Post No. 995 - Dog Day Blues

“There is no escape from the strange spasms of the world as we’ve remade it.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

August of my second year of semi-retirement and the money blues are starting to sing. It’s been a summer of unexpected expenses, our daughter coming home from college in May, working sporadically at a local deli; in July she had breast reduction surgery for the second time in five years -- smaller breasts, a relief for her, but hefty medical bills for us -- with the standard barrage of paper notices regarding  in-network/out-of-network services, co-pays, deductibles, all the familiar ways costs are shifted to American patients because this country doesn’t provide medical care for all its citizens. It’s the same cost-shifting racket seen in other areas of the economy. Fees. Service Charges. Tiered plans. Subscriptions. American “consumers” get hosed right and left, preyed upon by banks and credit card companies and airlines and mobile phone and cable companies, all down the line. All these “rents” make some people richer than monarchs. 

I think our portion of the bill(s) will be around $10K. Shows you how high our annual out of pocket maximum is, but accepting that risk is the only way we can keep the premiums affordable. Damned, one way or another. 

Our daughter made a wee mess of her student loans, even though we’d been riding her to sort out her financial aid situation since May. We thought, erroneously as it turned out, that we had to cover a large tuition bill in order for her to enroll in her courses. On the one hand it serves us right because we left school finances to our 21-year-old daughter, expecting her to inform us when we needed to take action on her behalf. This, we thought, was a responsibility she could, and should, handle. She did, sort of, though if we had the money we fronted now, I’d be breathing a little easier. But we won’t see a refund for another month or so. That was our little cushion, our what if the washing machine dies or one of the cars needs new tires? cushion. But isn’t that the thing about being part of the working or retired poor? The unexpected expense that drops you in a hole can take months or years to climb out of. My wife and I are good about paying down debt, chipping away at it, but right now it’s about equilibrium between the money coming in and the money going out, the balance is off and I fret and stew and create dark scenarios of poverty and destitution.  

That’s one of my major life problems and bad habits, buying trouble in the future. It’s almost a certainty that we’ll be forced before too much longer to leave Santa Barbara. We’re local products, born and bred, but we missed the real estate lottery and haven’t a prayer of becoming property owners now. Precarious renters we shall be. When my mother-in-law passes, our last good reason for remaining here will be eliminated. But when I think of relocating my head hurts because there are more and more places in America where I refuse to live. Short list, for starters: Texas, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Other places are ruled out due to cost or climate. I think my wife would go mad in wet, cold Oregon. I wonder if Wisconsin or Minnesota might be viable. 

I collected my first Social Security check in July. Most of it went immediately to my daughter for school expenses and airline tickets. I reduced my hours at the Market from 24 per week to 16, in part to stay under the income limits imposed by Social Security for workers my age, but primarily because my body needs more recovery time between shifts. I’ve got all kinds of physical ailments, from arthritis in both thumbs to a torn rotator cuff muscle, to neuropathy in both feet; I snore at night and my restless legs drive my wife crazy. “Who the hell are you trying to kick?” I’m still fit, but I need more recovery time between training sessions, and I’m forced now to constantly modify my routines, fewer reps and shorter durations, lighter weights. My arthritic thumbs are a challenge I didn’t see coming. Anyway, working two days a week, Tuesday and Saturday, is perfect, but I bring home less money. Compounds the problem. 

My daughter did some growing this summer, even though it seemed at times that she was dead set on self-sabotage. By the time we flew to Philadelphia together, and spent a couple of priceless father-daughter days setting up her room in her apartment on Spruce Street, she had set her mind on making the best of her final year. It was hot and humid in Philadelphia, the kind of heat that clings to the skin, a soporific heat. We made trips to Target and CVS and Trader Joe’s, but also made time to see the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall, the Ben Franklin museum. We had drinks in a cash-only hole-in-the-wall bar whose walls were adorned with Philly sports memorabilia. The Little League World Series played on the TV. My Old Fashioned was tasteless. 

At night the sounds of the city kept me awake: screeching tires, car horns, alarms, voices, sirens and helicopters. People wandered in the alley below the window.

