FRESH OUT OF LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

 

“Like all living organisms, trees die. But what is happening here is not normal. Large patches of trees are dying simultaneously, and saplings aren’t growing to take their place.”  Emily Ury, The Guardian

America, America, America, turning into an open air prison, building Walls, turning public space into private, patrolled space, installing cameras and motion sensors, armed security guards. Angry country, as evidenced by mass shootings and slow deaths of despair. We draw the boundary lines and designate what tribe controls what. Won’t be long before states with fresh water supplies fight against states in the grip of drought. Hard to imagine the next decade being anything but a major downer, a clusterfuck the likes of which we’ve not seen. One day some people will look back and say, You know, it wasn’t that bad, even with Covid and the takeover by Christian Fascists. We got along alright. We adapted. Of course some got along in more style and comfort than others, this is America, after all. Trust, but verify in the age of Fear; Hunter S. Thompson called it the Kingdom of Fear -- a decade and a half ago. Evidence of the losing streak we’re stuck on. Too many guns, too few people able to consistently cast a ballot, too much injustice and inequality, too many needy, hungry, and broken. What manner of madness have we created here, on this once fruited plain? Of course that’s not true, either. If ever it was fruited, it was only for some, not all; there was plenty, but little equality. Riches for some, subsistence or slavish struggle for many others. 

Accept and normalize. Democracy may die with a whimper. New doors have opened, new ways to suppress the vote of some, magnify that of others, new ways to deny the popular will. The Would Be Lord down in Mar-a-Lago pointed the way, showed how pliable institutions are, how corrupt and complicit, from the Florida congressional district that barfed up Matt Gaetz, to the waste of an elite education represented by Josh Hawley, to Trump’s idiot children, and that insufferable prick Jared Kushner, to Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio. What a fucking joke. Stephen Miller. All this performative politics, this grotesque American theater, the ineptitude we saw close-up and nationwide when Covid hit and key institutions failed, faltered, fabricated and fucked up, with almost all the death and fear and distrust down to Donald J. Trump and his loyal enablers in the Republican Party. 9/11, Katrina, Trump, Covid. Party over country, and power over principle, year after year, that’s the GOP’s bread and butter power. Trump accelerated our slide to the bottom, Biden’s trying to slow it down. John Boehner is out with a book longing for the good old days of the GOP, the Tea Party days, when the entire party wasn’t beholden to a moron. Boehner’s on the rehabilitation tour now, looking for broken pieces he can collect, use as collateral to wield some influence, maybe rake in a bit of coin in the process.

Meanwhile, we sit in our homes, apartments, cottages, penthouses, basements, suites, condos, duplexes, tippees, or tin-roofed shacks, if such are still around in this day and age. I suppose they exist, in other places, where the cost of land isn’t as dear, places far from the cooling ocean breeze and red-tile splendor of downtown, out in the arid hinterlands where the heat shimmers and dust storms erupt. If we’re among the lucky we sit and wait for GrubHub to deliver dinner. Material wants and needs satisfied with ease on our phones, through the almost instantaneous transfer of funds. That’s some impressive shit, when you stop and think about how quickly we can turn a want into reality. Dropped on our doorstep by a chunky brown-skinned man in a blue Amazon van. Amazon is where we get our food and medicines, our toilet paper, our tampons, our pots and pans, our slow cookers, our tablets, our dildoes and scented lubricants. Amazon for everything, even, sooner or later, XXX porn. Yes, one day King Bezos will figure out a way to make huge profits from porn, he will control the pipes that carry the images, movies, whatever you fancy and are willing to pay for. Any sensible person can figure out the problem with monopolies and the people who own them. It’s pretty simple. Too much ends up in too few hands, and by too much I mean the obscene wealth of men like Bezos, Gates, and Musk. Pick your favorite plutocrat. We can have such people, but we cannot have democracy, too. Even limited democracy is difficult when so few control so much. But I get the frustration with democracy, it’s a slow, time-consuming, at times enervating process, and building any kind of political consensus with staying power is long game work. Social movements that stay in the game, on mission and message, that are adaptable and relevant, that avoid internal corruption and external co-optation are hard to build. Autocracy, on the other hand, can be speedy and decisive -- and disastrously, murderously wrong. Pick your poison. 

Is it better to toil in the gig economy than to work the line at General Motors under the United Autoworkers banner? Unions help working people and that’s why the political right has waged war on unions since Reagan broke PATCO. Look it up, younger readers. That broke the dam. But unions have problems of their own, no matter how much they profess to be “member run” and “democratic.” Power does things to people. A guy starts out in the union battling the tight-assed owner in cover-alls and boots, and sometimes ends up looking like a mirror image of the hated boss, and not only in dress and manner and speech, but in the way he acts the closer he gets to the center of power. Power is corrosive and has to be checked. It’s a diabolically difficult balance. 

In a jam, back to the wall, and fresh out of lawyers, guns and money. What’s a man with no property to do? Whose flag does such a man rally around? Where does such a man find like-minded souls? Down at the Fool’s Cafe where the patrons recite poetry and throw knives, and chant to bring about the brotherhood of man. This world’s crazy. It’s upside down and inside out. Thinking too much about where we go from here could be hazardous to your health. 

Suitcase Full of Memories

 “We can, and must, tax the rich. But not because we can’t afford to do anything without them. We should tax billionaires to rebalance the distribution of wealth and income and to protect the health of our democracy”. Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth

Write utter gibberish I tell myself, howl at the moon, nobody cares and it will cause no harm. I call my friend G in Michigan who just turned 60 and is legally blind and learning how to live as a sightless person. Lost his sight suddenly and for no cause a pack of MD’s could determine. He tells me about a place called Blind University, where blind folks are taught to navigate in the kitchen and out in the world. We talk about once a week, exchange text messages in between, usually about what’s happening in the news, with Trump and the balless, soulless, witless assholes, male and female, who ride with the GOP. G lives in a town full of Trumpers, with several of his nearest neighbors included. They don’t talk politics. G owns a firearm and often schools me on the lethal power of today’s weapons. His son’s in the Army, based at Fort Hood in Texas.  His oldest child, a daughter, is in the process of becoming an MD.  We met thirty years ago here in California and have kept in touch, with just one gap of a decade or so, since. 

