Here Comes the Darkness

 

The Washington Post greeted the beginning of the first Chaos administration with a bold new slogan: Democracy Dies in Darkness. They weren't going to let things go dark.  They were going to shine a light.

The Washington Post is greeting the beginning of the second Chaos administration with a new slogan--though they couldn't replace the old one entirely without facing an even greater editorial staff revolt than they are already experiencing.  The new internal slogan is "Riveting storytelling for all of America."  It comes with a further intent to greatly increase the amount of "conservative" commentary.  

Once upon a time the Washington Post braved powerful pressure from an established administration--the first one known to make Enemies Lists--to expose the corruption of President Nixon and his administration.  

In 1972 I documented (for the Boston Phoenix) ways that the Nixon administration was already pressuring news media, with some success, especially at TV networks.  But in the early 1970s, the Washington Post led a journalistic outpouring of exposing administration lies and corruption. 

 Though the New York Times beat them to the Pentagon Papers (which also exposed lies from the Johnson administration), it was the Post that broke the Watergate story and kept after it.   Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the reporting, but courageously backed by editor Ben Bradlee and publisher and owner Katharine Graham.  Nixon officials attacked the Post directly--and Katharine Graham personally-- as the story evolved, but the Post did not stop..

The 2017 slogan--Democracy Dies in Darkness-- was in line with that tradition, and no wonder: it was a line from a speech given by Bob Woodward.  Though it was Post owner Jeff Bezos who heard it and selected it, it clearly has the sound of an editorial origin.  

The 2025 slogan has the tin-eared sound of origin in the marketing department.  That alone suggests what's going on at the Post.  The refusal to publish an unflattering political cartoon as well as deep-sixing the endorsement of Kamala Harris for President are part of the pattern.

Katharine Graham was in the newspaper business, and she had a sense of responsibility.  Jeff Bezos has other business interests, and like other tech billionaires he is bending the knee to Chaos in the hopes that those interests will be served, particularly (I would guess) his aerospace business, where he is in direct competition with Elon Musk for government contracts. 

People like Bradlee and Graham were motivated in part by a sense of shame.  They would be ashamed of themselves if they had bent the knee to Nixon.  A sense of shame seems to have disappeared entirely from public life, however rare it had been.  Chaos, Elon Musk and MAGA supporters prioritize lies and hate--especially lies that inflame hate.  This is not compatible with a sense of shame.

The darkness of a Dark Age is specifically the loss of knowledge, of the truth or the sincere search for truth.  Opposition to that is implied in the Post's old slogan.  Its commitment to living up to it is in serious doubt.  Without it, hate and corruption spread, and so eventually does chaos.

It's already part of a pattern.  The ABC network surrendered to Chaos by quickly settling an absurd lawsuit, and apparently now CNN is sending its most popular correspondent to the news day equivalent of Siberia, because Chaos considers him an enemy.  Hate and lies are spewed unrestricted now on the major social media platforms, such as Facebook and its Meta offshoots, TikTok and of course X.

Tech and other corporate billionaires line up to flatter the king, who has the distinction of heading the most corrupt administration in American history even before it takes office. There will be a resistance, but right now the big show is cowardice, capitulation and appeasement.  For one thing, only Michelle Obama and Nancy Pelosi have announced they will not honor the criminal Chaos by attending the coronation.  They--and they alone so far--have my respect.

Invitation

 

Oh do you have time
        to linger
                for just a little while
                       out of your busy

and very important day
        for the goldfinches
                that have gathered
                       in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
        to see who can sing
                the highest note,
                       or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
        or the most tender?
                Their strong, blunt beaks
                       drink the air

as they strive
        melodiously
                not for your sake
                       and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
        but for sheer delight and gratitude—
                believe us, they say,
                       it is a serious thing

just to be alive
        on this fresh morning
                in the broken world.
                       I beg of you,

do not walk by
        without pausing

 to attend to this
                       rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life

--by Mary Oliver

The goldfinches in this poem are probably American Goldfinches (photo above), seen in the eastern United States among other places.  They are different (ornithologists insist) from the goldfinches in Europe, where in medieval times (according to poet W.S. Merwin) they were symbols of eternal life.

  The American goldfinch was a familiar and always happy sight in the western Pennsylvania of my childhood, and is still a visitor to my sister Kathy's backyard there. So I've lamented the obvious absence of the bright red cardinals and bright yellow goldfinches here on the far North Coast of California. But it turns out we have a species of goldfinches that at least pass through on the Arcata flyway: the Lawrence goldfinch (photo below), a smaller bird that resembles the larger siskins in coloration.  So without knowing it, I have seen flocks of these goldfinches briefly visiting our backyard and pecking at seeds before they move on to their mountain habitats.  

 Still I miss the bold gold and black of the goldfinches I knew, though I can't say I saw more than one or two at a time, and so missed this collective song, though I too am alive in this broken world.

 

Origins: "The Holidays", Christmas and New Years

 

If you were a Catholic during the first two centuries of Christianity and you wanted to celebrate the birth of Jesus, you would be committing a sin and would go straight to hell.

That's because the Church fathers were emphasizing Christ's divinity and not his humanity.  Besides, no one knew (or much cared) when that birth happened.  The Biblical accounts point to spring, but it was kind of so what.

Then by the late third century the Christian church was large and influential enough to challenge the Roman gods, competing with the contemporary cult of the sun god Mithras, imported from Persia and popular enough to be declared the official religion of the Roman Empire.  It celebrated the birth of Mithras, or Natalis Solis Invicti, with a good long festival centered on December 25.

 It just happened to be about then that the Church got interested in Christ's birth, and more or less arbitrarily declared it was--surprising coincidence!--on December 25.  It took awhile but Christmas began to be celebrated throughout the Empire by the fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine was baptized a Christian.  

