The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 5

“We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.” Frederick Douglass

America, are we tired of winning yet? According to Trump and Pence, and that skinny bitch who calls herself a Press Secretary, Covid-19 is on the decline, jobs are returning in droves, and the economy is on the rebound. Trump’s poll numbers are perfect. The nation has at long last achieved racial equality. The climate crisis is solved. Every American is housed and cared for. It’s all beautiful, tremendous, fantastic, never been done before, the world has never seen, people are saying...

To repeat what I’ve said before: we’re fucked, royally fucked. It’s more than Trump, of course, it took decades for the rot to take hold, for Money to define our lives and worth as human beings, for Money to flood and corrupt the political system, and for the whims, desires, and needs of corporations to take precedence over the needs of the people. It took several decades to render organized labor insignificant. It took 40 years of relentless, slick propaganda to get people to believe that solidarity was in fact tyranny, that the Market God was just and fair. It took far less time to devalue -- even more than they were to begin -- the lives of black and brown people, and anyone who was different and therefore dangerous. The neoliberal system had a wicked answer for that, too: a lucrative carceral state, much of it run by corporations and Wall Street investors. Just add black and brown bodies for delicious profits.

 It was 9/11 hysteria, hubris and hypocrisy, that launched the disastrous, money and body-sucking War on Terror. War on a tactic, against ever-shifting enemies, with no boundaries and no end. Forever war we call it now, as if it’s perfectly normal for a country to be continuously at war or preparing for war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, swaths of Africa. We are never short of enemies. What does the Pentagon need more than anything else? Enemies, credible or not. Communism. Radical Islam. Venezuela. Al-Qaeda. Iran. 

...an era so perverse and corrupt that when 2016 rolled around a fraudulent fool named Donald Trump, a failed businessman, a serial adulterer, a tax cheat, who appealed to the worst in people, got burped up.

The militarization of American police started in the 1990’s if I recall right, and accelerated thereafter under Republican and Democratic regimes, and almost in tandem with our global war on jihadis. As time passed, more and more military equipment was gifted to the states from the Pentagon surplus, and American police resembled their brothers and sisters in the Armed Forces. War abroad, war at home -- the American Way. 

Police protect property, that has always been their role in America. It started with the Slave Patrols that hunted two-legged property, and continued during labor strikes, the Civil Rights era, and every social upheaval since. Police, as we have witnessed repeatedly of late, from coast-to-coast, look like occupying forces and treat peaceful exercise of a Constitutional right as a criminal activity worthy of tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, horses, SUV’s. 

War abroad, war at home -- the American Way. 

Fucking disastrous. I need a beer, maybe two. It’s going to be a long night here in Santa Barbara Town, home of the laid back wealthy and the frenzied working poor, partially shut down again by order of the Governor. No bars or inside dining. Beaches open (but gatherings prohibited), beach parking lots closed. 

California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, among the states where Covid-19 veers beyond control. Public health authorities are largely on their own, abandoned when the Orange Menace tossed the towel in and claimed victory. Red state governors, desperate to put their loyalty to Trump ahead of their constituents, turned a stone ear to public health professionals. Came out of lockdown ahead of the pack, opening bars, restaurants, parks, nail salons, barber shops, pool halls, gyms, hardware stores, a magnificent show of hubris and stupidity. 

Lords of a hollow kingdom. But they will ride it down to the very end, into the fiery pit. 

What was the point I was working toward? Yes, the neoliberal, Free Market God, put-a-price-on-everything, privatize everything, cut taxes, then cut them again, and again, squeeze the working poor, crush the poor, saddle kids with education debt, an era so perverse and corrupt that when 2016 rolled around a fraudulent fool named Donald Trump, a failed businessman, a serial adulterer, a tax cheat, who appealed to the worst in people, got burped up. He was good for TV ratings. He promised tax cuts and radical right-wing judges. He promised to vanquish the limp-wristed Liberals who ate artisanal salads and drove electric cars and thought they were superior to Real Americans. He declared war on immigrants. 

