There Will Be More Blood

“Men’s memories are uncertain and the past that was differs little from the past that was not.” Cormac McCarthy

I don’t know what to make of the Orlando mass shooting, the latest rampage to occur in this country of guns and gun violence. When the news broke I was sad and disheartened, but also curiously numb; the shooting happened thousands of miles from where I live my life, and none of the victims were known to me or my small circle of family and friends. I did think of the victims, their kin, their friends and co-workers, their acquaintances, and how their lives would be altered from here on. A life can never be the same after a random act of violence. I don’t know why civilians in America are allowed to purchase assault-style weapons. Like other sacred texts, we have perverted the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution beyond recognition.

When I read the news the novel Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy came to mind, one of the strangest and most violent novels I’ve ever read, a story where blood is spilled on nearly every page; I don’t profess to understand the allegorical aspects of Blood Meridian, though it seems to suggest that extreme violence is deeply rooted in the American psyche and our first, most abiding option when dealing with Others is to kill them.

The mainstream media and all its jabbering servants fixated on the radical Islam angle, linking the shooter to ISIS, claiming he self-radicalized via the Internet, and was so incensed about US military actions in the Muslim world that he selected a target – a gay nightclub – to make his final statement. If the man’s intent was to protest US foreign policy wouldn’t it make more of a statement to attack a government building, military base or some other symbol of US power, like a bank? It seems to me that the man was wrestling with other demons and that the ISIS angle is a convenient peg to hang motive on, not to mention a handy justification for the ongoing wars against the Muslim world and for maintaining a massive, unprecedented system of mass surveillance in this country.

Fear strangles liberty.

The morning I read about the Orlando killing, I also read – and saw some videos – of the mayhem in Marseilles caused by what was reported to be Russian and English soccer fans. This was straight mob violence, people running amok, kicking and punching anyone who got in their path; I saw one man get blindsided by a punch, and another hit over the head with a chair. It was horrifying. That morning the seething world felt like it had finally toppled from its axis.

Like all the other mass shootings on this fruited plain, Orlando will slip into memory. Columbine. Newtown. Aurora. San Bernardino. Legislative proposals will be made to curb sales of assault weapons but almost all will fail once the NRA bribes pliant legislators. Money speaks louder than blood and sorrow, so the killing will continue, no matter who the victims are, young, elderly, gay, straight, white, black or brown. White mass killers will be determined to suffer from mental illness; black, brown, Asian, or Muslim shooters will be labeled terrorists or suspected terrorists.

US bombs fall on Syria, US drones swoop over targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Yemen. Turning points are reached, benchmarks achieved, milestones eclipsed, but still the wars continue; they are immune to reason and experience; they are self-perpetuating; and they are futile. Imperial nations must always have an implacable enemy, and if one doesn’t present itself, the imperial power creates one, either by design or happenstance.   

A Dream Dies in Houston

There was plenty of media hype ahead of the US Men’s semi-final soccer match against perennial world power Argentina, lots of rah-rah USA that I found comical. Not that the US didn’t deserve to be in the semi-finals, after all, they beat Costa Rica, Paraguay and Ecuador, but none of those teams are in the same class as Argentina, a lesson the US learned with a vengeance on Tuesday night in Houston.

The way the “experts” on Fox Sports were talking prior to the match, the vapid Alexi Lalas chief among them, you would have thought that American players like Clint Dempsey, Bobby Wood, Michael Bradley, and Alejandro Bedoya were World Class, first-rate, top shelf guys, able to compete against any team in the world. Now, it’s true that Wood, Bedoya and Jermaine Jones were all suspended for the semi-final, but even if that trio had been in the starting eleven it would have made little to no difference.

Dempsey, so effective in the matches leading to the semi-final, was a ghost against Argentina; in fact, the match was nearly eight minutes old before he got his first touch. That is but one measure of how dominant Argentina was; their midfield players stymied the US completely, forcing Bradley to make a number of errant passes. Fabian Johnson couldn’t get forward, and it took nearly 30 minutes for DeAndre Yedlin to make a run and cross a ball into the box. On the night the US managed just one shot, and it was not even on frame. Forward Chris Wondolowski, partnered with Dempsey up front, scores handfuls of goals in MLS, but against Argentina he looked as hapless as a man lost in a foreign country.

Argentina pounced on every loose ball and forced the US to chase and defend. At times it appeared that Argentina was toying with the US, just pinging the ball around the midfield, ever a step ahead of Kyle Beckerman and Michael Bradley.

The match commentary by Fox broadcasters JP Dellacamera and Landon Donovan struck a hopeful tone, even after the US conceded a goal within four minutes of kickoff, Donovan suggesting that Argentina might be tempted to sit back and relax a bit. That made me chuckle. Teams like Argentina, Chile and Germany at the national level, and Bayern Munich, Real Madrid and Barcelona at the club level, rarely lift their foot from the gas; when they get one goal they want two, and when they have two they want three, and so on, but, given the American audience, Donovan’s comment was understandable; his corporate employers would not have been pleased if he had said that the US was doomed for a very long and very frustrating night and destined for nothing more than a spot in a meaningless third place match.

