The Streets aren’t paved with Cheese: Trump, Biden, and America

I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ The Us and the Holocaust (why yes, I could use a hug). As someone who has spent years studying political violence, I’ve ceased being surprised by the horrors every new text or documentary shows. Last time I was reading a memoir from Rwanda I came up with a great YA novel where a plague wipes out 98% of the men on the planet.

But Ken Burns got me with this. Maybe it is the weaponization of antisemitism right now. Perhaps it’s living through multiple genocides simultaneously. It could be because I’m re-reading Judith Shklar, and the hollowness of legalism is sitting heavy with me. It could be something as simple as Peter Coyote’s gentle voice (love him!) juxtaposed with the horrors of the Nazis (hate them).

Or it could be that we’re on the episode that talks a lot about Poland, where my grandmother’s family, part of my grandfather’s family, and my husband’s ancestor all came from. I remember the old ladies of my youth who still covered their hair when they left the house, spoke English that was peppered with accents, and would feed any child within a seven-mile radius. It wasn’t until I was older that I considered what they must have gone through to get here.

An American Tale

I have written previously about Pixar’s Elemental and comparing it to An American Tale. But it’s strange seeing my kids grow up without neighbors who constantly talk about “back in the Old Country.” I realize that as we Americanize, we lose a connection with being the “Mother of Exiles” and the “tired…poor…huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” We keep the freedom but forget the struggle, and in so doing, close “the Golden door” behind us.

Burns documentary does an amazing job of looking through the high-level politics, but where it really shines is in examining the street-level bureaucrats. People who we think of as paper-pushers who, as one interviewee said, can save a life by pushing the right paper from here to there. The law is equal and arbitrary all at once, which is theoretically fun until millions of people pay the price for it. A stamp means life, a rejection, probably torture and death.

The Streets Aren’t Paved with Cheese

“There are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese,” the Mousekewitz family assured their children (apologies to cats whom I love for the bad metaphor, but I didn’t write the song). I wish it were true for children around the world, as I would want it to be true for my children if we were in that situation. People fleeing violence give up so much in hopes of living, then if they arrive where they want to be find Lady Liberty’s promise to be less than what they expected. When Fievel had to change his name, I remember feeling the same distress my daughter did when Bernie and Cinder had to leave their Firish names behind in Elemental, as did my great-grandfather’s parents, possibly with him in their arms (my grandmother’s memory was a little fuzzy here).

It’s easy to see these days that the streets aren’t paved with cheese. It’s easy to see that what Burns puts in his documentary still rings true (I mean, that’s probably his point). A strongman leader who openly sews discord, riles up the angry and disenchanted, and promises to make [country] great again. It’s funny how over and over those in dire economic straits turn on marginalized groups and never the rich people who put them in the dire economic situation in the first place. Maybe we’ll grow out of that someday.

Until then, it’s straight out of Jason Stanley’s 10 steps on How Fascism Works. (We’ve checked off all ten. Be afraid.)

But wait, there’s more! The whole world seems to be regressing into authoritarianism, and the resistance can’t seem to muster any more resistance than a virtue signal. Or to put it as Hal Brands did: “It’s beginning to look a lot like WWII out there.” Distressingly, even in WWII it wasn’t until Japan attacked that Americans were sure we were going to join on the Allies side (probably why conspiracy theorists, defying all evidence, still claim FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen).

The Father Coughlin hate radio types and the German American Bund with their “American Fuhrer” were hoping we’d join the Nazis, and it wasn’t a wholly baseless hope (concerning).

It’s worth noting that despite open calls for white supremacists violence and advocating joining the Nazis, none of these people were seen as traitors or rounded up and thrown into camps, but American Japanese were. (If you haven’t read George Takei’s graphic novel, do).

It feels hopeless, even to my suspiciously optimistic heart, which is why my kids and I have been rewatching Captain America and Indiana Jones. Punching Nazis is the second greatest American pastime (nothing tops baseball).

A Love Letter to Democracy

A friend of mine, knowing my distress about the enthusiasm vacuum that will be the Biden-Trump election sent me a meme that said “a vote isn’t a love letter to a candidate. It’s a love letter to democracy.”

Annoying friends being right when I’m trying to be jaded and cynical. Hate that.

If the streets were paved with cheese, I could sit this out. If it was another Obama-Romney or even Obama-McCain where the results wouldn’t be that different from a policy-diplomacy sense, I could protest vote. But I can’t. Because in this case, my vote really is a vote for democracy (however flawed it may be) or for authoritarianism.

I’m not some wide-eyed optimist who thinks that Biden is great, but I think Biden is an acceptable alternative, a least objectionable variable. And after 2000, I know how important it is to vote like a disaster is around the bend: we are where we are because George W. Bush was president on September 11, 2001. The credibility, money, lives, and international law that he destroyed while simultaneously giving a boost to Fox News, hate radio, and Christian Nationalism took us here.

You don’t always know when an election is going to be consequential. You should always vote like your democracy depends on it, because it very well might. In 2016 we knew. In 2020 we know. And in 2024 we know. If Trump wins, the hatred and bigotry he brings with him win. We won’t just get a narcissist; we’re get a narcissist with a score to settle.

Those upset with Biden for his catastrophic arrogance and ignorance about Gaza (myself included) are not going to find an ally in Trump. Biden is someone a Congress could change or persuade. Trump is not. Look at the Republicans lining up at his trial. They don’t like him. They’re doing it because they know if he wins, he’ll attack them if they don’t. They’re trying to protect their interests because it’s easier than standing up for our country. They’re in too deep to go back now.

At the end of the day, there are cats in America. There’s also us, and us can still say no.

"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato