7-Opinion
Opinion
K
ing George III probably
assumed
that
George
Washington
would
go
the way of Oliver Cromwell. To be
fair to America’s colonial monarch,
it was a reasonable assumption.
Across history, such astronomic
victories in the field were rarely
followed by voluntary concessions.
Many Europeans — and even
Americans — suspected that in
the event of a Franco-American
victory, Washington would retain
his power, perhaps even becoming
America’s king. Across the waves,
King George III wondered the same.
He evidently asked Benjamin West,
a famous American painter who
was in London at the time, what he
thought Washington would do if the
rebels were victorious. West said that
he believed the Virginian planter
would return to his estate at Mount
Vernon — to civilian life. King George
was stunned. “If (Washington) does
that,” he said, “He will be the greatest
man in the world.”
West’s prediction was correct.
America’s
independence
was
formally confirmed through the
Treaty of Paris in September 1783,
and in November 1783, the last
Redcoats in the nascent republic
sailed out of New York Harbor. A
month later, Washington resigned
as
commander-in-chief
of
the
Continental Army. “Having now
finished the work assigned me,
I retire from the great theatre
of Action,” Washington said in
Annapolis, Md. “And bidding an
Affectionate farewell (... I) take my
leave of all the employments of public
life.”
Of course, Washington later did
return to public life, becoming the
first president under the United
States Constitution and serving
two terms (after which, to a similar
surprise of many, Washington again
voluntarily gave up his power). But
that Washington returned to public
office after having supposedly given
up “all the employments of public
life” in 1783 does not dilute the
importance or power of that moment.
After leading the Continental forces
through eight years of war against
the Crown, he could have become
an American warlord. Instead he
became an American citizen.
As of writing this article, Donald
Trump is desperate. He has still
refused to concede to Joe Biden, the
rightful winner of the presidential
election, which we know produced
a fair and correct outcome. Rather
than admit defeat with the grace
and dignity befitting of his office
— something all of his one-term
predecessors have done — he has
peddled baseless conspiracy theories
about how the election was “rigged”
or “stolen.” None of it is true, of
course, which is why Trump’s half-
baked lawsuits are getting slammed
in the courts.
After
four
years
of
our
commander-in-chief’s
constant
ridiculousness, perhaps we should be
accustomed to this sort of behavior.
But it is nonetheless disheartening
to see an American president
behave like a 4-year-old who lost a
board game and to see millions of
Americans support this obscene
disrespect of our republican process.
But
it
goes
beyond
mere
disrespect for American democracy,
too. Trump’s refusal to publicly
recognize defeat, while not in itself
a barrier to the transition of power
— Biden will be sworn in on Jan. 20,
2021 whether or not Trump makes a
public concession — can cause very
real and lasting damage to the nation.
For one, it undermines faith in
American democracy, both at home
and abroad. Americans need to
know that our electoral process is
trustworthy and fair, and republican
government only works because
the losers recognize defeat. When a
sitting American president calls that
process a scam without evidence
— and his base, along with scores of
Republican Party lawmakers, abet
these nonsense claims — it puts the
legitimacy of our form of government
in jeopardy. What’s more, it damages
America’s image on the international
stage. Americans have long regarded
the U.S. as the paragon of democracy,
an ideal that we have long prided
ourselves on and often used to
inform our foreign outlook. If we
can’t manage a smooth transition of
power at home, how can we expect
the world to still see us as a model of
democracy?
There are also some serious
practical consequences of Trump’s
behavior. In rejecting Biden’s status as
president-elect, Trump has evidently
refused to share information about
COVID-19 that would aid Biden’s
transition team. Per CNN, the
Trump
administration
directed
personnel at the Department of
Health and Human Services to not
speak with Biden’s advisers. “Unless
it (necessary information) is made
available (to us) soon,” Biden said, his
administration could “be behind by
weeks or months” in addressing the
pandemic.
