National Emergency: The Long Death of America's Soul

“The even larger problem is that a chronic complacency has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing real to anyone -- except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.” Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion

For me, living in America right now is like watching a train wreck in super slow-motion. The daily insanity coming out of Trump and the Republican Party, the outright cruelty, racism, stupidity, intolerance, corruption, and incompetence is real, and yet, unreal. It hasn’t directly impacted me yet, or the city I live in; Santa Barbara is still gilded, full of well-to-do, smug hipsters, wine bars, craft breweries and gourmet noodle shops, upscale boutiques, and yoga studios. Like they do elsewhere, the rich live well here. The City debates the scourge of electric scooters and the fate of the Paseo Nuevo shopping mall. The latter is a big deal because the Paseo anchors the State Street retail core and a large space once occupied by Macy’s has been vacant for nearly two years. The City and the Paseo’s operators have struck a deal, a lease extension in exchange for $20 million in renovations and upgrades and some dough for services for the homeless -- presumably to keep them away from the Paseo during business hours. The renovations are said to include fire pits and a bocce ball court. When I read this I burst out laughing at the absurdity, but this is the Age of Amazon, 1-click satisfaction, and retailers must resort to all manner of gimmicks to lure people into actual stores; not only do they have to sell products, they must provide the customer an “experience.” No wonder this country is so fouled up. Mindless and endless consumption is our true religion.  

The Orange Menace, unable to garner support by legitimate means for his vanity wall, has declared a National Emergency and will pursue his personal Moby Dick without the consent of Congress or the citizens, who overwhelmingly oppose this monument to racism, xenophobia and fear. The only emergency on the Southern Border exists in what remains of Trump’s fevered brain. His insipid declaration will wind up in the courts, but Trump will no doubt claim a great victory anyway. That’s how he operates, always characterizing his failures as big wins. His gullible followers cheer and wave their red MAGA hats. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, a man as debased and detestable as Trump, backs the president’s play though he probably understands that the courts will throw a spanner in the works -- which will allow Mitch to shake his head and say, what can you do about the courts?

God, how working people in this country have been had, played, manipulated, lied to and betrayed. We let the neoliberals destroy unions, ship jobs overseas, create powerful monopolies, and privatize the commons upon which we all depend. We are overworked, underpaid, spied upon; our votes are almost meaningless, if we are able to vote at all. America is an oligarchy, owned and operated by the rich for the rich. How many of the people who represent us in Congress are multi-millionaires? You think they care about working-class people? They never have. Not Bill-I-Feel-Your-Pain-Clinton or Barack-Hope & Change-Obama. Not Nancy Pelosi. Definitely not Chuck Schumer. With a few rare exceptions, the American working class has given the game away without a fight. We lost our sense of solidarity, allowed ourselves to be torn apart and divided, pitted against one another by neoliberal promises of great jobs manipulating data, boundless opportunity for entrepreneurship. In the meantime, damn near everything we need -- medical care, education, child and senior care, clean water and air, basic services in our cities and towns -- have been privatized by the relentless force of capitalism. The rich and corporations declared a tax holiday for themselves many years ago and barely pay any now compared to what they ponied up in the 1950’s and 60’s. The result? Massive income and wealth inequality, with just a handful of people owning as much wealth as the other half of the entire nation. This is a massive, legal but immoral shift of wealth to people who need it least. Read Martin Luther King, Jr., he knew, he saw it coming and he called the rich out. Then he was killed.

The oligarchs have hijacked our language. Profit, loss, cost-benefit, branding, leverage, synergy, curating, thought-leading, though-partnering bullshit that has spread like a virus. Public agencies now talk like corporations. It’s despicable.

We are down to one functioning political party -- and the Democrats function at a low level of effectiveness because their leadership is corrupted by money -- a bad spot for a so-called democracy to be in. The GOP is now a criminal gang, forcing their minority views on the majority of citizens, giving the government away to special interests, lobbyists, and the Pentagon, which devours about 57% of our total federal spending, an obscene, unjustifiable amount that benefits resource extractors and defense contractors and all the other parasites who suck at the War Machine’s teat. Our wars go on and on and the citizens could care less because too few of us pay attention and none of us are being drafted. The Trump junta is right now doing everything it can to gin up a war against Iran, a nation that isn’t a threat to the United States or any other country at the moment. But taking Iran out has been a wet dream of the neocons for decades. Wars of choice, people, how fucking insane is that?

