In Search of Wiser Heads & Hearts

“A very few people owned most of the land and were keenly resented. Three percent of the population controlled 50 percent of the wealth. People were not stupid; there was general knowledge of the plunder, chicanery, favoritism, privilege of name and corruption of government officials that had created such inequity.” E.L. Doctorow, Notes on Art & Politics

What period of American history do you think E.L. Doctorow was referring to in the passage quoted above? It sounds like contemporary times, doesn’t it, when the members of the Forbes 400 congratulate themselves for owning more wealth than, well, almost all of the rest of us serfs, combined.

But Doctorow wasn’t writing about our times, he was writing about America the colony, before the revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Even back then, the elites ruled, and often by means of the same tactics employed by the wealthy today: plunder, chicanery, and that reliable old standby, corruption. Like the buying of influence with campaign contributions, or funding think tanks to churn out favorable policy analysis and positions, or hiring lobbyists to stroke and soothe and succor elected officials.

Chris Hedges, whose Truthdig column I read every week, sees a dire, dystopian future for America, full-scale social collapse, environmental devastation, and an internal crackdown on anyone who dares to buck the prevailing corporate-controlled order. For the sake of my children, I want to believe that Hedges is wrong and that wiser heads and hearts will put America right before it’s too late. But I also think we are running short on time, and that it’s unlikely a savior will rise from within the current broken two-party system.

We might be fucked. Look at the leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump, and at the wing nut right behind him, Ted Cruz. Even if you’re not an American, these men should scare you. It’s not much better on the Democratic side. Democrats once stood for working people, the poor, the elderly and infirm, but that was years ago, before a certain charismatic governor from Arkansas figured out that Democrats could cut deals with big time corporate money men; his wife has the same jones for Wall Street.

Bernie Sanders is no more than window-dressing, a candidate with no purpose other than to hoodwink the electorate into thinking it has a choice. Sanders never had a chance in hell of securing the nomination, that’s not how the rules of the fixed game work. Because of Sanders, Dame Clinton may make populist noises, but once she has the nomination in her crooked fingers, and she will, any and all left-leaning positions she once espoused will be ditched faster than her hubby ever ditched a one-night stand.

The grim outlines that Chris Hedges writes about week after week are visible – if one looks behind and beyond the BS that passes for news in the corporate media.

The clock is winding down.

Finally

It’s finally over, the big day has come and gone, and now we can turn our attention to the after-Christmas sales. So long to manufactured Christmas cheer, fuzzy-headed commercial pitches for cars and diamonds and cell phones and sweaters; so long to can’t miss recipes and advice about holiday party etiquette; so long to outrageous expectations and non-stop Christmas music.

Bah, humbug? Perhaps. But when the Christmas “season” kicks off before the candlewax dries in our Halloween pumpkins, and is in full froth by Thanksgiving, fatigue sets in; while Bing Crosby croons and the ads drone, this crooked world spins on, and in my mind’s eye I see photographs of destroyed cities, block after block of shattered buildings, rubble, concrete and steel – Syria and Gaza. As an American it is my imperial right not to care about those war-ravaged places, but I do. The human beings my country kills, directly, by remote-controlled drone strikes, or indirectly, by the avid support the US provides to corrupt regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel, have stories, histories, desires and dreams. That we don’t care about the details of our victims says more about us than them.

My country has been hijacked by dangerous ideologues.

The drought continues on the Platinum Coast of California where I have lived the majority of my life. It remains to be seen if there will be an El Nino miracle, but even if we receive a deluge of Biblical proportions, the drought isn’t going away.

Neither are astronomical housing prices and rental costs. I should tell my landlord that the refrigerator leaks water and freezes when it should cool, but I dare not get on the radar as a wanking tenant; better to remain quiet and deal with the leak until it becomes catastrophic. My son is home from his first semester away at college. My hair is thinner and grayer. My fourteen-year old daughter, now in high school, is an emotional volcano; she is either the apple of my eye or the pebble in my shoe. My wife constantly misplaces her iPhone.

As another year winds down here on the Balcony, I want to extend a thank you to all the people who read this blog. I remain an unarmed and very average American male, doing my level best to cause as little harm as possible.   

Sack Them All!

