Of Quizzes and Quakes: Reflections on Triumph and Defeat

Many thanks to everyone who reached out to me after the recent powerful earthquake in New Zealand. We are suffered no ill effects in Timaru. It primarily struck in a beautiful but sparsely populated area 200 miles north of here, in Kaikoura. Fortunately only two people were reported to have died, but the destruction to infrastructure and transportation will take a long time and lots of money to repair. It is yet another reminder (as if we need it) of how fragile our world can be.

U Ram It Pub Quiz Team -Champs of the South Island- Photo by John Bisset Fairfax

Now for the good news: my eight-person team went to Auckland on November 12, 2016 to participate in the 17^th Annual New Zealand Pub Quiz Championship 2016. We came, we saw, we finished 15^th equal (or tied for 15^th in US English). Out of the total 61 teams there were four from the South Island, U Ram It finished the highest, allowing us to declare ourselves Champs of the South!

Final scores. Look carefully at the 18^th line.

The name U Ram It was suggested by team member Dr. Sam Fussey, and you might have noticed it is Timaru spelled backwards. The logo and Tees were designed by me, and I think they came out well.

The logo is mirror image of Timaru

My backside

The quiz was a grueling five hours long and including a round of tasting and naming seven cheeses and three wines in order of certainty (i.e.: at first wrong answer, no further points are awarded). We all easily identifies a sliver of Swiss cheese and we put it #1 on the list, but the answer they wanted was Emmental (!?!) so we got zero out of ten points for that round.

Sam and the team take the taste test

I have had my eye on participating in this event for two years and it exceeded my expectations, which were to go, not finish last, and have a good time. Check, check, and checkmate. Thanks to the rest of my team for going with me this adventure; Sam, Renee, Cushla, Connaire, Stephen, Paul, and of course Fayne.

A panorama of the quiz with U Ram It at the middle table

It was good just to get away to Auckland for the weekend. As we head into the Holiday Season, Auckland is once again erecting a giant Santa on Queen Street, the main drag.

Previous versions of Santa have had him menacingly winking and beckoning with his finger, and led many to give him the title of “World’s Creepiest Christmas Ornament”. St. Nick has had some recent cosmetic surgery, and the winking and beckoning finger have been eliminated. Click here for further history, and here for the full Top Eleven list.

Another thing that has brought me joy lately is the appearance of some fruit on our young cherry trees. After we moved in to our house last year Fayne did some modest yard improvement, and knowing my love for cherries had a pair of saplings planted. Looking quite dormant over the winter, they have revived this spring and even produced some small green fruits, as yet inedible but with a promise for the future.

Now for the elephant in the room: the election of Donald Trump as our next US President. This disturbed me much more deeply than I expected. In my own way I have struggled to come to terms with this. When I could bear to think about it, I felt a compulsion to coherently sort out my thoughts and feelings. (If one believes in omens, perhaps the Cubs winning the World Series for the first time in 108 years, or Ireland beating the All Blacks for the first time in rugby in the 111 year history of their contests had a darker significance.)

What follows is a long exposition on how I responded emotionally to the news, trying to make a case that perhaps it will not be as disastrous as I fear, but also expressing skepticism, and finally enunciating what values I cherish. This has been very therapeutic for me, but please feel free to skip this if it is still too painful for you, or if you don’t really want to know what I think and feel.

Trump

On December 26, 2004 a massive earthquake struck and caused death and destruction from Indonesia to Africa, killing about 270,000 people. It was powerful enough to alter the rotation of the planet and shorten the day. In my lifetime, I have experienced four major intra-psychic temblors that fundamentally shook up my world view.

My personal list includes:

1.  Friday November 22, 1963- I was in 8^th grade the day JFK was assassinated
2.  Saturday October 15, 1988- Game 1 of the 85^th World Series, a great Oakland A’s team was ahead in the 9^th inning with two out and the amazing Dennis Eckersley on the mound when a severely hobbled Kirk Gibson hit a 3-2 pitch out to the right field bleachers to win the game for the Dodgers. (Admittedly, a very trivial choice but as an avid A’s fan in the stands in LA, it did shake my reality and makes me wince to this day).
3. Tuesday September 11, 2001, and
4. Wednesday November 9, 2016- in New Zealand excruciatingly hearing the news of Donald Trump winning the election (remember, NZ is one day ahead).

I generally process things analytically and at a distance (at times to a fault), but these events all struck at a deep involuntary limbic level. I lost appetite, couldn't sleep, had trouble concentrating, was too stunned to watch the news or interact with people normally. I was also drawn to things to try to give me an endorphin jolt: "comfort" junk foods, loud rock music, wishing I could dance mindlessly until exhausted.

Since then, I have struggled to understand why this election has affected me and many others so savagely. It is not that I thought it couldn’t happen, but that it wouldn’t happen. I knew that as a major party nominee he had a significant chance to win, and I experienced a severe and chronic amount of anxiety and worry over that prospect during the interminable campaign, with a crescendo in the last few weeks.

