No Comparison

 “Whether you are the criminal or the captive, there are few things more disconcerting than learning that the rescue crew is in on the plot.” Sarah Kendzior, Vanity Fair

The way Donald Trump evades accountability for his many transgressions is astonishing. Whether this is a result of Trump’s evil genius or simply the weakness of our institutions and the people who sit atop them, I can’t say, though I imagine it’s a little of both. That the people who write and administer the laws are rarely held accountable by them, even after swearing an oath to faithfully obey and uphold them, is a maddening axiom. Maddening because average people have no capacity to play hide and seek with the law; average people can’t ignore subpoenas or demand that their case be heard by their own hand-picked judge. Only the wealthy and powerful and politically-connected are allowed to play the legal game this way. 

I sounded the alarm about Trump early and often on this blog, my long-running vanity project that resides on the fringes of total anonymity. One small voice drowned by the noise of the world. I had been aware of Trump for many years and considered him an obnoxious buffoon, the worst kind of rich asshole because of his insatiable insecurity and blinding need to always be the center of attention, even as he failed at one business venture after another. Bright lights, glitz, famous people, and braggadocio was what Trump had, and it was enough for the New York real estate world. But Trump was never the business whiz he claimed to be; you have to be a particular kind of fuck-up to run a casino into the ground. It’s telling that the only thing Trump excelled at was the make-believe of “reality” television, where he controlled the script, the lighting and camera angles, final edit approval, and all the make-up and hair people he needed. When he entered politics in 2015 he did so on the wings of television which he understood how to manipulate better than any other figure, perhaps any American, ever. The Republican field was crowded but weak in 2016, and none of the candidates knew how to deal with someone like Trump, who lied and exaggerated and accused and humiliated others as casually as a bully on an elementary school playground. The corporate media -- ABC, NBC, CBS, and the cable networks -- aided Trump, of course, because he was good for ratings and strong ratings juice ad revenue. Trump had the full-throated backing of Fox News, whose on-air “personalities” and performers rushed to defend, explain, excuse, and interpret him for its viewers nearly all day, every day. Trump was making money for the media CEO’s, so it’s no surprise that they stayed seated for the ride. After Trump’s shock victory by way of the absurd Electoral College the same media outlets bent over backwards to normalize Trump and treat him like a serious man -- like he had a clue about what being President of the United States meant. 

He didn’t. All Trump knew was that he was going to have a lot of power. 

With great solemnity many pundits predicted that the office would change Trump, temper his baser instincts and coarse behavior, but the opposite happened; Trump turned the office into a burlesque, an extension of reality television, complete with wicked villains (Democrats, the Deep State, Hillary Clinton, anyone who opposed him or said unkind things about him) and outrageous claims of his own greatness, omniscience and popularity. Better than Obama, always, because Obama was bad juju for Trump, the one man Trump couldn’t cow, bully, humiliate or denigrate. He tried to erase as many of Obama’s accomplishments as he could with his executive pen, but largely failed. There’s no comparison between the two men: one is a successful human, the other a sociopath; one is respected for his calm mind, intelligence, eloquence and reason, and the other spews outrageous lies like a busted sewer line; one possesses a moral and ethical center, the other is amoral and only admires raw power. Despite laws and norms, precedent and tradition that existed to prohibit such behavior, Trump set out to profit from his office, to monetize it as much as possible, only in scale and technique different from the kleptocrats of the former Soviet republics. Trump had no concept of being a servant of the people or the American state: he was the state, and the people were his subjects. The system of laws and norms and precedent and tradition failed to stop Trump, and once Trump saw how porous the guardrails were he knew the field was wide open. Start with relatively minor stuff like blatant violations of the Hatch Act and the Emolument clause of the Constitution, and if no alarm is raised, go further; if alarm is raised, issue a flat denial, accuse the Democrats of what-aboutism, and attack the accuser. This works very well if you have a massive social media following and a cable network willing to carry your freight. 

