74 Million Reasons to Worry

 “Since the time of Reagan, the American economy has ridden waves of speculation -- in real estate, in information technology, in mortgages, and now in real estate once again -- each leading to a bust.” James K. Galbraith, The Nation

One thing is for certain: the West is treating the carnage, destruction and refugee crisis in Ukraine very differently than it did when the victims were Afghans, Syrians, Yeminis and Somalis. What accounts for this? Is it because Ukranians, by and large, resemble us and pray to the Christian God rather than Allah? Or does the West consider the lives of Ukranians more valuable and worthy of our concern and compassion? Afghanistan is a ruined country, and a forgotten one as millions of its people face the possibility of starvation. Most of the world yawns. 

How does Tucker Carlson -- the poster boy for hysterical white grievance -- get away with spouting pro-Russian drivel on Fox News? Commerce, of course, advertising revenue based on his devoted audience. As long as Carlson attracts eyeballs to screens he will be allowed to continue spewing nonsense like a busted sewer pipe. 

Reports in the corporate media indicate that Russian forces are targeting civilian targets in Ukraine, a charge that Russia denies as fake news. Apparently, any video footage coming from Ukraine that is critical of Russia or evidence of war crimes, has been doctored. Sounds to me like Putin plays the same PR game as his pet and protege, Donald J. Trump. Meanwhile, Biden is doing his best to thread the needle by keeping NATO on the sidelines while he authorizes billions in military assistance. If only it was as easy to fund health care and education for all Americans. Funny thing about war spending: it always receives swift approval and is exempt from all accountability for how the money is spent. No cost-benefit analysis or means testing, none of the hurdles faced by any initiative to assist the poor or needy. War is better for business. 

Remember when the Soviet Union collapsed and there was talk of a “peace” dividend? No? Can’t blame you because it lasted about a minute and was quickly forgotten after 9/11 and Bush/Cheney’s global War On Terror. That blunder cost trillions of dollars, caused thousands of civilian casualties and a refugee crisis, and no one was held accountable. George W. Bush paints and slides into dementia, Dick Cheney clings to life, and people like David Patraeus are invited to prognosticate on cable news programs. What did America get for its “investment” of several trillion dollars? We practiced torture abroad and cruelty at home (we incarcerate more people than any nation in the world), our economy is obscenely tilted in favor of the wealthy, and our political system is a dysfunctional farce. The GOP is so far up Trump’s behind that it didn’t even bother to offer a platform in 2020; whatever Trump wanted was the platform. We demonize the poor and less fortunate. Naked racism is on the rise, greenlighted after five years of Trump. We praise the stupid and villify the intelligent. We’re afraid to look in the mirror and confront our nation’s history. Intolerance is on the march and it comes packing heavy heat, thanks to the perversion of the 2nd Amendment. How long before it turns really ugly? Listen to the rhetoric, the explicit calls for violence. Do you think it will simply dissipate, like fog? I don’t. Malevolent forces are loose in our land and closer than we think.

What happened to the criminal referral for Mark Meadows on charges of contempt of Congress and those highly anticipated public hearings about January 6, and the various probes into Donald Trump? Swept aside by Ukraine and rising gasoline prices. This Congress will run out of time and the work of the January 6th committee will probably never see the full light of day. DOJ will abstain from prosecuting Trump on the pretense of not wanting to divide the nation. Besides money, you know what destroys democracy? Cowardice. If you think these are the delusions of an overwrought old liberal keep in mind that Donald Trump received 74 millions votes in 2020 -- after being impeached, after bungling the federal government’s response to the Covid pandemic, after embarrassing the nation time and time again on the world stage, after all the scandals, after all the lies. 74 million of my fellow Americans saw all that and still voted for Trump. The question for the ages is how can so many people be so stupid and irrational? 

That’s why I must conclude that we are well and truly fucked, as Hunter S. Thompson might say. 