How we are paying for our sins. The Trump Death Clock records 76,669 deaths from Covid-19 that could have been avoided if Trump had acted earlier. But of course the Orange Menace didn’t act, he denied, deflected, downplayed, and dithered in the face of overwhelming warnings. Had to protect the stock market and his reelection chances ahead of public health. Trump is a sociopath. And the entire GOP still bends over for him. 

My brain feels like a pinball machine. Mental overload. I may need some Irish whisky. What fresh insanity will come with the rising sun? This is Trump & Pence Land, a beautiful, prosperous, safe, devotional, and above all, white place, where the sun is always shining and the stars burn bright at night. The picket fences are white. The lawns are trimmed, weeds pulled, American flags on display. Walk into someone’s home and the first thing you see is a Bible. Mr. and Mrs. Jones may have a chest of sex toys in their closet, and cheat on their taxes, but in Trump & Pence Land they are as pure as Sierra Nevada snowmelt.  

We’re not winning. We’re the world’s basket case. Look at the numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths. Look at the economic calamity, the worst of which is yet to come. 

The Real American Divide

“Now it seems exhaustingly obvious that what’s happening to refugees, to the climate and the biosphere, to the poor under hypercapitalism, is a vicious disregard for their rights and humanity, and that some of the men perpetrating public brutality are monstrous in private is a given.” Rebecca Solnit

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has warned for years about the corporate takeover of the American state, but because Hedges is, for all intents and purposes, banned from mainstream media outlets, his warnings go largely unheard. 

I bring Chris Hedges up because South Dakota recently passed two laws to make protesting the construction of oil pipelines a crime. Eight other states, including Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois are considering similar measures. Think about this for a moment: energy extraction companies -- keen to avoid another Standing Rock -- flush with lawyers, lobbyists and cash, use the power of the state to make public dissent a criminal act. By passing such laws, under euphemistic titles like The Infrastructure Protection Act, the state prioritizes corporate interests over public welfare. This is, or should be, astonishing, but I would wager that most Americans are completely oblivious to such affronts to democracy, let alone the environment on which we all depend. 

Robert Reich recently wrote that the divide in America isn’t between the left and the right, it’s between the oligarchs and the rest of us. He’s correct. The oligarchs, the ruling class, the elites, call them what you want, have been on a 40-year roll, a grand neoliberal economic project of low taxes, privatization of public services, monopolies, scant regulation, and endless military conflicts. They have gutted America’s manufacturing base, decimated organized labor, made it legal to buy politicians (see the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling), and organized an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the many to the few. 

Grotesque income inequality leads to political inequality and political inequality makes it nearly impossible for citizens to exercise agency when it comes to protecting the environment, voting rights, reproductive rights, or stopping the Pentagon from sucking up almost half of all federal government revenue. Neoliberalism has been a spectacular success for the few, and an unmitigated disaster for the many. This is blatantly obvious, but look how both political parties cling to the tenets of neoliberalism. Only Bernie Sanders, and to some extent, Elizabeth Warren, come close to offering a critique of this system that is inexorably destroying our environment and what remains of representative democracy. But none of the bumper crop of Democratic presidential candidates dare to name the real villain: unregulated capitalism. 

And that’s the other factor about the oligarchs -- they set the boundaries of debate, what can be discussed, and what topics, like catastrophic climate disruption, will be studiously ignored. Capitalism itself is never questioned, it’s the only system on offer, the sole possibility, even if it ultimately renders this planet uninhabitable. 

It seems to me that neoliberalism has also stunted our collective imagination. The mass media (owned by a handful of corporations), the universities, the think tanks, all reinforce the dominant narrative of free markets, fossil fuels, imperialism (in the name of freedom and democracy, naturally), and the dangerous idea that the unbridled accumulation of wealth and power leads to virtue. It never has and never will. 

Bibi's Puppet

“Actually, the ones who at all costs want to appear strongest are usually the weakest, and at times they look ridiculous or pathetic.” Piero Ferrucci

Against all professional advice and the pleadings of our European allies, the Orange Menace has done it, pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement. Reneged. Bowed to his pals and our long time “allies”, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and the prime minister of Israel, both of whom would love to see the US attack Iran. The neocon wet dream may be within reach, the dream that arouses Pompeo and Bolton in the middle of the night more than kiddie porn arouses a child molester.

