It's Better In Italy

My absence from columny was due, in part, to having been nine time zones and more than a world away from the Trumpic outrages that have consumed me for the past few years. Italy. How calming to spend hours in magnificent medieval – and older – churches, absorbed in fantastic mosaics and frescos, statuary and architecture. Wandering ancient Greek and Roman ruins. 

We – my wife, one of her many sisters, and I -- were accompanied by a friend, a brilliant professor of art history, whose broad and deep knowledge of such things and ability and willingness to share it were gifts beyond measure. I’ll never process it all.

For many miles every day, we walked in 90º weather; in Palermo, Napoli, Roma, Apulia, and surrounds, such that, despite indulging in perfectly legal, recreational gelato, we lost weight. In Italy! Home of pasta and pizza and cappuccino. Even as we gained knowledge.

And something more politically pertinent about our trip: Masks. Vaccination ID. Testing and vaccination stations on the streets. No one complaining. It was Italy, after all, at the beginning of the pandemic (which really happened and still is, in case you believe the deniers), that was hit hardest. Maybe it takes that amount of death and economic devastation to seal the message, in ways it seems not to have here, for selfish, deluded Trumpists. 

Maybe Italians are just smarter. Or traditionally more tuned in to family and friends; to caring about them. A tradition, for the last two thousand years, that actually follows the teachings of Christ, as opposed to the grifting, phony, fake Trumpochristianity that doesn’t.

To enter every museum, we showed proof of vaccination, had our temperature taken. On every bus, train, and subway, in which sanitizer dispensers were abundant, as they were in stores and restaurants, everyone wore masks without drama. Amazing. In a grocery store, I’d forgotten to put mine on and was reminded. “Mi dispiace,” I said, embarrassed. The clerk smiled.

How comforting to be surrounded by caring people, to whom it was as natural as, well, breathing. Who cared because it’s right; and because it’s what revitalized their economy. Streets were full of people strolling, enjoying life. Restaurants were full, too, as were other businesses. Not just with tourists. All because of uncomplicated, shared empathy; anathema to today’s Republican core. Why is it so impossible for them?

If America isn’t the only country with anti-maskers and anti-vaxers, ours are louder, more ubiquitous, more violent, more unrepentantly stupid and dangerous. Claiming it’s about freedom when, in fact, they’re prolonging the need for restrictions. Encouraging more dangerous mutations of the virus. Killing themselves by stupidity and denial.

And, by filling hospitals when they needlessly fall deathly ill, killing others from whom they’ve taken up beds. Swallowing unproven and disproven “cures,” refractory to facts about them. (It was in doses 100 times higher than achieved by ingesting the stuff that Ivermectin was shown to have some activity against the Covid-19. In a Petri dish.)

Made helplessly defenseless against the lies, Trumpists believe they’ll become magnetized, or sterile, or chipped, or bearers of “mutant” DNA, or mega-testicular, or, as a “doctor” recently proclaimed, that the vaccinated will be dead in five years. Clearly, there are people spreading those lies who do so deliberately. One can only wonder why. Especially when the victims are now, nearly exclusively, of their own political ilk. 

Even at that human cost, they’re willing to keep the pandemic going, so, come the next election and the second coming of Trump, they can blame it on Democrats. What other explanation is there for creating their cult of death? Other than making a ton of money off it, of course. 

To enter Europe, we had to show proof of vaccination; and have a negative Covid test within 72 hours of returning home. By golly, the tests were negative, despite being body to body in public transportation, in which everyone was masked and most, presumably, vaccinated. No surprise. Not mysterious. All it takes is a spirit of cooperation and common cause. And a lack of unpatriotic idiocy.

In the apses of many of the churches we visited were beautiful mosaics of Christ Pantocrator, in which He gives a sign of blessing with His right hand, holding the New Testament in His left. In some images, the book is open, indicating the path to paradise. In others, it’s closed, portending the fate of people who reject His teachings. In those, it seemed He was speaking through the ages and directly to Trumpists. Who, while pretending to godly patriotism, couldn’t care less.  

