Alpha & Omega

 “Stories trap us, stories free us, we live and die by stories.” Rebecca Solnit

Why read the ramblings of an aging White American male, resident of Santa Barbara in the Once Great state of California? Fair question. Why write them? Better question. Everything is fair game at the minute. Excuse me while I empty the contents of my brain. Come along if you are inclined. We’ve been in our new digs for a month. It seems longer for some reason, like the physical movement of our household, be it only a block, had the effect of slowing time down. It was two and a half weeks before we had sorted the upheaval enough to be somewhat comfortable. Thinking back on those first couple of weeks, and my reaction to it, only reminded me of how fortunate I am at this moment. Millions of people on this damned planet do not have the luxury of being inconvenienced. We all saw that during the height of the pandemic. Many of us haven’t perceived the true damage wrought by Covid. Takes time, and a bit of distance to see clearly. (That’s my view, anyway, but maybe I put too much stock in the virtue of wisdom. Doesn’t naked ambition and blind greed run the table every time? Isn’t that what history tells us? Wisdom, that’s from the age of chivalrous knights, the warrior kings of old.) And fewer people would be inclined to walk away from a job that pays what mine does, but that is what I have decided to do at the end of June. It’s something I have thought about, off and on, for more than a year. The smart thing would be to suck it up and stay in harness; the right thing is to call it a career. Doing the right thing has most of the time served me well, led me to something else. It’s in no way a true retirement because I intend to continue working, just elsewhere, and in a different environment. I have worked almost my entire life, all kinds of jobs, and I still want and need to work, but what I don’t want is the daily pressure of dealing with other people’s issues, sitting through endless meetings, sorting annoying problems, always grinding, which is what I do at the moment. That, and much more, though I have been very well compensated for my efforts. I’ve never complained about the compensation; the battle for me was keeping boredom, frustration, and cynicism at bay. My career at the local school district has treated me well, and I’m leaving at the moment that feels right to me. But under no illusions, either. It’s going to be tight financially until I find something to do for money, and my wife finally moves on to better paying employment. She works hard and makes next to nothing at her job, exchanging low pay for flexible hours and the ability to work remotely. She’s ready for a change, too. I’ve got medical coverage until September, but then it’s off to anxiety land, buying health insurance through Covered California. My biggest peeve about this backassward nation is that we’re so weird about the commons. Every human being will need medical care sooner or later. It’s as fundamental as clean water and food. A civilized society should be able to agree on that, at the very minimum. Personally, I’d pay higher taxes for universal health care. Call me crazy. Most European nations make this arrangement work, it’s only in this country that rigid adherence to ideology makes it politically impossible. 

An end, and then I hope a new beginning, what I’m thinking of as the third phase of my life -- bring what it may. I’ve had incredible luck, good health, and a strong wife at my side. I’m forcing myself to stay in the present moment, not wander two months ahead and What If. I see it as taking a temporary step off the treadmill. What a luxury. It’s in considering how fortunate I am to have these options that my thoughts drift to places where survival is a perpetual struggle and decent choices are few. It’s a greedy world. America is a greedy nation. Always has been. Designed to be so. But I don’t think it speaks well of our country when there are people living in tents on the sides of our major freeways. It’s a sight that always jars me. Human lives shouldn’t be disposable. Seems like we often treat animals better than we treat people.

I’d rather not think about the political situation in America. It’s worse than it looks, of that I’m sure. One party is attempting -- and largely succeeding -- in choosing its own voters while excluding as many others from voting as possible. That’s part of it, but the GOP is also enshrining its powers relating to election law all over the country. That’s the more critical piece. First, prevent certain people from voting. Second, make sure their votes don’t count even if they manage to cast a ballot. A collision is coming. When a political party refuses to bow to the will of the voters and peacefully relinquish power according to the law, it has crossed over. The GOP is straddling the line, but by very little. After Trump, they understand that victory can be had by not conceding defeat. Don’t concede defeat, and you win. 

What a month this has been. I seem to be doing everything backwards. Moving into more expensive digs while at the same time walking away from my job. To top it off my beloved Chelsea Football Club won the Champions League title on Saturday, defeating Manchester City by one goal to nil. It still feels like a dream. The Blues put in a top performance against a City side that looked the favorite to lift the trophy. Big accomplishment for the club and manager Thomas Tuchel, who in less than a month beat Pep Guardiola three times. After a couple of poor late season performances -- against Arsenal in the Premier League, Leicester City in the FA Cup Final, and away at Aston Villa to close out the campaign -- Chelsea conspired to put together a complete performance, first minute to last. A very sweet victory, and some redemption for Kai Havertz, the young German who joined Chelsea for a record fee but started the season slowly. Havertz scored the match winning goal near the end of the first half. 

