The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 8

“It signifies a fact that has not fundamentally changed since the defeat of Reconstruction: black people can be subjected, usually with impunity, to arbitrary aggression.” Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

Covid-19 days, nights, weeks and months. It feels that we’re almost back where we started in March, as if the virus sent us back to the starting line. Covid-19 is active in Santa Barbara, though tourists roam State Street and dine outdoors; people in masks queue outside the Apple Store, still hungry for the latest gadgets. Life in a pandemic is strange to begin with, but when you live in a country with corrupt and incompetent political leaders, strange becomes surreal. 

Our Trumpian nightmare, our American Horror Show, eternal night. As expected, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, punted the question of Trump’s tax returns back to the lower courts, where the matter will be drowned in briefs and motions and legal stalling for God knows how long. This has been Trump’s way of dodging accountability for decades. Sue, countersue. The secrets in Trump’s financial records will not be seen by American voters prior to November. Trump won the round. Yes, Roberts and the Court upheld the most basic legal concept -- that no one is above the law -- but if reinforcing that assertion is what passes for courage or justice -- we really are in deep water. 

The wealthy buy justice. No surprise. Even the law has a price tag. 

I studied the architectural plans for the office’s HVAC system while heating a cup of water in the microwave. The schematic might have been Sanskrit and I understood little of what it communicated. In my next human incarnation I wish to have two skills: carpentry and music. I want to be able to build a tool shed or a doghouse, erect a fence. My father was a butcher, a skilled one, but he had no mechanical aptitude and neither do I. Taking things apart to understand how they work never has intrigued me, and I regret this fact. Same with music, I like many forms of music but I don’t understand how it works and my attempt to learn the guitar was a failure. I am tone deaf, can’t keep a rhythm. I remember being in the second or third grade, forced to play an instrument; my mother chose the clarinet. I was inept. All I made that instrument do was screech like nails on a chalkboard. It was torture, an embarassment. 

I’m deep into Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. Like his legendary live performances, the book is long. I’m to the part where Springsteen has just released Nebraska, his dark, spare, and haunting masterpiece. I’ve always liked the album, though I didn’t discover it until many years after it was released in 1982. “Nothing feels better than blood on blood.” The early 1980’s. I was living in Japan then, cut off from what was happening in America. The early days of the conservative political revolt led by Uncle Ronnie Reagan, the AIDS crisis, the death twitch of American manufacturing. The Japanese economic juggernaut was going to eclipse us in an avalanche of Honda and Toyota automobiles and SONY boomboxes. Long ago. When I think of the 1980’s my memories are dim as ash. 

Springsteen’s quieter albums, Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust, Magic, and Western Stars won my respect and admiration. The imagery, mood, and beauty of the writing, the empathy are why I return to them over and over. The autobiography fills in some of the spaces, explains Springsteen’s state of mind and circumstances; his childhood in Freehold, New Jersey, exerted a tremendous pull on his imagination and heart. Poor, working-class, houses with thin walls and no hot water, a taciturn, distant and sometimes menacing father, a vivacious and loving mother. Springsteen willed himself to become the leader of a band that could follow his voice, ambition and vision. The man’s a product of hard work. Springsteen hauled his Catholic guilt around for years. Many of his songs are rooted in the fear of, and longing for, his father’s love. 

I understand that longing. My dad passed away long ago, aged 57, his body ravished by a pack-a-day smoking habit and too many years of heavy drinking. He never met his grandson. He wasn’t present when I got married. I assume he would be proud of me. I wish I could talk to him about his life, his dreams and desires. 

Covid-19 summer. Fruit falls from the trees, rots on the ground. My emotions swing like a frayed rope bridge over a deep ravine. Am I a fraud and a failure? Have I slept-walked through my days and nights, always searching for a prize I cannot see or name? I wrestle with my contradictions, kick myself for wasting time searching for clues in dark corners. Too selfish I conclude, too stingy with my love, too walled off from other people, too solitary, too locked in my own head. Feels too late to slip this skin now. I have to harvest the seeds I’ve sown. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 6 (4th of July edition)

“All I need's a volunteer

I'll cut you in half

While you're smilin' ear to ear

And the freedom that you sought

Driftin' like a ghost amongst the trees

This is what will be”

Bruce Springsteen, Magic

Who will be the last to die from a mistake? It’s a line from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Last to Die.” It’s a relevant question in this time of Covid-19 chaos, with Donald Trump and Mike Pence lying their way to what I hope will be eternal infamy, almost 129,000 dead, millions unemployed, rents and mortgages delinquent, and still, still, six exhausting, anxious months into this thing, no coordinated federal government response on testing, tracing, PPE, income protection for workers and families, or even the merest empathy for the dead and the grieving and the sick and the worried. 

