America

(Win McNamee / Getty NorAm, via TPM)

The charm of the land 'South of the Mason-Dixon' is never on better display than in the gracious attitudes of its citizens, rooted in the values for which the 'Old South' is so widely known.
(--  Flying-A Gasoline Travel Guide, 1940)

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(Michael Reynolds / Pool/AFP)

Almost instinctively, once a President appoints a judge to sit on the Supreme Court, the public earmarks the Justice as an incarnation of impartiality, neutrality, and trustworthiness ... It is a judge's neutrality, fair-mindedness, and integrity that once again label him a person of impartiality and fairness, a person who seeks justice, and a President's first choice to serve the nation.
(-- Melissa Loewenstern, 2003, "The Impartiality Paradox"; Yale Law & Policy Review)

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His testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday was a howl of partisan rage. He said the behavior of Democrats on the committee was “an embarrassment” and “a good old-fashioned attempt at Borking.” He said they were “lying in wait” with “false, last-minute smears.”

The proceedings were, he said, “a national disgrace,” a “circus,” a “grotesque and coordinated character assassination” ... a “search and destroy” mission. He blamed Democrats for threats against his family, “to blow me up and take me down.”

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election . . [all for] revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups” ... Gone was the nominee who ... preached judicial modesty... [and] who on Monday spoke to Fox News about fairness and integrity and dignity and respect.
(-- Dana Milbank, "Brett Kavanaugh, Disrobed", Washington Post)

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As Kavanaugh’s hearing ended, Trump asserted his pleasure with the performance. “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him,” he tweeted. “His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!”
(-- Gabriel Sherman, "This Was Why He Nominated Him", Vanity Fair)

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Just after 5 P.M. on Wednesday, Trump went full Trump... [and] launched into a nearly 90-minute rant... Trump blasted the allegations against Kavanaugh ... incorrectly claimed that only “three or four” women had accused him of sexual misconduct; praised his handling of North Korea; boasted about his “very, very large brain”; and denounced all of the “fake” people at the press conference... Even by Trumpian standards, it was a stark display of the president’s uninhibited rhetorical style ...

More important, from the perspective of the [United Nations] General Assembly, was what Trump’s manic performance suggested about America’s diminished power on the world stage. The president of the United States... looked weak and small -- preoccupied ... insecure about his achievements, and fearful ...
(-- Abigail Tracy, "At The UN, Diplomats Grapple With A Diminished Trump", Vanity Fair)

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[Regarding a 'rule-less' society,] economic disparity and political dysfunction have been exacerbated by the collapse of the judicial system, as Matt Taibbi writes in his book “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.” There is aggressive criminalization of the poor while the ruling elites are protected by high-priced lawyers and non-enforcement or rewriting of laws...

The elites, who sacrifice nothing for society and are not held accountable for their criminal behavior, live in what Taibbi calls a “stateless archipelago.” They are empowered to pillage the nation, amass obscene wealth and wield unchecked political and legal control. The result has been the obliteration of the primary social bonds that, however biased in favor of the white majority, held the nation together.
(-- Chris Hedges, "American Anomie", TruthDig)

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Begin Again In The Off-World Colonies

Depressive Weimar Monday Ranting
Well, you were warned.

All Elected Officials Began Their Careers In This Way.

America -- soft 'n fluffy but with drones, Lil' Tay, fattish Archbishops, pasty Whiteboy judicial nominees and scumbag catfights -- made it through another week without collectively quitting our jobs and moving in a mass exodus to Canada. I don't know how, but we succeeded! USA! USA! Have an entire cheesecake as a reward for whatever it is you did. Or a few Big Macs. G'head.

You wanted the cheesecake. You wanted the Big Macs; you know that -- just like you wanted that neck tattoo (And that worked out, didn't it? Sure it did). Each bite helped pass the time on the weekend. Didn't it? Yeah, pal.

Creepy Cute Toy Used To Instruct Dental Assistants

In Dealing With Child Patients. Okay; Maybe Not.

But now it's Monday, and it's creepy out there. I don't know about you, but America was not really ever as creepy as it is now. Why? Because comfortable illusions about our society which have been accepted without question -- Jesus saves (or He at least invested wisely); white superiority and democracy; girls just want to have fun; work hard and play by the rules; Toonces The Cat can actually drive -- have all been proven wrong.

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Here goes a rant:  I may be wrong, but Rod Rosenstein, who has been the only thing between (as the Irish would say) Us and the Devil, will resign. Jeffy Sessions may or may not follow, may or may not be the next contestant in the reality-TV government to be told You're Fired. And after that, Robert Mueller.

Why not? Congressional Republicans are staring at a possible loss of the House in six weeks; why not double down? Why not do things while they still have the power? They're untouchable!

There will be a grand Kabuki theatre of Dr. Ford's testimony, and the eleven Republican men will tread very carefully to avoid the appearance of a lynching, where an uppity woman will be seen to attempt to keep Biffy from assuming his Rightful Place.

On one level, part of me thinks: This is a story of a pasty, privileged white man being accused, and defended, by a bunch of other privileged people. It's America's elite, slap-fighting with each other.

Dr. Ford did what she believed was the right thing. But at the end of the day some people will make serious money on the back of her decision, and she'll receive the Anita Hill Special on national television. And Biffy will still get his seat, will ensure that Roe dies, and that Citizens United was just the beginning. And the privileged jackasses who primly defended their good friend Biffy will still be just as privileged, and still jackasses.

Meanwhile, two in five children in America will still wake up hungry tomorrow. Our Leader wants his war with Iran. Or with Somebody. And there are so many lies he has yet to tell.

