Star Spangled Fantasy

 “It is the burden of life to be many ages/without seeing the end of time.” Jim Harrison

Another 4th of July. Life, liberty and the pursuit of property and profit. We hold these truths to be self-evident (for white men). The many myths of America, shining city on the hill, beacon of freedom, cradle of liberty, welcoming arms for huddled masses from every corner of the globe. Rockets red glare. Dawn’s early light. Remember the Maine! Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My Lai. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The reality withers the myth like the burning sun shrivels the Pacific Northwest. Un-American you say, love it or leave it, Commie-Pinko-Socialist-Liberal. Get out if you don’t believe that America is the greatest country in the world, if you refuse to acknowledge the essential goodness of the people who inhabit this blessed nation. We’re No. 1!

America is a Land of Lies and Fantasy. Our history is littered with reverence for ignorance and fear. We avoid staring Truth in the face the same way Superman avoids kryptonite. We can’t accept or reconcile our long history of racism, violence, genocide, and destruction of our forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains because not enough of us have the courage to acknowledge the truth. We prefer to divide into our camps, red and blue, liberals and conservatives, the woke versus the Trumpian Zombies, and ride our fairy tales over the edge. After all these years and all the trauma, millions of white Americans can’t let go of the notion that there is something inherently inferior about black people. Am I alone in thinking that America is a madhouse, an air-conditioned nightmare as Henry Miller called it back in the 1940’s? 

The foundation is cracked and crumbling. Tears fall from the eyes of Lady Liberty, splash into the roiling waters of New York harbor. Huddled masses yearning to breathe free are no longer welcome here. The Republican Party is as conformist and sclerotic as the Communist Party was in the old Soviet Union, as adverse to facts and logic, reason and evidence. America is a fearful nation, not a confident one. Mainstream Democrats put up limp resistance, compromised as they are by corporate cash. The Supreme Court is ruled by political operatives in dark robes. As a country we’re not prepared for the coming crisis; there’s too much disunity and distrust within our borders, too much blatant celebration of our ignorance, fanned by Trump and his many enablers and imitators. Fire and flood and drought and famine are in our future, but we ignore the warning signs and dig ourselves in deeper. 

Raise Old Glory and aim your fireworks into the night sky. It’s Independence Day in the indispensable nation. We’re No. 1, remember? 

Mob Boss

 “A hideous farce against a backdrop of sweat and misery.” Henry Miller

I enjoy walking in our yard in the evening, when the sun reflects from the windows and the air feels soft, the sky clear overhead. We have two small lemon trees, a jacaranda, and an old olive tree. Fuchsia bougainvillea, many varieties of cactus. Cars whiz past on Milpas, but with part of the yard shielded by a seven-foot hedge, the noise is muted. It’s a gift to have some turf to move around in. I give the compost bin a spin. My good fortune astonishes me. After 22 years working for the same employer, in the same building, I’m moving into a new phase of my life. It feels right, so I’m going with the feeling, see where it leads. For the first time in years, I feel comfortable in my skin, I’m not envious or jealous of others as I might have been in the past, and I’m treating myself with more kindness. 

When I go back in the house my wife is on the phone with her sister who lives in Santa Maria and is nearly blind and plagued with other serious health issues. Her little dog escaped from the yard again and was found strolling down the street. They talk about In The Heights, the movie that was released this week to Oprah-style hype. Underwhelming, says my wife. She’s more of a purest, Broadway is her passion, and she didn’t think the female leads had the voices for the roles. 

My news feed is full of reports about Trump’s corrupt Department of Justice, and how the DOJ, first under the reign of Jeff Sessions, and then The Dirty Doughboy, AKA William Barr, subpoenaed the digital records of at least two members of Congress, both Democrats, as well as reporters from the New York Times and CNN. Apple was also subpoenaed. We’re finding out about this now because the gag orders issued by federal judges have expired. The House members, Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, were harsh critics of Trump, in particular Schiff who prosecuted the first impeachment trial. It reads like a reboot of the old Nixon Enemies List. What’s interesting to me is the tone of surprise from the talking heads on MSNBC and CNN, as if they can’t believe these revelations. I’m not surprised at all. Trump is as corrupt as the United States is unequal. The true extent of the damage Trump caused won’t be clear for at least another decade, but the essential point is that you can’t hand the levers of political power to a person as corrupt as Trump without being certain that he will use that power corruptly, for his own ends and the ends of his friends and people useful to him. To understand Trump think only of The Godfather, the book by Mario Puzo, the films by Francis Ford Coppola. Trump desperately wants to be a Mob Boss in the style of Don Corleone, feared and respected, but he is doomed to play Fredo. Trump’s understanding of power isn’t sophisticated, it comes from the mob idea, that’s why he treated federal agencies as if they worked for him. Like a mob boss, Trump prizes loyalty to him above nearly all else, and punishing the disloyal is reflexive. I have long wondered what Trump and Putin talked about for an hour and a half in Helsinki a few years ago, but I’d wager that not only did Vlad have plenty of advice to offer Trump, but that Trump was receptive because he respects the power and fortune Putin has amassed. Look at Trump’s pardons of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and the noxious Roger Stone for further evidence of straight payback. Trump plays the game out in the open. How will the sycophants and boot-lickers in the GOP spin these latest developments? We will hear cries of “Witch Hunt” and “this is all politically motivated by the Democrats.” Those ruses are reliable ways to deflect and distract, clog up the news cycle and social media, and confuse people about what it all means. What it means is that we had better invest some effort into reforming the Department of Justice, Trump-proofing it while there is time. A house won’t stand for long on a cracked foundation. 

