Two Harvard professors wrote an article in Sunday's NY Times, "Is Our Democracy in Danger?"
One salutary effect of Donald Trump is he has freed me to say this: These pundits may be Harvard professors, but they don't know what they are talking about.
Professor Steven Levitsky has "studied" Latin American countries where they adopted the U.S. Constitution and nevertheless saw a collapse of democratic government. Professor Daniel Ziblatt studied failed governments in Italy and they have "identified" warning signs of the displacement of democratic rule by authoritarian regimes and they see the signs now, in Donald Trump and in the "alarming glimpse at political life in the absence of partisan restraint."
There are so many things about "Nashville" which make one wonder and think but one theme is about the meaning of competence and talent. The one political operative you see is played by Michael Murphy and he is slick and manipulative and focused but he is in no sense talented. He is a grifter in a suit, like most politicians.
Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is an unctuous country star, married to a woman you never see, but accompanied by his "companion" played by Barbara Baxley.
Baxley's character worshiped the Kennedy brothers, and she worked for their election in Tennessee and still burns with resentment at their defeat in that state, and she knows the exact vote count for Kennedy and for Nixon in the 1960 campaign. You look at her, at how deeply she felt about the Kennedys, and you are able to see the depth of feeling of people who feel so strongly either for Trump or against him. There is something about certain public figures which resonates in some deep, dark places in the souls of their countrymen. But watching "Nashville" you can appreciate the deep absurdity of this sort of identification, of this sort of hero worship and of the opposite.
People were weeping in Havana when Castro died. They wept when Kennedy died. Citizens in the audience invest in the actors on the stage-- who are really no more than ideas to them--with great personal meaning.
What is so mesmerizing about "Nashville," written by Joan Tewkesbury, is the depiction of clearly different levels of competence and talent.
One tip: watch the DVD with the captions--the dialogue is often lost behind ambient noise.
At one end of the competence spectrum is Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) who cannot carry a tune. There are the merely competent who parlay what small talent they have into disproportionate success, like Haven Hamilton, who barks out maudlin pieces pitched to pander pablum. And then there is the genuine talent, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley), who is simply head and shoulders above everyone else, but she is so neurotic she is barely functional.
The really stunning experiences come when people you've been following, but who have not actually been allowed to speak (or sing) in any significant way, finally get their moments. So Keith Carradine (Tom) rocks the screen when he gets his chance, but most surprisingly is Mary, the wife of the trio's leader, who has fallen in love with Tom, opens her mouth and finally performs at an impromptu scene in a club, and she is really good, jaw droppingly good. But, of course, the biggest surprise of all is Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), who has been trying to be heard the entire movie and finally gets her chance to belt out the tune you've been barely aware of, which has wafted through scene after scene, "It Don't Worry Me," which was actually written by Keith Carradine.
Of course, what this song says, what the movie says, is in America, we have not been free, at least for long intervals, but it doesn't really matter to people who are consumed in their own problems, trying to just get by or to just maintain. It don't worry me that I ain't free.
Beyond all this, is the fact that Christina Raines, who plays Mary, in real life,
gave up her stage career at the age of 40, went to nursing school and works now as a dialysis nurse. She gave up one form of competence for another.
And that brings us to the Brooklyn Bridge. What "Nashville" tells us is it really doesn't matter how bizarre the people at the top are, as long as the masses have people who keep the wheels turning and the machines oiled. These are the necessary but not the sufficient elements in society. For a nation to flourish, it does need leadership, competent leadership. The men who conceived of and built the Brooklyn bridge John Roebling and his son, Washington Roebling, were indispensable.
We can limp along without a bridge to Brooklyn, without Medicare, without Social Security, without health insurance for a third of our people, but we need smart, thoughtful and competent leaders to get the nation, together, to greatness.
If you want to look for historical precedents, there is Germany during the Third Reich. There you had a highly competent population, lots of engineers who were able to get the machines of war moving and sustained against overwhelming odds. The trouble was, the leader, der Furher, took all that competence, that well engineered machine and drove it straight off a cliff.
In our presence circumstances, we may be seeing something different, the well oiled machine broken by a group of incompetents heading the important departments of Health and Human Services, Defense, Interior and Energy, unrestrained by a feckless President.
One salutary effect of Donald Trump is he has freed me to say this: These pundits may be Harvard professors, but they don't know what they are talking about.
Professor Steven Levitsky has "studied" Latin American countries where they adopted the U.S. Constitution and nevertheless saw a collapse of democratic government. Professor Daniel Ziblatt studied failed governments in Italy and they have "identified" warning signs of the displacement of democratic rule by authoritarian regimes and they see the signs now, in Donald Trump and in the "alarming glimpse at political life in the absence of partisan restraint."
Throughout the article they make the case that the concept of a loyal opposition has been essential to the functioning of our republic, with reference to "The Broken Branch" by Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein, which documents how legislators from the two parties fail to cooperate in ways they once did.
These two men clearly spend the majority of their time reading books and papers by other academics, but they do not read much history, and they don't get out of Cambridge much. When you read about the way Jefferson and Adams behaved, you can be reassured the country can survive. Adams made it illegal to criticize the government--the Sedition Act. Jefferson tried to get his former Vice President convicted of treason, not once but several times.
It's true, we just haven't seen his particular brand of idiocy since Joe McCarthy, at least not in an office holder above the level of Congress. We have seen lots of Congressmen who are at least as stupid (e.g. Louie Gohmert of Texas, and any Republican member of the House Select Committee on Investigations.)
