Weapons of Mass Delusion

 “They will overthrow the temples and soak the earth in blood.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

>It’s difficult to make sense of the world at this moment, particularly here in the United States, where madness has been sanctified in one of our two major political parties. That’s due to the cowardice of too many Republicans who allowed a sociopath to browbeat and cow them into submission by name-calling and mean posts on social media. I will never understand how so many people fail to see that Donald J. Trump is a quintessential coward, a braggart and blowhard who caves at the first sign of resistance. He’s also a draft dodger, a tax cheat, an adulterer, a liar, and the most incompetent and destructive man ever to sit in the White House. 

>It will not be a banner day for America when Trump becomes the first American president to be indicted for felonies. What it will show the world is that America isn’t what it has portrayed itself to be for more than a century. Not ordained by a higher power. Not exceptional or special, and certainly not better than or inherently superior to. Yet it’s absolutely necessary for Trump to be indicted and held accountable for all the crimes he committed as president -- even if that means acts of violent civil unrest on the part of Trump’s most demented followers, his neo-John Birch Society soldiers. We should fear not holding Trump accountable more than the possibility of scattered violence. 

>Trump is going to make a speech in Waco, Texas, on the 30th anniversary of the siege of the Branch Davidian complex; you can bet he’ll wrap himself in the shroud of David Koresh and proclaim that he is but another persecuted prophet. (Also batshit crazy.)

>The only way to bring Russia’s war in Ukraine to an end is through a negotiated settlement. Even with help from the West, and another $100 billion in assistance from the United States (which can always find money for war but only rarely for peace), Ukraine cannot prevail in a war of attrition. The mandarins and policy wonks of American imperialism cannot be happy that China is assuming a diplomatic role the US once thought its exclusive purview. Whether the US likes it or not, China is a global power, with growing interests and influence around the world. Brokering a diplomatic thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and offering to mediate between Russia and Ukraine are two signs that the era of American hegemony is waning. This will be hard for US political and financial elites to accept; they have profited brilliantly from the American-led neoliberal world order. 

>The Republican Party loves the unborn but despises the living, as made clear by efforts underway in many red states to rollback laws and regulations that prevent exploitation of child labor. Arkansas has already acted, Iowa may follow soon. Yes, say Republican governors, 14 and 15 year old kids should toil in mines and meat packing plants, work around dangerous machinery because nothing is more important than providing cheap, expendable labor to America’s capitalists! Destroy the public schools and force children to work for the Fatherland! Heil Trump!

>America needs enemies to vanquish. Native Americans, Blacks, communists, socialists, immigrants, hippies, Yippies, feminists, suffragettes, George Soros, liberals, drag queens, gays, transgender people, poltically-correct, tree huggers and the ultra-dangerous Woke. We need bogeymen, objects to fear and hate. 

>I can’t get over the strangeness of these times. The world is a scary mess, and yet my little clan is still living a comfortable, pleasant life. How long this will last is unknown, and that’s disconcerting. What calamity waits around the bend? Without doubt we’re living at the end of one time and the beginning of another. American economic hegemony is fading as is American influence; capitalism is destroying itself as surely as cancer destroys the human body; and climate change is already wreaking havoc. 

>It’s the 20th anniversary of America’s unprovoked and entirely fabricated invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq. Some of the architects of this massive strategic blunder have passed away, while others escaped accountability and went on with their lives. I wonder if George W. Bush has nightmares. Probably not. 

>It’s also the 50th anniversary of the standoff at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, a 71-day siege, with US Marshals on one side and members of the American Indian Movement and Oglala Lakota on the other. 

>Here’s some food for thought from the author Brian Klass: “Our social world has changed, but our brains haven’t. Humans have learned to pick leaders for reasons that no longer reflect modern realities.”

