Keep it together, people!
It will get worse before it gets better
Back from a couple of days in Madison WI, where there are no more commercials on TV — just political ads nonstop (seriously).
Forgive the nostalgia and perhaps a touch of incoherence, I have managed to contract a sinus infection and so am a bit tenuous on all fronts today (I plan on scoring some antibiotics this afternoon in an absolute bout of drug-seeking behavior).
One of the great signs of my contracting a sinus infection is that I start losing things like crazy. I’ve had this happen all over the world and this time it was expressed by my infinite cleverness in leaving my laptop home in Ohio!
I discovered that right about kickoff of the Packers-Jags game at noon. I have never done that, but sinus infections make me do very strange things. I will pretty much have to swear off emails this week because, when I’m suffering, I can be vicious beyond reason. Indeed, I have come close to getting myself fired on several sinus infections. It’s kind of my thing.
My big faux pas wasn’t an issue in this day and age. I borrowed my daughter Vonne Mei’s Mac Air and had youngest child Abebu email us the file from home and everything was great on that front.
Had a nice time at Memorial Union Sunday evening.
I was welcomed:
Got to have dinner with the UW student group that brought me to Wisconsin — the day after Homecoming no less and magically enough during my 40th reunion year!
The Wisconsin Union Directorate — Distinguished Lecture Series, or WUD DLS, even made up special pins to memorialize the event, which was absolutely darling of them to do.
Back in the early 1980s, pins were a big deal. My spouse Vonne had some made up when she ran for the presidency of Chad Hall (women’s dorm) and finished second (earning her the Veep slot in a very early American political history kind of way).
I was my dorm floor (9th) president in Witte Hall, and the ladies on my floor created a fan club around my notorious party antics (I always wore a flaming orange Hawaiian shirt — hence the color and nickname, as they were several Toms on my floor).
Of course, the big thing with pins back then was your band identification, as this was the age of punk and new wave.
My identification was singularly tight:
After the nice dinner with the students, they had me sign their registry, which included an illustration by one of the student members. She explained the bit about the Bucky red-and-white bib overalls and I showed them the six or so representations of Uncle Sam in the book. So that was some nice synchronicity.
Then the talk in historic Tripp Commons.
It was a tough start for me, I noticed, and I now realize that was the sinus infection standing between me and my audience. I naturally pushed through even as my voice got increasingly gravelly.
Spoke for just over an hour, and then did Q&A for 30. Great and really smart questions, if I could remember any of them. But had the usual effect: “My brain was red-lining all 90 minutes!”).
Made a point of having a picture taken with UW senior daughter Vonne Mei (our fourth child) and my older brother Andy, retired library director from Stevens Point who got his grad degree at the UW. I will re-unite with Andy at his regular tailgate party just outside Lambeau next Sunday for the Lions game (and yes, we are scared of the Lions this year).
So, how to sum up the mood?
Nervous dread, I would say, and almost all of it about the election.
The questions revealed that nervousness, and, as I replied to one student, the most realistic way to view this election is that it will not settle much but merely mark an important battle in the ongoing culture war between an increasingly secularized, educated, racially diverse liberal base and an increasingly religious, less educated, and less racially diverse conservative base. That urban-coastal-versus-rural-interior breakdown exists all over the world, thanks to globalization. America is far from unique in that regard. Frankly, we’re less violent than the vast majority of those cleavages.
WAPO: How education and religion have redrawn America’s political map
Still, those are pretty stark dividing lines: long in the making and even longer in the unwinding.
Obama’s election in 2008 created a profound societal awareness of America’s ongoing racial makeover.
This remains — to me — one of the most important images from the book in terms of its explanatory power. It is the undertow to our ongoing political polarization.
How could it not be? Where do we think White Christian nationalism emanates from? Or all the comparisons to fascist Nazi Germany?
So Obama gets us Trump, in domestic terms.
In global terms, George W. Bush, the epitome of market-making presidents in the national security realm (following the economic version preceding him in the form of Clinton), got us Obama/Trump/Biden — three nation-building-at-home presidents, with Harris likewise fitting that mode.
Harris would also be a significant counter-punch to White Christian Nationalism, to be sure, but she would likely set in motion an even greater surge on that side … and so on and so forth like rounds in a boxing match.
In short, we are in the middle of a long stretch of “change elections,” which, on some levels, stretch back to 1994.
Eventually, the US finds some balance between, on the one hand, its old “sole superpower” market-making role of the Cold War, post-Cold War, and post-9/11 periods, and, on the other hand, its overly aggressive embrace (mostly in the form of Trump) of its natural market-playing (looking-our-for-#1) role that we’ve assumed since the 2008 Crash (MAGA).
The same will happen domestically, although there is likely to be a lot of political violence (the vast majority being performative) between now and then. But, eventually, White America will adjust and accept its majority-minority status, in large part because its White Catholic nationalist Supreme Court will carve out all manner of safe spaces for scared and angry Whites — just like our economy needs to carve out more satisfactory segments of a tradesman/middle class economic existence for a major portion of our population.
These are momentous and transformative processes, unfolding amidst demographic and environment change of the highest and unprecedented order, so yeah, it will get worse before it gets better.
But it will get better.
Neither side in America is going away, so accommodation will be necessary.
Same for the US and the world’s other superpowers.
This is all about sharing, people. It’s not that hard and we’ve got the right generations coming up on that score.
I remain totally impressed whenever I interact with college kids today. This notion that academia is out of touch with everyday reality … there is plenty of truth there.
But the notion that we’re producing college grads who are out of touch with anything is deeply flawed — even insulting. These young people are — to a person — impressively in-touch with our world, its challenges, and its opportunities.
I have no fears — just a pounding headache.
