On the Condescensions of Streep

According to Roger Cohen of the New York Times:

"The issues that afflict the economy — rising inequality, stagnant middle-class incomes, marginalization — are not enough to explain Americans’ decision to leap off a cliff and entrust their fate to a collection of billionaires and ex-generals under the diktat of a thin-skinned showman of conspicuous 'cruelty and ignorance,' in the words of Garrison Keillor."

So if all that is not enough, what else does it take to explain the paroxysm of spite and vandalism that is vaulting a rabid frothing ferret toward the highest office of our sick and suffering nation?

Well, according to Cohen, and so many boobs who claim to speak for middle America, we can blame the trimpification of America on the bicoastal libtard cultural elite.

The claim seems to be that if these glittering white wine sippers weren't so out of touch with the struggles of ordinary Americans who don't live in cities, then the good people of the prairies might have held their noses and given Hillary one last chance to fix a broken system. Never mind that this is a system to which she has accommodated herself (so thoroughly and so professionally) throughout her entire long career.

Really Roger?

What does being "in touch" with such people really mean? How does Meryl Streep offend them, by pointing out that trimp (as an obvious and indelible matter of public record) did indeed publicly mock a handicapped person just trying to do his job? How do liberals insult the salt of the earth by claiming that aging Red States receive more federal expenditures from Washington than they send in via their taxes? How does anyone injure them by fighting to protect their Social Security, MediCare, and MedicAid?

Is it because it hurts their pride to be reminded that we all depend on one another? Is it because it injures their "honor" that they may need the same types of support and services people with different skin colors also might need?  Is it because they want to be seen as brave and independent even though they are impaired by (somewhat) rational fears of crime, terrorists and unemployment?  Does it have anything to do with how somebody somewhere might seem to be walking into the wrong bathroom or holding hands with a person who might have the same nasty bits inside their pants?

Only an idiot would deny too many Americans are suffering. The victims include those among the younger, more urban populations who can suffer because of poverty, insecurity, racial hatred, fear, the cultures of crime and drugs, and a crippling lack of access to good education or meaningful work. Also included are people among older, more rural, populations who endure poverty, insecurity, fear, perceived racial bias, vulnerability to crime and drug culture, and a crippling lack of access to good education or meaningful work.

Obviously there is suffering. And, nearly as obviously, this is shared suffering. But the key word here does not seem to be "shared". The key word remains "suffering".

Except in depictions in art - and very rare real life occurrences (miracles) - suffering only rarely ennobles the human spirit - even when that suffering is survived. Suffering is too easily and too often glibly conflated with challenge and adversity. But suffering is, by definition, pain one tries to endure when there is no meaningful hope and no genuine comfort.

As the parent of any child - or any survivor of deep depression - may know, some suffering is transient. Maybe most suffering, and perhaps all of it, is only temporary especially if one takes into account the mercy of death. But when one feels helpless to offer meaningful hope or comfort, suffering with all its hopelessness is contagious. This is probably true of any contact with any victim who suffers - or even seems to suffer- no matter how brief the contact.

But if the defining characteristic of suffering is hopelessness (very akin to "helplessness") then the imperative to be of use militates that we, in certain ways, must inure ourselves to the suffering of others - even the suffering of those most dear. This is the carapace of the nurse, the nun, the surgeon, the teacher, the genuine helper who may, for a brief time, sit and share the despair of the sufferer, but who then must soldier on - or otherwise be of no use in this or any other case of suffering.

This is never easy - not even in institutional settings (such as hospitals and families) where certain distinctions are made and maintained between the sufferers and their "helpers". Out in the wild world, though, things are ever much more dicey.

"Killary" lost only because so few people made it to the polls. Some, sulking like armchair Achilles, stayed away voluntarily. Far too many though were kept away by the malicious means of hacks and manipulators seeking the short term benefits of voter suppression. Only a minority of those who actually voted did so for trimp. And of that minority only a tiny (but viciously vocal) splinter still actively participates in the obtuse choir of cacophony that feigns to find any words against their swindler a personal affront.

But those who sullenly pulled questionable levers for the Moronic Marsupial of Mal-I-Guano have some reason to resent preaching or scolding from those who, in public, appear more careless and free. This is not anything deserving of mockery anymore than it merits the insults of pity or sympathy. From us they want silence and, perhaps, some time to regain their bearings undistracted by supercilious jibes and accusations. And they are justified in the sense that no one has the right or the standing to pose as superior or "all knowing" compared to anyone else. 

 Our problem though is that this is not the whole story.

Out in the wild world, no one ever has the whole story - if there ever was (or will be) one story to be had. trimpulists love to remind us of this as a more genteel way to tell us to shut the fuck up. Out in the wild world we all must take turns leading and following, helping and being helped, learning and teaching, taking and giving. It's a swinging square dance with more than one "dance addled" caller.

So let us like Streep not call attention to the private anguish of those, who (by their vote, their influence, or their inaction) helped "electorate" our hateful toddler. Instead let's just try to remember how someone, through no merit or fault of their own, can become the emblem of future abuse and atrocity that we must try to prevent.

Oh, and by the way, Fuck You, trimp!