The Perspective of Amnesia

 Back before our main viewscreen went flat with all- digital streaming, we connected our boob tube to cable and a VCR. In those days—way back, 10 years ago and more-- the VCR/television interface was about the last technology I understood, and so in my personal viewing area/den/library/mancave (a word that did not yet exist), I hooked up two VCRs and a TV so I could tape from the TV and from another VCR. 

 I taped movies and plays, series TV and a lot of PBS, even some C-Span, plus music performances, poets reading, lots of talk show and other interviews, and so on. I had thematic tapes (50s s/f movies, Truffaut films, Obama speeches etc.) and a few tapes of short clips I wanted to preserve for one reason (or one project) or another.

 I can’t tape anything anymore from that old cable-cut TV but I can still play those tapes on one of the still working VCRs that connects to it. Recently I thought I’d revisit one of those clips tapes to accompany bedtime snacks—short pieces that wouldn’t keep me up too long.

 It didn’t work.  That is, the tape worked.  But not the sleeping part.

 The tape I found had clips from late 2002 to probably 2010. It had pieces of the kind I was seeking—with Julie Taymor on performance, RSC’s John Barton on Shakespeare, novelist Isabel Allende, film director Gregory Nava, John Cage, visionary architect William McDonough, etc.

 But there was more. There was Harper’s editor and writer Lewis Lapham, author Mark Hertsgaard, and that artist of reviewers John Leonard, all talking to Bill Moyers; and reporter/author Chris Hedges talking to Michael Moore.

 Lapham and Moyers discussed the 2002 elections, the first congressional election after the selection of George W. Bush for President.

 Remember him? For a long time Bush dominated our political frustrations and horror. He brought us wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the return of torture, the Katrina debacle and so much more. He was the iconic combination of arrogance, incompetence and evil.

 An icon no longer, though. Nobody mentions G.W. Bush anymore, except as this benign and nostalgic figure who paints pictures and jokes around with Michelle Obama at state funerals. Perhaps we’ve mostly forgotten how maddening and painful his presidency was because we had to.

 But then came Trump-- it was like taping over a terrible movie in our memory with an even worse one. Our Bush years amnesia may have been necessary for our mental health and ability to go on. (And after all, they ended with millions on the Washington mall to witness the improbable inauguration of the best President in a generation or more.)

 But this Lapham interview, and others on this tape that followed, preserved the moment, at this point less than two years into that slough of despond. And it’s clear that so much of what we’ve suffered for the past four years was a louder repetition or continuation or extension of what was happening then.

 In 2002, Republicans defied precedent to win both houses of Congress. “The oligarchy won,” Lapham said. The winners “represent the frightened rich.” For them, “democracy has served its purpose and run its course. We will now protect ourselves.” Partly by being and becoming so much richer than most Americans.

 Lapham observed that Republicans “believe in their reactionary ideology with religious passion.” In his commentary, Moyers noted that moderate Republicans of past decades were gone—they were now “united behind a right wing agenda.” 

 “If you like the Supreme Court that put George Bush in the White House,” Moyers continued, “ you will swoon with what’s coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the rapture.” It’s a heady mixture of “piety, profits and military might, all joined at the hip with ideology and money. Lots of money.”

Later in the tape, Mark Hertsgaard discussed his first two books reporting on environmental degradation around the world, especially the climate crisis, and how the world views the US. In explaining how world leaders were disappointed with Bush, he reminds me that before Trump dumped the Paris Agreement, Bush took the US out of the Kyoto Treaty, its climate crisis predecessor. Before Trump sanctioned the International Criminal Court, Bush refused to join it. Before Trump blew up the Iran nuclear agreement and other arms control pacts, Bush left an anti-ballistic missile treaty. In general, Hertsgaard said, Bush alienated the world with American arrogance.

 Lapham and Hertsgaard both talked about the US sponsorship of commodifying everything, while Julie Taymor spoke of the dangers of commercializing art. These complaints sound quaint—not because they weren’t true, and aren’t even more true now, but because no one bothers to complain about them anymore, it’s all just accepted.

 In a clip from a few years later, John Leonard mentioned how good Republicans were getting at “gang tactics” (quoting a noted Republican conservative.) “If everything becomes partisan,” he said, “it’s a “bloodthirsty crusade” akin to the French Revolution.  All hail Mitch McConnell.

 Leonard added his laments about the deadening effect even on the language of a thoroughly commodified society. “It’s sell, sell, sell’ buy, buy, buy, that’s it...Gone are scruple, gravity or grace.”

 Moyers quoted from Leonard’s book, about how celebrity shifts shape “to reflect whatever society at any given time has been taught to value or to fear.” He asked Leonard what this society values as reflected in its celebrities.

 “We’re taught to value the Donald Trumps of the world,” Leonard said, “the money-makers. We define success...as money.”

 It’s always dismaying to hear the name you’re trying to escape by burrowing into the past. But it happens, because Trump has been around a long time, building this image firmly in the American psyche. It happened to me a few months before, when I was innocently watching an old episode of the classic 90s series that embodies innocence: “Northern Exposure.” Maurice justified evading taxes through a loophole by exclaiming, “I’ll bet Donald Trump doesn’t pay any taxes!”  So I guess when the New York Times confirmed a decade or so later, it wasn't much of a surprise.

 Lapham, Hertsggard, Leonard all mentioned the unholy alliance between the oligarchical elites and right wing zealots, as well as money worship and the dominance of celebrity. Can we wonder then where Trump came from in 2016? Where he took us is much farther down this path of destruction. But that Trump was so prefigured, that he distinguished himself mostly by managing to leapfrog G.W. Bush to become the worst President in modern American history, if not all time—makes this stuff we had to forget completely contemporary. 

 The tape stops with Michael Moore interviewing author Chris Hedges, probably about the time that his 2009 book came out, titled The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. This idea didn’t just echo those interviewees earlier in the decade. Books with themes like that weren’t new. There were plenty in the 80s (Amusing Ourselves to Death, for one) and 90s. Like those interviews, Hedges emphasized the role of elites in making money, wealth and celebrity the paramount values--while killing all other values. But it was hearing his forecast of the outcome in this present moment, that further rattled my perspective. 

