The Gates of Hell

“How Venezuelans choose to conduct their political affairs never has been and is not now the business of the US government. One need support neither Maduro nor Guaido to reach this conclusion. It’s simply not up to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, or any other American politician to run Venezuela.” Thomas Knapp

I don’t know much about the history of Venezuela or its politics. I do know that Hugo Chavez was a meddlesome figure for the George W. Bush administration and that back in 2002 Chavez survived a coup attempt orchestrated behind the scenes by the US. No surprise there. The US has meddled in Latin American for a century or more, destabilizing countries that refused to hand over their natural resources or open markets for US firms or adopt American-style capitalism or obey the dictates of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (the arms of American-style capitalism). Heaven forbid a Latin American country get chummy with Cuba, Russia or China, or stand in opposition to US whims. That’s a big no-no. I know that when the US can’t have its way it often resorts to force, covert or overt; it can bring enormous financial and diplomatic pressure to bear on a target country, and if that fails to unlock the door, the US can, and will, obliterate the door with military might. Chavez survived in 2002, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, may not. This is a different time than 2002, the third-stringers are running things in the US, leaping from the bench with their tattered imperial playbook. The US corporate media is reluctant to call what is happening in Venezuela a coup, though it certainly smells like a coup and walks like a coup and looks like a coup.

If Venezuela wasn’t oil rich would the US care about it so much? Dumb question, right? Would we go to such lengths for apples or grapes or bell peppers or cauliflower? Or maple syrup? Or coconut oil?

I have heard media pundits blame Maduro’s socialist policies for wrecking Venezuela’s economy. I have also heard pundits claim that the economy collapsed due to punishing US sanctions. Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s old talking head, said that Venezuela was thriving when Chavez took over, the people’s pots overflowed with bounty, life was good, but if that was true and the populace was content, why did they elect Chavez? Other pundits claim we have to recognize the unelected opposition leader Guaido in order to save democracy in Venezuela, and that the crippling economic sanctions are actually helping people. Where are you, George Orwell? But it gets truly comical when the US claims that Maduro’s reelection was marred by massive voting irregularities. After the American election in 2016, and last year’s midterms, with those infamous now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t polling stations, faulty voting machines, and purged voter rolls, that’s just flat out hysterical.

The truth is always more complicated than the “official” narrative makes it out to be, but if you live in the US and swallow corporate media, you will be wildly misinformed, and not only about Venezuela. The situation in Venezuela is extremely complicated and cannot be reduced to ten second sound bites or 140 character explanations.    

The writer Chris Hedges likens the US to a wounded beast, thrashing around in its death throes. Hedges isn’t optimistic about the immediate future, or if any meaningful future is even possible. The murder of the planet continues while Trump and America face off over his vanity wall. The American empire is still powerful, but also hollow, ruled by corporate interests and abetted by a corrupt political system full of unscrupulous hacks like Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, not to mention hopelessly compromised souls like Chuck Schumer and, yes, even the darling of the moment, winner by TKO of the Great Wall Showdown, Nancy Pelosi.

What to do? What to think? Where to turn? Feels to me that we are closer to the gates of hell than to the gates of heaven, but perhaps this is business as usual for our species.     

A Bottomless Bout of Vertigo

“This is one of those nights where there is nothing. Imagine being always like this. Scooped-out. Listless. No light. No dance. Not even any disgust.” Charles Bukowski

It’s hard to keep one’s wits in the looney bin that is America in the time of Trump. Truth is optional, public relations and perception are everything, and every damn day is like suffering a bottomless bout of vertigo.

The detestable Mike Pence, our wax figure veep and one of the preeminent ass-lickers in recent American history, compares Trump, an immoral, ignorant, racist blowhard, to Martin Luther King, Jr. Contemptible. Trump and Pence aren’t fit to clean Dr. King’s toilet.

