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. 

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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)

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... 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 

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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.

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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.

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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.’”

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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.

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Twenty-Two

 Nine-Eleven

(Redux of a post originally published in September, 2010)

On November 22, 1963, I was outside for a 10:00AM break between classes at my Junior High School when it was announced the next class would begin prematurely. Immediately. We were told to sit quietly at our desks. When asked, our teacher told us nervously that President Kennedy had been shot.

After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas.  After a few minutes, someone -- probably the principal --  placed the PA system microphone next to the speaker of a television set; we heard what I now know to be the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television, announcing the President's death.

Where were you when JFK was shot? A standard question a large number of Americans (now discarded as 'Useless Boomers') have asked each other, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the primary media of the early 1960's -- radio and television.

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So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM here in California, and turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. Getting out of the shower just before 6:00, I heard a report that a "plane" appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

I lived briefly in Manhattan in the late 70's and had seen just how huge those buildings were -- and to me, "a plane" meant a small aircraft; a Cessna, or something similar. I remembered: sometime after WW2, a B-25 flying through dense fog over Manhattan had ploughed directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but an accident, and on the other side of the continent. 

NPR suddenly updated its report, using the words "jet aircraft" -- which immediately moved the entire event from a tragically wayward Cessna into the category of Well-This-Was-No-Boating-Accident.

Turning on CNN, I sat watching an image of the WTC towers from the roof of CNN's Manhattan headquarters, roughly two miles away. Both towers looked like chimneys, topped by boiling clouds of grey-black smoke drifting away at an angle into a clear, morning sky. 

Aaron Brown was reporting, taking phone calls directed from witnesses in the vicinity -- only one of whom, the doorman at the World Trade Centers Marriott, was close enough to report on anything immediate and consequential. 

A CNN-affiliate local news helicopter, hovering over the Hudson, provided an extended telephoto shot of the façade of the Tower on fire; I looked at the pattern of the cladding of the building, a huge, black gash angled across it. 

Occasionally, I saw clouds of small white shapes fluttering in the smoke, like flocks of birds, swirling -- and realized they were sheets of paper, ream after ream of it, drifting out of the building's broken windows. 

Just as that thought registered, at the extreme right-hand edge of the screen, I saw a darker object drop quickly, straight down and out of frame. It took a second; less. I didn't know then, but I had just seen one of roughly two hundred people who fell or jumped that morning from the Towers' upper floors.

The Falling Man: Photograph By Richard Drew / AP

Images Like This Were Broadcast And Published

In Europe, But Not America (Photo: UK Telegraph, 2001)

By the time I had sit down, two airliners had slammed into the WTC towers. Aside from profane shock, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what it had been like, standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot. This is history. 

I've seen large explosions and been in crazy environments, but the scale of what I was watching made it all seem unreal; special effects. I sat in the armchair, watching, as first the South, then the North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively). News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon was broadcast; I began flipping back and forth between networks for coverage. 

Finally, I left to make my way to work on mass transit. On a BART train, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops and Blackberries -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. People were subdued; there was literally no conversation about what had just occurred.

Work closed down at Noon. At a friend's, we sat watching CNN -- clips of the second Tower being struck, and of each one collapsing, were replayed endlessly.  I made a few phone calls, primarily to The Last Of The Old Unit ("Fuckin' glad we're not eighteen right now," one observed). 

We were all expecting more information, something to provide a larger context to everything seen that day. We also knew we weren't going to get it -- the dice had been rolled, and we wouldn't find any clarification until they had bounced off the back of the craps table and come to rest. 

The dice are still bouncing. They haven't stopped yet. They never really will -- like Gavrilo Princip, shooting the Archduke, the dice which were rolled that day haven't stopped yet, either. That's how history works. 

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That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar, the culmination of so many threads in our history going back to 1898 and 1917, the choices successive administrations have made since deciding to follow an Imperial course.

I remembered another image from this same period, within a day or two of the attacks: video of an Iranian soccer pre-game event, where both teams playing sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. I've looked for the footage, but AI sucks and Google sucks. I still know what I saw.

A gesture like that would only have been allowed with permission of the Iranian Powers That Be, and it was only a gesture -- costs nothing for forty teenagers to sing a song. But gestures can lead to actual events.

The 9-11 attacks could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have seized the opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; the long breach with Iran; our over-reliance on the House of Saud. We could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.

Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention: Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last

This photograph exudes more punk-ass cravenness than any I've ever seen.

It was a crossroads moment. Our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power.  

