The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 11

“In a real sense, all life is interrelated. The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich; the betterment of the poor enriches the rich. We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Time in Trumpistan moves as fast as a tornado and as slow as molasses. Fast in the tumult of Trump’s infantile and incompetent response to Covid-19, the staged assault on peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square on June 1, the deployment of heavily armed, unidentified, Federal agents in Portland, the lies and corruption and outright lunacy of Trump and the miscreants who surround him. But ever so slow as the nation staggers toward Election Day, less than 100 days hence, and one day runs into the next, not a carbon copy, but similar, with the latest Covid numbers the priority. Is our county up, down or flat? What’s going on statewide, where’s the latest hot spot, where are deaths rising? What’s Congress doing or not doing to help states and citizens weather this storm? 

And of course we are forced to endure the daily spectacle of Trump himself, the bloated leader of our Covid-19 battered banana republic, bragging about his mental acuity on national television. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. Trump’s new mantra. Bonus points (only in Trump’s withered brain) awarded for reciting the words in order. Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So proud is Trump of his achievement that even as the American death toll from the pandemic reaches 150,000, he can’t stop talking about it. “I passed a test! I finally passed a test, all on my own, with no help and no cheating!”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan called out the irony. When it comes to Covid-19, a lethal pandemic, Americans look in vain for a coordinated federal response. But when it comes to protecting federal property from graffiti in Portland, behold, the federal response is not only coordinated, it’s jackbooted, long on shock and raw force. When it comes to dispersing protesters from Lafayette Square so Trump can stage a photo opportunity for his reelection campaign, the federal response is not only coordinated, it’s choreograhped by William Barr to portray Trump as the triumphant protector of law and order. The pandemic bores Trump because it’s too complicated, like the algebra he never could fathom. Unleashing BORTAC -- the shock troops of the Customs & Border Patrol -- against American citizens exercising their first amendment right is not only easier, it provides immediate gratification and satisfies Trump’s sadism. 

So proud is Trump of his achievement that even as the American death toll from the pandemic reaches 150,000, he can’t stop talking about it. “I passed a test! I finally passed a test, all on my own, with no help and no cheating!”

(Here’s a random thought: how does Jared Kushner react when Trump summons Ivanka to the Residence at 2:30 a.m., with instructions to report in high heels and a black negligee?)

In all this turmoil and madness, Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence, on the very same day Stone asked for it, has gone down the memory hole. The GOP is a lost cause, so of course not a soul from that doomed vessel sounded a dissent. Hypocrisy, cowardice and silence is now standard procedure in the GOP Death Cult. But where the hell are the Democrats? The Stone commutation was obviously payback for his loyalty. It was the Trump crime family taking care of its own. The timing and context are clear. The commutation was a crime. Where’s the outrage? Jerry Nadler’s committee had Attorney General Barr on the stand and in the main failed to land a significant blow. Barr is a seasoned Washington fixer, he knows the game, how to parse, dodge, obfuscate, duck, parry and counter. Barr is the Pillsbury doughboy’s evil twin. The Democrats had plenty of opportunities to hammer at Barr’s mendacity and subversion of the rule of law, his craven and comprehensive dereliction of duty, but for the most part let the chance pass. 

Trump knows he’s staring defeat at the polls in the face, and his gut impulse dovetails with his tactics over the past three and a half years: toss even bloodier hunks of red meat to his base of true believers (his recent remarks about saving Suburbia from people of color), his focus on Law & Order, and his empty threat to postpone the November election based on fear of massive voter fraud. With intent and malice Trump is tossing seeds of delegitimization to the wind, hoping to harvest a crop of Doubt after November 3. 

If that’s not sobering enough, imagine if Joe Biden wins the election but the GOP retains control of the Senate. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 10

“It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.” Sebastian Barry, Days Without End

Trump Death Clock

84,589

Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction

Trump has his own force of Brownshirts now and they are deployed on the streets of Portland, Oregon, uninvited and unwanted by state and local authorities. Heavily armed, decked out in camouflage fatigues sans branch insignia or name plates, riding around in unmarked vehicles, their mission is to stir the cauldron of social unrest on behalf of our demented president. Trump is itching to demonstrate how to dominate the urban “battlespace” and show the enemies of our beautiful white republic how a real “strong man” operates. If largely peaceful protests and acts of legal civil disobedience can be turned into a street brawl, so much the better. The tactics are straight from the tattered authoritarian playbook; first light a small fire, fan it with armed goons, add copious amounts of gasoline, then ride in with the Law & Order brigade to put the conflagration out. 

Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.

Silence from the ranks of the GOP Death Cult of traitors, cowards, hypocrites, and opportunists. The rancid moonshine Republicans have been guzzling since 1994 (Newt Gingrich’s family recipe) has shrunk their hearts and muddled their brains, and now a majority of the party is indifferent to the suffering of others whose race, gender, or religious affiliation differs from theirs. They’ve got the power disease as bad as Southern Democrats had in 1857. They’ve convinced themselves that the blood running in the veins of some Americans is inferior to their own. 

Trump will send his Brownshirts to other cities where they will be as unwelcome as they are in Portland. The Orange Menace is desperate for a foe he can vanquish to lift his sinking reelection prospects; Covid-19 is far too formidable, and when it comes to the economy, the GOP will ride their nihilistic ideology into the fires of Hell before they marshall the resources of the government to help ordinary citizens weather the crisis that is barreling toward us. Trump’s betting the last of his chips on beating the mythical “radical left.” I wish we had a radical left in this country. 

