OK

So the Ukraine Thing is becoming very strange, turning inside out. Just what is going on, we don't know, partly because there is almost no non-narrative based on the ground reporting, no livestreaming, no embeds, no honesty, either. 

It's all propaganda, every bit of it, at least up to now. This is the ninth-tenth-thirteenth-fourteenth day since the Russian incursion. We've seen the same building blow up again and again, the same satellite still image of the same long-long convoy stalled outside Kiev/Kyiv, the same crying woman in the subway, the same neonatal unit in the bomb shelter, the same hospital bombed to smithereens, the same pregnant woman carried away from the ruins... well, it's the same over and over.

Now we're told that the assault on the nuclear plant wasn't quite what we were told before. The reactors were never in danger, there was no radiation leakage, the Ukrainian staff is still on the job, the Russians are in control of the plant, nothing to see here, move along. 

And so on. Again and again, "Move along."

One thing I've made note of repeatedly is that Putin's grievances have some basis in fact, and yet that does not justify an invasion. USandNato propaganda insists there is no basis for Russian grievances. No Nazis, no genocide, no oppression of Russian speakers, and furthermore Ukraine has always existed, and Ukrainians and Russians are totally different people. This is absurd.

Ukraine is a democracy dagnabbit! 

Uh. No.

But let's get some clarity, ok? If our rulers actually believe the bullshit they're spewing, then we've got to come to grips with some things and we better do it quick. I think it was DW that did one of the more interesting "fact checks" on Putin's grievances, declaring them all "false" and yet in the little explanations, admitting they were all at least partly true.

Let's see if I can find it.

Ja, here we go.  

First grievance and objective: "Denazify" Ukraine.

DW declares it "false" because someone in Sweden said that Zelensky is Jewish and was elected by an overwhelming majority (true)... therefore.... what? There are no nazis in the government and military of Ukraine?

Wellllllll, not exactly.

The entire propaganda apparatus in the USandNato uses the formula that because Zelensky is Jewish and was elected by an overwhelming majority, Putin's complaint about Ukrainian nazis is bogus.

Let's see what DW says further about it, tho: "there are far-right groups..." and during the Euromaidan uprising "individual far right groups" (whatever that means) were involved, but today, far-right groups like the notorious Azov Battalion are integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, so.... what? Not nazis now? Or what? 

And while there have been scandals regarding the far-right in the Ukrainian military they were exposed, So... so...? Again, they admit a basis for the complaint but deny its validity because "Zelensky is Jewish."

This is absurd, but oh well. Let's go on.

Complaint: Nato troops advancing toward Russia's borders. Is this true? DW says it's "misleading" and then admits it is true, getting more true every day, only it's not in formation, so what's the problem, eh?  Ukraine is not (or was not) being admitted to Nato despite all the alliances, bases, and training with Nato that were in place and expanding prior to the Russian invasion. It wasn't just Ukraine. Oh no. 14 formerly Warsaw Pact countries have joined Nato, four of them bordering Russia, and they all have Nato troops and ordnance on their borders. 

Complaint: Russia must defend itself from Nato aggression and the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk under the UN Charter chapter 7 article 51.

This gets tricky. Russia launched a preventive war which UN charter allows under very limited circumstances which Russia has invoked but Nato denies. Russia claims that Nato activities and troops on its borders are a provocation and a threat; Nato's activities in Ukraine were explicitly a threat to Russia, and the Zelensky government made other explicit threats (including reacquiring nuclear weapons) which precipitated action by Russia against Ukraine.

This argument is essentially the same one the USandNato used against Afghanistan and Iraq, the first with UN concurrence, the second without. Does this constitute "justification?" Well, obviously, if the USandNato does it, yes. If Russia or any other nation (except Israel) does it, no.

Complaint: Genocide by Ukrainian nazis against Russian and Russian speaking civilians. Again, tricky. "Genocide" has a very specific definition in international law, and what the Ukrainian civil government, armed forces and militias have been doing since 2014 technically fits that definition, though the scale of "genocide" in Ukraine is debatable. And it is genocide against Russians and Russian speakers within the borders of Ukraine. Indeed, since the start of the Russian incursion, it's only gotten worse, with rumors of nazi-ish death squads activated to liquidate pesky-Ruskies who've not fled to Russia or the Donbas already.

There is no genocide according to DW because there haven't been any documented "mass killings" of Russians and Russian speakers -- despite the fact that there have been -- and even if there weren't, "genocide" is not at all limited to Babi Yar type mass executions of many thousands at one go or to Auschwitz type extermination camps. Of course DW -- and all the rest of Western propaganda media -- knows this, but what they know doesn't matter when the truth is to be masked no matter what in service to a narrative.

And that narrative says that Russia's behavior is bad -- it is. That narrative says that Ukraine's behavior is above reproach -- it isn't. That narrative claims that the USandNato are doing their utmost on behalf of enabling Ukraine to defend itself without going directly against Russia -- debatable. And that Ukraine and the USandNato have never, ever done anything to antagonize the Russian bear -- demonstrably false.

I've been an anti-war activist since Vietnam, and I'm not about to change my stripes now. I have no brief for any side in this conflict. They're all wrong and they're all doing wrong in a very dangerous Guns of August - Missiles of October manner for which there is no excuse, none. Our ruling classes are out of their minds, following urges that date back very far but which are invalid in the current circumstance. In fact, there are so many far more important things they should be dealing with but utterly refuse to. They want war and they will have it come what may.

We the rabble have no choice in the matter.

Welcome to Eternity.

Cold Update

Frozen pipes. They're never any fun, but this cold snap managed to freeze the supply line to the toilet, the hot water line to the bathroom (even though we left a trickle running) as well as the drain lines from the bathroom and the kitchen sink. We had running water in the house, but for several days could not get it out except in buckets. 

We've had freezes before but nothing quite like this wherein the seizure was all but complete even though we took precautions. Temps were much lower for a longer period than we'd ever experienced, and the truth is with the drain lines, there's almost nothing we could have done to prevent their freezing given the temperatures (one overnight was 19 or 20 below zero) we were experiencing.

This house wasn't built for that kind of cold, and in fact, it hardly ever happens. Below zero over nights and never above freezing daytimes (sunshine, tho!) for more than a day or so is rare. The plumber who came to help clear out the bathroom blockage said he'd lived in this area all his life and nothing like this kind of cold had happened in his memory. There were busted pipes all over, but not as many as would have happened when most everyone had metal pipes. Now of course it's PEX, and that can freeze without bursting. 

Only the kitchen sink drain is still frozen. Hopefully, if the outside temp is warm enough, it will clear today.

And we'll catch our breath for a moment and go on.

Someone stole our St. Francis statue off the front porch during one of the very cold nights. We've had him for quite a while, and he was getting kind of battered. He's plaster and hollow and parts had been breaking off (a large hole had appeared on his left shoulder and pieces were breaking on his back) but he was the Protector of our house and its animals (of which there are many.)

I discovered him missing when I opened the front door to check on the cats. Just a half hour before, I'd gone out to inspect the drain access -- and found the accesses full to the brim with a film of ice on top. It was very cold outside. We heard what sounded like a cat ringing the plastic bell by the door the way they do to let us know they want to come in. It sounds like a soft knock. But we didn't check for at least another fifteen minutes or so. That's when I saw that the five-foot high statue of St Francis with his birds and animals was gone.

It was a shock. 

Why would anyone take a deteriorating plaster statue of St. Francis? And who would do a thing like that? Where would he go?

I drove around the neighborhood seeing if there was any sign of him, but no.

In the morning I found that there was a set of footprints in the snow outside leading directly from the street to the porch and back to the street. Then later, I found another set of footprints that had come up the driveway and then to the front porch and then went back down the driveway. A scout perhaps? I don't know.

At any rate, St. Francis -- well, this one -- disappeared/was taken (we have another terra cotta one in a pyracantha hedge near the front porch) soon after Ms Ché bought a Bill Worrell style metal shamanic statue that we have installed by the side door (where my attacker entered last summer) and who seems to be settled in nicely, cold and snow or no.

I suspect there's some kind of symmetry going on. Only so many Protectors at one time maybe, and two St Francises at the front door is a bit lily gilding, no?

So we wait for the unfreezing of the final drain -- hopefully today -- and trust that St. Francis is now protector of the animals somewhere he's needed.

Otherwise, I might begin to lose faith in humanity.

-----------------------------

Update to the update:

The kitchen sink drain did unfreeze late yesterday after I wrote the piece above; we found, however, that the laundry-room drain is still frozen. Tried a load of laundry and found out; luckily I was close to the washer when it started draining mostly onto the floor and was able to turn the washer off before too much water flowed where it shouldn't. Called the plumber back, but I think we'll just have to wait for warmer weather. Meanwhile, I'll get to work on emptying the washer by hand. Oh m'back!

