The 2017 Honor Roll

“The earth is but one great ball. The borders, the barriers, the cages, the cells, the prisons of our lives, all originate in the false imagination of the minds of men.” Mumia Abu-Jamal

This has been a bastard of a year for people of goodwill and common decency, for people who believe in truth, in fairness, in equality of opportunity, and in compassion for the less fortunate. Americans are well into a period of orchestrated cruelty, shocking malfeasance on the part of our political class, and body blows to the tattered remains of our democracy.

Still, we have to live and work, study, take care of our families, and do what we can to resist Trump and his mafia; it’s a hard slog up a muddy hill, and at times it appears our efforts are futile, that the game is lost and that the power of the forces opposing our dreams and aspirations for a better country and world are unstoppable. The good news is that these forces aren’t unstoppable -- or inevitable.

What follows is my Honor Roll of people who fight the brave fight and show no signs of throwing in the towel. This isn’t a definitive list by any means, it’s my list, shaped by what and who I read and listen to. If you take time to make your own list you will undoubtedly recognize different people, and that’s good. The point is that there are many millions of people who know damn well that a better, more just world is possible. Keep battling in 2018. We’re better than Trump and his gang of kleptocrats.

Bill Moyers

Amy Goodman

William Rivers Pitt

Chris Hedges

Cornel West

Sonali Kolhatkar

Arundhati Roy

Matt Taibbi

Dean Baker

Rebecca Solnit

Jeremy Scahill

Sally Yates

Colin Kaepernick

Ralph Nader

Jeffrey St. Clair

Ian Masters

Kshama Sawant

Junot Diaz

Carmen Yulin Cruz

Peter Joseph

Paul Jay

William Barber II

Alicia Garza

Women all over the world

Standing Rock Water Defenders

Climate scientists

All the firefighters and emergency responders who worked on the Thomas Fire in Southern California

Smash, Grab, and Don't Look Back: A Looting on Pennsylvania Avenue

“Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways.” Rebecca Solnit

You’re going to hear this a lot over the next year or two from Trump and his handlers and enablers: The tax reform we passed in 2017 is the single greatest piece of legislation in American history! It returns more money to the middle class than any tax cut ever has, and it insures that small businesses and family farmers will not lose everything they’ve built when they die.

And blah, blah, blah, and many other lies, too. If there is any good economic news to be had -- not to fear, it won’t be news of real jobs being created, industries returning to the Ohio River valley, or wage growth, it will likely be the rising stock market, fueled by corporate purchases of their own stock (with the money they are not paying in taxes) -- the GOP will say that the tax cuts are the reason. And if the economy runs off the rails, the talking points are already written: Obama’s fault, naturally, the black guy who wasn’t even a real American left the country in a mess. (In any case, Obama’s two terms are being erased, goodbye ACA, the Iran Nuclear arrangement, the Paris Climate Accord, rules to protect the environment, regulate the banks, etc.)

Trump will undoubtedly begin comparing himself to FDR and LBJ, claim that his tax cuts are as great an achievement as the major parts of the New Deal, and way better than the Civil Rights Act, and that it was all done to help the little guy.

No mention will be made that the GOP-controlled House and Senate rammed these bills through the legislative process like thieves during a blackout: backroom, closed door meetings, favors exchanged, promises made, no public hearings, shoddy analysis, lines of corporate bagmen lined up in the halls for their share of the spoils, flat out lies in the press. The GOP wins because it cheats -- it cheats to get elected through gerrymandering and voter suppression, and it cheats when it controls the levers of power.

Has fucking the American people over ever been so easy?

When the Democrats controlled both houses during the first Obama term the Republicans contorted themselves to block, delay, derail, and undermine Obama’s legislative agenda -- tepid as it was -- even though Obama had what Donald J. Trump will never have, a legitimate mandate from the electorate. All’s fair in love and politics. Shoe now on the other foot and as these disgraceful bills moved I heard nary a peep from the Democrats about the corrupt process.

