Search Results for: I Saw An Angel Last Night

The loss of the old life of the rural communities has usually been written off as an improvement, if it is considered at all. Romantics lament the old values and the old ways, but Political, Cultural and Media America has moved away, leaving the heartland in the dust.

Far from caring for our land and our rural people, writes Wendell Berry, as we would do if we understood our need for them and dependence on them, we have not, as a nation, given them so much as a serious thought for half a century.

Berry, an acclaimed author, farmer and environmentalist,  says he follows commentary on politics and economics by accredited and highly educated experts, and “I can assure you that you will rarely find in any of them even a passing reference to agriculture or forestry.”

The ultimate official word on agriculture seems to have been spoken by Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, who told the farmers to “get big or get out.” Most of them have simply gone under.

I am outlier and transplant who lives in rural America. I spent most of my life in urban America, but have finally come home to rural America, it is what I love and where I belong. Everywhere around me, I see the beauty and echoes of community and family  but also the devastation and suffering.

Despite the fact that I live here and photograph and talk with farmers and rural people,  I did not foresee Donald Trump’s victory, but I should have. In the past year, he has somehow become rural and conservative America’s long awaited savior.

I saw the “Trump-Pence” lawn signs sprouting like dandelions, but I didn’t put it together.

There is perhaps no other swath of America that yearns more for the past than rural America. So many of our cities – Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles,  San Francisco, New York, Austin, Denver, even Detroit in some new ways – are growing wealthier by the day in the new global economy.

Rural America has been left behind.

They have, as Berry suggests, languished in neglect and suffering for decades. They saw the family farms collapse under corporate onslaught and government edict; the land has been ravaged and worn, the good jobs gone to the cities, or to China and Mexico,  the big farms have devoured the small ones, their children gone with the jobs, their future in darkness, their towns and cities empty and decaying, their schools impoverished, their community institutions and opportunities shuttered, their businesses  ravaged by the ruthless box stores owned by strangers, sucking up everything in their path.

The Wal-Marting of America has devastated rural businesses, the chains leave nothing alive, they pay little to their workers and have no relationship to the life and values of their new communities. They offer the lowest prices to the people with the least amount of money.

Nothing is more striking than the stark demographic outline of the election. It was not really a question of left or right, Republican or Democrat. It was a social tsunami.

Rural America was once considered the heart of America, it’s breadbasket and inspiration. Rural Americans helped invent America and led the Revolution.

Agricultural communities fed the new and growing America for generations, and was the source of so many of its values. Thomas Jefferson thought that farmers ought to be the only Americans allowed to vote, only they understood the stake and responsibility we all have to the land.

Now, rural America, abandoned by its own government,  has gone to war with urban America, it has become a separate nation with fundamentally different ideas and goals and realities.

Until 2016, no politician or political leader cared. Donald Trump went all over the country saying he cared, and I hope he does. Almost everyone around me here believes that this dysfunctional urban billionaire truly cares about what happens to them and will, almost overnight, bring back much of what they have lost. I believe he connects with their sense of outsiderness and their resentment of what they consider the elites who run the world, he knows and speaks the language of that fury.

Our most powerful politicians and journalists and pundits seem only dimly aware that an actual  country lies out there beyond the boundaries of wealth and power. And how could they, are are asked to do little more than sit around horseshoe tables with their open laptops and shout at one another.

They pay no attention to the voices of the country outside of the cities. They will tell you at the Bog Tavern that it cannot possibly get any worse for them, it can only get better.

I was born an urbanite, and was once a political writer. I do not hold the promises of politicians in high regard. But there is hope here now, for the first time in a long time. Like him or not, Trump knows how to communicate with the people who live outside of the big tent. It is a matter of chemistry, not facts or logic.

“I haven’t had a good job in 20 years,” Todd, who worked once at a catheter plant,  told me at the bar Wednesday night, “my kids have all run off to the city for jobs they hate and bosses who hate them. They send me money every month so I can fix my teeth. It isn’t right. The Chinese have plenty of work. Things are going to get better in a hurry, Trump will make it happen.”

In a sense, all politician are fantasists. And all, sooner or later, have to lie to win or survive. That is the nature of the beast.

They habitually promise things they can’t possibly deliver, and as the promises pile up, so do the resentments and the rage. Every few years, we are promised a booming economy, safety for our children,  lower taxes, fewer regulations, better schools and health care,  tough stands with the banks,   a return to the good old values of the good old days. We must, we are told, join the new kind of prosperous global economy.

“How many years can you watch your town shrink, your kids leave, the jobs vanish, wages drop, while the people in Washington make one deal after another than just runs us right over? I can’t die and leave this kind of world to my grandkids,”  said Jamie,  whose factory job left for Mexico 15 years ago. He has not worked since.

Washington, he says, is corrupt, full of people getting rich off the blood of the people they swore to serve. It isn’t a matter of race or sex, he said, for us, it is a matter of survival, he said. “Donald Trump is our last chance.”

The old men and the young men here talk all the time of a better time, of a better past.

