Freedom to the Winds

“Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create a market for weapons?” Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story

It hailed in Santa Barbara this week. My wife got some lovely photos of the courthouse lawn, green streaked with white, and a bed of succulents covered with ice. I can’t remember the last time it hailed here. As little rainfall as we get a hailstorm, no matter how brief, is notable. Lake Cachuma still looked pretty sad the last time we drove past on Highway 154, but our area isn’t in a severe drought. Not yet. The weather’s kind of unpredictable now, a result of our endless meddling in Mother Nature’s business. Do I think human beings are killing the planet? Yes. Will we adapt to it like we have adapted to Covid? Probably. And once we adapt, is there ever any going all the way back? Covid, or something like it, will be with us from now on. 

When I ruminate on our changing climate and the obscene disparities of wealth and power in most places, I figure the wealthy can buy many kinds of protection to give them the best chance of long term survival when the rule of law becomes the law of the jungle. Not hard to imagine a world where the wealthy hoard the resources needed to sustain life, and defend their control of those resources to the death. Grim. Has wisdom and justice ever prevailed in human history? Has decency and kindness ever ruled?  Not to my knowledge. Someone always winds up having more power over others than any human should. Life and death power. 

I received the single dose Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine in my left arm yesterday. This morning when I woke up I felt fine in every respect, but around ten o’clock I began to feel a little dull, a touch fatigued. It wore on as the hours in the office passed and I had to skip my usual Friday evening training session. It’s the one time each week when I feel like working in a higher gear, just because it’s Friday and I can recover the following day. I took a nap instead. My son came up from LA to file his taxes and is staying with us, and I could hear him and his sister sniping at each other in the next room. Non-stop insults, brutal sarcasm, obscene putdowns. The bickering hits a lull and then flares up. The problem is the lack of space, we’re crammed together, four adults now, much different from two adults and two children. I think we’re another month from moving. Our harried and haggard landlord continues his renovation project below us and in the backyard. Our “stuff” is scattered around, piled high, covered with concrete dust. Every day when I go downstairs my training gear has been moved; I stubbornly move it right back to where I can get to it easily. I try not to let the lack of control bug me but it does. We never amassed enough money to buy a house here in our hometown and likely never will. That vessel sailed long ago. This bothers me far less than it once did. I don’t see us becoming as rootless as the people in the film Nomadland, but nor can I see that we will ever own the roof over our heads, which means we will be subject to other people’s rules and bullshit. Money buys many kinds of freedom. 

Should we get used to the idea that we’re going to extinguish all life on this planet one day?That’s cynical and defeatist and hopeless, isn’t it? Yes it is. I’m trying to remember if I felt more hope before Covid hit and gave us a glimpse of the future than I do a year later, after 500,000 Americans have died and the lives of millions more have been forever altered. There are stories from the forgotten and the ignored that we don’t hear about. I’m lucky to have a speedily created vaccine in my arm that I paid nothing for directly. It’s not that I lack hopes and dreams and desires, I still have some. I definitely want to travel more, see places and people, watch a football match in Spain or Italy or England. I’d love to get back to Italy. I liked the vibe there. I’m cynical, yes, but perhaps not entirely faithless because I believe there are many people like me, neither rich or impoverished, who are very content to live and let live, who are opposed to violence as a national ethos, and who think justice is vital to insure long term peace. The big middle, that’s us. We’re rarely consulted about anything except what our money can buy. Money never excited me enough to chase it with all my heart. I read Henry Miller and other sages carefully and they spoke to me about life, what has value, what’s eternal and good in the human species. People go to incredible lengths to help one another survive. Covid has shown us the best and worst in ourselves. 

