Reprint Heaven: Sail On

 An Anecdotal

(A Birthday Post From March, 2019.  Now He Knows What We Do Not)

City Of Paris Sign In The Conversation (1974)

Almost half my life ago, a friend took me to an event in support of saving the Eiffel Tower-shaped sign which had graced the roof of the old City of Paris department store on Union Square. CofP had been there for generations -- since the Gold Rush; before and after The 1906 Earthquake and fire -- but business setbacks forced it to close.

The property had been purchased by Neiman-Marcus; they intended to build what still looks like a featureless beige box around the old CofP's oval, central core, topped by a stained glass skylight (you can see the old City of Paris building, and its trademark sign, in Coppola's film, The Conversation).

Replacing City of Paris with Texas-based Neiman's struck many San Franciscans as a cultural loss (dear god; Texas???) . Trying to save a landmark sign from a landmark local business was a way of saying No, we don't agree with that Yah-Hoo shit. A meeting was held to raise funds to purchase the sign, before finding a suitable location for it: and there would be poetry! Gary Snyder would read. So would Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

I went, I listened.  Snyder had been a particular lodestone favorite of mine for a long time; I'd only heard him read once before in Berkeley; and Ferlinghetti, not in person at all.

When he did, he set "In Fascist America " in front of us like a dish, well-cooked but spicy enough to be a challenge to eat, like reading The Fire Next Time all in one sitting -- dig in if you've got the spittle for it, baby. And he read it in the Beat cadence you can see, fortunately, in film and video clips.

The applause at the end was genuine. Everyone knew Ferlinghetti as a national treasure, a cultural icon, someone who had gravitas and knew it and used it. He was on the side of Right and it appeared in his work like a sword on fire. We applauded for all that as much as the reading.

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They never were able to buy the City of Paris sign. I went on to dinners over the years with friends and occasionally did (or was asked to do) my impression of Ferlinghetti, reading -- I'm gifted as a mimic; people laughed, which was the point (particularly about the repeating line in that poem, with a specific pause in his cadence when he would say, "In Fascist / America"). One person I knew in particular, who loved Ferlinghetti's poetry and had heard him read multiple times, always dissolved in laughter when she heard me do that.

Fast-forward a number of years: My acquaintance was taking lessons in a foreign language in the City, through a cultural exchange group; Lawrence Ferlinghetti was in the class. The last, penultimate assignment for each student was to take a short piece of literature or poetry, translate it into the Language Other Than English, then read it to the rest of the class. Ferlinghetti chose, "In Fascist America". He did it in the same cadence I'd used in my homage.

My acquaintance said later she was able to hold it in "almost until the end", before exploding with laughter. Apparently she slipped and fell trying to exit the room but made it outside, leaving Ferlinghetti and the rest of the class somewhat mystified.

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I lived in North Beach for over a decade. In (for me) the old days, before heading to Vesuvio's or Spec's or Tosca's [Still with us in 2021]-- the real Bermuda Triangle (and if you understand that reference, you are my brother or sister) -- I might stop off in City Lights Books; occasionally, you might see Ferlinghetti on the ground floor, talking with someone at a table in one of the alcoves. More rarely at night, when you were coming out of Pearl's jazz club across the street [No idea if it's survived Covid], you might catch a glimpse of him, working late, through a window in City Lights' second-floor offices.

Most long-time residents in North Beach knew his house; it was roughly a block from my flat, and we passed each other at least twice a week for years, he walking up Stockton street towards Columbus, me walking down: two guys who wore fedoras. We made eye contact; I smiled, and sometimes said hello (it would have been odd if, after years of occurrence, I hadn't) but it was only a short time before I left the neighborhood that he began responding back.

The last time I saw Ferlinghetti was during a sentimental walk back, over ten years after leaving North Beach: walking across the grass of Washington Square on a warm, sunny afternoon; there he was, wearing one of the trademark hats, lying on the grass with his head propped up by a day pack, a faint smile on his face as he tilted it up toward the sun. I believe he'd been hospitalized for a heart problem not long before, and that knowledge struck me -- mortality; a memory of my Sixties in The City, the place I landed after Southeast Asia and never really left, and Ferlinghetti's connections to all of that.

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Ferlinghetti once wrote, "All I ever wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life." The City changed, and not for the better.  In a 2015 PBS News Hour segment, he noted that int San Francisco, "A new brand of dot-com millionaires and generally Silicon Valley money have moved into San Francisco, with bags full of cash and no manners." 

In response, one person responded, "What a crank. The city is still as vibrant and creative as it ever was, except, now, young ambitious people are in tech."  Another wrote, "...Fogeys gonna foge." 

Well. Kiddies.

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At some point today I'll walk over to the old neighborhood and past his house, and put a good thought out for him. A century is a long time for a person, but it's not even a blink in the universe. 

Very few of us get to impact the Geist of the culture, live in people's hearts, and so sail on into time. But he will.

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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.

---

Never Be Rid Of Him

Until The Cletuses 'Own The Streets'

Oh, and [redacted] Steve Bannon to [redacted].  And, the heads of all the fascisti parties in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Coatia, Serbia, Russia, Greece; China, and all the other [redacted] countries where they live and breed.