The excesses of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 return to roost in 2020, and Democrats bear as much responsibility as Republicans for creating this monster in the first place. Misuse and abuse was an inherent danger of granting so much power to the executive branch in the name of “security.” That brand of power will inevitably be used for nefarious purposes by unscrupulous actors. Thanks, Congress. 

Trump is an arsonist, his target is the Constitution.

In the late 1880’s, when southern Democrats had reclaimed political power and derailed the lofty intentions of Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass urged his fellow Americans to “Remember that all the present rests on all the past.” Almost every day, Donald Trump tries to make Americans forget the present. After all these months, after all the insane pronouncements about the pandemic, after all the blaming of others, after all the denials, after all the suffering and deaths, after all his abuses of power, Trump still insists that he, and he alone, can defy gravity. 

He can’t, but Trump will go down swinging at his real and imaginary enemies. He will make our three-headed crisis -- pandemic, economic collapse, and police violence -- worse. With every passing day, America sheds its democratic skin and takes on the visage of a pathetic banana republic. Our political leaders, of both parties, have failed the nation, failed the people, and failed to do their Constitutional duty. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 9

“Understandably, enslaved Africans were a  major target for taxation since they were one of the most significant repositories of wealth…” Dr. Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776

The drip, drip, drip of Covid time. No end in sight. Since the early days of March I believed that the suffering would get worse in the months ahead, there was an inevitability about it. Once it was clear that Trump couldn’t BS, lie, bully or threaten Covid-19, that the virus didn’t give a shit about his cowardice, narcissism, or reputation as a tough guy, when Trump threw the white towel  and claimed victory, that’s when it was clear to me that there’s no basement for the Trump Gang. The elevator goes down, down, down, never stopping. Daughter Ivanka, as clueless as Marie Antoinette, is placed in charge of some BS jobs program -- this bitch of absolute privilege who has never searched for a job in her life -- and the best slogan she pitches is “Find Something New.” Clueless and tone deaf. 

Meanwhile, behind the big podium, Trump’s mouthpiece, Kayleigh McEnany, calls the administration’s response to the pandemic “historic.” Historic response she squeaks over and over, as if Americans from coast-to-coast cannot see, feel, and sometimes touch, the colossal fuck-up that belongs to Donald J. Trump and his GOP Death Cult. Trump’s stunning incompetence was supercharged by the moral cowardice and hypocrisy of his party. All those mute sycophants. Then add Kayleigh, who wets herself every time she lies for Donald Trump. My God in whom I don’t really believe, not that it matters, how far into the Bible must we reach before we explain the shit we’re seeing today, in the United States, supposedly the greatest nation, ever? Remind me where I can find something biblical about perversity. 

We’re living the logical outcome of the last 50 years of American politics. The dominant ideology of those 50 years was unfettered capitalism, private ownership (you’re gonna pay) and control over public ownership (open to all and funded by our taxes), “small” government, tax cuts as Policy Job No. 1 in all circumstances, a dismantling of the New Deal social safety net, and the destruction of organized labor. The conservatives veered far right of Dwight Eisenhower, and then even further under Reagan, as they fanned the flames of social issues along racial, religious, and abortion lines that drove a wedge between the electorate. Two working-class people might agree on basic economic issues, but when it came to the social stuff, the tribal stuff, the twain didn’t always meet. 

Historic response she squeaks over and over, as if Americans from coast-to-coast cannot see, feel, and sometimes touch, the colossal fuck-up that belongs to Donald J. Trump and his GOP Death Cult. 

When Bill Clinton came along with his New Democrat, third way claptrap, the Democrats ditched blue-collar Cleveland and Youngstown for the white-collar canyons of Wall Street and the easy luxury of the Hamptons, for good. Clinton sold us out smart and proper, and that silver-tongued satyr made us feel good about it. Clinton was a true politician: I will sodomize you and make you think it was your idea. 

That’s a simplistic, thumbnail version. We must add decades of preposterous military spending. The great peace dividend of 1992 never happened. The Soviet Union collapsed but all that taxpayer money we were going to devote to other things never materialized. George H.W. Bush gave us the first Gulf War against an extremely useful bogeyman -- Saddam Hussein -- our former ally against Iran, America’s nemesis since 1979. We were knee-deep in the Middle East now, standing with Israel no matter how Israel degraded the Palestinians, courting a new enemy that sailed under the banner of Islamic Extremism. Then came the greatest gift the right wing ever received -- the post 9/11 hysteria that had Americans removing their shoes in airports, subjecting themselves to full-body scans by the TSA (part of the creepily named Department of Homeland Security), and shrugging their shoulders when the government gave itself sweeping powers of mass surveillance. That’s when the takeover accelerated. Good times for the Pentagon and the Security-Intelligence industry. Then Afghanistan, followed not long after by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the greatest strategic blunder in American history. Here’s where Saddam Hussein proved his value as a threat to civilization. Uncle Dick Cheney whispered voodoo in W’s frightened ear and off the US went. Holy war. Shock & Awe made for spectacular television images, like a fireworks display, but of the innocent human beings who perished, nary a mention. We didn’t even bother to tally the Iraqi dead. That’s when our Imperial Hubris became terminal.

