In this dangerous political moment where is the necessary and countervailing assertiveness from the nation’s corporate leadership and those sitting in the co-equal branch of the Congress?
It is revealing that a culture ostensibly immersed in the values of individual initiative and freedom of thought—virtues celebrated endlessly in the cowboy mythologies of popular entertainment—we would see its actual corporate and political leaders wither in the face of serious government malfeasance. Where is the assertiveness of the nation’s industrial powerhouses and the once co-equal Congress? With some notable exceptions most news giants have also folded and retreated into safe compliance with gag orders and payoffs to appease this president. All of this is happening in the face of a blizzard of presidential attempts to sabotage once secure American values and policies. Where are fearless figures like Indiana Jones when we need them?
Trump has destroyed the nation’s once historic leadership of former allies and democracies. Now they feel threatened by America’s new and growing rogue status. We are not Russia, but the comparisons are more apt. We clearly have many new billionaires who have sold their souls for photo ops with the President and the chance to profit from his absurd whims. In the years to come the silence of leaders at Apple, Amazon, Paramount and other tech giants is going to make them look ruthlessly opportunistic and small.
And while there are some signs that some in the Senate and house are rousing themselves, it is not fair that octogenarian Bernie Sanders should stull be the most effective advocate question Donald Trump’s real and threatened raids on other nations. There are too few profiles in courage from the supposedly dominant party in Congress. Most members of the GOP seem to be doing everything except hiding under their desks to avoid calling out the unamerican actions of their political leader. Politicizing federal agencies and violating international law by kidnapping the leader of Venezuela represent the latest offenses against the Constitution that stack up weekly like a midwinter supply of cordwood. In lieu of the silence of the Speaker of the House and most tech and news chiefs we look to look to older seniors with handmade signs standing on street corners who have taken up the cause against administrative malfeasance.
The irony is that political and commercial “leaders” who have thrown their support to this President seem to be ignoring evidence of Trump’s clear unpopularity with the American public. Their indifference to their own constituents and customers does not bode well for our future.
Biographer Nell Painter remembers working on a study of the former slave and abolitionist, Sojourner Truth, who led a remarkable life of advocacy over a period spanning the mid-1800s. But several years ago Painter told a C-Span interviewer that her “closeness to me receded” as she worked her way deeper into Sojourner’s life. She respected her subject to the end, but finally doubted they would connect in a conversation. Sometimes the great and good are better left to be appreciated for works in their time. Pick the right moments from our own lives and we can all look a little strange to future generations.
Reading about another’s life can rise from the simplest of motives. We want to know more about how someone pieced together an exemplary existence. What luck or brilliance worked to their benefit? What friends or associates were influential, or lucky to have them in their lives? These kinds of questions lead me to books written by or about Joan Didion, Griffin Dunne, Frank Sinatra, Woodrow Wilson, Steve Jobs, Riccardo Muti, Dimitri Shostakovich, Oliver Sacks, Jim Henson and many others. Even at the hands of a first-rate biographer, and perhaps because of the writer, some luminaries can lose their luster. In a few cases I’ve encountered enough documented boorishness to happily put the book aside. In our current moment we probably don’t learn as much from someone’s character faults. We have Donald Trump for that. I take the fickle reader’s option of moving onto something that is likely to be more affirming.