Back home Hurricane Hillary was moving ominously toward California, and the island of Maui was still in shock after wildfires destroyed a swath of Lahaina; hundreds of people there remain unaccounted for, many of them children. Canada. Greece. Portugal. Fires, floods, record breaking temperatures across the world. Catastrophic climate change isn’t coming, it’s already here, along with a debased and diseased political system that is incapable of taking action on this most pressing problem. More important matters, like banning objectionable books from school libraries and blaming America’s decline on transgender children, chasing Woke phantoms from university campuses, and making abortion illegal in all 50 states are the issues upon which our rulers and media fixate. They waste time and our tax dollars on insignificant and entirely contrived problems while the house burns and smoke pours from the roof. 

One Nation Under The NRA

“Imagine losing the Amazon and the Antarctic ice sheets. Well, it’s happening: ‘The estimated mass of particulate organic carbon held in sediments beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet is up to an order of magnitude greater than that associated with northern hemisphere permafrost.’” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

Maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Instead of trying to pass firearm laws, background checks, red flag warnings, all that sensible stuff, maybe we should simply pass a law mandating that every man, woman, and child in the United States own a firearm. Maybe the law should also require every American over the age of 16 to carry a loaded firearm at all times -- to school, the grocery store, the dentist, the church, synagogue and mosque, to the doctor, to weddings and funerals, to amusement parks and concerts, dance recitals and soccer games, to Dodger Stadium and Madison Square Garden. Think how happy this would make the NRA, and which of our national priorities is more vital than pleasing the NRA? Clean water? Breathable air? Safe food? Fuck all that. Forget a chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Let’s strive to put a firearm in the hands of every American! 

Fuck the piecemeal approach. Fuck doubling-down. Let’s triple down on the American penchant for violence and blood. It’s our birthright after all, the way we became who we are today. Let each and every American embrace his or her inner sociopath. Lock and load people. Don’t give your 7-year-old an iPad -- give her a 9mm Glock with a full magazine. “Run along now, go shoot something, or somebody. Just be home in time for lunch.”

I’m being facetious, but only just so. America is a fucking open-air insane asylum, ruled by a tyrannical minority of wealthy people and institutions, with a bloated imbecile at its head. Every time there’s a mass shooting, the wacky right pulls its tired, worn bullshit off the shelf:

“Guns don’t kill people, criminals kill people. Our focus must be on the criminals. (By the way, wink, wink, dog whistle, the criminals are all black or brown.)”

“Gun violence is the result of moral decline. If the Ten Commandments were posted in every public place, we wouldn’t see the level of carnage we’re seeing. Our moral decline must be stopped. Christian faith is the answer.” 

“The problem is that when we teach evolution in schools we disconnect our children from God. How can we then expect them to know right from wrong? If you tell a child he rose from the primordial slime rather than the blessed loins of the virgin Mary, that child will not value human life!”

“Mental illness is the problem.”

“Gun violence is caused by violent video games.”

The NRA and its cowardly enablers in Congress talk around and around, mentioning everything except guns. An overwhelming percentage of Americans want sensible, reasonable, restrictions on the purchase of firearms, particularly military-style assault weapons, but our political system is so corrupt and rotted that what the majority desires is brushed aside, ignored. 

Our dipshit president claims that Congress is working on many proposals to curb gun violence, great stuff, big ideas that will soon roll down Capitol Hill. These ideas are certain to be as fantastic, and invisible, as Trump’s health care plan, as certain as Mexico coughing up the money for Trump’s racist wall, as certain as our manufacturing base returning from China. If Congress failed to enact meaningful gun legislation after the October 2017 Las Vegas massacre, during which one gunman killed 58 people and wounded more than 400, if that slaughter couldn’t goad Congress into action, what will? How many deaths is too many?

No death threshold is too high for the NRA. 