No surprise then that we are on this dead-end road in the dark of the American night. The ghost of Mr. Darwin riding shotgun, survival of the fittest, which in America means survival of the richest and fuck the rest. The headlights pick out the ruts and potholes, barbed-wire fencing, telephone poles, bare trees, mailboxes, abandoned cars, burned-out semi-trucks. A trail of destruction. There will be no presidential pardon for us, no commutation of our sentence. The GOP will snap the whip on wage-earning Americans by resisting the extension of unemployment benefits and rent and mortgage eviction moratoriums until they are pressed to the wall, and even then, Trump is so insane that he might veto such a bill, just because he can, solid sadist that our president is. 

No hope unless and until we oust Trump and his gang of incompetents, and even then the road will be dark and bumpy. I know what’s going to happen, can hear the speech now, Joe Biden telling the nation it’s time to look forward, not back, therefore he doesn’t think it serves any purpose to investigate and prosecute Trump and key members of his crime family...instead, let us toil in vain to build a new house on a rickety foundation. That will be the first mistake of the Biden presidency. At his age and mental capacity, he’s a one term president so he’s got nothing to lose by spending some of his political capital on serious, deep investigations into the entire Trump Era. We must, must, must, spend the money and resources to uncouple the government from Trumpism, which to me means serious reform of the Justice Department, an actual rooting out of Trump loyalists, and a solid firewall between the Attorney General and the President so that the former doesn’t become the servant of the latter.  We cannot allow the powerful to hide behind the law is what it comes down to. 

Almost 138,000 dead. Nothing to see here says the Trump Gang. We must open the schools. Historic response. The reason we have so many cases is because of our great and magnificent testing. Historic response. Let’s talk about protecting monuments to the traitors of the Confederacy. Let’s hold campaign rallies on the White House lawn, sell canned beans from the Oval Office. If we can’t take the family circus on the road, let’s bring people to the circus, right here at the White House. 

No surprise that we are on this dead-end road in the dark of night. Alone with the ghost of Mr. Darwin riding shotgun, survival of the fittest, which in America means survival of the richest and fuck the rest.

Lack of testing, delays in getting results, which render a test practically useless, death rate poised to climb, hospitals saturated with the sick, morgues bursting. No coordinated, all-out, war footing federal response. 50 American states on their own, competing against each other for PPE and test kits, free market Frankenstein on the loose, black bodies still falling at the hands of the state, Post Office being strangled to death by Trump loyalists. The fucking United States Postal Service, a national treasure, an icon of ingenuity and organization. The American institution that connected us one to another for so long. Historic response. Fuck you, Kayleigh. 

All that is historic about the Trump Administration is its incompetence, cruelty, and corruption. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 8

“It signifies a fact that has not fundamentally changed since the defeat of Reconstruction: black people can be subjected, usually with impunity, to arbitrary aggression.” Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books

Covid-19 days, nights, weeks and months. It feels that we’re almost back where we started in March, as if the virus sent us back to the starting line. Covid-19 is active in Santa Barbara, though tourists roam State Street and dine outdoors; people in masks queue outside the Apple Store, still hungry for the latest gadgets. Life in a pandemic is strange to begin with, but when you live in a country with corrupt and incompetent political leaders, strange becomes surreal. 

Our Trumpian nightmare, our American Horror Show, eternal night. As expected, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, punted the question of Trump’s tax returns back to the lower courts, where the matter will be drowned in briefs and motions and legal stalling for God knows how long. This has been Trump’s way of dodging accountability for decades. Sue, countersue. The secrets in Trump’s financial records will not be seen by American voters prior to November. Trump won the round. Yes, Roberts and the Court upheld the most basic legal concept -- that no one is above the law -- but if reinforcing that assertion is what passes for courage or justice -- we really are in deep water. 

The wealthy buy justice. No surprise. Even the law has a price tag. 

I studied the architectural plans for the office’s HVAC system while heating a cup of water in the microwave. The schematic might have been Sanskrit and I understood little of what it communicated. In my next human incarnation I wish to have two skills: carpentry and music. I want to be able to build a tool shed or a doghouse, erect a fence. My father was a butcher, a skilled one, but he had no mechanical aptitude and neither do I. Taking things apart to understand how they work never has intrigued me, and I regret this fact. Same with music, I like many forms of music but I don’t understand how it works and my attempt to learn the guitar was a failure. I am tone deaf, can’t keep a rhythm. I remember being in the second or third grade, forced to play an instrument; my mother chose the clarinet. I was inept. All I made that instrument do was screech like nails on a chalkboard. It was torture, an embarassment. 

I’m deep into Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography. Like his legendary live performances, the book is long. I’m to the part where Springsteen has just released Nebraska, his dark, spare, and haunting masterpiece. I’ve always liked the album, though I didn’t discover it until many years after it was released in 1982. “Nothing feels better than blood on blood.” The early 1980’s. I was living in Japan then, cut off from what was happening in America. The early days of the conservative political revolt led by Uncle Ronnie Reagan, the AIDS crisis, the death twitch of American manufacturing. The Japanese economic juggernaut was going to eclipse us in an avalanche of Honda and Toyota automobiles and SONY boomboxes. Long ago. When I think of the 1980’s my memories are dim as ash. 

Springsteen’s quieter albums, Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust, Magic, and Western Stars won my respect and admiration. The imagery, mood, and beauty of the writing, the empathy are why I return to them over and over. The autobiography fills in some of the spaces, explains Springsteen’s state of mind and circumstances; his childhood in Freehold, New Jersey, exerted a tremendous pull on his imagination and heart. Poor, working-class, houses with thin walls and no hot water, a taciturn, distant and sometimes menacing father, a vivacious and loving mother. Springsteen willed himself to become the leader of a band that could follow his voice, ambition and vision. The man’s a product of hard work. Springsteen hauled his Catholic guilt around for years. Many of his songs are rooted in the fear of, and longing for, his father’s love. 

