The Bomb In The Back Yard: A 2020 Coda

 Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Where the title of the previous post, 'End Of The Beginning', came from is obvious. The major events which began or rose to prominence in 2020 will, aber naturlich, continue to play out in the New Year.  We can party, but it's only the close of a Beginning. There is more shit to come.

____________________________

The greatest threat, the most dangerous unexploded munition waiting to go off in America, are the 70 million persons who voted for Donald Trump. They didn't vote for him, exactly; they voted for how he made them feel. How he still makes them feel. 

Since the mid-2000's there has been a struggle between traditional, Good Ol' Boys of the GOP (McConnell the current figurehead), and 'Alt-Right' 'Tea Party' revolutionaries originally created by the Koch brothers, later taken over by evangelical 'christians' and anti-democratic opportunists  (Trump their current Leader), to control the Republican party. 

(Incidentally, the January 6th showdown over electoral college votes in the 2020 election is a contest between these two factions. Aside from being an act of sedition, this power play will show how much control over the Republican party McConnell and the traditionalists still hold -- and how much the GOP belongs to The Leader, and his howling Base.)

Trump's ability to connect with and direct his cult followers determines how much influence he has on the party. And in a larger context -- even with potential legal issues, reportedly precarious finances -- his popularity determines how useful he will be to the Bannons and Adels, the LePens and Weidels, the Hofers and Farages of the world.

These heads of more global, proto-fascist, nationalist movements will tolerate the cons which Trump runs on banks and 'investors' -- after all, as Bannon's indictment shows, they all have their own cons to run, their own sheep to fleece. In turn, Trump will make as much (or more) use of them as they of him.

But, Trump -- in his mid-Seventies, obese; addictions, unspecified health issues -- will eventually dwindle to a sideshow. He'll make incendiary remarks, appear at rallies for "Trump-True" candidates; 'write' books. Fueled by hate and his own inner demons, he will not go quietly, but go he will have to.

Meanwhile, the Murdochs, Mercers and Bannons want to find a 'Better Trump' -- charismatic, gifted; a worthy successor to the fascist energy of the 1930's -- to finish what Bannon Trump started. Someone who can speak to and mobilize the Base with A New Message for All Those Of (Dominionist christian) Faith, and American (Right-Wing Political) Strength -- All (White Heterosexual, Male) People; and those with full use of the 'physical gifts with which god has graced them'.

____________________________

Which leaves us with 70 million unexploded bombs of Trumpism in America. 70 million people who believe -- one way or another -- in what Trump said and did, then voted on those beliefs.

They voted for white supremacy, for Dominionism. They voted for keeping a knee on the neck of every George Floyd, forever. That SARS-CoV2 is a hoax, and science is wrong. That America and the world is ruled by satanic pedophiles, through a bureaucratic Deep State. 

They voted for a liar and a con artist. They voted for forced separation of children from families. They voted for tax cuts to the wealthy. They voted that a sitting President could take money in exchange for favorable treatment, and to coerce the leader of another country to attack the President's political rival. That all political Liberalism equals Socialism, equals tyranny -- and so they voted for Trump as a way to "own the Libs".

Trying to comprehend how 70 million people can think this way (abandon fact-based reason; act more like superstitious Dark Age peasants than citizens in an industrial society) and follow a person like Trump, has been an enduring question in America for four years.

We've had nationalist politicians, rabid populists, in American politics before, but they've always had relatively few followers. Their ideas have never threatened to become mainstream belief. The malignant spread of Trump's hate-filled messages through the The Base -- which includes Congressional Republicans -- leaves the American Left dumbfounded. We pause and sputter, try to reason with them, find 'bipartisan consensus'. It fails, every time.

The Europeans I know are even more alarmed at Trump and 'Trumpism' than we are. They understand in their bones what fascist politics look and feel like. They've seen The Base before. And, they understand that Trump's expansion of the American Presidency into autocracy is only a symptom of a possible future even more malignant and terrifying -- and that Trumpism's followers, the Proud Boys and militias, will be waiting for the next Leader to appear and pick up where Trump left off.

If you're a Left / Progressive voter; if you're a Person of Color, LGBTQ; if you're poor, homeless, an immigrant -- and if you believe The Base are people, Americans like you, who have the capacity to be compassionate and rational... if you believe that Republicans in the House and Senate want the best for all Americans, and that their behavior is just political theatrics ... remember: A majority of  The Base's 70 million, and those Thugs in Congress, do not believe you are even human.

They believe you are agents of Satan, Socialists who want to destroy America. They believe this as fact. You are the enemy. Think about that.

______________________________

In reading through Digby, I came across a Tom Sullivan piece, "What's Reason Got To Do With It?", which I recommend:

... Trying to understand Trumpism is like asking a hoarder why she/he hoards. ... The questions assume there are rational answers when rationality has nothing to do with it. For his followers, Trumpism is about how they feel... 

UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild tells The Atlantic‘s Derek Thompson that Trumpism “exists beyond the logic of policy“... Hochschild wrote in her 2016 book, “Strangers in Their Own Land” that there is a “deep story” playing out with a large faction of Americans:

The deep story went like this: You are an older white man without a college degree standing in the middle of a line with hundreds of millions of Americans. The queue leads up a hill, toward a haven just over the ridge, which is the American dream. Behind you in line, you can see a train of woeful souls—many poor, mostly nonwhite, born in America and abroad, young and old. “It’s scary to look back,” Hochschild writes. “There are so many behind you, and in principle you wish them well. Still, you’ve waited a long time.” 

Now you’re stuck in line, because the economy isn’t working. And worse than stuck, you’re stigmatized; liberals in the media say every traditional thing you believe is racist and sexist. And what’s this? People are cutting in line in front of you! Something is wrong. The old line wasn’t perfect, but at least it was a promise. There is order in the fact of a line. And if that order is coming apart, then so is America.

Hochschild tested this allegory with her Republican sources and heard that it struck a chord. Yes, they said, this captures how I feel. In the past few years, she’s kept in touch with several of her connections from the Deep South and keenly tracked their philosophical evolution. 

