Heeeeere’s Donny
There are few movie lines more memorable than Jack Nicholson sticking his head through a freshly axed bathroom door saying with a devilish smile, “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” The Shining, from which the line comes, is also right up there in the pantheon of scary movies. Well friends, we are in our own scary movie and while I need to substitute Johnny with Donny, the urgency and extreme nature of the threat to us all is just as real as it was in the movie to Jack’s wife hiding in the bathroom.
Rachel Maddow is easily the best known and respected liberal news anchor in America. Maddow has a degree in public policy from Stanford and a Doctorate in political science from Oxford University and that makes her a particularly well informed and thoughtful commentator on the worldwide political scene. She was the highly acclaimed anchor for MSNBC at the 9pm slot for fourteen years (even understudying for a while the strange bedfellow of Tucker Carlson) until she downshifted in doing more writing and podcasts and doing one regular show on Mondays for MSNBC and hosting various election and other political specials. Those of us who got very used to a daily diet of Rachel look forward to our weekly dose on Monday nights. She is a story teller more than a reporter and tonight’s story was as scary as I’ve heard her tell. Her story focused around the warning given to Donald Trump by Judge Juan Merchan about sending him to jail if he once again violates the gag order against which he has already been found ten times to be in contempt of. The quandary is whether he will comply or take this opportunity to make a public point of his disobedience. Her point was very simple and that is that the war on the rule of law and democracy is not coming, but is rather already here and now before and amongst us. Donny’s head is through the bathroom door.
We’ve all heard one version of this story or another over the last year or two. It starts with some obnoxious act by Trump or someone out front in the MAGA movement. The act or comment is so out there and contrary to anything we used to tolerate from politicians or any rational person that we are momentarily shocked, but then we just tsk-tsk and move on with our lives. We are then reminded that we must not become immune to these abnormal outbursts and must recognize them for what they are, a cultural drip of water that is weakening the foundation of our society ever so slowly and almost imperceptibly. Now, after several years of this drip of foul water on our collective souls, we are at a point where fair and well-informed observers like Rachel Maddow can list an astonishing compendium of markers that are a gathering of these societal cracks that have left us cowering in a back bathroom while Donny hacks down the door and finds us hiding and trying to pretend that it all is not really happening. Heeeeere’s Donny!
I am an aficionado of WWII movies. I have always been and this interest runs from the European Theater to the Pacific Theater and also includes all the preludes to war in Europe and elsewhere including and especially the Nazi fixation on their master race theories and the policies, country by country, that they enacted to address their obsession with anti-semitism. I have seen stories about their actions within Germany, in Poland and Austria, in Italy and all across the array of Eastern European and Scandinavian countries not to mention France and the Low Countries of Belgium and the Netherlands. I understand that there is a certain demand pull for these movies, but I also suspect that filmmakers consider it a rich vein of pathos that almost always finds an interested audience. One must ask oneself why after 80-90 years this is still such fascinating stuff to us. I suspect that one reason is that we feel so much more enlightened now that we cannot fathom how this frog could get boiled so slowly and yet so thoroughly before the very eyes of society and even those who were getting boiled, and that it could have happened so recently. Seeing atrocities inflicted on our fellow man hundreds or thousands of years ago is an historical curiosity. Seeing atrocities inflicted during our lifetime or the lifetime of our parents is shocking, no matter where in the world it occurred. And what probably amazes us most is that it happened right in front of our eyes as we starred in disbelief.
I have written before about Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War and the attempt it makes at explaining how we could let the world geopolitical situation get so out of hand in militaristic terms. There is probably a comprehensive cultural version of that story that chronicles how we allowed our collective humanity to pervert itself and erode to the point of non-recognition. We are amazed to think it could even happen. And yet, what Rachel Maddow is telling us is that while we were busy watching these historical movies and tsk-tsking our parent’s generation for what they allowed to occur, the same thing has happened to us and is still degenerating our souls even further as I write. Hitler and to a lesser extent, Mussolini, and their extreme views and acts, were visible to all and yet it was the acceptance of their followers that stands as the amazing reality. Aberrant behavior is not new to the world, but when it becomes infectious and it turns a whole society into an aberrant civilization (and I use that word loosely), that is thankfully something that is less common, but does happen. We find ourselves in that place right now.
Take 100 statements, spoken or texted via social media, from Donald Trump and examine them. Ask yourself for each and every one whether you find some sentiment which can only be taken as abhorrent and grossly negative at a societal level. Set those aside and review the rest and ask which of them has anything positive to commend it. Set those aside. If you have any left at all, and you may well not, ask yourself of the others how much you agree in totality with the sentiment it reflects. I have rarely seen a comment or inference from Donald Trump that I find in the least bit agreeable. It is surprising just how much of what comes out of Trump is objectionable and that he has gotten to a point where he is unafraid, ney, encouraged, to say these things. It is perhaps even more surprising that we are unfazed by their continued ejection.
We are on the brink, the very precipice of a potentially dark moment in history when the darker forces of human nature are allowed to prevail against our better angels. It is happening all around us, every day. The water is boiling and I am starting to smell frog. It has taken the form of attacks on human rights such as reproductive rights, voting rights and the very civil rights we had made so much progress to enact. It has taken the age-old form of the worship of wealth, both absolute and excessive and also on a zero-sum basis, above all else. It has taken the form of fear and suspicion of our fellow man both at the border and in distant and presumed belligerent lands. The basis for the fear and suspicion can be religious, racial, ethnic, sexual, sexual orientation or just broadly cultural. Anything different, diverse, inclusive or not will do. The fear mongers have found their moment and they are standing tall in exploiting all of this for their own purposes, and worst of all, they have gotten much traction from the susceptible followers among us. It may be Donny’s head and distorted smile that we see through the axed door, but it is the legion of zombies that are behind him in the shadows who will devour our holy souls. We have no advantage other than the need of the movement to announce its coming to us. Heeeeere’s Donny!