The day after O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of the double murders and the evidence was freshest in mind, polls showed that the majority of Americans, both white and nonwhite, believed that the verdicts were correct. Only later did public opinion change. You can check it out and try to figure out why.

Do you remember when “Close Cover before Striking” was the most printed phrase in the English language?

Each time I wear my specially-made tee shirt I feel a lot of eyes on it. It reads, “Trump: His Mother Did Not Have Him Tested.” I expect that many who read the legend won’t get it, but so far no stranger has asked me what it means. Still, the daughter, who helped get the shirt, has made me nervous about wearing it. She told me that a woman wearing something anti-Trump was hit in the face by a Trumpista while dining in a Brooklyn restaurant. But so far, in New York I have gotten the expected quizzical looks but also many smiles and nods of appreciation. Once I even got outright enthusiastic laughter from a woman sitting at a window table in an upscale establishment. A young man fell in step along side me when I was wearing the shirt , told me that he worked for a union, and asked if I had seen a Trump documentary that he said was hilarious with its clip of the President’s mother. The only time I was actually nervous wearing the shirt was when I came out of the subway at a construction site. Hardhats, all white, were leaning against a fence on a coffee break. The youngest-looking saw what I was wearing and quickly came towards me. A white construction worker and me with an anti-Trump shirt. I thought that I was in for an awkward time at the least. A few feet from me he smiled broadly and said, “You got it right.” He turned to the crew and said, “Look. Isn’t that great!” Some of the coworkers smiled; one laughed; and the rest looked dumbfounded. I realized that I, too, could fall victim to stereotypes. But I still haven’t worn the shirt outside of New York City.

I was driving midweek in central Pennsylvania. Signs seemed to be everywhere for a weekend church festival. I was sorry that I was not going to be there then because the festival offered not just the usual music and food, but something that I have never experienced and could not entirely imagine: A Polka Mass!

I would like some study to examine how, if at all, voter ID laws affected our last election. I am sure that it would be hard to do, but solid data on the number of people who were prevented from voting who were not entitled to vote and the number of people who were entitled to vote (except for the ID laws) but who did not vote because of those laws. Knowing this would help us to understand what we call a democracy.

How did it originate that baseball players throw the ball around the infield after the first and second outs with no runner on base? Why is the first baseman often excluded from the ritual? Why does the third baseman always throw the baseball to the pitcher?

A Mercedes Benz ad that I see frequently during sporting events shows families in a nice suburban neighborhood admiringly looking up as a fleet of red cars zoom past. Each time I wonder where is it that people barbeque in their front yard?

“Drinking the Kool-Aid” is an expression that I find distasteful. It now seems to be said humorously or ironically to mean adopting an idea or a practice after having given in to peer pressure. It is said almost lightheartedly, and when said this way, it seems to make obscene fun of its origins. The expression, of course, comes from a mass suicide-murder when over 900 followers of Jim Jones took a cyanide-laced drink, reported to be Kool-Aid, or were otherwise murdered. In fact, according to a new book, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple by Jeff Guin, it was not Kool-Aid, rather a cheaper knock off, Flavor Aid, but “Drinking the Flavor Aid” never caught the popular mind.

I also learned from this book that Jim Jones was not merely a demagogue, who, for whatever his reasons, betrayed his followers. He hated racial and economic inequality and did much to fight segregation. He and his followers instituted successful programs to feed the hungry and fight addiction. Their scholarship programs aided many, and Jonestown in the Guyana jungle was a settlement that was close to being self-sustaining until Jones’ paranoia brought it down in that horrific way. Guin states, “Jim Jones was undeniably a man of great gifts, and one who for much of his life and ministry, achieved admirable results on behalf of the downtrodden.”

