The Isolation Diaries No. 15

“Yes, the world’s a cat’s ass, a real driveling disgust, and the sweetest thing is getting away from them, their sounds, their decayed unlaughing laughter & faces as brutal and ugly and impossible as any matter you can dream up...and the eyes, the eyes, no eyes at all. I can well understand men who run into caves and stay there.” Charles Bukowski

I stopped myself from going headfirst down the Facebook rabbit hole. Bernie Sanders is out, possibly for good, though the Vermont senator appeared to leave the door open a crack. The Democratic National Committee got the man it wants to defend the status quo, even if that means losing in November. What’s the next move, Tom Perez, the white flag of total capitulation? Biden may have the DNC infrastructure and the backing of the Democratic old guard, but he’s missing the one thing he needs more than any other to unseat Trump: grassroots energy. Biden had better start wooing the Sanders/Warren wing of the party or Old Joe will get his ass kicked by the worst president, and one of the worst human beings, in American history. 

No surprise that Wall Street reacted with glee to the news of Sanders dropping out. Wall Street knows that if the Biden longshot pans out, they can work with the man who has served their interests with distinction. 

Yesterday it felt like we hit some kind of wall. It wasn’t any one thing, more like an accumulation of hours and days, an unsettled feeling mixed with anxiety, maybe even a shot of fear. What’s going to happen next? How bad will it get? The news that Trump fired the Inspector General tasked with oversight of trillions of taxpayer dollars, first infuriated, and then left me feeling sick. That was Trump raising a giant neon sign over the loot, a big Fuck You to Democrats in Congress, and an act of prime time theft. You know damn well that somehow, some way, some of that lucre will find its way into Trump’s coffers, Ivanka’s purse, or Jared’s wallet. It will be funnelled through one company or wealthy individual, then another and another, and come out the other end without leaving a trace. Trump needs that money to save his failing businesses, pay his enormous debts, and cover his legal expenses. 

If we think self-isolation is hard and ennervating, imagine what prison is like, and then go a step further and imagine what it’s like in solitary confinement.

Biden’s got a Woman problem. Not only does he need Sanders/Warren supporters, he needs women, young and middle-aged, the energetic ones turned on by the possibility of change that Sanders championed and Warren sometimes amplified. The women who get other people to the polls. “Every A-frame had your number on the wall,” sang Steely Dan. Same with Biden. Women have Biden’s number. His problems with sniffing hair and laying on of hands, unwanted, univited hands, will trail him like the stench from a stagnant pond. Even though Trump is a pig and a pervert, with a closet full of sexual indiscretions, he has far less of a Woman problem than Biden because Trump has FOX News to provide cover, distracting fire, close air support. Who remembers Stormy Daniels except Melania? Or that Access Hollywood bit? That shit bounced off Trump like he was protected by a force field. Biden has to face an all-female heavy metal band who sing angry songs about men with wandering hands and Viagara-swollen cocks. Castration is a recurring theme. 

I just re-read No. 14 of this little series. The thing barely had a pulse, no snap, no nada. I posted it anyway, because the idea is to capture what I’m feeling and thinking about in this strange moment. 

In my neighborhood, on the far north end of Milpas, the pandemic and self-isolation has not silenced the weedwackers or the men who wield them. 

I’m thinking about Biden’s campaign. Keep it simple, something along the line of: He’s not Trump. Vote for Joe. Not being Trump is all Biden has to offer. He may be creepy and doddering, but at least he’s only a single-shot liar; his opponent is the AR-15 of lies. Joe may have trouble with the truth, but at least we won’t have to fact check everything that comes out of his mouth. Joe may be dumb but Trump is even dumber. 

Consider this: Trump wants us to forget all about this pandemic, pretend it never happened and get back to playing our roles as cogs in the money machine. Forget the dead. Forget the early warnings. Forget the failed federal response. Forget Trump’s dismissals and lies. Forget Trump’s lethal incompetence. 

Don’t forget. Please. 

