The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

What powerful man will be toppled next over charges of sexual misconduct, and why hasn’t the stain of misconduct reached our Groper-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump? Obviously, sexual harassment in the workplace pre-dates Trump ascending to the Oval Office, but Trump has altered the zeitgeist like no president before him. Trump continues to call his accusers liars, and claim, as only Trump can, that nobody respects women more than he does. Right. Trump respects women as long as they give in to his ego, narcissism, tiny, wandering hands, and boorish behavior. Isn’t it curious how the corporate media largely give Trump a pass at the same time they go on endlessly about movie moguls, actors, and other politicians?

I don’t know what to make of this flood of accusations, other than this is still a male-dominated world, and certain men in positions of power and authority seem to believe they can act as raunchy as they want without fear of consequence. Even an old goat like Charlie Rose is in on the act, pawing women at office parties, flashing his sagging member at co-workers, and who knows what else. All over the world, in offices, factories, hospitals, City Halls, and schools, women suffer at the hands of men -- and mostly in silence, behind closed doors, out of sight, and far too often when they do come forward, they are not believed.  

Depressing vibe for a holiday week, when the sun is shining here on the Platinum coast, and there’s cold beer in the fridge, Champions League football on the tube, and my daughter bugging me to raise our Christmas tree before the end of November, which I resist doing with all my being. I don’t believe in the holiday “season,” the ceaseless exhortations to buy, spend, and get the deal. We need to buy more stuff like we need to spend more money on the war machine. We’ve got enough stuff, enough wars. What we lack is a sense of balance and proportion, of fairness and equity, of empathy and compassion. Thanksgiving doesn’t get it’s due any more -- as dubious as the holiday is -- it’s just a springboard to the interminable Christmas season, the day before Black Friday. How many scenes of  shoppers surging through the doors of Wal-Mart or Target will the mainstream press feed us this year? Get your diamond tennis bracelet, your Lexus tied up with a red bow, the new iPhone whatever…

The air-conditioned nightmare is what Henry Miller called America back in the early 1940’s. Not sure what Henry would say if he were to come back for a visit with the living. The American nightmare is much, much worse now, and the air-conditioning sputters on and off. We are a hollowed-out hulk of an empire, a rust-bucket aircraft carrier running out of fuel and drifting wildly off course. The President is a dangerous fool and his party is a collection of hacks, perverts, pedophiles, and hard-hearted ideologues. The Republican-controlled Congress is very close to passing a breathtakingly hideous tax plan that will benefit a small number of wealthy people at the expense of the many. This disgraceful legislation will, when its effects are fully realized a few years down the trail, immiserate millions of average people.

And that’s when the air-conditioning switches off for good.

The Amnesia of Power

“It is time that we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality. There were slaves when it was written; there were still slaves when it was adopted.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I can’t recall. I don’t remember. I don’t have a specific recollection. In fact, I don’t even have a vague recollection.”

The white Attorney General of the United States of America can get away with this two-bit BS’ing of Congress. Imagine an African-American defendant trying these lame responses on an all-white jury. How quickly do you think the jurors would return a guilty verdict?

When the rule of law becomes a farce and a carnival show, and one class of people set themselves above the law, all is pretty much lost. The poor routinely experience the full weight of the law on their necks, even for relatively minor crimes, while the wealthy and well-connected plead amnesia and pillage with impunity.

Like a Greek tragedy, these are dark and perilous times. Trump returns from his jaunt to Asia and declares that American prestige and honor has been restored, and that the fecklessness of his predecessors has been vanquished. With the exception of the murderous president of the Philippines, most Asian leaders would disagree. What did Trump achieve? Next to nothing.

Why isn’t the disaster in Yemen in the mainstream American news? Saudi Arabia, with considerable assistance from the United States, is perpetrating genocide on millions of human beings, with death from the sky and cholera and famine on the ground, but we can’t be bothered to pay a minute of attention.

The detestable Roy Moore, candidate for United States Senate from Alabama, hides behind his Bible while he defends himself against accusations of sexual predation lodged by multiple women; but, hey, no problem, because according to Moore, the girls he creeped gave their consent. Grown men marry and fuck teenage girls in other nations, so why not in America? What’s wrong with a 32-year-old pervert stalking 14-year-old-girls in a shopping mall? Sounds like the perfect training ground for a United States Senator in this Age of Trump, himself a serial groper.