Guin posits that most demagogues appeal to selfish instincts to get followers—I will get you more or I will protect you from enemies. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple, preaching socialism and racial justice, was different. “Jim Jones attracted followers by appealing to the best in their nature, a desire for everyone to share equally. . . . Most members sacrificed personal possessions, from clothing and checking accounts to cars and house for the privilege of helping others. They gave rather than got. . . . They hoped everyone would emulate them.”

The tragedy of Jonestown was, of course, shocking, seemingly unique, but in fact it was an extreme example of a theme in American history. Americans have been regularly attracted to movements that, to outsiders, have unusual beliefs and followers who often do bizarre things. New York’s burnt-over district in the early nineteenth century, for example, spawned many religious and social movements that had beliefs then seen as outlandish. Some had a lasting success and formed the roots of modern Mormonism and for Seventh Day Adventists, but there were many others largely or completely forgotten. Utopian communities were also formed. Perhaps the best remembered, because of its silverware and the city that bears its name, is the Oneida Community, which practiced communalism not only in property, but also in marriage and child rearing. (Some of my forebears may have been influenced by such a utopian movement. I know little about my ancestors, but an aunt once produced a family tree of my mother’s side of the family. I took it with a grain of salt—the chart had the family arriving on the second or third ship after the Mayflower. My reaction was that the passengers on the Mayflower have been well documented, but I had my doubts about the knowledge of who were on ships coming twenty or thirty years later. I also wondered about my relatives’ pride in this supposed fact. My reaction: “You mean the family is white, Anglo-Saxon (isn’t that redundant?) Protestant, been in this land of opportunity over 400 hundred years, and is still poor! What is the excuse?” But I became more interested when I saw the nineteenth-century entry for a family in upstate New York who had a daughter named “Freelove Dewey.”)

Western and upstate New York in the early 1800s was not the only era and locale to spawn cults. Certainly there were many in the second half of the twentieth century that produced Jim Jones. There was the Manson family, the Love Family, the Hare Krishnas, Reverend Moon’s Unification Church, fundamentalist and polygamous offshoots of Mormonism, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation, various New Age movements, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, white supremacist groups, the Michigan Militia, End Times people, Lyndon LaRouche and many, many others. Stories of mind control and brainwashing as well as other claims of atrocities by many of these movements led to the deprogramming movement, often involving kidnappings and imprisonments, to “rescue” sons and daughters from various cults.

I may not understand the appeal of many of these groups, but what are seen as fringe beliefs and ideologies clearly have had appeal throughout our history. These movements often seem to attract outsiders who feel that the larger societies disdain them. They feel that their group or their identity is under attack, and that, therefore, they need to protect themselves and withdraw from the rest of the world. But the withdrawal is seldom complete, and this often brings out some sort of need to lash out at society. Jim Jones’ movement had many of these characteristics as he encouraged paranoia about how others wished to prevent Peoples Temple members from living the way they wanted to.

Of course, we still have people today attracted to fringe beliefs for Americans. (Check out the pro- and anti-Sherry Shriner protagonists.) We have living in our country those who voice allegiance to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Isis, and some of them do dastardly things. We don’t understand them. They are outsiders to us (we are reluctant to call them Americans). But aren’t they really a continuation of a long strain of our history? Should we really be surprised that some in this country, feeling estranged, have been attracted to an ideology that many of us think is dangerously alien and that a few of those people do despicable things? Hasn’t that always been the case?

I watch the Wimbledon awards, and I wonder about the tradition of making the loser participate in the ceremony. The Stanley Cup does have the line where the two teams shake hands, but the hockey players don’t have to talk about it in front of an audience of millions immediately after their loss. Tennis players do, and this must be especially hard in this one-on-one sport with its stark winner/loser dichotomy. I win; you lose. You win; I lose. I won and made you a loser. You won and made me a loser.

