Is A Fascist Future Inevitable?

Many of us have been losing hope for years that the slouch toward a Fascist future can be reversed or delayed. The West, as it were, has Fascism baked in in one form or another, and no amount of rebellion or resistance is enough to overcome it. We are on the path of descent and there's no way back.

And it may be true.

With the advent of Trump in the White House -- an existential mistake in my view -- we got a taste of what our Fascist future might look and feel like. Many of his defenders were ostensibly "progressive," but we found that their "progressivism" was limited to opposition to various individuals, personalities, and policies that were advocated, featured or implemented by The Government. There was and is no coherent ideology among these "progressives" except opposition a thing, person, or policy largely for the sake of opposition.

Trump upset a few apple carts, broke a few rice bowls, and introduced constant chaos into The System, and as such he was worthy of support and defense by people who should have known better -- and I believe did. But more important to them was shaking up The System, disrupting routines, and skewering ("pwning") institutional complacency.

Trump's behavior was one thing, but his intent was clearly to rule as an authoritarian, indeed Fascist, dictator, no less so than Nixon, and Bush I & II. They set the standard. Trump was too mentally deficient and chaotic to follow through very well, but he sure tried. And a good deal of what he set out to do is still in place, as are many of the people he put in office.

Our problem -- if we oppose Fascism -- is not so much Trump or his chaos as it is the sponsors who see their advantage in fostering this sort of thing. Their primary advantage is in keeping the masses (to the extent they are acknowledged at all) diverted and entertained. 

In other words, making it all but impossible for there to be an uprising against the corporate-fascist ruling clique, a ruling clique that intends to endure no matter which political party is ostensibly in power. Trump was great at keeping the hoi polloi outraged and entertained. So long as they were, they didn't have time or energy to do anything about their lot in life, and as it happened, in death as the COVID pandemic easily managed to eliminate something over a million "useless eaters" in the United States and God knows how many globally. That pandemic is ongoing, though the death rates have (temporarily?) declined. Other illnesses and wide-spread poverty exacerbate the problems of the masses.

Until recently, I was almost always optimistic about the future and about building a better future mostly via community. The individualism that was so heavily promoted by the libertarian right was in my view a passing phase not likely to outlast the numerous crises that seemed to be accumulating. It was only through community, I believed, that we as a society would be able to get through what was coming.

Well, I was wrong. 

The breaking point was the lawless interference of the Supreme Court in the presidential election of 2000. While I saw it then as a deeply erroneous ruling, almost worse was the acceptance of this monumental error by the Democratic Party and the electeds, including Al Gore who presided in the Senate over his own loss of the presidency. The only ones who objected were the Congressional Black Caucus. And they were promptly silenced -- by Al Gore. 

Something was very wrong at the very top of the governmental structure. It would lead -- inevitably? -- to the catastrophes of September 11, 2001, and the perpetual wars in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. All of a piece.

Yet I thought and believed that the American People, indeed the people of good will throughout the world, would be able to overcome the worst aspects of the ruling clique that included both political parties and seemed to be spreading internationally. 

The War Party seemed to be universal.

After a certain point there was no more Peace party. Code Pink seemed to be the only outspoken party for Peace in the United States and often it seemed its voice was faltering.

The horrors perpetrated by our rulers were atrocious and obvious, yet nothing was done. Obama was seen as the redemptive counterpoint to all that had been going wrong, particularly the economic meltdown of 2008, and yet he turned out to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

The fundamental problem was our reliance on a singular figure -- the President in the case of the United States -- to solve the problems that just kept building up. The President can't do it, and not only that, it's not appropriate to expect him (or her) to.

It takes a community, a community of communities, the society as a whole, to do it, and the society of 2000 and later was not capable. All the energy was going into fragmentation of society rather than cohesion. And it seemed to me that the internet and later social media was part of the problem.

We are now so far down that path, the only way back toward community is the fascist path.

 Yes, fascism is a rightist "community" strengthening ideology. There is nothing equivalent on the left any more. Socialism and communism once played that role, but no longer. 

There are a few leftish religious outfits that could-- maybe-- be the kind of counters to the slouch toward fascism that could slow or halt the current trends, but I don't see any of them becoming strong enough.

My former optimism for the future is pretty much gone.

The Trump experiment was bad, but it wasn't definitive or final. We'll face the elements of fascism again. 

And again and again until it becomes the default social organization for much of the West.

We've been on that path -- whether we want to be or not -- for a long time, and there may be no way back,

Is it inevitable? What is the upshot? I don't have an answer. 

We'll just have to see, won't we?

 

"Longtermism"

 So let's ponder this arising cult of "Longtermism". Haven't heard of it? Well, I think we've been living with the consequences for some time now.

Apparently, "Longtermism" is a philosophical belief system, an ideology if you will, manifest widely among our overlords and their minions, particularly in Silicon Valley and its offshoots and in higher order academia. It's an ideology that posits human value in the Future, distant Future in many cases, and effectively devalues humanity in the present. One's vision, supposedly, should be on the Future, longterm benefit, wherein, it is thought/believed that there will be trillions of humans living all over the Universe, happy and wise, and descended from the Good People of today.

Those Good People, of course, are the few and favored oligarchs and their closest servants. They and only they are to be protected at all costs no matter what happens in the present and near future, because they and only they will be the progenitors of the Wonderful World of Tomorrow, filled with joy and ease and Happiness.

There are far too many people on the earth today and thus their cull through disease and war and the effects of climate change and so many other crises is meet and just and should not be effectively interfered with -- so long as the overclass is protected from the consequences of these crises. 

Whatever happens in the political realm is irrelevant; the economy is irrelevant. What's relevant right now is holding on to power over the safety of the overlord class. So long as they -- and only they -- survive, Future Joy will be assured for their trillions of descendants.

Which is the sole point of "Longtermism."

Maintaining a polite distance from the rabble of today helps maintain the power of the overclass. This process was worked out long ago by royalty and the stars of the entertainment world. CEOs and such have a long history of rudeness toward the masses, but in the Brave New World of libertarian freaks who actually have power these days, polite indifference combines with exploitative interest to assure an unbroken continuation of power.

According to Longtermists, there won't be any rabble to contend with, exploit or oppress in the Wonderful World of Tomorrow. All the struggles we see today will be over. Everyone will be happy and content and will be as gods -- or would be in the context of today. In their own context, the very concept of "gods" would be unknown. Everyone would be a god, so no one would necessarily be better than any other.

We could go on all day filling out their fantasy, but let's instead focus on the consequences right now.

Why are we living in such bizarre, chaotic, and for many of us deadly times? What's going on? How did things get so badly out of whack?

The ideology of "Longtermism" provides at least a hint of an answer.

The question really is, "What can we do about it?"

Check it out:

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/30/elon-musk-twitter-and-the-future-his-long-term-vision-is-even-weirder-than-you-think/

https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo

"When Tomorrow Comes..."

I have a modest collection of books, magazines and pamphlets published during and in the aftermath of WWII. I think they are better windows into US society as it was back then than most of the movies that were made during and immediately after the War. 

To hear lots of us gabbing these days or to see and read the posts on social media, you'd think we are living in the Worst of Times and Doom is on the perpetual horizon, but you'd be wrong.

The thing that is most striking to me about the material from the War years and immediately after was the overall positivity and futurism it featured. Yes, things were bad, life was tough, conditions were harsh, and yet... "When Tomorrow comes..." ran many refrains, so much of what people were suffering through during the War and prior to it during the Great Depression would be gone, poof, as if it never was. "When Tomorrow comes..." Life would be better -- for everyone. Friends and current enemies alike. We knew how to fix things so that the world would not descend into this kind of madness again -- and the War was definitely considered madness, something deranged and unnatural, but something that had to be done and had to be won, and we (the Allies -- aka United Nations) would do it come hell or high water or both at once. 