Fortunately,
federal
agencies
will cooperate with Biden’s team
(with or without Trump’s approval)
now that the General Services
Administration — the agency which
formally
oversees
presidential
transition of power — has confirmed
that Biden won the election. GSA
Administrator
Emily
Murphy
certified Biden as president-elect in
late November, which was inevitable
given the insubstantial nature of the
president’s litigation.
While our sore loser-in-chief holes
up at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and
pursues laughable lawsuits, rational
Americans understand that the game
is up. Biden is president-elect and
Biden will become president on Jan.
20, 2021. At that time, Trump will
no longer be commander-in-chief;
he will return to being just a citizen.
Trump’s appreciation of history is
probably as flimsy as his current
legal proceedings, but he would be
wise to follow the example of our
first commander-in-chief. Perhaps in
a few years, if he and enough of the
American people so wish, we’ll see his
return to the presidential arena. But
right now, it’s time for the president
to do what is right for America: step
down, move aside and go home to
Trump Tower or Mar-a-Lago or
wherever he calls Mount Vernon.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020 — 6
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN | COLUMN
The Queen’s Gambit shows knowledge
can’t defeat addiction
T
he period piece and limited
Netflix series “The Queen’s
Gambit”
amplifies
the
internal contradictions of addiction
through nostalgic portrayals of a
time when the battle for dominance
between the then-Soviet Union and
the United States was predominantly
cultural. Rife with contradictions
in how its nostalgic renderings and
pleasingly muted color palettes fail
to reflect the turbulence of the late
‘60s, the series certainly paints afresh
a feel-good, “pull yourself up by your
bootstraps” narrative.
Despite this declaration making
immediate indications of a scathing
review, I haven’t been able to
stop watching the show, and this
column isn’t a review of the series
as a whole. My tendency to notice
one storyline embedded in the
series over all the others is born of
my foregrounded knowledge of
addiction’s consequences. But the
series offers a powerful rendition of
how self-knowledge, or knowledge of
the potential for hereditary diseases,
doesn’t defeat addiction.
From the vantage point of our
cultural moment, it is critical to
engage the addiction narrative in
“The Queen’s Gambit.” We could
begin with the way the orphanage
doses the orphans with tranquilizers
to keep them manageable, and how
we recently learned of McKinsey’s
evil corporate scam, where the
corporation knowingly preyed on
victims of the opioid crisis by offering
“overdose rebates” to pharmacies.
We could begin by naming another
example from that same legacy
left by another quintessential icon,
the “American scam artist,” where
self-proclaimed
“rehab
centers”
systematically scammed vulnerable,
low-income
families
for
their
insurance money.
Even so, let us start with the
practical and the cosmetic. About
halfway through the series, Elizabeth
Harmon’s addiction has clearly
escalated — the expected trajectory
of any active addiction from modern
medicine’s understanding of it. It is
additionally important that I clarify
what I mean by this: Through the
first half of the 20th century and
beyond, addicts were regarded
by Americans with characteristic
ambivalence, perhaps epitomized
by the United States Narco Farm
in Lexington, Ky., which opened
in 1935 and housed both convicted
drug addicts and voluntary patients
in an ultimately doomed experiment
for treating addiction. Still, addicts
desperate for relief even wrote letters
to the farm’s directors begging to
be admitted. This is despite how
addiction was then ubiquitously
regarded as a moral failure that could
be cured by farm work alone.
Today,
addiction
specialists
use the term “medical model” to
summarize their understanding as
opposed to attributing addiction
to moral shortcomings. But cue
Harmon downing entire bottles of
red wine at an astonishing pace with
a pensive, sultry gaze. Her ensuing
spiral into substance abuse has a
cinematic, nearly iconic look to it.
We might want to step away from
imagery depicting someone’s bottom
as a well-choreographed music video
with only one scene of projectile
vomiting, where she somehow never
manages to lose the house.
