Random Barking: Burning Down The House

After Harvey

 Previously Flooded Houston Neighborhood; September 1, 2017

It is hot in Kiddietown. Baking hot. Pipin' hot. The kind of Hot where Dogs get under things, in the shade, and just watch stuff happen. And smell things. We bark randomly at what appears to be nothing.

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The media coverage of Harvey's hitting Texas seemed to fall into neat categories, from the relative safety of Kiddietown: pre-game warnings and warmup as the storm approached land; cellphone video of the effects of high winds, before-and-after photos showing effects of unbelievably torrential rain; and, in Harvey's wake, the brave pluck with which those affected, and the rescuers, soldier on. Cut to commercial.

A good example of this last -- Thursday's ABC World News Tonight (A Walt Disney Production) aired a segment  showing one ABC reporter on-scene in Houston, 'embedded' with a helicopter unit. They lift off -- and suddenly, are diverted to evacuate people sheltering in a Middle School -- dry at that moment, but threatened by rising flood levels. The people had to be airlifted out -- quickly!

The helicopter lands near the school. The ABC reporter was filmed assisting in the evacuation, even at one point appearing to give orders to someone off-camera; okay, let's go! Rapid cuts between shots makes for rising tension; will they make it? Will they have enough time?

All those at the school (including Dogs; film crews love photographing Dogs in emergency situations) were airlifted to another shelter. We watch them, dazed, walking into another building -- brave evacuees! -- and presumably all was a happy ending.

I'm bothered by this, as I am about the sensationalism of news reporting generally, the demand for a happy ending before the last commercial break. And, what's being reported has to conform to that story arc. Real conditions on the ground can't be controlled --  they're messy, and prompt some to ask uncomfortable questions. Can't have that.

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A friend has family in Texas; the texts fly back and forth. Both have their own families; all live in / around Houston. One has lost their home and very probably everything in it -- and, because they relied on the information from the City of Houston, didn't purchase flood insurance. The chance of that would be a "once-in-500-year" event in their part of the city.

The other family member and their people are dry so far but surrounded by flood zones. They've spoken with others in their area, who watched armed men commandeering boats from their Coast Guard crews at gunpoint. and those same people and boats were seen systematically looting neighborhood homes. They've heard sporadic gunfire.

They live in Katy, near a reservoir which may breach, and have to be ready to evacuate within 30 minutes of notice -- but, have been given no instructions on how they are to leave an area surrounded by flood waters, or where they are to go.

Over at The Soul Of America, there was a link to a similar take on what Harvey means, in spite of the media coverage:

...an air of unreality hangs about the flooding of Houston. Those of you with memories of the 00s will remember how Gore was mocked for his animations of oceans flooding cities. ...

The press so far has -- understandably -- concentrated on happy rescues, people doing things for people. Underneath this news is a sort of failure to express the probable extent of the casualties and what this means economically.

...We gotta change our infrastructure. We gotta severely reshape our economy. Capitalism isn't built to solve this problem. That isn't even to say we abolish capitalism, it is simply a call for recognizing its limits and acting accordingly.

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And in the midst of it all, Our Leader's appearance in Texas. He never spoke about the People with any empathy, never said how he recognized their fear and loss; he only spoke about them in relation to himself. The focus must be on Him, the magnificent one -- the vengeful one (reminding FEMA in a Tweet, "The world is watching!" Don't fuck this up or you'll deal with me). At his side, the Faithful Melania, in six-inch [redacted]-me high-heeled pumps, off to see how the peasantry is faring in this icky weather -- like her husband, tasteful; classy.

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Bad things are happening. Nearly every sentient human senses that hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning and other storms are becoming more and more powerful, destructive, and that climate change (I heard the term, "climate breakdown," yesterday) is a principal factor.

But, we know what our Leader's feelings are about that. Fake news; fake science. USA. USA. Climate breakdown isn't real to the Leader. Perhaps it will be when Mor-e-Lego is submerged by another hurricane hitting Florida, but I doubt it. He'll find a way to make the country pick up the tab for it. We already pay for his many jaunts. And his golf.

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The mainstream media's presentation of Harvey's landfall and aftermath is a reminder of how much more of things, iceberg-like, are out of our sight below the waterline. Not only things which we don't see, but which by some collective, unspoken agreement we aren't allowed to see.

It is, if we look, a way of judging how much difference there is between comfortable assumptions of how life In These Times is, and the real. If you look closely enough, you might see a nation fracturing along lines of race and class, net worth and age; and it seems God's away on business.

Heading off to work early each morning, I see more homeless, broken, addicted and profoundly, heartbreakingly disturbed human beings on the streets than ever before. A friend, working in Tech in Kiddietown, had his first-ever anxiety attack and ended up in an Urgent Care ER in the Tenderloin; being there for several hours was a cultural eye-opener.

And around the corner from where network news is filming a man carrying a Dog to safety, our national politics is teetering between two different visions.  One, identified as liberal, believes a strong Federal government is essential to ensuring all of The People are served, and protected from the excesses of Capital. It's a compact between a government and its people: You are our highest priority. We are here for you. The spirit of the New Deal.

(It's worth noting: there is a body of opinion that [no matter what laws have been passed making some provisions for our citizens] the New Deal was window-dressing, a band-aid -- in the early 1930's, it saved and perpetuated systematized inequality, that same structure of power and class that has existed in America for generations.)

But there's another group in our national politics which sees that same power and class structure as being too unbalanced  -- towards the poor. That in true Randian spirit, the poor are responsible for their own poverty. That the 'business of America is business', not foreign nonsense. That the country is only a loose confederation of fifty regions and doesn't need a Federal government messing in the business of the States: America, circa 1860. And, if some wealthy person believes we should change the number of states, why not?

And if some States want to declare that -- slavery, say; or 'separate but equal' clauses, are legal -- along with lower wages for women; healthcare determined by "market forces"; relying on corporations to determine 'safe' levels of chemicals in air and water -- well, the States should be able to do that.

The High School Civics Class Version of America is what the media and networks assume is the surveyor's mark, the fixed assumption we share about the world we live in. But that vision doesn't allow for boats taken at gunpoint, looting, nazis marching in the the Old South, robotics, and poverty. It doesn't allow for a Tech industry poised for a great leap forward, which will enrich some, and leave others unable to afford the pretty toys and wonderful services yet to come.

The High School Civics Class Version doesn't allow for the rise of an unstable, corrupt leader, with both major political parties explaining that their continual Fluffing of Corporations and The Rich is just a necessary pragmatism. It doesn't allow for Ferguson, or Charlottesville, or the picture of Hillary Clinton as she warmly embraces Henry Kissinger.

