I don't know that tomorrow's scheduled Electoral College vote will result in any surprises, but the way things have been going -- one "shock" after another -- suggests that the effort to convince Electors not to elect Trump may be a failure, and yet it will have serious repercussions.
Our indirect system for electing presidents is bizarre and anachronistic. According to elite academic and legal opinion, it is intended to prevent the ascension of incompetents, unqualified candidates and demagogues to the presidency, but it doesn't do that. What it sometimes does, and what it is intended to do, is enable minority vote-getters to ascend, whether or not they are incompetent, unqualified or demagogues.
It is a system tailor made for what is likely to happen tomorrow: the ascension of Trump to a decadent presidency, exactly as the system is designed to enable.
Decadence, yes.
Many of Trump's defenders seem to believe that his ascension will end the rule of the neoLibCon cabal that has led to so much mischief, stagnation and suffering for so many people for the last 40 years or so.
How they come to that conclusion is a mystery. Every sign is that Trump will accelerate the ruling paradigm into hyperdrive. NeoLibCon rule on crack and steroids.
Without any mitigations whatever.
The system of rule may crash because of the chaos inherent in the Trumpian practice, but if a system crash is what his defenders are after, they should say so openly, and they should have long ago proposed an alternative to the current deviant, decadent and unstable system. But they haven't. Instead, they act like Puritan scolds, criticizing the system and then supporting and defending a plutocrat disruptor whose sole interest is his own preening eminence. Great.
They haven't proposed an alternative because they don't have an alternative. They just want to see the whole thing come crashing down or not -- which is nothing but nihilism.
The desperation of the Ruling Clique to maintain the decadent system that has propped them up and given them so much is plain to see what with the various strategies in play to prevent the ascension of Trump to the throne. Of course, there is always a reserve strategy should none of the rest of them work.
I understand that he has decamped to his Winter Palace in Florida, a more easily defensible location given the instability of the situation. I wonder if he has a fortified bunker there.
Speaking of, I was thinking about Jeffrey Epstein's nearby Zorro Ranch the other day. We pass by it every time we go to Santa Fe. There is a little Western town on the road up to the Big House, one I assume was built but never used as a movie set. The Big House sits up on a mesa overlooking the Galisteo and Estancia Basins. It's huge. At least at one time, it was designated the largest private home in New Mexico. I've always assumed that it was built as a bolt-hole when everything goes to shit.
And I assume it has a deep bunker built into the mesa -- just in case. Probably another one under the Western town set, too. These people. I tell you. According to reports, it's not certain that Epstein still owns the Zorro Ranch. Whenever we've passed by, there is hardly any activity there. Cattle are sometimes seen pasturing; there might be a worker coming or leaving. But never any motorcades or even a single armored Escalade or Yukon. No sign of the "owners" in other words.
Decadence aplenty. But where are the Owners?
I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Saturday, December 17, 2016
The Training -- Post Review
Well.
Interesting view of how "law enforcement" is supposed to see their role and behavior during a protest whether or not it involves a so-called "riot" or "civil disturbance."
This particular training document was pulled out of the FEMA vaults by Unicorn Riot who's been on scene and subject to North Dakota "law enforcement" for much of the Water Protector actions over the past many months. Their media reps have been arrested and been witness to much of the violence perpetrated by "law enforcement" against the Water Protectors, and their documentary evidence will no doubt be utilized in the numerous pending lawsuits against the North Dakota and allied "law enforcement" bodies, and in the many pending trials of arrested Water Protectors.
That aside, the FEMA training document is much lighter on specifics than I anticipated. It's an overview of a course of training for crowd control rather than a detailed course itself. It contains some details of training that is applied in the field, and some of us have witnessed just how it's been done under differing conditions and perceptions of "threat" from the crowds of protesters/protectors. While this course advises "law enforcement" to resist the urge to resort to force, and even resist the urge to dress up in RoboCop costumes, we know that too often "law enforcement" can't resist resorting to violence and gross intimidation of loud but unarmed and often unresisting protesters. They just can't help themselves, can they?
No, says the training guide. Don't do that. Keep use of force to only what's necessary under the circumstances. Don't provoke the crowd. Be respectful. Yadda yadda. All the things "law enforcement" is supposed to do but doesn't. People have a constitutional right to protest ("peaceably") without force used against them.
Right.
Of more interest, perhaps, are the descriptions of protester "types" and what they do. This is yet more of the "intelligence" of our Overlords, wherein X is presumed to mean Y and Z is the expected outcome. Except that's not what happens. Yet "law enforcement" -- or whatever Overlord interest -- acts as if X->Y->>=Z is true no matter what. Leading to appalling episodes such as the assault on the Water Protectors the night of November 20-21. It didn't matter what was really going on, all that mattered was that a "riot" was under way that had to be suppressed.
It wasn't true, but it was believed by "law enforcement" to be true.
What actually happened has still not been acknowledged by "law enforcement."
Still, this training manual is an interesting read if you want to know how our ever more notorious police think -- or are expected to think.
The document is interesting for the way it characterizes threats, how the psychology of crowds is perceived, and what force protection and munitions should be employed against protesters.
Other than that, it's potentially useful against "law enforcement"... but we'll let that mellow for a while...
Interesting view of how "law enforcement" is supposed to see their role and behavior during a protest whether or not it involves a so-called "riot" or "civil disturbance."
This particular training document was pulled out of the FEMA vaults by Unicorn Riot who's been on scene and subject to North Dakota "law enforcement" for much of the Water Protector actions over the past many months. Their media reps have been arrested and been witness to much of the violence perpetrated by "law enforcement" against the Water Protectors, and their documentary evidence will no doubt be utilized in the numerous pending lawsuits against the North Dakota and allied "law enforcement" bodies, and in the many pending trials of arrested Water Protectors.
That aside, the FEMA training document is much lighter on specifics than I anticipated. It's an overview of a course of training for crowd control rather than a detailed course itself. It contains some details of training that is applied in the field, and some of us have witnessed just how it's been done under differing conditions and perceptions of "threat" from the crowds of protesters/protectors. While this course advises "law enforcement" to resist the urge to resort to force, and even resist the urge to dress up in RoboCop costumes, we know that too often "law enforcement" can't resist resorting to violence and gross intimidation of loud but unarmed and often unresisting protesters. They just can't help themselves, can they?
No, says the training guide. Don't do that. Keep use of force to only what's necessary under the circumstances. Don't provoke the crowd. Be respectful. Yadda yadda. All the things "law enforcement" is supposed to do but doesn't. People have a constitutional right to protest ("peaceably") without force used against them.
Right.
Of more interest, perhaps, are the descriptions of protester "types" and what they do. This is yet more of the "intelligence" of our Overlords, wherein X is presumed to mean Y and Z is the expected outcome. Except that's not what happens. Yet "law enforcement" -- or whatever Overlord interest -- acts as if X->Y->>=Z is true no matter what. Leading to appalling episodes such as the assault on the Water Protectors the night of November 20-21. It didn't matter what was really going on, all that mattered was that a "riot" was under way that had to be suppressed.
It wasn't true, but it was believed by "law enforcement" to be true.
What actually happened has still not been acknowledged by "law enforcement."
Still, this training manual is an interesting read if you want to know how our ever more notorious police think -- or are expected to think.
The document is interesting for the way it characterizes threats, how the psychology of crowds is perceived, and what force protection and munitions should be employed against protesters.
Other than that, it's potentially useful against "law enforcement"... but we'll let that mellow for a while...
Friday, December 16, 2016
The Training
Things up at Standing Rock got pretty odd once the Veterans showed up.
Almost immediately, the ACoE denied the easement to drill under Lake Oahe/Missouri River; Dave Archambault II told everyone to go home; a fierce blizzard came up making it effectively impossible for anyone to go home; the camps split over the order; the police hid behind their barricades; Wes Clark, Jr. and a number of other Veterans knelt and apologized for the numerous atrocities and the genocide perpetrated against Natives by their predecessors; many, perhaps, most of the Veterans left the camps; thousands of other Water Protectors and allies also left the camps when the weather permitted; reports surfaced that the Standing Rock Tribal Council was hoarding supplies meant for the camps; Chad Iron Eyes took the opportunity in the chaos to look after the welfare of those remaining in the camps; it turned out that Dave Archambault's sister served in the Obama White House as an advisor on Indian Affairs; there are still reports that Energy Transfer Partners is drilling anyway; an incident in Bismark went viral when an Anglo confronted an Indian at the Mall and demanded that he explain himself, and within minutes, the Indian was assaulted -- as were several others who tried to protect him -- by a masked Anglo Indian hater (who has since they say been arrested).
Meanwhile the Morton County Sheriff continues to fabulate and lie about the Water Protectors.
Ah yes, the training.
Indeed. I've thought all along that the "law enforcement" operations against the Water Protectors -- which have always seemed to be way out of proportion to the needs thereof -- have been a training exercise for the eventual suppression of a more or less general popular uprising.
Why that might be necessary or desirable didn't become clear until the recent (s)election follies. Oh. Right.
Myself, I don't think there is likely to be a general uprising, whether or not Himself is allowed to ascend to the (no doubt by now gold-plated) Throne. No doubt there will be sporadic disturbances, as there always are, but a general uprising is about as likely as a general strike. Not very.
Nevertheless, prudence indicates that "law enforcement" should be ready come what may, and what better training for them than to go against anarchists and Indians in the wilds of North Dakota? I mean really.
So comes now what amounts to a FEMA training manual for the suppression of protest.
It was sent to the "authorities" in North Dakota in September, no doubt to give them courage and fortitude in the face of the raging savages.
Here 'tis. (135 pg PDF, be warned)
When I get a chance today -- or maybe tomorrow -- I'll try to study it in detail.
Meanwhile, after the incident in Bismark, Chris Lemke and Shiye Bidziil got together at the Standing Rock Casino and posted a YouTube appeal to "both sides" to cool it.
The precipitating incident is referenced in the "White Men Behaving Badly" post from December 6.
Interesting.
So many people are so much better than we might believe from the media depictions and narratives.
Almost immediately, the ACoE denied the easement to drill under Lake Oahe/Missouri River; Dave Archambault II told everyone to go home; a fierce blizzard came up making it effectively impossible for anyone to go home; the camps split over the order; the police hid behind their barricades; Wes Clark, Jr. and a number of other Veterans knelt and apologized for the numerous atrocities and the genocide perpetrated against Natives by their predecessors; many, perhaps, most of the Veterans left the camps; thousands of other Water Protectors and allies also left the camps when the weather permitted; reports surfaced that the Standing Rock Tribal Council was hoarding supplies meant for the camps; Chad Iron Eyes took the opportunity in the chaos to look after the welfare of those remaining in the camps; it turned out that Dave Archambault's sister served in the Obama White House as an advisor on Indian Affairs; there are still reports that Energy Transfer Partners is drilling anyway; an incident in Bismark went viral when an Anglo confronted an Indian at the Mall and demanded that he explain himself, and within minutes, the Indian was assaulted -- as were several others who tried to protect him -- by a masked Anglo Indian hater (who has since they say been arrested).
Meanwhile the Morton County Sheriff continues to fabulate and lie about the Water Protectors.
Ah yes, the training.
Indeed. I've thought all along that the "law enforcement" operations against the Water Protectors -- which have always seemed to be way out of proportion to the needs thereof -- have been a training exercise for the eventual suppression of a more or less general popular uprising.
Why that might be necessary or desirable didn't become clear until the recent (s)election follies. Oh. Right.
Myself, I don't think there is likely to be a general uprising, whether or not Himself is allowed to ascend to the (no doubt by now gold-plated) Throne. No doubt there will be sporadic disturbances, as there always are, but a general uprising is about as likely as a general strike. Not very.
Nevertheless, prudence indicates that "law enforcement" should be ready come what may, and what better training for them than to go against anarchists and Indians in the wilds of North Dakota? I mean really.
So comes now what amounts to a FEMA training manual for the suppression of protest.
It was sent to the "authorities" in North Dakota in September, no doubt to give them courage and fortitude in the face of the raging savages.
Here 'tis. (135 pg PDF, be warned)
When I get a chance today -- or maybe tomorrow -- I'll try to study it in detail.
Meanwhile, after the incident in Bismark, Chris Lemke and Shiye Bidziil got together at the Standing Rock Casino and posted a YouTube appeal to "both sides" to cool it.
The precipitating incident is referenced in the "White Men Behaving Badly" post from December 6.
Interesting.
So many people are so much better than we might believe from the media depictions and narratives.
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Reminder
WSWS (World Socialist Website) has some of the best political and economic analysis going. It doesn't always jibe with consensus, and that's a good thing.
"If You Strike at the King...."
My spidey sense is all over the map these days. Politics has nearly reached peak chaos it seems to me, and the dithering behind the scenes has left it up to the lawyers to figure out what to do. Not a good look.
Dithering, yes. The Dems haven't actually done anything to thwart Himself, and I can hardly imagine them doing so. It is not in their genetic make up to act except on behalf of themselves and their owners and sponsors.
Trump's advantage is that he is one of the owners and sponsors -- though never a heavy hitter -- and he's filled his cabinet with other owners and sponsors, many of which have been around for a very long time and are very rich and very powerful though their profiles might not be as high as Mr. Trump's.
This would be a form of direct rule by the corporate kakistocracy/kleptocracy as opposed to the their indirect rule through a managerial/technocratic class (viz: Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, and even the Bush Regime, odd as it may seem.)
Well, that would be something new, wouldn't it? Our original rulers were of the owner class, to be sure, and their hand wasn't always light, their wisdom was often questionable, but it seems clear enough through the lens of history that their intent was patriotic rather than self-aggrandizing. Not so now.
Even during the worst of the Gilded Age, when government served only the interests of the richest of the rich, the malefactors of great wealth did not operate the government directly (for the most part, there were some exceptions here and there). They bent the government to their will through the purchase of politicians and legislative bodies and the installation of compliant managers and smooth-talking con men in office.
Now though, huh. Basically the Trumpians have opened hostilities with the entire entrenched class of technocrats and managers who have run the country on behalf of Our Betters at least since Reagan. Some of them will be sacrificed without issue. Nobody likes them and nobody cares what happens to them. On the other hand there is an entrenched and powerful "alt.government" (I hate the term "alt" but it is a Thing at the moment, so let's play for a bit) that will not go lightly into the sunset. Oh no.
We've seen this play out before during the Snowden Thing among others. If anything there are more factions in the alt.gov than there are in the public face of government. It's just amazing. Anyway, what seems to have happened is that the CIA, among other shadowy agencies, has tossed a few grenades (labeled "Putin Did It") the King's way as an initial shot across his bow. A warning, as it were, that "we can -- and will -- take you down if you don't play nice."
On the other hand (there are always more hands in this game than we know), there are plenty of agencies and alt.gov centers that have made their peace with the New Boss and are eager to obey and serve. Well, at least for public consumption. FBI seems to fit into that framework.
Then there's the NSA which is pretending to be above the fray and neutral as to outcome. Yeah, right.
I've suspected all along that the Putin/Russia Thing is largely a consequence of Snowden and his apparently very comfortable exile/asylum in Moscow. Had that not happened, the relationship between the Kremlin and DC might not have deteriorated to the point it has as quickly as it has. Which doesn't mean it would have been good, but still. For whatever reason, Putin, Hillary and Obama don't get along, regardless of any background issues and noise.
NSA is the one with the hardest animosity toward Snowden and Russia whereas the CIA is out and about committing whatever atrocities and unpleasantness they can think of and wish to engage in. They're the ones on the front lines, skin in the game and all that, whereas the perfumed princes of the NSA simply sit in their comfy Star Trek chairs and watch the world head straight to hell in a handbasket. Sometimes nudging things in that direction if it pleases them to do so. Damb I loathe these people.
But there are so many other players in the alt.gov, players known and unknown, that it's impossible for someone like me, way on the outside, and never close on the inside, to sort it all out.
At any rate, shots have been fired toward, not yet at, the would be King. I can't say whether there is sufficient support among the factions of the alt.gov to accept direct rule by the kakistocracy/kleptocracy, but there may not be enough resistance to do anything about it.
The Trumpian charge that the CIA in particular and the "intelligence" community in general got the Iraq Thing wrong and continue to wrong-foot their destructive way through the Middle East and elsewhere is valid. But it's not at all clear that Mr. Trump and his cronies would be any better. They have a different set of targets. That doesn't make them any wiser than those who have so screwed up for so very long.
If this matter is to be resolved in the interests of some of the Trumpian targets -- they are many and practically everywhere -- he cannot be allowed to ascend to the Throne. Period. He will not be subject to the control of his inferiors (as he sees them) once he is installed as president-king-emperor. His opponents either yield or they're gone.
Preventing his ascension is apparently still a thing. But as time goes by, options narrow, and I think we know what the ultimate option is.
I say it is unlikely that option will be utilized (and I really don't want to see it). But it's not up to me or any of us. The struggle does not involve us, the Rabble, directly or indirectly. We are at best a chorus in the background of yet another pageant. Mostly we're little more than scenery or props.
Meanwhile, "If you strike at the King..."
[Note: FTR, I've been getting a huge number of hits from Russia lately... go figure...]
