The 'Hamilton' Fantasy

Tonight, VP-Elect Mike Pence attended #HamiltonBway. After the show, @BrandonVDixon delivered the following statement on behalf of the show. pic.twitter.com/Jsg9Q1pMZs

— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) November 19, 2016

Given my background in the Theatre this "Hamilton" Thing is kind of fun. Hah hah hah. Gotcha!

I came up during a period when it was a rule -- at least in the kind of theater I was working in -- that one didn't break the fourth wall or violate the sacred space of the stage. One did not make speeches from the stage, in other words. That was a 'sacred space' and woe betide you if you violated its sacredness to make a "statement." That's what the play was for. Or not as the case may be.

Producer, directors, actors and others could and did directly address the audience -- but not from the stage. That was the place for the Performance of the Play. which was itself a sacred act  -- but which might or might not have an important or life changing message for the audience. If something needed to be said to the audience beyond the work of the playwright and company, then it could be said from just off the stage -- either in front of it or on the side. The message would be just as strong and it wouldn't interfere with the suspension of disbelief that was a fundamental aspect of the Theatre.

Well, that concept of theatral sacredness and not violating the fourth wall or the performance space was never universally observed, and these days it seems totally forgotten. There are many plays which depend on violating the fourth wall (which is something different than speechifying to the audience apart from the play), but what happened with the cast of "Hamilton" delivering their message to Pence and the Trump and their cohort was something quite different.

Not having seen "Hamilton" I can't say how it did or didn't fit in with the play itself, but as the speech was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the play and its former lead actor, I can fairly confidently assume he intended it as an outgrowth of his vision for the play.

As I've been told is the case with the play, the speech given by the actor who played Aaron Burr (Brandon Victor Dixon) was generous in spirit and inclusive. It was not a condemnation or "lecture" as it has been characterized by Trump apologists and loyalists. It was an open-hearted request to be heard and listened to and to use the power of government on behalf of all Americans, not just the favored few. That's all. Message: "We're all in this together." More or less.

The Twitterverse exploded when Himself, Mr. Trump, condemned the cast for "harrassing" Mr. Pence and he ordered them to "apologize." Blah, blah, blah. Who cares what he thinks, he'll change his mind tomorrow. Or the next day.

This isn't just an example of his notoriously thin skin, it's an example of his disinterest in those he deems "disloyal" to his person. It doesn't matter to him what they say or do, what matters is that he deems them "disloyal" and therefore they have no rights which he is bound to respect, and they can say nothing he cares to listen to.

Someone posted the other day that this is a form of classic abuser behavior (not referring to the "Hamilton" flap, but referring to the body of Mr. Trump's public behavior). The abuser believes that the abused brings on their own punishment through "disloyalty" toward the abuser, and once the cycle gets going, there's no way to stop it. Literally everything the abused says or does is more proof that they deserve their punishment. The only way off the treadmill of abuse is to get off. Get away from the abuser as fully and completely as possible.

I doubt that Mr. Pence, awful in his own way as he may be, was offended by the Speech From the Stage the night he attended "Hamilton." He's been in politics a long time, and he's been pilloried and skewered by his opponents in far harsher ways. If anything, I imagine he got bored rather quickly -- assuming he listened at all -- because the speech wasn't harsh or insulting or in any way "harrassing." It was a simple and heartfelt plea, that's all.

Mr. Trump's offense-taking on Twitter over it is pure bullshit, but there you are. That's the man, and that's his style. Be warned.

On another front re: Hamilton, Tony Wikrent over at Ian's Place has written a long, scholarly piece arguing that Hamilton designed the Constitution and the early independent economy of the United States to favor labor, and apparently concludes that this can be and should be a basis for governmental reform. Uhh... I beg to disagree.

Whatever the supposed intent of the Founders, including Hamilton, the nation they founded was a slave republic dependent on the labor of black chattel who had no rights whatever, and so called "free" labor who had few rights employers were bound to respect.

They did not found a republic to favor labor in any way; they founded a republic to favor ownership and exploitation of labor by a few quasi-aristocrats -- like Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, et al, come to think of it. Whatever gains labor has been able to make over the centuries has come at a tremendous price in blood and sacrifice, and every step of the way has been bitterly fought and resisted by those who were advantaged to begin with and by their descendant and co-conspirators. They are still fighting against labor's advance. And they are winning.

So I dispute the premise.

It's belied by the facts on the ground.

But it's well written, nicely argued, very detailed and it's backed up with scholarly and original sources. Trouble is, it's wrong. It's wrong because it's a fantasy of what might have been but never was. Fantasies seem to be more important than ever these days.

It would be far stronger -- though still somewhat fantastical, maybe like the play -- if Tony acknowledged that what he believes Hamilton set out to do never happened. That would be a breakthrough, I think, because there hasn't been a lot of public acknowledgement that the nation founded in 1787 started off on the wrong foot -- as a slave and genocidal republic -- and has never quite got it right.

Instead, he seems to argue that it did happen as Hamilton intended, and it only went off the rails when the false neoliberal economic ideology became dominant in government in the latter 20th century. I say "seems" because by the end of his piece, it's not really clear what he's arguing.

The play "Hamilton" is strictly speaking a musical fantasy, and from what I've read and heard about it, it's a very effective "message" play about what the country should have been and what it might still become -- because many of the right impulses were there at the beginning, along with a lot of wrong ones. That's the kind of thing the Theater can present which doesn't necessarily work on a completely rational, academic plane. The play is wildly popular, and it's been said that its concept and execution is so vital and unique that it's changed the way Broadway producers see the future of their industry. We'll see. We've heard that many times, and as much as "change" has entered their vision, backsliding is a constant.

Some observers claim that Trump used his "Hamilton" flap to distract from the $25 million settlement he made in the Trump University fraud complaint. Maybe he did. Well, so? If one is so dependent on media -- especially the simulacrum of media on Twitter -- one is too easily manipulated, it seems to me. If one has to have media validation to know what to think, one is largely lost in fantasy but then what else is new?

Media is a tool, it isn't or shouldn't be a determinant.

That's in part why I tend to stay away from  the Twitterverse, Facebook, and websites that focus on what the media or factions of it say about this or that rather than focusing on critical thinking (not so much critical "theory" -- another of those post-modern academic masturbatory efforts that run in circles of WTF), about living in the material world, truth, and everything.

It remains to be seen whether this "Hamilton" Thing will have more than a momentary impact, but it's interesting to me because of my background.

We'll get through this somehow....

[Note regarding theatral "sacred space" : The way I learned about all this was both from academic study and direct practice. Briefly, we learned that what became Drama in Theatre started as Pageants of the Gods in Ancient Egypt, in which masked and costumed actors impersonated the gods and enacted the stories and myths by which the Divine could be understood by the masses.

These pageants were witnessed by Cretan merchants and other visitors who took the idea back to Crete where these pageants were adapted into something like variety shows that included sporting events, dance, and performances that may have been intended to honor the dead as well as the gods. It's hard to know because very little of this ephemeral art has survived in Crete. What is still there are the "theatral spaces" -- generally large rectangular plazas in the so-called Palaces where stepped seating is still visible. It is assumed that many of the activities depicted in Cretan frescos -- bull leaping, dance, wrestling, etc. and possible impersonation of the Divine -- were performed in these plazas.

Mycenaean Greeks witnessed these performance/pageants and adapted them in Athens and elsewhere, and presented them as part of the celebrations of a Levantine god, Dionysus. The early Greek theatral space was the same sort of rectangular plaza as in Crete with temporary bleacher seating on two sides. Initially there was one actor and a chorus, and the performances focused on the stories of the gods and their effects on puny humans. There may have been other elements in these early theatrical performances in Greece -- dance, sport, etc -- but in time, the performances were codified, and some of the scripts from this latter period still survive and are performed to this day. The point is that all these early performances were considered sacred acts, and the spaces where they were performed were sacred spaces. When Drama in Theater spread further from Greece, the sacred nature of the performances and the spaces where they were performed went with it  though highly attenuated. Actors, directors, designers, etc. knew and know of the sacred nature of what they are doing and the sacred spaces in which it is done. All sorts of rituals and superstitions, some of which may go back to the origins of Drama in Theatre, are still part of the process of creating the play. So there is a nearly straight line between the origins of the art form and today's productions and performances, whether or not the company observes the niceties of sacred ritual.]

'Nother Note on Information Sources

Just so you know, I don't watch cable "news" and I will not allow cable TeeVee in my home. I occasionally watch Democracy Now!, one or more network news broadcasts, PBS Newshour, and various foreign news outlets that are on my PBS station,. That doesn't include RT or Aljazeera, though I will sometimes check them online.

I do not do Twitter and I do not do Facebook, though occasionally I will look at bits of postings to either platform if I find an interesting link somewhere. Usually, I don't.

I have two Win10 news feeds, neither of which are comprehensive but they do provide a quick glance at events. I will look at the New York Times and WaPo online if not daily, at least every other day, and I also read the LA Times online, but probably only once a week. My local news sources are fairly slim, and they include KXNM radio, which has an outstanding London-based news roundup hourly. I occasionally read the Albuquerque Journal online and pick up whatever "alternative" news papers I see in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

I have really limited the websites I visit. They include DKos (I've been a member since 2003, and I along with a whole raft of Old Timers was horrified by Markos's dicta and his inappropriate Hillary fluffing. It was nauseating, but I long ago concluded that Markos was running a con, basically with the intent of rebuilding the Republican Party along the lines it once had before the crazies took over. I don't think he cares about Democrats at all) the Intercept, Naked Capitalism, and Ian Welsh's Place. Inappropriate Trump fluffing is still common at NC and Ian's place, for reasons I can only imagine are due to cognitive capture. NC has backed off its incessant Trump boosterism, but in my view they're still captive to the con.

I do follow links if the information looks interesting and/or compelling.

Otherwise, there are random sites I visit now and then.

I'm not a shut in yet, so I still have a fairly active life out and about; that means I'm not glued to the news 24/7 and I wouldn't want to be. I tend to be an early riser, so my news consumption is generally between 4am and 7am. Then it's on to whatever is on the activity calendar for the day. This is one of the times I don't have anything scheduled for this afternoon.

I think I'll take a nap.

If anybody has any good news sources, let me know!

[Note: I forgot to mention MoA (Moon of Alabama) which I check daily for the latest Inappropriate Trump Fluffing from overseas. Bernhard is I believe German living in Germany. His analyses of Syria and other conflicts is usually very good, but his absolute devotion to Trump -- which he denies -- shows his own susceptibility to falling for the blandishments of a conman. Oh well.]

Overturning Myths and Expectations

If nothing else, this election has kicked the complacent in the butt. The complacent have had a number of these kicks lately, but it's not entirely clear the lesson has been learned. This is quite a different country, it seems to me, than conventional wisdom would have us believe, and as all the hue and cry and schadenfreude and what have you over the outcome continue unabated -- no, no, they're redoubling! -- it doesn't appear that many observers or opinion leaders have the least clue to what is really going on. It's all about confirming bias and believing falsehood, in other words being willingly conned. And that goes for pretty much all "sides" in the "national conversation" about what happened and where we go from here. I'm as guilty of that as anyone, though of course I see myself as a font of wisdom and objective reasoning. Of course. Don't we all?

I've been through these kinds of elections many times -- going back to Ronald Reagan's California gubernatorial victory over Pat Brown in 1966. The shock then couldn't have been any greater than the shock is now,  I didn't notice at the time, but I've heard that there was a similar shock nationally when JFK defeated Richard Nixon in 1960. The whole Nixon impeachment/resignation drama was certainly shocking at the time, but previously the shocks of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the undermining of LBJ's administration by anti-war fury among other things, followed by the multiple assassinations of 1968 acted as one shock after another. Nothing has been the same since.

Perhaps the most appalling shock of a presidential (s)elecction was the elevation of G W B thanks to the lawless intervention of the Supreme Court in 2000. Nothing like that had ever happened before. A naked power grab, quite simply, with the open connivance and participation of a faction of the sitting government. It was a coup, right before our eyes, and nothing was done about it.

The popular rebellion that tried to get going several times from the beginning of the Bush2 Regime fizzled out, partly because the media ignored it, being as it was fully in the tank with the usurpers. And the media was in the tank until the whole appalling mess unraveled when the economy collapsed.

The Obama elections and administration haven't been particularly shocking -- except to the white supremacists who never accommodated the notion of Negroes in the White House as anything but doormen and butlers and such -- it's been mostly a pause, a breathing space, before the next set of outrages and shocks, and here they come!

Oh yeah baby. Reversion time it will be. Reversion to America's Greatness, with White Men in charge the way they're supposed to be. You betcha. Hillary wouldn't have been a White Man (damn her all to hell!) and she wouldn't have undone the diversity progress that's been made in the government for a generation, but I have to agree with some observers that her administration, the permanent US government, and US society as a whole would still be dominated by White Men, and that white supremacy, while more or less subdued, would still be the dominant belief of many, perhaps most Americans.

Trump merely makes it explicit. Oh boy, does he.

Assuming he takes office -- and there is still some marginal doubt that will happen -- he will govern as a White Supremacist without a doubt in my mind. However, so would Hillary. And to a great extent, so has Obama.

They pretty much have to because it's baked into America's "Greatness." The US wouldn't be what it is and what it wants to be without White Supremacy.

A reversion to White Supremacy as it was as recently as the 1950s looks to be in the cards, and that's not a good thing in my mind. To many white people, the way White Supremacy operated outside the South in the 1950s was very benign and benevolent, and even in the South, as long as the colored didn't get uppity, it was tol'able.

As long as the colored and other inferiors didn't cause trouble, so the story went, they didn't get trouble.

Of course it wasn't true, but that's the myth of the era.

That's the era that Trump came up in. He's a little older than me, so he got a headstart. Of course he was born into wealth and raised in privilege (white privilege supplemented by the privilege of wealth) and was educated in private boarding schools at a time when the people who went to them were considered the offspring of the cream of the crop. He got in trouble, though, for misbehaving at one school and was then placed in a military boarding school connected with West Point to learn discipline and correct behavior. As far as anyone knows, the lessons didn't take, in part because the New York Military Academy saw his misbehavior -- particularly his bullying and "persuasion" -- as an asset rather than something to be trained out of him, and he was pretty much allowed his head.

I didn't have anything like that background. No. Not much. I was raised by a single working mother in California (who at one point said she wanted to send me to military school to train the rebellion out of me), and until I was ten years old, we always lived in lower or working class mixed race neighborhoods. When I was ten, I encountered middle class and upper middle class and then upper class "all white" society for the first time, and I recoiled -- still do, really.

It was crazy, and the beliefs that insulated white people had of their inferiors (and make no mistake, in all white society, the colored are most definitely considered inferior) were ridiculous and wrong. But since they only knew them as servants and field hands, how were insulated white folks to know that? They couldn't, right? And they didn't. And they had no better beliefs about lower and working class white folks, either. This was in the late 1950s, so I experienced it at its apogee before its fall. Or rather, its retreat. It never fell.

This is not to say that some of the white supremacists I encountered and knew weren't in many ways "good people." They were. some of them. They had no open animosity toward their inferiors -- but they didn't mix with them, either. Some employed Asians, Blacks, or Hispanics as servants, without any sort of conscious prejudice toward them, but many who had servants at the time only employed white people. Again, there was likely no conscious prejudice involved, it was just the way things were. They were following the precedent set by their parents and grandparents and the expectations of their class. That's all.

For the most part, these white-rightist-supremacists were ideological Progressives. I've tried to clarify the nature of Progressivism in other posts, but I don't think I've quite hit the spot. California was, until Reagan's terms as governor, as fully a Progressive state as there has ever been in the United States, and it still echoes some of that past, despite Reagan's successful efforts to dismantle Progressivism as California's governmental operating system.

Progressivism was a Republican innovation to counter the spreading threat of Populism that the Democratic Party was utilizing for political purposes. The basic Progressive theory was "rule by managerial elites" with the "consent" of the ruled. Experts in many fields would be called in, they would study problems and make expert recommendations regarding solutions, the public or their representatives would be given a chance to say yay or nay -- always under the assumption that they would say yay, which is what they usually did when allowed to opine -- and the expert cadres would be set to work. Previously intractable problems were indeed addressed and many were solved to the benefit of all. On the other hand, democratic principles were subverted, the "consent of the governed" part was often skipped in practice, and in operation, Progressivism was deeply intertwined with white supremacism. It was taken for granted without question. "Everyone knew" whites, particularly Anglo-Saxons and so called Nordics, were superior. Not only were they superior to the colored races, they were inherently superior to other whites, and they were meant to rule.

The reason for the withdrawal of consent for the continuation of Progressive Rule in California was simple enough to understand. By 1966, there had been numerous student rebellions in public colleges and universities (there was even a walk out in my high school) and there had been spectacular uprisings of the disincluded in urban environments, just then becoming known as "ghettos." And of course, the hated Hippies were arising.

Pat Brown, who had been a very successful Democratic and Progressive governor for two terms, was unable -- and perhaps unwilling -- to bring various rebellions under control. He was seen as feckless and ineffective against the urban blacks and rebellious white students. Both groups were seen by many Californians as "undeserving" of the privileges and benefits they had been granted by their Progressive overlords.

So the voters rebelled and installed a nonentity in the Corner Office, a nonentity who proceeded to crack down on the rebels as harshly as he and his cohorts felt necessary, to the cheers of many. Meanwhile he was instituting policies and programs to cripple public education, starting at the top and moving downwards, and insofar as possible eliminating the state hospital system for the mentally ill and insane. In the process his administration began the dismantlement of the Progressive operating system of government, substituting an advance on a prior form of government which was typical before the Progressive Revolution (essentially re-opening government to rule by corporate interests for their pecuniary benefit.)

Democrats, to their undying shame, largely went along with it. It was all based on a theory that government existed primarily to punish the lower orders and to reward the rich and powerful.

That set the pattern for what was to come nationally under Reagan when he became president, but under Democrats, too.  And here we are.

Trump in some ways is the natural culmination of that theory of governance.

But Hillary, had she been able to capture the prize, wouldn't have been so much different. She wouldn't have the trappings and the glitter that Trump brings with him, but essentially their politics and policies are very similar, they just have different targets for their "wrath" as it were.

The key difference between them, I think, is that he was always sheltered and showered with the privileges of his wealth and whiteness, and she was not. He started out on third base, as they say, and succeed as a conman and gangster to reach the top of his field -- and then (apparently) become president. She worked her way up from next to nothing -- she wasn't poor, but she was brought up in a very abusive household -- and she made many indelicate compromises along the way.

