No unity without justice

I'm sure you're all happy to know that I'm willing to sacrifice my constant stream of entertainment embodied by The Idiot, President Donald J. Trump, for the sake of the rest of your sanity and ability to feel at least somewhat decent about the concept of America as anything but the profit center I believe it to be. We have come to end of Trumpworld, to a certain degree, and even the QAnon people are giving up. I remain constant in my opinion that the only upside to that moron occupying the Oval Office was that it forced people to pay attention. Every time he exploited the "rules" of tradition and custom that make up our mockery of a government; every time he pushed the limits, knowing that the pearl clutchers wouldn't believe he was telling them exactly what he was going to do; every time he reinforced the farce of an uneducated and often willfully ignorant public putting a con man into the highest office in the land and being supported by other elected officials (Hi, Mitch!) who definitely knew better, he showed just how outdated and inadequate our administrative system actually is for the vast majority of those subject to it. If you are part of the ownership class, the Trump era likely reinforced your status. The rest of you will have to live with actually being awakened to the reality of how the system is designed to exploit you and those with even less than you have.

And, of course, now is not the time to return to sleep. What I was afraid of with Hillary Clinton's election was that the very real systemic problems- the wealth disparity, the police state, the inability to speak outside the traditional norms of discourse without being dismissed as an extremist -would all be dutifully ignored. Trump's election changed some of that and we began to see the emergence of people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and Katie Porter; people that were committed to asking the questions about the power structure that had regularly been dismissed as not relevant to the goal of wealthy people making even more money. Those representatives are all still present in Congress and one assumes (hopes?) that their attitude has not and will not change. With a functioning adult in the White House, there arises the prospect of actual, positive change. But in his speech today, actual-President Joe Biden spoke of "unity", which has been a buzzword among Republicans in the last two weeks, suddenly confronted with the fact that not only had they lost control of both branches of government but had been directly threatened by the monster that they've nurtured and ridden for the past 30 years. My opinion on that is simple:

I'm not interested in "unity" without justice.

I'm especially not interested in unity with those who actively encouraged the assault on January 6th, such as Ted Cruz (R-TX), Joshua Hawley (R-MO), Mo Brooks (R-AL), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ.) (Rumor has it that the latter three went looking for a pardon from the Idiot in the last couple days...) I'm not interested in unity with fascists or unrepentant racists or devoted QAnon cultists. Advocating unity with people like that only encourages their crimes and makes it that much easier for them to be considered acceptable behavior the next time some con man like Trump (and there will be a next time; in Josh Hawley, there basically already is) leads a bunch of fools into declaring him the messiah. The only thing that counts right now is justice. Justice means expelling all five of those people, among others like Lauren Boebert (R-CO), from their respective bodies of the legislature as not suitable for the proper function of government. It means arresting stooges like Louis DeJoy and seizing the assets of his company for directly interfering with the function of a federal agency (in this case, the US Postal Service.) It means cracking down in the most direct and obvious ways to send the message: No more. No more profiting by damaging the function of government. No more attacking the function of that government in the name of some twisted cult based on the second amendment or some other bizarre notion (like trickle-down economics...) For once, the hope is that Democrats run the show like they're aware that they're in the director's chair and not concerned about the studio (i.e. their campaign fundraisers) threatening to pull the plug if they're spending too much money (It's pathetic how symmetrical that analogy is.) For once, they should be assured that the progressive opinions they're hearing put forth are those of the majority of the citizens of this country.

National healthcare is one of them. Climate change is another. Student debt is another. Policing is another. Economic inequality may be the most important one of all. But don't talk to me about unity with what are, in the end, actual criminals. In the modern era, the fox guarding the henhouse is perhaps a bit too quaint to draw the picture, so let's try something timely: If you invite the plaguebearers into the house, all you do is continue to spread the plague. There is no herd immunity to broken government and the widening gap between rich and poor in this nation. There is, instead, a simple dividing line: One can be on the side of facts, truth, and equality or one can be a fascist. I say again that I have no interest in unity with fascists because they have no interest in facts, truth, or equality. I'm still convinced that proper civil war is the only way to truly solve our current national problem, but it may be a case of fighting the fascists long enough for some of them to realize that the real problem is the ownership class and always has been. It's Biden's task at this point to make a statement about which way this society is going to move in the future. To his credit, the line from his speech today: "... not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example." is a good summary of what I'm talking about, since it would be starkly different from much of what the US government has stood for, in matters international and domestic, for most of its existence; from Shays' Rebellion to now.

The casualties of the non-stop rueful, cynical entertainment will probably be half a million strong by the time we reach February, and that's only talking about COVID. Millions more are already casualties of the profit machine and one con man's willingness to exploit every angle of it. Now we have a new executive whose task is to reverse course on much of what has happened over the past four years, but whose real task should be to alter course on much of what has happened over the past forty. Is he willing to do that? As the zen master once said: "We'll see."

The mirror, darkly

People usually ask me around the appropriate times: "What do you want for Christmas?" or "What do you want for your birthday?" My typical response is something like: "Bloody revolution." Most that know me also know my political outlook, which is one that decidedly contrasts much of America's and certainly the outlook that has come to embody America. Whereas most believe in and promote the idea of big business, everything for profit, what's good for GM is good for America, etc., I'm a Marxist. What that means is that I favor people over profits, whether it comes to labor law, environmental law, or any other rules of society. So, when I talk about "bloody revolution", my image is of a popular revolt based on a higher principle, rather than on petty prejudices and a demagogue. So, when it came to the events today around and inside the Capitol building, my primary reaction was a mix of disgust and humor. The humorous part was that all of these fools were following the commands of an idiotic con man whose true nature has been blatantly apparent for 40 years. The disgust was based on watching all of the institutions that are held so sacred by most Americans being brought to their proverbial knees by a bunch of ignorant QAnon believers and a large number of racist cops; many of whom are also supporters of that idiotic con man. (How can someone that stupid deceive so many people? Animal cunning isn't bounded by intelligence. It's an instinct that's well-served by people who want to be deceived in the first place. But I digress.)

