The Abyss: Updates

So many corporate CEOs on two presidential advisory boards resigned or supported disbanding that the White House itself disbanded both.  But many CEOs acted under immediate pressure from the public, in some cases reversing the stands they made just hours before:

“The collapse of the CEO councils is not due to an outbreak of conscience,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. “Instead, it is public pressure — pressure for the CEOs to evidence a measure of decency — that is driving them off the councils. That’s not exactly the most inspiring example of moral leadership. No profiles in courage here.”

Score one for the Resistance.

But even though stories continued to emerge of dismay in the White House and the administration, there were no resignations on Wednesday.  Jonathan Chiat notes that White House staff were shocked only that Homegrown Hitler made his racism public--they've been working hard to hide it, since they've heard him in private.  It's unlikely then that these cowardly enablers will step out of the moral abyss.

There were a few more measured statements from Congress but no profiles in courage there either so far.  A challenge has been made however, as several House Dems introduced a resolution to censure the apprentice dictator in the White House.  Supporting that is the only way out of the abyss for Republicans, but breath is not being widely held.  NBC and Fox new shows couldn't get a single Republican officeholder to talk on camera about this situation.

However, pretty interesting that dissidents to HH's rhetoric came from leaders of the US military.  The NYTimes:

Five armed services chiefs — of the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marines and the National Guard Bureau — posted statements on social media condemning neo-Nazis and racism in uncompromising terms. They did not mention Mr. Trump by name, but their messages were a highly unusual counter to the commander in chief.

Meanwhile, Politico reports that Homegrown Hitler was pleased with his Tuesday performance, and so apparently was his alt.right aide:

The president was not alone in his pleasure at the news conference. Chief strategist Steve Bannon, whose nationalistic views helped shape Trump’s presidential campaign, was thrilled with the remarks, according to a friend of Bannon. Even though Trump on Tuesday failed to offer full-throated confidence in Bannon, saying, “We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon,” the controversy has brought some additional job security for the strategist, who has been on the outs with Trump and other White House aides."

This suggests to me that while some White House staff may have been blindsided by HH's statements on Tuesday, Bannon wasn't--he probably was the one who prepared the notes that HH was seen slipping into his coat pocket just before the press questioning began.  Enough of these notes was visible to determine they were about Charlottesville.

Add another to the White House roster of Nazis--the NY Times reports that the lead lawyer for HH on the Russian investigation forwarded an e-mail "echoing sucessionist rhetoric."

The Governor of Virgina followed the governor of North Carolina calling for all Confederate monuments in their states to come down. Meanwhile the city of Baltimore quietly took down four Confederate monuments, literally overnight.

On the history and its significance, Adam Goodheart writes persuasively in Politico that the erection of statues commemorating the Confederacy were deliberate political acts in times of renewed racial oppression, giving them a significance now that might be lost outside their local and historical context.

For example, the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville was not installed immediately after the Civil War but in 1924, the height of the Klan revival.

It is important for non-Southerners to try to understand the local context, from both sides of the racial divide.  At the same time, resurgent racism is not just a Southern phenomenon.  The Nazi who killed Heather Heyer and injured others came from Ohio.  Self-proclaimed Nazi groups hide out in isolated areas of the West.

As for history, a striking aspect of all this for me is the coincidence of my recent research into the old Post Office building in my hometown of Greensburg, PA, which turns out to be modeled very closely on the old Court House in Charlottesville.  In fact, I thought I spotted that Charlottesville building--now a library--in a photo of the strife there.

While Greensburg (being in a Union state) doesn't have a Confederate statue, it does share a history of hosting the Klan resurgence in the 1920s.  According to a local history, the Greensburg chapter was formed in 1921 and "was said to include many prominent county and Greensburg men."

Update: Here's an interactive map of the 917 hate groups in the US, as compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Time Capsule

Everyone I know is depressed.  So only one last downer on the topic before I end this cycle with celebrations of the Obama years.

Everyone I know is depressed about what is coming, and that of course has already started.  This follows the shock.  But maybe it's worth defining what the shock was about.  Because this wasn't just a bad outcome.  This was pretty scary evidence that the entire political system as we knew it is done.

One candidate broke all precedent and refused to release tax returns.  One candidate lost all three debates.  One candidate got almost no newspaper endorsements, including from those newspapers that had endorsed Republicans for a century or more.  One candidate was called--and not just by his opponents--unqualified and unfit for office.

One candidate was widely called out for authoritarian rhetoric, for racist statements, for bluster and bullying, for making fun of a disability.

One candidate was accused by multiple women of sex crimes.  One candidate lied in a documented 3/4 of the statements he made.  One candidate made statements that by any reasonable standards would be called crazy, and those statements were often dangerous.

One candidate talked enthusiastically about reviving torture, and encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons.  One candidate said the climate crisis doesn't exist, that there should be a registry for Muslims in America, that the US must build a wall along the entire length of its southern border to keep out the hordes of Mexicans crossing it illegally, even though illegal immigration has measurably declined.

One candidate called for ending heathcare coverage for millions of Americans, through Obamacare and Medicaid.  One candidate spread easily rebutted falsehoods about the economy, crime and many other topics.  One candidate was clearly ignorant on topics a President must address.

One candidate has no experience in government whatever, on any level. There was evidence that one candidate had ties to a foreign government run by a dictator that he praised, and evidence even before the election that this government of Russia was using illegal means to intervene in the election on his behalf.

