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VIDEO NOTE: This video below demonstrates how incredibly screwed up an administration can become.
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The recent death of superstar Dolly Parton revealed how incredibly needy the world is, at present, for an experience with somebody “nice” and “kind”.
For much of my Baby Boomer existence, those qualities have bordered on cheese. My whole generation grew up on grit cinema and anti-hero ethos, tending to model more after Holden Caulfield and Dirty Harry than on Atticus Finch or the more recent Ted Lasso.
I’m sure there are researchers who plot public attitudes, but all politics not-aside, I noticed a surfacing meanness in the public spirit when Donald Trump first ran for the presidency in 2016. That’s when he reached the zenith of his skill as a put-down artist, so vulgar and inappropriate that even I found it entertaining. He was initially savaging a large pool of Republican rivals, so as a Democrat, I could enjoy watching that trainwreck. It didn’t occur to me that he could win the White House.
Donald Trump has been on the public radar forever, because he took so many actions to try to put himself there. In the eyes of most, it just made him look like an idiot. People like Larry King used to bring him on his show because Trump was a national joke who was sure to say something the public would find entertaining.
Trump seems to have the personality of a mean drunk, except that his liquor is the bright light of live television. He craves attention and seems desperately in need of love, but he is so filled with bile that it takes a really special type of person to find him tolerable, let alone likeable.
Then there was Dolly Parton, the media creation, literally sculpted, coiffed, dressed and colored, but somehow completely authentic. She seemed like her own light, like she was going to shine whether the cameras were rolling or not, and she was going to stay on message. Dolly portrayed nice, kind, fun, and eternal youthful optimism, and she did it with such consistency that I found it easy to accept that it was simply who she was. (That said, her bubbling joy-of-life seems to have surfaced as her career developed. In her Porter Wagner days she was just sort of normal.)
She made smart decisions seem like there was no thought in them at all, her quiet position on politics being a prime example. She executed on her views of what people could do for others, turning her vast wealth into public assistance in all kinds of ways. There are a lot of philanthropists in the world, but I cannot right off think of another who so under-sold their immense contributions.
I wonder if the public reaction to Parton’s death isn’t partly a slingshot or bounce-back effect responding to the last ten years of Donald Trump and MAGA attitude.
Maybe people are just fed up with the contention? (And the lies, and the bullshit?)
Certainly some are, but at the same time we are seeing this heated debate within the Democrat party between those candidates who want radical change from Trump, and investigations into his ill gains following the upcoming mid-terms, and those who want to retake Washington D.C. just to reestablish the old norm (which hasn’t worked for too-many people).
Great period for sociological climatologists. Change seems afoot, direction unclear, but hopefully more toward Dollywood than Mar-a-Lago.
On the other hand, the Trump virus (Trump Derangement Syndrome) has spawned people like Pete Hegseth, who is un-self-aware to degrees that he rivals the derangement of his leader.
I now wake up every morning to this stupid commercial from “War.gov”, which positions going to war, which most people see as failure, as a cool thing to do. Do kids see this crap? And are they influenced by it? If so, Hegseth and his whole cadre are guilty of war crimes, to my mind, of public fraud, indecency, and moral stupidity.
Hegseth plans to run for President, and I hope he (not I) is deaf to the public mood. Is it normal for seaman to jump off aircraft carriers at sea? Anything wrong there?
We need to return the “Defense” department and think about what Dolly would do. Some used to ask what Jesus would do. Hegseth would do that, but we never saw Jesus.
We saw Dolly, though, and we see her dark opposite.
I’m starting to bet on the good guys, and hoping young people aren’t falling for the war-is-fun game.