And The High School Civics Class Version doesn't allow for that unstable leader to be a potential target in an investigation for corruption and potential treason. It also doesn't allow for that same Leader to be at the helm of the Joint Chiefs, his principal advisors all four-star generals, as he decides how to deal with a nuclear North Korea backed up by the People's Republic of China.

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None of this is any great surprise, and my observations are not unique. Just more tears in the rain.

Hurricane Irma is developing in the Atlantic. It was just declared a category 3 storm (Harvey was a 4 when it slammed into Texas), and, all things being equal, NASA has predicted it could make landfall in Maryland -- that the District of Columbia will be right in its path.

Other meteorologists predict a track to send it slicing across Florida, not too far from Mor-e-Lego, and some have it sliding across the Caribbean to strike Texas. Again. We'll see -- because we're not going anywhere. The hurricanes will come to us.

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MEHR, MIT WASSER:  

 2 hurricanes in ten days and the mother fucker in the White House still says climate change is a hoax   #Irma  #Harvey
--  Tweet, via Red painter @Redpainter1; 31 August 2017
(From TomClarkBlog)

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Funny

Dick Gregory (1932 - 2017)
Jerry Lewis (1929 - 2017)

Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis, 1960's

A long time ago, I found myself at a screening of a 16mm film, "Dog Of Nazareth", which portrayed the life of The Jesus and his faithful canine companion. The trailer to the film was actually more interesting -- because whichever moment in His life was being portrayed, the camera was always focused on the Dog. It was hilarious (in that long-ago time before Life Of Brian), and there was much sacrilegious laughter withal.

A notable alternative comics artist was in attendance. We ended up smoking out on the street, talking about the film we'd just watched, and mused about what was humor, anyway? And the fellow said: Humor was a juxtaposition, a collision of opposites which for a split second forced an observer to temporarily abandon their routine assumptions about reality. "Some find that threatening," he went on, "and they respond by getting angry -- but for the other ninety-nine out of a hundred people, they're going to laugh."

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This is late in getting posted, but, still: Dick Gregory passed away last week; Jerry Lewis died Sunday. Both were fixtures in my 1950's, Sixties, and early Seventies, for different reasons, and both were Funny Men from completely different perspectives.

Gregory was funny because his juxtaposition of opposites was in his very presence on a New York stage -- a black man, reminding white audiences about race and class, who was allowed to do what, and where; on what basis, and why.

Wearing a white shirt and three-button Brooks Brothers suit, he balanced himself on a stool and talked in rolling sentences, punctuating his routine with long pauses as he slowly dragged on his cigarette.

“He would find a white waiter and say, ‘Bring me a Scotch and water,’ and there would be this palpable gasp from the crowd,” said Robert Lipsyte, a former New York Times reporter who helped write Mr. Gregory’s 1964 autobiography...

“They’d watch as the waiter brought him the drink. He’d take a sip and then say, ‘Governor Faubus should see me now’ ” — a reference to the Arkansas governor who in 1957 opposed the integration of the Little Rock schools. “He won over the whole audience. They were suddenly liberal again."

It can be argued that Gregory was acting as a band-aid, something to soothe the guilt of his audiences so that they could convince themselves that they weren't really racist, weren't really supporting and perpetuating a class structure that (also) excluded people of color. But Gregory did something revolutionary, in a soft way. At a time when it really was stepping over the color line to do so, he delivered -- a measured voice, slow, even in tone -- reminders of how things actually were.

His voice was like taking your chin, not unkindly, and turning your head to see something that was bound to make you uncomfortable. What you did with it after that was your business -- but for some people it would be one more step up, out of ignorance.

He juxtaposed sardonic observations of life against the privileged assumptions of middle-class, white America ("... a restaurant waitress in the segregated South who told him, 'We don’t serve colored people here,' to which Mr. Gregory replied, 'That’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Just bring me a whole fried chicken.' ”), and made humor. His audiences laughed, but on some level understood the joke came at a cost. And, he made it possible for other black comics and entertainers to make their way to the stage.

I recall (as old Dogs do) his running for President on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1968 -- the same year that saw Martin Luther King, Jr. and RFK gunned down; that saw Hubert Humphrey the Democratic Party's candidate against Richard Nixon, The One. And a little more than a year later, in Southeast Asia, I found a good number of my black room- and team-mates knew exactly who Dick Gregory was.

A monologist, a comic, a teacher; Gregory didn't quit. He saw comedy as a vehicle for instruction, for consciousness-raising, and even as he passed away was still involved doing what he did best. Losing his voice, now, seems one more cruelty of fate, time, and tides.

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By comparison, Jerry Lewis was someone who didn't ruffle many feathers.  He was as mainstream a comedian as any in postwar America, and while his humor wasn't as socially-focused as Gregory's, his family had been among the waves of Jewish immigrants coming to America -- each of whom could be part of a community, but who had to navigate a world run by Gentiles and the anti-Semitism which, like racism and sexism and homophobia, persists.

Jerome Levitch had parents who were small-time entertainers, "his father [Danny] a song-and-dance man, his mother [Rae,] a pianist — who used the name Lewis when they appeared in ... vaudeville and at Catskills resort hotels. The Levitches were frequently on the road and often left Joey, as he was called, in the care of Rae’s mother and her sisters. The experience of being passed from home to home left Mr. Lewis with an enduring sense of insecurity and, as he observed, a desperate need for attention and affection."

Lewis followed his parents into performing as a comedy 'sketch artist'. His idea of humor was personal, idiosyncratic, a nebbish with slapstick. The story of his paring with the lounge-singer-smooth Dean Martin was one of those near-magic, serendipitous connections: In mid-1946, Lewis was doing a routine at the Havana-Madrid club in Manhattan, lip-syncing popular songs while performing some of what would become his signature slapstick; Martin was singing.

One night, they started riffing off each other in impromptu comedy sessions after the last show. Their antics were noticed by a Billboard magazine, reviewer, who wrote, “Martin and Lewis [have] all the makings of a sock act,” meaning a successful show.  And they were -- very successful, personally and financially.

When they parted, it wasn't pretty. Dean went on as part of the Rat Pack. Jerry learned filmmaking and began directing his own movies, which showed him as a talented comedian -- and became an almost perennial fixture with his annual telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy foundation.

I remember bits and pieces of them as schmaltzy, almost embarrassing (my parents would let the show run as teevee background noise) -- but I also remember having the sense that 'Jerry's Kids', in wheelchairs, or with braces and crutches, were not objects of pity. I didn't learn compassion from a Jerry Lewis telethon, but prosaic as it sounds, it wouldn't be far wrong to say it helped move me towards an understanding.

