Archives for January 2018

If, in the course of one day, you were given the opportunity to join first at breakfast, and then at lunch, and finally at dinner three different people—be they modern or ancient, living or dead, near or far, kindred or foreign—to whom would you lend your imaginary invitations? With which figures of history would you most like to pass your time? Within which intellects would you eagerly dive? With which minds would you most crave to converse? You might choose a scientist or an artist, a romantic or a humanist, a philosopher, an apostle, a singer, a star, a conqueror, or a queen. Perhaps a dignitary or a revolutionary, a humble monk or a business mogul. Any person born of any civilization awaits you. All you have to do is call, and he or she will oblige.

Who, then, given this daunting carte blanche, will you choose? But first, before we get too far ahead of ourselves, allow me to clarify the conditions just a bit more. For each meal, your interlocutor must be one; only he or she is to be present, seated across from you face-to-face at your favorite bistro, booth, or bar. No extras nor cameo appearances are to be permitted, save for the intermittent intrusions of the waiter. It’s to be a tête-à–tête—a strictly intimate affair. I should add also that your chosen companion will be with you for one meal and one meal alone. Each successive time you find yourself seated at a new table, from morning, noon, until the evening’s close, you’ll encounter a new person, always of your choosing, and your prior friend will never reappear. He or she is to return, grudgingly, to the lofty perches of history or textbooks whence he or she came. Such are the conditions. The rest is up to one’s imagination.

It’s an idea that confronted me a few days ago, and I’ve not stopped chewing on it since. This scenario, unlike those others that bid you choose one person with whom to spend a day or one lover a night, requires you to think not only about the audiences you wish to hold, but of the timing with which you want them held. Are you to start your day (putting a desperate end to your overnight fast) with someone jaunty or sober, enthusiastic or soporific? Will your mid-day meal be a time for a philosophical contemplation or an airy crescendo for the night life to come? And on that point, your night—will it be one of reflection or of revelry? Take your time and decide. In the meantime, below, you’ll find listed the three dining partners that will lead me through this once-in-a-lifetime day.

For breakfast, that most long-awaited moment of gustatory inauguration, I’ve decided to reach deep into the history of Western thought for my first companion. I’ll meet him where he can be most reliably found, in the homely gardens of Athens. While yes, they pale in comparison to those hanging at an earlier Babylon or a later Italian countryside, a sentience and equanimity flowers there that the others lack. It’s there, in the gardens, and not in the stoa nor the agora nor the Lyceum nor the Academy where most other philosophers can be found. Detached from those Socratic descendants is Epicurus, the first person with whom I’ll share a meal.

Entering his garden, I’ll pass under the inviting inscription, “Guest, thou shalt be happy here, for here happiness is esteemed the highest-good”. A propitious way, I should think, to begin any day. A few steps more and I’ll find my philosopher friend, seated, smiling, and contented in his genial thought. Closer still and I’ll lay witness to him scribbling his voluminous letters and books (we’re told he had authored over three hundred), of which only a small number exist. In them, he’ll praise pleasure and prudence as life’s first and ultimate goods. He’ll anticipate and warn us of our unhealthy infatuation with what lies beyond the grave by stoically stating that “death is nothing to us”. He’ll bring to the earth Plato’s metaphysics and distance himself from Aristotle’s passionless scientific prattle that drains of life its vital essence.

As he does this, I’ll approach and tap him on the shoulder. I expect he’ll turn and greet me with his easy affability and the natural sincerity of his warmth. Contrary to our modern connotation of his name with decadence and hedonistic sin, we’ll likely enjoy together a glassful of wine, (probably diluted as the ever-temperate Greeks preferred) and a simple course of hearty bread and goat cheese. For a sparse, if not wholly abstemious consumer of breakfast such as I, the Epicurean diet suits me well. And his philosophic prescription of ataraxia (which means, “serene tranquility or equanimity”) and Eudaimonia (“overall and general happiness in one’s life”) and fearlessness in thinking about death is the most clear-eyed, earnest, and gregarious way to start my day.

Typically, in the natural development and evolution of ideas, poetry precedes philosophy, and philosophy grounds itself before an emergent science. But here, and only here, I’ll reverse this well-established order, bend these ancient rules, and shake up the status quo. In doing so, I’ll make it in the nick of time for my lunchtime date at Combray with Marcel Proust. Of course, the city doesn’t exist, at least not outside the adventurous and inimitable mind of Proust. Perhaps I’ll accompany him to the equally fictional but no less appealing seaside town of Balbec or to the very real Champs-Élysées.

The timing will be perfect; Proust was known to favor afternoons and twilights over early or even late mornings and afternoons. To him, the sunrise was his alarm clock, and every day it beckoned him away from his prodigious nightly labors back to bed. His work began when the moon embarked upon its slow climb into the crepuscular Parisian sky. Then, and not a moment before, he’d settle into his dimly-lit study, which seconded as a bedroom, and set himself to the task of crafting seven volumes of the finest literature the twentieth century (and arguably, any century) had ever seen. I expect at some time around noon, the insatiable author will be hungry.