When Barack and Michelle Obama’s official White House portraits were unveiled this week I thought again of the contrast between Trump and Obama, the criminal narcissist and the half-black man of immense cool and class. Now, I was very critical of Barack Obama -- during the first half of his first term in particular -- that two-year period when he had congressional majorities and could have acted boldly and instead tried to play the game with the GOP, which wasn’t interested. Obama had it rough, especially after the 2010 midterms. I still think that not going after the CEO’s of the big banks for their role in the financial crash hurt him with Americans who lost their homes, jobs, health insurance, and hope. His foreign policy always disappointed me as it was in alignment with the Council on Foreign Relations, though he managed to sound more conflicted about the deployment of US power than his predecessor, the faux cowboy who plunged the US into a disastrous, stunningly stupid War on Terror, never ending, and ever changing. What I more clearly appreciate in retrospect is how skilled a politician Obama was, and how much abuse he endured. There’s more class in Barack Obama’s pinky than in all of Trump’s bloated body. 

The ground for an unscrupulous someone like Donald Trump was prepared over many years. The GOP has long harbored anti-democratic, racist, white supremacist, misogynistic and authoritarian figures, Christian nationalists and rabid anti-Communists. This is the modern GOP’s DNA, what they believe. Trump gave the entire party permission to unfurl and wave the MAGA flag of hatred. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 30

“Those jobs will all be back.” Donald J. Trump

Another lovely day in Santa Barbara. The wind kicked up and chased the marine layer from the sky. I rode my bike to the office where now anyone entering the building must wear a facial covering. One of the contractors working on the heating and cooling upgrade never wears a mask. He looks like the kind of person who would say, “I don’t need a mask. It’s just the flu, and I never get the flu. It’s totally overblown.” Part of Canon Perdido street has been repaved, but the lane lines are yet to be laid down. Next door to the office a new building is under construction, a monster that runs from property line to property line, not an inch wasted, and rising three stories. Offices and apartments. Luxury living in beautiful downtown Santa Barbara. Mountain views. Across De La Guerra street, another project is underway and the street is blocked off to allow heavy equipment room to operate. I watch a man bust chunks of a sandstone wall with a sledgehammer. I hear the sound of hammers, saws, diesel engines. 

Whatever you believe about Barack Obama, the facts prove that his administration was one of the cleanest in modern American history. No scandals. No pornstars. No Russian agents.

As I ride my bike around there seems to be more activity, more cars, and more people out. A loosening of the net. But stores are closed, some retail spaces already wear For Lease banners, and the Nordstrom store that anchored one end of the Paseo Nuevo mall for decades has announced it will not reopen. We bought a lot of stuff at Nordstrom over the years, from shoes to cosmetics to jewelry to clothing. No Macy’s. No Nordstrom. No Forever 21. Who will fall next? I still believe that the majority of the general population has no idea what lies ahead. We’ve been hit hard by Covid-19, but the right hook coming from the economic collapse will send us reeling. 

Don’t ask me, ask China, says Donald Trump before he scurries from an uncomfortable press conference. An Asian-American woman half his size tried to hold Trump accountable. Donald hates accountability, whether in business or his personal life. Strong women frighten Donald and he doesn’t know how to react. He likes his women flashy and dense, not professional and determined.  

The crime is obvious to anyone, says Donald Trump, referring to a make-believe conspiracy called Obama-Gate. I don’t know any details about Obama-Gate, other than it’s likely manufactured from the detritus of fevered imaginations. Whatever you believe about Barack Obama, the facts prove that his administration was one of the cleanest in modern American history. No scandals. No pornstars. No Russian agents. Obama’s reign was clean and mostly efficient; while I don’t agree with how he did it, I recognize that he kept the nation on the rails in 2009 and 2010, when the rigged housing market collapsed and the paper economy buckled. 

“We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” says Trump, like a gladiator. According to MSNBC, 81,468 deaths and more infections than any other country. Testing per capita still trailing, though Trump insists that We Are No. 1. The CDC guidelines for safely reopening society are ignored by Trump himself. 

The US has five percent of the world’s population and thirty percent of coronavirus cases. MAGA, baby, this is the “transition to greatness”. We’re going to come roaring back like a locomotive in the third quarter. It will be beautiful, tremendous, like nothing anyone has ever seen, the world will envy us. 