The quality of soccer in the US is improving and the growth of MLS is a testament to the sport’s rising popularity across the fruited plain, but the US has a ways to travel before the national team can run with the big dogs of this hemisphere. Even the bombastic Alexi Lalas has to admit this now. The US didn’t just lose Tuesday night, it got thumped, no two ways about it.

Argentina plays football the right way and that makes them a fun team to watch. Yes, they have Lionel Messi, arguably the best player in the world, but look down the bench and you see a depth of talent. Let’s not forget that even without Angel Di Maria, Argentina didn’t miss a beat.

Pick Your Poison

“So. The presumptive nominees for the two major parties are among the most singularly despised people on the North American continent. One makes terrible decisions as a matter of course, and the other has no ideas whatsoever beyond a fictional notion of his own greatness.” 

William Rivers Pitt

“You’re gonna’ have to get over it,” my wife told me the morning after Hillary Clinton won the California primary. “I don’t want to hear you bitch for the next five months.”

I thought Bernie would do better in my home state, in fact, I thought he was going to win the primary and delay the coronation of Madam Clinton. I never believed that Sanders could overcome Clinton’s iron grip on the Democratic Party machinery and actually win the nomination -- the table was rigged from the jump. Look at the debate schedule, the one-sided media coverage, the primary rules, all of it tilted in favor of Madam Clinton. But Bernie and his supporters, millions of them young and getting their first exposure to national politics, made a contest out of what was supposed to be a stroll in the park for Hillary. God, how that must have ticked her off, the clear, unassailable fact that millions of people simply don’t trust her or like her.

The mainstream corporate media did its best to ignore Sanders, but when the man started winning states and pulling in huge crowds, the networks and elite pundits had no choice but to take notice. Clinton’s carefully managed campaign stops never approached the enthusiasm and energy of a Sanders event; Bernie’s message and connection with people -- particularly the young -- was genuine rather than manufactured.

Deep in her shriveled, money-grubbing, neoliberal, war-mongering, power hungry, and utterly corrupt heart, I’m sure Madam Clinton knows -- has to admit to herself in a quiet moment -- that Bernie Sanders would have cleaned her clock if the playing field had been level. If the fight had been fair, Clinton would have been smoked.

You can bet that all the Democratic Party honchos and heavyweights, from President Obama down, will now strongarm Sanders to abandon his quest and throw his weight and, more importantly, encourage his supporters to toss their collective weight to Madam Clinton so she can defeat the evil, atavistic Donald. The bigwigs will guilt Bernie, tell him that if his reluctance or refusal to enthusiastically support Clinton helps Trump win the White House, the fault will be his and his alone, and does he want to risk being the man responsible for placing Trump’s finger on the nuclear trigger? C’mon, Bernie, they’ll say, do it for party unity, for your country and your legacy. Clinton’s not the enemy.

Yeah, the honchos will lay it on Bernie heavy and thick.

Meanwhile, the Donald -- deluded by his own myth -- thinks he actually has a chance of enticing Bernie’s supporters into his camp. The Donald can’t seem to grasp that the views and dreams of Bernie’s people are antithetical to his. Bernie’s followers are inclusive, multicultural, tolerant of differences, and forward-thinking, in short, everything that Trump’s supporters are not.

I remind myself that America is a democracy in name only, and that our elections are tainted and fraudulent, which explains why our choice in November will be between a dangerous buffoon and a serial liar who happens to be a woman; I have no issue with the woman part, none at all. My issue is the fact that her name is Hillary Clinton, wife of Bill, the man who, as much as any single political figure, dragged the Democratic Party to the right.

This nation cannot afford a President Trump any more than it can afford another President Clinton. Pick your poison, voters, and cross your fingers.

Ali

“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.” James Baldwin

Muhammad Ali has passed on and the tributes rightfully light up social media. I remember his epic battles with Joe Frazier, and how he knocked out George Foreman in 1974 in a fight few thought he could win. I admired Ali’s skill and flair, his style, that flicking left jab, the footwork, the rope-a-dope. What I find more admirable now, all these years later, is how Ali refused to be drafted, stood for his principles and beliefs, and went to jail during the prime of his career rather than compromise. His exploits in the ring were remarkable, but that act of conscience said everything about the man.

Why would an African-American man in the mid-1960’s willingly ante up his life for a government and a country that considered people of his skin tone second-class citizens? Ali recognized hypocrisy when he saw it and refused to be part of it, even if it cost his freedom.

Paris is drowning. Here on the Platinum Coast, our main water supply, Lake Cachuma, is little more than a puddle. The promise of some relief from an El Nino deluge never happened.

In the name of profit, capitalism is murdering this planet. I want to believe that we will come to our senses before it’s too late but the evidence I see all around tells me that the point of no return has already passed. Hotter winters, fierce storms, fires, flooding, melting arctic ice; the world’s oceans are full of plastic. But are the world’s capitalists turning from the abyss? No, of course not; the problem with capitalism is that it recognizes no limits, it must always have more regardless of the consequences, even if that means cannibalizing itself.

