Trumplandia Three

Bark Bark Bark Bark

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? ... You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! ... There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immutable, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars... which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today... 

...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only [ Apple], and [Google], and [Facebook], and [Microsoft], [Bayer, Glaxo-Smith-Kline, Disney, AT&T] and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today... We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. 

--  Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" (1976, with updates)

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The current news regarding Mr Cohen and Manafort's convictions aren't necessarily as  significant as some (e.g., A Work Colleague) believe they are.

AWC:  (Walks up) Hey; how ya doin? I'm pumped.
DOG: Why?
AWC:  (Pause) You don't watch the news?
DOG:  A couple of scumbag fixers are being processed through our System Of Justice™. One got convicted, the other pled out. That's all that's happened. Unless aliens landed.
AWC:  Okay; I'm not even going to discuss it. This is the beginning of the end of Trump! You just want to shit all over it!
DOG: This is only the second half of the third inning. Two runners got retired trying to steal bases. Cohen and Manafort couldn't hit that well, but still got on base and then thought they'd cheat and got tagged out. They were puffed-up, small-time fixers who believed they were better Players than they were. They thought they were Ty Cobb and Ted Williams and they weren't.
AWC: Okay, I get it.
DOG:  No, you don't. Let me push this a little further: this is just the second half of the third inning -- in this game. There are like about eighty games left to play in the season! Trump is still in office. The GOP is still Führertreu and still runs the Congress, and Stevie Bannon is still hung over and shedding his facial skin all over Hungary. It's a little soon for the forces of Peace and Justice to be saying, "It's over! We're taking the Pennant!"
AWC: You're just saying this because I wanted a sane woman to be president.
DOG:  Not really -- but, hey; I've never successfully carried a baseball metaphor this far through a conversation before. I feel pretty proud of myself.
AWC: The BBC is reporting Cohen can give Mueller information on a conspiracy with the Russians.
DOG:  Uh-huh. It's still the bottom of the Third -- in one game -- and we're not even talking about the Democratic party, or international politics, or economics yet.
AWC: (Walks away)

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I'm capable of being a selfish, venal Dog. The taste of Schadenfreude as Trump's lies twist around the axle of his public life is tempting and sweet: it's satisfying to watch that bloated punk flail and bellow as he becomes stuck in the Tar Pits. But -- as satisfying as that is, bigger things are at stake and Trump's hair and family and public antics have never been the real show.

The Right-wing media echo chamber -- the true fake news -- has spent over thirty years repeating, again and again, that America's central, federal government is a lying oppressor, a tool of liberal one-worlders out to steal our Rights. It's broken, unresponsive. Individual state governments could do a better job...

On the Left and the Right, people know Trump is an abusive boss, a Crap Daddy, a blowhard and a rich fuck-up. They expect him to behave like one. And everyone hopes this, uh, situation will just resolve itself -- somehow -- with the same dramatic arc as a network television program: the Bad Guy gets his way; then, eventually Hubris brings him low. Everything is resolved. And, most important of all, life goes back to normal.

Except, we don't live in a television program. Even so, the drama is entertaining.  And Trump feeds on it, hour by hour -- he's the center of all attention.

One thing about Manfort's conviction, and Cohen's guilty plea, both on multiple counts is the solidity, the concrete reality, of the events. They can't be denied, called 'fake', or lied about. They're a reminder to Trump that his control is an illusion.

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Even so -- no matter what happens to Trump; or to Republicans, Democrats, the Alt-Right and Social Justice Warrior activists -- all the major issues in American politics and the society that were raised and on display during the 2016 election cycle have not been addressed.

And, our national problems are being played out against the backdrop of a global ideological struggle -- between 'Brexit', anti-immigrant nationalism and repressive quasi-fascism on the Right; Kumbayah-neoliberal-globalism, or Socialist-quasi-communism, on the Left.

Whatever happens to Trump in America may affect that debate (e.g., it might help discredit the myth of nationalist, strongman rule), but despite his trade tariffs, his jackass behavior with the UN, the EU and NATO; despite his bromance with Kim Jong Jong; Trump's downfall won't resolve it.

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(Finally, even if the current situation develops into a question of Impeachment being raised -- I don't like quoting myself, but I've already barked about this:)

...any charges brought by a special prosecutor must be referred to the United States Congress. The House Judiciary committee would hold hearings to determine whether the charges against the president were impeachable offenses. 

Unless the November midterms change the balance in Congress, the Judiciary Committee may still be dominated by Republicans. 

Partisan politics may rule; the Right has run roughshod over the country to get what it wants, so they may shut down any inquiry and to hell with the media and the People. If they do, that's an end to it.

There will be CSPAN coverage of the committee sessions, and video clips of Democratic members crying that this is the darkest day in America since the Civil War -- that will be true, but it won't matter. Trump, vindicated, Tweets for days, strutting and preening. Ivanka goes shopping with Louise Linton and they have a 'Spa Day'.

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But, let's say the Judiciary committee does hold full and transparent hearings. They vote to refer the matter to the full House (here, the Rules Committee would determine how debate and voting would proceed). A simple majority (218) is required when voting on Articles of Impeachment. This means 192 Democrats have to find twenty-six Republicans to join them. It's possible -- but if the vote falls strictly along party lines, it will fail.  That's the end of it.

Trump crows over his 'success', his 'win', in a never-ending series of press conferences, takes a full week off in New Jersey and golfs every day, making Impeachment jokes to the neutered press. President Vladimir Putin of Russia calls Trump to congratulate him.

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So, let's assume Articles of Impeachment actually pass in the House and are referred to the Senate for the president to be tried. When Clinton was tried in the Senate, there were hours of debate and plenty of grandstanding; the same will happen here. The spectacle will 'consume the nation', but remember -- it's theater. Get some popcorn, but I wouldn't spend extra money for the really good kind.

A two-thirds vote is required in the Senate to convict a president on any charge. 67 Senators voting 'Aye' on any charge results in a conviction, which also means a vote to remove the president from office.

If Trump were tried in the Senate, it's probable that, like Clinton, the number of Senators voting to convict would not reach 67. Trump would be "shamed", as Clinton was -- but he remains in office, and that's the end of it. 

The thing about public shaming:  the person being punished has to feel as if the penalty actually means anything. Trump would care less about being disgraced as the third president in history to actually be tried for Impeachment in the Senate. For him, "not getting a two-thirds vote" and remaining in office equals "winning".  

Perversely, Trump would feed on a 24-by-7 news cycle being focused on him, for months on end. After the vote(s) fail, he will bellow, preen, strut, and celebrate with an all-night party at More-Lego, attended by all the bottom-feeding, alt-Right and white supremacist glitterati, flown in at government expense -- and with a manly, affectionate embrace from surprise guest, Stevie Bannon. President Vladimir Putin of Russia will send flowers to Melania.

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MEHR:  NETT u. SPASS!!

If I'm going to be self-referential, might as well trowel it on. From the wayback machine:

[Trump's] campaign depends on tapping the kind of inchoate rage that we see or experience on the street, or at work. If Trump were to win, it would mean a period of social and political dislocation in America which no one in memory has experienced. I could make a joke about a similarity with H.P. Lovecraft's return of Chtulu and the Old Ones, but in fact nobody knows where it would all lead. 