First off, let's get one thing straight: Anyone invading the Capitol today should have been shot. Full stop. That's what any nation does when an insurrection is attacking its primary legislative body. If I were leading my much-fantasized bloody revolution, I'd certainly expect to be shot if I was in the halls of Congress or the White House. That's what happens when you're trying to violently overthrow a government. People tend to shoot you or at least shoot back when you shoot at them. These people should have been treated as the domestic terrorists that they are and been shot. The first few to go down would have scattered the rest to the four winds. This is how this normally works. But, instead, what we saw were repeated instances of police retreating from unarmed invaders, taking selfies with said invaders, and even letting them in the door in the first place. This was after the date of January 6 was singled out by both President Trump and anyone who casually followed this thing called the Internet for weeks. Everyone knew this was coming, so there can be no argument that the Capitol Police or the myriad of security forces in and around DC were surprised by what happened. The fact that they stopped to share photos with these insurrectionists demonstrates what the reality was: These cops supported this insurrection. The foxes were, indeed, guarding the henhouse.

This brings into stark contrast what happened over the summer, when actual protests occurred across the nation in response to the death of George Floyd. In those instances, since the protests were made up of non-White people and were in support of non-White people and protesting against their usual treatment at the hands of authority (Protect and serve!), those participating in those events were attacked by police as if they were the enemy... because we are, to their thinking. We threaten the institutions because we point out that those institutions are either flawed or malicious. That's never a good idea in a state that's beholden to a very few. Indeed, the starkest example of the difference in response to the two events were what Washington looked like then:

 And what it looked like today:

This speaks to not only orders given from on high, given the weeks of lead-in to this event, but also attitudes among the police themselves. After all, these "protesters" weren't Black! We're all in this together as fellow Americans, right?! This was cooperated with. Messages were sent from above that this behavior was acceptable in the corridors of power. (15 whole arrests today! Woo!)

And that's where the disgust really ramps up. Right away, you get the plaintive mewlings of government officials with the "This isn't who we are." line. This isn't America!, they say. This doesn't represent our grand, idealized vision of the city on the hill that, as one CNN reporter put it tonight, is the "anchor of democracy throughout the world." I nearly spit my water across the room because, you see, this is America. It totally is. This nation is seen as the "anchor of democracy" in many corners of the world only if your interpretation of "anchor" is something that weighs you down until you drown. This image- of self-entitled White people given free reign by cops to attack the legislature in the hopes of intimidating it to hand power to a would-be dictator -is absolutely America; especially when contrasted with what happened over the summer and what has happened to Black people in this nation for 400 years at the hands of authority, both locally in the form of cops and nationally in the form of Congress. This is so on brand for America it's almost as funny as it is disgusting. The "This isn't who we are" line is a dodge. It's an evasion that allows people to not confront this truth and pretend that real problems don't exist until everyone can move on to the next episode of The Mandalorian and forget that bad things even happened. It usually helps that the people using that line are the ones for whom those problems don't really exist (i.e. White, often wealthy) because they're never directly affected by them.

But that's another thing to keep in mind: This problem is far bigger than The Idiot, Donald J. Trump. This is the Republican party in a nutshell (with their often all-too-willing accomplices, the Democrats.) Trump may be the beacon in these insurrectionists' lives. He may be the one that keeps whipping them into a frenzy with lies that they love to hear and fantasies that can't possibly make sense. But it's vermin like Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Matt Gaetz, Mitch McConnell, and Josh Hawley that have made this possible, among many, many others. They enabled this creature and looked the other way every time he committed crime after crime just like today, usually only after announcing that he was going to commit whatever crime that took place. (Someone tell me: Is Susan Collins concerned again? Or has she learned her lesson...?) This is the modern GOP and no one should ever forget what this party is: fanatical hucksters, dependent on ignorance, and completely devoid of any policy ideas that will improve life for anyone but the tiny sliver of the wealthy of which they are a part. This is a party so dependent on the Reagan religion, the tenets of which that have been so resoundingly disproved or rejected over the past 40 years that they can't reasonably be brought forward as actually popular ideas, that it can't promote anything but ignorance and fear; mostly of The Other (the non-Whites, the foreigners, the immigrants, the "socialists", etc.) Trump is the outward manifestation of this trend and they have covered his tracks at every opportunity; so much so that Cruz and Hawley have played to his base tonight on the Senate floor as prospective candidates for 2024. This is the Republican party and no one should ever forget what they've created.

