Re-Reading

 Mad Dog typically has five or six books going on his Kindle and bedside books, most of which he has already read months or years before, and is now re-reading.

Klimt, Before the Deluge 

Short attention span, poor memory, for whatever reason. Mad Dog just likes it.

Isherwood

Of the new books is one Mad Dog has had on his Kindle for years: Christopher Isherwood's memoir, "Good-bye Berlin," which Mad Dog just never got around to reading but  just recently read, having stayed up all night, unable to put it down. Not since "West With the Night," that singular Beryl Markham memoir, has Mad Dog been so enthralled with a book. 

Reading this while re-reading Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash," and Kuznick and Stone's "Untold History of the United States,"  and Edmund Morris's series on Teddy Roosevelt, and Daniel Okrent's "The Guarded Gate," H.C. Richardson's, "West from Appomattox," and Bruce Caton's "A Stillness at Appomattox," affords a soul roiled by the daily news, which is All Trump All The Time, a certain emolument quality.

One realizes, this too, shall pass, and today did not arise as a random, unlucky asteroid which slammed into our nation. 

Isenberg traces the whole phenomenon of the unpropertied, white, rejected rural poor called "white trash" by both the gentry and colored folk, as a culture of people who love to brag and who love braggarts, the man who will claim to be the best President ever, the man who kilt him a bear when he was only three. These folks do not know the rules of debate, and do not care to know. They elected Andrew Jackson because he talked like them, married an already married woman, and simply ignored the Supreme Court's rulings and went right ahead and deported Cherokees and other Indians along the Trial of Tears to claim Florida for the (white) United States.

Isherwood, speaking of Weimar Berlin, explores how everyday people, whether they are wealthy Jews who own department stores, or spinster women eking out a living by subletting rooms in their houses, or young men barely out of adolescence trying to discover their own identities, flirting with prostitutes at night clubs or declaring themselves revolutionaries as puffery, for effect, and  all of them just trying to live a life, as an unseen tidal wave approaches.

Next up may be "Charlottesville" by Deborah Baker, which just got a review in the NYT Book Review, and explores "old-fashioned white nationalism and white supremacy, with its grab bag of bigotries, wrapped in contrarian, countercultural and hypermasculine cool."

Democrat Terrence O'Rourke

This brought to mind Terence O'Rouke, who spoke at the Exeter Hotel in a candidates' forum in 2017 running the Democratic primary among 11 candidates. Mad Dog was sitting in the back of the room, yakking with his friend and foxhole mate, Olivia, making fun of various people in the crowd, when a sentence emanating from the podium caught his attention: "As divided as our country is right now, with all the arguments and cultural divides, I would have thought the one thing we could all agree upon is that there is no such thing as a very fine Nazi."

"Wait!" Mad Dog hushed Olivia. "What did he just say?"

Of course, O'Rourke was referring to Trump's response when Trump was asked about the mayhem in Charlottesville at the Unite the Right rally, where James Alex Fields, Jr., a man who kept "Mein Kampf"  and a photo of Hitler at his bedside, ran his car into a group of people protesting against the vile Unite the Right and the "We Will Not Be Replaced" mob. Fields aimed his car and stepped on the accelerator, crashing into that group trying to stop Nazis,  killing a 32 year old woman, Heather Heyer, and hospitalizing 36 others. When asked about this, Trump said, "Well, there were very fine people on both sides." Oh, then Mr. Fields, is a very fine person. A murderer, a self proclaimed Nazi, but still, a very fine person.

There are always those who shrug off whatever Trump says--as Trump marvels at the fine command of English of the President of Liberia, who is the president of a country where English is the official language and taught every child from an early age, or when asked when and why Trump halted arms shipments to Ukraine shot back to the reporter asking the question, "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"  Or when a reporter asks about  the federal response to the Texas floods, and Trump replied, "You have to be an evil person to ask such a question. You are an evil person." 

All of this is predictable, expected, and not at all a sign of diminished cognitive function, at least not a precipitous decline; it's just always been there and it's what his fans voted for. 