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How It Ends

Smoke And Ghosts

Fuk Off To The Sea

A king, who had brought suffering and disaster to his people, finally died. His funeral was attended by massive crowds from all corners of the nation, who in almost complete silence walked past the funeral bier of the Great Leader.

Observing the crowds was an ambassador from another country, surprised by what he was witnessing. He said to his secretary, "This bastard treated his people as chattel, lied to them, and when the plague descended he did nothing but lie and steal from them -- and yet they come to grieve!" His secretary replied, "They come, not to grieve, but to make absolutely certain he truly is dead."

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Over 200,000 new cases of SARS-CoV2, and two and three thousand deaths from complications of the disease, are reported in America every day. 

It's easy to forget that it didn't have to come to this. ~ 400,000 People dead; many more will suffer 'Long Covid' effects. The number of deaths, the suffering and anguish, amplified by the incompetence and sociopathology of The Leader -- still screeching that the election was stolen from him; that the nation is "angry"; adding the veiled threat that this is a "dangerous" time.

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Long ago, I interviewed persons who had interacted regularly with Hitler, for an academic writing project. Later, under different circumstances, I located and interviewed members of a particularly vicious cult with a violent end.

My questions varied -- but in essence they were all the same: How did it happen? Why did you assist someone so clearly disturbed, so incapable of real empathy, so capable of bringing about real evil? I never received a common answer; don't think I really expected to find one.

In the past four years, there hasn't been a single day that I haven't asked about The Leader: He's a bully, a liar, a grifter; he's mentally ill. He denied reality, now 400,000 people are dead; the United States is more fragile than it's been since 1860; how can you believe in -- this malignant thing ??

No one has been able to provide an answer to that question about The Leader. He appealed to the some of the worst aspects of human nature. The Leader enabled people to be cruel, violent; to believe obvious lies, and to hate. That's his legacy.

And, I will not speak or write his name. Not any longer. Let him Fuck Off To The Sea.

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Last Acts: The Leader was busy after the election. Loyal satraps like Graham and Giuliani made calls to Republican officials in swing states, nosing around to see how amenable they were to a little election fraud (none were). There were baseless lawsuits; bizarre conspiracy theories. In early December, several meetings were held at the White House to discuss tactics in contesting, even overthrowing, the election which may or may not have included a Proud Boy leader or two.

In late December, The Leader himself repeatedly called the Georgia Secretary of State, who ducked all but the eighteenth attempt. He pressured the man to commit election fraud. The Secretary recorded the call, and released it to the media. It was clear The Leader, a week from the Congress' accepting the votes of the Electors and certifying Biden's victory, was still in utter denial about losing the election.

On January 6, Congress was in session to certify the Elector's votes. At the same time, The Leader spoke to an extremely large crowd -- many brought to Washington on chartered busses paid for by Koch groups, donations from individuals (like Ginny Thomas, wife of a Supreme Court Justice). Standing behind a podium bearing the Presidential seal, The Leader primped and pranced; he savored the energy of a crowd of tens of thousands. 

He essentially told them to march to the Capitol. Whatever happened, would happen. After his speech, he didn't do what he'd promised, and walk to the Capitol with them. He returned to the White House and watched televised images of the mob he had created in action, as it unfolded. He was 'delighted', 'pleased'. 

The Leader Makes A White Power Hand Gesture To Adoring Masses

When some in his inner circle suggested the riot was "bad optics", The Leader became angry and sullen. When Congressional Republicans made panicked calls from lockdown inside the Capitol, some approached The Leader to suggest he make a statement. Defuse the situation, end the violence.

 

A request was made from the Congressional leaders at the Capitol: bring Washington, D.C.'s National Guard units in (as D.C. is not a state, only the President can release them). The Leader's swinish eyes narrowed, his mouth slumped into a busted, downturned scrawl in the ochre pudding of his face. He refused. 

Then, when it was clear the riot had already resulted in 'bad optics', aides convinced him to make a video statement, delivered in a wooden voice after the riot ended -- and even then, he still said the election was stolen, describing his supporters were "special... we love you", but that they should go home now.

Long After The Riot Ended, A Call For Healing, Sort Of

The next day, after the roll of dead had risen to two police officers (one dead of injuries received at the Capitol; the other a suicide) and four of the rioters, The Leader released another video, speaking from a podium in an even more detached, emotionless voice, he urged peace and condemned the violence. It was just for show, and everyone knew it.

He spoke of "handing over power to a new administration", and ended by saying to his True Followers, "I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning; there's never been anything like it... will only grow stronger by the day." 

... Trump taped a short video calling on Americans to act peacefully following pressure to do so from Vice President Pence, daughter Ivanka Trump, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other advisers. Trump later told aides that he regretted doing it and that his supporters did not like the video, two officials said. (Washington Post)

At the same time, the White House's flag was not lowered to half-staff in honor of the Capitol PD officers, though nearly every other U.S. flag in Washington had been.

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Aside from the shock of the violence -- that a rightist mob would break into the Capitol, pushed by The Leader, enabled and coddled (even assisted) by Republicans in Congress, is important. Using a threat of violence to compel a deliberative body to overturn national election results is crossing a significant red line. 

