A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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Donald Trump and the United States of Amnesia |
By David Corn March 26, 2024 |
Donald Trump speaks at a political rally at Dayton International Airport in November 2022. Michael Conroy/AP |
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In the previous issue of this newsletter, I wrote about Trump Normalization Syndrome—a term I’m trying to popularize and a condition that demands greater recognition—and I observed that a major element of TNS is forgetting. After all, outrageous conduct that endangers American democracy cannot be easily minimalized or ignored, if the details remain fresh in our minds. And Donald Trump and his campaign are banking on the human inclination to cast aside or deemphasize ugly memories—to the extent that they have been absurdly asking voters, “Are you better off now than four years ago?” This is bonkers. Four years ago, we were in the middle of a pandemic that was killing thousands a week—by the end of April 2020, 60,000 Americans had died—and crushing the economy. It was a time of fear and food lines, as Trump downplayed and mismanaged the crisis.
It is amazing—and an indictment of the American political system—that the fellow whose mishandling of the pandemic resulted in hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths could be in strong contention for a return to the presidency. Worse, Trump and his minions believe that they can use 2020 as a selling point. This has been flummoxing me. Then I read a recent article in the Atlantic by George Makari, the director of the DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at Weill Cornell, which sheds light on this. (Makari happens to be an old college chum.)
Makari and Friedman set off to answer a bit of a different question: Why is America in a funk? They point out that unemployment rates are low, and the stock market is high. Yet President Joe Biden’s approval rating is abysmal, and polls show that Americans’ satisfaction with their lives is near a record low. “And nearly half of Americans surveyed in January said they were worse off than three years prior,” they write. The pair note that experts and pundits have struggled to explain the malaise. Inflation (which soared but then dipped)? Ukraine? Gaza? The border crisis? They dismiss these possible causes and insist the experts are “overlooking a crucial factor.” Their answer: Covid. They write:
Four years ago, the country was brought to its knees by a world-historic disaster. COVID-19 hospitalized nearly 7 million Americans and killed more than a million; it’s still killing hundreds each week. It shut down schools and forced people into social isolation. Almost overnight, most of the country was thrown into a state of high anxiety—then, soon enough, grief and mourning. But the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured. As clinical psychiatrists, we see the effects of such emotional turmoil every day, and we know that when it’s not properly processed, it can result in a general sense of unhappiness and anger—exactly the negative emotional state that might lead a nation to misperceive its fortunes.
In short, we went through a national trauma and have not fully reckoned with that. (An aside: The same could be said for January 6.) More from Makari and Friedman:
The pressure to simply move on from the horrors of 2020 is strong. Who wouldn’t love to awaken from that nightmare and pretend it never happened? Besides, humans have a knack for sanitizing our most painful memories. In a 2009 study, participants did a remarkably poor job of remembering how they felt in the days after the 9/11 attacks, likely because those memories were filtered through their current emotional state. Likewise, a study published in Nature last year found that people’s recall of the severity of the 2020 COVID threat was biased by their attitudes toward vaccines months or years later.
When faced with an overwhelming and painful reality like COVID, forgetting can be useful—even, to a degree, healthy. It allows people to temporarily put aside their fear and distress, and focus on the pleasures and demands of everyday life, which restores a sense of control. That way, their losses do not define them, but instead become manageable.
Forgetting can be useful. This jibes with what I’ve been struggling to comprehend about Trump’s current standing. People yearn for the good old days…even when they were not so good. At the same time, unprocessed trauma creates an unease that affects current attitudes. So with Trump and the pandemic, many Americans don’t want to accurately recall that terrible stretch but the unresolved issues from that horrific time yield a dissatisfaction with the current moment that Trump himself can exploit. Talk about a bank shot.
In part, Trump can (try to) get away with this because there was no post-pandemic establishment of a consensus Covid narrative. There were a few congressional hearings—mounted by Democrats—that examined the Trump administration’s actions during the crisis. But the Democrats failed to turn these sessions into high-profile affairs. And there has been no prominent blue-ribbon commission to investigate what was the worst public health emergency in a century. Accountability has been absent. That has made it easier to forget.
Makari and Friedman explain that “consigning painful memories to the River Lethe…has clear drawbacks, especially as the months and years go by. Ignoring such experiences robs one of the opportunity to learn from them. In addition, negating painful memories and trying to proceed as if everything is normal contorts one’s emotional life and results in untoward effects.” In extreme cases with veterans, this can lead to PTSD. (“We are not suggesting that the entire country has PTSD from COVID,” they state.)
Traumatic memories can affect how the brain functions and, thus, how the present is perceived. As they put it, “Traumatic memory doesn’t feel like a historical event, but returns in an eternal present, disconnected from its origin, leaving its bearer searching for an explanation. And right on cue, everyday life offers plenty of unpleasant things to blame for those feelings—errant friends, the price of groceries, or the leadership of the country.” We might not recall all the dreadful details of the early pandemic and the specific fears. (Will millions of us die?) “But,” Makari and Friedman assert, “the feelings that that experience ignited are still very much alive. This can make it difficult to rationally assess the state of our lives and our country.”
