Um, "Royalty"

The other day, for no good reason, I was thinking about my visit to the King Tut exhibit at the De Young in San Francisco some time in the mid '70s. I went with "the wife" (Ms. Ché) and her mother, "Gramma." I was very excited to get tickets as it seemed to be sold out. We drove from the Central Valley, at least 2 hours, and parked, I think, on Fulton St. It was whatever the street was behind the museum. And we only had to walk a little way.

Almost as soon as we entered the exhibit, I began to experience an abdominal cramp. Ultimately, I only saw the famous gold funerary mask and a few of the pretty things left in the tomb before I was in such severe pain that I had to leave. I sat on a bench just outside the doors, then lay down on the lawn in front of the museum, groaning. Maybe an hour or so later, Ms. Ché and her mother emerged from the museum and found me outside. I was still in a lot of pain, but slowly managed to get up and hobble back to the car. Thank goodness it was close. We had planned a number of other stops in San Francisco to eat and to shop, but we decided it would be best to drive home instead. I don't remember whether I drove or she did, but more than likely Ms. Ché did while I groaned in the backseat.

I considered this little aborted adventure one of my few brushes with Royalty, in this case the long dead King Tut -- Tutankhamun. I had a book that was published about that time -- still have it somewhere I'm pretty sure -- that detailed the search for and discovery of the tomb and pictured nearly everything that was found in it most thoroughly and in many cases beautifully. I haven't seen anything like it published since. I wasn't able to enjoy or much appreciate the exhibit at the De Young, but the book filled in most of what I missed. The experience wasn't the same, however.

The abdominal pain was nearly gone by the time we got home, and I didn't have another pain like it for many years. I don't remember ever having a pain like it previously, either. So I still ascribe it to the Curse.

Later that year, or perhaps the year previously or the year after, but still in the mid seventies, I remember lining up on a blacktop driveway with about 20 others working where I was in a little town named Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley awaiting the arrival of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik who were touring the area and were planning on spending a few minutes visiting and having lunch with local dignitaries. I don't know how long we waited, joking about tugging our forelocks and whatnot, being lectured on protocol, etc.

Shortly, the motorcade arrived, led by two motorcycle policemen. The Queen and her consort were being driven in what I recall was a white Cadillac 4 door sedan, but it may have been a Mercedes. What it wasn't was a limousine. There were flags of Denmark and the US on the fenders. The car pulled up to the driveway, and the Queen got out. She was wearing a camel colored coat over a blush pink silk dress, though it may have been sky blue. She had a wide brim camel colored hat on at a jaunty angle, wore white gloves, pearls, and simple beige pumps. She carried a matching purse. As she got out of the car, the small crowd cheered, and she waved. The Prince got out of the other side of the car and came around to meet her. He was dressed in a plain suit, gray I think, and he was very handsome in a Scandinavian sort of way. The Queen, for her part, appeared very young and pretty. She waved and waited a moment while a couple of functionaries appeared from somewhere to lead them to the reception line. 

The Queen said "How do you do?" to everyone as she passed by and shook hands with perhaps five or six of those in the line. I don't recall whether I was one of them, though I can recall the feel of a gloved hand on my own. More likely, she shook hands with the missus who was standing next to me. I think she might have attempted a curtsy, but if she did, it was more in jest than not. 

Prince Henrik for his part followed the Queen at several paces behind, said "How do you do" and shook hands with everyone, thanked people for coming, and seemed quite jolly. The Queen stopped and spoke with the half dozen or so dignitaries and then waved to the rest of us and went inside. We didn't see her again.

For an encounter with royalty, this one was very brief, somewhat surprising, and pleasant. I remember we went to have lunch and chatter about it, then went back to work. 

In October, 2021, I revisited that driveway in Solvang. It was cracked and worn and lined with porta-potties and construction materials. It seemed so much smaller, shorter and narrower than I remembered. Had the Danish royal family really walked this path? I guess they must have, as we stood there in a line, tugging our forelocks and being asked/not asked "How do you do?"

Maybe a decade later, Queen Elizabeth paid a call on George Deukmejian, then Governor of California, in Sacramento. I don't recall whether Prince Philip was with her or not. We'd invited her to visit our workplace a few blocks away from the Capitol, but the Palace politely declined. We walked over to the Capitol to see the Queen, and all I recall is a white gloved hand waving a Royal Wave in the backseat of a black Cadillac limousine as it sped by and then the sight of the same gloved hand waving from the balcony of the Capitol behind thick bullet-proof glass. We didn't actually see Herself at all or if we did, it was only the briefest of glimpses.

I think she was wearing a blue dress and hat.

There was a lesson about these monarchs and their manifestations that we could learn from. They present a very carefully, indeed artfully conceived and prepared facade, rather like the stunning gold mask of King Tut, and they may -- or may not -- be pleasant enough when in the presence of the peasantry, but they don't deal with us rabble at all. No, they have People for that. The ones they deal with more or less directly are the "Dignitaries," the Important People, Those In Charge. Or, contrariwise, those with obscene wealth.

No one else except their staff.

It's been this way for as long as there has been royalty, monarchs and such.We the Rabble sometimes get to look on as They pass by, even now and then see them greet the lowly, but they are not really dealing with us at an official or human level. We are at best useful props, but mostly we're not even there.

This sense of "notness" when dealing with the lower orders is commonplace among many categories of the Upper Crust. The rejection of any contact with People Who Don't Matter is not unheard of. But usually it's a matter of separating and isolating oneself as much as possible while being... um, "polite" when contact can't be avoided. Always maintaining one's distance, keeping the lowly at bay.

Though Tut's tomb was raided and looted by Carter and Carnarvon back in the day, there's a kind of democratization in the presentation of the loot to the public. Anyone who could get a ticket could see the exhibits that have traveled much of the world, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo showed much of the tomb contents for many, many years. 

While he was alive and at his funeral, his person and tomb contents were not for the view of the People. They were a Mystery.

And that is ultimately what all of those who rule us wish to be. Monarchs must have a public presence, but it's a mask. They hide behind the gloved hands and the "How do you do's". What else can they do? What should or could we do about it?

After a while, we might begin to understand how much they loathe us.

Then what?

