The right answer is John Lennon

John Lennon was assassinated 39 years ago tonight. Sigh.

This is a great video of "Working Class Hero," which accentuates the lyrics. As a person substituting at schools here in New Mexico, I am finding myself singing a line or two from this song more often than I thought, as my heart goes out to these kids.

As with the JFK assassination, one remembers where one was when they heard the news. Most of us were watching Monday Night Football and recall Howard Cosell essentially interrupting the game to make the announcement.  What is amusing is how Cosell verbally turned to Frank Gifford for a comment, Gifford being the great football hero from the New York Giants in the early 1960s, and then doing color commentary. All Gifford could do, however, is sputter, "Indeed, it is."  Frank Gifford missed the Sixties student movement and may have liked the early Beatles, but had no clue about anything from "Revolver" on, other than George Harrison's lament about taxes, one supposes.  The Giff was a football star who lived a life very much removed from protest and critical thinking.  He was an idol, too, but one far more narrow and fleeting than Lennon, who I am sure Gifford did not like from Gifford's vantage point.

Here, in Lennon's song, "god," is Lennon asking his fans to give up their idolization of him and The Beatles. I always loved Lennon using Bob Dylan's birth name so as to not leave anyone wondering if Lennon meant Dylan Thomas. However, I guess Lennon's plea for being treated with less cult-like reverence did not work with a particular disaffected, southern white guy who drifted around the nation, and bought a gun in Hawaii to track down Lennon in New York City, in front of Lennon's home at the Dakota Hotel.

I remember a London paper had said something like "New York sickie killed our John." That was not true at all. New Yorkers were so in love with, and respectful towards Lennon they essentially let him live like a normal individual. Lennon walked the streets of NYC without being mobbed for autographs or anything like that. A father of a woman I have known since high school used to work in NYC, and he would see Lennon nearly every day while the father walked to his office. He and Lennon passed each other on the way--just happenstance--and eventually they would acknowledge each other with a smile and a wave. If I recall correctly, they never had a conversation, just a brief hello or good morning on occasion, and mostly just a smile or a wave. It is remarkable because there are many stories like this, and a FB friend reminded me of a Tom Snyder interview in April 1975, where Lennon stated this himself.

In the days following Lennon's assassination, I remember concluding the Sixties were really over with Lennon's death, as Lennon's death followed, just the month before, the election of a man, Ronald Wilson Reagan (Mr. 666), who first achieved public office attacking the Sixties student movement, which began in Berkeley, and who actively promoted racist dog whistles for white Baby Boomers and their even more racist elders.

In 1988, HBO did a miniseries called "Tanner '88." about a congressman named Jack Tanner, who was a combination of then senator Gary Hart, Bobby Kennedy, and a blow-dried news reader (cough, cough, Tom Brokaw), who ran for president that year. Garry Trudeau, the creator of "Doonesbury," wrote the miniseries, and the series featured Michael Murphy as Tanner. Murphy literally went around Iowa and New Hampshire in that presidential year as if he was a real candidate. The script was often brilliant, par for the course with Trudeau, who I consider our nation's Balzac in comic strip format. Here is the end of the first episode where Tanner, frustrated at his lack of traction, and his belief that he and his other candidates are mostly just spouting spin and vague, focus-group massaged language, talks about who the best Beatle is. Tanner says there is only one correct answer to that question. And I would say Tanner is right that, if you are running for public office, there is only one correct answer.*

The dream is over/What can I say?/The dream is over/Yesterday/I was the dream weaver, but now I'm reborn/I was the walrus, but now I'm John/And so, dear friends, you'll just have to carry on/The dream is over.

*Still, I have to say, though I hated then, and hate now, Tanner's discussion of Vietnam. There was no moral reason in starting that war and certainly none in how we got out. I know Trudeau knows better, and, over the years, I have wondered why he wrote that. The War against Vietnam was not a morally based mistake. It was a war crime from the start and it continued to be one, right through the way Nixon and Kissinger negotiated the end of that war.  And Watergate was not a "triumph of the system."  It was far less than that.  Still, Tanner talking about Biden and the loss of any can-do spirit is even more profound than it was in 1988.

Bu-bu-bu-but, her emails!

Bu-bu-bu-but, her emails!

This is ironic if Trump and Rudy G did not use sufficiently secure phones for their Ukrainian shakedown for their Russian puppet masters. Putin could dangle lots of things in front of Trump for not disclosing the transcripts of those phone calls. As I say, secrecy is overrated, and, as there was never any proof I saw how HRC's emails damaged national security in any true sense, I see little to worry about in terms of the content of the Rudy G-Trump calls that are not already otherwise available through any of the testimony so far or any future persons' testimonies. If there is other information not found through others' testimony, and it is material, then Trump may find himself hoisted on his own petard, to use an archaic phrase, because it means he is subject to Russian extortion or blackmail.  That Trump is already likely subject to blackmail is something one gleans from Seth Abramson's and Craig Unger's books on the history of Trump's relationship with Russian oligarchs.