Oh yeah, for a year or two the propaganda is going to come thick and heavy, laced with deadly, mind-numbing, truth-obfuscating BS. The attacks on Social Security and Medicare will come, the huge burden of these “entitlement” programs (paid for by worker contributions, so technically not entitlement programs at all) will be blamed for bankrupting the nation, ruining our credit standing in the world, our competitiveness, the deficit! Only one possible solution -- strict austerity for the slovenly poor and wage earning class. Cut, cut, cut. The war machine, energy extractors, lords of finance, and the wealthy in general will be exempt from the austerity blues, of course, walked around the velvet rope and right into the VIP section, bitching about the profligate ways of the unwashed masses as they go. Gilded, baby, gilded everything.

The people knew this was coming. Destruction is all Trump and his mafia can do. They cannot build, erect, create, or imagine anything but violence and destruction. They are pirates loose in port, drunk, crazed, rabid, horny, and mean; they’ve got the keys to the armory, the courts, and the treasury, no one to answer to, nothing to slow their roll. In the time it takes to pour a flagon of rum half the town will be in flames.

History says Trump and the GOP will overreach, go too far, grab too much, and the pendulum will swing back toward the safe center, where capitalism, militarism, and imperialism reign. We can change the hands on the levers, a good, necessary step, but until enough Americans realize that we must change the game if we are going to have any chance of surviving climate change and every ill this man-made threat brings in its wake, just changing the party in charge won’t get it done.

A society is reasonably just if its people don’t have to die for access to health care, decent housing, meaningful jobs at living wages, courts that act independently of politics and ideology, education, food, assistance when disaster strikes, and a fair opportunity to address their legitimate grievances.  

Get ready, people, hard times are coming.

Keeping Faith In Trump Time

“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.” Albert Camus

The massive Thomas Fire has dominated this entire week. The fire has torched nearly 250,000 acres and caused the death of one firefighter, locals schools have been shuttered, and the streets downtown are mostly empty of people. Local merchants are panicking as they watch the holiday shopping season pass. Those of us whose homes are not in danger have dealt with falling ash and unhealthy air quality, and, depending on where in the city one lives, the rumble overhead of helicopters on their way to make water drops. I haven’t left the house without an N95 mask for almost ten days. My 16-year-old daughter is going stir crazy. As of this morning, the Thomas Fire was 30 percent contained, but unless the winds remain quiet and we get some humidity the fire could burn several more weeks. Naturally, there’s no rain in the forecast.

On the political front, the odious Roy Moore did not win election to Alabama’s vacant senate seat; voters repudiated Moore, Trump, and Steve Bannon. Democrats are jubilant but what the party doesn’t seem to grasp is that simply being opposed to Trump isn’t enough for 2018 or beyond. Despite being a complete moron and a first-class creep, Moore lost by a slim margin. After nearly a year of Trump’s idiocy and incompetence, his lies and vulgarity and cruelty, I still don’t know what or who the Democratic Party stands for; working people or Wall Street, war or peace, social justice or austerity, prisons or education, resource extractors or the environment?

The GOP tax rip-off slithers toward Trump’s desk. The Trump FCC voted to repeal net neutrality rules, yet another holiday gift for corporate America, despite opposition from millions of Americans, proving once again, as if more proof were needed, that this country is a democracy in name only. Although, I can’t help but think that this is the last desperate gasp of the insane Republicans -- they are like a pack of looters after a natural disaster, racing to grab as much stuff as they can before the authorities arrive, but they are also planting the seeds of a reckoning. The majority of Americans are better than Donald J. Trump and the cold-hearted GOP. In Trump and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, plus a host of others, the dark underbelly of America has been exposed in all its ugliness, greed and cruelty; for now the dark side holds sway, but beware stirring the masses.

And if the masses can be stirred by a set of basic ideas like living wages for workers, education not prisons, crime and reasonable punishment, a complete re-think of America’s legitimate security and military needs, an end to fouling the earth, water and air for private profit, and the humane notion that no person should go hungry, homeless and without access to medical care, and that no elderly citizen should die destitute, then a lot that is good for people is possible, because the majority of Americans are the opposite of Donald J. Trump and his followers.  

He Ain't Heavy, He's Just a Pedophile

“Conflict is the lifeblood of imperial capitalism.” Jason Hirthler, writing in CounterPunch

 Will Alabama or won’t Alabama?

 Elect the alleged pedophile, Roy Moore.

