A dearth of imagination

If you want proof that Donald Trump is an idiot, I don't think you have to look any further than his response to the coronavirus crisis in this election year.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but thanks to his bizarrely dysfunctional steering of the ship, it's not impossible that he could actually blow it and lose to Sleepy, Creepy Joe Biden!  Can you imagine the difference to his favorability and chances for re-election if instead of being his best The Donald -- i.e., an incompetent, weak baby whose one trick is to appeal to the die-hard white supremacist ingrained by our culture in people of all walks of life-- he or someone influential to him had seen the incredible opportunity opened up to him by the jackpot of a crisis he could have nailed but for his narcissistic obtuseness and acute (if well-placed) inferiority complex. What if someone on his team had seized this moment for greatness-- what if with the bottomless stores of treasure that he and his vultures diverted to the pockets of his billionaire enablers, he instead had mobilized industry to produce the ventilators and protective equipment urgently needed by those tasked with caring for the virus’s victims, pushed through a universal basic income to see people through, decreed an open-ended implementation of single payer healthcare and medical leave on the government's dime to see that isolation was easy for people and that those who fall ill would be able to seek treatment so that society could manage the spread.  

He could do this to benefit himself in the form of votes, approval and genuine adulation on the part of Americans and a place of honor in the history books.  Congress would leap at a chance to support a president being unexpectedly presidential.  His own gain would coincide with lives improving for an America eroded by 40 years of trickle down neoliberalism.  In consequence, his actions would result in a gush-up boost to the economy from the beneficiaries of his largesse, the isolated masses adequately supplied with cash for survival.  His detractors on the left wouldn’t know what hit them until they got what they wanted. As for his reactionary base, it would be a test of his proposition that he could shoot someone in the face on 5th Avenue and his fans would still love him. I think he would pass the test.

He wouldn’t do this though, even though by doing it he would sail to victory on a tidal wave of approval from Americans  thirsting for a new and better age who would flock in gratitude for bold, new leadership away from their tepid reactionary acquiescence to entreaties to support the alternative.  As surprisingly sure-fire as this tack would prove for the Republican incumbent, I don't think the Democrats need fear that they will be out-lefted by the right (which sadly would be the only thing that would ever inspire them to scramble to reclaim their leftist credentials).   This level of meaningful subterfuge is not a job for Mr Trump Steaks. It's not the subversive nature of it that makes it an unlikely re-election strategy for Trump.  His whole thing is subversion of the office of the presidency after all.  Rather it's the possibility that it could actually be a good thing for the marks.  

The mark of a true criminal is that their success is measured by the degree of pain they inflict upon others.  If the best con in the world results in the easing of pain for strangers you’re not trying hard enough at your criminality. 

Alas.

The Emancipation of the Stupid

The sight of a swarm of angry, armed, unmasked Michigan protesters storming their statehouse demanding of their democratic governor an end to coronavirus quarantine and an immediate return to business as usual even as the pandemic ravages Detroit and continues to spread in the state forces atrocious thoughts into my mind.   I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling an involuntary eagerness for reports of the first COVID-19 deaths among the protesters.  It would vindicate the governor,  the science, and indeed, me.  But what if it never comes?  What if the governor throws up her hands and gives in, or anarchy ensues, business goes back to usual in Michigan and a coronavirus resurgence among the whiter, Trumpier parts of the state never happens.  Are they lucky? Or are they vindicated?  How disappointing would that be!

Shame on them (and those who bid them to do this) for making me have these thoughts.  On the other hand, let's for a moment entertain the notion that there is something to their beef with the state for forcing them to isolate for their own good.  It might require activating the troglodyte part of your brain.  The smart, sciency part of my brain tells me that the unusual asymptomatic transmission of the virus which contributes to the rate of its spread, the unavailability of testing, the lack of treatment and prevention and the brutal severity of what's known about its effects call for the precaution of extreme isolation.  What we're learning about the disease is frightening and it's best to think of fellow humans as potential carriers. (How else are you going to get it?) Furthermore, especially with the healthcare system we have in this country, we are as usual taking a peashooter to a gunfight.  Hospitals are actually closing in the middle of this because as Briahna Joy Gray noted in a recent conversation with Current Affairs editor Nathan J Robinson, "there is no profit in treating the sick."  The Trump administration and our leaders in Washington are under-equipped to handle this, so naturally the Professional Managerial Class who run our municipalities and provincial governments have been forced to take matters into  their own hands.  This is the smart, sciency view.  But the troglodyte in me can easily club the rational side senseless long enough to see how a person could become indignant at some elite telling me when I can get my hair cut and go to the mall and the Sonic without putting a sissy mask over my face.  

What makes elites think they know better?  Humans have been idiots for most of our existence and look how far it's gotten us.  

