Kentucky On My Mind

“What is America? America is vanity again! And I daresay there’s a lot of swindling going on in America, too.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mitch McConnel is the most powerful and most unaccountable political figure in the nation. He rules the US Senate, decides what judicial nominees to propose and confirm, how grand a corporate tax reduction to allow, which legislation moves forward and which gets shelved, and how miserly to be when it comes to relief for the common folk. It’s when the commoners are involved that Mitch turns the screws. In McConnell’s view, $600 per eligible head is more than enough relief. What man or woman can’t meet all their human needs on the princely sum of $600? 

When the government heaps tax cuts and write-offs and outright subsidies on giant American corporations, it’s called Capitalism; when the government gives anything of value, no matter how small, to the people, it’s described as Socialism. One is a virtue, the other a terrible evil. 

Mitch is openly contemptible of the American people, even those from his home state of Kentucky who reliably return him to Washington every six years. Thanks, Kentucky, for the party gift. Nobody in America tells Mitch what to do. He controls the money in his caucus, the plum committee assignments, who rises and who falls; no Republican senator can cross McConnell and survive. Mitch is the real Boss Man, far more focused and cunning than the mentally unstable Donald Trump. 

On one hand you have to admire a man with the skills to amass that kind of power, and on the other you have to question a system that puts so much power in the hands of one man. 

Covid-19 is extracting its terrible toll as America stumbles toward 2021. The infection rate and death count rises. California has been hit particularly hard. The level of suffering in this country -- thanks to the sociopathy of Donald J. Trump and a half century of economic policies that have shrunk the middle class and swelled the ranks of the poor -- is the opposite of what America imagines itself to be. Our myths of indispensability will live on, they will just not in any way resemble our reality.

America’s tenure at the top of the world power structure is coming to an end, it’s only a matter of time. The bills for dominance are hefty, it takes trillions of dollars to maintain nearly 800 foreign military outposts, some small, but others massive. 

From George W. Bush to Donald Trump, from the War on Terror to the War on America, that’s what we’ve witnessed in the first two decades of this century. Remember the ideas of Dr. King: violence abroad always comes home. The nation has been at war with some adversary, in some foreign territory, since my daughter was born more than nineteen years ago. These endless conflicts take place beyond the awareness of most Americans. This country squandered its future in armed conflicts abroad, spending trillions of dollars that might have improved the health and welfare and economic security of millions of American citizens. The problem was, and is, our corrupt and thoroughly gamed political system, dominated by two parties who haven’t advanced new ideas in decades. 

As Hunter S. Thompson might say, 2020 has been a King Hell bad year. Bad in every direction. The wealthy, and the lucky, have fared pretty well. I count myself and my small family among the lucky. We have only been inconvenienced, we haven’t suffered privation. My wife had a bout of kidney stones, tripped down two stairs and messed up her ankles, then suffered third degree burns on her right arm when she spilled a pot of boiling water. All that happened in the space of a few months. My daughter tested positive for Covid-19, but thankfully never displayed any symptoms. There were plenty of presents under our Christmas tree. The worst thing to happen to me personally had nothing to do with Covid. I was the victim of a simple property crime in the early morning hours of December 27 when a thief, or thieves, jimmied the door to our laundry room, which is down below our apartment, off the carport, and swiped my Diamondback Insight bicycle. For years I’ve stored the bike down there, hanging from the ceiling, secured to a three inch vertical pipe with a thin steel cable. This thief carried bolt cutters and made easy work of my cable. My Transit saddle bag was on the bike, with my good North Face gloves and small tire pump inside. Gone. Nothing else was touched.  No trace left except the severed cable on the ground. 

It will cost some good money to equip myself with another commuter bike, new saddlebags, lights, gloves, and the best quality lock I can find, before I can resume my 9-minute commute to work. Until then, I’ll walk. What a luxury to live so close to where I toil from 8 to 5. It’s an easy walk, along the perimeter of the high school, past the baseball stadium, then down Canon Perdido to Garden. Another block and a half and I’m there.

It could be worse. 

Happy New Year to all those around the world who from time to time read this obscure blog. 

Boxing Day Massacre

 “That was shambolic.” Post-match reaction from Younes, of the YouTube channel Younes Talks Football

The set up was about as good as it gets in the Premier League. Arsenal sat in 15th place in the table, in apparent disarray, Mikel Arteta under close examination, without a league win since way back in November. They look up from the canvas and see Chelsea approaching, not in top flying form, but still a very good and dangerous team. A win for Chelsea and they would jump to second in the table, at least temporarily. On paper the ingredients predicted a Boxing Day London Derby dominated by Chelsea. Some Chelsea supporters probably thought it was going to be an easy afternoon stroll around the Etihad, maybe a two to nil or three to nil victory and three important points.

This Chelsea supporter was worried, but not because I feared the Gunners. My worry was with the law of averages paired with Chelsea’s record of dropping points in key fixtures, a problem that has existed over the past few seasons. We did this self-immolation dance under Maurizio Sarri, and in Frank Lampard’s first season at the wheel. What I mean by key fixtures are those matches where a win moves us up the table a few places. Over the past two seasons, we’ve haven’t fared well in those situations. Chelsea are not Liverpool or Manchester City -- we don’t put a hurt on other teams. In fact, what we habitually do is make mid and lower table teams look better than they are. 

If the Gunners were going to rise up and show some life, this was the fixture for that resurrection. A London Derby, a big game, and a significant result if they can get one. Arteta went with a group of his younger players. Among others, Aubameyeng and Pepe sat, and defender David Luiz wasn’t in the side. 

