The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

What powerful man will be toppled next over charges of sexual misconduct, and why hasn’t the stain of misconduct reached our Groper-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump? Obviously, sexual harassment in the workplace pre-dates Trump ascending to the Oval Office, but Trump has altered the zeitgeist like no president before him. Trump continues to call his accusers liars, and claim, as only Trump can, that nobody respects women more than he does. Right. Trump respects women as long as they give in to his ego, narcissism, tiny, wandering hands, and boorish behavior. Isn’t it curious how the corporate media largely give Trump a pass at the same time they go on endlessly about movie moguls, actors, and other politicians?

I don’t know what to make of this flood of accusations, other than this is still a male-dominated world, and certain men in positions of power and authority seem to believe they can act as raunchy as they want without fear of consequence. Even an old goat like Charlie Rose is in on the act, pawing women at office parties, flashing his sagging member at co-workers, and who knows what else. All over the world, in offices, factories, hospitals, City Halls, and schools, women suffer at the hands of men -- and mostly in silence, behind closed doors, out of sight, and far too often when they do come forward, they are not believed.  

Depressing vibe for a holiday week, when the sun is shining here on the Platinum coast, and there’s cold beer in the fridge, Champions League football on the tube, and my daughter bugging me to raise our Christmas tree before the end of November, which I resist doing with all my being. I don’t believe in the holiday “season,” the ceaseless exhortations to buy, spend, and get the deal. We need to buy more stuff like we need to spend more money on the war machine. We’ve got enough stuff, enough wars. What we lack is a sense of balance and proportion, of fairness and equity, of empathy and compassion. Thanksgiving doesn’t get it’s due any more -- as dubious as the holiday is -- it’s just a springboard to the interminable Christmas season, the day before Black Friday. How many scenes of  shoppers surging through the doors of Wal-Mart or Target will the mainstream press feed us this year? Get your diamond tennis bracelet, your Lexus tied up with a red bow, the new iPhone whatever…

The air-conditioned nightmare is what Henry Miller called America back in the early 1940’s. Not sure what Henry would say if he were to come back for a visit with the living. The American nightmare is much, much worse now, and the air-conditioning sputters on and off. We are a hollowed-out hulk of an empire, a rust-bucket aircraft carrier running out of fuel and drifting wildly off course. The President is a dangerous fool and his party is a collection of hacks, perverts, pedophiles, and hard-hearted ideologues. The Republican-controlled Congress is very close to passing a breathtakingly hideous tax plan that will benefit a small number of wealthy people at the expense of the many. This disgraceful legislation will, when its effects are fully realized a few years down the trail, immiserate millions of average people.

And that’s when the air-conditioning switches off for good.

The Amnesia of Power

“It is time that we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality. There were slaves when it was written; there were still slaves when it was adopted.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I can’t recall. I don’t remember. I don’t have a specific recollection. In fact, I don’t even have a vague recollection.”

The white Attorney General of the United States of America can get away with this two-bit BS’ing of Congress. Imagine an African-American defendant trying these lame responses on an all-white jury. How quickly do you think the jurors would return a guilty verdict?

When the rule of law becomes a farce and a carnival show, and one class of people set themselves above the law, all is pretty much lost. The poor routinely experience the full weight of the law on their necks, even for relatively minor crimes, while the wealthy and well-connected plead amnesia and pillage with impunity.

Like a Greek tragedy, these are dark and perilous times. Trump returns from his jaunt to Asia and declares that American prestige and honor has been restored, and that the fecklessness of his predecessors has been vanquished. With the exception of the murderous president of the Philippines, most Asian leaders would disagree. What did Trump achieve? Next to nothing.

Why isn’t the disaster in Yemen in the mainstream American news? Saudi Arabia, with considerable assistance from the United States, is perpetrating genocide on millions of human beings, with death from the sky and cholera and famine on the ground, but we can’t be bothered to pay a minute of attention.

The detestable Roy Moore, candidate for United States Senate from Alabama, hides behind his Bible while he defends himself against accusations of sexual predation lodged by multiple women; but, hey, no problem, because according to Moore, the girls he creeped gave their consent. Grown men marry and fuck teenage girls in other nations, so why not in America? What’s wrong with a 32-year-old pervert stalking 14-year-old-girls in a shopping mall? Sounds like the perfect training ground for a United States Senator in this Age of Trump, himself a serial groper.

Hundreds of people, including journalists, who protested the inauguration of Donald Trump, are on trial and face decades in prison for engaging in one of the most fundamental acts a citizen in a democracy can engage in: dissent. Once dissent is criminalized we are finished as a democratic republic. You can shut out the lights and close the door and declare the American experiment over.

Russia, Russia, Russia. Talk about a distraction. I must be stupid because I still fail to see how Russia tipped the electoral college for Trump.

Trump embodies everything that is vile and loathsome in the American character, the ugly American writ large, loud, bombastic, ignorant, and dangerous.

Sitting here in California, waiting for the other combat boot to drop, feeling sick to my stomach every time I see Donald Trump on the TV screen, or hear his voice. While I know that it probably never will, I’m old enough to want my country to live up to its exalted ideals, not bow to its basest and most venal instincts. The veneer of participatory democracy has been ripped away like a tin roof in a hurricane, and now all can see the tyranny of the wealthy minority over the struggling majority. This is the new feudalism. I am a serf, no doubt about it, landless and without title. Look at the massive tax giveaway the GOP-controlled House of Representatives just approved for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Never mind the cruelty of this bill, what of the utter hypocrisy? Any time Barack Obama proposed to spend money, every GOP representative squealed about the budget deficit and accused Obama of saddling future generations with ruinous debt. Remember the Tea Party?

