Day 413…
It’s been seven months since Michael and I were last up here in Provincetown. Seven months of living at home in New York and not going anywhere much beyond the city limits. I am hard pressed to remember when the last time was that I have gone that long without going somewhere else.
Whenever it was, it was because I was working on a show. Even then, I would have taken a vacation or possibly taken a weekend off to do something else, somewhere else, while I was ostensibly living in the city. Seven months straight through without a break? It’s been decades since I’ve done that, if ever, I think.
The place where we stay when we are up here on the Cape isn’t fancy but it’s comfortable. It’s just across the street from the bay which we can see from the small, front patio. We have stayed here, now, enough times, that it feels a bit like just another home. We bring a bunch of kitchen stuff and other personal things up with us, so there are plenty of familiar objects lying around. While Michael and I are more than used to being in limited space together, in the long run, this would be just a bit too limited for us to be here indefinitely. For a week, though, it’s home.
During the summer, of course, we would go to the beach which we certainly don’t do back in the city. Now it’s too cold to do anything more outside than take a good walk. We end up doing here what we’d be doing at home. All of this is to say that being up here doesn’t feel like going on a vacation. It feels more like we are just living our regular lives in another physical place.
I say all of that and I am somewhat amazed. I cannot imagine feeling this way a year ago. I would have been clawing at the doors of our New York apartment after seven months. Up here, I would have planned places for us to go and see every day. I look back and I know I used to move at that speed and, in fact, needed to move at that speed, but now I can’t imagine operating that way at all.
President Biden addressed Congress last night. Talk about the difference a year makes. For about an hour, he coherently and forcefully outlined the issues facing our country and the plans that he has to implement them.
It’s hard to look at the speeches, and I use the word loosely, from his predecessor and believe that that is what we had to listen to for four years. Rambling and incoherent without any sort of legislative agenda beyond deregulating everything he could so as to help his wealthy friends, we were all fed a steady diet of nonsense and lies and, often, actual gibberish.
President Biden’s approval ratings are higher than the former President’s ever were, but if you only poll Republicans, they are rock bottom. If you poll Republicans about what he has actually done, though, those numbers go much higher. Much higher. They end up contributing to extremely favorable approval ratings for President Biden across the boards. Republicans seem not to like the guy, himself, maybe because, after all, he beat their guy, but they certainly seem to like what he’s doing.
The GOP rebuttal to the most ambitious agenda that we have heard in an entire generation last night, was given by Senator Tim Scott. It contained nothing substantive at all that would offer an alternative to anything the Democrats are proposing. It was cringingly uncomfortable to watch him try to support his party. In the end, all he could really come up with was a general warning to us all against Big Government.
Afterwards, in a discussion among commentators, Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post made a very interesting observation.
During the 1960’s and 1970’s the Civil Rights movement led to a push to desegregate schools and districts. There was a lot of forward movement in terms of regulations to protect the environment. It was a time, in general, of progressive social reforms. All of those movements and other social causes had an enormous amount of energy behind them, and advances were made. Even Presidents from the other side of the aisle had to acknowledge that most people wanted some social reform so even though they might have been against it, they were forced into making some. Even under Republican leadership there were a lot of Big Government programs. By the time we got to Jimmy Carter, however, people had become somewhat weary of it all. Carter was a kind, honest man, but he was out of his element in Washington and lacked the skill to push legislation through the two Houses. When it came time for his reelection, people wanted someone to take charge.
Ronald Reagan handily beat Carter in 1980 by concentrating purely on finance and the Republican ideal of minimizing government. He didn’t care about social reform. Trickle-down economics was the thing that was going to save the country. He managed to swing the pendulum in the complete opposite direction for an entire generation. The trend continued throughout his Presidency and then through the two Bush’s before landing with our last President. Presidents Clinton and Obama spent much of their Presidencies fighting Republican dominance and often failing to push through legislation because of it.
The overall swings are not smooth arcs. Whether the trend is heading towards Big Government or away from it, there are interruptions over the decades as candidates from the other side manage to get elected. Even so, the real power seems to reside with one party for a much longer period of time than the actual Presidential terms would have you think. Look at how the former Republican Senate Majority Leader was able to obstruct almost everything President Obama tried to do. Republicans were able to hold onto a great amount of their power even during the last few Democratic terms.
Complete changes in direction require a major player. As much as I admire President Obama, I don’t think that he was that. We are only 100 days into Joe Biden’s Presidency, but he very well may be the one that can change the direction of our country, profoundly.