She’s watched the locus of their anxiety move from budgets ..to the entrenched and “swampy” political class. She also witnessed the Trumpification of everything. “There used to be a Tea Party,” she said. “Now it’s all Trumpism.”

The logic of policy has nothing to do with it. Trump is a kind of dancing orange dinosaur who has captured the imaginations of his base. He gave shape to their feelings. He gave voice to them.

Hochschild explains, “From his first rallies, Trump’s basic message has always been ‘I love you, and you love me, and we all hate the same people.’”

________________________________

Reprint Heaven: This World At Night

 Dusk 

(From late November, 2016, apre le dénouement.)

As I write, it's twilight on the Left Coast; 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 deleted it. It was, in its way, bullshit: I don't know what will happen, 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. Let them lean out.

As I wrote the Post That Was Not, I understood something else: 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, 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 succeeds; Casson melts away, towards Paris, more vagabond than a fleeing soldier. 

     ... Sometimes, in a café, 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 -- an act against Occupation and exclusion, against division and hate -- but for a purist or Marxist, it will seem a fool's move, sentimentalist garbage. Only, it's our deepest passions, sometimes hidden even from ourselves and spurring us to act, which define us.

_______________________________ 

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 our papers, 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.

_______________________________ 

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.

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."

__________________________

Cult Of America

State Of Emerging Emergency

In these days I live in a bubble of self-imposed social isolation: an urban dweller, still occasionally going into hospitals to do my work, I'm stricter about protocols and distancing in the other areas of my life.

I follow the rituals, because I am an acolyte of a cult; the cult of Covid, which coexists inside another -- the cult of America. Both can be comforting if you follow their rules, and both can be damaging, even fatal, if you don't.

The rules of Covid are clear. Risk increases if you disregard them, for yourself and others. America's rules, as they say in corporate life, contain a higher level of ambiguity. For now, anyway.

_________________________________

Years ago, at a holiday party in North Beach, when there was still a Cold War and Ceausescu's regime still in power, I met a Romanian journalist who had managed or been allowed to escape to the West -- and in giving me his impressions of the United States, the man said something I've never forgotten. It seems timely to recall.

In Romania, in the East Bloc -- you become enough of a problem for somebody, they take you out in the woods and put a bullet in your head. In America, you become enough of a problem for the government, and you -- don't get a credit card. They restrict your ability to make money. 

That's the difference between Reagan, America; and what Ceausescu has made out of Romania. But someday, that difference may disappear. When your government crosses the line. When you start finding people in the woods who have been shot in the back of the head? Then it's too late.

When you attack a man, or a people, you must destroy him entirely: they must have no power left at all, or will take vengeance (Machiavelli).

________________________________

Trump says the election is a fraud, rigged, stolen. That it is the work of a massive conspiracy by Democrats and the Deep State to deny him his rightful place as Leader. 

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs -- but there is no evidence. At all. Trump's legal team has filed multiple legal actions to delay or overturn the tallied vote counts. All but one, inconsequential action has failed, denied by judges. Multiple recounts in the key states have proven no fraud had occurred, and reaffirmed the election's outcome. 

However, very public Trump supporters have begun saying very publicly that he should go further -- that the Republic is in danger from such a massive, carefully planned conspiracy. In order to preserve America, Trump should declare a State of Emergency and order a "second election" be held under military supervision. 

Among the people saying this are ex-Army General Michael Flynn, recently pardoned, and ex-Air Force General Thomas McInerney, who earlier this week claimed "US soldiers died attacking a CIA facility in Germany tied to fraud in the US election". And, Sidney Powell, tossed from Trump's legal team last week after spouting theories about who was behind the conspiracy that not even Rudy Giuliani could stomach. 

On Twitter late Tuesday, Flynn shared a press release from the nonprofit 'We The People Convention (WTPC)', which had purchased a full-page ad in the right-wing Washington Times. The Ad stated that Trump should declare "limited" martial law and hold a new election. 

(It's worth noting that the Military Times, an official organ of the U.S. Armed Services, reported all of the above in detail, quoting a 'senior defense official' as saying the prospect of a new election run by the military was "insane".)

Also yesterday, Trump released what the Washington Post described as a "bellicose, rambling" 46-minute video address taped at the White House (released on Facebook in full, and a shorter version via Twitter). It was stupefying in it's banality, and frightening in that Trump repeated the same primary lie, over and over -- that the election was rigged, its outcome fraudulent, and Biden has no legitimate claim to the Presidency.

1.  It's not possible to overstate how pathological, how untethered from reality, this is. Trump is the elected head of state. Faced with a complete absence of evidence for his claims (in fact, faced with evidence disproving the lie he is telling), Trump claims it is still true just because he says so. 

2.  Senior White House staff; Giuliani, other lawyers; Congressional Republicans; Murdoch's media / Fox 'personalities'; all support contesting the election as a Leftist conspiracy and Biden as its illegitimate winner  -- even though there is no evidence to support it beyond whatever comes out of Trump's mouth.

All of Trump's toadies have to be aware that the only conspiracy being conducted around the 2020 election is the one they have helped to create and perpetrate. For them, the ends shape the means, and as self-styled Patriots, whatever ends they use are right, proper; even blessed.

By itself, the video is just a curious artifact. But as the result of everything that's happened since election night, Trump's behavior demonstrates an inability to distinguish his fantasy from Reality . It's reason enough to invoke the 25th Amendment.

But it won't happen, of course.

_________________________________

I've seen officers make bad, even crazy, decisions, and issue bad orders. I've watched managers and executives in corporate organizations, who had created environments every bit as toxic as Trump's, do the same. And, most people just execute the orders given -- they don't want to be punished for disobeying. They don't want to lose their jobs, or their 'power', inconsequential as it might be. They go along to get along.

Trump is doing everything possible to overturn the November election. Have no doubts about that. It's helpful that he's an incompetent bully, and has surrounded himself with other self-important incompetents who support his delusions. But there is more he can do.