We signed the lease on the house a block south from where we live now. Money will soon change hands, and that will seal it tight. Have also given my landlord notice. My family is excited about this move,  as am I, but I also find myself thinking of all the major moments we’ve had in this space, birthday parties, graduations, Thanksgivings, Christmas mornings, then too the screaming fights, slammed doors, arguments, the time I wanted to strangle my son for locking us out of the house, and all the sweet everyday moments. Many nights I felt very lucky to tuck my children into clean beds with a roof overhead and none of us hungry or sick. Too many people take this luxury for granted. I happen to believe that the walls of houses, especially old houses, hold memories, stories, mysteries and miseries; certain spaces just speak to us, give us an immediate sense of familiarity and safety or a shiver of disquiet. I find what I’m feeling surprising, unexpected, because on the one hand we are ready to go, but on the other, I feel a certain reluctance. We had a great run here, and for many years we paid the rent on time and the landlord let us be. Only in the past few years has he become Mr. Grumpy, hunched and haggard-looking, a man carrying a weight he can never unload. 

Time to pack our memories away. 

I finished reading Dalva by Jim Harrison. The main character is a tough, resilient, physically attractive and intelligent woman, independent and confident of her own judgment. She’s the kind of woman who will see a man she wants to sleep with and go after him through the front gate. A woman of many lovers but few loves. Her father was killed in the Korean War. She had a baby with her half-brother. A major thread of the novel is about the American West and the many ways white people ousted the native tribes. There were fortunes to be made on the frontier (and nothing mattered more than that), towns to found and consecrate, railroads to build, and Indians to dislodge. It’s an ugly, brutal story. Millions starved during the harsh winters. The native people fell victim to the white man’s diseases, and succumbed by the thousands. I remember watching westerns on black & white TV when I was very young, the Indians always portrayed as one-dimensional caricatures, murderous barbarians speaking in strange dialects. Americans forced them off the lands they had roamed and survived on for millenia. The native people, far more sophisticated than white people gave them credit for, took what they needed from the land to survive, but they don’t appear to have devoted their lives to squeezing the Earth of everything it had to give. Americans drove the indigenous off, stole the land, rivers, creeks, and streams out from under them, and the American government never made a solemn treaty it didn’t later break. Killed the buffalo herds. Hunted down and Killed Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and all the rest. Americans treated all the tribes as one monolith rather than many distinct groups, a mistake America has since made in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. We didn’t see the native people as being worthy of a share -- and still don’t. There’s a swath of American history I don’t know as well as I’d like, specifically the period from the Louisiana Purchase, around 1804, to 1920. That was a consequential period, great fortunes were made harvesting timber, gold, iron ore, silver, and water. Canals and railroads were built, commerce expanded. The US Congress was corrupt. Manifest Destiny and all that imperial thinking took hold of the American imagination. 

I’m also reading a quirky, wonderful history of Los Angeles by Mike Davis called City of Quartz. I have never understood how Los Angeles became the jumble it is today. LA has always seemed to me a city without a center -- or perhaps too many centers, Beverly Hills, Westwood, Echo Park, Century City and Hollywood. I knew little about LA history, and the few times I went to LA as a child felt more menacing than enthralling. LA was where I was sworn into the United States Air Force. Davis gets under the surface, exposes the major players, the money, the movers & shakers, the politics and the racism against the non-white population. LA was imagined, then sold, as a sunny American Dream, a city safe for white people. 

Poor Matt Gaetz, GOP congressman from Florida, big hair, media whore, rich family, great ally and ass-kisser of Donald J. Trump, a born used car salesman if ever there was one. But wait, there’s more, and it’s salacious and the media is eating it like cake. Gaetz is going down on the spike that has dynamited many a man, many a career, many a marriage, many a reputation: the taste for young flesh. 17-years-old if media reporting is accurate. Gaetz splashed the cash on his underage queen, or queens, (who knows what details will emerge), and now the media glare is hot and uncomfortable. Many Republicans are having a ball watching this punk squirm, and it will be absolutely delicious if he is indicted for transporting underage females across state lines. Live by the prick, die by the prick. I’m astonished whenever I consider how some of the so-called prestige schools in America -- Harvard, Yale, Princeton -- have given us nitwits like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton. I don’t know where Gaetz went to school, though I imagine he never fretted the cost or worried about how he was going to afford tuition and food. Matt strikes me as one of the pampered, a fuck-up with a gilded safety net beneath him. Makes it easy for him to spout horseshit about self-reliance, hard work, and the Christian God who smiles on the wealthy and spits on the poor. At least Gaetz has Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene in his camp. 

Anyone surprised about Republican-led efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters? What happened in Georgia will be used as a template. The Republicans can only win elections if they cheat, it’s that simple. I wonder if John Roberts still stands by his decision to gut the Voting Rights Act. The root cause of these shenanigans is Fear, unfounded fear, of the dark-skinned Others who lurk in the shadows, waiting to rape white virgins. America is a fearful nation, armed to the teeth and frightened of the dark. 

Menace

 “At some time or other in life, everyone finds themselves at an important crossroads and must tackle their fate head-on.” Varlam Shalamov, Sketches Of The Criminal World

Menace is at my feet this evening. That’s not the puppy’s real name, not yet, though it would be appropriate. Since my mother-in-law bought her from a woman in LA, the Shih-Tzu pup has answered to Martini, Chula, Cali, Calliope, Xochitl, Sweetums, Lil’ Mama, and Jessie, the latter being my mother-in-law’s choice, which she’s sticking to even though the entire family hates it. Not long after getting the pup Mother-in-Law had to have hip replacement surgery and that curtailed her ability to care for her new charge. We have the baby. I call the puppy Menace because she’s always getting into things, gnawing on power cords, having the occasional bodily accident on the rug. She likes to eat her own shit and will wolf it down in the blink of an eye. Menace has learned that people often drop food in the kitchen, little morsels, crumbs, and if quick enough she can snatch a treat. At this very moment she is sitting by the open back door, chewing on one of my Adidas slides. Tipping the scale at about two pounds, she’s a playful, schizophrenic ball of brown and white fur. The tip of her tail is white. We’re all infatuated with her, though I will be glad when she stops nipping at my toes.  

