Outrage to Action: Battling the Right Wing Attack on America

Photo from the run-up to the assault on the Capitol.

Note:  This post is a follow-up to the previous one.

The first thing we need to understand is that Trump and Trumpism are not the same thing.  Trumpism is much bigger than Trump, and much older than his relatively recent influence on our political condition.  In an MSNBC opinion piece, Steve Benon cites an article from Philip Bump in The Washington Post where he offers a concise description of Trumpism:

... a sense of robust self-confidence, rejection of inconveniences as personal or legal slights and  an acceptance of what one wants to hear over what's demonstrably true.  This undercurrent predated Trump, but he helped make it central to right-wing politics.

A proper "ism" requires some "ists".  You know, socialism has socialists, imperialism needs imperialists, and so forth.  I have tried to determine what a real Trumpist is, and it's tough. It's not Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, and their ilk, who I am sure, behind closed doors and off the record would tell you that Trump is full of shit and a pain in the butt.  These guys are not idiots, they're riding the Trump wagon to improve their career prospects.  They follow this path not out of ignorance, but worse, out of dishonesty and greed. Much better representatives of Trumpism are Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert (ostensibly representing working class constituents), and disciples of "the big lie" commonly found in red-state legislatures, which is where the real destructive work is being done.

Who They Are

I have put some effort into trying to learn the origins of this weird comingling of the white evangelicals and the monied corporate elite that is the recent incarnation of the Republican party.  It was likely more a gradual process than an event that can be traced to one particular cause.  There was a convergence of need in the later years of the Twentieth Century as both groups sought to reverse the gains made in social justice, social equality, feminism, environmental regulation, workplace safety, unionization, etc. by liberal activism in the post-war decades and into the 1970s. Corporations needed the evangelical votes, evangelicals needed the corporate money, and they commenced to cooperate to maintain the status quo of pro-business government policy, and to change the status quo of what was perceived as the creeping liberalization of American society.

Paul Weyrich, a right-wing conservative Christian activist started the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) with the intent to spread the message that political activism was the key to reversing the trend toward liberalization.  His organization met with limited success, but was on the verge of financial failure.  At about the same time Lewis F. Powell, a charter member the League to Save Carthage, a group of corporate magnates who believed that America was on the way to Socialism wrote a call to arms in a letter to the Director of the US Chamber of Commerce.  In this memo he contended that American business should assert influence in all aspects of social and political policy making.  Both facets learned, and then taught, that they needed to approach the politicization of their ideas with the same intensity with which one would fight a war.

For an in-depth look at corporate efforts to guide the country's economic and political policy see:

Dark Money:  The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, by investigative journalist Jane Mayer.

For a look at the pro-business atmosphere these billionaires seek to preserve see Senator Amy Klobuchar's:  Antitrust:  Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age.

 What They Do

ALEC's primary method is to create task forces that write ready-made legislative bills that legislators can present in a neat, easy to pass package that has already been evaluated and corrected for any potential legal weaknesses and court examinations.  This method is responsible for the remarkable similarities in various state voter suppression laws and laws restricting abortion.

The list of things these right-wing groups target is closely related to the list of things that they are afraid of, which includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Immigrants

Latinx

African Americans

Africans

Asians (South and East)

Muslims

Jews

LGBTQ

Scientists

Teachers

The list can go on, but the thing they fear most is the Voter.

How They Do It

Promote voter ID Laws and other means to suppress the vote.

Resist police reform

Resist environmental legislation

Resist protections for public lands, promote the sale of public lands

Resist sensible gun legislation

Attempt to set educational curricula in public education

Resist laws protecting the rights of almost everyone except themselves

What Can We Do?

We recently relocated our residential base to Chattanooga, TN.  Our address is literally less than 200 yards from Georgia and the congressional district that is home to Marjorie Taylor Green.  Early in the year we started to see television ads and lawn signage that promote her Democratic challenger, Marcus Flowers, a handsome, articulate, and apparently qualified candidate.  We thought it would be good to contribute to his campaign even though we don't reside in Georgia.  Apparently a whole lot of other people had the same idea.  Our daughter's research showed that by early May his campaign had raised 8.1 million dollars.  The same research indicated that in that particular overwhelmingly Republican district he has virtually no chance of winning.  This is merely an anecdotal way of saying that we need to concentrate our efforts in places where there is a legitimate possibility of gaining or retaining a competitive seat.  There are dozens of races where a few votes can make a huge difference.  Research where they are, and do what you can to help.

Donate to entities like the DNC and Common Cause where a lot of the money goes to counteract voter suppression laws and ignite grassroots enthusiasm.

Volunteer to work the phones or ring doorbells in places that matter.

Work hard in local and state arenas where the opposition is doing the most damage.  Fight anti-democratic state bills before they get out of committee.

Look at the suggestions listed here:

https://politicalcharge.org/2018/05/04/15-ways-to-help-a-campaign-win-their-election/

What's At Stake:

From "On Tyranny:  Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century" by Timothy Snyder.

"The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat that they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy.  Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century.  We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Naziism, or communism.  Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience."

People often remind me that America has survived numerous phases of antiimmigration fervor, hyper- nationalism, and regressive social policy.  The McCarthyism of the 1950s is an obvious example, as are the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII, and some of the nativist movements of the 19th century before and after the Civil War.  My fear is that this is different, has more staying power, and the ability to do more long-term damage.  My deepest hope is that I am wrong.

Catharsis: Test To See If Writing About It Helps

 

Kristin and I spent the heart of last winter on the Alabama Gulf Coast. We got there about the first of January, and this was at the time when our country was in the midst of the expected winter surge in Covid cases. The “sides” in the “Covid Wars” had drawn clear lines.  We had people who were wearing masks and getting vaccinated.  We had people who were not wearing masks and not getting vaccinated, and not giving a damn who they infected.  Kristin and I were in the former group, and in South Alabama we were part of a very small minority.

