Trump

Tuesday June 9, 2020 

145 Days until the election on November 3^rd

225 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I was on an archaeological trip when the subject of Burning Man came up. One person went on about how Burning Man was this gathering of old hippies and new agers in the desert to do drugs and have sex. 

I asked him when he had been to Burning Man. He said he had never been. I said I had – twice. I found that it was, as advertised, a festival of “radical self-expressionism” and if you wanted it to be about sex and drugs it certainly could be I guessed, but I found the art to be the most interesting part and that it was my first experience writing for a newspaper.

Once I had stopped talking he went right back to saying Burning Man was about old hippies and new agers having sex and drugs in the desert.

Impressions and habits are hard to change. Mostly because they are easier to hold on to than to face and think about. Change requires effort. Why bother? Why indeed. 

For whatever reason the death of George Floyd has sparked an international round of protests. Whether this will create any real change within systems of government and society is hard to say at this point. 

It seems that once again technology has caused this change. The first was the video taping of the murder of Floyd, the second was that video being flashed around the world.

This brings me to questions like: “What needs to change?” and “How do we do that?”

I refer to Elon Musk’s discussion about progress, wherein he said progress is brought about by people being highly focused on the objective. 

How did we get to the Moon? President Kennedy set the objective and unified the nation to accomplish it. 

What happens when there is no objective? We drift. We get complacent. Shit happens and no one seems to care or know why.

There are attempts to fix problems, but many of these are misguided. There are few knowns and many unknowns. Attitude and belief shapes a lot of what we do. Joseph Campbell pointed out that civilization is based on myth. What happens when those myths go away? Either they get replaced with new myths or the civilization goes away.

Like Huey Lewis said, and I misquote, “We need a new myth.”

Okay let’s take Black Lives Matter and Defund the Police. What is really being said and why? Fortunately, for you, I know all the answers. 

Defund the Police is really saying that we need to pay more attention to what is needed in a community and not depend on the police to provide it. Especially, if what is needed isn’t clubbing people. 

Black Lives Matter is pointing out that police have been trained to club people, specifically black people. For some reason they’re tired of it. Of course, this is nothing new. This has been said for – I don’t know – one hundred and fifty years. Why pay attention now? 

Ah, video cameras and social media. It is kind of disturbing to be sitting in your living room and see some big fat white fuck go over with his buddies and grab a black person, pepper spray the others and throw the guy on the ground, beat him and cuff him. For some reason that’s unsettling.

What to do? Well, you can take the Fox News alt right approach and say things like George Floyd had an arrest record and it’s too bad that someone hadn’t killed him sooner. Or you can say that Floyd merely illustrates what’s been going on for decades in this country and something has got to change. Okay, what exactly?

Interestingly, one of the bad guys in all this is police unions. The problem with the police unions is the problem with unions in general, but the police unions are an extreme example. 

If you get rid of unions you allow everyone to scrap and fight for their economic lives in a Lord of the Flies, Dog eat Dog scenario and if you are a person looking for a job you quickly learn that they don’t pay squat and if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else that doesn’t pay squat or as Chris Rock says, “You know what minimum wage means right? I’d pay you less but the government won’t allow me.”

Unions fight for their members, even when said member has been an idiot. Therein lies a problem. Without unions management and the owners see the potential to pay people less. Therein lies the other side of the problem. What to do? OMG! That would require thinking!

Okay. Let’s look at several examples of ways to address the situation.  First off you’d have to recognize and agree on the problem Whoops, there go all the right wing Fox News viewers. Maybe not. Roll tape. Screw that let’s have those right winger meet up with some big burly unidentified police types and have those police types pepper spray everyone in your crowd, grab you and put you face down on the concrete, cuff you and put a knee to your neck with your face on the curb for nine minutes than let’s talk, okay?

I’m betting you’d have a slightly different attitude. No? Okay, then let’s dredge up something about your past, publicize it and have a bunch of news/opinion people say you’re a bad person and deserve it. Just for grins, okay?

So maybe we all agree that there is something that needs to be done about policing. Here’s an idea – let’s not think that everything that is a problem in our society is a crime. Let me throw a few items out for consideration:

Fifty percent of people incarcerated can’t read.

When did being poor become a crime?

When did working forty hours a week not be enough to support a family?

When did going to college mean you went in debt for half your working life?

One in a thousand black men in this country are killed by police.

The gap between super rich and poor is widening.

Forty percent of people think they will be in the one percent someday.

Poor areas have crappy schools.

Okay, enough on that. What to do?

Well what has worked? In the case of the police some places have gotten rid of their police department. What? Yeah, this is what you do when the union becomes so onerous that you can’t talk sense to them. You fold the business, open up again and have people reapply for their old jobs under a new title. This allows you to weed out some of the really bad apples, put some new procedures in place, etc.

