Over the Bridge and Back Again

“It is the mark of illiberal regimes that they make free speech more difficult even outside their borders.” Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

I have just returned from my annual trip to Oregon to visit my brother. He lives in a working-class neighborhood in Tillamook, one block from the Hampton lumber mill which churns out wood products twenty-four hours a day. We loaded two bikes on his Jeep Cherokee and set out for Washington under blue skies. We crossed the Astoria Bridge, always a thrill for me since I have few opportunities to see a river as wide as the Columbia, and headed for the small town of Ocean Shores. In years past we explored Westport, Grays Harbor, Port Townsend, Tokeland, and Aberdeen. Ocean Shores has a population of around six-thousand souls. Two of its larger hotels were shuttered temporarily, and when we inquired about vacancies at another we were told there were none because of a shortage of housekeeping staff. Help wanted signs were ubiquitous. Despite the labor shortage, we noticed quite a lot of new construction -- houses, condos, and commercial spaces. I wondered if the city mothers and fathers were following a Field of Dreams strategy -- build and they will come. We finally found lodging for the night at a Comfort Inn. The young woman at the front desk told the customer in front of us that due to a shortage of staff she worked seven days a week for most of the summer. 

After an uneventful evening we drove back to Astoria the following morning, crossing the bridge minutes before a maintenance crew set up, which slowed traffic in both directions for several hours. We rode along the bicycle path that parallels the Columbia, watched a couple of big container ships, and saw two Blackhawk helicopters fly under the bridge. We had dinner on Pier 39. The window of our first floor room at the Hampton Inn faced the river, and we could watch the container ships at anchor get turned all the way around by the current. The barking of sea lions went on most of the night.  

Back in Tillamook by midday the following day, we cleaned rain gutters and wiped the bikes down while listening to Mojo Nixon’s show on Sirius XM. I was interested to learn from some of my brother’s friends about Tillamook real estate, which, as in many other unlikely locales in our country, is experiencing price wars, with potential buyers offering thousands of dollars above the asking price. Where the money comes from I have no idea. I wonder if this phenomenon is another example of irrational exuberance that will come crashing to earth sooner or later. 

Whenever I travel I realize how little I know. I can finally distinguish a Douglas fir from a spruce, but there are many other species of tree I can’t name. I don’t know much about fishing, tides, currents, and very little about bow hunting. The older I become the less I seem to know, and much of what I think I know is tinged with doubt. Our world is drowning in information, yet knowledge seems to be in short supply, and wisdom is even more rare. One of my brother’s friends, Larry, immediately struck me as intelligent because he listened more than he spoke, and when he added something to the conversation it was thoughtful. I must learn to listen more. This blog is of course filled with my opinions, notions, biases, prejudices, gripes and inchoate thoughts. The modern world is bewildering, and it very often scares me. What is real, what matters, how can we help? 

I drove from Tillamook to Portland in a steady rain, through the state forest on Highway 6, a twisting road prone to rock slides in spots. I left my brother’s house early so I could take my time. My rental car hydroplaned once or twice. It was early in the morning, dark, and fortunately there was sparse traffic headed east; I kept to a steady 45mph. My night vision is suspect and at times it was hard to see where the road was heading. I alternated between high and low beams, and when a vehicle appeared in my rearview mirror I pulled over to let it pass. No sense pissing off the locals. 

Travel is a luxury, but it’s one of the best ways to learn. 

I Left My Money in San Francisco

 “Spend what you need but just throw even a few coins into a tin and forget that you have it. A woman should always have something put by.” Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

We spent three days in San Francisco to celebrate our children’s birthdays. Miranda turned twenty on September 3, and Gabriel ushered in his twenty-fifth year on the 4th. They were born five years apart. Our last visit to San Francisco was fifteen years ago and much has changed in that short span of time. There was the financial implosion of 2008 and 2009, the recovery and gentrification that changed many of SF’s neighborhoods, the election of Donald Trump and the madness of his administration, massive wildfires that confirmed some of our worst foreboding about the changing climate, and the pandemic. Gabriel lived in San Francisco for a couple of years, moved down to Los Angeles for a job at the LA Phil, then back to San Francisco when he got a job at the Opera. He lives in a quintessential Victorian-style house with three roommates. The front door opens on a steep flight of stairs, climbs to a landing, then another short flight of stairs to the living area. The windows in the high-ceilinged living room offer views of downtown. The room Gabriel occupies has hardwood floors, a fireplace and a lovely bay window. 

Miranda spent most of her time in Berkeley visiting two of her girlfriends from high school who attend UC Berkeley. She got her first tattoo and rode the BART for the first time. We all had dinner together at Gabriel’s on his birthday. The boy made pasta, bread, a lovely salad, and cookies for dessert. 

We stayed at the Marriott Marquis on 4th street, near Union Square. There’s a Trader Joe’s across the street from the hotel. The room was decent, although the mini-fridge leaked water. Marriott charges its guests $14.95 per day for Internet access, $80 a day to park a car. Aside from being annoying, it was another reminder of how corporations try to squeeze as much profit as they can from every customer. We parked our Honda across the street for $58 a day. The Dodgers were in town for a weekend series against the Giants and the hotel was full of baseball fans decked out in team gear. Face masks were required in the common areas of the hotel, and at every restaurant and the Academy of Science we had to show our vaccination cards and ID to get in. We didn’t find this unreasonable or see it as an encroachment on our freedom. It seemed a sensible precaution in a pandemic. We got around on foot, and by Uber and Metro. Union Square is gritty and grimy, populated with tourists and homeless folks, street corner preachers and panhandlers. The Disney Store is closing, Crate & Barrel is looking for seasonal help. 

The Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park was fantastic, worth every cent of the $40 entry fee. We went to the top of the observation tower at the de Young Museum to take in the panoramic view of the city. The sky was hazy that day, but the view was still spectacular. The park was crowded with joggers, cyclists, people walking dogs, picnicking on the grass, playing Frisbee. The weather was fine, sunny and warm. I like the ethnic diversity of San Francisco. I enjoy looking at the architecture and the fire escapes, the old facades juxtaposed with gleaming glass towers. 

 I tried to stay away from the news during the trip, but it was difficult with the shocking reproductive news coming out of Texas and the Supreme Court. The conservative political minority in the United States has been intent on killing a woman’s right to an abortion ever since it realized it was a potent wedge issue. The political (banks, insurance and real estate, large corporations, and the Pentagon) arm of the American right wing cares about low taxes, minimal regulation, weak unions, heavy defense spending, and limited social insurance; this arm doesn’t care one bit about the unborn. The issue is useful in that it gave the political right entry into the world of the Christian right. Both arms are after the same thing, power, but on their respective planes of interest, which frequently overlap. The Christian right believes its male members are sanctioned by the bible to control womens’ bodies. This marriage of convenience and mutual aid is why a man as immoral and religiously illiterate as Donald Trump was adored by evangelicals. 

Naturally, Texas, being Texas, had to go full Taliban against women, with a cruel and bizarre law. The Texas state legislature has a long history of crackpot members and idiotic laws. Read Molly Ivins for confirmation. Note, too, that the legislature rammed this abhorrent anti-abortion law through at the same time it was passing a vicisous voter suppression bill. Power and control, minority over majority, not accidental. I don’t know what to say about the Supreme Court other than to call it what it is: an unelected and unaccountable political body. The action taken by the Court in the Texas matter isn’t as surprising as the cowardly way the majority went about it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to create a bill that will codify in federal law a woman’s right to an abortion, but this is a hollow response since such a bill has zero chance of getting through the Senate, unless the Democrats change the rules regarding the filibuster, an action they are too timid to undertake. Pelosi is probably thinking that the abortion issue might be very useful for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Women voters (especially women of color) could very well hold the key to the Democrats holding the House and Senate. 

In the final days of the US occupation of Afghanistan many conservatives expressed concern about the fate of Afghan women, and cried their crocodile tears, and yet when it comes to the reproductive health of American women, they are only too happy to support Draconian measures that will hurt the poor most of all. The GOP is the party of Hypocrisy. If Republicans are so concerned about women, why is their standard-bearer a serial sexual harasser? Why is the ERA still languishing, and why won’t Republicans back renewal of the Violence Against Women Act? Spare the tears. 

I’m reading The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine, a fine history of the Civil War. 

Chronicle Of A Failure Foretold

 “I was reminded again how the men who start wars invariably live through them to justify the behavior that has left millions maimed and dead.” Jim Harrison

Saigon, 1975. Kabul, 2021. The motif of the limits of American military power is that of helicopters evacuating personnel from embassy compounds once thought to be impregnable, and permanent. 

I was opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan from the beginning. While the American reaction to the 9/11 attacks was understandable, it always struck me as an overreaction, misguided, out of proportion. I place the Patriot Act in the same category. The folly of trading civil liberties for the illusion of safety, and in the process creating a massive bureaucracy with a creepy name -- the Department of Homeland Security -- was sure to return to haunt us, and did in the summer of 2020 when protestors were snatched off the streets of Portland by DHS thugs in unmarked vehicles and uniforms without insignia or identification. I never consented at the ballot box to be kept under constant electronic surveillance by my own government. Homeland. The word has fascist overtones. 

Had 9/11 been treated like a crime America would not be scrambling to exit Kabul today. Nor would Osama bin Laden have been able to evade capture for ten years, hiding in plain sight in Pakistan. We were told that bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world, hunted by all of America’s major intelligence agencies, and with help from our “allies” in the region. I’m sure it will be fifty years before the full story about bin Laden is known, but my gut sense is that the reporting on the raid that killed bin Laden by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is nearer the truth than any official explanation by the US government. And, of course, the War on Terror didn’t end with bin Laden’s death. Over the course of two decades the lies told by the military establishment to Congress, the media, and the public about Afghanistan rival the lies told about Vietnam. We’re winning; progress is being made; we’re turning the corner; we can leave victorious once the local security forces are trained and equipped, indoctrinated with our fool-proof methods; all we need to completely turn the tide in our favor is a troop surge; all we need is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Year after year. Thousands of Afghan and American lives, trillions of taxpayer dollars, wasted. 

Once the rather nauseating explosion of “thank you for your service” tributes, solemn moments of silence for our fallen heroes, and stadium flyovers by Navy F-14’s lost their novelty, the American people forgot about Afghanistan. Who could keep track of the Whack-A-Mole nature of the conflict, with the Taliban being routed one year only to return the next more potent than ever. Our victories on the ground were ephemeral; the Taliban had only to be patient, to wait. That was the way to outwit the overwhelming military power of the foreign invader. It worked against the Soviet Union. It worked against the United States, too. 

I’m struck by how often the most egregious blunders are conceptualized and sold by men and women with the finest pedigrees, educated at elite institutions like Harvard and Yale. The best and brightest of the Vietnam Era, the financial wizards who crashed the world economy in 2008, and the architects of the War on Terror, which was always meant to be evergreen. We’ve forgotten the inconvenient fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were nationals of Saudi Arabia, but the United States could hardly launch a military invasion against our dear friends in Riyadh, not at the risk of losing access to Saudi oil. No, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney gave the Saudis a soft pass, as has every administration since. What was the first foreign country Donald Trump visited? Saudi Arabia. Hubris. Greed. Corruption. Rot. This is how global empires deteriorate and collapse. Under the crushing weight of stupidity and the mythology of their own infallibility. 

