Assembly Required

In my next incarnation, if I don’t return as a cricket or a gopher, I will be a carpenter or mechanical engineer, the kind of guy who can build a fence on a Saturday afternoon or dismantle an engine and put it back together. Hand and power tools will consider me a kindred soul rather than a dangerous imposter.

The other day we bought a new desk chair from World Market. It’s called a “Konrad” chair, made in Thailand from teak wood. Assembly required, of course. As I unpack the carton on the living room rug, I consider the long journey this chair has made from where it was produced to where it will be used. Trucked from a factory somewhere in Thailand, (what kind of factory, what kind of working conditions and wages?) packed into a sea container and loaded on a ship for the voyage across the ocean, perhaps stopping in other ports along the way to collect more cargo. World trade is a web of faceless factory workers, middlemen, transportation conglomerates, freight brokers and wholesalers, and a product moves through many hands before it lands on the floor of a store like World Market.

When I embark on a home improvement project anything can happen, and when all is said and done it’s more likely than not that there will be parts leftover. It’s also certain that at some point I will unleash a torrent of curse words and become cross with my wife and kids. (They have learned to give me plenty of space). The written directions and assembly diagrams for the Konrad chair make my head swim. Nuts and bolts, washers and screws; attach part A to B and B to C, tighten with Allen wrench. Sounds simple enough, in theory, but I am mechanically challenged and the damn Allen wrench keeps slipping from my fingers.

I’ve long thought that two people who are considering marriage should first attempt to build a piece of furniture that contains many pieces and parts. How they go about it is sure to be revelatory. Many years ago, my wife and I assembled a large computer hutch, and by the time we finished we despised one another. Every negative aspect in our respective personalities was on display that day.

Thankfully, I succeeded in assembling the Konrad chair without my usual histrionics, and when I sat on it for the first time it didn’t collapse beneath me. The pride I felt was disproportionate to the difficulty of the task, but given my mechanical incompetence, I still felt a sense of accomplishment.  

FOOTPRINT

It’s Sunday and we wake up to discover that we have no coffee in the house. We hop in a rented Chevrolet Cruze – my beloved 1998 Honda Civic is in the body shop for repair, the result of it being backed into by a delivery truck – and drive across town to Ralphs on Carrillo. The streets are quiet, a few people walking their dogs. The plaza in front of the public library is deserted, but in a few hours the homeless will begin congregating, some to sleep on the grass in the shade of a tree, others to hold court.

Inside Ralphs workers are restocking the shelves and arranging fruit and produce; others sweep the floors and rotate jugs of milk, containers of cottage cheese. I like this store because of its downtown location, and because here I see people I don’t see in Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods or Tri-County Produce – the elderly who live nearby, students, Mexican families, drifters and homeless. Each day a tide of human beings move through this store.

We locate our brand of coffee and a package of doughnuts for our son, and move through the self-service checkout, scanning our purchases and placing them in a reusable bag. No human interaction required, efficient yet impersonal; I swipe my debit card, enter my PIN, a receipt is automatically printed and the machine reminds me to take it.

Back outside I notice the grime on the red bricks and concrete, blobs of chewing gum, sticky stains from soda and juice spills, a single shoe imprint captured in this accumulated muck. NIKE, I think, though I could be wrong. This single imprint will last longer than a footprint on wet sand at the beach. 

NSA: Our Hero in a White Hat

Big news, breaking news. The NSA has intercepted or overheard Al-Qaeda terrorists “chattering” about an imminent major strike on American or European targets. High alert is ordered, and as many as nineteen embassies or American outposts in the Mideast or North Africa are shut down as a precaution. Among other claims, the major news media says the threats are specific enough for caution, yet still somewhat vague and nebulous. Hmmm, that’s crack reporting – specific yet vague. 

A new, younger generation of Al-Qaeda terrorists are said to be even more diabolical and fanatical than their forebears, going so far as to surgically implant explosives in the bodies of suicide bombers.

(This new generation may have a chip on its shoulder because the U.S. has killed or murdered so many of its fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, mothers, sisters, and so on. You kill us, we kill you, forever and ever, amen.)