There might be a little something to the thought that with enough numbness to the consequences, humans could power through this coronavirus thing with only half of our wits engaged. Not all of us would get the virus probably.  Of those of us who do, some would inevitably succumb (to achieve herd immunity we're told it would have to be a phenomenally huge number, a disproportionate percentage of them people of color and no doubt many of them the essential workers who have to deal with the virus face-to-face whether their fellow humans take it seriously or not) but some number would recover with antibodies, and some of those who by the genetic luck of the draw were not susceptible to the disease to begin with would conceivably live to perpetuate their super power into future generations.  As for the ones who succumbed, they would be remembered in photographs and stories, some in song and maudlin poetry by what survivors of theirs remain.  Our progeny who survive will get the annual corona vaccine along with their annual flu shots.  Same as always.  And if in the future some obscure bird disease in the amazon rain forest mutates into a microbial face-eating parasite that spreads asymptomatically to humans across the globe in a span of weeks, we'll deal with it then. 

If reckless disregard for public health works out for them without taking its toll on them, I'll be pissed.  Things always seem to.  But it will mean those of us who have survived can put away our literal masks sooner than we anticipated for the next pandemic and, though we might not fully recognize the world we'll emerge back into, we can put back on our figurative masks and get back out there to some of the communal activities we've missed for a little while.  

If it doesn't work out for them, shame on them for making me feel like gloating.    

Entropy

In the interest of time and of keeping the content flowing, we present to you today a young man's poem, written nearly 40 years ago, in one sitting too early one morning while watching the sun taking its sweet time rising; to my memory a Sunday, after a hard night and before a full day's work.  It's a reminder of life before the pandemic if you can think back that far.  A time when you could make mistakes in public without necessarily killing anybody.

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A table here, a desktop there, a plant, a pair of shoes, a chair, a shroud of nicotine on the air.  And everything that shatters the teacups of existence.

A lamp gone stingy with its light, the method of dawn's break from night.  And each sharp body scattered has somehow homed in on my shin and every piercing wave pokes dumbly at my heavy ear.

And I am visited at this rude hour by mental and intestinal doubt like Russia was visited by the Tartars. Though I might have died for all the world's debt there were nothing sacred about my martyrdom.

And then I come to it, through a haze that, had it descended on Grenada instead might have repaired America to its shore: The Night Before.

The fact? I was like a vessel cracked, its liquid seeking every pore, where some will be reclaimed with pain but some must always stay.

The past was never a favorite haunt.  The future's perched on toothpicks.  But I would take them both in place of last night and today.

The vacuum is getting crowded

Now that Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign and endorsed Joe Biden, there is no active leader for the ideas that Bernie was running on, and so the question each of his campaign's supporters must ask of themselves is,  What now?  I don't have a definitive answer but I can chronicle where I am at this moment in time, April 2020.  In the midst of a pandemic that has distanced Bernie's constituency from him and from each other making his second place campaign untenable to pursue, in the midst of the first administration of a president emblematic to the nth degree of the rot at the core of the American system of governance and economic distribution, the alternative to Bernie and to Trump is essentially a parody of the slick, self-dealing two-faced Washington Establishment insider who gave us the kind of world that made Donald Trump's presidency possible; whose only campaign promises so far have been to veto Medicare for all if it ever comes before him, to try to do better on the unsolicited nuzzling and that “nothing will fundamentally change.”

Biden might be marginally less bad than Trump, but I am finding that I don't feel like justifying the margin.  Watch the video of Joe Biden speaking in favor of the 1994 Crime bill, or any of the various times he courageously parades before the cameras his willingness to cut your retirement income and health benefits in order to balance his budget as his paymasters command him to,  or his cavalier way with the facts in the buildup to the war and beyond  as he makes his donors' case for sending you and your brothers and your sisters to die, to be maimed and to kill millions of Iraqi citizens in order to assert the interests of billionaires, and riddle me this:  if this is the candidate you feel we must have in order to defeat Donald Trump, what exactly is your problem with Donald Trump?  This guy was Donald Trump before Donald Trump was Donald Trump but instead of a mere blatant grifter, he was the less blatant kind.  Like Trump, he knew how to force his way into a voter's drawers, but in contrast to the dull simplicity of Trump's agenda, Biden was actually a gifted deliverer of the goods for his donors.  Is it the success at screwing you that you love about Joe?  Is the reason you had to defeat Bernie that Donald Trump was talking a good game but when the lights came down, just not keeping it up for shafting you to the extent that you knew you could count on from Joe?

In case it's not clear, the switch from Bernie Sanders to Joe Biden is not easy for me.  I am not fully on board with it.  Bernie Sander's endorsement, an inevitability by his own account from day 1 of his campaign, might be a bridge too far for me to cross with him.  As of today.   Bernie had famously described his campaign as a movement of "Not me.  Us." -- in effect, circumscribing the perimeters of his leadership to the extent that it should surprise no one that some of us are prepared to continue his campaign without him.  That said, I greatly appreciate the leadership he has provided and do not begrudge him his choice. And I don't rule it out for myself in November.  Today, I have concerns.

For one, I'm having trouble believing Joe Biden will defeat Donald Trump.  With his horrendous record, with his staunch refusal to stand for anything that a reluctant voter could be motivated to get behind, in his current state of deterioration, he must be the worst democratic candidate I've ever seen in my lifetime.  Is this a joke our democratic elite are perpetrating on us all?  Is there a method to the madness of cramming him down our throats?  Rest assured, his weaknesses are like catnip to Trump's messaging team.

