Trump’s making his habitual hand gestures as he talks. He looks angry, like a grumpy Ivan the Terrible, and I’m sure he’s on the attack. Trump’s whole gambit tonight might be to try and wear Biden down by interrupting, disrupting, knocking him out of rhythm. Trump’s like a fat boxer with no power who does nothing but lean and hang on his opponent. Is Chris Wallace doing anything to control Trump? Now it looks like a free-for-all.. WWE... What’s next, a water fight? Trump’s trying to show how virile and vigorous he is compared to creaky Joe. That will be Trump’s tweet at 1:00 a.m. TOTAL VICTORY OVER SLEEPY JOE BIDEN. TRUMP CRUSHED HIM. GREATEST PRESIDENT EVER. GREAT RATINGS! I need my gods and guides tonight, Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski, James Baldwin, Queen Toni Morrison. I need Sam Shepard and Chekov. I need to escape into one of Salman Rushdie’s dreams. Is this all we’ve got, America? I remind myself that this country is ruled by a minority of mostly white people, and Mitch McConnell’s slapping the mortar of minority rule into place as Trump snarls. (I keep getting texts from the Biden organization -- asking for money, of course.) I need a story of hope and redemption, one where evil men are dethroned and tried for their crimes, rather than rewarded with more wealth and power. Trump looks like a snarling dog, a Chihuahua/Rottweiler mix. I’m tempted to turn the sound on, just to let my ears confirm what my eyes are seeing, but it’s too risky to allow Trump’s voice into my head. Hideous orange face. Don’t blow it, Biden, don’t let Trump goad and annoy you into a mistake. Play your game, remember who you are and represent -- the majority of Americans, most of whom are decent, kind, and generous. Is Trump jabbering about Hunter Biden? Do Americans care about that? What does it prove? Trump should steer clear of comparing the exploits of grown children. The gene pool on Trump’s side is malignant, mutant. God, how long must this nation have to endure the TRUMP FAMILY? I shouldn’t have stopped drinking on August 1. A whiskey is very appealing right now, on this early fall night when the wine country of California is being torched. I will wait for the post-debate analysis, see what the talking heads and jib-jabbers have to say about this unsightly and unholy spectacle. Two aging gladiators. My buddy Leblanc from Michigan calls, he’s up late, sipping whiskey, and wants to know what I think of the debate. I explain my viewing strategy. I hear crickets outside. Trump looks agitated, bloated, and I think he wants to bite Biden’s neck...or maybe take an ear off, like Mike Tyson. Trump can’t be saying that he’s the greatest friend, ally, and protector of Black people in this nation’s history? But the fat fuck wouldn’t accept Barack Obama. Roll in your grave John Brown, roll yourself into the wide river and float away from this madness. You suffered your own. Hey, Donald, where were you when the music died? What’s your playlist when you want to woo the frosty Melania? Another text message. Apparently Trump is going berserk, but the Biden camp needs me to chip in $20 to save Joe. What the fuck? Leave me alone for a couple of days. I pay $12K a year in Federal taxes. I wish Joe could drop Trump with a straight right in the solar plexus. “Do you recall what was the deal the day the music died?” Shit, where did that come from? American pie. 1976? Light the torches, load your weapons, standby for the secret signal. Does Trump signal with his eyes, a combination of Eastwood-like squint-scowl-squint-smirk that sends the white boys into the streets? Has Trump claimed that Biden is the Grand Wizard of Antifa yet? This debate might never end, Chris Wallace may never stop asking questions. Is the flag in Trump’s lapel from one of the countries in which he pays taxes? Panama? Turkey? The Philippines? How many times will Trump say “law & order” tonight? He likes law and order yet he breaks the law almost daily and has led the nation into chaos. Trump plays the arsonist and the fireman; he sucks at the latter. It’s almost over. We must grasp the smallest miracles.