Dithering, yes. The Dems haven't actually done anything to thwart Himself, and I can hardly imagine them doing so. It is not in their genetic make up to act except on behalf of themselves and their owners and sponsors.
Trump's advantage is that he is one of the owners and sponsors -- though never a heavy hitter -- and he's filled his cabinet with other owners and sponsors, many of which have been around for a very long time and are very rich and very powerful though their profiles might not be as high as Mr. Trump's.
This would be a form of direct rule by the corporate kakistocracy/kleptocracy as opposed to the their indirect rule through a managerial/technocratic class (viz: Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, and even the Bush Regime, odd as it may seem.)
Well, that would be something new, wouldn't it? Our original rulers were of the owner class, to be sure, and their hand wasn't always light, their wisdom was often questionable, but it seems clear enough through the lens of history that their intent was patriotic rather than self-aggrandizing. Not so now.
Even during the worst of the Gilded Age, when government served only the interests of the richest of the rich, the malefactors of great wealth did not operate the government directly (for the most part, there were some exceptions here and there). They bent the government to their will through the purchase of politicians and legislative bodies and the installation of compliant managers and smooth-talking con men in office.
Now though, huh. Basically the Trumpians have opened hostilities with the entire entrenched class of technocrats and managers who have run the country on behalf of Our Betters at least since Reagan. Some of them will be sacrificed without issue. Nobody likes them and nobody cares what happens to them. On the other hand there is an entrenched and powerful "alt.government" (I hate the term "alt" but it is a Thing at the moment, so let's play for a bit) that will not go lightly into the sunset. Oh no.
We've seen this play out before during the Snowden Thing among others. If anything there are more factions in the alt.gov than there are in the public face of government. It's just amazing. Anyway, what seems to have happened is that the CIA, among other shadowy agencies, has tossed a few grenades (labeled "Putin Did It") the King's way as an initial shot across his bow. A warning, as it were, that "we can -- and will -- take you down if you don't play nice."
On the other hand (there are always more hands in this game than we know), there are plenty of agencies and alt.gov centers that have made their peace with the New Boss and are eager to obey and serve. Well, at least for public consumption. FBI seems to fit into that framework.
Then there's the NSA which is pretending to be above the fray and neutral as to outcome. Yeah, right.
I've suspected all along that the Putin/Russia Thing is largely a consequence of Snowden and his apparently very comfortable exile/asylum in Moscow. Had that not happened, the relationship between the Kremlin and DC might not have deteriorated to the point it has as quickly as it has. Which doesn't mean it would have been good, but still. For whatever reason, Putin, Hillary and Obama don't get along, regardless of any background issues and noise.
NSA is the one with the hardest animosity toward Snowden and Russia whereas the CIA is out and about committing whatever atrocities and unpleasantness they can think of and wish to engage in. They're the ones on the front lines, skin in the game and all that, whereas the perfumed princes of the NSA simply sit in their comfy Star Trek chairs and watch the world head straight to hell in a handbasket. Sometimes nudging things in that direction if it pleases them to do so. Damb I loathe these people.
But there are so many other players in the alt.gov, players known and unknown, that it's impossible for someone like me, way on the outside, and never close on the inside, to sort it all out.
At any rate, shots have been fired toward, not yet at, the would be King. I can't say whether there is sufficient support among the factions of the alt.gov to accept direct rule by the kakistocracy/kleptocracy, but there may not be enough resistance to do anything about it.
The Trumpian charge that the CIA in particular and the "intelligence" community in general got the Iraq Thing wrong and continue to wrong-foot their destructive way through the Middle East and elsewhere is valid. But it's not at all clear that Mr. Trump and his cronies would be any better. They have a different set of targets. That doesn't make them any wiser than those who have so screwed up for so very long.
If this matter is to be resolved in the interests of some of the Trumpian targets -- they are many and practically everywhere -- he cannot be allowed to ascend to the Throne. Period. He will not be subject to the control of his inferiors (as he sees them) once he is installed as president-king-emperor. His opponents either yield or they're gone.
Preventing his ascension is apparently still a thing. But as time goes by, options narrow, and I think we know what the ultimate option is.
I say it is unlikely that option will be utilized (and I really don't want to see it). But it's not up to me or any of us. The struggle does not involve us, the Rabble, directly or indirectly. We are at best a chorus in the background of yet another pageant. Mostly we're little more than scenery or props.
Meanwhile, "If you strike at the King..."
[Note: FTR, I've been getting a huge number of hits from Russia lately... go figure...]
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Coups, Revolutions, Civil Wars, and All the Rest
Yeah right. Whatever.
I'm getting sick of the threats from the Trump loyalists and defenders that if he is denied the presidency by legal or other means, there will almost certainly be a civil war. Revolution. Chaos. Yadda, yadda.
What crap.
Of course I've long made clear my preference that Trump not be allowed to ascend to the presidency, and I favor almost any legal or at least "acceptable" means to prevent it. There are plenty of mechanisms available, and a number of them appear to be in play at the moment.
I don't favor Hillary back in the White House, either. That, to me, would be a grotesque perversion and misperception of the will of the voters. The majority chose neither one, and that's the key to my understanding of what's to be done.
Trump defenders, of course, feel threatened and paranoid by the efforts under way to thwart the announced election outcome. You start listening to them and you realize they feel threatened and paranoid about most everything, particularly about losing their superior status.
Which they hope to reclaim through the agency of their Promised Redeemer, D J Trump.
Oh dear.
Now my Predict-0-Meter hasn't worked properly for a very long time, so anything I say about what might happen is to be taken with a barrel of salt, but still, the outlines of what could come have been sketched for many years.
Civil war and/or Revolution do not apply to the resolution of the disputed presidential (s)election.
Instead, what is likely to occur, should by some slight chance Mr. Trump be denied his ascension to the throne, is the installation of an "interim government" of military officers and technocrats.
They'd be called "Caretakers". Bless their hearts. Some high-ranking and broadly respected general would be the face of the interim government, but he would not necessarily rule. More likely the same Deep State/Shadow Government that's been in charge for decades would continue uninterrupted. The General would be there as a calming authority figure, much as Obama has been since his advent as Redeemer.
It's likely that the expressed plan would be to re-do the presidential election -- or maybe all elections -- in a year or so, but it wouldn't be surprising if elections never again take place (legitimately) above the local level.
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton would be able to run for any office.
Candidates would be selected by committee. There would be no primaries. Their qualifications would include loyalty and obedience and the ability to keep a lid on revolt and resistance.
The likelihood of revolution or civil war is much less under such a coup and transfer of power, but the possibility isn't eliminated.
We'll see, won't we?
I'm getting sick of the threats from the Trump loyalists and defenders that if he is denied the presidency by legal or other means, there will almost certainly be a civil war. Revolution. Chaos. Yadda, yadda.
What crap.
Of course I've long made clear my preference that Trump not be allowed to ascend to the presidency, and I favor almost any legal or at least "acceptable" means to prevent it. There are plenty of mechanisms available, and a number of them appear to be in play at the moment.
I don't favor Hillary back in the White House, either. That, to me, would be a grotesque perversion and misperception of the will of the voters. The majority chose neither one, and that's the key to my understanding of what's to be done.
Trump defenders, of course, feel threatened and paranoid by the efforts under way to thwart the announced election outcome. You start listening to them and you realize they feel threatened and paranoid about most everything, particularly about losing their superior status.
Which they hope to reclaim through the agency of their Promised Redeemer, D J Trump.
Oh dear.
Now my Predict-0-Meter hasn't worked properly for a very long time, so anything I say about what might happen is to be taken with a barrel of salt, but still, the outlines of what could come have been sketched for many years.
Civil war and/or Revolution do not apply to the resolution of the disputed presidential (s)election.
Instead, what is likely to occur, should by some slight chance Mr. Trump be denied his ascension to the throne, is the installation of an "interim government" of military officers and technocrats.
They'd be called "Caretakers". Bless their hearts. Some high-ranking and broadly respected general would be the face of the interim government, but he would not necessarily rule. More likely the same Deep State/Shadow Government that's been in charge for decades would continue uninterrupted. The General would be there as a calming authority figure, much as Obama has been since his advent as Redeemer.
It's likely that the expressed plan would be to re-do the presidential election -- or maybe all elections -- in a year or so, but it wouldn't be surprising if elections never again take place (legitimately) above the local level.
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mrs. Clinton would be able to run for any office.
Candidates would be selected by committee. There would be no primaries. Their qualifications would include loyalty and obedience and the ability to keep a lid on revolt and resistance.
The likelihood of revolution or civil war is much less under such a coup and transfer of power, but the possibility isn't eliminated.
We'll see, won't we?
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
White Rightists, King-Emperors, and the Führerprinzip
I'm not sure whether a coup is underway, but the outlines of one have taken shape. A powerful faction of the Ruling Clique, how large of one it is impossible to say, has issued a challenge and a series of threats to the out-group faction that won ("won") the election and is preparing to shift the ship of state onto an uncharted course of unbridled corruption, destruction and rapine.
There is no precedent for anything they are setting out to do. The consequences, if they are not stopped or controlled, intrinsically threaten the survival of the Republic (already on its last legs), and could result in an extinction level of harm to Americans and people around the world. (Again, not that such a fate hasn't been bruited about for a generation or more.)
Something must be done about it, and fast.
The agencies that have lined up in opposition to the imposition of Trumpivism on the nation and the world -- an opposition retailed as some kind of Russian interference in the election just past -- are not among the most highly regarded by the public. The CIA has one of the most wretched reputations for bad thinking, lies, and destructive conduct of any in US history. It has operated effectively as a shadow government since its formation after WWII. While there are few brakes on CIA activities abroad, it can assert a powerful influence on domestic government; it has the power to change who is in charge through various means, including the Kennedy Solution.
One messes with it and its affiliated agencies at one's peril.
Apparently Mr. Trump has chosen to mess with it.
OK then.
We'll see what happens. I'm not particularly sanguine that the opposition agencies will win the contest with Mr. Trump and his loyalists, but we'll see.
A way to understand what's going on is through the lens of White Supremacy and the White Rightist conception of how the United States and the world should be run.
I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Trump and his chief loyalists and followers are steeped in the belief system of White Supremacy. It's the foundation of their identity. We've been seeing a resurgence in White Supremacy, White Identity, and White Rightist and Nationalist political ideology throughout Western Europe and North America especially since the advent of the Obamas in the White House, but it has never not been a factor in the political economies of Western Europe and their colonial and post colonial enterprises around the world, including the United States and Canada of course. Let's not forget Russia as part of the White Rightist world.
White Supremacy and White Rightism is always there, but it has been submerged in very public efforts to be inclusive and promote ethnic, racial and cultural diversity within the context of White Supremacy.
The context doesn't change. Who gets to participate and to what extent does.
Once included, it's hard for formerly excluded groups and individuals to let go of their seat at the table, and that's part of why there is so much public anxiety about the advent of the Trumpist faction to power. He and his loyalists have made quite clear that the party's over for the inappropriately included (interpreted, I believe correctly, as non-white.) He has explicitly targeted numerous minority groups he regards as unworthy. Scapegoating is de rigueur. One almost has to be white (and preferably male) or be seen as a non-white acceptable to white men to be included in the Trumpist vision of the New America. Loyalty and obedience are the essential factors affecting inclusion; race and gender are subsidiary but crucial factors.
The Republic has been on its death bed for some time, the coup de grace administered by the Supreme Court decision handing the presidency the Busheviks in the interest of "equal protection." It was bullshit, unconstitutional, and it was a coup. Yet by and large, Americans accepted it with relatively minor protest and grumbling. What could they do? A lot more than they did do, but the Rules of Politeness and Patriotism were more important at the time than fighting for what was right.
It was clear from the outset that the Bush Regime would be catastrophic for Americans and peoples around the world, and so it was. We are still living with the consequences. My generation will never escape them.
The Obama regime mitigated some of the worst aspects of the Bushevik catastrophe but didn't really change any of its fundamentals. It was obvious from the beginning that his job assignment was to con and soothe the Rabble and prevent, channel, or crush any revolt -- while the looting and destruction continued with little let up.
Hillary was supposed to continue the program with some slight revisions in emphasis.
Trump has overturned the status quo in a way; in another way, he's announced his intention to shift the existing program of looting and destruction into hyperdrive. In other words, the current program isn't producing enough rewards for the worthy people and it produces too much reward for the unworthy. Priorities and targets for exploitation and destruction will change, the world will witness and tremble.
Among White Rightists, Nationalists and Supremacists, there is a near worshipful regard for Trump and extreme levels of hope for his commitment to restoring Whiteness to its rightful position of superiority over the lower orders. Cluestick: there has never been a time in the colonial and post-colonial era when Whiteness hasn't been privileged in the Western European/North American context. Never. But that doesn't register with white people who sense an existential threat to them from the very presence of non-whites.
This White Supremacist worship is being exploited by Trump and his cronies to the fullest extent they can without triggering too much of a response from the lower orders. One of the ways they exploit it is by assuming a quasi-royal mantle (the Busheviks were masters at it) by which the title of President serves as a stand in for what it really is --- modern day King-Emperor. After all, Trump summons his potential barons and earls to his gold-plated palaces for interviews (palaces that strangely and discordantly resemble Saddam's "Republican Palaces" most of which were destroyed in Bush's war of aggression, but some of which were preserved intact and are part of the American and Iraqi puppet presence there.)
It's a matter of style over substance, but there's little reason to doubt that Trump intends to rule as if he were a King-Emperor, and his loyalists and cronies are fully on board with it. Why not make explicit what has long been implicit, after all?
There's another element that seems obvious to me, but is otherwise widely unrecognized. It is the concept of Führerprinzip -- the "leader principle" -- commonly ascribed to the Nazi rule of the German Reich, but much more widely believed and exercised than merely during that episode of unpleasantness.
I pointed out that it was part of the belief system of Arnold Schwarzenegger as he assumed the mantle of California's governorship after defeating Gray Davis in that recall back in 2003. He strongly believed in his rightness and unbridled authority because of his personality, power and position. The fact was, like so many who have been raised to power over the years, he was incompetent and was unable to rule as he wished because of powerful forces aligned against him, and the ability of some of those forces to more and more easily influence his rule as they took his measure and exploited his many weaknesses. By the time his wife left him, he was little more than the tool of other interests.
I doubt that would happen with Trump. Not because he's competent. Not at all. But because he has carefully tended his authoritarianism and knows how to use it against rivals and enemies. This is part of his conman and gangster persona. He acts as an implicit -- and sometimes explicit -- threat to any disloyalty or disobedience. This in turn shapes the behavior of both his loyalists and opponents. These threats are clearly meant to be taken seriously. And for the most part they are.
The Führerprinzip presents the Leader as the center and source of all law, policy, and political action. This is of course totally at odds with the traditional power-relationships of the Republic, but the Republic has been on life-support for a long time. The transition to a hegemonic imperial state guided and ruled by a Leader is merely a detail in the march of progress, no? Call him a dictator, a king, an emperor, a president or Führer, it hardly matters. In the conception of many authoritarians, it doesn't matter. They're all essentially the same thing.
Trump may face opposition from Congress, the judiciary, and many elements of the security state and the military, but he seems to have convinced the private sector elites to go along with him at least for the time being.
After all, they're getting richer by the minute. What do they have to lose?
As for the Rabble, enough of them are happy enough to be ruled; and too many don't care. On the other hand, Their Betters care no a whit what happens to the Rabble. They are mostly surplus anyway.
Meanwhile, this is a dangerous and unstable situation. Those who manage and impose the rule of the government and take action for and against governments overseas are rationally alarmed at what might be coming, and Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize them.
How they will respond is anyone's guess at this point, but what's happened in the past is that the security state and the presidency have found accommodation with one another through various forms of unpleasant negotiations. We'll see whether accommodation is found this time.
I'm not looking forward to the outcome.
There is no precedent for anything they are setting out to do. The consequences, if they are not stopped or controlled, intrinsically threaten the survival of the Republic (already on its last legs), and could result in an extinction level of harm to Americans and people around the world. (Again, not that such a fate hasn't been bruited about for a generation or more.)
Something must be done about it, and fast.
The agencies that have lined up in opposition to the imposition of Trumpivism on the nation and the world -- an opposition retailed as some kind of Russian interference in the election just past -- are not among the most highly regarded by the public. The CIA has one of the most wretched reputations for bad thinking, lies, and destructive conduct of any in US history. It has operated effectively as a shadow government since its formation after WWII. While there are few brakes on CIA activities abroad, it can assert a powerful influence on domestic government; it has the power to change who is in charge through various means, including the Kennedy Solution.
One messes with it and its affiliated agencies at one's peril.
Apparently Mr. Trump has chosen to mess with it.
OK then.
We'll see what happens. I'm not particularly sanguine that the opposition agencies will win the contest with Mr. Trump and his loyalists, but we'll see.
A way to understand what's going on is through the lens of White Supremacy and the White Rightist conception of how the United States and the world should be run.
