Travelogue 1170 – 17 February
A Quote from Mel
Part Five

Polite and softening language are standard parts of the curriculum in Business English. Polite language shows respect. You say, “would you please?” instead of “give me that!” because it establishes respect. It lends power to your counterpart, establishes equality and camaraderie.

More important is the softening language: “I’m afraid that won’t be possible” and “we were thinking differently” instead of “never going to happen.” It signals regret and a willingness to negotiate. It signals an acknowledgement that adversaries in a negotiation have valid concerns and interests. That keeps people at the table.

Students balk. How is this lesson useful? Why can’t we speak directly? I like being blunt, they say. “Blunt” has become a favourite word of mine. Dutch people deploy it quite frequently, and with pride. Yes, you enjoy being blunt, don’t you? How do you think your interlocutor likes it? Answer: everyone likes it. They know where they stand. Yes, I say, indeed they do. They stand next to someone who will always go through the door first, who will never offer a seat on the Metro, and who is never going to think about a conversation a second time. So how do you think that will influence their business decisions about you moving forward?

I’ve been picking on poor, happy-go-lucky Mel Gibson, who let drop his wide-eyed observation about Trump coming to California after the fires, that it was like daddy arriving, “and he’s taking his belt off.” There is something sweet and innocent about Mel, even when he’s letting these sorts of inanities fly. Rogan and his ilk indulge poor fools like Mel, milking them for every half-thought. The right sets these fools up to be shamans because they live in a stream-of-consciousness dream. In Mel’s press packet, “blurt” is his official verb of attribution. One moment he seems profound, the next we’re cringing. And Mel is just shaking his head at the wonder of it all.

There’s privilege to being a right-wing shaman. You get to shout down your network interviewer with savage righteousness. You get to swagger into government offices, chase employees out, and shut them down. You get to call people names. Not only do you get to victimise innocent people, tearing up their employment or procurement contracts, you get to circle back and call them names, encouraging your bros to rain terror down on them. How cool is that?

“So cool,” murmur the basement-dwellers who idealise Trusk and Mump. They shake their heads with wonder and call them master politicians. In reality, the two co-queens have no idea what politics is. They play to exclusively to their own audience. They reach out a hand to no one. They burn every bridge. There’s no coalition. There are the rich bros, their sweaty shamans, and there is the mob.

Obviously, these guys don’t expect any real election in the future. They have made clear that they think the age of democracy is over. But the people haven’t spoken. Who is tracking all the enemies made in only one month in power? Even among their own audience. Most of their constituency are simple-minded ticket-holders to the circus. What happens when the big tent gets cold because there’s no one manning the heater? What happens when the wild animals get loose because the trainers have taken a NASCAR break? If they start grumbling, is daddy going to take off the belt?

Travelogue 1169 – 11 February
Do I Love?

My country, open plains hours long in the night. They are most dark during my daylight hours here. Underneath the plains, there are glass wires crackling with danger. The little black spiders of someone’s broken psyche are skittering along them, quick with their poison.

I feel something like my Ukrainian students now as I monitor the news from my home country. The news is war news. It’s not as bloody, not so classic in its story structure as the horrible Russian invasion, the empire sending an army to burn villages and kill children. The suffering in the Ukrainian war zones is keen; the story is horrific, and it’s not fair to make the comparison.

But we wait for reports, raids on the cities and on the offices, no sirens going off, just the shuffling of boys with laptops. But the mind of the expat pictures the laying down of bombs, those flowers opening far below across the target zone. And there are casualties. There will be stories of the innocents far afield who died, abandoned by my compatriots who had promised them food or medicine. The stories will emerge, and it will feel like war.

It's always night there for me. The country lies quietly, in something like innocence, prosperous land, alluring for pirates. It tries to sleep, but the raids keep coming, day after day since the inauguration. The King of the Bandits ran for president. He said he wasn’t the bandit; those people were the bandits. People were confused. It’s Kyiv. It’s Topeka. There is definitely war afoot.

