tRumper Factions

Pro-tRumper voters can be assigned into one or more of five categories: ideologues, evangelicals, racists, opportunists and working people who have felt abandoned by the democratic party... this last the only category at all likely to shift.

Ideologues: this personality is characterized by belief impervious to evidence. It is a psychological commonplace that encountering new information leaves one the option of expanding or tweaking one's point of view to accommodate the new information or denying the new information. The belief that my grandfather was a wonderful, loving man would be challenged by information that he spent the World War II. years with the SS enthusiastically exterminating inmates at Auschwitz. Deny or tweak? The good German denies the holocaust, the good Patriot denies or rationalizes U.S. torture or, say, reports of a president's lies. Democracy is wonderful in this view but only so long as the right side wins. Perfectly acceptable to suppress the votes of those too ignorant to see the shining truth.

Evangelicals: here denial is more pointed. First of all the basic dogma is bedrock truth, no facts or argument necessary, just as with the ideologue but now with a religious twist. Jesus died for our sins blah blah... evangelicals aren't troubled by reports of outrageous presidential behavior, no need to deny them when told by their pastor that God's warriors are sometimes a bit rough around the edges, just so they're doing God's work. And that they are doing, according to the pastor. This usually amounts to opposing abortion, family planning and gay marriage and especially defending Christianity from secular attack. This attack translates, on examination, into obstacles set up by “secularists” (maybe even communists!) to prevent christian evangelicals from imposing their own little “sharia law” on the rest of us. Laws like the First Amendment of the Constitution providing freedom of (and from) religion. The founders well knew the tyrannical form organized religion could take and sought to avoid this by not favoring any one religion, keeping state and religion separate. This is fine with evangelicals for other religions but not theirs, theirs being the only true one. Just what the founders were afraid of. Democracy is not big with this group except in so far as their votes can affect their issues. Getting god's dictator in power is a much higher value. The recent article in the influential Christianity Today, is no doubt causing some cognitive dissonance for the evangelical. It calls for tRump's impeachment on grossly immoral grounds.

Racists: hard to talk about this group since their tenacious commitment to the “cause” is so ugly and transparent one wonders truly how they can maintain it. And their resistance to contrary information is so dogged that the other groups seem almost liberal in comparison. It certainly is about ego, suggesting a desperate insecurity that requires someone to look down upon. Dylan's line sums it up, “The poor white remains, on the caboose of the train, but it ain't him to blame he's only a pawn in their game.” Well that implies that someone (the 1% perhaps?) cynically uses the issue in their divide and conquer strategy to maintain their privilege. Early union organizing was really hurt by this divide. I suppose it goes way back to the days where small bands of humans distrusted other bands based on difference. Hell, I remember being ready to fight other kids because they were from a town 11 miles away – foreigners! The civil rights chant comes to mind, “The people united will never be defeated!”

Opportunists: of course this population is always alert for any opportunity to gain power and prestige. Mussolini was a Socialist in his early days but soon saw where the money and power lay. Newt Ginrich, Linsy Graham, Dick Cheney, Kissinger, Kelly Ann Conway, and a seemingly endless list of other shameless individuals recognize that serving 1% interests is the fast and easy path to personal wealth and power. Ralph Nader comes to mind as someone who made a modest career of refusing this easy money. The old expression, “Nice guys finish last.” or Cheney's statement that “...principal is fine but it only takes you so far.” Or Kissinger's cynical, “The issues are too important to allow the people of Chile to decide them.”, as he abetted a coup very costly in freedom and lives... and misery. Ask these guys though what motivates them they'll swing out the flag and drum corp for “freedom and democracy.” Not persuasively to the informed but that's not who they're talking to.

Workers: Reagan began his presidency by gutting a union and this was what the 1% had been working toward since Roosevelt's terms in office. They had fought tooth and nail to defeat his notions of government serving the poor with programs like social security and recognition of unions. They were successful in watering many down and in their campaign to demonize the word socialism. World War I. Vets who marched on Washington demanding their promised bonus were met, by Hoover, with bayonets. Roosevelt sent them coffee. After World War II. there was a shared prosperity in the U.S., limited for sure, by race, gender and class, but still prosperity for a significant portion of the population. But the forces of greed were under the radar organizing, culminating with a vengeance in Reagan's election. More and more workers were returned to the pre-union world of low wages and boss abuse, the “Humiliation of the marketplace” as Chomsky called it. Alienation was certainly felt by workers and Reagan's invented “Welfare Queen” was meant to divert and explain it, provide a nice scapecoat. When Bernie came along to pull the curtain aside, naturally he had to be marginalized, leaving the field to the great con-artist and establishment.

One further category is the owners, the 1%. As Chomsky points out, they generally could care less about abortion and gay marriage but are happy to see such issues used to swing votes their way. It is said that in a meeting with the newly elected Adolph Hitler, German industrialists were asked for funds to help solidify the victory after which there would be no more elections for a hundred years. The checkbooks came out, overcoming any squeamishness they might have had about this uncouth deal maker with dancing visions of unimpeded profits. I don't think this has to be underlined in its application to 2020.