Trump and Pence and all the Fox News blabbers have fed us a steady diet of bullshit, pie-in-the-sky false hope, and a triple helping of magical thinking. 

Trump got bored, Pence went back to praying for the end of the world. Job done. Americans should be outraged by the endless string of failures, scandals, fuck-ups, calamaties, and incompetence engineered by Donald J. Trump and his battalion of Enablers. When Trump and the rest of these jackasses take their final bow and limp or crawl off the stage, I hope we don’t spend even a minute trying to rehabilitate their images like we did with  many Confederates after the Civil War. Let them stand forever as symbols of failure, destruction, and death. 

4th of July, fuck me. The beaches are closed, fireworks cancelled, bars shuttered, movie houses dark. Except for a jog over to the high school, I haven’t left the confines of our apartment building all day. I am now acquainted with every inch of our small yard, from fence to fence. I’ve taken to placing my hands on the trunk of one of our gum trees, for reassurance, the feel of a living thing that will survive this strange time. 

Incompetence kills. Write it down, pass it on, post it on your favorite social media platform. Incompetence kills. It’s a long way to January 2021. Don’t underestimate the damage Trump, Pence, McConnell and Barr can do in the months ahead. 

Let me see if I can wrap part of my brain around recent news reports -- some of them breathless -- that Trump’s buddy, Vladimir Putin, King of Russia, offered cash to elements of the Taliban for killing American soldiers. The American media is astonished, almost apoplectic, first that Russia would bankroll the killing of our brave men & women, and second, that Donald Trump either didn’t read the carefully prepared intelligence that he was provided this past February, or that he refused to believe what he read (or more likely was told), and decided it wasn’t worth even a phone call to his friend in Moscow.  

It’s no secret that Trump admires the way Putin holds and wields and constantly expands his powers. On the other hand, I have never bought the notion that Trump is a Russian asset. Trump is far too scattered, impulsive, stupid, and undisciplined to be run as an agent. I think it’s far more probable that Donald Trump laundered money for Russian oligarchs when they looted the former Soviet Union. I think this explains why Trump is fighting the release of his tax returns in the Supreme Court, as well as why he treats Putin with such deference. The returns may show income sources, investment portfolios, but may also reveal what people like the journalist David Cay Johnston have suspected for years: that Trump never had as much wealth as he claimed.  

I’m not for war. I’ve been against the undeclared and illegal war in Afghanistan since it began. I support slashing the Pentagon budget in half. I’m just an average citizen, but I knew Afghanistan was a mistake and would end in failure. What I never suspected was that successive administrations would keep the war going for nearly 20 years, using the same litany of lies we heard during the Vietnam War: we’ve turned a corner, we must build up the Aghan troops, we’re winning hearts and minds, we just need a troop surge to finish the job, we’re making progress, the Taliban are contained, we’re meeting our strategic objectives, etc, etc. 

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA sprang into action, supplying weapons, money, training and logistical support to the Afghan mujahideen, whose first and only loyalty was to expelling the invaders without giving up any tribal advantage or territory. How many young Soviet soldiers returned to their homeland in body bags, courtesy of the American-supported mujahideen? Not a few, not hundreds, but thousands. Putin would recall the Soviet Union’s failure and humiliation in Afghanistan very well. It must be his Vietnam. The overwhelming force of a superpower defeated by a determined and unyielding guerrilla army that received plenty of help from the United States. I imagine Putin would enjoy settling that score, inflicting casualties on the US, who really have no business being in Afghanistan in 2020. We cannot win any more than our arrogant leaders can admit defeat. 

The message from the US is always the same: it’s fine when we do it, not fine when you return the favor. We’re the indispensable nation, the great beacon of liberty and freedom. Yes, our police forces routinely murder unarmed black Americans. Yes, many of our states contort themselves to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. Yes, millions of Americans cannot afford basic health care. Yes, our police spray rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Yes, we incarcerate more people than any other nation. Yes, we erected monuments to traitors and white supremacists. But how dare anyone question our commitment to liberty!

