Drive-bys on an early Sunday morning

The problem with going to sleep too early is getting up too early, especially when Zoey The Dog tells me, in her silent-film way, she is hungry.  Zoey The Dog does not bark nor does she welp in most situations.  Instead, she just stands by your bed and maybe pants a bit until you wake up, and there she is...almost smiling.  In that moment, she appears to be saying, "Come on now.  You know I'm hungry."  Zoey remains, at age 15 1/2, an extraordinary dog. 

Anyway, The Wife is away in Taos for an art teachers' convention of sorts. I had spent Friday and part of yesterday with her before comimg hone yesterday. This morning, as a loner, I find I am able to click on YouTube and listen to prog rock cranked up. First up this morning was Yes' "Revealing Science of God," from the Topographic Oceans album (1973).  Then, Genesis' "Battle of Epping Forest," from the Selling England by the Pound album (no intent, but also 1973).  If one wishes to hear an amazing rock backbeat, Phil Collins' work on the latter song is perhaps the pinnacle of such drumming.  Until one isolates the drums, one barely notices how busy Collins actually is throughout the song. 

I am writing here at the blog as I have begun to largely refrain from engaging anymore within Facebook (FB). In that spirit, I provide what I call the "drive bys" in this "electronic drawer" known as a blog (the phrase is a nod to Victor Serge, who said he wrote his last novels, notebooks, and memoirs for the dressing room "drawer," as nobody was reading him at that last, destitute point in his life).  As I said in previous post, I have finally grown tired of people on FB who don't read the article or source posted, and would rather parrot corporate media arguments they have ingested--and when faced with factual analysis, retreat into cognitive dissonance. Stated another way, I find myself emotionally defeated by the uninformed and misinformed.  I am now feeling as Bertrand Russell felt in 1935 when he penned his brilliant essay, "The Ancestry of Fascism."  

If we were to ask me, what am I happy about, well, let me begin by saying I am very proud of The Daughter for all the essays she has had published since the start of this year in HerCampus-UCLA.  She has wanted to break into more hefty subjects than romance and films, but that is the nature of her assignments.  What I find extraordinary is she has come up with the subjects of her articles, having only been told to write about film or more often, romance issues.  She has complied a trove of essays worth publishing in book form, in my Dad-humble view.  Her style is unlike Dad's and is far more in the Nora Ephron tradition, which may mean she may have a positive future ahead of her.  Also, The Son begins his Neo-prog radio show at North Carolina State next Saturday.  This is on top of his scientific endeavors in pursuing a PhD in Biomathematics, which, per his discussions with us, are not going as well as he'd like. He is, however, his own worst critics and we have told we support hum even if he wanted to quit.  Of course, we are only able to respond to his feelings and cannot in the least offer any substantive help.  Meanwhile, The Wife is enjoying her first art teaching job, and her taking this job (one which represented her dream job) has given me space to be a substitute teacher on his way, hopefully, to pursuing the "Alternative Licensure" program for teachers here in the Land of Enchantment.  Finally, The Folks are getting used to living here, and enjoy, as much as we do, and we do, living next door to each other.  

And so, with those positive notes, here go the drive-bys:

*I found an entire webpage of many of the legendary Ron Cobb's political cartoons.  They remain deeply compelling and powerful, with the drawings themselves worthy of hanging on your wall.  That these cartoons are mostly from about 45-50 years ago are an achievement of perspective and insight.  These are well worth the clicks, especially if you have not seen Cobb's work before.

*Here is another political comic, from Bob the Angry Flower, positing a sequel to Atlas Shrugged, and reminding us how the capitalist elite actually don't know how to do anything. Bob the Angry Flower has caught my recent sensibilities in this one as well.  I mean, really. If I hear one more some corporate-media-misleadingly-defined "moderate" rhetorically ask, "How are we going to pay for Medicare for All?" when never telling us how much the public option will add in costs (subsidies, people still paying co-pays, deductible, and premiums), how doctors are not likely to take the public option patients, since they are likely to be those who can't get insurance elsewhere, and how the public option does nothing to cut the paperwork that is a major part of what makes the current system so ridiculously expensive, I may develop Tourett's Syndrome.

*Yes, this article about unrest in Chile is, unfortunately, tediously long, but well worth wading through, since corporate broadcast media is not talking about what is happening in Chile at all.  The writer is writing for an audience that has no memory of the events which led to 9/11/1973 and the fascist military coup that defaced what had been Latin America's longest functioning open government.  Also, the author, a Chilean by heritage, is usually not up to writing about a topic this profound, so there is lots of what I like to call "tee-up," a phrase my first post-bar passage boss in the law, Douglas Woods Richardson, meant when he said there was too much explanation going on as if the judge did not know the first thing about the law (which he admitted sometimes was true...).  Anyway, one cannot read this article without beginning to realize why the whole right wing and corporate Democratic Party member arguments about the failures of "socialism" in Venezuela are at best misguided, and more directly a lie.  It is not about "socialism" or "capitalism" or any "isms" per se. Well, actually, it is about the legacies of militarism, colonialism, and imperialism.  And maybe the Center for Economic Policy and Research is on to something when saying US sanctions have played a role in the rapid decline of economic fortunes in Venezuela, not merely the decline of oil prices.  Still, I think there was a sadly typical military mindset--Chavez was a military officer the US trained, it must be remembered--prevailing in Venezuela in the early part of this century, where there was no planning for a decline in oil prices, little diversification for Venezuela's economy, and no sense of fiscal prudence which Scandinavians understand, and even Eugene Debs would have understood.  So, I am fine with laying failure blame onto "socialism," too, but not with the glee or overstatement so prevalent in most discussions regarding Venezuela.  For me, I think we should see Venezuela has been an economic basket case for decades before Chavez began his tenure as leader, as this article eventually summarizes (there were periods of tremendous growth followed by ridiculous inflation and unemployment).  Yet, to hear the right wing and corporate Democrats tell it, one would think Venezuela was doing just fine until Chavez started building schools, getting more doctors in rural areas, and, in effect, sharing some of the oil wealth to a level not seen in Venezuela's history.  Oh well.  I don't know anyone who claims to be liberal or left in American politics who wants to emulate Venezuela.  It's always about Scandinavia, and Western Europe in general.  

