More diary
6/17 I'm about halfway through Susan Faludi's THE TERROR DREAM, about the post-911 media narrative, and I'm startled by 1) How transparent the myth-making was, 2) How many pundits who are still prominent participated in it (and not just right wing jerks like Rush Limbaugh, David Brooks, and Peggy Noonan, but more progressive and supposedly thoughtful people like Jonathan Alter). Last night, I read an amazing excerpt from an article by the pre-Mondoweiss Philip Weiss, in which he described how he and his soft creative class friends couldn't stop talking about the glories of torture and vengeance. What a difference a few years would make in his politics!If you don't remember (and I certainly didn't), there was a huge push to make 9/11 feminism's Waterloo--the moment when America's masculinity was restored. Women professionals were quitting their high-powered jobs to marry strong, silent, blue collar protector types and have babies, the story went. Sensitive brainy Alan Alda types and geeky Silicon Valley nerds were being supplanted by Jack Bauer and John Wayne's Ethan Edwards as symbols of national prowess. Sewing machines were flying off the shelves; there was a colossal baby boom. None of it was true--to the extent that women were leaving their jobs, it was because of the recession, there was no baby boom, and those first responders didn't actually "save" the twin towers or the city--they were victims too. People were stanning (though the word didn't exist yet) over Rumsfeld and Giuliani's sexiness; George W. was Shane and Laura Bush the national mother. Some of it reminds me of Andrew Cuomo and Anthony Fauci's brief reigns as sex symbols (people really do have this need for saviors and a lot of women seemingly do want to marry their fathers, and the media and smart politicians exploit it).But almost none of that archetypal myth-making has been shaped around Trump during our current crisis, and I think I know why--because Trump was already the defining figure going into it: there were no hard women and soft men left to disown and dethrone. If there was a national longing for comic book righteousness back then, nowadays there's just a lot of anger. No one but a Trump cultist believes that Trump is a super-hero and they're stoked on their angry delusions already. The rest of us are mad at him. Back then, we as a nation were trying to displace our fears of impotence. Today, we're mostly just pissed.6/15 Not out to shame anybody, just observing and opining. The demonstrations in Brooklyn are big and a little scary if you are in your 60s and have some of those preexisting conditions, but nearly everyone wears masks and people tend to be good about not crowding too close together. Walking around Flatbush, Prospect Heights, and Park Slope on my daily walks, I see something like 80 to 90 percent mask compliance.I just got stuck in traffic in Williamsburg, though, and was amazed--the sidewalks were mobbed as always, and I didn't see a single Satmar wearing a mask. Not one. It's as if masks have been declared tref or something, because they're not part of the 18th century costume. That's somewhat less the case with the Lubavitchers in Crown Heights, closer to where I live. My guess is that the Satmars believe they're social distancing already by living as separately from gentiles and non-frum Jews as they do. I don't think they realize that they can carry and share the germs among each other--which I suspect is why people in general have been so vulnerable to plagues throughout history, because putting distance between yourself and your friends and family feels so unnatural while blaming and punishing outsiders is instinctive and emotionally satisfying. If I were an anthropologist, I'd do an ethnographic study, comparing MAGAs and Satmars. They might have more in common than they realize.
