[From September, 2020. It's curious, three years on, how little seems to have changed. Even with all the legal actions, the shutdown, the mock-impeachment. We're still on the edge.]
I've done my best to live the right way I get up every morning and go to work each day But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode Explode and tear this old town apart Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart Find somebody itching for something to start
-- "Promised Land" (From Darkness At The Edge Of Town /1978)
.. thinking about Bruce Springsteen. Not any specific music of his; just, how it's always reminded me of the America I grew up in: small-town, white boy America, next to the ocean. Not all that far from-big-city USA. Chamber of Commerce, Future Farmers, Boy Scout and Kiwanis America; Pleasantville.
Bruce's music always felt more East Coast, for obvious reasons; the Beach Boys' music was supposed to be speaking for life at the edge of California. I liked Pet Sounds, thought "Little Deuce Coupe" was cool (though that got replaced by Hendrix and the Airplane and Mothers Of Invention soon enough).
By comparison, Bruce's music isn't about L.A. culture. It's deeper and more generic. It's filled with the ambiguity of living, of longing for love; it's about betrayals and missed connections, being locked into class and locality and fate. Be True To Your School is a more naive take on America, and as close as Brian, Roger and the Boys got to exploring the darkness on the edge of town.
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Where I came from, we didn't have the Eastern version of mills and factories, but we understood working-class expectations. We knew where our families were in the local pecking order, and those who mattered in town -- the people you didn't want to make unhappy. We knew, without being told, that our experience wasn't shared by Blacks, Latinos, Asians; they weren't even part of the equation. And all that reflected the larger image of America, a larger pecking order, with so many layers above and below.
It was an America built on white privilege. It was built on a fantasy wrapped in a flag and accompanied by 'The Star Spangled Banner' and Semper Fiedelis. We had relatively stable weather, but the future disintegration of population, of air, water, soil and climate already apparent. The gulling and fleecing of Americans to feed the desires of the rich were yet to begin in earnest. All this is manifestly clear, now; only a fool would dispute it. But it was my world.
Humans view their challenging present with times that by comparison seem safer, stable: so I think fondly of that old world in spite of all my present, hard-fought, earned knowledge.
That America of the late 1950's and 1960's is mostly gone; only scraps are left. Some people pretend it's still the One True Vision of who and what we are, but everyone knows that world has disappeared. The one we're in, now, is changing. In fact, it may be gone soon, too.
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I still hope we will pull a rabbit out of the battered workman's cap -- but I come from people whose nations were ravaged by political grifters, murderous, quasi-religious zealots, war, economic disaster and revolution.
I was raised to believe that more often than not, the dice do not fall your way, no matter how much you may wish for it. And when you hear a voice saying blood is about to flow -- run, you should pay attention.
I'm beginning to see a bad moon above the horizon, like an escaped balloon, baleful and drifting. Even with all the Dystopian thinking I've subscribed to, I never expected it to manifest in reality.
In the Bible Cain slew Abel
And East of Eden he was cast,
You're born into this life paying,
for the sins of somebody else's past,
Daddy worked his whole life, for nothing but the pain,
Now he walks these empty rooms, looking for something to blame,
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames...
("Adam Raised A Cain")
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Something In The Night
As I scan Trump’s tweets, speeches ... the thought occurs to me that this must be what it would have been like had former Alabama governor George Corley Wallace Jr. won the presidency in 1968. Read Wallace’s rhetorical choices during the ’68 campaign and you will quickly learn that Trump has been channeling him.
Wallace sought the presidency at a tumultuous time of protest, civic unrest over deeply rooted racism and the Vietnam War. With his “Stand Up for America” slogan, he played to the growing White backlash against the marches and acts of civil disobedience. Backlash is also the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign war against “anarchists” and the media.
Hear Wallace in a 1968 Toledo speech... : “I want to say that anarchists — and I am talking about newsmen sometimes — I want to say — I want to make that announcement to you because we regard that the people of this country are sick and tired of, and they are gonna get rid of you — anarchists.”
Trump gets away with being a despot because we allow it. When he crosses some new Red Line of conduct, we collectively say But that's just not done! It's an Outrage!!
It's the functional equivalent of saying, "Well! I never!" as someone commits an act of unspeakable rudeness. We act as if commonly-understood rules of public conduct are still in force for him, for the political Right -- and that with a broad, public show of disapproval, he will be forced to conform.
The media have done this with Trump even before he came down the escalator. They act as if he could be politely shamed in print or online to change his behavior. He didn't. When it became clear he lied, daily, outrageously, unbelievably, they could have called him a liar -- but, no. To be seen as practitioners of honest journalism, to be oh-so-neutral, they would 'fact-check' him.