How can people be happy when life’s so shitty for so many? How can life be so beautiful and so ugly at the same time? Dealing with contradiction is part of the human condition. The cruelty of America often stuns me, though it shouldn’t because our history as a nation overflows with it. We’re not unique and hardly exceptional, except when it comes to the number of savage gun deaths we tolerate year after year. Atlanta and Boulder have joined the club. Columbine, Las Vegas, El Paso, Sandy Hook, Charleston, Orlando, Parkland. Too many places to list because in this American culture mass shootings happen so often they no longer shock. The motives for the killing sprees in Atlanta and Boulder are not entirely clear; young men with serious problems and easy access to killing equipment. 

To operate motor vehicles in this country we require that people have drivers licenses and insurance in case they hit something or somebody. There are tests, written and performance, and fairly strict rules of the road that must be followed after the license is issued. Licenses can also be revoked. This system works reasonably well, although an argument can be made that too many people still die each year in automobile accidents. But the point is that collectively we accept drivers’ licenses as a necessary, reasonable method of ensuring we can all enjoy the privilege of driving with a measure of safety. But when it comes to guns we require very little. Why? Well, one reason is that gun ownership has become -- was deliberately made to be -- a deeply contested, hot-button political issue, a litmus test for conservatives. The GOP and the NRA were a marriage that worked to make gun ownership a third-rail of American politics. After every mass shooting that I can recall, the NRA immediately mobilized its might and pressured Congress to do nothing -- and Congress complied. The 2nd Amendment has been twisted like a pretzel, out of all proportion to its meaning and the context of the time when it was written. The men who wrote the Bill of Rights could not have imagined the lethal weaponry ordinary people would one day find easy to get their hands on. Semi-automatic pistols, assault rifles with extra large magazines. My friend in Michigan knows firearms better than I do, and can quote make, model, velocity, types of ammunition, the whole catalog. I don’t own any firearms, never have, but I respect my fellow citizens’ right to own rifles, pistols, and shotguns, whether used for sport or protection. I have no problem with people owning firearms for these purposes. But I think buying and owning a firearm should require some effort, a few hoops to jump through before a permit to purchase and own is issued. Is a background check or waiting period that unreasonable? Guns are a public safety issue and only the State has the power to regulate them. Regulation isn’t foolproof or failsafe, nothing ever is, and as soon as the government declares something illegal, whether alcohol or heroin, some enterprising, cunning people will find a weakness to exploit and make money supplying the forbidden to willing buyers. 

The gun manufacturer’s lobby is another reason no real action is ever taken; the making and selling of firearms is big business. 2020 was a record year for gun sales. 

The NRA isn’t the potent political force it once was, mired in corruption and bankruptcy proceedings, but the arguments it pushed remain articles of faith among many conservatives, and the likelihood of any sensible legislation emerging from Congress is slim. Republicans will employ the usual scare tactics, accusing Democrats of wanting to take away everyone’s guns. Debate will run in circles and no matter what measures are proposed, they are certain to die on the floor of our dysfunctional Senate. This sick process will repeat after the next mass shooting. Our political “leaders” protect the right to bear arms more vigorously than they protect the welfare and safety of citizens. 

In national polls a majority of Americans favor stricter gun controls, a trend that has been consistent for years. But if there’s one thing our political system excels at it’s ignoring the will of the majority. The next mass shooting is coming to a city, town or hamlet near you. Ready your thoughts and prayers. 

Sailing Under the Black Flag

 “White supremacy is ravenous and vicious. It is America’s embryotic fluid. America was born in it and genetically coded by it.” Charles M. Blow, The Devil You Know

The other day I learned that my dentist died. I last saw him six months ago. His practice had slowed down due to the pandemic, but he was managing to keep two hygienists and his office manager employed. All three had been with him for years, decades in one case. Good people. The office had a friendly vibe, a treasure chest for children, family photos on the walls. This man cared for my teeth for thirty years. Two or three root canals, a couple of cracked teeth, crowns. He was five years my senior, but our children -- one boy, one girl apiece -- were about the same age. The news of his death hit hard because it wasn’t preceded by an accident or illness, his time was simply up, his existence claimed by natural causes.

The back end of life isn’t an easy victory lap. 

My dentist’s sudden death made me aware of the passage of time and the precariousness of all the things we think of as solid and lasting. I believe a reckoning is coming that will make the Covid pandemic look minor by comparison. Much of what’s coming I can do little about: shit’s going to happen to me and those I love, to my city and state, my country, the world. Some of it will be wrenching, of that I have no doubt. As I was skipping rope the other day this thought flitted across my mind: am I training for the apocalypse? Am I trying to be physically ready for whatever comes? Maybe. The training regimen I’ve created for myself has become a lifestyle. Funny how that happens. What we do consistently, we become some version of. The women from my mother’s side of the gene pool live a long time, several of them into their 90’s. My mother’s older brother, my last remaining uncle, is 87, still mentally sharp, a huge Los Angeles Dodgers fan. With good fortune and smart choices I could live another twenty years, a thought more unnerving than exciting given the state of the world. I think of the film Nomadland and remember that in this soulless consumer Potemkin Village called the United States, it takes very little for people to lose their grip and freefall. Lose a job, health insurance, fall behind on the rent -- name a calamity -- and it could mean living on a rectangle of concrete under a freeway overpass. When I was a boy back in the 1960’s and 1970’s we thought of “hobos” in romantic terms, riding flatcars from state to state, heating Dinty Moore beef stew over an open fire, free to ride the breeze and laze around while others toiled. To my young eyes the world seemed more hospitable. Of course, it wasn’t hospitable then and isn’t now.  There’s nothing romantic about homelessness and poverty. 

Our politics is a cynical, empty circus of bullshit, and our citizens are easily duped by fools and charlatans. 