I understand that longing. My dad passed away long ago, aged 57, his body ravished by a pack-a-day smoking habit and too many years of heavy drinking. He never met his grandson. He wasn’t present when I got married. I assume he would be proud of me. I wish I could talk to him about his life, his dreams and desires. 

Covid-19 summer. Fruit falls from the trees, rots on the ground. My emotions swing like a frayed rope bridge over a deep ravine. Am I a fraud and a failure? Have I slept-walked through my days and nights, always searching for a prize I cannot see or name? I wrestle with my contradictions, kick myself for wasting time searching for clues in dark corners. Too selfish I conclude, too stingy with my love, too walled off from other people, too solitary, too locked in my own head. Feels too late to slip this skin now. I have to harvest the seeds I’ve sown. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 7

“To emphasize the commonality of the 99 percent, to declare an enmity of interest with the 1 percent, is to do exactly what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them -- from the Founding Fathers to now -- have tried their best to prevent.” Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present

After making two dark, end-of-America-as-we-know-it speeches for the 4th of July holiday, it’s clear that Donald J. Trump is going to stay the course of division and fear and ride his smoking chariot all the way to the fiery gates of Hell. Trump is contemptuous of the ongoing pandemic which is responsible for the deaths of nearly 130,000 Americans, but determined to protect monuments to traitors and white supremacists until the end. 

Trump goads his supporters to believe in an America that never existed, a Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best sort of place, where white, heterosexual men ruled and prospered, and women, blacks, and queers knew to stay in their subservient places. In Trump’s mythical America, there was no genocide of the indigineous people, no broken treaties, no Trail of Tears. Slavery existed, but it was benevolent and paternal, and white masters treated their human property with kindness and generosity. The Confederates were not traitors against the United States, they were stalwart defenders of the right of states to regulate their own affairs. Reconstruction was a peaceful period of advancement for formerly enslaved people. The Ku Klux Klan was far less murderous than the “radical left” insists it was. Had the Supreme Court not overreached in 1954, forcing the integration of schools, many lives would have been spared. If only the black minority hadn’t tried to impose its will on the white majority. No wonder white people are so aggrieved. 

Getting an American history lesson from Donald Trump is like taking advice about mercy from Satan. Trump’s speeches were no doubt penned by his malevolent minion, Stephen Miller, but Miller is only putting language to Trump’s twisted thoughts. In Trump’s worldview, the circle of acceptable people is very small, restricted to the white and wealthy, with allowances for certain immigrant women attached to white men. Morality is for suckers and sentimental fools. Any show of compassion or empathy or kindness is a sign of weakness. 

The Trump Gang’s new strategy for the Covid-19 pandemic is to simply ignore it entirely, to declare the virus, as Trump did on July 4th, as “99 percent harmless.” With more infections and more recorded deaths than any nation on the planet, Americans must accept the risks and go about their lives as if nothing is amiss. In other words, we must accept Trump’s terms: when he couldn’t bring the virus to heel with his usual tactics of bullying, gaslighting, lying, or threatening, he threw in the towel, declared victory, and demanded that the nation deal with the consequences of his failure. 

When we finally wake from this Trumpian nightmare, and we will, the work stacked on our collective breakfast table will reach the ceiling. Make no mistake, it will take time to eradicate every last vestige of Trumpism from our body politic. The damage Trump has wrought in less than one term is stunning. Our fabled institutions and “free” press failed to hold this aspiring autocrat to account.

As Masha Gessen writes in her excellent book, Surviving Autocracy, “There will come a time when the Trump era is over. In the best-case scenario, it is ended by the voters at the ballot box. In the worst-case scenario, it lasts more than four years.”

Can you imagine four more years of Donald Trump? The proposition haunts my sleep, perverts my dreams, and weighs heavy on every waking hour. Trump and Trumpism are like a metastasizing cancer that threatens the very heart of America. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 6 (4th of July edition)

“All I need's a volunteer

I'll cut you in half

While you're smilin' ear to ear

And the freedom that you sought

Driftin' like a ghost amongst the trees

This is what will be”

Bruce Springsteen, Magic

Who will be the last to die from a mistake? It’s a line from the Bruce Springsteen song, “Last to Die.” It’s a relevant question in this time of Covid-19 chaos, with Donald Trump and Mike Pence lying their way to what I hope will be eternal infamy, almost 129,000 dead, millions unemployed, rents and mortgages delinquent, and still, still, six exhausting, anxious months into this thing, no coordinated federal government response on testing, tracing, PPE, income protection for workers and families, or even the merest empathy for the dead and the grieving and the sick and the worried. 

Trump and Pence and all the Fox News blabbers have fed us a steady diet of bullshit, pie-in-the-sky false hope, and a triple helping of magical thinking. 

Trump got bored, Pence went back to praying for the end of the world. Job done. Americans should be outraged by the endless string of failures, scandals, fuck-ups, calamaties, and incompetence engineered by Donald J. Trump and his battalion of Enablers. When Trump and the rest of these jackasses take their final bow and limp or crawl off the stage, I hope we don’t spend even a minute trying to rehabilitate their images like we did with  many Confederates after the Civil War. Let them stand forever as symbols of failure, destruction, and death. 