He was allowed to lie on Twitter (not a journalistic medium; but, still) until its own users pressured Jack into putting a sticker on a couple of Trump's Twits that they were 'bad'. He continues to lie on that platform, and they continue to let him.
They allowed Kellyanne Conway to screech that there were such things as "alternative facts", and then said nothing -- as if facts were debatable; truth a matter of whoever is holding the gun. Politicians on the left made the same mistake, and continue to do so (read on below).
We keep playing the game with These People by the old rules -- as if normalcy would return any minute, like parents coming home early to find the maskless party in full swing, and say What in the world were you thinking?
We refuse to stoop to the same behavior as These People. We believe we're morally superior -- and we believe that even as they kick us to the curb, over and over again, and take our wallets. Even as they abuse children in detention facilities, lie about the pandemic, steal and scheme to steal, push their AR-15s in our faces and tell us they're patriots and do what they say.
And when the media, the politicians on "our side" respond with a "Well, I never!" -- Trump's reply is always Yeah, you never, bitch. I always. And this is why he continues to appear to win, liar and thief that he is.
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Factory
When you have at least 40% of the population wanting to believe irrational things, and another 40% wants a logic which is not functional, there is a great deal of logically valid and scientifically correct data which will not be allowed as a given.
In short, we argue over things that have already been proven to be true. I do not need to listen to President Trump to know that he simply lies. However, his overt lies are a result of the fact that there has been for 40 years a gradually building consensus for a covert set of lies.
The system which created the confluence of events which led to him taking the oath of office is in no way related to any system of reality worthy of attention.
Many of our most influential editors and reporters are acting as if the rules that prevailed under previous American presidents are still in effect. But this president is different; the rules are different; and if it doesn’t adapt, fast, the press will stand as yet another institution that failed in a moment of crucial pressure.
In some important ways, media outlets are repeating the mistake made by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller. In his book about the Mueller investigation, True Crimes and Misdemeanors (and in a New Yorker article), Jeffrey Toobin argues that Mueller’s tragic flaw was a kind of anachronistic idealism—which had the same effect as naivete. He knew the ethical standards he would maintain for himself and insist on from his team. He didn’t understand that the people he was dealing with thought standards were for chumps.
Mueller didn’t imagine that a sitting attorney general would intentionally misrepresent his report, which is of course what Bill Barr did. Mueller wanted to avoid an unseemly showdown, or the appearance of a “fishing expedition” inquiry, that would come from seeking a grand-jury subpoena for Donald Trump’s testimony, so he never spoke with Trump under oath, or at all. Trump, Barr, and their team viewed this decorousness as a sign of weakness, which they could exploit.
Something similar is going on now with many members of the press. They’re behaving like Mueller, wanting to be sure they observe proprieties that would have made sense when dealing with other figures in other eras. But now they’re dealing with Donald Trump, and he sees their behavior as a weakness he can exploit relentlessly.
MARK LEVIN : Recall that in June, acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly warned Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act, against the riots, spread across the country. That would let Trump use military troops to quell the violence...
And ... should Donald Trump get reelected, God willing, he needs to fire this Secretary of Defense. This Secretary of Defense doesn't get to dictate to the commander-in-chief. And no, it's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections. Other presidents have done exactly the same thing.
And if what you see in the cities isn't an insurrection, I don't know what the hell is. These are Marxist, anarchist groups. And if they plan to continue what they're doing in even worse form, multiply by five or ten, they need to be put down. Are you hearing me Media Matters? Mediaite? Yes, we need to retain a civil society and a republic.
Attorney General William Barr told the nation’s federal prosecutors to be aggressive when charging violent demonstrators with crimes, including potentially prosecuting them for plotting to overthrow the U.S. government [i.e., sedition], people familiar with the conversation said.
In a conference call with U.S. attorneys across the country last week, Mr. Barr warned that sometimes violent demonstrations across the U.S. could worsen as the November presidential election approaches. He encouraged the prosecutors to seek a number federal charges, including under a rarely used sedition law, even when state charges could apply, the people said.
The call underscores the priority Mr. Barr has given to prosecuting crimes connected to violence during months of protests against racial injustice... Federal prosecutors have charged more than 200 people with violent crimes related to the protests, most of whom face counts of arson, assaulting federal officers, or gun crimes... police officials say they are alarmed by the presence of armed fringe groups from both sides of the political spectrum. Mr. Barr has blamed much of the violence of leftist extremists including antifa, a loose network of groups ... which Mr. Barr has described as a movement advocating revolution.