Too Much Stuff

 

“Behind every beautiful thing there’s been some kind of pain.” Bob Dylan

= I came across a quote by Thomas Mann that seems to sum up the age we are living in here in the barely united United States.  Mann wrote, “Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.” The batshit antics of the Trump-owned GOP, from the surreal ballot recount in Arizona, which may be ruled illegal if it gets any nuttier, to Trump urging all his sycophants to run Liz Cheney out of her leadership position, to the hundreds of anti-democracy voting bills introduced in Republican-controlled state legislatures. The assault on Liz Cheney, who sits third in the House hierarchy, behind the power-mad Kevin McCarthy and Trump bootlicker Steve Scalise, is an example of the GOP eating its own. Cheney’s transgression? Refusing to carry water for Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, which, let’s not forget, he lost. I haven’t forgotten that Cheney is the spawn of Uncle Dick Cheney, one of the most devious VP’s in recent history; she’s a hard-right Conservative about whom the only positive thing I can say is that at least what she believes is tethered to reality. If it appears that Cheney is standing alone against the Forces of Trump it’s only because the bar for integrity in the GOP is an inch from the surface of the cesspool. McCarthy, McConnell, Hawley, Cruz, Rubio -- this bumper crop of political miscreants -- who daily trade their honor for power, are going to destroy the GOP as a viable political party. Since the Reagan Revolution conservatives have run the table, as dominant as the best Manchester United teams under Sir Alex Ferguson, but they have lost the magic and must be relegated. They’re out of ideas, other than obstruction and destruction. They’re deathly afraid of Donald J. Trump, who sits on his fat behind down in Mar-A-Lago and whines about election fraud, and SAVING OUR GREAT COUNTRY to small crowds of devoted fans and asskissers like Kevin McCarthy. America might benefit from more than two political parties, but at the very least two are necessary, and they must do more than obstruct, undercut, and sabotage each other. We’re headed for a bad patch, of this I am sure. The GOP is too far out to sea to rescue itself. Thanks to Trump, the man incapable of accepting defeat, every election from here out will be doubted, contested, and denounced for impropriety. Democracy runs on faith in shared norms, and rules written and unwritten. Trump always thought, and still does, that no law applies to him. 

=One week in our new digs. First time we’ve ever lived in a house. Still surrounded by boxes in need of unpacking, but we’ve made good progress in a week. Got the cable and the WiFi connected -- after I dashed down to Office Max and bought a new cable modem. Washed our first loads of laundry, ironically the last in our 15-year-old GE washing machine. Blew the bearings the first time we used it in our new home. We bought a refurbished Kenmore for $450 from a man with a side yard full of appliances of every description. Commercial grade stoves, a huge gas range circa1949, refrigerators, cannibalized washers and dryers, hoses and motors. It was like an amusement park of appliances. 

We have real windows. By that I mean double-windows which slide up and down. Of the many things I loathed about our apartment, the casement windows were at the top of the list. I’ve always wanted a front porch wide enough for a bench or chairs, and now we have one, with a little bistro set my wife purchased from Wayfair or such. (Inexpensive stuff, made in China by human beings who earn very little money, a fact not lost on me.) We have a solid front door. We have nooks and crannies, a kitchen you can actually move around in without bumping into something or someone. We even have a fireplace. Yet this first week we have struggled to adapt to the space, our minds and muscles trained over two decades to a very different configuration of light switches and cupboards and drawers. Waking up one night to pee, I was momentarily lost, not sure where the bathroom was. Long way to go yet, but this is going to be a wonderful house to live in, though I suspect it will be cold in the winter months. Another month, possibly two, before we’re dialed in. 

The move has also been difficult because clutter and disorder unsettles me. I can handle a certain amount of both, but when I reach my limit I get cranky as hell, a problem for my wife and daughter, both of whom tend to hoard. Over twenty years we had simply accumulated too much stuff, a lot of it useless. I counted six upright fans, a big box of board games no one has played for at least five years, a bolt of muslin that I’ve wanted to toss for a quarter century, a broken telescope that belonged to my wife’s father. To me moving day felt like drowning. We loaded box after box into the U-Haul and still there were more. For the first couple of days we climbed over and around boxes and hunted for toothbrushes and Q-Tips and prescription medications. It kind of made me snap, I just lost my shit over the futility of moving all this stuff from one place to another, only this time without a large storage space to put it in. Six plastic storage boxes full of Christmas ornaments, enough to decorate three trees. Rolls of wrapping paper, some sealed, most open, loose, torn. Boxes of shoes. Stuff, everywhere. I’m still looking for a black belt. 

=My beloved Chelsea Football Club booked a place in the Champions League Final later this month, brushing aside a struggling Real Madrid team. This is a stunning achievement for a team that six months ago looked to be going absolutely nowhere. Frank Lampard’s team was bereft of identity and solidity, and some players, like centerback Antonio Rudiger, and wingback Marcos Alonso, had been shunted aside like surplus parts. When Lampard got sacked and the German Thomas Tuchel took over,  it was a reclamation project of the highest order. But Tuchel has been more than up to the task. The hallmark of successful football managers is their ability to make good players great players. Tuchel has a good football mind and very high standards for his team. 