The thought that even 5% of my country would respond to his message was deeply disturbing to me.   60 million Americans voted for Trump! We all know people who did, and some are reading this now. They are the one’s responsible for the results of this election. I choose not to say “blame” because by definition that means I know this decision will turn out badly. I worry that this will be the case, but I am not 100% certain of how this all will play out. I have reasons for my fears, but past performance does not always predict the future. To be clear, the heart of his message was racially charged, misogynistic, hateful, angry, mean-spirited, fear-mongering, and filled with easily exposed lies. Added to this are questions about his temperament or his wild foreign policy stances, which deeply concerns much of the rest of the world. Those Americans who marked their ballots for him either:

1. Did not recognize this;
2. Saw it and agreed with it; or
3. Saw it and decided in spite of all this, voting for Trump was the best use of their ballot.

To the first two groups, I doubt you will listen to anything I might say. To the third group, you must have decided you will benefit in some way important enough to tolerate his abhorrent behavior. I expect most people to vote for whom they think will be best for them, not necessarily who may be best for their neighbors, the country, or the world. I hope what motivated you most was a desire for a positive change in your lives: a better job, more money, more sense of security, a cure to drug addiction problems in your communities. I hope for your sake some of those things get better under the next government. If you don't get any of that, and the worst parts of Trumps agenda lead to widespread suffering for others by taking away health insurance from tens of millions of people, ripping families apart, encouraging white supremacy and xenophobia and sexism, then you all have been duped. If what you most desired most was to express anger and to make others’ lives worse, the satisfaction you feel may be short-lived.

Donald Trump has been in the public eye for over 40 years with his history and public statements are widely available.  To his credit, he made no real effort to hide his personality or his platform. At times it seemed as if he was trolling the whole country, flinging accusations at his opponents that were more apt descriptions of himself. I found it particularly ironic that he liked to quote this 1960's R&B song (ostensibly to criticize Hillary or refugees, I'm not sure which):

"Oh shut up, silly woman," said the reptile with a grin
You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in"- from  The Snake, written by Oscar Brown

Specifically, I cannot forgive or forget his initial political claim to fame: pushing the hateful Birther lie, attempting to make a twice elected president somehow illegitimate. People don't like to be considered racist, but the fact is we all have deep-seated conscious and unconscious biases. For example, studies have shown when absolutely identical patient scenarios, say a broken bone presenting to the Emergency Department, people of color will be treated differently and receive less pain medicine.  It is deep in all our souls and our society, although we may not recognize it. You may not agree with any policy or action taken by President Obama, but if you believed the Birther Lie, you are racist.  In the same way, Trump said many times of Hillary "she should not be allowed to run for President", a clear and indefensible attempt to de-legitimize her.  And of course, he then boldly lied that Hillary started Birtherism and he ended it. It is hard for me to ignore that he choose to vilify China while praising Russia, and crudely attacked Megyn Kelly, the conservative Fox News host when she reported things he didn’t like. His bilious rage centered primarily on the non-whites and non-males. Nasty man!

The ball is squarely in the Republicans' court. They won. Now let us really see how they will govern. Had Hillary won, there was plenty of reason to suspect even worse gridlock and do-nothingness in Congress than Obama has faced most of his tenure. Some promised continued endless investigations into Hillary’s “scandals”, possible impeachment, and stone-walling the Supreme Court nominees for at least four years. Perhaps whatever they do may address some issues like the national debt and our crumbling infrastructure. Let’s see what they really do about immigration and world affairs and health care, large and chronic issues that have not been resolved in part because of their complexity.

For things to turn out better than expected, Mr. Trump will have to back away from some of his most draconian and odious proposals, not impossible but unlikely. He would have to have a "Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus" moment of dramatic change. He is 70 years old and just pulled off the largest upset in US Presidential politics, so he might not be inclined to change.

It is almost certain that I personally will be affected much less than the most vulnerable; the poor, the disabled, non-white people, women. America has never been perfect, and there are many dark periods in US and World history.  You may take comfort in that so far, we have been through worse periods and survived, and things eventually did improve. Or you may look in despair at the horrific tragedies in just in the last 100 years. It feels like the 1930's. There is something going on world-wide. Look at Brexit, the current President of the Philippines, and the rise of right-wing movements in Europe. 

We are reminded of Godwin's Law, which posits that "As an online discussion grows longer, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler”. This may not be that, but horrible things have happened before and can happen again. Bad things start somehow, and lack of concern or even contempt of our fellow man and woman seems a good place to begin. Not overlooking very shameful parts of American history, I have always taken pride in what I learned as core founding American Principles. It is not an exaggeration to say these are being threatened. 

The American Revolution was fought for the right to a fair and speedy trial and freedoms of speech, press, and religion. We have had people locked up in Guantanamo for over a decade with no charges or court dates in sight. Our President-Elect has openly advocated torture, stop-and-frisk, and international war crimes. He has openly been hostile to the press, to any critics, to non-whites and women, and people of the Muslim faith. I prefer to live in a world with leaders who exhibit rational thought, respect for others, compassion, fairness, esteem for science, and who value the search for truth. I fear losing the good things about my country and that the world will be a worse place. I hope I am wrong.