Dead End Blues

“To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human.”  David Whyte

Halfway through Charlie Musselwhite’s set I thought of the coronavirus and looked around at the audience. The Arlington Theater was nearly full. Even the balcony seats were occupied. Earlier that day I stopped at Smart & Final to pick up a few items, and the store was busier than I have seen it in a long while. The couple in front of me in the check-out line were stocking up as if for the Apocalypse. Water, toilet paper, canned milk, frozen dinners, canned soup, macaroni & cheese, Gatorade, mayonnaise, ketchup, spaghetti sauce. $450 worth. By the time Jimmie Vaughan came on stage I had forgotten about the coronavirus. Jimmie and his band tore it up, and then the legend that is Buddy Guy came out, 80-years-old, and he made his guitar wail, and told some jokes that he has probably told a hundred times before. 

By definition, the coronavirus, or Covid-19, is a pandemic. Serious shit, and not the time for incompetence and fecklessness, which is what the people of America are getting from Donald J. Trump. The writer Charles Blow put it in context when he said that Trump will not be able to gaslight his way out of this one. Sooner, not later, Trump’s idiotic pronouncements will turn around and eat his lunch. It’s contained, says the Donald, and the next day the number of cases doubles. It’s no more dangerous than the flu, says the Donald. Tell that to the grieving in the state of Washington. We’ve closed our borders, says the Donald. Too late. The virus is already here, and closing borders is a medieval response anyway, as doomed to fail as bleeding the sick. On Monday, the stock market plunged 2,000 points, sparking fears that a long overdue recession is happening. We’ve got it under control, says the Donald. No, you don’t. 

Buddy Guy gave the audience the blues, the little joys and big sorrows that living brings to every one of us, sooner or later. Trump can jet around the country, hold rallies for his followers, appear on FOX and spout lies about how great he is, how he understands science like nobody’s business, but the wolf is scratching at his front door now, and the wolf is as ravenous as a starving man at a buffet. 

Meanwhile, the Establishment of the Democratic Party has almost landed its standard bearer. If Joe Biden does as well in this week’s primaries as he did on Super Tuesday, it may be game, set, and match for Bernie Sanders, the only candidate who stands a chance against Trump in November. I’m sorry I can’t jump on Biden’s train. The problem is that I’ve seen this script before, and I know -- with the same certainty with which Buddy Guy plays the blues -- how it’s going to end. Trump will attack Biden’s long, dodgy record, and for good measure bring in Ukraine and Burisma and Hunter, and top it off with attacks on Biden’s sketchy mental state. How will Biden downplay his diehard, well-documented, support for the punitive crime bill, the bankruptcy bill, Wall Street deregulation, and the disastrous Iraq War? Joe Biden is shark bait for Trump, so naturally, Biden will be the Democratic nominee. 

Here we go down the dead end road. 

Once again, the oligarchs and power brokers, who have no use for democracy, offer voters a choice of the lesser of two fatally flawed aging white men (Demented Trump vs. Decrepit Biden). No wonder so many eligible voters opt to stay home. Bernie Sanders has been running uphill since 2016, the Democratic Party honchos slamming him like a hurricane, the corporate media either attacking or ignoring his campaign. If Trump wins a second term, the destruction of our republic will continue, but at a higher tempo. If Biden somehow manages to survive Trump’s personal attacks and prevails in November, he will try to reimagine the Obama years. That might seem like a good thing, a return to normalcy, but while Obama was a decent and honorable and intelligent man, his eight years in office prepared the ground for Donald Trump. And in any case, history moves forward, not back. 

It all gives me the dead end blues. 

The Curse of Greed

“Financial extraction happens across the economy, from farming to health care to retail to manufacturing and beyond. The tools include building monopolies, using tax havens to cheat on tax bills, firms channeling profits not into productive investment but into buying back shares to boost share price…” Nick Shaxson, The Nation

I’m writing this early on Super Tuesday, though I may not post it for another few days. All eyes in the Democratic Party apparatus are trained on Joe Biden today, hoping his win in South Carolina -- the first primary Biden has ever won in three tries at the presidency -- will give him momentum, and eventually, the nomination. The Democrats are desperate for Biden to overtake Bernie Sanders, desperate to dodge the threat Sanders poses to the hegemony of the Clintonites and other hacks who enjoy power and privilege, desperate to avoid any serious critique of how the party has shafted working people and the poor for decades. 