I’ll insist that we seat ourselves at an outdoor café—preferably one surrounded by an active environment: a mise en scène blossoming with flora, chirping with fauna, and animated by people passing by. There, I can be an accomplice to Proust’s perspicacious eye. I’ll concentrate, seeing what he sees and listening to what he says about the quotidian things we can’t help but overlook. As I lather with butter another hot piece of French baguette, I’ll ingest through his words all of the minutiae that this endlessly colorful and beautiful world paints before my unseeing eyes. He’ll talk for pages and hours about aristocratic pretensions, honest brows, haughty chins, chrysanthemums, churches, sensitivities, insecurities, liberties, and sexual fantasies he could never hope to repress. He’ll rejoice or lament the precipitous fall of the upper crust elite and the fading fin de siècle. He, like no other, will articulate as we finish our lunch the details of this world that we see but fail to put into words.

Proust will leave me with a poetic reminder of just how miraculous and beautiful the grand and small things of this world can be. He’ll have brought to the fore all of the majesty and the bounty that this world has to offer. It’s a beauty that we’re prone to obscure—carelessly and habitually—in the background of our inattentive minds. For that, I’ll thank him, bid him adieu, and move on to my final dinner appointment. I needn’t travel too quickly nor too far if I’m to make it on time; if I leave Paris by mid-afternoon, I should arrive at Ferney—a small, homely town on the cusp of the Swiss border—by the evening’s light. I walk swiftly toward the humble chateau before me, where I’ll find waiting Aureat de Voltaire—the rascal of the regency, the patriarch of pen, and the indomitable spirit of France.

With him, I’ll pass in fascination my last meal. Speaking with Voltaire will be a seamless transition, a thorough encapsulation of the ideas and the people I’d met before. In short, a perfect way to cap off the night. In Voltaire, I’ll find the friendly, earthly philosophy I’d stumbled upon in Epicurus; the prodigious, indefatigable literary zeal I’d immersed myself in with Proust; and the uniquely mordant wit, the scientific prowess, and the esemplastic erudition of a man who, in his time, had been both loved and hated, exiled and embraced, excommunicated and canonized as the patron saint of the Enlightenment.

I’ll be sure to be on my toes, though; while history knows Voltaire best for being an intellect and a belletrist of the greatest type, he was also a recidivist—a repeat offender equally as comfortable in jail as in a salon. At least twice he was imprisoned at the infamous Bastille and thrice expelled from the capital at Paris. I’ll be just uneasy enough as we settle down to eat, with one eye on the great sage and another on the door. The police might barge in at any moment. I’ll laugh with a sheepish grin as he unlocks the entrance, welcomes in the entire town, and assuages my fears.

In between bites, we’ll talk about a life whose content and action exceeded his boundless work. I’ll ask him of the duels and the dames he’d experienced through the years and the wounds he’d inherited from both. He was as readily brought to fighting as to loving—though in all cases, his zeal was unrequited. Those against whom he wished to duel deferred with a haughty laugh, while those upon whom he showered his love died in a quiet tragedy and withered away.

We’ll discuss our shared infatuation with the British empiricists: Bacon, Newton, and best of all, Locke. He spent a brief time, after all, on that European island called England and learned of her startling freedoms and advancements. From commendation to vituperation, he’ll turn to lambaste the likes of Leibniz, Rousseau, Diderot, and Frederick the Great. Quietly, I’ll listen. All might be considered in a more sympathetic view, but personal slights make such optics impossible. We’ll argue about pacifism and atheism and agree to disagree. We’ll talk about travesties like Lisbon and the human response and its spirit, and I’ll ask him, as candidly as I can, if all truly is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Doubtless, the bon vivant will have a ready answer—one that’s as earnest and brilliant as the sky is blue.

Having covered all topics, answered all questions, mused all mysteries, and sated all my belly’s growlings, I’ll bid Voltaire good-bye, as I did Proust and Epicurus before him. I’ll take from this last repast all of the lessons that philosophy, poetry and science have to offer. I’ll walk away, slowly back to reality, with my waistline expanded as well as my mind. I’ll digest for days, weeks, and surely years all that I’d learned from these three meals and these three minds. Full myself, I ask of you, hungry reader, this delicious question: what will you learn, whom will you see when you bring to dinner three minds? All of humanity is the menu from which to choose. Bon appétite!

Old bags have a way of re-upholstering themselves. Not only that, they’ll find a way to carry on the day’s conversation. They need a bit of dusting off from time to time, a cool washing and a hot drying in what’s become an infrequent limelight. Hugging America’s waist, like the well-worn purses or satchels that they are, we find Mitt Romney and John Kerry. Together, they’ve put behind them their shared obscurity, stepped out in to town, and are grabbing, if only for a moment, the country’s attention.