This is what America got for allowing the Scalia Court to appoint "Lil' Boots" Bush as President of the United States -- a man who surrounded himself with Project For A New American Century neo-imperialists. 

Within hours of Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, they were sitting in the White House, discussing how to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was a foregone conclusion. And, after 9-11, what else could we have expected from Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From Rove, DeLay, Limbaugh and the Murdochs?

September 11th: An Excuse

And, they believed it would be 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so, no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on individual soldiers of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen. The arrogance behind this conceptualization is stunning.

It was an utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name only a few. How eagerly they jumped on the War bandwagon; so good for their careers.

Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)

And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. 363 tons of it. Some $9 billion of that cash simply can't be accounted for.  But, there was plenty of money to be made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy. It was a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group -- a founder of which was George H. W. Bush, who gave the Group its intimate connection to the House of Saud.

But, Lil' Boots kept talking about cutting Medicare, privatizing Social Security; cut any social programs which made real the pact between government and citizens that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal... because, Bush claimed, there was just no money to pay for that. Because of the war, you see.

And there was Guantanamo, CIA 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written opinions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.

Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007

And what followed wasn't just secret prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but a matrix of information based on unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular telephone traffic, banking records and public record databases. It became a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.

And, if it was all about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing or killing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri, then Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Taliban were able to come roaring back.

The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about leveraging the war to enact a larger Rightist agenda. It was a cover for deregulation, defense contractors, profits. It was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule.

Victory, to these assclowns, had a very different meaning. The military portion of it was just a backdrop banner for Bush and his cronies: Mission Accomplished. The cynicism in that perspective is an obscenity; Yeah, a lot of that going around.

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We had an economic collapse in 2008, then eight years of neoliberal nothing, followed by four years of proto-Fascism. After a three-year pandemic, an attempted coup -- roughly 37% of America's adult population claim to believe that 4chan posts by an anonymous fraudster are more real than mathematics, science, or common sense. That over 60% of those on the Right trust what Trump says over and above their own family members.

The blessed 37%  refuse to accept the vaccines for SARS-CoV2. They refuse to wear masks. They do this to "Own The Libs". They injected themselves with special magic pony blessed horse juice, or screech that the Blood Of The Jezus is all they need. 

And they died choking on their own phlegm in hospital ICU wards, wheezing that Covid was all a hoax. Incidentally -- if you want to gauge how likely it is a hot civil war will happen here, just remember that image: cult members, fanatics, behave that way. Not rational, normal people.

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Since September 11th, 2001, a quote by Bush (whom we are supposed to think well of, now; let the healing begin) comes back to me:

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)

-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress

Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm? Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?

There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to preserve.

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Welcome To Your Locked In Third-Class Thursday

 No One Is Coming To Put Out This Fire

A Short Howl

... he decided that.. he didn't want to leave [a false] passport in his apartment. .. So he opened an account... using the passport for identification, at a Banque du Nord office on the Boulevard Haussmann, then rented a safe deposit box for the passport itself. Three days later he returned... and put an envelope holding twelve thousand Francs on top of the passport. What are you doing? he asked himself. But he didn't really know; he only knew that he was uncomfortable, in some not very definable way ... Somewhere, something was warning him... Hide money, something told him. Arm yourself, said the same voice, a few nights later. But that... he did not do.

          -- "Alan Furst, "Dark Star" (1991)

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It all feels inexorable. 

Down in Third Class, we hear and sense a commotion building on decks above us; the liner is slowing down. Something doesn't feel right. The passenger line has provided a few musical instruments, a few board games like Anchor and Crown to keep us occupied; they turn a blind eye to a bit of gambling. They even gave us a tot of Rum - the good kind, nearly like molasses. Something doesn't feel right, but we keep smiling; let's have more music. Don't spoil the party for others.

And when our concertinas and fiddles pause and the laughter stops: faintly and far above us the ship's orchestra is playing. We can feel the liner has stopped. Then, we hear a series of scraping rattles, like blind curses, as gates to the gangways going up to Second Class and the Boat Decks are pulled out, and locked. 

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Or: From the Salon windows of the passenger gondola, we look out over the plains of New Jersey, all muted mauve greys and purples at sunset, rain clouds dimpling on the horizon in the fading light. We hear ropes uncoiling to slide out of the nose of the airship as we gently make for the mooring mast. There's another low sigh of noise, like a breath, like acceptance or resignation, as water ballast is released.

