Showing posts with label You KNOW That. Show all posts
Showing posts with label You KNOW That. Show all posts

Sunday, August 20, 2023

The Adulation Of Crowds

 Point Of No Return 
Yet Another Long Howl

(Definition) The point in the flight of an aircraft, beyond which remaining fuel stores are insufficient for a return to a known starting point and predictable conditions.

[Trump] voters repeatedly [use] very violent, warlike rhetoric... [from] otherwise normal people, normal Americans... And it’s one person after the next – these aren’t just a few random individuals...
In October [2022 at a Trump rally] outside Mesa, Arizona… a man came up to me; he wouldn’t [speak] on camera … then said, “You seem like a nice guy. But you’re with NBC.” Then he said, “I just want you to know -- the corporate media are going to be among the first to go.” And it took me aback; I didn’t know how to respond; ‘Among the first to go’. 
...When Trump talks about revenge, and retribution – people are listening to him.
--  Vaughn Hilyard, NBC Reporter; “Fast Politics” podcast, 8/17/23 (Paraphrased)
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For a time I stood against the [ship's] rail watching the lights recede on a Europe in which I had spent all fifteen of my adult years... It had been a long time, but they had been happy years, personally, and for all people in Europe they had meaning and had borne hope -- until the war came and the Nazi blight and the hatred and the fraud and the political gangsterism and the murder and the massacre and the incredible intolerance and all the suffering and the starving and cold and the thud of a bomb blowing the people in a house to pieces, the thud of all the bombs blasting man's hope and decency. 
--  William L. Shirer; Returning to America from nazi Germany; "Berlin Diary" (1941)

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

-- Edgar Allan Poe, "City In The Sea" (1845)
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I want to talk about American society preparing for civil war. I have a gut instinct that something bad is coming; have felt that for some time. I'm not alone in having that premonition.

An extraordinary series of circumstances are in play. It may be avoidable, may not. This is only my opinion; feel free to disagree, but I didn't come lightly or easily to this conclusion. I just can't see a path out of the current circumstances. If you do, please speak up.

 Let me explain how I got here -- and apologies in advance: Brevity is not one of my virtues.
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And Only A Fool Would Say That

In the summer of 2021, Rightist 'anti-government' celebrity Ammon Bundy ran for governor of the state of Idaho. He publicly, falsely, accused a local hospital of participating in a child sex trafficking ring. You may have seen mention of that, and instantly dismissed it -- one more insane, baseless accusation by a Rightwing nutjob. 

The hospital filed a lawsuit for defamation. A jury found Bundy's accusations about the hospital a tissue of lies, as expected, and awarded it $52 million in damages. Bundy ignored the civil action -- to him, America’s judicial system is just part of a corrupt, illegitimate power structure. An Idaho court charged him with contempt, issued an arrest warrant, and Bundy went into hiding. 

A week ago, Bundy was arrested at a dinner for his son's local Idaho high school football team. He was released on August 14th, surprisingly on $10K bail, loudly declaiming, "this is absolutely a political prosecution.”
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That same day, eight hours later, a grand jury in Atlanta, Georgia, handed down the fourth criminal indictment against Donald Trump, and eighteen co-defendants, for running a 'criminal enterprise', conspiring to reverse Georgia's voting results in the 2020 election as part of a broader plot to keep Trump in power.

Trump's reaction was the same as Bundy's: the new indictment was a “political prosecution.” The Right-wing echo chamber responded, predictably; one example demanded Red-state, Republican legislatures defy the federal government. They should treat the Biden administration as “an occupying power.”

“If a judge tries to stop you, ignore them,” the pundit said. “Ignore them.”
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Won't You Sign In, Stranger

The shared narrative in these stories is, Government in America is illegitimate. Government has been infiltrated by Leftists -- Woke Democrats, Progressives; Communists; Blacks; Illegal Immigrants; LGBTQ+. All of them, they say, are our enemies.

The political and cultural Right in America do not think of the Left as their fellow citizens. We consider them to be people with whom we strongly disagree -- but still think of them as Americans.  They see us as evil. Some of them believe we are literal Demons. Not even human. Their enemies.

As their enemies, the Right owes us no common dignity or compassion. We need to be dominated or destroyed. There can be, they say, no compromise with evil. 


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Be Part Of The Brotherhood

One of The Last Of The Old Unit asks: Aren't you demonizing the Right?  It's a fair point.

In America, the default Left position in a discussion is, criticize the behavior or the opinion, not the person.  Having a different, even an uncomfortably different political opinion or lifestyle is not the result of something physically or psychologically wrong with them.

Most important, the current American Left doesn't threaten or commit violence to achieve a political outcome or make an ideological point. Historically, America has seen violence from the Left -- but in 2023, in the United States?  No. Anyone claiming it's happening now is a liar and a fool.
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The Right equates holding certain opinions or living certain lifestyles with being brainwashed, corrupted, dangerous; even insane: There's something wrong with the person. 'Woke leftists believe certain things', or 'People are gay because' there's something wrong with them

The only way the political and cultural Right in 2023 knows to win an argument is to "own" an opponent -- utterly degrade and dominate them. Unlike the Left, for whom compromise is a win-win, the Right believes win-lose is the only outcome. Compromise is gay. It's weak.

The Right also believes threats of violence, or actual violence, is acceptable. It's part of a testosterone, manly culture. It's why guns. The Right is comfortable with violence -- because their opponent, the enemy, is so fanatical, alien, threatening. We had to. They made us do it.

Talk to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ask Emmet Till, or Martin Luther King, or Fred Hampton. Ask residents of the Greenwood district of Tulsa in 1921.  Ask George Floyd. Ask Matthew Shepard.
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You Can Try To Run
As for the nazis; well, they're more like pigs than humans, if you think about it... I'm talking about real pigs: pink, overweight. Quite intelligent, certainly smarter than dogs... They do want what they want, and lots of it, and right away, and then when they get it they're happy. Blissful.

 -- Alan Furst, Dark Star (Paraphrased), 1991
We lived through Donald J. Trump for roughly five years. We watched as he blew past every governmental, presidential norm like a schoolyard bully (Yeah? Yeah? So I stole! So I'm fuckin' with ya! Ya gonna do somethin' to me, huh, punk?). 

He claimed the 2020 election had been stolen; that there was "massive voter fraud" (but had no proof, since it was a lie), and tried to strongarm state officials into falsifying the actual vote counts in his favor. He kept highly classified information after leaving office for purposes that are still not clear, obstructed government efforts to retrieve it, then tried to cover up the obstruction. 

