Rhode Island

It is not often that an American politician publishes a book of genuine interest. It is even less often, breaking through the veil of ghostwriters and marketers and political risk consultants, that such a book provides real insight into its author. Hillbilly Elegy is an obvious example: an unusually vulnerable self-portrait whose sales shot through the roof after J.D. Vance was tapped to be Donald Trump’s running mate this summer. Josh Hawley may never be vice president, but his ambitions and his politics are already apparent in the biography of Teddy Roosevelt he published a full sixteen years ago.

Score one for unexpected nominative determinism! All this time, people figured Sheldon Whitehouse’s name must foretell a quixotic attempt at the presidency. Instead, it turns out he just likes sitting in a giant house full of white people. Last Friday, as part of the nation’s Juneteenth ebullience (at least eight dead so far!), some enterprising reporter decided to ask the Rhode Island senator about his membership in the Spouting Rock Beach Association, better known as the Bailey’s Beach club. Whitehouse was asked if the club was still all-white — and if he was still a member. Whitehouse was apparently unprepared for the question, which is fairly inexcusable for a politician who has spent a year seeing others consumed by America’s racial 'reckoning’.

I think it was Sir Charles Dilke who warned against ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’. I live in a small, fairly isolated neighborhood of about 100 houses on the Connecticut side of Long Island Sound. Most of my neighbors seem to be trying out for the part of Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death. Our neighborhood association issues frequent, increasingly shrill bulletins. Most appeal to the authority of the CDC, warning us and our children to stay at home, wear a mask and, should we dare to venture out, to keep at least six feet apart from one another. We are forbidden from congregating in public spaces. We are discouraged from socializing with friends inside.

Americans enjoyed a tremendous sense of solidarity in the days following 9/11. People gathered on street corners, at subway stops, holding small candles, and for a time we quite forgot about politics. I had expected something like this to happen now, during the corona pandemic. But it hasn’t, and this has made me think that the country’s breakup is even more likely than I had thought when my book, American Secession, was published in January. One difference, of course, is that we’re not supposed to be together during an pandemic. We’re supposed to be six feet apart, the length of a hockey stick. We don’t do group hugs anymore. If you’re a misanthrope, these are the glory days.