The world seems to teeter and veer out of control. Refugees from war zones drown and the world stifles a yawn. Nobody wants desperate people coming across their national borders. Meanwhile, the wars in the Middle East and North Africa go on. Can anyone other than the purveyors of armaments claim to be winning?

Political commercials on the tube, one after another, promises of change and a better day if only we elect so-and-so. The ads make so-and-so sound like a saint and a savior. I’m too cynical to believe in a savior. Two earnest young women wearing Bernie Sanders t-shirts knocked on my door and asked if I had voted or was planning to vote, and did I need a ride to my polling place. “Girls,” I said, “I’ve voted before. I know where to go and what to do, but thank you nonetheless.” After they left I wondered if they understood that it is what happens on the ground between election cycles that makes change happen; a real movement doesn’t end when the quadrennial carnival packs up and hits the highway out of town.

And Muhammad Ali is gone. The bitch about getting older is watching idols and icons -- the anchors of our memories -- pass away.

To the Right of Nixon

“I know progressives who are nostalgic for Richard Nixon.” Ralph Nader

I particularly enjoy this time of the year on California’s Platinum Coast. The light arrives early in the morning and remains until well into the evening. I usually wake to the twittering of birds; the days are fine, neither chilly or too warm. Santa Barbara is still full of itself, still entranced by its own image, a distant cry from the town I grew up in many years ago, but what the hell. So what if the foodies and the wine aficionados and yoga parlors and private wealth managers have taken over, and State Street is just a carnival for out-of-town hipsters. Let the good times keep rolling.

It’s funny what Ralph Nader said about his progressive pals who are nostalgic for Richard Nixon. Those of us who are old enough to remember Dick Nixon in all his many political guises, but in particular the Nixon of 1972 to 1974, may be hard pressed to view Nixon as a friend of anything remotely resembling a progressive position, but the point Nader is making is that the American political scene has shifted so far to the right that many policies advanced by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama actually lie to the right of Nixon. Think about that. And don’t for a moment believe that Madam Clinton will reverse the trend. Madam Clinton is the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Fuck all New Democrats is what I say, they have bent us over and rammed it home. Barack Obama is viewed as a peace-loving leader at the same time his administration is busy provoking Russia, encircling China, selling weaponry to Vietnam, and conducting drone warfare all over the planet. Oh, and let’s not forget that Obama, the man of peace, is proposing to spend around a trillion of our tax dollars to “modernize” America’s nuclear arsenal. This modernization isn’t mentioned by Bernie Sanders or Madam Clinton.

We will be at war with someone, somewhere, forever. We will maintain a military presence in Afghanistan in the same way we have maintained one in Japan, Germany, Okinawa, and South Korea. We will occupy most of the planet militarily until the sheer expense of this empire crushes us. We are the drooling ogre with a learning disability who cannot learn the lessons of the past. We tell ourselves that our armaments are used only for noble ends, to protect our freedom or to free others from the grip of despots.

We lie to ourselves, always have, because to do otherwise is to expose the corrupt underbelly of this country. The lights are dim all over the city on the hill.

We are reassured repeatedly by our corporate propagandists that we are blessed to live in a democracy where our vote and our voice matters. This is bullshit. In the United States those that govern do not fear the governed. Why should they? Our votes are nullified by money, drowned out by money; our governors serve the money masters, gerrymander the electoral map to insure their perpetuation in office. We, the governed, pay 535 people to represent our interests, to advance policies that will provide us the most life, liberty and happiness, and they repay us with betrayal, with sell-outs, with austerity and endless war.

And look at our choice for the highest office in the land, the leader of our empire, two representatives of the ultra-rich who haven’t the faintest idea what it means to be an average, wage-earning person. Bernie Sanders understands, at least when it comes to economics, but the system will not let him past the velvet ropes.

Damn, what a downer. Is such pessimism warranted?

Election 2016: The Farce Continues

“And so we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with an enthusiasm that enables us to rally support for them based on confidence and trust.” Martin Luther King Jr., 1967

The farce continues. Donald Trump will be the standard bearer of the Republican Party, whose movers and shakers must now swallow their bile and put on a display of party “unity.” Much was made of Trump’s visit to Capitol Hill last week for a meeting with Paul Ryan, the putative Party genius. It doesn’t matter that Ryan has never hatched an idea beyond the typical Party doctrine -- he’s the man whose ring must be kissed. Media reports concluded that Trump and Ryan didn’t agree on anything major. No surprise there. Trump is a wild card, totally unpredictable, and therefore uncontrollable, and most of the GOP big shots have denounced him at least once during this campaign.

Bernie Sanders won the West Virginia primary, though the mainstream media continue to write him off because the delegate math favors Hillary Clinton. The honchos in the Democratic Party call on Sanders to submit to the inevitable and call it a day, urge his supporters to tip their energy and money and votes to Queen Clinton. So far, Sanders vows to fight on, though the day of his capitulation is only a matter of the changing of the calendar.