 Michael Moore’s question was well put, though it wasn’t exactly the one Hedges answered. “I wondered for a long time if a society that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves, is ultimately a country that, if it doesn’t redeem itself for that behavior, just won’t last.”

 “I think it’s dying,” Hedges replied. “It’s composed of a giddy intoxication with illusion—that’s what happens when societies die. The worse it gets the more disconnected they often become. And that’s how you end up with demagogues, and tyrants who promise magic.”

 And that’s how we did. 

 Voted out of office, Trump continues to sell delusions for profit—and it’s pretty clear that’s mainly why he’s still doing it. He’s banking $150 million and counting, just in case, but as long as there is demand he will loudly supply. So far he’s left us with a smoldering government, and half a country that apparently believes these delusions so deeply that they can’t even believe in the reality of the virus that is killing them.

 So now I wonder: once Trump is gone from the White House, do we go into a well-earned defensive amnesia? Perfectly natural to let the brain and the heart heal. But it didn’t seem to work out so well last time.

Poetry Monday: The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

 The winds that will be howling at all hours,

 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

 For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

 It moves us not—Great God! I’d rather be

 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

 William Wordsworth

 1806

Transition

Jeremy Stahl’s headline in Monday’s Slate said it best: It Was a Good Day for Democracy. Pennsylvania judges not only threw the latest Trump case out of court but told them not to bother coming back. Then the minor functionary Republican holdout in Michigan was satisfied with his fifteen minutes and joined two Democrats to certify Michigan’s election. (One of the Rs wondered if they could just adjourn without deciding and learned this wasn’t an option.  Someone has to win, someone has to lose, not everybody gets a trophy, they were told.) 

Update: On Friday and Saturday, Trumpists lost two more baseless cases in PA, one in federal appeals court, the other in PA Supreme Court.  The PA Supreme Court decision was "with prejudice," which means the Trump strategy of getting it to the US Supreme Court probably won't work. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign paid (or promised to pay) Wisconsin $3 million for a partial recount, which result in a net gain of 132 votes--for Biden.

 Then the chief Trump operative of the GSA finally “ascertained” that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, officially beginning the transition. Apart from the certainty of state certifications, a rolling catastrophe of lost court cases, and a rising tide of demands to get on with it, she might have noticed that Biden currently leads by more than 6 million votes, a total of more than 80 million, even before New York state has fully reported. The current percentage is 51% to 47%, and will likely grow. His electoral vote lead hasn’t changed, remaining exactly the number Trump got in 2016. 

 Biden now gets funds and access to vital national security and covid crisis information, and the country and the world knows we indeed have a President-Elect. He’d been selecting and naming Cabinet and other high officials anyway—now he gets to do it using a website with .gov behind it. As for these first moves--mostly Obama-Biden veterans moving up a notch-- the professionals in the relevant departments are overjoyed at his choices, because they will be taken seriously again, as will actually governing. Apart from Barack, John Kerry is the perfect appointment for a Cabinet-level officer on the climate crisis. This as well as other appointments made or reported are playing well internationally also.

 To say the writing was on the wall doesn’t mean much when it’s Trump, who can’t read very well. But the wall was crumbling and starting to tumble down: when Republican Senators actually tell you it’s time to start the Transition, the situation is politically done.  Trump will commit more outrages to keep his picture in the paper for as long as he can, and there will probably be a few more bumps in the process, but maybe we can begin our mental and emotional transitions, too. 

 It’s a victory for democracy also because this caps an election that thousands of public servants worked hard to bring off better than anyone had the right to expect in the year of Covid and Trump, our twin plagues. Too bad there’s vaccines for only one of them, but getting the other out of the White House is worth celebrating, again. With several more opportunities ahead.

Now we just have to get through these horrific weeks of both plagues, especially Covid, as the economy falls apart and the suffering spreads.  This administration is making sure their evil lives after them as they subvert the economy, further confuse covid crisis response and prevent government from helping by starving the states and zoning out on the federal level.   It's like watching a badly written tragedy of the real.

Poetry Monday (and Thursday): Thanks

Thanks

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you

 we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings

 we are running out of the glass rooms

 with our mouths full of food to look at the sky

 and say thank you

 we are standing by the water thanking it

 smiling by the windows looking out

 in our directions

 back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging

 after funerals we are saying thank you

 after the news of the dead

 whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

 over telephones we are saying thank you

 in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators

 remembering wars and the police at the door

 and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

 in the banks we are saying thank you

 in the faces of the officials and the rich

 and of all who will never change

 we go on saying thank you thank you

 with the animals dying around us

 our lost feelings we are saying thank you

 with the forests falling faster than the minutes

 of our lives we are saying thank you

 with the words going out like cells of a brain

 with the cities growing over us

 we are saying thank you faster and faster

 with nobody listening we are saying thank you

 we are saying thank you and waving

 dark though it is

W.S. Merwin

Dreaming Up Daily Quote: Nov. 22, 2020

 

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them."

President John F. Kennedy

His November 1963 Thanksgiving Message.  He did not live to see that Thanksgiving.  He was shot and killed on November 22, 1963.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

" Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak when power to flattery bows?

 To plainness honor's bound when majesty falls to folly."

Shakespeare

 Kent in King Lear Act I Scene I

Winter Has Come

Winter is here: the coronavirus winter.  The much predicted and feared major surge is well underway, just about everywhere.  That includes here in Humboldt County, which has recorded more new cases in the first two weeks of this month than all of last month.  We have more than triple the number of active cases than we did just weeks ago.  Like most of CA counties, our restrictions have become more stringent again.  Elsewhere the impact is much worse, and because virus begets virus it will get worse still, as winter deepens across the country.

But the contours of the covid crisis may well have changed in recent days, with promising announcements of very effective vaccines, which may immunize for up to a few years.  The vaccines have not finished final trials nor been approved, and even if all goes well it will be months yet before any vaccine becomes widely available.  At best, expectations are that front line health workers could be getting their first immunization shots before the end of 2020 (both vaccines require two shots, about 3 weeks apart.)  But the rest of us likely won't get them until spring, perhaps March or April.

Tbere's additional good news Tuesday in the approval of an at-home covid test.  But I wouldn't count on that being available before the Biden administration, since the current government seems incapable of organized effort.