It was in this context that my expectations were set.   We were in the land of individual freedom, individual responsibility, “Let’s go Brandon” t-shirts, AR-15 silhouettes in the windows of trucks with “Jesus Saves” bumper stickers.  I figured it would be no-holds-barred, wide-open revelry with unrestrained public tobacco spitting, beer guzzling, and spontaneous outbursts of prayer.  We found something much different; these folks have more rules than they do in Portland, where I’ve heard the expression that "if it’s not mandated, it’s illegal."

Sign, sign

Everywhere a sign

Blocking out the scenery

Breaking my mind

Do this, don’t do that

Can’t you read the sign?

(Five Man Electrical Band)

This is not to single out Fairhope.  Similar signs are in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.

I don't even know what the thing in the middle is, but it's not allowed.

On our first Sunday in the area, we decided to go check out the beach at Gulf Shores. We ran into a nice couple who told us that since it was Sunday, we would probably be alright, but that during the week when the beach police were more active, we would be fined $500 for having our dog on the beach!  I went and put on my mask, not for fear of Covid, but for the stench of repression.

As we continued on our excursions throughout the Southeast portion of red-state America, we saw reinforcement for what I really suspected all along.  The right leaning citizens of the area are not at all opposed to government overreach, so long as the government doing the overreaching is the government they install by whatever means they can make work.  (More on this in the next installment which will appear in a few days.)

 

This "Wheat Jesus"  billboard is a Kansas I-70 icon.  It is different than the images I discuss below, but the artistry is of the same quality.  It was put up by a family in Colby.

MORE SIGNS

Early in May we needed to be back in Utah, so we chose the I-70 route which would allow us to stop and see friends and family in Western Colorado.  (Colorado leans Democratic on the east side of the mountains.  Western Colorado is so red that it might make Alabama look like a college town in the Northeast.)  I-70 took us right through the middles of Missouri and Kansas.  Missouri has the standard roadside signage touting gun shows, Bible verses, injury lawyers, medical marijuana dispensaries, Super 8s, etc.  Kansas has most of that and more.  When you get to the wide-open expanses past Kansas City and Topeka, you start to see these remarkably well painted displays that consist of a repurposed refer trailer or an abandoned shipping container.  They will show an image of the waving stars and stripes and a big image of a grinning Donald Trump, complete with a decent representation of whatever color you call that hair.  I think some signs even have a badass eagle, and then the inevitable admonition to vote 2024.    

A hundred yards or so down the fence line in the very same field, there will be a smaller, but even more professional depiction of the blond, blue-eyed, Jesus with some wording on the bottom reminding us that the end is near, and we had better shape up, or that redemption is just one conversion away.  Now the sledgehammer incongruity of these two images is striking enough to make the unprepared driver loose concentration and crash. Most of us can agree on a general idea of what Jesus stands for—love, forgiveness, compassion, healing, practicing The Golden Rule, that kind of thing.

Donald Trump on the other hand is a scumbag real estate developer from New York City, a washed-up reality TV personality, a verifiable misogynist, and a wannabe dictator who is absolutely diametrically opposed to Jesus in every way.  If a person has not fallen under whatever spell this demagogue has cast, you wouldn’t allow him within a half mile of the oval office, let alone sitting in it and making critical decisions.

BAD SIGNS

I spent the whole rest of the drive, and a lot of time since, just trying to figure out how this clown captured the loyalty of such a high percentage of the population.  I can’t do it, so I quit trying.  I liken my obsession with Trump to the Republicans’ never-ending fixation on the Clintons, who have been non-entities for years.  The terrifying difference is that Trump is not yet a non-entity.  He is still influencing almost every aspect of our political lives, and the worst part is that even though it is becoming clearer that he will never again be able to hold high public office, he has given succor to a long festering infection in our society that is the biggest threat we have seen since the Civil War.  Trump is becoming irrelevant; Trumpism is real and gaining traction.

[Coming up:   Combating the NatCon Conspiracy]

Absolutely Everything You Need to Know about Healthcare

Healthcare 2020

2009 was an eventful year in developments leading up to our current state of political and economic division and inequality.  Barak Obama was inaugurated as President of the United States, an event which set in motion significant events in the realm of opposition politics.  The brothers Koch called an emergency meeting of their cabal of ultra-rich, radical-right, reactionary, racist business comrades including Philip Anschutz, the Colorado oil magnate, and Sheldon Adelson, the guy who owns Las Vegas.  These folks were terrified and appalled that a black Democrat held the highest seat in the U.S. government.  They immediately set about increasing efforts they started 20 years earlier to fund opposition action groups under the guise of “charitable foundations” and other clandestine funding mechanisms (enabled by the infamous Citizens United v. FEC) that purchased university professorships in economics, law, and sciences, and paid for the elections of several U.S. Senators and Representatives.