We have the worst government money can buy, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.  Those of us who live out here in the real economy of rents and medical bills and student loan payments and every other expense it takes to survive, are going to bear the burden if the United States Senate follows the House. Best prepare to bend over. And make no mistake -- this will hurt.

A Dubious Anniversary

“Be it ancient Rome or modern-day America, you’re either citizen or slave. Lion or Jew. Guilty or innocent. Comfortable or uncomfortable.” Paul Beatty

Another day, another mass shooting by a disturbed white man with a history of domestic violence. As always, the NRA and its political enablers wring their bloody hands, offer thoughts and prayers, or like Vice President Pence, vow to stand against evil, whatever that empty statement means, and then proceed to go about their deadly business. The problem isn’t the prevalence of firearms, they always say, in fact, what we need are more people armed with guns...

How much more proof is needed that this is a sick society? Plagued by an excess of rage and animosity, fueled by people like Donald Trump. Mass shootings won’t stop any more than the oligarchs and plutocrats will stop parking their loot offshore to avoid paying US tax. There are myriad forms of violence at work in America, Inc, against the poor, people of color, the working poor, and the environment. We live by Hellfire missile abroad and the AR-15 at home. The rage bubbles like a pot of stew on the stove. But do we stop and consider the systemic causes of our maladies, the impact of savage capitalism on flesh and blood human beings? Rarely. Getting to root causes takes time, effort, reflection, and critical thinking. The party that wields political power over the country disdains intellectual activity, ridicules anyone who searches for truth or questions prevailing orthodoxy, who points out the hypocrisy of our leaders. It’s much more comfortable to believe in myth and fairy tales, the Garden of Eden and the Yellow Brick Road, magic beans, the Lone Ranger,  Superman, and the Big Myth -- American Exceptionalism.

King Donald I is in Asia hawking American-made weapons. Big, beautiful, shiny, weapons. South Korean protesters tell Trump to shut up and go home.

Meanwhile, Trump stooges like Steve Mnuchin and Paul Ryan are spewing lies about the GOP tax plan, the latest blatant giveaway to our wealthiest and least deserving citizens, by alleging that slashing taxes for the wealthy will create jobs for everyone else. This is the tried and true and discredited, let-me-trickle-my-piss-down-your-leg idea that only leaves wage workers standing in a noxious puddle.

A year since the anti-democratic Electoral College went for Trump. The Orange Menace, who lost the popular vote, let’s not forget, and has no mandate, has flailed and failed on all fronts, his approval rating is in the toilet, historically low for a president in the first year of his first term. Of course, in Trump’s alternative universe, he is winning like no president before, his ratings are fantastic, the stock market is soaring, and America is on course to be great again. The hacks, sycophants, incompetents, and criminals who surround Trump scheme day and night to rob the treasury and make millions of Americans absolutely miserable.

As Jeremy Scahill says, history and context matter. The Orange Menace didn’t rise from a vacuum -- he was vomited up by a system of predatory capitalism, racism, and militarism.

J. Edgar's Ghost

“The FBI took a shotgun approach to target and harass protesters partly because of its belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal.” 1976 Senate Report on the FBI

The FBI has come up with a new threat, BIE, which means Black Identity Extremists. Echoes of cointelpro in the 1960’s and 70’s when the FBI spied on civil rights activists and leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr. If you actively protest the killing of unarmed black people by white police officers this might make you a “black identity extremist.” If you march, picket, hold a sign at a rally or follow Black Lives Matter on social media you might land on the FBI’s radar. Are black human rights activists -- because that’s what we are really talking about here, human rights -- a threat to the republic? More than the resurgent KKK and white supremacists armed to the gills? As far as I can determine, Black Lives Matter doesn’t advocate for the wholesale killing of white people; it’s goal is to stop the unjustified killing of unarmed black people by police officers.

What is missing in all the media furor over presidential condolence calls to the kin of fallen service members? Put aside the Orange Buffoon’s idiotic blathering -- by now we should know that Trump will always say the wrong thing, then lie about what he said, then attack someone when they question his lie. The question not being asked is why the United States deploys military personnel to places like Niger. Why are we there? Why are US military forces still based in Japan and Germany, Italy and England and South Korea and Turkey? Why are US soldiers in Kuwait? Why is the US still in Afghanistan after 16 years of futility? These are the questions that should be asked, debated, and justified.

Such a debate will never happen. The empire is a force that can only be perpetuated, never questioned. The military budget is sacrosanct. To argue against military spending is to be branded as someone who “doesn’t support our troops.” OK, I don’t, because I see America’s military power as a destabilizing force in the world, a force that is used to impose America’s brand of cut-throat capitalism and market domination.

