Tag: Trump

Historical Perspective

The 2024 Presidential election is in the books and it’s time to take stock. I’ll let the political science people analyze the results, but one number jumped out at me. Trump won an election for the first time in his life with slightly more votes than he received in 2020. The big difference was that Kamala Harris received about 9 million fewer votes than Joe Biden had in 2020. Again, other people are more equipped than I to comb through these results and explain them, but, as a historian, I can offer some thoughts about the presidency in a general sense.

Every few years, someone conducts a poll among historians and other scholars, asking them to rank the presidents from best to worst. The sort of criteria used by these polls usually include various questions, but they fall into three main categories. (1) How did the president do in terms of foreign policy? (Did they keep us out of unnecessary wars, strengthen our status in the world, make us stronger militarily, etc.?) (2) How did he do with domestic affairs? (Did the economy improve or decline?;  How did he handle the rights of minority groups?; Did he rule on behalf of all people, not just the wealthy,?; Were there political scandals or corruption connected with his administration)? (3) And finally, if faced with a crisis, how successful was he in resolving the situation?

Because of the assortment of people polled and criteria used, the results have varied over time, but certain patterns emerge from these polls. The top three presidents in these polls are invariably the same: Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and George Washington.

Washington ranks highly because of his steady guidance and restraint through the process of establishing exactly what a president’s role would be within the brand-new, checks-and-balances system of a democratic government. Most important of all, he set the incredible precedent of willingly stepping down from the presidency and conducting a peaceful transfer of power to the next president. This may not sound like much, but it had never happened before in modern history. Before Washington, most national leaders in the world had been kings, absolute monarchs, or military leaders who were loathe to even share power, let alone surrender it. George’s amazing act set an example that was followed in the US until 2020 and was copied by many other nations.

FDR makes these lists because he guided the nation through our two greatest crises of the 20th Century, the Great Depression and World War II. In the process, he did several things that helped elevate the country to world dominance and greatness. First, he legalized labor unions, thus allowing millions of workers to improve themselves economically and even join the middle class. Also, he passed the Social Security Act, called by many the single most important piece of legislation in US history. The SSA provided security for millions of people who had previously lived on the dangerous edge of poverty. Finally, he laid the groundwork for an alliance system that provided national security for the US and numerous other countries across the globe for decades. Before his international leadership, the US had floundered on the periphery of the world’s stage and pursued a policy of isolation, assuming that we could go it alone, without getting involved with other nations, especially in Europe. It was this myopic stance by the isolationists that allowed Adolf Hitler to take over one country after another in Europe until he was almost too powerful to stop. FDR elevated the US to a position of leadership that we have never fully relinquished since the 1940s.

Lincoln stands at the top, poll after poll, for obvious reasons: he ended the odious institution of slavery and held our nation together at its most critical moment, the Civil War. I could write pages more about the greatness of Lincoln, but this will suffice for now.

Toward the bottom of these polls, you will find the usual suspects. Those connected with massive corruption, such as Warren G. Harding, Ulysses S. Grant, and Richard Nixon (although Nixon’s reputation has improved in recent polls), show up repeatedly. Also, those who demonstrated utter incompetence in the face of a crisis show up here. This would include Herbert Hoover (The Depression), Andrew Johnson (Reconstruction), and especially James Buchanan. I just read Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest, which is about the start of the Civil War, and Buchanan, with the nation at a critical breaking point, repeatedly tried to appease the slave-holding states or pass responsibility off to the next president.

All of this is preamble to an attempt to speculate where our last two presidents will fall in these polls. I should preface these remarks by saying that historians never like to discuss current events. We are trained to delay analysis for at least several decades to allow the passage of time to cool partisan passions and, hopefully, create a more objective viewpoint. That said, this is my attempt to guess what historians will say about the recent presidents fifty years from now.