Camden, New Jersey did this with their police department. Minneapolis is going to do this with theirs. Why? As the head of the Minneapolis City Council pointed out, they’ve tried everything else. They did the reforms. They did the body cameras. They did all that kind of stuff and yet the reports of police brutality kept coming in. 

Also, let’s not forget that after the Iraq war there was all kinds of military gear that was given to the police. There’s also been training that teaches cops how to confront “the enemy” and how to kill. Yeah. Not quite community based stuff. 

Minneapolis is changing the paradigm by asking, “How do we keep our citizens safe? All our citizens?” Apparently, having the head of the police union advocating for killer training and going to Trump rallies wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with “Cops for Trump” is now being seen as not helpful. 

Minneapolis is now asking what is needed to keep people safe and what does a particular community need?

If you are in a poor community you need help. Probably having cops come in and choking people and beating the shit out of them isn’t helping. Pulling funding out of programs that aid and assist the poor doesn’t help either. 

Race problems? Yeah, they exist but the bigger problem is economic as reflected by class differences. Class differences are reflected by what one values. If you’re poor you’ll hang onto symbols of wealth and status even if you can’t afford what those symbols represent. 

John Oliver’s show ended with a black woman in the streets talking about why burn the Target or the other stores in the neighborhood? Because as she pointed out, “We don’t own them.”

What about unions? Hum. Similar problem. In Germany the autoworkers came to the manufacturers and asked what they could do to improve the quality of vehicles being made. Not in one plant or one manufacturer but across all German auto makers. 

What about education? Finland has the top students in the world. What did they do? Implemented one education system, made teaching a profession by paying well, and got rid of most tests that weren’t helping the students.

Basically, all these ideas for a solution are pointing to one overall idea. That is the philosophic outlook that we are all in this together. If you approach the world from that viewpoint things change. If you take the “I got mine; you get yours” viewpoint, well then you have what we’ve got today and how’s that working out for you?

145 Days until the election on November 3^rd

225 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Descending into the tunnel under The Temple of The Feathered Serpent, Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Friday June 5, 2020 

149 Days until the election on November 3^rd

229 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

You know the pandemic was so yesterday. Now we are marching in the streets because a black man got killed. This killing was especially obvious. It was so obvious that the Republican senators almost made a public statement about it and Trump’s reaction. They scuttled like little crabs trying to avoid the sunlight (okay, it’s an analogy and it suffers. Got it.) None of the Senators seemed to have read or seen or known what Trump had done. They did seem vaguely aware that a black man had been killed. Lisa Murkowski took the bold step of publicly saying that she thought that maybe they ought to think about doing something like saying something about what they were thinking about. The others? Blackburn had a phone call. Portman had read anything. Mitch didn’t speak. Another said he was late to lunch. Another said China. This is the kind of leadership we’ve come to expect from the Republicans in the Senate.

And we are depending on them to stop Trump?

The streets of DC had men in tactical gear: hard helmets that looked like super duper bike helmets, big fat vests, sunglasses, that kind of stuff. Who they were, or what they were doing there was unclear. What was clear was that they wore no identification and would not say who sent them. I hope someone was smart enough to take their pictures and put them up on Facebook so that they could possibly be identified. This is what we have come to.

By the way, where are the Second Amendment guys? You know those guys who like to parade around with their AR-15s? Why aren’t they out in the streets protecting their rights? Seems like when someone shows up who actually might be able to use a weapon and is in shape these 2^nd Ammenders are no where to be found.

Meanwhile, the number of Covid cases are on the rise in states across the country. Yeah, doesn’t the virus know it’s fifteen seconds of press coverage is over? That was last week.

Then there’s the mail in ballot and voting rights. Oh boy, do we have to go over this? Well, yeah. Seems there some new wrinkles on this peach. The corona virus has been shown to effect older people a lot. Turns our most poll workers are older people. Seems those people don’t want to work to die. Hey, why not invoke the War Posers Act and force them to work? What? Oh. You don’t want people to vote? Just your people? Not the other people? Got it. What? Yes, I know; isotopes in the ballots, change the vote. Yeah. Got it. 