The comedian Jerry Lewis stayed out of politics, but Lewis the man was a conservative (per Wikipedia, he remarked that Donald Trump "would make a good president because he was a good 'showman' ") -- his obituary in Variety effectively claimed him to be racist, homophobic, a hack who had long outlived any usefulness as a cultural reference.

It's undeniable: his movies didn't question the established order; his characters were full of inventive slapstick and terrific comic timing -- but they weren't like Chaplin's Tramp. They were inoffensive, wacky, fumbling, based around shtick that began seventy years earlier in Vaudeville; they didn't reference the world of Selma and Saigon, JFK and Johnson, Goldwater and the Cold War. They were mainstream, part of American entertainment's cultural noise. Even so, it's also undeniable: Lewis did raise a great deal of money, ostensibly to benefit young humans just starting life, having been dealt a different hand than the rest of us.  

Lewis was a 'showman' -- for him, comedy was a craft, an art form, more than a method of showing some deeper truth about ourselves or the present. It was part skill, part competition, and he was a success -- not only by the yardstick of the entertainment industry. And, he did make people laugh. That's worth something, just on it's own.

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Now they know what we do not. Two more Mensches leave us. I'm sure they had their moments of egoism and assholery, of weakness and excess, like the rest of us. But, they made us laugh -- reminded us to laugh, for different reasons, even if our laughter was in spite of.  And for that alone, I'll miss their being fixtures in the cultural landscape.  And, we live in a world with a limited supply of Mensches.

Gregory, 2009;  Lewis In 2016

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Absent Friends

You Know Who They Are

Mozart: Adiago, Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra

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Pardon Me

Same As It Never Was

While all agree the U.S. president has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.  FAKE NEWS
Trump / Twitter, July 22, 2017

Donald Trump is a pivotal historical figure. He'd like hearing that, but not for the reasons it's true.

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Trump is an Oligarch, the first of his ilk elected to national office in America, the culmination of a long string of compromises, inertia, and bad choices in our history and politics. Trump came to power in an alliance with opportunistic associates, the best political con artists of the early 21st century; and voters loosely described as Tea Party and Alt-Right, who have unquestioningly accepted 30 years of indoctrination in the alternate reality of the Right's echo chamber.

The image of a corrupt, bombastic national leader is one Americans have always used, with a smirk, to dismiss the problems of 'somewhere else': the behavior of a Berlusconi, a Mugabe; a Ghaddafi, a Middle Eastern prince; or the leader of a 'Banana Republic'. Now, America has just such a leader.

Nine months after the election, it's fair to say the majority of Americans do not understand how this could have happened, are frightened of what will happen next, and don't know what to do about it.

Far from being steward of a nation of some 400 million people, Trump sees the presidency as an extension of his own person, a grand stage on which to strut and preen and demand validation, over and over. He personifies what American culture holds out to the world as the apex of success and fulfillment in life -- being a billionaire business 'leader', wielding power, able to afford a wonderful life, with treats, and a separate system of taxation and justice.

Trump has no real political agenda, because the presidency of the United States is just his latest acquisition. It's a sweet little property, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to the kind of access needed to work deals so 'big', so 'huge', that they will elevate him and his family into world-class Oligarchs. 

His administration may not last another twelve months, but his becoming president is one symptom of a metastatic disease within America's political structure. And like the towering rages he treats his subordinates and family to, as Trump leaves the presidency, thwarted by a liberal conspiracy, his greatness stolen by a fake-news media, Trump will urinate in the Lincoln Bedroom, set fire to furniture, spray-paint obscenities on the Roosevelt Room walls and cut paintings out of their frames on his way to the helicopter.

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A little speculation: Trump was determined to be president. He saw no difference between "winning" a national election and making any other successful corporate power play -- you pull out all the stops, play rough; even play dirty if it will gain an advantage. In that context, it's very believable that Trump would see back channel help from a foreign government in winning that election to be no different than approaching a business associate for assistance in closing a deal. 

And why not accept some help? Trump has what we now know are thirty years' worth of business and personal connections with Russia -- and at least a handshake relationship with its ruler, Vladimir Putin, whom Trump respects and believes he understands. During the campaign, Trump sent signals in the many complimentary things he said about Putin. He praised the Russian president in terms Trump likes to use to describe himself -- tough, rich, uncompromising; a Player. 

But Trump wanted to win. And he may have considered that if he became president, Russia could become an ally to fight ISIS, possibly even a partner to help broker peace in the Middle East, instead of an adversary. It's a bit of a stretch -- but an alliance-in-all-but-name with Russia would remake the balance of world politics overnight. It's the sort of game-changing strike without warning which Trump and his principal strategist, Steve Bannon, are fond of.

There would be skeptics in the GOP like Graham and McCain, who mistrust the Russians; and among Europeans, who are closer geographically to Russia than we are. The Chinese wouldn't like it. But somehow, Trump might believe -- if he could just become president -- it would work. And, a political fait accompli would tend to obscure any Russian hacking that might happen before the election, which was already obvious to U.S. intelligence and then-President Obama. Any investigation of that activity would be buried, because Trump would be in charge.

After, Trump just knew he would be covered in glory, with huge, big, big, big; hugely big approval ratings -- proving to everyone that he was loved and adored (no, worshiped) as no American Leader before him had been. Craving uncritical adulation appears to be one of Trump's principal motivations. It may be the only one.

Trump would then have all the domestic political capital with a Republican-controlled Congress he needed to build border walls, deport people he doesn't like; repeal Obamacare. Easily elected to a second term, he would continue to encourage his surrogates and camp followers to realize the fevered, wet dreams of power, domination and punishment which America's political Right has nurtured for generations.

So, in this consideration, help was offered and/or asked for, and was delivered. If that sounds like a bridge too far, here's a question: Why was there so much attention focused on Russia, and contacts with Russians that have direct connections to Putin, by Trump and his coterie of advisors both before and after the election? What was the reason?

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You have to wonder how Putin viewed Trump's becoming president. Financial sanctions levied against Russia by the Obama administration hurt Putin (and his associate)s' ability to more efficiently skim off the top and launder the proceeds, and he had no intention of taking it lying down.

The cyberarm of the GRU (Russian military intelligence) has been probing American governmental and commercial systems for over twenty years. Their goal has never been to run scams like Ransomware, or weaponize software code in something like Stuxnet -- but in developing the ability to use cyberwarfare as one part of an asymetric attack on a target; in this case, the United States.

