ALICE, THE MAD HATTER AND OUR ELECTION

Alice had gotten into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the way things to happen, and it seemed quite dull and stupid for things to go on in the common way. ~  C.L. Dodgson  

Alice’s expectations about strange, abnormal out-of-the-way things happening have indeed been realized for all too long right now, not just 156 years ago. For her and us, the normal, common way of things has become quite endangered for all things political, especially with our upcoming election.

I decided to read C.L. Dodgson’s (aka, Lewis Carroll) famous childhood fantasy after trekking through all 85 essays that comprise The Federalist Papers. These treatises were resolutely written in 1787-88 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay – under the pseudonymous name "Publius." The papers were created to promote the ratification of the US Constitution and originally appeared in several New York City newspapers. They realized this goal.

On June 21, 1788, the proposed Constitution was ratified by the Congress. The newly-constituted citizens began organizing our then-radical form of democracy in the following months. As they say, the rest is history. And it’s being challenged as never before.

My attempt at digesting the Federalist papers has been both absorbing and weighty. As a fictional balm, I decided next to read Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Lewis Carroll’s 1864 story is the original, handwritten account that proceeded his more famous Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland[1] the following year. In Wonderland, Carroll added the now-legendary episodes when Alice meets the Cheshire Cat and partakes in the Mad Tea-Party along with the Hatter and his buddies the March Hare and Dormouse. It was after Carroll’s time that his Hatter became known as the Mad Hatter. Nevertheless, the phrase "mad as a hatter" was common when he was writing.

The Mad Hatter

By John Tenniel in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Reading “Alice” has turned out to be a prophetic choice. I’ve found several similarities in Alice’s adventures to our current, woebegone political situation. It’s as if all of us has fallen into another rabbit hole. I fervently hope it will be hare today, gone tomorrow. But not quite yet; with any luck and considerable effort we’ll feel better in 21 days. Like Wonderland, at this point it just gets curiouser and curiouser here.

In Wonderland the Mad Hatter utters preposterous statements, is always fecklessly changing his mind and causes Alice unyielding distress. Does this behavior remind you of someone all too familiar now in our public lives?

The severe Queen of Hearts sentences the Mad Hatter to death for “murdering the Time,” who is a character in the story. Yet he manages to escape, retaining his head. However, in retribution Wonderland’s Mad Hatter is destined to be forever stuck at tea-time.

The Queen of Hearts hasn’t yet made a regal pronouncement regarding our Mad Hatter-in-chief. His doctors proscribed drugs including powerful steroids, antivirals and monoclonal antibodies to manage his alleged covid-19 infection. These drugs may be affecting his behavior, although that’s difficult to ascertain since his usual conduct is so abnormal and erratic.

Like Alice’s Mad Hatter, our Mad Hatter is stuck in time. He’s forever re-living Wednesday, November 9, 2016, after unexpectedly winning the election the day before. Does he remember the past eight months of our devastating coronavirus pandemic, the 31.4% crash of the US second-quarter GDP, or the 14.7% unemployment rate in April? Nope. He’s 2016 all the time.

At the same time that our Mad Hatter now pleads for votes at large-scale public, potential super-spreader events, big business lobbyists also have been busy. With his certain support, they have been trolling the halls of Congress begging for additional aid money with gold-plated tin cups in hand. Are these lobbyists the Knaves of Hearts? Perhaps.

This includes the largest airlines that have taxied up to Congresspeople telling them that the $25 billion bailout they received just six months ago isn’t nearly enough. American and United, two of the four largest airlines which account for a startling 70% of all US flights[2], have been threatening to lay off at least 35,000 of their employees unless they get a lot more taxpayers’ dough to keep flying.

Movie theater owners, who don’t want to be left out of the second round of the covid-bailout sweepstakes, are also pleading for money. Less than 25% of US movie theaters were open in August because producers halted distribution of their movies and folks remain wholly-reticent to be entertained eating stale popcorn inside their theaters. The movie theater owners have gone six months without revenues, and on Capitol Hill ominously predict their big, dark screens foretell a disastrous ending for 70% of them – perhaps more fictional than factual –without a government bailout.