One week later, The Leader was Impeached on a single Article: incitement to insurrection. The far right chitters with threats and continued radicalization, feeling they have nothing to lose, hoping for their fabled Boo Galoo.

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Watching the White Riot unfold via streaming video from outside the Capitol building, I sensed the same spontaneous Shit-Happens energy that I remember from long-ago mass antiwar actions. The energy of the crowd as it rushed up to the Capitol seemed like video of the 2004 tsunami in Sumatra: the ocean surge, initially laps on shore, just a few inches of water. Then it became a foot of water, pulsing more urgently; and suddenly, the ocean is flooding in without stopping, now four or five feet and rising. 

This is what revolutions feel like; we're soaking in it.

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It's likely there was a smaller organized group, or groups, inside the Capitol with a specific agenda, hidden by the cover of a mass disturbance. The march had been organized a month before; plenty of time to research and plan; that should surprise no one. 

This is The Leader's legacy, too. I don't feel I am living in a country where, no matter what, we're all Americans. I think -- just as the MAGAs do -- that The Other Side will stop at nothing to destroy the country. The White Riot was just a sample, "only the start... getting stronger by the day".

But, together with the Covid pandemic -- the White Riot and feelings that we can no longer trust each other may be the impetus for an expansion of the American security state: Patriot Act 2.0. As with 9-11, it's too good an opportunity to lose.

Meanwhile, our Oligarchs running social media, the Oligarchs that own news and entertainment networks, pay no penalty for hooking suckers on lies and dopamine. They become richer and richer, and claim innocence; 'free expression' 'free speech'.  And every day, angry Cletuses are radicalized to hate, and envy, and to dream of revenge.

If I have to see Mark Zuckerberg's smooth, Aspergerish face one more time, sputtering about how his poorly-led corporation is unfairly blamed for assisting societal dissolution, I'll throw up.

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Peter Wehner, Republican New York Times contributor who wrote on November 5, 2016 about what The Leader's presidency would be like, appeared on PBS News Hour last night to observe

We're in an epistemic crisis... there has been an assault on truth and on reality, that [The Leader] has led, and his party was a part of, and his Base was a part of. We now live in a world where we don't just have policy differences -- we're living in different moral universes, different epistemological universes; we don't have a common set of facts, even a common reality. And when you lose that, it's very difficult to put it back together again... 

But if you don't... a free country can't continue. Ultimately, your politics breaks down and your society breaks down... there's no ability to have dialogue. [The Leader] did this... it wasn't just the lies; it was this intentional assault on reality, which ...spreads a kind of disorientation in the public that has tremendously damaging and long-term effects.

Wehner's opinions ignore the development of the American Right since 1974 towards authoritarianism, 'christian' Dominionism and (with the Leader) proto-fascism. It also ignores the devolution of both Republican and Democratic parties into extensions of a neoliberal, globalist perspective, which benefits a limited number of people with wealth. 

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Being in America, now, is like walking into a crime scene. The victim is still here; blood and numbered cards for the photographers still dot the floor. There are witnesses to interview, security camera video to review, leads to pursue. If you have to throw up, do it outside.

And, there's a weird calm hanging over everything that only seems to appear in the wake of incredible violence. You go about your business, live your life, with the knowledge of what has happened hovering just behind everything, like smoke; like ghosts.

It's a great relief to see The Leader deposed, no longer with any legitimate authority.  I do not wish him well, or his Issue, or his Base.

Where the Biden administration will take us, no one knows. May all of us be well, and safe.

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Reprint Heaven: Don't Know Much Psychology

 Musings Of An Ex-Cigarette-Smoking Man

(From 2018)

Research into Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made clear that physical, neuro-chemical effects occur when people experience significant traumatic events, evoking a "fight-or-flight" response, which is a function of our DNA; as hardy meat puppets, we're hard-wired for survival.

Neural pathways created in the brain are triggered when, later, people perceive -- subconsciously, for the most part -- that they're in circumstances similar to that original event, reliving, replaying (and actually reinforcing) the same emotions they experienced in it.

As a definition, PTSD was first used as the Vietnam War began winding down (for America, anyway), and only became a medically-accepted diagnostic category in the early 1980s. The Veteran's Administration was quick to adopt that addition to the DSM-III, but not necessarily to act on it or treat it.

My Dog Trainer (who specializes in PTSD, and has been in the Biz since the mid-70's) agreed that the relationship between trauma, brain chemistry, and cyclic reinforcement of bad experiences is likely.  I've worked with them for a while, and a something we've talked about occasionally is the effect of broad social or political events on the mental health, and trends, in culture and societies.

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In college I was introduced to Loren Eisley through his autobiographical All The Strange Hours. He was born in 1907, and was already in his early twenties during the Depression. There was no way he could describe experiences in his life, on his way to becoming an anthropologist, without mentioning that historical event.

In trying to understand The Depression, any statistics are useless. Every anchor-point that defined a person's place in a community, their sense of identity and self, was threatened. The anxiety people felt (a constant fear in anticipating more loss, shame, powerlessness; death) went on, every day, for years with no end in sight. 

People adapted -- as organisms, that's what we do. But their spirits were bent by the gravity of events, and the effects rippled out through their lives, because that's what History does. 

