Drag Queens

 “To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.” Barbara Ehrenreich

I read a headline that claimed that George Santos, probably the most notorious, outrageous, mind-boggling example of the gangrene in Trump’s GOP, once did drag, another small secret in his impressive resume of Bald Faced Lies & Total Fabrications. This boy’s got it all, the perfect advertisement for the GOP, and hapless Kevin McCarthy has to keep him or watch his majority shrink further. McCarthy is strapped to a rocket of political cruelty and stupidity. Serves him right. What kind of shit do you think lines the closet of a man like Kevin McCarthy? A man who for position and power repeatedly humiliates himself. In Public. Who makes backroom deals that he knows are pure madness? But the train is rolling now, unstoppable. Kevin’s going to have some very bad days in the months ahead. 

If Kevin McCarthy were a drag performer, what do you think his stage name would be? Ponder. Share ideas. Collaborate, as they say. 

Leave it to the state of Florida to choose ignorance over knowledge and academic tyranny over academic freedom. No AP course on African-American history will be offered to Florida’s high school students. Too many references to “Black Power” and “Reparations” and “Black Lives Matter.” Way to go Florida! Keep fighting the future! Stay stupid!  

Let’s change the subject to football. My Chelsea are going through a rough season, the first under new ownership. The Russian oligarch, Roman Ambramovic, owned the club for two decades and his money and belief played a huge part in Chelsea’s most glory-laden seasons. Lots of great players, now club legends, a tradition of excellence, many trophies. He invested lavishly in the club. He sacked managers for poor results, possibly for sport. He was mercurial, impatient for silverware. The fans loved him. 

Roman’s gone, chased out by the UK government in its crackdown on Russian oligarchs after Putin invaded Ukraine. Todd Boehly and a group of investors are now the owners, everything’s different. Boehly is splashing money around with verve, but 12 first team players or their immediate substitute is injured and out of action. They have a new manager, Graham Potter, who was snatched from Brighton Hove Albion where he had success in building a reliable mid-table team. Potter replaced the very popular Thomas Tuchel. I liked Tuchel, he didn’t deserve the sack after what he contributed to the club, but that’s how the business end of the game works. No loyalty.

The jury’s out on Potter, whether he’s the man to lead the regeneration of this team. Is he a good enough manager? Or is this stage too big for him at this point in his career? Brighton and Chelsea are very different. The expectation of the supporters is way, way different. Chelsea fans are anxious, and it’s not clear what kind of team is being assembled for what style of play. 

So, that’s Chelsea. In the meantime, cross-city rivals, Arsenal, are killing it, sitting atop the table with 50 points. Tremendous young team that is totally in sync and playing with daring and skill. I watched them defeat Manchester United 3-2 on Sunday. United have been resurgent of late and sit in fourth position. Under new manager Erik ten Hag, United is back from the wilderness, definitely in the title race when this match kicked-off, and even more so when they scored first through a brilliant Marcus Rashford laser from distance. I was very keen to see how Arsenal would react to going a goal behind in front of their home support. That’s always a tell. Arsenal didn’t blink. You could see them collectively dig in. They didn’t get wobbly when United equalized at 2-2, either. That informs me that this team is for real, a proper title contender. They’re a very direct team, always moving forward with organization and smarts. Thomas Partey was massive in the midfield for Arsenal, my man of the match. But that honor could just as easily be handed to Bakayo Saka who scored a highlight reel goal from distance, or Eddie Nketiah, who scored a brace, including the winner in the ninetieth minute. Dramatic stuff. Both teams were up for the contest, and the match was played with high intensity and tempo and skill. Ridiculous skill. 

I’m reading a book called The Big Myth, and George Saunders’s new collection of short stories. Liberation Day. Typical Saunders: strange, dark, funny, with unusual juxtapositions. I just finished writing a review of Personality and Power by the historian Ian Kershaw. The subtitle is Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe. 

Sweet and Sour Meanderings

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
That’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over till they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done

“Hurricane,” Bob Dylan

+ My daughter is going back to Philadelphia in a few days, back to university and student life. She’s feeling sad about leaving. Of course. She’s 21 and life here is comfortable and familiar and easier. But she needs to be back in school. She seems so young, much younger than her peers of the same age. The progress she made last year was hard-earned, with tears and daily thoughts of throwing in the towel. Homesickness. We thought she might quit. We encouraged her to see out the semester. She did. She also changed her living situation, from the dorm to sharing an apartment off-campus with a new friend. She’s working it out in the Big City. 

+ There wasn’t any flooding or damage in our immediate area from the recent rains. Crazy rains after years of drought. But that’s the history of this state, cycles of drought and flood. Water in the wrong places, far from the majority of the population, water that has to be moved north to south and east to west, through canals and dams and a massive aqueduct. Engineering marvels on one level, but on another destructive as hell. Fucking with nature, changing the course of rivers, streams, making lakes where no lake was meant to be. Displacing people. That’s part of the California story, too.  

+ The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday crept up on me this year. It’s usually a time of reflection, but this year it came and went. Dr. King. Frederick Douglass. W.E.B Du Bois. James Baldwin. My pantheon of great Americans. Each one a prophet. The radical King is largely unknown now, except to scholars and careful readers. With every passing year we get a watered-down, white-washed, sanitized King. I encourage folks to read or listen to King’s 1967 address, “A Time to Break Silence.” It’s all there. “There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.” The American war budget for this fiscal year is $858 billion. A fair chunk of that is earmarked for Ukraine, another war that might continue for some time. $858 billion while so many Americans are unhoused, hungry, without access to medical care or an education, in need of mental health care, and the wealthiest corporations and individuals have gamed the tax system. We saw Trump’s tax returns. They’re the returns of a lousy businessman and a cheat. No surprise, not really news. Not that uncommon in his circles, either. 

King said that America has a “proneness to adjust to injustice.” How right he was. We have adjusted to being ruled by the magic of the Market and every inequity that it brings, as well as conditioned to accept permanent war as normal. I’m not a communist; when it comes to economic matters I’m more of a social democrat. The infallible “logic” of the free market has failed for too many and succeeded for too few. People created the Market, it wasn’t handed down by the Christian God. It’s not free, and rarely has been in this country. King knew that unregulated capitalism produced rough and ragged edges, which led to other maladies, social, political, racial. Read or listen to the address. It seems to me that we’ve never been most distant from King’s vision.

+ Democracy isn’t perfect, not close, but it’s better than most alternatives. We’ve neglected ours, assuming, I suppose, that it’s carved in stone and will last forever. Neither is true, Trump and his accomplices proved that. The legal guardrails were challenged. Innocent people died. Trump and Meadows and Flynn and Giuliani and Stone are free, all  of them. Kevin McCarthy is Speaker of the House. America is in trouble. Remember what Hagrid said to Harry Potter: “Dark times, Harry, dark times.”

+ Our natural gas bill rose from something like $75 to $220 in the space of a month. Our little house is 90 years old, drafty and poorly insulated. We have to run the heater. 

+ Two minutes on Twitter is enough to convince me that America has lost its collective mind. Fortunately, Twitter doesn’t present the entire picture. 

The Maddening Double Standard

 “Once factual truth is no defense in politics, all that remains is spectacle and force.” Timothy Snyder

Does the arc of the moral universe bend toward justice? Perhaps a better question might be: is there a moral universe at all? 

It’s comforting to believe that truth wins out, that justice matters, and that those who commit misdeeds, who lie, cheat and steal their way through this life get punished, but the evidence is scant and spotty. Truth is a leaky rubber raft floating on a choppy sea in a post-truth era like ours, always on the verge of being submerged. 

Donald Trump remains a free man two years to the day after inciting a mob to storm the US Capitol, and having carted off a trove of documents, some highly classified, that belonged to the government. Lesser mortals caught with government secrets have paid harsh penalties, including prison time. For lesser mortals, unauthorized possession of classified stuff brought swift and heavy consequences, unlike the deferential way Trump has been treated. In Trump’s case the wheels of justice are barely turning, as if too encrusted with mud, weeds and rust to turn, with no certainty, even if the wheels do begin to move, that the rule of law will prevail against him or his co-conspirators. We can be reasonably sure that deals will be cut, immunity granted, indictments deferred, perhaps pardons issued. Trump has never been held to account, which is why he treats the law with contempt, as something others are required to follow but from which he is immune and exempt. Like the proverbial playground bully, he’s daring someone in authority to bring the fire and fury. No takers thus far, though there’s plenty of speculation, analysis, opinion and guesswork. I’ll believe it when I see an indictment. From what jurisdiction it emerges I don’t really care. 

Why can’t Trump be exiled to a barren island that is being inundated by the rising sea?

It’s the double-standard that makes it all so maddening. Only rich and powerful people can defer accountability or evade it entirely; most of us have minimal defenses, and some of us have none. 

Will Vladimir Putin ever be held to account or pay any personal cost for his decision to invade Ukraine? Not likely any time soon. Justice for the victims of his aggression -- and it is Putin’s aggression, Putin’s atrocities, Putin’s death and destruction and suffering -- must wait. And wait. Did Stalin suffer any punishment during his lifetime for the millions of his own people that he caused to die? 