My mother liked to tell a tale that she was "a direct descendant of Marie Antoinette." I never knew where she got this notion, but when she said it, she adopted a very aristocratic bearing, head high, nose up, chin forward, and spoke in a nasal pitch that was her imitation of posh. No, she wasn't an aristocrat, far from it, though she tried to marry into what she thought were aristocratic families -- well, for America -- and largely failed. But she said her mother's mother was independently wealthy and her mother inherited a fair chunk of money when her mother died. My mother's stepfather, may he rot in hell, then spent it on hairbrained schemes: a motor court and filling station on the Redwood Highway in Willits and then on a very bogus gold mine in Nevada that went belly up when the two "partners" took off with the cash leaving her stepfather to hold the bag, and he just barely escaped going to jail for fraud --- even though he was the main one defrauded. So he lost all the money, his and his wife's inheritance, and moved back to California where he went to work at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, while his wife, my mother's mother, wasted away from untreated stomach cancer -- they were Christian Scientists -- and died in agony a few months later. My mother never forgave her stepfather whom she blamed for her mother's death and for losing her inheritance.'

Much later through Ancestry.com, I learned what may have been part of the source of her claim of Royal descent. My mother's biological father was from a semi-prominent Indiana family that claimed descent from noble Huguenot refugees who settled in Scotland in the 17th century. That was their claim -- passed on to me through a cousin I never knew about who got it from a descendant of my mother's uncle still in Indiana.

I never found a shred of evidence that the story of descent from Huguenot refugees was true, but there was plenty of evidence of rebel Scottish blood coursing through the veins of that family.

Scots and English. Natural enemies united in the United States, raising six sons, maybe not so happily, but surviving and only losing one son to an accidental gunshot wound, and then, of course, losing their black-sheep son -- my mother's father -- to an accident (or maybe not an accident) that cut him in half in a St. Louis railyard when my mother was five years old. 

So it went. My mother was not raised in poverty by any means, but she never had the social status she believed she deserved. She didn't know poverty until she married for the first time. He was a gas station attendant working for her step father -- who always ensured she had "enough" and even gave her a new car in the middle of the Depression. Later her husband became an oil jobber -- selling petroleum products to stations up and down California -- and later still, he claimed to be a vice president for sales at Chevron oil. Was it true? I don't know. But it hardly mattered. He and my mother divorced in 1941, and she struggled for years until she got work at the air base and met my father, scion of what she thought was a rich family in Iowa. Well, that saga will have to wait. 

But this story is already too long. And I'm happy to say the only "royalty" I've found in my ancestry is the possibly bogus story of a Native American "Princess Snowflower" ancestress on my mother's side (she knew nothing of her) and deep in the past, complicated relationships with the Drake family in England. Sir Francis Drake's uncle Sir John was apparently an ancestor, and then there were threads through the British royals through him and his ancestors so deep in the mists of time, Camelot may just reappear in mystery and majesty. 

So it goes....

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?

 

The Genocide(s) on the Horizon

I made a comment on another site recently that it appears a good deal of the "left" of this country is working itself up into a genocidal rage at Russia for crimes real and imagined and not limited to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an earlier comment, I suggested that Russia's invasion, aka "Putin's War", may indeed prove to be his fatal error.

Marching to Moscow, burning the Kremlin and hanging Putin seems to be one of the animating fantasies of the Azov-Nazis defending Ukraine-Kiev. Where does this come from? Well, of course, Hitler failed in his great march across the steppe to Moscow as did Napoleon before him. The Grand Imperialists never seem to be able to conquer Mother Russia, but the urge to do so seems implacable among a certain sort, and so, apparently, here we go again.

The Ukie-Nazis are doing the fighting and largely losing against Russia, but all the USandNato players are doing their part to fund them and supply them and keep the fighting going "to the last Ukrainian." So then my question is "what is the purpose of depopulating and destroying much of Ukraine? Cui bono as it were?

I've noted that the Ukrainian population declined some 30% after the fall of the Soviet Union, and since the invasion, another 25% or so have fled to other parts of Eastern Europe, and some back to Mother Russia itself. Parts of cities and villages have been destroyed. Planting and harvesting has been disrupted. There is no going back to the status quo ante, and it is my suspicion that many of those who have fled the fighting won't go back to Ukraine, either. 

In the meantime, genocidal forces are let loose. Zelensky claims (constantly) that the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine. There is no evidence that this is the case. On the other hand, Putin has made the claim that Ukraine has committed genocide against Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. The eight year Ukrainian war against the Donbas oblasts (and now republics) is cited as evidence, together with the appalling massacres in Odessa and Mariupol in 2014 following the coup against the government of Viktor Yanukovych. Russia, on the other hand, has vowed to "denazify" Ukraine, with particular emphasis on liquidating the Azov Regiment and other neo-nazi elements  of the Ukrainian state. The threat is not to Ukrainians per se, but to groups within the Ukraine who espouse Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology -- and presumably who take action to violently enforce their will.

Which then leads to revenge.

A good many of our overlords seem to like it that way.

We see genocidal rage building in many other areas of the world as well. The United States is no exception. The urge to kill The Other in the US has long been paramount. One could say it is foundational. Now we have a situation where practically everyone is The Other to someone else, a level of alienation and lack of community that may be unprecedented. The internet provides a refuge of sorts, and the simulation of community, which has, from time to time led to extraordinary acts of violence int the real world, acts that by their nature can be characterized as genocidal -- and would be considered so but for the relatively small numbers of targeted groups murdered by the killers.

The internal stresses and tensions could metastasize at any time into generalized mayhem. What then? It seems we've been conditioned to accept it. "Nothing can be done." And our lords and masters are fine with it. So long as it doesn't touch them.

For now, crises compound without much mitigation. Society pretty much everywhere is enduring a stress test. Some will survive. Many won't -- possibly including our own. 

Ukraine Thing

 So that Ukraine Thing continues to fester like a huge open sore that can't heal. It shouldn't have happened to begin with, and once it did, it should have been quickly closed and heavy doses of antiseptic applied, but that's not what we're getting. Just the opposite, mostly. Let's see how much bigger the wound can get, eh?

Sure. Why not? Our rulers must be bored with themselves.

I've said here and in other fora that Russia has their reasons for the invasion of Ukraine and for going Grozny on the neo-Nazi resistance thereunto. I don't like what the Russians did and are doing, and I think they should stop and leave. But that's not going to happen as long as Ukies (oh dear, insults so soon?) are being supplied and re-supplied by the USandNato with mercenaries and materiel to keep the conflict going indefinitely -- and with an increasingly bloodthirsty urge to take the battle all the way to Moscow, burn the Kremlin and hang Putin no matter the risks or consequences to the whole wide world.

Whoever is running this thing, if anyone, doesn't care what happens to the rest of us. Certainly they don't care about the Ukrainians, so many of whom have fled the country so as not to "get caught in the crossfire."

