The Weird Reality of Trump and His Accolytes

 The House investigation of the January 6 insurrection has Capitol police and other law enforcement personnel testifying about the horrors of the Trump-inspired mob.  These members of our justice system join other facets of the establishment, including the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Defense in denunciation of Trump's actions.  Others alienated from Trump include former members of his inner circle, including John Bolton from national security, Defense Secretary James Mattis, a host of former Trump associates, and many staunch Republicans.  The weirdness is that Trump's base refuses to abandon him.  They are somehow able to assert support for police and national defense but dismiss the testimonies of leaders of police and national defense.  

As time passes, the Trump and supporters have rebranded the riot as a peaceful demonstration of patriots.  Ashlii Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police protecting the inner barriers to Congress, sent a Happy Birthday message to her family at what would have been her 36th birthday.  He contends that her death was unnecessary and that her family deserves justice.  The facts, of course, are that she was attempting to break into the chamber with a violent mob that battered police, called for the deaths of Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and were trying to interfere with the certification of the votes validating the election of Joe Biden as President. 

Many Republicans

A Purpose for Searching

 I read today a book review of Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, a finalist in this year's National Book Award for Translated Works.  The 'work of fiction based on real events'  concerns physicists reckoning with various periods of science history, including the theories of quantum mechanics and relativity.  There is the chemist Fritz Haber, who invents the reaction that produces nitrogen fertilizer from atmospheric nitrogen, a process used to enable modern agriculture and is estimated to have enabled over 3 billion human lives (and billions more chickens, pigs, and cattle).  His nightmare is that his talent was perverted to also invent the process for producing chlorine gas that was used in gas warfare in WWI and in the Nazi concentration camps.  Karl Schwarszchild solved the field equations from Einstein's General Relativity theory and realized the horror of Black Holes.  

This concept of nightmares from understanding made me think about humanity's drive for understanding as a fundamental feature of cognition (Duh!).  Is there any difference for my brother's search for truth in the Bible and my interest in understanding from logic and science?  I recall with great fondness the feeling I had in graduate school when we used statistical mechanics to derive Boltzmann's gas constant.  I had a sense that perhaps all of existence was comprehensible, was discernible.  The fear of meaninglessness was quenched temporarily.  A part of my psyche says, 'Don't worry!  The answers are out there, and though things seem chaotic and meaningless, it is only your ignorance and lack of data that gives you the impression that all is a mystery.'  A feeling of bliss ensues.

The alternative part of my psyche says, 'Whatever sensation you have of understanding, life leads to death and the abyss.  There is no purpose or meaning.'  Depression ensues.  

Despite the evidence, there must be more, there must be some meaning, even if it is meaning of my own invention.  All is not lost, even in nihilism.  I have the capacity to know love and joy, whether the universe is ordered or unintelligible.  Awareness or ignorance of self delusion does not alter the sensation.  

The Winter of Discontent

 There is an increasing emotional gap developing between myself and my children.  It is disturbing, but it may not be permanent, significant, or even malleable.  That is, I am in general feeling alienated and irritated.  It seems I am always looking at interactions critically and with irritation.  I perceive disrespect when there is likely nothing personal.  

I began this post because I wanted to explore a potential explanation for my discontent.  In my working years, there were many hours of the day devoted to activities of seemingly clear purpose.  My mind was occupied with attending to obligations, planning, analysis, and interaction.  The days seemed filled with endless possibilities involving my thought, decision, and action.  

There were rhythms to this life that allowed the focus to monitor a range of time frames.  For example, there was a long term goal of saving for retirement.  In early years, the goal was abstract and perhaps even beyond comprehension.  My approach to such problems is to assume the goal is essentially unattainable, but like much of life, a suitable outcome would be achieved through continual effort and some realistic near-term action.  

Home ownership was a conventional activity that felt applicable to the retirement goal.  We needed a place to live anyway, and home ownership engaged a time frame in the range of retirement planning.  A thirty-year mortgage brought the abstract into the actual.  It was a commitment and something I could envisage of happening.  With modest assumptions about land value, the ownership would translate into an asset in the value range of income replacement.  As well, I had seen this method of wealth accumulation work for my parents.

Retirement savings seemed impossible at the start of my working career.  Besides the difficulty in rationalizing savings versus meeting every day needs, I had a pension plan with the large company that would be adequate for retirement.  But the large company presented an opportunity I could not ignore.  They agreed to add 50% to my savings up to 6% of my pre-tax wages.  The government agreed to allow the savings to be deducted from my wages so that my income tax decreased.  I could not ignore these incentives, and so we learned to live with 94% of whatever salary I made.  These two actions helped me feel satisfied I was attending to this long-range important issue.