The temperature soared to 102 degrees in Santa Barbara yesterday, a record, The heat was thick, oppressive. I watched the hills for signs of smoke, but thankfully saw none. The winds were calm. I sat on the deck with a cold IPA and listened to a podcast on FAIR.Org. Inside the apartment every fan was going full bore but having no real effect. I thought of the memoir I’m reading, For Love of the Dollar by J.M. Sevrin, an undocumented immigrant’s tale of survival in the northeast of America in the last decade of the 20th century, around the time Disney was scrubbing Times Square in NYC, making the area safe for tourists and small children. This made me think of the gentrification happening here in SB, on Haley Street and along Milpas, big projects on small lots, with limited parking and the usual exorbitant price tags that no wage worker can afford. Across the country affordable housing is in short supply, but in SB the supply is infinitesimal. The retail corridor on State Street is struggling mightily, and losing, the battle against behemoth Amazon and many storefronts sit vacant, windows staring. City fathers and mothers and the merchant class lay the blame for State Street’s woes on the homeless, demand the police run the homeless off to places where they can’t be seen by tourists. Out of sight, out of mind, but still a problem, only for someone else. The five mayoral candidates talk about leadership, vision, water, and housing, but the problems faced here are much larger than any of them will admit. The SB I was raised in died many years ago and is never returning. Another foodie joint, craft beer hall, wine bar or yoga emporium isn’t going to save the city.

And so it goes.

Harvest of Disaster

“We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.” W. E. B. Du Bois

Leave it to Du Bois. A “harvest of disaster” is precisely what we are facing in this time of Trump and the collapse of American empire. Following the House, Senate Republicans voted on a tax plan that will stand as a massive rip-off of the public treasury all so “tax relief” can be delivered to their wealthy benefactors. What is left of vital social programs like Medicare and Medicaid will take a gut punch. The glee on the faces of the mostly white, male, and wealthy Senate Republicans after the party line vote was nauseating. If any more evidence of the fact that we are ruled by oligarchs was needed, Senate Republicans just delivered it. If a national budget is a map of a nation’s priorities then it is very clear that the only priority in America is to give more to those who already have the most.

The war machine gets its money. The fossil fuel extraction industry gets its tax subsidies, as does big pharma and agriculture, and of course the finance boys and girls -- best represented by Goldman Sachs -- reap all manner of perks at our expense. The rich will get even richer, wealth inequality will deepen; the poor and working poor will bear the burden, as they always do.

Year after year we sow the same seeds, reap the same harvest. Trump, as I’ve written many times, is not the cause, he’s a symptom of a diseased, corrupt and compromised system. Trump is only hastening America’s decline and laying bare for all with the will to see that this country has misplaced its soul. Writing on the Truthout website William Rivers Pitt put it this way: “You are certainly a man of the times, The Man, avatar of all that ails us. You are, among other things, the end product of a decades-debunked economic model that consigns a vast majority of Americans to poverty and stasis while lavishing trillions on the wealthy. This we call ‘trickle down,’ and we've waited half a century now for the rain that never comes.”

I feel like I’m watching a train wreck in super slow motion. Sparks and flames, metal twisting, glass shattering, and bodies tossed around like trees in a hurricane. I don’t understand how we can be so blind, so ignorant, so cruel. Has the US always been this fucked up and I just didn’t see it? We seek peace and stability by waging endless war; we propose to stop senseless gun violence at home by making it easier for more people to own more guns; we purport to blunt the jagged edges of climate change by denying science and the evidence of our own senses.

The Democratic Party, ever willing to render itself inept and irrelevant, tacks steadfastly to the failed ideology embodied by Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So much for the best and brightest.

Despair is a bitch. Staring into the abyss for hours on end is exhausting. We must still rise from our beds, do whatever work is before us, pay bills, help children with homework or with navigating the treacherous shoals of social life, take care of elderly parents, and deal with the unexpected. In other words, though our ears are ringing and our face is battered, we have to keep coming off the corner stool and walking to the center of the ring.

California Burning, America Vanishing

Parts of California are burning. October and November are fire season in the Golden State, but what has happened in the Napa area boggles the imagination -- some neighborhoods look like they were bombed by an invading army. Houses reduced to smoldering ash, cars torched, as if Mother Earth pitched a temper tantrum and decided to retaliate for how shabbily we have treated her. Climate scientists have been warning for years that one potential result of human-caused climate change will be fiercer storms, floods, and wildfires. Houston, Puerto Rico, Napa. Get the idea now?

I have Trump fatigue. How about you?

The Orange Buffoon embodies the most reprehensible and vile aspects of the American character: ignorance, bombast, greed, cruelty, racism, arrogance, and violence. In less than a year, Trump has turned the White House into a risible shitshow. His approval rating is in the low 30’s and will not climb any higher unless he launches war against North Korea or Iran, in which case the political class and corporate media will grovel at his feet and a majority of Americans will rally around him as if he were the reincarnation of George Washington. All occupants of the Oval Office understand this reliable escape route from tanking poll numbers or domestic scandal.

Neal Gabler wrote a piece for the Bill Moyers website recently that put forth the idea that we are viewing Trump and his entourage of miscreants through the wrong lens. We can’t, Gabler wrote, view Trump through the standard political lens but must view him through the lens of entertainment, of ratings and clicks and social media traffic, the same lens through which we see Kim Kardashian. Trump, with his incessant demand for attention and adulation, is flipping the usual script, replacing politics with entertainment, and as long as people keep tuning in, he will keep attacking African-American athletes, US senators, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, the people of Puerto Rico, his own Secretary of State, and the corporate media; he will constantly up the ante and create false drama with arch comments like, “You’ll see.” An approval rating in the low 30’s matters little when you can still command all the media attention, and when that attention is all you care about. Gabler’s hypothesis is intriguing and might be the only way to understand the disaster that is Donald Trump.

While Trump preens, postures, lies, attacks, threatens, and makes an ass of himself, the kleptocrats around him are doing serious damage to the nation, making every economic, social and environmental problem worse by dint of their greed and incompetence. The Trump Administration’s response to the devastation of Puerto Rico is criminal, but no matter how many Puerto Ricans suffer or perish, you can bet that no one will be held accountable. That is, unfortunately in this awful year of our lord 2017, how our system works -- the political and economic elites, the wealthy, play by a completely different set of rules. Like white police officers who gun down unarmed black men, there is never a penalty to pay.

When our country is this jacked up and corrupt, nobody is obligated to stand for the national anthem, salute the flag, or recite the pledge of allegiance. No matter what Trump and Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions say, dissent is never unpatriotic. Dissent is the essence of patriotism. If we don’t demand an end to predatory capitalism, rigged elections, shitty medical care, endless wars, racism, gun violence, jingoism, and ecocide, nothing will change. Kneel, sit, bow your head, turn your back, raise a clenched fist, be an American, stand for something and demand better before it’s too late.

World Leader in Death

“Violence runs through US society like an electric current offering instant pleasure from all cultural sources, whether it be the nightly news or a television series that glorifies serial killers.” Henry A. Giroux

Columbine. Virginia Tech. Aurora. Sandy Hook. San Bernardino. Orlando. Las Vegas. By some estimates I’ve read, there are 300 million firearms in the United States, and every single day in this country, 92 people are killed in firearm related incidents. After a mass shooting I always feel the same sense of unreality, numbness, and then outrage because no matter how murderous the rampage -- and the scope of the Vegas massacre is almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around -- nothing changes. The NRA still presses campaign donations on easily purchased members of Congress, and launches a PR blitz designed to blunt any criticism, and of course remind us all of the sacred Second Amendment. Politicians wring their hands, offer prayers, tell us to honor the innocent victims, but in the next breath declare that now isn’t the time to have a debate about sensible firearm protections. (If not now, when?) Whoever the sitting president is makes a speech condemning the violence, knowing full well that the carnage will continue in another place, at another time. Obama’s rhetoric after a mass shooting brought people to tears, but his beautiful words never changed a thing. (As emotionally stunted and inappropriate as ever, the current occupant of the White House offered his “warmest condolences.”)

Firearms are historically, politically and culturally embedded in our American DNA. Violence is as much a part of our creed as the Declaration of Independence and the Star-Spangled Banner, as college football and NASCAR.  

More details about the Vegas shooter emerge in fits and starts, as they always do in the aftermath of a mass shooting, though his motive remains murky. Was his intent only to inflict death and pain and trauma, to forever alter thousands of lives, or just to etch his name in the history book as the architect of the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history? Job accomplished on all counts. The man is in the annals now, the latest, but not the last, deranged white man with demons running around his brain and a huge cache of weapons and ammunition in his garage.

The numbness returns. A woman who trains in the dojo I attend was at that concert in Las Vegas on Sunday night. She survived unscathed, physically, but her husband told me that she has descended deep within herself, suffering from wounds unseen.

This madness never ends. America has never been great, and only good when it suits the powerful, but nobody can argue that we are not the world leader in death, at home and abroad.

Take a Knee

“But even he knew that things would turn out all right in the end. They would, because they had to.” Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Where to begin? Puerto Rico? The NFL? College basketball? Another week of Donald J. Trump’s vicious idiocy. Another week in which the United States is diminished in the eyes of the world. The mind reels, the gut convulses, but this is a logical juncture in a country that rewards the most perverse incentives, that puts profit above human life, that wages war indiscriminately, that thinks tax cuts for those with the most is sound economic policy, and that refuses to come to grips with the fact of climate change.

Which brings me back to Puerto Rico, our island colony. I wrote an angry e-mail to my congress person, complaining about the tepid response from Washington to the humanitarian crisis on the island. Imagine, I wrote, if Santa Barbara County had been hit by back-to-back magnitude 7.5 earthquakes. Would you accept the foot-dragging currently on display in Washington? Our idiot president is too busy attacking African-American athletes for exercising their first amendment right to protest injustice, racism, and violence to fret about Puerto Rico; besides, we’re not talking about aiding white Americans, right? Puerto Rico was in distress before Irma and Maria devastated the island, held in bondage by an unelected Fiscal Control Board hellbent on extracting every last nickel to satisfy bankers and hedge fund managers and God knows who else. Capitalism and humanitarian impulses are not compatible. But don’t worry, Puerto Rico, Trump is going to pay you a visit soon. Don’t be surprised if he tries to sell you some hats.

So, it appears that the FBI has determined that some NCAA basketball programs are cheating. The shock! Of course NCAA colleges and universities cheat. They do it because there is inordinate pressure to win, to build a team that can go far into the annual March tournament and thereby rake in big money for the school. I hate college sports. I don’t watch them. The day I might watch is the day college athletes are paid to play the games. As it stands, many college athletes are being exploited, as are most workers in a capitalist system. Add the NCAA to the long list of American institutions soiled and compromised by greed.

I don’t watch NFL games either, not simply because I find American football utterly boring, which I do, but because the NFL -- more than any other professional sport league -- is a die-hard promoter of the American war machine. If the NFL wants to hawk beer, automobiles, cell phones, carbonated beverages or artery-destroying fast food, go ahead, but get the hell out of the war promotion racket, tell the Pentagon to fuck off.

Ah, but are we not Americans who love violence? Yes, we are.  We can’t live without bloodsport. Our president acts like he’s a tough guy, but it’s clear that Trump is a pussy who wouldn’t last 10 seconds in a street brawl. Sad, pathetic excuse of a white man, draft dodger, insecure blowhard. Can you imagine Trump as a soldier in a war zone? He’d shit his fatigues in thirty seconds and start wailing like a baby, probably call for his nanny or Melania.

