To the Right of Nixon

“I know progressives who are nostalgic for Richard Nixon.” Ralph Nader

I particularly enjoy this time of the year on California’s Platinum Coast. The light arrives early in the morning and remains until well into the evening. I usually wake to the twittering of birds; the days are fine, neither chilly or too warm. Santa Barbara is still full of itself, still entranced by its own image, a distant cry from the town I grew up in many years ago, but what the hell. So what if the foodies and the wine aficionados and yoga parlors and private wealth managers have taken over, and State Street is just a carnival for out-of-town hipsters. Let the good times keep rolling.

It’s funny what Ralph Nader said about his progressive pals who are nostalgic for Richard Nixon. Those of us who are old enough to remember Dick Nixon in all his many political guises, but in particular the Nixon of 1972 to 1974, may be hard pressed to view Nixon as a friend of anything remotely resembling a progressive position, but the point Nader is making is that the American political scene has shifted so far to the right that many policies advanced by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama actually lie to the right of Nixon. Think about that. And don’t for a moment believe that Madam Clinton will reverse the trend. Madam Clinton is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Fuck all New Democrats is what I say, they have bent us over and rammed it home. Barack Obama is viewed as a peace-loving leader at the same time his administration is busy provoking Russia, encircling China, selling weaponry to Vietnam, and conducting drone warfare all over the planet. Oh, and let’s not forget that Obama, the man of peace, is proposing to spend around a trillion of our tax dollars to “modernize” America’s nuclear arsenal. This modernization isn’t mentioned by Bernie Sanders or Madam Clinton.

We will be at war with someone, somewhere, forever. We will maintain a military presence in Afghanistan in the same way we have maintained one in Japan, Germany, Okinawa, and South Korea. We will occupy most of the planet militarily until the sheer expense of this empire crushes us. We are the drooling ogre with a learning disability who cannot learn the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves that our armaments are used only for noble ends, to protect our freedom or to free others from the grip of despots.

We lie to ourselves, always have, because to do otherwise is to expose the corrupt underbelly of this country. The lights are dim all over the city on the hill.

We are reassured repeatedly by our corporate propagandists that we are blessed to live in a democracy where our vote and our voice matters. This is bullshit. In the United States those that govern do not fear the governed. Why should they? Our votes are nullified by money, drowned out by money; our governors serve the money masters, gerrymander the electoral map to insure their perpetuation in office. We, the governed, pay 535 people to represent our interests, to advance policies that will provide us the most life, liberty and happiness, and they repay us with betrayal, with sell-outs, with austerity and endless war.

And look at our choice for the highest office in the land, the leader of our empire, two representatives of the ultra-rich who haven’t the faintest idea what it means to be an average, wage-earning person. Bernie Sanders understands, at least when it comes to economics, but the system will not let him past the velvet ropes.

Damn, what a downer. Is such pessimism warranted?

Election 2016: The Farce Continues

“And so we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with an enthusiasm that enables us to rally support for them based on confidence and trust.” Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

The farce continues. Donald Trump will be the standard bearer of the Republican Party, whose movers and shakers must now swallow their bile and put on a display of party “unity.” Much was made of Trump’s visit to Capitol Hill last week for a meeting with Paul Ryan, the putative Party genius. It doesn’t matter that Ryan has never hatched an idea beyond the typical Party doctrine -- he’s the man whose ring must be kissed. Media reports concluded that Trump and Ryan didn’t agree on anything major. No surprise there. Trump is a wild card, totally unpredictable, and therefore uncontrollable, and most of the GOP big shots have denounced him at least once during this campaign.

Bernie Sanders won the West Virginia primary, though the mainstream media continue to write him off because the delegate math favors Hillary Clinton. The honchos in the Democratic Party call on Sanders to submit to the inevitable and call it a day, urge his supporters to tip their energy and money and votes to Queen Clinton. So far, Sanders vows to fight on, though the day of his capitulation is only a matter of the changing of the calendar.