Chelsea have reverted to a side-to-side, front-to-back, brand of football that is really annoying. There’s far too much of this unproductive movement. Time and again the ball went to the wings, and from there it was crossed into the box by the likes of Reese James, who had a poor game, and Ben Chilwel, back from an ankle injury. Tammy Abraham, Timo Werner and Christian Pulisic were the front three for Chelsea. We put little pressure on Arsenal when we had the ball, never got a passing rhythm established, or mounted any sustained run of possession to get the tempo where we wanted it. We kept losing the ball in midfield, an area of the pitch we should have dominated with Kovacic, Mason Mount, and N’Golo Kante. When we created opportunities with the ball the crosses we put in were tame or off target. It was like firing a toy cannon. 

I didn’t panic when Arsenal went ahead one-nil via a Lacazette penalty kick. We gave up a penalty and paid for it, something that happens to teams all the time. I thought going behind a goal would light the torch, but Chelsea kept playing to the sides and backwards, and through another error we conceded a free kick in a dangerous area. Xhaka, who was out of favor with Gunners fans for a time, buried his kick in the top corner. At the half the improbable score line was Arsenal 2 and Chelsea 0. 

Even down two goals I thought Chelsea had the wherewithal and talent to come back and get something from the match. They needed to up the tempo and intensity, press high and win the ball back quickly. One of Chelsea’s best players for that role is Mateo Kovacic, but what does Frank Lampard do? He takes Kovacic off and puts Jorginho on! Also coming off is Timo Werner, replaced by Hudson-Odoi. That left me scratching my head. 

The change of personnel didn’t work in any case, as Arsenal scored a third goal through young Saka. Two goals, maybe a comeback is possible, three, no way. Chelsea had done it yet again, dropping key points at the most inopportune time. This penchant is in Chelsea’s DNA. We were so poor that our first shot on target didn’t arrive until the 80th minute. That’s shocking. 

Jorginho placed a cherry atop Chelsea’s misery when he did his hoppity-hop move and missed a penalty kick. Had Werner been on the pitch he would have taken that kick. 

It’s clear that without the passing ability and creativity of Hakim Ziyech, Chelsea are one dimensional. It’s rare to see Chelsea attack down the middle of the pitch. Christian Pulisic is the player most likely to do so, but he needs runs from other players to create space for himself. Chelsea have dropped three of their last four Premier League matches, a worrying signal that Frank Lampard and his staff better find some answers. This is December and the matches keep coming. We sometimes allow Lampard a pass because of his status as a legendary Chelsea player, but if Chelsea continue the way they are now -- flat, lacking intensity, energy and urgency -- Lampard may find himself under the gun. The club spent big money in the summer transfer window, bringing Werner, Kai Havertz, Ziyech, Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, and Edouard Mendy aboard. Havertz looks like a man lost at the moment, while his German compatriot Werner might struggle to hit a target as wide as the English Channel. 

I didn’t bother looking for our position in the table. I know we fell further behind Leicester and Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool and Southampton. The Premier League is unforgiving. December in the PL is like an iceberg. Pity the club that collides with it.  

The Waning Nights of Count Trumpula

“From the very first wave of the virus, Trump and his entourage of quacks and enablers have failed the most basic tests of governance and leadership.” Elie Mystal, The Nation

The waning days of December. Here on the central coast of California the weather is gorgeous, clear skies and sunshine. It’s almost enough to make one forget the pandemic and the economic misery faced by so many in places where the sky isn’t filled with light. It’s winter now, according to the calendar, the winter of American discontent. Congress (at least the half that flies under the Trump Party banner) dithered for months while both the pandemic and the economy worsened. Then, at the eleventh hour, the benevolent servants of the people agreed to dole out a measly $600 for those eligible. That’s what people are worth to this Congress, with its tame Democrats and ideologically stunted Republicans, some of whom had the gall to complain that giving more relief to citizens would expand the deficit. Let’s be clear: Republicans gave not two shits about the deficit when they lavished tax cuts on their wealthy donors and corporate sponsors. The hypocrisy never ends. 

State and local governments got left out of the relief package, which surely portends deep cuts in public services at a time when the public needs those services more than ever. Such is the logic of our cruel capitalism. The rich get tax breaks, the poor get austerity. Trickle down economics means the same thing today that it meant in 1980: the rich piss on the poor from ever greater heights. 

Mercifully, Donald Trump has been dragged from the spotlight where he loves to twirl and preen, but this can only be a temporary lull. The deluded president, prodded by a small cadre of extremists, continues to claim that he won the election in a landslide. This isn’t even in the same zip code with the truth -- Trump lost, and he lost badly. What he cannot accept is that more than 80 million people voted against him, rejected him, fired him. Trump’s fragile ego and fear of being exposed for what he is -- a broken little boy who could never win the love of his mommy and daddy -- cannot handle such a public rebuke. Trump is the worst kind of rich punk because he’s also an asshole, and a cruel one at that. This frightened little man can’t bring himself to offer even a sentence of empathy about the more than 320,000 Americans dead of Covid-19. He doesn’t care, it’s just a number, an abstract idea. 

We will pay dearly for the damage of the Trump years. He has amplified differences and a perverse brand of patriotism. Fear rules in TrumpLand and the ranks of threatening “others” grows all the time. It’s you or them. Choose your side, there’s no middle ground. But once you start demonizing people as “others” where does it end? Where do you draw the line? Who decides who is in and who must be expelled? 