Selective Mercies

“The trick, as always, the key to human success and domination, is to be selective in your mercies.” Ian McEwan, Saturday

I haven’t had time to write anything new for the Balcony. Semi-retirement is busy, a different routine, but still a routine. One thing that has changed is the way I wake up in the morning. No alarm, for one thing, and no rolling out of bed like a soldier roused from sleep. Even when I work until 10:30, p.m., I wake up between 6:00 and 7:00, but now I have the luxury of laying in bed until I’m fully awake. I usually stretch and flex my feet, and then perform eye exercises, glancing from left to right, right to left, up and down, and then rolling them one way and the other. I don’t know if these daily exercises provide any benefit for my vision, which is wonky to begin with, but they feel good. Then it’s off to the bathroom. 

There’s something optimistic about brewing a pot of coffee, pouring that first cup. I’m sure I drink too much of the stuff, just as I drink more wine than is good for me. I sit down at the dining room table with my laptop and notebooks, read some news and watch a few videos on YouTube. Like coffee and wine, I know I need to reduce, if not eliminate, my consumption of political news; it puts me in a foul, defeatist and bitter frame of mind which sometimes stays with me for several hours. We’re living in an age of idiocy, of treason, of cruelty, of misplaced anger, of political malfeasance, of endemic corruption and stupidity. No samaritan is coming to winch us out of the ditch. As Hunter S. Thompson would say, we’re well and truly fucked. I wrote here after Trump’s defeat that at best all Joe Biden will be able to do is slow the slide. The Democrats are on course to lose the House and possibly the Senate in 2022, which could very well pave the way for a return of the Orange Menace in January 2025. 

I’ve been off for a couple of days but return to work tonight for my usual 2:00 - 10:30 shift. My partner, Jose, is on vacation so I’ll be the only maintenance person on duty for eight hours. The electronic minder I carry will remind me of the hourly inspections of aisles, bathrooms, and the front of the store. Being midweek there’s bound to be lots of cardboard to bail. The bailer is the color of a battleship, a huge piece of machine powered by hydraulics. The U-boats that line the narrow hallway that run behind the store will be loaded with product and empty cartons. If my average holds, I will walk between 12 and 13 miles. The pain in my left foot that I’ve been dealing with for a while has been alleviated with stretches for my lower back. I suspect I suffer from sciatica. The test now is to see if I can work pain-free regardless of the shoes I decide to wear. 

My other physical problem is my left shoulder. It has been bothering me for a while, and might be the result of bursitis, tendonitis, or a rotator cuff tear. My mobility isn’t terrible, but it comes with pain, and I don’t have much strength. I’ve got a series of exercises that I do that have helped some, but I need to see a doctor. I had a rotator cuff tear in my right shoulder in 2012 that had to be surgically repaired. I see how the kind of work I’m doing now can break a person’s body down over the long term. Long hours on your feet, standing, walking, bending, twisting, reaching, stooping, pushing and pulling. I must be weird, but I enjoy the physical aspect of the work, even with these nagging ailments. The challenge is to ward off the incredibly repetitious nature of the work. I’m very fortunate to only have to do it part-time. I’m not sure I could handle 40 hours a week. My injuries haven’t kept me off the job, and I can work safely provided I’m conscious of what I’m doing and my body mechanics. Where the shoulder issue really plagues me is when I sleep; I’m a habitual side sleeper who must now sleep on his back. 

I’m writing book reviews for the California Review of Books, the website I co-founded with David Starkey and Michelle Drown. The latest one I’ve got in the hopper is Humane by Samuel Moyn, a brilliant analysis of how the US has made war more humane but at the same time never-ending. It boggles my mind to think we spent two decades fighting in Afghanistan, longer than the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam, combined. I just received John McWhorter’s Woke Racism, and this morning I finished reading the novel Saturday by Ian McEwan. I’m about fifty pages into Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose. 

Change is constant, time is finite, and suffering is unavoidable. 

Nowhere Else to Go

“It is to be decision not by election but by assertion, made not by the mere numerical majority but by ‘we’ the patriots, the real Americans.” Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

Of course Trump was acquitted by the Senate. Of course that diseased body let Trump off the hook, again. The final tally was 57-43. Seven Republicans repudiated the cult and voted to convict Trump. All seven are, or soon will be, under merciless attack from state political parties, suffering censure and condemnation for their betrayal of Dear Leader Trump. Fidelity to their oath of office, the Constitution, or their constituents is secondary. Perversely, they will be sanctioned for doing their duty. The same fate will befall the ten GOP members of the House who voted to impeach.

