So What's Next?

Wow. I've been going through some of the hundreds of reports and posts I wrote during Occupy -- a decade ago now -- and... wow.

It was a nascent revolution that... fizzled out. Not meant to be? With all the talk about co-opting and infiltration of Movements these days, it is glaringly obvious that Occupy was partially co-opted and heavily infiltrated by informants during its brief lifetime in the public square. In the end it was brutally crushed and dispersed by a nationwide coordinated police action that resulted in thousands of arrests and hundreds injured.

I reported on some of what I witnessed, including the presence of obvious provocateurs, instigators and informers. I also saw public officials openly manipulating the encampments for their own political purposes, police experimenting with new and improved crowd control tactics (it was a game to them), and political party operatives trying to "guide" actions on their own behalf.

It was fascinating and stomach churning to watch. Not so much fun to participate in. 

And I saw and reported on one Occupy encampment after another disintegrate into squabbling factions almost always due to two things: unfamiliarity with anarchist and intentional community principles and practices, and the presence, sometimes by invitation, of mentally disturbed loudmouths who were almost inevitably allowed to take over.

While the public face of Occupy disintegrated and dispersed, the underlying energy has only grown stronger, and we've seen it manifested in a proliferation of intentional communities, many set up as quasi-independent associations for self-sufficiency and sustainability. The anarchist form of governance is still very alien to the US, and black bloc and diversity of tactics scares a lot of people. 

What I saw was that an anarchist intentional community-- as most of the Occupy encampments were set up to be -- is almost impossible to sustain among strangers. It's far too intimate a situation and responsibility for strangers to undertake with one another suddenly. That's how Occupy was organized, and in essence, the encampments were designed to fail. And they did. The brutal destruction and dispersal of the Occupy encampments wasn't necessary from an organizational standpoint, but it seemed to please the Powers That Be immensely.

The millions of people who participated in the Occupy movement in 2011 were followed by many more millions who marched and protested and assembled in the United States and all over the world on behalf of causes like stopping wars, gun control, women's rights, an end to police violence, protecting the environment and so on. Millions have taken to the streets, encampment tactics have been widely adopted, governments have been overthrown, and yet...

What has changed for the better?

A global rightist/fascist reaction has set in. Trumpism is fully a part of it. But it is by no means limited to Trump and his ilk; it's very wide-spread, heavily funded by the billionaires, and so far, it's been successful in taking over governments and largely suppressing dissent. 

From appearances, it aims for permanent dominance.

Barring the unforeseen, it will achieve that within short order. 

There is no vigorous, strenuous and determined counter-movement, let alone a more than flaccid Socialist or Communist ideological movement. 

So what's next?

I don't know. Every time I ponder what might be, I face a blank wall. 

The Impeachment Thing

[Note: Buddhism, in some cases especially Zen, doesn't preclude one's interest and involvement in the material world. It does, however, affect one's sense of the importance of this or that aspect of it. 🕉]

The current impeachment inquiry is the third in my lifetime. There have only been four attempts at impeachment of a president in the history of  the United States. None have been successful [Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolution went to the floor of the house]. The betting is that this one won't be, either, but of course you never know.

The charges likely to be included in any House resolution to impeach Trump are being laid out day-by-day, pretty much as follows:

1. Abuse of power -- impeachable, not criminal
2. Bribery -- of Zelensky/Ukraine; impeachable, criminal
3. Intimidation of witnesses -- impeachable, may be criminal
4. Suborning perjury -- impeachable, criminal
5. Defying Congressional subpoenas -- impeachable, may be criminal
6. Probably violations of emoluments clauses -- this might be a throwaway
7. Misprision of felony -- impeachable, criminal

And so on. The charge-list could get quite long indeed. But there is no likelihood, whatever Trump does, that a Republican-controlled Senate would vote to convict and remove him from office. At least not now. 

It's possible that not even a Democratic controlled Senate would do so.

