RUTHFULLY YOURS

Since the Trojan War, generations have always trashed their own age in comparison to ages past. The idea of fated decadence and decline was a specialty of 19th-century German philosophy.

So we have to be careful in calibrating generations, especially when our own has reached a level of technology and science never before dreamed of (and it is not a given that material or ethical progress is always linear).

Nonetheless, the so-called Baby Boomers have a lot to account for — given the sorry state of entertainment, sports, the media, and universities.

The Harvey Weinstein episode revealed two generational truths about Hollywood culture.

One, the generation that gave us the free-love and the anything-goes morals of Woodstock discovered that hook-up sex was “contrary to nature.” Sexual congress anywhere, any time, anyhow, with anyone — near strangers included — is not really liberating and can often be deeply imbedded within harassment and ultimately the male degradation of women.

Somehow a demented Harvey Weinstein got into his head that the fantasy women in his movies who were customarily portrayed as edgy temptresses and promiscuous sirens were reflections of the way women really were in Los Angeles and New York — or the way that he thought they should be. It was almost as if Weinstein sought to become as physically repulsive and uncouth as possible — all the better to humiliate (through beauty-and-the-beast asymmetry) the vulnerable and attractive women he coerced.

Two, Weinstein reminded us, especially in his eleventh-hour medieval appeals for clemency by way of PC attacks on the NRA and Donald Trump, that mixing politics with art was, as our betters warned, always a self-destructive idea.

Hollywood ran out of original thought about three decades ago, and the people noticed and so keep avoiding the theaters. How many times can a good-looking, young, green progressive crusader expose a corporate pollution plot, or battle a deranged band of southern-twangy Neanderthals, South African racists, or Russian tattooed thugs, or a deep-state CIA cabal in sunglasses and shiny suits? How many times can the nth remake of a comic-book hero be justified by updating him into a caped social-justice warrior from L.A.? Ars gratia politicorum is suicide.

The ruling generation in Hollywood is out of creative ideas mostly because it invested in political melodrama rather than human tragedy. It cannot make a Western, not just because Santa Monica’s young men long ago lost the ability to sound or act like Texans in 1880, but because its politics have no patience with the real world of noble people who are often doomed, or flawed individuals who are nevertheless defined by their best rather than worst traits, or well-meaning souls who can cause havoc, or courageous men who fight for bad causes.

It was the cackle that cost her an election.

The time was the 80s and the First Lady of Arkansas was chatting with Roy Reed. Reed was a New York Times bigwig, a civil rights hero and is currently a speaker for the Clinton School of Public Service.

Back then, Reed was working on a profile of the Clintons for Esquire. The profile was never published. The tapes of the interviews were stowed at the University of Arkansas until they were dug up in ’14.

And there’s Hillary Clinton laughing on tape about how she saved a 12-year-old girl’s rapist.

Kathy Shelton had been raped and beaten into a coma when she was twelve years old. Her rapist wanted a “woman lawyer.” Hillary Clinton took his case as a favor and used every dirty trick to get him off. Even though she admits on the tape that she knew her client was guilty, she accused his victim of being “emotionally unstable” and fantasizing about older men. And she used the little girl’s bloody underwear as the pivot of a blatant lie that got her client off with less than a year in prison.

All of that is bad enough.

It reminds us that there is nothing that Hillary Clinton won’t do to win whether it’s accusing an abused child of being a mentally ill slut or accusing her election opponent of cavorting with urinating Russian prostitutes. And that despite her best efforts to appear human, she has nothing resembling a soul.

But there’s the Clinton cackle. You can hear it throughout the tape. Even years later in the governor’s mansion, Hillary thought that getting a 12-year-old girl’s rapist off the hook was the funniest thing ever.

Roy Reed, the great media hero of the civil rights movement, never wrote about it. There were no outraged stories in the New York Times or Esquire. Just like Harvey Weinstein’s associates. They knew.

They knew and they said nothing.

Hillary Clinton wasn’t the last Democrat presidential candidate to have deeply troubling links to pedophiles.

Her husband was much worse.

Bill Clinton took dozens of rides on Jeffrey Epstein’s Lolita Express. The top Democrat donor’s plane earned its nickname because of its association with the abuse of young girls. Like Hillary’s client, the tastes of Bill’s bosom buddy allegedly ran to twelve year old girls. An FBI investigation found 40 victims.

“In the course of that press conference, Kelly described Donald Trump as a “decisive” and “thoughtful” man of action. I think his record to date corroborates that description even if his style (those tweets, those off-hand remarks) offend the delicate sensitivities of those who have not gotten over the fact that someone not of their tribe had the temerity to garner the support of enough people to be elected to the Presidency without their permission. I am a supporter of Donald Trump, but “Trumpism,” I conclude, is just a name. ”

I have given up on Trumpism. I realize this declaration will come as a surprise to some readers. I should mention, therefore, that it is a decision to which I came only after considerable reflection. It was not easy. I have plenty of friends who endorse Trumpism. I acknowledge that I did as well. I labored assiduously in those vineyards. But I have changed my mind.

Why?

A decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that I should declare the reasons that impelled me to this separation.

One factor was the increasingly surreal commentary that surrounds the whole enterprise of Trumpism. I have found that many of those discussing it would say the most bizarre things. At the end of the day, I simply could not reconcile what was being put forth under the banner of Trumpism with the political and social realities I saw operating all around me.

Everywhere I looked, I saw a vertiginous disconnection between what was described as Trumpism and what was actually happening. Eventually, the cacophony of cognitive dissonance was just too deafening. I realized that I could no longer support Trumpism.

In brief, I have concluded that “Trumpism” does not exist. Rather, it does exist, but only in the way a unicorn exists: in the dashing narratives of fabulists. “Trumpism” is an imaginary, mythical beast. Like the unicorn, it may be recognized from descriptions of its peculiar characteristics—for example, any self-respecting unicorn, as its name implies, has but one horn—and its exploits. But, again like the unicorn, it has only notional existence.

Just as there are many different stories about unicorns—some emphasizing its fierceness, some the magical healing powers of its horn—so there are different versions of that mythical figment, Trumpism.

To a large extent, “Trumpism” is a reflection or coefficient of disappointment. Donald Trump was not supposed to be President of the United States. Indeed, pundits, Hollywood celebrities, politicians from Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi on down assured us that the contingency was impossible. “Take it to the bank,” said Nancy Pelosi, “Donald Trump is not going to be President of the United States.”