History as therapy

As a doctor I am prescribing a new therapeutic tool to counteract the mental havoc caused by Trump: the book These Truths by Jill Lepore. Dr. Lepore is a chaired professor of American history at Harvard and a staff writer for The New Yorker. These Truths is a narrative history of the United States written like one of those tremendously engaging New Yorker articles about a subject you never even thought about but the writing is so powerful it pulls you so deeply into the world of orchids or artisanal iron work construction that you want to change careers. Except These Truths is nine hundred pages long. There are a hundred pages of notes, however, as support and amplification of any subject that comes up. That in itself is such a pleasant change from Trump who, not only lies about whatever suits him, offer no supporting evidence for anything he says, lies or not.

These Truths calmed me down. To begin with, the Trump/populism thing has happened many times in this country and our democracy has withstood the threat every time. Populism itself is not a threat but a reminder for whom the government works. But every time there is a financial crisis like the one in 2008 that is followed by a prolonged recession, the same type of demagogues arise and attempt to take control of the government in the name of 'the people'. Hitler came to power as a solution to the economic punishing debt repayment inflicted on Germany after it lost WW1. Fascism has always arisen during tough economic times. And along with it, the isolationism which manifests itself as trade tariffs, keeping out immigrants, and blaming the situation on minority groups. Just before reading Dr. Lepore's book, I read Crashed by Tooze an economic historian from Columbia. The entire book is about how an economic downturn gives rise to a political shift to the right, to a more conservative world view, which means, anti-immigrant, anti-safety net, anti-internationalism.

Another thing I learned from These Truths is how heavy the shadow of slavery in the form of racial prejudice hangs over our country. I knew about slavery, and about Jim Crow, but I never felt it until reading this book. I grew up in Portland, Oregon surrounded by liberal white people who never manifested racial prejudice. So when Obama was elected it seemed like just a really smart, good person was elected. The fact that he was black broke a barrier; I knew that. But when the Republicans decided to do everything they could to make him fail, I was a little stumped. Was this just politics? It seemed too divisive, too extreme, to just be political polarization. And it was. It was racial prejudice. Many people told me this. It was written in countless essays about the reaction to the Obama presidency, but not until I read the whole history of our country in one long narrative piece did I realize how big the race issue loomed and still does. 

After reviewing our history, Trump seems like the boil that he is. But we shouldn't ignore him. Boils can cause problems, as that hilarious movie How to Get Ahead in Advertising demonstrated. In the movie, Richard Grant, an advertising writer gets a boil on his neck that grows a face, gets bigger and bigger until it eventually takes over the real Richard Grant. We must not ignore boils. We need to hot pack them, lance them if necessary, and sometimes even take antibiotics. With Trump, boil that he is, we need to speak up against his lies, we need to welcome refugees and immigrants to our country of immigrants, we need to cooperate with the rest of the world to make the entire world safe for our species and every other species, and we need to take care of our neighbors as we would like them to take care of us if we needed taking care of. 

Thank you Jill Lepore!