That candidate was elected to run the federal government and represent the United States as chief of state.

But that wasn't all--the Republican party held on to majorities in both houses of Congress.  After refusing for the first time in history to even consider a President's nominee for the Supreme Court, that Republican majority will make the balance on the court, and possibly reshape it even more drastically in years to come, for many more years to come.

Every institution involved in this election campaign failed miserably.  But whatever the reasons, the country has gone from a new hope to the Dark Side.

And that's what people are depressed about.  Many are afraid about losing healthcare.  Women, Latinos, Muslims are among the groups with specific anxieties.  But they all see individual rights, the economy, peace and the future of the planet at risk.

Most of the people reading these words today know this already.  I don't know if hearing some of the reasons for their shock and anxiety expressed will help them in any way, or perhaps make things worse.

But for those who stumble across these words in coming years, if you've wondered what people were thinking and feeling about all this, now you know a little more than you did.

For those of us now, a little solace, maybe: An American Tune.

Farewell and Hail

It was President Obama's Farewell Address as President of the United States, and brought him full circle from the themes of his first campaign in 2008.

It was a preemptive attack on the priorities of the next regime.  And it was the outline of a program for Barack Obama, citizen, serving notice that his voice will be heard in the future.

In his farewell address, President Eisenhower warned against the Cold War dominance of the military-industrial complex.  It was as prophetic as it was surprising, and prefigured the lasting traumas of Vietnam.  President Obama put his finger on the basic threats to our tottering democracy that will dominate and endanger in the coming years: underneath arguments and political advocacy, the disappearance of a sense of common national purpose and solidarity, successfully assaulted by cynical partisanship that demonizes and shamelessly lies.  And the disappearance not only of a basic agreed-upon set of facts, but the disappearance of the acceptance that there could be agreed-upon facts--in other words, a cynical ignoring of facts themselves.  He said:

"And increasingly we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

And this trend represents a third threat to our democracy. Look, politics is a battle of ideas. That’s how our democracy was designed. In the course of a healthy debate, we prioritize different goals, and the different means of reaching them. But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, then we’re going to keep talking past each other.

And we’ll make common ground and compromise impossible. And isn’t that part of what so often makes politics dispiriting? How can elected officials rage about deficits when we propose to spend money on pre-school for kids, but not when we’re cutting taxes for corporations?

How do we excuse ethical lapses in our own party, but pounce when the other party does the same thing? It’s not just dishonest, it’s selective sorting of the facts. It’s self-defeating because, as my mom used to tell me, reality has a way of catching up with you."

President Obama was quite clear on the consequences of this in confronting the climate crisis:

"Take the challenge of climate change. In just eight years we’ve halved our dependence on foreign oil, we’ve doubled our renewable energy, we’ve led the world to an agreement that (at) the promise to save this planet.

But without bolder action, our children won’t have time to debate the existence of climate change. They’ll be busy dealing with its effects. More environmental disasters, more economic disruptions, waves of climate refugees seeking sanctuary. Now we can and should argue about the best approach to solve the problem. But to simply deny the problem not only betrays future generations, it betrays the essential spirit of this country, the essential spirit of innovation and practical problem-solving that guided our founders."

I haven't heard a single commentator nor read a single story on this speech, but I'm sure somebody said, okay, we all know he gives a good speech, but... Such people should be in a different line of work--the Russians would no doubt hire them, though likely at lower rates.

What made this speech great was not rhetorical eloquence or even elegance (though there was plenty of that) but cogency and precision.  President Obama outlined the clear and present dangers to democracy, though an hour was not long enough--nor was the occasion appropriate--to describe them all, the still-expanding story of Russian influence scheduled to move inside the White House in ten days.  Putin won't (as far as we know) actually be sworn in, but he might as well be.

Though President Obama pointed no fingers, and his speaking of the words "Fascism" and "authoritarian" were historical references, this speech was a positive statement of the beliefs he brought to the office, but the threats to democracy he outlined were all predominant in the 2016 campaign and outcome.  So it was a warning of what to watch for in the coming weeks, months and years of the next regime.

The crowd cheered him but there was sadness and anxiety at his going. (Especially since the speech proved that he is right in claiming that had he run against the Rs in 2016, he would have won.) That Michelle's dress was black, and daughter Malia in black and white, meant the statement and the mood couldn't be mistaken.

President Obama also paid emotional tribute to his wife Michelle, to his daughters, to Joe Biden, and to his White House staff.  For more complete video of all of this (without annoying commentary), the C-Span coverage is worth exploring.

Defining the Darkness.13

This almost unnoticed act could turn out to be the most serious of recent GOP moves and announcements, and the first step to reactionary totalitarian rule.

Washington Post:

"Members of Congress awarded themselves the power to slash the annual pay of any federal employee to as low as $1, thereby essentially telling government workers to forget about civil-service protection: Their jobs now may rise or fall on political whim."

"The Republican-led House voted to reinstate a procedural rule devised in 1876 that allows Congress to retrench agency spending by singling out a government employee through amendments to appropriations bills. Prior to adoption of the Holman Rule, named for the Indiana congressman who devised it as a hedge against the political patronage that then dominated government programs, an agency’s budget could be broadly cut but specific employees or programs couldn’t be targeted. Now it can be open season."

A Little Light

Defining the Darkness.12

Washington Post:

"Russia carried out a comprehensive cyber campaign to sabotage the U.S. presidential election, an operation that was ordered by Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and ultimately sought to help elect Donald Trump, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a remarkably blunt assessment released Friday.