I’ve lived and worked long enough now to see the horrific effects of neoliberal capitalism on workers, our children, our elderly, and the environment. When the corporate media loses its shit over Sanders I shake my head and wonder if any of the talking heads and sterile blabbers remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sanders only seems radical today because the United States has moved so far to the right since the New Deal era. By the values of that trying period, when capitalists had ruined the American economy, Sanders’ policy proposals are hardly radical, but to enact them would mean the hyper-rich and corporations must accept taking less of the spoils, and that is something they are unwilling to do. The rich have waged a brilliant and merciless 40-year-long war against the working-class and the poor, rigging the economy and the political system and the courts to their advantage. They’ve run the table.

Regardless of political, religious, racial, sexual or gender affiliation, rural or urban provenance, working people lost. We let the wealthy divide us and conquer us, anesthesize us with spectacle, smoke, mirrors, and magical thinking. As I’ve said on this blog many times before, since the tail end of the 1970’s, working people have taken a first-class beat down. 

The problem with Greed Capitalism is that it recognizes no limits, either moral or environmental. Accumulation becomes the be-all and end-all, until a handful of people control a majority of the world’s wealth. Through media outlets they own, they drill into us that this is perfectly natural, that they are extravagantly wealthy because they are extravagantly worthy. Through endless propaganda about the fairness and virtue of free-market capitalism they have convinced us that our lack of wealth is our own fault, the result of personal shortcomings, lack of vision and wherewithal to seize the reins of our own destiny. 

Greed isn’t good. Greed is a curse, a plague, an insidious and terminal virus. 

If only we chased justice as frantically as we chase wealth and power. But justice doesn’t hold out the promise of whiter teeth and unblemished skin, a long life of ease and luxury, private yachts, jets, penthouses in the clouds, and the power to compel others to do your bidding, take your orders, satisfy your whims, starve while you gorge yourself. Justice involves sacrifice and wisdom.  

Masters and slaves, ordained by God and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. A few must rule, the rest must bow and beg. The poor make the long walk to the manor house, knock at the back door, beg for an audience with the Lord, and walk away, into the twilight, empty-handed. 

The Second Coming of Karl Marx

“The great measure of human maturation is the increasing understanding that we move through life in the blink of an eye…” David Whyte

I’m reading Jesmyn Ward’s memoir, Men We Reaped. Ward describes a period in her life when she lost five men who were close to her, including her brother. Violence, drugs, lack of opportunity, the systemic racism of Mississippi. Ward’s family is large and sprawling, full of aunts, uncles, cousins, deeply rooted in the Gulf Coast, and poor. Ward’s family moved around a lot when she was young. Her father was restless, unable to remain faithful to his wife. Ward left for college, but always felt the pull of home, the smells, the rain, the woods and open spaces. It’s a sad memoir, but rings true. 

I also started reading 2666 by Roberto Bolano, the Chilean’s last work, a massive novel. I’ve only started it and can’t draw any conclusions yet. It’s Bolano, so I expect it to be strange, sometimes startling, and full of intelligence. 

Tyranny gains a foothold when good people see what’s happening and remain silent. This is where we stand in the United States, teetering on the edge. Democracy has always been fragile in this country, subject to subversion by wealthy interests when the will of the governed threatens their power and privilege. The Democratic Party mandarins cast Bernie Sanders as the second coming of Karl Marx, malign him in the corporate media, employ scare tactics and hyperbole to turn voters against him. The fact is that Sanders’ policy positions are standard New Deal stuff, but seem radical and foreign because of how far the US has moved to the right -- Democrats included -- since Uncle Ronnie Reagan lived in the White House. Given the backing of the Democratic Party machinery, Sanders would likely trounce Trump in November, which you’d think would be a desirable outcome. But you’d be wrong. The corporate masters of the Democratic Party would much rather run Mayor Pipsqueak from South Bend against Trump, or failing that, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, than support Sanders. Bloomberg has so much money he just might be able to purchase the nomination. 

