The Gift of Silence

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Today’s New York Times gave us a great gift for the holidays. The front page of the print edition had not a single story—nor a single headline—about Trump. The closest thing was in the lower left-hand corner: a bit about AG Bill Barr distancing himself from Trump while on the way out the door.

Even that story was only indirectly about Trump. It had to mention his lies to explain why Barr’s refusal to endorse them with formal, special-counsel investigations was newsworthy. Apparently, Trump’s made-up conspiracies now merit front-page coverage only as reflected in the words and acts of people deemed sane. That Bill Barr leads the pack of those people is a measure of just how low we’ve sunk.

The welcome vacuum of Trump’s nonsense sucked in real news. There were stories about the coming relief checks, misnamed “stimulus,” their political implications and fraught history, the virus’ mutation, Kelly Loeffler’s history as an entitled white workaholic and über-opportunist in both business and politics, and a curious series of online thefts of literary manuscripts.

This also was a great gift. To me, it felt like relief from a nagging headache or chronic pain. (For many months, I have only scanned, not read, the front page, ignoring worthless “news” about Trump.)

Once the initial shock of returning normalcy fades, you hardly notice it. To healthy people, the absence of pain is unremarkable. But it can be noteworthy nevertheless.

Now we can all feel the relief. The steady drumbeat of lies, falsehoods, insults, made-up conspiracies, taunts, broadsides, nicknames and epithets is gone. So are the rants and Tweets with ALL-CAPS nonsense. The Walter Winchell who has dominated our national speech and thought for five long years is off the stage he constructed. (People of a certain age, especially, those in show business, will know who Winchell was. Those who have to Google him are blessed.)

The welcome stories about the relief bill flowed naturally into this news vacuum. Released from the endless stream of high-volume distractions, our senators had gotten got back to work. They had begun to recall the reasons why they had run for office, why they had been elected, and what their jobs are. What better way to recall than to give voters relief from the worst pandemic in a century and (as a result) the worst economic depression in over seventy years?

So I think the relief bill arose out of cause and effect. The immediate cause was not all the suffering, which has persisted for months. It was the Silence of Trump.

Before that Silence, our public figures were like prepubescent children hurling insults at each other on a grammar-school playground. The quick riposte and cheap hit were all. When they had even a moment to think, they devoted it to “how can I protect myself” and “what’s in it for me”? How can I turn the latest distraction and false controversy to my advantage? How can I avoid the Wrath of Trump?

Then came the Silence. Then came the rediscovery that there’s a whole world out there. It may not be entirely to the heart’s desire. This year may be the worst in our national history since the depths of the Great Depression or the early, losing years of World War II. But it’s real.

Reality is not overrated. It’s the chief concern of the sane. For four years (five, including the candidacy) our news media, our public thinkers, our pols and even our bureaucracy have been focused on the outpourings of a single self-obsessed mind. Now they can focus on reality.

It was all a bit like what we used to call “Kremlinology,” or how we now focus on the Mind of Xi. But in this rare case, it was all directed at our own government and our own supreme leader. Who knew what new raven of derangement would fly out of his mouth or pen on any day? Who knew when it would change direction in mid-flight, often by 180 degrees?

Some day, a precocious graduate student or underemployed think tank will tote up all the hours of useless labor devoted to reading the Mind of Trump, deciphering his rants, and figuring how to respond. Some day they will put a price on that labor. Including the price of lost opportunities, the sum will no no doubt rise to trillions.

But for now, it’s enough to exult quietly. We can think again. We can plan again. We can address our real problems as if we were rational people deserving our self-awarded title Homo sapiens. We can congratulate ourselves on the survival of our democracy, which still might be temporary. We can hope that the relief bill will be only the first fruit of our return to the land of the real.

That may seem a small thing. It might seem overdue and delayed. But the return to sanity is never trivial. In this most dismal of all holiday seasons for those of us still living, it’s something to hold and to cherish.

Footnote: Times’ headline writers keep calling them “stimulus” checks, despite repeated admonishment by the the Times’ own columnist Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics. Maybe the people who write headlines should read their own newspaper. God forbid they should take a course in economics.

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