Media Complicity & Elite Rule

Mainstream media, aside from the disgusting Faux News, has been exposing tRump's lies for some time, and that's just responsible journalism. But lest we be naive, we need to recognize their own lies: when it comes to nation states such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, to the extent that they pursue a vision that challenges global capitalism with a more benign alternative; when it comes to “allied” nation states that violate the rights of their own citizens or subjects or neighbors but serve U.S. Interests (read, interests of the U.S. 1%) such as formerly South Africa and currently Israel, Egypt, the Philippines, Honduras, Columbia... and with the recent elections in Great Britain, a virulent strain of reaction seems be seizing power in far too many locales. Gerrymandering, voter suppression and foreign interference certainly seem to be rampant in the U.S., and probably abroad, unless we are to believe that a “landslide” of British subjects have suddenly embraced fascism. And, as Chomsky  has pointed out, interference by the 1% in elections dwarfs foreign interference.

Their lies? Take the issue of media spin on countries pursuing alternatives to global capitalism. Venezuela has frequently been described as a dictatorship despite its elected government, whether Chavez or current leaders. A coup against a democratically elected president in Honduras was quickly accepted by the U.S., this under Obama the communist muslim, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of state. Obama did attempt a lightening up on Cuba but tRump put an end to that. When the U.S., under Reagan, was violently attacking Nicaragua in ways, that if conducted against the U.S. would clearly be denounced as terrorism (in fact the world court convicted the U.S. Of terrorism for its mining of Nicaraguan harbors in 1985). I remember watching mainstream television reporters standing in Honduras, at the border, pointing behind themselves with their thumb to the Sandinista-led “marxist” dictatorship, despite, again, being an elected government far more respectful of general liberties than the brutal fake democracies the U.S. Supported in El Salvador and Guatemala. U.S. rhetoric sings high praise to freedom and democracy but as just that, rhetoric. It claimed in the bad old days of the cold war that Russia was a repressive gulag but it turns out that it wasn't the brutality “we” objected to, but the anti-capitalism. In favored regimes, Guatemala and El Salvador, anyone advocating for a free press, unions or questioning of 1% rule soon were carted off to gruesome meetup with a death squad. Never a major problem for the caretakers of democracy in administration after administration.

Take the other issue, allies who routinely violate human rights. Recently Representative Ilhan Ohmar was villified, attacked by democrats and republicans alike, for mildly criticizing Israel's policies of land theft and oppression of Palestinians. According to Noam Chomsky, Israel's intent is to make life so miserable for Palestinians in the occupied territories that they will leave. This is increasingly applied also to Palestinian/Israeli citizens. Justification for this blind support is neatly summed up by Chomsky's statement that Israel, from the U.S. point of view, is “our” mid-eastern aircraft carrier, conveniently located near oil riches.

The U.S. was very slow to recognize the loss of its chief enemy, and justification for bloated but highly profitable, military spending, when the Soviet Union collapsed. At the first opportunity our democracy loving leaders supported the Yeltsin coup, shuttling aside Gorbachev who wanted a Swedish-style social democracy. Thus the arising of today's Russian gangster oligarchy. The “democratic spring” in Egypt caught our great leaders by surprise and they did what they could to support the ruling elite over those upstarts. And at home, did the police pepper-spray the bankers and stockbrokers pilfering the housing market and stock market or the uppidity protesters?

Well, these two categories of lies certainly lay out part of what those who actually prefer democracy are up against. And it is the anomie generated by these dominant forces that account for some of the attraction to tRump but it is clear that he is hardly a threat to but rather an amplification of elite rule, in a loose-cannon kind of anti-democractic caricature of populism. It is a quandry that we depend for information on 1%-owned media, a gradiant true, from Faux news on the hysterical right to CNN etc; supposedly liberal but actually maybe “moderate” to MSNBC which asks some great questions but in the end simply marks the left-most respectable position which DOES NOT question global capitalism. The New York Times and Washington Post might despise tRump but they do not pursue questions that discomfort their owners. A useful tool is fair.org which studies how the media is spinning things, the Intercept for a radical (read sensible) take. Speaking of that maligned term, who is radical? The politician calling for an assault rifle ban or the smarmy second amendment/NRA apologist? The advocate for nuclear disarmament or the proposal for trillion-dollar expansion of those doomsday arsenals? The idea of non-violent conflict resolution or military hegemony?                    Tom Ferguson (drawing by the author)

Update

James Baldwin & critical thought

Complaints Department

One of Eckhart Tolle’s many provocative ideas is that all,... ALL! complaining is of the ego. It isn't that one doesn't recognize unpleasant realities. A central and alarming unpleasant fact is that the wealthy class has disproportionate influence on our political process and so undermines democracy and creates serious obstacles to addressing an urgent crisis, several in fact: climate change, myriad other pollution issues, soil erosion and degradation, the continuing possibility of terminal nuclear war (it ain't over until these weapons are gone) and overpopulation/extinction of species (including us). There are many other obstacles and issues but the point is that preoccupying oneself in thought - blaming, posing enemies, nurturing grudges, anticipating disaster, or glory - stands in the way of presence, and presence is where our power lies. Ram Dass said it in three words, be here now.

An attempt to describe presence: ONEness comes to mind, the felt interconnection described by many religious, spiritual, artistic, poetic, scientific writers and thinkers... characterized by incredible beauty, the deeper one goes. The first level? Take a breath, here you are, no thought... as you stay you go deeper, thoughts arise, let them pass, it becomes a well that you can dwell in, to various degrees, coming back to surface to do your taxes or cross the street but keeping a foot in... and it reveals the moment as not a passing one but ONE that encompasses past and future... and the impulse to creativity that occurs in presence transcends ego as it is aligned with primal intelligence. The doing that comes out of presence is authentic, celebratory, joyous, and what is needed for the next step in evolution. And these are thoughts about it, not it... it is felt experience, non-narrative, and it accompanies the transitory bias that leads us to engage discrete slivers of time in order to... dance.