What I've said about the two of them is that he is a crude and rude representative of his class, and she is the model of those who work for them.

Sigh.

I don't expect him to be any less destructive of the public good than his predecessors, but I wouldn't have expected much good to come from Hillary's reign had she succeeded. As I say, they had different targets, but in the end they both favor the already rich and powerful.

It's a complete myth that she would start WWIII; just as it's a myth that he will prevent it. It's one of the more pernicious myths of the election season, and it's unshakable among believers.

But there are many others. There's been a great deal of projection onto both candidates, most of which has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the unmet needs of the hoi-polloi. Neither candidate would actually meet those needs, however. Both would try to bamboozle their way along.

I believe the plug was pulled on Hillary primarily because she showed she was not much of a bamboozler when it came to the end when she might have turned Comey thing around. She didn't, she blew it.

Trump, on the other hand, showed himself to be 1) a master entertainer; 2) a master conman. Those are two absolute necessities in the Post-modern Presidency. Hillary just didn't come up to snuff.

Well, enough of that. We'll get through this one way or another.

The Coming Reversion to White Supremacy "When America Was Great"

This was one of the most glaring consistencies of the Trump campaign, one that a lot of people recognized.  Some supported it, some were simply baffled, others were outraged, but seemingly no one not on board with a full on restoration of White Supremacy as it used to be ("When America Was Great") knew or knows how to deal with it.

Most of the physical attacks we're hearing and reading about during the campaign and since the election are over this factor of Trumpism more than anything else.

Claims have been made that because "the protesters" were not in the streets during the campaign, the current nationwide protests against the elevation of Trump to the presidency are hypocritical and invalid. The claim that there were no protests is false and galling, but that's the kind of thing that Trump partisans and loyalists are known for. The Big Lie is one of their favored tactics, and it comes right from The Man himself.

What also comes from him is the unshakable belief in White Supremacy. Sometimes he couches it benignly and more or less kindly, other times, not so much. But essentially all of his threats and insults during the campaign and since have come directly out of a White Supremacist playbook which asserts that White males, particularly those of the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic heritage (hm, he himself, eh?), are innately superior and meant to rule over everyone else. Bow down.

Let's face it, this is how the United States and its colonial predecessors were organized and operated from the get go until very recently.

The dismantling of White Supremacy as the operating philosophy of the American government and society has only been under way since the mid-Sixties. It isn't complete by any means, and I don't think there was ever an intent to completely eliminate White Supremacy. Simply boxing it in as one of a number of notions about superiority and inferiority was thought to be sufficient unto the day. As long as there was an apparent and conscious effort by the government and throughout society to overcome the inherent prejudices of White Supremacy everything would work out fine.

Now we're about to enter into an era of reversion to the way White Supremacy operated as recently as the 1950s and even later.

Let's understand: this is the era Trump came up in, and this the last heyday of unchallenged White Supremacy in this country. Truman's desegregation of the armed forces in 1947 marked the death knell, but it would take another generation of struggle to begin to overcome some of the many, many impediments to the self-determination and self-worth of non-whites in America, a struggle that is by no means complete.

It is a task that has never been fully accomplished, but baby-step by baby-step, progress has been made -- along with a lot of back-sliding.

Trump and his loyalists and cult followers have essentially said, "Throw that all away, it didn't work. Go back to what did work, the way it used to be when America was great."

I've benefited from White Supremacy all my life but I've also felt the sting of White Rage toward any non-conformity. Oh my yes. Conformity is one of the hallmarks of White Supremacy. It's not simply that whites are superior, it is also that whites themselves have to fit into a standard of conformity determined by their Betters or face The Wrath. Any deviation or disobedience can cause untold trouble.

As for Others, ie: the Inferiors according to the tenets of White Supremacy, they essentially only exist to serve the interests of their white overlords. They live on the sufferance of their white overlords. They can be dispatched at will. We see the contemporary operations of this way of thinking in the violent actions of police in and against communities of color. The often arbitrary killing and violence by police against people of color -- and anyone else who is considered to be disobedient or a threat -- is right out of the White Supremacist playbook, what I call the Caucasian Id.

The whole structure of White Supremacy, at least as it's operated in this country, depends on the presence of inferior victims. Order is maintained by declaring and oppressing inferiors. As a rule, those inferiors have no recourse to authority when they are victimized. When that's taken away, as it largely has been in civil society -- though not in the "justice" realm -- disorder is the inevitable result. Without inferiors to oppress, there can be no "order" in a White Supremacist society, at least not the way it works in the United States.

Thus Trump and his cohort have targeted a whole range of non-whites (and women and nonconformist whites) for open oppression. Thus, too, the violence we've seen from Trump loyalists and random white people against people of color and non-conformist whites. It's an integral part of the way White Supremacy works.

People who have a heritage and history of being victims of White Supremacy instinctively recognize what this man and his cohort are setting out to do, where their social theories of superiority and inferiority inevitably lead. It's no mystery at all. We've been there before, we've barely emerged from it, and only partially at that.

Many Trump loyalists and cult followers insist they cannot understand the fear that's gripped targeted individuals and communities. "My goodness! You're overreacting to liberal fearmongering! Nothing has happened to you. Nothing bad will happen to you. Just settle down and go along with the program. You'll be fine."

Right.

How many times have victimized communities and individuals been told exactly that? And how many times has it led to assaults and worse against them? And that's exactly what targeted communities and individuals were told during the unpleasantness that swept Europe in the 15 years or so before I was born.

We've been down this road before. Those of us with any critical thinking skills and historical memory at all know where it leads. And those of us who are fighting this reversion to type, if you will,
have no intention to yield to our "superiors" -- not this time.

I think back to the origins of the Progressive Era and how it operated on a White Supremacist foundation. One of the first civic efforts at being "Progressive" was that of Galveston, TX after the devastation of the hurricane of 1900. Essentially the prior governmental operating system was scrapped. An appointed manager and commission was installed to replace the authority of the elected and arguably corrupt city council. Blacks were disenfranchised right off, as they were considered too inferior to make informed decisions. Rule was through the city manager and the commission, the elected representatives were essentially ceremonial. But only whites could vote for them.

If this sounds familiar it should. For Galveston's Progressive revision of civic government became the pattern for Progressive city governments all over the country. Many cities, in fact most, still operate on this system (in most cases without the commission), though in most the wholesale disenfranchisement of Inferiors has been eliminated. Now only certain Inferiors are disenfrachised. (Felons, those without proper ID, blah-blah.) The number of categories that result in disenfranchisement has been expanding recently, however. We saw that at a minimum hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of Americans were prevented from voting in the most recent election due to purges, incomplete voter registration rolls ("We're so sorry, your name isn't on the list. [Smile!]"), onerous ID requirements, and so on. Media mentions the remarkable decline in Democratic voter turn out in this most recent election but few connect that with active voter suppression efforts in exactly those places where largely Democratic voters were functionally denied the ability to cast a vote that would be counted (provisional ballots rarely are.)

In some places, particularly in parts of Michigan, "emergency managers" -- much like Galveston in 1900 -- have been appointed to rule cities in place of elected representatives whose function is reduced to a ceremonial one if they have any function at all. Even black people can still vote for them, but they have no authority. Voters in Michigan rejected this form of rule thumpingly, but it didn't matter. The state imposed it anyway.

The United States is notorious for its system of disparate "justice", arresting, convicting and locking up black and brown men and boys in particular far out of proportion to their commission of crimes and their population. In addition, the United States maintains the most bloated jail and prison system on earth, an abomination in itself by any rational standard.

What I'm saying is that we've been on a path toward the restoration of White Supremacy as it will come to be under Trump for a long time. He isn't innovating much, merely continuing what's been under way since Reagan's presidency.

Democrats have gone along with it for the most part. Sometimes they might slow it down a bit or jigger this or that aspect, but there have been very few objections among the political class of either party, and only muted objections from the rank and file.

It's simply untrue that targeted communities and individuals didn't object to what's been going on during every administration since Reagan's, but as I say, the Big Lie is a consistent factor in the New America being put together right now.

The acceleration of what's been going on since Reagan to restore White Supremacy as it used to be is apparent however. For those on the target list it's terrifying.

Who knows what it will mean or how exactly it will be implemented, but don't expect more than token resistance by the political class.

We're on our own.

OT:: The Diagnosis

The coming diagnosis, let's put it that way. My various physicians have me on a kind of diagnostic treadmill, checking off one thing after another ("Nope, not that!") and going on to the next. It took months, for example, to confirm I had rheumatoid arthritis and to come up with a treatment routine that seems to be working pretty consistently for joint pain and swelling.

They've checked me for cancer (multiple myeloma) -- so far no sign. Yay.

Now the question is what's wrong with my lung(s). Breathing problems and fatigue have been getting worse. I can feel the pressure of a "growth" in my lower right chest (this may be in the lung or it may be due to a hiatial hernia, more about which in a bit), and at times I can barely be active at all -- say walk for more than a few dozen yards, or even stand upright for more than a few minutes -- without becoming exhausted.

Hm. So what's going on? The pulmonary function test showed that everything was more or less normal, except... I had severely reduced lung capacity. I think it topped out at 38%. The pulmonologist declared confidently, "Welp, that because you have pulmonary fibrosis due to RA; your rheumatologist should treat it aggressively steroids." He added that I have emphysema, too, from smoking -- which I knew from years ago -- but that it was not severe (I think he called it "mild") and it was not a significant factor in my breathing problems.

