On the Side of a Pot-holed Road

“When we give up false hopes, when we see human nature and history for what they are, when we accept that progress is not preordained, then we can act with an urgency and passion that comprehends the grim possibilities ahead.” Chris Hedges, columnist, Truthdig

The lawn at my in-laws house is dying, and it is not alone; many lawns are dying here on the Platinum Coast. The drought continues in California, in the same inexorable manner that conflict in the Middle East continues. I fill a two-gallon can with water and pour it around the base of the fig tree, then refill the can and do the same for the avocado tree. The fig tree looks healthy, despite the drought, but I don’t think the avocado is going to make it.

My mother-in-law has been ill with a bacterial infection; my father-in-law has early Alzheimer’s. My wife and I are witness to their slow, steady decline. My father-in-law hides screwdrivers and light bulbs and AA batteries, and then cannot remember where he hid them. He shuffles around the garage, searching in vain for these things. It’s heartbreaking to watch, but it is life, the way it goes for every single human being. We are prone to illness, disease, decline and death. No way around it. We have to reconcile ourselves to these facts at the same time we try to live with hope and purpose.

The hope part is difficult, for me, very difficult. I see the stupidity and cupidity of my own government, the venality of corporate leaders, and the vacuity of most of the American media establishment, and I feel despair, not hope. Take what’s happening in Iraq for example. The US has led a campaign of airstrikes against ISIS targets for the past ten months, and yet ISIS was able last week to seize the city of Ramadi. As is becoming commonplace, the Iraqi security forces that the US spent nearly a decade training and equipping, turned tail and retreated, leaving weapons and other equipment behind.

Americans are told – indoctrinated is more accurate – to believe that our military power can solve any problem; our aircraft and bombs, our pilots, our technology, are of such quality that we can pick out a single target – a bad guy – and take him out, him alone, without collateral damage. This is insane bullshit, of course, but many of my countrymen buy it, particularly over a patriotic weekend like this one. But if we are so awesome, why is ISIS able to grab more territory and spread more terror?

Americans seem to me like a nation of people with their heads jammed deep in the sand. We have allowed corporate and government power to form a real evil axis, and we can see – or would be able to see if we looked closely – that the one reinforces the rule of the other. Corporations and the wealthy buy political favors from politicians, and politicians write laws to reward their corporate benefactors. Democracy is essentially a joke because voters are never given a choice between any real alternatives; our choices lie within a narrow spectrum that center on the infallibility of capitalism and the projection of military might. No line of questioning or thought, and no policy proposal that seriously challenges the acceptable spectrum, is allowed a hearing. Our political leaders do not answer to us – they have another constituency and they serve it with slavish devotion. Democracy is a meaningless label. Without real choices of parties and candidates, voting is a waste of time.

How is one to be hopeful when the most critical issue of our time, human alteration of the earth’s climate, is simply ignored by our corporate masters and their political lackeys? Oil company CEO’s and their brigades of lawyers and lobbyists will go to their graves protesting that the science isn’t definitive, that there is still a shred of doubt that burning oil and coal and fracking for natural gas is harmful to the environment. They might be choking, but they will not recant the insane beliefs that lined their purses.

The financial elites that make money playing games with money, who never build anything of lasting value, who take and take and take, will go to their graves insisting that financial capitalism is the greatest evolutionary development in the history of the world. Forget that it produces, all over the planet, stupendous wealth for some, staggering misery for millions, and environmental degradation for all of us.

The hope and change bandwagon broke down on the side of a pot-holed road years ago. Thieves stole the tires, the rims and hubcaps; scavengers stripped the machine of everything that was left.

Ugly Little Liars

I always assumed that the official tale of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was bullshit. There were too many holes in the White House and mainstream media narrative, but the holes were papered over in the rah-rah and the gushing over the heroics of Seal Team 6. I frankly didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Yes, Osama bin Laden was a sociopath – no argument there – but what’s the essential difference between the murder he organized and the murder inflicted on Gaza by Israel two times in the past five years?

The killing of bin Laden was a political opportunity, and Barack Obama used it to paint himself as a decisive military leader. It was his Bush “Mission Accomplished” moment, but did it bring the absurd, wasteful and counterproductive War on Terror to an end?

Of course not. The War on Terror is a bonanza for the military-security complex and a host of private intelligence and mercenary corporations, and as long as the money flows, the war will go on.

Let’s not forget that Osama bin Laden was a fugitive for nearly a decade after claiming responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. He was the world’s most wanted criminal, prime target of every intelligence and military asset the US and its allies possessed, but all that time he eluded detection and capture. Ironically, it appears the Pakistanis – our stalwart allies in the War on Terror (wink, wink) -- knew where bin Laden was for almost five years.

Seymour Hersh, one of the greatest investigative journalists ever, has written a 10,000 word article for the London Review of Books that yanks the pretty wrapping paper from the official bin Laden story. The White House immediately issued a classic non-denial denial, meaning Obama’s spin-doctors ignored specifics and condemned the whole; numerous pundits have jumped on the bandwagon to discredit Hersh.