Boxing Day Massacre

 “That was shambolic.” Post-match reaction from Younes, of the YouTube channel Younes Talks Football

The set up was about as good as it gets in the Premier League. Arsenal sat in 15th place in the table, in apparent disarray, Mikel Arteta under close examination, without a league win since way back in November. They look up from the canvas and see Chelsea approaching, not in top flying form, but still a very good and dangerous team. A win for Chelsea and they would jump to second in the table, at least temporarily. On paper the ingredients predicted a Boxing Day London Derby dominated by Chelsea. Some Chelsea supporters probably thought it was going to be an easy afternoon stroll around the Etihad, maybe a two to nil or three to nil victory and three important points.

This Chelsea supporter was worried, but not because I feared the Gunners. My worry was with the law of averages paired with Chelsea’s record of dropping points in key fixtures, a problem that has existed over the past few seasons. We did this self-immolation dance under Maurizio Sarri, and in Frank Lampard’s first season at the wheel. What I mean by key fixtures are those matches where a win moves us up the table a few places. Over the past two seasons, we’ve haven’t fared well in those situations. Chelsea are not Liverpool or Manchester City -- we don’t put a hurt on other teams. In fact, what we habitually do is make mid and lower table teams look better than they are. 

If the Gunners were going to rise up and show some life, this was the fixture for that resurrection. A London Derby, a big game, and a significant result if they can get one. Arteta went with a group of his younger players. Among others, Aubameyeng and Pepe sat, and defender David Luiz wasn’t in the side. 

Chelsea have reverted to a side-to-side, front-to-back, brand of football that is really annoying. There’s far too much of this unproductive movement. Time and again the ball went to the wings, and from there it was crossed into the box by the likes of Reese James, who had a poor game, and Ben Chilwel, back from an ankle injury. Tammy Abraham, Timo Werner and Christian Pulisic were the front three for Chelsea. We put little pressure on Arsenal when we had the ball, never got a passing rhythm established, or mounted any sustained run of possession to get the tempo where we wanted it. We kept losing the ball in midfield, an area of the pitch we should have dominated with Kovacic, Mason Mount, and N’Golo Kante. When we created opportunities with the ball the crosses we put in were tame or off target. It was like firing a toy cannon. 

I didn’t panic when Arsenal went ahead one-nil via a Lacazette penalty kick. We gave up a penalty and paid for it, something that happens to teams all the time. I thought going behind a goal would light the torch, but Chelsea kept playing to the sides and backwards, and through another error we conceded a free kick in a dangerous area. Xhaka, who was out of favor with Gunners fans for a time, buried his kick in the top corner. At the half the improbable score line was Arsenal 2 and Chelsea 0. 

Even down two goals I thought Chelsea had the wherewithal and talent to come back and get something from the match. They needed to up the tempo and intensity, press high and win the ball back quickly. One of Chelsea’s best players for that role is Mateo Kovacic, but what does Frank Lampard do? He takes Kovacic off and puts Jorginho on! Also coming off is Timo Werner, replaced by Hudson-Odoi. That left me scratching my head. 

The change of personnel didn’t work in any case, as Arsenal scored a third goal through young Saka. Two goals, maybe a comeback is possible, three, no way. Chelsea had done it yet again, dropping key points at the most inopportune time. This penchant is in Chelsea’s DNA. We were so poor that our first shot on target didn’t arrive until the 80th minute. That’s shocking. 

Jorginho placed a cherry atop Chelsea’s misery when he did his hoppity-hop move and missed a penalty kick. Had Werner been on the pitch he would have taken that kick. 

It’s clear that without the passing ability and creativity of Hakim Ziyech, Chelsea are one dimensional. It’s rare to see Chelsea attack down the middle of the pitch. Christian Pulisic is the player most likely to do so, but he needs runs from other players to create space for himself. Chelsea have dropped three of their last four Premier League matches, a worrying signal that Frank Lampard and his staff better find some answers. This is December and the matches keep coming. We sometimes allow Lampard a pass because of his status as a legendary Chelsea player, but if Chelsea continue the way they are now -- flat, lacking intensity, energy and urgency -- Lampard may find himself under the gun. The club spent big money in the summer transfer window, bringing Werner, Kai Havertz, Ziyech, Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, and Edouard Mendy aboard. Havertz looks like a man lost at the moment, while his German compatriot Werner might struggle to hit a target as wide as the English Channel. 

I didn’t bother looking for our position in the table. I know we fell further behind Leicester and Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool and Southampton. The Premier League is unforgiving. December in the PL is like an iceberg. Pity the club that collides with it.  