Over the rapid course of a day, the once and potentially future presidential candidate, John Kerry, has witnessed his popularity wax and wane, peak and then fall. Search his name, filter for the news, and you’ll quickly find two tales developing around him, that prognathous patrician of Obama fame.

The first, as I alluded to above, is that he’s toying with the idea of running for the presidency in 2020. His most recent attempt to do so came and went in 2004, when he lost, albeit just barely, to the incumbent George W. Bush. Before that ill-fated foray into a presidential election, he served for two decades as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. And, after the foray, he served as President Obama’s second (less feminine and only slightly less controversial) Secretary of State.

The second story, more scandalous and noteworthy or cringeworthy than the first, is that he’s alleged to have held a meeting with a Palestinian emissary while traveling abroad in England last week. The story’s not yet been fully corroborated, and the details are in their infancy, but as it reads right now, Kerry went there to meet with a gentleman by the name of Hussein Agha, a representative of the Palestinian Authority and underling to current Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. As the still-developing story goes, the two discussed, at length, the predicament within which the Near East finds itself enmeshed.

To recount the situation in a brief telling, it all began a month ago, when President Trump announced he’d be swapping America’s old digs at Tel Aviv for a new home at Jerusalem. Expectedly, and perhaps not without reason, the Palestinians protested this blasphemous idea. They, and many other like-minded Middle and Near Easterners, consider the very idea unpalatable, subversive, and above all, sacrilegious. To them, the city of Jerusalem is inextricably Islamic and should remain exclusively so. It’s their holy city, although—one should clarify—not their only holy city (a divine distinction that must be made: Jerusalem humbly counts itself third behind Medina and Mecca in the blessed hierarchy of three), but even so, no one could be so bold as to give its providence to the hated Jews. In effect, by announcing that the American-Israeli embassy would indeed be breaking ground within that ancient city’s limits, President Trump did just that.

In, then, steps Kerry, whose aim was to seek out Agha and quell the controversy in his own furtive way. In the course of their conversation, Kerry advised that Agha hold out just a bit longer; he prescribed patience to his old Palestinian comrade, with the understanding that a more sympathetic administration would soon be on its way. And who might be leading this friendlier cabinet, carrying with it the anodyne ointment that will heal all wounds and put an end the Palestinian’s plight? Why, that person would be Mr. Kerry himself, of course.

The problem is, however, that that time hasn’t yet come (nor likely will it), and in his current station in life, there’s no reason for Kerry to be discussing international relations with a foreign government official.

Unlike years past, Kerry isn’t acting as an Obama plenipotentiary, doing his good work under the State Department’s seal and the Senate’s confirmation. Rather, he’s a private citizen (for the first time in a long time), a concept that seems to travel beyond his grasp. His ability to seek surreptitious alliances or dole out quiet assurances with foreign governments has long since passed. That said, it stands to follow that he has openly broken the Logan Act—the law proscribing the intercourse between private American citizens at home and established government personnel abroad. It was precisely this law that many Democrats alleged former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to have broken. Of course, as we now know quite well, Flynn didn’t—his fatal transgression was lying to the FBI, not conversing with Russians. Kerry, on the other hand, appears blatantly to have broken the act when he decided to try and assuage his Palestinian confidante.

While, rightly or wrongly, much was made of Flynn’s infringement, little has been made of Kerry’s impropriety. The media, reliably allergic to reporting on anything ugly happening on the left, hadn’t a thing to say about it. Not surprisingly then, by default, the story found fertile ground and strong roots on the political right. Fox News, the Washington Examiner, and the Daily Caller picked up on the incipient controversy and plastered it on their front pages. Unfortunately, though—which I say in light of the fact that hypocrisy again seems to rule the day—the story is destined to be overlooked by most reporters and under appreciated by most Americans.

It’s at this point we pivot from one Bostonian to another—both Kerry and Mitt Romney are adopted sons of that tough, revolutionary city by the sea. The latter made himself a headline or two when news broke that his political ambitions had been rekindled. As is being reported, perhaps prematurely, but probably not, Romney is readying himself to announce formally his campaign for Utah’s senate seat in 2018. His official announcement still awaits us, but most observers have expected it for some time. Ever since his failed presidential campaign in 2012, Romney has remained politically curious, personally hungry, and professionally ambitious to regain what he’d lost. There was a time, not so long ago, when he was even on President Trump’s short list of nominees to become Secretary of State. Before that, and before being a presidential candidate, he’d been a lawyer, a purveyor, a corporate raider, and a governor. The next natural step, having had his presidential hopes dashed, would be a senator.