I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Trump and his chief loyalists and followers are steeped in the belief system of White Supremacy. It's the foundation of their identity. We've been seeing a resurgence in White Supremacy, White Identity, and White Rightist and Nationalist political ideology throughout Western Europe and North America especially since the advent of the Obamas in the White House, but it has never not been a factor in the political economies of Western Europe and their colonial and post colonial enterprises around the world, including the United States and Canada of course. Let's not forget Russia as part of the White Rightist world.
White Supremacy and White Rightism is always there, but it has been submerged in very public efforts to be inclusive and promote ethnic, racial and cultural diversity within the context of White Supremacy.
The context doesn't change. Who gets to participate and to what extent does.
Once included, it's hard for formerly excluded groups and individuals to let go of their seat at the table, and that's part of why there is so much public anxiety about the advent of the Trumpist faction to power. He and his loyalists have made quite clear that the party's over for the inappropriately included (interpreted, I believe correctly, as non-white.) He has explicitly targeted numerous minority groups he regards as unworthy. Scapegoating is de rigueur. One almost has to be white (and preferably male) or be seen as a non-white acceptable to white men to be included in the Trumpist vision of the New America. Loyalty and obedience are the essential factors affecting inclusion; race and gender are subsidiary but crucial factors.
The Republic has been on its death bed for some time, the coup de grace administered by the Supreme Court decision handing the presidency the Busheviks in the interest of "equal protection." It was bullshit, unconstitutional, and it was a coup. Yet by and large, Americans accepted it with relatively minor protest and grumbling. What could they do? A lot more than they did do, but the Rules of Politeness and Patriotism were more important at the time than fighting for what was right.
It was clear from the outset that the Bush Regime would be catastrophic for Americans and peoples around the world, and so it was. We are still living with the consequences. My generation will never escape them.
The Obama regime mitigated some of the worst aspects of the Bushevik catastrophe but didn't really change any of its fundamentals. It was obvious from the beginning that his job assignment was to con and soothe the Rabble and prevent, channel, or crush any revolt -- while the looting and destruction continued with little let up.
Hillary was supposed to continue the program with some slight revisions in emphasis.
Trump has overturned the status quo in a way; in another way, he's announced his intention to shift the existing program of looting and destruction into hyperdrive. In other words, the current program isn't producing enough rewards for the worthy people and it produces too much reward for the unworthy. Priorities and targets for exploitation and destruction will change, the world will witness and tremble.
Among White Rightists, Nationalists and Supremacists, there is a near worshipful regard for Trump and extreme levels of hope for his commitment to restoring Whiteness to its rightful position of superiority over the lower orders. Cluestick: there has never been a time in the colonial and post-colonial era when Whiteness hasn't been privileged in the Western European/North American context. Never. But that doesn't register with white people who sense an existential threat to them from the very presence of non-whites.
This White Supremacist worship is being exploited by Trump and his cronies to the fullest extent they can without triggering too much of a response from the lower orders. One of the ways they exploit it is by assuming a quasi-royal mantle (the Busheviks were masters at it) by which the title of President serves as a stand in for what it really is --- modern day King-Emperor. After all, Trump summons his potential barons and earls to his gold-plated palaces for interviews (palaces that strangely and discordantly resemble Saddam's "Republican Palaces" most of which were destroyed in Bush's war of aggression, but some of which were preserved intact and are part of the American and Iraqi puppet presence there.)
It's a matter of style over substance, but there's little reason to doubt that Trump intends to rule as if he were a King-Emperor, and his loyalists and cronies are fully on board with it. Why not make explicit what has long been implicit, after all?
There's another element that seems obvious to me, but is otherwise widely unrecognized. It is the concept of Führerprinzip -- the "leader principle" -- commonly ascribed to the Nazi rule of the German Reich, but much more widely believed and exercised than merely during that episode of unpleasantness.
I pointed out that it was part of the belief system of Arnold Schwarzenegger as he assumed the mantle of California's governorship after defeating Gray Davis in that recall back in 2003. He strongly believed in his rightness and unbridled authority because of his personality, power and position. The fact was, like so many who have been raised to power over the years, he was incompetent and was unable to rule as he wished because of powerful forces aligned against him, and the ability of some of those forces to more and more easily influence his rule as they took his measure and exploited his many weaknesses. By the time his wife left him, he was little more than the tool of other interests.
I doubt that would happen with Trump. Not because he's competent. Not at all. But because he has carefully tended his authoritarianism and knows how to use it against rivals and enemies. This is part of his conman and gangster persona. He acts as an implicit -- and sometimes explicit -- threat to any disloyalty or disobedience. This in turn shapes the behavior of both his loyalists and opponents. These threats are clearly meant to be taken seriously. And for the most part they are.
The Führerprinzip presents the Leader as the center and source of all law, policy, and political action. This is of course totally at odds with the traditional power-relationships of the Republic, but the Republic has been on life-support for a long time. The transition to a hegemonic imperial state guided and ruled by a Leader is merely a detail in the march of progress, no? Call him a dictator, a king, an emperor, a president or Führer, it hardly matters. In the conception of many authoritarians, it doesn't matter. They're all essentially the same thing.
Trump may face opposition from Congress, the judiciary, and many elements of the security state and the military, but he seems to have convinced the private sector elites to go along with him at least for the time being.
After all, they're getting richer by the minute. What do they have to lose?
As for the Rabble, enough of them are happy enough to be ruled; and too many don't care. On the other hand, Their Betters care no a whit what happens to the Rabble. They are mostly surplus anyway.
Meanwhile, this is a dangerous and unstable situation. Those who manage and impose the rule of the government and take action for and against governments overseas are rationally alarmed at what might be coming, and Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize them.
How they will respond is anyone's guess at this point, but what's happened in the past is that the security state and the presidency have found accommodation with one another through various forms of unpleasant negotiations. We'll see whether accommodation is found this time.
I'm not looking forward to the outcome.
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Something's Going On [With A Follow Up]
Um. I saw that little worm Reince Priebus on the Sunday Shows, George and Chuck. Hm. It looked like he did George's show first. When he got to Chuck's gabfest, he was clearly rattled. Of course, it's unusual for Our Fearless Media to tangle with high ranking Republicans, even if they are worms. So when George lit into Reince and then Chuck skewered him over the reports of the CIA report and Trump's now familiar insults in response, the little worm was taken aback. Sputtering and spluttering, he flailed away, to the point that I almost felt sorry for him.
The subtext is that things are not what they seem and something is very much going on.
Is it a coup?
I think it might be...
[OT: I think Ms Ché knew Stephen Stills back in the day. I'm not sure. He wasn't one of her primary interests that I can recall. That would have been the likes of Jim McGuinn Who-Became-Roger of the Byrds, and various other noted rockers and folk rockers and ravers of the British Invasion and such like. There were so many of them. Only recently, though, did she get together with Buffy St. Marie, one of her favorites and idols from way back. They acted like a couple of elder Indian women recognizing one another as relatives, sisters, cousins. Their mutual laughter is still ringing in my ears. I'm just a white guy on the edge of all this of course. She, Ms Ché, is now recruiting a whole new generation of Indians and non-Indians alike to go out and be themselves, enjoy life and liberty and grow in spirit, don't let the fuckers get you down. Listen, learn, be.]
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A coup?
I don't know. My spidey sense was sure tingling in the morning, but around evening it went more or less quiet. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
What is clear enough is that one faction of the ruling clique is contending with another for power.
This does not involve the Left or even the 'left.' This is between a conservative faction and radicals among those who have ruled us in and out of government for generations.
That's as obvious as sin, and the question is whether the contending factions will reach an accommodation with one another. It's not clear whether they will at this point. Furthermore, if it is a coup, we don't know who the golpistas really are. It's almost certainly not the Clinton camp. They may or may not be involved, but if they are, it is unlikely that She Herself will be installed as Queen-Empress should the conservative faction prevail.
That would be a trigger after all. Our Rulers may not have many smarts when it comes to their responsibilities and obligations, but they're not that stupid. They couldn't be. Could they? Please.
Unfortunately, yes they could. It is their culture, after all.
It occurred to me thatSaturday today December 10th12th was is the anniversary of the last coup,[h/t lea-p for the correct date] when the Supreme Court lawlessly intervened in the 2000 presidential election and handed the presidency to GWB. That was an unmitigated disaster, but perhaps it was inevitable given the instabilities already apparent in government and the private sector at least since the Impeachment Follies of 1998. Instabilities that had been building for a generation before that.
That coup anniversary may have been a trigger in itself for the actions underway to overcome apparent election results which would hand the presidency -- and the future of the United States -- over to a gang of "unindicted co-conspirators," some very successful con artists and mobster-wannabes. This is as serious as it gets.
At the time of the previous coup, the losing faction handed the government over to the golpistas out of a misplaced sense of formalism and duty under the rubric: "How bad could it get?" Yes, well. We found out, didn't we?
Certain formalities were observed, even though they were quite outside the Constitutional framework -- for example, the Supreme Court has no constitutional authority or jurisdiction in election matters they were asked to decide; it is specifically up to state governments and legislatures, and they should not have taken the case. Once they did, and once they decided in favor of the Bush-faction, it rent the fabric of the national project, and we are living with the consequences.
And too, the Bushevik faction was a "known quantity" to The Powers That Be. They brought back some of the well-known operators from times gone by, all the way back to the Nixon regime, Bush Jr. was the son of the CIA head, vice-president, and president previous to, under and after Reagan, and Cheney was... well, Darth Cheney, but whatever else he was (Evil), he was a known quantity in the corridors of power. Same with Rummy and so forth. It was initially like Old Home Week. And then it went south, even before the attack on 9/11.
They may have been mostly familiar faces but they were acting like teenagers lolly-gagging around the pool and their media handmaidens were making utter fools of themselves trying to recreate the atmosphere and revenues of the Clinton Scandals around the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
It was a goon show that ended abruptly with the events of 9/11/2001.
While the coup of December 10, 2000, was an example of the political aspect of the Shock Doctrine, the events of 9/11 went way beyond mere politics; it was Shock Doctrine that literally consumed and transformed the very nature of US government, as well as destabilizing the cobbled together social, economic, and psychological agreements that had kept the nation whole through thick and thin.
There was an immediate unity after the attacks, one that very quickly fell apart as the Busheviks demonstrated an almost unbelievable lack of wisdom in the face of crisis. That's not to say they didn't do some things appropriate and right. But their military response and targets were wrong-headed in every way, and the conduct they permitted and encouraged their agents to engage in was criminal.
Their war of aggression against Iraq had the effect of blowing apart whatever fragile stability there had been in the Middle East and North Africa, while their pig-headed Afghanistan adventure is still a major destabilizing factor in South Asia. What were they thinking?
Well, it's obvious they weren't. Thinking that is. They were exploiting opportunities.
It was and still is all reactive and self-feeding crisis. And it's a failure on any rational or public interest plane. But some people got very, very, very rich off of it, so they're all for more, more, more.
Henceforth the world would work in a different way. Well, part of the world...
Now comes Trump. Well, it's obvious he wasn't supposed to win. It's still a question -- that will probably never be satisfactorily answered -- how or whether he pulled off the Upset of History. As we know, there will be no verification of the vote. We've seen sufficient evidence so far that it's literally impossible to verify the vote in critical areas. One must accept the election results on faith because there is no way on earth to be sure the results accurately recorded and reflected the wishes of the voters. Our electoral system is purpose-designed to be opaque in critical areas. We don't know, and we can't know, what actually happened. Intentionally so.
Given the overall results reported so far, however, it's reasonable to assume that the voters did not want Trump and his gang of thieves and mountebanks in the White House; neither did they want Hillary. Ergo, trying to force either one on the People is risky business to say the least. Uncertainty is certain to follow.
Thus the moves to prevent Trump from taking power. Or to circumvent him and his gang if he does.
There was a similar kind of instability until some time after the inauguration of GWB. But it was tamped down by the capitulation of the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the concerted efforts of the media to ignore, discredit and denounce the many protests against the coup.
Combined, the efforts to prop up the Bush Regime both within and outside the government were partially successful. The protests never stopped, and those surrounding the preparation and initiation of the Iraq War were unprecedented. Enormous.
Yet millions upon millions of Americans never considered the Bush Regime to be legitimate, no matter the efforts of media and Democrats to make it so.
Obama calmed things down -- that was his assignment after all -- but without really changing much of the internal dynamic of a corporatist government run amok. It is still what it was under the Bushevik Regime, it simply has softer and calmer public face.
Many people understandably felt betrayed by Obama, the longed-for Redemption from centuries of Error.
He hasn't fulfilled his promise. Not even close. But he kept the lid on the growing rage of the discouraged and dispossessed. And that was all that was necessary for him to do in the eyes of the Ruling Clique. Just keep the Rabble tame.
Hillary was supposed to continue the Obama program, maybe with an added bone or two thrown to the Rabble to keep them mostly quiet over the next few cycles of rapine and exploitation by Our Betters.
Trump was supposed to be a sideshow to keep the potential hostiles and trouble makers in line. Oops.
Now that they're planning to take over and install rich and self-righteous rebels in positions of extraordinary power to do harm domestically and internationally, regardless of any "good" they might also do, the High and Mighty are awakening to a clear and present danger to them -- they care not about the Rabble -- should Himself ascend to the throne.
Right now, they're making out like bandits themselves as the stock market soars in anticipation of Trumpian profits without end.
The anticipation of the immense profits to come from the Trumpian crony capitalist pig troughs, and the fortunes to be made from the dismantlement and privatization of Social Security and Medicare, among other public programs slated for the ax, are about the only things that Our Betters are looking forward to with regard to a Trump Regime. The downside of all that money making is collapse. The strain has already built to unsustainable levels -- that was fast. Now what to do?
Whatever is to be done has almost nothing to do with We, the Rabble. We have to be honest about that. This is not our fight. Bluntly, we, the Rabble chose neither of the candidates we were offered. A record percentage of voters stayed home. Millions, of course, were deliberately disenfranchised.
But the overall turnout was pitiful, and the majority of those who did vote, voted against each candidate. That is a majority voted against Hillary, and a similar though somewhat larger majority voted against Trump.
The Trump EC victory may or may not be up and up. We don't know, we can't know. We can take it on faith or not but there is manifestly no way to verify the vote in the crucial states -- nor for that matter can the vote be verified in many jurisdictions all over the country. Our elections are therefore easy to manipulate for the desired outcome.
This one, however, was not the desired outcome. Something went bad-wrong. Whether it is due to "Russian" interference or simply that enough of the voters made the "wrong" choice, I can't say. It isn't up to me in any case.
Nor is it up to any of us. This will have to play out at a higher level. As it apparently is doing.
Stay tuned...
A little Billy Idol to lift our spirits...
The subtext is that things are not what they seem and something is very much going on.
Is it a coup?
I think it might be...
[OT: I think Ms Ché knew Stephen Stills back in the day. I'm not sure. He wasn't one of her primary interests that I can recall. That would have been the likes of Jim McGuinn Who-Became-Roger of the Byrds, and various other noted rockers and folk rockers and ravers of the British Invasion and such like. There were so many of them. Only recently, though, did she get together with Buffy St. Marie, one of her favorites and idols from way back. They acted like a couple of elder Indian women recognizing one another as relatives, sisters, cousins. Their mutual laughter is still ringing in my ears. I'm just a white guy on the edge of all this of course. She, Ms Ché, is now recruiting a whole new generation of Indians and non-Indians alike to go out and be themselves, enjoy life and liberty and grow in spirit, don't let the fuckers get you down. Listen, learn, be.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A coup?
I don't know. My spidey sense was sure tingling in the morning, but around evening it went more or less quiet. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
What is clear enough is that one faction of the ruling clique is contending with another for power.
This does not involve the Left or even the 'left.' This is between a conservative faction and radicals among those who have ruled us in and out of government for generations.
That's as obvious as sin, and the question is whether the contending factions will reach an accommodation with one another. It's not clear whether they will at this point. Furthermore, if it is a coup, we don't know who the golpistas really are. It's almost certainly not the Clinton camp. They may or may not be involved, but if they are, it is unlikely that She Herself will be installed as Queen-Empress should the conservative faction prevail.
That would be a trigger after all. Our Rulers may not have many smarts when it comes to their responsibilities and obligations, but they're not that stupid. They couldn't be. Could they? Please.
Unfortunately, yes they could. It is their culture, after all.
It occurred to me that
That coup anniversary may have been a trigger in itself for the actions underway to overcome apparent election results which would hand the presidency -- and the future of the United States -- over to a gang of "unindicted co-conspirators," some very successful con artists and mobster-wannabes. This is as serious as it gets.
At the time of the previous coup, the losing faction handed the government over to the golpistas out of a misplaced sense of formalism and duty under the rubric: "How bad could it get?" Yes, well. We found out, didn't we?
Certain formalities were observed, even though they were quite outside the Constitutional framework -- for example, the Supreme Court has no constitutional authority or jurisdiction in election matters they were asked to decide; it is specifically up to state governments and legislatures, and they should not have taken the case. Once they did, and once they decided in favor of the Bush-faction, it rent the fabric of the national project, and we are living with the consequences.