Your move, Trumpists.

Still, isn't there some way to implicate Pence so we are not subjected to a right wing, delusional Christian dominionist as president for even 10 months or so? I am counting on Trump to throw Pence under the bus along with every one else. He has already implicated Pence, and I think the focus of the impeachment should expand to Pence at this point. As I say when discussing this topic, House Speaker Pelosi could easily propose, and then set up, a bi-partisan caretake executive branch for the remainder of 2020 and January 2010 if enough Republicans were wise enough to go along. It would only take about 5-10 Republicans to make this happen.  Also, let's keep in mind the removal of the Trump-Pence mistake or nightmare (it has elements of both) gives the Republican Party a chance to choose another Trumpist, but without Trump's deeply concerning Russian-tinged corruption and without Trump's refusal to follow even the most superficial diplomatic and political norms.

I continue to support impeaching Trump because I consider Trump's behavior to be a threat to what remains of our nation's republic, and consider Pence the fruit of a poisonous tree. I support impeachment not because I see much good coming out of this for Democrats per se. The key for me remains Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, which goes against the grain of those Democratic Party poobahs most interested in impeaching Trump.  Also, for me, the Democratic Party needs to re-embrace a labor-oriented, New Deal-oriented stance which speaks to the majority of workers who struggle, no matter what macro economic indicators appear to say.  That is all separate from impeachment.  While I have chosen my strange bedfellows, I do not stand with them on any other major issue nor do I stand with them regarding the direction of the Democratic Party.

And, of course, Trump may yet decide his best defense is to say this impeachment proceeding is a criminalization of politics, and he has the right to cavort with Russians and work closely with Putin to the detriment of US relations with Western Europe and Japan.  However, once this defense begins to unfold, I look forward to the exoneration of Alger Hiss and Jane Fonda.  Still, the problem with this defense for Trump, in this instance, is Trump's shakedown of Ukraine's president with regard to US military aid is more of a personal type of corruption, not a criminalization of policy differences.  Trump was not faithfully executing the laws, and was clearly motivated by personal considerations.  

Thanksgiving week 2019: Drive bys

* I had begun reading The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, by David Treuer (2019). Treuer is part Jewish heritage and part Ojibwe (a tribe now centered in the area of Minnesota). He has written what so far appears to be a very powerful book, but in the first third I am reading, it is a painful summary of the rise and fall of the different tribes throughout each region of the nation from ancient times to 1890. He makes a salient point that it seemed whether a tribe chose accommodation or war, the result tended to be the same, which was destruction and often genocide.  The rest of Treuer's book promises to be more hopeful about Native American survival into the present, and I am looking forward to reading that. One knows to at least some extent the tragic legacy arising from the genocide of Native Americans. I am thankful for Treuer to attempt to see the cup as not completely empty.  And if one has not read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's The Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014), one is missing a great deal.  I found Dunbar-Ortiz's book to be an immensely rewarding, if also painful, experience. 

* Harvard history professor Philip DeLoria, who specializes in Native American history, and who is enrolled in the Sioux tribe in the Standing Rock area, has written, in the New Yorker, as great a summary as I have ever read about the true background to the holiday we call Thanksgiving. The article fills in gaps of knowledge, provides nuances and specifics about various Native tribes, but punches home the points that we find uncomfortable to the present day.  One may not hear Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" in quite the same way again; something I myself have though about in recent years.  

* Ron Cobb sorta summed up Thanksgiving in a one panel political comic from about 50 years ago.

* Meanwhile, here are Calvin & Hobbes giving thanks for each other.  It is likely unauthorized, as fans of Bill Watterson's iconic comic may best understand.

* And speaking of thanks, with the largely unreported Bernie surge, Matthew Rozsa at Salon has noticed there may be a way for Sanders to win.  He is no Sanders fan, but has written a few times throughout this year how corporate media understates Sanders' chances.  However, this Politico article shows how much the DNC and Obama still hate Sanders.  It is obsessive, and shows the lie behind the corporate Democrats' mantra of "Blue No Matter Who."

* Here is an article showing what has already been found regarding the fraudulent removal of hundreds of thousands of voters from Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial election.  I wonder what those who support Bolivia's coup against Evo Morales would say?  Actually, we already know, since the people who support that coup are often the same who would commit voter fraud or push for voter suppression here in the United States.

* And maybe, just maybe this article summarizing the report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may get some traction, particularly the report's conclusion the fossil fuel industry receives as much subsidies as the Pentagon.  And maybe how the US military believes Trump not only did in the Kurds, but helped ISIS regroup and revitalize.