Don’t be surprised that Tom Price has resigned in disgrace for flying in luxury on the people’s thin dime. If you are a regular reader of this page you know that I refer to the Trump administration as Trump and the Kleptocrats. Every last one of these motherfuckers signed onto the Trump team thinking it would lead to a trip to the bank. These people are punks and thieves.

Take a knee, and then rise up.

Welcome to Oregon

I made a short trip to Tillamook, Oregon to visit my brother. We hadn’t seen one another for eleven years. I flew into Portland, rented a car, and drove west in the rain. When I crossed into the Tillamook city limits I was pulled over by an Oregon State trooper for speeding. The trooper politely introduced himself and said he clocked me doing 68 in a 45 mile per hour zone. I didn’t realize I was traveling that fast. The trooper asked what brought me to Tillamook, I told him, he handed my license back and advised me to slow down.

Welcome to Oregon.

My brother’s first house in Tillamook was located on Trask River Road, a stone’s throw from the Trask River, but he has since purchased a manufactured home on a cul-de-sac in the city proper. The street is crushed rock and full of potholes, and without sidewalks. The houses of his immediate neighbors are well maintained, but many homes on the adjacent streets are weather-beaten, sagging, yards littered with rusted cars, refrigerators, and motor homes. Maintaining a house in that wet climate isn’t easy, and some folks don’t bother trying. Why park your truck on the street when you can park on your front lawn? Coming from Santa Barbara, a city obsessed with its appearance, its beauty and refinement, and the astronomical cost of its real estate, where the crappiest house costs a Midas-sized fortune, I wasn’t used to seeing dilapidated houses, pot-holed streets or trucks parked on lawns.

About 5,000 people call Tillamook home. There’s an elementary school, junior high, and high school (Home of the Cheesemakers!) in town, a big Hampton lumber mill, the Tillamook cheese factory (major tourist draw), a hospital that appears to be fairly new, and the air museum just outside of town, a relic from World War II. There’s not much to see downtown. On my first day we drove up to the Trask River in my brother’s Subaru station wagon. In less than ten minutes we were in the country, passing dairy farms, houses that were set well back from the road with plenty of distance from their nearest neighbor, pastures where cows grazed on green grass. It rained off and on. I saw a few houses that appeared to be abandoned, overgrown with wild blackberry vines; an excavator parked in a field was suffering the same fate, and I wondered who had parked it and how long it had been sitting there. My brother told me that most of the dairy farmers were members of the Tillamook Creamery Association. We saw some log trucks and some trucks hauling milk. We hiked along the Trask for a mile or so. My brother has a degenerative back ailment and he moves slower than he once did. Water dripped from Douglas firs that towered 60, 80, even 100 feet above our heads onto the damp forest floor. Ferns, tangled vines, rotting logs; thick moss -- thicker than I’d ever seen -- hung from the branches of trees, like long beards. We didn’t see another soul. The sound of the Trask followed us. “The river is pretty tame this time of year,” my brother told me, “but come January and February it rages like you can’t believe.”

My brother is experiencing serious fear and loathing of Donald Trump. I have never known him to be a political person, I didn’t know he voted, but Trump and his band of kleptocrats have knocked my brother for a loop, and, like many, many Americans, he feels an intense embarrassment almost every time Trump opens his mouth or takes to Twitter to spew his violent, vapid, vicious idiocy. He rations the amount of corporate news he watches; most of the time, his television is tuned to the Weather Channel. He doesn’t own a computer, a tablet, a Kindle, a laptop, an iPhone, and has no electronic footprint; he still writes a paper check when he does his grocery shopping at the Fred Meyer store.

We drove all over Tillamook county in the two days I spent there, from the forest to the coast, Netarts, Cape Meares, around Tillamook Bay to Garibaldi. It rained, hard at times, and then the sun would make a brief appearance and steam would rise off the pavement and the pasture land. After nearly 50 years in California I don’t know if I could live in a wet, damp, chilly climate like Tillamook but I enjoyed the beauty and diversity it had to offer, and the experience of walking in the deep woods was rejuvenating. My brother is happy there and lives a simple existence. He manages his back pain by swimming every morning at the YMCA, but by 6:00 p.m. or so he needs to get off his feet. He reads a lot. He fishes for cutthroat trout on the Trask when he can.

It was good to get away, good to renew the ties of blood, good to step off the treadmill of daily routine, work, chores, obligations. When I returned home I felt wealthy.

Doing Time in My Mind

“Trump embodies the decayed soul of America. He, like many of those who support him, has a childish yearning to be as omnipotent as the gods. This impossibility, as the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote, leads to a dark alternative: destroying like the gods.” Chris Hedges

My children were born one day apart, September 3 and 4, five years apart. My son is now 21, my daughter 16. The United States has been at war in Afghanistan my daughter’s entire life. My son was born during the Clinton administration, which, politically, seems a very long time ago. When my son was two or so, the Lewinsky scandal broke and the GOP controlled Congress went after Bill Clinton with a vengeance. The Puritanical streak lodged in the American psyche kicked in and day after day the news was full of lurid speculation about semen stains on a blue GAP dress and Bill Clinton’s insatiable libido. For telling fibs about a blowjob, Clinton was impeached. Today a ridiculous man who fibs spectacularly all the time about damn near everything sits in the Oval Office.  

