Old Black Friday

“The total opposition of world views between the elites and the people is going to explode.” Roger Hallem, Common Sense for the 21st Century. 

Black Friday. Let the games begin, the shopping and frenzied buying with maxed out credit cards and backpacks full of student loan debt, and the rent, always and finally, the rent. But do your part for the consumer engine and buy a new TV, iPad, toilet seat, latest iPhone, shirts, slippers, ties, underwear, socks, packs of condoms, cigarettes, wine, beer, spirits, hammers, cordless electric drills, cutlery, pots, pans, skillets, coffee makers, blenders, silk panties, leather belts, shoes by the dozen, buy and buy, consume and spend because the folks with ALL the money don’t play in a frenzy. They're sophisticated types, with money here and money there, wealth managers, CPA’s, hefty mortgages, they hoard their dough and wait for the financial winds to shift. Then there’s all the billionaires who can probably weather the storm no matter what. They’ve got fuck you type money. They’ve got the money to buy judges and politicians, to get an initiative placed on the ballot at their own cost, to buy companies for their offspring and private islands for their trophy wives.  Wealthy individuals and corporations hoard the big money, send it chasing its own tail, endlessly, until the inevitable happens, again. How bad this time, how much misery for how many people? The corporations buy-back their own stock to keep the stock prices propped up, and everyday like clockwork the corporate media reports that the market is up another 100 points, the economy is strong, and it’s nothing but high times in the big houses on the hill. And climate change is still far off…

The people down below know something is way out of whack, and they’re showing signs of waking up to the fact. Bolivia. Colombia. Ecuador. Iraq. Venezuela. Hong Kong. Climate activists like Greta Thunberg. Folks who hold membership in the ACLU. Folks who care about mass incarceration and the heinousness of Trump’s white nationalist border policies. Folks who know it’s not normal for a country to be at war somewhere on the planet all the time. Not normal at all. Not sustainable, either. Folks who are just stone tired of Donald J. Trump’s mug, his stupid expressions, his girth, his endless bullshit, his magnificent ignorance, and the sound of his fucking voice. That’s millions of people right there. Fed up enough to vote this time. 

People down below sense that the elites are nervous. That’s why we see so many strongmen types around the globe: Trump ( Note that Trump’s strongman status lies mostly in the tangle of thoughts inside his head.) Bolsonaro. Duterte. Putin. Modi. Xi Jinping. They’re preparing to hold on to power, most by whatever means necessary. The elites know the windows are going to get smashed and the fires burn and the blood run in the streets. It’s starting to happen. The cork’s coming out of the bottle at pace. Better prepare to duck. 

The people are like steam in the kettle, getting heated to a roil by the harshness and insecurity they face, the discrimination, prejudice, injustice, wealth inequality, shit jobs in shit conditions, decay and decline, poverty, and slow death. It’s not entirely their fault, and for the first time in years they see that the Ayn Rand-inspired fairy tale about economic winners and losers, free markets, hands-off government, privatization of everything possible, deserving individuals and parasitic masses, self-made by force of iron will and hard work, terribly hard work over many years, is starting to look like what it is: a con. They might not have a name for it, or any theory, they just know it’s unfair and not right. People know something’s not working, not right, and these people are sensible enough to know that blame cannot be laid solely at the feet of undeserving immigrants and criminally lazy black and brown people. The villains we face are in our midst, though most of us will likely never set eyes on them or know their names. Most are men, most are white, most, but not all, are older. Many pretend pious Christian faith. Many give money to foundations and charities and hospitals and symphonies and libraries. Good works for the little people while they continue the pillage of communities and the planet. 

Wow! That’s some heavy shit on a clear, cool afternoon in November. The yard is muddy from a couple of days of rain. The temperature is in the mid-50’s but feels cooler. It was in the low 40’s when I went to the dojo at 5:30 a.m. Only 10 people willing to roll out of bed at that hour and break a sweat. Went to Smart & Final for provisions. Took a nap. Read. Wrote this.