* And finally, a little anti-Boomer humor from College Humor, entitled "Do We Really Need Baby Boomers?"  Hmmm....sounds like a short story I wrote.  This is the next step in the Millennial or really Gen Z response to Baby Boomers' continued attacks against Millennials and Gen Zers.  My take is simple: I stand with the kids, and the word generation comes from the word general, as in generalization.  And I continue to believe 60% of white people over age 55 will vote for Trump and the Republicans in 2020.  They have a lot to atone for, as well as their continued attacks against the youngs.

Sunday morning drive bys: November 24, 2019

* Fascist foreign policies leads to fascist reactions. This time, Trump's bellicose policies toward Iran have given the Iranian government permission to engage in crackdowns against dissent, after Iranians took to the streets protesting high gas prices. The reformers who negotiated the Iran nuclear deal with the Obama administration are now on the run. Personally, I think the Iranian government needs to follow American practices to keep people off the streets: Flood the market with self-help books designed to make us feel like the only problem we face is ourselves as individuals.  Tell people it is never systemic, or, if you hear that, just say, "You are not taking personal responsibility!" Then, make sure you load up the television, Internet, or radio with diversions and distractions.  And make sure you keep telling citizens how they live in the "greatest country in the world." It does not matter if it is patently untrue. Any number of economic indicators show it is not true in America, but we keep telling ourselves that over and over--so inbred is this belief.  Cue Lee Greenwood and salute the flag, you ingrates!

* If you have to engage with the proverbial uncle at Thanksgiving--thankfully, pun intended, I do not--here are some handy statistics from The Century Foundation.  I know, I know.  Factual analysis and information is irrelevant to the proverbial uncle, but our more sane family or fiends may find the information useful.  Recently, a Trumpist told me Obama never had a quarter with 4% GDP growth, but Trump presided over one that did--in 2017, early in his presidency.  I thought, though, that can't be true--but it was.  However, the charts in The Century Foundation link provide charts showing why that one quarter was an outlier of a downward trend. To me, however, the whole thing about quarters and GDP growth applied to presidential administrations are more silly than not because the president has less immediate and direct impact on quarterly results than we ascribe.  I said this consistently during Obama's years, and say it again now during Trump's.  Still, it's okay to use the charts in The Century Foundation article as a cudgel against the proverbial uncle who thinks the economy only got going under Trump, and that somehow making air and water less clean made the unemployment rate drop to 3.9%.  I also like to remind people the definition of unemployment in the US unemployment rate includes people working part-time who want a full time job.  That started under Reagan to give the impression unemployment was falling, and since then, no politician wants to change it back--even though most western or advanced nations count part-timers who want full-time work as unemployed. Then, Obama changed the definition of when one dropped out of the work force from 99 weeks with no job to 260 weeks with no job.  This played havoc with decades old comparisons regarding workforce participation.  But, hey. Don't talk about this stuff with your proverbial uncle. It may get him too confused.  You may sound like you are looking at economic indicators with intelligence and nuance, which may make his head explode.

* But maybe making your uncle's head explode is a good thing?  I mean, really.  Do we need Baby Boomers at all anymore?  The website, College Humor, has an interesting take on us Baby Boomers, somewhat akin to my 2016 short story, Boomerang.  And yeah, Boomers and addled Oldsters.  Keep pissing on your children and grandchildren, and making fun of them for cultural matters you don't understand.  I am sure they will be glad to shore up your social security payments in twenty years since you are all doing so well as you enter retirement.  The article highlights a dirty secret corporate media doesn't often tell, which is, without social security, most elderly would be impoverished.  

*So a hyper-partisan investigation into the FBI's concerns over Trump's ties to Russia while he was running for president found no bias?  This investigation was the subject of fevered, delusional rhetoric all around the right-wing social media and right-wing corporate media (I'll save you the disgust from reading links)--as if the FBI had no probable cause to be concerned about Trump's Russian ties and communications. The report finding was dropped into the laps of news reporters on Friday, I believe, and is not getting the coverage it should be receiving.  But too bad.  Nonetheless, the right-wing media, which FoxNews leads, is having none of that conclusion.  They think, simply because an FBI lawyer they long hated, Peter Strzok, was ahead of his own curve in terms of evidentiary support for the Russian-affiliated Carter Page, My God!, they scream. This is the first time in history that a government lawyer (whether District Attorney, Attorney General, etc.) was ahead of his or her own evidence in a search warrant demand from a judge!  Stop the presses!  Esquire has a round up of more Friday dumps that should be shoved into the faces of Trumpists.

* And really, after all the nonsense attacks on Clinton and Obama (and Susan Rice) over what occurred in Benghazi, Libya, one would think these Trumpists and right-wing media should be demanding Trump be impeached for this enhancing of ISIS alone.

* The Confederacy, now joined by Nebraska, has decided they would rather not count their own citizens and residents in the next Census.

