Blackout

The US doesn’t mourn the victims of its drone attacks. Turkey doesn’t recognize the Armenian genocide that happened 100 years ago. History didn’t happen, just as the earth isn’t warming as a result of human activity. A fair number of sane and sober people actually believe that Hillary Clinton has shed her heavy baggage and now cares about us commoners. Back in the 1940’s, Henry Miller called America the “air conditioned nightmare.” I wonder what Henry would say if he could see the joint now. We wage perpetual war against shadow enemies and reserve the right to ignore casualties unless they are our own and can be exploited to show how evil our enemies are. The other day I heard a Republican nitwit, a congressman from one of the red states, jabbering about the dangers of our overly generous social safety net, and how it makes people dependent on the government. I wondered if this joker really believes this claptrap or if he’s merely an ideological robot. The only people with a safety net in this country are those that don’t need it, and by that I mean the ultra-rich, the corporate chieftains, the bankers, and the energy company czars. In this twisted nation, the poor bailout the rich, not the other way around. In Saudi Arabia, public beheadings are common, and yet we still call the Saudis our friends. We give Israel weapons with which to murder Palestinians. Somewhere in the world, the global battlefield, an American drone is hovering over a target that may, or may not, be a terrorist; it could just as well be an elderly grandmother on her way home from the market. Was the world this nuts 30 years ago? Who killed the Arab Spring? The masters of war and the ministers of global finance never sleep. Waist deep in BS, that’s what we are. One by one, we extinguish the thousand points of light. Dark days and darker nights ahead.

True Religion

My 18-year-old son, who is taking a gap year to figure out his future college plans, and how he’s going to pay for the privilege of an education, has been learning some hard lessons about the wonderful world of work. He has two part-time gigs, one at a coffee shop in the posh SB Public Market, and the other down in a trendy restaurant in what is now called the Funk Zone.

Both establishments are owned and operated by sole proprietors with oversized egos. Understand, dear readers, that coffee and food are now serious business – particularly in a destination town like Santa Barbara. The “foodies” have invaded what used to be an industrial swath of territory, with their Avant-garde ideas of food-as-art, or whatever the hell they think they’re doing. Seems to me that it’s all about buzz and presentation, slick marketing and public relations designed to draw in our local celebrities (Oprah, Michael Keaton, etc.) and Hollywood types in for the weekend.

What my son has discovered in both places is that owners have inflated egos and often act capriciously, like deciding, out of the blue, to reduce the kid’s hours by two-thirds with no notice whatsoever – and of course without explanation; the young lackeys who pour the drinks and serve the customers are not entitled to know why the puppet-master yanks the strings.

You would think that a trendy restaurant would spend some time training new employees, but my son reports that this isn’t the case; new workers are expected to know what to do the minute they walk through the front door and, if they stumble, the owner calls them out in front of others. On-the-job training by humiliation. You see, even if they are treated like dirt, workers should be grateful for the very opportunity of working in a popular Funk Zone establishment.

The service industry blues, my son, low wages, irregular hours, asshole bosses. I’m sorry that the American Dream died a long time ago.

If what I hear is true, the Public Market is in financial trouble, surprise, surprise, a dubious idea bearing dubious fruit. According to my son, who is nothing if not keenly observant, foot traffic during the day is scant, and what traffic exists is not made up of people who live in the surrounding area. With much media fanfare about renewal and mixed use, the Public Market displaced an old, dilapidated Vons grocery store that actually served the needs of the surrounding neighborhood. Along with working folk, elderly people and students, my wife and I shopped that Vons for years. Now, most of the million dollar condos above the Public Market remain unsold, and the retail spaces down below are vacant. Again, surprise, surprise. The developer probably figured, it’s downtown Santa Barbara, just a block off magic State Street, we can charge whatever the hell we want and the money will roll in like a tsunami.  

Sometimes the smartest people in the room prove to be dumb fucks when they get out on the street and come face to face with reality. Working people in this town cannot afford to pay $10 for a scoop of ice cream or $12 for a bowl of noodles.

But make no mistake, Santa Barbara isn’t unique in this respect: greed and exploitation is not only our national ethos, it’s our true religion.

Life Support

“Power without fear deflates like a lung without air.” Eduardo Galeano

The other morning I was listening to Democracy Now and learned an extraordinary fact – it takes 660 gallons of water to produce a quarter pound of ground beef. Why? Because water is required to grow the feed that fattens the livestock.

660 gallons according to a documentary film called Cowspiracy.

 In drought stricken California – and in many parts of the world for that matter -- beef is a food luxury we can’t afford, but because agriculture is big business in some parts of the state, and because size and money equals lobbying power in Sacramento, corporate ranchers and farmers still get their water. Short showers and drought-tolerant landscaping are necessary measures, but neither will save the amounts of water that slapping stricter controls on Big Ag would save.

That hasn’t happened yet, but it might as water agencies pushback against Governor Jerry Brown’s April 1 order mandating that they cut usage by as much as 25%.

And here I was feeling proud of myself for capturing six to eight gallons of gray water every time I do the laundry.

Let the madness begin! Now that Hillary Clinton has done what everyone assumed she would and declared herself a candidate for the presidency, let the lunatics out of the asylum. The next 500-plus days are going to be sheer misery for old-time liberals and progressives, a slow torture of misinformation and false arguments, awful TV ads filled with total lies and scripted debates designed to keep voters confused and fearful.

