Slip, sliding away

I sit here feeling like I committed a mortal sin.  Even though I am a lifelong Democrat, I chose not to listen to the speakers last night.  Why?  Because quite frankly, I am tired of drinking Kool-aid.  I am tired of listening to the exaltation of those who have an agenda and are trying to get me to believe in something I no longer believe in.  The party is broken, the country is broken.  

I pondered my fall from grace (so to speak).  Why was I so dismissive of the First Lady, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and even my choice Bernie?  Because this quadrennial farce is getting old.  I thought about the power of the spoken word.  I didn’t think of pulling the lever (a relative easy and non thing to do).  I thought of a suicide bomber going into a crowd and detonating a bomb.  Isn't that person motivated by what someone said?  The point is I am easily confused and oftentimes spirited to action by other’s words and encouragement.  When I act following that disposition, I may well act not from reason but emotions.  Good writers know this.  This is the hook.  This is what makes a speech effective.

Last night speakers to the one are motivational.  They can wrap a message in rhetoric, pull on your heartstrings, stimulate your thinking, and move you.  Riding in on the tide of prose, there lies a virus that once ingested begins the downward spiral into non thinking.  It is when we are in a fever and chanting and acting like some “Holy Roller” that we lose our individuality and huddle with the masses.

We are victims of our biases.  As inane and factually incorrect Trump’s speech was, his ardent supporters felt they were being transported by the rhetoric of their candidate.  They like the Democrats were moved.  We humans are like that, aren’t we?  It is our nature to coalesce behind one thing or another and to follow the lead of those who are enshrined on some pedestal.  In the end, we are like the lemmings who in the heat of the moment get behind the one who is out in front and rush head on.  Unfortunately, all that remains at the end of our efforts and troubles is a cliff.

Dem Convention

The only concern the establishment has in its constituents is what it can get.  The old guiding principles that those in power live by is “what have you done for me lately.”  There is a great divide between the rank and file and the powerful elite.  That divide can be traversed only when you give all that you have to the cause.  Like a voracious raptor, the establishment will suck every drop of blood and if it is to their advantage they will discard your remains without a scintilla of concern.  Wasserman, deserving of scorn, is a case in point.

To see Bill sitting up there all smug knowing the cartel had taken its weak and limping candidate over the finish line is to witness an actual “Game of Thrones.”  Like the Lannisters the Clinton move through the objective unconcern upon the effects they are having.

The Democratic Party is an entrenched establishment designed to further the ends of those who are still capable of doing things for them.  Their lackeys and sycophants are in numbers too large to calculate.  That they lack even a semblance of hope and change is evident in the hue and cry of those who have given their heart and soul to change yet are expected to sit quietly while the made for tv event unfolds.

Obama was to be the grand champion.  Once in office he followed a trajectory that could only be described as lackluster.  He did a capable job, but that Hope and Change was jettison while his super majority was eroded away and he was left to face the jeers of a Republican Congress hell bent on ensuring nothing but nothing would get done.

Now, there are pleas for Bernie supporters to get behind the candidate who was the rigged choice of the party.  The general argument forming now she is the lesser of two evils.  Funny Thing, if we choose the lesser of two evils, we are still left with evil.  

To encourage people to care is a dangerous thing.  Caring is just not some commodity that can be transferred on a whim.  Certainly, if the caring feel as if they were betrayed, and evidence that later comes to light that they were, well, that is a stinging indictment of a system and is a cut too deep to heal in a day of supposed unity.  Fuck Kumbaya!

“The Russians did it” is probably the best bullshit argument ever to bubble out of the cesspool of insider politics.  Even if the Russians did leak the documents, they weren’t the ones writing the emails.  Again, if the light is shown on evil doings by the Russians, the scandalous actions of a body to favor a candidate while the election is going is evil.  

I can remember when the candidate was chosen at the convention.  This made for TV world of hype and showmanship is pure horseshit.  The days of the smoke filled room and the deals is something I wish would come back.  Because this year long money driven cluster fuck is nothing short of some grand scheme by power elites to window dress a system that has literally degraded into a circus.  And what about all the money that is changing hands?  I contributed because I believe that change is needed desperately.  I am tired of the Clintons, the Trumps and all the other power elites that have been running this country for a long time and have presided over the largest decline in roads and bridges, income inequality, decaying cities, etc. etc. Crooks on Wall Street are praised.  Obama singled out Jamie Dimon as a great man,  More horshit.  So here we go again.   A great surge of optimism is being tamped down.  We are being told we need unity.  Why?  The Republicans don’t have it, do they?  Hell that is a rolling disaster with a clown leading the parade of fools.  Two parties are outdated.  The Republicans had a coup.  Unfortunately, the crazies had taken control thanks in large measure by the bullshit spewing out of the mouths of their elected officials and the news junkies who peddled their crap.

