Your Holiday Steerage Update For Third Class

 We Had A Good Run 

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

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Now It's Done

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is done. It's over. 

That long, persistent idea of a nation -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born and lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up because, at least here, there were limits. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society: George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe. The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the election voted for a demagogue. A fascist. He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is. And they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

1/20/25 is a red line in the calendar of history: Where we, Americans, ended. Please take note.

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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the next month -- consider all the others in past history who suspected they were on the edge of catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering, but gathered together anyway: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  We're on the edge of... we don't know. We only know it will be bad.

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Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it as a national holiday. Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, is finished. That America will not exist after 12:00 Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" will be only a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because it won't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed and violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives from this point forward.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

The American story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, will push back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser, as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far -- right up to January 20, 2025 -- is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come out the other side of this. The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, to feel unsafe in our own land, in order that We, The People will reject it -- now or ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: Perhaps this is where Trump and his Orcs are now. It may be possible that this moment, before they've even swaggered into the White House, is the Zenith -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. 

There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. That the seeds of eventual failure are being sowed, now, can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

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November 11th

 Absent Friends

You know who they are.  

And none of us went to Southeast Asia for this shit.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

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Absent Friends

You Know Who They Are

Last of the Old Unit just got a little smaller.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

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Dawn Of The Dead

 The Envy Of The World 

In The Newsroom series, there's an episode where the fictitious ACN network covers the 2012 elections. Before airtime, Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) , president of  the news division, asks for everyone's attention in the studio. On overhead monitors, Skinner shows a series of still photographs.

This is China -- people having their picture taken pretending to cast a vote [in a facsimile of an American polling station]. In India, they're waving [American] flags and having viewing parties of the coverage... In South Korea, they're watching an electoral map... Our elections are the envy of the world.

ACN was fictional. The photographs being shown were not. Our elections have been seen as a symbol of an America continually reaching for an ideal form of union, of society. It's the right to vote in a fair election, where We, The People, elect politicians who are supposed to move us toward that ideal society. Supposedly. Ideally.

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Hell:  San Francisco's Tenderloin, 2019.  It's no different in 2024.

At this juncture, my cynicism compels me to say Blow it out your ass, man; just walk six blocks downhill into the Tenderloin and tell me how ideal it all is. Check out the corrupt, money-fueled, Fuck-The-Peasants viciousness of our Tech Bro Oligarchs and our Gang-Of-Six justice system and tell me about perfection. 

Fair point. But both are true: America's elections are expressions of reaching for an ideal, and the priorities of many politicians being elected reflect corruption and degeneracy.

The majority of those narcissistic politicians are attracted to one political party -- and while we should keep that in mind, it's not entirely the point. That is worse.

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Stuff You Already Know

Votes in each municipality, county, and state are tabulated and results 'certified': election officials attest that all processes necessary to confirm those results were performed. Some Presidential elections have had questionable voting results -- but the overarching fairness, accuracy and impartiality of our elections has been a bedrock assumption in America for generations.

 In Presidential elections, state results drive the Electoral College process; Electors' votes, recorded on Certificates in each state, are delivered to the Congress. The Vice President accepts the Certificates before a joint session, reads the results, and the Senate certifies the totals.

That long chain of certifications -- cities and towns, to the states; to the Congress -- is a legal requirement, but mostly a formality, an afterthought, because of course we have rules and checks and balances. Of course it's fair. We're all Americans, for god's sake.

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After The Scalia Court appointed "Lil' Boots" Bush as leader in 2000, the Thugs wanted to ensure Forever Republican Rule. One method would be elimination of votes cast by Liberals, under the guise of "election integrity". Suddenly, the Thugs claimed voter fraud was epidemic.

Fat Karl, "The Architect": A Boot, Smashing Into A Human Face, Forever

Over the next twenty-four years, Red states adopted draconian and exclusionary ID requirements, purged voter rolls, created obvious gerrymandering; and groups were founded to organize voter suppression efforts. Funding for many of them came from the Kochs, and a half-dozen other Bundist billionaires.

"Election integrity" was the backdrop for Trump's absurd, delusional claims about the "stolen" 2020 election, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 attempted coup.

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The Third Reich Tiki Room At Charlottesville.

Death Cult  

The political and religious Right in America is a delusional death cult. Donald Trump is its figurehead -- a corrupt, narcissistic con artist. The cult has absorbed the GOP; it is the Republican party now.  It intends to force America to become a white supremacist, fascistic and theocratic state. Project 2025 details how that will happen.