The humor of today was also brought about by entities like the National Association of Manufacturers, suddenly realizing that widespread public violence might be bad for their profit margins, finally suggesting that Trump is unfit for office, two weeks from his removal after four years of perfidy. Or Twitter and Facebook, finally responding to the unending stream of lies that he spews forth that led directly to the national legislature being evacuated from its building by cutting him off their platforms; the same platforms that were used to organize this little revolt and which did nothing but promote his bullshit for years as a concession to "free speech", but really because they made money from it. As always in American politics, it's about the money. It's always about the money. Even the corporate media finally had to concede that perhaps "protesters" and "demonstration" weren't quite sufficient euphemisms for insurrectionists attempting a coup. CNN even labeled them "anarchists" at first. Remember anarchy? That thing you do when you're trying to keep the current government in power? Yeah. That. But all of this is reflective of the normalization of fascism. History is replete with examples of events like this, both within America (the Wilmington Massacre of 1898 (also racially-motivated)) and without (Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922.) Fascism is a solidification of corporate and political power and most major media sources are corporations, so they feed off this. Organizations like the New York Times remain eager to avoid buzzwords that might make anyone think that something is wrong with the American democratic edifice like, say, when the President is a liar or when people attempting to intimidate the legislature are staging a coup. That's why the term "anarchist" is thrown around. Anarchy represents change, so it's used to represent chaos, the lack of order (Law and order!), the undermining of authority, the breaking down of institutions.

So, don't kid yourself when you think that America is "better than this." It never has been, because things like this usually lead to profits for the people that own America (exactly what the NAM was concerned about.) It's also a shining example of what the US has done, repeatedly, in other nations around the world, also at the behest of those owners (the term "banana republic", which many are applying to the US these days, came about because of the activities of United Fruit, the US Marines, and the CIA.) This is America. One of our two major political parties has simply begun saying the quiet part out loud; usually embodied in the form of The Idiot, but now also in his devoted followers who have been elected to the highest legislative body in the land. But his departure will not change anything but the façade. While every effort should be made to both arrest all of the participants of today's debacle (including the outgoing president) and expel all of the Congresspeople promoting sedition (It actually should be done, legally, per the 14th amendment.), there will still be much more work to be done. They and the people they serve will still own everything and will still work to maintain that situation. The only thing to potentially look forward to is the actual bloody revolution that might serve the interests of someone other than a minority of racist morons. I await that day with great anticipation.

Not quite a Klassic

BlacKkKlansman is Spike Lee's latest joint and it was clearly intended as a statement film, rather than a story. There are generally two types of political films: one with a story that delivers a message as part of its theme and one with a message that carries a story. This one is the latter, without doubt, dressed up as it is in the stylistic trappings of a Lee effort that attempts to be the commentary before the critics can get there to extol it.

The best part about its absurdist plot is that it's a true story: the only Black police officer in Colorado Springs did actually infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan and speak with David Duke. But Lee is careful to not let said absurdity override the essential disturbing theme of American racism being alive and well in 1979 and to this very day. All of the direct encounters with the Klan members carry an atmosphere of danger and there are no hi-jinks that would lift the story out of the realm of drama and into comedy. That doesn't mean that the film is a brooding one, as Lee also consciously applied the style of the time in which it's set, using choreography and shooting angles that were an obvious homage to the Blaxploitation films of the 70s (Patrica and Ron skimming toward the camera with guns drawn, etc.) He was also careful to draw tight links to the reality of Trump and his followers in the present day ("There's no way America would ever elect someone like David Duke president!", Topher Grace as Duke muttering about "Making America achieve... greatness again!"), as that part of the message was repeated over and over: In many ways, nothing has changed in the last 40 years and the regular shooting of Black people isn't too far away from the organized lynchings and torture that Harry Belafonte as Jerome Turner spent several minutes elaborating upon for his young revolutionary audience. I think that message is a good one that bears repeating.

My one note of reluctance about the film is that, as has happened with many other Lee joints, I think he was attempting too much with one film and the editing was perhaps hindered by both the amount of material contained in the script (and the message) and the relatively thin characters that weren't able to carry the film from scene to scene. In many ways, it became too obvious that it was a message being delivered and not a story being told. The jumps from scene to scene were often choppy and the pace of the film dragged a bit in the middle, mostly because there wasn't enough story to carry it evenly from act 2 to act 3. You only cared about the inevitable resolution and not enough about what was happening to get you there. There was little warmth in the relationship between Ron (John David Washington) and Patrice (Laura Harrier) and most of the moments when Ron had to deal with the chief or other superiors felt almost as staged as your typical police procedural.

But there were some very strong and memorable moments. I found it kind of fascinating that the few moments of real levity were when Ron was conducting his phone kalls to to Klan members and other cops would be cracking up at his over-the-top performance. Of course, Washington was playing it so straight that what was truly funny about those scenes was watching the other cast members try to restrain themselves and end up giving him away. This is one of the interesting things about comedy, in that some of it can best be enjoyed with other people, so that true enjoyment comes from seeing how other people are reacting, even moreso than anything gained from the actual content of the joke. You'd like to think that that, too, was a part of the message, in that the best way to deal with that kind of visceral and unreasoning hatred and ignorance is to be able to laugh about it (and at the racists) together; taking collective joy in the behavior of fools rather than letting their foibles reduce our own.

Adam Driver as Flip Zimmerman had the most poignant moment of the film when it occurred to him just how much privilege he enjoyed, despite the fact that he was one of the primary unwanteds of the Klan, since it wasn't obvious that he was anything other than a White man. It was a great question of identity when he revealed that being Jewish was never something that was a part of his reality as a child until he grew old enough to understand what it meant and develop his sense of self. But that scene may have been a measure of Driver's greater experience as an actor, since he was able to convey that kind of identity quandary, whereas Washington, as the central figure in all of this, really didn't. He was constantly the straight man in the grand joke. Similarly, it occurred to me in act 3 that the person occupying the typical role of hero in the action scenes was, in fact, Driver, since he was the one taking the physical risks in interacting with the Klan, got the chance to show off his shooting skills, and then finally rescued Stallworth from overzealous cops at the end. So, once again, the person occupying the popularly understood notion of "hero" of the film about Black identity was a White guy (see: Amistad.) And this was a Spike Lee film! Two other performances of real note were Corey Hawkins as Kwame Ture and Jasper Pääkönen as Felix. The latter reminded of no one so much as Michael Biehn as the deranged Lt. Coffey in The Abyss.