We might be sacrificing now, but it was for the right reasons, and the hardship Americans were experiencing was light, nothing compared to the Brits, the French, the Belgians, or bless them, the Soviets. The US might be rationing meat and butter, but at least there was meat and butter. Tires and new cars might be unavailable, but there were still rattle trap jalopys to be had, and if you were handy with tools and didn't drive very much (which you couldn't do anyway due to gas rationing) you could keep it running indefinitely. Same with your newer car if you had one. If you got a blow out, you fixed it. If your tires were bald, you were careful. Etc.

People lived rough in many cases, families confined to tiny trailers, tarpaper barracks or shacks, rooming houses that once were mansions, or doubled-tripled-quadrupled up in city apartments in buildings that were falling apart and for which there was practically no maintenance available due to lack of materials and supplies.

People made do.

Jobs were plentiful, there was that, and everyone who could was either working or in the military. One thing you couldn't help but notice is that private companies -- many of them the same multinationals of today - - were the bulwark of the War effort. They manufactured and supplied everything to the military and the civilian markets. And they were fiercely regulated by government. 

At the time, people made jokes about some of the regulations -- they seemed absurd or were impossible to meet -- but they appreciated that tight leashes were kept on the corporate overlords of the day.

Those leashes have been loosened to such an extent that there is no longer any but the most tenuous "public interest" -- only corporate interest, and particularly finance interest,  in the current political economy. 

And there is no futurism or even any concept of a Future to dream of and aim for and realize.

"When tomorrow comes...?"

What if there is no tomorrow?

Antsy

We're still pretty much confining ourselves to home. Not that we can't go out if we want, and I go out for supplies or to get the mail fairly regularly, but we still don't do or go places like we used to. I notice, too, that we're spending more than we did before the pandemic-shut down, even though we're not eating out or traveling. It seems to me, though I can't be certain, that basic food and supplies are costing 20%-30% more, and that's the main reason why our expenses are higher.

There is still no hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, isopropyl alcohol, disposable gloves or face masks to be had locally. It's not because people are still hoarding -- though they certainly did at the beginning. The lack of these essential supplies is due almost entirely now to the fact that they are not being delivered or are being delivered in such small quantities the supplies are immediately sold out. Everything is back-ordered, and those orders are not being filled, and may not be for months to come. I suspected this was happening at the beginning when people were panicking. Merchants put out what stock they had, sold it -- in part to hoarders -- and that was it. Weren't no more to be had.

Toilet paper and other paper products have reappeared in limited quantities, and washing products like soaps and bleach are available, though we're still sometimes seeing unfamiliar brands and prices are sometimes high. This is true of flour, sugar and other baking supplies as well. Yeast is still not seen all the time, though it does periodically appear on the shelves. In some cases, prices are double or even triple pre-pandemic prices for some essentials.

I don't know what it's like in more populous places. We don't go shopping out of town. We get some things online, but there are problems with delivery that can sometimes be complicated. When we order, we don't necessarily know how the items will be shipped and we can't find out until after the shipment is processed. Sometimes, merchants will say they use UPS or FedEx, for which we must provide a street address. Then we find out they are actually using SurePost, which means the items go to the post office for final delivery. Trouble is, the post office here doesn't deliver to street addresses, only to PO Boxes. Every time this happens, items risk being returned to sender. Some people we know have not received packages they ordered because of this quirk, and the post office is no help much of the time. On the other hand, even when things are shipped UPS or FedEx, skipping the post office, the street addresses can be tricky for drivers, and boxes wind up on our porch that we didn't order and we wind up being the final delivery service to neighbors who did order the items. So we confine ordering online to things we're certain we need and can't get any other way.

And for the record, free Target's "two day shipping" is a cruel joke. Ordinarily it takes a week, on occasion, it will take two weeks. I think only once was shipping actually "2 days" -- from Albuquerque.

All of these things are minor annoyances magnified by the fact that we're focused on them because we are at home most of the time. I think that factor had something to do with the armed "Haircut Rebellions" that swept the nation a while back and seemed to force the immediate "reopening" of some businesses that had been shuttered during the lockdowns. It was really amazing how suddenly state and local governments complied with the demands of "Haircut Rebels."

Antsy. People were getting antsy at having to stay home so much. They still are. Even though many or most restrictions on movement and activity are lifted in most places. And in many of those places, the virus is having a party.

Of course it needs to be said that the armed rebels who stormed around were not met with force by the authorities. Far from it. There were few rebels, for one thing, and their firearm fetish didn't result in more than empty and/or implied threats. Nevertheless, most of their demands were instantly met.

On the other hand the mass marches in the streets against the lethal brutality of the police have been met with -- more and worse brutality. Dozens of people have had their eyes shot out by so-called "less lethal" projectiles, and uncounted thousands have been injured, some severely. No count has yet been made of the dead but police killings continue apace. Police have been killed, too, but so far, all of them have died at the hands of "Boogaloo" and other rightist bands of brothers. Interesting, then, that police action is almost entirely focused on suppressing what they think of as "leftist" rebellion. And simply put, US police forces in too many places too often outdo their Hong Kong colleagues in brutality and vicious tactics. It's gotten so bad that there are international calls for US police to be condemned for egregious human rights violations.

It's still surprising that "Defund the Police" is a seriously considered thing, that it is being done in some places, and that pissed off police are refusing to go to work unless they are "appreciated."

Oh my.

Police are being fired right and left, police chiefs are resigning, some police are being charged with assault, manslaughter, even murder, far faster and in far greater numbers than ever before. We've never seen anything like this shake up of police forces, and the suddenness of it is shocking. What is going on?

Obviously, people who matter are calling the shots, and they are simultaneously demanding that "leftist" rebellion be suppressed and that misbehaving police be held to account immediately, not years down the road which had long been the protocol. Police are in shock, but so is the public. What is going on?

The more the situation devolves, the more antsy the public becomes. Limited police "reforms" are being far more widely instituted than ever before, but the brutal suppression efforts and police killings continue almost as if "reform" was not happening. Like it hasn't happened so many times before. Cosmetic changes aren't enough, but maybe that's all we'll get this time, just as in the past.

I've referred to this period as a paradigm shift, but it's looking more and more like a generational shift. We're entering a different era and doing so with considerable difficulty. People my age are mostly not going to be around to see the outcome, "bye-bye Boomer!", but some of us had something to do with setting the stage for what's to come. Let's hope it's better for everyone.

Reflections on Earth Day

This year I jiggered together a sort of semi greenhouse out of Wal-Mart shelving, animal fencing and a heavy plastic drop cloth. I set out trays of Cherokee Purple tomato seeds saved from last year's crop (lost one tray because it got too hot one day, and they cooked!), long pepper seeds -- we could pretend they're Hatch chiles, but they're not, they're seeds from garden variety Anaheim chiles grown in Texas,-- a tray of wildflower seeds, and pots of Indian corn and bolita beans, cantaloupe, acorn and butternut squash, catnip, lavender, and other flower varieties. Most of the seeds have germinated, and the tomatoes and peppers are almost ready to transplant to larger peat pots. I think I'll have plenty to give away this year just as was the case last year. Some of the people who took the plants last year said they had the Devil's own time trying to get any fruit off the vine, but tomatoes are touchy. It's simply a fact that it's very dry in New Mexico, and tomatoes like lots of water. I know one year I grew tomatoes here and for a while, the plants seemed to flourish and then they declined, never had more than one or two tomatoes from each plant, and then they seemed to shrivel and die. I'd grown them in large pots with good potting mix, and so their decline seemed strange -- until I pulled out the plants and discovered that only the top couple of inches of the soil had any water. Most of the soil in the pot was bone dry; I hadn't watered them nearly enough, though to my eye, and to my California conditioned watering hand, they'd had more than enough water. Lesson -- sort of -- learned.