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Debate Night in America - LIVE
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Follow the Money
“Democracies survive when all major players respect the ground rules. They crumble when significant players start to flout those rules -- and get away with it.” Sasha Abramsky, The Nation
Trump’s up, Biden’s down, Trump’s down, Biden’s up. The election will be a nail biter. It will be a blowout, a landslide for Biden because the overwhelming majority of the American people reject Donald J. Trump and the Trumpism Project. Trump is desperate for a close contest so he can challenge the results and possibly kick the final decision on the outcome to the Supreme Court. This partly explains why Trump is hellbent on ramming another product of The Federalist Society through the Senate confirmation process and onto the court, pronto. Even though conservatives enjoy a clear majority on the Court, Trump’s not willing to gamble. Maybe that majority isn’t as solidly pro-Trump as we are led to believe. How many times has the most despicable bottom feeder turned and snapped at the hand that once elevated and supported it?
Have you ever wondered what Putin and Trump spoke about when they met behind closed doors with only their translators present? I assume both sides have recordings. In Helsinki they met for a couple of hours, before emerging so Trump could tell the world that when it came to Russian interference in the 2016 election, he believed Putin over his own intelligence agencies. That should have spelled the end of Trump, right then and there. It would have ended the run of every other president since 1960. It was one of the first significant shocks of the Trump reign, an admission totally against the grain, but I don’t remember many ex-generals and Secretaries of State or Defense, former FBI and NSA and CIA Directors, losing their shit when Trump sucked up to Putin before the entire world. The spectacle was written off as Trump refusing to follow the norms of his office and the advice of people who know fifty times more than he does.
Does Putin call the president, Donald? Do they have a secret handshake shared by grifters the world over? Is Trump in love with Putin? Is a desperate longing for the embrace of another man what lies at the center of Trump’s sociopathy?
Trump doesn’t let pesky details get in his way; he’s a “big picture” guy.
As far as I know, Putin doesn’t play golf and Donald J. Trump doesn’t ride horses. (Frankly, the visual of Donald J. Trump attempting to climb, or be lifted by crane, onto a horse’s back is priceless.) So, what did these two men talk about in Helsinki, why has nothing been reported about it, and what have Putin and Trump talked about since? Does Putin call the president, Donald? Do they have a secret handshake shared by grifters the world over? Is Trump in love with Putin? Is a desperate longing for the embrace of another man what lies at the center of Trump’s sociopathy? Is he a self-loathing homosexual? Does that explain why an obese, weak, ignorant and cowardly old man goes overboard on displays of masculinity and menace? Or why he’s always threatening women who don’t stand for his bullshit? Pundits frequently tell us that Trump is projecting who he is on the rest of us. Why does Trump always pose before mammoth trucks, hold rallies using Air Force One as a backdrop, salute the military even though every active duty military member knows what Trump thinks about them? (Suckers. Losers.) Is Trump’s need for big toys, glittering women, and endless adulation all because he had a shattering, unrequited homosexual love affair at the New York Military Academy? Is reliving that experience -- those fleeting moments in the communal showers after lights’ out, when for the only time in his entire existence did Trump feel the stirrings of love and connection with another person -- the reason he’s up at all hours whining and bitching and spreading lies on Twitter? Because he lost his one chance at happiness? Because the one time his penis and his brain gave him diametrically opposed messages both happened to be true? That neither penis or brain were untruthful, was, and is, the torment. Trump’s brain screamed, “These feelings can’t be real!” while his erect penis answered back, “No, Donald, they are very real.” Donald buried the experience deep, under glitz and glitter and self-aggrandizing behavior, and it rarely surfaced until now, when the entire Donald J. Trump Show looks like being cancelled due to ridiculous storylines, bad writing, cardboard characters, incompetent directing and low approval ratings. Trump never bought the idea that truth, about anything, but in particular about himself, would free him. No, Trump believes a real man buries his deepest fears, regrets, lost opportunities, missed chances, failures, missteps, and feelings in the footings of a skyscraper.
Follow the money. Follow the money. Follow the money. The key to who Trump is and what he does resides in his income tax returns, and that’s why he has battled for years to keep them away from public scrutiny. Recent reporting by the New York Times points to what a number of smart people, including the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston, who for years opined that Donald Trump is a tax evader, a tax fraud, and a business failure who isn’t anywhere near as wealthy as he claims. According to reporting by the Times, Trump is hundreds of million of dollars in debt. He’s not a business wizard. He’s just a common white collar criminal.