The fact is, it is the exceptional time when government attracts really smart, talented people in any significant numbers.
But there is hope. I've been reading David McCullough's book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and watching "Nashville" Robert Altman's masterpiece about, well, about America and what makes it what it is.
America has never been "great" in the sense that Finland or Sweden are great, but it has been great in the way America can be great.
"Nashville" was released in 1975, just as the Vietnam war was winding down, 7 years after the assassinations of 1968 and it follows a politician whose words you hear but you never see. He is a right winger with all sorts of conspiracy beliefs, a proto Tea Party type who believes government is run by inept lawyers and who believes the Catholic Church ought to be taxed. The sound truck broadcasting his homey words weaves through scenes filled with a cast of 24 characters who are trying to eek out a living or maintain their place in the world of Nashville, Tennessee--successful Country and Western stars, wannabes, no talents, unknown talents, people sleeping in cars, or in rooming houses, groupies sleeping with anyone in a band.
There are so many things about "Nashville" which make one wonder and think but one theme is about the meaning of competence and talent. The one political operative you see is played by Michael Murphy and he is slick and manipulative and focused but he is in no sense talented. He is a grifter in a suit, like most politicians.
Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is an unctuous country star, married to a woman you never see, but accompanied by his "companion" played by Barbara Baxley.
Baxley's character worshiped the Kennedy brothers, and she worked for their election in Tennessee and still burns with resentment at their defeat in that state, and she knows the exact vote count for Kennedy and for Nixon in the 1960 campaign. You look at her, at how deeply she felt about the Kennedys, and you are able to see the depth of feeling of people who feel so strongly either for Trump or against him. There is something about certain public figures which resonates in some deep, dark places in the souls of their countrymen. But watching "Nashville" you can appreciate the deep absurdity of this sort of identification, of this sort of hero worship and of the opposite.
People were weeping in Havana when Castro died. They wept when Kennedy died. Citizens in the audience invest in the actors on the stage-- who are really no more than ideas to them--with great personal meaning.
What is so mesmerizing about "Nashville," written by Joan Tewkesbury, is the depiction of clearly different levels of competence and talent.
One tip: watch the DVD with the captions--the dialogue is often lost behind ambient noise.
At one end of the competence spectrum is Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) who cannot carry a tune. There are the merely competent who parlay what small talent they have into disproportionate success, like Haven Hamilton, who barks out maudlin pieces pitched to pander pablum. And then there is the genuine talent, Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakeley), who is simply head and shoulders above everyone else, but she is so neurotic she is barely functional.
The really stunning experiences come when people you've been following, but who have not actually been allowed to speak (or sing) in any significant way, finally get their moments. So Keith Carradine (Tom) rocks the screen when he gets his chance, but most surprisingly is Mary, the wife of the trio's leader, who has fallen in love with Tom, opens her mouth and finally performs at an impromptu scene in a club, and she is really good, jaw droppingly good. But, of course, the biggest surprise of all is Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), who has been trying to be heard the entire movie and finally gets her chance to belt out the tune you've been barely aware of, which has wafted through scene after scene, "It Don't Worry Me," which was actually written by Keith Carradine.
Of course, what this song says, what the movie says, is in America, we have not been free, at least for long intervals, but it doesn't really matter to people who are consumed in their own problems, trying to just get by or to just maintain. It don't worry me that I ain't free.
Beyond all this, is the fact that Christina Raines, who plays Mary, in real life,
And that brings us to the Brooklyn Bridge. What "Nashville" tells us is it really doesn't matter how bizarre the people at the top are, as long as the masses have people who keep the wheels turning and the machines oiled. These are the necessary but not the sufficient elements in society. For a nation to flourish, it does need leadership, competent leadership. The men who conceived of and built the Brooklyn bridge John Roebling and his son, Washington Roebling, were indispensable.
We can limp along without a bridge to Brooklyn, without Medicare, without Social Security, without health insurance for a third of our people, but we need smart, thoughtful and competent leaders to get the nation, together, to greatness.
If you want to look for historical precedents, there is Germany during the Third Reich. There you had a highly competent population, lots of engineers who were able to get the machines of war moving and sustained against overwhelming odds. The trouble was, the leader, der Furher, took all that competence, that well engineered machine and drove it straight off a cliff.
In our presence circumstances, we may be seeing something different, the well oiled machine broken by a group of incompetents heading the important departments of Health and Human Services, Defense, Interior and Energy, unrestrained by a feckless President.
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteWell Trump and his gang may not kill Democracy as we know it-but they will surely beat it to a bloody pulp. At the end of his tenure we will still be a Democracy-but how many steps backwards will we have taken?
I share the concern of the authors of the NYTimes piece when they talk about Trump's potential response to a terror attack, riots or large protests. They see the "norms of Presidential restraint at risk"..ya think?? As they point out Trump is a serial norm-breaker, so it's unfortunately likely he will test the boundaries of democracy-especially for certain minority groups-all in the name of "keeping America safe"...So ironic given he's the greatest threat to that notion..
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteFor me things are beginning to crystallize. For the past 3 years I've been going to work every day and experiencing life and thinking (or, more accurately, emoting) in Trump America. These folks simply do not share the basic thought processes my friends and family have absorbed and incorporated into the DNA of their brains, which starts with a concept of how you develop an opinion, the rudiments of analysis and argument. The basic steps of "If...then," of marshaling evidence to support an argument we all learned in grade school--simply not there. It's hard to describe exactly how they acquire their opinions, but for them, Trump is exactly like them. We haven't had someone from this strata in the Presidency in living memory. It will be an experiment.
Phantom