* I feel bad for the Boy Scouts.  The organization long made the necessary reforms against sexual abuse, and I know from experience with my son, I had to take an online course, and know how strongly the rules were enforced to protect the pre-teen and teen boys.  Yet, because of the change in he statute of limitations (essentially dropping statutes of limitations) in various states, the Scouts now face lawsuits for events thirty and forty years ago, which may well bankrupt and destroy the organization.  The beloved Philmont camp is now collateralized to pay for insurance premiums and related costs to the various litigations.  I have to say, as I have said before, the US tort system is a part of the dog-eat-dog capitalist ethos of vengeance and greed, which system we should rein in, once we establish societal norms where people can be helped and protected in a humane way.  We should not make millionaires of a few litigants and their lawyers.  Oh well.  I am certainly out of step with victim culture in that particular respect.

*Can we ever do economic development in a way that actually helps poor and working class people, as oppose to helping the wealthy, i.e. gentrification?  Looks like we are in for another round of gentrification in the deserts of California. 

* The CA ACLU organizations have been busy defending people's rights.  Here, they are helping students who did activist art after the teacher said...Create activist art.  And here, the ACLU is holding UC to its commitment to not discriminate in providing abortion and abortion-related services simply because the UC has a contract with a Catholic hospital.  I think Mike Hiltzik's column is correct, and it is what we used to call a sticky wicket for the university.  However, maybe the UC needs to promote secular hospital contractual relationships, and help limit the ever-growing power of religious-sectarian hospitals, which deny abortions are part of women's health.

* Krystal Ball, who is my hero in the corporate-owned media these days (through readers here know I am not in full agreement with her on the Trump impeachment issues), has a Bernie has a path commentary worth seeing, and the ending, which goes beyond that topic, is worth considering.  Here is Matthew Rosza, at Salon.com, who has not been a Bernie fan, saying something similar.  But let us remember, American men, and some white American women, are still having a hard time getting their heads around a female president.  Pathetic.

* And this article made me happy to see, because I always admired Eric Dickerson.  If I recall right, I saw six of the eight home games that season when Dickerson set the NFL record for most rushing yards.  It has never been broken in thirty-five years.  The story ends with how Adidas shoes, which sponsored Dickerson, gave him a cake, when Walter Payton received a fancy car.  Dickerson, unlike Payton, was a guy who took no crap from the media, and paid for it.  He also stood up to the Rams' owner, a chorus-woman widow of a jerk of a business man, who literally ran down the Rams' team to get an excuse to get a big payout from St. Louis municipality and its citizens in moving the Rams from the Los Angeles/Orange County area to Missouri.  And I have long admired NBA start, Chris Paul.  This article shows why I like him so much, besides his amazing athletic abilities.

* I have long loved the LA Times' Calendar section because of articles such as this one on Netflix's She-Ra series using "they/them" to describe a non-specific gender character.  I used "they/them" after a single subject noun, such as "student," "lawyer," etc. when I was in high school and college.  However, a poli-sci prof at Rutgers, a woman, said it was terribly wrong from a grammatical viewpoint and marked me down in grades for my use of the terms.  I said I found "he or she" to be tiring to a reader after awhile, and thought it would be easier for a reader to use "they/them."  Because of that, I studiously tried to say "he or she" or find some other way, consistent with traditional grammar, to express myself in such a situation. Now, with the transgender movement, it appears this is the new way to use those group pronouns, even when discussing a single named person, as opposed to a generalized noun, as I did.  I think the prof, who is no longer alive, would have been appalled, though, as a liberal minded person, she may have come around to the idea. :)

Don't worry, we don't remember a lot of things before we were born, either

Yesterday, I substituted as a World History teacher at a local high school. On the wall, the teacher (who from his wedding photo and what I hear, is an older Millennial) had a photograph of JFK. In three classes, I asked, Does anyone know the historical significance of today's date of November 22? 

In all three classes where I asked this, I had to literally point to JFK's photo before anyone could guess, and most had no idea.

Now, we may throw up our hands and say, Oh, this is terrible. This generation is so ignorant of history! However, I never knew anyone from the misnamed Greatest Generation or especially the Silent Generation who knew the day William McKinley was shot. Let's remember, these high schoolers were born after 9/11/2001.  That is nearly forty years after 1963.  The Greatest Generation people were born only twenty or so years after McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, with the Silent Generation born in the late 1920s through early 1940s, so that they, too, should know the day McKinley was shot--if we think students today should know November 22 is the day JFK was shot.  

