Bill of Goods

“People come, people go

Some grow young, some grow cold

I woke up in between

A memory and a dream

So let's get to the point, let's roll another joint

Let's head on down the road

There's somewhere I gotta go” Tom Petty

The daughter of one of my wife’s oldest friends graduated from a local high school on Thursday, an afternoon full of sunshine and a light breeze. The line of people filing into the stadium was long and moving slowly through the gate; parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, some clutching balloons that were not allowed into the stadium by the hired security guards, who also checked bags for contraband, air horns, signs, and anything else deemed verboten. An instrumental group was on the artificial turf field playing musical numbers from movies. White chairs for the graduates, arrayed like a chevron, and a three person Navy color guard. The mood in the area where we sat was expectant, light, tinged with relief, graduation being an end and a beginning. As we watched people stream in I thought of my son, for whom high school was one long agony of not fitting in or connecting; he stacked his time and couldn’t wait to be free of what he considered a soul-sucking waste of his time.

The instrumental group began playing the graduation march and the students filed in, two by two, girls in red robes, boys in blue; as the students passed the stands family members stood up and waved or called out, hoping for a wave in return. Pair after pair until all the students were seated on the white chairs. The school principal asked everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance -- that strange ritual -- and then a choir sang the national anthem (no one took a knee in protest). The principal, an embattled figure who is currently suing the school district for its decision to return him to a teaching position next year, introduced two of the school board members who voted to oust him, an ironic twist. I wondered what was going through his mind, knowing that this was his final graduation exercise at the school where he had worked for nearly 20 years. He began speaking about what a record-breaking year it had been for the athletic department, with something like eight conference championships and two state titles, an odd place, it seemed to me, to start a graduation speech, given that the majority of students are not involved in athletics, and then he spoke of the award-winning choir and the theater department, using, within the first two minutes, the word “amazing” three times. Most of his speech consisted of platitudes to hard work, learning from adversity and never giving up, stock phrases, many of which were repeated by the white girl who spoke next; she reminded her classmates that they had begun four years before as wide-eyed, weak-kneed freshman, and now here they were, confident and accomplished seniors, ready to step out into the wider world and seize all the opportunities she was positive were waiting. Her pigmentation or surname would never stand between her and her dreams, and the cynic in me suspected she came from a family with dough, maybe even a Hope Ranch clan.

The final student speaker was a special education kid who got a big cheer when he finished. I wondered what his future would be like, if he would find his place in the world, or if this accomplishment would be the highlight of his life. The times are so different now, the American Dream is dead, the American Empire is in decline, and the can-do American spirit that existed in the the quarter century after World War II has been replaced by fear and cruelty and grotesque, brazen corruption that kills hope. As the long roll call of names began I wondered if my generation had sold these kids a bill of goods, a false promise, and a bucket of piss. I hope not. I hope these kids will wrest power from the oligarchs before it’s too late.

Short Takes:

Donald Trump: “All the best Constitutional scholars agree that I am above the law, below the law, immune to the law, better than the law, and beyond the reach of law. I can pardon myself any time I want to.”

Razan Al-Najjar was only 21 when she was murdered by an Israeli army sniper. Razan was a medic, trying to provide care to a wounded Palestinian near the fence that keeps Palestinians trapped in Gaza. The medics wore white vests and held their hands up, not that this universal gesture matters to the Israeli Defense Forces. Israel is now spinning the fairy tale that Razan was no Florence Nightingale, she was providing care to Hamas. Nobody believes this BS except Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the UN, and Bibi, of course.

Anthony Bourdain, RIP. You told the truth about what you saw, as well as what you ate.

According to Seymour Hersh, the award-winning and legendary investigative reporter, the most lethal words to come out of the mouth of a guest on cable news are, “I think.” Hersh could care less about what guests think -- he only wants to know what they know and can prove. Amen.

Trump is possibly the most brazenly corrupt American president in history. The US Constitution has a mechanism for stopping him, but only the corrupt US Congress can make that mechanism work, and the chances of that happening are slim.