Trump's first wife, Ivana, died and was cremated -- yet Trump placed the urn in a heavy, expensive casket, buried it near a tee-off spot on his Bedminster, NJ golf course -- then ignored it; the grave is overgrown and unkempt today; barely recognizable. 

While in the White House, Trump and his children leveraged their positions to make (at least tens of) Millions. The Trumps used the White House, the presidency, America, like a pay toilet they would never have to clean. 

Never has an American President been elected to office and openly, brazenly, engaged in questionable and even criminal conduct for profit, that he would be impeached twice; that he lied, pathologically and outrageously, multiple times each day that he was in office. But, we're not crazy -- all this did happen.  We were here; we all saw it.  And, he is running for the 2024 GOP nomination for President.

It feels like an incredible moment in America; like living in an excruciating horror / comedy film by F.W. Murnau, all Schadenfreudisch humor and razor blades, released at the 'Gloria-Palast' midnight show in Berlin on January 29, 1933. How did we come to be here?

And Trump is still in our faces: Did'ya miss me yet?


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Any World That I'm Welcome To

As background, and quickly: 

The current American Right really began after Reagan's FCC eliminated the Fairness Doctrine in 1984. Right-wing talk radio appeared almost immediately with Rush Limbaugh. He wasn't a William F. Buckley, having a polite dialogue with the Left to win on points; he wanted confrontation. He wanted his audience in a constant state of outrage. He wanted to taunt, insult and bait Liberals, on-air -- to his fan's delight.

"We Are At War With Our Own Government": Limbaugh, January 9, 2010

Limbaugh's program was syndicated in 1988, spawning imitators and competitors; his audience grew exponentially. His syndicators charged advertising rates Limbaugh once described as "confiscatory"; this made Limbaugh rich. He became a political force in the Right-wing world.


That business model was attractive to another Right-wing bully, Rupert Murdoch -- who had already been using it in the UK and Australia. He teamed with Roger Ailes (Nixon's former campaign TV consultant) to tap into the same demographic as Limbaugh, but via cable television. Ailes gave Murdoch an entry to America's political Right-wing world; Fox opened in 1996. Everyone knows what Fox is.

In the early 2000's, digital social media appeared -- Yahoo; Facebook; Google; Twitter -- all designed around users being scored on popularity. With smartphones and mobile apps, in less than a decade Americans were constantly connecting: tweeting, liking (or, not liking) each other; 'sharing' -- new methods to campaign, connect with, organize voters -- and, if not well monitored, to manipulate public opinion.
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When The Razor Boy Comes
There was a fever over the land...  Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow; fear of our neighbors; and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us... "There are devils among us... Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed."

-- Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster); Judgement At Nuremberg (1961)
By 2016, the Republican party was addicted to grievance politics. It was the lever to unify the American Right. Not since Nixon in 1968 had the GOP electorate been so energized -- and, they were angry. No surprise -- Limbaugh and Fox had broadcast an unending river of propaganda for thirty years. An entire generation in America had grown up on a diet of lies, dreaming of revenge. 

The Base believed lies over data-driven fact. They only trusted information spoon-fed by right-wing radio and the Murdochs. Each new 'revelation', every fresh, manufactured outrage was eagerly shared and reinforced in Facebook groups, on Twitter, in private chat rooms. 

The world created by Fox and Limbaugh became more concrete, more 'real' than events in their actual lives. Mainstream news reporting, even scientific fact, was rejected as lies from an illegitimate government and liberal-dominated media.  It was a closed, negative-feedback loop.
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The problem with creating an ever-rising stream of paranoia, outrage, anger; the constant references to an End Times, apocalyptic showdown with the enemies -- is that a time must come when all of it is resolved. If you keep promising a final, Great Cleansing to settle all scores, where the demons are made to pay -- then you have to deliver. All that crazy bullshit you've been talking had better be real. 

It's a classic formula in political revolutions: The leaders are pushed by their mob of supporters to take ever-more radical action -- otherwise, the mob might turn on them. The American Right's political leaders were riding a tiger which they had raised from a cub. And it was hungry. 
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Nothing mattered but Winning, and Owning the Libs. The GOP was driven by a Red Meat community that waited, primed, for a populist demagogue to lead them to that apocalyptic climax with the enemies.

Then they got one.
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A Man Of My Mind Can Do Anything


Donald Trump is the personification, the front man for America's Right wing. He is the reason America is five minutes away from a national crisis it may not survive intact. And he is loving every minute of it.

Some may have dropped out of his base. But the majority of Maga country stands by him. They identify with Trump. They believe charges against him are manufactured. They believe the narrative: It's all a lie, created by our enemies; the illegitimate deep state. Trump, like them, is just another victim. 

The classic example of Trump's relationship with the Base has been QAnon: appearing on the 4chan platform in October 2017, "Q" claimed to be a power structure insider who posted hints and cryptic messages -- the world really was run by a massive global conspiracy, of pedophiles. And all the enemies were in on it. 

Most important: President Trump knew. He had been chosen, by god, to confront this great, mother of all conspiracies, in a climactic battle of good and evil; to bring light and healing and truth. He was just biding his time -- and his True MAGA Followers would join him, play their part. Be ready for orders, the messages said; The Storm Is Coming. Be vigilant; be true. Wait for the word. 

The Faithful wait for the word to this day.
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Trump says openly that when he returns to the presidency, he will destroy the deep state. There's even a plan, 950 pages long, prepared by Koch-funded consultants and Federalist Society lawyers, entitled 'Project 2025'. It is meant to destroy the framework of American Constitutional government. This is a goal of the political and cultural Right.

Trump has no real policy or program to benefit the American people. His top-of-mind consideration is becoming Leader again, so that he can use raw power to support a lavish lifestyle, and extract revenge. He wants to be feared, and loved: The King Of The World. And the MAGA Base loves it. This spring, Trump told CPAC convention-goers, "I am your justice -- I am your retribution." 

Every time he tosses another slur, another insult at the judges and prosecutors bringing him to justice, he's throwing down the gauntlet: Try to put me in jail, he's saying; just try. It's a massive game of Chicken, daring them to incarcerate him -- so his Believers will rise to his defense. They're just waiting for the word.

It's not improbable that triggering an insurrection to topple the American government has passed through Trump's mind. But, who knows. The next 15 months, or less, for Trump is literally about his survival. His decision-making is likely to be affected by that single perspective.
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King Of The World

One way or another, Trump has everything to lose. He either wins the presidency, pardons himself / escapes state charges in Georgia and elsewhere, or he likely goes to prison. 