For those of us out here in Reality Land, where the impact of neoliberal policies (low-wage, contingent jobs, student loan debt, crushing medical expenses, etc.) is felt and paid for, the choice offered us is no choice at all. Trump is a gilt-edged novelty for media moguls and pundits, but the man is a dangerous buffoon with no core beliefs other than money and celebrity. Clinton, on the other hand, is more of the same: austerity for the needy and welfare for the rich; imperial wars and domestic surveillance; lip service for the existential crisis posed by climate change; and continued privatization of the assets and services we are supposed to own in common for the good of us all.

Regardless of who wins this tarnished election, private profit will remain the primary organizing principle of the U S of A.

The whole game is rigged, of course, designed to keep the duopoly in power and limit the issues that are allowed to be discussed and the people invited to discuss them. Flip on the network shows and it’s the same faces all the time talking about the same trivial BS. Can anyone remember a period in US history when the country was involved in so many wars simultaneously, none of them formally declared or approved by Congress? I cannot. And these contemporary wars grind on and on, year after year, with no end ever coming into view. Trump claims that he will “rebuild” the US military, though one has to wonder what this might look like given the disproportionate amount of taxpayer money that is siphoned off by the military-security-intelligence apparatus. We outspend every other nation on armaments. The network pundits don’t talk about this at all.

The political system is corrupt and dysfunctional, and this year it has vomited up two presidential hopefuls who most of the voting-age public either despises or distrusts. I have been ruminating lately on the question of whether or not the country deserves Donald Trump, if his ascent is the logical end to decades of lies and disinformation, patriotic mumbo-jumbo about freedom and democracy and the American Way, enormous giveaways to plunderers and plutocrats, and deliberate attempts to anesthetize the populace. The media moguls are more than happy to gin up controversy about transgender restrooms but cannot be troubled to tell the scary truth about the economy, climate change or nuclear proliferation.

I did hear the economist Richard Wolff say something that cheered me. In a lecture about how pressure for social change often builds unseen and then explodes all at once, Wolff said, “The aristocrats never see it coming.”

Could we be at such a turning point now? I’m fairly certain that our collective survival depends on it.

5000-1

Leicester City Football Club pulled off one of the greatest feats in the history of English football, capturing the Premier League title with two matches to spare. Start with the fact that only a year ago the Foxes had to play their way out of a hole that seemed certain to see them relegated. Add the fact that at the start of the 2015-2016 season, oddsmakers set Leicester’s chances at winning the title at 5000-1. (For an American this is hard to wrap one’s head around, but I suppose it would be like a Triple A baseball team, such as the Fresno Grizzlies, winning the World Series.) What’s even more startling is Leicester’s puny team payroll of 48.2 million pounds, compared to the huge payrolls of giants like Liverpool (152 million pounds), Arsenal (192 million pounds), and Manchester City (193 million pounds). I suppose the moral is that while money can buy talent, it cannot buy heart and desire and belief.

By all that is logical and holy in football the Foxes should not be champions of the Premier League. But don’t tell them that. All season long this remarkable club played with a freedom and abandon that defied logic and was often beautiful to watch; they won with spectacular play and they won by grinding matches out; they won with Jamie Vardy leading the line -- and they won without him. Mainly, they won together, that was what made watching them so enjoyable.Their talent was complimentary and reinforcing and expertly marshalled by manager Claudio Ranieri. They won because the spine of the side, Kasper Schmeichel in goal, Robert Huth and Wes Morgan at center back, and N’Golo Kante in the holding midfielder role, was consistently better than any comparable side in the league. In fact, Kante may be the most valuable player of all. Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez and Leonardo Ulloa score goals, but Kante is the constant in midfield, intercepting passes, winning challenges, and making timely tackles that frustrate the opposition and kill counterattacks. Kante never stops running -- he is perpetual and determined motion.

This was a title 132 years in the making and I for one hope Leicester supporters enjoy every minute of their turn in the winner’s circle.  

I’ve been thinking about Leicester’s accomplishment since Monday night when my beloved Chelsea (huge payroll, disinterested players, dismal season) erased a two goal deficit to earn a draw against Tottenham, the result of which tipped the title to Leicester. It was a match marred by cheap fouls and bad behavior. Twelve yellow cards were issued, nine against Tottenham. At the end of the match, Guus Hiddink, Chelsea’s 69-year-old interim manager, was knocked to the ground. Ugly stuff. But that wasn’t the focus of my rumination; I was thinking about Leicester in relation to American politics and the rise of Donald Trump, and wondering if there is any possibility that Trump will pull off a political miracle as unfathomable as Leicester’s footballing miracle.

I don’t know if the odds of Trump’s winning are 5000-1, but I assume they are long. It’s one thing to win primaries, another to prevail in a general election. Will Trump’s atavistic message resonate with a wider electorate, particularly women and Latinos? Doubtful. Trump is the candidate of fearful, resentful, and spiteful white men who yearn for the days when women and minorities knew their place, and America built stuff. Those days are long gone. It’s like yearning for the days when Great Britain ruled the Indian subcontinent and a mediocre white bloke could pretend he was a royal. Ian Masters, host of Background Briefing, has a theory that Trump doesn’t want to be president as much as he wants to win the presidency. Five minutes after his inauguration I think Trump would be asking himself, “OK, now what?” It’s not that Trump is anyone’s puppet -- his ego is too massive for that -- but I think his temperament is completely ill-suited for high political office. Emperor maybe, president never.