This season, we had the driest winter in many years, and it has affected everything. I've started watering the trees and lilacs and other long term residents of our property here, but some,  I think, aren't going to make it. They've had many years  of drought stress before this only occasionally relieved with "good years" of reasonably abundant rain and snow. And a "good year" is dry by any common measurement.

The Indians abandoned this area in the 1670s during a severe drought and famine exacerbated by Spanish colonial Franciscan padres who simply saw the suffering of the Indians as God's wrath for  idolatry and whatnot. By the time the nearby pueblos were vacated, there were only a few hundred Indians left. They mostly joined pueblos on the west side of the mountains along the Rio Grande -- which apparently still had some water in it. This area was left more or less uninhabited for many years. The raiding tribes would set up temporary camps amid the ruins, and from time to time Spanish settlers would run their cattle and sheep over the range. But otherwise, it wasn't until the early/mid-1800s that small settlements were set up on the lower slopes of the mountains, and re-settlement of the plains (without the Indians) only got going in the early 1900s.

It's not easy land to farm, and drought is a persistent risk. I'm sure the early dry-land bean farmers were shocked the first year the rains didn't come. And the next and the next and the next. Eventually, they realized they couldn't rely on summer rainfall and winter snow to grow their crops, and somebody decided to drill down into the aquifer that underlies the whole basin. Sure enough they hit water, and ever since, such crops as are grown here have been under irrigation. But it's an uneasy balance.

There are a few farms still operating, but mostly such agriculture as there is around here is cattle raising, and when things get too dry -- as they seem to be right now -- the cattle... disappear. Where they go is one of those.... mysteries. Most I imagine go to slaughter right away. A few go to feed lots or greener pastures in Texas and Colorado.

The farms grow beans and corn and alfalfa and a few other crops for the animals, not so much for people. I'm one of several trying to get some varied vegetables to grow here. It's possible with enough water, soil amendments and care, but it's not easy.

For one thing, the soil lacks nutrients. It's mostly heavy clay with some sand, and it's highly alkaline. Organic matter is nearly completely absent, and all our attempts to establish a compost pile have failed. There are no earthworms, and practically no soil bacteria. Compost doesn't form because the material you're trying to compost doesn't decompose. It petrifies.

They say there's a way to make compost in buckets if you're patient and you keep it wet and introduce bacteria and earthworms, but I haven't figured it out yet. The two open piles we started are kind of hilarious what with their petrified garden debris and food scraps. One has grown quite large, but nothing has happened. Everything is as it was deposited, just dessicated.

In pots -- and bags and other containers -- things can grow very well. The only things we've been able to grow in the soil have been tulip and daffodil bulbs, but even they are stressed by the super-dry winter, and this year they are pretty peaked and wan.

Our farmer friend down the road supplements his soil with fish emulsion and manure. It gives him good crops, mostly beans and corn, but he's had only middling luck with vegetables. They will grow, but it's like they don't want to. He's preparing to grow some vegetables in greenhouses, but his first attempt failed when some kind of disease in the greenhouse killed off most of his plants. I don't think he's going to try again this year, but his kids have set up two vegetable plots outdoors. They set out lots of plants one weekend. Couple of days later, there was a hard freeze overnight. They'll have to replant when the weather warms up enough.

My beans and corn germinated in the greenhouse a week ago, and that same hard freeze killed most of the beans. Even though the greenhouse has heat (a number of 25w pads) I forgot to turn them on that night, and by the time I remembered, it was too late. The corn is struggling, but looks to be surviving. I'll plant more shortly.

So far, the squash and melons have not germinated though they were planted weeks ago. I'll give them another few days, then try again. Oddly, some hollyhock seeds that are at least five years old are starting to germinate. We'll see. They can be really tough to grow. You never know.

Though there have been some failures and disappointments so far this year, all in all I'm pretty pleased with the way my modest attempts at growing things are going. Freezing overnights have not quite ended, though, so I might have some more losses. It's not all that cold right now (early morning -- about 5am, about 37°) but the prediction is for it to freeze again by 6am. I've got the heat on in the greenhouse just in case.

I've just got to keep learning and trying.

Meanwhile, we don't do nearly enough R, R, & R, though I think we do much more than most others. Our garbage can, for example, is hardly ever full, unlike that of our neighbors -- some of whom have two cans overflowing, week after week. We recycle, reuse, and repurpose as much as we can, and so we send much less to the landfill than we might.

We learned about "living lightly on the Earth" many years ago and those lessons have stayed with us.

Even our house is a recycled pioneer adobe. From time to time, I think about doing another renovation/remodeling, but since we're getting up there in years, I'm not so sure it's going to happen before we shuffle off this mortal coil. We'll have to make do in the meantime..

Reflections on Earth Day? Over the decades, the lessons are largely ingrained and unconscious now. Sometimes the advocates get too enthusiastic and expect too much from individuals and not enough, it seems to me, from civic bodies and institutions. There's a constant tendency to approach the issues of Earth Day from a position of superiority over those who haven't got the message yet. Demanding, directing, disapproving, hectoring, yadda, yadda. It seems to me, too, that the whole thing is so very, very... white. Ain't much of a Rainbow Coalition. Those who have adopted some of the principles, however, or who have always lived by them, aren't nearly so white or so judgmental at all. We just do our thing!

Keep on keeping on...

Refugees

While doing some random pondering the other day, I came upon a news item saying that the regime had cut the number of admissible refugees from 100,000 a year to 20,000 and suggesting that the real number let in this year would probably be less than that.

This in a world of displaced people -- most of them victims of the various wars of aggression instituted, supported and maintained by our dauntless civilian and military warriors -- numbering upwards of 65 million and growing thanks to the effects of climate change.

Well. How special.

As we know, the immigration fight, including the admission of refugees, is part of the budget impasse that has resulted in yet another "government shutdown" which may or may not get resolved some time soon. Ya never know with these things, but every time there's been a "shutdown" something else appalling is integrated into the formulas for budgeting and operating the government of These United States. With Shitball in the White House, you can bet a whole raft of Awful will emerge with the restoration of government function (probably some time in March) and few will be the wiser. So it goes.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about the plight of refugees in general and particularly how some of my ancestors were themselves refugees from the policies of Great Nations and Empires which found it useful to scapegoat, starve, and run out of their homes certain segments of their own populations and those of nations, empires and imperial conquests they went to war with -- thus creating any number of refugees in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

The practice never really ended, did it?

I learned recently of the Huguenot French heritage of my mother's father and his paternal ancestors. They were refugees driven out of France during one of the intolerances of the 1600s and wound up in England where they weren't exactly welcomed and assimilated. So about 100 years later, they emigrated to America, winding up on the Frontier -- such as it was -- first in Virginia and then Kentucky, moving on to Indiana in the 1830s. That's where my mother was born and that's where some descendants still are.

I've known about my Irish ancestors for some time, but I wasn't told the truth about them when I was growing up. An elaborate fiction was created connecting them with a prominent colonial family in Maryland and their arrival in America between 1688 and 1705. Or so.

But there is no connection between my ancestors and that family. There may be a distant connection in Ireland well before then, but there's none now.

Instead, it looks like my Irish ancestors were in fact Famine refugees who arrived in America between 1848 and 1854.

The Famine was never mentioned in the family lore I heard. Nor was the journey from Ireland to eventual settlement in Iowa ever detailed. Over time, I've learned a little bit about it, and how anti-Irish/anti-Catholic sentiment in Ohio, where my ancestors first tried to settle in America, drove them out and set them on a long route across the Mississippi River to take up homesteads in Iowa's Scott County.

Not only were they refugees from Ireland, they were among many internal Irish and other domestic refugees in the US.

Meanness was endemic among some Americans then as it is now.

I'm still trying to find out more details about my German ancestors. There are some indications they might not have been ethnic Germans at all. Indeed, there is family lore that they were Jewish conversos, and some of the DNA evidence suggests they came from somewhere in Eastern Europe, possibly from territories of the Russian Empire, likely some time in the 18th century. They settled in Baden and in the Palatinate and converted to Catholicism. But it seems their settlement was uneasy at best.

