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.