----------------------------

Twenty buckets later the washer is empty, the clothes and such that were in it are rinsed and dried, the water on the floor is mopped up, but the laundry room drain remains stubbornly frozen. Daytime temps in the low-mid 50s, overnights in the low 20s should unfreeze it soon, but it hasn't happened yet. 

The plumber wondered how the drains and supply lines were arranged. In the walls? Nope. Under the house. Hanging free? Yeah, pretty much. Insulated? No. Welp, that's why they freeze. But I pointed out that they only do it when low temps -- ie: single digit or below zero -- persist for a long time, and daytimes are never above freezing. Yap. That's the way it goes. He told the story of growing up one town over, where winter temps are at least as cold as they are here and there is much more snow (usually). He said the pipes at his place would freeze every winter, sometimes for a long time, and that finally his father crawled under the house and insulated the pipes with pool noodles. It was quite a task he said. But it worked. Could I do that here? I said I didn't think so. The floors are actually less than a foot above the ground, so there's no real crawl space. The drains that freeze shouldn't but they do because part of them are exposed under the house before they converge on the main line under ground. When it is cold enough, it's almost impossible to keep them from freezing. He said try running more hot water than just a trickle during cold snaps, enough to make steam in the drain lines, as that could help keep them open. 

The laundry room drain, though, is a problem. We had that one put in some years ago. It looked like there was a drain there when we moved in, but we found on first use it was blocked, and when we had a plumber look at it, we discovered it didn't go to the main drain but simply dropped water into a pit under the laundry room. Oh fine. 

So we had a proper drain for the washer installed. It meant digging to make all the connections, and lo and behold, the plumbers made a discovery. It wasn't really a pit that the bogus washer drain drained into, it was a semi-basement with a dirt floor and a staircase under what's now a bank of pantry cabinets. Oh. Maybe it was a root cellar. Or even a storm cellar. Who knows. But that's what the laundry room and a portion of the kitchen were built over, and that was where the laundry room drain drained into. 

The drain line we had installed in the laundry room is partially attached to the floor joists and is exposed to the ambient temperature which is essentially whatever the temperature is outside. So. It freezes like now. This is the first time, though.

So far no burst pipes, so at least there's that.

I'm contemplating a grand renovation program... 😃

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For the record, the laundry room drain unfroze yesterday 2/10. Daytime temperatures were in the high 50s, overnight about 30. That did the trick. 

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Brief Note On Current Events

There's much dooming and glooming about the current political and economic landscape for a variety of reasons. Inflation, congressional gridlock among them.

Well, I tend not to panic over any individual circumstance or event, but I've begun to wonder.

I live out in the country, right? Miles from anything. We don't have home mail delivery, have to go to the post office to pick up mail. Electricity and natural gas service is available but costly. In fact, the gas association has raised our monthly bill by 80% because they anticipate their costs for gas going up that much. They'll make an adjustment up or down next June. Meanwhile we pay.

Gasoline prices went up from just under $2.00 a gallon all last year to almost $3.50 for a while, then inched back down. Yesterday, I think the posted price was $3.25, and in town it's down to about $3.00. 

Food prices have increased a lot at our local-ish grocery store, up 30% last year on average, and another 25% this year. Some shelves have been bare since the start of the pandemic. Supplies don't arrive. When they do, they are less than ordered. 

The local-ish Walmart in the next town over burned a couple of weeks ago (suspected arson) and there is no date certain for reopening. There is a kind of panic over it because their pharmacy is closed, and patients have few options. The pharmacy closest to us closed just before the fire at Walmart and my prescriptions were transferred to a supermarket pharmacy I've never used. So were a lot of the Walmart pharmacy's prescriptions. I've heard that service is terrible to say the least. This is literally thousands of patients added all at once.

In fact, Walmart had become a kind of regional supply depot, and without it, the surviving local businesses are strapped. They don't have the personnel or supplies to meet the local demand, and for some things you will have to go into Albuquerque -- which is quite a distance if you're shopping.

I wish I could say online ordering is reliable. It's not. If you need something and you order it online, be prepared to wait, weeks in many cases, or be prepared to be told it's not available -- after you order.

It's a crapshoot.

People aren't panicking yet, but there is a lot of tension. Out here we're used to making do and doing without, so the tension isn't as high as it might otherwise be (except among some of the elderly who are very worried about getting their prescriptions.) But I went into town (Albuquerque) to try to stock up on cat food (a precious commodity and sometimes hard to get out here) and tensions were high. Of course it's holiday season, and that's always tough for many people, but this seemed tougher than usual. 

I see that some of the media is deliberately ginning up the tension, too. They're running false stories about inflation, for example, saying that prices for essentials have more than doubled in the past year, gas prices are through the roof, so on and so forth. It's not true, but people feel like it is, partly because that's what they hear on the "news" and partly because they are paying more. Shortages are flogged constantly, but from our perspective out here nothing really essential is in short supply. What is in short supply we've been doing without for a long time and probably don't need.

But... this is "ratcheting." Things are getting harder and harder to get, and prices are going higher and higher. The pandemic is not abating but is coming in wave after wave. Illness and deaths continue to mount, and as medical care and medications are harder to get, people are "falling through the cracks."

I've speculated that the death toll as a consequence of the pandemic -- both from Covid and from neglect of other illnesses -- has easily topped 1,000,000 in this country, god knows how many world-wide. 

Personnel to work in various low-paid and poorly paid positions are scarce. Employers have resisted raising wages, but they have no choice if they plan to continue operating. Some of course won't.

Thee paradigm is still shifting but we're entering uncharted social, political and economic territory. 

Meanwhile, authoritarians of all stripes are marshaling their forces.

"Living Poor With Style"

(Note: I've been working on this post for some time now. Let's see if I can finish it! 🤪)

I recently got out my ancient copy of "Living Poor With Style" (1972) by Ernest Callenbach and I was shocked to realize how strongly this book and the ideas in it influenced my life, and how strongly it still does all these many years later.

Re-reading it, I'm also intrigued at how much and how little has changed since publication. The United States is still a cancer on the Earth, sucking up and squandering resources to no discernible object, devastating people and societies at will, enforcing consumerism on a largely pliant population, and pretending to hold the moral high ground while Americans still have no universal health care -- among so many other deficiencies. Yet in 1972, it was possible to live reasonably well off the fat of the land if you knew how and were willing to take the risk of failing. 

Now? I'm not so sure that one can live well. One can survive, perhaps. Though it is getting harder and harder. Much of what Callenbach suggests a poor person can do to live better is as useful today as it was 50 years ago -- and more -- but many of the public support programs he advises taking advantage of either don't exist any more or have been so transformed and bureaucratized that they might as well not exist for the vast majority of people. 

In 1972 it was possible to live poor and reasonably well if you were clever, skilled, and adaptable. In 2022? Maybe not. 

The ideas Callenbach presents, however, have formed the foundation for many movements we see today, from ecology to minimalism. 

The title of his book changed through many reprints and revisions from "Living Poor..." to "Living Cheaply..." in part, I think, because of the negative connotations of "poor" among his largely white middle class readers. Even in the early edition I have (it's like the third printing of the original 1972 Bantam edition), he acknowledges that the offspring of white middle class families are the primary drivers of the search for "alternative lifestyles," and living poor or living cheaply is one of them or is actually a constellation of them.

You don't need so much stuff, for one thing. Let go of it. You don't have to eat out, you don't have to have a car (if you're in the city), you don't need a lot of living space. You can do without a lot of what you've been conditioned to believe you must have for a happy life. You can disconnect from all of that and still live well -- though your friends and family may think you're crazy, especially if they're still immersed in consumerism. 

The one thing I'd say about his approach is that though he calls on community, he's addressing individuals. This is what you, personally, can do to live well without a lot of things and money. 

I look around and realize that, yes, I've lived very much that way for most of my life and am doing so now. The only caveat is that we have a LOT of things, most of them accumulated and not disposed of over a lifetime (or several lifetimes as our things include many of the things of others who have passed on.) Some would consider us hoarders because we've kept so much stuff over the years. I brought the final bits of stuff we'd been keeping in California out here to New Mexico last month, and we're slowly sorting through it, disposing of some but keeping much. Keeping for what, though?

Most of what we have is old. Older than us. Our house is over 100 years old, and much of the stuff in it is nearly as old or older. Many things we've had for decades. But much of it was old when we got it. What's newish is almost entirely a few appliances, electronics, minimal clothes -- and some books and art. 

We have a 14 year old Subaru that we bought used and a 25 year old Chevy van also bought used. They're "new" in our view. We don't drive nearly as much as we used to, and the van really is superfluous, but we keep it and I sometimes drive it. It's a convenience in a pinch, for example when the car is in the shop or when we need to transport something large/bulky that won't fit in the car.