* Saletan is usually great for this type of parsing style argument, and here he shows us how callous and reckless Trump really is.  The betrayal of the Kurds is unbelievable in the sense that it clearly shows how and why Trump is pro-Putin and pro-Fascist International.  Peter Galbraith's article in the most recent NYRB provides a good geo-political summary and analysis as well.

* In the What-the-Heck!? department, what is up with Morrissey being a British version of a Trumpist?  The Wife and I adore The Smiths and Morrissey's solo career, when we followed it up through the mid to late 1990s.  We found his and The Smiths' song lyrics to be equivalent to postcards from creative, thoughtful, caring, and eccentric minds.   It is frankly bizarre how a guy who found international fame, particularly among Hispanics up and down the Western Hemisphere, would have such a worldview.  Oh well again.  I guess Morrissey is going to be like Cat Stevens to me; someone who no longer exists but who wrote part of my life's soundtrack.

And now for some drive by comments regarding other NYRB articles: 

* Linda Greenhouse, the NY Times Supreme Court beat reporter for the past 20 years, has a good, but not great review of a book about Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman Supreme Court Justice.  What Greenhouse misses, perhaps owing to personal familiarity with Justice O'Connor, is how O'Connr joining in with the full on reactionaries in Bush v. Gore in 2000 helped seal the fate that led to her being replaced by Justice Alito.  Had O'Connor not been intellectually corrupt and elitist, and let the process in Florida's post-election counting continue, and Gore ascended to the presidency, Gore would have picked someone far more akin to O'Connor's version of "judicial moderation" than what came from the Bush II administration.  Alito was a bomb thrower, and O'Connor knew it at the time Alito was nominated in 2005. However, neither O'Connor nor apparently Linda Greenhouse recognize this development as O'Connor's own Twilight Zone episode, meaning this: O'Connor feared a Gore victory and thought her "moderation" would be nullified.  So she got what she wanted, which was judicially created Bush victory, and, in the end, her "moderation" has been nullified.  The few fans of MF Blog, the Sequel may recall my paean and analysis of The Twilight Zone, and note theme #1 from the Zone show. 

* I enjoyed this article about O'Keefe and Stiglitz and the other couple whose lives intersected with them.  This review is a paradigmatic NYRB essay-review, meaning it is a great example as to why the NYRB remains the premier political-literary journal in the US since its founding 56 years ago.  It means to American culture what the North American Review meant in the early 19th Century.  It is just too bad the percentage of people vis a vis the entire US population who read the NAR was so much higher than the percentage of Americans who read the NYRB.

* Here is another essay-review which illuminates, excites curiosity to deeper thinking and perspective; this time on the continuing controversy regarding Confederate leader statues and, most importantly, and how not subjecting the slaveowner traitors to a Nuremberg trial after the US Civil War, led to the Southern region of our nation never coming to grips with its own guilt for supporting and promoting racism and murder of African Americans.

* It is a tragedy this article about the current situation in Israel and how it got there is behind the subscription wall.  This article would never have been written under the initial ownership of the NYRB, as the one blind spot from the late Barbara Epstein and now late Robert Silvers was their emotionally based attachment to the Zionist dream, even as Chomsky and I.F. Stone tried to warn them what was happening.  Instead of heeding Chomsky and Stone, Silvers and Epstein banished these two intellectual titans.  Now, after Silvers' death in 2017, the new ownership and editorship have been far more open to the type of criticism Americans need to hear regarding Israel. 

Back to other drive bys....

*So what is it about people like Kamala Harris, who come from strong, progressive backgrounds, who decide to be players and throw out whatever was good from those backgrounds?  Here, the LA Times prints a story about Harris' Indian side of her family that has no sense of irony about Harris' neo-liberalism, her fealty to the prosecutor's creed to lock up people of color under the guise of fighting against "drugs," cynical ambition, etc.  It is amazing to me how Al Gore seemed to run away from his father, Al Gore, Sr., for most of Gore, Jr.'s political career, how Mitt Romney ran away from his father George's union-liberal Repubicanism, and how Pete Buttigieg, aka Mayor Pete, has   largely been and now has fully morphed into a cynical neo-liberal of the worst sort, when Mayor Pete's Dad was a devotee and leading translator of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci.  The thing about Kamala Harris which is truly wild is we already knew her Dad is Donald Harris, a major economist from Stanford, who is known to be a post-Keynes guy, with a critique more left wing than anything else.  Each of these children of great progressives appear to have decided their parents failed because they were left wing.  They are correct, of course, but to see these players play at being "Les Grossman" is beyond frustrating.  I know.  I blog on a Sunday morning and have not accomplished much of anything.  Easy for me to say.  :)

* One has to read this article from Mike Hiltzik of the LA Times all the way through to realize the editors chose a headline that far overstated the effect of the new California law regarding the gig economy on freelance writers and photographers.  It is classic to read of the one guy who managed to work out a living in the gig economy as a travel writer/photographer who hates the new law, and come to recognize what a whiner he is. The article shows the devastating effect from greedy billionaires and their executives who used the "newspapers are dying" argument to make sure they make their billions for themselves and left their reporters and photographers fighting over the scraps as "independent contractors." That some succeed as independent contractors is no surprise.  What should be noted is how few actually succeed. CA State Assemblywoman Gonzalez comes off as thoughtful and fair as a political leader, and recognizes some "winners" in the gig economy will have louder megaphones and will never be satisfied until they are fine, while the great mass suffers.  One may ask why the editors chose the headline--until one reads the article and realizes whose side the editors are on, meaning themselves and the publishers-owners. 

* And the next time one of my few readers sees Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, maybe, after cursing out these jerks for their recent attacks on the superhero genre, which attacks constitute a crime against culture, they may ask them to at least read this article explaining how powerful the new Watchmen series on HBO promises to be.  As I can't afford HBO, I will have to wait for a final verdict. From what I have read, the new Watchmen series is dealing with the real American history of race relations, particularly the Tulsa massacre and riot by white folks nearly 100 years ago, which destroyed a middle class African-American community.  