I read a statistic that the population of Ukraine had fallen some 30% since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with the advent of the war, another 20-25% had fled, many of whom will not be returning but will scatter and serve as a boost to the declining population of the rest of White Europe. Oh what a tangled web is woven.

It may be that Ukraine is headed to extinction as a viable state. In some ways it goes with the long-term depopulation of the American Heartland. It drives me nuts that so many of the hot-shot observers of American politics have no idea at all what's going on outside their fancy urban and suburban bubbles and could even begin to hypothesize that "rural America" elected Trump. Then do the diner tour to "prove" (ha) what they already believed. 

People. There simply aren't enough people in "rural America" (definition lacking) to elect anyone to national office, let alone a President. I believe the statistic now is that the population is 89% urban and 10% and change "rural." They think the election of 2016 was "so close."No it wasn't. Hillary won the popular vote in a veritable landslide, but she lost the election because of the Electoral College which awards votes by state. By this means, "rural America" won the presidency for Trump. But even that's not true. No, it wasn't "rural America." It was largely a matter of suburban votes for Trump and voter suppression in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But so what?

The point is that Rural America is largely depopulated, and depopulation seems to be the prime objective of the Ukraine War -- on both sides. The Ukrainian state ceases to exist except as an appendage to one or the other Sides. The Ukrainian people are left to flounder, suffer, and be exploited no matter who marches in the Victory Day Parade -- if there is one.

The risk of course is that this whole Thing is gonna blow up. It's getting very close, and it looks like the double-dog daring  stage has been reached, and half the world is on tenterhooks wondering how much longer it will be before the Nukes start flying.

Our Rulers clearly want that outcome. 

They are playing a very, very sick game.

And there's not a good gottdammed thing we can do about it.

Deplorable.

Some Thoughts on Chaos and the Crazy

The other day, I was pondering the chaos and crazy some of my ancestors and relatives experienced in their lifetimes and now, and of course I was relating it to my own life, and I was extending that thought process to the chaos and crazy that's been afflicting the United States and the world at large for many long years now. 

As I go through these exercises, I start to see more clearly how we are not only all connected but in reality we are all part of the same thing, in Buddhist parlance, we are all the same thing. This was a realization I came to (in a form or flash of enlightenment) many, many years ago, but the details were always elusive. As I get older, the threads of connections and the ground state of being becomes clearer and clearer. 

Afghanistan is "falling" to the Taliban we're told, but in fact, it has never not been "fallen" and the Taliban (however they are conceived) have never not been pre-eminent. They are the Afghan people, whether our establishments and ruling class like it or not, know it or not, and beating them back can only be accomplished through a campaign of extermination, genocide in a word. That hasn't happened... not yet... so the end-state, outcome of the Afghanistan campaign was foregone: right back where we started from. 

The whole campaign was a crock from the get... in a manner of speaking. 😞

It was wrong and wrong-headed and it's led us back to where we began, or nearly so, as time is a spiral not a straight line. 

Not unlike the case of Vietnam, to which comparisons are made more and more starkly and openly. We've been down this road before, haven't we?

How many of our lives are just like that? In many ways, mine certainly is and has been.

What have we learned from our mistakes? What have I learned from MY mistakes?

And how much farther do we have to go?

I'm reminded of an opinion column by Mark Morford from 2017: 

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR END TIMES, AMERICA?

Please read it. And realize he wrote this four years ago. How little has changed. Even though... everything has. 

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... 

🕉

Some Thoughts

Of course I've been paying attention to events, but there's such a level of chaos on so many fronts it's hard to know what's worth the time to explore more and what's just "entertainment."

1) Propaganda. We are immersed in propaganda, sales pitches, and false narratives from the media, politicians, commercial interests and others all the time. We know this, don't we? As a rule, the truth of things beyond our immediate reference point is rarely knowable to most of us. Yes, even science and scholarly research can produce false and misleading information.

Thus, it is always wise to be skeptical about what we are told by authority or somebody trying to sell us something. Not all of it is false, but much of everything we're told is framed to make us believe certain things in certain ways that may not have anything to do with reality.

The Russia Thing has been all about propaganda and the effective use of propaganda for political objectives. There's been an effort to blame-cast Russian propaganda for electing Trump -- which to me has always been simply stupid. Incomprehensibly stupid.

There was Russian propaganda at play, but there was lots and lots of other propaganda coming from many, many sources during the election campaign and afterwards. We used to joke about the Macedonian teenagers spreading false stories about Hillary on Facebook and Twitter and various websites. Yes? So? Apparently there were whole troll farms running internet propaganda campaigns from many locations in and out of the USofA, a good deal of it automated, and yes, they were effective among those particularly vulnerable to what they see, read, and hear on the internet.

I think far too much has been made of anti-Hillary, pro-Trump propaganda, however.Trump won the presidency not because the American people elected him -- far from it -- but because the Electoral College elected him based on 70,000-80,000 unverifiable votes in three states. The voters chose Hillary by more than 3,000,000 votes overall, so it's simply false to say that a majority of the  American People elected Trump. They didn't.

The propaganda of the campaign was effective in disparaging Hillary mostly among those already so inclined. There was no comprehensive or comparable propaganda effort to disparage Trump. That may seem strange given how over the top some of the denunciations of Trump have been since the election, but consider this:

Media gave him and still gives him nearly limitless coverage for anything he says or does or for pretty much anything anyone else says about him. The circus sells. So, they cover it obsessively. The internet has come to set the standard narrative about things such as Trump, and media falls into line. If Trump is trending, which he always is, the media covers him and everyone -- pretty much -- around him. It's a goon show and they love it. Can't get enough of it. It doesn't really matter what kind of coverage he gets, positive or negative, so long as he gets coverage. If that ever stopped, on the other hand...

There has never been any comparable level of coverage for Hillary or Democrats in general, something that once was noted regularly.

What this means is that Rs and now Trump are able to sell their product almost without impediment whereas in so many cases, Ds can't even come up with a product to sell. But even if they did, their sales technique, indeed, their product itself, wouldn't differ much from that of the Rs. The propaganda and the lies would be nearly indistinguishable. What foreign interests and internet meme generators, fake news purveyors, and what have you do or don't do don't really matter all that much -- they are all part of the game being played. Our rulers lie to us. All. The. Time. Some do it more subtly that others, but they all do it.

That Russian and other foreign and domestic interests exploited these characteristics of American politics to sow discord and "influence the election" should be taken for granted. That one or another campaign was entangled with these interests and activities should be seen as the way the game is played.

What should be clear by now, though, is that Americans are way too vulnerable to these tactics and too many of them lack the tools and skill to sort through the garbage. They believe what they believe and whoever/whatever confirms it. Thus, propaganda is more effective than it should be.

