Boots - a review of the TV series

It's easy these days to succumb to dismay or even depression over the efforts of the oafish Pied Piper in the White House to dismantle democracy in the U.S.A.  Two hundred and fifty years we've been at this project, trying to include more and more of the American populace into our sometimes hit sometimes miss effort to make the Enlightenment ideals in our founding documents a reality.  We are in an era where our steps forward seem to be wiped out by steps backwards.  But... but... I'm writing this on October 18 and the images are coming in of millions in the streets of all fifty states on No Kings Day, so the fat lady ain't sung yet.

It's always useful to be reminded of how far we've come.  It's for that reason I just sat through the eight Netflix episodes of Boots, a series inspired by The Pink Marine, a book by Greg Cope White, about his experiences as a gay man in the Marines in the days before "Don't Ask Don't Tell."  Normally I don't take a lot of pleasure in beating my head against the wall, but I read somewhere that the fact that it was spread over eight episodes meant it was able to track the progress of gay liberation in the military that paralleled the progress in society at large, and who doesn't like happy endings?

There were times when I thought I'd wandered into enemy territory.  Boots is gay history and ultimately a coming out story with a happy ending.  But it is also a full-throated endorsement of the world of macho men and the U.S. Marines.  The story takes place at a basic training camp where "boys are made into men" - i.e., where they learn to shout "kill" at every opportunity and grit their teeth against pain.  I wanted to turn it off at times.  The reason I didn't was that the acting was superb and the gay characters were complex personalities.  There are multiple sub-plots, all shedding light on contemporary American minority groups.  The lead character, Cameron, and his best friend, Ray, join the Marines to get away from home. Cameron is running from his mother's neglect, Ray from his father's pitiless machismo.  They wonder at times if they haven't moved from the frying pan into the fire when Cam gets bullied for being gay and Ray for being a mixed-race kid.  There's a lot of bullying, in fact.  The recruits are not the most enlightened of folk.

I discovered, once I got far enough into it, that one of Boots' producers was Norman Lear. The company is headed by a female captain, there are twin brothers working out family dynamics, a suicide, masochistic leadership, and plenty of examples of selfish kids learning to care for their fellow recruits.The characters grow and mature over time, and that is probably the reason why I couldn't put it down.  It's a superb sociological study of America's difficulty in handling its diversity.  

And lots of jingoism and chauvinism.  You have to take the less appealing with the more appealing.

Semper fi!

Coughing in Warsaw

Part I: All about me.

Polish audiences seem to have a wonderful capacity for holding in a cough.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's 2025 and I am once again in thrall to the performances of some of the world's best pianists at the 2025 Warsaw Chopin Competition.  It's also October and there's lots of flu and colds in the air, apparently.

The contestants come up the stairs, down onto the stage, bow, sit at the keyboard, adjust their chair, get out their handkerchief, wipe their hands and sometimes the keyboard, and stare nervously at it, lift their arms, and begin.

Out comes some of the most beautiful music ever written and the world is effectively shut outside my door.

They play a number of pieces, sometimes, as with preludes, moving from one to the next without delay.  When they do delay, as if to gather strength to move on in another direction, we are suddenly presented with a barrage of coughing. It's clear people need to cough, but have been holding it in until it is socially acceptable to let it out.  After a number of these displays of respectful silences followed by loud hacking, the whole thing becomes quite funny.  And distracting.  I'd almost prefer it if the audience would just let loose when they need to.

Maybe I'm overly focused on coughing.  I have a lung disease and that means I also have a chronic cough and I'm more than a bit pissed that I can't go to public performances anymore for that reason.  Except that actually I can as long as I get seated early enough to calm my breathing.  I don't cough if I don't exert myself.

Part II: All about Western Civilization and racism - and me again

When asked about my race, I check the Caucasian box. Both my parents go all the way back to fade-out as Europeans in origin. And I am profoundly disgusted when I encounter MAGA folk who are white supremacists. I have loyalty to my LGBT brothers and sisters, to my fellow German-Americans, to both Germany and Japan, countries whose cultures I have had the luxury of playing around in and who have offered me great benefits: Germany gave me a year of university education and an introduction to the joys of urban living.  Japan gave me a good living for 24 years and enough money to buy a house in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It also gave me a husband I'm terribly fond of.  But I have no loyalty whatsoever - zero - to the Caucasian race.  If two men could make a baby, I'd be more than happy to have a mixed-race Asian-Caucasian baby to love and to raise as much as I love my dogs and cheerfully pick up their poop off the sidewalk when we go on walks. I don't understand why one would give credit to accidents of birth.