So, what was the trade-off that fueled Trump and his administration's decision to downplay the deadly seriousness of the virus to the American public? What was the specific panic they wanted to avoid?
Trump's economic advisors Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow and Steven Mnuchin, among others, made it abundantly clear that the administration's main concern was stock market values. The Trump administration's principal measure of its economic success has been the rising stock market. Trump himself boasted the other day about the record highs in the Dow Jones Industrial Average as evidence of what a good job he is doing. Understandably, they did not want to see a stock market panic a la 2008.
So, let's look at the numbers on both sides of the trade-off equation. Currently, the U.S. has roughly a quarter of the world's deaths (~195,000) even though we only make up about 4% of the world's population. Worldwide deaths stand at ~905,000.
So, doing back-of-the-envelope math, if Trump had acted responsibly and truthfully, not downplayed the severity of the threat, and the U.S. had performed on par with the averages of other countries in the world (not better, just average), we should be at ~36,000 deaths (4% of 905,000). That's ~160,000 additional deaths due to Trump's neglect and public lies about the deadly severity and spread of the virus.
So the question we need to ask is how many points on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were salvaged by this policy? And how many lives were sacrificed in trade-off for each point on the Dow?
“Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, particularly his outstanding appointments to the federal judiciary,” McConnell said in a statement Friday following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
He added: “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.”
At Sunset I Saw The Chickens Swooping In For A Landing
Inequality and polarization have not been this high since the nineteenth century. Democrats are certain that if Donald Trump is reelected, American democracy will not survive. Republicans are equally certain that if Trump loses, radical socialists will seize the wealth of elites and distribute it to undeserving poor and minorities, forever destroying the economy of the United States.
Both sides are also convinced that the other side intends to change the democratic ‘rules of the game’ in ways that will make it impossible for them to compete effectively in future elections.
(Redux of a post originally published in September, 2010)
On November 22, 1963, I was outside for a 10:00AM break between classes at my Junior High School when it was announced the next class would begin prematurely. Immediately. We were told to sit quietly at our desks. When asked, our teacher told us nervously that President Kennedy had been shot.
After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas. After a few minutes, someone -- probably the principal -- placed the PA system microphone next to the speaker of a television set; we heard what I now know to be the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television, announcing the President's death.
Where were you when JFK was shot? A standard question a large number of Americans (now discarded as 'Useless Boomers') have asked each other, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the primary media of the early 1960's -- radio and television.
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So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM here in California, and turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. Getting out of the shower just before 6:00, I heard a report that a "plane" appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.
I lived briefly in Manhattan in the late 70's and had seen just how huge those buildings were -- and to me, "a plane" meant a small aircraft; a Cessna, or something similar. I remembered: sometime after WW2, a B-25 flying through dense fog over Manhattan had ploughed directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but an accident, and on the other side of the continent.
NPR suddenly updated its report, using the words "jet aircraft" -- which immediately moved the entire event from a tragically wayward Cessna into the category of Well-This-Was-No-Boating-Accident.
Turning on CNN, I sat watching an image of the WTC towers from the roof of CNN's Manhattan headquarters, roughly two miles away. Both towers looked like chimneys, topped by boiling clouds of grey-black smoke drifting away at an angle into a clear, morning sky.
Aaron Brown was reporting, taking phone calls directed from witnesses in the vicinity -- only one of whom, the doorman at the World Trade Centers Marriott, was close enough to report on anything immediate and consequential.
A CNN-affiliate local news helicopter, hovering over the Hudson, provided an extended telephoto shot of the façade of the Tower on fire; I looked at the pattern of the cladding of the building, a huge, black gash angled across it.
Occasionally, I saw clouds of small white shapes fluttering in the smoke, like flocks of birds, swirling -- and realized they were sheets of paper, ream after ream of it, drifting out of the building's broken windows.
Just as that thought registered, at the extreme right-hand edge of the screen, I saw a darker object drop quickly, straight down and out of frame. It took a second; less. I didn't know then, but I had just seen one of roughly two hundred people who fell or jumped that morning from the Towers' upper floors.
In Europe, But Not America (Photo: UK Telegraph, 2001)
By the time I had sit down, two airliners had slammed into the WTC towers. Aside from profane shock, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what it had been like, standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot. This is history.
I've seen large explosions and been in crazy environments, but the scale of what I was watching made it all seem unreal; special effects. I sat in the armchair, watching, as first the South, then the North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively). News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon was broadcast; I began flipping back and forth between networks for coverage.
