We’ve hit the 100-day mark of the Trump administration and the news media has been filled with volumes of copy focusing on what he has and has not accomplished at this arbitrary milestone. While it is true that he has managed little legislatively, he has changed the focus of the federal government — administratively gutting environmental enforcement, ending oversight of local police, and so on.
These are significant changes that demand more coverage than they are getting — I have a piece coming soon at NJ Spotlight on New Jersey counties and immigration. But they are not his only legacy.
Much has been written about the empowering of “alt-right” groups and the possible rise in hate crimes — the numbers are notoriously difficult to gather or vet — that have been a hallmark of this administration.
This passage from yesterday’s 100-day rally speech (link has been de-activated) is instructive, I think. Here we have the president of the United States reading the lyrics to a ’60s soul song, “The Snake,” , essentially a reworking of the Aesop’s tale and similar in theme to the scorpion and the frog. (He attributes its writing to Al Wilson, who sang a cover version of the song, but it was written and first performed by Oscar Brown). The song is apolitical, though the story can be applied to politics, as both Aesop’s fable and the later tale tell stories of unchanging nature — both the snake and the scorpion end up biting and killing their benefactors. Thematically, they are warnings that “the wicked show no thanks.”
And I thought of it having to do with our borders and people coming in. And we know that we’re going to have; we’re going to have problems. We have to very, very carefully vet. We have to be smart. We have to be vigilant.
So here it is, “The Snake.” It’s called “The Snake”:
Trump, though, recontextualizes it — pointing the “moral” not at the powerful but at his favorite scapegoats, Latino and Muslim immigrants. Here is what he said:
“On her way to work one morning, down the path along the lake, a tender-hearted woman saw a poor, half-frozen snake.His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew. “Poor thing!” she cried. “I’ll take you in and I’ll stake care of you.”
The border. (Laughter.)
“Take me in, oh, tender woman. Take me in for Heaven’s sake. Take me in, oh, tender woman,” sighed the vicious snake.
“She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk, and laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk. She hurried home from work that night, and as soon as she arrived, she found that pretty snake she’d taken in had been revived.
Take me in, oh, tender woman. Take me in for Heaven’s sake. Take me in, oh, tender woman, sighed that vicious snake.
She clutched him to her bosom, ‘You’re so beautiful,’ she cried. ‘But if I hadn’t brought you in by now, oh, heavens you would have died.’ She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed him and held him tight. But instead of saying, ‘thank you,’ that snake gave her a vicious bite!
Take me in, oh, tender woman. Take me in for Heaven’s sake. Take me in, oh, tender woman, sighed the vicious sake.
‘I have saved you,’ cried the woman. ‘And you’ve bitten me, heavens why? You know your bite is poisonous, and now I’m going to die.’
‘Oh, shut up, silly woman,’ said the reptile with a grin. ‘You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.'” (Applause.)
Does that explain it, folks? Does that explain it?
Well, yes. It explains a lot — about Trump. The use of an otherwise innocuous song — contrary to Michael Gershon’s contention in an otherwise inciteful column, the lyrics themselves are not racist — to paint immigrants as unchanging in their nature and that, no matter how moderate and mainstream they might seem, no matter how much we help them, they eventually will lash out. It’s what they do and who they are and the only way to prevent it is to build a wall and keep them out. This is racist nonsense reminiscent of attacks on other groups — the “Jew vermin” of the Nazi era, our own depiction of blacks as sub-human, and so on.
Trump used this song lyric repeatedly in rallies during the election campaign, so we shouldn’t be surprised that he reached for it again when standing before a friendly crowd at a moment when he feels himself besieged by the press corps (see the first half of this speech). There is a difference, however: He is no longer a candidate.
He is the president, and rallying a crowd of supporters with naked appeals to race and ethnic purity is downright terrifying and carries with it dangerous possibilities. I’m not saying he is a fascist or a Nazi, though the historian Timothy Snyder in an interview with Salon said he sees “elements of his approach which are fascistic.
The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment as a way to undo institutions, that is fascism.
Whether he realizes it or not is a different question, but that’s what fascists did. They said, “Don’t worry about the facts; don’t worry about logic. Think instead in terms of mystical unities and direct connections between the mystical leader and the people.” That’s fascism. Whether we see it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we forget, that is fascism.
Another thing that’s clearly fascist about Trump were the rallies. The way that he used the language, the blunt repetitions, the naming of the enemies, the physical removal of opponents from rallies, that was really, without exaggeration, just like the 1920s and the 1930s.
Snyder fears a Reichstag fire moment, though that seems a reach. And yet, there is Trump still holding rallies, still inciting the crowd with hate, still pointing fingers, creating scapegoats, fomenting rage. And few call him out for it. Much of the coverage focused on his attacks on the press (because, you know, we only worry about our own), with few focusing on the hate-filled core of his comments.
Gershon, a conservative with whom I agree on little, was one of the few, calling the speech “arguably the most hate-filled presidential communication in modern history,” and adding that the only thing more terrifying was “the apathetic response of those who should know better”
Citing the essay “Politics, Morality and Civility” by Vaclav Havel, the late-Czech dissident, playwright and former Czech president, he describes Trumpism as “moral and spiritual poverty”:
the cultivation of anger, resentment, antagonism and tribal hostilities; the bragging and the brooding; the egotism and self-pity. All is visible. None will be forgotten.
Gershon prescribes an antidote — the “democratic faith” that the American “people, in the long run, will choose decency and progress over the pleasures of malice.”
It is the job of responsible politics to prepare the way for new leaders, who believe that all of us are equal in dignity and tied together in a single destiny. But this can take place only if we refuse to normalize the language of hatred.
We have been blinded by Trump’s overactive Twitter finger and the incomprehensible nonsense that spews from his mouth on an almost daily basis — so much of it, in fact, that it all seems to run together. We dismiss it whole cloth, assuming it is either the ravings of a lunatic or a well-thought-out plan to distract us. The press corps, which has no experience with a man like this, attempts to treat him as any other president even as he hectors them and upends all of the rules.
This may make sense in terms of policy — much of what his policy agenda is in line with Republican orthodoxy, or at least in line with what George W. Bush did or attempted. But his influence goes beyond policy. it is cultural. What he says matters because his followers take what he says as gospel. He has spread the gasoline and he now stands ready with lighter in hand.
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Hank Kalet 