The Bane of Humankind

 

“At the time of the Civil War, the monetary value of the country’s enslaved men, women, and children was greater than that of all of its factories and railroads combined.” Adam Hochschild. New York Review, May 25, 2023

What am I thinking about? Feet of human beings, males and females of the species, old and young, but it’s mostly the older folks I observe, in their sandals, flip-flops, pumps and every now and then completely naked of foot. Feet that have held body weight over many years, walked, who knows? thousands of miles, endured heat and cold and friction, corns, bunions, and blisters. Feet that have felt fine sand between the toes, desert dust, red clay, black loam, coal dust, broken glass, pebbles, stones, thorns. Feet that swim and feet that dance, run, jump. I see them now, mangled, bent, dry, toenails uneven, horned, sharp as blades. Unattractive, I think. And fat ankles. Kankles. Not a fan. Am sometimes startled by the girth of a human ankle. I think of an elephant’s foot. My eye is drawn to the slender ankle, mostly of the female, though my eye can be disappointed if ankle and foot are mismatched. Uncomplimentary. Also unfortunate. My opinion. 

My wife tells me she’s taking me for my first ever pedicure, a father’s day gift. Feet will be encased in wax, massaged with warm oils, scrubbed with pumice stones of various hues, and clipped with sterile instruments. My feet will emerge from all this treatment feeling fantastic. I may wish to wear sandals and show them off. No toenail polish. Not there yet. 

Janky feet, the bane of humankind. 

My daughter and I are in the Honda Accord, driving to the dispensary on a weekday afternoon, discussing various subjects of life, when stopped at a red light at the intersection of a prominent corner, my daughter says the foot massage place near the corner (which will go unnamed to avoid potential legal exposure or other unintended consequences) has to be a front for shady or illegal business because most of the employees are usually in the parking lot in the back, smoking, as if possessed of all the time in the world. Languid smoking, full inhalations and exhalations. Prodigious clouds of smoke. But while they’re smoking, what’s going on inside? This is the mystery. Most businesses cannot afford to have people standing around doing nothing, although I’ve noticed that in many low-wage, shit-job establishments, that’s what many employees do, stand around doing as little as they can get away with. My daughter tells me I can probably get a “happy ending” there and I don’t know what she’s talking about. Daughter is incredulous at my stupidity and lameness. Schitt’s Creek, remember, David, went and got a happy ending? Oh, yeah, sorry. I fucking loved Schitt’s Creek. 

Trump is indicted at long last. Such a long, tortured wait. Rusty wheels of justice. Disheartening. Half the nation cheers; thirty percent says it’s all a lie and the other side wants to murder unborn infants, so there; and twenty or so percent could care less. Aren’t even aware that a historic first in the history of this Republic is happening. The oblivious. Many have given up. They keep their heads down and move on, always moving on. They don’t look to government for anything but stop signs and traffic signals. Self-government requires too much sacrifice for some people, especially people who must, for their survival and that of their families, focus entirely on making enough money to live.

Will be infuriating to watch the Republican Party try to brush off Trump’s 37-count Federal indictment. Has already begun, two days before his arraignment. Grab the narrative. All that matters anymore. Truth in, lies out, citizens lost in between. 