I know what Boomers and addled Oldsters are thinking, though: "JFK's murder was far more important than McKinley's!" Sorry, fellow Boomers and Oldsters. You are wrong; arrogantly, ignorantly, and selfishly wrong. The change from McKinley to Theodore Roosevelt was at least as, if not more, momentous as the change from JFK to LBJ.  McKinley was a man of the late 19th Century Gilded Age. McKinley was none too bright, and largely a pol who followed the new corporate plutocrats. McKinley was so simplistic he had to pray on his knees to get God's guidance before deciding to go into the war the jingos (including, especially, his Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt) wanted against the Spanish and the Spanish colonies in 1898, and, at the time of McKinley's assassination, our nation had embarked on a program of mass murder and "pacification" in the Philippines. TR wanted that war so bad he could taste blood, and TR, after assuming office, solidified America Pax Americana in a way McKinley may well not have been as effective in doing--oh, that is an irony for the anarchist who shot McKinley, though at least the assassin understood the war crimes the US was perpetrating in the Philippines (Mark Twain knew it, too, but was afraid to publish his parody in real time).  However, on matters of domestic policy, TR represented everything McKinley had no clue about, and TR's important break with McKinley in this regard cannot be overstated. TR saw corporate trusts as a problem to be overcome and solved. TR saw the importance of protecting forests and natural wonders.  TR saw the importance of regulating products businesses sold nationally and even within states.  And in each of these areas, he worked with Congress to enact legislation in these matters, and, when the legislature did not act, he often acted through executive order.  TR was active in a way that would have bewildered, if not shocked, McKinley.  TR changed our culture, how we saw presidents, and was the first president to recognize how mass media worked.  It was a phenomenal change, when we look at the change from various perspectives.

As for JFK, I would posit JFK died for our nation's sins prevalent in his and our time.  JFK had no luck and no skill in getting Congress to pass civil rights legislation, Medicare, or any assistance to the poor.  The Goldwater-Kennedy election of 1964 was going to be a nail-biter, because there was already a white backlash brewing.  It is so easy to forget how many white folks hated or feared Martin Luther King, Jr., or how "respectable" white opinion saw King as "divisive." Malcolm X was off the charts scary to those people.  And let's remember, this is the misnamed Greatest Generation and the aptly named Silent Generation we are talking about as the ones in prime time charge of America's power centers.  As Robert Dallek initially recognized in the early 1990s, and now Robert Caro (finally!) recognizes, LBJ cannily used the nation's grief over the dead JFK, and LBJ's own understanding of how the Congress worked at the time, to push through the legislation which improved the lives of many Americans who had been left out of the so-called American dream. 

For those who think JFK would have pulled troops out of Vietnam, Chomsky's analysis refutes the John Newman, and later, Oliver Stone and James Galbraith thesis in a way which reveals the childishness behind that thesis.  The November 1963 memorandum on Vietnam, which JFK received shortly before his death in Dallas on November 22, 1963, was naively hopeful that the coup against Diem was going to stabilize the government in South Vietnam, and we could pull out safely by mid 1965, meaning after the 1964 election.  See Chomsky's response to James Galbraith (and Galbraith's lame reply) in the letters section of the Boston Review.  Well, we know how that optimism worked out, and, at the time, JFK, and most US national security state policy-makers really believed we could replicate what the US had done in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Lebanon in 1958, the Congo in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1963, which was overthrow governments and replace them with military juntas we liked, train the juntas to prey ("control" or "pacify" were the usual terms used in internal documentation and sometimes in newspaper op-eds) on the people there, and keep from using US troops while the local military leaders in those nations "stabilized" their nations for our corporations to exploit.  We have to also recognize JFK, LBJ, and Nixon all politically came of age when the right-wing led "Who Lost China?" political debate reigned in 1949 through 1953 in the power corridors of the United States.  None of them wanted to be blamed for "losing" Vietnam to the Communists.  I find it almost preposterous to think JFK was going to pull out troops or seek a negotiated settlement with Ho Chi Minh's forces in 1965, 1966, or 1967.

Anyway, what I did find yesterday, at least in the first period, where the students started asking political-historical questions, is the Kids are much more knowledgeable about substantive issues than people my age were back in the early 1970s.  However, they don't know who their local or state representatives are.  As I said to them, knowing about substantive issues is an improvement over their grandparents and probably some of their parents. However, I said, if they expect to effectuate change, they must register to vote, and further, they must learn precisely who their area representatives and senators are. They nodded with appreciation, from what I noticed, but, as a mere sub, I don't know how much sticks.

I admit I winced when I saw none of the students could readily recall November 22 as the day JFK was assassinated.  However, after I immediately stepped back, did some mathematical birth year calculations, went back in some relatively recent US history (120 years or so), and realized something:  These young people in that classroom were not only born forty odd years after JFK's assassination date.  They have lived in the shadow or through major historical events, starting with Al Queda attacks in September 2001--and we know how our corporate media culture has reacted to that.  The Kids have also lived through the Great Recession of 2008 and the greatest economic inequality in the US since Mark Twain described the Gilded Age of 1870-1900 (and beyond Twain's death in 1910).  They have lived through the non-transformational, often reactive Obama presidency and now the fascistic-racist transformational presidency of Trump. They have seen how climate change has become a national security issue, and intuitively know water and food are, above all, political issues.  And, yet, we Boomers and addled Oldsters think they should know something about the murder of a then-mainstream Cold War politician 56 years ago--largely because we can personally remember where we were when we heard the news of that single event?*  