I don’t pretend to have been a superlative athlete, but I have played sports throughout my life, and I know that losing in a team game is much different from losing in an individual sport like tennis. I loved making a good play on the baseball field. I had taken a hit from someone else. The hitter was no doubt disappointed, but I never felt as if I had made that person a loser.  They had hit the ball well; they had done their job.  I was just lucky enough or in the right place to make a good play. And if I was on the losing side at the game’s completion, the personal, solitary feeling of being a loser at the end of a tennis match did not exist. I would recap the team game, sometimes obsessively, and think about the opportunities I had had where if I had done something different, the outcome might have been reversed, but I knew that my teammates who cared about winning or losing were having the same thoughts. I always knew that neither I nor a teammate had lost individually. We lost or won. If we had won, I liked, or hoped, that I had contributed to the win, but I never thought that I had made an individual on the other team a loser. They lost.

Of course, in losing there could be the bad feeling of not performing at a crucial time as I had wished, say, missing a key free throw, but part of me knew that the game was close as the result of many things that I and each of my teammates did that could have been different throughout the game. And, of course, even if I had not played well, I might still be on the winning side because of what my teammates had done.  Not true in tennis.

That said, I don’t pretend that I really had the mental makeup of a good athlete. To succeed, athletes have to be able to accept failure. Even the best batter knows he will make out most of the time. A tennis tournament ends up with all but one having lost their last match. To be a good athlete, you have to risk being a public failure. I can still remember playing in a softball tournament during a summer of my college years.  It was the last inning; we were down by a run, and I was at bat.  I remember my feeling; I did not want to look bad, and I rationalized that even if I hit a home run, the opposing team, in a high-scoring contest, would most likely still get the winning run at the bottom of the inning. I got into the batter’s box not wanting so much to win the game as to avoid embarrassing myself.  I hit a long fly ball that was caught with a slight jump at the fence for the final out, and we lost.  And I realized that I was relieved simply because I had not struck out or hit a weak popup.  I had wanted more not to be a washout than I had played to win, and I realized at that moment I did not truly have a winner’s mentality. In tennis terms, I feared more the embarrassment that would accompany a fluffed overhead than I cared about the step to winning that would accompany putting the ball away. And I walked away with even more respect for the top athletes.

[Note. The next posting after today’s will be on July 17, 2017]

“I had no father—at least, I never knew my father—but Zipper had one.” Joseph Roth, Zipper and his Father.

“Deceiving others is an essential part of everyday social interaction.” Aldert Vrij, Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for Professional Practice.

“The courtship and remarriage of an old widower is always made more difficult when middle-aged children are involved—especially when there are unmarried daughters.” Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis.

“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what has that got to do with a room of one’s own.” Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own.

“Who wouldn’t be skeptical when a man claims to have spent an entire weekend with God, in a shack no less?” William P. Young, The Shack.

“Plaquemines Parish is the end of the line—a narrow, fertile peninsula more than a hundred miles long, stretching out into the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.” Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta.

“In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.” Toni Morrison, Sula.

“At my university, and doubtless others as well, there is a recurring, seasonal clash involving life and death, order and disorder—and lawn care.” Norman J. Finkel, Commonsense Justice: Jurors’ Notions of the Law.

“Even the smallest stone in a riverbed has the entire history of the universe inscribed upon it.” Hikaru Okuizumi, The Stones Cry Out.

“No one is left from the Glenn Valley, Pennsylvania, Bridge Club who can tell us precisely when or why the group broke up, even though its forty-odd members were still playing regularly as recently as 1990, just as they had done for more than half a century.” Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.”

“People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood, but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” Charles Portis, True Grit.

“Who was this man whose baby son had been taken from his crib and murdered?” Ludovic Kennedy, The Airman and the Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann.

“Either forswear fucking others or the affair is over.” Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater.