They believe it can come back, they believe Donald Trump will bring it back, for the first time in decades, high hopes have returned.  He may be a jerk in many ways, they say – they do know this – but that doesn’t mean he won’t bring change. He already has, they say. In stunning contrast to the shock and hysteria that swept much of urban America, there was joy and relief all across the rural divide.

“Trump is the match,” one farmer told me, “Washington is the oil can.” In all of his life, this dairy farmer told me, no Washington politician or bureaucrat has ever done a single thing to help him or any farmer he knows. “What difference does it make if he screws Washington up? He ought to blow it up.” He has renounced his own political system, and he could care less if Donald Trump is dishonest or ill-informed.

The men and women up here in upstate New York  talk all of the time about the return of what they call “good work,” work that satisfies, is secure, permits a man to take care of his family and pay for his own teeth.

How did I miss the significance of all this, why was I so shocked by the outcome Tuesday? Perhaps because I listened but didn’t hear. I think of all those signs that began appearing on lawns in the late summer.

Corporate America has savaged the idea of good secure work everywhere, but the difference is that in urban America there are now plenty of bad jobs and plenty of good ones. Kids leave and never come back.

In rural America, there are few jobs at all. We are, says Wendell Berry, the first entire people ever to think of work as something we have a right to escape. In the process, we have forsworn love and excellence, security, health and joy.

I would guess the old timers are romanticizing the past somewhat, people tend to do that as they get older. But there is little doubt there was plenty of sustaining work to be had, off and on the land. A century ago, my town was booming, filled with family farms, factories and opportunities. Kids grew up and stayed, families stayed intact, the communities – stores, churches, schools –  were strong and vibrant. Almost all of them is gone or in shadow.

Can we really go backwards and bring back those better times? History suggests otherwise, but the farmers don’t read much history, they cling to theirs. The world is changing, and we have not been asked to sacrifice a thing, only given bigger and grander promises.

Most of us, urban and rural, go along with the fantasists in politics and government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility and leisure indefinitely.  That we will never have to change. That feels better than the harsher reality, and few politicians have won elections telling distracted masses of people the truth.

The fantasists promise infinite resources for all time, and reject the idea that these resources are limited, or our planet is in danger, or that we have to give up one single thing that we want. They say we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely.  We can get the good old days back, that is their promise to the people of rural America, to the coal and steel miners and workers.

That is their promise to us. Some people see it as a lie, others see it as their salvation. I am eager to see what people here think in six months.

The bedrock faith of the fantasists is predicated on the idea that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy without consequence; domestic oil fields, shale, oil, gasified coal, natural gas, nuclear power, solar and wind energy.

The scientists, lonely voices in the corporate and political wilderness, tell us the basic cause of our energy problems is not scarcity, it is moral cowardice, craven and ignorant political leaders,  and weakness of characters and resolve. They are not telling people here that we all need to change, they are telling them we never need to change.

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So this election is a big deal, for rural America in particular, which believes it was left behind, and was, in fact, left behind. The vast range beyond the cities has been promised its place at the table. I am not a seer or economist or politician. The election is not simply about race or immigration or women, it is about all of those things, but it is also about something as deep and crucial, rural America has finally been seen and heard.

The reporters and economists and politicians in New York and Washington never mentioned rural America much in the past decades, they didn’t even, as Berry points out, pay lip service to it.

It will be a searing and heart-breaking thing for the people in rural America if Donald Trump breaks or fails to keep his promises.

In this election year, many politicians and activists have talked of revolution. In rural America, they just started one.

“You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours and minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a  slug is undone when salt is poured on him…”  – Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety.

Aging is one of life’s great adventures, being young absolutely pales in comparison to the thrill of it. I think older people love to look back so much and wallow in nostalgia because looking ahead can be so overwhelming. Our journey is a story that is, by definition, not all that long, and that has the same ending every single time – we will all fall and die from one thing or another, and there are  an awful lot of possibilities, most of them awful.

Meeting Bernie Glassman was an experience in life, not death, but I could not help reflecting on my own life, and to ask the questions that often afflict people of my age, sometimes obsessively: could it happen to me? How would I react to it.

I am 69, I understand that I will die of something, perhaps sooner rather than later.

Glassman, a renowned spiritual thinker and leader is recovering from a massive stroke.  The first night, he could not talk or move much of his body, he thought he was dying.

Talking to him about it Sunday in his home was a revelatory experience for me. His experience tells both sides of the story – the pain and suffering, the sense of fulfillment, discovery and rebirth. There were no illusions, no sugar-coating, no whining or self-pity.

And on the way home, and last night, I am thinking: I am so much better at being older than being younger, I feel most days as if my life is just beginning. Is that a bubble just waiting to be burst? Or is does the search for a meaningful life affect its end?

Like most of the extraordinary people I have had the pleasure of meeting, Bernie Glass man is man of humility, humor and quiet wisdom. He has every reason to be a bit arrogant, his story is remarkable. He has lived and is living a remarkable life.

