Mob Boss

 “A hideous farce against a backdrop of sweat and misery.” Henry Miller

I enjoy walking in our yard in the evening, when the sun reflects from the windows and the air feels soft, the sky clear overhead. We have two small lemon trees, a jacaranda, and an old olive tree. Fuchsia bougainvillea, many varieties of cactus. Cars whiz past on Milpas, but with part of the yard shielded by a seven-foot hedge, the noise is muted. It’s a gift to have some turf to move around in. I give the compost bin a spin. My good fortune astonishes me. After 22 years working for the same employer, in the same building, I’m moving into a new phase of my life. It feels right, so I’m going with the feeling, see where it leads. For the first time in years, I feel comfortable in my skin, I’m not envious or jealous of others as I might have been in the past, and I’m treating myself with more kindness. 

When I go back in the house my wife is on the phone with her sister who lives in Santa Maria and is nearly blind and plagued with other serious health issues. Her little dog escaped from the yard again and was found strolling down the street. They talk about In The Heights, the movie that was released this week to Oprah-style hype. Underwhelming, says my wife. She’s more of a purest, Broadway is her passion, and she didn’t think the female leads had the voices for the roles. 

My news feed is full of reports about Trump’s corrupt Department of Justice, and how the DOJ, first under the reign of Jeff Sessions, and then The Dirty Doughboy, AKA William Barr, subpoenaed the digital records of at least two members of Congress, both Democrats, as well as reporters from the New York Times and CNN. Apple was also subpoenaed. We’re finding out about this now because the gag orders issued by federal judges have expired. The House members, Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, were harsh critics of Trump, in particular Schiff who prosecuted the first impeachment trial. It reads like a reboot of the old Nixon Enemies List. What’s interesting to me is the tone of surprise from the talking heads on MSNBC and CNN, as if they can’t believe these revelations. I’m not surprised at all. Trump is as corrupt as the United States is unequal. The true extent of the damage Trump caused won’t be clear for at least another decade, but the essential point is that you can’t hand the levers of political power to a person as corrupt as Trump without being certain that he will use that power corruptly, for his own ends and the ends of his friends and people useful to him. To understand Trump think only of The Godfather, the book by Mario Puzo, the films by Francis Ford Coppola. Trump desperately wants to be a Mob Boss in the style of Don Corleone, feared and respected, but he is doomed to play Fredo. Trump’s understanding of power isn’t sophisticated, it comes from the mob idea, that’s why he treated federal agencies as if they worked for him. Like a mob boss, Trump prizes loyalty to him above nearly all else, and punishing the disloyal is reflexive. I have long wondered what Trump and Putin talked about for an hour and a half in Helsinki a few years ago, but I’d wager that not only did Vlad have plenty of advice to offer Trump, but that Trump was receptive because he respects the power and fortune Putin has amassed. Look at Trump’s pardons of Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and the noxious Roger Stone for further evidence of straight payback. Trump plays the game out in the open. How will the sycophants and boot-lickers in the GOP spin these latest developments? We will hear cries of “Witch Hunt” and “this is all politically motivated by the Democrats.” Those ruses are reliable ways to deflect and distract, clog up the news cycle and social media, and confuse people about what it all means. What it means is that we had better invest some effort into reforming the Department of Justice, Trump-proofing it while there is time. A house won’t stand for long on a cracked foundation. 

A Step Closer to the Gallows

“What we know for sure is that the path to the criminal prosecution and imprisonment of the president of the United States is now clear. How it is handled will be a major test for the American system of government.” James Risen

Trump pals Manafort and Cohen are convicted and Fox News ignores the evolving story, sticks its collective head in a pile of Trump’s beautiful clean coal. Not surprising. Fox is the real fake news, a phony network that acts as the official propaganda organ of the right-wing and Donald J. Trump. But in the real world of facts, the noose is clearly tightening around Trump’s fat white neck. His former campaign manager and his lawyer/confidant/fixer face jail time, and that bleak future usually renders people quite cooperative. Sing, men, sing.

Day by day the sleaze oozes out of the White House, drips down the front steps, and streams toward the gutter. Trump’s criminal gang falls like dominoes. Who will be next? I’m old enough to remember Watergate, Nixon, the cover up, All the President’s Men, John Dean, Erlichman and Halderman, the web of lies, how the unraveling gathered speed and ended with Nixon waving like a spastic from the helicopter that carried him away. What’s happening with Trump is much worse. Not only is Trump an ignorant douchebag, he’s an odious human being, a liar and a grifter. If hell exists, Trump is headed there, express ticket, non-stop. He has debased his office, insulted the world, and divided this country.