On The Walkway To The Pavilion; Jonestown, Guyana; November 1978

But first, Trump must be elected. Or something. He was running against Biden, and LaCivita and Cheung -- The Smartest Guys In The Room -- told Trump yes, Leader; the election is in the bag. You are the strong, the all-wise. Trump smiled, and strutted, and preened and played golf -- taking mulligans, cheating; always the top score when he played on his golf course.

Then, suddenly, Biden dropped out -- and supported Kamala Harris, a younger, charismatic Black woman whose campaign solidified and hit the street within thirty-six hours. 

Everyone had expected a long, nasty public bar fight within the Democratic party if Biden left the ticket, but it was an astounding transition without any visible friction. And after just two weeks, polls and the vibe on the street are saying it's a much closer race -- possibly, a down-ballot Democratic Trifecta; the Presidency and both houses of Congress.

(Whether you like Harris or not; or see the election as Americans being fooled by a bourgeois political elite into voting for a non-fascist neoliberal -- a large number of people appear grateful, overjoyed at feeling any hope for the future in Harris' candidacy. Blame it on human nature, I guess.)

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Trumpo, Magic Murder Clown; August 8, 2024

Political Seppuku Will Be Televised

In Trump's hour-long self-parody whatever, broadcast from the Florida Reich Chancellery last week, he appeared old, muddled, and pale -- unbelievably, he wasn't wearing his signature skin bronzer. He took questions from the press but said nothing new; it was the same repetition of themes (immigrants, crime, economic collapse), grievances, victimhood, and lie after lie -- but his voice was up an octave; his throat was tighter. In addition to seeming confused, he sounded frightened.

Trump's pathological narcissism won't admit he could lose. His multiple criminal indictments have been dismissed or delayed, but aren't gone. Unless he returns to power, it's possible he will die in a prison infirmary, like Bernie Madoff.

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The death cult was jubilant, celebrating: after fifty years, they are within inches of fulfilling their dream of controlling America -- once Trump is elected. The agendas of dozens of Rightist political and religious organizations are in Project 2025, and they all want those agendas realized.

This Photo Makes Me Ashamed To Be Over 70 Like Nothing Else Can.

Through the falling snow, they can see the spires of the Kremlin. They've taken all but a few thousand yards of that city on the Volga. So much is at stake. The anticipation of victory, revenge, domination for the glory of somebody's god, after so long is palpable. 

 -- then, suddenly, Kamala Harris' Morning-Star rise. Trump is apparently disintegrating. In the blink of an eye everything has changed: the death cult leaders are angry, confused: What do you mean, we're losing??

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Your Continuing Freedom May Be In The Hands Of Bubbah

My concern is that, if Trump loses, the death cult feels risking a second coup is worth it -- What have we got to lose?? Trump will support it -- he approved the coup planned in 2020 -- but the stakes are higher in this election. The death cult may feel they'll never have as good an opportunity, and pull out all the stops. Trump has to win or his world collapses.

The 2024 coup would follow a path similar to the 2020 claims of election interference and fraud. But before, Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell filed 70 separate legal actions, trying to overturn Biden's win. All seventy were dismissed for an astounding lack of evidence -- That Court wouldn't even hear an appeal on so flimsy a case. That can't happen this time.

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In early June, Rolling Stone reported that a Republican county election official in Georgia, who has worked for prominent election denial groups, filed a lawsuit to allow them the discretion to refuse to certify election results based on nothing but their judgement.

On August 4th, Rolling Stone also reported "nearly 70 pro-Trump conspiracists are serving as election officials in key battleground counties" across the U.S., and were ready to attempt a "mass refusal to certify their county's election results" in November. They have no proof of fraud being planned, no defined threat; they just know it will happen. So they want to refuse certification, in advance, and yes, this is as insane as it sounds.

States do have rules to resolve election disputes -- but after results are counted and certified. It provides a baseline for an investigation. But Georgia's Board of Elections has voted to provide county officials in Georgia with the power to launch "reasonable inquiries" into election integrity -- before vote totals are certified -- and what 'reasonable inquiry' means was not defined. 

I Understand That The Film "Bubbah Ho-Tep" Was Released 

On The Same Date As The November 2016 Election, But That's Coincidental. Right?

Some states have regulations which prevent or mitigate these situations. But if voting results in several counties are not certified, the statewide results can't be, either. This gives the appearance of substance to charges of fraud where there is none. It's Alice-through-the-looking-glass logic.

One of the legal actions will find its way on expedited appeal to That Court -- where the Gang of Six will do their duty to an Opus Dei god and find in favor of Donald Trump. As they already have. Twice.

