General Bone Spurs

“The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.” H.L. Mencken

Press Event, The White House, Washington D.C.

President Trump enters the press briefing room looking agitated, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. After wiping his nose several times, Trump begins reading his prepared statement. 

PT: I have big news today, very big news. The biggest. At my direction, our brave military forces launched a raid in Northern Syria and killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, one of the most vicious killers of all time. al-Baghdadi died like a whimpering dog, begging for mercy, but on my order he was afforded none. We took him out very beautifully. Only a military leader such as President Trump -- the greatest president in American history -- could have planned and executed this operation. It was extremely dangerous, ten times more dangerous than the raid that  killed Osama bin Laden. I want to thank our wonderful allies Russia and Turkey for their assistance. They are great countries with strong leaders who lead strongly. al-Baghdadi was a very bad hombre, many times more dangerous than Osama bin Laden. I took out the worst of the worst. 

Reporter: Mr. President, you stated that you planned this raid. Can you tell us when you did that planning?

PT: I planned the whole thing on the 14th hole at my golf club, a beautiful course by the way, world class, and by the time I arrived on the 15th tee I called my generals and told them how to take this killer out. I’m the best strategist, even better than George Washington. Then I teed off on 15, drove the ball right down the middle about 350 yards. I’m a big hitter, you know, the best golfer to ever occupy the White House. I could beat Obama with a putter, a pitching wedge, and a 4-wood. Even if I let Obama tee off from the ladies tees I’d still beat him. 

Reporter: Will you toss out the first pitch for Game 5 of the World Series?

PT: We’re still considering that. The last time I threw out the first pitch was for a game between the Yankees and the Mets. The pitch was clocked at 95mph and had so much movement on it that the Mets offered me a contract on the spot. I turned them down because I was too busy making billions of dollars. People have always said that I was one of the best baseball players in the history of New York City, a phenom, the next Mickey Mantle. I was a classic 5-tool player which is why it’s insane for the dirty Democrats to talk about impeachment. Witch hunt! 

Reporter: Mr. President, the news on the impeachment front over the past two weeks hasn’t been favorable. Are you concerned about the reaction you might receive from fans at the World Series? 

PT: That’s fake news. The economy is the best it’s ever been, my administration has created like a billion new jobs, we’re building the Wall to keep our country safe, and many people are saying that no American president has ever been more popular. They love what I’m doing with China on trade. You should see the massive crowds at my campaign rallies! So many people, so many red hats, so many signs. They love their great president. They can’t get enough of me. My only concern with attending the World Series is that I’ll get a very long standing ovation that will disrupt the game. 

Reporter: The latest polling shows your approval rating at less than 40%. 

PT: Fake news. Fake news. Fake news. My poll numbers are consistently high, 60, 70 percent of Americans think I’m doing a fantastic job. And now that I’ve taken out this very bad hombre, al-Baghdadi, I expect my approval rating to go even higher. The dirty Democrats know I’m unbeatable in 2020, which is why they’ve launched this illegal and very phony impeachment. Adam Schiff is like a rabid dog. He’s got nothing on Trump, nothing but smoke. The whole thing is very illegitimate and the Democrats know it, they know it, especially now that Trump is a war hero, the man who took out al-Baghdadi, who was a very bad hombre with a lot of blood on his hands. Many people are saying nobody except Trump could have pulled this off. You think Joe Biden could have done this? No way. Joe’s too busy trying to help his loser son. 

Reporter: Mr. President, speaking of loser children -

PT: It’s illegitimate, the whole thing, because the House hasn’t voted to impeach. It’s right there in the Constitution, in black and white, and the Democrats know it, they know it. They’re making it up as they go, with no respect for the law. They will learn a hard lesson in 2020. My very good friend Vladimir Putin told me not to worry. 