Maybe Tolle's definition will help: To feel, and thus to know, that you are; and to abide in that deeply rooted state is enlightenment.

Ok, so how does abiding in that deeply rooted state address climate change and rule of the rich? It is only in this abiding, presence, that we are connected to the intelligence that is self-evidently at the root of being, is in fact being, or consciousness. In that connection we experience peace and out of that peace comes creativity, what is needed to address, to overthrow as it were, the dysfunction currently running things here on planet earth. Awareness then is the most effective form of activism. Our power doesn't lie in persuading others by argument but in standing in alignment with essential intelligence. We don't decide to do good, we are good to the extent that we are present. In awareness, we may hit the streets, or write a poem, or start a business - we can't predict from a state of unconsciousness. If this appealing idea is not just another wishful fantasy, then the most urgent task at hand is cultivating awareness. From that will come, what Tolle calls, A New Earth.

Word Art

New Hat

American Radical, the Life and Times of I.F. Stone by D.D. Guttenplat

The book’s sub-title is not just an add-on. Surrounding I.F. Stone’s life are some very remarkable times. The 1930s depression, fascism, the New Deal, World War II., hi-jacking of government by anti-new dealers – true witch hunts, this time of “communists” and “fellow travelers”, completely ignoring the bill of rights for a time (not for the first time Eugene Debs fans will remember), the development and open-air testing of nuclear weapons, the use of same, the cold war, Dien Bien Phu, Algeria, … and, as they say, more. 

I.F. Stone’s youth was marked by a precociousness (first news sheet at age 14) that, by age 40, had brought him journalistic renown. His most visible gig was as an occasional panelist on Meet the Press but he was also known as an investigative journalist on several daily newspapers. By 1953 he was persona non grata, unemployable in his profession and hardly spoken to by friends. This was not the product of criminality or a sex scandal nor ethical breech. Stone became the victim of anti-communist hysteria conducted by opportunistic or ideological fanatics every bit as scary as the crop hovering currently around our White House. People were jailed, slandered, careers ruined by an inquisition of small-minded, self-promoting cads in congress, law enforcement and media.

Stone wrote for The Nation, a weekly, still honorably illuminating hypocrisy among our esteemed leaders to this day, and PM, a progressive daily long defunct. The author of American Radical in fact is the new editor of The Nation. Like the immature species we are, it seems that all attempts to seek some kind of order in the world, whether of the social justice flavor or of the fascist, are undermined by internecine brawling, sectarian dogma, ego forever steering the ship. Consistency and reason, claimed as guide by all factions, are routinely set aside whenever circumstances and loyalty, punishment or reward, demand. Witness the tRump administration as it blithely embraces outrageous, anti-democratic polices while White House staff conduct back-stabbing media-leaking as they jockey for position. Witness also the shameful democratic party attack and misrepresentation of dissenters from slavish subservience to Israel. Stone had a special fondness for Israel but his clear sightedness was not clouded by infatuation. He recognized early that justice for Palestinians was a prerequisite for a stable and peaceful Israel.

In the thirties and forties the Communist Party and “fellow travelers, liberals and various progressives, were gaining ground, given the calamitous impact of the capitalist depression on so many working people and the then apparent success of Communism. Thanks to ego again, the hijacking of the Russian revolution by the psychopathic Joseph Stalin and the masking of his crimes thwarted the dream of ending poverty and inequality. Those who most profited from the capitalist order also intervened, putting significant resources behind efforts to demonize communism and socialism. It has been said that the left always arranges its firing squad in a circle. But this holds true for most movements and helps explain why the Machiavellian path so often plows under the altruist. Stone, or Izzy as he was affectionately known, eventually gave up on the hopeless factionalism and sectarianism of the communist party, unhesitatingly critiquing it, though its ideal is where his sympathies lay. The right, more often in power though, held most of his journalistic and editorial attention, whether in The Nation, PM or his books.

As a prominent journalist Stone used his platform, indeed built his reputation on, exposing corruption in business and government. This of course made enemies but the writer was uncompromising in his search for a story. With the start of World War II. he became “respectable”, given his connections in the New Deal administration and his intense anti-fascist stance. He was quick to notice but also to forgive Roosevelt’s lapses though U.S. tardiness in acknowledging violent Nazi antisemitism was a great frustration. U.S., British and French support or indifference to the fascist coup in Spain was also a trial. Love of Democracy among (elitist) western rulers, mostly rhetorical, tends to become inconvenient when the “wrong” parties come to power, especially those with low enthusiasm for the preferred economic system which so benefits them. Vietnam would soon come around to prove this thesis for those who didn’t quite get it yet.

Prior to Stone’s fall from grace he was intimate with high officials in the Roosevelt administration. His admiration of Vice-president Wallace, and outrage at his ouster in favor of Truman, did not prejudice him against the new president, in fact he was quite optimistic. Truman, as a senator, was quite accessible and Stone thought him trustworthy. By the end of the decade he was unequivocally appraised of his error in judgment. His dogged criticism of J. Edgar Hoover and the congressional investigations eviscerating the constitution ignited those forces against him. An agent finally approached, demanding his passport. Many others had this experience, all as innocent as he of illegal acts but all guilty of insufficient subservience to power. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) was, at this time, grazing among the sheep, refusing to vigorously challenge government oppression. Stone and a handful of progressives formed the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (ECLC) to take their case to the supreme court. Izzy was the only board member not wealthy or safely pensioned so he soon found himself unemployable, even by The Nation. From the fall of 1951 Izzy was daily, and ridiculously surveilled by the FBI. His mail was opened, neighbors questioned, doorkeeper recruited to spy on him. All this while the FBI director denied the existence of the U.S. Mafia, that organization allegedly having compromising photographs of Hoover to insure his investigations excluded them.