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 13

 “Inverting the words and sentiments of Abraham Lincoln, this dark troll of a man celebrates malice for all, and charity for none.” Wade Davis on Donald Trump, Rolling Stone

Biden selects Kamala Harris as his running mate. Old Joe made the safe choice. In this moment Harris casts a longer shadow than the other contenders for the job because of her recent experience and exposure in a national campaign, and the high profile posts she held in California. Harris is smart, quick on her feet, telegenic, the daughter of immigrants, and, of course, a woman of color. That’s a lot of boxes checked. There are things to like about Kamala Harris, but if you’re a Progressive she’s still a disappointment based on her criminal justice record as the District Attorney in San Francisco and Attorney General of California. Idealism and realism, pick your poison. If I thought a headless mannequin could beat Trump, I’d vote for the mannequin in a heartbeat. 

Biden-Harris v. Trump-Pence. In a sane country this is no contest, like Bayern Munich shredding Barcelona 8-2 in the Champions League quarter finals. A hiding, a pasting, an annihilation and humiliation. Barcelona bruised and bloodied and dazed, the great Messi with his head down, not just beaten, defeated. That’s what Donald Trump deserves for the hell he’s inflicted on this country and its imperfect institutions. But not just Trump needs to go down, the GOP needs a hard reckoning for allowing themselves -- and in some cases eagerly volunteering -- to be bullied, humiliated and punked by Donald J. Trump. The moral cowardice in that ideologically stunted party is staggering. 

Biden and Harris make a decent tough on crime duo, but is that old Democratic Party formula what’s needed in this moment? The squishy middle ground when it’s so clear that much bolder initiatives are desperately needed? Slow, incremental change will not meet the climate, economic, and social justice challenges we can no longer afford to kick down the road. We’re like the Barcelona back line -- too exposed and easy to exploit. 

If I thought a headless mannequin could beat Trump, I’d vote for the mannequin in a heartbeat. 

The election should be a cakewalk, but this is America on the downslope of empire, a crazed fool roams around the Oval Office in search of conspiracy theories. America is no stranger to electoral mischief, as many of us witnessed in 2000, when a conservative Supreme Court delivered the country into the hands of George W. Bush. In 2016, perhaps with a boost from Russia, America handed its heart to Donald J. Trump, and some people, myself included, foresaw a shitshow of epic proportions. I saw Trump as a fraud the minute he came down the escalator, and cannot believe any person of sound mind ever expected anything from Trump other than what he has wrought; transgressions stretching far longer than Abraham Lincoln was tall. Honest Abe. Dishonest Don. But that’s my point. Trump has always been a con man, a tax cheat, a draft dodger, a philanderer, a business failure, a liar, a fabulist, and, of course, always, and above all, a showman selling magic beans, all of which seemed obvious to me and why I expected colossal incompetence and corruption. In this regard Trump has delivered. I didn’t predict a pandemic, but every administration is tested in some way, challenged by some crisis. Bush had 9/11, Obama the economic crash, and Donald J. Trump and Co. got the Covid-19 pandemic. The rest will live in infamy. 

Trump is reeling all over the political map now, firing on his remaining cylinders, stoking racial fears in the Leave It to Beaver suburbs, repeating as fact scurrilous lies about Kamala Harris’ birthright citizenship, promising vaccines and cures for the coronavirus, magic money to keep the Social Security System solvent, and peace in the Middle East. The Trump campaign, but more importantly Trump himself, knows he has fried his own goose, and the only path to reelection is through voter suppression, depressing turnout, and seizing control of what in this pandemic year is the backbone of our electoral system: the US Postal Service. For his own political survival, Trump is willing to neuter an institution that has existed since the beginning of our republic. 

Because Trump is a crude and stupid man, he wields power like a sledgehammer, not a scalpel.  Imitating the autocrats he holds in such esteem -- Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan --  Trump forces key arms of government to work in the  interests of his political agenda, not that of the people. For proof look no further than the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. Now the USPS, in broad daylight, is being corrupted for Trump’s benefit. What American institution will be next? 

After almost four years in office, Trump still has zero understanding of the legislative process, and refuses to learn. He can’t tell the difference between a bill introduced in Congress and one of his empty Executive Orders. Trump wants to rule by decree. When he signed four mostly useless EO’s last week at one of his golf clubs, I think Trump believed he was solving the economic crisis we are in. The man dwells in his own universe.

The hard reality is that even if the Biden-Harris ticket prevails in November, the road ahead will be perilous, especially between November and January 20th. The pandemic will almost certainly still be with us, the economy might be worse, and the white people who cling to dreams of past glory and supremacy will be angrier than ever. Trump and Co. will be busy stuffing suitcases with files and money, issuing pardons, stealing silverware. One last orgy before charges are filed. Our best hope is to stop the bleeding, stabilize the nation, and then get to work on the massive problems we face, including climate change. As Bill McKibben writes in the New York Review of Books, “The upheaval that has been caused by Covid-19 is also very much a harbinger of global warming.” Biden must be pushed to address climate change in a serious, systematic way. Old Joe isn’t the man to take on the entrenched corporate power that owns our country...how can he when he actively helped Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama turn the American economy into a rigged game? 