There will be a little hue 'n cry; there always is. There may even be people in the streets -- for a while. The Punditi will do their complicated dances and smirk at each other; they'll compare Rosenstein's resignation and Mueller's firing to Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre. They'll spend a week speculating on Biffy's move, and the heart-warming moment when he greets RBG with 'real humility'.

But, eventually everyone has to go to work. Right? And there's always beer, and a Big Game on TV.  Calm down. It's not worth getting in a twist over. Democrats in Congress will fume, but the Republicans still run the show. The Leader is still there, still the Teflon Don. No one is going to invoke the 25th of anything. This is what I'm afraid of.

And in November, even with the vaunted Blue Wave -- what, substantively, will have changed? Seriously; what?

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Let me repeat: This is what I'm afraid of. America has progressed through time, and on one level we've only been getting progressively more strange.

The only thing which seems even stranger is that there has been enough slack in the culture, enough space created by time and wealth and military power; weak north-south neighbors; two big oceans; to allow us to go forward without destroying ourselves before now. But History takes a long time to play out.

We Heart The Deep State. Don't We?

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After You've Gone

Echoes

South 8th Street, NYC; September 11, 2001 (Toby Amies / UK Guardian)

Lil' Boots: Feared And Bigger Than Daddy, At Last

We're not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before... the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends -- in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.
-- George W. Bush, Joint Speech To Congress, 9/20/01

(Al Jazerra, 2006)

From the moment the towers fell, the authorities told us no one could ever relax again. The implication was that only a continually expanding regime of extreme vigilance could successfully fight this new menace.

Americans agreed. They were so terrified by the sight of falling towers and dead civilians on their own territory that they gave a thumbs-up, or at least didn’t protest much, at each request for expanded power the military and the government made during this time. Secret prisons? Sure. Torture? Sure. Warrantless surveillance? Sure. Need to read our library records, toss out habeas corpus? Sure and sure. The press, too, rolled over ...

And it went without saying that showing videos of Americans killing Iraqi civilians became particularly taboo in major media, to the point where the broadcast of the chilling “Collateral Murder” video via Wikileaks led to actual espionage charges against Chelsea Manning.

It can’t be underscored how important that series of events was. It was proof that the lesson we learned from places like Vietnam was that the real enemy did not live in bushes and hamlets, but in front of TVs in places like Oklahoma and Pennsylvania...

The Democrats will tell you they were genuinely convinced voting for the war was politically necessary, and/or that they really believed the intelligence about Saddam’s weapons programs. It was just a big misunderstanding, all of it. An “oops“ moment, as some commentators called it even back then.

Bullshit. The invasion was no mistake, and nobody above the age of eight believed the WMD story. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. We all knew what was going on.

--  Matt Tabbibi, "Legacy Of The Iraq War"; Rolling Stone, March 21, 2018

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Obama and Chief Finance Advisor Larry Summers At The White House, 2009 (Jim Young / Reuters)

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer. “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.” 

I put down my notebook. “Just that?” 

“That’s right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.” 

-- Matt Tabbibi, "Why Isn't Wall Street In Jail?", Rolling Stone, February 16, 2011

(Larry Belcher / CNN)

One of the basic premises of the Occupy movement is the idea that democracy exists for most Americans as little more than an unhappy choice between two sides of the same corporate coin. “We’ve been so alienated from our own sense of agency that being asked to be part of any real decision is exciting,” a woman in her late thirties who calls herself Beatrix tells me. She’s one of the old hands, close to the core of nearly every major radical action in New York of the past decade. So she’s a little jaded, but even so, she’s startled by what’s happening: “Movements usually spend a lot of time on education, telling people why they need to come to the demonstration. This is exactly the opposite. The people came. Now we’re all deciding together what happens.” 

-- Jeff Sharlet, "Inside Occupy Wall Street", Rolling Stone, November 10, 2011

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U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday there is no doubt that civilians have been killed in U.S. drone strikes targeting suspected terrorists, and procedures are constantly evaluated. 

He told a news conference at the end of a nuclear security summit that there had been “legitimate criticism” of the legal framework for the drone strikes and “there is no doubt that civilians were killed that shouldn’t have been.” 

“In situations of war, you know, we have to take responsibility when we’re not acting appropriately.” 

-- President Barack Obama, April 2016 (Reuters)

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Republican presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump said the U.S. ought to “take out” the families of terrorists in the fight against the self-described Islamic State. 

Asked in a Wednesday morning interview on Fox News whether he was concerned about the possibility of civilian casualties, Trump said he would “do my best... I mean, one of the problems that we have and one of the reason that we’re so ineffective, is they’re trying to, they’re using them as shields,” Trump said on Fox and Friends. “A horrible thing. They’re using them as shields. But we’re fighting a very politically correct war.” 

“And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he added. “When you get these terrorists you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.” 

(Huffington Post, December 2, 2015)

Young Republicans And Young Publicans: November 2016  (Somodevilla - Ratcliffe / Getty)

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At a recent Pentagon press briefing, Task & Purpose’s Jeff Schogol asked General Joseph Votel, former SOCOM commander and the current chief of U.S. forces in the Greater Middle East, if “a new generation of children will grow up to have to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Votel largely punted on the issue of how generational the war on terror might prove to be, but his answer was still a telling one. “I do recognize we’ve certainly been in Afghanistan for a long time — and of course, we’re back in Iraq for a second/third time addressing some of these problems,” he replied. “I think this is a reminder that these things often take time.”