All of his staff who have spoken out or spoken up have quit or been fired. Those left are True Believers in the Cult Of Trump. All live in fear of his rage and vindictiveness. If he acts on his delusions and issues orders, his staff will carry it out without much hand-wringing. He is Der Chef, and what he says carries the force of a Presidential order.

There may be people around Trump to dissuade him from bombing Iran, but domestic considerations are different; there may not be anyone to place a check on his mad impulses. And, forget the influence of Javanka or the rest of his family -- we were told Trump 'just needed time to adjust' to reality, that Trump would see reason sooner or later. How did that work out?

Staffers, and Congressional Republicans, think he's an asshole, and say so -- in private; particularly since the election. But the GOP's political fortunes are welded to Trump's crazy house of cards. Very few Congressional Republicans have said the election is over; Biden is the winner; time to move on. Others have pulled away, a little, from The Leader -- but in the language of their public statements you can see they're hedging their bets. Trump still controls The Base; he has the majority of the GOP by the short hairs. 

The federal bureaucracy may have enough persons in it who might slow-walk any truly crazy order Trump might issue. But he is the President, and can still order a state of emergency -- even over a non-existent election crisis -- and it will be a legitimate order from a sitting President.

Interesting that, after the election, Trump fired the Secretary of Defense because, it was reported, Esper refused to agree to order U.S. military personnel into American cities if there was civil unrest. Then, he fired the head of Cybersecurity (because Krebs wouldn't support Trump's false claims of election fraud).  He had already appointed John Ratcliffe as DNI, and was threatening to fire the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Director of the FBI. These agencies and individuals would be affected if Trump declared a state of emergency over a "stolen" election, and order some level of martial law. 

___________________________________

If Trump's 46-minute video rant really is a preface to further Presidential action -- then all the major players in America's power structure will have to make a choice: Back Trump by accepting any order as legitimate because it is issued by the President, or refuse.  

I think Trump actually doing something regarding the election using the power of his Office is quite possible -- don't give it much of a chance, but we're in uncharted territory here. His legal strategy is a failure; he can try to lean on governors in the Key states to appoint their own electors. He can keep trying to place the election question in front of his Supreme Court.

Trump could be dragging all this out just to keep the focus on himself, and the idea of a second election is just a massive head-fake. He's even dangled the possibility of announcing his run for the Presidency in 2024 -- timed to coincide with Biden's inauguration on January 20th. 

One way or another, we will never be rid of Trump until (from natural causes, of course) death comes to claim him. He's a grifter; he and his family had just begun to taste the rich seam of public money. They were the Meth Addict Family with their own reality TV show, and they want their happy ending: the rest of the world prostrate at their feet, enriched beyond the wildest fantasies their BSE-riddled brains could imagine.

_________________________________

Most people aren't following this story any longer. We watch a video clip or two on the news -- always, it's Crazy Rudy and his crazier 'witnesses'; sound bites chosen to highlight Trump's assertion that he won the election looks every bit as crazy as it is, and we have just tuned the entire story line out. This will all be over in January; he's crazy, let him rave on. We do have more pressing realities than to give any more time to that lying, bloated caricature of a man.

It isn't that 'The System Works', so much as it worked this time -- and, a sitting President refusing to concede his loss of office, making every effort to overturn an open election; this has never happened before. I believe we have dodged a collective bullet over the past month, beginning with Trump's loss at the polls -- but, look: nearly all Congressional Republicans continue to give public support for his batshit-crazy ravings. 

And, Lindsey Graham called the Secretary of State for Georgia, asking whether whole classes of votes could be rejected. Trump reached out to Republican canvassing board members in Michigan. If there had been a serious effort to pressure Republican governors into appointing their own electors, or refusing to certify their state's results... we could be in a much worse situation, now.

In the events of the past four weeks -- like the past four years -- there's a clear warning in how far Trump will go to mutilate America in protecting his personal interests, and how far the political Right will go in making up insane conspiracies, making alliances with proto-nazi militias, in order to push the tyranny of minority rule.

And they're not done with us. And we haven't even spoken about the Democrats.

200,000 new Covid cases, and 2,000+ deaths per day; the coming potential relief of a vaccine: the unimaginable sacrifices being made by Emergency technicians, nurses, physicians, environmental services -- these are the stories we should pay attention to. 

And we should remember who brought us to this, and how we got here.

_______________________________

Reprint Heaven: In The Beginning Was The Word

 Ten Years Later

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

(It grieves me to give Glamorous Glenny any space in this post, but it can't be helped. Originally offered August 28, 2010.)

 

Glenn Beck, At Lower Right Surrounded By Private Security Guards, Waits To Begin The Rally behind A Poster Of A Native American (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10) 

It isn't really important that someone staged a religious rally in Washington, D.C.; that's been done before. The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition have staged them, and the 'Million-Man March' comes to mind. But this is the first religious rally that is overtly political, a demand to link or merge church and state, organized by evangelical christians with the general theme of turning America back to god -- through the general emergence of a new political force, the vaguely-defined 'Tea Party'. And it is happening at a time when the mainstream media continually portrays the state of National politics as confused at best and governing against the will of the People at worst. 

And, this rally is happening at a time when many people are out of work, angry and vulnerable, and ready to listen to a "new message". The Times stated that NBC news estimated 300,000 people lined the Mall between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument; the event's spokespersons said it was half a million. "But," said the Times, "by any measure it was a large turnout," which to me is disturbing.

 

The Rally (Photo: New York Times / Jacquelyn Martin - AP) 

 It was organized by Glenn Beck -- an eager entertainer who has the backing of Little Rupert's News Corp., the most powerful media conglomerate on the planet. Ten years ago, Glenny was just another drive-time talk jock. Now, he's standing with the Lincoln Memorial at his back, believing he speaks for god and preaching a mixture of biblical interpretation and Rightist garbage.

