No Rain in the Forecast

“I hate and despise, I feel indignant, outraged, and afraid. I’ve become excessively severe, demanding, irritable, ungracious, suspicious.” Anton Chekov, A Boring Story

The sky clouded over briefly today, but no rain fell. If this pattern keeps up – and there’s no reason to think it won’t at this point – the drought will worsen, putting the squeeze on farmers, vineyard operators, home builders, the tourism industry, and many others. The California economy may sour, again, though it will likely be a year or two before the full effects of this drought hit home.

Do most Americans still believe what Fox News tells them, that global warming is a myth, the science still up for debate, or, more precisely, obfuscation, from slick shills paid for by energy extractors? I see in the news that John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, has become a believer in the perils of climate change – belated though his conversion may be – since no nation on earth has done more to delay real action on climate change than the U.S. Apparently, Kerry is now very worried about extreme weather events. Sometimes it takes years for the fog to clear and the truth to be seen. Kerry should mention to his boss, President Obama, that no such thing as “clean” coal exists in the world, that nuclear energy is dangerous, and that the Keystone XL pipeline is a terrible idea after all.

I heard the intrepid journalist Jeremy Scahill on the radio, talking about Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to Americans about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Ike would not believe his eyes if he could see how his worst fears have manifested themselves. Add the security-intelligence complex to the military-industrial complex and you have a behemoth of global proportions -- intrusive, overbearing, and to a dangerous extent, under the control of private operators such as Halliburton, Blackwater (or whatever name this army-for-rent is calling itself now), and the Carlisle Group. Huge corporate entities have major skin in the war game, the anti-terror game, and the national security game. Preposterous sums of money are at stake, and therefore no incentive exists to stop the failed War on Terror or the intensive surveillance of Americans, Germans, Russians and whoever else the NSA deems an enemy, a threat, or an economic competitor. The incentives all work in the opposite direction. This beast is now so huge and unaccountable that we may not be able to tame it.

Eisenhower would be appalled, but if George Orwell were to come back I imagine he would just shake his head and say, “I warned you.” Orwell did warn us against perpetual war, intrusive surveillance, and debased language; when the Ministry of Truth is devoted to lies, and most people cannot tell the difference, your goose is boiled; when corruption, bribery, and mendacity become the norm in a state, elites win and ordinary people lose.

I walk outside and gaze at the clear sky, the waning gibbous moon, a smattering of stars. No, there’s no rain in the forecast. Mother Nature is unhappy and withholding her love.

The Blank Page

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”           W.E.B. Du Bois

The blank page. The wide world. Everything to write about, and yet nothing to write about, a total failure of imagination and daring. The voice inside my head is accusing and indignant.

California is in the grip of a serious drought. The Winter Olympics are underway in Sochi, Russia; ice dancing, speed skating, downhill skiing, hockey, and all the rest of the typical events. The mainstream media reports that all is not well in Sochi. Aside from the military-style occupation for “security” purposes, there are more practical problems like clean tap water, hotel rooms with missing doorknobs, and, fright of all frights, gay people mingling with straight people! This mingling happens on the down low, of course, as public displays are criminalized in Putin’s prudish, homophobic Russia. At least there is snow in the mountains. Seeing a quick glimpse of NBC’s host, Bob Costas, I wonder what happened to his face. Botox treatments are not always successful.

Speaking of Botox, there has been plenty of it on display at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Botox queens and mavens pour into our city from Los Angeles and the hills of Montecito, their faces frozen in permanent smiles or frowns or grimaces – trophy wives of trophy husbands. State Street, our main tourist artery, is full of film industry-types, hipsters, poseurs, and fans. Our restaurants and bars do brisk business this time of year, and rooms in local hotels and B&B’s are very costly and hard to secure. The American Riviera is on display, big stars walk the red carpet beneath bright klieg lights, targets for hundreds of photographers, and fans turn out to catch a glimpse of Leo, Marty, Bruce Dern or Bob Redford. This is good, though, a celebration of art and culture, of our shared humanity and conundrums. Good films show us things we may otherwise not want to confront.

We need rain, like a Biblical deluge of forty days and nights, to replenish Lake Cachuma and the Gibraltar reservoir, and turn the rolling hills from tawny to green again. But the sky won’t rain today, the sun is out and the temperature is warm. Back to the rain dance or the silent prayer. I will remind my children to keep their showers brief. What is not held dear is often wasted or neglected. Kids, don’t take clean running water for granted; don’t take or use more than you need, think of others. This advice is sure to fall on deaf ears.

I have all manner of thoughts in my head, slippery as eels, never still, always darting this way and that. It is black history month, so I think of Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Cornel West, of the book I’m reading by Michelle Alexander called The New Jim Crow; the name Oscar Grant flits across my consciousness. America never has been, and may never be, a colorblind society. Though it is less blatant, racism is still with us, the constant current running through our society; we criminalize black drug addicts, rehabilitate white drug dealers. Racism is more subtle, coded, but no less prevalent.

It was also nine years ago this month that Hunter S. Thompson ended his eventful life with a bullet to the brain. Thompson spared himself the frustration of the Obama years. I suspect Thompson would have been hopeful, as many were when Obama was elected, that change was coming after the dreadful reign of Cheney-Bush. Hope lasted until Obama surrounded himself with Clintonites, dug in deeper in Afghanistan, and unleashed drone warfare on a level never reached by Dick and W. Watching Obama bend over for the GOP time and time again would have been enough to make Thompson reach for his pistol.