Power rallies to itself, that’s how it works. 

After voting to acquit Trump, Mitch McConnell contorted himself in a manner Gumby would admire and declared that Trump was responsible for the Insurrection and should be held to account -- in the courts. Mitch passed the buck then pretended sanctimonious outrage, assuming everyone had already forgotten how in the days after the Insurrection he claimed there wasn’t enough time for the Senate to try Trump. We should never forget McConnell’s blatant, calculating political ploy to have it both ways. He manipulated the Senate to prevent it from holding a trial while Trump was in office -- in essence running out the clock -- then voted to acquit on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional to convict a president who has left office (false). And there he was, standing upright though he has no spine, assuring the nation that Trump is culpable for inciting a deadly mob. Mitch talks out of every orifice. Spare us the sanctimony, you miserable coward. 

If we don’t strengthen our democracy now, while there’s a chance, we will have only ourselves to blame when we find ourselves under autocratic rule. We need immediate consideration and passage of HR1 (The For the People Act) and its companion, SR1. Most state legislatures are controlled by Republicans and many are already scheming to create more obstacles to voting. Because they are a true minority party, the only way Republicans can win elections and retain power is by cheating. To survive they must gerrymander districts and erect barriers to prevent or disqualify large numbers of eligible voters from voting. They’re very adept at it. HR1 and SR1 are needed to balance the scales. 

Keep an eye on anti-democracy fuckery operations in Georgia, Florida and Texas. 

The choice seems clear: either we strengthen our democracy or prepare for permanent minority rule. It’s not certain that we will fully recover from Trump’s frontal assault on our democratic processes. My gut sense is that within a decade we will be effectively finished as a representative democracy. If elections have no legitimacy in the eyes of millions of citizens why respect their outcomes? If there’s no perceived legitimacy, there can be no peaceful transfer of power. I think, as Hunter S. Thompson might say, we are well and truly fucked, especially if Trump and his entourage pay no penalty for their words and deeds. 

And there he was, standing upright though he has no spine, assuring the nation that Trump is culpable for inciting a deadly mob. Mitch talks out of every orifice. Spare us the sanctimony, you miserable coward. 

Our atomized, poisoned media landscape is one problem I don’t think we will solve. How can we resolve differences and solve difficult social problems like racism, climate change and wealth inequality when we cannot come close to agreeing on the facts? When people don’t know what or who to believe they become easy prey for false prophets and demagogues. Being told what to think and believe is easier than thinking for oneself. My 85-year-old mother has had her mind taken over by Fox News; she’s certain that the Biden administration will force every American to get vaccinated against Covid-19. She survives on a small pension and Social Security and decries “socialism” as the worst evil. There’s no way to reason with her. 

When all is said and done it’s about raw power dressed up as the “will of the people”. What a perverse joke. According to polls, the majority of Americans favored Trump’s conviction, but once again the will of the majority was easily ignored or subverted by those elected to represent us. Cynical, craven Republicans still cower before Trump, terrified of being ostracized from the personality cult, attacked on social media, and losing their privilege and power in primary challenges when election season rolls around. The specter of the next iteration of Marjorie Taylor Greene haunts the sleep of most Republicans. 

As I’ve written before, all Joe Biden can do is use his narrow window of opportunity to slow America’s descent, but he cannot stop it. This train is chugging along a route that will soon run out of track. I’d jump off if I could, but like millions of my fellow citizens, I have nowhere else to go. 

Time for Voters to Kill the Game

 “So it was not without a keen and profoundly morbid sense of curiosity that kept me and Cromwell locked into the TV news all night -- mainly waiting to see who was going to get blamed for an outrage so awful and massive as to snap the mind of Richard Nixon… “

Hunter S. Thompson, Songs of the Doomed

Long days, strange nights, Covid here but not there, Covid rampaging through the White House, rumored to be a ghost town with only a few lights burning. House of shadows and gloom. Trump lumbers through the hallways, sweaty, breathless, confused and angry, like when your grandpa goes off his meds for a week. Where’s Jared? Has Melania left? Is Barr sick? Trump sucks attention like a Dyson vacuum run at full, screaming volume. His stunts become more pathetic and empty, a fat white man on a balcony above a courtyard strewn with trash and broken folding chairs. He may still be contagious, but we don’t know. Trump doesn’t want us to know. Donald is starting to spin toward the drain. This river of shame and failure narrows ahead and the canyon walls rise high and sheer, and with every passing day it feels like the end is nearing. There are no escape routes from this canyon, no gaps in the sheer stone walls. The only way out is through, to where the river widens. The king has the plague, half his court is in hiding, his coffers are depleted, the jesters run through their usual tricks but find them stale and dry. Dip too many times in the Well of Absurdities and this is what happens. 