I've bought some tools/equipment necessary or helpful to growing things and taking care of our little patch of ground. But I also do without. For example, we don't have a wheelbarrow. Seems strange, but I make do with a wheeled garbage can that serves the purpose just as well if not better.

Many other examples of making do could be given, but the point is that much of what needs to be done can be done without things you simply have to have in order to do them. And very often, things that can't be done without this or that tool or equipment don't really need to be done.

"Living poor..." is a lifestyle of survival if you will. Callenbach was adept at it, but he didn't need to live poor because he lacked money or any other benefit of and upper middle class white male life during his lifetime. He wasn't forced into and kept in poverty the way so many Americans have been. He recognized the truth of their plight even in the early '70s, though, and in seeing that truth, he offered what he could of solutions; advice and ideas he thought would be helpful.

At least for me, and I suspect many others, they were. 

Whether poor people today need or want them, I can't say. Much of the practical advice he gives is second nature to someone who's been living poor for a while. A good deal of it no longer applies because of cultural, social and economic changes since the '70s. And the number of abjectly poor people living unhoused on the streets has grown exponentially. His advice won't and can't help most of them, because "Living poor..." in the Callenbach style requires shelter and access to so much of what someone on the streets doesn't have.

We've seen one failed attempt after another to rectify forced impoverishment over the decades; "nothing seems to help" for long or in many cases, at all. In my view, most of these activities aren't meant to seriously address the problem. They are meant as job creation for surplus sons and daughters of the higher classes. They cannot solve a problem they seek to perpetuate to ensure their own well-being. This is not unlike the situation of the monasteries of yore. Yes, some did good works, but that wasn't the point of them. 

Meanwhile, I can and do recommend Living Poor With Style  (if you can find the original publication not one of the later revisions) as a window on the history of poverty in this country. It's not a complete picture by any means, but it serves to illuminate what people could and did do to alleviate poverty themselves. It became something of a guidebook for disgruntled middle class folks who sought to simplify their lives by "living poor" without necessarily being poor (which I suspect was Callenbach's own position.) And it proved inspirational to any number of alternative lifestyle and ecological/utopian ideals we see in operation today.

"When Tomorrow Comes..."

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

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

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

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

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

People made do.

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

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

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

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

"When tomorrow comes...?"

What if there is no tomorrow?

Twenty Years On

I was going through old papers, burning the ones that didn't need saving -- meaning most of them -- and one that was kind of striking was the receipt from the Executive Hotel Pacific in Seattle for a five day stay, 9/10/2001 - 9/14/2001. The total was just over $600, whatever the Government rate was (I think it was $105 in Seattle at the time). The hotel is across the street from the Central Library and my room (on the 5th floor?) faced the construction site. The old library was being demolished in preparation to construct the new gleaming one that stands on the site today. I remember waking up to the sound of what I thought was a pile driver and a wailing siren. It was just about 6am.

I washed up and kept hearing the siren and pile driver. I remember looking out the window at the construction site. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The morning was a little bit foggy. I turned on the teevee, and the news on every channel running news was showing the burning World Trade Center Tower, the hairdos and makeup jobs expressing puzzlement, most seeming to think it was an accident that probably involved a small private plane. And then a large, four engine jet, probably a commercial airliner, appeared out of nowhere on the screen and struck the second tower. I think the talking heads were talking with the camera on them when this happened. It may or may not have been split screen. I'm not sure now. 

But suddenly, the talking heads seemed to realize what was happening was no accident. They were still puzzled. But two planes into two towers was no coincidence. Their ear pieces were were no doubt filled with chatter from producers and floor directors and such. I watched for a while, switching channels, and just after 7:00am, I called the office to find out what the plan for the day would be. "Come in," I was told. "We'll do what we can."

What that was, who knew?

I continued watching the news until shortly after the Pentagon was hit, and then I walked to the office a few blocks away.

What we did was watch the news on the big screen and try to get direction from HQ in DC. They initially said continue with our original schedule. I was conducting training classes, so that's what I was to do for the interim. The class was a disaster. Half the students didn't show up, and those that did couldn't concentrate, so we broke up and went into the meeting room to watch the news on the big screen. Everyone was sent home early, the class told to return in the morning to pick up where we left off. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not, we were able to complete the training the following day, and I spent the next two days in Seattle strategizing ways to get home (no commercial flights, remember?) and helping out with office things when I could. Everyone was in a daze, uncomprehending really. No one that I was aware of was in a rage of bloodlust determined to go war-rampaging in the Middle East. The news was on the big screen, but we only watched occasionally. Nobody actually knew what was going on or what would happen, and HQ in DC was not at all communicative. 

Finally, I was able to rent a car from Alamo and a colleague and I loaded up and headed south. Took two days. We were practically silent the whole way, in shock. Much shaking of heads at the news on the car radio. "This will not turn out well." No, no it won't. And no it didn't. One tragic thing has led to another and to many, many others since. 

I applaud getting out of Afghanistan -- even when Trump announced it. It was the right thing to do, as I believed sincerely that going into Afghanistan on the side of myriad murderous warlords was wrong. Afghanistan was not the cause of the 9/11/2001 attacks, and it wouldn't be the cause of the Endless Wars our rulers decided to conduct. Afghanistan wasn't even a side-show to all of that and yet it bled like any other war-theatre, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or they wore the wrong kind of clothes or the war-gamers in Florida wanted/needed a kill for the win. It was a foolish goon show that did nothing at all to lift either Afghanistan or the US or perhaps especially Nato from the mire of neo-imperialism.

It's supposedly "over". We'll see.

I left government service in 2009, fed up with the increasing insanity within. That's what I saw. A creeping but unstoppable insanity that was consuming government and those who served. It became worse, much worse, upon the election of Barack Obama, and that's when I became convinced I had to get out. I know many of my colleagues saw the same trends, and many got out before I did. Some died. 

On the internet we discuss how Bad this or that Leader is, how deeply antithetical Government is to the wants and needs of The People -- however we define that mass -- and how grotesque the Government is and has been, yada-yada, world without end. 

It's team sports. It's a game. Nothing fundamental ever changes. We may rail and argue constantly, but how many have any intent to change anything for the better or even understand there may be something better to change to? We coulda. We shoulda. We didn't.

So here we are.

Biden is providing a pause to the general insanity of Government, but the overall trend remains the same. The continuing hysterics over the withdrawal from Afghanistan shows how deeply compromised and corrupted the so-called "defense" industry and almost all the media has become -- or maybe they always were. To me, it's most stark on BBC where there appears to be a neo-imperial cult in charge, and where nothing at all is ever permitted to counter the Official Narrative that Afghanistan was Wonderful under the rule of the Imperial Powers/USA, and everything has gone to shit under the Taliban, though sotto voce, you might hear something like (shh, it's the way most Afghans want it....shhhh). 

Getting out was a matter of my own sanity. Getting as far away as I prudently could was part of that. And then one day the Madness came silently up behind me and thwacked me solidly on the head. I still have a divot in my brow-ridge where that tomahawk (come on!) hit me. That was a reminder that I'm not that far away from it at all. It can come up behind us at any time and Thwack! 

Twenty years on, everything is different, but nothing really has changed. 

On the Upward Curve

Just looked at the numbers. Hm. I shouldn't have done that. We're on pace to meet some of the ugliest projections of death and disease from COVID-19. New York appears to be the present epicenter, but California's state-wide shut down is perhaps more worrying as it includes the possibility that upwards of 25 million residents will be infected without it and an unknown number with it. With a 1% death rate, that means potentially 250,000 dead. Or some fraction thereof. In California alone. If that situation is replicated in other states and localities, we're looking at many millions of dead, perhaps ultimately close to the 11 million predicted at one time.

China has apparently controlled the Outbreak domestically through enacting some tough quarantine measures in Wuhan and locating and isolating carriers and patients outside the region. They may not have done it as early as they should have, but they did it and it seems to have worked. At least for now.

Something necessary, however, is not happening in Italy and much of the rest of Europe, or in most of the English speaking countries where the virus is running rampant despite spotty or even nation-wide shut downs, gathering prohibitions and stay at home orders.

Part of the problem of course is the near absence of tests and testing for the virus in so many places. Where tests can be done on a relatively large scale -- nowhere near the scale of testing in China, Korea, Japan or practically anywhere in Asia -- the number of infected individuals is high and growing exponentially. Italy got overwhelmed, and it looks like New York and California could be next, while Washington is struggling mightily to keep up with constantly increasing numbers of victims. It's a situation compounded by a reluctance or inability to test and, shall we say, a porous Shelter In Place policy. Projections are grim, very grim. And there's no way out.

As I understand it, in Wuhan and Hubei Province, the lockdown was real. Residents were confined to their homes or to hospitals, and violations were spotted and punished promptly. Testing was widespread and continuous. Travel within the city and province was confined to that necessary to transport food and supplies, which were delivered to residents; they did not go out shopping or for any other reason without permission and strict supervision.

