by Barry Goldman
When I get up in the morning I drink a pot of coffee and read the paper. The coffee makes me irritable. The paper makes me furious and miserable. That sets the tone for the rest of the day.
I agree with Ezra Klein that the constitutional crisis is not coming, it is here. When the Trump administration can ignore a unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court, the breakdown of the rule of law is not threatening, it has arrived.
I am a lawyer. I speak the language. I faithfully listen to Talking Feds and Strict Scrutiny, and I read the relevant Substacks. But I’m afraid all the smart lawyers in all those places are making the same mistake. The Trump people don’t give a damn about the definition of “invasion” or “predatory incursion” under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. And they don’t give a damn about the difference between “facilitate” and “effectuate” in the Supreme Court’s order in the Abrego Garcia case. Arguing about legal definitions with Trumpers is playing chess with a pigeon. The pigeon knocks over the pieces, shits on the board, and struts around like he won. Pigeon chess has nothing to do with chess, and Trump administration litigation has nothing to do with law. This realization accounts for what I have taken to calling my macrodepression.
When I’m done with the paper and my daily dose of legal commentary, I sit down at my desk and toggle to microdepression. I look at my email. Inevitably, the people I’m looking forward to hearing from have not written. The people who have written are either cancelling something it took weeks to schedule, trying to sell me something I don’t want, or writing to tell me another one of my friends is sick or dead.
Then the phone starts ringing. Usually, it’s a recorded message. Because I’m over 70, the messages tend to about medical alert systems, assisted living facilities, and burial and cremation plans. Sometimes I stay on the phone to see if there is an option at the end that says, “Press 2 now to remove your number from our call list.” I press 2, but it has no discernible effect. Often when I answer the phone, the machine that called me decides it doesn’t want to talk to me after all, and it just hangs up.
Then I look at my To Do list and try to pick the least onerous task. Call the homeowner’s insurance company to find out if they’re ever going to do anything about the leak in the kitchen? Call the electric company to ask about the mysterious charge on my statement? Call the bank, the phone company, the city government?
I know how those calls will go. So do you. First, I have to identify myself “for security purposes.” What is my account number? What is my password? What was my favorite restaurant 15 years ago when I set up this account? “We’re sorry, the information you have entered does not match our records. Please check your entries and try again.” If I somehow make it past security, I am presented with a list of options. None of the options matches what I want to talk about. The robot will be happy to connect me with an agent, but “due to unusually high call volume, no one is currently available to take my call.” If I do manage to reach a human being, it is never the person I talked to last time. That person is on vacation or out of the office or doesn’t work there anymore. The new person has no idea what I’m talking about, but my call is important to them. They make me start at the beginning. Then they put me on hold. Then they hang up.
I give up and try to get some work done. This is complicated by the fact that I recently got a computer “upgrade.” Simple procedures I had finally mastered are no longer even possible. I can’t find things, and I can’t figure out how to find them. Everything takes much longer than it used to. I get so frustrated I stomp away and get another cup of coffee. The coffee makes me more irritable.
When I can get my computer to work, I schedule meetings that will never take place. I leave messages for people who will not get back to me. I complain to giant organizations that don’t even pretend to care what I think.
I take a break and check my news feed. That toggles me back to macrodepression. The news reads like a contest between Cruelty and Stupidity to see which can more quickly and thoroughly destroy human civilization. I feel completely outraged and utterly helpless.
Rinse and repeat. The toggling back and forth is part of what makes the experience so vertiginous. It brings to mind Neil Postman’s famous “Now…This.”
Finally, late at night when the rest of the house is asleep and I am alone in the dark, I indulge in my secret virtue. I listen to Bach. (Currently, the Complete Bach Recordings on Deutche Grammophon by Walter Gieseking.)
Listening to Bach restoreth my soul.
Bach doesn’t make politics any more sane. It doesn’t make our “leadership” less moronic or less cruel. It doesn’t make the bureaucracy more responsive. It doesn’t help anything, really. Like poetry, Bach “makes nothing happen.” What it does, though, is it inspires the thought that the human race may be worth defending.
That may be overstating it. There is a story about Samuel Beckett that gets closer to what I mean. Beckett was walking with a friend in Paris on a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, birds were singing. The friend said, “It makes you glad to be alive.” Beckett said, “Oh I wouldn’t go that far.”
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