* My mother--The Mom--has a take on animation that mirrors Scorsese and Coppola about the superhero genre: It's for kids.  What The Mom has had to grapple with over the past three decades, and in which she shows textbook cognitive dissonance, is the brilliance and very adult-oriented "cartoons."  The last season of Bojack Horseman is upon us.  For those with Netflix, and this show is the number one reason to get Netflix, and with it a crescendo for the most emotionally intelligent situation comedy ever to appear on television.   This article from Salon.com gives us a decent to good explanation as to what is going on.

* The Wife and I so want to see JoJo Rabbit, and this article gives me even more reason to do so.  It may be the best film about Nazis and society since Life is Beautiful, which I continue to say is a brilliant film.  The Mom has always said I would have behaved the same as the Dad did with the Son in Life is Beautiful, and I think she is correct about that.  What I have always thought about the film is how callous and non-redeemable the writer-director made the Germans.  They were entitled to no subtitles when they spoke, and, when one thinks one of the "nice" Germans would help the main character-Dad, he doesn't, and his non-doing is so perfectly callous and apathetic. Anyone who thinks the film "whitewashes" the Holocaust does not understand the differences between the Italian experience during the Holocaust on the one hand, and does not understand the attack on the entire mentality which produced the Holocaust on the other.  Also, for those who think the idea of a Dad shielding his son from such a situation is daft and itself callous-fiction writing, here is an article from today's--yes, today's--Los Angeles Times, where the writer speaks about the anti-Semitic attack in Pittsburgh last fall, when he was in the immediate facility.  He writes:  

Hearing a wail of sirens, I looked out a window and saw an armored personnel carrier racing down my street. A shelter-in-place order was issued as rumors spread that the heavily armed gunman (or gunmen, they didn’t yet know) was on the loose. These rumors later proved untrue — but in the moment, they were terrifying. I locked the doors to the house and took my kids into the basement. While I anxiously cradled my 3-month-old, I tried to persuade my 3-year-old that we were playing a game by hiding.

As a Dad, that is a natural reaction to a terror filled moment.  It is not the only reaction, but it is certainly what we lawyers call "reasonably foreseeable."  As I like to say, Oh well....Just keep on saying Life is Beautiful is a travesty--though maybe let's see how JoJo Rabbit fares with audiences, if any.

* We continue as a species to value short-term economic profit over our own lives, our children's lives, and the planet.  It happens across the planet.  Here is an article about an Italian steel plant which produced cancer as well as steel, and how difficult it was to decide to finally do something about it, and maybe even close the planet.  Ibsen's 19th Century play, Enemy of the People, dealt with this precise issue, and yet, we never seem to learn.  How Green Was My Valley also dealt with this issue.  As I say, we never learn.  I see it here in NM, as people shut down talk of alternative fuels, saying it would kill the economy, and then cynically say, You're a hypocrite if you want to use the money to jump-start pre-K education for children or otherwise help anyone who is vulnerable.  Must be nice to live in that heretically sealed world known as "moderation" or "conservatism."  As Corey Robin's magisterial work on the reactionary (conservative) mind, the duty is to preserve privilege. One may be intellectual in orientation, i.e. Burke, Kirk, and Rand, or one may be vulgar, as in Joe McCarthy or Donald Trump, the goal remains the same: Protecting the privileged.

As a final note, to the inevitable question: What am I reading?  Well, here goes...

I am half way through Van Wyck Brooks' Howells: His Life and World (1959), one of Brooks' last works.  As usual, I am knocked over by Brooks' insight and analysis.  I also found myself holding and then buying, for $3, a book by May Sarton, Kinds of Love.  I realized yesterday I am finally ready for Sarton.  She is a writer from the mid to late 20th Century, who dared to speak of lesbian relationships, and who came from intellectual pedigree: Dad was a famous chemist and progenitor of what has become known as the "history of science," and Mom was an artist, suffragette, and socialist.  What I find interesting about Sarton is critics of her work noted her wider societal lens in her works about personal relationships.  I think what has impelled me toward Sarton is reading Van Wyck Brooks about the history of American literature, and its ground-zero location in New England, where Sarton set many of her works.  As I say, I find myself ready for her, and managed to read nearly 50 pages in one sitting last evening, even though tired. I would describe the book thus far as follows:  Sarton's description of place is outstanding, in the sense one does not have to have experienced New England to understand it. Further, Sarton has already provided great insight into various characters she has been introducing, all through dialogue and minimal narration.  In between, I found, at a used bookstore in Taos yesterday, a book of interviews with Edward Said from the 1980s up to the year before his death in 2003.  I remain convinced Said is one of the most remarkable minds of the past 50 years.  His mind was so wide ranging, and nobody could make the Western canon more exciting than he could--with Martha Nussbaum being his equal. And to read his interviews on the Arab-Israeli wars is to see, in retrospect, his hopes and dreams, and to realize they have, in the 16 years since his death, essentially defeated.    

Not being on FB has given me more time to read NYRB at night or early in the morning, too.  Tomorrow, though, I am back to sub teaching, this time at a pueblo school north of here, subbing for a science teacher in middle school.  I am bringing the Stephen Jay Gould essay book which includes the essay on Mickey Mouse to show how evolution works (with Mickey, in reverse) in case there is time beyond the teacher's notes for the students.  It is an extra copy I have of the book so a lucky student may find it to be a gift tomorrow.  

Reading Bernard Porter's blog about Great Britain and Wondering Whether the Remaining Rational People End Up in Intellectual Versions of Monasteries

I have enjoyed reading a blog by a professor who appears to divide his time between Sweden and Britain (mostly in Sweden these days), Bernard J. Porter.  He is one of the hopeful voices in the cacophony that is social media and the Internet--not because he has much hope, but because he is a rational voice who understands argument format, the importance of empirical analysis, and a belief that maybe one day we'll mostly get it right.  His latest two posts on Brexit politics are deliciously insightful.  He also understands why Corbyn has been correct all along with respect to navigating through the working classes on the Brexit issues, and why Corbyn's critique of the European Union is essentially correct, something that seems to be beyond most corporate media pundits in Great Britain, including, amazingly enough, much of The Guardian's staff writers.

