On The State Of Journa ism

-by Nigel Best

If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain. Obviously then, I have no brain, just a very large heart!

- Anonymous

Summer has played its final hand of the year and left the shores of Lake Chautauqua here in the green, grape fields of upstate western New York.

A salvo of steady rain and cooler temperatures is autumn’s way of announcing itself.

Hanging on for a last attempt at love at the edge of the tree line are at least two fireflies that are still blinking their messages in the hopes of attracting a lover. Above, a blue moon is trying to peer down on this damp scene. With the scarpering, rushing clouds, it looks more like an eyeball blinking; An eyeball trying to make sense of the world through cataracts that are blurring its vision.

Two deer were caught in my headlights as I drove the fifteen minute on the dark road from the Chautauqua Institute to the tiny, country cottage I’m staying at. Deft driving skills had kept me alive on the wet road, and the avoided deer scampered off into the woods.

Now, imagine that is all metaphor if you will. Sitting on the stoop watching the drizzle fall  through a neighbouring home’s dim, yellow porch light, all of the weirdness of the past few hours could be, and inevitably later on the advice of my fortune-telling bag of chicken bones, will be, symbols of something much larger taking place. After all, weird is as weird is.

The Chautauqua Institute is itself a place for liberal arts: Wynton Marsalis is here all week lecturing and performing: Local Jamestown heroes 10000 Maniacs performed this week as well. These concerts happen on the grounds right next to the houses and apartments for those with serious religious leanings, strange but weird folks here to glean some sort of deeper insight into their beliefs. The summer months have the parking lots filled with the out-of-state license plates of the religious, the artists, or those here to enjoy courses as far-flung as sailing lessons or, if I heard correctly, mushroom identification.

Yet, it was on a stage here just a few years ago that author Salman Rushdie was attacked as he spoke. The knife-wielding attacker managed to blind one of Rushdie's. As one can imagine, that’s not exactly a talking point on any of the advertised walking tours of the grounds. There is, however, an old, massive wooden hotel on the grounds, the Athenaeum Hotel. Sitting on its deck with a bottle of vodka, I had a momentary impression that the hotel’s 1888 design and its ghosts was making me feel like I was sitting on the Titanic’s deck moments before the iceberg hit.

For what it’s worth, a certain doom did sink my evening. The doom took the shape of a loud, aggressive, and seemingly ubiquitous early-20-something young man who, when all was said and done, was the quintessential caricature of a U.S. citizen  that the world recognizes. Essentially, loud mouthed, absolutely sure the world revolves around him, and motivated in most of what he speaks about by money. Nothing new about that for me. It’s just weird still where the mind goes at midnight drinking vodka with strangers, as this fellow was to me. Having been in this part of the state before, I knew this was Republican territory. To make sure anyone passing through this area can recognize it as such, the streets of the neighbouring towns are lined with street lights each bearing a U.S. flag; There are more churches than there are houses;  And, there are plenty of signs on the perfectly manicured front lawns displaying Trump 2024 banners. 

To further prove as to where one is, ridiculous stickers declaring Trump-love 2024 are plastered on car bumpers as well. All in all, it’s the stereotypical U.S. towns that seem destined to always be shackled to the 1950s.

I was here just after Trump’s 2016 election victory. That night, I had been accosted by a couple of drunks who reminded me in no uncertain terms, and through the gnashing of their teeth, that this was a conservative stronghold, and that a socialist Canadian ought to “get the hell back” across the border. All I wanted was to enjoy the bottle of Cuban rum I’d brought with me for my trip. I was rescued that time by a more centrist leaning judge from Buffalo and his wife who, overhearing the conversation, inserted themselves  into the verbal fight that would surely have resulted in a pistol duel at the dawn of the next day.

Absorbing tonight’s discussions with a stranger, the weirdness that came over me is the realization that in the USA it would appear that a citizen doesn’t so much choose a political party as much as it’s just bred into a person’s DNA. It’s why I don’t buy into the shiny, smiling faces of so-called ex-Republicans on stage at this week’s Democratic National Convention wringing their hands and words at their new whipping boy, Trump. Those politicians, so willing to cross the aisle, will never be anything but suspect for me.