In my head I can still hear the voice of George W. Bush, the faux cowboy, as he justified the undeclared war against a country that had not attacked the United States; a country in a part of the world that most American citizens couldn’t find on a map or begin to understand; a country of regions, tribes, languages, dialects, feuds and traditions. Bush painted with a simplistic brush, good against evil, on our side or the side of our enemy, our benevolent god against their malignant god. A shocked and frightened nation bought the story. Now will come the excuses and justifications and retellings of the story, recast, not as a tale of colossal failure, but as a noble effort to bestow American-style freedom and democracy on a country that never asked for either. 

Hardwired

 “I will finish it by saying that you should resist letting self-analysis become self-abuse.” John Steinbeck

That’s good advice from John Steinbeck, a writer who had a deep understanding of human psychology, and something I frequently violate to my detriment. I am my harshest and most consistent critic. I need a certain amount of order and predictability to feel balanced, a trait I’m not proud of because it can easily lead to falling into a rut and a lack of spontaneity, which makes one dull and rigid. Sometimes the set of my ways, my habits of mind, make me feel closed off, isolated inside my head. Staying in the moment is as challenging as ever. 

Full, leisurely retirement here in our delightfully comfortable bungalow on Milpas Street has been wonderful but I know for the health of our bank account that I have to transition to semi-retirement before long. Today my wife looked at me and said, “I’m a little worried about money.” So, this pleasant run we’ve been on will soon come to an end. I expected this, and planned all along to find part-time work within a few months of bidding the school district goodbye. This will hopefully mean a reasonably tolerable part-time gig of thirty hours a week. I don’t want to do much thinking, I just want something I can do primarily on my feet, even if it’s repetitive, in exchange for time to write, think, and breathe. Thus far, Trader Joe’s has rejected me twice, not even an interview to look me over, see that I’m ambulatory, pleasant, and capable of doing the job. If I’m honest with myself, and I usually am, I admit that my job hunting efforts to date have been scattershot, not even classifiable as half-hearted. I don’t want to surrender the slow-paced, completely free hours spent writing, reading under the market umbrella on the patio, afternoon naps, training sessions, drinking wine and sleeping past six a.m. Not yet. Part of me wants to hold on to this luxury as long as possible. 

Dissipation and dissolution are for the wealthy. I’m just a working-class guy. 

My daughter started her first post-City College job today, at a local sandwich shop. It’s an entry-level gig, part-time. She was nearly a half hour late because she mixed up the start time, but she made it and put a full day in, and came home smelling of salad oil and bemoaning the math involved in making change. She’s had this awful phobia about numbers for years, it’s her academic Achilles Heel. She may return to school in the Fall, but she doesn’t yet have an idea where. On the other hand, she’s not yet twenty so I refuse to push her faster than she can go, not as long as we can afford it. No rent, no chores to speak of, a car to get around. My daughter’s best girlfriends, her posse, have returned to their colleges and universities, one at Cal Poly in San Luis, and two at UC Berkeley. Smart girls, but goofy as hell. They start laughing for no reason. Why does Ally titter when I ask if she wants a glass of water?

My wife and daughter rarely read this blog, but somehow always react if I mention them in a piece. I’m making an effort to bring the lens closer to who I am, although any regular readers of this thing I created in 2004 and have obsessively kept going since should have an idea. My politics lean left and have since I had a brief fling with the GOP in the mid-80’s. My preoccupation is with the balance of power between citizens and their government, between the wealthy and the many, between corporations and consumers, and between humans and the planet. Our economic system works too well for the few and is too hard on the many, and is making the planet sick, and in some places unlivable. The resources America hands to the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex at the expense of the welfare of the nation’s citizens is obscene. The War on Terror was a misguided delusion that I opposed from the outset. Ditto the Patriot Act. Serious shit is happening on every front, but if it’s not unfolding before our eyes every day we lose interest, until the next flood, fire, mudslide or hurricane. Human nature, hard-wired. It’s like Robbie Robertson sings, “Hardwired for war, hardwired for sex.” 

The only book I’m reading now is The Road Home by Jim Harrison. Nearly done with it. Harrison’s writing gobsmacks me. I love this tale about the Northridge clan on the American Plains. It’s a story of land and cattle and rivers, of lost brothers and a long absent son, and his mother, Dalva. Harrison gets the tone right, and the reader always knows the season, the temperature, and what flowers are in bloom or lying dormant. But Harrison also gets his characters right, builds them with insight and detail and humor. Like some people are taken with certain painters, I’m taken with Jim Harrison, though I feel like I’m late to the party, having intentionally immersed myself in his writing only in the last two years. 

We’re taking a road trip to San Francisco in a few weeks for our kids’ birthdays. Our son Gabriel lives in the city again, so we’ll see his neighborhood and do some wandering. No idea what the Covid situation is up north at the moment. In the third week of September I will travel to Oregon to visit my brother in Tillamook, our annual get together. Whenever we spend time together I realize how similar in temperament we are. We’re both obsessive, neat, and practical, and born fretters over the mundane details of adult life. I was mulling over a road trip, sort of a repeat of what I did last September, hopefully minus the wildfires and closed freeways and smoky air, but have decided not to risk getting stuck somewhere and will fly to Portland and rent a car that will sit in my brother’s driveway while we head off in his Jeep Cherokee with bikes on the rack and a cooler full of snacks in plastic bags with twist ties. Granola bars, crackers, cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Green pastures, dairy cows, rivers, trees. I hope to once again look upon the mighty Columbia. 

The Death of Shame

 Shame: n. The feeling of humiliation or distress arising from the consciousness of something dishonourable or ridiculous in one’s own or another’s behavior or circumstances, or from a situation offensive to one’s own or another’s sense of propriety or decency. Oxford English Dictionary

You might think a man with three daughters would be hyper-sensitive to issues facing women in the workplace, including unequal pay and sexual harassment, but in the case of Andrew Cuomo, the embattled Governor of New York, you would be wrong. Having three daughters hasn’t curbed Cuomo’s penchant for hitting on women, groping them, kissing them, and other lecherous behavior. Despite compelling and voluminous evidence that he harassed numerous women, Cuomo defiantly asserts his innocence. His Italian heritage is what accounts for his excessive displays of physical affection, he says. All the women who came forward to accuse him are mistaken or exaggerating. He’s a good guy, just misunderstood. 