But, good people, don’t think for a minute that the Orange Menace is done, he’s not. The polls tell a story, and we can take some hope from the fact that this is not 2016, but we cannot let up. Turnout is the key. Trump’s defeat must be overwhelming so it can survive the BS legal challenges Billy “Evil Doughboy” Barr will attempt as all the votes are being tallied. 

Thankfully, it’s not 2016. Hillary Clinton isn’t on the ballot, and Donald J. Trump is no longer an outsider; he’s the Man, with the weight of abject failure and humiliation hanging from his neck. He knew Covid was going to hit hard and he lied, again and again and again. He waited too long to act, and when he did act his effort was feeble and bungled, a disgrace to his office. More than 210,000 Americans have died. More dead than on 9/11. More dead than in all our recent undeclared wars, invasions, and occupations.  

Democrats, people of goodwill who hate politics, Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016, back when it was easier for some people to believe in Trump’s myth of winning, but can no longer avoid the hard truth, is an odd coalition, but I’ll take it. Folks who rolled the dice on Trump in 2016 will not make the same mistake in 2020. They’ve seen enough. Trump’s on TV, on radio, jabbering and frothing to keep his hardcore base from collapsing, but that’s all he can do, keep his base. He isn’t expanding it. Voting is already underway in many states. The number of undecided voters is far less than it was four years ago. That bodes ill for Trump. 

Voters, it’s time for us to kill the game, as soccer commentators like to say. Just because the polls look favorable, we cannot take our foot off the gas. It’s no different from a great football club like Liverpool or Bayern Munich, elite teams who are never satisfied with a 1-nil victory. Liverpool and Bayern are ruthless and unrelenting; when they score one goal they immediately want another, then another. They don’t back off and defend, they press high up the pitch and swarm their opponents to force mistakes. We have to be as hungry to send Trump and his entourage packing as Liverpool and Bayern are to score goals and win titles. That means we play hard and smart until the final whistle shrieks. Vote. Encourage people you know to vote. If you can, donate a few bucks to candidates in close races for senate. America needs a reset, and that cannot happen while Donald Trump and the GOP is in charge. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 5

“Rum will be absolutely necessary to get through this night -- to polish these notes, this shameful diary…” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Health care workers, doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, all of them, must be protected at all costs, no matter the inconvenience to the Trump Junta. They are the critical first line of defense against a pandemic. Let’s pray that the all-knowing free market provides enough protective equipment, gowns, ventilators, masks, and gloves to protect our health care workers. Because if they go down, we go down. 

But what if the private sector can’t do it, or won’t do it unless the price is divine, the contract guaranteed, no matter how many might die from shoddy manufacturing, lax quality, and late deliveries? Do you trust Corporate America? Exxon-Mobil? Facebook? Goldman Sachs? General Motors? Do you really want to outsource the response to this pandemic, or any other crisis, to Corporate America? Do you really want to roll those dice? 

Public and private must find some kind of equilibrium for long-term stability. Our  40-year-trek to the dark Heart of Capitalism is nearing its inevitable end. The fabled gates where every human person has an equal shot at fortune and comfort are within sight, but for those who cannot, or will not, keep up, well, they will get what they earned. And if a few worthy souls claim all the gold and silver, silks and spices, concubines and slaves, musicians and mystics, palaces and private islands, it is simply the natural order asserting its dominance. It has always been the same, the weak do not survive. The Law of the Jungle. Fuck the Enlightenment. Fuck Humanism! Ayn Rand forever! 

Unless you land at the top, you will be exploited in some way. Sometimes the higher you climb the less you are exploited, but the less exploited you are the more power you have to exploit others. Life is paradox, right?  