Leicester’s march to the Premier League crown was full of passion and joy; by contrast, the American general election in November will be full of lies and bombast. Whether the winner is Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, millions of people will have a foul taste in their mouths the day after.

Torches and Pitchforks

It’s almost reality, the presidential matchup the corporate media has been salivating for, Trump versus Clinton. The major commercial networks will use the public airwaves, for which they pay nothing, to earn buckets of cash carrying Trump and Clinton campaign ads, and the inevitable debates. It will be great for the corporate bottom line, wonderful fodder for the pundit class, and downright terrible for the nation. This is where we are. The oligarchy is alive and still in control.

Despair is an easy option. Watching the Republican Party reap the reward it has sowed for years alleviates some, but not anywhere close to all, my despair. The party strategists and bigwigs have blown the dog whistle for decades and what finally came home to them is the atavistic Donald Trump. Bummer.

What bothers me is the other party, the Democrats, the one that is supposed to be all-inclusive, champion of working people and the environment, women, equality and social justice. We know this isn’t the case any longer. As Thomas Frank points out in his new book, Listen, Liberal, the Democrats have been sprinting away from their traditional constituencies since the early 1970’s. As a result, the Party apparatus was hijacked by the Clintons and others of their ilk, so called New Democrats (Barack Obama included, which explains his energetic support of the Trans Pacific Partnership secret trade agreement) who embrace a savage neoliberal agenda that has devastated the middle class.

Our democracy is weak, the game rigged to produce preordained results. This is nothing new in American history -- we’ve traveled this rutted sideroad before. The wealthy and powerful always do everything they possibly can to limit direct democracy simply because they can’t control it. They talk about the “will of the people” and all that blather, but what they really mean is the will of their kind of people. So, we see arcane nominating rules and outright efforts to deny people their right to cast a ballot; we see how potential third parties are ignored and marginalized by the media, prevented from participating in debates and candidate forums.

The political duopoly serves its masters and makes serfs and slaves of the rest of us. As Robert McChesney and John Nichols note in their book, People Get Ready, “Unemployment, inequality, and poverty are best understood not, in the end, as economic problems, but instead as political problems. They require political solutions.” McChesney and Nichols go on to say that the level of corruption in contemporary American politics -- the blatant buying of politicians from both parties -- would make Gilded Age icons blush. The wealthy have never had it so good; 40-plus years of propaganda and scheming and manipulation has put them in the catbird seat.

But cracks are appearing in the foundation of this deeply entrenched oligarchy. The economic pain has become so widespread and pervasive that people are once again receptive to New Deal-style solutions. Bernie Sanders never had a prayer of winning the Democratic nomination -- the whole Party edifice was arrayed against him -- but he has succeeded in dragging bedrock middle class issues like income inequality back into the light. And when movements like Black Lives Matter, the Fight for $15, climate justice, humane immigration reform and voting rights, to name a few, coalesce with the understanding that their separate struggles are in reality one overarching struggle, the cracks will become fissures.

It has happened before. It will happen again. The People know the current arrangement is not only inequitable but unsustainable. Hell, the oligarchs themselves know this is true, which is why they are so desperate to delay the day of reckoning.

Tick, tock, torches and pitchforks.

Oligarchs Paradise

“I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.” J.S. Mill

Slick Willie still has balls. It takes a hefty pair to stand in front of a crowd in Philadelphia and tell African-American protestors that government policies that hurt them and their communities were really, at heart, for their benefit.

Your lives mattered so much to my administration that I made them a living hell. I had to destroy your communities in order to save them.

No apology required.

Bill Clinton’s crime bill, passed back in the mid-90’s, was not designed to protect the lives of African-American teenagers; the intent was to allay the fears of white people who thought black gangs like the Crips and Bloods were about to overrun suburbia, and to demonstrate that Bill Clinton was as tough on crime as any Republican.

The Clintons triangulate everything for political advantage. Yes, I physically beat you to a pulp, but surely you can see it was for your own good? Turn the tables, blame the victims. The Clintons have made this tactic into an art form.

The thought of another Clinton administration is nauseating. We deserve better than someone who has used her position in government to enrich herself. Who asks us to believe that Wall Street banks are happy to pay her upwards of $200,000 for a single speech without expecting anything in return. This is insulting -- we know how the world works.

Our democracy is a democracy in name only because the political system, at least at the national level, is deaf to the needs of average citizens. How many times have I written this or something similar on this blog? The disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is severe. It’s clear that people from all walks of life and circumstances want peace, decent jobs, some measure of economic security, safe drinking water, breathable air, food that isn’t laced with poison, and a voice. The political machinery produces few of these things because to do so would require the rulers who own and operate the machinery to give up their privilege, and that never happens.  

As Robert McChesney and John Nichols note in their new book, People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy,  the solution to all these issues is political. Income inequality is about distribution of wealth, and that involves politics; climate change is all politics; the impact of technology on employment opportunities for our children is about government policy. But we have to understand that from the very beginning, the leading lights of the American colony, and then the American nation, feared the masses, the passions of the mob, and protected private property, the landed, and the slave owners. If the status quo is going to change, we cannot ask politely and wait for an answer -- we must demand.

