Distraction

I have been following this week's political events more closely than I normally do. And I should have written things down as they occurred to me, because I can't for the life of me remember exactly what I wanted to say about McCain and Bush and Kelly and #metoo and all of the rest of it. I suppose that I'll just write through the weekend on and off, and I'll eventually get to a point. Or maybe I won't. You've been warned. Anyway, it's just been an interesting week, for lots of reasons. All of a sudden, I live in a world in which John McCain and George W. Bush are my heroes.

All day yesterday, I heard and read stories about John Kelly's "defense" of President Trump. And I suppose it was a defense, in the way that you might defend a friend who drunkenly drives onto someone's front lawn and takes out the mailbox and part of the porch, and you say "Hey, he didn't kill anyone!"

So anyway, I've been following the political news cycle this week. I even watched part of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night. And I can't stand Lawrence O'Donnell. And he did exactly what I'd have expected. He extracted the tiniest thread that could tie Kelly's speech to racism and sexism, and he pulled as hard as he could, claiming that "empty barrel," which was really just a garden variety insulting and demeaning and unworthy of a White House Chief of Staff way to describe a Congresswoman, however grandstanding and cynical she is (and she is both), as an explicitly racist and sexist slur. So now we're expected to accept that old-time Ross Perot-style down-home aphorisms like "The empty barrel makes the most noise" are always and everywhere sexist or racist when used by a man to insult a woman, or by a white person to insult a person of color.

Even O'Donnell knows that this isn't true. On the other hand, I agreed with him just a tiny bit when he said that he doesn't remember the world that Kelly recalled, a world in which women were "sacred," because I don't really remember that world either. Kelly and O'Donnell are a little older than I am, but not that much.  And it's also worthwhile to point out that a world in which women are "sacred" excludes the possibility of a White House Chief of Staff insulting a Congresswoman during a press briefing. It also, of course,  excludes the possibility of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.

Apparently, there's video now that backs the Congresswoman's claim that Kelly lied about her remarks at the FBI dedication in Florida. I'm not going to watch it, because I really hate watching videos online. I'm also not going to watch it because 1. It might show that she's telling the truth 2. It might show that he's telling the truth, and 3. It doesn't really matter.  Or it does matter, I suppose, but the larger issue, which is the total domination of political debate by mean-spirited one-up-manship and disingenuous fake outrage and bad faith and flat-out dishonesty on both (all) sides will not change one bit if I force myself to watch the video to figure out the truth of this particular little he-said she-said. It doesn't matter.

(And on the subject of he-said she-said, I guess that we've finally reached critical mass. If the questions are "how long does it take before people will believe women who say that they have suffered sexual harassment or worse?" and "how many women have to accuse a man before people believe that he actually is a sexual predator?" then the answers usually are "years and years" and "a shitload." But I say "critical mass," because the Weinstein scandal might actually change things a little bit. The timing could have been better, of course. A year ago, maybe a #metoo hashtag campaign could have changed the election results.)

So yes, Kelly "defended" Trump. He also pointed out--indirectly, but clearly--that Trump has never sacrificed anything for anyone, has nothing but contempt for women, and isn't smart or sensitive enough to understand well-meaning advice on how to talk to a grieving military widow (Hint: Maybe don't repeat the "he knew what he was getting into" part verbatim, with no additional context).  With friends like that, I suppose Trump doesn't need any (more) enemies.

Masha Gessen suggests (the essay as a whole is a little extreme, as might be expected of a person born in the Soviet Union) that Kelly seems to have little respect for the vast majority of Americans who have never served in the military. One one hand, I understand Kelly's anger.  It's a problem that we have been at war for 16 years now, and most of us live life every day without even thinking about the war(s) or the people who are fighting them, or their families. On the other hand, it's just stupid to suggest that the military is the only place where people sacrifice and serve and even risk their lives for the benefit of others, and John Kelly doesn't seem stupid to me, so I wonder what else he was getting at.

It's almost 6:30 on Sunday night now, and I never did come to the point, because I never figured out what it is. My son went to his high school's homecoming game on Friday night. He and a group of classmates made t-shirts, each with a single letter painted on the front, and they sat together to form "Class of 2019." My son was inordinately pleased to be wearing the "F." In two years, most of them will be freshmen in college, but some of them--maybe even my son--will be in uniform. That has nothing to do with everything that happened last week, except that it does, somehow.  We still don't really know what happened to those four soldiers in Niger, do we?