The same Roy Moore who kept a tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments in his courtroom to remind the sinners and thieves who came before him That he was righteous and tight with the Lord.

Only thing, the Judge was ordered by a higher court to remove his tablet,
Holding the Bible like a shield what did the man do?
Refused, that’s what.

Same way he refused to recognize marriage equality, even when the Supreme Court ruled it the law of the land. Old Roy got himself tossed off the bench until the people, the people! re-elected him.

Time and time again Roy Moore has refused to separate his religious beliefs from his judicial duty. He’s made racist remarks, and even declared that all Constitutional Amendments after the Tenth be repealed. Think about it: the abolition of slavery, equal protection under the law, the right to vote -- forget it all.

Moore’s no fan of the Rule of Law.

This perverse history came before the public allegations of pedophilia, before stories of Judge Moore creeping adolescent girls in shopping malls, believing, so thoroughly in biblical patriarchy that women should submit to their men, and every man deserves a young virgin, that there was nothing amiss with this behavior.

Just gettin’ what God told him he was owed.

Sucking on hubris, high on tax cuts, the morally comatose GOP chucks its support behind Moore, Figuring there’s no electoral downside.

And the Orange Menace, America’s Malignant Tumor, Donald J. Trump, is all-in for Judge Moore, rallying his tribe of racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and aggrieved followers to vote for Moore because he’s needed to Make America Great Again.

(Did you know that we are well on our way to being great again? Trump said so. Must be true.)

Morality, conscience, compassion, commonsense, humanity, the GOP traded its soul for cash, for power, and now the invoice has come due, time to pony up big tax cuts for the donor base.

So the plutocrats can rule forevermore.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell laugh hysterically, a pair of sociopathic pranksters who have almost pulled off the cruelest joke -- the free ride for the wealthy will be paid for by the working poor, by children and senior citizens, the disabled, the hungry, the homeless, the sick and infirm.

So funny when you can manipulate people to vote for their own immiseration.

Just talk about God and gays and transgender freaks and liberals and states’ rights and entitlements and welfare queens and the glory of the Free Market and American greatness. Stoke the fires of grievance and envy and fear, never forget fear.

Lie about tax cuts, swear to God that tax cuts for the wealthy produce wonderful jobs for the poor, even though they never have, not ever, not for Uncle Ronnie Reagan, or George W. Bush.

Easy as apple pie. Flat out lies are the New Truth, science is bogus, history irrelevant, memory an aberration.

Already Present in the World

“In an age of almost unparalleled extremism, violence and cruelty, authoritarianism is gaining ground, rapidly creating a society in which shared fears and unchecked hatred have become the organizing forces for community. Under the Trump regime, dissent is disparaged as a pathology or dismissed as fake news, while even the slightest compassion for others becomes an object of disdain and subject to policies that increase the immiseration, suffering and misery of the most vulnerable.” Henry Giroux

Ash from the Thomas Fire in Ventura is falling like snow outside my window. The air quality is unhealthy and the sun is the color of a ripe peach. The wildfires raging in various parts of California are clearly exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, but don’t bother telling Scott Pruitt or the other venal nitwits in the Trump Administration -- they refuse to believe the evidence right in front of them.

People walking in downtown Santa Barbara wear dust masks or bandanas. Is this what the apocalypse will look like? The schools in the unified district have been shuttered for two straight days. There has hardly been any wind, so the smoke from the fires lays over the city like a malevolent blanket. Some fire officials believe the Thomas Fire could burn until Christmas. More than 130,000 acres have burned thus far. There’s no rain in the forecast, even though this is supposed to be our “rainy” season. When and if rain comes, it will likely produce mudslides, but not to fear, this has nothing to do with climate change, that Chinese hoax.

This is the age of cruelty and stupidity. As I noted on this blog many months ago, Trump and his band of kleptocrats will do enormous damage to the nation, exacerbate our most pressing problems, and fuck things up but good for a generation -- if not longer. Despair is an easy emotion to fall into, and I have been guilty of this many times in the last 12 months. In normal times -- and these are anything but normal times -- I tend to brood and see the world through a dark lens; cynicism comes easy to me. These are not traits I’m proud of, but I recognize them for what they are. But sunny optimism without an understanding of the work required to make any kind of change -- personal, social -- seems naive. Wishing will not make something so, effort is required, and not only effort, sustained effort, through setbacks and failures and dead ends and dark nights when any progress seems impossible.  