We have to live in the present but cannot forget the past. Around my children’s birthdays I always think about the passage of time. I think about markers, significant events like birthday parties, graduation ceremonies, Christmases. I think about who I was and who I am, and I wonder if time is my nemesis or my friend. In my day to day life time feels like a weight I haul around. I’m at an age where there is likely more of life behind than ahead. I despair a little when I think of all the books I will never read, the places I may never see. Instead of expanding, my viewpoint seems to wither and shrink. I wonder if something is wrong with me. To look back at one’s life with regret -- and ahead with trepidation -- can’t be healthy. I also think about people I’ve known who have died, and as the years pass the number grows. I see the effects of time on people all around me, in Trader Joe’s on Sunday afternoon, in line at the movie theater: arthritic fingers, swollen feet and ankles, bent backs, mottled skin, gray hair. Evidence of Time’s merciless toll is everywhere. Every human will suffer. Such is the nature of existence. For the most part, we receive no instruction in dealing with the nature of our existence.

Funny how the certainty of youth, the clarity of right and wrong, just and unjust, becomes the doubt of middle age. My son is far less of a fool than I was at his age. At 21 I was serving my third year in the Air Force, in Japan, and because I could sustain myself I felt like a grown-up when in reality I was still an immature, hot-headed boy. In my mind the memory of that time is sepia and dim. I spent hours riding trains, and when I wasn’t riding I was walking, from the train station to my tiny apartment, from the station to the front gate of Yokota Air Base. How many miles? I have journals from that time that I have carted from Japan to Honolulu, and from Honolulu to Seattle, to Irvine in Orange County, and then back home to Santa Barbara, that I refuse to read for fear of embarrassment. I should pile them in the backyard and set them on fire, and one day, perhaps I will. When you’re a hot-headed, foolish young man as I was, you do things that hurt yourself, but also others.

My children will make their way in a world radically different from the one in which I made mine. I fear for them. First, because they are already casualties of a failed economic system. Second, and intimately linked to the first, because of the real prospect of catastrophic climate change. And third, because of the invasive power of the US surveillance state. The balance of power between the government and the governed has never been so out of kilter, and unaccountable power is terrifying. But even more I fear for my children because of the strong undercurrent of cruelty that is loose in our land. As the US has become more fearful of losing its hegemony around the world, compassion for its own citizens has atrophied. Instead of a helping hand, more often than not only a clenched fist is offered.

I feel sad for the people of Bangladesh, Houston, and parts of the Caribbean, who have been severely harmed by natural disasters exacerbated by climate change. It pains me that my country has for so long been so two-faced and craven about our environment, fixated on economic gain and geopolitical advantage to the exclusion of human life.

Forever Unhinged

“Market capitalism is simply not conducive to mutual human concern. It is a system based on social warfare, cultivated by its root socioeconomic orientation.” Peter Joseph, The New Human Rights Movement  

The corporate-owned media always acts surprised when Donald J. Trump goes off script and rants, as he did after the murder of a peaceful demonstrator in Charlottesville, and then again at a pro-Trump rally in Phoenix. But nothing Trump does or says or tweets should surprise anyone. Disturb yes, surprise, never. Trump was unhinged when he declared his candidacy for the White House, unhinged on the long primary campaign trail, unhinged through the general election, and unhinged the day he sat behind the big desk in the Oval Office. Trump hasn’t changed. Trump can’t change. Trump won’t change.

What should be clear to the people of the United States, and unfortunately isn’t, is that Trump and the two political parties have no interest in confronting the massive problems facing the country. This isn’t necessarily because all the people in government are evil fucktards -- though some of them (Attorney General Sessions, for instance) surely are -- but because our political and economic system is designed to serve the interests of private property and private capital. Forget all the rhetoric about “We the people” and “all men are created equal”. Our system rewards particular behaviors along a very narrow spectrum that doesn’t include the welfare of the many. In the past, in the New Deal era for example, because the entire system was teetering, the negative consequences caused by unregulated capitalism had to be addressed and some effort to better distribute resources undertaken. This worked reasonably well for several decades. In fact, the financial reforms and social initiatives of the New Deal era worked too well, presented too much of a challenge to the system and those who own and profit from it.

Poll after poll demonstrates that Americans of all political persuasions want affordable college tuition, health care, decent housing, safe roads and highways, clean drinking water, retirement security, and other basic necessities of life. The wealthy individuals and corporations who run the country have no interest in any of these things.

Our failed, stupid war in Afghanistan is set to last a lot longer. When Trump earlier this week announced a change in strategy, which was not much of a change at all, except perhaps to exacerbate tensions between India and Pakistan, many corporate media talking heads applauded in their usual knee-jerk way, so conditioned are they to support war. Insert 4,000 troops or 40,000 and the US is still going to flounder, and ultimately fail. Our brave and heroic troops may, as Trump boasted, kill some terrorists, but they will also kill and displace hundreds, if not thousands, more innocent civilians than have been killed and displaced in the past 16 years. This means creation of more fanatics filled with grievance and hatred and hell-bent on revenge.

Obviously influenced by the military men he has surrounded himself with, Trump offered only destruction and death in a country in desperate need of a political solution. Does the US even bother with diplomacy in the age of Trump and the Kleptocrats? Why talk when you can bomb? The majority of the American people are paying no attention to Afghanistan, have probably forgotten that any US troops are there at all. What we should have learned is that   starting a war is easy, ending one is much more difficult; the generals dig in, refuse to face reality, demand more troops, more drones, more cruise missiles, and promise that victory -- whatever that means -- is around the corner, within reach. Defense contractors like Raytheon and Boeing have a huge financial stake in keeping wars going, and their lackeys in Congress are scared to death to oppose them.

