Agitators and Agita

Street Fighting Nebbish Summer

Is it 1968? Or 2020? Surely, the meme of the week. Of course, there are other options—1776, 1848, none of the above?—but we live within ledes and takes and “breaking” news. Gotta be one year or the other. In 1968—as the commentariat, including me, has been reminding people—violent student demonstrators, including those at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, helped tip the election to Richard Nixon. In 2020, there were vast demonstrations, mostly peaceful, in support of Black Lives Matter and expressing outrage at the Minneapolis police who killed George Floyd. Trump tried to exploit it. Remember his Bible in front of St. John’s church gambit? But it didn’t work. The demos didn’t matter all that much in the end. So which will it be this year?

I am vehemently undecided on this. There will be other issues, beyond violence in the streets. Gaza may fade as a casus belli, especially if the cease fire and regional peace Biden is cleverly seeking comes to fruition. But something else may blow up. Inflation could linger. There may be trouble at the border. There may be cataclysmic climate events that finally force a reckoning on that issue. Something may change drastically, like the health of the candidates. These are two old men. As a fellow codger, let me say: Age weighs on you, psychologically. There’s always something; some unfamiliar muscle barking or cramping, some unexpected pain in the chest—is it indigestion or a heart attack? It takes more energy to perform the routine ceremonies of life.

The presence of Trump makes everything more fraught and vivid—and confusing. He’s up all night, tweeting; napping by day in the court room, gorging cholesterol at the 21 Club. He doesn’t look good. I’m sure he’ll have some choice epithets if the protests at the Democratic Convention turn violent, but have his imprecations lost their sting? You can’t tell whether Trump means what he is saying or just playing around. In a terrific New Yorker piece, Susan Glasser expresses astonishment that Trump told a Milwaukee newspaper—pretty much flat out (but with his usual wriggle room)—that he won’t accept the results of the election if he loses. Actually, Glasser’s astonishment is with the media for not making more of it. She’s right, but the media’s reaction is understandable: What Trump said isn’t exactly news. He said the same thing, and a lot of other awful things, to Time Magazine this week. And he’s said similar stuff in the past. He said—joked?—that he’d be a dictator on day one. But only day one, if you can believe that. He is not unfamiliar with the incendiary thought, the extra-legal action, the authoritarian stroll. His flip, slipshod demagoguery is baked in the cake. It’s assumed. The difference in 2024 is, he won’t be in charge of the government. He can call out the Proud Boys and other ozempic-eschewing patriots, but Biden will have the Army…and the experience of 2020 to prepare for any mayhem.

Protests, there will be. There may be casualties. It would be nice if we could socialize the process, in a distinctly American way: turn street-fighting into a theme park, like those paintball battlefields. Indeed, I have a proposal: Why not organize a catharsis? Why not set aside a nice big park, or quad, and let the right-wing militias and left-wing Hamas-huggers have a go at each other in a mid-summer cage fight, keffiyahs v. MAGA hats? Televise it. Have Jim Nantz and Tony Romo do commentary. The merch would be epic. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the two sides would wind up chanting “Genocide Joe” together, as they did at a demonstration in North Carolina this week. The extremists have more in common with each other than they do with the sane center.

To Wit: My Congressman Jamaal “Fire Alarm” Bowman is distributing literature claiming that his Democratic primary opponent Westchester County Executive George Latimer is getting support from, gosh, Republicans. Also AIPAC. I never thought I’d be on the same side as AIPAC, which once tried to bar me from their annual convention, but then Jamaal Bowman is all too often on the same side as Marjorie Taylor Greene—as he was in voting against funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Bowman’s atrocity of this particular week was voting against the largely symbolic bill that would put the teaching anti-Semitism in the same league as teaching racism in the schools. Guess what? Greene voted against that, too. (No surprise and no secret: I’m supporting Latimer.)

Back to Glasser: She’s right about the media’s absence of outrage about Trump’s prospective attempt to try, once again, to overthrow our democracy. But I don’t know. It’s kind of like the Stormy Daniels case—does our predictable (and rather comfortable) outrage over Trump’s mortal sleaziness work to his advantage or disadvantage? I fear the former—although there is an order and tradition to the court proceedings that is very unTrump-like. It works to his disadvantage. There is a democratic authority to the arena; a stern but fair Judge, a jury of citizens to hear the Stormyness . Trump is enduring the humiliation of the rightfully accused. It shows. It shows in his rallies. Will there come a point where Trump’s head actually explodes at one of these things? Already, on several occasions, he’s come close to babbling incoherently. And once again, a heartfelt plea to the networks: Show more of Trump. Show entire speeches. Give the public a great big dose of the guy. He’s gaga…and, having attended more than a couple of his speeches in the past, I find that he can get very boring very quickly if you’re not a member of the cult.

Another tidbit from Glasser: Why on earth are Democrats going to Chicago anyway? Protests will be happening anywhere the Dems pitch up, but protests in Chicago beg the use of archaic but incendiary videotape. Skulls cracked in Lincoln Park. And furthermore, the city has a Squad-Like left-wing mayor, Brandon Johnson, who presides over a mess, who once actually supported defunding the police and has “close ties”with Democratic Socialists of America—a living advertisement for one of Trump’s talking points: The Democrats are just a bunch of commies. Now there are very nice cities across the country, including some in red or purple states—North Carolina, Georgia—that have been successfully governed by moderate Democrats. Why isn’t this convention being held in Atlanta?

One more outrage on offer this week. The estimable Jeff Goldberg, editor of The Atlantic, takes a swipe at former Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman for not supporting the impeachment of Orange Pitbull in 2021. I know Portman and respect him, and think he’s an awfully nice guy, so my first reaction was: Is this necessary? Taking aim at Portman, now gone from the public fray, is sort of like Kristi Noem shooting her dog, an odd extraneity. But Goldberg is right: If we get an Orange Redundancy, it will be because Republicans who know better didn’t stand up and kick him out. In Portman’s case, it was particularly appalling because he was leaving anyway. I would put Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, another fine man, in that same category. What’s up, guys? Are you looking for jobs in the next Trump Administration? Given what happened to good people like John Kelly and James Mattis and—speaking of lap dogs—Mike Pence in Trump I, why would you even want to risk the shards of your reputations working for Donald? This Republican Party isn’t yours. Time to stand up and say so. And start working publicly for the restoration of principled conservatism.

In conclusion, let me turn the podium over to another Republican, Peggy Noonan, who visited Columbia University this week and was appalled. Noonan is worried that—to use another canine metaphor—our extraordinary country is in the process of screwing the pooch. So am I. Peggy concludes:

Everyone is tired of disorder. Our culture, our politics, our flailing media world—everything seems chaotic, on the edge of something.

The Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at relative peace with itself and said: Wake up! The Hamas demonstrations come to a country that hasn’t been at peace with itself in a long time. It watched, and thought: More jarring hell from kids with blood in their eyes making demands.

The people of my liberal-left town [New York] were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let people clean things up.

People want peacefulness. They want to go about their lives. It’s not too much to ask.

One hopes.

On the other hand…

One way to promote comity is to bring disparate people together in a spirit of friendship and curiosity. The American Exchange Project, which I’ve promoted here before, does that. Good Morning America did a lovely piece about the program this week. Watch this, and you’ll feel better—or, at least, a little less sick to your stomach. If you do, send them some money—as I have—to grow the program.