What penalty will George Santos pay for lying about every aspect of his professional resume? Santos rode his lies to a seat in Congress. What does that say about his voters, and soon, constituents? I don’t think I’d want to be represented in Congress but a complete phony; the representative I have is not a phony, but he is a politician. Some might argue that it’s the same thing. 

What about Trump’s last Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, will he ever feel the heavy hand of the law for his role in Trump’s attempted coup?

Perhaps the only form of justice we can reasonably expect is the poetic kind. Or the neatly packaged kind found in books and movies and reality TV shows. However, watching Kevin McCarthy, one of the most spineless, craven, mendacious, arrogant, power-hungry, shameless and nakedly ambitious political performers, repeatedly humiliated by members of his own party is deeply satisfying and poetic and deserved. McCarthy mortgaged his soul long ago, trusting it would lead to his being awarded the Speaker’s gavel, which must be the thing in the world he most craves given how much humiliation he’s willing to endure to get it, like Golum and the ring, but his extremist colleagues have other ideas. Probably because he’s burned them so many times before, promising one thing to their face, doing another behind their back, they relish thwarting him and watching him grovel and debase himself; time and again they thrust the knife in McCarthy’s side and giggle as he bleeds. To make the torment stop he will concede away most of his own authority and power. Instead of expanding the prestige of the Speaker’s Chair, McCarthy will shrink and neuter it. He’s no Nancy Pelosi, is he? 

Maybe all the arc of the moral universe does is double back on itself, traveling endlessly but without ever reaching its destination, seeking but never landing on justice. 

Justice in human affairs, like progress, isn’t inevitable. Organized people and institutions bring it about. But what do we do when people corrupt institutions? What have people always done? Protest, riot, wage war? Negotiate? How have human beings settled their differences throughout history? Is it a silly dream that people can solve their mutual problems without violence? A liberal fantasy? The result of smoking too much weed? 

Can there be a moral universe without facts? 

It’s the second anniversary of Trump’s failed coup attempt. The people are still waiting for accountability. 

End of the Year Onion

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.” Octavia Butler

I haven’t written that frequently here as I have in years past. I think I’m tired of talking to myself, tired of my own preoccupations and fears, and if I’m tired, why would any person stumbling upon Shouts from the Balcony on the Internet want to read what I’ve written, about any subject under the sun? 

Who am I? Not a simple question because most of us are like onions, which is why the onion is a useful metaphor for pondering the complexity of most people. Ironically, in my current occupation as a part-time member of the Housekeeping team at Whole Foods Market, onions, and more precisely, onion skins, are a nuisance, which can be found all over the store. Not the messiest vegetable, but certainly the best traveled. 

There’s a difference between having something to say, something beyond the ordinary, and just being a wanker with some technical skill, shouting into the void, hardly different from a street corner preacher haranguing a congregation of broken bottles, orange rinds, cigarette butts and birdshit stains. 

That’s why I gave myself a limit of 1,000 posts or 20 years, whichever comes first, and then I must stop this nonsense. This blog is like a diary. I suppose you can say it’s one of my onion skins, but there is more to me than what I’ve represented in these postings. I tend to ruminate about things that are more remote from my day to day experience, rather than describe what I had for breakfast, how I take my coffee, or what my wife and I argue about. I wander, mostly in the political and historical realm, with some sports mixed in from time to time. I used to write some about baseball, the New York Yankees, who I followed closely for almost a decade, but I completely lost interest in baseball as the Yanks phenomenal core players (Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, etc) aged out of the game, and then I got hooked on football, or soccer as some call it. What captivated me was the World Cup of 2010, played in South Africa. Something between the game and my brain clicked, and I was hooked and remain so. I’m by no means a historical or statistical encyclopedia, but I find the information I need, and I watch matches every week, Chelsea Football Club of England’s Premier League. I also watch Serie A, the Italian top flight, and loosely follow a number of clubs -- Juventas, Napoli, Roma, and lately, Lazio, AC and Inter Milan. I follow the Champions League. I spend a lot of time now on football because it fascinates me. That you can gather these athletes from all over the world, and see what they collectively bring to this very difficult, technical, and physically demanding game is to me supreme in the world of sports. I don’t watch anything else. American football and basketball don’t interest me, though when I was between the ages of eight and fourteen, I liked basketball, followed the Lakers and Celtics in the Bill Russell-Jerry West era, and was a decent ball handler and passer, but I was always too small. In the modern game, the players seem too large and the court too small, and there are simply too many stops and starts, time-outs, commercials for beer and cars and travel and phone service. 

I read a lot and write reviews for the California Review of Books for which I am paid nothing. I like history, philosophy, politics, novels, and memoirs of literary figures. I read periodicals, The Nation, Mother Jones, and the New York Review of Books; the podcast I listen to most regularly is Background Briefing. 