I wonder what Big Daddy Mario thinks of all this? Does he wonder where his boy went wrong? 

Suppose one of Cuomo’s daughters came home and told him that her male boss, an older white man in a position of authority, touched her breast or rubbed her backside or kept pestering her to have a date. Would Cuomo be fine with that? Would he write it off as harmless? Would he tell his daughter that she must be misinterpreting her boss’ actions? By all the accounts I’ve read, Andrew Cuomo has always been a bit of a bully and a thug. During the early days of the pandemic, when New York was hit hard and suffering, Cuomo’s stock rose on the strength of the striking contrast between his daily briefings and Trump’s fact-free, rambling, misleading and self-congratulatory monologues. New York, and the nation, looked to some political figure for serious leadership, and there was Cuomo, who in comparison to the petty and whiny President of the United States seemed like a tower of strength and competence. In reality, Cuomo’s leadership on Covid was shockingly poor, as described in a new book by Ross Barken titled The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York. Barkan argues that the actions Cuomo took -- and failed to take -- resulted in thousands of preventable deaths. So much for competence. 

Has the concept of honor lost all meaning in modern America? The smashing of norms was perfected by Donald Trump, but it didn’t start with the King of Mar-A-Lago. Shame no longer has the power to temper boorish or criminal behavior. Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Ron Desantis, Andrew Cuomo  -- no shame, no contrition, no remorse. I wrote a satirical bit on this blog a few years ago (I’ll link it here https://ozongsbalcony.blogspot.com/2019/07/blue-ribbon-president.html) in which Trump had sex with a sheep in the Oval Office and lost not a single acolyte or fan. Even brazen cruelty to animals couldn’t turn the MAGA crowd against Trump. Every one of Trump’s malignant acts, idiotic statements, and cruel policies can be explained away, deflected, or flipped on its head and weaponized in the alternate reality of MAGA world. 

I came across this quote while reading The Road Home by Jim Harrison, an American writer who is very underrated in my estimation: “The rich and the upper middle class were now seething with resentment over protecting their position and were demanding an enforceable mono-ethic which was gradually turning the country into a fascist Disneyland.” The Road Home was published in 1998. I’d say the transformation is complete. The mono-ethic is market capitalism. 

I received my sample ballot for the recall election of Gavin Newsom. There are 46 would-be governors waiting to take Newsom’s place if the voters of California are lame enough to remove him, including Caitlyn Jenner and Larry Elder. My favorite candidate is a Republican named Denver Stoner. I have no idea who Stoner is or what he stands for, I just love the name, Denver Stoner. There’s the obvious association with cannabis aficionados, but also a strength: Mike Hammer. Jason Bourne. Denver Stoner. I imagine some CIA Director in the middle of a crisis turning to his team and barking, “Get me Denver Stoner.”

The sun beats down. In other parts of California fires rage on. The pandemic has returned on the wings of the Delta variant, and we’re back to taking a mask everywhere. This resurgence belongs to the unvaccinated who refuse for misguided political reasons. 

2 + 2 = 5

 “I have come very late to the pleasure of sitting still with little or nothing on my mind.” Jim Harrison, The Road Home

Coming to the end of my first month of retirement. My Freedom Summer, the first time in twenty-two years that I haven’t been yoked to someone else’s schedule. It has been brilliant. A run of days of cool mornings and lovely sunny afternoons. I’ve been writing, reading, walking or riding my bike up Garcia Road, doing my training sessions, drinking wine, and watching TV in the evening with my wife. We’re into Dr. Death and The White Lotus at the moment. We enjoyed the Kominsky Method. The money is holding. Everybody’s healthy and we don’t suffer at all; life is crazy good right now. 

But back east in the nation’s capitol, the seat of our government and home of our limited, tenuous democracy, and many of our most cherished national myths, the war between Fact and Fantasy rages on. Trump fans the flame, Fox News amplifies it, and GOP nitwits like Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz repeat the talking points. Whatever the issue, employ the same tactic: work a bit of verbal jujitsu and flip it. Thus can Elise Stefanik, the third ranking member in the House GOP hierarchy, blame the breach of the capitol on Nancy Pelosi. Stefanik is banking on the American people being too ignorant to know what Stefanik clearly knows, namely, that the Speaker of the House isn’t responsible for security at the capitol. Not that facts matter. Slinging mud is what matters to the GOP. Anything and everything can be blamed on Pelosi. 

The modern GOP is like the Communist Party in the old Soviet Union, decrepit and morally debased, interested only in clinging to power; it’s a party based on denial -- of everything from climate change to who was responsible for the insurrection on January 6. We learned this week that neither Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell watched the first hearing of the House subcommittee investigating the Trump-inspired insurrection. Couldn’t be bothered, nothing to learn from four officers who battled rioters on that mournful day. Over on the Fox propaganda network, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson accused the officers of “theatrics.” So much for backing the men and women of Law Enforcement. 

Keeping an eye on politics tests one’s faith in human nature. Where else in this country do people so regularly sell out as in the halls of Congress? I’m not talking about the compromises politicians must make in order to craft legislation -- horse trading and compromise is how the sausage gets made. It’s messy and few are happy at the end. It’s the art of the possible and all that. I’m talking about selling out one’s principles. Condemning Donald Trump for inciting a mob one minute, then skipping down to Mar-A-Lago to lick his balls the next, as Kevin McCarthy did earlier this year, is what I’m talking about. Shamelessly describing the mob as a bunch of peaceful tourists, trying to turn rioters into patriots and martyrs, gaslighting people every day into doubting what they saw with their own eyes is my point. 

Insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. 

The last thing the GOP wants is for the full scope of what went down on January 6 to come out. They know where the trail of evidence will lead. They must know which members will be implicated. That’s why McConnell nixed a non-partisan independent investigation and McCarthy did his best to ratfuck the House subcommittee by clogging it with wingnuts and bomb-throwers like Jim Jordan. McCarthy wanted to turn the hearings into a circus, but since being outmaneuvered by Nancy Pelosi, all he can do is carp from the sidelines. Kevin’s not the brightest bulb, but he is scared of Jim Jordan and his ilk, and doesn’t want what happened to John Boehner to happen to him. McCarthy plays all the angles.

I don’t know how these folks sleep at night after spending an entire day pissing on the oath they swore. Corruption is corrosive and power corrupts and absolute power (which is what Trump wants. He wants to be Vladimir Putin) corrupts absolutely. If I were Steve Scalisi, I’d be watching over my shoulder for Elise Stefanik. She likes power, she’s hungry for it. She’s had a taste of it and wants more. 

You can’t swim in a cesspool and come out smelling of lilac. 

Songs of the Doomed

 “It was a loving crowd to by the way. There was a lot of love. I’ve heard that from everybody.” Former President Donald J. Trump on January 6. 

So, January 6, 2021 was a love fest. The Capitol police were ushering Trump’s people into the building, handing out cut flowers, bottles of water, canapes, wetnaps. It was like an outdoor picnic in the middle of winter, an outpouring of patriotic spirit, a red, white and blue day of celebration. And then Mike Pence fucked it all up.

Jesus Christ. I listened to some of Trump’s absolutely bat shit interview with Carol Leonning and Philip Rucker, Washington Post reporters and co-authors of I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year. I have no idea how Leonning and Rucker managed to keep looks of utter disbelief from taking over their faces. Trump’s rambling, fact-free, bullshit, completely-untethered-from-reality monologues are hard to listen to. Trump is every bloated, self-satisfied, stupid relative who gets tanked on Thanksgiving and subjects his entire family to outlandish tales of his own greatness. It’s just embarrassing that this malignant jackass was once the president of this beleaguered nation. Breathtaking mental illness. Never very bright to begin with, Trump has now slipped over the edge into total dementia. Trump actually makes Richard Nixon’s drunken midnight rants sound sane and rational. 

“Well, I heard,” Trump says. From who, Donald? The cheering throng inside your head? I imagine Hunter S. Thompson interviewing Trump, and in the first thirty seconds fixing the former president with a whiskey stare and saying, “Hey, what the fuck’s wrong with you? Are you really this fucked up, and without drugs? Sweet Jesus.” Leonning and Rucker spent more than two brain-withering hours with Trump. That’s a form of mental torture, like blasting the rankest heavy metal music into a bare prison cell for hours at a time in order to soften a prisoner up for interrogation. Did Leonning and Rucker head straight for the bar at Mar-A-Lago when they finished? Did they retreat to their rental car and fire up a fatty? To hear Trump talk about the Constitution, a document he’s never read and wouldn’t understand if he bothered to read it, and reference Thomas Jefferson, was perverse and disturbing. Dealing with nutters is never easy. But imagine the difficulty factor when the nutter is the ex-president of the most powerful military force on Earth. 

Don’t look into his eyes, never look into his eyes, it will melt your brain. 

I began this blog many years ago with the unshakeable belief that George W. Bush was the dumbest president in American history. Compared to Trump, Bush is like a member of Mensa or a Rhodes scholar. It’s hideous. Trump is Captain Ahab and Captain Queeg and Captain Bligh rolled into one fat ball. Monstrous, utterly monstrous. And millions of people believe this human piece of flotsam is the Second Coming. What the fuck is wrong with this country? Do we have dementia? Too much processed food, reality TV, opioids, booze, beer, weed, porn, and online shopping? Can an entire nation suffer cognitive decline? Maybe. You know how when we talk about great athletes who play team sports, like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady (fucking Trumper), Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Lionel Messi, etc., we say one measure of their greatness is their ability to make their teammates better? We always say that because it’s true. Great players lift the level of play of those around them. Now, think about Trump and the motley collection of dickheads, sycophants, thieves, and miscreants who surround him. Unlike a Messi, Trump makes the people around him dumber, weaker, even more idiotic. I mean, if Trump told Kevin McCarthy to fall to his knees and howl like a dog, I have no doubt that McCarthy would do it. 

Listening to Trump ramble for less than five minutes made my heart pound and my blood pressure rise. I felt a strange tingling around my left temple. I had to pull a book by Hunter S. Thompson from my shelf and seek a quote to make me feel better, it being too early in the day for a shot of single-malt or a toke or an edible. I found this in Songs of the Doomed: “We are raising a whole generation in this country that will never know what it feels like to rise up together and flog a crooked president out of the White House.” No, doc, it’s so bad now a generation of meatheads rises up to put a deranged and crooked president BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE. 

We’re all singing songs of the doomed now, folks...

Tushy

 

“After the rise of Barack Obama, large numbers of white Americans became convinced not only that racism was a thing of the past but also that, to the extent racial prejudice remained a factor in American life, white people were its primary victims.” Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America

Today I experienced a significant DIY accomplishment. All by myself I installed a bidet called a Tushy. For a competent man installing a Tushy would be a tension-free breeze, but when it comes to plumbing, tools, measurements and the like, I’m anything but competent. I usually have an ordeal, a confrontation with all my limitations, and a tango with the tarnished angels of my nature. F-bombs fall. My temper flares. I actually attempted to install the Tushy the day before, but could not get the hose connections to stop leaking. I followed the provided directions, full of pithy sayings about taking a poo, to the letter, and I looked forward with anticipation to the Tushy bathing my butt in cool water. Ha. Not so fast. After sopping up water with towels I put the Tushy back in its box, dead set on returning it from whence it came. But my failure nagged at me and I resolved to take another shot at the installation. This damn thing will not defeat me was what I was thinking. After taking a relaxing spin on my bike along Cabrillo Boulevard, I was back in the bathroom, resolute and determined. Lo and behold, a miracle, a domestic triumph, I successfully installed the Tushy -- without uttering a single curse -- and now our butts will be washed clean. 

