Not Exactly Mai-Tais and Yahtzee
Trumpism, "Con Air", James Randi, and more.
In what are hopefully its waning days, it might be time to discuss the notion of “Trumpism” and what it means for America’s political future. We’ve discussed in this space before whether or not Trump counts as a genuine bona fide fascist, and one of the useful distinctions drawn by Robert Paxton is that, unlike previous political ‘isms’ like capitalism, socialism, monarchism, and so on, fascism doesn’t actually describe any underlying ideology. Fascists don’t really stand for any principle, ethos, or assumption about how society works beyond a sort of vague nationalist mythology and the idea that fascists should be in charge of anything. It swims through the body politic like a fish through water, needing it to breathe but not really perceiving it, and like a shark, it relies on constant movement to stay alive. Its foundation of aggression isn’t even based on any deep philosophical realization about the uses of violence; it’s just bloody busywork.
This explains a lot of why Trump comes across the way he does. We surely must be past the point where anyone but the most egregious dupes believe that Trump does any actual work as president; just imagine him paying attention during a meeting about this or that international incident or domestic economic issue without slipping into a prediabetic nap. (Those with any kind of historical memory may recall how difficult a time Ronald Reagan’s advisors had getting him to absorb information about throw weights or unemployment numbers without him lapsing into slumber or anecdotage, and Reagan was both younger and, sigh, smarter than Trump.) His idea of politics is being places and doing things, preferably things that will make people cheer him or at the very least pay attention to him, and since he does not possess the dynamism of a younger man or the determination of a true believer, this boils down to rallies and tweeting out cockamamie ideas like the Space Force or buying Greenland.
Donald Trump is a man utterly void of ideas; it is no coincidence that his main sources of revenue have been derivative (following in his father’s footsteps in making shady real estate deals, and slapping his name and face on sub-par but already existing products). The idea that there might be a thing called “Trumpism” that reflects any kind of coherent, or even incoherent, ideology is nonsense cooked up by people with column-inches to fill. Nothing will remain of Trump’s policies or positions more than five seconds after he leaves office, because he hasn’t got any policies or positions. What we are seeing play out in Washington is not “Trumpism”, but just standard late-period Republicanism unleashed from any notion of restraint or politesse.
This, of course, is why the present trend of people appealing to the decency and sensibility of the G.O.P. in distancing itself from Trump (Nancy Pelosi: “One of my prayers is that the Republicans will take back their party. The country needs a strong Republican Party. It’s done so much for our country.”) is so completely misguided and foolish. The Republicans did not disappear when Donald Trump was elected; they rejoiced that God had sent them another Reagan, a polarizing but popular front-man they could wheel out in front of the public to take attention away from their looting of the public till. If Trump was allowed to decorate his cabinet with bargain-basement race hustlers and crypto-Nazis like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, that is an indulgence they were more than willing to provide him in exchange for unlimited access to every penny of government money they could get their hands on.
So, too, does this prove the suicidal incompetence of the Democratic Party in positioning themselves not as a party of genuine progressives, of the working class, as an actual alternative to right-wing leadership, but rather, simply, ‘not Trump’. There can be no return to normalcy, because if Trump has a unique genius, it lies not in his ability to motivate race-grievance hoodlums like the Proud Boys and the Boogaloos, two Nazi gangs who sound like the villains in a 1983 breakdancing movie. It is in his ability to detonate all the norms and niceties of politics and to lay bare the stark reality that even in the great American experiment of democracy, power largely resides with those willing to use it, and the ability to resist that power lies with those willing to do something about it. It is not a unique observation that the greatest threat of a weak Biden administration will be the coming of a more intelligent and more capable version of Trump, but it is a true one.
