Wholesale v Retail Politics

All politics is local, Tip O'Neill  told us.
Until it wasn't.

Today, all politics is Trump, for better or for worse.

Two, three times a week, from Montana, to Florida to Tennessee to Kentucky, to Georgia, you see throngs, people whose enthusiasm rivals those delirious crowds who adored Hitler.
Look at those arenas, tiers upon tiers of frenzied fans. 

And against that, we have small bands of mostly women, knocking on doors, where 30 out of 34 doors on the list go unopened. The canvassers leave behind fliers, paper, stickers: "Vote."

Or "Vote Democratic."

Our party leaders tell us this is the way elections are won.

This is the way they've done it in New Hampshire for generations.

But look at the Trump rallies. Look at the Trump twitters. 

Have we been left behind with 20th century tools in a 21st century political world?

He doesn't need an advertising budget.  He does his rallies, for the price of renting an arena and CSPAN and Twitter and Facebook do the rest.

And where is the charismatic Democrat to bring this demagogue down?

The Lie Factory

Mad Dog loves Bill Maher. 
He really does.
Maher is, taken with Stephen Colbert and Jon Oliver, the only really visible and effective force for liberal thought readily available to the masses and he is effective.
Jon Stewart has fled the field of battle. 
There are wonderful voices of criticism--Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle--but they are too coarse for Peoria. 

George Carlin is gone, although watching his "Jammin in New York" show is startling--he is speaking about 2018 from 1992. He was a quarter of a century ahead of his time. Always was. People who see the truth become prophets, not from some supernatural power, but from simple bravery. They see the truth nobody else is willing to see, to say it and later people say, "How prescient!" The Oracle is able to see the future by simply seeing the present clearly and without fear.

But getting back to Maher. His latest riff, which I loved, was effective, but flawed.
For dramatic effect, he asserted that Trump is something new, is more vile and more dangerous than any other President in history. He claims he was a history major in college, and all I can say, as someone whose last formal history course was high school--and that class, worse than useless--Bill ought to be reading more history now, and more widely.

Trump is different in that he plays a different game than anything we've seen over the past century and a half--he cannot speak the language of the intelligent, by which I mean, he cannot gather "facts" and examine the limitations of those "facts" and still build a case, and so he speaks the language of the bar room, of Archie Bunker: the simple declarative, often ill informed, mostly bigoted statement. 

He deals not in persuasion, but in challenge. He is not interested in ideas, but in power. He has no ideology, unlike Hitler, but seeks popularity and adoration. In that sense, he is not a modern leader at all, a man like Hitler or Mussolini who seek to bring the masses along to his world view; he is more like the kings of ancient times, who wish to be adored, feared, exalted, seen as a "winner" whose place on earth is God given, a chosen man, not by the masses, who only appreciate his genius and superiority which has been bestowed on him by nature, from good genes and the right parents. 

It's not really that he is anything new; he's simply part of a past most people are too young or too old to remember. 

Reading Jill Lepore and Oliver Stone, the venality, the deep seeded hate, the ignorance are nothing new in occupants of the White House. But like most common criminals, the Presidents do horrible things to other people, all the while seeing themselves as victims.

Lepore does trace a change in the major issues. She notes that since slavery, there has been no issue which has rent the fabric of American thought until abortion.

High paid opinion manipulators, "political consultants" pushed politicians in directions which meant "abortion was murder and guns meant freedom, or guns meant murder and abortion was freedom."

All reasonable discussion flew out the window and the blown open door.

I'm now almost finished Stone ("Untold History") and halfway through Lepore ("These Truths.")

And yes, Maher is correct, the effect of reading these stories--they are not attempts at "history" so much as an interpretation of the past for present purposes (as all history really is--the effect is calming.

But calm people may not vote.  And what Maher was doing in his Nov 3 plea, was to urge action among people (especially young people) who have historically been either too lazy or too self absorbed to vote. 
If we are facing an emerging Adolph Hitler, then this really does demand action, and a willingness to sacrifice a few hours standing on line or fighting with poll workers intent on suppressing your vote and voice. So Maher was well motivated to claim Trump is something new, something we've never seen before, someone who can make "it can't happen here" actually happen here. But he is wrong--we have had Presidents in the past who were every bit as stupid, venal, unfit as the present President.

Nixon played the Trump game: divide the Whites against the Blacks--and forget about winning the Black vote; go after the resentful White voters. Forget the underclass, go after the middle class. Trump is doing the same. The difference is that Nixon did not have to openly vilify his boogie men; all he had to do was wink and nod and everyone knew who he was talking about--those dangerous Blacks burning down the inner cities and those white children, the spoiled, pampered children of privilege who are "bums" and who are contemptuous of hard working work-a-day Middle class solid citizens. 