She
simultaneously
takes
incredibly strong tranquilizers,
but even at the end of the series,
anyone who has been in or has
known someone in the throes
of addiction cannot watch the
final
scene
unfold
without
wondering
how
Taylor-Joy’s
complexion
has
remained
so
lovely throughout. Dare I say, her
complexion improves significantly
and
becomes
miraculously
more radiant, with not a trace of
dehydration aside from the one
time she downs glasses of water
during her “hangover match” with
the Russian.
Even when Harry Beltik, her
pursuer
and
competitor,
notes
changes in Harmon’s skin with no
shortage of disgust and incredulity
(and whoever did Taylor-Joy’s make-
up there indeed made her look quite
a bit more pallid), I’m not sure I ever
noticed a difference as far as her face
appearing more bloated. If you were
to abuse alcohol on the level Harmon
does in “The Queen’s Gambit,” your
face would bloat from a combination
of water retention and weight gain.
Alcohol has many calories and causes
a unique kind of bloating — especially
and very noticeably in the face.
I have regarded my otherwise
malnourished face in a mirror, bloated
to the point where my own gaze didn’t
register the years-long accumulated
changes. Remarkably, I didn’t drink
until my first year of college, when
I ran cross-country for a small
Christian school. The act of taking
that first drink, it turns out, would
make an incision in my life resulting in
my nearly losing everything. You may
believe this to be an exaggeration but,
very unfortunately, it isn’t.
Addiction is structural violence
within
the
self
that
tentacles
into obsession, like a magnetic
field that cannot be reversed
or deprogrammed — think the
shimmer
of
Jeff
VanderMeer’s
“Annihilation” from which you do
not return the same. You may not
know this, but here is a haunting
and predictable piece of knowledge:
Alcohol
effectively
affects
the
hominid brain in a literalized reversal
of its evolution. First, it powers
down the frontal cortex, then the
prefrontal cortex and so on. Before it
can affect the brain stem, it silences
the hippocampus and therefore the
acquisition of memories. Then it
often triggers a stupor and a restless
sleep before it can impact involuntary
functions such as breathing.
Alcohol incapacitated my desire
for everything else as if a magnet
had steadily gained strength and
before I knew it, the temptation had
become physiologically built into
my everyday. My relationship with
alcohol was initially complicated
because, like many people on the
autism spectrum, I felt socializing
was impenetrably stressful, like a
labyrinth — every interaction was
a calculus I was notoriously bad at.
The first time I was legally able to
consume a glass of wine at a formal
event, I remember how my anxiety
shrank to a manageable level — it felt
like a revelation or a mere fragment
of the carefree social life I saw others
enjoying. I wondered why no one had
ever told me it could feel this good, or
this easy.
Moreover, this was before I was
introduced to cognitive-behavioral
techniques for disarming some of
my more annoying tics, which did
not make me particularly charming
and included: repetitively sounding
out consonants (“-th” and“-sh”),
“stimming”
and
tunnel
vision
for particular subjects that no
one else cared about (admittedly,
this hasn’t gone away). Small talk
wasn’t something I was necessarily
“disinterested” in — it confused me. I
tried to understand why people did it,
and then I tried to replicate it.
In exuding oddball glamour while
exhibiting some of the characteristic
obsession that I can personally
identify with, Harmon’s character
makes rigorous, disciplined obsession
alongside
fiercely
unapologetic
female intelligence seem a glamorous
performance art. Even when she
wakes up severely hungover in Paris,
she whips her head forward and
instantly collects herself, looking like
a veritable siren doll with sinuously
reflective
red
curls
magically
restored to bouncing perfection —
just minutes after emerging from a
bathtub with pitch-black mascara
bleeding down her cheeks. Every
man that has been in her life saves her
more than once; the show is a fairy
tale without Brothers Grimm body
horror or any horror to speak of aside
from its tragic opening scene.
But let’s rewind a bit more, to
the moment when Harmon first
visualizes an upside-down game
of chess on the orphanage ceiling.
