Friday Round-Up

The ERA is still dead; there is trouble brewing for Trump in the housing market; and TikTok and David Lynch RIP

I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.

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Come Monday at noon, America is diving back into the abyss. I wish I could offer a positive take on what awaits us, but I don’t call this newsletter Truth and Consequences for nothing. It’s going to be bad … very, very, very bad. And then it’ll likely get worse. I don’t think that means American democracy will wither on the vine. I’ve always found the “democracy is dying” platitudes a bit overwrought. Instead, I expect a continued degradation and coarsening of our politics and the weakening of our federal government as a positive agent of change. I wrote two months ago that America feels hopelessly and irretrievably divided, and nothing that’s happened since has changed my mind. From a more instrumental perspective, any hope of slowing down the worst effects of man-made climate change ended on Election Day 2024 and ensured that we will leave our children a far more imperiled planet than the one we inherited.

When I look back at what I got wrong about the 2024 election (and it was a lot), it primarily came down to a stubborn disbelief that America would again put a lunatic back in the nation’s highest elected office. But apparently, the America I hoped exists doesn’t quite match the one that actually does.

I fully expect the country to eventually sour on Trump, as they did in his first term and as they have generally done on every new president. These days, we’re too divided as a nation for any president to enjoy sustained popular support. But until then, it’ll be a bumpy ride. Get some rest this weekend, take a long walk, read a book, go see a movie, or watch some football. Because on Monday, the real work begins,

ERA … Not So Much

Earlier today, President Biden announced that the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered a ratified addition to the U.S. Constitution:

"It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,"

So, there's a bit of backstory here. The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972 and sent to the states for ratification. In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, surpassing the Constitution’s three-quarters of the states benchmark and, at least theoretically, making the ERA the law of the land. The problem, however, was that Congress had set a seven-year deadline for ratification, which the states had long blown past.

Supporters of the ERA have argued that since the Constitution has no deadline for passing amendments, the deadline is “meaningless.” They’ve urged Biden to “direct the national archivist to certify and publish the ERA, which would mean the amendment has been officially ratified and that the archivist has declared it part of the Constitution.” (The archivist has publicly said that she doesn’t believe the EPA is ratified and that Congress would have to lift the deadline for the amendment to become part of the Constitution).

However, supporters have a problem because while Biden said he shared their view on the ERA’s ratification, he is not telling the archivist to publish it.

A senior Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the White House’s plans, said Biden was not directing the archivist to certify the amendment, sidestepping what could have become a legal battle over the separation of powers.

So, while this is a nice symbolic act by Biden, it has no practical effect. If the archivist certified and published the amendment, it could set up an interesting legal fight … but it seems highly unlikely that will happen, irrespective of Biden’s actions today.

If the president had taken this action a few years ago, it might have had a real impact, but that would have meant taking a political risk, and I suppose that was too much to ask for Joe Biden.

TikTok … We Hardly Knew Ya

Today, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law banning the ubiquitous social media app TikTok.

President Biden signed the law last spring after it passed in Congress with wide bipartisan support. Lawmakers said the app’s ownership was a risk because the Chinese government’s oversight of private companies allowed it to retrieve sensitive information about Americans or to spread covert disinformation or propaganda.

I’ll be honest: I’ve barely followed this story, but putting aside the national security concerns, as a parent, I’m just happy that my kids won’t be able to use the app anymore. (As for the national security concerns, the fact that TikTok’s owners refuse to sell the company to get around the ban and will instead let it go dark is a bit of tell that China’s influence over the app’s operation is its primary purpose — rather than, say, making money).

The Housing Market … Not So Hot

This seems like bad news.

One of my speculations about the public’s downbeat view of the economy during the Biden years was that the housing market significantly contributed to the sense of malaise. With high interest rates, it was hard to sell, hard to buy, and rents kept rising. It’s hardly surprising that a lack of housing mobility would make Americans unhappy about the state of the economy.

With inflation seemingly tamed, interest rates began to fall last year, but now it seems that process is reversing. With Trump planning to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, one can expect housing prices to rise (who do you think builds much of America’s new houses?). Combined with the likely higher inflation due to the new Trump-imposed tariffs, I’m less than convinced that Trump’s currently high approval ratings will remain in place.

If housing remains in the doldrums and inflation begins to snake back up, Trump’s honeymoon will be short-lived.

RIP David Lynch

This one hurts.

I first watched “Blue Velvet” in high school, and at the time, I thought it was the most subversive movie I’d ever seen (the opening scene is a masterpiece. It’s a beautiful piece of foreshadowing tracking the film’s key theme that below the idyllic world is a far more violent and primeval realm).

I was obsessed with Twin Peaks, and its first season remains arguably the most remarkable season of television ever made. Lynch’s 2017 Twin Peaks revival might actually be better. Episode 8 — also known as the Atomic Bomb episode or the BOB origin story — is an astonishing piece of art.

The adjective “Lynchian “ was literally coined to describe his iconoclastic filmmaking. His juxtaposition of shocking, disturbing, and often grotesque imagery with the mundane and ordinary is what made his work so unique. I read someone yesterday who pointed out that Lynch loved using his films to ask questions without providing many answers. This aptly describes “Twin Peaks” (particularly the final scene of The Return) and “Mulholland Drive,” a film that is a masterpiece and, at the same time, utterly confounding.

There was also an air of sentimentality in Lynch’s filmmaking (he loved Frank Capra and the Wizard of Oz, and his 1990 film “Wild At Heart” is a homage to that classic 1939 film). Think of his anti-Lynchian film “Straight Story” about a man who rides his lawnmower to visit a long, estranged, dying brother. But, in general, the contrast between the occasionally saccharine and the habitually surreal is what made Lynch’s films so distinctive.

I thought the New York Times’s obituary of Lynch summed up his cinematic legacy well:

Mr. Lynch’s films were characterized by their dreamlike imagery and punctilious sound design, as well as by Manichaean narratives that pit an exaggerated, even saccharine innocence against depraved evil.

Mr. Lynch’s style has often been termed surreal, and indeed, with his troubling juxtapositions, outlandish non sequiturs and eroticized derangement of the commonplace, the Lynchian has evident affinities to classic surrealism. Mr. Lynch’s surrealism, however, was more intuitive than programmatic. If classic surrealists celebrated irrationality and sought to liberate the fantastic in the everyday, Mr. Lynch employed the ordinary as a shield to ward off the irrational.

Performative normality was evident in Mr. Lynch’s personal presentation. His trademark sartorial style was a dress shirt worn without a tie and buttoned at the top. For years, he regularly dined at and effusively praised the Los Angeles fast-food restaurant Bob’s Big Boy. Distrustful of language, viewing it as a limitation or even a hindrance to his art, he often spoke in platitudes. Like those of Andy Warhol, Mr. Lynch’s interviews, at once laconic and gee-whiz, were blandly withholding.

RIP to a true original.

• Kyle McLachlan’s tribute to Lynch is beautiful.

Musical Interlude