Travelogue 1168 – 9 February
A Quote from Mel
Part Four

Form matters. There, I’ve said it. I’m something of an aesthete. I believe in paying attention to how things are done. I was the nerd in university more interested in Renaissance humanism than in the dashing philosophers of other ages. The latter seemed too explosive, too strident. Truth should demonstrate the quality of self-evidence; it only required the subtlest gesture. I was always suspicious of revolutionaries, zealots, and evangelicals. Passion in a cause led to aggression: the truth was required of you, even if it had to be introduced violently. And there is never a third party in these transactions. The purveyor of truth is in charge, simply because truth has authorised all means necessary.

The very urgency of King Dweeb, our South African toy soldier, the very urgency of his agenda is an indictment. It’s the behaviour of the IT guy at work who impatiently pushes you aside and commandeers the keyboard. There’s no pathos or humanity driving it. It’s a screaming neurosis wrapped in plastic. It cannot explain itself. The owner of the social media platform doesn’t know how to communicate human-to human. Hundreds of tweets a day, and he connects with no one.

That’s the trouble with the “genius” label. One skill, refined to absurdity by the white-hot compression of psychological disturbance does not a genius make. It’s only the Trumpian “mandate” at work. Genius in history was not a synonym for success. It was a term for the mind that had transcended our sets of ideas and brought back something really new, and something crystal clear. Leonardo and Einstein gave us visions of life and beauty, art and science, that revolutionised our ways of thinking and seeing. That does not mean they had a ketamine flash, and then aggressively took hold of the wheel of your car. The real genius has the skills of their art, and they also have the skill of inspired communication. It is we, the people, who are moved to respond to their visions.

All of this is so inelegant. A part of me thinks, if only there could be a dictator with some style, I might go in peace. Imagine if Stanley Tucci were a dictator. At least he would make the terror palatable because he was, well, Stanley Tucci. The aesthetics would be right. Even if I didn’t fit the décor and had to go, I could admire it wistfully as the door closed. Instead, we have the clumsy and the ill-formed, the shambling tire salesman with the orange face, and the reptilian, middle-aged boy-prodigy, still locked in a battle with his own adolescence. Everything about them is ugly and carnivalesque, and the insult to injury is the most painful part of losing to them. One’s last word is, “Really?”

Travelogue 1167 – 4 February
A Quote from Mel
Part Three

The MAGA origin story seems to be something like this: Democrats turned evil somewhere in the recent past. Specifically, they became paedophiles en masse, and, in order to cover their sudden predilections, they developed the “deep state”. That’s a sinister name for something, well, sinister, and something defying description. Discussion of it requires the methods of medieval theology. You cannot say what the deep state is, only what it is not. It is ineffable. Since the deep state was engineered by masters of governance and law, then the heroes of the resistance must be unschooled and unsystematic.

Enter Trump, who never really manages to strike a higher note than a drunken bigot at a Midtown bar. Enter the likes of Mel Gibson, who has the same tic as Rudy Giuliani of being amazed by what comes out of his mouth. “It’s like daddy arrived, and he’s taking his belt off.” Mel is the perfect avatar. He’s charismatic. He says whatever comes to mind. He denies evolution. The MAGA movement needs its shamans, the personalities inspired only by spirit and never by logic.

Let’s consider the “genius” of the movement, our friend Elon. I am baffled by the stubborn insistence, even by political foes, that he is a genius. I struggle for signs of it. Of course, the broader Republican movement had always worshipped rich people. The richer they are, the more surely they are “geniuses”. Mean, pushy, avaricious, aggressive, manipulative, even savvy, I can admit. But where are the signs of genius?

Lately, the Great One seems incapable of reasoned thought. I include a few samples: here he affirms that workers in the office is a moral issue. The interviewer tries to throw him a line back to shore – maybe you can refer to productivity as a concrete measure. No, he dismisses it. Then there’s Elon with a goofy smile telling advertisers to go f themselves. What a charming imp! Now he takes peremptory and unlawful action against USAID. He must have a reason. He must have a thoughtful way to communicate his misgivings about USAID and the work they do. A key to business communications is intelligent persuasion. Well …

So this is what falls under the behavioural rubric of genius? Maybe MAGA should stick to the bug-eyed pronouncements of Rudy and Mel.

Travelogue 1166 – 2 February
A Quote from Mel
Part Two

Please, teacher, how can I learn? The question is sincere, but asking it outside class implies one of two things. Either the student wants to do extra work to advance, which is admirable, or the student is thinking magically: class is great, but there must be a quicker way. I answer with the unpopular voice of expertise. There are things you can do, but they are laborious and painful. I offer tips, and I can sense how disappointing they are. If they listen to common sense, they know I am right, and it quiets their anxiety a bit. If they are impatient, they politely thank me, but dismiss what I have said. I am the voice of an entrenched establishment or profession. Even if I believe what I have said, I am blinded by my interests. There are always short cuts. That is the glory of human nature, they think.

I can cite my own failures in the Dutch language, and I often do during class to make them laugh. I have tried some of the new AI programs. I have tried most everything, but haven’t got the time, industry, or intelligence to conquer this language! And that’s where its stands.

People cast about for short cuts, special guidance, insider knowledge, tips and tricks, immersion, miracle treatments, magical links between diet and success. They want their trips to the gym to unlock secret potential. They want to look like movie superheroes because there is a magic to mimicry.

By mastering mimicry, Trump has become the model for mimics. In the back of his followers’ minds is an unsolvable paradox: they know he is not the man he poses as, and yet the pose itself is successful. He is powerful, and he is rich, which corresponds to the pose he has struck. The crimes, duplicity, betrayal, corruption, and Mephistophelean trade of his miserable soul lie in the shadows, occupying the space between the pose and the man, but shadows don’t register in binary thinking. Is he or is he not successful? Is he or is he not our darling orange Jesus?

All the sweaty bros in their Star-Trek-Captain seats at tech companies and behind podcast mics have taken the cue. Self-doubts have vanished as they realise, wait, we are Masters of the Universe! We wasted years feeling guilty because our riches were so obviously coincidence, meanness, happenstance and bullying, landing us on the biggest wave of wealth creation in a hundred years, while we secretly played role games and indulged in fantasies of an age of demi-gods. But look! It was all real! Look at the orange spectre in the White House. It was all real, after all! Where are my num-chuks? Where is my wizard hat? Where is my protein powder? It’s time to roll up our sleeves! We will save this world! There is no death!

Is it wild kismet that one of the MAGA heroes of J6 was the QAnon Shaman with his horns and spear? He wasn’t a bug in the big, weird system, but a feature of the system itself.

Travelogue 1165 – 29 January
A Quote from Mel
Part One

People look to authority. It’s natural. They identify a need, and they cast about for help.

I filled in for a colleague last night, teaching a class of English learners. It was such a nice class. About half the class were new to the Netherlands. All of them were new to English. When you are a beginner in a language, you are helpless. You look to the teacher for help, with a childlike innocence in your eyes. I’ve been there, multiple times. I know what it feels like. I’ve been the student in many language classes; I’ve been the immigrant. Their hopes are high, but the task is overwhelming.

I know that every one of those students has a specific set of reasons for being there. The course a shrewd calculation on their part. Their resources are limited, in both time and money, and this is way they have chosen to spend them. I take that seriously because I know they do. It’s not a frivolous decision to invest in a language. It can be a key to economic freedom, self-sufficiency.

One young man walked me all the way down the stairs after class, asking desperate questions about how he could master the language in the quickest possible way. He had come from Syria. He was married, though very young. He was eager. He believed that English would be instrumental to advancement, through study and through work.

I measure what I say. I have taught for many years. I know what it will take for him, how long it will take. I am positive and supportive. I want him to succeed. But I also have to be clear and transparent. Language study is a long road. I can explain how language learning really happens. There is no magic bullet.