The Los Angeles public teachers strike is over, but it appears that many rank-and-file teachers are none too pleased with their union leaders and Democratic Party pols. While the teachers will receive some salary increases, they didn’t do as well on reducing class sizes, adding nurses and librarians, or getting binding agreement to slow the expansion of charter schools. One wonders how much time the leaders of the UTLA spent breaking bread with LAUSD officials and local Democratic politicians during the six day strike. Doesn’t smell right.

Despite the rather anticlimactic outcome of the LA strike it does appear that working people are finally regaining consciousness, and not just in the US. The Yellow Vest protesters in France, the thousands of workers in India who rose up to express their collective displeasure with Modi’s policies, made the billionaires meeting in Davos set down their champagne glasses and plates of caviar and pay attention. In the neoliberal world order, workers are supposed to remain silent. This is why the action in India received barely a mention in the US corporate media. The proletariat can’t be allowed to get ideas, can they? Ideas are dangerous things, more dangerous than an unarmed migrant from Guatemala. Average workers might wake from their slumber and realize that much of their suffering isn’t of their own making, that they have been made to suffer by design, which in turn might compel them to turn their ire on the oligarchs as the peasants once went after feudal lords.

Torches and pitchforks on a moonless night.

Despite claims of total victory by Trump and Pence, the ISIS faction in Syria isn’t dead just yet. It’s damn hard to annihilate a tactic…

I don’t know what to make of those Catholic high school kids who taunted a native American man armed only with a drum and a traditional song. Some call them little angels, others call them sniveling, entitled devils, like Brett Kavanaugh. The only thing I know for sure is that any person who dons a MAGA hat deserves an ass-kicking. That hat stands for one thing and one thing only: intolerance.

The partial shutdown of the American government drags on. Trump tossed out some tired, worn, and ridiculous ideas as concessions, but these were never to be taken seriously. Trump’s approval rating is in the crapper and there are signs that his base of support among a minority of Americans is starting to fray. Trump, the great negotiator, is still trying to find a way out of his corner without alienating the wingnuts who cheer for him at his rallies.

Where did the $5.7 billion figure Trump is demanding for his vanity wall even come from? This question was posed by the media watch group FAIR, and it’s a good one. What would $5.7 buy US taxpayers? (Or it is Mexicans?) Who came up with this number, what rational analysis is it based on? Oh shit, I forgot that this entire Wall project has no basis in rationality.  

Finally, a tip of the cap to Mariano Rivera, the newest member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, elected unanimously. Rivera had nerves of steel and a devastating 95 mph cut fastball that was nearly unhittable. The man is a champion, the greatest closer of all time.

Trump's Prison

It's good to be King and have your own way

Get a feeling of peace at the end of the day

And when your bulldog barks and your canary sings

You're out there with winners, it's good to be King

Tom Petty

I feel a minuscule amount of sympathy for Donald J. Trump, but it must really suck to be him right about now, with everything he nears turning to shit and the legal screw turned by Robert Mueller and others tightening, and Democrats in the House preparing subpoenas left and right, night and day, probing and prying into his tangled affairs and murky revenue streams, and refusing to pony up money for the Great Wall. Trump clearly had no idea, none whatsoever, how hard the job of POTUS would be, particularly when you’re one of the laziest, most ill-prepared presidents in American history. In the still of the White House night, when Trump is all alone (Melania having retreated to her own room and dead bolting the door behind her) and the voices inside his head start talking, there’s one, clearly heard above all the others, that says:

“Obama was so smooth, so cool, and he made it look easy, the way he glided around and handled the job, from meetings with foreign leaders to speaking with school children. No batshit, incoherent Tweets at 3:00 a.m., no torrent of demonstrable lies, and no scandals. You’re in over your head, Donald. You’re like a blind mallard flying in the dead of night. You’re an embarrassment. Feeding fast food to college athletes. Jesus, what the hell were you thinking? Are you insane? You don’t invite the National Champions to the White House and serve them Big Macs and pizza. Stupid, no-class meathead. You’re a rich guy with a truck driver’s mentality, except that you’re so pathetic you couldn’t drive a truck if you’re life depended on it. How you think you’re running this country is beyond me. Honestly, Donald, you couldn’t run a meeting of the local chapter of the KKK without fucking it up.”