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Random Barking Friday: Waist Deep In The Big Muddy

Leaders Not Liars

What is it going to take? What are people waiting for?

The person who is President of the United States is a liar. Repeating an observation Robert F. Kennedy allegedly made about Lyndon Johnson, "He lies. He lies all the time. He lies when he doesn't even have to lie." Arguably, Trump is the worst President in the history of the nation.

Trump says things which are completely and verifiably false, using the same method as a Limbaugh, a Jones, a Weiner, or Rupert Murdoch's media: say something confrontational, even nonsensical. Repeat it. When called on it,  double down, even triple down -- or, bully up, and walk away.  An observation about a mid-20th century right-wing politician noted:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong... never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

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The people of Puerto Rico have been all but abandoned by the U.S. government after the devastation of hurricane Maria. This has been a series of deliberate, choiceful acts.

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What are people waiting for?

Trump is corrupt, and filled his cabinet with right-wing sycophants and individuals who use their positions to advance their self-interest.  The tax structure revisions Trump and the Republicans eagerly pushed into law are the equivalent of burying a nuclear warhead under our house, on a timer: it will detonate -- but someday, in the future. After Trump has eaten his fill, gotten bored, and waddled away.

Then, there's what he and his crew have done with the Federal judiciary. With the environment; water and air quality, food safety, emissions standards. With banking, finance, corporations by eliminating regulatory oversight or refusing to act. With the belief that public leaders should represent a community's ideals, our Better Angels.

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Ivanka and Melania have made public comments appearing to contradict what Daddy Donald has said or done. It's a sideshow.  Melania's "I Really Don't Care" coat defines her; she's not secretly working for fairness and civility against her crude, malevolent husband. Spend a few minutes watching Ivanka operate, and you'll know she's not going to stand against Daddy either. 

Both women are indivisible parts of the Trump Family Brand, which sees the Presidency as just another acquisition, to be milked for every last drop of revenue and influence and discarded, along with the population of the United States, when they're done. 

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What's it going to take?

Watching a past episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, he and astrophysicist Sean Carroll made an observation about Trump similar to one I've shared here -- essentially, that Trump could have sex with a goat on live television, and nothing would happen. Carroll observed:

I worry about what happens next... I do worry, that this [Trump's consistent depiction of the mainstream media as 'fake news', 'enemies'] is a hard thing [for the media] to come back from. Because ... another thing that Trump said was, "Don't believe anything you're told, unless you hear it from me" ... and Tucker Carlson said the same thing..."[If you hear news from] any show other than mine, don't believe it." ... [Trump] gives people a narrative that works for them.

Trump himself constantly use the phrase, "Fake News", a buzz-word to his supporters.  It's been observed that Trump and his legal team -- Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani -- are spinning a narrative about Trump's connections with Russia for public consumption, using the same phrases and memes to be repeated in the right-wing media echo chamber. Their narrative is full of lies, too.

Giuliani admits, cheerfully, that in doing so, what they say doesn't have to be true; it's to influence public opinion around the topic of Impeachment -- because (as Rudy knows, and so does Trump), Impeachment occurs in the House and Senate. Elected representatives can be, uh, 'persuaded' by their constituents to 'go easy' on a disgraced Trump.  But it's a strategy based on contempt -- for 'the base', for any American, as rubes, Marks, who deserve to be fed lies because they're stupid enough to believe them.

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The Special Prosecutor's investigation into Russian influence during the 2016 Presidential election (in paralell with the case against Michael Cohen, and the multiple trials of Paul Manafort) continues to show that Trump is a liar.  Donald, Jr. is a liar. No one knows precisely where this goes.

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What The Fuck? I struggle, daily, with the impact of Trump's personality, breaking political and societal expectations for the role of America's Chief Executive. An unapologetic, in-your-face racist and nationalist, he gives permission to all the 'Little Trumps' to be unapologetic nationalist racists.

None of that is accepted practice. It isn't what Presidents do. It is what authoritarian leaders do.

I've said before, This cannot continue, and This cannot end well. We see and hear our Leader lie, obviously, daily; and the fact that nothing happens as a result makes me ask: Well then, what's it going to take? What are people waiting for?

One of the Last Of The Old Unit observed, "New drinking game -- it's the only one that will get us through this. Every time Trump says -- anything -- do a shot of single malt."

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Not everyone is drinking. Not everyone is waiting. Some are organizing, and the mid-term elections are a natural focus -- and the expectations for some are high, that the season will be a litmus test for American democracy. But the Left and Right wings of both Republicans and Democrats are fighting for control of their respective party.

At least for the Democrats, it's not clear who will be the Democratic candidate for President in 2020. The party's Old Guard could win, and push Joe Biden (or someone like him). The Progressives might win and promote Elizabeth Warren or Kamalah Harris; or, the Social Justice Warriors could win and offer Bernie Sanders (or someone like him).

For Republicans, none of that matters. With their command of the House and Senate, the GOP Old Guard supported Trump to advance the wet dream of american conservatism: dismantling FDR's New Deal, and they've ignored who Trump is to reach their goals.

Unless something reduces Trump's approval rating below 30% (hard to see what would have that effect, given his behavior already), the GOP will continue supporting him, and Trump likely will be nominated to run for a second term.

But if Trump's past behavior catches up with him, then suddenly he becomes the Old Guard's scapegoat; they throw him under the bus -- a risky game plan, again built on the assumption that Americans are naive and manifestly stupid.

(Or, it's not a risky plan at all, because the Old Guard on both sides of the aisle believe that the majority of America's population -- "all those Little People down there" -- are naive and manifestly stupid Rubes and Sheep; disposable and expendable.)

Some congressional Republicans have opted to bail before Bannonite Brownshirts in their districts push them out for being insufficiently Trumpist. Others have different problems. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to ignore Trump the crude, narcissistic liar with poor impulse control, exhibiting the possible onset of dementia.

So we wait for the midterms. My guess is, the Democrats won't have resolved their internal conflicts, sufficient to present a coherent face to American voters, by September / October. The Republicans may lose some Congressional seats, but it won't be a rout. And everyone will wait for 2020.

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Trump is President. He's a compulsive liar, a corrupt and venal man -- and even though that's been shoved in our faces like a crude pornographic cartoon, repeatedly, it isn't enough to prompt us to demand his removal, or commit to ongoing, large-scale public unrest -- not like some of that doesn't happen. And, not like Trump wouldn't like an opportunity to, you know -- crack down a little.

But Trump is a symptom of the failure of two competing visions for a future playing out here, and in Europe: Globalism and Nationalism. So far, I haven't seen a Middle Path proposed -- one that doesn't lead to rule by billionaires, multinational corporations, the WTO and IMF and a neoliberal elite; or, multinational corporations, billionaires, and authoritarian political puppets controlled by a mafia of Oligarchs.

