Sailing Under the Black Flag

 “White supremacy is ravenous and vicious. It is America’s embryotic fluid. America was born in it and genetically coded by it.” Charles M. Blow, The Devil You Know

The other day I learned that my dentist died. I last saw him six months ago. His practice had slowed down due to the pandemic, but he was managing to keep two hygienists and his office manager employed. All three had been with him for years, decades in one case. Good people. The office had a friendly vibe, a treasure chest for children, family photos on the walls. This man cared for my teeth for thirty years. Two or three root canals, a couple of cracked teeth, crowns. He was five years my senior, but our children -- one boy, one girl apiece -- were about the same age. The news of his death hit hard because it wasn’t preceded by an accident or illness, his time was simply up, his existence claimed by natural causes.

The back end of life isn’t an easy victory lap. 

My dentist’s sudden death made me aware of the passage of time and the precariousness of all the things we think of as solid and lasting. I believe a reckoning is coming that will make the Covid pandemic look minor by comparison. Much of what’s coming I can do little about: shit’s going to happen to me and those I love, to my city and state, my country, the world. Some of it will be wrenching, of that I have no doubt. As I was skipping rope the other day this thought flitted across my mind: am I training for the apocalypse? Am I trying to be physically ready for whatever comes? Maybe. The training regimen I’ve created for myself has become a lifestyle. Funny how that happens. What we do consistently, we become some version of. The women from my mother’s side of the gene pool live a long time, several of them into their 90’s. My mother’s older brother, my last remaining uncle, is 87, still mentally sharp, a huge Los Angeles Dodgers fan. With good fortune and smart choices I could live another twenty years, a thought more unnerving than exciting given the state of the world. I think of the film Nomadland and remember that in this soulless consumer Potemkin Village called the United States, it takes very little for people to lose their grip and freefall. Lose a job, health insurance, fall behind on the rent -- name a calamity -- and it could mean living on a rectangle of concrete under a freeway overpass. When I was a boy back in the 1960’s and 1970’s we thought of “hobos” in romantic terms, riding flatcars from state to state, heating Dinty Moore beef stew over an open fire, free to ride the breeze and laze around while others toiled. To my young eyes the world seemed more hospitable. Of course, it wasn’t hospitable then and isn’t now.  There’s nothing romantic about homelessness and poverty. 

Our politics is a cynical, empty circus of bullshit, and our citizens are easily duped by fools and charlatans. 

Every morning on my ride to the office I see the same three vans parked near the Armory. People live in these vehicles. They migrate around the block, at times parking on Nopal Street, other times on De La Guerra. It has to be hard living, cold at night when the temperature drops, cramped, and under constant threat from the authorities to move along. After watching the film Nomadland I can’t look at these vans the same way. They’re emblematic of a serious curse that afflicts working people across America -- a shortage of decent, affordable housing. The roots of this problem are long and run deep beneath the bedrock of our capitalism-gone-haywire era. In the words of Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, without adequate housing, lives fall to pieces. I think the same can be said of the absence of health care, which in America is a feature of our fealty to the Market God. We can’t have Medicare for All because the idea of a collective system provided by the government runs counter to our faith in Markets, and would brand us as Socialists, which might bring on a permanent eclipse of the sun and the end of the world.  In America our one and only choice is to sail under Capitalism’s black flag. Better to let people suffer and die without health care than to imitate the Europeans or Japanese. 

We live in serious times, but America isn’t a serious country. Our politics is a cynical, empty circus of bullshit, and our citizens are easily duped by fools and charlatans. We long ago stopped teaching civics. Americans don’t appreciate the effort that rule of the people requires, and those in power seek to keep it that way. A dumbed-down polity is easier to manipulate and control. So, facing a rabid movement of white supremacists who would rather burn it all down than share power with black and brown folks, we argue over Mr. Potatohead and Dr. Suess. America has been trapped in a downward spiral of dumbness for a long time. The pandemic exposed America’s crumbling facade, its utter hypocrisy and idiocy. Drink bleach. Fuck masks. Ignore science. 

What shall be done? The eternal human question. Either we renew our commitment to democracy or we accept authoritarianism, there’s no third way or middle ground. 

I will miss my dentist. He was a decent man who cared about others and used his skill to make their lives better. 

Down At The Crossroads (Ain't No Devil Down Here)

 “We need a wealth tax everywhere. We need quality free health and education for everyone, everywhere. We need a green new deal everywhere. There’s no country where this is impossible, and no country where this is not necessary.” Djaffar Shalchi

Remember last month, January 6, were you watching when the Trumpists attempted to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College (an undemocratic process to begin with, but that’s not what motivated the Trumpists) results? Trump’s people wanted to monkeywrench the ritual, not overturn it altogether; they’re after less democracy, not more. It’s a strange country to begin with when the rules say the candidate who receives fewer popular votes than his opponent can yet win the Presidency. This has happened twice since the turn of the millennium -- a warning sign about our limited democracy we’d better not ignore. If a real investigation of the January 6 Insurrection happens, and is invested with proper authority, we may find out just how much advance coordination occurred in the run up to that dark day. This is for sure: it was more than a random mob. 

I’m trying to wean myself from the national news, stop imbibing the stuff two, three times a day, be more selective and discerning about the voices I listen to and whose writing I read. (Like a selective drunk, I suppose. Keep your rotgut, barkeep, give me the good stuff from the top shelf.) Managing any perspective about America is never easy because we’re a confounding nation. There’s too much noise from too many voices that reasonable people should avoid. Grandstanding fools like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, ambitious punks like Josh Hawley, and jackasses like Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Fuck off miscreants, one and all.