Daddy’s voice, always Daddy’s voice. Old Fred Trump, the patriarch who taught Donald to lie, cheat, dodge taxes and stiff contractors. Old Fred who bailed Donny out every time he failed, to whom Donny had to come begging, on his knees, hand outstretched, please Dad, I’ll do better next time. But next time is always like the last time. The casinos, the airline, the university. Failure, failure, failure. Three marriages, God-awful children.  

At night Donald paces his bedroom in the hated White House, pissed that he’s not in Trump Tower in New York where he calls the shots and nobody second guesses him, corrects his grammar or ridicules his intelligence. New York, where Ann Coulter can’t challenge his manhood, and porn stars are only a phone call away. Where damn near everyone he has known hasn’t turned on him, cut a deal with prosecutors. It wasn’t supposed to go this way, the run for the White House was a lark, a way to build the Trump brand. Hillary was supposed to win, but who knew she’d run a tepid, inept, tone-deaf campaign? Who knew the American electorate was so angry with the status quo that they were prepared to roll the dice on a wannabe dictator with a kit bag full of skeletons? Why did the stars align so malevolently?

And gnawing at the remains of Trump’s soul is the legacy of Barack Obama, the accomplished black guy with the silver tongue, who could read from a teleprompter and speak in complete sentences, who read books and understood how government works, who actually knew the difference between an executive order and a bill, who understood the function of the Federal Reserve and all the confusing Cabinet departments. Black people are supposed to be inferior to whites! White people are supposed to rule! The Bible says so, it’s the way it is!

The White House is Trump’s prison. Unable to sleep Trump stares morosely out the window and remembers what Putin said in Helsinki. “It’s much easier for me, Donald. I want to make someone disappear, I say the word and it happens. No one can investigate my little side deals. I am master of my domain in a way you can never be. What a pity. Plus, I don’t have man boobs. Take my advice, invest in Spandex.”

Just as the first hint of light appears over Washington, the voices in Trump’s head drone on, and a single tear slides down his face.

Less Sense Than A Norway Rat

“Revolutions have a habit of succeeding when the time comes for them.” Eugene V. Debs

I skipped Trump’s falsehood laden speech on the make-believe southern border crisis. I can’t stomach listening to that fool spew for one minute let alone nine or ten. Every time Trump opens his mug, especially on the subject of immigration, he demonstrates his stupidity, incompetence, and manifest unfitness for the office he holds. After Trump won the electoral college I remember pundits wondering if the office would change the man. I scoffed. The office hasn’t changed Trump one iota, but he has changed the office, trashing it like a rock star amped on Cutty Sark and cocaine trashes a hotel room. The deliberate mendacity, cruelty, corruption and ineptitude of Trump and his administration has been astonishing. Never have I seen anything close, not from Nixon or the murderous Bushes. Trump occupies a league all his own.

That the major commercial broadcast networks aired Trump’s nonsense bothers me. None of them had to grant Trump time to disseminate lies and pretend that he cares about the fate of women and children. (I’m fairly certain that were Trump adrift with his family in a leaky lifeboat he would kick the lot of them over the side to save his own skin. Trump doesn’t have a humanitarian molecule in his bloated white body; the man thrives on cruelty.) The networks would do America a huge public service if they would immediately stop covering every Trump bellow, belch, bleat, fart and Tweet. Give Trump any kind of platform and the damage is done.

For the record: no national emergency exists at the southern border.

The crisis is wholly manufactured inside Trump’s mushy brain, with some assistance from Stephen Miller and other far-right trolls. The Big Speech was the latest Trump stunt, yet another diversionary feint, no different than his ordering regular military troops to “guard” the border against a caravan of a few thousand unarmed migrants ahead of the midterm elections. Didn’t work then, won’t work now. By boasting -- on television no less -- that he would own a government shutdown unless Congress coughed up money for his wall, Trump backed his ample butt into a corner and now he can’t extricate himself without appearing weak and foolish, which is, of course, precisely what he is. Trump claimed he wouldn’t blame Democrats for the shutdown, but of course that was just another lie as he is now blaming them every chance he gets.

