After You See the Truth

“And so we come to Donald Trump, the very personification of this low, dishonest age.” Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion

There are evenings in this crazy age of Trump when I wish that Hunter S. Thompson was still alive, hunkered down in Woody Creek with a huge supply of weed and coke, 3 cases of Carta Blanca beer, 4 quarts of Jose Cuervo, limes, an assortment of pipes and bongs, writing at his best in the darkest hours of night. I miss his voice, just as I miss Alex Cockburn’s. Blazing wit and intelligence, daring, balls, seeing things exactly as they are and why -- why being most important -- because it leads to who, as in, whose interests are we talking about here? 

Look what the rich have done in a little less than 50 years. Behold, for this is what concentrated political and economic power looks like. The owners and investors got us to hate the commons and pretty much everything associated with government; got us to believe that capitalism and democracy always walk hand in hand; got us to believe that everything about human life on Earth is just about the money; that it’s every man or woman for himself (except if the woman is pregnant and desires an abortion), and that we can only depend on ourselves; they convinced us that peace and cooperation are unattainable ideals; they got us  to believe that one day we can all be coders and entrepreneurs, winners in the gig economy; that the science of climate change is open to interpretation; that “wars” that go on for decades are normal.    

The shit they got us to believe is incredible! Tip of the cap to the rulers and their associates! It’s no surprise that the rich have ravaged the world, turned it all into commodities, endless wars, poisoned water, and a surveillance camera up your ass or implanted in your arm. 

Spread the news. The rich whipped our asses in the class war! It was a massacre. They buried our ideology along with our bones. 

We let them. We barely fought back. 

Now we have Donald J. Trump, the dumbest motherfucker imaginable, sitting in the Oval Office. My God, doesn’t this freak you out? It sure as hell freaks me out, sends me into deep depressions and prolonged funks. How the fuck did it come to this? I always thought the USA was a serious country, historically immature, of course, but at least pretending to high-mindedness in polite company. I suppose this is a result of all that JFK-rhetoric I imbibed as a young person. We used to be perceived as the good guys, the decent guys, the guys who at least thought twice about torturing prisoners or dropping bombs on civilians. Now? We do it for sport and with the impunity white men enjoyed in the days of chattel slavery. 

I couldn’t bear to watch the Democratic Party debate, that terrible circus of second fiddlers. When Joe Biden, resembling an upright corpse, is the front runner, it’s not an inspiring time. Biden’s sputtering nonsense is too much to watch. I cannot believe that fucker is in this race. His deeds are one of the reasons Donald J. Trump sits in the White House. What does Biden stand for, shill for, sell his ass for, as much as he does right-of-center notions? Biden was better than a Republican when it came to protecting and serving corporate clients like credit card companies, Wall Street investment houses, and the carceral industrial-complex. Wars, too. Biden was all over that shit, like a dog with a bone. He added his voice and position to a center-right, right, and whacky right cacophony and left a visible trail of destruction. But fuck all if despite his record Biden isn’t the man the mainstream media and the DNC is attempting to shove down our throats, force us to swallow. Doddering fucker. Tells batshit stories like your ancient grandpa after he’s tipped back six shots, all kinds of twisted, incoherent shit. Nowhere near Trump’s gibberish, of course, that stuff’s heroic -- (I hope we don’t see its kind again for a very long time) -- but along the same fact-less, ignorance-laden and incoherent line. 

How long will it take to dig out from under Trump’s pile of shit when the asswipe dies in his sleep, chokes on a cheeseburger, or Melania slices his ball-sack off and lets him bleed to death? (Either she’s itching to do it or she’s a robot.) Can you imagine a naked Donald J. Trump climbing on top of you? How fucking sick would that make one feel? 

Hunter Thompson would scorch Trump at every opportunity with both barrels, and it would be beautiful to see. But Hunter would also remind us to keep an eye on the courts, district and federal, because Trump is taking over that branch of our government. Appointing uptight fucktards left and right. Imagine how much more difficult this will make it to erase the shit smear Donald J. Trump leaves on America. Two decades, three? You think fuckers like Gorsich and Kavanaugh will make a philosophical about face and join us in the real world the minute Trump is pronounced dead?

We need wild, but not insane, voices to jar people out of their insta-cart, Facebook, Instagram world. Very few people are willing to face the truth, see what’s really happening, why, and by whose hand. Look deeply, but at your own risk. Not responsible for loss of political or religious ideology, party, group, pack or gang. You see the truth on your own, all by yourself. But it’s what you do after you see the truth that matters. 

Lost at Sea

“The prime constant factor in American politics across the past six decades has been a counterattack by the rich against the social reforms of the 1930’s.” Alexander Cockburn

All week I’ve felt this terrible sense of foreboding, even though my personal life, and that of my family, is fine, nobody sick or living in poverty, nobody going hungry or struggling to find  clean water, nobody running for their lives because of political or environmental upheaval. Right now mornings in Santa Barbara are cool, but by midday the sun is out, the sky is blue, and all is well.