Unlike the airline or movie theater industries, where a trifling number of giant firms control a disproportionate amount of industry business, the more than 30 million small businesses are customarily less able or adept at receiving government aid. They usually fly way under the capitol’s political radar, except during election-time when every elected official professes love for her or his local, small business. And it’s certainly election-time; money has flown their way.

A total of $659 billion was authorized in the first two rounds of the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) this past Spring that was designed to assist small businesses. The PPP has provided potentially-forgivable loans to businesses for payment of their workers’ salaries. PPP beneficiaries include some not-so-small firms like the Fiesta Restaurant Group which has over 10,000 employees. So it goes…

US small businesses account for about 47% of our workforce and still face big challenges. According to Yelp data, about 98,000 small businesses have permanently closed so far due to the coronavirus. These shuttered businesses employed about 240,000 people. Sadly, small business closures are increasing.

That’s almost seven times as many workers as American and United airlines are threatening to dismiss. Does nearly a quarter million more unemployed workers open up the Senate Republicans’ paltry public purses? Not at all. Alice, and maybe even the Queen of Hearts, would be tormented at such a prospect. Nancy certainly is. Mitch is not.

I hope we provide our own Mad Hatter-in-chief with an unignorably-convincing electoral defeat, which he might deem worse than perpetual tea-time or even death. This prospect for defeat rests on Democrat voters not taking the favorable poll results as a suggestion they don’t really need to cast a ballot, since the election is superficially already “in the bag.”

The vastly over-played, now daily pre-election poll results are at best only incomplete, momentary indicators of how some group of possibly actual voters are feeling. Polls do not count of real ballots. Mistakenly deciding not to vote – especially when the Repubs are clearly focused on making Dem voting as difficult as possible – could lead to another tragic, and likely more devastating Electoral College result.

The Dems’ mantra should remain: we need each and every Dem voter to cast a ballot to halt our self-righteous Mad Hatter in his tracks. Alice would most-assuredly agree.

 

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[1] After being first published in 1865, Alice in Wonderland has never been out of print. It has been translated into at least 97 languages, according to Wikipedia.

[2] The other two of the “big four” airlines are Delta and Southwest. 

ALICE LIDDELL AND OUR POLITICAL FANTASY

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll 

Even in his most imaginative early mornings it’s impossible to presume that Charles L. Dodgson – more widely known by his pen-name, Lewis Carroll – would have believed the 2016 Presidential race would be featuring an eccentric 74-year old democratic socialist (formerly just a socialist, who in 1988 honeymooned in the USSR) and a 69-year old bizarre billionaire Republican (and a former Democrat).

In November 1864 Lewis Carroll wrote his manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.[1] He gave it to Alice Liddell – the daughter of a colleague, and the protagonist of his manuscript – as “A Christmas gift to a dear child in memory of a summary day.” He later expanded the manuscript and it was published in 1865 as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Although the original book initially received tepid reviews, it quickly gained popularity. Carroll himself drew the original manuscript’s illustrations. The published book’s illustrations, drawn by John Tenniel, were more favorably reviewed than Carroll’s story. Attesting to its fame, the book has never been out of print.

After re-reading the manuscript, I am persuaded that our current presidential campaign has more in common with Alice’s adventures than I imagined. Hence this blog ties several aspects of the candidates’ continuing crusades towards Washington, DC with that long-ago adventure. I’ve introduced quotes from Carroll’s manuscript to guide the discussion.

               “Curiouser and curiouser…” (p. 11, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground)

As more time passes, the stranger these campaigns become. After an extended political nap, populism appears firmly resurrected for several of the presidential aspirants. The Trump and Sanders campaigns both offer considerable populist ingredients, including Mr. Trump’s “beautiful wall” that will allegedly seal the US-Mexico border and Sen. Sanders’ fierce criticism of Wall Street and CEOs.

For fervent populists, it’s been a long time coming. Some historians consider the 7th President of the US – Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) – to have been the last elected populist president, with his emphasis against entrenched political and economic interests together with his focus on the wellbeing of “common people.” Jackson’s presidency has been highly ranked (#8 overall) by both liberal and conservative reviewers.

