The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 11

“In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Time in Trumpistan moves as fast as a tornado and as slow as molasses. Fast in the tumult of Trump’s infantile and incompetent response to Covid-19, the staged assault on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square on June 1, the deployment of heavily armed, unidentified, Federal agents in Portland, the lies and corruption and outright lunacy of Trump and the miscreants who surround him. But ever so slow as the nation staggers toward Election Day, less than 100 days hence, and one day runs into the next, not a carbon copy, but similar, with the latest Covid numbers the priority. Is our county up, down or flat? What’s going on statewide, where’s the latest hot spot, where are deaths rising? What’s Congress doing or not doing to help states and citizens weather this storm? 

And of course we are forced to endure the daily spectacle of Trump himself, the bloated leader of our Covid-19 battered banana republic, bragging about his mental acuity on national television. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Trump’s new mantra. Bonus points (only in Trump’s withered brain) awarded for reciting the words in order. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So proud is Trump of his achievement that even as the American death toll from the pandemic reaches 150,000, he can’t stop talking about it. “I passed a test! I finally passed a test, all on my own, with no help and no cheating!”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan called out the irony. When it comes to Covid-19, a lethal pandemic, Americans look in vain for a coordinated federal response. But when it comes to protecting federal property from graffiti in Portland, behold, the federal response is not only coordinated, it’s jackbooted, long on shock and raw force. When it comes to dispersing protesters from Lafayette Square so Trump can stage a photo opportunity for his reelection campaign, the federal response is not only coordinated, it’s choreograhped by William Barr to portray Trump as the triumphant protector of law and order. The pandemic bores Trump because it’s too complicated, like the algebra he never could fathom. Unleashing BORTAC -- the shock troops of the Customs & Border Patrol -- against American citizens exercising their first amendment right is not only easier, it provides immediate gratification and satisfies Trump’s sadism. 

So proud is Trump of his achievement that even as the American death toll from the pandemic reaches 150,000, he can’t stop talking about it. “I passed a test! I finally passed a test, all on my own, with no help and no cheating!”

(Here’s a random thought: how does Jared Kushner react when Trump summons Ivanka to the Residence at 2:30 a.m., with instructions to report in high heels and a black negligee?)

In all this turmoil and madness, Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence, on the very same day Stone asked for it, has gone down the memory hole. The GOP is a lost cause, so of course not a soul from that doomed vessel sounded a dissent. Hypocrisy, cowardice and silence is now standard procedure in the GOP Death Cult. But where the hell are the Democrats? The Stone commutation was obviously payback for his loyalty. It was the Trump crime family taking care of its own. The timing and context are clear. The commutation was a crime. Where’s the outrage? Jerry Nadler’s committee had Attorney General Barr on the stand and in the main failed to land a significant blow. Barr is a seasoned Washington fixer, he knows the game, how to parse, dodge, obfuscate, duck, parry and counter. Barr is the Pillsbury doughboy’s evil twin. The Democrats had plenty of opportunities to hammer at Barr’s mendacity and subversion of the rule of law, his craven and comprehensive dereliction of duty, but for the most part let the chance pass. 

Trump knows he’s staring defeat at the polls in the face, and his gut impulse dovetails with his tactics over the past three and a half years: toss even bloodier hunks of red meat to his base of true believers (his recent remarks about saving Suburbia from people of color), his focus on Law & Order, and his empty threat to postpone the November election based on fear of massive voter fraud. With intent and malice Trump is tossing seeds of delegitimization to the wind, hoping to harvest a crop of Doubt after November 3. 

If that’s not sobering enough, imagine if Joe Biden wins the election but the GOP retains control of the Senate. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 38

“The best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins -- and he her worst enemy who, under the specious...garb of patriotism seeks to excise, palliate, or defend them.” Frederick Douglass

I can’t dislodge the events from this past Monday out of my head. First, Trump’s bellicose speech in the Rose Garden where he threatened to deploy active duty military personnel against American citizens, then the brutal clearing of protesters from Lafayette Park so Trump could lumber to St. John’s Church for a campaign photo op. In his speech Trump mentioned the 2nd Amendment, one of his favorite dog whistles, and in front of St. John’s Trump held a Bible aloft as if he had never seen one before, as if the book had fallen from the sky. The point of the speech and the photo op was to signal to Trump’s diehard supporters, Guns & God, Law & Order.