Here on the isolated North Coast, most of our covid infections come from people traveling into or out of Humboldt, attending large gatherings indoors there or here, and usually both.  Some of them infect others before they know they are infected.  In this we are a somewhat simpler microcosm.  There is so much virus around now in many places that simply gathering is enough to start a superspreader event.  As the covid crisis spirals out of control, more casual contact may be enough for infection.

How bad the winter becomes, and the level of devastation by spring, will partly depend on how many people behave, especially in the upcoming holidays.  The way this country faced the covid crisis in its first months was so hopeful, but that's long past now.  We'll see how many people can forgo Thanksgiving gatherings.  Much will depend on that.  

The news this winter--however it is subsumed by gaudier goings-on--will be of health care workers in crisis, hospitals in crisis, and many more covid dead.  I don't think anybody needs this blog to keep informed on these matters, though I will check in from time to time on the current state of things.  But it's safe to say it is a time of mourning.  There isn't much more that I can do.  I am in the high risk senior group.  Except for one visit to my doctor's office, I have not set foot in a building other than my home since March.  I expect to be here until next March.  So Thanksgiving will not be much of a question for me.

Others, especially seniors, will also be staying home.  It will be as if we are snowed in for the winter, more or less.  We will--and I will--be thinking of other things, doing other things, looking to engage with other things, such as the work of our age, which includes reintegrating the past, especially now that the urgency of the election is over and the results will play out (so far, much as I expected), outside our doors. 

So as I move on to other things here, I must first affirm that I am not otherwise ignoring the unfolding and largely tragic events around me, especially this deadly phase of the covid crisis.  It is going to be the worst so far, though perhaps also the worst period of the covid crisis altogether when it is finally over.   I will bear witness, even if I don't have much to say about it, just as there is little I can do about it except to stay out of its way, and avoid adding to the suffering. 

Our winter rains have begun, a hopeful if uncertain sign.  They complicate our lives--chiefly now our dog walks--but they nourish the spring.  The flowers, W.S. Merwin writes, are "forms of water"---

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning.

 

Poetry Monday: Days

 Days

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days,

 Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes,

 And marching single in an endless file,

 Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

 To each they offer gifts after his will,

 Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all.

 I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp,

 Forgot my morning wishes, hastily

 Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day

 Turned and departed silent. I, too late,

 Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Top photo: recent view through a window of the house in Concord, Massachusetts where Emerson spent his days.

Post-Election Post 2: Outcomes

Bye, Don: it is a major outcome. It is not easy to defeat an incumbent POTUS, especially one who leaves ethics and legalities behind to misuse the office for his own personal and political purposes.

 Joe Biden’s victory is impressive by many measures. His popular vote totals and margin (currently crossing 5 million votes and 50.8%) are historic. According to Ben Mathis-Lilley in Slate: “ Per current estimates, he will receive something like 51.3 percent of the national popular vote, 3 percentage points more than Hillary Clinton and a higher total than any candidate challenging an incumbent president since FDR got 57 percent against Herbert Hoover in 1932. That’s more than Ronald Reagan got (50.7 percent) in his 1980 win over Jimmy Carter, which is still (accurately!) heralded as a paradigm shift in American politics.. When you factor in how high turnout was, Biden will likely end up getting a higher share of all the votes that were theoretically available than Reagan did in his 1984 reelection landslide or Barack Obama did in 2008.” 

 Biden will be President partly because Kamela Harris will be Vice President, and that’s damn good history as well. And they did it in concert with voters who overcame Republican voter suppression, and if you’ve forgotten, some of it is detailed here.

Then there are all the other insidious creeps Trump takes with him. Slate ran a series of short essay goodbyes to his family members. Soon to be gone (at least for awhile) are the family androids: Jared, Ivanka and Melania. In addition, it’s goodbye to the Nazi lawyer Bill Barr and the fundie Nazi android White House flack Kaleigh whatshername.

 Farewell, Betsy De Vos!  Bye Bye Rudy ("a noun and a verb and 9-11") G!  Sayonara, Mike Pomepo—and if Dickens were here to turn this pompous hypocrite into a character, he wouldn’t need to change his name. And what joy to tell Louis De Joy his last federal paycheck is in the mail, after he used the US Postal Service to slow everyone's elses, delay and suppress votes while enriching his own company.

 Oil lobbyist in charge of the Interior David Bernhardt and coal industry minion Andrew Wheeler running EPA, Baby Scalia at Labor, the illegally serving heads of National Intelligence and Homeland Security, John Radcliffe and Chad Wolf, the White House idiots including Chief of Racism Stephen Miller and Chief Virus Enhancer Scott Atlas—don’t let the door smack you in the ass as you leave, no doubt after defecating on your desks. And others too numerous to mention—I can’t wait to forget their names forever.

 (As for exits, I’m still giving good odds that Trump will resign so Pence can pardon him, and he can avoid being around for Biden’s Inaugural. In any case, he’ll be out of the White House long before 1/20.)

 So all that is significant and to the good. President Biden will bring sanity, decorum, ethics and empathy to the White House, as well as non-blonde women and people of color. We’ll get photos of children hugging the President and some good White House concerts again.  And all that will be very welcome.

 But the Blue Tsunami, let alone a blue mini-wave, did not happen, and the consequences are profound. Democrats did not win the Senate majority, and though they could get crucial committee control by winning two run-off elections in Georgia, it’s a longshot.

 I don’t want to prejudge the Biden presidency, and I hope the more optimistic analysts like Politico’s John R. Harris are right.  But without the Senate it seems the Biden presidency can do little but undo some of the administrative damage and otherwise inch forward by executive order and diplomacy (which, given Biden’s knowledge of the federal government and the considerable expertise at his disposal, is not nothing.)

 But he is highly unlikely to get much legislation passed, especially because voters returned prime obstructionist Republican assholes to Congress like Lindsay Graham and Devin Nunes, and most especially because Kentucky voters returned Mitch McConnell to the Senate and therefore Senate leadership. For there is absolutely nothing the amoral McConnell will ever do that isn’t completely to the partisan political benefit of Republicans, especially in the Senate. He did his best to destroy the Obama presidency regardless of consequences to the country and its people, and he will do the same to Biden. His sententious hypocrisy is only a stylistic difference--he's a deadlier Trump. He probably has an even better chance of success against Biden, because Obama had his first two years with congressional majorities.  