Another familiar aspect was the little cultural touches that Lee included, sometimes with a feather, like Mr. Turrentine (Isiah Whitlock) using the tagline ("Sheeeeiiiitttt!") of his most famous role from The Wire, and sometimes with a cinder block, like dropping in the movie posters of those Blaxploitation films while Ron and Patrice are discussing them. I can see the desire to clue people in to what that conversation (and the consequent style touches throughout the film) was about, but I also think the heavy-handed approach kind of diminished the overall effect. No one I saw the film with had seen The Wire, so the Clay Davis moment was lost on them, but sometimes those Easter eggs are things to be discovered with later viewings, rather than shoved in your face the first time. Similarly, while I understand the desire to show the events of Charlottesville from last summer to drive home the fact again that, yes, this is still a reality and these people, including the president, are dangerous and a menace to civil society. But I'm not sure the full footage was as effective as a few still shots with captions would have been, allowing the audience to draw some of their own conclusions, rather than making them for it.

Regardless, it's a film that's well worth seeing for a variety of reasons and probably much more effective in the theater than it will be on smaller screens.

There is no door but the revolving one

The latest escapade of the Idiot's administration is both amusing and frustrating for one very significant factor that precisely none of the current major actors in our public farce will admit: This is not new. This is the same old story played out once again in front of a public only too willing to jump up and scream "Save the children!", even if the consequence of this action will be that many, many more children will die, and probably even American ones when they're sent over there from backwoods Alabama, since joining up was the best employment prospect they had. The fact that most of said dead children that the GOP is howling about saving are precisely the ones that they've insisted shouldn't be allowed into the country is just the kind of thing that wouldn't be brought up at the right parties.

There are the usual politically-driven complaints about acts against a sovereign nation and/or doing so without Congressional approval for an overt act of war, but that's all window dressing. The concepts of "sovereign nation" and "Congressional approval" are both irrelevant to US foreign policy at this time and have been since 1915 for the former and the early 60s for the latter (Haiti and Vietnam, respectively.) The US military goes where it wants and does what it wants and dares anyone to say otherwise. The fact that the US Navy has 19 aircraft carriers while the rest of the world, combined, has 22 should symbolize just how often anyone would be willing to take that dare or be capable of doing so. Democrats, Republicans, and the media are all falling in line with said military because of the usual hysteria over CHEMICAL WEAPONS, which is laughable on its face because the US has not only encouraged puppets to use said weapons frequently in the past (Let's use Iraq in the 80s, just as a casual, not even relevant to the situation at hand example...) but enabled the sale of materials to said puppets by signing off on various pharmaceutical producers doing business with them. 

But it's not really about that. This is the continuation of the grand game that hasn't changed under administrations going back to FDR. It's a bunch of old white guys who meet up in their various orgs with names like "Committee for the Restoration of Iran" or some such thing. They're still fighting the Crusades, 1000 years later, not for some spiritual god, but for the real god: money, and the oil and weapons which it is based upon. This agenda has not changed nor will it ever change until massive corporations and old white guys are no longer the predominant owners of our government. Obama did nothing to dissuade them. The Clintons were both ardent hawks. If anything, Trump was less of a hawk on the campaign trail than Clinton was, although it's certainly debatable whether he was so because he didn't have a clue about Syria or anything that's farther than three miles from one of his hotels (likely) and she was so because she had to be "tough" as a woman in a man's world of politics (also likely, although that doesn't excuse it.) This is the real agenda. All this noise over the past few months about Trump's incompetence and his family grafting off the government and health care and blah blah blah; none of that is the real story. This is. It always is. The ownership class signs off on presidential candidates only with the implicit understanding that said story will continue as it has for the last 100 years. Trump has finally engaged his 15-second attention span and signed on to the real agenda because he saw a news report about a chemical attack and, less than a day later, decided to follow the time-honored tradition of boosting his poll numbers with an act of war. It's the same thing every president has done for the last 50 years (Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, and many more.) They all do this. The fact that it gains them some political capital at the same time is an ancillary benefit. But this was destined to happen.

Now, granted, it's slightly more of a concern when the world's largest arsenal is in the hands of a person with the maturity and impulse control of a five-year-old (read: none whatsoever) but it doesn't change the inevitability of something like this occurring. Those rich, old, white guys still own the government, no matter who's sitting in the Oval Office. This is their agenda. This is how the system works and both Democrats and Republicans have long since signed onto it. So has the voting public, who always flock to the idea of the glorious American Heroes stepping out onto the world stage to murder someone. Americans who actually read the history often like to laugh at the idea of so many happy people watching their soldiers parade off to certain grinding death in 1914, but the same thing happens here for a certain segment of the population every time this event occurs, no matter where it occurs.

The usual response to any protest is: "So you're saying it's OK to use chemical weapons?!! On women and children?!!" No. That's not what I'm saying. That's what you're saying to serve your political favoritism or demonstrate your outright ignorance of the situation at hand. What I'm saying is that the United States should not be killing anyone to either benefit someone's poll numbers, justify the Pentagon's ridiculous budget and the corporations who feed at that trough, or enhance Chevron's bottom line. Not now. Not ever. If anyone really cared about the human beings involved in the midst of this, that would be the message they'd deliver.

