The Post-Death Whitewash

“Freedom is just frosting/on somebody else’s cake.” Langston Hughes

John McCain was a war hero, a giant in the United States Senate, a saint, and, of course, a maverick, whatever that means, or so you would believe from the recent fawning mainstream media coverage. This sort of post-death whitewash isn’t unusual. When Richard Nixon died, the corporate media and a phalanx of politicians closed ranks to pay homage to the man who bombed Cambodia and inflicted the Watergate scandal on the nation. When a prominent politician dies, memories get very hazy very fast.

Here’s what I will remember about John McCain. First, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that posed no credible threat to the United States. Even when the hoped for cakewalk became a quagmire, McCain supported the greatest military blunder in American history. I’m also sure McCain’s pulse quickened any time there was talk of bombing Iran or when the US actually bombed some other country.

Always a reliable and enthusiastic cheerleader for American empire, McCain was a true believer in American exceptionalism and our divine right to order and rule the world for our own benefit; and if that domination came on the back of a cruise missile, all the better.   

But what will always and forever color my perception of John McCain was his cynical and opportunistic selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. McCain was in his late 60’s then, and for him to potentially place Sarah Palin that close to the throne was an act of manifest irresponsibility. In some respects, the cartoonish Palin paved the road for the buffoonish Donald J. Trump. Like the Orange Menace, Palin celebrated ignorance, coarseness, and pushed simplistic solutions to complex problems. Like Trump today, Palin was all about the soundbite, the media moment, you betcha. By choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain debased himself and his campaign. Run with a dingbat and you’re likely to lose.

It’s no surprise that Trump turned petty when McCain passed, messing around about flying the flag at half staff. In the first place, Trump wasn’t the center of attention, the subject of fond reminices and accolades from the political elite. Second, unlike most of his GOP colleagues, McCain never dropped down on bended knee and kissed Trump’s hand or pledged his eternal loyalty to the Donald, so that made the senator from Arizona suspect. Trump, the Vietnam War draft evader, ridiculed McCain, the Navy pilot shot down over Hanoi and captured. In Trump’s fantasy universe, real heroes never allow themselves to be captured, but if they are, they overpower their captors and escape, like Rambo.

So, McCain will be mythologized by the political class, including ex-presidents W. Bush and Barack Obama, and the wooden Christian warrior, Mike Pence. His virtues will be touted universally, his flaws forgotten. Senator, warrior, patriot, true American hero. A flag-draped coffin, a burial filled with pomp and circumstance, and then the empire will totter on toward dissolution.  

A Step Closer to the Gallows

“What we know for sure is that the path to the criminal prosecution and imprisonment of the president of the United States is now clear. How it is handled will be a major test for the American system of government.” James Risen

Trump pals Manafort and Cohen are convicted and Fox News ignores the evolving story, sticks its collective head in a pile of Trump’s beautiful clean coal. Not surprising. Fox is the real fake news, a phony network that acts as the official propaganda organ of the right-wing and Donald J. Trump. But in the real world of facts, the noose is clearly tightening around Trump’s fat white neck. His former campaign manager and his lawyer/confidant/fixer face jail time, and that bleak future usually renders people quite cooperative. Sing, men, sing.

Day by day the sleaze oozes out of the White House, drips down the front steps, and streams toward the gutter. Trump’s criminal gang falls like dominoes. Who will be next? I’m old enough to remember Watergate, Nixon, the cover up, All the President’s Men, John Dean, Erlichman and Halderman, the web of lies, how the unraveling gathered speed and ended with Nixon waving like a spastic from the helicopter that carried him away. What’s happening with Trump is much worse. Not only is Trump an ignorant douchebag, he’s an odious human being, a liar and a grifter. If hell exists, Trump is headed there, express ticket, non-stop. He has debased his office, insulted the world, and divided this country.