Trump will attack the New York Times, call for whoever leaked his tax information to be executed, and demand William Barr make the whole mess disappear down the memory hole. He’ll whine about being treated unfairly. We’ve seen this show many times, and it gets no better with repetition.
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Mitch's Fever Dream
“Free black people were forbidden to carry firearms, testify against a white person, or raise a hand against one even in self-defense.” Isabel Wilkerson, Caste
When I heard the news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had passed away, I knew that Mitch McConnell would immediately start the wheels in motion to get another Federalist Society-approved judge on the Supreme Court. McConnell is about one thing and one only: power. He could care less if people call him a hypocrite, partisan, immoral, unethical, or Trump’s lackey -- none of it matters as long as McConnell can pack the federal courts with enough ideologues to sustain minority rule for the next generation. That’s McConnell’s fever dream, and he’s very close to making it a reality. Every gain won by Women and minorities, gays and lesbians and transgender folks, every protection for the environment, voting rights, gun control, the Affordable Care Act, all, and more, will be in peril if McConnell succeeds. At this point, I see no way to stop him.
American conservatives have been gunning to overturn Roe vs. Wade for decades. A small minority of people, most of them white men, will decide what a woman can do with her body for years to come. This small minority will make that decision for white women and black women, Asian women and Latinx women, rich and poor, rural and urban, devout and agnostic, my own daughter included. This small minority believes it has the right to exercise control over female reproductive power.
From the beginning, American democracy has been more myth than reality, a structure designed to be ruled by a white minority, an elite. Non-whites, led and schooled by the intrepid example and courage of African-Americans, particularly women, immigrant workers of both sexes, labor unions, struggled mightily for decades to gain room to stand and grow. They made some gains, but have spent the past forty years on a losing streak. The world changed. The economy changed. The compact between workers and employers, between banks and borrowers, between Made in America and Made in Cheaptown, Wherever, was deliberately severed.
Every gain won by Women and minorities, gays and lesbians and transgender folks, every protection for the environment, voting rights, gun control, the Affordable Care Act, all, and more, will be in peril if McConnell succeeds. At this point, I see no way to stop him.
The American Dream died years ago; we live in the American nightmare.
But maybe the biggest change, the scariest change for white people -- especially white men -- is demographic change; the day when white people will be a numerical minority in this land is coming as inexorably as the death of Roe vs. Wade is coming. I think this demographic reality is what drives Mitch McConnell. A minority that controls the economy, banks, the courts, elections, and key levers of government, including the national security apparatus, can rule a majority. McConnell aims to lock minority rule in place.
Locking minority rule down tight is also why the Commerce Department is trying to monkeywrench the US census. Don’t like the direction the count is moving? Lop a month off the data collection deadline. Undercount the undesirables.
When it comes to race, I’m not sure McConnell can stand in the Racist Hall of Fame with Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, Theodore Bilbo, Bob Jones, and Bull Connor. Maybe he can. What I am willing to wager is that McConnell holds fast to the belief that white people are inherently superior to black and brown people and deserve to rule. McConnell’s racism might be as deep-seated as Trump’s, but better disciplined. I bet bourbon is flowing in the Hall tonight as Strom and George and Theodore and Bob and Bull toast the outcome of the grand jury investigation of Breonna Taylor’s murder at the hands of police, in her own home, her own bed. No murder charges were returned. People waited many months for justice to be served, marched, chanted, rallied on social media, posted signs, but as has happened in other places at other times, Breonna Taylor is dead and no one will be held to account.
Trump may hope the situation in Louisville spins out of control so he and William Barr can send the shock troops in to restore law and order, protect property, and keep the rabble in their subordinate place. Trump will dig the optics as they say, betting that scenes of police brutality will burnish his image as a tough guy, and frighten white people sufficiently to peel some support from Joe Biden.
I steer clear of polls, prognostications, and predictions. Turnout is all that matters. It must be overwhelming for us to have any chance of dislodging Trump. He’s already pissed in the pool, called the outcome into doubt, instilled the idea in his rabid base that the election is only free and fair if he wins. The Electoral College may tip the balance in Trump’s favor, again, and there’s the possibility of the outcome being decided by the Supreme Court. The will of the people may be ignored again, unless the turnout is historic. If young people cast ballots instead of sitting on the sidelines, we have a chance. If African-American men turn out strong, we have a chance. If Latinx voters go for Biden in big numbers, we have a 50-50 chance.