Who’s the least worst in a Trump-Bloomberg match-up? 

It comes down to money, not ideals; the wealthy don’t donate to candidates -- they invest in candidates in the same way they invest in other instruments that increase their wealth or protect their privilege. Bloomberg himself and his corporate allies will paint Mayor Stop-and-Frisk as a sincere friend of working people. The con from Bloomberg may not be as blatantly transparent as Trump’s, but it will be a con nonetheless. Loaded dice, a marked deck of cards, three-card monty. Rich fucks like Bloomberg and Trump don’t care one whit about the needs and daily struggles of ordinary people. This should be obvious, but unfortunately too many Americans fall for the same trick again and again. We ought to be tired of coming out on the losing end, tired of being lied to, fooled, tricked, conned, and yet, the louder the carnival barker, the more entranced we become. Like typical suckers, we think it will be different this time. 

It won’t be. Out my window the California sun is bright, but in my vision the immediate future looks gray and dim, all color washed out. The American fairy tale still mesmerizes too many of us. We believe we’re in the game, playing on a level field, with rules that apply equally. Up in the luxury boxes the oligarchs laugh at our gullibility. They can’t believe how easy it is to manipulate us.  

Violated, Broken, and Maimed: The Acquittal of Donald J. Trump

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.” Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

The Senate’s acquittal of Trump was no surprise. The sham trial was no surprise, either. The idiotic defense offered up by Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz was as predictable as snow in Minot, North Dakota in January. Madison and Hamilton are rolling over in their tombs. “Don’t feel bad, men, your Constitution worked pretty well for over two centuries.” But not even in your darkest and most fearful imaginings could you have conjured Donald J. Trump, and an entire political party (save Mitt Romney) of cowards, hypocrites, and incompetents, who without batting an eye traded the rule of law, checks and balances, for the law of the jungle. 

Trump’s followers are betting that the good times (meaning the tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, defense spending, low interest rates, oil and gas drilling) will keep going -- although it’s against the laws of nature that they do -- and their power grows and solidifies, and that Trump will not at some point become paranoid and turn on them, as Joseph Stalin was wont to do. Politicians of Stalin’s era feared a midnight knock at the door and a firing squad; members of today’s GOP wet themselves just thinking about being maligned by Trump on Twitter and Fox News.   

Afraid to stand up to the bully for fear of losing position and privilege. But not afraid to trash their oath of office and stomp on Madison and Hamilton’s best work.  

The imbecile bully who, after today, may as well be king. Mad king Donald. 

The American government is not a parliament of whores as P.J. O’Rourke once called it, it’s just a cheap whorehouse on the edge of a dying city, with leaky toilets and creaky beds, soiled sheets, and suspicious stains on the floor. 

Hey, Donald, we’re becoming a shithole country. Are you going to bomb us? 

Once again a minority triumphs over the majority.

In 2016 I didn’t think Trump had a chance of becoming president. I overestimated my countrymen’s ability to think logically; I underestimated their pain and fear. In 2020 I don’t see how Trump can lose. Incumbency is powerful in and of itself. Trump’s also sitting on a tower of cash that he can splash around the media landscape. But the real problem, for me, is lack of a Democratic candidate who can unite most of the party, build a large enough coalition, and energize the masses to vote. In the current field, only Bernie Sanders has the mojo to excite people, particularly the young, but the national Democratic Party despises Sanders. Why? For the same reason Republicans won’t cross Trump. Fear of losing power and privilege. Sanders might overturn the gravy train, he might build a movement, he might try to raise taxes on the wealthy and slow the growth of Pentagon spending. He might actually put some official weight behind a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. 

Establishment Democrats and their big money donors aren’t having it. That’s why they let Bloomberg buy his way into the game. That’s why MSNBC and CNN twist themselves into knots to avoid acknowledging that Sanders is a viable candidate. That’s why an unknown pipsqueak named Pete Buttegieg is still hanging around, as if he might stand a chance. It’s why Joe Biden is always described as the front runner. These are the safe guys, tried and true neoliberals and war enthusiasts, the kind of stand up people who would give Juan Guaido a standing ovation. 