There And Back Again

“Like a dormant cancer waiting for the right conditions to flourish and kill its host, the true face of the system is being revealed as our advanced technological capacity is enabling accelerated economic turnover to satisfy the market’s need for constant economic growth, clashing with natural planetary limits.” Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement

I just returned from Monterey where I attended a conference. I’ve always liked the feel of Monterey, its familiar Mexican street names, adobe and red tile roofs, the nearness of the sea, and the tourists, who come year after year, as regular as migrating birds. The conference was educational and for the most part enjoyable, and in a couple of ways it will help me do my day job a shade better. No taxpayer money was squandered sending me to Monterey. There was a lot of talk during the conference about pension obligations, and how cities and the state Public Employee Retirement System, or PERS as its known, face growing gaps between their funds and their future liabilities. This dilemma is seized upon by a small army of attorneys, advocates, and consultants who offer their expertise and insight in exchange for fees. Judging by the figures and names of donors flashed on huge screens in the main ballroom, the insurance brokers are making out well. They act as go between for agencies and providers in the search that goes on year after year for medical plans that employees can actually afford. The whole system is fraught. Investment returns for PERS haven’t entirely recovered from the 2008 Crash. Due to pressure from labor and environmental groups, PERS has begun divesting from fossil fuels and tobacco stocks.  One consultant argued that this principled approach was hurting the fund’s returns. The same person also said a downturn is imminent. The question will be: how hard will it hit, how long will it last, will the United States recover, and when it does, what will it look like? With a mentally unstable president watching TV in the Oval Office and railing against his enemies, real, perceived or made up out of whole cloth, the last question isn’t trivial. Trump can do even more damage to the country and its rickety institutions than he already has. The Orange Menace, Dictator Donald, King Donald I, Mob Boss Don Trumpito and his crime family -- call him what you choose -- has it in him to wreak more carnage, and in his second term -- which I am resigning myself to believe awaits us -- he will. The rot is simply too deep, the corruption too commonplace and tolerated, the populace too disunited and blinded by ceaseless propaganda masquerading as news. 

During my trip I finished reading How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell. There was much in this book that appealed to me, the importance of unplugging from the electronic world and its relentless algorithm’s and engaging in a practice of deep listening being one thing. Odell is an artist as well as a writer, and when she puts her attention on something, she sees it, and usually she names it very precisely. Good reminders. With that done, I downloaded on my Kindle the latest Le Carre novel, Agent Running in the Field. It’s what we have come to expect from Le Carre, now in his productive twilight years, a story that starts in motion and never stops, and writing that never gets in its own way. As I think about it, Jenny Odell reminded me not to neglect Krista Tippett and the brilliant ideas she and her guests make real. The stuff soothes the soul and reminds one to breathe and be hopeful. There are a lot of people doing important work in this country, all over, who value people and the planet over profit-making and speculation. How does a political party represent these people, workers and students, and elderly folks on Social Security, black and brown and whatever else, any gender and sexual preference? Where a person wants to pray, if they choose to do so, doesn’t bother me. What I fear are fanatics of any stripe and those that impose their will by brute strength or force of arms.  Where’s the party that has the guts to stand up to the Pentagon, the defense contractors, the private spy agencies, the insurance industry, Wall Street, and other financial vultures circling as global capitalism marches grimly toward mass destruction? Has to be people-powered, but that can get out of hand easily. Richard Nixon was scared to death of hippies and potheads and anti-capitalists, and he wasn’t alone. You can start with the most glorious intentions and end up doing the same crap that you once railed against. The Trail of Good Intentions requires many, many compromises along the way. Like most people, I prefer not to be under the yoke of another, except voluntarily, and with the freedom to leave when it suits me. 

I’ve been bothered for a long time that we have trees and plants in our yard that I cannot name. With help from an app called iNaturalist, I have put names with some of the living things that have been part of our lives for over twenty years. We have twelve silver dollar gum trees, one Chinese banyan, a tall West Indian cedrela, a twenty foot tall crimson bottlebrush and two high pittosporum. Because of this foliage we see many birds in the yard, though with the exception of blue jays, hummingbirds, crows, and an occasional woodpecker, I don’t know their precise names. Before I changed my compost container to a black plastic barrel, rats visited often, drawn by the compost bin, which they made a mockery of finding their way into. We heard them, and often saw them at night moving as if on a highway through the silver dollar gums. We also have rosemary, Mexican sage, and a couple varieties of lavender. The soil here is hard, stratified with clay and rocks. Only on those rare occasions when we get consecutive days of rain can I easily turn the soil with a shovel. 