Here's the problem as I see it:

Trump has been allowed to get away with just about anything he wants to do during his tenure in office -- just like he's largely been allowed to do whatever he wants throughout his life. He's a terrible person and a rotten president, but.... he gets away with it, just like he always has.

As president, he's changing the presidency and the nature of the federal government. He's making the presidency over into a highly authoritarian position (it's always had such elements) in command of not just the government, but of the nation as a whole. In other words, the point is to make the president a ruler rather than a servant of the people. Opposition to be crushed rather than co-opted or negotiated with. 

In this remodeling of the presidency by Trump, the president is to have full and personal control of the federal government independent of any advisors, systems, precedent, Congress, or the courts. S/he will personally direct and control every aspect of the federal government (something no individual human being can do, but that's beside the point). The president becomes a de-facto emperor. Something that again is inherent in the position, but which until recently has been suppressed in action.

These are among many aspects of systemic changes we're seeing in real time under Trump's presidency, and they will become precedent for future presidents. Trump may be a bad emperor -- oh yes -- but what he's being allowed to do can lead (in time, if we're very, very good) to a Good Emperor. But Emperor it will be, good, bad or indifferent.

I came to this conclusion while watching part of the Yovanovich testimony yesterday. What it boiled down to was a question of whether the president has the power and authority to emplace anyone he wants in an ambassadorship (yes), and whether it is appropriate for a president to engage in the smearing of an ambassador in the process of having her removed (could be.)

In this case, the ambassador is the avatar of any federal officer, the smear is the symbolic means of removal/replacement that could affect anyone in federal service. We've seen examples in the past (Shirley Sherrod comes to mind, but there have been many others, especially since the 2000 election.)

But now it seems the smear-and-removal will be codified. 

These are big changes to what the presidency is, not so much what it could be, and I predict they will be permanent. Trump can go or stay, it really doesn't matter. The governing system is what is being overhauled-- mostly without the knowledge or consent of the governed -- and there will be no going back. Impeachment may just fade entirely from the conception of checks and balances. After all, the consistent argument during the Trump reign is that ONLY impeachment can be used to control the actions of the president, and if impeachment fails to remove him (likely), there's no remedy under the constitution or law. That's it, he gets away with it.

Ambassador Yovanovich was quite eloquent in defending norm, process, propriety, etc., but I don't see a future in which those things are considered necessities for governing. Indeed, just the opposite may become normalized. The reasons are simple enough. We're entering into a rough transition period in which the consequences of climate change and decades of neoliberalism become one continuous crisis. There's really no escape at this point. Past norms and processes will have to be jettisoned in order to deal with the inevitable crises, or the permanent crisis. No way around it. Trump is crude and awful, but he's doing what the ruling class believes is necessary to cope with the transition and beyond. That's why he's been protected and allowed to get away with so much harm.

Better it should happen now. So that we can become accustomed to it. It's only going to get worse for most of us.

Trump won't be in the Big Chair forever. And whoever comes after him -- whenever that happens -- will almost immediately be considered a "savior".  Because he or she won't be as terrible a person nor as incompetent and chaotic a ruler. 

But Ruler/Emperor the follow-on president will be. And most of the hoo-hah during the Trump years will seem silly in retrospect. We have serious business to attend to.

So, that's my theory of what's really going on... 

🕉

Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold

The Second Coming

W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus MundiTroubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Looking at the political trainwreck of the last few weeks, one can't help but think the paradigm shift under way is coming close to a climax. Of course, one has thought that before and one has been wrong, so we'll see, won't we?

It's not just the gold-plated turd that is Trump, though he is certainly the Shiny Object keeping attention away from More Important Things. His constant ravings have fully captivated the media, and they hold more sway than they should over the public attention.

Yet many are beginning -- finally -- to see that Trump isn't an outlier of his class; he is a representative of these insensitive pricks who've ruled us for doG knows how long. He is them, they are him. The entrance of one prickish billionaire after another into the political fray demonstrates clearly that these people, mostly privileged white men, are appallingly dense, vicious, stupid and cruel. Well, yes. That it wasn't obvious before is the peculiar thing.