I knew this day was coming, but it still leaves me low. What it portends for the future scares me. Intellectually I know that despair is not an option, and that all good and decent people have to keep their hope of a more just world alive; it’s just that today something feels violated, broken, maimed for all time. 

The Real American Divide

“Now it seems exhaustingly obvious that what’s happening to refugees, to the climate and the biosphere, to the poor under hypercapitalism, is a vicious disregard for their rights and humanity, and that some of the men perpetrating public brutality are monstrous in private is a given.” Rebecca Solnit

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has warned for years about the corporate takeover of the American state, but because Hedges is, for all intents and purposes, banned from mainstream media outlets, his warnings go largely unheard. 

I bring Chris Hedges up because South Dakota recently passed two laws to make protesting the construction of oil pipelines a crime. Eight other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering similar measures. Think about this for a moment: energy extraction companies -- keen to avoid another Standing Rock -- flush with lawyers, lobbyists and cash, use the power of the state to make public dissent a criminal act. By passing such laws, under euphemistic titles like The Infrastructure Protection Act, the state prioritizes corporate interests over public welfare. This is, or should be, astonishing, but I would wager that most Americans are completely oblivious to such affronts to democracy, let alone the environment on which we all depend. 

Robert Reich recently wrote that the divide in America isn’t between the left and the right, it’s between the oligarchs and the rest of us. He’s correct. The oligarchs, the ruling class, the elites, call them what you want, have been on a 40-year roll, a grand neoliberal economic project of low taxes, privatization of public services, monopolies, scant regulation, and endless military conflicts. They have gutted America’s manufacturing base, decimated organized labor, made it legal to buy politicians (see the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling), and organized an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the many to the few. 

Grotesque income inequality leads to political inequality and political inequality makes it nearly impossible for citizens to exercise agency when it comes to protecting the environment, voting rights, reproductive rights, or stopping the Pentagon from sucking up almost half of all federal government revenue. Neoliberalism has been a spectacular success for the few, and an unmitigated disaster for the many. This is blatantly obvious, but look how both political parties cling to the tenets of neoliberalism. Only Bernie Sanders, and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren, come close to offering a critique of this system that is inexorably destroying our environment and what remains of representative democracy. But none of the bumper crop of Democratic presidential candidates dare to name the real villain: unregulated capitalism. 

And that’s the other factor about the oligarchs -- they set the boundaries of debate, what can be discussed, and what topics, like catastrophic climate disruption, will be studiously ignored. Capitalism itself is never questioned, it’s the only system on offer, the sole possibility, even if it ultimately renders this planet uninhabitable. 

It seems to me that neoliberalism has also stunted our collective imagination. The mass media (owned by a handful of corporations), the universities, the think tanks, all reinforce the dominant narrative of free markets, fossil fuels, imperialism (in the name of freedom and democracy, naturally), and the dangerous idea that the unbridled accumulation of wealth and power leads to virtue. It never has and never will. 

Tone Deaf

“The prevailing quality of life in America -- by any accepted methods of measuring -- was inarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today…” Hunter S. Thompson, 2002.

Where to begin? Like the scene in Chicago, the area around the site of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia is awash in temporary fencing, barricades, and police, all dedicated to keeping thousands of protesters from injecting a dose of reality into this week of political fantasy. How Orwellian when peaceful protesters are penned in blocks away from the convention hall in what are called “ free speech zones.” Free speech that the powerful do not have to hear or see or respond to.

Looks like Bernie Sanders was right all along -- the Democratic National Committee was actively sabotaging his upstart campaign from the get-go, using the sort of tricks that are normally reserved for the opposition party. The revelations (thank you Wikileaks) show a few things. First, Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a hack who would do anything for her pal Hillary Clinton. Second, the big-shots in the DNC obviously knew that Hillary would not win a contest played on a level field; cheating and foul play were necessary to push Hillary over the top, because her campaign sure as hell failed to generate much organic enthusiasm.