Glassman went to college, became an aeronautical engineer, then received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He first encountered Zen Buddism while studying a book in an English class in 1958, at UCLA. It altered his life. He began meditating and began studying Zen. He was a founding member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and went on to become Zen master teacher, a roshi.

In 1982 he organized the famed Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, one of the country’s leading social enterprises. The bakery, still expanding,  was created to help the homeless and also provide jobs for inner city residents with criminal or prison histories, or who lived in poverty or lacked education and skills.

The bakery has successfully hired the homeless and the “unemployable” and eventually  partnered with Ben & Jerry’s of Vermont to supply brownies and fudge for their best-selling ice cream. He has performed as a clown, written books and articles, lectured all over the world.

Glassman left Greyston in 1996 to create the Zen Peacemaker Circle, an international organization dedicated to promoting peace and healing the earth. He became an American Zen Buddihist roshi and is famous for his teaching and spiritual thought. He is married to an another remarkable human named Eve Renko, a friend, writer, social activist and teacher.

The two have traveled the globe promoting peace, community and equality. At various times, Glassman  and Marko have lived on the streets as a  homeless person to understand what it was like.

This accomplished man had a stroke six months ago that paralyzed much of his body and his mind, he is working hard every day to recover, I was gratified to meet him Sunday in Massachusetts, Maria and I drove down to visit with Eve and meet him.

Glassman and I had never spoken or met, I don’t think he was at all familiar with me or my work. Our meeting touched me on so many different levels, it will take a while for me to sort them all out.

I could see from watching Bernie how much of a struggle he has had to regain some control over his mind and his body. He does not yet have full use of his right hand or complete memory. He walks stiffly and with a cane, but he can  get up and down stairs. His condition, he says, has vastly improved in the past few months, he participated fully and actively in a wide-ranging conversation, asked and answered questions easily and clearly, smiled often and missed little or nothing.

He said that he did not recognize himself after his stroke, and that he has changed – he is, say he and Eve – more emotional and this sense of re-discovery, even rebirth, is both unnerving and exhilarating. Bernie’s journey inspired me to be accepting of my life as I begin to be old. I have no illusions about where I am or where I am headed, but I am caught up in the wonder of life, the possibility of change, the power of love and connection, my faith of creativity and encouragement.

It is a miracle to be alive at any age.

I believe these values carry me forward and will help me deal with what’s ahead as best as I can. That is what I saw in Bernie, and what I feel reflected in my own life – I do the best I can for as long as I can. In writing photography, books, love, community and work.

People tell me every day that I should appreciate every day that I have while I have them, and before the inevitable comes, but that does not really work for me. I appreciate every day that I have because I can and want to. Because it is there. Every day, I ask myself, do I want to live? And the answer is always yes. It is not that I am counting down the days left, but celebrate every day for its own sake.

it is precious, for all of its heartaches and disappointments. Bernie said he emerged from his stroke knowing that he had to be active, he had to move. I said I felt the felt the same thing after my open heart surgery, I knew I had to move and keep moving.

I can do with life what I will. I will not speak poorly of my life or of the things that happen to me.

At one point in the conversation, we were talking about change, and wondering if it were possible for people late in life to change. I said this was a subject close to my heart, I did not really change until I was into my 60’s, and this has transformed my life. I am changing still, and hope to change into the future.

Aging is complex, illness can be  unimaginable dispiriting and difficult. But when all is said and done, life is what we make of it, just like Grandma Moses said. In two hours,  I did not hear a word of complaint come out of Bernie Glassman’s mouth, nor an expression of lament. The experience, he said, was traumatic, but then his eyes lit up. “I am going to some new places,” he said, smiling.

Then, he said, he was tired, and went off upstairs to rest.

I have often wondered if people who are awakened, and who have lived a deeply spiritual life face aging and illness and death in a different way. My conversation with Bernie suggests to me that this is true. It is never easy to be stricken, but the experience can bring us to new and meaningful places.

We control very little, but that part is up to us. Bernie said he considered suicide in the first hours and days after the stroke, but then choose to work hard to recover and live. He and I both live out of our minds, and I believe as long as I can think, I can live.

I imagine he will get to many more new places in the coming weeks and months. I hope to do the same.

I started to say creativity was about change, and also a spiritual change, but Bernie Glassman, watching me closely, smiling and nodded interjected and finished my thought.

“Spirituality is change,” he said towards the end of our two-hour conversation.

“So is creativity,” he added. “They are the same thing.” I don’t know what he was like before the strong, his mind seemed powerful and clear to me.

At that moment, I think, I connected strongly with this man, we saw and felt this in so much the same way, it was my turn to be humbled. He is working so hard to re-acquaint  himself with the precious thing that had shaped his amazing life – his mind. How surprising to me to see and feel that this gift stranger and I saw something so important in much the same way.

You can plan all you want to, but everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone… Sometimes, it feels as if we are slugs, just trying to stay away from the salt.