Good to get away, and a relief to have a home and family to return to. My daughter just finished her run as Marianne in Santa Barbara City College’s production of Sense & Sensibility. My son came up from LA to see her and we got to hang and talk some. My kids mostly talk to their mother. One would be a fool not to appreciate such basic good fortune. It’s all most people in the world want. Maybe part of our problem in the so-called First World is our notion that we are the only ones who deserve to live a decent, full life.    

The Nadir of the American Republic

“But that boundless blind faith is beginning to fade now.” Hunter S. Thompson

My head aches. I listen to bits of the House impeachment proceedings, then read about them on my usual outlets -- Truthout, Truthdig, The Nation, Counterpunch, Politico, Democracy NOW -- and try to make sense of it all. What’s abundantly clear is that the Republicans have sold their souls and their children and their pets to Trump, and can no longer even be described as a political party. Noam Chomsky has said numerous times that the current GOP is a criminal organization. When it comes to the Orange Menace, they see no evil, hear no evil and speak nothing but nonsense. Naturally, the blowhards and miscreants over at FOX News spin and slant their coverage to make it appear that the Democrats are throwing punches but not coming close to landing a glove on the innocent Trump. 

It amuses me to hear Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, talk about how the State Department attempted to school the newly established Ukranian government in anti-corruption practices. Coming from the United States -- whose Representatives and Senators are, with few exceptions, purchased, owned and operated by corporate interests, and whose foreign policy history is rife with coups, election interference, regime change operations, spying, invasions, assassination attempts and other malfeseance -- this is laughable, like a convicted pedophile priest teaching sex ed to teenage boys.  

When I think of American corruption, I think of the silky smooth rhetoric of Barack Obama, who couched the power plays of the American empire in words like self-determination, democracy, liberty and justice, and then turned around and authorized targeted assassinations in Afghanistan or wherever else he felt US power needed to be demonstrated. Measured, reasonable language and a Sidewinder missile is how America has always preferred to operate its Empire. The Trump Administration is completely different, of course, crude, clumsy and overt, the shiny facade ripped away to reveal the base intent of Empire (or is the objective now only to enrich Trump and his family?), which is, lest we forget, to thwart global rivals, control natural resources and markets, put down popular uprisings, and justify ever-increasing contributions to the Pentagon war machine. 

The divide in this country, between reality-based citizens and those who dwell in the FOX News ecosystem, is now so deep and broad that I fear America is finished as a representative democracy. We’ve reached such a nadir the two political parties cannot even agree on the most basic facts. If Adam Schiff asserted that Abraham Lincoln was 6’4” tall in his stockings, Republicans would immediately accuse Schiff of inflating Lincoln’s height, Tucker Carlson would call him the biggest liar in American history, and Sean Hannity would devote an entire show to “Height-Gate.” No republic can survive in this atmosphere, not when the economy is primed to implode and the impact of anthropogenic climate change is accelerating by the day. 

Here’s a dim and not very original prediction. The House will impeach Trump on a party-line vote and the Senate will acquit him, also on a party-line vote. If the economy doesn’t implode between now and election day, Trump will lose the popular vote, again, but prevail in the undemocratic Electoral College, again. Four more years of Trump will spell the end of America as we’ve known it. If you can think about that without feeling a sharp pain in your lower intestine, you must be very wealthy, stone dumb, or high on the most potent chemical concoction Big Pharma can come up with. 

The Worst and Dimmest: the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump

“Rich man wanna be king/And a king ain’t satisfied/Till he rules everything.” 

Bruce Springsteen

If hell exists, Devin Nunes will occupy a front row seat in Satan’s luxury box, near the fiery pit, where the smell of sulphur is most pungent. Listening to his opening statement for less than five minutes made me want to puke. An acquaintance, the comedian Kimmie Dee, put it aptly, albeit crudely, when she posted on Facebook that Nunes’s ability to speak with Trump’s dick in his mouth is remarkable. Indeed. Nunes is quite a talent. 

