If You’re Not Angry and Fearful About Trump…..I Have No Time For You!

Just to be clear at the outset of this polemic, I am enraged that this malignant buffoon became our President and I fear for the futures of my progeny.  In my 70’s, having almost died 7 years ago, prior to my heart transplant,  the miracle of my survival has let me know my life is now on borrowed time.  The lives of my children and my grandchildren though, have yet to be run and it is their futures, not my own, that most concerns me.  The forces of evil abroad in our land are personified by this angry, ignorant narcissist and our situation closely parallels the rise of NAZIism in 1930’s Germany led by another angry, ignorant narcissist

The United States in the 21st Century, is a country far different than the Germany that gave rise to Hitler in the 1920’s and 1930’s, but some key, underlying factors are starkly similar.  In Germany the hatred of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and Leftists was fueled by the  narrative that these groups were responsible for Germany losing World War One.  In America, we see  similar hatred against people of color, the LGBT community and Liberals, reflected in a similar minority of angry voters.

Both Hitler and Trump achieved power when the vagaries of an electoral system allowed that minority of voters to put them in office. Both of these demagogues  campaigns and executive actions had/have a strong propaganda operation based upon the constant repetition of blatant “Big Lies”, which their fanatically gullible followers believe(d).  In both cases these propaganda operations were skilled in manipulating the corporate mass media into unwittingly assisting their cause. But while the horrors of Hitler are in the past, the horrors of Trump dominate our present and I have little sympathy for those too blind to fully recognize the danger to us all.

The ability of citizens to defend themselves against demagoguery is directly proportional to the information they receive and to the tenor of political discussion that they have access to. While we in America pride ourselves on our Constitutional guarantee of a “Free Press“,  the truth is that for most part American journalism has been owned by and accountable to, its’ wealthy ownership.  That ownership has always represented a powerful portion of the American establishment and their journalism has represented their viewpoints.  The classic example of this has been mainstream Journalism’s assumption that Bi-Partisanship is the desired state of American political affairs.

Repeating themselves time and again throughout 2016 and now 2017,  are news media pundits longing for the olden days of “bi-partisanship”. This is happening as we have a mentally disturbed, intellectually unfit President in charge of our nation and a Republican controlled Congress lusting over how high a tax break they can provide for the oligarchs who own them. In the context of America today the idea of bi-partisanship is nonsensical and irrelevant. It derives from notions of our Founding Fathers as:

“James Madison argued in The Federalist Papers that a danger to democracies were factions, which he defined as a group that pushed its interests to the detriment of the national interest”.

How this group of men, so prescient in so many areas, failed to understand that humans have always disagreed over political self-interests and that in fact consensus in politics usually leads to the worst occurrences, is beyond me.  In my lifetime, bi-partisanship and the consensus derived from, it led to the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq Wars and the Afghanistan War, all of which were dreadful mistakes, costing untold harm to millions. Then too, 100 years of institutionalized segregation was the result of bi-partisan agreement. I could go on and on with examples of why bi-partisanship is nonsensical, but my point is beyond that.  Madison hated factions because to him a faction was a group “that pushed its interests to the detriment of the national interest“.

Today’s Republican Party, operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Koch Brothers, ALEC and the American Oligarchy.  While the Democratic Party has similar issues of control by Oligarch’s money, it at least attempts to forward an agenda beneficial to 99%, rather than 1% of the people.  The Trump Administration, besides the obvious incompetence of this malignant monster, has put in place an Administration and Cabinet that is blatantly pushing an oligarchic agenda.  The Republican controlled Congress is pushing an agenda crafted to the interests of  the oligarch’s money that controls it, to the definite detriment of our nation. However, that IS NOT the worst part of the danger we face.

The greatest danger we are facing in America is that our thuggish Commander in Chief is a bigoted demagogue in the mold of an Adolph Hitler,  with no respect for our Constitution or our democratic ideals.  If Trump is allowed to continue he will entrench Fascism as the American political system and no doubt institute purges of the American people who protest. Now is the perfect time for a Partisan approach approach of RESISTANCE to and REMOVAL of  Trump, Pence and this whole gang of political miscreants.  Through Impeachment, Indictment and Criminal Proceedings this crew of conspirators must be removed from power, before they can destroy what is good and great about our nation.  So yes I am angry and fearful.  If you are unaware of the danger we are facing, then I really do have no time for you and your indifference to the dangers we all face.

In the Age of Trump the Eternal Cluelessness of the Avenging Mind

The election of Donald Trump entails far more than our country being led by an angry, revengeful narcissist,  who only sees the world as a reflection of his needs.  Supporting this man, once you get past the greedy oligarchs demanding more of our nation’s treasure, the White Supremacists with their bigotry and hatred,  are legions of Religious fundamentalists wanting revenge upon all who would not worship THEIR GOD as THEY command. The pardon of the loathsome Joe Arpaio and the nomination of Roy Moore for senator,  both popular among Trump’s voters,  indicates the angry, vengeful mindset abroad in our land.  The ultra-radical theocratic direction of this Administration become all the more clear with Mike Pence as VP, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary and Neal Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.  What Trump, his appointees and his followers all have in common is that they see Government and the Law as a vehicle for them to exact revenge upon all who disagree with them.  They see themselves as pure and Godly vessels, empowered to take Gods revenge upon all they define as sinners. They are prime examples of the the Eternal Cluelessness of the Avenging Mind.