I have long laughed at Billy Joel's insipid song, "We Didn't Start the Fire."  The lyrics are simply a list of names and references without any showing of or explanation of any how's or why's (compare and contrast Phil Ochs' songs on generational topics).  And when Joel, says, "JFK blown away: What more do I have to say?" I would scream at the radio, "You fucking moron. You haven't said a goddamned thing!"  And, Billy, don't fool yourself.  Our generation started a whole bunch of fires, in tandem with The Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation.  It is why I wrote "Boomerang."  And, this morning, on the Web, I was glad to see an amusing comedy skit, "Do We Really Need Boomers?" from College Humor, as it shows others in the Generation Z and Millennial generations are starting to understand people over fifty are political arsonists.  

If I could say something to the Kids, it would be this: You need to come out and vote, and start with registering as Democrats to vote for a guy from the Silent Generation, Bernie Sanders (Birth month and year, December 1941). Sanders stands apart from most his age, and from a majority of Baby Boomers, both in physical strength and historical-political perspective. Bernie is a Popular Front New Dealer, who understands and works from a strategic perspective that involves mobilization, coalitions, and elevating people who were previously at the margins.  It is a very different approach from technocratic, post-WWII approaches from liberals and even some lefties (cough, cough, Elizabeth Warren, who is still miles ahead of most of the other corporate media named candidates).  Sanders' approach harkens back to labor union organizing, at a time when "One Big Union"--the cry of the Industrial Workers of the World--gains more currency in a globalized, technologically connected economy.  And, as a big by-the-way, find out who is a Bernie type running in Democratic Party primaries in state and local offices, and support and vote for them, too.  He can't do it alone, and neither can we.

And I say to those around 50 and up: Let's not rip into the Kids, shall we?  How about we act like good parents, and embrace the youngs, and give them some respect for their youthful idealism, hopes, and concerns.  When a young person demands great change from the horrible things today, instead of saying, "Don't be naive," or some such thing, we should be embarrassed these things exist, and we should ask them, "What do you think we should do?" and talk about various solutions where we don't fall into the "what is" of accepting excessive political power from an economic royalty or elite.  In short, we should stand with our Kids, for they are all our kids--and they are the ones we are asking to support us in our old age.

*I know it may seem strange for me to speak of JFK in this way since I wrote "the" book about RFK surviving 1968, and becoming a transformative president (albeit due to the circumstances at the time, and personal charisma more than leadership skills) who helps lead us close to a completion of the New Deal.  However, RFK believed in the Camelot Myth more than most, and he thought he was completing his brother's visions.  RFK, more than his brother, also realized their father's isolationist streak had some merit in not trying to overthrow governments or prop up unpopular governments abroad (Nasaw's biography of Joe Kennedy, Sr. is quite good on the topic of Joe Kennedy's paleo-conservative skepticism of the Cold War international project).  RFK sat with Cesar Chavez, saw merit in environmental policy ideas, wanting to rebuild cities on behalf of those living in them, particularly African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Puerto Ricans, as well as rural areas where whites and African-Americans were living side by side in poverty, and beginning to take a crack at the military-industrial complex which his brother Jack had little understanding about.

Drive bys for November 22, 2019

You may think I wish to speak about JFK's assassination 56 years ago today. Nope. Been there, done that in my old blog, at least I think. Let's get up to speed on drive bys for today:

* I was unable to access the NYT due to the subscription wall. However, this Common Dreams summary tells us what we need to know about how corporate Democratic Party leaders feel about the base. The first response was contempt, voiced against an immigration activist, to go vote for Trump. One may ask, What is that about? It's a Bidenian shorthand for, "You'll lose the election to Trump, you dark skinned radical!" The other was to tell a person concerned with Biden's funding sources, that the person was "listening to Bernie too much" and "it's not true." Well, technically, Biden may be correct as corporations cannot give directly to Biden, but they can have executives and industry associations bundle money into PACs and to Biden personally. And "listening to Bernie too much" is the pat-on-the-head, saying, "You silly, naive ninny. You need to listen to an adult like me." 

Yup. That is the way in which corporate Democratic Party leaders express themselves when they have to deal with activists and members of the base. Never Trumper David Frum's dictum holds, "The Republican Party leadership fears its base. The Democratic Party leadership hates its base."

