Gonzo Monday, accompanied by a small Goya gallery
...Two of them to choose from on the upper level of the airport, both staring out on the wind-swept, sunny criss-cross of runways stretching into the distance. One was glittering Euro modern, the other fabbed up like a ramshackle cabin on the shores Lake Balaton. Which world do you want to enter ? I hesitated on gimpy legs before crawling in to the smaller, shadowy Magyar love shack.
‘Victor Orban,’ I whispered into my glass, hunched over the counter trying to get a grip after the last week in Hungary, ‘Victor, I could almost like you but your wine still stinks and you close newspapers that dare critise your never-ending reign. That hits where it hurts. Just insult them like Trump does the New York Times.’ The Peace Conference in Budapest was over and I was on my way back to Paris.
American accents lashed out from a table against the wall six feet away. Laughter, nervous, raucous guffaws, chortling their heads off about Trump’s latest imbroglio, as if nobody else in their country ever talked about anything else. They sounded jubilant and one of them looker a grayer version of someone I knew from the Lower East Side a few years back. Hard to tell. They invited the stranger over; they must have recognized me from the conference. I gave them the ‘maybe later’ sign. I had things to mull over.
I nudged my drink. Real power is fear. The seductive lullabies the Clintons and Obamas whisper in our ears are just for show. The power to compel comes, if not out of respect, fear. What President ever dared to say that ? None other than King Rude who played Americans’ fears like the strings on a golden harp. Trump puts Nixon to shame. He must have studied Milhouse closely, with the difference that he seems to enjoy himself whereas an invisible lizard was always biting Nixon’s ankle. One section of the country watched Trump aghast, another hit the bars to celebrate and everyone else stood around like cows, not sure what was true and what wasn’t. Should they drink the bleach or shouldn’t they ? It was the beginning of doubt about everything and the death of God’s Honest Truth. ’Twas all so very long ago but here he comes again, Ubu Re-Dux paddling up the mighty river of public opinion.
Fait accompli to my friends making merry on the other side of the airport bar. Only a matter of time now, they told each other, and he’ll be behind bars. They looked sure of it. Within earshot, I didn’t budge.
America is an exuberant drunk
They want Trump stashed away, out of the picture, after he won the first election by the book and there was all sorts of Mystery Voting in the second. If it’s widely accepted – journos cite it all the time – that Joe Kennedy got his son elected in ’60 by twisting West Virginia’s arm, shouldn’t we hazard the guess that it happens every year, everywhere until provided evidence to the contrary ?
I didn't hear a peep about Hunter Biden or fair elections or dismantling the electoral college from that crowd. Maybe they weren’t who I thought they were, maybe they were on a mission.
But Trump. He’s dangerous and entertaining, too madcap for Democrats’ taste. He's teaching things about power, waking Americans up to the contradictions. You can be President and have limited power over the state apparatus, something Kennedy learned to his sorrow. They're afraid that Trump could win in ’24, from behind bars if it comes to that. That scares them because then America isn't the America that's taught in schools or on fabulous wonky Ted talks. We haven't budged an inch since the Gilded Age.
One of the men wandered over. I downed the bad wine that came from who knows where and ordered a different one. I was listing to starboard with the tail winds.
‘So you’re a Trump supporter ? We heard you snorting at us.’ My long-ago friend was rubbing elbows fraternally.
Always putting his keys in other people’s doors
‘Do I look like one ?’ I asked. Aren’t they usually better dressed ? Something about me that screamed beefy loser ? Was I talking to myself out loud again ? It’s the been-around-the-block rumpled writer look, making me pass for Bannon’s half-brother after a week of sleeping on people’s sofas.
‘Have one on me, pal,’ I said. ‘Let the music commence.’ Trump, I asked, who, apart from annexing half of Syria, caused no wars and invaded no one, must be taken out of the picture. ‘What did you think of the Peace Conference ? I assume you attended. Or did someone send you to Budapest to keep your eye on the dissidents ?’
He dismissed it with an all too accurate ‘speeches’, and veered into U.S. politics, probing to see how I felt. Biden wasn’t so bad, he’d done good things – he leaned closer – before he went around the bend.
I decided to go, if not for the jugular, heartburn. I looked the guy over. Earnest Midwesterner, hair thinning on top, nervously ramming his glasses up the ridge. He was old enough to remember Nader or any other green hopefuls. Not one to part with his illusions, though.
‘So a lousy Democrat, eh ? A true believer. Dis-info everywhere, like church heresies that must be quashed.’
He looked at me astonished. ‘Of course I’m a Democrat. What do you mean, true believer ?’
‘One of those eternally hopeful reform losers,’ I said, ‘Who never accomplishes much and never gets close to power but just keeps repeating things like, if we move left on this issue we’ll get the x-vote. Internet’s lousy with those types. Means nothing to sacrifice any number of foreign countries for your reform fantasies at home. Terrific killing fields in the Ukraine now, by the way. Hats off to State.’
‘It’ll be over soon,’ he grumbled, casting a look back at his friends, hoping to extricate himself. I wouldn’t give him the chance.
‘One thing Chairman Thump taught us is that you can say bad words and offend people and the Republic will survive. But it can’t survive the hopey-changey jive juice you guys peddle year after year, which doesn’t cure anybody.’ I was getting started.