What is the strange hold Trump has over many Republicans? Why does this bombastic, ignorant, narcissistic, ridiculous failure scare the bejesus out of the GOP’s rank and file, its leadership, and the Republican National Committee? I suppose one can ask the same question about any cult leader. Logic, reason, morality, and common sense go right out the window. Here, drink this Kool-Aid and all your doubts and difficulties will evaporate.  There was never any mystery about Donald Trump or any question that he would govern the same way he ran the Trump Organization or that he would fail spectacularly; spectacular failure is Trump’s stock-in-trade, as is lying, cheating, and defrauding others. What is mysterious, baffling, is the utter, complete lack of honor among congressional Republicans. Damn near every last one of them has debased himself or herself since Trump got anointed by the Electoral College. Loyalty to a political party or a leader at the expense of the law, the country, or principle is a hallmark of despotism. Every last member of the GOP has forgotten that he or she swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. The Constitution, not the GOP and certainly not Donald J. Trump. 

What is wrong with these people? Wake up, open your eyes and look at whose ass you’ve been kissing for three years. 

I’m so tired of hearing Republicans claim that Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 election. Republicans conveniently forget that their boy Trump lost the popular vote; the only reason he made it to the White House is because the undemocratic Electoral College favors small states over larger ones. Impeachment is not about the 2016 election. Impeachment is about one co-equal branch of our government checking the abuses of power by the executive. Our Founding White Fathers had many shortcomings, but their fear of unchecked executive power was grounded in experience. 

Having no defense, all Republicans can resort to are spurious attacks on the process.

Thank You For Your Service

“We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors like the war on terrorism, or poverty, or AIDS into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.” Gore Vidal, Dreaming War

Cal never liked Veteran’s Day. Too overhyped. What were we celebrating, after all, but death and destruction? He avoided the parade down State Street, white-haired WWII and Vietnam era vets riding in vintage Army jeeps, waving little flags at the people lining the sidewalk. Everybody clapping. Every year a foursome of old bombers flew over the city, low and lugubrious. Cal thought WWII was righteous, necessary, but every American war since had been dubious, and the so-called War on Terror was a cruel joke, an endless joke, with too many boys coming back maimed or mental. The government had little use for them then, and Cal saw many veterans camping on the steps of the art museum or under the overpass. If I had a son, Cal thought, I’d never let him enlist in the military. 

Cal served eight years in the Air Force. He spent three years in South Korea, one year in Japan, the rest in Texas. He enlisted a few years after Saigon fell, got discharged before the first Gulf War. He remembered the first briefing at the base outside of Wichita Falls, given by a burly Master Sergeant with a flat-top. “I advise you to steer clear of downtown in general, and in particular don’t go down there in uniform. The good ol’ boys around here don’t have much tolerance for military personnel. A couple of airmen got their asses kicked a few weeks back.” 

Times change. Now it was “thank you for your service” everywhere you went, even if, like Cal, you never served in war time. People just assumed he’d been in combat when he told him he was a vet. Since the draft was long gone, most people were clueless. Wars were remote now, out of sight, forgotten. It was hard to believe that young people once flooded the streets to protest the war in Vietnam. The government doesn’t even bother to declare war any more. It’s usually the president who decides that some country or terrorist group is an imminent threat. Once the shooting starts the media loses its mind, oohing and aahing and interviewing retired generals who can’t say enough about America’s ordnance, which is so sophisticated and precise that only enemy forces are targeted. If civilians die it’s never on purpose. You’d think they were talking about Tom Brady’s throwing arm. Dissenting voices are blacked out, so it feels as if the entire country is of one mind. Cal marveled at the effectiveness of the brainwashing; it didn’t take much to convince people that the latest shooting war was justified. It wasn’t like Vietnam when every night on the evening news there were images and casualty figures. Vietnam felt close and real.  

Cal drew the curtains in the living room. Across the street his neighbor Roger had put his American flag out. Roger never served in the military, but he loved the technology of war, especially fighter jets and drones. Roger thought the US had every right to bomb what he called evil nations like North Korea and Iran. Roger got pissed off one time when Cal told him that the US was the biggest threat to peace in the world. Cal had just shrugged and told Roger to check the history, it was all there. A fact is a fact, even if it contradicts what you believe. 