Trump deployed the National Guard to California and New York, if I’m not mistaken. What’s the Guard doing? What’s their mission? Who do they answer to? Will hospitals be cordoned off before too long?

I had trouble figuring out it was Tuesday. Only Tuesday. In her bedroom my daughter wails that she cannot take anymore. Why can’t my boyfriend come over? The 6’ rule is BS, it’s stupid. I’m losing my mind and nobody cares! At 8:30 a.m. we are in line at Trader Joe’s on Milpas, with maybe 10 people before us. I was glad to see a separate line for senior citizens. The store opens at 9:00. We got in at 9:30. Everyone in line was orderly, compliant, patient, but in the faces of many I saw fatigue, drawn expressions, stooped shoulders, an inwardness which made total sense. I watch my breathing, in and out. We’ll find everything we need, I tell myself, with the exception of TP. One must get in line very early to score TP. 

The store is orderly and well-stocked. Almond milk is back in good supply. Half/half. Butter. Two dozen eggs! Yogurt. Corn Flakes. Two cans of tuna! Two cans of vegetarian chili! Six bottles of wine. One sick pack of beer. French Roast Coffee. Cheese. Wheat bread. Tortillas. Potato chips. We load up. We’re rolling. At first I noticed I was feeling anxious, like I had to grab what we needed immediately lest we go without, that I had to move fast, as if on a timed scavenger hunt. The days of pushing the cart leisurely up and the aisles are gone. When it felt vaguely competitive I caught myself, turned around and took a panoramic look. With the exception of Coronavirus Gold (toilet paper), there was plenty of everything to go around. There was no clock above the entrance ticking the minutes away. Breathe, man, think, keep your cool, take it slow.  

The NYSE closed up 2,113 points today. Trump will misinterpret this momentary surge as a sure sign that his brilliant leadership is saving the stock market from ruin. Almost single-handedly, Trump brings the stock market back from the dead. That will be the story, repeated and repeated and repeated; like a drum in the night, and a chainsaw at dawn, you will not be able to ignore it. “I alone can fix it.”

God help us all.  

To fight a pandemic like the coronavirus, a nation needs a robust public health response. Now the bad news: the US doesn’t have a robust public health system. Ours was gutted and allowed to bleed to death. Far too costly, and not the proper role of government. The glorious free market is the best way to deliver care when it is needed, justified, cost-benefit analyzed, and paid for in advance. 

American capitalism is a virus, do you understand? It attacks society’s equilibrium. We’ve let it go untreated for decades, a failure of political will, courage, and values. Money won the day. Idealism is for suckers and fools, comfort and justice for the rich.  

It’s the Hunger Games in the USA, at least in the great State of Texas, where the Lt. Governor recently suggested the elderly should sacrifice (by dying off?) to save the economy for the younger generation. Don’t tell me this statement surprises you? You’ve been paying attention, haven’t you? It’s just business, man, just business. In late stage capitalism, human life loses value.

Trump must think America is like one of his hotels, where the gilded front doors are thrown open after an elaborately staged ribbon cutting ceremony. “I’m happy to say that we updated the plumbing, at great expense to me personally, but we did a great job and in record time, the greatest plumbing job in history, with no collusion or quid pro quo, and it’s just fantastic that we’re open for business again. And here’s the thing I’m most proud of -- we’re opening on Easter Sunday, a glorious day, a magnificent day, it’s an all-American ressurection. God’s very happy today, I can tell you that.”

Oh, Donald, you ignorant fuck, do you think we’ve been out rennovating, checking on the contractors, polishing the railings? Re-open? Are you serious? Do you think America is like the neighborhood barber shop, it opens, it closes, the proprietor shuts it down for a few days vacation in Miami, turns it back on by flipping a sign in the window when he returns? Donald, this is a nation. It’s very big. It’s complicated. There’s no on/off switch. 

Our salvation lies in the Market. We have to feed it what it needs, what it wants, what it desires. The hours and days of our lives? Our very souls? No, your cotton tops, graybeards, codgers, old biddies, the broken and infirm, grandparents. Perhaps this will be enough, but I must warn you, the market is insatiable. It’s a beast of unimaginable cunning, cruelty, and viciousness, whose hunger and thirst can never be slaked! It has three inch claws, laser vision, armor plating, razor-wire teeth, and an acute sense of smell. The elderly will go first, but more will be needed, always more will be needed. More sacrifice, more blood.  

