What we're talking about when we talk about Trump

He's a liar. He lies to get his way. He lies to get stuff. He lies to make himself look good. He lies for the sheer hell of it.

Which makes a story like this about how Trump "sows distrust" while saying things "with no evidence" a bit aggravating. It's circling the thing without saying the thing. And I'm tired of White House quotes like this.

“The American people know they never have to wonder what the president is thinking or how he feels about a particular topic, which is one of the many reasons why they chose to elect him over the same old recycled politicians who just use the poll-tested talking points,’’ Mr. Deere said.

Which is, of course, bullshit. The question isn't whether we know how Donald Trump feels. He won't ever let us get away with not knowing. The question is whether there is truth to what he says. And there isn't.

What if it is too late to save America?

Farhad Manjoo admits he's feeling jumpy: "To me, the signs on the American horizon are flashing blood red. Armed political skirmishes are erupting on the streets, and scholars are tracking a rise in violence and instability as the election draws near. Gun sales keep shattering records. Mercifully, I suppose, there’s a nationwide shortage of ammo. Then there is the pandemic, mass unemployment, natural disasters on every coast, intense racial and partisan polarization, and not a little bit of lockdown-induced collective stir craziness."

I admit to finding this way of thinking persuasive. Democracy depends on agreement that it's ok for the other party to win elections, even if we want our party to win. I'm pretty sure that agreement is no longer operable in the United States, and I don't quite know how to get it back. That's the short version of my argument.

And it pains me, greatly, to think about. I'm terrified of living out the last third or so of my life in an unstable, poor country. (Especially one that possesses an endless supply of nuclear weapons -- it is terrifying to think how instability in the United States could quite literally bring about the end of the world.) Even worse, I feel miserable when I think about my son having to navigate such a world, if it survives.

Manjoo's column this morning reminded me of Jonathan Franzen's New Yorker piece, almost exactly a year ago, in which he contemplated the likelihood of a "climate apocalypse." It made a lot of people angry, but his case then -- that we're far down the road, and there is insufficient political will to do what is necessary to fix the problem -- seems to have grown in strength now that we see how much of a mess America has made of the pandemic.

But I didn't think the piece was totally hopeless. Here's what he said toward the end of the piece:

It’s fine to struggle against the constraints of human nature, hoping to mitigate the worst of what’s to come, but it’s just as important to fight smaller, more local battles that you have some realistic hope of winning. Keep doing the right thing for the planet, yes, but also keep trying to save what you love specifically—a community, an institution, a wild place, a species that’s in trouble—and take heart in your small successes. Any good thing you do now is arguably a hedge against the hotter future, but the really meaningful thing is that it’s good today. As long as you have something to love, you have something to hope for.

This makes sense to me. Franzen was talking about climate change, but I wonder if it might not be best to take this approach to everything. I may not be able to save America. I may not be able to save Kansas, or Lawrence, but maybe I can do some things to make my corner of this community a little better. It may be all I can do, in fact. And if enough people do it in enough places, maybe we can make enough of our places better that this thing we call America won't slide into total failure.

That's not much hope. But it's the best I can do.

“Just because I have a car doesn’t mean I have enough money to buy food.”

NYT: “I want people to understand, the face of the needy is different now,” said Ms. Cazimero, who has joined a new class of Americans who never imagined they would have to take a spot in a modern-day bread line. “Just because I have a car doesn’t mean I have enough money to buy food.”

I don't have much to say about this, except the need for a more robust safety net seems both obvious and unreachable for America, and it's aggravating. And I'm old enough to remember stories like this.

One in eight Americans receives food stamps One in four American children now depends on food stamps. Among all Americans, one in eight is receiving food stamps, and as unemployment drops middle-class people into poverty, 20,000 additional people are signing up each day.

That's from 2009. Seems we should have learned a lesson during the Great Recession that we didn't.

The president wants to cut funding to "anarchist" cities

NYPost: President Trump is ordering the federal government to begin the process of defunding New York City and three other cities where officials allowed “lawless” protests and cut police budgets amid rising violent crime, The Post can exclusively reveal. “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump says in the memo, which twice mentions New York Mayor Bill de Blasio by name.

Of course, depriving these cities of federal funds will almost certainly exacerbate whatever problems they currently have -- but it seems pretty obvious that Trump isn't interested in solving problems as he is in posturing before his base and punishing his perceived enemies. This is an old observation, but: This is a president who has little interest in governing the entire United States for the entire United States. And we see this isn't just a rhetorical ploy on his part -- he wants to deliver real pain to the places that don't vote for him. (And if that pain suppresses voter turnout in November, I'm sure that's just a coincidence.)

"Criminals only understand strength!" Trump tweeted on Wednesday. I guess he'd know.

We can use our laws to detain alleged terrorists. They can't use our laws to get undetained.

NYT:

A federal appeals court panel has ruled for the first time that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are not entitled to due process, adopting a George W. Bush-era view of detainee rights that could affect the eventual trial of the men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The Due Process Clause may not be invoked by alien without property or presence in the sovereign territory of the United States,” Judge Rao wrote, a position also taken by Judge A. Raymond Randolph.

The reach of American courts extends throughout the world. The reach of America's rights before a court does not. 

A thought about my simmering rage

 So:

* I extracted myself from social media so that I could stop immersing myself in -- and contributing to -- a culture of Very Online Constant Rage.

* But: There are actually things to be angry about. Leaving Twitter doesn't change that.

* So I am trying to figure out the sweet spot of writing about, and bearing witness to, the injustices of the age while at the same time not exploiting it, unnecessarily or unreasonably exacerbating it, or losing my own soul to constant anger.

I would take some advice on that. 

"Most days it felt like attaching my mouth to an exhaust pipe and then inhaling"

Yeah:

He diagnosed me right away. “Well, so this is a delicate topic, and it's often been difficult to talk about, but there's some kinds of people who particularly get Twitter addictions and they're often journalists—”

I laughed sadly. “And people who are addicted to Twitter are like all addicts—on the one hand miserable, and on the other hand very defensive about it and unwilling to blame Twitter.” (Shortly after this conversation, I quit Twitter for about three weeks. It was soothing. Actually, it was life-changing. As of this writing, for reasons I don't understand—but also do, all too well, because of Lanier—I'm back on the platform. Please kill me.)