Finally, I left to make my way to work on mass transit. On a BART train, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops and Blackberries -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. People were subdued; there was literally no conversation about what had just occurred.
Work closed down at Noon. At a friend's, we sat watching CNN -- clips of the second Tower being struck, and of each one collapsing, were replayed endlessly. I made a few phone calls, primarily to The Last Of The Old Unit ("Fuckin' glad we're not eighteen right now," one observed).
We were all expecting more information, something to provide a larger context to everything seen that day. We also knew we weren't going to get it -- the dice had been rolled, and we wouldn't find any clarification until they had bounced off the back of the craps table and come to rest.
The dice are still bouncing. They haven't stopped yet. They never really will -- like Gavrilo Princip, shooting the Archduke, the dice which were rolled that day haven't stopped yet, either. That's how history works.
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That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar, the culmination of so many threads in our history going back to 1898 and 1917, the choices successive administrations have made since deciding to follow an Imperial course.
I remembered another image from this same period, within a day or two of the attacks: video of an Iranian soccer pre-game event, where both teams playing sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. I've looked for the footage, but AI sucks and Google sucks. I still know what I saw.
A gesture like that would only have been allowed with permission of the Iranian Powers That Be, and it was only a gesture -- costs nothing for forty teenagers to sing a song. But gestures can lead to actual events.
The 9-11 attacks could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have seized the opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; the long breach with Iran; our over-reliance on the House of Saud. We could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.
Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention: Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last
This photograph exudes more punk-ass cravenness than any I've ever seen.
It was a crossroads moment. Our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power.
This is what America got for allowing the Scalia Court to appoint "Lil' Boots" Bush as President of the United States -- a man who surrounded himself with Project For A New American Century neo-imperialists.
Within hours of Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, they were sitting in the White House, discussing how to invade Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was a foregone conclusion. And, after 9-11, what else could we have expected from Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From Rove, DeLay, Limbaugh and the Murdochs?
September 11th: An Excuse
And, they believed it would be 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so, no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on individual soldiers of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen. The arrogance behind this conceptualization is stunning.
It was an utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name only a few. How eagerly they jumped on the War bandwagon; so good for their careers.
Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)
And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. 363 tons of it. Some $9 billion of that cash simply can't be accounted for. But, there was plenty of money to be made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy. It was a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group -- a founder of which was George H. W. Bush, who gave the Group its intimate connection to the House of Saud.
But, Lil' Boots kept talking about cutting Medicare, privatizing Social Security; cut any social programs which made real the pact between government and citizens that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal... because, Bush claimed, there was just no money to pay for that. Because of the war, you see.
And there was Guantanamo, CIA 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written opinions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.
Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007
And what followed wasn't just secret prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but a matrix of information based on unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular telephone traffic, banking records and public record databases. It became a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.
And, if it was all about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing or killing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri, then Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Taliban were able to come roaring back.
The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about leveraging the war to enact a larger Rightist agenda. It was a cover for deregulation, defense contractors, profits. It was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule.
Victory, to these assclowns, had a very different meaning. The military portion of it was just a backdrop banner for Bush and his cronies: Mission Accomplished. The cynicism in that perspective is an obscenity; Yeah, a lot of that going around.
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We had an economic collapse in 2008, then eight years of neoliberal nothing, followed by four years of proto-Fascism. After a three-year pandemic, an attempted coup -- roughly 37% of America's adult population claim to believe that 4chan posts by an anonymous fraudster are more real than mathematics, science, or common sense. That over 60% of those on the Right trust what Trump says over and above their own family members.
The blessed 37% refuse to accept the vaccines for SARS-CoV2. They refuse to wear masks. They do this to "Own The Libs". They injected themselves with special magic pony blessed horse juice, or screech that the Blood Of The Jezus is all they need.
And they died choking on their own phlegm in hospital ICU wards, wheezing that Covid was all a hoax. Incidentally -- if you want to gauge how likely it is a hot civil war will happen here, just remember that image: cult members, fanatics, behave that way. Not rational, normal people.
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Since September 11th, 2001, a quote by Bush (whom we are supposed to think well of, now; let the healing begin) comes back to me:
We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)
-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress
Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm? Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?
There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to preserve.
This is a topic never far from my mind in These Days. Not only am I chronologically closer to death, it seems the circumstances in life I've taken for granted may be changing to include a higher level of risk; a lot more rapidly than I'd thought.