Perhaps the real original sin of humanity is the concept of sin itself. There is of course evil in the world and there is good. To me there is little equivocation about some evils and I am hardly a moral relativist. Although these terms become subjective when viewed from the perspective of an individual, there is a wide general acceptance among diverse cultures as to their general definitions.

We consider murder in all cultures evil, as is robbery, assault, rape (in most but not all cultures), and a host of familiar others. For at least five thousand years, cultures established legal systems to deal with bad behavior and with those systems came the need for punishment. The history of punishment has always been rather draconian and bloody. While today punishment is perhaps more humane in many places, it still caries with it significant cruelty in its application throughout humanity.

“A woman and her three children had just gotten off the bus at a stop across from their apartment building (in Marietta, Georgia) in October 2010 when her 4-year-old son, A.J., broke away from her and ran into the street. A car struck the boy, causing fatal injuries. Nelson (the woman) and one of her two daughters also suffered minor injuries. Nelson was charged with three misdemeanors: second-degree vehicular homicide, failing to cross at a cross walk and reckless conduct, according to court records. A jury convicted her. Although prosecutors did not recommend jail time, each count carried a potential sentence of one year in jail”.

What is behind this prosecution? Who among us who has raised young children wouldn’t be chilled with the vision of this happening to them? Why do we see such prosecutorial zeal in our society to find someone to punish when accidents occur?

The other salient aspect of this case is:

“The man driving the car, Jerry Guy, fled the scene after the accident but later admitted being involved, according to CNN affiliate WXIA-TV. He was sentenced to five years in prison but served only six months. He is serving the remainder of the sentence on probation.”  Here is the full story from CNN.

My proposition is that the increase in fundamentalist religious thought in the world and the influence it has had on us as a society, has led to a rash of unneeded prosecutions, motivated by the need to find an answer to each tragedy that comes to the public’s attention. The disconnect is that while our legal system and Constitution do not talk of sin as an offense against society, those believers in the concept of sin have the belief that we are punishing people for their sins and not for breaking the law. So deep is their dedication to fighting sin, that they believe our legal system is the proper venue to deal with it. In Christianity and Islam sin is to be punished by God/Allah’s judgment at the point of an individual’s death. Nevertheless, there is the idea that society should also punish sin, pre-Deity so to speak and in effect revenge itself on those miscreants who violate God’s Law. Judaism doesn’t talk of sin per se, but the harsh judgments prescribed in the Torah for various acts of breaking the 613 Commandments, may as well be the same as terming them “sin” by the popular understanding of the word.

When a society begins to judge criminality based on the notion of punishing sin, the roster of things to be punished is an ever-expanding one. With this goes the notion that society must avenge itself on those who commit sins and that punishment should be harsh. In this mindset, the law is meant to avenge wrongs and provide punishment as revenge. Not only is this notion inimical to our American legal system and Constitution, it is a foolish one that perverts our system and undermines our laws.

The tremendous increase in our prison rosters are due to what are essentially victim-less crimes dealing with drugs and alcohol. Hundreds of million are spent to dissuade drug abuse and after you parse  the message past the personal harm to the individual, the message is clearly that “getting high” is sinful. If we took the sin out of judging and dealing with the effects of drug use, perhaps we might even reduce it, or at least cut the cost in money and human lives it now represents.

Drugs are just one aspect of the problem of viewing our legal system as existing to punish sin and enforce religious based morality. Sin bespeaks the need of society to avenge proscribed behavior. A rational legal system is not about revenge as punishment, but should be about protecting the citizenry from predation and maintaining a safe environment. As such, our law should be dispassionate about meting out justice and compassionate in its application.

The human mind strives to make sense of the randomness of tragedy, seeking reasons for why they occur and trying to pin blame for the devastation on someone, or something. We know intellectually that “stuff happens”, but we find it hard to accept that sometimes there is just no reason for bad things to occur. If one is a Religious Fundamentalist, believing an omniscient God controls everything, since God is good it must be Satan controlling the supposed perpetrator. Therefore, when bad accidents occur to innocent, little children, someone has to assume blame. In this case, an overburdened mother, coming off from a bus and a four-year old behaving as four-year olds do and pulling away.

We can imagine the indignant feeling of a judgmental public wanting her called to account and the avenging feelings of Cops and Prosecutors, disdainful of her carelessness. This is what I call the “Avenging Mind”. This mindset believes that people deserve harsh punishment for their transgressions, not as reformation, but simply for the satisfaction of revenge. It is an angry, narrow-minded mindset, which internally treats itself with undue harshness and guilt. From a Fundamentalist perspective, we are all sinners, some restrained only by their certainty of punishment in the afterlife. God’s wrath though is not enough for them, because they will never see the punishment to occur. They need the vicarious thrill of seeing it happen.

