Little Blessings

“While whites sought to extract uncompensated labor from Blacks, their principal concern in relation to Indigenous people was to secure ownership of their lands.” A Field Guide to White Supremacy, Kathleen Bellew and Ramon A. Gutierrez, Editors

It’s December and I feel a bustle. Many of the houses in our block and nearby blocks are brightly lit with Christmas lights. Ours are up, courtesy of my wife and daughter. They have outdone themselves this year. After several years with an artificial pre-strung tree from Sears, we have a live Doug fir this year. It smells great. When my wife brought it home from Home Depot and we stood it up and fluffed it out, I thought of the managed forests my brother and I drive through on our way into Washington each September. It sucks a fair amount of water each day. Needles on the hardwood floor. We have some inside lights, too, and the kids’ stockings hanging from an actual mantle. We’re in a new place this year and it feels good, a comfortable harbor against the strangeness of this period in time. Are we balanced between one way and another? Is that what is happening, is the world turning toward authoritarianism because we cannot agree on more fair and equitable means? The slogans are simpler, that’s for sure. Freedom! Liberty! Soil! The question is always freedom and liberty and soil for whom? Based on what, money or force, or both? 

Here’s some irony for you. On Friday the normal political world, not MAGA Faux Outrage & White Fear world, stopped to pay tribute to Bob Dole, war hero, Senate titan (during the good old days when the Reagan gang sold arms to the Iranians in order to fund the Contras in Nicaragua), and GOP standard bearer in the 1980’s. Today, the Trump GOP would run the great and noble Bob Dole out of the party. Today, Trump would make fun of Dole’s war disability and belittle his legislative achievements, and then for good measure insult his wife, Elizabeth Today, would Bob Dole stand up to Trump or allow himself to be cowed along with a majority of his confederates? Would Dole turn a blind eye to Trump’s unprecedented corruptness? How corruptible was Bob Dole? As much as Mitch McConnell? Kevin McCarthy? That punk senator from Missouri? Ted Cruz?

Let’s turn to another depressing subject, the fate of Julian Assange, who a UK Court just ruled can be extradited to the United States to be executed or jailed under the Espionage Act, or whatever other statutes the American government can bury him under. Assange is a journalist, and he’s not an American. How does the United States even have jurisdiction? To me Assange is a historic figure. And what was his crime? Journalism. He collected information by as many means as he could, including sources, and published his findings. Isn’t that what journalism is supposed to do, the way it provides a check on the powerful? Yes, but when a journalist completely outs the Empire, exposes its crimes and hypocrisies in exhaustive detail, her, or she, will pay. And Assange has. With years of house arrest in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and a long spell in Belmarsh Prison, which isn’t known to be hospitable. There are probably many people in London and Washington D.C. who wish Assange would die or hang himself. The US will go all out to mete out a maximum punishment for Julian Assange. Too bad our government can’t direct such righteous fervor against those involved in the attack on the US Capitol, starting with Donald J. Trump. Assange will pay, Trump will not. There’s the unfairness of this world. The powerful have too many tools. 

On a different note altogether. I did a long training session this afternoon, mostly slow and cautious because my left shoulder/biceps is still wonky. I see a specialist in January. I may have done too much today. I have a decent range of motion and improved internal rotation, but it’s not pain free. Not that the pain is overwhelming, but it is constant. Every day I run through several rehabilitation exercises, and I do a lot of stretching on my breaks when I work at the store. I am sleeping better than I was. Now I wake up with a stiff lower back. It’s one ache then another. 

My Chelsea football club isn’t well these days. I think the manager, Thomas Tuchel has done a very good job, but injuries have sidelined too many key players for too long, primarily N’golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic. Christian Pulisic missed a number of games. Ben Chilwell is out for an unknown period. Romelu Lukaku has just returned after a multi-match absence. Jorginho, the important pivot point in midfield, has also been injured. Trevor Chalobah, a young player emerging as a critical member of our back three, is out injured. We drew with a Manchester United side we should have beaten, escaped Watford with a win, but lost to West Ham on a late wonder goal. Our recent Champions League match in St. Petersburg saw us fail to hold a lead in the last minutes of the match. A defense based on amnesia. We drew, and consequently Juventas topped the group. We play Leeds United in the premier league next. Although we’ll be at Stamford Bridge, I expect this to be a tough match. Leeds play with a quick tempo and they face a Chelsea team that is tired, depleted, and in a ragged run of form. 

I’m writing a review of a new book by Brian Klaas, Corruptible, for the California Review of Books, and reading A Field Guide to White Supremacy. Not exactly light, year-end reading. For that I’ve turned to True North by Jim Harrison, a novel I first read some years ago. I have since read nearly all the fiction Harrison produced. Definitely one of my favorite writers. 

We’re almost to 2022. I’m still wondering, and unable to understand why so few journalists or writers are not doing the same, what Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin talked about for ninety minutes in Helsinki in 2017. I don’t imagine the needs of the people of their respective countries came up much. So what did these two kleptocrats talk about? 

More Profound Than Ruin*

“The emptier our hearts become, the greater will be our crimes.” James Baldwin

In the same way Israel slowly chokes the Palestinians out of existence while the world sits on its hands and averts its eyes, the world is witnessing the slow demise of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, who has been in exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for nearly eight years -- without, it must be noted -- ever being charged with a crime. Assange, a journalist by trade, has been cut off from the outside world for months and is reported to be in declining health. He is largely denied access to sunlight, fresh air, and medical attention. Ecuador, under pressure from the United States, is said to be in the process of revoking Assange’s citizenship. If Assange is booted from the Ecuadorian embassy it’s likely the British government will turn him over to the United States, which will no doubt mean lifetime confinement or execution for espionage.