   

The Most Something Name In News: Reflecting Beck's Penchant For Truthyness And Factitiousness (Screencapture: CNN)

It's a Meaglomaniac's dream come true. However, the phrase, "Jesus wept," is invoked for a reason. There are a large number of people who see Beck attempting to equate his little monologue with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech in the same place, on the same date -- an address of hope and a demand for equality and justice, that has nothing to do with the ego of a tubby con man enabled by a media oligarch. And they're not happy. 

"For too long, this country has wandered in darkness,” Beck said to a nearly all-Caucasian crowd in a long, rambling speech that repeated themes from his Fox television program, his Clearchannel radio show, and his Web 'University', all of which push a bizarre amalgam of half-truths and boldfaced lies about American history. "This country has spent far too long worrying about ... and concentrating on scars," Glenny went on. "Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow.”

   

"Under God": Tea Party Attendees Recited The Pledge Of Allegiance; Find A Black Person In This Photo And I'll Pay You 1,000 Quatloos (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, New York Times Online, 8/28/10)

Speaking of something many of the other tubby white men in the crowd would do, Sarah Palin spoke immediately after Beck; "We must not fundamentally transform America as some would want," Palin said. "We must restore America and restore her honor." The themes were consistent: America is on the wrong road; we need to regain our honor; we need to look to our glorious past; we need to turn back to religion as the basis for governing the country; and as Beck has been spouting for several years, the Federal government should be reduced in its power, and get out of the lives of its citizens... and all citizens should accept god, and live by godly principles.

 

Obligatory Cute Dead Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant 

...the important thing is that all signs are that the next few years will be a combination of economic stagnation and political witch-hunt... This is going to be almost inconceivably ugly. 

-- Paul Krugman, "Failure To Rise"; NY Times, August 28, 2010 

 I believe a large number of people will snort out a laugh about Beck's rally, and his performance, today (even David Niewart, who has kept as close an eye on the totalitarian leanings of America's Right as anyone). After all, they'll say, we've heard all his themes before; nothing new there -- and they'll make fun of him. 

 But I also think people are uneasy at what they're seeing; all sniggers aside, the rally had a moderately respectable turnout (Definitely not half a million, and not 300,000; but respectable). And, because Beck wants nothing short of a revolution -- he's as much as said so. His enablers and investors (monkey-gland-fueled oligarchs like Little Rupert, and the Billionaire Boyz Club) think the Tea party will disappear, sooner or later -- but intend to make Progressives spend capital and resources fending it off ...and get something out of it for themselves.

 

And if it does become something; if the country ends up being ruled by nut jobs like Palin and Bachmann and Paul... well; it's nice to be on the right side of people who believe god speaks to them, isn't it? Because those people usually take a Dairy Queen full of people hostage and then demand money, a fueled jet, and "complete release". 

 Unless revolutions are seriously non-violent (as Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, or Mahatma Gandhi's long effort to win independence for India, were) and truly have justice and history on their side, they end in two ways -- a coup d'etat, because in order to survive, a government has to share power with the revolutionaries (Germany in 1933); or a seizure of power by force, (the French and Russian Revolutions), usually with some involvement by part of a country's professional military officers, even if they stand aside and wait for some 'supreme authority' to win the struggle for control.

 

Who Wants To Swear Allegiance To Anything We Say,

Or End Up In The Gulag? Soviet Citizens During The Purges Of The 1930's

In either case, the revolutionaries need scapegoats. In moving from the Old Order to the New, there will have to be punishments, a comeuppance. And, since it's a Revolution, the old notions of civility, fairness and justice won't apply. The revolutionaries suddenly in power will do whatever is necessary to keep it -- and to survive, people will have to swear allegiance to whatever those in power want them to. Because in the end, it is all about power; "Where the broom does not sweep," Mao Zedong said, "The dust will not vanish of itself." 

In order to bring about revolutionary change, the new leaders won't ask a society to do what they want -- they have to demand it, and behind that demand is always the barrel of a gun. In a political revolution, that's bad enough; ask the Czechs, the Romanians, the Bulgarians and the Russians; the Spanish and the Germans. 

But in a revolution created by religious True Believers, they will not only want you to agree that two and two make five; you will have to prove to them that you believe it with all your heart. Or else. The only way religious revolutionaries can build consensus is by attacking 'heretics' and 'unbelievers' as defined by their leaders, who claim to speak for god.

 

Francisco Goya, Inquisition; Prado Museum, Madrid 

 For example: Non-christians, agnostics or atheists may be identified by others in their neighborhoods to the authorities. They may be ostracized, their businesses boycotted. Eventually, they will be marginalized legally -- at first, laws may be passed requiring only recognized christians to hold public office or civil service jobs; then, to hold any job. Then, to own certain kinds of property. 

 And while all this is going on, the media is broadcasting the message that since the new leaders are informed by god, directives of the new government are directed by god as well -- in fact, will be equated with god's will. Those against the government, and certain non-christians, are evil; "in rebellion against god"; agents of Satan.

 

Nazi Auto-Da-Fe In The Operaplatz, Berlin A.R. Moritz, 1938

And, the things these evil people have made -- art; literature; scientific studies; architecture and design and theater ... all of it will become objects of official ridicule and discarded (even, burned in public) as evidence of moral degeneracy.

 

Exhibition Of 'Entartete Kunst' (Degenerate Art); Münich, 1937 -- An Exhibition Of Art Declared Against The Principles Of German Culture And Society As Defined By The Government (Wikipedia)

It's inevitable; at some point, witches will have to be be tried. There will be forced confessions (as with the Inquisition, or Soviet Purge trials, or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge). If the accused don't recant, and accept whatever interpretation of religion the leaders direct as orthodox -- then, it ends in executions and anonymous graves.

 

Cambodian Teacher, Photographed Before Execution By The Khmer Rouge.

If you think this is science fiction, substitute the word "Jew", or "Homosexual" "Communist" "Monarchist", or "Liberal" for 'non-christian', 'atheist' or 'agnostic', and remember your history (only, recanting an unpopular opinion, or changing religious affiliation did nothing to help the Jews). 