I’m prone to bouts of depression, dark, somber moods. I’d be better off if I stopped reading dozens of online news sources every day, but it’s hard to look away from the most bizarre political era of my life. I think Trump fatigue is as real as any ailment the pharmaceutical industry hawks during the evening news. If only there was a little oval -- purple, blue or white -- pill to cure Trumpism. The Orange Menace must be worried about the midterm elections because he’s really gone off the rails this week, even by his lofty standards of sheer madness. Provoking a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. Promising his supporters a tax cut before the midterms, even though Congress isn’t in session until after the election. Opening the Alaskan coast to oil drilling. Identifying himself as a nationalist, which means “white” nationalist. Calling for unity after spending nearly two years pouring gasoline on the flames of division. Claiming that the ranks of a Central American caravan of migrants headed toward the US are infiltrated with MS-13 gang members and Muslim terrorists, hell-bent on “invading” the country that spends more on its military than any other on the planet. The corporate media, playing along with Trump, calls the migrants an “army.” (If it’s an army, it’s an army of the desperate, the fearful, the displaced, and the impoverished.) Spewing utter nonsense about the great US jobs his proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia will produce, pulling numbers out of his ass and flinging them at reporters, all fabrications, of course.  

A nation is in deep trouble far at sea when facts don’t matter, when a president makes stuff up on the fly, and the media more often than not accepts the mindless drivel, rather than calling BS, loud and incessantly.

Trump is a laughingstock. His administration is a shambles, a cruel, dangerous shambles. What about the children in custody at our border, separated from their parents, in limbo in cages? Have we forgotten them? Yes. The media moves on, fascinated by the next shiny thing, the next outrage, the next scandal, the next heaping pile of lies. What about Fukushima? What about the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing oil as I write these words? What of our endless war in Afghanistan? Silence. Not shiny enough, not as interesting as Trump’s latest Tweet.

I worry about the malignant seeds Trump is spreading in our soil, some of which will wither and die when he finally leaves or is forced from the stage, but others that will take root and grow, with the fruit not to appear until ten or twenty years from now. Sometimes the real danger is unseen. Trump didn’t come from nowhere. He’s the result of a political and economic system turned corrupt and unresponsive to the needs of the people. The tinder was there when Trump rode his escalator down, primed and waiting for a match.

Try a Little Marx

“There’ll be one corporation selling one little box

it'll do what you want and tell you what you want and cost whatever you got.”                  

Greg Brown, Where is Maria?

This is my 500^th post. I never anticipated keeping the Balcony going this long, but one thing led to another, and here we are, number 500.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the McCutcheon case was outrageous but not surprising, because the high court is dominated by rabid ideologues. John Roberts is a second-class whore and his judicial robes should be festooned with corporate logos so his masters are easily recognizable.  Money equals free speech and corporations are people – this is what passes for democracy in America.  Our cherished myths about one man (or woman) - one vote and the will of the governed are only that, myths; this is not the land of the free and the home of the brave -- this country belongs to the wealthy and they operate it for their own advancement. 

Our “democratic” institutions are rotted through and through, hollow, ready to topple, and authoritarian forces are prepared to take their place. Every time I hear a politician say, “the American people” I want to puke. Congress has never given a rat’s ass for the will of the people -- not from the founding of the republic -- it only acts reluctantly, when forced from below by popular movements. Unfortunately, our social movements are fragmented, more often than not working at cross purposes, and while what’s left of organized labor, the environmental movement, civil rights organizations, and the remnants of the Occupy movement bicker or dither, the lackeys of the wealthy scheme to hand more of our collective booty over to people who don’t need it.

This is what totalitarian capitalism looks like. Nothing is allowed to interfere with the chase for profits…not law, morality, common sense or decency.

Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, and the World Meteorological Organization have all recently issued grim warnings about climate change. The condition of the planet is bad and getting worse, and yet denial remains the American mantra. Business as usual! Drill, blast, scorch, pump, cut, fell, and dump. If we don’t talk about climate change it will go away, right? Do political elites and members of the 1% breathe different air, drink different water, eat fish from a different ocean? Are they immune from drought, flood, fire, and tornado?

In the 1940’s Henry Miller referred to America as the “air-conditioned nightmare.” I’m glad Miller can’t see the country or its major institutions now, not that it would break his heart, but because it would confirm damn near everything he predicted, and he would have hoped we’d have regained our senses by now. I can imagine Miller saying, “Seventy-odd years later and they still don’t get it. A nation of dolts, that’s what they are!”

It’s hard for any thinking American not to feel bummed out by the hypocrisy, the waste, the mendacity, the unfairness, the greed, the impotence, and the belligerence that characterize our country in the middle of the second decade of the 21^st century. I’m reading a book called, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture by the late Alexander Cockburn. Writing in 2004, Cockburn relates some advice his father, Claud Cockburn, gave him: “When all seems dark, try reading a little Marx. It puts things in perspective.”