The Sundstrøm Political Report

 The Sundstrøm Political Report. 

I don’t answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. I can think of reasons I might want to talk with someone I don’t know, but none of the reasons I can think of make me pick up the phone. They can leave a message.

The phone rang. The screen said “Nils Sundstrøm” and gave his number. I picked it up. I know Nils. You know Nils.

     There was chatter, and I was losing track. I stumbled back on at “haircuts”: “Axel and I were giving each other haircuts this morning, and I was wondering what was going on with Tom Nashe,” I heard Nils saying. “I’ve got something I’d like him to take a look at.”

     “I didn’t know you knew Nashe,” I said from my end.

     “Well, . . . ” and Nils admitted that maybe he didn’t, not personally. “But what happened to Go Around Back?” He meant my feeble, failed attempt at political blogging, which I got Nashe to take over for me for a time. Until he later abandoned it himself.

     “He gave it up, I guess,” I said. “Or, he gave up on writing about politics altogether. Or, he gave up on politics.”

     “Why?”

I wanted to say that he’d come to agree with me that everyone writing about politics ended up looking smug, or smugly trying not to look smug. Instead, I said truthfully,

     “I don’t know.”

     “You’ve got a theory, though,” Nils said.

     “An hypothesis,” I said, and I told him what I’d wanted to say and hadn’t.

     “There are no idealists, then?” Nils said.

     “Not if they’re getting paid,” I said.
     “You weren’t paying Nashe, surely?” 

I didn’t say anything. Then, I did say, “Well, gotta go!” But I hesitated.

     “Wait!” Nils said. “Anyway,” he said, “do you know how I can get in touch with him? I have an idea.”

     “Last I heard he was quarantining himself in the cabin of a friend, somewhere in the National Forest.”  And,

     “Gotta go!” I said again. Again I hesitated.

     “Wait!”

Here’s Nils’s idea that he came up when Axel was cutting his hair. As a barber, Axel doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s aware that he doesn’t and he’s careful: he doesn’t so much cut Nils’s hair as he trims it, the way he would a yew bush, clipping the strays and keeping the shape of the bush. So, Nils looks okay when his brother’s done, or he looks okay enough. No one sees him anyway.

     Also, Nils works the same way, cutting around the edges of Axel’s fringe, and if the people that see him on Zoom and Facebook Live meetings in Bible studies and Sunday morning services think he looks odd, they don’t say anything.

     This hair-cutting had gotten Nils thinking about barbers, and hairdressers, then about masseurs and masseuses. Then about prostitutes. Then, about the “gig economy,” which “We’ve come to wonder about,” Nils was saying, “but what made us ever think it was going to be a good idea when the business model from the beginning was prostitute-pimp?”

     “And?” I said.

     “That’s it.” That was his idea.“That’s it. Fill in the blanks,” he said.

I couldn’t think what the blanks would be, but I don’t think that way. The op-ed pieces I read have no more idea about the business model of the gig economy than Nils’s, yet they go on for 2000 words. I couldn’t have written 20 words after the opening paragraph. Then,

     “Incidentally,” Nils said, “your friend Moody [link] may be onto something - Trump on steroids: that’s why he’s so damned angry all the time. He doesn’t have ‘roid rage. He is ‘roid rage.”

I nodded. “Gotta go,” I said, and I hung up. Here ended the conversation. Then, the phone rang.

“Axel,” Axel said.

     “I know,” I said because I could read his name and number on the phone.

     “Here’s something else for you. An experiment to propose.”

     “Okay.”

     “Let’s - for a week anyway - retire the term ‘racist’ and substitute the more forgiving - and more accurate! - ‘dupe,’ at least for those making less than the average Post or Times pundit, E. J. Dionne, Charles Blow, and their ilk.”

     “Ilk?”

     “Bruni, Dowd, and their . . . yes, ilk, that is, those most likely to use the term in print. And I’m pegging that at $200,000 a year, though I’m probably aiming low. And they’re the only ones that have to avoid the term and only avoid applying it to people, let’s say, making less than half of what they make, people whom they may not understand.”

     Pause. “And they can call them dupes.” Another pause.

     “That’s it,” Axel said. “Just not racists.”

     “Okay,” I said again. I thought, “And what am I to do with it?” but I didn’t say that. He said,

     “No, you know, forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about.” And he hung up.

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang.

     “You won't say anything about this to anyone, will you?” Axel asked.

     “Okay,” I said.

     “Not even Albert,” Axel said. “Because what do I know, right?”

     “Okay,” I said.

     “About anything,” Axel said.

     “Okay,” I said because I know the feeling.

07.14.20