Biden will be complicated. A good comparison might be Harry S Truman. FDR died in April, 1945 and his VP, Truman, took over during one of the most difficult moments in the nation’s history. It fell to Truman to end the war against Germany, defeat Japan, rebuild the economy after the war, and develop an alliance system to oppose an aggressive Russia. After the war, millions of former soldiers returned home, expecting to find jobs, buy homes, and start families. However, at that very moment, factories that had been supplying tanks, airplanes, machine guns, uniforms, and other things for the military, suddenly shut down in order to convert to making civilian goods such as appliances, clothing, and automobiles. Unemployment was rampant, and the grumbling began. Further, because of shortages of consumer goods, prices shot up as people were willing to pay higher prices for almost everything. Economists predicted a return of the Depression that had ended with the start of the build-up for war. So, although none of this was the fault of the President, Truman got blamed for the lack of jobs and the high inflation. His approval ratings plummeted, hitting a low of 22%. He was regarded as a bumbling bureaucrat who was in over his head as President. His campaign song for his re-election was “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” but detractors, noting the lack of enthusiasm for the Democrat, altered it to “I’m Just Mild About Harry.” Despite all of that, he managed to win re-election in a close vote. Still, his 2nd-term approval rating remained mired in the twenties and low thirties. Historians, too, ranked him among the weakest presidents of all time.

Then, twenty years later, something remarkable occurred. In the early ‘70s, in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, his reputation enjoyed a resurgence. After dealing with Nixon, people suddenly looked at Truman as an honest, decent man who spoke frankly, rebuilt our peacetime economy, and started the nation on a quarter century of world-wide economic dominance. Moreover, he stood up to the aggressive Russians, who were trying to take over all of Europe, and limited their expansion. About the time of his death in 1972, his popularity soared. There was a one-man show on Broadway called “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry.” That play was made into a movie, and a best-selling book titled, Plain Speaking detailed his life and career through his speeches and quotes. His ranking in those presidential polls began to climb as well, and the most recent one I saw had him ranked as the 6th best president of all time, just behind the Big Three, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt.

I am suggesting that, fifty years from now, Joe Biden’s presidency will be looked at in a similar fashion. He took office during another critical period in our nation’s history. Like all Democratic presidents over the past 40 years (Clinton, Obama, and Biden), he inherited an economy from his Republican predecessor (Bush, Sr., Bush, Jr., and Trump, respectively) that was in a severe recession. Covid was still killing tens of thousands of people every day, unemployment under Trump had been as high as 15% and millions of people were still out of work. The stock market had bottomed out under Trump, with the Dow Jones Avg. hitting a low of 23,000. Many economists were predicting a depression or a prolonged recession that would devastate our country. Moreover, our alliance system had been greatly weakened by Trump, the US had abdicated its leadership role in world affairs, and we were stuck in a war in Afghanistan that had lasted nearly twenty years and seemed to have no end in sight. Finally, the previous president, Trump, tried to overthrow the legitimate government and conduct a coup that would have, in effect, ended democracy.

With all of these obstacles in his path, Biden managed to pull us out of the mess he inherited. He used the full power of the government to facilitate the final development of a vaccine and distribute it to the people for free. The Covid crisis slowly subsided and people were able to return to work. The jobless rate improved dramatically, reaching levels not seen in six decades. The Dow recovered rapidly and now sits at an all-time high of over 44,000, thus helping everyone’s IRA and retirement accounts. Biden worked with the handful of Republicans who actually cared about the country more than they cared about Trump and passed important, bipartisan legislation such as the infrastructure bill. Every president of the 21st Century had tried and failed to pass such a bill. As soon as the economy recovered, however, another crisis reared its head: inflation. As in Truman’s case, the rise of prices came about because of worldwide problems, in this case supply-line shortages caused by Covid and higher gas prices caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions put on Russian oil by the West. Every industrialized nation experienced bad inflation, but Biden’s aggressive approach to the problem meant that the US recovered faster and more effectively than the rest of the world.

In international affairs, he was equally successful. Bush, Jr., Obama, and Trump all promised to extricate us from the lengthy war situation in Afghanistan. All of them, though, quickly realized that to do so would be a messy and unpopular proposition. Biden was the only one to follow through with that promise. It was, as expected, an ugly withdrawal, and it could have been handled better. Still, he gets high marks for getting us out of an unwinnable war that had resulted in over 23,000 Americans being killed or wounded. Most important, Biden rebuilt the alliance system that had been greatly weakened by Trump. This became crucial in February, 2022, when Putin and the Russians invaded Ukraine as part of his plan to start a new Russian empire in Europe and Asia. Biden is seen as something of a hero in Europe for taking the lead in organizing NATO’s resistance to this naked aggression, and the US is a stronger nation because of this alliance. It should be noted that we would have not won WWI, WWII, or the Cold War without allies who helped present a united front to our enemies.

Biden was heavily criticized for his inability to solve the immigration problem at our southern border. In that regard, he certainly did no worse than the other three presidents in the 21st Century. Trump proposes shutting down the border completely and expelling millions of immigrants now living in the US. My question to him would be: What do you plan to eat if you do that? I have recently seen some startling statistics about immigrant labor in this nation. In the lily-white state of Iowa, 73% of all agricultural workers were born in another country. In Wisconsin and Minnesota, as many as 80% of the low-paying, filthy jobs in the beef and pork industries are held by immigrants, most of them illegal. I expect that similar numbers of immigrants are involved in fruit-picking and other agricultural jobs across the country. Instead of railing about the problem without offering a real solution, as Trump continues to do, Biden worked with Republicans and law-enforcement authorities along the border and helped design an actual policy that would provide a possible solution to the problem. That plan, of course, was effectively vetoed by Trump, who ordered his GOP minions to defeat the bill rather than see Biden and the Democrats get credit for solving the problem.

Despite all of his accomplishments, the media, as they did with Truman, focused on Biden’s missteps and his obvious diminished capacity near the end of his term. As a result, his approval ratings hit a low of 36% at one point, bad, but not as low as Truman’s 22% or even Trump’s low of 34% when he was president. I believe that, fifty years from now, Biden’s presidential record, like that of Truman, will be re-evaluated and his status will be much higher than it is today. If one of those polls were taken today, I expect that Biden would rank somewhere between the top 15-20 presidents in history. Like Truman, though, I think history will be good to him, and he will rise into the top ten in a half-century.

Trump’s status is much easier to ascertain than that of Biden. Historians will certainly focus on one issue in evaluating his first term. The fact that he tried to instigate an insurrection, overrule the democratic election, and institute a coup d’état is the only factor that matters. That alone places Trump as the worst president in US history. No other person tried to interrupt the 250 years of peaceful transfers of power and establish himself as dictator.

Looking at the other factors historians use to evaluate presidents, Trump will fare no better. The only crisis he faced was the Covid virus that raged during his term in office, and he failed miserably in dealing with that issue. He gets points for helping allocate government money toward finding a vaccine, but he dramatically undermined that effort by downplaying the virulence of the virus. Focused much more on getting re-elected than dealing with the crisis, he pronounced it “no worse than the flu” and discouraged people from taking even the most rudimentary precautions. As a result, many thousands died needlessly because they refused to wear masks, avoid crowds, or get vaccinated when the shots were available. Domestically, the only meaningful thing he accomplished was a large tax break for corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Those tax breaks helped the top 3% of the people, but put the financial burden of the nation on the other 97%. Further, these breaks increased the national debt more than any president in history by greatly decreasing the amount of money the government took in each year. Our grandchildren will have to deal with that burden in the future, and the corporations repaid the government’s generosity by gouging the consumers and making inflation much worse when prices began to rise.  In terms of corruption, Trump’s administration stands alone. Never before has a president or former president been found guilty of multiple felonies (although Nixon was pardoned before he could face a judge or jury). The president himself, of course has been indicted and convicted of numerous crimes. Because of his stranglehold on the government and the judicial system, however, he will never be held accountable for those horrendous crimes. Moreover, dozens of his closest aides and accomplices in crime have already been convicted and have served time in prison.

In international affairs, Trump made the US a much weaker country. He failed to do anything about immigration except separate parents from children at the border and build 40 miles of a proposed 2000-mile-long wall. He vowed to get the US out of Afghanistan, but did nothing when he realized that such actions would be complicated. He withdrew from the nation’s traditional role of world leadership by refusing to take part in worldwide agreements concerning the environment or even standing up to Russia’s aggression. Instead, he lauded Putin and encouraged him by indicating the US would not stand in his way should he want to expand his borders in Eastern Europe. Finally, he denigrated the US military personnel by labelling anyone who fought for their country as “losers” and “suckers.” Even the generals who served under him have characterized Trump as a dangerous man with fascist tendencies. In short, there is no way to view Trump’s first term other than as a complete disaster. So, what does the US do with the worst President in American history? They give him a second chance.