While it’s unclear with whom he’ll contend, there’s little early doubt he’ll have a tough go at it; the field before him should be easily cleared. He’s a consummate conservative, the old-fashioned type that traditional Republicans like and need now more than ever. The paradigm in the Republican Party has shifted. It’s moved irretrievably or morphed unrecognizably away from the Classical Liberal foundation to which we all owe a debt. It’s become an unapologetic, objectionable, populist, nationalist Trumpian claque.

Think for a moment of the Republican Party and its most newsworthy men: Roy Moore, Donald Trump, Pat Meehan, and now, lamentably, Joe Arpaio. Notice I said, “newsworthy”, and not laudable or representative. But still, their faces are the ones many people see when they’re given a Republican Rorschach test. The centrist or undecided voter sees them and all their gross shortcomings and sins. All are morally dubious characters even on their best day. On their worst, they’re national embarrassments. It’s at this decadent point in the Party’s history that Mitt Romney rides in as if on a white steed. He and his squeaky-clean image could be the tried and true panacea that the Party so desperately needs.

In many ways, he’s the antithesis of President Trump. Romney’s religion teaches polygamy—it explicitly endorses extramarital affairs, thanks to Mr. Smith and his angel Moroni—yet he’s as abstemious as any one-woman monk. He’s been faithfully devoted to one Mormon dame all his adult life. Trump’s religion, on the other hand (assuming he professes one at all), teaches monogamy, yet he’s been anything but. The emergence of Ms. Stormy Daniels, the porn star turned tell-all demimonde, is another nauseating testament to that. Beyond their sexual indiscretions, as far as the make-up of their characters go, Romney is even-keeled, consistent and concise; Trump is bilious, evasive, and self-injuriously verbose. This speaks nothing to policy, but everything to personality and I think Republicans are beginning to realize that, at the end of the day, a candidate truly does need both.

That said, seeing this situation play itself out will be worth the price of admission. Trump and Romney have done little to disguise their mutual distaste. Romney, bravely, was one of only a few prominent Republicans to openly and ardently reprove Donald Trump (at the time a candidate, not a president). He’s not since let up on commenting and criticizing the president when comments and criticisms are required.

Trump, for his part, has publicly encouraged Orrin Hatch—the out-going Utah senator whose seat Romney will take—to rethink his retirement, not because he has a tender spot for the aging Hatch, but because he dislikes Romney to that extent. There was no subtlety in Trump’s endorsement of Hatch. He wants nothing less than to have Romney grand-standing and rebuffing him on the senate floor. It will be interesting to see how Trump reacts during the Republican primary in Utah. One wonders if he’ll swallow his enmity for Romney and lend him his support, or endorse his opponent if one is so bold as to arise.

At least one of these old bags will be made fashionable again. It would be a mistake, though, for it to be John Kerry, a success should it be Mitt Romney. The Democrats must move beyond the obsolete Obama era and choose, or forge, a new path ahead. Kerry, simply, isn’t the man for the job. He won’t carry them to the Oval Office, but he will hasten them to a defeat. As for the Republicans, they must retrace their steps and discover what once made them a noble party—a gallant party. They need an upstanding man like Romney to remind them what pride is and what public life is all about.

Government comes in many shapes. The kakistocracy is government by the worst; the plutocracy, by the purse. The kleptocracy is led by bandits; the punditocracy by opinionated elites. The thalassocracy, a form known not to us but to those confined to islands, carves it laws as Cretans did the sea, while the democracy, our modern form of state, charts its course through the turbulence of popular whim. The tellurocracy, by contrast, reaps its power from the earth, while the aristocracy, also by contrast, endows itself by birth.

Still, there lies before us more than a few types of government to name. We mustn’t forget the timocracy, the technocracy, nor the tyranny, whose respective possessions include some things, smarter things, and all ill-gotten things at once. Nor is our list complete without the ecclesiocracy or the theocracy, which give to us our laws from the heavens above—be they mediated or direct. Where the mandates of heaven fail, earthly treasures succeed; they replace the old religious piety with a newly-minted corporatocracy, or a government beholden to the business class—one that worships on an economic alter profits, where once the golden calf of prophets brought men to their knees.

What name, then, are we to bestow upon this newest form of government—in which actors, stars, celebrities, and charlatans vie for the highest offices in the land? This type of government in which TV personalities have created—with the strength of their smiles and the subtle comforts of their brands—strange new cults of political personality? You’d think every term had been used—every archaic, ungainly Greek prefix and suffix attached. You’d think that the fertile but dated Latin had been milked to its last linguistic drop. The last thing we need right now, you might reasonably say, is some newfangled, worthless word. After all, you might quietly hope, this rule by celebrity is just a moment, not a movement, and it’ll be over in a few short years.