 2009 was also the year that Fox News abandoned all pretense of being a legitimate news organization and became a blatant propaganda arm of the Republican Party.  Together with Rush Limpdick and his Excessive and Incessant Bullshit (EIB) Network, along with other right-wing outlets, both local and national, and the obstructionist opposition in the Congress, they set out to dismantle all things Obama.  The hot topic at the time was the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It was in this atmosphere that I shared some thoughts about the debate.  Most of it appears below.  I have edited out some commentary about what was going on with me work-wise, and about the heat wave going on at the time in the Pacific Northwest (*).  Eleven years later, it is sad to say that most of what I wrote is still relevant.  Pandemic aside, at this time there are still too many people in this country who cannot afford to go to the doctor for preventative care, and we still spend more on health care per capita than almost any wealthy industrialized country.  We are throwing good money after bad in order to perpetuate a system that helps too few and costs too much.  https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2019/07/how-does-the-us-healthcare-system-compare-to-other-countries

Last week we went to Mt. Rainier National Park and stayed at a campground that had a really neat outhouse.   It takes the waste deposited therein and cycles it through a filter of cedar chips where it encounters bacteria that turn it into CO2 and water. I was sitting there taking a dump when I was struck by the supreme irony of the situation.  This thing is eco-friendly, yet it works just like regressive neo-con political thought.  It circulates the same old crap endlessly.  The difference is that the crapper renders the waste harmless through the process of organic decomposition while the righties just wear the shit out.

I envision an old neo-con on a mountaintop with a long beard, sunken eyes, emaciated, and with excessively long fingernails that curl on the ends.  This old fart has an original thought about every ten years, sends it off the mountain to the land of talk radio where Rush, Sean, Bill Bennett, Ingraham and the ditto heads ride it and whip it until it turns to dust.  It is reincarnated periodically.  Sometimes it is spiced up by being delivered by one in the long succession of blond bitches (Ann Coulter, Monica Crowley, etc.) who went to college and learned that they could make bank in the conservative political entertainment industry that operates with the knowledge that blather, bombast, and bullshit out sells straight reporting.  Hence the private jets, etc.; just like John Travolta and George Clooney….

….When I got back to Seattle, I had a day or so of work to do for the store in Kent and quickly reverted to my old routine of listening to Public Radio on the way to the shop in the morning. The topic of the NPR discussion that morning was the health care reform measures currently before Congress. By the time I was finished hearing the opponents’ platitudinous sound bite arguments, and the proponents’ ineffectual attempts to counter them, I was so pissed I could have spit nails. I was too disturbed to even be driving, let alone driving in Puget Sound area morning traffic. I immediately thought I should write something about it—right after I shot the asshole who just passed me on the right and then cut left in front of me. But several attempts at composition yielded no fruit. Each time I started to formulate some coherent ideas, I had a recurrence of the flushed-face, vein-in-the-neck-popping, spittle-spewing, anger that overcame me that first morning. I simply could not make a cogent argument. This went on for well over a week. I discussed this frustration during a family gathering the other night and someone astutely noted that this sounded like just the sort of thing one should blog about. It was in fact the essence of blogging. I thought, “Hmm”, and then, “Screw it, here goes.”

I’m still too pissed to make any attempt at rational argument. This puts me on equal footing with the planted shouters who have been showing up at the “town meetings”. These are not “town” at all, but rather nationally broadcast forums being used for organized dissent. I have no problem with organized dissent, but do not try to call it something else. It is like the old ploy of waging all-out war while engaging in peace talks. This is one of the most effective tools of war; kick their asses before they know they are in a fight. Righties use the tactic with finesse. Any time there is a suggestion that working people might have a different agenda than the privileged; someone is accused of “trying to create class warfare.” News flash! It is a war, has been for decades, and working and middle-class people are getting whooped while they are in denial. The opposition deftly uses emotionally driven arguments to counter reason. This is a remarkable skill. But why bother? Emotion wins out over reason every time, so I will try to keep reason to a minimum despite constant temptation from facts and logic.


Should the government even be involved in healthcare?

You bet. The government, often with the approval and encouragement of the right, is involved in protecting us from everything under the sun. The government has taken it upon itself to protect us from communists, Corvairs, mythical WMDs, pot smokers, prostitutes, profanity, monopolies, gay marriage, pesticides, misleading advertising, hydrogenated oil, sodomy, and the list goes on. Why should it not then protect us from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and malaria? Oops! It already does that by subsidizing spraying programs and draining swamps. If you think there is any aspect of your life that is not already regulated, subsidized, or otherwise affected by the government, you are living in a fantasy. You want to live in a society without government involvement? I will bet most likely you don’t, not really.

[The subject of subsidy is a topic in itself. If the government spends one penny to subsidize anything from agriculture to space exploration (it does), it should subsidize medical research (it does). If it spends one penny of taxpayer money to subsidize that research, the fruits of the research should be available to every person who ever paid a penny of tax. I say, “No taxation without free bowel resection!”]

Will the proposed reform somehow limit my freedom to choose healthcare options?

I don’t really know, but I doubt it, and if it does, I really don’t care. Money talks. If I can afford choice, I am damned sure going to get some. Meanwhile, people who do not have insurance can’t even get into a hospital unless they go to the emergency room. They have zero choice. Now this is the place where I should introduce statistics, expert testimony, etc. Sorry, heard ‘em all, don’t care, you ain’t changing my mind. Sound familiar?

Will the proposed reform create a huge expensive bureaucracy?

Probably. So what? A bloated bureaucracy is what the government already is. There is no bigger bureaucracy in the world than the U.S. military and we are all in favor of that. They are protecting us from a whole bunch of stuff. This bill may cost (How do the right-wing radio dipshits put it?), a thousand-billion dollars over ten years. (Only a liberal would mask the dire reality and trivialize the figure to a mere one trillion.) That is only 200 billion more than we just gave to the bloated bureaucratic banking industry over what—a millisecond? Actually, we would just be replacing a private bureaucracy we already fund through subsidy but without oversight. Maybe if there are enough government jobs out there, we all might get one. I hear they come with insurance.

What about the fact that xyz% of Americans are happy with their current coverage?