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If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are elected on November 5th, it's not over.

The death cult has come too far to lose. There is even some possibility (who knows how much) that, if Trump's return to power can't be forced through a Supreme Court decision, proponents of a violent attack on the government -- the Michael Flynns, Eric Princes and their mercenaries; Steve Bannons and Roger Stones -- may act. And then we are in truly uncharted territory.

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I Lift Up Mine Eyes To The Hills, Not Disposed To Mercy

 Yet One More Barking Rant To Begin An End-Times Laugh Riot Week

Mikey Johnson Reminds: Church Attendance Is Mandatory

This Might Replace Rodin's 'The Thinker'

This post seems incomplete, like two relatively unconnected essays thrown up on the wall which stuck, barking about the Middle East, and the omnipotent, they-are-always-with-us Rich. You may think this is low-hanging fruit, but it's not.

Not that it's important; if this blog's observations had any impact in the public discussion of serious issues, then this post would have more meaning. But, it's only unsourced opinion by one individual with no agency beyond their own existence. 

I am as singular as, and no more important than, any of the dead uncovered at Pompeii whose names we'll never know, all events and actions and experiences in their lives -- for what? -- unknown, lost.

Some of my observations offered will, in all probability, cause the few readers of this blog to say yeah, eyeroll, whatever the fuck, but this is what happens here in downtown Earth. Be well.

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   I Have Wanted To Say This

Listen to me:  Fuck all you motherfucking fucks; you murdering fuckers you.

The Middle East's history is woven in the interactions of generations -- families, clans, tribes; all part of religious sects, now become modern political movements and governments. This geography is steeped in misogyny, cruelty; art, science and spirituality; and blood feuds millennia old.

Comedian Don Rickles inadvertently summed it up on his first album, a live recording of his heckling standup routine in Las Vegas, which I heard in 1969: "What's your name, sir -- Habib? ... You got to laugh about people, Habib. I've met you before, haven't I? That's right, you hung my uncle." 

Rickles' joke was a rough equivalent of the history of Palestine and Israel, which was just 20 years old, then. It hadn't even been a year since the 'Six-Day' War, where Israeli troops occupied the West Bank, the Golan, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai.

The casino crowd on the Strip laughed at Don's joke -- but Habib might easily have pointed the same joke at Rickles ("Yeah; didn't you hang my uncle when you took his house and orchards?"), and few would have understood. It was all happening so far away, and Vietnam had everyone's attention. Including mine.

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Everyone knows what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. It was more than a massacre by Hamas; it was an obscenity. And everyone knows what happened next in Gaza, and what is still happening; more monstrous brutalities. War crimes were committed and are still being committed.

And all the participants -- Hamas, Hezbollah; Islamic State, Iran; the Houthis, the Saudis; the IDF, the Israeli government; the United States government; Netanyahu, Biden; members of Knesset and Congress -- are guilty.  No one is clean. 

I condemn every threat, every act of violence, of thuggery, viciousness; every calculated political decision allowing more violence and more suffering to continue: No one is clean. To argue that one side is more monstrous, more brutal than the other, is the comparative mathematics of lunacy.

It has to stop. The maiming and the killing, the abuse and enforced suffering. Stop bombing, stop launching rockets, stop seizing territory, stop starving refugees. You are all complicit. And questions of land, of statehood, of security, can't be addressed so long as anyone raises their voice or a hand in any way against any Other.

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During the 2006 Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, I wrote a post on a still-new Daily Kos, then republished it here six years later during another spate of regional violence. You may consider its conclusions simplistic and naive. I would argue the horror in Israel and Gaza passed beyond nuance, rhetoric and sophistication long ago.

There is a point where the amount of death and misery is so great that nothing matters, except that it ends. And damn anyone willing to sacrifice more children, use all the blood-feud deaths of generations, to justify more violence.

... look into that child's eyes. ... Look at the expression written there: Where are you taking us? Why are you doing this? What will happen to me?

Will you tell them, when you put your pistol to their head, burn them alive, drop your 500-pound bomb on their encampment, kill their siblings and friends in front of them, that it's for a greater good? For the glory of a faith? Because your wife or husband, brother or sister, your parent or cousins or friends, were killed and revenge demands that now this child's life has to end?

I do not care about the political or religious "dimension" in all this. I swear to you because I know: a dead child is an utterly final answer to all the puking, screeching human argument justifying our species' ability to commit murder. It all must stop -- followed by a final resolution to all questions of Palestinian statehood and Israeli security. Period. 