Burning In The Dark

“The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain.” Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Parts of California are burning again, and here on the coast it’s nearly 90 degrees at the tail end of October. A few days ago local residents were advised to prepare to be without power for 24 to 48 hours as Southern California Edison planned to shut down its transmission lines to prevent potential fire danger, much as beleaguered Pacific Gas and Electric had already done up north. Both utilities are desperate to avoid further liability. Stock up on batteries, bottled water, canned food, fill the gas tank in the car. As I write this, half a million people in Sonoma County are without power. 

SCE and PG&E are loathe, as is most of corporate America, to connect the dots between climate change, prolonged drought and deadly wildfires, but their silence can’t change the reality that climate change is already impacting our lives, and most thinking people know this is just the beginning. California is drier and wildfires burn hotter and longer. I don’t know if shutting down power lines is useful except as a way of limiting corporate liability. 

I’m reading American War by Omar El Akkad, a novel that imagines an America at war with itself in the year 2075, when most of Louisiana is submerged by water, and the capital of the north has relocated from storm-battered Washington D.C to Columbus, Ohio. Mexico has reclaimed most of the territory it lost to the United States in the 19th century. A few southern states have banded together, not because of slavery this time, but because they refuse to stop using fossil fuels. The entire state of South Carolina is under quarantine, completely walled off due to a virus so virulent it killed 110 million people. The world’s superpowers are now China and a conglomeration of former Middle Eastern countries called the Bouazizi empire, who provide basic material aid to war-torn America. Mighty no more is America, either militarily or economically, hopelessly divided against itself, and dependent on the generosity of other countries.   

American War is a depressing read because, like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, it feels plausible, particularly at the speed we are moving toward climate catastrophe. I’ve never been able to re-read The Road; once was enough. The novel terrified me, probably because when I read it my son was five or six years old. In the years since, we’ve moved nearer to McCarthy’s dark vision. When the imbecile who occupies the White House isn’t stoking the fires of division and hatred, he’s doing everything he can to make life easier for fossil fuel extractors and polluters. The very wealthy in this country seem to believe they can sidestep the climate bullet. Perhaps they will, for a while, but even if they buy a little time, the degradation of our air, soil, water, and infrastructure will ensnare them eventually. 

Meanwhile, the Kincade Fire has scorched 20,000 acres. Here in Santa Barbara the air outside feels reminiscent of fires past -- the Tea, Gap and Thomas. I keep waiting for a plume of smoke to rise from behind our mountains. It’s not windy now, but later in the afternoon the wind will likely pick up, adding to the danger. 

1000 Days of Madness

“If we are not currently an authoritarian nation it’s thanks in part to the insubordinate spirit of a good deal of the American public and the underlying confidence behind this relative fearlessness.”  Rebecca Solnit

1,000 days of the madness of would-be King Donald I. At times it feels like a bad dream and I long to snap wide awake and breathe a sigh of relief that Trump never happened except in our imagination. The idiocy, cruelty, venality and mendacity is almost too heavy a burden. When we look back at this period -- if the republic survives and what remains of our institutions hold -- one question that must be answered is why many of our fellow citizens followed Trump, believed in him, and thought he was doing good for the nation. Any conscious, sane person who listens to Trump for more than a minute should reach the conclusion that the man is nuts, insane, a sociopath. I don’t think all of Trump’s supporters and followers are bad people, but I do marvel at how misinformed they are.

Trump is P.T. Barnum on crack. 

Has Trump made us stupid or did we make Trump because we are stupid? During the reign of George W. Bush the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson often said that America was trapped in a downward spiral of dumbness. W. Bush, now being rehabilitated as a kindly nitwit, seemed the epitome of elite decay, a man buoyed by his family name and connections and wealth, a serial fuck-up who always landed on his feet, smiling, a faux cowboy. Donald J. Trump makes George W. Bush look eloquent by comparison. I never thought I would see that. Trump doesn’t have as much blood on his hands as Bush does, not yet anyway, but who knows if he manages to escape impeachment and scandal and win another term via the undemocratic Electoral College. 