If you spend even an hour listening to 'christian' radio, its broadcasts are long, ranting monologues about fire and sin that build slowly to a frenzy -- and always delivered by men, shouting about seeking out and recognizing the devil and the ungodly, about prophesy as they interpret it, and punishment to come. 

Those who punish others out of a claim to know wickedness are blind to it in themselves. 

I'm a long way from saying we're on the cusp of a Rightist, Dominionist 'christian' takeover of the government. More likely, the Teabaggers can try and ram god down the country's throat, and at some point the society will begin to choke.

Until then, it will look and feel like the McCarthy era, as incompetent evangelicals run the United States onto the rocks and brand everyone who blames them as agents of Teh Satan. However, make no mistake: any change of government in this country from its current, secular democratic Republic would have to end in the repression, imprisonment, and murder of anyone whom the new leaders saw as a threat. That is the nature of revolution; there are no exceptions. There never have been.

If Little Glenn Beck has another rally, and more people show up than there were today -- if this is pushed as a "populist" uprising by Right-wing media like Fox and bankrolled by billionaires with revenge on their minds -- then I would take note, and be afraid, because the days of living in a pluralist, secular and diverse society may be numbered.

All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

[-- All Boldface Quotations: Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797); Taste The Irony ]

__________________________________

---

In A World Of Gutturals

 I Want What I Paid For

The first Presidential debate was a concentrated, painful display of one man's perversity and evil. Over 90 minutes on the stage at Case Western, Trump showed everyone exactly how he will behave over the election's outcome, and what he will do in a second term. 

Then, he 'suffered' through the most public, and hidden, case of Covid-19 in the history of the pandemic. He emerged (for the cameras) as the Strong Daddy, The Leader. I watched his choreographed return to the Whitey Haus from Walter Reed and felt a chill: the sequence appeared copied, nearly shot-for-shot, from Adolf's arrival at Nuremberg captured in Riefenstahl's Triumph Of The Will.

Since then, The Leader has gone on a social media rage, an almost nonstop public vomiting of bile, the usual lies and self-aggrandizement to Jack's Twitter and the Murdoch media, his enablers. His (presumed) case of Covid was a "gift from God" that regular Americans should not be afraid of. 

He wants Hillary, Obama and Biden arrested by 'his' Justice Department. He is all but silent about a militia plot to kidnap a sitting U.S. Governor. He demands that a Federal judge, with strong and deep ties to a bordering-on-evangelical-Protestant cult, be confirmed to the Supreme Court. He says all American troops will be Home For Christmas from Afghanistan, and the Taliban smile. 

He turns this way; he turns that way. He capers and spins. He is the focus and center of all disgusting things, the degenerate clown who drops his pants and exposes himself to show the crowd the anus mundi -- Well, at least they're all lookin' at me! And that means they're not lookin' at Sleepy Joe!

___________________________

Results of the debate were not what I expected. People reacted against Trump's behavior, seeing it as an embarrassment -- like watching a relative pick a fight in a restaurant for no reason, and voiding his bowels at the same time. Possibly, they saw the same thing I had -- that being steeped in a concentrated bath of Trump was like watching the capering clown; so disgusting, but you couldn't look away. The longer you watched, the more painful it became.  

Biden, by comparison, appeared sane -- and, also a little like the Geek kid whom a bully goes after. They may not like the Geek much (secretly, they think he's weak and should stand up for himself), but they liked the bully less for his behavior.  

In the world most people live in, which never got much more sophisticated after High School -- if the majority of Americans were the school vice-principal, they signaled in their rejection of Trump's display that he would get the three-day suspension. 

The second debate was cancelled. Because The Leader does not wish a virtual debate (due to Trump's own infection with Covid-19); he considers it a "waste of time." Perhaps the third debate will be held -- and by then, The Leader may be so untethered, his little piggy eyes squinched with hate and a desire to hurt, to dominate, that he will give America a show it will never forget.

I paid good money -- SARS-CoV2 money -- for the past eight months; the past four years; and I want to see this murderous, narcisstic jerk-off pull a China Syndrome, and melt down right to the bottom on national television. Gibbering, screeching, making monkey noises; voiding his bowels in public.

That's my right as an American, and a consumer: I want what I paid for.

______________________

Vote Of No  =  Not The Same As A Vote Of Yes

At the same time, I'm clear that voting for Biden is a vote of No against all that. As my vote in 2016 was. As my vote for Obama was in 2008 and 2012. And so forth.

So I'm voting against a deluded grifter, a child-man caricature of a politician who is an empty suit for religious crazies and opportunistic proto-fascists -- who are just front persons for the monsters: corporations, and Our Fabled Wealthy.

I'm voting for Democratic empty suits, promising Americans a little more prosperity, a little social justice, but have ever only delivered a small fraction of that. Because to get it, they make deals with the front persons for the same monsters, same corporations and Fabled Wealthy. 

This time, the front men for the monsters have had a taste of all the money to be made, the 'christian' messages that can be delivered; a delicious taste of Power. They can see how easy it is to paint whole sections of the country as looters, Antifa; communists and Those In Rebellion Against God. They may not be in the mood to make deals with Democrats. They may decide to back Trump all the way to a coup -- when will they ever have as good a chance again?

"If you fuck around with us; if you do something bad to us; we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before.”  

      -- Trump, Interviewed On Limbaugh's Radio Program; October 8, 2020

The fix always seems to be in. The truth always seems to be just out of reach, obscured by alternative facts, by the Murdoch machine "flooding the Zone with shit", as Lil' Stevie Bannon says; because people have been treated like Rubes and Marks so long that many of them are, now. And because I know what I'm voting against, and voting for, I despair for my country. 

______________________

Looking Over The Edge Of The Vent Block Roof

Most healthy persons can't take more than a few minutes of Trump at a time. To preserve our sanity, we've been forced to absorb him by spoonfulls over the past four years -- mostly, video clips of his speeches and press events. We know he's a liar, an infantile, insecure bully using taunts and threats to feel powerful. He responds to external stimulus through a narcissistic filter: he is the center of the universe.