Trump has never failed this spectacularly. This is the apex, the pinnacle, the room at the top of the world, the Emmy and the Oscar and the Tony, a diamond-studded Super Bowl ring, the Masters Green Jacket, the World Cup trophy, and the Olympic Gold Medal of Trump’s long run as a huckster and conman. Trump is the Meryl Streep of con artists, a man of the media age, where facts and truth are overrun by images and simplistic plot tricks. He didn’t just ratfuck a casino or an airline this time, he ratfucked an entire country. Trump knows the sales pitch, the slogan, the mirage, but nothing else. When the shit goes down, he cowers away, hides behind bogus lawsuits and bankruptcy protection. Trump’s a punk who thinks he’s a big boss. 

I miss soccer, it’s like a void. Marcelo from Real Madrid just turned 32, but it seems like he’s been at Real forever. Same with Sergio Ramos. Both are great players, fun to watch. This long hiatus must drive top players crazy. They are like racehorses, primed to gallop, not be cooped up, even if that means cooped up in luxury. 

May. The merry month of May. The mail carrier is wearing blue latex gloves and a face mask. It’s May in the time of Covid-19. It might be May on the edge of the abyss. 

It’s May as far as we can see. 

The Nadir of the American Republic

“But that boundless blind faith is beginning to fade now.” Hunter S. Thompson

My head aches. I listen to bits of the House impeachment proceedings, then read about them on my usual outlets -- Truthout, Truthdig, The Nation, Counterpunch, Politico, Democracy NOW -- and try to make sense of it all. What’s abundantly clear is that the Republicans have sold their souls and their children and their pets to Trump, and can no longer even be described as a political party. Noam Chomsky has said numerous times that the current GOP is a criminal organization. When it comes to the Orange Menace, they see no evil, hear no evil and speak nothing but nonsense. Naturally, the blowhards and miscreants over at FOX News spin and slant their coverage to make it appear that the Democrats are throwing punches but not coming close to landing a glove on the innocent Trump. 

It amuses me to hear Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, talk about how the State Department attempted to school the newly established Ukranian government in anti-corruption practices. Coming from the United States -- whose Representatives and Senators are, with few exceptions, purchased, owned and operated by corporate interests, and whose foreign policy history is rife with coups, election interference, regime change operations, spying, invasions, assassination attempts and other malfeseance -- this is laughable, like a convicted pedophile priest teaching sex ed to teenage boys.  

When I think of American corruption, I think of the silky smooth rhetoric of Barack Obama, who couched the power plays of the American empire in words like self-determination, democracy, liberty and justice, and then turned around and authorized targeted assassinations in Afghanistan or wherever else he felt US power needed to be demonstrated. Measured, reasonable language and a Sidewinder missile is how America has always preferred to operate its Empire. The Trump Administration is completely different, of course, crude, clumsy and overt, the shiny facade ripped away to reveal the base intent of Empire (or is the objective now only to enrich Trump and his family?), which is, lest we forget, to thwart global rivals, control natural resources and markets, put down popular uprisings, and justify ever-increasing contributions to the Pentagon war machine. 

The divide in this country, between reality-based citizens and those who dwell in the FOX News ecosystem, is now so deep and broad that I fear America is finished as a representative democracy. We’ve reached such a nadir the two political parties cannot even agree on the most basic facts. If Adam Schiff asserted that Abraham Lincoln was 6’4” tall in his stockings, Republicans would immediately accuse Schiff of inflating Lincoln’s height, Tucker Carlson would call him the biggest liar in American history, and Sean Hannity would devote an entire show to “Height-Gate.” No republic can survive in this atmosphere, not when the economy is primed to implode and the impact of anthropogenic climate change is accelerating by the day. 

Here’s a dim and not very original prediction. The House will impeach Trump on a party-line vote and the Senate will acquit him, also on a party-line vote. If the economy doesn’t implode between now and election day, Trump will lose the popular vote, again, but prevail in the undemocratic Electoral College, again. Four more years of Trump will spell the end of America as we’ve known it. If you can think about that without feeling a sharp pain in your lower intestine, you must be very wealthy, stone dumb, or high on the most potent chemical concoction Big Pharma can come up with. 