That’s a downer, but so is thinking about the extent to which unfettered corporate consolidation has perverted our country. This is a subject rarely explored on corporate media, for obvious reasons, but it’s finally getting some attention (thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Chris Hedges have warned of concentrated corporate power for more than a decade) from the mainstream. Thom Hartmann is out with a new book about monopolies, as is David Dayen, author of Monopolized. When every aspect of our lives, from health insurance to air travel to internet service to banking to our food supply, is controlled by a handful of corporations operating a functional monopoly, we cannot begin to address climate change, income inequality, systemic racism, housing or health care. No corporation should ever be allowed to become “too big to fail.” Concentrated economic power doesn’t happen without political power. It’s time to reject Robert Bork’s perverse interpretation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Bork got it all wrong. It’s not about lower consumer prices for laundry detergent, it’s all about power. 

As Bill McKibben writes in the New York Review of Books, “The upheaval that has been caused by Covid-19 is also very much a harbinger of global warming.”

After yesterday’s horrific defeat to Bayern Munich, heads are sure to roll at the Nou Camp. Many people will find themselves out of a job. Top level club football is a hard gig. When giants like Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventas fall short in the Champions League, managers get sacked and players get sold or sent out on loan. Bayern Munich are a relentless team, a high-pressing, quick, physical and technically-gifted group. I lost track of how many times Bayern won the ball in Barcelona’s half, and even with a four goal cushion, Bayern midfielder Thomas Muller was chasing balls down like the match was in the balance. Relentless and ruthless. I don’t feel so bad about my beloved Chelsea’s 7-1 defeat to Bayern on aggregate. 

Dangerous Certainty

“The decline and fall of these civilizations...was not caused by external invasions but internal decay.” Martin Luther King, Jr. 

This morning we had some thunder and a light rain, and now there’s a cool breeze and some steelwool clouds. Feels like we might get more rain. I spend most of the day watching football matches, Chelsea versus Tottenham and Leicester against Manchester City. The Chelsea match starts at 4:30 a.m. I’m awake by then, more or less, waiting for the alarm on my phone to go off, but I lay a while longer, thinking about the novel Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. Sad stuff, and Hurricane Katrina hasn’t hit yet. 

I go to my landlord’s house to ask if they’ll let us have a dog. For the past two days my daughter has been texting her mother and I photos of adorable puppies available for immediate adoption. Asking, and then pleading with us to let her bring one home. No, I respond, please don’t do that, not yet. Repeat this two or three times. Patience my child. We must be eight or nine years removed from the day Sparky, our Jack Russell terrier, died. We got him as a puppy and for 14 years he was family. In many ways Sparky was our first child. A spunky boy with a black patch over one eye, long legs, smooth coat and proud chest. Quick, alert, agile, mischieveous, and loving. Since losing Sparky, and after Chula, my mother-in-law’s shipoo died a couple of years ago, we have felt starved of canine energy. Once you experience it, get used to it being around, it’s hard, at least in our experience, not to have it on a daily basis. Especially when I see people walking their dogs all over town, past our house, on the grass at the high school, when I go to Handlebar for coffee on weekdays. We’ll see what they say. All I can do is ask. Seems simple enough, asking, but it took a long time for me to come to it. (I’ve never been very comfortable asking people for things). We’ve been in this apartment nearly 23 years, and I have rarely asked our landlord for anything. He’s replaced the stove and the refrigerator and the toilet once since we’ve lived here. Had some plumbing issues over the years, but nothing catastrophic. He’s replaced some window hardware. I pay the rent on time, in fact, every month I take the check to his house and hand it to him, or wedge it in the door if he’s not around. I treat his property as a caretaker would. We won’t live here forever, it doesn’t work that way, but I’d like to stay as long as we can. 