* And now this appears in The Atlantic after another poor debate performance from Biden. I read it thinking, Oh my God. We are now going to call Joe Biden a Stutterer-American? Really? Now he tells us? After his gaffe about the "only" African-American woman in the senate endorsing his candidacy, referring to now former, and largely disgraced Carol Mosley Braun of Illinois, when black female senator Kamala Harris is a primary opponent on the same stage with him? That is not a stutter. That is an error in recollection and maybe we can say a brain fart. But again that is not a stutter. Not knowing what state you are in when speaking to a crowd is not a stutter. This article is clearly a controlled leak to a sympathetic reporter and it gets written and reported as if there is some amazing insight. Typical. The Atlantic is so often a disappointment, though, when it is on, it is definitely a moment.

*And, meanwhile, despite the Bernie Black Out, and the often carping dismissal of Bernie as a candidate with a low ceiling, and no basis for improvement, this new national Emerson poll shows Bernie now tied with Biden and several points ahead of Warren--while Mayor Pete is lagging in a dismal fourth place at 7%. This poll is interesting poll because I continue to believe how a poll is conducted is going to be far more important than a poll's results. I am not sure how pollsters poll for a caucus in a place such as Iowa, and I am not sure if the polling data showing Mayor Pete in the lead in Iowa includes many young people in that polling. I also think we should be cautious at this point about national polling data because Trump is still in an excellent position to win re-election by virtue of the Electoral College, and white Baby Boomer and Oldster support in the Rust Belt. It is why I scream with frustration more often than not that only Bernie is in a position to peel away that support, excite young people's activism and voting, and bring back the black voter to the polls with the type of hope they have not had since RFK was gunned down over 50 years ago. As many who know me know, I consider the greater tragedy in American history the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 than Jack's in 1963. Jack's death gave LBJ an opening to pass legislation JFK was never going to get passed in the Congress, starting with the Civil Rights laws in 1964 and 1965, and Medicare in 1965. As for polls, my advice is to stay with your presidential preference among the top four candidates, at least, as the voting in the Iowa caucus is not for three more months, and the first primary almost four months away. If you change, it should be for substantive reasons, not strategic in the sense corporate media wants you to change--especially when, for me, the clear choice remains Bernie. I mean that from as much strategy in this anti-Establishment time as for public policy reasons.

* Chomsky is essentially correct in this interview at Truthout.org, but I depart from his analysis, well, really drive by, comment about Watergate. I agree with him that historian Henry Steele Commager was wrong to say Nixon's resignation "vindicated the system." However, the scandals under the heading "Watergate" were far more than the break-in at the Watergate hotel. The Plumbers had already broken into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to try and find personal information on Ellsberg to discredit him through friendly sources in the corporate media. There were taps on phones without FBI approval of various people in and outside the administration. There were plans to kidnap student leaders, including veterans of the peace movement, and take them to a concentration camp in Mexico (The Huston Plan, which was making its way toward final approval by Nixon). Nixon had bypassed the FBI--which was a pretty amazing thing to do considering Hoover was still in charge, and ready to pounce on unarmed dissenters to American domestic and foreign policies--and even sidetracked the CIA. Behind it all was the illegal bombings in Cambodia, which led to the creation of the Plumbers, who were to plug "leaks" in the administration to news reporters. And, as several commentators have analyzed over the years, there were multiple reasons to break into the DNC headquarters at the hotel, namely: (1) DNC char Larry O'Brien's friendship with a Greek dissident, who Nixon and Agnew believed provided information to the Democrats of the Greek military junta having giving money to the Nixon-Agnew campaign in 1968, money that was originally from the CIA to the junta (Agnew being a Greek-American may have inspired this). I wish The Nation would reprint the Christopher Hitchens essays on the topic (written in the 1980s and early 1990s), based upon Hitchens' own discussions with the dissident. Also, let's recall the main outside guy to put up bail money for the break-in defendants in court was Tony Pappas, a Greek-American rich guy who had dealings with the military junta in Greece. Pappas is mentioned in the linked to article; (2) O'Brien had information on Nixon's sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in 1968 from Clark Clifford, LBD's last Defense Department Secretary, and Nixon wanted to know how much Clifford had given O'Brien; and (3) There is also perhaps reason to believe John Dean, the Nixon WH lawyer who went rogue, may have been interested in finding out what O'Brien knew about a ring of "escorts," which may or may not have included Dean's wife before Dean and she were engaged. I always found the last one involving Dean to be really far-fetched, but let's recall how humans in a conspiracy have their own peculiar motives, sometimes. I am surprised Chomsky did not seem to recall any of that, and fell for the right wing line that the Watergate scandals were a "third rate burglary," and nothing more.

