A Diplomatic Dispatch from The Year of Living Dangerously
Diplomats come to develop a fine-tuned sense of changing political winds. It's a key part of their work. They closely monitor events in the country or region they're in and report the results back to Washington. Those who serve in volatile areas acquire a keen sense of oncoming turbulence or violence the same way a Nebraska farmer might sense a brewing tornado.
That reflexive fingerspitzengefühl for an approaching political storm that I developed as a diplomat has kicked in again with this president. The evidence:
“General Milley is here, who's head of Joint Chiefs of Staff, a fighter, ...and I've just put him in charge."
“The secretary of defense is here. We’re strongly looking for arrests. You have to get much tougher.”
“If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time."
“We will activate Bill Barr and we will activate him very strongly.”
"They would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen."
"I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults and the wanton destruction of property. We will end it now."
And then there was the cartoonish photo stunt of Trump holding an upside-down bible in front of a damaged church issuing threats to his fellow citizens.
Adding fuel to the fire is an inept secretary of defense bloviating, “We need to dominate the battle space, the quicker this dissipates and we can get back to the right normal.” Right normal?
And a clownish Joint Chiefs chairman strutting about Lafayette Park in battle fatigues and jiggling jowls.
Deja vu carries me back to places where this sort of thing is commonplace if not normal. My training tells me to quickly write it up with a quick and dirty analysis and dash it off to Washington. Only, now it's Washington that burns.
There's a bad moon rising in this country. Our democracy is endangered. Our society is fraying at the seams. We're becoming Weimar America, Americans battling Americans.
I've seen this movie before, but not here, having lived through coups d’état, guerrilla attacks, kidnappings, terrorist attacks and fatwas to assassinate American diplomats. In almost all cases, there were warning signs of oncoming violence - like those volatile Nebraska wind storms. Something doesn't seem right. Locals are cringing, animals fidget, cars are racing through the streets, sound of gunfire.
For my money (speaking of movies), the film that best portrays this gathering storm tension is The Year of Living Dangerously. A slow boil tension builds as unseen forces maneuver in 1965 Jakarta in the lead-up to the violent coup that ousted Sukarno. The viewer can almost sweat along with the protagonists, Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver, amid the sweltering tropical heat and raw suspense. Something's about to break and it ain't good. Neither the foreign journalists nor diplomats have a firm grasp on what's happening, which makes the suspense that much more taut.
In my report to headquarters, I would describe political dysfunction, a long-building social tension engulfing politicians, and now average citizens. I would portray a head of state who is as dangerous as he is incompetent, at war with his own government, ruling by nepotism, patronage and corruption, and likely mentally deranged. I would lay out a leadership style marked by bluff, bluster, bullying and bullshit. I would point out that the president's Senate cohort is little more than a "political brothel," as coined by Tom Friedman. The growing street battles, I would state, are a sign that the bill for dysfunction and misrule is now coming due. I would conclude that the only hope for this country not plunging into complete disarray is the election of a wise old political veteran in the fall. But even then, the likelihood that the desperate incumbent will seek to pull off a defacto coup cannot be ruled out. Should that happen, then expect global consequences.
But I'm not drafting a diplomatic dispatch from a foreign country. I'm writing this blog post in my own nation, a mere citizen who, like most, is at a loss to explain the brewing storm at the heart of our society. All we can do is to pay heed to The Year of Living Dangerously's mesmerizing character, the prescient dwarf, Billy Kwan:
"Don't think about the major issues. You do what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your light to the sum of all light."