George Carlin's analysis from more than 25 years ago is still true today: You got the rich on top, who pay no taxes, controlling everything; you got the middle class who pay the taxes and keep the government and the country rolling; and you got the people at the bottom, the lower class, who are there to scare the Hell out of the middle class. 

The people on the bottom now aren't so much the Blacks or even the more recently arrived Browns, but the wannabes, all those scary, tattooed face, lean and hungry invaders from South of the Border, who can throw rocks like shooting rifles and who want to rape White women--we wouldn't care if they wanted to rape just Brown women--and who want to take your jobs!

Answering

Jill Lepore supplies two quotes from Republicans of the 1960's:

"How long are we going to abdicate law and order...in favor of the theory that the man who heaves a brick through your window or tossess a fire bomb into your care is simply the misunderstood and underprivileged product of a broken home?"

And...
"Working men and women should not be asked to carry the additional burden of a segment of society capable of caring for itself but which prefers making welfare a way of life, freeloading at the expense of more conscientious citizens."

The first is Gerald Ford, not remembered today as a particular virulent or rabid Republican in the mode of Donald Trump.

The second is Ronald Reagan, saint Ronald, who is not today remembered as a far Right Republican.

But both gave voice, or perhaps shaped the perception that colored underclass men were both dangerous and incorrigible and lazy. 

Reagan loved talking about the "Welfare Queen" of Detroit, a Black woman who drove around town in a big Cadillac, living off welfare checks, raping the system.

When the guy who owned the garage or the HVAC business hears all this, he seethes and fumes and votes Republican.

Obadiah Youngblood, Salt Marshes

The Democrats have never learned to answer this.
Give me just one Democrat who says, 

"Look, if the prisons are 80% Black and Hispanic maybe it's because 80% of crimes are committed by members of that group--or maybe it's because 80% of those coloreds accused are found guilty and not all of them are guilty. 
Sure we need borders. No country can exist or manage itself without borders. Democrats are just as tough on borders as Republicans for good reasons. But this big lie about an invasion by ISIS, terrorists and MS13 is just that, a big lie by a little man who is trying to create a phony crisis so he can coming riding to the rescue and get credit for saving us from a lie."

Just once, I'd like to hear a guy like that, from the Democratic side.

Bill Maher's Got It

He's famous. 
He's got name recognition. 
He's rich. 
He's culivated an audience over years.
He's male.
White.

Sort of Irish. 
Maybe, if he just keeps doing what he's doing, he could beat Trump for President in 2020.

Watch this: 
https://youtu.be/YIuuHK3sL7o

Feel Good Moments

How long ago was it when all those women wearing pink hats rallied and organized massive group hugs?

And where are they now?

There's a scene in "Band of Brothers" where American soldiers liberate a Dutch town and the women in particular, but all the citizens, just go wild with joy and relief and wave flags.

Several nights later the American soldiers, defeated in an ill conceived operation called "Market Garden," stand on a hill at night and watch that same town being bombarded by German artillery and Lou Nixon, one of the soldiers, remarks, "I bet they're not waving all those pretty flags now."

That's how I feel about all those million women who hugged and marched and cheered speeches from Gloria Steinem et al just yesterday, it seems.

Now, with early voting going hot and heavy in Florida, snow birds from the Middle West, the rich folks who live 6 months and day in Florida and vote there, have put the Republicans 100,000 votes ahead already. The artillery is reigning down on the state. 

Bet those women aren't waving their pink knit hats now. 

Apocalypse Now: Trump and the Baby Caravan

Oh, save us, President Trump, from that swarm of Ork babies and mothers and MS 13 adolescents headed for our Southern border, as if ordered by Flash Mob, by the White House.

Don't they make your blood run cold?

Where is Bob Mueller when you need him?

Democrats, that wild mob which pounds on the iron studded doors of the Supreme Court and defiles Saint Kavanaugh and sends pipe bombs to former Presidents and Secretaries of State and liberal billionaires, are also funding the caravan of babies headed as an infestations to our Southern border, where, unless some very fine Nazis head them off, they will inundate our thin blue line and start raping white women just as soon as they hit puberty!

Actually, it's this guy makes my blood run cold.

Oh, the forces of evil and Nancy Pelosi are swelling and only a pure Aryan soul can lead us to safety!

Did you know global warming is a trick invented by Chinese Democrats to destroy our great American economy--the greatest economy EVER--and if it weren't for the king of Saudi Arabia, very dishonest journalists would convince the uninformed that those 7,000 invaders could not kill all 320 million Americans?

Fortunately, our Saudi friends know how to deal with those terrible, no good, very bad people who are our media. That journalist worked for the Washington Post, which is proof enough of what a bad man he must have been. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon and he looks like a very bad man with that shaved head. 

And Amazon is BAD! They have enslaved the United States Postal Service, with a VERY BAD deal, forcing postal workers to work Sundays!