The Dems are now circling the wagons, but it is only the power elite, the mouth spewing spinsters who never answer a direct question but always babble on and on.  I guess the theory goes if you repeat a lie often enough people will believe it.  Funny thing is that power brokers just don’t get it.  They all say the same thing.  It is as hollow as the wind going through the mouth of an empty bottle.

Modern day politics is pure bullshit.  Conventions are empty displays of carefully crafted words written by gnomes who try to convince us this horseshit is meaningful while actors (sad and sorry elected officials) mouthed the words displaying passion as vapid as their histories.  They coin phrases because they know our attention spans equals that of an insect.  We who believe in change are left with our hands out while the glib candidate press flesh in an attempt to fool us into choosing.  I said it once and I will say it again.  Choosing lesser of two evil still leaves us with evil.

On Violence

This essay is not designed to diminish in anyway the tragedies of the recent past.  The horrors of watching a young man too scared to be carrying a gun shooting a man whose family is there to watch his murder is beyond reason.  It is truly absurd because we have a ringside seat to a snuff film.  The news media cranks up its reporting, which I think is partly to blame, given the twisted thinking of some who think their miserable lives can be justified by sometime in spotlight.   The gunning down of five police officers becomes a reason to roll out the pundits who wring their hands and talk their usual nonsense about everything.  Yet, is it the story that is important or the need to feed the 24 hour news cycle?  

The Orlando shooting was a case in point.  The bloviators began trumpeting their claims of the greatest mass murder of all time.  I guess the Indian massacres are now beyond the grasp of these so called experts.  The history of this country cannot be separated from violence.  While the talking heads talks their talk, one must remember every page of our history is written in blood red.  That minorities are the primary victims in the savagery of this nation, and yes we are all an insane thought away from being a statistic.

I don’t know about you but the haunting images of hanged young black men while whites stand their looking with their scorn countenances are as haunting of any of the recent photos or movies.  As Billie Holiday sang,

Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze

Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees

Violence is what we Americans are about.  I know it is sweeping generalization but let’s not talk about violence as if it is anomaly.   It is who we are.  Our diplomacy seems always tied to some military action.  Now we fight wars remotely.  The police department in Dallas struck a blow to policing by blowing up the suspect.  That is not to say that this violent person needed to be stopped.  But were there any options before that?  Just like those fellows in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, what happened to the stun guns?  What is it with this shoot’em up, blow’em up mentality?

The sad reality is that we are a violent nation.  It is our way.  It has been that way from beginning and continues to be.  Isn’t it ironic that Dr. King, a non-violent activist, was gunned down?  The statistics on shooting and deaths are staggering.  On an average day 36 people will be killed.  So let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this business of deadly violence is new or novel.  The fact that people are aware of the violence hopefully will bring some change.  As for me, I am cynical when it comes to change in the culture.  Violence is who we are.  What is striking is that there are so many of us who really aren’t violent.

But rather than just point a finger at Americans, it seems there is a persistent and pernicious tendency for humans to wreak havoc on ourselves and the world at large.  We are cruel by nature.  Some will argue that it is not our nature, but history shows us otherwise.  The more serious immediate concern is that there are too many humans on this planet.  Perhaps if we were truly rational sentient beings, there would be hope.  That isn’t the case.  We tend to separate ourselves with religious beliefs and political disagreements, to name the two primary ones.  We stand in horror as we look upon our violent experiences as foreign to us.  In reality, this is who we are.  The change needed to make a correction in this chain of never ending violence is nothing short of a complete transformation.  While some may see a path to this end, I see a road strewn with bodies of those who engage in violence and those who are victims of it.  Fact is as wise men have said in many ways and in many forums, you can rid the world of violence with violence.  All I see are guns and hate and firm convictions that do little but separate us from each other leaving all in the grips of that which we abhor.       

The election of 2016

It has come down to this:  Clinton and Trump, two of the most unliked public figures of these times we live.  One a brass and stupid buffoon; the other a cagey opportunist too smart for her own good.  We are to chose the one least likely to lead us further down this road of decay.  Both are like characters in a Greek Tragedy playing out their doomed destinies never for a moment attempting to face the personal consequences of their flawed egos-- hubris unchecked will always signal the destruction of that which is coveted the most.