At the same time, maybe because I lived those 24 years in Japan and because my first lover was a black American, and my last one, my husband, and the one before were Asians, I am race-conscious and totally committed politically to the notion that racism needs to be eradicated all over the world.

When I first went to Japan, back in the 1970s, I remember watching a TV program where they were teaching Japanese how to applaud. How much was too much, how much was not enough. It was hilarious.  So very Japanese, I thought, in focusing on doing the right thing rather than allowing for spontaneity.  All they succeeded in doing, I thought at the time, was stressing that western music was alien.

That's the thing.  "Western" music - Bach, Beethoven and Brahms - do not belong to Germany, or to Europe, or to "Western civilization." They are world composers and belong to us all.  When I still had legs that could go all night long, I used to dance in a kolo folk dance group. I'm not a Yugoslav.

And that takes me to make the observation that now, when the contestants at the Chopinowski competition (to give this a Polish slant) have more Asian names and faces than you can shake a stick at (if you're a white supremacist and into shaking sticks) I feel obliged to mention that not only does the list of contestants contain several Lees from Korea and four Lis from China, but there is also Kevin Chen and Ryan Wang from Canada, Eric Lu and another Wang, William, from the United States. And if that doesn't make my point, you've got to include the Polish speaking Viêt Trung Nguyên from Poland and Yuanfan Yang from Edinburgh.

Part III: Sweet mysteries of life...

How the judges make their decisions continues to baffle me.  I know I'm just showing my limitations here, but when I began listening to the first round all I could hear was perfection. Then I listened to the second round and had to admit I thought the performances as a whole were actually somehow better than they were in the first round.  Obviously the judges were onto something.  But what?  How could I be so out of it?  I had good musical training as a youth, was a church organist for a while and accompanied choruses and ballet lessons.  I wasn't good enough to go on to a career in piano or in music, but I thought I had a well-trained ear. But the judges are miles ahead of me.  This is one serious bunch of musicians, and that probably explains why I'm inclined to use words like "thrill" and "joy" when reacting to the competition.

Part IV: Favorite composers

Following up on my musical limitations, I often say, when asked to identify my favorite composer that I don't like ranking world-class quality talent.  If forced to, I'd put Mozart and Chopin out beyond all the others, but I'd still list Liszt and Rachmaninoff and Bach and Tchaikovsky as gifts from the gods.  As with the Olympics, much of this probably stems from the tendency of countries to claim their heroes as national heroes.  Austria gets Mozart, Germany gets Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Mendelssohn and a whole bunch more, Russia gets Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev and many others, and Poland says it will be damned before it lets France take Chopin away from them.  Hence this every-five-year spectacular thing in Warsaw.

Part V: Chopin, in particular    

Sitting for hours in front of the tube (or the computer) listening to 28 contestants display ways to do things with their fingers that are not humanly possible (like watching divers or pole-vaulters in the Olympics), I realize how much, even after all these years, I still have to learn about just what Chopin managed to do in writing over 250 known and numbered pieces of music, in addition to many which got lost or never got numbered. He wrote more than twenty waltzes, more than fifty mazurkas.  Of all his music, it's the nocturnes (all 22 of them) that go most directly to the soul, the etudes that blow my mind, the polonaises that make me want to get up off my chair and pretend to be the King of France, the rondos and scherzos that make me happy to be alive.  And where does that leave the four ballades - utterly beautiful pieces of music - and the impromptus and the two concertos.  And the bolero and the berceuse and the barcarole (music for boats??? - yes, I understand he got the inspiration from Venetian gondoliers).

The excitement isn't over.  They are, as I write, just beginning the third round and the winner won't be announced till the end of the month.  I've chattered on about spin-off thoughts rather than pretend I'm in the running to judge the performances.  You can find those easily; they're on YouTube.

Again, words that I reserve for things like the Warsaw Chopin Competition, if you haven't watched fingers fly in a while, go to YouTube for the thrill of it all.  Joy.  Pure joy.

