Literal or Serious? (2)- True Believers

Yesterday I wrote about the statement that has been given as a way of "explaining Trump", at least from his supporters side. (See below for the whole post.) I said then:

Trump's critics take him literally while his supporters take him seriously.

The obvious inference is that when Trump speaks, don't take him literally- but take him seriously?

I talked then about how I might not often take him "literally" but I do take him very seriously. In fact, personally, I find the distinction quite difficult to understand. I believe many of his supporters do take him literally. For one, I have talked to enough of them who do believe what he says about, for example, his famous campaign line, "Lock her up!" or his recent agreeing with someone yelling out at a rally that not standing for him at the State of the Union was "treason." When he said it they believed it. Literally and very, very seriously.

But the other reason I think this is a false understanding and even a "straw man argument" is simple. Many of his staunchest supporters, his unshakeable 30% are Evangelical Fundamentalist "Christians". If there is one thing that Evangelical Fundamentalists believe beyond anything else is....

the literal, word for word interpretation of the Bible. They are well schooled in knowing when to literally believe something literally. And that is when it fits their beliefs.

• They believed that Obama was literally going to come for their guns. They took it so literally they were serious about it. 
• They believed that Obama was born in Kenya. Literally! It was not just some crazy right-wing extremist idea. When Trump said it, they believed it.
• They believed some crazy-ass conspiracy theory that Hillary was supporting some pedophile ring out of a pizzeria. Or worse, that there was some uranium-selling deal she fostered through her emails. Fox News said it, they believed it.

That is just the tip of the iceberg I am afraid. There is a very strong undercurrent like this running around the country. Trump feeds it. He himself may not believe all this shit literally, of course. But he has enough people convinced that the FBI is the "bad guys" and the our judicial system is out to get him that it is a literal understanding. Trump's critics don't take that literally. Many believe he is just throwing things out as a smoke-screen or diversion.

The real serious stuff is not what Trump says in his daily mega-tweets. It is what he wants to do to significantly change the social support structure of our country that we have been building little by little over the past 85 years and others that go back to the beginning of last century. He plays loose with facts, but who cares. He said it, it must be true.

Broadcast and cable news has had a very difficult time dealing with this. He is so good for sound bites, they all know it helps their ratings. Whether it's MSNBC yelling on the Left or Fox and others on the Right, they love the hype. The evening news shows, just as dependent on sound bites and good video, have the same issue.

Fortunately the print news has, overall, done a great job of trying to do the digging and publishing. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian have broken stories and dug into the depths they are taking this all very seriously and doing some difficult work. (Go see the movie The Post to see how the print media, esp. the Washington Post, stood up to a previous president who wanted to shut them down.)

It is time those of us on the Left do take Trump seriously and stop egging on his insane posting and statements. It is time for people like Stephen Colbert (who I enjoy at times) to stop making jokes that only serve to make him look like a buffoon we don't have to take seriously and instead focus on what he is doing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a contemporary of Henry David Thoreau once wrote

Your actions speak so loudly that we cannot hear what you are saying.

 Trump, so far, has been able to hide some of his actions by the loudness of his words. Let's move from that and see that his actions get more of the light of day they deserve.

What Hunter S. Thompson Missed in My Hometown

Back in January I had a post about the connection between my hometown, Jersey Shore, PA, and the original Gonzo Journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. He spent three weeks there in 1957 as a sports editor- his first job out of the Navy. To say he hated it would be an understatement, referring to them as a "nightmare people." (I was nine years old when Thompson lived a couple blocks up the street from my grandfather and worked at the newspaper office across the street from my Dad's pharmacy.) In a letter to a friend he had commented on many differences between Fort Walton, FL, and Jersey Shore, PA. One of these was:

There were innumerable bars in Fort Walton: there are two in Jersey Shore.

I am sure there were far more than two bars in my hometown in the late 1950s, especially if you counted the “hotel”, The Legion, the VFW, and the Elks and Moose clubs. Alcohol was not forbidden in Jersey Shore. It played a part in the area history as much as the Susquehanna River or the logging of Pine Creek. A local hero from the Prohibition Era was one Prince Farrington, arguably the greatest of American bootleggers. (Info from Lock Haven Express, 5/3/08)

Farrington, who died a year before Hunter S. Thompson arrived in town, was, to many, the Robin Hood of Central Pennsylvania. He purchased shoes and food for poor children, a roof for a local church and helped with mortgages for local families in danger of losing their homes. He is said to have hired every farmer within 50 miles of Williamsport to provide his supplies. He bought grain above market price, and then paid them more to store and hide the barrels. It’s said milkmen delivered jugs of Farrington’s product on their standard milk routes; most of the area’s law enforcement, regulatory and judicial staff were on his payroll. (LHE)

Originally from North Carolina he heard about the wonders of Central Pennsylvania from a fellow inmate during one of his youthful incarcerations. He was told of the clear and wonderful water in that part of the country. A perfect place to brew whiskey. It didn’t take long for Farrington and his family to move to the area. Loganton, in Clinton County, became home. His whiskey was considered better than the “big names” of the business. The story went that film star Roy Rogers once had a trainload of Farrington whiskey sent to Los Angeles for a Hollywood party, the barrel taps dipped in root beer to disguise the odor. It was so good that he continued to brew his own well into the early 1950s, long after Prohibition ended. After all, moonshine whiskey had no taxes on it.

The “last raid” on his stills came in 1946, but after posting bail he fled the state. He was eventually caught in Florida, served two years and released due to failing health. His daughter brought him back to Central Pennsylvania where he died in 1956. The family, it is reported, continued to make bootleg whiskey into the 1960s. (LHE) I guess Hunter S. Thompson didn’t hang around long enough to find them.