Trump's weird vision of an America behind border walls, but still projecting military and financial strength to influence the world through threats and fear, just isn't viable. The world is interdependent, -- and like it or not, how we vote and who we vote for affects more than just the United States. Trump is a perfect example.

But the two dominant political models in the current world aren't viable, either. Seen from that perspective, the politics of America's midterms are part of a larger struggle between competing theories. The Old Guard of each party will appeal to a Return To Normalcy or To Greatness. The radical Left and Right will demand a revolution.

What concerns me is that enough people will want an End To Crazy -- enough that they'll believe a Biden, or a Kinder, Gentler conservative,  will Make It All Like It Was. I don't believe that's possible. It may not even be desirable.

But until our political parties can enunciate platforms which reflect a broader understanding of what's at stake and provide an alternative, no one has my vote. Meanwhile, we still have Trump; things still can't continue like this without a terrible,  corrosive effect -- and it all cannot end well.

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Random Barking: Wondering

Wandering

Murrika: Enshrouded; Lost; Guided By A Trickster (Foto: Joseph Beuys u. Coyote)

Big Box Of Terror 
In conversations with friends over the past few weeks, we admitted experiencing an uneasy, underlying sense that The World had fundamentally changed in a way we can't fully grasp, validate, or prove. We were the same, but everything around us had shifted, slightly -- like a kid's party game, where you guess which items have been moved on a table.

The Oldest Friend came close: "It's like I went to bed one night, and woke up in an alternate universe that was just a little bit different than the one I went to sleep in. Nothing immediately definable -- it would be like discovering there had never been Abba-Zaba Bars, or the original 'Star Trek' ran for three seasons, not two. I'm fine; I'm okay -- but, the World feels 'off', different -- 'stranger in a strange land'-ish.

"That's completely subjective, I know," she said, "but it takes a while to go away, and it's pervasive."

While all of the people I spoke with defined that experience a bit differently, there was common agreement that we perceived some difference between ourselves and The World that hadn't existed before -- which led us to feel mildly alienated from everything, except possibly each other.

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When we said The World, we didn't mean the planet, the natural landscape. Climate deterioration aside, the Natural World seems to be solid, abiding. 'The World' we referred to is the one built out of social fabric, stretched on a framework of collective relationships and stitched together by the cultural Ways our society accepts and agrees to in those relations. It was in that world we felt, suddenly, out of place.

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The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo said it reminded her of the Cold War -- what it meant to live in the knowledge that nuclear war was possible (guess what? It still is). It was an understanding we kept, down in the basement of our consciousness, jammed in a dark corner, along with the box that has the big, yellow label with red lettering -- Terror: Or, we are Mortal and Death is Mystery.

There were times down those years when we woke up in the middle of the night after a particularly bad news cycle, thinking what if the sirens just went off? Now (the people I spoke with agreed), nearly every morning when we get up, we wonder what new outrage has been committed, what new boundary was crossed, while we slept. We come awake expecting bad news. One way or another what we're really thinking is What? What Has Trump Done Now?

Someone noted, 'Trump is the new Cold War' -- meaning, like that time in our collective past, he has become the symbol and avatar of that dark corner in our own basements. His antics are a reminder that The World is just a construct, and the control we think we have over the Natural World is an illusion. Trump is the embodiment of unpredictability.

As a 72-year-old, Trump has to know that he will not live forever. Spasmodically, he acts out and splatters America with his own feces, then revels in the disgust he provokes, the impotent anger of others, all to feed an endless hunger for validation to avoid the Big Box Of Terror at the center of his own being.

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So I wake up in the 2:30AM, sometimes with the Terror, sometimes not. I remind myself that we're animals, hard-wired to survive -- and self-conscious animals, who understand that our lives are finite, and demand answers.

Our world (the actual one around us; the perceived one in our heads) is changing.  It has always been unpredictable in its details -- but not in our beginnings, rites of passage, ecstasies and sorrows, and our end. No one, alive or dead, can say why we came to be or where we're going -- but we demand our Reason Why, even if it's not possible.

And I remind myself: all of our Details are in The Stories. It's why Gilgamesh. It's why Homer and Herodotus, Chaucer and Pope; Dickens and Melville. It's why statuary and panel and canvas and paper, camera, movement and words on a Stage. It's why music from Cantos to Paart, Bach to Ravel, Joplin to Pere Ubu -- and all of it bent to the virtuous effort of telling the Story of What Happened To Us When We Went Through It. All of our details go; only the Stories remain.

I considered this, and because I'm only a Dog and not a philosopher, passed my observation on to friends in the version used at the Soul Of America: Be Kind, Motherfuckers. They could get behind that.

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This Bathroom Is Occupied

I'd picked up Peter Fritzsche's 2016 book, "An Iron Wind: Europe Under Hitler", now out in paperback. Browsing it at a bookshop, I was idly looking for resonances with the perspective that we're living in an occupied country, under Trump and his creatures. As if the nightmare were something alien, forced on us by an invader.

I do actually know better. My life in America is not even remotely similar to the European experience between 1939 and 1945. As swinish, bloated and mendacious that Trump and his crew are, they aren't foreign invaders. They don't speak a different language. And they aren't nazis  -- though some of  Trump's "fine people" parading in Charolettesville last year would like to be.

I'd like to say Trump's government doesn't demand your identification, perform roundups of civilians, make it easy for companies to provide the population with food, water, or products which are unsafe. But they do these things, and much more. And while Trump and the opportunistic leeches he's dragged in his wake are not nazis, there are people in America who are treated by that government as if nazis had landed -- primarily, the Usual Suspects: immigrants, the marginalized poor, people of color; LGBTQ Americans; women.

You know the drill. None of this is news; we see it on television or online, every day. But so long as it isn't happening in more affluent neighborhoods, or to your friends and families or you -- Meh. Doesn't concern us. Have a beer. Watch the Big Game.

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In the 1970's, I visited Europe. Walking through cities I noticed (with surprising regularity) something rarely seen in America -- it seemed a significant percentage of adults in their late forties to early sixties had serious facial scars, eye patches or glasses with one darkened lens; crutches, missing limbs.

At a bus stop on a warm morning in southwestern Germany, a man stood waiting, wearing a Tyroler hat, a topcoat and gloves. His face was a smooth mask of shiny, oddly pink skin, which made discerning his age difficult. His nose had been reduced to a smooth bump. Plainly, he'd suffered serious burns -- except around the eyes, where a pilot or air crewman would have worn a set of goggles. I must have been staring; the man looked over at me, took in my non-European appearance and clothing, and said, "Good morning," in a British-accented English.

I nodded back, said nothing, and so missed the opportunity for an insightful conversation with someone who at the least had an interesting personal story. He also might have confirmed what I was already guessing: that the European experience of the Second World War seared everyone by degrees, civilian and military, the persecutors and persecuted, right down to their souls.

Those who weren't killed in occupied Europe continued to experience degrees of cruelty, humiliation, betrayal, anxiety and uncertainty, at levels that would have been unthinkable before 1933 -- and all because it became acceptable and popular in Germany to believe ideas which first became policy, and then law.