Midterminations

Putting my Saturday column (yes, I guess I'm back) up early. Might be too engorged later in the week.

After Washington went to mail-in ballots, I mourned going to my car, changing clothes, and voting again, just as Trump said. Those poll-ladies were suckers for my Groucho glasses. I forget how I signed in, and under whose names, but it must have been easy. Donald Trump doesn’t lie. 

Probably I saw illegal immigrants voting, too. Lou Dobbs says millions did this time, and had a “huge impact;” so I must have seen a few back then. Had I known, I’d have signed them up for Social Security.  

I was cavorting around Italy on Election Day, but news travels fast. Maybe it was delicious Italian coffee buzzing my brain, but Trump’s behavior after the election has seemed even more detached from reality than before. I laughed when Mitch McConnell warned against abandoning bipartisanship, though. Far as I could tell, he was serious. Spending hours in enormous churches containing the best of human artistry, much of it depicting the Final Judgement, one could almost believe such outrageous hypocrisy won’t go unpunished.  

Which ought also to apply to Trump, who’d melt like the wicked witch were he ever to set foot inside an honest church, and whose two-a-day rallies leading up to the election impossibly topped his customary level of deranged, desperate lying. Democrats want open borders, will kill Medicare, won’t protect preexisting conditions: that sort of ungrounded madness. One of his ads was so dishonest and racist, even Fox “news” wouldn’t run it. But Trumpists loved his lies like I loved gelato. 

About half the candidates to whom I gave money won. Looks like it’ll take another cycle or two, and more recognition of the damage being done by the party of Trump, for Texas to turn blue; it’ll get there, maybe even before it’s too late. Republican governors who remade their states into showcases of Republican economics, driving them into the sort of debt and failed governance Trump is creating, lost.  

As sanity searches for a way back into American politics, I chose to return home, rather than seek asylum. Included in their broad representation of our nation’s diversity were eight scientists elected by Democrats, which holds hope for addressing climate change. Republicans elected three people currently under indictment and one dead pimp. Like refugees in the caravan, sanity has a ways to go, and could drop out before arriving. 

Speaking of which, we haven’t heard much about the existential threat posed by that caravan lately, have we? Trump’s hate- and fear-mongering suckered his base, per usual. Now he’s lying about Finns and rakes, again showcasing his cluelessness about how things work. 

Republicans have long realized that, given the widespread unpopularity and oft-demonstrated unworkability of their ideas, the ultimate threat to their power is a fair electoral system. They can attack education and expertise, lie without remorse, threaten the very idea of an adversarial, inquisitive press; but if all citizens have the same opportunity to vote, they know they can’t sustain such a top-heavy, self-serving agenda. 

The midterms provided evidence both of the power of their suppression tactics, and evidence that it can be overcome. Many states flipped to Democratic legislatures. Undoing the sort of gerrymandering that gave North Carolina ten of thirteen US Representatives despite getting only half the votes becomes possible, even as their lame-duck legislators get quacking to prevent it.  

Forced by the courts to redraw Republican-created districts, Pennsylvania voted about equally for Ds and Rs, resulting in equal numbers of winners. (North Carolina was similarly ordered, but ignored it!) Young people voted in record numbers, still appallingly low. When they see the forest for the burning trees, everything changes.  

Over 300-million tickets were purchased in the recent national mega-lottery. Winners were known within minutes, including where tickets were sold. By contrast, vote totals and outcomes remained unknown in some localities after a week. Rolls purged of legal voters, long lines, mysteriously broken or absent machines, especially in minority districts: elections in the US are, to use Trump’s perennially misused phrase, a disgrace. That it’s deliberate becomes obvious. This, the literal stealing of elections by Republicans, not fake news about Democrats in disguise and illegals voting, is America’s true shame. 

It won’t change under Republicans, and everyone who believes in democracy should care. Sadly, that doesn’t include Trump and his lie-preferring excusers, who, no doubt, also loved his third-grade-level insult of Adam Schiff.  

Dang, I miss gelato.