This December date is roughly that of the winter solstice, long a traditional time for ritual and celebration (including in surviving Indigenous cultures), as the days start to get longer, announcing the coming birth of spring.  In my life it was my Uncle Carl who explained the solstices and equinoxes to me--the nuns teaching me in school never mentioned them, possibly because such knowledge still seemed darkly pagan.

Like those of most holidays, Christmas customs are a mishmash of approximated traditions from many cultures in many eras, often shorn of their original meanings. But an impressive number of them are pretty recent--from the nineteenth century to the World War II era and beyond--especially the songs.  

When I was a child in the 1950s, we used to hear Gene Autry's original recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on the radio--it was a poem devised as an advertisement for Montgomery Ward department stores that was set to music in 1949 and became a massive hit for him.  It has since sold more records that any song except Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," which itself was written in 1942 by Irving Berlin for the Crosby movie "Holiday Inn."

That's me in 1951, defending my sister
Kathy in my new Hopalong outfit

Crosby had another Christmas hit the next year with "I'll Be Home for Christmas," very definitely a World War II song. "The Christmas Song" ("Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...) is from 1945. 

Though Perry Como had a bigger hit with it in 1953, Gene Autry followed up his Rudolph bonanza with "Frosty the Snowman" in 1950, and I used to see the animated accompaniment to the song on WJAC-TV in Johnstown;  the station puts it on the air every Christmastime to this day. 

  "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas" is from 1951, with its specific reference to the first television star to generate product lines, the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy.

Even the venerable "Jingle Bells" is from the mid-nineteenth century, but for years it was simply one of many songs of that era about sleigh rides, and was first performed in minstrel shows.  It took at least a decade or two before it became associated with Christmas.  Now it is perhaps the most familiar Christmas song in the world.

Rudolph's origin in advertising wasn't unique.  Advertisers were mighty drivers of Christmas imagery for obvious reasons.  They were also apparently responsible for changing the expression "the holidays" from referring to school vacations in the summer to the Christmas to New Years period (and conveniently so, for this was before the non-Christian holidays such as Hanukkah and Kwanza were widely included in general public perception.)  The earliest example of "Happy Holidays" imagery appears to be a 1937 ad for Camel cigarettes.

When I was a kid in the 50s, the holidays were really "the holidays"--they extended past New Years.  I notice here in Arcata these days that holiday decorations go up early (I saw Halloween decorations in late September), which is of course how retail stores and related businesses have done it for decades--get in the spirit (and the spending) early.  But Christmas decorations are often taken down even before New Years.  In my childhood we didn't decorate until the week before or even the week of Christmas.  In some families it was traditional to trim the tree on Christmas Eve or maybe the day before that.  

Christmas itself was for children, and the close family gathered on the Eve and the Day.  But after that it was more for the adults.  Certain pastries and other foods and certainly drinks came out that weren't around at other times of the year.  And then the visiting commenced.  Close family again sometimes, but mostly more distant relations and my parents' friends and their families would visit us or we would visit them, or both.  These could be my mother's old friends from high school (who were often related to us somehow anyway) or my father's current and past work colleagues, and then later those of my mother's when she started working in hospital administration.  They weren't the most fun times for me but they were memorable--my chance to observe adults in their natural environment.

This would go on past New Years, and the decorations would stay up until early January.  It was a long Christian tradition to take them down on Twelfth Night (which is what they called January 5 in England), the night before the feast of the Epiphany, or the visit of the Magi. We weren't that exact, but it usually was around then.  Maybe sooner, if the Christmas tree was drying out and shedding needles.  It's worth noting that commercial activity was at a low ebb after Christmas then, until perhaps the January White Sales.  So they really were the holidays.

Like Christmas, New Years traditions are a cultural hodgepodge.  But there are some revealing origins, mostly associated with the new year as celebrated in the spring. January 1 became the first of the new year with the introduction of the Julian calendar in Rome, but wasn't firmly established throughout the world until the universal adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which took centuries.

But because the new year had been celebrated nearer the March equinox, many traditions were associated with crops and their fertility.   Next to the Fourth of July, New Year's Eve is the holiday most associated with making noise, including explosions.  This tradition was originally to scare away the demons that destroyed crops, especially with diseases.  

On the other hand, some new year traditions were to encourage growth.  The tradition of wassail, a hot drink with alcoholic properties, was part of ancient Anglo-Dane and Anglo-Saxon holiday rites.  In some areas of England, the tradition was all about conviviality, and was associated with Christmas. But at least in one region it was part of another ritual.  Some sources say it was a Twelfth Night ritual, but Henry David Thoreau writes about it in detail (in his essay "Wild Apples") and associates part of it with New Year's.

In Thoreau's account, the drink was an apple cider, and was used in a rite to encourage apple trees to be fruitful.  It would be shared with the trees on Christmas Eve, and people would dance around it and chant a particular song, to call for a bountiful harvest.  Then on New Year's Eve, in another ritual of noise, a group of boys would visit apple orchards and engage in what was called "apple howling" to encourage the trees, and once again perform a chant while circling them. They also rapped on the trees with sticks, which was called "wassailing," according to Thoreau.  

A New Year's tradition of the Iroquois in America, still existing when Europeans arrived, was to build a huge bonfire and throw their possessions into it, so it would literally be a new year.

Happy Holidays 2024

 

These beauteous forms, 

Through a long absence, have not been to me

 As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye; 

But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din

 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

 Felt in the blood and felt along the heart; 

And passing even into my purer mind,

 With tranquil restoration—feelings too

 Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,

 As have no slight or trivial influence

 On that best portion of a good man’s life,

 His little, nameless, unremembered acts

 Of kindness and of love.