There are many twists and turns between now and an early November day in 2024. Many things can happen -- but the basic possibilities appear to be:
  • Trump dies during GOP primary season (and the world mourns)
    • GOP finds another candidate
        • << Game Over / Trump >>
  • Trump faces incarceration for any reason before / during GOP primaries
    • He calls for help from the Maga faithful; they show up, with guns
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
    • [Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
  • Trump loses the GOP primaries to a challenger
    • Challenger wins General Election; pardons Trump
      • Challenger executes Project 2025
        • <<  Game Over / America >>
    • Challenger loses General Election
      • [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
  • Trump wins the primaries; the GOP nominates him
    • Faces incarceration for any reason before General Election
      • He calls for help from the Maga faithful; they show up, with guns
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
      • [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
    • Trump loses the General Election
      • He contests; Maga faithful protest. Ugly, but gradually recedes
        • << Game Over / Trump >>
      • Trump's legal escapades end in prison
        • << Game Over / Trump >>
      • Trump flees; goes into exile (Russia, Hungary)
        • << Game Over / Trump >>
      • [Maga Revolt / Flynn / Bannon / Prince / 'christian' coup attempt]
        • (Not good - anyone's guess where this ends)
    • Trump wins the 2024 General Election (lawfully, or not)
      • He executes Project 2025
        • <<  Game Over / America >>
    • Trump wins 2024 General Election but dies before Inauguration
      • Trump's VP executes Project 2025
        • << Game Over / America >>
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I Fear The Monkey In Your Soul

Once again: The constant promise of a final, Great Cleansing to destroy the enemies and demons that plague America, where they are made to pay (and maybe Jesus will even make a guest appearance with Trump!), keeps the faithful constantly on edge, waiting for The Word.

A Maga Revolt would not be a replay of Fort Sumpter or the Whiskey Rebellion, or even January 6th. It might be a 'patriot militia' taking control of important infrastructure. It could be asymmetric warfare, IEDs, snipers; destruction of power substations; truck bombs, like Oklahoma City. It could go on for a long time.

At some point, an Ammon Bundy-type will appear and declare a portion of some state as 'Sovereign territory', the Republic Of Christ Church, or some such bullshit. Vladimir Putin announces the Russian Federation diplomatically recognizes the new "breakaway republic", offering military assistance and a warning "not to interfere with the progress of democracy". North Korea and Iran follow suit. 

Twenty years ago, these scenarios were laughable. That they're being considered by security analysts and risk consultants today should tell you just how serious our situation is.
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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).  Because we know how the story will end, the leitmotif of nostalgia we sense in the background is really the collective despair of survivors who lost everything familiar, an entire frame of reference for living.

But we don't know the next chapters in this story. No one knows how it ends. The majority of people reading this (myself, three other people, and a giant parakeet) will probably be around to find out. But it doesn't prevent any of us, feeling some massive change is coming, from already feeling nostalgic; that we may be about to lose the trusted and safe and familiar.

Many people will say this -- but the election to come will actually determine whether the American Experiment continues, or ends at 11:59:59 AM EST on January 21, 2025. It isn't hyperbole. 

What they don't say is, this election will be just one more battle. Even if the Democrats win, the struggle is far from over. For over thirty years, the American political and cultural Right has been developing a generational project to pack the courts, suppress voting; roll America back.

When we are at a crossroads of climate deterioration, when collaboration and cooperation may be the only things that save us as a species: the only thing the Right can do is plan on how to Own the Libs, to take more for themselves -- and fuck the Peasantry: that's us, by the way.

And to make this work, they are willing to do anything -- sacrifice their honor, their sacred bonds of love and fellowship; the basic tenets of common decency -- for this Trump person. This one truth about our current situation never ceases to amaze me; that they will give it all up... for that.

What happens will depend on how far the Right is willing to go -- how vicious, how violent, how delusional they can be. And on what we're willing to do to stop them.
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He who writes this book, in which hate is not hidden, was formerly a pacifist...For him no disillusionment was ever greater or more sudden. It struck with such violence, that he thought himself no longer the same man. And yet, as it seems to him in this state of hatred, that his conscience becomes diminished -- he dedicates these pages, with emotion, to the man he used to be.

--  Emile Verhaeren, Belgian Poet; Dedicating a book of his poems to his former self, 1915
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Sunday, November 6, 2022

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. 
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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.
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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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Friday, December 17, 2021

Reprint Heaven: Nadir

 Bottom Of The Batting Order

(This, from December 20, 2011, almost a decade ago. These were the Things happening, five years before the rise of the waddling, lying grifter. 

(How far you feel we have moved on as a society from the issues reported in 2011 is subjective. But it is the anniversary of the assumption of the waddling liar's unrequited love, Kim Jong Jong-Jong.)

 

This Chart Answers The Musical Question, "What Percentage Of All U.S. Corporate Profits Is Generated By The Financial Sector?" Answer? "Their Satanic Majesties Request", Or 26%.

   

