THANKSGIVING 2019 -- ENNUI AND AMDG

THANKSGIVING 2019 -- ENNUI AND AMDG

Let's face it.

It's a tough year for thank yous.

It's not that there aren't things . . .  or events . . . for which we should be grateful.  God has not taken a holiday and His ever inscrutable ways still leave us bounty and beauty in considerable measure.  One of my best friends, a Jesuit priest teaching at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, routinely posts photos on Facebook in his Ignatian search for God in the everyday.  

And he finds Her . . .

In the flowers, fauna, pristine snowfalls, gritty urban walls and antique gargoyles he happens upon in his jaunts through the New York (City and State) he has called home for seventy plus years and the New England his brother has called home for more than forty. At one point last year, I commented that he was the Gerard Manley Hopkins of photographers. "Nature is never spent," wrote Hopkins in God's Grandeur, and this 21st century Jesuit's photos prove what that 19th century Jesuit's poem recounted.

So, thank you God.

Now, could the rest of us step it up a bit.

As we approach the end of 2019, it strikes me as somewhat odd . . . or sad . . . or at least puzzling . . . that approximately 40% of my fellow citizens still approve of our President and do not want him removed.  There is no point in rehearsing the grounds for why he must go -- soliciting a bribe from Ukraine's president, obstructing Mueller's investigation, the thousands of lies, the recourse to the gutter whenever criticized.  "Facts are a stubborn thing," said John Adams.

But why do so many fail to see it?

I do not think it's ignorance. 

Either mine . . .

Or theirs.

As to the absence of mine, on the latest contretemps, there is no real dispute that Trump demanded political dirt on the Bidens and held up military and other assistance to the Ukraine in an effort to get it.  Anyone who watched those House Intelligence Committee hearings last week could not miss that reality.  Even his own guy -- the hotelier cum million dollar donor and (later) Ambassador to the EU-- was explicit: "I know that members of this committee frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a 'quid pro quo'? . . . [T]he answer is yes."  

Sondland would not take a dive for Trump.  

And in refusing to do so, he merely confirmed what the half dozen erstwhile deep staters -- Taylor, Kent, Yovanovitch, Vindman, Hill and Holmes -- more than suspected.

Trump's errand boy -- Rudy Giuliani -- was hijacking foreign policy for his boss's (illegal) benefit.

This is impeachable.  It is a form of bribery, which the impeachment clause explicitly lists as a ground. It goes to the core problem for which the Founders fashioned impeachment as the remedy -- their fear that the country's chief executive might tie his interests to those of a foreign state and in so doing repudiate ours.  And even if it is not impeachable, it is seriously wrong and counts as yet another minus in Trump's extraordinarily long column of demerits.

So I am not wrong here.

But the 40% who still stand with Trump can't all be stupid, and the vast (and I mean vast) majority aren't.  Like me, they go to work, raise families, pay bills, maintain relationships, generally distinguish right from wrong, know that the earth revolves around the sun, will concede it is raining out if someone comes in with a dripping umbrella, and agree that 2 + 2 = 4.  

They're not inherently mean, nor do they confuse authenticity with dishonesty or vulgarity. 

And they aren't blind.

Which, perhaps, creates the greatest conundrum.  

Because, say what you will about Trump, he does not hide his malfeasance. 

So, what gives?

Why are 40% of my neighbors always giving Trump a pass?

I think it's ennui.

I get there mostly by process of elimination.  Having discounted ignorance, the next available candidates are the Fox network and self-interested politicians.  

According to surveys, about 2.8 million tune into Fox every day.  There are, however, 153 million registered voters.  As a matter of simple arithmetic, 40% of them are not watching Fox.  This doesn't mean Fox's bias has no influence.  It has a lot, just not enough to explain the views of 61.2 million people. And as for the politicians, the reality is that pols follow voters.  It's rarely the other way around. If the voters change, the politicians will change . . .

Or they'll lose.

Ennui is defined as weariness, dissatisfaction.  It manifests as boredom.  We all have experienced it.  If you've ever had a bad job (check) . . . or a bad marriage (check) . . . there comes a point in time when you are just tired of it all.  My ex-wife told a friend of hers that she knew our marriage was over when I stopped fighting.  No kidding.  And in that sad interregnum between the knowledge that things are bad and the energy to enact the solution that might be good . . . 

One gets weary.

According to polls, a sizable group of Trumpers only support him "somewhat." Those who "strongly approve" of him account for no more than 25% of the electorate, and in September a poll found that 69% actually dislike him personally.  With Trump, therefore, and in particular with his supporters, I suspect we are in that interregnum, somewhere between the bad and the not-by-any-means-inevitable possibilities of either removal by impeachment or removal by defeat. In other words, we are in a period of . . .

Ennui. 

Which can become permanent.

Just ask Camus. 

Life for my Jesuit friend in Syracuse is not all roses.  The city and region are economically depressed.  There's more than enough grounds for ennui.  