Isn’t this the reason people were fighting to get into Casey Anthony’s trial and that the television ratings for the verdict were astronomical? It was a need to see her face, as the verdict was delivered and the punishment pronounced. They hoped for the sadistic satisfaction that tears or a pained expression on her face would give them. This isn’t about her guilt or innocence, it is about the fact that many humans take satisfaction in revenge. There are millions of children, living and dying in this world in horrible circumstances, yet we avoid that macrocosm with its attendant crying out to our emotions and focus upon the death of one in millions.

This woman above, faced with the devastating loss of her child and the overwhelming guilty feelings accompanying it, was made to stand trial for vehicular homicide. She was convicted, but in a seeming show of mercy sentenced to no jail time. She never should have been tried on that charge in the first place, or put through the torture of a trial, to make sure that revenge was provided for the human mistake of an instant. The only crime we have here is the Driver’s, for his fleeing the scene. He was treated more humanely for his crime, while a grieving mother who will never forgive herself, was forced to undergo public humiliation and trial.

How do we educate the part of the public so inundated with the notion of sin and retribution, that revenge is not the purpose of the law? In theory, our legal system exists as an extension of our Constitution, to safeguard us all and to protect our society from those who would willingly do harm to others. Somehow, it has gotten all confused with God’s wrath and that is to our detriment.

 

Inflaming the Delusions of Trump and the Republicans is the American Myth of “Rugged Individualism”

Almost all of the dangers now facing our country, in this Age of Trump with Republican Control of Congress, stem from the primary American Myth of “Rugged Individualism”.  Belief in this mythology is at the base of the Republican hatred of government and its’ unfounded belief that we are all better off as lone individuals without any societal protections.  This myth has been destructive to our country in the past and it may well completely destroy us in the future.  When a society conflates heroic mythology, with mundane reality, it always results in devastating danger.

“I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday’s refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from.”–Hunter S. Thompson, Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)“

Mythology can be seen as the social glue of diverse groups. It is the accumulation of tales, beliefs, moral strictures and mores that gives a specific population a sense of homogeneity, allowing it to exist with synergy. This is true of nations, ethnic groups, religions and even political movements. One of the defining conditions in our nation is that we are one of the most diverse on this planet when it comes to religions and ethnicities. All of our original thirteen States came into existence via individual peculiarities of settlers, religious sects, slavery, climate and the spoils system of colonialism. About a third of the citizens of those thirteen colonies,  chafed under foreign domination and engendered a rebellion against the British Empire’s exploitation. Among that fractional populace, there fortunately resided a group of the colonies wealthiest citizens and greatest minds. The rebellion succeeded and a decade later a government emerged created by the novelty of a Constitution delineating how it was to be run.

As improbable as the rebellion against the world’s greatest power might have seemed, the ongoing success of this enterprise is even more of an improbability. From the beginning most citizens saw themselves as attached more to their individual states, than to the Federal Government. The subsequent history of this country is well-known, but what I think often gets missed is that the history as we know it is mostly a creation of an American mythology, which has given consistency to this diverse enterprise and served to inculcate waves of immigrants into seeing themselves as part of America. While a nation’s mythology may serve it as “social glue” it can also contain within it seeds of social dysfunction. What follows is my take on the American Myth of the “Rugged Individualist” and why though it may have had initial utilitarian value; it has become cancerous within our country and may lead to the disintegration of America as we know it.

 

Robert Becker’s OpEd at The Nation of Change which is titled “The Right’s Sham Religion of Rugged Individualism”  presents an excellent short essay on how the Right Wing today is using the myth of Rugged Individualism to attain and maintain political power. It served as my inspiration for this piece,  but rather then extensively quoting it I urge you to read it, while I spin off in a less political direction looking at Rugged Individualism from the standpoint of American Mythology. The study of Mythology in the tradition of Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Sir James George Frazer and Richard Slotkin has been a lifelong avocation of mine. Using Mr. Becker’s article as a kind of muse, I will look at “rugged individualism” from my synthesis of the ideas I’ve absorbed through the years and it is an insight that influences much of the way I view America’s current situation.

“Rugged Individualism definition:

The belief that all individuals, or nearly all individuals, can succeed on their own and that government help for people should be minimal. The phrase is often associated with policies of the Republican party and was widely used by the Republican president Herbert Hoover. The phrase was later used in scorn by the Democratic presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman to refer to the disasters of Hoover’s administration, during which the stock market Crash of 1929 occurred and the Great Depression began.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rugged+individualism

While it is true that Herbert Hoover is given credit for the coinage and usage of the words “rugged individualism”, in my view the concept and connotation of these words goes further back into American history as a mythological theme. With the advent of the “Social Darwinist” philosophical movement, that “pseudo-science” lent credence to the concept and helped blend it into the common wisdom of the country.

One way to view history is from a conspiratorial perspective. While I do think there have been many conspiracy’s that have indeed influenced the course of human events, I think that to view them as the result of evil cabals plotting their execution is to be naive as to the way we humans act and think. It is certainly true that the NAZI’s in Germany and the Communists in the USSR, conspired to gain power and then used propaganda to create national mythologies that were ultimately destructive in nature. Similarly, FDR’s Administration used ideology, and mythology to create propaganda to defend against these foreign forces. My thinking is that propaganda and its creator’s, no matter how cynical, ultimately start out with a set of mythological beliefs, sincerely understood to be ultimate truths by the propagandists. Julius Streicher and then Joseph Goebbels of the NAZI Party really believed that Jews were an evil plague upon humanity and then created propaganda to convince others of its truth. The un-examined acceptance of mythology, common wisdom if you will, is perhaps a person’s greatest handicap in trying to understand the world they live in.