Don’t thank me for my service. Ask me what I did while I served. The closest I ever came to being injured was one day in a dreary little strip mall outside the base in Wichita Falls when a redneck in a Chevy pickup tossed a half-full can of Coors at my head. 

Bukowski Pissed Here

“Because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound on a sane philosophy of life.” James Truslow Adams

My son sends me a photograph of a sign he saw in the men’s room of Cole’s an LA eatery famous for its French-dip sandwich: Charles Bukowski Pissed Here. Old Hank pissed in plenty of bars and restaurants in LA in his day, but if Buk rose from the dead and strolled around LA today he might not recognize his old haunts. A lot of the bars he drank in are gone, as are the factories where he toiled at meaningless jobs. In Buk’s heyday LA was still King of Aerospace, and workers machined parts and assembled fuselages and tested engines. A man could work at McDonnell-Douglas or Hughes Aircraft and make a living wage; he was likely a union member with health benefits and a pension. 

Buk’s LA is mostly a memory just as the Santa Barbara I knew as a boy is mostly a memory. The physical beauty of SB hangs on, but it’s harder and harder to ignore the angst of wage earners over rents and college tuition and medical care, the ranks of unhoused people, and creeping gentrification. Amazon, the behemoth that has done more to kill the State Street retail core than anyone else, will soon occupy a large building on State Street. Irony, I suppose. Seeing the Amazon logo is going to piss me off every time I walk by. Retail cleansing. It’s not that different from a hedge fund buying thousands of single-family homes on the cheap, forcing the owners into foreclosure, and then renting the homes out. Extraction is the name of the game. 

Will the economy belly-flop before the 2020 election? A serious global downturn might be the dagger in Trump’s shriveled heart, and the only thing that can keep him from a second term. His B-team of looters and grifters hasn’t strengthened the economy for anyone except the already wealthy, but then, that was predictable. When the next crash hits the Fed and the rest of the world’s central bankers will have few cards to play. I suspect it will be very ugly for many people, myself included. I don’t own any property or a stock portfolio or a sack of gold bars. I was a working-class kid and I’m a working-class adult.  

Like Henry Miller, Hank Bukowski figured out very early in life that the whole American set-up was a big con, a system of exploitation owned and operated by the wealthy and moneyed interests for their benefit. The rich always climb on the bent backs of the poor. Miller called America “the air-conditioned nightmare.” Then, like now, it was a country of crass commercialism and spiritual emptiness. I think Bukowski saw it as a madhouse, full of dull-eyed, soul-dead people prepared to follow the next snake-oil salesman to come along. Donald Trump in the White House would not surprise Bukowski in the least. Buk watched a number of regimes come and go, Truman, Eisenhower,  JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton. What was the real difference between them? Bukowski would remember that at least until the Carter Administration, the Democrats supported organized labor and needed labor’s backing to retain power. But after Carter the connection between the Democratic Party and labor was ever more tenuous. The Dems began sucking up to banks and insurance companies for campaign dollars. Money started to tilt the playing field. The rich declared war on the spirit of the New Deal and the Democrats helped them wage it. 

The game is fixed, the dice loaded, the house always wins. Figure the game out and a pair of muscle-bound bouncers with thick necks toss you out on the sidewalk. The attention span of the average American is short and Fox News spreads misinformation 24 hours a day. We are lost in a digital wilderness. 

I imagine tracking Henry Miller down to a cliff near his house at Big Sur. I hand him the latest iPhone, demonstrate what he can do with it, and watch as he turns it over in his hands. He stares off at the blue sky. Is he day-dreaming of his days in Paris, living on his wits and guile, hell-bent on becoming an artist and escaping the bonds of convention? He was always more of a sage than a pornographer. Henry wanted to discern the meaning of life, past lives, future lives, all life, every sense awake. I can visit the great museums of the world on this? He asks. I nod. Find photographs of ancient Greece? Yes. Pornography? Yes. Henry smiles at me then tosses the phone over the cliff. 