Here is a post of his from 2016 that captures my present mood, where I find more and more irrationality and refusal to accept facts is now included among those on my FB page.  His example is admittedly more extreme than my recent experiences, where a fellow called in to an American radio show in the year 2000--he was in the US at the time--and, after the host attempted to correct the caller that the 1940 bombing of Britain by the Nazis preceded the 1945 bombing of Dresden, Germany, the caller said, "But I'm a free American and believe whatever I like."  That of course is high level cognitive dissonance, where Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous line, "You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts" bounces off one's forehead without leaving a trace.

The Wife has saidit is time for me to get off FB for at least awhile, and I have agreed to not post anymore.  Today, instead of working as a substitute teacher, I am off to help her in her classroom, per her request.  And yesterday afternoon, as a test for FB forbearance, I decided to read further in my latest Van Wyck Brooks acquisition, Howells: His Life and His World (1959), one of Brooks' last published books.  I may have felt alone, but I was admittedly more happy than arguing with otherwise intelligent people suffering from cognitive dissonance.  

I am finding more and more I am losing patience when people do not see how their arguments are irrational--one otherwise good friend tells me where I came from is somehow a reason why I am wrong on various issues--or how their arguments lack foundation as to causation.  I am more and more losing patience when people do not see how corporate media functions, and people think media criticism focused on use of language, slanting, placement, and what is not covered is the same as Trumpists saying "fake news" to avoid unpleasant facts to one's ideological or political party stance. I am more and more losing patience with what Paul Krugman calls "zombie" arguments, where we regurgitate theoretical talking points that ignore the evidence already in, and, instead of maybe arguing around the edges, we act as if the evidence is not already essentially established.  Worse, we seem incapable of accepting paradoxes, accepting that one can hold disparate thoughts that, yes, can crash into each other, but which, when considered, deepen perspective.  Worst, I find people rush to comment when not reading the article posted, failing to even understand what may be a misleading headline, and just talking from one's own apocryphal, and therefore narrow experiences, without even knowing what was behind business decisions, when talking about the minimum wage, or refusing to understand how businesses often go under or are squeezed due to commercial rent pressures more than labor costs.  I sighed as I just wrote this last sentence, I admit.

In any event, I have tried to quit the FB habit before and failed.  That is because The Wife says I have "Messiah syndrome," where I feel like I have to save the world, and impart my vast knowledge and yes, even experience, I have accumulated. She properly notes how, each day I do a substitute teaching job, I come home telling her how I reached a student who other students or teachers say has been unreachable.  I don't reach all by any means, but she has noted how stunning it is that I keep reaching at least one in only one day--and how, when I return to a particular school, the students are happily buzzing the "best" substitute--one said "the wisest substitute"--is back.  So maybe I am at that Candide stage of life and the local schools the gardens.  Maybe I will start writing a second novel since PhDs in History of Literature are not in my future or my life.   Or maybe just continue to dry out after 37 years of lawyering, though one former client from Texas with business in CA called me out of the blue yesterday afternoon to sort through a new legal problem.  The CEO asked to call again, after the advice was provided, and I said, Of course.  Practical advice has its merits, though we never talked about whether I am going to be paid for the advice. :)

So here we go.  Another test of removing oneself from FB, though maybe I will continue with the blog so I don't have to read comments where I end up battling zombie arguments.  Writing an essentially non-read blog is the modern equivalent to writing for the dresser drawer, to paraphrase Victor Serge.  We will see how things go.  I ask, with arched eyebrow, Can the relatively few people who read me live without my public commentary?  Will things in our nation and world continue to deteriorate so that intellectual "types" end up hiding in monasteries while the nation and world descend into a much less friendly "Idiocracy?" Who knows? I lack any power and frankly, I have very few who read my FB posts with any appropriate critical eye.  We will see how things turn out.  I pray for Bernie Sanders' health and know the US is running out of chances to redeem itself.  

Outside of our city-states, and surrounding suburbs, America is a Second World nation

Ladies and Gentlemen who live in wealthy suburbs near or in city-states in the US,

The US rural communities, and poor urban neighborhoods, constitute a Second World nation moving toward Third World "status." What compounds this trend, which I have long blamed primarily on corporate trade deals which hollowed out the nation, and pushed people into cities, is the growth, in those communities, of the religious right, which reenforces racist and xenophobic (and increasingly anti-Semitic) "reasons" for this decline. This political reaction exacerbates and makes more difficult the ability to change policies that are beggaring so many people. 

People wonder why I push Sanders, and this is one significant reason, as the people in white rural America, despite Bernie's Jewish heritage, trust Bernie in a way they trust nobody else except Trump. It accounts for the polling which shows people beyond Democrats support him and help defeat Trump. That the largely white rural folks should not trust Trump is a valid question, but the answer is not one us well off folks in the suburbs of city states, and inside wealthy areas of city-states, want to hear. The reason is Trump continues to consistently speak rhetoric to those folks' worst values, which makes it appear Trump is keeping his "promises." Again, these people need to know that who they vote for will have their backs. This is what is wrong with candidates who are evasive, who rely on focus groups, etc., and why the Native American "issue" for Warren ends up going to her integrity in a way that sticks--and does not stick to Trump. They know he's a lying cad, but he has not lied in his policy making about immigrants, no matter his own hypocrisies of having hired "illegals" himself. 