The whole "populist" act that Trump has been putting on is failing -- the Foxconn Debacle being a case in point -- but he keeps trying, so I'll grant him that. He's also methodically putting together a War Upon War finale to his reign that might just pull the popular will right along with him into the Abyss.

Yeats wrote his dirge post-Easter Rising, post-WWI. He could see -- how could he not? -- that what Used to Be was no more, and wasn't coming back, either.

We're not at that point yet, but we're getting closer.

So I'll go make some coffee in my ancient MidCentury Universal percolator. Sit and contemplate with Siddarth Gautam Buddha, nag champa incense wafting through our dusty, drafty house in the middle of nowhere. Wondering what today's new cycle will bring.

While stewing

I've been stewing over the last year (and some) of this shit show coming from DC, and I noted while doing so that nothing that could have been done has been done to stop it.

It is as if the PTB are happy to have a shit show in DC.

Well, I think they are.

The Trump Shit Show has immense entertainment value that translates to ratings gold.Where there is money to be made, plenty of our Overclass are ready, willing and more than able to cash in. Trump has cut his chops making money for the Right People, and he's shown skill at doing it for the Overclass in general as President.

It's not just his entertainment value. There's more to it.

For many years, the point has been made -- sometimes sotto voccei -- that Trump is mobbed up like mad. He's a gangster and runs with gangsters and everybody knows it and has known it for decades. There should be no mystery about it. But for some reason, it's ignored by those who know, even by those who are so eager to promote the Russia Thing  -- which is itself a gangster story, though you wouldn't know it from the hype over "troll farms" and "election meddling" and what have you.

Our Overclass is fine with having a gangster and his cronies in the White House and fine with running the government as a mob operation -- as long as they get their cut, which they did with the tax overhaul, which is nothing but a huge give away to the already rich beyond measure.

All the unending scandals of the Trump regime and their cronies in Congress -- and they do go on, don't they? -- serve the function of entertaining the masses while the looting and killing go on unimpeded. By anything.

I'm convinced there's little -- maybe nothing -- we can do about it. "We" as in We, the Rabble. This is all about our Overlords and how they want their rule to proceed.  Making a bad joke of the presidency is a feature not a bug. It's not unlike the effects of installing a morbid, bad "democracy" in Iraq to replace the severe and decadent rule of the Saddam family. It made Iraqis and many  others in  the region hate the bastard "democracy" they were subject to. And so, I suppose, it will be for us.

There's no recovery from such a perversion of the presidency. But then, I know the white supremacists and their cronies believe sincerely that elevating a black man to the presidency was a worse perversion. And so it goes.

But! The good news is that the Ché household is netting an additional $50 a month (for now) thanks to the revised withholding tables. On the other hand, I better not get sick again. My Medicare Advantage co-pays have mostly doubled (again), and I'm now assessed an additional monthly premium in addition to Medicare premiums which have also increased. Neat.

We will get through this phase but it's not at all clear what comes after.

Be Careful What You Wish For-- the After Labor Day Dread

The media trope that nobody pays attention to much of anything till after Labor Day may be true, I can't say. Summer has never been that much of an "I don't care" season to me, never that much of a vacation, either.

Media's attention, however, is dulled, even absent during the summer. News organizations tend to take weekends off, too, which is why the Friday Night News Dump is so popular among political operatives. Release news on Friday night and no one will see it goes the rationale, and it used to be pretty much true. Something that would be news on any other day of the week isn't all that important news on Friday, Saturday or Sunday because news rooms are shuttered and only a skeleton staff is on duty.