Putin's KGB career involved analyzing American culture and intentions, and it's likely he understands roughly a quarter of the adult U.S. population has swallowed thirty years of right-wing codswallop, which always ends with a Federal government determined to sell America out to a one-world, globalist liberal conspiracy.

America is full of fault lines, primarily involving race and wealth inequality. Russians view even the flawed diversity and democracy in the U.S. as expressions of weakness, especially when compared with their own nationalist, authoritarian government. Putin wants to diminish U.S. influence in the world, and anything which exploits America's partisan divide against itself gives Russia more advantage -- in Syria; in Ukraine; and in offshore accounts.

A straight hack of the DNC to obtain more raw intelligence about the organization of a major American political party is one thing. But hacking to obtain information, and then using the product to tip the scales of a U.S. national election is something else. Trump presented the Russians with an irresistible opportunity: all hackers are Geeks with Kung-Fu powers; there's a lot of juice in just pulling the hack off successfully. 

The product of the GRU's hacks, used properly, could destabilize the United States -- not in an obvious way that could be seen as an act of war (e.g., bringing down the electrical grid or disrupting the banking system), but by kicking the confidence of Americans in its government and basic democratic institutions further to the curb.

Trump's election would leave the U.S. further divided and uncertain, its government distracted, its president a weak, bombastic narcissist who only accepts advice from a tiny circle of family or uncritical 'alternative' advisors. If even a part of that could be achieved, with a minimum of resources and effort, Putin might consider it an exquisite kind of payback.

Putin knew Trump might expect an America under his leadership becoming a closer partner with Russia. Publicly, Vlad said he welcomes closer relations. He would like the sanctions against Russian individuals and its banks lifted -- but it is certainly advantageous to Russia if America is kept off-balance and distracted. So, Putin could suggest the possibility of A Great New Friendship... but it will always remain just out of Trump's reach, so long as Vlad wants it that way. Bizarrely, Trump needs Putin more than the reverse is true.

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So, very possibly, Trump accepted assistance offered by intermediaries from Putin. He saw the Russian hacks and release of the product as right, a necessary edge in an election against a hated liberal icon, sowing confusion and discord in a political structure that the outsider Trump claimed to detest.

Crooked Hillary, the Fake News conspiracy against him, would be outmaneuvered. He would fight and fight and fight -- and win, because he was Donald Trump; and all would love him.

That's all that mattered.

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I keep hearing conversations with some variation on If only this turd were swept out of power, everything could go back to normal. This perception is a mistake. Mike Pence in the Oval Office might seem more socially acceptable; we could pretend everything was The Same As It Ever Was. But Trump's fall means elevating a religious fundamentalist to the presidency, and even though Pence outwardly appears to be 'normal' (relative to Trump), he is equally as threatening and destabilizing. Look at his record.

Pence aside, the damage has already been done. There is no viable alternative to the continued rule of America by the individuals who crawled in behind Trump as he was inaugurated. Their goal is to continue dismantling the social contract between government and citizen that was the cornerstone of FDR's New Deal. And they will not cease, unless someone stops them.

And by that I mean a Poland-style, hundreds of thousands in the streets, saying No Pasaran stopping them. But with few exceptions (in particular people who already know what the score is and are so full of rage they feel they have little to lose), everyone just wants it to be The Same As It Ever Was.  

But who or what will offer a change? The Democratic party appears rudderless. The same neoliberal PTB who wanted Hill-O as Leader seem still to be in charge -- and their message isn't about Resistance. It's about connecting with the people they believe voted Trump into office; feeling the pain of ordinary Americans.  It's about playing a longer strategic game.

Yesterday, Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chair Tom Perez announced the 2018 campaign direction for their party. Reduced to it's essence, their 'answer to America's working families', is the same as Michael Dukakis' during the 1988 presidential election -- "good jobs at good wages" -- meaning they would focus on addressing basic economic issues, in order to define the Democratic party as being more than "just against Donald Trump".

It's easy to see the decision behind this rebranding, but it doesn't encourage standing up, or fighting back. It's like handing an aspirin to a person slowly being crushed to death, and touching their hand -- tenderly, and with love. Under the circumstances, this kind of response is inadequate.

Something more active needs to be done. But given the lack of response from the population and Left politicians, how much worse will it need to become before a larger number of people act? 

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Trump has gotten what he wanted -- the limelight of history: Top of the world, Ma! In what happens next, he is a pivotal figure, a cause utterly out of proportion with the effect he will have on our lives. That anyone suffers because of this Clown is tragic, and ironic. Chickens, home to roost. Somewhere the gods are laughing, fit to bust -- and Vladimir Putin, of course.

The ascension to the presidency of a right-wing buffoon with limited impulse control is bad: The Past Is Prologue; just look at what's happened in seven months. The buffoon made Leader at the same time the Congress is dominated by Republicans, with a probable conservative bias in the Supreme Court, is very bad.

If it's determined the buffoon president solicited or agreed to assistance from a foreign power, in order to affect the election which barely gave him a victory, it's not just extremely bad for America -- it's an unprecedented Constitutional crisis.

And Trump is only a symptom. All this, The fact that he is where he is, makes obvious our political structure is dysfunctional and schizophrenic. That we're becoming a culture where the needs of Americans -- employment; housing; safe water and air and food; medical care; one system of justice -- won't be addressed unless they can pay for them. That we all feel something is out of control, getting perilously close to an edge. That things can't go on like this.

As if it wasn't obvious. As if anyone had to actually say so.  But we do. We need to say it publicly, loudly, and often, until we believe it.  Because at the moment, a majority of Americans are still betting that Same As It Ever Was is still a possible future.

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MEHR, MIT DAS TIERLIEBE: 

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Reprint Heaven: When In These Coarse Current Events

Nothing To See Here

(Original Foto, Courtesy Danny Dutch, That Guy, via The Soul Of America)

Sad Vlad, The Putin (called 'Pooti-Poot' by George "Lil' Boots" Bush, in that bizarre, Mitfordian slang his Familia di Criminale use to describe other people), is like that guy who claims not to have a dinosaur.

Vlad does, in fact, have a dinosaur. He has Ted the T-Rex in his barn -- I mean, we can hear Ted bellowing all the way down to County Road 47; hell, we can hear him down to the Interstate. Some nights, Ted spots cars full of joyriding teenagers, out cruising the Rural Routes between the farms, and chases them all over the place. He doesn't ever catch them -- probably, he just likes running after them -- and there are big three-toed footprints, afterwards, everywhere. Plenty of kids have had big dents put in the roofs of their cars, by something, out on those dark roads -- but the two auto-body places we've got don't mind the business.