And too, the Bushevik faction was a "known quantity" to The Powers That Be. They brought back some of the well-known operators from times gone by, all the way back to the Nixon regime, Bush Jr. was the son of the CIA head, vice-president, and president previous to, under and after Reagan, and Cheney was... well, Darth Cheney, but whatever else he was (Evil), he was a known quantity in the corridors of power. Same with Rummy and so forth. It was initially like Old Home Week. And then it went south, even before the attack on 9/11.
They may have been mostly familiar faces but they were acting like teenagers lolly-gagging around the pool and their media handmaidens were making utter fools of themselves trying to recreate the atmosphere and revenues of the Clinton Scandals around the disappearance of Chandra Levy.
It was a goon show that ended abruptly with the events of 9/11/2001.
While the coup of December 10, 2000, was an example of the political aspect of the Shock Doctrine, the events of 9/11 went way beyond mere politics; it was Shock Doctrine that literally consumed and transformed the very nature of US government, as well as destabilizing the cobbled together social, economic, and psychological agreements that had kept the nation whole through thick and thin.
There was an immediate unity after the attacks, one that very quickly fell apart as the Busheviks demonstrated an almost unbelievable lack of wisdom in the face of crisis. That's not to say they didn't do some things appropriate and right. But their military response and targets were wrong-headed in every way, and the conduct they permitted and encouraged their agents to engage in was criminal.
Their war of aggression against Iraq had the effect of blowing apart whatever fragile stability there had been in the Middle East and North Africa, while their pig-headed Afghanistan adventure is still a major destabilizing factor in South Asia. What were they thinking?
Well, it's obvious they weren't. Thinking that is. They were exploiting opportunities.
It was and still is all reactive and self-feeding crisis. And it's a failure on any rational or public interest plane. But some people got very, very, very rich off of it, so they're all for more, more, more.
Henceforth the world would work in a different way. Well, part of the world...
Now comes Trump. Well, it's obvious he wasn't supposed to win. It's still a question -- that will probably never be satisfactorily answered -- how or whether he pulled off the Upset of History. As we know, there will be no verification of the vote. We've seen sufficient evidence so far that it's literally impossible to verify the vote in critical areas. One must accept the election results on faith because there is no way on earth to be sure the results accurately recorded and reflected the wishes of the voters. Our electoral system is purpose-designed to be opaque in critical areas. We don't know, and we can't know, what actually happened. Intentionally so.
Given the overall results reported so far, however, it's reasonable to assume that the voters did not want Trump and his gang of thieves and mountebanks in the White House; neither did they want Hillary. Ergo, trying to force either one on the People is risky business to say the least. Uncertainty is certain to follow.
Thus the moves to prevent Trump from taking power. Or to circumvent him and his gang if he does.
There was a similar kind of instability until some time after the inauguration of GWB. But it was tamped down by the capitulation of the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the concerted efforts of the media to ignore, discredit and denounce the many protests against the coup.
Combined, the efforts to prop up the Bush Regime both within and outside the government were partially successful. The protests never stopped, and those surrounding the preparation and initiation of the Iraq War were unprecedented. Enormous.
Yet millions upon millions of Americans never considered the Bush Regime to be legitimate, no matter the efforts of media and Democrats to make it so.
Obama calmed things down -- that was his assignment after all -- but without really changing much of the internal dynamic of a corporatist government run amok. It is still what it was under the Bushevik Regime, it simply has softer and calmer public face.
Many people understandably felt betrayed by Obama, the longed-for Redemption from centuries of Error.
He hasn't fulfilled his promise. Not even close. But he kept the lid on the growing rage of the discouraged and dispossessed. And that was all that was necessary for him to do in the eyes of the Ruling Clique. Just keep the Rabble tame.
Hillary was supposed to continue the Obama program, maybe with an added bone or two thrown to the Rabble to keep them mostly quiet over the next few cycles of rapine and exploitation by Our Betters.
Trump was supposed to be a sideshow to keep the potential hostiles and trouble makers in line. Oops.
Now that they're planning to take over and install rich and self-righteous rebels in positions of extraordinary power to do harm domestically and internationally, regardless of any "good" they might also do, the High and Mighty are awakening to a clear and present danger to them -- they care not about the Rabble -- should Himself ascend to the throne.
Right now, they're making out like bandits themselves as the stock market soars in anticipation of Trumpian profits without end.
The anticipation of the immense profits to come from the Trumpian crony capitalist pig troughs, and the fortunes to be made from the dismantlement and privatization of Social Security and Medicare, among other public programs slated for the ax, are about the only things that Our Betters are looking forward to with regard to a Trump Regime. The downside of all that money making is collapse. The strain has already built to unsustainable levels -- that was fast. Now what to do?
Whatever is to be done has almost nothing to do with We, the Rabble. We have to be honest about that. This is not our fight. Bluntly, we, the Rabble chose neither of the candidates we were offered. A record percentage of voters stayed home. Millions, of course, were deliberately disenfranchised.
But the overall turnout was pitiful, and the majority of those who did vote, voted against each candidate. That is a majority voted against Hillary, and a similar though somewhat larger majority voted against Trump.
The Trump EC victory may or may not be up and up. We don't know, we can't know. We can take it on faith or not but there is manifestly no way to verify the vote in the crucial states -- nor for that matter can the vote be verified in many jurisdictions all over the country. Our elections are therefore easy to manipulate for the desired outcome.
This one, however, was not the desired outcome. Something went bad-wrong. Whether it is due to "Russian" interference or simply that enough of the voters made the "wrong" choice, I can't say. It isn't up to me in any case.
Nor is it up to any of us. This will have to play out at a higher level. As it apparently is doing.
Stay tuned...
A little Billy Idol to lift our spirits...
The Nuclear Annihilation Gambit
One of the most frequently retailed "truths" during the presidential campaign was that Mrs. Clinton would surely get us into a nuclear war with Russia -- and Mr. Trump would save us from it.
I find that this "truth" is still being widely retailed as a defense of Trump. Some commenters maintain that this "truth" alone was sufficient reason to vote for him and to cleave loyally to him, come what may.
It's completely irrational. It's still being promoted as if it were established fact, but there never was any truth to it. It is no more true that Mrs. Clinton would get us into a nuclear war with Russia than Mr. Trump saved us from it.
I've tried to briefly explain why that is so in other fora, but it's not an easy concept for some people to grasp. They are so convinced of the "truth" they've been fed about the certainty of Mrs. Clinton's nuclear warmongering and the salvation of Mr. Trump's lack of belligerence toward Russia that they simply can't wrap their minds around the idea that neither of them were advocating or trying to start nuclear war with Russia, and that there is a constant and inherent risk of nuclear war regardless of who is in the White House. It's simply a fact that the United States and Russia are not the only nuclear players on the face of the earth.
It is particularly difficult for those who didn't live through the Cold War to recognize what was going on with all the Putin-bashing and Russia blaming from the Clinton campaign. Its devolution since the election is frankly bizarre.
First: based on their campaign rhetoric, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Trump was likely to launch a nuclear first strike against Russia.
Second: there was no sign whatever that anyone in the Kremlin, least of all Tovarich Putin, was in any way inclined to launch a nuclear attack against the US.
Third: the anti-Russia/anti-Putin campaign rhetoric and propaganda used by Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates was transparent, often ridiculous, over the top, ill-advised and potentially very dangerous.
Fourth: on the other hand, it was a tried and true tactic directly out of the Cold War play book. It's called Brinkmanship. Dr. Kissinger was one of its chief practitioners back in the day. Dr. Kissinger and Mrs. Clinton were/are buddies.
Fifth: Brinkmanship was practiced throughout the Cold War. The threat of instant incineration and mutually assured destruction over both the Soviet Union and the United States was used as a negotiating tactic in order to establish and sustain a certain dynamic tension and world order. So long as the Soviet Union was able to project strength and wisdom as a counter to US imperialism and greed, neither side was able to fully dominate the other. It was in the interests of both to find accommodation. They did so, over and over again.
Sixth: Mrs. Clinton was not about to launch a nuclear first strike against anyone; Mr. Trump showed no interest in launching a nuclear first strike against Russia.
Seventh: if there is a nuclear first strike, it would more likely be launched by Israel or Pakistan, both of which are under increasing social, political, economic and emotional strain and both of which have governments that perceive an existential threat to their national existence -- from both internal and external forces.
Eighth: if a nuclear attack is launched by one of the other nuclear armed states, it would present a clear and present danger and an almost insoluble dilemma for both the US and Russia. I'm sure it's all been gamed out by both governments, but what would be done in the actual event is an open question.
Ninth: a US president does not have independent authority to launch a nuclear first strike. It would be incumbent for anyone receiving such an order to disobey. Mrs. Clinton could not launch a nuclear first strike on her own, and she knows it. Mr. Trump may or may not know it. He may not care.
Tenth: Brinkmanship as practiced by the Clinton campaign and as is still being retailed by neocons, parts of the government intelligence community and the media is stupid, counter productive, and borderline insane. But it never meant that Mrs. Clinton would launch a nuclear attack or that Mr. Trump would prevent one.
The idea that she would and he wouldn't is an article of faith. It has no basis in reality or truth.
Here's part of the reason why:
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump and I all grew up during the Cold War. Mr. Trump is two years older than Mrs. Clinton and I, and his educational and social experience during the 50s and 60s particular is very different than those of us who were students in public school -- like Mrs. Clinton and I were.
Public school students all over the country were conditioned to fear and loathe the Soviet Union and Communism and to anticipate nuclear annihilation at any time. Because the Soviets were Evil, we were told to believe that they wanted to conquer and exterminate us. Were it not for the strength and resolve of our leaders in Washington and our firm belief in our system of capitalism and democracy, they would win.
Of course this was all propaganda. My fifth grade teacher essentially said as much after we were exposed to yet another anti-Soviet propaganda film in the cafetorium. He was, of course, investigated for Communist sympathies and other purported crimes... that's the way things were then.
We weren't told and we weren't supposed to know what was actually going on in the world. But as we got older, we learned more and more of what lay behind the curtain.
Our rulers were playing a game with the Soviet Union, a game which the Soviets were playing as well. It was a game of dominance, but the intent was stalemate. In other words, the point was to keep a certain level of threat and tension between the two superpowers without leading to nuclear holocaust.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, that game of necessity stopped. Without a Soviet threat, without a Communist enemy, the US governmental premise itself came close to collapsing. There was no purpose to much of the US government anymore.
It took the designation of Iraq and Iran and ultimately most of the Muslim Middle East, South Asia and North Africa as Enemies du Jour to restore in confidence in the intelligence and military sectors that they had some purpose and meaning.
And it's been a shit - show ever since.
When the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia were sufficiently wrecked, attention turned to Russia as the next target for the wrecking crews. There have long been plans in the MIC/Intelligence community to dismantle the Russian Federation and loot whatever remains of state and private wealth, in order -- they say -- to prevent the rise of any rival to US hegemony. I understand that China is also on the list for dismantlement.
Supposedly any potential rival will face the same treatment in the by and bye.
While some of our ruling clique are convinced that a nuclear war is desirable and survivable, most clearly are not. Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton both have nuclear survivalists in their policy shops, but there never was any sign that those men and women were in charge of policy.
A complicating factor with Russia is Edward Snowden's asylum there. Until that happened, Russia and Putin were at least nominal "partners" with the US in world affairs. Maybe it was at arms length, maybe it was a tense relationship, but it was not overtly hostile most of the time.
When Snowden was granted asylum and provided a highly public internet platform by his hosts, all that changed.
And so here we are.
If the Ukrainian Nazis had access to nuclear weapons, I have little doubt they would have glassed Moscow and Leningrad long ago. Provided of course that Kiev hadn't been turned into a radioactive ruin first.
The danger of nuclear annihilation is a constant. We are not free of it no matter who is in the White House, but the likelihood of either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton launching a nuclear first strike against Russia -- or provoking the Kremlin into launching a first strike against the US -- has always been next to nil.
I find that this "truth" is still being widely retailed as a defense of Trump. Some commenters maintain that this "truth" alone was sufficient reason to vote for him and to cleave loyally to him, come what may.
It's completely irrational. It's still being promoted as if it were established fact, but there never was any truth to it. It is no more true that Mrs. Clinton would get us into a nuclear war with Russia than Mr. Trump saved us from it.
I've tried to briefly explain why that is so in other fora, but it's not an easy concept for some people to grasp. They are so convinced of the "truth" they've been fed about the certainty of Mrs. Clinton's nuclear warmongering and the salvation of Mr. Trump's lack of belligerence toward Russia that they simply can't wrap their minds around the idea that neither of them were advocating or trying to start nuclear war with Russia, and that there is a constant and inherent risk of nuclear war regardless of who is in the White House. It's simply a fact that the United States and Russia are not the only nuclear players on the face of the earth.
It is particularly difficult for those who didn't live through the Cold War to recognize what was going on with all the Putin-bashing and Russia blaming from the Clinton campaign. Its devolution since the election is frankly bizarre.
First: based on their campaign rhetoric, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Trump was likely to launch a nuclear first strike against Russia.
Second: there was no sign whatever that anyone in the Kremlin, least of all Tovarich Putin, was in any way inclined to launch a nuclear attack against the US.
Third: the anti-Russia/anti-Putin campaign rhetoric and propaganda used by Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates was transparent, often ridiculous, over the top, ill-advised and potentially very dangerous.
Fourth: on the other hand, it was a tried and true tactic directly out of the Cold War play book. It's called Brinkmanship. Dr. Kissinger was one of its chief practitioners back in the day. Dr. Kissinger and Mrs. Clinton were/are buddies.
Fifth: Brinkmanship was practiced throughout the Cold War. The threat of instant incineration and mutually assured destruction over both the Soviet Union and the United States was used as a negotiating tactic in order to establish and sustain a certain dynamic tension and world order. So long as the Soviet Union was able to project strength and wisdom as a counter to US imperialism and greed, neither side was able to fully dominate the other. It was in the interests of both to find accommodation. They did so, over and over again.
Sixth: Mrs. Clinton was not about to launch a nuclear first strike against anyone; Mr. Trump showed no interest in launching a nuclear first strike against Russia.
Seventh: if there is a nuclear first strike, it would more likely be launched by Israel or Pakistan, both of which are under increasing social, political, economic and emotional strain and both of which have governments that perceive an existential threat to their national existence -- from both internal and external forces.
Eighth: if a nuclear attack is launched by one of the other nuclear armed states, it would present a clear and present danger and an almost insoluble dilemma for both the US and Russia. I'm sure it's all been gamed out by both governments, but what would be done in the actual event is an open question.
Ninth: a US president does not have independent authority to launch a nuclear first strike. It would be incumbent for anyone receiving such an order to disobey. Mrs. Clinton could not launch a nuclear first strike on her own, and she knows it. Mr. Trump may or may not know it. He may not care.
Tenth: Brinkmanship as practiced by the Clinton campaign and as is still being retailed by neocons, parts of the government intelligence community and the media is stupid, counter productive, and borderline insane. But it never meant that Mrs. Clinton would launch a nuclear attack or that Mr. Trump would prevent one.
The idea that she would and he wouldn't is an article of faith. It has no basis in reality or truth.
Here's part of the reason why:
Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump and I all grew up during the Cold War. Mr. Trump is two years older than Mrs. Clinton and I, and his educational and social experience during the 50s and 60s particular is very different than those of us who were students in public school -- like Mrs. Clinton and I were.
Public school students all over the country were conditioned to fear and loathe the Soviet Union and Communism and to anticipate nuclear annihilation at any time. Because the Soviets were Evil, we were told to believe that they wanted to conquer and exterminate us. Were it not for the strength and resolve of our leaders in Washington and our firm belief in our system of capitalism and democracy, they would win.
Of course this was all propaganda. My fifth grade teacher essentially said as much after we were exposed to yet another anti-Soviet propaganda film in the cafetorium. He was, of course, investigated for Communist sympathies and other purported crimes... that's the way things were then.
We weren't told and we weren't supposed to know what was actually going on in the world. But as we got older, we learned more and more of what lay behind the curtain.
Our rulers were playing a game with the Soviet Union, a game which the Soviets were playing as well. It was a game of dominance, but the intent was stalemate. In other words, the point was to keep a certain level of threat and tension between the two superpowers without leading to nuclear holocaust.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, that game of necessity stopped. Without a Soviet threat, without a Communist enemy, the US governmental premise itself came close to collapsing. There was no purpose to much of the US government anymore.
It took the designation of Iraq and Iran and ultimately most of the Muslim Middle East, South Asia and North Africa as Enemies du Jour to restore in confidence in the intelligence and military sectors that they had some purpose and meaning.
And it's been a shit - show ever since.
When the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia were sufficiently wrecked, attention turned to Russia as the next target for the wrecking crews. There have long been plans in the MIC/Intelligence community to dismantle the Russian Federation and loot whatever remains of state and private wealth, in order -- they say -- to prevent the rise of any rival to US hegemony. I understand that China is also on the list for dismantlement.
Supposedly any potential rival will face the same treatment in the by and bye.
While some of our ruling clique are convinced that a nuclear war is desirable and survivable, most clearly are not. Mr Trump and Mrs Clinton both have nuclear survivalists in their policy shops, but there never was any sign that those men and women were in charge of policy.