It is starting to appear that our former President was, in some ways, the Republican version of Jimmy Carter. Despite extolling the Republican talking points, he was almost completely ineffective. He was inexperienced in the ways of Washington and couldn’t maneuver through its halls. Taking full advantage of the vacuum he left behind, President Biden is doing much the same thing that Regan did forty years ago in Carter’s wake. His speech tonight made no apologies for Big Government. He embraced it. Look what government can do for you he kept saying. He outlined social programs that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. $15 minimum wage? There were gasps.
His jobs program is solidly aimed at the working class whom Reagan and his successors largely left behind and ignored. Still locked in the partisan mindset of the election, Republican citizens across the country may not like Joseph R. Biden, but they sure seem to be wholeheartedly behind his socialist Big Government programs. He may actually be able to shove the pendulum back the other way.
It is interesting to have been alive long enough to witness these monumental pendulum swings. Until Mr. Robinson made the observation, I hadn’t looked at our history from quite that perspective. It may not happen that the Democrats do change things, but the Republicans are certainly scrambling to try and find some traction to prevent it. They aren’t finding it.
The FBI raided Rudy Giuliani’s office in New York yesterday and seized his phones and computers. How remarkable is it that Rudy Giuliani, who was once the Mayor of New York and who was actually once admired by many, has fallen this far?
Clearly there has been a change in leadership. Given all that he did for the former President, law enforcement would have certainly raided his home long before this but they were prevented from doing that by former Attorney General Bill Barr. Without that obstruction from the top, now, the FBI was free to move. We are now likely to see many of the President’s circle finally being able to be fully investigated. Some of these investigations are going to lead back to the former President, himself.
At least 400 people who participated in the January 6 insurrection have been charged with crimes. The Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland looks as if it is going to be nothing if not thorough. I can only imagine that everyone in the last Administrations is desperately searching for excuses and alibis.
It’s meant to drizzle all day today up here. We only have today left and then we will head back to our real home tomorrow. I’ve been rewired enough, it seems, that I am looking forward to getting out for a walk regardless. I have work to do on a variety of different projects - some of it unpaid and some of it on projects that may actually result in some income.
I never really understood why people returned to the same place for a vacation time and time again. I always wanted to go somewhere new. Spending the last seven months in New York City has driven me to find places and experience the city on a level that I never could have imagined. It’s the same being up here. I am getting to know my way around. I finally understand where the Stop & Shop is in relation to the rest of the town without having to look at a map to get there. We are acquainted, now, with several people up here. There are people that we run into that we can chat with.
I am sure that many people would find that a normal and expected way to live. Until this year, I wasn’t one of them. Working in theatre turns a lot of us into nomads. Nomadland, the film that just won the Oscar, truly resonated for me because of that. Last year, though, I think I would have made the same choice that Frances McDormand’s character made. This year? I don’t think I would. I’ll leave you to watch the film and see what that choice is.
One of the gigs I may have coming up would take me to another city for a month and a half. I’m excited for it to actually happen. I more excited about the chance to be back in the room with many members of my extended theatre family than I am about being in another place. Like coming up here to Provincetown, it will be more like trading one home for another, briefly, than anything else. Rather than taking the work, itself, for granted and focusing on everything else, I’m looking forward to actually collaborating and creating something with my friends and colleagues.
In some regards keeping all of us away from what we do for a year, together, has been life-changing. We have had to look inward. We have had to examine how we were living our lives. George Floyd lost his life at the perfect moment in history for that to truly make a difference. Each time we all go back and re-open the discussion, the exploration goes just a little bit deeper and we are finding more and more that we need to fix.
As a country, we have been given a solid, protracted look into the machinery that runs most of what we do. We have seen that much of it is outdated and broken down - especially down at the level where most Americans live.
What President Biden proposed last night was a plan to rebuild that machinery - not just the part of it that caters to the top 1%, but all of it. After more than a year of being able to look at what is wrong, we are all in a position to see that that is long overdue. Last night, President Biden, among many other things, appealed to the transgendered youth of the United States and specifically said to them, “Your President has your back.” He reached out to ALL of us last night. As he spoke, the two most powerful women in the country stood behind and above him and applauded.
We haven’t seen or heard anything like that before. Ever. From anyone. His aim is to make this country a place where all of us are welcome. A place where all of us can work and be fairly paid. A place where all of us have somewhere that is ours that we can truly enjoy and appreciate. A place where all of us can go out for a walk in the rain and know that we will be coming home at the end of it.
Idealism? Sure. But why not aim for that.
And hope.
As always, beautiful perspective
Jx
Beautiful