This past weekend, The Folks and I had traveled down south to Truth or Consequences, NM, and, along the way, The Folks saw the poverty that is in the many square miles of New Mexico among small, rural oriented populations. They were shocked. I said this is what we would see if we drove across the nation and looked, with any degree of carefulness, at the trailer or pre-fab homes, the empty storefronts, etc. and saw the only places for any employment there is at the Post Office, a public school, or maybe a small hospital--or worse, a private or public prison. I find it astonishing how only the Clintons get blamed for this regression of economic fates, not Reagan, not Bushes, not the mostly Republican congress critters who consistently voted for these trade deals. But it remains a fact and, ironically, it is a basis for mistrust of corporate media, which tends to promote corporate Democrats and rail against those who seem to make sense from a right wing perspective to these rural, religious oriented folks. It's just too bad this ends up becoming an echo chamber for these folks, especially if they belong to a hate factory, I mean right wing church, which tells them to fear gays, lib-ruls, and immigrants, and to keep their guns locked and loaded. 

But, sure, let's just keep telling ourselves how much we like the gay neo-lib, Mayor Pete. Let's keep telling ourselves how much Warren is the same as Sanders. Let's keep telling ourselves Joe Biden is more electable. And keep giving Harris, Booker, Castro, and others space to keep up their vanity candidacies. Oh, and young folks who like Yang, who has turned into a neo-lib in so many ways, and was unable to explain his foreign policy to Maddow last week, yeah, keep telling yourselves he is the answer. He won't be when he has to confront the rural communities, who still hold excess power through the Electoral College, when they are told how his VAT will increase their own taxes and cause them to lose food stamps if they try to take his $1,000 a month--those folks who are themsleves on food stamps and know people on food stamps. It is one of those great contradictions; you know, like the white guy in his 50s or early 60s on social security disability who listens to Rush, Michael Savage, and Hannity all goddamned day, and rail against "big gummint."

Trumpists try to hijack "The Kingsman"...and fail

In reaction to Trump fans' use of The Kingsman church massacre scene, I wrote on FB this morning the following:

It is beyond contradictory and ironic how right wing activists created the Trump killing media people video used "The Kingsman" church massacre scene. That scene remains one of the most amazingly outrageous scenes in the entire history of cinema. As we see in the beginning of the clip (and I wish there was more of that beginning because the preacher is a hate monger right out of Trump-David Duke land), the church is a hate factory sadly not completely made up in the history of the South and near South (Kentucky). The background, for those who are not familiar with the film, is the billionaire villain--Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), speaking with a humorous lisp--has hatched a plan to rid the planet of about 1/3d to 1/2 of humanity to fight climate change, but protect the 1% (or at least those who are willing to go along with him). Valentine's solution is a Malthusian solution (note: Karl Marx was the early 19th Century's most brilliant critic of Malthus, explaining capitalism would help in resolving any issue of over population and food development, and that the issue remains one of distribution, not population numbers). The billionaire's plan is based upon his giving away free cellphones, with people not knowing the cellphones contain a frequency which, when activated, will cause people to lose all non-violent inhibitions and suddenly want to kill each other. It affects all who are in the range, as it did Colin Firth's character, who is the essence of decorum, restraint and dignity, but can fight like the dickens when necessary. 

The scene is not only a choreographically visual wonderment, but the soundtrack chosen is brilliant. It is Lynyrd Sknyrd's classic, "Free Bird,"* and the song is used from the last words in the song, "Lord knows, I can't change...." LS was a Southern rock band in the 1970s (tragically, it lost members in a plane crash in the late 1970s) which hoisted a large Confederate flag behind them in shows and were notoriously reactionary and perhaps racially insensitive in their politics (unlike the greatest Southern rock band of all time, The Allman Brothers). Infamously, LS' songwriters wrote "Sweet Home Alabama" as a rebuke to Neil Young's "Southern Man," never wanting to come to grips with the racist hatred and violence which is a main legacy of the Southern region of our nation.** If one listens carefully to the lyrics in "Sweet Home Alabama," one sees the direct rebuke to Young amidst the very catchy and great tune.*** To use "Free Bird," the real LS anthem, as the backdrop for the murderous reaction of The Kingsman (Colin Firth) right after the preacher gives his hate sermon, and the first woman killed is a horrible, hateful person spewing hatred at Firth's character, who had mischievously set forth all the things the woman hates (blacks, Jews, abortion, etc.), is a stunning stroke of brilliant creativity. I always wondered how the filmmakers, Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman, got away with using LS' song in this way. I wonder if the song's copyright owners understood the use--as I saw no corporate media critics note these points and most filmgoers certainly seemed to have been unable to articulate just what was going on in the scene.

I appreciate how some smart right wing activists may have wanted to take back the scene, but all I can say is nice try, but it is a Fail. The preacher does them in every time and the woman's racist hatefulness does in any such attempt to change context. This scene in the original film has a worldview, a point of view. And the entire film is a Chomskyian version of a James Bond film, where the people who are right wingers and racists are the ones who die amidst "funny" or "ironic" music, while the nicer people, when confronted with death or are killed, have more typical somber, scary music within the soundtrack. The NY Times corporate media critic thought the film incoherent and The Guardian critic actually thought the film was right-wing. No, it was neither.  The bad guy may have been concerned with climate change, but his Malthusian solution was a typical selfish oriented capitalist accumulation in reverse. The other bad guys in the film are the British version of Rush Limbaugh-FoxNews fans who hang around in pubs and bully people--and they get theirs a couple of times at least in the film. The film also attacks the 1% who nearly all get theirs--yes, Chomsky fans--even Obama and other "corporate liberal" 1%ers get theirs, too. As I say, this is a film with a decidedly left radical bent, and it was amazing to me how hardly anyone seemed to get it, even when seeing it. 

All the Trump fans see in this scene is a glorification of violence, which is a projection of their own adoration of violence (and hate). However, the film itself is a demand we solve this climate change problem saving people, and not killing them. Even the full scene shows Colin Firth's character recognition of remorse, guilt, disgust as to what he has done and wondering how and why it occurred. And we see it in the faces of his compatriots helplessly watching the carnage. Firth's character is then shot by the bad rich guy at point blank range when he steps out of the church, with a recognition that motives may not count as much as actions in karma-based justice.

* The lyric in "Free Bird" speaks of stubborn selfishness as a virtue.  It makes Dion's self-parodying and self-ironic "The Wanderer" from 1962 seem closer to "Get Together."  