Central to American mythology is the idea of the “rugged individualist” as the driving force behind our country’s success. This myth holds that all of American progress came through the exertions of extraordinary men, going their own way, charting their own courses and bringing the rest of the populace along with them as followers of their iconoclastic natures. We have the legends of Daniel Boone, “Johnny Appleseed” and Paul Bunyan to represent how individualists helped spread the White Man in his quest to claim all of our “manifest destiny”. Like most mythology, the process of the accretion of heroic stature onto real people came from a need to find “men” the populace could emulate and follow. This need came from the loose alliance of business and political interests seeking to make this country into a world power and seeking to exploit the bounty of its natural resources, as they each pursued their selfish interests.

In the Revolutionary War we saw the creation of heroic myths used to rally people to the cause and then glorify the revolution to a population that did not overwhelmingly support it. Once the battle had been won, a national mythology was needed to make this collection of localities and populations coherent. Think of Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys in upper New England.  Remember Nathan Hale’s speech on the gallows; Sam Adams radically rousing the people of Boston; Paul Reveres’ Ride; “The Shot Heard Round the World”;  and of course the Boston Tea Party. These people and instances, along with the individual mythology surrounding the wisdom of our “Founding Father’s”, were used as a common mythology to take a collection of diverse localities and meld them into a national whole. That there was much truth to the fact of the extraordinary talents of some of these individuals does not diminish their mythological aspect, merely it enhances it.

To bring us forward in time we see the mythology of the “rugged individualist” as the driving force of the American success story throughout our subsequent history. Behind that of course, is the belief in “great men” doing “heroic deeds” as being those who impel history, leading along the rest of us who lack their stature. We see this myth-making in the “Taming of The West”; in the Civil War; in our “Industrial Revolution”, in fact this theme of individual greatness runs through the entire history of this country and to illustrate it let me just list a bunch of names and allow you to conjure the images these names produce:

Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, George Armstrong Custer, John Jacob Astor, Eli Whitney, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Wyatt Earp, Jesse James, Thomas Alva Edison, Henry Ford, Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst, FDR, Dwight D. Eisenhower, JFK, MLK, RFK, Ronald Reagan, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

I’m sure as you read these names all of them are familiar to you, but beyond that familiarity there comes to your mind a back-story that is full of detail. Though all of these were real people, they have already passed into American Mythology, because of the mental associations you have with them and the partially mythologized detail of their particular life stories. I specifically chose those names because all of them can be associated with “rugged individualism”, American History, American Progress and the belief that great “Men” impel progress. The “Great Man” theme is certainly not unique to our country; it is in fact a common thread throughout humanity. Where America has taken this theme though, in the ideals of many powerful political and economic forces in this country,  is into the sense of “rugged individualism” representing the backbone of the “great men” who drive our history and create the mythology of “American Exceptionalism”.

If you accept “rugged individualism”, as exemplified by “Great Men”, as the driving force of progress and growth of our society, then logically it is to the needs of these “great men” that we must all cater. We see the truth of this today in the popularity of the works of Ayn Rand and the pervasive influence of libertarian philosophy. Viewing issues from this perspective leads one to the conclusion that any attempt by the government (or society) to restrain the individual rights of any person, or corporate entity, creates stifling counter-productive effects upon our country. If we are all merely individuals ultimately responsible to ourselves, then we must be the sole guardians of our personal interests, without any mediation from the “nanny state”.

In this 2012 election there was a recurring theme of much Republican and Libertarian argument that is the outgrowth of the “rugged individualism” mythology. The counterpoint between the people who “produced” for our economy and the 47% of those who merely took from it, was put forth repeatedly. The idea of the entrepreneur as the modern “rugged individualist” hero creating wealth for all of us, was so common as to be a “given” in much political debate. Even the ultimate representative of collectivist bureaucracy, the Corporation, was seen from a “rugged individualist’s” perspective; since they were run by “entrepreneurial hero” CEO’s, who with their strength of leadership and wisdom provided for their workers.

I believe that the idea of the “rugged individual”, seen through the lens of American History, is not only dangerous but utterly false. I assert that it is contrary to the history of humanity from prehistoric ages unremembered. Humans are by nature “social” animals and humanity’s ascension to dominance on this planet is the result of building societies of ever greater complexity. Yes, to be sure, the actions of great individuals have spurred progress and change for better or worse, but all change occurs limned by the social structure where it occurs. We have had “great people”, geniuses perhaps, moving us forward via innovation due to their thinking outside the box. Yet this genius was nurtured in a particular social context that allowed it to grow. Michelangelo was a genius in his time, but his time included Leonardo Da Vinci and was after all “The Renaissance”. Sir Isaac Newton was a singular genius, but then too Gottfried Liebnitz was his contemporary and their time was the beginning of the “Enlightenment”. Thomas Edison was a genius electrical inventor, but his contemporary of no mean skills and accomplishments was Nikola Tesla and their time was the height of the “Industrial Revolution”.

