My Blog Week: November 15 to November 21

A Word on the Week

More Flounce to the Ounce

Earlier in the Trump presidency, commentators used to say, “The one thing about Trump is that he’s never boring.”

Well. These final months’ flailings (and projected flailings) remind me of combing fleas off my cats. Always one or two more crawling back. (I’m trying to control them organically, but may have use a chemical treatment.) The lack of anything resembling working at a job ought to give pause to Republiclowns still able to lash out lip service while darting away from reporters. So your candidate didn’t win, but your candidate is the very best of candidates…what’s preventing him from making his glory a reproof to his enemies? Couldn’t his leadership be so noble, so courageous, so wise, so forbearing, that his detractors would feel shamed and regretful as he lifts America above racial divisions, above the pandemic, then gracefully leaves that stage?

Of course not, but his supporters may as well count themselves idiots, with no eyes to discern leadership; otherwise explain why grudge-golfing, pouting and watching TV doesn’t make Trump a leader the country can well do without.

Another of this week’s emergences has been a troll movement, against forgiveness of student loans. Loans are a financial product, they can be bought and sold, so possibly interests are at work. It may also be a political attempt to set people against each other. But the argument that paying off a loan is “being responsible”, is weak. Yes, honoring an agreement you signed to, paying back what you borrowed—on the terms you accepted, however odious—is responsible behavior. The error here should be easy to spot.

Take a test case…which is the more honorable way of dealing? You work from home. You need to attend a colleague’s funeral, so you buy a black pantsuit, a thing you don’t expect to wear again (within the window of its fitting you). So after the funeral, you send it back, and claim a refund. Or, you ask your niece, soon to graduate from college, if she would like to have it for interviews. Or you donate it to a charity that supplies work clothes for low-income women… 

We know wardrobing isn’t right. We know that when you buy something on sale for $29.99, you don’t get twenty dollars “back” from the store if you spot it on clearance for $9.99. We know we choose rightly (shouldering our burdens, not throwing temper tantrums) in such decisions all the time, and always have. Good work and congratulations if you paid off your student loan. Your (everyone’s) responsible and honorable commitment was to do the thing agreed to. Others get other deals, and are expected to honor those—nothing new. You have always lived in a society in which there are hundreds of deals, and few get exactly the same one. Let’s be happy when another generation gets a break, and not apply weird formulas that make their break an unfairness to their elders.