I went to a book group recently. This still feels unusual. I was well into my seventh decade before I went to one. I haven’t done much reflection on why I have not been a book group kind of guy. Certainly I read, perhaps too much, but for me books are a solitary activity. They are read alone, and a group discussion doesn’t seem to enhance the pleasure or the accomplishment of the reading. I do discuss books, but almost always one-on-one with the wife or the daughter or with a reader friend.. Then the intimacy of the conversation seems to enhance the solitary pleasure of a book, and the one-on-one with a knowledgeable reader can lead to the kind of discussion that is less likely in a group, especially groups that are as large as the book groups that are held in my summer community.

My reluctance may also stem from a feeling that a book group is a feminine activity, and it is true, that while I know men who are members of book groups, overwhelmingly I know women who go to these organized book discussions. If a subconscious perception of non-manliness is a reason for my non-attendance, it is ironic because I have never seen myself as a manly man, and I would like to think that I embrace my feminine side at least as well as most men. (There is something funny, something incestuous or hermaphroditic in the phrase “embrace my feminine side.”)

It would have been doubly ironic if I had avoided the recent book group because of my feeling that it was a feminine activity. The book under discussion was Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. The author chronicles his struggle to both embrace and rise above his roots and succeeds, landing him at Yale Law School which he never calls The Yale Law School as a friend and former Dean of that institution always did. He bemoans the hillbilly culture that labeled studying and learning as “feminine” and a male with good grades as a “pussy.”

Vance and his book have gotten quite a lot of play. Read this book, many have said, to better understand the rise of Trump. The book, however, makes no such claim. Vance does say that he is concerned that jobs have gone overseas and that the middle class is harder to attain for those without a college degree and then pronounces: “But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It’s about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It’s about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it.”

The author, of course, can tell us what the book is about, but the reader, even if admiring the book, does not have to agree. Hillbilly Elegy is not about what happens to individuals when their economy sours. It is not about a way of life with an increasing societal collapse. The book does not show behavior getting worse or better depending upon the availability of good jobs. Indeed, he writes about a couple making over $100,000 in small-town Ohio who were unable to manage their lives. He does not show that the social decay has increased; instead he documents perennial family and work instability, childish family “honor” that justifies violence, child abuse, ignorance, and alcohol and drug abuse that has existed for decades in a “hillbilly” culture.

In fact, however, this flawed culture goes back much further. Appalachia, of course, saw honor killings as early as the nineteenth century—think Hatfields and McCoys. (The Feud:The Hatfields and the McCoys by Dean King [2014] makes for interesting reading alongside Hillbilly Elegy.) A century ago, H.L. Mencken wrote, of course entertainingly, about the Appalachian culture that promoted ignorance over education. And if you care to look, you can find many other examples from our history describing basically the same culture that Vance now chronicles.

Vance’s personal story is interesting, but he says little about how to change this well-entrenched culture. Instead, he suggests that the best way to escape its powerful pull is to marry outside the culture. Or perhaps, as he did, go to The Yale Law School and marry outside the culture. In other words, not much hope is really offered for some big change.

And he ignores a bigger fact about America in general. We proclaim ourselves to be the land of opportunity where hard work and education mean you can move up the economic ladder. And for much of our history, mobility was much easier in the United States than in Europe or other developed nations. This is no longer true. We have close to the lowest upward mobility in the advanced industrial world. (Go look it up.) A child born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income scale has only a 30 percent chance of making into the top half of incomes, and this percentage is less than it is for France, Germany, Sweden, and Canada.  Increasingly, the income ranking of a child’s family determines the income ranking of that child as an adult.

Add to this another phenomenon. Whites forty-five to fifty-four with no more than a high school education, a cohort that contains more than hillbillies but surely has a sizeable number of them, are now dying at a higher rate than they did in 1999. At the end of the twentieth century, deaths in this group were 601 per 100,000 but in 2013 were 736 per 100,000, a shocking, disturbing, and largely unknown increase. Whites in this age group with no more than a high school education were four times more likely to die as those in the same age group with a college degree.

In other words, it is always been unlikely that the hillbilly kid could break out of his background, but now larger trends in this country make it is increasingly unlikely that someone in the bottom half will move up.

