Lives of quiet desperation give us our Trumps

Anne Frank

"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. ... I think peace and tranquility will return again."
-- Closing paragraph, "The Diary of A Young Girl,"Anne Frank

So where do we go from here?

I remain basically an optimist about the good hearts of most people, and I was definitely taken aback -- and seriously flattered -- by a reader's comment about me being the "last best hope for a permanent MIDDLE viewpoint."

And anyone who doesn't believe in the basic goodness of people -- especially in view of the fact that a young girl hiding from the Nazis can feel that way -- is either seriously afraid or a serious misanthrope.

I even believe that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had basically good hearts, although I'm not at all sure about Dick Cheney.

That's a joke, folks, although I remain flabbergasted at the idea that someone could shoot an old man in the face and then make him apologize for getting in the way.

But what do you say to someone if they're shot or killed by some lunatic who believes the Jews or the Blacks are out to get him? Too bad? Tough luck? You should have ducked?

What do you do when you encounter hate like that?

In the fall of 1989, I was covering a 49ers football game for my employer at the time, the Reno Gazette-Journal. After I filed my story, I walked to the Candlestick Park parking lot to find that someone had smashed the passenger window in my car.

Since I faced a 220-mile drive across the Sierras to get back to Reno -- in December, at night -- I was also faced with basically freezing.

When I got into the mountains, I couldn't take the cold any longer. I pulled off I-80 and went into a convenience store to buy a pair of cheap gloves and a ski cap. A perfectly nice-looking man, manning the cash register, made conversation with me and asked me why I was buying those particular items.

"Somebody smashed my window and broke into my car at the 49ers game," I said. "I'm freezing."

"Probably your ni**ers," he said. "Your ni**ers will do stuff like that." (If you can't figure it out, the * replaces the letter g)

I knew I wasn't going to convert this individual to tolerance, and I was getting tired, so I just thanked him, got my change and went back to my car.

If I had been younger, if I hadn't been a tired 39-year-old who had seen too much, I probably would have criticized his racist remarks. But except for the racism -- and I know that's an "except for that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln" remark -- he didn't seem like a bad guy.

He didn't say what he said in an angry voice. He was more old and ignorant than anything else, and I'm not convinced we should hate people for being old or ignorant.

All that happened a long, long time ago. And so much has happened to make it more difficult to stand against hate. We have a president who rode a platform of hate and anger to the White House. Whether he won fairly or was installed by the Russians doesn't much matter after nearly two years. We have to deal with the fact that he's there and at least for now has a great deal of power.


It's ironic that the election of Barack Obama in 2008 -- the first time a free country elected a leader from a minority group of 15 percent or less of its people -- seems to have awakened the truly vicious racists among us and has them making a "last stand" of sorts.

Trump, who isn't very smart but has the instincts of a predator, ran a vicious campaign and somehow managed to win. If you think "vicious" is too strong a word, ask yourself if George Wallace ever wanted his opponents jailed or reporters covering his campaign beaten up.

Walden Pond

People like Trump rarely if ever appeal to our better angels. They play on fears and frustrations, realizing that what Henry David Thoreau said in "Walden" is very true.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Most people have heard that statement, but few are familiar with the rest of the paragraph that follows.

"What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

Thoreau wrote those words 165 years ago, and except for the minks and muskrats, it hold true in the present. Most people are at least somewhat resigned to their lives being less than they had hoped for, and many of them live with resentment.

Resentment turns to anger, a feeling that they are somehow being cheated by unseen enemies. That leads them to follow demagogues who promise simplistic answers to complex problems.

Is there a benign middle, or are we doomed to bounce back and forth between one extreme and the other? Have we created a paradigm where people become rich by stirring up those who are desperate or resigned?

We're awfully far down the wrong road, The only way we'll ever get back is if people really are good at heart.

If Anne Frank was right.