The political Right has purred for years that FDR's 'social experimentation' after his election "really made the depression 'Great' ".  The truth is, a Republican-led government left 'the markets' to sort themselves out without interference. The Oligarchs of the day didn't care; their lives remained much as they always had been. They left the People on their own.

Herbert Hoover believed in a rugged individualism, where strength built character. Asked decades later how he dealt with critics who blamed him for the Depression, Hoover quipped, "I outlived the bastards". Meanwhile, people struggled to adjust and survive. Until Roosevelt was elected and tried to do something, anything, they did so without hope. 

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Eisley never spoke about what The Depression did to people directly. America is composed of physical places, but also it's very much a geography of the mind: Eisley described hopping freights and moving through Hobo Jungles, towns of the Great Plains, writing sketches of the people he met there, dislocated physically and mentally by The Crash. One night, a hobo told him what he believed was the great lesson of life, hoping Eisley would get it: "Men beat men, kid. That's all there is."

Something in those side-glance references to America during those years reminded me of  late-evening conversations I'd overhear as a child, between my parents and their peers. When they'd talked through current events, surface details of their jobs and days, they worked down to the big events, to the Second World War. Reminiscing in that layer could take time.

Among married couples, the men watched their language (for the most part), and only made brief mention of the details of their war if they'd served in a combat arm. The wives talked about waiting, home, families, radio news, and finding work.

If the talk went on long enough, someone would finally mention The Depression, and something about the conversation took on a different character. The War was something to be proud of, and their voices were energetic, confident, talking about it. And it rubbed off on the children: attending the first day of First Grade, when roll was taken some children answered 'Present' or 'Here'; but a good number of kids responded, "Yo!"

But our parents sounded like distinctly different people when talking about the Depression. I don't remember details -- but sharing these memories sounded different. I could sense a current of uncertainty passing between them, a helpless fear; survivors reliving a disaster that came out of nowhere, and repeating every memory sounded like thank god we got through it; I never want to see anything like that again.

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Reading Eisley sparked a connection for me between the America after 1929, and my mother's compulsive saving of string, rubber bands, pencils, tin foil. How she seemed to expect bad news or a worst-case end to anything; a stock response was, "You never know". My father, despite a level of professional success, bonuses and good reviews, worried that his job was always in jeopardy; his favorite phrase was, "Get with the program".

There was no apparent reason for either of them to live as if anticipating the ceiling would collapse, but they did. And, children talk -- we discovered our parents had similar motivations, fears, even memories. They all had their own Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- and the veterans in particular.  One friend's father was a survivor of Corregidor, the Bataan death March, and four years in a Philippine POW camp. Another kid said quietly his father would wake up, shouting for a long-dead shipmate, several times a week.

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It seems obvious that people are affected by the events they live through; that trauma marks us, and it's obvious what we're living through, now, is having the same effect. Never mind the details; we all watch the news. Many people more intelligent than I am present an analysis of What It All Means every day. I only bark about it.

I keep remembering the opening section of a John Gardner short story, "John Napper Sailing Through The Universe" (1974): he and his wife arrive home after a party, full of drink and making their way up to bed. Gardner has a sad vision of the future: ...fumbling, helping each other as we must... [We] take our teeth out. I'm ninety-two. The planet is dying -- pestilence, famine, everlasting war. The nation's in the hands of child molestors. True Dat.

All I'm considering at the moment is how the echoes of the history we're living through continue to affect us, rippling out across time. How just being in the room when something happens -- seeing an image, hearing something shouted or whispered -- shapes perception. How, like gravity from some body unseen in space, experience bends how we act in the world, and our expectations of it.

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And now, something completely different: Socio-Political Commentary!

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The Bomb In The Back Yard: A 2020 Coda

 Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

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

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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'.

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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.

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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: End Of The Beginning

 The Year Of Living Dangerously

2020 (MMXX) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2,020th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 20th year of the 3nd millennium, the 20th year of the 21st century, and the 1st year of its second decade. 

Initially trained as an historian, my reflex is to see 2020 as a mega-event -- where one year is dominated by  a few serious, unique and overwhelming occurrences affecting hundreds of millions of individuals. It's felt like wartime, with battles, victories, losses; new technology; politics affecting the war; and, deaths.

So in finding a year to compare with 2020, some obvious choices were the Great Plague of Athens in 380 BC, which took three years to burn out and killed ~25% of the Greek population. Or, 1347 and the Great Plague of Europe, the Black Death, which lasted four years and killed ~200 million; 1664-65, the Great Plague Year in London; or the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza epidemic.

2020 seemed to be a year of emotion more than actual conflict. As a nation, or as individuals, we were about 'waging war' with a viral organism, and with some of the most vicious, ugly aspects of human nature -- sometimes, in ourselves.

But I found myself looking for periods that felt more like a match than were correct in some one-for-one historical comparison. The Second World War felt obvious; maybe, too much so. It isn't part of my experience, but I was born not long after it ended. I absorbed its experience by my parents' generation, the Depression that preceded it, and the early Cold War / Red Scare America that followed.

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Then I gave up. I realized that comparing 2020, globally and in America, with a year in WW2 is what we've always done -- dramatize events as one more chapter in the heroic, upward progression of America's story. It's normal to frame traumatic events in ways that help us absorb them, find a context and understanding. But we need to see what has happened, just over the past 365 days, with real clarity.