This morning my wife informed me that our bank balance is a slender $114 until she gets paid again. Jesus, only my second week of retirement and already broke. I’m still coming to terms with the idea of “retirement”, preferring to think of this period as one of transition from one form of life to another, with more time, less work, more life, and less money. I realize the inherent limitations in this formula. I’ve applied for part-time jobs at Costco, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods; we’ll see if anyone wants to hire me. In the immediate, we’re fine, comfortably housed, well-fed, healthy. And now we will also boast clean asses! Life is good. 

I’m sitting on our secluded patio, under a red market umbrella. It’s a warm afternoon under a cloudless sky. The ice is melting in my G&T. I’m being pestered by an aggressive fly. My wife is inside, taking a nap. She’s developed a new affliction: she smells tobacco smoke when it’s not there. I forget the clinical name, but apparently this isn’t uncommon, and in fact is a side effect of a blood pressure medication which my wife has been on for years. What she believes she’s smelling manifests in irritated eyes and mild headaches. 

What were most Americans thinking about in 1851? What was the burning political issue of the time? What kept escalating, becoming more tense? Slavery. The Missouri Compromise and the Fugitive Slave Act. Did a man who owned another man have a right to pursue and apprehend his property in a free state? If a Negro escaped his owner and made it to a free state, was he assumed to be emancipated? What about compensation for his owner, the insurance companies and the banks? The business of slavery had its own infrastructure, one piece dependent on another. Big, fraught questions that lingered, then flared into controversies every few years. In the free states the slavery issue was vexxing, an annoyance. Many citizens objected to slavery, but that didn’t mean that Negroes were welcome; they weren’t. No open arms waited. They were the problem as much as the people who owned them -- and were determined to continue owning them. I’m sure there were many white people in free states who wished the Negro problem would just go away. It’s like our own time when half the country wishes that Donald Trump would just go away. But it won’t happen. Trumpism will be with us for a time. This is a divided nation. In thirteen Southern states 66% of Republicans support secession according to polling by Bright Line Watch. 

I hate to be a downer (I know, I know, this blog is usually a downer) but I think we’re headed for a period of armed confrontations between Trump’s insurrectionists and federal, state and local authorities. Political violence runs through American history. But if ever there was a terrible time for the country to be so bitterly divided, this is it, facing as we are two related crises: the pandemic and global climate change. The American west is bone dry and afire; parts of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are under water. Climate change is happening now, not down the road. It’s fucking scary. 

BACKLASH

“Not just in the South but across the country the Klan enjoyed a remarkable resurgence, reaching its all-time peak of an estimated four million members by 1924.” Adam Hochschild, “All-American Vigilantes” The New York Review

It used to be that nations mounted space explorations, now a few Robber Baron billionaires have so much wealth at their disposal that they can foot the bill to shoot themselves into space. Bully for you, Richard Branson. Who will the next contestant in the Billionaire Space Race be? 

I’m reading “The Cruelty Is The Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America” by Adam Serwer. One thing I’ve come to realize is that many of my fellow Americans are happy to enter the tent of Nationalism-Nativism-Racism. The rhetoric of America First, of America-for-Americans, and the superiority of the white race appeals to millions, as evidenced by the 74 million votes cast for Donald Trump in November 2020. That Trump was incompetent, immoral, ignorant, and an imbecile didn’t matter. As Adam Serwer points out in his essays, Trump’s followers adore him because he says out loud, and often, what they think; he hates and demonizes the same people they do, and gives voice to their grievances. A core tenet of Trumpism is that undeserving people are taking from “real” Americans, reaping benefits at the expense of flag-waving, gun-toting, salt-of-the-earth Americans. The takers are black and brown, foreign and devious, the victims are white. Democrats side with the black and brown folks, the queer, women, animals, fish and fowl at the expense of true Americans. Trump’s gift is that he absolves his followers of any shame or guilt. He makes them feel good, justified in their beliefs and opinions. He assures them that they are good people, “tremendous” people, as he called the mob who sacked the US Capitol on January 6. Trump tapped into an old, recurring, and reliable strain of American bigotry. 

I didn’t fully appreciate the backlash against Barack Obama until Trump was in office and actively trying to efface everything Obama had accomplished. Obama’s ethnicity never bothered me. What bothered me were his centrist policies, his caution, his expansion of our unwinnable wars, and his harsh treatment of illegal immigrants. In hindsight, I better understand what Obama was up against: it wasn’t just Mitch McConnell and the entire GOP that tried to thwart him, it was a sizable chunk of the white electorate who despised him because he was a black man who embodied the great fear of white people. The response to Barack Obama was tribal, and had far less to do with jobs and wages and material well-being, and more to do with bigotry -- and the fear of losing control, status, and privilege that white skin has always bestowed. As Adam Serwer writes, tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism. 

What happens next? I have no idea, but the portends are dark. The energy of resurgent white nationalism has to go somewhere. We’ve witnessed what Trump’s followers are capable of and it would be a mistake to believe they will fade quietly away. At this point it’s obvious that Trump’s core supporters will not desert him no matter what. Donald J. Trump satisfies the darkest impulses in the American soul. 

Who Will Win, England or Italy?