I once thought that despite America’s very checkered history we were a country with a decent heart and soul, that though we had the capacity to do tremendous harm, and frequently did, waging war wasn’t our first inclination when faced with a problem. I thought there were some things we agreed on, like the dignity of work, a fair wage, reasonable security from want, care for our young and our elderly, a shared sense that we were together. No more. Capitalism has destroyed America’s soul because it is a soulless system. We have become monstrous, deluded, cruel and belligerent. Trump’s bloated, snarling face is our face. America is in its death throes and our democracy is soon to be completely extinguished.  

A Synthetic Scandal: Ilhan Omar & AIPAC

“That victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he, or she, has become a threat.” James Baldwin

Maybe AIPAC, the powerful Israel lobby, doesn’t directly buy political favors in the way the NRA does, but that doesn’t mean that politicians from both parties aren’t influenced to  outright support AIPAC’s aims or remain silent about them for fear of landing on the wrong side of the lobby. And you can see by the hysterical reaction to Ilhan Omar’s comments about AIPAC how quickly bipartisan indignation and righteousness gets ginned up. How dare this first year congressperson from Minnesota criticize AIPAC! The temerity. Naturally, anti-semitism must be Omar’s motivation. What else could it be in our black and white world?

Omar apologized but you can bet money that she will be forever fighting the anti-semitic label, which is one way AIPAC wields influence. On their best days, Washington D.C. politicians are a pusillanimous lot, and for the majority of them the idea of crossing AIPAC is about as welcome as a colonoscopy. Get smeared with the anti-semite brush and you can kiss your career goodbye. An AIPAC endorsement can spell the difference between winning or losing an election or reelection bid. And it hardly matters if the charge is baseless. You just can’t criticize Israel, period. You can’t compare AIPAC to the NRA though they both practice and benefit from influence peddling. You can’t bring up the fate of the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank without having anti-semitism thrown in your face. I can think of no other nation in the world that can squelch even the mildest criticism as quickly as Israel can. The Israeli Defense Forces shoot and kill unarmed Palestinian protesters without consequence. This is a fact, not an anti-semitic statement. I don’t contest Israel’s right to exist as a nation and have security for its citizens. I don’t question the reality of anti-semitism in the world; it is real. I do question whether Israel has a right to forcibly expel Palestinians from their land, wall them into pitiful enclaves, restrict their freedom of movement, torch their olive trees and take their water, or strangle the life out of them in Gaza; I also question the Netanyahu government’s support for democratic values.

But just try having this debate in the United States, or Britain, for that matter. You can’t. No critique of the government of Israel is allowed. The subject is off-limits. The second you raise the question of the Palestinians you are deemed to be hostile to Israel, and if you’re hostile to Israel you will be chased from the editorial pages of the New York Times, from CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and all the rest. You will be silenced. Ask Angela Davis or Mark Lamont Hill. Ask Noam Chomsky. Ask Jeremy Corbyn. Ilhan Omar is in good company.

MJ Rosenberg, a contributor to the Huffington Post, wrote the following: “AIPAC uses the same tactics as the NRA to ensure that the United States never deviates from support for whatever policy the Israeli government is pushing at the moment.” It’s assumed that Israel’s foreign policy objectives are indistinguishable from those of the United States, and that the United States will always, and forever, provide diplomatic cover and military aid to Israel.

Donald Trump has called for Omar to resign over this synthetic scandal, a ridiculous thing for him to say but hardly unexpected from the most corrupt person to ever inhabit the White House. Less than two years ago Trump was apologizing for neo-Nazi’s who chanted “Jews will not replace us!” Pelosi and others in the Democratic Party leadership have extracted an apology from Omar, that’s enough. Like the NRA, the fossil fuel lobby and Big Pharma, AIPAC uses all the means at its disposal to influence the United States government on behalf of Israel. This is a fact and nothing to apologize for. If supporters of Israel are so certain of their righteousness and morality, why are they afraid to engage in debate and discussion?

Presidential Harassment

“Old evils return with new names.” John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism

Poor Donald Trump. The pussy-grabber is himself a pussy, whining about harassment from Democrats armed with subpoena power. The Republicans didn’t do this to Obama, Trump cries. No, the GOP wasn’t able to use scandal against Obama because there wasn’t any to speak of. Obama had many faults and his administration failed on many fronts, but for eight years it was never a cesspool of corruption and self-dealing like Trump’s criminal enterprise. Obama got a different brand of treatment. He was burned in effigy by Tea Party supporters, called a liar by Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina during a State of the Union address, and, most notably, hounded about his birth certificate by one Donald J. Trump. He’s not an American, Trump said, he’s a foreigner, not one of us. Trump beat this racist drum for a long time.

