[FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Sep 5 21:19:01 EDT 2020
On 9/5/20 6:41 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
>
> Trump’s charm comes from the fact that he tells the truth about
> his basest impulses
>
>
> I like your theory. Somehow I doubt it would work for everyone. Why
> does it work for Trump?
>
> Part of it may be that Trump goes one step beyond affirming his basest
> impulses. He assumes them and then glories in what he paints as the
> positive consequences. Cheering on right-wing thugs means that he can
> claim that the implied violence they represent will back him when he
> needs it. Transactionalism means that he is always "winning" and
> always doing things that will make him richer. Sexism means that he
> always has a supply of women at his call. Continually repeating his
> lies means that he always has a crowd of people who believe him.
> Constant bullying and name-calling means that he puts himself in a
> position to judge and demean others and can always portray himself as
> better than everyone else.
>
> All-in-all he portrays himself as living the life everyone else
> envies. And it works. He (presumably) has quite a bit of money and has
> made himself into the most powerful person in the world. That's quite
> an attraction for lots of people--especially for those who value the
> ends over the means--another of the base impulses from which he has
> reaped significant rewards.
And I have this recurring dream of January 19th (or whatever the
inauguration day) 2021 when his Secret Service detail perp-walks him out
the door to the lawn and hands him over to the Marine1 crew to fly down
to Maralago which has been pre-emptively turned into a 100 acre
gilded-cage holding cell for him while he faces a never ending stream of
indictments ranging from petty P*ssy Grabbing to War Crimes.
Biden has been forming his "transition team" and I'm wanting to believe
he's tapped Carter, Bill Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama to enlist their
Secret Service details (I don't think Biden as former VP has a detail,
right?) to chat up via backchannels and personal relations, the Service
teams in place and make sure they are ready to *force* an orderly
transition of power on the 11th hour if it doesn't happen
organically. I have a HS friend who was SS working on Gore's
detail. Unfortunately she retired early and moved to Idaho where she
could be more fully in touch with her inner-Trump, maybe exercise her
hoarded stash of (previously legal/permitted?) automatic weapons without
nosy neighbors or invasive critical law-enforcement? Otherwise I'd ask
her the chances of her "brothers and sisters" stepping up to the threat
of a Trump whose "hell no, I won't go" from the sixties has been bumped
up a couple of levels?
mumble,
- Steve
> _
> _
> __-- Russ Abbott
> Professor, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 4:51 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com
> <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Again, people. Could we just forget the whole anecdote? Please?
>
>
>
> I wish we could focus not on the particulars of the anecdote, but
> on that fact that Trump’s charm comes from the fact that he tells
> the truth about his basest impulses, while lying about everything
> else. And that trait ingratiates with those amongst us who have
> base impulses for which we fear we might be shamed.
>
>
>
> Speaking of shame! Whew!
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 5, 2020 5:41 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] OFFLINE:Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
>
>
>
> James is the man... I didn't want to name him speculatively
> on-list. I don't know the Ohori's owner, only the original
> founder Susan Ohori... I guess she cashed out some time back? It
> hasn't felt like her touch for some time. James would have been
> avoiding Larry, not you, even though you might have been vaguely
> implicated in it. He might even remember you as "Nick" and "from
> New England" and "wild eyebrows"... the current circumstances
> don't have me "running into him" as likely as in the past, but the
> discussion is in the queue for if ever we do!
>
> Dear Steve,
>
>
>
> I would not be surprised if you did, indeed, know him.
> Somehow, he worked his way into being something of a water
> commissioner up there, mediating the most difficult issue I
> can imagine… as a stranger? The whole thing seemed incredible
> to me, but a credit, in any case, to the vibes he gives off.