What's in a word?

The war of words between those who would surrender the quest for an ever more perfect union in favor of autocratic rule in the United States and those committed to the democratic project has reached a fever pitch.  Anger and invective fly back and forth and more and more friends of the Enlightenment worry that the battle may already be lost.  I have largely held off commenting on the fracas out of a suspicion that anybody chiming in at this stage merely adds to the din.

If you're a regular reader of Hepzibah,  you probably know that my academic background is in linguistics, and I identify as a sociolinguist, sociolinguistics being the study of the way language is used as a tool for communication in society. This interest has led me to question in recent times whether or not Donald Trump deserves the label "fascist." 

The left seems quite at home calling Trump a fascist; the right fumes the left's use of the term is dirty pool, little more than an attempt to provoke them into anger.

I'd like to make an argument that this bone of contention should be seen as two separate issues: first off, is he in fact a fascist?  And secondly, even if he is, is the term so loaded that there is nothing to be gained by calling him one?

Because the terms fascist and fascism cover a broad range of notions, whether you can make a solid case that Donald Trump is a fascist depends on how you define the word, so let's start there.

The notion of fascism originates in Italy.  It was first closely associated historically with Mussolini's ruthlessly authoritarian style of governing, but was soon extended to Hitler's national socialism. Its use can be traced back to as early as the 1870s, and was extended in the 20th century to the rule of Franco in Spain.  Since World War II, the term has been expanded over the years and today often functions virtually as a synonym for any absolute dictatorship.  But, I want to focus here not on its history but on how closely trumpism reflects the five features which define it.  Those features are: 

        1. the prioritizing of might over right, and an appreciation of power and violence for their own sake;

        2. the exaltation of race, nation or other collective entity over the rights and desires of an individual;

        3. The appeal to populist illusions rather than to reason and evidence-based objectivity;

        4. economic and social control by physical suppression;

        5. the cult-like blind obedience to a leader, probably the clearest example of which was the Führer-Prinzip - the "leader principle" - in Germany under Adolf Hitler.

These five aspects of fascism apply to virtually all dictatorships to at least some degree. At one extreme, the Japanese Emperor was literally a god, even though his position was essentially symbolic and he was actually dictated to by what most people saw as lesser beings who ran the government. Stalin in Russia was arguably as ruthless as Hitler, and ruthless brutality did not end in 1945.  Ferdinand Marcos was a kleptocratic piker by comparison, but many would nonetheless include him in the lot.  Pol Pot killed more than a million of his own countrymen, as did Mao in China, although Maoists insist with considerable justification that his policies brought about improvement in the lives of the Chinese people overall after centuries of poverty and backwardness. We are left to debate whether that advance was worth the cost of millions of lives and must constantly remind ourselves that the application of these five descriptors of fascism varies in severity and in extent.

When laid out like this, Trump is small potatoes compared to his more bloody predecessors with an authoritarian bent. The reason the left wants to include him in their number probably has less to do with his resemblance to them, and more with the astonishment that any leader could capture the hearts and minds of so many of his countrymen with such fierce devotion. Although I may be placing more stress on the Führer-prinzip than on the other features, even his supporters tend to concede that his pronouncements have less truth value than self-serving utility, and the parallels to Hitler's rise to power during the waning days of the Weimar Republic are impossible to miss.  Those who choose to slap the fascist label on Donald Trump, as I am inclined to do, have to admit they may be doing so because they are shocked at evidence that fascism could, in fact, be happening here, rather than that they have an open-and-shut case for using the label.  

I'm listening to those who argue that the charge is over-the-top because the guardrails have - so far, at least - held and his moves against the DOJ and the late-night satirists Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have all fallen flat.  And because he's not so much interested in Lebensraum (Greenland and Panama notwithstanding).  I'm aware that he's way more hung up on his own ego and that"Make America Great" is not the same thing as "Amerika über alles."  He's not interested in ruling the world; he just wants love and affection - and lots more money.  But I have to ask you, is he a fascist only if he succeeds?  I think he gets points for trying, however clumsily, to replace constitutional democracy with self-serving autocracy.

