The Isolation Diaries No. 11

“Capitalism would, in the end, Marx said, turn on the so-called free market, along with the values and traditions it claims to defend. It would in its final stages pillage the systems and structures that made capitalism possible. It would resort, as it causes widespread suffering, to harsher forms of repression to maintain social control. It would attempt, in a frantic last stand, to extract profit by looting and pillaging state institutions, contradicting its stated nature.” Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour

By one report I saw the death toll in America from Covid-19 has reached 5,848. It’s higher now I’m sure. 

The Santa Barbara Independent reports 152 cases in Santa Barbara County. 

Imagine if the United States was engaged in a war without the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top levels of Pentagon management. With no central coordination or logistics or intelligence, the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy are sent into the fray to do what they can independently of one another. At the front Army units call for air support, but the Air Force and Navy can’t decide which branch should respond. While they bicker, casualties mount. The Commander-in-Chief shrugs and says the war isn’t his problem, the services need to figure it out. He’ll back them up, but it’s their problem. As the war rages, the Army and Marines fight over limited supplies of ammunition and bombs and the Navy and Air Force spar over fuel and spare aircraft parts. The chaos is so profound that a Navy pilot mistakenly bombs an Army unit, killing 100 soldiers and wounding many more. A Marine battalion rushes to the front only to be told when they arrive that the battle line they are to reinforce is 110 miles to the east. The Air Force finds itself desperately short of rations, while the Army has five tons more than it needs. The Air Force petitions the Commander-in-Chief for aid, citing major casualties if the aid isn’t forthcoming. “I don’t like the way you’re asking me for help,” says the Commander-in-Chief. “First, you should be grateful for my leadership, and second, you should arrange to buy your own rations. What do I look like, Whole Foods?” Every afternoon the Commander-in-Chief holds a televised press briefing and claims the war is being won, casualties are minimal, and the whole thing should be over very soon. “Exciting things are happening,” says the Commander-in-Chief. “There’s never been a war like this. Nobody’s done the job we’ve done.”

Day-by-day erasure of truth, of fact, of verbatim, recorded statements. The grotesque, terrifying heart of George Orwell’s 1984 is alive and thriving in Donald Trump’s twisted rendering of his administration’s historic, perfect, never-been-done-before reponse to this pandemic. The governors are to blame for not preparing early, for not purchasing ventilators and masks and gowns and gloves in advance; nobody knew it would get this bad (most recognized experts saw the potential for catastrophe); hospital workers are stealing gloves and masks and selling them at huge profit; the federal government is only a backup; we acted early; Covid-19 testing is readily available to anyone who needs a test.  

Trump’s stupidity is as unbearable as his incompetence and mendacity. 

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is the poster boy for rich, pampered, lazy, incompetent assholes. He’d benefit from an old-fashioned playground ass-kicking. I’d be honored to administer that beat down. 

States do not have large stockpiles of strategic materials. This is why the federal government maintains the Strategic National Stockpile. National, meaning for the nation; national, because the federal government has size, economies of scale and logistical capacity that individual states do not. 

We are now bearing the weight of years of austerity, inequality, budget cuts, and cruelty. The chickens are flocking home to roost. So much for operating our government like a corporation, so much for the deliberate destruction of a social safety net that was never very robust to begin with, so much for the arrogance of the wealthy and the apathy of the masses.  

The sun is shining and birds are twittering, it’s Spring, time of rebirth and renewal. Traffic on Milpas Street is light. On a “normal” Saturday morning the flea market in the high school parking lot would be going at this hour. But the parking lot is deserted now. We stay inside, try to maintain hope, stay healthy, physically and mentally, though the latter is a challenge. I’ve lost count of how many consecutive days I have trained. Physical training is an important part of my life, but now my steel mace, kettlebells, jump rope, bands, TRX, pull-up bar, gymnastic rings, truck tire, and all the bodyweight exercises and martial arts movements I know are keeping me somewhat sane. I train, then meditate for a few minutes. I read -- The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. I listen to music, podcasts, watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ru Paul’s Drag Race with my wife. I write this humble blog, tossing my thoughts into the void. For the first time yesterday we wore masks (we found some brand new N95 masks we ordered during the Thomas Fire in the closet) when we went to CVS and Ralphs. 

No end in sight of Covid-19, self-isolation, Donald J. Trump and his band of profiteering ghouls, America’s delusions, fears, and madness, death and sadness, quiet acts of kindness and heroism and fierce creativity. I’m fearful. I’m angry. 