Donald J. Trump: “After my great and unprecedented response to the evil and deadly Chinese coronavirus, I must be re-elected with the biggest margin of victory ever recorded. I, and only I, no one else, just me, saw this pandemic coming. I am king, sultan, supreme leader, generalisimo, president, Top Gun, Sage on the Stage, Grand Wizard, Pope. I am the sun and the moon. I am Midas. I am TRUMP!”

Here’s Trump’s plan in a nutshell: “Let’s just see what happens.”

1000 Days of Madness

“If we are not currently an authoritarian nation it’s thanks in part to the insubordinate spirit of a good deal of the American public and the underlying confidence behind this relative fearlessness.”  Rebecca Solnit

1,000 days of the madness of would-be King Donald I. At times it feels like a bad dream and I long to snap wide awake and breathe a sigh of relief that Trump never happened except in our imagination. The idiocy, cruelty, venality and mendacity is almost too heavy a burden. When we look back at this period -- if the republic survives and what remains of our institutions hold -- one question that must be answered is why many of our fellow citizens followed Trump, believed in him, and thought he was doing good for the nation. Any conscious, sane person who listens to Trump for more than a minute should reach the conclusion that the man is nuts, insane, a sociopath. I don’t think all of Trump’s supporters and followers are bad people, but I do marvel at how misinformed they are.

Trump is P.T. Barnum on crack. 

Has Trump made us stupid or did we make Trump because we are stupid? During the reign of George W. Bush the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson often said that America was trapped in a downward spiral of dumbness. W. Bush, now being rehabilitated as a kindly nitwit, seemed the epitome of elite decay, a man buoyed by his family name and connections and wealth, a serial fuck-up who always landed on his feet, smiling, a faux cowboy. Donald J. Trump makes George W. Bush look eloquent by comparison. I never thought I would see that. Trump doesn’t have as much blood on his hands as Bush does, not yet anyway, but who knows if he manages to escape impeachment and scandal and win another term via the undemocratic Electoral College. 

As we saw this week, any translator who has to make sense of Trump’s gibberish is in a most difficult spot. “The Kurds have sand, a lot of sand. More sand than is good for them. Lot of sand, too much. It’s hard to imagine so much sand. You can’t believe it. Sand everywhere. Gets in your shoes and your hair. Hard to get the sand out of your hair. I’ve got great hair, the best hair of any American president, ever. Very soft, very shiny, it’s beautiful, my hair, my great and unmatched hair.”

1,000 days of madness, drifts of BS up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, Abraham Lincoln turning in his grave, George Washington sobbing uncontrollably as King Donald tramps over the republic. This can’t be happening, yet it is. It’s not a dream. Trump and the fourth string crew who surround him are becoming more and more blatant and defiant of every norm. Wholesale disregard for the Legislative branch. Total disdain for the rule of law. This is dangerous territory. 

After You See the Truth

“And so we come to Donald Trump, the very personification of this low, dishonest age.” Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion

There are evenings in this crazy age of Trump when I wish that Hunter S. Thompson was still alive, hunkered down in Woody Creek with a huge supply of weed and coke, 3 cases of Carta Blanca beer, 4 quarts of Jose Cuervo, limes, an assortment of pipes and bongs, writing at his best in the darkest hours of night. I miss his voice, just as I miss Alex Cockburn’s. Blazing wit and intelligence, daring, balls, seeing things exactly as they are and why -- why being most important -- because it leads to who, as in, whose interests are we talking about here? 

Look what the rich have done in a little less than 50 years. Behold, for this is what concentrated political and economic power looks like. The owners and investors got us to hate the commons and pretty much everything associated with government; got us to believe that capitalism and democracy always walk hand in hand; got us to believe that everything about human life on Earth is just about the money; that it’s every man or woman for himself (except if the woman is pregnant and desires an abortion), and that we can only depend on ourselves; they convinced us that peace and cooperation are unattainable ideals; they got us  to believe that one day we can all be coders and entrepreneurs, winners in the gig economy; that the science of climate change is open to interpretation; that “wars” that go on for decades are normal.    