The Russia! Russia! Russia!! Thing has mostly faded away this summer in part, I think, because it hasn't polled well. It's become something of a running joke. I don't doubt there's a there there, and we've already seen a boatload of smoking guns, but they haven't caught on as something to care that much about because ... well, why? Are we just so used to corruption in high places that the in-your-face old-line gangster corruption of the Trump Organization and its collusion with a foreign power for political (and financial) gain in simply taken for granted? Or is it something else.
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I've long been of the opinion that Trump and the Trump Organization are not anomalies. They represent a class of people and enterprise that is common among the High and Mighty. This is who they are, this is what they do, and Trump is not categorically better or worse than any of them. They are gangsters, thieves, mountebanks and con artists.

Our political class has always intersected with them, and sometimes -- like now -- has largely been them. There is little or no moral separation between them.

This is true of our political/ruling class in general. It's no better on one side of the aisle than the other.

We, the Rabble, have little choice in the matter. Voting doesn't really change things, though it can accelerate or retard the rate of looting, pillage, and destruction by the Powers That Be, and it can change the personality of the looters ruling over us.

We're in a situation now where the Looting/Ruling Class sees the looming catastrophe from climate and other environmental changes before them and they... worry.

The Rabble may be pretty well contained by their squabbling among themselves over this and that, everything really, that doesn't really matter (eg: the Nazi/Antifa street theater among so many other Things) but the forces of Nature marshal themselves time and again, and they can't be escaped even by the Highest of the Mighty.

The South Texas Disaster is yet another object lesson among so many this season. The floods there are mild compared to elsewhere. And yet it's a disaster nonetheless with long term consequences as well as short term misery.

What will be done about it? Largely nothing. Not for the Rabble, at any rate. But there will be a sorting and selection process among the People Who Matter, many of whom -- if they haven't already - will abandon the region for somewhere higher and drier, where they can put their bunkers and Be Safe.

I expect to see more of them moving to my area of Central and Northern New Mexico. We already have plenty of The Type. I expect we'll get more.

There are plenty of other nicer -- and safer -- places they can go, and I expect they will, but we won't know about it because it won't be reported by our intrepid media. It's not a Thing like Russia! Russia! Russia!! (Sharks and Missing White Women! Nazis and Antifa!! Oh my!) and media moguls and personalities are making their own survivalist preps anyway.

They'd rather not be caught in either fire or flood, yanno?

People who continue to claim that "nothing has been done" about climate change or population control or whatever are silly. Of course "something has been done," it's just not (quite) enough to make that much of a difference. It never is. In some ways, it can't be "enough" no matter what is done.

The thing is, humans aren't totally in control of the situations they (we) face.

Desire for that control is part of the problem.

There is a greater power than we ourselves.

Oh.

When "we" wish to have power over climate change or population control (of "them" of course, not "us") we're asking for something we can't -- and shouldn't -- have. At least for their part, Our Betters seem to subliminally understand that. However much they see themselves as Masters of the Universe, they self-limit their mastery to money and governing, and they seem to be losing the thread of government.

They don't know what to do. They're too self-obsessed. Ignorant. Uncaring. Mad.

We have to be careful what we wish for. I don't want these monsters ruling us, but at the same time, I haven't seen a better alternative. There are no good monsters, they're all bad each in their own way, and there is no one in the ruling clique that gives a shit about the rest of us. On the other hand, I haven't seen anyone emerge from Below who is capable and brilliant enough to overthrow the ruling clique and do any better.

It's classic rock-hard place dilemma.

Because no one has found a Better Way yet, I'm facing After Labor Day when things get Real again, with an uncommon dread. Our rulers -- especially Himself in the White House -- are itching to prove their bravery -- much as Bush/Cheney back in the day --- and that could only mean war. We're involved in so many of them as it is, and so many die every day under our Imperial Benevolence that adding more death and destruction would seem to be a waste of resources and energy, but it's a target rich environment out there, so Pyongyang or Tehran or wherever better watch out. The itchy trigger finger is on the button, you know?