I wrote a couple of days ago that I was temporarily ending my self-imposed exile from political writing – I was a political writer before I started writing books and migrated to the county – but that the current presidential election had brought me back to it, hopefully briefly.

Every political reporter knows this campaign is over, and so does every experienced political consultant. One, a good friend of mine, we used to work together in newspapers, messaged me last week. He said the data is clear, the election is over. “It may well be a landslide.”

Politics is never fully predictable and there is always some chance Trump could pull off a miracle. It is less likely every day, especially given his increasingly erratic and disturbing behavior.

I wanted to write about this because so many people are so worried about this election, I wanted to ease their worry. I am not worried about it, and I think a lot of good will come from it.

The piece I wrote went viral, it may be the most shared piece I have ever written, you can see it here.

I have a foot in both worlds, really. as a book author and former journalist and media critic,  I understand how media has worked, as a user and early enthusiast about new information technology, I also grasp the power of social media to affect change. It is easy to misinterpret the power of social media, even easier to overrate its influence. That is happening in the political coverage now.

It was eerie, but the minute I wrote the piece, a raft of new polls came out  almost immediately showing Hilary Clinton beginning to break away from Trump in ways that are now almost impossible for him to overcome in a couple of months, especially as he seems utterly committed to alienating and confusing the greatest number of people every single day.

I felt good about my post.

I want to write today about the underlying truth of where we are now:   social media has played a key role in this campaign, both in elevating Trump and in the spectacular disintegration of his candidacy.

Today, and especially since his insanely stupid confrontation with the Khan family, and his bumbling through everything else,  following the Trump campaign is more like watching the Hindenburg catch fire and crash.

The political history of social media is that it is a powerful medium for starting revolutions, a poor one for keeping them going or making them succeed. Consider the collapse of the Arab Spring, the great democratic experiment in the  Middle East. Social media awakened fierce social protests and even toppled governments,  but could not make them viable or enduring. Democracy did not come to the demonstrators.

Evil people can get on Facebook and Twitter too, and use them effectively.

Both journalism and politics have been traumatized by social media. Both are essentially closed, elitist institutions whose success depends on the exclusive control of information and political power.  Presidents get nominated by a very small number of very entitled people. It is, as Trump suggests, a closed shop. Until the Internet, so was media.

The idea of so many millions of people communicating to one another directly would have made Jefferson happy, but has terrified both politics and publishers. If the people get hold of the tools of information, there is not much for them to do, not much money for them to make.

Trump is the first national political figure to grasp the possibilities of using a platform like Twitter to quickly reach a like-minded audience and bypass the entrenched institutions of information and politics. In this case, working class white men who feel they have been left behind, especially in the face of liberation movements for women, African-Americans, Latino’s and gay and transgender people.

Trump got the big and uncovered story of working-class America: they have felt and been betrayed by Washington economists and politicians, who promised them they would flourish in the new global economy. They have not, their work, lives and communities have been shattered and abandoned, and no one has lifted a finger or spent a dollar to help them.

Both parties completely missed the rage and hurt that was building. Hillary Clinton certainly didn’t talk about it much, and neither did any of Donald Trump’s 16 fellow candidates for President. Trump broke the story on Twitter, and it was an instant sensation there and in almost every primary state.

Trump, a billionaire who seems somewhat oddly to share this working class anger and sense of grievance, was able to completely by pass the networks and big newspapers and the Republican political establishment. They all thought he was a joke who would fade.

But Trump had reached his own natural audience and was also able to attract millions of disaffected people from outside of the political system who felt the country had forgotten and abandoned them. They will stay loyal to him in the end for that, but there are not nearly enough of them to win a presidential election.

In terms of launching his campaign, his Twitter initiative was stunningly effective, his more traditional opponents were steamrolled by his ability to hold a running conversation – he posts on Twitter almost every day, sometimes several times a day. It was their turn to be left behind

In a primary, this worked beautifully. People sent him money, came to his rallies, voted for him.  He didn’t have to speak to the broader audience or win them over to win.

On social media there is a curious phenomenon whereby people attach strongly to people who talk directly to them, and do so regularly.  Most people don’t get to chat with powerful leaders every day, Trump is viscerally interactive. It is quite easy to build a large following on Twitter, tens of thousands of people have large followings there, it doesn’t necessarily mean a thing in relation to the larger world.

Lots of authors have Twitter Feeds, but they will almost all tell you that they don’t sell any books. One thing does not necessarily follow the other.

If Twitter sparked his early success, it also doomed  him, he could never see beyond this superficial and juvenile adolescent way of communicating. There is, in fact, something of the arrested adolescent in Trump, he does not seem to have grown up, for all his success.

Trump, among his other problems, got caught up in the echo chamber of the Twittersphere, he came to see it as the real world, as the entire political reality. He was so busy pandering to his 10.5 million Twitter followers he forget to speak to anyone else. This worked in the primaries,  general elections are a very different story.