Hooray! This presupposes that they have coverage to begin with, and I congratulate them. Aren’t they the lucky ducks? “I have mine and I do not care about yours.” Now that is the kind of thinking a strong society is built on. At the internet urging of a sibling, I was recently directed to a website: Defend Your Health Care.croc.** Well, I guess if I had some that was worth a shit and that I could afford, I would defend the hell out of it. The site has some great examples of fear mongering and carefully crafted rhetoric. To counter the argument that covering preventative care will help contain increasing health care costs, the website has this to say. “…., virtually all studies show that prevention saves lives but not money.” Well hell, that is disappointing—wouldn’t want to save too many lives.

It goes on to say, “Most people who take cholesterol lowering drugs or get mammograms wouldn’t get sick anyway.” Isn’t that kind of the point? Just saying.

For a few more laughs, check out the website poll:
Who do you think will be hurt most by the Obama health care plan?
1. Small business.
2. Families.
3. The elderly.
4. Veterans.
5. Children.
6. Terminally disabled.

This is so obviously shaded; we don’t even need to change the question, just the answers:
Who do you think will be hurt most by the Obama health care plan?
1. Drug companies.
2. Drug company lobbyists.
3. Insurance companies.
4. Insurance company lobbyists.
5. Right wing commentators.
6. Fat assed Republican Senators.

Will there be some sort of panel or process for evaluating expenditures in end-of-life circumstances?

Absolutely not; but would it be so horrible if there was? Hey! We’re all laissez-faire survival of the fittest types, and let’s face it, skeleton Granny ain’t never gittin’ up, and if she does, she ain’t goin’ far and likely won’t know where she is when she gets there. And we are told every day that it’s all about the $$$$, and “hard choices,” and that kind of crap. If a grieving family needs some help while facing this extremely difficult situation, I would hope that counseling would be available. In fact, that’s all the bill does. It simply proposes to add counseling to the list of covered services. It doesn’t create any death squads or panels of liberal intelligencia (excuse the redundancy) to decide who lives and who dies. The notion of the “death panels” is a prime example of the opposition’s use of fear as a weapon. Plenty of fear can be generated around this topic because we well know that as our society ages; we will have to deal with this dilemma increasingly often. Right now it’s more comfortable to just ignore it and hope it goes away. Using it to make political capital is despicable. How about mandated living wills? At least then we would only be prolonging the existence of people who want it. I will bet there wouldn't be very many. Is that intrusive enough for you?

Should universal coverage even be a matter of debate in this country? In this century?

Hell no! That’s what got me so riled in the first place. It was not the inane arguments or the imbeciles who were delivering them; they are old and tired. It was the very idea that we are still spending time and intellectual effort in arguing something that almost every other civilized country put to bed shortly after World War II. OOH! We don’t want any European style system in this country. Fine, have another style, but for the love of Pete, have something. If the legislation that comes out has flaws, fix them later. The problem now is that we don’t even have a base from which to begin repairs. The status quo is unacceptable, and in your heart, you know it.

Where we are now (again, pandemic aside):

In my original diatribe, I swore not to let facts and reason interfere with emotional argument.  I have calmed down some since then, and this stuff is just toocompelling and too supportive to pass up.

The PPACA passed a Democratic controlled Congress on March 10, 2010.  Republicans in both houses introduced bills to repeal it the day after it was passed.  As of February 3, 2015, the House had 67 repeal votes.  I do not know how many there have been since.  Republicans led numerous attempts to defund implementation; in 2017 the repeal and replace effort also failed.  Trump’s first executive order screwed with the bill by weakening the individual mandate.  He then reduced funding for resources to aid enrollment and reduced the enrollment period by half.  These actions reduced the number of people the bill was helping.  He then made a (false) public statement that the exchanges were unstable, further undermining the law.  There is presently a huge hue and cry from the right about the amount Congress spent on the impeachment attempt.  How much have they spent trying to undermine an attempt to help people?


 Meanwhile, in the U.S., healthcare spending as a percent of GDP is 16.9.  The next highest is Switzerland at 12.2; the UK is 9.8.  The per capita cost in the U.S. is almost twice the average of other wealthy developed countries.  Due to inefficiency and administrative waste because of complexity and the waste involved in trying to deny coverage, our administrative cost per capita is $843.00.  This is more than we spend on preventative and long-term care.  Come on people!  After all of this,  you still cannot go to the doctor in this country unless you are stinking rich or you are employed by someone who is stinking rich, and you have a better job than most of us have.  Making employers responsible for our health insurance inhibits their ability to be competitive on the world market, and competitive capitalism is supposedly what we are all about.  Is it not?

(*)  I had to do a hydraulic repair on a front-end loader in Portland.  It was 106ᵒ.  It is never 106ᵒ in Portland.

**In 2009 there was a defendyourhelathcare.something website.  I can’t find it now.

Guns, Geezers, and Graves

Several weeks ago, when the Covid-19 pandemic was really just starting to get public attention, my sister-in-law in North Carolina told us that she had gone to the hardware store to get some spring plants and that the place was overrun with folks stocking up on guns and ammo. I didn’t get the connection right away; after all, viruses are too many to shoot, even with high capacity magazines, and they’re reportedly hard as hell to hit. Then I saw with my own eyes the lines at the store in the small Southern Utah town where we were staying, and I saw the reports on state and national news from around the country; this run on weaponry was a real thing. It took awhile for it to soak in that these people were getting geared up to shoot one another rather than Coronaviruses. Bizarre as hell, but I get it now. The Trumpists are coming for me, and I’m scared (and armed). 