4th of July, fuck me. The beaches are closed, fireworks cancelled, bars shuttered, movie houses dark. Except for a jog over to the high school, I haven’t left the confines of our apartment building all day. I am now acquainted with every inch of our small yard, from fence to fence. I’ve taken to placing my hands on the trunk of one of our gum trees, for reassurance, the feel of a living thing that will survive this strange time. 

Incompetence kills. Write it down, pass it on, post it on your favorite social media platform. Incompetence kills. It’s a long way to January 2021. Don’t underestimate the damage Trump, Pence, McConnell and Barr can do in the months ahead. 

Let me see if I can wrap part of my brain around recent news reports -- some of them breathless -- that Trump’s buddy, Vladimir Putin, King of Russia, offered cash to elements of the Taliban for killing American soldiers. The American media is astonished, almost apoplectic, first that Russia would bankroll the killing of our brave men & women, and second, that Donald Trump either didn’t read the carefully prepared intelligence that he was provided this past February, or that he refused to believe what he read (or more likely was told), and decided it wasn’t worth even a phone call to his friend in Moscow.  

It’s no secret that Trump admires the way Putin holds and wields and constantly expands his powers. On the other hand, I have never bought the notion that Trump is a Russian asset. Trump is far too scattered, impulsive, stupid, and undisciplined to be run as an agent. I think it’s far more probable that Donald Trump laundered money for Russian oligarchs when they looted the former Soviet Union. I think this explains why Trump is fighting the release of his tax returns in the Supreme Court, as well as why he treats Putin with such deference. The returns may show income sources, investment portfolios, but may also reveal what people like the journalist David Cay Johnston have suspected for years: that Trump never had as much wealth as he claimed.  

I’m not for war. I’ve been against the undeclared and illegal war in Afghanistan since it began. I support slashing the Pentagon budget in half. I’m just an average citizen, but I knew Afghanistan was a mistake and would end in failure. What I never suspected was that successive administrations would keep the war going for nearly 20 years, using the same litany of lies we heard during the Vietnam War: we’ve turned a corner, we must build up the Aghan troops, we’re winning hearts and minds, we just need a troop surge to finish the job, we’re making progress, the Taliban are contained, we’re meeting our strategic objectives, etc, etc. 

When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the CIA sprang into action, supplying weapons, money, training and logistical support to the Afghan mujahideen, whose first and only loyalty was to expelling the invaders without giving up any tribal advantage or territory. How many young Soviet soldiers returned to their homeland in body bags, courtesy of the American-supported mujahideen? Not a few, not hundreds, but thousands. Putin would recall the Soviet Union’s failure and humiliation in Afghanistan very well. It must be his Vietnam. The overwhelming force of a superpower defeated by a determined and unyielding guerrilla army that received plenty of help from the United States. I imagine Putin would enjoy settling that score, inflicting casualties on the US, who really have no business being in Afghanistan in 2020. We cannot win any more than our arrogant leaders can admit defeat. 

The message from the US is always the same: it’s fine when we do it, not fine when you return the favor. We’re the indispensable nation, the great beacon of liberty and freedom. Yes, our police forces routinely murder unarmed black Americans. Yes, many of our states contort themselves to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. Yes, millions of Americans cannot afford basic health care. Yes, our police spray rubber bullets and tear gas at peaceful, unarmed demonstrators. Yes, we incarcerate more people than any other nation. Yes, we erected monuments to traitors and white supremacists. But how dare anyone question our commitment to liberty!

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 5

“We ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe.” Frederick Douglass

America, are we tired of winning yet? According to Trump and Pence, and that skinny bitch who calls herself a Press Secretary, Covid-19 is on the decline, jobs are returning in droves, and the economy is on the rebound. Trump’s poll numbers are perfect. The nation has at long last achieved racial equality. The climate crisis is solved. Every American is housed and cared for. It’s all beautiful, tremendous, fantastic, never been done before, the world has never seen, people are saying...

To repeat what I’ve said before: we’re fucked, royally fucked. It’s more than Trump, of course, it took decades for the rot to take hold, for Money to define our lives and worth as human beings, for Money to flood and corrupt the political system, and for the whims, desires, and needs of corporations to take precedence over the needs of the people. It took several decades to render organized labor insignificant. It took 40 years of relentless, slick propaganda to get people to believe that solidarity was in fact tyranny, that the Market God was just and fair. It took far less time to devalue -- even more than they were to begin -- the lives of black and brown people, and anyone who was different and therefore dangerous. The neoliberal system had a wicked answer for that, too: a lucrative carceral state, much of it run by corporations and Wall Street investors. Just add black and brown bodies for delicious profits.

 It was 9/11 hysteria, hubris and hypocrisy, that launched the disastrous, money and body-sucking War on Terror. War on a tactic, against ever-shifting enemies, with no boundaries and no end. Forever war we call it now, as if it’s perfectly normal for a country to be continuously at war or preparing for war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, swaths of Africa. We are never short of enemies. What does the Pentagon need more than anything else? Enemies, credible or not. Communism. Radical Islam. Venezuela. Al-Qaeda. Iran. 

...an era so perverse and corrupt that when 2016 rolled around a fraudulent fool named Donald Trump, a failed businessman, a serial adulterer, a tax cheat, who appealed to the worst in people, got burped up.

The militarization of American police started in the 1990’s if I recall right, and accelerated thereafter under Republican and Democratic regimes, and almost in tandem with our global war on jihadis. As time passed, more and more military equipment was gifted to the states from the Pentagon surplus, and American police resembled their brothers and sisters in the Armed Forces. War abroad, war at home -- the American Way. 