The big news of the week, for me, anyway, was the firing of Jose Mourinho by the top brass at Chelsea Football Club. With the Blues floundering at the southern end of the Premier League table something had to give, and someone had to take the fall. Such is the way of big league football. From what I’ve seen since August, there are a number of Chelsea players who deserve to be banished to purgatory, but I also recognize that Mourinho bears some responsibility for the club’s abysmal form; Jose hasn’t had the swagger or conviction he displayed in years past. Instead he frequently displayed petulance and annoyance, and his post-match comments to the media often sounded self-pitying. 

Whether or not a cabal of Chelsea players actively tried to undermine Mourinho is a question many long time fans are asking on social media. I don’t know how to answer this question. Was the drop off in form on the part of Eden Hazard, Diego Costa, Cesc Fabregas and Nemanja Matic deliberate? Did they mail their performances in to strike back at Jose? Fans will never know the answer, only those players know what they did or didn’t do, and why, and it’s unlikely they will talk publicly. Diego Costa may exit the scene come the January transfer window, and I think Eden Hazard’s tour at Chelsea might also be drawing to an end.  

While Chelsea Football Club was going through this upheaval, the world continued to spin. The nitwit parade that is the campaign for the GOP presidential nomination rolled on, with bombastic Donald Trump and creepy Ted Cruz competing to prove which of them is keener to rain ordnance on Muslims. The would-be leaders of this country still don’t understand that we cannot bomb our way to peace with that relatively small segment of the Muslim world that commits acts of terrorism. The rhetoric that spews from the campaign trail like sludge from a busted sewer pipe is scary; none of the GOP aspirants is qualified to occupy the White House, but on the other hand, I don’t get a warm fuzzy feeling from Hillary Clinton. Once again, the choice before the voters is the uninspiring lesser of all evils. Which candidate will be the least dishonest and detestable and demonic and detrimental to this country and the rest of the world?

The bar for the highest office in the kingdom is set so low that a witless blowhard like Donald Trump is taken seriously; Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush should be laughed off the stage, but they too are treated like real candidates rather than the lightweight hacks that they really are.

What a sad state of affairs. If only politics were more like football! The American public could sack the Congress and the Senate for poor performance, a losing record and general, all-around cupidity.

COP 21: The Stupid and the Damned

“When I reflect on the pompous titles bestowed on unworthy men, I feel an indignity that instructs me to despise absurdity.” Thomas Paine

World leaders meet in Paris at COP-21 to see if rich nations and poor nations, large nations and small nations, can reach agreement to mitigate the effects of climate change. The stakes are very high.

Speeches galore on the opening day, calls for action, and dire warnings about the dangers of inaction; Barack Obama makes a speech full of words that soar like falcons but in the end amount to little more than the twittering of finches. Obama’s fellow leaders know that he can’t push climate legislation through a Republican-controlled US Congress chock full of rabid climate change deniers. While the world fries in some areas, and floods in others, while the air in many parts of China is hazardous, the deniers claim that the science of global warming is still up for debate.  

Why does the US spawn so many stupid politicians? This country boasts some of the finest universities in the world, our technological know-how is astonishing, our ability to measure and predict is unprecedented, and yet many American politicians steadfastly dispute the reality of climate change; they ignore the evidence at their feet and right above their heads; and as for expecting them to connect the dots between climate change and political unrest, terrorism, and refugees, forget it, they never will. They are blinded by greed for money, power, influence, and prestige.

COP-21 has only a slender chance of producing an agreement binding on all nations. When all the talking is through, money will win out as it almost always does. The big polluters, who have phalanxes of lawyers and lobbyists and PR flacks to do their bidding, will insist on incremental foot-dragging to allow industry time to transition. But when it comes to the climate on which we all depend, time is the one resource we don’t have.

The people out in the streets of Paris, and those around the world, are miles ahead of their political leaders because they know that the weight of climate change will fall disproportionately on them.

The poor and downtrodden always take the blunt end of the club in the gut.

Infinitesimal

“I got my finger on the trigger/but I don’t know who to trust.” Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust

Infantile, as usual.

Expect nothing less.

The reporter on Good Morning America says that President Obama’s message to the country is this: the government has our back and the homeland is secure this holiday season.

The news is chilling, but the holiday commercials are cheery and bright. Black Friday starts at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday!

How I hate that word, Homeland. It never fails to arouse in me mental images of the Third Reich, goose-stepping black-uniformed soldiers illuminated by torchlight. Like our leaders today, the top dogs of the Third Reich exhorted the German people to be vigilant and report suspicious activity.