Hearing Obama invoke the cadence of MLK, exhorting the crowd to elect Hillary, one wonders if his efforts are designed more to affirm his popularity.  Will this be his legacy?  To elect an unlikeable person because he will, and in his words, “ she will carry the torch,” “she will finish the race.”  What race?  The race to mediocrity, the race to allow corporate greed to go unchecked.  Obama is a good man, and he would have been remarkable if he had a strong senator and a congress to take his mediocre proposals and fashion them into truly innovative policies and programs.  Was it too much to ask that the country take the bold steps like those of FDR and repair a nation and its people? Why does it always come down to a choice between the lesser of two evils.

Alas, now we have a Democratic candidate who has been singled out as a person with poor judgment.  While a server is no big deal, what happens when the consequences of actions become serious?  And what of her husband, the first “whatever?”  This mischievous miscreant who has a history of doing things that are truly embarrassing has the tendency to put personal above country.   Why else would he use the oval office for his assignations?   And if that wasn’t enough we have the two of them acquiring wealth?  Does one think that with her ascension to the Oval Office Hillary will now be able to do the things she never was able to do.  Sure, she could handle the Department of State, the Office of Blah Blah Blah.  Her work in the Senate was as much about helping Wall Street as anything else.

How uninspiring she is or will ever be, she pales in comparison to Donald Trump.  Here is an example of a Mencken observation, “no one ever went broke underestimating the stupidity of the American Public.”  A character right out the pages of a comic book he saunters forth babbling like a fool and spouting nonsense.  He is a textbook narcissist. He is a product of a culture and a party that have given itself over to ignorance.  That he rose above the circus of the candidate field in the Republican Party shows how low an organization can fall when it opts for lies and chicanery to promote the selfish aims of its cabal.  

Democrats are not much better.  They rig a selection process designed to reward the one who will reward their loyalty with the spoils of high office.  Of course, the chorus, to return to the allusion of a Greek Tragedy, is comprised of the moneyed people who stand ready to grab even more.  

The play is entering the 3rd act; soon the forces of our fate will drive the action.  As we learned, hubris will rule the day and the fatal flaws will in one last and disturbing thrust reduce all to the outcome we all knew was coming but was hoping it wouldn’t.

Step right up and vote, but . . .

Empty Hope

So all Bernie supporters need to forget about their hopes and beliefs and get behind Clinton.  Obama and those bigwig Democrats (many if not all are superdelegates) who never gave a shit about us now welcomes us.  You had your fun, but like ol’ Billy Boy said, “Your Toast.”  Look over there at the Republican presumptive nominee.  See what can happen!  The shrill chorus of gloom and doom echo in every quarter; hell even the media is picking up on it.

An historical moment is unfolding.  See there is a woman, the first woman to become the presumptive nominee of one of the two bankrupt parties that dominate this country.  There is nothing more any true American liberal could ever want.  Right?   Bullshit!

You see we been through all this before.  Are we so myopic that we already lost sight of 2008.  Remember that black dude in Colorado who gave his nominating speech in a stadium -- the only place in Denver to accommodate the crowd.  Everyone wanted to be a witness to history.  I must confess that I choked up hearing that young black man talk about hope and change.  I choked back tears when his family came out to join him.  Hell, I was sentimental seeing Oprah in the midst of the masses shedding a tear or two.  Wasn’t that historic?  Wasn’t that a barrier shattered? How absolutely empty that moment was in hindsight.

You see, we didn’t get anything to quell the fever of hope.  Though Obama marched into office with a super majority (a house and senate in his party), though he had one of the grandest inaugural of all time (hell Beyonce sang), we got nothing but the same, save for some tweaks like the Affordable Care Act.  This colossal product of bureaucracy and politics and the private sector was a little short of a national healthcare (I am being facetious here).  It was a nightmare from stem to stern, incomprehensible when first issued, riddled at implementation, and more importantly it had an escape hatch for neanderthals who don’t quite comprehend a social compact.  That insurance companies can raise their rates and the average joe can see his taxes go up speaks to the absolute failure of a program that is essential to living a life of liberty and a pursuit of happiness.  And all the Democrats crowing for unity had a hand in this.  That something was done is good, but let’s assess it for what it really is or should I say isn’t.  It’s not Medicare.

The aforementioned is a way of showing the hollowness of party unity.  Even when the electorate overwhelmingly turns out and follows a dream what it ends up with is little more than a morsel of the slice of the pie.  The big boys get the pie.  

Enter Clinton, or should I say Clintons, either way we are going to get both.  They are a team that is to be sure.  That they can run and steal an election, no doubt about that.  But what is behind this dynamic duo, well fasten your hip boots because it does get murky.