 “Every time the national team plays, no matter against whom, the country holds its breath.” Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow

The start of my semi-retirement has been very relaxed, free of worry. I’ve willed myself to do as little as possible, to honestly take a break, wind down. The other morning I took a long bike ride along the beach, followed by a five mile walk on the Riviera, where some of the loveliest homes in this city are. At night Santa Barbara shimmers and glitters down below. I came back to the flat land by way of winding Garcia Road. I feel ridiculously happy. I wake up slowly rather than like a man fired from a cannon. I’ve done some satisfying training sessions in my home gym, which is set up perfectly for all the modes of training I regularly do. And I’ve been reading a wonderful novel by Colm Toibin called The Master. It’s a stunning literary work. I’ve started a few poems. In the evening as the sun drops in the sky and the heat abates, we sit on our front porch, sipping pinot grigio. Life is very good. We love our new lodgings. 

For all that, my obsession this past week was Euro 2020, the semi-final matches between Italy and Spain, England and Denmark. I’m happy to see Italy in the Final. After France and Belgium, Italy was my team. I like the style of football they play under Roberto Mancini. I thought Spain played some very strong football against Italy in the semi-final, the first team in the tournament to dictate the tempo to the Azzurri. It was a classic match, concluding in a heart-stopping penalty shoot-out. Denmark put up stiff and valiant resistance against England deep into the additional periods, but it became clear that England had more strength and stamina. Kyle Walker was still sprinting with ease past the 110th minute; Denmark looked knackered. The penalty on Raheem Sterling was questionable, but give Harry Kane credit for his quick and sure reaction when Denmark’s Kaspar Schmeichel blocked his penalty kick. After decades of futility and heartbreak, England finally earned a berth on the biggest European stage of all. 

The Italian midfield is a joy to watch. Nicolo Barella, Jorginho, and Marco Verratti are each strong players on their own, all adept on playing in tight spaces and under extreme pressure. As a trio they are effective at winning the ball back quickly, and often high up the pitch. What the Italian midfield lacks is the raw physicality of England’s Declan Rice, and that lack is one reason I’m not convinced Italy can control the middle of the pitch for long periods of time. Jorginho is the key player for Italy in that respect, because, as he does for Chelsea in the Premier League, it’s Jorginho who keeps the ball moving, who offers an outlet to the back line, and who links the play. If England neutralize Jorginho, the Three Lions can control the midfield and get the ball to Harry Kane when he drops deeper to orchestrate England’s attack. Kane is in form again, not only scoring goals, but making incisive passes and intelligent runs.  

Another element the Azzurri lack is an out-and-out striker. Ciro Immobile and Andrea Belotti are workhorses up front, willing to make runs and press the ball, but goals have been coming from the wings by way of Lorenzo Insigne and Federico Chiesa. Italy needs their strikers to put some pressure on John Stones and Harry Maguire. The other reason I think England will prevail tomorrow night is the absence for Italy of Leonardo Spinazzola, who was having a fine tournament until he went down with an injury. Emerson Palmieri isn’t nearly as effective as Spinazzola, and, in fact, can be a liability. Finally, the match is being played in London at Wembley Stadium, an advantage for England. 

My prediction: England 2 - Italy 1. 

Star Spangled Fantasy

 “It is the burden of life to be many ages/without seeing the end of time.” Jim Harrison

Another 4th of July. Life, liberty and the pursuit of property and profit. We hold these truths to be self-evident (for white men). The many myths of America, shining city on the hill, beacon of freedom, cradle of liberty, welcoming arms for huddled masses from every corner of the globe. Rockets red glare. Dawn’s early light. Remember the Maine! Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My Lai. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The reality withers the myth like the burning sun shrivels the Pacific Northwest. Un-American you say, love it or leave it, Commie-Pinko-Socialist-Liberal. Get out if you don’t believe that America is the greatest country in the world, if you refuse to acknowledge the essential goodness of the people who inhabit this blessed nation. We’re No. 1!

America is a Land of Lies and Fantasy. Our history is littered with reverence for ignorance and fear. We avoid staring Truth in the face the same way Superman avoids kryptonite. We can’t accept or reconcile our long history of racism, violence, genocide, and destruction of our forests, rivers, lakes, and mountains because not enough of us have the courage to acknowledge the truth. We prefer to divide into our camps, red and blue, liberals and conservatives, the woke versus the Trumpian Zombies, and ride our fairy tales over the edge. After all these years and all the trauma, millions of white Americans can’t let go of the notion that there is something inherently inferior about black people. Am I alone in thinking that America is a madhouse, an air-conditioned nightmare as Henry Miller called it back in the 1940’s? 

The foundation is cracked and crumbling. Tears fall from the eyes of Lady Liberty, splash into the roiling waters of New York harbor. Huddled masses yearning to breathe free are no longer welcome here. The Republican Party is as conformist and sclerotic as the Communist Party was in the old Soviet Union, as adverse to facts and logic, reason and evidence. America is a fearful nation, not a confident one. Mainstream Democrats put up limp resistance, compromised as they are by corporate cash. The Supreme Court is ruled by political operatives in dark robes. As a country we’re not prepared for the coming crisis; there’s too much disunity and distrust within our borders, too much blatant celebration of our ignorance, fanned by Trump and his many enablers and imitators. Fire and flood and drought and famine are in our future, but we ignore the warning signs and dig ourselves in deeper. 

Raise Old Glory and aim your fireworks into the night sky. It’s Independence Day in the indispensable nation. We’re No. 1, remember? 

Study the Dust

 “Alas, it’s very hard to pass a prodemocratic measure in an antidemocratic system.” Jeet Heer, The Nation

The obstructionist GOP has done it again, this time blocking passage of significant election reforms pushed by Democrats. That these reforms are very popular with the voting public matters not at all. Nor does it matter that reforms are desperately needed to prevent a coup by a well-organized political minority. Democrats Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi vow to continue the fight, but the institutional barriers standing in their way are formidable. Where’s Biden? He didn’t throw much of his weight behind the legislation, despite telling Congress in April that American democracy is suffering an existential crisis. 