 Nor less, I trust,

 To them I have owed another gift,

 Of aspect more sublime; the blessed mood

 In which the burthen of the mystery,

 In which the heavy and the weary weight

 Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood

 In which the affections gently lead us on…

William Wordsworth

King Chaos

This was the Time cover in January 2021,
an artist's acid rendition of the chaos
Homegrown Hitler left behind. This
December 2024, Time named him
Man of the Year.

After the election there was talk of a Resistance but what we've seen so far is the opposite.   Late in the campaign  Jeff Bezos was accused of "anticipatory obedience" in caving in to Chaos by dumping the Washington Post's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.  It's the historical lesson that wannabe dictators consolidate power when people not only fail to resist but rush their compliance without being asked, let alone forced.

Now even some of the people who warned of anticipatory obedience are openly engaging in it.  More than that, they are among those fawning all over him.

  Billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg were first in line, the owner of the LA Times quashed another editorial criticizing Chaotic cabinet choices, and of course Elon is relishing his power over the federal money that supports his ventures (he just wants to deny that money to anyone else, not only the aforementioned Bezos and Zuckerberg, but the poor, the sick and the old.  Just about everyone. And he sure doesn't want to pay any of the tax money he's eager to spend.)  Elon himself has made over 90 billion dollars since the election, without lifting a finger.  That's billions with a B.  Update: Make that 200 billion new dollars.  My apologies for shortchanging him.

CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple are lining up behind them to genuflect, as banks and billionaires produce millions in donations for the inaugural party.  They're apparently hoping to be part of an oligarchy, with or without a dictatorship.

 Meanwhile in Washington, instead of making Chaos fire them, FBI director Wray and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith are quitting. The federal cases have already gone away, the 34 felonies are to be swept under the rug in New York, and ABC has settled a Chaos suit against them, blowing off the First Amendment.

And on the day that Wall Street invited him to do their ceremonial opening or closing or whatever it was, Time Magazine named him Man of the Year.  It's his second stint with that designation, which equals the number of times he was impeached.

And where is the Resistance?  Whose voice is raised in opposition?  None other than Mitch McConnell, the embodiment of evil who helped enable the rise of Chaos, no longer leading the Senate but still in it, loudly opposing Chaos foreign policy (namely the surrender of Ukraine to Russia and the dismantling of NATO) and the Chaotic proposal (for Chaos now includes not only the man but those he empowers) to deny approval to polio vaccines.  

So what's the problem?  Well, let's start with hypocrisy.  Either people really believed that Chaos is an unparalleled danger to democracy, to the American people and to the future, or they didn't, and don't.  And it's not that Chaos is repudiating much from his campaign.  He's still bent on mass deportations, tariffs that will spike inflation, taking an ax to health care, Medicare and Social Security; he's said again that he believes everyone on the commission that investigated the invasion of the U.S. Capitol and his role in it should be jailed, and that's a message that his attorney-general is not going to miss.  He's already started the lawsuits against opponents, his congressional puppets are smelling investigations of Liz Cheney.

He's busy appointing far right ideologies and incompetents to wreak havoc on every function of the federal government that materially affect every last person in the United States, not to mention a drunk to run the Pentagon--what could go wrong there? And a history of at least allegations of sex offenses appears to be a qualification.

So apart from hypocrisy--not exactly unknown in politics--what's the problem?  Isn't it fair to just wait and see?  Well, we're going to.  But in larger terms, this all goes beyond normalization towards valorization, and only increases the power of Chaos.  He doesn't have to wait to be inaugurated President--he's fawned over like a king.

And therefore that power eases the possibilities of the next steps.  If Chaos actually aspires to dictatorship that goes beyond four little years, those steps include empowering armed supporters and taking control of the military. 

Take his FBI appointment for a start. Appointing someone whose chief qualification is his loyalty to Chaos already corrupts justice. Doubtless attention will focus on the use of the FBI and Justice Departments to go after the enemies of Chaos.  But there's something else: appointing someone who says he wants to cripple the FBI may well have the function of releasing the right wing militias, the armed hate groups and white supremacists from the efforts of the FBI to restrain them.  I wouldn't be surprised to see them marching at the Inauguration.  Given enough encouragement, they are the natural candidates to become the equivalent of Hitler's brownshirts.  And of course there are those insurrectionists who will be pardoned out of jail.

But control of the military is the most important, and Chaotic supporters are out to rid the Pentagon of anyone who might oppose them.  A purge may be in the offing.  It will be worth watching out for--because it's the Chaos style to say a lot of outrageous things and do a lot at once, misdirection by publicity and exhausted attention.  

That's the dictatorship playbook: neutralize opposition (or just watch the opposition neutralize itself), create chaos, get control of the engines of force, which includes the law and power over lives that depend on Social Security, Obamacare, and the work of a thousand agencies, but definitely includes stacking Justice, the FBI, IRS and other punitive agencies, and the military with far right ideologies and just plain lackeys.

Chaos may be too chaotic to pull this off, but this anticipatory coronation isn't going to help stop it. It only makes it more possible.  

People who have to deal with him have to deal with him, but symbolic resistance is necessary at this point to encourage the real kind when chaos really gets started.  Democrats, including the President and Vice-President, staying away from the Inauguration would say something big.  Some congressional Democrats are reportedly already organizing such a boycott.

And it's not like Chaos has any respect for norms. Does anyone remember how Homegrown Hitler treated President-elect Biden?  He did not invite him to the White House, he subverted the transition and he did not attend Biden's Inauguration.

 President Biden may want to show that he's a better man, and of course he is.  But let's not continue normalizing Chaos. For one thing, any Democrats (should they be invited) who attends the inauguration of Chaos are doing just that.  This is the time to stop normalizing.  This is not normal.

Advice for the Age of Chaos: As Well As You Can, For As Long As You Can

 On January 18, 2017, three days before Homegrown Hitler was inaugurated, Margaret Atwood's essay on "What Art Under Trump" was published in the Nation magazine.  It now appears in her latest collection, Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces 2004 to 2021.