Hundreds of people, including journalists, who protested the inauguration of Donald Trump, are on trial and face decades in prison for engaging in one of the most fundamental acts a citizen in a democracy can engage in: dissent. Once dissent is criminalized we are finished as a democratic republic. You can shut out the lights and close the door and declare the American experiment over.

Russia, Russia, Russia. Talk about a distraction. I must be stupid because I still fail to see how Russia tipped the electoral college for Trump.

Trump embodies everything that is vile and loathsome in the American character, the ugly American writ large, loud, bombastic, ignorant, and dangerous.

Sitting here in California, waiting for the other combat boot to drop, feeling sick to my stomach every time I see Donald Trump on the TV screen, or hear his voice. While I know that it probably never will, I’m old enough to want my country to live up to its exalted ideals, not bow to its basest and most venal instincts. The veneer of participatory democracy has been ripped away like a tin roof in a hurricane, and now all can see the tyranny of the wealthy minority over the struggling majority. This is the new feudalism. I am a serf, no doubt about it, landless and without title. Look at the massive tax giveaway the GOP-controlled House of Representatives just approved for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Never mind the cruelty of this bill, what of the utter hypocrisy? Any time Barack Obama proposed to spend money, every GOP representative squealed about the budget deficit and accused Obama of saddling future generations with ruinous debt. Remember the Tea Party?

We have the worst government money can buy, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.  Those of us who live out here in the real economy of rents and medical bills and student loan payments and every other expense it takes to survive, are going to bear the burden if the United States Senate follows the House. Best prepare to bend over. And make no mistake -- this will hurt.

A Dubious Anniversary

“Be it ancient Rome or modern-day America, you’re either citizen or slave. Lion or Jew. Guilty or innocent. Comfortable or uncomfortable.” Paul Beatty

Another day, another mass shooting by a disturbed white man with a history of domestic violence. As always, the NRA and its political enablers wring their bloody hands, offer thoughts and prayers, or like Vice President Pence, vow to stand against evil, whatever that empty statement means, and then proceed to go about their deadly business. The problem isn’t the prevalence of firearms, they always say, in fact, what we need are more people armed with guns...

How much more proof is needed that this is a sick society? Plagued by an excess of rage and animosity, fueled by people like Donald Trump. Mass shootings won’t stop any more than the oligarchs and plutocrats will stop parking their loot offshore to avoid paying US tax. There are myriad forms of violence at work in America, Inc, against the poor, people of color, the working poor, and the environment. We live by Hellfire missile abroad and the AR-15 at home. The rage bubbles like a pot of stew on the stove. But do we stop and consider the systemic causes of our maladies, the impact of savage capitalism on flesh and blood human beings? Rarely. Getting to root causes takes time, effort, reflection, and critical thinking. The party that wields political power over the country disdains intellectual activity, ridicules anyone who searches for truth or questions prevailing orthodoxy, who points out the hypocrisy of our leaders. It’s much more comfortable to believe in myth and fairy tales, the Garden of Eden and the Yellow Brick Road, magic beans, the Lone Ranger,  Superman, and the Big Myth -- American Exceptionalism.

King Donald I is in Asia hawking American-made weapons. Big, beautiful, shiny, weapons. South Korean protesters tell Trump to shut up and go home.

Meanwhile, Trump stooges like Steve Mnuchin and Paul Ryan are spewing lies about the GOP tax plan, the latest blatant giveaway to our wealthiest and least deserving citizens, by alleging that slashing taxes for the wealthy will create jobs for everyone else. This is the tried and true and discredited, let-me-trickle-my-piss-down-your-leg idea that only leaves wage workers standing in a noxious puddle.

A year since the anti-democratic Electoral College went for Trump. The Orange Menace, who lost the popular vote, let’s not forget, and has no mandate, has flailed and failed on all fronts, his approval rating is in the toilet, historically low for a president in the first year of his first term. Of course, in Trump’s alternative universe, he is winning like no president before, his ratings are fantastic, the stock market is soaring, and America is on course to be great again. The hacks, sycophants, incompetents, and criminals who surround Trump scheme day and night to rob the treasury and make millions of Americans absolutely miserable.

As Jeremy Scahill says, history and context matter. The Orange Menace didn’t rise from a vacuum -- he was vomited up by a system of predatory capitalism, racism, and militarism.