The true meaning of events we're living through are both profoundly personal and epochal at once. But by turning 2020 into a Ken Burns special in our heads, it becomes a Year already in the Past -- safely in memory, something manageable, unable to hurt us further.

That would remove the fear and disruption and claustrophobia -- but it will also rob us of our own individual experience of this moment, this time. It prevents us from seeing the reality of 2020's real impact.

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We're still in the middle of a bad spike in a long-term pandemic. It isn't a dramatization to say: We're in the most fragile and desperate of moments in our nation's history, since 1776 or 1861. Believe it. Trump (please God) leaves office as of January -- but he tried, incompetently, to stage a Coup. He's still trying to subvert the election, still trying to burn down as much of America as he can before the 20th.

And, he's just the worst symptom of a deep infection at America's core; the worm at the heart of the rose. Trump will go; but Trumpism -- fascism, authoritarianism, Bannonism; what you like -- is now a precedent in American politics. Two months ago, seventy million adult Americans voted in favor of it.

As a nation, if we're wise, we'll take this Plague Year ending as a wake-up call to address a very long list, spanning generations, of cultural Chickens Coming Home To Roost -- starting with The Pandemic. How we prioritize the rest will determine where we go as a nation. And that's just the beginning

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MEHR, MIT MUSIK, MIT MUSIK, MIT MUSIK: The Girl Who Refused To Be Mrs. Mongo put in her oar: "The phrase, 'Letting your freak flag fly' popped into my head, for some reason."  Fair enough.

Reprint Heaven: This World At Night

 Dusk 

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

As I write, it's twilight on the Left Coast; almost too obvious an image. At work, in the aftermath of the election, few people spoke about the results. Even fewer people mention what's to come, now, except with a lot of who-the fuck-knows eye rolling and shrugging.

For now, there is an adult (no matter what you think of his policies) in the White House. We can push the image of Trump and his ilk, of Mike Pence telling the media to "buckle up", out of our minds -- but everyone knows that this (relatively) liberal presidency is ending; the light is fading.

I wrote a long post claiming to know something of the future, but deleted it. It was, in its way, bullshit: I don't know what will happen, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I let those who can analyze and translate current events well, or those with louder voices, or with a penchant for ego masquerading as humble simplicity, do their thing. Let them lean out.

As I wrote the Post That Was Not, I understood something else: the future is very present. It's going to play out in the faces and the lives of friends, and total strangers, whose fates seem more important now than they did a month ago.

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I'm not a very deep reader, and when uncomfortable tend to chew on the familiar. So I grabbed Alan Furst's The World At Night to read over the long weekend. It's a story of Paul Casson, a Parisian and a producer of films, in France at the fall of the Third Republic, and the choices he makes after. It's about morality, love, courage and venality of life during Occupation.

Casson has been recalled to the army in the late spring of 1940; the Germans are already invading the Low Countries (and eventually, as everyone knows, France itself via the Ardennes). He is part of a propaganda unit filming the French army as it heads toward the front.

     ...Casson was stopped. The sentries were drunk and unshaven. "What brings you here?" one of them said.
     "We're making movies."
     "Movies! You know Hedy Lamarr?"
     "Dog dick," said another. "Not those kinds of movies. War movies."
     "Oh. Then what the hell are you doing up here?"
     The second man... offered Casson a bottle through the window... [and] laughed as he took the bottle back. "Come and see us, squire, after this shit's done with."
     The hard Parisian sneer in his voice made Casson smile. "I will."
     "You can find us up in Belleville, at The Pig's Ass."
     "See you then," Casson said, shoving the clutch in.
     "Red Front!" They called after him.

The German army succeeds; Casson melts away, towards Paris, more vagabond than a fleeing soldier. 

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

Casson is a character who lived a comfortable, creative life, a Parisian life, and after the nazi victory he only wants to get back to living it -- and he does, until he discovers that he actually is a moral man. And, while it takes time for the corrosion of the Occupation to seep through to him, eventually he has to act against it. He had no other choice, really; it just took some time for him to become clear to himself.

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

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For the Left, the appointment of Bush in 2000 was a shock unlike any other in American politics -- and what followed was an eight-year chapter in the Banality of Evil. 

Life under Bush, a limited, Dauphin of a man, was Life During Wartime -- one reason Obama's election in 2008 was greeted with street parties -- here in Kiddietown, it was like the Place De Concorde in 1944 -- The nazis are gone! Vive La France!  We were Liberated!

But, Bush and the creatures that swept in with him had some legitimacy as part of the political mainstream. Not so with Trump or his creatures. Lil" Boots played at being a loud, crude Man Of The People but was always the son of a Yankee, blue-blood Old Money family.  Trump has all the sophistication of an infomercial, the intellectual depth of a racetrack tout -- and, it's not an act. No one knows what will happen this time, but it's almost certain to be bad.

 Obligatory Cute Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Ogg Ogg

(From Mongo Interviews Mitzy, 2012)

And this time, it feels more like Occupation. Like the real thing -- as if Bush had been a dry run, a testing of limits. Just outside our field of vision, we sense men in Field Grey on the corners, but they're waiting, not asking for our papers, Ausweis; not yet.  Unconsciously, this was why I had taken Furst's book down from the shelf in the first place.