I’m reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, a young woman with all kinds of literary awards to her credit, Ivy League credentials, a popular trilogy, a phenom, shooting meteor-like across the literary skyline. I’ve read 263 pages and still find myself disliking the protagonist, a young female writer, white, who hits the literary and social media big time with her first novel, about Chinese labor battalions in World War I. Unknown history, unusual angle. The book was conceived and sketched out by her friend/nemesis, Athena Liu, who, like R.F. Kuang, is just dazzling in almost every way, a literary prize winner, with well-received books and hefty advance payments, a robust social media machine, good looks, too, and ambition to be the next big literary thing.  The protagonist helps herself to the notes and sketches after Athena’s tragic death, turns them by a measure of diligent labor and talent into a big book, one that can be marketed, packaged, publicized, and sold. It’s the book that puts the protagonist on the literary map, scores her invitations to sit on panels at prestigious writer’s conferences. Speaking engagements at colleges, readings and Q&A’s in upscale bookstores. Soon she’s being interviewed, written about, asked for her thoughts on this and that. Intoxicating. Validating. Is she a thief or just an opportunist? Both. Some strong writing about the publishing industry (brutal and cutthroat), and how quickly a social media audience can turn from adoring to vicious, as well as facing the question of who has the authenticity to write about certain subjects, in this case a white female writing about Chinese people. What does she know about it? No final opinion yet, other than that the pacing seems off. Shouldn’t I feel, by now,  something other than annoyance for the protagonist, more than a desire to encourage her to grow up? Maybe take a minute and think about someone else?

But maybe that’s the intent, to challenge a reader to accept an unlikeable character enough to keep reading. It’s like Succession on HBO, or whatever it’s now called, which I often hated because I found all the characters so grasping and power-mad and striving and controlling and empty, though also recognizing the dark humor, some finely written and acted scenes. Almost a different dialect with all that Finance-Bro speak. I watched until the end. “Fuck Off!”

Books are funny, magical vessels. 

Want to watch something on the political front other than the 24-Hour-Trump-Indictment-Saga? Just pay attention to what red state governors like Abbott down in the Republic of Texas and Ron DeSantis in Floridistan are doing legislatively to cities and counties where blue-minded voters live and work and recreate. Watch how they’re attempting to wrest more and more control over such places. Austin. Parts of Houston. 

It’s another overcast day here on the Platinum Coast, day after day of thick marine layer, a blanket. The old June-gloom. When I was a young boy, the land around the Whole Foods Market where I work part-time as a utility worker (mostly janitor and shopping cart-wrangler and trash-emptier), was orchard, avocado, walnut, and lemon. Hitchcock and State Street. Been here a fair time now, almost my entire life, many summers. Very strange thing life, and time. On my strolls on the lower Riviera, I notice how different the view is from the opposite side of the street I usually take; I see things that had gone unnoticed before. 

Coup a la Trump?

“The American experiment does not have to work. Empires and nations rise and fall.” Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books

What does an aspiring strongman need? Collaborators in high places. Dedicated rank & file minions to parrot Dear Leader’s line. Mitch McConnell. Mike Pence. Mike Pompeo. William Barr. Let the record show that these men are collaborators. Traitors to their oath of office and the American people. They are aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s effort to overturn a democratic outcome. It’s happening in plain sight and in corridors of power we can not know about. If you doubt this is their aim, watch the video recording of Pompeo speaking to the media yesterday. With the smirk of a diabolical asshole on his face, Pompeo said the transition to a second Trump administration would be smooth. The sitting Secretary of State flat-out refused to acknowledge the president-elect.  Think about that. None of us have ever seen such outrageous behavior from a Cabinet official. 

Many political analysts and journalists thought it would go down like this: Trump prematurely claiming victory, casting allegations about vote fraud, mounting as many legal challenges as possible, no matter how frivolous, creating chaos and uncertainty in a process that produced its fair outcome, refusing to concede that Biden won the election. If the Democrats rigged the election, they botched the job so badly that they lost seats in the House and failed to flip the Senate. Make no mistake, the election was a referendum on Donald Trump. It wasn’t stolen, Trump lost. The country’s not ready to throw in the towel yet. Too many of us still believe in the American experiment. 