On the one hand it’s amusing to hear Trump moan about how unfair it all is, this man who constantly boasts about how strong he is, how tough, how macho, and on the other it’s infuriating. Trump is sitting in the Oval Office today for many reasons, a few of them valid, but he lost the popular vote and wouldn’t be in the White House except for the un-democratic structure of the American political system. The iron grip of the two political parties, the flow of dark money, pervasive gerrymandering, blatant voter suppression, the fact that Montana has the same number of senators as California, and that almost every presidential election is really contested in only 15 or so states. American democracy is anemic, at best, entirely based on personalities instead of substantive ideas.

Emails keep appearing in my in-box about 2020. They want to know which Democratic candidate I might support. I have no idea. Thinking of another marathon presidential election season, an American tradition that benefits campaign consultants and media types and PR flacks and the TV networks, but not voters, is nauseating. I can’t go there yet. What I know for certain is that whoever the Democrats nominate to take on Trump, he or she will be an enthusiastic supporter of the American Empire, of endless wars never declared by Congress, of obscene Pentagon budgets, of law and order on the domestic front, and of capitalism as the only economic system. He or she will pledge undying devotion to Israel, no matter what outrageous crimes against humanity that tiny nation commits. If Trump is the naked face of empire, a bloated and ugly one, the Democratic nominee will wear an elaborate mask, as Obama did, as Hillary Clinton tried to do though hers was cracked and worn. In one hand an olive branch, in the other a cruise missile. It’s never easy to pull the status quo down; too many people are invested in it, profit from it.

No savior is going to rise from this swamp to set the world right. The American Empire has had a long and bloody run and now this heavily armed frigate is headed for the reef at full speed. The crash might be spectacular. The masts will snap in two, the canon and the barrels will go over the side, the hold will fill with water. There will not be enough lifeboats. As the boat slowly sinks the plaintive wail of all the innocent victims of the American Empire will be heard. Koreans and Guatemalans and Salvadorans and Iraqis and Afghans and Yemenis and Panamanians and Palestinians and Vietnamese.   

 

Lie-Fest 2019

“We read to remember. We read to forget. We read to make ourselves and remake ourselves and save ourselves.”  Maria Popova

The economy is fantastic thanks to our rollback of useless regulations. Manufacturing jobs are flocking back to our great country by the millions. Eight beautiful new steel mills have been built and are producing gorgeous American-made steel. Oil and gas exploration is off the charts. Our healthcare system is the best on the planet. We gave the middle-class the largest tax cut in history. Foreign leaders now know without any doubt that America is back, that we are strong and getting stronger, that our military is the greatest and our airplanes the fastest. We have great relationships with our allies, including the magnificent nation of Saudi Arabia. In two years my brilliant administration has accomplished more than any administration in American history, and we’ve done it by following the highest ethical standards. America is winning on every front, every single day and when we have border security...when we stop the flow of drugs, murderers and terrorists who stream across our southern border...

I know how Trump’s turn in the spotlight will go. If he manages to read from the teleprompter he might, maybe, make more sense than he does when speaking extemporaneously. The Republicans in the House chamber will have been instructed by their leaders to clap raucously, no matter what drivel comes out of Trump’s mouth and to rise to their feet on cue. Democrats will likely sit very quietly, hands in their laps (or covering their eyes). Nancy Pelosi will stare at the back of Trump’s head, searching for clues to his comb-over. Others will stare at their phones, pissed at having to bear witness to an empty spectacle, in the company of a lazy, incompetent, brutish and cruel man with a dead soul. They will wonder how much longer  this will go on. How many lies can one man tell in less than an hour? Do those people across the aisle, mostly men, mostly white, believe anything he says? Ninety-two percent of political life is pure bullshit, benign lies, words designed to sound substantial but evaporate like morning dew, fake smiles and false promises. I feel your pain tripe, I’m with you, you have my support. This guy is 100% Grade A bullshit. On his best day he’s barely coherent. He doesn’t read! He trusts no one! My toddler has a longer attention span. What do the Russians have on him? It can’t be a pee tape, that wouldn’t embarrass him in the least. Has to be money, dirty money that came to Trump for a wash. American banks cut him off, remember, because he ran every one of his ventures into the ground. Jesus Christ, Trump couldn’t make money in the casino racket, what does that tell you? He’s still talking, how can he still be talking, and about what? How can this guy be president? Who turned the world upside down?

I won’t be watching. I’d rather watch an iron pipe oxidize. We need to turn Trump off, kill the microphone and the lights, and simply ignore him, let him wither like a vine in need of sunlight.