St. Elsewhere
I usually write the blog piece first, then a title based on the content. In thinking about the events of recent days, though, “St. Elsewhere” suggested itself before I’d written a word. I was a big fan the 1980s medical drama of that name. It comforted me to immerse myself in its messy but compassionate world during a decade that marked my entry into wage-earning adulthood, with all the challenges and vulnerabilities that entailed.
Per Wikipedia, St. Elsewhere “is a slang term used in the medical field to refer to lesser-equipped hospitals that serve patients turned away by more prestigious institutions.” In the series’ pilot episode, Dr. Mark Craig (portrayed by William Daniels; memorably Benjamin Braddock’s father in The Graduate) laments that for all the dedication and compassion of St. Eligius’s doctors, nurses, administrators and non-medical personnel, the place is “perceived as a dumping ground, a place you wouldn’t want to send your mother-in-law.”
That’s pretty much the way I see the Democratic Party.
To me, it’s an enterprise with a big heart that believes in public service and truly strives — albeit it with uneven results — to help make people’s lives better. Yet the party is perceived by millions of Americans as a dumping ground receptive to people deemed undesirable by a cruel and transactional politician who’s been successful in shaping public opinion.
Donald Trump’s politics of anger and grievance sees Emma Lazarus’s “muddled masses yearning to breathe free” and transforms them into rapists and criminals who are stealing American jobs. Young people who are simply trying to be true to themselves and live their best life are told to shut up, conform to their anatomical gender and stop trying to cheat their way to athletic trophies. Women who only want autonomy over their bodies are forced to travel to states that respect that desire. Anyone seeking even common-sense restrictions on gun use is derided as a freedom-hating radical. Securing a government job used to be seen as a path to financial stability and the American dream of home ownership. To MAGA America, the federal workforce is now a Deep State that must be eradicated.
I’m thinking of the opening lines to “I’d Love to Change the World,” a 1971 song by Ten Years After that has aged very badly: “Everywhere is freaks and hairies/Dykes and fairies/Tell me, where is sanity?” Trump’s Republican Party defines the Democrats as the Freaks Party of disgusting weirdos, criminals and losers. Sanity, within this warped reality, means freedom from environmental regulations, no line between church and state, unfettered access to firearms, an autocrat-friendly foreign policy and a government populated by MAGA loyalists.
It is extremely hard right now to be a hopeful Democrat, in either the capital or lower-case sense of the word. The events of the past week have been devastatingly dispiriting. There was the assassination attempt that should have been seen as an indictment of gun culture but instead has been weaponized against the political party that seeks to ameliorate the violence. There’s the sense now that Trump is not just Teflon-coated but indestructible. There’s an allure to that for those who contrast Trump’s vitality with the frailty of an incumbent president who looked and sounded every bit his age in that disastrous debate. There’s the transformation of a cynically self-created “victim” into an actual one — clearing Trump’s path to martyrdom among voters of an amenable mindset. There’s the sidelining of efforts to energize the Democratic ticket by getting President Biden to step down in favor of a younger, more charismatic candidate in whom Americans have cognitive confidence.
Then, Monday brought the naming of odious opportunist J.D. Vance — who’s gone from comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler to proudly accepting the role of potential Vice Chancellor of the Reich — as Trump’s running mate. Given Vance’s youth and determination to out-Trump Trump for future generations, his ascension is particularly frightening.
I’ve been texting with like-minded friends about all of this. The one thing that gives us, well, not hope, really, but a small degree of solace is the fact that the presidential election is happening not tomorrow or next week, but three and a half months hence. Things can happen, right? Circumstances can change. What? How? I’ve no clue. In my best-case scenario, Trump’s shooter — a registered Republican — was an ideological fellow traveler who sought to rise to Heaven alongside his hero. Biden drops out, and his replacement turbocharges voter turnout for the good guys.
Or perhaps, as the assassination attempt becomes old news, the Democrats so successfully message warnings about Dictator Trump and Project 2025 that a critical mass of voters defies the polls and reelects President Biden.
It’s worth noting that way back on May 25, 1988, in St. Elsewhere’s final episode, the long-struggling hospital is succumbing to the wrecking ball. The walls shake, the end is near. But in an instant everything changes. The precipitation falling outside is revealed to be fluttering within a snow globe on which a boy with autism is intently focused. Two men who’ve been portrayed as senior doctors throughout the series’ six-year run are now the boy’s construction-worker father and grandfather, trying to imagine what possibly could be going on inside the kid’s head. It turns out that beyond the boy’s impenetrable exterior lies a rich universe in which the inner workings of a big-city hospital are imagined and anything is possible. In this neural landscape, a wrecking ball might just as easily be disappeared as invoked.
It’s a miraculous conclusion that no television viewer had remotely imagined. Democracy must hope that a similarly uplifting real-life denouement is in the offing.
