First Meal in Trump's America

This blog ends where it began: over a meal of Chinese food at the Wonderful House restaurant of Trinidad, Colorado. It is mid-afternoon on the Thursday after the election. It is late enough after the lunch hour for the place to be almost empty, but still early enough to choose from the lunch specials. It is afternoon but outside the sun looks like it's already setting. There is only one stream of music playing to the empty restaurant today: the soft tinkling of 'easy listening' piano is soothing. I turn off the ringer of my phone, and let myself get swept away by the cheesy, wordless version of Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" I read the local paper: obituaries, business' ads, comics, local and state election results. The paper is two sheets thick-- hardly a newspaper at all. I search for my horoscope; my soup arrives. 

Embrace the mystical? I close the paper and open a news app on my phone: tear gas in Oakland. Protests outside Trump properties nationwide. I slurp my soup and go back to just listening to the music: it is not unpleasant, but now a melody I hardly recognize. The piano-- all of the instruments-- are synthetic, fabricated. Back to the news feed: I see a sign in a photograph taken at a protest that reads "Impeach White Supremacy." I want to understand more about the mission of the protests, but the mainstream media fails to provide such context. Is it a march against the Electoral College? Or that the election itself was "rigged," as the President-elect said it was going to be? Or is it the general rage-- the popular rage-- against the changing of the country? 

I finish my soup. At the Wonderful House, they bring you a small dish of duck sauce with your soup, and the duck sauce has a dollop of hot mustard in it. I've never seen this practice before, but found a little drip of duck sauce and hot mustard along with the egg drop soup was a whole different combination of wild, familiar flavors. I sipped my tea and read more news. I switched over to Facebook. Three different parents-- people I knew, from very different contexts-- were reporting traumatic experiences regarding their children's questions about the President-elect's coming immigration policies: were the non-white students in their classrooms going to get to stay in this country? One friend of mine, whose support for Clinton had been jolly and positive, had been posting rabidly since the election results became known: she feared for the safety of her adopted daughter, who was not born in the United States. She spoke this fear, inside of a text box on Facebook, and a procession of likes and comments drew attention to her concern. Can you feel the hate tonight, I think to myself. Others reposted photographs of racial violence-- what we once called hate crimes-- from communities across the country. Were they real photographs, like the minivan with the back window smashed in, still sporting both a Bernie and Hillary sticker on the bumper? Were the spray-painted swastikas PhotoShop manipulations, or depictions of actual events? I stuck my pinky in the glob of yellow-brown hot mustard, and put some on my tongue: this might be what privilege tastes like, or at least some metaphor. 

I was privileged to be able to afford lunch, privileged to have a roof over my head, and a brain smart enough to be able to at least produce this blog. I launched this project as an effort to provide my own commentary on the Presidential election, not solely because I thought it was rigged for Hillary, but because I became so outraged about America's horrific choice that I had to use my voice, for better or worse. Whether this blog will be buried and unread in years to come or not may depend on search engine algorithms, federal government censorship, and public interest, or a lack thereof: it has been a lark, a project that attempted daily deadlines and mostly succeeded. I never expected to be making record-album-based collage or writing about Curt Weldon-- who deserves a special shout-out, for not only making another appearance in the media, beyond the Delaware County Daily Times opinion piece discussed in a previous post here, but for using that media attention to discuss the nefarious actions of the FBI days before he would lose his re-election bid. Perhaps it's ego-maniacal for me to believe this blog had anything to do with Curt's re-appearance on a television network in Philadelphia, but I appreciate how he helped me understand his side of the story, and how the FBI's fucking with Hillary Clinton days before the election is not unlike what happened to him (sadly, after half an hour of searching, I cannot find a link to this story to provide here). In Trump's America, each of us needs to speak up, to find new ways to use our existing voices. This blog has been an experiment in that, and a short one. I challenge you to make your own, and make it better than this. The election of 2016 could be pinned on the mainstream media and their despicable antics and collusion, but the concept behind the need for a media is the educated citizenry-- that is, the knowledgeable voter. This was the last election of its kind, in that regard, because our Facebook and Twitter feeds will only continue to compound our thoughts and opinions into a yearning for facts. The President-elect's open self-contradictions during the campaign confirm (for me, at least) that people didn't vote for what he said, but who he was-- through his behavior, his Twitter, his image. I do not believe the American people will ever again tolerate the charade that was the election of 2016. I hope I'm right, and I hope your blog-- or feed, or channel, or whatever-- has something to do with it. 

I eat the rest of my lunch and the easy listening music continues on. A couple come in, but they're only here for takeout. After placing their order they sit in chairs by the door and wait for their food. They do not talk to each other. One of the waiters moves back and forth from the kitchen, gathering placemats and dishes and silverware for the dinner crowd, or whoever else comes in until then. One of the owner's children, a boy of six or seven, is playing a game with himself, of sneaking around the empty restaurant, trying not to be spotted by his father, the man preparing the place settings at the empty booths and tables. As I finish my lunch, I catch the boy's eye as he crouches along the wall nearby, having fun seeking if he can go unspotted. The easy listening music drones on in the empty afternoon restaurant, and tensions are not high, except for one of us, who dashes among the chairs and booths, down the hallway to the restrooms, to the kitchen, and back again. 

I empty my plate into a small cardboard box, unable to finish the heap of fried rice, vegetables, and Schezuan beef. The couple by the door are handed their food in brown paper bags and leave the restaurant. The small paper fortune looms back at me, its gender-specific pronoun resonating through the empty restaurant as loudly as any synthetic piano music. The election was over and its effects were just beginning to be felt, in America and worldwide: foreign and domestic policy could change, dramatically. But the issue of behavior-- of mirrors-- of image-- these have dominated this election cycle, more than any policy. The United States elected its first pure-bred celebrity (Reagan doesn't count; he was a Governor), one whose persona was riddled with the edgiest beliefs and statements. America elected what Kris Kristofferson called "a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction," someone whose behavior we are expected now to intentionally and expressedly overlook-- for the safety and security of our country and the future of the republic. The results of the Electoral College have set into office an image, a set of behaviors, something shown to us in a mirror-- and while this would have been true no matter who won, the scarier scenario of the two candidates has come to be. A couple was coming in to the Wonderful House as I was leaving. I held the door for them and they said 'thank you' before I walked outside, and into the dry, late afternoon sunshine of the high desert. 

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This blog was a temporary project. For more politics, music, and art, check out my regular blog here. For YouTube channels, go here and here. For my website, go here. Drop me a line here. 

Election Night Diary

Election night 2016 was spent on Fishers Peak Ranch, on the outskirts of Trinidad. Unlike most places I hang my hat, this rented home was equipped with high-definition satellite television, in addition to high-speed Internet. I had the remote beside my laptop, and my cell phone charging on the kitchen counter. I had considered going to Las Vegas, but lost interest in the trip when I realized I was excited about neither outcome: a longtime Bernie Sanders supporter, I believe Hillary Clinton rigged the nomination process in her favor, in collusion with the DNC leadership. Regardless of her long history of public service and experience, I couldn't trust her. Wikileaks emails revealed deep-seated corruption. I also refused to vote for Trump, believing him not only unqualified for the office, but a danger to our national security and uneasy sense of calm. I cast my vote in Vermont: knowing the Democratic nominee would sweep the state, I cast my vote for the Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Had I been casting my vote elsewhere, I would have likely acted differently. 

I had handed my ballot to my town clerk more than a month prior to election day. I was in Colorado, and I walked through downtown Trinidad. On my way back from the post office, I stopped in for a beer. The bar had recently opened-- like, the day before. The election results were on the screen: FoxNews was anticipating the closing of the polls within minutes. At the very top of the hour-- 7 PM on the east coast-- FoxNews announced the first of fifty states to be called. Vermont had predictably gone for Hillary Clinton. I raised my pint glass: the local IPA was amazing, too tasty. I drank my beer too fast and headed back to the house. 

There were phone calls, texts, emails. I turned on the tube and opened up my laptop. At 6:30pm Mountain Time, the Denver CBS affiliate cut in to the national feed for a local update. Electronic voting machines across the state shut down from 2:47-3:16pm, for reasons yet to be understood. State Dems were trying to file an injunction to allow for two additional hours of polling; without such an injunction, the polls would close on time. I flipped the channel. 

The talking heads on CBS were laughing about the difference between an "edge" and a "lead." I didn't understand what they were filling the time with, besides their own self-aggrandizing, idle banter. I flipped to ABC, luckily at a moment when that creep George Stephanopolous wasn't on screen. They were talking about how Paul Ryan is going to have to placate the next Congress, before calling Mississippi for Trump without citing any data. With one third of the votes counted, Trump's lead in Tennessee was 70-30. ABC's all-white panel was talking with all fourteen of their hands about Trump's last-days decision to ignore Wisconsin.

I flipped to NBC, and just before an ad about their election coverage being sponsored by Amazon Echo, I caught live coverage from as close to my hometown as any network would get-- Montgomery County, Pennsylvania-- and a blonde woman with a microphone explaining that the County Election Chair said they're going to be a while. NBC's national map, which floated like a holograph above the ice rink in Manhattan, colored Colorado yellow, as if the polls were about to close in less than nine minutes.

I moved on to the last segment of the Denver Fox affiliate, and caught the end of a fluff piece on a tree covered in free clothing for homeless people. These may need to be installed in many more communities in Trump's America, I thought. The Fox national feed returned. I noticed Shep Smith stutters on election night; it is probably whatever drugs they pump him full of and call it dinner. He leered and swayed before three-story-tall video screens, holding useless notes. He had a troubling snark in his voice. I moved on.

"Did we think it was going to be this close, John?" asked Gwen Ifil on CBS. John tilted his head and talked in a nasal voice: usually we've called a battleground state by now. CBS moves on to an all-standing panel led by Charlie Rose, and featuring Peggy Noonan, sandwiched by two men. Noonan told it like it was: "One of the problems Trump had the way he talked about those issues and his approaches... was limited, and seemed to be talking to the white working class," and not the Latino working class, the black working class, etc. The guy next to Peggy said this was part of a reaction to globalism, a reinvention of the Western world. Back to the first guy: people voted on personality, not issues. "There were issues, but he didn't do them well," Peggy clarified, as if to bring the question of Trump's qualifications to a close. CBS cuts to the most ominious commercial: "we're Wells Fargo, and we're renewing our commitment to you."