Recriminatory stupidity

Now that was an interesting first three weeks, wasn't it? It's like having a five-year old as leader of the most powerful nation on Earth: "There's no way he'd do that, would he...?" Everyone with that attitude or who actually uttered that statement is the equivalent of a direct challenge to the Idiot. It's like telling said five-year old not to run out into the street. That's immediately the first thing he thinks of doing. Now it just remains to be seen if Nancy Pelosi can find the right angle: "I bet you can't raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour!" (This never works on kids, either.) I said before the election that if the Idiot got elected, this would be non-stop entertainment, and it is (waves tiny flag /mgoblog), even if it's the "shock value" kind of entertainment. More's the pity.

Tangent: I've found no more suitable title for President Trump (snicker) than The Idiot. I'm betting that most people will read that in the conventional sense in which it's intended. Me being one of those untrustworthy and uselessly hyper-educated types, I can only think of Prince Myshkin every time I use that term, which is hilarious because of the genuine irony present in Dostoyevsky's novel (That's right people. Not sarcasm. Not coincidence. Actual irony.) Myshkin, as a character, is everything that Trump is not and someone who would be roundly rejected by both Trump followers and many Democrats as unsuitable for public office. Again, more's the pity. /tangent.

Howevah! One thing that has become increasingly annoying over the past few weeks is the recriminatory bullshit being lobbed from many corners of the Democratic sphere (mixed metaphor!; that's how complex modern politics are.) "Thanks to all those Sanders/Stein/Johnson/insertrandomnon-Clintoncandidatehere voters who said there was no difference between Democrats and Republicans!"

First off: What, exactly, does this accomplish? It lets you vent your spleen at... who?
The Idiot? No.
McConnell? No.
Goldman Sachs? No.
Putin? No.
Millions of Trumpistas? Not them, either.

Instead, you direct your teenage angst and ire against the very people who would otherwise be your allies. I've seen this happen in previous scenarios too many times to count. These are people taking the chance to get Twitter yuks and demonstrate their perceived superiority over other points of view, while the building continues to burn around them. The most important thing to do right now is fight back. I think a great first step would be to alienate the people willing to fight alongside you and who, incidentally, have often been doing it longer and harder than you ever have, especially if you're a Clinton fan. (That, folks, is sarcasm.)

Secondly, they're still using the old boogeyman routine: "If you don't vote for our horrible candidate, you'll get something even more horrible!" They've been stroking that since Kennedy and, since the advent of the DLC and the Clintons, the horrible candidate has gotten (ahem) progressively worse with one exception: Obama, who tried to separate himself from the DLC types and was rather ferociously attacked for it in 2008 by one Hillary Clinton... who no doubt had done a 180 and become a stalwart supporter of the little guy by 2016. Seriously. Just ask her. Yes, I'm putting aside all of the ways that Obama really wasn't for the little guy (especially if said little guy happened to live in, say, rural Yemen) but let's not get into that.

The point is simple: Democrats are not entitled to votes no matter how awful the GOP candidate may be. They have to earn them, just like everyone else. If you want millions of progressives to actually vote for a Democrat, one has to be proffered that isn't on the payroll of Bank of America and Co. If you give people something to vote for, they will. If all you ever talk about is someone to vote against, at some point, they stop caring. They'll stop caring even sooner if your response to their not voting for your candidate is attempting to browbeat them with specious reasoning. Hillary Clinton's husband did more to shape the modern economy for the worse than any Republican going back to Warren Harding. And you're telling me that she would have suddenly abandoned her wealthy donors and decided that the way forward is to help the little guy? Her campaign and extensive history say otherwise.

You just lost an election to the worst candidate who's ever run for president and your response is to blame everyone who didn't vote for your candidate who couldn't win that race. Just think about that for a bit and then wonder if your next tweet should be sniping at people like a rejected teenager or promoting the actual efforts of groups like Rogue NASA.

The ego begins

One thing to keep in mind is that Donald J. Trump is not the typical Republican. There's nothing particularly "conservative" about him, especially when it comes to being recognized as the smartest guy in the room. Anyone who remembers this

should understand that easily. So this article by Politico should already be tickling some Democrats.

“We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals,” Trump said. “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure — which will become, by the way, second to none — and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”

You're looking at every county commissioner and city mayor whose jurisdiction contains one or more of the above.

Trump wants to be known as the 21 century's Justinian II; the guy who saved/restored the Roman Empire (kinda... for a few years.) You can't have that if The Beast is dodging potholes every time the president goes out to review the peasants. This is part of why people like Paul Ryan and mainstream Republicans were leery of getting on board with Trump in the first place. He doesn't play ball in the typical DC fashion and will be loathe to abandon any project that makes him look the magnanimous overlord to plighted Americans. He doesn't answer to the donor class and he doesn't really care about "conservative principles." The problem for all of us is that he doesn't really care about anything that doesn't burnish the image of Trump. But navigating those waters while watching Ryan and Co. wrestle with the more hardcore budgetarians in the House will be endlessly entertaining.

And the crowner of that piece is, of course, the quote from the Heritage Foundation's Dan Holler:

“It would be a mistake to prioritize Big Government endeavors over important issues like repealing Obamacare, reforming our regulatory system and expanding domestic energy production,” Holler said. “Along with confirming a conservative justice to the Supreme Court, these are the type of legislative efforts that will help anxious families and folks struggling all across the country.”