If Hersh’s sources are reliable, bin Laden was, for all intents and purposes, neutralized, under virtual house arrest by the Pakistanis. He wasn’t masterminding deadly Al Qaeda operations, and when the Seals blew his shit into the next world, he wasn’t armed, either. The most dangerous terrorist on the planet went down without a struggle. The Seals never came under fire.

The truth of the bin Laden raid is too mundane for the Pentagon and Hollywood. What was needed was a tale of American bravery and daring: the Pakistanis had no idea the US was coming, Osama bin Laden was armed to the teeth, the CIA located him with the help of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, etc.

Governments lie, they always have, they always will, and that is why an independent, inquisitive press is so vital in a democracy.  

Scare Tactics

“How can hope be sustained in such a world? First, be shedding all illusions about the capacity of the rulers of the world to reform themselves.” Tariq Ali, The Extreme Center.

One of our local TV news outlets is an ABC affiliate, so my wife usually watches that channel in the morning, to find out what the weather is going to be and to catch some local news, delivered with amateurish exuberance by our local talking heads. At 7:00 Good Morning America comes on, invariably with the latest airline disaster, a dramatic train wreck or highway pileup, maybe a kidnapping or school shooting. If it bleeds or screams or wails or has the potential to scare people, it leads.

It amuses me to no end to hear people who call themselves “journalists” whip up fear of ISIS with scanty facts, almost no context, and the same file footage over and over, giving the impression that blood-thirsty ISIS evildoers are pounding on our gates. This used to piss me off but now I just find it amusing. ISIS is our creation and a direct consequence of our hubris in the Middle East, a region we do not understand. ISIS is also a fabulous windfall for the arms merchants who profit from death. Some deadly terror group had to replace Al-Qaeda. With Bin Laden and Saddam dead, and our leaders not yet so bereft of sanity that they dare start a war with Iran, ISIS is the perfect follow-on foe, stateless and barbaric, and savvy with social media.

Starting an armed conflict doesn’t cause the US to pause and consider as it once did; our leaders are eager, it seems, to impose their will with Hellfire missiles.

In his most recent book, Tariq Ali, a prolific writer and intellectual, argues that no external force exists that can knock the US from its dominant position in the world. Ali doesn’t accept the notion that the US is a fading empire that must follow in the footsteps of the British Empire, or, going further back in history, the Romans. Because I’m one of those soft-headed people who think the US should accept limits, retreat from the idea of global hegemony, and focus on domestic issues like health care, education, the environment and wealth inequality, I found Ali’s assertion depressing.

But I think Ali is correct when he writes that, “Any change from above or within the existing structures is unlikely, unless the threats from below become too strong to resist.” Unfortunately, unlike Spain and Greece, I don’t see any organization in the US coherent enough to challenge the current order. Backing Bernie Sanders for president in 2016 might make one feel better, but without an entire political party dedicated to challenging neoliberalism and a belligerent foreign policy, the prevailing structure will remain in place.

And make no mistake, the neoliberal edifice erected over the last 30 – 40 years is strong and its beneficiaries will fight hammer and tongs to keep it just the way it is.

Meanwhile, over on Good Morning America, the FBI has uncovered another ISIS plot to strike against the American homeland. The horror, the horror, lock your doors, and pull your children close.

Random Notes of a Scattered Mind

“There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.” Amiri Baraka

My son came home with a bag of clothes from H&M, t-shirts and a couple of extremely thin cotton shirts that cost $9 each. As I always do with clothing, I looked at the label to see where the garment was made: Bangladesh. I wondered about the human being who sewed the shirt, what his or her daily life was like, and how much this unknown person earned for this insubstantial garment I held in my hands.

Baltimore on my mind, the fire this time, burning right in front of our eyes, and white pundits entirely missing the point as they spout nonsense about law and order. They don’t get it. Oppression breeds rage, hopelessness breeds despair, and sooner or later a spark touches off a fire that becomes an inferno. Connect the dots. Urban communities in America have been deindustrialized, jobs at living wages are hard to find, especially for people of color; policing in these communities is harsh, brutal and murderous; the downward spiral has been swirling for nearly two generations. What do we expect will happen?

He doesn’t have a prayer of winning the nomination, but I’m glad Senator Bernie Sanders has entered the 2016 presidential contest. The race desperately needs another voice, a voice not fueled by corporate dough, a voice that speaks to the real, everyday, mundane concerns of average people: jobs, wages, housing, health care, education, and the condition of our planet. Bernie Sanders won’t champion populist themes and then turn his back on people in favor of the tired neoliberal agenda that has sundered the middle class and created obscene wealth and political inequality.

The “system” will call Bernie Sanders a radical, a socialist, even a communist, hostile to capitalism and the American way; he will be ridiculed and laughed at, marginalized and largely ignored by the media machine. Remember Ralph Nader?

May. The drought drags on here in California. No rain in the forecast. In Nepal, another body is pulled from the rubble. The earth seems melancholy.