What a state of affairs, this slow-motion train wreck that may very well end with the US waging war against yet another Middle Eastern country that hasn’t attacked or directly threatened us. What will the trigger be, some Tonkin Gulf type incident, a provocation by Israel (this began on cue in Syria shortly after Trump made his announcement), or simply the steady drumbeat of hysterical reporting in the New York Times, on CNN and from Netanyahu? Convincing the American public that Iran poses an imminent threat to our sacred way of life and that violence is the only solution is easy, and Congress isn’t likely to put up much resistance. American propaganda can turn any foreign leader into the equivalent of Hitler. One thing is certain: Trump has killed any chance of negotiating with Iran. Sanctions will punish the people of Iran -- not that Trump cares about them -- as well as European nations like Germany that trade with Iran. So dumb, so destructive, so hypocritical.

So Trump.

In the Middle East, a region we have never understood, our wagon is lashed to Saudi Arabia, country of origin for most of the 9/11 hijackers, a barbaric place where the state stages public beheadings, and an avid sponsor of a perverse strain of Islam; and Israel, the world’s great occupier, land thief, and perpetual victim.

On the domestic front, Trump continues to fulminate against the press any time an unfavorable report or story about him emerges. I think the corporate press has been cowardly in reporting about Trump, unwilling to confront his obvious inadequacies and lack of intelligence, but then, the Orange Menace is so outrageous that his every idiotic mutter is covered, drawing coveted eyeballs to screens for advertisers, and ad revenue is far more important than intrepid reporting. Anyway, most members of the credentialed press are parrots. But Trump is so mentally deranged that he deems any negative or unflattering report about him as fake news; the man honestly believes that he is accomplishing deeds greater than any previous president. Trump is impervious to truth, proud of his ignorance, blind to anything outside of himself, and ever desperate for attention and approval.  

The Pelosi-Schumer Democrats appear content to bide their time and hope that Trump either self-destructs or is brought down when Robert Mueller sorts out the money pipeline linking Russian oligarchs and the Trump Organization. The only thing I ever agreed with Steve Bannon about is that the entire Russia-Trump story is about money laundering. Corporate Democrats seem to believe they can sit back, offer nothing in the way of policies, and capitalize on Trump’s unpopularity with much of the electorate. No upsetting Wall Street donors or the military-surveillance complex, no abandonment of the neoliberal fictions of the Clinton/Obama eras. This is a recipe for continued failure. After 18 disastrous months of Trump, Democrats still cannot find their voice. It’s not enough to be against Trump -- a majority of Americans are against Trump. Democrats need to get off their lazy asses and offer the electorate -- not only their corporate donors -- something to be for. This will not happen.

Short Takes:

The Premier League season ends tomorrow. Manchester City are champions, deservedly so, and my Chelsea is most likely to finish fifth and miss out on the Champions League competition next year. Our manager, Antonio Conte, will pack his bags and leave Stamford Bridge, yet another manager who couldn’t get on with the club’s top officials. It has been a frustrating year for Blues fans.

The Deranged Matador

“For more than an hour, Trump resembled a man on electronic detention, going cautiously through the motions, careful not to violate the terms of his invitation: no freelancing or potshots, no vulgarisms or mad gesticulations. For the most part, his big speech, in both substance and tone, could have been given by Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. It was pure political boilerplate." Jeffrey St. Claire

I remain skeptical about the hysteria surrounding Russian influence of the November election, a very sacred process according to our Imbecile-in-Chief, because hacking the DNC seems a weird route to take to tip an election. If it can be proven that Russian operatives corrupted voting machines and flipped votes from Clinton to Trump, that’s a different story.

My second observation about this entire controversy is the sheer hypocrisy of US ruling elites. How many foreign elections has the US meddled in over the last half century? It’s never an issue when we do it, but when the tables turn we get all sanctimonious and reverent about democracy. The fact is, like ruling elites anywhere in the world, “democracy” in America is tolerated as long as it doesn’t interfere with business interests, including the business of war, and private property.  

