On the Condescensions of Streep

According to Roger Cohen of the New York Times:

"The issues that afflict the economy — rising inequality, stagnant middle-class incomes, marginalization — are not enough to explain Americans’ decision to leap off a cliff and entrust their fate to a collection of billionaires and ex-generals under the diktat of a thin-skinned showman of conspicuous 'cruelty and ignorance,' in the words of Garrison Keillor."

So if all that is not enough, what else does it take to explain the paroxysm of spite and vandalism that is vaulting a rabid frothing ferret toward the highest office of our sick and suffering nation?

Well, according to Cohen, and so many boobs who claim to speak for middle America, we can blame the trimpification of America on the bicoastal libtard cultural elite.

The claim seems to be that if these glittering white wine sippers weren't so out of touch with the struggles of ordinary Americans who don't live in cities, then the good people of the prairies might have held their noses and given Hillary one last chance to fix a broken system. Never mind that this is a system to which she has accommodated herself (so thoroughly and so professionally) throughout her entire long career.

Really Roger?

What does being "in touch" with such people really mean? How does Meryl Streep offend them, by pointing out that trimp (as an obvious and indelible matter of public record) did indeed publicly mock a handicapped person just trying to do his job? How do liberals insult the salt of the earth by claiming that aging Red States receive more federal expenditures from Washington than they send in via their taxes? How does anyone injure them by fighting to protect their Social Security, MediCare, and MedicAid?

Is it because it hurts their pride to be reminded that we all depend on one another? Is it because it injures their "honor" that they may need the same types of support and services people with different skin colors also might need?  Is it because they want to be seen as brave and independent even though they are impaired by (somewhat) rational fears of crime, terrorists and unemployment?  Does it have anything to do with how somebody somewhere might seem to be walking into the wrong bathroom or holding hands with a person who might have the same nasty bits inside their pants?

Only an idiot would deny too many Americans are suffering. The victims include those among the younger, more urban populations who can suffer because of poverty, insecurity, racial hatred, fear, the cultures of crime and drugs, and a crippling lack of access to good education or meaningful work. Also included are people among older, more rural, populations who endure poverty, insecurity, fear, perceived racial bias, vulnerability to crime and drug culture, and a crippling lack of access to good education or meaningful work.

Obviously there is suffering. And, nearly as obviously, this is shared suffering. But the key word here does not seem to be "shared". The key word remains "suffering".

Except in depictions in art - and very rare real life occurrences (miracles) - suffering only rarely ennobles the human spirit - even when that suffering is survived. Suffering is too easily and too often glibly conflated with challenge and adversity. But suffering is, by definition, pain one tries to endure when there is no meaningful hope and no genuine comfort.

As the parent of any child - or any survivor of deep depression - may know, some suffering is transient. Maybe most suffering, and perhaps all of it, is only temporary especially if one takes into account the mercy of death. But when one feels helpless to offer meaningful hope or comfort, suffering with all its hopelessness is contagious. This is probably true of any contact with any victim who suffers - or even seems to suffer- no matter how brief the contact.

But if the defining characteristic of suffering is hopelessness (very akin to "helplessness") then the imperative to be of use militates that we, in certain ways, must inure ourselves to the suffering of others - even the suffering of those most dear. This is the carapace of the nurse, the nun, the surgeon, the teacher, the genuine helper who may, for a brief time, sit and share the despair of the sufferer, but who then must soldier on - or otherwise be of no use in this or any other case of suffering.

This is never easy - not even in institutional settings (such as hospitals and families) where certain distinctions are made and maintained between the sufferers and their "helpers". Out in the wild world, though, things are ever much more dicey.

"Killary" lost only because so few people made it to the polls. Some, sulking like armchair Achilles, stayed away voluntarily. Far too many though were kept away by the malicious means of hacks and manipulators seeking the short term benefits of voter suppression. Only a minority of those who actually voted did so for trimp. And of that minority only a tiny (but viciously vocal) splinter still actively participates in the obtuse choir of cacophony that feigns to find any words against their swindler a personal affront.

But those who sullenly pulled questionable levers for the Moronic Marsupial of Mal-I-Guano have some reason to resent preaching or scolding from those who, in public, appear more careless and free. This is not anything deserving of mockery anymore than it merits the insults of pity or sympathy. From us they want silence and, perhaps, some time to regain their bearings undistracted by supercilious jibes and accusations. And they are justified in the sense that no one has the right or the standing to pose as superior or "all knowing" compared to anyone else. 