Cattle are missing in eight counties, and plenty of people haven't seen their pets for a while -- and piles of shit, seven feet tall, appear here and there almost every day. What Vlad doesn't plow under, he sells as fertilizer -- and he's been selling that shit to just about the whole damn state for a long time, now. Some people from Monsanto were sniffing around Vlad's farm, trying to figure out where that manure was coming from, but they just kind of -- disappeared.

Vlad and his family are constantly getting people stopping by the house, asking about that damn dinosaur. He explains, patiently, with that flat-fish expression of his that no, they do not have a dinosaur. Vlad claims to be so tired of this, all the folks from Des Moines and Ystaad and Tunbridge Wells and Saskatoon with their kids, piling out of overloaded station wagons and asking to use the restroom -- that finally, he made himself a sign, right there, on the hood of an old 1949 Vonyets tractor: We Do Not Have A Dinosaur.

If you continue to insist he does, Vlad will take a step back and look at you. Dinosaur? You been out in the sun a while? Ridiculous. Those things've been extinct for a good, long time ("Just like my old buddy, Alex," Vlad says with a sly grin). If you can hold it, there's a Tastee-Freeze a couple miles up the road with a bathroom, Vlad says. We got a farm to run, here; you all have a nice day.

Except, this is where he gets his cake and sells you dinosaur shit, too: There Is A Fucking T-Rex In Vlad's Barn. You know it. He knows it. You can't really prove it -- I mean, no one has actually seen Ted -- but when you put together that noise coming out of Vlad's barn, all those footprints, lebenty-billion pounds of crap all over the place and a whole bunch of missing cattle ... remember Ossie's Tazer, or whatever they call that: When all's said and done, the simplest explanation is pretty much gonna be right.

And the folks at the County Seat claim to know nothing about it. Vlad's been a good friend to the County folks -- lot of that fertilizer money went to see them get elected last fall. And there were those big piles of shit that appeared every morning on the front lawns of their opponents' homes.  Vlad had some problems with that previous administration -- some back taxes; not addressing his land rights issues, questions about how he runs his fertilizer trade. But now the election's done, word is that all may disappear. And, the County Commissioner has a new John Deere Combine -- he claims it's a lease. Others aren't so sure.

There are plenty of people out there who will tell you that Vlad's a good guy. He means well, runs a tight farm and, up front, always treats you with respect. But there's no denying that his neighbors -- the ones who bring their cattle into the barns every night, the ones they've spent a biggly amount of cash reinforcing with steel -- are a little nervous about Vlad.

Some of them say he has funny ideas about expanding his farm -- that he has some kind of Plan, and Ted The T-Rex is a big part of it. Others say he likes doing crazy-ass things just out of pure, human fuckery.

All I know is, Vlad has that sign, We Do Not Have A Dinosaur, and almost every night I hear that big lizard, bellowing to beat the band as he chases some car full of teenagers, having a helluva good time. You can complain, but the County Commissioner will just tell you -- probably on Twitter -- what a silly goose you are and you best shut up now. Sad!

Random Barking

I Dreamed That Dream Again


In a room crowded by Nabobs and Archons, Exalted Persons with collagen and plastic bags of saline in their Parts, who rub orange cream on their skin, who enjoy Oil and a State Of Emergency at home, gather together beneath the Eye to pay homage to those who own us. (News Item)

But before champagne corks pop in Manhattan and Berkeley and other capitals of liberal America, people might want to consider the government’s track record of holding elites accountable over the last decade. It’s not a pretty picture from the standpoint of justice or fairness. ... because America doesn’t prosecute anyone with money or power anymore. ... much has changed since Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, went to jail in 2005 for tax evasion and witness tampering.

--  David Dayen, "Why Trump Didn't Have To Obstruct Justice: The US No Longer Holds The Powerful Accountable"; Fiscal Times, May 23, 2017

(Courtesy Soul Of America.)

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Up

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And, courtesy of First Dog On The Moon at the UK Guardian online (Click To Enlarge! Easy! Fun!):

 

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One More Voice

The Beaver Speaks For His Kind

(Photo: William Ploughman / NBC)

Never did I ever think I'd be grabbing quotes from Davey ("Bucky The Beaver") Brooks, unindicted war criminal, but these are strange times.

Bucky is really an old-line conservative, out of Kristol, by way of  Buckley and Podhoretz. Like many pundits of any political stripe, he supports the status quo (ultimately, rule-by-the-0.01%), but from the Right. He's carved out a niche in Right wingnutostan as the voice of traditional conservative values; a reading of his columns in the Paper Of Record seem to indicate his perfect world looks a lot like Saskatoon around 1958, as Bucky was born and raised North Of The Border.

While many pundits frequently hedge their bets, while the contest for a Republican candidate ground on, Bucky sided with that party's old-line leadership in declaring Trump a menace, and said plainly This Is Bad when Wonderboy became the nominee.

Still, for the sake of preserving a Republican party, through the summer he tried to find some silver lining in the sow's ear as Trump faced off against She in the clash of worlds. With the election, Bucky was as stunned as the rest of us, offering jumbled conservative credos that amounted to a 'How Can This Be Happening??'

Wonderboy, Speaking To A Room Of Dishonest Lying Haters (Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP)

Bucky is one bellwether of mood among status quo conservatives. Not long before the inauguration and America's renaming as Trumplandia, he said plainly that he wouldn't take a Trump presidency lying down.  And after watching the 77 unscripted minutes of Wonderboy's free association press conference yesterday, Bucky typed:

I still have trouble seeing how the Trump administration survives a full term. Judging by his Thursday press conference, President Trump’s mental state is like a train that long ago left freewheeling and iconoclastic, has raced through indulgent, chaotic and unnerving, and is now careening past unhinged, unmoored and unglued.

Trump’s White House staff is at war with itself. His poll ratings are falling at unprecedented speed. His policy agenda is stalled. F.B.I. investigations are just beginning. This does not feel like a sustainable operation.

One way or another, we're all feeling this. Bucky, on the other hand, is a well-known right-wing cheerleader with impeccable (for those people, anyway) credentials -- and even he is verbalizing the same WTF and "this can't end well" which we're all feeling. And, what next?

On the other hand, I have trouble seeing exactly how this administration ends. Many of the institutions that would normally ease out or remove a failing president no longer exist.

There are no longer moral arbiters in Congress like Howard Baker and Sam Ervin to lead a resignation or impeachment process. There is no longer a single media establishment that shapes how the country sees the president. This is no longer a country in which everybody experiences the same reality.