I've been in immediate danger of dying, of death right in my fucking face, four times. In each case, it was only clear immediately after: Holy Shit; that almost took me out. I didn't have time, in the moment things were going down, to realize, this is Last Day. I checked in with the Last Of The Old Unit about this and their experiences are roughly the same. So: I not crazy.
In terms of death as loss, I've had my share. Only one or two had coincidental events, what I think of as 'echoes', after, which might appear to some like a message or a parting word. But I'm not sure -- so I use the word 'coincidental' as a hedge, a cheat; an out. Because there isn't any way to know.
The short, sharp shock -- out of the Blue; into the Black -- is how death happens for so many people around the world, in These Days. It's only by the luck of the draw that I've lived more than seven decades and have the capability to contemplate my physical end from a smallish apartment in a major Blue city at the western edge of the North American continent, beside the broad Pacific, now heating up like oceans everywhere.
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And when I think about life, all our lives, how brief some of them are (and, let's face it: It's always going to seem too brief) I remind myself about the Iceman.
In 1991, the preserved, effectively mummified physical remains of a Bronze-Age human were found on a glacier. He was dubbed "Ötzi The Iceman". Ötzi. It sounds friendly, like a nickname for some your slightly daffy uncle, if you come from a German family; an attempt to turn this fellow -- preserved by chance and climate -- into a mascot for tourists, a name to print on tee-shirts and mugs and lunch boxes.
Ötzi died 5,300 years ago (about 3,300 BC) in the mountain pass where his body was found, between current-day Italy and Austria, shot with an arrow by an unknown assailant. He was found with possessions and clothing. His body was found with intact genitalia, but at some point between discovery and transport to a climate-controlled environment, some modern-day fuckwad stole his penis; of course they did.
Eventually, his facial features were reconstructed -- as forensic anthropologists do with modern-day murder victims -- and we found he looked, more or less, like Charles Bukowski:
Ötzi (Not His Real Name)
The man with this face lived and died Five Thousand, Three Hundred Years Ago. This places him in the Prehistoric era (from ~3 million years BC until 1,200 BC). Specifically, in the Bronze Age.
He died 3,000 years before Greek civilization developed, or the Roman empire -- and hundreds of years before the 'Old Kingdom' Egyptian civilization began and the first Pyramids built.
He died four thousand years before the Buddha. At least 2,300 years before either Jesus or Mohammed are reported to have lived.
When Ötzi was alive, the earliest human written languages had just begun to appear.
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My Dog Trainer advises that packs of Ibex meat were found in Ötzi's carrying bag -- and, while he was in excellent physical shape, his arteries showed significant Atherosclerosis. Some Vegans have said this is evidence that a presumably meat-based, Prehistoric 'Paleo' diet, eaten by an actual Bronze Age human, is a bad idea.
And: He was discovered because the glacier which had held his body over thousands of years was melting.
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Thanatology:
Study of death and practices and beliefs attached to it
1. Life is finite. Every single one of us will die.
The Population Reference Bureau estimates the current population at 7 billion humans. They estimate only 107 billion people have ever lived -- meaning, some 15 humans have died for every person currently living.
2. We have no idea if, as individual consciousnesses, humans continue in any form after death.
Some people have beliefs, or faith, in specific outcomes. But (all the YouTubes about NDEs aside) feelings are not facts. No human being alive knows what happens to us. Anyone who says they do is comfortingly deluded.
This existential problem -- what is this, why are we, and what happens to us when we die is the Ur-question of human existence.
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3. There is a cave system in South Africa, showing proof of its use as a burial site by an ancestor species, Homo Naledi. Designs were also found scratched into the rock near the burials. We have no idea what they mean.
But it appears that 300,000 years ago, Naledi buried their dead, laying them out in a specific way, with stone tools and other items. It suggests the Naledi had concepts of Self / Something Else, and Self / Here; that they believed being somewhere else after death. We don't know. There was no written language three hundred thousand years ago.
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Neolithic Homo Sapiens buried their dead with possessions, with food, weapons and utensils, which would seem to indicate a belief that the deceased existed after death, going somewhere, though the body decayed. We don't know. There was no written language in the Neolithic.
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If This Is Friday, It Must Be The Afterlife
A. It isn't clear where the idea of an afterlife first appeared in human religion. Humans began organizing in villages, towns and cities, around 10,000 BC. Per Wikipedia, The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religion developed in ~6,000 BC, coinciding with the region being permanently settled -- and the earliest real evidence of organized religion dates to roughly 4,000 BC, coinciding with the invention of writing.
The forces of nature were worshiped as providers of sustenance. About 3,000 BC, the forces and objects of worship which used to be essentially nameless were given names and personalities. Multiple divinities, each with particular functions, appeared.