The guy stammered a comeback about Trump assuming dictatorial powers if he wins again. It was a popular line just making the rounds back then, soon to be a Truth Universally Accepted. ‘Could happen,’ I said, tilting my glass all the way up. ‘Already there, aren’t we ? Obama didn’t ask anybody for permission when he let his minions destroy Libya, did he ? UN ? Congress ?’ I’d strayed into foreign policy again. Nobody cares about that in the States. They threw up their hands long ago.
When the neighbor gets up to complain
‘Want to know your real objection to Trump?’ I asked him. The man's mouth moved but only a small sound came out, pwah. I wasn’t letting him get a word in. ‘The reason you hate him is that he taught you how power operates: it's organized, capricious, ruthless. Objects to anything that stands in its way. If it fails on one front, it pivots and attacks elsewhere. With Trump, it's all raw nerves and the Monroe Doctrine on benezedrine or whatever he takes to make him so pesky. Trump flaunts it. That's what you object to, isn’t it ? The rube outsider who ran up against the immoveable behemoth.’
His turn now. I was negative, anti-everything. Definitely not patriotic. He didn't know what came after communist on the spectrum but whatever it was... I let him run with it until he came to the bit about how I fell for every conspiracy theory come down the pike.
‘That’s right, my new-found friend. Any old conspiracy will do if it has legs. Life is a conspiracy between two cells and a hunk of carbon – it all started there. Get it ? Wild theories interest me. Everything is absurd until people realize it’s true. I’m a writer,’ I said, pausing to catch a breath. ‘We’re in the conspiracy business. Every novel is a conspiracy and most opinion pieces are, too.’ The wine had gone to my head.
‘So you're gonna indict Trump on anything you can, just to make sure he’s behind bars in ’24 ? You're pissed. The bad part of America went for him and you still haven’t forgiven them. You want to shut down the disinformation spreaders, cancel the career of anybody with awkward opinions. You want Trump’s scalp.
America wants to know
‘Trump revealed how the businessman thinks, giving us the full Monty inside a corporate exec’s mental steeplechase : enter, exploit, change horses, slide down the haunted shoot, exit, no excuses, next! Africa, Trump says, that's a great place, I know a lot of people going over there to make deals. Deforestation, beauty contests and military bases to follow. The Confidence Man par excellence. I like chaos,’ I told him. ‘People should question everything. Trump is chaos theory in action. Meanwhile you doofuses twist yourselves into contortions to prove that having a senile president has its advantages. Unless of course you work for the NSA, in which case you want to wheedle my full name out of me if you don’t have it already.’ I was on a tear. Maybe the wine wasn’t so bad.
‘Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden, it's perfect music, a weird, haunted, discordant Symphonie Fantastique, with the tympani of the Apocalypse entering at the end. Just let Trump back in,’ I cajoled him… ‘How bad could it be ? What if D.C. burned and the country cheered ?’ The expression on his face made me think I’d insulted the Madonna.
He was gripping his shot glass a little too tightly. Maybe I was wrong but I thought he was about to douse me with the contents. ‘Don’t throw that drink at me. You hate me and I hate you. I can live with that. You’re winning after all.’
‘I just can’t figure why you like Trump so much,’ he rasped, letting his claw rest on the bartop.
‘Didn’t say I did.’
‘Well then, what’s your plan, really ?’
What the fucken fuckety fuck
‘I don't have a plan and neither do you. We’re just biting our nails up here in the mezz. I'm one of the Great Unwashed. Throw in coward too if you want, since I prefer to observe my country’s shambolic jitterings from a reasonable distance.’ I glanced at the planes taxiing on the runway. ‘I miss it,’ I confessed. ‘A little. America is an exuberant drunk who’s always putting his keys in other people’s doors and when the neighbor gets up to complain, wants to know what the fucken fuckety fuck they’re doing in his place.’
‘You're certainly not a patriot.’ I let him score his point. I could have launched a brief lecture on cultural benefits accruing from the fall of the western Roman empire but took pity and sued for peace.
‘You're a decent guy. You want the best for the country,’ I said patiently. ‘But I've had this conversation over and over again since the 80s. We’re trapped in an Eternal Return and it gives me the willies. And since I'm not your idea of a good American, let’s drop it. What do you do in real life ?’ Evidently the wrong thing to ask. His companions stood up. Time to catch that flight back to Dulles.
They passed me on their way out, bellowing like jubilant elephants who’d grabbed a load of sugar cane off the back of the truck. The friend look had drained from my partner’s face. See ya Russian ass-et, he hissed as he strolled out of the bar overlooking a runway that stretched to a horizon lost in late summer haze.
The Hungarian Peace Conference, Budapest, end of August-first days of September, 2023.
Memory is a tricky business : I’m sure I gave myself a few too many good lines... but things went down more or less as related, if less intelligibly. Hungarian wine will do that to you !
Before you come in with guns blazing, I'm not a Trump aficionado nor a Bannon acolyte... If I could I'd put Kennedy's head back where it was in the first place. But that and a million other things, We Cannot Have. So where do we go from here ?
Finally. Something having to do with US politics worth reading! Thanks. G.