But even with all the DNC’s shenanigans on Clinton’s behalf, the Sanders campaign made Clinton work. What does this tell us? That there is a reason Donald Trump is today leading in the polls. Now, Clinton will get the usual jump coming out of the Convention, but even so, voters east, west, north and south will still view her unfavorably, as a prevaricator and liar, and one who, like the fictional Mafioso Don Corleone, rewards loyalty. Instead of kicking Wasserman Schultz to the curb, Clinton makes Wasserman Schultz the honorary chair of her campaign.  

Talk about tone deaf and oblivious to voter perceptions. But we knew that when Clinton tapped Tim Kaine to be her sidekick; that was like flipping the bird to Bernie supporters with one of those oversized foam fingers. Clinton chose a nice, safe corporate clone who believes in the fairy tale of “free” trade and “clean” coal. Talk about one step up and two back. Clinton is so insulated in her DC/NYC bubble among the political and financial elites that she really has no clue what her actions look like to those of us out here in the real world.

Clinton’s arrogance is breathtaking, and it’s that total disdain for ordinary citizens that is giving Trump buoyancy. As filmmaker Michael Moore recently wrote, a lot of people in this country are fed up with politicians of both parties, fed up with the influence of bankers and hedge fund managers and resource extractors, fed up with the way the middle class is being ground to dust. Now, rich, white, demagogic Donald Trump is a strange champion for the downtrodden middle class -- but when Trump hammers bankers and free traders and pols, he’s speaking a language struggling people relate to; all the promises of the Bush’s, the Obama’s and the Clinton’s haven’t amounted to shit, so why not take a ride on the Trump express and lob a Molotov cocktail at the elites?

Hillary Clinton is damn lucky the election isn’t tomorrow. You can bet she will not receive the same reception on Thursday night that Bernie got on Monday. When the camera panned to where Bill Clinton was sitting you could see that he understood this, too. Hillary doesn’t engender the love that Bernie does -- she wants it, terribly, but it’s not who she is.

The Fork In The Road

“Throughout the Western world the financial system has become an exploiter of the people and a deadweight loss on economies.” Paul Craig Roberts

Looks like we owe the Feds money again, but may get a refund from Jerry Brown, which means our tax dance for 2015 might be a wash. Had we owed both Federal and State I might have had a nervous breakdown. Our daughter is flunking Physics -- no surprise -- she hates the subject and doesn’t apply herself, and sooner or later will understand the relationship between effort and results. Mom and dad have to go meet with her teacher. The work we do for the money we need to sustain our life is often a soul-sucking grind, and like many Americans in the low-low middle class, though we claw we never seem to get ahead; one calamity and we’re toast. Maybe our lot will improve when Donald Trump becomes president. He’s a winner, or so he tells us at every opportunity, and when he wins, we win.

Forget I said that, I’m joking, of course. Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Rubio, nothing is going to change, no matter which of these people is elected. The American economy is a scam, a house of cards, operated by an oligarchy for the benefit of the oligarchy. As John Jay said when this nation was founded, “The people who own the country run it.”

The mass of people who work for wages understand this, and, at some level, they realize that it is the “system” that causes their struggles, not some fault of their own; not laziness or lack of will or initiative, but a system designed to make them, or keep them, poor. Trump spews plenty of garbage, but when he talks about how trade deals like NAFTA (thanks, Bill Clinton) have decimated the American working class, he’s right, and I think this is why he sounds like a savior to some people.

What about Bernie Sanders? Yes, if Sanders somehow overcomes the Clinton death grip on the Democratic Party and all its machinery, he might shake a few crumbs from the system, but his ability to do so will entirely depend on the makeup of Congress, and this is fraught with uncertainty because so many Democrats are now Republicans, ideologically speaking; Sanders might have difficulty pushing his agenda with Democrats in control of the House and Senate. Of course if those bodies remain in Republican control, Sanders would be stymied at every turn.

