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“What to Fight For”: The Way Forward
On Election Day I flew up to New York City to celebrate with friends the Harris victory I had begun to think was certain. On the plane I explored what Kamala Harris’s campaign, win or lose, got right, how she addressed something that we desperately need, a rebirth of community.
Apparently, that idea wasn’t right enough for the electorate. But, however wrong I was about the election, I finished this piece mostly unchanged to put a pin in the idea. While the pundits explain what went wrong and the Democrats indulge in their traditional circular firing squad, it’s worthwhile to mark what Harris got right.
A Deeper Dive on Tribalism: On the Eve of the 2024 U.S. Election
Political discourse now echoes the darkest moments before the Civil War. If we haven’t seen an event on the Senate floor like the 1856 caning of Charles Sumner, when Representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina, used a walking cane to attack an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, the January 6th perpetrators did far worse in order to get into the Senate Chamber.
Call it Trump Derangement Syndrome if you must but count me among the less surprised at the caning of Mookie Betts in the Dodgers-Yankees World Series. Yankees fan Austin Capobianco grabbed Betts’s glove with both hands and pulled the ball out. Capobianco’s friend, John Peter, grabbed Betts’s non-glove hand.
Sign of the times? You bet.
Dionysus-in-Chief: A Deeper Dive into Trickster
“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” So said Donald J. Trump to his Chief of Staff John Kelly. If reelected, he may not find such generals at the Pentagon. But he has them lined up to staff the Oval Office and much of the federal government, many of them Trump-pardoned convicted felons, a plan laid out in Project 2025.
This time the velociraptors will know how to turn the door handles.
Is Trump Weaving Rambling, or Unraveling?
Wee Willie Keeler’s legendary hitting streak of 44 games (1894) was not broken until Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game streak 44 years later. Keeler’s secret for his mastery of hitting? “Keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't.” The first part is sometimes quoted as: “keep your eye on the ball.”
The art of persuasion follows half of Keeler’s advice. Yes, to persuade your audience you must keep your eye clear and on the ball. You must know what the goal of your persuading is, what you want your audience to do. But persuasion flips the second half of Wee Willie’s script. In any kind of communication, however informal, you've got first to hit them where they are. You've got to know your audience, what their assumptions are and what their knowledge of issues is.
Immigration and Contingency: Choose Your Own Adventure
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Called branching-path narratives or gamebooks, these were meant for readers ages 9–12. They are improvisations in which the reader determines what happens next. They sold more than 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998, when they were superseded by electronic games. They still sell a million copies annually.
We think of ourselves as possessing an authentic identity which shapes the choices we make. The Choose books acknowledge that we possess multiple selves, each authentic in their own way, in the moment that they possess us.
The War Between The Opportunity Economy and The Prosperity Gospel
The Prosperity Gospel is a fast-growing theologically conservative movement frequently associated with Pentecostalism, evangelicalism, and charismatic Christianity. Wanna know why evangelicals support Trump? Look to The Prosperity Gospel. Also known as the Health and Wealth Gospel, it promises believers the ability to transcend poverty and/or illness through devotion and positive confession. What Trump and the evangelicals share, their hands perpetually out, is the grift, the hustle.
What I Learned Leaving the Ivory Tower
What always made me uncomfortable about my obsession with improv was that it seemed so ivory tower, just part of the worlds of ideas and of the arts. Fuzzy headed? Maybe. Yes, I loved ideas and the arts but was I living in a cloud?
Then I saw Trump come down the golden escalator and give that free-associative rant about American carnage. I knew instantly that the ivory tower had been broached by political realities. To my surprise, what had long seemed stuck in the clouds also had a role—albeit, a dark role—in the political world down below. What had seemed only an idle, artsy fascination now clearly had political consequence. It could affect our daily lives and political realities. And it did.