The GOP side is filling up with the usual field of wingnuts, the latest being Marco Rubio, who joins Rand Paul and Ted Cruz at the starting gate. If he hasn’t already, Jeb Bush will settle into the blocks next, and fat Chris Christie will follow. What a stalwart field! The GOP candidates will beat up on one another for several months to see who can move furthest to the right. This internecine battle will scare the bejesus out of GOP strategists, knowing as they do that extreme positions may sound like an aria to Tea Party faithful, but like fingernails on a chalkboard to relatively sane general election voters.

In the end, the GOP will likely get behind Jeb Bush, the family dynasty candidate, and the PR wizards will work their magic to whitewash Jeb’s connection to his Pa and dimwitted older brother. We’ll be told that Jeb is his own man, or that he is, in fact, a “self-made” man who never traded on the family name. The general election will be a contest for the center-right, with plenty of saber rattling about ISIS and Iran and Venezuela. Oh, and let’s not forget Russia.

Hillary will continue her charade to paint herself as a champion of the common people, and many voters will buy it. No one else will rise from the Democratic ranks to challenge Hillary, so her path to the nomination will be straight and relatively smooth.

Is this the best we can do in 2015? Yes, I’m afraid it is. Money drives the wheels of the system, third parties are marginalized or excluded, and the spectrum of acceptable argument is deliberately narrow. Neither party cares about the aspirations and needs of working people or what remains of the middle class.

This is democracy on life support.

White Noise

“Well, the devil’s in the alley/mule’s in the stall

say anything you wanna/I have heard it all”   Bob Dylan

I paid my tithe to the American war machine this week, ahead of the April 15 deadline. According to a report I read, in 2014 an astonishing 27% of tax payments in this failing empire went to the military. Let that figure settle for a moment. Twelve years since the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses and set off a chain reaction of events that have led to a new enemy in the Middle East: ISIS or ISIL, the bad guys, the evil ones. Our policy – if our ad hoc actions can be called a policy – is to support Israel and Saudi Arabia and Egypt at all costs and in any context, and to find common cause with Iran, when it suits our strategic purposes, but to reserve the right to turn around and accuse Iran of being the gravest threat to world peace since Nazi Germany.

Schizophrenia?

Martin Luther King warned back in 1967 that America’s militarism was a threat to the American soul. Any doubters? As our hold on world power weakens we become more belligerent, ever prepared to seek solutions by brute force – and to hell with the consequences and casualties. How many Iraqis perished during our invasion and occupation? A million people? Two million? Was an accurate count even made? How many innocent Afghans has the US killed during the past fourteen years? I know, who cares about Afghans? Mothers, grandmothers, aunts, babies, toddlers, children – their desire for life, liberty and the pursuit of peace is somehow inferior to ours, because we are the exceptional nation, the indispensible nation, the nation with the biggest stick and the means to use it. We exempt ourselves from those laws and standards we find burdensome.

Despite our dismal experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, some members of Congress agitate and advocate for a US strike against Iran. The same members of Congress allow Bibi Netanyahu to use their chamber as a bully pulpit for his political and strategic purposes; they stand and cheer, whistle and stomp, as if Bibi were the second coming of George Washington.

And the Obama Administration continues to arm the world with the latest hardware. War is good business, sales are booming, and as surely as the seasons, some of these weapons will one day be turned against us or our “partners.”

Riverside Church, 1967, the unmistakable voice of Dr. King reverberates and rolls down the canyon of decades, and our leaders and commentators and wise men pay no more attention now than they did then.  

The Burden of Dissatisfaction*

Crazy times. Politicos in Indiana must be reading George Orwell and picking up on the perverse ways language can be used to turn logic on its head. Indiana’s “Religious Freedom” act is designed to allow business owners to discriminate against same-sex couples, though what this has to do with religious freedom I don’t know. I guess it’s too upsetting for Indiana’s pious Christians to dine alongside same-sex couples.

Will this weirdness never end? Same-sex couples don’t bother me in the least. What bothers me is the fact that the United States is still mucking around in Afghanistan, fourteen years after invading the country in search of terrorists. I’m also bothered – but certainly not surprised – by the lack of media coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis. Millions of people have been displaced, uprooted from their homes and livelihoods and kin. It’s an enormous human tragedy, particularly for children. I’m bothered by the fact that the US penal colony at Guantanamo Bay is still operating, at enormous expense and dubious benefit. I’m bothered that a nitwit like Ted Cruz thinks he’s presidential material…that the man holds a seat in the US Senate is insulting enough.

My list of grievances is long. Fools and fuck-ups are at the helm and steering us straight at the iceberg. Everyday they write another tale of ordinary madness. We bleed from a thousand wounds without realizing we’ve been cut.

The thinking that landed us in an economic-environmental-political-military shithole is not up to the task of getting us out. Time to change the music.

Is there any realistic chance of this happening? Probably not. The ruling elites are very well entrenched and content with the status quo. One look at who the likely presidential candidates are in 2016, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, a pair of tarnished political retreads, is proof enough that significant change isn’t in the cards. Our political leaders keep doubling down on failed – or stupid – ideas, all in the name of maintaining their power.

Closer to home, and of more immediate impact, California’s governor has finally called for mandatory cutbacks in water consumption. Why it took Jerry Brown this long to act is curious, but late is better than never. When I was in Riverside last weekend, a waitress serving my breakfast brought a tall glass of water that I didn’t request, and while I was driving along a suburban street I saw a man washing his car in his driveway, an image that shocked me. Don’t they understand the magnitude of our situation? All anyone has to do is look at the nearest creek, river, or reservoir.

*With a nod to Allen Ginsberg