Every morning on my ride to the office I see the same three vans parked near the Armory. People live in these vehicles. They migrate around the block, at times parking on Nopal Street, other times on De La Guerra. It has to be hard living, cold at night when the temperature drops, cramped, and under constant threat from the authorities to move along. After watching the film Nomadland I can’t look at these vans the same way. They’re emblematic of a serious curse that afflicts working people across America -- a shortage of decent, affordable housing. The roots of this problem are long and run deep beneath the bedrock of our capitalism-gone-haywire era. In the words of Matthew Desmond, the author of Evicted, without adequate housing, lives fall to pieces. I think the same can be said of the absence of health care, which in America is a feature of our fealty to the Market God. We can’t have Medicare for All because the idea of a collective system provided by the government runs counter to our faith in Markets, and would brand us as Socialists, which might bring on a permanent eclipse of the sun and the end of the world.  In America our one and only choice is to sail under Capitalism’s black flag. Better to let people suffer and die without health care than to imitate the Europeans or Japanese. 

We live in serious times, but America isn’t a serious country. Our politics is a cynical, empty circus of bullshit, and our citizens are easily duped by fools and charlatans. We long ago stopped teaching civics. Americans don’t appreciate the effort that rule of the people requires, and those in power seek to keep it that way. A dumbed-down polity is easier to manipulate and control. So, facing a rabid movement of white supremacists who would rather burn it all down than share power with black and brown folks, we argue over Mr. Potatohead and Dr. Suess. America has been trapped in a downward spiral of dumbness for a long time. The pandemic exposed America’s crumbling facade, its utter hypocrisy and idiocy. Drink bleach. Fuck masks. Ignore science. 

What shall be done? The eternal human question. Either we renew our commitment to democracy or we accept authoritarianism, there’s no third way or middle ground. 

I will miss my dentist. He was a decent man who cared about others and used his skill to make their lives better. 

Freedom to the Winds

“Do we need weapons to fight wars? Or do we need wars to create a market for weapons?” Arundhati Roy, Capitalism: A Ghost Story

It hailed in Santa Barbara this week. My wife got some lovely photos of the courthouse lawn, green streaked with white, and a bed of succulents covered with ice. I can’t remember the last time it hailed here. As little rainfall as we get a hailstorm, no matter how brief, is notable. Lake Cachuma still looked pretty sad the last time we drove past on Highway 154, but our area isn’t in a severe drought. Not yet. The weather’s kind of unpredictable now, a result of our endless meddling in Mother Nature’s business. Do I think human beings are killing the planet? Yes. Will we adapt to it like we have adapted to Covid? Probably. And once we adapt, is there ever any going all the way back? Covid, or something like it, will be with us from now on. 

When I ruminate on our changing climate and the obscene disparities of wealth and power in most places, I figure the wealthy can buy many kinds of protection to give them the best chance of long term survival when the rule of law becomes the law of the jungle. Not hard to imagine a world where the wealthy hoard the resources needed to sustain life, and defend their control of those resources to the death. Grim. Has wisdom and justice ever prevailed in human history? Has decency and kindness ever ruled?  Not to my knowledge. Someone always winds up having more power over others than any human should. Life and death power. 

I received the single dose Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine in my left arm yesterday. This morning when I woke up I felt fine in every respect, but around ten o’clock I began to feel a little dull, a touch fatigued. It wore on as the hours in the office passed and I had to skip my usual Friday evening training session. It’s the one time each week when I feel like working in a higher gear, just because it’s Friday and I can recover the following day. I took a nap instead. My son came up from LA to file his taxes and is staying with us, and I could hear him and his sister sniping at each other in the next room. Non-stop insults, brutal sarcasm, obscene putdowns. The bickering hits a lull and then flares up. The problem is the lack of space, we’re crammed together, four adults now, much different from two adults and two children. I think we’re another month from moving. Our harried and haggard landlord continues his renovation project below us and in the backyard. Our “stuff” is scattered around, piled high, covered with concrete dust. Every day when I go downstairs my training gear has been moved; I stubbornly move it right back to where I can get to it easily. I try not to let the lack of control bug me but it does. We never amassed enough money to buy a house here in our hometown and likely never will. That vessel sailed long ago. This bothers me far less than it once did. I don’t see us becoming as rootless as the people in the film Nomadland, but nor can I see that we will ever own the roof over our heads, which means we will be subject to other people’s rules and bullshit. Money buys many kinds of freedom. 

Should we get used to the idea that we’re going to extinguish all life on this planet one day?That’s cynical and defeatist and hopeless, isn’t it? Yes it is. I’m trying to remember if I felt more hope before Covid hit and gave us a glimpse of the future than I do a year later, after 500,000 Americans have died and the lives of millions more have been forever altered. There are stories from the forgotten and the ignored that we don’t hear about. I’m lucky to have a speedily created vaccine in my arm that I paid nothing for directly. It’s not that I lack hopes and dreams and desires, I still have some. I definitely want to travel more, see places and people, watch a football match in Spain or Italy or England. I’d love to get back to Italy. I liked the vibe there. I’m cynical, yes, but perhaps not entirely faithless because I believe there are many people like me, neither rich or impoverished, who are very content to live and let live, who are opposed to violence as a national ethos, and who think justice is vital to insure long term peace. The big middle, that’s us. We’re rarely consulted about anything except what our money can buy. Money never excited me enough to chase it with all my heart. I read Henry Miller and other sages carefully and they spoke to me about life, what has value, what’s eternal and good in the human species. People go to incredible lengths to help one another survive. Covid has shown us the best and worst in ourselves. 

Joe Biden and the Democrats shepherded a Covid relief bill through Congress. No Republicans voted for the bill but many of their constituents stand to benefit from the legislation. Now Biden has to sell this accomplishment to the public, explaining and highlighting what it will do for working people, small business owners, and children. The Democrats cannot take for granted that the voting public will remember come 2022. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to bow to Trump, who is being hemmed in on all sides with lawsuits and investigations. America is much quieter now that Trump is off the main stage. The danger the Republic faces is still present, make no mistake about that, and what emerges from the investigation into the January 6th Insurrection will be important. How close to Trump will that probe get? How many of those charged will flip for leniency? What was Roger Stone’s role? Stone is a weird fucker, the kind of villian Made in America, something he shares in common with Donald Trump. 

