2 + 2 = 5

 “I have come very late to the pleasure of sitting still with little or nothing on my mind.” Jim Harrison, The Road Home

Coming to the end of my first month of retirement. My Freedom Summer, the first time in twenty-two years that I haven’t been yoked to someone else’s schedule. It has been brilliant. A run of days of cool mornings and lovely sunny afternoons. I’ve been writing, reading, walking or riding my bike up Garcia Road, doing my training sessions, drinking wine, and watching TV in the evening with my wife. We’re into Dr. Death and The White Lotus at the moment. We enjoyed the Kominsky Method. The money is holding. Everybody’s healthy and we don’t suffer at all; life is crazy good right now. 

But back east in the nation’s capitol, the seat of our government and home of our limited, tenuous democracy, and many of our most cherished national myths, the war between Fact and Fantasy rages on. Trump fans the flame, Fox News amplifies it, and GOP nitwits like Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz repeat the talking points. Whatever the issue, employ the same tactic: work a bit of verbal jujitsu and flip it. Thus can Elise Stefanik, the third ranking member in the House GOP hierarchy, blame the breach of the capitol on Nancy Pelosi. Stefanik is banking on the American people being too ignorant to know what Stefanik clearly knows, namely, that the Speaker of the House isn’t responsible for security at the capitol. Not that facts matter. Slinging mud is what matters to the GOP. Anything and everything can be blamed on Pelosi. 

The modern GOP is like the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union, decrepit and morally debased, interested only in clinging to power; it’s a party based on denial -- of everything from climate change to who was responsible for the insurrection on January 6. We learned this week that neither Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell watched the first hearing of the House subcommittee investigating the Trump-inspired insurrection. Couldn’t be bothered, nothing to learn from four officers who battled rioters on that mournful day. Over on the Fox propaganda network, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson accused the officers of “theatrics.” So much for backing the men and women of Law Enforcement. 

Keeping an eye on politics tests one’s faith in human nature. Where else in this country do people so regularly sell out as in the halls of Congress? I’m not talking about the compromises politicians must make in order to craft legislation -- horse trading and compromise is how the sausage gets made. It’s messy and few are happy at the end. It’s the art of the possible and all that. I’m talking about selling out one’s principles. Condemning Donald Trump for inciting a mob one minute, then skipping down to Mar-A-Lago to lick his balls the next, as Kevin McCarthy did earlier this year, is what I’m talking about. Shamelessly describing the mob as a bunch of peaceful tourists, trying to turn rioters into patriots and martyrs, gaslighting people every day into doubting what they saw with their own eyes is my point. 

Insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. 

The last thing the GOP wants is for the full scope of what went down on January 6 to come out. They know where the trail of evidence will lead. They must know which members will be implicated. That’s why McConnell nixed a non-partisan independent investigation and McCarthy did his best to ratfuck the House subcommittee by clogging it with wingnuts and bomb-throwers like Jim Jordan. McCarthy wanted to turn the hearings into a circus, but since being outmaneuvered by Nancy Pelosi, all he can do is carp from the sidelines. Kevin’s not the brightest bulb, but he is scared of Jim Jordan and his ilk, and doesn’t want what happened to John Boehner to happen to him. McCarthy plays all the angles.

I don’t know how these folks sleep at night after spending an entire day pissing on the oath they swore. Corruption is corrosive and power corrupts and absolute power (which is what Trump wants. He wants to be Vladimir Putin) corrupts absolutely. If I were Steve Scalisi, I’d be watching over my shoulder for Elise Stefanik. She likes power, she’s hungry for it. She’s had a taste of it and wants more. 

You can’t swim in a cesspool and come out smelling of lilac. 

Songs of the Doomed

 “It was a loving crowd to by the way. There was a lot of love. I’ve heard that from everybody.” Former President Donald J. Trump on January 6. 

