Fascism in America, Backlash in Boston, Happiness in Slow Swing
This Week: Would you recognize fascism in America? — with James Carroll, Wendy Kaminer, Peniel Joseph, Nikhil Singh, Richard Cohen, Adam Fitzgerald, Marimba Hammond. Listen today at 2 pm on WBUR or anytime on our website.
Holy Rats In A Trap, Batman! At the end of another exhausting, head-spinning week in Trumplandia, the depressing polls seem to confirm what Steve Bannon and Donald Trump sense with their bat radar: Nothing Trump said or did last week cost him any meaningful support with his tribe of true believers. Bannon has always insisted that democrats just don’t understand Trump and that they continue to underestimate his appeal, and even after Trump’s latest terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week, it’s still probably the case, alas. As bad an apple as Steve Bannon is, he’s a savvy political operator; he just got tripped up by the third rail of American politics, like lots before him. We’re about to find out what Trumpism looks like without its Machiavelli, and let’s admit it — we’re going to stay tuned to this reality series, even binge on it, to see who comes out on top in the West Wing and whether Darth Sideous is more dangerous inside or outside, now that, as he says, the Trump presidency we fought for and won is over.
Our guests this week were passionate about the news from Charlottesville and the miserable truth and history that it forced on us. The revelation, Jim Carroll said, if we needed one, is the criminal character of western culture that’s hardwired into our DNA. You can see it in the video and photos from last weekend, in those despicable chants, in that creepy Vice documentary, and then finally in the spectacle at Trump Tower on Tuesday with our president openly supporting white supremacy. Adam Shatz wrote in the LRB: ”Trump is so hollow a person, so impulsive a leader, that it’s easy to miss the great paradox of his presidency: that a cipher of a man has revealed the hidden depths, the ugly unmastered history of the country he claims to lead.”
Chris summoned the moral from Camus’s Plague: the bubonic plague is never finished; the return of fascism in the 21st century could arise anywhere. In the last lines of the novel Camus has his doctor saying:
“ the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good. It can bide its time for decades, slumbering in furniture and linen. It waits patiently in bedrooms, in cellars, trunks, handkerchiefs, old papers. Perhaps the day will come when, for the affliction and instruction of mankind, the plague will rouse up its rats again and send them out to die in a happy city.
Zach Goldhammer:
A bunch of members of the OS crew showed up for the counter-protests in Boston this weekend—where the so-called “free speech” advocates were thoroughly routed something like 40 to 40,000!
I was there marching with the socialist contingent, which met up in front of Roxbury Community College and made the long, slow, hot walk up to the common. One of the figures leading and cheering the crowd on was Khury Petersen-Smith—who was the to-the-left-of-Bernie guest on our first program covering the socialist baby boom in 2016.
I was there with another of the guesst from that program, Tim Barker, now also my roommate in Somerville.
There weren’t conflicts or confrontations that I witnessed directly—though there were reports of a few scuffles and police arrests. But the image that struck me most was after I left the main march and saw two, isolated Antifa demonstrators walking down Tremont, slowly trailed by a police car.
On the back of their black hoodies was a sign quoting our friend and guest, Dr. Cornel West: “ANTIFA saved our lives in Charlottesville”
Overall, it was an inspiring scene in Boston, but we shouldn’t forget that our city still has a losing record on these issues. Another new hero, transcendentalist wonder woman Lydia Maria Child, knew it well back in the day and wrote about it long before some of her more famous abolitionists friends. Our friend and LMC chronicler Lydia Moland published wrote this piece in the Globe yesterday.
For now, call us the Comeback City.
We’re Listening to:
Chris Lydon: Nothing to do with anything, but… I have an all-time fave song in my head this week, so listen up to “Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe.” It requires a miracle in every performance, to make a verrrrry slooooow song swing — with passion.
It was a Harold Arlen / Yip Harburg addition to the movie “Cabin in the Sky” (1943) from the redemption fantasy with an all-black-cast on Broadway (1940). On film Ethel Waters played the wronged but loving woman who sings the song about Joe.
I melt at pianist Erroll Garner’s concert version of the tune. The greatest of the “girl singers” recorded it — most spectacular and Wurlitzerly was Sarah Vaughn, Ella is fine, Peggy Lee okay; Bette Midler loved it. But perfection with this song is Abbey Lincoln — with Sonny Rollins and a flawless Miles Davis rhythm section: Wynton Kelly (p), and Paul Chambers (b).
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We’re taking a breather for the next two weeks, working on new shows for the fall and hitting the beach for a couple days.
Stay strong!
Mary, Zach, Chris and the OS resistance.