My rheumatologist did not entirely agree. She thinks emphysema could be a bigger factor than the pulmonologist believes, and if that's so, it wouldn't be wise to treat me as if pulmonary fibrosis is the leading cause of my difficulty. She also said that if I had extensive pulmonary fibrosis due to RA, she would be obliged to treat that very differently than the treatment I've been receiving for joint pain and swelling. She didn't say how she would treat it differently, but only said she wanted me to go to the National Jewish Health in Denver for a thorough respiratory assessment and diagnosis.

I've been in contact with  them and they are working out appointment availability and which department to assign me to and so forth, but truth is, I'd rather not go -- not in the middle of winter anyway. There has been no snow so far; the weather hasn't even been particularly cold here in central New Mexico, or up in Denver. But that could -- probably will -- change. They were talking about a February appt but said they'd try to get me in sooner because I'm out of state. We'll see.

Meanwhile, I had a follow up CT scan last week. The results were posted Tuesday. I'm still digesting the findings. A lot of it is written in clinical jargon some of which I don't understand, but the upshot I gather is that the radiologist who thought the signs were ambiguous in May now thinks the signs are quite clear that I have pulmonary fibrosis in my right lung, that it has spread from the lower right lobe to the mid lobe, and that it is probably though not absolutely certainly due to RA. There is some mild to moderate emphysema particularly in the upper left lobe (which is essentially the same diagnosis I received in May and what I was told when I had a scan in 2010 due to one of my periodic bouts with pneumonia.)

So I do a little research with the Goggle and discover that pulmonary fibrosis is indeed one of the possible complications of RA, that it is irreversible, and as it spreads it becomes fatal. There is no treatment, at least none that can control or reverse the progress of the disease. The only things Medical Science can do are palliative. Oxygen, for example. Or a lung transplant. Which, due to my auto-immune condition (RA), would probably not be indicated.

Alrighty then.

I'm not in a tailspin about it, and I probably won't be. When I told Ms Ché what this situation was looking like, she was momentarily stunned, and then took the tack, as she always does, that this is just another challenge sent our way, and we'll get through it. No matter what. Bless her heart.

As far as I'm concerned, que sera sera. I'm not in any particular pain, thanks to the medications I've been taking for RA. While I'm conscious that there is something happening in my chest, it doesn't hurt at all, it's merely uncomfortable sometimes when I lie down. Fatigue is a real problem and is getting worse, but I have means to cope with that. (I'm old, I take naps. OK? ;-)

So in a lot of ways I feel extremely lucky, even if I don't have much longer before shuffling off this mortal coil. According to what I've seen in my research, unconfirmed by my physicians at this point, the prognosis is that I have perhaps months, perhaps years before the fibrosis makes it impossible for me to take in oxygen from my lungs -- and I die.

Hm.

We all gotta go sometime, and in my view, passing from this plane is a part of the circle of life. It's one stage on a journey, and for all we know, it's not the last stage.

So. As things clarify, I may have somewhat more to say about The Journey.

In the meantime, be good to yourself and one another.

The Democratic Party Is Irrelevant

I saw Bernie on Charlie Rose last night. As he always does, he made a strong case for his policies and programs that he believes would control Wall Street greed and uplift the working class, curb the police state, and inspire confidence in America around the world. All well and good, but by pleading with Trump to do the right thing, he's essentially declared the Democratic Party irrelevant.

Of course.

Democrats have been yielding power to the Rs for decades, truly since Reagan, but they weren't so savvy about wielding power after Nixon defeated Humphrey either. Nixon was practically a Communist compared to Trump, and the Republicans in Congress in Nixon's day weren't anything like today's radical reactionaries who call themselves Republicans. But Nixon's election signaled the end of the New Deal/Great Society coalition headed by Democrats and progressives, and the coming reversion to prior theories of what it was appropriate for government to do.

As things have devolved from that point, the Democratic Party has reverted more and more to its roots as an aristocratic and deeply conservative party not particularly intent on rule so much as it is on influence. Democrats have adopted populist and/or progressive positions periodically throughout the long history of the Party, but they've also been perfectly willing to throw them away.

During the most recent campaign for president, it appeared that Hillary was attempting to pull off something Democrats have long yearned for -- the union of the Democratic Party with top level Republican "moderates," those Republicans who had rejected Trump.

I think she thought she had achieved her objective, but lo and behold, she hadn't. The R "moderates" went right back to the fold once Trump was declared the victor. The power that Rs can wield by holding the White House and both houses of congress is truly intoxicating,  They won't let this moment pass unexploited. Oh no.

Trump's apparent EC victory was stunning because it wasn't expected or planned for. The shock waves ran through the Ruling Clique, just as they did through the media and the public; it was in its own way an even greater shock than the Supreme Court's lawless interference in 2000 to give the presidency to GW and his bloodthirsty cohort. It makes no sense, and it is "illegitimate" from the get. Just as GW's elevation was. GW was forced upon an unwilling but also largely unresistant public and he caused the very horrors his opponents warned he would. Wars and economic collapse being the highlights -- or lowlights as the case may be.

Democrats, to their undying shame, did not serve as an opposition party but were instead enablers, co-conspirators, and willing victims. Even when they were given back Congress in 2006 they sat on their hands and essentially pretended that everything was OK, and Bush and Company would not be more than ritually challenged. For some, it was a shocking revelation: Democrats were useless.

And in 2008 when Obama was elected in a landslide and congress had a filibuster proof Democratic majority, guess what? Obama's prime objective was rehabilitating the Rs, resuscitating them from their near-death experience, and carrying on the Republican lite programs and policies the Ds had been notorious for since the victory-debacle of 2006.

To say the public was disappointed is to put it gently, and the Ds were given their punishment in 2010. The interesting thing to me is that the Ds didn't even try to reverse the trend. They essentially conceded state houses all over the country without a fight, knowing full well that by doing so, Republican gerrymandering would ensure R political dominance for at least ten years and possibly much longer than that. The Ds knew what would happen and they let it, if they didn't actually help engineer it.

They lost most of their Congressional majority as well.

As long as they had the White House, apparently the Ds didn't care. Of course the policies which essentially favored Rs, Wall Street, and the financial elites were enacted right and left (intentional pun) to the horror of many Americans who simply wanted fairness and justice from their government and got something else entirely. Disappointment? Ha.

Government obviously was totally out of the hands of the public, governing contrary to the public interest was the operating theory of both parties, and for all intents and purposes, there was no alternative. NeoLibCon capture was complete.

There was nothing We the Rabble could do about it. Elections in 2012, 2014 and now 2016 confirmed the People's powerlessness.

But this time, instead of the stability and continuity that would have been Hillary's direction in office, we get another shock to the system, equivalent to, maybe even greater than that of 2000, and literally nobody knows for sure where we go from here. I'm convinced that's designed and deliberate, not an accident of the voters' unexpected preference. I think the voters had very little to do with it. And it is obvious from Hillary's increasing, indeed unprecedented, lead in the popular vote (now up above 1,000,000 it seems and headed toward 2,000,000 maybe even 3,000,000 or more) that the voters chose stability and continuity -- even if they didn't like Hillary -- not whatever radical upheaval is in the works.

But it doesn't matter. What the voters want in any given election is of no interest or consequence to the Ruling Clique. They want what they want, and they will get it by hook or crook. The trouble is, until the outcome was announced, they obviously wanted stability and continuity, though not for the same reasons the public did.

So what happened?

Somebody or some faction which could do so pulled the plug.

Given the tiny margins in some of the battleground states that switched the outcome, and given the exit polls showing a substantial Hillary victory in those same states -- much like Gore's exit poll victory in Florida which was conveniently overruled -- it's pretty obvious that the count was interfered with (somehow) by a faction that wanted shock and destabilization rather than stability and continuity.

Crisis-opportunity, right?

Crisis=Opportunity.

We've been through this so many times, we should understand it by now. And we should have some way to counter it. But no.

Every time is like the first time. "Whut?!" And the cycle repeats over and over.

That is one of the ways Our Rulers keep their grip on power no matter the wishes of the public.

But it's a factional rulership, not a monolith, and the factions are constantly contending for the upper hand.

The fact that Hillary, Obama, and nearly all the Democratic hierarchy went along with the... odd... outcome without question and rank and file Democratic office holders are stunningly mute about it indicates to me -- having observed these things over the years and having had an inside view of DP operations for a while in California -- that the Dems really don't care, never did, and as far as they're concerned, it's no problem -- for them. In other words, they're useless and irrelevant as a political opposition, for they do not oppose; they enable.

Of course I and many others have known that for years, but seeing it so obviously presented in this case is still a shock.

But that's the intention.

Shock the public and get away with god knows what while they're fighting among themselves.

Works every time.

So far anyway. This time it may run into a few speed bumps, but what needs to happen are spike strips at least.

That can happen if the results in the battleground states are investigated thoroughly enough to discover the kind of jiggering I suspect went on. But I don't see that on any agenda. I don't think anybody wants to do it for fear of what they'll find. This is essentially complicity in fraud but that's hardly unusual in American politics and elections.