The stunt failed as nearly everything Trump attempts fails. He sounded like an authoritarian tyrant and looked like a fool, but this creation of television got the images he wanted for his reelection campaign. Add stirring patriotic music and a voiceover and Trump will be transformed from a pathetic coward to a manly hero.  

Peaceful protesters were assaulted with flash bangs, tear gas, and stampeded by the forces of the state. A military helicopter hovered above the crowd at low altitude, its downdraft bending trees and scattering dust and debris. There is so much to say about this spectacle, and yet, I feel as if words fail. I lived through Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, and believed I had seen the low points of the American republic, but what we must understand about Donald J. Trump is that there is no bottom to which Trump can sink. His basement leads to one sub-basement after another, each one more tawdry and debased than the one that came before. 

What we have witnessed this week is forces of the State oppressing citizens using equipment and tactics perfected by the military outside America’s borders. This is as true today as it was during the Vietnam War era. The police, Secret Service, National Guard, and mounted Feds who stampeded peaceful demonstrators exercising a right enshrined in the Constitution acted as cruel and cavalier and arrogant as graduates of the Israeli Defense Forces do when they brutalize, humiliate and murder unarmed Palestinians. 

The police are out of control. 

Because this is America, protection of property will take precedence over people. The narrative about the nationwide demonstrations is already shifting from police brutality and racism -- the murder of unarmed, handcuffed, face down on the pavement George Floyd in broad daylight -- to law and order. Don’t be outraged about police brutality, meted out with impunity across this nation, be outraged because some lowlifes smashed windows and looted a Target. 

The world we’ve made small is closing in. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic. Millions of Americans are out of work. Glaciers are melting. The power structures constructed on a foundation of white supremacy, war, genocide, and greed can read the demographic writing on the wall. America is changing, people are stirred now because they see the rot, corruption and racism at the heart of the structure. The rich and comfortable hate the idea of solidarity; the powerful squirm when they hear the people speak of justice. That’s why they despised Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s a long way off still, but through the billowing smoke and the chaos and pain, one can glimpse the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. 

Let justice be our North star. 

National Emergency: The Long Death of America's Soul

“The even larger problem is that a chronic complacency has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing real to anyone -- except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.” Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion

For me, living in America right now is like watching a train wreck in super slow-motion. The daily insanity coming out of Trump and the Republican Party, the outright cruelty, racism, stupidity, intolerance, corruption, and incompetence is real, and yet, unreal. It hasn’t directly impacted me yet, or the city I live in; Santa Barbara is still gilded, full of well-to-do, smug hipsters, wine bars, craft breweries and gourmet noodle shops, upscale boutiques, and yoga studios. Like they do elsewhere, the rich live well here. The City debates the scourge of electric scooters and the fate of the Paseo Nuevo shopping mall. The latter is a big deal because the Paseo anchors the State Street retail core and a large space once occupied by Macy’s has been vacant for nearly two years. The City and the Paseo’s operators have struck a deal, a lease extension in exchange for $20 million in renovations and upgrades and some dough for services for the homeless -- presumably to keep them away from the Paseo during business hours. The renovations are said to include fire pits and a bocce ball court. When I read this I burst out laughing at the absurdity, but this is the Age of Amazon, 1-click satisfaction, and retailers must resort to all manner of gimmicks to lure people into actual stores; not only do they have to sell products, they must provide the customer an “experience.” No wonder this country is so fouled up. Mindless and endless consumption is our true religion.  