It should be noted, of course, that Trump has not even started his second term, so his legacy is not yet complete. When he first took office in 2017, many observers urged caution in judging Trump prematurely. He can’t be as bad as he sounds, they said. No one could be that bad, they said. The Republicans in Congress will rein in his excesses and teach him how a responsible leader of the Free World behaves, they said. Instead, the GOP complied with all of his selfish wishes and kissed the ring (and other body parts) whenever he demanded. The result was a failed presidency of epic proportions. But perhaps this time will be different. Maybe he has learned from his countless mistakes and will now rule as a decent human being.

Perhaps. And perhaps Hell will freeze over, the world will stop spinning on its axis, and all leopards will suddenly change their spots. Check back with me in fifty years.

Great Again?

September 11, 2001. That was the last time I felt gut-punched like I did yesterday. That was the last time that someone attacked our government, our democracy, our country. As we did on 9-11, Kathleen and I spent all day glued to the television, flipping channels, and trying to make sense of the disgusting images unfolding on the screen.

As I write these words, I am already breaking my New Year’s resolution to avoid talking about politics in my blog. Obviously, the events of yesterday moved me to take this step and made it impossible to remain silent. As a historian, I had images flashing through my mind of other times when our Capitol was under attack. In 1812, invading British forces took the city and burned the White House; in 1856, a Southern congressman used a cane to beat a US Senator bloody and unconscious at his desk in the Senate chamber because he was an abolitionist who spoke out against slavery; a few years later, that same issue resulted in a civil war in which Washington DC had to be turned into a fortress because the city was under assault from an invading army; in 2001, the Pentagon and White House were targeted by another enemy who sought to destroy our government. Those efforts all failed to accomplish their goal and our country survived. Even yesterday, all that was accomplished by the sickening, lawless mob was a slight delay of the inevitable. Late at night, despite these attacks and weeks of threats and failed law suits by Trump, both houses of Congress officially affirmed Joe Biden’s decisive victory.

For months leading up to the election, Donald Trump warned the voters that the election of Joe Biden would result in anarchy. He was right. He just didn’t explain that he would be the cause of that anarchy. I now have new images of attacks on Washington to join those of my historical memory. Thousands of seditious thugs tried to stop the operation of democracy while their hats, shirts, and flags bore the slogan “Make America Great Again.” They seemed to have no sense of irony at the fact that the four-year-long reign of terror by King Donald has ripped apart and destroyed a formerly great nation. Nor did they see the disconnect between the waving of American flags while attacking the very things that the flag stands for. All of this happened at the behest of their messiah. At a rally earlier, he repeated his lies about a “rigged election,” and exhorted the mob of mindless cult members to march down to the Capitol Building to disrupt the proceedings. (You can now add “inciting a riot” to his long list of criminal acts while president).

It reminded me of a film biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong that I used to show my students in World History. In 1966, in an event known as the Cultural Revolution, Mao became angry that China seemed to be slipping toward capitalism and away from “pure communism.” He started holding massive rallies with young people and college students, stirring them up with propaganda, and he organized them into groups he called “Red Guards.” They wore red bandanas similar to the MAGA hats and carried copies of a small book called “Quotations of Chairman Mao” (AKA, The Little Red Book). For three years, these people worshipped Mao as a god and became fanatical, marching through the streets attacking journalists, intellectuals, and anyone else who disagreed with their narrow view of the world. (See picture above) Hundreds of innocent people were killed, and by 1969 the nation was so disrupted by their mob actions, that the government had to step in, quietly force Mao into retirement, and try to restore order. Many of the fanatical followers, however, refused to cease their activities, so they were “sent down” to the countryside and forced to do hard labor that sapped their revolutionary energies. I vividly recall a film clip of one such girl who was so unrepentant and radicalized that they harnessed her to a plow in place of a draft animal. The film showed her with a huge smile on her face, happily straining to pull the plow through the fields for the good of China. Perhaps, after January 20th, we can do something similar to the Trump lemmings who attacked our nation yesterday.

Seriously, though, yesterday’s events were all a result of the forces of hatred and intolerance unleashed by a narcissistic president who believes himself to be above the law and who cannot admit to himself that he is a loser.