Terror is real. Terror is a tactic. We are at war against Terror, have been for a decade and a half. Terror seems to be winning. Or maybe Terror has already won. Once a population trades its liberties and freedoms for a false sense of security, Terror lifts the trophy.

Obama says ISIS must be destroyed so that the group cannot carry out more terror attacks. Obama’s plan is to keep bombing, which will never work to rid the world of ISIS, but who’s keeping track? The US is doing something. Look how successful we’ve been in Afghanistan!

The good news today is that the homeland is secure, we can travel to grandma’s house for a Thanksgiving feast, gather with relations and friends, lift a glass of champagne, stuff ourselves with turkey and ham and stuffing and mashed potatoes, and then head off to the mall for Black Friday, confident that we will not be disturbed by an attack from ISIS. Shopping for bargains is the measure of our freedom. George W. Bush claimed this freedom was one reason the terrorists hate us.

Infantile, like I said.

The idea that Uncle Sam, represented by the troops of the FBI, CIA, DOD, DIA, NSA, JSOC and Naval Intelligence, has our back is ridiculous. Can we please set aside the blatant and absurd fear mongering and tell the fucking truth? The odds of being killed in the US by ISIS are infinitesimal. Don’t worry about ISIS – worry about your neighbor who just lost his job and can’t pay his mortgage or send his son to college, whose marriage is crumbling and whose health insurance is unaffordable – and who owns a dozen firearms, all purchased legally, and maybe has it in his head that immigrants or Affirmative Action is the cause of his troubles…watch that guy.

Why worry about ISIS when every single day in America 100 hundred people are killed with firearms?

Every. Single. Day. Sea to shining sea.

And when it happens, our leaders make pious statements, wring their hands, and bow to the money of the NRA. If you want something to worry about, worry about that.

The Warmonger's Chorus

“Collectively, the feedback from America is a disturbing mix of sheer madness, fathomless ignorance, and dangerously myopic aggression.” Jason Hirthler on the Paris terrorist attacks.

The terrorist attacks in Paris were diabolical, designed to inflict pain and suffering on innocent people in the heart of a major city, and show any nation involved in Syria that ISIS or ISIL (I’ll use ISIS from here on) can strike far from its base.

The response from France and the United States has been predictable, lots of aggressive rhetoric, stepped up bombing campaigns, heightened security, and near hysteria about Syrian refugees. In the US, the mainstream media does what it does best: strip the events in Paris of context and fan the flames of fear. Listening to the talking fools on Good Morning America, you would never know that a war has been going on in Syria for more than four years, that as many as ten different nations have been involved in aerial bombardment, or that ISIS was birthed in the aftermath of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. To hear ABC News tell it, ISIS arose from the dust, without antecedent or reason, and the brutality it inflicts on innocents has no logical cause, other than the evil inherent in radical Islam.

The most shameful thing I’ve seen, heard or read since the Paris attacks, besides the US CIA Director trying to milk the tragedy to call for more intrusive surveillance, has to be Republican governors of American states vowing to block Syrian refugees from settling within their borders. I have seen many acts of cowardice in my lifetime, but nothing as blatant as refusing to deny desperate refugees a safe haven. Trace the cause of their exodus, you damn fools, back to 2003, the hyped rhetoric about Iraq coming from the Bush White House, the lies spilling from the lips of Uncle Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, William Kristol, and many others; remember the steady drumbeat calling for war against Iraq, and the New York Times and every superstar talking head repeating the Bush line as if any utterance from the White House was pure truth. Remember the disgraceful run-up to Shock & Awe? Syria was an intact country then, not in the American camp to be sure, ruled by a dictator as many Arab nations were then and are now, like our dear friend, Saudi Arabia, but still functioning. 

Look now, look closely, look long and hard.

There is no way France, Russia, Great Britain, Turkey, the United States or Saudi Arabia can defeat ISIS in Syria. There is no military solution. Peace can’t be gained through bombing. Thoughtful observers understand this, but as happened in 2003, the warmonger’s shrill chorus drowns reasonable and learned voices out.

Oh, the twisted tangle of interests vying in Syria: geopolitical, economic, military. Russia, Turkey, Iran, the US, France, Saudi Arabia, all trying to milk the Paris tragedy for their own advantage. The Syrian people hardly matter in this struggle, just as Iraqi civilians hardly mattered in 2003.

They matter so little that it’s not even necessary to accurately count the dead.