Why is justice so hard to come by for some? Why in America do we so often punish the victims?
Back in 1997, the late Molly Ivins wrote, “There is so much anger out here. It is taking so many bizarre forms. And most of the media can’t even see it: Economic apartheid keeps the bottom half of society well hidden from the top half.”
Oh, Ms. Molly, if you could see us now.
Friday, September 18, 2020
America vs. MAGA America
Will never fill that hole
You're a man bought and sold
You're a man without a soul”
Lucinda Williams
It’s Round 12 of 15 in the contest between Trump and Truth. Truth has been the victim of two headbutts and one low blow and is bleeding from a gash above the right eye. Truth lands better punches but it’s not enough to stop the lies, conspiracy theories, empty promises about a Covid-19 vaccine arriving any day now, or the stock denials by Trump of his own recorded statements. No thinking citizen can keep pace with the scandals and theft and treason committed by Trump or watch the Evil Doughboy, William Barr, endorse and advance dubious legal gambits for Trump’s benefit or protection without his or her mouth falling open. It’s all so brazen, so in your face, so crude and devoid of style and artistry, and never, ever, even a hint of grace. It’s not there. Trump and his family are the worst of the capitalist ruling class.
GOP senators sit silent, heads bowed, as docile as can be. Cowed and quivering in the glare of Trump’s Twitter feed. Every one a profile of cowardice. Every one guilty of breaking his or her oath of office. Remember them on the day of reckoning when you seek someone to blame.
Who’s carrying weight for the Truth? Hard to say in this divided nation. Trump gasses that flame at every opportunity, makes it all so simple, just a matter of Red -- the good side, the strong side, the Real side, the heavily armed side, his side -- against Blue, the big city snobs, blacks, women, transgender folks, Leftists, Socialists, environmentalists, baby killers, Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Howard Zinn.
Black and white certainty. Winners on one side, losers on the other. All or nothing. Nuance is for elites.
We’re smarter than this, aren’t we? What say you, America? Is this the final step on our journey to the end of the American republic? A house divided against itself collapses sooner or later. This time we will not solely draw the boundaries in white and black, but in blue and red. America vs. MAGA America.
“We don’t count the dead in blue states. That would make our numbers look bad.”
The low blow was Trump lying to the American people about Covid-19. He knew. He covered the Truth under a blizzard of bullshit. For months. Repetitively. Deliberately. Nearly 200,000 dead Americans. Wives and sisters, husbands and brothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, people with names, with stories.
How many people who have the franchise will cast a ballot? That’s the question, the only question. If it’s a big turnout, a historic turnout, and all the ballots are counted, and all Trump’s subsequent court challenges fail, Biden should become the next President of the United States. Not necessarily on November 3, and maybe not even January 20, 2021. Trump is Trump, he will do what he always does, the same game he’s played keeping his income tax returns from scrutiny; delay and delay and delay; challenge the results as long as possible, by every means possible, and cry foul and theft and stolen and rigged! on Twitter and FOX. What then? How bad might it get? This idea messes with my sleep. We saw enough in the last three months to have a very good idea of how it could go down. Think Seattle. Think Portland. Think Minneapolis. There’s so much fear and pent-up rage, and so many guns, and too many officers of the law who relish conflict in the streets where they have overwhelming killing power. It’s like these fires all over California, Oregon and Washington. There’s enough combustible stuff, just a spark and you ignite a fire that can burn hot and fast and far. Trump will still be the president, and his enablers and lackeys and ass-kissers have bet all their chips on him so they can’t turn back now. The White House is already a fortress. Will it be painted red or blue?
I’m freaking myself out. This shit is enough to make any thinking, rational, reasonable person absolutely miserable. Prime time denial and delusion, corruption every day, and the next and the next and the next on to forever. Trump fights like a punk, but it’s still hard to lay a solid shot on him. He ducks, bobs, weaves, feints. He acts like a spastic and dares Truth to clock him. He lays on the ropes as long as the referee will allow. The rounds feel long, longer than the proverbial Dog Year. Much longer than that. Cockroach years.