This is where Izzy’s famous Newsletter saved him from destitution. He was able to build a following of subscribers that left him free to pursue his hard-boiled investigative journalism without limitations imposed by advertisers, owners and editors. His targets were the usual shenanigans in business, congress and the administration. He managed also to write a book, The Hidden History of the Korean War, a story in itself. Turned down by more than two dozen publishing houses, he was about to give it up when he ran into two old friends in the Central Park zoo cafeteria. The first thing to come up was that the former colleagues were publishing a new journal, Monthly Review, and asked Izzy if he knew anyone with something interesting to say about Korea. He sent them the manuscript and they were so impressed they decided to somehow raise the money to publish it. It’s reception was cool silence with a few deliberate establishment hatchet-job reviews. In time the book would gain a respectability by serious historians but the mid-fifties religion of anti-communism was too pervasive to allow an objective reading.

So the newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, bridged the considerable gap where Izzy wandered outside the economic wilderness of mainstream journalism. Page five of the first issue, January 17, 1953, 15 cents, is included in the book and it displays the writer’s deft verbosity. In quoting President Truman’s prescient comments about the threat of nuclear war Stone points out that the president’s sound recognition of the danger is completely negated by his failure to acknowledge the necessity of the alternative, co-existence. Truman favors the reckless strategy of demanding, in effect, Soviet surrender as the solution. Izzy comments, “To pursue such a policy with stubborn blindness while warning against its inevitable consequences is to give a drunken party and salve one’s conscience with a lecture on alcoholism.” In this kind of madness Stone sought soul mates such as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, the latter who offered, “I see with a great deal of disquiet the far-reaching analogy between Germany of 1932 and the U.S.A. of 1954.” It doesn’t take a renowned physicist to note the chilling relevance and applicability of such a statement to today’s world. Stone went on to critique the Bay of Pigs, pentagon infatuation with counter-insurgency (to include torture), and the coming Vietnam disaster. He was always there with the civil rights movement, greatly admiring the youthful SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee). SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) eagerly awaited the newsletter and sought Stone's council. Gradually he regained respectability, growing in demand as a speaker but still on the outlaw fringes of polite discourse. Stone was one of those rare figures, a true radical, who pitilessly pierced the fog of conventional wisdom, a practice that our survival depends on being more widely adopted.

Drawing by the author

Fire and Fury, Inside the tRump Whitehouse, Michael Wolff

 

Wolff's title comes from the rant tRump impetuously directed at North Korea, that it would be met with “... fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen...” this irresponsible mouthing, a terroristic threat really, came in response to a reporter's question about North Korea at an August 8, 2017 discussion of the opioid crisis. Trump had been reading a statement in a monotone, bored stiff, anxious to get back to his golf game. The question perked him up and Dr. Jekyl became Mr. Hyde, a loose cannon of major proportions, hiring and firing staff as impulsively as he tweeted whatever crossed his mind, surrounded by lackeys sucking up and vying for position, trying to channel his presidential power down whatever road their particular variant of right-wing ideology demanded, using always the strategy most likely to succeed, flattery.

An email forwarded around the Whitehouse, from a disgruntled staffer, then out onto the net, summarized what working for tRump was like: It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything – not one-page memos, not brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family (meaning of staff). I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror.

It bothers me when people call tRump an idiot. They do it out of anger and frustration and it’s hyperbolic. The man is certainly narcissistic but a literal idiot, no. Idiot Savant perhaps, for he’s capable of charming millions of people despite his many and dangerous faults. Referring to himself in the third person as a stable genius, hard to believe he isn’t joking but since he’s apparently not, something’s screwy.

The book covers the 9 month period of Steve Bannon’s tenure, a bazaar right winger with an anarchic streak toward chaos and strangely, in favor of single payer health care! Bannon and Kushner, tTrump’s son-in-law (with partner Ivanka, the president’s daughter) acted as though they were chief of staff while Priebus, the official chief of staff, suffered their interference and a more or less constant belittling from the president. Vicious, juvenile office politics ruled the White House from day one. The chief of staff is traditionally a powerful figure since everyone must go through him to get in to the oval office. tRump by turns megalomaniac and insecure narcissist... does all the talking in meetings, very little listening and makes decisions based on his “gut” unless relentless and massive interventions are applied. Even then, he can walk out of a room having agreed on some course and suddenly tweet the opposite. The whole administration is a failed state. tRump calls his daughter and Kushner the kids, supposedly New York liberals who he humors. Their intent seems to have been to bring in the Wall Street crowd to run things while Bannon’s was more in the scorched-earth Gestapo camp. Nothing much gets done except the cabinet appointees, all anti-democracy ideologues with frequent ethical lapses, out there doing damage from respective departments. House speaker McConnell stalled federal judge appointments under Obama, saving them for tRump, who attempted to reward a business crony with a judgeship. Staff intervention turned the appointment duties over to the Federalist Society, assuring over 100, to-date, right wing extremists now sitting on the federal bench, including of course the Supreme Court. This of course, in addition to those Bush/Cheney installed. In Georgia we can be grateful that somehow progressive judge Totenberg slipped through the ideological filters.

