Waiting for Good

I have taken myself to Walden Pond. The only tweets I hear will be from sparrows and titmouses.

I have deleted Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For different reasons. Facebook broke my heart with its careless and cynical handling of personal data and fake news. Twitter never pretended to be anything but a jungle, but for now I’ve had enough of trying to hack my way through its tangle of hate and lies (most notably from our president).

I love social media. I was early on Facebook and Instagram. But I don’t love what they’ve become. I would like to see a paid subscription model. That would get rid of the advertising pollution and exploitation. It wouldn’t sort fake news from fact, though. Until algorithms get much better, the only way to do that would be to apply to social media the defamation rules newspapers live by: if you publish a defamatory lie, you’re liable for damages.

That would be a Good platform. I could meet my friends there and we could chat the way we do in person, without worrying that someone is trying to exploit us or is lying to us (well, no more than we all lie to one another about little personal things).

It could be a long wait for Good.

In the meantime, I’ll keep up with my friends directly and say what I have to say more broadly in essays in print or on the radio (thanks for the opportunity, KQED).

And I’ll keep writing this blog. Follow it if you're interested.

Otherwise, look for the smoke from the chimney of my cabin in the woods. There will be a sign on the door saying “Novel in Progress,” but you’ll be welcome anytime.

Walls of Worry

The stock market climbs a wall of worry, the old expression goes. That’s certainly happening now. There may still be gas in the tank of the old bull (to really mix my metaphors). It has taken us so far so fast that not many are asking to be let off at the next stop. Meanwhile, fear and greed are duking it out in the back seat like a couple of bored teenagers on an overlong family road trip.

Walls are emotionally powerful symbols. Trump has his border wall. He wants us to be afraid of all those brown people who want to rape our wives and daughters and steal our livelihoods. 

I’m scaling my own wall of worry; free-climbing, no ropes, no safety net. My wall is the midterm elections. I want to believe in the blue wave. I think we need some balance in Congress. But I’m terrified that both fear and greed are going to gang up on what used to be called American values.

For the midterms, we have the fear of the other lined up on the side of old fashioned avarice. Together, they may just beat the crap out of the weakling intellectual called liberal democracy. 

Around the world we are in a new era of the strongman. From Hungary and Poland and Turkey to Brazil and China and Russia. And now, with Trump, America. Strongmen aren’t big fans of democracy, or free press, or independent judiciaries. They’re autocrats. People install them, or tolerate them, when the aimless sloppiness of democracy isn’t getting enough done to suit them. That’s what got Trump elected.

Since his election, he has shown his true colors: he’s a racist, misogynist oligarch; a man who wants to destroy the press and pack the courts with men who will let him do whatever he wants. He has tossed aside alliances with other nations that have protected and promoted a peaceful world order for seventy years. He’s a dangerous man.

But the economy is rocking, and he’s taking credit for that. Unemployment is at a fifty-year low. Wages are rising. Businesses are prospering. This moment of undeniable economic success won’t last forever, or perhaps even much longer. We’re already late in the expansion cycle. And the latest tax cuts are pumping up the deficit. When the party stops, we’re likely to have a bad hangover.

But for now, we’re looking good economically. And immigrant bashing and isolationism, let’s face it, are more popular among a larger segment of society than we’re comfortable admitting.

Blue wave? I hope so. But the economic facts the voters are seeing are pretty supportive of Trump; and the additional facts he is making up about threats from illegal immigrants and unfair trading partners, threats that require his strong hand, are easy enough to believe.

I’m climbing my midterm wall, but I’m worried. Every time I glance down, I see we could have a very long way to fall.