If it were discovered that the results actually were jiggered in Trump's favor just enough to clinch the EC, that would essentially cancel the election. The whole thing, the vote in its entirety would have to be reviewed (which wouldn't bother me) and the transition schedule would be thrown into chaos. What would be found would likely be appalling to everyone. One shock would follow another. Our Rulers would find that unacceptable because the whole system would shudder and potentially collapse. A crisis indeed, but one which the Wrong People could use as an Opportunity. The Wrong People being the Rabble.

The Rabble want fairness, justice, economic comfort/prosperity for themselves, and a sense of self-worth. Our Rulers do not want the Rabble to have those things because if they do, they can't be exploited to the extent they must be to please and pleasure their Betters.

What the Trump cabal appears to be preparing to do is to restore White Supremacy pretty much as it was in the 1950s and before, as a sop to some of the Rabble to make them think they're getting what they want while exploiting and robbing them to the hilt.

It's a nasty tactic, but it worked back in the day, so I suspect the Trumpists think it will work again. Why not?

The rest of the Rabble, the ones who will suffer the most under this scheme, "deserve their punishment" according to the principles of White Supremacy. They are inferior. Period. End of discussion. Some of them are Good Mexicans, Good Darkies and such, and so they can be rewarded, but the rest? They're lucky to be alive, they can bow down and shut up. Or leave. Or die. Their choice.

No, this isn't Nazi-ism or straight on Fascism. This is the way the US was ruled and operated from its origin until the mid Sixties and LBJ's Great Society when many of the disabilities imposed on Out Groups began to be removed.

The Trumpists want to restore America's Greatness by reverting to the white supremacist principles that they believe made America "great" in the first place.

Whether the Ruling Clique is down with that, I don't know. Some of the factions aren't, but some are.

The Democrats, in the end, though, will go along with whatever faction wins.

The Rabble can have a say, if they take the reins and force the issue, but in the meantime, the Trump cabal can get away with a lot of mischief while the issue of White Supremacy is serving to distract the masses.

Oh, these people know how to run cons all right, and they know most people are marks. Breaking free of this crap is what the People need to do. Whether they or we can, I dunno....

More later. I'm tired.

Housekeeping Note

I've been informed that the comment form is bouncing efforts to post comments. I've repeatedly had that problem when I've tried to reply to commenters. If you've had a problem with the comment form, please email me at

chewhatyoucallyourpasa -- at -- hotmail,com.

If it's possible, I'll look into changing comment software.

Thx

Ché

Wasting Time

The Hillary Hate just goes on and on and on. Folded in with it is Obama Hate and the ever-popular Democrat Hate. No such hate or scrutiny applies to Trump and the Republicans, at least not on most of sites I tend to visit. It's all Hillary/Democrat/Obama Hate all the time.

As for Trump and his merry band of conmen, thieves, mountebanks, and white supremacists, criticism has been, until recently, muted or non-existent. Inappropriate Trump fluffing is non-stop. Still.

The items:

*He canceled TPP (he didn't)
*He has prevented WWIII (he hasn't)
*He beat the Hag like a tin drum (he didn't)
*The reign of neoliberal/neoconservative ideologues is over (it isn't)

*The protests are trivial, irrelevant, and/or funded by Soros and filled with Clinton Cultist Losers (come on, false on every point.)

Do people who believe these things have any critical thinking skills left at all? Apparently not.

I've wondered why. What happened to people who once seemed to be pretty sharp and insightful who are now so consumed with Hillary Hate and Trump Love, they can't even begin to see or understand what's happening. How did that happen?

While I have no brief for Scott Adams, he seemed to understand pretty clearly what was happening with Trump and why he was "sure" Trump would win. (Note, his apparent EC victory is highly questionable, but we'll get to that another time. He got nowhere near a popular vote win.)

Adams said that Trump was using a form of persuasion/hypnosis to convince his growing cadre of acolytes and cult followers. In other words he's a con-man, and he knows how to con just about anyone to get what he wants.

In a way, he's not unlike Obama.

Hillary is practically incapable of conning in the way Trump and Obama can. She lies, yes, and often says whatever she's told will gain her support whether she believes it or not. But she can't run the Big Con. And that may be why the plug was pulled on her at the last minute.

At the very end of the campaign, suddenly and inexplicably, a series of events occurred that had the effect of pulling the plug on Hillary and denied her the EC victory. Exactly how that happened needs more careful and honest analysis than it's received, but it's obvious that something happened that probably shouldn't have if the election was free and fair.

Well, our elections are jokes anyway, so whatever it was, it probably is not all that unusual.

I never fell for his con; I could and can see right through it. I never bought Hillary's hooey either. Neither one of them had any appeal to me. But that's me. Obviously most voters went to one or the other.

Trump should never become president. A billionaire white supremacist conman should not be president of any functioning democracy, but -- no surprise -- we don't have a functioning democracy or representative government, we have a fully captured government that serves the interest of.... people like Trump... and which needs a con artist at its helm.

People who haven't been conned by him -- and they are legion, though many of them have stayed quiet -- may see him somewhat differently than I do, But they all seem to see him as a threat -- a threat because of what he has done: incited violence at his rallies, approved of and used racist/sexist rhetoric, issued threats and insults toward anyone who he chooses to target and approved of his loyalitsts who "get 'em", and he has taken glee and mocked the suffering of others.

It's his metier, and it hasn't changed since his (s)election.

The whole rigamarole over whether he is or is not a fascist is mostly moot. The nation has been crypto fascist for so long it's hard to know when it began. White supremacy is ingrained through the whole fabric of American government and society. It's in the Constitution for cripes' sake. It's the way this country has been operated from the beginning and it still is. Let's not fool ourselves. The corporate state serving the rich and generally ignoring everyone else is as American as apple pie.

The progress in race relations since the 1950s was bought with tremendous cost, and yet white supremacy has never been overthrown, it's barely gone underground.

Trump seems prepared to revive this old American tradition (of "Greatness") more or less as it was before Brown vs Board of Education, maybe as it was before the armed forces were integrated by Truman.

Fascism cannot be introduced by Trump because it's intrinsic to the way the US  has been run for generations. It became most overt and obvious during FDR's regime, but was never entirely absent before or since.

The US has always been authoritarian. Always. Trump may make it more so, but he cannot introduce authoritarianism. It's long been integral.

And so on.

It's a total waste of time to focus on Hillary or someone else's badness while ignoring the big ol' elephant in the room, but that's what I see going on as every criticism of Trump is met with "But Hillary!" and every notice of the harm to come from the Trump/Republican agenda is met with "Demonrats!! Evil!!!"

It's crazy.

OT: My Mother's First Car

As I get older, I go into periodic nostalgic reveries. A good deal of it has to do with cars. When I was very young, just learning to talk and walk, I was well-known for being able to identify car models, years and brands by their shapes, marques, hubcaps, etc. It's a skill I still

have to some extent, at least for cars between say 1939 and 1969. Beyond that, not so much.

I was cruising Hemmings where I hang out now and then, and today I stumbled on this little beauty:

https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/cars-for-sale/dodge/deluxe/1837953.html

Please visit the site if you're so inclined, and by all means, buy the car if you've got a spare 50 grand or so lying around! ;-)

This one is cool for me. Although I doubt I would have been able to recognize what it was when I was a toddler -- not unless I could find its badge -- I know what it is now, because my mother had one very much like it. 

It was her first car, purchased for her by her step father who was the service manager at Ed Ruebel Dodge in Santa Maria, CA, where they had lived from 1917. She told me she absolutely adored that car, and she kept it until she went into the Army during WWII.

Of course, I was not around in 1934, but my sister was, and she said she remembered her mother's first car very well. She said it was "OK" but by the later '30s and early '40s it may have been getting a little ratty and by then was certainly out of date.

My mother bought a full-sized Dodge in 1969 as a kind of nostalgic remembrance of that first Dodge she had, but she found out very quickly that there was no comparison, and she really hated the new Dodge and got rid of it within a few months. She bought a Pontiac LeMans which I found for her, and she kept it for the rest of her life.

I knew about this car, the 1934 Dodge Coupe, because I'd seen a picture of my mother standing beside it, dressed to the nines in almost movie star glamorous fashion, the car gleaming in the sun. I'm not sure anymore, but I think she said it was burgundy; of course the photo was in black and white, so I couldn't tell from the picture.

I remember the photo very well, but I'm not sure where it came from. I don't think my mother showed it to me; I think my sister did, so it was probably in her possession. I think she showed it to me in the mid-sixties sometime. But again, I'm not sure.

Anyway, a friend here in New Mexico is currently restoring a Dodge from the era, and who knows, maybe before I die... well, we'll see.

I'm posting this as a little break from the current hoo-hah over the election. I, like many others, have lost sleep over it and I get more worked up about it than I really want to. But there you are. It's the way things go. We do what we can, and we think of many things along the way.

Message: Be good to ourselves.

Examples to Learn From

The Power Structure of this country appears to be doing everything it can to prop up the unfortunate "election" of Donald Trump to the Presidency. It's quite a remarkable scene when you think about it.

Not only is he unsuited to the office, he's totally unprepared and obviously at sea as the reality of what he's in for engulfs him. I'd be laughing if it weren't such a dangerous situation for so many Americans and people around the world.

Truly, I don't think he expected to win the office and he was quite prepared to hector Hillary from the sidelines, probably from his own TeeVee show and network set up and run by his compadre Roger Ailes. That's what I believe they were going for and expected to do. It would make them lots of money and serve as a brake on a Hillary White House.

In other words, they expected to play the Opposition Game the way it's been played by the Right for decades -- and to profit from it handsomely.

Had that happened, there would be grumpiness and grumbling from Trump loyalists to be sure, but he would have been able to give them a whole alternate universe in which to lick their wounds and do virtual battle against The Hag -- until she was either driven from office or so tied up in knots her regime would be declared a failure. Blah blah blah. It seems to me the groundwork was already done for this enterprise, and all they needed was a Hillary victory to launch. Stars and dollar signs were in their eyes.

And then... the unthinkable happened. They were given the Presidency instead. Now there will be no launch. No dollar signs. No alt.universe for their Loyalists to play in. This is as real as it gets.

Jeebus dancing on a Ritz. Whose idea was this? Well, it is what it is, and I imagine I'll be exploring it for some time to come. I had little interest in the campaign and the candidates while that shit-show was going on, but we're here now, and my interest in what to do about it is pretty intense.

He was given the keys to the Kingdom, and he's obviously as stunned as everyone else is. The Caucasian Id has been unleashed -- to what object I don't know, but there it is. White folks running wild doing what they want to whoever they decide to Other. It's ugly now and getting uglier. The worst of it is falling on the children, the brown, the black, the differently abled, the suspected queer, the suspected Muslim, or anyone at all who doesn't fit the New Model (White) Conformity.

That id has largely been kept in check for generations, and now it's let loose again to prey at will on the different and the vulnerable. Whose idea is this? What is the freaking purpose?

The United States has long since ceased to be a 'White' country, unlike some of the revanchist nations of Europe which have been reclaiming their 'Whiteness' in the face of the brown hordes of refugees driven from their homes (by EuroAmerican Imperialist destruction) in the Middle East and North Africa.

Until 'this' happened, Americans seemed quite content not to be 'White' any more, and the election of Barack Obama (twice) was supposed to be redemptive proof. He's still a very popular president. The efforts to turn him into a caricature and to "Nigger-ize" him never worked. At least not that I ever saw, but then, I'm not keyed in to the alt.White universe. I don't know how those people think. I don't know what they believe. I don't even know who they are or where they are.

It's just alien to me.

At least from my point of view these people are simply fringe, free to believe whatever they want, but not free -- until now -- to act on it.

Now they feel they've been liberated, and their Champion is going into the White House.

America will be White and Right again! Yay!

Why would Our Betters want this to happen? Why would they allow it to happen? Why are they trying so hard to prop it up? What's the deal here?

Obama himself is part of this process of propping up the inconceivable. He's been going out of his way to be kind and generous and welcoming and helpful to the Incoming Inconceivable, extending his hand and opening his heart, yadda yadda, which is not only eye-popping, but is also deeply disturbing. WTF, Dude?

Whoa. Something's going on we don't know anything about. Things are not what they appear.  But maybe we got a hint of it when Michelle Obama so warmly embraced War Criminal George W. Bush at the opening of the Museum of African American Culture a few months ago. That was really shocking to a lot of people who sincerely believe that man should be in the dock at The Hague. Until he is, he should be shunned. But no. The Obamas and the Bushes and the Clintons -- and the Trumps? -- are all very good friends. Well, maybe the Trumps will be brought into the Circle if they ever get their act together enough to warrant inclusion. They haven't done so yet, but they're being given every opportunity. Why?

And what do we do about it?

Always we're being told just to calm down, accept the inevitable, don't fight it, everything will be fine, "he's not as bad as you think," yadda yadda, and I'm sorry, no, we're not going to just roll over for Trump, not this time...

I'm so old that I've heard this same litany about rightists installed in office -- going back to Reagan's gubernatorial victory in California in 1966. Every time, the same litany has been repeated: "Just calm down, accept it, 'he's not as bad as you think', everything will be fine." And every time it gets worse.

Every fucking time.

Reagan's election in 1966 was considered catastrophic at the time. Many innocents would be hurt. And guess what? It was and they were. Almost exactly as predicted. And so it's gone with every subsequent reiteration of Rightist Rule, over and over and over again.

And now this.

No, not again. Not when it is so obvious that something is dreadfully wrong with our electoral process, and not when he himself has no inkling of what to do now or even, seemingly, how he got this prize.

WTF?

I despise what he did during the campaign, boosting White Supremacy, inciting violence, and conning so many people into believing his bullshit. That all has violent and destructive repercussions on the innocent playing out right now. What he did was release the Caucasian Id from any restraint, sowing the wind. He will reap the whirlwind, but in the meantime a lot of people who shouldn't be hurt will be.

That's happening right now.

He told his followers to "Stop it!" as one would tell a dog, but they're not stopping. Why should they? In their mind, their victims deserve it. They lost! Oh, jeebus.

So what do we do?

Among the examples to learn from are the Water Protectors now and for months facing down Authority run amok in North Dakota. Other examples include the rebels in Ireland who ultimately defeated the British. The independence movement in India which eventually led to the exit of the British Empire. Anti-colonialists everywhere, including our own 18th Century revolution. The Zapatistas. And on and on.

Examples not to follow include SYRIZA in Greece, bless their hearts. It appears the Socialists everywhere are simply exhausted and out of steam. They have nothing much to offer any more, and they are obviously too willing to concede to their opponents almost before the struggle is engaged. Does that sound like the Democratic Party as well? Of course it does.

But make no mistake, the Democrats are just as much captive to the neoLibeCon, aristocratic ruling clique as are the Republicans, as are nearly all ruling parties throughout the West and much of the rest of the world.

The struggle we must engage in now is ultimately against that entire ruling ideology. Though we have to take it one step at a time.

I cite the examples I do because each of them based their struggle on simple principles: sovereignty, self-worth and spiritual renewal. If you think about it, that's what many of the White Rightists after too, only they want what they want in order to harm others, not to lift them up.

In other words, while the struggle we must engage in may be similar to that of the White Right, the objectives are quite different.

Strategies and tactics of where we go from here are actually very well worked out long since, the rule book of how to do it is already written. We don't have to reinvent the wheel, but we have to resist efforts to divide us (Shut up, Democratic "helpers" -- you're not helping!)  and we must be aware of and  remain focused on the end game -- why we fight, in other words.

We will win, though probably not in my lifetime.

You never know, though. As we've seen, things can change in a twinkling.

What Were They Thinking?

As this electoral debacle devolves, more and more it looks like not only did Trump sow the wind, so did the ruling clique that now faces as profound a constitutional crisis as last time this sort of thing happened (2000) and are facing a far more resistant Rabble due to events that have transpired since the 2000 abomination.

What were they thinking?

Both major candidates were absurd, and were insults to the rest of us. I think that was quite purposeful, too. Our Rulers fully intended to insult us, and so they did.

Don't think that Trump was somehow some kind of pop up populist who popped out of nowhere to slay the R Establishment Dragon and ride to victory. That's not what I saw going on at all. He was carefully groomed to play a supporting role in the Pageant, and to serve as a sop to the raging crazies on the Right. I think he did his job, and he's still doing it. The trouble is, he wasn't supposed to win.

And I think he wouldn't have if some shadowy force hadn't interfered in the count in just those states where he had to win in order to secure an EC majority. Just. Those. States. Alrighty, then. In other words, something changed in the background dynamic of the factions which produce our  Presidents.

I won't go into all the factional politics that are part of the Deep State that rules us, but the Pageant that passes for an election campaign is just that, a Pageant. And who ultimately rules depends more on which faction gains the upper hand in the background than it does on the Rabble's votes. The candidates are proxies for the factions.

Hillary's faction had the upper hand up to the very end of the Pageant/campaign, and then whoops! the prize was snatched right out of her hand just like that. The tell that this is what happened was Hillary's concession the next day, in which she basically abased herself before the God-Emperor Trump -- or rather his faction -- without a single reference to Putin's Interference or any questioning of the results whatsoever.

Since only those "must win" states flipped -- some by a tiny margin -- at the very end of the Pageant, my sense is that the faction backing Trump, whoever they are, was able to gain the upper hand through strategic vote counting (how well they know how to do it by now) and wah-lah. The prize goes to ... Trump!

The question is, why would they do it? What were they thinking?

Their action has precipitated a constitutional crisis and a crisis of legitimacy, not solely for the incoming president, but for the Ruling Class in its entirety. The situation is very unstable, to the point where it looks like the nation could disintegrate, though I doubt that will happen, at least not soon.

When it was shown that Hillary got more votes than Trump, initially by a few hundred thousand nationally, the Trump partisans simply dismissed it as irrelevant; only the EC mattered, and her margin was too tiny to even notice. But since then, her margin has grown to the point where it may top out at 3-4 million, far greater a margin than any defeated candidate has ever led by. This is the fifth time the popular vote leader has been denied the presidency, the second in the last 16 years, but never has there been such a stunning difference in the popular vote between the vote leader and the person installed in the presidency.

Whoops! The discrepancy has become so great that the Trump partisans are now trying to claim that Hillary jiggered the results in the Blue States, and that in fact Trump won the popular vote. He did! He did! Nyah. Nyah. I don't think they really want to go down that path. But they're going down it out of desperation. The transition simply isn't going well. It's falling to pieces.

At least from what little I've seen of him -- is he bunkered down in his penthouse or what? -- Trump seems to be trying to be a little less childish and tantrumy, but he's obviously not in control of his own raging whatevers. The PTB look to be giving him enough rope to hang himself if you ask me.

So what's the long game here?