2) Gunz. The nightmare continues. I was impressed by the size of the crowds at Saturday's marches for Our Lives. Sadly, however, we know that marches per se, no matter their size, are routinely ignored by Our Rulers, simply because they can and they want to stick it to the Rabble one more time.

On top of the issue of school massacres, there is obviously still a problem with police executions and murders, street mayhem and murder in various cities, and the ridiculous and deadly insanity of the gun lobby's constant demands for more gunz no matter what.

The thing of it is, despite the absolute number of gunz in private hands, fewer and fewer Americans own them. Ponder: something like half the gunz are in the hands of 3% or so of the population. Only 30% or so of households have a gun, and the number is declining. The rest -- apparently -- are in private arsenals like the one maintained by the Las Vegas mass murderer, or... well, something is going on with those arsenals.

There are always so many gunz available in the black market. There are always so many gunz available on the legal market too. Dude in Florida could walk in to his neighborhood gun shop and buy anything he wanted as long as he had the bucks -- which he did somehow -- and could pass the so called "background check" which didn't pick up any of his sketchier behavior and threats. No problem. It's a puzzlement that all of the reports and calls and tips and so on about him were apparently ignored by layers of authorities who were informed and chose to do nothing. If he were Muslim or black or some other disfavored minority, who knows, he might have been tortured on the rack and thrown in the hole for the rest of his life, but apparently, he was a favored minority.

There is some dispute over whether he is an ethnic Hispanic. He was apparently adopted by a Hispanic family and was given a Hispanic name, but that he is not ethnically Hispanic. Most reports say he's "white." Beyond that, it's a muddle.

But despite being a double orphan, he had plenty of money to buy gunz and he did. This happens with some frequency among the mass murder contingent.

I think we can admit that gunz are far easier to get than they need to be, and that the failure of Our Rulers to do anything about it -- except make it easier -- represents policy. A policy of bloodshed as a corrective for the Rabble, keeping them in fear and thus relatively tame. It's not pleasant, but it works.

Thus the kids must fail in their crusade, and they must be seen to fail. We'll see. Even if/when they manage to expel the electeds who insist on the policy of practically unlimited gun access and periodic mass murder, there is more than a little suspicion that the policy won't change much. Because it is effective in keeping the Rabble in its place, fearful, powerless and under control.

We'll see.

3) Another bimbo eruption. Oh dear. The Storm(y) has hit. Of course no one is shocked -- least of all I imagine Melania. But trying to take out Trump over this sort of thing -- no matter how many women come forth (up to 27 at last count) -- seems somewhat silly. I think Clinton showed that you don't get rid of a president because of his sex life. You just don't. It's ridiculous. But here we are, going through nearly the same thing with Trump as with Clinton, and it's deja vu all over again.

Please.

The entertainment value is high, of course, other people's sex lives being endlessly entertaining, but that's about all it is. (Personally, it all makes me kind of ill; I really don't want to know and don't much care.)

But entertainment in these cases always has a purpose. The purpose is to keep you 'n' me distracted while something else, much more important to Our Rulers, is taking place.

What's important to Our Rulers are the policies being enacted: tax cuts, regulatory relief, theft of public resources and wealth, wars and aggression against designated and ever changing enemies, that kind of thing.

That's going on at an accelerated pace no matter the dazzling show.

There's much more of course.
-----------------------------------------------------
I've started a whole bunch of seeds, and have more to start during the next week or so. My health is better but not fully up to par. Will probably be starting physical therapy soon. Ms Ché is getting her BFA in Creative Writing in May and then starting the MFA program in August. She will not be the oldest graduate, but close to it. And she's having the time of her life!

In the midst of all the hoo-hah, there's always something else again.

I may take another long break over the next several months.

We'll see how things settle out.







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.

Losing the Argument

I started a post the other day about the apparently endless flap over the White House response to the death of Sgt. La David Johnson in Niger. Of course the way it has been handled by the White House is appalling to anyone with a shred of decency, but decency is not what it's about.

It's about power and its exercise.

It's not an argument, in other words. It's not something you can rationally consider and come to a conclusion about from an intellectual or even moral standpoint. It's a visceral, immediate, emotional thing, and if you "stand with" the White House and Trump, literally nothing at all will change your mind about it. If you "stand with" the widow, Myeshia Johnson, and with the congresswoman, Frederica Wilson, you won't change your mind, either.

In the end, it doesn't matter. In the end, the one with the most power and the ability to exercise it wins. Period.

The issue I was trying to deal with the other day, however, was not so much that as it was the mechanisms by which power was being exercised in this example.

The White House was exercising textbook gaslighting. It wasn't merely that what they have been saying about it was false, it was that they had the power to say anything they wanted about it and to force you (all) to doubt your own perceptions and sanity in the process.

Trump lied repeatedly about it. It wasn't differing perceptions, it was deliberate lies, meant to put into question the sanity of Rep. Wilson and The Widow, Myeshia Johnson. The White House fabricated and Trump disseminated false stories about what had happened, and the only ones who could correct the record had far less power than the White House and Trump, so their corrections were generally treated as "he said, she said," and as everyone knows, when the President says something, even if it is  wrong or a lie, one must give it due respect.

Not so with a couple of Negro women who can't say anything that a white person is obliged to respect or believe. Everyone knows they... tell tales. Amirite? And that sparkle hat! Who's to believe anybody who wears a sparkle hat on TeeBee? You see? And so it went.

When Gen. Four Star (Ret) Kelly was trotted out to stand at the podium and blatantly smear and lie about the Congresswoman with a purely Gaslighted story about what she said in her dedication speech for the FBI building in Miramar, FL in 2015, it was over. The argument, such as it had been, was lost. It was over.

Here's why: Kelly fabricated out of whole cloth a story of the self-aggrandizing Negress at the dedication who got up, bragged about her prowess in getting the money for the building and for her constituents, and how great she was, and then sat down. It "stunned" the audience, so said Kelly. They couldn't imagine anyone doing such a thing at such a solemn occasion.

Except for the fact that it didn't happen, one might understand his dismay and the dismay of those who were there. How dare she! Right?

Not only was Kelly's description of the event fabricated, a straight out lie as shown in a video of her remarks at the dedication, which did not self-aggrandize at all but celebrated the work of law enforcement and the FBI, and particularly the sacrifice of the agents for whom the building was being named, she never mentioned "getting the money," but only briefly spoke of the request from the FBI  Director that she spearhead legislation to name the building after the fallen agents, a task she took on and which was successfully completed by bipartisan efforts in the House, the Senate and the White House just a few days before the dedication. It wasn't her doing alone, it was the doing of many.