What’s to become of a country indifferent to the deaths of some 320,000 of its citizens? How many of these deaths were preventable? How many were sped along because so many Americans lack access to affordable health care? How many can we lay at the feet of our Market God, who demanded that commerce continue even if it meant that millions of people would be exposed to Covid-19? 

Count Trumpula roams the White House after midnight, looking under beds for conspiracies, tugging at the corners of rugs in search of fake ballots, listening for the ghost of Hugo Chavez. What’s his exit plan? How can a strong man leave the stage voluntarily without appearing weak? The notions from the Fever Swamp become more unhinged: Declare martial law and re-run the election, says retired Army general, and convicted and pardoned felon, Michael Flynn. Seize the voting machines! Stop the steal! It was a landslide and we won! If the Secretary of Defense was a public servant instead of a Trump toady, Flynn would be recalled to active service and court-martialed for sedition. Flynn, whose retirement is paid by American taxpayers, is only too happy to subvert the will of the voters, and piss on the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend. 

The nearer we draw to January 20, the more erratic Trump will become. His only instinct is self-preservation. In his mind, nothing came before him, and nothing will come after. He is the sun and the moon and the stars. He is thunder and lightning, hurricane and flood, fire and ash; he is Death. 

Will We Forget?

 “They will, at last, realize themselves that there cannot be enough freedom and bread for everybody, for they will never, never be able to let everyone have his fair share!” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

This infernal year of plague and death and strife, trapped in the grip of greed and arrogance, careening for the abyss at top speed. It’s hard to decide where to begin. Should I begin with the photographs I took of downtown SB in March, during the first lockdown, when store shelves were bare and the streets were eerily quiet, deserted? When toilet paper was as good as money? Or do I start with the criminal negligence of the Trump Crime Family (TCF)? 

Remember Trump’s statements, day after day, about a few people coming in from China, how Covid would one day go away like a miracle, and that in any case it was no worse than the seasonal flu? 

Will we forget Liberate Michigan?

Human nature being what it is, I fear we will forget what has happened this year, misunderstand its deeper meaning, and how dangerous the game we’re playing with our limited democratic freedoms is. I’m afraid we will forget what an utter disaster Donald Trump has been. That with the passage of only a little time, we will forget the more than 300,000 Americans who have died on Trump’s watch, forget the millions more who lost their economic footing because Trump’s response to the pandemic was so inept, ignorant, incompetent, and indifferent to the reality of the situation. While Trump denied science and commonsense -- and babbled about miracle cures, ingesting bleach and disinfectants, herd immunity, and packed churches on Easter Sunday -- Americans suffered and died. 

Writing in the Nation magazine recently, Elie Mystal noted the following: “And yet, somehow, even all of this -- the bleach, the rallies, the unconscionable disregard for life -- fails to capture the full scope of the harm he’s done to this country. Trump’s anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture-war mongering have filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame.”

I’m afraid that neither Trump or any of his many, many enablers will be held accountable for the damage they’ve done, or for how casually many of them betrayed their oath of office. Was that taste of power worth it? 

We must never forget the 18 state attorney generals and 126 Republican members of the US House of Representatives who supported the corrupt Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, and the bogus legal claim he mounted in an effort to overturn the results of the election and cancel out the legal votes of millions of Americans. 

Will we forget the ranks of silent Republican senators, who stood by while Trump mounted one laughable legal challenge after another in state and federal courts? Who said nothing when Trump claimed the election was rigged and that he’d never accept the result? Will we forget this wholesale absence of principle and courage? 

William Barr, good riddance doughboy, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, so no mercy will be shown to you. Your trangressions are many, but none more repugnant than reinstating the death penalty for certain federal crimes, and then executing condemned people in record numbers, including Orlando Hall and Brandon Bernard. 

One lesson to be learned from 2020 is that mercy is hard to come by in America, particularly for the poor and marginalized. Perhaps we never had mercy in us to give. Americans have always killed to gain land, territory, minerals, and wealth, or to terrorize people deemed a threat.  

I’m afraid we will forget George Floyd, Breeona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, just to name a few. 

But Kyle Rittenhouse, a sad, deluded white kid who murdered two people protesting police brutality, will be considered a hero in many quarters. Will we forget hate groups like the Proud Boys, who crawled from the shadows to stand in Trump’s malign spotlight?

Will we forget uniformed but unidentified federal agents plucking people off the streets of Portland, Oregon? Or those federal goons under the direction of William Barr, who drove peaceful protesters out of Lafeyette Square with pepper bombs, rubber bullets, batons and shields, all so Donald Trump could make a triumphant march across the street to the church -- where the idiot held the good book upside down.  

As Donald Trump rants and raves about massive voter fraud, let’s not forget all the efforts by the Republican Party to cripple the US Mail service, reduce the number of polling places and ballot drop boxes. Voter suppression is the real election fraud in America, and it is engineered by a Republican Party that is openly hostile to democracy. 

Will we forget politics by stunt? 

We would be wise to think hard about the divisions, fissures, and fractures the Trump years and this deadly pandemic have revealed about our country, its insidious racism, militarism, and wealth inequality. 

When Donald Trump talked about “American carnage” in his inauguration speech in January 2017, I don’t think many people understood what he meant. Trump made it seem that America was at war with itself. It wasn’t true on that day, but it is true now. 

Running for the Cliff

 

“Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving.” Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

Where’s Mike Pence? Where’s the VP while Don-the-Denier wanks and whines and blows idiot winds every time he opens his mouth? Has Mike jumped the Trump ship? Is he working on his story, a patriotic tale of how he, and he alone, prevented Trump from blowing up the world? Contrary to all the evidence, you can bet Mike Pence will portray himself, not as Trump’s docile lapdog, but as a ferocious behind-the-scenes champion of the American Way. Start putting the campaign ads together, because Mike Pence will be running for something soon enough. 