Land of the Sidewalk Dwellers

“They were that new kind of Democrat who didn’t seem to know any working people.” Jim Harrison

Crooked is straight. Wrong is right. Cruelty is kindness. Corruption is virtue. Lies are truth. War is peace. Ignorance is intelligence. Chaos is order.

Orwell’s nightmare vision coming to life.

Life in Trump-World is disorienting. The chaos and confusion is unrelenting. A rational person can only take so much before cognitive dissonance sets in. When you think the bar cannot be lowered any further, it drops another notch. When you think Trump can’t say anything more ridiculous than his last statement, bang, the Orange Menace pulls another whopper out of his ass.

It gets me every time we drive to the theater in Los Angeles. Tents pitched on the sidewalks. Makeshift shelters built from discarded cardboard boxes. Blue tarps stretched over a few possessions. One of the wealthiest cities in the US. Gleaming office towers boasting the names of major American banks. Luxury condominiums that sell for sums beyond the reach of mere toilers. And down on the street, a stone’s throw away, the sidewalk dwellers collide with LA’s upscale types.

Every time I see the tents I wonder where I am, how this came to be, and why it’s acceptable in a rich city, a rich state, and a rich nation.

How many souls live on LA’s streets? 50,000? 60,000? Are we devolving, back to the world of Charles Dickens or Jack London’s Iron Heel? Goes to show that human progress isn’t inevitable, that reason and logic can be rolled back to the Dark Ages, to the time of superstition and serfs. The great neoliberal project, launched by Uncle Ronnie Reagan in 1981 and going strong ever since, has placed the majority of the planet’s wealth in very few hands. Better to have 50,000 homeless people on the streets than to tax corporate profits. Better to despoil the soil, water and air than to regulate fossil fuel extractors and make the shift to renewable energy. Better to guarantee the profits of pharmaceutical manufacturers than to make life-saving medicines affordable for the masses. Better to pour billions of dollars into an insatiable war machine than to make higher education affordable or retirement secure or medical care universal. Better to let the Market God dictate the price of human necessities like housing.

Joe Biden, presumptive Democratic front runner, isn’t Donald J. Trump, but Biden and others like him, including Bill and Hillary and Barack, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck “Citibank” Schumer, were, or still are, integral parts of the machinery that made Trump possible. Without help from Democrats, there is no Trump. Trump is a feral, media-savvy opportunist who tapped into the anger of millions of working people left behind by 35 years of neoliberal economic, monetary and trade policies; by the outsourcing of millions of jobs to lower wage nations; by the privatization of public goods and the decimation of labor unions. Trump, incompetent con artist and serial failure, has no answers for what ails, other than to blame everything on immigrants, Iran, and the Chinese. As Thom Hartmann pointed out recently, Trump is holding an economic house of cards together with the same materials his predecessors used: tax cuts for the wealthy, austerity for the poor, increases in military spending. This will fail as it always does, and when it happens, the poor and what remains of the middle-class will get hurt the worst.

No, I will never get used to seeing tents pitched on city sidewalks, just as I will never get used to the cruel and incompetent con man who currently sits in the Oval Office. We cannot normalize these abominations. We must resist them in every way we can.

The Gates of Hell

“How Venezuelans choose to conduct their political affairs never has been and is not now the business of the US government. One need support neither Maduro nor Guaido to reach this conclusion. It’s simply not up to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, or any other American politician to run Venezuela.” Thomas Knapp

I don’t know much about the history of Venezuela or its politics. I do know that Hugo Chavez was a meddlesome figure for the George W. Bush administration and that back in 2002 Chavez survived a coup attempt orchestrated behind the scenes by the US. No surprise there. The US has meddled in Latin American for a century or more, destabilizing countries that refused to hand over their natural resources or open markets for US firms or adopt American-style capitalism or obey the dictates of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (the arms of American-style capitalism). Heaven forbid a Latin American country get chummy with Cuba, Russia or China, or stand in opposition to US whims. That’s a big no-no. I know that when the US can’t have its way it often resorts to force, covert or overt; it can bring enormous financial and diplomatic pressure to bear on a target country, and if that fails to unlock the door, the US can, and will, obliterate the door with military might. Chavez survived in 2002, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, may not. This is a different time than 2002, the third-stringers are running things in the US, leaping from the bench with their tattered imperial playbook. The US corporate media is reluctant to call what is happening in Venezuela a coup, though it certainly smells like a coup and walks like a coup and looks like a coup.