The Zeppelin company provides complimentary champagne -- a toast; we've crossed the Atlantic! We're all upper- and upper-middle class, highly-paid chroniclers and technicians (passage to America on a Zep in 1937 cost $450 -- almost $10,000 in 2023 USD). The long moment keeps uncoiling, poised between heaven and earth, as in a dream -- when you think you feel the Zeppelin's airframe jolt, just perceptibly, once, like something trying to get your attention.

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With our Planet, our shared climate; our politics (willed helplessness or vicious cruelty); our arts and culture (expressions of existential fear and loathing, and 'christian' mania) ... in almost every expression of human behavior, signs of something rising keep getting louder.  It takes more energy and effort to block it out. My personal lot here in America is better than most, less than some.

Outside America, things are more elemental: I listen to the BBC for a time most mornings, and followed reports made by journalists on scene of the effects of a pointless war between the egos of two Sudanese generals. "I'm looking at video from downtown, central Khartoum," one reporter noted, "and can see a large, modern building. It's the National Bank of Sudan, and it's burning. 

"The remarkable thing," he continued, "is that it's absolutely silent. We can hear gunfire, but otherwise, there are no sirens, no fire trucks, no ambulances. No one is coming to put out this fire."

Obligatory Photo Of Overly Familiar Cute Dog

In Middle Of Blog Rant

And no matter what you think about the war in Ukraine, it is brutal, and it has gone on for over 450 days. The damage is generational: that's how bad it is -- and you could use much the same language to describe events of the past decade in Yemen, Somalia, Syria; Lebanon. 

In Gaza, the endless cycle of repression and revenge and counter-revenge goes on without letup or pity. And, Israelis turned out in tens of thousands to protest a government of malicious ego and religious arrogance, but it made no difference: the Malignant narcissist wins again. I suspect this will become the norm in countries like Israel, Hungary... and eventually France, Austria, America. 

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On the weekend, I looked up from doing another sort of writing and saw, through my living room window, a woman standing at the curb across the street, having an animated conversation with someone on her cell phone. She appeared in her early twenties, and I wondered what her experience of living was like -- prejudices, desires, expectations -- and what her future would look like in another fifty years, when she is as old as I am now. If she lives that long.

I have two degrees in History but have never been good at being a Futurist, at prognostication. That takes a completely different kind of intellect than I possess. Mostly, I bark at what I see, and consider a possible future -- and bark and bark. Few people listen, and that's just how it is.

I don't know what it's going to be like. I only know that two things I keep thinking are absolutely true: The current situation[s] cannot continue, and This cannot end well.

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MEHR, MIT EIN RÜCKBLICK: Much of what I've written since starting this Blog in 2008 has been an extended complaint about living in an absurd, oft-times shabby, and incomprehensible universe. Occasionally it's produced something profound in a minor-key way, or funny, but principally it's just been an extension of that Dog in the neighborhood who barks, and Why Can't His Owners Shut Him The Fuck Up.

This post could have been written at any time during the past two decades and still have seemed relevant. That's both sad ( gosh, Slothrop; you're stuck in a rut, seems to me) and representative of the times we currently live in: All this same shit has been going on at least that long, and what does that tell you?

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MEHR, MIT EIN UNERWARTETER AUSRUF SEINER MAJESTÄT:

CHOOK:  Fuck's sake, Mate; fuckin' Bollocks; this is -- I shouldn't have to fuckin' do this shit, Mate; I'm the King --  an' what the fuck is this 'ere?? Can you just fuckin' move this out the way??  Fuckin' 'ell, Mate; bein' King is Bollocks, I'm fuckin' done with this shit!"

Wouldn't it be Loverly.

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Across The River And Into The Trees

Don't Say You Didn't See This Coming

Another Long Howl

Depending on which media 'outlets' or polls you follow, the Democratic party will either win, and the American form of democracy will be preserved -- or, the political and cultural Right will win, and that will be the end of The American Experiment.

The Democratic party is the best we've got. Some in the party don't believe its stated policies go far enough to realize a more equitable future; to prepare for the challenges of climate deterioration, and competition with an authoritarian China and Russia. They favor restructuring national priorities, continuing the spirit of The New Deal.

The Republican party claims to be the same GOP that's existed for over 160 years: The party of Lincoln; of fiscal sobriety and small government. That's a lie. It belongs to Trump. 

The GOP is dressed in a Sturmabteilung brownshirt; it struts and marches. The Party says When (not If) it takes back what was rightfully stolen from it, it will impeach Biden, throw out the January 6th Committee and replace it with another to "investigate the radical Democrats". It will Own The Libs, codify law making abortion illegal in all states, and end the farce of Social Security and Medicare.