It's going to take time for the corrosion to sink in. And it will take time for people to act against it from our moral centers -- some sooner than others, but act we will have to. And the values and passions at the core of our Selves will direct us. We don't have any other choice, really.

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From the Post That Never Was, some tasty links as you cook that Crayfish. Pass the square bottle of yellow stuff, would you? And, which way to The Pig's Ass?

"Red Front!" They called after him.

Alastair Crooke, Without Any Masterpiece Theatre  --  and who he quotes, Raul Meijer.

Richard Rorty, though he be dead (quotes below -- see The Paper Of Record's original 1998 review.)

"[M]embers of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

"At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. …

"One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past 40 years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. … All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet...

"This world economy will soon be owned by a cosmopolitan upper class which has no more sense of community with any workers anywhere than the great American capitalists of the year 1900... [This group included intellectuals who are] quite well insulated, at least in the short run, from the effects of globalization."

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Cult Of America

State Of Emerging Emergency

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But it won't happen, of course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wartime: A Long Howl

 The Worst Nightmare You Ever Had

This is wartime. 

Our cities haven't been bombed, with combat in the ruins around us. There is a level of threat in going out in search of food or water, or to jobs in businesses that remain open -- but not from being caught in a crossfire; you don't have to wait in cover and to guess when to make a run across some rubble-strewn intersection. 

There is a body count, and there are people responsible for substantial portions of it. Mostly, it's a state of mind, not a physical manifestation of destruction. But recognize it or not, we are in wartime.

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Trump, his family and sycophantic staff, Congressional Republicans and GOP leadership; and the entire travelling grifter roadshow of the political Right have assaulted America without pause. 

For five years, we've watched the United States deteriorate into a chaotic, corrupt, authoritarian state. Trump himself is manifestly corrupt, so the government reflects its Capo. He sees the American Presidency as nothing but an extension of personal greed, an exercise in raw power that he can use to destroy his enemies and gift largess to his toadies. And his corruption is openly mirrored through his administration, and the political Right. 

It all happens right out in the open. The Justice Department is run by Trump crime family Consiglieri Billy Barr, so there will be no investigations or indictments, and everyone knows it. But we have also seen a parade of forced resignations; pardoning of Trump's cronies; politically-motivated prosecutions and retaliations -- and for a while, the threat of the stillborn 'Durham Report'. 

We watched the Impeachment and Trial in the Senate, listened as career members of the government detailed the administration's crimes and misdemeanors, and Trump's complicity. It was said clearly that what Trump and his toadies were doing were counter to the idea of Democracy -- but the fix was in in the Senate.

Trump emerged, the Teflon Don, shrugging it all off with a smirk and a threat: You come at the King, you best not miss. And everyone knew what would come next.

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Every morning we've gotten up and checked the news; What has he done now? And always, we had the same unanswered question: How does he get away with this? Why will no one stop him? What is this inexplicable hold he has, getting others to throw their lot in with this crude, greedy, stupid bully?

We lived with it, day after day. And it delegitimized the idea of government -- What good is it? One side as bad as the other; no one cares about us -- which is exactly what people like Bannon, the GOP leaders, the Billionaire backers of Tea Party and PACS, taking money laundered from overseas, intended. 

They want us to see a dog-eat-dog world. They want us to believe in social Darwinism and continuing minority rule. They want us to believe they cannot be defeated.

But, day after day,  it drew a line under the belief that The People have no real power against the political Right, against the Mercers and Mellons and Kochs; the billionaire Bundist money. See? We've packed the Supreme Court! Even the law works for us now! That there are no limits on the rich getting richer and the poor, poorer. Power means you pay no penalty -- and having no power means no protection.

And in our drop by drop exposure to Trump, the media's response boiled down to Ahhh, Trump is Trump; that's just how he is. When he attacked mainstream media as Fake, calling them "enemies of the People", all major outlets (except Murdoch's Fox, of course) bent over backwards to show themselves neutral, "fair", and balanced. They didn't know what to do with Kellyanne Conway's "there are alternate facts". They didn't push back.

Instead of calling Trump a liar, and Conway a malicious loon, they only said the President needed to be 'fact-checked".  Twitter's owners did not dare flag or block Trump's unceasing torrent of lies and slander and veiled threats. 

And Trump would emerge to go golfing, again, or lumbering off to yet another rally in front of screaming, ecstatic crowds, more smirking, and not-so-veiled threats about Very good people, asides to QAnon; dogwhistling to white supremacist groups. And his Base cheered. And cheered. And the GOP defended each and every step down the path he was taking, each new red line crossed. 

Trump isn't very sophisticated -- he simply sees masses cheering, all for him, and his narcissism is sated, for a while. As a grifter, he understands instinctively how to connect with and milk the emotions of his Base. He preys on their fear, and hope -- and offers them hate as the antidote to fear. And they cheer.

Calling up murderous tendencies in the human heart has only one outcome, one destination. But Trump doesn't see further than the moment, the cheering sea of red MAGA hats, the maskless faces, the Proud Boys giving him the Hitler salute. And he does not care.