As we saw this week, any translator who has to make sense of Trump’s gibberish is in a most difficult spot. “The Kurds have sand, a lot of sand. More sand than is good for them. Lot of sand, too much. It’s hard to imagine so much sand. You can’t believe it. Sand everywhere. Gets in your shoes and your hair. Hard to get the sand out of your hair. I’ve got great hair, the best hair of any American president, ever. Very soft, very shiny, it’s beautiful, my hair, my great and unmatched hair.”

1,000 days of madness, drifts of BS up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, Abraham Lincoln turning in his grave, George Washington sobbing uncontrollably as King Donald tramps over the republic. This can’t be happening, yet it is. It’s not a dream. Trump and the fourth string crew who surround him are becoming more and more blatant and defiant of every norm. Wholesale disregard for the Legislative branch. Total disdain for the rule of law. This is dangerous territory. 

A Quick Flash of Light

“The government’s central evil is its willful failure to distinguish the quality of intent or motive.” Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent

I am having a long conversation with myself about this blog and why I keep writing it. 15 years. Through George W. Bush and the Iraq Disaster, that unbellievably stupid strategic blunder, which has since caused distress and death for thousands of people, from Egypt and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. We meddled, and we’re paying and paying and paying. I doubt  they can even keep count of all the money the US spent destroying those countries. 18 years in Afghanistan. Longest war in American history, and nobody’s pissed about the milestone except a few middle-aged liberal cranks like me. The Obama years were disappointing to me, a fumbled opportunity. Obama lost his political nerve and turned in the direction he was oriented in anyway, center-right. Outwardly kinder and far more sophisticated but no less deadly than W. Smoother by a mile. With no push forward, we stayed in place. But the optics as they say, the presentation of Barack and Michelle Obama, was to me always reassuring, even hopeful. Cautious man, that Obama. Measured. Honestly seemed to be a very decent person, and never for a minute did I doubt that Obama was doing his best for the country. The man was calm, cool, polished to perfection, and that drove some people in this country into anger, then near madness. I believe, historically speaking, in black backlash. Happens every time there are any widespread gains for people of color. 

Obama didn’t do much for the Democrats as a party. But he stayed smart and elegant and cool until the last day of his term. Only doubted the policies and decisions and compromises, not the man.

And then the system goes haywire and vomits up Donald Trump. And here I am three years and countless unread blog posts later, living in Trump Time. America is an amusement park violently flipped upside down. Donald Trump. Fuck! I don’t know what else to say. I cannot even keep track of all Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors. Everyday there’s a new transgression. And his party of supposedly rational, decent people, the Grand Old Party, continues to follow Trump, fear Trump and, if not licking Trump’s ass, at least kissing it. They keep turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, afraid of Dear Leader and his Twitter machine, but secretly hoping he falls, and falls hard. 

The ship’s taking on a lot of water. The captain is addled, to say the least, but pretends that everything’s alright, that he’s the greatest man ever to sail, king of the sea, even though he knows deep down that this is the caper he’s not getting away with. The ship’s not listing, yet, but it’s taking on a lot of water. When are the rats going to start jumping, by ones and twos, and then trios and quartets? When will the sailors turn on the captain? This captain will sell his mother’s soul if it means saving his own. He’s fucked things up pretty well, and now it looks like his treasure maps are soon to be let out in the world. 

The age of Obama feels a long way back, a quick flash of light in the dark. The man read real books. He understood the law. He followed the law, for the most part. He was eloquent, even inspiring. Obama in eight years left no stain on America’s soul or hole in her heart. He kept the world at bay and the American empire humming. That takes a bucketful of skill. Obama had that. He also hired competent people. There were no personal scandals during Obama’s tenure in the White House. And then Trump and Company tramp in and the beautiful white walls turn a shade of ochre, the windows grow a film, a smell of rot permeates the whole place, and soon the only people that remain are the most immoral, crooked, cruel, and stupid. Barr. Pompeo. Mulvaney. Mnuchin. It’s not even the fourth string. It’s a coup alright, a coup by a bunch of people you’d never invite into your home for a cup of coffee. Redolent of sloth, all of them. The bottom of the barrel, the dogshit on the bottom of your boot. A decent God would smote them one by one, or at least plague them with disease, but as Tom Waits sang, God’s away on business. 