Four years of clips, sound bites, and reported self-referential bully's chatter is the context for our understanding of Trump.  But we keep all those moments separate in our minds -- like the core of a nuclear device -- because experiencing all of Trump, suddenly bringing all those facts together, might be more discomfort than most people can stand. 

Doing that could mean the realization that Trump is the embodiment of every lie, every contradiction and half-truth about America that's woven into our national fabric. He's the personification of everything about America we have been trying as a society to avoid facing. He's Brutal Whiteman Daddy Who Doesn't Care, coming home drunk at 3 A.M., and fuck knows what will happen. 

And we know he will at least try to bully his way into rigging and stealing the election, to avoid prosecution, to rule America as a dictatorship. The past four years may be prologue.

The debate forced America to experience all four years of Trump, concentrated into 90 minutes of bombast, jeering, heckling, lying. It was painful to see just how good he is at it. It was frightening. What I found just as painful was watching Biden's response.

______________________

The Minotaur And The Other Guy

Biden appeared to have prepared for a debate on the facts, to show his qualifications to be President (this strategy had been broadcast by his campaign, several times). Trump would appear weak and out of his depth.  

What Biden wasn't prepared for was Trump, acting in the tradition of a Joseph Goebbels / Steve Bannon Brownshirt. He went after Biden from the moment he opened his mouth -- interrupting, insulting; forcing the eyes of the cameras on him, making his behavior the focus of the debate.

Biden's initial response was to laugh, but after a few minutes he reacted like any normal person would:  he was pissed; This is a Presidential debate! You can't act like this! But Trump isn't normal. He's pathological. And his political career is based on acting that way, a dogwhistling display of behavior that sends his Base into an orgasmic delight.

Two minutes in, it wasn't about facts. Trump was a bully in a bar fight, daring Biden to punch back -- and when one starts, it's not about principle; Woodrow Wilson's famous "there is such a thing as a man too proud to fight" only means you will take a beating.  Biden responded with a normal person's outrage -- exactly the way the media and institutions have reacted to this punk for the past four years -- and Trump didn't just keep stepping over the line, he pissed on it, on national television..

Biden's campaign has focused on his experience as Vice-President, and his empathy for ordinary Americans in the midst of a consuming national emergency. He wanted to show by contrast that he was a better, more qualified person than Trump. It didn't work. He didn't have the physical presence, voice, or quick responses to Trump's crude taunts. 

Chronologically, I'm only a few years behind Trump, and a few more behind Biden, but Joe seemed Old -- flustered, stumbling on occasion under Trump's relentless needling. In those moments he looked exactly the way the Rethugs want to portray him. Isolated clips of Biden on the nightly news didn't show this, aber naturlich. You had to be there.

From coast to coast, Trump's Base was drinking in bars and each others' homes, not wearing masks, bellowing their approval: Yeah! Yeah! We're ownin'; them libs! YAAAH-hoo!!  Itching for the opportunity to take their AR-15s and surplus gear and head for a polling place to Get in some lib's face, dare 'em to push back. 'Cause we're ready.

____________________________

Strong Daddy; Good Daddy

Then came the via Dolorosa of Trump, the Brave, Our Savior; whisked off to Walter Reed, walking -- no, striding resolutely to Marine One, apparently with a cannula hidden under his hairdo and cloth face mask, and a portable 02 unit in his right pocket. And there were reports that the celebration of Lil' Amy's announcement (of soon being able to speak in tongues from the highest court) turned out to be a Superspreader event.

In quick succession, his doctors prevaricated and threw magic pony dust in the eyes of the mainstream media. Trump spoke -- not through his Press Secretary, brave Lil' Kayleigh (who later tested positive, too) -- but through the Murdochs, telling their 'broadcast personalities' he was The Strong Daddy, the 'good genes' Daddy who was "in control".

Meanwhile, no one gave a damn about the White House staff or the "domestics" (i.e., the butlers, housekeepers, cooks and custodians). No guidelines were issued, no suggestions to be tested; no rules about wearing face masks -- which few people in the White House did; after all, they worked for The Leader, and all reality bends to His will. There would be contact tracing, but not by the CDC; a private contractor would handle it (wonder which cabinet secretary owns the company -- or, a friend of Javonka's?).

There were video clips and still photos released. Evil know-it-all Antifa sympathizers indicated they were staged, taken before Trump left the White House, minutes apart, using the same props in two different rooms. But they showed Daddy hard at work -- for you; all for you, in The Leader's America.

Then, a long, surreal weekend, culminating in a bizarre joyride -- and then, science and all persons bowing to The Leader's will, his triumphant return to Washington, jumping up the South Portico stairs, up, up to the balcony, framed by backlighting and American flags. Daddy was home; and for some all was well. Everyone else felt their stomachs clench, checking their cellphones: What crazed shit has he done now?  Just as he wants us to do. 

Always doing something new, our Daddy.  What will be next?

_______________________

Random Barking: Darkness On The Edge

 Edge Of America

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

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

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

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

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

_____________________________

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

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

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

In the Bible Cain slew Abel

And East of Eden he was cast,

You're born into this life paying,

for the sins of somebody else's past,

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

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

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

("Adam Raised A Cain")

________________________________

Something In The Night

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Bark Bark Bark Bark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Factory

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Racing In The Street

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Badlands

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Prove It All Night

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Streets Of Fire

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Lie

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

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

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

______________________________________

At Sunset I Saw The Chickens Swooping In For A Landing

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

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

_______________________________________

Reprint Heaven: End Of The World As We Know It

(This, from 2012, when I actually spent more time and energy writing and posting.)

Over the long weekend that everyone took, I went to see 2012. It didn't help that I began coming down with a cold right there in the theater, but it wasn't a bad film, really -- and as a friend warned me over Thanksgiving dinner, "You'll only go to see the special effects": They were spectacular, true; but Woody Harrelson's fuzzy-wacky Pabst-Drinking conspiracy radio host, broadcasting from the edge of the Yellowstone caldera as it erupted, almost eclipsed the digital magic...