Kentucky On My Mind

“What is America? America is vanity again! And I daresay there’s a lot of swindling going on in America, too.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Mitch McConnel is the most powerful and most unaccountable political figure in the nation. He rules the US Senate, decides what judicial nominees to propose and confirm, how grand a corporate tax reduction to allow, which legislation moves forward and which gets shelved, and how miserly to be when it comes to relief for the common folk. It’s when the commoners are involved that Mitch turns the screws. In McConnell’s view, $600 per eligible head is more than enough relief. What man or woman can’t meet all their human needs on the princely sum of $600? 

When the government heaps tax cuts and write-offs and outright subsidies on giant American corporations, it’s called Capitalism; when the government gives anything of value, no matter how small, to the people, it’s described as Socialism. One is a virtue, the other a terrible evil. 

Mitch is openly contemptible of the American people, even those from his home state of Kentucky who reliably return him to Washington every six years. Thanks, Kentucky, for the party gift. Nobody in America tells Mitch what to do. He controls the money in his caucus, the plum committee assignments, who rises and who falls; no Republican senator can cross McConnell and survive. Mitch is the real Boss Man, far more focused and cunning than the mentally unstable Donald Trump. 

On one hand you have to admire a man with the skills to amass that kind of power, and on the other you have to question a system that puts so much power in the hands of one man. 

Covid-19 is extracting its terrible toll as America stumbles toward 2021. The infection rate and death count rises. California has been hit particularly hard. The level of suffering in this country -- thanks to the sociopathy of Donald J. Trump and a half century of economic policies that have shrunk the middle class and swelled the ranks of the poor -- is the opposite of what America imagines itself to be. Our myths of indispensability will live on, they will just not in any way resemble our reality.

America’s tenure at the top of the world power structure is coming to an end, it’s only a matter of time. The bills for dominance are hefty, it takes trillions of dollars to maintain nearly 800 foreign military outposts, some small, but others massive. 

From George W. Bush to Donald Trump, from the War on Terror to the War on America, that’s what we’ve witnessed in the first two decades of this century. Remember the ideas of Dr. King: violence abroad always comes home. The nation has been at war with some adversary, in some foreign territory, since my daughter was born more than nineteen years ago. These endless conflicts take place beyond the awareness of most Americans. This country squandered its future in armed conflicts abroad, spending trillions of dollars that might have improved the health and welfare and economic security of millions of American citizens. The problem was, and is, our corrupt and thoroughly gamed political system, dominated by two parties who haven’t advanced new ideas in decades. 

As Hunter S. Thompson might say, 2020 has been a King Hell bad year. Bad in every direction. The wealthy, and the lucky, have fared pretty well. I count myself and my small family among the lucky. We have only been inconvenienced, we haven’t suffered privation. My wife had a bout of kidney stones, tripped down two stairs and messed up her ankles, then suffered third degree burns on her right arm when she spilled a pot of boiling water. All that happened in the space of a few months. My daughter tested positive for Covid-19, but thankfully never displayed any symptoms. There were plenty of presents under our Christmas tree. The worst thing to happen to me personally had nothing to do with Covid. I was the victim of a simple property crime in the early morning hours of December 27 when a thief, or thieves, jimmied the door to our laundry room, which is down below our apartment, off the carport, and swiped my Diamondback Insight bicycle. For years I’ve stored the bike down there, hanging from the ceiling, secured to a three inch vertical pipe with a thin steel cable. This thief carried bolt cutters and made easy work of my cable. My Transit saddle bag was on the bike, with my good North Face gloves and small tire pump inside. Gone. Nothing else was touched.  No trace left except the severed cable on the ground. 

It will cost some good money to equip myself with another commuter bike, new saddlebags, lights, gloves, and the best quality lock I can find, before I can resume my 9-minute commute to work. Until then, I’ll walk. What a luxury to live so close to where I toil from 8 to 5. It’s an easy walk, along the perimeter of the high school, past the baseball stadium, then down Canon Perdido to Garden. Another block and a half and I’m there.

It could be worse. 

Happy New Year to all those around the world who from time to time read this obscure blog. 

Will We Forget?