The media loves to quote Twitter and Facebook as if both speak for the entire country and are extraordinarily powerful. They aren’t.  Twitter has 7 million users, or about 17 per cent of the U.S population of nearly 324 million people.  (About 53 per cent of Americans are on Facebook, but Facebook does not play nearly so large a perceived role in the media/political world). That means Trump was not speaking directly to more than 83 per cent of Americans, most of whom do not spend their days and nights on Twitter, they are busy working or taking care of their families.

Twitter is important, but it is not nearly as powerful as Trump believes, or as the tech-traumatized media likes to think. In fact, one could argue that the media and political obsession with Twitter – they are all on it – has blinded them to seeing what is happening the wider world.

The great reporters once got their insights by traveling around talking to human beings, not by monitoring Twitter feeds and screaming at one another on cable television. We see the consequences of this every day. The great political writers – David Broder, James Reston, Eugene Roberts – used to get it right, not wrong. They were rarely shocked by the mood of the people, mostly because they spent most of their time traveling and talking to them, not sitting in studios tweeting.

It is a shock both to journalism and politics that tens of millions of Americans, devastated by national economic policies are furious and disconnected. It is not a surprise to me, if you go to Stewart’s, a regional convenience store chain in my town where people gather for their morning coffee, you will hear about it every day.

My town has never seen a reporter. No one talks to real people any longer. Trump speaks directly to them.

No one predicted Trump’s rise, no one foresaw his fall. Journalism is no longer able to guide us or help us understand what it is really happening.

In this new political environment, we are on our own, your idea is every bit as good as theirs or mine. But the Trump campaign is also frightening, it has greatly disturbed many people.

Trump failed to evolve, the danger of an egomaniac billionaire running his own show.

The nominating conventions are the first time most people get to see the candidates and form enduring impressions of them, and these impressions rarely change much after the conventions. In recent years, the country has broken into rigid ideological constructs – the dread left and right – which means even fewer people will change their minds about anything, no matter what is said. The middle is shrinking.

No presidential candidate in the history of the country has ever lost with the lead Hilary Clinton now has over Donald Trump.

Hilary Clinton’s staff understood this profoundly important reality, Donald Trump did not. He was and is mired in his own Twitter World, it became reality for him. He seems not able to believe that it is time for him to move on. He appears now to be addicted to it.

Feedback on social media can be intoxicating, it is easy to feel like the Pope waving from his balcony.

The political reality is that Trump’s supporters will mostly support him no matter what he does, and the same is true for Clinton. To win, he has to win over hers and those who are undecided. She has to keep hers, she doesn’t need his to win.  He didn’t. She did.

Trump is far more provocative, insulting and, frankly, foolish in his political judgments than Clinton or her handlers have  been, and a week after the conventions, a significant majority of Americans are now more comfortable with her than they were, and less comfortable with him. People did not go for his Transylvanian view of America.

If Clinton makes strangely unaccountable blunders at times in her life, her campaign has been almost flawlessly run. Her campaign also speaks directly to voters, but not via angry Twitter feeds. She has stayed focused and avoided a single major error while campaigning. She is the anti-Trump.

She might be unpopular, but she is not scaring people or attacking Gold Star Mothers.

Trump is already whining about the election being rigged, a certain sign that he is floundering. You don’t claim something is rigged if you are winning.

The conventions proved a striking contrast between the two and the millions of voters who have now made up their minds, and whom Trump has almost willfully alienated. It is possible that the televised debates – if they occur – can change that equation, but Hilary Clinton is far less likely to mess up in a debate than Trump, he is much more likely to implode, which he has been doing nearly every day.

The debates are  not likely to be transformative, even if they do occur. Trump may skip at least some of the debates altogether, he is already claiming that they are rigged.

When the history of this campaign is written, Khizr Khan will be at the center.

Khizr Khan changed the equation further. He is not a political person, despite many efforts to label him that way, he is the most American of figures, a patriotic immigrant who son sacrificed himself for the country. And whose parents are in awful grief.

Of all of the people we have seen in the political spectrum, Donald Trump is perhaps the only one who could not find it in himself to be gracious or empathetic to this noble and pained man. Beyond that, he managed – on Twitter – to be cruel to the Khan and his wife, for absolutely no reason. This is the stuff of mindless Twitter posts, not of the real world of human beings. Trump lost it there, if not there, it would likely have been somewhere else.

In the same way that Edward R. Murrow and Joseph Welsh exposed Joseph McCarthy as a liar and a cruel and indecent fool, Khan exposed Trump as a man trapped in  his own universe, no longer able to judge his new and broader audience. Trump revealed a cruelty, arrogance and insensitivity that was simply unacceptable to the very audience he most need to win over – the people who are not angry, not always left behind, not disaffected, not on Twitter.

His Twitter jibes at Khan excited his followers and repelled just about everyone else. Trump now had a tin Twitter ear.

These were also the very people Clinton needed to reach – remember the two were tied after the Republican convention. The new polls suggest a dramatic, even massive shift to Hilary Clinton. Trump blew it, even as he fumed and whined and sputtered out more insulting Tweets and continued to attack the Khan family.