** A FB friend challenged whether LS ever recanted their worldview before the tragic plane crash, also properly noting they had a good relationship with Neil Young on a personal level--Young being a pall bearer at the post-plane crash funeral of Van Zandt.  After reading this article from Rolling Stone, I think the point made below, which is LS and Van Zandt were extolling George Wallace, and the band being fine with the Confederate (Northern Virginia flag) up through and well after the plane crash, tells us my initial point is still on point.  And, really, "the record company forced us to show the stars and bars?"  Really?  I don't believe that for a minute.  Sounds like a post-cultural moment whine.  And certainly some LS fans knew better and reacted with anger and betrayal when a recent incarnation of the band jettisoned the flag.

*** Here are a sample of the song's lyrics, which most don't even hear as the music covers it like a nice, warm blanket.  "I miss Alabamy once again and I think its a sin yes/Well I heard Mr. Young sing about her/Well I heard ole Neil put her down/Well I hope Neil Young will remember/A southern man don't need him around anyhow." 

 And here is a little tasty reminder of how right wingers viewed the Nixon scandals in the next verse of the song: 

In Birmingham they love the governor

Boo-boo-boo

Now we all did what we could do

Now watergate does not bother me

Does your conscience bother you?

Tell the truth

Sweet home Alabama

Where the skies are so blue

Sweet home Alabama

Who, first off, was Alabama's governor in 1973-1974 when this song was released in 1974? George Wallace, the face of American racism in the 1960s and early 1970s (although he was trying to show some change in 1974). One can reasonably envision LS marching in Charlottesville with those other "nice people" in 2018....

The Big Club We Are Not In

I guess what I initially found compelling about the "Should Ellen have gone to the game with GW Bush?" imbroglio is Bush does seem likable.  If I met him and especially Laura, I think I would  find them decent, though I would have to forget who they really are and what they have stood for. My initial take was admittedly selfishly humble: "Hmmm, I have long said I would have loved an evening with Richard Nixon, as I find him endlessly fascinating--even though I still consider Nixon a war criminal. And even though I know Nixon spoke in anti-Semitic terms--though Nixon was very tight with Len Garment, a definitely Jewish guy, and there was nothing anti-Semitic in Nixon's policies as I recall."

I then circled back to Ellen's "status" as a lesbian icon and wondered, what is Ellen doing? If I was gay, I think I would have been immediately upset at Ellen DeGeneres' decision, as she is a very out lesbian.  Considering that status, I think she should have more deeply considered the GW Bush administration's (1) choices for federal judges, (2) policies promoting right wing religious schools with public funds--even as those schools push anti-LGBT "doctrines" and support discriminating against the LGBT community, and (3) dog whistles to right wing voters, which were decidedly anti-LGBT.  Nixon did not appoint anti-Semitic judges as part of an expressed policy (though Carswell and the other schmuck nominee for the Supreme Court probably didn't like Jews all that much). Nixon is also known for coming to Israel's rescue during the first 24 hours of the Yom Kippur War at a time when the majority of American Jews and Israel were much more aligned than now.  Bush may have been pro-Israel, but in this century, being pro-Israel primarily means promoting oppression of Palestinians and having a satellite in the military-industrial complex rather than standing for  the "protection of the Jewish people."  As I like to say to BDSers, So, you think the Egyptians would have spared the Israeli Jews if Egypt won that 1973 war?

I think GW Bush gets a pass from the cultural elite, of which Ellen is a major member, because Bush is a hail-fellow guy on a personal level, though unlike Nixon, he is dull and banal, and definitely not endlessly fascinating. I find Ellen's defense hollow because, no matter what she says, I doubt she would have gone to the ballgame with Dick Cheney, though Cheney's personal family life made him personally pro-gay--as Cheney continued to cynically push an anti-gay agenda for Cheney's more personal monetary, and primarily imperial and fascistic designs. There is something not so nice about Cheney's personality to say the least (though I'll admit an evening with his writer wife would be fascinating for me). 

Overall, I have grown more and more to think of Mark Raffalo's points about Bush, as I recall Bush being a cruel buffoon, including Bush's reaction to Hurricane Katrina (which was a result of Bush-Cheney's cynical destruction of FEMA before Hurricane Katrina), the Bush-Cheney lies regarding the Gulf War II, the torture policies, pushing private prisons and the prison-industrial state, the continued dog whistles promoting racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and policies which strengthened a denial of climate change--all when Bush campaigned in 2000 as the ultimate Republican "moderate." 

I also admit to remaining most amazed at the success of the US corporate media's propaganda system that Bush and Cheney were never in danger of impeachment for their negligence in allowing the events of 9/11/2001 to occur. Had this horrific event in US history occurred under a Gore-Lieberman administration, the cry of criminal negligence would have made impeachment inevitable. However, let's note something else here: There would have been no "9/11" because Gore would have listened to Richard Clarke and John O'Neill, and would have hardened airport security, as the Europeans did in the summer of 2001 (Bush-Cheney US Attorney General John Ashcroft wanted this hardening, too, and refused to fly in commercial aircraft starting in June 2001).  But, hold on Gore fans. Gore and Lieberman were gung-ho about going after Saddam, and would likely have allowed for the promotion of the imperialist lies about WMDs, and gone merrily on the way to Baghdad. Gore was a neo-con and neo-lib of the first order in his career, before he lost in 2000 what should have been won, grew a beard, and re-read his late, great father's speeches and life career.  When we think about the events of 9/11, and recognize Bush's negligent complicity, I wonder if we can really say, Oh yeah, let's go to a ball game with that guy.

So count me more in as asking Ellen why she did what she did, especially given her status as a lesbian icon. I don't see how civility in politics was improved by her non-brave move of going to a ballgame with a former president who is personally irrelevant in current American politics. Instead, the whole thing does look like George Carlin's insight, "It's a big club--and you ain't in it."

Which Strange Bedfellow's Side Are You On?

Here is where Krystal Ball and I part company. First, people should watch this several minutes' oral and visual op-ed from Krystal Ball because she provides important information and context about foreign affairs that are not provided anywhere else in corporate owned media. 