Repeatedly.

Democracy is messy and unpredictable. The alternative, however, is what we see happening now: environmental degradation, extreme income inequality, political paralysis, a weak and debased corporate media that only serves to distract citizens from reality, and wars abroad that go on for decades. Poll after poll shows that this is not the America people want.

I know it’s not the America I want. I want this country to live up to its ideals, and I’d like my children to have half a shot at lives that are not reduced to toil, want and insecurity.

Hey, Bartender

Don’t ignore the little people; don’t look right through us as if we are wearing Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak. I can assure you that our money is as good, and our thirst as pronounced, as the strapping gentleman, or the buxom female, who garners all your attention.

What am I talking about you ask. Fair question. The other night my wife and I went to a well known music club in Santa Barbara to hear Eric Hutchinson and his band. The place wasn’t crowded when we arrived; we stood at the bar trying to decide what libations we fancied. Two bartenders on duty. One of them, bearded, wearing a white shirt and gray vest, was talking wine with a couple seated at the bar. The other was rinsing glasses two feet from us. Neither acknowledged us or made eye contact. Being polite types, we waited patiently. Surely one of them would raise his head and take our order. Nope. The first guy kept talking, the second kept rinsing glasses. We may as well have been invisible.

I was immediately transported back several months, to the Westgate Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. I was attending a conference and staying at the hotel, and one evening I went down to the casino and sat at the bar, less than three feet from a bartender who did everything but look at me or acknowledge my existence. I was so stunned by his absolute indifference that I didn’t say anything -- I just sat there and waited, fascinated to see how long he could go without acknowledging me. After seven and a half minutes -- yes, I timed it with the stop- watch on my iPhone -- I gave up.

This happened to me three times at the Westgate, which says more about that crappy joint than it does about me. After the third time I strolled over to the concierge and asked to speak to a manager. An African-American woman listened to my tale, told me that the hotel was under new management, and promised to relay my concerns during the next all-staff meeting. No apology, no chit for a drink, not even a smile, now that I think of it.

I’m not a tall man, I’m a runt, and this I think, more than anything else, explains the troubles I’ve experienced with bartenders. The two examples I note here are not the only times I have failed to get service; this happens frequently, in establishments all over my hometown. My wife is convinced that I bear some sort of secret marking visible only to bartenders. Now, I know that some of you are thinking that this dilemma (which, in the big scheme of life is really, really minor, boo-hoo can’t get a drink,) is easily solved if I adopt a more forceful approach, call out to the bartender, tap my debit card on the bar or wave a fistful of dollars to get his or her attention (to be fair to female bartenders, I can say that they ignore me less often than do their male counterparts). But here’s my point: tall men don’t need to resort to these kinds of histrionics -- they step up and are served -- or are at least recognized.

That’s all I want, really, to be recognized, acknowledged, noticed. As a rule, I’m very appreciative of servers and bartenders and busboys, their work isn’t easy and customers can be a pain in the ass. My wife and I tip well because we are working-class people ourselves. I don’t expect anyone to kiss my ass; I do expect people in service businesses to provide service.

So, bartenders, don’t overlook us short people. Like I said, our money is good.

My Interview with Amy Goodman - Santa Barbara Independent - April 5, 2016

Amy Goodman Talks 20 Years of Independent Journalism

Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now, the only public media program that airs simultaneously on radio, cable, satellite television, and the Internet, will be speaking at UCSB on April 10 at 7:30 p.m. Goodman, along with longtime writing partners Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, are on a 100-city book tour to promote their latest book, Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America. 

UCSB

Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman’s list of journalism awards and accolades is too lengthy to mention. Suffice it to say that Goodman has walked the walk in war zones and areas wrecked by natural disasters, and has been on the ground to cover major stories such as the recent Paris climate negotiations and the Black Lives Matter movement. 


Brian Tanguay caught up with Amy Goodman on the eve of her book tour. 

When you started the broadcast back in 1996, did you have any idea it would become what it is today?We thought it would be a nine-month project, ending with the election, however that turned out. We were the only daily election coverage in public broadcasting. But there was more demand the day after the election than before. More and more stations wanted to pick us up. First it was community radio stations, then NPR, and public access television stations. Then PBS stations asked to air us. It just grew and grew. We’re translated into Spanish and Democracy Now is now carried on 1,400 public stations. Our growth is an indication of the hunger for independent voices.

Democracy Now started at a time when media consolidation in the United States was gathering momentum. Did the prospect of trying to establish an authentic voice in a corporate-dominated environment give you pause? Sadly, they have left such a huge niche — in fact, the corporate broadcasters are now niche broadcasters. These corporate networks feature such a small circle of pundits who know so little about so much. Our work at Democracy Now is giving voice to the vast majority of people whose voices are not represented. That’s what gives us our authenticity.

