Everyone is angry.
I’m watching people snap.
Late last week, when I was stopped at a red light, a naked man streaked past me on the crosswalk, through the fruits and vegetables, being chased by a fully clothed and highly capable police officer. Both of them looked angry. The naked man looked even angrier when his range of motion was severely curtailed shortly after the police officer made his acquaintance. The officer seemed angry that he had to tackle a sweaty, fat, wide-eyed and extremely pale naked man.
Of course, things are far angrier than that in the world, and not nearly as Pythonesque. Wars, human trafficking and mass shootings continue, and seem to increase in direct correlation with the rising temperature of the planet. Many people are losing faith that things will get better.
The next president of the United States must successfully harness hope — or I fear a further descent into madness for all of us.
That is a tall order. Internationally, the world continues to be mostly run by people nobody would invite to a neighborhood barbecue. Take your pick of festering, lingering or growing conflicts across the planet. Humanity, faced with the challenge of turning the world into a paradise, continues to consume everything, even itself.
After seeing this, millions of people in the U.S. just want to close the doors and make it all go away. But isolation doesn’t work and isn’t an option — especially in the age of connectivity.
Tuesday began on a note of hope. President Biden spoke in the morning to reporters in the South Court Auditorium about climate change initiatives. Of course, without other large industrial nations being involved, like China, fixing the problem remains a dubious proposition.
China is on the president’s mind this week. After making his climate presentation, Biden took a few questions from the press about his upcoming meeting in San Francisco with President Xi Jinping. Standing just 10 feet away from me, Biden looked as if he felt personally injured, and as if he believed that all our foreign policy problems could be fixed if Xi would just pick up the phone and call his pal. Did Biden get ghosted after calling Xi a dictator? He sounded like it was personal, and he was trying to come to grips with losing a good friend. In truth, they have known each other long enough. Yes, this is still sarcasm.
By late Wednesday, it appeared the two leaders decided to stop blocking each other’s calls. They emerged from a four-hour summit in San Francisco announcing they have agreed to restore high-level military communications and will take steps to curb fentanyl production.
After months of tension, both leaders made clear they wanted to stabilize their countries’ relationship. Ah, there. Now we can be friends again! (Val Kilmer, from “Tombstone.”)
Of course it all ended with a short news conference during which Biden again called Xi a dictator.
I ask those older than myself for a better frame of reference and a clearer view. I can remember 1968: That was one angry year. Assassins claimed the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. The Tet Offensive led to lots of American boys returning home from Vietnam in body bags. Riots at the Democratic National Convention introduced us to “Daley cops” — the brutal, violent officers led by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, last of the big city bosses.
Those riots at the Chicago convention led to a disastrous election between Richard Milhous Nixon and Hubert Horatio Humphrey. Nixon came into office and it was a preview to the Trump presidency, only slightly less salty. It was a Quaker’s version of despotism. Then came Reagan, the Old Hollywood studio version. Donald Trump was the closed drive-in version.
At least 1968 ended on an upbeat note when Apollo 8 circled the moon. I was a kid. I naively clung to hope.
For those older than me: What was worse, then or now? I’ve put that to everyone I’ve met recently who lived through both times as an adult. Many of them have said we’re living through the worst times of our lives right now. Really? The worst? What? Post-COVID? Could you be any crazier? (Read that line as Matthew Perry playing Chandler Bing.)
Me? I don’t know. I do know that since the dawn of man, when we crawled out of the caves, humans seem to be engaged in a never-ending rerun of the opening battle scene among the hominids in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
If life is a video game (to follow current deep thinkers), would the child running this app kindly press the fast-forward button? It’s getting a bit repetitive here for my taste.
I believe in free will. The test of that is this: What do we do about the situation in front of us? Do we react as others have for thousands of years? Or do we try something different? Sentience has to include learning. But we don’t learn. We barely remember what it is we haven’t learned. Most of us haven’t bothered to read enough to find out what we haven’t learned.
Still, believing in free will, I share the optimism we see from Joe Biden on the rare occasions we are actually allowed to be graced by his presence. If you find that sentence dripping with clichéd sarcasm, congratulations — as Don Rickles used to say, you get a cookie.
No president in my experience, except Reagan, has escaped public view as successfully as Biden. That limited interaction has led to controlling the press so well that if reporters get the president to hang around at any public appearance for three questions, and if Biden offers more than four words for any one answer, then it’s considered a huge victory for the press — at least by the press.
Biden always embraces hope. He says there are better days ahead and we’re getting there together. You have to wonder why that hasn’t been turned into a campaign slogan. If people ever needed a breather from the vicissitudes of our daily conflicts, now would be a good time. People used to say, “Tell me a funny story.” Today, we settle for, “Tell me a story where nobody dies.”
People need a reason to be hopeful. Anger we have aplenty.