As we consider life once again under Homegrown Hitler but this time (as they say) on steroids-- a figure I refer to simply as Chaos, I offer the concluding words of that essay.  Directed specifically to artists and writers, it perhaps has broader application, and broader wisdom.

“As once-solid certainties crumble, it may be enough to cultivate your own artistic garden—to do what you can as well as you can for as long as you can do it; to create alternate worlds that offer both temporary escapes and moments of insight; to open windows in the given world that allow us to see outside it.

With the Trump era upon us, it’s the artists and writers who can remind us, in times of crisis or panic, that each one of us is more than just a vote, a statistic. Lives may be deformed by politics—and many certainly have been—but we are not, finally, the sum of our politicians. Throughout history, it has been the hope for artistic work that expresses, for this time and place, as powerfully and eloquently as possible, what it is to be human.”

Margaret Atwood

Thanksgiving 2024

 The Thanksgiving dinner I'm thinking of this particular year is the one in the 2021 movie Don't Look Up.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays a midwestern university astronomer whose graduate student (Jennifer Lawrence) discovered a new comet. When he realizes the comet is on a collision course with Earth, and its impact would kill most life on the planet, he tries to warn everyone. 

It's a serious subject, a kind of updated remake of the 1951 movie When World's Collide, but it's also a political satire very much akin to Dr. Strangelove.  The President (played by Meryl Streep) is a female Trump, and in an suddenly more accurate addition, her right hand man is the tech billionaire (Mark Rylance) modelled mostly on Elon Musk.  

The astronomers try to persuade the authorities to take the extinction threat of the comet seriously.  At first they don't (nor does the news media) but when they need a political distraction, they pretend to address it--until the tech billionaire convinces the president that he has a way to divert the comet and still exploit its mineral riches.  (Spoiler: he doesn't.) Eventually the President makes ignoring the comet into a political fetish. She whips up her adoring rally crowd, adorned in a baseball cap with her motto, "Don't Look Up."  It's already visible but if you don't look up to see it, the comet won't be there. It won't be real.  Instead, look down and check your Black Friday deals.

One analogue to the comet is the Covid pandemic, but mostly it's climate distortion. Climate distortion is the comet that will destroy civilization and life as we know it on Earth.

Eventually the comet crashes into Earth, but by that time the president and her billionaire have left the building, though their prospects on a distant planet appear dubious.  Still, the point is made: the super rich and the ideologues who serve them, fuck things up and let everyone else suffer the consequences.  As usual.

The dinner is at the astronomer's middle class home. It may not actually be Thanksgiving Day, but it seems like that kind of meal.  Gathered around the table are his family, and the strays that became a family in trying to save the Earth.  They've finished the meal, and are praising the quality of the coffee, when the DiCaprio character looks around and says, "We really did have everything, didn't we?"  And the next moment the table shakes and the walls implode.

In comparison, our apocalypse is in slower motion, but it is underway.  Due in part to the short time left, when squandering four years could be fatal, the chances of doing much about climate distortion as a society, as a global community, have just about disappeared. That's thanks to the results of a corrupted election, bent by illegal foreign interference by Putin and others, and Musk's money and power over a major information medium, and perhaps a lot more than that. 

With a Harris presidency we had a chance of a useful approach to the inexorable effects of climate disruption, and prospects for humanity in the farther future.  For one thing, Kamala Harris as v.p. is the only official I've ever heard speak of the crisis in terms of causes and effects. She knows her stuff. She had the potential of finally articulating the known dimensions and the tasks ahead.  

 We don't know for sure but it's likely that we are almost out of time to do much even about the far future.  We still had a chance to get ahead of the effects in the nearer future--and the present we're ignoring by not looking up--instead of trying to only deal with each disaster as it occurs. Those effects are certainly coming.  But on the federal level and in many states, addressing and anticipating those effects isn't likely to happen either.

It seemed that this slow- motion apocalypse presented opportunities to address its effects and its causes.  But the fact that it was a slow-motion apocalypse also made it easier for some people to ignore what is really happening.  Now the institutions that we would depend on to clarify what needs to be done, and to organize our resilience, are going to be bled dry if not completely destroyed.  The stability and strength necessary to deal with the international problems that are already happening--such as the pressures of climate migration--may be willfully and needlessly destroyed.  What would have been chaotic may now become chaos.

For the past 40 years or so, each Republican administration that screwed the economy and weakened government's ability to meet needs of the people was followed by a Democratic administration that spent 4 to 8 years undoing as much of the damage as it could.  But that's going to be much harder this time, even if the growing electoral college disadvantage (and the Supreme Court) can be overcome.  

Because--enter Chaos, formerly known around here as Homegrown Hitler, and more generally as the Orange One.  The extent of the destruction his administration is already planning for the federal government would take a long time to restore, and might never be undone.  The place of America in the world-- economically and politically (as a great power, but also a beacon to the world for its stability and the rule of law)--may be ended.  We'll be lucky if in four years America is not a client state of Russia. 

The last time Homegrown Hitler was elected, some had the excuse of not knowing what he would do.  This time everybody who cared to listen knew what he planned to do. Severe damage to this country and to many other countries in the world will be self-inflicted, and hard to forgive or forget. America might never live down the humiliation of electing a wannabe dictator and what amounts to a criminal organization to run the country.  A lot of other things this country has never experienced suddenly could be possible, like a dictatorship, and then even a military coup or a revolution.

Apparently there were enough voters in the swing states to elect a criminal, a sexual predator and de facto rapist and de facto traitor, who is appointing a government led by other criminals, sexual predators, de facto rapists and de facto traitors--a group notable for truly alarming ignorance as well as suicidal ideology.  Those voters effectively voted against democracy, and as Margaret Atwood said, now we'll see how they like it.

