Lennon, McCartney, Trump and Newton’s Cradle

The thing I remember most about the aftermath of John Lennon’s 1980 murder was Paul McCartney’s reaction and the public reaction to his reaction. McCartney was ambushed by the media on his way out of a recording studio. He appeared pale and surprised. He said a few robotic words about how he found out about the murder and signed off with, “It’s a drag, isn’t it?”

I remember the reaction when I watched the impromptu interview in a student center at Dartmouth. Pundits and students alike were appalled by McCartney’s words. A drag? This is what this alleged genius said about his legendary partner? I was young, so my inclination was to go along with the crowd. McCartney was one cold fish, therefore Lennon had been the true genius and McCartney had betrayed himself to be just the cheerful, shallow “cute one.”

I’ve thought a lot about this episode during the past four and a half decades, most of which were spent in the damage control business. It had an impact on how I was to advise clients in crisis. I’d tell them two things in the early stages of controversy. One, don’t think right away about the truth; think about what is better than the truth because that will be the story — the story that human beings, in their rage, will need to believe. Second, the only thing people will care about is blame. Not on the truth. Not fixing the problem. Blame.

For the most part, we humans can’t help ourselves. Our brains are hardwired to sense villainous narratives for our own safety. Not data, not probability. We are, after all, still primates foraging for sustenance against hostile elements.

What has made human nature worse than it was in 1980 are the technologies that have turned any political or cultural event into the equivalent of Newton’s cradle, that desktop toy with the five metallic spheres hanging from strings. When you let go of the one on the left, it hits the one next to it, which remains mostly still (along with the two beside it in the middle). Only the one to the far right flies out after the energy transfers through the other orbs. Then the process begins again, giving us the water torture of that pock pock pock sound. The extreme left and the extreme right fly out for a while, and the orbs in the middle keep getting smashed until they eventually die down, and somebody ignites the phenomenon again.

The internet has made this syndrome especially violent because all we see are the balls on either side because only the extremes make noise. Witness the discussions after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The shooter must have been Antifa. Biden riled him up. Trump ignited this climate. It’s not that such speculation is completely absurd, it’s that we gain nothing by circulating only the most extreme possibilities. Sometimes, losers are just being losers.

During the Trump years, whenever something bad happened, the internet would be ablaze with remarks such as “Ugh. Trump’s America.” You can rest assured that any violent incidents that have taken place since 2021 will be followed by the harrumph, “Biden’s America.” The legacy and digital media zero in on the most incendiary morsel and broadcast only that because the algorithm knows what we’ll respond to. Most of us know that broad trends don’t turn on a dime because of who was just elected president and we have the free will to say “Hold on a minute.”

One of the hardest things that I have had to learn is not to debate people who come at me with absurd premises. If somebody told me that I had a purple cow coming out of my nose, of what utility is it to debate such a person? Yet it is the type of thing I probably would have done until rather recently because of my vanity and a childish need to demonstrate that I was right. Perhaps my synapses were telling me that only the Alpha gets the food. Nevertheless, as Steve Buscemi's character said in Boardwalk Empire upon a ridiculous provocation, "Not everything requires a response."

Is there anything that can be done? Yes — perhaps something similar to the effort afoot to throw a flag onto the social media field. Parents and schools are starting to pay attention to the damage done to kids. Overseas, the European Union is examining ways to educate students about the destructive power of comparing one’s own life to the purportedly perfect lives of those they see mocking them on TikTok. After the attempt to assassinate Trump, I opted out of dialogues, online and in person, that blamed the most extreme elements of the political horseshoe for the tragedy and urged others to do the same. I engaged the phenomenon by withdrawing from it.

In the decades since McCartney’s 1980 streetside interview after his partner’s murder, I have read a lot about Lennon and McCartney’s relationship, including countless interviews with Paul. He is thoughtful, soulful and it is clear that he loved Lennon deeply, despite personal tensions about which he is candid. There was no even divide in the partnership between who was the “deep” one and who wrote the ditties. When Lennon died, Let It Be was the song most played on the radio until a Beatle-ologist pointed out that McCartney wrote it. I’m glad I took the time to investigate because 44 years ago, I had gotten the story wrong.