And it may well be. This experiment with Donald Trump as president and Commander-in-Chief might soon pass us as quickly as it came. In three short years, we might find ourselves reflecting on how this ever came to be—how a fading yet omnipresent reality television show host, in between his moonlighting as a businessman, pantomiming as a pundit, and daydreaming as a diplomatist, shot his way up to the top of the political mountain and climbed into the world’s most powerful seat. We’ll look back with nostalgia or nausea at the exciting, fatiguing, fraught, and contentious four years that are sure to define his presidency. We’ll rejoice the economic booms and lament the many moral busts and, ultimately, we’ll be made to decide if the loss of the one was worth the other’s gain. We’ll learn our lessons from this fun but unsustainable character—this crass, vigorous, and virile man—bid him farewell as we do all presidents, and turn back to the status quo ante-Trump, to a humdrum time when attorneys, academicians, career politicians, and military personnel constituted our Executive.

Or not. Come 2020, President Trump may run not as an upstart but as an incumbent. Again, as before, he’ll likely tear through the Midwest and the southeast with his trademark and inexplicable vigor, accompanied this time by a renewed irascibility and a seasoned determination. He’ll campaign in all of those fertile, forgotten spots—those places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana—each nestled and restless along that rough and tumble Rust Belt. There he’ll find his faithful “deplorables”, bustling, all of them, eager to refresh themselves in his overflowing overtures, his incendiary charisma, and his torrential appeal.

And who, on the Left, will contest him? Who has the tenacity of spirit to withstand his charge, the resilience of skin to deflect his jabs, and the quickness of mind to keep up with his ever-agile and changing ideas? Who can galvanize a nation embroiled in anger and heal the widening, festering wounds? Will it be a Biden, a Booker, a Gillibrand, or a Gabbard? How about a Warren, Franken, Sanders, or Harris. Heaven forbid it’s a Clinton—Hillary, Chelsea, or one we’ve not yet met—but that needn’t exclude all former First Ladies: Ms. Michelle Obama, whose elegance is bested only by her eloquence, could be a strong pick. Before her, there’d be obstacles (as always there are when one hasn’t the experience of having held elected office) and above her, a centuries-old ceiling made of glass. It’s a roof that begs to be broken but stubbornly stays intact.

From this group, which includes nearly every color and gender to tick off the requisite intersectional checklist, the Democrats will choose their candidate. He or she will then be thrust upon the stage to exchange words, insults, or worse with President Trump.

They could do this, and they very likely will, but there’s a growing possibility they’ll look beyond the entrenched political elite and intelligentsia for a new face in the crowd. Much as the Republicans did, whether willingly or not (one could claim the party was commandeered), the Democrats appear to be entertaining the idea of having a celebrity lead them forward into the second decade of this century. As it stands, theirs is a listless party in desperate need of a pulse, and in Oprah Winfrey, the TV, magazine, literary, and cinematic star and quintessential rags-to-riches and then riches-to-more-riches success story, it thinks it’s found just what it needs.

Winfrey has flirted with the idea before, albeit less seriously than did President Trump. You’ll recall that he, with a small but enthusiastic group of supporters, tried to break into national politics on more than one occasion. He did so as a Reform and then Republican Party nominee in the late 1980’s and early 2000’s. Though unsuccessful, he was intoxicated by the air in the political arena—that last frontier awaiting his arrival and conquest. Between his hesitant attempts in the 80’s and 2000 and his bold capture of the RNC in 2015, he took time to sharpen his attacks, blunt his edges, and amend or muddy almost all of his positions.

Oprah, on the other hand, has done none of these things. Aside from an off-handed comment here or there, she’s given little indication that she’s politically ambitious. At the most, she’s lent her name, her celebrity, and her purse to other prominent Democratic candidates running for high office, but she’s not personally been involved in an elective race.

What she did though, was deliver a rousing speech at the Golden Globes award show. She was the honored recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille award, a bronze statuette bestowed upon the year’s most outstanding contributor to the fickle world of entertainment. In her acceptance speech, which lasted just shy of ten minutes, many heard the incipient sounds of an Inaugural or State of the Union Address. As only Oprah can, she spoke with the passion of an orator and the candor of a confessor. In brief, she recounted her frightfully tragic but inspiring upbringing, her skin color, her sexuality, and her fierce femininity. She did so with a pathos that’s unknown, or better yet, anathema to the garden-variety politician in today’s day and age. She was forceful in her sincerity, graceful in her delivery, and wholly unapologetic. America took note.

As is its habit, after her speech finished, Twitter was in a tizzy. Millions of Oprah’s followers and fans had in a moment become her unflinching political apostles. The tagline “Oprah 2020”—much like that of ideal eyesight—became clear as day in the midst of a darkening sky. She alone became a political savior and revelation. Her name and the year bounced around every nook online and gathered an avalanche of support. Pundits took note and joined in the wishful thinking. They took to the airwaves to entertain or expound upon their dreams of one nation, under Oprah, indivisible and with audience hand-outs for all. Everyone was abuzz, as always they are, for the arrival of Oprah, for the coming of her age and her revolution and, ultimately, our national redemption from this age of Trump.