You and your team at Democracy Now have profiled, featured, and interviewed people that the corporate media ignore. I’m thinking of Noam Chomsky, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Jeremy Scahill, Angela Davis, Arundhati Roy — a long list of important voices that the average American knows little if anything about. Was providing a platform for voices like these part of your original vision or did that evolve? These are voices that need to be heard. I won’t say these voices have been blacked-out — maybe whited-out is more accurate — but we’re talking about thinkers and grassroots leaders, and people closest to the issues that impact their lives and communities and nations. 

Of all the interviews you’ve done and events covered, is there one that stands out more than the rest? No, it’s more the inspiration of so many different voices. Our team at Democracy Now uses all its skill and diligence to give voice to people closest to the issues. This is critical in a democracy.

Can you recall the number of times you’ve been arrested in the course of reporting? (Laughs.) I don’t have the exact number, but I will say that it’s unacceptable that police arrest reporters. Our job is to be in the streets covering events and talking to people who are excluded from the conversation. 

Which corporate media broadcasts do you watch? As many as I can. It’s important to understand how events are framed, and what questions aren’t being asked. 

What unsettles you when you look at the contemporary political landscape, particularly the election coverage? The lack of diversity. 

What gives you hope? The movement. There’s no question about it. This book, written with my colleagues Denis Moynihan and my brother David Goodman, is about people all over the world who are challenging discrimination against immigrants or fighting for gay and lesbian rights or economic and environmental justice. The persistence and dedication and ingenuity of these people is inspiring.

I have to ask you this question, Amy, because it’s one of the most important questions of our time. Have you seen Hamilton? I can’t believe you’re asking me this question! It’s as if you have a little lens into my life. I have been wanting to see Hamilton, but of course there’s no way because the show is sold out for months. But then a week ago a friend of mine came into town for my birthday bearing tickets for the show! It’s an unbelievable work that is changing the face of Broadway. Who would have thought American history could be told through hip-hop and rap?

Reefer Madness Redux

“When the Great Scorer comes to list the main downers of our time, the Nixon Inauguration will have to be ranked Number One.” Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ‘72

Like many people of my generation, I detested Richard Nixon and just about everything he ever stood for. Nixon was an evil dude, and he surrounded himself with authoritarian creeps like H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and Charles Colson. Bad times, unrest in the cities and on college campuses. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. King had been murdered and the heart seemed to have been ripped from the nation.

Like Donald Trump today, Nixon was a Law & Order guy, a tough talking high sheriff who would lock criminals up and bury the key. To rid the nation of the scourge of dangerous drugs, Nixon and his henchman launched the War on Drugs. This bad idea is still with us, all these years later, and our prisons, many of them operated by corporations for profit,  are filled to bursting with former users and junkies.

Nixon’s War on Drugs was erected on a foundation of out and out racism. An interview with John Ehrlichman that came to light recently makes the real intent of the War on Drugs crystal clear. Here’s Ehrlichman, speaking with breathtaking candor in the mid 1990’s:

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

There it is, in all its sinister glory. A diabolical scheme hatched by a paranoid government to put white, pot-toking hippies and black smack junkies back in their boxes and slam the lid. Only Nixon, I think, only that rat bastard was evil enough to conceive of such a plan, and the consequences plague the nation -- not to mention Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, to name a few -- to this day. Obama came out the other day and said that drug use and abuse is more of a health issue than a criminal one, a good start, albeit way too late, but I wonder if he would have said anything if record numbers of white folk weren’t getting hooked on heroin and prescription opioids. When a social problem impacts the pale skins, the government acts and money begins to flow toward solutions.

God, why am I thinking about Nixon? It’s a lovely day outside my window and I’m free of the work clock, there’s lots of cold Lagunitas in the fridge, a couple of bags of sunflower seeds, but more to the point, the current political circus is awful enough without drifting back to our dark past. If I start thinking about Nixon I will invariably think about Henry Kissinger and Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Millions of people killed. Nixon and Kissinger, W. Bush and Cheney -- a gallery of unindicted war criminals. I’m not sure the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Kissinger is considered a sage in some circles; W and Cheney run free still, make speeches for good money, and never bother to hang their heads in shame.

The horror, the horror, the horror!

Death Trap

“My point is, with Hillary Clinton, we know what we’re getting — a corrupt war-mongering, duplicitous neoliberal Wall Street shill posing as a progressive. With Trump, we get a narcissistic businessman posing as a fascist. Neither one as president would actually be what they are pretending to be during the campaign.” David Lindorff

The letter from Honda was alarming. IMPORTANT SAFETY RECALL  (in red typeface).  “Honda has decided that a defect which relates to motor vehicle safety exists in certain 2007-2011 model year CR-V vehicles.”

And in bold typeface this: “The defect in these vehicles could kill or injure you or other people in your vehicle.”

Wait a minute...Honda has decided? What about Honda has discovered or determined or learned? Decided?

It gets even more macabre: “Specifically, in some vehicles, the driver’s front airbag inflator could produce excessive internal pressure upon deployment. If an affected airbag deploys, the increased internal pressure may cause the inflator to rupture (break apart) and deploy abnormally. In the event of an inflator rupture, metal fragments could pass through the airbag cushion material possibly causing serious injury or fatality to you or others in the vehicle. Past ruptures like this have killed and injured vehicle drivers.”