... The Civil Service has a thousand ways to ignore or sit on any presidential order. The court system has given itself carte blanche to overturn any Trump initiative, even on the flimsiest legal grounds. The intelligence community has only just begun to undermine this president.

President Trump can push all the pretty buttons on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise, but don’t expect anything to actually happen, because they are not attached.

So far as the USA goes, this is a good description of the internal political landscape as of February 17, 2017.  However, this ignores the possibility of something -- an external threat, but most likely something happening within our own border -- to change the game.

We're one terrorist (or false flag) incident away from Wonderboy -- insecure, narcissistic, child-man led by Stevie Bannon -- declaring a State Of Emergency and locking the country down. It will be a massive overreaction designed simply to match the paranoid, delusional world Trump and Bannon inhabit, a "War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast -- the results of which will be impossible to predict once it's been put in motion. At that point the nation will find all the buttons on Trump's command deck are fully connected and operate very well. 

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MEHR, MIT MEHR VON BUCKY!  On this evening's PBS New Hour -- following a segment showing interviews with Trump supporters and critics in Bellville, and Austin, Texas -- Bucky made a few observations [warning: paraphrased quotes].

"What's at the core [of the divide between Americans]? Why is the chasm so wide?  Is there some cultural or racial divide?  Whether it's some identity politics thing or something else... that's the world we're in."

Bucky said he saw Trump's news 'conference' performance as "mildly deranged", then questioned what of substance Trump was actually doing. He noted that relatively few of the total number of presidential appointees had actually been made. "On the substantive picks, he doesn't have nominees [in place]... nothing is happening."

Asked if he believed Trump was 'mildly deranged', Bucky made a trademark non-demurral demurral: "I'll walk that back a little... he was 'unmoored'... he's not speaking as a president giving orders and leading the American people... [his] attack on the press... saying that they are enemies of the people... [that's] to take [direction] right out of the fascist playbook..."

Trump's actions "offends 65 to  70 per cent of the American people," Bucky added later. "It pleases 35 per cent of the people," he said, noting that the Republican leadership was not in any hurry to put distance between themselves and Trump "anytime soon. Among Republicans, 82 per cent support Trump, a higher [percentage] than Reagan got."
 

Finally, Bucky said the Republican leadership are "living in a hermetically-sealed universe, as are the democrats; so they're going to [support Trump] even at the risk of electoral downfall..."

And that's Jenga.

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Friday We Went Into The Night And The Gnashing Of Mandibles

Hope You're Not Expecting Profundity, Or Good Government.

At the end of another week I remind myself:  We don't have it that bad, relative to... a whole lot.

Huh? You want the list, Yo? Well, to start with --- we didn't have to endure physical torture (though watching Il Duce's minions in confirmation hearings on CSPAN2 is pretty close); we didn't have to survive a Russian airstrike; we didn't have to wander in -20 F temperatures outside Belgrade; we aren't dropping to the living room floor whenever we hear popping we know is gunfire. We have enough money to buy things we do not need (as we are compelled to do by training which begins in infancy), and enough food to be overweight (Mildly. Let's not get carried away here).

We're fairly safe; live in neighborhoods where there are over ten different varieties of honey for sale, for fuck's sake; and we don't have to pay the police to leave us alone.  It's a good bet our children, if they commute home from school, will actually get there alive and unmolested. And when The Dear Leader To Come appears on teevee -- tubby, bloated, "Huge" -- we can shut the fucking thing off and not be compelled to perform some act of obeisance.

Yes; there's much I personally do not have.  But because of all the above, I am grateful. Really.

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Dow Surges As Kremlin Says Has No Dossier Dropped From Chinese Bomber Over The Spratlys

While Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Scrambles Taiwanese Jets
To Investigate Mariah Carey's VW Executive Oil Pricing 
In Wake Of Sessions Confirmation Hearings

Mongo Is On The Ball.
"Hey; is that food? Give me some -- I've been picking up this thing you keep throwing."

 Just thought we'd cover everything. It's raining out here on the Left Coast.

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Always Free Cheddar In The Mousetrap, Baby

Digging Up The Dead With A Pick And A Shovel

Tom Waits: "God's Away On Business" (Album, 'Blood Money'; 2002)

(Used in the 2005 film, Smartest Guys In The Room)

... Political conditions were becoming even more confused. One crisis followed on the heels of another, and we paid no attention... On January 30, 1933, I read of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor, but for the time being that did not affect me. Shortly afterward I attended a membership meeting of the Mannheim local party group... "A country cannot be governed by such people," I briefly thought. My concern was needless. The old bureaucratic apparatus continued to run the affairs of state smoothly under Hitler, too.
--  Albert Speer, Inside The Third Reich; The MacMillian Co. (1970), p.25.

Police reported that eleven people were shot and killed in Chicago, primarily in South Side neighborhoods, during the Christmas holiday. The city may pass 700 homicides, and over 4,000 gun-related injuries, before 2016 ends.
--  Information In PBS 'Nightly News Hour' Segment, December 26th

BOB:  ... And a heartwarming moment this weekend when Fred Arnold of Pinole lost his partial upper dental plate while riding the Richmond BART line on Christmas Eve. The dentifrice was found by a five-year-old boy, whose parents wish him to remain anonymous; and on Christmas Day Mr. Arnold was reunited with his dental plate, telling KTUV news, "I can eat now."
KATHY:  That's so kind of that boy. You know, when I hear items like this, it balances out so much of the other news we report, you know?
BOB:  Sure does.
--  Close Of 6:00PM Newscast, KTUV-Oakland, California, December 26 (OK; maybe not).

Tom Waits: "Hell Broke Luce" (Album, 'Bad As Me'; 2011)
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The Days

Random Barking: Fate Of Our Fodders 

Electoral College members voted today, with minor defections, to affirm that Donald Trump is the next President Of The United States (News Item).

Eschewing politics, partisanship, and party building, Obama seemed to believe that restoration of transparent, efficient, competent, and responsive government within strict neoliberal policy parameters was commensurate with the epochal demands of social renovation that his own unlikely emergence was supposed to signify. In retrospect, it should not be surprising that this brand of repressive tolerance and progressive tinkering would not hold back the forces of repressive desublimation and social decay that Trump represents. Risk and volatility are on again... the wrecking crew is back in the saddle.
 -- "Trump and the Present Crisis," Nikhil Pal Singh; December 6, 2016

The point is that the relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion.  The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
-- George Orwell, Freedom of the Park (1945), quoted by David Remnick in "American Tragedy"; The New Yorker Online, November 9, 2016   

May They Burn In The Forever Fire

"Today there were terror attacks in Turkey, Switzerland and Germany and it is only getting worse. The civilized world needs to wake up."  -- Duce!