There is a growing movement out there, led by some conservative politicians and media personalities, that is selling the notion that the governmental response to the pandemic is “draconian”, that the death numbers are inflated, and that the economic fallout is going to be worse than the disease toll. They are cooking up the standard fare of conspiracy theories, blaming all current, past, and future Democrats, and getting the Trumpist legions all atither. (Draconian: This is a word you see more of lately. I wonder how many Trumpeteers looked it up when they saw it on some right-wing Facebook post; mostly I wonder how many needed to look it up, but didn’t bother.) 

There have been protests throughout the country where both the frightened and the fear mongering are gathering to press local, state, and national authorities to drop some of the measures that have been instituted to curb the spread of disease-- to get the economy going again even at the risk of allowing the disease to get a stronger foothold. (I understand that as this pandemic continues, maybe even gets worse, declines and rebounds, whatever the scenarios are, we, as a society will have some hard choices to make. I also understand that we’re not in a position emotionally, or from a knowledge standpoint, to be able to make those choices right now. We’re too close. We’re reeling). It should be noted that after a few days of declaring himself omnipotent and getting cross threaded with a bunch of governors and senators,  Trump backed off a bit and took a tone as close to conciliatory as he's ever going to be.  He allowed he would let the governors and state legislators set their own trajectories, and some of them unveiled plans to ease into reentry mode in the next few weeks.  Maybe this will help these folks cool off a little.  I'm hopeful.

I saw some guy protesting on a YouTube telecast the other day who said, “...they have no right...!”. This in regard to government stay at home declarations and so forth. Then he went on to say that if “the old folks” needed to quarantine themselves, so be it, “...we have a right...”. I want this clown and those of his ilk to know that they actually do not “have a right” to ignore emergency measures put in place to protect the public, even if they’re too stupid to see that the measures are protecting them as well. This is a clear example of the principle exhibited in the case where Oliver Wendell Holmes drew the free speech line at falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting FIRE in a theater and causing a panic. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature to create a clear and 

present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” They can protest all they want, and I’m sure they will. When the protests advocate policies that make it more likely for me, and people like me, to die a horrible death of suffocation-- I draw the line. 

My story is common enough to apply here. There are thousands in similar situations: I’m 67 years old, I have asthma, I have heart disease; I’m a Covid-19 high risk individual. With the aid of decent health insurance, some great doctors, family support, and a bit of hard work, I’ve been able to manage these conditions and lead an active and productive life. I figure I have eight-to-ten years where I can continue to have a positive influence on my grand kids, do a little community service, share some valuable experience, and hopefully do something to keep future megalomaniacs out of the Oval Office. To this protester on YouTube, to the people down the street who ignore the closure on the tennis courts, and to anyone who thinks they are special-- more valuable than I, more valuable than my wife--anyone who thinks we’re expendable, I can only say one thing: Go ___k yourself! 

How the Cow Ate the Cabbage

Position Statement for a Moderate Democrat

Or

“How the Cow Ate the Cabbage”

By Mike Grant

My biggest Covid-19 fear is that I’m going to get sick and die without ever having come out of my self-imposed silence in relation to political affairs.  There is a degree of hypocrisy involved in my situation that I am struggling to rationalize, but I can’t go back and say shit when I should have said it last week, last month, last decade, last century.  I can only try to set the record straight and move forward with more honesty.    Here is one example of the hypocrisy that is so disturbing;  I spent my entire working life being either directly, or indirectly, involved in extractive industry,  and in the interest of keeping my job, keeping workplace peace, or keeping happy customers, I bit my tongue and listened to the insufferable and incessant comments about tree huggers, stupid  environmentalists, greenies, and so forth.  I stashed my Sierra Club and Trout Unlimited membership cards in the back of my wallet and carried on in industries that were disgorging all manner of disgusting and destructive effluent, destroying public lands, sterilizing streams, and probably sterilizing more people than all the Planned Parenthood clinics in the country. So many of my friends and acquaintances are righties and Trumpists that the Facebook algorithm thinks I’m one too.  I get a constant barrage of unadulterated horseshit, and I just let it pass—NO MORE!  Here is how the cow ate the cabbage topic by topic.


*Trump is a narcissist.


Trump and the Covid-19 Pandemic

Let’s face it.  By this point in the Saga of Donald there is nothing he could do that his opponents would find acceptable, or that his supporters would find less than perfect, really big,  maybe the biggest thing ever, (a lot of people are saying it) , or fantastic.  After the dust settles and the investigations wind down, if we confirm that in the early days he really did downplay the seriousness of the emerging pandemic in the hopes of fending off a bad stretch for the stock market and thus protecting the wealth of his right-wing donors and billionaire buddies, then we have a crime on the order of something really big, maybe the biggest thing ever, perfectly imperfect.  Let us hope that the people in the private sector, and those remaining in the local, state, and federal governments who have professionalism and integrity can save our asses.  Then we can dig into the adjective thesaurus and go hog wild.  (Note:  April 16^th Orange Man went ahead and “authorized” the governors to follow a sensible and safe approach to getting the economy started down the road to recovery.  Dr. Fauci and Mike Pence must have smacked him in the side of the head and got his attention.  I hope it holds.)


*Trump is a megalomaniac.


Reproductive Rights

I don’t kill babies.  I don’t want the government to kill babies.  Aside from the odd psycho, I don’t think anybody wants to kill babies.  A woman’s right to choose is a complex issue, and to hide behind the simplistic notion that all abortion is murder is a way to absolve oneself of having to put any real thought into it.  I find it interesting that the same people who are supposedly all about self-determination, self -reliance, and individual rights, jump on this opportunity to be all up in somebody else’s business.  There is undeniable truth in the argument that the ultimate decision is between the woman, her loving family, her conscience (possibly, but not necessarily religion based), and her trusted confidants, if she is lucky enough to have some.  I don’t have a problem with some restrictions if they are applied fairly.  A minor should be required to have the advice of parents or guardians, but with some relief in special circumstances where the guardians are demonstrably off the deep end in one way or another. A lot of people, really smart people, some of the smartest people ever, and people with compassion, really compassionate people, some of the most compassionate people in the world think that 20 weeks is a reasonable guideline for distinguishing “late term” procedures, but even then there has to be consideration for medical circumstances.  The fact is that abortion rates have been declining since 1990, and it is due to improved access to contraception rather than to increased restrictions on abortion.

