Random Barking: Darkness On The Edge

 Edge Of America

I've done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this old town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

  --  "Promised Land" (From Darkness At The Edge Of Town /1978)

.. thinking about Bruce Springsteen. Not any specific music of his; just, how it's always reminded me of the America I grew up in: small-town, white boy America, next to the ocean. Not all that far from-big-city USA. Chamber of Commerce, Future Farmers, Boy Scout and Kiwanis America; Pleasantville. 

Bruce's music always felt more East Coast, for obvious reasons; the Beach Boys' music was supposed to be speaking for life at the edge of California. I liked Pet Sounds, thought "Little Deuce Coupe" was cool (though that got replaced by Hendrix and the Airplane and Mothers Of Invention soon enough). 

By comparison, Bruce's music isn't about L.A. culture. It's deeper and more generic. It's filled with the ambiguity of living, of longing for love; it's about betrayals and missed connections, being locked into class and locality and fate. Be True To Your School is a more naive take on America, and as close as Brian, Roger and the Boys got to exploring the darkness on the edge of town.

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Where I came from, we didn't have the Eastern version of mills and factories, but we understood working-class expectations. We knew where our families were in the local pecking order, and those who mattered in town -- the people you didn't want to make unhappy. We knew, without being told, that our experience wasn't shared by Blacks, Latinos, Asians; they weren't even part of the equation. And all that reflected the larger image of America, a larger pecking order, with so many layers above and below.

It was an America built on white privilege. It was built on a fantasy wrapped in a flag and accompanied by 'The Star Spangled Banner' and Semper Fiedelis. We had relatively stable weather, but the future disintegration of population, of air, water, soil and climate already apparent. The gulling and fleecing of Americans to feed the desires of the rich were yet to begin in earnest. All this is manifestly clear, now; only a fool would dispute it. But it was my world. 

Humans view their challenging present with times that by comparison seem safer, stable: so I think fondly of that old world in spite of all my present, hard-fought, earned knowledge.

That America of the late 1950's and 1960's is mostly gone; only scraps are left. Some people pretend it's still the One True Vision of who and what we are, but everyone knows that world has disappeared. The one we're in, now, is changing. In fact, it may be gone soon, too.

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I hope. But I come from people whose nations were ravaged by political grifters, murderous, quasi-religious zealots, war, economic disaster and revolution. I was raised to believe that more often than not, the dice do not fall your way, no matter how much you may wish for it. And when you hear a voice saying blood is about to flow -- run, you should pay attention.

I'm beginning to see a bad moon above the horizon, like an escaped balloon, baleful and drifting. Even with all the Dystopian thinking I've subscribed to, I never expected it to manifest in reality.

In the Bible Cain slew Abel

And East of Eden he was cast,

You're born into this life paying,

for the sins of somebody else's past,

Daddy worked his whole life, for nothing but the pain,

Now he walks these empty rooms, looking for something to blame,

You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames...

("Adam Raised A Cain")

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Something In The Night

As I scan Trump’s tweets, speeches ... the thought occurs to me that this must be what it would have been like had former Alabama governor George Corley Wallace Jr. won the presidency in 1968.  Read Wallace’s rhetorical choices during the ’68 campaign and you will quickly learn that Trump has been channeling him.

Wallace sought the presidency at a tumultuous time of protest, civic unrest over deeply rooted racism and the Vietnam War. With his “Stand Up for America” slogan, he played to the growing White backlash against the marches and acts of civil disobedience. Backlash is also the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign war against “anarchists” and the media.

Hear Wallace in a 1968 Toledo speech... : “I want to say that anarchists — and I am talking about newsmen sometimes — I want to say — I want to make that announcement to you because we regard that the people of this country are sick and tired of, and they are gonna get rid of you — anarchists.”

(Colbert I. King, "There is no vaccine for our deeper national sickness" , Washington Post)

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Bark Bark Bark Bark

Trump gets away with being a despot because we allow it. When he crosses some new Red Line of conduct, we collectively say But that's just not done! It's an Outrage!! 

It's the functional equivalent of saying, "Well! I never!" as someone commits an act of unspeakable rudeness. We act as if commonly-understood rules of public conduct are still in force for him, for the political Right -- and that with a broad, public show of disapproval, he will be forced to conform.

The media have done this with Trump even before he came down the escalator. They act as if he could be politely shamed in print or online to change his behavior. He didn't. When it became clear he lied, daily, outrageously, unbelievably, they could have called him a liar -- but, no. To be seen as practitioners of honest journalism, to be oh-so-neutral, they would 'fact-check' him. 

He was allowed to lie on Twitter (not a journalistic medium; but, still) until its own users pressured Jack into putting a sticker on a couple of Trump's Twits that they were 'bad'. He continues to lie on that platform, and they continue to let him.

They allowed Kellyanne Conway to screech that there were such things as "alternative facts", and then said nothing -- as if facts were debatable; truth a matter of whoever is holding the gun.  Politicians on the left made the same mistake, and continue to do so (read on below).

We keep playing the game with These People by the old rules -- as if normalcy would return any minute, like parents coming home early to find the maskless party in full swing, and say What in the world were you thinking? 

We refuse to stoop to the same behavior as These People. We believe we're morally superior -- and we believe that even as they kick us to the curb, over and over again, and take our wallets. Even as they abuse children in detention facilities, lie about the pandemic, steal and scheme to steal, push their AR-15s in our faces and tell us they're patriots and do what they say. 

And when the media, the politicians on "our side" respond with a "Well, I never!" -- Trump's reply is always Yeah, you never, bitch.  I always.  And this is why he continues to appear to win, liar and thief that he is.

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Factory

When you have at least 40% of the population wanting to believe irrational things, and another 40% wants a logic which is not functional, there is a great deal of logically valid and scientifically correct data which will not be allowed as a given.