Assange and Wikileaks exposed the slimy underbelly of American foreign policy in Iraq and Libya, embarrassed the Clinton campaign, and the political elites will never forget that. They prefer to cover their brutality and mendacity under the guise of freedom, liberty and democracy. The persecution of Assange is a bipartisan gig, one of the few matters Democrats and Republicans agree on. If the United States gets its mitts on Assange, he’ll get the Chelsea Manning treatment, and then some for good measure. All investigative journalists should be watching this cruel injustice with extreme care as the distance separating them from Julian Assange isn’t long. Expose the ugly or uncomfortable truth about empire, feel the wrath. No journalist is safe, and particularly not when the President of the United States calls the media the “enemy of the people” and Saudi Arabia murders a journalist in its own consulate in Turkey.

So behemoth Amazon has chosen sites for its next headquarters, extracting billions of dollars in tax concessions from New York and Virginia in exchange for what it promises will be thousands of high-paying jobs and urban renewal. The latter no doubt means hyper-gentrification, soaring rents and housing prices, and longer commutes for working stiffs who will not be able to afford the price tag. The promised number of jobs will likely be fewer than advertised, which is usually what happens when corporations play cities and states against one another. This sorry game has been going on for decades. Corporations dangle the carrot of jobs, jobs, jobs, and then slam states and cities across the back with demands for tax breaks and infrastructure improvements. It’s basic extortion, and taxpayers usually wind up holding the bag or suffering diminished social services.

Amazon is the avatar of nearly everything wrong with the American economy. Gargantuan size, low wage seasonal workers, shameless exploitation, cutthroat practices. It has been allowed to become a monopoly that has driven thousands of small businesses out of existence, turned main streets into virtual ghost towns, wiping out retail jobs, local brick & mortar stores, bookstores, all because it can withstand selling products at a loss. I’ve seen this happen on State Street in Santa Barbara, the retail backbone of my hometown. Amazon is now competing with FedEx and UPS to control the delivery pipeline. If the US enforced its antitrust laws, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods would never have been approved. No single corporation should amass the power that Amazon has over so many aspects of the economy. This kind of concentrated economic power naturally turns into political power. Many years ago, singer-songwriter Greg Brown wrote that one day there will be one corporation selling one little box, it will give you everything you want and take everything you’ve got. That’s Amazon. Yes, Amazon makes acquiring stuff easy and quick, but as a society we pay dearly for this magical efficiency. I buy stuff from Amazon, so I’m as guilty as most American consumers, though whenever I hit that one-click button I feel a little sick to my stomach.

Trump sure looks like a frightened man with piss running down his leg. He’s sullen and petulant and more erratic than ever, his statements little more than gibberish. He reminds me of a comedian who has run out of material, who reaches deep into his bag and finds nothing but lint, and can do nothing but repeat himself. Naturally, Trump made a fool of himself on his recent ceremonial visit to France. The French mocked him. Back home, Trump spews unsubstantiated claims of election fraud. The White House is rumored to be a total shit show, a scene of confusion and disarray, turmoil and backstabbing. Trump must sense that the Democrats are coming (if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer don’t capitulate before the first shot is fired, as Democrats almost always do) with Robert Mueller not far behind, and the rotten facade of Trump World on the verge of collapse.

Here’s a thought to consider from writer Jacob Bacharach, “Poverty—both individual and social—is a policy, not an accident, and not some kind of natural law. These are deliberate choices about the allocation of resources.”

*thank you, William Faulkner

Better in the Morning

The odds are strong that Julian Assange will wind up confined to a cell for a long time, possibly the rest of his life.

With the release of hundreds of U.S. diplomatic cables, the founder of WikiLeaks has pissed off or embarrassed enough powerful people around the world to insure that those folks go to any lengths to punish him.

I imagine U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton screaming into her phone: “I want Assange hung by his balls. I don’t care how you nail him. I don’t care where you nail him. Just snuff him out!” Other world leaders painted in an unfavorable light in the cables would hardly object if Assange and WikiLeaks suddenly vanished.

Blame the leaker who exposes bad actors rather than the actors themselves.

Assange is wanted in Sweden on sexual assault charges, an accusation that came hard on the heels of a WikiLeaks release of thousands of documents about the Afghanistan war. It may be that I have become paranoid or that I have read too many John Le Carre spy novels, but when the news of the sexual assault charge first surfaced, my immediate thought was: Assange is being framed by the CIA.

Why would the CIA do that? Because even if the charge proves false, as Assange insists it is, the smear attached to his name won’t be easily removed or forgotten. And that’s the point. Discredit the source and you discredit his information; whether or not an accusation is true makes no difference at all.

Maybe. I am certain the clock is winding down for Julian Assange.

Meanwhile, here at home the GOP is standing strong for millionaires and billionaires, pledging to thwart every Democratic proposal unless the Bush Era tax cuts are extended for all income groups. The price tag for these cuts is something like $700 billion over a decade, at a time when millions of Americans are either out of work or stitching together part-time jobs to stay afloat; while money to extend unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed simply cannot be raised without exacerbating the deficit; while the Iraq and Afghan occupations continue without end; while the President’s bipartisan Deficit Commission proposes Draconian cuts to social programs along with – surprise, surprise -- corporate tax cuts; and while the President cannot seem to locate his spine.

It’s all disheartening and frustrating.

Perhaps it will look better in the morning.