Red Sky at Morning

If you happened to catch the tail end of the Republican National Convention this week, perhaps you will understand when I tell you I'm feeling doubtful about November.  I am not the target audience for either the RNC Convention or the Democratic counterpart the week before, but I watched the conclusion of both and I have no memory of Biden's speech or the aftermath, whereas I can't unremember Trump's largely teleprompted uberramble and the spectacle that followed it-- the most amazing fireworks display I've ever seen (probably Chinese fireworks as a guest on Bill Maher pointed out the next day) over the Washington Monument, a fantastic mystery tenor crushing patriotic songs, opera and Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, draped flags stirring majestically in the breeze, unmasked crowds cheering shoulder to shoulder (including an epically sweaty Rudy Giuliani) on the artistically lit South Lawn of the white house.  Ethically squishy (as usual for this bunch) but, so what? For political visuals it would be tough to beat.  Joe Biden was reportedly not the beneficiary of a post-convention bounce from his speech and convention -- to the contrary, his double digit lead had eroded before things had even gotten underway for the republicans-- but if Trump doesn't get a bump from his, he's in deeper shit than we thought..

Michael Moore was moved to tweet the bad news to Twitter that the history of 2016 might be repeating itself, urging those within hearing distance who'd like to avoid that outcome to "ACT NOW.:  As in 2016, his warning to Dems was met by a predictable chorus of boos from the Blue No Matter Whos who seem to prefer to conflate pessimism about Biden's chances with a desire for Trump to win, preferring to believe once again, perhaps more so, that Donald Trump's self-evident unfitness for office dooms his project of reelection to failure. Any expression of doubt in the ranks about Joe Biden's preeminent fitness for office translating to victory over Trump will be blamed if anything goes wrong in November.  From which I conclude that the stakes are actually higher for Michael Moore and those sympathetic to his panic than they are for the democratic party faithful, their ostentatious Trump derangement notwithstanding.

Inspired by a genuine fear of the horrors that would be in store if a lame-duck second term for Trump is enabled, I am feeling stirrings of involvement rising within my bosom which I feel would have to take the form of engagement with on the fence voters--with a very real understanding of their hesitation-- to enjoin them if they're able, to resist inertia and do what they can to help keep a Trump re-election from happening, but they are being fought against by a very real uncertainty about how to marshal the requisite enthusiasm to sustain me through even one pitch on Biden's behalf.  What could I say?    Sure Biden is worthless.  He has been a senator since he was 30 years old.  Believe him when he tells you that he has no imagination, no empathy for the average voter.  He proved again and again in his long monotonous career that he is all about primping and preening, willing to be rhought courageous enough to threaten your security and your well-being in order to demonstrate his seriousness to his class.  He stands for nothing except for when his donors enter the room. His working class stiff routine is an act. 

Sure, Biden has no principles.  Trump is a menace.

I don't know if it will work but it has me convinced.

Chronicles of an August

I've returned from vacation in another state.  The conditions for the visit imposed by the health authorities there were that I either needed to document a clean bill of COVID-19 health taken within 72 hours of arrival or self-quarantine for 14-days.  Plans A & B for testing both fell through. One site required a referral which we did not have, another was too costly.  We learned of a reputedly "free" method for testing but between the distance from our base, the availability for an appointment and the prospects for receiving results, our window for certification disappeared.  Fortunately we had access to private quarters so sheltering in place it was.  There was no internet where we were, no cable, the telephone was not connected and cell-phone service was spotty at best, so we went cold-turkey on media saturation, news and our usual diet of information.  Hard to believe but we survived.

Before I left, I'd helped a friend with setting up a transfer between an unemployment account and a bank. The magnetic strip on the card issued by the municipality through which they were receiving benefits had stopped working though they'd had it for a only a short while, their efforts to get a new card after months of working to get the first had not yet panned out and their straits were getting dire.  I witnessed the completion of the transaction, went on vacation, on my return, they still had not received the money from the unemployment account in their regular bank account.  Had they maybe not dotted some i on the transaction like missed a final ok button or something?  There had to be a simple explanation for it.  While I was speaking to them about it, they reminded me that I had told them while they were going through the process that the managers of the system would not have made the process easy.  I had no memory of saying this.  Sure enough the site left many steps unexplained that required either some knowledge of how online financial processes generally work or a degree of ESP in order to figure out.  I had a bit of the former.  The holdup in getting their funds moved to their usual bank account was in small print on the site: transactions take up to 30 days. Figures.