The report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that Moscow’s role represented “a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort” beyond previous election-related espionage."

"In the report, the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded with “high confidence” that Russian intelligence services penetrated numerous computer systems tied to U.S. political parties and then “relayed” the email troves to WikiLeaks."

"Overall, the report describes a multipronged campaign that involved not only hacking, but overt propaganda on Russian-controlled news platforms and the extensive use of social media and even “trolls” to amplify voter discord in the United States and encourage opposition to Clinton."

Bloomberg:

"Even as intelligences officials looked back in their reports on the election, they also made a troublesome prediction: Russia isn't done intruding in U.S. politics and policymaking.

Immediately after the Nov. 8 election, Russia began a "spear-phishing" campaign to try to trick people into revealing their email passwords, targeting U.S. government employees and think tanks that specialize in national security, defense and foreign policy, the report said."

"Russia also used state-funded propaganda and paid "trolls" to make nasty comments on social media services, the report said. Moreover, intelligence officials believe that Moscow will apply lessons learned from its activities in the election to put its thumbprint on future elections in the United States and allied nations."

Defining the Darkness.11

The Washington Post:

"For weeks now, nightmares have been jolting Olga Perez Stable Cox awake several hours before sunrise. Sometimes she’s able to fall back asleep, but more often she finds herself lying in the dark, body tossing and thoughts racing, until she’s reduced to tears.

For as long as she has taught, Cox, a professor at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Calif., has prided herself on speaking freely. Then a clip of her calling Donald Trump’s election “an act of terrorism” went viral earlier this month, unleashing a wave of violent threats that forced her to end her semester early and flee her home in suburban Orange County.

Now she’s back home, but her life hasn’t returned to normal.

“Now, at 66, I’m paranoid,” Cox said. “It doesn’t feel good at all to be looking over my shoulder and wondering when an unfamiliar car pulls up across the street whether they’re going to take a picture of me or something worse — but that’s my life now. I feel like I’ve been attacked by a mob of people all across the country,” she added. “If they’re telling me over and over again that they want to shoot me in the face, how am I supposed to know if they’re going to do it or not?”

The mob Cox refers to doesn’t wield pitchforks and torches but hate-filled tweets, violent emails and threatening Facebook messages and phone calls. They are a virtual force with limited numbers but a seemingly unlimited supply of hate that has proved just as frightening for the longtime academic.

The harassment crested when Cox received an email from a man named Tim White that showed her home address, phone number and salary and threatened to spread the information “everywhere.” The email referred to Cox as a “libtard, Marxist, hatemonger, nutcase.” It was then, Cox said, that she could no longer stand to be in her home and decided to flee.

The professor turned her final week of class this semester over to a substitute, but Cox said her ordeal continued after the controversial video appeared on the O’Reilly Factor. The host referred to her statements as “gibberish” and “slander” and labeled the professor part of 'the totalitarian left.'”

Dark Age Ahead.2 Family and Community

Continuing discussion of Dark Ages Ahead (2004)by Jane Jacobs.  First part is here.

In warning of the dangers of a Dark Age ahead, Jane Jacobs singles out "five pillars of our culture that we depend upon to stand firm, and discuss what seem to me ominous signs of decay."

Her five pillars are community and family, higher education, "the effective practice of science and science-based technology," taxes and government, and "self-policing by the learned professions."

She immediately recognizes that these are not the most obvious, which would include "racism, profligate environmental destruction, crime, voter distrust of politicians and thus low turnouts for elections, and the enlarging gap between rich and poor along with attrition of the middle class."

She feels these second five have been recognized, and also sees them as results of the first five.  Elsewhere she notes that while her choice of five may not be the biggest threats leading to a Dark Age, they are the stabilizing pillars of the culture that we depend on to make corrections in our cultural course---so if we're on the way to catastrophe, these in a healthy state would help us change direction.

 But if they are weak, we are less able to change culturally to confront such challenges as racism and environmental degradation, and so we're left helplessly watching ourselves head into the Dark Age, knowing what the problems are, but unable to address them.

At the end of the book, Jacobs makes practical suggestions to reverse some of the deterioration in these five pillars.  In interviews about this book she insisted she is basically an optimist, and that despite the title, this is an optimistic book.

First pillar (chapter 2) Families Rigged to Fail

Jacobs makes a distinction between the family as a biological unit (whether nuclear or extended family) and the household, which is an economic unit.  A household can include renters and boarders, or be non-families altogether--from monasteries to armies.

She discusses some of the threats to the nuclear family that are well known, but one of her particular virtues is how she uses statistics.  She finds averages nearly useless, as the so-called divorce rate at 50%, which is made up of averaging very long marriages with very short ones.  But she acknowledges that there are higher proportions of divorce across all income classes, and postponements of marriage and having children, which contribute to lower birth rates.

But her major emphasis is economic.  For 40 years starting in the 1930s, the median income (meaning half made more, half made less) of a family was sufficient to buy a median-priced home or rent a median-priced apartment.  That changed in the 1970s, and by the 1980s, 90% of America families could not afford a median-priced house.  Rents also took up larger proportion of income.

This led to an epidemic of homelessness, and a middle class dependent on low inflation and the paper wealth of mortgages on their homes.  Families depended on at least two incomes to support a household, but it was a losing fight, for expenses increased--especially the need for a automobile or two.

In addition: "Two parents, to say nothing of one, cannot possibly satisfy the needs of a family-household.  A community is needed as well, for raising children, and also to keep adults reasonably sane and cheerful."