As I said, this is boring shit. There’s no sex, mayhem, murder, or tragedy, very little humor, more than enough snark, some good use of quotations from people I admire. I was very active in a labor union when I worked in public service for the school district. When I joined the management ranks I became a cog in a bureaucracy; though I was often bored and restless and felt the work I did was meaningless, I like the idea of public service and believe in a large public sector. The maintenance and care of public or common goods is tricky and difficult, but worthwhile, I believe. I like public libraries and parks, museums, schools, hospitals, smooth roads and clean water, and baseline services for the needy. 

In 1977 I enlisted in the Air Force and spent five years in Japan. Seems like it all happened to someone else. What strikes me all these years later was how ignorant I was of American history. I read a lot, but I was pretty dumb and swallowed most American mythology, which is why I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I was only four when JFK was assassinated, but remember looking at black and white photographs from that day, and watching the Watts Riots on television, understanding none of the context, being too young, but I realize I got the standard indoctrination about Black people; meaning, primarily, that they are different and scary, prone to violence and criminality. It wasn’t always overt in the household or neighborhood I grew up in, but casual racial bigotry was always present. We learn a lot through absorption, proximity, and then we have to unlearn through direct experience or by travel, reading and study. 

I have come to the conclusion that, by and large, white Americans love Black culture but hate Black people. 

I got married for the second time in 1992 (still married!) and earned my BA in 1995. It took seven years, but I wanted to be the first person in my working-class family to graduate college. I consider myself a fairly typical liberal arts major. 

I like different kinds of music, but again, I’m not the type who can name members of a band or knows the lyrics to every song. Lately I’ve been listening to Curtis Mayfield, John Coltrane and Ludovico Einaudi. 

I lean heavily toward atheism, drink wine, beer, whisky, gin (not at the same time) and smoke pot from time to time, but never on the days I work. I worry about climate change and this country’s never-ending nightmare of gun violence. I’m demonstrative with my children and laugh a lot with my wife. My physical health is very good for a man of 63, but I now understand how performing a routine repetitive job, over the course of many years, can be disabling. 

I like to think that over the course of my life I’ve done more good deeds than bad ones. 

Argentina Wins the World Cup

 “This World Cup arrived courtesy of Western commercial capital and FIFA. The blood stains their hands as well.” Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin, The Nation 

Super Bowl games and heavyweight title fights don’t always live up to their hype. Not so the 2022 World Cup Final between Argentina and France. The last match of a tournament that saw upsets in the group stages, late goals, penalty shootouts, Croatia knocking Brazil out, and Morocco making an improbable run to the Semi Finals, delivered, and then some. 

It was the best this beautiful, worldwide sport has to offer. The devotion and passion of fans along with the grit and skill of the players. The drama. The twists and turns and heart-stopping suspense, wild swings of emotion, from joy to despair in a matter of seconds. No other sport comes close. It’s what sets football apart.

For 75 minutes, Argentina completely outplayed France, dominating  the midfield, winning almost every duel, pouncing on every loose ball, and defending with an intensity that left France struggling to cope. It was a clinic of tactics and execution. A penalty from Lionel Messi and a stunning team goal on a counter-attack saw Argentina with what looked like a comfortable two goal advantage with fifteen minutes to play.

What happened thereafter will go down in World Cup history. After Kylian Mbappe converted a penalty everything changed for France. The players’ body language was revived as if all of them had received an injection of adrenalin. Within 90 seconds, Mbappe struck again with a bit of incredible individual skill and the match was suddenly tied at two goals apiece. Now it was Argentina’s turn to look dazed. This was a scenario they had seen in the Quarterfinals against the Netherlands, when a comfortable two goal lead vanished in ten minutes; that time Argentina escaped, winning a penalty shootout, but this was the Final against the defending champions. 

Near the end of the first period of extra time, Lionel Messi scored, and it looked like it might be enough to pull Argentina over the line for the first time since 1986. But in the second period Mbappe converted another penalty, giving him a hat trick and pulling France level. 3-3. 

Penalty shootouts are nerve wracking, gut wrenching affairs, full of psychology and mind games, and sometimes even the best penalty takers falter. Look what happened to Harry Kane when England and France tangled in the Quarterfinals. I thought Argentina would have an advantage because France’s goalkeeper, Hugo Lloris, isn’t known as a great penalty stopper, unlike Argentina’s keeper, Emiliano Martinez. Sure enough, France came out on the losing end, 4-2.

France gave everything. Making it to the final of the World Cup two tournaments in a row is a feat of which the French can, and should, be proud. 