Unfortunately, the finish line still lies ahead and Trump is a master of delay. The longer he fans the flames of doubt, the better for him. He’s got his collaborators and almost all the rank & file of the Republican Party under his thumb. They’re more than willing to go down with Trump, willing to push the limits of the law until they snap the brittle bones of our democracy. This is astounding. I heard Sydney Blumenthal in an interview with Ian Masters, and when the former advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton warned of the national security secrets Trump will carry out of the White House (no matter how he goes), I stopped what I was doing. I hate to sound paranoid, but this is what life under Trump does to people. We begin to doubt the evidence of our own eyes and ears. We are forced to consider things that have heretofore been unthinkable. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Donald J. Trump would sell America’s secrets to the world for the right price. And with the freight train of litigation that is headed his way when he’s no longer president, plus the millions he owes coming due, Trump will need money, lots of it. 

Over the past two days I’ve listened to or read a number of commentators, legal experts, elected officials, and the majority of them think Trump will back down when this phase of his endgame fails. They believe our systems will hold. I’m not so sure. Who’s going to stop the Trump Gang? The anxiety that drained from me on November 7 has returned. The Trump era will not end until the man is physically out of the White House, stripped of all governing power. 

Pay close attention lovers of liberty, the days ahead will be fraught.  

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 8

“It signifies a fact that has not fundamentally changed since the defeat of Reconstruction: black people can be subjected, usually with impunity, to arbitrary aggression.” Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

Covid-19 days, nights, weeks and months. It feels that we’re almost back where we started in March, as if the virus sent us back to the starting line. Covid-19 is active in Santa Barbara, though tourists roam State Street and dine outdoors; people in masks queue outside the Apple Store, still hungry for the latest gadgets. Life in a pandemic is strange to begin with, but when you live in a country with corrupt and incompetent political leaders, strange becomes surreal. 

Our Trumpian nightmare, our American Horror Show, eternal night. As expected, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, punted the question of Trump’s tax returns back to the lower courts, where the matter will be drowned in briefs and motions and legal stalling for God knows how long. This has been Trump’s way of dodging accountability for decades. Sue, countersue. The secrets in Trump’s financial records will not be seen by American voters prior to November. Trump won the round. Yes, Roberts and the Court upheld the most basic legal concept -- that no one is above the law -- but if reinforcing that assertion is what passes for courage or justice -- we really are in deep water. 

The wealthy buy justice. No surprise. Even the law has a price tag. 

I studied the architectural plans for the office’s HVAC system while heating a cup of water in the microwave. The schematic might have been Sanskrit and I understood little of what it communicated. In my next human incarnation I wish to have two skills: carpentry and music. I want to be able to build a tool shed or a doghouse, erect a fence. My father was a butcher, a skilled one, but he had no mechanical aptitude and neither do I. Taking things apart to understand how they work never has intrigued me, and I regret this fact. Same with music, I like many forms of music but I don’t understand how it works and my attempt to learn the guitar was a failure. I am tone deaf, can’t keep a rhythm. I remember being in the second or third grade, forced to play an instrument; my mother chose the clarinet. I was inept. All I made that instrument do was screech like nails on a chalkboard. It was torture, an embarassment. 

I’m deep into Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. Like his legendary live performances, the book is long. I’m to the part where Springsteen has just released Nebraska, his dark, spare, and haunting masterpiece. I’ve always liked the album, though I didn’t discover it until many years after it was released in 1982. “Nothing feels better than blood on blood.” The early 1980’s. I was living in Japan then, cut off from what was happening in America. The early days of the conservative political revolt led by Uncle Ronnie Reagan, the AIDS crisis, the death twitch of American manufacturing. The Japanese economic juggernaut was going to eclipse us in an avalanche of Honda and Toyota automobiles and SONY boomboxes. Long ago. When I think of the 1980’s my memories are dim as ash. 

Springsteen’s quieter albums, Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust, Magic, and Western Stars won my respect and admiration. The imagery, mood, and beauty of the writing, the empathy are why I return to them over and over. The autobiography fills in some of the spaces, explains Springsteen’s state of mind and circumstances; his childhood in Freehold, New Jersey, exerted a tremendous pull on his imagination and heart. Poor, working-class, houses with thin walls and no hot water, a taciturn, distant and sometimes menacing father, a vivacious and loving mother. Springsteen willed himself to become the leader of a band that could follow his voice, ambition and vision. The man’s a product of hard work. Springsteen hauled his Catholic guilt around for years. Many of his songs are rooted in the fear of, and longing for, his father’s love. 