Do we ever learn? Of course not. And what does a culture of endless war abroad mean on the domestic front? Can a nation engaged in foreign military conflicts enjoy peace and prosperity at home? Ask the protesters at Standing Rock or activists from Black Lives Matter what it feels like to confront militarized police forces.

The taxpayer money that has been poured into Afghanistan, wasted, lost, funneled to warlords and corrupt officials, could easily alleviate the crushing student loan debt faced by so many Americans.

Opportunity lost in the fog of endless war.

Fire & Fury

“By interpreting freedom as the multiplication and the rapid satisfaction of needs, they do violence to their own nature, for such an interpretation merely gives rise to many senseless and foolish desires, habits and most absurd inventions.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The elderly of North Korea know fire and fury very well. They survived carpet-bombing by the US Air Force, the dropping of napalm on their towns and cities. War and utter destruction is their history, never to be forgotten. Yes, the leader of North Korea is as nutty and unstable as the leader of the United States, but let’s keep in mind that North Korea doesn’t stage massive military exercises -- war games they are called -- near the border of the United States.  

I keep reminding myself in these days of August that Donald Trump and his band of incompetent kleptocrats and bigots are a symptom, not a cause. The problem is neoliberalism, imperialism and militarism; I keep reminding myself that American capitalism is a failure, a brutal and inhumane system that works -- spectacularly well -- for only a small percentage of the population and leaves the majority insecure, indebted and in misery; I keep reminding myself that the economy is a castle of sand, sure to be toppled by the next big wave; I keep reminding myself that racism lies at the heart of the American experience, and that it takes little to unleash that wicked genie from the bottle. Look at what just happened in Charlottesville, Virginia. To me it was like being shot back in time, to 1955 or 1860 or 1741. We can say, “this isn’t us,” but it’s not true -- this is us. Racist, violent, intolerant and ignorant.

The author Ta-Nehisi Coates, speaking on Democracy Now, placed the inaction of the Charlottesville police in perfect context when he said, imagine if, after the killing of Eric Garner by police, black people had organized a march and flooded into the streets laden with torches, clubs, guns and shields, and brawled in the streets with counter-protesters. Do we think the police would have stood idly by and done nothing? Unarmed black people are gunned down in this ass-backward country for driving a vehicle with a busted taillight.

Fareed Zakaria passes himself off as one of the wise men of CNN, but, like so many of his colleagues, he’s a hack who toils within the narrow confines of what masquerades as public debate. On Bill Maher’s HBO show the other day Zakaria said that illegal immigration has been a long-standing problem in part because it has driven down the wages of working Americans. Maher let this trope pass without challenge. Wages in America have been flat for decades by design. Offshoring manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and other countries where labor is dirt cheap was a conscious decision by American corporations and the allies they bought in government. Trade, tax and monetary policies that favor capital over labor, investors over workers, have also contributed to wage stagnation here. And let’s not forget the effects that union busting have had on wages. Decades of corporate attacks on what once was called Big Labor by corporations, with support from Republicans and Democrats, have done far more than illegal immigration to produce the staggering level of wealth inequality that is not only tolerated in this country, but celebrated.

Every single day King Donald I exposes the deep cracks and fissures in the foundation of our system, the insane and insatiable desire for wealth and power, the complete indifference to human needs, domestically and abroad, the unbridled arrogance with which America deals with the rest of the world. Even if King Donald were driven from his throne tomorrow the system would stumble on toward the abyss, like a blind ogre.

It was 70 years ago that the British partitioned India. Millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of arbitrary lines. The mayhem and dislocation and violence that ensued was monumental and the ramifications continue to this day.

Fear and intolerance are powerful things.

Trump Declares War -- On Tacos

“That’s the thing about privilege; those who hold and wield it are afflicted by a maddening tunnel vision, an obliviousness to the forces and needs (beyond corporate board rooms) that shape the world.” Oscar Gonzalez

The White House is a grim, unsettled place these days with a lot of nervous, confused and frightened people scurrying around in a doomed attempt to keep up with President Trump’s mercurial pronouncements and splenetic declarations. There are cocky and belligerent folks too, mostly those who spend a lot of time with Trump. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, routinely belittles the White House servants, complains about the food, and threatens to fire any underling who doesn’t jump high or fast enough. Ivanka, even more of a tyrant than her hubby, has already cycled through four assistants; three of them ran out of the White House in tears. There have also been reports from credible sources that sometimes, in the wee hours of the night, the lights in the residence flicker on and off and an eerie wailing from a source unknown can be heard, but, oddly, this arouses no suspicion whatsoever. One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he hasn’t experienced such a dark, moody vibe in the White House since the last year of the Nixon Administration.

Late one recent evening, President Trump summoned his new Chief of Staff, John Kelly, and his chief political guru, Stephen Bannon, to the Oval Office.

DT: I don’t like seeing those trucks on the street, especially in Washington D.C.

JK: What trucks are those, sir?

