Writing Boots

Famously, Nixon White House attorney John Dean told President Nixon about Watergate, “I think that there is very much a cancer on this presidency” that, left to spread, would destroy the administration. Only with the Trump administration, the presidency is a cancer on the country. And left to spread …

I’ve lived in this place 57 years—through a few wars, several recessions, good times and bad. (And probably none much culturally grimmer than the years I was growing up, in between rusting Cleveland and rotting Akron, Ohio.)

There’s more meanness in this country now than I can ever remember. Far more. Words hurled rather than shared by people clearly angry about something other than what they are shouting about.

For instance, Wyndham Clark seems to be a somewhat bratty guy who struggles to control his emotions and publicly talks about seeing a therapist to help him deal with it. Did those shortcomings rate five hours of verbal abuse from thousands of emotionally deranged goons on an old-money country club on Long Island Sunday—people mockingly screaming “don’t choke,” and cheering madly at Clark’s every mistake?

And before we get off the subject of Clarks!—does it make any sense that the young professional basketball star Caitlin has to endure what appear to be wholly fabricated rumors by mobs on X and elsewhere about problems with her teammates and rivals alike, and answer reporters’ questions about them at press conferences? Clark has handled all this almost impeccably, even occasionally criticizing her own fans who have said racist or rude things about others. But after several years of it, the once ebullient and spirited competitor looks by turns deeply worn down, and a little bitter, herself. She’s 24.

And why did a LinkedIn conversation I was having last week escalate into an online shouting match when the other guy started sounding so much like President Trump—he actually referred to a newsletter I publish as “the failing Executive Communication Report”—that I finally asked him, “Are you Trump’s ghostwriter, or is he yours?” Before he erased our whole exchange from the thread, apparently.

A close friend asked me later, “Why would you start a fight with that guy on LinkedIn?” Admitting that I do sometimes like to get a rise out of people, and explaining that I’ve been waiting to get a rise out of this particular guy for about three decades, I reminded my friend that my initial two or three salvos were gentle and non-confrontational in tone and substance, and that the guy ratcheted up the rhetoric by addressing me as “dude,” telling me I was too stupid to comprehend his intellect and, also Trump-like, calling my lack of agreement with his point of view “sad!” (And then, yes, I questioned the value of 30 years of his “thought leadership”; fighting words for sure.)

I think my friend might really be asking a deeper and much more troubling question, that too many of us are asking: Why would anyone risk any disagreement in public conversation with anybody, anywhere? It’ll probably escalate quickly, it will probably go nowhere or become about something far beyond what it’s about—and what’s the upside? I ask that question more and more myself. Which would be troubling for any professional communicator, but especially for the author of a 2021 book titled, An Effort to Understand: Hearing Ourselves (and One Another) in a Nation Cracked in Half.

Once, in an Italian neighborhood in Chicago then known as a hub for gangsters, my unwitting father in law, visiting from out of town, had his car blocked, in a parking spot. He started hollering about it, in hopes that the offender would hear him and move the car. I practically pounced on him to hush him, because this could only lead to trouble in a neighborhood where you don’t pick your battles, you avoid battles altogether.

That’s how it feels everywhere right now. Why? I guess I can’t assign all of that to more than a decade of President Trump’s rhetoric and the rest of the world’s counter-rhetoric, seemingly useless in defense. But if you think all that vulgar, all-caps propaganda from the leader of the free world is not a big factor in building the spite walls between us, then I guess you don’t believe that leaders have any influence at all.

Trump Derangement Syndrome? Trump Dyspepsia is more like it. And for communicators, anyway—dystopia, too.

On some Tuesdays it makes me want to put the words away, start working at a soup kitchen, and call it a day.

This is my 4,493rd post on Writing Boots. Can you believe that?

I started this blog in spring of 2008, around the time I was leaving the freelance employ of Ragan Communications and entering the freelance employ of another publisher, McMurry. Around that time, this is what I looked like. “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” my old pal Steve Crescenzo said at the time.

I’ve posted something here just about every weekday since.

I’ve parlayed this into a paid column.

I’ve parlayed this into an essay collection called An Effort to Understand.

I’ve used this as a chance to sharpen my knives.

I’ve used this to remind myself, on muggy gray Tuesdays between magazine articles and books and other public stunts, that I exist.

I’ve used this to draw crowds by starting fights.

I’ve used this to be a self-righteous prick.

I’ve used this to write gentle poems that you wouldn’t read otherwise.

I’ve used this to make reading my thoughts, your habit.

I’ve used this to get things off my chest.

I’ve used this to settle scores.

I’ve used this to preen.

I’ve used this to figure out what I think.

I’ve used this to force myself to say something, every day.

I’ve used this to make saying something every day easy and natural. (It’s easier to write every day than once a week, a daily columnist and I agree.)

I’ve used this to say whatever the fuck I want.

I’ve used this to keep from complaining that I’m not allowed to say whatever the fuck I want.

I’ve been told lately I ought to consider converting this to Substack.

And I’ve agreed that I ought to consider converting this to Substack, because Substack helps things go viral.

I don’t think I’m going to convert this to Substack, because viral isn’t what I’m looking for. Back in 2009, the marketing guru Seth Godin mentioned Writing Boots in a post and I got 10,000 views in a single day. Wow! But also: Who cares?

I was 39 when I started Writing Boots. I’m 57 now. More and more, I do this for the right reasons. Which means it’s harder to do every day. And which also means I don’t need to do it every day (or to make reading my thoughts, your habit).

So I’m gradually letting myself off the hook, about that.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You get what you pay for.

I do know why I’m telling you this. I’m sleepless at 12:32 on Thursday morning and that’s another thing I’ve used this for. And will continue to do, I imagine.

Thanks, as always, for reading.