The sun came up this morning. President Trump said that it was his idea.

“According to Dick Devlin, there are two kinds of work: the kind where you shower before and the kind where you shower after.”  Jennifer Haigh, Heat and Light.

A play idea for the Beckett or Sartre in you. Imagine that redwoods are sentient and can communicate. Setting: A redwood grove with three or four trees. What would be the conversations over the thousand years that the redwoods would be next to each other unable to be alone or find other company? And then what happens when one of the trees finally dies?

You are Jewish if your mother is Jewish, I am told. But what if your mother converts to Judaism after you were born?

The person I took to be a conservative was railing against the big government program of food stamps. Her clinching argument was that someone she knew should have been on food stamps but did not qualify.

Another time I felt old. A man was dragging a loudspeaker against the traffic and ranting into a hand held microphone. No doubt a street preacher, but the loudspeaker was pointed the other way, and I did not hear his message until he got alongside of me. He looked directly at me and then said, “That applies to you too, Pops.”

At the old guys’ lunch, Bob, who gets interrupted a lot because he takes so long to say anything, was interrupted followed by a quick apology. He said, “That’s ok. My wife has told me that I talk too slow and then I often don’t make sense.” Ray replied, “How did Sarah get it right on both counts?” We all laughed, including Bob.

On the Fourth of July I wear a hat that reminds people of the Cat in the Hat, except that it is red, white, and blue with stars and spangles. Its label says that it was made in China.

orth Korea launched an ICBM that some say could have reached Alaska. I wonder if Sarah Palin saw it.

My friend, a good tennis player, announced after her game that she was going to play golf in the afternoon and added, “I hope that I hit a rider today.” Of course, I asked, “A rider?” “That’s when I hit the ball far enough that it is worth getting in the cart to ride to it.”

Apples and oranges. Don’t confuse them. Especially if you have scurvy.

Yet again I am confused by some Christian people.  Apparently religious principles prevent having contraception in a healthcare plan, but lying on invoices and trafficking in what are probably stolen goods are just fine with God as long as the artifacts are for a Bible museum. Maybe that museum will show me where the Bible forbids IUDs.

His hair is distinctive, one could say impossible, but there it is. A microphone is only a few inches from his lips, but he still leans into it. He does not really yell into the mike, but the voice is certainly not conversational. His words can be adamant; they can be bullying. He denounces enemies, enemies that stand in the way of greatness. He talks about the alliances he has entered or created and how strong they are. He makes promises about how he will perform, performances that he guarantees will be great. There is nothing nuanced in what he says; there are no ambiguities. It is a world of black and white; of good and bad; of greatness or failure. There is not a single shade of gray.

He pauses often, seemingly waiting for his audience to catch up. The audience reacts visibly and audibly. Each denunciation, each bragging claim elicits a hoot and a holler. He encourages the audience to mock his opponents, and the crowd often responds with a sing-song chant. This is an interactive, audience-participation performance. The speaker supplies the initial energy, but he soaks back energy as the frenzied crowd reacts to him.

The audience doesn’t really care about the specifics of his promises. They know that many can’t be kept. Indeed, they won’t be surprised if contradictory promises are made in a week or a month or that the alliances announced today are changed tomorrow or that the enemy previously castigated in absolute terms is now a dear friend with whom he has been secretly colluding. The audience is there not for truth, but for an attitude, and he supplies and feeds that attitude.

This audience seems bound together by something more than what most audiences have. They know that others, “nice” people, “successful” people, “elite” people not only do not share their enthusiasm, those others, this group knows, think there is something wrong, ludicrous, maybe even shameful or dangerous and low class in what this audience feels. Here, however, together with this crowd and the performer who understands their visceral reactions, each can indulge the passions they all enjoy, and this brings them closer together.

Perhaps this is a Trump rally, but what I was trying to describe is pro wrestling. Since the rise of Trumpism, I have thought that those who are mystified by the appeal of Donald Trump might learn something by trying to understand the allure of professional wrestling.

The theatrics of professional wrestling remains strikingly similar to what they were in my childhood of Verne Gagne with his sleeper hold and his between bout pitches for a nutritional supplement. There were good guys (Wilbur Snyder, for example) and bad guys (definitely Dick the Bruiser) in a simulated reality of pain, danger, and unbelievable heroics. The business, however, has changed in some important ways.

What I watched growing up was largely regional. Different parts of the country had different wrestling companies. As a friend once said about a wrestler, “He was the world heavyweight champion of the greater Cleveland area.” The spectacle might have been similar everywhere, but the performers changed with the territory.

Vince McMahon of what is now the WWE (World, or maybe Worldwide, Wrestling Entertainment) changed that. His wrestling organization, started in the Northeast by his father, did not respect others’ territories. He drove many regional operations out of business or bought them out as they started to fail.  WWE now dominates the business, and wrestling fans today pretty much all see the same product. The rise of cable television, the Internet, and other media has given more choice for news and entertainment and has fragmented popular culture. We don’t share as much in common as we once did.

Professional wrestling, with its nationalization, has gone in the opposite direction. The odds are overwhelming that its fans all know, and probably have opinions about, Kevin Owens, The Undertaker, the New Day, and Triple H. Wrestling is one of the few popular forces that is producing an increasingly unified cultural base, but a base that is out of sight to the rest of America.

The wrestling business has also changed because, while it is not trumpeted, it is not now a secret that the contests are not real sporting events. While back in the day, some fans may have thought that the spectacle was a legitimate sport, today it is acknowledged that wrestling is “sports entertainment.” All but the most naïve of wrestling fans know that while the wrestlers can be athletic and do take risks, the violence is simulated and the outcomes follow predetermined story lines. Wrestling’s popularity has fluctuated through the years, but its popularity does not seem to have been harmed because those involved no longer steadfastly maintain that it is “real.” Instead, it has always been a form of reality TV; something that pretends to be real.

The allure of pro wrestling to the outsider is hard to fathom, but it must have something to do with the power of simulated reality, violence, the simplicity of good and evil, outrageous characters, and the continuing tensions of soap opera. As epic poems, sagas, novels and movies show, we want, maybe need, superheroes and supervillains. At least some of the time, we don’t want nuance, caveats, and tough choices. During the wrestling shows, we have those heroes and villains and only easy choices. Who and what is good or bad is crystal clear.

It is not my point and beyond my abilities to analyze the allure of wrestling, and anyway, the appeal may largely be visceral and, thus, cannot be satisfactorily explained to those who don’t feel it. But what should be recognized is that the spectacle has had an enduring appeal. And if I am right, that Trump at a rally performs much like a pro wrestler talking to the audience, and that audience responds much as a wrestling crowd does, it may make sense for those who can’t grasp Tumpism to try to grasp pro wrestling.

When Trump was gaining traction in the political arena, this wrestling fan thought back to one of the WWE storylines. It featured Donald Trump. Oh, yes, Trump has been a part of pro wrestling for quite some time. As I recall, Vince McMahon backed one wrestler and Trump another, and either Trump or McMahon would have his head shaved depending upon which wrestler lost some big event. This billionaire-baiting went on for weeks or maybe even months, provided us with the recently reprised and altered video of Trump “taking down” Vince McMahon in a moment of made-up macho madness. But of course, no one could really believe that Trump was going to appear bald to further wrestling ratings. The mere thought of it, however, whipped up the crowd.  Politicos have studied Trump’s business record and pop culture critics have talked about The Apprentice, but pundits mystified about his appeal should also have been studying Trump on Monday Night Raw and then watching more of the wrestling shows.