Despite common belief to the contrary, Henry Ford invented neither the automobile, nor the “assembly line”, but he certainly helped to perfect both, again in the context of an ongoing “Industrial/Technological” Revolution. I celebrate the “individual” who has the ability to think counter to the myths they are born with and who strives to introduce new ways of looking at the world. For better, or ill, I’ve tried to act that way in my own life, so I certainly am no justifier of collective thought and action. Yet no matter how much I would like to believe that I am not the product of my heredity, my social milieu and the country of my birth, I must accept that all of those elements and many more shaped me.

The specious philosophy of “rugged individualism” has caused much ill to this country. It has lent itself to the companion myth of “American Exceptionalism”, because that thinking goes with our “ruggedly individualistic” mythology that this country has been raised above all others and it is our destiny to enforce our hegemony. This myth has actually allowed us to create a mythology similar to the mythologies created in countries with overwhelming ethnic homogeneity, like Hitler’s Aryan purity premise in Germany, French “cultural superiority” and/or the Serbs vs. the Croats and vice versa.

We humans do have a need for mythology as a means of establishing societal connectivity. At the same time though, when we allow ourselves to become blinded by the myths we live by, we lose the ability to see our world clearly enough to make logical decisions on the issues that we face. To me the scariest thing about politics in the world today is that our discussions and our debates are muddied by mythological premises to such an extent that we can’t hear other points of view, or allow ourselves to consider them. While this has been generally true throughout human history, our species has never had the power before to destroy everything and everyone. Because of that destructive ability it is imperative that we look beyond our myths to see our present world as it really is. We are on the brink of so many disasters like climate change, over-population and water shortage, that we must seek means of dealing with them. Yet due to the inhalation of various counter productive mythologies we merely talk at each other, allowing events to overwhelm us, as we remain in a state of inaction.  In our America, the myth of the “Rugged Individualist” is the most destructive myth of all.

 

Five Things We’ve Learned (Or Haven’t Learned) About America in the Age of Trump

When I was a boy, so long ago, the 21st Century was a science fiction dream in a distant, hopeful future where the world be a better place and full of wonders. America was the land of the victors, with a “Dream” so strong that we were the preeminent country in the world. Our country had unprecedented military might and with unlimited opportunity awaiting us all. Now I am old and I’m seventeen years into that once wondrous appearing Century. America and our world has become an environment of wonders that in my childhood were only posited in science fiction. I was born into a world without television, cell phones, computers and the like. Now I go nowhere without my cell phone, am constantly in touch with the internet, use a GPS for driving directions and I’m in possession of a number of digital devices barely conceived long ago. Since the technological world didn’t end as some predicted about New Years 2000, we all live in this new century of wonder and yet the old horrors of humanity still exist. Wars are still being fought. Bigotry is still prevalent and the “rich” still get richer. Billions of humans still live in abject poverty and have not benefited from all the scientific advances that have been made in my lifetime. We denizens of the internet seem fascinated by lists and so I thought I’d compile a Top Five List of my own:

5 Things We’ve Learned (or Haven’t) About America in the 21st Century:

1.  Democratic principles don’t prevail in our electoral system.

The 21st Century really began with an election wrongly decided by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court of the United States. They made a ruling in favor of stopping the recount of the key votes in Florida. In their decision it was pointedly stated that it was not to be used as precedent for future cases. Given the stated preferences  of that conservative majority has almost always been to bolster the rights of individual states, it was inconsistent with their own purported judicial ideals. All of those Judges too had a long history of following the Federalist Society , whose precepts decried the work of previous “active” SCOTUS Justices, that had failed to follow the Originalist method of interpreting the Constitution. Yet somehow, in a one time ruling, the “men of honor” cast aside previous beliefs to elect a man whose family was directly involved in their being nominated to the Court. They also turned a blind eye to the fact that the then Governor of Florida was a brother of their preferred candidate and that the details of mishandling the election and disenfranchising voters cast some suspicions on his use of power. From the result of this SCOTUS ruling in undemocratically deciding a national election all other examples of what this country has lost in this new Century have flowed.

2. America has become a nation ruled by fear:

For America the signal event of this century so far has been 9/11, a day that has become so ubiquitous that all that is necessary to conjure a myriad of thoughts in most people, is to simply state those two numbers. For me, alive for all these years, I can remember the events of 9/11 more clearly than I can remember some of the fun times with my kids. Because of my age, the only comparable day in my memory was the day JFK was murdered. That too is a day that had many bad consequences in the years that followed. Etched so forcefully into the psyche of all Americans alive on 9/11 was the message that we were under attack and that attack happened at home, destroying two of the largest phallic symbols of our country, symbols that cast shadows over America’s true heartland Wall Street. The realization in Americans that we were not immune in our homeland from a terrorist attack struck fear into the hearts of a people of a once fearless nation. This was the country whose entire Pacific Fleet was wiped out at Pearl Harbor and yet within four years completely destroyed its enemies and their allies, by creating the most massive military juggernaut ever seen on this planet. Such was the fear, revulsion and anger of 9/11 that the quest for revenge was slaked by our political leaders, with few exceptions, approving a war against a country that had nothing to do with the cause of the attack. Our nation watched as this second Iraq War began with an attack called “Shock and Awe” . While Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 a proven fact with which some still disagree, it had much to do with that country’s oil reserves. The Bush Family is intertwined with the oil industry and are partners with Saudi Arabia in many a consortium. Then too, Dick Cheney also has a background in oil and also served as the head of “Halliburton” a company whose checkered history was also involved in the oil industry. This company became a leading defense contractor and no doubt has made Cheney into a very wealthy man.