In 1850, my father's German grandmother's large family all left Koblenz for America, almost immediately heading west to Iowa where many of their descendants still are. They settled as farmers and merchants and their descendants are now found all over eastern Iowa.

Were they refugees? I don't know, but I suspect they were. During the 1840s and '50s what would become united Germany in the 1870s was wracked with rebellion and revolution. Some of the victims included Jews and conversos who were subject to all manner of discrimination and sometimes death presaging in part the later Nazi anti-Jewish programs.Those who could get out did so -- sometimes under compulsion by authorities or the mob.

I think something similar might have happened to my father's German grandfather Reinhold. But there was a twist. He left his town in Baden in 1854 -- when he was 14 (or maybe 16 or even 17, records suggest he was not truthful about his year of birth. He said it was 1840, but it was probably 1837 or 1838). He was not the first of his family to leave. His older brother left in 1852, his parents would leave in 1856, and his younger siblings would leave shortly thereafter. Ultimately, the entire family emigrated to America.

Reinhold went to France and sailed to New York in 1855. He stayed in New York apprenticed to a book binder in Brooklyn until 1863 when he went out to Iowa. Some of his relatives were already there. Shortly after he joined them, he married my father's German grandmother, and over time, they  had many children, including my father's mother Elizabeth who was the great beauty of the family, though she was deaf.

Thinking about when Reinhold left Baden and then when he left New York, I find a common thread: the military draft. If he was 17 when he left Baden, then he was of draft age. There were military campaigns throughout the region against rebels in those days, and so it's quite likely he sought refuge from the draft. There were draft riots in New York during the Civil War, and I can well imagine he went out to Iowa to escape the draft in New York.

Refugee? It's possible he felt the sting of antisemitism in Germany that was part of the revolutionary fervor of his youth, and it's likely that he wanted no part of military service in either Germany or the United States.

But it's as likely that he was descended from refugees who escaped pogroms in the east.

And then there are my English ancestors, all of whom arrived in America between 1620 and 1640. They settled in New England and New Jersey which suggests to me that they were probably religious dissenters, but I haven't found any details to confirm it one way or another. Religious dissenters of the era were in many cases refugees, and some of them, when they got to America, became refugees from persecution by earlier arrivals. There was little respite.

But the point of going through this is that were it not for refuges like America and the US many of my ancestors probably wouldn't have survived the conditions they faced in their homelands, conditions created by forces beyond their control. Their situation was in some ways comparable to the refugee crises of today.

The US has had both "open door" and "closed door" policies toward refugees. When the door has been closed, as it was during WWII and its lead-up, millions of people were sacrificed abroad so that nativists at home could feel protected from their taint. It was a shameful display of racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice that we seem to be headed into once again. Since 1924, the immigration door has been either closed to "undesirables" (ie: non-Northern European Christians) or cracked open just a little bit.

The lie is that the US has had an "open door" immigration policy at any time since 1924. It's false.

Asylum for refugees has always been limited since 1924 as well.

Now it looks like immigration and asylum will be further restricted. There may be reasons to do so, but the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee campaigns are full of lies and deceptions and should be rejected as unworthy of the nation's best qualities.

On the other hand, "open door" immigration -- which enabled many refugees to immigrate, survive and prosper in the US -- had a deliberate and devastating effect on Native Americans, a topic to explore in another post.

Mass Murder is More American Than Apple Pie

As we once again slouch toward Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day against the background of mass murder in Las Vegas, it's easy to see that the perpetual "gun debate" is stalled where it has been for decades: "Nothing can be done, nothing should be done, occasional mass murder is the 'price of liberty,' now is not the time to discuss these issues."

Yes, well. We've been round and round this mulberry bush so many times. More than 1,500 incidents of mass murder since Sandy Hook, and to the extent there's been any legislative action at all, it has been to loosen restrictions on access to firearms. Something is haywire.

I'm watching a "debate" right now between two congressmen (both military vets, 38 years old)  on the issue of "gun control" and it is the same sterile garbage we've been hearing for years -- "can't" "should", "conversation," "emotion," "automatic weapons," "confiscation," "reasonable," "common sense," on and on, round and round, "tyranny!"

Nonsense.

Here's (part of) the problem: The American experience is founded on repeated episodes of mass murder, beginning with Columbus and continuing to this day. There has never been an end to it.

The "well-regulated militia" referenced in the Sacred Second is about having the ability to threaten and commit mass murder to supposedly protect the nascent "free state." From what?

Slave rebellions, worker strikes and rebellions, Indian uprisings, etc. That's what the militia was for and to an extent still is. The National Guard is the current iteration of the militia of the post-revolution era. The National Guard is a largely reactive and protective force that tends to serve the interests of the political and financial elites -- which can but don't necessarily involve putting down slave revolts and Indian uprisings. The ad-hoc militias -- mostly white males, mostly right-wing -- on the other hand, are much more zealous about who is in charge and why, and who will be targeted by said militias.

Black people, brown people, poor people, homeless people. You know the kind. "Threats" to the "free state." Of white men doing what they want.

That's the foundation of all of this, and until Americans clarify that in their own minds, nothing can be or will be done about mass murder and gun violence in this country.

I mentioned on another site that a possible way to break the log jam over "gun rights" is to engage in a persistent campaign to end the acceptance of and glamorization of gun violence and mass murder in this country.

The idea is to use some of the tactics successfully employed by anti-tobacco and anti-drunk driving activists not so very long ago.

Very powerful and wealthy interests opposed both campaigns, but their opposition ultimately failed. Indeed, many opponents ultimately joined the campaigns to reduce drunk driving and tobacco use.

It can be done.

These were largely social campaigns -- though legislation was part of it. Acceptance of drunk driving deaths and injuries and deaths and injuries from tobacco use was specifically targeted for social (and political) opprobrium. It took some time and quite a bit of money and grassroots activism, but... It worked.

Using similar (Bernaysian, public relations) tactics against gun violence and mass murder could have a similar effect.

I was surprised and pleased to see Mark Shields make the same point on NewsHour last night. There isn't a movement yet, but there could be.

A key is to fear not.

Simple Things -- Growing Tomatoes in Central New Mexico

Tomatoes by the shed

[I know it's September 11 once again and the whole wide world seems to be in a state of Apocalypse what with all the hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, solar flares and what have you. It's a mess for so many survivors; but so many don't survive. We're all living on the edge. For now, at any rate, some of the simple things mean more than ever.]

Early in the spring I started some Cherokee Purple heritage tomato seeds. I could barely walk due to the joint pain of rheumatoid arthritis, but I desperately needed a project. I couldn't stand the idea of being unable to get around or do anything useful for the rest of my life for one thing, and for another, I felt the need to do something positive, no matter how difficult my personal situation might be.

This project turned more fraughtful than I ever thought it would. And more rewarding.

I've never tried to grow tomatoes from seed in New Mexico and I had no idea what would happen. I've grown tomatoes from plants started in nurseries here with varying success. One year we picked a tomato or two from several plants before they gave up the ghost; another year, the whole crop might have amounted to seven or eight tomatoes. And we considered that excellent. One year, nothing.

I ordered the seeds (1000 of them) from Johnny's in Maine.

When they didn't come after a week and I got no email that they'd been shipped, I became a little concerned and emailed their customer service. Next day I got an email saying the seeds had been mailed, and sure enough, when I went to the post office later, there they were.

What to do now?? I could barely move, and it was still cold, so I decided to wait until I was in better shape before I did anything with the seeds. In a few days, I was able to get around without too much pain, so I picked up several seventy-two cell seed starter trays and an armload of peat pots and starter soil. Then I had to wait another week before I could get the trays ready and plant the seeds.

That day was glorious, sunny and warm and an excellent early March planting day. Or so I thought.