No one is clean; and It has to end. Stop killing the children, then make peace --  because the alternative is nihilism and obscenity, the blood-feud, forever. Agree and then act. It really has to be that simple, because every other convoluted attempt at peace has twisted around the axle of pride, history and hate. Enough.

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   Bring My Car, And Be Quick You Fucking Proles

I'll just say it: American / Western society is essentially owned by a vicious, arrogant layer of wealth -- call them the 0.001 % -- principally Old Wealth, maintained in the same families for generations. I've actually been around these folk, a bit, and they are just as venal and clueless, as well of course I should have this as I wish it arrogant, as if you'd lifted a cultural stereotype from a comedy-of-manners and dropped them into Real Life. They truly exist.

They own multiple homes, in neighborhoods which, if you don't live in them, you'd better have a verifiable reason to be there. They move in a cyclical progression from home to home, seasonal vacations at resorts and private hotels. Their children attend preparatory schools, a tight circle of European and American universities; eventually, sliding into sinecures at law and investment firms. They are members of clubs we wouldn't be allowed to join. They do not know how to build a fire, make coffee, set up a tent or cook a filet of sole: they hire others to do that sort of thing.

Most families know (or are at least aware of) each other. They intermarry. Their children grow up with each other. They are supported by accountants, financial and investment advisors, personal assistants, tax and estate attorneys, physicians and surgeons, tailors, chefs and valets. Their children walk in comfort and anonymity along the same private, manicured paths as their predecessors in generations before them.

Within their class, maintaining their family's fortunes is the critical priority ("You don't love it as I do," Lord Grantham explains to his cousin as they regard Downton Abbey. "But I am merely a steward of all this"). There's also a certain amount of social Darwinism between players, a jockeying for position: It's Edith Wharton and John Cheever with a touch of Voltaire (see "Discrete Charm Of The Bourgeoise", and The Ruling Class).

They tolerate the Zucks, the Musks, the Jobs' and Bezos' and Thiels and Andreesens; all the Tech Bro billionaires, as nouveau riche arrivistes; pool boys, waiters and office workers who somehow struck it rich. Not the right sort -- no history, no breeding- -- but, they can afford to live well, and, if the past is any guide, eventually they and their money will disappear. Or, they'll be around for a few generations and finally become acceptable. 

They have serious class solidarity: depend on it.  Even if Claus von Bülow appeared to have attempted to murder his wife, members of their class might disapprove, but would "support the side", "maintain common cause" against a greater mass of humanity: We are the Owners, and Fuck the Peasants (see 'The Draughtsman's Contract').

These persons are not accountable under any law in the same way, or to the same extent, that you or I are. They don't wait in line, don't submit to passport control or customs checks; aren't required to appear in court for all but the most serious charges (if they appear at all). They are anonymous to all but each other.

And collectively, they own you whether you believe it, accept it, or not.

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   You Are Pwned -- A Dream Coda

Years ago, I had a dream which stands out in memory -- because I don't often dream with details that I recall so completely. 

I was some kind of mountaineering guide, taking wealthy persons up -- not Everest, but some similar peak. I was "inside" myself in this dream (sometimes dreams allow you see yourself in 'camera view'), looking out on a snow-covered slope -- a right triangle of pure white, from upper left to lower right -- against a sky of deep Cobalt blue.

A man in his late twenties / early thirties stood a few feet in front of me, wearing an orange parka with the hood pulled back. He had a light stubble of beard, curly, reddish-blonde hair, and wore a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. He was completely at ease, smiling, and spoke with an accent (French, I remembered). He wasn't arrogant or emphatic with his delivery, but matter-of-fact, as if describing the weather.

"I will tell you how it is," he said. "My family is thirteen hundred years old. One of my ancestors was  knighted by Charlemagne. We've survived plagues, wars, financial collapse, revolutions, occupation. We've had our black sheep, our idiots -- but mostly, we have made fortunes and passed them down to the next generation. We've been good at it, and lucky. 

"If you can't trace your family back more than a few generations? I don't care. You've always worked for pay -- but maybe you get lucky, win some lottery, and your children inherit that money? I don't care. In one, maybe two generations, it will be gone, absorbed into banks, financial houses, and by taxes. Perhaps my family owns some of those financial houses.

"We own forests and mines. We own companies" -- he waved at me with one hand -- "Maybe you have even worked for us. But some day, you will be dead, and that will be the end for you. Your name will be forgotten, as if you and everyone in your family line before you had never existed. My family will still be here.