One aspect of the Holocaust is as a teaching moment for humanity about intolerance and hate, and where it can lead. Fritzsche's book shows clearly what the power of belief can do to individuals, and groups, in even more detail than any other look at the period I've seen -- something I didn't think was possible. Using only contemporary documents and writings, he shows how The Leader in an authoritarian system provides permission to his followers for accepting astonishing levels of violence (if not committing it), and how he becomes a psychological scapegoat for the violence should it all go bad later.

America's history has already burned us, as Europe's before WWII had done to its own cultures and societies. We aren't living in an occupied country, but we are changing (“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig... but already it was impossible to say which was which”). We run the risk of being seared down to our souls (as Europeans were, over twelve years of nazism) by whatever at the moment seems to be coming.

I'm not sure what it will feel like to live here, when the country gets to wherever we're headed. We can try to be kind, first; perhaps that's all we can do. Perhaps it's the only real act of resistance, in the end.

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America Wants Its Guns And Jesus

Parkland, Florida: 17 Dead

Yet one more mass killing.

I understand what gunfire and injuries caused by weapons mean. In 2012, when twenty children -- 20 children -- were murdered at Sandy Hook, projecting my own experience into a situation involving the deaths of five-year-old children -- five-year-old children -- I thought this, finally, would be the event, the tipping point which would cause us to turn in collective revulsion, and something would be done about gun violence in America.

But it wasn't. And in the six years since, we've had Virginia, and Denver, and Florida (No. 1), and Washington D.C. And San Bernardo. And Texas. And South Carolina. And.

Every time this happens, it becomes Just One More Of Those Things That Happens. And, I've said it before: these incidents always happen Somewhere Else in this big Nation of ours -- until they don't. And Our Corrupt Whores Complicit In Homicides Sainted Politicians do nothing.

Our Bloated, Raving Skunk Sainted Leader says it's about mental illness -- guns don't kill people; it's the crazy nutjobs who do that.  But Our Sainted Leader can shut the fuck up and be damned: as I've said and unfortunately will go on saying, none of these incidents are about Operator Error.

And because I've said it before, here are reprints from 2015, and 2014, and 2012, after (then) yet another mass killing. And another.

And while the massacre in Norway in 2011 didn't occur in the United States, the connection between gun violence and right-wing consciousness is clear -- more of a threat in America than the rest of the 'developed' world.

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Virginia

I've already had to repost my thoughts about Sandy Hook after yet another rampage by some angry nutjob.  I'm not going to do it every time we see the effects of combining Angry Nutjob with Firearms, or I'd be reposting it every week.  But I will quote myself:

Only in cases like Sandy Hook does our national debate begin and end with, "Guns don't kill people; the people using them do". And that's it -- Pilot Error, essentially, is the public finding; and any other meme is just filler in the media. That, and people repeating, "It doesn't happen every day."

I'm sure that fact is a comfort to the extended families of twenty children, who died because they were shot with high-powered handguns. Twenty children...

What happened in Sandy Hook yesterday has happened before -- in Columbine; in Denver; In Virginia; in a mall in Seattle last week; at a Dairy Queen in the Northwest. There may not be massacres, but annually there are many multiple-victim, firearm homicides in America.

And they will keep happening, until something changes about how firearm ownership and possession is discussed, and regulated, in this country.

The debate is not about Operator Error.  It's not about something that happened "over there" in another city or state. It's about twenty dead children.

 Per Reuters:

Two journalists, reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward of Roanoke CBS affiliate WDBJ7, were shot during a live interview on Wednesday by a disgruntled former station employee who later killed himself. The woman who was being interviewed was wounded and hospitalized.

Parker's father, Andy Parker, urged state and federal lawmakers to take action on gun control, especially to keep firearms out of the hands of people who were mentally unstable... "How many Alisons is this going to happen to before we stop it?"

The United States had about 34,000 firearms deaths in 2013...  with almost two-thirds of them suicides, according to the [CDC]...

The last time there was a push at the federal level for tighter gun control was following the massacre of 26 people, mostly children, at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012... [the legislation] was rejected in April 2013 by the U.S. Senate, including by some lawmakers in [the] Democratic Party.

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Norway

I want to say this, right up front: In the United States, domestic terrorism is in fact committed by those on the Right. Period.

Don't agree? How many dirty hippie leftists plotted to destroy the Federal Building in Oklahoma City? How many bombs have been set off by "left-wing extremists"? How many family planning clinic doctors and nurses have been stalked and murdered by Buddhists? Or Progressives? Come on; how many?

How many organized groups of dirty hippies (some with illegal heavy weapons) publicly hail Marx and Lenin and claim they are "at war" with an illegal, 'occupation' government? How many churches, and alleged 'pastors', preach messages of exclusion, intolerance and hate towards Evangelicals? How many radio stations in America spew out a never-ending stream of hatred and bile towards conservatives, caucasians, and christians?

How many? How many?

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Sandy Hook

 (Photo: AP, via The New York Times)

There are no real words for what happened in Connecticut, yesterday. There is plenty to say about how it happened.

I overheard someone at work (a classic gun nut owner who believes Negros persons of color will overrun his part of the planet) observing that "this [presumably, massacres committed by unstable individuals with firearms] is the new normal".

On PBS' The News Hour, a professional psychologist asked to comment said (and I'm paraphrasing) that "It's important to say... this kind of tragedy doesn't happen every day... that schools really are safe places."

I reject the first comment. The second remark made me think: This fellow doesn't go to many Inner City schools, then -- massacres with 27 dead don't happen every day, that's true; but there are shooting incidents, and kids packing, and metal detectors, and education occurring against a solid backdrop of poverty and violence, every day.

The psychologist on News Hour was, I thought, trying to suggest themes parents might pass on to reassure their children (Don't worry, Timmy; It Can't Happen Here) -- that planes can crash, but the odds of going down in one, or having one crash on top of you, are hugely in your favor. And largely, that is true.

But planes do crash. Ships sink. Trains collide and buses plunge. Whenever that does happen, there are NTSB investigations, reconstructions and root-cause analyses. There are discussions with engineers and manufacturers about what to do to lessen the chances such a tragedy doesn't happen again.

Only in cases like Sandy Hook does our national debate begin and end with, "Guns don't kill people; the people using them do". And that's it -- Pilot Error, essentially, is the public finding; and any other meme is just filler in the media. That, and people repeating, "It doesn't happen every day."

I'm sure that fact is a comfort to the extended families of twenty children, who died because they were shot with high-powered handguns. Twenty children.

I've owned firearms; at various times because I was required to carry them, but afterwards had no sane reason to keep them. I don't want them in my home.

We live in a world of high anxiety, and there are persons who want to exploit those feelings of danger, threat, and imminent disaster:  Gun manufacturers, and their lobby, the NRA, are at the top of the list.  Mike Huckabee and the rest of his fellow Xtian evangelical ilk; there are 2012 World-Enders, predicting massive earthquakes and crustal displacement and 'coastal events', and ultimately few survivors.

There are White Power fascists, and Survivalists, and the people who manufacture and sell them freeze-dried food and plans for bunkers to shield against the EMP bursts from North Korean-launched warheads, detonating high above the USA.