-- Chris Hedges, "The Legacy Of Infinite War", Truthdig, August 6, 2018

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After nearly tripling since the post-financial crisis spring of 2009, last year the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose magically again by nearly 24%. Why? Because despite all of his swamp-draining campaign talk, Trump embraced the exact same bank-coddling behavior as President Obama. He advocated the Fed’s cheap-money policy and hired Steve Mnuchin, an ex-Goldman Sachs partner and Wall Street’s special friend, as his Treasury secretary. He doubled down on rewarding ongoing malfeasance and fraud by promoting the deregulation of the banks, as if Wall Street’s greed and high appetite for risk had vanished.

--  Nomi Prins, "Donald Trump And The Next Crash"; Le Mond, April 27, 2018 [inside link to Prins, "The Next Financial Crisis Will Be Worse That The Last", Truthdig]

(See also, too: "The Next Financial Calamity Is Coming"; NYT, September 12, 2018)

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The lake of ice is divided into four concentric rings (or "rounds")... This final, deepest level of hell is reserved for traitors, betrayers and oathbreakers. 

-- Wikipedia, Font Of All Knowledge; 9th Circle Of Hell In Dante's 'Divine Comedy'

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MEHR, WAS ES FÜR ALLES GEWESEN HAT:

Why We Have Fought To Make An Empire: A seven-pound, bacon-and-bratwurst-burger, being served at the Arizona Cardinal stadium. This is why we have suffered and struggled since 9-11 and The Crash and The Forever War.

This is the Good Life. It is one of your birthrights as an Amrican. It is why our Four Fathers forged a valley. They made a Fake Valley. They fought in a War about being Civil, and they got Gettysburgers. Yay! It's why they landed on Omaha, back in the Dee Day -- because Nebraska. Because Freedom. 

Remember: Illegal People want to come to Amrica and take your seven-pound, bacon-and-bratwurst from you. Your sons and daughters will be denied their chance for high cholesterol and stupendously high percentages of body fat. We need that wall! USA! USA!

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Trust Only The Children

Burning Down The House

Brazil's National Museum; 200 years of priceless artifacts and historical records, burns (John Moraes / Reuters 2018)

I keep trying to read the tea leaves about the future, a foolish, stupid thing to do. Predictions are an illusion; the world has too many variables influencing what that future will become -- though some people have a frightening talent for being able to predict large-scale swings in the culture. It's also a foolish thing to do because I'm not very good at it.

Trying to predict what will happen is just what humans do -- attempt to exercise control in a chaotic mystery world. Americans are a pack of 400 million proto-Chimps who possess just enough intelligence and socialization to prevent us from acting like the Australopithecines in 2001: A Space Odyssey all at the same time. Still, we're dragged around by our genome and our hormones. Our level of consciousness allows imaginative conceptualization, including an awareness of our mortality, and that we have no idea what this chaotic mystery world is.

The leitmotiv of the human condition is not having absolute answers to the obvious questions arising from self-awareness. Every ridiculous and sublime thing we do or have ever done to define or organize or protect ourselves is a response to that. Whatever we come up with are only operating assumptions. They're not absolutes. They're not the answers. But when we insist those assumptions are The Answers, we feel less anxious and insecure.

For thousands of years, religions, cruise lines, governments, distillers, investment bankers, snack food and condom manufacturers have made good money by selling other proto-Chimps on the idea that [Fill In Blank] is The Truth / makes you feel better /lets you boss other Chimps around.  We want to be distracted -- and, as in so many things, America has been Number One in the Distraction Industry for generations.

As we convince ourselves the collective assumptions are The Answers -- at the same time we know that's a lie. When the balance between those two opposites becomes hard to maintain, the reality can come home to roost with a vengeance: Hubris. The Comeuppance. The Fire Next Time. And -- you know -- Things will happen. 

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Tea leaves, then: America is collectively being sheep-dipped in unreality. Since Trump, the negative feedback loop of cognitive dissonance has gone into overdrive. The effort to maintain a collective illusion that All Is OK In The USA has become progressively more difficult.

It's a Meatball Moment for so many people (if 2008 wasn't enough). And it's happening on so many levels at once -- political, financial; artistic; race, age, and gender (and, hovering in the background, climate deterioration, species extinction). All feed on and amplify each other, and the general dysfunction -- which loops back; 'round and 'round.

All Is Not OK.

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As a society, we've been here before. There's some Summer of '68 in the air.  Then, we had our Foreverwar, too; we had Tet, we had My Lai. We had protests; "People carryin' signs / mostly say, "Hooray For Our Side" '. Left politics and Civil Rights were quashed by assassination, by Daley's police. We had larger versions of Ferguson in Harlem, Watts, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston; Baltimore.

We had an honest-to-god World Struggle For Domination with the Soviets in that 1968, with real thermonuclear war a possibility (well, we do now, too, but everyone thinks it will never happen). It was more likely the Russians would invade somewhere, as the Czechs found out.

The DJIA slumped a bit in 1968 (but the economy hadn't taken a full-on greedhead Ooopsie!, brought to you by America's Fabled Wealthy™) and the average price of an American home was $14,000 (that's about $120K today).

There was Feminism, but no #MeToo; Gays and Lesbians, but no Stonewall (yet) and a nascent Castro. There were drugs and rock 'n roll in long-ago-68; there was Woodstock and Youthtribe! but no Burning Man -- and, there was more hopeful naivety. There seems way more cynicism, more jock-like readiness to take offense, more fuck you today than in 1968.

Might be there's a reason for that -- given what's gone down since.

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The most positive thing Wonderboy has done for America in nearly twenty months is to be precisely who he is -- a congenital liar and an abusive bully.  On a daily basis, he shows us in stark contrast the difference between our collective illusions, and the Real. As Americans, what we do with that understanding is critical.

Not OK, but we'll take what we can get.