Whether history will know him as a no-doubt-about-it fascist or as a tried-but-failed fascist is, in the long run, not what matters here. What does matter is the fact that the advent of trumpism has left an indelible mark on America's history.  Future students of American history will now have to add this new "-ism" to its list of other bumps in the road toward "a more perfect union:" racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, religious bigotry, anti-semitism and homophobia. (And I beg the indulgence of those who think my use of the metaphor of "bumps in the road" is unduly wishy-washy.)

I have not held back in attaching the fascist label to Trump, first of all because his rallies instantly bring to mind the Nuremberg rallies, with masses of people displaying sometimes insane levels of devotion. But news coverage as well shows his minions going out of their way to sing his praises, way beyond what once were normal levels of social interaction.  What is in the nature of his followers, one has to ask, that makes them behave in such a cult-like fashion?  And what is behind their failure to impose consequences after fact-checking his lies?  His moves against democratic institutions are right out in the open - against the media, against universities, against the justice system.  As are his recent efforts to shut down late-night television comedians who satirize him in ways that get under his skin.

I am aware that if we're ever going to close the gap between left and right, we're going to have to consider more seriously not whether what those of us holding fast to democracy say is true, but whether what we say communicates what we want to communicate.  Communication is measured not by what comes out of one's mouth but by what the listener takes in through their ears. It's a contest between being right and being effective. So having made the case for identifying Trump as a fascist, whether a real one or just a paltry wannabe, the question is still open whether or not highlighting the fascism in trumpism helps us put the country back on the road to democracy.  When most people hear the word fascism, they think of Hitler, not the whole range of tinpot autocrats, so I have to admit it probably doesn't.

But there is another battle going on, and that is how one fights the lies being fed to the public by Trumpist Enablers, including Trump himself and the Fox propaganda network that functions as a propaganda ministry for the Republicans. A liar has an inherent advantage over a truth-teller, because truth tellers are more limited by what they can say, so long as the intended audience is willing to be persuaded by untruth.

That's not the whole story, not the main event when discussing the state of American democracy. Willingness to be duped is not what I consider America's weakest link.  I would reserve that term for America's lack of equity, a problem exacerbated  by the Supreme Court's decision in "Citizens United": too much money and power in the hands of too few. Until we fix that problem we on the left are going to be held responsible for putting Trump in power in the first place. How many democratic administrations have made even a feeble attempt to address the inequity problem?  Democrats, as much as their Republican counterparts, have been wary of Bernie Sanders and his urging that we pay closer attention to unions and the working class. And afraid of being labeled as socialists.  Those who blame the Democratic Party elites for the rise of Trump have a case. The fact that they're having trouble getting back on their feet is not a mystery to most Americans anymore.

Republicans have long been the power brokers for the wealthy and for corporate control of wealth - the "I got mine!" crowd. They have been quick to dismiss opponents as socialists or communists, words carrying the weight of House on Un-American Activity days and the efforts of J, Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn to root out enemies of the people, another term that Trump has brought back to life. Since those days there has been no way to even begin proposing a better way to distribute the national wealth without getting tarred with one of those labels, socialist or communist.  Republicans have tied their fate to a 21st century pied-piper and become an unabashed trumpist party of single-issue voters, whether that issue is the price of lettuce, the goals of Christian nationalism, or turning the clock back on the rights of women and gay people.

Self-interest is not the worst thing in the world unless it comes at the expense of others, as it does with Trump's Enablers, many of whom have no interest in ethical government and have climbed aboard the Trump bandwagon not because they believe it is just but because it happens to be in the lead.

In the end, I throw in my lot with those favoring democracy, which I understand the way Winston Churchill did when he made that memorable statement in a speech to the British House of Commons in 1947: "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."   Its weakness lies in the fact that it doesn't care whether people are their best selves or their worst selves; the people have to be careful what they ask for because in a working democracy they get what they ask for.  Hitler, Trump, Orbán, Marcos, Erdoğan and many other anti-democratic leaders were, at least initially, democratically elected.

For reasons I've never adequately explained, even to myself, while I'm very light in the faith department, I do have faith in the human race.  I believe, in the long run, given enough time to think things through, people will come to their senses.  And if they put bums in office, they can and will ultimately throw them out again.

I have a sign on my wall which reads "My kids have paws."  I've lived longer than both my mother and my father did and I don't have kids whom I want to watch get their diplomas.  I just hope I live long enough to see my country throw this fascist bum out.