In short, we argue over things that have already been proven to be true. I do not need to listen to President Trump to know that he simply lies. However, his overt lies are a result of the fact that there has been for 40 years a gradually building consensus for a covert set of lies.

The system which created the confluence of events which led to him taking the oath of office is in no way related to any system of reality worthy of attention.

(Stirling Newberry, "The Theocratic Mantra Of Our Age", Ian Welsh blog, September 17, 2020)

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Racing In The Street

Many of our most influential editors and reporters are acting as if the rules that prevailed under previous American presidents are still in effect. But this president is different; the rules are different; and if it doesn’t adapt, fast, the press will stand as yet another institution that failed in a moment of crucial pressure.

In some important ways, media outlets are repeating the mistake made by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In his book about the Mueller investigation, True Crimes and Misdemeanors (and in a New Yorker article), Jeffrey Toobin argues that Mueller’s tragic flaw was a kind of anachronistic idealism—which had the same effect as naivete. He knew the ethical standards he would maintain for himself and insist on from his team. He didn’t understand that the people he was dealing with thought standards were for chumps. 

Mueller didn’t imagine that a sitting attorney general would intentionally misrepresent his report, which is of course what Bill Barr did. Mueller wanted to avoid an unseemly showdown, or the appearance of a “fishing expedition” inquiry, that would come from seeking a grand-jury subpoena for Donald Trump’s testimony, so he never spoke with Trump under oath, or at all. Trump, Barr, and their team viewed this decorousness as a sign of weakness, which they could exploit.

Something similar is going on now with many members of the press. They’re behaving like Mueller, wanting to be sure they observe proprieties that would have made sense when dealing with other figures in other eras. But now they’re dealing with Donald Trump, and he sees their behavior as a weakness he can exploit relentlessly.

(James Fallows, "Media Mistakes", The Atlantic (September 2020)

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Badlands

MARK LEVIN :  Recall that in June, acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly warned Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act, against the riots, spread across the country. That would let Trump use military troops to quell the violence...

And ... should Donald Trump get reelected, God willing, he needs to fire this Secretary of Defense. This Secretary of Defense doesn't get to dictate to the commander-in-chief. And no, it's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections. Other presidents have done exactly the same thing. 

And if what you see in the cities isn't an insurrection, I don't know what the hell is. These are Marxist, anarchist groups. And if they plan to continue what they're doing in even worse form, multiply by five or ten, they need to be put down. Are you hearing me Media Matters? Mediaite? Yes, we need to retain a civil society and a republic. 

("Fox's Mark Levin calls Donald Trump 'to use Insurrection Act' ", Media Matters, September 15, 2020)

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Prove It All Night

Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government [i.e., sedition], people familiar with the conversation said.

In a conference call with U.S. attorneys across the country last week, Mr. Barr warned that sometimes violent demonstrations across the U.S. could worsen as the November presidential election approaches. He encouraged the prosecutors to seek a number federal charges, including under a rarely used sedition law, even when state charges could apply, the people said.

The call underscores the priority Mr. Barr has given to prosecuting crimes connected to violence during months of protests against racial injustice...  Federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people with violent crimes related to the protests, most of whom face counts of arson, assaulting federal officers, or gun crimes... police officials say they are alarmed by the presence of armed fringe groups from both sides of the political spectrum. Mr. Barr has blamed much of the violence of leftist extremists including antifa, a loose network of groups ... which Mr. Barr has described as a movement advocating revolution.

(Digby, "Barr Takes It Up A Notch", September 16, 2020)

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Streets Of Fire

So, what was the trade-off that fueled Trump and his administration's decision to downplay the deadly seriousness of the virus to the American public? What was the specific panic they wanted to avoid?

Trump's economic advisors Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow and Steven Mnuchin, among others, made it abundantly clear that the administration's main concern was stock market values. The Trump administration's principal measure of its economic success has been the rising stock market. Trump himself boasted the other day about the record highs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as evidence of what a good job he is doing. Understandably, they did not want to see a stock market panic a la 2008.

So, let's look at the numbers on both sides of the trade-off equation. Currently, the U.S. has roughly a quarter of the world's deaths (~195,000) even though we only make up about 4% of the world's population. Worldwide deaths stand at ~905,000. 

So, doing back-of-the-envelope math, if Trump had acted responsibly and truthfully, not downplayed the severity of the threat, and the U.S. had performed on par with the averages of other countries in the world (not better, just average), we should be at ~36,000 deaths (4% of 905,000). That's ~160,000 additional deaths due to Trump's neglect and public lies about the deadly severity and spread of the virus.

So the question we need to ask is how many points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were salvaged by this policy? And how many lives were sacrificed in trade-off for each point on the Dow?

(Wisdom Of The West:  "Panic vs. Pandemic: Doing The Hard Math", September 10, 2020)

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Lies And The Lying Liars Who Lie

“Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary,” McConnell said in a statement Friday following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

He added: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”

"McConnell Vows Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Will Get Senate Vote", WaPo, September 19, 2020

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At Sunset I Saw The Chickens Swooping In For A Landing

Inequality and polarization have not been this high since the nineteenth century. Democrats are certain that if Donald Trump is reelected, American democracy will not survive. Republicans are equally certain that if Trump loses, radical socialists will seize the wealth of elites and distribute it to undeserving poor and minorities, forever destroying the economy of the United States. Both sides are also convinced that the other side intends to change the democratic ‘rules of the game’ in ways that will make it impossible for them to compete effectively in future elections.

-- Mathematician Peter Turchin (quoted in "Ginsburg's Passing May Worsen The Crisis Of Our Democracy"; Max Boot, WaPo September 19, 2020)

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