So if we’re all still reeling from those awful years of death and stress—and that is distorting how we view our current lives—what can be done about it? These two clinical psychiatrists say “you need to do more than ignore or simply recall it. Rather, you must rework the disconnected memory into a context, and thereby move it firmly into the past.” One remedy, they maintain, “is for leaders to encourage remembrance while providing accurate and trustworthy information about both the past and the present.” They see the politics of all this in similar fashion to what I’ve written: Trump, who bungled the response to the pandemic and who spread misinformation about Covid, has “become the beneficiary of our collective amnesia, and Biden the repository for lingering emotional discontent.” Yet they optimistically contend, “Some of that misattribution could be addressed by returning to the shattering events of the past four years and remembering what Americans went through. This process of recall is emotionally cathartic, and if it’s done right, it can even help to replace distorted memories with more accurate ones.”
I’m not certain that during an election year marked by record-high political polarization such an exercise could occur. Any attempt to revist those dark days to set the record straight would face a barrage of opposition from Trump, the GOP, and the conservative media, replete with shouts of “hoax” and accusations of Deep State plotting. See what happened when the Democrats tried to establish an account of what led to and occurred on January 6. There are no longer neutral observers (or observers who are widely considered neutral) in the political media world who could guide an endeavor of national remembrance and reconciliation.
It's clear that Biden and his advisers have decided to steer clear of Covid—as a policy matter and a political issue. He rarely brings it up, and there’s not much of an effort on the part of his administration to promote booster shots or other anti-Covid measures. They seem to want to sidestep the divisive cultural wars that Covid triggered. Makari and Friedman, however, contend that reminding voters of the worst days of the pandemic need not “create more trouble” for Biden. They write: “Our work leads us to believe that the effect would be exactly the opposite. Rituals of mourning and remembrance help people come together and share in their grief so that they can return more clear-eyed to face daily life. By prompting Americans to remember what we endured together, paradoxically, Biden could help free all of us to more fully experience the present.”
I’d like to believe this. And I’d like to see Biden try. As I’ve noted, I am stunned that Trump’s malfeasant handling of the crisis has not disqualified him for a return engagement. Then again, I could say the same thing about Trump’s Big Lie and January 6. We’ve often heard that the first step to recovery is recognizing the problem and resolving to address it. With both Covid and January 6, one half of the political system has no interest in such a process. It rightfully calculates that its survival depends on preventing this. Can Biden and the Democrats do this on their own? That would be quite the task.
While pundits have failed to fully explain the sour mood of the American public, Makari and Friedman have delivered us a smart diagnosis that helps us understand at least part of this unusual and upsetting political moment. (On Sunday, the New York Times published a smart piece that examined the current political impact of the pandemic.) Their article is a reminder that psychology is often crucial for comprehending voters’ attitudes. I wonder, though, if it’s too late to fulfill their prescription. I once heard Gore Vidal refer to this country as the United States of Amnesia. Our problem is that many of our fellow citizens are damn happy to reside there.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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Over the past year, I’ve reported extensively on No Labels, the dark money group that was trying to run a bipartisan centrist ticket in the 2024 election that many political experts believed would draw more votes from Biden than Trump. Though the outfit—led by former Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson, who’s married to onetime Bill Clinton adviser Mark Penn (who advised Trump during the first impeachment)—refused to reveal its donors, my colleague Russ Choma and I uncovered a list of big-money contributors that showed its funding base leaned toward Republicans. And in this newsletter, I laid out the absurdity of No Labels’ entire effort, noting it could help elect Trump.
Now it seems that this misbegotten endeavor may be close to death. When Sen. Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, announced in February that he would not run as the No Labels’ presidential candidate, remarking he did not want to assist Trump, that seemed to doom the venture. Yet the group insisted it would move forward and find another standard-bearer. A few days ago, the Times reported that there have been no takers. The long list of figures who have rejected No Labels entreaties include retired Adm. William McRaven, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), retired Gen. David Petraeus, and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R-Ga.). This roster illuminates how loony this project was. Two names are Republicans with absolutely no national standing. Rice helped give us one of the greatest strategic disasters in US history: the Iraq War. And Petraeus was investigated for providing classified information to his biographer-mistress and eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified information. These are not political saviors who could rally tens of millions of voters and vanquish the big-party candidates.
No Labels has not, as of this writing, thrown in the towel. But it seems to be on life support, if that. One sad thing is that Jacobson has raised at least $60 million for this project that always appeared destined to either a) fail or b) boost Trump—though its leaders repeatedly claimed they did not want to see a Trump restoration. If the No Labels gang truly cares about the state of American democracy, it should now take whatever money it has left and invest it in voter education and registration.
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List |
Bad River. We all know that Native Americans have been totally screwed ever since European migrants arrived in the United States. The theft of land, conquest, the Indian wars, forced relocation, reservations—it all amounted to genocide. And the United States has never fully come to terms with this original sin of America (slavery, of course, is the other). Bad River, a new and gripping documentary about one tribe’s battle against a Canadian energy company in northern Wisconsin, brilliantly conveys both the tragic history of the First Nations and the current consequences of centuries of oppression.