Even though it looks like it might rain, I take our blue 2009 Honda CRV to the car bath on Anacapa for a long overdue wash. The body’s banged up, dented and scratched, from Miranda learning to drive, and I figure, what’s the point? But my wife likes it when the Honda is clean. I’ve got a pocketful of quarters and I buy plenty of time to power rinse, scrub, and rinse again, do the tires. Across the street from the car bath Dune Coffee is bustling. The weekly Farmers Market is going on in the city parking lot where Lincoln School once stood. Pedestrians on the sidewalks, some with bags of vegetables, jars of honey, apples and oranges and marmalade. Lots of people in shorts and sandals. Santa Barbara Saturday. This is the good stuff, sunshine and the Farmer’s Market. Drinking that Dune coffee drink nice and slow, no hurry, nowhere to be at any specific time. Feels good. The CRV drips dry while I drive home. I gather some rags, a couple of towels, a Latex glove, Amorall, Windex, RainX, a can of tire cleaning spray and a spray bottle of headlight lubricant. I set-up the old vacuum we use for the cars. The paper filter was last changed in 2012. The thing must weigh 25 pounds. I think we bought it at Sears. I wipe the car down. Traffic passes on Milpas Street. I spray Armorall on the faded plastic trim, let it sit for a few minutes before wiping it off, then spray the tires with the tire spray. Clouds pass over the building, hiding the sun. I clean the interior with Armorall and Windex. I’m thinking about the interview I listened to earlier, when I was training. Krista Tippett interviewed two Jesuit priests who are also acclaimed astronomers. The conversation centered on faith and science, doubt and certainty, and that marvelous moment when we realize how much we have yet to discover. That’s how it goes, like laying paving stones in the ancient world, building the road as you go; then another person comes along, armed with more knowledge than you had, or better tools, and adds to what you’ve done, extends the reach of the road. Tippett’s guests believe in God and Science, with no contradiction, mental tug-of-war, or cognitive dissonance. God and Science are neighbors, existing peacefully next to one another. Both men were both wary of certainty. I thought of Donald Trump, our Mob Boss President, who proves how utterly ignorant he is every time he claims to be certain of something. All Trump has is certainty, starting with the certainty that he is the greatest man who has ever lived. Dangerous certainty.

I force myself to think of something besides Trump and the death of the American Republic and the craven Democrats and the economy and the federal deficit and the burning Amazon and the fires in Australia and what an ass Mike Bloomberg is and how glad I was to see Elizabeth Warren slap him down. Put that aside. Focus on washing a window, inside and out, leave no streaks. I’ve never minded doing simple chores. It’s relaxing, and when you finish you feel satisfied. A lot of the stuff we do as adults, in our professional lives, doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying. The reward is not as immediate. 

Chelsea beat Spurs by a 2-1 score, and in a tightly contested match in the rain at the King Power Stadium, City edged Leicester 1-0. Chelsea stays in 4th place in the table, 4 points ahead of Tottenham. If the Blues qualify for the Champions League next year it must be considered a minor miracle. 

The Festive Period

“There are towns and villages in Brazil that have no church, but not a one lacks a soccer field.” Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow

This time of year is a football (soccer, for my American readers) fan’s dream. The matches come thick and fast as they say -- probably too fast for the players’ liking -- but it’s a delight for fans. My beloved Chelsea continued their bizarre home form on Boxing Day, falling to a Southampton team they should have defeated. The match itself was eerily similar to recent matches against West Ham and Bournemouth, both losses. Those clubs arrived at Stamford Bridge desperate for points, and Chelsea obliged. In all three matches, Chelsea started ponderously and played with a cloak of futility. Against Southampton, Chelsea might have played for two or three hours and never troubled the opposition keeper. Our attack sputters in the final third, as if our forwards, Willian, young Tammy Abraham, and Callum Hudson-Odoi, run out of notions when they reach the edge of the penalty box. The American Christian Pulisic is capable of injecting a spark of creativity, but he can also go AWOL at times. Frank Lampard scowls in his technical area, but he seems powerless to get more from his players. 

Chelsea are in a transition year, so expectations must be muted. Our youngsters -- Mason Mount, Abraham, Fikayo Tomori, Hudson-Odoi, Reece James, and Pulisic -- have each shown flashes of their potential and from time to time the ability to link up and play appealing football. But consistency and Frank Lampard’s squad are not well acquainted. A good performance, like the away win at Spurs, is followed by a dud against Southampton. It’s baffling. 

As a Chelsea fan I’m not supposed to say anything positive about Liverpool. I’m supposed to despise the Scousers at every turn, but the fact is, as a football fan, I enjoy watching Liverpool play. Jurgen Klopp has developed a style that suits the players at his disposal, and watching Liverpool play is a pleasure. The Reds are not just quick physically, they are quick mentally. They see space and exploit it without hesitation. They move forward with a relentless energy. The Liverpool fullbacks, Andy Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold, are often other-worldly in their ability to get up the pitch, creating width, and delivering pinpoint crosses to the front three of Firmino, Salah and Mane. Where Chelsea dwell on the ball, play it backwards to their goalkeeper, pass side to side, Liverpool plays one or two passes to get up the pitch and into attacking position. It’s slick and fluid, with the front three interchanging. Liverpool also have the best defender in the world at this moment, Virgil van Dijk, the rock at the back. There’s a reason Klopp’s side is running away with the Premier League. I thought Leicester might give Liverpool a game, maybe spring Jamie Vardy for an early goal, but it wasn’t to be. Liverpool dominated their nearest title rivals and left the King Power Stadium with a 4-0 victory. 