I move on. The Vermont Secretary of State's election-night website is legendarily reliable-- but it endlessly refreshed without providing any results. Back to NBC. The vote spread in NH was down to 200, and there were "jitters in Clinton headquarters." Not sure what to say, NBC cut to commercial. The Vermont results were back up: Republican Phil Scott held his lead over Sue Minter in the race for Governor. The NBC Denver affiliate was back, first from a strangely quiet room, the GOP watch party at a hotel somewhere on the Front Range, but it seemed like there was no one there. Still, the segment was entertaining because the sound tech hadn't properly checked the mic level, and blew out the sound volume on half of the televisions in Colorado. NBC National was back: New Hampshire's spread had grown to 1,700. Pennsylvania, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, most of the map still too close to call. It was 9:30 PM on the east coast, and just past dinner time here in the high desert. NBC switched over to a confused man in a suit and beard (Chuck Todd) who couldn't work his magic screen to properly dissect Florida counties; he gave up and cited the number 537, like some sort of Charles Dickens ghost-of-election-past spectre. "The Clinton campaign has been projecting a lot of confidence" over the last 72 hours... "I don't want to say it was a hidden Trump vote..."

Missouri goes for Trump. The announcer's voice chills. Where am I? NBC. "We've underestimated rural America." Someone makes a joke about ordering breakfast. For better or for worse, suddenly we've cut to a shadowy Glen Beck, one-time major-network contributor, now media upstart, "We haven't listened to each other, and I know I've been at fault for this... we don't listen to each other, we don't trust each other... 34% of Americans trust any of our voices. That's because they view us as talking down to them." Beck's lashing out at the corporate media was a pleasant diversion, but was too much for the network to take. Beck looked like a deflated, not angry Lewis Black, and spoke as slowly as Fred Rogers. They cut back to their panel, where others tried to establish the idea of the Orphan Voter.

"The people are entering into a time beyond reason... they're not listening to reason."

Is this what you believe and why you believe it?

11 PM on the east coast, and with a chill, NBC called North Carolina for Trump. The Dow Futures started dropping-- 500, then 600, 700 by the time they cut away to two heads at a different desk. Evan Bye, Ted Strickand, other losers being branded as "retreads." The GOP was sweeping the night. The glass ceiling that loomed above the collected Clinton supporters was going to become a weighty symbol over at least the next four years. 

Cut to Andrea Mitchell in her red leather suit from Hillary Headquarters and beneath that ceiling, where the crowd behind her stood still and murmured to themselves in front of an empty stage. Mitchell didn't blink as she explained that Kate McGinty in Pennsylvania still had a chance, but she didn't have much other good news. Mitchell had no spirit in her voice, spoke in monotone, as if no one was listening. She could have passed for a much older woman, feeding twenty dollar bills into a Mr. Cashman slot machine at the Trump Plaza. 

In trying to escape Andrea Mitchell's gloom, I lost track of what network I was on. While a blue-suited white woman with a microphone talked about the ramifications of the loom(ed) indictment from Trump HQ, AOL flashed a news alert over my phone: Trump, according to AOL TimeWarner, was projected to win Florida. It became a matter of which networks were brave enough to call states for Trump, and not wait to see if Hillary pulled ahead anywhere. 

She wouldn't. Flip to CBS. In a low tone they were describing Trump's two-million-vote margin. Someone off camera said "wow" when they showed the Utah results: Trump got a 60% lead over Hillary, among the votes that had been counted to that point. Cut to Major Garrett: inside the Trump campaign, they're starting to count on Pennsylvania, Michigan, others. They're counting on things we're not, he was saying. Everyone, on all the networks, stood very still.

I flipped the channel: Trump was "never" in the lead of the CBS News poll, not once, not from the close of the convention until this night, explained the anchor, with some undefinable indignancy, as if waiting to be proven right. "This could go either way," says the old man, profoundly. "That's the headline right now."

Back to Montgomery County, where we're in a bar and an old man is leering at a younger woman wearing a mullet, who's trying to form a sentence about why she voted for Trump. They then cut to a a different table where they "brought in" some Hillary supporters. A man with a Trump sign walks  behind the camera. One of the alleged Hillary supporters is a young man with pudgy cheeks; he speaks, but not well, but speaks. One of the two women is  sheepish when the mic is put in front of her face: "I'm not from this country, I'm just here with them," she said, as she backed away. The third woman admits to not having voted at all, but said she supported Hillary all the same. Back to you in the studio, the anchor says, obviously aware of the disaster her simple segment became. 

Cut to Michael Bennett, Colorado Senator who won, quoting Ben Franklin in his acceptance speech: is this a republic, or a monarchy? "A republic-- if you can keep it," Franklin famously said. The network cut away. Had we kept the Republic tonight? Charlie Rose on CBS, a man who has sat at the tables of the Bilderberg summit: this is a statement about "a lack of trust in institutions." I thought about the pomp and circumstance of my doctoral graduation ceremony less than two months prior to this night. Charlie Rose turns to his still-standing panel: Clinton provided voters 'a confirmation that eltie culture was against them.' As this is happening, I poured my first Glenlivet, my first drink since that lone beer in the bar. The bottle was given to me as a graduation gift, from an absolutely beautiful and very smart woman. She is 2,000 miles away but right now I want to be by her side. I do not want us to be apart-- to be sleeping apart-- in Trump's America.

We will wake up alone. CBS is now noting that Hillary hasn't set foot in Wisconsin since April Second, as if that's something that is suddenly revealed to them. The looks on the faces of the CBS anchorpeople each held despair, trying to find something else to say about Wisconsin: somebody could have done the counting prior to this moment. 