A Quick Flash of Light

“The government’s central evil is its willful failure to distinguish the quality of intent or motive.” Jim Harrison, The Beast God Forgot to Invent

I am having a long conversation with myself about this blog and why I keep writing it. 15 years. Through George W. Bush and the Iraq Disaster, that unbellievably stupid strategic blunder, which has since caused distress and death for thousands of people, from Egypt and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. We meddled, and we’re paying and paying and paying. I doubt  they can even keep count of all the money the US spent destroying those countries. 18 years in Afghanistan. Longest war in American history, and nobody’s pissed about the milestone except a few middle-aged liberal cranks like me. The Obama years were disappointing to me, a fumbled opportunity. Obama lost his political nerve and turned in the direction he was oriented in anyway, center-right. Outwardly kinder and far more sophisticated but no less deadly than W. Smoother by a mile. With no push forward, we stayed in place. But the optics as they say, the presentation of Barack and Michelle Obama, was to me always reassuring, even hopeful. Cautious man, that Obama. Measured. Honestly seemed to be a very decent person, and never for a minute did I doubt that Obama was doing his best for the country. The man was calm, cool, polished to perfection, and that drove some people in this country into anger, then near madness. I believe, historically speaking, in black backlash. Happens every time there are any widespread gains for people of color. 

Obama didn’t do much for the Democrats as a party. But he stayed smart and elegant and cool until the last day of his term. Only doubted the policies and decisions and compromises, not the man.

And then the system goes haywire and vomits up Donald Trump. And here I am three years and countless unread blog posts later, living in Trump Time. America is an amusement park violently flipped upside down. Donald Trump. Fuck! I don’t know what else to say. I cannot even keep track of all Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors. Everyday there’s a new transgression. And his party of supposedly rational, decent people, the Grand Old Party, continues to follow Trump, fear Trump and, if not licking Trump’s ass, at least kissing it. They keep turning a blind eye and a deaf ear, afraid of Dear Leader and his Twitter machine, but secretly hoping he falls, and falls hard. 

The ship’s taking on a lot of water. The captain is addled, to say the least, but pretends that everything’s alright, that he’s the greatest man ever to sail, king of the sea, even though he knows deep down that this is the caper he’s not getting away with. The ship’s not listing, yet, but it’s taking on a lot of water. When are the rats going to start jumping, by ones and twos, and then trios and quartets? When will the sailors turn on the captain? This captain will sell his mother’s soul if it means saving his own. He’s fucked things up pretty well, and now it looks like his treasure maps are soon to be let out in the world. 

The age of Obama feels a long way back, a quick flash of light in the dark. The man read real books. He understood the law. He followed the law, for the most part. He was eloquent, even inspiring. Obama in eight years left no stain on America’s soul or hole in her heart. He kept the world at bay and the American empire humming. That takes a bucketful of skill. Obama had that. He also hired competent people. There were no personal scandals during Obama’s tenure in the White House. And then Trump and Company tramp in and the beautiful white walls turn a shade of ochre, the windows grow a film, a smell of rot permeates the whole place, and soon the only people that remain are the most immoral, crooked, cruel, and stupid. Barr. Pompeo. Mulvaney. Mnuchin. It’s not even the fourth string. It’s a coup alright, a coup by a bunch of people you’d never invite into your home for a cup of coffee. Redolent of sloth, all of them. The bottom of the barrel, the dogshit on the bottom of your boot. A decent God would smote them one by one, or at least plague them with disease, but as Tom Waits sang, God’s away on business. 

What I started with was the question of why I continue writing this blog. I’ll put that aside for now. 