 Our problem though is that this is not the whole story.

Out in the wild world, no one ever has the whole story - if there ever was (or will be) one story to be had. trimpulists love to remind us of this as a more genteel way to tell us to shut the fuck up. Out in the wild world we all must take turns leading and following, helping and being helped, learning and teaching, taking and giving. It's a swinging square dance with more than one "dance addled" caller.

So let us like Streep not call attention to the private anguish of those, who (by their vote, their influence, or their inaction) helped "electorate" our hateful toddler. Instead let's just try to remember how someone, through no merit or fault of their own, can become the emblem of future abuse and atrocity that we must try to prevent.

Oh, and by the way, Fuck You, trimp!

A Plutocrat's Guide to the Loserverse?

This is a great list, and I'm ashamed to admit I've only read a small fraction of these. But who WOULD (beside academic types) embark upon such a course of learning?

Plutocrats, aspiring billionaires, and embryo Machiavellians would all certainly benefit from reading any one of these tomes knowing, as they do, that "information plus insight" equals "opportunity and, perhaps, wealth and power" - or just more of the same when you already have at least some of each.

The "electorization" of Dumvald J trimp has a substantial likelihood to be soon decapitated by impeachment, Section 4 of the 25th amendment, or some other measure deemed necessary and (more or less) proper by those in the know. If any of this should (somehow) happen, it would likely unleash another "populist" paroxysm parallel to that which launched the orange tufted twat close enough to the White House to rape the benefit from a push from Putin and a goad from the G men.

Whether trimp is or (is not) neutralized, there may well be another upsurge not so easily managed. The financiers of Babbittry, trifling, and racial hate who support voter suppression are the same social entrepreneurs who encourage the camouflaged, beer soaked, "home grown Country Joe's" to run regularly into the woods chanting "Knee Shaggy Nadz!" and "Moron Labia!" 

These moneyspenders and media manipulators have been immensely successful in convincing a vast majority of Americans that politics, government, and democracy are nothing but frauds - and the victims of such cruel mockeries are the "good people" - the washed up, pale, pallid, bleached out, patient sufferers who are rumored to be patient no more.

Neither the particles nor the wavers of that swelling tide are likely to find the time or have the inclination to dip into this reading list. But anyone willing or able to read so far here - or even to skim through these titles and descriptions - might. 

Such people, I like to think, are a special part of a larger current that excludes none of the smaller eddies - or any titanic whirlpool. It's a current much broader and much deeper then the flailing storm that's frightening our minds and may soon spill into the streets. It's a current of hope and despair, not resignation. 

This current is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It's a strange mixture of idealism and realism that can't easily be encapsulated into a slogan or a meme. It has no plan, no leader, no true ideology - and no religion or faith though it may share some guiding spirit that cannot be named despite our human natures that compel us to try all sorts of labels.

No matter what happens with trimp, readers and their kindred are also likely to be in the streets. Not immune from dog whistles from side streets and high windows, they are still more likely to organize themselves according to principles less confined by the blinkering of tired paradigms. 

But imagination embodied with an awareness that history does not stay sequestered in the past is the burden and the strength of readers whose purposes transcend both the self and its escape.

Vietnam and the Lessons We Don't Learn

There are so many reasons to deplore the Vietnam War, its escalations, it's "causes", and its simmering aftermath. But even more deplorable are the efforts and resources expended to ensure we continue to learn the wrong lessons from it all. These efforts and their monumental success are emblematic of cultural conditions explaining how our electoral process was recently trimped in such a shameful way.

Nearly all of has were raised believing that fighting in the military equates to "serving one's country".  There are even well-intentioned efforts to amend this belief in light of the uncomfortable consequences the Vietnam experience has had on our culture.  One of these is the idea that "the armed services [should] be just one of many ways young people can serve their country".  This is indisputably true in principal, but effectively false with regard to the actual uses of "our" US military.

"Our" military, in principle, still defends the independence and security of our troubled nation.  But in actuality, the US military is almost wholly used in the service of empire. And the greatest enemies of this empire are not invaders, terrorism or communism - unless such labels are used to describe the efforts of foreign nations to control their own resources and choose their own paths for development.

The lesson of Vietnam, which could be learned by anyone who seriously studies the Pentagon Papers, is that the US consistently works against democracy and self-determination wherever they might conflict with "our" national interests. But, as trimp voters know in their guts, these interests are preponderantly defined by the private, profit-seeking motives of the directors of "our" economy.