If Venezuela wasn’t oil rich would the US care about it so much? Dumb question, right? Would we go to such lengths for apples or grapes or bell peppers or cauliflower? Or maple syrup? Or coconut oil?

I have heard media pundits blame Maduro’s socialist policies for wrecking Venezuela’s economy. I have also heard pundits claim that the economy collapsed due to punishing US sanctions. Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s old talking head, said that Venezuela was thriving when Chavez took over, the people’s pots overflowed with bounty, life was good, but if that was true and the populace was content, why did they elect Chavez? Other pundits claim we have to recognize the unelected opposition leader Guaido in order to save democracy in Venezuela, and that the crippling economic sanctions are actually helping people. Where are you, George Orwell? But it gets truly comical when the US claims that Maduro’s reelection was marred by massive voting irregularities. After the American election in 2016, and last year’s midterms, with those infamous now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t polling stations, faulty voting machines, and purged voter rolls, that’s just flat out hysterical.

The truth is always more complicated than the “official” narrative makes it out to be, but if you live in the US and swallow corporate media, you will be wildly misinformed, and not only about Venezuela. The situation in Venezuela is extremely complicated and cannot be reduced to ten second sound bites or 140 character explanations.    

The writer Chris Hedges likens the US to a wounded beast, thrashing around in its death throes. Hedges isn’t optimistic about the immediate future, or if any meaningful future is even possible. The murder of the planet continues while Trump and America face off over his vanity wall. The American empire is still powerful, but also hollow, ruled by corporate interests and abetted by a corrupt political system full of unscrupulous hacks like Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, not to mention hopelessly compromised souls like Chuck Schumer and, yes, even the darling of the moment, winner by TKO of the Great Wall Showdown, Nancy Pelosi.

What to do? What to think? Where to turn? Feels to me that we are closer to the gates of hell than to the gates of heaven, but perhaps this is business as usual for our species.     

Chevy to the Levee

“Republicans believe that the rich need more money and the poor need less help. They support tax cuts for corporations and cuts in services for the vulnerable.” Editorial in The Nation, June 19/26, 2017.

Madness loose in the land, spurred on by capitalism’s death rattle, the endless drive for more profit, higher rates of return, growth, expansion. The super wealthy stash their coin in offshore accounts, away from taxing authorities and other prying eyes. Some of the wealthy build fortified bunkers for protection against the day when the entire crooked system implodes and the mass of impoverished people rise up, as people once did in France and Russia, and begin searching for those that caused their torment. Chris Hedges, journalist and prophet, calls America a tinderbox and it’s difficult to argue otherwise. It takes little imagination to imagine a full-scale government crackdown on protesters and dissenters, most police forces are already militarized to play this role, and if they aren’t, there are private goons for hire, well-equipped and eager to cash in on domestic upheaval.

America is morally bankrupt, a clear and present danger to its traditional allies, a danger to the planet itself. All the hoary mythology used to cloak America as a beacon of freedom, truth and justice, is being stripped away to reveal our true nature, who we really are, and the portrait isn’t flattering. The face of a true hypocrite rarely is.

The propaganda organs work overtime to control the narrative in order to maintain the status quo. There is no economic alternative to capitalism. Tax cuts produce jobs. The minimum wage cannot be raised or the world will end. Social Security is nearly bankrupt. We cannot afford Medicare for All. Greed is good, compassion is for wimps. And on the foreign front -- Russia, bad. Iran, bad. Qatar, bad (but they can buy our beautiful weapons). North Korea, bad. Saudi Arabia, good. Black or white, nuance abandoned and left to perish by the wayside. Enemies, threats. The nation must be ever vigilant, alert, ready to defend itself from the bad guys who hate our freedoms. We must bomb them before they bomb us. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. All problems can be solved by our beautiful military. Our cruise missiles. Our drones. Scour the kill list for new targets. We can see through the fog of war.

Orwell shakes his head. Told you so. Down the memory hole. War is peace. Truth is what the leader says it is. Slavery is freedom. You didn’t listen then, you won’t listen now.

Reign of terror. Reign of error. Reign of fools. Reign of greed. Reign of lies. Reign of bluster.

Hipsters sip $4 coffee and $15 craft cocktails, oblivious to the impending collapse. They tap their screens and keyboards, all synergy and branding and can’t miss business propositions. Self as commodity, substance buried under a layer of style. Acquire happiness in the marketplace. Enlightenment overnight from Amazon. Wisdom from Google.