But. Kelly's gaslighting went right round the world several times before the media and the Congresswoman got their pants on. Once the tape showed the General Four Star (Ret) lied, it was too late.

Subsequently, when the White House spox was asked specifically about the General's lies, she doubled down, suggesting that no one should question the word of a Four Star. Of course what she was doing was more gaslighting. She did not and would not address the actual questions about the actual lies Kelly told from the podium. Instead, she was referring to his comments about his son killed in action to deflect from his lies about the Congresswoman, and it seemed as if no one in the media at all, and darned few commenters on the situation, caught it.

From that point, there was mostly just flailing ineffectively.

There really is no defense against gaslighting. I didn't even know what it was until one day I saw the movie from which the term is derived. In it a husband forces his wife to question her own perceptions and sanity through a series of carefully crafted lies and fabrications about his actions and those of others. She witnesses things that contradict what he says, but he says in so many words she's crazy, and what she thinks she sees is not what's going on, oh no not at all. The only defense against the perpetrator is to get away--or take decisive unpleasant action to stop him.

You cannot argue with him.

He will just lie the more, fabricate more falsehoods, and continue to go on about his nefarious business until the bitter end.

And so that's the situation we are in with regard to much more than the fracas over the White House response to the death of Sgt. Johnson.

They get away with it because they have the power to do so.

It's a deeply, deeply dangerous situation for the rest of us.

Joke-ification

I can't say I know what's really going on because I don't, but the view from out here in the wilderness of the continuing spectacle in DC is both alarming and hilarious.

The "President" is a running gag, but he's a joke whose policy effects are real and devastating for many. He seems to be intent on causing as much harm as he can to as many people as he can before his plug is finally pulled and he's hooked off the stage for good and all. He seems to know he doesn't have that much longer in the Oval Office -- if indeed he's actually in office and not just someone else's puppet on a string.

It's never been clear with him.

But then, nothing is.

Congress, for its part, seems nearly incapable of functioning so long as there are these pesky "parties" and "politics' going on. The rare agreements, like sending Calista Gingrich to the Vatican (oh, that should work out well) as ambassadress are often more symbolic of "supporting our own" and real policy moves.

They can't do much more without pissing off someone. Some time. Some where. And too many of them are terrified of the consequences of pissing off the wrong person/people at the wrong time.

The White House seems to be run by The Generals whose objective appears to be committing as much mayhem, death and destruction (directly or by proxy) as they can in as many places as they can so as to force the rebels (whomever they may be) to desist and submit. I keep seeing references to all the death and destruction committed by Obama and Mrs. Clinton, but never anything about the death and destruction an order of magnitude greater committed by Trump and His Generals. It's as if Obama and Mrs. Clinton are still in charge -- of whatever they were in charge of. They are blamed no matter what happens.

Trump and His Generals don't actually exist. Or something.

The legitimacy of the courts has been under question since the appalling Bush v Gore SCOTUS decision almost 20 years ago now. Whatever the corrupt courts decide is subject to a perfect storm of dispute and disagreement. No longer is justice found in the courts (assuming it ever was).

So here we are. Effectively, we're being ruled by a junta fronted by a buffoon.

What did we do to deserve this?

Let Them Die?

I don't know what's going on in the Caribbean islands and Puerto Rico, but it sounds like something terrible is underway, worse perhaps than the botched Katrina rescue and recovery efforts.

The infrastructure throughout much of the Caribbean and Puerto Rico appears to have been destroyed to the point where there is no electricity, sewage treatment, potable water, and much housing has been flooded, wind-damaged or destroyed completely. This is much much worse than the post-apocalyptic hurricane situation in Florida and Texas. Hospitals are inoperative. There's little or no food available for millions of people.

"Looting" is underway (well, you know who's doing it, so it has to be "looting" rather than scavenging survival supplies.) Desperate measures are being taken by survivors on some islands, as humanitarian efforts appear to be absent or totally inadequate.

Under the circumstances, survivors do what they must, and it isn't always pretty.

There are reports that suggest Puerto Rico is being deliberately neglected by the High and the Mighty in DC, as if to say "let them die." After all, there are too many of "those people" anyway, aren't there?

Much the same was the case in Louisiana after Katrina. Volunteer rescue efforts were organized but not allowed to proceed. Innocent people walking on a bridge were shot and killed by police who then lied about what they had done. Those weren't the only ones killed by New Orleans' "finest." They were on a murder rampage. The lies about what was happening in the Superdome, where thousands of refugees had assembled, were nonstop and some of them are still being told. After all, so many of those who took refuge there were poor and black, and well. You know what that means? Babies are raped and eaten; the dead are stacked like cordwood under the stands; the animals are shitting and pissing everywhere.

Thousands died, to be sure, most of them drowned. Many of the dead were simply left to die.

And here we go again.

Monstrous.



As The Russia Thing Continues to Metastasize

This long ago got boring I know, but the Russia Thing continues to grow and flourish on the internet and throughout the media firmament; it is this summer's sharks and missing white women story on steroids.

Of course no matter its ever broadened net, no matter how many Trump or Clinton campaign advisors and staff it ensnares, ultimately it appears there will be no there there for the simple reason that it's not meant for a denouement, it's meant to keep the Rabble (and some of their Betters) entertained and distracted while the serious business of neoLibCon looting and pillage and slaughter continues relentlessly.

The Juggernaut must not be interfered with in any way.

Barring the Who-Knows-What, it won't be.

Evidently Grenfell Tower Was Unsafe for Habitation

There is a kind of panic in Britain right now due to the Grenfell Tower fire and what it has exposed about the high rise buildings (4,000 of them I'm told) used for "social housing" all across the UK.

Many have exterior cladding supplied by the same company as that which supplied cladding for the Grenfell Tower, cladding which undoubtedly contributed to the spread of the fire on the exterior of the building.

It's puzzled me why the fires burned so fiercely inside the flats, however, and why so many people were unable to escape.

Supposedly, these buildings are constructed to confine fire to individual flats. Fire shouldn't be able to spread like it did at Grenfell, even if the exterior cladding is combustible. Or so you would think.

But other factors appear to have been involved that ensured the building lit up like a torch, inside and out, within minutes of the flames first being spotted on the outside -- which was itself within minutes of extinguishing a "fridge fire" in a fourth floor apartment.  As far as I can tell, that fire was caused by a shorted out refrigerator plug, but I'm not entirely sure because I've seen no details of just what set off that fire.

Other factors include wiring within the flats that may have been "illegal." Wiring and positioning of plugs was of particular concern according to the residents' association. This may have contributed to the "fridge fire."