The Ukrainians will have to get used to being part of Putinland. NATO will just have to get along without us. And at home there will be more god, and less godlessness, in society -- oh, the Party will see to that.

And above it all -- various investigations against him stymied or quashed -- there will be the triumphant return of The Leader in 2024, as he waddles back into the White House, before starting his Revenge Tour of America, basking in the adulation of thousands at his rallies -- as if they were tent-revival meetings for the Cult of Trump.

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Michael Moore says he believes there will be a Blue Tsunami on election day, one that hasn't been detected by the pollsters, just as his prediction of Trump's apotheosis was ignored by the professional pollsters in 2016.  Meanwhile, he complains, Democratic campaigning is tepid, uninspiring, encouraging Democrats "to believe liberals are losers."

It’s very disheartening ... Democratic party consultants are feeding lines that are so lame and weak. They don’t go for the jugular like a Republican would. It doesn’t inspire people... We stand here on the precipice of a very important election and our greatest enemy could be the Democratic party itself.

And, meanwhile, Bill Maher (whose libertarianism I don't particularly like) says correctly that Democracy is on the ballot, and predicts "it's going to lose". 

Ben Franklin said our country was a "Republic, if you can keep it." Well, we can’t, and unless a miracle happens on Tuesday, we didn’t. Democracy is on the ballot, and unfortunately, it’s going to lose. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.

So here's what's going to happen: Republicans are going to take control of Congress, and ... begin impeaching Biden and never stop... it won't matter and it won't make sense -- but Biden will be a crippled duck in 2024 when he goes up against the Trump - Kari Lake ticket.

And even if Trump loses -- it doesn't matter: On Inauguration Day 2025, he's going to show up... and this time he's going to have the army of election deniers behind him that's being elected in... days. 

This really is the crossing-the-Rubicon moment... it's how countries slide into authoritarianism --not with tanks in the streets, but by electing the people who have no intention of giving [up power]...  Hitler was elected. So was Mussolini; Putin; Erdogan; Orban. This is the, 'it can't happen to us" moment that's happening to us, right now.

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A deranged man broke into the home of Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer, demanding, "Where's Nancy?" The man had two hammers, zip-ties, and told police he had committed the break-in and assault because he was "fighting against tyranny".

[He stated his] intention was to find Speaker Pelosi at the home and take her hostage. He planned to have a conversation with her, claiming that if she told him "the truth" he would let her go. If she "lied," in his eyes, he planned to break her kneecaps. He also indicated that he did not expect her to tell the "truth," further suggesting his hope to commit violence during the incident.

Less than an hour after the attack was reported, Rethugs were broadcasting that the man was a male prostitute Paul Pelosi had picked up.  It was a "tryst" gone wrong.  Elon Musk ("world's richest man", bloated Owner of a shiny, newly-acquired toy, Twitter) helped broadcast it under the guise of "free speech", then deleted the post -- but, too late. 

No matter that it was a lie -- the Rethugs amplified and regurgitated it. The Murdochs broadcast it -- and when Fox says something, 40% of American adults automatically snap-to and believe. Marjorie Taylor-Green and Lauren Boebert claimed Pelosi brought the attack on himself. It was his fault -- but the real victims in all this were ... America's patriots; the Trumpist Right.

A few in the GOP condemned "the violence in our culture", then blamed Dems for being "pro-crime" -- again: Pelosi brought that head trauma upon himself.  Some claimed the assailant was part of Antifa. But among most of the Rethug members of Congress, there was silence. No one said a word.

The Thugs couldn't quite bring themselves to say any politically-motivated violence was unacceptable. That there were red lines in American society about politics that couldn't be crossed. They might have, fifteen or twenty years ago. But not in 2022. 

We're going into this election with the Right giving its cult members a clear signal -- political intimidation through violence, even assassination, is the spirit of the future. Attempting to kill the Libs isn't fully permissible, yet -- but the fact that the attack happened, and most Republicans said nothing, should be a massive wake-up call. But it doesn't appear to be. 

_______________________

Within three days, we'll find out whether America's democratic experiment is on its deathbed; whether the country is being delivered further into the hands of narcissistic monsters and child molesters who will make a mockery out of American government. We'll think we've been fucked by a train.

I don't know whether that will happen. But I know History -- particularly the inter-war years in Europe: the rise of Italian fascism; nazism; end of the Weimar Republic and everything that followed. 