When everything was set up outside--planting trays, water can, bags of soil, bowl of seeds -- I set to work, planting two or three  seeds in each cell, one cell after another, water after planting, and I thought things were going well until a gust of wind came up and the seed bowl overturned into the dirt and gravel next to my work table. I'd planted a hundred or so seeds by that point. The rest of them wound up on the ground.

It took some strategizing -- I couldn't bend down very well, and if I did, it would be difficult to unbend -- but I figured out a way to get most of the seeds along with plenty of dirt and gravel into a larger container, and I set about with tweezers picking the seeds from the dirt and debris.

It took the rest of the day, but I managed to rescue about 350 seeds. The rest of them had disappeared.

I figured that would be enough in any case. What would we do with a thousand tomato plants? We planned to give away several dozen plants and keep maybe a hundred for test purposes.

So over the next few days, I got the rest of the starter trays planted, and I set seeds into numerous peat pots. The laundry room and kitchen would be serving as hot houses for immediate purposes, but I needed an outdoor greenhouse for the longer term.

A fellow in town has one that would be just right but I had no way to transport it, and neither did he. Besides, he wanted $1000 for it, and that was more than our budget. Way more. So I decided  on improvising something with shelves and plastic drop cloths -- the heavy kind.

It seemed to work pretty well, and after I got the improvised greenhouse put together the starting trays and peat pots went outside, only to be brought in again when the temperatures were slated to fall into the twenties.

That only happened a few times after planting, but with my mobility issues, getting the plants inside the house from the greenhouse took some... doing. But it got done.

Most of the seeds sprouted by the end of April -- seemed late to me, but oh well -- and after they grew tall and sturdy, it was time to transplant to peat pots from the trays of cells. Supposedly, only one plant from the two seeds was to be transplanted; the other was to be composted. In some cases, I transplanted both plants to the same peat pot just to see what would happen.

Ultimately we had about 175 peat pots, some with two or sometimes three plants, close to three hundred plants altogether.

Some didn't do well, and those wound up in the compost. Many did very well, and I had to think about the final transplanting to containers. We've learned not to grow anything in the ground around here, though I suppose we could. It would just be more difficult. We'd have to heavily amend the soil, correct the pH, fertilize, etc, and even then, there would be no guarantee. The farmer up the road has his own wells and says he even has to acidify the water (using vinegar!) in order to make it suitable for irrigation.

At any rate, we use containers and pots and Miracle Grow potting soil for our tomatoes. We have a lot of pots of varying sizes and kinds accumulated over the years. This year, I picked up more, including several galvanized tubs.

We also bought two Cherokee Purple plants from Bonnie. As a test.

The Bonnie plants were put in large terra cotta pots with tomato cages, the rest were put in different sizes and kinds of pots and containers with as many as six plants per container. We're always told to put one tomato plant per pot or container but that's all. I decided to try for more to see what happened.

The Bonnie plants set fruit first toward the beginning of July, but after the first blossoms, there were no more fruits on those plants until mid August. The plants from seed didn't set fruit until the end of July and the beginning of August, but there were abundant tomatoes on the  plants, and most of them are still setting fruit this late in the season. The Bonnie plants are not. Each had about six tomatoes (some with blossom end rot) and that was it. The others have had anything from one to ten tomatoes each so far and most are setting new fruit daily.

We gave away about 45 plants and have kept about 50.  We had more than 60 but some became ill with various tomato scrofulae, so I pulled them out and threw them away. The ones that have done the best, interestingly, are those that were planted six to a container. They don't have tomato cages, though four containers have simple frameworks that can help support the plants. The plants, too, help support one another.

Other containers don't have frameworks, and the plants have curved down with the weight of the tomatoes, but that doesn't seem to be a problem as long as the tomatoes are kept off the ground -- which seems to be easy enough to do.

We've harvested about 30 tomatoes so far. I pick most of them green and let them ripen off the vine, but some were left to ripen on the vine, and truthfully, I can't tell the difference in flavor between vine ripened and those picked green.

One has been gnawed by hoppers

We've given away about half the ones we've harvested. That will probably be the case through the rest of the harvest season.

We haven't seen any tomato worms this season (they may be there, we just haven't seen them) but we do have grasshoppers, and they seem to enjoy munching on tomato leaves -- especially fresh growth -- and they have completely eaten two young tomatoes. Yes, they ate the whole things. They have chewed on a few others, but the damage is very slight, so we're not worrying too much about them. As anyone who's tried to knows, grasshopper control is very difficult. We've used NoloBait repeatedly and the numbers of grasshoppers have declined but there are still plenty of them. I think they're wise and refuse to eat the NoloBait.

Tomato plants take a lot of water, and I think that's something people attempting to grow them don't fully understand. They say that tomatoes grown in containers need more water than you think -- about a gallon a day under "normal" conditions (little wind and relatively high humidity -- 30% +)  Under dry and often windy conditions such as is "normal" in Central New Mexico, a full grown container tomato plant can require two gallons or more water each day. Sometimes our plants -- which are watered no less than once a day -- get dry and wilty. The problem, I've found is that even a heavy watering may not penetrate all the way down the container and the lower parts may be almost completely dry. If the plants dry out, the tomatoes may be susceptible to blossom end rot. A few of our tomatoes were afflicted, but even then, the un-rotted parts were edible.

After my second Rituxan infusion in May, I was able to get around much better, and that made caring for the tomatoes a joy. While the season isn't over yet, I'm very happy with the results so far, and I'm thinking that if I am able to do this again next year, I'll grow as many as I can for my own enjoyment and to share.

Do We Need A Regent?

The Queen and Prince  William and Jeremy Corbyn all visited warmly with the Grenfell Fire survivors in London.  Teresa May went hop and skip to visit with the first responders on Thursday -- avoiding the survivors like the plague they are -- and on Friday made a non-public appearance at one of the shelters for the Grenfell evacuees which she scuttled out of promptly to the jeers and catcalls from protesters and survivors in the street. "Coward! Murderer!"

Well.

I bring this up to show the completely different approach to calamity displayed by those who hold power (such as May, Trump, et al) and those who show simple human decency in the face of calamity (Corbyn, The Queen, are there any American examples under the age of 90?)

As Trump continues to stumble badly in his role as president, he seems to revel in hurting people as much as he can with as limited powers as he has. And ignore pretty much everyone else. This appears to align well with Teresa May's conservative position in the UK. One has power, apparently, so as to cause harm to or ignore the many while protecting and defending the few.

The assertion is often made by his defenders that Trump hasn't done anything "bad" so far, so it's "too soon" to criticize him. Of course, it's horseshit and has been nothing but that since the defense was offered during the campaign.

The idea is that he doesn't have a history. Somehow he sprang from Zeus's brow apparently, with no past to point to. His gangster behavior in real estate is forgotten, just like his behavior as a tv host. The fact that he's been in the public eye for decades, and has a long and inglorious record of misbehavior was simply erased.

And nothing he's done really matters, you see, because he hasn't triggered a nuclear war with Russia -- which Mrs. Clinton still longs to do.

That millions of Americans in immigrant communities are facing greater and greater levels of terror tactics from ICE doesn't matter because it isn't nuclear war with Russia. That tens of millions of civilians are under threat in the expanding war zones overseas and tens of thousands have been killed since Himself's installation doesn't matter because it isn't nuclear war with Russia. And so on and so on and so on. That he's literally turned over military policy and strategy to the Generals should put the fear in his believers, but it doesn't because it hasn't (yet) triggered nuclear war with Russia.

To the extent there is a functioning Trump Administration, it's a mess. That's considered a bonus by his defenders because it "breaks the rice bowls" of the status quo. As long as the "Clintonites" are punished, anything goes it seems. After all, it isn't nuclear war with Russia.