It would be a relief, if this was the tipping point in Il Duce's rule.  If that's true, however, think about this:  It means America's population put up with an insane level of behavior by that Orange Suet Pudding-In-A-Bag for nineteen months.  It will have taken 19 months for us to collectively say hey, fuck this, you Jackass! 

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I was once shown a photograph of an older man, taken in Iowa in 1944, standing on a semi-rural neighborhood street with a small girl, possibly his granddaughter. The man appeared to be at least in his late sixties, and looked a little like the author, Kurt Vonnegut (in fact, a lot like him). That would mean he had been born at some point between 1865 and 1875. 

He had grown up in a world where the Civil War, even the First World War, weren't Ken Burns' specials on PBS; it's conceivable he could have been a child when Custer stumbled into the Little Big Horn. His expectations of how the world worked would have been rooted in the 19th century. But there are automobiles in the photo behind him; far beyond Iowa, the Second World War was playing out in all its awful technological splendor.

I don't look anything like Vonnegut, but I could be the Old in someone else's photo, having lived in that long-ago 1968, my expectations about the world based in analog television, 25-cent double-feature movies, rotary phones and slide rules -- but more important, how social behaviors and human institutions worked. 

In the present, we can feel a shift in culture and society, in consciousness, is coming. Driven by changes in climate, technology, in the (im)balance between rich and poor, and unstable global politics, the changes coming will be as radical in their effect as transitions from the 19th to the 20th centuries. 

It's crystal clear that Trump, Alt-right nationalists and Bundist billionares, can't be allowed to shape the debate in America about those social transformations. But I'm not in favor of anyone wired into the neoliberal elite determining our priorities, either. 

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The End Of Trump will play out. One way or another, he's done. It may happen within months; it may take two years. It may involve a "Constitutional Crisis", or not -- but it will be ugly; the only question is to what degree. 

If I had a wish, it would be that Trump's unbelievable, foul-mouthed repeated lying about whatever comes into his head, finally brings about the end of the Murdoch business model of selling lies as facts. That Americans might finally demand truth (or a higher standard of accuracy, at least) from our government, from politicians, political activists, the media, educators, corporations. I mean, you don't lie to people whom you respect; right? And Americans are still treated with casual contempt. 

Yes; this is either setting the bar too high, or it's laughable. Lying -- boldface, or by omission -- is baked into the institutions of human affairs, so I'm pissing into the wind, making this wish; but, still. There are much bigger questions to be answered so that any of us might avoid being forced to wipe the bottoms of America's Fabled Elite™, and provide them with many soft treats.

Will we? I told you: I'm only a Dog. I'm not very good at this.

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo

In Middle Of Blog Thing About Congenitally Lying President.
Smooth! Shiny! Crazy!

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• Lil' Brett Kavanaugh is a scum-sucking pig-dog. He is going to be the next Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The confirmation hearings are a sham -- everyone gets to preen and bellow and act outraged, for different reasons -- but he'll sit on the court. He'll overturn Roe. He'll protect Wonderboy, Because Freedom. He'll do everything Fat Tony Scalia would, were he still staining the bench. Bretty will represent power and privilege, and be feted and stroked by the Federalist Right forever; amen. And they'll say such nice things about him when he leaves, full of years and glory. Abschaum-saugen Schweinhund.

• It doesn't matter what Bob Woodward says. 98% of the 'revelations' in his book had already been reported (though the new bits about stealing papers off the Clown King's desk are choice). Woodward reinforces the view, for those not still Führertreu, that Wonderboy is a cartoon of a man, a scrawl of needs and demands for gratification, piggish and infantile. And, no one is shocked by Bobby's book, really, because (wait for it) it was written for the Villagers! 

          The Great Curmudgeon Says: Fuck Off, The Rest Of Us Can

Many (most? who knows) even benevolent elites think that elites, in the very specific context of what that means in the United States, should run the country, and by implication, the world.  

Upper middle class (at least) background, elite universities (and elite high schools!), connections, etc. The "good" [elites] might not express this. They might not actually know that they believe this. But it doesn't take too many overheard "jokes" about who did and didn't go to Ivy equivalents, or even just understanding that this is a perfectly normal topic of conversation for people who are 20 years out of college, to get the point. 

Good liberal federal judges aren't hiring law clerks from Kabumfuck State University Law School, for example. (I am sure there are exceptions proving the rule). 

And the non-benevolent [Elites?]. Well, they truly think they should run the world. And own it. And the rest of us can fuck off.

Digby Says: A Slice From The Loaf Of Amoral And Unprincipled

It's obvious now that Trump's odious public persona is not a performance. He is even worse in private...  

On Wednesday the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed written by a "senior official" in the Trump administration that further supports Woodward's reporting. This person claims that members of the White House staff are acting as guardians of the country by keeping Trump from going off the rails. It's an astonishing essay in which this unnamed official admits that members of Trump's Cabinet actually spoke about evoking the 25th Amendment. 

This person characterizes the president as an amoral, unprincipled oaf who has no idea what he's doing, so he or she, along with others in the administration, have taken it upon themselves to save the nation, essentially patting themselves on the back and saying "You're welcome" to what is presumed to be a grateful nation.

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TPM Says: Trump Has A Friend?

Trump’s “volcanic” anger and “absolutely livid” (in the Post’s words) reaction to the op-ed sent top aides, like chief of staff John Kelly, scuttling to sniff out the renegade, according to the Times, which reported that aides have already produced a list of at least six possible culprits. Some believe the defector works in the administration, but not the actual White House, while two people familiar with the matter told the Post that Trump is convinced the turncoat is involved in national security or a member of the Justice Department. 

“It’s like the horror movies when everyone realizes the call is coming from inside the house,” one former White House official who remains in contact with ex-colleagues told the Post.  