What happened in Sandy Hook yesterday has happened before -- in Columbine, in Denver; In Virginia; in a mall in Seattle last week; at a Dairy Queen in the Northwest. There may not be massacres, but annually there are many multiple-victim, firearm homicides in America.

And they will keep happening, until something changes about how firearm ownership and possession is discussed, and regulated, in this country.

The debate is not about Operator Error.  It's not about something that happened "over there" in another city or state. It's about twenty dead children.

Along those lines are two, other very pertinent observations -- one, a part of the discussion at TPM Prime:

Memekiller:  ...for me, it's all about the NRA. I'm anti-NRA, not guns, and am offended by the strangle-hold they have over our politics. And I'm angry that Democrats have ceded the issue, only to have the NRA, if anything, put twice as much effort into unseating Democrats and Obama who, if anything, loosened rules on guns ...

... And the gun culture the NRA fosters... Would the prevalence of guns be as frightening without the culture of paranoia and conspiracies they perpetuate? It's not just about freedom to own a gun. The NRA culture is a cult of xenophobia and insanity. They don't seem to be aiming their message at responsible gun owners so much as the disgruntled and those prone to paranoia. They are less about developing an advocacy group than they are about assembling a well-armed militia of the mentally unstable.  

And the other, at The Great Curmudgeon :

Broken

Our discourse, that is. Fortunately, we have DDay trying to repair it.

Just to pick at random, here are a couple headlines at the Hartford Courant site just from the past 24 hours: Woman Shot, Man Dead After Standoff In Rocky Hill. Armed Robbery At Hartford Bank, Two In Custody.It’s not that school shootings like this are abnormal. They are depressingly normal. The fact that there were no shootings in one day in New York City recently was seen as a major achievement, which shows you how desensitized we have become to gun violence as a normal occurrence of daily life.Just a reminder. The NRA is an industry lobby for the gun industry. The industry that makes consumer products largely designed to kill people.  Not deer. Not rabbits.

People.   

by Jay Ackroyd (@jayackroyd)

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Reprint Heaven: Wheeeeeeee

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(An interesting repeat; from January, 2016.  On Friday, January 26, 2018, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose to 26,617 -- it's historical high-water mark. 

(Since then, the DJIA has lost 2,271 points -- the bulk of it today. The market dropped, at one stage, by 1,589 points -- the largest intraday trading fall in the history of the American Stock Exchange.  The DJIA pulled out of the dive, coming back up over 800 points in less than an hour, before plunging again to finish down by 1,175 at the bell. And, yeah: The Great Curmudgeon still says that thing he says.

(Keep all this in mind, reading about the market over a year ago: then, it dropped 2,300+ points over eight months -- and 1,000+ points of that drop took ten days. That same drop happened in five hours today.

(And it appears American politicians [Republican? Democrats? Alt-Right, DNC; they all play for the same team, so I don't know how to refer to them any longer] want to end Social Security -- to be replaced by investment accounts a la 401(k)s, "managed" for you by an army of Rentier Capitalism experts in the Great Casino. 

(The softest and simplest explanation is: Republicans are sharks; they smell blood in the water, have a Pestident they can blame everything on later, and they just want it. Democrats will compromise because that's what they do best.

(There will be fees for all the Rentier experts [many of whom will even have online college degrees], and there will be market-down days, but -- Oopsie! Things happen! When you lose, others win -- so you'll be participating in wealth creation! It's all part of the excitement of being a Racing Dog Bettor investor! 

(And, someone has to pay for the comfort, and treats, of America's deserving wealthy -- and that will be you!) 

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Random Barking: Dog Track Daze  

Would Risking It All At The Dog Races Be A Better Retirement Option?

(Note: Do The Needful And Support Efforts To End The Abuse Of Racing Pooches)

The Great Curmudgeon, Blogger extraordinaire and member of the Kool Kidz, used to report days like today in the stock market under the title "Wheeee", and the usual note, "Another exciting day at the dog track." In fact, he still does.

And, it does appear to be an open question whether it's a better retirement option to bet your entire 401(k) on Greased Lightning in the fourth, as opposed to letting it ride on the Craps Table of the open market.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost over 1,000 points since the market opened on January 4th [2016].

The plunge is historic -- the Dow has never dropped that far in so short a period of time.  And, since the market's last true high on May 19, 2015 (18,312), it's lost over 2,300 points.

(For a little perspective, in the 2008 Crash the DJIA went from a then-all-time high of 14,066 to 6,626 -- however, that took nineteen months, most of it in a 3,300-point slide over eight weeks in the spring of 2009.)

The DJIA, 2006-2016

The most obvious effect of a drop in the market is that the value of investments decreases; and, a company's value also drops.  But the longer-term effects are hard to project. It's likely that hundreds of billions of dollars in stock value has been lost by investors, just on the Dow Jones -- the international stock market has lost over $2.4 Trillion US in just the past ten trading days  (international market losses in the 2008 Crash have been estimated at $15 Trillion; the GDP of the United States is $14 Trillion, just for comparison).

All of this has been happening against a backdrop of regional wars, migration; politics (in Europe and the U.S.); an increase in global terrorism -- and a lack of consensus, a tremendous irresolution, in the world over how any of it should be dealt with.

And, all the talking heads on finance programs, asked to explain what's happening and look ahead to the future, all say that future is bright -- but the market will remain volatile, possibly with further losses; be cautious! Or, maybe be ready to pick up a few bargains! Or not. Or some of both! Most of these people work for one major investment house or another, or have firms of their own; their clients wouldn't appreciate it if they simply said, "Hey, man; who knows?"

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One question which keeps being asked (and by these same talking heads) is: has the 'recovery' of the U.S. economy since the '08 Crash been "real"? Corporations in the U.S. have been reporting record profits for five years -- and while the wages and salaries of their "individual contributors" (read: Peasants) have stagnated, salaries and bonuses for managers and executives have skyrocketed.

Millions of jobs have been added to the American economy since 2009 -- but are they sustainable positions, tied to businesses that manufacture or build things, and sell them? Or are they jobs with Uber and TaskRabbit, tech startups? As they part-time, working from home? Are they waitpersons or others in the "service economy", which can vanish with the next downturn? 

Companies like Uber and Airbnb, Facebook and Twitter, or Rovio (developer of 'Angry Birds') are worth billions, traded at hundreds of dollars per share -- and all of that value is blue-sky; strictly on paper. As in the Dot-Com era, the vast majority of Tech companies only provide access to online services which many might want to use, but which no one truly needs.  This is the current shiny new business model -- an economy (and an investment market) driven by businesses built on "sharing".

It's a Geek Dream: You build a business to do something cool -- a different way to do this or that with your smartphone, or connect to a a service. People's lives will be... just so much better! It'll be powered by software, available online or via mobile -- so you hire people whose lives revolve around coding, project management; 'presentation'.  And you need money. Lots and lots of money.

However, businesses like this don't create anything that has separate, definable and independent value -- like a hammer, or wristwatch, or dinnerware.  But people driving the "sharing economy" sniff at that; "Making and selling things? So 20th century. Leave that to some poor people in Malaysia or Bangladesh. We're building the future."  But their businesses sell concepts; nothing more. Any business has to consider image and position and marketing; but in these days, it may be all these businesses are about -- appearance.