A Year of Covid

 “The other wing of the neoliberal establishment, the one represented by the Democratic party leadership, fears that exposing capitalism in this way – making explicit its inherently brutal, wrist-slitting tendencies – will awaken the masses, that over time it will risk turning them into revolutionaries.” Jonathan Cook

As we near one year of life in a pandemic I think of The Plague by Camus which I re-read last Spring. I remember the first lockdown, when the streets of Santa Barbara were deserted, eerily silent, except for the sound of the breeze in the trees; I remember walking to the grocery store with my wife, standing anxiously in a long line to pick-up some basic foodstuffs, hoping to find eggs, milk, beans, and toilet paper; I remember a Saturday morning at Smart & Final, staring in near disbelief at empty shelves, like I was in a tale from the old Soviet Union. It all looked and felt so strange, like the end of the world. 

Last March and April I felt certain the pandemic would get worse before it got better, and sure enough, primarily because of the criminally negligent response of the Trump gang, the death toll from Covid-19 rose steadily. When it surpassed 100,000 I was stunned. How could this happen in the United States? It was a question easily answered: a broken political establishment headed by Trump, a cruel ideology hostile to knowledge, science, common sense, and expertise. Trump treated it like a PR opportunity. Day after day he stood before the people and lied out of his ass. I started a series of reflections titled, The Isolation Diaries, which became, after George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the police, The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries. 

The rebellion for racial justice was short lived, as Charles M. Blow notes in his latest book, The Devil You Know. Blow writes, “And in the end, however protest is performed, for what motivations, it will eventually wane. Outrage is an expensive emotion. It consumes energy like a blaze. At some point, inevitably, the fuel is exhausted.” Our collective attention moved on even as other black men were murdered by trigger-happy police officers. 

I don’t know what being “woke” really means. I was awake to the reality of race in America long ago, by virtue of reading and reflection, and I recognized my unearned white privilege for just that, a privilege, a passport to move about freely without a thought of being targeted by law enforcement, or regarded by society as an existential threat. With very little effort I could live in peaceful anonymity. This privilege fell to me by virtue of my birth. By my whiteness I could enjoy first and second chances. I got this white ticket by sheer blind luck, by being born to my French-Canadian parents. I didn’t earn the privilege, it was handed to me. Do I fully understand what it’s like to be an Other? No. Can I imagine what it’s like? Yes. If you sit long enough with the truth, you can get to that place. 

My mind is a contradiction, full and empty at the same moment, fatigued but antsy. I wonder if the Democrats will compromise away their chances of expanding their slim majorities in 2022. If the past is prologue, it’s almost guaranteed they will. Angry, frustrated voters will take it out on Democrats in 2022. To make sure they win, the GOP will depress turnout using all their anti-democracy tricks; if the GOP retakes one of the chambers, or both, I don’t see how the nation remains “united” in anything but name. At that point, faced with permanent minority rule, the so-called Blue states should secede. Sounds crazy, but is it any crazier than a handful of white, male senators from sparsely populated states blocking any and all legislation that might better the lives of the majority? Is denying majority rule not a form of craziness? Too many elected officials believe democracy is a nuisance and the oath they swear little more than a mild admonition, completely optional. As we careen from crisis to crisis we need a functioning federal government. Why? Because no other entity can manage a crisis on a nationwide scale. No other entity has the resources. No other entity can do what needs to be done to keep climate catastrophe, of which pandemics are part, at bay. Sorry, Texas, you proved the case for the regulation of core common resources, which include electricity and water. 

I worry for my children’s future, especially my daughter. Does she have enough grit? Have we coddled her too much, let too many things slide and been too easy on her? The near future will see climate refugees as parts of the planet sink under rising oceans, food production becomes impossible, and entire regions burn. I don’t imagine life will be easy, especially for the masses of people in the Have Not camp. As life is constantly upended, made inconvenient and then uncomfortable, our fears of one another will grow. If our laws are not fairly executed by honest people, if there is no accountability for the wealthy and powerful, if a new appreciation for the commons that we all depend on isn’t nurtured and supported by the people, another Trump-like figure will rise. 

It’s a crazy world, as beautiful as it is horrid. People fly in private jets over concrete bridges under which people live. The chosen and the rest. The royal family. The cardinal and the pope. The landed gentry and the golden aristocracy. The plutocrats. The oligarchs. The Supreme Leader. The Czar. The Fuhrer. The President for Life. The General. The emperor. Who rules? Who says how the pie is to be divided and among whom? How can you live free if you’re burdened with debt, suffer a chronic illness and have no medical care, and work two or three crappy soul-killing jobs to make what one job once paid? Who has the money and power? How do they get it, hold it, expand it? 

A year of Covid, a changed landscape. The outdoor eating areas on State Street look fancier and more permanent all the time. 

Down At The Crossroads (Ain't No Devil Down Here)

 “We need a wealth tax everywhere. We need quality free health and education for everyone, everywhere. We need a green new deal everywhere. There’s no country where this is impossible, and no country where this is not necessary.” Djaffar Shalchi

Remember last month, January 6, were you watching when the Trumpists attempted to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College (an undemocratic process to begin with, but that’s not what motivated the Trumpists) results? Trump’s people wanted to monkeywrench the ritual, not overturn it altogether; they’re after less democracy, not more. It’s a strange country to begin with when the rules say the candidate who receives fewer popular votes than his opponent can yet win the Presidency. This has happened twice since the turn of the millennium -- a warning sign about our limited democracy we’d better not ignore. If a real investigation of the January 6 Insurrection happens, and is invested with proper authority, we may find out just how much advance coordination occurred in the run up to that dark day. This is for sure: it was more than a random mob. 

I’m trying to wean myself from the national news, stop imbibing the stuff two, three times a day, be more selective and discerning about the voices I listen to and whose writing I read. (Like a selective drunk, I suppose. Keep your rotgut, barkeep, give me the good stuff from the top shelf.) Managing any perspective about America is never easy because we’re a confounding nation. There’s too much noise from too many voices that reasonable people should avoid. Grandstanding fools like Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, ambitious punks like Josh Hawley, and jackasses like Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Fuck off miscreants, one and all.