I understand that longing. My dad passed away long ago, aged 57, his body ravished by a pack-a-day smoking habit and too many years of heavy drinking. He never met his grandson. He wasn’t present when I got married. I assume he would be proud of me. I wish I could talk to him about his life, his dreams and desires. 

Covid-19 summer. Fruit falls from the trees, rots on the ground. My emotions swing like a frayed rope bridge over a deep ravine. Am I a fraud and a failure? Have I slept-walked through my days and nights, always searching for a prize I cannot see or name? I wrestle with my contradictions, kick myself for wasting time searching for clues in dark corners. Too selfish I conclude, too stingy with my love, too walled off from other people, too solitary, too locked in my own head. Feels too late to slip this skin now. I have to harvest the seeds I’ve sown. 

The Isolation Diaries No. 23

“I think of the entire history of human strife and how we navigate the frightening and the unknown.” Anna Badkhen, New York Review of Books

Hot. 90 degrees at 6:00 p.m. in Santa Barbara. Our apartment is stifling, even with the front and back doors open and a ceiling fan and three tower fans running at top speed. The breeze brings warm air. After sundown the wind lashes at the windows, yanks the doors closed with a bang. The wind recedes, then rushes again with renewed ferocity; the wind chimes on the deck dance madly. Another day of self-isolation comes to a close. We survive, none are ill under our roof or the roofs of our immediate family. Our niece, Mia, a nursing student, is hunkered down in NYC. 

I work off and on, read The Plague and The Plot Against America, take a short nap, have a training session in the glaring afternoon sun, sit on my meditation cushion. For my 61st birthday I received a pair of Apple Airpods, an extravagant gift from my wife and mother-in-law. I drink several cups of peppermint tea. 

And then back to the pandemic, the open air asylum that is Trump and McConnell’s America, unmasked now with all its weakness and cruelty on full display. The hypocrisy of the GOP is stunning. Of course the people are subjected to another session of Trump’s verbal diarrhea. Trump seems to have backed off his favorite Covid-19 miracle drug, hydroxycholoquine, now that more evidence against its efficacy is presented. Trump is now on to sunlight and lung-cleansing disinfectants. I wonder if the good folks over at FOX News, like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, Dr. Oz, and Brian Kilmeade will echo Trump about the latest nonsense as they did hundreds of times about hydroxychloroquine. Will someone sue these people or FOX News? One can only hope. At a time of great crisis and danger, America is bereft of great men (we have some great women, but none of them are in power). Instead our fate rests in the hands of greedheads, imbeciles, charlatans, jesters, cranks, crackpots, cretins, xenophobes, homophobes, Christian warriors, fools, fakers and misanthropes.

I came across this passage in The Plot Against America: “I went because every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country?”

That about sums it up. 

Neoliberalism is on its deathbed, stripped of its gloss and false promises of trickle down prosperity; we should hasten its demise, pull the plug, but the white men in power stay our hand and will, they want to keep the patient alive while they continue, by means fair or foul, to rig the end game so they win and the masses lose. I came across this in the New York Review of Books by Hari Kunzru:

“The rapid disintegration of all social and economic life has exposed the terrible fragility of the American system. How does a society that privatizes risk cope with a public health crisis? How can it ask for social solidarity when it demonizes every expression of it as ‘socialism’? Suddenly we are all socialists, even Mitt Romney, trying to reinvent community as we self-isolate in our apartments.”

I keep fear and despondency at bay by keeping my focus in the moment. It’s a difficult task. Others must feel the same because I see more traffic on the streets, more people outside. My sense is of a boundary being pushed and prodded to see how much it can bend. The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in this county approaches 500.