I.F. Stone, in his book on the Fifties shows how governmental abuse is not exactly new but he also cites a 1957 supreme court decision that put an end to senate and house committee trampling of citizen rights in hearings that were truly witch-hunts. The current supreme court would doubtless come down in favor of such congressional misbehavior though they would probably protect trump’s prerogatives under Dick Cheney’s theory that if the president does it, it’s legal. The recent movie Vice also confirms that sinister attacks on democracy are hardly unprecedented but trump’s administration is pretty unique in its clown car chaos. Fire and Fury narrates the downfall of Steve Bannon, though he is still out there in zany never right-wing land doing mischief, especially in Europe, working to birth a new fascism there. The book also provides a glimpse of billionaires who throw their disproportionate influence around our government, and it also documents the dysfunction we have voted upon ourselves which ought, we can hope, to inspire an uprising at the ballot box.

Ruminating on Utopia

The coming U.S. electoral struggle is going to be down and dirty. The right is entrenched, inflexible, outnumbered but more than willing to compensate with gerrymandering, voter suppression, Russian assistance, e-voting fraud and outright cheating. And, as Chomsky points out, the largest interference with our elections comes from U.S. corporations and wealthy elites. There will be no converting what Chomsky calls the most dangerous political party in our history, but it would be a mistake to allow them to set debate terms. It is the general voter who must be reached. The right wants the discussion to pit capitalism against socialism because of the advantage the former generally holds, given years of indoctrination in media, schools, churches and most institutional life in the U.S. They will try always to get their opponent defending socialism and link that to communism and the worst abuses of that system, ignoring/denying of course the worst aspects of capitalism. It might be helpful to consider that there is Big capitalism and little capitalism. To lump them together as the villain is to alienate some potential allies. The real issue is more clearly found on different terrain. The poles are not capitalism versus socialism but greed and domination versus decency and democracy. This gets us more immediately to the issues, by-passing a couple very loaded words and some default loyalties.

I.F. Stone's collection of essays, The Haunted Fifties, 1953-1963, a Nonconformist History of Our Time demonstrates that the anti-democracy tRump phenomenon, though certainly on steroids, is not new. Wisconsin Senator McCarthy was smearing reputations and careers and constricting debate to a narrow right-wing, jingoist range where few officials were safe from charges of disloyalty or “un-Americanism”... or courageous enough to speak out. McCarthy was embroiled in financial impropriety which, if revealed, could have stopped his rampaging much earlier but political cowardice won out. Eventually he, like Nixon, stepped on the wrong toes or out-lived his usefulness but while he conducted hearings the inquisition was live. One victim was Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein's parents who were reduced to managing a laundry mat to make a living. But they were far from being alone. On the other end of the fame-spectrum Charlie Chaplain was forced, or elected, to leave the country. Many Hollywood artists and writers were harassed and blackballed, some with the connivance of the president of the Screen Actor's Guild, Ronald Reagan. Most of the victims were exercising their constitutional rights by joining a party or engaging in political activity that resisted the ruthless domination of the ruling class. This technique of labeling those who demanded justice and real freedom as subversive was (and is) frequently found useful by those who orchestrate and profit from injustice.

In critiquing the then new Eisenhower administration Stone points out the appointment to key cabinet positions of defense contractors, oil industrialists and corporate lobbyists. One of the appointees, dismissing conflict of interest questions around his General Motors investments, commented that “...what is good for General Motors is good for America.” The more things change the more they stay the same. I think it's called BAU, business as usual. Joseph Heller in his magnificent novel, Catch 22, used that phrase to good effect to unmask insidious corporate nightriders.

Just as today we have anti-science climate change deniers, the political climate in the 50s allowed the U.S. to dismiss proposals to do away with nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union, claiming that the Soviets then would have a numerical conventional advantage. Even when the Soviets agreed to limit conventional arms the U.S. rejected, apparently ranking profits for the military industrial complex to survival of our civilization. Going against science and going against popular will, BAU.

Another more recent book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, by Peter Pomerantsev. Confirms that Russia is completely corrupt, run by and for gangster/oligarchs and that as these characters attempt to park their wealth in safe places, particularly London, they bring their corruption. The author holds double citizenship in England/Russia so focuses on that relationship but, given other books on the subject, it is clear that the U.S. is hardly free of this spreading contagion.

White Supremacy and Extremism, Southern poverty Law Center

It used to happen that, arriving at a party, a perfectly innocent neighborhood party say, within five minutes I would be engaged with a fascist. I suppose there's one at every party and I'm for some reason a magnet and incapable of resisting baiting. This lack of judgement has had me embroiled in many fruitless on and off-line discussions. I eventually, however, recognize the futility and back away, always striving to maintain respect and civility while engaged, sometimes slipping. In a recent exchange I encountered the idea that the “violent left” is preparing an insurrection to grab “illegitimate power”. In the wake of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the murder of journalists in Maryland, this seemed preposterous, especially when used to characterize the whole “left” which apparently, from the right's point of view, is anyone not a fascist. I recall the provocateurs among anti-WTO demonstrators in 1999 Seattle, breaking windows, throwing bricks etc; I always thought there were under-cover police instigating at least some of that violence, a not uncommon police tactic from the 60s. Once a fringe group starts breaking windows the police can be turned loose with truncheons and pepper spray. They don't always need an excuse of course.