Who’s carrying weight for the Truth? The same old bunch, some dead and gone, some living, Martin and Malcom and W.E.B. DuBois, Fanny Lou and Ida B. Wells, Gil Scott-Heron, the Black Panthers, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, the NAACP and the ACLU -- send them money if you can -- Democracy Now, The Lincoln Project, Reverend William Barber III, Cornel West and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Black Lives Matter, The Nation and the New York Review of Books, Maxine Waters and Ilhan Omar, too.
My vision tonight has taken on a gray tinge. The sky is too cloudy for any portents to shine down. The next three months will be hellish, of that I am sure. There will not be a smooth passing of the nuclear codes this time around. Win or lose Trump will burn it down and leave nothing but embers and ashes in his wake.
Like Lucinda Williams says, he’s a man without a soul.
And there’s the bell.
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Escape from Banjo Land
“It’s rush hour now, on the wheel and the plow/and they’re breaking down the distance between right and wrong.” Bob Dylan, Ring Them Bells
I picked the wrong time for my annual trip to visit my brother in Tillamook, Oregon, and the wrong means of transportation. Uncomfortable about flying due to the risks of Covid-19, I decided to pack the 2008 CRV and do my version of a Sam Shepard/Bruce Springsteen/Hunter S. Thompson road trip, driving a long distance alone, with 9 hours of music on a Spotify playlist I created to keep me company, GPS for navigation, and some snacks to munch on. I knew when I made this decision that California was in the grip of the Summer of Fire, a gruesome preview of what is coming if we do not stop pretending that the devastating fires, hurricanes, and floods happening all over this planet are caused by some force other than human activity. Climate activists, scientists, and indigineous people have sounded the alarm for decades, to deaf ears and blind eyes. The climate crisis is happening right now, before our eyes, and we are ill-prepared for the shocks to come, the consequences of our actions. Our obsession with bigger, newer, shinier, cheaper, faster, and more profitable is threatening our ability to live.
Not in play at the moment of my decision was what would happen in Southern Oregon only a few days after I arrived in Tillamook.
The drive to Oregon was mostly uneventful. It was warm and sunny the Sunday I started north on the 101 freeway. From San Jose to the California border the sky was smokey and the sun the hue of a ripe peach . When I reached Redding in the late afternoon it was 111 degrees. At six the next morning when I headed out it was already 71. When I pulled into my brother’s driveway in Tillamook, just after noon on Monday, it was an astonishing 85 degrees, cloudless blue sky overhead, and windless. When I called my wife to let her know I had arrived safely she told me it was over 100 in Santa Barbara.
By three a.m. on Tuesday morning a hot wind was howling with gusts up to 70 mph. When I went outside in the morning the CRV was covered with dust, trash cans lay on their sides, and drifts of leaves had collected against the fence surrounding my brother’s yard. The leaves were green, torn from the trees a month before they would have fallen on their own. In other parts of Tillamook the wind uprooted trees and downed power lines, forcing road closures. My brother moved to Tillamook in 2006 and has seen all kinds of weather, but never before had he experienced a freak windstorm that pushed an overheated wind like a California Santa Ana.
Do we have nothing in common? Do we disagree on everything? When did we become so distrustful of one another? When did we lose our confidence as a nation and become so fearful of the world?
We left Tillamook on Wednesday morning, headed for Westport, on the south side of Grays Harbor in Washington. It was warm and the sky was hazy with rust-colored smoke. We loaded bikes on my brother’s Jeep Cherokee and started out. Before we got out of town we saw the plume of smoke rising from the forest behind the golf course. For more than twenty years my brother worked on Hot Shot fire crews in the Los Padres National Forest and northern Arizona. “We normally get about 90 inches of rain a year,” he said. “This year it’s down to 60 inches. It’s dry back in there. If that fire spreads fast it could be a big problem for local firefighters. They don’t have much experience with wildfires.” The 101 northbound was open so we headed on, crossing the Columbia River on the Astoria Bridge into Washington about four hours later. I noticed at least a dozen dead birds on the bridge.