How the cow ate the cabbage: 1) When abortions are illegal, people with money and connections can (and do) get discreet and safe procedures and can go back to thumping Bibles with nobody the wiser.  Disadvantaged women end up enduring much less favorable, more dangerous circumstances, and this sucks.  2)  When you get to the bottom of it, it is none of the government’s business, and none of your business either. 3)  Now the only unanswered question is whether society should subsidize the procedure through Medicaid or other programs.  If the government helps pay for any medical procedure, then it must help with this one.  If society is going to get out of the medical field all together, then there will be a whole lot more of us in trouble than the poor young lady on the tenement stoop who is struggling to find aid and hope in a terrifying circumstance, whatever that may be. 


*Trump is a demagogue.


 The Electoral College

The Electoral College is not working, and it should be eliminated or substantially modified as soon as possible.  The way it is functioning is to make the votes of some people count for more than the votes other people. Florida, with a population of about 20 million, has 29 electoral votes, or about 699,000 Floridians per electoral vote. Wyoming with a population of about 586,000 has three electoral votes, or about 195,000 Wyomingans [sic] per electoral vote. Or, to put it another way, each citizen of Wyoming has more than three-and-half times the voting power as a citizen of Florida. This violates common sense as well as the concept of "one man, one vote."



  Contrary to widely held belief, the Electoral College was not instituted to protect a courageous and self-reliant rural minority from the misguided snowflakes in the cities and on the coasts.  It was a compromise between those who wanted to select the executive by popular vote, and those who thought selection should be by Congress.  The designers of the Constitution were terrified of the exact situation we find ourselves in now.  They were paranoid about excessive executive power, and they were afraid of the power of a populist president appealing to an ill-informed and gullible public:

The president should be elected "by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation," Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 68. "A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations." 

Thirty states now require the electoral college vote to reflect the popular vote.  This is progress.  We need more.


*Trump is a douchebag.


Republicans


Back when I was a kid and we walked five miles to school through blizzards and tornados after milking the cows and feeding the chickens, Republicans  were just people who had money and who advocated policies to help make sure they could keep it.  They thought a key to keeping their money was to avoid sharing it, but you could sometimes convince them that sharing was a good idea, and they’d be okay with it.  Democrats, particularly the ones with power, (eg. Kennedys, Roosevelts, Johnson, McNamara, etc.) were people who had money and thought that there was enough money in the country that working -class people could have a share-- enough to have a decent life.  The two parties had significant differences for sure, but they generally figured a way to work things out and to get some things done.  It was give-and-take.  We built highways, dams, cars, suburbs, awesome swords and sandals movies, and had a shit-load of kids.  We made some mistakes, (Vietnam, aspects of The War on Poverty, electing Nixon), but our hearts were in the right place, and we made sincere effort to fix our screw-ups.  We could talk to one another.  It was pretty cool.


Sometime in the 1980’s, it became obvious to some Republican mucky-mucks that they weren’t likely to win many more elections unless they recruited more people.   Someone got the brilliant idea to co-opt some social issues that they really didn’t give a rat’s ass about and use them to bamboozle a whole lot of the white working-class into joining the team.  It was a miraculous turnaround for the party.  There was a kind of utilitarian mind meld between the ultra-conservative ultra-rich, and the ultra-conservative, ultra- white Christians.  Rich Republicans get enough votes from poor Republicans to keep them in power and to keep them getting richer. And we are where we are.   We don’t have civil discourse anymore and the income gap just keeps growing.







*Trump is a buffoon.

The 2^nd Amendment

I don’t want your guns.  I don’t want the government to take your guns.  I don’t want the government to take my guns.  If you think you “need” a whole rack of AK 47’s to “protect my family”, I suggest you move to a different neighborhood.  If you have a gun shrine in your living room, you have problems the 2^nd Amendment can’t help you with.  I don’t think it is unreasonable for state or federal laws to make guns a bit harder to get, or to limit who can own guns based on mental health, criminal record, etc.. These principles have been upheld in the courts numerous times.  I don’t think it is unreasonable for state or federal governments to limit the types of weaponry we can own.  The Constitution guarantees our right to own guns.  It does not guarantee the right to own unlimited numbers and types of guns.  I have some guns; I don’t have any fighter planes, or rocket launchers, or even any hand grenades or fully automatic assault rifles.

 Garrett Epps, in an article from 2018 in The Atlantic makes a very cogent argument in this article:  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/second-amendment-text-context/555101/



Be safe, stay healthy.  Stay tuned for updates on climate change, environmentalism, and other topics.

Mike



*These comments do not have anything to with the passage they precede.  I just needed to get them in here someplace.

I started this blog in 2009 when I was off work due to a combination of factors.  Like many small businesses at the time, ours started skidding downhill so I stepped out to see if I could take some pressure off the business and get another job, and that took a while.  Shortly after that I started having some heart issues which now seem like a blip on the screen of my life, but which at the time were pretty serious.  I took the opportunity created by the downtime to write some memories and to comment on the political stuff that was happening at the time.  I really didn't have the know how or the desire to market the thing to anyone except my family, so I didn't ever accrue a following.