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So we would get up, check the news; with each new outrage Trump committed, and in the absence of criticism saw the media normalize his behavior. Like the Frog in the kettle, we tuned him out -- fuck this garbage -- and got on with our lives. People responded by perceiving the mainstream media as unable to speak obvious truths about what was happening right in front of us -- so, part of the problem; tainted, cowardly.

But it also meant tuning out our broader awareness of what was happening to America. In our inner mindscape, we could see tornado clouds gathering, hear the sirens going off.  We kept waiting, as we had for years, for some adults in the room to do something. We hoped the election season, the Biden candidacy, would tear down Trump's tower of lies. 

And we went into the Thanksgiving and Christmas season of 2019. There was a report about a new respiratory illness in China, but few paid any notice.

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We are in the second wave of SARS-CoV2. As of this writing, 245,000 Americans are dead. Biden was elected two weeks ago, but Trump disputes it as Fake, "rigged", "stolen" -- a conspiracy theory he had already prepared well ahead of November 3. 

He claims there is proof of a conspiracy, election fraud on a mass scale. No such evidence has been presented, because it doesn't exist. Dozens of lawsuits pushed by Trump's shrinking legal team, attempting to slow, stop, or interfere with counting of votes in key states, have been dismissed as frivolous. 

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

But Trump continues to lie. His Base believes every word of it. Republican members of Congress and Party leaders, with few exceptions, back Trump's insistence the election has been "stolen". Some of them say, privately, that Trump is having difficulty adjusting to the election results; that we should give him time to "process" losing. That we should humor him.

Meanwhile, Trump will not allow the normal mechanism of transition to a new administration to occur.  He suggests Republican state Governors appoint their own, Trump-True electors to appear in Washington on December 14.

If in that process, either Biden or Trump do not receive 270 electoral votes, then election of the President will result from a vote in the House of Representatives -- where each state has one vote. If that were to happen, Donald J. Trump would likely be 'elected' for a second term -- all legal, and blessed by the Constitution.

Yesterday, approximately 10,000 members of his Base attended a "Stop The Steal" "Million MAGA March" in Washington D.C. Out in force were the openly nazi 'Proud Boys', and other right-wing militia -- 'American Guard'  'Oath Keepers'  'Groypers' -- marching with the other, more mainstream Trump supporters. 

The Leader himself decided to drive past them in his armored SUV, on his way to play golf at his country club in Virginia, giving them a characteristic gesture through the window: two thumbs up, and sticking his tongue out between his teeth. The Base cheered. Later, he broadcast by Twitter: 

"[Biden] only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!"

Later that night, the various fascist militias walked the streets in Washington D.C., assaulting counter-protesters, 'owning the streets'. It was a scene straight out of Berlin in the early 30's, with nazi Brownshirts assaulting whomever they believed were an enemy. The Washington police appeared to focus on containing anti-Trump protestors, allowing the pro-nazis freedom of movement and action. 

Again, Trump Twittered:

"ANTIFA SCUM ran for the hills today when they tried attacking the people at the Trump Rally, because those people aggressively fought back. Antifa waited until tonight, when 99% were gone, to attack innocent #MAGA People. DC Police, get going — do your job and don’t hold back!!!"

This continues a trend that's developed since the summer, as the various fascist militias come together develop and coordinate their tactics; they organize.  And, a continued blurring of boundaries between armed, openly pro-nazi organizations and a the broader 'legitimate' conservative mainstream is very disturbing. 

The day you see a spokesperson from one of the pro-nazi organizations appear on PBS' The News Hour, or MSNBC or CNN, as one half of a 'both-sides' segment -- we will be too far down the road towards very deep trouble.

Millions, including hundreds of thousands of Americans, died to crush nazism

during the Second World War. Now, nazis sell their flags on the National Mall,

not far from the WW2 Memorial, or Arlington. (via Twitter)

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On top of that, it was announced yesterday (in Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, of all places) that the Mercer family -- who brought you Cambridge Analytica, among other things -- is funding Parler, a new social media app boosted as 'Twitter for conservatives' . 

Essentially, it's the Murdoch business model of monetizing right-wing users, using the app to broadcast rightist propaganda, lies, and distortions to be shared by The Base. The Mercers will be able to harvest their user's data, sell it to vendors, right-wing organizations, and (as they've done with Facebook) develop strategies for those clients to manipulate the Base -- Rubes and Marks that they are.

And, insanely, an interview with Charles Koch was published two days ago:

After spending decades bankrolling causes and politicians that fueled America’s increasingly ugly and hostile national divide, billionaire mogul Charles Koch [said] he now wants to focus on bridging the gap he helped create.

“Boy, did we screw up. What a mess,” is how the Donald Trump supporter characterizes [it] ... Koch claims he wants to work across party lines to forge solutions to poverty, addiction, gang violence and homelessness...

Koch's interview was also published in Murdoch's WSJ.  Just as Murdoch wants to buy a fig-leaf of credibility by calling Arizona for Biden on election night, Koch wants to others to not hate him and remember him as the kindly philanthropist who only believed in healing. 