Third, the Russian angle diverts attention from a simple fact: Hillary Clinton ran a terrible campaign based on nothing more than not being a petulant man-child by the name of Trump. The fact that millions of Americans are sick and tired of the neoliberal economic policies favored by the Democratic Party since the early 1970’s, turbo-charged under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, never penetrated Hillary Clinton’s thick arrogance. Utterly tone deaf and out of touch, Clinton believed she could coast to the White House by pledging more of the same.  

There has been no reckoning in the Democratic Party, no reflection on what really went south in November or why Republicans rule, not only the White House and Congress, but a majority of state governments. Like someone lost in the woods, Democrats need to find a clearing and reorient themselves to the sun, and what that means is they need to turn left -- away from Clinton and Obama -- and return to being a party of working people.

Not to worry, they won’t, Democrats are far too obdurate and tied to corporate and Wall Street money.

Trump is a buffoon and a joke and an embarrassment, but as I’ve written many times, he is a logical product of neoliberalism, of corporate media and a culture awash in infotainment and fantasy, of corrupt politicians and purchased elections. William Greider, a writer I have long admired, wrote recently in the Nation that Trump is not the worst president we’ve ever seen, and though this may be true, Trump is the worst president in my lifetime and the shit he’s hawking will impact the lives of my children, and that bothers me.

I assume from Trump’s recent allegation that Barack Obama ordered the electronic eavesdropping of Trump Tower last fall (a ridiculous claim) that there may be something to the whispers and hints of contacts between Trump campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government. The timing of the allegation struck me as a classic attempt to divert the media’s attention from the very real possibility that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath. The move was so typical of Trump, and reminded me of a deranged matador waving a cape to draw the bull’s attention. Does Trump sense that a noose is tightening around his neck?

Let us hope.

The Smash & Grab Presidency

“The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.” Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear

The Trump blitzkrieg of cruelty and stupidity makes my head swim and, like many of my fellow citizens, it’s difficult to keep track of every outrage committed by the junta. These are not normal times. Part of me thinks that the flurry of activity by Trump and his minions is designed to keep people on the back foot, off guard, and confused. This would suggest a measure of planning and forethought. I don’t think Trump is capable of such mental feats, but the people in his inner circle might be.

One thing is for certain: like all demagogues, Trump employs fear to justify his actions. The US has not been attacked or threatened by Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia or the other nations Trump singled out in his racist ban, but they are predominantly muslim nations and in Trump’s twisted universe that automatically makes them suspect.

Let me state here that I am not afraid of muslims or Islam. I don’t feel any need to be “protected” from muslims by the US Government. Yes, there are muslims in the world who harbor grievances and carry out violent and barbaric acts; many adherents to radical Islam seem to want to restore a golden age of faith and obedience that never was, and in this they are not that much different from Trump and his gang, who want to restore the America that existed before civil rights, women’s rights, LGTBQ rights, labor unions, and environmental protections. Trump and his minions use fear and radical Christianity as cover for the kleptocracy they have planned.

Make no mistake, it’s vital for citizens to flood the streets in protest, but it’s equally vital for citizens to articulate an alternative vision to the Trump coup. Trump’s methods are more direct, harsh and callous than those offered during the Obama Administration, and what would have been offered if Hillary Clinton had prevailed in the Electoral College, but the common theme that unites Trump and Obama/Clinton is neoliberalism, meaning a permanent war economy, imperial adventures abroad, American exceptionalism, austerity for the poor and socialism for the wealthy, privatization of everything not anchored down, including Social Security and Medicare, and absolute fealty to Wall Street. Think of Obama/Clinton as a kinder, gentler, machine-gun hand, as Neil Young sang many years ago. Trump will ram an extreme form of neoliberalism down our throats; Obama/Clinton did, and would do the same, but with softer, more urbane rhetoric. Here’s another way to think of it: Trump will cut off your head with a single chop, Obama/Clinton kill you by a thousand little nicks, and they smile while they wield the blade.