Both parties are corrupt, as is the entire electoral system. Voters are offered two unpalatable choices -- isn’t democracy grand! It’s like going to the dentist and being told that your cracked molar can be pulled with needle nose pliers or vice grips, which do you prefer? Politicians, at least at the national level, no longer trouble themselves representing the interests of the voters who elect them. Instead, they represent the corporations and wealthy donors who own them. This guarantees that the critical issues facing the nation will not be addressed, except at the most superficial level. And when it comes to an issue like climate change, superficial measures are a recipe for disaster and death.

Getting back to Trump and his traveling circus for a minute. What is his economic policy? Just win, baby? Knock the Chinese over the head with a two-by-four? Invade Mexico? Any voter -- white, black, brown, or rainbow colored -- who believes that Trump will improve their lot economically is flat nuts.  “I will make great deals,” is not a policy. Running an empire, even one bordering on collapse, is not the same as starring in a make-believe TV show. Blithely declaring that one will “strengthen” America’s military, when 54% of the discretionary budget is already being spent on America’s sprawling military apparatus is not only stupid, it’s suicidal. But that’s Trump. Buffoon, blowhard, egomaniac.

And as of today, the GOP frontrunner.

I’m too tired to think about a Hillary Clinton presidency. I despise the woman; she is mendacious and mediocre and malignant. In my mind, Hillary’s almost as frightening as Trump. Most of her experience is covered with a thick coat of failure, and she has blood beneath her fingernails.

How did America come to this pathetic fork in the road?

A Feeble and Horrible Year

“The great and terrible irony of capitalism is that if left unfettered, it inexorably engineers its own demise, through either revolution or economic collapse.” Robert Scheer, The Great American Stickup

I’ve never set foot within Iowa’s boundaries. It’s the middle land, flat country, with an economy centered on agriculture and insurance; the highest point in the state is Hawkeye Point at 1,670 feet above sea level. Every presidential election cycle, Iowa takes a turn in the spotlight as the center of the American political universe, and then it returns to being, well, Iowa.

So maybe Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family political machine isn’t invincible after all. Until the Iowa Caucus, Hillary looked the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, a shoo-in with too many advantages for any other candidate to overcome, especially one like Bernie Sanders who proudly proclaims  himself a socialist. Americans are conditioned from birth to fear socialists and communists and Maoists, or any other doctrine that doesn’t exalt free market capitalism; calling yourself a socialist is normally a political death sentence.

I wrote Sanders off in these pages some time back -- not because his economic message doesn’t resonate, it does -- but because the political status quo is so difficult to beat. The truth is that I desperately want to believe that someone like Bernie Sanders can be elected President, but my doubts are as strong as my desperation. The ruling class will not go quietly or let go of its privileges easily; they are on a major winning streak and control nearly every gear of power. Hillary Clinton is an ally of the ruling elites, one of them, a Wall Street suckup if there ever was one, and she will do their bidding when push becomes shove. Same goes for the Pentagon. Hillary seems to enjoy saber rattling, and she will be unlikely to throw a lug wrench into the perpetual war machine. Sanders might, although he’s not completely averse to militarism.

Sanders did better in Iowa than I thought he would and I’m sure the Clinton camp is concerned that Madam is in a battle from which she may emerge bruised or bloodied.

The Clinton coronation is now behind schedule.

The nation is clearly unsettled and seething with anxiety. The middle class is battered. Young people face a diminished future, with many saddled by student loan debt and lousy job prospects. Middle-aged whites, particularly males, have seen their economic and social advantages eroded. They need a scapegoat, and Mexican immigrants, Muslims and other minorities make for inviting targets. Donald Trump speaks in a language these people understand at a subconscious level. Though a complete buffoon, a joke that no thinking person can take seriously, Trump understands how to connect with certain people on a gut level. Make America Great Again is a nice sounding slogan and looks good on a bumper sticker, but what does it mean? Trump says he will make “deals,” as if the political world is merely an extension of a corporate boardroom. It’s not. The world is frighteningly complex and dangerous, many times beyond the Donald’s ken.

