Essays, Politics and

This section for now is what I don't share on Facebook, thoughts, opinion and politics.  I think of it as less formal and polished than the essays I post on my blog's home page.  

November 9, 2022

The Day After Midterm Elections

Yesterday was election day, house and senate seats along with local state and city elections. The Red Wave that had surged at the end of the summer fizzled. The Republicans are going to win the Congress not by 10, 20 or 30 seats but only by a few. They’ll be in charge but barely and looking at losing it in 2024. The Senate is still not decided. They might get a one seat majority which would be bad, but they may lose one seat and face a 51 seat majority. Red states voted in Republican governors, but purple states like Pennsylvania and Michigan voted in or kept Democrats. The Democrats kept the Arizona Senate seat and are losing in the race for the Republican held Governor’s position.

It was an election where Trump could have secured his hold on the Republican Party. Democracy was on the ballot but in not in one question but in hundreds of state races. Instead of a Republican sweep as history would have dictated the Republican Party, Trump’s Party is badly weakened. The Party regulars who care about winning elections will be looking for a way to dump Trump. Trump loses seats they should have and he didn’t do them a lot of good in elections they won, they were probably tighter than they should have been. Ron DeSantis is the rising star. Well that’s a star that destined to burn out along the way. DeSantis will be knocked out along the way. He lacks a certain authenticity and outside the Red South and the MAGA crowd he’s not going to attract any votes. I see him being knocked out in the primaries or even well before that. No Democrats like DeSantis and Northern conservative suburbanites aren’t going to be drawn to a little Trump who pulls stunts and is the front runner.

I don’t think the Republicans have anyone who can pull the party together and make it viable beyond the neo-Confederacy and their base. Trump is shit on everyone who backs him and his Republican opponents can’t win Republican base votes. Gregg Abbott could only win if it was for National Meanie. Sarah Huckebee is probably the strongest candidate they could find and she’s weak. Nikki Haley? Where’s Bobby Jindel when you need him? It seems MAGA is a tumor in the Republican Party Like a parasite that takes all the sustenance and let's the Party die.  Republicans can’t win national elections or even statewide in many states with all the Trump shit on it.

Now the Democrats need to smoothly replace Biden and Harris. Harris is a good person but not a national candidate with any draw. She wasn’t before and she still isn’t. So the first few primaries should turn the Democratic nomination into a contest. As to Biden, I’m 76, I’m not voting for anybody older than me.

All things equal I’d be for Corey Booker. Can America vote for another Black man? Booker is very capable and charismatic but not with the appeal that Obama had. The Trumpists rose up against Obama. Can Booker overcome the prejudice against him? I’m going to vote my heart until the winner emerges and maybe it can be Booker.  The Republicans have already tagged Adam Schiff as toxic and Congressmembers almost never become President.

So in the end I think the country will go on divided. Trump is badly weakened, more inside the Party than with the public. He’s always been the hero of 30% and disliked by the rest of us. The Republican Party is stuck with him as long as he wants to run it. They won’t win any National elections with him or races without an overwhelming Republican electorate.

As of today things are better, not OK, but better. I don’t think the Republicans are going to be able to win a National election unless the Democrats give it to them. The Democrats need to find a good candidate and running mate for 2024 and they should be able to stay in the White House and win some Senate and Congress seats. Our nightmare may be waning.

July 9, 2016

Dallas 2 days later.


There was only one shooter. My first reading was that there were three shooters and they were triangulating on the police officers in a deadly ambush. Three shooters is a conspiracy, a coordinated attack, or a rebellion. One shooter is just another mass shooting. This attack was not a mini-rebellion as I first thought.

It amazes me that there aren't rebellions here but as I think about it, rebellions don't begin with a coordinated attack but like in Los Angeles are the spontaneous release of pent up anger. And maybe those are just riots until an organized group like the Sons of Liberty for instance coordinates the resistance. So this wasn't it. Do I think it's imminent? No, not really. Even something like the Los Angeles Civil Disturbance sputters out.

In the United States Commandante Marcos would be a drug kinpin.

So it's just another mass shooting. In Parks where I was a police officer I used to say that most of our visitors were very decent people but one out of 10 was an idiot, and 1 out of 100 was a complete idiot, so on a day when we had 5,000 visitors we had 50 complete idiots running around and that's why I was there and prepared to handle it. Is it one out of a 1,000 or out of 10,000, or out of 100,000 who is a dangerous and murderous idiot?  In the United States there are 300 million people. Do the math.