The publication of the anonymous note of dissension has only added to Trump’s increased “sense of paranoia,” according to the Post, and has pushed the President — who was already feeling vulnerable following reports on Bob Woodward’s new book filled with anonymously sourced palace intrigue — to question his closest allies. 

Only his children remain trusted confidantes, a Trump friend told the Post. 

“He’s surrounded by strangers,” one former Trump campaign official told Politico. 

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MEHR, MIT HUHN:  I just really like this graphic.

At the Friday propaganda session, when Missy Sarah told Another Big Fib, she was immediately shamed by the Chicken. All the Boys and Girls laughed at her because she was such a Big Fibber.

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I Lift Mine Eyes To The Hills

And See The Naked Fat Guy

(Photo: ©Indecline, via Art Newspaper, August 17, 2018)

Back in the day, I was associated with the Billboard Liberation Front (a little odd, considering what I once did for a living, but there you are). 

The basic concepts of the BLF (and don't take my word for it: read the Manifesto) were essentially that the materialism and commercialism expressed in billboard advertising were part of the mass deadening of our culture, and so fair game for artistic manipulation which revealed said deadening -- like Adbusters, except the BLF came first and wasn't available in bookstores. You had to look up and experience it -- or, actually do it. 

So when I recently noted the art collective, Indecline, had been out and about in Los Angeles, it stirred a few memories.

(Photo: ©Indecline, via Art Newspaper, June 22, 2018)

Consider the logistics necessary to do something like this in an urban area -- reconnoitering the site; having access to the platforms; creating the artwork to match fonts, sizes and background colors; hauling all materials up narrow ladders; and completing the work rapidly enough to avoid being seen, and any unpleasantness with the local constabulary. Normally, this is done in the dead of night.

Indecline had already garnered some notoriety prior to the 2016 election by creating, and publicly displaying, life-sized statues of a naked Wonderboy in several large American cities (regarding their naked Il Duce statue, placed in New York City's Union Square, a spokesman advised, "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small").  Earlier this year, they had created a jail cell in a Trump hotel in New York for a Trump lookalike in a MAGA hat.

I should note that, sadly, no one performs this sort of consciousness-raising exercise on a billboard regarding the state of the Democratic party. But don't worry; it's all in Good Fun, and the future is bright and shiny and tasty and fun.

And, Wonderboy continues to gain weight in office, while the rest of us are driven mad -- meaning there will most likely be future billboards in need of liberation. Like this one:

(Margaret Bourke-White, 1937)

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Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

1.)  To Avoid the Collapse Of Western Civilization.

In der offiziellen Version ist das Huhn ein beklagenswerter Feigling, vor der Glorreichen Zukunft davonläuft und falsche Nachrichten verbreitet. (In the official version, the chicken is a deplorable coward who runs away from the Glorious future and creates fake news.) 

There are, at a global level, two “mainstream” forms of hegemonic politics, each with their own oligarchical backing. One of these is the Clintonian-Merkelist-Obamist-Sorosian politics that is a confluence of at least overt social-liberalism and a variety of economic neoliberalism.  The other one is a Trumpian-Putinian-Bannonite-Orbánist instrumentalization of parochial nationalism. 

The former represents an oligarchic politics, democratically unrestrained trans-national capitalism, that has the potential to do great harm to the world if left unchecked.  The latter represents a con game that starts out with cotton candy for the True People and eventually ends up with states under the control of local and not-so-local looters who instrumentalize nationalist conflict for crony enrichment — this too, is oligarchy.

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2.)  To Challenge A Corrupt Patriarchal Power Structure.

"I'm not exactly sure why the chicken crossed the road... I attempted to question the chicken but he wasn't really communicating with me." (The Dodo, July 12, 2018)

(Actual Quote:) "I recently uncovered the nature of reality from a man on a flaming pie, who handed me a[n] herbal cigarette. I now know that previously I was a body in a vat being poked by a malignant demon. I was only an ape then, but after millions of years I evolved so that I could have the brain power to lasso the demon with my electrode and thus escape. I was chased by a large white balloon, but made my getaway from the Island. Since then, I have set up my own very successful religion in the U.S.  So, all in all, make sure you always trust your senses, never question organised religion, and don’t engage in any philosophy beyond The Matrix 1-3. 

Simon Maltman, Bangor"

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3.)  To Express Incredulity At The Level Of Malevolent Stupid Which Is Allowed. 

At the Friday propaganda session, when Missy Sarah told Another Big Fib, she was immediately shamed by the Chicken. All the Boys and Girls laughed at her because she was such a Big Fibber.

Some reporters will outright call Sanders a liar. Others are more reluctant to break out the L-word but still become frustrated at the way she regularly obfuscates and bends the truth. Whereas [Sean] Spicer was known for big blowups, reporters say that with Sanders it feels more like a million small things. “There’s almost sometimes an exhaustion writing the stories of the daily briefing because the number of things she says that are patently false are too many to let your story be weighed down with them,” one White House reporter says. 

-- Jason Schwartz, "The Puzzle Of... Sanders"; Politico, May/June, 2018 -- the puzzle, of course, being how a government based on such obvious boldfaced lies and illusion can continue. 

We mean utterly baseless and over-the-top lies, not the standard obfuscations and misdirection we're used to in Aremica -- but real, Foxy Murdoch-style, verging-on-Joseph-Goebbels-type lying.

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4.)  To Maintain Its Balance In An Uncertain Future. 

Don't Drive Angry.

Essentially, businesses have been in a sweet spot for years, in which profits have gradually risen while interest rates have stayed low by historical measures. If either of those trends were to change, many companies with higher debt burdens might struggle to pay their bills and be at risk of bankruptcy. 