The Isolation Diaries No. 34

“Everybody in the south wants the privilege of whipping somebody else.” Frederick Douglass

Here in Santa Barbara several blocks of State Street, our restaurant, bar, and commercial (what hasn’t been destroyed by Amazon) backbone, are blocked to vehicle traffic for several hours a day, creating what the City calls a “pedestrian promenade.” Restaurants, which up to Friday the 22nd were only doing takeout business, are open again with restrictions on how many patrons can dine inside at a given time, and tables set up outside. 

After weeks of isolation, seeing hundreds of people strolling along State Street is startling. More startling is that 80 percent of people are not wearing face coverings. There was a line of people in front of Joe’s Cafe when we arrived to pick up our takeout order, and the tables on the sidewalk were full. The hostesses and waitstaff wore masks. Dining in at this point holds no appeal for us. We just wanted to collect our order of a spinach salad, turkey dip sandwich with salad and fries, ranch dressing, and two Manhattans and get back home. There was confusion at the front counter, the young woman behind it seemed harried, trying to handle our order and answer the phone, and doing neither well. No fault of hers. I felt bad for her. While we stood there, a woman in her mid-40’s who had been waiting outside entered and asked my wife and I if we were waiting for a table or picking up. It was clear from her tone that she assumed we had skipped the line. She wore a large, flashy diamond. Her vibe put me off immediately. “Well,” I said, “if we were waiting for a table we’d be standing outside, wouldn’t we?” She spun around in a huff and went back outside and resumed her wait. 

Back home we discovered Italian dressing instead of the ranch dressing we asked for, and the au jus sauce that makes the turkey dip was missing. The sandwich was dry, the French fries soggy. On the plus side, the Manhattan’s were the usual Joe’s strength. We ate, sipped our cocktails, and watched the last three episodes of the final season of Schitts Creek.

The problem is that ignoring the public health aspects of a pandemic will not make it go away; happy talk and magical thinking are equally futile. I can’t see how we avoid a second wave. 

The pressure to generate economic activity is intense and hangs heavy. After two months of isolation, it’s natural to want to get out, move around, have a drink in a bar, eat a meal, see people. City and state government officials are trying to balance public safety with the need to turn the revenue spigot back on; it’s like spinning six plates while standing on one leg. Since the federal government abdicated its responsibility for the pandemic, states, which have far fewer resources, have had to pick up the slack, blowing huge holes in their budgets in the process. Without an infusion of money from the federal government, states will have no choice but to cut services, furlough public employees, and adopt austerity measures -- at a time when public services are desperately needed. 

Trump and Company try to will the pandemic away with a toxic combination of lies, bluster, and threats. The problem is that ignoring the public health aspects of a pandemic will not make it go away; happy talk and magical thinking are equally futile. I can’t see how we avoid a second wave. When I checked this morning the Trump Death Clock stood at 58,708 deaths that could have been avoided if Trump had taken Covid-19 seriously and acted earlier. But expect no contrition or reflection from Trump. He insists that he would do the same things over again, including, it seems, shilling Hydroxychloroquine endlessly and stoking a culture war between red and blue states. 

Even if Joe Biden were leading Trump in the polls by 50 points, I would still expect him to find a way to blow it. November is a long way off, we’re in a pandemic, Trump’s in the White House, McConnell runs the Senate, and the Democratic Party establishment dithers at the margins

What do you get when for 40 years the reigning ideology in the world is how to monetize every aspect of human life? You get Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk; you get Steve Mnuchin, Jamie Dimon, and Timothy Geitner; you get staggering wealth and political inequality and environmental damage; you get government by money, of money, and for money; and to close out the neoliberal era with a near collapse and endemic corruption, you get Trump, an incompetent, semiliterate failure who sees himself as the best the white race has to offer. 

I just started reading Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, by David W. Blight, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. I’ve also been reading Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith, and listening to Western Stars by Bruce Springsteen. My wife finally acquiesced and cut my hair short with a dog grooming trimmer that we once used on Chula, my inlaws loveable Shih-poo. 