While the Trump administration will do as much damage to the federal government as they can on their way out, McConnell will do what he considerably can to sink the economy further, sow chaos in the states and country, and prevent a contrasting single federal response to the covid crisis, regardless of the damage to American lives and civic structures, just so Joe Biden and the Democrats will look bad.

 Democrats theoretically could take the Senate in two years, though the results of this election don’t bode well for that. What they cannot do is undo the damage of failing to take back majorities in state legislatures this year, which is the year that they redistrict. That alone means 10 more long years with Republicans retaining their gerrymandered advantages and perhaps expanding them, to ensure that they hold more power than the raw number of votes they receive would justify, by a lot.

 Further, it is in state legislatures and in state governments that most of the targeted voter suppression efforts begin and take hold. So those structural barriers will also remain, and voting will not be fair, let alone easy, for the foreseeable future.

 Until Election Day, it was possible to see the 2016 Trump victory as a fluke, which voters would repudiate. But now it’s even worse. Because in the past four years, Trump remade the Republican party in his image, and that transformed R party did quite well across the country. So now the Rs have no reason other than their vaporized consciences to repudiate Trumpism, and plenty of reasons to embrace it because it worked for them.

Among its darker features is the liberation of racial and other prejudices, especially very old ones.  Right now Republicans pin their Georgia hopes on the resonance of the name Chuck Schumer in winning those Senate seats and preventing the New York Jew from becoming Majority Leader.  As well as the Blacks taking over Georgia.

 Political pros and media continue to wag their fingers at current fascistic tendencies to deny that votes for Democratic candidates could possibly be legitimate, warning that it will “damage the Republican brand” or do “ serious long-term harm” to the party. Nonsense. This election proved it will not. The R enablers of our relentless baby psychopath chief executive, our apprentice dictator, our Homegrown Hitler, didn’t pay a price for enabling him. They were rewarded. We can fully expect this to continue, as Republicans do everything in their considerable power to thwart Biden on every issue, no matter how many people suffer as a consequence.

 Trump leaves him with a government depleted of talent, experience and confidence, infiltrated by devious zealots with a taste for anarchy. He leaves behind a raging pandemic and deeply wounded economy because of his inaction, and by February 1 Republicans will be castigating Biden for ineffective leadership, for pandemic deaths and for a by then more obviously weak economy. And they will do everything that can to make sure there is no recovery from either, so they can keep the Senate and retake the House in two years, and retake the White House in four. And right now, I would not bet against them. Especially since Democrats are already at war with each other, engaged in ideological recriminations as a result of electoral failures.

 But even if the Biden administration works some minor miracles, as we devoutly wish that it will, the prospects of a longer term future were significantly dimmed by this election and what it revealed. What America needed was a new coalition sweeping into power, ushering in an administration as transformational as FDR’s New Deal. We needed it for the next four years and even more for the future ahead.

 It may be that the climate crisis is so far advanced that nothing will prevent the collapse of civilizations and the end of the web of life as we know it on this planet in the next century or two. But with an organized, concerted effort, and a galvanized country concentrating on solving common problems rather than fighting for stupid partisan advantage (though with plenty of room for dissent and alternatives), perhaps we had a chance. We need that kind of cohesion just to face the effects of the climate crisis we are feeling now and will feel more and more in greater scope and extremes. But it is clear we don’t have that now. 

 This election once again proves the enduring power of denial. Although exit polls may be as bullshit as polling in general was this year, they did indicate that presidential voters more often voted on economic issues than the pandemic. So Trump may have succeeded in talking down the pandemic, because that’s what people want to hear: it’s overblown, it’s a hoax, get back to normal.

 For the animal reaction to even a visible danger like the covid crisis is not only fight or flight. There is also the deer in the headlights. Humans consciously experience this sometimes as they witness something awful and feel, “this isn’t happening.” That might well be the animal seed of human denial.  The rest is a complex interaction of individual psychologies with reinforcement from culture and social groups to which humans desperately cling.

 If nothing else, the silence of the polls suggests that more and more, when a lot of people stare at a secret ballot, they go into a dark place. And we’re not even at the end of this logical chain of consequences. 

 The twisted and heavily leveraged interpretation of the Second Amendment that quickly resulted in AK-47s at political demonstrations (not to mention bars) has already blinded half the country to the tragedies as well as the implications of the massacres of children, Blacks and Jews. Now a prominent R politician in Florida advocates citizens be legally permitted to shoot to kill demonstrators and trespassers.

 How long will it be before the impulse of ordinary Americans to come to the aid of disaster victims begins to falter based on whether the disaster happens in a blue or red state? (Ask poor people and/or people of color about that.) 

 In any case, a little less than half of the country thinks the rest of it is evil, if not willing participants in kidnapping and eating children. And a little more than half thinks the rest of it is, one way or another, crazy. They share increasingly fewer facts, evaluations, assumptions, world views and even values. It’s a lot more than red or blue.

 So we can rejoice at the election of Biden-Harris and the changes that it brings. But we can also note, along with Tom Nichols in the Atlantic that “a large portion of the electorate chose the sociopath.”

 So we had a barely literate, incompetent sociopath on display for four years, completely without ethics or empathy, and transparently concerned only with himself. He presided over a non-response to a pandemic that has killed more Americans than any recent war plus acts of terrorism that so inflamed the country that it gave away some of its freedoms, and still stands in airport lines with belts and shoes in hand, or it would if flying didn't infect you.  He allowed the economy to sink into untold depths, persecuted brown immigrants and children, all of which is still causing immense suffering and will have lasting effects for at least a generation. He lacerated civic norms, robbed the federal treasury and his own followers, made a mockery of the law, and severely wounded the institutions of governance. He is an obvious con man and grifter, a convicted thief (if only in civil cases so far), a serial liar who makes absurd claims without even bothering to organize credible evidence, and a loudmouth lout.  He made the White House the tragic laughingstock of the world for four years.   He was the 21st century Richard III.  And he got 70 million votes. The party that supported him remains a powerful and destructive force.

 So what would it take? We had the most powerful and widespread wild fires in history, more hurricanes than the alphabet has letters,  and oppressive and killing weather caused by the climate crisis, plus a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and disrupting the economy and society for most people. This wasn’t enough? 

 We had a coalition of races, of the youngest and oldest voters, of women generally, with the unprecedented support of prominent Republicans of the recent past. This wasn’t enough? 

 We had a cartoon psychopath as president, who brought ruin, incompetence and corruption so obvious,  racist hate so stark and simplistic, and this wasn’t enough? To repudiate him completely, as well as all those moral cowards who followed and enabled him?

 Then what would be enough? 

 Maybe there’s time. Time for some other catastrophe to force recognition of the need to foresee before disaster, or even see a disaster for what it is. Time for demography to reshape the political landscape. Time for a new America. But maybe it’s not just my time to see it that’s running out.

Poetry Monday: Easy by nature

Easy by nature

 True goodness

 is like water. 

Water’s good

 for everything.

 It doesn’t compete.

 It goes right

 to the low loathsome places, 

and so finds the way. 

 For a house,

 the good thing is level ground.

 In thinking,

 depth is good. 

The good of giving is magnanimity;

 of speaking, honesty;

 of government, order.

 The good of work is skill,

 and of action, timing. 

 No competition,

 so no blame. 

 Ursula K. LeGuin’s version of No. 8, Tao Te Ching

Day of Joy

I expected relief, but Saturday turned out to be a day of joy. 

 When in late morning Eastern time, the networks and AP finally called Pennsylvania (throwing in Nevada shortly afterwards) and therefore affirming the presidency for Joe Biden, cheers rippled through the nation and spontaneous demonstrations began.

 Someone said she was approaching the Saturday farmer’s market when she heard cheers erupt ahead of her, and she knew exactly what they had to mean. And pretty soon there was dancing in the streets of Philadelphia. 

 Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, which had been the scene of police violence and angry demonstrations, became a happy party, all the way down to the gates of the White House. 

 And it happened all around the country, in cities and suburbs and towns. The cheering from individual buildings could be heard wafting into the air in New York City. (This Guardian video captured some of these moments.)

 “I had to explain to my kids just now that this is not the normal level of celebration after an election in America,” tweeted Preet Bharara. “It feels like Joe Biden also won the World Cup.”

 The joy extended beyond the shores. “In countries across the globe, people reported fireworks, cheering and the sound of church bells ringing after President-elect Joe Biden was named the winner of the 2020 presidential election,” wrote The Hill.

 There were also tears—of joy and something more. Here for example are the eloquent tears of Van Jones on CNN. 

The joy came from the people who made it happen. “Robert Mueller didn’t save us,” tweeted Jennifer Taub. “Impeachment didn’t save us. We saved ourselves. We voted. The people have spoken. Donald, you’re fired.”

" I am listening to honking horns, clattering pots, cheers, and joyful shouts," wrote journalist Eric Levitz. “My neighborhood – circumscribed along race and/or class lines in normal times, atomized into a collection of masked individuals in the COVD era – is sharing a collective experience of joy. Beneath the mutual suspicions, poisonous power imbalances, bigotries and species of self-absorption that color social life in this place, there is a low hum of shared values and solidarity, and today, Trump’s defeat made it loud enough to hear.”

" From the moment CNN made the official call onward, we finally got the catharsis that had been so sorely lacking on Tuesday night, and I think it felt just as good as it would have on November 3," concluded New York Magazine associate editor Benjamin Hart. “The celebrations in the streets of Brooklyn, where I live, and in cities across the country were reminders that unalloyed political joy is still possible.” 

 

Later in the evening darkness of Wilmington, celebration met drama when the Vice-President Elect strode onto the stage, in a symbolic white suit—the color of the Sufragettes. From that moment Kamala Harris and then President-Elect Joe Biden grew into their roles before our eyes, with confidence and clarity.

 “And when our very democracy was on the ballot in this election with the very soul of America at stake and the world watching, you ushered in a new day for America,” Kamala Harris said.” And you delivered a clear message. You chose hope and unity, decency, science, and yes, truth!”

 As the first woman and first woman of color to be elected Vice-President, she spoke to the girls watching, too young to remember President Obama. “Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities and to the children of our country regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: dream with ambition, lead with conviction and see yourselves in a way that others may not simply because they've never seen it before.”

Of her own role she pledged: “I will strive to be a vice president like Joe was to President Obama, loyal, honest, and prepared, waking up every day thinking of you and your family, because now is when the real work begins, the hard work, the necessary work, the good work, the essential work...” 

 

Then Joe Biden bounded onto the stage, jogging to the podium, and gave the most energetic, concentrated, powerful speech I’ve seen him make since the 2008 or 2012 Democratic Convention. Even with a few specific echoes of President Obama, it was all Biden.

 He remarked on this day of joy.  “And what I must admit has surprised me, tonight we're seeing all over this nation, all cities in all parts of the country, indeed across the world, an outpouring of joy, of hope of renewed faith in tomorrow, bring a better day. And I'm humbled by the trust and confidence you've placed in me.”

" The Bible tells us, “to everything there is a season: a time to build, a time to reap, and a time to sow and a time to heal.” This is the time to heal in America. “ A time to heal became the universal headline. 

Then Biden forecast his priorities. "Now this campaign is over, what is the will of the people? What is our mandate? I believe it's this: Americans have called upon us to marshal the forces of decency, the forces of fairness, to marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time. The battle to control the virus. The battle to build prosperity. The battle to secure your family's health care. The battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country. And the battle to save our planet by getting climate under control. The battle to restore decency, defend democracy, and give everybody in this country a fair shot. “

 And then, the fireworks over the parking lot.

 “Protecting our democracy takes struggle,” Kamala Harris had concluded. “It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it.” There was on Saturday.

      Pittsburgh South Side.  That white building was my bank when I lived on the South Side.

                                               Georgia

                                                            Miami

                                             Grand Lake, California

Post Election Post 1: Voting Heroes

                                                Counting votes in Georgia

So it’s taking a little longer, mostly because of the gun-shy network decision desks, but okay, instead of discussing the outcome, let’s consider the process.  

The process should be celebrated--though not the entire process. The most obviously broken part of how America does elections is polling. I’m sure the polling geeks will point out how they didn’t actually mess up big time, not really. But really, they did.

 Polling organizations, and media organizations that sponsor and prominently report polls, constitute one industry feeding off the election process. Another is the marketing and advertising industry that spends the money the campaigns raise from contributors. Those contributors got pretty much nothing for their money this year. The millions of dollars that the Democrats spent did nothing, and may have been counterproductive. It was excessive, especially during a pandemic when that money could have been contributed to organizations supporting public health. 

 Will campaign pros look at all this honestly? Can they afford to? Without the information from polls, without the go-to option of buying TV ad time etc., how are all these folks going to stay in business?

 Those are the broken parts of the process. The parts that came out of this shining, that minted heroes, were the people in Pennsylvania and Georgia, in North Carolina, Florida and Texas and across the country who worked themselves into a frazzle to get out the vote, to walk voters through the minefields that politicians created to keep them from voting.

 Vote suppression is not new to Georgia, but it was relentless, and they overcame it. Those people are heroes. And it looks like they’ll have to try to do it again but even bigger in the January run-offs, for the D’s to get the Senate. 

 In Florida and Texas and elsewhere, vote and voter suppression  were fought against but were factors again, though in the post-election period of recrimination and analysis, this will probably be forgotten. Except by the people who live there, who will fight back against it again next time.

 And then there are the people who counted the votes, especially in the most contested states where they were under enormous pressure. The election officials by and large kept their nerve, and the poll workers kept their heads in working long and exacting hours to mollify a restless electorate while making sure that ever vote was accurately counted. 

 And the voters, celebrated here in earlier posts, who came out in record numbers, masked up in long lines, to partake of this sacred American process. There was little violence or disruption, and voters often thwarted suppression efforts, though those efforts succeeded enough to affect the elections. 

 I heard that word “sacred” spoken about this election, not only by Joe Biden but notably by others, including network reporters, in connection with Homegrown Hitler’s White House whine that he really won except for everybody who voted against him, by definition fraudulently. He violated this sacred process of elections, the television reporters said.

 From the nuns in Catholic school I learned about two systems of the sacred: the Church and American democracy. Both had clear principles, moral foundations, systems of authority, checks and balances. By the middle of high school my misgivings about the Church were becoming a little less than silently ascendant, but my faith in American democracy grew stronger. The reason was simple: there were lines of authority and rules for all, including the basic rule that everyone could debate and dissent, and in the end, a lot was decided by votes.

 

By college my faith in the Church slipped away entirely, and though my faith in American democracy was taken beyond the breaking point in the Vietnam 1960s, and I endured more heartbreaking and mind-wrenching election nights (Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush) than nights that confirmed my confidence (Clinton, Obama), I never completely lost my faith in the process of debate and my awe for the process of voting. Yes, it was sacred. And human. And a prime definition of American.

 I also enjoyed the act of voting, the rituals of it, the secret ballot, inking in my choices and only my choices, seeing the ballot join the stream, while old ladies at tables smiled at me.   

In my hometown of Greensburg where I voted (and worked the polls for candidates) among people I sort of knew, and in Pittsburgh, where I saw familiar politicians canvassing from the required distance, and where I could buy a paper cup of coffee and a sweet roll from the bake sale after I voted. Things were more antiseptic in California, but still.. I was ecstatic to vote for Barack Obama four times (including two primaries) in a huge veteran’s hall that has to be one of the older buildings in Arcata. In a few elections before that I liked the idea of voting in a nearby public school. When we moved, we could vote there just by walking to the end of our street.

 Things were different this year of course. We all voted by mail, which works fine, here. Except for certain new wrinkles in voter suppression, the voting process was the most normal part of this election and these last four political years. 

 There are probably a dozen reasons why American democracy is so broken right now. But the signs are everywhere. In just the past week a federal judge ordered the head of the US Postal Service to take extraordinary measures to deliver completed ballots in time. He not only failed to do so. He out and out refused to comply. And upwards of 150,000 ballots didn’t make it. Even a few years ago, and certainly in my youth, that casual defiance would be unimaginable.

 It’s not a direct analogue but it is something else that has seemingly become normal but which is unprecedented in my lifetime: not just that the President of the United States makes dangerous and scurrilous charges from the White House podium, but that the major American networks immediately cut away from the scene, and prominent television reporters expressed in their words and manner utter contempt for him. This is also what we’ve come to. What much of this year’s voting expressed turned out to be doleful. And yet, even now, when the voting process is so wounded and defiled, I can’t help still seeing its beauty.

BYE DON

 

Biden-Harris have just taken the lead in Georgia, and will shortly go ahead in Pennsylvania.  While the Georgia lead is not definitive, once Biden takes the lead in PA, it is very unlikely he will relinquish it.  He is hours away from being President-Elect.  Though no doubt the drama will continue.

Poetry Monday (and Tuesday) Over the Carnage Rose...

OVER the carnage rose prophetic a voice,

 Be not dishearten'd, affection shall solve the problems of freedom

 yet, 

Those who love each other shall become invincible,

 They shall yet make Columbia victorious. 

 Sons of the Mother of All, you shall yet be victorious,

 You shall yet laugh to scorn the attacks of all the remainder of the earth.

 No danger shall balk Columbia's lovers,

 If need be a thousand shall sternly immolate themselves for one.

 One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade,

 From Maine and from hot Carolina, and another an Oregonese,

 shall be friends triune,

 More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth. 

 To Michigan, Florida perfumes shall tenderly come,

 Not the perfumes of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death.

 It shall be customary in the houses and streets to see manly affection, 

The most dauntless and rude shall touch face to face lightly,

 The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, 

The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

 These shall tie you and band you stronger than hoops of iron,

 I, ecstatic, O partners! O lands! with the love of lovers tie you.

 (Were you looking to be held together by lawyers?

 Or by an agreement on a paper? or by arms?

 Nay, nor the world, nor any living thing, will so cohere.) 

-- Walt Whitman

Determination Day

This year Election Day is a different beast. Rather than being the one day nearly everyone votes, it will instead be the last day that anyone votes. And above all, it will be the first day the votes are counted.

So if you have not voted, it's time to join in making history.  Vote.  Before it's too late.

Millions have voted already--perhaps 100 million before the polls even open on Tuesday. Most election experts believe that more than half the votes will have been cast by then. Early voting, both by mail (or drop box) and in person, has been phenomenal. In huge Texas, the early vote is as large as the total vote in 2016. That is likely to be true for a dozen states by Monday. The early vote in tiny Hawaii not only exceeds the total vote in 2016—it is higher than the total vote in any election in the state’s history, including 2008 and 2012 with native son Barack Obama on the presidential ballot.

 But Election Day itself is not therefore just an afterthought. Nor is it the day that only Republicans vote. There are plenty of Democrats and Independents, especially from core constituencies in key places, that have yet to mark their ballots. 

 

And if turnout is anywhere near proportional to early voting totals, we will see higher numbers of voters and a higher percentage of eligible Americans voting than anyone alive has ever seen.

 Nor will Election Day necessarily be the end of the process. In the ordinary course of how particular states count ballots and for how long, votes will be recorded for days and in some states weeks, by law. Unfortunately, the fears and omens gathering around Election Day may also persist: the relentless vote suppression efforts, the threat of armed militias and foreign cyber attacks on the system. Several reports suggest that Trump will continue misusing instruments of government to disrupt election results and the orderly transfer of power, and may refuse to concede any loss while claiming false victories. 

 But let’s stick with Election Day and Election Night, and what we can expect. While that subject will be debated every moment until then, there are a few things to be said, and to watch for.

 On Election Day, the most important factor to watch for is turnout, both generally and in specific places. Some may be tempted to see large turnout as favoring Republicans, because so many Democrats have voted. But that’s not necessarily so. In fact, Democrats will need large turnout in places like Miami Dade in Florida and in Philadelphia, and more categorically among Black and Latino voters. But the general rule this year is very likely to be: the higher the turnout, the better it is for Biden-Harris and almost all Democratic candidates.  The same determination that brought voters out in hostile conditions to vote early must happen again on Determination Day.

 Or put it this way: the only way Biden loses is if turnout is middling low, either generally or in a freakishly selected few places. (If it is very low, then Biden may have already banked enough votes to win.)

 Then comes Election Night and how the votes are counted and reported. Much has been made of the “red mirage,” the counting of Election Day votes skewed Republican, before the mail-in votes that are largely Democratic. Apart from causing viewer stress, this was theorized as providing Trump an excuse to claim victory because the red mirage will make him look like the winner on Election Night, before Democratic mail-in votes slowly overtake this lead in the ensuing days and perhaps weeks.

 But the reality is likely to be more complicated. The order of when votes from the three streams of in-person early, in-person on the day, and mail-in votes are reported, varies from state to state, and sometime county to county within states. And nobody really knows how that will go.  The New York Times and FiveThirtyEight have published state by state guides to how they will report, and the guides do not always agree.  And then there's the vagaries of the day—for instance, if turnout is overwhelming.

 But the assumption that every state counts Election Day votes first is certainly wrong. According to the New York Times,  only Virginia reports just Election Day votes first. Many states do a mixture, or counties within states have different policies. Early on there may even be a blue mirage in Nebraska, Missouri and maybe Montana because they count mail-in votes first.

 In some states, when the red mirage appears it will likely turn blue by the end of the night. But in other states—notably Pennsylvania and Michigan—it could persist until the last arriving mail-in votes are counted, days later. However, even this is unlikely. 

 The big question is whether a red mirage will persist into Wednesday in enough states to provide the illusion that Trump has won the required 270 electoral votes for victory. And the answer is probably not, at least according to a couple of analysts at Politico. 

 

The pattern that is likely to occur in more key states is the blue/red/blue sequence. These are states that count early votes first, then Election Day votes, and then the last mail-in votes. The states where this is more likely to happen include Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas, and maybe Wisconsin. (This cycle doesn’t necessarily mean red will go ahead of blue in the middle but just increase faster.) 

 The potential good news is that this blue/red/blue cycle will probably be completed fairly early on Election Night in Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and Ohio. If Biden wins any one of them, he is likely to win the election: especially Florida or Ohio. This is the conventional wisdom now, and it is how the news networks will report it. 

In most polls so far Biden has a small lead in all of them except Ohio, and some polls give him a tiny lead there, too. Again, he doesn’t have to win them all. He wins one or two, and it’s all over but the counting elsewhere.

 But Trump needs to win all of the above states, plus another state where Biden has a small polling lead that may have pretty complete returns Tuesday night: Georgia. And then there’s Texas, which may also have definitive results. 

 Even if Trump wins all of these states, Biden can still win the presidency with the tier of upper midwestern states where his polling lead is higher. But he’ll need Pennsylvania, which in the hive mind of political analysts is turning out to be this year’s Florida or Ohio.

 If Biden must rely on these states, the process will drag on longer. But a lot of analysts believe the winner will be clear on Election Night. Some expect to know by 11 pm Eastern. The numbers crunchers at FiveThirtyEight say there’s a 60% chance we’ll be sure by midnight Pacific. They all say that if we do, the winner will be President Biden.

 So however the count goes, here’s one thing to remember, if you go to bed late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning: in any state that by that time Biden is ahead, no matter how slightly, he will very likely win it. So much for the weeds of Tuesday. 

 The bigger picture? What if the polls are wrong? The polls are always wrong, to some extent. In 2016 they (fatally, as it turned out) underestimated the Trump vote in certain states. In 2012 they underestimated votes for President Obama, and Mitt Romney had to cancel his fireworks. According to the New York Times four days from Election Day, if state polls are as wrong as 2016, Biden still ends up with 335 electoral votes.

 Apart from general Trump revulsion, for me the key differences are that Democrats were not really united in 2016, and were (stupidly) not all motivated to vote. The leftists who voted third party were even dumber. This year Democrats (and the bulk of Independents) are united and highly motivated to vote (that is, angry and scared to death), and third party support is miniscule. 

 So here’s the big possibility: the unique and highly motivated coalition to defeat Trump and Republicans and elect Biden and Democrats will produce an overwhelming tide, leading to large margins in many contested states, and victories in states Democrats haven’t won in years or decades. The red mirage will be barely a blip if it appears at all. We may see so many Biden victories that Pennsylvania could keep counting until March and it wouldn’t matter. 

 However, if it is closer than that, various fears will be engaged. For instance, the fear that the election will be, or at least seem, so close that it will take weeks to resolve, with accompanying turmoil and court cases. But looking at the numbers, FiveThirtyEight estimates that there is no more than a 4% chance of this happening. At worst, days.

 Will voters believe a Trump claim of victory on Election Night results alone? Pew found that half the voters surveyed believe that the winner won’t be known by then. They may not be happy about it, but they are willing to wait for votes to be counted.  And all that's needed to win is 270 in the end, assuming we keep our nerve.

 This is not to say there might not be challenging days and weeks ahead. In fact there will be, no matter what happens on Election Day. With the Trump administration still in charge, and 100,000 new Covid cases a day, this is going to be the greatest test the American system has faced, at least since World War II and probably since the Civil War. And just as surviving the covid crisis depends on the doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers most of the media never sees, surviving Trump will depend on career public servants and state officials whose names we may never know.

 As for Tuesday night into Wednesday, it’s tempting to say, fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. And it may be. Days before November 3, Florida and PA continue to be complicated and hard to read, with lots of dirty dealings going on. But the effect of all of that disruption is relative. A really big turnout resulting in a really big wave suddenly overwhelms all those disreputable efforts. By late in the evening (and possibly earlier), I think it will be pretty clear that Trump is being decisively rejected. After that, enjoy watching the progress of how badly.

  That is, if you've been part of that determination.

Determination

Something is happening.  And it's determination.

Americans are voting early—by mail or drop box, or in person--in record numbers. It is estimated that nearly 70 million ballots have been received, with probably another five million on the way. It could eventually mean that 100 million votes come in before the traditional Election Day, less than a week away.

 The numbers so far are astounding. They’ve blown past the early voting totals of 2016, and already add up to more than half of all the votes cast in the 2016 election. In Texas it’s 90%. In Georgia 71%. 

The mail-in vote as predicted is heavily Democratic. In some places the in-person early voting shows more Democrats, in others more Republicans, but also plenty of declared Independents and undeclared voters. The youth vote is way up. Black voters in Georgia are nearly triple the numbers there were in 2016.

 Something is happening right now. Because of this Washington regime’s subversion of the Postal Service, and thanks to decisions by the Supreme Republican Court, election officials and non-profits are strongly advising voters who have received absentee ballots not to mail them, because they might not arrive by Election Day. They are advised to deliver them to drop boxes or election clerk’s offices. There are many people working hard to identify and help these voters.

 If the 2016 election showed how stupid American voters can be, this election so far indicates how smart they can be. Many heard and read about the Postal Service slowdown, the Republican legislatures and Trump Court of Appeals judges changing rules several times about which votes will count and when votes can be counted. So they mailed in their ballots very early, or they took them to drop boxes, or they voted in person. They’ve completely changed the contours of this election.

 

Voters in Texas and Georgia in particular saw the blatant efforts at vote suppression, so they lined up the first day of early voting and they haven’t stopped.

 Early in-person voting makes it very visible that something is happening. Voters are lining up for hours, surrounded by a life-threatening pandemic virus.  They shouldn't have to, especially the seniors, but they are.  And they stay in line until they vote.  They are determined that their votes are counted.  They need leadership out of this pandemic. They need leadership that sees them and their mortal problems. They need hope.

 They are lining despite forest fires and hurricanes. They are lining up in the rain, the heat, the cold. They defy suppression and intimidation. They are risking their health and their lives. They are at least as heroic as any soldier, for what they are doing for their country and each other.

 And because this is America, they are entertained in line by dancers and musicians. Nonprofits pass out bottled water and coffee. There are hot dog vendors.

 When early voting is over, others will take their place on November 3, Election Day. Again there will be long lines, the pandemic, maybe bad weather. There will be intimidation and probably violence in some places. But they will not be deterred. They will vote. Perhaps you will be one of them.

 

If something continues to happen, the number of Americans who vote—and the percentage of eligible voters who vote-- by the end of the day on November 3 will be greater than in any election anyone now alive has experienced. About 137 million voted in 2016. When early voting started booming, the boldest 2020 forecast was a total of 150 million. That would be the highest percentage turnout since 1908. Now analysts are talking about 160 million, or 165.

 Something is happening—and it is that millions of people are determined to vote, even at a cost. Because they know their votes will to a meaningful extent determine the future.

Poetry Monday: A Little Song for Gaia

As the cricket's soft autumn hum

              is to us,

     so are we to the trees

            as are they

    to the rocks and the hills.

 --Gary Snyder

As a special feature on the DVD of The Practice of the Wild, the short biographical film about Gary Snyder, the poet reads and talks about some poems, including this one, which is part of the Little Songs for Gaia sequence.  He reads it here as a stand-alone.  (It's also used in the film itself, as a voiceover.)  He says that it was inspired by a conversation with his close friend and fellow poet Lew Welch, when they were both quietly looking at the landscape, probably in northern California. Welch wondered what the mountains thought about the trees.  What do you mean? Snyder asked.  To the mountains, Welch guessed, the trees are just passing through.

Snyder's poem focuses on the perspective of time in natural relations, and its effect on perceptions.  But implicit is Welch's sense of everything being alive.  "It is possible to speak of a mountain knowing," Paul Shepard writes in Man in the Landscape, "or, with Jacquetta Hawkes in A Land, of the quiet sentience of rocks."  There is a scientific sense, a good deal more accepted now than when Shepard wrote this in the 1960s, that the web of relationships and behavior of ecosystems like forests and ponds include communication and response to what's going on in the near environment.  Ancient cultures of course accept that rocks and trees have spirits, that they are aware of humans, and humans must treat them with respect and honor.

This DVD also includes an additional interview with Snyder that begins with him talking about the virtue of ahimsa, which is the first precept of Buddhism, and is also central to Hindus and Janism in India.  Snyder translates it as meaning "do as little harm as possible, according to the situation."  So strictly speaking it is not always non-violence.  But what is most important to Snyder is that it applies to everything-- not just to certain humans or even humans in general, but to all beings, including the rocks.

As a boy growing up in the country, young Gary Snyder had a feeling for animals as fellow beings.  But he never lost it, and his conviction that non-human life is just as important led him to study Chinese paintings and then the language, the Japanese language and then Buddhist practice in a monastery in Japan for years.  Even earlier it led him to the last American Indian cultures in his native Northwest.  

We don't know the minds of other beings.  We just don't.  But we know that the degree of consciousness that humans have allows moral thinking and moral decisions.  So this is our duty to the common landscape, the common universe.  This is our part.  In the end we are what we are committed to, even as we fall short.