'Cuz, y'know, every former pipefitter stuck working at Home Depot that I know is direly concerned about how a conservative justice on the Court or the profits of Chevron will help his anxious family. I mean, seriously, how could you be thinking about anything else while working for $10 an hour? Priorities, yo.

Going back to the well

Here we are, two days out, and I've been involved in a number of conversations with people trying to understand the whys and wherefores of president-elect, Donald J. Trump. I get that. It's a surprising turn of events for many people who figured there was no way that the voting public could be so irrational as to elect that idiot. But I don't think irrationality is the issue here. I've also been involved in a couple conversations wherein people objected to my overtly humorous reaction to the election. I get that, too. A lot of people are frightened of what a Trump administration could look like, especially as we are now regaled with stories of who is under consideration: Ann Coulter, Myron Ebell, Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, etc. A couple things about that:

• My sense of humor has been described as anything from "macabre" to "quaint" because I tend to find humor in situations that many people find abhorrent. There's a certain level of cosmic perspective ("Nothing will ever match the depredations that would accompany the world being taken over by Yog-Sothoth!") but it's often a Robert Frost thing ("If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.")
• I TOTALLY called the Palin as Secretary of the Interior thing. There's no better indication of a collection of people that have no clue as to how government (to say nothing of Interior) actually functions than to believe that she's the right choice for that post.
• Ann Coulter as White House press secretary. Can't you just imagine Trump barging onto the dais in the press room to interrupt Coulter saying something outrageous with a pronouncement that's even MORE outrageous? Pardon me while I convulse with laughter again. It helps if you have absolutely zero respect for most of these institutions as a whole, given that they largely deserve none.

 Those people all sound horrible for those of us actually concerned about things like, say, climate change or police-community relations. But what concerns me even more is the number of Democratic voters and media types who are continuing with the "race" and "likeability" angles as to why Hillary Clinton lost to the most outrageous and incompetent candidate and campaign in the last century.

Race is a factor, as David Duke and his execrable ilk are now happy to tell you. Clinton's difficulties on the stage and with regular folks are a factor, as has been cited often. But just because some of Trump's supporters are bigots

Low-income rural white voters in Pa. voted for Obama in 2008 and then Trump in 2016, and your explanation is white supremacy? Interesting.

— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) November 9, 2016

and just because Clinton was a suboptimal candidate on the stump

This is very curious advice. Clinton not a great speaker, reportedly great listener. That works on @foxnews? https://t.co/UJYjS2YapR

— Medellín (@TonyJohnIII) July 22, 2016

doesn't make those the defining traits of her loss. Anyone remember what Bill Clinton's in-house slogan was for his campaign in 1992?

And there you go. When you have a block of voters that have missed out on the benefits of the "new economy" and are, at best, serially lied to by politicians promising to help them or, at worst, are labeled as losers by the media for not succeeding in said "new economy", presenting them with a candidate whose message is just more of the same is a sure recipe for disaster. The only thing that kept this race close for Clinton was the fact that Trump is such a horrible human being (and who goes on trial for fraud in a couple weeks. 'Merica!) If she'd been running against Romney, it would have been a slaughter. But, again, one of the reasons someone like Romney or Jeb Bush didn't get nominated is that they represent the same things Clinton does: Goldman Sachs, concentration of weatlh, and continued oligarchy. In the emails that were hacked from the DNC, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress put it best:

“I mean it makes my life more difficult after telling every reporter I know she’s actually progressive but that is really the smallest of issues. It worries me more that she doesn’t seem to know what planet we are all living in at the moment.”

Here's a hint: She doesn't.

So, what now? Well, what this presents us with now is opportunity. Yes, the next four years are going to be a bit of a trial with the GOP controlling all of the government and that idiot loose in the White House. But the opportunity comes in the fact that so many people dread that reality. This should be a galvanizing event. Don't be one of those Facebook warriors screeching at me about how others are going to suffer more than I am. I'm aware of that. What I'm saying is that there were plenty of people already suffering, including those highlighted by the keyboard champions whose only real expression of concern was to hit a Paypal button to toss $20 toward the Clinton campaign and feel like they were "contributing" to anything other than a stagnant edifice that's already rolling in cash, thanks. Again, borrowing from people who are likely expressing it better than I am, take a listen to Marc Lamont Hill on The Breakfast Club from a few months back:

The pertinent stuff begins at the 11:05 mark, but the whole thing is worth a watch, as he's a very interesting guy. But, in short, what he says is that he's not interested in voting for the same thing that continues to not work and a Trump presidency may be the thing that gets the majority of people to finally fight back against a system that is largely designed to make them passive observers (i.e. the equivalent of walking into a voting booth every four years), rather than active participants.

We can't just keep dismissing this event as the work of closed-minded racists. That's missing the point. The point is that a genuinely democratic and/or representative republic has to work for more than just the wealthy and ours simply doesn't.

So, here's the thing

When this whole thing started and I was as surprised as anyone that a narcissistic buffoon with little record of accomplishing anything without someone else's money (i.e. Daddy's) was going to be the Republican nominee for president, I told several people that it would be the most fitting result possible for modern American politics and, if he did win, I was going to laugh my ass off. You'll have to pardon the exaggeration of intensity, because I actually dozed off while reading tonight (and, yes, ignoring election results) and when I woke up, the media were declaring President Trump. The first thing I did?

I'm letting this picture break the margin because... yeah.

