We’ve been watching Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. I was afraid that Ryan Murphy and company would turn that asshole Truman Capote into a hero. They have not.

The centerpiece of last week’s episode was a libel suit filed by Gore Vidal against Capote over lies told by the latter in an interview. I know both sides of the story and believe Vidal. This post, however, is not about the mutual hatred between two literary luminaries but about how the past can inform the present.

Gore Vidal is my literary inspiration. Before settling in to write, I often ask myself: What would GV do? I’m as snarky as Vidal but not as big a contrarian. We share, however, an admiration of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Vidal ran for Congress in ER’s district in 1960. They got to know one another on the campaign trail. GV lost but ran ahead of JFK in the district, which he never tired of pointing out.

Why am I on about this 64 years later? It’s the post title, which comes from a review GV wrote of Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph Lash. Here’s the final paragraph, which is set at ER’s funeral:

I had other thoughts in 1962 at Hyde Park as I stood alongside the thirty-third, the thirty-fourth, the thirty-fifth, and the thirty-sixth Presidents of the United States, not to mention all the remaining figures of the Roosevelt era who had assembled for her funeral (unlike Proust’s golden figures in his last chapter, they all looked if not smaller than life, smaller than legend—so many shrunken march of time dolls soon to be put away). Whether or not one thought of Eleanor Roosevelt as a world ombudsman or as a chronic explainer or as a scourge of the selfish, she was like no one else in her usefulness. As the box containing her went past me, I thought, well, that’s that. We’re really on our own now.

That was the first thing I thought when the Supreme Court’s DQ opinion was released: We’re on our own now.

It’s a bad and confusing 5-4 opinion; if it had been more limited it would have been unanimous. Past chiefs would have made it so, but John Roberts is a weak man in thrall to his ideology. My colleague Jamie O nailed it in a post called Another SCOTUS Decision That Says It’s Up To Us.

Shorter GV and Adrastos: We’re on our own now.

I believe in democracy. I don’t believe a majority of Americans want a dictatorship. The primary votes thus far indicate that many registered Republicans have become Never Trumpers. Others prefer to believe the polls; I believe the voters. The mainstream media wants Trump to win because he’s a better story than Joe Biden. I regard that as journalistic and historical malpractice. It’s as if the press had sided with the Axis during World War II.

Trumpism was defeated at the polls in 2018, 2020, and 2022. It has never mustered a majority of votes nationally. Fuck the polls and those who believe them over actual votes. Schmucks.

First Draft readers and writers are political junkies, but most Americans are not. I believe that once people focus on the Indicted Impeached Insult Comedian’s madness and fascistic plans for a second term, they will reject him again. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I’d rather err on the side of optimism, decency, and democracy than pessimism and bed wetterism.

I once revered and respected the Supreme Court because of the likes of Jackson, Black, Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall. The current court is a bad joke imposed on the body politic by Mitch McConnell, the Federalist Society, and the Kaiser of Chaos. We should never have expected them to save us.

We can only save ourselves at the ballot box. That’s how democracy works. It’s “we the people” not “we the judges.”

Repeat after me: There Is No Deus Ex Machina.

Repeat after GV: We’re On Our Own Now.

The last word goes to The Verve: