The Isolation Diaries No. 40

“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not a gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

According to the last time I checked the Trump Death Clock, an estimated 67,045 American lives might have been spared if Donald J. Trump had taken the Covid-19 pandemic seriously and acted only one week earlier. 

The entire world saw what Trump and Co. did, for nearly two months. Epic, deadly arrogance and incompetence. 

Here’s something curious in the midst of all the chaos of the pandemic and the rebellion. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former National Security Advisor, pled guilty twice in Federal court to lying to the FBI. The Trump Administration prosecuted him. So why is William Barr, our doughy, dangerous Attorney General, using his power to get all charges against Flynn dropped? Why is Barr going to extraordinary lengths for Flynn? Why the writ of mandamus? Serious monkey business. 

America’s Most Wanted: William Barr. Mitch McConnell. Donald J. Trump. This merciless trio mocks the rule of law. 

Mr. Barr, in particular, has a track record as a magician for the powerful, including extricating George H.W. Bush from a tight Iran-Contra corner. Don’t let his rotund form and mild manner fool you -- Barr is a dangerous ideologue. 

Barr’s the ladle stirring the toxic brew in Trump’s fortified compound. 

If one considers the juxtaposition of images one might be justified in referring to America as a failed state: doctors, EMT’s, nurses, technicians, all scrambling to outfit themselves with personal protective equipment, while police, National Guard, ICE, FBI, ATF, Park Police, and Secret Service are laden with gear to put down the People’s Rebellion of 2020. It’s a sad but accurate portrait of America in this moment, a clear statement of our inverted and perverted national priorities. 

Violence and social control over the care and well-being of citizens. 

It took Covid-19, a murder, and the twisted madness of Donald J. Trump to awaken the rebellious spirit of the American masses. Three months of enforced isolation, lives disrupted, jobs lost, people dying, and then the broad daylight murder of George Floyd, caught on video for the world to see, the cop nonchalant as he pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck. It was too outrageous, coming close on the heels of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. The focus of the nation, cooped up and tamped down for nearly three months, shifted suddenly to the state sanctioned murder in Minneapolis. Too many black men, women, and children have died at the hands of police for it to be a coincidence. People of all colors, creeds, and ethnicities flooded America’s streets to demand an end to these racist killings. 

It was fucking beautiful. At last, the people awaken. Into the streets, peacefully, but with determination and purpose. A long and terrible roster of victims like George Floyd surged back into the public consciousness. But George was the catalyst, we watched his killing. 

The official, uniformed forces of oppression had gone too far this time. 

After George Floyd’s murder and Trump’s sadistic performance on June 1, when he threatened to unleash the US military on Americans for exercising a Constitutional right, the people will not go back to sleep, not this time. The sleeping giant is awake now, on the move, and sending a mighty message: the corrupt status quo must go. Police in America are out of control, overarmed, overfunded, poorly trained in some cases, asked to intervene in matters not their business or expertise. Why does homelessness fall to the police? Because for nearly half a century public services in this country have been deliberately defunded in an orgy of austerity for working people and the poor. Instead of vital public services like health care, housing, job training, and mental health treatment, our tax dollars have been invested in the wealthy, through massive tax cuts and subsidies, and the bottomless pit known as the Pentagon through the idiotic War on Terror, and more obscenely bloated budgets every year. The spigot at the Pentagon spews champagne, and the generals never skip brunch.

We fund the military-security complex like a prize hog and starve the rest of the farm. 

The outcome of the mass demonstrations remains in doubt, but the activist energy visible around the country is a hopeful sign. People are listening, tuned in, totally engaged. Corrupt regimes often fall with a single push. 

One thing we know for sure: It’s time for white America to get its knee off black America’s neck. 

Takedown

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill. 