So, January 6, 2021 was a love fest. The Capitol police were ushering Trump’s people into the building, handing out cut flowers, bottles of water, canapes, wetnaps. It was like an outdoor picnic in the middle of winter, an outpouring of patriotic spirit, a red, white and blue day of celebration. And then Mike Pence fucked it all up.

Jesus Christ. I listened to some of Trump’s absolutely bat shit interview with Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker, Washington Post reporters and co-authors of I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. I have no idea how Leonning and Rucker managed to keep looks of utter disbelief from taking over their faces. Trump’s rambling, fact-free, bullshit, completely-untethered-from-reality monologues are hard to listen to. Trump is every bloated, self-satisfied, stupid relative who gets tanked on Thanksgiving and subjects his entire family to outlandish tales of his own greatness. It’s just embarrassing that this malignant jackass was once the president of this beleaguered nation. Breathtaking mental illness. Never very bright to begin with, Trump has now slipped over the edge into total dementia. Trump actually makes Richard Nixon’s drunken midnight rants sound sane and rational. 

“Well, I heard,” Trump says. From who, Donald? The cheering throng inside your head? I imagine Hunter S. Thompson interviewing Trump, and in the first thirty seconds fixing the former president with a whiskey stare and saying, “Hey, what the fuck’s wrong with you? Are you really this fucked up, and without drugs? Sweet Jesus.” Leonning and Rucker spent more than two brain-withering hours with Trump. That’s a form of mental torture, like blasting the rankest heavy metal music into a bare prison cell for hours at a time in order to soften a prisoner up for interrogation. Did Leonning and Rucker head straight for the bar at Mar-A-Lago when they finished? Did they retreat to their rental car and fire up a fatty? To hear Trump talk about the Constitution, a document he’s never read and wouldn’t understand if he bothered to read it, and reference Thomas Jefferson, was perverse and disturbing. Dealing with nutters is never easy. But imagine the difficulty factor when the nutter is the ex-president of the most powerful military force on Earth. 

Don’t look into his eyes, never look into his eyes, it will melt your brain. 

I began this blog many years ago with the unshakeable belief that George W. Bush was the dumbest president in American history. Compared to Trump, Bush is like a member of Mensa or a Rhodes scholar. It’s hideous. Trump is Captain Ahab and Captain Queeg and Captain Bligh rolled into one fat ball. Monstrous, utterly monstrous. And millions of people believe this human piece of flotsam is the Second Coming. What the fuck is wrong with this country? Do we have dementia? Too much processed food, reality TV, opioids, booze, beer, weed, porn, and online shopping? Can an entire nation suffer cognitive decline? Maybe. You know how when we talk about great athletes who play team sports, like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady (fucking Trumper), Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Lionel Messi, etc., we say one measure of their greatness is their ability to make their teammates better? We always say that because it’s true. Great players lift the level of play of those around them. Now, think about Trump and the motley collection of dickheads, sycophants, thieves, and miscreants who surround him. Unlike a Messi, Trump makes the people around him dumber, weaker, even more idiotic. I mean, if Trump told Kevin McCarthy to fall to his knees and howl like a dog, I have no doubt that McCarthy would do it. 

Listening to Trump ramble for less than five minutes made my heart pound and my blood pressure rise. I felt a strange tingling around my left temple. I had to pull a book by Hunter S. Thompson from my shelf and seek a quote to make me feel better, it being too early in the day for a shot of single-malt or a toke or an edible. I found this in Songs of the Doomed: “We are raising a whole generation in this country that will never know what it feels like to rise up together and flog a crooked president out of the White House.” No, doc, it’s so bad now a generation of meatheads rises up to put a deranged and crooked president BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE. 

We’re all singing songs of the doomed now, folks...