But it’s impossible not to feel happy for Argentina and Lionel Messi. The country has faced tough economic times the past several years. For Messi, bringing the World Cup trophy home completes his set of football achievements. The diminutive magician has won everything, individually, and for club and country. As far as I’m concerned, Messi is the greatest player of the modern era. 

This World Cup was phenomenal, but while I loved the matches I can’t forget the enormous human cost; thousands of workers died building the facilities and infrastructure. According to Jules Boykoff and Dave Zirin, the financial cost landed in the neighborhood of $220 billion. Writing in the Nation Boykoff and Zirin observe:

“So why did Qatar do it? This World Cup shows that authoritarian, unchecked power can launder surplus capital—the mega-event reportedly cost some $220 billion—into reputational capital. “

One of the commercials on the Fox network boasted about Qatar’s progress and modernization, and its integration with Western institutions, including the US military. That seems a dubious endorsement. Suffice to say that a tremendous amount of money was spent, made, and splashed around. Now that Qatar has all these beautiful facilities, what will it do with them? 

Heavyweights

It comes down to two of world football’s heavyweights, France and Argentina. When the World Cup tournament started I had three teams, basically my sentimental favorites. France, because my favorite player is N’golo Kante; Croatia, because I love watching Luka Modric command the midfield; and Belgium, because of Eden Hazard and Kevin DeBruyne, both of whom played for Chelsea at one time. Belgium looked old and tired and didn’t make it out of the group stage; Croatia were defeated by Lionel Messi and Argentina, though I think Croatia deserves lots of credit and praise for making it to the Final in 2018 and the Semi-Final in 2022. How does tiny Croatia consistently produce so many footballers of the highest quality, who play in all of Europe’s top divisions? The country is a football factory. 

France is missing three key players, Karim Benzema, N’golo Kante, and Paul Pogba. Benzema is a big absence because he’s a big game player and always a scoring threat, Kante a midfield giant when healthy and in form, and Pogba is an athletic midfielder who can join in the attack and provides good passing range. Despite missing these players, the French have reached the Final for the second World Cup in a row. It’s still a very good team, an experienced team. If Adrien Rabiot is fit I will feel good about France’s chance to repeat. 

Argentina has Messi. What more needs to be said? Messi is the ultimate X-factor and this tournament has an air of destiny about it. I can’t explain it other than to say it’s like Lionel Messi is going to get his ultimate prize, no matter what France does. Messi is likely to produce a moment of sheer genius. He’s hard to contain for 90 minutes, and he only needs one opportunity to beat you. 

Messi also has quality players around him, and Argentia are a cohesive unit. They have displayed more solidity than flair, overall, which is how World Cups are won. It’s hard to bet against Argentina. In football, time is an implacable enemy, and this Final is surely Messi’s last chance to add a World Cup to his legendary list of accomplishments. In these circumstances, I give the little magician the edge against a French defense that has seemed vulnerable at times. 

No disrespect to Kylian Mbappe. Like Messi he could easily come up with one moment of magic.

Which side will control the midfield? Which side will take its chances? The French have been very clinical in front of goal. Can they do so again? 

I can’t wait until Sunday. It’s going to be a joy. 

Wandering Mind

I have a couple of days off from the Market and my body needs it. As the calendar year comes to an end I find myself bothered by nagging injuries; torn rotator cuff muscle in my left shoulder; pain in my right thumb; minor nerve damage in the balls of both feet; and there’s something creaky about my neck, a stabbing pain if I turn my head at a certain angle. This neck pain really bothers me when I ride my bike. I walked 27 miles over my last two shifts at the Market. This afternoon I had a training session in my home gym, and then took a fast walk up the hill to Franceschi Park. The recent rainfall was a boon, and the ground beneath the trees is still damp. The view was magnificent, visibility to the Channel Islands, clear blue sky, and a slight breeze moving through the Eucalyptus trees. 

As I walk my mind skips from topic to topic: rising rents and the continuing gentrification of State Street in Santa Barbara; how many more years I might be able to work at the tempo I work at now; where my wife and I will ultimately live, it can’t be our hometown. We’re on the road to being priced out as so many have been in the real estate madness and cruelty that prevails, not just in SB, but all over the country; my son and daughter will both be home for Christmas, and I’m looking forward to seeing them; my grown children are hilarious individually and brutally so together; the way MBS of Saudi Arabia toys with the Biden Administration is a clear sign of waning US influence. The US is no longer able to call all the shots. Why is the US in this unbreakable marriage with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Oil is part of it. American military installations and arms sales are the other. It’s an unholy alliance that has gone on for far too long. Never let anyone tell you that the military industry doesn’t get what it wants, it always does. There’s no empire without it. Maybe in their lifetimes my kids will witness the dismantling of the American empire, the rolling up and shutting down of the massive worldwide network of bases and outposts and installations, which even a fraction of the annual cost could fund health care for all, housing and food security, clean water, education and climate mitigation.

