The Cure

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country—and we haven't seen them since.

— Gore Vidal

History—and Americans' ignorance thereof—keeps coming up in post-January 6 discussions. For good reason. Research by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni finds Americans know little about the subject. To wit:

• 33% of adult Americans do not know when the American Revolution took place
  
  
• 50% believe the Civil War occurred before the Revolution
  
  
• 78% cannot name the source of the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people”
  
  
• 80% cannot describe the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation
  
  
• 71% do not know what the Reconstruction was
  
  
• 33% do not know FDR introduced the New Deal
  
  
• 58% do not know when the Battle of the Bulge took place
  
  
• 41% cannot identify the name Auschwitz
  
  
• 29% do not know the title of the national anthem

"The knowledge of all American history has become a wasteland," the researchers said. "The reason is that we are no longer teaching it."

Ordinarily I complain about society's problems, without offering solutions; but today you're in for a treat. I know the way to restore our national knowledge deficit, and it isn't some billon-dollar program. Teachers merely have to assign their students the seven novels composing Gore Vidal's "Empire Chronicles."

Vidal liked to call our country, aptly, the "United States of Amnesia." We can cure that disease for only $25 per person—the cost of a farting Donald Trump doll. Call it the $25 cure for amnesia.

The novels composing Vidal's series are Burr, Lincoln, 1876, Empire, Hollywood, Washington, D.C. and The Golden Age. 

I've read each one more more than once and would best describe the novels as suspenseful, tapestry-like, and deliciously lurid.

• Burr recounts the life of the roguish Aaron Burr as he's caught up in the struggle between the power-hungry planter Thomas Jefferson and the craven financier Alexander Hamilton.

• Lincoln follows our greatest president through his entire time in the White House as he battles ruthlessly to preserve the Union and curtail the damage wrought by a crazy wife.

• 1876 recounts "America's worst year," when the winner of the popular vote in the presidential election—Democrat Samuel Tilden—loses the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.

• Empire takes you through the era of the egomaniacal expansionists William Randolph Hearst and Teddy Roosevelt.

• Hollywood provides a behind-the-scenes look at Woodrow Wilson's time in office, with walk-on appearances by Charlie Chaplin, James Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Fatty Arbuckle.

• Washington, D.C. portrays real-world politics during the Great Depression and World War II through the eyes of a political family not unlike the novelist's own.

• The Golden Age delves even deeper into the era, providing an inside look at the political machinations of FDR and the dawning of the Cold War.

Should you doubt the importance of my inexpensive cure for amnesia—and many of the nation's other ills—consider the words of JFK:

“There is little that is more important for an American citizen to know than the history and traditions of his country. Without such knowledge, he stands uncertain and defenseless before the world."

Humiliation

You mustn't humiliate the opposition. 
No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated.

— Nelson Mandela

Humiliate is a 16th century word borrowed from the Latin humiliare‎, meaning "to abase." Humiliare, in turn, came from humus, meaning "dirt."

When hate flairs, we love to shame each other, to grind each other into the dirt.

In England in the 1660s, journalists who offended any gentleman would be publicly shamed in the coffeehouses and doused with boiling-hot coffee.

In Germany in the 1930s, Nazis would force Jews to kneel on the sidewalks and scrub anti-Nazi graffiti off storefronts, to the merriment of the goyish passersby.

In France in the 1940s, women who'd had sex with German soldiers during the occupation had their heads shaved in public, before being paraded through their home towns and villages.

In America in the 1950s, Blacks were regularly barred from entering restaurants, stores, and hotels. Attempting to do so risked public threats, insults, and beatings.

On social media right now, anyone who voices support for Joe Biden is hounded by "trolls," whose favorite tactics are to name-call and conspire to get the poster "cancelled" by the platform. (It happens to me routinely.)

Conservatives love to weaponize humiliation. While they'd deny that browbeating their opponents is a source of sadistic pleasure, their proud pronouncements say otherwise; for example (this statement from a proponent of caning children):

"Once we realize that a world of only positive reinforcements is wondrous but not within human reach, we must reluctantly turn to disincentives, sanctions, and other forms of punishment."