DT: Those taco trucks. They’re everywhere, on every corner, on every block, probably operated by illegal immigrants or other bad hombres. They just pull up and start dishing out tacos and burritos and tortas like they own the street, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they’re dealing drugs, too. I want this investigated right away by the FBI’s best people. The best! Get them on it! Order them to infiltrate the taco truck cartels. I want them wiped from our streets! They’re a grave threat to our national security, like Iran and North Korea. I want to see good, old fashioned hot dog carts, pushed by real Americans. No dark-skinned foreigners. Nothing is more terrific, more American, than a plump juicy hot dog slathered in mustard and sauerkraut and onions. When people complain that there are no jobs we’re going to tell them to get in the hot dog business. Once this taco truck ban takes full effect all across the nation, it will create thousands, maybe even millions of jobs!

JK: I will have it investigated, Mr. President.

SB: Wonderful idea, Mr. President. It dovetails nicely with our ongoing effort to level the playing field for white Americans. It’s about time America had a president committed to alleviating the oppression of the silent white majority by militant and entitled blacks, spics, and Asians. This move will solidify your base of support and most definitely boost your poll numbers even higher, sir.

DT: How high are my numbers now, Bannon?

SB: I located a rare but highly credible poll produced by a small community college in Alabama that pegs your approval rating at 70%.

DT: That’s huuuuuge. That’s real news. Get that in the mainstream media. Call our friends at Fox and Sinclair. I want this covered, wall-to-wall.

SB: Yes sir.

DT: John, how great a job am I doing? Has any president ever done as much as I have in such a short time? Nobody is even close, am I right? I’ve done more in seven months than Obama did in eight years. And nobody is more presidential, am I right? Maybe Lincoln, but nobody else comes close. I walk into a room at the G20 and everybody stops what they’re doing because they know a strong US president is in the house, ready to do business. I walk in and the other leaders wet their pants, they soil themselves. Sad! I sit down with Putin and he knows he’s dealing with a real man. I go to Poland and the people love me because they know I’m not going to take any crap. Huge crowds wherever I go, adoring crowds, women tossing flowers at me, little kids asking for my autograph. The Saudis think I’m awesome. I’m easily the most respected leader in the world.

JK: You’re a very great, man, Mr. President. You’re single-handedly making America great again.

Melania Trump enters the room, hisses at Bannon and Kelly and gives her husband the finger.

DT: What are you doing, Melania? We’re talking business here, important stuff you wouldn’t understand. I just made a major decision. My decisiveness is unbelievable, off the chart, so much better than Obama’s. I make the best decisions, incredible decisions.

MT: (Looking unimpressed) What decision is that, Donald?

DT: A complete and total ban on all taco trucks nationwide. They will be replaced by hot dog carts. How great is that, huh? How great am I? C’mon, tell me.

MT: Donald, you are an asshole, surrounded by assholes. I’m going to bed. Don’t disturb me when you come up, and if you know what’s good for you, don’t even try to touch me.

Melania exits.

DT: You can see how much she worships me, am I right?

JK & SB: (In unison) Absolutely, sir, no doubt about it.

Gangsta Nation

“In this hour, in this day of conflict, his insights bear repeating, for although some things have indeed changed, we must scream the naked truth that some things remain the same.” Mumia Abu-Jamal on James Baldwin

Who else but Donald Trump could stand before a gathering of Boy Scouts and make a total ass of himself?

That’s the American president, a gigantic asshole who every single hour of every single day demeans the highest office in the land. He is a turd floating in a wading pool. Trump makes war criminal presidents like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush look benevolent and entirely sane.

To be sure, the Boy Scouts of America have always been a creepy, paramilitary organization, designed to reinforce mythical American values, white and Christian supremacy, and imperialism, but the Scouts didn’t deserve that display of madness. Some of those boys may be scarred for life.

And how about Trump’s decree that transgender people will not serve in the empire’s military forces? Anyone willing to be shipped off to fight and die for the cause of American imperialism and hegemony should be welcomed to do so, be they white, black, brown, gay, straight, or transgender. Trump blathered about our military needing to focus on earning a “decisive and overwhelming victory,” but the fool didn’t mention which of our many conflicts this focus applied to. Maybe he meant America’s war on the Muslim world, over which a “decisive and overwhelming victory” isn’t within the realm of possibility. North Korea? Iran? Jamaica? Cuba? A citizen can never be sure with Trump.

Trump is so inept that he would be hard pressed to earn the lowest Boy Scout merit badge. Born with a golden spoon in his mouth and a silver one shoved up his ass, Trump has rarely had to lift a finger to secure his wants and needs, and he’s the last man I would want by my side on a trek in the wilderness. Imagine the whining and whinging, the claims of unfairness when flies and mosquitoes swarm, the moaning about being tired and thirsty and hot and sweaty. Trump swaggers around like a macho man, but it’s clear that at heart he’s a coward; most bullies are.

What a state of affairs. What a monumental cluster-fuck. We raise our glasses in praise of venal men and women, frauds and liars, thieves and perverts. We celebrate ignorance, glorify violence, and pray to a false god. In this climate to think too deeply, to search for and confront the truth is to dearly suffer.  

The black dog comes over me and everything feels very dark and hopeless. I can’t find an antidote. I feel out of step and out of time, weighed down by the stupidity, cruelty and injustice that has been exposed by the emergence of Trump and his band of thieves. I know these traits have always been present, under Obama, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Republican and Democrat, it makes little difference which party is in the ascendancy; from the beginning American rhetoric and American deeds have rarely matched. All one has ever had to do is pull back the velvet curtain and look, see Uncle Sam standing before a map of the world, his hands drenched in blood and his coat pockets bulging with $100 bills.