*Speaking of sports, I mean, really, the Lakers have the best record in basketball at 12-2. Oh, wait. Not that. It's time for another look at Colin Kaepernick, who continues to be the obsession of white citizens who are in love with the NFL, and hack sports guys in television, like Stephen Smith, who should have known better. This article provides the background, including how the waiver the NFL wanted CK to sign was probably designed to stop CK from criticizing the NFL ever again, or even bringing another suit against the NFL. And Max Kellerman (starting at about 3 minutes it) reaches back into his Jewish-American roots, and shows his father taught him about how important it was to challenge power--and not talk about how "uppity" Jackie Robinson was behaving after Robinson's first year and reporters, such as the overrated and odious Jim Murray of the LA Times, and Dick Young of the NY Daily News, treated Robinson as a "boy." I wish one could find links on the Internet about Young and especially Murray. Murray is deified in death (even Rachel Robinson joins in that chorus, when the Arnold Rampersad bio of Robinson gives us a strong whiff of Murray's attitude toward Robinson in the latter's playing days, though it does not show how Murray waxed eloquent and tearfully supported Zola Budd, a South African Olympic runner, during the boycott movement against South Africa), while Young has had his reputation clipped for decades after Young's death due to more generalized racism toward other black and Latin American players such as Roberto Clemente and others.

Trump, the influence of television, and the destruction of open government discourse

This essay-review in the latest New York Review of Books is a decent summary of two recent books on Trump and television. I think the article is wrong to leave Taibbi's belief that "Russiagate" is ultimately a hoax akin to Saddam Hussein's WMDs. Taibbi's judgment is horribly and cynically wrong because there is more than smoke with Trump's long relationship with Russian oligarchs and many of Trump's foreign policy moves, as Seth Abramson and Craig Unger, two respected reporters, have disclosed in books on Trump and the Russians, released a year or more ago. I am surprised the writer, David Bromwich, who should know better, seems to have not considered those books in evaluating Tiabbi's conclusion. Worse, Bronwich seems unfamiliar with findings in the Mueller report, which showed over 100 contacts between Trump, his campaign, and the Russians in the 2015-2016 campaign period, and totally ignorant of Mueller's clear conclusion that, while he believed he was bound by the executive branch conclusion that no president could indicted, Congress had the power to take action against Trump and others surrounding Trump. Mueller's testimony made clear to any reasonable person he believes Trump should be further investigated, particularly where Mueller acquiesced in not personally deposing Trump. This is a major failure on the part of Bromwich, who again should know better as a veteran NY Review of Books reviewer for over 30 years.

However, I am glad Bromwich properly castigated the colloquiums and cliches that mar the other book being reviewed, and was wise enough to recognize some important analysis within that other book. Bromwich says:

"Here indeed is a clue to his (Trump's) presidency. For though Trump is an attention guzzler—he wants an audience to notice him every hour of every day—he has a smaller need than the average politician for wide popularity. An extra skin or protective layer of unconcern goes with his readiness to say or do the abrasive and insulting thing. It was this that most set him apart from his immediate predecessors, Obama and the younger Bush. The numerical minority and electoral majority that lifted him to the presidency seem to have done it partly in response to this trait. He offered a perversely satisfying relief from the soft-sell pandering of American political life."

This insight is why those who revere Trump, mostly older, white Baby Boomers and addled Oldsters, who have racial insensitivities and appear unable to overcome corporate media biases, mostly right wing and elitist, are less and less interested in majority rule--and worse, live in a world that promotes a new type of anti-intellectualism and portent of outright fascism.  Eric Alterman, who I used to like a lot, but who I find less and less interesting, had earlier this year written an essay in The New Yorker that traced the decline of History majors in public universities to a decline in historical understanding, noting Yale University was increasing the number of History majors because of its elite status, where people graduating with a degree in History were in a much better position to land a job teaching History.  This is true as far as things go, but wholly unsatisfying as a reason for any decline in historical understanding.  I would say most of the American population has long had a problem with historical perspective, as Gore Vidal properly said our nation should perhaps be called "The United States of Amnesia."  Vidal understood the role of broadcast corporate owned media in heightening an inability to grasp and evaluate historical perspectives and how people are often focused on trivialities, inanities, and gossip.  I would also add the destruction of private unions across the nation that accompanied the de-industrialization of the nation, which corporate-friendly trade deals accelerated.  These are more systemic and more profound in producing Trump as a political leader and where our nation's discourse is at in the present.  I find it more and more impossible to converse with people who claim they are Republicans or support Trump to the extent they live in a right-wing media bubble, complete with unfounded and discredited conspiracy theories against the Clintons, a lingering belief Obama is not a US citizen and is a "secret" Muslim fundamentalist friend of terrorists, and are obsessed with immigration and guns based upon an avalanche of misinformation and fear. 

In addition to the substantive points responding to Bromwich, I have a perhaps quibble with Bromwich, which is his assertion that the New York Times is "an organ for educated middle class." This is incomplete if not outright misleading.  The New York Times, for the past 100 plus years, has been an organ for elite opinion, particularly the economic elite, and that is well beyond the middle class. That the middle class buys too much into the slant from corporate owned media, and does not critically evaluate the information, that much is definitely true. It is also true of Bromwich's article, though Bromwich's article should nonetheless be read in its entirety to help move forward a discourse sorely needing progress.