If Biden can't win, the only reason to vote for him if you're not a democratic operative -- to defeat Donald Trump-- is gone.*  For all but Biden True Believers (if any exist), a mere vote for Biden is a wasted vote.  Therefore, it seems to me, you might as well vote your conscience if you're going to vote at all.  If your conscience bids you to vote for the lesser evil with the best chance of winning (however remote), vote for Joe Biden.  If you cannot bring yourself to participate in the supreme farce that this 2020 Presidential election has become, stay home or leave the choice blank.  (I suspect this option will win in November.)  If you're feeling spiteful and nihilistic, you know what to do.

The real dilemma is for those who prefer their vote to count in a substantial way.  Given the premise that Biden will not win, and assuming Trump is not an option, substantial may mean merely voting to signal support for change that is not on the ballot of either party likely to win in November.  Where does this vote go?  At this stage, it means writing in Bernie Sanders or making a lonely choice among third party alternatives.  The Green Party-- the traditional place where leftist votes go to die-- is as good a choice as any, has name recognition, and at least has a platform that lines up completely with my own aspirations.  If they're smart (which has yet to be demonstrated), they will understand the historic and unique opportunity that Joe Biden prevailing as the Democratic challenger in the middle (or at the end?) of the Age of Trump affords them.  At this moment in time, there is no better reason for a leftist to vote Green than to help build a unified voice for true change, for policies that are urgently needed to make a difference in real people's lives and to urge immediate action to mitigate the inevitable effects of capitalism on the planet.  If the Green Party were the relocation of the "Not me, Us" movement**, imagine an unignorable surge in polling for presumed Green party candidate Howie Hawkins in the polls.  Will the Green party step up to make a clear case for itself as the home for the collective voice for revolution?  It remains to be seen.

With no clear place for leftist votes to go, there is still time to hope for the single possibility that would bring both change we can believe in and victory in November:  that upon close unprotected exposure to Senator Sanders from inside his campaign, Joe Biden and his team become infected with a fever for the fervor and begin to feel the Bern.  The relative susceptibility of a Democrat to progressive change is the reason Bernie Sanders and Noam Chomsky urge the Biden option in light of present circumstances.  Behind my anti-coronavirus mask, I'm not holding my breath.

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*  If Biden can and does win in November without the left as many of his apologists desperately want to believe to be the case (when they're not busy preparing to blame Biden's loss on Bernie supporters),  then voting for Biden will do nothing to advance the left's cause anyway.  True or not, it's an engraved invitation from Biden's camp for the left to look elsewhere.

** And not a place for Jesse Ventura to park his perennial presidential vanity project as is rumored to be under discussion.

A nutty thought

A message to voters in states that have yet to hold their Democratic primaries in 2020*:

Unless a switcheroo happens at the Convention this summer, Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee.  Therefore as long as you are voting, you are free to vote for the policies you want and not for the strategy you think will make Trump lose.  In fact, it would be very smart of you to do this because how often do you get a chance to vote for what you want without any bad consequences?  Your working theory was that Biden was the one to defeat Trump and now, according to your theory, you have that in the bag, so as long as you have a vote at your disposal, you might as well use it to give Uncle Joe a sign of the sort of policies you would actually prefer, because left to his own devices (or those of any other candidate the democratic operatives who gave you Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton and John Kerry and Al Gore and Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale would permit you to vote for in November should they have second thoughts about the presumptive nominee's capacity for fulfilling his duties), "things are not going to fundamentally change for anyone."

If you vote for Joe Biden (who has already won without your vote) you will basically give him permission to make adjustments to social security and Medicare to balance the federal budget on your back and not the back of the shirking 1%, to veto Medicare for All, to privilege fossil fuel corporations and pharmaceuticals and financial and insurance conglomerates and the prison industrial complex over people as he has done throughout his career, and as he is already accumulating obligations to resume doing if -- I mean when!-- he wins the election in November.  You can count on years more of debt and insecurity and the same policies and behaviors that have given us global warming continuing into  what's left of the livable future. But Bernie Sanders is still on the ballot.  You don't have to worry about him winning any more, but bear in mind that the stronger Bernie's showing in the remaining primaries, the louder the message that in exchange for trusting the experts on who is going to defeat Donald Trump, in return for doing our part in the voting booth in November, we'd like to see some crumbs trickling down our way.

Okay, vote for Joe in the General if that's your plan. Vote for Bernie in the Primary. What do you have to lose?

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* Note: this piece adopts the cynical view that the very credible allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden that have been raised by Tara Reade will, for reasons of political expediency, continue to be ignored and when push comes to shove (i.e., when raised by Trump in the general election) be actively rejected by what would otherwise be a necessary critical mass of mainstream public feminist opinion makers, let alone the media. 

Party's over

The title of this single from Detroit-based singer-songwriter* Anna Burch's new album is so true in so many ways today:

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* And Bernie canvasser and supporter.

All Right

Please enjoy a moment of encouragement from Swedish duo BC Unidos featuring the talents of U.S. Girls and Ledinsky.