And I think about the World Cup Quarter Finals. 

Eight teams left. Croatia, Brazil, Netherlands, Argentina, Morocco, Portugal, England and France.

Brazil is a ridiculously talented and deep squad, their football is creative, expressive, and athletic. Many Brazilians play in the Premier League and in Europe’s Top Five leagues. Loads of swagger, too. Croatia is scrappy, as we saw in 2018, led by 37-year-old maestro Luka Modric (I love watching Modric control the tempo and pass the ball, he’s brilliant), but they have talented players in nearly every position. Maybe a little weak up front, but sturdy in defense and their midfield is solid with Kovacic and Brozovic. Croatia will need a massive team performance to have any chance. However, I expect Brazil to prevail by a 2-nil margin. I’m sure the Netherlands will have a tactical plan for Argentina, and I expect this one to be tight. Low score, a 1-nil to Argentina in extra time? 

Every World Cup there’s a sleeper team that surprises everyone. In 2022 that team is Morocco, the only African team to earn a berth in the quarterfinals. I like Morocco very much and admire their unity and spirit; I won’t count them out. Portugal is a team with a chance to win it all, sneaking through the backdoor like they did in the Euros in 2016. A talented team, pretty stingy, and full of creative attacking talent, Bruno Fernandes, Bernardo Silva, Joao Felix and the youngster who scored a hattrick and tallied an assist in the blowout of Switzerland. In my opinion, Portugal is a better team without Ronaldo in the starting eleven. It would be incredible if Morocco finds a way through, but I expect Portugal’s experience will make the difference. The match I am most looking forward to is England-France. In Kylian Mbappe France has the ultimate impact player, but England is solid, with attacking options of their own. For England to win, Kyle Walker must have an impactful game. This one is hard to call. I think goals will be scored, and the final score might be 3-2, either way. Curious to see how England approach the match tactically. 

Our luck is holding, everyone is healthy, we have a nice roof overhead, walls around us, a lovely bed to sleep in, running water and heat, food and drink, books on shelves. Nothing is ordinary, almost everything sacred when you get down to it. My wife is still in the process of grieving her sister who died almost a month ago. Today I spoke to my 88-year-old mother, who told me about how much fruit she eats every day, and the cherries she bought at Whole Foods. The women on my mother’s side of the family live long lives, deep into their 90’s, with all their faculties intact. Stubborn French-Canadian stock, immigrants, mill workers. My maternal grandfather never drove a car. 

A Funny Old Game

 

“The net was the bridal veil of an irresistible girl. In front of the open goal he licked his chops. And in one fell swoop he stood naked, then bit.” Eduardo Galeano, Soccer in Sun and Shadow

I’m not writing much these days because of the World Cup. For more than a decade I’ve supported Chelsea in the Premier League, rarely missing a match, while also watching as many Italian Serie A matches as I can. Like many football fans, I found FIFA’s award of the tournament to Qatar bizarre and upsetting. First and foremost because of Qatar’s dismal human rights record, and second because of the human cost of building the infrastructure the tournament requires. One report I read claimed that nearly 6,500 workers died in the decade-long effort, most of them poor laborers from India and Nepal. Stadiums, training facilities, hotels, media centers, roads, all financed by some of the richest people in the world, but constructed by some of the poorest and most disposable. 

Holding the World Cup in November and December fouled up the schedules of all the major European soccer leagues, forcing compression of domestic and Champions League fixtures which undoubtedly led to injuries for players lacing up their boots every three days. Chelsea, for example, has been riddled with injuries and is so far having a forgettable campaign. 

Living in the US forces me to watch the tournament on FOX Sports, which means an unrelenting diet of adverts, news, fluff and jingoistic commentary about the US team, which prior to this tournament was ranked 16th in the world by FIFA. Call me jaded, but I simply don’t give a rat’s ass about the US team. Other than Christian Pulisic who for now plays his club football for Chelsea, and Weston McKennie of Juventas, I’m not that familiar with US players. But when it comes to US men’s soccer, and FOX Sports, Christian Pulisic is nearly a god, Captain America with superpowers in his boots and brain. This reputation is laughable for any Chelsea supporter who has watched Pulisic for the past four seasons. Yes, the young American has had moments -- against Liverpool and Manchester City in the Premier League -- but his highlight reel is brief. The physically slight Pulisic has often been injured, and unlike with the American national team, isn’t an automatic first name on the Chelsea team sheet. I’ve watched him get bundled off the ball by Premier League defenders, fail to convert clear chances in front of goal, and make the wrong decision in the final third more times than I care to remember. So, I’m not a big Pulisic fan; yes, he’s talented and still young, but in my estimation will never be a consistent top player in the physically demanding and very fast Premier League. I think Weston McKennie is a better overall talent, but McKennie doesn’t get the media hype. 

