A Walk to the Park - Part II

I’m just back from a walk to Franceschi Park. From our front porch to the parking lot of the park took 31 minutes at a reasonable pace, with only a brief stop or two to enjoy the view of the city. I had my phone but didn’t listen to music or podcasts. I’m trying to provide myself a respite from news, information, sound bites about American democracy or the situation in Ukraine or which Chelsea attacking players are said to be at odds with the manager. Enough. Poverty, injustice, cruelty, and stupidity. Same goes for you. I need a break. I worked the last three days at the Market, one day shift, two closing shifts, during which I walked nearly 40 miles and put in 24 commuting miles on my bike. Didn’t get up until eight this morning, late for me. A body needs rest. Ahead of me near the top of Garcia Road I saw a worker carrying his tool belt in his right hand and his lunch pail in his left. His body language told me he was tired after a long day. No weekend for him, just a short respite and back to it. I see that same look at the store in some of my co-workers, the guys and ladies who work in areas that are short staffed, like the meat department. More times than not, their workday goes on for twelve hours. Most of us always have one eye on the work and the other on the clock. 

I’m reading a book called Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth by the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Prize winner who until recently I had never heard of. This is why I remain an unpaid book reviewer. I can’t even pretend to have read broadly or deeply enough. But this novel is so brilliant it makes my head spin. The voice telling the story is that of a master of pace, dark humor, and memory. Heavy moral and ethical subjects written about with a sly humor, and always, a knowing. 

The other book I’m reading is To Govern the Globe by historian Alfred W. McCoy. It’s weighty like Chronicles, but in a much different way. McCoy’s subject is empire and world orders, and his range of analysis is the past half century of human history. Empires like that of Spain and Portugal, and later Britain, with outposts in exotic, foreign locations; wars of conquest for church and crown giving way to wars between sovereign nations that included colonization and the radical racial theory that legitimated the enslavement or murder of thousands of human beings. A world order organizes an entire age, not precisely, but as a prevailing ethos, like the Iberian idea -- backed by the Catholic Church -- that to the conqueror went the spoils, including total dominion over the conquered. Great book. British rule of the Indian subcontinent has always fascinated my imagination, the circumstances that made it possible for so few to assert control over so many for so long. I’ve heard Alfred McCoy on podcasts and seen him on Democracy Now, and he’s always concise and direct in his analysis. He has some trenchant things to say about the future of the American world order. (Spoiler alert: it’s coming to an end.) He’s worth listening to. 

I put a book by Rebecca Solnit called Orwell’s Roses on my radar. 

In terms of my own writing, I published one review at California Review of Books this month, and two pieces for my Medium page. I admit to getting caught up in the anxiety and anticipation of views, reads, and reaction from others, but I usually remind myself of the hundreds of things vying for our attention these days, sunup to sundown, from the latest must-have deals to what’s hot on HBO. Is it trending? How many likes? What’s the hashtag? It’s exhausting. My fiction project hit a stall, as if the breeze on the sea suddenly ceased and the sails drooped. While I was walking it occurred to me that though the story is coming clear to me, I still do not know who is telling the story. I don’t trust my own voice, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that I don’t know what my voice sounds like. I think I’ve stumbled upon a structure that might connect all the scenes in my head. We’ll see. My labor of love, failure, and hopefully, learning. I try to get better at things. 

As I was riding past the Old Mission the other night around 10:30, I heard the yipping of coyotes, a loud chorus that I haven’t heard in such volume in a long time. The sound echoed in the heavily wooded canyon. Nature. I’ve been working on composting, experimenting with opening the tumbler to air it out as much as possible, because it’s too wet and smells rank, a sign of excessive moisture. Composting food waste and watching its slow decomposition, then spreading it around our yard, turning it into the soil with a long-handled trowel, is very satisfying to me. From a very young age I loved gardening. There’s wisdom in it. I need to get my hands in dirt on a regular basis. 

And sometimes I find I need to just be, where I am, fully present in the moment. It’s the toughest discipline. 

A Walk to the Park

 “Let us march on ballot boxes, until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress men who will not fear to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.” Martin Luther King, Jr., March 25, 1965

Today my wife and I made an urban hike from our house to Franceschi Park. I did this four-mile round trip a week or so ago and wanted Terry to see it. Turns out that she had never been to Franceschi Park, incredible news to me as most Santa Barbara natives have visited FP at least once. We set off up Garcia Road. The sky was streaked with clouds but the islands were visible in the channel. I couldn’t remember the last time we had taken a walk, just the two of us. Terry turns 60 in March of this year; in November we will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. As with most marriages, ours hit a few bumps in the road, rocky patches, but we managed to find a way through and now find ourselves in a good place, more tolerant of one another, happy in our little bungalow. Funny how we can find ourselves content in a world that my incessant social media news feed portrays as falling apart. Terry, as ever, is the optimistic one. While I’m happy enough on a personal level, I find myself more and more resigned to the real possibility that the United States is headed for autocratic rule. 

