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.