The Orange Menace, unable to garner support by legitimate means for his vanity wall, has declared a National Emergency and will pursue his personal Moby Dick without the consent of Congress or the citizens, who overwhelmingly oppose this monument to racism, xenophobia and fear. The only emergency on the Southern Border exists in what remains of Trump’s fevered brain. His insipid declaration will wind up in the courts, but Trump will no doubt claim a great victory anyway. That’s how he operates, always characterizing his failures as big wins. His gullible followers cheer and wave their red MAGA hats. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, a man as debased and detestable as Trump, backs the president’s play though he probably understands that the courts will throw a spanner in the works -- which will allow Mitch to shake his head and say, what can you do about the courts?

God, how working people in this country have been had, played, manipulated, lied to and betrayed. We let the neoliberals destroy unions, ship jobs overseas, create powerful monopolies, and privatize the commons upon which we all depend. We are overworked, underpaid, spied upon; our votes are almost meaningless, if we are able to vote at all. America is an oligarchy, owned and operated by the rich for the rich. How many of the people who represent us in Congress are multi-millionaires? You think they care about working-class people? They never have. Not Bill-I-Feel-Your-Pain-Clinton or Barack-Hope & Change-Obama. Not Nancy Pelosi. Definitely not Chuck Schumer. With a few rare exceptions, the American working class has given the game away without a fight. We lost our sense of solidarity, allowed ourselves to be torn apart and divided, pitted against one another by neoliberal promises of great jobs manipulating data, boundless opportunity for entrepreneurship. In the meantime, damn near everything we need -- medical care, education, child and senior care, clean water and air, basic services in our cities and towns -- have been privatized by the relentless force of capitalism. The rich and corporations declared a tax holiday for themselves many years ago and barely pay any now compared to what they ponied up in the 1950’s and 60’s. The result? Massive income and wealth inequality, with just a handful of people owning as much wealth as the other half of the entire nation. This is a massive, legal but immoral shift of wealth to people who need it least. Read Martin Luther King, Jr., he knew, he saw it coming and he called the rich out. Then he was killed.

The oligarchs have hijacked our language. Profit, loss, cost-benefit, branding, leverage, synergy, curating, thought-leading, though-partnering bullshit that has spread like a virus. Public agencies now talk like corporations. It’s despicable.

We are down to one functioning political party -- and the Democrats function at a low level of effectiveness because their leadership is corrupted by money -- a bad spot for a so-called democracy to be in. The GOP is now a criminal gang, forcing their minority views on the majority of citizens, giving the government away to special interests, lobbyists, and the Pentagon, which devours about 57% of our total federal spending, an obscene, unjustifiable amount that benefits resource extractors and defense contractors and all the other parasites who suck at the War Machine’s teat. Our wars go on and on and the citizens could care less because too few of us pay attention and none of us are being drafted. The Trump junta is right now doing everything it can to gin up a war against Iran, a nation that isn’t a threat to the United States or any other country at the moment. But taking Iran out has been a wet dream of the neocons for decades. Wars of choice, people, how fucking insane is that?

I once thought that despite America’s very checkered history we were a country with a decent heart and soul, that though we had the capacity to do tremendous harm, and frequently did, waging war wasn’t our first inclination when faced with a problem. I thought there were some things we agreed on, like the dignity of work, a fair wage, reasonable security from want, care for our young and our elderly, a shared sense that we were together. No more. Capitalism has destroyed America’s soul because it is a soulless system. We have become monstrous, deluded, cruel and belligerent. Trump’s bloated, snarling face is our face. America is in its death throes and our democracy is soon to be completely extinguished.  

Poem: Black and Unarmed

50 years since Dr. King was gunned

down in Memphis,

a sad milestone.

Rivers of black blood have flowed

since that April day,

coast to coast,

in big cities and small towns.

Dr. King was unarmed in 1968,

so was Oscar Grant in 2009

Trayvon Martin in 2012

and Michael Brown in 2014.

Tamir Rice packed a toy gun in 2014,

Freddie Gray an illegal knife in 2015.

Anton Sterling was unarmed when

he went down in 2016,

shot,

like Philando Castile the same year

and Stephon Clark two years later.

Black and unarmed,

empty hands in the air,

but still a threat

to the peace,

property

or the man behind the badge

always presumed guilty.

There are many more names than these,

a roll call of victims, testament to white America’s
fear and savagery. 