Joe Biden and the Democrats shepherded a Covid relief bill through Congress. No Republicans voted for the bill but many of their constituents stand to benefit from the legislation. Now Biden has to sell this accomplishment to the public, explaining and highlighting what it will do for working people, small business owners, and children. The Democrats cannot take for granted that the voting public will remember come 2022. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to bow to Trump, who is being hemmed in on all sides with lawsuits and investigations. America is much quieter now that Trump is off the main stage. The danger the Republic faces is still present, make no mistake about that, and what emerges from the investigation into the January 6th Insurrection will be important. How close to Trump will that probe get? How many of those charged will flip for leniency? What was Roger Stone’s role? Stone is a weird fucker, the kind of villian Made in America, something he shares in common with Donald Trump. 

The Great Forgetting

 “How hard will the Democrats fight for the majority that elected them, and how hard will the Republicans fight to enshrine minority rule in our institutions?” Waleed Shahid, The Nation

He’s gone. The blessed day finally arrived. Trump lumbered away, disgraced, deflated, and defanged.  The people’s house is under new management; Joe Biden is now president. No riots broke out, the hallowed steps of the Capitol weren’t stormed by heavily-armed Trump supporters. It seems those malign forces went back to ground. 

But no sooner did Biden sit down in the Oval Office -- after it had been thoroughly disinfected, fumigated, saged, and exorcised -- than did the Great Forgetting begin. Republican halfwits like Lindsey Graham called for unity and warned of angering millions of people if Trump is tried by the Senate. Cries of “Putting a former president on trial is unconstitutional!”were heard on the cable networks. One piece I read on Politico or The Hill even argued that in the name of national unity Biden should pardon Trump as Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. The argument didn’t sway me. There can be no unity unless there are consequences for Trump and all connected with the January 6th Insurrection. We must call it what it was: a brazen attempt to seize political power by force, and by terror. Some of the folks who stormed the Capitol at Trump’s instigation believed they had license to rampage and immunity from consequences. Where did that notion come from, who planted the seed? 

America has to look under its bed and find out who gave aid, comfort and money to Trump’s foot soldiers, but I fear the January 6 Insurrection will slip out of focus, lose purchase as time passes and Congress gets distracted by shiny political objects. We need to immediately establish a commission invested with broad authority to investigate, hold public hearings, and out the enablers on the inside, the ones with badges and government-issued ID, and possibly even a few who sport Congressional lapel pins. 

In our investigation of the Insurrection, we must determine what Trump was doing and who he communicated with while the insurgents ransacked the Capitol and chanted for Mike Pence to be hung. Phone records, text messages, emails -- we need to see it all. 

Donald Trump will not enjoy his final years on this earth. Too many arms of the law encircle the worst president in modern American history, twice loser of the popular vote, twice impeached, and let’s hope once convicted. 

I repeat what I have written before -- it will take a few years to gauge the full effects of Trump’s single disastrous term. He drove the country blindfolded at full speed, convinced that only he knew the way, and millions of people took his word for it and went along for the ride. Biden’s crew has just begun to sort through the slag left by Trump’s people, and will no doubt be stunned and horrified by the incompetence and stupidity they discover. 

Like millions of my fellow citizens, I felt a sense of relief when Inauguration Day came off without a hitch. It was a good day for the country, a great day for women as Kamala Harris assumed the vice presidency. I see America too clearly to get weepy about the performative rituals of American democracy, but I do not dismiss their value. The spectacle surrounding the peaceful transfer of power was all the more remarkable and meaningful after four long years trapped beneath Trump’s oppressive ego. It was solemn and serious and steadying, a measure of comfort for a weary nation. The Trump years were hard, marked by cruelty and stupidity on a stunning scale. When the helicopter carrying Trump cleared DC’s airspace the tone of the country immediately changed. Biden gave a heartfelt speech full of platitudes about unity and American ingenuity and our essential, enduring decency, but along with the words themselves, it was the sound of a reassuring voice that many needed to hear. 

I don’t have any doubts about Biden’s basic decency, honesty, and sense of honor. It’s his policies on the economy, the use of military force, mass surveillance, climate change, and racial justice where I worry about Biden. Policy and time. Let’s not forget that Biden is a 78-year-old man faced with multiple challenges. 

