By Scott Graber
It is Sunday, and there is an autumn-like crispness in the air. This morning I welcome the warm steam coming-off my coffee — Starbuck’s Sumatra — and also have some thinly sliced (and toasted) sourdough bread enhanced with a generous, evenly applied layer pear and jalapeño peppered jam.
No, this is not your Breakfast of Champions.
This morning I’m listening to Adam Gopnik who is being interviewed by David Remnick on the New Yorker Radio Hour.
Gopnik is a magazine writer who describes the murky, counter-intuitive cross currents sloshing through our culture. At the moment Gopnik is taking on Trump and his efforts to erase the “improper ideology” that is presented by the National Museum of African American History.
Before getting to “improper ideology” Gopnik reminds us about the foundational ideas that undergird our democracy — rule of law; free and fair elections and “pluralism.”
Pluralism is the concept that we, here in the United States, can entertain multiple ideas, tastes and beliefs even when they are discordant.
Gopnik says there is a dissonance between the music of Metallica and that of, let us say, Aaron Copeland. There is a difference between the art of Norman Rockwell and that of Marc Rothko. There is a divide between those who love a mayonnaise and mustard slathered chili-cheeseburger and those who prefer a slow-roasted, thinly-sliced pork belly chased by an Italian Pinot Noir.
Importantly, there are those who believe in capitalism — that making as much money as one can accumulate in, say, 60 or 70 years is an entirely meaningful, life-time pursuit. And others who believe this is a wasted life.
Gopnik reminds us that Joseph Stalin, after hearing a concerto composed by Shostakovich, decided this man’s music should be banned in the Soviet Union. Gopnik argues that Stalin’s decision about Shostakovich was as wrong-headed as, say, Trump deciding that there is too much floor space dedicated to the evils of slavery at the National Museum for African American History.
Gopnik says the curators at the Smithsonian are entitled to interpret history according to their research — and to present that point of view using eye-popping dioramas as well as brass slave badges and iron ankle shackles.
He says that visitors can agree, or stay away — Trump saying this emphasis on our sordid relationship with human bondage is blasphemy.
I, myself, have tried to find middle ground on this particular topic saying that “I grew up Southern thinking that the shoeless, rag-tag farm boys who fought in the trenches around Petersburg did not think much about slavery.”
I reasoned that these Duplin and Martin County teenagers knew that Georgia had been invaded — that Kilpatrick’s calvary was burning every building, barn and farmstead — and that their farms and their families were next.
Furthermore, these were not people who took An Introduction to Anthropology at Chapel Hill, or who had subscriptions to Scientific American or Lancet. These folks raised their collards, cured their hams, and when they contemplated slavery, bought, no doubt, into a convenient theory that slavery had a Biblical justification.
But one rarely hears that narrative these days.
In the last 15 years (or so) there have been at least three new museums focused on slavery — and many existing museums have refocused their exhibits around the horror, and the misery, and long term consequences of human bondage.
NPR has, recently, put a racial spin on much of the its programming. Whether it’s whole hog barbecue, gerrymandered districts or pollution from chicken farms there is usually a race-based vibe that gives meaning and substance to the term “virtue signaling.” And, of course, this gives Donald Trump yet another shiny object to wave in front of his agitated acolytes.
There doesn’t seem to be much research on the effect of this “virtue signaling” or “ancestor shaming” in the 2024 election. The two southern battleground states, Georgia and North Carolina, went for Trump. But generally speaking the primary, alleged defect (on the Left) was the tepid turn-out of Black men in Atlanta and Charlotte. Other Democrats say this election was actually a repudiation of Obama; or have another simple, single-sentence reason for the rejection of Kamala Harris.
But I think the reasons for Trump’s success were complex; had a lot to do with his huge digital delivery each and every day. But in the end he successfully mined heretofore hidden veins of resentment and anger that won him a second term in the Oval Office.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