In the days when cities and regions had more specific identities because newspapers were the primary means of mass communication, the papers reflected their readership. Who is reflected on social media? If this were 1905 would QANON publish a newspaper? I’m old enough to miss a good newspaper. All those city and town specific newspapers, who published the local news, the obits, reported on city hall, the police, sports, living, arts -- all the aspects of society that make it possible for us to co-exist. Were we more civil then, more tolerant, more accepting? Of course not. Were we better informed? I don’t know. In the days of newspapers did readers always read below the headlines? My dad always went straight for the Sports page. When we only had television broadcasting -- the three networks -- the dream of marketers and advertising gurus was narrowcasting, honing in on a specific audience at whom to pitch commercials between the programming; now we have the almighty algorithm that will feed you all you want of whatever you want. 

Are we better critical thinkers today than, say, a half century ago? I don’t know. Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016; millions of Americans seem incapable of thought, let alone critical thinking. 

My little family finds ourselves nearing a crossroads of sorts. The tiny two-bedroom, one bath unit in a triplex built in the 1950’s that had housed us in enough comfort, but never enough space, for more than twenty years has become untenable. We need a change of provenance. Five years became ten, ten became twenty, the rent was fair and the landlord was mostly reasonable, we were near downtown, the kids’ schools, and my job, squeezed in always, but still able to live in relative comfort. Tiny kitchen, limited cabinet space, severe shortage of usable electrical outlets and countertops, no dishwasher. No ice machine in the refrigerator. We made it work. Four people, one bathroom. Intricate morning dances to get everyone up and out. Old gas wall heater with a thermostat that has often acted balky. Cold in the winter because of old , thin windows, stifling in the summer, especially in the last ten to fifteen years. The hot weather now presents itself from May to November, and every year feels hotter than the last. 

We’ve been here through flood, fire, and now, pandemic. About two miles from the Pacific Ocean. 

In our time here we have accumulated too much stuff. The space below us that functions as a low-ceilinged multipurpose laundry room-storage area-gym was, until last week, crammed with stuff. Boxes, bags, old furniture that never got refurbished, a wooden chest, bins full of artwork produced by my kids, stuffed animals, board games, motor oil and glass cleaner, a bucket of hand tools,  a toolbox, and my fitness gear. Knowing -- because this is Santa Barbara and folks in our working-class income bracket struggle for decent spaces, particularly within the city limits -- we will likely move somewhere with less storage space than we have now prompted a decades overdue frenzy of cleaning, purging, shredding, donating, tossing. “Be ruthless,” I told my wife and daughter when sentiment got in the way of practicality. To set an example I said goodbye to my weight bench, all my free weights, my tractor tire, 8-lb sledgehammer, a few pairs of dumbbells, and lots of stuff I’d hauled from Japan to Honolulu, across the Pacific to Seattle, to Irvine, and then back to Santa Barbara in 1987. In boxes that hadn’t been opened for years I found stained notebooks filled with the scribblings of my twenty-year-old self, photographs, letters (shows you how old I am), journals, schoolwork from my undergraduate days, magazines, newspaper articles, and military service records that I didn’t know I even had. 

It felt liberating to lighten our load, to say goodbye to the stuff of our past, to make a big donation of usable things to the Alpha Resource center, to put good books back in circulation. My sense is of a shifting foundation, a tilted floor with slippery footing. Change is coming and we will need to be agile. For the first time, we’re all in agreement that the time is right. My son lives in Los Angeles, my daughter might be headed off to school somewhere -- if she is accepted and we can pay the fees without going into major debt. I feel a strong need for different space, different angles, maybe a larger kitchen. 

I don’t know what will happen to this country politically, but I foresee more and more madness from the far right, more braying from Trump as he attempts to remain relevant so he can keep his grift going. The minority, by way of the arcane, undemocratic United States Senate, means to hold power by any means necessary. A handful of men from states with small populations compared to New York, California and Illinois, thwart every action with which they disagree, even when what they disagree with would materially benefit the people they purport to represent. The Senate stands for stalemate and obstruction. Why do we have it, what purpose does it serve? 

Texas is what happens when disdain for government and the exaltation of markets becomes a religion. When disaster strikes the wealthy manage fine, they can get away, like Ted Cruz, or stay on the dry high ground in their gated compounds with backup generators and private security patrol. The majority must depend on a collective response, from local, state or the federal government when a major disaster strikes. America has been kidnapped and raped by Capitalism-on-steroids, a beast never to be let off the chain lest it run amok and punish the common people, the working-class and the poor. Punish, abandon, repeat. This cruel system makes the cost of basic necessities like housing, heat, clean running water, food and medical care too expensive, at the same time it keeps wages low and profits high. It’s an arrogant system that doesn’t recognize any limits, not even of our planet itself. How can someone like Jeff Bezos ever be satisfied when there’s always more? He’s got enough money to insulate himself from the problems his business model creates for millions of people all over the world. He’s of the elite. He doesn’t live in the same world most of us common folk do.

The rich start the fire, then convince you no one else has the expertise to put it out. The failed architects of the Iraq Invasion become grey-headed sages on cable news shows; the bankers who broke the economy in 2008-09 are asked for policy advice; men and women speaking on behalf of our government tell boldfaced lies, argue, straight-faced, that what we just witnessed with our own eyes didn’t happen, then counsel the masses about truth and honesty on TV and in print. In America, if you have the right pedigree, the right credentials, you can fuck up royally, cause real hardship to millions of human beings, and pay no penalty. You get second and third chances, a clean slate. 

The red states make the laws, the blue states pay the bills. 

What I’m reading this week: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders, City of Quartz by Mike Davis, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, and The Devil You Know by Charles M. Blow.  

Nowhere Else to Go

“It is to be decision not by election but by assertion, made not by the mere numerical majority but by ‘we’ the patriots, the real Americans.” Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

Of course Trump was acquitted by the Senate. Of course that diseased body let Trump off the hook, again. The final tally was 57-43. Seven Republicans repudiated the cult and voted to convict Trump. All seven are, or soon will be, under merciless attack from state political parties, suffering censure and condemnation for their betrayal of Dear Leader Trump. Fidelity to their oath of office, the Constitution, or their constituents is secondary. Perversely, they will be sanctioned for doing their duty. The same fate will befall the ten GOP members of the House who voted to impeach.