We insist that everyone has the right to be armed, even the idiots, and armed with assault rifles like the ones used in Dallas and Orlando. Why would anyone be surprised that we're having mass shootings on a monthly basis? The 2^nd Amendment is an 18^th century anachronism protecting an armed militia. Every idiot owning a gun is a 20^th century result of the greed of the gun lobby, the paranoia of the NRA leadership and the weakness of Congress. Let's disarm America.

I can live with hunting rifles, four shot magazines in single shot rifles and based on the American character I suppose I could accept pistols, though I think any sane country would strictly control the sale and possession of pistols. But assault rifles. Come on either do something about it or accept mass shootings as the new normal, maybe even a fad for macho suicides.



July 8, 2016

Black Lives Matter


Six people are sitting at a table and five of them are served food. The five start eating and the one without food says, “I'm hungry.”

The other five say, “Everyone's hungry,” and go on eating.


Dallas


Five police officers doing their duty were shot dead and 7 more were wounded. It is a dangerous job. These men and women can face deadly force at any time and every year some police officers die doing their duty. That five police officers were killed in a single day is a terrible event.

After 9/11 everyone seemed to be saying, “How could this happen to us?” As if we were totally innocent in anything that might have caused this brutal attack.

We weren't innocent. The workers in the Towers, the cops, the firefighers and the Emergency Responders were innocent but we the United States of America were not innocent. For years we have been blindly backing Israel in it's unconscionable treatment of Palestinians. We have been propping up the House of Saud rule in Saudi Arabia, a police state as bad as any Soviet state and our unflagging constant support for the status quo for countless other Middle Eastern potentates.

As Ortega y Gassett the Spanish philosopher said, “Violence is reason frustrated.”

Certainly the Dallas police officers were innocent victims, but we the people of the United States are not. In other countries where the disparities between the well off and the powerless is as great as it is in the United States.  I'm not talking about the notorious 1% but the 50% or so of us who live reasonably well on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised.  In other times and other countries when the numbers are like that, the answer is rebellion.  

Consider the unemployment rate among Black men in their 20s, the incarceration rate among Black youth, Brown youth and all of the disenfranchised. The Black Panthers, the Civil Disturbance in Los Angeles, you can add Waco and other odd events; it's only drugs, alcohol and religion that dilute the rage of rebellion among the disenfranchised. Unionization is impossible for millions at the bottom of the ladder because they're undocumented and can be deported at the first demand they might make for civil rights. It's an Orwellian/Huxley solution we practice.

Add to that an insane commitment to making assault weapons and every type of arm available to everyone, even those we've listed as possible terrorists.

Dallas looks like a skirmish in an armed rebellion. We can be pretty sure it won't go anywhere, that it is a terrible and silly gesture. How long can we expect to escape the consequences of millions kept powerless? How long will it be the odd event?

The amazing thing about Dallas is not that it happened but that it happens so rarely.




July 4, 2016

Happy Birthday America. Living in America feels like being in a slow motion train wreck:

1. The election stolen from Al Gore by George W. Bush and the Republican Party
   
2. The World Trade Center destruction
3. Invasion of Iraq
   
4. Mass Shootings
   
5. Trayvon Martin
   
6. Flint, Michigan
   
7. Donald Trump
   
8. The War in Afghanistan
   
9. ISIS
   
10. Congress
    
11. Income disparity, rise of right wing populism, shrinking middle class
    
12. Student Loans
    
13. State authorized torture
    
14. The Patriot Act
    
15. The slow collapse of public education

On the other side is the slow creep of progress, the election of Obama and now America's first woman as a serious Presidential candidate, acknowledgment that global warming is real, marriage equality, and our difficult and slow acceptance of diversity.




July 3, 2016

50th High School Reunion

I feel bad about what I wrote about my high school reunion. Part of my brashness in the way I write is my suspicion that almost no one really reads my blog. My 50th high school reunion was an exercise on living with my ego. The whole time I wanted to tell everyone how well I had done, counter the disdain and pity I felt in high school. And there it was the same feeling. Of course, it was me. It is a common human condition comparing oneself unfavorably with one's peers. So many people seemed happy and enviably successful and comfortable with their lives. There were some fools, some obvious low achievers, a drunk or two and a lot of very comfortable and successful people. And there it seemed like the whole situation made me feel the same way I had in high school, small and out of place.

Like most things in my life I was smack in the middle, not an outrageous success, not rich, not resting in the bosom of an ideal family, a once married and still loving wife of 45 years, beautiful, successful, and loving children. My life is a little more complicated than that but nonetheless a good life.

But I couldn't figure out why John so obviously and with great effort snubbed me. It really bothered me and I still have no idea why. So I sniped at John's role as wounded war hero. Then I learn that in fact John had been a medic. In my mind all medics were heroes and I suppose so is John. Why Bob doesn't get the same patriotic admiration is still a question for me but he wasn't wounded thank god and Bob is maybe not as personal and hangdog as John. Bob seemed happy with himself. John like a lot of Vietnam vets seemed wounded.

Father Marti did snub me, for the obvious reason to me that I wasn't a likely mark for donating to the school. So I sniped at him, a snipe at the sanctimonious catholicism that angers me, not the whole of Catholicism, but one aspect of it. Later I learned that it wasn't Martin as I had thought, it was Marti. He is a Cuban and shares the surname of the great Cuban patriot, poet and revolutionary Jose Marti. He had said, he was sure we didn't know anybody in common. In reading his bio later I was quite sure we did know people in common. I felt bad about sniping at him. It's what I wrote at the time. He is a successful man and good for the school, it now has a great theater program. Then I read he's the chaplain for the Pasadena chapter of Legatus, a very conservative and devout organization of Catholic businessmen founded by Tom Monaghan and some say an Opus Dei front organization.  In an interview in their magazine he praises them for their similarity to Opus Dei, as if we all admire Opus Dei. .

Like all medics are heroes in my mind, anyone who praises Opus Dei is suspect. So I feel bad about my reaction to John and not at all off the mark for Father Marti. He's smoother than Father Alphonsus, less of the country bumpkin with French cuffs under his Franciscan robe, but not someone I admire. I'll leave what I wrote.

I will be going to the 55^th reunion in three years, ojala. It's good to risk my ego like that sometimes; see if I can reach some sort of equanimity. It's a spiritual exercise, one I haven't done well at yet. I do worry if anyone actually reads my bog I may be thrown out, but probably not.


July 2, 2016

OK.  I'm for Hillary.  I like Bernie, I like what he says and what he stands for.  I think Hillary would make a better President.  That wasn't hard.  I'll write about it later on.

Brexit.  If the Brits ever felt superior to us.  They shouldn't.

October 29, 2012

I am an undecided voter.  No, mine is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Barrack Obama.  I’m undecided between Jill Stein and Rocky Anderson, a choice between two goods instead of the lesser of two evils. 

Yes, that’s the way I’ve heard Progressives describe their ambivalence about voting for Obama.  I like Obama.  I think he’s a good man, but his administration is Bush Lite.  Obama is himself a conservative Democrat in the Bill Clinton mode and he has had to compromise his platform in trying to govern with a very right wing Congress whether it’s Tea Party members or their predecessors, the Blue Dog Democrats. 

However, it’s not Congress that kept us in Iraq until Bush’s own deadline, well past the time we should have been there.  It wasn’t Congress that continued and pushed the War in Afghanistan and Obama plans to remain there another two years when our justification for being there vanished shortly after we invaded.  There has never been a good reason to stay in Afghanistan.  He signed the renewal of the Patriot Act.  Guantanamo Bay is still open and assassination and torture continue as national policy.  Deportations in an unfair system of immigration have increased under Obama and he has aggressively pursued the War on Drugs when it makes no sense at all.

Yes, I have the luxury of living in California where Obama is sure to win our electoral votes.  If I were in Ohio I would probably vote to keep Romney out of the presidency, but in California I can vote my conscience and I’m voting against Obama. 

American politics have been corrupted by money as never before.  Whether it’s the right wing ideologues in the Republican Party or the pragmatists among the Democrats, Wall Street and Big Money always win.  Under Bush at least Kenny Lay and Jeff Skilling were convicted of fraud, Lay died before he went to jail.  Under Obama there hasn’t been a single indictment for the biggest Wall Street gambling fraud since the 20s.  Wall Street and Banking regulation are still woefully inadequate and his programs to save people’s homes sound good, but haven’t worked at all.  Foreclosures continue unabated.  Global Warming, not even an issue between Romney and Obama. 

So I’m undecided between two goods, the Green Party candidate Jill Stein and the Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson.  I invite anyone who wonders why to look at a real debate between candidates on You Tube, US Third Party President Debate (Moderated by Larry King).