So in the mail comes recently a publication from the Southern Poverty Law Center (splcenter.org/hatewatch), Hate and Extremism in 2018. The 32 page tract is a selection from SPLC's Hatewatch blog investigating the Proud Boys and other elements of the radical right. Proud Boys is described as a collection of militaristic hate groups that frequently join neo-Nazi and white supremacist rallies. The Make America Great Again hats have a definite presence. Members seem to specialize in knocking critics to the ground and commencing the fine art of kicking them senseless. They talk a lot about “freedom” but it's hard to square such words with their actions. Maybe they mean freedom for them to violate the liberty of others. And the highly charged word is probably appropriated for its prestige and crudely associated to legitimize their violence, if only in their minds. The Oath Keepers militia planned training sessions for its members to use “lethal force” at far-right rallies, based on this wild belief that the “left” is planning violent revolution.

Organizers invited attendees to bring weapons to Rallies in Berkley, California and Portland, Oregon which were marked by assaults on counter-protesters, both by the right and by police. The police seem too often sympathetic to the right, ignoring their violence or deeming both sides at fault (tRump's “there are good people on both sides” remark comes to mind). The FBI seems more interested in infiltrating and containing legitimate free speech activists like Black Lives Matter than in right wing hate groups. Two white neo-nazis, however, were convicted in separate cases in Charlottesville for exercising their “freedom” to kick opponents to and on the ground.

Returning to my confusion around the right's paranoid claims of “left” violence, the reports include mention of a small faction among counter-protesters, antifa or antifascist, who do antagonize and mirror the right in their eagerness for confrontation and combat. Again, this is small, not characterizing the whole movement, and subject to the same skepticism about police provocateurs as above. There is no record of antifascist shooting or killing anyone in the past several decades but the racist “alt-right” has been involved in murdering 43 people and injuring 67 over the past four years alone.

The right “soldiers” I so foolishly attempted to engage remained silent when I asked where they got their information. I provided my sources - Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Jane Meyer, Commondreams.org, Fair.org, The Intercept, Democracynow.org etc; I did visit brietbart and found it a total bore. Maybe it was a bad day but I saw none of the outrageous stuff I expected. The SPLC report mentions right websites and web presence via instagram, twitter, reddit and many have been banned due to their hateful content. Censorship always makes me uncomfortable but I have mixed feelings about this stuff. Milo Yiannopoulous, a racist alt-right figure, was quoted that he was looking forward to vigilantes gunning journalists down on sight. Two days later we had a mass shooting, five dead, at a newspaper office in Maryland. This disturbing report reminds me of the post World War I. clashes in Germany where the right would provocatively march into neighborhoods that supported unions and the left and terrorize the population with assault, even killings. From a recent song on the album Protection on the cut Random Rifle Fire, “There's something awfully dreadful running through our age, lingering from last century ferocious karmic rage.” https://thinkspeak.bandcamp.com/track/random-rifle-fire

At Home, A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson

Bryson, in his various entertaining books, likes to poke at the reader's vulnerability with quick accounts of the many historical catastrophes, whether plague, war or primitive medical procedures. Or he might cite the coming nuclear holocaust, random meteor hit or volcanic eruption that will swiftly turn the earth into a vacant desert. To be sure, all this stuff is perfectly possible. In his sketches of remarkable individuals he also keeps our attention by citing their extreme financial success or, more often, their poverty, suffering and lack of recognition, despite contributing mightily to the march of civilization. I imagine him having a team of researchers who hand him lists of fascinating facts which he weaves into his text, around a theme. In his book One Summer, 1927, he uses events from that short fecund period as springboards to examine the broader picture. Lindberg crossing the Atlantic to look at aviation, Babe Ruth to look at baseball, its history, including salaries. He does much the same in At Home, spinning off the rooms in a rectory he purchased in England.

The small church graveyard near the rectory, he early in the book tells us, is final resting place to 20,000 souls, layered over the many years such that the church itself seems to be sinking into the rising land. As the author moves from room to room he expands outward in his narrative to some of the many stories his research has compiled. The “hall” for example evokes the evolution of the word and an examination of living conditions over time, from primitive, shared, no-privacy quarters to today's many-roomed mansions. How did early humans survive the winters, heat their quarters, cook their meals, order their affairs, treat their servants, serve their masters? How were parsons privileged, what was the typical culinary arrangement at the dinner table – or cave floor, depending on timeframe?

A typical story is of Joseph Paxton, humble gardener, who came up with a design for a grand exhibition building when nearly 300 proposals by architects were turned down as unworkable, too expensive and incapable of being built in the timeframe necessary. His design out-shown the professionals aesthetically, came in under budget and made the near impossible timeline. The solution was a very large scale greenhouse. Bryson uses the occasion to comment on the times, 1851, when glass was so expensive that most structures had small and few windows. Events coincided such that the lowering of a glass tax, Paxton's availability and a happenstance visit to a French exhibit contributed to the happy outcome. Paxton, incidentally, was the inventor of the Christmas card. And did you know that the outdoor privvy was the rule, in London and elsewhere, until this exhibition which had flush toilets, which turned out to be as popular as the exhibits and sparked a new trend?