Making it out of the group stage isn’t a sure thing -- just ask Germany or Belgium or Mexico -- so I give the US credit for advancing to the knockout stage, although they got a gift from England in their head-to-head match when the Three Lions played flat, boring, and slow football. With all the attacking talent on its roster, the likes of Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling, and Jack Grealish, England managed only one or two shots on target. It was dismal, like watching Chelsea flail about. England, ranked number 5 by FIFA, didn’t appear to be playing to win. The usefulness of the FIFA rankings is suspect anyway because when the tournament began Belgium was ranked 2nd, behind Brazil, which is hysterical. Belgium were soundly beaten by an inspired Moroccan team, and their core players -- the so-called Golden Generation -- looked old and slow. Eden Hazard is a shadow of his former self after two injury-plagued seasons at Real Madrid. Belgium are due for a rebuilding period. 

The World Cup usually provides a twist or two, like Saudi Arabia beating Argentina and Japan topping Germany and Tunisia defeating France. Upsets are what make the tournament interesting and dramatic. Who would have picked Australia to advance to the last 16? 

I'm neutral in this World Cup, interested in watching competitive matches, but I do have a soft spot for France, Croatia, and Portugal. By the depth of its roster, and sheer talent, I think Brazil is the odds on favorite, even without Neymar, but as the saying goes, football is a funny old game. Anything can happen.  

Mueller Redux?

 “Never forget that under a totalitarian system cruelty and absurdity go hand in hand.” Ai Weiwei

I haven’t been writing much on the blog lately, focusing instead on pieces for my Medium and Substack pages, as well as book reviews for the California Review of Books. I began the Balcony in 2004, during the reign of the faux cowboy, George W. Bush. I’ve decided to hang it up after 20 years or 1,000 posts, whichever comes first. This is post No. 961.

We had a death in our family, my wife’s sister, Nancy, who was 63 when she passed away from complications of heart trouble and diabetes on November 15. Nancy and I were in the San Marcos High class of 1977. That feels like a million years ago to me, and I barely remember it. I knew of Nancy in high school, but had never met her until I began dating Terry. Like most people, Nancy was complicated, a bundle of conflicting impulses and emotions, likes and dislikes. She was a massive fan of Rod Stewart’s music and saw the singer in concert more than 100 times, often traveling long distances; she also loved the Beatles and knew the lyrics of many songs by heart. Her last couple of years were shot through with health issues, the inevitable complications of diabetes. Nearly legally blind, deaf in one ear, survivor of open heart surgery and kidney failure, which made thrice-weekly dialysis sessions mandatory. Still, despite it all, Nancy somehow -- and I honestly don’t know how -- managed to remain hopeful that she might one day regain a measure of independence. When she drew her last breath she was flanked by people who loved her for who she was. 

On the American political front…the Democrats beat mid-term expectations by retaining the Senate, but they lost the House by a slender margin, which will make Kevin McCarthy’s speakership a living nightmare as he attempts to temper the flamethrowers and nitwits in his caucus. In the short run, McCarthy will strut around like a peacock, preening and applauding himself for finally grabbing the gavel he has salivated after for years. He’s an empty and immoral man, devoid of soul. 

I have never been a Nancy Pelosi fan. I always perceived Pelosi as a prime example of what ails the Democratic Party; too concerned with being solicitous to corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working people, wage earners; unwilling to take concrete action on climate change; and blindly supportive of the money-sucking American War Machine. Having said that, I respect her skill and her effectiveness in the Speaker’s chair, and how she conducted herself on January 6; she remained calm and cool as Trump’s MAGA horde broke windows and beat on the walls. She is a competent and formidable woman and her tenure as Speaker will go down as one of the more effective in American history. 

So, nearly two years after the Trump-inspired attack on the Capitol, Merrick Garland has appointed a Special Counsel in the person of Jack Smith, a career DOJ prosecutor said to be smart, experienced, aggressive, able not only to run complex investigations but also bring indictments and prosecute cases. That’s Smith’s reputation, in any case, but we’re talking about Donald Trump, one of the more slippery criminals to come along in a very long time, who has proven time and again that he stands above the law. Part of me wonders why the DOJ doesn’t simply indict Trump directly, without the additional layer of a Special Counsel. My sense is that Garland would rather walk a mile-long trail of broken glass in his bare feet than bring an indictment. My fear is that we’re in for Mueller Redux, a multi-year investigation that snares a few low-level miscreants but spares the true culprits. No matter how skilled Jack Smith is, or how strong a case he might make, when it comes to a charging decision it’s still Garland’s call. The Mueller Report sits on a shelf now, gathering dust, and it wouldn’t surprise me if in a couple of years a voluminous, multi-volume Smith Report joins it. That’s how these things tend to go because the political class is incapable of investigating and holding itself accountable. 

