A MASQUE WITHOUT A MASK

A MASQUE WITHOUT A MASK

In Elizabethan England, masques were a common form of entertainment.

They usually involved costumed, dancing courtiers, even the kings and queens themselves, masked around elaborate sets, with professional actors performing the singing and spoken parts.  They usually (but not always) flattered the court itself and sometimes took the form of interludes in larger productions.  Elizabeth I expected them on her travels through her kingdom and was generally presented with a fawning version of the former.  Shakespeare's masque in The Tempest, however,  is a good example of the latter.  That masque, a play within the play,  celebrates authority while the play itself  highlights the vulnerability of those who exercise it.  His masque is thus metaphorically unmasked by the play itself.

And makes it more honest.

Something typical of the bard.

By the mid-17th century, however, masques were on the wane, most likely a victim of the English Civil War in which Puritans closed the theatres, one of their (and Cromwell's) many sins.  Though performed in eras thereafter, they were not as popular, and as theatre moved beyond the 19th and into the 20th century, their greatly reduced numbers became vehicles mostly to create change in the performing arts themselves.  In the 19th century, masques resurrected English musical composition; in the 20th, one tried to revolutionize dance.

The old masque, the lavish performance of disguised praise or of Shakespeare's not so disguised interlude of  unmasking, had died . . .

And then came Covid.

For the past two weeks. America has lived on a psychological knife edge, poised between the ennui of social distance and stay at home quarantines on the one hand and the hoped for return to some form of normal -- a job, a restaurant, a meeting other than on Zoom -- on the other.  Unfortunately for us, though he can monopolize the airwaves and social media, our Commander-in-Chief is no therapist in chief. 

Past presidents knew how to share our feelings, to empathize, to console.  Reagan would not let us forget "the crew of the space shuttle Challenger . . . as they waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'".  Clinton felt our pain, most acutely in the wake of the Oklahoma bombing.  W stood atop a pile of rubble and "heard" all of us as we sat stunned, almost emotionless, days after 9/11. And Obama cried after Sandy Hook  and sang "Amazing Grace" in Charleston.

Trump is . . .

Different.

And weirdly so.

He seems to have never met an anxiety in others he was not willing to exploit . . .

Or one in himself he was not willing to hide.

Early on, before the death toll approached 100,000, coronavirus was mocked.  It was a "hoax" that would magically evaporate as the mercury rose.  When magic failed, it became the fault of a mute WHO unwilling to sound the alarm . . . or of Obama, who supposedly left the cupboard bare of needed PPE and ventilators . . . or of "fake news", who never gave him credit but would gleefully hoist him on various  petards -- hydroxychloroquine, ingested disinfectant, more lies about testing than it was possible to count.  He sought to artificially depress the numbers by leaving sick people at sea.  His CDC drafted a plan with metrics to govern re-opening, but he deep-sixed the plan (apparently) because it was too austere.  The one he published in April set out phased re-opening periods linked to continuing two week declines in cases.

But it was promptly ignored by the states that wanted to re-open . . .

And then by Trump himself.

The doctors -- Fauci and Birx and Bright --  have either been demoted (Bright) or sidelined (Fauci) or ignored (Birx).   Dr. Bright, formerly the head of the federal government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), identified the equipment and shortage problems last year and long before the outbreak could have had the administration up to speed had it listened.  It didn't; so after he filed a 300-page whistle-blower complaint, it demoted him. Dr. Fauci went into self-quarantine after being exposed and has otherwise been scarce over much of the past three weeks; nevertheless, his virtual testimony at a mid-May Senate hearing warned that premature re-openings risked an enormous second wave. For her part, Dr. Birx keeps touting the need to take precautions, practice social distancing and wear a mask in public.  But this is advice . . .

Her boss and his more ardent fans ignore.

Maskless, Trump visited a Ford factory in Michigan last week.  Again maskless, he laid a Memorial Day wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington yesterday.  He travels hither and yon quite conspicuously unmasked, in part (he says) because he does not want to give the press "the pleasure of seeing it."  His supporters are even more obdurate.  Lake of the Ozarks, a Missouri vacation spot, was a maskless, sardine like crowd of bathers literally breathing on each other over the Memorial Day holiday.  The week before, protesters in Suffolk County on New York's eastern Long Island were lined up holding Trump 2020 signs and cursing out "fake news" as one accosted a reporter within inches of his face even after being asked to step away.

All this is Trump's play within the play.

The main event is a heart wrenchingly slow wrestle with an often lethal virus that spreads quickly and against which there is no known cure.  While researchers the world over work overtime to come up with a vaccine, dilution and seclusion are the only available antidotes.  That means staying apart (social distancing), keeping our germs to ourselves (wearing a mask in public), and avoiding large crowds (some form of quarantine or stay at home).  If those practices are consistent with re-opening, and sooner or later they will have to be lest we all go broke, the new normal will be nothing like the old.

