This is America

"For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake." Frederick Douglass

The 4th came and went and I didn’t feel much patriotism for my country. It has been a long time since I saw the glowing myth behind the gray reality. Too many doses of truth. My generation has made a muddle of things, capitulating to the forces of capitalism. We bought the fable of market rationalism, believed, even when it became clear that it was a total failure, sat by idly while the few raked in all but the loose chips. The Market replaced God, seeped into our schools, public spaces, civil discourse, and institutions. The Market knows best. The Market is fair and just. The Market plays no favorites. The Market is always right, the only way of looking at the world, the only solution to any problem.

Brand everything, including yourself, package and sell it.

The hole we’re in is deep, caving fast. Our president, a shameless moron who would rather be King, shovels dirt on our heads. The light from above fades. A collapse is coming, and must come, because the foundation is cracked and can’t bear the weight of the fraud and mendacity at the top. The elites, the credentialed experts, the blow-dried talking heads on cable news, the PR flacks, the market cheerleaders -- heartless and cruel, perpetuating each other up and down the line. “In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.” Colson Whitehead wrote the line about a different set of criminals, but the thought applies just as well. It’s not that we are headed for plutocracy and kleptocracy, we’ve already arrived, cruised the limo around the circular drive, past the gilded fountain and the liveried staff. Democracy is a sham, we all know it, the game rigged, the fix in. Except for a few decades here and there, it has always been so, and right from the beginning. Those Founding Fathers feared the people, distrusted them, thought them too ignorant and unruly for self-rule. No, we didn’t want a king, but neither a mob. Now under-populated red states lord over heavily populated blue states, South Dakota represented by the same number of senators as California and New York. Tyranny of the minority.

Uruguay and France. Brazil and Belgium. There might be fireworks, for sure there will be drama. I will be glued to my big screen. Eight teams left in Russia.

Here’s a statistic from Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest column for Counterpunch:

+ Countries where school shooters in 2018 were born …

Libya- 0

Syria- 0

Somalia- 0

Yemen- 0

Iran- 0

United States- 22

The median price of a home in SB was recently pegged at a million bucks. In San Francisco, a six-figure income can qualify you as low income. The Market, again, turning a basic human need into a commodity. How can real estate prices rise so steadily when incomes are flat? There was a home for sale around the corner from us for a few weeks; yesterday a big truck was parked in the driveway and the porch was cluttered with furniture, packing cartons. Another lucky winner of the SB-Real Estate-Lottery. We got our piece of Paradise!

Apparently, Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the EPA, believes God’s hand is guiding Donald Trump as he rolls back every regulation he possibly can, flogs coal, and thumbs his nose at climate science. Don’t count on Pruitt ever paying a price for the trail of blatant corruption he blazed. Remember, this is America.