So, yes. None of this is a surprise. Nor is it a unique American characteristic. As Rick Perlstein said, "If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America."

Ernest Hemingway said that all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

And, of course, the pivotal moment in that book is often said to be when Huck has to choose between returning the slave, Jim, to slavery, which is what polite Confederate society insists is the morally correct thing to do, or he can choose to abet Jim's race to freedom, which Huck is sure will mean Huck will go straight to Hell. 

For me, however, there is another pivotal moment, mostly unmentioned, when Huck returns to their raft after disappearing in the fog and Jim expresses his relief that Huck is alive and tells Huck how devastated he was at the thought of Huck's drowning in the fog. But Huck tries to convince Jim that Huck had never left the raft, never been absent and Jim must have been dreaming. It's an early case of what is now called "Gaslighting" after the movie "Gas Light" where a husband tries to manipulate his wife into questioning reality as she perceives it and claims he knows reality, where she is only imagining it and getting it wrong. Jim tells Huck that attempt at manipulating Jim is cruel and unworthy of him, a man who has loved Huck and would never do anything to hurt Huck.

And Jim, of course, is absolutely correct. Huck has been cruel, just for the fun of it. That's one quality inimical to the qualities of "white trash"--cruelty, and the others are braggadocio,  and hate of authority.

And now, in the 21st century, we are living in the gas lit world of Trump, where we are told we are threatened by an infestation of criminals--who are not here to pick our crops or roof our homes--but to rape our white women; where we are told masked goons throwing people into unmarked vans are here to protect us; where we are told tariffs will magically cause new factories to arise from the rusted out hulks in the Rust Belt; where we are told measles vaccines kill more kids than measles ever would; where we are told fluoridation of drinking water poisons our bodily fluids; where we are told government waste is what is causing inflation, economic despair and it's all because of lazy, or evil civil servants who are supposed to be protecting and maintaining our nuclear missiles in their silos;  where we are told Confederate generals were not fighting to preserve chattel slavery but were only fighting to preserve Southern heritage;  where we are told patriots seeking only to tour the Capitol on January 7, 2021 as ordinary tourists, while they smeared feces along the marble walls and invaded the offices of Congressmen were only brave, patriotic tourists; where we are told Trump did not incite an insurrection; where we are told by the Supreme Court that Trump is king and any break on executive power is unconstitutional; where we are told by that same court separation of church and state is unconstitutional; where that same court says the First Amendment is unconstitutional and the Second amendment guarantees the individual the right to own a howitzer;   where we are told Ukraine started the war by invading Russia; and finally, where we are told there were very fine Nazis out there in Charlottesville.

Berserk is something of an understatement, of course. 

Big Beautiful Blondie Bombies

 

And here Mad Dog thought it was just him.

What Makes a Lady FOXY?

He has some trouble distinguishing among all the blonde ladies with long hair who serve Mr. Trump. They are not exactly doppelgangers, but it can be a little disorienting.

Maybe they are FOXBLONDES.

But then there's that cross thing. 

Mad Dog noticed it but told himself, Naw, just let it pass.

For some reason, those crosses on chains were very common on nurses back in the day. The protagonist of "House of God" commented on it. They turned him on.

There is something in those crosses-- almost a dare, maybe a tease. You know, if a fetching nurse was wearing a cross, it was almost like a wedding ring; it was saying, "I'm not going to bed with you," or something. But then, that was a challenge. That's what was happening in "House of God." Back in the day only women wore crosses on chains. Now, with men wearing bling, there may be more crosses on men, but those non bling, modest little crosses are so...feminine. Or something. 

But what is the message?

MAYBE  the message on the Trump blondes is different: It's a dog whistle to all those Aryan nation types, all the evangelicals that well, you know, America is a Christian nation, as they've been telling us all along.

But then Jon Stewart picked up on it, and Mad Dog was so relieved: It wasn't just some dark psychopathology buried in Mad Dog's mind--other people noticed it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NFifXeZdolI

So, it's a thing. 
Maybe. 

GOT COVID? DOGE GOT YOUR PAXLOVID!

