Optimism isn’t your friend anymore

Optimism isn’t your friend anymore

Is there anything called going too far anymore? The presidential address to the joint Houses of Congress on March 4, 2025 was reminiscent of a session in hell as John Milton imagined it in Paradise Lost, with the hellhounds barking ecstatically every time the Prince of Darkness threw them glistening slabs of meat, mostly human, mostly nonwhite.

That and the pity fest. Tokenized “victims” of “radical left” excesses under Biden’s administration were paraded up and down, a political porn show of the exploitation and consumption of human beings’ deepest fears, darkest anguish, insecurity, and lemming instincts.

All of it together made me wonder if there still might be something called going too far, and of inhuman dictators eventually being hoist on their own petard (remember Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Bashir El Assad, Nicolae Ceausescu, and more.)

But I’m not feeling very optimistic.

In Akira Kurosawa’s ”I Live in Fear,” (1955), a Japanese businessman and father ultimately goes mad after trying to escape the H-bomb which he is convinced is coming, and from which he tries to save his family by moving to Brazil but can’t. And goes mad, of course.

His doctor at the psychiatric ward says to a visitor, “Is he crazy? Or are we, who can remain unperturbed in this insane world, the crazy ones?”

Friends, I write about literature, politics, women, environment, and culture, but since February 28^th, 2025, afterwitnessing, openmouthed, the world-changing event of Donald Trump and Volodomir Zelensky meeting in the Oval office for the staged bullying battle royal, and Trump and Vance essentially showing him the door after provoking, insulting, and silencing him, and then after Donald Trump’s presidential address to the joint houses of Congress on March 4, I have been wondering if I should add existential fear and pessimism to my subjects.

Because I don’t want to be the frog that slowly simmers to its boiling death. When the leaders of America and Russia are two princes of darkness, and Elon Musk the advisor of one, should we live in fear? What if we get up tomorrow and the world isn’t there anymore?

Musk’s Oscar-worthy chainsaw massacre would be almost funny to watch if it weren’t so obscenely terrifying. You can watch a capsule of his chainsaw avatar here.

In the midst of political commentators proclaiming a new era in world history, I have a thought. Does what happened in the Oval Office on Feb 28^th recall, even evoke 9/11, that raw wound of history the angel of death stamped on the American political unconscious, in some way?

Or even the assassination of Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria in 1914 that triggered a century of slowly but surely rotating apocalyptic humanity roast?

In other news on that, Zelensky gave in on March 4, a concession perfectly timed before Trump’s address, strengthening everyone’s hunch that the February 28^th showdown was deliberately and carefully choreographed for the express purpose of forcing Zelensky’s hand and making him bow his neck for Trump and Vance to grind their boots upon it till they’d had their fill, while Marco Rubio puddled in his . . . .

For a certain take on the event do check out Saturday Night Live.

Zelensky gave in. He had to. Europe didn’t forcibly enough defend him. Some of his own people are turning tail on him. I don’t blame defecting Ukrainian politicians or their supporters entirely, though I do now temper my unmitigated admiration for all Ukrainians as heroes. Three years of constant Russian sulfur and brimstone might have turned me into a turncoat looking for a scapegoat in the resistance leader of my country too, just to make the bombing stop, who knows. I’m not a hero.

But Zelensky is, was, and will remain so. And the world is slowly losing non-negotiable, non-relativistic, universal values like justice and the rule of law. If the Europeans bail, it’s open season for superpowers and their lackeys.

I live in fear.

Trump mocked and insulted all democrats—this man who’s given himself the biggest tax cut of all and should be in jail—and called Nancy Warren “Pocahontas” while she was sitting there in front of him.

Still, I can’t live in constant fear and despair (or at least I can try not to). So let me suggest a bright side here, as miniscule as it might be, because writing about fear and living in fear is so . . . well . . . frightening. And fairly useless as a defense against fear.

And so I must admit that I rather enjoy seeing cruel selfish people get hoist on their own petards. The pretty large-scale response to Musks’ DOGE initiatives, including his ultimatum email to all federal employees to list what they’d done in the last seven days or be fired, seems to me to be, to some extent, hopefully, the beginnings of this hoist. Maybe this is why we needed these oligarchs and their bought presidents to win this past year.

Friends, for the last months, and especially after the ridiculous excesses of January 2020 and the January 2025 inauguration circus, as well as since Elon Musk stood, phallic, holding his toddler X even atop himself on his shoulders, and stole the president’s primacy in the very Oval Office, and in sweats and jeans, no less, I have been asking you and other people what can be done, whether there is any light at the end of any tunnel, if there is even a thread of silver in this darkness visible that is the second presidency of Donald Trump. And then we got February 28^th.

And I think the answer to “Is there any light at the end of any tunnel?” is “Maybe, yes.”

Thirty-thousand people showed up at Representative Sean Casten’s (D-IL) townhall on a Thursday (three weeks ago) to speak some choice and unfettered words about what they think about Elon Musk and his interference in sensitive and critical departments of the Federal Government whose employees, ideal or not, perfect or not, serve the American people to the best of their capacity most of the time (which is more than can be said of the POTUS or his best friend Putin). Oh, and 35% of them have served in America’s wars abroad. Yes, do do a second take. THIRTY THOUSAND WORKING AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN CAME TO A 1 PM TOWNHALL called by Congressman Sean Casten of Illinois to express terror, fury, and disgust at what Trump is letting Musk do to the American people. That includes not only the juddering of the civic and bureaucratic apparatus of the United States by harassing and threatening federal government employees, and cutting 80,000 VA jobs, but also eliminating Medicaid, funding for education, Social Security, and other basic safety networks for the proud people of the world’s most powerful democracy.

If you see my point, friends, that’s where the hope lies. In the overreaching of stupid Titans like Musk and Trump (and even I note with a shudder that I’m writing Musk’s name before Trump’s here, but why not? The Emperor wears Sweatshirt and Jeans and a Baseball Hat, after all, though when the President of an invaded country comes in military dress, it’s “disrespectful” ).

And so when I see that an IRS worker who voted for Trump and was fired in the “swamp-draining” lie that was, apparently, sufficient promise for average, comfortably off or better, and even educated Americans to vote for Trump—some of my friends’ friends, I am told—I see how the over-reachers just might be hoist on their own petard. The ex-IRS worker said shakily on MSNBC that he’d expected Trump to come in with a “fine-toothed comb” and relieve the administration and government of inefficiencies (which, of course, exist; in what world are there no systemic inefficiencies, other than in systematic dictatorships?); instead, Trump took a wrecking ball to his life.

More Americans should demand town halls, especially from Republican politicians who’ve scaled them back because of the reception they’ve been getting from their constituents. And everyone should go. That’s where saving America and saving the world might start.

Because it certainly ain’t gonna happen in the Oval office of the White House of the US of A.