It has been a strange week. I feel like I spent three days in a dark tunnel, with the faintest light at one end, and only today did I return to myself. I’ve been depressed. What Ernest Hemingway called the Black Dog. I bet my aura was tar black. I realized all of a sudden that I was garnering little joy for my day job, a job I have always performed very capably, but not one my heart is always in. The job pays the rent and puts food on the table and allows us to go to the clinic or the hospital. 20 years I’ve been there. 60 years old. I wonder about the remainder of my life, how we might survive on some pension money, my freelance work, and maybe a job at Trader Joe’s or something like that. The big worry is losing employer-based health insurance. I’m too young for Medicare. 

The Ball Is At Nancy Pelosi's Feet

“Trump is a habitual criminal.” James Risen

Well, those of us who wanted the Democrats to launch impeach proceedings the minute they took control of the House have finally got our impeachment. We’ve reached Nancy Pelosi’s threshold for serious wrongdoing. Now the question is, how do the Democrats proceed? Stick to the safe middle and base their case on the Ukraine issue alone, or tack on Trump’s multiple other impeachable offenses? Go narrow or wide? Shallow or deep? Slow or fast? This week I’ve read pieces advocating a go-quick approach, and an equal number practically begging the Dems to slow down and be thorough, meticulous. Build a mountain of evidence, so tall that even a modern Republican -- spineless, corrupt, hypocritical as such are now -- has second thoughts about being on the wrong side of history. While not likely, it’s possible that some Republicans will face reality, find their spines, and remember their sworn oath when the evidence against Trump is too overwhelming to ignore. 

Republicans are a strange breed. They’re all about the Constitution and the rule of law when they’re in the minority, but put them in power and the only oath they swear is to the Party, no matter how ridiculous and corrupt it becomes; they throw their weight behind a man like Donald Trump, and then cower before him like little bitches. Terrified of Trump’s tweets, they allow Trump to run roughshod over the Constitution, its separation of powers, checks and balances, and the most elemental norms of decency, like not putting innocent children in cages or denying school lunches to millions of school kids. 

The list of Trump’s high and low crimes, his misdemeanors and felonies, is long. James Risen is correct: Trump is simply a habitual criminal. The man has been like acid on the American republic since the day he placed his hand on the Bible and lied. For the next few months, Trump is going to spin like a top, froth and fulminate against the Democrats at every opportunity, call Adam Schiff names, portray himself as the victim of a Deep State witch hunt, whine, and declare how unfair it all is and how it should be illegal. Get ready. It’s going to be an all-out onslaught of drivel, bullshit, wild claims, boldfaced lies, conspiracy theories and hypocrisy the likes of which Americans have never seen before. 

Before long, Trump will have convinced 40% of Americans that Joe Biden, with assistance from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, shot JFK. 

I doubt that the tone of his chat with the new Ukrainian president was far different from that used by Trump in other instances with other foreign leaders. We have to understand the way Trump perceives the office he holds. In Trump’s criminal mind, a president is like a mafia don, the ultimate authority, the Alpha male, the toughest guy in the neighborhood, and the Man who controls it all because he controls the biggest gang. This may be why Trump cannot fathom how, or why, Congress has any authority over him. In his muddled mind Trump believes he’s back in his tower in New York, his name on top, and every decision his alone to make. Receiving any resistance to his whims freaks Donald out, messes with his sense of himself as a badass with nerves of steel, muscles, a large cock, and real hair. Nobody checks Don Corleone, and Donald Trump thinks nobody can check him. This is why the asshole needs to be impeached.  

All I can say is that the Democrats better not blow this chance. I’d say we keep an eye on Nancy Pelosi to make sure she doesn’t use legislative judo to concede an advantage for no reason. Pelosi only did the right thing when forced, impeachment isn’t the road she chose or wanted because she is a pillar of the Establishment, but now the ball is at her feet and the field is opening before her. When the instant comes, when the goal-scoring chance presents itself, will she make the right decision, pick the correct pass or let the chance go begging?

The other thing I agree with James Risen about is the absurd way the mainstream media covers Trump, as if he’s a serious man rather than the bloviating incompetent that he is. Trump has opinions aplenty but a shocking lack of even basic knowledge. Most of what he says or tweets is unintelligible nonsense. The press should treat Trump as he is: habitual liar, immoral ignoramus, and total grifter. Trump was never in a million years going to grow into the office, and not once in three years has the Orange Menace come close to being Presidential. 