So good luck to those voters in Georgia and North Carolina the next time there's a hurricane and they sit in the rubble of their homes for months before they see a FEMA representative throw them a roll of paper towels. Good luck to them in Arizona and Nevada when they can't get fresh fruit and vegetables from Mexico. Good luck to them in Wisconsin and Michigan if the inevitable next pandemic hits soon and the federal government does not permit a vaccine. Good luck to them in Pennsylvania and all the swing states when prices go up, and then unemployment, and the economy hits the danger zone again, with no one in power with the sense to do anything but make it worse.  And therefore, good luck to us all.

 And good luck to those voters in PA and Ohio when they feel the effects of losing seniority and savvy in the Senate, and in Montana they watch a senator who knows nothing about their state and cares less, or in Texas they endure another six years of a coward co-conspirator in insurrection, interested only in his own power and comfort.

Good luck to the small dying cities revived by immigrants who see their lifeblood drained, and to an America that thinks highly of itself as good and humane, as families are torn apart and more women die for lack of medical care that is standing there, too afraid to act.  Good luck to an America that thinks itself peaceful and well-ordered by law and not racist at all when the high tech hobnail boots come to their towns and cities and drag people from their homes.  Then we'll see how well this philosophy serves them: don't look up. Don't look at reality.  Keep your eyes on your lying phones.  

Taken all together, it's hard not to conclude that the apocalypse timetable has been sped up.  It may turn out to be more like collision with a comet that it seemed it would just a month ago.

So this Thanksgiving we can savor what we have now, and what we've had.  Probably no generations since the Pleistocene had it better, especially materially, than those who lived in America after World War II until now.  Despite a rough ride through those decades, we really did have everything.  

Happy Thanksgiving.

Life's Tallest Order

 

“There is a solace in finality and a grace in resignation, no matter what one is resigned to—death, helplessness, the end of chance, resignation itself. But life’s tallest order is to keep the feelings up. To make two dollars worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can’t do that. So fiction does. And there, right there, is the real-- I want to say ‘only’ morality of fiction. Not much, is it? It’s all there is.”

Stanley Elkin

A Long Time Coming

“…We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime."

Franz Kafka, from Conversations With Kafka 

Been Here Before, Sort Of (Ending with a Joke)

 

In a personal sense, obviously I've been here before.  An incomprehensible election result, anticipation of at least four years of consternation and despair.  

This one of course is incomprehensible on steroids, as are the likely consequences. (And what suggests itself as comprehensible is almost too ugly to contemplate.) 

But the consequences are yet to come, and the task now is to tamp down the adrenal panic, and proceed prudently.  Part of the panic is not knowing how to protect ourselves.  There doesn't seem to be much we can do, especially at our age.  Flight means different sets of difficulties, for few places on Earth are going to be untouched.  We're vulnerable, but so are many, many others, including those far more vulnerable than we.

So now it's just occupying ourselves, attending to the moment at home while at same time living for awhile in other worlds in books etc.  When I've been out this week--walking, at the nearest grocery, a hike up Trinidad Head--people have been unfailingly gentle, polite and kind.  It may be the last calm before the onslaught of storms, and since we suspect it is, it has a sense of unreality that goes with life going on as before.

There are maybe two things different about it this time.  The first is about the country and therefore the world, which is that this is a more thorough catastrophe.  Maybe the nation will be so fucked up that in four years the Democrats take power again, but...they'll have to reinvent themselves first.  Everything about politics and elections--political operatives and campaign theorists, pollsters and media--are all utterly discredited.  That's even just assuming that what just happened is political in that sense.  It feels more societal, and that doesn't bode well for change.  In fact, given the pressures on our system that nature will provide, as well as wily dictators, it bodes well for chaos.  From what little news I've allowed myself to see, that's already begun.  But it may take some time to reach critical mass.

The second, since I'm taking a personal perspective here, is age.  The aging life is likely to make its own demands on my time and attention, forcing its priorities.  What's going on in the outside world probably won't help, may materially hurt, but eventually it all becomes part of the same thing: living in time.

So if I'm fortunate I can find the inner and outer resources to complete the work I want to do, the final acts of witness to the world I've experienced, a world now almost totally gone.  And live partly in those alternate worlds of story, of memory, of my remaining capabilities. 

But for now it's one day at a time.  Or one hour, as I deal with sleep and other physical issues, the day is seldom predictable.  I'm also finding that shorting out the anxiety during the day seems to simply move it to when I'm asleep.  I can feel it strongly then, making sleep lighter and more broken at best.

 As I cast about for things to occupy me away from all this, I was provided with the sight of a book on a shelf I didn't remember putting there, in plain sight of where I walk by several times a day.  It was an account of Paul Newman directing a film version of The Glass Menagerie in the early 1980s.  I'd not read it before.  And also, when looking for something  I didn't find, I saw that I had a film version of this play on VHS I'd never watched, a library discard.  It's the same Paul Newman directed film.  So I'm now reading the book, and then I'll watch the film.

Margaret suggested I also look at film comedies I have that I like (and mostly that she doesn't); the Marx Brothers and so on.  So far I've reveled in some Rocky and Bullwinkle (the administration of Whatsamatta University is meeting because the school is going broke.  "Why don't we give Daddy Warbucks an honorary degree?"  "Daddy Warbucks is a fictional character," the president scoffs.  The guy who suggested it looks stricken.  "You mean we're real?")

I've also got DVDs of a great unheralded Italian comedy, "Big Deal on Madonna Street," and a package of 1980s comedies including "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun."  And the Marx Brothers, of course.

Margaret also learned a joke going around now, likely in European circles:

Q. What borders on Stupidity?

A. Canada and Mexico.

Kamala's Call

2025

 “Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, have their actions as their refuge.”

Majjima Nikaya, 

Buddhist teaching

There is nothing about this election I understand, except its very dire consequences.  