In about five minutes of play, Alexander-Arnold delivered more dangerous balls into the Leicester penalty area than Chelsea’s mediocre fullbacks, Cesar Azpilicueta and Emerson Palmieri, did over ninety minutes. When Chelsea have a corner kick they invariably fail to get the ball past the first defender. It’s very frustrating for the supporters. Even with good business in the January transfer market, I don’t think Chelsea should expect to finish higher than sixth or seventh this season. The gap between potential and results is too wide. Chelsea lack players with high footballing IQ’s, who sense where the space will be and run into it, who make the right forward runs at the right moment, who can make something happen when the team is chasing a game or under pressure. Chelsea have too many deficiencies at the moment. 

But it’s football and fans always hope. And, as Vicente Calderon famously said, “Soccer keeps people from thinking about more dangerous things.” 

A Nation of Racketeers

“The current situation of the United States is obscene, insane, and incredible. If someone had pitched it for a thriller novel or film a few years ago, they would’ve been laughed out of whatever office their proposal made it to because fiction ought to be plausible. It isn’t plausible that a solipsistic buffoon and his retinue of petty crooks made it to the White House, but they did and there they are, wreaking more havoc than anyone would have imagined possible, from environmental laws to Iran nuclear deals.” Rebecca Solnit

The most amusing thing I notice in America’s slow (but gathering speed) political, economic, and moral collapse is how many people still consider the Democratic Party a viable counterweight to Trump and Trumpism (which I define as endemic corruption, incompetency, and utter disregard for and ignorance of the Constitution and the rule of law), despite evidence that the Pelosi/Schumer Democrats are inept, timid, and devoid of any principles except serving their corporate donor base. At this point, can anyone reading these words tell me what Democrats stand for? Because I have no idea. The lessons of Hillary Clinton’s loss stood out like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, clearly visible to all -- with the exception of corporate Democrats.

In a recent piece for Truthdig, Chris Hedges wrote of the Democratic Party: “It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics.”

We face an urgent need to restructure our economy in a manner that slows destruction of the biosphere, but the Trump Administration is moving full-speed in the opposite direction, toward the abyss where our addiction to fossil fuels is taking us.

Here’s what Noam Chomsky had to say on this subject recently: “One cannot overemphasize the astonishing fact that the most powerful country in world history refuses to join the world in doing at least something -- in some cases a lot -- about this existential threat to organized human life (and to the species that are disappearing as the Sixth Extinction proceeds on its lethal course). And beyond that, is devoting its efforts to accelerating the race to disaster. And no less astonishing is the failure to highlight, even to discuss this extraordinary situation. Considering what is at stake, it is hard to find a historical parallel.”

We face an urgent need to end our perpetual wars on the Muslim world, and to drastically curtail mindless military spending, but no, our glorious, bloated and insatiable military is sacrosanct and untouchable.

We face an urgent need to provide healthcare for all citizens based on need, not bank account. Our for-profit insurance system kills people, bankrupts people, and leaves far too many with no care at all. Placing medical decisions in the hands of insurance company profiteers is insane.

We face an affordable housing crisis that is devastating communities and leaving even lower middle class citizens in a precarious situation, forced to devote a higher percentage of their incomes to keep a decent roof overhead.  

We face a multi-faceted political crisis caused by too much money, too many lobbyists for corporations and oligarchs, outright bribery, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and a two-party system that leaves millions of voters with no choice whatsoever. Tweedledee or Tweedledum isn’t a choice. A lack of independent news media plays into our political ignorance and dysfunction. The corporate media, dominated by cable, distorts, obfuscates, confuses, and, mostly, fails to do any meaningful reporting on climate change, the real economy, and international affairs like Israel’s murder of unarmed Gazans.

Short Takes:

Rest in peace, Philip Roth. You leave us with Portnoy, Zuckerman and David Kapesh, and some of the most beautiful prose ever produced in American literature.

NFL owners, all but two of whom are white and wealthy, have decided to prohibit their largely African-American labor force from taking a knee (or doing anything else) in protest during the national anthem. Compulsory patriotism, as Davie Zirin, sports editor for The Nation calls it. As far as I’m concerned, NFL players have the right to express their opinions in whatever way best gets their message across; they don’t cease to be citizens when they walk on the playing field or the court. Seems that the intent of the owners is to placate Trump and at the same time assert control over labor. White NFL fans can’t handle it when African-American athletes assert their human rights.

Chelsea Football Club won its 8th FA Cup trophy last weekend, salvaging some pride from a season that more often than not felt dull and dismal. No sooner had the team lifted the trophy than speculation about Antonio Conte’s future began in earnest. Will the Italian remain or leave, has he torched the bridge connecting him with the club’s board? Still unknown, though most fans are leaning towards Conte’s departure. Blowing through managers is a Chelsea FC staple. By August, the club’s make-up will likely look very different.

The veneer of civilized debate and democracy, of respect for tradition and American values, has been ripped off like a tin roof in a hurricane, revealing the corruption that has been there all along. The class war is long over, the rich won, and now nothing can hold them back. America: a nation of racketeers, by racketeers and for racketeers.