After manufacturing left the U.S. for elsewhere, and the businesses dependent on selling the things being manufactured closed... how were Americans supposed to make a living? Since Clinton's first term in office, the dream that keeps being touted (including by Obama in his most recent SOTU) is that, somehow, American workers will just have to become better educated, and trained, and take "tech jobs" in the "new digital economy." That rising digital tide, allegedly, will lift all boats.

My concern is that the present 'recovery' and the "sharing economy" is based on the development of businesses that are forced to quickly turn a profit in a vicious cycle: Venture Capitalists put their money into Tech startups specifically because the business models (unlike those for industrial processes, or manufacturing) have a rapid ROI. Everyone just wants to get richer. This same focus and method in the 90's helped create an overvalued, "overheated" Tech sector, better known as the Dot-Com bubble.  

If America's so-called recovery since 2008 had been a real sea-change -- if more capital investment had gone into developing a new manufacturing base for next-generation technology, moving away from fossil fuels; or to create entirely new economic sectors for development and investment -- then, I'd feel more confident about the future.  With few exceptions, that didn't happen; so I don't.

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The global economy is more interconnected than even before the 2008 Crash. No matter how many Quants are running algorithms to analyze market action and so allow the firms who employ them to trade more effectively (and make more profit), there are simply too many variables in play for anyone to say what will happen next. So as it turns out, Hey man, who knows? really is what it comes down to.

I don't pretend to understand in detail how international stock markets, international banks and finance corporations; falling oil prices and the effect on dependent sectors of the global economy; and how the stability of economies in China, the EU and the U.S., all inter-relate and affect each other. There is, I'm sure, an app for that, running on someone's algorithm.

I've met people who make decisions, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, in institutional investments on a daily basis. If they make a bad call, people and pensions could be affected.  You couldn't pay me enough to live with the level of stress associated with that.

One thing is true: investment markets are in part experiments in crowd psychology; John Maynard Keynes coined the term "Animal Spirits" in the 1930's to describe something already known -- that investment decisions can be influenced by emotion over reason:

Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is ... instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations... [Most] of our decisions to do something positive... can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of [reasoned decisions based on weighing the data].
-- The General Theory Of Employment, Interest, And Money (1936)

It's an election year. Expect more "volatility and uncertainty", and of course, plenty of Animal.

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MEHR, MIT EL-ERIAN; For Those Who Do:  Mohammed El-Erian, Very Wired-In Guy, writes about current global market instability in Canada's Globe and Mail. While I believe there are some additional forces at work, his main points I've extracted here:

Financial markets are undergoing two consequential transitions... The first has to do with the shift from a prolonged regime of repressed financial volatility to an environment in which such instability is higher and less predictable. The primary reason is that central banks are less willing ... or less able ... to act as suppressors of volatility. 

...The second transition involves liquidity... Facing tighter regulation and sharply reduced market appetite for short-term [losses], broker-dealers are a lot less willing to take on inventory when the market overshoots. Other pools of capital, including sovereign wealth funds, also face constraints in increasing their risk-taking.

Left unchecked, these two transitions would feed each other, accentuating the general sense of financial instability and insecurity. The longer this continues, the greater the volatility... and the higher the risk that the instability could then spill back onto financial markets, fueling a destabilizing vicious cycle of economic and financial dislocations.

The good news is that such dynamics ultimately exhaust themselves. Unfortunately, that only happens after a lot of volatility, accompanied by a heightened risk of very sharp and disorderly declines in financial asset prices as well as contagion.

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Random Barking: Your Illusion Of Normalcy Weekend

Get Out The Big Hug Mug
(A variant of this post has appeared earlier.)

Every morning, I wake up, pad into the kitchen and unplug the stupidphone from its charger, then check the UK Guardian and BBC websites to see what new outrage, what new rape of civil decency and the human spirit, which Trump has committed while I slept. It's my Daily Monster: What The Fuck Now?

I anticipate that, one morning, I'll discover the United States is at war. Or that Trump has fired four Supreme Court Justices. Or has finally had sex with a goat in the Oval Office before a delegation of Republican Senators -- all of whom will be unable to recall what Trump said and did in their presence, except the single Democratic Senator in the room.

And, Little Paulie Ryan will only remark that Trump's act of bestiality was "generally unhelpful". Sean Hannity will remind his many viewers that the President of these United States cannot be prosecuted for any "alleged" behavior while in office, and will call the Democratic Senator a "liar". The 'Jawhol Sturmfront For White Purity' website will post a demand that the Democratic Senator retract his comment or "face justice as a species traitor".

________________________________

Still, I have a belief that things will change. They always do. Whether that will be a Same As It Ever Was change, or whether The Daily Monster becomes something more serious, who knows.

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Recently I went through a True Detective / Season 1 marathon, and find myself drawn back to the lines Nic Pizzolatto had written for the character of Rustin Cohle, as delivered by Matthew McConaughey: Existence as bearing witness to the Unsolvable, the bottomless and apparently no-limit ability of humans to fuck with each other; the unfathomable What of all and everything. 

One of my favorite quotes: Episode 7, "After You've Gone"; Hart and Cohle interview an older black woman who winds up spouting about Carcosa and death is not the end, another link in the investigative chain leading them on, upriver, looking for Kurtz, the deep madness hiding in the Bayou.

McConaughey lights a cigarette and says to Harrelson, "Sure hope that old lady's wrong."  Puzzled, Harrelson asks, "About what?"   " 'bout death not being the end," McConaughey replies.

______________________________

McConaughey's character looks at the Daily Monster and doesn't flinch; he wants, and doesn't want, an answer to the What question (an old Suicide Club acquaintance once said, preparing to do a handstand on the summit of the west tower of the Bay Bridge, an age ago, now: "You're scared, but you do it anyway"). 

In the end, Cohle has an epiphany of a kind -- in my imagination, he comes to some understanding that some days the universe is that bottomless, reductive, time-in-a-circle-eternal-recurrence, Dantean pit. On others, it isn't.

_________________________________

And on days of either kind, here in the vastness of 'Murrika, we can have ice cream if we want. This is okay, but I have some qualms about it. 

I'm aware that in other places, people don't have ready access to ice cream. They are being denied ice cream. They face hoots of derision and worse if they ask politely for their ice cream. Their ice cream is being stolen from them. They are getting into leaky, undependable boats and setting off on long journeys whose outcome is uncertain in order to find ice cream. 

I mean, what the fuck; all people want is some ice cream. Is that too goddamn much to ask? Hand it over -- or, never mind. We'll figure out how it can be distributed. Just get out of our faces, right now, before we start looking for lampposts.

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RUST COHLE:  I tell ya, Marty -- I been up in that room, lookin' out them windows, thinkin' -- it's just one story. The oldest. 
MARTY HART: What's that? 
COHLE: Light versus dark. 
HART: Well...  I know we ain't in Alaska, but (looks up at the night sky) -- it appears to me the dark has a lot more territory. 
COHLE:  Yeah, you're right about that... but you're lookin' at it wrong.  
HART: How's that? 
COHLE: Once, there was only dark... You ask me, the light's winnin'.

-- Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson / True Detective (Season One, 2014)

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Not In The Stars, But Ourselves

Random Barking:  Oprah

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

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

_____________________________

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

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

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

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

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

________________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I suspect many Americans would too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Manner Of Our Living

Thorns On Roses

The point has been made that the election in Alabama is more an American cultural metaphor than a political contest. It's one reason why the state's Governor and its GOP leadership can say they support Roy Moore, no matter what -- and why that feels both unbelievable and make perfect sense.

For the alt-Right (e.g., Bannon and Breitbart, and the Bundist billionaires who bankroll them), supporting Roy Moore is 'revolutionary'; an in-your-face attack on the old-line GOP.  They support neo-nazis and white nationalists for the same reasons (and because they are racist, fascist scum). So does our bloated, piggish Leader.

But it's worse than that. It's an assault on perceived common values, on what is considered permissible by social contract. It's a formula well-known in fascist societies: The 'revolutionary' Bundists breach social boundaries, forcing a culture to accept something which restricts human rights, or is repressive, as acceptable conduct.

"We believe in god, the Constitution, the Sanctity of Life and the Sanctity of Marriage," Moore tweeted. "We are everything the Washington Elite hate. They will do whatever it takes to stop us. We will not quit."

The persons defending and supporting Roy Moore, on one level or another, understand this 'revolutionary' aspect of their actions. As perceived victims of a vast liberal conspiracy, they see a vote for Moore as support for their entire world-view: it's okay that ol' Roy did what he did. It don't matter what he made those girls / women feel, or feel like. We got ways of doin' things where we live and you best just keep your nose out of it. 

Do you understand that when we get in that votin' booth, and pull that lever for ol' Roy -- we're doin' it to spite you godless Northern liberal sons o' bitches? Roy is already pissin' in your faces. That's why we like Trump and Fox and Rush, 'cause they piss on you, too. So we're gonna stand with him.

And we're sendin' you a message, and it's this: We hate you. We're gonna take all your godless one-world, immigrant- and black- and muslim-lovin', faggot-feminist bulllshit an' make you eat it. And we'll vote for a child molester and put him in the U.S. Senate, just so you hear us loud 'n clear. 

And, what you gonna do 'bout that? Ain't nothin' you can do. Fuck you, boy. 

This reminded me of a passage in the film, Mississippi Burning (1988), where the Southern FBI agent, played by Gene Hackman, tries to tell the Northern-Intellectual-Liberal FBI agent, played by Willem Dafoe, how things are below the Mason-Dixon: 

You know, when I was a little boy -- there was an old Negro farmer, lived down the road from us, name of Monroe. And he was... Well, I guess he was just a little luckier than my daddy was. He bought himself a mule. That was a big deal around that town.

My daddy hated that mule. His friends kidded him that they saw Monroe ploughin' with his new mule... and Monroe was gonna rent another field now that he had a mule. And one morning, that mule just showed up dead. They poisoned the water. After that, there was never any mention about that mule around my daddy.

One time we were drivin' past Monroe's place and we saw it was empty. He'd just packed up and left, I guess -- gone up North, or somethin'.  I looked over at my daddy's face ... and I knew he'd done it. And he saw that I knew.

He was ashamed; I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and he said, 'Son -- if you ain't better than a nigger, who are you better than?' [He was] so full of hate ... that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killin' him.

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These persons are a minority, in raw numbers, but collectively they're dangerous to themselves and others. And, their idols either run the government or influence the society -- and for all its connections with centers of power, the establishment media didn't spend thirty years saying there are no facts -- only alternate, competing systems of belief fighting with each other for dominance.

That image is so beloved of fascist ideologies: the future is for the strong. Because Democracy is weak, compared with Randian, capitalist alt-Right nationalism. It's the alt-Right's intent to break American democratic culture, dominate it and rebuild it in their image; but I'm not sure people like Bannon truly understand where their actions will really lead. People like Moore assuredly don't.

They understand what they're doing in the short-term feeds their egos. It brings them degrees of personal power and wealth. But their actions are based on a long-term belief that they can control the future. The problem with extreme political systems is a belief in magical thinking -- that things can be willed into being if you are simply strong enough.

The fascination, the Great Game, is being able to influence the world at the level of an entire society. They see themselves and their "struggle" in larger-than-life, romanticized terms, as if this will all end in a lavish, eight-hour HBO mini-series. They crush their enemies and are vindicated by history, with a thrilling soundtrack, in the last ten minutes before commercials -- portrayed by handsome Hollywood actors as wise, human and good, worthy not only of veneration but love.

___________________________________

It seems supporters and defenders of Moore would be happy to re-fight the Civil War; the alt-Right has spent decades building the idea of a 'culture war' in America without bothering to mention that war means violence and death and surrender or submission.

It isn't just that die-hard, Red State Americans don't like the rest of the country's centrist or liberal opinions on politics -- they don't like the people who have those opinions. They don't like the people. And that makes it easy to move from passively absorbing decades of corrosive Murdoch propaganda, to marching in the streets, ready to hurt their perceived enemies, or worse.

About Alabama, the feeling that keeps returning is that it's one more violation of our collective social contract, as Americans; and that the alt-Right is looking for its Fort Sumter moment -- possibly another Charolettesville, one where armed alt-Rightists 'stand up to' the central government and, instead of an Abraham Lincoln, a president sympathetic to their cause stands that government down and directs former Klanster Jeff Sessions to blunt the force of the Justice Department.

We could see a vindication of human nature next month. I wouldn't bet heavily on it, but it's possible. That Moore has a chance of being elected, by people filled with sickness and Bad JuJu -- to the degree that they don't know what's killing them -- should frighten us all.

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Crustal Displacement Is Not Your Buddy; Or, Weimar II

Wrong
(From November 9, 2016)

Put On A Happy Face.  Or, Not.

Clinton would win. Of course; aber natürlich she would. Because the idea of a victory by Trump was so far outside the bounds of possibility. It was laughable; worse, it was stupid, and I said exactly that here and elsewhere, over and over.

Trump was a joke. He was clownish, 'Brassy', utterly without gravitas. He was like the owner of the hardware store in a small town, outwardly successful (though there were stories about how he ran that business), a member of the country club, invited to all the right public parties -- but no one would ever suggest he had a serious chance if he ran for mayor. This asshole?  Ha ha; no.

And, the people who supported Trump had to be troglodyte, tin-foil-hat wearing, racist, misogynist Brownshirts. They lapped up propaganda paid for by the Koch Brothers, as eagerly as anything being passed in the right-wing public vomatorium. They were bitter-enders, the "twenty-four per centers'; of course they were. There couldn't be enough of them in America to elect that, that -- person.  My America was (at a minimum) progressive, fact-based, secular. There was no room for the kind of Tea Partei intolerance and lunacy which Trump's running mate (and now Vice-President) Pence tried enacting into law in Indiana.

