Life During Wartime
"We're about to go into a dark winter"
Welcome to The Experiment, the weekly newsletter where we’re making our way through the Uncertain Now. We’re in the fog of war, people, but one thing’s for certain: Regardless of who wins, we’re still going to be in a pandemic.
This week The Experiment brings you Frank Spring and his Scottish sidekick Marcus Roberts with “Drunk History, Mitch Edition: A Scot, a New Mexican, and a Senate Majority Leader Walk Into A Bar.” Sonia Van Meter is back with an episode recap of Star Trek: Discovery that draws so many parallels with our current situation that it might as well be the two yellow lines in the middle of the road. Bob Doyle’s review of Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You is a sucker punch to the feels. Pollster Stefan Hankin has been rethinking the safety net. And of course we’ve got Robin Whetstone with her latest chapter of Red Ticket. This week, in “The Great Terror,” she is losing it.
And as always, we remember who we’ve lost and offer recommendations on what to do, read, watch, and listen to, including an easy recipe for cioppino, a speech by Barack Obama that suggests a future for drive-in comedy, and new music from Elvis Costello.
But first, did I ever tell you about the time I heard tanks shelling parliament on my way to work?
This was back when we all thought Russia was becoming a Western-style democracy. Boris Yeltsin was trying to push through austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund, and the Duma, dominated by socialists and nationalists, refused, so Yeltsin sobered up enough to sign an executive order disbanding parliament. The parliament, rightly saying that the constitution did not grant Yeltsin that power, impeached him, setting off 10 days of violence that only ended when Yeltsin ordered the army to roust the recalcitrant “bandits and pogrommakers” — Yeltsin’s words — from the the capitol building they called, funnily enough, the White House.
The army didn’t just rush in. First, they called out the tanks and, on October 4, started firing on the building at 8am. It was a Monday, and I still had to go to work.
My apartment was not far from Red Square. I could hear the shells hitting the White House and looked up, expecting screaming, fear, and a general carrying on. Downtown Moscow was nearly deserted. All I saw was one man, walking with his head down as if nothing was the matter. His country was the middle of a constitutional crisis and the worst spate of street violence since the Russian Revolution, and this guy was minding his own damn business.
Whenever I wonder about life during wartime, I think of that guy walking in Moscow within earshot of tanks shelling his parliament.
Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
Packed up and ready to go
Heard of some grave sites, out by the highway,
A place where nobody knowsThe sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in a ghetto,
I've lived all over this town
“We're about to go into a dark winter,” says Joe Biden, and regardless of who wins that’s where we’re headed. The COVID computer at the University of Washington says we could reach 415,090 dead by January, and that’s the best-case scenario. “We're going to have a very deadly December ahead of us,” said the PhD in charge of the estimate.
The death toll for the Spanish flu in 1918 was five times higher in the fall and winter than in the summer, and this virus, like that one, loves finding us indoors with other people. Winter makes it easier for the pandemic to catch us regardless of whether Generalissimo Failson takes his cue to leave the stage.
“We’ll see what happens at the end of the day [on Election Day],” he said on Wednesday. “Hopefully it won't go longer than that. Hopefully the few states remaining that want to take a lot of time after November 3 to count ballots, that won’t be allowed by the various courts.”
The virus does not care who the president is or whether he’s conceded or impeded an election. The virus doesn’t care whether we’re in a constitutional crisis by Christmas. Either way, he’ll be president when the death toll approaches the population of Atlanta.
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now
Like anyone who thinks self-reflection is looking at himself in the mirror, he concerned himself about whether the novel coronavirus made him look fat, not whether we were viral cannon fodder for his ego. Donald Trump will be president at Christmas when the death toll laps the U.S. casualties in World War II. It’s up to us to stay alive during this microbiological war.
So we adapt. A third of Americans — including 72% of regular church goers — have started attending religious services online and seem to like it fine. We just had a World Series and an NBA Finals. White collar America is working from home for the time being. Door Dash is now a $16 billion company, worth more than the New York Yankees, The New York Times Company, and many of the fashion brands in the garment district — combined.