Our political leaders can’t even be bothered to come up with better talking points. They obviously think the people are stupid, and perhaps they are right. When morally bankrupt motherfuckers like Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Steve King, and Rick Scott get elected and re-elected, and a human cesspool like Donald J. Trump ascends to the highest office in the land, maybe we -- and I mean citizens, voters, people of good will and decency -- are reaping the whirlwind of decades of silence and passivity. American oligarchs don’t fear us, they don’t believe we can channel our outrage into mass acts of civil disobedience that will bring our sick and weary society to a grinding stop. 

All the potentates understand, and the only way to force them to act, is to confront them with the potential loss of their profit, position, advantage, and privilege. 

The Genie Is Out Of The Bottle

“But no U.S. president has ever lied as prolifically, constantly, insidiously and dangerously as Donald Trump. He never stops. He’s the Energizer Bunny of endless falsehood.” Paul Street

The beat of xenophobia, racism, fear mongering and lies goes on, orchestrated and revved up by the Trump junta ahead of the midterm elections. The language coming from Trump and his enablers is violent, and it encourages marginalized, broken, and wounded people to emerge from the shadows, from behind closed doors, convinced that their time has come, that the injustices they’ve suffered, real or imagined, are about to be rectified.

Macho man Trump, who, like most authoritarian men, is a coward at heart, orders a ridiculous number of US troops to our southern border to defend against an “invasion” of Central American migrants. This is all spectacle for Trump’s base, another empty stunt in his reality show, since a. The migrants, young men, women, and children, have no capacity or inclination to invade a hamlet let alone the US, and b. The caravan will not come near the US border until well after the midterm elections, and by then might be much smaller than it is now. But the spectacle and the emotion it engenders now are the point. It reinforces the fears of many of Trump’s supporters and makes Trump look like a tough guy, the great white protector of his great white flock. Forget the fact that it’s like a man using a bazooka to kill a mouse.

The Commander-in-Chief is abusing his power and using US military personnel as props in his midterm election theater. How can any US service member, officer or enlisted, go along with this madness without feeling used and befouled? Hey Private Jones, is this why you enlisted, to “protect” the US border from economic, political, and environmental refugees? Did you sign up to be a pawn? Don’t be surprised if, after this pitiful episode, you are not thanked for your service and allowed to board airline flights ahead of others. So much for our noble warriors. Let’s hope that when the migrants arrive, a month or two from now, US soldiers don’t overreact like the police so often do and start shooting children. I won’t be surprised if this happens, sickened yes, surprised, no.

The violent genie is out of the bottle, not only in the US, but in Brazil, which has just elected a strongman of its own, Jair Bolsonaro, whose past statements about women and gay people are even more outrageous than Trump’s. Brazil may be in for a very rough ride, one that will no doubt exacerbate the very conditions that brought Bolsonaro to power. Trump, Bolsonaro, Netanyahu, Erdogan, Putin, MBS, Orban -- the authoritarians are on the march, bolstered by the seen and unseen hands of the world’s capitalist masters. A half century of neoliberal economics, the ascendancy of the Market (all-powerful, all-knowing, fair and equitable, etc.), has created a few spectacular winners and billions of desperate losers, and, of course, put too much power in too few hands. As people grasp that they’ve been played for suckers, that neoliberalism and so-called free-trade is a rigged game, they start to protest, and the state, serving the capitalists who have bought its services, cracks down. Harder and harder. This is only the beginning.

This from Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch:

“From 1970 to 2014, 60 percent of all animals with a backbone — fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — were wiped out by human activity, according to an ongoing survey of more than 4,000 species spread over 16,700 populations scattered across the globe.”

Ruminate on that 60% figure in light of what the Trump junta is doing to accelerate a climate disaster, and what Bolsonaro has promised to do in the Amazon.

The storm gathers on the horizon and dark clouds block out the harvest moon. Up on the hill, the lights in the shining city have almost all gone out.

This is America

"For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake." Frederick Douglass

The 4th came and went and I didn’t feel much patriotism for my country. It has been a long time since I saw the glowing myth behind the gray reality. Too many doses of truth. My generation has made a muddle of things, capitulating to the forces of capitalism. We bought the fable of market rationalism, believed, even when it became clear that it was a total failure, sat by idly while the few raked in all but the loose chips. The Market replaced God, seeped into our schools, public spaces, civil discourse, and institutions. The Market knows best. The Market is fair and just. The Market plays no favorites. The Market is always right, the only way of looking at the world, the only solution to any problem.