Power rallies to itself, that’s how it works. 

After voting to acquit Trump, Mitch McConnell contorted himself in a manner Gumby would admire and declared that Trump was responsible for the Insurrection and should be held to account -- in the courts. Mitch passed the buck then pretended sanctimonious outrage, assuming everyone had already forgotten how in the days after the Insurrection he claimed there wasn’t enough time for the Senate to try Trump. We should never forget McConnell’s blatant, calculating political ploy to have it both ways. He manipulated the Senate to prevent it from holding a trial while Trump was in office -- in essence running out the clock -- then voted to acquit on the grounds that it’s unconstitutional to convict a president who has left office (false). And there he was, standing upright though he has no spine, assuring the nation that Trump is culpable for inciting a deadly mob. Mitch talks out of every orifice. Spare us the sanctimony, you miserable coward. 

If we don’t strengthen our democracy now, while there’s a chance, we will have only ourselves to blame when we find ourselves under autocratic rule. We need immediate consideration and passage of HR1 (The For the People Act) and its companion, SR1. Most state legislatures are controlled by Republicans and many are already scheming to create more obstacles to voting. Because they are a true minority party, the only way Republicans can win elections and retain power is by cheating. To survive they must gerrymander districts and erect barriers to prevent or disqualify large numbers of eligible voters from voting. They’re very adept at it. HR1 and SR1 are needed to balance the scales. 

Keep an eye on anti-democracy fuckery operations in Georgia, Florida and Texas. 

The choice seems clear: either we strengthen our democracy or prepare for permanent minority rule. It’s not certain that we will fully recover from Trump’s frontal assault on our democratic processes. My gut sense is that within a decade we will be effectively finished as a representative democracy. If elections have no legitimacy in the eyes of millions of citizens why respect their outcomes? If there’s no perceived legitimacy, there can be no peaceful transfer of power. I think, as Hunter S. Thompson might say, we are well and truly fucked, especially if Trump and his entourage pay no penalty for their words and deeds. 

And there he was, standing upright though he has no spine, assuring the nation that Trump is culpable for inciting a deadly mob. Mitch talks out of every orifice. Spare us the sanctimony, you miserable coward. 

Our atomized, poisoned media landscape is one problem I don’t think we will solve. How can we resolve differences and solve difficult social problems like racism, climate change and wealth inequality when we cannot come close to agreeing on the facts? When people don’t know what or who to believe they become easy prey for false prophets and demagogues. Being told what to think and believe is easier than thinking for oneself. My 85-year-old mother has had her mind taken over by Fox News; she’s certain that the Biden administration will force every American to get vaccinated against Covid-19. She survives on a small pension and Social Security and decries “socialism” as the worst evil. There’s no way to reason with her. 

When all is said and done it’s about raw power dressed up as the “will of the people”. What a perverse joke. According to polls, the majority of Americans favored Trump’s conviction, but once again the will of the majority was easily ignored or subverted by those elected to represent us. Cynical, craven Republicans still cower before Trump, terrified of being ostracized from the personality cult, attacked on social media, and losing their privilege and power in primary challenges when election season rolls around. The specter of the next iteration of Marjorie Taylor Greene haunts the sleep of most Republicans. 

As I’ve written before, all Joe Biden can do is use his narrow window of opportunity to slow America’s descent, but he cannot stop it. This train is chugging along a route that will soon run out of track. I’d jump off if I could, but like millions of my fellow citizens, I have nowhere else to go. 

One Step Ahead Of The Sheriff

 

“If that happens, if the Democrats cannot prevail over Republican obstructionism and find the political voice to care for working-class Americans, the only question that remains is what these modern-day Hoovervilles will be called: Trumptowns or Bidenvilles?” Dale Maharidge, “How America Chose Homelessness,” in the Nation. 

By all that is righteous, Donald J. Trump should be convicted and barred from holding ANY public office ever again. But the odds of this happening are long because the Senate of the United States is a strange place operated under arcane rules known only to a select few. It’s like something out of the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter. The senators should wear black robes like Professor Snape. They could be adorned with colorful stripes, corporate emblems, or maybe TRUMP OWNS MY SOUL in gold letters on the back. Lindsey Graham would love that look. Can you see Ted Cruz in a dark robe? Josh Hawley? Marco Rubio? In my youth the United States Senate was referred to as the world’s greatest deliberative body, where men like Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, George McGovern, and George Mitchell argued big questions and made difficult compromises that allowed meaningful legislation to be made. It never was as high brow as that, I know, but nor was it completely gone over to the dark arts like today’s splintered and unhinged GOP. Cruz and Hawley and Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham could sit through 72 hours of footage of the January 6 Insurrection and still vote to acquit. These men are full of ambition and lust after power, but none have any honor. The same can be said of most of their colleagues.

He was always a very small man playing the very biggest man in the land, a coward pretending to be a fearless and unapologetic Big Boss. 

If Trump is acquitted as many are predicting, it surely proves that an American president cannot be held accountable. If inciting a mob to attack the legislative branch isn’t enough to convict, what is? Trump’s second-string legal team will contort logic like a giraffe trying to mate with a chihuahua when their turn comes. 

The American constitutional system is broken, that’s all there is to it. If the instigators of the January 6 Insurrection go unpunished, I honestly think America is done. There will be a next time. 

Trump’s enforced radio silence has helped millions of people (I am definitely one) settle down and breathe easier. The Orange Menace knows how to rile people up and pit them against each other. It’s a peculiar skill. A social media platform in Trump’s tiny hands is a deadly weapon; it came close to tearing our country apart. Social media spread Trump’s Big Lie faster than Coronavirus in a nursing home. 74 million Americans will disagree with me, but Donald J. Trump is a mentally-ill man, a sociopath with no regard for anyone but himself. He was always a very small man playing the very biggest man in the land, a coward pretending to be a fearless and unapologetic Big Boss. I watched the House managers lay out the evidence, the footage, the graphs, the words spoken by Trump himself over many months, and it’s obvious that Trump knew what some of his most devoted followers were capable of. January 6 was his last shot at monkeywrenching the election outcome. His black soul and white hands are splattered with blood. 