But the best part came next. “The remedy parts needed to conduct driver’s airbag inflator recalls will become available in the Summer of 2016.”

So, if I understand this correctly, my family and I should continue driving our potential death trap until Honda has enough parts available to conduct its recall. Happy motoring from now until Summer 2016, which means what, exactly? July? August? Early September?

Honda is rather blase about the possibility of my or my family’s potential death or dismemberment. Play the odds, take a road trip, avoid rear-ending someone…

Honda’s recall took my attention from the presidential election and the terrorist attack in Belgium. Knowing the American corporate media will draw the wrong conclusions about Brussels, I avoid the news. I still believe that the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are peaceful people who want the same things Americans, English, French, Spanish and Africans want: to exercise some control over their own destinies, to raise their children, to work, play, travel, and worship. All the reasonable human expectations. Extremists, whatever guise they wear, get the attention, and Islamic extremists motivate Western nations to wage war endlessly. Don’t misunderstand -- attacking innocent civilians is barbaric and cowardly -- but so is launching laser-guided missiles at a wedding party from a remote-controlled drone. Both acts terrorize the innocent; both acts stoke the fires of vengeance.

And let’s not forget or ignore root causes. Who mid-wifed the birth of ISIS?

The Dance of the Phonies staggers on. Cruz and Trump and Hillary. Bernie Sanders is still in the race, though you’d hardly draw this conclusion from the mainstream media. Hillary is awful on the stump, wooden and pedantic. Little of her hubby’s magic rubbed off. All Slick Willie had to do to make audiences swoon was start his lower lip quivering. Try as she might, and try she does, Hillary cannot convince the masses to like or trust her.

We trudge toward our Hobson’s choice. Dear voter, how would you like your death, brutal and quick, or less painful but more drawn out?

The Fork In The Road

“Throughout the Western world the financial system has become an exploiter of the people and a deadweight loss on economies.” Paul Craig Roberts

Looks like we owe the Feds money again, but may get a refund from Jerry Brown, which means our tax dance for 2015 might be a wash. Had we owed both Federal and State I might have had a nervous breakdown. Our daughter is flunking Physics -- no surprise -- she hates the subject and doesn’t apply herself, and sooner or later will understand the relationship between effort and results. Mom and dad have to go meet with her teacher. The work we do for the money we need to sustain our life is often a soul-sucking grind, and like many Americans in the low-low middle class, though we claw we never seem to get ahead; one calamity and we’re toast. Maybe our lot will improve when Donald Trump becomes president. He’s a winner, or so he tells us at every opportunity, and when he wins, we win.

Forget I said that, I’m joking, of course. Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Rubio, nothing is going to change, no matter which of these people is elected. The American economy is a scam, a house of cards, operated by an oligarchy for the benefit of the oligarchy. As John Jay said when this nation was founded, “The people who own the country run it.”

The mass of people who work for wages understand this, and, at some level, they realize that it is the “system” that causes their struggles, not some fault of their own; not laziness or lack of will or initiative, but a system designed to make them, or keep them, poor. Trump spews plenty of garbage, but when he talks about how trade deals like NAFTA (thanks, Bill Clinton) have decimated the American working class, he’s right, and I think this is why he sounds like a savior to some people.

What about Bernie Sanders? Yes, if Sanders somehow overcomes the Clinton death grip on the Democratic Party and all its machinery, he might shake a few crumbs from the system, but his ability to do so will entirely depend on the makeup of Congress, and this is fraught with uncertainty because so many Democrats are now Republicans, ideologically speaking; Sanders might have difficulty pushing his agenda with Democrats in control of the House and Senate. Of course if those bodies remain in Republican control, Sanders would be stymied at every turn.

Both parties are corrupt, as is the entire electoral system. Voters are offered two unpalatable choices -- isn’t democracy grand! It’s like going to the dentist and being told that your cracked molar can be pulled with needle nose pliers or vice grips, which do you prefer? Politicians, at least at the national level, no longer trouble themselves representing the interests of the voters who elect them. Instead, they represent the corporations and wealthy donors who own them. This guarantees that the critical issues facing the nation will not be addressed, except at the most superficial level. And when it comes to an issue like climate change, superficial measures are a recipe for disaster and death.

Getting back to Trump and his traveling circus for a minute. What is his economic policy? Just win, baby? Knock the Chinese over the head with a two-by-four? Invade Mexico? Any voter -- white, black, brown, or rainbow colored -- who believes that Trump will improve their lot economically is flat nuts.  “I will make great deals,” is not a policy. Running an empire, even one bordering on collapse, is not the same as starring in a make-believe TV show. Blithely declaring that one will “strengthen” America’s military, when 54% of the discretionary budget is already being spent on America’s sprawling military apparatus is not only stupid, it’s suicidal. But that’s Trump. Buffoon, blowhard, egomaniac.

And as of today, the GOP frontrunner.

I’m too tired to think about a Hillary Clinton presidency. I despise the woman; she is mendacious and mediocre and malignant. In my mind, Hillary’s almost as frightening as Trump. Most of her experience is covered with a thick coat of failure, and she has blood beneath her fingernails.

How did America come to this pathetic fork in the road?