RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) There is an old circus-generated theatrical tradition that when everything is going wrong on stage and the audience is getting bored and restless, the only solution, as captured so movingly in a song from the 1973 Sondheim musical ‘A Little Night Music’, is to ‘send in the clowns’. The US political situation more than meets this test.
Anyone who hasn’t become bored, restless and disheartened like this gringo, given the despicable progress of the American presidential election campaign with ever deepening layers of fear and disgust, either hasn’t been watching or has somehow managed to tune it all out. Putting Brazil’s shambolic and pitiful political mud fights aside for the moment, with the US presidential election just around the corner on Tuesday, November 3rd, it’s worth considering just what’s at stake, not only for the US but for the world.
At its heart, what this is all about is the traditional concept of honesty, the glue which cements our ability to inherently trust one another. When someone tells me something or makes a promise, my strong instinct has always been to believe them. Without that, why should I accept a paper dollar bill or a Covid-19 inoculation?
Unfortunately, we have landed at the point where the bar of trust has fallen so low that distrust takes over, social interaction disappears and paranoia infects everything. Perhaps the ultimate corruption is when words no longer have a common meaning, when it is impossible to know the difference between lies and the truth.
Is this happening now? Worse, has it already happened?
Here’s an example from a couple of days ago:
“TONIGHT, I should’ve been debating (and beating) Joe Biden for the second time at a Presidential Debate. But, the Liberal Biased Debate Commission CANCELED the debate. They wanted to keep me from exposing the TRUTH to the American People.”
That’s exactly how, capitalizations and all, President Trump’s tweet explains how he refused to participate in the non-partisan Debate Commission’s decision that the second debate should be virtual for health protection reasons after Trump’s Covid-19 infection, forcing it to be cancelled and then claiming to be a victim. “Beating Joe Biden for the second time” would have meant Trump had beaten him the first time which was hardly the opinion of the majority of the public as reflected in commentary and the polls.
As far as exposing the ‘truth’ to the American people, one can only look at Trump’s outrageous record, as tallied and reported by the ‘Washington Post’: more than 20,000 outright public lies since becoming president and the fact that even he has admitted deceit about the seriousness of the virus. “He has said ‘fake news’ and ‘hoax’ so many times that it has poisoned the public discourse. It’s like a slow-acting poison that kind of gradually moves to the veins of the American body,” said CNN’s Brian Stetler.
Have we become so bored with official pronouncements and commercial communications, and so inured to their veracity, that our knee-jerk reaction now is that they are ALL untrue and therefore not worthy of attention? That could be critical for people threatened with the dangers of hurricanes, forest fires or other disasters. If we don’t have faith in what is ‘true’ and what is ‘false’, how are we to make reasoned judgments? Will everything simply become a proverbial crapshoot?
The truth is not a constant; if it were, we would still believe the earth to be flat. Just because some wisdom has been ‘carved in stone’ doesn’t guarantee its veracity: anyone with a hammer and chisel could have carved it. The ‘truth’ is something which merges experience and faith and leaves our egos out of the equation. Our experience guides us: faith allows us to suspend disbelief. Our cumulative experience of the Trump presidency and the pervasive corruption surrounding it has caused a loss of faith extending far broader than the political arena.
‘NY Times’ Columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote: “When you have a president without shame, backed by a party without spine, amplified by a network without integrity, and by social networks that are marinated in conspiracy theories, behind whom are a lot of armed people — if you are not frightened by this, you are not paying attention.”
And if you are paying attention; what then? Going forward, how are we to reestablish a base line for what to believe?
We gringos have long held high the banner of ‘democracy’ and unreservedly preached to the world our noble truths of ‘equality’ and ‘lawfulness’. We have, often imperiously, proclaimed our world moral and military leadership. If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that our fine words are not universal truths; they have been grossly devalued by the reality that has always been there, but which – due to Trump’s racist and misogynistic behavior – has now become much more visible.
Much has been written in the last few years about the end of democracy as we know it or better, as we think we know it. Until now, it was relatively easy to grasp these theories intellectually while not letting them push any emotional buttons. As we come close to what has generally been labeled ‘the most important election in US history’ it’s a gut-wrenching time.
One of the characters in Tom Stoppard’s play ‘Jumpers’ sagely observes; “Democracy is not in the voting, it’s in the counting.” Trump trumpets, without any credible evidence, that this will be a “rigged election”. Cooler heads assure us that any voter fraud will be de minimis. Everyone seems fearful that despite all the technology and armies of lawyers on each side, getting to a ‘true’ result will not be easy. What’s missing is the reestablishment of accepted values and beliefs. Trust in the other guys is missing.
There can be no doubt about it, it’s time to send in the clowns.