What I started with was the question of why I continue writing this blog. I’ll put that aside for now. 

It has been a strange week. I feel like I spent three days in a dark tunnel, with the faintest light at one end, and only today did I return to myself. I’ve been depressed. What Ernest Hemingway called the Black Dog. I bet my aura was tar black. I realized all of a sudden that I was garnering little joy for my day job, a job I have always performed very capably, but not one my heart is always in. The job pays the rent and puts food on the table and allows us to go to the clinic or the hospital. 20 years I’ve been there. 60 years old. I wonder about the remainder of my life, how we might survive on some pension money, my freelance work, and maybe a job at Trader Joe’s or something like that. The big worry is losing employer-based health insurance. I’m too young for Medicare. 

Grifter's Carnival

“Impeaching Donald Trump would do nothing to halt the deep decay that has beset the American republic.” Chris Hedges

On the one hand, it’s absolutely comical to watch Donald J. Trump flail around like an orangutan with a mongoose attached to his testicles, but on the other, what we’re witnessing is the outing of the entire corrupt American political system. It’s laughable enough when Trump warns his base that they stand to lose their guns, their religion, and their military if he’s impeached, less so when both Republicans and Democrats have mercilessly pursued whistleblowers like Reality Winner, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden into prison or exile. And when either party spouts off sanctimoniously about doing the business of the American people -- which neither party has done since the mid-1960’s -- it’s hysterical. As I’ve said on this blog many, many times, we do not have a democracy and our government only marginally works for us; we have a tyranny of a minority of people and corporations that have the money and influence to buy legislative favors and judges. Tax holidays for the rich, corporations and special interest groups, and cruel austerity for the poor, is not how a democratic government works for its citizens. 

There are only two instances when the American government can be roused to action: undeclared military interventions that go on without end is one. Cutting taxes for people and corporations who already have more money than they know what to do with is the other. Think I exaggerate? A majority of Americans want decent jobs, affordable housing, health care, educational opportunities, meaningful action to curb the effects of climate change, plus reasonable, commonsense restrictions on the sale of military-style assault weapons. The political class, which purports to represent “the people,” wants none of these things and will never deliver it under the current capitalist framework. 

The journalist Chris Hedges wrote recently that while the impeachment of Donald J. Trump is necessary,Trump’s ouster won’t change the underlying system one iota. Yes, impeachment -- if the Senate convicts (not likely) -- will remove from office the most idiotic, malignant, amoral, and corrupt president in American history and possibly key underlings like Mike Pompeo and William Barr, but loyal servants of the status quo like Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will remain in place, as will douchebags like Kevin McCarthy and Devin Nunes and Rick Scott and Ted Cruz and Susan Collins. Many congressional districts will remain rigged and widespread voter suppression will continue; North and South Dakota will still have the same disproportionate political clout in the US Senate. The Supreme Court will remain a subsidiary of the Federalist Society. The undemocratic Electoral College will still supersede the will of voters. 

What astonishes me is the utter lack of honor on display in Washington D.C. It’s just a big grifter’s carnival, with damn near everyone in the trough up to his or her neck. Maybe it has always been so. Did Joe Biden make calls and open doors for his wayward son, Hunter? It’s highly likely that he did, but rich, well-connected people do this for their kids every single day. It’s risible to hear Donald J. Trump accuse Joe Biden’s son of being a know-nothing loser who walked away with millions, when his own offspring carry his criminal DNA and would be working behind the counter at Wendy’s without Daddy Trump’s money and name, but no level of hypocrisy, or irony, is too much for The Donald. Born halfway to home plate with a platinum spoon up his ass, Trump still made a hash of every business venture he tried. 

It’s all a perverse joke. I might laugh if it wasn’t so serious. Donald J. Trump has waged a two and a half year siege on the rule of law; the GOP has been content to stand by and help him do it, and the Democrats too feckless to fight.