...If inflation were to get out of control and the Fed raised interest rates sharply, companies that can handle their debt payments at today’s low interest rates might become more strained. Moreover, with federal deficits on track to rise in the years ahead, the federal government’s borrowing needs could crowd out private borrowing, which would result in higher interest rates and even more challenges for indebted companies. 

The International Monetary Fund included a warning about this run-up in global corporate debt in its most recent Global Financial Stability Report. If inflation were to rise more quickly, Tobias Adrian, an I.M.F. official, said in a news conference, it could “trigger a sudden tightening in financial conditions and a sharp fall in asset prices,” which is I.M.F.-speak for [Ruh-Roh]. 

-- Neil Erwin, "What Will Cause The Next Recession..."; New York Times

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MEHR, MIT EINE KLEINE ANFRAGEN: A message for the three humans, and the Superintelligent Parakeet, who read this blog:

Please go here and do whatever you can to help Arthur. You can click on the "donate" button on his site; or, use the following link, because this is a request that you donate money. 

It doesn't have to be a huge amount. For the price of a couple of lattes and a Boo-Boo Burger, you can do the needful for another person.  Twenty bucks -- ten bucks. Just your pocket change, even.  

This is someone who should have a listing on Go Fund Me! just to keep them alive and in their home -- but they don't; it's just us. Come on; it's a mitzvah, for Christ's sake. 

I never ask you three reprobates to do anything, ever (and, hey; you approach the Parakeet at your peril) -- but I'm not kidding. Please give Arthur some help.  

Please feel free to pass these links around to others.  C'mon, do it.  Thank you.

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Random Barking: Don't Know Much Psychology

Musings Of An Ex-Cigarette-Smoking Man

Research into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made clear that physical, neuro-chemical effects occur when people experience significant traumatic events, evoking a "fight-or-flight" response, which is a function of our DNA; as hardy meat puppets, we're hard-wired for survival.

Neural pathways created in the brain are triggered when, later, people perceive -- subconsciously, for the most part -- that they're in circumstances similar to that original event, reliving, replaying (and actually reinforcing) the same emotions they experienced in it.

As a definition, PTSD was first used as the Vietnam War began winding down (for America, anyway), and only became a medically-accepted diagnostic category in the early 1980s. The Veteran's Administration was quick to adopt that addition to the DSM-III, but not necessarily to act on it or treat it.

My Dog Trainer (who specializes in PTSD, and has been in the Biz since the mid-70's) agreed that the relationship between trauma, brain chemistry, and cyclic reinforcement of bad experiences is likely.  I've worked with them for a while, and a something we've talked about occasionally is the effect of broad social or political events on the mental health, and trends, in culture and societies.

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In college I was introduced to Loren Eisley through his autobiographical All The Strange Hours. He was born in 1907, and was already in his early twenties during the Depression. There was no way he could describe experiences in his life, on his way to becoming an anthropologist, without mentioning that historical event.

In trying to understand The Depression, any statistics are useless. Every anchor-point that defined a person's place in a community, their sense of identity and self, was threatened. The anxiety people felt (a constant fear in anticipating more loss, shame, powerlessness; death) went on, every day, for years with no end in sight. 

People adapted -- as organisms, that's what we do. But their spirits were bent by the gravity of events, and the effects rippled out through their lives, because that's what History does. 

The political Right has purred for years that FDR's 'social experimentation' after his election "really made the depression 'Great' ".  The truth is, a Republican-led government left 'the markets' to sort themselves out without interference. The Oligarchs of the day didn't care; their lives remained much as they always had been. They left the People on their own.

Herbert Hoover believed in a rugged individualism, where strength built character. Asked decades later how he dealt with critics who blamed him for the Depression, Hoover quipped, "I outlived the bastards". Meanwhile, people struggled to adjust and survive. Until Roosevelt was elected and tried to do something, anything, they did so without hope. 

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Eisley never spoke about what The Depression did to people directly. America is composed of physical places, but also it's very much a geography of the mind: Eisley described hopping freights and moving through Hobo Jungles, towns of the Great Plains, writing sketches of the people he met there, dislocated physically and mentally by The Crash. One night, a hobo told him what he believed was the great lesson of life, hoping Eisley would get it: "Men beat men, kid. That's all there is."

Something in those side-glance references to America during those years reminded me of  late-evening conversations I'd overhear as a child, between my parents and their peers. When they'd talked through current events, surface details of their jobs and days, they worked down to the big events, to the Second World War. Reminiscing in that layer could take time.

Among married couples, the men watched their language (for the most part), and only made brief mention of the details of their war if they'd served in a combat arm. The wives talked about waiting, home, families, radio news, and finding work.

If the talk went on long enough, someone would finally mention The Depression, and something about the conversation took on a different character. The War was something to be proud of, and their voices were energetic, confident, talking about it. And it rubbed off on the children: attending the first day of First Grade, when roll was taken some children answered 'Present' or 'Here'; but a good number of kids responded, "Yo!"

But our parents sounded like distinctly different people when talking about the Depression. I don't remember details -- but sharing these memories sounded different. I could sense a current of uncertainty passing between them, a helpless fear; survivors reliving a disaster that came out of nowhere, and repeating every memory sounded like thank god we got through it; I never want to see anything like that again.

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Reading Eisley sparked a connection for me between the America after 1929, and my mother's compulsive saving of string, rubber bands, pencils, tin foil. How she seemed to expect bad news or a worst-case end to anything; a stock response was, "You never know". My father, despite a level of professional success, bonuses and good reviews, worried that his job was always in jeopardy; his favorite phrase was, "Get with the program".