Though Trump is marching them to the edge of the precipice, the lapdogs and sycophants of the GOP, having forgotten their oath of office and obligations under the Constitution, stand by their man. Trump says bend over, they do; Trump says spread your cheeks, they do. The Party of Lincoln. Sorry, Abraham, poor sod. When will Republican members of congress find their spines and turn on Trump? How much more water does the ship need to take on before the rats sprint for the exits?

Of course, the Trump spin machine is now on overdrive, denying and deflecting and dissembling and defending, insisting that there is no crime, no collusion, no campaign finance violation, even though Cohen copped to two counts of federal election violations. “Nothing to do with campaign finance,” Trump says. “I don’t know Cohen that well. Hardly know him, rarely talked to him. Might not be able to pick him out of a police lineup.” The detestable Huckabee Sanders ridicules media questions, regurgitates Trump’s ludicrous denials, and the machine spins on, black is white, 1+1=4, coal burns clean, and the economy of West Virginia is the envy of America. Here’s what the Orange Menace said to Fox News:

“I don't know how you can impeach somebody who has done a great job,” Mr Trump told Fox News. “I will tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor because, without this thinking, you would see – you would see numbers that you wouldn't believe, in reverse.”

Great job? The market would crash? I’ve said it before, but I have to say it again, the President of the United States of America is a fucking imbecile. There’s no point in even deconstructing his comments.

What happened to us, to America, a country that has been occasionally good but never, ever great? How in the world have we fallen so far so fast? Or does it only feel fast? Capital has been on the ascendancy for 40 years, buying politicians to write laws in their favor, chipping away at the welfare state and New Deal institutions, labor unions, environmental regulations, shifting manufacturing to low-wage nations, freeing capital from restraint, packing the federal courts with corporate-friendly judges; little by little amassing more power, more control in fewer hands, always a recipe for tyranny. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Boeing, Goldman Sachs. A corporate coup, as Chris Hedges might say.

And so it goes in Trump’s capitalist wasteland.

The Flame That Never Goes Out

“The potter’s wheels are still there, but the clay is not.” Andrew Solomon

The other day I was re-reading some columns by the great journalist I.F. Stone (and wishing he were around today, along with Alexander Cockburn and Hunter S. Thompson and James Baldwin), and Stone was describing the backlash to the Civil Rights movement that galvanized the presidential campaigns of George Wallace, an outspoken racist and white supremacist. Fast forward to 2015 and the malignant rise of Donald J. Trump, a similar reaction to a period of black ascendancy, eight years of a black man occupying the White House. Then I saw the new Spike Lee film, BlackkKlansman, and I was struck, again, of the incredible persistence of racist ideas in this so-called “all men are created equal” limited democracy we call America. Periods of progress for African-Americans are always followed by periods of regression, in the same way night follows day. When Lee, at the end, shows actual footage from the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, the point is slammed home. Torches cut through the dark in our past, torches cut through the dark in our present.

Let’s not forget that Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation in the White House in 1915. Fifty years later the Voting Rights Act was passed. But only a few years after that, Richard Nixon was playing his “Southern Strategy.” Fast-forward again, to the Obama years, and some whites, seeing the demographic writing on the wall, flock to Donald Trump, spouting the absurd notion of “white civil rights” and cheering for Trump’s stupid Border Wall and his ban on Muslims. Sometimes the racism in America is subtle, and sometimes it’s as loud as a five-alarm fire.   

Nor should we the forget the image of Michael Brown lying dead on the street in Ferguson, Missouri, and the cop who killed him walking free. On Bill Maher’s show recently the comedian D.L. Hughley said that Donald Trump is who we are. Hard to argue with that. Racism, like mendacity, pervades everything Trump does. The Orange Menace is freaking out again about NFL players -- black players -- refusing to stand for the national anthem. Trump says the players don’t know what they’re protesting about. Yes, they do. Rewind to Michael Brown and Oscar Grant and all the rest of the unarmed human beings shot down for having the audacity to have been born black.

Nobody wants to surrender an ounce of privilege, a foot of ground, a rung on the ladder. One person’s gain must come at another’s expense. We must feel superior to someone. And so we stumble onward trailing a list of grievances, real and imagined, and the planet smolders and the sun is unforgiving. Have to stand on the edge, balanced between hope and despair.