Though Trump is marching them to the edge of the precipice, the lapdogs and sycophants of the GOP, having forgotten their oath of office and obligations under the Constitution, stand by their man. Trump says bend over, they do; Trump says spread your cheeks, they do. The Party of Lincoln. Sorry, Abraham, poor sod. When will Republican members of congress find their spines and turn on Trump? How much more water does the ship need to take on before the rats sprint for the exits?

Of course, the Trump spin machine is now on overdrive, denying and deflecting and dissembling and defending, insisting that there is no crime, no collusion, no campaign finance violation, even though Cohen copped to two counts of federal election violations. “Nothing to do with campaign finance,” Trump says. “I don’t know Cohen that well. Hardly know him, rarely talked to him. Might not be able to pick him out of a police lineup.” The detestable Huckabee Sanders ridicules media questions, regurgitates Trump’s ludicrous denials, and the machine spins on, black is white, 1+1=4, coal burns clean, and the economy of West Virginia is the envy of America. Here’s what the Orange Menace said to Fox News:

“I don't know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job,” Mr Trump told Fox News. “I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor because, without this thinking, you would see – you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe, in reverse.”

Great job? The market would crash? I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again, the President of the United States of America is a fucking imbecile. There’s no point in even deconstructing his comments.

What happened to us, to America, a country that has been occasionally good but never, ever great? How in the world have we fallen so far so fast? Or does it only feel fast? Capital has been on the ascendancy for 40 years, buying politicians to write laws in their favor, chipping away at the welfare state and New Deal institutions, labor unions, environmental regulations, shifting manufacturing to low-wage nations, freeing capital from restraint, packing the federal courts with corporate-friendly judges; little by little amassing more power, more control in fewer hands, always a recipe for tyranny. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Boeing, Goldman Sachs. A corporate coup, as Chris Hedges might say.

And so it goes in Trump’s capitalist wasteland.

Fragments

“Educated people, of any color, are so extremely rare that it is unquestionably one of the first tasks of a nation to open all of its schools to all of its citizens.” James Baldwin

Sooner or later, everyone will be a stranger in a new place. A visitor, a tourist.

What did Trump and Putin talk about in Helsinki?

Is Trump Putin’s bitch?

The Dow fell by 137 points today. Should I care? Should you?

Is the universe benevolent or indifferent?

Can reality be bent?

Can anyone tell me how the US war in Afghanistan, America’s longest war, is going? Are we winning, losing, playing to a draw? Will the US ever leave? What is it that Afghanistan has that we want so desperately? Opium? Minerals?

The train was orange. The windows were fogged over. My stop was third from the end of the line. I was 18 years old, ten thousand miles from home. On a clear day I could see Mt. Fuji in the distance. In 1978, I climbed to the top with two friends. We found drifts of bottles, cans, paper, cigarette butts. The summit of the most sacred mountain in Japan was a garbage dump.

The incompetence of the Trump White House is off the charts. Remember when the Orange Menace claimed he would only hire the “best people”?

Did Trump and Putin talk about porn stars in Helsinki? Did they whip out their dicks and compare size? Was Trump stunned when his dick proved to be the smaller? Is this why he looked shell-shocked when he and Putin emerged to meet the media? “It’s very unfair that Vlad’s dick is bigger than mine.”

Two mobsters meet to divide the spoils, define their territories, and pledge restraint so both can make money.

They found him sitting behind the wheel of his 1975 Cadillac Calais Coupe, the car he adored and had restored all by himself. If you didn’t see the bullet hole in his temple, he appeared to be smiling.

In America, money equals rectitude, status, accomplishment, and morality. My dad always told me that if you have money you can do whatever you want.

My dad died penniless. All those cigarettes, all that vodka, for all those years. He looks back at me when I look in the mirror.

We don’t get to pick our parents, the place of our birth, the circumstances, princess or servant. Life is a roll of the dice, a game of chance, a longshot wager on an unknown horse.