Twitter is a valuable tool, it is not the place to offer a vision of the country or a political campaign. It is good for provoking and declaring, not for explaining complex ideas and policies.

The language of Twitter – the abbreviated jabs and bursts that are Trump’s hallmark, do not translate well to many people, including the vast majority of the country who do not Tweet.

Trump became addicted to his own Twitter rants and the endless publicity a feckless media bestowed upon them, as if they were the very pronouncements of Socrates. They did not know better.

The people running Hillary Clinton’s campaign did know better. You do not see her trying to define herself via Twitter outbursts, it it is not the way most people see their presidents communicating. There are so many much better ways to do it.

Clinton has not even bothered to defend herself against the avalanche of accusations Trump has thrown towards her, she is the steady ship, chugging along. All she has to do to look good against Trump’s increasingly frantic and desperate rantings is nothing. She can let him destroy his own campaign, he is happy to oblige. What a good position for her to be in, just weeks after she faced a threatening scandal at the worst possible time.

You could call Trump’s disintegration  death by Twitter, or at least that’s what I call it.

The campaign is really over now, for all practical purposes, not matter how much they try to frighten you. Of course, there is time for things to change, for new things to happen. There is growing talk in Washington that Trump may withdraw from the race, many Republicans are now convinced his campaign will be a catastrophe in November. I would tend to agree.

There is no evidence that Trump is a generous or selfless enough person to do that.  He seems to be loyal to no ideology or belief. Although he senses the suffering and pain of one group of people, it is not clear how he intends to help them, he is still all about himself.

There is also right now no evidence to suggest he can possibly win. My tweet: It’s over. Stop Worrying.

“Whatever the government does, it has to have a rational basis, connected to a legitimate government interest. And, I don’t know what the legitimate government interest is in getting rid of the horse carriage industry.” – Norman Siegel, attorney for the New York Carriage Trade.

I’ve been waiting some time to see Norman Siegel, one of the country’s most prominent civil rights attorneys and the lawyer for the New York Carriage Trade, step forward and articulate what is by far the strongest argument for the survival of the New York Carriage Trade: the mayor’s proposals are neither rational nor legitimate.

I support the carriage trade, but I am not on their team.

We differ in many significant ways. I am hundreds of miles away from the drivers, and while I talk to them often and see them occasionally, I am not one of them. I resent it when people tell me what to do or think, I am reluctant to tell anybody else what to do or thing.

But I hope they go to court, and do it soon. The mayor may just get them there. It is never easy to file lawsuits, and hard to win them. But the mayor seems to be helping out, providing the specific grounds for a strong case. Norman Siegel may well be the angel they have been waiting for.

I think the mayor has given the carriage trade its greatest gift yet by trying to ram a noxious cripple-the-carriage-trade deal down the throats of  the City Council. The mayor has overdone his heavy hand, he has forced this collection of tribal and diverse and quarrelsome people to begin the grasp the awful truth that hovers over this  tortuous and deeply disturbing controversy.

I talked with a well-known New York attorney this morning who has handled a number of cases related to regulation and government. He asked that he not be identified.

“This is a gross violation of government authority,” he said, “the mayor has outlined no public interest in persecuting a legal and regulated industry in this way. They should have had him in court six months ago, and don’t let anybody fool you – he will run for his life before he will tell any lawyer under oath how all of this happened. Remember, he’s already running for President.”

The city has the right to regulate the carriage trade under the law, but the regulations must be rational. They must, as Siegel told reporters last night, demonstrate a legitimate and clear government interest. The carriage trade has put up with this irrational assault on their freedom and sustenance for years now.

This week, it is  becoming clear to everyone that it’s time to stop and fight, as it has perhaps been for a good while. They will never negotiate a rational settlement or understanding with this mayor, and these animal rights organizations.

This is what the courts are for in part. To protect the rights of citizens to equal justice under the law and due process.

I have always thought the carriage trade and the Teamsters believed that somehow, they could maneuver, politic, lobby or hide until their profoundly irrational and possibly corrupt mayor goes away or is somehow defeated, many of the drivers are from Ireland, they believe in fairies. And to be fair, it looked for a time as if that approach had succeeded.

Maybe they thought the fairies would sweep away the animal rights people, and the most powerful politician in the city, all of whom have vowed to destroy them. I think the fairies have done them another favor, awakened them to stopping this travesty once and for all.

I think this week they are now seeing the inescapable truth, as I am, as everyone is.

Benjamin Franklin said that justice will never be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. I am outraged by the relentless and cruel attack on the carriage trade and the carriage horses, even though I live hundreds of miles away and am not affected by the outcome.

Many others are outraged as well.

From the beginning it has been crystal clear to almost everyone that the mayor and city government has no legitimate or rational interest in banning the carriage horses and destroying a legitimate, profitable, immensely popular and law-abiding business that has existed in the city for more than 150 years.