A few years later I could have helped. One of my teachers in high school was a relative of the Prince- and no one hid the fact. The legends of Prince Farrington, which was his real name, were never lost. It may even be that they have grown with time. His homestead is now an Inn along Main Street. In the 2008 article in the Lock Haven Express the good and bad of the story was recalled.

While Tammy Farrington [Prince’s great-niece] is proud of her family history, and the rogues that populate it, she says some of her relatives are a bit embarrassed by their association with one of the world’s most famous bootleggers.

And, she admits readily, there is a dark side to the family legend: Many of the Farrington clan developed serious drinking problems. In fact, she had her own past battles with alcohol.

But if the Prince Farrington legend lives on in the local imagination, it’s largely because of the folk hero’s genuine altruism, which kept food in the mouths and roofs over the heads of so many families.

One story that bears repeating involves his donation of $400 to replace the roof of a church in Sugar Valley. When parishioners finished the project at a cost of only $200, they tried to return the balance to Prince. He refused to take it, advising them to give the money to the church reverend.

The good reverend mulled over the offer from the millionaire bootlegger and finally decided to accept his largesse, saying, “God needs it more than Prince Farrington does.”

The Susquehanna Valley may have been too narrow for gonzo journalism, but it was a perfect place for bootlegging to thrive.

This was rural Pennsylvania in my formative years.

Before He Was Famous

Hunter S. Thompson was one of the off-beat characters of the late-20th Century. He started- and personified "Gonzo Journalism."

Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word "gonzo" is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style. It is an energetic first-person participatory writing style in which the author is a protagonist, and it draws its power from a combination of social critique and self-satire.
--Wikipedia

Over the past few years I came across some information that linked Thompson to my small, north central Pennsylvania home town. Last year when doing some research on some memoirs I discovered even more about that. Here is what I wrote at the time.

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The world of the 1950s and early 1960s was, in small town America still the “old world”. The soldiers had come home, America was prosperous and lots of babies were being born. Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, was as typical of that world as any other place. If you were looking for excitement and change, challenge and movement, this was not the place. The world of Central Pennsylvania was still as it had been for decades.

Perhaps no one expressed that better than future Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. In 1957, fresh out of the Air Force and looking to become a professional, Thompson found a job working as sports editor for the Jersey Shore Herald, a daily newspaper whose office was across the street from Lehman Pharmacy. He was 20 years old with no college degree. His resume said he had worked for the Command Courier, the newspaper of Eglin Air Force Base at Fort Walton Beach, Florida. He moved into an apartment four blocks from my grandfather’s house.

Jersey Shore, he discovered was not the (New) Jersey shore, as he had originally thought. He wrote a letter to a friend that clearly explained his no fear but a lot of loathing of Jersey Shore.

So you think Iceland is bad: ha! Let me tell you about north-central Pennsylvania.

There were three red lights in metropolitan Fort Walton: there are two in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. There were four laundry and dry cleaning establishments in Fort Walton: there are NONE in Jersey Shore. There were innumerable bars in Fort Walton: there are two in Jersey Shore. There were at least four good eating establishments in Fort Walton: there are but three small grills in Jersey Shore. There were women (whores, lesbians, and divorcees, if you must) in Fort Walton: the only women under forty in Jersey Shore go to high school. There were beaches and water and sand dunes and sea gulls and boats and bays in Fort Walton: there are mountains of coal dust, dirty old people, ancient wrecks of houses, and "True Confessions" magazines in Jersey Shore.

And now you're going to ask just what in the hell I'm doing in Jersey Shore, Pa. I know... and I'm ready with a quick answer I'm having a nightmare.

To say he was unhappy would be an understatement. But it’s not that he was unwelcome. On the Internet I found a scan of his press pass signed by the Chief of Police who I knew. Thompson even explains in his letter about what the people of the town thought.

These nightmare people think I’m a “nice young man” who’s come to settle in their community and make it a home. They call me “Mr. Thompson” and “sir” and insist that I attend the Lions’ Club meetings, become an Elk, and join a bowling team. They invite me to their homes for dinner and tell me that the only thing wrong with America is the fact that we’ve given all our money to foreigners.

He went on to briefly describe his work as sports editor. “Half of one entire page has to be local bowling scores – a goddamn list of people’s names…If a man really wanted to bury himself, I can think of no better place to do it than in Jersey Shore.”

Obviously the rural, small town America was not for Thompson. Staying in Jersey Shore was not an option. But the Hunter S. Thompson that Johnny Depp would one day portray on screen was at work. He left Jersey Shore after a few weeks, but only in a Hunter S. Thompson way. Here is a description from an online blog.

He had taken out a colleague’s daughter; the father was kind enough to allow the young couple access to his '49 Chevy. Sure enough Hunter got the man's prized possession stuck in the riverbed. The next day, the angry co-worker drove the car into work and Thompson said, “I knew heavy trouble was coming …I just got up, took my coat off the rack and went out the front door. Didn’t even collect my pay. Went straight to the apartment, loaded the car and drove to New York.

These “nightmare people” were, of course my relatives, neighbors and friends. “They” included me. During the time Thompson was in town the only thing I worried about was the tonsillectomy I had that November just before Thanksgiving. I want to defend my “nightmare people” but I am at a disadvantage. I knew nothing else but Jersey Shore and its seemingly ideal life. It was probably as quiet and dull as Thompson reports. At least on the surface. Later, the joke would be that the bus drivers on the intercity bus called Jersey Shore, "Jersey Whore". That or "The Peyton Place of the Susquehanna." Of that I have no personal knowledge.

Source of italicized information:
Outta the Way Blog

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As always, I guess things depend on your own experiences and history.