Where Have You Gone Al Smith?

Politics in America has become a quagmire? I ask . . . we like to interrogate the truths of our world rather than assert them declaratively. I prefer “we” when I requires more courage or confidence than I can muster at the time. Washington is a swamp, we have liked saying; we have repeated this how often lately. I do not agree with Trump on anything else he says, thinks he means, means when he says otherwise than what we hear . . . I cannot imagine an intelligent person thinking he is not as narrow minded as he  appears, is not quite as foolish, or lacking in intelligence, as we seem to lack.

I detest the Donald, as he was called by us, we New Yorkers back in the 80s. New York City media then held an affection for the marketability of his image, for better or for ill or for whatever it was that sold airtime, newspapers—he remained a buffoon more than icon.  I do hate our colloquial thus our media’s use of the word ‘icon,’ just as it sometimes bothers me to hear the colloquial or any medium’s use of Mecca: a Mecca of hockey, a Mecca of entertainment? One of our social Icons? A Hollywood icon? What means anything when we talk like this any qualified Rhetorician might ask?

More questions asked to beget yet other questions: What then means Oratory to anyone raised without a respect for language, her language, his, mine, ours, this American tongue, English . . . at least with how far we have fallen in our esteem for the power and purpose of language, allowing for a degraded literacy to take root in our pedagogy, in our performative value. And this is not pressure for English only; I applaud a multi-lingual society as I applaud the world lingua franca, English. I was talking about native speakers who have allowed themselves, through systematic under-education and the supplanting of alphabetism in place of literacy, to debase their facilities with the spoken word, but most assuredly with the written one. When was the last time you listened to King? No, really, when? When have you ever read his speeches, or the essays of Madison, or the letters between Madison and Jefferson, or the speeches of Lincoln? This is just to name a very select few in the matters of rhetoric in the field of Politics.

I have said this before and I will say it again, in these and in other words, always words themselves around a topic, an idea, an observation concerning our political plight? our political quagmire? our political problems? our political night? We do spin our wheels, pin wheels in the wind passing for what we do when we say we think.

A dark night of the American soul has descended; and do not be mistaken and try to side-step that Trump is taking heed the words of the Alternative Right–as alternative as Kentucky Fired Chicken is no longer fried. Keep saying KFC long enough and it is no longer fried chicken, right?  The American People will suffer; but certainly not the new Public for which they stand for the State, as Publics have always been the People in service of the State. And too many of you who have opted to be a state serving Public, and Obama had his Public as Hilary would have had her Public, as Regan had his and Bill Clinton his, et cetera, et cetera. They will stand with Baron Trump, behind Baron Trump . . . and they will stand at the beck and call of this Baron Von Trump.

Our opening of the Trump era–no! I do not imagine that 4 years constitute an era; I also cannot fathom that this Von Trumpeter of his own manias can do anything especially heinous unless the Democrats allow him; however, most of our Democrats are Republicans from the 70s, as you have heard me say since Bill Clinton–yes, for decades now I have been calling out the Democrats for being Republicans; as had Bernie Sanders, and you saw what that got him: vilification and mockery. Sanders, the Socialist? Only the American media can get away with saying something so false and stupid. I faced an Ashkenazi acquaintance here in Brooklyn New York, an educated man, a former pharmacist, not a stupid person, and that was individually judged through conversations and not by accepting a mistaken face-value for his profession–yes, he looked me in the eye laughing when he mentioned Sanders name and called him an idiot and that Sanders was speaking Socialism. He did say that. Idiot; socialist. So anyone who supports traditional Democrat values integral to maintaining a safety net is a Socialist? Yet another rhetorical question, themselves to beget more questions.

This here is exactly how we have come to Trump.  Where did we think the Republicans would go–could go–if the Democrats moved right along with the monolithic shift to the right in American Politics. And it has shifted significantly to the right of eternal political center. If we were to divide an American political triangle, equally into to halves, Democrat and Republican, and then were to place this appropriately into an equally divided rectangle of eternal Left and Right, the American quadrilateral would have to be situated with all of the Republicans being significantly inside the Right half of the Eternal Political divide between  Left and Right. A good portion of the Democrat half of the American Political Party divide would find itself also to the right of the eternal divide between Left and Right.

A country for let?

Donald Trump is a very dangerous man because it is becoming apparent that there was no subterfuge in his campaign, that he was not being crazy like a ferret, that he was not manipulating anything or anyone, and that he is the one who has been, was and will continue to be manipulated (and by the Proto-fascists)–if there was ever a talking head, Trump is it. It has become apparent that the Donald (he does not get Mr.President, and will not get “the President”) cannot think beyond what he says and how he says it; that what we heard is all of him, that the man said what he meant and meant what he said.

I used to believe no stupid man could become President, but that was before we decided that systematically under-educating was going to free us; that undermining any notions of Truth in a way nearly as intellectually savage as the Bolsheviks or the Nazis before us was going to protect us and our liberty–if you talked to most undergraduates from any time in the last thirty years, you would soon realize that Doubt is the highest wisdom and knowledge is impossible and a universal human nature (thus humanity? thus being humane?) is also a deception. The problem with politics is not politicians but that there are no politicians and only businessmen or lawyers who do not employ bankers and brokers and CEOs and other lawyers except as managers or puppet masters of our politics.

Yes, whenever it was that the American People decided being a Public at the expense of Democracy was okay, that by being a Public they could barter their freedom for a few more crumbs, or what they imagined were more crumbs–whenever it was that we got the idea that politicians should be substituted with businessmen or lawyers being lawyers doing lawyerly things, it was not long before the banks came in and decided to screw politics in America the way they had screwed labor by convincing corporations that they needed to ship jobs overseas (perhaps to receive friendlier loans????), and then by screwing the general public (no longer a People, We the People) with ’08.

We do not have Politicians who operate as politicians within the metaphysics of the profession Politician. The model for me will always be Al Smith of New York. I suggest you examine his track record, a little bit of history can go a long way. FDR learned most of what we love him for from his fellow New Yorker, former Governor Al Smith. And those who think the democrats abandined them may be right in direct proportion with how it abandoned what we learned from the Great Depression–but then there is no Truth, right? There are no Absolutes, right? There is no Human Nature, right? There are no individuals because individuality is also a lie, right? Doubt is the highest wisdom because knowledge is impossible, right? As so many or too many of the Post-Structuralist and Post-post Structuralist and Neo-Liberal design for a new an orderly world have decided. Hypotheses become fact for too many who have been dis-abled in their thinking.

We are like the fool who cuts down all the trees of Law in the forrest of Justice just to get at the Devil, and when the Devil turns to face him, he has nothing left to stand between him and the Devil. Good luck my younger brethren and sisters with your anti-humanity in the guise of half-baked hypotheses extracted or mis-taken from mis-reading far too much badly written theory translated equally badly.