After only a couple of days’ time the rose began to wilt. The usual political fuckery began with Mitch McConnell reverting to his obstructionist role. Biden’s doing as much as he can by Executive Order, but sooner or later he will need to pass legislation and that still entails striking deals with McConnell.  

Unity and reconciliation will come through accountability for Trump, as well as his enablers and collaborators. 

Out and Out Dread

 “Never let the weeds get higher than the garden.” Tom Waits

Kids are back in school, at distance, through digital pipes that bring their teachers to them on screens. Covid-19 is still here, people are still wearing masks, nine blocks of State Street are still off limits to vehicle traffic. The outdoor eating areas take on a more permanent aspect. After six months it still feels somewhat surreal, and it’s definitely spiritually and emotionally draining. 

By itself the pandemic is enough of a disturbance and worry, but America is on a slippery slope and I find it impossible to ignore the incessant political noise. It’s more than fear and loathing, it’s dread, out and out dread. Our racist president cannot bring himself to speak the name Jacob Blake, shot in the back seven times by trigger-happy police, or acknowledge the murder of two people at the hands of a teenage vigilante. Trump can’t do that, but he can ramble on about property damage and the threat Black Lives Matter protesters pose to delicate white women; he can spout nonsense about “dark shadows” from the Left who control Joe Biden. Trump, a coward pretending to be tough, has nothing but praise for law enforcement. Trump’s racism is as blatant as his ignorance and corruption. Racism is what propelled his political run in the first place, it’s the only card left in his tiny hand, and he will play it because racism has always been a reliable political tool in America. 

Out and out dread. Inescapable. No savior, no miracle, no intervention from a benevolent god. 

Judging by the amount of construction going on, Santa Barbara’s building business is still healthy. While there are many empty storefronts on State Street, the renovation of the Paseo Nuevo Mall, no longer anchored by Macy’s and Nordstrom, is nearing completion. That looks more and more like a losing bet. Why pour money into a mall when malls are becoming obsolete, relics of another era? Near the building where I work, the corner of Santa Barbara and De la Guerra Streets, two new buildings are rising from their foundations dug twenty feet into the ground. Every inch of both lots used. Three stories, underground parking, white stucco and red tile. Piece of paradise for those that can afford the asking price. 

I can’t. 

For me SB is a town full of ghosts, vague memories, shadows. My wife can remember very specific details from high school, I can recall very few. That time was a blur. It felt endless while it was happening, but soon was far in the rearview mirror. I left SB in 1977 and didn’t return for good until 1988. A lot happened to me during that time, and a lot was starting to happen in SB. By the time I returned, my hometown had a different vibe, and that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. American Riviera, baby! Wine country. Home of Hollywood stars, Oprah, Jeff Bridges, etc. SB had long been a sleepy tourist town, but it became a destination. Come LA. Come Europe. Come Japan. Come China. Come one, come all, let’s have a fiesta! And come they did, and come they do, even in a pandemic.

Now the narrow brick building that houses The Pressroom, an iconic watering hole beloved by soccer fans, is in jeopardy, its fate in the hands of developers and the planning commission. You see, SB needs more elegant-downtown-white stucco- tiled entryway-wrought iron balcony-red tile housing for the deserving wealthy, and that is what is proposed for the block. Might spell the end for yet another local institution. The Pressroom might survive a move, but there’s something about that particular block, the shape and contour of the building itself, the interior, where the barstools and tables are, the spot outside where smokers gather. It’s a one-off, dependent on the space for its particular atmosphere. Would Harry’s Plaza Cafe be Harry’s anyplace but Loretto Plaza? You can’t manufacture character, character is built over time, by surviving through the years, changing and adapting as needed, but never at the expense of essence. 

Money. The way the economy is structured, money never stops looking for growth opportunities. Finance people and developers know a desirable city like SB is a good bet, a magnet for money. If you build it, someone will buy it, rent it, lease it. The developers may have local ties, deep ones in some cases, but money has a powerful pull and a logic of its own. After much hand-wringing by local officials, money usually wins. 