Keep an eye on the mortgage default rate in the next few months. In the words of Warren Zevon, send lawyers, guns, and money, the shit’s about to hit the fan.  

The Isolation Diaries No. 25

“This is like a repeat of 2008, where Congress is dumping staggering sums of money into the hands of Wall Street thieves.” Chris Hedges. 

I spend three and a half hours in the deserted office. I feel clumsy in my own work space. Surrounded by familiar things, I still can’t work at my normal efficiency. Every task before me feels monumental. It’s one of those hit-the-wall days, a low ebb. They happen in bleak times like this. Stress, anxiety, worry, boredom, singularly, or all at once. I feel impatient, harried by my thoughts. When I return home I’m edgy with my wife. Has the apartment shrunk in my short absence? 

We’re at a stand-off with our 18-year-old daughter, who continues to blame her parents for the total disruption of her young, important life. She can’t hang with her friends or see her boyfriend; she asks if she can visit him, we tell her, no, not unless you’re prepared to move in with him. No going to and fro like Heidi Klum skipping down the runway. Uneasy truce. On the positive side the portable AC unit my wife ordered arrived. Our defense against the stifling days to come. My poor wife suffers in the heat, it wipes her out; fans don’t cut it. We have a swamp cooler that helps, but when it’s 85 or 90 outside it feels like 100 inside. 

What do you fall back on when you feel empty inside? Where do you place your faith? God or man? Religion never did it for me, but men frighten me more than God, because they’re here, now. Is there more good than evil in humankind? 

Back to normal, back to normal, back to normal the drumbeat sounds. Back to normal? No, that’s a mirage. An economic bomb is about to hit. We’re about to learn how hard it is to build a foundation that can stand the test of time, good and bad, droughts and floods, wars and hurricanes, earthquakes and fires, and how easy it is to destroy a foundation that has been deliberately allowed to rot. The odds of a swift recovery are very long, this isn’t 2008/09. We allowed that golden opportunity to angle the economy -- just a tiny bit -- toward average people and away from the wealthy to pass in favor of the status quo. Obama chose the wealthy over the people. The rich got richer, remember? Executive bonuses and stock buybacks. Even greater wealth inequality.Working people either lost or stayed the same. Had our economy been stronger prior to the pandemic, the hurt now would be less drastic. (By stronger I don’t mean a bigger bull market and hefty corporate profits, I mean more equal in terms of wealth, more equitable sharing of the spoils, far less precarity.) No person allowed to die of hunger or neglect. No person unhoused. No person without access to medical care. No person without access to clean water. No tents on the streets of Los Angeles, no Skid Row, ever, anywhere. Let’s start with FDR’s 4 Freedoms, see how those notions can be improved and expanded upon. Let’s revive the idea of social justice. We need a new definition of profit that takes into account owners, workers, and the planet. You can make money, lots of it, but not on the backs of workers, and not to the detriment of the planet. The Pentagon all-you-can-eat buffet must end; wars of choice that never end must stop. Unbridled corporate power must be checked. Our political system must be reformed, big money and soft money and dark money rooted out, voting rights expanded and secured, and the war on the poor that manifests in mass incarceration, ended. Only then might we stand a chance against what’s barreling toward us. 

Yeah, it was a day. I guess this is what I fall back on, playing with the word. It’s funny to think that six weeks ago our routines, our lives, seemed solid and predictable, but of course that was an illusion. Life is more fluid, especially in a society like ours, gilded on the surface and rotten to its core. This realization is humbling, and infuriating. A line from a Springsteen song comes to mind, from his album The Ghost of Tom Joad: “You get used to anything and it becomes your life.”

What stupid thing did Trump say today? What was the lie of the day? 

What happened to the anti-war movement in the US?

If America had a robust labor movement and a semi-level regulatory playing field, would we all enjoy universal health care now? 

The big money boys put the New Deal to the sword. Now they are busy looting the treasury. They do their best work in broad daylight, out in the open, under the glare of TV cameras. We get $1200, the dust left over from the frenzy of theft orchestrated by corporate lobbyists and their political cronies. 

Dust to dust. The human condition. I take a snifter of Irish whiskey out on the deck and sit in my new recliner. As the evening quiet deepens, I sip whiskey and stare at the waxing crescent moon. I can’t believe how beautiful it looks.