I have been calling my senators non-stop though I rarely get through; most times the lines are busy and the voice mailbox is full.

Precarious times. My sense is that Trump and his band of miscreants are making a last ditch stand to hold onto white privilege. They know that demography and history are against them, and that the American brand of exploitative capitalism and crass commercialism is not sustainable, but they are determined to loot the country to the maximum extent they can before it all implodes.  

We interrupt this post to bring you the latest from the White House Press room:

Sean Spicer: I never said the Muslim ban was a ‘ban.’

Reporter 1: Uh, yes you did. So did President Trump.

Sean Spicer: No, that’s just the same old mainstream media bias. I never called it a ban and neither did President Trump. Extreme vetting, yes, ban, no. I never said ban; I called it what it is -- extreme vetting of people who threaten the safety of the American people.

Reporter 2: You said ban during an appearance at American University, and President Trump used the word on Twitter.

Sean Spicer: This is another example of you awful people creating fake news. President Trump has been very, very clear, hugely clear, that extreme vetting is our goal, not a ban. We are not banning anyone from any country and for the media to say we are is very, very unfair. You have no right to hold this administration to any reasonable standards of truth.

Reporter 1 to Reporter 2: Does your head hurt?

Reporter 2 to Reporter 1: All the time. Do these people realize there is video evidence of them saying ban?

Reporter 1: I can’t take 4 years of this shit. Are you reading 1984?

Reporter 2: Oh yeah, every night before bed. It’s the new Bible.

Trump's Royal Scam

“But some of us are not content to have a gap in opportunity and income that drives a wedge between rich and poor, causing the rich to become ever more callous and complacent and the poor to become ever more wretched…” Alice Walker

With every Trump Cabinet or advisory appointment I become more convinced that we are in for an orgy of crony capitalism. As if the oligarchs needed more power than they have already, corporations, hedge fund managers, the finance, insurance and real estate industry, and resource extractors, will wade into the public sphere up to their chests, and squeeze even more private gain from public assets.

Trump is loading his Cabinet with millionaires and billionaires, characters like Trump himself, who believe the rich are better and more deserving than the rest of us. Because of this belief, the Trump Gang will hardly bother to disguise their intentions -- they will simply pillage our nation, impoverish our future, and exacerbate human caused climate disruption. Of this I have no doubt. We are in for at least two years of staggering rip-offs and ethical malfeasance.  

Nomi Prins, a writer who knows a few things about Wall Street, calls Trump’s Cabinet picks one of the great bait-and-switch jobs in US history. Like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama -- and Hillary if she had prevailed in the undemocratic electoral college -- Trump says one thing and does the exact opposite. For instance, he talked a lot about bringing jobs back to America, and then nominates for Secretary of Labor a corporatist hostile to workers in general and what’s left of organized labor in particular. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were masters of this bait and switch, gifted orators who made you think they understood your problems, pain, anguish and hopes, so much so that you hardly felt it when they plunged the dagger in your back.

Trump is more direct, less polished and urbane. Trump embodies the worst traits of the capitalist system -- an insatiable hunger for money and power, a hunger that recognizes no boundaries or limits, a hunger incapable of regulating itself.

Someone, I think it was Chris Hedges, said that regardless of who sits in the Oval Office our corporate system functions quite independently, pursues similar neoliberal policies designed to either protect the wealthy from taxes and regulations or transfer money to the wealthy. The challenge for the rest of us -- if we are to mount a credible resistance -- is to critique the system of power and wealth concentration, not the personalities the system vomits up. This will not be easy because the corporate media rarely -- very rarely -- allows any critique of American-style capitalism. Instead, capitalism is deemed to be the only possible system, as sacrosanct and unassailable as the notion of American exceptionalism.

The concentration of wealth into few hands over the past 40 years has strangled our democracy and rendered millions of people disposable. The Trump Gang will deepen our class and racial problems and immiserate even more of our citizens in misery.

Hold on, it’s going to be ugly and mean.