I wonder what the conspiracy-folks think of this November issue of The Atlantic. The one with a cover story of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, who’s father served in the pacific during WWII. Milley had to try to rein in President Donald Trump. “The Donald” was clueless.
Flip open the cover: The four stories listed on the first page start with the army one where the president has the nuclear launch codes, The Patriot. Then one about a functional newspaper having, unlike social media, journalistic ethics We Are Not at War, We Are at Work. The “war” part was what Trump claimed about the regular media being against him. Next is Her? About Vice President Kamala Harris, including evidence of her being disparaged by Trump supporters. Last is What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate. That one, for Trump loyalists, might be the most damaging of all.
I guess conspiracy types would say The Atlantic deliberately ran an “anti-Trump issue.” Not so, it’s simply that the former president continues to suck up the air in the American room. The ex is still relevant. I ask: “What if there is a conspiracy among Washington politicians to pretend there is a conspiracy or two?” Or three. I can say this because Romney reports seeing his fellow senators being very respectful when Trump enters the room, and then everyone laughing at Trump after he leaves. These guys are not straight shooters.
Being a senior citizen, I can dimly remember when a politician named George Wallace tried to be fair. Then he lost an election to a fellow who was more racist than he was. Lost! Wallace fumed and vowed that he would never be out-racist-ed again. Later he was elected as an avowedly racist state governor, still later he was shown on the national news standing in front of a Southern University gate to bar it “forever” to Black Americans. Of course he was then re-elected. …But the public changed… And Wallace himself changed to be a non-racist, ascribing his change to God. I am sure God had a hand in it, and I also believe the voting demographic had changed.
Here’s a quote from the Washington Post about Wallace in 1982, when middle aged men had long hair and new attitudes: “In 1982 he ran for governor a fourth time. In a watershed moment, he admitted he had been wrong about “race” all along. He was elected by a coalition represented by Blacks, organized labor and forces seeking to advance education.”
I see history repeating on page 75 of the Romney story, by McKay Coppens, when a man who had written a popular leftist book “…decided he wanted to run for the Senate, and reinvented his entire persona overnight. Suddenly, he was railing against the “childless left” and denouncing Indigenous People’s Day as a “fake holiday” and accusing Joe Biden of manufacturing the opioid crises “to punish people who didn’t vote for him.” The speed of the MAGA makeover was jarring.
I won’t be in an unseemly rush to scapegoat politicians, no, because I think America’s senators will change as fast as the American people change to create their future. In my lifetime: I expect “The People” to be able to define “populism;” to stop saying of social media, “It must be true or they wouldn’t have forwarded it;” to understand that computer algorithms don’t reward kindness and democratic goodwill, only outrage. There are already signs of this, needless to say, now it only remains for the word to spread. I regret to opine such news will spread last to folks who wear red MAGA hats. (Make America Great Again)
Since this is my own blog, one is entitled to ask: Have I a crazy pet peeve, or a pet answer? Why, yes! I wish the public would do like my grandparents and parents and righteously refuse to pay attention to anything maliciously dug up on the web that is older than the Statute of Limitations. Imagine what that would do to the “cancel-conspiracies” of the left and right.
For example, all the actors on Guardians of the Galaxy stuck up for writer-director James Gunn when a bad tweet was “discovered” that was more than seven years old. Of course the actors judged Gunn by the past several years they had known him. It took a while, but at last they got the producers who fired Gunn to reinstate him. Speaking of galactic sci-fi, if I take my time machine to 1982 then I can shake the hand of George Wallace, as he cooperates with Blacks, because I would ignore anything older than seven years. I could say, “God bless you sir.”
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Sean Crawford
On God’s own continent
November 2023
Blog note: For the third time in three weeks, the Iliad!
The Atlantic includes a four page story regarding the accuracy of Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s epic tale.
I remember when a local used bookstore, FairsFair, had several old translations, all of which were poetry, not prose. One was by Alexander Pope. It was T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) who first translated Homer into prose.
Reminder, after viewing Troy: As a big white button at a sci-fi and fantasy convention reads, Never Judge A Book by its Movie.