The stakes are exactly as described by Maher and others. I am looking at the cards on the table and feeling a cold sense of anticipatory dread: We go this way, we die. Period. It is as clear as anything I've ever felt. Beyond voting, I am helpless to do anything to affect the outcome.

This is how history works at the level of a citizen in a participatory democracy whose future is uncertain.

________________________

Imagine a world without America. We have so many crimes and shortcomings to answer for as a society that many might say, yeah, right; bring it on. Whatever comes must be better than the lies, the greed, the inequality of this faux Democracy we live under. 

But would it really? The vacuum produced by our withdrawing from the world stage would mean other countries will assert their authoritarian leadership. I know some Marxists who say, good; a dose of what the CCP is doing would be a step toward a better world for the greatest number of people.

I disagree, for one reason: Under the CCP or Russian Federation (and theocratic governments, like Iran, or Afghanistan), artists can't create certain images. Writers can't express certain thoughts. Nor can Filmmakers, Playwrights, Musicians.  Any system which says You Cannot is inherently despotic -- and despotic systems are always maintained by the threat of death. 

That threat sits in the shadows of every demand for obedience such systems make on their citizens -- Obey, Or Else. Governments imprisoning and murdering persons for what is in their minds and hearts, for having the ability to express it creatively, is one of the great crimes of this or any other period in history. 

You can argue that a citizen of America is complicit in great crimes; that the 'Obey' is implicit in our system; I won't argue. But it's ironic that such a truth goes hand-in-hand with (even our level of) individual rights and liberties in the United States of America, today, November 6, 2022. 

I'd like to be positive. Maybe America will vote for sanity -- that we'll collectively dodge a bullet, be delivered from the repercussions of slavery, genocide; racism; greed, and lies.

But maybe not.  No one can say we didn't see it coming.

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Kleiner Mann, Was Nun

 Misery Does Not Require Acts, Only Conditions

(Originally from November, 2019. As true today as it was in the Olden Days)

Vanished World: Ours Will Also Seem As Remote

While from a Proud Tower in the town / Death looked gigantically down

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "City In The Sea" (1845)

The ... great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark reliance... The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.” 

-- Barbara Tuchman (1966)

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In The Proud Tower, popular historian Barbara Tuchman focused on describing Western culture in the decades leading up to the Great War -- a huge, red line of demarcation that finally separated the generations of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.

Her story is a chronicle of human folly (one of Tuchman's favorite themes), and because we know how the story will end, a leitmotif of nostalgia we sense in the background is really the collective despair of survivors who had lost everything familiar, an entire frame of reference for living.

Edward VII's Sendoff: Royal Procession Of Mourners, 1910

She opened her book with a spectacle: the funeral of King Edward VII of England, who had been on the throne for less than a decade after the death of his mother, Victoria. Tuchman described the brilliant funeral cortege, royal houses and empires in uniform. As Edward's coffin rolled along London streets, "The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock ... but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again." One of the last displays of presence and power of the Elite of the Gilded Age.

Tuchman closed the book with another funeral: this one for Jean Jaures, Socialist member of the French Chamber of Deputies, and a  principal, seminal Left political agitator of the age. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary had been assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and with the interwoven alliances in that era, major European powers began slow-walking into war.

Jaures Speaking At A Socialist Rally, Paris; 1914

A general war had been building for the better part of a decade, and the Socialists in Europe knew working people in all countries would be the disposable cannon-fodder for nationalist politicians and industrial plutocrats. Jaures believed only a pan-European worker's strike, united under the banner of each country's Socialist party, could prevent the continent from being dragged into a catastrophe.

Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia, whose assassin had killed the Archduke, then mobilized to invade. On July 30, Russia declared a general mobilization; Jaures was pushing to organize the strike action with other Socialist leaders. While eating at a Paris cafe on the night of July 31, he was assassinated by a right-wing nationalist who had been stalking him. Jaures died at roughly the same time Germany's ambassadors were delivering messages in European capitals, advising it had declared war on Russia.

The Great War had just begun as Jaures' funeral took place in Paris on August 4, 1914. As the funeral cortege moved through Paris streets, Tuchman described a muffled bell of Notre Dame tolling, thinking of a poem by Schiller: "I summon the living / I mourn the dead."

Four years, three months, and the deaths of ~10,000,000 soldiers and civilians later, the war ended.

________________________________

We know we're living in a time of extremity. Everyone is figuratively holding their breath, waiting for ... something.  Tuchman's story led to a streetcorner in Sarajevo, and a few weeks in the high summer of 1914 -- and we read it with dread because we know where it ends. No one knows where our American story is leading.