My brother sarcastically refers to Tillamook and other small towns in Oregon and Washington as Banjo Land, meaning Hicksville, populated with rednecks and narrow-minded folks, a generalization he knows is too sweeping to be true. But when you are Santa Barbara born and raised it’s hard not to make comparisons -- and find nearly every other place wanting. It’s rare in Santa Barbara to see the front yard of a house littered with the hulks of old cars, refrigerators, tires, and junk. It’s equally rare to see Trump 2020 yard signs. But like the rangeland around Yreka in northern California where I saw signs that read, FARMERS FOR TRUMP and SAVE BABIES, VOTE TRUMP, the rural towns we drove through looked like Trump country. I saw many American flags and a dozen Trump 2020 signs. As the scenery passed I thought about these small towns, and how they contribute their sons and daughters to fight America’s wars. Proud and self-reliant, these people don’t like being told what to believe or how to live their lives by people of my bent or the federal government. They vote Republican. God, America, guns, freedom to own a big gas-guzzling truck. I think the honest ones know that climate change is caused by human activity. They may not have liberal-style sophistication, but they’re not stupid. From what I saw, they are practical, capable people making their way through life, raising families, working the fields or the rivers and sea. I’m not willing to write these people off, even though I assume we would disagree on many subjects. I want to know why they see Trump so differently than I do. If nothing else, we’re still Americans. That meant something before the working-class got hammered by big money titans on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, and divided from each other by racial animosity, religion, guns, immigration, depictions in the popular culture. Do we have nothing in common? Do we disagree on everything? When did we become so distrustful of one another? When did we lose our confidence as a nation and become so fearful of the world?
We rode the bikes around Westport, checked out the boats in the harbor, followed a bike trail to the beach where many surfers and stand-up paddle boarders were enjoying the gorgeous afternoon. A few hours later I stood on the jetty and watched the sun dissolve into a nearly horizontal line. There was a cool breeze, the sound of the waves, an uncommonly lovely moment that I wished I could share with my wife and kids. Peace is very hard to come by these days. I closed my eyes and breathed in the sea air.
Back in Tillamook on Thursday, the sky was hazy with smoke and very fine ash. My brother cleaned the Jeep while I read. We smoked some weed and listened to Mojo Nixon’s Outlaw Country show on Sirius XM. We watched the Weather Channel. We talked about our parents.
My plan on Friday was to drive down the 101 to Eureka, spend the night, and then continue on my way home. I’ve never driven the 101 from north-to-south, and I thought it might be cool to hug the coast. I felt some apprehension about the fires, but the 101 was open when I started out at six a.m. My Road Trip playlist was on as was my GPS, and I was feeling fine until I saw the flashing red and blue lights up ahead, and then the orange letters of a sign announcing that the 101 southbound was closed. The GPS tried to re-route me down a country road but that road was also closed. The next route the GPS suggested was blocked as well. I was starting to feel trapped. Eureka wasn’t happening. To get home I would have to return the way I came, on Highway 22, then 18, then I5 through Medford and Ashland. I pulled into a rest stop to cancel my hotel reservation in Eureka and call my wife. By now it was 7:30 and the sun was behind a dense dome of smoke. My phone was down to 10% battery power. What the fuck? The charging adaptor wasn’t working. I switched it out for a spare and that adaptor also failed. Neither adapter worked in either port. No phone. No GPS. No paper map. I had had no problem charging my phone on the way to Oregon, but now, when I needed it most, it was useless. After a couple of wrong turns I found my way back to highway 22 heading east. The smoke was still thick and visibility poor.
At a gas station mini-mart I bought a new adaptor, two cans of Red Bull, and a cup of coffee. Fortunately, the new adaptor worked. I called my wife and asked her to cancel my hotel reservation in Eureka, and then I settled in for some serious driving into what looked like the apocalypse. Passing through Medford I saw the destruction, like a bomb had been dropped. Buildings leveled, metal twisted, cars burned out, a chimney here and there. It reminded me of the Tea Fire in Santa Barbara more than a decade ago. All in all it was seven hours before I crossed into California, and another ten before I reached Santa Barbara at 11:30 p.m. I only stopped to pee and get gas. When I crawled into bed, my comfortable, familiar bed, I still felt as if I was moving, driving fast on highway 41 in the pitch black night, the smell of smoke in my nostrils, and Bob Dylan whispering in my ear.