Speaking of France, another spin-off, this time of the room called passage (or hallway). The Eiffel Tower was built of iron, just as it became, as building material, obsolete. Steel had just been invented, making way for the industrial revolution. That little aside, how steel was accidentally discovered by blowing air into pig iron, comes under the chapter titled, The Cellar. Anyway, Alexandre Gustave Boenickhausen-Eiffel had a reputation as a noted bridge builder. He also designed the superstructure for the Statue of Liberty, the thickness of which, Bryson informs us, is less than a tenth of an inch. Eiffel's solution to that problem, created the technique of curtain-wall construction, the most important building technique of the twentieth century, making skyscrapers possible. All that from the Passage. Of 100 entries in a competition for an iconic centerpiece for the Paris Exposition of 1889, Eiffel's was chosen. Who can think of Paris without bringing to mind this structure? Yet certain French celebrities embarrassed themselves in their opposition to this “atrocity!”. Not mentioning any names but some of their initials were, Emile Zola, Paul Verlaine and Guy de Maupassant. Bryson mentions that not only was it the largest thing ever built but the largest completely useless thing.

So merrily on goes Bryson, covering The Study, The Kitchen, The Pantry, The Garden, The Bathroom (of course – did you know that ancient Babylon had drains and sewage system and the Minoans had running water and bathtubs well over 3500 years ago?) , The Dressing Room, The Nursery and ending with, yup, The Attic. Bryon's attic has a tiny, architecturally baffling balcony from which he gazes out on the landscape, imagining how it must have appeared at various past times, - back to the Roman occupation, way back to lions, elephants and exotic fauna grazing on arid plains. And with this he explains that the difference there is attributable to a temperature that humans alive today will live to see again. A change humans will have to adapt to at a much faster than geologic pace. His closing sentence, “The greatest possible irony would be if in our endless quest to fill our lives with comfort and happiness we created a world that had neither.”

Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle

When the spirit of the ruler moves against ye, yield not. One might be forgiven for seeking an alternative to the urgings of Ecclesiastes, after beating one's head against the very unyielding obstacle of status quo politics for awhile. It seems only a tiny portion of the electorate recognizes the threat of Fascism, of environmental collapse by nuclear war, climate change or just steady and persistent pollution of the life system, and with overpopulation exacerbating the whole damned thing.

Solace is offered, often part of the problem – consumption, what capitalism recommends, or endgame superstition of your favored religion, or a nice hobby. More “spiritual” paths are also available, often leading to thickets of thoughts in the head, in the form of lists of dogma to embrace, heads to shave, foods to avoid, checks to write. Somewhere in there one of these might actually have something. Stillness Speaks is a collection of aphorisms distributed over ten chapters under headings like, Beyond the Thinking Mind, The Egoic Self, Death and the Eternal... all set forth as pointers, sign-posts, designed to bring one into presence, the here/now. In that state, it is said, one is connected to the intelligence permeating reality as opposed to the confines of egoic mind, and from there (here) one knows what to do. In presence one experiences interconnection, the greater self which is ONE. The feeling is joie de vivre. In that state of joy, sooner or later, arrives an impulse to creativity and that action, aligned with basic intelligence, will be congruent with what is needed. Possessed by ego one behaves egoically, the great dysfunction of our civilization and its greatest threat. Possessed of presence one behaves in ways respectful of the life system and the ONE life. This is the most powerful form of activism, not advocating or arguing for an ideology but being it. Since the whole physical array can be seen as vibrating frequencies, the specific frequency of presence affects other frequencies more powerfully than clever argument.

This appealing notion tempts - why not try it out since it has become abundantly clear where ego brings us, has brought us. One doesn't go, in this scenario, to presence to enhance and strengthen one's point of view. It may be that presence will bring one to conventional activism but the answer to what-to-do will come from connection not from thinking. We might approach the same old opponents with the same old arguments but with a presence that transforms. We also might do something completely different, a possibility if we set aside all preconceptions and get our “instructions” from the connected state.

Ok, so how does one get present? On the first page of the book Tolle states, “The only function of a (spiritual) teacher is to help you remove that which separates you from the truth of who you already are and what you already know in the depth of your being.” A bit later, “... words (the aphorisms) are no more than signposts. That to which they point is not to be found within the realm of thought, but a dimension within yourself that is deeper and infinitely vaster than thought.” Tolle advises putting the book down often, to pause, to reflect, become still. Because the words in this book, “come out of stillness they have the power to take you back into stillness, out of which you arose.” Instead of identifying with the passing personality, we shift to that state.

Focusing on the main task the book puts forth, namely freeing oneself from the prison of obsessive mind chatter and ego, assuming that possible, what is the obstacle? If it is true that mind-chatter dominates almost everyone then, whatever age you are, you have that many years of conditioning to overcome. Changing a lifetime habit is no easy task but if the result is a state of joy, and a chance to significantly contribute to saving the world, well hell, wouldn't we go for it? Haven't many religions offered something similar, pie in the sky etc;? I suppose Tolle would say that when these kind of promises were made they were either misunderstood or mere con-artist manipulation, or as in Elmer Gantry, a confused combination of the two. The basic intelligence might be just another wording for God, the joie de vivre another for heaven, pie in the sky – just words, signposts. But in the desperation of our dilemma, where an essentially fascist movement seems to be arising all over the planet and where conventional resistance has shown itself ineffective, well, we might try something else or at least adopt an adjunct strategy. Tolle expresses this polarity saying, “... the dysfunction of the old consciousness and the arising of the new are both accelerating. Paradoxically, things are getting worse and better at the same time, although the worse is more apparent because it makes so much noise.” That's cute. And a shot of hope.

