Geek show

So I am not actually watching the Republican National Convention, minute by minute on cable TV or even just the hour of prime-time on the broadcast networks. Can't do it. It's not just that I can't listen to so much rhetoric that I disagree with. The ignorance behind the rhetoric makes me crazy and depressed.

But that doesn't stop me from following the convention, in blogs and on Twitter. It's like the pull of a soap opera. I followed "All My Children" with giddy but ironic embarrassment through high school and college. What delicious, outrageous thing would happen next, spun out slowly from Monday through Thursday, with a cliffhanger on Friday to bring you back again after the weekend. 

Nowadays there's reality TV, also spinning out stories for weeks at a time, stories that regardless of the appearance of spontaneity are arranged and even provoked by producers.  I'm not hooked on any of those, which might have as much to do with being too disorganized to remember to watch as it does with revulsion at the values and obsessions of the people on these shows. 

Politics is the spectacle I follow, though it worries me that political news is more about the story than the policies, more about who's winning and losing than about government serving real people. But all my college-educated high-mindedness still leaves me unable to take my eyes off the geek show that is the Republican presidential nomination process.

I don't use the term geek show lightly. My sainted husband, Lon Grahnke, often reminded people that originally the word geek referred to a sideshow performer who chased and caught chickens and bit their heads off. A geek was the lowest form of carnival performer, despised by other performers, who themselves lived outside the boundaries of polite society. 

Lon's knowledge of geek shows would come up in the context of discussions of professional wrestling. Lon was a journalist and a lifelong pro wrestling fan. If he were alive right now, I'm sure he'd be pitching a piece to his editors comparing Donald Trump and his campaign to a pro wrestling narrative.

Lon reported on pro wrestling in the late 1980s, in a way that earned him the trust of both wrestlers and readers. Was it all fake? He never put that question to the guys he interviewed, because, hey, everybody knew it was a, um, heightened version of reality. Lon's stories did not appear in the sports section but in the Chicago Sun Times' entertainment pages. Wrestling was more like live theatre than baseball, performance art for the masses, circus acts on steroids, with narratives punctuated by body slams and blood in the ring, bluster and the accumulation of crass wealth backstage.

The shared public value was dominance--winning. Also, humiliating the opponent. 

And so we arrive at the Republican National Convention, where the phrase "winning the nomination" seems to me to be heard far more often than "nominated for the office of President of the United States." We're watching a celebration of the contest, not a consideration of the responsibility ahead. The RNC and the Republican presidential contest and debates that preceded it have had much more in common with the wrestling ring than with, say, the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Not that those 19th-century guys didn't play to the crowd--they did. They were politicians. But they also relied on reason and logic at a time when the nation's ideals were in serious question. The crowds listened, for hours under the hot summer sun.

Trump's message is about winning, vanquishing foes, making fun of losers. He appeals to the downtrodden by conning them with the dazzle of wealth or the promise of the freedom to say whatever you feel, offend whom you may, rather than with actual policy or plans. It's a geek show. He runs this way and that, catches the chicken and then outrageously bites its head off. He body slams opponents by making fun of them. His surrogates incite chants of "lock her up" against his Democratic opponent. You can't help watching to see what he does next, and this week of screw-up after screw-up, badly handled, has not failed to disappoint.

And then, in a turn of events worthy of the wrestling ring, Ted Cruz, the mortal enemy, takes the stage, seems to be making up with Donald, but in a surprising cynical twist, refuses to endorse him, uses the word conscience, and is booed off the stage. 

How can you not watch? 

When Lon reported on professional wrestling he was always respectful of its fans and his readers. The wrestlers he interviewed were also mindful of fans--after all, they bought the tickets and the merchandise. Pundits and analysts have been busy this year figuring out who the Trump voters are and pointing out that the "Make America great again" slogan appeals to people who are fearful of the future in a world that is changing. They point out that the policies of the elite leadership of the Republican party ignored the realities of its ordinary voters. 