Mitch McConnell remains the most powerful and unaccountable politician in the nation. By sheer numbers, McConnell and his GOP represent fewer Americans than Democrats, but this doesn’t hinder their ability to block any legislation they dislike, which is almost everything the Democrats put forward. The GOP obstructs, period. Long gone are the days when politics was a method for mediating our differences and finding compromise. Now it’s just about amassing and wielding power. How is a two-party representative democracy supposed to work when one of the parties refuses to compromise? It can’t, which is why I think America is headed for authoritarian rule. 

Meanwhile, the western US is in the grips of a heatwave. I read more and more reports of falling water levels, at Lake Mead in Nevada which provides water to three states and parts of Mexico, and in California, where more than forty of the state’s fifty-eight counties are in severe drought; the Edward Hyatt Power Plant at Lake Oroville may be forced to shut down for the first time in a half a century. The lake is at 38 percent capacity. Farmers in southern Oregon skirmish with state and federal agencies over diminishing water supplies. We’re only at the summer solstice. The warnings climatologists have been issuing for decades are happening. Hotter and drier weather, bigger storms, massive wildfires, the consequence of human hubris and greed.  Like the California farmers and cattle ranchers and citrus growers I’ve been reading about in a brilliant book by Mark Arax called The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, greed is baked into our society and the imperative is to get bigger, richer, more powerful. In California water and land have made or cost fortunes from the beginning. The ability of people to build massive dams, aqueducts, reservoirs, levees and canals, to divert rivers and use hydraulic power to mine for gold, irrigate some of the best farmland in the world, and allow the building of millions of homes is an awesome feat of vision, sweat, money, labor, and political influence. It’s why the State Water Project and the California Aqueduct were built: to capture water where it was abundant and transport it to where it was scarce. Tremendous public expense, huge private profits. Once that water started flowing, fortunes were made in cotton and cattle, grapes, mandarins, raisins, almonds, pistachios. Sole owners like Henry Miller and J.G. Boswell controlled hundreds of thousands of acres of land, some of it with water rights, some without. They and others ran company towns. As it always does, size matters, makes a difference in influence with bankers and politicians. Californians have always fought over water, north versus south, east versus west. Rivers were essentially stolen, bent to private use or controlled by the state or the Feds to the consternation of the locals. For decades, Central Valley farmers have dug deeper and deeper wells, in more and more places, and pumped the aquifer dry. In some places the land has sunk, the result of a falling water table. 

Our country should be having a serious conversation about climate change, but we are too self-absorbed and short-sighted to see the storm bearing down. If we cared to, we could learn a few things from the Covid pandemic, primarily that it makes sense to have adequately funded public agencies equipped and prepared to provide services when necessary. Our goal should be to reduce or alleviate human suffering, but our policies are created to protect property and the possessors of wealth. As in many places in the world, the poor pay the highest price, live the hardest lives, and die the earliest deaths. We could learn, as well, a few handy lessons from history, yet many influential people in positions of power would have us stop when the reality of who we are and what we have done grows darker, and crueler. 

We should ask ourselves if a political system as frail as ours can deliver the things millions of us will need to survive when the next disaster strikes. I’m not confident. The problem with our species is that we see ourselves as masters rather than caretakers. 

Killer Instinct (Lack Of)

 “The result is a metastisizing corruption at the heart of the polity. About the Capitol coup there is no shared reality.” Mark Danner, New York Review

I understand some of the political calculations being made by Democrats. If they move too zealously to punish Trump for his myriad abuses of power, they risk inflaming Trump’s diehard base, many of whom are armed and waiting for a provocation. But if Democrats don’t act to hold Trump and his enablers accountable, and soon, they run a real risk of legitimizing Trump’s abuses. 

If the tables were turned and a crazed horde of armed Black Lives Matter supporters had stormed the Capitol on January 6, the Republicans would have spent the last six months holding Benghazi-style hearings to the exclusion of any legislative activity. The rabid right-wing media universe would throb and buzz with dire predictions of an incipient attack on God-fearing white people. That’s just how the GOP rolls. By comparison the Democrats seem tame and phlegmatic, totally lacking in killer instinct; they are like a soccer club that always sits deep and defends, with only the faintest hope of hitting their opponent on the counter attack. The GOP plays to win, the Dems are content with a draw. 

While Democrats make their political calculations in wood-paneled corridors, the GOP is doing everything it can to cement minority rule. Writing in the New York Review, Mark Danner notes, “If in close elections Republicans can place the effective power to award a state’s electoral votes in the state legislature, they will have gone far toward establishing a permanent grip on the White House.” This certainly appears to be the operating strategy. Accepting Trump’s Big Lie about a stolen election is the first step, putting in place the mechanisms (blatant voter suppression and nullification measures) to prevent future elections from being “stolen” is what logically follows. 

As I wrote here after he won the election, Biden will do what he can to return the country to a state resembling normal (meaning, I suppose, a less over-the-top level of deceit and corruption than we experienced during Trump’s misbegotten reign), and steady the institutions Trump tipped over, but I can’t help but think he’s the proverbial boy with his finger in the dike. Opposing him is a political party in thrall to a con artist along with millions of people willing to practice magical thinking. Even if Trump is indicted by any one of the agencies on his trail, his supporters will not abandon him. I can’t see the moment when the fever breaks and the reality of who Trump really is becomes crystal clear. As Hunter S. Thompson might say, we are well and truly fucked. A country in which nearly half the population believes in idiotic conspiracy theories and “alternative” facts is doomed. 

What does the reality-based half of the country do, where do we turn, and how can we stop this unholy onslaught? That sound in the distance is the drumbeat of minority rule. January 6 was a skirmish in the war. Under American flag and Christian cross, the aggrieved have begun to march.