Brand everything, including yourself, package and sell it.

The hole we’re in is deep, caving fast. Our president, a shameless moron who would rather be King, shovels dirt on our heads. The light from above fades. A collapse is coming, and must come, because the foundation is cracked and can’t bear the weight of the fraud and mendacity at the top. The elites, the credentialed experts, the blow-dried talking heads on cable news, the PR flacks, the market cheerleaders -- heartless and cruel, perpetuating each other up and down the line. “In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.” Colson Whitehead wrote the line about a different set of criminals, but the thought applies just as well. It’s not that we are headed for plutocracy and kleptocracy, we’ve already arrived, cruised the limo around the circular drive, past the gilded fountain and the liveried staff. Democracy is a sham, we all know it, the game rigged, the fix in. Except for a few decades here and there, it has always been so, and right from the beginning. Those Founding Fathers feared the people, distrusted them, thought them too ignorant and unruly for self-rule. No, we didn’t want a king, but neither a mob. Now under-populated red states lord over heavily populated blue states, South Dakota represented by the same number of senators as California and New York. Tyranny of the minority.

Uruguay and France. Brazil and Belgium. There might be fireworks, for sure there will be drama. I will be glued to my big screen. Eight teams left in Russia.

Here’s a statistic from Jeffrey St. Clair’s latest column for Counterpunch:

+ Countries where school shooters in 2018 were born …

Libya- 0

Syria- 0

Somalia- 0

Yemen- 0

Iran- 0

United States- 22

The median price of a home in SB was recently pegged at a million bucks. In San Francisco, a six-figure income can qualify you as low income. The Market, again, turning a basic human need into a commodity. How can real estate prices rise so steadily when incomes are flat? There was a home for sale around the corner from us for a few weeks; yesterday a big truck was parked in the driveway and the porch was cluttered with furniture, packing cartons. Another lucky winner of the SB-Real Estate-Lottery. We got our piece of Paradise!

Apparently, Scott Pruitt, the disgraced former head of the EPA, believes God’s hand is guiding Donald Trump as he rolls back every regulation he possibly can, flogs coal, and thumbs his nose at climate science. Don’t count on Pruitt ever paying a price for the trail of blatant corruption he blazed. Remember, this is America.

The Dogs of War are Off the Leash

“The timing is certainly suspicious. The Assad regime had nothing to gain and everything to lose from dropping chemical bombs on civilian targets. The Syrian government is winning the war. The rebel forces are in retreat. ISIS is a splintered force. Europe is desperate for a resolution to the Syrian war and an end to the tide of refugees.” Jeffrey St. Clair

I had been thinking about capitalism this week and had planned to write something about it when Tiny Hands Trump decided to launch cruise missiles against a country that hasn’t attacked the US directly, making Trump no different from many of his predecessors. American presidents love cruise missiles because they are big and flashy, launched from distance, look great on TV, and rarely endanger the lives of American servicepeople. What’s not to love?

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams actually referred to the Pentagon’s photographs of cruise missiles arcing across the night sky as “beautiful.” No mention of the poor souls on the receiving end, though one can assume all beauty ceases on impact. Williams isn’t unusual -- most of his elite media colleagues puff up with pride when the US goes to war. Shock and awe, you know?

There are a number of problems with Trump’s action, most notably that the US cannot know with any certainty that the Assad regime was behind the use of chemical weapons. As Jeffrey St. Clair noted for Counterpunch, the Assad regime had no compelling reason for launching a chemical attack now because government forces are winning the conflict. US crocodile tears about the gassing of infants and small children are cynical as well as hypocritical: how many innocent human beings has the US killed during the past 16 years of its insane War on Terror? While Uncle Sam may hang his head and sob, his hands are smeared with blood. When it comes to determining friend and foe in the Middle East the US is clueless. We can’t sell enough arms to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and of course our support for Israel never fails.