There is a particularly dangerous
form of causality being drawn here
between
Harmon’s
blossoming
intellect — her precocity — and not
just her tendency toward addictive
behaviors, but her addiction to
pills as well. It’s important to note
the difference: It’s perfectly fine to
acknowledge that sometimes yes,
there is a link between an individual
who harbors some kind of genetic
predisposition toward addiction and
their potential for greatness.
Sierra Elise Hansen can be reached
at hsierra@umich.edu
MAX STEINBAUM | COLUMN
A return to Mount Vernon
Max Steinbaum can be reached at
maxst@umich.edu.
O
n Wednesday, Nov. 25, the
Supreme Court overturned
New York state’s restriction
on attendance at religious services
amid the COVID-19 pandemic,
claiming that New York infringed on
freedom of religion. As a result of this
decision, New Yorkers may now freely
worship in large numbers, despite an
increase in COVID-19 cases across
the United States. This ruling may
result in more COVID-19 cases and
more deaths than ever before. Cold
weather, the gatherings associated
with the holiday season and the spike
in attendance at religious services for
Christmas and Hanukkah combined
will not help. Furthermore, this
ruling is indicative of future
rulings of the Supreme Court. The
majority of this Supreme Court is
conservative and will likely rule
accordingly in favor of exceptions
for religious practice, as they did
on Nov. 25. Though not surprising
given
the
justices’
political
views, overturning New York’s
restriction on attending religious
services raises New Yorkers’ risk
of contracting the coronavirus.
Their decision also showcases that
this Supreme Court values religious
freedom over the right to live. At the
end of the day, no religious sentiments
should be valued above the health
of many. Life must trump religion,
always.
Though
religion
should
not
come before human life in any
circumstance, it can also be argued
that New York’s restriction does not
infringe upon the freedom of religion
guaranteed in the Constitution.
According to the American Civil
Liberties Union, the First Amendment
gives Americans the right to practice
whatever religion they choose, or no
religion at all. However, restricting
in-person attendance at religious
services does not enforce a religion,
or lack thereof, on New Yorkers.
Those affected by the restriction are
still free to subscribe to any faith of
their choosing: They simply must
observe that faith safely, given the
unique circumstances determined
by the pandemic. Many historians
also argue that First Amendment
rights were given not to restrict
state governments, but the federal
government, making New York’s
restriction constitutional through
some lenses.
In normal times, I would agree
with the justices in their stance that
the government should not be able
to determine how people choose to
practice their respective religions.
But we are not in normal times. The
COVID-19 pandemic has prompted
government intervention in many
areas in which the government is not
usually involved. Cities and states
have instituted stay-at-home orders
and mask mandates to minimize risk
of contracting COVID-19, and these
orders were deemed constitutional.
Why, all of a sudden, do individual
liberties come before national health
when religion is involved?
Regardless of the constitutionality
of the restriction, we can all agree
that it would likely mitigate the
impacts of the pandemic in the
holiday season. Any effective method
of deterring people from gathering
in large numbers will contribute
to the national effort to slow the
spread of COVID-19. Earlier in the
year, religious gatherings facilitated
community spread of COVID-19.
Combine that inevitable spread with
the flu season, the cold weather
and the upcoming major religious
holidays in the U.S., disaster is bound
to strike. Though the Supreme Court
has won the favor of many religious
individuals in the U.S. with the
ruling, its decision will likely lead to
thousands of COVID-19 diagnoses.
Despite the Supreme Court’s
ruling putting millions at higher risk
of contracting COVID-19, there is
some good news: New Yorkers, and
all Americans, still have the agency
to make the right decisions for
themselves and their communities.
Many places of worship and religious
organizations stream services so
attendees can practice religion from
the safety of their own homes
ILANA MERMELSTEIN | COLUMN
No religion is more important that people’s lives
Ilana Mermelstein can be reached
at imerm@umich.edu.
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