I think I sketched out a scenario yesterday whereby he's allowed to take office but then exits stage right -- voluntarily or by force -- in favor of his VP, a right wing religious zealot, who also leaves before the Rabble storms the gates, burns down the palace and hangs every aristo they can get their hands on (figuratively of course.) At that point, some unelected hoo-hah (maybe a general) is installed to bring the disorder in and out of government to a halt, much to the relief of most Americans.

I think a scenario of that sort becomes more likely every day this unstable situation is perpetuated.

I suppose this sort of Deep State factional struggle was inevitable once Our Rulers succumbed to the blandishments of so much cash to be had for their compliance with the wishes of the Few and the Proud and the Rich.

They're not so brave though. And they're not all that smart.

In this context it appears that Trump is way out of his depth -- he had no idea -- and he had no intention for this sort of thing to happen. I don't think he had any idea he'd be the EC victor. Didn't enter his mind, because that wasn't the way it was supposed to go. Hillary was supposed to win, everyone was prepared for Hillary's win, even or especially Trump, and then... something happened. Somehow it got fucked up, and I don't think it was the voters who did it.

Actually, they can't. But that's another story.

No, because of the tiny margins by which Trump appears to have secured Michigan and Pennsylvania, and the somewhat larger margins in Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio (Wisconsin's being the most questionable) I think we've been rooked by a faction of Our Betters who decided among themselves at the last minute that Hillary could not be president. And once she was informed (the night of the election) she said OK, have it your way.

I think she pissed off somebody -- yes, they're that petty -- who could pull the plug on her, and the plug was pulled.

Whoops!

But they didn't think it through, and there is no Plan B.

So. Here we are.

Someone posted a comment at NC yesterday which suggested I wanted to see a "color revolution" in the US. This is nonsense, of course, but the whole Color Revolution and Soros funding CT is coming from a faction of Trump partisans who appear to be desperately trying to hold this hot mess together by throwing whatever they can think of against the wall hoping that something sticks.

Soros is a Devil, of course, because he funds factions of the Rabble which hector the High and Mighty, and he played a role in the Eastern European Color Revolutions that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, much to his personal profit and pleasure.

Of course it's the profit and pleasure part of these efforts I dispute. Color Revolutions basically exchange one boss for another, in Eastern Europe, it amounted to replacing the Communist rulers with NeoLiberal rulers who proceeded to strip the public of every ounce of wealth they could get their hands on, reducing them to poverty, ill health and functional slavery to the profit and pleasure of a handful of greed crazed oligarchs. Which they call "Democracy!" Feh.

You think I want to accelerate that process here through the efforts of Color Revolutionaries? No way!

But that notion got going among Trump partisans when the protests kept growing and growing, spreading and spreading, and they started having a destabilizing effect on the cities where they are taking place, which in turn has a butterfly effect throughout the nation. Obviously, this must be a Soros-funded effort to overthrow the duly elected government, right? Like the Maiden in Kiev, right?
Soros! Nuland! Clintooons!  They're trying to overthrow the government! Just like a Color Revolution!

Obviously.

The CT and paranoia is thick and heavy with those people in part because Trump has been feeding it for years. As president-elect, though, he's been trying to back away a bit from what he used to revel in as recently as the day of the election.

I'll tell you this, though. If it were a Color Revolution type operation, not only would Trump be unable to survive it, the whole rotten apparatus of government including the craven Congress and their sponsors and owners would be swept away as if they never existed. It's not going to happen because what's going on isn't a Color Revolution, but if it were...

But aren't I arguing that something like that is going to happen anyway?

I suppose I am, except that the scenario I've laid out preserves the framework of the present government, and it doesn't sweep away the deeply embedded corruption and its practitioners. It doesn't even necessarily change the background players. All it does is change the face of the operation, and it imposes "order" on the chaos that has been precipitated by the abomination of the so-called election.

The Republic becomes an empty shell; the forms are still there, but they don't function. The game is still played, but it becomes solely sport and entertainment, elections having no consequences. The institutions of rule become more rigid, the pre-chosen President more like a God-Emperor (Hail Caesar!) whose word is law, whose divinity is worshiped by cult followers, and woe betide whoever doesn't bow down.

That's the more likely outcome than a Color Revolution. But ya never know. Things can change in a twinkling, as they did election night.

Whatever the case, Hillary will not be president, and Trump may not be either, at least not for long.

The flop sweat of Our Rulers is stinking to high heaven, and We the Rabble are in for a very rough ride.

Signing off. Your correspondent in the Wilderness. Ché.

Banned at NC? [Updated]

Um. Could be.

Seems that Yves at Naked Capitalism is quite cross with me, seeming to claim I "made stuff up" in violation of site rules so she's put all my comments into moderation. I have been quite active over there since the election, and before that, in part to counter some of the inappropriate Trump fluffing I was seeing there day in and day out. And still today.

Of course, let's not forget Lambert banned me at Corrente because I wouldn't fall for his bullshit about nonviolence and called him out on it. This was during Occupy.

Let's see, who else? Digby banned me when I advocated on behalf of Karen Bernal, the chair of the CA Democratic Party's Progressive Caucus. The Caucus had been suspended for daring to suggest that Obama should be primaried in 2012 for his failure to follow through on economic and other promises he made during his 2008 election campaign. This was after I'd tangled with her several times over Occupy and her apparent ignorance of it. Shortly afterwards she got rid of her comment section altogether as she was not finding much sycophancy there anymore. From anyone. Funny that.

Barbara O'Brien (Mahablog) banned me for something I don't remember, probably yet another challenge of her ignorance or arrogance (they go together, don't they?)  Oh, I remember! It was over the Vietnam War protests and student rebellions of the '60s. I'm not sure what the issue with her was, something about SDS perhaps, but my view was less antagonistic about anti-war organizations than hers. She claimed to have been involved with SDS, and she loathed them after Mark Rudd took over.

At least that's how I recall it. I may have defended Rudd to her chagrin. Anyway, years later -- again during Occupy  -- I met and tangled with Rudd at UNM; he had become a nonviolence absolutist, and was saying that even wearing all black or wearing bandanas was "violence" and I told him it was horseshit. The violence was being perpetrated against Occupy by police, and they would do so regardless of bandanas and black clothing.

I still get invitations from Barbara to join her at Linkedin. I haven't responded.

I wasn't banned from Greenwald's Salon effort, but I withdrew when it became clear I wasn't welcome there for challenging his arrogance and ignorance and for rejecting his vicious attacks on longtime posters who he suddenly took a dislike to. His behavior was becoming bizarre and erratic (I suspected drugs) and it was a very hostile environment. When I better understood his phoniness and lying, it wasn't a place I wanted to hang out at anyway. I check the Intercept now and then, as I would occasionally look at his Guardian posts. At the Guardian it was clear that he'd become lazy and indifferent and his comment section was filled with multiple IDs for only about 40 individuals. Then Snowden came along.

The issue with Yves is not so much her false accusation that I made something up about crowds in the streets protesting Trump as it is my challenges to her and Lambert and large numbers of the commentariat fluffing Trump every day.

The proximate issue: There was a demonstration in Los Angeles yesterday which was referenced on my Win10 news feed, the headline stating 100,000 marching on Wilshire Blvd. I scanned it quickly and posted a comment on the Links thread at NC which confirmed what another commenter had said about the demonstrations. Some time later, another poster suggested that the "100,000" in the streets of LA that I'd referenced might be fake, that there was a photo of demonstrators in Venezuela going around the internet that was being passed off as yesterday's demonstration in LA. I thanked him and said I'd find the source, which I was able to do rather quickly. It was not fake and the images and videos were not from Venezuela. They were from yesterday's demonstration in Los Angeles. However, the 100,000 number only appeared in a tweet. The headline stated 10,000. Other estimates ranged to a low of 8,000 up to 100,000. To my eye, the crowd looked to be much closer to 100,000 than 8,000 or 10,000 (I've had some experience estimating crowd sizes from photos and videos after all, and I usually get within 15% to 20%.) [I went back and did a more careful estimate of the crowd size shown in the  overhead photos and videos posted here. It's my original source. I note that in all the pictures and the videos, one cannot see either the beginning or the end of the march on Wilshire Blvd. From what can be seen, I estimate 12 - 14,000 but there are clearly more than that as the march continues well beyond the view of the camera. For there to be 100,000, the crowd would have to continue down Wilshire Blvd five or ten times farther than is shown in the pictures. I'm dubious that it does, but it's impossible to tell from the pictures and videos. I could only guess, and I would say the total size of the demonstration is probably in the 25-30,000 range.]

At any rate, Yves has taken the position that the protests are small and trivial, and that there are not enough people involved to have an effect on Trump's assumption of the presidency. She is rigid in her stance, and she repeats it as often as possible. OK. She also goes on and on about how "if" Trump does this or that he'll be popular and reelected, and she and Lambert defend Trump to the hilt. No matter what he does or says, their hatred of Clinton and the Democrats gets the better of their judgment.

Lambert has even suggested that the protests are somehow arranged by Clintonites to embarrass Trump. This is ridiculous. The entire political class, including Clinton and her flacks, have been telling the protesters to desist and accept the outcome. The protesters are disobeying their orders from Clinton HQ, and at least to my eye, they have no interest in seeing Clinton back in the White House. They don't want Trump installed either, but mostly they want the system changed..

