"Legitimate Political Discourse"

 “If fossil fuel corporations are allowed to continue heating the planet, mounting food and water scarcity could well induce civilizational decline.” Daniel Sherrell, The Nation

Another week in the open-air asylum that is America. The Republican Party censored two of its members, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, for doing their sworn duty and upholding their oath of office. Pause and allow that to sink in. The Republican National Committee then, believe it or not, called the riot of January 6 “legitimate political discourse.” Sit with that for a moment as well. This is the stuff of which authoritarian regimes are made. Absolutely fidelity to the Great Leader, and belief in fantasy. Is it legitimate discourse when five people die, hundreds of law enforcement personnel are injured, and the seat of our democracy is damaged and desecrated? Is this what the Party of Lincoln calls “legitimate political discourse”? If Dwight Eisenhower was on the scene today, he’d be booted from the GOP. Hell, back in the 1950’s the John Birch Society claimed that Ike was a communist. The nutty fringe is now firmly in the mainstream. Thank you Koch family. Thank you Roger Ailes. Thank you Rupert Murdoch. Thank you United States Supreme Court. 

Stop the presses, Mike Pence said publicly that Donald Trump is wrong! The ultimate blasphemy. Pence was one of Trump’s most subservient lap dogs, who believed as many evangelical Christians did that Trump was the second coming of their beloved lord and savior. Whatever Trump says, spews, or barks is gospel, no matter how witless, idiotic, illegal, or insane. That’s the public belief system that must be expressed at every opportunity, the Party line. Pence was already a pariah in the GOP, the man Trump’s addled foot soldiers sought to hang on January 6, on the gallows they hastily erected, so stating the obvious won’t cost him. Mikey wants to be President almost as much as he wishes to sit at the right hand of the father, but his chance is gone. But let’s not anoint Pence as a courageous man for doing his duty under the law. That’s the bare minimum we should expect from any person in public office. No accolades or praise is necessary. 

Trump’s endless whining about fraud and corruption in the electoral machinery might backfire, and I bet many in the GOP know it. They wouldn’t be disappointed if Trump was struck by lighting and rendered mute. Trump’s unfounded claims could dampen Republican turnout in November. If the whole process is as bankrupt as Trump claims, why bother to vote? Stay home MAGA people, wave your big Trump flag in protest, torch Nancy Pelosi in effigy, stick needles in your Adam Kinzinger voodoo doll. Listen to your false idol, the Fairy King of Mar-A-Lago. 

To watch this country descend into such madness and stupidity, to watch millions of Americans embrace a man as ridiculous as Donald Trump, to watch an entire political party fall to its knees and declare loyalty to Trump rather than loyalty to this country’s institutions and laws, is mind boggling. How can so many people be so gullible? How can so many be so terrified of examining our history, accepting and coming to terms with it? “Real” Americans see liberals as wimps, soft, mush-brained, as Rush Limbaugh told them daily for nearly thirty years. Turns out that Limbaugh’s people, the ones with all the guns and ammo, are a pack of wusses, scared shitless by ideas and historical facts. All this activity around the nation to ban books from school libraries, and etch into law a requirement that teachers not present ideas or concepts that might upset pale-skinned Jack, or high-strung Caitlyn; we can’t run the risk of upsetting the delicate sensibilities of white children. Might harm them for life. Throw those terrible and frightening books on the fire. 

Joe Rogan and Marjorie Taylor Greene are America’s new prom King & Queen.

Remind me, how is the GOP any different from the Taliban?

I’m almost finished with Alfred W. McCoy’s fine book, To Govern the Globe. The world order stitched together by the United States after World War II, which included the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe, the creation of NATO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and mutual security pacts with Japan, South Korea and Australia, is unraveling. While there was plenty of hypocrisy in Washington’s order (professing democratic ideals and human rights while simultaneously toppling duly-elected governments it disagreed with, climbing into bed with dictators, and so forth) it has managed to maintain relative stability and prosperity for 70 years. What comes next we can only guess at. McCoy theorizes that China has the economic and military potential to supplant the Washington order as early as 2030. If trends continue, the US, with a declining share of the world economy under its control, will be unable to maintain its massive global military presence, and in particular its hegemony over the Pacific Ocean. Climate change is the wild card. McCoy writes, “Through its ever-increasing intensity, global warming will have a destructive impact on world orders for the rest of the twenty-first century and beyond.” What McCoy shows in this book are the circumstances -- political, industrial, diplomatic, social, and military -- that cause empires to fall and world orders to shift. The US is a hollow lion, losing its global edge a little more each year. Trump hastened our slide by stupidly attacking NATO, the WHO, and settled international agreements like the Paris Climate Accords. The framework erected during the American world order, global symbols for order, cooperation, and the rule of law, were either weakened or eliminated under Trump’s reign of error. This country is in for a great reckoning. 

I may not see it, but my children surely will, and that is why I am constantly in a state of anxiety, because time is not on our side and collectively we have failed to take climate change seriously. Baby Boomers, like me, will die in an era we may hardly recognize. 

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.