On one level, the film, directed by Mary Mazzio, is a straightforward David-versus-Goliath tale. It chronicles the fight of the Bad River Band, an Ojibwe (or Chippewa) community based in upper Wisconsin along the Bad River, to regain control of its own land. In the early 1950s, a Canadian firm now known as Enbridge built a pipeline through its territory. In 2013, the easements expired, and the tribe, fearing the old pipeline (increasingly exposed by erosion) would rupture and poison not only the Bad River but Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world, refused to renew them. It sued the company to shut down the pipeline and remove it from tribal lands. The company went to court to keep the pipeline operating. (Enbridge also owns Line 3, which in 1991 ruptured on wetlands in Minnesota and caused the largest inland oil spill in US history.) The legal fight is still pending in federal court.
Yet the movie—narrated by model Quannah ChasingHorse and actor Edward Norton—is not just a courtroom drama. It is a beautiful examination of the Bad River tribe and its relationship to the river, which for centuries has been the heart of the band’s commercial life and spiritual existence. The documentary also traces the long narrative of exploitation that crushed Native Americans and that led to the pipeline cutting through Ojibwe land. Much of this story is familiar, much is not, and it’s all horrible—such as the kidnapping of Indigenous children who were shipped off to boarding schools to be “civilized.” I had not realized that in the 1950s Congress voted to terminate federal recognition of the sovereign status of tribes across the country—essentially vacating long-established treaties. The film also includes a compact history of the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Bad River Ojibwe had been through many ordeals before they entered this titanic struggle against a transnational corporation that in court argued that the demands of commerce outweighed both environmental concerns and the tribe’s sovereignty. What’s most inspiring is the sense of stewardship that animates the tribe’s battle. Its people truly believe the Seventh Generation Principle. As one of its members says, “My little tribe is protecting water for the planet.” It sounds dramatic, but this tribe is indeed fighting for its own survival and much more. In one poignant scene, representatives for the Bad River Band appear at a state legislature committee to oppose an open pit mine. A legislator asks, “You don’t trust the government?” An elder, Eldred Corbine, replies, “If you were an Indian, would you trust the government?” The legislator has not much to say.
Bad River opened this month in theaters around the country and drew sold-out crowds in states near the Bad River. If it’s not playing at a theater near you, look for it on a streaming service soon. |
“Tennessee Rise,” the Tennessee Freedom Singers. Once upon time, political candidates had campaign songs. They were usually corny. Louisiana Gov. and Sen. Huey Long wrote one of the best back in the 1930s, “Every Man a King.” (Randy Newman covered the song in 1974.) But, alas, campaign songwriting is no longer much a practice in American politics. Which is one reason it’s a pleasure to hear “Tennessee Rise,” a song composed to help the campaign of Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Democrat. Johnson was one of the “Tennessee Three”—state reps who faced expulsion votes in the Republican-controlled Tennessee General Assembly after they took to the floor to protest gun violence days following the Covenant School shooting in Nashville last year. (The two Black legislators were expelled, but she was not. The pair were later reinstated.) Johnson is now running in the Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
In support of Johnson, Grammy winner Allison Russell (an Our Land favorite) led a group of more than 30 artists to record “Tennessee Rise,” a tune she wrote with her husband, JT Nero, that celebrates movements for social justice. This choir—dubbed the Tennessee Freedom Singers—includes Emmylou Harris and Brandi Carlile. It’s a soulful anthem that recognizes both pain and progress: “The joy’s for the new day coming / Yeah the trouble’s for that too / Cause we’ve come so far / But there’s so much left to do.” Okay, it’s not literally a campaign song. But a piece of work this beautiful is bound to be an asset for Johnson.
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Read Recent Issues of Our Land |
March 23, 2024: Trump Normalization Syndrome—a threat to the USA; the most important 1 percent in 2024; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Ari Fleischer); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 19, 2024: It’s time to start worrying about Christian nationalism; Constellation is lost in space…and time; the wonderful musical party Karl Wallinger left behind; and more.
March 16, 2024: Time to unleash Kamala Harris to trigger Trump; Our Land needs you; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Dwight D. Opperman Foundation); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 12, 2024: Jared Kushner and the award that’s not good for the Jews; old cops versus new cops in Criminal Record; James Grady delivers a different mystery with The Smoke in Your Eyes; and more.
March 9, 2024: Trump’s back on top, and this is not fine; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Mark Robinson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
March 5, 2024: The threat to democracy from white rural rage; the common flaw of Maestro and Napoleon; Tierney Sutton’s jazzy take on the racial wealth gap; and more.
March 2, 2024: Barbara McQuade on disinformation in 2024; Richard Lewis, RIP; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tommy Tuberville); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
February 27, 2024: The new “It Can Happen Here” project; the darkness of True Detective: Night Country; and more.
February 24, 2024: The racism is the point; the Smirnov affair; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
February 21, 2024: The great forgotten betrayal of the Trump years; the fifth season of Fargo gets political; the Black Keys get funky; and more.
February 17, 2024: A refresher on Trump’s porn-star/hush-money case; a farewell message from Alexei Navalny; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Jared Kushner); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. |
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Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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