Will Smith as The Man, and Abby (Or Kona), as Sam The Pooch

Back at home, lying around with The Cold, I flipped through some of my 200 DVDs and found the 2008 release of I Am Legend with Will Smith -- which was a fairly good film, but only in it's alternate release version. I glanced at the Criterion edition of Fritz Lang's M; I ran a finger across the cover of Beetlejuice; I considered Pixar's The Incredibles (Dudes!! Where's the SEQUEL???). But it was "I Am Legend" that gave me pause.

Ahnold's (Supposedly) 'Final Film', Canceled By Voters

Smith had been offered the starring role as Dr. Robert Neville, because the first Star cast, Arnold Schwarzenegger, had become the Governator. I strongly considered watching Smith (a more than decent actor), but finally passed on it to check out the simple, unexpected wonders of the Teevee, and I was glad I did.

Here in San Francisco, a local cable public access channel occasionally runs films when they need filler for a spare ninety minutes or so (occasionally, they don't even run the full feature). The prints are always bad, and the sound worse, but it's interesting to see what the kids down in the studio will pick. A few weeks ago, they put up Romero's original Night Of The Living Dead; this weekend, it was The Last Man On Earth -- which is, aber natürlich, the earliest version of 'I Am Legend'.

There have been any number of End-Of-The World-As-We-Know-It stories and films based on the elements of I Am Legend: 28 Days Later; The Stand; the late-70's BBC series, Survivors (certainly, "Shaun Of The Dead"); in an odd kind of way, even The Puppet Masters and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

These stories involve a nuclear war/alien incursion/mysterious plague (sometimes man-made) which kills and/or radically alters its victims; somehow, they turn into Zombies/Vampires/Unemotional Communists Alien Replicants; and, there is a single person/small band of plucky survivors, trying to find others who survived as well and get on with living in the Brave New World.

(Photo: The Incorruptable We Worship: Canada's dvdbeaver.com)

Last Man was released in the U.S. in 1965. It began as a property owned by Hammer Films in England, with Richard Matheson writing a script after his classic 1954 novella, "I Am Legend".

A Bantam Paperback: Forty Cents.

(Matheson later wrote another novella, "Bid Time Return", which became the 1980 cult film, Somewhere In Time; later, another novel, "What Dreams May Come" was turned into a fairly good movie about life in the Afterlife, with Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra and Max von Sydow.)

(Photo: You Will Sing 'O Canada': dvdbeaver.com)

Hammer Films passed on turning the acquisition into a film, but sold production rights to the 'concept' (without Matheson's script) to a cut-rate American producer who filmed it quickly in Europe to save costs. It was directed by Ubaldo Ragona, whose only other films were Fiesta In The Caribbean and The Virgin and The Bastard -- fortunately for Ol' Ubaldo, "Last Man' is a cult classic, the only work he'll be remembered for.

"By night they leave their graves, crawling, shambling, through empty streets, whimpering, pleading, begging for his blood!" Said the film posters. How they signed Vincent Price to play the title role and add the voice narration, no way to know -- except, he did get a European vacation!

Nope; It's Not The L.A. Coliseum... Price, Hunting Vampires In The Amphitheater At 'Eur',

The Rome Suburb, Home To Mussolini's 'Architecture Of Fascism'

As a kid, I'd read Matheson's novella, set in a post-apocalypse Los Angeles. As a sort-of Southern Californian, it was easy for me to visualize L.A. after a Zombiesque, vampire plague. However, Last Man wasn't shot in SoCal; it was filmed in and around Rome, the Eternal City: The architecture, the landscape, the foliage was supposed to be American -- but in college, as I sat getting loaded and watching this thing on teevee, it looked... well, Jeez; it was Italy, for cryin' out loud. Even after several bottles of Chateau Du Safeway, the bunch of us watching the film could spot most of its really obvious 'goofs'.

Wandering West Covina In Search Of The Undead? Nope; Still Eur.

(Photo: The Sublime: dvdbeaver.com)

My favorite "production errors" were seeing vehicles driving in the far background in a number of shots of 'deserted America'; or, Vincent Price (who has been out hunting vampires for two or three years), needing to stock up on garlic to keep vampires away -- and stopping to pick up a few garlands in an abandoned grocery store. Garlic won't last in my kitchen for two weeks, let alone three years.

My favorite bits were the cars Price drove -- which, between cuts in the same sequence, would change from Chevrolets to Fords and back again. I hadn't seen goofs that obvious in a film since spotting a dead slave wearing a wristwatch in the slow-pan-over-the-battlefield shot in the last reel of Spartacus.

"Not tonight, Bobby; I have a headache... be a dear and get me

one of our daughter's pet rats, a razor blade, and a straw?"

(Photo: The Inscrutable: Canada's dvdbeaver.com)

Following the line of Matheson's novella, Price played Robert Morgan, an ordinary man, uninfected (apparently due to a natural immunity) by a plague which arrived from Europe. In a series of flashbacks (also from Matheson's novella), Morgan's daughter becomes ill with the plague, but he and his wife try and nurse her to health. The daughter goes blind; his wife becomes ill with the plague; but he believes they can get through this... until first his daughter, then his wife, dies.

Vincent Price As Morgan, One Step Away From Cracking Up

(Photo: Your Best Friend: dvdbeaver.com)

Now he has a problem; he knows they'll become vampires. Morgan can't bear to stake-and-garlic his own wife and child, so he buries them a long distance from their house. As he knew they would, they return to their old home, every night, standing on the overgrown front lawn and calling out to him. In a grisly way which he can't even admit to himself (They'll come back, man -- and you want them to), Morgan can't bear to be completely separated from the ones he loves, his now Zombized Vampire family, calling to him out of the night.

"We Got 'Glow In The Dark' Play-Doh, Baby... It's So Koooool..."