"And if that's unhappy for you, if it makes you angry, I don't care," he said, and smiled again. "And that is how things are."

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Reprint Heaven: Brutality

 The Normalization Of The Night World
(From June, 2022: Still meaningful today as it was in the olden times.)

Ken McElroy's Chevy Pickup, Elm street; Skidmore, Missouri; July 10, 1981

My favorite opening in a short story is T. Coraghessen Boyle's 1984 "The Hat": They sent a hit squad after the bear. It's really a story about people caught in a cul-de-sac of life, marginal at best, and not a large Ursine animal just doing its Bear Thing -- but I dare you to pass on reading a story with a hook like that, just to find out where it would lead.

This doesn't have much to do with the little screed which follows. Oh, maybe a little -- I'm in my own corporate / retirement merry-go-round cul-de-sac at the moment, wondering when They will send a hit squad after America; how long the current precarious balance of all things will last. Who knows.

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The population of Skidmore, in Nodaway County, Missouri, as captured in the 1980 National Census, was 437 people.  One of them was Kenneth Rex McElroy, born 1934; according to Wikipedia, the next to last of 16 children, born to a dirt-poor, migrant tenant-farming couple. At age 15, still in 8th grade, he dropped out of school "and quickly established a local reputation as a cattle rustler, small-time thief, and womanizer."

McElroy worked on occasion, stealing and selling to fences when he wasn't; barely drifting along at the edge, smack in the middle of flyover country. He had a reputation in Skidmore as a rough customer, someone you shouldn't cross. 

Reportedly, while working on a local construction site, an iron girder fell and grazed him on its way down; he suffered skull fractures and other injuries. He healed -- but some in Skidmore believed the injuries, particularly to the head, changed him. 

The Grendel Of Nodaway County; His Grave Marker Says, "Fearless... Compassionate"

McElroy was already a town tough, but then he went further: he became proactively vicious and cruel -- someone who went after people, because he could. Because he wanted to. Because it seemed to give him pleasure to do so.

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For the next twenty-plus years, McElroy was the the monster in the Corn of Nodaway County.  He was suspected of stealing "grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques, and livestock", and was charged 21 times with various offenses. McElroy was helped by a clever, not very principled defense attorney, Richard Gene McFadin.

Reputed to have connections to organized crime in Kansas City, McFadin did the legal work. McElroy terrorized witnesses against him, or members of juries; several times, he put rattlesnakes in the Rural Route mailboxes of his targets. And -- su-rprise, su-prise -- suddenly, witnesses' memories faltered and became hazy, or complainants withdrew charges, or if matters ever got as far as a courtroom, juries hung when some members claimed they just couldn't reach a decision.

Rape, theft; extreme physical violence -- McElroy did more or less whatever he wanted. There is plenty of reporting on McElroy's reign of terror in Skidmore. He was a living Id, untethered and loose.  Some stories leave you shaking your head, wondering just how this violent, narcissistic sociopath was allowed to get away with it all for over 20 years.

Example: McElroy was married to his second wife when he met Trena McCloud, a twelve-year-old girl. He raped her repeatedly. The McClouds told him they wanted his 'attentions' to end. McElroy didn't like that, and so burned the McCloud family home to the ground and shot their dog.

Trena moved into McElroy's house, living there with him and his then-wife, Alice. According to Wikipedia, "McElroy divorced Alice and married Trena in order to escape charges of statutory rape, to which she was the only witness. Sixteen days after Trena gave birth, both she and Alice fled... McElroy tracked them down and brought them back. He then returned to Trena's parents' home when they were away and, once again, shot the family dog and burned the[ir] house down."

__________________________

In 1980, McElroy shot the 70-year-old owner of Skidmore's only grocery store, for accusing one of McElroy's daughters of shoplifting. Just --  bang -- shot him. The man survived.  And, McElroy was finally convicted of a crime... second-degree assault. The jury specified the maximum sentence: two years in State prison. 

His attorney, McFadin, had McElroy released, pending appeal -- unbelievable, given McElroy's history of witness and juror intimidation. Predictably, he began harassing the grocer at his home, and any Skidmore citizens he encountered. None of McElroy's previous legal issues had gotten this far -- and possibly, he sensed whatever bully's magic charm of invincibility he may have possessed was disappearing. 

On July 9, 1981, he walked into Skidmore's local bar, carrying a Garand M1 with a bayonet, and threatened to kill the old grocer. Sheriffs were called; McElroy was taken into custody, his weapon impounded -- but again, he was released.