Except the Empire, the American Empire, and its government can't operate like this, not for long anyway, without shattering to pieces. This too is considered a bonus by some of Trump's defenders who want more than anything for the Empire to disappear. Well, I'm not a fan of the Empire, either, but this kind of perpetual chaos is not the way to end it.

Observers of the mess have started to campaign for a Regency. A Wise Man or a Committee of Eminence to "help" Trump to govern "correctly." Or to govern in his stead should need arise. Something like, oh I don't know, Cheney was to Bush Junior.

Or GHW Bush was to Reagan. Or George IV was to his father Mad King George III. And so on.

A Regent is to the side of the Emperor (or king or president or ruler of your choice) under a regency, and is not necessarily directly in line to the Throne at all. A regent can literally be anyone who is respected and who can be counted on to exercise the powers and authorities of rule responsibly on behalf of the nation, empire or what have you.

The key term is "responsibly" -- which Trump has shown himself to be incapable of, necessitating corps of fixers to come in and clean up yet another mess he's made of things.

You can't run a government like this, let alone an empire.

Some time ago I asked whether we need an Emperor, someone above the president, to deal with the important matters that the Presidency was never intended to.

Or -- as we see under Trump -- can't.

An Emperor would be more in line with the course of devolution our government has been on for quite some time now. Much as Augustus "restored" the Republic while ruling from Above it, an Emperor might "restore" missing or abandoned elements of the American republic while effectively ruling as a benevolent autocrat.

Of course, whether regent or emperor, there is no such position in our current form of government. Regents of sorts have functioned on behalf of or in place of presidents, but never so far has there been someone in a position above the president -- at least not openly.

Is it time?

It Was Fifty Years Ago Today...

My oh my. How time flies.

Monterey International Pop Festival Poster
June 16, 17,18, 1967

I actually don't remember how we got there or exactly when we left the Central Valley for the Coast, but I do remember arriving in Monterey in the late afternoon and checking into a motel (the name of which I don't recall) a short distance from the fairgrounds where the festival would be held. There were four of us, I think: myself and soon-to-be Ms. Ché and Rick and Jackie. That's my memory, but Rick and Jackie may have had their own room. Rick (changed the spelling to Ric ) became one of the more notorious members of the Cockettes (performing as ?? Maxine??) in San Francisco. I don't know what happened with Jackie.

We had tickets for some of the performances, either afternoon or evening. Friday was evening only; Saturday and Sunday were afternoon and evening shows.

The line up was stunning.

Faulty though my memory has become, I think we had tickets for Friday evening, Saturday afternoon and evening and Sunday evening, but we didn't go to the Saturday afternoon show, or possibly we didn't have tickets for Saturday afternoon but listened to it outside the venue.

I recall we spent quite a lot of time on the fairgrounds in the daytime enjoying the people and the booths, and the smells of incense and patchouli and marijuana, and it was probably Saturday afternoon because I don't remember seeing Country Joe and the Fish, Canned Heat, Steve Miller, Quicksilver and the other performers (including Janis and Big Brother) that afternoon. I remember hearing them, though.

Of course when the movie came out, memories got even more confused. Because I remember the movie performance of Big Brother in the afternoon, but my memory of seeing them perform was in the evening. Janis and a whole lot more.

We had box seats for some shows, seats on the flat arena floor for others. The venue was the Monterey County Fairgrounds rodeo arena, also used for the Monterey Jazz Festival and other events throughout the year.

I remember it was cold outside most of the time, and foggy much of the time. Drippy. There wasn't anywhere to escape the wet. So you just went with it.

About 25,000 attended over the three days of the festival. It was a lot of people but it wasn't too many, not even close to too many. We never felt too crowded, and everybody was mellow including the sheriff's deputies manning the fairgrounds and directing traffic and so on. In fact, they were so mellow we wondered if they were enjoying certain substances with much of the crowd.

I don't remember acid, though Rick may have had some. Marijuana, however, was pervasive, and it may have been there that I first indulged. I'm not sure. Marijuana has never agreed with me -- raging headaches and puts me to sleep -- so I rarely indulged back then, and haven't at all for decades.

Rick was tripping most of the time so I imagine he had dropped acid, but I didn't know him well, so I couldn't tell for sure, and we rarely saw him during performances. I think he was backstage for a while, but he was with us during Jimmy Hendrix and The Who. Jackie was with us pretty much the whole time, but I didn't know her well either. They were friends of Ms Ché's but I'm not sure how they and she had hooked up.

Ms. Ché had long been involved with teen bands in the Valley, so I assume that's how they and she got together.

At the time, I looked something like one of the members of a British duo, tall, thin, longish reddish hair, glasses, vaguely hippie-ish garb, mostly castoffs and thrift-store finds thrown together. I remember I had a navy pea coat and a green woolen Eisenhower jacket. Suede boots. Flowered shirt and a bright blue one. A cream-colored knitted turtleneck.

We had no money at all. How we afforded this adventure, I have no idea. At the time, we didn't have a car, so I think we must have ridden with Rick and Jackie, and it may have been Jackie's car, come to think of it. I don't think it was a GTO but it may have been a Pontiac Le Mans, 1964? Maybe. I don't remember.

But we had a motel room for all three days, and the fairgrounds were within walking distance. I think we ate at a nearby Sambo's a time or two. Again, where we got the money, I don't know. But we had enough for food and gas and lodging; we'd bought the tickets well in advance.

When we left on Monday morning, we went to San Francisco and dropped Rick off in the Haight and then headed back to the Valley. We'd go to San Francisco as often as we could and even took to flying down to Los Angeles now and then on the $19 PSA flights to see shows or visit with friends.

This pattern went on throughout the Summer of Love, and though I don't think we were hippies or wanted to be, we were definitely counterculture in that we were living far less materialistically than we'd been brought up to be, and we were living simply compared to most of those we knew and our families. Focus was on music and people and finding new answers to old problems.

Through various steps and travels it led us eventually to New Mexico -- where we might have gone long before, but we didn't -- where a remnant of the counterculture remains, much as it does in enclaves all over the country. Some of it is very stupid and stupefying. Yet some of it is deeply rooted and fundamental. There is a tendency to want to throw it all out and start over. But you know what? There always was.

Onward.

[Pennebaker has blocked most of the clips from his film of Monterey Pop from YouTube and the other video sites, but a restored version of the film will be shown in Santa Fe next month. We'll probably go -- if our health permits.

Highlights  of the Festival for us included Janis Joplin with Big Brother, The Who, the Animals, Simon and Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, Mamas and Papas, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Hugh Masakela, and some I don't remember. Eg: I barely remember the Dead at all... so it goes...]


Going Into Town

I've been driving quite a bit more than I ordinarily do these last couple of weeks. Last week was midterms at IAIA, and Ms. Ché was under the weather thanks to a bug she picked up somewhere, either at school or at the New Mexico Writers' Dinner she attended the week before midterms. She didn't want to take the bus, and I don't blame her. She has fairly long layovers in Santa Fe as there is no direct bus out to IAIA, and mornings especially were cold in town (not so much at our place, but they were cold up there.) She figured she'd get a chill and feel worse. So I drove her up the hill to the campus in the mornings and she took the bus back home (or on Fridays, a fellow student who lives in the next town over drove her back.)

The trips up to Santa Fe are difficult for me, although I'm not complaining. It's hard to breathe, even with oxygen, and that's the main thing. Consequences include exhaustion; after a drive up there and back, I'm pretty well spent for the rest of the day, though I try to accomplish some things at home. I have a whole list of things to get done, and I'm getting through it slowly, slowly, but I'm stunned at how far behind I'm am.

This week is Ms Ché's Spring Break, but this is the only time she has to deal with some of her own medical and dental appointments that she's been putting off because she has no time for them when classes are in session. She's carrying 18 units and her class schedule is tough -- even without a bus commute. Two more semesters, she says, and she should be done. We'll see!