Around ~2,000 - 1,000 BC, the last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism developed. It showed greater emphasis on personal religion, with the gods structured into a hierarchy; the national god of whichever (Babylonian, Akkadian) being the head of the pantheon.
Walk Like An Egyptian
B. By 2,000 BCE (or, 1,300 years after Ötzi died), the Egyptians had developed their own polytheistic religion around the notion that humans possessed a soul and, at death, that soul's place on a spectrum of good and evil would be judged.
Per Wikipedia, "Upon death, one entered the underworld, where Anubis, God of the dead, weighed the person's heart on a scale against a feather... of order, truth, and righteousness." If the heart weighed more than the feather (like the 'Witches weigh as much as a Duck' scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail), then the heart would be devoured by a waiting demon. You "would die a second death and be eliminated from existence", forever.
If your heart weighs as much as, or less than, the feather, you are allowed to pass into the Land of the Sun. This was someplace else, mythic or extra-dimensional, not a physical place on Earth. A comfortable, abundant land -- essentially, the best aspects of life as experienced in the Kingdom of Egypt.
Tewaret, Hippo Moon Goddess You Bet, Guides The Departed. Or, You Know, Not.
This Eschatology was supported by a complex set of beliefs, involving prayers and rites. At the height of ancient Egyptian culture -- the Middle Kingdom -- after death, funerary rites lasted over a month. There was an elaborate process of embalming and mummification; tombs filled with decorations and hieroglyphic ritual prayers, and items for the deceased's existence in the afterlife -- possessions, food, weapons; statuary representing servants.
Surviving family members performed regular ancestor rites to pray and make offerings to the gods on behalf of their deceased. When a Pharaoh died, they had attained status as a god; all Egyptians could pray and make offerings at their temples in the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings.
Egypt had developed all this at leasta thousand yearsbefore the rise of ancient Greece, and Rome.
Grecian Afterlife Thirst Trap
C. In Greek Eschatology, Hermes, the Messenger, delivered departed souls to the banks of the river Styx, where they waited until a boat operated by Charon the Ferryman appeared to take them across and into Hades -- which, to the Greeks, was another physical place on earth; the land of the dead. Charon demanded compensation; Greek funerary rites included putting a coin under the deceased's tongue so they could pay that last passage.
In Hades, three legendary kings judged a soul's conduct in life. Those who had lived pure lives, or were relatives of the gods (who always seeming to be having sex with humans), went to The Elysian Fields -- green valleys and mountains, where all was peaceful, and the Sun always shone for the guiltless and connected.
The majority of Greeks, their good and evil deeds essentially in balance, or who were indecisive in life, went to The Asphodel Fields -- a sort of low-rent version of Elysium; something like Hooterville, the location of the action in TV's Green Acres, but without a laugh track.
Finally, those who had blasphemed against the gods or been consciously evil were sent to Tartarus, a place foul and stygian where they would be burned in lava or stretched on racks (definitely without a laugh track).
When In Rome, Do As The Greeks Do
D. After Rome invaded Macedonia and southern Greece in 146 BC, it absorbed Greek art and culture, the Pantheon of Greek deities and their afterlife cosmology -- with its Egyptian flavor of souls being judged, and specific levels of afterlife experience based on that judgement.
Virgil, the Roman author who created the three most important Latin poems in antiquity, described the afterlife as the Romans adopted it in his epic, the Aeneid, written around 24 BC. Virgil makes a tour of Hades, guided by his recently dead father (as Dante would later have Virgil guiding him).
(Just a note: Virgil's poetry was a Big Deal in that long-gone Roman world. The UK Guardian recently reported that a shard of pottery found at an archeological site in Spain had lines from a poem by Virgil inscribed in Latin into the clay before firing. This was in an age where poetry actually meant something.)
Because You Never Know
E.Sheol, the Jewish concept of an afterlife, began as the universal destination of the dead, a place of darkness to which both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of their moral choices in life, will go.
It wasn't a place of active punishment, but a land as far removed from Paradise -- from God -- as possible. And in Judaism, being separated from God (the most perfect expression of existence) is a terrible thing.
In 500 BC, Sheol was being portrayed in some Jewish texts as the place where the righteous and the wicked were separated into different afterlife regions. In other texts, it was described as a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone.
In 200 BC -- roughly the same time Rome was absorbing Greece into its empire -- Hebrew scriptures were being translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria. Scribes substituted the 'Sheol' in Judaism with the Greek word, "Hades" -- and the Greek concept of an afterlife along with it.