Our presidents and our governments lied about Vietnam because telling the truth might have preempted such atrocities. Does anyone really believe there's been any war since Vietnam that was particularly different?  Vietnam was but one of many US interventions into other small countries before, during, and after the 1960s. It was not even the longest lasting.  For one example: the US still conducts regular military operations in the Philippines as it has, more or less consistently, since our invasion in 1898.  Honduras is another "abject" example of "our good intentions", and so (in another way) is Cuba.

Most of us have still not learned this lesson. It is a lesson that goes well beyond Vietnam - and even beyond empire. It is a lesson that could let us clearly see the long way to go before we can actually claim to be participating in any democracy.  

But first, we would have to want to.

Why is this Happening to US?

or

Tom Engelhardt's Top Five trimpvelations

The 0.1% Economy

First of all it’s NOT really the "One Percent” who are calling the shots and letting prospects for any actual US democracy get washed away.  It’s the 0.1% economy based on what Tom accurately calls "Casino Capitalism".   

It's interesting to note that the architects of the Bretton Woods (NH) post WWII world economic order did what they could to corral “finance capital” as opposed to “productive” capital.  But many such prudent safeguards including much of the New Deal have been steadily eroded, repealed, replaced or ignored by the Monied Masters of Mankind who, to their credit, share our disdain for the Dummkopf of Mal-A-Guano.  

The chipping away at the foundations for decent living standards for the masses started well before the mushrooms over Nagasaki could begin to dissipate. Now the malign fallout of greed and unaccountable concentrated wealth is raining grief on all of us.

The National Security State and the Permanent War Economy

Publicly available national security planning documents make it clear that “world empire” was an expected outcome of the Second World War during which US planners were actively preparing for the actualities of (imperial) diplomacy, propaganda, and intervention under the “Pax” Americana. 

World War II conclusively demonstrated that Keynesian economics worked wonderfully well in the real world.  The anemic economic stimuli provided by the New Deal did mitigate the ravages of the Great Depression, but the massive war deficits actually eradicated unemployment faster and more effectively that what the Salk vaccine did to polio.  

World War II also proved that, even during the most dire of national emergencies, there could be no peace between predatory capitalism and organized workers.  Workers, lulled by postwar prosperity and the passing of generations, forgot this.  Institutionalized greed did not. 

The war economy was rationalized and sold to the US public by ginning up fears of the soul crushing world communist serfdom represented by the “Red Menace” of Soviet Russia and the “Yellow Peril” of Maoist China.  US planning documents, including the Pentagon Papers, establish that US official clearly knew their real foe was the economic nationalism of peoples who dared dream of controlling “our” resources that just happened to be located within the borders of their quaint homelands.  But that’s “communism” too, and as Strummer and Jones later noted, “Castro is a color that is redder than red.  Castro is a color that will earn you a spray of lead.”  But the Indian fighters of the US Calvary and the US commander in Vietnam put it even more cogently with their Almarican dictum which, as every American schoolboy knows, translates as “Kill ‘em all.  Let God sort ‘em out”.

Interestingly, the war economy did much more than simply provide what passed for full employment.  Much of the Pentagon funded research of the 50s and 60s  was only tangentially related to national security needs.  But they did supply the necessary research, development, and market building for the high tech economy.

The National Security Act of 1947 laid the legal basis for the National Security Surveillance State.  The Church and Pike Committees and other investigations such as the one that looked into the Ronald Reagan/Oliver North Iran Contra travesty were little more than speed bumps in the accelerating development of the Secret Government.   September 11. 2001 may still turn out to be the death knell for democracy as we dreamed existed in the US, but time will tell.

The One Party State

Principled leftist commentators have long said that US politics is dominated by one Business Party (with two flapping wings).  Recent Supreme Court decisions and the increasing monopolization of our society’s collective resources by a predatory idiot (0.1%) elite mean that big money is likely to continue to dominate both parties and constrain public discourse (and campaign rhetoric) so as to protect the interests of these “Masters of Mankind”.  

Although pundits and chatterers have long loves detecting signs that one or the other party is coming into certain dominance, elections in the US are amazingly close with ever fewer citizens able to give a clear description of the difference between Democrats and Republicans.   If any party is likely to fracture, history and logic indicate that it will probably be the GOP.  But in that event a new right wing party that aggressively pursues the agenda of the business will emerge from it’s wreckage just as the National Republicans replaced the Federalists, the Whigs replaced the National Republicans, and the GOP replaced the Whigs.