Lost at sea, seven miles south of Purgatory; the sails are torn and our flag is in tatters. Looking into the gloom an old sailor says what most of the crew is thinking: “We may not see land again.” 

The Isolation Diaries No. 15

“Yes, the world’s a cat’s ass, a real driveling disgust, and the sweetest thing is getting away from them, their sounds, their decayed unlaughing laughter & faces as brutal and ugly and impossible as any matter you can dream up...and the eyes, the eyes, no eyes at all. I can well understand men who run into caves and stay there.” Charles Bukowski

I stopped myself from going headfirst down the Facebook rabbit hole. Bernie Sanders is out, possibly for good, though the Vermont senator appeared to leave the door open a crack. The Democratic National Committee got the man it wants to defend the status quo, even if that means losing in November. What’s the next move, Tom Perez, the white flag of total capitulation? Biden may have the DNC infrastructure and the backing of the Democratic old guard, but he’s missing the one thing he needs more than any other to unseat Trump: grassroots energy. Biden had better start wooing the Sanders/Warren wing of the party or Old Joe will get his ass kicked by the worst president, and one of the worst human beings, in American history. 

No surprise that Wall Street reacted with glee to the news of Sanders dropping out. Wall Street knows that if the Biden longshot pans out, they can work with the man who has served their interests with distinction. 

Yesterday it felt like we hit some kind of wall. It wasn’t any one thing, more like an accumulation of hours and days, an unsettled feeling mixed with anxiety, maybe even a shot of fear. What’s going to happen next? How bad will it get? The news that Trump fired the Inspector General tasked with oversight of trillions of taxpayer dollars, first infuriated, and then left me feeling sick. That was Trump raising a giant neon sign over the loot, a big Fuck You to Democrats in Congress, and an act of prime time theft. You know damn well that somehow, some way, some of that lucre will find its way into Trump’s coffers, Ivanka’s purse, or Jared’s wallet. It will be funnelled through one company or wealthy individual, then another and another, and come out the other end without leaving a trace. Trump needs that money to save his failing businesses, pay his enormous debts, and cover his legal expenses. 

If we think self-isolation is hard and ennervating, imagine what prison is like, and then go a step further and imagine what it’s like in solitary confinement.

Biden’s got a Woman problem. Not only does he need Sanders/Warren supporters, he needs women, young and middle-aged, the energetic ones turned on by the possibility of change that Sanders championed and Warren sometimes amplified. The women who get other people to the polls. “Every A-frame had your number on the wall,” sang Steely Dan. Same with Biden. Women have Biden’s number. His problems with sniffing hair and laying on of hands, unwanted, univited hands, will trail him like the stench from a stagnant pond. Even though Trump is a pig and a pervert, with a closet full of sexual indiscretions, he has far less of a Woman problem than Biden because Trump has FOX News to provide cover, distracting fire, close air support. Who remembers Stormy Daniels except Melania? Or that Access Hollywood bit? That shit bounced off Trump like he was protected by a force field. Biden has to face an all-female heavy metal band who sing angry songs about men with wandering hands and Viagara-swollen cocks. Castration is a recurring theme. 

I just re-read No. 14 of this little series. The thing barely had a pulse, no snap, no nada. I posted it anyway, because the idea is to capture what I’m feeling and thinking about in this strange moment. 

In my neighborhood, on the far north end of Milpas, the pandemic and self-isolation has not silenced the weedwackers or the men who wield them. 

I’m thinking about Biden’s campaign. Keep it simple, something along the line of: He’s not Trump. Vote for Joe. Not being Trump is all Biden has to offer. He may be creepy and doddering, but at least he’s only a single-shot liar; his opponent is the AR-15 of lies. Joe may have trouble with the truth, but at least we won’t have to fact check everything that comes out of his mouth. Joe may be dumb but Trump is even dumber. 

