Get the bow ready
“There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.”—Buffalo Springfield, 32 years ago, in another unsettling American era.
Let’s unpack the arrows. This seems like a possibly pivotal time. Donald Trump—His ego is his very definition, essence and disorder.
That ego has led him repeatedly to grandiloquent declaration. But it also has permitted him to let those around him scale back his grandiloquence toward reality or practicality—on guns, immigration, steel tariffs, Obamacare, the Iran nuclear settlement.
After all, a man with an outsized ego doesn’t want to fail for all of history. And he wants to avoid that just as earnestly as he wants to avail himself of every opportunity in the fleeting rhetorical moment to engage in self-delusion, self-congratulation and self-celebration.
But now we confront a potentially seminal point. Trump’s ego has him convinced that, after a year, he has mastered the presidency and no longer needs a mitigating force around him—no general, no diplomat, no voice of reason—to scale him back or talk him down.
Saying “let Trump be Trump” is like taking the out-of-control bus in the movie Speed and turning in onto your own cul-de-sac.
Our best hope is that the permanent government—Steve Bannon calls that the “deep state”—will still be able to check Trump while he’s watching TV.
Guns—The NRA scoffs. It says these high school kids leading protests are being used by billionaires and political organizations.
If so, here’s the thing: Billionaires and political organizations are smart enough to help high school kids who are savvy enough to accept that help to spread a message that the time is now for gun-law reform to attend to childhood safety.
I’m not sure how passionate reform-minded kids getting advised and aided by rich and politically experienced adults should make the NRA feel better.
The NRA has report cards sent to mailing lists that scare Republican office-holders who don’t want to lose primaries. That’s all it has. It apparently is a lot.
Facebook—What’s good about the social-media juggernaut is that, if I catch the beagles Roscoe and Sophie in a cute moment and have my phone handy, I can, in seconds, capture the charming moment in a photograph and share it with thousands of people.
What’s not good about Facebook is that it can waste time, substitute for real living, spread lies, get defrauded by Russians, help elect a madman as the American president, and allow our personal data to be mined and exploited.
Social media has been a wondrous wild frontier. It’s about time for it also to be accountable.
Mark Zuckerberg should be in front of a congressional panel forthwith.
Old Democrats—Loath though I am to criticize my own generation and escort it to pasture, it has become abundantly clear that Hillary Clinton needs to stop whining about the numbskulls who defeated her.
It is equally clear that Joe Biden should never have invoked the notion of beating the hell out of Trump.
It ought to be easy enough for Democrats to assail Trump’s lack of personal and behavioral fitness for the presidency without sinking to its subterranean level.
Old white male newspaper columnists—They, on the other hand, need to shout “preposterous Russian-endorsed second-place president” louder and more frequently than ever. If Trump is determined to liberate himself from restraint, old white male newspaper columnists need to keep reminding everyone that the guy not only failed to secure a mandate, but even a popular-vote plurality.
Women—From the Benton County Democratic legislative slate to the leading boardrooms and political cloakrooms across the country, this is their overdue time—to be de-objectified, treated equally and elected to public office, whatever their partisan affiliation, at a percentage matching theirs of the general population.
Warwick Sabin—Based on the identities of persons throwing him fundraisers—you have Republican Sheffield Nelson over here and liberal library-retiree Bobby Roberts over there—I hereby seek to anoint him the front-runner for mayor of Little Rock.
French Hill—He’s sufficiently vulnerable that four Democrats are fighting to be the one to take him out. He needs a little maintenance checkup on his Saline County firewall.
Head basketball coach selection at UALR—Two former Trojan coaches, Porter Moser and Chris Beard, led teams to the Elite Eight in March Madness. One—Moser—is, with the help of Sister Jean, taking Loyola of Chicago to the Final Four.
Plainly, they know in Little Rock how to pick up-and-coming college basketball coaching talent, usually.
Head basketball coach selection at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville—Former head coach John Pelphrey has advanced all the way to an assistant’s post at the University of Alabama. Former head coach Stan Heath has made it all the way to a head coaching post in an NBA minor league.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.