Transmit the message, to the receiver,
Hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas,
You don't even know my real nameHigh on a hillside, the trucks are loading,
Everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime,
I might not ever get home
The holidays are going to be tough. There is no scientific case to be made that gathering and traveling during the holidays is safer than sitting your happy butt down on the couch and being Fonzie about the whole thing. But when was the last time Americans were cool about anything? The lure, or obligation, to seek comfort at home is strong, and pandemic fatigue set in a long time ago. Only 57% of Americans say they will not travel over the holidays, though 67% told AAA they’re uncertain about whether to take a vacation. There’s a substantial overlap there of people planning to do what they know to be wrong.
This assumes, of course, that America’s cheese does not completely slide off its cracker. We might have two guys claiming victory and battling it out in the streets and in the courts. A friend of mine told me he drove into town the other day to teach a liberal friend of his how to shoot a gun. Another friend, a veteran of the Afghanistan War, has a loaded gun in his bug-out bag. The President has not agreed to a peaceful transfer of power, even hypothetically. I feel irrational for believing in the institutions that usually deliver us election results. This year, voting felt like an act of faith in things unseen. If Philadelphia becomes Fallujah, who am I to judge anyone who wants to go home for Christmas?
But trying to have a traditional Christmas during wartime is, at best, a temporary fix. You can’t retrofit the future, at least not for long. You might miss doing regular things as bodies fall and hospitals fill. The virus still doesn’t care, so we adapt.
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain't got time for that nowHeard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody see you up thereI got some groceries, some peanut butter,
To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones,
Ain't got no records to play
Regardless of whether Trump is elected, we’re going to have to find a way to live through this pandemic.
A vaccine won’t save us, though we’ll probably have a few in record time. Trust in institutions has so eroded that a little more than a third will not take the vaccine when one is available. If a vaccine is 90% effective, only 61% will take the jab. Herd immunity is achieved only if at least 70% are vaccinated.
And even if American idiocy wasn’t a super spreader, the supply chain isn’t ready to distribute the estimated 10 billion doses, which would constitute the toughest logistical challenge in world history. We are a country that opens up restaurants when the infection rates go down and then acts surprised when the numbers go back up. Remember trying to get toilet paper in March? Now imagine that toilet paper could save your life, but getting it to you required every airline, airport, and air force in the world to pull off the Mother of all Dunkirks. Oh, and meanwhile you have to remain calm.
Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
We blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines,
I know that that ain't allowedYou make me shiver, I feel so tender,
We make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving,
You ought to get you some sleepBurned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
The burning keeps me alive
The future seems ambitious. Usually the sight of fake Christmas trees for sale at Costco before Halloween makes me angry. This year the sight filled me with irrational hope. I smiled without embarrassment at the plastic limbs and colored lights. This means we might live to next year! I thought to myself. Can you imagine what it will feel like to count down to the end of 2020 on New Year’s Eve? Can you imagine getting to New Year’s Eve?
Barack Obama wrote about the audacity of hope, but he hoped to reclaim the American Dream. Now, hoping that the votes will be counted seems audacious. Making resolutions for 2021 seems audacious because it assumes there will be a 2021. Our leadership’s bungling of the pandemic response is an act of war against ourselves, and the death toll, closed businesses, and lost jobs are the casualties.
And yet we adapt. I go to work at the kitchen table. My younger son is getting straight A’s during his senior year in his bedroom. My wife is consulting for more than a hundred Democratic campaigns in the desk we put in the older son’s bedroom while he’s away at college where he attends organic chemistry labs wearing PPE. Summer turns to fall, and we pull the box with the sweaters out from under the bed, feeling a fissure of excitement about the forward movement of time.
Adapt forward, carrying with you from the past only what serves you in the future. Besides, we already know what happened before. What’s next is the real adventure. By the time you read this, I might be on the road with my wife, headed to a cabin by a lake where we’ll watch the election returns and, a few days later, mark our eleventh anniversary. The anniversary gift for eleven years is steel, as perfect a 2020 metaphor to end on as any.
Drunk History: Mitch Edition
by Frank Spring and Marcus Roberts
Frank Spring is back, accompanied by his friend and coconspirator, pollster Marcus Roberts, with a rundown of political advice they got from Mitch McConnell over several rounds. Long story short, Democrats should play to actually win once they’ve won. But how did Frank and Marcus end up having drinks with Mitch? It’s a long story. A Scot, a New Mexican, and a Senate Majority Leader Walk Into A Bar…
“I’ve seen this movie before. It’s a G-rated adventure about a plucky bunch of valedictorians and hall monitors who somehow win an election and bring their warm-hearted commitment to rule-worship and politeness-at-any-cost to Washington, DC, where they negotiate against themselves for years until the people, furious and exhausted with their hem-hawing bullshit, vote them out again.”