Trump's life history shows that he's perfectly willing to use his brand to dupe fans, with schemes like Trump University or simply by not paying the contractors and small businesses who work on his projects. He's done serious damage to social norms in America and it's hard to imagine how the divisiveness he encourages for his own narcissistic ends can be repaired in the months ahead.

Trump's overblown messaging, his theatricality and spontaneity, are entertaining, mesmerizing even, though he's no more qualified to be president than Hulk Hogan. And he has a lot less heart.

RNC

I keep waiting for the moment when Donald Trump is revealed as the two-bit sham that he is, and people's eyes are opened and there's some big realization that what he's selling is not just snake oil, it's toxins. And everyone holds up just short of going over the cliff, like in a cartoon.

But it doesn't seem to be happening. Demographics, math, polls say he will lose in November, but how does anyone walk back the hateful rhetoric being spooled out in Cleveland tonight? How can anyone think this leads to good government?

I can't watch.

Open hearts

Yet another day of following breaking news about violence against police officers, this time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Another lone gunman walking around with an assault rifle--how could that happen again? How will it not happen again?

I read comments from leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement who condemned the violence--condemned all violence--but did not back down from nor became defensive about peaceful protest against racism. I feel good about their wisdom.

Our only hope is in sharing one another's suffering. It seems a feeble hope, though there is so much suffering to share. Opening our hearts to grief and sadness--well, who wants that? The news cycle has been crummy enough that one could get angry and want to get a sense of control back--might be inspired by a blustering promise to "make America great again."

But that is a call to power. It is not a call to enlightenment, or wisdom, or the way of the cross.

Thinking on these things .... Listening to Thich Nhat Hanh over at onbeing.org

Summer Saturday

As the blogging (almost) every day till my birthday project continues, can I just say that I have nothing to blog about tonight?

Yesterday's attempted coup in Turkey is beyond me. No shocking news today. There was a Black Lives Matter protest here in Oak Park, but I didn't go. The house is a tiny bit tidier than it was yesterday and the overdue library book has been returned. The gas tank is full, and there's gluten-free bread in the refrigerator again. (But I forgot to buy the wheat bread for the rest of us.) There are fresh raspberries and peaches from the farmer's market and three kinds of beans for three-bean salad. I'll have clean clothes to wear this week, and my mother's phone is back on the hook at her condo.

I'd describe all this as quotidian, but that's a pretty fancy word for everyday, day-to-day stuff.

Which is not to say that you can get fresh Michigan raspberries every day--you can't. I love raspberries pretty much however and wherever I find them, but they're never better than when you eat them by the handful from a pressed paper box warmed by the sun at the Farmers' Market.

Grace made perfect

Duct tape, says my son Kris, over at Gronks Finding Grace. He's making choices about duct tape repairs for his ALS. What does he want patched up, patched over, at least for a while? Duct tape repairs are all that modern medicine has to offer these days for ALS.

It's kind of a downer to read about. I sat in the chair waiting to see the eye doctor this afternoon praying over this, but with no words for it.

I'm his mother. I think he's perfect. I always have, from the first moment his scraggly red newborn self was lifted into my tired but surprised embrace. It was a long labor. I'd forgotten the reason for it, but oh my! His four-month-old round-headed smile was perfect. His goofy butt-scoot crawling was perfect. His love for his six-year-old buddies was exemplary. (Is it any wonder there's a whole Gronks Grace team fighting ALS with him?)  His struggle with baseball was perfect. His choice of a special education career was so right for someone so intuitive about quirky kids. His love for his family--his father, his mother, his siblings--makes us all happier, better people.

Praying in words would be mere duct tape--fix this, send that, trying to specify where and how God should make repairs. Duct-taping things together is what the team of specialists at the ALS clinic do, and their work is important to Kris's well-being. Prayer asks for grace, for mercy, for holy presence, for healing and wholeness of the soul. "The Grace catches up to me later," says Kris.