When we say “socialism or barbarism”, it is not just a catchy slogan; it is an accurate description of our current moment. Neither the country nor the planet can afford another eight years of two capitalist parties. If we accept that Trumpism is fake, but that Republicanism – which is to say, laissez-faire governance of an unrestrained finance capitalism – is real, then we need something better than just hot and mild varieties of the same sauce. We can’t accept that being slowly poisoned is superior to having our throats cut. Or, to abandon the bad analogies, we have to have an opposition party that doesn’t welcome the people who have been trying to destroy it for forty years into its ranks; that doesn’t maintain or even increase the same bloated police and military budgets; that doesn’t pretend to listen to scientists and then gleefully supports fracking; that doesn’t cozy up to the exact same financial criminals as long as they keep those donations coming.
What the Trump Era –and how strange to call it that when it’s not even been four years, but it seems even longer, a Trump Epoch – has proven beyond a shadow of doubt is not that a particular segment of the population is vulnerable to some bugaboo called “Trumpism”, or that Trump is the most dangerous and unprecedented threat to the republic that has ever occupied the Oval Office. It is that a sitting administration is allowed to do more or less anything the public allows it to do, and that the ‘resistance’ offered by the alleged opposition party and by do-nothings on social media with their clever hashtags and their we-stand-with-X Facebook backgrounds is worth less than the paper it’s not printed on. If Biden and his people don’t figure out how to play the game their opponents are playing and quickly, it is they, not Trump’s crew of grifters and cranks, who will go down in history as the last gasp of democracy.
My wife and I have a difference in age (I am a mid-GenXer, and she is an early Millennial), and so we do not share certain cultural touchstones. We are each often surprised that the other has not seen or heard this or that important bit of movie/TV/musical history, and while I’ve never been one of those “how is it even possible you have not seen [thing that was popular when I was in my early 20s], we have to watch it right this minute” dudes, we have generally compatible tastes, and she is usually gracious in her willingness to indulge me along these lines. I try to repay this favor in kind, which is how I recently came to watch, 23 years after its initial release, the Simon West action blockbuster Con Air.
Now, we call it a Simon West movie, because he was technically behind the camera during its filming, but let’s be honest and use its true identity: a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I spent most of the 1990s avoiding the legendary producer’s oeuvre, which included such titles as Bad Boys, The Rock, Armageddon, and Coyote Ugly. I am not a huge fan of giant explosion, loudness, and misogyny in combination, so the ‘90s were a tough time for me. Watching his movies in the 1980s, when he masterminded Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Beverly Hills Cop II, I noted a familiar sensation – something akin to when you fart so vigorously it gives you muscle cramps around your ribcage – that I wanted to avoid moving forward. However, I like dumb crap in small doses, and I especially like making my wife happy, so we sat down and watched what must surely be one of the most ridiculous movies to ever make hundreds of millions of dollars.
If, like me, you somehow missed Con Air the first time around, here is the plot, such as it is: Nicolas Cage is Cameron Poe, an Army Ranger who was inexplicably convicted of manslaughter for killing a guy who was trying to murder him and rape his wife. He, like roughly 97% of ‘90s action movie heroes, just wants to get his kids back, in aid of which he grows a robust length of glam metal hair. Once he serves his time, instead of just taking a bus, he gets on board a special prison plane that is transporting a rogue’s gallery of evil fiends, led by a weirdly hot John Malkovich as someone named “Cyrus the Virus”, who is named leader because he has the least stupid name. Naturally, they engineer a takeover of the plane to win their freedom, and Nicolas Cage must stop them with the aid of only John Cusack collecting a paycheck and his own ability to telegraph emotions.
Absolutely nothing in this movie makes a lick of sense, so let’s talk about the cast. Ving Rhames plays Nathan “Diamond Dog” Jones, a black radical terrorist who, like the Panthers and the SLA, is know for his love of David Bowie concept albums. Colm Meany, the transporter guy from some Star Trek or another, plays a DEA agent who is a jerk for no reason. Danny Trejo plays a rapist. Monica Potter is Nicolas Cage’s wife, cast in a desperate and failed attempt to make Monica Potter happen. Mykelti Williamson, who deserves better, is there to be Nicolas Cage’s long-suffering friend; he’s almost as wasted as Dave Chappelle as some kind of flunky who later gets used as a cadaver/plot device. And, of course, in the movie’s most fun reveal, Steve Buscemi shows up to buy a boat off the proceeds of playing a Hannibal Lecter type called “The Marietta Mangler”. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, eh, folks?