We were able to make war on Iraq and then Afghanistan mainly because America’s sense of security was turned to fear by 9/11 and skillfully manipulated by a corporate news media, whose key phrase, repeated continually was “This Changes Everything”. In America’s new fear of attack, we were to see this philosophy implemented in many ways throughout the ensuing years and still today. Our country, once proudly seen as the “Home of the Brave” has been turned into the “Home of the Fearful”. This is not a critique of average Americans, or even the troops in our Armed Forces, because they have been skillfully manipulated by those in control of our society into being fearful, a state reinforced every day by almost all of the media available.

Since 9/11 Americans have been under a propaganda attack far more sophisticated and fear inducing than the “The Cold War” years propaganda. Although there was the dread of total nuclear destruction the Cold War never quite destroyed the Constitutional Rights of the American people, in the way that the fear induced by 9/11 has.

3. The American Dream is dead.

One month prior to the 2012 Presidential Election, while I was with Jonathan Turley’s blog, I wrote about “The American Dream” . What I wrote then holds even more truth today. In it I quoted Professor Jerome Karabel stating:

“[T]his cherished view of America is now a myth. The reality is in fact quite the opposite: Family origins matter more in the United States in determining where one ends up in life compared to other wealthy democratic countries. This is a recent development. Studies of social mobility as far back as the 1950s and 1960s showed that rates of movement in the United States were generally comparable to other developed countries. This finding itself challenged the longstanding image of America as exceptionally open, but it is a far cry from today, when the United States rates at or near the bottom in comparative studies of social mobility.

To take just two examples, a study by Jo Blanden and colleagues at the London School of Economics found that a father’s income was a better predictor of a son’s income in the United States than in seven other countries, including Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom. And a review article by Miles Corak at the University of Ottawa, based on 50 studies of nine countries, found the United States tied with the United Kingdom as having the least social mobility, trailing not only Norway and Denmark but France, Germany, and Canada.”

You will find further documentation from other respected sources in that piece. What is clear is that this is still a matter of concern and the evidence of the social disparity in America and the economic disparity is overwhelming. It is even accepted around the political spectrum that Americans can no longer expect that their children will do better than they did economically, which after all is the aspiration of the “American Dream”.

4. America has turned into a police state.

One of the oft-repeated precepts for our fear of the Soviet Union and China during the “Cold War” was that both those countries were “police states”. As it was defined constantly in TV, newspapers, movies and literature a “police state” existed in those countries because the State spied on all of its’ citizens creating a “climate of fear”, which stifled free expression and the exercise of freedom of choice. They were also “police states” because the police had seemingly unfettered authority to harass, physically intimidate, arrest indefinitely and even kill those it deemed “criminals”. With 9/11 came the fear and with the fear came the creation of the “Patriot Act” which has legitimized the abrogation of our Constitutional Rights in favor of greater security. In an ironic twist, supposedly conservative lawmakers, banded together with supposed liberal lawmakers, to create this act and also to create the super agency “The Department of Homeland Security”.

This super agency literally has its finger in every aspect of American life. It has also been responsible for the militarization of American police via the funding of “Swat Teams” and the funding of police training in using “Military Methodology” in dealing with American citizens.

5. American Mainstream Media hides the real news from us.

The American News media is controlled by an ever narrowing group of corporations. While the political bias of Rupert Murdoch’s crews are apparent, perhaps less apparent to most Americans is that almost all of the rest of the corporate media serves as both news suppressors and propaganda suppliers as well. The news they suppress relates to corporate control and malfeasance, especially where it relates to issues of foreign policy. The propaganda aspect comes from the use of patriotic memes like “We honor your service” to legitimize the war crimes committed by this country in the interests of the oil industry and private corporations. Even the most jaded among us cannot help but have compassion for the American Troops who put their lives at risk for this country, only to return or not, with maiming, PTSD and poor economic prospects. Yet that compassion within us is manipulated in the service of American Empire and corporate world domination. This is encouraged/abetted by the communications corporations that dominate our consciousness and set the boundaries of discussion. This situation is summed up in this excellent article: “The Biggest Scandal in America is its Controlled Press”

So here we are in The Age of Trump, a man elected with the aid of a hostile power and the peculiarity of our Electoral College,  which gave him the Presidency, despite his losing the popular vote by 3 million.  This fraudulent failure, made to seem a success by reality TV and a media enjoying his clownish behavior in the interest of ratings, ran a campaign solely based on fear.  This malignant mountebank stoked the underlying racism (which itself is fear) of barely enough voters, by disparaging Latinos, Muslims and People of Color.  He insisted, despite the facts, that America was a land of dangerous, murderous crime and used the dog-whistle phrase “Law and Order” to give the message that Black People would be suppressed. Donald Trump was elected President by the use of fear, whether from people of color, immigrants, Muslims, women, or liberals.  In the midst of his incompetence,  cupidity and deceit, he is trying to maintain his now tenuous grasp of the Presidency by invoking fear.