First, they were the architects of the first national health bill that was an unmitigated failure.  It was a testament to their inability to move things.  Say what you will about Obamacare at least it is law and does offer some relief to the disastrous totally private administration of health care.  How about the conservative shift in criminal justice and so called religious freedom.  In the former, you just jailed the poor especially the blacks, and in the later you gave the bigoted religious zealots an avenue to vent their hate.  Oh, as for the economy, let’s give the power brokers free reign to run their scams with other people’s assets.  Should anything go wrong, let’s remember “they are too big to fail.”  Of course, the fact that millions will go bankrupt and lose their homes, well, big is good, but small who cares?  This list of “achievements” can only be elevated by rhetoric.  Also, a budget was balanced but on whose backs?

Yet here we go again.  The choice of course is always framed as the lesser of two evils.  Does anyone ever ask why can’t there be a choice between what is good and what is bad.  Claiming an historical moment when a lifetime politician ascend to high political stature is kind of self serving.  That a black made it to the top was unfathomable though the significance is more in the optics than the substance given the ignorant truculent bigots in Congress and the reluctance of that body elected with him to truly vote against the interests of the special interests.

So I should not be concerned with helping the impoverished to get a decent minimum wage, nor should I worry about students being saddled with debt for improving themselves, and I shouldn’t give a hoot if a bunch of thieves manipulating the market for private gains get away with their criminal acts.  Most of all I should ignore the history of a candidate in matters of personal profit and glaring stupid mistakes.  I should worry about the buffoon bogeyman.  That both of the candidates this term  inspire nearly no one is of no importance.  After all it is about choices in a democracy.  Choose between the lesser of two evils, which sort of mean evil abounds.

Reflection on the Primary (Democratic)

When The Scoundrels Won

Pacino in the movie The Devil’s Advocate tells his prodigy that the devil won when he convinced the people he didn’t exist.  Enter the moneyed class and scoundrels.  They won this election cycle by ensuring that their position is secured.  Clinton is the best example of how to don sheep clothing and get into the flock.  This family dynasty can be counted on to enrich themselves and play any game to get where they are going or want to go and it usually is to stand in front of mirror and fill their empty egos with pride.

John McCain must be drooling at the prospect of becoming Secretary of Defense.  What scoundrel from Wall Street has been promised the keys to the Treasury?  A good guess can be found in the thieves who paid Clinton to speak.  How many pardons will the new president grant that have to do with the shenanigans of Billy-Boy’s friends?  How is the tax department going to study the filings of the Clinton Foundation?  And how much of this dirt is going to roll out in the election?  One thing rich and powerful people like to do is gossip.  Not the gossip the masses get but the real inside stories.  Of course, Trump, the buffoon, will have no trouble spilling the beans.

What is sad, really sad is that again the nation is adrift in mediocrity tinged with a heavy dose of “pay for play.”  The world is going to shit and neither candidate cares.  The first and highest priority is to preserve and expand the legacy of their egos.  Fracking, is any candidate against it?  Wall Street reform?  Outrageous college debt?  Will global warming lose out to Exxon?  Will the minimum wage bill be run by the Waltons?  Can we extract ourselves from the actions of a bellicose Israeli Prime Minister?  How about GMO’s?

We stand on the brink of a world spinning out of control because too few have too much.  I look at the Clintons and compare them with Carters.  There is a world of difference in their approach to public service, a world of difference in their approach to humanity.  Carter serves the poor but not through a foundation where millions, if not billions, is funneled though some pseudo corporate entity.  By the way, didn’t they have to return items that were taken from the White House?

Platitudes coming from Clinton and her minions are attempts to draw on the energy of a campaign of ideas.   Bernie ran a good fight.  He energize the party.  He brought out the disenfranchised.  He is good for the party and the country.  What these statement fail to appreciate is that Sanders campaign was never about Bernie.  If they think they can now draw on his support with this insincere rhetoric, they don’t have a clue what the Sanders campaign was about or why it drew the attention it did.  

Bill Clinton moved this country to the right farther than anyone because he had the support of the Democrats.  His crime bill and welfare reform were creations drawn from the primer on a conservative agenda.  That is why he was able to work with a Republican majority.  Oh, and all those bullshit religious laws that single out gays and transgender folks, well look that up sometime.  And he had such a forward policy on gays in the military, “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  That worked, huh?