Now due to the Covid-19 epidemic and the social distancing edicts, etc. I’ve got downtime during the retirement that has frankly been a hoot for a couple of years.  (Hmmm?  Downtime in downtime—I’ll have to think about that a minute, could be a subject for later).  Anyway, I’ve decided to revive the thing, and I’ve decided to leave the old stuff up there for anyone who is bored as hell and doesn’t have a Kindle.  My first post is a replay of one I did earlier, and I might do some of that now and then because some of the stuff is still relevant, albeit dated. This one tells a few things about me, and might explain why I retired about as soon as I hit 65. I never did find work that didn't qualify as work.  Here goes:

Work

Disclaimer:  Work sucks!  There, I said it.  This is a cliché the use of which bothers me a great deal.  The problem is that there is no suitable substitute.  Any metaphor used to take its place is either inaccurate or ungainly.  Nothing matches “work sucks” for conciseness.  One alternative might be, “work is a prostate exam,” which is sexist, as would be, “work is like childbirth,” which is equally sexist, and woefully wrong because childbirth, although painful and difficult, is also (reportedly) satisfying.  This disqualifies it as a metaphor for work out of hand.



The June 1 issue of Newsweek has a piece that reviews two books on the subject of work.  One is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton in which it is proposed that the American infatuation with work is yet another dogma handed down from pre-Revolutionary times and unique to America.  The notion that work is “fun” flies in the face of a conviction held for centuries that life, including work, is essentially miserable.  This conviction, according to the author, is a defense mechanism against disappointment.  The other book is Shop Class as Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford.  This book extols the virtues of “working with your hands” which has the benefits of objective results, reduced stress, etc.  (More on this later:  much of this activity is also disqualified as work.)  I must admit that at this early date, I have not read either of these books, but I certainly will.  I have the time because I am the victim of a cruel irony—work sucks worst when you don’t have any.  This is a personal tragedy that only reinforces the evidence that our relationship with work is a perversion.



“Eureka!  Hallelujah!  Praise the Lord!, “ was my reaction after learning of these publications.  In reading one short essay, I was freed from self loathing as an unproductive, bitter reprobate slacker.  I was now on the forefront of contemporary thought—an avant-garde intellectual.  I can sense many of you stiffening and thinking, “What kind of communist anti-American bullshit is this?  I enjoy my work and derive great satisfaction from it, and so should you.”  Congratulations!  You don’t have a job and get paid anyway.  If you enjoy it, it ain’t work.  It’s entertainment, or sport, or mental exercise, or something—but not work.



The idea that work worship is uniquely American is verifiable by anyone who has ever tried to do business with almost any country in Christendom between mid-December, and mid-January.  The UK, South Africa, Australia, Italy, Belgium, and Brazil—all closed for the Christmas holiday.  Most companies do, however, have someone there to answer the phone and laugh at the American who thinks he actually has a need more pressing than selecting a Mediterranean beach.  We are universally regarded as a people that works too hard, too long, and at inappropriate times.  We take less vacation and work more hours when we are working than anyone I’m aware of.



Voltaire said, “Work keeps at bay three great evils:  boredom, vice, and need.”  This is an attitude born of the same Enlightenment that shaped American attitudes in the years leading up to our Revolution.  For some reason it did not stick in the minds of his French countrymen who are notoriously non-obsessed with work, perhaps because it is a load of crap.  Boredom is the very definition of work.  Work invites vice:  see white collar crime, our present financial crisis, and some of the history of organized labor.  The absurd idea that work allays need is contradicted by the fact that one of work’s primary rewards, money, drives our thirst for material gratification, and creates the “need” for more work.





An idea came up in a beer driven conversation with a former construction partner.  I don’t know whether it was an original thought that Josh had, or if he got it from someone else.  It seems a little deep for Josh, but beer does that.  Josh’s idea was that society ought to be set up so that we all just party and have a good time until we’re, say 55, and then work our asses off until we drop dead.  This idea warrants some consideration.  George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  I would agree, and add that work is imposed on the young.  Think of all the youthful creativity and energy wasted on the drudgery of “making a living”, when what we are really doing is making a slow death.  Think of the money that would be saved on health care for the aged.  If an old fart gets senile, he just stumbles in front of a bulldozer, and that’s it.   There would be no drawn-out humiliating existence in a care facility that takes up valuable resources and wastes the talent of nurses and doctors—no more images of emaciated, bed-ridden grandpas with sunken eyes and tubes going in and coming out.  The possibilities for societal improvement seem endless.  The economic stimulant implications are immense.  The young do not take the senior discount, and are less likely to skimp on tips.  Like most utopian solutions, this one has some flaws, but it should be in the conversation.



Another possible solution to the problem of work would be to increase pay based on the degree to which the work is disliked.  The obvious problem with this idea is that it probably wouldn’t change things for most people.  The office administrator who spends the day licking the shoes of some self-important personification of the Peter Principle would still make more than the house painter who will walk off the job and straight to the bar at the merest hint of bullshit from the boss, reeking of satisfaction all the way.  An even greater problem would be the need for some device for measuring discontent.  We certainly couldn’t just hand out money to the biggest whiners and starve the stoics.  There would have to be a brain implant, or a periodic test similar to the personality profile questionnaire you answer when you apply at Home Depot.



“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”—Booker T. Washington:

This is, among other things, a paen to those who toil.  Toil is strenuous labor, but not necessarily work.  Work contains no dignity.  Some examples differentiating work from toil are in order.

·       Building fence is great sport:  outside, physical, yet requires some craft—straight, square, etcetera—immediately tangible results, and can be done while having a few beers.  There are many “puttering around the house” activities that are good rewarding fun. Some are not.

·       Plumbing under the sink sucks, and qualifies easily as work.

