Tupac, Trump and Rawls’ Theory
A short time after both Tupac Shakur and John Rawls’ rested in peace and well before Donald J. Trump pilgrimaged into politics, Dr. Pat Angelo, or Doc, a periodontist, sat in a jacuzzi on a February night in the swanky suburbs of Chicago. All five teenage kids were asleep as his wife watched television and uncorked an expensive bottle of wine.
Though he’d performed several surgeries that day, some pro bono, it wasn’t bleeding gums that left him exhausted, but hundreds, thousands, of homeless who were without not just a jacuzzi, popcorn, or a comfy bed, but basic food and shelter. He would lounge no longer.
He dressed in pajamas, grabbed a parka, and shut the door at her first laugh. His Mercedes lit up without fail and soon snow blanketed it as he considered his intentions: clothe and feed the less fortunate scattered across Lower Wacker Drive.
It was almost 10 p.m. when he parked at the nearby Rock n’ Roll McDonald’s. He checked the trunk, stuffed with hand warmers and blankets then went inside and swiped for $380 worth of hamburgers and coffee.
His Mercedes skidded down a desolate street and found several women huddled near a dumpster, half shielded by a cardboard tent. He slammed the brakes, got out and began to nourish. Recipients were either too cold or addled with addiction to assess the situation, so they accepted and stared at the loony man in pajamas skipping across the icy encampment.
There was no cop in sight, and if a car did pass, its driver was likely dialed in on driving drunk. A few unwrapped the burger, some stared at the coffee’s steam, but all smiled as the Mercedes raced back towards ‘reality’.
This went on for over fifteen years, nearly every night, at least during the winter. Nobody knew, except wife and children, and all told there was millions of dollars and half that in hours spent.
Doc didn’t utter stale political theory or promise shelter. He didn’t gift God to ‘save’ the destitute, but instead helped clothe and feed his fellow humans. And if he did vote for George W. that past November, did anybody care? He wore a veil that rest his empathetic eyes on the weaker players, everyone but himself.
The Gist
John Rawls was a twentieth century academic who dedicated his life to moral philosophy, most notably at Princeton in the wake of World War II and as a professor at Harvard thereafter. Justice as Fairness is his restatement of an original publication A Theory of Justice and expanded upon his advocation of mutuality for a common right of liberty. He advocates for both a fair equality of opportunity and a difference principle insisting that justice was more than efficiency but fairness.
What is fair? And who is Rawls’? Shall we care about a geeky professor with big frames and even bigger brain?
Rawls proposes five distinct social systems: Laissez-faire capitalism, welfare-state capitalism, state socialism, property-owning democracy, and liberal socialism. He disavows the former three to focus on the latter two. He argues a citizen’s right to equality exists with a fair and equitable shake in human capital, education, and trained skills. Thus, procedural justice will accrue from one generation to the next to eliminate a underclass , to deem Doc out of philanthropy. But he adds that there may still be such a small class because of conditions we cannot change, identify, or understand which leaves Lower Wacker Drive with crumbs of human life as fresh bread bakes atop, right?
“Wrong,” said Donald J. Trump.
“He was borrowing fourteen million dollars from his father to start his businesses,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in follow up during a debate leading up to the 2016 General Election.
But, before she could finish, Trump blurted again. “Wrong.”
He did it again and again and again. And it wasn’t only her critique he was after, but a win at-all-costs. He had done it his entire life, stuck in the “if/then” thought. If he gets a loan, he’ll build x. If he builds x, he wins project y. When he begins y, he’ll be rich. And when he’s rich, he’ll be president.
Donald Trump was born affluent enough for elite schooling only to succumb to his father’s razzle-dazzle real estate empire. His American Dream was one beyond the streets and simple shelter, like skyscrapers and slick suits, an immigrant-like work ethic spoiled by Rawls’ idea of laissez-faire capitalism. Maneuvering through Manhattan and eventually any city that would welcome his money, he sought serenity in the sky as buildings were built, bought, and sold. He lobbied mayors for hotel lobbies and soon enough, he had his own show, The Apprentice, a stamp of success as his array of assets depreciated in the background. His balance sheet grew about as muddy as the swamp he eventually tried to drain in Washington.
And as he did, or tried to, his name grew synonymous with turmoil. He spewed toxicity and deemed democracy delusional. Through perspective, one of an over-educated media ruling class exempt from discreditation, a majority who often denounced his behavior and entire idea of existence still punched his ballot in 2016.