...And This One Tracks Financial 'Industry' Profit As Percentage Of Overall GDP. (Source: Arbor Research, via Big Picture) Tonight at sundown (aside from its being the second night of Hanukkah), the Winter Solstice will begin. This is physically the longest night of the solar year, the Nadir, the lowest point in a cycle of one orbit of the planet around the sun. As a result, you'd expect the kind of mutant freakshow we're seeing these days.
  • Republicans Continue Countdown To Self-Detonation: Bob Schaeffer, CBS News Washington correspondent since the Late Cretaceous Period, noted in last night's CBS Evening News that the current (i.e., most recent) impasse in Congress is a result of "both sides trying to undermine each other". On the BBC's American version of the evening news, Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich (and former BFF prior associate of Citicorp) commented in a segment on the effect to those living on unemployment of having benefits suddenly removed or slashed, "I try hard not to be partisan, but the Republican party seems to be the one" creating the current deadlock. Some Left Blogistan sites (e.g., TPM) report that, as a result of the refusal of the Rethug-dominated House to pass a Senate bill that would extend (by two months) both a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, President Obama's job approval ratings have become more positive. TPM reported 46.6% Approval vs. 48% Disapproval -- "There’s now a lot of evidence that the President’s approval numbers are rising after bottoming out at the end of the summer after the debt deal debacle," Josh Marshall wrote. "But they’re rising toward an almost total polarization.
  • "50% for, 50% against. Very little middle ground." 
  • Your New Stratoliner: The One Per Cent, And Their Hats One interesting note: Little Rupert's Wall Street Journal, the "Tits 'n Tattle" scandal sheet of Rupert's empire for the financial class, ran an editorial criticizing Republicans for blocking the two-month extension in the House -- and mostly criticizing it as a poor tactic, rather than for the effect it would have on taxpayers and unemployed Americans. Heaven forbid that Little Rupert or Fat Roger would give a damn about the people they treat with such barely-disguised contempt. Rupert, that crafty ol' Aussie, is sending America's Rightist politicians a message: I Am Not Amused. Get Your Shit Together
  • But as much as he criticizes them, he has to support the Rethugs, and his NewsCorp will have to get behind whichever candidate, drooling, brain-dead and barking, it hoists for president in 2012. So, whatever scribbles are published on the editorial page of the WSJ tabloid don't really matter. Little Rupert is as much a hostage of a self-destructing political party as the Rethugs are hostage to their addictive love for Little Rupert's propaganda. 
  •   MEHR: Not that long ago, the House Minority Whip, Stenny Hoyer walked to the floor of the House Of Representatives, and asked the Speaker Pro Temp, Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania (standing in for President Boner), to grant "unanimous consent" for an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill the Rethugs deep-sixed yesterday. House Republicans on the Hill were with Speaker Boner at a photo-op. Meanwhile, as Hoyer made his request to the Speaker's chair on the House floor, Fitzpatrick simply ignored Hoyer and walked away... all broadcast on CSPAN. "As you walk off the floor, Mr. Speaker," Hoyer said to Fitzgerald's back, "You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class tax payers, the unemployed, and very frankly as well from those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors — 48 million senior citizens.” In and of itself, business as usual in the United States Congress. But, providing the Democratic party with a telling image of Rethugs who don't give two hoots about The People, and which can be rebroadcast over and over and over? Priceless.
  • Global Banking Structure Aims Free Money Nozzle At European Banks: The European Central Bank has loaned a massive 489 billion Euros ($639 billion US) to over five hundred European banks, at one per cent interest, for what the War Criminal Post reported as "an exceptionally long period of three years" in the ongoing attempt to keep the EU from dissolving into a bad fusion between "Apocalypse Now" and "Mr. Hulot Opens A Hedge Fund". It was the biggest infusion of credit by the European Central Bank in the 13-year history of the Euro; in a response I think is best termed 'irrational exuberance', the DJIA rose over 330 points. The ECB's move allows its client banks to borrow money, essentially, for free: 1 Billion Euros borrowed can become loans, and any interest charged on those loans above one per cent is pure profit. The problem is, these loans will act as life support for some financial players whose books are sagging with toxic debts that these ECB credit lines can't repair; the amounts of debt are too huge. It's just another means of postponing the Day O' Reckoning, kicking the can down a road paved with good intentions. But, hey; Little Angela's happy. So, s'all good. Right?
  • Rethugs Say, VOTE FOR PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER! Replicating the internal epic battles within the Rethug, Red-State World (something like Rodan vs. Monster Zero), it appears that Thugs will nominate Mitzy Perry Grand TurtleBear Ru Paul Mitzy Randyman Perry Ru Paul "Somebody Else" as their candidate for president in 2012. No kidding; a poll recently reported by CBS showed Republicans pretty evenly split between three potential candidates, so far: Romney and Gingrich, and "Somebody Else". It's a ringing, star-spangled endorsement of -- well, somebody. A write-in candidate who embodies true, conservative principles, like Lil' Bernie Madoff, or William Stafford, or the Zombified Ronald Wilson Rayguns-ah. The ever-tasteful Alicublog reports that the Special Bus Kidz at RedState are enthusiastically arguing in favor of... a Rick Perry candidacy.
Fellas, there's probably a robot somewhere that would govern in the most consistently conservative fashion -- it wouldn't be hard to program; just get it to yell "More tax breaks for the wealthy!" and "I hates me a faggot!" at intervals, and to fart loudly when France or higher education is mentioned -- but it doesn't mean anything unless you can get people to vote for it. 

 ...Perry makes George W. Bush look like Pericles. Nobody, but nobody, is praying, "Oh Lord, send us someone just like George W. Bush, only stupider." Just the other day... Perry misread Kim Jong Il as "Kim Jong the Second". That's like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie. Most observers... have moved on to wondering if Perry can tie a shoelace without coaching.

I enjoy flailing, particularly when it reinforces stereotypes I have of conservatives as retrograde, Troglodyte morons, beating each other bloody with Wal-Mart shopping bags filled with The Collected Works Of Ronald Rayguns: "They fought so fiercely because the stakes were so small". Keep it up!
  • Tubby Twentysomething Becomes New Leader Of Starving, Heavily Armed North Korea: A few days ago, this short, pudgy guy with weird hair and glasses died -- some say on a train: Kim Jong Il, ruler of the upper half of the Korean peninsula and a leader of a totalitarian, repressive state... and was reportedly someone who loved dogs and western porn, and really in his heart was kinda, sort of, a good guy. "The Kim Nobody Knew". His twenty-something son, Kim Jong Fat Boy, short, pudgy, with a very bad haircut who reportedly likes dogs, food and western porn, and in his heart is kind of a good guy, replaced him. 
  • The CIA apparently had no idea that Kim Jong 2 had passed away until it was announced by North Korea's official media (there is no other kind). There immediately commenced massive (and in the last Stalinst, cult-of-personality culture on the planet, we mean massive) shows of public grieving. Thousands gathered publicly to cry and cry and rend their hair and fall weeping on the pavement, each attempting to outdo everyone else to show how sad they are that a totalitarian freak, who wore shoes with three-inch lifts and created policies resulting in starvation of his people and nuclear weapons, was dead. Kim Jong Well went to see his father lying in state, bowed without much expression, then reportedly went for pizza and some XBox action.
There's one other thing about The Winter solstice to keep in mind. This is the last of the old solar year, the bottom of the wheel, the Appogeian, farthest point out in Earth's orbital motion. The planetary pole is tilted back; this is the longest period of darkness in a full turn around the sun. 

 And from midnight tonight, the Days will become incrementally longer, the nights shorter. From this long night we will all enter what I like to think of as The Season Of Rising Light -- from one point of view, the darkness being reduced a degree at a time, each day forward, until the top of the wheel, the Apex, next June. And while waiting for someone to start singing "Here Comes The Sun", in the meantime, we'll still have the unfolding, everlasting clown show to watch.
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Auf Nicht Wiedersehen

Ende: Slipping Anchor

"First and foremost, I’m a businessman. My first goal is to attract the largest audience possible so I can charge confiscatory ad rates. I happen to have great entertainment skills, but that enables me to sell airtime.” Then he added -- as if he had to after a rare moment of honesty -- "But in my heart and soul, I know I have become the intellectual engine of the conservative movement."
John McManus, "The Flap Over Limbaugh", New American, April 2009

   

Lard Boy, 70, racist homophobic misogynistic junkie and self-described shill "intellectual engine" for America's Rightist movement, is dead. He was famous for publicly stoking political and racial hatred, spreading lies, and behaving like a high school bully for nearly thirty years. 