·       Fixing cars made before about 1980 can be fun.  Working on any car that has the engine in there sideways sucks.  If you look through the engine compartment and see the ground, there is potential for some entertainment.  If the compartment is so packed with shit that not even light can escape, you have a black hole, which sucks in the literal and figurative sense.

·       Sales, which I have done most of my life now, sucks—rejection, disappointment, catering to assholes, motels, fast food, or no food, and windshield time.

·       Mining was a kick and didn’t become work until it made me sick.  It was a little kid’s dream—playing with giant Tonka Toys, blowing stuff up, unrestrained cussing, and a great espirit de corps.

·       Writing a poem does not suck.

One of the triumphs in my life of toil came during a summer stint at the lumber mill in Walden, Colorado.  The mill superintendant was the father of a classmate.  Kent was one of the class athletes-- good at football and wrestling.  Let's just say I wasn't.  I suspect he and his dad thought it would be entertaining to watch me perform in exceptionally difficult circumstances.  Dad put me to work sorting slabs and flitches on the head rig.

When a log went through the initial process after debarking, it was ripped lengthwise into flat segments (flitches) that would eventually become boards.  Making a round log square necessarily leaves four “slabs”, which are the ugly outside segments that have jagged limb stubs sticking out, and are often warped, hard to manage, and always pointed on the lead end.  When the ripped log shot onto a chain conveyor, my job was to, by any means necessary, get the slabs the hell off the conveyor and let the future lumber go by.  I stood facing the onslaught and dodged lumber while grabbing slabs and flinging them onto a conveyor going another direction.  I was aided in this by a high speed roller called “the pineapple” because it had beads welded around for traction on the slabs.  The pineapple would grab anything that touched it and shoot it about 20 feet.  My position was on a little platform right in front of the pineapple, and I became a virtual ballerina on that deck, dodging and slinging in a rhythm matching the output of the saw, and all the time avoiding getting grabbed by that spinning pineapple.

Kent was doing a much more dignified job in the same area of the mill, and was in position to watch me all day.  After about a week and a half, Kent said, “You know Grant; I’ve got to tell you I didn’t think you’d make it this long.  We usually give that job to winos and bums because we know they won’t be here long.  They almost always take a ride on that pineapple and don’t show up the next day.”  I think I gained some respect after that—from Kent, and certainly from myself.  I quit two days later and went to the mine for an extra 25 or 30 cents an hour.

Now that was good, wholesome, make me dog-assed tired, toil.  And I’d go back to it in a heartbeat if I still had any ballerina in me.  I know some women who get turned on by the smell of pine pitch and diesel fuel.

MY FRIEND RAJ

What the ____ is a cobweb?  That’s the first thing that came to mind when I decided to “blow the cobwebs off” this blog.  The cob part likely derives from a Middle English word “coppe” which simply means spider.  Cobweb means different things to different people.  For some it is a spider web, for others a spider web fat with dust, for others a spider web with dust and some broken strands giving it a disheveled look, some ruggedness.  My cobwebs are rugged.  Sure the classic geometrically fascinating spider web is a wonder of nature, but a proper cobweb looks like it’s been around a while, had some hard knocks.  The black widow spider makes helter- skelter disorganized webs without the aid of wind, dirt, or time.  It is just her nature to make a jumbled web.  I can relate.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is blowing the cobwebs off popular activism that has been hanging around collecting dust since the first half of the 1970’s.  Sure we can debate, compare and contrast the Occupy Wall Street bunch and the hippies, and there are probably more differences than similarities when you break down motivations, economic backgrounds, and the like.  The hippies were a product of several years of economic prosperity that, after World War II, made the American middle class and gave definition to “the American dream”.  Hell, in 1971 you could walk out of Haight-Ashbury, sober up, get a haircut, and get a job.  Now you can’t afford a haircut and you can’t get a job. You probably can’t afford a haircut even if you have a job.  I don’t know if it is ironic or just sad that 1973 was end of the Golden Era, the last year in which the working class American made real gains.  It was the year I got married.  It was another 20 years before I discovered how blatantly we were getting screwed.  Ignorance is bliss.

What the Occupy Wall Streeters and the hippies have in common is a desperate feeling of disenfranchisement, a knowledge that the forces driving their lives and their futures are totally beyond their control.  They give voice to the sentiments of Howard Beale in the movie Network: “All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.  You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

This was 1976, before we even knew the good times were over.  I can’t even imagine how pissed Howard would be today.

I read an article in Newsweek the other day.  It was about a guy named Raj Rajartnam who was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading.  His story was article worthy because he didn’t take a plea deal like all the other guys caught in the same scandal.  I kept expecting to read that it was due to some higher sense of honor, or maybe contrition, no chance; it was because he had been to some soothsayer/witch doctor who told him he would be A-Okay.  Whatever.

I wondered why this was the first I had heard of this guy.  I probably had heard of him, but didn’t pay any attention.  There are some crime stories we pay attention to because they are shocking; a guy blows up his family with a meth lab in the garage, or some woman buries her kids in her suburban backyard.  Rich-on-rich crime is like water off a duck.  We know that Raj was just screwing other one-percenters and we could give a rat’s ass.  It is like gang related crime.  If a bunch of the baggy pants-sideways hat-wife beater shirted-tattooed ding dongs want to shoot one another at a wedding, so be it.  If rich guy gets richer by robbing some other rich guys, who cares?

We normally pay attention only when the gangs actually come to our neighborhoods, or when the crooked traders tap our piddly little retirement accounts.    Lock the doors and buy gold buddy!  It might get real interesting in the next few years.  Time to blow the cobwebs off some dusty old social activism.  Hooray for the hippies!