Thus, it wasn't weird to me to once again fall into conversation with a man in his early 20s who bent my ear and my brain with his Republican Party rhetoric, and his absolute devotion to Donald Trump. The conversation had started off with the usual questions of me and Canada. Innocent talk around health care, guns, kids wanting to dress like gangsta rappers (oddly, he was convinced that everyone in Canada under the age of 16 dressed this way!) Politics came next, which inevitably led me to ask about this week's Democratic convention; I poked the bear  and the night got weird when I enquired of his thoughts on Kamala Harris.

“I can’t talk about Kamala Harris,” he’d told me. “If I say anything negative, I’m just considered to be a racist.” He went on to describe Trump’s “excellent” economic record, and that Harris doesn’t understand economics.

I realized this was the conversation a lot of the citizens of the United States couldn’t have with each other, and the young Penn State student, for that’s what he is, real estate studies, articulated that as we poured a little more vodka. “We can’t speak about these things,” he said. “A Democrat won’t talk with me like this.”

“I am a liberal, and we’re not tearing each other’s throats out,” I reminded him. Then the earth tilted in a weird way as he confessed by the dark lake waters that abortion should be a woman's right. I reached for the bottle of vodka, and, intent on listening, began drinking straight from the bottle. I wanted in on his moral code. If this is the future, I mockingly told myself, then we’re truly doing a rag-doll dance on the precipice of a bottomless pit.

“I have to tell you that I hate forgiveness of student debt. Maybe for someone who is becoming a doctor, but not just someone doing a bullshit, throw-away degree." I let him rant on about his value system. “Harris is hated by the military. The U.S.’ military has always been the best in the world. When any country needed us, we were there. Harris will destroy the military.”

“I live in New York state and my vote never counts because of all the liberal voters east of Buffalo. Why should I bother to vote? Why should we out here in the country have to give in to the coastal elites with their rights for everyone and everything?”

Then, as he really allowed his emotions to boil at the way his country seemed to be treating him, he unleashed the last of his anger in the weirdest of weird ways. In my newspaper days, I learned a trick to amp up the interviewee. It was time to amp this youngster up. Moving well into his personal space with a loaded question would either get the emotional response of the answer, or a broken nose for me for being so invasive.

“Trump’s an arsehole,” I casually said. “I hate the man. If it were allowable, I’d put him on the gallows. Are you aware that outside of this forsaken country of yours, most of the world is happy to predict that Trump will lose the election? That it’ll be like getting a monkey off the world’s back?”

Our young man seemed, for a moment, to be taken aback. His eyes began a weird dance around his eye sockets; A dance that had obviously been concocted by his brain right there and then. Spittle started flying from his mouth. The youngster was seething.

“Do you believe anything will change if Harris is elected?” I prodded. It took a moment. Finally, In a way that felt something beyond anger, he said, “The last election was stolen, but I think both parties have chosen the wrong candidate. What’s true to me and many like me is Harris does not understand economics, Trump does. The USA had the greatest economy ever under the Trump presidency.”

“And allowing more socialist ideas into government?” I enquired.

“I’d drown socialists in this lake. I hate socialists,” he almost yelled.

So, there it was. All the highlights of the past few days, weeks, and years of MAGA in a few angry sentences.

“There you go,” I said, shifting back into my chair, allowing him to feel like I was conceding the hour. “We managed to have a conversation from both sides of the equation, and we didn’t come to blows.”

What has become apparent, though, is that no amount of fact, fiction, nor friction is going to shake the young man’s faith. It's very difficult for me to find faith in anything said by either a Trump fiend, nor anyone that says god bless anything.

“God bless you, God bless the U.S.A.” he saId as he left. It was a pledge I did not need bestowed on me as the evening ended. Speaking of god, though, I can at least throw this evening’s conversation onto an August 23rd Volcanalia sacrificial bonfire. Maybe Vulcan will hear my request and stop youngsters from burning the whole goddamn country to the ground in the near future.