(Photo: The Scrumptious dvdbeaver.com)

Even his best friend (also seen through pre-plague flashbacks) appears with them to taunt Morgan, crooning for him to come out and join them... strangely, his Sta-Press hairdo remains the same after he goes over to join the Legion Of The Undead... and occasionally, he tries the ol' White House State Dinner Gate Crash through the front door...

"We Want To Meet The Obamas And Suck their Blooooooood!!

(Photo: Canada's dvdbeaver.com, who shall not be named.)

But, he does more than fight the vampire-survivors just to stay alive; he actively hunts them, day in and day out. He broadcasts on radio, looking for other survivors, without an answer. Suddenly, he comes across an apparently uninfected girl, after not having seen another 'normal' human for years -- and slowly, Price discovers that she's one of them ... part of a developing new society -- of vampires.

Price Staking His Claim As King Of The Vampire Hunters

They've developed a serum which keeps the weird, bacteria-like contagion that results in vampirism at low levels in the blood, which prevents them from lusting for it to survive, and to venture out in daylight. It allows the girl to pass for 'normal', and to get close to Price so that he can be neutralized. Because they see themselves as victims of Price's relentless vampire hunting.

"Don't Talk Trash To Me About The Dodgers -- Ever!!"

This is the masterstroke role-reversal Matheson slowly introduces into his story: We initially see The Man as lonely hero, lost in a decaying, shabby world and surrounded by infected, homicidal monsters. But from the perspective of the New Vampires, trying to create order and structure in a world changed by a disease without a cure, they've adapted to survive -- and to them, Price is no hero: He's the Outsider, his daytime staking and killing the threat to their existence.

"But -- But I Can't Be The Monster -- You Are !!!"

(It's The End Of The World... And You're Wearing A Tie?)

Their serum liberates them from most of the aspects of Vampyrism -- enough to build a New Order. Price is their monster, the thing New Vampire parents use to frighten their children before going to sleep, a boogeyman who comes in the daylight with garlic and a stake. And, he has to die, so that they can live without fear.

Irony: A Bus In Rome (Where The First Version Of Matheson's Story Was Filmed), Advertising the Latest Version, "I Am Legend" (2008)

The next take on Matheson's story, The Omega Man, was released in 1971 with Charlton Heston -- who made Planet Of The Apes in 1968, and would go on to star in an honest classic, Soylent Green, in 1973. Oddly, in a bit of deja vu, 'Omega' was made after purchasing the rights from Hammer Films -- which still had been considering making a film from Matheson's script.

In Hammer's vision, the property had a new working title -- "Night Creatures" -- but British censors considered the concept of an empty world with decayed corpses and vampires too graphic for 1970, and again sold the production rights to Americans... but the plot wasn't entirely okay with censors here, either (there was plenty of real gore on the nightly news, courtesy of the war in Vietnam), so some changes had to be made.

Omega Man was set in L.A., and Heston's character was named Robert Neville -- both points identical to Matheson's story. But the plague survivors in Neville's Los Angeles were not nocturnal vampires -- just albino, deranged paranoids, wearing black monk's cowls and Ray-Bans, suffering from a terrible sensitivity to sunlight. They were Luddites, to boot, organized around an anti-technological dream in a group called "The Family".

ZERBE: These wigs itch. How long does it take to set up a camera?

KIRKPATRICK: Got that right. It's fucked up, man.

ZERBE: Hey, Lincoln; we wear these shades all the time. Right?

What the hell -- let's get high! Who's gonna know?

KIRKPATRICK: I'm down with that, man. You holding?

ZERBE: I think those two chicks who say, "More! Burn it more!" have

some pretty decent shit. Let's go ask. Not like we don't have time.

Heston's nemesis was the leader of the Family, a former L.A. Teevee news commentator named Matthias ("You -- you creature of the wheel!"), played by Canadian actor Anthony Zerbe (a strong supporter of Werner Erhard's 'est' training, back in the day). Before this, Anthony had a small, supporting role opposite Heston in 1968, as a ranch hand in the western, Will Penny. And, Matthias' right-hand 'Family' member, Zachary ("Just let me put some explosive to him, brother -- just a little nitro!"), was played by Lincoln Kirkpatrick -- who in 1973 would appear opposite Heston in Soylent Green as a Catholic priest tortured by the secret of Soylent after it was revealed to him in confession by Joseph Cotton.

Anthony Zerbe, Character Actor Par Excellance --

A Softer version of Anthony Hopkins, in the 1990's

I wonder if Zerbe, Kirkpatrick and Heston ever talked on set about prior shoots working together, or if that wasn't considered appropriate when you worked with someone whose credits included playing Judah Ben-Hur and Moses and Andrew Jackson and Michelangelo.

When The World Ends, You Get To Use Automatic Weapons.

It wasn't a terrible movie; it was Heston's second science fiction film, after Apes and before Soylent. It had a typical look-and-feel of back-lot production values possessed by many Columbia, 20th Century Fox and Warner Brothers films from the late 60's and early 70's. Watching Heston's acting (he seemed to be playing Robert Neville as if it was his Michelangelo from Agony and the Ecstasy) made me feel his career had to be headed for the toilet. The end of the film has Heston's Robert Neville dying in a posture that is too obviously like that of Christ on the cross, and no one watching could fail to feel the weight of the Ham we were being asked to bear.

Chuck; Ah, It's About The Symbolism, Man. Painful; Ya Know?

I felt excruciatingly embarrassed for him -- Heston, who had played so many great roles in film, was doing burned cheese sci-fi?. But, I took all of that back retroactively when he became the public face of the NRA -- and I've been an NRA member.

( I'm a fan of end-of-the-world films -- and, hey; you really want to be frightened? See the 1984 BBC production, Threads, which was the UK's version of 'The Day After'. I guarantee you won't sleep for a week. No shit: I Guarantee It.)

(In fact, if you look carefully at the film's poster, down at the bottom, below the credits in very small type is the simple statement, "This Film Will Not Just Frighten You; It'll Fuck You Up For Life". )

---