A complicating factor with Russia is Edward Snowden's asylum there. Until that happened, Russia and Putin were at least nominal "partners" with the US in world affairs. Maybe it was at arms length, maybe it was a tense relationship, but it was not overtly hostile most of the time.
When Snowden was granted asylum and provided a highly public internet platform by his hosts, all that changed.
And so here we are.
If the Ukrainian Nazis had access to nuclear weapons, I have little doubt they would have glassed Moscow and Leningrad long ago. Provided of course that Kiev hadn't been turned into a radioactive ruin first.
The danger of nuclear annihilation is a constant. We are not free of it no matter who is in the White House, but the likelihood of either Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton launching a nuclear first strike against Russia -- or provoking the Kremlin into launching a first strike against the US -- has always been next to nil.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
OT: Oxygen!
This is more a record-keeping post than anything else.
I took Ms Ché up to Santa Fe yesterday morning. She'd been up all night completing an assignment for one of her creative writing classes, an illustrated children's book that dealt with important issues or struggles a child might face. Her story dealt with facing and coping with loss. I thought it was sweet and naive (in a good way, it's for children after all) and compelling. But it took her all night to complete it, and I didn't want her to drive up to Santa Fe on her own. So, I got myself ready, and we headed out.
It's a lovely and peaceful drive from our place on a rarely used two-lane blacktop north through the Estancia Valley and the Galisteo Basin. 50 miles or so to the IAIA campus. Takes about an hour.
There's no snow to speak of yet, though morning temperatures have been in the teens lately. So yes, it's cold but still very nice out and the roads are safe enough. The problem Ms Ché and I recognized right off was that she's driven the road so many times that it's all but automatic for her. The road is straight and true for the first 20 miles or so, and then it swoops and dives and twists every which of a way. If one is alert, it is easy enough to negotiate but since she'd had no sleep, she said she could easily have fallen asleep while driving the road she knew so well, and that could have deadly consequences. We passed by the wreck that killed a Longmire crewman a couple of years ago on a swoopy curvy part of that same road. He'd been up all night crewing and was headed home around 4 am. It isn't certain, but it is believed that he fell asleep, ran off the road, rolled his pickup and was killed. A pair of horseshoe cross descansos on the fence of the Bar-S Ranch marks the spot where he died.
This was my first trip to Santa Fe since I got oxygen. I thought I would be fine and didn't take any with me, since the last time I'd been in Santa Fe, maybe three weeks ago, I didn't experience severe breathing difficulties. But as we started heading uphill yesterday, bam... I thought I wasn't going to make it.
Santa Fe, at 7000 ft, is about 1000 feet higher in elevation than our home. When I was a smoker, I loathed going to Santa Fe because I felt I was suffocating. After I stopped smoking 20 years ago, I no longer had that problem in Santa Fe, and I could even go up to Taos from time to time and enjoy myself.
But yesterday.... oh man. I started feeling distress as we passed Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch (yes, that Jeffrey Epstein). The Zorro Ranch marks the boundary between the Estancia Valley and the Galisteo Basin, and one goes over a ridge to get from one to the other. The ridge is probably a couple of hundred feet higher than the Valley floor.
I started feeling modest and then more and more severe chest pain, the same kind of pain that got me in to see a cardiologist. My breathing became more and more difficult, and by the time we got to the village of Galisteo, I thought for a moment I was going to pass out.
Whoa.
The rest of the way to Santa Fe, about 20 miles or so, I was in considerable distress and chest pain, and I was having a harder and harder time concentrating on the road. I was worried I would run off the road and crash. But we made it to the campus without incident. I credit that in part to the fact that I've driven the road so many times it's almost automatic, and I wasn't falling asleep. I was in distress, but the automatic pilot was still operating.
After dropping Ms Ché off, I turned around and drove back home, still on automatic pilot, and I was paying attention to whatever was going on with my breathing difficulty. The pain and distress started easing by the time I reached Galisteo, and it was almost entirely gone by the time I passed Zorro Ranch headed south.
By the time I got back home and hooked myself up to an oxygen tank, I almost felt fine.
Later, when I went back to Santa Fe to pick up Ms Ché, I took the tank with me and breathed in oxygen the whole route. No distress at all.
It was an unintended experiment. I learned that the chest pain that had triggered a cardiac alert was due to my breathing difficulty caused primarily by rheumatoid arthritis lung disease. (There are minor COPD and emphysema components). Altitude is an exacerbating factor and I am very sensitive to even minor increases in altitude, say from 6,200 to 6,500 feet.
Without supplemental oxygen, higher altitudes are now close to impossible for me. And this is a much worse situation than I've faced before. This tells me that the lung disease is not controlled and more and more of my lungs are scarred by fibrosis.
I see the pulmonologist Tuesday. We'll see what he says.
I took Ms Ché up to Santa Fe yesterday morning. She'd been up all night completing an assignment for one of her creative writing classes, an illustrated children's book that dealt with important issues or struggles a child might face. Her story dealt with facing and coping with loss. I thought it was sweet and naive (in a good way, it's for children after all) and compelling. But it took her all night to complete it, and I didn't want her to drive up to Santa Fe on her own. So, I got myself ready, and we headed out.
It's a lovely and peaceful drive from our place on a rarely used two-lane blacktop north through the Estancia Valley and the Galisteo Basin. 50 miles or so to the IAIA campus. Takes about an hour.
There's no snow to speak of yet, though morning temperatures have been in the teens lately. So yes, it's cold but still very nice out and the roads are safe enough. The problem Ms Ché and I recognized right off was that she's driven the road so many times that it's all but automatic for her. The road is straight and true for the first 20 miles or so, and then it swoops and dives and twists every which of a way. If one is alert, it is easy enough to negotiate but since she'd had no sleep, she said she could easily have fallen asleep while driving the road she knew so well, and that could have deadly consequences. We passed by the wreck that killed a Longmire crewman a couple of years ago on a swoopy curvy part of that same road. He'd been up all night crewing and was headed home around 4 am. It isn't certain, but it is believed that he fell asleep, ran off the road, rolled his pickup and was killed. A pair of horseshoe cross descansos on the fence of the Bar-S Ranch marks the spot where he died.
This was my first trip to Santa Fe since I got oxygen. I thought I would be fine and didn't take any with me, since the last time I'd been in Santa Fe, maybe three weeks ago, I didn't experience severe breathing difficulties. But as we started heading uphill yesterday, bam... I thought I wasn't going to make it.
Santa Fe, at 7000 ft, is about 1000 feet higher in elevation than our home. When I was a smoker, I loathed going to Santa Fe because I felt I was suffocating. After I stopped smoking 20 years ago, I no longer had that problem in Santa Fe, and I could even go up to Taos from time to time and enjoy myself.
But yesterday.... oh man. I started feeling distress as we passed Jeffrey Epstein's Zorro Ranch (yes, that Jeffrey Epstein). The Zorro Ranch marks the boundary between the Estancia Valley and the Galisteo Basin, and one goes over a ridge to get from one to the other. The ridge is probably a couple of hundred feet higher than the Valley floor.
I started feeling modest and then more and more severe chest pain, the same kind of pain that got me in to see a cardiologist. My breathing became more and more difficult, and by the time we got to the village of Galisteo, I thought for a moment I was going to pass out.
Whoa.
The rest of the way to Santa Fe, about 20 miles or so, I was in considerable distress and chest pain, and I was having a harder and harder time concentrating on the road. I was worried I would run off the road and crash. But we made it to the campus without incident. I credit that in part to the fact that I've driven the road so many times it's almost automatic, and I wasn't falling asleep. I was in distress, but the automatic pilot was still operating.
After dropping Ms Ché off, I turned around and drove back home, still on automatic pilot, and I was paying attention to whatever was going on with my breathing difficulty. The pain and distress started easing by the time I reached Galisteo, and it was almost entirely gone by the time I passed Zorro Ranch headed south.
By the time I got back home and hooked myself up to an oxygen tank, I almost felt fine.
Later, when I went back to Santa Fe to pick up Ms Ché, I took the tank with me and breathed in oxygen the whole route. No distress at all.
It was an unintended experiment. I learned that the chest pain that had triggered a cardiac alert was due to my breathing difficulty caused primarily by rheumatoid arthritis lung disease. (There are minor COPD and emphysema components). Altitude is an exacerbating factor and I am very sensitive to even minor increases in altitude, say from 6,200 to 6,500 feet.
Without supplemental oxygen, higher altitudes are now close to impossible for me. And this is a much worse situation than I've faced before. This tells me that the lung disease is not controlled and more and more of my lungs are scarred by fibrosis.
I see the pulmonologist Tuesday. We'll see what he says.
Reality Bites -- Nomi Prins Tells It Straight
Funny.
Jeebus.
Fore!
Trump’s Bait and Switch
How to Swamp Washington and Double-cross Your Supporters Big Time
By Nomi Prins
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176219/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_the_march_of_the_billionaires/#more
I'll excerpt a few pertinent graphs from it, but please read the whole thing.
First of all, Nomi Prins is a well known and respected writer on matters of politics and economics. She has the requisite Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs background to know the real deal about the finance sector. She is somewhat of the leftish persuasion, but in our political realm, that's not really leftist at all. There is no left to speak of in US politics or economics, it's all rightist and it is more and more reactionary all the time.
Prins is telling the truth here, and the truth is kryptonite to Trump and his followers.
They can't stand it.
So what is the truth here? Let's go through some of her points, one by one.
His attacks on working people via his appointments and his Twitter machine should have been a wake-up call to his working class followers, but in the Trumpiverse, every attack is deserved. The people, institutions and companies he goes after deserve it because they are disloyal or disobedient or both. For them, no quarter. Regardless of anything else.
Of course for disaster capitalists, an "abyss of inequality and instability" is perfect. Let's not forget that, either.
There follow details of the Harding-esque nature of the coming Trump Regime a detailed examination of the important players in the New America being set up.
Finally, wrapping up, Prins notes that
For some of his followers, it was. And they hope to profit on their insight and loyalty. Others may not have seen the thieves picking their pockets as they joyously shouted "Lock her up!" or whatever, and don't see them now. Little or nothing can persuade them that they've been conned and will be fleeced of what little remains of their pelf.
They're not the only victims, of course. Everyone who can be will be relieved of everything the grubbing con artists can get their hands on. That's baked in. Anyone who tries to protect and preserve any shred of their former lives will easily become a target. That's how these things work.
Some of Trump's loyalists are eager for that outcome, looking forward to how they might profit from the ascension of His Gold Plated Self. The opportunities are immense. The victims deserve their fate.
Trouble is, they don't recognize that even the strongest loyalists can wind up in the victim basket. Or if they do recognize it, they think they will escape. Maybe it's a lack of knowledge and understanding of history, maybe it's contrariness and pigheaded self absorption, I don't know. But their illusion of safety under the circumstances is false.
Jeebus.
Fore!
Trump’s Bait and Switch
How to Swamp Washington and Double-cross Your Supporters Big Time
By Nomi Prins
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176219/tomgram%3A_nomi_prins%2C_the_march_of_the_billionaires/#more
I'll excerpt a few pertinent graphs from it, but please read the whole thing.
First of all, Nomi Prins is a well known and respected writer on matters of politics and economics. She has the requisite Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs background to know the real deal about the finance sector. She is somewhat of the leftish persuasion, but in our political realm, that's not really leftist at all. There is no left to speak of in US politics or economics, it's all rightist and it is more and more reactionary all the time.
Prins is telling the truth here, and the truth is kryptonite to Trump and his followers.
They can't stand it.
So what is the truth here? Let's go through some of her points, one by one.
Trump’s version of a political and financial establishment, just forming, will be bound together by certain behavioral patterns born of relationships among those of similar status, background, social position, legacy connections, and an assumed allegiance to a dogma of self-aggrandizement that overshadows everything else. In the realm of politico-financial power and in Trump’s experience and ideology, the one with the most toys always wins. So it’s hardly a surprise that his money- and power-centric cabinet won’t be focused on public service or patriotism or civic duty, but on the consolidation of corporate and private gain at the expense of the citizenry.The signs have been plain since the campaign, of course, but as the Gold Plated Great Man fills his cabinet and appoints loyalists and cronies to other positions of import in the coming Regime, literally daring anyone to do anything about it, there is no sign of public service or public interest in the choices and their life's work at all, any more than there is any sign of patriotism or civic duty in Trump's background. It just doesn't exist. There is every sign of consolidation of (favored) corporate and private gain at the total expense of the citizenry.
It’s already obvious that, to Trump, “draining the swamp” means filling it with new layers of golden sludge...Gee, ya think?
The rarified world of his cabinet choices is certainly a universe away from the struggling working class folks he bamboozled with promises of bringing back American “greatness.”Let's call a con a con and be done with it.
His attacks on working people via his appointments and his Twitter machine should have been a wake-up call to his working class followers, but in the Trumpiverse, every attack is deserved. The people, institutions and companies he goes after deserve it because they are disloyal or disobedient or both. For them, no quarter. Regardless of anything else.
what is guaranteed to be an abyss of inequality and instability.Precisely. This is what some of us have been warning of. Strangely, now that these warnings are being listened to, known of, and worried over outside the Cassandra Class, the opportunities for action become more and more limited. It doesn't mean that nothing can be done, just that what can be done about it is shrinking.
Of course for disaster capitalists, an "abyss of inequality and instability" is perfect. Let's not forget that, either.
There follow details of the Harding-esque nature of the coming Trump Regime a detailed examination of the important players in the New America being set up.
Finally, wrapping up, Prins notes that
His new incarnation of the old establishment largely consists of billionaires and multimillionaires with less than appetizing nicknames from their previous predatory careers. They favor government support for their private gain as well as deregulation, several of them having already specialized in making money off the collateral damage from such policies....
Trump is now surrounding himself with a crew of crony capitalists who understand boardroom speak, but have nothing in common with most Americans. So give him credit: his administration is already one of the great political bait-and-switch productions in our history and it hasn’t even begun. Count on one thing: in his presidency he’ll only double down on that “promise.”Well, yes. Wasn't it obvious?
For some of his followers, it was. And they hope to profit on their insight and loyalty. Others may not have seen the thieves picking their pockets as they joyously shouted "Lock her up!" or whatever, and don't see them now. Little or nothing can persuade them that they've been conned and will be fleeced of what little remains of their pelf.
They're not the only victims, of course. Everyone who can be will be relieved of everything the grubbing con artists can get their hands on. That's baked in. Anyone who tries to protect and preserve any shred of their former lives will easily become a target. That's how these things work.
Some of Trump's loyalists are eager for that outcome, looking forward to how they might profit from the ascension of His Gold Plated Self. The opportunities are immense. The victims deserve their fate.
Trouble is, they don't recognize that even the strongest loyalists can wind up in the victim basket. Or if they do recognize it, they think they will escape. Maybe it's a lack of knowledge and understanding of history, maybe it's contrariness and pigheaded self absorption, I don't know. But their illusion of safety under the circumstances is false.
Thursday, December 8, 2016
"No You Can't" -- On Tone Policing, Recounts and Other Matters
Sometimes I go off on people, not necessarily nicely, either. The other day, a friend called me from California. He'd just read in the New York Times that Trump had "fired" Michael Flynn, Jr. from his transition team for spreading fake news stories about that pizza place in DC. Didn't I think that was a good thing? And then he read about Trump tweeting something about canceling the new Air Force One from Boeing because it cost too much. Didn't I think that was a good thing? And then he said something about China and Trump, and wasn't that good, too?
"Gee," he said, "he [Trump] might not be so bad after all."
I went off on him, up one side and down the other. I told him I didn't want to hear him defending Trump, that there were already too many on our supposed side doing that, just like they did with Baby Bush when he was installed in the presidency by the Supreme Court, and we know how that turned out, so let's not do it this time, m'kay?
We've been friends for close to forty years, so it's not like we haven't had knock down drag outs more than a few times over things we disagree about. I think we understand one another well enough that it's OK to fiercely disagree with one another from time to time. But this time it really got under my skin -- because he did something I see way too much of.
He saw something in the newspaper (he gets hard copy NYT daily) and even though he was by no means a Trump supporter*, what he's read in the papers about him and seen in other news sources is convincing him that Trump just might be OK, because, according to what he's been seeing lately, Trump is trying to do the right things.
He "fired" Flynn, Jr. He denounced Boeing and the costs of Air Force One, he's standing up China. The Trump regime won't be so bad after all. And he saved all those jobs in Indiana. How bad could it be?
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*Anecdote: He said he had a "feeling" election night and went to bed before the polls had even closed in California. He's met Hillary a number of times over the years, and met her once during this year's campaign. No, he didn't have to pay $150,000 or whatever she was charging for meet and greets, he gets into these things free (another story for another time). Anyway, he said this last time he saw her, he felt there was something off, he didn't know what. Maybe she was just tired. But what he said really came across to him was that she didn't care. Not any more. The "fire" had gone out. He said to himself, "Uh oh."
He said it was a sign to him that she might not win the election, even though every media outlet and poll except the Los Angeles Times was certain she had it in the bag. Her election was all but a done deal, and yet he had his doubts.
When he got up the morning after election night, he opened his paper and saw the headline and he said he felt sick to his stomach, but he wasn't surprised. Yep. That's what he sensed would happen, and sure enough. There it was in black and white.