I think Ms. Ball is spot-on correct that revolution is currently in the air around the world. For me, and I think Ms. Ball as well, this is the foreign policy equivalent to the labor unrest in our nation that corporate owned media continually ignores other than a stray newspaper headline. It is the left part of the Great Reaction against the Neo-Liberal/Capitalist Consensus of world leaders for the past 40 plus years. 

Second, I agree with Ms. Ball there can be over-coverage of the "Trump as a danger to the Republic" story, and the way in which elitist imperialist National Security State types are now convincing  Trump-bootlicking Lindsey Graham that it is maybe time to stop dancing with Trump. There is a National Security State sort of reaction going on as a result of Trump's tweets yesterday. However, that fact does not change the most straightforward fact: Trump is a danger to what is left of the republic in a way that portends full-on fascism of a very virulent and racist type. When I consider the Dominionist-Christian fundamentalist zealots and right wing racists inside the US military, I wonder if there is a further danger from Trump in the next year to push a fascist military coup and how much of the US military follows him. It will not take a majority of the military to back Trump in a coup. It never does, as we know from our Founders, from revolutionists in Soviet Russia, and in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Japan, up through our own time.  It is why I have come to the conclusion Trump must be stopped now before we reach a stage where Trump cannot be stopped when he attempts a coup for his own self-aggrandizement and the fascistic-religious zealots in the US military see an opportunity in joining him. 

Ms. Ball's commentary (strangely) completely ignores how Trump's policies are largely consistent with what I am calling the Fascist International, and, after Ms. Ball delivered her commentary, we saw Trump's pronouncement yesterday to abandon the Kurds to Turkish imperial desires and how Trump's overall policy moves play into Putin's Russian policy demands. I get that my strange bedfellow position includes people like Max Boot or some other warmongering national security state  (the link is to Vidal's 1998 speech to the National Press Club, starting at just before the 10 minute mark) elitists. I believe, however, that is a safer strange bedfellow than becoming a member of the anti-anti-Trump coalition, who end up sounding like an American Communist, circa 1940, when the Stalin-Hitler Pact was in vogue, and American Reds were calling FDR a Social Fascist again and calling him an imperialist warmonger. 

Ms. Ball also wrongly assumes the corporate media will cover these revolutionary activities if there was nothing about Trump and Ukraine. This is a false assumption and conclusion. The vast majority of American citizens still don't understand why the US was wrong in the US war against Vietnam (the failure to understand how bad Ken Burns' documentary on Vietnam, and his obscurant discussion and misinformation regarding the 1954 Geneva Accords was, is my Exhibit A). Worse, the vast majority of American citizens still do not know, let alone understand, how the US supported, trained, and subsidized killers to lead regimes in Central America in the 1980s to kill clergy, doctors, nurses, teachers, and labor leaders.* The vast majority of Americans still do not know or understand all sorts of foreign policies the US has followed around the world. To think as she does means she should also think the corporate media will suddenly find time to report on labor unrest inside our nation, or find time to fairly report on Bernie Sanders' policies and find Sanders himself a great candidate who stands for policies the majority of American support. That will not happen.  And, sorry, Ms. Ball, this is all of a single piece.

I think we are in a Gil Scott-Heron moment: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at Home or Abroad.  Worse, we are in a moment where the elite are divided, and we, who are powerless, end up having to choose which elite with whom we align. The Neo-Liberal/Capitalist/National Security State or the Fascist International.  It is not a pretty choice.  I continue to support Bernie Sanders' candidacy, and will see how he holds up following his heart attack.  He remains the only and singular salvation as a U.S. president at this precipitous moment in U.S. history.  He is my "great leap forward," with all the ironies, contradictions, hopefulness, and the Vonnegut-ian recognition that we should, above all, value kindness.

But, for me, again:  Trump remains a clear and immediate danger to what remains of our Republic.  We do not, and should not, wait until he acts more effectively in pushing for a coup where he truly becomes the Orange Caudillo.

* Go ahead.  Try to Google an article that shows how Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary did what I said regarding the 1954 Geneva Accords, and how the U.S. created out of whole cloth a government called the "South" Vietnamese government.  Try to find a non-left wing source regarding what the U.S. did in Central America. The documents from the U.S. government itself tell these truths. Yet, the "mainstream" corporate owned U.S. media remains essentially silent in providing any narrative or context or any detailed information for the most part in such matters.  One must consult books from reporters on the ground in Central America or in Vietnam, and even then, there are limits to understanding.  One ends up in Chomsky-Zinn land and, of course, in corporate media parlance, that makes one a hopeless left-winger and possibly a left wing version of wearing a tin-foil hat.  As Gore Vidal once remarked in a letter to me, the university system and the corporate media do wonders in propagating Pax Americana.

A lesson in corporate media bias

Yesterday's LA Times had this front page story about Senator Warren's excellent third quarter fundraising haul.  The article managed to downgrade and avoid saying Warren's haul was second to Sanders. The headline should have read, "Sen. Warren's excellent fundraising haul still second to Sen. Sanders."  A sub-header could have read, in a moral universe, "Despite corporate media hailing Warren and criticizing Sanders throughout the quarter."  However, corporate media executives do not believe in a moral universe, and neither should we when reading their employees' (reporters') work.

I believe this is an excellent news article to dissect how corporate media bias operates.  In this article, the second place fundraiser, Warren, is listed first in the headline and again in the article's first paragraph. Warren is also the candidate highlighted in the first paragraphs of the article, complete with her campaign manager's effusive quote for his candidate.  This is all placed in at the beginning because people rarely read past the beginning of such articles, as people rarely go to the continued page inside the front page section of a newspaper.  The article reads as if it is completely fact based when the placement and phrasing are clearly persuasive writing designed to influence thinking beyond the article itself.

Deeper into the article, an opinion is offered through general, unsourced cherry picking of alleged polling data designed to favor Warren, again the second place fundraiser, plus one sentence about how it is good for voters to switch from Sanders to Warren because, after all, they are the same. The reporter or editor are saying, You can trust us.  We know what we're talking about.  Warren is better than Sanders.  Vote for her if you want a progressive.  