Nothing as strict and enforceable is underway in the US or pretty much anywhere else in the West. Thus we're seeing continuing spread -- in some places almost completely uncontrolled.

Much of the failure to control the virus in the West is, I believe, due to the imposition of neoLibCon ideology onto everything. Ultimately, it's a nihilist death cult that has been waiting, if you will, for just such an apocalyptic situation for its ultimate triumph.

Our rulers have been preparing for years, decades, at least a generation. They have their bunkers stocked, their escape routes plotted, and their financial reserves are fat and in some cases still growing. They have no reason, it seems, to fear the virus. It won't affect them, or if it does, their concierge medicos will take care of it in short order. After all, even for ordinary rabble, 80% or more recover without intervention of any kind. So they say. There are apparently a number of treatment options for the well connected who get sick. But few will, as most of the High and Mighty never come into contact with the Lower Orders.

A 20% die off of the Rabble doesn't bother Our Rulers a bit, especially if it is focused on the old, the ill, the useless eaters, the rebellious, and so forth. If anything, I'm sure some would be happier if the cull rate were higher.

I've watched the goon show in Washington that hasn't really addressed the situation and appears too incompetent to do so, and I'm becoming more convinced every day that their "incompetence" is a charade. It's quite deliberate and very cynical. They have no intention to do what is necessary to prevent a major die-off. They never had any intention to interfere more than minimally.

What we've been witnessing in Italy is an example of what they want to see here. The public healthcare system completely overwhelmed, triage that saves the young and otherwise healthy and consigns the old, the ill, and the not-well-connected to their fate -- which for many is an unpleasant death.  There's nothing to do about it because there isn't "enough" of anything, anywhere, to control the Outbreak. Tough luck, suckers. Too bad, so sad.

Those stocks of toilet paper you've been hoarding? May as well give them to the dogs to play with:

And so...

So far, the Rabble has mostly submitted with little resistance. How long that will last, I don't know. If, as I suspect, the situation gets desperate enough in certain locations in the US, there will be rebellion. But it is unlikely to be universal, and it may be put down rather easily -- or it may be co-opted, too.

Uncontrolled chaos is unsustainable, but we haven't reached that point yet. There's no consistent leadership from DC, and there won't be. Localities are essentially on their own, and any help they receive from On High depends on their submission. Unquestioning. And even then, it looks like that won't be enough.

We ain't seen nothin' yet.

Stay alert, stay well, don't fear the Reaper.

Seeing Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood [with updated notes]

Before all the recent massacres, we went with friends to see a movie, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," after consuming way too many plates at the Albuquerque sushi joint we like to patronize. It's on Tramway just below the  rise of the Sandia Mountains, and like many areas of 'Burque, it reminds me a lot of parts of LA a long time ago. V. B. Price calls Albuquerque "City at the End of the World" partly because of those mountains rising heavenward on the edge of forever. Los Angeles, where he and I both had shallow roots, has many similar mountains, and when I was a kid in far eastern LA County, the mountains I saw out my living room picture window were the San Gabriels, with Mount San Antonio ("Old Baldy") gleaming with snow all year long as the anchor to the mountain range. This is a Google street view of the mountains from the vantage point of the street where I lived from 1954 to 1959. The yellow house on the left is where I lived.

Imagine the scene without the trees and you have a good approximation of what I could see out my living room window.

Well, when I could see the mountains at all. It was a smoggy era, and more often than not, the mountains and everything else were obscured with a thick, choking yellow-brown haze. The smog defined what you could and couldn't see and more often than not, you had a very limited view no matter where you turned. The smog was worst on the still summer days when it built up so thick and heavy, you could feel it pressing down on you and you hesitated to take a breath.

I left LA in 1959 and didn't go back until 1969 when on a whim one June or July late summer day, Ms Ché and I drove down the coast on Highway 1 from San Jose in the 1951 Buick I'd purchased a few weeks before. * We were headed for who knew where. Somewhere south, places I'd known as a kid, maybe to a mission or two. I didn't know.

We wound up sitting in front of the house where I'd lived from 1954 to 1959. How I was able to find it with hardly a wrong turn on the road after ten years away and never having driven in LA before, I can barely imagine now. But there we were. The house had been painted yellow and looked much shabbier than I remembered. The whole neighborhood was shabby it seemed to me, and it seemed almost as if the life had left it. The smog was as thick as ever. It was a little before noon. I asked Ms. whether she wanted to see Hollywood and Beverly Hills and all that. She said "Sure."

This was Ms. Ché's first trip to LA and she seemed to like it. It was my first trip back but my umpteenth time in the City of Angels. And I didn't like it much.Which surprised me, because I'd long felt that LA was my home, and I had faced extreme culture shock leaving for Northern California when I was 10. Yet coming back when I was 20, more of a hippie rebel and wanderer than not, I felt it was a phony and dismal place, ugly at heart, and as we toured the sights in Hollywood, cruising Sunset, I got this notion that's never left me: LA is a killer culture. I was lucky to be out of there. I doubted I would have lived had I stayed.

I didn't tell her at the time, though. I'm not sure I ever have.

The Tate-LaBianca murders hadn't happened yet [*See below, yes they had], but there was definitely something in the air -- besides the smog -- that presaged a coming bad thing, something spiritually, psychically foreboding.. I attributed it at the time to my own personal sense of that killer culture I'd never quite grasped before. [As I've thought back on it, the murders may have been an underlying reason why I wanted to go back a few weeks after they happened, even if I wasn't consciously motivated at the time. Maybe I wanted to see for myself...]

I showed her places I recalled in Hollywood and up into the hills [was I looking for Cielo Dr.? Could be...], but mostly we just drove around at random and finally wound up at the ocean at Santa Monica Pier. A brief stop there, and then it was back up the coast, headed north, spending the night in Santa Maria, then in the morning driving nonstop up 101 to San Jose again then across the Valley to our home. An almost three day adventure.

So when we went to see the movie, before all the recent massacres, it was with a sense of anticipation and not a little dread. We knew what it was about --or thought we did. We were not Tarantino fans, but at least I had an open mind about what the picture might have to offer.

It didn't disappoint.

Though its climax shocked and appalled and horrified, it was a cartoon, and because it was a cartoon, the horror of the climax ultimately evaporated almost like a dream. This didn't happen. You imagined it. Or rather, Tarantino imagined it for you.

The climax is very bloody and worse, but... it wasn't real. That's not what happened.

The Tate-LaBianca murders really did happen. They were a pivotal event and not only in Hollywood. They began to bring the curtain down on an era. The Counterculture had run amok. Woodstock was yet to come and the dreadful Altamont. We continued to protest and march against the Vietnam War. Nixon was a lightning rod for youthful anger.

But after the murders, something changed --again, not to forget all the psychic changes after the assassinations and insurrections of 1968 -- and there was no going back.

Tarantino is too young to remember much of the '60s, and yet he recreated a version of Hollywood c.1969 that mostly felt right. I'd put it this way: we didn't know what was to come, and because we didn't know, we put on a brave face and continued with our lives regardless. That's the case for the characters in the movie as well..They could feel that things were changing, particularly the main characters, but they didn't know what or how. My guess:50 years on, and they still don't know. They're in the business of creating illusion after all, an illusion which reality rarely penetrates.

After the movie, I said to our friends (all much younger than us and with no memories of the '60s or Hollywood as it was or... well, you get the idea ... that what really bothered me about the picture was the license plates on the cars. (They were the right color/style for the era -- black with yellow letters and numbers, though they would start changing to blue and yellow in 1969) -- but Tarantino was fucking with our memories by jumbling the letters and numbers, instead of having plates with three letters followed by three numbers the way they were in California back then. He was fucking with us.

Yes. Yes he was. Quite deliberately too.

Things really did change in 1969. Nothing would be quite the same again. LA and Hollywood wouldn't be the same again.

Having someone too young to remember tell us old farts what happened -- as he sees it -- is really more valuable than not. No, his history is skewed, but what if...?

What if...?
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* Ms. Ché and I were talking about it the other day, and she remembered something that was going on at Cal Expo the day we left, so she said we could probably figure out the date from that. Sure enough, it was September 4, going into the weekend after Labor Day. This struck me as odd at first because I thought we were still taking classes and would have to be at college. She said, "don't you remember?" I graduated that June and she'd graduated the year before. We were done with our educations for the time being. Oh. No. I didn't remember. Later that month I would take a job in Stockton and we would move there.