Trump ordered the strikes without approval from Congress, an investigation into who was responsible for the chemical attack, or with a resolution from the United Nations. Given the lapdog nature of Congress, Democrats as well as Republicans will applaud Trump, giving Tiny Hands a needed respite from all the turmoil he and his henchmen have created. Trump certainly needed a “win” of some kind to nudge his lagging poll numbers up from the doldrums, and launching missiles rarely fails to do the trick. After nearly two decades of continuous war, American citizens are numb and blind to the consequences of military actions taken in their name.

One must always ask who the beneficiaries are when an empire like the US decides to attack. Clearly, the attack on Syria benefits Tiny Hands, at least in the short term; Trump can bask in a rosy military glow for a few days, pass himself off as a decisive and “strong” leader, grab some decent press, and also take shots at the weakness of his predecessor; the markets are up today, so Trump can take credit for that as well; the arms makers and dealers always reap rewards; Israel will be pleased.

But then what? Will Syria cease to be a problem area, even if Assad falls? Will Russia just bow out of the region? We exterminated Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the colonel in Libya and those countries are hardly models of stability and prosperity. I can’t wait to read what Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn have to say about this latest twist.

Why is the US’s first inclination always to bomb? If we really wanted to help the long suffering Syrians, we would provide massive quantities of food, medicine, portable shelters, and other necessities of life, not more death and destruction. We can comfort our consciences by calling these strikes limited or surgical, but the likelihood is that innocent people are going to be killed or injured.

Moon Over Trumpland

“A society in terminal decline often retreats into magical thinking.” Chris Hedges

I’m still trying to sort out what the election of Donald Trump means, how it happened, and what might lie ahead for the “indispensable nation.” I’ve been reading articles, opinion pieces, analysis of the returns -- how Clinton did with this group or that group (seems she sucked when it came to white females and didn’t do all that well with Hispanics, either).

I still feel slightly off balance as if suffering from vertigo, and my thoughts pingpong from despair to resignation to resistance; my email in-box is full of messages asking for money or issuing dire warnings. I’m glad people are in the streets, protesting Trump’s election, because if Hillary had won the electoral college (that quirky anti-democratic feature of our democracy) but lost the popular vote, Trump supporters would be out in the streets, possibly armed.

And I’m also amused by the talking heads and so-called liberal commentators who are contorting themselves to explain Hillary’s loss: it was the Russians, Jill Stein, James Comey, racist whites, white men, and so on, everybody but the corrupt Democratic Party apparatus, which shoved Hillary down our throats, offering nothing more exciting than maintenance of the failed status quo.

I’m also recalling the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, and how Republicans behaved. Today Trump calls for unity, and Obama and Hillary counsel us to give the president-elect a chance, but no such pass was given to our first black president. Remember those Tea Party rallies where Obama was burned in effigy, and Donald Trump himself crowing that Obama wasn’t born in the Unites States, and fanning that flame for years? And Mitch McConnell vowing to do everything in his power to make Obama a single term president?

During the campaign, Obama and Clinton told us that Trump was dangerously unhinged -- now they ask us to give him a chance. So, basically, all the racist, obnoxious, abhorrent and outrageous statements Trump made on his path to the Oval Office are hereby wiped from the slate?

I guess words are not going to matter in Trumpland.

Something else just occurred to me: during the primaries when it looked more and more likely that Trump would win the GOP nomination, the press was full of stories about the disintegration of the GOP, how it was finished as a party. Let’s see. The GOP now controls the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, plus a majority of governorships. So much for decline. Seems to me that the Democrats are the party in decline, a logical result of decades of slavish adherence to neoliberal economic policies that have battered the poor and the middle class. And who were the main proponents of those neoliberal, corporate-friendly policies? Bill and Hillary Clinton, of course.

I think this thought from Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch is on target: “I think Hillary lost because she was on the wrong side of the class war. From the beginning of their political careers, the Clintons have been on the side of the one-percent against the rest of us, regardless of gender or skin color. Her allegiance to Wall Street finally blew up in her face.”

Here’s a question that has been bouncing around inside my head. If Donald Trump succeeds in making America great again, what will America look like?”