Here we're on traditional Jane Jacobs ground, as she describes all the resources a family needs, including those usually provided through government (roads, parks, public health, schools, libraries, emergency services) as well as non-profits and commercial establishments.

Then there are "thoroughly informal, thoroughly intangible, and probably the most important [resources]: speaking relationships among neighbors and acquaintances in addition to friends."

She describes why these are important, and how they function.  But these relationships are less likely in car-dominated suburbia, which also tends not to have a diversity of residents.  She notes how highways obliterated city neighborhoods and how, without mentioning her own substantial role, that kind of city planning was defeated in New York, saving the now fashionable neighborhood of SoHo.

She also describes in some detail how the triumph of the automobile was hardly market-based, it was the work of General Motors in stripping American cities of public transportation, especially the more efficient trolley systems.  (I did a detailed article on trolleys and light rail including the history, and while Jacobs' stats are damning, the history is a little more complicated.)

Some people would find this nostalgia or a quaint memory, but she insists on trolleys as "quieter, faster, more comfortable and more durable and economic" as well as less likely to destroy neighborhoods, and reminds us that when China capriciously jettisoned its ships, people soon forgot them.

Other factors could be added to those Jacobs outlines to contribute to loss of community, but an important concept here is that it is indeed a loss, and not a theoretical one.  For her, the mark of the Dark Ages is a societal forgetting--so that the memory of what was lost is also lost.  That includes specific knowledge (how to do things, how to fix things as well as facts and theories) and it includes what once had physical form, like communities and their landmarks.

Now with more migration and immigration, flexible and strong communities are needed more than ever.  She notes that these observations are fairly obvious, and that she will return to the problem of communities again.  But she warned:

"If the predicaments of North American families continue mounting and climb further up the income ladder, I have no idea what kinds of households will emerge to deal with needs that families are at a loss to fill.  My intuition tells me they will probably be coercive.  This is already true of the most swiftly multiplying and rapidly expanding type of American households at the turn of the millennium--prisons."    

Dark Age Ahead: Choosing Ignorance

Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) is rightly remembered for changing how influential people thought about and designed cities, particularly in North America, because of her original and persuasive writings and activism.

But in this culture people get a single label, which is probably one reason that her last book, Dark Age Ahead was praised and ignored when it was published in 2004.

Another reason is that such a subject (a coming Dark Age in America) is hard to think about: difficult because it is complicated, difficult because it requires shedding habitual categories and ways of thinking, and difficult because it is emotionally huge, and invites displacement and denial.  The mind just can't get itself around it, while the emotions blur the brain and suggest sweets instead.

But at this cultural moment, as we really need to be clear on what's going on and what it may portend, this relatively short book may help focus observations and analysis, getting us beyond the usual paths that so many are now taken in trying to explain what's happened, and more importantly, what to do about it.

There is some agreement that this is part of a trend--not the only one, but a powerful one--that has been building and consolidating over years and likely decades.

There is perhaps less agreement that, as I believe, this is not a mere political problem, let alone an accidental outcome.  Though electoral margins were slim and there's the counter-evidence of the popular vote--and clearly the culture is divided-- the failure of the political system (including media) was so total that it more than suggests a larger cause.

In retrospect, for example, we can see the political and economic causes for Hitler's rise in the 1930s.  Something like it was in the cards at the close of World War I and the harshness of the Versailles treaty.

But that doesn't really explain Hitler.  C.G. Jung, who was in neighboring (German-speaking) Switzerland throughout this period--from before World War I until well after World War II--felt strongly that there was a mass psychological component that transcended politics and economics.  It continued to obsess him for years after.  Judging from the monstrousness of what occurred, I am persuaded he's right.

Jacobs doesn't get into the psychological realm, which I believe is part of the story today, and I believe it is directly related to the prospect of the climate crisis.

But Jane Jacobs also looks beyond ordinary politics and economics, though she includes them in her synthesis.  I approach her book now, determined to go through it carefully.

I begin reading with one of my questions in mind: has any civilization, prosperous and powerful and with domestic tranquility relative to many times and places in the past, actually chosen ignorance and thereby self-destruction?

In the early pages of the book, Jacobs cites two strong cultures that did themselves in: Mesopotamia (much of what we call the Middle East) before the Christian era, and late medieval China.

"The difference between these failures and those of conquered aboriginal cultures is that the death or the stagnated moribundity of formerly unassailable and vigorous cultures is caused not by assault from outside but by assault from within, that is by internal rot in the form of fatal cultural turnings, not recognized as wrongful turnings while they occur or soon enough afterward to be correctable. Time during which corrections can be made runs out because of mass forgetfulness.”

The initial cause of decline in Mesopotamia was environmental degradation: they cut down their forests.  In China it was the result of a bad decision made by the head of an all-powerful--totalitarian-- central government, that turned the nation inward.

But at some point they made everything worse by choosing ignorance. “Cultural xenophobia is a frequent sequel to society’s decline from cultural vigor. Someone has aptly called self-imposed isolation a fortress mentality," Jacobs wrote.

The fortress mentality conjures up the inevitable image of walls.

Jacobs quotes historian of religion Karen Armstrong analyzing the Mesopotamian decline as continuing because of a shift "from faith in logos, reason, with its future-oriented spirit" to a "conservatism that looks backwards to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and a worldview."

