Impeachment Is A Kobayashi Maru (and we should still do it)

The day that the fuller version of the Mueller report dropped, I realized that the impeachment situation is a Kobayashi Maru scenario for opponents of Donald Trump. For those who don't know, Kobayashi Maru was a training exercise for Starfleet in the Star Trek universe where prospective captains were put into an impossible situation. They could try to rescue the civilians aboard the namesake ship, but would be destroyed by the enemy. The point of the simulation was not to guess the correct course of action, but to show how officers would react in bad circumstances.

Impeachment is a Kobayashi Maru because there are two options: to allow a brazen criminal to continue to occupy the presidency, or to exhaust political capital in what will be an inevitable failure to unseat that president. As has been obvious from day one, Republicans will follow Trump to the gates of Hell. They happily defended his breaking up of migrant families and tossing their kids into cages. They signed their deal with the devil, and now there's no going back. In any case, he is the key to their wildest dreams of unfettered capitalism and Christian dominionism. Even if ten Republican Senators defect (which will never happen), the Senate still would not be able to unseat Trump.

A lot of folks, including in the Democratic Party leadership, have made this calculation. They are concerned that this inevitable failure would boost Trump, allowing him an easy path to reelection in 2020. They are more rightly concerned with how focusing on Trump takes air away from appeals on issues like health care that are the party's winning advantage.

I've been thinking long and hard about this, but impeachment needs to be done. If failure is guaranteed either way (which it is), then doing the right thing actually becomes a lot easier. The pragmatic option doesn't exist. The question becomes simply this: are we going to give a proven criminal president a pass, or not? I do not see how we can live with ourselves if we refuse to carry out the Constitutionally mandated remedy for this situation.

It can also be carried out in a way that does not backfire, or where the consequences are at least mitigated. The message on impeachment can be intertwined with the "bread and butter" issues. Investigating the Trump finances (which aren't even part of the Mueller probe but are by far where most of the crime goes on) will dredge up all kinds of stuff. The message gets pretty easy: "Your tax return went down last year, but Donald Trump set up a system where people like him don't have to pay taxes." Any serious look into his business empire is going to turn up all kinds of stuff (just listen to the Trump Inc podcast), revelations that can be capitalized on, so long as Democrats run an economically populist campaign. This will be crucial, because with the economy growing they need to not just talk about "jobs," but about compensation, health care, child care, etc.

Ever since Trump's election, the country's politically apathetic soft middle has yearned for a "return to normal." This I think is secretly one of the Democratic party's biggest advantages in the 2020 election. If you spend time talking to so-called independent moderates, they tend to frame things in maddeningly imprecise generalizations. Last time around it was "I don't like either candidate" and people who deep down didn't like Trump ended up casting their vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, which in key states was effectively a vote for Trump. One of those garden variety suburban dipshit opinions could easily turn out to be "I'm just tired of Trump. I just don't want to have to care about politics." In that case, impeachment might actually be able to help Democrats.

And speaking of the soft middle, political corruption is something that most voters dislike. It's the reason Trump kept talking about "draining the swamp." It turns out, of course, that this was not about ending corruption, but invoking the kinds of metaphors for the opposition beloved by fascists. Impeachment hearings will dredge up things that are public but which have been allowed to leave the headlines, as well as brand new stories.

The danger, of course, is that the soft middle white suburban dipshit opinion after the Senate clears Trump could easily turn into "I guess Trump did nothing wrong and those Democrats ruined my life by putting all this stuff in the news that I didn't want to think about." That won't end so well.

Be that as it may, impeachment has to be attempted. Not just because the president has been proven to abuse his power (the basic litmus test of impeachment), but because if we take our political ideals seriously we MUST take action. And though failure may be inevitable in the short term, in the long term the Republicans will never be able to shake the stigma of their support of this criminal. Future generations will look back and know who was in the right.

I am reminded of another time in American history when a political faction held the country hostage against the demands of justice. In 1860 Lincoln gave his famous speech at Cooper Union in New York City, where the prairie politician moved his skeptical east coast audience by reminding them that slavery was wrong and nothing could ever change that. He ended his speech thus: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

We know we are right. We know our duty compels us. Time to act.

