Trump and the Tea Partiers aren't America

Jackson Pollock applying paint to his canvas

My very cool friend Maya Grafmuller – who designed my kick-ass logo – mourned the loss of our country’s stellar reputation in a Facebook post yesterday:

First it was Dubya, then Sarah, now the Donald? Man, how embarrassing for us....you know, as a country. I'm just sayin'.

Her friend Beth, who had lived overseas and traveled extensively, agreed:

You know, Maya, you are so right…I have always been proud to say I'm American but I started to get negative feedback so after a while I started saying I was Canadian and no one hassled me.

Beth’s response made me sad. I was compelled to remind them that at least two Oval Office occupants (one recent and one current) are intellectually formidable. William Jefferson Clinton may have self-discipline issues but when it comes to brainpower, he’s a genius. You don’t get to be a Rhodes Scholar – the most prestigious scholarship in the world – by claiming to see Russia from your front porch or answering “All of ‘em” when questioned about what publications you read. I was fortunate enough to meet the guy more than once and can report that he was not only intimidatingly sharp but really likable. Not phony likable like Dubya but genuinely likable. (I never understood how an inarticulate guy whose millionaire parents lived in Kennebunkport could buy property in Crawford, put on a cowboy hat, drag some twigs around for the camera and call himself an average, likable Texas rancher.)

Barack Obama – who, in one of the most embarrassing moments in recent American political history, was forced to provide copies of his long form birth certificate in an effort to prove his citizenship and quell the objections of brainless racists who still aren’t satisfied and will stop at nothing to discredit the brother in the White House – is undoubtedly one of the most eloquent, charming, intelligent men ever to enter politics, let alone ascend to the highest office in our land. I don’t always agree with him and haven’t been shy in expressing my disappointment. But the man is as sharp as the pointiest of tacks and the world knows it.

There are others in America’s political arena whose knuckles don’t drag on the sidewalk when they walk. Anthony Weiner from New York, Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Barney Frank from Massachusetts use more of their brain cells than the average Joe the Plumber. Al Franken (D-MN) is surprisingly smart, given that he used to be Stuart Smalley on “Saturday Night Live.” I’ve never met Bubba’s spouse but Madame Secretary strikes me as having a large amount of tolerance (a sign of intelligence, I’m told), talent and intellect. While not politicians, Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow (another Rhodes Scholar) are certainly astute observers of politics with impressive, above-average smarts.

I agree with Beth and Maya that the imbeciles in the Tea Party and the public figures who pander to and use them – Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, the Koch Brothers, et al – are embarrassing. But they don’t represent this country. They’re blips on the political radar screen, temporary darlings of a lazy media, proof that America truly is a melting pot with all types of residents, helpful and harmful. They don’t contribute or enhance anything. Party members congregate in public places at the behest of their overlords and give ridiculous interviews to bemused news crews and display their misspelled signs and leave nothing substantive but litter when they return to the rocks under which they live. They’ll be gone soon, I hope, relegated to political science textbooks and YouTube, where the parents of the future will show their children the clips as proof of what can happen when governments spend more on tax breaks for their rich than on educating their citizenry.

Just because we’ve gone from a democracy to an oligarchy doesn’t mean people despise us. The Leader of the Free World is a man of color, for Pete’s sake! The Donald's racism aside, that’s a powerful symbol for little boys and girls of all colors around the globe.

I’d wager this country is known more for John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks and Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. Far more people have heard of Michael Jackson than Michelle Bachmann. Sure, people know we’re a flawed nation in many ways – but they still want to be like us and dress like us and come to us and live with us and listen to our music and watch our movies. Our health care isn’t the best, our foreign policy is infuriating and our history includes much of which to be ashamed – as any Native American or African-American or Japanese-American can tell you – but there’s also much of which to be proud in the 235 years of our formal existence.

We’re known for Motown and the Marshall Plan, electronic innovation, the development of the modern public school system, computers, airplanes, cameras, our university system and our support of the United Nations. When people think of us they think of jazz, the polio vaccine, video games, the space program, literature and poetry, nylon and vulcanized rubber and celluloid and Teflon and Tupperware, the Panama Canal, contact lenses and elevators.

What else? Scotch tape comes to mind, and photocopiers and Post-It notes and fiberglass and Broadway and the Smithsonian and ball point pens and Walt Disney and fast food (sorry about that one, world) and bubble gum and Wikipedia and Amazon.com and GPS. Let’s not forget cash registers and the Richter scale and denim jeans and safety pins and hip hop and Aldo Leopold and Andy Warhol and John Kenneth Galbraith and Jimmy Carter and Al Gore and roller blades and Hollywood and Jackson Pollock and Cesar Chavez.

When people think of the United States, they think of cars and soft drinks and the cotton gin and Steven King and Dean Koontz and John Grisham and Danielle Steele and Amy Tan and disposable diapers and The Big Apple and the Windy City and the Big Easy and Ernest Hemingway and Kahlil Gibran and Cat Stevens and Truman Capote and Mark Twain and Langston Hughes and e.e. cummings and Emily Dickinson and Ella Fitzgerald and Billy Jean King and Billie Holiday and Michael Moore and Michael Jordan and Jack Kerouac and Neil Armstrong and John Glenn and Upton Sinclair.

The list also includes Bill Maher, Malcolm X, Matt Taibbi and Charles Bukowski. America means cowboys and “American Graffiti” and E.T and Fred & Ginger and Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello and Rowan & Martin and Sonny & Cher and Simon & Garfunkel and the Marx Brothers and the Mamas and the Papas and the Three Stooges and Edgar Allen Poe and Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman and the beatniks and Benjamin Franklin and James Brown and Shirley Temple and Lucy and Desi. It means “Gone with the Wind” and “inherit the Wind” and “Star Wars” and Clint Eastwood and Jack Nicholson and “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

I really could go on and on.

Suffice it to say that there are probably more photos of Hawaiian-born Barack Hussein Obama hanging in the living rooms of other countries than of Eric Cantor and John Boehner and Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the Wench from Wasilla and even St. Ronnie of Reagan combined.

This is a strange period in history, to be sure. And I concede people underestimated Hitler at first too. But Trump the Chump and the Tea Party ignoramuses don’t represent me. As much as I like and respect Canada, I would never say I was Canadian. I wouldn’t want that and neither would our friends to the north.



Source:  Self Referential Collapse