When someone learns where I work, they sometimes will fix me a sympathetic look and coo, “How is the paper doing?” Nodding with anticipation, they clearly expect me to share some tale of woe. Ready, it seems, to pat my hand sympathetically, if not give me a supportive hug after I burst out weeping.
And not without reason. We are still in the age of the Great Newspaper Die-Off, where journalistic brachiosauruses regularly roll their eyes and collapse to the ground with a thundering crash.
So it surprises them when I reply that the paper is doing great, really getting my back into that word, Tony the Tiger fashion: “grrreat!” Their faces betray disbelief and perhaps a little disappointment, the way you would react to news that Nana, 96, has checked herself out of hospice and gone on a Carnival Cruise to Antigua.
But it’s true. The Chicago Newspaper Guild recently signed a three-year contract that, unlike past contracts, is not a full-face slap. There are raises. I can’t speak for anyone else on our burgeoning staff — they’re also hiring — but for me, it’s like being about to surrender to the icy chop, closing my salt-crusted eyes for the last time upon this storm-tossed world, only to open them later to find myself blinking in a bright stateroom, being dried off with fluffy towels as hot broth is spooned into my mouth.
There’s also new equipment. The tech folks told me to come get my new laptop, even though the old Apple, circa 2012, still works. I almost argued. The long-established rule at the paper is, you can’t get a fresh pencil until you turn in the stub of the old one.
First, I was instructed to go over the old laptop, removing my files. The laptop, with me from Tokyo to Tierra del Fuego, had thousands of photos. Instead of just transferring them, I saw a chance to cull.
I kept a blurry shot of the back of a young man I met on public transit on my way to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July 2016. He worked the third shift restocking shelves at Walmart, and was on his way to attend a Citizens for Trump rally. He wore a T-shirt that he had made himself. On the front, a Teddy Roosevelt quote lecturing immigrants against having divided loyalties. On the back, InfoWars bumper stickers and a hand-lettered “Stop the Steal.”
Which reminds us — and we need reminding — that the idea of a stolen election is not something Donald Trump concocted in 2020. It is, instead, his standard lie, resurrected any time there’s a chance he might lose. He was claiming that in 2016, before the election, insisting that if Hillary Clinton won, that meant the election was rigged.
That’s why calling Trump a fascist is not an insult, but a dry factual description. If every election is, by definition, illegitimate unless you win, that is not democracy. It is totalitarianism.
The notion of election theft is a self-serving lie intended to whip up donations from the aggrieved. It works. Trump has collected over $200 million since he lost the 2020 election. Of course he doesn’t actually believe his lie. If he did, why run again? If Trump actually thought the last election was stolen in some fashion he can’t even articulate, never mind prove, then why bother running for the next? Won’t whatever happened last time simply happen again? Won’t George Soros just turn a dial in Davos, or Nancy Pelosi punch a final vote tally into her phone?
You’re not supposed to think about the lies. You just accept them. And people do. It’s amazing. To see Darren Bailey rushing to Donald Trump’s side, trying to rub off a bit of his mojo, like a puppy rolling in something gross. It’s mystifying.
I’ve been downstate. They seem like nice people. They’re farmers. Farming is a very fact-based endeavor. Were I to go downstate and say, “It’s June! Harvest time!” not many would fall for it. Yet they’ve got the Trump hook firmly planted in their cheeks and are happily flapping away. They clearly don’t realize what a bad look it is. Someone should tell them. But then, that won’t help either. They won’t listen to anybody else. Trump has them under his magic spell.