Bob Schafer: this could come down to New Hampshire. Bob Schafer laughed at Gwen Ifil when she mentions Canadian Immigration Website going down; "I never liked you, Bob Schafer," Gwen says, as she looks him in the eye. The media would eat themselves by morning. The popular vote margin graphic stays the same. There is no more talk of the Dow Futures. Bob again: "this is a vote against Washington. That's what this is." Speechless, they cut to a break. We are all approaching midnight on the east coast.

I pour more Glenlivet. ABC: "I don't know if stranger things have happened."  Their correspondent in Times Square is jumping around on a lavish plastic set, built for Instagramming, sharing memories of this historic night, and interacting with the network and its Manhattan presence. But he explained that in Times Square no one's in the mood to be celebrating-- "you can't find a lot of Trump folks in this crowd"-- and that Times Square "has gone quiet, gone quiet," he keeps repeating. One could see the massive crowds standing still, and yes, quiet, there in the middle of one of hte biggest cities in the world. They stood in the eye of a hurricane, a blizzard of wealth, expecting to be rallying around the coronation of the longtime darling of the left, the once and true heir to the Obama legacy, the first woman President of the United States. Instead, they watched on Times Square's huge screens the populist revolution of Donald Trump, reality television star. 

Back to CBS: they're describing the "Howard Beale Coalition"-- the angry voter. I mute the television to watch Beale's final speech, titled on YouTube as "The Individual Is Over." I post the video to my Facebook page, captioning the video "tonight's winner."  

I lose track of the remote control. The phone rings. My Democratic friend, who's been pestering people going the polls in Pennsylvania all day, is talking in a low, sober tone. "We're done for, we're fucked," he keeps saying. I asked him if it was rural America that did it; he started ranting about pipelines and explosions. While he's talking, I notice a scrap of paper with a different friend's prediction: Hillary would take Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, for a final tally of 291-247. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. My Democratic friend is still going on about the Democrats' failure when the captain of the ship himself, John Podesta, appears on the screen. I insist on getting off the phone: Podesta, king of emails, made his now infamous 'thank-you-and-goodnight' speech as I was pouring more Glenlivet. Podesta is no Howard Beale, and neither was Hillary: the Clinton machine hasn't channeled the popular rage in quite some time. 

I call my friend back, and we talk until the networks were airing the gathering crowd in front of an empty podium, where the family and supporters of Donald Trump assembled. When Trump appeared, we ended our call, and I poured another drink, sat down on the couch, exhausted, terrified. The gloss of the network faded away, the news crawl on screen disappeared, and I truly listened to Trump's acceptance speech. Podesta's appearance earlier had been the slimiest of goodbyes, a snake slithering away in the night. Clinton would appear before cameras the next morning, but as the crowd dispersed beneath the glass ceiling, at first I thought 'why?' Suddenly something will become clear to us, surely. Or did Podesta, Hillary, et al not want to break up with the country in the middle of the night, but instead wait for day? Wolf Blitzer: "...as we wait for the President-elect..." and I yell into the phone, "FUCK CNN," unsure how I got onto the network. My friend agreed, though he knew  nothing of the circumstances on my end of the line. I let him go and sat down on the couch to watch President-elect Trump deliver his first address as such. 

The classification "America's forgotten men and women" includes all of us, it seemed-- or at least anyone who might be calling me at this hour. 3 AM on the east coast, or something close, when Trump's remarks ended. From this point on, even though none of us had been to bed yet, we were beginning to Make America Great Again. I do not know what CNN said or did after Trump left the stage-- I cannot imagine what they had to say, or if they, like so many, had even planned for this contingency. Somewhere Donna Brazile, DNC chair and CNN correspondent, was escorting herself out from beneath the glass ceiling. The world was to be a different place-- not when the sun came up and we all brushed our teeth and rubbed the sleep from our eyes-- but that moment, in the middle of the night on the east coast. 

Howard Beale's "The Individual Is Finished" speech, as cited by AmericanRhetoric.com:

Last night, I got up here and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage and you did and it was beautiful!

6 millions telegrams were received at the White House!

The Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped!

The people spoke!

The people won!

It was a radiant eruption of democracy.

But, I think that was it, fellas. That sort of thing is not likely to happen again, because at the bottom of all our terrified souls we know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying political concept writhing in its final pain.

I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, the most powerful, the most advanced country in the world -- light years ahead of any other country.

And I don't mean the communists are going to take over the world, because the communists are deader than we are.

What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it.

It's the individual that's finished.

It's the single, solitary human being that's finished.

It's every single one of you out there that's finished.

Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It's a nation of some two-hundred-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.

Well, the time has come to say, "Is 'de-humanization' such a bad word?" 

Because good or bad, that's what is so.

The whole world is becoming humanoid -- creatures that look human, but aren't. The whole world, not just us. We're just the most advanced country, so we're getting there first.

The whole world's people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things.

For Those Who Can Hear the Difference: An Election-Night Art Project

This project was conceived, created, and published from the outskirts of Trinidad, Colorado. The notion came to me on election eve, while I was listening to Rachel Maddow, and deciding which vinyl record I'd put on when her program ended. I realized the faces of the musicians staring back at me from these cardboard sleeves were each a unique conception of celebrity and public image: two concepts that have proven critical during the election of 2016. I have always enjoyed making art that re-uses materials, and how collage can create startling and challenging juxtapositions. I wanted to explore how old record images could serve as a springboard for 21st century rhetoric. 