This is how Democrats see the prospect of Oprah Winfrey as their party head, but they fail to see the danger therein. It’s a danger they’re quick to point out in the person of Donald Trump, but slow to acknowledge in the equally unqualified Oprah Winfrey. She, like he, is a political tyro—untried and untested—and perhaps to an even greater degree. The difference is that he at least dabbled in running for office before taking it seriously and committing himself to the task. She hasn’t even done this.

More than anything, this situation reveals how far the lofty demands we once placed upon our political candidates have fallen. We’re witnessing, strangely but rapidly, the unprecedented shift in which Hollywood supplants Capitol Hill and celebrity replaces the polity. It’s a transition, I don’t think, history has yet seen and therefore, hasn’t appropriately named. So, I ask, with what little creativity we can spare, what are we to call this new form of government—this new type of ruling class in which showmen, stars, and actors reign supreme? In which the time-honored science, practice, and art of statecraft is but a speck of dust, an unseen superfluity in the grand multi-verse of celebrity? Not one of those types of government I listed above quite fits the bill. So, at the risk of throwing into the verbiage another pretentious portmanteau, I’ll propose this: let’s call it a thespiocracy—or, a rule by the thespians. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it’s they, after all, who really do rule us. Their patron saint is the stage and their captured audience (namely, us) can’t escape. Trump 2020, Oprah 2020—a new era in governance has officially begun. Dim the lights…cue the camera…everyone in place…let the political theater begin.

If I were to be tasked with describing President Trump’s negotiation style in but two words, I’d pause for a moment, my thoughts deep in recollection of the sage wisdom I’d accrued from having read The Art of the Deal (yes, I did).

In that happy moment of my memory, I’d think back to those hundreds of pages filled margin to margin with unsurpassed acumen and cut-throat advice. Then, just as his words of wisdom were fluttering back into mind, I’d forget everything I’d learned. That’s right—I’d toss it all aside. Like litter at the curbside or plastic out to sea. For it appears his book was rather insincere, or perhaps, merely the profile of another man. Either way, none of what I learned from that best-selling chef-d’oeuvre, that prophetic businessman’s bible, rings true today. If it did, my choice words to describe the president’s negotiation style might be shrewd and relentless, or sagacious and deft. Instead, I settle on these two terms, a marriage of uninspiring adjectives: eager and ingenuous.

For all his talk of being the ne plus ultra of negotiators, the wheeler and dealer in a league all his own, Trump really is quite bad at doing what he says he does best. He’s proven this more times than just once.

I first took note of this incongruity—between his vaunted business-sage persona and his actual self—a little over four months ago. It was then that, for the first time, he met with the Senate and House majority leaders, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan (who were accompanied by Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and Senator Kevin McCarthy) and the Democratic duo who would come to be known forevermore as “Chuck and Nancy”. It was the first such meeting during which both parties convened with the intention of really working something out. On the table was the debt ceiling, which the Republicans wanted raised over the course of a year, and which the Democrats wanted raised and then re-negotiated after a fleeting three months.

In almost an instant, before the blink of an eye or the clearing of a throat, Trump agreed to the Democrats’ first and only offer set forth. Steven Mnuchin, eager to interject on the president’s behalf, was made to bite his tongue. He wanted to make the conservative’s case, that an extended debt-ceiling timeframe would be fiscally and politically advantageous, but he wasn’t even given the chance. Trump yielded to “Chuck and Nancy” almost immediately, defecting to the Democrats and leaving his gaggle of gobsmacked Republicans behind. The Republicans, for their part, had all the power and the leverage they could want—an Executive and Legislative Branch at their back, with solid majorities in both houses of Congress, no less—but even so, they left the meeting defeated, empty-handed, and unexpectedly scratching their heads.

And the head-scratching hasn’t stopped since. Recently, the White House held an unrelated bi-partisan meeting on immigration reform. It’s become a beast of an issue as of late. It’s one that’s as laborious and wonkish as it is politically dangerous. When (and if) the negotiations eventually come to their close, it’s inevitable that neither side will be fully pleased. The Democrats have made their position clear: they want, above all, to pass a “clean” DACA bill, or, one that enshrines the Obama-era measure into law—Constitutionally and unambiguously. Heretofore, it’s been sustained by what’s known as “prosecutorial discretion”, a sort of turning of the federal government’s all-seeing blind eye. In this way, although they weren’t Constitutionally protected, the “Dreamers” (or, those beneficiaries of the DACA program) had no cause to concern themselves with fears of being deported, or of not eventually attaining citizenship via a government-endorsed pathway. This is what’s being presented as a “clean” bill—nothing more and nothing less.