There was no apparent reason for either of them to live as if anticipating the ceiling would collapse, but they did. And, children talk -- we discovered our parents had similar motivations, fears, even memories. They all had their own Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- and the veterans in particular.  One friend's father was a survivor of Corregidor, the Bataan death March, and four years in a Philippine POW camp. Another kid said quietly his father would wake up, shouting for a long-dead shipmate, several times a week.

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It seems obvious that people are affected by the events they live through; that trauma marks us, and it's obvious what we're living through, now, is having the same effect. Never mind the details; we all watch the news. Many people more intelligent than I am present an analysis of What It All Means every day. I only bark about it.

I keep remembering the opening section of a John Gardner short story, "John Napper Sailing Through The Universe" (1974): he and his wife arrive home after a party, full of drink and making their way up to bed. Gardner has a sad vision of the future: ...fumbling, helping each other as we must... [We] take our teeth out. I'm ninety-two. The planet is dying -- pestilence, famine, everlasting war. The nation's in the hands of child molestors. True Dat.

All I'm considering at the moment is how the echoes of the history we're living through continue to affect us, rippling out across time. How just being in the room when something happens -- seeing an image, hearing something shouted or whispered -- shapes perception. How, like gravity from some body unseen in space, experience bends how we act in the world, and our expectations of it.

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And now, something completely different: Socio-Political Commentary!

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Old

The Only Serious Thing In The World

Harry Bertschmann, "Stuttgart No. 6", 1957  (Bertschmann Studio / NYT 2017)

The New York Times recently presented a showcase article about an artist, a painter living in New York City. They've produced a body of work and it's clear they have some chops, a vision -- but they're still trying for that Big Break to achieve recognition. And they're 86 years old.

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American culture really has no idea what to do with the Old (and 'old' is a plastic term; so, anyone over 55, say) beyond separating them from the most important thing in American culture: their money. In that, Olds are no different than any other segment in our population.

In the brave new 5G world, everyone is a unit or resource, part of a demographic group to be influenced, led, monitored and monetized. To the Powers, what people do with their little lives isn't so important -- it's what percentage of their income can be shorn from them during those lives that's key.

In 2016, The New Inquiry webzine dedicated an issue to aging, and in an editorial comment noted

In the ... capitalist core (that is, those regions which have long since sundered the multigenerational household as the central economic unit), old age isn’t held in the public esteem it vaguely remembers it should be due...

But ... (m)any of the indignities of old age are, on inspection, the indignities of being socially discarded — feelings of isolation, a fall in status, loss of autonomy. That is, these are not organic facts of the body but outcomes desired, at some level, by someone. Why that is, and who benefits, are both painfully obvious and logically obscure.

The general assumptions made about old age have to do with physical changes, a reduction and a diminution. Older people "retire", leave the jobs where they labored and the homes where they lived and (possibly) raised families, and slowly disappear from public view.  Who cares what they did in their lives? They're no longer vital or real contributors to the world. That's all in the past.

And journey's end is death, the ultimate reduction and mystery.  Olds are a reminder of The End of everything our spiritually crippled culture asserts is most important. Small wonder most people are almost eager to ignore them, unless of course there's money to be made.

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People with a desire for artistic expression make efforts to translate their insights and experience, birthing them into the world through whatever medium. American culture takes art seriously, and boasts of the achievements of our artists, but doesn't support those artists and won't take them seriously unless there's money involved (if so, Jeff Koons is the greatest artist humankind ever produced).

Often the image of that effort is connected to youth --  the young artist, the unheated garret; trying for recognition and fame, the "big break". Most people wouldn't connect being a "struggling artist" with being an Old -- but I'll bet you lunch that it's more common.

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When the New York Times published Harry Bertschmann's story, it was a reminder that artists frequently make trade-offs between creative time and material security, Working The Day Job. Bertschmann was no different; he worked for decades doing advertising art, and making that choice affected Bertschmann's path as an artist.

In that review, the NYT story took a traditional perspective -- an underlying assumption that art must result in financial success and name recognition to have any intrinsic worth: Bertschmann knew Rothko and Kline and Motherwell; they got famous and rich, and he didn't.

The usual conclusion of a storyline like this will depict the unrecognized artist, aging, living in solitary poverty -- a cold-water, sub-basement apartment; a description of finished canvases stacked beside the pallet and mattress, the stained, pathetic hotplate.

But this story has a Cinderella ending: good news, that Bertschmann is becoming known, late in life, with a promise of financial reward: the NYT article was timed to appear a week before a solo show of his selected works at a prestigious, upstate gallery. There's lots of buzz and potential for sales.

Don't misunderstand: I'm all for Cinderella endings. I'm glad Bertschmann and his wife will have more money, more security -- and, that his work will be shown. People will see it -- and whatever alchemical magic happens when we see, hear or read art can take place. That's why Art gets done. I would suggest that if Bertschmann were here, he'd say that's what he's been doing for 60 years; it's why he's on the planet.

At the same time, there's a reminder that perspectives and assumptions about art, about aging, and life and death, served up by our culture are terrifyingly inadequate. In spite of itself, the NYT article of Bertschmann's story gives a glimpse of that -- and that sometimes, in this world, there are happy endings.

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Not In The Stars, But Ourselves

Random Barking:  Oprah

Annual programs, like the Golden Globes earlier this week, celebrate the entertainment industry. It's a way for the public to vicariously experience an event honoring the work of familiar actors and actresses.

I like movies, but avoid watching self-congratulatory presentations like the Globes (the last Oscars I watched were sometime in the late 1980's). They're ways of participating in the American film and television celebrity culture which dominates our public entertainment. I opt out.

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Every summer, there was an annual celebration held in my home town, with a parade down our two main streets. Every year, the organizing committee found some entertainment star to make the parade's 'Grand Marshal'. My father had something to do with organizing these parades, and by my adolescence had spent some time observing a number of film and television notables.