Police protect property, that has always been their role in America. It started with the Slave Patrols that hunted two-legged property, and continued during labor strikes, the Civil Rights era, and every social upheaval since. Police, as we have witnessed repeatedly of late, from coast-to-coast, look like occupying forces and treat peaceful exercise of a Constitutional right as a criminal activity worthy of tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, horses, SUV’s. 

War abroad, war at home -- the American Way. 

Fucking disastrous. I need a beer, maybe two. It’s going to be a long night here in Santa Barbara Town, home of the laid back wealthy and the frenzied working poor, partially shut down again by order of the Governor. No bars or inside dining. Beaches open (but gatherings prohibited), beach parking lots closed. 

California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, among the states where Covid-19 veers beyond control. Public health authorities are largely on their own, abandoned when the Orange Menace tossed the towel in and claimed victory. Red state governors, desperate to put their loyalty to Trump ahead of their constituents, turned a stone ear to public health professionals. Came out of lockdown ahead of the pack, opening bars, restaurants, parks, nail salons, barber shops, pool halls, gyms, hardware stores, a magnificent show of hubris and stupidity. 

Lords of a hollow kingdom. But they will ride it down to the very end, into the fiery pit. 

What was the point I was working toward? Yes, the neoliberal, Free Market God, put-a-price-on-everything, privatize everything, cut taxes, then cut them again, and again, squeeze the working poor, crush the poor, saddle kids with education debt, an era so perverse and corrupt that when 2016 rolled around a fraudulent fool named Donald Trump, a failed businessman, a serial adulterer, a tax cheat, who appealed to the worst in people, got burped up. He was good for TV ratings. He promised tax cuts and radical right-wing judges. He promised to vanquish the limp-wristed Liberals who ate artisanal salads and drove electric cars and thought they were superior to Real Americans. He declared war on immigrants. 

How we are paying for our sins. The Trump Death Clock records 76,669 deaths from Covid-19 that could have been avoided if Trump had acted earlier. But of course the Orange Menace didn’t act, he denied, deflected, downplayed, and dithered in the face of overwhelming warnings. Had to protect the stock market and his reelection chances ahead of public health. Trump is a sociopath. And the entire GOP still bends over for him. 

My brain feels like a pinball machine. Mental overload. I may need some Irish whisky. What fresh insanity will come with the rising sun? This is Trump & Pence Land, a beautiful, prosperous, safe, devotional, and above all, white place, where the sun is always shining and the stars burn bright at night. The picket fences are white. The lawns are trimmed, weeds pulled, American flags on display. Walk into someone’s home and the first thing you see is a Bible. Mr. and Mrs. Jones may have a chest of sex toys in their closet, and cheat on their taxes, but in Trump & Pence Land they are as pure as Sierra Nevada snowmelt.  

We’re not winning. We’re the world’s basket case. Look at the numbers of Covid-19 infections and deaths. Look at the economic calamity, the worst of which is yet to come. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 4

“If you’re black you might as well not show up on the street/’less you wanna draw the heat.” Bob Dylan, Hurricane

America is being taught a hard lesson, one I hope we don’t soon forget. The lesson is that competence in our public institutions matters. As Masha Gessen points out in her excellent book, Surviving Autocracy, Donald J. Trump routinely ridiculed the government while a candidate in 2016, and then continued his assault on competence and expertise when he assumed office. Trump’s former advisor, Steve Bannon, boasted about dismantling the administrative state. Trump filled his Cabinet and federal agencies with unqualified hacks like Ben Carson, Rick Perry, Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin. Everyone Trump appointed seemed to share one trait: hostility and disdain for the departments they headed.

Is it any wonder that the Trump Administration response to the pandemic has been so disastrous? Not in the least. Incompetence breeds chaos, and as Masha Gessen notes, “Trump’s incompetence is militant.” I still laugh at people like Van Jones and Fareed Zakaria who opined that Trump would grow into the presidency; others said the office would change Trump, but the fact is that the opposite has happened -- Trump changed the office -- and not for good. I can’t think of an America president who has more thoroughly debased and disgraced the office. 

As his reelection hopes crater, Trump draws from a rancid well of division, hatred, and racism. He speaks about Confederate monuments as if he had been born and raised in Georgia, refers to Covid-19 as the “Kung Flu” even though he praised China’s leader Xi Jinping for his handling of the outbreak, and rambles on about real Americans who believe in real values, all while Covid-19 stages a counterattack and the death toll rises to nearly 125,000. Trump practices a politics of grievance, self-pity and revenge.  Add the scandals, the staggering abuse of power, the self-dealing and blatant disregard for the rule of law and it amounts to a deadly confluence of incompetence and venality. 

I still laugh at people like Van Jones and Fareed Zakaria who opined that Trump would grow into the presidency; others said the office would change Trump, but the fact is that the opposite has happened -- Trump changed the office -- and not for good.

Because the potential for voter suppression or foreign meddling in November is high, I’m in no way counting Trump out -- he’s like a vampire who cannot be considered dead until a stake has been driven through his shriveled heart. November is a long way off and Trump’s capacity for destruction isn’t likely to diminish. Even in the midst of a worsening pandemic, Trump wants the Supreme Court to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, which would cause millions of people to lose their health insurance coverage. Why now, Donald, just because you have some twisted need to act callous and cruel to fulfill your strongman fantasies? 