“Fuck you.” “No, fuck you.” “You want to fight?” “Not really, I’m kind of tired.” “How ‘bout we fight tomorrow?” “OK, tomorrow I kick your ass.” “In your dreams motherfucker.”

It’s a measure of how perverse the Trump Administration is that former CIA Director John Brennan, serial liar, torture advocate, is now seen as a torchbearer for Truth. The world is upside down.

The Flame That Never Goes Out

“The potter’s wheels are still there, but the clay is not.” Andrew Solomon

The other day I was re-reading some columns by the great journalist I.F. Stone (and wishing he were around today, along with Alexander Cockburn and Hunter S. Thompson and James Baldwin), and Stone was describing the backlash to the Civil Rights movement that galvanized the presidential campaigns of George Wallace, an outspoken racist and white supremacist. Fast forward to 2015 and the malignant rise of Donald J. Trump, a similar reaction to a period of black ascendancy, eight years of a black man occupying the White House. Then I saw the new Spike Lee film, BlackkKlansman, and I was struck, again, of the incredible persistence of racist ideas in this so-called “all men are created equal” limited democracy we call America. Periods of progress for African-Americans are always followed by periods of regression, in the same way night follows day. When Lee, at the end, shows actual footage from the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, the point is slammed home. Torches cut through the dark in our past, torches cut through the dark in our present.

Let’s not forget that Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation in the White House in 1915. Fifty years later the Voting Rights Act was passed. But only a few years after that, Richard Nixon was playing his “Southern Strategy.” Fast-forward again, to the Obama years, and some whites, seeing the demographic writing on the wall, flock to Donald Trump, spouting the absurd notion of “white civil rights” and cheering for Trump’s stupid Border Wall and his ban on Muslims. Sometimes the racism in America is subtle, and sometimes it’s as loud as a five-alarm fire.   

Nor should we the forget the image of Michael Brown lying dead on the street in Ferguson, Missouri, and the cop who killed him walking free. On Bill Maher’s show recently the comedian D.L. Hughley said that Donald Trump is who we are. Hard to argue with that. Racism, like mendacity, pervades everything Trump does. The Orange Menace is freaking out again about NFL players -- black players -- refusing to stand for the national anthem. Trump says the players don’t know what they’re protesting about. Yes, they do. Rewind to Michael Brown and Oscar Grant and all the rest of the unarmed human beings shot down for having the audacity to have been born black.

Nobody wants to surrender an ounce of privilege, a foot of ground, a rung on the ladder. One person’s gain must come at another’s expense. We must feel superior to someone. And so we stumble onward trailing a list of grievances, real and imagined, and the planet smolders and the sun is unforgiving. Have to stand on the edge, balanced between hope and despair.

Poem: Invisible Steel

When Trump’s fans in Pennsylvania

Go looking for the mythical new steel plants

Dear Leader says are springing up all over

To apply for mythical jobs

And earn mythical paychecks

To pay their real bills

When they realize they’ve been conned

Will they still swoon for Trump then?

The Art of Hypocrisy

“The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice.” Chris Hedges

The mendacious Orange Menace and his GOP sycophants lose their shit every week over the Mueller investigation and how long it is taking, when, by the standard of how complex investigations go before any conclusion is reached, it’s moving along fairly fast. All politicians are hypocrites, when you come down to it -- lambasting others for doing the same crap they do -- but Republicans have made hypocrisy into something of an art form. When the GOP devoted endless hearings into the Benghazi affair, time wasn’t a problem at all, nor was plowing over the same patch of ground again and again. Whatever it took to paint Hillary Clinton in a negative hue.

Newt Gingrich is one of the great political hypocrites of all time. Back when Newt was laying his Contract with America on America, the Congress he bossed launched an investigation into a land deal in Arkansas, Whitewater, involving Bill and Hillary Clinton. That little exercise in political vindictiveness went on for nearly 6 years, damn near the entirety of Clinton’s presidency. Talk about a “witch hunt,” and all over a failed real estate deal. Gingrich was certain that Whitewater was the Crime of the Century. It wasn’t, any more than Clinton lying about a blow-job. So, calm down motherfuckers. Muller’s investigation seems a tad more important, and it’s obvious that Trump is worried about it because he has intensified his Twitter attacks on Muller and the press.

