Freefall

“This is a world that only values narrow, selfish interests; isolated, competitive individuals; finance capital; the reign of commodities; and the alleged ‘natural laws’ of free-market fundamentalism.”  Henry A. Giroux

I just watched my beloved Chelsea lose to Liverpool. My team is in free-fall, a consistent loser, even on home ground.

And Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House of Representatives. Talk about free-fall. It’s bad when it happens to a football club, even worse when it happens to a country. We’re there now, locked in that downward spiral. Like all the GOP candidates for president, Paul Ryan is a hypocrite who constantly yammers on about cutting the size of government, yet gives the Department of Defense and the entire national security apparatus a completely free pass from the budget axe, as if those entities are somehow separate from the “government.”

The mainstream press – nothing if not a reliable source of misinformation – anointed Ryan as a budget “expert,” an exceptional wonk with his head wrapped around the gargantuan federal budget, yet all Ryan does is what all Republicans of his stripe do: spin whopping lies about the looming fiscal danger of Social Security and Medicare, and insist, against all evidence, that lowering the tax burden for corporations and the wealthy will produce, as if by magic, prosperity for the rest of us. These tropes are old, false, and dangerous to the welfare of the majority of citizens, but we hear them again and again, like a mantra.

It amuses me when I hear politicians covered by taxpayer-provided platinum-plated medical insurance and generous retirement plans, demand deep cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits. If men like Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul abhor government so much, why do they accept the benefits that come with their offices? Insisting that average Americans, folks like you and me, work until we’re 70 before collecting Social Security gives them no pause whatsoever. And they never talk about where all the jobs for these codgers will come from.

According to the mainstream media shills, Marco Rubio “won” the last GOP debate and is now surging, while Trump and Bush are losing traction. How any single candidate can be named the winner of a ridiculous lie-fest is beyond me, but I’m not surprised that Rubio is the latest darling and the focus of renewed attention; I’m sure the big brains behind the GOP are thinking that Rubio, being younger and of Cuban heritage, has the best chance of attracting Latino voters in the general election. This is unlikely, but make no mistake about this: Rubio is simply a younger face on a failed ideology.

My football team lost to one of its most bitter rivals, but I can live with it because football is just a game. The fact that my country has lost its way and can’t locate its soul is far more troubling.

The Sophistication of Our Corruption

“Or, to put it more dramatically, the richest 400 Americans own more assets than the bottom 150 million.” Mark Blyth, Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea.

Even Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, can’t provide a coherent definition of what socialism means. Bill Maher tried to coax a concrete answer out of Sanders last week, but all Maher got for his effort was a monologue about free health care and free tuition at public colleges and universities. Maher’s audience approved of this answer, but the question deserves a fuller response.

I don’t have much hope for Bernie’s campaign, as I’ve written here before, because in the end Hillary Clinton has too much campaign cash and media love for Sanders to overcome. Plus, when you bill yourself as a socialist in America – even a democratic socialist – you will be demonized. Americans have been conditioned to fear socialists, communists, leftists and Marxists.

What I want to hear Sanders talk about, in the time left before he folds his tent and exits the field, is the need for a counterweight against corporate power. Without robust government regulation and monitoring, capitalism inevitably produces a relative few spectacular winners and a staggering number of losers, which is the sad pass we have arrived at today. Years of tax cuts and tax breaks and other legal means of tax avoidance for corporations and wealthy individuals has created conditions typical in what used to be called “banana republics”; a handful of wealthy people who own practically everything and segregate themselves from the unwashed masses, a professional class that lives comfortably, a tiny “middle-class” and the working poor and dirt poor.

The only way to have any semblance of economic fairness for the majority is to deliberately engineer it. That means government policy, rules, regulations, and laws that can’t be circumvented. I appreciate services that only government can deliver on a mass scale, like clean water, breathable air, decent public schools, single-payer health care, national parks, safe bridges and freeways, courts that give average citizens a legitimate means of redress, and a safety net robust enough to smooth the jagged edges of capitalism; I like knowing that the foods and medicines I consume are safe, free from chemicals and genetically-modified ingredients.

Of course we have to pay for all these social benefits. That entails taxing the super wealthy and corporations, it means revising the byzantine tax code and shrinking the national security apparatus and the military. What might have been done to help American citizens with all the money we have wasted fighting a losing war in Afghanistan, a war we started and cannot finish? Think of the opportunities lost and human lives ruined.

This feels to me like a dangerous time for the American Republic. The mechanisms of our government are rusted because the political system has been perverted by money -- money that buys lawyers, lobbyists, think tanks and PR flacks – and rendered completely incapable of addressing critical problems. Citizens barely matter any more, we are paid lip service by the powerful and our legitimate needs are ignored because the political and corporate elites know that the masses are unorganized and easily divided. We are fed a steady diet of horseshit about the majesty of the free market, freedom, and American exceptionalism.

News flash: America is exceptional only in terms of the sophistication of its corruption.