 “They will, at last, realize themselves that there cannot be enough freedom and bread for everybody, for they will never, never be able to let everyone have his fair share!” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

This infernal year of plague and death and strife, trapped in the grip of greed and arrogance, careening for the abyss at top speed. It’s hard to decide where to begin. Should I begin with the photographs I took of downtown SB in March, during the first lockdown, when store shelves were bare and the streets were eerily quiet, deserted? When toilet paper was as good as money? Or do I start with the criminal negligence of the Trump Crime Family (TCF)? 

Remember Trump’s statements, day after day, about a few people coming in from China, how Covid would one day go away like a miracle, and that in any case it was no worse than the seasonal flu? 

Will we forget Liberate Michigan?

Human nature being what it is, I fear we will forget what has happened this year, misunderstand its deeper meaning, and how dangerous the game we’re playing with our limited democratic freedoms is. I’m afraid we will forget what an utter disaster Donald Trump has been. That with the passage of only a little time, we will forget the more than 300,000 Americans who have died on Trump’s watch, forget the millions more who lost their economic footing because Trump’s response to the pandemic was so inept, ignorant, incompetent, and indifferent to the reality of the situation. While Trump denied science and commonsense -- and babbled about miracle cures, ingesting bleach and disinfectants, herd immunity, and packed churches on Easter Sunday -- Americans suffered and died. 

Writing in the Nation magazine recently, Elie Mystal noted the following: “And yet, somehow, even all of this -- the bleach, the rallies, the unconscionable disregard for life -- fails to capture the full scope of the harm he’s done to this country. Trump’s anti-science sociopathy has been embraced by many other political actors. His messaging, his attitude, his culture-war mongering have filtered down throughout our country, to our national shame.”

I’m afraid that neither Trump or any of his many, many enablers will be held accountable for the damage they’ve done, or for how casually many of them betrayed their oath of office. Was that taste of power worth it? 

We must never forget the 18 state attorney generals and 126 Republican members of the US House of Representatives who supported the corrupt Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, and the bogus legal claim he mounted in an effort to overturn the results of the election and cancel out the legal votes of millions of Americans. 

Will we forget the ranks of silent Republican senators, who stood by while Trump mounted one laughable legal challenge after another in state and federal courts? Who said nothing when Trump claimed the election was rigged and that he’d never accept the result? Will we forget this wholesale absence of principle and courage? 

William Barr, good riddance doughboy, you sold your soul to Donald Trump, so no mercy will be shown to you. Your trangressions are many, but none more repugnant than reinstating the death penalty for certain federal crimes, and then executing condemned people in record numbers, including Orlando Hall and Brandon Bernard. 

One lesson to be learned from 2020 is that mercy is hard to come by in America, particularly for the poor and marginalized. Perhaps we never had mercy in us to give. Americans have always killed to gain land, territory, minerals, and wealth, or to terrorize people deemed a threat.  

I’m afraid we will forget George Floyd, Breeona Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, just to name a few. 

But Kyle Rittenhouse, a sad, deluded white kid who murdered two people protesting police brutality, will be considered a hero in many quarters. Will we forget hate groups like the Proud Boys, who crawled from the shadows to stand in Trump’s malign spotlight?

Will we forget uniformed but unidentified federal agents plucking people off the streets of Portland, Oregon? Or those federal goons under the direction of William Barr, who drove peaceful protesters out of Lafeyette Square with pepper bombs, rubber bullets, batons and shields, all so Donald Trump could make a triumphant march across the street to the church -- where the idiot held the good book upside down.  

As Donald Trump rants and raves about massive voter fraud, let’s not forget all the efforts by the Republican Party to cripple the US Mail service, reduce the number of polling places and ballot drop boxes. Voter suppression is the real election fraud in America, and it is engineered by a Republican Party that is openly hostile to democracy. 

Will we forget politics by stunt? 

We would be wise to think hard about the divisions, fissures, and fractures the Trump years and this deadly pandemic have revealed about our country, its insidious racism, militarism, and wealth inequality. 

When Donald Trump talked about “American carnage” in his inauguration speech in January 2017, I don’t think many people understood what he meant. Trump made it seem that America was at war with itself. It wasn’t true on that day, but it is true now.