Last Train to the Gates of Hell

“Young Americans aren’t stupid. They can read the writing on the wall, and they recognize that our economy is broken, functioning for the affluent few at the expense of the many. And young Americans will be vital to producing structural political or economic change in the coming decades.” Anthony Dimaggio

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an aristocrat and member of the American oligarchy, but unlike contemporary oligarchs, he understood that if capitalists were left to their own devices they would destroy the economy and cause unrest among the masses. Many of the reforms and programs passed into being during FDR’s four terms were designed to save capitalism by blunting its rougher edges.

Today’s oligarchs lose no sleep worrying about capitalism’s rough edges. Cruelty is on display and it begins with Tiny Hands Trump who clearly believes the wealthy are not only better and more deserving than anyone else, but bear no responsibility for the less fortunate. The oligarchs no longer bother to hide behind a facade of concern for the masses, except, perhaps, during election campaigns when vague promises are made to voters. Trump played to the embattled white working class, men and women hammered by the neoliberal economic, trade, and monetary policies of the last 40 years, but once elected, Trump’s true colors emerged as he surrounded himself with Goldman Sachs alums and a host of capitalist vultures.

A terrible illness afflicts our society and as a result we are among the most harried, stressed out, insecure, worried, and drug-addled nations on the planet. We are two distinct nations, very similar to a developing country, extremely rich on one end, and a huge number of poor or destitute. America’s brand of capitalism is destroying America, ripping and tearing, puncturing vital organs, breaking bones. From the Powell Memo to business leaders in 1971, to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, the Crash of 2008, the apologetic administration of Barack Obama, to Trump and his gang of kleptocrats, the disease has spread, metastasized. Unbridled capitalism destroyed our manufacturing base, forced states to seek revenue through gambling schemes, casinos, lotteries; cities and states have paid ransom to corporate America in the form of tax relief and subsidies; public goods have been auctioned off for private gain, and national tragedies like what happened to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina were exploited for corporate profit. Ideologues and media enablers told us that a financialized economy was THE ticket to prosperity for all, but the income gains have accrued to those who already own the most. The level of income inequality in America is staggering, immoral, untenable, and wrong. The plight of so many of our elderly citizens is a disgrace.

And Trump and his gang will only make economic suffering -- and all the social ills that go with that suffering -- worse.

I remember watching a snippet of a town hall meeting during the first George W. Bush administration. A woman told Bush that she had three jobs, to which the affable nitwit said something like “isn’t America great,” thinking perhaps that the woman was simply ambitious rather than desperate. Things have not improved since. Automation will eliminate more and more jobs, including, one day, truck drivers, bus drivers, cab drivers, a legion of retail workers, and many others. The capitalist drive to lower or altogether eliminate labor costs will never stop unless there are laws and regulations in place to force the capitalists to consider the human costs of their thirst for maximum profit.

I walked past the shuttered Macy’s department store on State Street in Santa Barbara the other day. Macy’s, along with Nordstrom’s, was for years an anchor in the Paseo Nuevo Mall. Across State Street sits another deserted space that once housed the restaurant Left At Albuquerque and after Albuquerque went under, Panino. The City Fathers and Mothers blame vacant retail space on the homeless who camp on the sidewalks and panhandle passersby, but there is something far deeper at work here; wages for workers have been flat for decades while people pay more for housing, medical care, and education, particularly in a city like Santa Barbara where rents are stratospheric and everything seems to cost more. The economy depends on consumers, but what is the logical outcome when consumers can no longer afford to consume? When jobs are part-time, contingent, low-wage, temporary, and without benefits?

American-style capitalism may be destroying us but that doesn’t mean we can have a serious, rational discussion about it; capitalism itself -- the entire bullshit system of cutthroat competition and individual gain -- is sacred, unassailable, and infallible. If we had any respect for history, for the concept of moderation in all things, we would recognize that we’ve been on this road before.

The difference this time may be that we are passengers on a speeding locomotive with no brakes, hurtling straight for the gates of Hell.  

As Martin Luther King Jr., put it many years ago, “Capitalism fails to realize that life is social.”