Do you remember where you were when the American Dream died, when the party ended and the last note of music faded away?

Bye bye miss American pie.  

Eerie Echoes from 1984

I just finished re-reading George Orwell’s 1984. As my son is introduced to literature like All Quiet on the Western Front and 1984 in his sophomore English class, I am re-introduced to these books. We don’t talk about them too much, my son and I (he’s deep in that uncommunicative teenage phase), but I see the books lying around and pick them up, remember where I was when I first read them. Times change, cultural tools change, governments fall or reinvent themselves, world leaders enter and exit the stage, but these enduring books remind us that regardless of era or place or circumstance, people largely remain the same.

As I was reading 1984 I was reminded of how necessary it is for a nation to have an enemy. For four decades or so America feared the Soviet Union and Soviet-style communism, that grey, humorless KGB-Gulag-police state that lay like a heavy blanket across Eastern Europe, and we devoted economic, political and military resources to contain the Soviet threat wherever in the world it reared its head. Our spies shadowed their spies; our nuclear arsenal kept pace with theirs, warhead for warhead and tank for tank; our proxy states matched up against theirs. Tensions rose, tensions fell, but during the Cold War we always knew where to find our nemesis.

And then the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and got bogged down for nearly a decade in a hostile land that would not bend to their will, their centrally planned economy failed to expand as promised, Gorbachev began to loosen the reins of State control, the Soviet edifice creaked and cracked, the Iron Curtain went up in flames and the Berlin Wall crumbled.

Our primary global adversary had morphed into a free market opportunity.

But as if to prove that nature abhors a vacuum, a new bogeyman arose to take Communism’s place: radical Islam, represented by bearded men in flowing robes, with sandals on their feet and ammunition belts draped across their chests, AK-47’s held at port arms, and defiance in their eyes. Jihad, they cried. God is great and Death To America. Our new enemy, everywhere and nowhere, moving in the shadows and on the margins, until they brought the Twin Towers down and instigated the worldwide, never-ending War on Terror, which -- to bring this back to 1984 -- is reminiscent of Oceania’s ceaseless war against its enemies.

The other eerie echo of 1984 lies in the grotesquely oversized American surveillance state, much of it contracted out to private companies with minimal accountability. By now, most Americans grasp that our government routinely eavesdrops on domestic phone conversations, e-mail messages, tweets, Facebook posts, and other on-line activity, though little public protest has resulted from this massive assault against personal privacy. Posters of Big Brother may not be everywhere in contemporary America, but Big Brother is definitely watching and listening, ever alert for allusions, hints, associations or phrases that might be a harbinger of another attack. In a war without end, the threat never abates, and the citizenry is exhorted to exchange constitutionally protected freedoms for the illusion of security; thus it becomes permissible for the President of the United States to authorize the killing of American citizens on foreign ground, without bringing formal charges in a court of law; or authorize the military to indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of subversion or alliance with our enemies, right here on home soil. The current occupant of the White House assures us that he will never abuse these extraordinary powers, but once the genie escapes the bottle, there’s no telling what might happen two or four or six years from now.

Fanatics are always dangerous, and it makes little difference whether those fanatics are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Capitalist or Communist, wild-eyed oil drillers or tree huggers; fanatics become blind to any cause but their own, and in the fanatical mind, the means always justifies the ends.

I fear America has passed a dangerous marker in its history as a functioning democracy, but outside of the ACLU and writers like Christopher Hedges, few people recognize the peril we are doing to ourselves. True liberty and total security from external threats are antithetical. Rights once relinquished don’t return. It’s worth quoting Christopher Hedges here:

“Totalitarian systems always begin by rewriting the law. They make legal what was once illegal. Crimes become patriotic acts. The defense of freedom and truth becomes a crime. Foreign and domestic subjugation merges into the same brutal mechanism. Citizens are colonized. And it is always done in the name of national security.”

I want to believe that Hedges is overstating his case, but I don’t think he is. Orwell described a dystopian country engaged in perpetual wars, constant surveillance of its people, and total control of information; citizens only knew what the Party wanted them to know. As I said before, all of this seems eerily familiar in contemporary America; we are at perpetual war with Muslim fanatics, under watch by our own government, and subjected to a corporate-owned media that filters, distorts and misinforms.

Very eerie indeed.