The Long Fall

“The blending of hubris and stupidity on display in the Comey affair is a recipe for political comedy and legal disaster. By concocting a false story for Comey’s expulsion, the Trump team, including the President and the Attorney General, have exposed their consciousness of guilt and laid the groundwork for charges of obstruction of justice against them–if there’s anyone left in the Justice Department or the Congress with the guts to bring it.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

I don’t know what to make of Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey. I never cared much for Comey to begin with, and to understand his sacking from the reasons coming from the White House is almost impossible. When Comey was all up in Hillary Clinton’s business Trump liked the guy, but when Comey turned his focus on Trump’s possible ties to Russia, it all went south. Was Comey getting too close? No idea. The Russia-stole-the-election story still seems full of holes to me, I don’t see how hacking the DNC tips the election to Trump...Democrats should grow up and face the truth: Hillary Clinton is a despised figure who ran a dismal election campaign and lost to a complete buffoon. She needs to slink off and disappear. And she can take Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein with her. As long as these figures lead the Democratic Party, the Dems will continue to be a party of fucking wimps and losers.

Do I think that maybe Trump has shady financial connections with Russian oligarchs? Yeah, that’s far more likely. Follow the money, it always tells the story.

Trump is still Prez of the US Empire, right, he hasn’t resigned in disgrace yet or thrown up his tiny hands in total frustration, ran off to one of his golf courses, groped a 10-year-old beauty pageant contestant or claimed that he was the first American to walk on the moon...

Sweet Jesus, it’s hard to imagine how far my country has fallen. It’s been a long time coming, decades of bullshit policies that have reinforced the time-honored American ideal of government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, a government that hardly makes any bones about who it is working for and why. The elites and their elected servants have dropped all pretense about their intentions and interests. Gutting the Affordable Care Act was about eliminating the tax on wealthy people that paid for subsidies for the serfs, plain and simple.

I heard some heartless GOP congressperson on the radio the other day, blabbing on about how people get sick and develop pre-existing conditions because of their lifestyle choices…This is one reason this country is so fucked up.

I’ve read a fair number of pieces condemning Barack Obama for taking huge speaking fees. Get over it. Obama is going to cash in, big time, and make some serious coin as recompense for how loyally he served the financial elites. Obama was a hyper-articulate failure, and when he decries, as he did recently, the cynicism that many citizens feel for our precious institutions it’s laughable because he played a big role in stoking that cynicism. How many Wall Street executives were prosecuted for the fraud they committed in 2008? Right, none. Cynicism? Because Obama the Nobel Peace Prize winner ordered hundreds of drone strikes that killed thousands of innocent human beings? Maybe our cynicism is justified.

Here’s a question: why do voters in Wisconsin keep re-electing Paul Ryan? Does that evil motherfucker really represent your values? The same question can be asked of voters in Kentucky, who give us Mitch McConnell, another completely failed human being.

Someone remind me why the United States is still conducting military operations in Afghanistan. What’s the point again? To eradicate Al-Qaeda, vanquish the Taliban, protect women and children, plant the seeds of democracy and freedom, prevent the terrorists from invading the US...

I drank a beer or three too many last night, a special night because Chelsea Football Club clinched the Premier League title with a 1-0 win over West Bromwich Albion. Chelsea are top of the league!

Hoist the Cup

Seeing is believing.

If I hadn’t watched every minute of the game, if I had looked only at the stats – possession, total shots, shots on target, corners – I would have assumed that Bayern Munich beat Chelsea easily. The fact that Chelsea was outplayed for most of the Champions League final yesterday and yet still walked away with the hardware, is one reason football is the endlessly fascinating game that it is. 

In football, the improbable happens all the time.

Petr Cech was a monster in goal for Chelsea. Bayern pressured the Chelsea end relentlessly, wave after wave of attacks led by Ribery and Robben, but Chelsea refused to buckle, even without stalwart defenders John Terry and Branislov Ivanovich. On their back foot most of the game, the Blues showed grit and heart and championship character. And yes, the soccer gods appeared to side with Chelsea on this occasion, no question about it. No matter the sport or the team, it takes a bit of luck to win a championship.

Bayern had numerous chances to put the game away, but they couldn’t do it.

When Fernando Torres came on in the 84^th minute and Chelsea behind a goal, the Blues became more attack minded. Torres and Didier Drogba haven’t been on the pitch together very often, but it should be remembered that it was Torres’ hard work that won the corner on which Drogba headed home the equalizer. No commentator has mentioned this, but it struck me as significant.

If this was Didier Drogba’s final appearance for Chelsea, the big man certainly exits in fitting style. In games on the largest stages, Drogba delivers the goods. He was cool as ice when he stroked the winning penalty kick into the back of the net, as were Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole before him. The core Chelsea stars came through in the clutch, and coupled with some brilliant goal keeping from Cech, some luck and some Bayern miscues, the Blues became champions of Europe by the most difficult route possible.