The greatest phrasing slant is how the article has to finally mention Bernie was the top fundraiser in the quarter. The third paragraph in the article states: "The (Warren's) amount is close to the haul by her Senate colleague and fellow progressive Sanders, of Vermont, who earlier in the week reported raising $25.3 million." This is very awkward phrasing, designed to avoid saying, straight up, Bernie hauled in the most money--and again, notwithstanding all those doom and gloom stories about his campaign failing that appeared nearly every day in the quarter in most leading newspapers, especially the Washington Post.

This is how the corporate media generally operates (one finds exceptions, of course, but we are talking about the overall narrative one sees with op-eds and broadcast cable news). It is standard procedure for at least 120 years. See as examples: Upton Sinclair's "The Brass Check," George Seldes' "Freedom of the Press," Chomsky/Herman's "Manufacturing Consent," Mark Hertsgaard's "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency," and Robert Parry's "Fooling America."

It is not a situation where the article contains false or "fake" news in any sense Trumpists mostly mean when they use that "fake news" mantra. Instead, what we see, as critical readers of this particular Los Angeles Times article, is a slanted headline and slanted phrasing in the article, cherry picking of information, and highlighting who corporate media has been shown to wish to promote in the past several months, Warren, and who corporate media wishes to not promote, which has fairly consistently been Sanders. See here for a Sanders' campaign compilation of only the tip of the iceberg of bias corporate media has shown. And let us note how information is simply not provided. Example: If Warren had more donors overall than Sanders, that would be mentioned and perhaps highlighted. Since that is not true, it is ignored.  And let's get specific here:  Bernie had 1.4 million donors giving an average of $18, and largely from working class people.  Warren had less than half, just over 500,000 donors, donating an average of $26, with far more in the professional classes than working classes as donors.

I remember my Dad telling me how, when he stationed in Texas and Oklahoma in 1956 during the Eisenhower-Stevenson election campaign, several newspapers would never refer to Stevenson by name. Stevenson would merely be referred to as "the President's opponent." Back then, one referred to the "capitalist press" as opposed to "corporate media." As I say, one has to translate corporate/capitalist speak in newspaper or media reporting. It is not necessarily the reporter's fault, either.  Editors often determine headlines and order of paragraphs, and edit sentences.

With this Los Angeles Times article, I expect there was probably a lot of editing work.

Overheard at MSNBC Executive Suites

The Folks say there has been hardly any coverage of Sanders' heart condition on MSDNC. I was able to get a transcript of a leaked recording over at MSNBC's executive suites:

SUIT #1: Bernie's in the hospital! I think he's getting a pacemaker!

SUIT #2: No, it's a stent.

SUIT #1: Oh. Interesting.  Anyway, let's get the coverage going. Bernie's so old. This proves it. He's toast. Let's get Kamala Harris on the air to talk about Bernie and her campaign--

SUIT #3: I don't know about that. My father had a stent put in ten years ago. He's fine. It's like saying throw out your sink and replace your pipes because the pipes need a cleaning.

SUIT #1: No way. It can't be that simple. Can it? (Pauses) I was a business major. I never took college biology. 

SUIT #2: Poli-sci.

SUIT #3: English. 

SUIT #1: So that means we're all dopes. 

SUIT #1: Hey, don't tell anyone! We make more than electro-physical cardiologists anyway. And a lot less studying....

SUIT #2: So are we covering this or not?

SUIT #3: I don't know. If we let any of our employees on the air now, they'll start into their attacks on Bernie again--and what if Bernie dies? We'll look like assholes to even our rich Democratic voter demographic. People turn quickly when someone dies.

SUIT #2: Oh boy. Now that would make my skin crawl, more than when I think of Bernie and his screaming about giving people free stuff.

SUIT #1: I know we're not supposed to speak ill of the dead--

SUIT #3: McCain. May he rest in peace. (Bows head). A warrior for peace and ethics.

(The three suits pause for silent moment in honor of St. John the McCain)

SUIT #1: I got it. We don't say anything. It's a win-win--

SUIT #2: How--

SUIT #1: Doncha see? This way, we won't have to remind our demographic of older viewers about Bernie's big fundraising haul the other day or how many individual donors he has--more than anyone, including Trump and every Democrat. 

SUIT #2: But what are we gonna fill our time with? I know we can't cover workers' strikes. I think that's against corporate Standards & Practices--

SUIT #3: Hillary's got a new book!

SUIT #2 and SUIT #1: Thank God! Book her! 

SUIT #2: (Presses button on office phone).  Megan, call Maddow. Tell her to book Hillary.  Hillary's got a new book.  Wait. What?  She did already?  God. Thank God.  Thank you.  (Hangs up)

SUIT #2 Maddow never needs a memo.  She's awesome.

SUIT #3: Well, I think we have a consensus, then. Nothing said on the air about Bernie one way or the other.  We'll fill the time.  Just repeat and rinse the same shit every hour.  It's how we roll.  Our oldest people forget anyway, and just let it drone on in the background anyway.  It's like Soma.

(Quizzical looks from other suits)

SUIT #3: Huxley.  Brave New World.  Remember?

SUIT #1 and SUIT #2:  Oh yeah.  (Muttering.)

SUIT #2: Yes. Excellent idea. Nothing said one way or the other.

SUIT #1: Yeah, that's the best strategy here. No response at all. And ya know, Bernie might just die and we can then say what a great guy he was. So honest. So straight.  Great for ratings.  We can broadcast the funeral.  You know, Republicans on Capitol Hill like Bernie as a person. They admire his guts.

SUIT #3: Don't get lost here.  If he dies, it's only great because he's no longer a threat.

SUIT #2: Yeah, what was that line from Stalin again? "No man, no problem."

SUIT #3: I'm no Stalinist, but I think I first heard that line from a Board member at Comcast when they told us to drop Ed Schultz. 

SUIT #1:  Yeah, that line works for everyone.  

The Suits laugh.

End of transcript.