Parked In Front Of The Bar; July 10, 1981-

A Reenactment, In Skidmore, For Television Documentary

On July 10, McElroy drove into Skidmore with his wife, Trena, in his maroon-and-white Chevy pickup truck and parked on Elm street, the town's main drag, directly in front of the bar. He went into the town grocery store -- where he had shot its owner -- while his wife waited in the truck.

While McElroy was in the store, a group of Skidmore's men held a quick, impromptu meeting inside the bar. Other residents in the immediate downtown area had seen or were told of McElroy's arrival, and began to gather on the street. There was a sense something was about to go down.

McElroy walked out of the grocery, unwrapping the pack of cigarettes he'd purchased, and got into the driver's seat of his truck. The men came out of the bar and confronted McElroy. Several, apparently, were armed. McElroy, still sitting behind the wheel of his truck, casually lit a cigarette, appearing completely unconcerned.

Suddenly, and for the next twenty seconds -- which I can tell you is an eternity when discharging firearms is concerned -- several armed individuals shot McElroy. He was struck multiple times by .22 rifle rounds (a poor man's gun, for hunting small game, Foxes, Coyotes or other predators) from at least two different weapons. 

Apparently, McElroy took some time to die. He bled out, slumped in his truck. No one made any attempt to help, or call for emergency medical assistance. When the shooting began, Trena had jumped out of the truck in a panic; she was unharmed.

_______________________

As investigators worked the crime scene, canvassed, identified and interviewed, every witness to the shooting said the same thing: They didn't see who fired any weapon, had no idea -- as if, collectively, everyone present had suffered a crucial erasure of memory at the same time.

McElroy's wife, Trena, claimed to have recognized one of the shooters -- but they denied it, there were no other witnesses; Trena's testimony alone was not a strong enough case for prosecution. 

The same witnesses told the same story to County Sherriff's detectives, State investigators, and eventually the FBI.  Richard McFadin, the attorney who had helped McElroy to walk free on so many prior charges, said "the town got away with murder". 

_________________________

Skidmore's population as of 2020 had fallen to 247.  To date, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy's death. The original DA and chief investigator in the case have retired. McElroy's wife,  his attorney McFadin, and a number of witnesses have passed away. The case is still open. And for almost 42 years, no one who was on Elm street in Skidmore that July afternoon has said a single thing.

________________________

Uvalde.

In America we are witnessing the blowback of a culture awash in guns, in hatred, in insane and illogical ideas about nearly everything, broadcast eagerly 24 hours a day by the political Right's private propaganda stream, its special opinion-makers.

We're watching a country where the political Left is marked by indecision and learned helplessness, by complicity with the same corporate interests and wealthy Oligarchs.

And, the political Right's rhetoric continues to become more shrill, more apocalyptic, by the day -- talk about "taking back" the country, before guns are taken away, before the liberals / gays / unchristian / colored persons and immigrants / socialists destroy America. 

They attempted to overthrow the government of the United States in January, 2021. They want to try again. It isn't guns that someone is coming for; the Right wants your soul.  This isn't hyperbole and it isn't exaggeration.

At the same time, Rightist-dominated state governments and their Rightist governors pass laws they know will be appealed to their Supreme Court, secure in the knowledge that whatever challenge to existing Lib-Socialist law will be taken up, and affirmed by a slate of second-rate, rightist legal hacks appointed for life.  With the fervor of the 'christian' zealots they are, they can't wait for their day, their chance to do god's work.

America and its citizens are being cowed, and bullied. The Right has decided if it wants to burn down your home and shoot your dog, they will. And no one is coming to your aid.

A nation's government which can't govern, a society which can't maintain basic public safety and human rights, is five minutes from being overthrown. Ask the Royal French bureaucracy in 1789. Ask the Duma. Ask the Cambodian government in 1975. Ask the Weimar Republic's Reichstag. 

___________________________

In the larger world, Western democracies were more concerned with making money -- making a world safe for the corporate interests, globally: a neoliberal New World Order, wonderful for business and the rising Oligarch class. Not so much for the little people. But, who cared.

The sages of the West believed the assumed stability of a post-WW2, post-Soviet world would be forever. Hitler and Stalin were dead; so was Mao. No one wanted to go back to the world on September 1, 1939. War was a thing we had tamed. Dictators could be dealt with through sanctions, economic coercion. 

NATO was just one method of maintaining the nation-state structure to support corporate business -- but the day of military force had passed, unless something happened in one of the shithole countries: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia; North and Central Africa; Afghanistan. 

