The Space Plesiosaur

There is one thing that Trump generally doesn’t lie about: his emotions – namely the ones happening in the immediate moment.  I think that’s why people think he “tells it like it is” and “isn’t PC.”  Politicians, whether they’re honest about what they’re doing or not, pretty much across the board lie about how they’re feeling, or at least put on an act.   Trump doesn’t.

In politics, there is a proper way to show emotions – we never see Obama get angry, and Hillary Clinton is always smiling, frowning, and laughing at the right moments to the appropriate things.  We know she’d probably like to write an angry 3 am tweetstorm at Comey and Weiner but she reels that instinct in.  In public, she is appropriately disappointed at the outcome of the election.  

When a politician’s veneer cracks and real emotions seep into the constructed ones, the result is a kind of hybrid emotion that people can’t read, which makes us uncomfortable. Think of that moment when Clinton noticed the balloons drop.

Trump doesn’t really have a veneer, because he doesn’t seem to think that certain emotions are indecorous.  I think it makes people simultaneously trust him more and feel validated about some of their own baser instincts.  He makes it seem like it’s ok to feel vindictive if you appear to be losing, it’s ok to be happy when you get a compliment (even if it’s from a racist asshat), it’s ok to brag about your wealth.  It’s ok be violently angry, even if it’s misdirected at innocent people.

Our current culture doesn’t really trust people who seem to be feeling exactly as they’re supposed to be all the time.  There’s a reason that Jennifer Lawrence is America’s Sweetheart right now and perfect Anne Hathaway isn’t – we don’t have patience for filters, and in some ways have forgotten that sometimes they exist for a good reason.

To be clear, I admire and understand Clinton’s emotional restraint, and I think Trump DOES have a filter, but it’s the same kind that Kim Kardashian has – a filter that makes literally everything look unplanned and emotionally authentic, à la reality TV.  It turned out to be an effective way to keep people watching and make them feel like he was a personal friend.

I think what people will start to realize, and what we can start to point out, is that while Trump tells it like it is with regards to current emotional state, he doesn’t tell it like it is with regards to what he’s doing (or even what he did in the past).   We can acknowledge that knowing how a politician is feeling most of the time is very, very refreshing, but must also contend with the fact that not knowing what a politician is doing and how they will act is very, very dangerous.  

Trump has no history in public office that we can extrapolate from, he won’t release his tax returns, and we don’t really know where and how he does his business.  He’s never outlined a concrete plan for the actual execution of what he proposes, and he doesn’t like the press bringing it up.  We know he genuinely likes Putin as a person, but what we don’t know is what they actually talk about together.  Did they conspire to win the American Election?  Is Trump in a position to make a lot of money if we start funding Russia’s wars? Is it just a bizarre bromance? We won’t know until Trump does something.  And by then we could be in a situation that endangers American and global citizens alike.

Context.

It seems almost sinister, almost calculated, the way that the arts are targeted first. “You won’t get a job,” they say, dismissively.  Sometimes, we believe them. And yet, for all their uselessness, the arts have been skillfully deployed as propaganda by authoritarian regimes all over the world.  The arts speak the language of the heart. The Arts can bolster a corrupt regime up to unprecedented heights.  

The arts can also surreptitiously dismantle it. Do authoritarian leaders realize this themselves, or do they notice a long, historical pattern of artists being a generally difficult species to subdue?

I must not tell lies.

I remember learning (during my useless Liberal Arts education) about the works of Mikhail Bulgakov, a Russian author and playwright whose work was increasingly banned for satirizing and cheekily critiquing  Soviet culture during Stalin’s reign. Enough of his work got through to his audience for his message to sink in, in part, I believe, because his talent was a big enough asset to the Soviet art scene that they were willing to overlook his transgressions at first.

Centuries earlier, Bulgakov’s hero, the French playwright Moliere, wrote plays mocking the ruling classes – always biting enough to make people think, but funny enough to keep him out of jail. Mostly.

Like a person, a good measure of a government’s sense of stability is whether or not it allows you to make fun of it.

In their most subtle forms, the arts can slink under the radar of an authoritarian regime, bending words and obscuring meaning within meaning, and slip truths like passed notes under the veil of storytelling. Truths that the oppressor tries to hide from the people.

I must not tell lies.

The arts are dangerous.  They challenge us to slowly doubt the world that has been built around us, the world that has gently wrapped itself around our minds like a blanket. Maybe this world has told us things. Things we’re complacent with. Things like:

“Everything was better in the 1950’s.”

“Protestors are just whiners.”

“The rich know best what to do with the money in our system. That’s why they must be the job creators, not you. Never you.”

“That’s locker room talk.”

“Muslims should be registered for our country’s safety.”

The seeds of doubt in these notions are anchors to our better human nature. These kinds of seeds aren’t sewn by people shouting facts and figures at us, pleading with us, arguing with us. Arguments might budge us a little, but art – art speaks the language of the heart. And art, with its million disguises and meandering truths, knows how to get there, burrowing deep until it grows.

It’s the play about the foolish king, the novel about the wise maid, the painting of a creature wrenching itself apart that keeps you up at 3 a.m., wondering how you could have been so blind.  It’s the children’s series featuring a teenage boy whose who is forced to write lines in his own blood when he dares speak out against corruption that becomes our instruction manual for how to fight for our rights.

The arts doesn’t accuse. They only invite you to be a part of the story.

I must not tell lies.

Save the arts, my friends. Someday they might be the only voice of truth you have left.

—

Ok. Ok.  The world of art won’t die if the current regime stops funding it. It will simply become the purview of the wealthy, and their children who can afford to learn it – which, frankly, is tragic. The rich man has many languages, but the language of most of his fellow men is not one of them.

We will seldom hear the voices of those who feel their full potential and can’t reach for it due to lack of time and resources.  These voices hold truths from people all around us, in every part of our society. And we can’t grow as a society until their truths permeate our blanketed minds as easily as the truths of the ones who have it easy.

And I’m no art historian, but I can think of at least one example of a time when art was driven by those with the largest bank accounts.

Gothic art
Gothic art
Even more Gothic art

(This is not an exhaustive list.  There were also cool drawings of skeletons).