Consider this: Trump wants us to forget all about this pandemic, pretend it never happened and get back to playing our roles as cogs in the money machine. Forget the dead. Forget the early warnings. Forget the failed federal response. Forget Trump’s dismissals and lies. Forget Trump’s lethal incompetence. 

Don’t forget. Please. 

Dead End Blues

“To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human.”  David Whyte

Halfway through Charlie Musselwhite’s set I thought of the coronavirus and looked around at the audience. The Arlington Theater was nearly full. Even the balcony seats were occupied. Earlier that day I stopped at Smart & Final to pick up a few items, and the store was busier than I have seen it in a long while. The couple in front of me in the check-out line were stocking up as if for the Apocalypse. Water, toilet paper, canned milk, frozen dinners, canned soup, macaroni & cheese, Gatorade, mayonnaise, ketchup, spaghetti sauce. $450 worth. By the time Jimmie Vaughan came on stage I had forgotten about the coronavirus. Jimmie and his band tore it up, and then the legend that is Buddy Guy came out, 80-years-old, and he made his guitar wail, and told some jokes that he has probably told a hundred times before. 

By definition, the coronavirus, or Covid-19, is a pandemic. Serious shit, and not the time for incompetence and fecklessness, which is what the people of America are getting from Donald J. Trump. The writer Charles Blow put it in context when he said that Trump will not be able to gaslight his way out of this one. Sooner, not later, Trump’s idiotic pronouncements will turn around and eat his lunch. It’s contained, says the Donald, and the next day the number of cases doubles. It’s no more dangerous than the flu, says the Donald. Tell that to the grieving in the state of Washington. We’ve closed our borders, says the Donald. Too late. The virus is already here, and closing borders is a medieval response anyway, as doomed to fail as bleeding the sick. On Monday, the stock market plunged 2,000 points, sparking fears that a long overdue recession is happening. We’ve got it under control, says the Donald. No, you don’t. 

Buddy Guy gave the audience the blues, the little joys and big sorrows that living brings to every one of us, sooner or later. Trump can jet around the country, hold rallies for his followers, appear on FOX and spout lies about how great he is, how he understands science like nobody’s business, but the wolf is scratching at his front door now, and the wolf is as ravenous as a starving man at a buffet. 

Meanwhile, the Establishment of the Democratic Party has almost landed its standard bearer. If Joe Biden does as well in this week’s primaries as he did on Super Tuesday, it may be game, set, and match for Bernie Sanders, the only candidate who stands a chance against Trump in November. I’m sorry I can’t jump on Biden’s train. The problem is that I’ve seen this script before, and I know -- with the same certainty with which Buddy Guy plays the blues -- how it’s going to end. Trump will attack Biden’s long, dodgy record, and for good measure bring in Ukraine and Burisma and Hunter, and top it off with attacks on Biden’s sketchy mental state. How will Biden downplay his diehard, well-documented, support for the punitive crime bill, the bankruptcy bill, Wall Street deregulation, and the disastrous Iraq War? Joe Biden is shark bait for Trump, so naturally, Biden will be the Democratic nominee. 

Here we go down the dead end road. 

Once again, the oligarchs and power brokers, who have no use for democracy, offer voters a choice of the lesser of two fatally flawed aging white men (Demented Trump vs. Decrepit Biden). No wonder so many eligible voters opt to stay home. Bernie Sanders has been running uphill since 2016, the Democratic Party honchos slamming him like a hurricane, the corporate media either attacking or ignoring his campaign. If Trump wins a second term, the destruction of our republic will continue, but at a higher tempo. If Biden somehow manages to survive Trump’s personal attacks and prevails in November, he will try to reimagine the Obama years. That might seem like a good thing, a return to normalcy, but while Obama was a decent and honorable and intelligent man, his eight years in office prepared the ground for Donald Trump. And in any case, history moves forward, not back. 

It all gives me the dead end blues. 