Something else has been unleashed by Donald Trump, however. During the chaos of the afternoon, the final votes were tabulated in Georgia, and Jon Ossoff was declared the other winner of the runoff election to determine the state’s two senators. In a result that would have been inconceivable just a few years ago, Ossoff, a Jew, and Raphael Warnock, the first Democratic African-American ever elected to the US Senate from a Southern state, will now become part of a Democratic majority in the US Senate, US Congress, and the White House. They, like President-Elect Joe Biden were pushed over the top by people voting for the first time, many of them Black, people who were moved to exercise their right to vote by the dangerous excesses and dictatorial power wielded by Trump. The events of the past four years moved them to take this step, and, like me, it became impossible to remain silent. And make no mistake, the electorate, like the country, is changing. Voters of the near future will be younger, more engaged, and more accepting of differences in race, color, sexual preference, and religion than the people who elected this horrible man.

Hopefully, this dramatic change in government leadership is just the beginning of something that will, indeed, make our country great again.

Divisions

Recently, much has been said and written about the divisions that we have in our country today. This led me to ponder the various dividing points that separate the 15,000 people who live here in our new home of River Falls.

Ironically, a street named Division is a major axis in River Falls. Main Street parallels the Kinnickinnic River and forms the primary artery on a north-to-south line. The east-west running street of Division, however, doesn’t bisect the town evenly into rectangular-grid quadrants, as the name might indicate. Instead, it is on the north edge of town, separating one of the newer sections from the older  section. It gets its name, I would guess from the fact that it forms the border between Pierce County and St. Croix County. That’s right: people on one side of Division Street in River Falls live in one county, while those on the other side reside in a different one. St. Croix County hugs the river that gives it its name and straddles I-94 before it crosses over into the Twin Cities. We live in Pierce County, which is predominantly rural and contains about half as many people as its northern neighbor. It also borders the St. Croix River, but, with no major bridge crossing into Minnesota, it has less traffic and a slower pace of life. Aside from the fact that certain government services are centered in one county or the other, this county division is insignificant and appears only on maps. In fact, I have never even seen a sign saying that you are leaving one county or entering the next.

As in most places, sports rivalries play a big role up here. Growing up in Chicago, I know that the Cubs-White Sox rift is the most pronounced division in terms of sports in that town. While loyalty to the Bears, Blackhawks, or Bulls tends to unify Chicagoans, most would agree that, if you have any integrity at all, you can only support one of the two major-league baseball teams. River Falls is only about 25-30 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul, but, in terms of sports loyalties, it seems to be more a part of Wisconsin than Minnesota. Packers’ fans appear to outnumber Vikings fans by a significant measure, and Wisconsin Badger supporters are more numerous than those of the Minnesota Gophers. However, in baseball, my purely unscientific and impressionistic estimate gives the nod to the Twins over Milwaukee’s Brewers.

There are other divisions that are unique to this town. For instance, living in a cold climate such as this, people take their windows seriously. Fights can break out between those who favor Pella windows over those who swear by windows made by Anderson. A local political controversy revolved around the two dams on the Kinnickinnic River. Some thought they should be should be destroyed and the falls should be restored to their natural state, while others argued that the dams, built in 1904, should remain in place. Just last year, it was decided that the dams will come down in stages over the next few years, but “Free the Kinni” signs can still be seen in windows around town.

More familiar political divisions are, of course, present in River Falls as well. Wisconsin, with its ten electoral votes is definitely one of the battleground states this year, having voted Republican in 2016 by only .77 of one percent. River Falls seems to be in a “purple” region of the state, being evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.  The presence of a university in town means that many people are college-educated and lean toward moderate and progressive candidates. The area around the town, though, is rural and more conservative. As a result, a large number of people support Donald Trump, while a similar number of people tend to support democracy, equality, and the Constitution instead. For our part, Kathleen and I are delighted to finally live in a state in which our vote will mean something. For years, it was depressing watching Tennessee elections called on TV about twenty seconds after the polls closed.