In addition, new-ish gas piping was exposed throughout the building, though promises had been made to box it in with fire resistant materials. Some of that boxing had been accomplished, primarily the vertical runs in the stairwell (singular) but there were exposed gas pipes running to each flat near the ceilings in the hallways on each floor. Some residents who escaped said they heard explosions and saw blue flames emitted from these pipes as they fled the building.

Finally, there was only one stairwell for escape; once the upper floors were involved in the fire, there was no way to reach it or use it. Most of those on the  upper floors were trapped with no way out.

Some died in the stairwell from smoke and fumes.

There were no fire sprinklers in the building because they were not considered necessary due to construction that was supposed to isolate and confine fires. There may not have been interior fire hoses (not entirely clear). Residents stated there were no building-wide fire alarms, and residents themselves went door to door to warn of the approaching fire.

Residents also stated that the window frames were vinyl and melted in the heat of the exterior fire which allowed the flames to enter flats from the outside.

Given all these factors, the building was manifestly unsafe for habitation, unsafe in part because of recent "improvements" -- such as the combustible cladding and the exposed gas piping. It was a torch waiting to be lit.

How many other social housing towers in Britain are like this is anyone's guess, but at this point, every building whose cladding has been tested has failed. There are said to be 600 + buildings across Britain with suspect cladding; not just housing but schools and hospitals as well. Almost all of them -- of course -- serve the less well off.

How many of them also have hazardous or "illegal" wiring? How many of them have exposed gas pipes?

How many of them have only one stairwell exit that becomes unusable in a fire?

How many of them have vinyl window frames that will melt in a fire?

How many of them have no fire alarms, no interior sprinklers, no interior fire hoses?

In other words, how many of them are as manifestly unsafe as Grenfell? Why in the name of all that's holy were people living (and then dying) in Grenfell, and what will be done about all the other unsafe buildings people are living in?

According to reports, thousands of residents have been told to leave their tower blocks while "safety repairs" are undertaken. Some are resisting as people will do under the circumstances. Reports indicate that ultimately hundreds of thousands of people may be displaced, schools and hospitals closed, and so on, as the extent of the cockup and the fire hazards become better understood.

From the beginning, though, I've suspected that there was a deliberate intent, if you will, behind the suddenly discovered fire hazard. The cladding was known to be combustible but it was used anyway because it was a little bit cheaper than comparable less combustible cladding. The exposed gas pipes were hazardous on their face, and promised to enclose them were not kept in a timely fashion. The building was designed with only one stairwell, too bad if residents couldn't make use of it to escape.

In other words, the hazards were known, the failure was built in, and in a sense the tragedy was meant to happen, an inevitability given the unwillingness of The Powers That Be to ensure the safety of the residents. Those who say it was murder have a point. At the very least it was negligent homicide.

And given the way these sorts of things have devolved in the past, nothing will be done to improve the situation for the victims. But quite a few people will see their power enhanced and their wealth improved from "trying."

What have we done to deserve this?

Medical Care Boondoggle Continues

It's become almost impossible to sort through the charges and countercharges being leveled over Obamacare and the efforts to "repeal and replace" it with something is "better" by making things worse for millions upon millions of Americans.

What is wrong with these people?

The fact is that Obamacare is widely disliked for its absurd complexity and -- for many users -- sky high costs for premiums and deductibles. For some users, it's been a godsend, and that should be acknowledged. The fact is, many of those people will lose coverage and access to healthcare that arguably keeps them alive should the current Trumpcare proposals be enacted. Tough luck suckers, this is making America great again, don'tchaknow.

The problem, of course, is that Trumpcare is just a crueler version of Obamacare, and given their druthers, Americans don't want either neoLiberal boondoggle.

They want universal coverage and universal access to healthcare, paid for like they do almost everywhere else, through taxes.

"Medicare for All" is one way to do that.

But our political class on both sides of the aisle avoid that obvious solution like the plague. They will not consider it.

Absolutely will not consider it.

This is yet another example of the rulers deliberately governing contrary to the public interest and the popular will in order to serve the special interests of well-connected campaign donors, lobbyists, and would-be Royals.

Voting has little or no effect on that constant condition.e

Trumpcare, the current Republican version of neoLiberal Obamacare, makes health insurance and health care matters demonstrably worse for tens of millions of Americans, and it does so consciously and deliberately while preserving the basic structure and mechanisms of Obamacare.

Bizarre? Well, no. It's what these people do. Once they have an idee fixethey stick with it till the bitter end, and even then... Look at the endless wars. Same thing.

And the electorate cannot -- generally speaking -- affect the situation in any way.

We are stuck in a loop.

No way out.

Or is there?

Is It Getting Real Yet?

I've been pondering the Grenfell Tower fire in London as possible arson, or a deliberate "let 'em burn" incident.  Once I saw that many/most of the residents and victims were of the Muslim persuasion, I couldn't shake the idea that somehow the fire was revenge for the Manchester incident and the London Bridge incident.

I've seen Teresa May on the teevee stumbling and bumbling through her talking points, points which she repeats by rote no matter what the question is. That says to me she knows something she dare not state. She's too frightened to state it.

Or something.

The Grenfell Tower fire was awful but very evocative too. It reminded me of the World Trade Center fires after the planes hit in 2001; it reminded me, too, of the Odessa Trades Union House massacre in 2014.  Both were deliberate -- and opportunistic.

They were meant to inspire fear and terror, which they did. But they took advantage of weaknesses and unknowns to full effect as well. Did the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks know that the World Trade Center buildings would collapse causing far more damage, death and destruction than if only parts of the buildings had burned but the rest had remained standing? I doubt it. But they knew how to take full advantage of the situation.

The cause of the fire at the Union House in Odessa is pretty well understood; the mob outside was using Molotov cocktails which started a number of small fires inside and outside the building. It is said that those holed up inside also had access to and used Molotov cocktails against the mob outside.

Somehow, it's not exactly clear how, one or more cans or barrels of gasoline or other petroleum in the lobby of the building exploded sending fire up the stairwell, incinerating dozens of people.

The effect of the fire was to shut down the Odessa resistance to the Nazi coup in Kiev. Worked like a charm by taking advantage of fortuitous circumstances. I doubt the mob outside the Trades Union House in Odessa had any idea they would be able to spark such a level of death and destruction inside. But once they did, they made the most of it.

And so it goes.