He was the most successful hate-monger on radio, after the end of the Fairness Doctrine under Reagan in 1984. Limbaugh used his huge soapbox -- not to build positive connections between people in service of a public good, but to pour permeating, corrosive dialogue into the culture.

Beginning in 1988, Limbaugh helped to shape the audience for Rupert Murdoch's Fox, which debuted in 1996. Lil' Rupert could not have been as successful, quickly, without Limbaugh creating a ready-made market for the hatred and lies the Murdochs push daily.
“You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray [assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”
He mocked people, insulted them, belittled them on air.  And from that soapbox, he lied, or passed along lies pushed by others. He used his position to attack public figures whose politics he disliked (even other conservatives who weren't Toeing the Limbaugh line), which would guarantee they received more hate mail and threats to their personal safety. 

He reveled and took pleasure in being able to affect others in a negative way from the safe remove of a broadcast studio, like the bully he was.

To an African American female caller: "Take that bone out of your nose and call me back”.  To an immigrant:  “You’re a foreigner. You shut your mouth or you get out.”

Limbaugh was vain, morally and ethically crippled. He was a coward. His legacy is utterly negative, without a shred of redeeming behavior. And he was no stranger to flirting with sedition, even secession.

   
This government is governing against its own citizens. This president and his party are governing against us. We are at war with our own President, we are at war with our own government. Limbaugh; January 9, 2010

 
Blimp's End: 'Tucked In With A Spade' ; the obituary in Little Rupert's papers
("Giant Of The Age Passes - And The World Mourns").

He's dead. He was who and what he was. He was responsible for what he did.  I am not unhappy he's gone. If that's upsetting to you, so be it.



Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Is It Possible These Parades Are The Same

 4:58 PM PST (7:58 EST)

We watch the returns as they come in. Is it "liberation"? It is "Triumph Des Willens"?

The conclusion of this night will result in our playing the Second Movement of  Brahms's A German Requiem, or something suitably John Phillips Sousa-like

Aus Funf / Acht-und-Dreizig dotcom, where they are being suitably cautious. Let's wait and see!

According to our final presidential forecast, Pennsylvania is the most likely tipping-point state, and a lot of Biden’s chances in the Electoral College hinge on what happens in the Keystone State. He leads Trump there by about 5 points in our polling average, but it’s not as large a margin as Biden might like.

Last week, we gamed out what would happen if Biden lost Pennsylvania but won other Midwestern states like Wisconsin. (...there’s no clear Plan B for Biden.) ...

Unless Trump or Biden has a really good night ... it’s pretty unlikely, though, that either of them will hit the 270 electoral votes needed to win by the end of the night. That doesn’t necessarily mean, though, that we won’t have a pretty good idea of who won. 

It’s all going to come down to how close some of the key battleground races are and whether a representative share of the vote can be reported, which won’t always be possible given the challenges of the pandemic. We’re tracking when we expect results in every state.
Please to keep this in mind as we go forward. 
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5:33 PM PST (8:33 PM EST)

PBS' Oh-So-Neutral News Hour has a number of political analysts commenting as the results come in -- including Eliana Johnson, 'Editor-In-Chief' of the Washington Free Beacon.

Per The Atlantic, the Beacon's founder "told Politico ... 'Andrew Breitbart pioneered the new approach. His websites were dedicated, impassioned, and broke news. Glenn Beck exposed White House czar Van Jones's radical, 9/11-Truth past. Guerilla journalist James O'Keefe performed sting operations that led to ACORN, Planned Parenthood, and NPR having very bad days. Tucker Carlson's website, The Daily Caller, published excerpts ... which showed liberal writers coordinating their party line.' " 

Why does PBS legitimize a mouthpiece for the kind of lying, bullshit propaganda of an O'Keefe or Carlson? These people are apologists for white supremacists -- the White Supremacist In Chief, primarily. Why feed them; why allow anyone to think 'The Beacon' has as much gravitas as a legitimate new organization? It's like claiming a Kangaroo is an Ostrich.

And, Arkansas projected for Trumpo The Murder Clown. Also, Tom Cotton, racist who self-copulates, is reelected. Of course he is.
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6:35 PM PST (9:35 PM EST)

Early votes continue to come in, and states are being counted and called, as if it was any other national election. Trumpo has said he doesn't intend to claim victory at his Whitey Haus party, but he lies.  In the 'battleground' 'tossup' states like Pennsylvania, Florida; Michigan, Arizona, there is little information.

It seems clear that Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin will be the states which decide this public contest.  However, in looking at Pennsylvania, various county elections commissioners are saying they will not be declaring just an initial wave of vote counts until roughly midnight Eastern time (9:00 PM Pacific time, or two-and-a-half hours away). Another wave of vote tallies will be reported sometime tomorrow morning -- but no final counts.

Colorado called for Biden, along with Maryland and Vermont. A number of pundits are first saying Biden has done well in places, then hedging and saying oh it's very close; so close. Huh.

Eliana Johnson, who hearts James O'Keefe and Glamorous Glenny Beck, chimes in; it's so warm and comforting that a True Trumper who drinks Flavor-Aid straight from the Washtub In Front Of The Pavilion tells us what American voters believe and want.

Oh; Madison Carlson in North Carolina, who lied about his military service and turned buying a home with a medical settlement into being a "real estate investor", has been elected to the House of Representatives.  Likewise, Marjorie Taylor Greene -- who hearts QAnon and believes the universe is shaped like a burrito, and that there should be tests for witchcraft by dunking women in ponds, also won in Georgia for a House seat.

Of course they have. If you live in other countries, I don't recommend going to North Carolina or Georgia.
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7:05 PM PST (10:05 PM EST)

Jamie Harrison has been declared to have lost in his bid to unseat "Lady G" Lindsey Graham from his senate seat in South Carolina. Harrison's campaign spent over $50 Million, and had seemed very close in polls for weeks.  We will still have to endure the nasty, waspish bitch that Graham is.

John Cornyn, a complete asshole, will return to the Senate from Texas.  Ah, Texas.  And In Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones is beaten by Republican Tommy Tubberville. 