Okay the real issue is the Republican party thinks that they will lose if people vote. I have heard that higher turn outs favor Democrats. This has translated into mail-in ballots are bad for Republicans, but in fact, there is no evidence that mail-in ballots favor one party over the other. This hasn’t stopped the Republicans from doing whatever they can to stop mail-in voting. You know it’s ripe with fraud? No, I didn’t. Did you know that in Oregon out of over two million ballots there were a little over 50 that were suspicious? Yeah. Many of those were attributed to people moving and getting their ballot from the old place – stuff like that. There was, as far as I know, not one confirmed case of fraud. This hasn’t stopped the folks at Fox from warning of its dangers. I guess that’s because the only real example of voter fraud recently was a race in North Carolina where it was the Republican who had people cheating for him. But there it wasn’t fraud in the sense of someone trying to pretend who they weren’t; it was what is known as “ballot harvesting,” a practice Devin Nunes approves of btw. Ballot harvesting is the practice of picking up a ballot from someone and delivering it to a place to be counted. This is illegal in 49 of the 50 states; California being the exception, hence Nunes’ desire for it. (Otherwise Nunes claims he will lose.)

Then you’ve got Fox and all the stuff about fraud and mail-in ballots. John Oliver went through all the steps you’d have to go do in order to submit one fraudulent ballot. They included knowing the birthdate of the deceased, having records like a driver’s license, etc. After doing all that you could submit a ballot. If you got caught you’d face jail time. Apparently, no one wants to go to the hassle and face jail time. This is something that eludes the folks at Fox. 

Will there be justice for George Floyd and all the George Floyds? Maybe this time. Maybe this time?

Meanwhile, the virus is still out there. It’s lurking. It’s waiting.

PS Rocket Man and Fat Boy

Wedensday June 3, 2020 

151 Days until the election on November 3^rd

231 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I’m running a few days behind on my screeds. It happens. However, June 1, 2020 is a day historically that will probably be remembered like no other in American history. It is the day that a President of the United States of America declared he was ordering an active duty combat brigade to be deployed against the American people in their homeland. He said he was doing this in part to “protect our Second Amendment rights.” He also told the governors on a phone call that was supposed to be with the Vice President that he wanted to see more arrests. He also announced that he was putting the head of The Joint Chiefs of Staff “in charge.” He also said he was activating The Attorney General “very strongly.” The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of The Pentagon showed up at the White House in battle fatigues. The Attorney General ordered the clearing of Lafayette Park of peaceful demonstrators and this was done with tear gas and flash grenades. After the park was cleared the president flanked by various members of the White House staff, the head of The Joint Chiefs in his battle fatigues, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General stood in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photograph. The rector of the church was not notified, nor was the bishop or anyone else within the church that this was going to happen. The Secretary of Defense who is serving in an acting role having never been confirmed by the Senate said that the streets of our country were “the new battle space,” and that we needed to get back to “the right normal.”

The above are the facts. These are not open to debate. There are not questions of any kind about the above. They are facts. Anyone can look them up. It is what was said and done, and videos taken show this to be so. This is not someone’s delusional dream or demented reality. This is what was said and done.

If you want to speculate as to what this means, by all means, but those are the facts.

Tom Cotton welcomes it. Rachel Maddow wonders what the Joint Chief is in charge of and speculated that perhaps the AG was some kind of glow in the dark doll that was activated by being held close to a bright light. Historically, this is the first time that a president has threatened to use the military against the nation. Yes, there have be specific instances in specific places that Federal troops have been deployed, but never in the nation as a whole. 

In order for the president to be able to pull this off he would need to invoke The Sedition Act of 1807. Naturally, no one knows if he has done this. There are specific things the president would have to do to invoke this act but why worry about petty details? Just call up the army, and that is what he did. It was pointed out that he called them up to show up in DC with live ammo and fixed bayonets. Why not? I mean at Kent State after those kids were shot you couldn’t really tell if they were dead or not. They were just lying on the ground unmoving. But if the public should watch a livestream of someone being gored up close and personal with a bayonet, well, then you’ve got something.

It was said that the reason Trump called the military to DC was that he wouldn’t need any governor’s approval. True dat. However, if you know anything about DC you know that the streets belong to the District, while the various malls and government buildings belong to the Fed. That’s why the T-shirt vendors and food trucks are parked on the street and not on the Mall. Seems to me, you’d at least need a parade permit. Whoops, there I go again with the rules. Silly me.

It reminded me of a historical account of the Etruscans. They fought with Rome for over five hundred years before finally being suppressed and made citizens of Rome.  At one point the Etruscans had been defeated in  battle and had been marched to the Forum where they were held captive. At the time there was consternation in Rome. Some folks were a bit restless and protesting what was going on. Many Romans were gathered for an event when the order was given to slaughter the Etruscans. Those gathered elsewhere could hear the cries and screams. Any questions?

Trump seems to know little, except for one area, authoritarians. He had the speeches of Mussolini at his bedside. He quoted this week from a well known Klan member. He and his sons and Stephen Miller all seem to know a lot about the right wing signs, symbols and quotes. They show no reluctance to use them. That is until they are called out and then they feign ignorance. 