Absent clear and compelling evidence of extreme abuse and neglect of the horses – there is none – it is none of the mayor’s business how the carriage trade and the horses interact with one another. It is not for the city to impose repressive rules and regulations for no reason and put people out of work and horses in danger.

The mayor is lying when he says the horses are unsafe, or are slowing or clogging traffic on the streets. There are plenty of cars to do that, and he has no interest in banning or restricting any of them. And unlike the horses, cars and trucks do kill people in New York City, every single day.

The city and it’s citizens are in no way being harmed by the existence of this industry. The horse draw many tourists, generate millions of dollars in business and taxes. The carriage trade has by a staggering margin the best safety record of any public conveyance in the city. At least a dozen of most respected veterinarians in the country have traveled to New York and pronounced the horses healthy and content and well and lovingly cared for.

As of this  writing, no carriage driver is charged with abuse, the carriage trade has broken no law, violated no regulations, harmed no citizens.

The carriage trade is perhaps the most regulated business in the history of New York City. Five different agencies oversee the horses care. None of them have lodged a single complaint against the industry in recent memory. There are thousands of complaints lodged annually against the restaurant industry, where people eat food, or against landlords, where people live.

What then, is the rational basis or legitimate government interest in the mayor’s fanatic pursuit of the horses, beyond the fact the mayor was paid to support the banning of them?

The mayor has never owned a dog or cat, never ridden in a horse carriage, can’t remember when he was even last in Central Park. There is no record in all of his long and very active public career of a single mention of the carriage horses or any other animal or animal rights issue.

He runs for mayor in 2010 and NYClass, the group spearheading the horse ban (and run by a real estate developer and supporter of the mayor), spends a million dollars to defeat the mayor’s primary opponent, then gives the mayor hundreds of thousands of additional dollars, violating city campaign finance laws along the way. His campaign is no longer struggling.

The mayor then stuns even his most loyal supporters by saying banning the horses is his “number one” priority in a city with some of the world’s most intractable and complex urban problems. Two thirds of the city’s residents oppose his idea to ban the horses, so does every newspaper in the city, labor unions, business groups and every respected equine or animal veterinary group in the country.

The mayor doesn’t care, he says that doesn’t matter.

The mayor insists it is inhumane and immoral for horses to pull carriages in New York, or even exist in New York City.

The mayor’s ban proposal is rejected so soundly the city council won’t even vote on it.

A few months later, the mayor abruptly approaches the city council and begins aggressively negotiating what he says is a deal to move the horses to Central Park (at a cost of roughly $25 million dollars, says the New York Times). The Teamsters Union is enchanted by the idea of a taxpayer-funded stables in the park – who wouldn’t be?, but runs in  horror when they read the fine print.  It soon becomes clear that the mayor is asking the carriage trade to negotiate itself out of existence, he is negotiating to ban them in a new and different way, and at taxpayer’s expense.

It seems to many people that what is called for is a Grand Jury, not a City Council hearing.

If the trade is inhumane and immoral, of course, then why should it be moved at public expensive and considerable conflict to the city’s most prized jewel of a park so that they can be inhumane and immoral there?

Since there is no public health or safety or other rational interest that the mayor has ever articulated, why then, should city taxpayers spent at least $25 million to honor what is apparent to everyone is a campaign promise at best, a bribe at worst?

The founder of the Central Park Conservancy, who began and oversaw the great renovation of the park decades ago, said last night this was a horrible idea and misuse of precious park land. She said it should never happen and will never happen.

The carriage trade people do not like public fights or complex and expensive legal battles. Neither would I. They just want to work in the park with their horses as they and their grandparents have for generations. Many came to America to escape this kind of arbitrary persecution and are shocked to be the target of it here.

They simply want to run their business and lead their individualist and instinctive lives. They buy houses, pay taxes, send their kids to college.

It is way past time for the lawyers, and for the courts. Government exists to protect the freedom and property of citizens, not to remove them for arbitrary, even dishonest, reasons. Their choice is to be pecked to death or confront this injustice squarely and ask for help.

Many citizens and animal lovers all over the country  are not directly affected but are outraged, this is a dreadful precedent for almost all of us in many important ways. It should be confronted directly and forcefully, it can’t be handled or danced around, the mayor will succeed with a thousand cuts what he can’t do with a single blow.

The mayor is both fanatical and irrational for whatever reasons, he has given the carriage trade the gift of making that perfectly clear. There is help for the carriage trade if they need it.

No one in the whole spectrum of New York City politics and culture is defending this grotesque and troubling campaign –  not the drivers, not the unions, not the tourists or city residents, not the newspapers or business associations, not the city residents, not the people who run Central Park, not the people who love to see the horses, not the advocates who represent the taxpayers, not the vast majority of animal lovers, not even his fellow fanatics in the animal rights movement.

So what is the rationale? What is the legitimate interest of government here?

The carriage trade has hired Siegel and Ron Kuby,  experienced and savvy lawyers, they have both spoken out clearly against this latest effort to disembowel and legal and much-loved industry in a city being overpowered by greedy and money and cars and condos.