Perhaps roots of Trump can be found in Huey Long and William Jennings Bryan, but we should also consider Gorgeous George. Gorgeous George was–perhaps next to Milton Berle–early television’s biggest star. Professional wrestling has always presented itself as what is now called reality TV, and GG was America’s first huge reality TV star. Gorgeous George (George Raymond Wagner), often shortened by TV announcers to Gorgeous or Georgie, was in wrestling parlance a “heel,” a bad guy. (Good guys are “babyfaces” or just “faces.”) But he broke stereotypes. In what was supposedly a testosterone-fueled world, his character displayed effeminacy. Flunkies would precede him up the arena’s aisles spraying perfume in his path. He entered the ring wearing elaborate robes no “man” would have been caught in—festooned with ostrich feathers, for example. No one but his valet was allowed to touch his robe, and the referee in a Chaplinesque routine would be repeatedly blocked from doing so. And he had that hair. It was some sort of yellow or straw color never seen in nature, and it was curled and primped in ways that only permanents and feminine implements could produce. His hair was secured with what otherwise would have been called bobby pins; his were called Georgie pins. Before a match, he would elaborately remove and toss them to the crowd. The hair was central to the character. The storylines often said that he would not fight someone unless the opponent contracted not to touch his hair. And late in his career, as other wrestlers were eclipsing him, he fought a match where the loser would have his locks sheared. Gorgeous lost the match and his hair.

There is a line from Gorgeous George to Trump. This path meanders with stops for Muhammed Ali and James Brown, both reportedly fans of Gorgeous. It goes through Ric Flair, William Regal, and other wrestlers. But although the line goes to him, Trump in some ways has flipped (piledriven?) the Gorgeous George persona on its head.  Gorgeous played the heel to fill the arenas with those who came to jeer him. Trump, too, acts the heel, but not to the faithful in front of him. Trump unites with the audience and together they act as the heel to all who are not Trump’s fans or are, like Vince McMahon, Trump’s real or imagined nemeses. It provided pleasure akin to that at a wrestling spectacle when he would say–and the crowd would join in denouncing–little Mario, that nasty woman, the lying press. The fantasy of pro wrestling, however, becomes dangerously real when Trump wants the audience to join him in jeering at and taking down legitimate news media. Wrestling stars in the ring have a made up and scripted role, but Trump seems not to realize the President of the United States is not a fictional character.

Gorgeous entered the arena to work and work up the audience. When the crowd frenziedly taunted him, he would shout back, “Shut up, you peasants.” The crowed would roar with delight. Trump’s has shifted the heel’s performance. His audience roars because Trump and his audience together seem to shout to all those that are not enthralled by him, “Shut up, you elites.”

If you are like me, your Fourth of July rituals have changed through the years. When I was a mere tyke, I went to a parade on the main street. Representatives from a VFW post; floats decorated by kids from the day camps around town; a marching band or two. Lame and boring, I thought even then. (How often does a marching band actually play in tune?) Then a family reunion picnic at Aunt Maude’s where the boredom increased. In the evening, fireworks on the lakefront—the only good part of the day.

As a young married, the spouse and I did not have any firm Fourth of July rituals. Sometimes we went to New York City’s fireworks–always magnificent. Sometimes, however, we were traveling on Independence Day, at least once in Italy where I watched Wimbledon on a TV in a store window.

For decades now, I have been in a little summer community that has its own Fourth of July pageantry. A tiny parade followed by a program that almost never varies—a few songs; children reciting the names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence; a couple dressed as George and Martha; a short speech by a community member; the releasing of thirteen doves; and cookies and watermelon afterwards. We then marvel at how Americana-ish we are. (I have some problems with the early morning routine. A rider on horseback goes through the community before a civilized wakeup time intoning, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” While this might be appropriate for Patriots’ Day, it is wrong for the Fourth. I don’t know where Paul Revere was on July 4, 1776, but he was not signing the Declaration, and he was not looking for lanterns to see whether if it was by land or sea. I have read my Longfellow.)