Imagine where we’d be today if GOP senators had placed the country and the Constitution over power and party in 2020 and removed Trump then. How many lives might have been saved if we had entered the pandemic with Trump exiled at Mar-A-Lago? January 6 wouldn’t have happened. Brian Sicknick would still be alive. 

No matter how compelling and conclusive the House case, Trump’s going to skate. It’s not a court of law, it’s the Senate, a place where powerful people, mostly men, make rules that let them evade responsibility and accountability. 

All who vote to step on the Constitution with a bloody boot and allow Trump another pass should suffer the fires of Hell and the ridicule of history. 

Where Serfs Are Rarely Allowed

 

“It’s not the poor who make revolutions.” Chris Hedges, in conversation with Chauncey DeVega

All Joe Biden can do is slow America’s slide, but I don’t expect him to instigate or inspire the true course correction necessary to keep the country from coming apart at the seams. He’s got a narrow two year window in which to operate and a razor thin majority in a completely dysfunctional Congress. Trump drove the GOP insane and now the inmates have seized control of the guard towers and are headed for the armory. Unless we quickly strengthen and reinforce our democratic structure and some of its machinery -- voting rights, eliminating the filibuster, ending gerrymandering -- the republic cannot long survive. 

Accomplishing such reforms would be a major achievement for a functioning Congress. It seems obvious to me that the same political system that landed us in this ditch cannot pull us out. The corruption is too deep in the Senate, for example, for that body to accomplish anything except tax cuts for the rich, corporate handouts, and obscene annual tithes to the Pentagon. For the majority of working-class Americans -- and by this I mean people of all genders, creeds , political persuasions and skin tones who work for and depend on wages -- all we ever get from Congress is indifference and hypocrisy. The US has some of the weakest basic protections for working people in the world, and no organized labor power to speak of. Congress wrings its soft hands, knits its brow, and squeals when the subject on the floor is aiding working-class citizens in the middle of a devastating pandemic. Republicans make one-time $2,000 payments to eligible citizens sound like the worst profligacy imaginable. But they have no qualms about cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, handing out millions of dollars in welfare to companies that don’t need it, or drowning the Pentagon in money. No qualms at all, that’s simply business as usual, constituent service.

In a corrupt, upside down system like ours, the needs of working people will always be subordinated to the needs of the wealthy and powerful. Look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average if you need proof. At a time when our economy is limping along and millions are struggling to pay the rent and feed their loved ones, the DJIA is riding above 30,000. One clearly has no relation to the other. Two completely different games are going on here. How can the economy be booming for a few and collapsing on the many? How did we engineer such a perverse system? Why don’t we talk about it? Why don’t we speak in the language of class warfare in America when that is precisely what has been going on for almost half a century? Is it to maintain the meritocratic fantasy that every American is born with equality of opportunity? That every American rises or falls by his or her own effort and talent? Is it to justify the winners and explain the fate of the losers? 

People and companies who benefit from a 30,000 DJIA might reside in the same country with the serfs for whom the DJIA is meaningless, but they travel in fine automobiles on private roads where serfs are rarely allowed. 

As we approach a full year of adapting to the pandemic I’ve been thinking about the role of elders in society. In an article about loneliness, I came across some startling statistics, such as the large percentage of elderly people in America who live alone. My brother, cousin, and mother are in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s respectively, and all live alone. Extended families living under the same roof are rare. Families scatter now for schooling, work, military service, affordable housing, temperate weather, and many other reasons. Transportation is easier, faster and more efficient than it was a century ago. Upward mobility on the economic ladder might be a thing of the past, but people still pack up and move in search of better lives. The question I’ve been thinking about is: What do we lose when families scatter? The elders, for one thing. Elders are supposed to peer down the road ahead, see how it compares to now, and make a guess, using all their lived experience, about the dangers that might lie ahead. This might have been more immediately relevant to survival in indigenous societies, but I still think elders matter today. Even if the technology of the future is even more mind-boggling than it is now, and it surely will be, we remain human beings with passions, prejudices, fear, and the potential for violence. Wise elders encourage a cooling down, a meaningful pause to consider the consequences of words and actions. That’s the opposite of our lightning fast, digital, social media news feeds, YouTube favorites, and other noise that comes at most of us many hours each day. Without elders wise about the ways of human beings, without stories of people and places, events, times lived through, and threats survived, we lose the everyday wisdom of those who came before, and who can tell us how this or that place used to be.

How many of our elders have died alone due to Covid? How many of those deaths belong to Donald J. Trump?

I’ve also been thinking about China. Despite all his bellicose rhetoric, Donald Trump was easily outplayed by China on the trade front, and before much longer China will take our belt and become the preeminent economic power in the world. As political sclerosis and social unrest and division weaken the US, China will stroll through the double doors Trump left open and dominate technology and trade. Trump sundered America’s traditional alliances, alienated world leaders, made preposterous claims and a mockery of America’s longstanding claim to global leadership. Although America’s dominance was eroding when Trump moved into the White House, his reign was like tossing a Molotov cocktail onto a runway slick with jet fuel. Trump’s grandiosity and stupidity accelerated America’s decline. What does this mean for the millions of Americans who have nearly been forgotten in the half century of America’s disastrous experiment with neoliberalism? If we think those deemed “losers”in our unforgiving meritocracy are angry now, just wait. 

As our economic power wanes so will our military power, and then maintaining a global network of military bases will become untenable. The empire will be forced to fold its tents and limp home. 

When revolution comes to America it will arrive from the political right and it’s symbols will be the flag and the cross. Or the bullet and the Bible. Trump blathered about a fictitious “radical left” but the true danger is from Christian fascists, who for decades have been funded by conservative oligarchs. I found this passage in a book titled The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart:

“Addressing gerrymandering, voter suppression, and other abuses of the electoral process that continue to hobble American democracy will be a central aspect of any effort to meet the challenge of Christian nationalism.”

Can I get an Amen on that?