And, Trumpo The Murder Clown declared the winner in Kansas.  North Carolina, with 88% of the expected vote counted, is 49% Trump, 49% Biden.  

It is announced that 91% of the projected total votes in Florida have been counted -- Trump 51%,  Biden 48%.

In Michigan, with 32% of the votes counted -- 56% Trump, 42% Biden.

In Wisconsin, with 38% of the expected votes -- 51% Trump; Biden 42%.
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7:50 PM PST (10:50 PM EST)

Not good news:  I am hearing analysts on the major mainstream media outlets (CBS; MSNBC; PBS; ABC) all reporting that their "sources in the Biden campaign" are 'very concerned' about Day-Of vote totals in key states. There does not seem to be a 'Blue Wave' occurring, or anything like it.

The map of the US they're referring to is appearing predominantly Red, at the moment -- states trending for Trump. As many expected, this contest really does seem to hinge on how the voting goes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Counting all votes in these states will not be accomplished tonight, or even tomorrow.

I am toying with the idea of watching two back-to-back Battlestar Galactica episodes, then going to bed; I have a 6AM meeting and that's just the start of my day.
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Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

9:00 PM PST (Midnight, EST)

The talk from last week, even earlier today, of a Democratic landslide, a repudiation of Trump and Trumpism, hasn't materialized.  Trump is outperforming his 2016 efforts -- meaning more Crackers are voting for him in greater percentages than four years ago -- in key districts of the states he is projected to carry.

ABC News has chose some name personas to act as commentators and analysts -- Chris Christie and Rahm Emanuel, for example.  Christie (who helped prep Trump for his debates with Biden, and was probably infected with Covid by The Leader) says flatly that the Republicans' ground game is better, and that their polling and estimates are based on better methodology than the Democrats'. The more their estimates prove true, the more they will believe they can win: Simple.

Emanuel says well, in states where Trump is leading, there are still Democratic-stronghold areas to be counted and those numbers could tip the scales to Biden -- but while Christie seems confident, Emanuel's reasoning feels hollow. He could still be right, but I sense worry. This night is not unfolding the way the Democrats expected.

One analyst chimed in to say that in Michigan, the current totals showing Trump with a lead will change; she noted the current numbers are only today's in-person-vote totals. No mail-in ballots have been tallied yet, and Democrats traditionally do well with them. While that was a more fact-based assertion than Emanuel's, she didn't seem entirely convinced by her own argument.

Again, everything seems to be coming down to one, or two states. Biden has 192 Electoral Votes at this point (based on estimates, not officially-certified vote totals) to Trump's 118.  It takes 270 to win.

Pennsylvania has some 2.5 million mail-in ballots to count, statewide. In Philadelphia, it was announced by elections commissioners there that they are only processing some 10,000 an hour, and that they were suspending the count until tomorrow morning in that urban county. Partly, a labor issue, but also a recognition that getting the entire state's vote total accounted for will take time.
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10:15 PM PST (1:15 AM EST)

Biden appeared in Wilmington, Delaware, and gave a short 'rally-the-troops' speech, saying "we're very confident" that he will win the election, and lauded his supporters for their patience. 

Almost immediately afterwards, Iowa and Florida were called for Trump. Texas has been declared 'likely'. Lindsey Graham, in the spirit of conciliation, accepted his challenger's concession by saying "all the money from New York and California" contributed to the Democrats yielded a "poor return on investment". 

Then, it was announced on PBS that Trump was Tweeting as Biden spoke: 
"We are up BIG but they are trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do that. Votes cannot be cast after the polls are closed!" 
Yamiche Alcindor, who reported Trump's comment, referred to his comments as "baseless... offered no evidence" and similar to his comments earlier this year that the 'only way they can win is if the election is rigged'.  Trump's staff announced that he, too would speak to the nation soon.

Just can't wait.
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11:05 PM PDT (2:05 AM EST, November 4, 2020)

The Mad King will speak from a podium in the East Room of the Whitey Haus, in front of a background of American flags. Trumpo threw a poll-watching party there tonight for some 400 guests, but has not been seen. Apparently he's been meeting with Attorney General Barr and 'economic advisors' -- but Vice-President Pence is not there, which some think is notable. The guests reportedly have not been wearing masks; the media has to depend on a few pool reporters to share information on the soiree, and otherwise have no idea who is attending.

Trumpo keeps everyone waiting. That seems to be a thing with dictators; they never appear on time, because they are in control. You can wait. I'm tuned to CBS, and their reporters and analysts are filling in the time talking about control of the Senate. Wait wait wait.

There are, we are told, "millions of ballots in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that have [still] not been counted" and that elections volunteers are working through the night; a testament to our Democracy.
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11:20 PM PST (2:20 AM EST, November 4, 2020)

Junior, Eric, Ivanka walk in; a theatrical announcement, as if this was a game show, and Trumpo the Murder Clown appears to cheers and "Hail to the Chief".

"... A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise [Trump voters] and we will not stand for it... we were getting ready for a big celebration, and it was just called off! We were set to get outside and celebrate... to support our movement... The returns came in, 'they're never gonna catch us; they can't catch us'... and we don't need all the states; Arizona; we didn't need it, okay..."

He rambles. He claims they are "winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes... we're up by 690,000 votes... with 64% of the votes coming in, it's impossible to catch us..."

He goes on. The election "is off... they knew they couldn't win, so they went to court-- did I tell you this Newt, that's what they would do?... all of a sudden things, just stopped. This is a fraud on the American public... and we did win this election... We will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop..."

So, he did exactly what he said he wouldn't do (He lied. Big surprise). He's saying votes people cast that have not been counted will be contested as illegal. He spent half the time he spoke listing each state he has (apparently) won; and his message is that he believes he'd already won. 

He said it weeks ago: he has no intention of accepting the election, if not in his favor. He will be asking that all current counting of votes cease, and take it to the Supreme Court, where Amy Barrett is warming up in the bullpen.
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On PBS, some right-wing 'freelance journalist' chides viewers that all will be well, and that he doesn't think anything of how Trump speaks, and that no one takes it seriously. The system will work.

Bullshit.
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Monday, August 10, 2020

Random Barking: You Know That

Everybody Knows

...And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
         -- Leonard Cohen
Animals

We live in an anthropocentric world of social and political constructs, dominating the natural biosphere. That structure is composed of more layers than we can imagine, constantly interacting: a terrible beauty. 

We can't know how those layers interrelate with each other. Data and technology can reveal, even predict cause-and-effect interactions between some layers in the constructed world. But no one can have a god-view of the entire system. This makes a definite future difficult to predict.