“For you see, so many out-of-the-way things [meaning very unusual things, like falling down a rabbit hole] had happened today, that Alice began to think very few things indeed were really impossible.” (p. 7)

At this point political soothsayers have had to apologize several times for their faulty pronouncements of Sen. Sanders’ and Mr. Trump’s imminent demise. Instead, Sen. Sanders’ popularity continues to rise and Mr. Trump’s domination remains unyielding in the Democratic and Republican races, respectively. Not so ago these oracles wrote-off both these candidates as improbable at best. Despite the sages’ expectations, neither populist has fallen by the campaign wayside yet, much to the consternation of the political “establishment” in both parties. The fantasies propounded by Sen. Sanders and Mr. Trump have instead seized the hearts and minds of voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and beyond. Impossible; no longer.

Make no mistake; many of the policies proposed by Sen. Sanders and Mr. Trump are fantasies. Sen. Sanders’ centerpiece desire to reduce income inequality, however well-intentioned, rests on actions that have little if any hope of becoming law. For example, as I mentioned before, his “free college” plan certainly sounds enticing to the young voters he’s been targeting, but if implemented (a highly unlikely prospect) ultimately will cause much letdown and disappointment. As high-school graduates overwhelm public colleges and universities with their tuition-free applications, even assuming state governments have provided their universities (especially in the 31 states that have Republican governors) with the $750 billion needed to eliminate tuition revenue, it will be a long time before these colleges are able to increase their capacity to meaningfully educate the myriad of new applicants. And what happens to the value of higher education when the supply of BA degree-holders has increased significantly?

Sen. Sanders’ distain for market-based government programs – even government-subsidized plans like student loans and low-income medical policies – will require huge increases in government funding. Economists have estimated these policies may require an additional $18 trillion in new spending, an amount equal to this year’s entire GDP. These increases will necessitate higher federal taxes. Sen. Sanders’ stump speech always mentions increasing taxes on the 1%; he doesn’t say taxes will also need to be raised for many more folks way below the 1%. More than 80% of his proposed tax increases to pay for his single-payer health plan will come from new broad-based income and payroll taxes that would apply to nearly all workers, not just the rich and wealthy. Sen. Sanders’ revolution would not only expand the role of the federal government and provide benefits to many more citizens; it would revolutionize our tax system by increasing taxes for most people. Given our current political environment, that prospect is beyond any realistic hope of implementation. This implausible possibility hasn’t at all reduced his growing appeal. Given Sen. Sanders’ increasing popularity, very few things now seem impossible, just like Alice thought long ago in wonderland.

               “Off with their heads!” said the Queen to her Knave. (p. 73)

Mr. Trump has loudly and zealously espoused many radical policies that contravene existing programs, including placing punitive tariffs on China’s exports to the US, rapidly deporting 11 million Hispanic residents, building the “beautiful wall,” pre-emptively striking North Korea and walking away from NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada). Explanations remain absent from the Trump campaign about exactly how such policies would benefit this country and its citizens, or “make our country great again.” There seems little doubt that Mr. Trump’s populist base would have little compunction about having heads of the “establishment” roll off their perches.

               “You’re enough to try the patience of an oyster.” (p. 30)

Unlike Mr. Trump and Sen. Sanders, their benighted competitors have not yet figured out how to gain the acceptance and confidence of many potential voters. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Hillary Clinton must be exasperated with their unsuccessful efforts to date. Even though they are not oysters, their patience continues to be severely tested.

“That’s very curious!” Alice thought, “But everything’s curious today.” “I know something interesting is sure to happen.” (pp. 66 and 35)

First confirmation of Einstein’s precept called gravity waves was publicized on Feb 11, 2 days after the New Hampshire primary. This may not be a coincidence. These waves have been spinning around the political firmament for months, and have reached a crescendo following the Feb 9 primary vote. Political gravity waves (PGWs) are being created by the ever-nearer circling of the 2 most-prominent political stars, Bernie16 and Donald16 in an alternative galaxy. If their event horizons ever meet, be prepared. Here’s what the possible collision of these 2 stars and the subsequent PGWs, reflecting ripples in the fabric of political space-time, may sound like. As a good friend noted, maybe that’s the sound of the unrealistic colliding with the untenable.

Alice simply woke up from her dreamed adventures in wonderland, but we may need to fasten your seat belts.  

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[1] I have a copy of this 91-page manuscript. The Limited Editions Club of New York published Carroll’s hand-written manuscript in 1964 (100 years after it was created), when my father was a member of the club. This manuscript is copyright by University Microfilms, Inc. 1964.