S3 E2: "It's not who we are"
by Sonia Van Meter
Watching any Star Trek franchise by Sonia Van Meter’s side is an opportunity to witness faith in humanity’s upside. To her, Star Trek depicts a future for us in which what is good about people is the organizing principle of society. But our couch is not big enough for all of you, which is why I asked her to write episode recaps for season three of Star Trek: Discovery, in which institutions have failed, the Prime Directive is a historical relic, and doing the right thing is a tiny rebellion. That is to say, this week she saw some parallels to what Saru and his crew are experiencing and what we are going through as well.
Even here on this desolate rock, in this desolate future, faith in Star Fleet still exists. And where there is faith, tremendous things can be accomplished. Colonies can thrive. Tyranny can be vanquished. Justice can be served, and peace may reign. We might just get out of this mess yet!
Bruce's Letter to Us
by Bob Doyle
My old friend Bob Doyle didn’t just make us a playlist for his review of Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You. He sent liner notes: “You might want to give the readers an FYI on the playlist. I start with a track from Letter to You, the latest album and then immediately follow it with a song from Bruce’s catalog that the new song reminds me of in some way…a lyric, sound, subject, instrumental usage, etc. Nothing formal, just fun. I hope this is what you wanted.” Yes, Bob. This is what I wanted. You’re going to want to read his review of Letter to You even if you’re not big on Springsteen. It sneaks up on you. Enjoy.
Letter is of a piece with his recent writings: best-selling memoir, Tony-winning Broadway show and 2019’s Western Stars. Bruce has grown more comfortable in sharing his personal life with his audience during these last years, and much of that surely has been driven by aging and loss. In Letter to You, we hear perhaps the most explicitly autobiographical music he has ever released.
Rethinking the Safety Net
by Stefan Hankin
At the end of the day, protecting individuals is not only good for the people, but also for businesses.
Red Ticket: The Great Terror
by Robin Whetstone
This weekend in Red Ticket, Robin Whetstone goes mad.
I sat in the dark on the living room couch, staring at the top of the curtains, waiting for the first watery light of the morning to pool on the ceiling. When I saw it, I stood up and walked into the kitchen, amazed at having washed up on shore again after another night at sea. I poured myself the first of three jelly glasses of vodka, and took the bottle with me back to the couch.
RIP
This lady who made cinnamon rolls
How we’re getting through it
Wearing these masks
Making teriyaki chicken
Playing electoral pickem
Ranking Halloween candy
Making bomb-ass cioppino
Changing my DNA through meditation
Making spicy black bean and sweet potato chili
Making spicy butternut squash pasta with spinach
Communicating better by synchronizing brain waves
What I’m reading
Francis Fukuyama: “America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction” - Two years before Trump got elected and six years before … /gestures vaguely/ … all this, Fukuyama wrote that the only thing that could set American democracy on the right path was disaster.
“The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action.”
Gregory Galant: “The real scandal in journalism” - Good newsletter about the news media
Ryan Holiday: “It’s Not About Intention, It’s About Action” — Your thoughts can’t manifest results, but they do affect what you do.
Dave Chappelle’s joke was that Rhonda Byrne should fly to Africa and tell those starving children her secret. That all they need to do is just visualize some roast beef, some mashed potatoes, and some gravy. They’d beg her to stop filling their minds with delicious impossibilities. “No, no, no,” Chappelle says, pretending to be Byrnes, “the problem is you have a bad attitude about starving to death.”
Michelle Goldberg: “Four Wasted Years Thinking About Donald Trump” - I try not to read any political commentary, but I love the idea of examining what it has cost us to pay so much attention to Trump. Goldberg’s always a helluva read, and I got a lot out of her elegy to the time wasted looking at the orange sun.
[A] perpetual state of emergency isn’t healthy or sustainable. Living in Trump’s panic-inducing eternal present is bad for art, but it’s also bad for imagination more broadly, including the imagination needed to conceive a future in which Trumpism is unthinkable.