The Republicans, or as I now refer to the GOP, the Trump Party, hasn’t seemed to miss Pence. You don’t hear much about his whereabouts, which is a pretty good clue that even corruptible Mike Pence has a limit to what he’ll put his name behind. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the congressional gangsters, gadflys, goofballs, geeks, and grifters have no apparent limit. They represent a cesspool with no bottom. They lust after the power to force their minority viewpoint on the majority in this country. They’ve grown accustomed to wielding or withholding this power as they please. To them, compromise is a foreign, dirty word. Duty is in the eye of the beholder. Honor is reserved for the winners. 

The Democrats are generally less corrupt but no less owned and operated by Corporate America. I promised myself that I would not pay much attention to Biden’s picks for his cabinet and key agencies, knowing they would piss me off and make me feel discouraged before Biden assumes office. I  have watched Joe Biden for years, and to me he’s less a Democrat than he is what we used to call a “moderate” Republican. Believe it or not, there were quite a few of them back in the day, and they often joined Democrats in passing legislation that made the lives of working-class America less precarious. They’re all extinct now, not one to be found unless you count Mitt Romney, or possibly Larry Hogan, the Governor of Maryland. Hogan neither disgusts or scares me -- he seems like a sensible man and a decent human being. Mitt Romney disappoints me. He’s a wealthy man, beholden to no one except the Mormon church, with nothing at risk, and even Romney won’t step out and flatly declare that Trump’s clumsy, inept and stupid attempts to subvert the will of the voters is not only wrong, it’s dangerous for the nation.

Hey Trump Party members, answer me this: are y’all really going the Joseph McCarthy route, full batshit, conspiracies behind every door of every house in blue America; fever dreams about about brown and black people threatening to take over major cities; dire warnings about death-crazed Muslims intent on imposing sharia law in the white suburbs where the Christians live. Is that the deal with you people? Are you going to be bullied by a nihilistic movement -- I’m talking about Trumpism -- that is doomed to consume itself, and you with it? You need to repent by declaring yourself free of Trump’s hold. Crazy doesn’t work. Stand up and condemn the crap that Trump’s foisting on the nation day after day. Can’t you see how desperate he looks, and how dangerous what he’s doing is? Surely you can see. He lost. You know he did, the numbers don’t lie. The Supreme Court just sent you a very clear message. Joe Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump. Biden thumped Trump’s ass. That stupid Texas lawsuit is going nowhere. The election was a resounding repudiation of Donald Trump’s brand of dangerous, callous incompetence and madness. That so many people voted for Trump worries me greatly, but the majority declared that enough is enough.  

But no matter what, on January 20, 2021, the Trump Party will still be here. That diseased herd is running full tilt for the cliff, all chasing Trump’s long and ugly shadow, all willing to sell mind and soul for another handful of magic beans. They keep backing Trump’s play, mucking around at the perimeter of the law, afraid that Dear Leader will frown with disfavor and sic his most demented followers on them. Trump’s people are loud and mean on Twitter and Facebook, and  some of these fools are now showing up at the residences of elected officials, demanding they break the law and put the fix in for Trump. As for Trump, he’s never shy about his corruption, it’s business-as-usual to him, the way it’s done, so he calls the governors of swing states in broad daylight, from the Oval Office, and pressures them to rip up their state constitutions and order their attorney’s general to subvert the law and make Trump win. 

Trump is one dumb fucker, I have to say. It’s astonishing to me how stupid he is, how illogical and childish and moronic. He says the most ridiculous shit, like, “I won. I’m 2-0 in elections. I got more votes than Obama.” But you got 7 million less than Joe Biden, your opponent, or were you running, in that gelatinous brain of yours, against Obama’s ghost?

And how about Trump’s understanding of the Supreme Court? It comes down to this: If Trump appoints them, it means they are forever beholden to him and must always rule in his favor. It’s that transactional, that simple, they must obey the king. Trump still believes the Supreme Court, his Court, will somehow, some way, reverse the election results and hand him a second term. 

Where’s Mike? I don’t know and don’t really care. Maybe he’s hiding in the wings until Trump summons him to do him a service, to bend forward and kiss the ring, then produce a magic wand and make it all come true. 

Will Americans Ever Connect the Dots?

 “The calm that is called the calm before the storm, but is in reality the foundation of a human life, waiting there for us between the steps of our march to our mortality, when we are compelled to pause and not act but be.” Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

Yesterday my nineteen-year-old daughter tested positive for Covid-19, becoming the first person in my immediate family to contract the virus. Fortunately, her case appears mild and she should recover; she’s more upset about having brought it home than she is with how she feels. This morning my wife and I got tested at Sansum Clinic. We’re both waiting for the results to appear in our electronic files. 

And now we’re all back in quarantine, canceling hair appointments, and ordering groceries on Instacart. 

I never doubted that Covid-19 was real. I’m a liberal native Californian and I believe in science. I don’t doubt that climate change is real and in progress. Even though it’s slow and messy and subject to being corrupted, I believe that democracy offers the best chance for human beings to live together in imperfect harmony. I believe that citizens of civilized countries have a human right to basic retirement security, public education, and medical care. There are some things for which a market solution is ill-suited, and satisfying basic human needs is one of them. If we invested half as much money into these public goods as we flood the Pentagon with decade after decade, millions of American citizens of whatever political persuasion, or none at all, could instantly improve the quality of their lives. We can afford it. Make pragmatic investments in people and you will reap multiple rewards. It’s not much different from planting seeds in rich soil. 