I guess I'm not alone in this.  Half the country seems to be having a nervous breakdown today.

For me, I realize that this hasn't been the world I've known for some time, but now it is a truly alien country.

America is in disgrace today.  Our system has failed, beginning with the judiciary, that sent hundreds to jail for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, but failed to bring its leader to justice.  The result is we have a man who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, who is guilty of 34 felonies and charged with what amounts  to multiple treasonous acts, handed fateful power again.  Now everyone is endangered (except perhaps a few billionaires), including the selfish saps who voted for Chaos.

2025 was always shaping up to be a fateful year.  For the international effort to address the climate crisis through the Paris Agreements, 2025 is a benchmark year. Several targets for that year are almost certainly going to be missed.  Needless to say, the new US government will officially not care. Meanwhile the emission of the main greenhouse gases reached record levels in 2023, after one of the highest one year increases from 2022 despite international commitments to lower emissions.

In all the campaign fuss, a few relevant news items were obscured, such as the latest UN climate conference which called for "no more hot air" instead of action, and a "quantum leap in ambition" if the goals of limiting greenhouse gases sufficiently is to be attained.

 And the story that half a million people around the world were killed since 2004 in natural disasters made worse by climate distortion--more deaths than caused by wars, terrorism and malnutrition combined.  The predicted expansion of formerly tropical diseases has also begun, with outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue in new regions.

Now of course we've elected to have multiple other very dangerous crises and soon.  Perhaps even before the US commits economic suicide with global consequences, we've learned that Russia is enlisting North Korean troops to fight Ukraine, coupled with the kowtowing to Putin by Musk and of course Chaos himself, threatening Ukraine's existence, the western alliance and eventually the sovereignty of the United States.

I could go on but who's listening? I haven't slept since Monday night.  Every time I started to fall asleep, another terrible consequence would attack me.

 On November 6 the sun came up on the beginning of a very different world, for everyone.  And really really really, not in a good way. 

Numbers V. The Vibe

 The day has come.  My impression of it as the voting begins is the stark difference between the so-called numbers and the vibe.

The numbers people, the data people, parse what they continue to call an extremely close race.  Ace NYT numbers guy Nate Cohn worries aloud that the polls may underestimate Chaos again, and ace NYT numbers guy Nate Silver sees the Chaos shadow everywhere.  No momentum for Kamala, a dour razor thin election.

But out there on the campaign trail for the past week or more the contrast has been almost mythic.  The Harris campaign is exuberant, expansive, joyful.  She sounds like a winning candidate talking to the electorate that will soon be her constituency.  Chaos sounded broken, dazed and depressed.  She sounds like a winner.  He sounded like a loser.

 The Harris campaign, fusing Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated, is unified.  The federal and state Republican organizations are detached, the Chaos campaign itself is riven with public infighting.  

The momentum has been visible, palpable. Kamala Harris drew ever-increasing crowds.  Huge crowds everywhere--20,000 was not unusual.  75,000 in Washington.  The sprawling crowd for her last event in Philadelphia may have been upwards of 30,000.  The last Chaos rallies showed empty seats, people leaving.  

The numbers people say it's a tossup.  The vibe says that America is finally done with him.

To be sure, there's plenty of good news in the numbers for Harris.  The final Marist poll puts her national numbers at 51% to Chaos 47%, which has been the number that has sounded right to me this week. (Reading between the lines, I think the Harris campaign is figuring on a 50/48% split.)  The NYT & some other big polls are tied nationally, and the swing states very close.  But even in the NYT poll, Harris is ahead in more of those states.  The same in other polls, though it's not always the same states.  Then there's that surprising Iowa poll with Harris ahead there, which may suggest layers and movement that other polls aren't picking up. 

And there are the other numbers: the number of Harris staff and volunteers, the number of calls they're making and doors they're knocking on, vs. the conspicuous absence of Chaos workers.  A superior get out the vote effort is worth at least half a percentage point, they say.  Once again, these numbers suggest the vibe--the enthusiasm that is motivating, that could create the bandwagon effect of an obviously winning campaign.

And it seems that nobody but maybe Nate Siler and Nate Cohn believe Chaos will win.  Observers as different as Michael Moore and Bill Kristol not only foresee a Harris victory, but one that will be clear by midnight tonight, though a lot of votes will likely still be uncounted.

What to expect?  The first crucial results will probably be Georgia and North Carolina, either or both of which are expected to have definitive results by say 9 or 10 p. EST.  If Harris wins one, the most direct path to victory for Chaos has been severed, and it's time to put the champagne in the fridge.  If she wins them both, then something big is happening. 

Michigan and Wisconsin may also report enough votes by say 11 p. to show the shape of votes to come.  If she wins those as well as Georgia and North Carolina, it's time to to pop the cork.  If she has won one, then it may take awhile for her to officially get the two votes she needs.

If results are mixed, then the wait for Pennsylvania returns, which could be late Wednesday or Thursday.  Nevada and Arizona could take a week or even two to complete their count.  Any or all of them could be projected by the networks before the night is out. But if margins are truly razor thin, the suspense will continue past the weekend.  

But the vibe says no.  It says that women--including a healthy minority of Republican women, a plurality of unaffiliated women, have not forgotten the abortion bans.  It says that young voters are excited, Black and Latino voters are motivated, older voters are disgusted with and alarmed by Chaos, so they will turn out to vote for Harris.   It says that many former Chaos voters may be like Chaos campaign staffers who would be glad if he just goes away. They may stay home. At his last events, it was clear that if Chaos was trying to appeal to anyone, it was right wing conspiracy fringe.

The vibe says Texas and Florida may not be out of reach.  And yes, Iowa.  It says that the Dems may squeak out a Senate and House majority.  

Even some of the numbers people suggest that the polls aren't picking up late registrants, their models might not work anymore anyway,  and in an election with a coalition of Ds and Rs (and a Generation Z that prefers to register unaffiliated), how people will actually vote based on registration is even more unpredictable than usual.  The vibe says that even if the numbers are even, there are enough ways to "overperform" them to win.

The vibes were all on display on Monday night. They say President Harris.

If you haven't voted, vote.  Be grateful you experienced the Harris campaign.   Soon we learn our fate. Let's hope the vibes are right.  Because what's at stake is the future.  Possibly all of it.   

Harrison Ford Adds His Voice

one of the two campaign ads Harrison Ford made for Kamala Harris.  It's how he says it, right?

Freedom 2024

 On Friday October 25, Kamala Harris held an impassioned rally in Houston that focused entirely on the issues involving reproductive rights.  The next night, in Kalamazoo, Michigan (temporarily renamed Kamalazoo), Michelle Obama spoke for 40 minutes before Harris, also focusing on women's health issues.  These were powerful events, on an issue that thanks to what's happened as a result of the Chaotic supreme court decision erasing the rights affirmed in the Roe v. Wade case decades before, has assumed great importance. 

If Chaos was not threatening to trash the Constitution and fully become Homemade Hitler, it would easily qualify as the issue of paramount importance.  Even with this, it's right up there.  Because it is about so much more than a woman's right to choose.  It's about a woman's right to live.

This was revealed earlier in the campaign with the report confirming that two women had died in Georgia because they were not given medical care by doctors terrified of arrest and incarceration under one set of the extreme laws passed by a number of states that criminalize medical care.  It was further emphasized in the days following these speeches with the confirmation of a similar--and similarly heartbreaking--case in Texas in which an otherwise health young woman in distress was left by doctors to suffer and die.  This woman did not enter the hospital to have an abortion; she was there to give birth.  But there were tragic complications that required procedures that had essentially been outlawed.

That this is happening in America should shock every American, and every American should demand that these cruel laws be abolished.  Reproductive rights for all women is at the center of this, but because of these laws, the danger goes far beyond restricting abortion.  Women who get pregnant with the intention of bearing the child can suffer from miscarriages.  That is tragic enough, but add to it the denial of care that has been routinely offered for as long as it has existed, because of these laws.  It has led to young women bleeding to death, alone and afraid.

Michelle Obama was eloquent also on the ripple effects of the Chaos abortion bans.  They are driving women's health facilities out of business, and so denying routine care to millions of women, including preventive care and early diagnosis of cancers and other life-threatening ailments.  They are discouraging doctors from specializing in women's care, and medical students from learning it.  

As both women emphasized, this is an issue not just for women but for men who have women in their lives--including their mothers and sisters and daughters.  It is in fact a human rights issue.  This is an abrogation of human dignity in America that is morally on the level of slavery.

The solution is the return of reproductive rights as guaranteed under the Roe decision, but this time written into federal law so that no corrupt court or repulsive legislature can deny them.  That can be accomplished by electing Kamala Harris to the presidency, and Democrats to both houses of Congress. 

  Among the avalanche of revealing statements that Chaos is making in the last week or so of this campaign was his assertion that he would be the protector of women "whether the women like it or not."  Spoken like a true sexual predator and supreme misogynist.  There are signs that this issue as well as others are driving women to the polls in record numbers.  That includes Republican women and the many primarily younger women who register to vote as unaffiliated to any party.  There are so many issues of such great importance that this one has slipped to the background in media coverage and analysis.  On November 5, that may really change, big time.  

Haunted by 2016

As we careen closer to Halloween and a fateful election day, I'm not the only one who is haunted by the specter of 2016. 

 I have the advantage--if you can call it that--of this blog, which was very active during the 2016 campaign.  My 199 posts speak of shock and outrage and disgust at the lying and vitriol of the Republican candidate's campaign--a figure who I soon began to call Homegrown Hitler, a dictator wannabe.  

But Hillary Clinton remained comfortably ahead in the polls, and it seemed inconceivable that she would lose against a so clearly unqualified, unfit and utterly vile opponent.  And there's plenty of other resemblances to this year's campaign.  There were warnings of the dangers he posed.  Towards the end of the campaign, amid big rally appearances by Barack and Michelle Obama and, yes, Bruce Springsteen, Hillary told voters, "I'm all that stands between you and the apocalypse."

Pollsters and their ilk began to offer percentages of probability on the outcome.  Hillary was touted as having a 90% chance of winning.  One site--was it the Huffington Post?--gave her a 100% probability.

I was so disgusted and disheartened by the tawdriness of the campaign and the media coverage of it that I began to post videos of various versions of the song, "On the Sunny Side of the Street,": everybody from Gale Storm to Willie Nelson with Tony Bennett, and Esperanda Spalding's performance of it at the Obama White House.

So I sang that song to myself as I walked to my polling place, encouraged by the actual sunny day, and I voted (as it turned out, for the last time in person on Election Day as I had for every election before it since 1972.)

That night I started out on my computer staring at the New York Times now infamous needle of probability.  The evening began with Hillary having more than an 80% chance of being elected President.  Then it began to slip away.  Suddenly it was at 50%.  Then it fell to the other side of the dial, never to return.

To call that night and the subsequent weeks traumatic is to suggest why I am still haunted (and as I mentioned in my Halloween origins post, haunted means to be inhabited by.  These days we say "lives rent free in my head", which does not quite evoke the same emotional weight.  Haunted says it better.)

So much is different in 2024, and yet so much is repeated.  The candidate I now refer to as Chaos is even more openly running for tyrant, even more obviously unhinged and vile, with no limit to the ugly pernicious lies.  His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is saying, though in different words, that this time she really is all that stands between us and the apocalypse, and with overwhelming evidence that this time it may be literally true.

Commentators may say that we're in the classic campaign mode of Republicans being overconfident and Democrats dizzy with worry.  Maybe so, but once traumatized, twice shy.  Haunted by 2016, we anxiously examine any evidence that we're for an even worse shock this time. 