Pundits have created a shorthand analysis for this last American election, repeating that it was all about the price of eggs. But there is precious little being said about prices during the grand Trump 2.0 rollout.

The new American president flies to California to survey the fire damage, and Mel Gibson says in an interview, “It’s like daddy arrived, and he’s taking his belt off.” Setting aside one’s gut reaction to another embarrassing quote from Gibson – wishing briefly one were a daddy who could collect all the microphones in the Republican daycare centre, – there are a few troubling levels to this statement, a statement that no doubt had a few boozy Trump voters cheering.

First is the sentiment that the people need a daddy. If the president is daddy for libs, he is daddy for red states, too. Is that somehow a comfort? The questions it raises about democracy are obvious. It ought to raise psychological questions. The metaphor Mel reaches for as California starts its recovery is, yes, a slimy 78-year-old man giving them all a spanking. Hearing it gives one a shudder. Delivering it and applauding ought to mandate intervention.

Another interpretation of Mel’s gross statement is that, for the gangsters managing this administration, governance is punishment. None of them would have been caught dead voting for assistance for anyone worth less than a hundred million, but those aid systems are a handy stick with which to beat vulnerable libs about the head and shoulders.

They survey the land, from the windows of the country club, and they see no one they want to help. They see only enemies. Is every window a mirror?

Travelogue 1164 – 25 January
Cruelty in Paradise

Before the inauguration, as L.A. was ablaze, Paul Krugman wrote a few articles for his substack analysing the role of California in the nation’s economy. It’s a huge economy, and it contributes mightily into the national pool. Going further, he showed how much more the blue states contribute than the red states, even to the extent that the blues could be said to subsidize the reds. In a quick tally of recent national disasters, it becomes apparent that red states have received much more relief than blues. The blues had not been complaining. Now, red-state Republicans tease California with national relief, holding it up like the treats they are withholding from their younger brothers. They want to attach conditions.

When children do it, we call it bullying. Why change the vocabulary when it’s politics? Who are we fooling? When bullies on the playground do it, they do it because they don’t believe in consequences. Is it different now?

What is behind the rise in public cruelty? I don’t require the chain of events, the blow-by-blow of Trump’s ascent. I want the mass psychology. If we meditate Krugman’s blue-state-red-state story, we understand that red-staters see no consequences to their behaviour. Their blindness operates on several levels. On the level closest to the surface, they are sure that nothing is likely to happen to red-staters for punishing blue states. The very stability of the postwar order has made us doubt even the concept of consequence. Red states will be fine. Disasters are another day, and the Fed is always there. Furthermore, even without their relief, California will be fine, right? It’s all a kind of magic show. Nothing onstage is real.

There’s a deeper level to their motivation, something more significant. The prevalent postwar stability has served to mask the delicacy and complexity of modern society. I see it on the streets. In a city population highly integrated and multi-functional, in which everyone contributes to a dynamic whole, and in which an intricate web of reliance exists, individuals are surprisingly callous and cavalier in their treatment of each other. The woman you push out of the way at the Metro turnstile might be the nurse who treats your child. The man whose music you hate might deliver the parcel you absolutely need to arrive on time. The driver you cut off in traffic might prepare your food. But none of that matters. We take each other for granted, and we have done so for a long time now.

It has gone further. Taking people for granted has advanced to a perverted state of innocence, a belief that we don’t need each other at all. And what does human nature do when liberated from … each other? Apparently, other human beings become as objects to be shunted about like stage furniture. If we judge by the Musk-Trump model, people are to be bought (Greenland), moved out of the way (immigrants), dismissed as inconvenient (inspectors-general), sadistically put in harm’s way (Fauci, Cheney), or made to dance for the price of a few empty promises (J6 protesters).

Liberation! This is the bro-call of the tech lords and the sweaty, right-wing podcast set. How is it that the landscape of their paradise is so arid and joyless and void of love?