To understand why conservatives relish humiliation would require a battalion of psychoanalysts. Freud believed we all shared memories of prehistoric cannibalism that, under the sway of the "death instinct," we channel in the modern era into aggression.

I'm content simply to say conservatives as a lot are sick puppies.

As a political weapon, humiliation works only when its target has the temerity to think he, she or they is better than dirt. 

But self-worth among groundlings is a virtue conservatives despise, and so turn their hatred into efforts to humiliate their opponents—to grind them back into the dirt from whence they came.

Although it's hard, I for one hope to refrain from humiliating outspoken conservatives in the future, because it's the humane course of action. 

As Biden said yesterday, "We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we show a little tolerance and humility."

But I also hope to refrain from using humiliation as as weapon because it's prudent.

For as Mandela warned, "No one is more dangerous than one who is humiliated."

Helter Skelter 2.0

Fifty years ago, we recoiled in horror at the mesmeric abilities of a devious, two-bit con who'd concocted a fable about an impending civil war—a fable so powerful, it incited mass murder. 

The fabulist was named Charles Manson; his fable, "Helter Skelter." On the strength of the fable, a California judge condemned Manson to death, although he'd steered clear of the killings.

Another con is at large today. The fable he spins is as crazy as "Helter Skelter" and—to suggestible followers—just as compelling.

Will the law allow him to remain at large?

An Inauguration Memory

Memories keep the wolf of insignificance from the door. 

— Saul Bellow

A vivid personal memory: K Street on a bitter-cold January evening; a driving snowstorm dims the streetlights; no sounds but the wind and the murmuring pinkish sky; a column of long black limousines silently snakes by, bound for the White House or some nearby hotel. I was working late at a video studio, editing a show my client needed in the morning; I had stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. It was 1985.

Ronald Reagan's second inauguration was history's coldest. The temperature that morning was 4° below zero, the wind-chill, 20° below. Reagan delivered his speech inside the Capitol Rotunda, before an audience of Congressmen; no crowds gathered outside, for fear of getting frostbite. 

The parade down Pennsylvania Avenue was also cancelled, the president saying, "the health and safety of those attending and working at the event must come before any celebration;" but in truth it was Reagan's health and safety that were in jeopardy.

His advisors had reminded the 74-year-old Reagan—America's oldest president—of William Henry Harrison's 1841 inauguration. On that day, Harrison spent five hours standing on the Capitol steps in a freezing rain. The event left Harrison with a nasty head cold; and 30 days later, he died of pneumonia.

Reagan's inaugural committee had given away 140,000 tickets to the swearing-in and sold 25,000 tickets to the parade. None of them was used.

When asked by reporters at a photo shoot what would be different about his second term, Reagan replied, “Well, I hope it will be warmer.”

Beware the Devil's Bargain

What fools these mortals be.

— William Shakespeare

Five years ago, I spent three lovely winter weeks in Cape May, New Jersey, helping to care for my then-preschool-age granddaughter Lucy, while her dad was on an extended business trip.

Every morning while Lucy was in school, I'd grab a joe and a buttered bagel at a café near the county courthouse, and sit and read another front-page story in the local paper, The Press of Atlantic City, about the ruin wrought upon the region by a bankrupt casino developer named Donald Trump.

As story after story told, Trump had systematically cheated small-time building and hotel-service contractors throughout South Jersey, leaving them with nothing for their efforts but unpaid bills, insurmountable debts, and suicidal wishes.

Trump's biography as a businessman, we've since learned, is the tale of a consummate chiseler and all-time loser. Atlantic City was just one brief chapter of the tale.

The chiseler-in-chief has just added a fresh chapter to his biography, as he stiffs the fools who stormed the Capitol on his behalf.

Like those South Jersey contractors, they'll lose everything, while Donald remains safely ensconced on his golden throne.

Beware the devil's bargain!

UPDATE FEBRUARY 4, 2021: Trump is so despised in Atlantic City, the mayor successfully auctioned off ringside seats for the implosion of his abandoned casino later this month.