Tuchman's story closed in 1914, 105 years ago. In 2019, there's no one reason to assume bad things are coming, in America -- because there seem to be an overwhelming preponderance of reasons. No one can be blamed for feeling the present moment is portentous, that we're approaching something, a Sarajevo moment, that will trigger a cataclysm. It's a continuous, negative feedback loop, difficult to shake off.

________________________________

America has ignored critical, obvious things for generations: contributing to climate disintegration; the inequality in wealth. We've ignored our real history of class, race and gender. We became an Empire, and behaved like one. We became a center to develop technology out of desire for novelty and profit, while reducing personal privacy and allowing our opinions, desires, habits to be harvested and exploited.

We ignored the rise of weapons availability and gun violence. We ignored evangelical christian religious extremism. We ignored right-wing domestic terrorists and white supremacists. We ignored a malignant right-wing media -- whose lies and distortion have created a separate, alternate reality, tailored for a specific segment of America's population.

Our great national weaknesses have been chronicled and discussed for decades. Then, we had 9/11, and the Forever War; the 2008 financial crisis; an internal struggle in the GOP (won by the Alt-Right); and a loss of focus or purpose by our political Left (ostensibly, the Democratic Party).

In the new Millennium, America became progressively more tribal, split along every fault line you can imagine -- Left vs. Right; Rich vs. Poor; Young vs. Old; Urban vs. Rural; christian vs. non-christian; White vs. Anybody Else; LGTBQ vs. homophobe; Men vs. Women. Into the mix, throw gun ownership, militias, private armies and private intelligence groups, and the daily drumbeat of lies, conspiracies, taunts and threats pouring out of the great echo chamber of the Right.

Never before have the 'deplorables', the Base, felt so empowered, so justified, so ready to take back what they have been told is theirs from a rag-tag crowd of liberals, hippies, immigrants, minorities, and devil-worshiping pagans.

And, I can't shake the feeling that there are too many 'responsible' conservatives who want some final, showdown battle with everything they hate in life, personified by liberals, women, and anyone different from them.

_________________________________

Sad Vlad's Pal.

Against that background, Trump was almost inevitable -- "I can drain the swamp"; the allegedly rich mogul with the blow-up doll trophy wife; America's Silvio Berlusconi. He is the personification of everything we've collectively ignored, the would-be Clown Emperor. Everything about his presidency is a symptom of the rot at the heart of America, and on constant display -- selfishness, arrogance; narcissism and misogyny; nationalism; religious extremism; racism and sexism.

If you were trying to find a political leader who, if elected, would blow America apart along those developed fault-lines -- someone who would subordinate the needs of a democratic nation-state to feed a bottomless, life-sucking pathological need -- Trump is precisely who you would pick.

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I don't have any great expectations for the impeachment process. The hearings are important, historic. There will be moments everyone will recall with relish or anger. Generations will remember them, as  Watergate is remembered. From a legal perspective,  and for the historical record, they're essential.

Whether a majority of Americans understand this impeachment is about limits of Executive authority is an open question. The GOP will continue to push a conspiracy-fueled, barely coherent defense of Trump, designed to confuse and obfuscate, because that's what liars do.

Another part of that defense is the yet-to-be-released Barr report, which will attack America's intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement, claiming to document a titanic conspiracy by The Deep State to thwart a victorious, glorious Trump presidency. It's a lie, of course; a projection of Trump's distorted interior landscape, tailored by Barr and others to please and curry favor with The Leader -- and on that basis alone, it'll be astounding.

Barr intends people will go to jail because of The Leader's whims; that one cannot act against The Leader, lest they suffer. And Republicans in Congress, the huge megaphone of right-wing media, are eager to dominate any impeachment coverage with a constant smoke screen of lies.

The GOP will not walk away from Trump. He is their chance to roll back generations of Liberal political change, social programs, and legal precedents. That great work, blessed by evangelical pastors, is more important than anything. But they've gone all-in.

Last night on Amanpour & Co., journalists Jeff Greenfield of Politico and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame were asked about the current impeachment hearings, compared with those 46 years ago. Greenfield noted Americans seemed to be more involved and informed about the issues at stake, during Watergate -- and that they seemed to understand readily how Nixon had abused his office. More of an effort will be needed to 'sell' impeachment to Americans in 2019, Greenfield thought.

_____________________________________

I'm certain the hearings will lead to Articles of Impeachment in the Democratically-controlled House, but (my opinion) they will die in the Senate -- probably after an abbreviated trial; McConnell has already indicated what the result will be. After, there will be protests and civil disobedience (watch carefully how Trump and the government he owns will respond, as a preview of what may happen after the 2020 election).