I'd like to thank the Project For A New American Century, William Kristol, David "Bucky The Beaver" Brooks; 'Dick' Cheney'; Paul Wolfowitz; Donald Rumsfeld; the Special Condi Rice (Shot From Guns!); Colin Powell; munitions manufacturers, military contractors; many other scuttling roaches, and (last but not least among Bottom-feeders) George W. "Lil' Boots" Bush -- for an unnecessary, criminal invasion of Iraq, without which hundreds of thousands of human beings would be alive today, and multiple tragedies in Baghdad, Aleppo, Islamabad, Mumbai, Tripoli and Benghazi, Paris, Berlin, and a thousand other  cities and towns would not have taken place.

But, don't worry. As children are barrel-bombed in Syria; drown trying to escape across the Mediterranean; as suicide bombers kill and maim hundreds; as women and girls pass into sexual slavery for IS -- for all the above-mentioned persons, it's the most wonderful time of the year. Their holiday is easy and soft. They are warm , and safe, with many treats; and people to tell them they are kind and loved and right and sane and good.

We Mean It, Too.

Die Sprache

Going to work at 5:20AM and a stop at a coffee chain near the entrance to BART on a cold (48 Degrees F.) day. Considering how amazing it all is: Coffee grown thousands of miles away, roasted in machines, brewed in other machines behind the counter -- all the manufacturing processes to fabricate them, and the ships and the trains and the trucks that brought it all together. Served hot in paper cups with plastic tops (trees, oil; more machines making them) in a city with moderate political corruption and a good public transport system.

Inside, a carousel of baked goods, topped by a plate of Bear Claws piled ten inches high -- flour, butter; sugar grown and made in Hawaii (with all the machinery of harvesting, refining); almonds grown in the Central Valley; industrial mixers; baking ovens.  I'm moving towards work, considering the shifting likes and dislikes of my Dog's life and aware of the irony that I have these troubles in the midst of skyscrapers and laptops and cellphones and women so beautiful your heart (among other things) aches with memory and imagination.

At a table in the cafe: an Indian couple in their late twenties or early thirties, having an earnest conversation. "No you do not understand how I feel," says the woman ("Yes; I understand," the man says over her, in a flat voice without much conviction), "There are things I want to do, now."  "Yes and what things," says the man, waiting for the moment to pass, looking off into some middle distance.

"I want my career," the woman replied; the man made a sour face, and the woman said, "You are not taking me seriously. You have to listen to me!" As I was walking past them on my way out of the cafe, the man swung his face back to quickly look at her, eyebrows raised as if to say Oh, do I?

What The Election Means: Easy To Read Nutshell Version

(Click To Enlarge !  It's Easy And Fun !)

I walk down into BART, thinking: the intellectual concrete of language makes possible the construction of ideas, emotions, into the real. If people don't have (or aren't allowed) language that defines concepts like equality in opportunity, employment, pay; or reproductive rights; or when No means No... then after a while, not only will they no longer exist as rights in a society -- the very ideas will cease to exist for the larger mass of the population. It truly is that simple.

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They Have Milestones

John Glenn died, age 95. I met Glenn in 1963 for less than five minutes. He had been doing something at the Air Force base near my small home town, and had gone into a local shop to have new rubber heels put on a pair of shoes (his old heels were 'Virginia Oak' brand). He would be back in a week 'during the lunch hour' to pick up the shoes, he'd said.

In the early 1960's everything about the manned space program fascinated me. I had scrapbooks of every space-related article printed in LIFE magazine since before Sputnik -- and seven days later, I was in the shoe shop when Glenn drove up shortly after noon, alone, in a dove-grey military sedan and parked in front.

He looked exactly like his pictures, dressed in a black suit with the thin line of a white handkerchief showing above the coat's front pocket; a white shirt, and a blue-grey bow tie. He was polite, but contained, aloof -- discouraging any attention as embarrassing or unseemly.  We shook hands, and he autographed the LIFE magazine cover of the issue about his multiple-orbit Mercury mission, with the photo of him wearing his astronaut's silver flight suit and white helmet ("Best Wishes, John H. Glenn, Jr.").

What was it like? I asked. "Well, you can read about that in there," Glenn said, nodding toward the magazine -- and after paying for the shoe repairs, politely said goodbye and left quickly.

In the late Eighties, when Glenn put himself forward as a potential Democratic presidential candidate, I read an article about his campaign in Rolling Stone -- in one passage, without being seen, the author had observed Glenn while the ex-astronaut, Senator from Ohio, waited alone in a side room for an introduction to speak at a meeting of some civic organization; its members were in a larger room directly next door.

The group opened their meeting by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance -- and as they did so, the author watched Glenn stand, put his right hand over his heart, and recite the Pledge himself. There was no reason for him to do that; so far as he knew, no one was looking.

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Kirk Douglas celebrated his 100th birthday.  ZaZa Gabor died at (maybe) 99, and her passing even eclipsed information about Aleppo and submersible drones seized by the Chinese and Duce! in the nightly news -- ironic, as ZaZa was almost wholly without talent, one of the first to be famous ... just for being famous. She made Paris Hilton possible (more irony, as ZaZa had married, and divorced, Paris' grandfather Conrad). Even in death, our 'news' organizations treated her as if she were a person who had achieved something worthwhile and notable in human affairs. 

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I Remember It Was Better In The Olden Days

One Wants To Believe What Will Keep One Safe

... this is something different. This is not Mitt Romney winning in 2012 or John McCain in 2008. It's part of a larger current in the world that I find equally troubling, which is an illiberal current. It has justifiable beefs with the results of globalization, de-industrialization.

There are all kinds of people in the north of England, in the south, in the Rust Belt of the United States and throughout Europe who are made uneasy by, and have suffered by, all these currents... I just don't think that the political results that we're seeing in many of these countries are the healthiest thing in the world. I think just the opposite...

A friend of mine here at the office said it's like you've been tossed out of an aeroplane and you feel the sense of alarm, fear... no parachute is opened. No sense of "ah this is a normal event"… But there is that impulse to make it such, and I see it all around me. I see it on television. I see it in the paper. What I would call normalization.

You see it all over. I understand the impulse. It's a very human impulse always to normalize the situation, so that you're not in a state of constant alarm or fear or sadness or agitation.
-- David Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker, Interviewed By The BBC, 12/17/16

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Rot Front; Rot Front!