At its height, medieval China had huge fleets of ships capable of exploring the world.  The decision to destroy the fleets eventually led to government officials destroying all the records, designs, navigational charts, maps and findings associated with the fleet and these voyages.  Centuries of knowledge were lost.  Ignorance was chosen.

Jacobs quotes a vice president of the War Ministry for China of the period as denying the fleet was ever large and impressive, or that the voyages brought back anything of value.

This reminded me of a talk I watched on YouTube by science fiction author and thinker Neal Stephenson who suggested that today's minority views could become predominate, so that in a matter of decades in America it would be generally believed that the Apollo moon landings never really happened.

(By the way, what might have happened had China continued to explore is explored in Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history novel Days of Rice and Salt.) 

Jacobs adds another interesting comment:

“A fortress or fundamentalist mentality not only shuts itself off from dynamic influences originating outside, but also, as a side effect, ceases influencing the outside world.”

Reading about what could be causing the onset of a Dark Age is not the most pleasant--it can't be called diverting.  So I'm enforcing my reading by committing to writing about Jacobs' book in this space for the next few weeks.

2017

People will be presented with things, and will find things to be happy about in this new year.  But for America, the West, the planet, it is unlikely to be happy.

We will count it as not as bad a year as it might have been if we are not in a shooting war by the end of it, or no nuclear weapon has been used in the next twelve months.  And if the world's nations stay the course on the Paris climate agreement.  But it will almost certainly be a year of catastrophe for which we have no precedent in this country, even if some of those catastrophes aren't evident or don't manifest within the next twelve months.

Our imaginations work by metaphor, analogy, story.  There are lots of people trying to fit what is about to begin on January 20 within recent history, political and otherwise.  Some say 1968 is an apt analogy, for instance.

But 1968 is not. There is nothing of a normal pattern about it, and there is no analogy.  There are no precedents in American history, or history of the past century, except in the sense that photos cut up from various sources are precedent for the collage made from these fragments.

I use the term Hitler Millennium to suggest the direction and extent of what I see coming.  That's as close as I can get, and it is extreme in order to suggest that we are entering a period of extremes (and not simply extreme rhetoric), and it is best to err on the side of anticipating worse consequences than actually occur, rather than try to normalize and excuse events and actions that are by their nature and historical context extreme.  There is precedent for that attempt to deny and normalize, at least, in Germany of the 1930s.

The world may go completely to hell this year, but it may take a little longer.  Still, the UK is in almost as bad a shape as the US, and Germany is teetering.  (All this at a time of great prosperity and wealth, with relatively healthy populations.  None of which is guaranteed to last.)

The US is likely to see regression that goes beyond reversing progress and changes made in the past 8 years, or 50 years, to the past 75 years and beyond.  There is no precedent for that.

Perhaps it is worthwhile to realize that this perfect storm is composed of elements that we've been well aware have existed for some time.  Covert racism has been festering for decades, probably since it became culturally suspect to be overt. And while some see this as the revolt of an undervalued working class, it bears much more the hallmarks of the continuing revolt of the very rich, in unholy alliance with the political scum of the earth.

Some may hark back well into the previous century, to the conspiracies of power expressed, for example, in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (which I have recently actually and finally completed reading.)  I've recently been re-reading Jim Harrison's 1998 novel The Road Home. One of its narrators, a 29 year old man and confessed nomad whose study and solace is the natural world, nevertheless makes these comments:

"...part of the Republican trance that required of the poor only that they behave and keep out of the way of the money-making possibilities.  The whole country had apparently become comfortable with the greed frenzy of its top one percent."

This is 1998, with the "one percent" rhetoric of 2012.  And more to the point:

"The rich and the upper middle class were now seething with resentment over protecting their position and were demanding an enforceable mono-ethic which was gradually turning the country into a fascist Disneyland."

I wouldn't lay that at the feet of Walt Disney, a better and more complex visionary than many credit him, but what the term "Disneyland" suggests is clear enough in this context.  And now there's no more "gradually" about it.  We're about to get a fascist reality show.  Produced chiefly by fossil fuel wealth.

People are frightened--especially people of color, Muslims, women, people whose health depends on Obamacare.   The effect on the planet I'll leave for another time, but the short version is that whatever chance civilization had to survive the climate crisis relatively intact may well be gone as a result of what begins on January 20.

 We'll see if large numbers, or even a few, actually employ the tools of resistance being talked about, and if they have any effect, and what people will do if these efforts don't immediately change things.  It's a long game, with lots of unknowns.   It seems more than possible that 12 months from now--or 24 or 36--people won't recognize what things were like, what they themselves were like, on this New Year's day of 2017.

The apocalypse as a time of revelation is embedded in the word.  We will learn much about ourselves, individually and collectively. The stakes are highest for the young, and there are jobs to be done, jobs of hope enacted in the present.  There are lives to be lived, for however long they last.  As a wise old friend wrote to me recently, "My life has taught me that resistance starts with endurance."

As for this blog, it will be around for the rest of the Obama presidency.  By that time, maybe something else.  But my resolution not to dwell on political commentary doesn't mean I won't have anything to say.    

An Italian Connection

Among the many vicious and racist expressions liberated by election results--some unparalleled in my memory which goes back to the open racism of the 1950s--there are the prominent remarks of one Carl Paladino, often described as a highly placed Trump ally.

I won't repeat the remarks, though I will repeat that while such language about African Americans has obviously lived through private exchanges, not even in the 1950s would a public figure make them public.  (Paladino denies he meant to make them public, though he's made similar denials in the past.  His defense apparently is that he's a bumbling racist.)