Upon arriving in Trinidad, Colorado, I found it necessary for my work to purchase a computer printer. By chance, I found a color Canon printer on Clearance at Wal-Mart in Trinidad for $23, including color and black ink cartridges. I didn't think I had a use for the color ink capabilities, but I soon realized how even how low-res printouts of images could be used to create a work of political collage. 

The plastic 12" LP record sleeve seen below had been hanging on my fridge since the week of my arrival in Trinidad. I found it at a thrift shop, enclosing an original Audio Fidelity pressing-- a hi-fi, mono series from the late 1950s. I was taken by the label's elitist slogan, meant for those who sought experiences of musical appreciation in their living room, not just a means of providing background music. I printed out a black-and-white photo of Donald Trump, crudely cut it out his face, and placed it in the center of the plastic sleeve. In a few test photos, his facial expression leaped from the frame. I decided to move forward. 

I had already culled a few dozen LPs from local thrift shops, including some 'authentic' recordings of cultures found only in this region of the country. There was also already a stash of records here; I searched through these as well. I assembled more than I thought I wanted to use, and set to searching the Internet for the appropriate images of the two Presidential candidates. The process of selecting images was time-consuming. For each face I ended up using, I likely printed out three faces that didn't fit. I am not well-versed in imaging-editing software, so easily scaling images for re-purposing wasn't an option. Of course this project might have been made easier by using PhotoShop or another digital media platform. As the records are analog, physical, durable media, I felt my crude printouts and kitchen-scissor trimming work would end up fitting the 'feel' of the project. 

Of the albums I chose to use, I ended up omitting only one. The final project is a collection of eighteen images. Each has been edited and 'signed' with my web address and Twitter handle. These images may be freely saved, exchanged, and republished, as long as this small 'signature' is retained. 

This election has been influenced heavily by the meme, a homemade visual image meant to be transferred, shared, and passed around via Facebook, Twitter, and other virtual platforms. Like some memes, this project does not seek to contribute useful political 'punditry,' but rather to create interesting, if absurd, visual statements. The faces of the two candidates following the election of 2016 deserve to be de-mystified, no longer to be competing celebrities, but rather the depiction of a leader of the nation, and his worthy competitor. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are humans whose images we are more than familiar with. Putting their image into an unexpected context is surprising, startling, challenging. This project seeks to contribute to the growing realm of online visual rhetoric, but also to challenge our conceptions of celebrity-- both the historic conceptions of celebrity as originally depicted on these record albums, as well as the constructions of celebrity surrounding the two Presidential candidates during the 2016 election. These images juxtapose the race and gender of both candidates; this is intentional, and not intended as specific commentary on either candidate, but to be taken as a larger set of absurd images. Taken as a set, I hope they contribute to an understanding of who ran for the highest office in the land, and what we believed about them as we voted. 

Trump in Hershey PA, and The Return of The Only Man Who Can Save America

It’s the Friday afternoon before the election and I’m watching the pregame YouTube feed for Trump’s Friday evening rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The crowd, in t-shirts, and baseball caps, face an empty podium. The camera scans the crowd: most are in their early twenties, all are white, and from what I can gather via the YouTube feed from “Right Side Broadcasting,” there is one woman for about every thirty men. If Bill Clinton became known as the "first Black President" during his 1992 campaign, the look of this crowd could make one think that Donald Trump may be aiming to be the "last White President." I'm not trying to escalate racial tension in this observation, but the crowd does not appear to be in the least bit diverse. As Trump leveraged his celebrity into a Presidential bid, his campaign featured not just Duck Dynasty stars but a handful of conservative pundits and apologists. To what extent has the Trump campaign relied on the nefarious demographic "the silent majority"? Is this a central Pennsylvania fluke, or a larger, rural America Trump-supportin' trend?

I'm watching this through some network I've never heard of; they appear armed with at least a tripod and decent lens, and have sense enough to pump mp3 music over top of the crowd shots, instead of making their YouTube audience listen to the din of the pre-rally babble. When the dust settles as the country rolls on toward the holiday season, there won't be much media left standing. The extent to which the media pandered to the Trump campaign during the early season of this election-- in the name of ratings, as the candidate himself alleged from the stage of a GOP debate-- is its own national shame. Regardless of who wins, the extent of the collusion between the information and the information-getters in the coming years will be unfathomable, unknowable. Remember when Obama promised to be the most transparent administration ever-- and across eight years, we only saw the dwindling role of the White House press corps, the unanswered questions, in which information may or may not have been available-- then, or ever. Will Trump TV be launched while he’s President-elect? Is an American President allowed to operate their own (non-)cable news network? And who in that crowd of thousands, waiting to hear their candidate speak in Hershey, Pennsylvania, is ready for their own program on that network, and become at the very least the next Brett Baier?

The Trump campaign has not eased racial tensions in this country. I believe, through campaign rhetoric and vapid, repeated statements, the work of Donald Trump in his run for the Presidency has not only fanned the flames of existing fires of racial tension, but set ablaze conflicts new and old. A good friend emails two articles: a gut-wrenching tale of skinheads and Nazi salutes in Wal-Mart parking lots (‘My Time Inside the Alt-Right’), and the Newsweek story on Russia’s support for Trump-- including their offering of an explanation as to how the United States Presidential candidate and the foreign power have been playing on the same side. Regardless of who wins the election-- or if there was an election at all-- this country’s relationship with Russia will continue to teeter on the edge of madness.