James Hillman on Show Business Ethics
In “On Show-Business Ethics” (Philosophical Intimations, Uniform Edition), archetypal psychologist James Hillman offers a prophetic understanding of what drives Trump’s power with this base. Writing in 1988, the Reagan era, Hillman points out that, replacing morality as we know it—you know, right and wrong—show biz ethics has instead taken over the agora and the forum, the marketplace and the body politic. In show biz ethics, it is not the rightness or wrongness of action but strictly the question, does it work?
When the Joker’s Jokes Don’t Land
“Trump lost the debate because of his performance, or lack thereof,” Republican consultant Dennis Lennox argues. He adds, “That’s what happens when you wing it.”
Yet, Trump’s ability to wing it, to give the impression of making things up as he goes along, has long served him well. It has again and again helped to persuade his followers that he was trustworthy and authoritative. How? By conveying that, unlike other pols, he wasn’t reading his handlers’ script. He wasn’t basing his thoughts on a white paper written by some empty-suit, east-coast elite. No, what he offered came straight from the gut, so trust him….
Free Form vs. Rulebound: How Fair Needs Foul
My interest in behavior that is impromptu and free form means that strict, rulebound social behavior interests me almost as much. Even more interesting is when the two come together, fighting for dominance: will the perfect rightness or the just-as-perfect disruption of perfection win the day?
So Leonard Cohen thought, too. In “Anthem” on the 1992 album The Future he sings, "Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in."
“I Know Donald Trump’s Type”
So says the prosecutor regarding the convicted felon.
I know his type too, his archetype: Trickster.
Kamala and the American Gumbo Pot
Kamala Harris’s campaign has embraced what is surely the most hallowed of American traditions, a tradition saturated in modernity: freedom. Yet her discourse on the stump tends to follow traditional forms: evidence-based, logical, and reasonable. Anything but freewheeling.
But then there’s her laugh. There’s nothing politically traditional in her easy, free-flowing laugh. Politicians base their authority on being sobersided. Trump does not laugh, unless at the expense of his opponents. For the Trump campaign, Kamala’s laugh is one of her liabilities, proof that she’s weird. Compilations of her guffawing circulated online.
Harris’ Improvised Candidacy: Something New Under the Sun
The improvisation of Kamala Harris’s candidacy interweaves Hot and Cold Cognition. A campaign on a 15-week, not 3-year schedule calls for an unprecedented, norm-breaking political operation and demands improvisation moment by moment. But at its front stands a former prosecutor well-schooled in both evidence-based, reasoned narrative and quick response.
When Improv's Lies Become Bullshit
“Why give improvisation a bad name? It’s not a synonym for lies or bullshit!” So came a distinguished jazz historian’s immediate response to the email blast I circulated to promote a New Orleans Improv Conference panel I’d entitled “The Dark Side of Improv: Politics.”
I was stunned by his response. Improvisation may not be a synonym for “lies or bullshit.” But by December 2019 when we held the conference, it seemed to fit hand in improv’s glove well enough—unlike OJ’s—to convict. The Washington Post documented 30,000 lies during Trump’s tenure in the White House. How many lies does it take to turn alt-facts into just plain bullshit?
Guilty: When Cold Cognition Trumps Trickster’s Heat
Relying on Hot Cognition in a felony trial is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. In this case, 34 gunfights. Trusting in Hot Cognition, at best Trump ran true to form.
We long for more access to Hot Cognition in our lives. But when called to assess the authority of someone whose “gut knows more than many brains,” that’s when my Cold Cognition kicks in. Yours should, too.
Trickster Trump
Winging It makes the case that Trickster, that charming, charismatic troublemaker, is the engine and voice of improvisation.
One of Trickster’s incarnations is the African / African-American figure named Compère Lapin / Br’er (brother) Rabbit, a West African tale first recorded by Alcee Fortier at Laura Plantation in St. James Parish upriver from New Orleans.
Trickster is the original Energizer bunny. All the cartoon tricksters, from Bugs to Tom to the Roadrunner's Coyote, are relentless. They keep on coming. They operate on an endless supply of desire. Ever wonder at Trump's energy? Sleepy Don is now slipping out of character.