I mention them because by name and appearance, Paladino seems to be of Italian extraction.  I've noted with great sadness the Italian names that prominently appear in the ranks of reactionaries, xenophobes and racists.

 I've also noticed that as generations of Italian Americans have become "Americanized" and prosperous, they have lost touch with their roots and their ties to their immigrant ancestors.  I saw this in western Pennsylvania but it is probably true elsewhere.  The move to the suburbs seems to more than symbolize it.

I grew up in the 1950s, when Italian Americans were major players in American culture, from Sinatra to DiMaggio.  There were Italian language hit songs on the radio.  Later generations had only the Godfather films, brilliant in themselves but unfortunate in their effects at creating dubious and mostly inaccurate stereotypes.

There were waves of Italian immigration from the late 19th century to just after World War II, but the bulk came in the first two decades of the 20th century--and together with the immigrants from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe (at first solicited by American companies for labor in coal mines)--led to restrictions and quotas on immigration from those countries in 1921.

My maternal grandfather arrived from Italy just before these first restrictions went into effect, and my grandmother and mother got in later because they were family members.  The quotas from certain countries were further reduced in the National Origins Act of 1924, which a New York Times book reviewer earlier this year called it "the most restrictive immigration law in our history" meant to "protect the country from foreign contamination."

But "foreign" meant something more specific. It meant virtually all Asians, for one thing.  But it also meant Italians, already here in large numbers.  This review also quotes the august Saturday Evening Post from the 1920s:  “If America doesn’t keep out the queer, alien, mongrelized people of Southern and Eastern Europe, her crop of citizens will eventually be dwarfed and mongrelized in turn.” 

That prominently meant Italians, who at the time were not considered "white."  It also meant Poles, another chunk of my known heritage and the source of my last name.  When I was growing up and started having lofty ambitions, I could not help but notice that names like mine (or my mother's) weren't reflected in lists of American writers or presidential candidates.  And if I didn't notice it, others were helpful in pointing it out, even meaning it kindly.

The impact of immigration is complicated on every level.  There is a certain cultural sentimentality that twists reason, along with understandable reaction to nearby change.  On the other hand, racism is racism.

We can attribute the Paladinos of today's America to a combination of a lack of empathy and historical awareness as well as residual tribalism and personal stupidity, in which the culture of greed overcomes any other.  But there's likely also a specific sort of projection, a shadow of shame in the cultural disdain and stereotypes that still follow our ancestral groups.

Defining the Darkness.10

“She has opted for a world in which she has done nothing wrong, and that she need answer only to God. This is a not very rare version of God in America which is often viewed as a godless place, ergo, the most ordinary behavioral ethic may be ignored by Christians. It is a version of religion quite similar to Senator McCarthy’s version of Americanism where all honor and civility can be righteously ignored.”

Jim Harrison
The Road Home

In California, Resistance is Official

It's not just activists and entrepreneurs, and even not just California Governor Brown.  Elsewhere the Resistance to the coming Nazi Millennium is official, according to the LA Times.

The story notes CA reps to the federal government like Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein and incoming Senator Kamala Harris.  But also various state officials, like incoming state A-G Xavier Becerra, Sec of State Alex Padilla and top members of the state legislatures: Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

There's state legislation already in the works "which would stymie construction of a wall along the California-Mexico border and SB 31, which would prohibit the state from sharing information to a federally compiled registry of Muslims in the United States..."

Among non-officials and including non-Californians, talking up resistance are scientists who attended the recent American Geophysical Union convention in San Francisco where they heard Governor Jerry Brown's fiery speech, among others.  The Washington Post reported on their first street demonstration, and the determination of individual scientists and groups to defend science, especially climate science, against the Dark Agers of the Nazi Millennium.

The scientists confess they have no experience at political warfare.  Politicians on the other hand do--the question is will they have the stomach for it, beyond popular post-election bravado.  It's not very risky in California at the moment, but there's always the Bush-Cheney technique of getting us into a war or two and making support for the reich a test of patriotism.

Are they ready? Nobody seemed to remember the 2000 election, so why would they remember Iraqnam in 2003?  All these nifty Internet tools are useless when everything surprises you.

Syria

At his Friday press conference, President Obama talked about his administration's policies in Syria.  It was a serious look at a serious process, and is worth isolating in detail.

He brought up the subject in his opening statement.

"Around the world, as well, there are hotspots where disputes have been intractable, conflicts have flared up, and people -- innocent people are suffering as a result. And nowhere is this more terribly true than in the city of Aleppo. For years, we’ve worked to stop the civil war in Syria and alleviate human suffering. It has been one of the hardest issues that I've faced as President.

The world, as we speak, is united in horror at the savage assault by the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies on the city of Aleppo. We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging, and starving innocent civilians. We've seen relentless targeting of humanitarian workers and medical personnel; entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble and dust. There are continuing reports of civilians being executed. These are all horrific violations of international law. Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone -- with the Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran. And this blood and these atrocities are on their hands.

We all know what needs to happen. There needs to be an impartial international observer force in Aleppo that can help coordinate an orderly evacuation through safe corridors. There has to be full access for humanitarian aid, even as the United States continues to be the world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. And, beyond that, there needs to be a broader ceasefire that can serve as the basis for a political rather than a military solution.

That’s what the United States is going to continue to push for, both with our partners and through multilateral institutions like the U.N.