The New Media Landscape

Newspapers and network news appear to have lost some (or much) of their dominance.  Social media enables the spread of all kinds of actual news that’s generally surpassed or ignored by the mainstream media.  But social media (dubiously) is also blamed for siloing opinions and world views as well as for encouraging the dissemination of all kinds of fake news

Some “social media vectored “fake news” is designed and funded  to have an ideological effect.  Other times it is merely a way to generate clicks for ad revenue.  Either way there is worry that such fake news is part our nation’s political polarization and governmental gridlock while also helping to maximize “information entropy”, a form of generalized anomie where no information or information source is credible or actionable except to occasional heavily armed nutjobs who open fire in oddly named pizzerias or take over remote woodland federal installations so they can take turns patrolling the perimeter while the rest stay inside watching the internet and roasting marshmallows.

Social media also offers new modes of political organization (and monitoring of such) while certainly allowing leaders to bypass typical media conduits.  

All of this was partially instrumental in our upcoming trimpification.

Anomie, Exhaustion, Dereliction, Division, and Desperation

Though the US leads in destructive firepower and diabolical military technology, it is becoming ever more clear that our healthcare, educational, transportation, and energy infrastructure are falling apart while falling behind what is available in other advanced economies.  It is now a commonplace that American children can no longer expect to do better materially than their parents.  Incomes for 80% of the population have been stagnant since the 1970s.

We’re told that people are reflexively (because of so much media prompting) blaming “gubmint” for these ills.  Seniors are portrayed as protesting, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” and the New York Times recently quoted a mom who condemned ObamaCare for forcing her son off her insurance when he turned 26.   

It does seem to be the case that many of us are blaming immigrants or, at least, the “illegals”.  In the meantime we being told that “white” people (a concept invented in colonial Virginia) are no longer the majority of those now under 5 years of age - although these reports usually don’t break down how many of these “brown” toddlers are the children and grandchildren of those of us who have been taught to identify as “white”.

As Tom Englehardt points out, this is the America that will, before the end of this month, fall into the short, stubby fingers of a delusional buffoon.

The Perils of Dormant Butt Syndrome

Noam Chomsky is still out there pointedly making the useful distinction between "protest" and "resistance".

It makes so much sense.

Though the orange tufted twit of twat thumping has made his depraved intentions clear, he has not yet assumed office. So right now there is nothing to resist although gobs and globs of hideous obscenities to protest.

But in the months and years to come (even after Congress may have "disPensed" with the trimp and his raft of bombastic antics), we will all have to find ways of honoring and supporting each other's tries for decency whether they manifest themselves as varying forms of protest, dissent, organizing, educating, and peaceful passive or active resistance in very bold and creative forms. All of these can carry heavy forms of risk as witnessed by the atrocities at Standing Rock.

Every move any of us make is always an experiment to test our own capacities, but also to test the nature of the system we are trying to change. This is a system so much vaster than trimp and his legions of grifters. This is a system that is even far larger than the ponzi schemes of of state capitalism. Capitalism as a state sponsored system actually dwarfs the idiot elite who are merely captive to its dynamics. But our human project over arches all economic systems and fantasies. Ultimately it may be even greater than the much larger forces of empire and domination which deform all economies - and which also mandate state sponsored torture and terror with the US being the most powerful and vicious terror state of all (so far).

But here is our real struggle which is a struggle of memory and imagination as much as it is battles of wit, words, fists, theater, images, water hoses, tear gas, stun grenades, stadiums, and prisons.

The fact that the US is a massive terror state does NOT ultimately invalidate the myths we teach our children and often use to soothe ourselves. That the US (which includes ALL of US - no matter what) not only fails to live up to OUR idealistic images, but also routinely and systematically attacks and undermines these ideals DOES NOT mean we should choose between the current "reality of US" and our potential with its real, but unknown limits.

"Freedom and justice for all" as an empty headed slogan is revolting and disappointing, but less offensive than when its employed as a calculated cover for acts of infamy. But the underlying ideals are still alive, still real, and like "Democracy" they are neither satisfying nor reassuring. They are goads for us to stop pissing around - and to make ourselves useful.

(Warning: Dormant Butt Syndrome may lead to hip, knee and back pain as well as the withering of the spirit.)