The shit they got us to believe is incredible! Tip of the cap to the rulers and their associates! It’s no surprise that the rich have ravaged the world, turned it all into commodities, endless wars, poisoned water, and a surveillance camera up your ass or implanted in your arm. 

Spread the news. The rich whipped our asses in the class war! It was a massacre. They buried our ideology along with our bones. 

We let them. We barely fought back. 

Now we have Donald J. Trump, the dumbest motherfucker imaginable, sitting in the Oval Office. My God, doesn’t this freak you out? It sure as hell freaks me out, sends me into deep depressions and prolonged funks. How the fuck did it come to this? I always thought the USA was a serious country, historically immature, of course, but at least pretending to high-mindedness in polite company. I suppose this is a result of all that JFK-rhetoric I imbibed as a young person. We used to be perceived as the good guys, the decent guys, the guys who at least thought twice about torturing prisoners or dropping bombs on civilians. Now? We do it for sport and with the impunity white men enjoyed in the days of chattel slavery. 

I couldn’t bear to watch the Democratic Party debate, that terrible circus of second fiddlers. When Joe Biden, resembling an upright corpse, is the front runner, it’s not an inspiring time. Biden’s sputtering nonsense is too much to watch. I cannot believe that fucker is in this race. His deeds are one of the reasons Donald J. Trump sits in the White House. What does Biden stand for, shill for, sell his ass for, as much as he does right-of-center notions? Biden was better than a Republican when it came to protecting and serving corporate clients like credit card companies, Wall Street investment houses, and the carceral industrial-complex. Wars, too. Biden was all over that shit, like a dog with a bone. He added his voice and position to a center-right, right, and whacky right cacophony and left a visible trail of destruction. But fuck all if despite his record Biden isn’t the man the mainstream media and the DNC is attempting to shove down our throats, force us to swallow. Doddering fucker. Tells batshit stories like your ancient grandpa after he’s tipped back six shots, all kinds of twisted, incoherent shit. Nowhere near Trump’s gibberish, of course, that stuff’s heroic -- (I hope we don’t see its kind again for a very long time) -- but along the same fact-less, ignorance-laden and incoherent line. 

How long will it take to dig out from under Trump’s pile of shit when the asswipe dies in his sleep, chokes on a cheeseburger, or Melania slices his ball-sack off and lets him bleed to death? (Either she’s itching to do it or she’s a robot.) Can you imagine a naked Donald J. Trump climbing on top of you? How fucking sick would that make one feel? 

Hunter Thompson would scorch Trump at every opportunity with both barrels, and it would be beautiful to see. But Hunter would also remind us to keep an eye on the courts, district and federal, because Trump is taking over that branch of our government. Appointing uptight fucktards left and right. Imagine how much more difficult this will make it to erase the shit smear Donald J. Trump leaves on America. Two decades, three? You think fuckers like Gorsich and Kavanaugh will make a philosophical about face and join us in the real world the minute Trump is pronounced dead?

We need wild, but not insane, voices to jar people out of their insta-cart, Facebook, Instagram world. Very few people are willing to face the truth, see what’s really happening, why, and by whose hand. Look deeply, but at your own risk. Not responsible for loss of political or religious ideology, party, group, pack or gang. You see the truth on your own, all by yourself. But it’s what you do after you see the truth that matters. 

The Blind Pig Finds an Acorn

“Say no more to treating people like things and corporations like people.” The Reverend William Barber

Another crazy week in TrumpLand. Who else but Donald Trump goes to meet one of our perennial bogeymen and babbles about building condos on the beaches? Despite the fulminations of Rachel Maddow and what passes for the liberal media ( what a joke), the bumbling, idiotic Trump might actually have done something good in Singapore. As Hunter S. Thompson was fond of saying, “even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then” and if nothing else, it’s better and safer for the world when nuclear armed nations are talking, rather than threatening, one another. Every now and then a rank amatuer pulls off a miracle. Of course, Trump returned from Singapore talking as if North Korea had already disarmed, the whole matter done and dusted, just like that.

What a simpleton.

But then you turn around and look a the deplorable, cruel and inhumane treatment of migrant children at our borders, separated from their parents by order of the diabolical Jeff Sessions, and the reality of the Trump Junta comes screaming back into one’s face.