So this week, I've been driving her into Albuquerque for her appointments, and while it's not quite so tough on me -- due to a lower altitude, I guess -- it's still draining, and that bothers me. I'm afraid I'll get so tired that my attention will suffer and I'll run off the road -- as so many truckers tend to do -- and that will be that.

So far though, it's been OK, so again no complaints.

We still don't have another vehicle, and even if we did, I'm not sure Ms Ché would want to drive more than occasionally. She was really traumatized by the wreck, and I wouldn't blame her if she didn't want to drive at all any more. She's been in a couple of other wrecks, but this one was the worst. Thank goodness for the airbags, even though they were the cause of most of her injuries. Had they not deployed, there's no telling how bad it might have been.

There are a couple of things delaying the purchase of another car.

One being my dislike of car shopping. I tend to put it off as long as possible. Lately I've been scouring internet listings, but every time I find something online that I'm interested in, it's gone by the time I'm ready to make contact with the seller. Yes, well. That's how it goes.

So I found this on Hemmings, and thought: Well, here's a car that won't disappear tomorrow!

1948 Studebaker

Not exactly a commuter car, but what fun, eh?

And that's the way I have to look at this situation. Well, not just this situation, but the whole panoply of WTF that we're all immersed in. Life itself is throwing us some interesting challenges, eh? Some we'll meet head on, but others require a more nuanced approach -- or none at all. Just let it go.

I have my own appointments in town next week, so the trips will continue at least for now. The old beat up Astro van which got us here from California is doing heroic work getting us from here to wherever, and we're lucky to have it on hand.

Soon it will be time to start tomatoes. I have Cherokee Purple seeds and starting trays and as soon as the weather turns reliably warm -- probably next week, though we'll no doubt get at least a couple more cold snaps -- I'll start the seeds. Hope to get quite a crop and share the plants with the Cherokee group in town.

Making It Impossible for the Ruling Clique to Govern

Things are still so fluid, there's no way to tell how the unraveling will occur. But there will be an unraveling, no doubt about it. And many innocents will suffer.

That much is clear.

One of the keys to a successful rising is making it impossible for the ruling clique to govern. This was the key to bringing down the various targets of Color Revolutions, and indeed what led to the collapse of the regimes brought down during the Arab Spring and particularly the Ukraine not so very long ago.

It isn't that hard to do.

But note, efforts along those lines were tried in this country with the occupation of the Wisconsin state capitol in the winter of 2011 followed by the Occupy Movement in the fall of the same year. They received a lot of press and widespread admiration but they failed to bring on the Revolution, and in Wisconsin, the occupiers failed utterly in their goal of preserving, protecting and defending the gains made by their progressive political ancestors, gains being threatened by Scott Walker and the ascendant Rs.

The Wisconsin debacle should have been a lesson, but I'm not sure it was, as the failures mounted after the Capitol occupation was abandoned. It was as if the opponents of Walker and the Rs kept pushing the same nonfunctional button and expecting it to somehow work. It didn't. The wires had been pulled. But the Ds didn't notice. Or were they counseled not to notice?

The trick of  making it impossible to govern requires understanding how government works and knowing where the vulnerable pressure points are.

It seems that regime opponents rarely do, at least not when they start out. Resistance is typically inchoate at first, but then it coalesces around an "idea."

In Wisconsin, the "idea" was to Preserve the Status Quo. Oops. To me, that is a recipe for disaster in a revolutionary era. The status quo is fine for those who benefited from it, but under the circumstances, many were and are not benefiting from it, and that's why so many wanted it overthrown or undone. That's why the Rs were able to fully capture the political and governmental apparatus of a formerly Progressive state.

Enough Wisconsinites had had enough of "progressivism" to throw it all out and essentially revert to prior brawling, corrupt, and vile government practice. The Status Quo just would not do any more.

I tried pointing this out to some Wisconsinites who were absolutely convinced that Walker and his cronies and the Rs in the Lege would be brought down this time because reasons. I said no, it was becoming more and more unlikely that any political action would bring these people down, simply because there were enough Wisconsinites satisfied enough with the New Politics and Governance that they weren't about to change it, particularly not to go back to the status quo ante.  No, get over it, it's not going to happen. If you really want change, you have to go forward from where you are. You can't go back to where you used to be.

It seems axiomatic, but for whatever reason, the Ds and the progressives in Wisconsin never seemed to understand that simple premise. In politics, you can't go back.

That's one reason I had such high initial hopes for Occupy. They were focused on what was wrong in the present ("Shit's fucked up and bullshit!") and setting out on a path to fix it. Well, it didn't work out quite that way.

Part of the failure was operational. Much of the effort was focused on creating a model for a New Society based largely on Anarchist principles. Well... that can only go so far, and any resulting society will by nature be small-scale. In most cases, the Occupations themselves were too large and diverse to be run on an Anarchist model, though the effort to do so was maintained as long as possible. The models in Europe worked well enough, didn't they? Well, no, if you were paying attention, you saw them coming apart, and you saw them easily dispersed by the authorities and prevented from re-forming.

The operational model was a failure, though the ideas were right, and they continue to be vibrant all these years later because most of the forward looking ideas have yet to be addressed.

What were those ideas? I'll get to it in time -- or try to. This is not really about Occupy so much as it's about the current Resistance (which includes some of those ideas, just as it includes Black Lives Matter idea and many other elements of Resistance efforts.)

The current Resistance is still inchoate -- and probably will be for some months to come -- but it is coalescing around a few Big Ideas, including defending the rights of women, minorities and immigrants. There's a bit too much defense of the status quo, unfortunately. That can change. I hope it will.

The status quo wasn't working for far too many Americans. That's why we're in the political and economic mess we're in. Millions upon millions of Americans were forced into poverty during the Economic Crisis -- which has never ended for most of them. That impoverishment was due to policies, none of which have been rescinded. Most of them are due to get worse during the Trump regime.

I have yet to see a Resistance idea that addresses that fundamental problem. When I do, I'll cheer.

Mass imprisonment of (mostly) black and brown men was a feature of the status quo. That's slated to get worse, potentially much worse, under the Trump regime. What is the Resistance idea to address it? I don't know.

Rule by an out of touch elite was a feature of the status quo. That's not getting any better under a Trump regime -- which is nothing but a kleptocracy headed by the kleptocrat in chief. What is the Resistance idea regarding the kleptocratic elite who rule us? I have no idea.

And so it goes. These are among the ideas that can form the foundation for making it impossible for the ruling clique to govern, and that's a necessary factor in a successful Resistance.

The Dems are almost useless in this struggle, for they are the Party of the Status Quo -- whatever that may be. But they can be (maybe) useful within the ruling clique as a poker, shiv, etc. Otherwise, they should be ignored -- or defeated, right along with the Trumpists.

We need something better.

It's a long row to hoe, but it's more necessary than ever.



Despite all, the Hippies were right.

Wypipo and The Resistance -- A Color(less) Revolution?

So far, it appears that the growing and spreading Resistance is very, very white, largely female, and pissed as hell that this clown is allowed to fuck with the national consciousness this way.

Additionally, The Resistance appears to be largely middle and upper-middle class types who see that their benefits, rights and privileges are liable to be threatened or withdrawn by the advent of the Trump regime.

This is not to discount any other participants and interests involved in the ongoing series of protests, demonstrations, and actions that seem to have taken on a life of their own and have spread throughout the country. I can't be in the streets, unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!😀) so I don't have much personal contact with the Resisters, but I am still part of a peace and justice community that participates. Many of those in the community are well off white women but not all. But then, this is New Mexico, and it is as nearly polyglot here as any place in the US. And Wypipo are not always the most important social and political interests.

The Women's March was full of women of color, some of them quite a bit more radical than their white sisters. But that radical energy seemed to get rechanneled into more conventional and largely ineffective (because it's non-threatening) activism almost immediately. Activisim was channeled into raising a ruckus at congressional town halls and offices over various issues including the repeal of Obamacare. In other words, standard Democratic Party issues.

