So...

 ...I am honestly trying to figure out what value I can create at this blog, rather than give an opinion that other people also have expressed.

Performative patriotism

A follow-up thought on the controversy over whether Donald Trump disrespected troops: It is clear that some people genuinely love their country and admire military service as a result. But it is also obvious that a lot of people are more interested in using patriotism (and a related respect for the military) as a means to their own empowerment. 

Trump's also likes feeling like a tough guy: That's why he loves military parades and pardoning war criminals. But the key thing to note about him is that he is almost entirely transactional. From that Atlantic piece:

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.”

We should view Trump's displays of militiaphilia in the same terms we do his relationship with evangelicals: He'd probably toss them under the bus in a second if doing so were to his advantage. Patriotism isn't always the refugee of the scoundrel -- sometimes it's the cudgel used by power-hungry grifters.

About that Trump disrespecting military service and John McCain story...

This is very simple. Somebody needs to ask John Kelly, on the record, if it happened or not. Or Kelly can step forward to deny it of his own volition. If he does so, we move on and The Atlantic loses its credibility. But I feel confident the reporting will hold up -- it's certainly in keeping with what Trump has said and done publicly and on the record.

That said, I can't help but feel somebody like Tucker Carlson is watching and taking notes for 2024. You can get away with mishandling the pandemic, racist policies, undermining America's democratic norms and generally being unpleasant and bad for the country -- and that might be Carlson's agenda, too. But he'll be too smart to ever badmouth the military. Trumpism with a little bit of self-restraint and self-discipline will be a terrible and terrifying thing for the country. The original is bad enough.

I don't think THE GODFATHER PART III is so terrible

Vulture says G3 is getting a rerelease in theaters: " In honor of the film’s 30th anniversary, this edit of The Godfather Part III will feature some exciting new punctuation and will be called Mario Puzo’s THE GODFATHER, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone, according to a press release from Paramount Pictures."

I love the Godfather pictures -- I'm a middle-aged white guy, and I've only recently come to realize how much that makes me a cliche -- and my dirty secret is I don't think Part III is actually that bad.

Don't get me wrong: Pacino is way over the top in this movie. I would love to know how the silent Michael Corleone of the 1950s became the shouty guy of the late 1970s, but I suspect that's more a Pacino thing than a story thing.

That said, it has all the elements of a potentially great Part III:

* A young up-and-comer who wants to carry on the family legacy, even though...

* The king, who turned to a life of crime to protect his family, wants to get out of crime...

* ...and ends up sacrificing his family, the people he loves, because of the choices he made throughout his life.

It's a tragedy, man. And the end -- Corleone's death, set to Cavlleria Rusticana -- is wonderful. No assassination. Just death, coming for the king as it comes for us all:

It's beautiful. And imperfect. The new edit probably can't salvage Pacino's performance -- but maybe it can find the better movie I know is lurking within.

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.