The Curse of Greed

“Financial extraction happens across the economy, from farming to health care to retail to manufacturing and beyond. The tools include building monopolies, using tax havens to cheat on tax bills, firms channeling profits not into productive investment but into buying back shares to boost share price…” Nick Shaxson, The Nation

I’m writing this early on Super Tuesday, though I may not post it for another few days. All eyes in the Democratic Party apparatus are trained on Joe Biden today, hoping his win in South Carolina -- the first primary Biden has ever won in three tries at the presidency -- will give him momentum, and eventually, the nomination. The Democrats are desperate for Biden to overtake Bernie Sanders, desperate to dodge the threat Sanders poses to the hegemony of the Clintonites and other hacks who enjoy power and privilege, desperate to avoid any serious critique of how the party has shafted working people and the poor for decades. 

I’ve lived and worked long enough now to see the horrific effects of neoliberal capitalism on workers, our children, our elderly, and the environment. When the corporate media loses its shit over Sanders I shake my head and wonder if any of the talking heads and sterile blabbers remember Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sanders only seems radical today because the United States has moved so far to the right since the New Deal era. By the values of that trying period, when capitalists had ruined the American economy, Sanders’ policy proposals are hardly radical, but to enact them would mean the hyper-rich and corporations must accept taking less of the spoils, and that is something they are unwilling to do. The rich have waged a brilliant and merciless 40-year-long war against the working-class and the poor, rigging the economy and the political system and the courts to their advantage. They’ve run the table.

Regardless of political, religious, racial, sexual or gender affiliation, rural or urban provenance, working people lost. We let the wealthy divide us and conquer us, anesthesize us with spectacle, smoke, mirrors, and magical thinking. As I’ve said on this blog many times before, since the tail end of the 1970’s, working people have taken a first-class beat down. 

The problem with Greed Capitalism is that it recognizes no limits, either moral or environmental. Accumulation becomes the be-all and end-all, until a handful of people control a majority of the world’s wealth. Through media outlets they own, they drill into us that this is perfectly natural, that they are extravagantly wealthy because they are extravagantly worthy. Through endless propaganda about the fairness and virtue of free-market capitalism they have convinced us that our lack of wealth is our own fault, the result of personal shortcomings, lack of vision and wherewithal to seize the reins of our own destiny. 

Greed isn’t good. Greed is a curse, a plague, an insidious and terminal virus. 

If only we chased justice as frantically as we chase wealth and power. But justice doesn’t hold out the promise of whiter teeth and unblemished skin, a long life of ease and luxury, private yachts, jets, penthouses in the clouds, and the power to compel others to do your bidding, take your orders, satisfy your whims, starve while you gorge yourself. Justice involves sacrifice and wisdom.  

Masters and slaves, ordained by God and Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. A few must rule, the rest must bow and beg. The poor make the long walk to the manor house, knock at the back door, beg for an audience with the Lord, and walk away, into the twilight, empty-handed. 

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 Coup is Proceeding Quite Well

“America when will we end the human war?/Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.” Allen Ginsberg

Of course the Democrats are dragging their feet on launching impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump. Although, as Ralph Nadar wrote recently, Trump is probably the most impeachable president in American history, the Democrats, as always, play it cautious, like an old woman with poor eyesight who is afraid to cross a busy street. Trump is a walking, talking, breathing, farting, belching epitome of a corrupt president, the sort of debased, deluded, and debauched man our white founding fathers worried about and why they wrote into the Constitution a method for his removal. But the spineless Dems can’t pull the trigger. No, they first have to disassemble their weapon, oil the barrel, check the magazine, reassemble, fire some practice rounds, collect the shell casings, hold an inquest.

Only Democrats in the House can defend the principle that no one is above the law. But don’t tell Nancy Pelosi, she won’t listen, too busy is she with electoral considerations. What, Pelosi asks her Magic 8 Ball, might an impeachment proceeding do to the Democrats chances of defeating Trump in 2020? If it means shutting out the left-leaning wing of the Party (the wing whose ideas might actually energize voters) and nominating a neoliberal relic like Joe Biden to carry their standard into the fray, the Democrats will do it, just as they did in 2016. Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is tone-deaf and out of touch, a man who should be ushered off the stage and carted far, far away, never to be seen or heard from again.   