Trump's performance, however, is an elaborately staged counterpoint, a steady stew of self-congratulation, denial and deceit.  

He praises himself and condemns his predecessor even as he creates an unmatched record of incompetence.  Intelligence back in December warned of the pandemic but was ignored.  BARDA knew of the equipment shortages at the same time but was sidelined. China was at best negligent and at worst complicit in the spread of the virus early on but had to first be  praised because our own Wizard of Oz thought that was the string that then needed to be pulled.  Thereafter, he closed the border but was too late . . . 

And in any case closed the wrong one.  

New York City had already become a host city thanks to some Italian tourists.

He flouts the mask, even re-tweeting a Fox news bit yesterday that mocked Joe Biden for having worn one in his own holiday visit to a war memorial.  The Ford plant he visited last week requires masks but he gave those workers the proverbial middle finger . . . 

Just to get even with the press.

He turbo-charges the non-compliant, either with false futures (his much ballyhooed Easter re-opening) . . .  or with LIBERATE tweets to camouflaged militants who the virus can overrun before they've even cocked their pistols . . .  or with lies that undermine science (it's all a "fake news" hoax) . . . and so makes it permissible to ignore -- as he does -- his own advisors.  

He's a modern day masque . . .

Without a mask.

Literally, he refuses to wear one, and figuratively, his phoniness unmasks his performance.  There is nothing great or perfect or even all that competent about it, all of his word salad and tweeted insults  to the contrary notwithstanding.  The death toll mounts,  the division grows, the denial remains, and the uncertainty continues. 

At the end . . .

And  as with the Elizabethans . . .

Only the courtiers are dancing.

TIME OUT

TIME OUT

Donald Trump is the worst president in my lifetime.

He is a pathological liar, over 18,000 during his presidency alone according to the data base maintained by  The Washington Post.

He is lazy, routinely showing up to work in the Oval Office at or after 11 a.m. because he spends most of his mornings, and large parts of his apparently inomniatic nights,  glued to the cable shows and his twitter feed.

He is immature, a man-child who thinks the puerile ripostes of a schoolyard bully deriding those who disagree render him clever or authentic.

And he is dangerous, the natural consequence of a narcissism that avoids hard study, expert input, or even facts that are at odds with whatever self-interest captures his (brief) attention span.

His wealth, never as great as his boasts, was generated in part through an estate tax evasion scheme that illegally shielded large amounts of his father's estate from federal tax, and as a businessman he regularly stiffed vendors and contractors, forcing lawsuits and delaying payments with bogus defenses.  After six bankruptcies, at which point New York banks would not touch him, he reportedly got in bed with Deutsche Bank and was thereafter funded in part by Russian oligarchs (which probably explains his love affair with Vladimir Putin).

And nothing changed after he was elected president.

Last year he tried to illegally bribe Ukraine's president by withholding appropriated military aid in exchange for a phony investigation of Joe Biden, and this year, he ignored early warnings of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the government he runs should have been testing, tracing and quarantining the recently infected back in February, moves that, had they occurred, could have mitigated the spread, he was instead telling all who would listen that it would go away "miraculously" when the weather warmed.  

Failing that, and once the pandemic took off, he disclaimed responsiblity, refused to wield the purchasing power he had under the Defense Production Act to commandeer business and industry into manufacturing needed protective gear, left it to the nation's governors to find supplies more or less on their own, and then speculated on cures, some of which lacked a sound medical basis (hyroxychloroquine) and others of which were just plain crazy (ingesting disinfectant) .  

Those state governors more like him, mini-Trumps as it were, have now decided to "re-open" their states without even meeting the standards set by the administration itself (14 days of declining cases), and the nation's economy is on life support as unemployment approaches Depression-era levels.  

Two stimulus packages have passed and been signed into law, but a third, which would help state and local governments whose balance sheets have been decimated, is on ice in McConnell's Senate as Republicans claim they are not willing to use pandemic relief to fund state pension plans.  In fact, however, no such demand is being made by the states; to the contrary,  their tax receipts have cratered and they need the federal cash merely to replace what the taxpayers, were they fully employed, would have provided.

Meanwhile, right-wing nut jobs are showing up armed and in cammo in Michigan, pretending their phallic accoutrement will cow state leaders into ignoring the science they themselves choose to disregard.  And on Friday, one of them shot a cop who ordered his sister to don a mask while in a Dollar Store in Flint.

This is America, circa May 2020.

Distraught. 

Divided.

And on edge.

Enough on its public policy plate to keep an army of competent government leaders busy on the one hand.

Bereft of such leadership at the top on the other.

Under the circumstances, this is not an ideal time for a sex scandal. 

But, mirabile dictu, one has emerged.