Regretfully, but unsurprisingly, Russia has repeatedly blocked the Security Council from taking action on these issues. So we’re going to keep pressing the Security Council to help improve the delivery of humanitarian aid to those who are in such desperate need, and to ensure accountability, including continuing to monitor any potential use of chemical weapons in Syria. And we’re going to work in the U.N. General Assembly as well, both on accountability and to advance a political settlement. Because it should be clear that although you may achieve tactical victories, over the long term the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy.

That’s why we'll continue to press for a transition to a more representative government. And that’s why the world must not avert our eyes to the terrible events that are unfolding. The Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. The world should not be fooled. And the world will not forget."

Asked he felt some moral responsibility for the carnage occurring in Aleppo and Syria generally, he said:  "Mike, I always feel responsible. I felt responsible when kids were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions of people had been displaced. I feel responsible for murder and slaughter that’s taken place in South Sudan that’s not being reported on partly because there’s not as much social media being generated from there.

There are places around the world where horrible things are happening, and because of my office, because I’m President of the United States, I feel responsible. I ask myself every single day, is there something I could do that would save lives and make a difference and spare some child who doesn’t deserve to suffer."

But for those who make quick analysis or come up with easy answers, he talked about how seriously these questions are asked, with some idea of process and detail.

"So with respect to Syria, what I have consistently done is taken the best course that I can to try to end the civil war while having also to take into account the long-term national security interests of the United States.

And throughout this process, based on hours of meetings, if you tallied it up, days or weeks of meetings where we went through every option in painful detail, with maps, and we had our military, and we had our aid agencies, and we had our diplomatic teams, and sometimes we’d bring in outsiders who were critics of ours -- 

whenever we went through it, the challenge was that, short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from Congress, at a time when we still had troops in Afghanistan and we still had troops in Iraq, and we had just gone through over a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars, and when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to necessarily govern a country, 

and you had a military superpower in Russia prepared to do whatever it took to keeps its client-state involved, and you had a regional military power in Iran that saw their own vital strategic interests at stake and were willing to send in as many of their people or proxies to support the regime -- that in that circumstance, unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have problems, and that everything else was tempting because we wanted to do something and it sounded like the right thing to do, but it was going to be impossible to do this on the cheap."

Later he concluded: "I cannot claim that we’ve been successful. And so that’s something that, as is true with a lot of issues and problems around the world, I have to go to bed with every night. But I continue to believe that it was the right approach, given what realistically we could get done absent a decision, as I said, to go in a much more significant way. And that, I think, would not have been sustainable or good for the American people because we had a whole host of other obligations that we also had to meet, wars we had already started and that were not yet finished."

He noted that the so-called "safe zones" in Syria are impossible unless they are heavily defended if Russia and Iran don't agree to them.  But that a temporary safe zone, perhaps in Turkey, may be possible in the near future for refugees from Aleppo.

I think this is likely to happen after he leaves office, as Russia's sop to the Nazi Millennium government, and once announced with great fanfare, it will fade away when media attention turns elsewhere.

Meanwhile, this is the Republican's ally, fomenting warfare and testing out their weapons systems in Syria: Russia.  Dark Age Ahead.

Fighting Words From the President of California

California Governor Jerry Brown made a hell of a speech Wednesday, as reported in the Sacramento Bee: 

"Gov. Jerry Brown, rallying a room of scientists Wednesday with his most heated rhetoric yet on the topic, suggested California would defy the federal government should President-elect Donald Trump impede the state’s efforts to thwart climate change.

“We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend,” he said to boisterous applause at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco.

Brown struck a more forceful tone than he has since the election, suggesting the energy and enthusiasm in the room for him would be needed in the “battles ahead.”...

At one point, Brown warned against proposed budget cuts under the new presidential administration that could effectively eliminate earth-observing satellite programs.

He reminded the scientists that he earned his nickname, Governor Moonbeam, in his first governorship for proposing that the state launch its own communications satellite, and even had an ex-astronaut on his payroll as a space adviser. “I didn’t get that moniker for nothing,” Brown said.

“And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” he added. “We’re going to collect that data.”...

Later, he jabbed at former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who before becoming Trump’s pick for Energy Department secretary tried to poach jobs from California. “Rick, I got some news for you,” Brown said. “California is growing a hell of a lot faster than Texas. And we’ve got more sun than you have oil.”...

“A lot of people say, ‘What the hell are you doing, Brown? You’re not a country,’ ” the governor said, to laughter.

“Well, judged by measures of gross domestic product of over $2.2 trillion, we’re the fifth or sixth economy in the world. And we’ve got a lot of firepower ... And we will persevere. Have no doubt about that.”

“We will set the stage. We’ll set the example,” Brown added. “And whatever Washington thinks they are doing, California is the future.”

The Resistance is Forming...It Says

While the Nazi Millennium government prepares to take over in Washington, something that is actually calling itself The Resistance is also forming, centered in San Francisco--at least according to this article in the SF Chronicle.

"Californians ...are quickly forming the hub of what’s being called the Resistance.

While the term has been embraced by larger liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org, the intellectual headquarters of this surge in grassroots activism is the progressive Bay Area, where newly arriving techies, longtime activists and wealthy investors, among others, are plotting how to push back" on the Nazi Millennium agenda.

It's a good sign but what it may amount to remains to be seen.  It seems to be largely involved in branding and fundraising so far--which is also what I see in my inbox from established outfits, a lot of fundraising.