>
>
>
> I won’t tell on FRIAM entire story of how our last meeting
> went. I also befriended the then owner of Ohori’s, a very
> sweet and generous human, also with LOTS of life experience,
> who can easily flip into right wing asshole or left wing
> asshole, depending of what is needed to call attention to
> himself and create tension in the room. So I am sitting
> talking to our tall friend and Larry comes up to the table and
> says, “Can I join you?” I want to say no, but Larry does,
> after all, own the place, so my Liberal
> anybody-can-talk-to-any-body-else thing kicks in, and we’re
> off. Larry flips into right-wing asshole, I try to modulate,
> and Our Friend stays for a suitably polite interval and then
> makes his excuses and leaves. As he goes out the door, Larry
> turns to me and says, “Did I say something?” (Larry is not a
> complete idiot; he just plays one on TV)
>
>
>
> It goes down as one of the most humiliating moments of my
> life. But I am not sure you can repair it. I guess you could
> say, if he remembers me, that the bald, lame, crow-watcher
> thinks fondly of him, would love to know how the water thing
> worked out, and looks forward to running into him again as
> soon as I can start going to coffee houses again. I think his
> name is James.
>
>
>
> I am glad to know he is alive, and presumably well.
>
>
>
> As to you second story, it is terribly familiar. Both my
> father and my older brother could, when not sober, talk about
> “Jews”. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. I will
> reserve my further comment for a FRIAM post which I will make
> in a moment.
>
>
>
> Thanks, Steve,
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com>
> <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Steve Smith
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 5, 2020 1:27 PM
> *To:* friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Today's Sermon:: a minor awokening
>
>
>
> Nick -
>
> I think I may well know the man of whom you speak... he is in
> my "second order circle" so I only see him while visiting
> certain friends or at events we all share or the occasional
> criss-cross in a public venue. I will try to remember to ask
> him if he remembers YOU... question is which stereotype
> might I appeal to to describe you to him? I won't speculate
> on what forms that might take as I explore my own stereotypes,
> or worse yet, my projections of what *his* stereotypes of you
> might be. If we are talking about the same person I doubt
> he would have "avoided you"... he has been fairly politely
> blunt with me a few times and then resumed the jovial
> conversations we were having. He seemed very practiced at
> navigating (not so) hidden judgements and assumptions about him.
>
> My own mother had a modest amount of self-awareness, growing
> up in KY fairly proud of being a "Yankee" in the sense of
> north of the Mason-Dixon and from a subculture that was too
> poor to have ever risked owning a slave or having a close
> relative who did. She lived with her aunt in the city of
> Frankfort during the school year in the depression for lots of
> reasons. She was therefore raised as an only child, her
> cousins having recently grown and moved out of the family
> home. She tells an anecdote of having developed a friendship
> with a girl who lived *somewhere* between *her school* and her
> aunt's house... she would pause to play with her every day
> after school until it got to where she started being
> noticeably late home... when she told her aunt why she was
> late, she said "why don't you just invite your friend home
> next time and you can play here!"... she asked her friend who
> resisted for about a week and then finally came home (her aunt
> married a Scottish Doctor, so their home was very meticulous
> and in a nicer neighborhood, but they lived crazy-frugal
> anyway) and after the first day, her aunt very politely told
> her not to invite the friend back, and in fact, was forbidden
> to play with her anymore. The little girl was apparently the
> first black person she had ever met and it was years later
> that she guessed that that was what it was all about... her
> aunt was too "polite" to make a deal about it and too
> "authoritarian" to be questioned. Later her mother gave her
> a family heirloom which was referred to colloquially as a "tar
> baby" which her mother explained to her had been a type of
> doll that young girls were given to "play with" in the style
> and memory of how their ancestors had been allowed to "play
> with" the slave babies. Her mother explained how wrong *all*
> of it was, from the slavery to the treating even the babies as
> property, to replacing them post-emancipation with effigies,
> etc. I learned this when she was unpacking from one of our
> moves and it showed up in a cardboard barrel amongst her
> mother's (our aunt's) china that we never used... my sister
> saw it and was intrigued and "wanted to play with it"
> whereupon my mother tried to explain all of this to us and
> then declaring that "the best thing I can do is get rid of it,
> it is just a reflection of a bad piece of history". I don't
> know if it went in the burn barrel with our other trash or if
> she figured out some more respectful disposal method... I
> would like to think she knew of a historian or similar for
> whom such an artifact could be made meaningful. This and
> other similar instances made me think that my parents were the
> least prejudiced people I knew, until at 19 my sister who had
> a small group of friends from college, one of who was African
> American... my parents liked him a lot, he was a very
> sociable and interesting person (his father was career
> military and his mother had died when he was young and he and
> two sisters were raised by "help"). But at some point, the
> friendship drifted into the boyfriend zone and they very
> sternly, albeit embarrassingly disabused me of the thought
> that they were not prejudiced. I don't remember the exact
> conversations but it was clear that they were very much
> against the relationship, even if they didn't quite try to
> forbid their (adult) daughter from continuing. I think they
> even enlisted one of their (more openly) racist friends to
> have a conversation with her. It did not sit well at all with
> me. But made me realize how hidden some of these judgements,
> stereotypes, opinions, etc can be. I'm sure I'm laced with
> junk like that.