Some dealmaker, huh?

Donald Trump is ignorant and weak. What blows my mind is that Republicans continue to follow this meathead as he leads them toward the abyss. Can’t any of them straighten their backs and think for themselves? By now, after every lame thing Trump has done, you’d think some impulse for self-preservation would kick in. Norway rats have more sense.

Compared to climate disruption, income inequality, and undeclared wars that drag on for nearly two decades with no end in sight, the security of the southern border doesn’t keep me awake at night. What disturbs my slumber, in addition to things aforementioned, is the near certainty of another financial crash, the lack of affordable housing, education and medical care for working people, and the insidious size and reach of Amazon. America is insane, a country that no longer has even the dimmest notion of itself. Cruel, racist, war-mongering, unequal, undemocratic, this is us.

Great? Exceptional? Indispensable? Not by any measurement that really matters.

Turbulence Ahead

“The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike.” Salman Rushdie

New year. Like a child peeking out from under his blankets I peer out at this new year. Is the Orange Menace still holed up in the White House, wreaking havoc while he watches Fox News and issues insane Tweets about “border security?” As I write this, the NYSE is down another 500 points, below the 23,000 mark. Since the market began sliding in December, Trump hasn’t had much to say about the economy, except to blame the Federal Reserve for hiking interest rates. Trump is never responsible for anything negative, only the good, what little of it there is. Trump’s ability to debase whatever he touches is astonishing. America has had lousy presidents, but never one so blatantly inept and dishonest. Ditto the entire Trump junta. What a pathetic assortment of brutes, shitheads, assholes, and jerks. Like attracts like. Perfidy begets perfidy.

I’m not one for making resolutions, other than to stay in the present moment and try to be calmer and kinder, worry less, and enjoy more. I’m a lucky person, blessed with fortune. I have a rich life. When your chief wank is that your beloved football team (Chelsea) is playing uninspired, boring football, it means that the major aspects of your existence are damn good. I attribute my good fortune to luck more than anything else. I won Santa Barbara in the birth lottery and was reared before the American empire turned overtly, openly, cruel and maniacal. That’s the most disheartening aspect of the post-9/11 years, how America has lost whatever moral bearing we had before the Towers fell. Now we run side-by-side with rogue nations and make no excuses for it.

Because the federal government is at a standstill due to Trump’s temper tantrum over his Wall I have been thinking about the border with Mexico, our long suffering neighbor. As pointed out by Francisco Cantu in the New York Review of Books recently, the border area is one of the most heavily patrolled and surveilled on the planet. Migrants face a staggering array of obstacles, not to mention terrain that easily becomes deadly. Drones, helicopters, Humvees, infrared cameras, ground sensors, heavily armed agents. Against all this, and the fact that border crossings are down, the Orange Menace demands the public pony up the money for his vanity Wall. Colossal stupidity. When have walls, fences, moats or barricades ever worked for long? People always find a way under, over, around or through.

We don’t look at root causes, how from our very hand fell the seeds of the Central American migrant “crisis.” The elites in both political parties always have convenient justifications, plausible deniability, sound reasons, and, of course, historical amnesia. America is due a reckoning. We have to get over our 9/11 trauma and change cruel and inhumane systems, starting with our winner-take-all, survival-of-the-richest economy. The rich will have to take less, give more, and our tired empire must soon fold its tents, herd its livestock, and begin the long journey home. Trump is only a symptom of a disease, and even were he to be frog-marched from the White House in shame or shackles -- and no matter how good it might feel to witness Trump’s long overdue comeuppance -- the disease would remain, malignant cells rampaging over healthy ones.

Keep your seatbelt fastened. There may be turbulence ahead. If you ignored the flight attendant while he went over important safety features, you might want to take a moment now to identify the nearest exit.