War: The Real National Pastime

The other day I found myself thinking about the military mentality of the United States. Perhaps this is the reason why professional football is our national pastime; with its complex formations and carefully diagrammed plays, the communication between coaches on the field and those in the press box -- which is not unlike that between a platoon leader and a forward observer -- football is war-like. Broadcasters often refer to football seasons as “campaigns,” certain players earn the title of “warriors,” and top-tier quarterbacks are sometimes called “field generals.”

We like to declare war on conditions, objects and tactics almost as much as we do on other nations. Back in 1964, the Johnson Administration declared War on Poverty, spawning a slew of programs that widened the social safety net and provided minorities greater opportunities to get a leg up on the American Dream. Unfortunately, LBJ was as preoccupied with the war in Vietnam as he was with poverty in America, and the costs of propping up the corrupt government of South Vietnam against the communists up north hampered his administration’s efforts to eradicate poverty. Moral of the story: choose guns or butter, but not both.

Good old Dick Nixon continued many of LBJ’s anti-poverty programs, but also decided in 1968 that illegal drugs were a grave and immediate threat to the nation and launched the War on Drugs. Nixon was a law and order type, and in his view the hippies, anti-war protestors and black power advocates were amped on speed or freaked out on LSD and had to be stopped before all hell broke loose. The drug war continues to this very day, fought in our inner cities as well as our suburbs, with harsh legal remedies such as mandatory sentences that are partly responsible for jamming nearly one million non-violent offenders into the prison-industrial complex. The United States now has the distinction of being the undisputed World Champion of Incarceration, with more than two million people locked away. Despite millions of dollars spent on enforcement, eradication and anti-drug education, demand for illicit drugs is as rampant as ever, which is one reason Mexicans are killing one another to control lucrative drug routes to the American market. Lesson here: beware of unintended consequences. Second lesson: drop the hypocrisy and legalize the drugs that Americans are going to use anyway. The Volstead Act didn’t work against alcohol, remember? We came to our senses and dropped that bad idea; by now it should be abundantly clear that the War on Drugs is a total failure.

My favorite American war has to be the War on Terror declared by George W. Bush in 2001. War on Terror is a catchy slogan that no doubt captured the nation’s fear and need for revenge after 9/11, but I never understood how war is declared on a tactic. The most successful anti-terrorism efforts involve painstaking police work, intelligence collection and international cooperation, not full-scale military operations. But we needed revenge so Bush sent American forces to Afghanistan to root out the Taliban who were said to aid and abet al Qaeda, even though most of the 9/11 plotters were Saudis operating out of Germany. The overwhelming firepower of the American troops sent the Taliban packing (temporarily) and persuaded Bush (or was it Dick Cheney?) that it was high time to take out another purported sponsor of terrorism – Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

Of course, it took a concerted campaign of monumental lies from the Bush gang to convince people that invading Iraq and changing the regime there was critical to winning the War on Terror. The governments of Great Britain and Togo, to name two, swallowed the lies and joined the Coalition of the Willing, but most people knew better and millions the world over took to the streets to protest. Bush carried on anyway, and it wasn’t long before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was crowing about Shock & Awe, and CNN and Fox were hyping the invasion as if it was a football game. Only when successful invasion became failing occupation -- and American casualties began to mount -- did cold reality set in. Lesson: think twice or three times before unleashing the dogs of war.

Well, if you can’t walk tall, at least carry a large stick. And we do. The American military is a colossus that straddles the planet, more ubiquitous than Coca-Cola. Some 280,000 U.S. military personnel (not counting private contractors) are positioned from Guam to Turkey, Greece to Greenland – 135 countries in all. Our economy may be second-tier and getting worse all the time, but for now we can still boast having the biggest stick in the world.

We love war and its trappings. Why else do F18 fighter plans streak over stadiums before major sporting events? Why are West Point cadets used as human props for presidential speeches? Why is such deference given to generals and admirals? We love military spectacle as much as the Soviets ever did. What we shy from are the human costs of war: images of dead civilians, flag-draped coffins being off-loaded from cargo planes, and photographs from VA hospitals of the wounded, the maimed, the burned and the forever shell-shocked.

Far too often we confuse brute military force with moral authority, deluding ourselves into believing that our military might is only used for just purposes.

If you believe that, then you must also believe that pigs will one day sprout wings and take flight.