In the days when cities and regions had more specific identities because newspapers were the primary means of mass communication, the papers reflected their readership. Who is reflected on social media? If this were 1905 would QANON publish a newspaper? I’m old enough to miss a good newspaper. All those city and town specific newspapers, who published the local news, the obits, reported on city hall, the police, sports, living, arts -- all the aspects of society that make it possible for us to co-exist. Were we more civil then, more tolerant, more accepting? Of course not. Were we better informed? I don’t know. In the days of newspapers did readers always read below the headlines? My dad always went straight for the Sports page. When we only had television broadcasting -- the three networks -- the dream of marketers and advertising gurus was narrowcasting, honing in on a specific audience at whom to pitch commercials between the programming; now we have the almighty algorithm that will feed you all you want of whatever you want. 

Are we better critical thinkers today than, say, a half century ago? I don’t know. Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016; millions of Americans seem incapable of thought, let alone critical thinking. 

My little family finds ourselves nearing a crossroads of sorts. The tiny two-bedroom, one bath unit in a triplex built in the 1950’s that had housed us in enough comfort, but never enough space, for more than twenty years has become untenable. We need a change of provenance. Five years became ten, ten became twenty, the rent was fair and the landlord was mostly reasonable, we were near downtown, the kids’ schools, and my job, squeezed in always, but still able to live in relative comfort. Tiny kitchen, limited cabinet space, severe shortage of usable electrical outlets and countertops, no dishwasher. No ice machine in the refrigerator. We made it work. Four people, one bathroom. Intricate morning dances to get everyone up and out. Old gas wall heater with a thermostat that has often acted balky. Cold in the winter because of old , thin windows, stifling in the summer, especially in the last ten to fifteen years. The hot weather now presents itself from May to November, and every year feels hotter than the last. 

We’ve been here through flood, fire, and now, pandemic. About two miles from the Pacific Ocean. 

In our time here we have accumulated too much stuff. The space below us that functions as a low-ceilinged multipurpose laundry room-storage area-gym was, until last week, crammed with stuff. Boxes, bags, old furniture that never got refurbished, a wooden chest, bins full of artwork produced by my kids, stuffed animals, board games, motor oil and glass cleaner, a bucket of hand tools,  a toolbox, and my fitness gear. Knowing -- because this is Santa Barbara and folks in our working-class income bracket struggle for decent spaces, particularly within the city limits -- we will likely move somewhere with less storage space than we have now prompted a decades overdue frenzy of cleaning, purging, shredding, donating, tossing. “Be ruthless,” I told my wife and daughter when sentiment got in the way of practicality. To set an example I said goodbye to my weight bench, all my free weights, my tractor tire, 8-lb sledgehammer, a few pairs of dumbbells, and lots of stuff I’d hauled from Japan to Honolulu, across the Pacific to Seattle, to Irvine, and then back to Santa Barbara in 1987. In boxes that hadn’t been opened for years I found stained notebooks filled with the scribblings of my twenty-year-old self, photographs, letters (shows you how old I am), journals, schoolwork from my undergraduate days, magazines, newspaper articles, and military service records that I didn’t know I even had. 

It felt liberating to lighten our load, to say goodbye to the stuff of our past, to make a big donation of usable things to the Alpha Resource center, to put good books back in circulation. My sense is of a shifting foundation, a tilted floor with slippery footing. Change is coming and we will need to be agile. For the first time, we’re all in agreement that the time is right. My son lives in Los Angeles, my daughter might be headed off to school somewhere -- if she is accepted and we can pay the fees without going into major debt. I feel a strong need for different space, different angles, maybe a larger kitchen. 

I don’t know what will happen to this country politically, but I foresee more and more madness from the far right, more braying from Trump as he attempts to remain relevant so he can keep his grift going. The minority, by way of the arcane, undemocratic United States Senate, means to hold power by any means necessary. A handful of men from states with small populations compared to New York, California and Illinois, thwart every action with which they disagree, even when what they disagree with would materially benefit the people they purport to represent. The Senate stands for stalemate and obstruction. Why do we have it, what purpose does it serve? 

Texas is what happens when disdain for government and the exaltation of markets becomes a religion. When disaster strikes the wealthy manage fine, they can get away, like Ted Cruz, or stay on the dry high ground in their gated compounds with backup generators and private security patrol. The majority must depend on a collective response, from local, state or the federal government when a major disaster strikes. America has been kidnapped and raped by Capitalism-on-steroids, a beast never to be let off the chain lest it run amok and punish the common people, the working-class and the poor. Punish, abandon, repeat. This cruel system makes the cost of basic necessities like housing, heat, clean running water, food and medical care too expensive, at the same time it keeps wages low and profits high. It’s an arrogant system that doesn’t recognize any limits, not even of our planet itself. How can someone like Jeff Bezos ever be satisfied when there’s always more? He’s got enough money to insulate himself from the problems his business model creates for millions of people all over the world. He’s of the elite. He doesn’t live in the same world most of us common folk do.

The rich start the fire, then convince you no one else has the expertise to put it out. The failed architects of the Iraq Invasion become grey-headed sages on cable news shows; the bankers who broke the economy in 2008-09 are asked for policy advice; men and women speaking on behalf of our government tell boldfaced lies, argue, straight-faced, that what we just witnessed with our own eyes didn’t happen, then counsel the masses about truth and honesty on TV and in print. In America, if you have the right pedigree, the right credentials, you can fuck up royally, cause real hardship to millions of human beings, and pay no penalty. You get second and third chances, a clean slate. 

The red states make the laws, the blue states pay the bills. 

What I’m reading this week: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, City of Quartz by Mike Davis, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, and The Devil You Know by Charles M. Blow.