A Baleful Eye

“And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.” William Faulkner, Light in August

*A couple of nights ago we got some rain, along with thunder and a few flashes of lightning. The sound of rain on the roof and dripping from the trees outside our bedroom windows was so unusual that at first I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. The drought on the Platinum Coast has gone on for so long, and been so severe, that a natural sound like falling rain becomes a novel event. I got out of bed and opened the back door and watched the rain fall on our deck; the eucalyptus trees seemed to extend their branches toward the sky to catch every last drop.

*Election season rolls on. Each day our mailbox is clogged with a fresh batch of direct mail pieces, and the TV channels stack one political ad atop the next. Big Pharma is pouring millions of dollars into defeating Proposition 61, a ballot measure that would prevent California from paying more for prescription drugs than the Veterans Administration. Big Pharma gets testy when its ATM machine is challenged.

*Although I don’t pretend to understand the history or politics or religious rivalries at play in Syria, the country -- what remains of it, anyway -- has been on my mind. Images of destroyed buildings, bombed out apartment blocks, rubble-strewn streets, and the faces of displaced people, scattered across the Middle East and Europe. Even if the warring sides were to pull back and stop fighting, and some sort of political solution be achieved, can Syria be rebuilt? Is this possible given the instability in the region?

*The gift of chaos, bequeathed by George W. Bush and his band of neocons, continues to give.

*If the US had mandatory military conscription rather than an all-volunteer military, would we be content to sit back and allow undeclared wars to drag on for 15 years? I wonder. Nothing sobers the mind like flag-draped coffins.

*Here’s another thing I’ve wondered about since I heard that the armed gang that took over a federal wildlife preserve in Oregon were acquitted: if a group of armed black men had done the same thing, would they have survived to be acquitted? I doubt it. The right wing media machine would have been howling around the clock about the “new” Black Panthers, armed revolutionaries, raising the specter of race war, and calling for immediate action by state, local, and federal law enforcement to put down the insurrection. No forbearance. No patient standoff. And definitely no acquittal, if anyone was alive to be tried. Is there anything more terrifying to white Americans than the prospect of angry armed black men? This fear is lodged deep in our DNA.

*The soul of my country is pathological.

*My wife and I regularly watch Real Time with Bill Maher and for the most part I find Maher amusing, occasionally insightful -- particularly about the immediate danger posed by climate change along with the absolute futility of America’s failed War on Drugs -- but often off base and full of shit. His pompous pronouncements that Americans have only one choice in the presidential election next month reinforce the power status quo that is destroying our country and the planet; his commentary about Islam and Muslims ignore the fact that the vast majority of Muslims are not hell-bent on waging jihad against the west; and his paeans to Obama for the president’s stewardship of the economy are simply wrong. Yes, Bill, “official” Department of Labor unemployment statistics show that unemployment is lower now than it was when Obama took office for his first term, but this doesn’t reflect the true unemployment rate in the country. Thousands of people drop off the radar, give up looking for work, and many thousands more are working part-time or contingent jobs for paltry wages, and this is hardly a situation to be sanguine about. The fundamentals of the American economy have been manipulated and papered over to appear stronger than they really are.

*Happy Halloween.