As animals, we're hardwired for sensory input; every waking minute we navigate our constructed world, we take in information. We consider what we see as fact; or we reject it as false (it's not either/or; more a spectrum of relative value judgments). 

How we determine that is affected by our personal histories and emotional drivers -- and it's happening, for the most part, unconsciously, moment-to-moment.  And those emotional levers are notoriously easy to manipulate. Advertisers, social media oligarchs, megachurch 'pastors' and politicians know this.
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Factually, all this is as much as we can know about how we are as thinking animals and the world we are living in. It's an intentionally simplified description, but stops here -- where a pitch by carny barkers, cults, social media platforms or political parties normally begins.

There are religious and metaphysical perspectives, too. I make a joke out of having once met the Dalai Lama (asking if he'd seen Caddyshack), but I was able to pose another question: Was there one passage or observation which he felt summarized the teachings and the way of the Buddha? The Lama -- who never stopped smiling -- considered for a moment, then said, "Do your best."
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Complacency

None of our basic assumptions about America are complete or correct. We've mostly been content to live as resources and participants in a materialist culture, having The Good Life that the Promise Of America is supposed to provide. We've been drifting along on assumptions about what America is, what our national priorities are, where we as a society we should go. Not even the 2008 Recession shook us out of our complacency.

Before Covid, most Americans assumed America wasn't perfect, but things are way better than they were in the past. Economic and racial inequality takes a long time to address! 2008? Well, we came back from that (or, most did). As long as people could pay their way, America appeared to be a progressive society. 

Unless you're Black. Or Latino. Or Native American. Or Poor. Or an Immigrant. Or 'Other'. If so, then they already understood the High School Civics Class View of America was not based on their lives. They already understood what the knee on the back of George Floyd's neck felt like.

All of the metrics of the Pandemic have already been reported: the unemployed, the shuttered businesses; the evictions; the dead, the populations at risk. The Great Recession wasn't a mortal blow to America. But the Pandemic might be
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Future

When not talking about SARS-CoV2, my friends in America are focused on the November election. They see it in traditional terms: Either / Or.  They're the "Democrats" (or 'Progressive Independents'; or 'Left', anyway),  in opposition to "Republicans" or 'The Right'. They see the result of this contest as pivotal, a critical juncture; I agree. But the unspoken assumption is, Once Biden is elected, everything can go back to the way it was

This is based on the ideal that American society and culture really are progressive, egalitarian. My friends -- some of whom have children -- want a good outcome for our collective future. So do I... but I realize we're looking at our current state through different lenses.

They believe the fundamental layers of America -- our collective assumptions -- are real. That they are strong enough to see us through this crisis. That the rise of an armed, delusional Right, the revelations of bottomless greed and vulpine mendacity of The Wealthy; the absolutely chilling, child-sacrificing heartlessness of right-wing politicians, over just the past seven months, will disappear, swept away by a 'Blue Wave'. I feel those assumptions are laughably naive. 
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Curtain

America is everything in our memory and our lives tomorrow; but what we were taught are a fiction. This isn't a new revelation -- but for generations, only marginalized, ignored Americans have been saying it: that our national history is incomplete. It ignores and marginalizes Slaves; Native Americans; Women; Non-Christians; Immigrants; Commerce and War; Wealth and Inequality. 

But the most incomplete part of our national history is that there really is a One-One-Hundredth, a One-One-Thousandth of the One Per Cent who own the majority of everything worth having. With the exception of noveau riche newcomers like a Bezos or Gates, a Musk or Ellison or Zuckerberg, you never hear about the truly Rich.  They are behind a curtain, living and playing in places you will never hear about or see in photographs, let alone be allowed to enter. 

The history of politics has always been a struggle between the representatives of Our Wealthy, and those speaking for The People, to wrest concessions from the Rich on behalf of the rest of us.  Everybody knows there is one system for Them, and another for us. Since the Gilded Age, 150 years ago, this has never been made clearer in America as now. 

They care about their families first, then those in their class. Everyone else is only important relative to our usefulness to Their interests. Politicians, the judicial system; even laws are inconveniences, things to be manipulated. 

They view society not as a structure of cooperation, but a mechanisim created to satisfy their desires and further their interests. To Them, the notion of 'Freedom' does not include the visions of a John Lewis, Dr Martin Luther King, a Dietrich Bonhoffer or Mahatma Gandhi. It does not apply to you and me.

And, they absolutely do not care at all what happens to you.  When a Covid-19 vaccine is developed, it will be provided to Them, first, because they are The Best, and Our Owners. The rest of us will wait; some will die. 

If you say all this makes the wealthy sound like monsters, I won't disagree. They are.
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Savage

An opinion piece in today's WaPo notes that we are in a 'Pandemic Depression': Covid-19 has stressed all the fractures in our society at once -- racial, economic, gender; generational; political. But our past seven months of terror, suffering and cruelty were the result of the last four years of corrupt, incompetent authoritarian rule. 

And the Past four years were led by a Prologue: thirty-five years of right-wing talk radio and 'news': Limbaugh, Weiner, Murdoch; Sinclair, Mercer. Corporate media. The unbridled, savage expansion of personal wealth and societal power in the hands of the wealthy and conservative politicians, conservative judges. It will not vanish with a Democratic president. 

This is the malignancy which America's political right and Trump have bequeathed the country. It can't be walked back. We don't have the political cohesion to accomplish it. Republicans have shown themselves openly to be craven, ruinous opportunistic liars and toadies, and they will resist any change just to protect their bloodstained reputations. They are scum; no mistake.

But, let's be clear: Democrats are almost as corrupt as the Rethugs. Their campaigns are financed by the same wealth that pays the Right: it's equal-opportunity bribery. If our society isn't cohesive enough to heal our most serious divisions, the Democratic National Committee doesn't have the political will or desire. 

Many in the DNC want a return to Obama-era neoliberalism, the continuing march of globalism. Everything the way it was, with vaccines. Don't believe it? Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is being denied a speaking slot at the Democratic Convention. But, She Who Will Not Be Denied, Hillary, will speak. So will her shiny Bill-O. They will be the Voices Of Our Hopes.

At least the Republicans are more open about what they are.
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Dissonance

This is what Covid has done for us. It's made it easier to see and feel the weight of our collective cognitive dissonance around what America is. That the notion of race and social equality, getting better all the time, is a fiction. That what truly matters in America is how much money and influence you have, the color of your skin. 