Make The Baby Jesus Cry And Go To Hell
F. Christian Eschatology focuses on the divinity of one person -- who supposedly taught about life both physical and spiritual, and was put to death for bucking the authority of the Jewish religious order and Roman occupation -- an apostate and a terrorist. They were raised from the dead, ascended to heaven... and at our death, if we had followed their teachings, kept our noses and our hands clean and believed in their divinity, then we could, too.
By 325 AD, Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire. Emperor Constantine I called a council of Christian heavyweights, in Nicaea -- and over two months of arguing, agreed on what the doctrine of their now official state religion would be. This was followed in 390 AD by another council, in Hippo, to determine what official scripture would support that previously-agreed doctrine. There was editing, exclusion; other texts, like the 'Gnostic Gospels', were suppressed. The result was the Bible.
At these two councils, the streams of Mediterranean / Middle Eastern religious belief and tradition which had encountered and cross-pollinated each other -- The Babylonian and Akkadian informing the Egyptian, flowing into the Greek and then Roman; the long Jewish traditions --all came together.
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One of the most influential writings, not part of the Bible, which influenced Christian ideas about an afterlife was Dante di Alighiero degli Alighier's Inferno (Hell), one part of his 'Divine Comedy' -- a long, three-part narrative poem, published through the early 1300's.
Dante's great unrequited love, Beatrice Portinari, had died in 1290. His love for her was his north star for the remainder of his life -- and he tells his readers her death was the reason for the poem. It was a chronicle of his search for her soul, to lead her out of the Inferno, to Paradise, guided by the ghost of Virgil on the journey.
Dante took Virgil's description of the Roman Hades, borrowed from the Greek, influenced by Judaism and the Egyptians, and expanded on it. In Dante's artistic imagination, Hell was a funnel of nine descending 'Circles', each of which providing horrifying punishments for classes of sin and transgression, narrowing down to the final Circle at the bottom -- a plain of ice, where Lucifer, a titanic being with multiple faces, stood bound with chains and buried to the waist.
Dante was a deeply involved Player in the 14th century politics of Florence, his city-state birthplace -- and, he was no punk artist, but a first-wave fighter, rapier and blade, in open wars between factions. As a political person, his 'Divine Comedy' was as much subtle commentary on contemporary politics as an artistic expression, full of 'inside baseball' references -- some of those getting roasted in the hell he invented were easily recognizable to a sophisticated audience.
This is one of the most important aspects of Dante's work: His notions of Heaven and Hell were his invention, his artistic imagination. For seven hundred years, they have profoundly shaped the popular, public and secular notions in the Western world of what happens after death. And, dig it:He did that with a work of fiction!
In 1321, Dante contracted malaria and died. No one knows what happened to him after that, if anything.
(Side Note: I recommend two utterly different novels featuring the Dantesque vision as a setting -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno [1976], and Hell, by Robert Olen Butler [2009].
(The long-time Sci-Fi duo ['Mote In God's Eye', and Niven's Ringworld saga, are still popular] produced an underworld that is a bit dated but very readable. Butler's book involves a former mega-star news anchor, now broadcasting The Nightly News From Hell, on his search for A Way Out. Butler writes well; it's worth the trip.)
Dante's Big Vacation Guide:
Click To Enlarge -- It's Easy And Fun!
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Songs From The Bardo
G.The structure of Buddhist belief is too complicated to articulate here in detail. But: after death, a person enters a non-physical realm, the Bardo, where they encounter the essence of their own mind, locked by habit into a series of karmic imprints. As Ram Das once described the human mind, it behaves "like a drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion".
A person is presented an opportunity for awareness that all things are part of the great form / formlessness, all and nothing at once; are simply projections of one's own mind; and in that moment of realization attain enlightenment and become part of a greater cosmology.
Most of us, however, blow that opportunity and have to enter the Bardo of Becoming -- where we encounter our own minds: whatever we conceptualize, will be so. Basically, that scene from 'Ghostbusters', on steroids:
Stantz: What do you mean, choose? We don't understand.
Gozer: Choose; choose the form of the Destructor!
Venkman: Oh, I get it! I get it. Ohhh; very cute. Whatever we think of! If we think of J.Edgar Hoover, then J.Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us, okay? So empty your heads... Don't think of anything. We've only got one shot at this.
Gozer: The choice is made; the Traveller has come!
Venkman: Woah, woah woah; nobody 'choosed' anything! ... what did you do, Ray?
Stanz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever destroy us... It's Mr. Stay-Puft, the Marshmallow Man.