It's going to take more than that.  It's going to take resolve and courage and it's going to involve risk.  But it is the future of these generations and their children that's at stake, and it is up to them to do something about it.

So, duly noted.  I am monitoring.

Defining the Darkness.9: Orwell Gets An Update

Every January, futurist and sf author Bruce Sterling does his "State of the World" posts at The Well.  There's nothing else like them.  I expect the next one to be epic, but there are a few themes from the last one--in 1/2016--that seem of particular relevance now.

Among them are his comments on oligarchy and authoritarianism.  He mentions that:

"As for corporate dominance, it's quite old-fashioned. What actually
dominates now is stockholder value and a few ultra-rich individuals;
finance defeated corporate power many years ago. We have oligarch
dominance, not corporate dominance. Otherwise, Donald Trump would
be insulting and trolling corporations instead of individuals. The
Koch Brothers wouldn't be hated, feared and respected, we'd hate
their front corporations instead. People don't do that now.
Mistaking the Koch Bros for one of their corporate fronts would be
naive and corny."

I note this in connection with the upcoming US administration.  Not only are these cabinet secretaries against what their agencies administrate (anti-labor Labor secretary, anti-environmental EPA, etc.) but a conspicuous number are billionaires, with zero experience in government.  It is not only an oligarchical government--it is run by literal oligarchs.

The authoritarian tendency of the Republican candidate was no secret.  Here's what Sterling had to say about prominent authoritarian governments and economies elsewhere:

"In Russia and China in 2016, digital media is an arm of
the state. Internet has zero revolutionary potential within those
societies, but all kinds of potential for exported cyberwar. The
Chinese police spy and firewall model, much scoffed at in the 1990s,
is now the dominant paradigm. The Chinese have prospered with their
authoritarian approach, while those who bought into borderless
friction-free data have been immiserated by the ultra-rich."

It will be interesting to see how "exported cyberwar" applies to what Russia did in this American election (apparently a matter of controversy in Washington.)  But the larger point is the drift of oligarchy to authoritarianism, and how well it works economically--for the oligarchs.  This has implications for the economic well-being of Americans (including and perhaps especially those hapless stooges who voted Republican) and for freedom--for effective dissent, or freedom in any and all traditional senses in America.  Orwell gets an update.

Defining the Darkness.8

When the real news is almost as fantastic as the fake news,and the fake news is about to take over the government...What follows is all from the Daily Beast article linked at the end...

"The real-life consequences of a made-up conspiracy theory swirling around a popular D.C. pizzeria became all too real when a gunman walked into the venue Sunday afternoon.

During the presidential campaign, some elements of the alt-right began fueling the conspiracy that Comet Ping Pong was in fact the site of a pedophilia ring used by high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, deeming that supposed conspiracy “Pizzagate.”

The D.C. Police Department arrested 28-year-old Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, outside the kid-friendly pizza and music venue. Witnesses say that Welch went through the restaurant carrying the gun and tried to enter a staff area in the back of the building. He reportedly fired multiple shots inside, though no one was injured. He reportedly told the police that he’d come to “self-investigate ‘Pizza Gate,” which the department noted is “a fictitious online conspiracy theory.”


The conspiracy is untrue and easily disprovable. For example, the sex ring is supposed to be run out of the restaurant’s basement, but the owner told the BBC, “We don’t even have a basement.”

The fake news became so prominent that even retired Gen. Michael Flynn, whom Donald Trump has chosen to be his national security adviser, shared the story on his Twitter account.

 Follow

General Flynn 

✔@GenFlynn

U decide - NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc...MUST READ!http://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/ …

7:18 PM - 2 Nov 2016

---The Daily Beast

Brief Shining Moment at Standing Rock

This is another story previously followed here.  A good moment, for however long it lasts...

The Washington Post:

"The Army said Sunday that it will not approve an easement necessary to permit the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota, marking a monumental victory for the Native American tribes and thousands of others who have flocked in recent months to protest the oil pipeline.

“I’m happy as heck,” said Everett Iron Eyes, a retired director of natural resources for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and one of the organizers of a camp protesters set up near the pipeline site. “All our prayers have been answered.”


The victory for the Standing Rock Sioux and its allies could be short-lived, though. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to support pipelines such as this one. And Kelcy Warren, the chief executive of the pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, has been a major contributor to the Republican Party and Trump’s campaign.

Trump, who owned a $500,000 and $1 million stake in Energy Transfer Partners, has sold the shares, his spokeswoman Hope Hicks said. His most recent disclosure says he still owns a similar size stake in Phillips 66, which owns 25 percent of the Dakota Access line."

Defining the Darkness.7

No source for this thought on terrorism.  But it was said during the campaign that terrorist groups like ISIL would be ecstatic to see Trump win.  His xenophobic and specifically anti-Islamic rhetoric and possible actions are exactly the recruiting image of America these groups sell.

Perhaps they'll let the new administration show its cards first.  But eventually--and maybe sooner rather than later-- I expect maximum effort to pull off a major terrorist attack on a US target.

This will drive Trump to either fulminations of frustration but little more than Twitter rage, or (I'm sure they are hoping) a rash act, possibly involving nuclear weapons, and/or committing the US to extended and large-scale warfare.

It may be that the Obama administration has destroyed enough of the ISIL leadership and structure to make this much less likely.  ISIL etc. may be limited for awhile to taking credit for individual acts.  But their recruiting is likely to become more successful.  Active terrorism and whatever that provokes seems likely to be part of the darkness ahead.