September 4 was several weeks after the Tate murders, so obviously, they were on our minds. No one knew who had done it, though the caretaker had been arrested. At that time, the Tate murders were not officially connected with the La Bianca murders nor with a string of other murders the Manson followers would be accused of. Arrests of Manson Family suspects for the Tate murders would not come until October.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere in LA, heavy with smog as it was, let you feel the burden of death. How much of it was on our minds, I don't know. But Ms. Ché confirmed that we went out to Santa Monica before leaving, and it was a relief to be by the ocean and feel the ozone wash over us, almost cleansing.

Moar War, War Fever, Scandal! Scandal! Scandal!

What a freaking mess. What have we done to deserve this? [I'm sure the many targeted peoples under the bombs raining down on them from the Empire Above wonder the same damn thing...]

Views from Damascus overnight resemble Baghdad on Shock n Awe night so many years ago. Remember? I don't know anymore whether people do. There's been so much misery, mayhem and bloodshed Over There, it's hard to keep track, isn't it?

The proximate cause of the latest "coalition" air strikes (primarily from off shore missile launches) of yet another Middle Eastern city is the supposed use of prohibited chemical weapons against a rebel stronghold in the suburbs of Damascus.

Whether it actually happened and who did it if it did is subject of some dispute. There are statements that it didn't happen at all. There are statements that it was staged. There are statements that it was done by outside forces. There are statements that it was done by the rebels themselves... Yadda, yadda.

None of us is in a position to know. Whether our military and civilian rulers know much more than we do is a mystery. All we can say with any certainty is that the protagonists of these wars and rebellions tend to be dissemblers.

The launching of retaliatory missiles is essentially de rigeur these days. It's what's done to show the non-compliant who's the boss. It hasn't worked very well with the Assad regime, and it doesn't seem to quell rebellions either. It's just a Thing. Blowing shit up is the way things are done by the Empire and by the Rebel Alliance. Sometimes I think they cause misery for the fun of it.

So they just blow things up. People are in the way, oh well!

Jeepus, I hate this. I was going round and round about the Stephon Clark Thing in Sacramento. My point was that I just want the killing to stop, and he didn't quite get it. Huh? Whut?

The killing. To. Stop.

We seem to be locked into this situation where killing is the number one option when things go sideways or there's a perception of a threat of some sort. When police kill, they're just taking their cue from our Dauntless Leaders. Killing is their Go To solution to practically everything. They're no too bright are they?

Meanwhile the White House (and many other prominent elements of society) are enveloped in one scandal after another. I don't think we've ever had a mobbed up gangster sitting on the throne, but we do now, and our institutions have no idea how to deal with it/him. He's been hamstrung in various ways, but that's not sufficient. He uses what powers he has remaining for making much mischief and propping up his frail ego. This is hardly presidential, but I don't think it much matters any more.

The presidency itself has long since been diminished by various unfortunate and unpleasant occupants and their scandals, deceptions, and military adventures. It's close to time for something else again.

The Ruling Class seems happy to have the Rabble wallowing in it. Distraction? Sure. Entertainment? Yep. A masque?

The downward spiral seems inescapable.

And yet, there must be hope somewhere.

This Will Be The Day, They Say...

The Revolution will finally come, and all the Trumpazoids will be rounded up by AntiFa Zombie-Horde special forces, taken to the AntiFa-FEMA camps and sorted into Re-Education or Execution baskets, and that as they say will be that. Soros will gain his greatest prize and the USA of yore will be no more.

Or something.

Have we really fallen so low that such fantasies have any currency at all? Apparently so.

When I was young -- but maybe not so innocent -- my buddy and I would play out fantasies based on the latest science fiction movie shown at the kiddie matinée in town. If one of us missed the movie for some reason, the other had to tell the story convincingly enough to make our playacting in the dusty schoolyard believable to us both. We pretended in all sorts of ways to battle aliens and spiders and ants and mutants and whatever else we could think of to battle against as we saved mankind and the earth itself from a fate worse than death -- again and again and again. And when we tired of that, we played at Space Adventure. For not everything had to be battled against. We could explore the Moon and Mars and distant Jupiter if we wanted.

Bobby and I were eight or nine years old, barely out of our Cowboys and Indians phase. If you'd asked me in 1955 or 56 what my favorite "land" at Disneyland was I'd say Frontierland. By 1957 my answer would be Tomorrowland.

Well, Tomorrow is here and this isn't quite what we bargained for.

Not hardly.

This notion that an AntiFa-Zombie Uprising, engineered by the Clintoons and Obomba and funded by the Other Devil-With-Horns Alien-(read "Jew") Soros is just daft, but it seems to have some currency among the not so bright 40-somethings in the alt-right who never progressed in wisdom beyond their eight or nine year old play-selves. Is this what comes from too much World of Warcraft? I wouldn't know. But something definitely odd has been put in the water, that's for dang sure.

Maybe while we weren't looking, the Rooskies won?

"Commies!!!" was part of our schoolyard play as well. We saw plenty of anti-Communist propaganda pictures at the kiddie matinées, and we were shown plenty of others in our school's cafetorium.

Cafetorium

 Wonder of wonders the cafetorium is still there (courtesy of Google Streetview, May 2017). It hasn't changed, though what was our elementary school is now a charter high school. Makes sense. I guess.

Not only were we shown lots of anti-Communist movies in the cafetorium and at the kiddie matinées in town, we were also treated to plenty of nuclear annihilation movies, the kind that show the test dummies being blown to bits along with their incinerated houses. Made quite an impression, those movies did. We lived only a few miles from an Aerojet plant which we were told would be a prime target when the bombs started falling, and because of the mountain range just beyond the plant, the effects of the nuclear bomb would be reflected right back at us. See those windows high up on the north facing wall of the cafetorium? The plan was that the heavy canvas drapes would be pulled over them when the sirens went off and we, the children, would shelter under the tables and benches and along the walls in the cafetorium if we had time to get there. Otherwise, we'd duck and cover in our class rooms, where one whole wall was windows practically down to the floor and the opposite wall had a high strip of windows. How were we supposed to survive being cut to ribbons even cowering under our desks? There was a sort of plan of pushing all the desks against the wall away from the window wall and then getting us all to shinny under the desk-fort we'd made, but it was a madhouse when it was tried out, so they figured out the best thing would be to have us kneeling against the far wall, backs to the window wall, with desks lined up between us and the windows. On the other hand, I remember teachers shaking their heads during annihilation drills as if to say "This isn't gonna work." Something they dare not say out loud.

One day, one of my favorite teachers was absent and a truly stupid substitute had taken his place. I mean, stupid. We asked what had happened to Mr. Beamas, At first, we got no answers, but as the days wore on and Mr. Beamas didn't return, the class got restless and defiant. Where was our teacher? Was he sick? Was he dead? What was going on? Why did we have to put up with this idiot substitute?

No answer. After a week, though, maybe two, Mr. Beamas was back in the classroom, but he wasn't the same. Like the Body-Snatchers had got him or something.

After class one day, a few of us stuck around and asked him what had happened. Had he been in a car wreck? Was he in the hospital?

He finally opened up a little, but he clearly didn't want to say too much. He said he'd been suspended and reported to the police/FBI (I don't remember which) on suspicion of Communist sympathies. He'd been interrogated about his own actions and about everyone he knew, and about what he'd been teaching in class. Apparently there'd been a complaint from... someone. He didn't know who. About ....he didn't know what.He assumed he was under surveillance and he couldn't say much more.

This is the idyllic world we lived in in the 1950s.

In the schoolyard, c. 1958

That's the schoolyard, and that's me in the white shoes on the monkey bars. The dusty schoolyard, afterwards planted to grass stretches out behind us. My house was just across the drainage ditch from the schoolyard, and for a long time there wasn't a fence between the edge of the schoolyard and the drainage ditch, so it was pretty easy for me to climb my own backyard fence and scamper across the concrete ditch to get to school rather than going the looooong way around. The long way around was so long there was actually a bus that would take me.

After a while, it occurred to me that the safest place we could be when the bombs came was that concrete ditch -- as long as there wasn't any water in it. It was 10 maybe 12 feet deep, maybe 50 feet across at the top, 15 feet at the bottom, and at least a mile long, from the base of the hills on the east to the big ol' culvert under the roads and houses to the west. If we could get to it -- it was pretty far away -- the culvert would be an even better shelter yet. 

I remember  mentioning the ditch as a shelter once during a duck and cover drill and being promptly hushed up. One wasn't supposed to have ideas, after all. Not during a Commie-scare bomb drill. For cryin' out loud.

My buddy Bobby lived near the culvert, though, and he'd checked it out on his own. He said it was pretty hard to get into because of the fencing around it, but he managed to and said it could hold the whole neighborhood. So we made plans to get there when the time came.

But it never came, did it?

That's the thing. Despite all the scares and the drills, the time never came, and eventually the threat of instant incineration was forgotten. Even if NK goes ballistic and annihilates a city or two, we  could hardly care less. Oh well, who really needed Seattle, right? Buncha Leftists anyway. No one even notices the obliteration of city after city in the far-distant lands of our Imperial conquest. They deserve it, whatever, right? You bet.