Trump's supporters were angry that America has been moving down the wrong path, its political priorities not addressing what they saw as our critical needs -- oddly enough, I feel the same. But our ideas of 'critical needs' are diametrically opposed. And most conservatives I've met seem to have basic assumptions about How The World Works that just make me foam whenever I hear them -- and if they're evangelical conservatives, I start veering into Stroke territory. Thank god, I thought: they're only the 24%. Not enough to move the dial.

Hillary, as distasteful as her assumption of power might be to me, as autocratic as her stranglehold on the DNC was, made me feel that I had some license to be snarky and sarcastic. After all, she would win anyway, right? Of course. Of course.

And the numbers that appeared in Nate Silver's analysis of the electorate at fivethirtyeight.com supported that assumption. Silver, the Quant / pollster who defied 'conventional wisdom' in 2012 (predicting a second term for Obama when most polls and the GOP declared Romney the probable winner), consistently predicted Clinton a shoe-in:  as of Tuesday, November 8, her estimated chances of winning were 71.4%; Trump's were 24.6%.  The last message posted at the 538 site yesterday was:

Throughout the election, our forecast models have consistently come to two conclusions. First, that Hillary Clinton was more likely than not to become the next president. And second, that the range of possible Electoral College outcomes — including the chance of a Donald Trump victory, but also a Clinton landslide that could see her winning states such as Arizona — was comparatively wide.

That remains our outlook today in our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent favorite to win the election according to our polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according to our polls-plus model. ... This reflects a meaningful improvement for Clinton in the past 48 hours as the news cycle has taken a final half-twist in her favor. Her chances have increased from about 65 percent.

Our forecast has Clinton favored in states and congressional districts totaling 323 electoral votes ... but ... because Clinton’s leads in North Carolina and Florida especially are tenuous, the average number of electoral votes we forecast for Clinton is 302, which would be equivalent to her winning either Florida or North Carolina but not both.

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I spent yesterday in a jury assembly room, answering a summons to serve along with 200 other people. We were shown two videos which extolled jury service as a part of our system of law and justice, 'trial by ones peers', part of the rights guaranteed by our Constitution (where trial by jury is mentioned, we were told, three times).  It was interesting, even fun (possibly not for the petitioners or defendants).  We saw "Former Jurors" telling the camera that they would want someone like themselves on a jury if they were ever "in a fix".

Having to serve on a jury when I am galactically busy at my Place O' Labor™ is a drag -- but I agree with the idea that membership in a body politic means one may have to step up when asked. It was also ironic to be watching the videos while the country was casting votes about the potential future makeup of the Supreme Court.  But, Clinton would win; that would be fodder for eight years of jokes and photoshopped images. Not a problem.

Last night, I didn't even watch the returns. I sat down and wrote out a post -- a good one -- about the election, but my free blogger service ate it. Gone. I'd saved it, ready to Publish; when suddenly the screen refreshed and a much earlier draft of the same post was left. An hour of decent writing up the spout. So, I watched the last episode of Ken Burns'; documentary on America's experience of WW2, The War. I was bored; get it over with, already, and went to bed convinced I would see Hillary's face trumpeted from the skies tomorrow.

Wrong.

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This morning, members of my department at the Place O' Labor put in a half-day's work at the County Food Bank, sorting oranges, removing spoiled or damaged fruit and boxing the rest, carrying the boxes to pallets. We processed 13,000 pounds. As I was boxing the oranges (purchased in bulk from suppliers; edible, but not of very high quality), I considered that this is how some of America's most vulnerable are being fed. Obtaining even Grade-C oranges, or cast-off peanut butter, is the difference between eating, and not.

When we were finished, one of the volunteer managers stood up and gave a small presentation about what the Food Bank did and who it served -- approximately 120,000 persons in the San Francisco Bay area. "Every day, we receive about 100 calls from first-time people asking how they can receive food," he said. "These aren't people looking to receive something for free -- they ask because they can't afford to pay their rent or mortgage, their utility or phone bill, and feed themselves or their children.  Our staff says that number has been fairly consistent -- around 100 first-time callers per day.

"When did that start? I asked. They agreed -- it began after the Crash in 2008; it's been consistent ever since." He paused for a moment. "The elements that created the Crash were in motion for a decade before it happened -- and many of those same causes were never addressed afterwards. The same things could happen --" He stopped, then corrected himself -- "Will happen, again."

What kind of safety nets will be available for the Underclass now?  What kind of safety will there be, for any of us?

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MEHR, MIT ANDERN STUFF:  Most people in public, or the workplace, seemed to studiously avoid talking about What Happened. They talked around it; they talked past it. Their attitude was equal parts disbelief, and not wanting to create a conflict with anyone who might have voted for Trump.  

Very early in the morning, before the cubicle farm filled up, I did overhear an ancient project manager known as The Walrus (GooGoo Ka-Choob) saying to someone over the phone, "Yeah; I mean, think about it -- Presidents change, but the bureaucracy is the same. Right? The military doesn't change. That's the most important thing." That'll be a comfort to all those targeted by drones for Kill Tuesday.

I only heard the 'B' side of one conversation between two people  about the election all day -- two members of the permanent staff at the Food Bank: a woman had said something about Trump I didn't completely hear, and a man responded, "We don't know. Jus' gotta roll widdit."  That was all. 

At The Place Of Employ, even My Very Own Hillaryite Colleague was subdued and unwilling to comment. Only one person (we'll call him Harry Tuttle) said anything. Harry is a technical worker of long experience, a San Francisco native, and black; I asked for his take. "Well -- yesterday, America elected someone who's shown himself a known quantity. He's bigoted, sexist, and all kinds of fucked up. With all that, you tell me what the immediate future's gonna be like. I expect he'll take on the Fat Boy in North Korea, or someone he thinks is a soft target -- or he'll do something else that's stupid."

The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo sent a text: "What will we do? I think we should marry a foreigner. I'm willing to learn any language."  The Best Friend: "Whitelash! ... WTF?? Fuck You Very Much, America!"  I read through most of the comments traded by readers last night on The Great Curmudgeon's 'Eschaton' and watched the disbelief seep in as the vote-counting progressed; it was painful. 

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In Burns' documentary, The War, a photo was shown of a road sign erected by Marines on the island of Saipan in the summer of 1945, with an additional marker that reflected the apparent endlessness of  the Pacific conflict: "Golden Gate In [19]48 -- Bread Line In [19]49". On The Line, no one knows what it means when there's a significant change, like a new commander. You expect the deck is stacked against you, because you've seen the system and that's how it's arranged. You only hope you're not fucked too badly, that no one takes anything else away from you, and that whoever shows up to lead will not get you killed. That is not a joke.

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However, the comments on Eschaton and on a number of other sites make me want to add this note as a counterweight to the disbelief most seem to be feeling:  The election is over. But if our 45th President, or those who believe they own America and its people, think they're going to have free rein to drop a saddle on all of us and try to ride, I believe it's our duty to disappoint them as frequently and strongly as possible. And, all calls for 'National Unity' aside -- I believe a lot of people already have that intention.

It's going to be one hell of a ride.

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