Tushy

 

“After the rise of Barack Obama, large numbers of white Americans became convinced not only that racism was a thing of the past but also that, to the extent racial prejudice remained a factor in American life, white people were its primary victims.” Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America

Today I experienced a significant DIY accomplishment. All by myself I installed a bidet called a Tushy. For a competent man installing a Tushy would be a tension-free breeze, but when it comes to plumbing, tools, measurements and the like, I’m anything but competent. I usually have an ordeal, a confrontation with all my limitations, and a tango with the tarnished angels of my nature. F-bombs fall. My temper flares. I actually attempted to install the Tushy the day before, but could not get the hose connections to stop leaking. I followed the provided directions, full of pithy sayings about taking a poo, to the letter, and I looked forward with anticipation to the Tushy bathing my butt in cool water. Ha. Not so fast. After sopping up water with towels I put the Tushy back in its box, dead set on returning it from whence it came. But my failure nagged at me and I resolved to take another shot at the installation. This damn thing will not defeat me was what I was thinking. After taking a relaxing spin on my bike along Cabrillo Boulevard, I was back in the bathroom, resolute and determined. Lo and behold, a miracle, a domestic triumph, I successfully installed the Tushy -- without uttering a single curse -- and now our butts will be washed clean. 

This morning my wife informed me that our bank balance is a slender $114 until she gets paid again. Jesus, only my second week of retirement and already broke. I’m still coming to terms with the idea of “retirement”, preferring to think of this period as one of transition from one form of life to another, with more time, less work, more life, and less money. I realize the inherent limitations in this formula. I’ve applied for part-time jobs at Costco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods; we’ll see if anyone wants to hire me. In the immediate, we’re fine, comfortably housed, well-fed, healthy. And now we will also boast clean asses! Life is good. 

I’m sitting on our secluded patio, under a red market umbrella. It’s a warm afternoon under a cloudless sky. The ice is melting in my G&T. I’m being pestered by an aggressive fly. My wife is inside, taking a nap. She’s developed a new affliction: she smells tobacco smoke when it’s not there. I forget the clinical name, but apparently this isn’t uncommon, and in fact is a side effect of a blood pressure medication which my wife has been on for years. What she believes she’s smelling manifests in irritated eyes and mild headaches. 

What were most Americans thinking about in 1851? What was the burning political issue of the time? What kept escalating, becoming more tense? Slavery. The Missouri Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act. Did a man who owned another man have a right to pursue and apprehend his property in a free state? If a Negro escaped his owner and made it to a free state, was he assumed to be emancipated? What about compensation for his owner, the insurance companies and the banks? The business of slavery had its own infrastructure, one piece dependent on another. Big, fraught questions that lingered, then flared into controversies every few years. In the free states the slavery issue was vexxing, an annoyance. Many citizens objected to slavery, but that didn’t mean that Negroes were welcome; they weren’t. No open arms waited. They were the problem as much as the people who owned them -- and were determined to continue owning them. I’m sure there were many white people in free states who wished the Negro problem would just go away. It’s like our own time when half the country wishes that Donald Trump would just go away. But it won’t happen. Trumpism will be with us for a time. This is a divided nation. In thirteen Southern states 66% of Republicans support secession according to polling by Bright Line Watch. 

I hate to be a downer (I know, I know, this blog is usually a downer) but I think we’re headed for a period of armed confrontations between Trump’s insurrectionists and federal, state and local authorities. Political violence runs through American history. But if ever there was a terrible time for the country to be so bitterly divided, this is it, facing as we are two related crises: the pandemic and global climate change. The American west is bone dry and afire; parts of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are under water. Climate change is happening now, not down the road. It’s fucking scary. 

BACKLASH

“Not just in the South but across the country the Klan enjoyed a remarkable resurgence, reaching its all-time peak of an estimated four million members by 1924.” Adam Hochschild, “All-American Vigilantes” The New York Review

It used to be that nations mounted space explorations, now a few Robber Baron billionaires have so much wealth at their disposal that they can foot the bill to shoot themselves into space. Bully for you, Richard Branson. Who will the next contestant in the Billionaire Space Race be? 