Thank God, still perfect.

Bastille Day, 2016

In moments when my mind is considering all the possible things that can happen, I sometimes think about how so many of the things we do every day require that we trust one another. And by one another, I mean trust our fellow citizens, the ones who are complete strangers.

We're driving cars at 70 miles an hour. Some of us are carrying lethal weapons. We all have it in our power to hurt others, to be completely selfish. And yet we queue up at the grocery store with 15 items or less in our carts. We don't talk during the movie (mostly). We don't spit in the salad bar. We don't push one another over the rails of bridges or onto the subway rail. We stay in our lanes. We try not to lash out in irrational anger against people we don't know. (People we're close to--that's a more complicated story.)

When driving, we don't drive up onto the sidewalk. We don't run into one another with our vehicles.

But now there's Nice.

Seventy people dead in a truck attack. (WTF is a truck attack?) People who were kicking back and watching fireworks and celebrating Bastille Day in a popular vacation spot.

That's a big failure of the social contract.

I was in a crowd similar to that in Nice last Saturday evening, watching people young and old enjoy Latin music and Latin dancing. The outdoor dance floor was packed. Couples on the sidewalk were showing off some fancy steps. My friends and I sat on a blanket with food and drink all around us. We took up a lot of space, but nobody stepped on the corners of our bright orange blanket. Nobody came crashing through the middle, knocking over the pasta salad. Everyone around us seemed to be having fun, and everyone had space in which to enjoy the rhythm and the music and the beautiful summer evening.

"So many people," my Aunt Clara used to wonder. "Where do they all come from?" Think about it that way and it's hard to imagine that all these strangers can coexist together in a big city, reasonably trusting one another.

Until terrorism undermines that trust. That--not the deaths--is the goal, to put everyone on edge, to allow no one to feel safe, to force everyone to deal from fear.

Snipers shooting at police officers also undermine that trust. Racism is a huge blot upon that trust. Inequality and greed threaten trust.

But other things pull us together--suffering, tears, joy, music, what we want for our children, the tenderness we feel toward newborns, the awe we feel when confronting death. These are experiences we share as human beings, and humanity is a very big thing to have in common. It's powerful--look how far we've come. Look how many hearts will reach out to the families in France, to the families of  Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, to the families of the police officers killed in Dallas, to all who wait or watch or pray tonight.

God bless our shared humanity, the humanity Christ has redeemed.

Obama in Dallas

You gotta love a president who starts a speech by quoting St. Paul:

Scripture tells us that in our sufferings, there is glory, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see. Right now, those words test us because the people of Dallas, people across the country are suffering.

Especially if you're a Lutheran, and a Lutheran blogger who spent some time with that passage (Romans 5:3-5) on Trinity Sunday, May 22.

What suffering can do was a theme of President Obama's speech today in Dallas, at the memorial for the five police officers killed on Thursday night at the Black Lives Matter protest. The President talked about suffering and sharing suffering, acknowledging one another's griefs and hardships, how this can lead us to see one another's truth. (Read or watch the speech here.)

He returned to Romans in the middle of the speech:

I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair. I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds.
I know we’ll make because of what I’ve experienced in my own life; what I’ve seen of this country and its people, their goodness and decency, as president of the United States. And I know it because of what we’ve seen here in Dallas, how all of you out of great suffering have shown us the meaning of perseverance and character and hope.

And at the end:

We also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. For all of us, life presents challenges and suffering. Accidents, illnesses, the loss of loved ones; there are times when we are overwhelmed by sudden calamity, natural or man-made. All of us, we make mistakes, and at times we are lost.
And as we get older, we learn we don’t always have control of things, not even a president does. But we do have control over how we respond to the world. We do have control or how we treat one another....

It turns out we do not persevere alone. Our character is not found in isolation. Hope does not arise by putting our fellow man down, it is found by lifting others up.

Gotta run--but I can't add anything to this. Gonna miss this president.