The question for all of us, those truly patriotic Americans angered by the theft of our Country by those who would make us afraid is: what can we do to resist and prevail against those who would rob us of our freedom by making us afraid?

John McCain’s Vote on Healthcare Wasn’t Heroic….He Was Just Doing the Right Thing

Ever since our messed up political system installed a narcissistic bully as president, the 60% of Americans who were appalled by this have been desperately searching for some comfort that this too shall pass. In the midst of our justifiable need for a restoration of a semblance of normalcy in our country,  we grasp at straws in our search to find some good news.  With John McCain’s announcement that he would vote against the cruelly, inhuman Graham-Cassidy Health Care Bill we here plaudits and hosannas from pundits and journalists extolling McCain’s “heroism“. 

One apt dictionary definition is: Heroism consists of putting others first, even at your own peril. In other words, the main element of being heroic is that a hero is someone who risks their own interests in the service of others. While McCain’s history as a Prisoner of War defines his actions back then as heroic because of his refusal of special treatment above those of his fellow prisoners.

One cannot deny that this Senator suffered lasting physical injury from his time as a POW and persevered through tears of torture.  The Defense Department estimates that during the Vietnam era there were about 2,500 American prisoners of war. Many of these were repatriated also suffering disabling injuries both physical and psychological.  The difference between McCain and most other POW’s, was that his father and grandfather were Four Star Navy Admirals.  When McCain’s interest turned to politics, he was in an advantageous position because of his lineage and because of the wealth and political connections of his second wife. His campaign staff never missed an opportunity to use his POW history and his military lineage to advance his political interests.

Although McCain has courted the idea that he is an independent maverick, the truth is that his congressional voting history shows that he has been a rather regular conservative Republican:

“McCain has been a fairly reliable Republican vote since entering the Senate in 1987. From 1987 to 2015, McCain voted with the Republican Party 87 percent of the time on party-line votes in the average Congress. The median senator during that period voted with his or her party 91 percent of the time. So McCain’s body of work in the Senate doesn’t look very maverick-y, even if he has been slightly less likely to vote with his party than the median senator.“

Perhaps the most damning gesture by John McCain was his choice of the execrable Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. Regarding McCain’s choice of Palin,  Steve Schmidt a senior campaign strategist for McCain in 2008 has stated:

“For me and the experience I had on this campaign is that there are worse things than losing,” Schmidt said. When he was asked to spell that out, he said, “When a result happens that puts someone who’s not prepared to be president on the ticket, that’s a bad result. I think the notion of Sarah Palin being president of the United States is something that frightens me, frankly. And I played a part in that. And I played a part in that because we were fueled by ambition to win.” Here.,

In McCain’s ambition to win, he inflicted upon American politics, a self-serving no-nothing phony Fundamentalist, slavishly supporting a radically conservative ideology.  This was neither heroic, nor laudable.

Returning to the essence of what Heroism, we can all agree that a key factor is that Heroism requires an element of personal risk. Sadly, under the death sentence of incurable brain cancer, John McCain has risked nothing in refusing to vote for an unconscionable Republican Health Care Bill.  In fact the cynic in me could posit that he is trying to burnish his future legacy. My point is that I am happy that McCain has chosen to do the right thing in this instance, but his doing the right thing was not an act of heroism.

Our country is now faced with the greatest crisis in our history, led by a deranged, narcissistic fool presiding over a political party controlled by the Koch brothers billion$.  Our RESISTANCE is not an act of heroism even though it entails risks for us.  We RESIST because we love our country and understand that we face great danger if Trump and his billionaire backers succeed in their desire to overturn our Constitution and complete the transformation of the United States into a dictatorial oligarchy modeled upon the Putin kleptocracy.  We need to stop canonizing Heroes to lead us and coalesce as a movement of patriots, acting in our own self interest, to transform our country into a realization of our highest aspirations.

How We Know That Our America is Getting Crazier Than We Could Have Imagined

With a five day hiatus, while driving South to my home, I had a lot to think about while behind the wheel.  In the almost ten months since our country elected a dim witted Reality TV star as president, each new day seems to bring many more examples of the insanity that has overtaken the United States.  The depressing truth though is that this craziness has been a long time coming, but it occurred in small increments that appeared unrelated to each other.  It is all too easy to identify this disgusting person who is now president as responsible for the national disorder we’re in, but in a large sense he is only the detritus washed up by a tsunami of human greed and stupidity assaulting our shores. Politicians, historians, journalists and pundits of all manner can no doubt trace a litany of mistakes and false steps that have led us to this situation and in my small way that’s why I’ve bothered to write these past six years.  I say bothered because I do so with the full knowledge that I have but a tiny voice in these matters, as I clutch the elephant’s tail providing me with an incomplete knowledge of how this craziness all came to pass.  Here are some seemingly disparate items from only the past week that indicate how alarming matters have become.