Which is why I wonder about the Grenfell Tower fire in London. There had been a number of attacks, after all, against soft targets in London and Manchester, leading to several dozen deaths and injuries. These attacks were said to be the work of "ISIS" or whatever the most current iteration of Islamic Terror is. While the death toll and destruction was quite low comparatively speaking, and in each case the perpetrators were dispatched (either self-dispatched or shot by police) the incidents inspired an enormous level of shuddering terror in the British public -- which I assume they were intended to do.

It has become the custom to take revenge after a terrorist attack against targets in the West. But in the case of the recent British attacks, there was no one to take revenge against.

The pent up rage could easily lead to something like the Grenfell Tower fire or to what appears to have been an attack by van on Muslims worshiping in North London last night.

Tit for tat, don't you know?

Of course I don't know that's what's going on, but that's what it feels like.

There have been any number of relatively small scale attacks on Muslims in this country. Some of it is just silly, like the recent March Against Sharia. But some of it is deadly, too -- such as the apparent murder of a Muslim girl in Virginia.

Trump and his minions opened the Pandora's Box of violence against the Designated Others (including Muslims) during the campaign last year, and we are witness to or victims of the consequences. Random acts of violence which had been routine are becoming focused on certain targets.

Nothing quite like that had been common in Britain, though the Brexit campaign had opened a Pandora's Box of violence against the Other there as well. Thus, something like the attacks we've seen -- tit for tat in a way -- was almost inevitable, and so was something like the Grenfell Tower fire (even if it wasn't deliberate.)

This sequence of violence is far from over. I see no desire among Our Rulers to end it in any case. What they want, of course, is protection for themselves. The rest of us, as far as they're concerned, can disappear tomorrow and they wouldn't care.

Is it getting real yet?

More to come, no doubt.

Doing the Wrong Thing

Doing the wrong thing seems to be the way of our governing class, and that includes Trump. That he continues to be lauded and supported at all is interesting, "clarifying" you might say, because it shows up his prime supporters for who they are: nihilists, racists, reactionaries and would-be revolutionaries if they only had some courage. But they don't. They're cowards looking to lord it over someone, somehow, preferably by divine right.  IE: delegation by the God Emperor.

That's what they are supporting him for. They are hoping that he will assume the Purple and finally Rule once and for all as he should, from the Throne, brooking no opposition, giving no quarter to his enemies, enforcing obedience with whatever violence the situation requires.

Doing the wrong thing, indeed.

Except that's what his supporters and defenders want.

Enough of the business of politics. Enough with listening to the losers. Enough with mollycoddling the snowflakes. Enough with the Clintonites.

Time to put a final nail in the coffin of the Democrat (sic) Party.

Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!

They revel in every wrong move from On High.

Withdrawing from the Paris Accords (which apparently is a symbolic thing, but I'll get to that eventually) thrilled them. Of course it's been pointed out that the United States is now the only nation on earth that doesn't support the aims and goals of the Accords to deal with climate change as a common cause among peoples and nations. The two other nations that have not agreed to the Accords, Nicaragua and Syria, have their reasons -- Nicaragua because they didn't go far enough and Syria because the Assad regime was not allowed to represent the nation at the negotiations and thus no one was empowered to agree to the Accords for Syria.

The reason for Trump's withdrawal: Selfish, pissy, "nyah, nyah" to the rest of the world. That's about all. And that's what thrills his supporters and defenders. "Sticking it" to whomever is their prime objective. Sticking it, essentially, to anyone and everyone who disputes or disagrees  with their chosen Ultra-Alpha.

Many have claimed that Trump intends to destroy the ruling neoLibCon paradigm, freeing us and the world from its horrors. No, I think not, and I have argued that instead, Trump intends to consolidate it and impose it far more thoroughly and harshly than it has been heretofore (the example of Greece under the neoLibCon thumb is instructive). We see every indication of it in his budgets, statements, and actions, but his supposedly "progressive" supporters especially let them pass as if they were angel's wings, nothing to be alarmed at. Nothing at all.

It's more of doing the wrong thing. Sometimes in hopes that eventually the Right Thing will emerge and whatever horrors arise in the interim --oh well. Christian Martyrs, you know. Can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Eggs are losers. Too bad so sad.

In addition to doing away with politics, they seem to want to do away with the bulk of human population, disposing of practically everyone who is... well, let's be honest.. not white enough.

"Overpopulation" is a constant theme with them. The answer is disposal. They celebrate climate change because it will eliminate a shit ton of brown people. Whoo-hoo!

So of course Trump's withdrawal from Paris would be seen in a positive light.

The problem is that our less radical neoLibCon rulers are intent on doing the wrong thing too. Only less short term destructively. It's amazing.

There is really no one at all among the elites of governing, business, or finance who sees doing the right thing for the masses and the rabble as important or necessary. No one.

We cannot rely on them to do what should be and needs to be done.

There is only one way to solve a governing crisis of this magnitude. The upcoming elections in Britain may give a clue, but I suspect the results will be disappointing given the recent attacks in London and Manchester. We'll see.

At some point, the People, the Masses, the Rabble have to put the fear in the governing classes, particularly those in the Trump camp, but not solely them. So far, the Rabble has not been able to do it, not consistently and effectively at any rate, and it is partially because the Rabble are divided, almost atomized, and do not see a common interest with one another --unless of course it is to "stick it" to some other element of the Lower Orders.

There is no agreement about what Doing the Right Thing entails.

And so it goes.

The devolution will continue.

Saving the NeoLibCon Paradigm

So Emmanuel Macron is being hailed as the Great White Hope of the neoLibCons, saving the paradigm from the likes of the nasty and unrepentant white rightists who have been running rampant through the Euro-Anglo-American globalist Empire.

Indeed.

Or perhaps not.

The situation in France still seems somewhat fluid as "doubts" about Macron's mandate continue in the face of his rather thumping defeat of the white rightist candidate LePen. The problem I'm hearing most frequently is that he ran and won without traditional party support and he will have a tough, nay impossible time winning a majority in parliament, leaving him in a kind of limbo with little or no political backing.

On the other hand, there is a remarkable propaganda effort to prop him up as the savior of civilization in the face of the barbarian hordes -- such as Trump and his diminishing cohort of fanboys.

Hillary and Obama apparently are going all in trying to save the paradigm for the next generation, and I even heard Condoleeeeeeezzza Rice on the radio yesterday defending not just the appalling catastrophe of the Iraq invasion and occupation but the neoLibCon ideas behind that and so much of the disaster we've been heir to since (it seems like) forever.

These people are never right, but they are intent on bulling their way forward in their wrongness come what may.

Great.

Just great.

What did we do to deserve this?