For a long time before the present rituals, however, I had my personal Fourth of July routine. The New York Times printed the entire Declaration on the first section’s back page, and I would read it. Even after dozens of readings, I would note the archaisms, but still admire the rhythm and the phrasing of the Declaration’s first section—“a decent respect to [not for] the opinions of mankind. . .”; “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established. . . “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

If we even think of the Declaration today, we usually only contemplate these opening paragraphs, but I was also fascinated by the list of the elegantly-written grievances about the King and tried to remember, not always successfully, what specifics had occasioned the complaints. Some of my frustration at my lack of historical knowledge was relieved when, after many perusals of the Declaration, I read American Scripture: Making of the Declaration of Independence by Pauline Maier, who wrote “Today most Americans, including professional historians, would be hard put to identify exactly what prompted many of the accusations Jefferson hurled against the King, which is not surprising since even some well-informed persons of the eighteenth century were perplexed.” (Even so, I find it ironic today that the indictments included the assertions that the Crown had impeded immigration to our shores and prevented free trade. The list includes some . . . shall we say . . . overstatements of fact. My own research mirrors Maier’s: “Even the most assiduous efforts have, however, identified no colonists of the revolutionaries’ generation who were actually transported ‘beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.’”)

Even so, each reading led me to the conclusion that Jefferson was a genius. (The wife says that after finishing Ron Chernow’s Hamilton, she can no longer hold Jefferson in the highest regard.) This, too, has been tempered as I have learned that the Declaration was preceded by ninety or so state and local Declarations whose phrasings often were echoed in the Fourth of July Declaration and that Jefferson’s draft was frequently improved by the editing done by Congress. But still, Jefferson produced the draft that in its final form still lives. Or at least it lives, if we, not just a few academics, continue to read and appreciate it. Yes, decorate the coaster wagons and golf carts with crepe paper, play John Philips Sousa, listen to platitudes about our freedom, watch the jets fly over, have a family softball game, eat ice cream and watermelon, but at least once in awhile also read the document that is the cause for all the celebration.

“Riding up the winding road of Saint Agnes Cemetery in the back of the rattling old truck, Francis Phelan became aware that the dead, even more than the living, settled down in neighborhoods.” William Kennedy, Ironweed.

“In the beginning, human beings created God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth.” Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

“Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye, these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling yer head, then the other words; there’s something wrong; there’s something far far wrong; ye’re no a good man, ye’re just no a good man.” James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late.

“I hadn’t been a shad fisherman all my days, only seven years, on the May evening when this story begins—in a johnboat, flat and square, anchored in heavy current by the bridge in Lambertville on the wall of the eddy below the fourth pier.” John McPhee, The Founding Fish.

“ ‘The Mass in English, Lolita in Latin, that’s the recipe for peace in our time,’ Father Guardian said—the Superior had a bee in his bonnet about liturgy.” Bruce Marshall, Father Hilary’s Holiday.

“From the west-facing window of the room in which Meriwether Lewis was born on August 18, 1774, one could look out at Rockfish Gap, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, an opening to the West that invited exploration.” Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.

“They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach.

“Five Points, the lower Manhattan neighborhood name for the five-corner intersection of Anthony, Orange, and Cross Streets, was originally verdant and bucolic, like everything else in America.” Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The 19^th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum.

“We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.” James Agee, A Death in the Family.

“It was a few days after the tenth of August, 1949, when I first saw the Mann Gulch fire and started to become, even in part consciously, a small part of its story.” Norman MacLean, Young Men and Fire.

“I am an artist first, a censor second.” Anthony Marra, The Tsar of Love and Techno.

“We search for certainty and call what we find destiny.” Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan, Chances Are . . . Adventures in Probability.

“At the age of fifteen, my grandmother became the concubine of a warlord general, the police chief of a tenuous national government of China.” Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China.