We took a rest on the low wall where Garcia Road meets Alameda Padre Serra then continued on our way, pausing only to admire a stately house or the vibrant colors in a beautifully landscaped yard, the rough texture of a sandstone wall. Traffic was sparse and it was quiet enough to hear the shriek of a turkey vulture as it floated above the Santa Barbara Bowl. Terry had her earbuds in and was listening to music, which she claimed she needed for motivation. We cut through Sylvan Park, green after the heavy rain in December. A young couple was sitting on a bench, but other than them nobody else was around. On Dover Hill Road Terry stopped and lay on the road, protesting that she couldn’t go on. I knew she was being dramatic and waited for her to get on her feet. We climbed the stone stairs between two elegant residences and reached the lower section of the park. The foliage was green and hearty, proof of the restorative power of six inches of rain. The cacti looked refreshed. We could see some of our city’s landmarks, including the County Courthouse, the spire of the Arlington Theater, the Granada Building, and Peabody Stadium. As it has since I was a teenager, the contrast of trees and sky, white stucco and red tile roofs, and the blue of the Pacific Ocean filled me with happiness. When I was in high school my friend David and I spent a fair amount of hours in Franceschi Park, usually stoned to the gills on weed. It was the late 70’s, after all. 

Walking puts me in a ruminating frame of mind, and I found myself thinking, not about the peace of the moment, the beautiful scenery, but about something the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka said in an interview I watched on YouTube. Soyinka was talking about the endemic, crippling corruption in his native country, describing it as an endless cycle of rogues and robbers. Naturally, I thought of my country and the threat posed by Donald J. Trump and the GOP. Unless Trump chokes on a drumstick or is indicted, I expect him to run for president in 2024. Were he to win, I think he would try to do what autocrats always do: consolidate as much power as possible, including over the armed forces. Because Trump is a spiteful and vindictive man, it’s likely he would attempt to use the power of the federal government to go after people who refused to go along with his coup attempt. He would appoint loyalist lackeys in key agency roles in order to hollow the agencies out even further than they already are. He would continue to load the federal judiciary with right-wing activist judges. Cronyism and grifting would be rampant. Loyalty tests for members of the GOP would become ever more stringent. I think we would also witness more spectacles of white supremacy. Trump would find new enemies to blame things on, fresh scapegoats. 

Of late I’ve heard Trump declare, echoing Joseph Stalin, by the way, that who counts the votes is more important than who casts the votes. Such statements should put all citizens on alert. Here I’m going to plug an organization called Free Speech for People, which is doing important advocacy work around elections as well as barring January 6 insurrectionists from holding public office. Please check out: https://freespeechforpeople.org/one-year-after-january-6th-attack-on-the-us-capitol-public-interest-groups-launch-campaign-to-bar-insurrectionists-from-the-ballot/

The view from Franceschi Park was stunning, as always. 

A Year Too Late

“Well, the good old days may not return/And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn.” Tom Petty, “Learning To Fly.”

Finally, Joe Biden has spoken about the Insurrection that aimed to overturn his victory. The President said the right things and placed the responsibility for what took place that horrible day squarely where it belongs -- on Donald J. Trump. The long silent US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, also made a statement, though by comparison his was tepid and didn’t leave me with the sense that the DOJ will vigorously investigate and prosecute the insurrectionists, including Donald J. Trump. The country needed to hear from Biden and Garland ten months ago, when the wound was fresh and still oozing blood. 

Watching the footage of the attack a year later is no less horrifying. Those were some angry people. Some rage-filled people, most of them men, and most of them white.  

November and December of this year could be a dangerous flash point. The GOP is going all out to retake control of the legislative branch, and if historical trends hold, they will, which would end  Biden’s legislative agenda, such as it is. On the off chance the GOP fails to regain control of the House and Senate, you can be sure there will be accusations of fraud, demands for recounts, independent audits, court challenges, and possibly violence. Trump primed the pump, and now far too many Americans believe that political violence is acceptable. What kind of country will we be if we legitimize political killings? I think Ted Cruz is a dickhead but I do not advocate for him to be assaulted, maimed or executed. Mike Pence is a cowardly cipher and a religious fanatic, but at no time did I want to see him swinging from the gallows. The norm of a peaceful, cooperative transfer of political power has been one of America’s singular strengths, something we all could be proud of, at least until Trump came along and trampled it. Once the people’s votes have been counted, we have always agreed to abide by the outcome. Not anymore. So where does it go from here? Where does this spiral end? Are we just going to contest every electoral outcome, at every level of government? Or simply ignore the outcome by calling it illegitimate? No complex country and society can operate with such a prevailing ethos. Escalating turmoil would result. 