What The Makers Of The New Star Wars Can Learn From Nicholas Meyer

The last coupla days there's been people getting all excited about the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer.  I have been reminding folks just how over the moon so many of us went in regards to the Phantom Menace trailer, and that so far I don't see any evidence that the new film won't just be another middle of the road, movie by committee Hollywood CGI action/adventure flick.  Hearing the sounds of TIE fighters and the John Williams score might stir something in the core of me, but if I'm being honest when I look at the trailer I don't see any evidence that this film isn't simply another Hollywood cash-in using an old property to make easy money.  But hey, I could be wrong, and I hope that I am.

I've been thinking a lot about what it would take to make a good sequel to such a beloved series, and my mind wandered over to Star Trek.  Nicholas Meyer is not a household name, but when he took the reins of the Star Trek franchise after 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it was make or break time.  Trek hit the big screen after a combination of fan effort and desire to cash in on Star Wars, but the first film in the series left a lot to be desired.  It was like an extended episode of the original series, but superlong and paced slower than a three toed sloth.

The next film in the series, The Wrath of Khan, on the other hand, is often considered the best Trek ever.  It was directed by Nicholas Meyer, who also went on to write the fourth Trek movie and and direct the sixth one, widely considered to be the other highlights in the series.  There is no way that this is coincidental.  The great film podcast The Projection Booth did an episode on Khan, where I discovered that Meyer and writer Harve Bennett were not all that familiar with Trek before taking on the project.  That ended up being a benefit, since they brought fresh eyes to the material.  The first film was much more the creation of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the original Trek series.

The parallels to Star Wars are pretty obvious here.  The original films were beloved, but when original creator Lucas helmed the prequels later, the results were not good.  JJ Abrams, like Meyer, is now tasked with taking things in another direction.  In Khan Meyer shook up the staid, placid nature of Roddenberry's approach right from the get-go with the drama of the Kobayashi Maru simulation, which the viewer knows isn't real the first time they see it.  Most of the film is a kind of battle of wills between Kirk and Khan, with older-style Trek plots centered around encountering new planets absent.  It ends, of course, with the emotional punch of Spock dying in an act of supreme self sacrifice.  I remember seeing it for the first time as a wee lad and being shocked and deeply affected by it, and those scenes still pack a punch for me.  It is extremely gutsy to kill off one of your most beloved characters.  The film also exposes Kirk's vulnerability, making him a much more human character.  I doubt any of this would have happened had Meyer just tried to copy what worked best in the original series.

Star Trek IV and VI also benefit from daring choices that deviate from the original Trek template.  Star Trek IV is a time travel movie that mostly takes place in contemporary San Francisco.  VI is more a kind of murder mystery/political thriller taking place in the Trek universe.  Hollywood these days is nothing if not risk averse, and Star Wars is a much bigger property than Trek ever was.  I wonder how much freedom that JJ Abrams has had to send Star Wars on a different trajectory.  Nicholas Meyer ought to be an inspiration in how to take a great cultural institution and improve upon it by not simply doing everything by the numbers or the way it's always been done.

Track of the Week: Leonard Nimoy "Highly Illogical"

Back when I was in college a friend had a compilation album of actors attempting to sing, including Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.  For years I gravitated towards the Shatner stuff, mostly because his performances had a kind of crazed, irony-transcending quality to them.  Nimoy's just sounded comically bad, considering that his voice had a range even less expansive than my own.  Over the years, however, I've had a strange about face in regards to some of Nimoy's songs, mostly because of his own, less over the top commitment to the material.  Case in point is something like "Ruby Don't Take Your Love To Town," a grim tune sung from the perspective of a legless Vietnam vet threatening to kill his lady if she steps out on him.  Nimoy's voice strains, but there is a fascinating level of evocative emotion that can't be ignored.  I also enjoy his take on the great standard "Gentle on My Mind."  When he had more story-telling material like this his speak-singing style actually worked.

My favorite, coming before his folky, countrified albums has to be the novelty song "Highly Illogical."  Instead of singing in his earnest singing voice, Nimoy stays in character as Spock, his voice deep and stentorian.  Spock points out the illogical behavior of 1960s-era humanity, including the worship of the car and working hard to make money that will be irrelevant once death inevitably gets its due.  He's obviously having fun with the character, even if there are some serious messages about how out of whack most people's priorities are.  Nimoy crafted an unforgettable and unique character, but still obviously maintained a sense of humor, which can also be seen rather memorably in Star Trek IV, which he directed.  He used that non-human character to explore, in many ways, what it means to be human.  And for all of Spock's logical nature, Nimoy himself wasn't afraid to get emotional or silly in his music, and was seemingly fearless in exposing his lack of singing talent.  You might not like the songs, but I think they actually say something pretty profound about the man.