Why had I prior to my vacation correctly surmised that the process for accessing funds to which one was entitled would be difficult whereas post-vacation I was annoyed by the difficulty?  Answer: because before the vacation I was adapted to the poverty of life under a capitalist online regime, whereas in the intervening weeks my acquiescence had worn off even for the brief time I had been in unconnected quarantine. In quarantine, time unfolded naturally, with the rhythm of the sun. moon and stars.  Back in civilization everything happened once again in "real time": lightning fast for outgo, glacial for income.

While I was away, I learned through a notification delivered in the interstices of a shoddy 4G reception first that Joe Biden's VP pick was immanent, and second that it was Kamala Harris.  I greeted both pieces of information with indifference. I felt I had made up my mind about the election. I knew what I was dealing with.  No VP choice this turkey nominee could pick would disappoint me as much as his conquest of the nomination had.  I had a small place reserved for shock should he have upset expectations by picking someone not already being bandied about but more to my liking.  Biden has one speed so of course he picked among the non-entities already on the list.  Who gives a shit?  Apparently some people do because I was met more than once with an expectant, "Kamala Harris!  Am I right?" from people, to which I had to hesitate long enough for the subject to change.  From what I gather her gender and ethnicity are sufficient reason to be excited.  I was hoping for a bit more in terms of a signal that she would be a concession to the Bernie wing of the party who actually voted in the primary.

The Democratic convention started. They're not pretending anymore. All the usual suspects are featured, plus 6 Republicans in as clear a sign of Democratic priorities as I've ever seen. AOC got 60 pre-recorded seconds.  If I want to hear Republicans I'll wait til next week.  If even democrats aren't pretending there's hope for you and me in this rotten, diseased, capitalistic shithole of a country, why should we?

Come on, man!

Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both gone and opened their mouths again this week.  Donald Trump in an interview with Axion's Jonathan Swan characterized 150,000 plus deaths in the US from Coronavirus since March as "it is what it is", had only to say about the Civil Rights icon John Lewis's recent death the petty complaint that Lewis chose not to attend Trump's inauguration (like nearly everyone else), said no one had done more than Trump for black people except perhaps Abraham Lincoln (if him), declared himself perhaps the clearest thinker that Swan had ever interviewed, and got very cagey about prospects in the very little time he has left before the election to achieve his campaign promise to end US participation in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan among other places.  In a Fox and Friends call-in the next day, he asserted incorrectly that children were basically immune from coronavirus and should go back to school, the same day that a Georgia second grader was reported to have died from the virus within days of having returned to school.  For his part, Biden, fresh from a town hall with SEIU members in which he declared that no racist had ever been elected president until Donald Trump, testily replied when asked by CBS reporter Errol Barnett whether he had taken a cognitive test like the president:

No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man.That’s like saying you, before you got in this program, you’re taking a test whether you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?  ... I know you're trying to goad me, but I am so forward-looking to have an opportunity to sit with the president or stand with the president and debates, I am very willing to let the American public judge my physical as well as my mental fitness and to, you know, to make a judgment about who I am.

For Trump, November (if he's not able to postpone or preferably cancel it) is about seeing that his vanity presidency continues.  He cares little about anything that matters to anyone other than himself, and his lack of curiosity and involvement is exactly what his handlers see in him.  He does deliver on the most dastardly policy impositions of his base.  He doesn't know or care that he shouldn't be racist.  Racism comes naturally to him and truthfully has never not worked for him so he persists in it.

Biden is vain*, but it's not clear what he thinks he's doing running for president at this stage of his game.  He is a standard issue Democrat as though these were standard times.  Democrats win occasionally,  usually lately while imitating Republicans-- a trick Biden has been in the vanguard at playing throughout his overlong Washington career.  The mojo of the alpha republicans who devised the cool cruelty of socialism for the rich and austerity for everyone else might account for some of the Beta pale imitators’ success among the strategically timid element of their base-- the irony that seems to be lost on the operatives is that with everyone else it's mostly the mere opposition to the alphas, not the imitation that accounts for the bulk of their support--  but democrats have fixated on the strategy of imitation for years, never facing up to the significance of it: they have no ideas to speak of, they have no principles, they have no mojo of their own.  The only life that has been breathed into the democratic party in the last 30 years was imported from independent socialist Vermont, and it was snuffed out by a collective effort of the full spectrum of the remainder of the 2020 field from A to B.  It's pathetic really.