For those of us out here in Reality Land, where the impact of neoliberal policies (low-wage, contingent jobs, student loan debt, crushing medical expenses, etc.) is felt and paid for, the choice offered us is no choice at all. Trump is a gilt-edged novelty for media moguls and pundits, but the man is a dangerous buffoon with no core beliefs other than money and celebrity. Clinton, on the other hand, is more of the same: austerity for the needy and welfare for the rich; imperial wars and domestic surveillance; lip service for the existential crisis posed by climate change; and continued privatization of the assets and services we are supposed to own in common for the good of us all.

Regardless of who wins this tarnished election, private profit will remain the primary organizing principle of the U S of A.

The whole game is rigged, of course, designed to keep the duopoly in power and limit the issues that are allowed to be discussed and the people invited to discuss them. Flip on the network shows and it’s the same faces all the time talking about the same trivial BS. Can anyone remember a period in US history when the country was involved in so many wars simultaneously, none of them formally declared or approved by Congress? I cannot. And these contemporary wars grind on and on, year after year, with no end ever coming into view. Trump claims that he will “rebuild” the US military, though one has to wonder what this might look like given the disproportionate amount of taxpayer money that is siphoned off by the military-security-intelligence apparatus. We outspend every other nation on armaments. The network pundits don’t talk about this at all.

The political system is corrupt and dysfunctional, and this year it has vomited up two presidential hopefuls who most of the voting-age public either despises or distrusts. I have been ruminating lately on the question of whether or not the country deserves Donald Trump, if his ascent is the logical end to decades of lies and disinformation, patriotic mumbo-jumbo about freedom and democracy and the American Way, enormous giveaways to plunderers and plutocrats, and deliberate attempts to anesthetize the populace. The media moguls are more than happy to gin up controversy about transgender restrooms but cannot be troubled to tell the scary truth about the economy, climate change or nuclear proliferation.

I did hear the economist Richard Wolff say something that cheered me. In a lecture about how pressure for social change often builds unseen and then explodes all at once, Wolff said, “The aristocrats never see it coming.”

Could we be at such a turning point now? I’m fairly certain that our collective survival depends on it.

5000-1

Leicester City Football Club pulled off one of the greatest feats in the history of English football, capturing the Premier League title with two matches to spare. Start with the fact that only a year ago the Foxes had to play their way out of a hole that seemed certain to see them relegated. Add the fact that at the start of the 2015-2016 season, oddsmakers set Leicester’s chances at winning the title at 5000-1. (For an American this is hard to wrap one’s head around, but I suppose it would be like a Triple A baseball team, such as the Fresno Grizzlies, winning the World Series.) What’s even more startling is Leicester’s puny team payroll of 48.2 million pounds, compared to the huge payrolls of giants like Liverpool (152 million pounds), Arsenal (192 million pounds), and Manchester City (193 million pounds). I suppose the moral is that while money can buy talent, it cannot buy heart and desire and belief.

By all that is logical and holy in football the Foxes should not be champions of the Premier League. But don’t tell them that. All season long this remarkable club played with a freedom and abandon that defied logic and was often beautiful to watch; they won with spectacular play and they won by grinding matches out; they won with Jamie Vardy leading the line -- and they won without him. Mainly, they won together, that was what made watching them so enjoyable.Their talent was complimentary and reinforcing and expertly marshalled by manager Claudio Ranieri. They won because the spine of the side, Kasper Schmeichel in goal, Robert Huth and Wes Morgan at center back, and N’Golo Kante in the holding midfielder role, was consistently better than any comparable side in the league. In fact, Kante may be the most valuable player of all. Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez and Leonardo Ulloa score goals, but Kante is the constant in midfield, intercepting passes, winning challenges, and making timely tackles that frustrate the opposition and kill counterattacks. Kante never stops running -- he is perpetual and determined motion.

This was a title 132 years in the making and I for one hope Leicester supporters enjoy every minute of their turn in the winner’s circle.  

I’ve been thinking about Leicester’s accomplishment since Monday night when my beloved Chelsea (huge payroll, disinterested players, dismal season) erased a two goal deficit to earn a draw against Tottenham, the result of which tipped the title to Leicester. It was a match marred by cheap fouls and bad behavior. Twelve yellow cards were issued, nine against Tottenham. At the end of the match, Guus Hiddink, Chelsea’s 69-year-old interim manager, was knocked to the ground. Ugly stuff. But that wasn’t the focus of my rumination; I was thinking about Leicester in relation to American politics and the rise of Donald Trump, and wondering if there is any possibility that Trump will pull off a political miracle as unfathomable as Leicester’s footballing miracle.