 

You heard it here first:  Medicare no longer covers the one drug which actually stops COVID virus from replicating and is highly effective, orally, to rescue patients from the prospect of a respirator: Paxlovid.

No, some things are still available and not removed from reach:  not intravenous bleach, chloroquine or Ivermectin: Mad Dog has not inquired about coverage for those. But then again, unless you are a horse with worms or have a strong death wish, those are no great loss.

Go on Google and you will be told by Google AI Paxlovid is still covered by Medicare Part D (the drug part) but, for once, AI has failed us. 

How does Mad Dog know?

Actual non AI experience in what is now called "actual life," or AL for "actual life" or "alternative life."

Ah, it's New Hampshire, where we live free, and now may have to opt for the second half of that slogan: die.

A New Hampshire chorus of mostly 70 and 80 something women traveled to Scotland and did a number of concerts over the course of June 21-June 28, and about 3 days into the tour, one member tripped and fell, and had to be seen by Scotland's excellent National Health Service, where they found her to be febrile and alertly tested her for COVID, and she was positive. She wore a mask and sat in the back of the bus, and was otherwise isolated/ostracized, but clearly she had been infectious before she was discovered and by the time the chorus of eighty members got home, 45% of the chorus was coughing or simply tested and found to be positive.

Now, this is a pretty robust group of sixty, seventy and eighty year old women, who chose Scotland so they could hike up mountains between performances, but if you are COVID positive, coughing and symptomatic, over 65, Paxlovid is the safest thing to do, and while it has been underused it's well proven to prevent a respirator fate.

So, these women, who communicate avidly electronically, started seeing doctors and getting prescriptions for Paxlovid. Ah, the day is saved!

Or not.

Turns out when they went to the pharmacy to fill the prescriptions every one of them, some who live in Maine, were told the cost is now $700 (for a prescription we can all remember was $50 when Biden was in office.)

Many, not being women of great means, went home without the Paxlovid to face their fate.

So there you have the essence of government efficiency! DOGE has struck again, and this time into the homeland. 

And these are mostly White women, returning from a decidedly not "shit-hole" country with their American passports, so you might think Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk or RFK JR would not have them in their sites.

Of course, neither New Hampshire nor Maine voted for Trump, so there's that--but Maine has a Republican Senator. 

And RFK JR has intimated that if they just ate right and stayed young, none of this would ever have happened.

And really, what could be more efficient than not treating this group? Most of them are on Medicare, some getting Social Security, and some will ultimately need nursing homes, so if these folks die now, in the immortal formulation of Congressman Norman from South Carolina, well, that's a cost saving!

PS: A word on "coverage." 

One woman was told Medicare did "cover" Paxlovid, which costs $2,000, but her "copay" went from $50 last year to $700. So is that really "coverage"? 

There really is no "cost" for any drug now. A doctor who finds a bloated Ixodes tick on him after working in the garden and writes himself a prescription for doxycycline discovers the cost is $1,500. He calls his own doctor who calls in the Rx and the bill is $1.50. So what is the cost of doxycycline or any drug, for that matter?

Seeing What You Want To See

 

South Carolina has given the nation Lindsay Graham, Fort Sumter, the first shots of the Civil War and Congressman Ralph Norman, who appeared on the PBS Newshour to answer questions about the Big Beautiful (for Billionaires) Bill which President Trump wants to sign on July 4th.

Asked about cuts to Medicaid which will shutter many rural clinics, including those in South Carolina, the man who has had briefings at the White House and who has, unlike Mad Dog, presumably read the 940 page bill, said that Medicaid will not, in fact, be cut, except for denying Medicaid payments to illegal aliens who don't deserve to get Medicaid anyway.

When Jeff Bennett, the PBS anchor said that illegal aliens have never been eligible for Medicaid, Congressmen Norman informed the viewing public that they may not have been eligible for Medicaid but they got it any way, and that's what's been bankrupting the program and Mad Dog caught a scent of a long ago stench which found some part of his doggy brain.