The writer Rebecca Solnit whose book, Hope in the Dark, I am reading now, says this: “What we dream of is already present in the world.” I dream of a world less bent on its own destruction, a world where cooperation is more valued than competition, a world in which the pursuit of money isn’t the highest ideal, a world where one human life isn’t deemed more valuable than another, a world of far less wealth inequality, one in which large numbers of people can satisfy their basic needs for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, work and education, a world where a person of color in a hoody and baggy pants and white sneakers  can walk in a predominantly white neighborhood and not be considered suspect, dangerous, a threat.

Come off your corner stool, move to the middle of the ring, start punching. Don’t stop.

The Uses of Fear

“The chief principle of banana-ism is that of kleptocracy, whereby those in positions of influence use their time in office to maximize their own gains, always ensuring that any shortfall is made up by those unfortunates whose daily life involves earning money rather than making it.” Christopher Hitchens

Demagogues throughout history and the world over understand the use of fear, and how to stoke fear in order to manipulate their subjects or followers. When he’s not at war with black athletes, the NFL, CNN, Elizabeth Warren or members of his own cabinet, or insulting indigenous people with his breathtaking stupidity, Donald J. Trump never misses an opportunity to raise the spectre of crime, immigrants, and Muslims. The litany goes: soft on crime, soft on the border, soft on terrorism, yada yada. In reality, the crime rate in the United States is down, immigrants are not pouring across the border to pillage, rape and plunder, and we have far more to fear from deranged homegrown white men armed to the gills than we do from Muslims. But fear works on a large segment of the American public that doesn’t think, read, or know much, if anything, about history.

Trump bangs on endlessly about the threat of Muslim terrorists, but where did he go on his first overseas trip as President? Right, Saudi Arabia, that bastion of moderation and tolerance. As Al-Jazeera journalist Mehdi Hasan noted recently, “The Saudi Arabians have been exporting their particularly puritanical, intolerant brand of Islam to the rest of the Muslim-majority world since the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.” Naturally, Saudi Arabia is our bosom ally, and naturally, Trump is far too ignorant to see the hypocrisy of American policy.

I noticed the other day, quite out of the blue, a sudden surge of disquiet followed by a flash of white hot anger, and I realized the source of these feelings: Trump, the immoral GOP tax scam, the smirk on Paul Ryan’s face, the ongoing genocide in Yemen, aided and assisted by the United States. These are all people or events that take place far from my everyday life, but they feel real, bothersome, and often infuriating, primarily because I am powerless to do much but write my elected officials, sign on-line petitions, and write this blog. Might as well spit into a Category 5 hurricane. I’m not alone in feeling politically impotent; it’s obvious that the views of the majority of Americans are completely disregarded by political, financial and media elites. The people are only needed every few years to legitimize the system by casting votes in sham elections that are bought and paid for by corporations and the super wealthy.  

The proposals and proclamations issuing from the Trump kleptocracy are so heinous and cruel that it makes me wonder if people in Washington sit around thinking of the most damaging things they can inflict on the nation. How can we punish senior citizens, children, the infirm or disabled? What can we do to foul the environment and hasten the effects of climate change? How can we make it more difficult for young people without piles of cash to attend college? How can we get the masses to pay for the excesses of corporations and the wealthy? It’s as if there is a diabolical think tank around the corner from Pennsylvania Avenue where morons and fucktards hatch schemes…Trump has no respect for his office, the Constitution, the rule of law, basic decorum, and he’s even incapable of awarding commendations to elderly American Indian war veterans without making an ass of himself. If Trump were the president of Trinidad and Tobago or the Marshall Islands, I might be less troubled by his penchant for fouling everything he touches, but he’s the President of the United States and his buffoonery isn’t a laughing matter.

My wife clings to the idea that only the arts can save us from our worst impulses, live theater, plays, music, dance, painting; I want desperately to believe her. In a time of darkness, we must look for the light wherever we can.