Trump’s anti-immigration policies, if his contradictions and poorly-explained arguments do qualify as policies, could create the largest catastrophe in the history of the soverign United States-- not because of The Wall, but the hysteria that will come before The Wall. Pennsylvania-- Virginia-- Colorado-- these rural-with-urban-center states are now becoming recognized, if one is to believe the polling, as ‘swing’ states, in which Trump may actually carry a majority of the popular vote. A church in Mississippi burned this week; “Vote Trump” was spray-painted across the brick wall, below the now-burned-out windows. A local CBS affiliate reports on the Kickstarter campaign, having raised $170,000-- far more than the $10,000 the congregation sought. During this Presidential election, Trump has proven to be a bigot, a sexist, and to be resoundingly unfit for the office. He is a danger, but he is being identified as an individual danger. I think it is important to realize the momentum he has delivered to a variety of hate speech groups, and the extent to which he has challenged others to find the courage to ‘look aside’ his horrific treatment of women, let alone his complete lack of experience in government. I believe his election is a danger to this country and a threat to our domestic and international peace. I do not understand-- despite having followed events closely-- how Trump came to power, and took control of the party of Boehner, Cheney, Rove, Nordquist, Bush. Either the GOP is failing at its purpose-- to nominate a vetted and electable candidate-- or they are throwing the game for the other team, intentionally. Perhaps four years of continued obstructionism in a divided Congress would actually be the most profitable outcome for the military-industrial-intel complex: under President Clinton, the Obama legacy of selective and secretive foreign intervention may likely continue. Under President Trump-- an international businessman and maniacal sociopath-- all bets are off.

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I woke up around dawn; the sun was an orange streak in the distant sky. I had been glad when the phone had rung the night before, giving me an easy way out of finishing the grim screed on race relations and the Presidential election. I watched the sunrise; I wanted to be more hopeful. Could Presidents Clinton or Trump invite a national calm, or is the bitterest fight yet to be had? I went outside. The air is getting noticeably colder. The wind howled. The sun rose. The steam from my first cup of coffee seemed to rise more quickly into the crisp air that it had on other mornings. After the day was lit I stood naked in the kitchen looking at the news on my phone: Melania Trump’s appearance in Main Line, Pennsylvania-- coverage provided by the Delaware County Daily Times, but appeared to be a wire story-- two police sargents were horrifically ambushed and attacked in the Bronx; some alleging that FoxNews appeared to have gone silent on the story, once the perpetrator was identified as an outspoken Trump supporter-- the continued standoff in North Dakota at Standing Rock-- the terrible aftermath of a pipeline explosion in Pennsylvania, and the continued debate about a similar pipeline, to be installed directly through my hometown. The wind whipped as the sun went higher; by mid-morning, the wind stayed strong but the day was warming. And then I found the news article that made my day.



Dave Chappelle, one of the 21st century’s first and greatest satirists, had used his Friday night as an opportunity to escalate his re-emergence from obscurity. His Comedy Central program, The Chappelle Show, had become legendary satire on race, gender, and class, but was now dated and out of print; he was, for a brief time, one of the foremost comedians of my generation (perhaps one of the Chappelle Show’s finest moments came in his mock-Nightline segment on a blind, black white supremacist leader and author). Chappelle’s ability to make people-- all segments-- laugh at themselves, and not at others, is the mark of a true comedian. It is a gift George Carlin had, and at times, Howard Stern, but Dave Chappelle may be the person to save us from ourselves during the next Presidential administration. Chappelle has remained principled: he took immense heat for his dropping out of comedy after his tussle with Comedy Central, and it is reassuring not only to know that he is again willing to satirize the political and social mess we face, but that he’s still welcome in the public eye (and not just mine). His falling out with Comedy Central is part of his legend, and might now stand as a credit to his name: in short, he walked away from a dump truck full of money, over control and autonomy of his program.



Chappelle has spent time in 2016 slowly easing back into performance and stand-up, through a series of small-room gigs in NYC. Last night, from the stage of the Cutting Room in New York City, Chappelle turned violently political, gaining the attention of Trump’s son-in-law’s publication, The Observer. While their coverage characterized Chappelle’s set as a tirade against Hillary Clinton, Dave’s keen context for Hillary’s behavior can’t be overlooked. “She’s going to be on a coin someday,” The Observer quoted Chappelle as saying. “And her behavior has not been coin-worthy. She’s not right and we all know she’s not right.” Chappelle also addressed Trump, and not harshly, but rather remarking on his tenacity in weathering the 'grab-her-by-the' interview, which he characterized as being wholly the work of the Clinton campaign. While I’m hesitant to trust The Observer’s contextualization for Chappelle’s onstage comments, given the publication’s obvious bias (while Chappelle made an obviously-funny sexual reference in talking about voting for Hillary, the article implies he did), I trust their quotes from the re-emerging comedian, to an extent that can recognize perhaps our greatest ‘new’ voice towards restoring the Peace and Calm in this country, one that has not been heard from in a very long time. I want to hear his best joke about Hillary's "server"; I want to hear his best joke about Trump (whatever that may be). The sketches on the scant few seasons of the Chappelle Show were incredibly volitile and usually brilliant, challenging any and all definitions of identity, class, and gender.