I imagine Kim Jong-un leaning toward Trump and asking, “So, Donald, what was it like to fuck that porn star?”

The United Nations -- yes, that despised body -- released its report on extreme poverty and lo and behold the U.S. is doing great! 40 million Americans living in poverty; highest infant mortality rate in the developed world; our citizens live shorter and sicker lives; our access to clean water and sanitation ranks 36th in the world; and, of course, we retained our title as the undisputed leader in incarceration. Can’t touch the USA there! Take that, Vladimir. For every one you jail, we jail ten.

The World Cup is underway. The three teams I am pulling for are France, Belgium, and Argentina. France because of N’Golo Kante, who plays his club football for Chelsea; Belgium because Eden Hazard is one of my favorites and also a Chelsea man; and Argentina because I’d like to see Messi get the international monkey off his back. How fun was the match between Portugal and Spain? Cristiano buried that free kick to rescue a point for Portugal before he kicked the ball, you could see it in his face.

Maybe the thrill is gone, maybe it never was. It’s Father’s Day and I’m thinking of my dad, the smell of cigarette smoke on his coats hanging in the closet of our house on Ardilla Drive, and how little I knew of his interior life, what he thought and believed, what gave him joy. Ironically, I knew my father-in-law more intimately than my own father; they’re both gone. I’ve tried to lay down some markers for my kids so they’ll know who their old man was, but by the time they know, I’ll be gone, too.

And so it goes.

Year of the Jackass

“I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.” Donald J. Trump, speaking to the press on January 14, 2018.

There’s no point in deconstructing the many racist comments that Donald J. Trump has issued in his first, calamitous year in the White House. From the Muslim ban to the idiotic border Wall, the man is a racist and white supremacist, end of tale. The shocking thing to me is the craven reluctance of Republicans to exercise their constitutional duty and hold Trump accountable. As long as Trump is useful to Republicans, they will continue to shield him from the criticism and censure he deserves. This is a lesson in cowardice and hypocrisy that should not be lost on the public. As Noam Chomsky often says, the GOP is no longer a political party -- it’s a quasi-criminal organization, a gang of looters.

The news moves fast these days and trying to keep pace with Trump’s lame tweets and inane pronouncements (most of which are flat out lies) is futile, and the corporate media offers little help because nearly all reporting is devoid of context, history, and perspective; one can’t honestly learn much of use about this country or the world from the mainstream corporate media. As Chris Hedges frequently points out, the corporate talking heads are not journalists as much as they are courtiers, sucking up to the powerful in exchange for access; they support the ruling class rather than oppose it. It’s a sad state of affairs that has been building for many years, ever since media ownership consolidated into fewer and fewer hands -- all of them corporate -- and the corporate masters demanded that news divisions turn a profit. This trend moved in lockstep with the neoliberal notion that every facet of American life could be commodified, sold, traded, or squeezed for profit: health care, education, freeways, prisons, housing, and so on.

A strain of bad juju is loose in our land, felt most acutely by people of character, soul and heart, traits missing from the Republican mafia and the Trump White House. Destructive cruelty, mendacity, ignorance, and arrogance rule. Who but Donald J. Trump could make George W. Bush look, not only competent, but eloquent and coherent by comparison? It’s still very difficult to accept that the President of the United States is an ignorant, lazy, asshole with the mental capacity and attention span of a fourth grader. Of course there have been terrible presidents in American history -- Trump isn’t the first ignorant racist to hold the office, but he is the stupidest man to reign in the nuclear age, and his denial of the reality of climate change borders on the criminal.

If Hunter S. Thompson were alive to witness America’s descent to bonafide banana republic, he would surely load a pistol and blow his brains out. The first year of Trump has been, as HST might say, a King Hell year of complete degradation. It didn’t take Trump long to drop his pants and piss all over the tomb of the American Dream.

Trump’s erratic behavior and sheer incompetence are not laughing matters, as Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently pointed out: “The nation has never faced a situation like this: It is unwise to take literally or seriously anything the president and his official spokesmen say. An administration with no credibility cannot possibly lead.” Bingo.

Hold on world, year two of Trump is about to launch. I guarantee you it will be the Year of the Jackass.