I’m reading “The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America” by Adam Serwer. One thing I’ve come to realize is that many of my fellow Americans are happy to enter the tent of Nationalism-Nativism-Racism. The rhetoric of America First, of America-for-Americans, and the superiority of the white race appeals to millions, as evidenced by the 74 million votes cast for Donald Trump in November 2020. That Trump was incompetent, immoral, ignorant, and an imbecile didn’t matter. As Adam Serwer points out in his essays, Trump’s followers adore him because he says out loud, and often, what they think; he hates and demonizes the same people they do, and gives voice to their grievances. A core tenet of Trumpism is that undeserving people are taking from “real” Americans, reaping benefits at the expense of flag-waving, gun-toting, salt-of-the-earth Americans. The takers are black and brown, foreign and devious, the victims are white. Democrats side with the black and brown folks, the queer, women, animals, fish and fowl at the expense of true Americans. Trump’s gift is that he absolves his followers of any shame or guilt. He makes them feel good, justified in their beliefs and opinions. He assures them that they are good people, “tremendous” people, as he called the mob who sacked the US Capitol on January 6. Trump tapped into an old, recurring, and reliable strain of American bigotry. 

I didn’t fully appreciate the backlash against Barack Obama until Trump was in office and actively trying to efface everything Obama had accomplished. Obama’s ethnicity never bothered me. What bothered me were his centrist policies, his caution, his expansion of our unwinnable wars, and his harsh treatment of illegal immigrants. In hindsight, I better understand what Obama was up against: it wasn’t just Mitch McConnell and the entire GOP that tried to thwart him, it was a sizable chunk of the white electorate who despised him because he was a black man who embodied the great fear of white people. The response to Barack Obama was tribal, and had far less to do with jobs and wages and material well-being, and more to do with bigotry -- and the fear of losing control, status, and privilege that white skin has always bestowed. As Adam Serwer writes, tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism. 

What happens next? I have no idea, but the portends are dark. The energy of resurgent white nationalism has to go somewhere. We’ve witnessed what Trump’s followers are capable of and it would be a mistake to believe they will fade quietly away. At this point it’s obvious that Trump’s core supporters will not desert him no matter what. Donald J. Trump satisfies the darkest impulses in the American soul. 

Who Will Win, England or Italy?

 “Every time the national team plays, no matter against whom, the country holds its breath.” Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow

The start of my semi-retirement has been very relaxed, free of worry. I’ve willed myself to do as little as possible, to honestly take a break, wind down. The other morning I took a long bike ride along the beach, followed by a five mile walk on the Riviera, where some of the loveliest homes in this city are. At night Santa Barbara shimmers and glitters down below. I came back to the flat land by way of winding Garcia Road. I feel ridiculously happy. I wake up slowly rather than like a man fired from a cannon. I’ve done some satisfying training sessions in my home gym, which is set up perfectly for all the modes of training I regularly do. And I’ve been reading a wonderful novel by Colm Toibin called The Master. It’s a stunning literary work. I’ve started a few poems. In the evening as the sun drops in the sky and the heat abates, we sit on our front porch, sipping pinot grigio. Life is very good. We love our new lodgings. 

For all that, my obsession this past week was Euro 2020, the semi-final matches between Italy and Spain, England and Denmark. I’m happy to see Italy in the Final. After France and Belgium, Italy was my team. I like the style of football they play under Roberto Mancini. I thought Spain played some very strong football against Italy in the semi-final, the first team in the tournament to dictate the tempo to the Azzurri. It was a classic match, concluding in a heart-stopping penalty shoot-out. Denmark put up stiff and valiant resistance against England deep into the additional periods, but it became clear that England had more strength and stamina. Kyle Walker was still sprinting with ease past the 110th minute; Denmark looked knackered. The penalty on Raheem Sterling was questionable, but give Harry Kane credit for his quick and sure reaction when Denmark’s Kaspar Schmeichel blocked his penalty kick. After decades of futility and heartbreak, England finally earned a berth on the biggest European stage of all. 