Presidential Harassment

“Old evils return with new names.” John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism

Poor Donald Trump. The pussy-grabber is himself a pussy, whining about harassment from Democrats armed with subpoena power. The Republicans didn’t do this to Obama, Trump cries. No, the GOP wasn’t able to use scandal against Obama because there wasn’t any to speak of. Obama had many faults and his administration failed on many fronts, but for eight years it was never a cesspool of corruption and self-dealing like Trump’s criminal enterprise. Obama got a different brand of treatment. He was burned in effigy by Tea Party supporters, called a liar by Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina during a State of the Union address, and, most notably, hounded about his birth certificate by one Donald J. Trump. He’s not an American, Trump said, he’s a foreigner, not one of us. Trump beat this racist drum for a long time.

On the one hand it’s amusing to hear Trump moan about how unfair it all is, this man who constantly boasts about how strong he is, how tough, how macho, and on the other it’s infuriating. Trump is sitting in the Oval Office today for many reasons, a few of them valid, but he lost the popular vote and wouldn’t be in the White House except for the un-democratic structure of the American political system. The iron grip of the two political parties, the flow of dark money, pervasive gerrymandering, blatant voter suppression, the fact that Montana has the same number of senators as California, and that almost every presidential election is really contested in only 15 or so states. American democracy is anemic, at best, entirely based on personalities instead of substantive ideas.

Emails keep appearing in my in-box about 2020. They want to know which Democratic candidate I might support. I have no idea. Thinking of another marathon presidential election season, an American tradition that benefits campaign consultants and media types and PR flacks and the TV networks, but not voters, is nauseating. I can’t go there yet. What I know for certain is that whoever the Democrats nominate to take on Trump, he or she will be an enthusiastic supporter of the American Empire, of endless wars never declared by Congress, of obscene Pentagon budgets, of law and order on the domestic front, and of capitalism as the only economic system. He or she will pledge undying devotion to Israel, no matter what outrageous crimes against humanity that tiny nation commits. If Trump is the naked face of empire, a bloated and ugly one, the Democratic nominee will wear an elaborate mask, as Obama did, as Hillary Clinton tried to do though hers was cracked and worn. In one hand an olive branch, in the other a cruise missile. It’s never easy to pull the status quo down; too many people are invested in it, profit from it.

No savior is going to rise from this swamp to set the world right. The American Empire has had a long and bloody run and now this heavily armed frigate is headed for the reef at full speed. The crash might be spectacular. The masts will snap in two, the canon and the barrels will go over the side, the hold will fill with water. There will not be enough lifeboats. As the boat slowly sinks the plaintive wail of all the innocent victims of the American Empire will be heard. Koreans and Guatemalans and Salvadorans and Iraqis and Afghans and Yemenis and Panamanians and Palestinians and Vietnamese.   

 

Smash, Grab, and Don't Look Back: A Looting on Pennsylvania Avenue

“Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways.” Rebecca Solnit

You’re going to hear this a lot over the next year or two from Trump and his handlers and enablers: The tax reform we passed in 2017 is the single greatest piece of legislation in American history! It returns more money to the middle class than any tax cut ever has, and it insures that small businesses and family farmers will not lose everything they’ve built when they die.

And blah, blah, blah, and many other lies, too. If there is any good economic news to be had -- not to fear, it won’t be news of real jobs being created, industries returning to the Ohio River valley, or wage growth, it will likely be the rising stock market, fueled by corporate purchases of their own stock (with the money they are not paying in taxes) -- the GOP will say that the tax cuts are the reason. And if the economy runs off the rails, the talking points are already written: Obama’s fault, naturally, the black guy who wasn’t even a real American left the country in a mess. (In any case, Obama’s two terms are being erased, goodbye ACA, the Iran Nuclear arrangement, the Paris Climate Accord, rules to protect the environment, regulate the banks, etc.)

Trump will undoubtedly begin comparing himself to FDR and LBJ, claim that his tax cuts are as great an achievement as the major parts of the New Deal, and way better than the Civil Rights Act, and that it was all done to help the little guy.