There is, though, a fabric of this Trump that’s beyond the rattle-your-cage rhetoric. It’s thick and cotton-like and wants a jacket of justice to clothe fairness. It bestows liberty and freedom not upon all because that equals corruption and fraud and deceit and a desire to hold power and precedence to sort of hypnotize the human premise. And it’s not so ridiculous when you discover it’s riddled with Rawls’.
There’s another cultural icon who has transcended the torment of time, one from the underbelly, the Lower Wacker crowd, who was not for a faint of fortune wearing his bandana spewing sense so common and supple it was poetic. Tupac Shakur’s Street fighting soul originated from his mom, Afreni, a prominent member of the original New York 21 and Black Panther parties, who was Fred Trump with a heartbeat and a better wardrobe.
Her relationship with Tupac was complicated but her commitment to justice spread beyond her son’s music, acting and media persona. Before MLK, Afreni, the imperfect mother with a vision and an addled life of drugs, traveled with uncensored speech. Her charisma and charm got passed to her son so he could learn to speak his language of love. Words so few appreciate his grit and fight for a fair shake.
Rawls’ does a fine job discerning why the weakest player is in fact weak, but, gets so high, lofty, and academic that even Michael Eric Dyson, author of Holler If You Hear Me, gets warped into his thoughts about justice and inequality.
However, it’s more grounded, lower Wacker level. Rawls’ idea of philosophical doctrine is weighty and warrants acclaim, but the heart of our failed society is beneath. No matter the group, color, race, or boat one came on, there’s always a hotter stove somewhere spewing boiling rage.
To connect to common folk, within the Tupac and Trump factions, Rawls’ can be dissected enough to diverge from café talk, move it outside, around the corner and down to Wacker, which is where many have fled. Citizens run amok without a shield, but instead a phone in hopes they adhere to some phony baloney sequentialism.
Gettin’ Trumpy
Like it or abolish from recent memory, Trump made more than a divot in democracy. This egotistical errand for power and populism to rise against the elite started over a decade earlier by a man who was Trump before Trump — Andrew Breitbart.
Breitbart was cradled in the arms of Southern California coastal confluence. And after two decades of bearing the fruits of liberal utopia, he was cruising the 405 listening to Rush Limbaugh only to break away from a delusion of Hollywood nihilism. He would later conspire with other divergent orators like Arianna Huffington to fight from the fringe against an undulating green of government.
And like Trump, it isn’t that the ‘white’ boys overlapped inherent necessities, they saw other white narcissists use ‘race’ to fish out as many flounders before the boat tipped. Breitbart was as virtuous as he was vicious and pushed and prodded his way via Breitbart News, ultimately setting the stage for Trump and cronies to begin a full out shark attack.
He and the feared and loathing red hats aren’t anti-Rawlsian but pro-provincial. They deem power as hypocrisy, no matter its color. But as Rawls puts it, the government granted to enact justice will eventually derail.
Breitbart was correct in ushering in his famous ‘Talladega Night’ to the media, a reference to the elitist coastal stigma regarding ‘flyover country’ or anywhere other than D.C. Metro, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Marin counties and parts of the Pacific Northwest. And it’s this reference that created red hat demand, that Trumpy attitude which spilled like Kool-Aid all over American driveways.
Though taxation without representation alone did not fuel domestic hate. Division and discernment for democracy were its accomplices. Brexit highlighted a global push to reclaim culture as individual compartments instead of a chaotic mix coalescing as one. CU professor Benjamin Teitelbaum commits career to understanding ‘nationalism’. His work, Meeting the Enemy, offers a look at Breitbart disciple and former Trump advisor and famous ‘street fighter’ Steve Bannon. Teitelbaum offers a similar synopsis — don’t fear the freaks but freak out because they are getting people to listen and the ‘left’ should too.
There’s an essence of both Afreni and ultimately Tupac in this shouting — the ferocity and pursuit to peddle without worrying about Paul. Rawls says to confide in the weakest player, to administer justice to deem society equitable and fair, right, and just. But instead, the Trump flag in Peoria is more an “I must work to clothe, feed and afford an acceptable education.” Which isn’t bad per se, it’s different. It doesn’t get much of what Rawls is saying because it doesn’t care to learn.
It should care about being a decent dad or mum or pedestrian when the light hasn’t turned green and girlfriend is giving the middle finger. When the New York Times shifts out ‘this’ tide of tyranny, the weakest player then becomes Peoria. And, when Tom Cotton wipes out the tide of donkeys, the weakest player again finds its way back to Rawls and forgotten streets in a flyover town.