The rigid political divisions that plague our nation today can be traced to three developments a few decades ago. In 1988, Rush Limbaugh began his syndicated talk-radio program that is still on the air. From the beginning, his programs were marked by vitriol, racism, and fear- mongering. He also created the myth that he alone told the truth about politics, and that no other news sources could be trusted. He gained a huge audience among conservatives who wanted to believe that anyone who differed from their viewpoint was part of a left-wing conspiracy or bias. Then, in 1994, as part of his “Contract with America,” newly elected Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich issued a memo to all Republican senators and representatives. The memo indicated that any person who crossed the aisle and voted for Democratic-sponsored bills would essentially be ostracized from the Republican Party and cut off from all party support. Within the next decade, Democratic congressmen responded with similar partisan tactics, and gridlock has resulted. Recent studies on the political logjam in Congress have all pointed to Gingrich’s time as Speaker as a key factor in creating the obstructionist politics and polarization that are such a problem today. Finally, in 1996, Fox News Channel began their one-sided broadcasts. The powerful network routinely ignores facts in order to put a right-wing spin on all events and has evolved into much more a source of opinions than an actual news channel. Today, there are half-a-dozen legitimate news sources available on television, and yet millions of people get a twisted, disingenuous, and misleading form of the news from Fox. In terms of division, these three events have had an impact on this country that have altered Fox’s slogan of “We report, you decide,” to a more accurate “We distort, you divide.”

Then, this week, former Secretary of Defense, retired Marine General James Mattis, a man who has spent his entire professional career staying apolitical and above the fray, issued a statement that urged Americans to unite without expecting leadership to come from the Oval Office. He wrote, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.” These powerful words from a highly respected figure have been echoed in ensuing days by other military leaders, disillusioned Republicans, and former presidents from both parties. Even the intellectual voice of Conservatism for the past several decades, George Will, expressed his hope that the GOP will lose the coming election in order to awaken the party from the Trump-induced stupor into which it has fallen. His harshest words were reserved for the Republicans in the Senate who abandoned all sense of responsibility to the Constitution in their “Vichyite collaboration” with “this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath.” I usually disagree with much of what Will has to say, but the man can certainly write, and he always makes me think and question my assumptions.

I will wrap up this entry by pointing out that, in River Falls, the east-west road next to and parallel to Division is called Union Street. I sincerely hope that we as a nation can manage to traverse that half-block and find our way from Division to Union in the near future.

Laugh, and the World Laughs With You

“Laughter reduces pain, increases job performance, connects people emotionally, and improves the flow of oxygen to the heart and brain. Laughter, it’s said, is the best medicine. … And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates.”

—Psychology Today, 2005

As the coronavirus crisis drags on, and the number of deaths in only 3 months approaches the total of American lives lost in the Vietnam War over 14 years (58,000 from 1961 to 1975), we may have to work hard to keep our sense of humor. I know it’s difficult, but as the quote above indicates, there are actual physical, emotional, and psychological benefits to joking and laughing. If you think about it, this entire situation is funny in an absurd sort of way. Did any of us, just two months ago, envision a world in which we would be confined to our homes, wearing face masks in public, and washing our hands until our skin was raw? I guess what I’m saying is, as difficult as it might be at times, look for reasons to laugh. If you need something funny to read, try a Christopher Moore novel. I strongly suggest Lamb, Fool, or Noir; in each of those, he takes a familiar genre and turns it on its head. Laugh-out-loud funny.

It seems like a year ago, but as St. Patrick’s day approached, I heard a joke that I liked. Since we had reservations at a casino in Biloxi for March 17th, I thought perhaps I could casually throw it into a conversation at a blackjack table while the dealer was re-shuffling the deck. Then, of course, I never got the chance. So here it is:

A man walked into a neighborhood pub in Dublin, Ireland and ordered three Guinness Stouts. The bartender, who took his Guinness seriously, carefully poured three beautiful beers. In each glass, the dark brown, almost black, Stout was topped by nearly an inch of tan-colored foam. He placed them in front of the patron. Only then did he notice that the man was alone and planned on drinking all three beers by himself. “You know,” he said, “Guinness is best when it is freshly poured. If you ordered each of these separately, I think you’d enjoy it more.”

               The man smiled and said, “Technically, friend, these are not all for me. See, a few weeks ago, my mother died and my brothers and I lost the farm we had rented since my dear, departed father passed. One brother moved to Sydney, Australia, and the other went to Chicago, in America. I moved from the countryside to Dublin and found a job. Before we parted, though, we three boys made a promise that we would go to our local pub every Wednesday and have a beer with our brothers living far away. So I plan to drink these three stouts and reminisce about my family—those dead, and those who have moved away.”

               The bartender was touched by the story, and he left the man alone as he quietly sipped his dark beers. When the stranger left the pub, the barkeep related the story to the other patrons, all of whom were equally moved. From that day on, the ritual was repeated every week. The other men in the pub respected the ceremony, and the room grew silent until the stranger finished his three beers and left.

