Your bag is empty.
The presidential press secretary is a court jester.
The White House press corps is in a coma.
The president is a pathetic racist.
The world is numb.
And we are still four months out from the presidential-election finish line.
To think that it comes down to this in the United States: Two septuagenarians with questionable bladder control are the contenders for the highest office in the land. This is the best we can come up with to run our country?
Both candidates are aging white men. One of those candidates, President Donald Trump—being of unsound mind and a horribly unfit body—has destroyed America’s unity, economy, environment, race relations, relationships with long-standing allies and national health (both literally and existentially). He is the human embodiment of the coronavirus.
The other candidate is Joe Biden. Past his prime, he has weathered scandals during his career—though none of them compares to the scandal Trump deals with on a daily basis.
Biden has also dealt with the kind of tragedy that destroys many men: the loss of a son. To outlive your child is every parent’s greatest fear. In surviving this horrible loss, Biden not only gained a perspective Donald Trump does not have, but also revealed his empathy—another trait Trump clearly lacks.
White House reporters, more than anyone else outside the president’s bubble, witness up close and intimately Trump’s absence of empathy. And it weighs heavily on them. The familiarity has bred contempt, which in turn has led to numbness and a condition not unlike those in Zombieland—a condition that has turned most reporters into stupefied “Homer” zombies and a few into energized “T-800s.” (There are, however, very few reporters named Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita or Little Rock.)
The malaise of the press corps is not unique. It mirrors the discomfort of an entire nation that seems to have lost its identity—unable to fathom who we are or where we’ve been.
I have never seen anything like this among the members of the press in the 35 years I’ve had the privilege to visit the West Wing. “What am I doing here?” “When will this end?” These are no longer just existential questions. Most dread being physically close to Donald Trump.
His actions have so affected us that if the pandemic restrictions were lifted today, you’d be hard-pressed to find reporters racing to return to the Trump White House. Some would show up, but just as many are eager to keep a safe distance from the president and his horribly inept administration. And Trump is fine with that. He doesn’t want you looking behind the curtain anyway.
Aiding and abetting him is his latest fool—there is no other word to describe the insipid, sophomoric attempts at propaganda by the latest in a long line of unfit and unprofessional press secretaries—Kayleigh McEnany.
McEnany acts like a media critic berating the press at the urging and approval of Trump. She does so without providing factual information about the government she represents. Although she has met with the press more frequently than her predecessor Stephanie Grisham, she has so far managed to be both less informative and less professional than Grisham—who never held a briefing.
The malaise of the press corps is not unique. It mirrors the discomfort of an entire nation that seems to have lost its identity—unable to fathom who we are or where we’ve been. We know only chaos, violence and fear. The discord is stoked by a president who claims to be the head of the party of Lincoln but supports Confederate-like racists and traitors.
At the end of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant appointed General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain the task of accepting Confederate soldiers’ surrender. On April 12, 1865, three days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Confederate General John Gordon marched Lee’s remaining army before Chamberlain; as a result of the surrender, each soldier turned in his weapons. “The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply,” Chamberlain wrote in his autobiography, The Passing of the Armies.
Some of the Confederates were belligerent, some openly rebellious in voice and others openly contrite to the Union soldiers. Some, including Gordon, would go on to infamy as segregationists and KKK members.
Chamberlain, a professor of rhetoric and modern languages before the war, marveled at the resilience of the emaciated yet defiant Southerners. He asked himself whether such men, so tested under fire, might not contribute something to the Union after all. Without asking permission he turned and signaled his troops to give the Confederate infantry a military salute. Chamberlain describes what happened next:
“Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual—honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”
Thus enemy combatants who had tried to kill each other daily for four years ended the bitter acrimony of the Civil War with a sign of respect. It is a unique moment in history.
Chamberlain’s salute wasn’t popular with everyone on the Union side. And you could say politics and Lincoln’s April 15, 1865, assassination led to an imperfect Reconstruction, bitter racial policies and the systemic and overbearing racism that allowed the enmity to survive and now—with Trump’s help—thrive. You’d be right. But maybe we should consider the actions of our forefathers and apply them to ourselves.
If those who tried to kill each other in the Civil War can lay down their arms, set aside animosity and embrace a renewed sense of civility, then why can’t we?
We have to recognize the historic Civil War moment recounted above occurred between two white men. Gordon, a notorious racist, would never have saluted a black man. Such behavior has persisted since 1865. Today an unarmed black man can be choked to death by police while gasping out his last words: “I can’t breathe.” Meanwhile a white couple can walk outside their front door and wave a semi-automatic assault rifle and a handgun at protesters and be safe. The white couple even appears on CNN. They are now living in the safety of their home as the local prosecutor investigates whether charges should be brought.
Black lives matter. But Trump can’t or won’t say it, and his overtly racist actions keep us all on edge.
Why wasn’t George Floyd afforded the same opportunity? Hell, he wasn’t packing heat. What would happen if an African American couple stood angry and armed in their southeast D.C. yard, as the white couple in their Costco-looking clothes stood in theirs in good old gated-community suburbia? Would the African American couple be at home after a guest spot on Chris Cuomo’s show, or would they be six feet under, and the country up in arms about the killing?
Black lives matter. But Trump can’t or won’t say it, and his overtly racist actions keep us all on edge. Trump fans racist flames, making any chance of national unity nearly impossible. But if General Chamberlain saw a way to bridge divisions, then so must we.
To do so we also have to recognize something we have in common beyond the obvious. Until recently I had only the vaguest notion of what that was. Then I received an email from a friend during the Fourth of July weekend, a happy 30th of sorts, though it wasn’t my birthday: 30 years ago I was celebrating Independence Day while locked up in the Bexar County Detention Center in San Antonio.
I spent about two weeks in jail because I wouldn’t give up a confidential source. I was in a low-risk jail pod with about 17 other inmates overseen by one guard. The food was bad. The atmosphere naturally oppressive. No one wanted to be there. Days blended together. A grinding sense of dread hung over us all.
This July 4 weekend I suddenly got it. Kids in cages. Walls being built. Travel bans on Americans going to Europe.
Every American is living in a jail created by Donald Trump: That’s what we all have in common.
Trump’s version of America is divisive and full of fear. He reiterated that fact in his Independence Day speech from South Dakota. “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children,” he said.
His soulless message may trigger his faithful, but if the rest of us can overcome our numbing pain—and use it as inspiration—we can reunite and kick this charlatan to the curb, remove the jester and get on with our lives.
The key to overcoming Trump and unlocking the jailhouse door is empathy. What else do you need to know? You can vote for Biden, who has empathy for his fellow human beings, or you can vote for Donald Trump, who has none.
It is time for a Chamberlain-like salute and a resolve to move forward.