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A year ago, I was worried about brownshirts in the street, the decay of democratic institutions; today I’m worried (more) about war and environmental devastation. Which is tantamount to saying: in the Age of King Trump, there are so many things to worry about — so many political anxieties — that it is hard to know what to worry about. It is an age of political schizophrenia; splitting; identity-loss. When Hitler came to power in Austria, Karl Kraus, who had spent thirty years criticizing Austrian politics, at tremendous rates of loquacity, famously said that he had nothing to say — that Hitler had rendered him speechless. World War I, the dissolution of the Austria-Hungarian Empire did not render Kraus speechless — he wrote better than ever in the years between 1914–1919 — only Hitler could do that; only Hitler’s transcendent incoherence; his vilely charismatic stupidity. Trump, similarly, despite the massive commentary he provokes, simultaneously, and paradoxically, seems to provoke stunned silence; worried silence. Media-speak about Trump all adds up to nothing. No amount of scolding by cable pundits will stop Trump from provoking a nuclear-armed country over Twitter; nor will the scolding of senators, or the advice of his cabinet. If 2016 seemed (stress on seemed) like a well-coordinated and inexorable and democratically sanctioned fascist coup, 2017 seems like an improvised comedy set on the verge of losing its audience. What both 2016 and 2017 have in common, however, is that are nearly, if not entirely, hopeless — bleak years in which the individual and collective American spirit are severely, existentially, threatened.