 In conventional political terms, by every measure, there has never been a worse candidate than Chaos.  But the conventional wisdom is that the election is still up for grabs, and at the moment, I detect the sense of the New York Times, for instance, and other mainstream media outlets that Chaos is more likely to win.  It may be that after stories about the women's vote and abortion, the youth vote, the absolutely unprecedented flood of Republican former officeholders and even current officeholders continuing to come out for Kamala, their reporters have rediscovered working class discontent, now (perhaps) moving beyond white men.  Or they think they know something.

That impression is bolstered by the utter cowardice exhibited by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times--and especially their billionaire owners--in preventing planned endorsements of Kamala Harris and suddenly deciding not to endorse for President (despite endorsing for other offices.)

 Think about the ignominy of this.  Who in this world risks less in speaking their minds than multi-billionaires?  There are Republican politicians who have seriously risked their careers by endorsing Harris.  There are women who have risked retribution by telling their stories of the deadly effects of abortion bans, and publicly endorsed Harris.  Yet these billionaires who fear that regulation, taxes, investigations might cut into their profits when they already have obscene amounts of money, don't want to offend Chaos more than they have. They dishonor the traditionally great newspapers they own in the bargain. But their cowardice also looks like an indicator that they believe Chaos has a good chance of winning. 

There are more conventional issues that could go against Harris. I've written before that in my lifetime the one economic phenomenon that most upsets voters has always been higher prices.  Grocery prices, housing, fast food prices-- there are going to be voters for whom this is paramount in voting against somebody that is associated with somebody they think is responsible.  Such issues link up with latent misogyny and overall resentment.  And it's true that a society that continues to operate with the very rich getter immeasurably richer and everyone else sliding down is going to face a reckoning sooner or later.  That this is precisely the wrong way to express it--that it will only make matters worse and further empower the very rich--is a true thought, but not a feeling.

At the Atlantic, Tom Nichols argues a variation on this: he writes that some of this resentment is so strong that anything that Chaos says that outrages those perceived as better off pleases them, and makes Chaos more attractive.  It's the old "owning the libs" refrain, but extended.  He loves Hitler?  He says he'll send armed soldiers after television personalities who criticize him?  That's taking it to them.  The more chaos that Chaos creates the better--that is, until prices go up 20% and recession hits, Social Security goes broke with a 30% cut in current benefits, all results of announced Chaos policies economists predict.  

Chaos pushes his extremist lies about immigrants, but Democrats only ignore these statements and their effects.  They talk about Chaos as a fascist.  But judging from his huge Madison Square Garden rally, right out of the Hitler playbook, there is a market for fascism.

They don't even need to be a majority.  We're forced to accept the reality that this election is going to be determined in a few swing states, and therefore by a minority.  The last Republican candidate for President to win the popular vote was GW Bush in 2004 (and he didn't win it in 2000.)  Hillary won the most total votes for President.  But it didn't matter.  (I should add that this year, there is some possibility that another state or two beyond the designated swing states could turn out to be surprising and decisive.)

Now most political analysts still feel Harris will win, but until recently, people like Nichols and Nate Silver haven't said out loud that they feel it will be Chaos.  So it's time to listen to somebody like Simon Rosenberg. 

 He's a numbers guy and veteran of nearly 40 years of Democratic campaigns.  He warns against the flood of specious Republican sponsored polls that are again trying to screw with expectations.  He says that a real pollster for the Republican party recently told him he sees the race shifting back to Harris.  Some analysts see evidence in recent polls of a late break towards Harris. Rosenberg also notes that Chaos got fewer votes than his opinion polls suggested he would in nearly all of his primaries--which means that this flood of Republican support for Harris has some political basis among Republican voters.  

Rosenberg touts the Democratic ground game, money for ads, Harris being seen as more likeable than Chaos, her drawing even on the economy, and the massive enthusiasm for the Harris campaign that has the potential of bringing in new voters and motivate them to vote.  That's in addition to the expected power of women voting especially on the abortion issue, as evidenced in virtually every actual election that's been held since the deep-sixing of Roe v. Wade freedoms.  He praises the Harris campaign as the most skillful and savvy in modern history (as do others.)  Harris held the largest Arizona rally in that state's history, and the latest in Atlanta was 23,000.

While the folks Nichols references are happy with unhinged Chaos, Rosenberg cites focus groups that show other voters are increasingly disturbed by Chaos rhetoric and behavior.  He believes--as the Harris campaign evidently believes--that this is a winning issue, especially with Republican voters who can no longer stomach Chaos.  (The Harris campaign is also hammering the issue of reproductive freedom, which I'll expand on in a later post.)

 To me Rosenberg is a little less persuasive in talking of the Harris campaign money advantage, especially for ads, because Hillary had a similar advantage, and there's a huge amount of dark money being spent on Chaos.  But undoubtedly the bulge of official contributions to Harris financed hiring staff for sophisticated voter outreach, organizing events in swing states that go way beyond the big rallies and so on. Getting out the vote is not necessarily going to show up in polls (although the latest national poll, by ABC, shows a Harris surge.)  But closing strong is the key to the Harris campaign strategy.

 Rosenberg is a persuasive and articulate voice--he even advises on how to survive the negative noise, and maybe even the haunting of 2016.  (Like don't dwell on it, as I've just done.) "Worry less, do more" is his closing mantra. In addition to his videos he has a campaign news site called the Hopium Chronicles, which I'm certainly going to be checking.  

I've voted by mail, and my vote has been confirmed and is on the books here in California.  I've contributed to the campaign.  All of my eligible family members in western PA are voting Kamala. I'm getting "President Harris" on repeat in my head. Despite my 2016 haunting, I'm daring to once again direct my feet to the sunny side of the street.