Whatever the war, emotional stability matters. Before MAGA impales itself, we must cultivate unshakeable convictions that insanity is its own worst enemy.
Trapped in an asylum where the crazies double-down and escape hatches rare, who doesn’t need relief from relentless, calculated disequilibrium? What else results from a culture of chronic, manipulative lying? Meditation, drugs, alcohol, or weed have their limits as the walls close in. However uplifting to see inept spite-mongers crash and burn, we still need personal ballast against further terror tornadoes against sane, majority governance. The greater the pressure on failed MAGA Trumpism, the greater the glut of treacherous distractions. Now everyone has unwanted front-row seats at how destructive a rampaging president can be and how readily functional, complex structures, years in the making, can be demolished in hours. The longer that insanity reigns, the more daunting and time-consuming the reparations.
Here are a few interim ideas to offset the calculated deluge. They all depend on securing consolation from the glories of the past, both fiction and non-fiction. If you back off the 24/7 news feed, harvest the time for reading or listening to brilliant books, radiant music and recreational pleasures. Even walking more in a forest. Right after the indigestible 2024 election, I found comfort in the limitless scope of geology, relishing the sparkling Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth. Transcending current miseries, Marcia Bjornerud delivers a brilliant, accessible introduction to how the earth evolved and dynamically resolved massive, planetary challenges. This is high-class, scientific storytelling without slighting today’s relevant cultural and political tensions, to wit these gems:
Earth’s equipoise is perhaps its most remarkable character trait [vs. the barren Venus or Mars] . . . Earth has had fevers and chills but has suffered no malady so extreme that its climactic immune system could not overcome it. This is because Earth has high- and low-level strategies for mitigating crises . . . checks and balances that involve the oceans, atmosphere, biosphere, and solid Earth.
The lessons we can draw from Earth’s story are not merely metaphoric; rather, they are design archetypes that we should emulate in our economic and social systems if we wish to avoid irreparable instability. . . . Narcissistic fascination with our own short biographies blinds us to the far richer and deeper family saga (p. 6). . . key characteristics of Earth’s [equilibrium] systems are redundancy, recycling, and the capacity for self-correction (p. 8) . . . At its best, positive feedback leads to self-perpetuating progress (success, economic stability; at its worst, it produces self-amplifying volatility (nervous breakdown, hyperinflation, arms races) (p. 14). Earth would have met the same fate [as Venus/Mars] had it not devised a way to extract greenhouse gases from the air and stored them in sedimentary rocks. More than 99 per cent of all the carbon in Earth’s near-surface environment is stored in carbonate rocks – layers of limestone and dolomite (p,13).
For the would-be, even more expansive cosmology fan, explore readable efforts on the Big Bang and all that followed come from Neil deGrasse Tyson, Fourteen Billion Years Of Cosmic Evolution. More specific is The 4-Percent Universe (on dark matter) or the depiction of a cyclical cosmos, Endless Universe. Want more vastness and cosmic timeliness, check out The Beginning and the End of Everything or Cosmology’s Century. Let’s not overlook classic works from Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time or Brief Answers to the Big Questions. As with geology, research what’s best for you; big issues can be confounding.
An era-shaking adventure of rediscovery
If seeking more accessible history and a page-turning treasure hunt, my top favorite is Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Here’s a lucid narrative of an extraordinary Renaissance Italian book hunter who in 1417 unearthed intellectual gold: the first complete “modern”manuscript of Lucretius’ legendary masterpiece, On the Nature of Things. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction, The Swerve presents fresh, provocative ideas as dangerous in 50 B.C. as now:
the universe works without the aid of gods (or God), that religious fear (dreading hell) is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is composed of minuscule particles (as in atoms) forever in eternal motion randomly colliding and swerving in new directions.
How’s that for relevant “classics” written by a pre-Christian, very secular, humanist genius (without hard science)? This 15th C rediscovery changed the world, impacting Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein, even – via Thomas Jefferson – our Declaration of Independence.
With apologies for omissions, great stories provide the most positive distractions from dire political warfare, whether Robinson Crusoe (a critique of capitalist exploitation), Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, nearly anything by Dickens or Twain, plus Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, Great Gatsby, Portrait of an Artist (if not The Dubliners, even Ulysses), The Good Soldier, Lolita,The Invisible Man (Ellison), French Lieutenant’s Woman, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, and the anti-oligarchy Grapes of Wrath.
For less literary, adventure and mystery fare, John MacDonald’s Travis McGee series holds up well (in refreshingly, pre-DeSantis Florida). My two most delightful, popular fiction writers are Owen Parry (Abel Jones Civil War mysteries) – filled with humanity, humor, some gore and historic accuracy. Lighter still, Oakley Hall’s witty, charming mysteries re-imagine the cynical Ambrose Bierce as sleuth, recreating with panache the late 19th C, small-town San Francisco turmoil.
Be pro-active, care for mental resources
Since excising today’s cancer will take years, Never Trumpers must find ways to counter what is designed to weaken our battling spirits. For movie goers, the consolation of great movies (too many to list) stand alongside great music, old and new. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven only scratch the surface for peak, life-affirming experiences. My wife and I revere Andrew Graham Dixon videos on painting and sculpture (plus two brilliant books on Caravaggio and Vermeer), anthropology digs across Europe, Asia and the USA, Greek and Roman cultural history plus science and technology breakthroughs. Historic restorations feed the soul.
One final endorsement. Aside from Shakespeare, my remote island book list starts with Homer’s The Odyssey, with a glamorous translation by Fagels, more colloquial versions from Emily Wilson and Stanley Lombardo. Forget the high school focus on magic and marvels, even the role of Greek gods – all fun but the more interesting dynamic is Odysseus’s serial, life-restoring evolution. Despite kicking off western literature, the eye-opening, novelistic storyline is quite unique, depicting a battered, slippery, even conniving 40 year-old hero (and mastermind of the Trojan War) struggling for ten years to return home. Only then to be obliged to alone rebuild every major family/ social relationship, with his equally savvy, long suffering wife, his son, father, allies, workers, servants and irate neighboring families.
No western work I know more directly addresses such a formidable restoration of what a civilized life meant 2500 years ago (to Greeks then but also us). Sure, everyone over 50 should experience King Lear and Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch to confront one’s mortality, imperfections, relationships and redemptive prospects – all worthy travails. But for those between youth and pondering the finale, I recommend immersion in The Odyssey, and its modern (and not modern) models of resolving dreams, goals, trials, family life and governance.
All my recommendations will outlast the agony of enduring a criminal ne’er-do-well as president. I do think the end will come quicker thanks to monumental character flaws and the ham-fisted, neo-fascist demolition of the very democratic system that elevated him. No doubt we endure an epic story of painful American contradictions, betrayals, and misrule. One only hopes future historians and writers can make the tragic morass more plausible and believable than it feels now. Until then, find ways to shore up confidence and self-esteem against despair. Either the humane, compassionate, literate and educated push hard to redeem our political and social civilization, let alone prosperity for the majority, or the outcome is in doubt.
After all, what better fount of guidance and wisdom than the best, most creative minds who’ve already confronted the dark sides of human nature? It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and the better angels of our nature are most readily accessible through great literature and art, great science, and expert history that dispels truthiness and lies. Reality, as the past teaches, is full of deviations and wrong terms but also pathways towards the returning arc of justice.
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