Joe Biden is now accused of having sexually assaulted an ex-aide, Tara Reade, in the halls of Washington, DC's capitol building sometime in 1993.  Last Friday, he calmly but expressly denied the allegation on MSNBC's Morning Joe in a seventeen minute interview with show host Mika Brzezinski.  

As we now know, any knee jerk dismissal of Reade's charge  given the passage of time is neither appropriate nor necessarily accurate.  For many reasons -- trauma,  fear of reprisal, embarassment, re-victimization -- victims often deep-six accounts of  assaults for years, or can't remember all the particular details once they decide to talk, and the fact that they have done so does not in itself render their reports false or malicious or vindictive or any of the other shibboleths routinely launched by those who shower them in disbelief.

It is, of course, a given that political partisans, myself included, are the last people who should be called upon to adjudicate claims involving politicians.  If we have learned anything on this subject over the past thirty years, it is this -- partisan bias pretty much predicts where you'll come down.  

No one I know who wanted Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh confirmed, or Donald Trump elected, was willing to fully believe Anita Hill, Christine Blasey Ford or the twenty-five victims of Donald Trump's apparently unbridled libido.  Some of the same people who defended Thomas later impeached Clinton for lying about a consensual but inappropriate relationship, others who defended Thomas or Sen. Packwood (himself forced to resign in the '90s from the Senate on account of sexual harassment) cheered for Paula Jones, and some of the same people who vilified Kavanaugh are now defending Biden.

It is also easy to predict the arguments that will be made.  

Those who favor Biden's accuser will embrace the claims made above regarding victim memory and delay, and saddle Joe's defenders with the charge of hypocrisy in view of how they went after Kavanaugh in 2018.  

Those who favor Biden will note the passage of time, the fact that his accuser has told different stories at different times regarding the nature of her claims against him, the fact that  her current late report is her second late report, the first having come in 2019 (without any of the incendiary sexual assault claims regarding digital penetration), and the fact that then staffers in Biden's Senate office have all denied that any claim was ever made against their boss.  Perhaps most importantly, his defenders will note that, in a public career spanning almost fifty years, Joe Biden has never been accused of sexual wandering, let alone sexual assault, of any kind.   

Biden's defenders will also contrast his calm demeanor and clean past with the defenses mounted by Thomas, Kavanaugh and Trump.  

The two justices more or less trademarked outrage in the hearings held to assess the claims against them.  Thomas claimed he was the victim of a "high-tech lynching" and Kavanaugh literally shouted his denials, insulting anyone who pondered the possibiity that his well-known penchant for beer might have clouded his memory as much as it loosened his shorts, while lying about the meaning of references to  "devil's triangle[s]" (i.e., threesomes) in his high school yearbook.  

For his part, Trump's defense is not remotely sophisticated.  He says everyone of his accusers, all twenty-five of them, are lying about allegations that run the gamut from groping to rape.  His current press secretary is now asserting that the claims against him were in effect litigated in his favor by the voters in 2016.  If so, it's the first jury where a minority of the votes determined a case's outcome.

What to do?

There is no good answer.  

Unlike Senate confirmations, there is no forum in which an investigation can be launched, even were we to assume it could be a fair one.  None, thusfar, have been.  Witnesses who might have corroborated Blasey Ford's story in 2018 were never contacted in the much ballyhooed follow-on FBI investigation after the initial Kavanaugh hearing, and Biden himself was roundly criticized for not having called a witness who could have corroborated Anita Hill's testimony in 1991.  And political campaigns seem uniquely unsuited to the task.  No one who talks to a reporter, including both victims and the accused, is under oath.  No one can be subpoenaed.  No one can be cross-examined.

There is also a greater  risk here.

This presidential campaign will be among the ugliest in our history.  Trump himself makes that ineluctable. He is incapable of living anywhere but the gutter and has turned every campaign he ran -- all of the 2016 primaries as well as the general election -- into mudbaths.  He will lie, insult, and troll his way to November 3, diverting attention from his latest outrage as he works to drive-up Biden hatred and hijack the election.

That's what he did with Hillary and her emails.  

It's what he tried to do last year with Ukraine.

And it's what he'll do with Reade's allegation. 

Demands for investigations that cannot happen, or sealed documents that have no relevant information, are already being made.  Trump will enlist those demands to create yet another shiny object designed to take all eyes off him -- his incompetence, his vulgarity, his idiocy, his sheer danger -- while training them on his parody of Biden.  If the media play to type, as they did in 2016, a commttment to phony balance will make them constantly repeat this single and as yet unproved charge against Biden while voters spin their heads in the blur created by Trump's two dozen plus victims and his constant but ever changing parade of disqualifying inanities, tantrums and lies. 

America needs a break from sex.  

A time out.

Tara Reade waited twenty-seven years to tell her story.

Maybe we should wait six months . . .

Before deciding to listen to it.