And if it did, said the businessmen gathering at Davos, we don't care. No one is crazy enough to mount a major military conflict to grab territory and resources. This isn't 1938 or 1939, after all.

Trump Is A Fucking Tool.  But, Then; So is Sad Vlad.

But, Putin was crazy enough. He nursed a set of historical grievances which sound as delusional as the disinformation pouring out of the Murdochs' media. After more than a decade of coordinated manipulation and misinformation aimed at the West, Putin pushed the envelope in Georgia, in the Crimea. NATO and the West did little, or nothing. 

Europe was fractured, distracted by Brexit and the fumblings of the UK's Clown-Prime Minister. America was consumed with the predations of its own Clown-leader, then an attempted coup -- and above it all, a pandemic. Putin felt he could take Ukraine. The West could do nothing; the Ukrainians had elected a fucking comedian as their President! And like a bully in central Missouri long ago, Putin did what he wanted.

The stability in the world everyone has taken for granted is over. That of itself is a huge challenge to the neoliberal New World Order.  It isn't clear what will replace it. That it's coming at the same time as effects of climate deterioration are beginning to make themselves felt is rancid whipped cream on the proverbial Shit Pie.

The bullies have always been with us. They've just made it impossible to ignore them any longer. They aren't going away. Like it or not, we are going to have to deal with them individually, and collectively. One way or another.  And how that happens, or doesn't, is the story of the next months and years.

__________________________

MEHR, MIT DIE FRAGE:  Hey! Did you notice how many people in this story had last names that began with "Mc"? Pretty wild, eh?

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The Bomb In The Backyard: A 2023 Coda

 Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

(Some of the comments in this howl appeared on December 31, 2020, but have been updated to reference the pain and the stupid the stupid it burrrrns, yes it does, enjoy.)

Winston Churchill, utterer of quotable utterances, once said, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the Beginning." All the major events which began or rose to prominence in 2023 will, aber naturlich, continue to play out in the New Year. 

Nothing too big -- on one level, America's internal politics looking like Weimar Time more every day; on another, global fuckery expressed through the barrel of a gun. We can party, but it's only the close of a Beginning. There is more shit to come and everyone feels it. 

____________________________

It's been almost normal, nothing-to-see-here news, in Europe (Germany and England, specifically) when an unexploded aerial bomb is discovered, somewhere. They still harvest unexploded German and French munitions from the First World War on the Somme every year.

Defused British 2,000-Pound Bomb; Frankfurt, 2017

Their outside metal is corroded, but the internal mechanics are clean as a new watch. In some, glass vials filled with fluids, vaporizing when the shell detonates -- Mustard, Phosgene -- are protected and intact. Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams, Démineurs, stop on farm roads to pick up shells neatly stacked by farmers. There are fields across northeastern France and southern Belgium where compasses spin uselessly, there is so much iron in the earth below your feet.

America has its own unexploded ordinance -- racial, structural, economic. We have  roughly 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; and more on that in a moment.

Since the mid-1990's, there has been a struggle to control the Republican Party -- between traditional Good Ol' Boys of the GOP (McConnell their figurehead), and 'Alt-Right' 'Tea Party' revolutionaries originally created by the Koch brothers, morphing later into MAGA Red-Caps when their love, their Leader Trump, came along.

Trump's continued ability to connect with and direct his cult followers has given him control of the party. He will be the Republican nominee for President -- in fact, he has to be. It's a matter of life and death for him, now. He either seizes power or, maybe, goes to prison.

The Leader In 2020, Displaying Double-Jointed Thumbs You Fucker You

If he loses the election, Trump -- in his mid-Seventies, obese; addictions; unspecified health issues -- will almost immediately dwindle to a sideshow. He'll have the limelight for a few months, make incendiary remarks, appear at rallies; 'write' books. He will not go quietly, but it's likely that enough GOP powerbrokers will want him gone; turn the page; find their next Hitler.

If he does not lose, Project 2025 will hit the ground running at 12:01 PM EDST on January 20th of that year, and things will get bad very, very fast. One thing is for certain -- once he becomes President, again, Trumpo will do whatever he wants -- being President, in his mind, automatically gives him a monarch's power. 

America will reflect the pathological, twisted and infantile appetites of all the crawling, bottom-feeding sycophants of the political and cultural Right, their day come round at last. Living in America under the political Right will be intolerable, like living under nazi occupation in France.