Going into the election I knew two things. First, Biden and Harris had to win by a large margin, a margin, in the words of MSNBC’s Glenn Kirschner, too big to steal. Because the second thing I knew was that whether or not Biden’s margin of victory was significant or slender, Trump was going to contest the results with all of his manic energy. This response was entirely predictable to anyone who has watched Trump in action during the past four years -- years which to me have passed like decades. 

It was obvious from Day One that Trump was in over his head. The journalist David Cay Johnston has reported on Trump’s business and moral failures for nearly forty years, documented his fraudulent tax and insurance schemes, his habit of ripping off vendors, contractors, and creditors. Johnston knew the Real Donald Trump: the great business wizard who bankrupted a casino, an airline, and a bogus university. The misogynist and racist. The malevolent narcissist. The incompetent man-child. The criminal. None of it was any secret. 

It was all out in the open, which, strangely enough, is where Trump likes it because he has adapted schoolyard verbal jujitsu for the digital age. Call him fat, he calls you ugly. Call him racist, he’ll say he’s the least racist person in the room, even if the room he happens to be in is full of hooded KKK members. Call him a liar, he calls you fake news. 

With Trump it all comes down to the old schoolyard taunt: what are you going to do about it? A question spoken with a condescending sneer. The “It” can be passing state secrets to our adversaries; it can be funneling public funds into his personal property in violation of the Constitution; it can be thwarting the legitimate authority of the Legislative Branch; it can be withholding congressionally-approved funds in exchange for damaging information on a chief political rival. If you don’t stop Trump out the gate, you’ve already lost. In a functioning democracy, with political parties who now and then pause to recall who they really work for, and from time to time muster the ability to act with the merest courage and honor, Trump would have been gone two years ago, either by impeachment or forced resignation. Disgraced either way, as he should have been. 

For the next quarter century, political scientists and sociologists and psychologists and many other learned people will study the reasons Donald J. Trump became, against all the rules of reason and common sense, President of the United States; they will study what it has cost all of us, ponder and investigate why the Republican Party traded its soul to become the Trump Party. 

It takes time to see the myriad results a set of human actions produces, just as it takes time for water to wear down rock. The ground was prepared for Trump twenty years ago, after 9/11, when our country lost its senses and responded to the terrorist attacks by launching a never-ending War on Terror on a global scale. Think of what that misguided response produced. The Patriot Act is a big one because of what came after it was passed with bipartisan support. In the name of “security” and without much debate, politicians gave away the keys to our privacy. They gave us the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security, mass surveillance of Americans, the invasion and occupation of Afgahanistan (longest war in Amerian history, still going on to this day), the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the prison at Guantanamo, systematic torture of suspected enemies, Abu Ghraib. 

The Executive Branch of our government -- one of supposedly three equal branches -- was ceded enormous powers, the architects blind, or more likely indifferent, to what damage those powers could do to the nation if they fell into the wrong hands. Into corrupt hands. 

Into Donald Trump’s small, weak, and dishonest white hands. 

The deep tissue damage that Trump and his Trump Party enablers has done to our country isn’t clear yet, and won’t be for some time. That some 73 million voters don’t seem concerned is a matter for pause and reflection, though we have little time for either because Trump and his gang of misfits allowed the pandemic to spiral out of control. 14 million positive cases and 100,000 hospitalizations reported by CNN today; some 2,700 Americans dying each day; nearly 276,000 Americans dead since March. Schools closed. Small businesses suffering, many closing. Life at a standstill, stuck in a holding pattern, or collapsing. 

In 2015, Trump’s jones for the spotlight and things he can attach his name to and squeeze money from, brought us the long campaign infomercial called Trump 2016. He expected to lose, he knew he would, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was the attention and the TV ratings. Upon losing he’d declare the whole exercise fraudulent and walk away with a gleaming new persona to hawk. He was all set to become the Legend of Donald Trump, the man who could’ve restored America to its full splendor if Hillary Clinton and the Democrats hadn’t cheated, lied, fabricated, falsified and distributed millions of ballots to illegal immigrants. That was the story.

“I could have been the greatest president of all time, bigger than George Washington, even bigger than Abraham Lincoln.”

But then Trump won. His longshot wager came in and a whole new world ripe for grift came into view. He was like a pirate gazing at an under defended port city. For four years he got to play in the biggest sandbox in the world, and all those federal agencies, but especially the IRS and the Justice Department, worked for him now. All he had to do was tip the applecart upside down, reward people for being loyal to him, even if that meant they were stone incompetent or grostequely compromised, like Wilbur Ross and Betsy DeVos. No pun intended, but in Trump’s world, loyalty trumps competence. In fact, competence is frowned upon. 

Covid-19 is raging across the land. We’re a fearful and confused people right now, isolated in our warring camps, tribes, cities, townships, on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On the television and the radio. We never ask who owns those enormous squawk boxes, or question why they are allowed to use their government license to flood the public airwaves with divisive, misleading and false information. We have to put aside our differences for a moment and ask why so much of the underpinning of our lives is sold to us by a very small number of monopolies, like Amazon and Facebook, Google and AT&T, and see that as the wealth of the owners increases dramatically, the wealth of the people who labor and who cannot live on interest and dividends, gets much worse. We devote more time and energy to slinging insults and fists and words at one another -- and I’m guilty of it myself -- than we do trying to recognize the forces and hands that make our lives less full, less secure, less predictable, less physically and mentally healthy, less generous, less tolerant, and less merciful.  

