Mango-man in Jerusalem

Music: Pendant: Make Me Know You Sweet (2018)

Apparently goaded by top advisor Stephen Miller, the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy is separating thousands of children from their guardians as the government pursues prosecutions for illegal immigration.  The optics were of course deliberate, and the willful suspension of any sentiment of sympathy is seemingly total. Yesterday Trump erroneously claimed that the U.S. government was only "enforcing the law" (this is his enforcement policy, not a law), a point that was repeated, uh, repeatedly by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. "We will not apologize for the job we do," she said, "or for the job law enforcement does for doing the job that the American people expect us to do."

Numerous public figures have criticized the policy as fascistic and reminiscent of Japanese internment.  What is not emphasized enough, however, is the logic or type of affected thinking that willfully justifies the blind enforcement of cruel policies: "I'm just doing my job," or as Hannah Arendt termed it, the "banality of evil." 

Reporting for The New York Times, Arendt famously covered the trial of one of the major coordinators of the "Final Solution," Adolf Eichmann.  Rather than finding a monster she found a man who misinterpreted Kant's moral philosophy by installing Hitler as the arbiter of the categorical imperative (a superego) and, unable to think for himself, a drone who just followed his orders and the (constantly changing) law (first it was emigration, then extermination). Well, sort of.  He did help orchestrate massive deportations and the murder six million human beings. What is banal here is the complete absence of original thought; what is evil here is the complete absence of original thought too---but, paradoxically, an ability to make an independent extension of the unoriginal.  Could we say Eichmann was creative?  Or relatedly, that the spectacle of family separation is a rather creative means to justify a political win?

I don't think so.  Thinking of the ends, which means envisioning possibilities and consequences, is not in play here.  The "end" is already set.  As with the Dick the Dark Lord Cheney, Bannon and Miller scripted it all out before the president moved into the White Dump. It didn't go the way that was planned, but governance continues to move toward the desired direction.    

I've been thinking and reading a lot these days about creativity and its relationship to play: what is creativity, really?  We seem to know it when we sense it, but something remains elusive.  Many creative types will often tell you they don't know where their creativity comes from (hence, the muses and such). Even so, creativity seems to be a form of "original" thought and doing, apparently emerges in childhood play, boundary testing, and problem-solving that can be aggressive (even violent) at times but, as we mature, gets channeled often toward the aesthetic or sport.  I put "original" in scare quotes here because I do not mean to implicate autonomy or the individual genius model, but rather something like an openness to surprise or inspiration that gets channeled into something "new."  I mention my current reading habits because listening to the news today---this "we're only enforcing the law" routine---reminded me of the banality of evil but also how the Trump administration is completely devoid of creativity.  The end is set, they just gotta fund and build The Wall, and act-out the well-worn script that sounds like spectatorship but starts with the letter "d."  While I am not particularly fearful this kind of power will ever be achieved because at least some checks are getting balanced, the script is still getting filmed.

Apparently one White House custodian described the Trump Doctrine as, "We're America, Bitch!" which of course implies the coda, "get over it."   

We've had a similar rhetorical doctrine before with the Bush II presidency, which reminds me of the theme song (NSFW) for the Team America: World Police puppet fiesta by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.  Unlike the lapsed Mormon comedians, however, the "Get Over It" doctrine implicates a faceless humanity that is expendable (while a term of endearment for many, in this national, political context "bitch" is assuredly meant as a dehumanizing term), a faceless but brown-skinned humanity drowning in floodwaters but worthy of getting thrown at least roll of paper towels.  Or maybe a hydrogen bomb. Yet the "Get Over It" doctrine, which is apparently deliberately sabotaging friendships with powerful democracies and cultivating dude-bro relations with tyrants and dictators, is so banal in its historical plagiarism that it is, well, also stereotypically evil: build a wall; deport a perceived minority as a threat; demand "law and order," and so on . . . it's as if the Republican National Convention was, indeed, the Nuremburg Rally all over again, and the acceptance speech should be titled,  "I have a struggle too, bitch."  (For my hot take on the rally around the time it happened, see this Medium post). 

And is one really shocked that Trump had affairs with adult entertainment stars? Isn't that the key plot device in the How to Be a Bad Boy script? What about all that gaudy gold? Isn't that what rich winners get? Gold toilet seats, like golden showers, are really rich and naughty, right?

Two more points related to the dangerous direction of uncreative flow: the U.S. has more mass shootings than anywhere in the world, now on average about once a month depending on how one defines "mass shooting." Note that nothing about a mass shooting is a surprise; it's a fantasy that's been churning in U.S. culture for at least half a century, if not longer.  There is nothing more banal and evil than rehearsing a fantasy of mass atrocity---there were even some short-lived video games---since the script is well known, as is the demographic profile: a male, usually someone who feels like an outsider, obsessed with weaponry and hoarding it, a paranoia complex of some sort, simmering, years long grudges, an inability to see others as humans instead of faceless foes, a sense of entitlement, and the desire for a suicidal ending of bullet-blasting (or chest exploding) glory.  No creativity there, just a script. Mass shootings are also contagions: one script inspires another, and so on, usually among (young) men with the same "profile," now inclusive of "incels."  It's victims all the way down, a logic of cinema: to feel omnipotent something must disappear from the frame.

Second, the logic of the banal actor of evil is perverse, meaning that he (and it's usually a he) knows violence and cruelty is wrong but does it anyway, usually out of a sense of duty and inevitability and above all righteousness (or its flip side, revenge)---because it is gloriously wrong and perceived as transgressive! But it's not really transgressive, because it's a compulsory script—it's plotted already.  The pervert does not transgress, but rather makes demands.  The making of demands begets more demands---it has a certain addictive character.  Relatedly, the clinically perverse tend to have something in common: they have little capacity for creativity, but rather, are more interested in policing the rules of the game, which have been previously unfairly applied or enforced.  Everyone must be treated the same, by the rules, no exceptions (except, of course, the folks responsible for the policing, since they are not suckers like most of the players). This is the logic of "both sides" moral equivalency, of why the civil rights advocates are just as responsible for the violence in Charlottesville as the white supremacists.  This is the logic of deliberately splitting families up as a deterrent for an "epidemic" of illegal immigration and violence that is not in reality an epidemic or violent. This is the logic of dehumanization, which prepares the way for the only thing worse: disappearance.