The Sanders campaign was all about ideas and beliefs that in this world things can get done.  That to accomplish great things, bold actions need to be undertaken.  It was never about the candidate.   It was about a candidate who dared to go beyond the constraints that has kept this country in a strangle hold.  When was the last time the great Bill Clinton was seen at a public golf course?  Every picture of this man shows him surrounded by influence peddlers and moguls, or laughing and joking with the Bushes.   That people who believe in Democratic principles think that this conservative family is going to deliver something different this go around are engaging in wishful thinking and they definitely have their collective heads in a place where the sun doesn’t shine.  By the way, this cycle is the perfect sting:  You think you have won while the scoundrels walk off with your money.

Analyzing Republican Reaction To Trump's racism

The Hypocrisy of Outrage

To see the Republicans stammer when asked if Trump’s comments were racist shows that even confronted with the reality of their bigoted presumptive nominee they are reluctant to call it what it is.  Irony abounds.  They won’t say it is because they relied on racism to win the house and the senate and every presidential election after 1968.  The only difference is that they prefer to use code words and allusions rather than outright racial slurs.  The only mistake Trump is making by their standards is that he is using actual words rather than the euphemisms they employ.  How dare he pull down the screen and show people what these bigots really think?

There is an historical context to all this.  Way back when the southern bloc left the Democratic party over the Voting Rights Act.  For all those who forget or missed that lesson, the bill was the cornerstone of the Great Society.  This program of President Johnson was a legislative attempt to do what should have been done during the Reconstruction (i.e. period after the Civil War).  The Dixiecrats (they were never really democrats -- they were racists who held on to the antebellum views that men were not created equal) prided themselves on making sure Jim Crow Laws would negate the North win over the South.  How ironic it was the Republicans during that period spoke to the rights of all citizens.  The party of Lincoln held to the principles of equal rights.

Nixon was one who recognize the importance of a southern strategy.  The South was rudderless having been ignored by the Democrats.  So the modern Republican Party, a party of neoconservatives, shifted to the right or should say I dug a deeper hole that allowed the bigoted whites to drain into their hatred.  

Next came Reagan and the California right composed mainly of deviate money men whose only concern was to acquire as much wealth as possible before they croaked.  That Reagan was a man of minimal intelligence and strong emotions made him the ideal candidate to be manipulated.  His skill at memorizing lines and affecting an “Aw Shucks” demeanor made him the ideal empty suit to be transformed into a statesman.  That he didn’t know basic geography or remember a single important thing was easily channeled by keeping him away from any extemporaneous moments that might be recorded.  His image could be sculpted and the B actor was good at playing a role.  You see, the ideal face of the party could not be a strong person with a mind of his own but a “yes” man who could sell soap (literally).

Reagan built the military and the money grubbing industrialists couldn’t have been happier.  There was so much arms being built, the country became the arms dealer for the world even making it a means to prop up dictators and suppress populations in South America, indeed the world.  This is the Reagan legacy, a vast sell out to the military industrial complex, and a presidency guided by operatives, while the aging cowboy, who was losing his mind, nodded off into peaceful naps, while the world fell apart.

Then we have Bush I, with Lee Atwater, using Willie Horton, followed by Rove and the Idiot Son who brought racism and hate politics to an even greater depth of depravity.  With the rich getting richer and allowing their blood money to go untaxed, the Republican party was in clutches of those who used the ignorant to maintain their power and plunder the society.

 

Over time the nation defaulted to democracy and love of neighbor and elected Democratic Presidents , but the Republicans unleashed the bigoted cadre of Elmer Gantries who used their pulpits to preach made up moral issues and corral their flocks into supporting the charlatans who mouthed, though often not believed, their muddled view of Christianity.  Of course, all levels of government ruled by this monolith of hate and ignorance gerrymandered districts insuring only the most reprehensible individuals would be sent to Washington and create a pit where they could wrapped themselves in flags which was good because then they could stuff their pockets without being detected.  

Trump is the natural progression of a party that is based on ignorance and hate and beholding to men who are to the one scoundrels.  It is hard to find one of the so called leaders of industry who isn’t tainted with corruption and fraud.  That they persist promoting policies that are dangerous to all living creatures and the world itself is an indication that it is only their greed that matters for they will be long gone before they experience the devastation of their actions.   

The Republican party made a concerted effort to be a racist bastion of ignorance and hate.  Their leaders are caught in a trap of their own making.  The money men realize that this fool who rose up out of the trash heap they created is about to do something as bold as Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.  The events of this cycle need a caliber of a writer on par with Shakespeare to bring out the ironies of a party that created what they despise.  Also, there might be some poignant scenes by a Moliere caliber humorist -- one who could show the absolute absurdity of all the Republican players trying to avoid and court the buffoon.  Twain would capture it for sure.  But in the final analysis all we need to do is look at this spectacle and know that “karma” is a bitch.