Cowardly members of Trump’s party play to him, not the constituents they’re sworn to serve. They fear Trump’s Tweets, name-calling, and other retribution. I can’t remember a time when an entire political party has acted with such cowardice. It’s political malpractice. 

The reckoning must and will come. Trump is far too limited a human being to change that which inflicted him upon us in the first place. He knows one dance step, and one only, and he will perform it until the floor collapses beneath his feet. Overcoming Trumpism will not be easy or quick, it will need to be rooted out. The energy and determination on display during the protests and demonstrations against police brutality must continue and expand outwards, to include other forms of social justice, most important among them, health care for all Americans, followed closely by environmental, economic, housing, and electoral justice. These threads cannot be separated; together they form a rope that can hoist millions of people from the basement of precarity. 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 3

“The overarching fear was not economic but cultural -- the fear that somehow, black and brown people were going to replace whites.” Bakari Sellers, My Vanishing Country

Father’s Day. Another milestone on the calendar attenuated by Covid-19, the virus that came to visit and stayed because Donald Trump and our spoiled oligarchs became impatient; Trump because he needed a “strong” economy to bolster his reelection chances, and the oligarchs because losing profits is unacceptable. More than twenty states are seeing a new surge or resurgence of infections. 

By all accounts it appears that Trump’s Tulsa show flopped. Attendance was sparse, the images were lousy, and Trump and his campaign looked positively gassed. You eat the same thing morning and night and it will become bland and unsatisfying. Same old is what Trump has to offer. None of his lame bits worked. All he proved is that he can drink water from a cup.

Nearly 120,000 Americans are dead from Covid-19. 

Geoffrey Berman, ousted United States Attorney for the powerful Southern District of New York, sent a very clear message to the GOP in his rebuttal of the announcement that he had resigned. Berman, a Trump appointee let’s remember, gave Attorney General William Barr a procedural middle finger and stayed in place until Trump himself brought the hammer down. What’s up with the SDNY and its multiple investigations of Trump and Rudy G? Or was Barr’s Friday Night Massacre about a Turkish bank? Is SDNY getting close to making indictments? Was Berman signalling to the GOP that the shit coming down is bad and they’d be wise to locate the nearest floatation device? Time will tell.  We know that Barr -- who should have been impeached for dereliction of duty by now -- has long given up any pretence to be acting in the interests of justice. He’s Trump’s fixer, and when he acts, it means he’s trying to neutralize something or someone that might damage Trump. 

If there was ever a time for Republicans to find their Big Kid voices, it’s now, before Trump and Barr do further damage. It’s time for Republicans to come clean and clear and answer one question: Are you for Trump or the American Republic? They’re not one and the same. Trump stands for incompetence, corruption and death. The GOP has to choose, follow Trump into the jagged rocks or remember the lessons of kindergarten and do what’s right by the oath every last one of them swore. It’s called honor, a sense of duty, real patriotism.

How many Republicans need to step to the line and help Democrats move the blade from America’s carotid artery? Two dozen? 

Without Republican hands on deck, the Democrats alone cannot stop Trump from law breaking and self-dealing. Will Republicans enter their names in the historical record as siding with one man over the best interests of this nation? On the record, yeas and nays. What a clear moral, ethical and obvious choice: which side are you on, what flag will you congregate beneath, Trump’s or Old Glory? 

Republicans need to start humming an anti-Trump tune, warm-up their voices, be ready to join the growing chorus of disapproval for Trump and his odious crime family. Time’s running out for Trump, and as the clock winds down, the pressure builds. 

If members of the GOP believe in the oath they swore, one hand raised, the other on a Bible, surrounded by proud spouses and freshly scrubbed children, they will haul themselves from Trump’s polluted moat and raise their voices.  

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 2

“The only thing foggier than war itself can be the path to its frightening, if too often exciting, outbreak.” David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom 

Upside down, balanced on the head of a pin, sickness on one side, economic and social calamity on the other. Middle ground shrinking, the battle lines clear, all poised to fall or flee when the next shock comes. Flush with impatience, unable to strike out in spectacular fashion and solve the problem with force, the leaders of the crumbling Empire are too blind to see that victory this time requires agility and discipline, patience fed by the river of common purpose.

But years of drought dried the river up. Now you find and carry your own water, every man (woman, too) for himself. Dog-eat-dog and the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, no mercy, fee-based compassion. Coddle the wealthy few and punish the numerous poor. 60 years or so ago, a large chunk of American workers were card-carrying union members, with the collective power to compel owners to share the spoils or pay a cost. Today Uber is the emblem of the age; individual workers fly the Uber banner, but the ship and its upkeep is a burden carried by the worker who amounts to little more than a digital sharecropper. For the modern capitalist, harnessing the power of want and fear is Nirvana; precarious workers are compliant workers. 

The lies from high places keep coming. The false prophets and carnival barkers slay the truth. The Fraud King is off his nut, his candle burning down to a pool of wax; he’s totally lost, babbling about school choice as more black men die and the Covid-19 wave he and his many enablers ignore gathers force and prepares for another run at the jetty. Christian warrior Mikey Pence is on the loose, bearing false witness, misleading the flock into a false sense of security. “We smote the terrible virus and it is no more. Rejoice. Let us gather under one roof, and may our trumpets blare and banners fly.” 

Frederick Douglass said in 1862: “He is the best friend of this country, who, at this tremendous crisis, dares tell his countrymen the truth, however disagreeable that truth may be.”

The silence of cowards is deafening. 