Mark Manson: “It’s a Slow-Moving Car Wreck and We’re All In It” - Ryan Holiday turned me onto Manson a few weeks ago. His Monday morning email almost always has at least one idea or nugget worth learning. This week, he advocated for boring government.
Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “Government is best which governs least.” Instead, I submit that “Government is best which governs boring.” If changes in the tax code seem scandalous or thrilling—you’re doing it wrong. If healthcare policy has you more upset than the last season of Game of Thrones—you’re doing it wrong. If a new finance regulation has you up in arms and ready to take to the streets—you’re doing it wrong.
By the time you read this, I will have already voted for Biden. Not because I’m particularly enthusiastic about the guy or enthusiastic about a system that consistently produces two bad options every four years. But rather, because there is nothing enthusiastic about him. He’s boring. And unlike Trump, he’s willing to do boring things, like listen to scientists and experts, like sit through the complexities of policymaking, like respect the opposition’s humanity.
He conjures less of an emotional reaction. And in this day and age, I submit that this is a good thing.
Emily McCullar: “How Leaders of the Texas Revolution Fought to Preserve Slavery” - Texas Monthly has been writing about the Alamo since the ‘70s. This might be the first time they’ve ever written so directly about the role of slavery in the formation of the Republic of Texas.
Jason Stanford: “The Houston Center for Photography Captures Pandemic Times with a New Exhibit: Togethering shows glimpses into everyday life, in Texas and beyond, changed by the coronavirus pandemic” - I wrote a short thing about an inventive photography exhibit about … /gestures vaguely/
The photographs prove the coronavirus corollary to the Anna Karenina principle: Under quarantine, we’re all in this together, but we’re getting through this alone and in our own way.
Vanity Fair: “Writing the Finale Part II: 16 More Fever Dream Endings for the Trump Show” - In which Vanity Fair asks some smart and funny people how the Trump presidency will end.
Amy Walter: “Biden’s Path to 270 Widens, Trump’s Path Narrows, as Texas Moves to Toss Up”
To win the election, Trump will need to win every state we currently have in the Toss Up column: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Maine's 2nd CD, as well as the newest addition, Texas. Even then, Trump would be 22 electoral votes short of 270. He would need to win at least two of the seven states currently sitting in Lean Democrat: Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and New Hampshire.
What I’m watching
Mark me down as a fan of drive-in entertainments. I went to a drive-in concert the other day with some friends and had a great time. We had a roped-off place to put out chairs. We ordered snacks on our phones, and a guy in a golf cart brought them right to it. The whole experience was so much easier than in the Before Times.
The reason I bring this up is that I’ve heard a lot of comedians complain about drive-in comedy shows. They can’t hear the crowd, can’t gauge their reactions, can’t feed off their energy.
Clearly, automotive-based audiences require generous performers. Case in point, here comes Barack Obama campaigning for Biden/Harris in Florida this week. Skip ahead to about four minutes in to witness how a comedian can succeed in this medium. The secret, I suspect, is to embed the jokes into a broader story or argument. It also helps to have Obama’s flawless and confident timing.
What I’m listening to
Here’s Lou Reed doing an EBS test notice.
My colleague — and former Republican operative — Luke Marchant came up with an inclusive election soundtrack.
I’m including “YUUUU” in the rundown this week not because it’s Busta Rhymes’ new song but because it features verses from Anderson .Paak, who has kept up a streak of demanding your attention for several years now.
Can I tell you how disgusted I am with the Rolling Stones? They keep touring on a songbook that hasn’t had a hit since 1983 with “Emotional Rescue.” That’s just commerce, not music, and an abuse of an audience.
It’s hard for an artist who achieved early success to maintain the creative drive through a long life, and there’s a short list of those who have. David Byrne’s American Utopia puts him near the top of that list. Some, like Elvis Costello, keep it fresh with interesting collaborations such as his under-appreciated duet with Loretta Lynn, “Everything it Takes,” or his album with The Roots, Look Now.
But today Costello did the hardest thing: He dropped an album, Hello Clockface, that sounds new and like the best of his old stuff at the same time. The song list is a bit all over the place, but half of the album deserves a place in the Elvis Costello pantheon. Dig it.
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