               Several months later, the man came in and said, “I’ll have two Guinness Stouts.” A hush fell over the room as the bartender and the other patrons assumed the worst. The bartender silently poured the beer and brought them to the bar. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly.

               “What do you mean?” the man asked.

               “You only ordered two beers today, so I thought that one of your brothers must have passed.”

               “No, that’s not it,” the stranger said. “Today is Ash Wednesday, and I’ve given up beer for Lent.”

In this current type of a crisis, though, normal humor often takes a back seat to “Black Humor” or “Dark Humor.” This is a type of humor where a morbid slant on things is combined with comedy in order to give a disturbing effect or to point out the absurdity of life. Many times, the topics discussed under this genre are serious, but the approach towards it is very light and humorous. Some of my favorite films use dark humor to great comic effect. Dr. Strangelove, Harold & Maude, Heathers, Monty Python films or, more recently Pulp Fiction (or anything else by Quentin Tarantino) and Fargo (or anything else by the Coen Brothers) all used this technique. This type of humor is not for everyone. These are the sort of films that make you laugh aloud, but then you glance around to see if anyone noticed that you found those disturbing images humorous.

My family always dealt with loss or tragedy by resorting to the dark-sense-of-humor defense. On the morning my father died, my brother Mark was at the house while the Hospice people were still there, packing up their supplies. Mark asked, “So is this like a rainout, and you get to go home early?”

Kathleen and I went to Chicago for that funeral. My other brother, Dan, showed me a T-shirt that he had bought for me. It was from a local business and read “Chicago Jack” on the back. He tossed it to me from across the room and said, “I was gonna mail this to you, but luckily dad died and saved me the postage.”

I used a variation of that line later when I was sick and missed a month of teaching. Upon my return, colleagues were discussing a particularly lengthy and time-wasting faculty meeting that had occurred in my absence. I said, “That sounds brutal; thank God I had cancer and got to miss it.”

The point is that humor can get you through anything. If your kids are making you lose your temper during your first foray into home-schooling, get a T-shirt that says, “Good Moms Use Bad Words” (I saw that one recently). If watching the news and the gloomy predictions and statistics from doctors is getting you down, turn to the President’s daily press conference for a laugh. That’s right: even the Clown-in-Chief can be funny at times, albeit unintentionally. You can’t help but laugh as he staggers like a drunken sailor from one position to another, claiming dictatorial power one day, and throwing everything back to the states the next.

It is especially laughable to watch him try to shift the blame for his many mistakes. While President Harry Truman famously had a plaque on his Oval Office desk that read “The Buck Stops Here,” Trump refuses to take responsibility for any of his numerous blunders and flings blame around like confetti. In recent days, he has pointed fingers at the World Health Organization, governors of individual states (Democrats only, of course), and even former President Obama, who left office with a plan in place for possible ways to deal with a pandemic (that plan was scrapped by Trump in 2018). Yesterday, instead of providing any semblance of leadership, he touted miracle cures, such as hydroxychloroquine, sunshine, or—wait for it—injecting disinfectant. This puts our country in the bizarre position of having the FDA, CDC, and other government organizations warning people that they should ignore the snake-oil salesman we call a President. Yes, Trump’s antics would indeed be comical if all of this weren’t so damned serious. It is safe to say that no president in history, with the possible exceptions of James Buchanan, Herbert Hoover, or George W. Bush, was so ineffective in dealing with a national crisis. In each case, moreover, many people died because of their ineptitude.

My opening quote today refers to the old saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” I did some research and found that the origin of that quote is probably the Bible, specifically, a proverb from the Wisdom of Solomon.:“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it beats the hell out of drinking Lysol.

He Was in Heaven Before He Died

Yesterday was a bad day. We in Wisconsin were forced to leave our homes amid this pandemic in order to practice that most basic right of American citizenship: voting. That is only remarkable because the Republican majority in the state house, in a blatant case of voter repression, insisted that there be no delays because they wanted to keep the turnout low and prevent people from voting who are more likely to support Democrats. Our President gave another farcical press conference marked by outrageous statements and a refusal to answer legitimate questions from the media. That conference came after he had dismissed the non-partisan head of the oversight committee whose job it was to see that the $2 Trillion allotted by Congress last week will be disbursed fairly and impartially. Trump, who has never done anything fairly and impartially in his life, will now oversee those funds personally in still another power grab designed to remove all restraints on his runaway authority. All of this occurred on a day when more Americans died from Covid19 than on any previous day. To top it all off, as I opened my newspaper at 5:00 this morning, I saw that one of those who died of the virus was singer and songwriter, John Prine.