More and more I see mimes and articles comparing Trump to Hitler. At it’s most innocent it is just odd coincidence. At it’s darkest this is where he wants to take the country.

He has managed over and over again to surprise and outrage us. Many speculate that he will not go quietly from the White House. He careens wildly from day to hour. However, the one constant that all seem to agree on is that he is in it for himself. 

PS Truth is where you find it (?)

Day 1231 – Alexander Botts and Evil

Tuesday June 2, 2020 

152 Days until the election on November 3^rd

232 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Alexander Botts was a salesman who worked for The Earthworm Tractor Factory. He sent reports back to the home office. Everything sounded very formal bureacratic phrasing, but as you read on you realized that Botts created huge problems for himself and others. He never saw it that way. They were merely the facts of what went on and he then explained how he dealt with whatever came up. 

These were humorous stories written in the 1920s and 30s. I guess you could call Botts a clueless good natured positivity person.

But what if he wasn’t? What if he saw nothing wrong in doing bad things? Not that he would be aware they were bad, but he had a predilection to doing bad things, what then? What if he saw the world, not through the sort of rose colored glasses that he filled his reports with, but instead supposed the world was full of people out to get him and what he had done. What if he imagined vast dark conspiracies where there were none? What if he thought he was really smart, when in fact he was not? What if he felt he could only trust himself and maybe a few close family members – all of whom either shared his world view or at least played up to his thoughts about the world?

What if Botts not only saw most people as out to get him and he lashed out at them with crazy non-facts and conspiracy accusations? What if he found others to believe as he did? 

Do you see where I’m going with this? (No, then you’re probably a Fox News/Donald Trump devotee.) 

Some pretty wild stuff is being talked about. It started for me with the running argument I had with my right wing friend and her pals. This guy, whom I didn’t know, felt it a good idea to interject himself in the Facebook conversation by insulting me indirectly with comments like “Who is this turd?” Nice stuff. He eventually explained to me why he was against mail in ballots. It turns out he said that the Democrats could insert isotopes into the ballots that could be read and flip a Republican vote to a Democratic vote. 

Somehow I had missed this reason for not letting millions of people vote by mail. I asked him to let me know more. Maybe he can find some of these ballots. Wouldn’t that be cool? I also asked my friend to let me know what he finds out. She assured me she would. Great! 

It occurred to me that those on the right accuse those on the left of the very things they themselves are doing. This is an old trick and is often illustrated by quotes from Hitler about such things. Hillary Clinton said what? Three decades ago? That there was “a vast right wing conspiracy.” She was mocked by that very group of cabals for saying it. She was entirely correct.  I realized this morning that there is no such apparatus on the left. I mean the right loves to accuse George Soros of all sorts of unspeakable ills, but he’s one guy who has given money to more liberal causes than these folks on the right who are highly organized and have figured out all kinds of shady ways to give money to political and cultural pressure groups. But then I realized the right was correct, there is a vast group assembled against their interests and ambitions. It’s called Western Civilization.

When these right wingers bitch and fletch about people disparaging them what they are really saying is they can’t get their way because there are these institutions and people in their way. Who are those people and institutions? Let me make up a label to throw on them. Just pulling it out of the air mind you, let’s call them Rational people and they are supported by institutes of higher learning, scientists, and anyone with a real education and any knowledge. This is not to say that folks on the right are uneducated heathens. No, they’ve been educated, but somewhere along the way something happened.

Years ago I had a friend who wanted to read I-Ching cards. Okay, that sounded like fun. Let’s do it. But it wasn’t fun. She believed whatever it was that could be interpreted from a random throwing  down of these thick paper nicely illustrated cards. 

I’ve told the story of the woman who said her friend had her palm read. I said, “I can read palms!” She thrust her hand out. My desire was not to read her palm, but the best I would get was to hold the back of her hand. I said things I overheard when I had been around palm readings. I told her about her money-line, and the number of crinkles on the edge of her palm indicated the number of children she was going to have. I started to laugh because it was so ridiculous. She looked up – very seriously, and said, “Go on.” And looked back down at her palm. 

I know I’ve told these stories before. The palm reading one ends with my staring at the top of her downturned head, and my concluding that shooting fish in a barrel was not a good idea, nor something I wanted to do in the future.

I am amazed from time to time, how someone who I’ve known for a period of time then reveals a really bat shit crazy side of themselves. Maybe, it’s a belief in something they have heard from somebody, somewhere, they can’t remember exactly. It doesn’t matter where they heard it. It matters that they believe it. “You know that’s crazy right?” “Well, yes, but maybe it’s true. Or at least part of it? Don’t you think?” (Yes, I think. You don’t. You worry. You work yourself up into a tizzy over something that is patently false and has no basis in fact, but please – go on.)

PS Dat am one big linga!