Venkman: Aw; Mother Pus-Bucket... Good goin', Ray.
Buddhists spend much effort on meditation to discipline and focus the mind in preparation for death -- first, to have the best chance of not missing one of the opportunities the Bardo presents for enlightenment, and so step off the Great Wheel of death and rebirth. Second, to withstand the terrifying, anything-goes capabilities of our own minds.
Then (after one last opportunity to Get It; at almost each stage in this process of The Bardo, there seem to be multiple chances to obtain enlightenment), we may be reincarnated through rebirth. No one remembers their time in the Bardo -- as long as 49 days on Earth, so the traditions say. And, Big Wheel keeps on turnin'.
There is also a chance that you may be attracted to any of the five Realms of Samsara, illusion, and so wander in self-projection forever. Or you may continue on the cycle of birth, life, death, reincarnation, until you obtain enlightenment and step off the wheel, or perhaps if you can't will be seen as a defective part by the universe and discarded. But no one really knows.
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You Never Know
And, this is the point: No one knows what actually happens. No one. Whenever a notable person, an acquaintance, an enemy dies, I always think: Now they know what we do not -- even if what they found was Nothing, which is a possibility. And, Detective Chole speaks for many: Sure hope that old lady's wrong...
It remains my belief that, because no one knows what happens, this Great Mystery is behind almost every aspect of human existence; we simply work hard to put it as far in the background as possible. Death is the reference point by which all other experiences are measured, considered and qualified.
None of this is news. I'm just saying the quiet part, the real quiet part, out loud.
But at some point, we have to stop thinking about death, and live our lives. Savor the truth that we are alive, for the moment, and hopefully in the moment. It may even be possible (as a cab driver in Germany once said to Kurt Vonnegut, "If the accident will") to accept and experience death as an answer, as adventure. It will be our last choice in living -- how to experience our end -- so; why not.
In the interim -- because we all have to play chess with Death on the beach, or give him a Melvin -- may your time be long, your shoe leather thick; your glass full and your bowels cooperative. Be well.
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MEHR, MIT SCHLAG: This add-on from December, 2019 seems appropriate. It's what we all hope is true, one way or another, anyway.
Actor Danny Aiello passed away, age 86. He appeared in a number of films, including one on my top ten list: Jacob's Ladder (1990).
Set in 1975 New York, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), divorced Vietnam vet with a PhD in Philosophy, is working in the Postal Service, and may (or may not) be slipping in and out of a series of flashbacks connected to Vietnam in 1971 [part of my time in the Southeast Asian barrel], and the accidental death of one of his three children (Macaulay Culkin, pre-Home Alone). He also begins seeing inexplicable things (demons, things out of a Lovecraft novel) in broad daylight. Reality appears to be shifting and he's frightened.
Singer has lower back issues, and sees a Chiropractor, Louis Denardo, played by Aiello ("...You look like an angel, Louie," Singer tells him, "Like a big cherub. Anyone ever tell you that?" "Yeah," says Louis. "You; every time you come in here").
At one point in the story, Singer is struck by a car on a New York street. His lower back seizes up, his wallet is stolen by a vagrant Exmass Santa; he's brought to a hospital that becomes progressively more nightmarish, a Hieronymus Bosch painting.
Louis shows up at the hospital ("What is this, the Middle Ages?" he yells at a nurse when he sees Singer in traction in a bed) and forcibly takes him out, back to his chiropractic office. He puts Jacob on his adjustment table and begins working on his back.
Singer tells Louis what he's been seeing, that the hospital was a vision of hell. "Ever read any Meister Eckhard?" Louis asks; Jacob says he hasn't, and Louis is surprised. "How'd you get your Doctorate without reading that guy?
"Eckhard saw hell, too," Louis continues. "Know what he said? He said the only part of you that burns in hell is the part that won't let go of your life. Your memories; your attachments; they burn them all away -- but they're not punishing you, he said; they're freeing your soul.
"So, the way he sees it -- if you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on -- you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace -- then the devils are really angels, freeing you, from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it. So, don't worry about it. Okay?"
Now he knows what we do not. It's a decent film. Aiello is good in it. Give it a whirl.
(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.
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 enemieswere 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]
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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If I'm not happy about it, I'll bite you and pee on your leg.
WHAT'S IN HERE
Ingredients: ALL NATURAL. Make absolutely certain your sense of humor is fully engaged prior to using Before Nine. I am not responsible for your level of consciousness or documented ability to subjectively perceive stuff. Got that? Swell. Comfy now? Want a treat? A Juice Box? A cigarette? Well okay then.