Donald Trump: “There should be no public impeachment hearings. No private hearings, either. There should be no hearings because it’s all a hoax. My call with the President of Ukraine was perfect, perfecto, no quid pro quo, no collusion. The Bidens should be investigated, they’re crooked. What about Hillary’s emails? All those disappeared emails? The Democrats should investigate that, not me. I can’t be investigated, I have unlimited immunity, perfect immunity, it says so in the Constitution…”

What to do but uncork another bottle of wine and raise a glass to those who refuse to be bought, bribed, fooled, fucked with, deceived or defeated. 

Trump Will Not Go Quietly

“With so much wealth sloshing around, it should not come as a surprise that Blackstone is the largest landlord in the world. Run by Stephen Schwarzman, who spent close to $20 million on his 70th birthday party and is a good pal of fellow real estate magnate Donald Trump, it is the driving force behind gentrification everywhere.” Louis Proyect, Counterpunch

There are no fires burning in Santa Barbara County, yet, but the sky is hazy from fires burning in Ventura, and the air has a familiar burnt smell. Last I heard there were eleven major blazes in our state, and it feels like an apocalypse is drawing nigh. Has a breaking point been reached? Will climate deniers finally acknowledge that climate change is real, global, and happening right now? Not likely. Odds are much better that politicians and their capitalist bagmen will cling to business as usual as long as possible. 

Remember Baghdad Bob or Chemical Ali as he was also known? His real name was Muhammad Saeed al-Sahaf and in 2003 he was Saddam Hussein’s spokesman as the United States unleashed shock and awe on Iraq. Even as American ordnance was raining down, Baghdad Bob insisted that the Iraqi forces were repelling the invaders, blowing fighter jets and bombers out of the sky, and killing Americans by the score. “The Tigris is running with the blood of American soldiers!” Bob would insist, even though it was abundantly clear that Iraq was being bombed into submission. Climate deniers, including King Donald I, remind me of Baghdad Bob. They will keep repeating, “Climate change is a hoax,” until sea water laps up to the doorstep of their estates and the only birds left in existence are seagulls and crows. 

I read on Democracy Now that about 20% of the men and women fighting California’s rash of wildfires are prison inmates. They do the same work, with the same risks to their health and safety, but for pennies per hour, and their service protecting homes and property earns them little in regard to reducing their sentences. No thank you for your service salutes for these inmates, even though the dangerous work they do is far more useful than that of soldiers chasing shadows in Afghanistan or guarding oil fields in northern Syria. 

Some people understand that it’s the oligarchs against the rest of us, and that the only way to beat them is to flood the streets. Ecuador. Venezuela. Hong Kong. Iraq. Puerto Rico. Haiti. Lebanon. People are tired of austerity policies, lack of democracy, perverse wealth inequality, high prices for fuel and food, and inaction on climate change. People are fed up with being deemed disposable. They are tired of being trod upon by the rich. I can’t help but believe a reckoning is coming. 

Trump will not go quietly -- unless he loses the support of enough Republicans, and at the moment his cult followers are holding firm. To move most Republicans to ditch Trump, the impeachment inquiry must produce irrefutable evidence and enough public outcry to make Republicans worry about being on the losing side. If Trump survives impeachment -- and he very well might -- it will be down to November 2020. The Democratic Party machinery is working overtime to secure the nomination for Joe Biden (or someone of similar ilk, corporate-friendly, supporter of tax cuts and free market solutions to all problems, etc.) which likely portends a repeat of 2016. Mainstream Democrats would rather have a second Trump term than lose control of their party to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. This is familiar territory, 1968 and 1972 redux. Joe Biden is out of ideas, out of step, and out of touch. If he wins the nomination and Sanders or Warren do what the party will expect them to do -- hold their noses and climb onboard -- how many young voters and women will stay home on election day? 

If Trump isn’t soundly defeated at the polls and in the Electoral College he will not accept the election result. If he loses by a slender margin, a questionable margin, Trump will contest the results, and unlike Al Gore in 2000, Trump will never, ever, concede defeat for the good of the country. Trump is for Trump and only for Trump. He will give the middle finger to every norm established for the smooth transition of power. Every autocratic impulse in Trump’s bloated body will twitch at the prospect of being the first American president to refuse to hand over the reins.