>
> - Steve
>
> Dear fellow congregants,
>
>
>
> One of the things we talk about is our bemusement at Trump
> supporters. One expression you often hear these
> supporters say is that they admire him because “He tells
> it like it is!” They can say this while acknowledging
> that almost everything he says is false. So, if he is
> lying most of the time, what is he telling the truth about?
>
>
>
> I think I know. As I keep insisting, I am not a boomer.
> I am from the Silent Generation, the Lonely Crowd. My
> mother’s life hero was Eleanor Roosevelt. It was I, aged
> seven, who brought the news of the President’s death to my
> parents, and I was startled to seem my mother burst into
> tears. Crying was not her thing. My folks were
> publishers. We had black, Jewish, gay, lesbian, working
> class, authors visiting the house. But – and here is the
> point – when they visited, they visited /as such./ Not
> that I was told as a child explicitly, but it was conveyed
> to me as a child, somehow, that these folks belonged to a
> different category. And my education, in Massachusetts,
> in the 40’s, was devoid of any explicit contact with
> anybody in any of these categories.
>
>
>
> Ok, fast forward 70 years to Santa Fe. I befriend at
> Ohoris an extremely tall black man, grizzled, slow moving,
> thoughtful, with an intricate, international biography
> full of remarkable connections and coincidences. He fits
> in every conceivable way my childhood stereotype of the
> “old wise black man”. I sit in rapt attention to his
> stories. I look up to him, which, given his height, is my
> only choice. But, as we continue to meet, a tension begins
> to rise between us that is coming largely from me, but I
> cannot control. He becomes aware that I am seeing him
> through the stereotype of the old wise black man.
> Because I cannot admit to it, he is imprisoned by it.
> /Our conversations are based on a lie./ He disappears
> from Ohoris and I never see him again. He would rather
> eschew good coffee, than live in my lie.
>
>
>
> This is what Donald Trump is truthful about. He tells the
> truth about his own stereotypes. He is truthful about
> himself. That what he believes is FALSE is irrelevant to
> his base. He admits to thoughts which they know many
> others find distasteful. It is hard to live in a world
> which has moved on from one’s childhood, a world in which
> others find one’s basic categorizations distasteful – in
> fact, a world in which one finds one’s own basic
> categorizations distasteful.
>
>
>
> To break Trump we need to come to a new understanding and
> acknowledgement of type-isms. There are always going to
> be type-isms. We human beings do that sort of thing.
> Raised in a particular way, at a particular time I see a
> tall grizzled black man as wise, and everything he says
> and does is read through that lens. That’s abduction.
> This person wears a dress, this person is a woman, this
> person is gentle, that ‘s abduction. (Well, it’s
> abduction-deduction, but let that go.) Human beings
> naturally form identity groups that trap ourselves and
> others in false abductions. So we need to design our
> society to counter these. (Libertarians beware. Here come
> Nick’s white vans, again) In this case the white van
> takes the form of aggressive taxation of the rich and
> aggressive education of the poor, and of institutions that
> promote the random mixing of our citizens (like public
> universities and armies – or conservation corps).
>
>
>
> Could my friendship with the tall black guy have been
> rescued? Could we have laughed about my stereotypes?
> Perhaps I should have said, early on, “Look, I’m sorry, I
> keep seeing you as Uncle Remus. I am sure, as I get to
> know you better, I will get over it. Please be patient
> with me, and please call me out whenever you feel confined
> by it. ”
>
>
>
> A Liberalism that does not free me is not worth the name.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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