No mention will be made that the GOP-controlled House and Senate rammed these bills through the legislative process like thieves during a blackout: backroom, closed door meetings, favors exchanged, promises made, no public hearings, shoddy analysis, lines of corporate bagmen lined up in the halls for their share of the spoils, flat out lies in the press. The GOP wins because it cheats -- it cheats to get elected through gerrymandering and voter suppression, and it cheats when it controls the levers of power.

Has fucking the American people over ever been so easy?

When the Democrats controlled both houses during the first Obama term the Republicans contorted themselves to block, delay, derail, and undermine Obama’s legislative agenda -- tepid as it was -- even though Obama had what Donald J. Trump will never have, a legitimate mandate from the electorate. All’s fair in love and politics. Shoe now on the other foot and as these disgraceful bills moved I heard nary a peep from the Democrats about the corrupt process.

Oh yeah, for a year or two the propaganda is going to come thick and heavy, laced with deadly, mind-numbing, truth-obfuscating BS. The attacks on Social Security and Medicare will come, the huge burden of these “entitlement” programs (paid for by worker contributions, so technically not entitlement programs at all) will be blamed for bankrupting the nation, ruining our credit standing in the world, our competitiveness, the deficit! Only one possible solution -- strict austerity for the slovenly poor and wage earning class. Cut, cut, cut. The war machine, energy extractors, lords of finance, and the wealthy in general will be exempt from the austerity blues, of course, walked around the velvet rope and right into the VIP section, bitching about the profligate ways of the unwashed masses as they go. Gilded, baby, gilded everything.

The people knew this was coming. Destruction is all Trump and his mafia can do. They cannot build, erect, create, or imagine anything but violence and destruction. They are pirates loose in port, drunk, crazed, rabid, horny, and mean; they’ve got the keys to the armory, the courts, and the treasury, no one to answer to, nothing to slow their roll. In the time it takes to pour a flagon of rum half the town will be in flames.

History says Trump and the GOP will overreach, go too far, grab too much, and the pendulum will swing back toward the safe center, where capitalism, militarism, and imperialism reign. We can change the hands on the levers, a good, necessary step, but until enough Americans realize that we must change the game if we are going to have any chance of surviving climate change and every ill this man-made threat brings in its wake, just changing the party in charge won’t get it done.

A society is reasonably just if its people don’t have to die for access to health care, decent housing, meaningful jobs at living wages, courts that act independently of politics and ideology, education, food, assistance when disaster strikes, and a fair opportunity to address their legitimate grievances.  

Get ready, people, hard times are coming.

Back Where We Began

“But the truth is that no one is exempt -- the system that crushes one will crush all.” Emily Temple, review of Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Lottery.”

Disturbing days in TrumpLand. My anger isn’t burning as hot as it was a few days back when I wrote and posted “Poet in a Bad Mood,” but I am plenty mad about all the shit going down in this failing nation. The cop who killed Philando Castile will stroll, free, as if he had gunned down a coyote or a rabid dog. Castile, like all the other unarmed black men murdered by state agents, doesn’t matter enough to warrant the prosecution of his killer. What does it take for a police officer to be held accountable for killing a black person in America? Video evidence brings the crime into the light but rarely seems helpful in securing an indictment, let alone a conviction. As Ronnie Dunn noted on Counterspin, all a cop has to do to walk away unscathed from one of these fatal shootings is claim he feared for his life. For a cop who guns down a black man, them’s the magic words.