No, what we're to fear are hordes of Mexicans crossing the southern border to steal our stuff and rape our women. What we're to fear are the hordes of bearded Mooslums itching to blow us to bits or run us down with rental trucks. What we're to fear is Zombies and AntiFa and AntiFa Zombies and Clintoon and Obomba and George Fucking Soros!!!!! Aiyeeeee!

How far we have fallen.

Welp, this is supposedly the Day that They Rise... and round up all the Trumpazoids for final disposition. 

One awaits...

Cheers.

Mass Murder is More American Than Apple Pie

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

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

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

Nonsense.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It can be done.

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

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

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

A key is to fear not.

"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.

Bombs Away!

Idiot Trumpists continue to believe that they have slain the dragon once and for all. The Dynasties --- Bush and Clinton -- have been consigned to the dustbin of history so all is well, a new day dawns and joy will reign forever and ever, amen. Unless you're a Clintonite, in which case may every torment and evil descend upon you and your evil spawn forever and ever.

Amen.

We're led to believe that this weekend will mark the Big Man's showdown with the Evil North Koreans who will be annihilated -- whether or not they provoke their own demise. We're told that large portions of Pyongnang and Seoul have been evacuated, "just in case" this is the Big One. We're told that the Mother of All Bombs was dropped on some remote cave complex (shades of Bin Laden) in Afghanistan by Himself's Army -- on their own account, not ordered by either the White House or the Winter Palace. Thus, so the theory is starting to go,Our Own General Turgidson could actually set in motion an irreversible nuclear launch with no call back provisions. General Jack D. Ripper will claim it is to protect his precious bodily fluids, and the US Government, such as it is, will rule the ruins from its various bunkers around country and the world.

Only 20 or 30 million Americans may be lost in the hostilities, but oh well. They can be replaced, right?

Now what this looks like -- appearances can be deceiving of course -- is that the Generals have taken over US foreign affairs and look to produce results (ie: "get the job done") through intimidation, violence and/or annihilation of any and all designated foes. All of the current wars have been ramped up, and more are starting, with death and destruction on an geometrically increasing path. This is supposed to tame the natives by teaching them a lesson they will never forget.

Yes, well. That always works out, doesn't it?

The State Department is being dismantled -- or so it seems -- and the current SoS is limited to keeping up appearances -- but he actually doesn't do anything.

The Three Letter Agencies that spy on all of us everywhere around the world, and some of which conduct "operations" against various foes at home and abroad, appear to have had their wings clipped somewhat in favor of the higher ranks of the military.

As for Trump himself, he appears to have been neutered. Once he turned over power to the Generals, that was it. They don't care what he thinks (assuming...) and they don't care what he says. A great big FU to the (former) Powers That Be.

At one time, a military coup wasn't considered out of the question to deal with the increasingly crazy-making and faltering domestic government. Well, it looks like the coup has taken place with regard to foreign adventures and it may be exercising more and more domestic power as well -- hard to say what with the chaos in Washington and Palm Beach.

Chaos, however, will not be allowed to persist. Trump and his cronies haven't demonstrated that they can control it. They create it, after all. Ergo, intervention is likely -- even as Trump tries to meet the requirements of "presidenting."

I think Trump would be just as happy turning over the government to the military. His happiest time seems to have been when he was in military school (graduated 1964, the year "Dr. Strangelove" was released). He could do anything, and they'd let him.

Now, as an old man, that experience may well be informing his actions as President. Only to find that like the New York Military Academy (now owned by Chinese) what he thinks is his freedom to do what he will...isn't.

Ah well...

What have we done to deserve this?

Nope. Fizzled Out Again

The protests have begun to lessen, so it would appear from my perch in the wilderness. They haven't stopped by any means, nor are they likely to end any time soon, but the numbers in the streets have been on a declining trend for some time, and I suspect that something called protest fatigue and burnout is to blame. One can't keep marching and protesting every day, no matter how much one might want to, when there are other matters that need attention. For many, those other matters will include "making a living" and such.

Also, too, consider this: though there have been many indications that a coup of some sort is immanent, for whatever reason it doesn't happen. Instead, we seem to have a situation in which the presidency itself is becoming an irrelevancy -- except for its entertainment value.

Other people, other interests are taking charge of running the government, and as long as Himself is kept on the hustings and/or the sidelines, there's nothing to worry about. Right?

Nothing will happen that the ruling class doesn't want to happen; there will be no fundamental changes in the course of whatever may come. Trump won't change a damned thing. He can't.

Something happened over the weekend, some of which we saw, some of which we aren't privy to, and it was clear enough to observers that Trump's choke chain was tightened a link or two, and his leash was given a jerk. His shtick hasn't changed much -- at least not for his adoring believers -- but his demeanor has been dialed back a notch or two. While he may not be behaving in a classic Presidential style -- not in him to do so -- he's somewhat less abrasive on the Twitter machine, somewhat less stupid-seeming otherwise.

His campaign stop in Florida cheered his demoralized fans and seemed to give him something of a boost. His appointment of Gen. McMaster as National Security Advisor seemed to give the permanent government a reason for hope.

The story is that he isn't really much interested in presidenting beyond issuing diktats and shaking things up for effect. His staff appears to be weak and very limited both in numbers and skill level. They are way out of their depth, The permanent government is not nearly as vulnerable as they believe it to be, and beyond that, they need it if they want to get their policies implemented, their programs done.

Ergo, a tense standoff appears to be in place.

As some observers point out, this is all happening way above our heads, and we the Rabble have very little effect on it. Practically none. We can speculate all we want about what is going on, who's being thrown under the bus, who the survivors might be, yadda yadda, but it doesn't matter a bit. Ultimately, things will or won't happen regardless of the Rabble.

The defenestration of General Flynn, and then of poor Milo, I think served as cautionary warnings, the first to Trump himself, the second to "President Bannon" -- who seems to think he's invulnerable.

Flynn and The Russia Thing seem very bizarre, but there is something going on there beyond the hysterics over nuclear holocaust, etc. Whatever it is, it is being used as a cudgel by elements of the permanent government -- They Who Know -- over the Trump Regime.

My sense is that it has to do with Trump's extensive mob ties, some of which are clearly Russian, and who has dirt on whom. Little or nothing to do with geopolitical strategeries and what not. This reflects on the nature of the presidency itself -- it's been mobbed up for generations -- and how rule is implemented. And by whom.

As for Fucking Milo, GFC on a crutch. That one was almost too easy. I've seen maybe five minutes of his act in toto, and it was obvious from the get that the whole thing was fake. As fake as the ropes of "pearls" he wore for his Bill Maher appearance. No there there, and his provocations (:"":) were as substance free as he was. It was all a charade. Eagerly marketed by those who seek to profit from the gullibility of some of the masses.

Oh well.

Meanwhile, whatever is to come still won't be in our interests. The question is, whose?

The Pushback Is So Weak

It's long been a truism that "bullies are cowards."

Anyone who has dealt with bullies, which I guess we all have at one time or another throughout our lives, knows that they can be both dangerous and cowardly, but their ways are patterned. They can be wrangled and defeated, either by strategy or by force. On the other hand, a bully isn't necessarily bad; bullies can be useful if they're on your side. That may not happen often, but it can.

Bullies have to have toadies or they can't function. The idea of a solitary bully is almost impossible to conceive, but I understand they do exist and they can and do terrorize whole neighborhoods. I think that phenomenon may be a different thing, not a classic bully, but I don't know because I've never encountered someone like that. Heard about them; never seen one in the flesh.

No, most bullies I've encountered have a cloud of followers, toadies, some of whom become trusted assistant, others little more than hangers-on. The point being an expected reward for loyalty and service. The reward might consist of nothing more than a glance, a smile, a pat on the head, but for many who toady, that's enough. Some toadies become objects of contempt or derision among the group, and for them it's fine. At least they're noticed.

Challenging a bully can be tricky, especially if s/he has a relatively large following, each member of which can be a bully, a danger, and a coward in his/her own right. Getting through all of them to challenge the head-bully can be difficult, and it can be so exhausting that  challengers give up. In some situations, too, challenging the bully can get you killed.

Another truism: "If you strike at the king, you must kill him." Indeed. Challenging the bully without defeating him or her is a dangerous exercise, dangerous not only for the challenger but for many of those who seek to stay outside the conflict as well. Most people would just rather not be involved in any way, but when a challenge fails, as they often do, the consequences for the innocent can be severe.

All this is prelude to what I see going on with the White House occupants. Bullies and toadies aplenty, head bully with the gold-plated pate, and they are being challenged on all fronts, in the streets, behind the curtain, daily, hourly, nonstop in the media, and throughout the permanent and elected government. They have fewer and fewer allies, and they seem to relish alienating those individuals and interest who might naturally be their allies. They're in a world of shit of their own making.