For someone who's served, in more ways than one; taken oaths; to finally come to an understanding of what it is you'd been in love with is difficult. I'm not talking about some popularized 'woke' meme, adopting a perspective because it's Trending. It's a gut-level understanding that you've been wrong. My grandfather would have said: Du hast die Realität falsch verstanden; you have misjudged the reality around you. You're not sure where that takes you, but you're going to have to let it settle and live with it

Dashiel Hammett used to say that, when he came into a city, all he wanted to know was 'Who runs the cops?' Who are the real bosses? This is what we need to ask ourselves, going forward. It's the same question people ask in Putin's Russia, or Lukashenko's Belarus, Bolsonaro's Brazil, Orban's Hungary or Jinping's China. Who do we need to avoid, or bow to, just to keep living our lives?

The polite fiction of our country as egalitarian, a nation of laws, with two separate and different political parties offering a free choice of different perspectives, will continue until it becomes an encumbrance. Those of us who still have jobs will hang on to a vision of America as the freest place on earth, while watching Federal 'police' on the streets, rounding up the angry and the unruly and the hungry. 

Do Your Best.
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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Laugh It Up

Because Freedom

(From a long-ago March in a time before Trump and Disease, and a diseased Trump. Actually, this has nothing to do with Freedom. It is in fact my favorite joke, containing a willfully stupid grocer, a passive-aggressive waterfowl, and the tantalizing promise of nourishment.

(It's also a good general example of how The Universe treats us. It has a has a habit of returning, with the same questions, until we solve them -- and then hits us with a change-up at the end: Wow! Didn't see that coming!).

A LITTLE DUCK walks into a grocery store. He waddles up to the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"

The grocier thinks. "Um, no," he says finally.

The Little Duck looks up at him. " 'kay," he says, and goes away.

The next day, the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"   The grocier looks down at him; is this duck nuts? He was just in here!

"No!" the grocier says.  " 'kay," says the Little Duck, and he goes away.

The next day, the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any duck food?"   The grocier spins around, looks down at him and says, "NO! I told ya -- I gots NO DUCK FOOD ! You come back in here askin' about duck food again and I'm gonna nail your little webbed feet to the floor!"

" 'kay," says the Little Duck, and he goes away.

The next day -- the Little Duck was back. He waddles in, looks up at the grocier and says, "Hey -- got any nails?"   The grocier thinks. "Um, no," he says.

The Little Duck shakes a little. "Ooo!  Okay ! Got any duck food?"
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Monday, May 25, 2020

When In These Coarse Current Events

Oh The Humanity
(From August of 2015. Human nature has not greatly improved since; trust me.)


I assumed that one idea behind Hitchbot (the solar-powered robot who could interact with humans on a limited basis, its travels tracked by a GPS chip) wasn't only a potential teaching moment around how we relate to technology.  The little robot was an electronic version of the kidnapped Lawn Gnome. It was impossible not to look at it and anthropomorphize.

The Canadian artists who created it knew that Hitchbot's progress required the good will and active assistance of humans who would (anthropomorphizing, again) treat it like a stranger or (given its size) a child who needed help.


The Bot was a visible extension of our better sensibilities towards each other. You could treat a fun-looking inanimate object with kindness -- the way you would hope to be treated if you had set out on a journey; On Your Own, With No Direction Home; needing a ride and shelter.


The Hitchbot turned into an event that people could photograph, Facebook about, Twitter about it.  Clearly, the Bot got taken to parties, and into people's homes; things occasionally got a little loose -- but the little guy was treated well. He was passed, hand to hand, through the world -- shared, in a way.  Proof the human community still functioned and small kindnesses were still offered, illusory as though all that may be.


None of this solved the sectarian religious struggles of the Middle East, or solved World Hunger™. It had nothing to do with politics, social inequality or the vanishing of the Megafauna. The Hitchbot was a symbol of good feelings; it went Trans-Canada without incident. It went all over Germany and the Netherlands, and returned home.

Then, its Canadian creators decided to send the little Hitchbot across America -- down the Northeast Corridor, and bound for California -- the label around its can-shaped head said, "San Francisco Or Bust!".  It got as far as Philadelphia before some lowlife wannabe gangsta punk kiddie stomped it into the gutter.

Pathetic Excuse For Sentient Life (Philly.com; Click To Enlarge)
The person who found what was left of the robot, and posted what appears to be security camera video (above) showing it being kicked to bits by its suck-ass nihilistic whorespawn assailant, did not say how they came by the footage. Some people floated the idea that the attack on the Hitchbot was "a prank", and the security cam video a fake.
It doesn't matter. Whatever the motivation, someone in fact deliberately smashed the Bot, and shit all over what it had come to symbolize in the process. It was a useless, pathetic gesture.

And, know what? I wasn't surprised. This is the US of A, the Land of Jo Benet and O.J. Simpson; "Lil' Boots" Bush and Crazy Moose Lady and Grand Turtlebear Bachmann; of Hillary! and Herr President Obama, and Larry Summers laughing with Kenneth Lay, and millions of people losing their jobs and their homes. It's obesity and Goldman-Sachs and on-demand porno -- and some stupid asshole wearing his baseball cap backwards (you can see it in the actual video) as he stomps on an electronic ambassador of good feelings, tears off its arms and its head. That's a lot of effort and violence; yeah; the whole world gets to see that.

Thanks, kiddie. That's your America; thanks for sharing.  And while it isn't an image of people being barrel-bombed in Syria, or having their homes destroyed by wildfires or tornadoes, it was the functional equivalent of beating a child or stomping a puppy to death -- just because you're living The Faux Thug Life and you're All That and want lots of hits on UTub.

Give Him The Keys. Now.

Tell you what -- if it's an avatar of chaos and thuggery that you want in America, let's resurrect Ed209. Make him the symbol of "community", but in a way that really represents the Good Ol' Boy USA, the Kiss-Up-Kick-Down USA.  That's the kind of country the pudgy little-dick in the video lives in.

And, since we live in a country where making others fear us is as axiomatic in foreign policy as it is on the street, Ed's reappearance wouldn't be given much notice. You know where we live: Drones. 400 channel digital teevee. Gigantor trucks. Email, Internet and Cellphone surveillance. Southern Megachurches and President Boner and Tubby Ol' Mr. Sessions; The Very Wealthy Koch Brothers  and The Very Serious People and the manufactured excitement of  Hillary!  Jebby!  

The Hitchbot was a small reminder that we can live in a different world; but this is one of those moments when I'm reminded that it's just as likely we're on our way down La Chute, where all Empires travel on their way to the bottom; where we'll get everything we deserve (and an extra helping, Because Freedom).

So let's put Ed209 back in action. Let him hitchhike across America. I'll bet he'd make it in record time.
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