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. 

A Nation of Racketeers

“The current situation of the United States is obscene, insane, and incredible. If someone had pitched it for a thriller novel or film a few years ago, they would’ve been laughed out of whatever office their proposal made it to because fiction ought to be plausible. It isn’t plausible that a solipsistic buffoon and his retinue of petty crooks made it to the White House, but they did and there they are, wreaking more havoc than anyone would have imagined possible, from environmental laws to Iran nuclear deals.” Rebecca Solnit

The most amusing thing I notice in America’s slow (but gathering speed) political, economic, and moral collapse is how many people still consider the Democratic Party a viable counterweight to Trump and Trumpism (which I define as endemic corruption, incompetency, and utter disregard for and ignorance of the Constitution and the rule of law), despite evidence that the Pelosi/Schumer Democrats are inept, timid, and devoid of any principles except serving their corporate donor base. At this point, can anyone reading these words tell me what Democrats stand for? Because I have no idea. The lessons of Hillary Clinton’s loss stood out like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, clearly visible to all -- with the exception of corporate Democrats.

In a recent piece for Truthdig, Chris Hedges wrote of the Democratic Party: “It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics.”

We face an urgent need to restructure our economy in a manner that slows destruction of the biosphere, but the Trump Administration is moving full-speed in the opposite direction, toward the abyss where our addiction to fossil fuels is taking us.

Here’s what Noam Chomsky had to say on this subject recently: “One cannot overemphasize the astonishing fact that the most powerful country in world history refuses to join the world in doing at least something -- in some cases a lot -- about this existential threat to organized human life (and to the species that are disappearing as the Sixth Extinction proceeds on its lethal course). And beyond that, is devoting its efforts to accelerating the race to disaster. And no less astonishing is the failure to highlight, even to discuss this extraordinary situation. Considering what is at stake, it is hard to find a historical parallel.”

We face an urgent need to end our perpetual wars on the Muslim world, and to drastically curtail mindless military spending, but no, our glorious, bloated and insatiable military is sacrosanct and untouchable.

We face an urgent need to provide healthcare for all citizens based on need, not bank account. Our for-profit insurance system kills people, bankrupts people, and leaves far too many with no care at all. Placing medical decisions in the hands of insurance company profiteers is insane.

We face an affordable housing crisis that is devastating communities and leaving even lower middle class citizens in a precarious situation, forced to devote a higher percentage of their incomes to keep a decent roof overhead.  

We face a multi-faceted political crisis caused by too much money, too many lobbyists for corporations and oligarchs, outright bribery, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and a two-party system that leaves millions of voters with no choice whatsoever. Tweedledee or Tweedledum isn’t a choice. A lack of independent news media plays into our political ignorance and dysfunction. The corporate media, dominated by cable, distorts, obfuscates, confuses, and, mostly, fails to do any meaningful reporting on climate change, the real economy, and international affairs like Israel’s murder of unarmed Gazans.

Short Takes:

Rest in peace, Philip Roth. You leave us with Portnoy, Zuckerman and David Kapesh, and some of the most beautiful prose ever produced in American literature.

NFL owners, all but two of whom are white and wealthy, have decided to prohibit their largely African-American labor force from taking a knee (or doing anything else) in protest during the national anthem. Compulsory patriotism, as Davie Zirin, sports editor for The Nation calls it. As far as I’m concerned, NFL players have the right to express their opinions in whatever way best gets their message across; they don’t cease to be citizens when they walk on the playing field or the court. Seems that the intent of the owners is to placate Trump and at the same time assert control over labor. White NFL fans can’t handle it when African-American athletes assert their human rights.

Chelsea Football Club won its 8th FA Cup trophy last weekend, salvaging some pride from a season that more often than not felt dull and dismal. No sooner had the team lifted the trophy than speculation about Antonio Conte’s future began in earnest. Will the Italian remain or leave, has he torched the bridge connecting him with the club’s board? Still unknown, though most fans are leaning towards Conte’s departure. Blowing through managers is a Chelsea FC staple. By August, the club’s make-up will likely look very different.

The veneer of civilized debate and democracy, of respect for tradition and American values, has been ripped off like a tin roof in a hurricane, revealing the corruption that has been there all along. The class war is long over, the rich won, and now nothing can hold them back. America: a nation of racketeers, by racketeers and for racketeers.

Now What?

“The aims of a demonstration, however, are symbolic: it demonstrates a force that is scarcely used.” John Berger

After the massive women’s marches that took place all over the world, it’s reasonable to ask, now what? How can the spirit and energy of the women’s marches be channeled into a political movement that has as its goal supporting candidates who can win elections -- at all levels of government -- and claim power? Because power is what it’s all about. The Democrats never seem to grasp this fact while the Republicans live it and breathe it. If you don’t believe it, look at photographs of Paul Ryan in Trump’s company, look at Ryan’s smug smile; it’s the smile of a man who knows he has power to wield.

The Democrats are as tone deaf today as they were on November 9. The likes of Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi still believe in the Clinton/Obama neoliberal, corporate-friendly playbook. They will never get it, and as long as they and other Democrats believe that the way to win is to behave like Republicans, the party will continue to flounder on the margins.

The Democratic Party needs an enema.

Make no mistake: Democrats will attempt to co-opt the spirit and energy of the women’s marches for their own ends. We can’t allow this to happen. We can’t allow public demonstrations to be solely focused as anti-Trump exercises: demonstrations need to express the desire for specific policy positions like single-payer healthcare, a reduction in defense spending, free public universities, reform of the criminal justice system, civil and reproductive rights, immigration, regulation to smooth the jagged edges of capitalism, and, perhaps most critical, action to combat climate change.

It’s folly to believe the Democrats will take up such causes in any meaningful way as long as collaborators like Schumer, Feinstein and Pelosi are in the mix. Corporate America and the wealthy have two political parties to do their bidding. Who do working people, women, minorities, immigrants, and other marginalized folks have in their corner? OK, sure, there are a few Democrats who still act like Democrats: Sherrod Brown comes to mind, and Elizabeth Warren (most of the time) but one or two or three champions are not enough to move past the inertia of the Democratic party. Just ask Bernie Sanders.

The first days of the Trump regime are living up to the nightmare and travesty many of us anticipated. Trump acts like a monarch, spews lies, disputes indisputable facts, attacks his detractors, and pushes a radical agenda. His inaugural speech was chilling, with echoes of other authoritarian regimes that placed loyalty and patriotism and allegiance above all. Whenever I think of fascism in America I think about Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, which envisioned what might have happened if Charles Lindbergh had defeated FDR in 1940. Here’s what Roth had to say about Trump in the context of The Plot Against America:

“...neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Well said, Mr. Roth. Every day with Trump will showcase another outrage, another assault, another middle finger to our country.