Yemen is the epicenter of this Al-Qaeda upsurge. The U.S. has a long history of intervention in Yemen, with clandestine boots on the ground, CIA agents skulking around the capitol, and drones soaring through the sky. We’ve killed so-called militants in Yemen, as well as a fair number of innocents, plus one very well known American named Anwar al-Awlaki and his teenage son. Boom, dead: father and son. The Americans went to great lengths to make it appear as if the kid was a budding terrorist, though as Jeremy Scahill reported in his recent book, Dirty Wars, the younger al-Awlaki wasn’t a terrorist at all – he was just a teenaged boy who wanted to spend time with his father.

Is it my growing paranoia or is the timing of this heightened security threat unbearably convenient? The political class and the public have responded to whistleblower Edward Snowden’s disclosures with anger directed against the Obama Administration and the national security state.

Suddenly, people are talking about the NSA’s domestic spying program, the agency’s insatiable appetite for trivial information, and how government officials have been forced to admit – grudgingly, of course -- that they have been lying to the American people. The U.S. government is pissed off, and making threats against countries from China to Bolivia, and the spying program is under intense scrutiny. The NSA is in dire need of some positive press – and what do you know -- just like that the NSA has used its awesome technological powers to foil a devious plot by the evil terrorists.

You don’t think, nah, no way, that the heightened alert is a pile of steaming horseshit cooked up by our best and brightest in the corridors of power…our government wouldn’t lie to us, would it? They wouldn’t use their powers to concoct some phony-baloney terrorist threat and make the NSA look like a cowboy in a white hat, riding in to protect us from the bad guys, would they? Our honorable government wouldn’t exaggerate the threat from a ragtag force that the Obama Administration has repeatedly told us has been decimated by JSOC raids, assassinations, and “surgical” drone strikes, right? 

Right?

What’s that fishy smell hanging over Washington D.C?

The New Normal is Creepy

A lot of creepy people want to get into politics or return to politics, even if this means airing the dirtiest, smelliest laundry from the dank recesses of their closets.

Anthony Weiner. What to say? The media probe the connection between Weiner’s suffering spouse, Huma Abedin, and Hillary Clinton, breathlessly wonder if Hillary is giving Huma advice and counsel. Hillary knows a thing or two about philanderers. Her Bill was the undisputed champion of the game – no skulking around cheap motels for Bill, oh no, he got himself sucked off by an intern right in the Oval Office.

Bob Filner, mayor of San Diego, is a seasoned groper of women. But not to worry, San Diego! Filner is going to change his wicked ways in only two intensive weeks of therapy; he promises to rise from the therapist’s couch a new, improved man.

Meanwhile, President Obama has woken from his dream of a bipartisan orgy and re-discovered the Economy and the middle-class. In a speech the other day, Obama said that since 2009 the richest Americans have sucked up 40% of income gains. This can’t continue, Obama said, because it’s tearing America’s social fabric. Tearing? Mr. President, dude, the Levi’s of the American body politic are in tatters, and your administration bears culpability – not as much culpability as John Boehner’s jihadist GOP – but, man, your hands are covered in the blood of the expiring middle class.

Of course the elites are partying hard, and why shouldn’t they? Everything is pretty much as it was when the economy tanked in 2008. CEO’s are raking in huge salaries and bonuses, the stock market is ticking along, private sector honchos move effortlessly between boardrooms and the hallways of regulatory agencies, corporations are still considered “people” for purposes of campaign donations, and Big Media still reports the Talking Points of the powerful like gospel truth. What’s changed?

Jobs and wages? Too boring for prime time. Help the poor? That’s socialism, and in America we only do socialism for the wealthy; for the poor and needy it’s tough love, self-reliance, moral hazard. Besides, we need a permanent underclass to provide clients for our for-profit prison-industrial complex. Gotta’ feed the money machine what it needs.

The hour is too late for Obama to find his long lost inner populist or to score a major legislative victory. The U.S. Congress is gerrymandered and captive; Obama may honestly wish to move forward, but the GOP is determined to move back to the 18^th century, no matter how citizens suffer. Power matters, people don’t. In case you haven’t noticed, this is government of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. Before we know it, Larry Summers will likely be the Fed chairman. Welcome back to one of the primary architects of our one-sided economy. The gilded revolving door keeps turning.

Maybe this explains why twisted personalities like Anthony Weiner and Bob Filner subject themselves to the media rack; for a place at the golden trough, they will sacrifice everyone around them and endure any indignity.

Sick, twisted, and creepy. Welcome to the new normal.