I saw Prine perform many times. At one of those shows in Boulder, Colorado in 1978, he was explaining the idea behind a song of his called Bruised Orange. He recalled walking to church one dark morning to serve mass as an altar boy. There was a big commotion because a young kid, another altar boy or paper-delivery boy presumably, had been hit by a train and killed. A crowd gathered near the tracks and eleven terrified mothers waited to find out if the boy was their son. The Police finally revealed who the boy was, and, as Prine told it, “Everyone stared at the boy’s mother to see her reaction. But,” he added, “I’ll never forget the expressions on the faces of those other ten mothers.” That was the secret of his songs: he always saw the world from a slightly different angle.

I first became aware of John Prine in 1971 when his eponymous debut album came out. I was still in high-school and had only listened to pop music to that point. Something new was happening in music at that time, however. It was called “FM Radio,” and new stations were popping up that were not constrained by the limitations of Top Forty song lists. Prine was a Chicago guy, so many of these so-called “underground” disc jockeys saw him at area coffee houses and clubs and played his songs. From the first time I heard him, I was blown away. His songs told stories about ordinary people and their lives. And always, they came at you from a new angle that helped you understand the world and the people in it a little better. Somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, the thought registered that I, too, wanted to be a folk-singer. It would take a few more years before I acted on that thought, but when I moved to Austin, Texas to learn to play guitar in 1977, more than anything else, I wanted to write songs like John Prine.

Prine was not overtly political. Still, many of his songs hinted at political issues in subtle ways. In Sam Stone, he touched on the emotional and psychological battles being fought by returning veterans, long before anyone had used the term “Vietnam Veteran Stress Syndrome” (today called PTSD). That song still brings tears to my eyes. He addressed, in a humorous way, false patriotism in the form of people who put decals of the US flag on their cars, but hate most actual Americans (Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore). Six-o’clock News dealt with family secrets and unwanted children. As recently as 2005, he took a shot at our unjustified invasion of Iraq in Some Humans Ain’t Human. I can’t help thinking that he would have written another verse to that song if he saw our current president using a terrible human tragedy to advance his own political agenda.

Like Guy Clark and Steve Goodman, Prine never fit neatly into any commercially obvious categories, so record companies and radio stations didn’t know what to do with him. Rather than give up, though, he started his own record company where he was able to be himself, rather than some executive’s idea of what he should be. Performers such as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd listed him among their favorite songwriters. Everyone from George Strait (I Just Wanna Dance With You), to Miranda Lambert (That’s the Way the World Goes ‘Round), to David Allan Coe (You Never Even Called Me by my Name) had hits covering Prine songs. In addition to numerous Americana music awards, he won two Grammys and, earlier this year, a Lifetime Achievement Award. So, while he was never a commercial success personally, he managed to find his own niche and earn the respect of writers and singers throughout the industry.

Prine could use words in an incredibly clever fashion, and he had a whimsical sense of humor. If you need a reason to smile today—and we all do—listen to Jesus: The Missing Years, Let’s Talk Dirty in Hawaiian, In Spite of Ourselves, The Other Side of Town, or Dear Abby. He was also a great performer, especially when he was young. Almost every time I saw Steve Goodman, John Prine would show up and do a couple of songs with him, and vice versa. They clearly had a ball performing together, and the enthusiasm was contagious. When I finally sang on the tiny stage at the Earl of Old Town, where both Goodman and Prine got their start, I felt as if I were in some sort of holy shrine. I got chills, and, as I often did, I forgot the lyrics to my own songs.

In 1975, for his Common Sense album, Prine wrote a song about his dad in which he said, “He was in heaven before he died.” I think the sentiment applies here as well. I once heard him talk about singing at an annual family reunion in Kentucky, where his parents were from. He said, “I always have to play the song Paradise about a thousand times; if I only play it nine-hundred times, they think I’m getting a big head.”  

Still, I’d love to hear it one more time, John.