Ally Of The Poor

“The Europeans had managed to dirty up the good land and good water around the world in less than five hundred years. Now the despoilers wanted the last bits of living earth for themselves alone.” Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead

What outrage against the human family has the Trump Junta committed today? What laws has the Orange Menace broken or flouted, or demanded others break or flout? How much longer will the failed War on Terror continue? These questions, and many others, dance across my mind as this strange nightmare goes on; it’s like a river of toxic sludge, there’s no waking up from it, no respite or relief. I write to make myself feel better, to bleed my system of anger, despair, and disgust. My country is becoming a full-fledged banana republic, albeit one armed to the teeth and always ready to bomb an enemy real, perceived or contrived. It’s not difficult to see a total collapse, a descent into chaos. The foundation isn’t solid anymore, if it ever was. The edifice might look formidable, but under pressure it will collapse in a cloud of dust. Empires rise, empires fall.

I’m still reading Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko, published in 1991. The book is eerily prophetic. Silko imagined a militarized southern border, streams of refugees from Central American countries ruined by US policy and the brutality of the narco trade. European colonizers were masters of destruction and death and nothing was allowed to stand in the way of their plunder. Slavery, racism, genocide. Millions of expendable indigenous people died. They were god-less, ignorant, superstitious, inferior to the colonizers, so who cared how many were killed? Red, black, brown, yellow, leave the vultures to rip the rotting flesh from their bones, and leave the bones to bleach in the sun. Turn the survivors against one another, distract them, entertain them, bedazzle them with spectacle and make the simple complex, convince them that tyranny is freedom.  

The catalog of horrors grows. Like mold, Stephen Miller’s dark shadow grows longer on the wall of the White House. The Department of Homeland Security -- always creepy and suggestive of a nation under endless siege -- is in disarray, not sufficiently cruel enough for Trump and Miller’s tastes. If you’re not prepared to rip a newborn baby from its mother’s desperate grasp, you’re not made of the right stuff. On his recent trip to the border, Trump apparently encouraged government officials to ignore the law, which is what all dictators do eventually. Yet, Republicans still won’t turn on Trump, as if their instinct for self-preservation has mutated into a desire for a glorious, flaming end under the tattered banners of Christianity and white supremacy and Capitalism.

Everything in America is based on winners and losers, profits and losses. The will of the people is ignored now as it always has been, shunted aside by corrupt judges and crafty politicians, muted by clergy, ridiculed by the corporate media. The precise point at which the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice is very hard to find. Was Dr. King wrong? Is the notion of a moral universe just another fairy tale, like American exceptionalism? The oppressed must always be patient, must always wait, must always accept incremental progress. But as they wait, the plunder continues, day and night, winter and spring, under the rule of Republicans and Democrats, through boom and bust, the greedy hand never stops reaching for what it covets, be it precious stones, oil, gas, young flesh, land, water, gold,  cocaine or the thoughts inside our heads.

I ask again: what outrage against the human family has the Trump Junta committed today? What perversity has Trump normalized?

Give the last word to Leslie Marmon Silko: “All across earth there were those listening and waiting, isolated and lonely, despised outcasts of the earth. First the lights would go out -- dynamite or earthquake, it did not matter. All sources of electrical power generation would be destroyed. Darkness was the ally of the poor.”

In Search of Zen Mind

“Building character is like making bread -- you have to mix it little by little, step by step, and moderate temperature is needed.” Shunryu Suzuki

It’s difficult to stay present in the moment and too easy to drift into the most dire scenarios when the world seems wracked by calamity -- floods, violence, poverty, corruption -- and yet the sun comes up, birds chirp, and spring unfolds. The hills above Santa Barbara are green, and the County recently announced that the drought is over, though we still have a water problem and need to conserve.

The media are breathless about the Mueller Report that is in the hands of the Attorney General. I’m not holding my breath for any shocking revelations about Trump and Russia. What about Trump could shock anyone at this point? Do we need Mueller’s report to know that the President of the United States is corrupt? We already have enough proof of Trump’s disdain for the law. Trump will take to Twitter to deny the report anyway, calling it partisan, a witch hunt, or whatever, and his loyal base of cops, soldiers and bikers will nod their heads in agreement, and the Republicans will remain in line, mute and deferential. Rachel Maddow’s likely to be very disappointed, might even slip into depression.

Although the stock market took a dip yesterday, all you hear about the economy from the mainstream press is how strong it is, how many jobs are being created, and how this strength bodes well for Trump’s re-election in 2020. Incumbents, even one as unpopular as Trump, have built-in advantages, and add to that the near certainty that the Democrats will nominate Joe Biden -- or someone of similar bent -- as their standard-bearer and Trump’s re-election looks even more likely. That’s hard to accept on a sunny Saturday morning. Trump is pushing our institutions to the brink and it’s not certain they will hold for two more years, let alone a second term.

And if the economy is so great, why are so many people struggling and living in precarity?  Great for who?

I’m reading Almanac Of The Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko and 2 Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark. At first I had trouble keeping the relationship of the characters straight in the Silko novel, but I’m getting into it now; it’s a long one. The Shepard and Dark letters are fascinating, a 40-year friendship between two men who bare their souls to one another and examine their lives through lenses that are by turns humorous and deeply philosophical. For men of a certain age, the observations made can bring you up short -- these were well read men who examined themselves rigorously and had life experience as well. I’ve read a fair amount of Shepard’s writing, the play Simpatico, Motel Chronicles, Cruising Paradise, and Great Dream of Heaven. His letters provide context for his work, glimpses behind the stories. I’m old enough to know the excitement of receiving a letter from a friend, the sense of intimacy that an email or text message or social media post lacks. A letter provides a more tangible sense of connection, allows for a pause between receipt and response.

Humans need pause, need time to stop and reflect, but this modern, hyperactive, interconnected society we live in hates any pause and fills any silence with noise. My daughter’s connection to her phone scares me. I’m happiest when I don’t have my phone around, my daughter can’t be without hers without feeling anxious and unmoored. I remember being dependent on pay phones (and having change) when away from home, my daughter barely knows what a pay phone is, or was, since they are few and far between now. So much change to navigate, so little silence in which to do so. We can’t eliminate the pause.

Think I’ll go out and have a look at this day, scan the sky, turn the compost, and empty the trash. Maybe in doing so I’ll find my elusive Zen mind.