Legal accountability is for the poor, the lawyer-less masses. 

Our best hope of punishing Trump for his crimes rests with Black women in Georgia and New York. White men can’t be trusted to get the job done. They talk in circles, render the obvious opaque and the simple complex. 

Undercurrents

Making up the blues
Holding back schools
Lot of greed, lot of temptation
Proof of one thing, we're a hell of a nation

Willie Wright, "Right on For The Darkness"

Time feels slightly disorienting, even though I’m doing my best to slow down and enjoy it like I should. Perhaps it’s because I perceive the sense of looming cataclysm, political, financial, geopolitical, or all three simultaneously. Who can say with any certainty that Putin won’t go nuclear in Ukraine? That’s one of those more distant worries, sort of like the fate of the ancient and decrepit nuclear reactors in Hanford, Washington, where material for the first atomic bomb we dropped on the civilian population of Japan was produced. Evidence of poor maintenance, leaks, and shoddy oversight by the US Department of Energy, all covered in a new book by Joshua Frank called Atomic Days. That’s closer to home, but closer still is the 23% decline in the value of our IRA. The US federal reserve seems to only have one single blunt tool at hand, raising interest rates to suffocate inflation. Many unseen hands in this one, bankers, hedge fund managers, huge pension funds like Cal-PERS (my pension fund), all beyond my control. Climate change, the availability of water, is a constant undercurrent to our lives, though often easy to ignore. 

In many ways it seems a cataclysm of Stupidity and Greed and Cruelty, dating back to the 2000 election, an election that was actually stolen, thanks to GOP judicial operatives like John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, and culminating today, with the former president acting everything but disgraced by two impeachments and the incitement of an armed attack on the seat of the legislative branch, an attempt at government by thuggery, as he continues to push his election lies, grift his gullible supporters, feed his durable base a torrent of lies and nonsense fables, and shop the state secrets he stole from the legitimate government to interested parties, possibly including Vladimir Putin. The possibilities are boggling, but again, far beyond my tiny sphere of influence. Purity tests took hold in the GOP under Newt Gingrich in the 1990’s, when Gingrich figured out how to weaponize obstinance and unyielding partisan opposition to actual governing. Party over country, raw power the sole objective. Rigid party discipline was built over the decades, and with the advent of the social disease that is social media (yes, I’m aware of the irony of a blogger who uses social media criticizing that very medium), but it has changed the game of politics, and not in a good way, putting performance over sense-making, the more batshit and outrageous and insulting the better. Get it trending and on FOX News. Repetition, like water on stone, will eventually make the truth give way. What’s true today? What’s a fact? 

The ire and outrage and sense of entitlement represented by extremists on the political right ring with echoes of the 1850’s, when this country was squaring off for separation and divorce, bitterness and hatred flowing fast, reason taking an elbow from emotion, fear on the rise, violence in the rhetoric of politicians and talking heads. Trump was the ultimate loyalty test, and he bluffed and bullied the GOP into submission. His Word had to be echoed without criticism, defended with personal attacks, invective and counter-accusations. Trump is a master of this authoritarian technique, he does it like judo, by muscle memory. I despise the man, but credit where it is warranted. 

Among the books on my tables these days is American Midnight by the historian Adam Hochschild. His canvas is World War I, with a primary focus on what America’s entry into the war meant on the domestic front at a time of widespread labor strife and violence, agitation from unions, socialists and anarchists for more fairness in a highly unequal economic arrangement. This is the authoritarian era the modern GOP wishes to return to, with everything it values -- racial animosity, vigilante groups, citizens spying on each other, cruelty against immigrants, women fighting for full citizenship, and intolerance of dissent -- in play.  This was the era that birthed the Espionage Act (still in force today) and the Volstead Act, which ushered in the nutty idea of Prohibition. Dumb ideas have the unfortunate habit of also being cruel, and they tend to proliferate. Ban books, forbid the teaching of history, demand that public schools emphasis “patriotic” education, outlaw abortion, slam the border shut. Another similarity -- it was an age with a global pandemic, then, the misleadingly named Spanish Flu, and today, Covid. Deliberate misinformation about both was disseminated widely to the public. 

Speaking of dumb ideas, look at what’s happening in the UK, post-Brexit. The people of Britain were sold a phony bill of goods that harkened back to the glory years of the empire, when Britain was a major global power. The Conservative party in the UK is as devoid of ideas as the GOP in this country.