With three children, another actual problem that seemed unmanageable was paying for college.  The estimates for cost ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars, and these estimates were actually experienced.  In this task, we did not develop a savings plan.  Instead, we decided to manage the situation as it came.  We forced the children away from expensive private colleges to help manage the costs,  Somehow, we covered thirteen years of costs.  Two of the children worked while at school, but their earnings never contributed to basic living expenses or the tuition and fees. 

Beyond these two abstractions, we felt the responsibility of raising the children, caring for parents, helping children enter adulthood, marriage, and parenthood.  We were enthusiastic in these activities as they seemed to be the point of living.  We felt confident about a satisfactory outcome and cognizant of the attention and effort required.  The planning and execution formed the basis of daily activity (outside of work).  I know in retrospect, I cannot recall fully the discomforts and the anxieties of those former times.  Today, they seem so full of purpose and meaning, whatever the difficulties.  Life was as we chose.

The 'struggles' of daily life were not without respites and recreation.  Indeed, vacationing and communing with family and friends was another satisfying and happy focus of living.  We enjoyed our family activities on a daily basis.  Meals together, school work, television, phone calls, and vacations were perhaps the most sacred of existence.  For me, these dimensions of life were the reason for everything, even if they were at times subservient to the work and requirements.  At any time, they became top priority.  Such hierarchy contributed to a feeling of agency and balance.  Life had clarity.  Strangely, government and politics were of low concern.  Our preoccupation of caring for ourselves, our broader family, and our friends consumed attention leaving little energy for the intractable problems of society.

Contrast this past life with the present.  With respect to the long-term projects of retirement and family rearing, all is solved.   Work has ceased.  Social Security and Medicare are providing some basic needs.  The children are more or less caring for themselves, albeit without the same perspective about attending to the long-range issues of saving, retirement, etc.  Three of four parents are gone, and the remaining parent asks little from us.  Incomprehensibly, we have amassed a small fortune that leaves us mortgage-free, and with savings such that income from investments grow faster than the rate we can spend.  It was not a goal, but it appears we made it to this point.

The abstractions and uncertainties of 'the future' are now concrete and certain.  There is no longer effort towards any of the former goals.  We participate as we can with our children.  However, our former position as major shapers in their lives and development are long past, as we anticipated and is only proper.  The grandkids are influenced only slightly, again, as we intended.  It is not our place or role to parent them.  

Is it a paradox that I find myself in agitation and discontent?  What is wrong with me?

The Elephant in the Capitol

 The January 6, 2021 insurrection by Trump supporters has had a surprisingly short tenure in the national news.  Occasional reports surface as law enforcement agencies file charges.  One recent report on NPR stated that more than 250 have been arrested.  The report included a graphic of categories for the people and the indictments.  

Thus far, the Republican Party has reacted in a disturbing way.  Republican members who condemned the violence and Trump's role in inciting the violence have been rebuked by the Party.  Member who have supported Trump and who echo his claim that the election was 'stolen' have been lauded by the Party.  Some of the latter group will claim that they also condemn the violence (others are at least honest and do not address the issue), but their rhetoric includes efforts to ascribe the violence to 'a few rowdies' or even to left-wing factions that are against Trump.   A majority of polled Republicans believe the election was invalid.  

The general absence of Republican leadership condemnation of the January 6 insurrection and Trump's role in it represents an acknowledgment by Republicans that they represent a group who fundamentally rejects the democratic process bedrock of our government.  They are unpersuaded by judges, state officials, and the obvious fact that more people wanted Joe Biden to be elected rather than Trump.  The alternative reality for this cohort is that they believe their ownership of the country has been taken from them, and that any and all action necessary to reverse the status is justified.

It is largely a coalition of white supremacists, white nationalists, and Christian activists who feel aggrieved about their minority status.  It is frustrating to hear their irrational rhetoric, but I believe I could get most of them to admit that they know they are in the minority.  Surely most Christians understand that the world at large is not majority Christian.  In my former status as a member of a church, it was my firm understanding that most of the world did not know Jesus as savior.  Perhaps even most Christians did not understand the need to confess their sinfulness and be 'born again'.  Surely this means that the majority, perhaps the vast majority, of their fellow Americans do not share their conviction.

If this analysis is correct, there is an inescapable conclusion about the current Republican Party and its attitude towards the insurrectionists.  This elephant-in-the-Capitol is a sizable minority that would establish authority over the nation by any means necessary.  They have abandoned trust in democracy and in the Constitution.  The group is militarized by members who have been preparing for this occasion over the past few decades.  They are heavily armed and imagine themselves as revolutionaries.  They do not have much in the way of ideals.  Rather, they have an unshakable certainty that those not with them are against them, and that task #1 is to establish authority over these 'others'.  

The January 6 insurrection was no aberration.  The flags other than the Stars and Stripes suggest to me that most of the rioters believe the U.S.A. flag no longer belongs to them (it was stolen by the majority).  Their identity is with each other, and their righteous cause is to take back their country through any means necessary.  They are not listening or negotiating.  They are dictating.