Then, we'll head to the election. If the Republican attempts to confuse and obfuscate are successful; if the Democrats can't coalesce, and field a strong candidate; if our voting isn't secure against tampering; if voter suppression in key districts is successful... short of an act of god, America could end up with another 1,640 Days Of Trump.

There won't be a second attempt at Impeachment; the majority of Americans will be stunned, dispirited, and "sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science." (Winston Churchill; June, 1940)

I'm also reminded of a quote by lawyer and philosopher, Joseph De Maistre, in 1811: "In a democracy, people get the leaders they deserve."

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Let's put on our tinfoil hats... Trump loses, and refuses to concede, saying the results are "fake news". He asks "very good people" to bring their guns and come to Washington DC to "protect your president". The result would look very much like the confusion in a banana, or central African, republic as the government disintegrates.

Another possibility: if Trump loses the 2020 election and is replaced by a Democrat, the current "Cold Civil War" in America could turn hot:  asymmetrical warfare by rightist, white supremacist militias demanding -- something -- would likewise end in a state of emergency, a quasi-guerrilla war, endless paranoia and heightened surveillance.

If these circumstances become dire enough, other actors may step in. The military is one possibility, but more likely is a cabal of 'christians', backed by elements of a private corporate militia, might decide that god has called them to take control of America, end the sin, and bring the nation to His judgement and the path of righteousness. These actors are the best organized, best resourced group to commit treason on the scale necessary to succeed -- and, they believe they answer only to god.

There are scenarios, of course, where the Good Guys win, and America appears to have been 'saved'. Unfortunately, Fox and the rest of the Rightist echo chamber will continue pumping sewage; a Trump loss will make 'The Base' apoplectic, and right-wing violence will increase.

Any Left political leader elected to the Presidency will find it hard to govern in as fractured a nation as America is in the second decade of the 21st century.

_________________________________

Before you completely laugh off the possibility of a Republic of Gilead option for America's future, please consider these two news items:

1.)  The Ohio State Legislature has passed House Bill 164, the “Student Religious Liberties Act.” Under this law, students can’t be penalized if their work is scientifically inaccurate, as long as their reasoning is based on their religious beliefs.

If a public school student turns in a class assignment stating the earth is only 10,000 years old, if it's based on their religious belief, the student cannot be given a failing grade for the question.

The Bill also requires:

• Public schools to give students the same access to facilities as provided to secular groups, if they wish to meet for religious expression;
• Removing a provision that allows school districts to limit religious expression to lunch periods or other non-instructional times;
• Allowing students to engage in religious expression before, during and after school hours to the same extent as any student in secular activities or expression;
• Prohibiting schools from restricting a student from engaging in religious expression in homework, artwork or other assignments.

2.)  Former Time and Los Angeles Times journalist Joel Stein appeared on the PBS News Hour on Thursday, November 14, to discuss his new book, "In Defense Of Elitism".

Stein spoke about visiting the town of Miami, Texas, and his observations that Americans there were not uninformed or ignorant, but very determined that their point of view was true and correct:

...They [residents of Miami, Texas] were very white, and they were very christian.... And their anger about what is going on was different from what I thought it would be. And I found out that what they're upset about is, they feel really discriminated against. These are the people that, if you asked, 'are christians discriminated against more than black people', they will say yes. 

...So what they have noticed is that white christians have less power than they did 10, 20, 30 years ago. And they're panicked about that kind of change. ...These people are voting for what they want for the country. I think it's a dangerous vision they have, in my opinion, but it's not ignorant.

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Reprint Heaven: The Bomb In The Backyard

 Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

(Originally from December 31, 2020. Hate being right about stuff [the 'sedition' I expected on 1/6], but have been just as wrong [Trumpo, having to shuffle into a Rightist twilight world].)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

____________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

______________________________

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Random Barking Reprint: Taliban

 Someone Else Today. You Tomorrow.

(Originally From March, 2015)

This bill is not about discrimination... [the purpose of the legislation] is very simply to empower individuals when they believe that actions of government impinge on their constitutional First Amendment freedom of religion... 
-- Indiana Governor Mark Pence, to ABC's George Stephanopolis

SB 101: Religious freedom restoration. Prohibits a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, unless the governmental entity can demonstrate that the burden: (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering the compelling governmental interest... Specifies that the religious freedom law applies to the implementation or application of a law regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity or official is a party to a proceeding ... Prohibits a governmental entity from substantially burdening a person's exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability... Specifies that the religious freedom law applies to the implementation or application of a law regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity or official is a party to a proceeding implementing or applying the law. Prohibits an applicant, employee, or former employee from pursuing certain causes of action against a private employer... (The RFRA, per the Indiana General Assembly)

I had intended to post a long rant on the perfidy and outright evil which characterize right-wing evangelism in America, but we'll just take those items as a given.

