The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

“But no U.S. president has ever lied as prolifically, constantly, insidiously and dangerously as Donald Trump. He never stops. He’s the Energizer Bunny of endless falsehood.” Paul Street

The beat of xenophobia, racism, fear mongering and lies goes on, orchestrated and revved up by the Trump junta ahead of the midterm elections. The language coming from Trump and his enablers is violent, and it encourages marginalized, broken, and wounded people to emerge from the shadows, from behind closed doors, convinced that their time has come, that the injustices they’ve suffered, real or imagined, are about to be rectified.

Macho man Trump, who, like most authoritarian men, is a coward at heart, orders a ridiculous number of US troops to our southern border to defend against an “invasion” of Central American migrants. This is all spectacle for Trump’s base, another empty stunt in his reality show, since a. The migrants, young men, women, and children, have no capacity or inclination to invade a hamlet let alone the US, and b. The caravan will not come near the US border until well after the midterm elections, and by then might be much smaller than it is now. But the spectacle and the emotion it engenders now are the point. It reinforces the fears of many of Trump’s supporters and makes Trump look like a tough guy, the great white protector of his great white flock. Forget the fact that it’s like a man using a bazooka to kill a mouse.

The Commander-in-Chief is abusing his power and using US military personnel as props in his midterm election theater. How can any US service member, officer or enlisted, go along with this madness without feeling used and befouled? Hey Private Jones, is this why you enlisted, to “protect” the US border from economic, political, and environmental refugees? Did you sign up to be a pawn? Don’t be surprised if, after this pitiful episode, you are not thanked for your service and allowed to board airline flights ahead of others. So much for our noble warriors. Let’s hope that when the migrants arrive, a month or two from now, US soldiers don’t overreact like the police so often do and start shooting children. I won’t be surprised if this happens, sickened yes, surprised, no.

The violent genie is out of the bottle, not only in the US, but in Brazil, which has just elected a strongman of its own, Jair Bolsonaro, whose past statements about women and gay people are even more outrageous than Trump’s. Brazil may be in for a very rough ride, one that will no doubt exacerbate the very conditions that brought Bolsonaro to power. Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Putin, MBS, Orban -- the authoritarians are on the march, bolstered by the seen and unseen hands of the world’s capitalist masters. A half century of neoliberal economics, the ascendancy of the Market (all-powerful, all-knowing, fair and equitable, etc.), has created a few spectacular winners and billions of desperate losers, and, of course, put too much power in too few hands. As people grasp that they’ve been played for suckers, that neoliberalism and so-called free-trade is a rigged game, they start to protest, and the state, serving the capitalists who have bought its services, cracks down. Harder and harder. This is only the beginning.

This from Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch:

“From 1970 to 2014, 60 percent of all animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — were wiped out by human activity, according to an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations scattered across the globe.”

Ruminate on that 60% figure in light of what the Trump junta is doing to accelerate a climate disaster, and what Bolsonaro has promised to do in the Amazon.

The storm gathers on the horizon and dark clouds block out the harvest moon. Up on the hill, the lights in the shining city have almost all gone out.