‘Trumpy’ can too hide in the grocery aisles of Sprouts or Whole Foods, listening to the Grateful Dead on the very Pearl Street Promenade in, of all things, Allbirds. Seems illogical here in liberal utopia there could be such polarizing and illogical imbeciles. But dig deeper, tech aside, and this so-called imbecile doesn’t condone Trump’s hate. The Ann Coulter looking, Jack Crawford supporting, or Rick George hand shaker has brain and ballot on one item and one only — Liberty.
Patrick Plaisance states in his book ‘Media Ethics’, “a state of the absence of constraints or restrictions on what we can do as individuals.” And thus this freedom BUFFer seeks utmost independence in Church, flight (to Las Vegas) without a mask, vaccine mandates and Reaganesque trickle-down economics. It’s a political agnosticism that has them find their own way home.
But in a fair and just society as Rawls advocates, it’s counterintuitive for a citizen to captain their own boat, sail against the tide, then be treasoned as a supporter of a tyrant Trump. A 2019 David Remnick New Yorker piece deems the G.O.P. as anti-majoritarian and alarmingly anti-democratic which he considers tribal and resentful. And he’s right.
These Deadheads don’t care about Trump. They wish to resurrect justice as fairness, not in the way Rawls deems it, but a nuanced version of fairness is justice for democratic indecency. The country is on the verge of a Civil War, though Remnick offers no opposing sympathy for a counterculture not entirely undogmatic and indecent, but one seeking independence and earned entitlement. Rawls advocates citizens’ right to such entitlement as long as it is to the weakests’ advantage. If this is the foundation of democracy, then why is Doc, through numerous party and regime changes since he pulled into the drive thru at McDonald’s two decades ago, still employed by the crumbs below?
Eventually the Deadhead runs out of favor with John Mayer, or space in their artery wall, and dies. Then the avant-garde Trumpy fades into Charlie Kirk’s abyss, and best yet, America will have avoided any sort of Civil War, outside of the New York Times comment section, but let’s rest assured that some of that section will miss their rider when they’re gone, at least from trolling them in their so-called selfishness.
And when current leadership claims they’ve rescued the meek, returned them to inclusivity, which is inherently inaccurate as this facet has never and likely never will occur, do they mean this is an end of all tyranny? That Trump has finally been put out to pasture to only be seen again on Gettr? Perhaps it’s just a vacuum to suck up crumbs then lick the floor clean only to dump the crumbs elsewhere four years from now whilst never looking outside a three Tesla town. Sunny side of the street is dark.
Amerikaz Most Wanted
Tupac Shakur isn’t really a rapper but an artist, a poet and fervent freedom fighter. What is said for and against him can be debated in a course of his lyrics.
Shakur is everything his mom, Afreni, was and then some. He knew no dad, really, and confided a plethora of childhood troubles in self-expression, some good, others violent, and a few controversial. But let no sodomy charge veil his fertility for thought, let no curse words cover his cause — one that fought as much for inclusion as consideration for individual freedom.
The Black Panther-bred Afreni and thus raised Tupac to remind him was marginal and on the outside looking in. And in the fight for Black Nationalism, which Karin Stanford describes as “a political belief and practice of African Americans as a distinct people with a distinct historical personality who politically should develop structures to define, defend, and develop the interests of Blacks as a people’’, Tupac shouted loud but spoke soft to embrace difference and understand that difference’s existence within the skeleton of society.
Just when it seems like all the typography surrounding his influence deems him a critic of ‘whitey’, it’s his rugged capitalistic, individualistic artistic expressive ideas that move out of the framework of Rawls’ fair and just campaign into an iconic modern Jesus. He did as he spoke (charity, foundation), and carried his community from the fringe to the first tee remaining true to resilience through song to facilitate change. To stray from this would make him not less of a human, but more of a hater.
“Everybody’s at war with different things. I’m at war with my own heart,” he said.
Hate to many, matter of fact to everyone. He railed against the Reaganomic policies whose tax cuts had ‘whitey’ curtsy and Tupac cringe. Sanford explains in serene detail the 80s from Tupac’s angle where government money veered from not just Civil Rights but Rawlsian type in-roads like access to public assistance and low-income education.
Regardless of a rally against Raegan or the right to Rawlsian justice, it’s all perspective with as much congressional attitude as personal circumstance. And during his rise, Tupac discovered that justice was not won by shouting at congress but singing to the masses — lament those you loathe with lyrics.