I’m reading Truthteller by Stephen Davis, a journalist, producer, and investigative reporter who notes that when corporations and governments want to deep six the truth they inevitably dip into the same tool bag. If the message isn’t to their liking, they attack the messenger. If that doesn’t make the story go away, they delay, delay, delay until the public loses interest and chases after a newer shiny object. If the story somehow remains afloat, they hatch conspiracy theories, tapping any convenient bogeyman, from Vladimir Putin, to Iran, to the left-leaning media to eco-terrorists. And finally, they can always use their money and media power to create an alternate reality, one in which facts are irrelevant.

Make-believe reality includes Trump’s “booming economy,” which is far less his than it is Barack Obama’s. Yes, people at or near the top rung of the economic ladder are doing fine, as they have been for years, but the true measure of the economy is, or should be, two-fold: how are folks at or below the middle -- the people for whom healthcare, housing, education, and retirement are steep hills to scale -- doing, and how much is our current economic arrangement contributing to catastrophic climate change? 

Trump, and, to be frank, Wall Street friendly Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, could give a rat’s ass about either working people or the climate, having jettisoned the former and dragged their heels on the latter for decades. To hear Trump crow, you’d think every American is rolling around on a bed of crisp $100 bills.  

Trump attacks people and institutions who refuse to bow to him, sues at the drop of a dime, urges high officials to refuse to cooperate with Congress, and spins conspiratorial tales. He claims a coup is being staged against him when the exact opposite is the case. Trump and his henchmen in the GOP are running a coup against our Constitution; Mitch McConnell and William Barr are Trump’s point men. At this moment, the coup is proceeding quite well.

What’s an average citizen to do? Write more letters to his or her congressperson and senators? As if that has any value. “I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue,” is the usual response, and then the electeds do whatever they want. Theoretically, we should be able to take feckless legislators out at the ballot box, but that game is rigged in most states and districts, and our choice is usually a lesser evil, someone odious, just not as odious as Donald J. Trump or Marco Rubio or Charles Schumer or Lindsey Graham or Steve King or Devin Nunes.  

The Rarest Commodity

“This was my mother’s task, to sow and and hoe and grow us up with a Mexican heart in an AngloAmerica that had already occupied the village.” Cherrie Moraga.

Nothing new under the sun. What came before comes again, sooner or later. Joe Biden believes his is relevant today, thirty years after his first unsuccessful bid for the presidency, and after a long, well-documented career of supporting corporate power, war, mass incarceration, and, let’s not forget, his leading role in subjecting Anita Hill to a searing public humiliation that landed Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. This is the savior of the Democratic Party in 2020?

Might as well draft Hillary Clinton for another go at the crown. Biden’s time has passed, there is no third act, nor should there be. Wisdom is knowing when it’s time to go home and sit under your own vine, leave the battle to the next generation. But wisdom is the rarest commodity in Washington D.C.

Joe Biden. I feel bile rise in my throat.

The Democrats seem hellbent on once again offering voters little to vote for, only an opponent to vote against, which is hardly enough to inspire the massive turnout that will be needed to unseat Trump, and if Trump wins a second term, it might be game over.

I think of millions of gallons of water collecting behind the walls of a dam, but the walls are cracked and as the pressure builds it’s only a matter of time before they collapse and everything downstream is washed away. This is what it feels like, at least to me, to live in America in this moment. Our institutions are like my imaginary dam, under pressure, under assault, under siege, by a president who is not only spectacularly corrupt, but dangerously stupid. Trump’s contempt for the rule of law is as staggering as his venality and cruelty.

Here’s a chilling thought: it can get worse, and likely will. America isn’t immune to the curse of empire. A reckoning cannot be avoided forever, and no where is it written that the United States is destined to rule in perpetuity.