(I won't list them, except to mention in the early Sixties, I was stunned to meet Grand Marshal "Aunt Jemima" -- a heavy-set black woman, smiling and pleasant as she shook my hand, playing the iconic namesake for a brand of high-fructose corn syrup.

(On television just days before, I'd seen news film footage of police, dogs and water hoses attacking civil rights marchers in Mississippi. Even as a kid, I knew in my bones that was ugly and wrong, and remember thinking as this actress shook my hand: how could she stand, smiling, head bound up in what used to be referred to in the majority culture as a 'pickaninny' kerchief, wearing a calico dress with a shawl over her shoulders, smiling, surrounded by a room full white people -- with things like that happening? Well... it was an acting job.)

The characters these actors portrayed on the big or small screen were acceptable -- it was their talent to make us believe the make-believe. But (with a few exceptions) as I watched them interact with other adults from their 'public personas', I began to believe the idea of "celebrity" was about artifice, pretense, in the real world -- and to me, not acceptable, because as a kid, I was constantly getting in trouble for play-acting, "not being yourself" -- but every child can recognize that as typical, and double-standard, adult behavior.

It took much longer to learn that, in the larger world, acting from a persona as an adult is not only expected, it's often supported behavior -- particularly in entertainment, or politics. These days, the difference between the two is so slight as to be trivial.

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The difference between entertainment and politics is that art has power -- but only a politician can arrange to deport 200,000 Salvadorians, initiate Kill Drone Tuesday, authorize mass surveillance of all Americans' personal communications or the invasion of a middle eastern country based on manufactured evidence.

So as I read about the possibility being 'floated' for an Oprah Winfrey run for President in 2020, my immediate visceral reaction was negative: this was more celebrity-politics, reality teevee bullshit. Do we need another billionaire running for office? I thought; do we need another figurehead, utterly without experience in government, allegedly running the country? And, who will run them?

Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire, a competent business person; an entertainer; a black woman who has struggled through prejudice, misogyny and ignorance to succeed, in the way Americans are taught to accept and value 'success'. I understand all this, and (beyond my knee-jerk dislike of wealth and the wealthy) offer no criticism of her achievements.

The UK Guardian this morning referred to Winfrey as "one of the world's best neoliberal capitalist thinkers" -- but is that what we want? Is another neoliberal capitalist what the citizens of America need? I asked myself.

Online, there was a lot of verbiage about Hoping For Oprah, tossed into the air like confetti at a national convention. The pundits and even Our Leader were all a-twitter, literally -- and it isn't as if  we don't have bigger, real things, to worry about. One post by Ian Welch noted that

[None of  the possible Left candidates for U.S. President in 2020] have more star power and fundraising ability than someone like Oprah. ([who] does run a company, and does it competently.)...  Then we add in the billionaires, like Facebook CEO Zuckerberg. What other billionaire is now thinking “screw buying politicians, they can’t be trusted. I’ll just run myself?”...

2020 isn’t going to be a normal election. It is going to be far crazier than 20[16].

And heck, if I had a vote, I’d vote for Oprah (or Clooney) before most Democratic politicians, especially if they say “universal healthcare, fuck the bankers and no wars” like they mean it.

I suspect many Americans would too.

Remember, Trump won, in the end, because enough people were sick of regular politicians to take a flyer on him. A celebrity with more charisma and brains is entirely viable and will be considered seriously.

I foamed a bit more, reading this, until I was finally able to focus on what I thought was his main point: Given where Americans are, a candidate who appears competent and believes in at least baseline progressive policy ideas, is worth voting for. 

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As The new year opens, the notion of a wealthy, (presumed) progressive celebrity, with no experience in government, becoming President of the United States matters less than the direction of Left politics in America. Our fortunes, our families and our lives are in danger. It is that serious. No joke.

If we do not have a political party whose stated aims are people first, not profit; real representation in government; real inclusion; real equality; healthcare; fuck the banksters; and no war -- if we don't have a political movement which says this, first, and a lot else besides -- then which celebrity Liberal figurehead runs for President won't matter. 

If having that kind of political party is possible, then we should ask that its standard-bearer support those aims, and not be owned by the same status quo groups which believe they own all of us. That candidate could be Oprah, or Clooney, or Gillibrand, Warren, or Sanders -- as long as they talk the talk, and mean it. Policy first, then Celebrity.

But we don't have this, now. The Democratic party is (presumably) the most well-organized and well-funded liberal / progressive political organization in America. But it's wounded, adrift, and the list of Democratic politicians not career collaborators in a corrupt system is very short. 

Whether the Democratic party is even relevant in 2018 is an open question; just being the only big Liberal game in town isn't a definition of relevancy. Being the party of more Centrist is not relevancy. Just to survive, we cannot stand in the Center -- that time is long past. The Democratic party needs to be shaken down to its foundations and rebuilt to meet real demands of our times and our people. 

If we can't rebuild the Democratic party, or develop a political organization which represents the future we want and need, then America is done. 

Electing another billionaire celebrity, without massive changes in our national priorities, is no more sustainable than the path being chosen by the current billionaire celebrity in office. The future is ours to lose, or to fight for. 

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Republican Finish Tax Bill; Perhaps Will Provide Details Later

Step Outside

Up There (Getty)

They haven't yet determined how to charge us a fee  for looking up, into the universe -- but would very much like to, because it is who They are, and is what will please Them.

But even so, step outside and look up. 

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In The Waiting Room Of The World

Sound and Rhythm

I should like to be able to love my country and still love Justice. I don't want any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping Justice alive.

-- Camus