That, however, is not the Ignatian way, the Jesuit way.  

To the contrary, their encounter with weariness seems to spur them on.  

The Jesuit motto is AMDG.  It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam".  I translate that as "toward the greater glory of God". That's "toward", not "for".  It conveys that faith is active, not passive; that we have to work at it, not wait for it.

In Syracuse, the Jesuits have created Le Moyne College, the little engine that could.  Founded in 1946, it ranks second in New York and sixth nationally for value in its class, colleges with 2,500 to 10,000 students. Thirty per cent of its undergraduates are first-generation college students.  

It's president is Dr. Linda LeMura, a Syracuse native, child of immigrants, and first ever lay female president of any Jesuit educational institution in the western hemisphere.  Reflecting "what the Jesuits have refined in 500 years of scholarship and reflection," she explains that "my story, and the story of my family, is also the story of Le Moyne College.  Whether from humble origins or great wealth, immigrant or native born, we are united in our belief that education is an act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."

"An act of faith, an expression of confidence and calm in the face of the unknown."

It sounds an awful lot like what was produced in 1776 and 1787 . . .

By the Founders.

They looked ennui in the eye . . .

And beat it.

So can we.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

MARATHON (WO)MAN

MARATHON (WO)MAN

I am not a runner.

In fact, it hurts.

Large parts of me, the whole of which is itself getting larger as I age, are located between my knees and stomach.

The result is that, while some are designed to run, I am not.

I have, however, a lot of admiration for runners.

And an especial admiration for those who complete marathons.

America today is in desperate shape.  We are being run by a mad man narcissist accurately described by insiders working for him as self-absorbed, uninformed, inattentive, incoherent and cruel.  He governs by whim if he governs at all. He abhors truth.  He will not or cannot read and routinely violates the law or tells others to do so. Says Anonymous, the senior insider who penned the famous 2018 op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" and has now written the about to be published "A Warning": "He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity."

How did this happen?

The answer is that 62 million Americans, strategically located, voted for him and 40% of the country still supports him.  The sexist pussy-grabbing and transparent racism?  Ignored.   The nod to so-called "fine people" among the Nazis in Charlottesville? Forgotten by those who heard it, fake news to those who saw it reported. The unconstitutional emoluments rolling in from foreigners? Elitist nonsense. Impeachment for trying to enlist Ukraine to get dirt on the Bidens? A coup. And the repeated, pathological lying? Actually believed.

And if not believed, then at least forgiven.

Trump world is not stupid.

The most ardent Trumpers think people like me think people like them are stupid.

But I don't.

I think they are angry.

All. The. Time.

The anger is on display most clearly at his rallies.  They routinely dissolve into vitriolic threats against opponents in general and any reporters covering the event in particular.  The anger is also on display in the hatred his supporters visit upon the government.  Even when the government is helping them. How else to explain the otherwise insanity of the "keep your government hands off my Medicare" types abhorring the very hand that created Medicare in the first place.  Or the banana-republic chants of "lock her up."

I may be wrong . . .

But I do not think there are many marathoners in Trump world.

Marathoners are individualists but not narcissists.  Narcissists expect recognition without achievement.  They exaggerate their talents. They fantasize about their success, their power, their brilliance, their beauty.  They lack empathy.

Marathoners are recognized after they achieve.  They do not exaggerate, they demonstrate.  They endure but do not insult.  If there is fantasized brilliance or beauty or power in them, it's impossible to find in the sweat stained pain you can observe close up on their faces at mile 20.

The work is hard.

And they do it.

All of it.

They do not delegate it or avoid it.

The 26.2 miles on the actual day is preceded by months of training, managed increments of longer distances.   By the time they run the actual marathon, they've pretty much  run a few in practice beforehand.

Sometimes you can spot them early in the morning.

Solitary figures training for the big day, pounding the pavement in search of . . .

What?

I think it's themselves.

Or their selfs, those inner beings that give us the courage to recognize our limits while trying to exceed them.

Which is exactly what our country needs now.

In the millions.

I have known a number of marathoners and have admired four of them.  One I married.  Two I raised.  The last is my soon-to-be daughter-in-law, who ran the New York City Marathon last week.

She grew up in Florida where she was raised and educated. When she graduated from college, she moved alone to Pittsburgh and thereafter, and again alone, to New York. She embraces difference and has no fear.  I thinks she got that from her parents and family.  And from her inner self.  The one on display last Sunday.  The one that ran to raise money for a children's charity.

She has three Dads, two of whom made the trip to New York to watch in awe as she ran last Sunday, the third cheering from Tampa; one Mom, who tracked her daughter mile by mile on Facebook;  a sister, who now thinks her sibling a "badass";  a brother-in-law, whose job qualifies him as one; a  nephew marathoner-in-waiting (if his speed crawling last summer was any indication); and  . . .

A very lucky boyfriend.

The boyfriend's Dad thinks she's pretty cool too.