You want the 1930's (hopefully minus the Depression)? Okay; we'll give you the Thirties.

Antifa! Poster Announcing

"Prevent Nazi Parade In Berlin !", May Day 2004

Announcing Trump’s victory, his clever consigliere [Steve} Bannon offers a different story from the one we have typically been told about American global power, foretelling of a future restoration of what Bannon calls native, “American capitalism” and its place in the sun. For Bannon and Trump, the bill has come due for the global protection racket that the US has run lo these seventy years. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia,” Bannon has declared. “Like Andrew Jackson’s populism, we are going to build an entirely new political movement… it’s going to be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

 -- "Trump and the Present Crisis," Nikhil Pal Singh; December 6, 2016

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Reprint Heaven (Or, So We'd Hope)

Yeah; Thirty-Six Years

Something About Him Was Always A Kick-Out-The-Jambs Liverpudlian Rebel

Speak, Memory: One of the two arrests we made that day hadn't gone well. After putting the car in the basement garage at the Federal Building, I'd walked up the underground ramp to the street, intending to buy my second pack of Marlboros of the day from the liquor store up the next block. Stepping inside, I looked down at a stack of the evening edition of a paper which isn't even around any longer, lying on the counter below the cash register with a banner headline in 48-point type: JOHN LENNON SLAIN.  Fuck; I thought, and then said it out loud. 

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This World At Night

Dusk

As I punch this in, it's twilight on the Left Coast and almost too obvious an image. At work, in the aftermath of the election few people spoke about the results. Even fewer people mention what's to come, now, except with a lot of who-the fuck-knows eye rolling and shrugging.

For now, there is an adult, no matter what you think of his policies, in the White House. We can push the image of Trump and his ilk, of Mike Pence telling the media to "buckle up", out of our minds -- but everyone knows that this (relatively) liberal presidency is ending; the light is fading.

I wrote a long post claiming to know something of the future, but this was bullshit: I don't know, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I let those who can analyze and translate current events well, or those with louder voices, or with a penchant for ego masquerading as humble simplicity, do their thing.

Something else I understood -- the future is very present. It's going to play out in the faces and the lives of friends, and total strangers whose fates seem more important now than they did a month ago.

I'm not a very deep reader, and when uncomfortable tend to chew on the familiar. So I grabbed Alan Furst's The World At Night to read over the long weekend. It's a story of Paul Casson, a Parisian and a producer of films, in France at the fall of the Third Republic, and the choices he makes after. It's about morality, love, and the courage and venality of life during occupation.

Casson has been recalled to the army in the late spring of 1940; the Germans are already invading the Low Countries (and eventually, as everyone knows, France itself via the Ardennes). He is part of a propaganda unit filming the French army as it heads toward the front.

     ...Casson was stopped. The sentries were drunk and unshaven. "What brings you here?" one of them said.
     "We're making movies."
     "Movies! You know Hedy Lamarr?"
     "Dog dick," said another. "Not those kinds of movies. War movies."
     "Oh. Then what the hell are you doing up here?"
     The second man... offered Casson a bottle through the window... [and] laughed as he took the bottle back. "Come and see us, squire, after this shit's done with."
     The hard Parisian sneer in his voice made Casson smile. "I will."
     "You can find us up in Belleville, at The Pig's Ass."
     "See you then," Casson said, shoving the clutch in.
     "Red Front!" They called after him.

The German army is successful; Casson melts away, towards Paris, more a vagabond than a fleeing soldier.

     ... Sometimes, in a cafe, he heard the news on a radio. Nothing, he realized, could save them from losing the war. He left the roads, walked across springtime fields... He shared a campfire with an old man with a white beard, a sculptor, he said, from Brittany somewhere, who walked with a stick, and got drunk on some yellow stuff from a square bottle...
     ... "We'll all live deep down, now," the sculptor said, throwing a stick of wood on the fire. "Twenty ways to prepare a crayfish. Or, you know, chess. Sanskrit poetry. It will hurt like hell, sonny, you'll see."

Casson is a character who lived a comfortable, creative life, a Parisian life, and after the nazi victory he only wants to get back to living it -- and he does, until he discovers that he actually is a moral man. And, while it takes time for the corrosion of the Occupation to seep through to him, eventually he has to act against it. He had no other choice, really; it just took some time for him to become clear to himself.

At the end, Casson makes another choice -- as much an act against Occupation and exclusion, division and hate as joining the Resistance. But for a purist or Marxist it will appear a fool's move, sentimentalist garbage. Only, it's our deepest passions, sometimes hidden from ourselves and spurring us to act, that define us.

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For the Left, the appointment of Bush in 2000 was a shock unlike any other in American politics -- and what followed was an eight year chapter in the Banality of Evil.

Life under Bush, a limited, Dauphin of a man, was Life During Wartime -- one reason Obama's election in 2008 was greeted with street parties -- here in Kiddietown, it was like the Place De Concorde in 1944 -- The nazis are gone! Vive La France!  We were Liberated!

But, Bush and the creatures that swept in with him had some legitimacy as part of the political mainstream. Not so with Trump or his creatures. Lil" Boots played at being a loud, crude Man Of The People but was always the son of a Yankee, blue-blood, Old Money family.  Trump has all the sophistication of an infomercial, the intellectual depth of a racetrack tout -- and, it's not an act. No one knows what will happen this time, but it's almost certain to be bad.

 Obligatory Cute Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

(From Mongo Interviews Mitzy, 2012)

And this time, it feels more like Occupation. Like the real thing -- as if Bush had been a dry run, a testing of limits. Just outside our field of vision, we sense men in Field Grey on the corners, but they're waiting, not asking for Ausweis; not yet.  Unconsciously, this was why I had taken Furst's book down from the shelf in the first place.

It's going to take time for the corrosion to sink in. And it will take time for people to act against it from our moral centers -- some sooner than others, but act we will have to. And the values and passions at the core of our Selves will direct us. We don't have any other choice, really.

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From the Post That Never Was, some tasty links as you cook that Crayfish. Pass the square bottle of yellow stuff, would you? And, which way to The Pig's Ass?

"Red Front!" They called after him.

Alastair Crooke, Without Any Masterpiece Theatre  --  and who he quotes, Raul Meijer.

ARTHUR, Once Upon A Time In His Head, who self-references. It's totally okay.

Richard Rorty, though he be dead (quotes below -- see The Paper Of Record's original 1998 review.)

"[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

"At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

"One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet...

"This world economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900... [This group included intellectuals who are] quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization."

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