Oh, right! The Welfare Queen, that lady Ronald Reagan told us about so long ago, who managed to manipulate the welfare system so expertly that she drove around the ghetto in her Cadillac, wearing a mink coat. No need to say what color she might have been, although there was speculation about whether the Cadillac may have been pink.

And Congressman Norman then swung from talking about the BBBB to a panegyric about how President Trump had stopped illegals from crossing the Mexican border. 

Lisa Murkowski, from Alaska, had held out against the bill until Trump did the art of the deal to exempt Alaska from the Medicaid cuts, so she voted for it, in a patriotic act which could be described as "I got mine, to hell with the rest of the country," or simply this is what pork barrel politics is all about, and besides Iowa gets its way when it comes to adding corn alcohol to gas, which has by now become counterproductive as an environmental move, so it's every state for itself, no matter what we call the UNITED States.

Oh, that swamp done been drained. 

Behind the Congressmen, rushing across the halls, one could see kids and their parents in shorts touring the Capitol on their vacations, just normal tourists, like those fresh faced legions who toured the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Works in Progress

 

The president of the Hampton Dems, who is nothing if not innovative, challenged the group of 20 or so souls who rallied for the July meeting to try to capture in a phrase and an image what Democrats should be saying to the world.

Give Me My Big Beautiful Billionaire's Bill

Some found this easier than others, and Mad Dog was astonished when some of the quieter, retiring types, who rarely say anything during these meetings, offered up some dazzling thoughts. 

Mad Dog has often despaired of the frumpy, silent, nearly catatonic types who show up for these meetings. 

His compatriot, Olivia, who shows up every time, has always laughed at Mad Dog's grumblings, telling him he simply did not know these folks.

As each offered his or her thoughts, and Mad Dog was left with his jaw on his chest, Olivia shot looks in his direction with a very satisfied, "I told you so!" look on her face.

Sitting among us were likely past winners of the New Yorker caption contest. Mad Dog has long contended that Harvard should not select its class by grades and SAT scores, which tell you how compliant and diligent on the one hand (grades) and on the other hand, who possesses a certain narrow band of competence (SAT's), but they should sit down their 50,000 applicants in exam rooms across the country and present them with a dozen New Yorker cartoon contest problems and that would make the process way easier and would select a much more talented class. For one thing, it would probably eliminate at least half the applicants, who after sitting for an hour or two trying to think of a caption would simply give up and go home and withdraw their applications. 

(The other option would be simply to put all the names in a hat and draw out 2,000 names and be done with it.)

But, Mad Dog digresses. All he is saying is there are all sorts of intelligence, and present in our Dems meeting were at least a dozen folks who possess one very important type.

Don Draper (of Mad Men fame, about Madison Avenue advertising agencies) once said, "Every one thinks what we do is so easy. But, the fact is, very few people can do it."

He was talking about creating an ad campaign.

So Mad Dog limped home with his tail dragging between his legs and tried to do a simple exercise, which is presented above. 

It's a start. Or maybe an end.

But maybe, some talents can be trained and developed.

Baseball pitchers get coached. But they need to have a certain hand/eye coordination, shoulder anatomy, baseline talent.

Hitting a fast ball is certainly something you can learn to do. For that it's not clear you need anything but persistence. Mad Dog has spent years at batting cages. At first he could not hit much of anything. Now, its just a pleasure. 

Cartooning may be somewhere in between.

Trying to Move on from 1948

 

For some time, Mad Dog has been reading the history of the Weimar Republic as if he is reading today's news, but, as has been noted by many, the peace of 1918 was simply a twenty year interregnum until the inevitable war which rolled around once the sides rearmed.

Give 'Em Hell Harry

Now, Mad Dog is immersed in 1948, just 30 years after that maligned treaty, when Truman and his war hawk cabinet decided to go all out on devoting the economy and the focus of national thought on preparing for the final show down with a nuclear Soviet Union. Defense pending in those years was somewhere around 20-30% of the federal government's budget. Today America spends around 13% and the Europeans struggle to get over 2%. 

Reading about Truman is such an echo to today, it is downright eerie: As Peter Kuznik and Oliver Stone recount in their alternative history, "The Untold History of the United States," all the stuff we are dealing with today was put in place in that year, and simply never resolved, despite the fall of the Soviet Union and all the other changes in international relations.