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you want to understand the tree, you’ve got to study its roots. 

The Alchemist of Bullshit

 

“What can a man do in the face of the world’s injustice? Unite with others seeking non individual means of action.” Ricardo Piglia, The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: Formative Years

Create reality. Stage a “faux” public hearing, with Rudy G center stage, and have Donald Trump call-in. Give Trump space to spew lies about the election outcome, the fraud, the steal, the conspiracy. Get the images and sound bites on Fox, send them to the far corners of the right wing reservation. By force of repetition, make millions of people believe in something that didn’t happen. Trump’s all-in for the game. Whatever he can do to tarnish Joe Biden’s convincing win, cast doubt on it, challenge it on the basis of slogans and opinion, blame Democrats, leftists, Antifa, Hillary Clinton, Hugo Chavez and the Evil Empire, Venezuela. Win the narrative war, turn defeat into victory. 

Trump is a salesman of non-refundable dreams. He can turn any negative into a positive, come up with a counter-accusation every time he is confronted with his failure or stupidity. Lack of shame is one reason Trump is so vile. The worst thing that has ever happened to Trump, the most public rejection he’s ever faced, is losing to Joe Biden by six million votes. This is intolerable to Trump’s fragile psyche. That’s why he’s not conceding his loss, and persistently testing the guardrails for weaknesses. I expect Trump to turn up the rhetorical volume as key dates in the certification and electoral college process draw near. Trump’s not done, he doesn’t realize that he’s trapped by cruel reality. 

Covid, the pandemic Donald Trump turned his back on, quit on, like a golfer who drops his clubs and walks off the course. 

Democracy is fragile. More so than I ever before believed. Think about what Trump is doing -- he’s actively attempting to subvert our democratic election. When he called in to the faux hearing he said, “We have to turn the election over?” How is what he’s doing and saying not an attempted coup? 

Trump’s latest gambit is to ignore the 80 million votes that Biden received and instead declare that since he, Trump, received more popular votes than Ronald Reagan, he should win re-election. Such is the logic of Trump World. Every move Trump makes is part of an effort to transform make-believe into hard reality. 

Trump is an alchemist of bullshit. 

When the DJIA (the stock market index) hit 30,000 this week Trump naturally took credit for it, with Mike Pence at his side. Trump called it a “sacred number.” He didn’t need to reveal who the number was sacred to because that’s obvious: he meant his class of people, those with money to speculate, those who climb up on the backs of other people, those who lie, cheat and swindle, those who equate money with morality, and those who are rarely held accountable for the harm they do. That number doesn’t mean a damn thing to the majority of Americans who work for a living, draw a paycheck, pay their full share of taxes. That the DJIA hit 30,000 -- on the same day the news was full of stories about lines of cars outside food banks all across the country -- was the perfect snapshot of this country at this moment. Grotesque and perverse wealth inequality. It was also the day records for Covid-19 infections and deaths were broken. Covid, the pandemic Donald Trump turned his back on, quit on, like a golfer who drops his clubs and walks off the course. 

A 30,000 Dow simply means that the speculators and money-changers had a good day. It doesn’t shorten the line of cars waiting at the food bank, or calm hungry and anxious people who fear the food might run out before their turn comes. The economic shock caused by the Covid pandemic and Trump’s failed response has only begun -- there’s more to come. We are witnessing the first stage of the pain. Our most vulnerable citizens are the canary in the coal mine. The DJIA hit 30,000 because the Federal Reserve, the institution created to facilitate the needs of our banking system, has created a monster asset bubble. When it comes to matters of capital, labor, speculation, and the financialized economy Americans are woefully uneducated. We don’t understand how thoroughly finance and corporate power have taken over, obliterated the middle class, and brought us closer to fascism than we have ever come before. It’s a Tyranny of Finance. 

The Biden administration will resemble the Obama administration in the same way the Obama administration resembled the Clinton administration: centrist, corporate-friendly, supportive of military adventures and fiscal austerity for working Americans. Biden will rearrange the furniture, toss the gaudy and gauche, but he’ll never change the architecture. If the country is really lucky, Biden will be a maintenance & repair president. Forget transformation, it won’t happen. Our country’s in bad shape. The economic structure is not sustainable. The political system is so broken and riven with partisanship that it cannot respond to the needs of the people. Right now we need sane, sober, steady and serious leadership. 

But January 20, 2021 is still a way’s off, on the far side of a minefield. 

Transforming the Host

“A Republican seizure of power based not on the strength of the party’s ideas but on massive disenfranchisement denies citizens not only their rights, but also the talisman of humanity that voting represents.” Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote

Lazy Sunday afternoon in Santa Barbara town, blue sky and sunshine and a very comfortable seventy-one degrees. My son is in the kitchen behind me, baking cinnamon rolls. He’s twenty-four and never stops eating. My daughter is in her bedroom, door closed against the entry of her brother who pesters her endlessly. My wife is perched on the sofa with her laptop, pecking away at work. Yesterday I watched my steadily improving Chelsea football team beat Newcastle United, 2-0 away at St. James’ Park. Solid win. Tottenham is next on the Premier League schedule, at home. Tottenham beat Manchester City, 2-0 at home yesterday and moved top of the league. City have experienced a rocky start, and against Spurs they struggled to solve Jose Mourinho’s tactical set-up. Midweek there is Champions League group action. The poor players are being run ragged by a compressed fixture schedule and, no surprise, the training room of many clubs are full of players with muscular injuries. Christian Pulisic for Chelsea. Sergio Aguero for Man City. Many others. The injury bug and positive Covid-19 tests have hit Liverpool hard. They lost star defender Virgil van Dijk for the season with an ACL injury. Still, the Reds roll on, cruising past Leicester by a 3-nil margin. Jurgen Klopp has built a winning machine. 