The Italian midfield is a joy to watch. Nicolo Barella, Jorginho, and Marco Verratti are each strong players on their own, all adept on playing in tight spaces and under extreme pressure. As a trio they are effective at winning the ball back quickly, and often high up the pitch. What the Italian midfield lacks is the raw physicality of England’s Declan Rice, and that lack is one reason I’m not convinced Italy can control the middle of the pitch for long periods of time. Jorginho is the key player for Italy in that respect, because, as he does for Chelsea in the Premier League, it’s Jorginho who keeps the ball moving, who offers an outlet to the back line, and who links the play. If England neutralize Jorginho, the Three Lions can control the midfield and get the ball to Harry Kane when he drops deeper to orchestrate England’s attack. Kane is in form again, not only scoring goals, but making incisive passes and intelligent runs.  

Another element the Azzurri lack is an out-and-out striker. Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti are workhorses up front, willing to make runs and press the ball, but goals have been coming from the wings by way of Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Chiesa. Italy needs their strikers to put some pressure on John Stones and Harry Maguire. The other reason I think England will prevail tomorrow night is the absence for Italy of Leonardo Spinazzola, who was having a fine tournament until he went down with an injury. Emerson Palmieri isn’t nearly as effective as Spinazzola, and, in fact, can be a liability. Finally, the match is being played in London at Wembley Stadium, an advantage for England. 

My prediction: England 2 - Italy 1. 

Star Spangled Fantasy

 “It is the burden of life to be many ages/without seeing the end of time.” Jim Harrison

Another 4th of July. Life, liberty and the pursuit of property and profit. We hold these truths to be self-evident (for white men). The many myths of America, shining city on the hill, beacon of freedom, cradle of liberty, welcoming arms for huddled masses from every corner of the globe. Rockets red glare. Dawn’s early light. Remember the Maine! Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My Lai. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The reality withers the myth like the burning sun shrivels the Pacific Northwest. Un-American you say, love it or leave it, Commie-Pinko-Socialist-Liberal. Get out if you don’t believe that America is the greatest country in the world, if you refuse to acknowledge the essential goodness of the people who inhabit this blessed nation. We’re No. 1!

America is a Land of Lies and Fantasy. Our history is littered with reverence for ignorance and fear. We avoid staring Truth in the face the same way Superman avoids kryptonite. We can’t accept or reconcile our long history of racism, violence, genocide, and destruction of our forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains because not enough of us have the courage to acknowledge the truth. We prefer to divide into our camps, red and blue, liberals and conservatives, the woke versus the Trumpian Zombies, and ride our fairy tales over the edge. After all these years and all the trauma, millions of white Americans can’t let go of the notion that there is something inherently inferior about black people. Am I alone in thinking that America is a madhouse, an air-conditioned nightmare as Henry Miller called it back in the 1940’s? 

The foundation is cracked and crumbling. Tears fall from the eyes of Lady Liberty, splash into the roiling waters of New York harbor. Huddled masses yearning to breathe free are no longer welcome here. The Republican Party is as conformist and sclerotic as the Communist Party was in the old Soviet Union, as adverse to facts and logic, reason and evidence. America is a fearful nation, not a confident one. Mainstream Democrats put up limp resistance, compromised as they are by corporate cash. The Supreme Court is ruled by political operatives in dark robes. As a country we’re not prepared for the coming crisis; there’s too much disunity and distrust within our borders, too much blatant celebration of our ignorance, fanned by Trump and his many enablers and imitators. Fire and flood and drought and famine are in our future, but we ignore the warning signs and dig ourselves in deeper. 

Raise Old Glory and aim your fireworks into the night sky. It’s Independence Day in the indispensable nation. We’re No. 1, remember?