One example of Chappelle's modern wit came last night as he talked about Anderson Cooper and Martha Radditz’s questioning of Trump during one of the Presidential debates. This fragment was provided inside of the Observer's article, but I am left wishing I had been there, to hear Chappelle in full for myself: 

Something about this was backward. A gay white man and a white woman asking a multi-billionaire how he knows the system is rigged and insisting it’s not. Does that sound right to you? It didn’t seem right to me. And here’s how you know Trump is the most gangsta candidate ever. They asked him how he knows the system is rigged and he said, ‘Because I take advantage of it.’ He may as well have flashed his membership card for the Illuminati right then.

Where ever Dave Chappelle has been during his absent years (with his family and children), he has not been living in a vacuum-- I don't think anyone as smart as Chappelle could ever keep away from the news, the culture, and his status as an important voice, no matter how much he chooses to say. Therefore he is more than relevant; in this age of celebrity, Chappelle appears poised to be as revolutionary as Stephen Colbert became when he graduated from being a mere Daily Show correspondent to hosting his own program. Chappelle mentioned at the Cutting Room that he attended a private gala to celebrate the close of the Obama years, alongside celebs like Usher, Sonia Sotomayor, Donna Brazile, and others. One can imagine Dave's conversations about the future with the elite DC crowd: he has always been an outsider, too parodical and punchy for the mainstream to have ever fully accepted him. But absence has made the heart grow fonder, especially as other comedians fail to provide much more than a solitary charactacture, let alone tackle issues of race, politics, and language, head on, Lenny Bruce style. But as Chappellle rubbed elbows in DC I'm sure he mentioned his upcoming appearance as the host of Saturday Night Live, on the pivotal weekend following the election. As a country, we will be seeking reunification, and no less than a few laughs, and I am glad Dave Chappelle is choosing this moment to re-enter the public sphere. If he does at all: according to the Observer, he told the crowd at the Cutting Room,"You know there’s a pool going on whether or not I show up. I got $100,000 that says I won’t."



Danicki, J. (5 Nov. 2016). "Dave Chappelle..." Observer Media. Retrieved from http://observer.com/2016/11/dave-chappelle-defends-trump-rips-clinton-shes-not-right-and-we-all-know-it/

Making Atlantic City Great Again

When this happened-- at the opening of the Trump Taj Mahal in 1990-- my elementary school was abuzz. 

I grew up across the river from New Jersey; I grew up in the shadow of Donald Trump (or one of them). Long before he was a reality television star, in the 1980s, Trump was a board game, a real estate tycoon, and a chump often parodied by MAD and Cracked magazines-- he was right up there with ET and Hulk Hogan, among my elementary school crowd. His transition from his fame as a real estate mogul into status as a television personality. In the Philadelphia suburbs in the 1980s and 1990s, Trump was a looming presence: his name was synonymous with wealth that none of us expected to see in our lifetimes. I knew Trump best as the man who built the Taj Mahal, the grandiose casino in Atlantic City, that my maternal grandmother raved about ("oh, Chris, it's beautiful," she told me, having attending the Taj's opening weekend in 1990, seven years after construction began, under a different company and owner altogether). As a kid, I recognized Trump as a financial success: my grandmother was more than willing to save her spare change to feed his slot machines over a few weekends a month, and my parents would follow suit in the following decades-- bouncing between comp’d rooms at a number of different AC properties. Buses that ran from the Philadelphia suburbs to the casinos often cost ten or fifteen dollars, but riders were given twenty (or more) dollars in free slot play upon arrival. 

I was ten years old when Trump's operation of the soon-to-be-opened Taj Mahal came into question, as New Jersey statute barred any individual from operating more than three casinos. In response, Trump explained away the conflict, claiming that Resorts, the adjoining property he already owned, would become, in effect, an annex of the larger Taj Mahal complex. Initial construction costs in 1983 were estimated to be around $250 million; according to the Press of Atlantic City, final costs for the Trump Taj Mahal exceeded one billion dollars, and Trump was widely quoted as calling the building the Eigth Wonder of the World. Its gala opening was attended by Merv Griffin, Michael Jackson, and, of course, Trump himself. Within two weeks, New Jersey’s Division of Gaming Enforcement was making daily checks of the casino’s bank accounts, as the place had run so deeply into debt. 

The opening of the the Taj-- Atlantic City's twelfth casino-- The Taj Mahal was the twelfth casino built in Atlantic City; the thirteenth, the Borgota, opened in 2003, but the city’s fiscal high water mark may have already passed by that time. The Taj traded hands but retained Trump’s name, but in the last few months, the situation became increasingly tense. A bankruptcy court ruling dictated changes to the unionized workers’ healthcare policies-- namely, there would be no more employee-paid healthcare-- and the scuffle with the union resulted in the casino’s closure (not without the casino fishing around for tax breaks from the city to stick around). The building closed on October 10, 2016, as union protesters rallied outside. It took workers almost an hour and a half to lock and secure the doors, as they had probably never been locked. One protester took the liberty of locking the building, symbolically as well as literally, from the outside.

Photo by Press of Atlantic City. 