Winners and losers. The presidential election is staggering its way toward certification, though the Trump campaign is slowing the process with lawsuits and demands for recounts. The president, always on alert for another democratic norm to subvert, intervened personally by calling two Trump Party vote canvassers in Michigan; he then invited a delegation of Michigan Trump Party lawmakers to the White House, presumably to coerce them to ignore the will of Michigan voters (who overwhelmingly chose Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), and award the state’s electoral college votes to him. Since I didn’t read about or hear a peep of protest, I assume this kind of election interference is legal. It just looks like the kind of thing a mob boss might do. 

Democracy in this country relies on norms, on faith in processes, and on those in power putting the country’s welfare ahead of their own. 

Trump will never concede, never lend a hand to the incoming Biden team, and never stop moaning about voter fraud, fake ballots, and how the election was stolen from him, the greatest US president of all time. That’s the Trump narrative.  Get used to hearing it, or some variation thereof. Maybe Trump will adopt Rudy G’s theory that Hugo Chavez rose from his grave in Venezuela and, along with secret operatives from Cuba and China, financial help from George Soros, and wizardry from Big Tech, rewired voting machines and deviously flipped millions of votes from Trump to Biden.  Until his last breath Trump will repeat, “I won in a landslide.”

Truth. Facts. Logic. Reason. Trump and his minions have stomped on this quartet for four years, almost rendered all four of these vital components of a liberal society irrelevant. It’s an astonishing achievement to make millions of people believe in things that are demonstrably false, like Trump’s fantasy auto plants in Michigan, steel mills in Pennsylvania, and resurgent coal mines in West Virginia. Millions of American voters obviously want very much to believe in the charade Trump has waged on them. In his excellent book, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World, investigative journalist Tom Burgis documents how a new breed of global leaders obtain and maintain power by widely disseminating alternate truths. Putin. Bolsonaro. Xi JinPing. Modi. Mohammed bin Salman. Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump.  Here’s a quote from Burgis that illuminates the situation: “To hold total power you didn’t need your truth to beat your enemy’s, but to destabilize the very idea of truth, neutering its power to challenge any narrative you might select.”

Undermining the truth is what Trump has done in the United States, and now he’s casting about wildly in an attempt to delegitimize his defeat by Joe Biden. It probably won’t work in the end, but it will do lasting damage to our country. Democracy in this country relies on norms, on faith in processes, and on those in power putting the country’s welfare ahead of their own. Trump, of course, has turned these notions on their head. Here’s another quote from Kleptopia that applies to what Trump has been doing for the past four years: “But the new kleptocrats were subverting the state, using its institutions against itself, to seize for themselves that which rightfully belonged to the commonwealth.”

On his way out the door and into litigation hell, Trump will grab Uncle Sam’s frayed coat and try to drag the old man down with him. Though Trump will be gone, Trumpism will live on. Here’s another quote from Tom Burgis that should give us pause and also make us consider how we can strengthen our laws and institutions to prevent the next Trump from rising out of the swamp: 

“Those who resist them believe that, once they are gone, the institutions they have distorted will snap back to how they were. But like a parasite altering a cell it invades, so kleptocratic power transforms its host. Those who use their public office to steal must hold on to it not just for the chance of further riches but in order to maintain the immunity from prosecution that goes with it. When elections come around, losing is not an option.”

Long Nights in Loserville

“It was outside the realm of what happens, so incongruous and out of touch with the way things are meant to be in the world that people would deny and dismiss and discount anything you said because it didn’t fit with normality.” Tom Burgis, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World

The White House must resemble a funeral parlor these days. Rank and file staffers tiptoe in the corridors, deathly afraid of causing any commotion that might further upset the Big Baby in the Oval Office. Trump has finally stopped throwing himself on the carpet and screaming “Fraud” at the top of his lungs, but he continues to hurl Big Mac’s and French fries from his gilded high-chair. The defeated Orange Menace has kept a low profile of late, with few public appearances, but he’s as active on Twitter as ever, and his camp is working the grift as hard as they can, hectoring supporters for contributions to fight the fraud and thwart the steal. Most of the money raised will go to retiring the campaign’s debts rather than fund doomed-to-fail legal challenges.

Even though the GOP is utterly Trump’s party, he lost while most Republican candidates fared just fine. That must really gall Trump. It’s a flashing example of how much he is disliked by the majority of American voters. But, and this is a question the Democrats need to answer, what do the results in House and Senate races say about the Democratic Party?  

I’m pretty certain that a Biden administration will not spend much time, if any, probing the many misdeeds committed by Trump and his gang of miscreants. Like Obama before him, who declined to go after the criminal bankers who caused the Great Recession, or George W. Bush administration officials who sanctioned torture in the failed War on Terror, it’s not in Biden’s nature. He’ll call America to turn from the past toward the future, and in so doing perpetuate the gangrene that afflicts the American political and economic system: lack of accountability. In case you haven’t noticed, accountability and punishment in America is reserved for the masses, not the elites. The masses are lucky if they get three strikes before the heavy hand of the law lands on them, and far too many people are put away for a single mistake. Trump deserves to swing for all the damage he has inflicted on our fragile democracy, our standing in the world, the environment, government agencies, the federal courts and race relations. And for playing deadly politics with the Covid pandemic, deceiving the American people about the seriousness of the Coronavirus for months on end. Mocking people for wearing masks. Calling it a hoax. Blaming the Chinese.  But it’s not only Trump. His many enablers deserve punishment, too, starting with Chief Ratfucker, Mitch McConnell. Measure orange jumpsuits for Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Doug Collins, Kevin McCarthy, Kelly Loeffler, Louis Dejoy, and Stephen Miller. (Add one of those masks like Hannibal Lecter wore in Silence of the Lambs for Miller. He’s a creepy fucker.) The lot should be chained together and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. 