But that’s not to say that any addition to it is dirty. The DACA enshrinement is essential and—except for a few hardline immigration hawks on the Right—most lawmakers recognize this and agree. But, immigration reform as a whole needn’t stop there. “Dreamers” ought to rest comfortably in this country, which—in many cases—is the only one they’ve ever known—but this doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility and urgency to re-examine our immigration system in other ways. A beast, if indeed it is as I referred to it, must be tackled from more than one side.

In addition to, or, as the thinking goes on the Right, in return for DACA’s enshrinement, President Trump and the Republicans have listed a few demands. Among them are an end to chain migration, an increase in border security funding, and a swift cessation of the diversity visa lottery system. Taken collectively, these three measures would constitute a substantial step forward toward what’s been dubbed “comprehensive immigration reform”, the catch-all phrase for those measures Republicans want etched into law. And of course, included in this proposal would be the vaunted border wall, that beautiful, rally-crying barricade that stirred thousands to the voting booths, but has since dried up like an arid promise. We can now expect, if anything at all, some kind of Tex-Mex hodgepodge of fencing, hillocks, and rivulets.

You can see where both parties stand. Democrats want nothing but DACA; Republicans, everything except it. Hence, a second bipartisan meeting, much like the first one attended by “Chuck and Nancy”, was convened. Not one to learn from a mistake, President Trump again nearly repeated his flub a second time. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Senator from the state of California, put to him a proposal that he should’ve reflexively batted aside. She asked of him his thoughts regarding a “clean DACA bill with a commitment that we do comprehensive immigration reform later”. This is a bit misleading, and frankly, quite cunning on her part, for if her proposal were to pass—that is, a clean DACA bill with no strings attached—the likelihood of her returning to the table for future negotiations would be nil. There simply would be no need. Having achieved her goal, she and the Democrats could then bask in having passed DACA, without having to lift a finger for anything “comprehensive” thereafter.

You’d expect President Trump, the sagacious sage of the deal that he is, to pick up on Feinstein’s chicanery right away. Not only didn’t he, but he nearly agreed to everything she said. It took Republican Senator Kevin McCarthy’s intervention (succeeding where Mnuchin had failed) to reel the president back from the edge and save him from falling into the same trap twice. Had McCarthy kept his peace and allowed Trump to drift away naively to the Left, we’d probably be looking at DACA on the books, a border wall forever relegated to a lifeless blueprint, and an anemic immigration system in need of repair.

If I’m a Republican, the president’s negotiation “style” is a disquieting trend. For all his self-acclaimed negotiating prowess, he’s far too easily tempted by the aromas of the left. Democrats are playing him as if intoxicants. He’s too eager to jump in and bathe in their words, to swim there and leave his sobriety behind. That’s the danger of being at once a poor negotiator, ill-informed, and desperate to imbibe. Hopefully, there’s always a life-vest and a sharper mind to save him, because he obviously is incapable of making these deals alone.

Let’s pretend President Trump didn’t say what he’s alleged to have said at the Oval Office last week. It’ll require us to be ahistorical for a moment. We’ll have to be crafty and original in creating our own script. With what word, then—given the chance to go back in time and re-write this controversy—would we replace the now infamous term “s***hole”? Does there exist in our capacious language a synonym slightly more sophisticated and agreeable to gentler ears? Can we find one out there, in our endless ocean of adjectives, just one word that’s a bit less offensive and crude?

I think it’s not too tall a task. For starters, how about “fixer-upper”? It’s a tired phrase, I’ll admit, no thanks to HGTV, but it does the job. “Dilapidated” does as well, even if it’s a bit less easy on the ears and euphemistic. “Run-down”, “ramshackle”, “rickety”, “in-repair”: we’ve exhausted the r’s but haven’t in the process caused an international furor. How about “shabby”, “decrepit”, or simply “worse for the wear”? Not a kind word among them, no doubt, but surely any would be better than s***hole.

Trump might’ve chosen any of these words, or all of these words, for that matter, but he settled on “s***hole” …or “s***house”. We’re not entirely sure which. Somehow, though, the national debate is now turning on this distinction without a difference, between him having said “s***hole”, “s***house”, or—I almost forgot—having said nothing at all.

This is the position the president has taken up—that is, the last of the above three. A day after his alleged remark made its way uncensored around cable news, Trump vehemently denied having uttered such a coarse imprecation. He called his language at the meeting “tough”, doubtless, but nothing unfit for civilized ears. He then pivoted quickly toward the Democrats and assailed their inability to come to an agreement on immigration reform. He deflected the outrage that was focused upon him by calling them obstructionists hell-bent on risking the Obama-era DACA deal, which they ardently and he quietly needs to be resolved. Failing to do so would be a black mark on his résumé, and he knows it. His, and not the Democrats’ would be the name affixed to the forced exodus of nearly one million “Dreamers”, or those who arrived in this country as children illegally, by—as the saying goes—no fault of their own. Regardless, he’s put the onus squarely on the Democrats should DACA die and immigration reform fail.