Pennies on the Dollar

“We have only to open our eyes, and awaken to our predicament.” Alice Walker

Dark clouds massing over the American Riviera, thunder rolling in the distance. I stand on the deck and wonder if those clouds hold any promise of rain. Dry here, unseasonably warm day after day, heat close and oppressive, strength-sapping, sweat inducing. Rumors of El Nino, with the possibility of flooding, mudslides, all sorts of mayhem. The city fathers and mothers urge citizens to prepare by stocking sandbags and planning escape routes. Thunder rolls again, the dark clouds drift, night deepens. Let it rain, please let it rain. More thunder, a shot of lightning, and then a downpour, please.

I skipped the first Democratic debate, though I gather from media reporting – always suspect, I must add – that Clinton won though Bernie Sanders acquitted himself well, and compared to the GOP freak-for-all, this affair was like a convention of intellectuals. When the smoke clears and the noise fades and Bernie’s bumper stickers are peeling and faded, Clinton will be the nominee because she has the dough, the organization, the ground game, the name, the contacts. This is the stuff that matters in America, Inc., not merit, integrity, honesty or humility. Like her husband, Hillary Clinton speaks from both sides of her mouth, always has, always will; and like Bill, she tacks to the political wind. One minute she’s arguing vigorously for free trade and open markets, and the next she’s touting her total opposition to the TPP. Clinton flips and flops like a bass in the bottom of a boat. If you’re looking for change, Hillary isn’t your girl – she will defend the status quo to her last breath on the political stage. Hillary will support the absurd War on Terror, drone strikes, hysterical fear of Iran, and unqualified love for Saudi Arabia and Israel. Wall Street honchos will eat her lunch. She will sell her supporters out for pennies on the dollar, just like Bill did.

I’m a proud and unrepentant liberal so Bernie’s economic message is fine with me. Tax the obscenely rich and corporations, yes; make higher education more affordable, absolutely; increase the minimum wage, hell yes; protect Social Security and Medicare, damn right, whatever it takes. But Bernie is a no-go for me because of his unwavering support for the American war machine and Israel. If the United States is to recapture a shred of moral authority in the world it must begin to dismantle its far-flung empire, and start acting like an honest peace broker between Israel and the Palestinians. These are tall orders to be sure. While we are at it we should also tell the Saudis – those repressive head-chopping supporters of terrorism – to fuck off.

The field of presidential candidates is dismal, as always, and the mainstream media play it like a beauty pageant, deluge us with trivia, odds, and reports about the size of campaign coffers. Armed with disinformation, voters are exhorted to troop to the polls and cast their ballots, participate in our fabled democracy, legitimize the broken machine that will ultimately ruin us. 

I hear raindrops.

On Its Way

As Gil Scott-Heron said, “The revolution will not be televised.”

The US, or one of its “coalition” partners, bombed a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that they – the US and its phony partners – knew the precise GPS coordinates of, and called it, at first report anyway, by that nifty name that absolves a belligerent party of all responsibility, “collateral” damage. More than twenty people killed, at least that many wounded, and you know damn well there will be no impartial investigation, no war crimes tribunal, because the US, like our dear friends Israel and Saudi Arabia, are exempt from international law.

The US can kill whoever it damn well pleases whenever it pleases, and if you don’t like it, so what.

All the Pentagon has to say is that the Taliban was using the hospital for cover. God, how familiar does that sound? Think back to the last Israeli assault on Gaza – the same bullshit excuse was used when bombs and artillery shells fell on UN schools.

Fourteen years and billions of wasted dollars later, the US is still teeing it up against the Taliban. We were supposed to be leaving the scene, turning the broken nation back to the Afghans – sorry we fucked your country up but we gotta’ split – but now Obama wants to keep as many as 5,000 US troops in country for God knows how many more years. Great. Let’s piss away another $50 billion while people in our country starve, sleep on the sidewalk, and go bankrupt because they cannot afford overpriced medications.

My country is an embarrassment. Our politics are absurd, most of our leaders are liars and whores, and there is no doubt that we are the most dangerous and mistrusted nation on this poor planet. We are an imperial power, pure and simple, and like all imperial powers throughout history, we are in the throes of a major collapse. We can’t sustain global, endless war, but we’ll never give up trying. Our leaders are just too fucking stupid and pigheaded to admit that it’s time to sound retreat, to blow up all the monopolies and cartels, to chase the super rich from the temple with torches and pitchforks, string some of these white-collar criminals up by their scrotums, and start giving a shit about income inequality, the working poor, the dying middle class, and our beleaguered climate. 

No, Mr. Scott-Heron, the revolution will not be televised. The beat of the drum, the cadence of marching feet, the flicker of torches, and voices echoing off the pavement; better run, Mr. CEO, Mr. Mighty Banker, because these people are headed your way, right up your front porch to your gilded front door, just like 1789 in Paris. Remember? Heads in a basket, bodies piled in tumbrils like cordwood. You can rob the masses blind for only so long, prey on the poor and the weak for only so long, steal from the national treasury for only so long, before the people wake from their dream and realize they can end their nightmare.

The revolution may not be televised, but as sure as the sun rises, the revolution is on its way.