SB 101 isn't the first law passed in even recent memory allowing a minority in political control to enshrine their intolerance with the force of legislation -- in this case, evangelical christians (with a small "c") and their god-given (well, somebody's god, anyway) right to condemn -- in this case, LGBT Americans. And evangelicals love to condemn; being a True Believer seems to gives them the authority to do that, filled with Grace™ and love as they are.



And our right-wing evangelicals want to be the dominant authority -- over women, over children, over education and art and sexuality. Our evangelicals, like the Taliban, would like to enact their own version of religious law in America -- and religious law is not about uplifting and empowering the human spirit; it's based on Thou Shalt Not.

Religious law of whatever flavor (and there are few exceptions) is based on the fundamental precept that Humans are bad, stained from birth with evil, who must be carefully watched by the Elders and restricted from committing more acts which The Elders believe are affronts against (somebody's) god.

And (as is always true in less democratic forms of governing), the force of religious law always rests on ultimate punishment. Those who break these laws are whipped and disfigured, have parts of their bodies crudely amputated; are tortured until they confess their crimes; are stoned to death, beheaded, or burned at the stake. And the entire community will be made to watch, or may be required to participate in a ritualized killing... as a religious requirement. As an object lesson.

And nations ruled by True Believers and their edicts -- religious, or political -- always become bankrupt cultures; shabby, frightening, and ultimately murderous places.  Ask the Muslims of Serbia and Croatia. Ask the Tutsis of Rawanda. Ask the Rohingya of Myanmar. Ask the people of Cambodia. Ask the people of Afghanistan. Ask the Jews of Europe.

(A Dog has a long memory:  The last member of my family had been a born-again evangelical; for a time, they were associated with a tiny sect, organized around a self-proclaimed 'pastor'. After a long illness, my family member died; at the funeral, I watched the 'pastor' turn what was a moment of grief and remembrance into his opportunity to tell a captive audience, at length, that their time on earth was short and everyone in earshot and beyond was hellbound and they'd better get right with the lord. He shouted and strutted; he preened -- a True Believer in full, in love with the power that act of condemnation gave him -- power of passing judgement, and settling scores. 

(I've found some of him in every individual I've seen or experienced since who claims to be 'moved' by an allegedly higher power. And the so-called "laws" associated with whatever freakshow delusion they're pushing which allow them to do pretty much whatever they want. Yes, they'll make fine leaders of America, or whatever they'll call their New Kingdom.

(Ask the members of the People's Temple at Jonestown. Ask the Branch Davidians at Waco. You might even ask the members of 'christian' congregations across America, listening to speeches made by their 'pastors' condemning other people as less than human and feeling such putrescent drivel is not only just fine but righteous.) 

SB101 is not the last legislation of its kind that we'll see passed in America. And if an evangelical christian ever becomes President of the United States, we will see many more. The United States is, in the eyes of many, the country where political apathy is king; perhaps that's so.

If it is, then God help us all. In our torpor, ultimately we may find ourselves ruled by the same kind of strutting, egotistical monsters that a real pastor, Martin Niemöller, had in mind when he made the oft-quoted observation:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out. 

-- Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

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MEHR, MIT "ES GENUG IST !":

(Reuters) - Indiana's Republican Governor Mike Pence, responding to national outrage over the state's new Religious Freedom Restoration Act, said on Tuesday he will "fix" it to make clear businesses cannot use it to deny services to same-sex couples.

Pence, in a news conference, said the law he signed last week had been widely mischaracterized and "smeared" but he called on the state's Republican-controlled General Assembly to send a new law to his desk this week to fix it...

But Pence found support from conservatives including Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and possible presidential contenders Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio...

Critics say Indiana's law went too far in potentially allowing businesses to deny services to gay couples, because they could argue that doing so went against their deeply held beliefs.

Same-sex marriage became legal in Indiana under an appeals court ruling last year.

Religious Freedom Acts in Georgia and North Carolina appeared to stall this week after Indiana came under fire. But the Arkansas House of Representatives is expected to approve this week an RFRA that has already passed the state's Senate.

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