After Biden left the stage on Tuesday morning, he turned and took a question about the Israel-Hamas war. He gave hope to the hostages in Gaza, saying, “Hold on, we’re coming.” Sam and Dave would be proud.
A few hours later, tens of thousands of Israel supporters from across the country gathered on the National Mall. Social media erupted in anger for a variety of reasons. I saw very little anger on the ground, once I ignored the insipid speakers, just as a good portion of the crowd did. There were a lot of families, young kids and young adults. I saw one guy who looked straight-up like a 1950s CIA agent standing in the crowd. Turns out he was there to conduct a tefillin ceremony. I’m a sucker for a good fedora.
There was hope. I saw Palestinian and Jewish supporters bonding. There was anger, when the crowd chanted, “No ceasefire.”
It was a public demonstration well within the parameters of acceptable discourse.
To put it another way, it was less violent than a few Philadelphia Eagles home games I’ve been to.
There was even hope on Capitol Hill Tuesday. OK, quit laughing.
Now, it’s true that at about the same time Joe Biden was being gracefully introduced on Tuesday by a ninth-grader he described as a “future president,” Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, accused former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys while Burchett was talking to a reporter. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, still sore that McCarthy hadn’t shut down the ethics investigation Gaetz faces,, filed an ethics complaint against McCarthy. Go ahead and say it: The ninth-grader displayed more maturity than duly elected members of Congress.
And while Biden was on his way to San Francisco to meet with Xi and talk about peaceful coexistence, over in the Senate, Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, challenged the head of the Teamsters union to a physical fight in a hearing meant to showcase how labor unions are making families’ lives better. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the committee chair, broke it up by reminding Mullin that he was a U.S. senator.
So there was plenty of anger. But hope again visited the world late in the afternoon when the House passed a continuing resolution to keep the federal government open. Speaker Mike Johnson got 209 Democrats to vote with 127 Republicans to approve the stopgap funding bill. That’s more Democrats on his side than Kevin McCarthy ever managed. (In fact, only two Democrats voted against it, while 93 Republicans did.)
Anger wasn’t far away, though, and Johnson brought it back later in the day. Ignoring the Age of Enlightenment and our Constitution, he said in an interview that the separation of church and state was a “misnomer.”
Donald Trump looms large over this continuing anger. The Grand Old Party is his. He owns it, and he’s as angry as a feral child who’s soiled himself in the sandbox.
Anger is what drives Donald. Fear of prison drives the anger. Still, you think he’d be happy: Recent independent polls are driving the narrative that Trump is favored to win the 2024 election.
The Biden administration’s response to those polls has been odd — but also hopeful.
Last week close to two dozen members of the press were invited to a meeting where it was explained that it’s OK if Biden “appears” to be trailing in “a few” polls. The election is nearly a year away and people aren’t thinking about it yet. Therefore, Biden will start reminding people what a great guy he is — not now but later, closer to the election.
While some called it a “hopeful long-shot strategy,” others called it confusing and a few tried to visibly stifle their chuckles. I guess it could have been the edibles.
Why would you wait? It isn’t about lack of money. What conceivably sane political strategy in this day and age consists of telling your story later? Could you be any stupider? (Chandler Bing again.)
Trump has shown that to be successful, you don’t just create your message and shout it every waking minute, you also wake up from a sound sleep and blare it out at 2 a.m. on a late-night call-in show.
We all know why Biden trails in at least some polls. He’s doing his job, but he ain’t talking about it enough. He didn’t even acknowledge me in the East Room last week when I asked him to join us in the briefing room. I used my Sam Donaldson voice. I know he heard me. Biden has had little to no communication with us except during staged events, so the press is left trying to tease information out of the administration in dribs and drabs. I don’t know anyone who considers this a good strategy. I hope I’m wrong. I’ll be plenty angry if I’m right. I’m angry now.
The last administration accomplished very little and told us way too much. This administration has accomplished far more, and wants to wait to tell us about it until later — you know, when we all have that moment to spare.
I can appreciate the manners, but you are supposed to be running a re-election campaign — and you may be facing a man who is far more desperate and psychotic than the last time you faced him. Let’s face it: Donald Trump is nuts and remains dangerous.
Before Biden even gets to Trump, there’s also Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has jumped into the Democratic race. You’re also facing a third-party challenge from a guy with great name recognition: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And then there’s Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who isn’t running for re-election but, as NBC News reported on Wednesday, is also considering a third-party run for the presidency.
Meanwhile, plenty of Arab and Muslim Americans are angry with Biden over his unqualified support for Israel in the Gaza war. They’re not going to vote for Trump, but plenty are saying that they’ll simply stay home and not vote at all.
And Biden? What is he, a Stoic? Step up: The bully pulpit is yours.
So, you know, there’s that anger again.
But I still naively cling to hope, just like when I was a boy.
Mr. President: You got a minute?
I mean, before we see someone else pulling their hair out and running down the street naked, maybe you could explain a few things to us.
Start with hope.