Not sure, given his Randian, Social-Darwinist view of human beings, what kinds of solutions to poverty, addiction, gang violence and homelessness he could suggest. It's hard to "save" people you believe are nothing but easily-manipulated, disposable, and ultimately irrelevant.

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Meanwhile, America's political Left is fragmented. The Democratic party's leadership appear convinced that appealing to the center, 'normalcy', while singing Kumbaya to the GOP is the way to the future.

The Progressives believe their way is not only best, but the only way to positively affect the environment and achieve racial / economic equality and diversity. They see the mainline DNC's approach as too little, too late, and their distrust of the Democratic leadership's motives is high.

It's worth nothing that competing factions of the political Left in Europe before the Second World War (Italy in the years after WW1; Weimar Germany up to 1933; and Third-Republic France during the 30's) made it a near-certainty that the more cohesive fascist parties would come to power.

What Digby said:

[Biden] ran on unifying the country. And it was a smart appeal to people who are sick of the division and the chaos. But it’s not possible for him to deliver that. Obama ran on that and he failed as well. This is because the Republicans will obstruct and refuse to cooperate and then point the finger and say, “See? He didn’t deliver on what he promised!” It works out great for them.

..."Towering before [Biden] is a wall of Republican resistance, starting with Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede, extending to G.O.P. lawmakers’ reluctance to acknowledge his victory, and stretching, perhaps most significantly for American politics in the long term, to ordinary voters who steadfastly deny the election’s outcome."

...Voters want to believe in bipartisan cooperation but it’s a one-way street because Republicans, being a cohesive, radicalized minority party with outsized power, benefit from obstruction. So Democrats have to run as the “unity party” but there’s no way for them to get it. Most people see this and understand it... [but] people in the middle who Dems need to win the electoral college, or in red districts and states, don’t pay close enough attention to sort it all out. It’s a problem.

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The chances are that "the process" will work (unless there is another massive conspiracy out there we aren't aware of), and Biden will be inaugurated next January. 

Trump will continue to squeal, and fuel the notion that the election was stolen from him. He will go off into some kind of exile, trying to throw as much sand in the gears of American politics as he can -- but he's in his mid-seventies, a waddling tub of guts with health issues, facing potential prosecution for a variety of fraudster crimes. 

In that, he will become lies and less useful to the Steve Bannons, Nigel Farages and Marie LePens of the world. He may still have some use as an elder figurehead of a rightist movement in the U.S. -- and it will be a symbiotic relationship: Trump will get to monetize his notoriety as long as he can.

As an honest political party, Republicans are effectively done. They are the party of Trump, now; the party of white power, Ayn Randian, corrupt strongman rule.  The Base is the party -- and GOP leaders understand they have to continue dogwhistling to them in order to win elections.

And whether they recognize it or not, the RNC, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican 'leadership' are strapped to the proto-nazi, white-power militias that Trump called forth. I'm not sure they give a damn any longer.

The current Republican leadership can maintain power at the polls for a few cycles, but if they can't deliver on whatever the Base demands, a 'True Trumpist' may appear -- a new Leader, talking about God and Country and a glorious future. One who publicly embraces the militias, forcing GOP leadership to become more radical just to hold on to their personal power. 

America, meanwhile, continues down a road towards open violence, oppression, and civil war -- which is what the militias and their supporters want.

But now, Trump continues to sow doubt about "the process"; he tells his Base that assumptions about our Republic are false -- that without him in the White House, the government itself is illegitimate, run by Antifa, Satanists and pedophiles.

This may seem insane to most people who hear it -- but for roughly 37% of America's adult voting population, it is gospel and settled science. They believe it. They heard it on Fox.

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So, we continue in social isolation, in lockdown. We live in an internal landscape where nothing seems certain, and in an external world with very real threats. 

We are in wartime. Biden's election is a bit of grace -- even if all it does is cease the endless focus on one corrupt, deranged bully -- but there will be no Kumbaya with the Right. 

America has never been as divided a country since the last time we took up arms against each other, and that will not vanish overnight, if ever. The Republicans depend on stoking that outrage to maintain power, and at this point the level of public debate can only sink lower.

We are in a wartime of the spirit, and on that ground inside ourselves is where it will be fought. We will either come to recognize, or reject each other. It's likely to last for years -- a decade, if not longer -- and there is no guarantee that America will exist in any way we recognize when it comes to an end. 

But I continue to feel how we pay attention to the moments that will come for us, how we behave towards each other, and the choices we make may be more important than before. 

The Dalai Lama was asked what he felt the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism to be; he replied, "Just, 'Do your best.' "  I took the Lama's observation to suggest that Existence is too complicated for any person to say why they are, and what the end results of their thoughts and actions will be. Be kind; act with compassion. Do the best you can, moment to moment. That works for me.

But, as a comparative comment on purpose and values (in his case, Resistance), Albert Camus believed the fact of humankind was the justification for right action, of making a demand for Justice -- for a better world. And that works for me, too.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. [That] ... it has no justification but man -- hence he must be saved if we want to save the idea we have of life. 

With your scornful smile you will ask me: what do you mean by 'saving man'? And with all my being I shout to you that I mean not mutilating him, and yet giving a chance to the justice that man alone can conceive.  

(Resistance, Rebellion and Death)

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