What I'm seeing is some of the weakest pushback imaginable. Good heavens, they have essentially no defense mechanisms at all. It's all show business, no substance -- or at least not much.

Paper tiger doesn't begin to describe it.

The vile twitter rants have become international jokes. Policy and law are not made on the twitter machine. But the rants do expose weaknesses. Bald assertions of power and authority are regarded with the same arched eyebrows as Cartman's "You will respect my authoritah!" Sure, whatever. Blah, blah, blah.

Blamecasting for the multiplicity of missteps and failures, particularly blaming "Clintonites" and "The Media," is loopy. False claims and accusations are constant. They're called out for what they are, "lies," and the death spiral spins ever faster.

Threats and imprecations go nowhere. "Operations" to get rid of the troublemakers fail.

From the perspective of the governing class, those who do this governing thing for a living, the out of control and very weak bully-behavior is incredibly dangerous for the leader of an imperial nation-state such as the USofA.

It cannot be allowed to continue, and I have no doubt it won't be. The pushback is so weak from the White House, and it's becoming weaker by the hour, I'm not even sure the regime will last out the month. This coming weekend may be its last.

On the other hand you never know. All the weakness I'm seeing may be a feint, and something unpredictable and awful will take place. Another Reichstag Fire type event.

I've pointed out we've already had our Reichstag Fire (ie: 9/11) and there's no going back. We've been in a kind of interim phase since then; everything is set up behind the scenes to institute a full on police state autocracy, but if it were to happen, we the Rabble weren't supposed to notice. It would just be a smooth and natural transition, and that would be that.

The current situation has disrupted those plans (!), and the Rabble is noticing. How to finesse this with as little hoo-hah as possible?

I suspect it can't be done.

There will be hoo-hah, and some of it is bound to be ugly. In fact, a lot of it probably will be.

While Trump defenders continue to rationalize his every twist and turn as "brilliant!" even they are beginning to recognize that this situation is not sustainable, and the End quite likely is nigh.

The tipping point has been reached, and it's downhill from here.

It looks like some of the Rabble are recognizing that in order to correct the situation, there may have to be a period "without a president." Until yesterday, it seemed the focus was on impeachment or using the 25th Amendment -- ie: Constitutional remedies. Which would take time, time we don't have, and would result in Pence, Ryan, McConnell, or even Tillerson in the White House. But... this is such a severe situation that it seems more and more likely that extra-constitutional means will be necessary. In other words, "suspend the constitution" -- temporarily, of course. There is a means to do that, btw.

I for one don't necessarily look at what comes After the coup as a positive thing, but perhaps it's a Needful Thing. There will be dancing in the streets, perhaps replaced with fear and loathing soon enough.

What gets me about all this is that it was always possible for whoever sat in the Big Chair to do the right thing, and Trump, being such a disruptor and a bully to boot, could actually have taken the power of the presidency to new realms of Doing Right. That's what I think his believers thought he would, peace and prosperity would reign, and heaven would open a branch office on earth. But it isn't working out that way, and Trump is being revealed as a weakling, whining, empty headed freak.

OK then.

Off with their heads. Metaphorically speaking...

Oroville

The dam and spillway situation at Lake Oroville in Northern California are apparently severe enough to cause the evacuation of around 200,000 residents of the City of Oroville and towns downstream on the Feather River. Flooding is either happening right now or is expected throughout the Sacramento Valley thanks to heavy rains, saturated soils, and rivers and streams overflowing their banks.

The problems with Lake Oroville are on top of an already difficult situation.

I'm paying attention to this rather more than I might otherwise do because the region under flood warning and evacuation is part of my old stomping grounds in California. I lived mostly in and near Sacramento, but I traveled all over the Valley, particularly north of Sacramento, and my work often took me to the area under evacuation and flood warning. I got to know many people there and I still have friends in the area. So many people have been evacuated, and there is still risk to many more. It's a horrible situation for many whose peace of mind has been shattered and whose world is overturned. My sympathies are with them, though there's little I can do from out here in the Central New Mexican wilderness.

For now, it seems the situation has at least partially stabilized. The lake level is down enough (a/o Monday morning, c.. 3:00 am) that water is no longer flowing over the auxiliary spillway and the immediate danger of spillway erosion and collapse is mitigated. Releases are apparently continuing from the damaged main spillway, lowering the lake level enough to allow more runoff and snowmelt to enter. More rain is predicted for later in the week, and depending on how much their is, the situation could return to critical very quickly.

The problem with the auxiliary spillway as I understand it is that erosion of the upper part of the spillway has been severe due to the over-top releases yesterday and the day before; authorities are afraid that the erosion will compromise the integrity of the spillway and lead to collapse of that section of the lake-wall (not the dam itself). If that were to happen, an immense flood of lake water would be sent down the Feather River, almost as if the dam had broken, and people in the path of the flood would be at severe risk.

Because that risk is somewhat less now than it was yesterday afternoon, I'm sure people who have evacuated are fuming, thinking perhaps they shouldn't have been told to move so suddenly.

From the views I saw of the spillway yesterday, however, it was clear that the situation was developing fast and there was no certainty at all that the lip of the spillway would hold. Given the flood situation throughout the Valley already, it was reasonable to declare a precautionary emergency and to get people out of the path of any potential Lake-flood.

In the meantime, as chaos spreads, it's well to remember that flooding (though not this kind of threat) is relatively frequent in the area, and most residents are able to cope one way or another.

News is available at the Sacramento Bee, KCRA, and KNVN. There are other news outlets in the area as well, but these some of the main ones.

Transformative Presidencies

I was born during the 1948 election campaign between Harry S Truman and Thomas Dewey (Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat.)

The false Chicago Tribune headline would become a legend in November of that year:

Yes, well. "Everyone makes mistakes," right?

I don't remember Truman as president, but I certainly recall Eisenhower and his 1956 re-election campaign against Adlai Stevenson.

I grew up in a Democratic household and there are reasons for it. Loyalty to the Democratic Party on my father's side goes back at least to the anti-Irish riots in Ohio instigated by the Know Nothings -- a third party which amalgamated with the Republicans shortly after the mob violence in Ohio and elsewhere. On my mother's side, it's a little more complicated as her stepfather was a Republican, her mother was a Democrat (primarily due to social issues -- like women's right to vote and so forth) and my mother was initially disinclined to either party but became a Democrat under FDR. She stayed a Democrat the rest of her life, but was sometimes reluctant to vote for them.

Between Truman and Eisenhower, I think we can say that Truman was the Transformative President. Eisenhower consolidated the Truman Transformation.

Because I have no memory of the FDR administration and what I heard about it was somewhat conflicted, I can't say much about it from personal experience. Many of the programs initiated during the FDR administration were continued by Truman and Eisenhower, but many weren't. What I saw and experienced was what remained, the Legacy if you will, of a previous Transformative Presidency.

Of course the Post World War II context of the Truman administration is fundamental to any understanding of what was going on and why.

When I was growing up, WWII vets were everywhere. Some were doing fine. Others I knew were having a lot of psychological problems, what we know as PTSD now, and their difficulties reverberated in the neighborhoods where I lived. There wasn't a lot that was done for them; people were pretty much on their own to work out their war-time difficulties as best they could, or contrariwise, they could be sent to the looney bin.

Context.

Truman was Transformative, Eisenhower was not.

Truman authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Japan and was forever after unrepentant. Truman initiated the Cold War with the Soviet Union, something that would reverberate for all of us throughout the '50s and '60s -- and into later decades, and still (for some ungodly reason). Truman integrated the armed forces, which reverberated in unanticipated ways until civil rights and integration for minority non-white populations became the standard, a standard still resisted by die-hard White Supremacists.

Eisenhower, for the most part, just continued FDR and Truman era programs, initiated some of his own -- such as the Interstate Highway construction program -- and allowed particular political and economic interests to have their way. Eugene Joe McCarthy was given leeway to conduct his witch-hunt for example, with no interference from the White House, but what a lot of people don't understand now is that McCarthy was just a temporary phenomenon; the witch hunt for Communists and their sympathizers was continuous and it was everywhere throughout the '50s and early '60s, and it was that continuing witch hunt that inspired the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964 which in turn triggered the student rebellion of the '60s and everything that followed.

But as president, Eisenhower seemed very hands off, even disinterested. After his heart attacks he seemed to turn over much of his power and authority to his vice president, Richard Milhouse Nixon.

Kennedy's was a transformative presidency, but not the way he intended. Well, everything changed after his assassination. Changes we know of, changes we don't. But there were events during his brief presidency that transformed the way we looked at presidents and particularly their wives. They became celebrity figures more than political ones. In the case of Jackie Kennedy, she was not just a celebrity, she was a glamorous icon of beauty, fashion and class, a status she maintained the rest of her life, and which she passed on to her son, John F. Kennedy, Jr.

Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, November 22, 1963, was the first of many political shocks we would be heir to. What happened was, up till then, inconceivable. No president had been assassinated for decades, and the prior assassinations had been one-off anomalies. We were so far beyond that by 1963. Besides, despite political differences, who in their right mind would want Kennedy dead? There wasn't a Civil War after all, nor were there the kind of movements afoot in the land that led to the assassination of William McKinley.

No, it was crazy, and suspicion fell on the hostile environment generated by the right wing, John Birch Society saturated, white supremacist culture of Texas. In other words, Kennedy must have killed because those white crackers in Dallas hated him for being a Yankee interloper/"nigger lover."

But things got very strange very quickly when Kennedy's accused assassin was himself assassinated live on TeeVee -- nothing like that had happened before, either. It was equally inconceivable -- and the whole world seemed to come tumbling down over the Thanksgiving Weekend.

The elevation of Lyndon Johnson to the presidency was equally shocking. Lyndon Johnson from Texas. How convenient.

But LBJ got the benefit of the doubt from a strangely passive public, and he made the most of it, achieving the most comprehensive and broad-based social legislation in our nation's history, very nearly enacting FDR's Second New Deal over the muted objections of Republicans.

Transformative? There's no doubt about it. In fact, I rank Johnson the most transformative president of my lifetime. He was a steamroller of a President who managed to overcome many, many obstacles to get done what up till then couldn't be done, including civil rights legislation, Medicare, and a host of Great Society programs intended to alleviate poverty and build a better future for all Americans.

Then there was the war in Southeast Asia. How he got suckered into that one, I don't know, but he did, and once he did, there was no going back. They say he saw it as a "man" thing, he had to prove his cojones as a War President, following as he did a man who was hailed as a genuine War Hero. But the carnage in Vietnam and Laos for unclear or venal motives made less and less sense, and it triggered endless mass demonstrations against the war, added to the student demonstrations triggered by the FSM uprising in Berkeley added to the periodic rage and riots in the ghettos of the country. By 1968, it seemed like the whole country was descending into chaos.

And yet on the other side, the US had never been so prosperous and, yes, "progressive." Not everything about it was either good or perfect, but social and economic progress was being made on many fronts, and many of the changes that got under way following the assassination of President Kennedy became institutionalized very quickly. They're with us today. There is likely no going back.

But the assassinations of 1968 were perhaps too much of a shock to an already reeling society, and they helped destroy what little comity was left in the country, leading directly to the inauguration of Richard M. Nixon -- who ran on a platform of ending the War (Humphrey would have continued it on Johnson's terms) and bringing "law and order" to the streets.

Well.

Of course he didn't end the War, he intensified it, but he did end the draft, and that took a lot of the piss and vinegar out of the anti-war movement and the student rebellion. His "law and order" campaign had the effect of declaring domestic war on uppity Negroes, particularly males, who were essentially criminalized as a class. Cities stopped burning on a regular basis.

Some of the progressive ideals he'd grown up with continued, however, and so his truncated regime was/is considered a mixed bag. Good-Bad together.

But Nixon was forced from office in yet another shocking course of events. He was shown to be a criminal -- a political criminal -- who abused the office and the power of the presidency to advance his own political interests and ends. At the time, this behavior was unacceptable by both parties and rather than impeach his ass, he was prevailed upon to resign in disgrace. This after his vice president, Spiro Agnew, had been forced to resign in disgrace for his own crimes.

Dear me. People got the idea that the Presidency was a criminal enterprise run by gangsters.

Well. Yes.

Nixon's actions and fall had a powerful effect on society and the presidency that reverberates today, particularly with regard to an obsession with "law enforcement" (by any means necessary) on the proles, and the understanding that if done right, the Presidency can be an Imperial dictatorship. Nixon just didn't do it right. You see.

Yes, a criminal enterprise run by gangsters. What's to stop it?

I guess I will have to concede it was a transformative paradigm of rule, one we have by no means escaped. It's almost become iron law.

Nixon was followed by our first unelected President/Vice President pair, Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller. They were place-holders while the government attempted to get its act together. The War in Southeast Asia ended, finally, essentially petering out, leaving a swath of destruction through the region that is still being recovered from, but somewhat amazingly transforming the relationship between Americans and the people of Vietnam in particular from enmity to high regard. In some ways, they see each other as equally victimized by out of control rulers.

Ford was followed by Carter, whose moral suasion might have been high, but whose ability to implement that suasion from the Oval Office was thwarted by events, particularly the Iranian Revolution which crippled Carter's presidency beyond recovery. He was not re-elected.

Instead, a movie actor who suffered from incipient dementia/Alzheimers, Ronald Reagan, was elevated in a wave election that began the counter revolution against "progressivism" in its entirety. They wasted no time transforming the government and society into a version of what they used to be prior to the Progressive era.

Once again, people who understood that this wouldn't turn out well for the many, but would greatly enhance the comfort and convenience of the few were largely passive in the face of the Reaganite transformation. What could they do, after all? He was elected and he was for most of his reign very popular with a still powerful subset of white men.

Reagan was transformative, but not in a good way, though some of what he did was positive.

Reagan was followed by his vice president G H W Bush, former head of the CIA, and reputed to have been the eminence grise of the Reagan regime. Once installed in the Oval Office on his own account, he seemed almost as bumbling as Ford, and his appalling War on Iraq eventually became an albatross around his neck; wtf, dude? Of course there were the scandals. Jeebus, what had the presidency become?

Then came Clinton. Oh dear. Clinton has been ritualistically scapegoated for everything since the world began, and strangely he seemed to accept the role of scapegoat. No skin off his nose, I guess. He accelerated the neoliberal transformation begun under Reagan (Carter instituted some of it prior to Reagan's efforts) and thus set the stage for catastrophes to come. But he seemed oblivious -- then and now.

After being re-elected, Clinton was absurdly impeached. WTF, Congress? The spectacle was indeed compelling, much like the Trial of OJ, but what the actual fuck? The lesson was that the Presidency was not at all what many Americans thought it to be. It was neither all-powerful, nor was it power-less, but what it was depended more on the political equivalent of teevee ratings than anything else. In the meantime, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan was churning away in the background, largely unnoticed due to the spectacle of WTF. Shiny objects to distract from what was important and what was really going on.

Clinton's impeachment failed, but I don't think it was meant to succeed. It was Grand Theatre, Grand Guignol, a conscious and cynical spectacle of power run amok. He left office under a cloud but surprisingly popular nonetheless. He is still reviled and revered in almost equal measure.

Then came Bush2, dear me with sparklers. Jeebus what a shit-show.

His rule was an unmitigated disaster almost from the beginning, in part, certainly, because he was illegitimately placed on the throne (yes, by now it should be clear that the Imperial notion of the United States and the presidency inaugurated by Nixon was institutionalized, and the president was in effect an autocrat/Emperor who could be appointed and removed at will -- by whom, though?)

We knew it would be a catastrophe, and it was.

Transformative? Well, it was sick making. Nevertheless, as appalling as it was, the neoliberal/neoconservative game plan continued unabated. In other words, no matter what happened on the surface, no matter how destructive and horrible, the underlying paradigm did not suffer or change.

That should have been a lesson learned, but it wasn't. When Obama rode a wave of fear and revulsion into the White House, as the Redemption Candidate who would fix what had gone wrong, still the underlying neoLibCon paradigm of rule continued without a pause.

Nothing changed except rhetoric and appearances.

Obama had the opportunity to be a transformative and redemptive president, and he actually had the power, but he didn't use it. Instead, he used his charisma to calm things down while instituting or continuing many of the policies and programs that continued the exploitation and destruction of the Rabble. And then convincing much of the Rabble that it was Good For Them. And everything would work out for the best, you'd see.

No. It didn't.

Some of us were not surprised. Others still don't see his sleight of hand/con game for what it was. Others still are ambivalent, whereas there is a strong element of racism and hatred in much of the opposition to him, racism and hatred that effectively distracts from what he was doing.

I have no love for him, in part because so much of what he did was contrary to the interests of the People and served to further concentrate wealth and power among a kleptocracy that now rules directly through a not-very-tightly wrapped upper class twit, a con-man, gangster and raging conspiracist, who is apparently so wild and ego-driven that he is always spinning out out of control, and is more and more likely to be neutralized with extreme prejudice, perhaps by one of his own guards. It's that dicey.

This cannot be happening, but it is.

Where it might lead is anyone's guess, but I've already said it is likely to be the final end of the Republic, and what comes after will be some form of institutionalized autocracy, even hereditary rule -- a throwback to some other time and place. And endless meatgrinder wars.

Jeebus, what have we done to deserve this?