I don’t know if the odds of Trump’s winning are 5000-1, but I assume they are long. It’s one thing to win primaries, another to prevail in a general election. Will Trump’s atavistic message resonate with a wider electorate, particularly women and Latinos? Doubtful. Trump is the candidate of fearful, resentful, and spiteful white men who yearn for the days when women and minorities knew their place, and America built stuff. Those days are long gone. It’s like yearning for the days when Great Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent and a mediocre white bloke could pretend he was a royal. Ian Masters, host of Background Briefing, has a theory that Trump doesn’t want to be president as much as he wants to win the presidency. Five minutes after his inauguration I think Trump would be asking himself, “OK, now what?” It’s not that Trump is anyone’s puppet -- his ego is too massive for that -- but I think his temperament is completely ill-suited for high political office. Emperor maybe, president never.

Leicester’s march to the Premier League crown was full of passion and joy; by contrast, the American general election in November will be full of lies and bombast. Whether the winner is Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, millions of people will have a foul taste in their mouths the day after.

Torches and Pitchforks

It’s almost reality, the presidential matchup the corporate media has been salivating for, Trump versus Clinton. The major commercial networks will use the public airwaves, for which they pay nothing, to earn buckets of cash carrying Trump and Clinton campaign ads, and the inevitable debates. It will be great for the corporate bottom line, wonderful fodder for the pundit class, and downright terrible for the nation. This is where we are. The oligarchy is alive and still in control.

Despair is an easy option. Watching the Republican Party reap the reward it has sowed for years alleviates some, but not anywhere close to all, my despair. The party strategists and bigwigs have blown the dog whistle for decades and what finally came home to them is the atavistic Donald Trump. Bummer.

What bothers me is the other party, the Democrats, the one that is supposed to be all-inclusive, champion of working people and the environment, women, equality and social justice. We know this isn’t the case any longer. As Thomas Frank points out in his new book, Listen, Liberal, the Democrats have been sprinting away from their traditional constituencies since the early 1970’s. As a result, the Party apparatus was hijacked by the Clintons and others of their ilk, so called New Democrats (Barack Obama included, which explains his energetic support of the Trans Pacific Partnership secret trade agreement) who embrace a savage neoliberal agenda that has devastated the middle class.

Our democracy is weak, the game rigged to produce preordained results. This is nothing new in American history -- we’ve traveled this rutted sideroad before. The wealthy and powerful always do everything they possibly can to limit direct democracy simply because they can’t control it. They talk about the “will of the people” and all that blather, but what they really mean is the will of their kind of people. So, we see arcane nominating rules and outright efforts to deny people their right to cast a ballot; we see how potential third parties are ignored and marginalized by the media, prevented from participating in debates and candidate forums.

The political duopoly serves its masters and makes serfs and slaves of the rest of us. As Robert McChesney and John Nichols note in their book, People Get Ready, “Unemployment, inequality, and poverty are best understood not, in the end, as economic problems, but instead as political problems. They require political solutions.” McChesney and Nichols go on to say that the level of corruption in contemporary American politics -- the blatant buying of politicians from both parties -- would make Gilded Age icons blush. The wealthy have never had it so good; 40-plus years of propaganda and scheming and manipulation has put them in the catbird seat.

But cracks are appearing in the foundation of this deeply entrenched oligarchy. The economic pain has become so widespread and pervasive that people are once again receptive to New Deal-style solutions. Bernie Sanders never had a prayer of winning the Democratic nomination -- the whole Party edifice was arrayed against him -- but he has succeeded in dragging bedrock middle class issues like income inequality back into the light. And when movements like Black Lives Matter, the Fight for $15, climate justice, humane immigration reform and voting rights, to name a few, coalesce with the understanding that their separate struggles are in reality one overarching struggle, the cracks will become fissures.

It has happened before. It will happen again. The People know the current arrangement is not only inequitable but unsustainable. Hell, the oligarchs themselves know this is true, which is why they are so desperate to delay the day of reckoning.

Tick, tock, torches and pitchforks.