Covid-19 has altered time, disrupted our uneasy equilibrium, and exposed our weaknesses, just as immoral Capitalism has poisoned our national well, and now the water is contaminated with the carcinogens of greed and cruelty.  

All feels precarious, a strange calm before what is sure to be a vengeful storm. “It’s dying out,” says the Fraud King of the virus as evidence to the contrary gathers like leaves in the gutter. “I made Juneteenth famous,” the Fraud King says, “nobody even knew it existed before.” Bring on the Nazi-style rally in Tulsa, let it be a petrie dish for Trump’s insatiable need for adulation. He’ll say stupid shit, unhinged shit about Biden and the Democrats, John Bolton, his niece, the Supreme Court, Covid-19, anyone else he’s upset with, a river of bile. Trump is ruler of an island being reclaimed by the sea. He loses ground with each passing day. If Trump was smart, and he’s not, he would keep his mouth shut about the Supreme Court. The Court’s holding a potential wildcard against Trump. If the justices rule as they should, for the idea that no one is above the law, including Donald J. Trump, and force him to turn over his tax returns, the gig is up. I’ve said all along that with Trump you have to watch the current to see where the money comes from, and where and to whom it goes. Of all the shit that scares Trump, having his tax returns exposed is near the top of his list. 

Losing rounds for the Fraud King, he’s taken some body blows, shown some weakness, and he knows more is to come. Reality is merciless. 

 

The Isolation/Rebellion Diaries No. 1

“Trump is clearly out of his depth, which is basically the shallow end of the kiddie pool.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

I’ve changed the title of this series because the pandemic and people’s Rebellion of 2020 has for me merged into one event. As I write this, my wife is in Cottage Hospital waiting for a procedure to remove a stone from each of her kidneys. I have to call the pharmacy. If all goes as hoped, I should get a call to meet my wife in the recovery area in about an hour. I’ll see what I can get down here and hope it makes sense. I put in a lot of effort on the day job at the school district today, and as a result I’m tired. Plus, I had a training session in the heat of the afternoon, working my new double-end punching bag for a few rounds.

There’s too much news. My head hurts from trying to process it all. That’s another reason the pandemic and the Rebellion have merged. I am reminded of how things connect, how one thing affects another, and how if you’re aware, you can follow the tracks, treads, wires, and highways to the core issue. I think of the pandemic, and how those Americans who work for wages quickly exhausted their resources, a measure of how poor the economy really is for the majority of citizens. Saving money is damn hard for the working poor.  All the money that comes in goes back out, and when there’s more going out than coming in, that’s when you start letting stuff slide, like insurance premium payments and visits to the doctor or dentist. Debt usually follows, compounding the woe. Maybe this is temporary, you get back on an even keel eventually, but you don’t rebound to where you were, you’ve fallen, for good. Maybe you’ve hit that one-way street that runs straight downhill. You see a lot of people going that way, but when you look at your screen all you hear is how well this or that corporation’s bottom line looks, or how low the “official” unemployment rate is. You hear about bull markets, investor confidence, liquidity and bond yields, the latest pronouncement from the Federal Reserve, and it’s just noise because none of it means shit. We still got the problem: too much going out and not enough coming in. 

Off the tip top of my head, I estimate our out of pocket costs for my wife’s kidney stone procedure will land north of $3,500. The insurance companies always seem to do just fine. The bankers of all sizes and shapes make money coming and going, all legal, all immoral as hell. But who cares about morality when you’ve got the keys to the Treasury, a license to plunder. 

How about Trump. What a motherfucker. He’s one of the dumbest fucks ever, but there are some people around him who are truly wicked. I can summon an image of the dark lord, Stephen Miller, the gray cloud above his head, the faraway look in his eye, his dick hardening by a wonderfully wicked thought. What a way to stick it in their Black Lives Matter faces. What a way to signal them that their pathetic protests don’t mean shit. We have power, and that’s all the matters. Trump is untouchable. Let’s hold a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 19th. 

That’s some shit at this moment. Juneteenth. Freedom Day. Tulsa. The white on black massacre of 1921. Hundreds murdered. Black-owned buildings and businesses torched, black wealth gone forever, up in smoke, ashes in the dirt. To pick that day for one of Trump’s Nazi rallies takes a streak of evilness that makes repeat appearances in human history. To hold that kind of animating hatred, to deliberately use that level of hatred to manipulate people. Trump doesn’t own any hotels in Tulsa that I know of, so he’s probably clueless about the history of the place, not that it would make any difference. Trump’s going to Tulsa for the imagery and images, the backdrop, the photos he can blast out to his diehard base. Trump’s got a jones for footage that can be sliced, diced, and spliced together to create an alternate reality on Fox News, during the Republican National Convention and all the way to Election Day (if there is one). Trump’s itching to release his MAGA Greatest Hits. 

The market’s saturated with Trump’s bullshit, his stock is falling, he’s dumb and can’t adapt because all he’s got in his bag is a driver. 

Covid-19 is with us. But it appears our political leaders are OK with it. We’re not hearing much from the doctors and scientists these days, they’ve been muzzled, although new outbreaks and increased infections in states that refused either patience or prudence are concerning. My sense here in sunny Santa Barbara is that we jumped the gun by at least two weeks. We have to wait and see which way the wave breaks. 

Happy to report that my wife made it through her procedure, and came home last night. Howls when she pees, but is otherwise mending. 

Trump Death Clock

69,005

Estimated U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Due To POTUS Inaction