Oh, we got Apocalypse coming! 
Just hold on to Donald J. Trump, or we'll all be raped and slain and the stock market will crash!

Frederick Douglass Answers Jim Brown on Taking a Knee

Football players, TV personalities, Popular singers all have brains. The most successful have some sort of higher intelligence which facilitates their achievements.

But the sort of intelligence which allows you to set records on the gridiron, or to attract huge audiences of the unwashed hoi polloi may not equip you to comment on symbolic acts of protest.

For that sort of analysis, you need a different sort of intelligence, the sort possessed by Frederick Douglass, once a slave, then a force of history.

Douglass

Were we to interview him today about the "take the knee" controversy, we would likely derive more useful instruction than the recent remarks by the dissipated former star running back, Jim Brown, who Donald Trump re tweeted, as Brown spoke tearfully about his flag, his country, his idea of patriotism and the act of taking a knee.

The Man Who Used to be Jim Brown

Douglass died in the nineteenth century, but he speaks through the ages to us today, having seen the empty, cheap expressions of "patriotism" and reverence for "the flag" in his time. 

He spoke about celebration of the stars and stripes most emphatically, and although his reference was the state of the Black American in times of slavery, it will do just as well for the condition of the American Black who is stopped by a white police officer in the 21st century.

"What to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin vei to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages."

Substitute "your national anthem ceremony" at professional (commercial) football games for "4th of July," and all this applies.

It is no fluke that the Army pays the billionaire owners of football and baseball teams to allow "color guards" carrying flags and other displays of military might, fly overs by tax payer funded jet fighters, and all the other demonstrations linking the champions, the gladiators on the field, the heroes to military virtue. Wear a football uniform, and you can be a hero. Wear a military uniform, and although you are a little worm of a man, you can be like them, a hero.

Lost in all the noise and pageantry is the simple truth that billionaire owners have charged the 40,000 fans in the stadium a stiff ticket price to roar their approval of the waving flags and the marching soldiers. The commercialization of patriotism for the addled masses.

A new opiate of the masses, not religion from Rome or the Baptist ministry, but from Madison Avenue.

Would be Gladiator Hero 

Lost in all the proud tears is the story of the professional football player, Pat Tillman, who somehow perceived playing football after such patriotic displays was an empty gesture of patriotism, so he joined the Army, got himself shipped off to Afghanistan, where he did not die gloriously on the battlefield slaying his nation's enemies (who, it must be admitted, posed little threat to his nation from that impoverished 13th century nation) but he was shot by his own Army in a "friendly fire" mistake, which is  a polite way of putting what the grunts call an instance of FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition.)

Oh, the Shame!

If patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, it must also be admitted, it sells. 
The Olympic Games, Inc, appeals to the most base jingoism, and the amazing thing is the raw hypocrisy of the owners of the games sending home the two American athletes who had the temerity, at the 1968 Olympics, to bow their heads and raise their fists while standing on the winners' platforms as the American flag was raised to the strains of the Star Spangled Banner.  The very idea! Look at those (nasty Black) athletes despoiling this beautiful moment by a political protest! Why, all we were doing was celebrating the victory of the United States of America over the vanquished nations who had tried to field athletes from their countries of 5 million in a vain attempt to defeat the athletes from the country of 250 million!  Such depravity!

Oh, the shame!

But my favorite example of the connivance of powerful interests is the "Bong Hits for Jesus" Supreme Court case, in which a public high school principal in the state of Washington ordered her entire student body to line the streets in front of the school so the students could cheer the passing of the Olympic torch as it was driven down the street. Remember this is a publicity stunt for a commercial enterprise, the Olympics, which got its start in 1936 when Adolf Hitler decided to spend public money to host the Olympics in Berlin, so he could market the success of National Socialism (Nazis) to the world. And in that great tradition, the Olympics have been passed down to us to celebrate nationalism, as shamelessly as the NFL celebrates it for marketing purposes. 

A high school adolescent, unimpressed, decided not to participate in this pep rally for dollars and set up his banner, across the street from the school, not on school property, "Bong Hits for Jesus!" The enraged principal stormed across the stress, tore down his banner and suspended this peaceful protester from school.

The Supreme Court pondered the possible meanings of "Bong Hits" and that exchange among the puzzled black robed septagenarians is worth googling, as one justice asked, "What is a Bong hit?" And another opined Jesus was unlikely to be impressed. 

They finally decided students, being under the age of majority, had no rights to express their opinion in school, or even across the street from school, because free speech would be detrimental to the good order and discipline essential to controlling what could become an angry mob of students in the classroom. 

Thus the Court, with Kennedy the swing vote, ruled that order and the importance of control by state authority, was more important than the teachable moment about free speech in public schools.

Given that attitude, that free speech, that peaceful acts of dissent cannot be tolerated in American society, the President's outrage over taking a knee at commercial football games is entirely understandable.