He's spent the last several weeks going through the stages of grief, and I think when he called me about the Times stories the other day, he was reaching for "acceptance."
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Trump just couldn't be so bad, the thinking goes, because the American People wouldn't elect a monster. We are a Good People, and even though our presidents are flawed, they ultimately reflect the Goodness of America and Americans by being elected.
Except the voters didn't elect him. A majority of voters chose someone else. That's what happened. The narrative that got going on November 9, however, has been hammering the false notion that "WE", "America" or "the American people," or "the voters" elected him. No, an unverifiable and minuscule number of votes in a handful of states provided him with a sufficient margin in the Electoral College for him to be declared victor on election night by the media. The EC hasn't met. Consequently, every bit of Trump fluffing going on since election night is a matter of expectation and speculation. He is not officially "president-elect" because he hasn't been elected by the EC. Etc.
The point I try to make -- and it's uphill -- is that "WE" -- the voters, the American People, the Rabble -- did not elect this man. The voters' preference is clearly Not Trump. Hillary's popular vote lead is historic. Combined with the third party votes, the Not Trump vote is more than a majority of votes cast. When turned around, it looks like Trump does not get a majority by combining his votes with third party votes, but there was also a substantial Not Hillary vote, which I don't discount at all. So many people really wanted neither one of these candidates... Add in the people who either couldn't vote because of voter suppression efforts or chose to sit this one out, and we've got a serious level of disenfranchisement and voter resistance on our hands.
Yet our media, cowards and toadies to power that they are, can barely acknowledge these simple truths. Good heavens, no. It might stir the Rabble to action if they do, and we can't have that.
The recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are devolving fast, but that's OK with me because what's been revealed so far shows conclusively that the way elections and recounts were conducted in those states makes it essentially impossible to comprehensively verify the vote. It's particularly true in Pennsylvania where most votes are cast on DRE machines that have no audit trail or any other means of checking their accuracy or even providing a separate record of votes cast. It's all internal and unverifiable. So the request has been to do a forensic examination of the machines to determine whether they were tampered with. That is pending in court -- and given the Michigan court ordered halt to the recount there, I expect the court to halt the recount in Pennsylvania too as well as prohibit any examination of the machines.
In Michigan, where paper ballots are used, a rather remarkable election law states that if the number of ballots in the ballot box does not match the number of ballots given out in the record books, the votes in that precinct cannot be recounted. The original report stands. Whut? This is crazy. But them's the Rules. The all-important Rules. And in any case, both state and federal courts have ordered a halt to the recount there on specious grounds. Ah yes, here we go again.
In Wisconsin, as I understand it, precincts were given the option of hand-counting paper ballots or running them through the scanners again. Some have chosen hand counts, others are repeating the election night scans on the same machines. That proves nothing and verifies nothing. But oh well. There are apparently some counties in Wisconsin that are notorious for vote padding and other chicanery, some of which cannot be detected easily. I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be surprising if they just repeat the scans and come up with the same padded results as they did initially. Uh, that's not really verifying the vote. But they have the choice, so...
There is a recount effort in Florida that will have to be decided by the courts, and another partial recount is going on in Nevada, all well and good. There are apparently routine precinct level recounts under way or completed in many jurisdictions.
We're once again privileged to witness what an incomprehensible muddle American elections are. Once again, the outrage will get ramped up and go almost nowhere.
It will be unlikely to go anywhere because the current chaos and arbitrary nature of electoral practice and law is beneficial for preserving the status quo of the Duopoly, kakistocracy, and keeping the interference of the Rabble in their Rulers' work to a minimum. The fact that courts are expected to interfere in elections is now institutionalized. Thanks Scalia!
Doing more than quietly grumbling about it is considered impolite and arrogant by the Tone Police. It's really funny. The Tone Police are practically self-parodies. "You shouldn't say that, it's rude. We can't be like them after all. We are better than that!" But then, I'm seeing a lot of self-parody online, especially among Trump Fluffers -- who seem to be losing their minds. When I point out that this is actually dangerous and people are getting hurt, some will likely be killed as the situation devolves into even greater chaos, the crazy increases.
After all, "What about Clintooooon!!!!"
Yeah, right. Nope, won't play that.
I started this post with the story of lighting into a good friend who was trying to come to grips with a potentially positive view of Trump in the White House. I don't want him to do that, but of course, my desire is not germane to what he does. I am not the boss of him. His objective, like mine, is to get through this chaos alive and in good enough shape to carry on. He can see a way forward by acknowledging that a Trump regime won't necessarily be all that bad. I say it will be worse than we can imagine.
This is the fundamental divide in the country. Many of us can recognize the clear signs of catastrophe that Trump and his toadies, cronies, and hench-people carry with them. This is no joking matter. It's on display 24/7 from all of them. They saying quite clearly that they are intent on a course of destruction, and they will not let anything stand in their way. Many of us say "Stand and fight."
Others internally recognize the same signals and signs and choose not to fight against the whirlwind that's gathering strength. Rather, they find something "good" in the Apocalypse, and would prefer to go with the flow, even as they're swept up into the Maelstrom. The operating concept being "You can't fight it, so go with it."
"No you can't." Now that was Hillary's opening gambit during the campaign. "No you can't. No you won't. Not on a bet." It's been internalized by her supporters and is the bedrock belief of the Tump partisans. "No you can't. But just watch while we do what we want. You can't stop us. Suckers!"
So. Here we are. Chaos is increasing by the hour. Tone Police are working the refs to tamp down alarm and outrage and keep the Rabble divided and inactive. The political class and media are all in with the New Boss, currying favor, showing their bellies. Our Betters are either still in shock, or they're anticipating huge profits on their assets as an inflationary pre-Trump bubble strikes the Markets. Oh my oh my!
In fact, the passivity of Our Betters in this situation is one of its more striking aspects. They're almost all sitting on their hands, "letting it play out." Let the Rabble have their fun! They're so amusing, no?
Bah.
"Gee," he said, "he [Trump] might not be so bad after all."
I went off on him, up one side and down the other. I told him I didn't want to hear him defending Trump, that there were already too many on our supposed side doing that, just like they did with Baby Bush when he was installed in the presidency by the Supreme Court, and we know how that turned out, so let's not do it this time, m'kay?
We've been friends for close to forty years, so it's not like we haven't had knock down drag outs more than a few times over things we disagree about. I think we understand one another well enough that it's OK to fiercely disagree with one another from time to time. But this time it really got under my skin -- because he did something I see way too much of.
He saw something in the newspaper (he gets hard copy NYT daily) and even though he was by no means a Trump supporter*, what he's read in the papers about him and seen in other news sources is convincing him that Trump just might be OK, because, according to what he's been seeing lately, Trump is trying to do the right things.
He "fired" Flynn, Jr. He denounced Boeing and the costs of Air Force One, he's standing up China. The Trump regime won't be so bad after all. And he saved all those jobs in Indiana. How bad could it be?
-----------------------------------------------------------
*Anecdote: He said he had a "feeling" election night and went to bed before the polls had even closed in California. He's met Hillary a number of times over the years, and met her once during this year's campaign. No, he didn't have to pay $150,000 or whatever she was charging for meet and greets, he gets into these things free (another story for another time). Anyway, he said this last time he saw her, he felt there was something off, he didn't know what. Maybe she was just tired. But what he said really came across to him was that she didn't care. Not any more. The "fire" had gone out. He said to himself, "Uh oh."
He said it was a sign to him that she might not win the election, even though every media outlet and poll except the Los Angeles Times was certain she had it in the bag. Her election was all but a done deal, and yet he had his doubts.
When he got up the morning after election night, he opened his paper and saw the headline and he said he felt sick to his stomach, but he wasn't surprised. Yep. That's what he sensed would happen, and sure enough. There it was in black and white.
He's spent the last several weeks going through the stages of grief, and I think when he called me about the Times stories the other day, he was reaching for "acceptance."
------------------------------------------------------
Trump just couldn't be so bad, the thinking goes, because the American People wouldn't elect a monster. We are a Good People, and even though our presidents are flawed, they ultimately reflect the Goodness of America and Americans by being elected.
Except the voters didn't elect him. A majority of voters chose someone else. That's what happened. The narrative that got going on November 9, however, has been hammering the false notion that "WE", "America" or "the American people," or "the voters" elected him. No, an unverifiable and minuscule number of votes in a handful of states provided him with a sufficient margin in the Electoral College for him to be declared victor on election night by the media. The EC hasn't met. Consequently, every bit of Trump fluffing going on since election night is a matter of expectation and speculation. He is not officially "president-elect" because he hasn't been elected by the EC. Etc.
The point I try to make -- and it's uphill -- is that "WE" -- the voters, the American People, the Rabble -- did not elect this man. The voters' preference is clearly Not Trump. Hillary's popular vote lead is historic. Combined with the third party votes, the Not Trump vote is more than a majority of votes cast. When turned around, it looks like Trump does not get a majority by combining his votes with third party votes, but there was also a substantial Not Hillary vote, which I don't discount at all. So many people really wanted neither one of these candidates... Add in the people who either couldn't vote because of voter suppression efforts or chose to sit this one out, and we've got a serious level of disenfranchisement and voter resistance on our hands.
Yet our media, cowards and toadies to power that they are, can barely acknowledge these simple truths. Good heavens, no. It might stir the Rabble to action if they do, and we can't have that.
The recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are devolving fast, but that's OK with me because what's been revealed so far shows conclusively that the way elections and recounts were conducted in those states makes it essentially impossible to comprehensively verify the vote. It's particularly true in Pennsylvania where most votes are cast on DRE machines that have no audit trail or any other means of checking their accuracy or even providing a separate record of votes cast. It's all internal and unverifiable. So the request has been to do a forensic examination of the machines to determine whether they were tampered with. That is pending in court -- and given the Michigan court ordered halt to the recount there, I expect the court to halt the recount in Pennsylvania too as well as prohibit any examination of the machines.
In Michigan, where paper ballots are used, a rather remarkable election law states that if the number of ballots in the ballot box does not match the number of ballots given out in the record books, the votes in that precinct cannot be recounted. The original report stands. Whut? This is crazy. But them's the Rules. The all-important Rules. And in any case, both state and federal courts have ordered a halt to the recount there on specious grounds. Ah yes, here we go again.
In Wisconsin, as I understand it, precincts were given the option of hand-counting paper ballots or running them through the scanners again. Some have chosen hand counts, others are repeating the election night scans on the same machines. That proves nothing and verifies nothing. But oh well. There are apparently some counties in Wisconsin that are notorious for vote padding and other chicanery, some of which cannot be detected easily. I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be surprising if they just repeat the scans and come up with the same padded results as they did initially. Uh, that's not really verifying the vote. But they have the choice, so...
There is a recount effort in Florida that will have to be decided by the courts, and another partial recount is going on in Nevada, all well and good. There are apparently routine precinct level recounts under way or completed in many jurisdictions.
We're once again privileged to witness what an incomprehensible muddle American elections are. Once again, the outrage will get ramped up and go almost nowhere.
It will be unlikely to go anywhere because the current chaos and arbitrary nature of electoral practice and law is beneficial for preserving the status quo of the Duopoly, kakistocracy, and keeping the interference of the Rabble in their Rulers' work to a minimum. The fact that courts are expected to interfere in elections is now institutionalized. Thanks Scalia!
Doing more than quietly grumbling about it is considered impolite and arrogant by the Tone Police. It's really funny. The Tone Police are practically self-parodies. "You shouldn't say that, it's rude. We can't be like them after all. We are better than that!" But then, I'm seeing a lot of self-parody online, especially among Trump Fluffers -- who seem to be losing their minds. When I point out that this is actually dangerous and people are getting hurt, some will likely be killed as the situation devolves into even greater chaos, the crazy increases.
After all, "What about Clintooooon!!!!"
Yeah, right. Nope, won't play that.
I started this post with the story of lighting into a good friend who was trying to come to grips with a potentially positive view of Trump in the White House. I don't want him to do that, but of course, my desire is not germane to what he does. I am not the boss of him. His objective, like mine, is to get through this chaos alive and in good enough shape to carry on. He can see a way forward by acknowledging that a Trump regime won't necessarily be all that bad. I say it will be worse than we can imagine.
This is the fundamental divide in the country. Many of us can recognize the clear signs of catastrophe that Trump and his toadies, cronies, and hench-people carry with them. This is no joking matter. It's on display 24/7 from all of them. They saying quite clearly that they are intent on a course of destruction, and they will not let anything stand in their way. Many of us say "Stand and fight."
Others internally recognize the same signals and signs and choose not to fight against the whirlwind that's gathering strength. Rather, they find something "good" in the Apocalypse, and would prefer to go with the flow, even as they're swept up into the Maelstrom. The operating concept being "You can't fight it, so go with it."
"No you can't." Now that was Hillary's opening gambit during the campaign. "No you can't. No you won't. Not on a bet." It's been internalized by her supporters and is the bedrock belief of the Tump partisans. "No you can't. But just watch while we do what we want. You can't stop us. Suckers!"
So. Here we are. Chaos is increasing by the hour. Tone Police are working the refs to tamp down alarm and outrage and keep the Rabble divided and inactive. The political class and media are all in with the New Boss, currying favor, showing their bellies. Our Betters are either still in shock, or they're anticipating huge profits on their assets as an inflationary pre-Trump bubble strikes the Markets. Oh my oh my!
In fact, the passivity of Our Betters in this situation is one of its more striking aspects. They're almost all sitting on their hands, "letting it play out." Let the Rabble have their fun! They're so amusing, no?
Bah.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Our Banana Republic -- Memories and The TINA Principle
[OT: Oxygen! I got the small tanks yesterday. What relief. Couldn't deal with the big ones and the huge "portable"concentrator. Well, it's got wheels, so yah, it can be rolled from room to room, so there's that. Portability! The small tanks, about the size of a large wine bottle, can be carried about with a shoulder strap and the oxygen is dispensed in little bursts as you breathe. They last much longer than the big tanks that way, 4 hours or more as opposed to an hour and a half or less. I like it. And let me tell you, it is the simple things these days that make me smile... Oh my yes...]
Gold plated toilets. Damn, Dude has gold-plated everything. WTF? Why would anybody even want that?
But let's look back in our history. Do they teach history any more? They say that Civics isn't taught any more, so maybe they're not teaching history either.
Ms. Ché and I were yakking the other day about Our Day ("Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?") We've long been convinced that our years (1965-66) were the last high school graduating classes in California to get a comprehensive education. It was downhill from there, and we cite as evidence our nieces who went to the same high school I did. Things had changed radically from Our Day. And they, our nieces, did not get anything like the education we did. I wouldn't say they got an education at all.
We had to take six periods in class every day throughout three years in high school and one year (9th grade) in junior high -- it wasn't called middle school in those days. We took foreign language -- Ms Ché Latin and Spanish, me French all four years; science, history, math, social studies, civics, English, Ms Ché was also taking performing arts classes and performing in plays; I wrote a couple of plays in college prep English classes which were then performed by the drama students. Electives were few, and for me, there was almost no time for much besides regular college prep classes (it wasn't called Advance Placement until several years after we graduated and went on to higher education... another story entirely.) We had to successfully complete 250 units as I recall to graduate. In order to receive scholarships and other benefits to go to college or university, our grade points had to be above 3.2, which wasn't an easy challenge in those days. Our teacher worked us hard and expected excellence.
My senior English teacher was a Stanford graduate married to State University drama professor, and her standard for us was modeled on Stanford's English class requirements. It was her intent that whether or not we went to Stanford (I think only one of those in my senior English class did) we would be prepared for any college or university English class, and because we would be prepared for that, we would be prepared for any other college course as well.
My French teacher was a Columbia graduate who had been a student at the Sorbonne when Paris fell to the Nazis. She spent almost a year in Nazi controlled Paris before she was "miraculously" able to return to the United States. Her last name was Cohen, and when she told us about this, we thought "Oh my god, she's just lucky she wasn't sent to the camps for liquidation." She said she had friends who were rounded up, but that there was little chance she would be. Not only was she American -- and at the time, the US was not at war with Germany -- but she wasn't a Jew, she was a WASP from Long Island. She would marry a Jew later, but at the time, she didn't feel she was under any particular threat because of her religion or nationality, though she knew people who were, and it tore her apart. She was just glad to get out of there, and when she returned to Paris after the War, she said she was devastated. The city had survived more or less intact, but the people were so traumatized she wondered if they would ever recover from what they'd been through.
My chemistry teacher's last name was Tsuda. He was Nisei, and he was sent to the camps during the War. He was a teenager at Manzanar, and his experience there shaped his attitude toward the "America" as an adult. He graduated from UC Berkeley with high honors, but he had to wait until after the War, and until after some of the Anti-Jap agitation in California had died down before he could attend and complete his degree. All of the high school students he taught were white... go figure. He had no open animosity toward us, but I wouldn't say he liked us or gave a shit about us, either. I never did learn chemistry to speak of, and I doubt that more than one or two students in my class did.
When I was in high school, I lived next to the site of one of the transit camps for Japanese-Americans on their way to relocation. I knew there had been a military facility there called Camp Kohler. It had burned down-- I didn't know when at the time, but I found out later the fire was in 1947 when the camp facilities were being used to house returning US veterans and their families. All that was left of the camp were the concrete barracks pads, charred wood, fused glass, bits and pieces of metal, overgrown asphalt roads, and a spirit. A dark spirit.
I don't recall if Mr. Tsuda ever spent time at Camp Kohler before being sent to Manzanar (probably not, but who knows... ) What I do recall was his barely contained rage about what had happened to him and his family under the Stars and Stripes. I recall he mentioned being in Japan before the war and how beautiful it was, and he had returned after the war, I think he said in 1952 or 53 (Korean War? Was he a vet? I don't remember....) and it broke his heart. So much of Japan was still in ruins, of course. But it was the broken people that hurt his heart more. I don't recall him specifically mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it was very much on our minds given the nuclear tension we were all living under during the Cold War.
I could go on describing my memories of high school and my teachers, but these examples give an idea of the kinds of people they were and the kinds of experiences they shared with us. Wartime memories were of course very important because they had so strongly shaped our parents and our teachers, and WWII had completely transformed the world we came into as post-War Boomers.
There was a level of prosperity and well-being that Americans had never experienced before. There were also severe strains and the early stages of general social unrest that seemed to begin in California and spread outward from there. Of course it had not started in California, but it became focused there as the youth rebellion took hold and Hippies became a Thing.
Ms. Ché and I were on the cusp of all that.
No doubt we were rebels, but generally were not part of the Hippie scene -- which we saw for its self-evident commercial aspects more than its social importance. We would go to San Francisco from time to time during the hey-day of Hippiedom, but it was not necessarily an attractive thing. It was just another Thing, not the only thing. We had friends who moved to the City and became part of the Scene there, and we saw it as them being who they were, not as something we were compelled to emulate or necessarily wanted to.
We did attend the Monterey Pop Festival the summer after the Summer of Love, and we almost went to Altamont, but thankfully did not.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan was -- "impossibly" -- elected governor of California promising to bring an end to the student unrest, suppress the rebellions in the black ghettos, and ensure that nothing like that ever happened again.
Ever.
His methods were cruel and violent on the one hand, more subtly destructive on the other. He deliberately set out to wreck California's Progressive operating system, and he largely succeeded. After California's Progressive Era was brought to a screeching halt under Reagan, he and his cronies would apply the lessons learned nationwide.
And so here we are, Banana Republic.
Progressivism was itself the Enemy. Ripping it out root and branch was neither wise nor possible, but what the Reaganites did was set in motion its self-implosion and collapse, first by discrediting it, then by pushing on carefully selected pressure points -- including public education, mental health care, and "law and order" -- to produce desired results in time if not immediately. They knew what they wanted but they didn't always know how to get there.
What they wanted -- and largely got -- was a reversion to pre-Progressive California and ultimately a pre-Progressive America.
In other words, a Banana Republic ruled by caudillos, whose favor had to be curried or else. Corporate control of government would replace Progressive "experts" and public servants. Elections would be manipulated for desired results. Tax burdens would be lightened for the well-off (why should they be forced to pay taxes anyway?) and fees in lieu of taxes would be increased for everyone else. Government would be operated by and for the rich, and barely function at all for anyone else. Public education would be administered to death. There would be no more "free" higher education in California. Students would pay increasing fees and tuition until going to college at all would be too expensive to even think about. The quality of public education at every level would decline, to the point where high school students would graduate pig-ignorant, and college graduates would barely begin to comprehend what an average high school student understood in previous generations.
"All against all," "greed is good," and "There Is No Alternative" would become the new reality.
And so it was. So it is.
I have long been a critic of Progressivism for cause, but not necessarily the same cause as its Reaganite critics. It's racist and authoritarian at its core, even in decline, and those factors were in large part responsible for the uprisings that presaged the Reaganite reaction. Progressivism led to some good things to be sure, but the costs were very high, especially for marginalized populations. Progressivism could not mask its racism and authoritarianism, though in a late fight for survival, it tried to.
The argument was that compared to Reaganism, Progressivism was less racist and less authoritarian. The lesser of two evils, eh?
Besides, what are you going to do? You have a choice between the radical return to the Bad Old Days or continuing on a failing course of what was seen as public sector stupidity.
Nobody I know of in the political realm bethought themselves to come up with something better than either choice.
There was no alternative. "None of the Above" was not an option.
Nixon was elected president in 1968, and compared to Reagan, he was practically a Communist. He was a genuine California Progressive but on the dark side of the movement, and eventually he was driven from office, not so much because he was a criminal, but I believe because he was going bonkers and had become unstable and unreliable. His judgment was so severely impaired and his actions so arbitrary that he was seen as a clear and present danger to the survival of the Republic. That's something Our Rulers do not and cannot talk about. We the Rabble are not to know just how incompetent Our Rulers are. Please.
Incompetence is part of the package of public sector destruction that Reaganites set in motion in California and spread all over the country once they achieved the White House.
They didn't want competent public servants, and they saw to it that at the Rabble level, competence was often unavailable from government. This was actually a genius move because it destroyed confidence in government ("of the people and by the people") to get necessary things done. The only success allowed to government in the future would be police, prisons and jails, and in time, even that would be largely taken away with the substitution of private prisons, much like private schools would replace government schools.
They used some of the social strengths of the liberal-Progressives against them, and it worked.
I would say that initially the Reaganites were very weak, and they didn't really know how to do what they wanted to do. Progressives then offered them a helping hand to get things done. They set the stage and the standard model for their own destruction. They cooperated and collaborated. Oh my, we've seen so many examples of this throughout history, haven't we?
We see echoes of it in the actions of the few Democrats still in office nationally. I wouldn't call them Progressives, good doG no, but they act as the rump remainder of what used to be Progressives.
They are notorious collaborationists.
It is one reason among many they aren't elected any more. They offer no policy alternatives, only procedural and personality ones. Bless their hearts.
The Mini-Mes of Destruction. USA! USA!
You gotta elect me cause I'm not him! YAY Me!
Jeebus what a goon show.
Thanks to Jill Stein -- bless her heart-- we're finding out just what a fucked up scam this latest election was. Honestly, at this point there is no way to tell who the voters chose in the battleground states, as there is no way to accurately count or recount their votes in too many jurisdictions. There's no way to know.
We've been experiencing fucked up scam "elections" for so long that a lot of people seem to take it for granted and accept the announced results on faith -- because you can't do anything else. There is no way to show that faith results are right or wrong. They just are what they are.
Electoral fraud appears to be pervasive but unprovable -- by design.
Voter fraud is something else altogether and appears to be rare, but maybe not. Again, there's no way to tell.
And in the common perception manipulated by the media, there's no difference. The two are conflated all the time, deliberately and with malice aforethought.
It's becoming very clear that we do not know and we cannot know who the voters in the battleground/recount states actually chose to become president. And if we can't know the actual vote in those states, it puts into question the actual vote in every other state.
And that's not even considering the active voter suppression efforts that have been under way throughout the country for years.
Reports indicate that millions of otherwise eligible voters were prevented from voting or had their votes tossed out due to a wide variety of suppression efforts, and in at least some cases due to the whim of election officials. The suppression efforts during the primaries were highlighted -- and they were extraordinarily varied and frequent. By the general election, it was all but taken for granted that the same sort of suppression would occur on an even wider scale, and nothing would or could be done about it.
After all, There Is No Alternative.
How much longer this corrupt and corrupting system can endure is anybody's guess.
With the advent of Golden Boy to the White House (will he choose to live in his hotel, will he sell or rent rooms in the White House, say tuned campers!) the inherent instabilities may become so severe that it all collapses.
I'd say we're close to that point now.
I've thought for some time that Trump will not be inaugurated Jan 20, but if he is, he won't serve more than a year in office. This is based on instinct rather than any evidence, so I won't say it's a prediction, but because he is personally so unstable -- and is known to be -- it seems to me unlikely that the Deep-State/Permanent Government will allow him to rule as president or anything else.
On the other hand, I'm not seeing any effort at all to contain him.
So.... we don't know. We can't say. And for the moment, there is no alternative to his ascension.
As they say, We Are So Fucked. No matter what.
What a whirled, what a whirled.
------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile on the Standing Rock/Archambault front. Wow. As I expected, the announcement that everybody should go home, they weren't needed any more, was met with shock, outrage, and resistance. Chad Iron Eyes, a prominent Standing Rock Sioux, all but called Archambault out for this bullshit. But some people did try to leave in the blizzard and some ran off the road and otherwise wound up in dire straits. What was he thinking? This is crazy.
There have been many attempts to rationalized Archambault's statements as primarily a matter of "safety" -- but when so many people who tried to leave were caught in the blizzard and were stuck, the "safety" argument fell apart. Safety for whom, eh? Not the Water Protectors.
Most of those who stayed were obviously better off than some of those who tried to leave.
Apparently there have been some modifications since the "leave now" statements were issued. Realizing -- gee, ya think? -- that leaving under blizzard conditions is probably unwise, the tribe and (interestingly) Morton County and AoCE officials have extended their hands to "help" by opening shelters for those who don't have winterized camping facilities, and for those who would rather not travel in such weather. Morton County officials (the source of so much pain) have said they will respond to any emergency and provide assistance to anyone who needs it due to the weather. This after saying they wouldn't.
I've been around Indian politics enough to recognize or at least suspect what's going on, but I'd rather not get into it right now -- because I can't do anything about it, and it will have to be resolved one way or another by those on scene. I don't doubt it will be, and it might get pretty ugly.
Indeed, what a whirled.
Gold plated toilets. Damn, Dude has gold-plated everything. WTF? Why would anybody even want that?
But let's look back in our history. Do they teach history any more? They say that Civics isn't taught any more, so maybe they're not teaching history either.
Ms. Ché and I were yakking the other day about Our Day ("Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?") We've long been convinced that our years (1965-66) were the last high school graduating classes in California to get a comprehensive education. It was downhill from there, and we cite as evidence our nieces who went to the same high school I did. Things had changed radically from Our Day. And they, our nieces, did not get anything like the education we did. I wouldn't say they got an education at all.
We had to take six periods in class every day throughout three years in high school and one year (9th grade) in junior high -- it wasn't called middle school in those days. We took foreign language -- Ms Ché Latin and Spanish, me French all four years; science, history, math, social studies, civics, English, Ms Ché was also taking performing arts classes and performing in plays; I wrote a couple of plays in college prep English classes which were then performed by the drama students. Electives were few, and for me, there was almost no time for much besides regular college prep classes (it wasn't called Advance Placement until several years after we graduated and went on to higher education... another story entirely.) We had to successfully complete 250 units as I recall to graduate. In order to receive scholarships and other benefits to go to college or university, our grade points had to be above 3.2, which wasn't an easy challenge in those days. Our teacher worked us hard and expected excellence.
My senior English teacher was a Stanford graduate married to State University drama professor, and her standard for us was modeled on Stanford's English class requirements. It was her intent that whether or not we went to Stanford (I think only one of those in my senior English class did) we would be prepared for any college or university English class, and because we would be prepared for that, we would be prepared for any other college course as well.
My French teacher was a Columbia graduate who had been a student at the Sorbonne when Paris fell to the Nazis. She spent almost a year in Nazi controlled Paris before she was "miraculously" able to return to the United States. Her last name was Cohen, and when she told us about this, we thought "Oh my god, she's just lucky she wasn't sent to the camps for liquidation." She said she had friends who were rounded up, but that there was little chance she would be. Not only was she American -- and at the time, the US was not at war with Germany -- but she wasn't a Jew, she was a WASP from Long Island. She would marry a Jew later, but at the time, she didn't feel she was under any particular threat because of her religion or nationality, though she knew people who were, and it tore her apart. She was just glad to get out of there, and when she returned to Paris after the War, she said she was devastated. The city had survived more or less intact, but the people were so traumatized she wondered if they would ever recover from what they'd been through.
My chemistry teacher's last name was Tsuda. He was Nisei, and he was sent to the camps during the War. He was a teenager at Manzanar, and his experience there shaped his attitude toward the "America" as an adult. He graduated from UC Berkeley with high honors, but he had to wait until after the War, and until after some of the Anti-Jap agitation in California had died down before he could attend and complete his degree. All of the high school students he taught were white... go figure. He had no open animosity toward us, but I wouldn't say he liked us or gave a shit about us, either. I never did learn chemistry to speak of, and I doubt that more than one or two students in my class did.
When I was in high school, I lived next to the site of one of the transit camps for Japanese-Americans on their way to relocation. I knew there had been a military facility there called Camp Kohler. It had burned down-- I didn't know when at the time, but I found out later the fire was in 1947 when the camp facilities were being used to house returning US veterans and their families. All that was left of the camp were the concrete barracks pads, charred wood, fused glass, bits and pieces of metal, overgrown asphalt roads, and a spirit. A dark spirit.
I don't recall if Mr. Tsuda ever spent time at Camp Kohler before being sent to Manzanar (probably not, but who knows... ) What I do recall was his barely contained rage about what had happened to him and his family under the Stars and Stripes. I recall he mentioned being in Japan before the war and how beautiful it was, and he had returned after the war, I think he said in 1952 or 53 (Korean War? Was he a vet? I don't remember....) and it broke his heart. So much of Japan was still in ruins, of course. But it was the broken people that hurt his heart more. I don't recall him specifically mentioning Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it was very much on our minds given the nuclear tension we were all living under during the Cold War.
I could go on describing my memories of high school and my teachers, but these examples give an idea of the kinds of people they were and the kinds of experiences they shared with us. Wartime memories were of course very important because they had so strongly shaped our parents and our teachers, and WWII had completely transformed the world we came into as post-War Boomers.
There was a level of prosperity and well-being that Americans had never experienced before. There were also severe strains and the early stages of general social unrest that seemed to begin in California and spread outward from there. Of course it had not started in California, but it became focused there as the youth rebellion took hold and Hippies became a Thing.
Ms. Ché and I were on the cusp of all that.
No doubt we were rebels, but generally were not part of the Hippie scene -- which we saw for its self-evident commercial aspects more than its social importance. We would go to San Francisco from time to time during the hey-day of Hippiedom, but it was not necessarily an attractive thing. It was just another Thing, not the only thing. We had friends who moved to the City and became part of the Scene there, and we saw it as them being who they were, not as something we were compelled to emulate or necessarily wanted to.
We did attend the Monterey Pop Festival the summer after the Summer of Love, and we almost went to Altamont, but thankfully did not.
In 1966, Ronald Reagan was -- "impossibly" -- elected governor of California promising to bring an end to the student unrest, suppress the rebellions in the black ghettos, and ensure that nothing like that ever happened again.
Ever.
His methods were cruel and violent on the one hand, more subtly destructive on the other. He deliberately set out to wreck California's Progressive operating system, and he largely succeeded. After California's Progressive Era was brought to a screeching halt under Reagan, he and his cronies would apply the lessons learned nationwide.
And so here we are, Banana Republic.
Progressivism was itself the Enemy. Ripping it out root and branch was neither wise nor possible, but what the Reaganites did was set in motion its self-implosion and collapse, first by discrediting it, then by pushing on carefully selected pressure points -- including public education, mental health care, and "law and order" -- to produce desired results in time if not immediately. They knew what they wanted but they didn't always know how to get there.
What they wanted -- and largely got -- was a reversion to pre-Progressive California and ultimately a pre-Progressive America.
In other words, a Banana Republic ruled by caudillos, whose favor had to be curried or else. Corporate control of government would replace Progressive "experts" and public servants. Elections would be manipulated for desired results. Tax burdens would be lightened for the well-off (why should they be forced to pay taxes anyway?) and fees in lieu of taxes would be increased for everyone else. Government would be operated by and for the rich, and barely function at all for anyone else. Public education would be administered to death. There would be no more "free" higher education in California. Students would pay increasing fees and tuition until going to college at all would be too expensive to even think about. The quality of public education at every level would decline, to the point where high school students would graduate pig-ignorant, and college graduates would barely begin to comprehend what an average high school student understood in previous generations.
"All against all," "greed is good," and "There Is No Alternative" would become the new reality.
And so it was. So it is.
I have long been a critic of Progressivism for cause, but not necessarily the same cause as its Reaganite critics. It's racist and authoritarian at its core, even in decline, and those factors were in large part responsible for the uprisings that presaged the Reaganite reaction. Progressivism led to some good things to be sure, but the costs were very high, especially for marginalized populations. Progressivism could not mask its racism and authoritarianism, though in a late fight for survival, it tried to.
The argument was that compared to Reaganism, Progressivism was less racist and less authoritarian. The lesser of two evils, eh?
Besides, what are you going to do? You have a choice between the radical return to the Bad Old Days or continuing on a failing course of what was seen as public sector stupidity.
Nobody I know of in the political realm bethought themselves to come up with something better than either choice.
There was no alternative. "None of the Above" was not an option.
Nixon was elected president in 1968, and compared to Reagan, he was practically a Communist. He was a genuine California Progressive but on the dark side of the movement, and eventually he was driven from office, not so much because he was a criminal, but I believe because he was going bonkers and had become unstable and unreliable. His judgment was so severely impaired and his actions so arbitrary that he was seen as a clear and present danger to the survival of the Republic. That's something Our Rulers do not and cannot talk about. We the Rabble are not to know just how incompetent Our Rulers are. Please.