I found it surprising and, frankly, telling that when the president came out with this denial of what he probably said, claiming he’d said “tough” words but nothing egregiously obscene, no one batted an eye. His defense came and went as if it hadn’t been mounted at all. No one took it seriously. No one gave it credence or thought it credible in the least. The argument had already moved beyond that point. We were debating not if anything at all was said, but what exactly was said.

This, to me, is no small thing. It’s worth lingering on, if only for a moment. We’re taught to have a healthy suspicion of our political leaders. We feel within us an inextricable compulsion to question. It’s an odd personality trait built into the fibers of a free society who at one time wasn’t. Anything less than a healthy suspicion risks us being too easily taken in, while anything more stifles progress in an inescapable sludge of excessive skepticism. But the public’s reaction to President Trump’s defense was altogether new. It can be described only as a presumption of deceit, as if we expected his denial to be, at best, disingenuous and at worst, mendacious. That’s a startling thing with which to come to grips.

Not a single person (or better yet, not very many) deigned to believe him, but at the same time, none of us stopped to think about how crazy that is. Here we have the President of the United States, our representative upon the world’s stage, flatly denying he said something obscene, and no one so much as slowing down to pretend there’s truth to the claim. It’s astonishing, and a testament to how allergic to reality we think this president has become. It reveals just how far our expectations have sunk. We’ve all but accepted that our president, the most powerful man in the world, lives in his own reality, and we let him do it, as we pursue ours.

So, most of us agreed, on a hunch more or less, that the president was lying, but the question remained what exactly he said. Reality, at this point, split once again. Senator Dick Durbin, the sole Democrat in the Oval Office with President Trump at the time, relayed to the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey what he heard the president say. It was through this conduit—the Washington Post—that the world added to its lexicon “s***hole”, another Trumpian term that will live in infamy next to “fire and fury”, “covfefe”, and “both sides”. But other Senators present during the meeting said they heard something different. Tom Cotton and David Perdue, both southern Republicans and immigration hawks, denied having heard Trump say what he did (or didn’t). In a joint statement, they claimed they were unable specifically to recall what the president uttered. That’s not an unusual defense for someone trying to stay neutral without overtly lying to the public. Shortly after this initial statement, though, their amnesia seemed to have subsided; both senators pivoted and aligned themselves with Trump and his account, denying outright that anything inappropriate was said.

To this line of defense, they reconciled themselves, but things weren’t adding up. There were four men and three stories; not everyone could be telling the truth. Not to mention, the Oval Office is only so big. A word like “s***hole” isn’t likely to bounce off those walls without someone being there to hear it. If only the portraits and the statuary could speak, what tales Churchill and Jackson might tell. Shame. What’s worse, though, this simple matter of truth was beginning to cut along party lines—verity and falsity were wavering left and right, when reality, as I understand it, is not something that should be taking sides. Durbin the Democrat said one thing, Cotton and Perdue, the Republicans, another. The latter had on their side numbers, three against one; the former, a news media forever eager to excoriate Trump.

The score needed settling and that’s precisely what Lindsey Graham did. The Republican from South Carolina threw his hat into the ring by confirming Durbin’s account. In an interview with a local reporter, Graham said of Durbin’s account that it was “basically accurate”. Since then, doing his best not to add fuel to the fire, he assured us that his “memory hasn’t evolved” in the way Cotton and Perdue’s did over the matter. Not only does it appear Graham is telling the truth, but we’re told that after having heard Trump say what he did, Graham accosted him for having been so vulgar. It’s encouraging to know that decency, though moribund, isn’t completely dead, and Graham is our unexpected proof.

Had Graham not spoken up, Durbin’s word would’ve been one against three and it might’ve looked like a cut-and-dry attempt at a partisan character assault. What we now see is the President and his Senator’s perfidy. Their defense has crumbled, and the last leg upon which it stands is a matter of semantics. They now claim Trump to have said, “s***house” instead of “s***hole”, as if it really makes a difference.

While it’s possible we’ll never know for sure which word was said, what’s certain is that this uncouth, unavoidably dirty word lends itself very poorly to translation. The Chinese condensed it to “cesspit”, the Japanese expanded it to “dripping with excrement”. The Croatians put it best, and I daresay, most elegantly when they translated it to mean, “the place where wolves like to f**k”. I think, in Croatia, we’ve discovered a lingua franca (chock-full of lusty, lupine images that I now can’t purge from my head). Perhaps, buried like a jewel along that scenic Balkan coast, we’ve found what could be their greatest export—an encyclopedia of epithets. Croatia, if you’re listening, please send this president a copy. At least then we might belittle lesser countries with elegance.