Yves and Lambert's reaction to the protests and challenges to their Trump fluffing -- I'm not the only one doing it, but I'm more persistent -- indicate to me that there is a spreading panic among Trump partisans over the protests and over the general resistance to the Trump regime, and especially to the widening gap between Clinton's and Trump's popular vote. I saw one item today -- unconfirmed -- that she now has 3.5 million more votes than Trump. That seems to me to be way more than the count should be given that it was barely more than 500,000 more for Clinton than Trump yesterday. The NYT suggested that her lead would top out around 2,000,000 when all the votes are counted. I estimate something closer to 3-4 million if all the votes are counted. This would be stunning, unprecedented. To deliver the presidency to a candidate who so convincingly lost the popular vote might be "constitutional" but it would be a travesty. Ultimately, it would be unstable and unsustainable, even "if" Trump provided promised bennies to his loyalists.

Even Lambert is now hinting Trump will face a "legitimacy crisis." Indeed.

Anyway, Yves and Lambert clearly dislike my harping on these issues over there, and I wouldn't be surprised if they tell me to get lost, "loser."

Not. A. Problem!

Things are moving fast throughout the political class and the blogosphere; people are starting to bunker down for good reason. My Predict-O-Meter has been on the fritz for years, but I predict that Mr. Trump will face many severe challenges between now and inauguration day, that he will (barely) get through them and will be inaugurated under guard against a backdrop of massive protest, that his cultists and the protesters will essentially battle on the streets and parks of DC, that troops will be deployed to prevent the mayhem from affecting the inaugural festivities, that there will be bloodshed, and that within a few months of his inauguration, Trump will be gone from the Presidency -- either voluntarily or forced out. Mr. Pence will briefly take his place, and may or may not have an opportunity to appoint a vice president. If he does, then I suspect Pence will resign and whoever he appoints will become our next unelected president.

What fun. Not.

[Update: Well I haven't been banned -- yet -- only severely chastised by Yves for my "lack of critical thinking." Oh dear me all to heck. The irony, it burns. I had been driving a lot of clicks her way. Well, I will vow to stay away for a week or so, and see whether the regulars and the proprietors develop any critical thinking skills themselves. Seems to me most of them have totally captured by the Trump cult, and it's hard to shake. I think Scott Adams may have been right about Trump's hypnotic persuasive skills.  Sad.]

Ugly and getting uglier

Kind of interesting from the view at 30,000 feet, but I don't know how much longer I'll bebe able to maintain my distance from the roiling unrest in the streets, nor do I have any real insight into how far it's going to spread.

There were said to be 100,000 in the streets of LA yesterday protesting the elevation of Trump to the Presidency. If it was reported that way, the number was probably quite a bit more given the media tendency to low-ball "leftist" crowd estimates.

Gee.

The protests in Portland have been called "riots" and the police have responded by firing into the crowds with "rubber projectiles," gas and smoke grenades and flash-bangs after assuring us that the protesters threw "objects" at them. A sniper apparently fired live ammunition at a protester, wounding him.

And so it goes.

On the other side, Trump partisans are either claiming the protests don't matter -- after all, the protesters are so few and they're just losers, whiners, and no accounts -- or they are Soros-funded attempts at a domestic "Color Revolution" -- and they don't matter, because Soros, and who cares, anyway?

Well, I'm not aware of any Color Revolution aspects -- yet. But the protests have been growing and spreading, and they are destabilizing wherever they pop up. There was a demonstration in Albuquerque the other day (I think it was Wednesday, I forget!) in which about 600 participated. A handful of what I assume were anarchists targeted a restaurant along the route for vandalism, and sure enough, that's what caught the local media eye (they are always on the lookout for protester "violence.")  Another protest was apparently announced for Thursday night and all the mechanisms for suppression were marshaled by the authorities, but whoopsy! The protest didn't happen.

I have to say Albuquerque's local protest community is well experienced in psyching out authority, and apparently they've been doing that. Bless their hearts.

But what I'm seeing reported in the media about protests around the country should be starting to alarm Our Rulers. It's not a Color Revolution yet, but it could become one -- or something like one -- very quickly.

Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen, partly because the results where they have happened have not necessarily been what their participants intended -- sometimes they've been closer to the opposite. They tend to cause the institutionalization of a neo-liberal, exploitative and extractive power structure that acts against the interests of the People. We already have that, duh. But if a Color Revolution type general protest occurs in this country, Trump will be toast. I don't know of any target of a Color Revolution who has managed to survive the... um, process. I could be wrong, but it wouldn't look good for the survival of the current wildly corrupt and purposefully contrary power structure.

While that might be desirable in the abstract, what would take its place?

That's the problem. While there are many, many reasons to take to the streets over this appalling and outrageous (s)election, no one I know of is able to articulate an alternative. What are we supposed to do, and what sort of difference is supposed to be made?

Are we supposed to install Hillary instead of Trump? I don't see that as viable. First of all, she is saying -- along with the entire political class and the media -- to "accept" the results essentially without question and get used to Trump-the-President. The people in the streets refuse.

While Hillary has a widening popular vote lead, now estimated to top out at 2 million, but it might go to three or even four million by the time all the votes are counted, and if that happened, that would give her a clear majority in the popular vote, no one has yet looked closely at the "battleground" state totals that so surprisingly "flipped" from Clinton to Trump by a very narrow margin at the last minute -- giving him an Electoral College victory without the need for a popular vote plurality or majority.

Given all the talk about rigged elections and Putin's interference (OMG! Putin!) it's remarkable that after Trump's "shocking" "historic" "upset" no one said a word about rigging or interference again.

The Memory Hole sucked it right down.

How... interesting.

Clinton, for her part, is telling donors she "lost" because of Comey's interference. Wait. What about PUTIN????!!!!! No word.

Of course because Trump "won" he no longer has anything to say about "rigged elections," does he?

Jeebus.

They must think the Rabble are complete idiots. Well...

All right, I don't know what happened in the "battleground" states. The excuses I've heard for the "surprising" flip Clinton to Trump in those states -- and those states alone -- are that white women broke for Trump at the very last minute (because Comey -- that was Hillary's excuse) and there were all these hidden white rural voters who came out of the woods to vote for Trump, and what could you do, it was just enough to give him an EC victory, and that's it. Just accept it.

The people in the streets are saying, "No! Fuck No! Not. This. Time!"

We were told the same thing when Bush2 was handed the Presidency by a lawless Supreme Court. "Just accept it." And many did. A lot said "No," but that time, they were ignored. 60,000 or more protested Bush's inauguration in DC on the day, and there was almost no mention of it in the media. It went right down the Memory Hole too, and today hardly anybody knows it happened. "Get over it" was the constant refrain of the Busheviks, but many never did, and the outrages that Busheviks committed were so appalling and so destructive that today it's almost impossible to believe such a damaging regime was allowed to do what it did by the entire political class cheered on by a captive media. What were they thinking?

Millions took to the streets to protest the Iraq War, and they were ignored. But many, many others protested practically every aspect of the Bush Regime, and except for Cindy Sheehan sitting in her ditch in Crawford shaming Bush the Lesser, you practically wouldn't know there were any protests at all these days, because most of them were ignored at the time, and forgotten.

But they happened nonetheless and had the cumulative effect of destabilizing the regime. Not that it did any good, but it happened.

The horrors of the Bush2 Regime are not forgotten, despite the fact that the protests largely were, and I think part of the motivation of the current protests is a recognition that Trump is like Bush2 on steroids, raging and champing at the bit to commit even more mayhem to more people, faster and harder than the Busheviks did.

We will not willingly repeat that horror show.

Trump and his gang of thieves, mountebanks, torturers and warmongers have done nothing to assure us they won't engage in the kind of monstrousness the Busheviks did. In fact, they've been pretty clear they'd "finish the job" the Busheviks left undone by dismantling Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other remnants of a social safety net they can find, by deporting every brown person they can round up, building a higher wall to keep them Messicans out, by suppressing every aspect of dissent they can, by restricting the voting franchise to only People Who Matter, by dispensing favors to loyalists, denying them to everyone else, by going hog-wild with extraction and transport of fossil fuels (damn the Indians acting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, Trump himself stands to profit from it, get outta the way, ya damn savages!), restoring official torture programs, glassing any opposition to hegemony in the Middle East, by re-engaging in acts of war against Iran, by allying the United States with every rightwing/fascist regime on earth and on and on and on. That's the program Trump and his R cronies in Congress have been laying out, essentially daring anyone to do anything about it.

His defenders insist we must give him the benefit of the doubt because of all the Good Things he's going to do. Never mind the Bad. He's promising to increase infrastructure spending to create "jobs" -- for whom, doing what? Well, we don't know, do we? But not to worry, it will be Wonderful, and long overdue! He'll get rid of that Obamacare abomination, leaving -- perhaps -- the "prior conditions" denial of coverage provisions and offspring coverage on parents' policies until age 26 as remnant sops to the takers, losers, and whiners. But that's it. Nothing else. 20 some odd million to lose coverage, and wonder of wonders, to lose any ability to get coverage. Tough luck, suckers!

He won't start WWIII with Putin, so that's good, no? He will start a war with Iran and China and whoever else gets in his way or defies him, but they deserve it, right?

Gah. On and on.

"Give him a chance!" And more and more of the People say, "No. Not this time."

I don't know what will happen. I don't want to think the worst, but it's hard not to under the circumstances. This man and his cronies must not take office. Period.

God save us.