Incompetence is part of the package of public sector destruction that Reaganites set in motion in California and spread all over the country once they achieved the White House.
They didn't want competent public servants, and they saw to it that at the Rabble level, competence was often unavailable from government. This was actually a genius move because it destroyed confidence in government ("of the people and by the people") to get necessary things done. The only success allowed to government in the future would be police, prisons and jails, and in time, even that would be largely taken away with the substitution of private prisons, much like private schools would replace government schools.
They used some of the social strengths of the liberal-Progressives against them, and it worked.
I would say that initially the Reaganites were very weak, and they didn't really know how to do what they wanted to do. Progressives then offered them a helping hand to get things done. They set the stage and the standard model for their own destruction. They cooperated and collaborated. Oh my, we've seen so many examples of this throughout history, haven't we?
We see echoes of it in the actions of the few Democrats still in office nationally. I wouldn't call them Progressives, good doG no, but they act as the rump remainder of what used to be Progressives.
They are notorious collaborationists.
It is one reason among many they aren't elected any more. They offer no policy alternatives, only procedural and personality ones. Bless their hearts.
The Mini-Mes of Destruction. USA! USA!
You gotta elect me cause I'm not him! YAY Me!
Jeebus what a goon show.
Thanks to Jill Stein -- bless her heart-- we're finding out just what a fucked up scam this latest election was. Honestly, at this point there is no way to tell who the voters chose in the battleground states, as there is no way to accurately count or recount their votes in too many jurisdictions. There's no way to know.
We've been experiencing fucked up scam "elections" for so long that a lot of people seem to take it for granted and accept the announced results on faith -- because you can't do anything else. There is no way to show that faith results are right or wrong. They just are what they are.
Electoral fraud appears to be pervasive but unprovable -- by design.
Voter fraud is something else altogether and appears to be rare, but maybe not. Again, there's no way to tell.
And in the common perception manipulated by the media, there's no difference. The two are conflated all the time, deliberately and with malice aforethought.
It's becoming very clear that we do not know and we cannot know who the voters in the battleground/recount states actually chose to become president. And if we can't know the actual vote in those states, it puts into question the actual vote in every other state.
And that's not even considering the active voter suppression efforts that have been under way throughout the country for years.
Reports indicate that millions of otherwise eligible voters were prevented from voting or had their votes tossed out due to a wide variety of suppression efforts, and in at least some cases due to the whim of election officials. The suppression efforts during the primaries were highlighted -- and they were extraordinarily varied and frequent. By the general election, it was all but taken for granted that the same sort of suppression would occur on an even wider scale, and nothing would or could be done about it.
After all, There Is No Alternative.
How much longer this corrupt and corrupting system can endure is anybody's guess.
With the advent of Golden Boy to the White House (will he choose to live in his hotel, will he sell or rent rooms in the White House, say tuned campers!) the inherent instabilities may become so severe that it all collapses.
I'd say we're close to that point now.
I've thought for some time that Trump will not be inaugurated Jan 20, but if he is, he won't serve more than a year in office. This is based on instinct rather than any evidence, so I won't say it's a prediction, but because he is personally so unstable -- and is known to be -- it seems to me unlikely that the Deep-State/Permanent Government will allow him to rule as president or anything else.
On the other hand, I'm not seeing any effort at all to contain him.
So.... we don't know. We can't say. And for the moment, there is no alternative to his ascension.
As they say, We Are So Fucked. No matter what.
What a whirled, what a whirled.
------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile on the Standing Rock/Archambault front. Wow. As I expected, the announcement that everybody should go home, they weren't needed any more, was met with shock, outrage, and resistance. Chad Iron Eyes, a prominent Standing Rock Sioux, all but called Archambault out for this bullshit. But some people did try to leave in the blizzard and some ran off the road and otherwise wound up in dire straits. What was he thinking? This is crazy.
There have been many attempts to rationalized Archambault's statements as primarily a matter of "safety" -- but when so many people who tried to leave were caught in the blizzard and were stuck, the "safety" argument fell apart. Safety for whom, eh? Not the Water Protectors.
Most of those who stayed were obviously better off than some of those who tried to leave.
Apparently there have been some modifications since the "leave now" statements were issued. Realizing -- gee, ya think? -- that leaving under blizzard conditions is probably unwise, the tribe and (interestingly) Morton County and AoCE officials have extended their hands to "help" by opening shelters for those who don't have winterized camping facilities, and for those who would rather not travel in such weather. Morton County officials (the source of so much pain) have said they will respond to any emergency and provide assistance to anyone who needs it due to the weather. This after saying they wouldn't.
I've been around Indian politics enough to recognize or at least suspect what's going on, but I'd rather not get into it right now -- because I can't do anything about it, and it will have to be resolved one way or another by those on scene. I don't doubt it will be, and it might get pretty ugly.
Indeed, what a whirled.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Without Comment
 |
| Asking Forgiveness |
Video:
http://www.salon.com/2016/12/05/we-beg-for-your-forgiveness-veterans-join-native-elders-in-celebration-ceremony/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow
Another:
White Men Behaving Badly
This is just one example of threats, harassment and violence that Indians in North Dakota have faced for many a long year. It's nothing new. But this incident was posted yesterday, and it reflects the attitude of some -- maybe most -- white residents of the area near Standing Rock toward the Water Protectors and their campaign against the Black Snake, as the pipeline has been called.
The precipitating cause is easy enough to figure out. It's not so much the actions of the Water Protectors against the pipeline.
It is that the Indians refuse to yield to White Supremacy on demand.
This is what is so threatening to white men, and this is what is at the root of the violence by "law enforcement" against the Water Protectors. The refusal to yield on demand to White Supremacy and to obey the orders of (mostly) white men in and out of "law enforcement" is seen as an existential threat by these same men. They call it "aggression." Any challenge to the authority of white men is considered a threat to "civilization."
This is what goes on in Indian Country almost all the fucking time. This is what too many Indian people live with day by day.
And this Caucasian Id, as I call it, has been unleashed by deliberate incitement from a presidential candidate who is expecting to swan into the White House come January, and it is being used by white folk against phantom enemies who "threaten" them.
Like "law enforcement" in North Dakota, though, they are not under threat, nobody is threatening them, nobody is harming them, nobody wants to harm them. But we've seen how violent and insane "law enforcement" becomes when they believe there is a threat from the Indians and allies in the struggle over the pipeline. Water Protectors may be doing nothing but standing there, existing in space, and "law enforcement" will interpret that as a threat to be neutralized. And they do, as brutally and violently as they choose. All because "law enforcement" is afraid.
That extends to white men and some women in the general population as well. They believe they have the intrinsic authority to order and compel the Other -- be it an Indian or any other Other -- to do as they demand, and to punish disobedience or refusal -- because they are deemed by their God "superior."
That's what White Supremacy is.
The example here presented has probably been repeated hundreds of times during the actions in North Dakota against the pipeline, repeated by random white folks as well as "law enforcement" whose ultimate purpose is to enforce White Supremacy, not the law.
The precipitating cause is easy enough to figure out. It's not so much the actions of the Water Protectors against the pipeline.
It is that the Indians refuse to yield to White Supremacy on demand.
This is what is so threatening to white men, and this is what is at the root of the violence by "law enforcement" against the Water Protectors. The refusal to yield on demand to White Supremacy and to obey the orders of (mostly) white men in and out of "law enforcement" is seen as an existential threat by these same men. They call it "aggression." Any challenge to the authority of white men is considered a threat to "civilization."
This is what goes on in Indian Country almost all the fucking time. This is what too many Indian people live with day by day.
And this Caucasian Id, as I call it, has been unleashed by deliberate incitement from a presidential candidate who is expecting to swan into the White House come January, and it is being used by white folk against phantom enemies who "threaten" them.
Like "law enforcement" in North Dakota, though, they are not under threat, nobody is threatening them, nobody is harming them, nobody wants to harm them. But we've seen how violent and insane "law enforcement" becomes when they believe there is a threat from the Indians and allies in the struggle over the pipeline. Water Protectors may be doing nothing but standing there, existing in space, and "law enforcement" will interpret that as a threat to be neutralized. And they do, as brutally and violently as they choose. All because "law enforcement" is afraid.
That extends to white men and some women in the general population as well. They believe they have the intrinsic authority to order and compel the Other -- be it an Indian or any other Other -- to do as they demand, and to punish disobedience or refusal -- because they are deemed by their God "superior."
That's what White Supremacy is.
The example here presented has probably been repeated hundreds of times during the actions in North Dakota against the pipeline, repeated by random white folks as well as "law enforcement" whose ultimate purpose is to enforce White Supremacy, not the law.
Monday, December 5, 2016
Rumors Abound [With Some Follow Up]
A couple of hours ago Reuters reported that Dave Archambault II, Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman, had told the non-Sioux Water Protectors to go home:
I have a hard time imagining that Dave Archambault would think let alone say such a thing under the current blizzard conditions.
So far, this report is only on Reuters and the Reuters report is referenced by others.
Live streams from the ceremony at the bridge have made no mention of it, and so far, I've found no confirmation from any other source.
Until and unless I see/hear the words from his own mouth, I will consider it nothing but a rumor or fake news.
[Follow up: In fact there has been a kinda-sorta confirmation from Dave Archambault's own mouth. Apparently on the afternoon or evening of December 4, after the announcement that the ACE would not approve an easement under the Missouri River, Archambault said that the people in the camp could go home to their families and enjoy the Holidays. He was convinced that nothing would happen with the pipeline before January, and perhaps not even then. If people wanted to stay, they could, but they would be more comfortable at home. I don't know whether he was quoted accurately by Reuters, but nothing I have seen so far of what he said at the camp or to the people in the camp was in any way comparable to the Reuters quote. And meanwhile, a blizzard came in which made it essentially out of the question for anyone to leave yesterday.
Archambault's video statement made yesterday:
Defiance from Water Protectors:
Chase Iron Eyes responds:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/06/standing-rock-protesters-asked-to-go-home-by-sioux-leader
Hate to say it, but this is a typical corporate-government divide and conquer tactic. As solid as he has been throughout this struggle, one does wonder if he's been bought off.]
Rumors abound that Energy Transfer Partners is ignoring the Army Corps and has continued drilling under the Missouri River in order to complete the pipeline. Again no confirmation, but the rumor mill insists it's true.
Fake news? I don't know.
[Follow up: there have been numerous unconfirmed reports that ETP has continued drilling under Lake Oahe in defiance of the ACE. It may be true. But I've found no proof. A suggestive indication, however, is that the FAA forbade drone flights over the drilling platform that's set up by the river had quite a lot of activity to and fro a few days ago. That suggests to me that something is going on there that somebody doesn't want seen. On the other hand, the way the drilling platform is set up, it would be difficult to tell if there is active drilling going on.]
And in that regard the story of the Pennsylvania recount has become such a muddled mess, it's almost impossible to sort out truth from... something else.
It was reported on Friday that Jill Stein had abandoned the Pennsylvania recount effort by withdrawing from the Commonwealth Court petition to compel a statewide recount.
Reporting was sensational and inaccurate, but what else is new. In fact, recounts are and were going on in some election districts, but the petition was filed -- by "100 or more" Pennsylvania voters, not Jill Stein or the Green Party -- in order to meet Pennsylvania legal requirements to contest the election as a whole.
The petition was withdrawn when the Court imposed a $1 million bond simply to hold a hearing and required full payment by today. The petitioners said they couldn't pay the excessive bond. This was inaccurately reported as the Green Party/Jill Stein refusing to pay the bond, when they weren't the petitioners, "100 or more" Pennsylvania voters were as was required by Pennsylvania law. And they didn't have the money.
By Friday evening, Jill Stein and her attorneys stated they would be filing a federal court complaint for injunctive relief to compel recounts where possible and require forensic examination of electronic voting machines where recounts were not possible. Most Pennsylvania voting machines have no paper trail or any other way to verify their count and results. Thus a recount of those machines -- in the sense of verifying the vote -- isn't possible. This was not reported at all by some outlets, whereas others garbled it. A few got it right, but the initial false "abandonment" report was already out there, and updating or correcting it was... slow or nonexistent.
Jill Stein did in fact file for injunctive relief in federal court this morning.
And as always, the Trump Trope that she's scamming the public with this recount jaggoff was inserted everywhere possible.
What a whirled, what a whirled.
[Follow up: The story is mostly comprehensible in most of the media now, but things are moving so fast that the Pennsylvania recount is more of a sideshow. Apparently problems with the initial Michigan count have surfaced which are so severe that the Michigan vote could be challenged in its entirety. Developing. And from what I've seen so far, the Wisconsin recount is almost exactly the same as the initial count. Hm. Interesting.]
Time for some Springfield:
"I'm asking them to go. Their presence will only cause the environment to be unsafe," he said of the non-Sioux protesters, adding that he hopes to meet with incoming-president Donald Trump to educate him about the decision made and the future of the pipeline.At the time, thousands of Water Protectors, Veterans and allies were assembling at Backwater Bridge in a fierce blizzard for morning ceremony. "Going home" in weather conditions such as are current at the camp is unwise to say the least.
I have a hard time imagining that Dave Archambault would think let alone say such a thing under the current blizzard conditions.
So far, this report is only on Reuters and the Reuters report is referenced by others.
Live streams from the ceremony at the bridge have made no mention of it, and so far, I've found no confirmation from any other source.
Until and unless I see/hear the words from his own mouth, I will consider it nothing but a rumor or fake news.
[Follow up: In fact there has been a kinda-sorta confirmation from Dave Archambault's own mouth. Apparently on the afternoon or evening of December 4, after the announcement that the ACE would not approve an easement under the Missouri River, Archambault said that the people in the camp could go home to their families and enjoy the Holidays. He was convinced that nothing would happen with the pipeline before January, and perhaps not even then. If people wanted to stay, they could, but they would be more comfortable at home. I don't know whether he was quoted accurately by Reuters, but nothing I have seen so far of what he said at the camp or to the people in the camp was in any way comparable to the Reuters quote. And meanwhile, a blizzard came in which made it essentially out of the question for anyone to leave yesterday.
Archambault's video statement made yesterday:
Defiance from Water Protectors:
Chase Iron Eyes responds:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/06/standing-rock-protesters-asked-to-go-home-by-sioux-leader
Hate to say it, but this is a typical corporate-government divide and conquer tactic. As solid as he has been throughout this struggle, one does wonder if he's been bought off.]
Rumors abound that Energy Transfer Partners is ignoring the Army Corps and has continued drilling under the Missouri River in order to complete the pipeline. Again no confirmation, but the rumor mill insists it's true.
Fake news? I don't know.
[Follow up: there have been numerous unconfirmed reports that ETP has continued drilling under Lake Oahe in defiance of the ACE. It may be true. But I've found no proof. A suggestive indication, however, is that the FAA forbade drone flights over the drilling platform that's set up by the river had quite a lot of activity to and fro a few days ago. That suggests to me that something is going on there that somebody doesn't want seen. On the other hand, the way the drilling platform is set up, it would be difficult to tell if there is active drilling going on.]
And in that regard the story of the Pennsylvania recount has become such a muddled mess, it's almost impossible to sort out truth from... something else.
It was reported on Friday that Jill Stein had abandoned the Pennsylvania recount effort by withdrawing from the Commonwealth Court petition to compel a statewide recount.
Reporting was sensational and inaccurate, but what else is new. In fact, recounts are and were going on in some election districts, but the petition was filed -- by "100 or more" Pennsylvania voters, not Jill Stein or the Green Party -- in order to meet Pennsylvania legal requirements to contest the election as a whole.
The petition was withdrawn when the Court imposed a $1 million bond simply to hold a hearing and required full payment by today. The petitioners said they couldn't pay the excessive bond. This was inaccurately reported as the Green Party/Jill Stein refusing to pay the bond, when they weren't the petitioners, "100 or more" Pennsylvania voters were as was required by Pennsylvania law. And they didn't have the money.
By Friday evening, Jill Stein and her attorneys stated they would be filing a federal court complaint for injunctive relief to compel recounts where possible and require forensic examination of electronic voting machines where recounts were not possible. Most Pennsylvania voting machines have no paper trail or any other way to verify their count and results. Thus a recount of those machines -- in the sense of verifying the vote -- isn't possible. This was not reported at all by some outlets, whereas others garbled it. A few got it right, but the initial false "abandonment" report was already out there, and updating or correcting it was... slow or nonexistent.
Jill Stein did in fact file for injunctive relief in federal court this morning.
And as always, the Trump Trope that she's scamming the public with this recount jaggoff was inserted everywhere possible.
What a whirled, what a whirled.
[Follow up: The story is mostly comprehensible in most of the media now, but things are moving so fast that the Pennsylvania recount is more of a sideshow. Apparently problems with the initial Michigan count have surfaced which are so severe that the Michigan vote could be challenged in its entirety. Developing. And from what I've seen so far, the Wisconsin recount is almost exactly the same as the initial count. Hm. Interesting.]
Time for some Springfield:
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