we're on can be altered at any moment, sometimes for the better. You think you're destined to be alone for the rest of your life ... and then your eyes meet hers across a restaurant. You think you'll be poor forever ... and then your latest crazy idea takes off and makes you a million bucks. You think you have nothing to look forward to ... and then suddenly you do.

If Trump's surreal victory proves anything — if the consensus-defying election of an abrasive, septuagenarian reality TV star who's never held political office carries any larger message —it's that anything is possible. And if we ever think we have all the answers, reality shows up to give us a swift kick in the ass. 

Ouch! 

The last Trump

Lately, as you may have noticed, I haven’t published very many new posts on this blog. The reason is that I’ve been preoccupied with politics, and I’ve found it’s exceedingly difficult to focus on spiritual matters when immersed (emotionally, at least) in the clash and grind of a presidential campaign. With this post, I hope to close the book on this election so I can get back to our usual subject matter.

The election, of course, is not yet over – and yet it is. At least at the presidential level, the outcome is already known. Indeed, one bookmaking outfit is already paying out to its clients who bet on Hillary Clinton. There’s no reason to think the firm will regret its decision.

In coming months, there will be endless debate about whether or not Donald Trump, under other circumstances or following a different strategy, could have won this election. For me, the answer is simple: the Donald Trump we know, the Trump who exists in our universe, could not have won. He simply lacks the right stuff. Nobody handicapped by Trump’s liabilities could realistically have attained the White House. He is a man with zero knowledge of public policy, a man who quite possibly cannot explain how a bill becomes a law or name the three branches of government. Worse, he has no interest in learning anything new, because he believes he’s already a universal expert. Knowing nothing about military matters, he boasts that he knows more than the generals. Knowing nothing about international trade deals, he boasts that he can make the best deals. Knowing nothing about campaign strategy, he ignores his advisers and pursues a hopelessly self-defeating course.

A candidate who won’t prepare for debates, who spends his nights tweeting insults to celebrity journalists, who limits his media appearances to a few friendly venues on Fox News and talk radio, who insults and ridicules constituencies he needs to win over, who foments pointless and destructive intraparty feuds, and who behaves like an emotionally unstable six-year-old ... is simply not going to win. There’s a story that when Donald was a small boy, he became so unhappy at a friend’s birthday party, presumably because the attention was on his friend and not on himself, that he picked up the birthday cake and threw it on the floor. Trump has said his temperament has not changed since he was in kindergarten. This appears to be true. He is still the angry little kid who throws the cake on the floor.

Still, it’s possible to argue that some version of Trump could have won this election – a Trump 2.0, a Trump from a parallel universe, a Trump who could master his worst tendencies, learn a modicum of self-discipline, memorize a smattering of salient facts, and organize a serious campaign with a competent get-out-the-vote effort. A Trump, in other words, who could pivot and act presidential, as the Trump of the primaries promised to do – which is just one of many promises that have not been fulfilled. A better Trump, a more adult, less volatile, less thin-skinned, more serious Trump who actually heeded his advisers and did the things that serious candidates do, might very well have won against the scandal-ridden, socially maladroit, and personally unlikable Hillary Clinton, who represents a continuation of eight years of policies that are widely felt to have been disappointing. This election was the Republican Party’s to lose – and lose it they did.

In an earlier post I pondered the question of whether Trump is a fascist. I concluded that he is probably not a true fascist but more of a right-wing populist with proto-fascist tendencies. To me, this still seems like an accurate assessment of Trump as he came across in the primaries; but in the general election his message became so muddled and his behavior so bizarre that I’m not sure what assessment to make of him today. Most likely, a President Trump would not prove to be a dictator, if only because being a dictator requires a mental focus, determination, and courage that Trump doesn’t possess. He’s a flighty, narcissistic popinjay mainly concerned with protecting his own image and preserving his persnickety vanity. Had he been elected, he probably would have spent most of his time goofing off on the golf course or on social media, while his vice president, chief of staff, and cabinet members did the heavy lifting.

So I don’t think we’ve dodged the bullet of fascism, as some people say. On the contrary, it could be argued that electing Hillary Clinton actually pushes us a tad closer to banana-republic status by cementing the idea that the rich, powerful, and politically connected are above the law. It’s palpably obvious that Hillary and her friends in high office saw to it that the FBI “investigation” into Hillary’s server scandal was fatally hobbled. This is hardly a surprise, but it is a disappointment and a worrying harbinger of the next four (or eight) years. We can expect Madam President to use the machineries of the IRS, the Justice Department, the EPA, and other bureaucratic organs to harass and stifle her political enemies when possible. This is, after all, the same Hillary who, as First Lady, tried to put the career civil servants of the White House Travel Office in prison simply so she could replace them with her Arkansas cronies.

In such a discouraging political environment, it’s easy to give up hope. Some academics argue that, having crossed our own Rubicon, we’ve effected the transition from a republican system of government to an “elective monarchy” not too dissimilar from that of Imperial Rome (though with the key difference that Rome never worked out a rational method for the transfer of power). Even if this perspective is valid, it doesn’t mean the United States is finished. Rome survived for hundreds of years after the republic died, achieving its greatest power, wealth, and influence in its imperial phase.

Besides, it may not be valid. The similarities between the United States and ancient Rome are arguably more superficial than real. And history doesn’t have to repeat itself.

What can we do to improve our prospects? For starters, we can eschew overheated rhetoric and irresponsible fear-mongering. Although it’s become de rigueur for each side to foresee an apocalypse if its candidate loses, the partisanship this time has been more feverish than usual. The hard left predicts a Fourth Reich if Trump wins, while the hard right predicts civil insurrection, even civil war. It’s time to remember Kipling’s advice to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” The American system of government and the American people have both proven exceptionally stable, a fact that has consistently frustrated radicals and revolutionaries of all stripes. In this country there’s still enough innate suspicion of government to prevent a Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini from gaining power, and, for most Americans, life is still comfortable enough to make manning the barricades an unviable proposition.

Another unattractive feature of today’s politics is the assumption that one’s opponents have been hypnotized, duped, and brainwashed – assuming, of course, that they are not actually evil. The possibility of honest, intelligent disagreement is rarely broached. And yet trade-offs are an essential part of democracy, and sensible compromise is the key to good governance. There’s nothing disreputable or traitorous about seeking common ground; the effort to find and uphold shared values has been the cornerstone of American politics throughout our history. Our best hope for the future is to reach out to those with whom we disagree, to respect each other’s differences, and, in the famous words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address, to “bind up the nation's wounds” while showing “malice toward none [and] charity for all.”

If we want a better country, we can begin by being better people. Let’s wash the stain of this election season off our hands and get to work.