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.