And in his quest to bring neither ‘whitey’ down or black up, but merely have black ‘be’, he did not deviate from his persona reflected in his early 90’s group ‘Thug Life’. Its grassroots political assault style campaign against economic oppression had Tupac lead with an ear to those eager to participate, many youth in earnest. And, whether his advocating for them was the insurgence’s main premise could be debated, however, his leadership is a prime example of his authenticity. He didn’t give a f*ck.
As much as inclusivity warrants changed behavior and fosters development, it discredits the artist’s gifts. In his latest book White, author Bret Easton Ellis deems the 2016 blockbuster Moonlight “a valid story yet too overprotective in its critique.” The movie is profound in many ways — a gay black man navigates a broken childhood in search of triumph in overly subtle form. But Easton Ellis says this deviance from Tupac Street fighting character to a very passive and sensitized Chiron is far from a victory. Not only did shy away from success, the tip toey media told audiences they have to “love it” or else be called an a*hole.
A cry to be fragile and afraid is what Ellis wants and what Tupac did want. It’s a poignant and fierce character, not stricken by misfortune, one who is humble and WINS. If this enemy, Trump, and his penchant for anything BUT victory, is the target, and ‘this’ character sulks and stays soft but is ‘different’, what message does that send?
There’s no privilege in being a gay white male, like Ellis, not even a straight one. We are all going to get sick, live in peril only to perish and “just ‘because you live in the ghetto doesn’t mean you can’t grow, can’t transcend,” as Tupac poetically put.
More food, more problems. More money, more misery. As Tupac said, “Never surrender.” And he likely meant “to yourself.” Don’t see man as more mighty than women, straight more fortunate than queer but a human, whether they kiss a girl (and like it) or use an afro comb. Tupac wanted folks colorblind, not sure if Ellis cares, but ‘woke’ isn’t erasing anything by waking up and welcoming what else is out there. Don’t pity the weaker player, will they succeed, ok fine, be fed with a hamburger. Justice as fairness.
Don’t sweat the doctrine
Howard Doughty in a 2019 Innovation Journal article highlights the reduction in the welfare state and government regulation resulting in austerity and authoritarianism. He deems the Reagen era an undermining laissez-faire capitalist regime and deems the Clinton era not so reformist as history has it. But what about confinement for the crumbs on Lower Wacker placing a dent in the Deadhead’s W2?
From Tupac to Trump, from Stacey Abrams to Ron DeSantis, the bull in the ring continues. Politician’s eyes close, then BOOM, politician is whacked and down for a count. Peers aid and lift them up but it’s a never ending game, sinister, stale and very very addictive.
Problems seem to disappear at an elite’s thumbs down. What is a premium is subjective; money has one strapped and another in jail. Americans are the audience of a very deceptive Hollywood style production, fast paced and futile, as the David Remnick ‘Civil War’ looms large.
A lofty study, or out-of-reach education, isn’t for everyone. Not to stain the very seat, but means to an end really is just a job and orthodonture on a child’s teeth, or their own. The work of Rawls has scholars better understand the ills of leaders like Trump and Tupac, but if the crumbs it so ‘desperately’ wants to help can’t even pronounce its author, seems a sort of deceptive trickery in of itself.
And whilst attempting to traffic this intersection of politics and culture with careful journalism, consider the great Hunter S. and his so eloquently put patronage, “Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuck-offs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” Though nonsensical and drug-fueled, this depiction of the press as a cheap catch-all and false doorway is fairly accurate since their loose and lofty critique wouldn’t exist without our fear and loathing.
Cards have been stacked against some since post World War II, as outlined in the acclaimed novel The Color of Money, causing Rawls’ ideas and career itself to caravan across decades and Ivy League Campuses. It incited Doughty to deem a snippet of this period as ‘Liberalism on the Rocks’ which gave way to rock fights between conservatives and its proponents. If Fred Trump indirectly benefits from this G.I. middle income favoritism whilst others like Afreni Shakur have nothing but tape on their mouth and a cot to sleep on, one’s kin then does coalesce through life with a chip on the shoulder and the other, a twinkle in the eye.
British actor Tom Hardy’s character, Alfie, in hit show Peaky Blinders addresses Cillian Murphy’s character, Tommy, saying, “Big always f*cks small.” And when first considering this, out of context, it seems that indeed either big government or big money tramples its opponent. But consider Doc — family, feeding, not cleaning up the crumbs but bringing them together through the power not of fast food, but fairness. This is big, bigger than a big bank or a bright car. Bring others close and keep your enemies closer.
Where there is despair, there is transcendence. Tupac said it, Trump buried it, Rawls spent fifty years pontificating it. To speak to the weak, to fit the veil, forget Washington or the comment section, get out of the jacuzzi and head to McDonald’s.