Wendell Berry, Questionnaire

I remember black and white television, the V of the antenna protruding from the rear of the set. We got channel 13 from Los Angeles, the big city to the south of Santa Barbara, and on channel 13 we watched roller-derby with the Los Angeles Thunderbirds, boxing from the Olympic Auditorium, and professional wrestling. This was long before WWE took off and became a huge phenomenon, but the basic characters and storylines were similar, good guys and villains. The good guys fought fair, played by the rules, and with the villians it was anything goes. The only wrestler I remember was a good guy named Bobo Brazil, a black man with huge biceps and pecs and astonishing agility and athleticism. 

The crowd went wild when Bobo climbed into the ring against that night’s villain. Bobo usually started fast, with fancy footwork and a two-footed drop kick that decked the villain, but after taking some pummeling the villain always mounted a comeback, usually be jamming a thumb in Bobo’s eye or smacking him in the nuts. The villain would get Bobo on the canvas or pinned against the ropes and hammer away with a torrent of blows that no normal human could hope to survive. Bam! Bobo goes face first into the turnbuckle. Bam! Bobo gets body slammed. Bam! Bobo sails over the top rope and into the first row of spectators. Big Bobo would collapse on the canvas and the villain would pounce on his chest and try to pin him, but after a two count Bobo bucked the villian off and staggered to his feet. Knowing Bobo was dazed, the villain went in for the kill, karate chopping Bobo in the neck and slinging him against the ropes, then flattening him on the rebound with a wicked body block. Just when you thought Bobo was a goner, he rallied and launched a counterattack. Energized by the crowd, Bobo tossed his adversary around like a rag doll until he begged for mercy. With the crowd in a frenzy Bobo pinned the villain, proving once again that cheaters and bad guys don’t win in the end. 

But they do, or so it seems. A con man is President of the United States. The Attorney General of the United States is so consumed with kissing Trump’s flabby white ass that he forgets his oath of office. The Republican Party stomps on its moral compass and then tosses it from the top of Trump Tower. Democrats bicker among themselves, wring their hands, play the purity game, suck up to corporate donors and bow before the Israel lobby. Energy company lobbyists ransack the EPA. ICE agents terrorize little children. It’s a damn certainty that the US is going to launch a military strike against Iran.While Trump uses racial animosity to pit people against each other and completely distract and divide the nation, his bagmen and cronies line up to raid the treasury. The bad guys are like looters, smashing windows and making off with whatever they can carry; sirens wail, but when the police finally arrive they help the looters instead of arresting them. “Hey, Raytheon, yeah, we’ll pay $40,000 for a toilet seat. C’mon Goldman Sachs, feel free to take some risks, we’ll be here to bail you out. What you need, Exxon-Mobil, is another fat government subsidy! Let’s get you set up.”  

What tickles me most about Republicans is their sanctimonious hypocrisy. You have to admire the size of their balls. Mitch McConnell’s nuts may be old and saggy but his sack still has weight. Imagine if Barack Obama made disparaging remarks about some GOP maven’s grandmother; he’d of been lynched, either figuratively or literally, with Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham leading the charge of the Virginia chapter of the KKK. Trump’s base carry torches and shout “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us,” while Trump gives Bibi Netanyahu a blowjob and does everything he can to help the Israeli government replace the Palestinians. 

When Trump and his crew of miscreants finish raping America, Trump will build a Presidential Library, a gleaming monument to himself, that will of course be the largest, most expensive, most spectacular presidential library ever --many times more spectacular than Obama’s or Bill Clinton’s -- but what’s this library going to hold? Videos of Trump’s weird Nuremberg-style campaign rallies? Unedited collections of his insane Tweets? His collection of love letters from Kim Jong-Un? His golf clubs, a Confederate flag, a sword from Saudia Arabia, an NRA banner, maybe a Budweiser can autographed by Brett Kavanaugh? The first MAGA cap? A statue of Ivanka? 

The good guys are reeling, blood dripping on the canvas. How many more kicks in the ribs and stomps on our heads can we take? If only we could wipe the blood from our eyes and focus on the real villains, those fuckers in the expensive suits and shiny shoes, every last one of them sporting an American flag lapel pin. Ain’t hard to rob a bank when you own the damn thing.