Where are the cooler heads, the good people, the smart and compassionate people, the level-headed, decent, common sense-filled people who accept the fact that Trump lost and Biden won in a legitimate election with a legitimate outcome? There are 81 million of us, give or take, the majority of the country, dispersed across the land, in every city, village, town and hamlet. We’re the fucking majority of Americans, the people who believe we deserve a voice in how the government functions and for whose benefit it functions. We’re living our lives, trying to be decent, tolerant people who raise children to be the same; the kind of people who more times than not do the right thing. The majority of us looked at the four year reign of Donald J. Trump and his sleazy, pathetic, sycophantic entourage, and said, No, enough of this fool is enough. Enough scandal, enough incompetence. We don’t like Trump or the impulses he stands for. We’re smart enough to recognize a conman when we see one. We didn’t vote for him. We, the majority, agree that Trump and his followers are a potential danger to our representative democracy. We wonder why so little is being done, and why so much is being deliberately thwarted. Who benefits? Who pays the cost? 

You know what I want? A society as close to justice as we can get, because that is itself a lofty ambition. Some of us have been poisoned by propaganda and disinformation to act unjustly toward people we do not even know. 

Rules need to be in place to make corruption difficult and wholesale corruption impossible. 

How many Americans honestly believe Joe Biden is an illegitimate President? Is it roughly the same number of Americans who believe Tucker Carlson is a legitimate journalist? 

I’m going to pose the same question I have since November 2020: if the election was fraudulent, how do you explain the strong showing by Republican candidates across the country? If the Democrats rigged the election, why didn’t they rig it to cement control of Congress as well as the White House? Why would they rig it only to secure razor-thin Congressional majorities? At its core the Big Lie makes no sense, it’s a fantasy concocted to protect Trump’s brittle ego. The election was a referendum on Trump, he was at the top of the ticket, and he was rejected by the voters. Down ballot Republican candidates fared just fine, but 81 million voters repudiated Trump and what he stands for. 

I don’t know if America is headed for a social crack-up, but if that’s our shared destination, it will be a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare. All the craven, scheming politicians and media figureheads who precipitated the Rise of Trump to begin with, who didn’t stand up and say NO to Trump’s idiocy, and all the people fooled into cheering for him, who refused to see him for what he is, and will always be, a grifter and conman. Can’t you see that when you are no longer of use to Trump he will discard you like a spent condom? Television is a universe of make-believe and the only industry that Donald J. Trump was successful in. He was shit at the Casino game, which is pretty hard to fuck-up, but Donald John is a rare specimen of elite fuck-up. When it comes to elite failure, my GOAT was George W. Bush, but as I said, Trump is rare. He should be ridiculed and laughed at like a two-headed carnival freak, not revered as a God. America, I ask honestly, what’s wrong with you? Do we really need to do this old dance around the racist maypole? Look, very soon white folk will be a minority of the population. Is that what my fellow white people are afraid of? Why? What’s scary about that? I thought living through Richard Nixon was the low point.  Jesus Christ, compared to Trump, Nixon was a saint.  

Nixon was a twisted fucker, but Trump is many times more dangerous. Trump is a mass media maestro in a mass media age. Reality is what he says it is. Donald needs to go out in the wilderness, naked and alone, and have a refresher course in reality, in the basics of raw survival: food, water, warmth, shelter from the elements. 

Remind me, what is it exactly that we disagree about? What direct harm has been done to you by the government? What harm was done to you by Barack Obama?What’s your beef? 

Trump, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone are the kind of warped people who instigate social unrest and then hightail it to safety on a private jet owned by a real billionaire. Republicans knew what Trump was about from the beginning, yet waited in vain for others of better reasoning ability and morale capacity to step forward to restrain him. Out of nothing but lies, a story of magic and malice was forged. An invention worthy of Hollywood. The King is insane, his wife is a rigid bitch, his children are incorrigible phonies, and yet, some people can’t get enough. I don’t get it. I never will. 

The Right is using all its media power and rhetorical judo to convince enough Americans that what they saw with their own eyes on January 6, 2021 is false. They’re telling us that what we saw wasn’t sedition or a deadly insurrection, but the rational response of Patriots to an epic injustice. Get it? In this rewrite of the script the insurrectionists are the good guys, and the institution they stormed and desecrated is evil. Is this how the idea of America ends?