The street brawls might intensify, though it seems that for the moment, the Nazis are in retreat. We'll see. Meanwhile the mess in Texas gets worse and worse, as flood waters retreat for the moment, and the gawd-awfulness of it all becomes clear. The pollution alone will take generations to clean up -- if it ever is.

And much much more is in store.

If I sometimes go off on seemingly tangential issues, particularly comforting domestic ones, there's a reason. Given everything else that's going on and likely to come, we take comfort where we can.

Be safe, y'all.

"For the Love of God!" -- What Comes After Trump?

For all intents and purposes, Trump's power and authority was neutered toward the end of February (or March, depending on your point of view). He's simply not in charge of the government, which is in an anarchic -- but not yet chaotic-- state.

The interesting thing to me is that he has not (yet) been removed from office by subtle or overt means. So clearly he is serving a purpose on the Throne, even if he can't exercise any power from it other than having his personal Gestapo terrorize brown people in the Heartland. Why that's allowed while almost nothing else is, I'm not entirely sure. Entertainment for the crackers? I dunno.

Having this empty mechanical Thing sitting on the Throne may be entertaining enough for the rubes but it gives everybody else the willies. It's Grand Guignol at best. Walking Dead most of the time. Things are happening quite apart from anything Trump says or does, but what he says and does -- no matter how stupid or irrelevant -- dominates every news cycle, and that's probably why he's being kept on the Throne. So we don't see or recognize what's going on behind the scenes and who is directing the pageant.

Precedents are being set.

The world has been turned upside down and things will never be the same again.

This could be a good thing. Just as Trump or Congress or the SCOTUS might -- for once in their worthless lives -- do the right thing. It could happen. It won't. But it could.

What comes After Trump? How will the White House and the world be changed by his advent and demise?

I've said many times that his advent represents the apotheosis of the neoLibCon paradigm. Many observers -- and voters for that matter -- on the other hand, bethought themselves that Trump would smash and destroy neoLibCon - ism once and for all when that was never his idea or intent. It was a desire projected onto him. (Much the same happened with Obama, and look what it brought us: Trump and the accelerated implementation of the Program).

Many observers now claim that neoLibCon-ism will crash and burn on its own as the rise of the nationalist white right sweeps the global North and West. Somehow, nationalism and white supremacy are deemed the death knell for neoLibCon-ism and Globalism, though I can't for the life of me fathom why. It's simply a rearrangement of winners and losers, it has no effect on the paradigm at all.

The Forever Wars, the exploitation of the Rabble, the looting, the indecency of it all will continue at an accelerated pace. That's all. In other words, nothing changes -- except that scapegoating of selected minorities will become the distraction of the moment.

That's an important addition to the neoLibCon kit bag, but it ultimately changes nothing.

After Trump will we see a succession of clowns and rakes and buffoons on the Throne? Come to think of it, isn't that what we've been seeing since Reagan with few (no?) exceptions?

On the other hand, as mentally incompetent as Reagan was (we knew about it when he was governor of California, but nobody listened to us) he had a crew of wreckers come in with him who were clever and executed a program that essentially changed the nature of the federal government that was accepted by both political parties. It's a legacy that continues.

I've said that Reagan was responsible for uprooting the Progressive operating system (or paradigm of governmental operations) first in California then in the federal government, and I doubt we'll ever get it back, though strangely that's what a lot of the so-called populists are pining for.

We're actually devolving government into something closer to neoFeudalism.

I have many, many reservations about Progressivism, but most of the time it seemed to be better aligned with the public interest than its replacements.

No, a government that serves only the interests of the Highest of the Mighty, slavishly, is not in the public interest and cannot be.

Trump -- for all his lack of power and authority -- is tilting the government so far over to favor the rich and well-connected that what will emerge After Trump would be unrecognizable as a government at all.

It would be little more than a service to the rich and a disaster to everyone else.

By design, not accident.

That would truly be the apotheosis of neoLibCon rule, and it could easily become a permanent (well, long lasting) state.

The Future looks bleaker every day.