Bukowski Pissed Here

“Because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound on a sane philosophy of life.” James Truslow Adams

My son sends me a photograph of a sign he saw in the men’s room of Cole’s an LA eatery famous for its French-dip sandwich: Charles Bukowski Pissed Here. Old Hank pissed in plenty of bars and restaurants in LA in his day, but if Buk rose from the dead and strolled around LA today he might not recognize his old haunts. A lot of the bars he drank in are gone, as are the factories where he toiled at meaningless jobs. In Buk’s heyday LA was still King of Aerospace, and workers machined parts and assembled fuselages and tested engines. A man could work at McDonnell-Douglas or Hughes Aircraft and make a living wage; he was likely a union member with health benefits and a pension. 

Buk’s LA is mostly a memory just as the Santa Barbara I knew as a boy is mostly a memory. The physical beauty of SB hangs on, but it’s harder and harder to ignore the angst of wage earners over rents and college tuition and medical care, the ranks of unhoused people, and creeping gentrification. Amazon, the behemoth that has done more to kill the State Street retail core than anyone else, will soon occupy a large building on State Street. Irony, I suppose. Seeing the Amazon logo is going to piss me off every time I walk by. Retail cleansing. It’s not that different from a hedge fund buying thousands of single-family homes on the cheap, forcing the owners into foreclosure, and then renting the homes out. Extraction is the name of the game. 

Will the economy belly-flop before the 2020 election? A serious global downturn might be the dagger in Trump’s shriveled heart, and the only thing that can keep him from a second term. His B-team of looters and grifters hasn’t strengthened the economy for anyone except the already wealthy, but then, that was predictable. When the next crash hits the Fed and the rest of the world’s central bankers will have few cards to play. I suspect it will be very ugly for many people, myself included. I don’t own any property or a stock portfolio or a sack of gold bars. I was a working-class kid and I’m a working-class adult.  

Like Henry Miller, Hank Bukowski figured out very early in life that the whole American set-up was a big con, a system of exploitation owned and operated by the wealthy and moneyed interests for their benefit. The rich always climb on the bent backs of the poor. Miller called America “the air-conditioned nightmare.” Then, like now, it was a country of crass commercialism and spiritual emptiness. I think Bukowski saw it as a madhouse, full of dull-eyed, soul-dead people prepared to follow the next snake-oil salesman to come along. Donald Trump in the White House would not surprise Bukowski in the least. Buk watched a number of regimes come and go, Truman, Eisenhower,  JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I and Clinton. What was the real difference between them? Bukowski would remember that at least until the Carter Administration, the Democrats supported organized labor and needed labor’s backing to retain power. But after Carter the connection between the Democratic Party and labor was ever more tenuous. The Dems began sucking up to banks and insurance companies for campaign dollars. Money started to tilt the playing field. The rich declared war on the spirit of the New Deal and the Democrats helped them wage it. 

The game is fixed, the dice loaded, the house always wins. Figure the game out and a pair of muscle-bound bouncers with thick necks toss you out on the sidewalk. The attention span of the average American is short and Fox News spreads misinformation 24 hours a day. We are lost in a digital wilderness. 

I imagine tracking Henry Miller down to a cliff near his house at Big Sur. I hand him the latest iPhone, demonstrate what he can do with it, and watch as he turns it over in his hands. He stares off at the blue sky. Is he day-dreaming of his days in Paris, living on his wits and guile, hell-bent on becoming an artist and escaping the bonds of convention? He was always more of a sage than a pornographer. Henry wanted to discern the meaning of life, past lives, future lives, all life, every sense awake. I can visit the great museums of the world on this? He asks. I nod. Find photographs of ancient Greece? Yes. Pornography? Yes. Henry smiles at me then tosses the phone over the cliff. 

Donald Trump: “There should be no public impeachment hearings. No private hearings, either. There should be no hearings because it’s all a hoax. My call with the President of Ukraine was perfect, perfecto, no quid pro quo, no collusion. The Bidens should be investigated, they’re crooked. What about Hillary’s emails? All those disappeared emails? The Democrats should investigate that, not me. I can’t be investigated, I have unlimited immunity, perfect immunity, it says so in the Constitution…”

What to do but uncork another bottle of wine and raise a glass to those who refuse to be bought, bribed, fooled, fucked with, deceived or defeated. 