I’m not surprised that Cruz won Iowa, although the victory over Trump and Rubio doesn’t make Cruz any less creepy. Past GOP winners of the Iowa Caucus include Mike Huckabee and crazy Michele Bachmann, so winning Iowa isn’t, frankly, that grand a prize. Cruz will pick up momentum on the GOP fringes, with Holy Book thumpers and mainstream media handicappers, but Teddy will also learn that with frontrunner status comes intense scrutiny. Ted has made many bizarre statements during his political career, and all those birds will flock home.

Rubio is still my pick for the GOP. When the dust settles, and Trump and Cruz have totally freaked the GOP mandarins out, Rubio’s youth and ethnicity might prove a realistic default.  This hardly means Rubio is presidential material. None of the GOP contenders are; it’s a weak and sorry bunch of nitwits and hacks.  

More and more Americans are aware that something is fundamentally out of kilter with the way our society is organized, that the American Dream is only available to a select few, and that the means to redress the situation are missing. Thus the appeal of a political outsider like Trump or an unusual voice like that of Bernie Sanders. Too much economic and political power has lodged in too few hands, and the Casino Economy offers more jagged edges than benefits for working people.

When it comes to ideas, the GOP offers nothing but more of the same. Sadly, the Democrats aren’t much better, though at least Sanders is talking about middle and working class issues like college tuition, Medicare for All, and increasing the contribution of the wealthy to the common good. Better still, Sanders is not a serial liar like Hillary Clinton.

If nothing else, that’s refreshing, and in this feeble and horrible political year we take what we can.

The Sophistication of Our Corruption

“Or, to put it more dramatically, the richest 400 Americans own more assets than the bottom 150 million.” Mark Blyth, Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea.

Even Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, can’t provide a coherent definition of what socialism means. Bill Maher tried to coax a concrete answer out of Sanders last week, but all Maher got for his effort was a monologue about free health care and free tuition at public colleges and universities. Maher’s audience approved of this answer, but the question deserves a fuller response.

I don’t have much hope for Bernie’s campaign, as I’ve written here before, because in the end Hillary Clinton has too much campaign cash and media love for Sanders to overcome. Plus, when you bill yourself as a socialist in America – even a democratic socialist – you will be demonized. Americans have been conditioned to fear socialists, communists, leftists and Marxists.

What I want to hear Sanders talk about, in the time left before he folds his tent and exits the field, is the need for a counterweight against corporate power. Without robust government regulation and monitoring, capitalism inevitably produces a relative few spectacular winners and a staggering number of losers, which is the sad pass we have arrived at today. Years of tax cuts and tax breaks and other legal means of tax avoidance for corporations and wealthy individuals has created conditions typical in what used to be called “banana republics”; a handful of wealthy people who own practically everything and segregate themselves from the unwashed masses, a professional class that lives comfortably, a tiny “middle-class” and the working poor and dirt poor.

The only way to have any semblance of economic fairness for the majority is to deliberately engineer it. That means government policy, rules, regulations, and laws that can’t be circumvented. I appreciate services that only government can deliver on a mass scale, like clean water, breathable air, decent public schools, single-payer health care, national parks, safe bridges and freeways, courts that give average citizens a legitimate means of redress, and a safety net robust enough to smooth the jagged edges of capitalism; I like knowing that the foods and medicines I consume are safe, free from chemicals and genetically-modified ingredients.

Of course we have to pay for all these social benefits. That entails taxing the super wealthy and corporations, it means revising the byzantine tax code and shrinking the national security apparatus and the military. What might have been done to help American citizens with all the money we have wasted fighting a losing war in Afghanistan, a war we started and cannot finish? Think of the opportunities lost and human lives ruined.

This feels to me like a dangerous time for the American Republic. The mechanisms of our government are rusted because the political system has been perverted by money -- money that buys lawyers, lobbyists, think tanks and PR flacks – and rendered completely incapable of addressing critical problems. Citizens barely matter any more, we are paid lip service by the powerful and our legitimate needs are ignored because the political and corporate elites know that the masses are unorganized and easily divided. We are fed a steady diet of horseshit about the majesty of the free market, freedom, and American exceptionalism.

News flash: America is exceptional only in terms of the sophistication of its corruption.