The Trump Taj Mahal was one of the gaudiest and largest gaming resorts ever built. It was a testament to what appeared-- especially to a ten year old-- to be Donald Trump’s financial success. By the time I graduated from high school, construction on the Borgota-- what was to be even more impressive than the Taj-- had begun. After its opening, another casino-- the Revel-- was slated to be built in Atlantic City, on the farthest edge of the city, disconnected from the Boardwalk and all that had come before. Like the Trump Taj Mahal, construction was delayed on the Revel due to financing problems-- namely when backer Morgan Stanley decided to walk away from its $900 million investment halfway through construction in 2010. By 2012, the Revel was open for business but was impossibly in debt (the city said they were owed $12 million in property taxes, and the UNITE HERE union claimed some contractors who helped build the facility were still unpaid, to the tune of over $50 million). The Revel’s bankruptcy filing became inevitable, and happened in 2014. In the few years it was open as the Revel, the place gained an infamous reputation-- not only when a British tourist fell forty feet from the grand escalator, but when NFL star Ray Rice was caught on one of the casino’s security cameras beating up on his girlfriend in one of the hotel elevators. The Revel shut down three days after the Showboat down the block had closed its doors-- its demise not due to a lack of profitability, but that it simply wasn't generating enough profit for the Showboat's owners to consider continuing. 

Unlike the former Hilton Hotel and Casino (which briefly became The Atlantic Club), the Showboat, and Trump Plaza, plans are underway for the rebirth of the Revel casino. In the 1980s, Donald Trump invested heavily in the garish adult experience of feeding coins into a slot machine in an ‘opulent’ environment; by 2007 he had fled the city, leaving behind him a financially decimated community, of mammoth and vacant hulking ‘resorts’ that, for a brief time, were a destination for people my parents’ age, and for people that were, at the time, their parents’ age. Trump helped build Atlantic City, in his awkward and gaudy image; his now-infamous tweet claims he left the city at the right time, and that he “made a lot of money in Atlantic City” before selling off his interests (though allowing his name to be retained in properties’ brandings). In retrospect, Trump’s control of Atlantic City at its peak was larger than life-- larger than anything the Boardwalk had seen previously. The introduction of gambling to the struggling resort town was intended as an economic stimulus-- and it was until it wasn’t. Trump knew when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em, as it were-- or, at the very least, had powerful help in understanding what cards to play when, and how to string along city and state government agencies long enough to be able to cash in all his chips before fleeing for the door. A 2015 ruling by the US Department of Treasury found the Trump Taj Mahal had been negligent-- since its opening in 1990-- in abiding by rules that governed large financial transactions. Consistent disregard for these rules may have allowed “terrorists [...] and other bad actors” to exploit the casino, as a means of money laundering or more. Trump’s ownership and control in his Taj Mahal had long been relinquished; for the Department of Treasury, there was no one left to reprimand, and a substantial fine only compounded the casino’s financial doom. 

The Atlantic City I grew up with represented activities of gluttonous adult privilege (gambling, drinking, cigarette smoking, endless buffets) is dying out. The Revel is slated to open early next year as TEN, under the ownership of a Florida land developer, Glen Straub. Changing the character of the casino culture in Atlantic City, Straub’s long term tenants for the property are installing theaters, a white sand beach, a water park, an endurance bicycle course (in a section of the parking garage), and a ropes course in the main lobby. This would make TEN very different from the intoxicating, smoky cavernous gambling parlors constructed in the city by Donald Trump: when me and my sisters would tag along with my parents, to TropWorld (later to become Tropicana), the only recreation inside the resort for those under 21 was swimming in the pool and getting fat at the buffet. The vision for the reborn Revel casino appears to be very different than what Trump built in Atlantic City; if one wanted to intellectualize the history of Atlantic City, one could trace the development and investment in what Robert Putnam named “social capital” (“Financial capital - the wherewithal for mass marketing - has steadily replaced social capital - that is, grassroots citizen networks - as the coin of the realm”). Of course re-investment in the re-opening and re-branding of a closed casino in a town full of closed casinos isn’t necessarily what Putnam had in mind. But as the election hurdles onward, into the final 48 hours, I am struck by my nostalgia for even those scant moments from childhood, spent in the swimming pool with my sisters and mother, splashing around at TropWorld. The grim reality is coming into focus: the man who I learned of through parody in MAD magazine and through his appearances on the Howard Stern show, the land developer responsible for the construction of one of the few Wonders of the World my grandmother would ever see in her lifetime, this man who made Atlantic City Great Again and fled town like any crooked shyster, has more than a chance at becoming the President of the United States. I do not understand how his background has allowed him to emerge as the GOP front runner; I understand less how that party-- seemingly united for eight years in do-nothing opposition to Obama-- allowed Trump to rise to power, and why critiques of his vision of “American values” hasn’t been more widely discussed, critiqued, and downright ridiculed. While Robert Putnam had higher goals in mind when he outlined his definition of "social capital," the phrase-- in Trump's America-- might best be oversimplified as the difference between spending hours getting drunk at a bank of slot machines in the dimly-lit smoking section of the Trump Taj Mahal, and spending hours at an all-ages water park beside the ocean. 

Ferrigo, L, et al. (7 July 2016). “The Atlantic City summer…” CNN.com. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/politics/donald-trump-atlantic-city-taj-mahal/

Rosenberg, A. (16 Sept. 2016). “Revel casino…” Philly.com. Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/downashore/Revel-casino-gets-rebrand-as--TEN-.html