Short Takes:

-I saw the film Blindspotting last weekend. Written by Daveed Diggs of Hamilton fame, and Rafael Casal, Blindspotting is a hip, funny, moving, and sometimes violent story of two friends, one white, one black, trying to survive in Oakland, California, which is being invaded and gentrified by pale hipsters with money. A complication is that Colin, the character played by Diggs, is serving his final three days of probation in a halfway house and he can’t afford to make a single misstep. Left to his own devices, Colin could pass the three days fairly easily, but with a volatile friend like Miles, played to perfection by Casal, it’s like walking on a hire-wire, which only gets worse when Colin witnesses a police officer shoot an unarmed black man late one night. We don’t learn the crime that put Colin in jail until well into the film, but it was violent and involved Miles, and Colin bore his friend’s weight, a fact which cost Colin, not only his liberty but also his relationship with his girlfriend, Valerie. I found Blindspotting to be fresh, different, real and timely.

-Isn’t it odd that Donald J. Trump, thrice-married, serial adulterer, habitual liar, draft dodger, tax evader and general degenerate lowlife is the darling of the religious right? It’s another con, of course, based in Trump’s white nationalism and embodied by Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, who is freaked out that white Christians will be prevented from discriminating against gays, LGTBQ people, and people of various shades of brown in the name of religion, than he is of these historically marginalized groups gaining any kind of foothold in our society.

-When I drove into the parking lot where my doctor’s office is located the attendant, a white male of middle-age, was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and I heard Trump’s voice, talking about “our movement” and at first I wondered what movement The Orange Menace was referring to, but then I realized he meant the white supremacy, put-people-of-color-back-in-their-places, blame-all-our-problems-on-immigrants movement. The Make America White Again movement.

-The annual Fiesta has begun here in parched, hot, Fat City, also known as Santa Barbara, five days of revelry, Flamenco dancing, parades, tequila and Corona, cascarones, tacos, tortas, and churros, the most blatant, commercial kitsch; as always, the differences between Spain and Mexico will be deliberately blurred. Five of us strolled along a few blocks of State Street last night, on sidewalks crowded with tables laden with crates of cascarones, sellers sprawled on folding chairs; the sidewalks and gutters were already heavy with multi-colored confetti. The City had positioned generator-powered lighting towers in the middle of two different blocks, to keep the homeless from sleeping on the sidewalks or to make tourists feel safer, I wasn’t sure which, and the light cast was harsh and obnoxious. We went to Joe’s for a drink and something to eat. The bar was packed and a few minutes after we sat down a mariachi band arrived and played a few songs. Some of the patrons sang along.

Poem: Work

We need work, meaningful work

That feeds the soul

Rather than sucking it dry

But we get jobs instead

Dull, boring, inane

Where the moment

We walk through the door

Our true selves are hidden from sight.

We stack our time, try to abide

The long hours, mindless tasks, horrible meetings and

Asshole bosses, always talking about leadership and

Teamwork and value statements,

Market penetration

Synergy

Whatever buzzwords and corporate-speak they read

Or Ted Talk they watched

While vacationing in Fiji or Bali;

It all sounds like gibberish and is replaced in no time

With shiny new buzzwords.

The fruit of our toil belongs to another,

While we wither on the vine. The job steals our

Best years, our youth and vitality.

And when we outlive our usefulness or become too

Demanding

We are cut loose and in no time forgotten, replaced

By another drone.

Maybe we answer the call of Uber or Lyft

Become a bit player in the so-called gig economy, tenuous ties

And independent contractor status;

Or we pack it all in -- pride, self-respect -- and apply at

WalMart

Or

Target

Or

Amazon.

Then we die.