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

The Resistance, Paris, 1944 (Pro Tip: It Won't Look Like This If The Bad Happens)

____________________________

... But we're not yet there. We may never arrive at that place.  But, where we are now is 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 nationalism, white supremacy. They voted for keeping a knee on the neck of every George Floyd, forever. That the 2020 election was stolen. That SARS-CoV2 is a hoax, and vaccines are evil. That the Sandy Hook massacre was also a hoax. That America and the world is ruled by a "globalist" conspiracy of 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 for a person who beyond doubt received assistance from a foreign power to win the 2016 election. They voted their belief, as shouted by The Leader, that the 2020 election had been stolen by that same global conspiracy.

They voted that a sitting President could take money in exchange for favorable treatment, and to coerce the leader of Ukraine to attack the President's political rival if they wanted already-agreed-to aid released. They voted their belief that all political Liberalism equals Socialism, equals tyranny -- and they voted for Trump as a way to "own the Libs".

Trying to comprehend how 70 million people can abandon fact-based reason; act more like superstitious Dark Age peasants than citizens in an industrial society; how they can follow a person like Trump, has been an enduring question in America since 2015.

When The Travel Media Influencers Start Talking About Fascism,

Maybe It's Time To Take It Seriously 

_____________________________

We've had nationalist politicians, rabid populists, in American politics before -- but they've always had relatively few followers. Their ideas have never truly threatened to become mainstream belief. But the malignant spread of Trump's hate through the The Base left the American Left dumbfounded and profoundly alarmed.

The Europeans I know are even more alarmed at Trump and 'Trumpism' than we are. They understand in their bones what fascist politics looks and feels like. They've assumed that, Puritan-prudish and childishly exuberant as we can be, America could be counted on to be practical, fact-based. That even when we broke the rules -- as "Lil' Boots" Bush did in 2003 -- we played from a recognizable script.

And, they see Trump's mutation of the American Presidency into autocracy as a symptom of a possible future even more malignant and terrifying -- along with Meloni, Orban, Erdogan; the recently voted-out Polish Rightist party; The Rightist Slovak party; Putin's Russia, Jim Ping's China.  And Europeans are frightened of white, American evangelical 'christian' nationalism.

_____________________________

Let me be clear:  If you're a Left / Progressive voter; if you're a Person of Color, LGBTQ+; if you're poor, homeless, an immigrant -- and 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  those 70 million people, and Thugs in Congress, do not believe you are even human.

They believe you are Socialists who want to destroy America. They believe you are agents of Satan; that you are literally infested with demons, that you are supporters of the great conspiracy of pedophiles and child-traffickers. They believe this as fact. You are vermin. You are poisoning the blood of our country. You -- are the enemy. 

Think about that.

And consider: Even if Trump loses, what is the end game to all this? What will "winning" look like, for us or them?  I hear a massive amount of dire prognostication about what a Trump victory next year would mean -- but when he loses, where does America go from there?  Do we heal? Can we?

Remember history. When Hitler assumed power in January, 1933, Germans -- then Europeans, and eventually most of the western world -- had to live through roughly 4,500 days of nazi rule, war, terror and privation.  The historical calendar is filled with the apotheosis of passionate, murderous zealotry.

Sometimes, it all goes bad, and there is no ambiguous-but-maybe-happy ending. Think about that, too.

______________________________

In reading Digby back at the end of 2020, I came across a Tom Sullivan piece, "What's Reason Got To Do With It?":

... 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.’”

________________________________

Watching a documentary on aspects of the Hitler-Time in Europe; someone in his inner circle noted, "Like Napoleon, Hitler affected the lives of every European -- he was the Napoleon of the Twentieth century. Napoleon used to say, 'I am the French revolution'.  Hitler said, 'I am Germany'."

Trump has said, "I am your retribution".  Think about that, too.

_________________________________

Reprint Heaven: Still Darkness At The Edge

 Edge Of America

[From September, 2020. It's curious, three years on, how little seems to have changed. Even with all the legal actions, the shutdown, the mock-impeachment. We're still on the edge.]

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 still hope we will pull a rabbit out of the battered workman's cap -- 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)

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Lies And The Lying Liars Who Lie

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

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

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

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At Sunset I Saw The Chickens Swooping In For A Landing

Inequality and polarization have not been this high since the nineteenth century. Democrats are certain that if Donald Trump is reelected, American democracy will not survive. Republicans are equally certain that if Trump loses, radical socialists will seize the wealth of elites and distribute it to undeserving poor and minorities, forever destroying the economy of the United States. 

Both sides are also convinced that the other side intends to change the democratic ‘rules of the game’ in ways that will make it impossible for them to compete effectively in future elections.

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

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