But then with the Muslim ban, a spontaneous resistance arose from below the Party apparat that the Democrats tried to get in front of. The immigration and refugee issue is one that Democrats have always been conflicted over. It has to do with how immigrants and refugees are seen by the owners and sponsors, and it's not a particularly pretty picture at all. Much of it is obscured by sentiment. Trump and his toadies are taking off the veil of sentiment, becoming openly harsh and unforgiving about the Others Who Don't Belong Here, but that's been hidden or open policy for most of my life.

The spontaneous uprising had to do with human rights and simple justice -- something the Democrats had avoided with regard to immigrants and refugees for many years, so it was kind of funny watching the spin from the Dems as the demonstrations filled airports and demanded the release forthwith of travelers who were being detained pursuant to the White House diktat.

Exploiting the issue has been customary since then. But I don't think the People are necessarily being listened to in this matter.

It's much more nuanced than the question might appear, and it has almost nothing to do with the fearmongering of the regime.

It had much more to do with simple justice. The US war machine and neoliberal economic policies have created the refugee crisis and keep it going despite ongoing efforts to bring this phase of American Imperialism to a conclusion. Simple justice requires that the US accommodate the refugees that it has created, either in the United States or in other lands, and that the US handle immigration justly. None of those things are happening, as power centers exercise essentially arbitrary authority over who does and does not enter the country on a nearly random basis. The chaos at the airports came about due to the extension of that arbitrary authority. Nope. Not gonna fly.

The Dem effort to get in front of it was pretty pathetic from my perspective, but now that the issue is in the courts, we can all move on to other things.

Which would be?

For now, the Resistance appears to be mostly preventional. Prevent the horrors to come. Stop the madness.

And then build a better future.

I don't know that you can do it that way, though. The Color Revolutions showed us that unless you have a Better Future Plan queued up and ready to go, the neolibs and the fascists will move right in and take over. Every time. The follow up is grim. If we're ever going to defeat the fascists and the dominant paradigm of rule, we're going to have to have something very much better ready to go.

We don't. Far from it.

We have to look beyond the desires of the Wypipo.

For me, the model of resistance and that better future is that of the Water Protectors and their allies.


The struggle continues.

Water Protectors On Duty

By now everyone's heard that Trump has "restarted" the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline "shut down" by Obama. I use the scare quotes because what's actually happened is a little less declarative than the Narrative would have it.

Obama didn't actually shut down the pipelines, he deferred final decisions on them to a later time, when he was out of office. Trump has not restarted them, he has picked up the ball where Obama left it, and is considering whether to run with it.

I split hairs like this because what is actually going on in this chaotic situation often varies quite a bit from the Narratives put out by the White House and countered by the media. There are lies and lies and more lies, in a blizzard of falsehood -- coming from all sides -- and it's almost impossible for the Rabble to sort out fact from fiction under the circumstances.

Chaos is the key, and keeping things as chaotic and unpredictable as possible appears to be the way Trump intends to rule until he is deposed.

But he's not the only one who can play that game.

Not by a long shot.

Meanwhile up in frozen North Dakota, the Water Protectors were planning to decamp from Sacred Stone and Oceti Sacowin, packing up and moving away from the Standing Rock reservation and setting up camp again at other reservations by invitation. This was to be a voluntary evacuation, but it was in line with the SRS Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault's repeated requests (orders?) that the Water Protector camps be vacated "for the safety" of the campers. Or something.

His position was that while the Environmental Impact Statement ordered by Obama was being prepared, protection/provocation by Water Protectors was counter productive. The less conflict at the site during the process, the better in his view. There have been recent incidents of violence (by police) against Water Protectors at the Backwater Bridge, a continuous flashpoint at Standing Rock. Archambault said he wanted the bridge reopened,, and that couldn't happen so long as incidents of violence kept happening there.

So he issued another request/order that the Water Protectors leave, and he and the tribal council essentially seized the millions of dollars raised for the Water Protectors and declared it tribal funds to use as the tribal council determined. I don't know what happened to the warehouse full of supplies sent to the camps, but last I heard, the tribe was refusing to release them to the camps.

As a point of reference, there have been widespread Water Protector actions primarily against pipelines all over the country since things calmed a bit at Standing Rock. This is the kind of activism that takes on a life of its own, and by spreading out so much -- rather than being concentrated in one spot -- the Water Protectors are ensuring their survival come what may.

It's not unlike the way Occupy dispersed after the coordinated violent crack down against it in 2011 and 2012. While I haven't got around to updating my Occupy links -- many are dead now -- I am quite aware that Occupy is still around and is still active, though for the most part they keep a low profile. As one of the Occupy mottos says, "You can't kill an idea."


That's pretty much where things stood on Monday. On Tuesday everything changed when Trump signed his pipelines memorandum. Keystone XL and Dakota Access were suddenly placed on the track for eventual approval, regardless it seemed of anything else.

The evacuation of the camps at Standing Rock halted and a call went out for Water Protectors to return -- so long as they were physically able to do so and could be self-sufficient once there.

The call did not go out from Archambault, it was issued by Chad IronEyes, one of the Standing Rock Sioux activists who has stayed on top of the evolving situation there and who has occupied the space between the Tribal Chairman and Council and the Water Protectors.

I haven't checked the activist notices today yet, but after Trump's action, there were demonstrations by Water Protectors and their allies in many cities throughout the country. As the Water Protectors reassemble in North Dakota, the state is preparing to force the issue and prohibit protest in so far as they can by law. They've even come up with some kind of law that legalizes running down protesters who block roads -- as long as it's an "accident."

Yes, well. We've already seen that happen during the actions last year. Sport, dontchaknow.

And there have been violent incidents at the Bridge in which numerous Water Protectors and allies have been injured by rubber bullets, water cannon, and other weapons wielded by the police. They've even set up a missile launcher apparently to shoot down drones flown by Water Protectors in order to document what's going on.

Please understand, this is all a dry run for the eventual suppression of any and all popular revolts and uprisings that might come to pass in the future.

The Indians at Standing Rock know this; many of their allies do too. But the general public remains oblivious.

I've pointed out in other fora that serious protest action in the United States has historically been met with serious and deadly force. Kent State is a well known example, but there were many others in those days and previously. Massacres of Indians, of course, were routine in the 19th Century, but strikers, protesters, and other activists who were perceived as threats by The Powers That Be were frequently subjected to use of deadly force by private guards as well as the National Guard and police, occasionally by the Regular Army.

People who understand this history of suppression of dissent know that the Water Protectors, as some of the most successful activists in recent times, are at severe risk of injury or death at the hands of the authorities, no matter where they are, but particularly so in North Dakota. I don't know how many have been injured so far, but hundreds were injured during the action on November 20-21 when water cannon were first turned on the activists at the Bridge.

This is deadly serious.

I've pointed out that the Water Protectors have been showing the way to effective resistance under the current circumstances. They are rebels, yes, but they are not in the mold of past resistance efforts. They are a step beyond them. First, they are grounded in Native American spirituality, something a lot of Anglos like to play with, but something few of them understand or can relate to. It's a different way of looking at the relationship between the Spirits and the People. It's a much more powerful thing than most Anglos can imagine, and it's part of the reason why so many of the Water Protectors can endure the suppression and the violence unleashed against them by the authorities. It's a reason why the Water Protectors understand they might lose from time to time, and they understand the Dakota Access Pipeline might be completed no matter what they do, but that in the end, they will be vindicated and victorious.

They  have endured so much so far, and the struggle is re-engaged, not only at Standing Rock but all over the country now.

It is part of the emerging struggle against the forces of wealth and power so perfectly expressed through the elevation of Trump and his cronies to run the government of these United States.

Water Protectors have led the way. They are the vanguard.

Where the struggle goes from here, we'll have to wait and see -- unless, of course, we are involved in actions to change the situation for the better.

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.

"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.