I mean, actually, it was me laughing and the cats looking at me with exasperation like I know so many other people in my life will, but this is a pretty good representation. Everyone is going to try to highlight this or that factor that supposedly led to this result, be it emails or racists or a supposed reluctance to keep the same party in office, three terms in a row. But that last one is kind of crucial because, in the end, they're all the same party.

"What?!!", you scream. "There's no way you can compare that bigoted man-child to any rational candidate!" Oh, but I can, because he's part of the same class of people that own both major parties and, in effect, make them essentially the same party. So is Hillary Clinton. And there's your problem. That problem isn't bigotry or ignorance or religion or ideology, although all of those do contribute to the mess. That problem is money; who has it and who doesn't.

I hang out on a lot of gamer sites, both electronic and the old-fashioned cardboard type. Games are kind of a dominant hobby in my life, whether watching them (Michigan, Liverpool) or playing them or both. Strangely enough, I detested the game theory side of political science when I was in school. But a few months back, there was a post on a gaming forum (Fortress: Ameritrash) that called for people to register to vote in the upcoming election because of the perceived importance of the result. This forum has a number of regulars from around the world, so many of them chimed in with questions about the impending election and why Americans didn't go to the polls and so on. Someone suggested it was simply a matter of laziness on the part of the electorate. My response was this:

We might get better turnout if, like every other modernized nation, people had the day off to vote. We also would get better turnout if people thought their vote actually had an impact on the process by getting rid of the Electoral College and instituting ranked (or instant runoff) voting, so that there would be more viable candidates in the race and an actual choice for many people. You can't blame people for not participating if they've been told that either they have no choice but to vote for someone they find detestable or that their choice doesn't matter at all. And that they should spend hours standing in line away from their families and their jobs while they're making that useless or nonexistent choice. When people are encouraged to not participate, they won't. You can't castigate them for that.

At that point, someone asked for a perspective on the current state of American politics. I've been, uh, out of the scene for a few years, but I like to think that I still have a grasp of some of the nuances, so I chimed back in:

Just to clarify my perspective and position, I built the Green Party from the ground up in the state of Michigan and chaired it for 5 years, so those are my politics. However, I spent a long time trying to deal with the tunnel-visioned in those circles, who often declared that if you weren't part of the solution (that they would happily remonstrate to you at all times), then you were part of the problem. Needless to say, this is how so many good ideas get marginalized, as people attempt to be "Greener than thou" or whatever label they choose to follow or affix. I'm not active anymore for a variety of reasons, but I still know a lot of people in various political circles, on the Hill, etc. and I still like to drop into local meetings and have been, for example, to several Tea Party gatherings over the past few years because I like to know what people are saying and thinking, rather than what other people SAY "those people" are saying and thinking. 

The mood in the US right now isn't especially positive and it's driven by a number of things but, at root, the problem is economic. America, the Land of Opportunity is no longer so for the vast majority of the population and that trend has finally enveloped the bulk of the white population, who were the ones who most believed in the concept of that opportunity because it was sold to them from every politician, every neighbor, and every form of media. The American Dream is kinda dead. This is why Avik Roy, a fairly prominent conservative thinker, said the other day that the GOP is dying because it can no longer mask the fact that its central ideology isn't economic conservatism, but, rather, white nationalism. They can't sell the former idea because the concept of moving up the economic ladder is no longer a sure thing, hard work or no. So they've had to rely on the latter idea since Goldwater and it's only accelerated in the past couple decades. The frustration, on the left and the right, is paramount. This is why Donald Trump is where he is. 

Think about it: This is a man who, in the course of the past week, dismissed the Geneva conventions, talked about exiting NATO and then the amount of money the other members would have to toss at the US to rejoin, suggested that the president of Russia should release more negative info about Trump's primary electoral rival, and refused to release his tax returns. Any one of those statements or actions would be heavy damage, if not death, to any normal campaign. But Trump's supporters don't give a shit about any of that because it doesn't matter to what's in front of them right now. What's in front of them right now is a pretty stark reality: They need an education to hopefully get a decent job, but the old reliables like law school are no longer so reliable. If they tried to get that education, they'd have to go six figures into debt and, aside from that incredible burden, who'd be working to support their family (whether it be children or parents)? Meanwhile, they're still constantly berated by the stories of the success of the 1% and told that if they work hard they, too, can be "successful". But the reality says that that won't be the case and so now they're looking for answers. Trump is providing those answers in the simplest manner possible and using tried and true methods that are inherent to American politics from the dawn of its existence. Race has always been an element of American politics since before those fabled founding documents were written and it always will be. It will always be easy to divert people's attention from the real cause of their troubles (lack of opportunity caused by the concentration of wealth) to some other vague reason that usually involves people who look differently (race) or act differently (sexuality) or worship differently (obvs.) 

What's accelerated the process in the past 20 years is this thing we're currently all sitting on: the Internet. It is, in turn, the greatest and worst communication device ever created. It's the greatest because it allows thoughts and ideas to travel instantly around the world and for people of like mind to find each other and exchange those ideas. It's the worst because it allows people of like mind to segment themselves from the rest of humanity until they hear only what it is that they're comfortable hearing. When what you're already predisposed to believe is repeated to you hundreds of times a day, it's difficult to abandon it even when confronted by the stark reality that it's not true. That's why Trump is lauded for "telling it like it is", even when much of what he says are flat out lies. But those people that support him have been lied to constantly by "regular" politicians (like Clinton, for example) for all of their lives. Hearing different lies from a guy who clearly is not your regular politician is invigorating in a way because it provides some tiny element of hope that he might be able to turn a couple of those lies into reality, if only because he'd try to do something (outlandishly) different. And that's what most of these people are lacking: hope. In other modernized nations, you have socialized medicine, daycare, education, maternity leave, and a dozen other things that support the idea of changing your circumstances and moving on to something new and better. That's hope. That's not present in the US right now because almost none of those things are available, since American Individualism speaks against the idea of socialism in all of its forms (except when it comes to bailing out major banks, but that's another rant...) 