You Know Things Are Crazy When:

The U.S. President threatens to totally destroy a nation of 25 million people, before a World body created to promote peace among nations.

When the United States Senate is trying to pass a destructive health care bill simply to fulfill campaign promises made to obliterate the deeds of the former president, who is hated merely for the color of his skin.

“You know, I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley told local reporters, according to The Des Moines Register. “But Republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign. That’s pretty much as much of a reason as the substance of the bill.”

A former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was twice removed from office because he believes that the sovereignty of God, as he defines it, takes precedence over the U.S. Constitution, is the favorite to be elected that state’s Senator.

Alabama Senate Frontrunner: Evolution Is Fake And Homosexuality Should Be Illegal

The long standing problem of the Air Force Academy’s hierarchy pushing evangelical, right wing Christianity upon its’ cadets, starts showing results when a US Air Force chaplain says Christians who tolerate other religions ‘serve Satan’ and apparently the Air Force hierarchy will do nothing.  This is even though the military oath requires that member will uphold and protect the U.S. Constitution

“part of the problem stems from the AFA’s Colorado Springs location. The city hosts many evangelical parachurch organizations, such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, as well as New Life Church, an evangelical church founded by its former pastor Ted Haggard. He added that some of these groups have access to the academy, including cards that get them into dorms. “You have very strong encouragement — basically carte blanche access to cadets by the leadership of the academy by these groups,”

When hurricanes devastate “Red” States and the national media gives a forum to Right Wing Evangelical con men, who claim it is the “judgement of God” because for instance Houston had elected a lesbian mayor. Which is perhaps because they know full well that these States went for Trump.

“These hurricanes are not the result of global warming; they are the Judgment of God because of the innocent blood crying to Him for vengeance,” Terry wrote on Christian Newswire.  Hurricanes for abortions, then. And from this point on in our exploration, God will be dragged into nearly every wild explanation of Hurricane Irma, or Hurricane Harvey before it, or the solar eclipse before that — or the coincidence of all of them, as the more apocalyptic theories elaborate upon.

Re: Harvey, the televangelist Jim Bakker quickly blamed the deadly flood it caused upon God, as Dana Milbank noted for The Washington Post. On Bakker’s YouTube show Friday, a room full of co-hosts added to the list of divine charges: Irma in Florida, wildfires on the West Coast, the eclipse and an especially ominous spate of tremors around the Yellowstone volcano.“Our East Coast is being engulfed in water, and our West Coast is on fire,” Ricky Bakker noted, and asked: “Why is the earth being so shaken?”  He answered himself a few minutes later: “Judgment is coming to America.” He meant a biblical judgment that precedes the Bible’s final, gloomy prophecies — and then the second coming of Jesus Christ.”

Trump still has the overwhelming support of the Christian Evangelical community, that believes he will lead them to an America based upon Jesus’ teachings, even though the man has a history of immorality and fraud. This community, which is a small subset of worldwide Christian belief, has sold out their God and their parishioners by joining forces in crafting a right wing, corporate version of Christianity which doesn’t exist in the Gospels. Unfortunately, for our country, the mass of Evangelicals who claim to be adherents to “their bible and Jesus” really biblically illiterate and follow the oratory of con men like Jerry Falwell, who pick and choose scripture to suit their quest for wealth and power. As well known Conservative political pundit Michael Gerson has written of the Trump/Evangelical affinity:

“First, evangelicals don’t have a body of social teaching equivalent, say, to Catholic social doctrine. Catholics are taught, in essence, that if you want to call yourself pro-life on abortion, you also have to support greater access to health care and oppose the dehumanization of migrants. And vice versa. There is a doctrinal whole that requires a broad and consistent view of social justice. Evangelicals have nothing of the sort. Their agenda often seems indistinguishable from the political movement that currently defends and deploys them, be it Reaganism or Trumpism.

Second, evangelicalism is racially and ethnically homogeneous, which leaves certain views and assumptions unchallenged. The American Catholic Church, in contrast, is one-third Hispanic, which changes the church’s perception of immigrants and their struggles. (Successful evangelical churches in urban areas are now experiencing the same diversity and broadening their social concern.)

Third, without really knowing it, Trump has presented a secular version of evangelical eschatology. When the candidate talked of an America on the brink of destruction, which could only be saved by returning to the certainties of the past, it perfectly fit the evangelical narrative of moral and national decline. Trump speaks the language of decadence and renewal (while exemplifying just one of them).”

Donald Trump is a mentally disturbed, information-ally ignorant, narcissistic fraud of a leader, who is followed because most Republican politicians are more concerned with the desires of their super-rich backers, than the needs of the people that elected them.  These people are willing to set aside the institutions of our country, in order to satisfy their own lusts. In the context of the danger to our country’s future this is crazy.  On the other hand there is the dominionist Christian heresy, sold as Gospel to believers who have no clear understanding of the Christian Bible, by religious hucksters playing on fear. This heresy cons people, who believe that Armageddon is to come in their lifetimes into unconditionally supporting perhaps the least holy person in America, in the name of God. To me this is all insane behavior that will end in the destruction of our country and perhaps the world, if we allow it to prevail.