There have been some real shifts: The British Empire really was destroyed by World War Two and the Brits handed over world domination to the United States. They decided to play Greece to our Rome, as Christopher Hitches noted. It's still an empire dominated world: but the empire this time is contained in container ships and military bases, not a local raj system.

Problems simply were never solved.

The Exodus

The founding of Israel is just one of many examples. The United States did not want the Jewish refugees following the Holocaust, just as it did not want to admit them as the Third Reich emerged or during the Holocaust. Hitler remarked dismissively about remarks from some Americans about his treatment of the Jews: "Well, if you feel that way, why didn't you just allow them to immigrate to America? No, you don't want them. Why should we?"

 And after the Holocaust, when Franklin Roosevelt asked the king of Saudi Arabia about allowing Jewish refugees to go to Palestine, the King replied replied, why push them on to an innocent bystander? Put them back to the source of the problem, where those who harmed them can restore them. (He meant Germany.) The tension between the wretched refuge on the teeming shores of Palestine, who settled in and made the desert bloom, and the Arabs who were sheep herding and already there,  has not yet been solved.  There were something on the order of 35,000 Jews and 650,000 Arabs in that general area covered by the British "Balfour Declaration" at the end of World War II and that balance has shifted, owing to Jewish immigration following the war.

As far as Russia goes, first it was communism, which Truman and his team convinced themselves was dedicated to world domination. Of course, Truman and his boys, Curtis Lemay, Forrestal, Acheson, were also bent on world domination, and while America had a monopoly on the atom bomb, they thought it was a done deal. 

But then Truman was shocked to learn his mission accomplished idea was a fraud, and the Russians, three years later had a bomb of their own, and everyone was off to the races to the hydrogen bomb, which just might set the atmosphere on fire. 

And rather than try to negotiate on a more or less equal footing with potential adversaries, the United States decided to simply overwhelm them with spending on defense nobody else could match.

But somehow, that didn't quite control the problems of Russia, or Iran or the Middle East.

We tick off the problems of billionaires running capitalist societies to their own tastes, of struggling work a day folks trying to get by, of under developed nations in Latin America and the inevitable desperate exodus from those nations toward the magnet of wealth in the north, of intolerance of new ideas and the rejection of novel solutions, and you realize we have really made no progress at all in politics, sociology, psychology.

When a man from South Asia runs for mayor of NYC and suggests free bus fare and city sponsored grocery stores cries of the demise of Western Civilization arise. Where will the money come from? Really? In New York City, where only Wall Street capitalists who make more than $10 million a year can afford to buy an apartment you ask where all the money will come from? 

The only real progress we have made has been in science and engineering, particularly bioscience: We were able to develop a vaccine to bring COVID under some semblance of control; we've improved cardiovascular disease outcomes by lowering cholesterol and with angiography and stents; we've controlled some infectious diseases--although our biggest weapon, vaccines, has been thrown under the bus. We made some advances in the treatment of cancer and some lymphomas are actually now curable, as is testicular carcinoma.

Patient, incredibly detailed work on microscopic things has brought us miles of advances in the way life is lived, at least in America. Of course, now biomedical research is being rejected and defunded for ideological reasons. But until now, we did make some real advances.

We have made huge advances in communications and information management which were problems most of us didn't really even know we had in the 1970's. Even science fiction writers didn't imagine the information age. Most science fiction was about wild advances in transportation (space ships, Beam Me Up Scotty), or weapons, or time travel, but how many science fiction writers were writing about artificial intelligence (beyond rudimentary robots) or cell phones or desk top computers or ordering on line goods and services?  

Henry Wallace

Our President in 1948 was simply too small a man, with too small a mind. He did not really like being President: he liked playing poker with his buddies, where he could call people "Niggers" and "kikes," and everyone would laugh. He never lost a minute of sleep about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He got good advice from his Commerce Secretary, Henry Wallace--who was FDR's vice president, but who was too liberal to be tolerated by the Dixiecrats and billionaires, so Truman got shoved in to replace him. Truman listened to Wallace, but as soon as he was out of the room, he listened to the next guys in, who wanted capitalism and military spending to rule. They were the testosterone driven guys you see in Dr. Strangelove. Knowing on some level his own limitations, Truman endeavored to listen to the smart boys, but he couldn't figure out who to actually stick with. 