What's left to vote for "is what it is." The reason to vote for Biden is that he might very well be a vegetable by inauguration date.  If conditions merit the unexpected expedited implementation of Medicare for All, Biden may be in such a state that in spite of his insistence that he will veto it with every last fiber of his cognition that remains-- his handlers might just be able by January to commandeer his hand into signing the bill into law.. That is something that would never happen in a Trump second term.  Without the whisper of an incentive to pander to voters for the sake of the next campaign, it is frightening to think where a second Trump term with Trump free to be Trump might lead. 

~~~~~~~~~~

* He knows it's unseemly to openly proclaim racism for instance.  He lets his 50 year record do the talking.

Vote Fraud

Donald Trump suggested in a tweet this week that due to the risks imposed by the threat of the coronavirus with in-person voting and in an abundance of caution about the possibility of fraud due to mail in voting, perhaps the November election should be postponed.  He doesn't have authority to do it, but it's not far fetched to think that he inspired the Hong Kong government who the next day announced that they would be postponing their own elections for a year to the objections of the pro-democracy opposition.

The reasons behind Trump's sudden concern about the threat of COVID-19 in the context of voting (he hasn't demonstrated a great deal of concern about the virus in any other contexts to this point) can easily be discerned by a glance at the polls.  At the moment, as the walls come crumbling down, the country is registering disapproval at Trump's handling of the crisis.  The economy is tanking.  People are hurting worse than they were at the end of his predecessor's 2 terms in office and voters are not happy about it.  Things can and will change in the time left in the 2020 campaign -- it would be foolhardy to guess how at this juncture-- but if the election were held today, or alternatively if things don't improve in the next 100 days, the results may not be as ambiguous as it would benefit Trump for them to be.

The aesthetics of a president postponing his own election in an ostensible democracy are not good.  Donald Trump couldn't care less about aesthetics or democracy, but it's legitimate to ask the question, what would be the harm of delaying the election? These are unprecedented times-- do they not call for unprecedented measures?   Indeed whereas 49 countries have proceeded as planned with their 2020 elections, 68 have postponed planned elections due to concerns about the coronavirus.  But the arguments for it are not just suspicious in the American president's case, but weak.

It would of course be too much to ask this administration to take the lead in ensuring that states actually secure a safe, fair, on time and accurate election in the face of the COVID-19 threat-- a threat largely of the administration's own making.  That initiative would require some vision, competence and leadership-- three qualities that were never seriously promised by the president, never demanded by the constituency that elected him and certainly not about to be delivered voluntarily at this stage of the game.  In the vacuum of leadership, many states have already been stepping up.  The 2020 primaries in many states were postponed during the first peak of the virus (not before Joe Biden's nomination was secured of course) but many states acted rapidly to tweak the process to promote voting by mail as a socially distanced alternative to in person voting, with virtually no fraud reported.

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Trump and his minions persist in casting aspersion on the concept of mail-in voting.  Their goal is to delay the inevitable at worst; at best to stall until the economy can be propped up enough to make the inevitable somewhat avoidable.  Failing the postponement of facing the vote, they aim.not to ensure the integrity of the process but to undermine public confidence in the outcome.  It is all but a foregone conclusion that the proven effectiveness and fairness of mail-in voting will make it a primary feature of how the November election will be carried out. Credit for the success of the process to date is at least partially due to the US Postal Service itself-- one of the Federal Government's most consistently excellent public services.  Naturally the current administration would love to add dismantling the Postal Service to its list of dystopian accomplishments before November, but the clock is running out.

Tampering with an election should be more than an aesthetic violation in a democracy, but you have to wonder, is this a democracy?  Donald Trump was elected in 2016, and Hillary Clinton lost, because there was arguably a case to be made that Donald Trump as an amateur would have to be better than the more-of-the-same-and-then-some  that Hillary Clinton represented.  As it turned out, Trump was not a revolutionary; just an incredibly incompetent pretender and the results of his incompetence are lying in embers all around us.  Bernie Sanders offered himself as the locus for a bottom-up revolution that would restore the government to the hands of the people where it has always wanted to be, but in spite of the power of his message and the growing momentum behind the movement, the members of the political class united behind Sleepy Joe Biden, the elder (and I'm talking elder) representative of their tribe as their standard bearer, the rank and file obligingly fell into place and the dreams of  the "Not Me, Us" revolution were postponed yet again.  I'd like to know if revolution is possible as the ballot box.  If it is, then you have a democracy.  If it is not, then you do not..  

I fear we do not.