I think the trade will one day be grateful to Mayor deBlasio for this new round of transparently insincere abuse of power, I believe he may have awakened them,  set them on the path that will truly guarantee their survival and protect their rights, which are, after all, our rights and the rights of the horses as well.

There’s a very fine line between being broke and being humble. An angel seeded my dreams last night, and the wind broke my hunger. I think I died a little less. I need a vacation.

When I was a reporter in Philadelphia, I worked with a charming and dashing British journalist. He was dressed like a model for the aristocracy, tattered but expensive clothes, he had an Oxford degree, was headed straight for a peerage, a job at the Times Of London. He was gorgeous and brilliant.

A drinking problem – no problem at the Philadelphia Daily News  where it was considered unethical to write a story while sober – had cut short a promising career in London – and his family had lost their ancient fortune and been forced to sell their mansion outside of London. Arch kicked around a bit, landed in Philadelphia at a tabloid.

Arch told me his hard story one night in the seedy and smokey bar where we all went to wash away the night, and he introduced me to the idea of the One-Day Vacation. He had a wife and two children at  home, and he embodied the idea of the stiff upper lip.

“Have you heard of the One Day Vacation?,” he asked me. “Americans think vacations have to be far away, expensive and weeks long to be real. But when we lost the family home, my Dad said, “chin up, Arch, from now on, we will all be taking One Day Vacations. It’s all in your head, after all. Nobody can make you feel poor. ”

Arch would pile his family into the aging Volkswagen Beetle and head to Valley Forge for a picnic. Or to the shore, two hours away, for a day at the beach. Or to the Atlantic City Boardwalk for a spin at the games of chance or a ride on the ferris wheel. Or a day at Gettysburg touring the battlefield. He always had the best, “jolliest” time. “So many places to go in such a big country,” he would exclaim happily.

“We are,” he would grandly announce the night before, “off on vacation. See you tomorrow.”

I loved his never-complain-or-speak-poorly-of-your-life spirit.

If he was at all discouraged or sorry for himself, you sure never saw it.

He could write like Tom Wolfe, too, especially when drunk.

Sometimes these days,  I think of Arch. As you know, we filed for bankruptcy this summer and nearly lost our farm as well. Our bankruptcy is over.  I do not speak poorly of my life, or wallow in regret.

All in all, we are happier and better off than before, although I did get a very sympathetic e-mail this morning offering me an old car, a box of canned goods,  and two weeks in a Maine cottage – no charge – if I needed it. “We worry about you,” wrote a reader from Maine.

Please, I said, don’t send me a thing. Food is cheap and plentiful here. We are doing fine.

I have learned so much this year.

Love and life can make a flower more fragrant, a blue sky bluer, and an empty bank account emptier. Or they can fill the cup up. I should probably sign up for another credit card, banks love to give them to people out of bankruptcy. We pay promptly and on time, we don’t care to do this again.

In fact, early Monday morning,  we set out for one of Arch’s “One-Day-Vacation” specials, that is our new vacation model. Last January at this time, we were given a gift of a five-day trip to Disney World. Before that, we used to book a room for a few nights at a hotel in Manhattan, a block from the park and the carriage horses. Valet parking, too. Or sailed off to a beautiful Vermont Inn where Daniel Webster stayed up drinking all night. It was expensive.

Chin up, old sport, we will have an even better time on our One-Day Vacation. We will have fun and spend less on food all day than we did at breakfast in New York City.

And I need a vacation, it has been a difficult few days, and I am drained. The great thing about the One Day vacations is that  you actually return refreshed, but not exhausted or broke. And our house-sitter Deb gets to spend some quality time with Red, for which she would probably pay us…Hmmmm.

This year, we are heading to Brattleboro, Vt. for a one night stay at a funky hotel that costs $105. Like Arch, we are excited.

It works like this. I trawl the Internet – I’m even exploring Airbnb, I’ll try it next time  – and locate some well-reviewed but inexpensive hotels. I call them up and haggle over the room price – Monday is a good night to do this, as all hotels everywhere are empty. I am surprised at the flexibility. If you can be quiet for a couple of minutes, the price drops like a hawk going after a chicken. Sometimes, all you have to do is say you found a cheaper rate up the road.

I find a good Thai or Asian restaurant – is it my imagination, or is Thai food almost always good and inexpensive? Dinner for $30. Maybe a glass of red wine, so I can toast Arch, I wonder where he is, I can’t find him on Facebook, which is a bad sign.

In this case, a nearby movie theater helps They are showing Sisters. We will leave early Sunday, pick up coffee at the Round House Cafe and head that way. We’ll stop at some of Maria’s favorite Thrift Stores, I might look for a new pizza stone, maybe a new pair of suspenders. The movie at night, then hours of reading.

I’m bringing a book of short stories – it will be cold there Monday and Tuesday morning, continental breakfast and home. And my camera, always my camera.

Arch, wherever you are,  you were right about One-Day Vacations. They are fun, simple, inexpensive and actually restful. Chin up, nobody can make you feel poor.