I’m not holding my breath. 

The Cult of Trump may wither for lack of oxygen once the Orange Menace leaves the big stage, but it won’t disappear entirely because the conditions that gave rise to Donald Trump are still present. Cancerous cells don’t disappear of their own accord. The collective anger Trump tapped into in 2016, and spent the last four year stoking, won’t vanish. Millions of Americans are angry, frustrated, scared to death of the future and on the lookout for someone or something to blame. That impulse isn’t going away; it will continue to simmer. The Proud Boys and other groups of that malignant ilk, have enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame and notoriety, dressing up in their camo gear, lacing up their boots, and dreaming of a country free of people of color.  In their twisted view it can all be made the way it never was -- a white man’s Garden of Eden. They seem to believe that we can return to the time when women stayed in the kitchen and Negroes and Mexicans knew their place, go back to the days when this was a Christian nation, ruled by the good book. Sorry, boys, you cannot unwind the clock. The world’s changed, the colonies look different now, America has competition, our country is already a rainbow, but you refuse to accept it. It messes up your story of victimhood at the hands of women, minorities, and Chinese factory workers. 

I saw a report recently that said that the pandemic has been a boon for billionaires. Since the start of the pandemic, America’s oligarchs have made money hand over fist while millions of working people have struggled to make the rent, buy food, and pay medical expenses. In times good or bad, the wealthy make out fine, but what’s happening now is madness. It’s painfully clear that the economy is completely rigged in favor of the wealthy. Working people are playing with a two-headed coin. The only way the masses win is if the coin lands on its edge, and how often does that happen? It took nearly half a century for the nation to get to this level of wealth inequality. It took gutting the New Deal, easing regulations on big business and putting a boot on the throat of organized labor; it took a reinterpretation of antitrust laws that allowed monopolies to form; it took numerous Supreme Court rulings that benefitted business and weakened the rights of workers, voters, and consumers; and it took massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich. Ever since Richard Nixon loaded the Supreme Court with business-friendly, conservative justices, working people and consumers have lost ground. 

The anger millions of Americans feel, and that Donald Trump skillfully harnessed against illegal immigrants, NAFTA, liberals, and China, is misdirected. That’s not what did us in; the style of capitalism we play is the culprit. Winner-Take-All. Too Big to Fail. No Monopoly Too Powerful. The Wall Street money guys, with help from Democrats and Republicans, killed the American Dream. 

 

Coup a la Trump?

“The American experiment does not have to work. Empires and nations rise and fall.” Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books

What does an aspiring strongman need? Collaborators in high places. Dedicated rank & file minions to parrot Dear Leader’s line. Mitch McConnell. Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. William Barr. Let the record show that these men are collaborators. Traitors to their oath of office and the American people. They are aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s effort to overturn a democratic outcome. It’s happening in plain sight and in corridors of power we can not know about. If you doubt this is their aim, watch the video recording of Pompeo speaking to the media yesterday. With the smirk of a diabolical asshole on his face, Pompeo said the transition to a second Trump administration would be smooth. The sitting Secretary of State flat-out refused to acknowledge the president-elect.  Think about that. None of us have ever seen such outrageous behavior from a Cabinet official. 

Many political analysts and journalists thought it would go down like this: Trump prematurely claiming victory, casting allegations about vote fraud, mounting as many legal challenges as possible, no matter how frivolous, creating chaos and uncertainty in a process that produced its fair outcome, refusing to concede that Biden won the election. If the Democrats rigged the election, they botched the job so badly that they lost seats in the House and failed to flip the Senate. Make no mistake, the election was a referendum on Donald Trump. It wasn’t stolen, Trump lost. The country’s not ready to throw in the towel yet. Too many of us still believe in the American experiment. 

Unfortunately, the finish line still lies ahead and Trump is a master of delay. The longer he fans the flames of doubt, the better for him. He’s got his collaborators and almost all the rank & file of the Republican Party under his thumb. They’re more than willing to go down with Trump, willing to push the limits of the law until they snap the brittle bones of our democracy. This is astounding. I heard Sydney Blumenthal in an interview with Ian Masters, and when the former advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton warned of the national security secrets Trump will carry out of the White House (no matter how he goes), I stopped what I was doing. I hate to sound paranoid, but this is what life under Trump does to people. We begin to doubt the evidence of our own eyes and ears. We are forced to consider things that have heretofore been unthinkable. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Donald J. Trump would sell America’s secrets to the world for the right price. And with the freight train of litigation that is headed his way when he’s no longer president, plus the millions he owes coming due, Trump will need money, lots of it. 

Over the past two days I’ve listened to or read a number of commentators, legal experts, elected officials, and the majority of them think Trump will back down when this phase of his endgame fails. They believe our systems will hold. I’m not so sure. Who’s going to stop the Trump Gang? The anxiety that drained from me on November 7 has returned. The Trump era will not end until the man is physically out of the White House, stripped of all governing power. 

Pay close attention lovers of liberty, the days ahead will be fraught.