This is why there was so much commentary (usually in very dark terms) about how Bernie and Trump supporters were saying the same things. "But they're on opposite sides of the spectrum!", the wealthy and appropriately-threatened talking heads shrieked. No. They're just looking at the same problem from different perspectives. Trump is saying that everything is broken for one set of reasons. Bernie was saying so for a different set of reasons. Clinton, representing the "I got mine!" Democrats, is basically saying that they're both wrong and if we keep doing what we've been doing, everything will be fine. And it will be fine, for the very wealthy segment of the populace that she actually represents. But it won't be for everyone else, including the vast majority of her supporters.

That's the key, yes? As has been said so many times before, it's not about race, or sexuality, or religion, or gender. Those things all have some impact, but when we're talking identities it's really about one thing and one thing only: class. Class means money: who has it and who doesn't. Trump can't identify with the vast majority of the people who voted for him. But neither can Clinton. She travels in the same circles that he does and speaks the same language. Some may call that a necessary evil of US politics. I call it the thing that's making politics virtually irrelevant to the bulk of the population, who might just be inclined to deliver a "vote of change", as it were, no matter how apparently irrational. Yes, I realize that Nate Silver's polling data indicated that Trump's supporters, on average, were wealthier than Clinton's but somehow a good chunk of Mr. Silver's results never seem to conform to the reality that I see on the ground. One begins to question the math.

And already the howls of outrage are beginning to rise; not by Democrats against Trump and the GOP, but Democrats against anyone who didn't vote for their fatally-flawed candidate. This is identical to the situation in 2000. The Democrats put forth a candidate that really stood for no one but the money. When voters went for Bush, instead of blaming their own milquetoast efforts, they blamed minor party candidate, Ralph Nader, and, specifically, Green voters in Florida. This is despite the fact that Nader's votes in Florida were about 10% of the total of registered Democrats who voted for Bush. I suspect we will see similar results here, given that a significant number of former Obama supporters have apparently cast their lot with Trump. Once again, that outrage bespeaks a lack of understanding of or a lack of empathy for the people who, as I noted above, have little hope for improvement in their lives. Asking them to elect another Clinton when the impact of the policies of the first one (NAFTA, Reinventing Government, rescinding Glass-Steagall, Commodity Futures Modernization Act, etc., etc.) helped shape the current economic reality in largely negative ways is asking quite a bit.

But the root of that whole issue goes deeper than just venal Democrats. When discussing the minor party spoiler effect on the aforementioned forum, I also mentioned the pernicious effect of ballot access laws in many states and the denial of actual choice to much of the public, who are thus left with poor selections like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton:

Most minor parties run presidential candidates for two reasons: 1) Visibility. In a presidential year, no one pays attention if you don't have someone in the horse race. Those are also the years when most fundraising is done and the way to raise the most $ is via high profile races; presumed fool's errands or not. 2) Even more importantly, ballot access laws. See, the laws are written by Dems and Reps to ensure their dominance. The majority of states require you to get a certain percentage of the vote of the highest candidate to stay on the ballot. That's usually a presidential or senatorial race. If you don't run one, you're basically conceding your ballot access next time. Having organized multiple efforts, I can tell you that ballot access drives are often quite difficult and expensive, using time, energy, and money that could otherwise go toward those smaller campaigns. So, no, it's not just because we're all idealistic fools thinking we can win the White House. It's because the laws are written to make it as difficult as possible for the public to actually have a choice. We managed to change the law in Michigan by coordinating every minor party in the state along with a Libertarian-leaning GOP state rep and a sympathetic writer in one of the major papers. Now minor parties only need a certain percentage of the vote of any state-wide candidate, but that's an exception and we took advantage of extraordinary circumstances to get there.

Remember that all election laws are written by and for the two (one) major parties and are written to serve their interests. That primary interest is to stay in power. So, there it is.

I'm no soothsayer. As I mentioned at the start of this ramble, I was as surprised as anyone else when Trump did manage to land the nomination. But the more I thought about it, the more it began to make sense, in the same way that his victory yesterday makes sense. And here we are: President Trump. (Honestly, I convulse with laughter every time I think of that. If that idiot's term in office demonstrates anything, it will be just how absurd the whole situation has become. Non. Stop. Entertainment.) 

When the financial crisis of the last decade began in 2008, my opinion was that the only genuine way to solve many of the structural issues it revealed was to let the banks burn. There should be actual consequences for their actions and all that. Instead, they were bailed out and now wield more power than ever. Once again, we have come to a point of reflection. Will the half of the populace who didn't vote for Trump agitate in favor of actual structural change, both economically and electorally, like many of those who did vote for him apparently desire? Or will they just return to the status quo and let big money continue owning the government that's nominally of, by, and for? This would seem to be the moment to take a stand, yo. I'm just going to be over here chortling while thinking about that idiot trying to interact with other nations. Or anyone, really. His victory speech tonight was still him talking about how many generals and admirals were on his side. Hello? Donald? You won, dude. Most humans' egos would no longer need the massage. But, well, yeah... (Seriously. I can't stop laughing.)