Out of Left Field: No time to ‘fade into my own parade’

Michael Dinnocenzo

A great investigative journalist, Wayne Barrett, died the day before the 45th President was inaugurated in Washington.

The Times obituary described him as: “Fierce New York Muckraker.”

Barrett was the first major writer (in the 1970s) to provide searing criticism of the life and career of Donald Trump.

Because his negative evaluations continued for decades, the timing of his death was strikingly noted by his admirers.

Death is a final exit from life’s travails.  How many others will seek earthly escape routes because of Trump as President?

This year’s Nobel Laureate for Literature, Bob Dylan, in 1965, wrote that he was ready to “fade into my own parade.”

In 2017, how far into private parades will folks feel driven by the continued conduct of Donald Trump?

Gloom has descended, not only on Democrats who opposed Trump, but among many principled Republicans and Conservatives.

Bear in mind the reality (so rare in our era of fake news) that never in American history have so many members of a successful candidate’s own party disparaged and denounced him.

Clearly, Republican elected officials have a high stake in trying to work with Mr. Trump. Let’s see how that proceeds.

How has Trump’s conduct been since the election?

Many find him continuing to be egregious, ego maniacal, and polarizing.  Did he do anything to try to unite the nation before January 20?

Is it surprising that when he took the oath of office he had the lowest approval rating of any new President since polls were taken; he was in the 30s, even in the Wall Street Journal.

Has Mr. Trump earned those low ratings?

John McCain deplored that Trump wants “to engage in every windmill he can find.”

Newt Gingrich, a major ally of the new President, speaks optimistically of Trump as a “change agent,” noting that “he goes to an opportunity or a problem as it emerges.”

Is that a statement that strikes fear in many leaders here and around the world?

Does Trump bring to the White House any historical perspective? What has he read or studied?

Mr. Gingrich indicates that Donald Trump is always ready to “impose his will” and move on. But does “will,” without a creditable framework of human values and of our nation’s most esteemed heritage, risk a form of “Caesarism?”

Is that’s okay with Trump’s “Alt Right” boosters who favor “Caserarism” (google Peter Beinart’s Atlantic Monthly essay)? Beinart (who will speak at Great Neck’s Temple Emanuel) argues that those Trump supporters see it as an alternative to dictatorship because the leader has popular support, and when change can only be accomplished by the “One.”

During the campaign, and afterwards, Trump keeps reminding us that only “he” can do it.  Has there ever been such an example oi arrogance and immodesty by any President in all 227 years of the American Presidency?

Gingrich drew laughter before a New York GOP gathering on Jan. 19 when he said about Trump, “I can’t tell you what he’s going to do Saturday because he can’t tell you what he’s going to do Saturday.”

Trump’s Improvisations, without context, might drive more Americans to “fade into their own parades.”

Can you give illustrations of pre-Jan. 20 Trump views that were conciliatory to people he opposed, or examples of his efforts (even of “stated” intentions) to build bridges (as Lincoln and Dr. King always advocated) instead of erecting barricades (walls, too)?

He seems to believe he won a landslide.

But Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes than he did (the most ever by a “losing” candidate).

He boasts of his huge “Electoral College” win, but his margin ranks only 36th out of 48,

Might you think that those circumstances would induce such a “winner” to be more modest and try more sincerely to be a “uniter” rather than a tweeting tormentor?

This column was written early Saturday afternoon. I did not hear the Inaugural Address, but listened to an NPR discussion as I drove home.

Reporters highlighted the new President’s emphasis on “America first – always America first.”

They noted that Mr. Trump issued an Executive Order declaring a “National Day of Patriotism.”

Love of one’s country (and one’s countrymen and women!) is always appropriate.

But is this another example, as in his 18 month campaign, of “Us” against “Them,” and of “me” – the sole and ultimate savior?

Do you think there is irony that Inauguration day was at the end of a week that began with our Martin Luther King Jr. holiday?

Dr. King argued that “all of our lives are interconnected,” in a nuclear, shrunken globe,    and that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

What about Dr. King’s signature view, as he detailed the symbiotic relationship of the “triple evils” of racism, poverty and war, that we have reached a point when “every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole?”

Will Mr. Trump’s words and actions after January 20 prompt grieved, humanistic, patriots to seek creative escape routes to privacy and solace? How many will decide to “fade into my own parade?”

Will equivalents of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” play a song for the legitimately distressed multitudes to foster an activist and constructive “dancing spell” response?

If lots of folks do go to the sidelines and focus on their private lives, will that leave a huge void in the public sphere — especially at a time when there is a vital need for disciplined and principled voices of people like Wayne Barrett and Dr. King?

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