So, then as now, we have small brains in big places and that is democracy. Or we have brain worms. Or fake leaders who look good in costume or who are pretty enough to anchor segments on FOXNEWS.

 

Sometimes in history, the big brained guys give us a polio vaccine, a penicillin, a cholesterol lowering drug and things shift a little. But, for the most part, it's just one caveman pounding another caveman over the head with a bigger club.

What If Derek Chauvin Was Masked?

 

According to Professor Google, there is no federal law requiring police to identify themselves.

Now, syntax is important here. Try googling, "Do police officers have to identify themselves as police officers?"
Mad Dog has tried and failed.  It may well be police officers do not have to flash a badge or a photo ID in many of these United States. Police "in uniform" may be required to show a badge or an ID but plainclothes police apparently do not. That is a separate question from: does a police officer wearing a uniform, impersonating an officer, have to go the next step, to identify himself not just as a police officer, a sworn officer, but to then identify himself as a particular officer with a name and a badge number?

Go try to find that for your own state and town.

One thing which is clear, if a policeman in Hampton asks you to produce identification, you are by law required to do THAT. But it is not at all clear the same obligation weighs on the policeman. He may legally remain anonymous.

How's that for the home of the free and the land of the brave?

The attorney general and every bimbo on FOXNEWS have insisted ICE agents and police everywhere are being stalked and doxxed by "cartels" and masks are necessary for police and agents of every stripe. Of course, nobody has actually thought it necessary to offer evidence this is a real problem and not just some convenient excuse dreamed up to cover nasty behavior.

This means any sadist may impersonate a policeman easily enough, even though claiming to be police when you are not is often illegal--that would only play out later, after you've been stuffed into a van or raped.

In New Hampshire, local sheriff's department and town police have entered into obscure agreements with ICE to apprehend "illegal immigrants." If those police wear masks, baklavas in this open carry state, things may get interesting.

One can well imagine a gaggle of masked agents wearing bullet proof vests, invading the local Indian or Mexican restaurants in Hampton, and sitting there are gun toting citizens who happen to really like the Patek Paneer or the enchiladas, when the storm troopers burst through the door.  Shoot out at the OK corral hardly begins to describe the possibilities.

And what, as a citizen, even unarmed, should Mad Dog do if two men in baclava's jump out of a van and tackle some guy walking his chihuahua on the sidewalk in front of him? Should he act as a Good Samaritan and rush to the rescue? Whose side should he be on? The guys who scream "ICE" ?  Should Mad Dog respond "FBI" and flash his wallet ID obtained for $14 from Amazon?

Wouldn't that be fun? The "ICE agents" in their hoodies and baclava's now facing Mad Dog in his Hawaiian shirt flashing his pocket FBI badge? 

Then we call the Hampton police, who arrive in their N95 masks and try to sort things out.

What's a citizen to do?

Or suppose Mad Dog sees a baklava masked man with is knee on the neck of a man by the road? Who should Mad Dog hit? 

Outside of the COVID pandemic, Mad Dog would have thought the safest thing to assume would be the masked guy is the bad guy, and you should go to the aide of the guy the mask guy is beating.

It's like coming upon a man beating a dog he is holding by a leash with a stick or a club. You may not have much information, but the scene itself asserts itself--ipse race loquitor: The fact speaks for itself. It doesn't matter whether the dog is a local stray or belongs to the man. That dog may be a bad boy. But you don't like seeing a beating.

We hate cruelty to animals.

We reserve judgment about cruelty to people, especially if they happen to be "illegals."

But if Derek Chauvin had been masked, and people in the crowd gathering around him, watching him crush in with his knee on George Floyd's neck, if that milling crowd become unsure if Chauvin was a cop, would George Floyd be alive today?