The Healthcare Insurance Trainwreck

It's been odd -- to say the least -- watching so many self styled progressives defend the contraption called Obamacare. A contraption meant to ensure the profits of the insurance cartels in perpetuity. As a side benefit, some people who otherwise wouldn't have health insurance can get it. Others are out of luck.

It looks like the Rs will "repeal and replace" Obamacare with their own contraption that will most certainly punish and kill people -- why not? tough luck suckers! -- as well as ensure the profits of favored members of the insurance cartel. (Molina, watch yer back, hear me?)

And so it goes.

Of course at no time has either major party even considered doing away with the stupid, aggravating and too often deadly health "care" contraption that relies on private/commercial health care insurance through giant companies who intend to profit no matter what.

Until that happens, the trainwreck will continue to plow into the ditch and people who otherwise wouldn't will die.

Himself and Global War Fever

Oh my.

As was easily anticipated, Himself''s blooding in Syria over the supposed gas attack supposedly launched by the Devil Assad "against his own people" has led to one Hosanna after another, and the beating of pretty constant war drums targeting just about anyone and everyone who gets in his face or way. Always with the eager snapping of the media flacks for moar war, and with a surprising eagerness by foreign leaders to join in the fray.

Well, of course. War distracts from misrule like nothing else, it gets the patriotic juices flowing, it provides enormous ratings boosts to the media cartels, it delivers piles of money to the arms makers and all their subsidiaries, and it gives meaning to so very many lives (h/t Chris Hedges).

Now of course, the imagery going in to the latest phase of this bloody - permanent business was that Himself, the Peace and Deal Maker, would keep us out of War (cf: Woodrow Wilson, heh heh heh) because nationalist priorities, while Herself, the Hag, would immediately precipitate WWIII, nuclear annihilation, yadda yadda, all of which was fantasy and bullshit, and now that the curtain has been partially pulled back, I want to yell, "Told ya so!" but nobody would listen anyway.

We're so far through the Looking Glass now, nothing seems real anymore.

The bullheaded naivete of those who have no clue how government works, and who think that somehow beclowning the presidency with Trump will keep the peace or that elevating the Hag to the Big Chair will provoke Immediate War has been a feature not a bug of the latest round of delusions about the election and Important Matters.

These people appear to be gamers with no insight at all because they have no knowledge and don't wish to learn. They wish to assert, boldly, blindly. Because they can.

Those of us who do have some idea about the workings of the government are ignored simply because it's inconvenient to those whose assertions rule their understanding of reality.

They believe Trump is something he never was.

More like them, and that means.... who knows what?? They don't know themselves -- except for their anti-establishment yearnings. And then when they unexpectedly become the establishment... implosion ensues.

As for Hillary, Red Queen indeed.

Projection, rather.

No, she was not the ideal, far from it. Would she have been so chaotic? No. Would she have launched WWIII on her first day in office? No.

Would we have seen the same sequence of bloody-business in Mosul, the Yemen, and Syria? Uh, probably.

In other words, nothing -- really -- would change regardless of who sits in the Big Chair. The style would differ one from another president, oh yes. But beyond that? Not much.

Why? Well, because. We have a permanent government, a permanent governing class, and everyone involved is socialized to it. Including Trump himself. He's been a playah for decades, though perhaps on the margins rather than in the center. The point is, he's a known quantity to the Power Elites, he is more easily controlled than his acolytes want to believe, and he's basically a gangster.

No problem.

So here we go a-wilding, not so much because of him -- or in spite of him -- but because that's what our governing class does, chaos or no, public interest and popular will be damned. They do not care.

It's an infection that's spread throughout the West -- and parts of the rest of the world to boot.

Maybe the Kremlin thought they could take advantage of it. I don't know. Maybe they wanted to be part of it. Who can say?

But things are spinning -- once again -- out of control. Who knows where we will wind up?

What a whirled.

Plowing Toward Defeat

The health care "repeal and replace" fiasco follows on any number of other failed efforts by the White House and the Trump Regime to force this or that policy or action.

Politifact has been tracking the "progress" of  Trump Regime policies and promises, and it's interesting to see what is moving forward -- however haltingly -- and what is stalled or abandoned. Most of Trump's efforts to fulfill campaign promises are effectively non-operative, but some are going forth.

The "Repeal and Replace" debacle is a spectacular failure, but the courts have thwarted the Muslim Ban (for now), the "Deep State" continues to undermine the Regime's authority, the Russia Thing continues to metastasize, the military seems to be going off on its own wreaking havoc in foreign lands without oversight by the White House, and so on. This is only part of what Chaos has wrought, and it is only the first 60 days of the Regime-in-Power.

My sense is that Trump and his boys and girls in the White House were effectively neutered during the last week of February. The courts would not yield to his Authority over the Muslim Ban, the signs were that the Health Care saga would result in defeat or at best a Pyrrhic Victory, the permanent government (the bureaucracy) was in open revolt, the media continued to taunt and in some ways to terrorize (I know, loaded term) the Regime, the polls were going south fast, and for all intents and purposes, Trump was checkmated. What he wanted, he could not have without the cooperation of the governing cliques, the media, the courts and the congress.

All of whom and more he had spent his political capital threatening, alienating, insulting, and denigrating.

This may work in the gangster real estate/casino framework Trump is used to, but it clearly doesn't work in government -- at least not beyond his loyalists in DHS/ICE/CBP. Hm. Who'd a thunk?

The Loyalist faction is interesting, too.

These elements have the potential to operate as a kind of Gestapo serving Trump's -- or someone else's -- interests, and that seems to be what they want to do. Very much so. I'd say their loyalty to Trump is ephemeral, but it is clear that they see their mission as political, forcing compliance with executive command.

What was wrought with the creation of these entities? We're finding out, aren't we? As long as their efforts appear to be focused on foreigners, brown people, non-conformists, what's to worry, right?

Not a wise attitude it seems to me.

Some of their efforts have been thwarted or mitigated by public outrage, but how long that will last is a question. The demonstrations can have an effect, but the returns are diminishing. There's only so much the Rabble in the streets can accomplish. Given our system, there's only so much they are allowed to accomplish, viz: Occupy, Black Lives Matter, NoDAPL, etc.

But something else is going on well outside the purview of the public; Trump is only being allowed so much rope -- apparently to hang himself. And he's doing a bang-up job of it, too.

Under the circumstances, it's looking more and more like he's headed for crash-and-burn defeat, sooner rather than later. Superficially, it may be entertaining as hell, but it's not good for the nation -- for it exposes so many of the weaknesses and worse in our system. We are not prepared to replace it with something better.

Until that time comes, we're in a world of hurt, regardless of who sits in the Big Chair.

What a whirled.