I was reminded of the racist reality of America by a segment Bill Moyers did on the Big Lie that got Donald Trump on the national stage and then into the White House: the Birther Lie. The birther lie, in case you’ve forgotten, was the proposition put forth in 2009 by right-wing cranks, and then Trump, that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Trump was all over the corporate media back then, spouting this bullshit that our first African-American president was not actually an American, that he was born in Kenya, educated in a madrassa, raised a Muslim, in other words, foreign, suspect, illegitimate. On and on this went. It was a minor story that should have flashed across our TV screens and vanished, but Trump and his ilk kept it alive for several years. Bill Moyers interviewed four distinguished historians, three of them African-American, one white, about how the Big Lie placed Donald Trump in a perfect position to benefit from the white electorate’s pent up hatred of our African-American president. If not for Obama, it’s unlikely Trump would today be in the White House doing everything in his power to erase the legacy of Barack Obama, from undermining the nuclear agreement with Iran, to sabotaging the Paris Climate Accord, to replacing the Affordable Care Act with an even less effective, and far crueler, alternative. Trump is in many things ignorant, lazy, unhinged, idiotic, and bigoted, but, like every demagogue, he senses what a particular group of people want to hear, need to hear, either to give them hope that their power and privilege isn’t waning, or to give them a scapegoat for their own failure. The problem isn’t you, white America, it’s the liberals, it’s political correctness, it’s multicultural studies, it’s Affirmative Action, it’s feminism, it’s the LGBT people, it’s Muslims, it’s Mexicans. It’s the destruction from within of “American Values” by all these other, non-white undesirables.

It’s all the fault of the black man in the White House who doesn’t deserve to sit at the apex of power in White America.  

Racism is the stain on the American soul that cannot be erased, whitewashed, painted over or scrubbed away. It was present at the beginning of our history, present during and after Reconstruction and during the long struggle for civil rights, through lynchings, beatings, fire-bombings, terror campaigns, sit-ins and marches and boycotts. Every time we get to thinking of how far we have come, we turn around to find we are back where we began.

Moon Over Trumpland

“A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking.” Chris Hedges

I’m still trying to sort out what the election of Donald Trump means, how it happened, and what might lie ahead for the “indispensable nation.” I’ve been reading articles, opinion pieces, analysis of the returns -- how Clinton did with this group or that group (seems she sucked when it came to white females and didn’t do all that well with Hispanics, either).

I still feel slightly off balance as if suffering from vertigo, and my thoughts pingpong from despair to resignation to resistance; my email in-box is full of messages asking for money or issuing dire warnings. I’m glad people are in the streets, protesting Trump’s election, because if Hillary had won the electoral college (that quirky anti-democratic feature of our democracy) but lost the popular vote, Trump supporters would be out in the streets, possibly armed.

And I’m also amused by the talking heads and so-called liberal commentators who are contorting themselves to explain Hillary’s loss: it was the Russians, Jill Stein, James Comey, racist whites, white men, and so on, everybody but the corrupt Democratic Party apparatus, which shoved Hillary down our throats, offering nothing more exciting than maintenance of the failed status quo.

I’m also recalling the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and how Republicans behaved. Today Trump calls for unity, and Obama and Hillary counsel us to give the president-elect a chance, but no such pass was given to our first black president. Remember those Tea Party rallies where Obama was burned in effigy, and Donald Trump himself crowing that Obama wasn’t born in the Unites States, and fanning that flame for years? And Mitch McConnell vowing to do everything in his power to make Obama a single term president?

During the campaign, Obama and Clinton told us that Trump was dangerously unhinged -- now they ask us to give him a chance. So, basically, all the racist, obnoxious, abhorrent and outrageous statements Trump made on his path to the Oval Office are hereby wiped from the slate?

I guess words are not going to matter in Trumpland.

Something else just occurred to me: during the primaries when it looked more and more likely that Trump would win the GOP nomination, the press was full of stories about the disintegration of the GOP, how it was finished as a party. Let’s see. The GOP now controls the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, plus a majority of governorships. So much for decline. Seems to me that the Democrats are the party in decline, a logical result of decades of slavish adherence to neoliberal economic policies that have battered the poor and the middle class. And who were the main proponents of those neoliberal, corporate-friendly policies? Bill and Hillary Clinton, of course.

I think this thought from Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch is on target: “I think Hillary lost because she was on the wrong side of the class war. From the beginning of their political careers, the Clintons have been on the side of the one-percent against the rest of us, regardless of gender or skin color. Her allegiance to Wall Street finally blew up in her face.”

Here’s a question that has been bouncing around inside my head. If Donald Trump succeeds in making America great again, what will America look like?”