Thursday, September 03, 2020
Out and Out Dread
“Never let the weeds get higher than the garden.” Tom Waits
Kids are back in school, at distance, through digital pipes that bring their teachers to them on screens. Covid-19 is still here, people are still wearing masks, nine blocks of State Street are still off limits to vehicle traffic. The outdoor eating areas take on a more permanent aspect. After six months it still feels somewhat surreal, and it’s definitely spiritually and emotionally draining.
By itself the pandemic is enough of a disturbance and worry, but America is on a slippery slope and I find it impossible to ignore the incessant political noise. It’s more than fear and loathing, it’s dread, out and out dread. Our racist president cannot bring himself to speak the name Jacob Blake, shot in the back seven times by trigger-happy police, or acknowledge the murder of two people at the hands of a teenage vigilante. Trump can’t do that, but he can ramble on about property damage and the threat Black Lives Matter protesters pose to delicate white women; he can spout nonsense about “dark shadows” from the Left who control Joe Biden. Trump, a coward pretending to be tough, has nothing but praise for law enforcement. Trump’s racism is as blatant as his ignorance and corruption. Racism is what propelled his political run in the first place, it’s the only card left in his tiny hand, and he will play it because racism has always been a reliable political tool in America.
Out and out dread. Inescapable. No savior, no miracle, no intervention from a benevolent god.
Judging by the amount of construction going on, Santa Barbara’s building business is still healthy. While there are many empty storefronts on State Street, the renovation of the Paseo Nuevo Mall, no longer anchored by Macy’s and Nordstrom, is nearing completion. That looks more and more like a losing bet. Why pour money into a mall when malls are becoming obsolete, relics of another era? Near the building where I work, the corner of Santa Barbara and De la Guerra Streets, two new buildings are rising from their foundations dug twenty feet into the ground. Every inch of both lots used. Three stories, underground parking, white stucco and red tile. Piece of paradise for those that can afford the asking price.
I can’t.
For me SB is a town full of ghosts, vague memories, shadows. My wife can remember very specific details from high school, I can recall very few. That time was a blur. It felt endless while it was happening, but soon was far in the rearview mirror. I left SB in 1977 and didn’t return for good until 1988. A lot happened to me during that time, and a lot was starting to happen in SB. By the time I returned, my hometown had a different vibe, and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. American Riviera, baby! Wine country. Home of Hollywood stars, Oprah, Jeff Bridges, etc. SB had long been a sleepy tourist town, but it became a destination. Come LA. Come Europe. Come Japan. Come China. Come one, come all, let’s have a fiesta! And come they did, and come they do, even in a pandemic.
Now the narrow brick building that houses The Pressroom, an iconic watering hole beloved by soccer fans, is in jeopardy, its fate in the hands of developers and the planning commission. You see, SB needs more elegant-downtown-white stucco- tiled entryway-wrought iron balcony-red tile housing for the deserving wealthy, and that is what is proposed for the block. Might spell the end for yet another local institution. The Pressroom might survive a move, but there’s something about that particular block, the shape and contour of the building itself, the interior, where the barstools and tables are, the spot outside where smokers gather. It’s a one-off, dependent on the space for its particular atmosphere. Would Harry’s Plaza Cafe be Harry’s anyplace but Loretto Plaza? You can’t manufacture character, character is built over time, by surviving through the years, changing and adapting as needed, but never at the expense of essence.
Money. The way the economy is structured, money never stops looking for growth opportunities. Finance people and developers know a desirable city like SB is a good bet, a magnet for money. If you build it, someone will buy it, rent it, lease it. The developers may have local ties, deep ones in some cases, but money has a powerful pull and a logic of its own. After much hand-wringing by local officials, money usually wins.
Lost at sea, seven miles south of Purgatory; the sails are torn and our flag is in tatters. Looking into the gloom an old sailor says what most of the crew is thinking: “We may not see land again.”