A weekly recap of worthwhile political opinion and social commentary.
Vol 1, No 13 ……… December 12th, 2020
SCHEDULING NOTE ~ With this issue, Current Comment is taking a 3-week break for the year-end holidays. The next issue will be posted on January 2nd, 2021.
THE WEEK JUST PASSED ~ Three separate news stories this week gave us small, but significant, cause for guarded optimism. First, concerning the coronavirus pandemic, the Pfizer vaccine began shipping to all 50 states. Second, amidst the continuing uncertainty about the electoral college’s certification of the presidential election results, the Supreme Court – its three Trump appointees notwithstanding – rejected the Texas challenge to the election results in four crucial swing states. Third and last, the United Nations reminded us in its latest report that the global climate crisis is still very much with us, and suggested that we may actually be making some progress in dealing with it.
The two selections this week both reflect back upon recent history to paint contrasting portraits of Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama. Reading them one after the other may bring to mind the famous opening line of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Twelve words that perfectly capture the last twelve years of the American presidency.
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Selection #1 – New York Magazine political commentator Jonathan Chait takes a look back at an ominous but influential essay from Michael Anton of the conservative Claremont Institute, published in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign, in which the author misappropriates the heroic choices made by the 9/11 victims on Flight 93 to make a fantastically delusional case for Republicans to choose to support Trump …
“Anton articulated the bedrock principle that has driven the right the last four years: The Democratic Party is so terrifying and all-powerful that literally any measures, however unwise, are justifiable to block them from winning an election. That is the power of Anton’s chosen analogy, which urges his audience to overlook all of Trump’s complete unfitness to handle the job (“You — or the leader of your party — may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane,” he concedes) on the grounds that the alternative means imminent national death. Consciously or not, Anton’s imagery seemed to lodge in the minds of the party elite. Again and again, officials tasked with preventing Trump’s erratic impulses from producing a disaster cast themselves in the position of emergency pilots. “I can land the plane,” promised Rod Rosenstein. “I’m landing the plane right now,” testified William Barr.”
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Selection #2 – Author and retired New York Times lead book reviewer Michiko Kakutani interviews former president Barack Obama on the occasion of the publication of the first volume of his presidential memoirs, “A Promised Land” …
“Mr. Obama speaks slowly and thoughtfully but with the conversational ease that distinguishes his books, moving freely between the personal and the political, the anecdotal and the philosophical. Whether he’s talking about literature, recent political events or policies implemented by his administration, his observations, like his prose, are animated by an ability to connect social, cultural and historical dots, and a gift — honed during his years as a community organizer and professor of constitutional law — for lending complex ideas immediacy and context.”
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THE WEEKS AHEAD ~ Looking for progress on the coronavirus vaccine rollout and the ongoing Biden presidential transition, and hoping for an end at long last to the democracy-undermining tactics of Trump and his enablers seeking to overturn the results of the November election.
Happy Holidays! Wishing you all in the year ahead good health and growing harmony, in your personal lives and in the world at large.
Take good care of yourselves and stay well … Tom
REMINDER ~ Current Comment will return with issue #14 on January 2nd, 2021. Until then, you can keep up with the articles I’m reading by following me at https://twitter.com/LiberalBuddhist.
The Liberal Buddhist 