Anyway, you can probably figure it out from here. There is an ambush where lots of things explode and which is very dumb. Nicolas Cage acts like he just woke up from a Quaalude nap and makes some wisecracks about a stuffed bunny. John Malkovich gets his head crushed by a piledriver, and not a moment too soon. John Cusack wears a shirt three sizes too big for him and looks like Daddy’s Li’l’ Federal Agent. You’ve probably seen it already, so we’re all in this together. I would give it three stars out of ten for being less aggressively loud and stupid than Armageddon; would watch again stoned with my wife if there isn’t anything better on.
James Randi, the stage magician, escape artist, and paranormal investigator known as the Amazing Randi, died today at the ripe old age of 92. A co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and a legendary exposer of frauds and debunker of false psychic claims, Randi was one of the few people alive I counted as a hero. His books, which I devoured like candy in the 1980s, were an enormous aid in shaping my world view; I came to Marxism a little before I did skepticism, but one strongly informed the other and helped bring me to atheism, materialism, and the ability to spot bad arguments, false evidence, and other forms of deception and manipulation that have guided me throughout my whole life.
Randi was a stellar performer, funny and charming and extraordinarily talented; himself inspired by the great Harry Houdini, he actually outdid his idol with a number of astonishing tricks. But perhaps the greatest thing about Randi was that he had ample opportunities to take the easy way out – to affirm to people what they often told him, that he was possessed of genuine psychic power and the ability to see the future. Randi was repulsed by this and disgusted with the idea that anyone would take advantage of the vulnerability of others to enrich themselves. This is one reason he launched a crusade against so-called “faith healers”, who worked cheap conjuring tricks in order to make money off of poor, desperate people afflicted with horrifying diseases and ailments; he could not abide the sight of Peter Popoff, one of the most notorious of these huckster evangelists, telling people to throw their cancer medication away after assuring them, after some flamboyant mumbo-jumbo, that God had cured them.
Good guys don’t always win. Although Randi had a stellar record (he was constantly bombarded by lawsuits from the fake psychics he exposed but never lost a case, and no one ever successfully claimed the million-dollar prize he offered for evidence of a genuine supernatural ability he couldn’t explain or replicate), he was outlived by some of his worst enemies, including the sham Israeli mentalist Uri Geller, who made a fortune off his obvious lies, and even Popoff, who, after being bankrupted by Randi’s exposure of his nauseating deceit, just picked up where he started and is back to defrauding the poor and sick for millions of dollars a year. But he established himself as a unique and desperately needed voice who spoke out on behalf of defenseless people who didn’t even know they were being taken advantage of, and he mastered a dangerous and difficult craft. I highly recommend the 2014 documentary An Honest Liar, which examined his colorful history, his incredible act, his ability to suss out hoaxes and scams, and his tender relationship with his partner (later husband) of 33 years, Deyvi Peña Arteaga. Randi didn’t believe in God or the afterlife, and neither do I, so I won’t bother with wishing him a happy journey or a peaceful rest; I’ll just say he was a great man who expanded my mind, and assure you that he can do the same for you, even after he’s gone.
This week’s links: Albert Burnenko pens a tremendous obituary for Quibi at the Defector; Jacobin talks to Kim Stanley Robinson about the end of capitalism; Slate un-redacts the redacted sections of Ghislaine Maxwell’s deposition; Midwest Socialist recommends ten horror films for leftists; and the Discourse Blog analyzes Donald Trump’s bummer trip.