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

What powerful man will be toppled next over charges of sexual misconduct, and why hasn’t the stain of misconduct reached our Groper-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump? Obviously, sexual harassment in the workplace pre-dates Trump ascending to the Oval Office, but Trump has altered the zeitgeist like no president before him. Trump continues to call his accusers liars, and claim, as only Trump can, that nobody respects women more than he does. Right. Trump respects women as long as they give in to his ego, narcissism, tiny, wandering hands, and boorish behavior. Isn’t it curious how the corporate media largely give Trump a pass at the same time they go on endlessly about movie moguls, actors, and other politicians?

I don’t know what to make of this flood of accusations, other than this is still a male-dominated world, and certain men in positions of power and authority seem to believe they can act as raunchy as they want without fear of consequence. Even an old goat like Charlie Rose is in on the act, pawing women at office parties, flashing his sagging member at co-workers, and who knows what else. All over the world, in offices, factories, hospitals, City Halls, and schools, women suffer at the hands of men -- and mostly in silence, behind closed doors, out of sight, and far too often when they do come forward, they are not believed.  

Depressing vibe for a holiday week, when the sun is shining here on the Platinum coast, and there’s cold beer in the fridge, Champions League football on the tube, and my daughter bugging me to raise our Christmas tree before the end of November, which I resist doing with all my being. I don’t believe in the holiday “season,” the ceaseless exhortations to buy, spend, and get the deal. We need to buy more stuff like we need to spend more money on the war machine. We’ve got enough stuff, enough wars. What we lack is a sense of balance and proportion, of fairness and equity, of empathy and compassion. Thanksgiving doesn’t get it’s due any more -- as dubious as the holiday is -- it’s just a springboard to the interminable Christmas season, the day before Black Friday. How many scenes of  shoppers surging through the doors of Wal-Mart or Target will the mainstream press feed us this year? Get your diamond tennis bracelet, your Lexus tied up with a red bow, the new iPhone whatever…

The air-conditioned nightmare is what Henry Miller called America back in the early 1940’s. Not sure what Henry would say if he were to come back for a visit with the living. The American nightmare is much, much worse now, and the air-conditioning sputters on and off. We are a hollowed-out hulk of an empire, a rust-bucket aircraft carrier running out of fuel and drifting wildly off course. The President is a dangerous fool and his party is a collection of hacks, perverts, pedophiles, and hard-hearted ideologues. The Republican-controlled Congress is very close to passing a breathtakingly hideous tax plan that will benefit a small number of wealthy people at the expense of the many. This disgraceful legislation will, when its effects are fully realized a few years down the trail, immiserate millions of average people.

And that’s when the air-conditioning switches off for good.

Try a Little Marx

“There’ll be one corporation selling one little box

it'll do what you want and tell you what you want and cost whatever you got.”                  

Greg Brown, Where is Maria?

This is my 500^th post. I never anticipated keeping the Balcony going this long, but one thing led to another, and here we are, number 500.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the McCutcheon case was outrageous but not surprising, because the high court is dominated by rabid ideologues. John Roberts is a second-class whore and his judicial robes should be festooned with corporate logos so his masters are easily recognizable.  Money equals free speech and corporations are people – this is what passes for democracy in America.  Our cherished myths about one man (or woman) - one vote and the will of the governed are only that, myths; this is not the land of the free and the home of the brave -- this country belongs to the wealthy and they operate it for their own advancement. 

Our “democratic” institutions are rotted through and through, hollow, ready to topple, and authoritarian forces are prepared to take their place. Every time I hear a politician say, “the American people” I want to puke. Congress has never given a rat’s ass for the will of the people -- not from the founding of the republic -- it only acts reluctantly, when forced from below by popular movements. Unfortunately, our social movements are fragmented, more often than not working at cross purposes, and while what’s left of organized labor, the environmental movement, civil rights organizations, and the remnants of the Occupy movement bicker or dither, the lackeys of the wealthy scheme to hand more of our collective booty over to people who don’t need it.

This is what totalitarian capitalism looks like. Nothing is allowed to interfere with the chase for profits…not law, morality, common sense or decency.

Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, and the World Meteorological Organization have all recently issued grim warnings about climate change. The condition of the planet is bad and getting worse, and yet denial remains the American mantra. Business as usual! Drill, blast, scorch, pump, cut, fell, and dump. If we don’t talk about climate change it will go away, right? Do political elites and members of the 1% breathe different air, drink different water, eat fish from a different ocean? Are they immune from drought, flood, fire, and tornado?

In the 1940’s Henry Miller referred to America as the “air-conditioned nightmare.” I’m glad Miller can’t see the country or its major institutions now, not that it would break his heart, but because it would confirm damn near everything he predicted, and he would have hoped we’d have regained our senses by now. I can imagine Miller saying, “Seventy-odd years later and they still don’t get it. A nation of dolts, that’s what they are!”

It’s hard for any thinking American not to feel bummed out by the hypocrisy, the waste, the mendacity, the unfairness, the greed, the impotence, and the belligerence that characterize our country in the middle of the second decade of the 21^st century. I’m reading a book called, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip through Political Scandal, Corruption and American Culture by the late Alexander Cockburn. Writing in 2004, Cockburn relates some advice his father, Claud Cockburn, gave him: “When all seems dark, try reading a little Marx. It puts things in perspective.”