I turned 60 this week. Only a number as some say, but it means I’ve lived long enough to see old become new, the same mistakes made again, the same lies and justifications trotted out by the powerful. Trump raises the bar on mendacity and stupidity; the man is a carnival barker with access to nuclear weapons, the most dangerous fool on the planet. The man who was always a joke has become a predictable nightmare. I think of Lyndon Johnson lying to the American people about Vietnam, how the US was turning the tide when in fact we were losing; Nixon insisting he wasn’t a crook; Jimmy Carter commiting the cardinal sin of telling the truth about limits and sacrifice; Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra; Bill Clinton lying about a dalliance with an intern and the Republican hysteria that ensued (all forgotten now, right Lindsey Graham?); and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney’s disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Lies stacked like cordwood at the side of a sagging barn. The truth is buried in a shallow unmarked grave where the land slopes to the river.   

In Search of Zen Mind

“Building character is like making bread -- you have to mix it little by little, step by step, and moderate temperature is needed.” Shunryu Suzuki

It’s difficult to stay present in the moment and too easy to drift into the most dire scenarios when the world seems wracked by calamity -- floods, violence, poverty, corruption -- and yet the sun comes up, birds chirp, and spring unfolds. The hills above Santa Barbara are green, and the County recently announced that the drought is over, though we still have a water problem and need to conserve.

The media are breathless about the Mueller Report that is in the hands of the Attorney General. I’m not holding my breath for any shocking revelations about Trump and Russia. What about Trump could shock anyone at this point? Do we need Mueller’s report to know that the President of the United States is corrupt? We already have enough proof of Trump’s disdain for the law. Trump will take to Twitter to deny the report anyway, calling it partisan, a witch hunt, or whatever, and his loyal base of cops, soldiers and bikers will nod their heads in agreement, and the Republicans will remain in line, mute and deferential. Rachel Maddow’s likely to be very disappointed, might even slip into depression.

Although the stock market took a dip yesterday, all you hear about the economy from the mainstream press is how strong it is, how many jobs are being created, and how this strength bodes well for Trump’s re-election in 2020. Incumbents, even one as unpopular as Trump, have built-in advantages, and add to that the near certainty that the Democrats will nominate Joe Biden -- or someone of similar bent -- as their standard-bearer and Trump’s re-election looks even more likely. That’s hard to accept on a sunny Saturday morning. Trump is pushing our institutions to the brink and it’s not certain they will hold for two more years, let alone a second term.

And if the economy is so great, why are so many people struggling and living in precarity?  Great for who?

I’m reading Almanac Of The Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko and 2 Prospectors: The Letters of Sam Shepard and Johnny Dark. At first I had trouble keeping the relationship of the characters straight in the Silko novel, but I’m getting into it now; it’s a long one. The Shepard and Dark letters are fascinating, a 40-year friendship between two men who bare their souls to one another and examine their lives through lenses that are by turns humorous and deeply philosophical. For men of a certain age, the observations made can bring you up short -- these were well read men who examined themselves rigorously and had life experience as well. I’ve read a fair amount of Shepard’s writing, the play Simpatico, Motel Chronicles, Cruising Paradise, and Great Dream of Heaven. His letters provide context for his work, glimpses behind the stories. I’m old enough to know the excitement of receiving a letter from a friend, the sense of intimacy that an email or text message or social media post lacks. A letter provides a more tangible sense of connection, allows for a pause between receipt and response.

Humans need pause, need time to stop and reflect, but this modern, hyperactive, interconnected society we live in hates any pause and fills any silence with noise. My daughter’s connection to her phone scares me. I’m happiest when I don’t have my phone around, my daughter can’t be without hers without feeling anxious and unmoored. I remember being dependent on pay phones (and having change) when away from home, my daughter barely knows what a pay phone is, or was, since they are few and far between now. So much change to navigate, so little silence in which to do so. We can’t eliminate the pause.

Think I’ll go out and have a look at this day, scan the sky, turn the compost, and empty the trash. Maybe in doing so I’ll find my elusive Zen mind.