Painting by Tom Ferguson, Warbucks (detail)

Fear, Bob Woodward

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Bob Woodward is known, aside from his Watergate fame, for a series of books on sitting presidents. His strategy of conducting numerous interviews with policy-making participants, many anonymous, to build a credible picture of an administration, probably works pretty well. That said, I'm suspicious of well known establishment journalists. They are the ones who rise to the top of a system that filters out “radicals”, advancing those who feel it in their bones, or at least pretend to, that the current system is the highest possible economic arrangement. The author tends to write snappy, slightly heroic descriptions of his subjects, especially military figures and politicians like Lindsey Graham, a sleazeball of the highest order - his behavior protecting Kavanaugh's supreme court appointment alone is enough to establish that. Woodward doesn't entirely let him off the hook though. He quotes a conversation between tRump and Graham where they are exploring options dealing with North Korea's nuclear threat. The idea of attacking North Korea before they can develop the capacity to reach the U.S. with nukes is one option. Another is to “take out” Kim Jong Un (works for the Mafia), or do nothing, depending on the guaranteed total disappearance of North Korea the U.S. can guarantee to keep them at bay. Lindsey wants to hit'em, which can only mean nukes, and when told of the risk to millions in South Korea and Japan he responded, “If millions are going to die it should be over there not here.” Even tRump, a guy not known for his empathy, says, “That's kind of cold.”

The North Korea topic comes up more than once, along with the Iran agreements that tRump ends up abrogating. It is disturbing that in these discussions it doesn't occur to the brainstormers that there are options beside war, threat of war or assassination... non-violent conflict resolution practitioners exist whose expertise could be called upon. The military hammer seems to be too readily reached for. Outrageous arms shipments to Venezuela in support of tRump's preferred faction there is another example, though unmentioned in Woodward's book. It was true for Obama, in his drone assassination program, who really should have known better, given his awareness of King and Gandhi and the civil rights movement. This arrogance is also evident in the stance where the U.S. sees no contradiction in demanding nuclear disarmament of Iran or North Korea but stands ready to pour trillions into expanding their own nuclear war capacities. They want to dominate, they want to “win”, they want, as Chomsky says, hegemony. They do not get it, the choice clearly stated in Chomsky's book title, Hegemony or Survival. We can't have both. Going for the former is a path divergent from the possibility of the latter. Utilizing the skills of non-violent conflict resolution is highly challenging but no less necessary for that. We've got to get really good at it as soon as possible if this civilization experiment is to continue.

The internecine struggle among tRump advisors, what one observer called predators, is very much parallel to the way mainstream media operates. It gives the impression of vigorous and serious debate but masks the narrowness of the parameters. Leading up to tRump's pulling out of the Paris Accords on Climate Change, factions in the administration ranged from, “get out now, climate change is a hoax”, to “yeah but we should stay in the accords for public relations reasons, just not honor them”. The exception to this being, tRump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who surprisingly pushed for staying in for the right reasons (maybe). Trump allowed these family “advisors” free rein around the White House, responding to staff complaints with “Ah, they're liberal democrats.” Cute kids, but naïve.

On immigration I was puzzled at the vehemence with which Bannon, Kelly and the rest of the anti-immigrant faction pursued their mean-spirited agenda, to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and deport Dreamers who had essentially lived in the U.S. their whole life, had probably never been in the country they would be deported to except as infants, possibly didn't even speak the language of that country. Why Such nasty intensity? Given Bannon's reputation it doesn't seem unfair to conclude something along the line of the nazi desire to maintain racial purity. That and the hysterical desire to un-do anything Obama.

Bannon, in a talk with Attorney General Sessions, is quoted as anxious to get agreement from Sessions, which he got, that the election showed the hand of god intervening for tRump. Many of the people swirling around the president, who come and go with abandon, seem intent on playing him, currying for favor but bumping up against an impetuous, insulting, dismissive, inconsistent guy who won't prepare or plan, who thinks his “instincts” are infallible and just goes with them. The factions work to push him their way on issues like immigration, the wall, Iran, Syria, Russia, China. Secretary of State Tillerson, after a frustrating tRumpt meeting with Pentagon brass, burst out the opinion, “The man is a moron!” Said moron spends 6-8 hours a day watching television, the news shows, and has frequent volatile twitter-reactions based on what he sees there. Of course his preference is for Fox facts.

The title Fear comes from a statement tRump made, “Real power is fear.” Not clear to me what that means. Is fear what power produces? Is fear a synonym for power? Are powerful people afraid? Is this a significant statement? Maybe tRump wisdom is so thin that Woodward had to settle for this ambiguous bit. Dysfunction might have been a better title.

Reading in The Nation (2/25/19) an article about drone attacks in Somalia I realize that the book doesn't go into that issue at all. Under Obama there were plenty of wedding parties etc; murderously disrupted but the restrictions to protect innocents (however ineffective) have been pretty much completely lifted under tRump. Curious that the war-game aspect of the presidency didn't come up. Nor the illegal meddling in Venezuela. The tariff and free-trade issue gets attention, staff arguing but the president rejecting their “facts.' I put facts in quotes because the pro-free trade and anti-tariff “facts” come from the 1% point of view, not environmental nor labor issues. And the tag-team tRump/Mueller gets coverage, a lot of inconclusive back and forth. If you depended on this book for your take on that issue you'd probably come away thinking there's not much there (as opposed to reading Collusion or House of Trump, books I hope Mueller has read). Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, resigned when tRump decided, against Dowd's advice, to cooperate with an FBI interview. Dowd felt that a compulsive liar going into an FBI interview was jeopardy he couldn't condone. Ultimately it was agreed that written questions would be submitted. Dowd's strategy, surprisingly, was complete cooperation, no stonewalling, all document requests honored. The lawyer apparently accepted from someone he deemed a compulsive liar, assurances that he was innocent as charged. We shall see (maybe).