By Chris Satullo
Sometimes, beholding the impassioned but often puerile pageant of American society and politics, I wonder.
I wonder whether. I wonder how. I wonder why. I wonder at.
Here are some of the topics of wonder that haunt my brain:
- I wonder how many of the Americans who now declare that they “stand with Ukraine,” chant Volodymyr Zelensky’s praises and blast Joe Biden for not being Clint Eastwood-y enough with Vladimir Putin can recall what Donald Trump’s first impeachment was about. Reminder: It was about his blatant betrayal of Ukraine’s needs and America’s interests as he tried to extort Zelensky to dig up some mythical dirt on Biden’s son. As I recall, many of those folks now knocking Biden for not being true to the Yellow and Blue didn’t give a tinker’s damn about Ukraine or Zelensky back then. They were too busy making excuses for Donald J. Corleone after he basically told the newly elected Zelensky, “Nice little country you have here; be a shame if something happened to it.”
- I wonder whether the bubbled lefty activists and academics who primly ordered the rest of us to begin using their “non-binary” coinage Latinx to refer to Hispanics have let the results of a recent poll sink in. In a survey of actual flesh-and-blood Hispanics, a whopping 2 percent told pollsters they prefer to be called Latinx. A healthy 40 percent said the term bothers or outright offends them. Their preferred word, by a wide margin? Hispanic. I wonder, grimly, how many votes this all-too-typical semantic nonsense cost Democrats in the last election and, even worse, how many more it will squander for the Dems in November. I wonder, as well, if this fiasco will help the lefty Twitterati get a clue. Actually, I don’t wonder that. I know it won’t. They’ll double down on the nonsense, as usual, convinced of their superior righteousness.
- I wonder how a Lakers team with both LeBron James (the clear GOAT, IMHO) and Anthony Davis managed to miss not just the NBA playoffs but even its sad little “play-in tournament.”
- I wonder what, in the name of all that’s holy, administrators at the school where I sometimes teach, Penn, were thinking in how they dealt with the case of Mackenzie Fierceton. Fierceton is a smart, plucky young woman who emancipated herself legally from an abusive family of origin and applied to Penn as a FGLI – first generation, low-income student. She was told by some at Penn that she qualified for the category, since she had little income and no legal guardians who were college grads. She excelled on campus, earned a master’s in social work as well as a Rhodes Scholarship. Then someone dropped a dime to Penn, claiming Fierceton was a fraudulent FGLI, because her family of origin had been affluent. The Rhodes folks asked Penn folks: What’s up here? Instead of defending this young woman, they put the prosecutorial screws to her, eventually stripping her of her masters, fining her and costing her the Rhodes. It was an appalling performance, which thankfully has spawned a superb New Yorker Magazine investigation and well-attended campus protests. Penn has now withdrawn the fine and released the hold on her master’s degree. What an unnecessary fiasco.
- I wonder at people who were apparently smart enough at business to have made huge piles of dough being so gullible as to give at least one of their piles to overreaching, self-deluding B.S. talkers like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos and Adam Neumann of WeWork.
- I wonder at climate change scolds who will slap your wrist for wasting paper or eating beef, then hop on a plane for a vacation on the Pacific Rim. (Hint: Transoceanic travel packs quite a carbon footprint wallop.) Do not misunderstand me: Saving paper or substituting plant-based fake beef (it makes a fine burger) are the right things to do. It’s the self-righteous hypocrisy that gets me.
- I wonder how many Trump voters still try to teach their children sportsmanship using the venerable phrase “No one likes a sore loser.” That is one truism that was actually true, at least until their hero waddle-strutted onto the national stage in his red hat. Why is it that people who would not tolerate such tantrums from their own kids not only tolerate, but cheer on Trump’s endless, lie-choked, violence-fueling hissy fit over his not-at-all-close thrashing in the 2020 election. (I remind us once again: Trump lost Pennsylvania alone by more votes than the combined total of votes by which he won the crucial states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and PA in 2016.)
- I wonder at how many people thought it desperately important that they publicly unburden themselves of their hot take on Will Smith’s slap of Chris Rock. My simple, homely opinion: I wish it had not happened and have nothing else to add.
- I wonder at how little credit Joe Biden gets for the American economy adding 6.6 million jobs in his first year in office, an all-time record and more than three times the number from Trump’s first year. I know, I know: The pandemic effect pads the number…and…inflation!…and the stock market slump! (I feel that pinch, too.) Still, the tax cuts favored by Republicans, and always justified by the phony mantra of jobs, jobs, jobs, never (NEVER) have produced job gains such as those that Biden’s willingness to invest in people and infrastructure has.
And finally, a word or two on inflation: An 8.5 percent inflation rate is surely concerning – but let’s recognize that the number is also padded somewhat by being a comparison with the trough of the pandemic recession. Still, while many people are getting raises due to a high-employment economy, not many are getting raises big enough to offset cost increases that steep. There’s a loss of buying power for many, for sure.
But be aware that the big dogs of American capitalism will still be raising alarms about inflation even if the rate drops this summer to half its current figure. Why? Because they lent you, the average American, money to buy your home, your car, your new living room set at the low, low interest rates of 2018, 2019 etc. Now you get to pay them back with the cheaper dollar of 2022, which is a hidden good deal for you and something that annoys the heck out of the lenders.
So take their future howls of concern with a grain of salt; they’ll just be agitating for a return to the federal policies that cut their taxes and swelled their wealth, while offering job insecurity and wealth stagnation to the mass of Americans.
—
Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia