Say it Ain't So

Say it Ain't So

  

Every morning I ruin the start of my day with my usual perusal of the mainstream media . Also for a Middle East prospective I look at the always grim news as reported by Aljarzeera (for the most part US media avoids much discussion of the relentless carnage in Gaza and now Lebanon). Never have I felt such dread in engaging in this daily ritual.

 

And darkening it all is the knowledge that Donald J.Trump climate change denier, serial liar, convicted felon, hoarder of classified documents and braggingly proud sexual predator has now been reelected.  This is the same Donald J Trump who attempted a coup d'etat by falsely claiming he did not lose an election which he clearly lost and then encouraged a mob to storm Congress to prevent the legal formal transfer of power. Astonishingly has he escaped prosecution of this high crime of treason.

No post election disappointment has carried with it such a specter of doom. This is far worse than when Nixon trounced McGovern in a landslide, or when when Ronald Reagan and the reinvigorated GOP waltzed in to begin its 40 year attack at FDR's New Deal, or when we had to endure the back to back victories of the inept neocon Bush/Cheney regimes. But now the worst has happened, a wannabe dictator has been returned to the presidency by an electorate of ignoramuses. And this time he is armed with an agenda planned by a cabal of billionaire-financed think tanks who have conjured up a frighteningly ruthless road map to a Trump led ultra libertarian Christian nationalist theocracy.

 

It appears the good ole USA has been reduced to essentially a nuclear armed banana republic as all time honored norms have been flushed down the toilet. Apparently a majority of voters (49.9% vs 48.3%) are just fine with that. This born-on-third-base cheap hustler, multiple bankrupt developer and one time television personality, has discovered late in life that he also has a stellar talent for demagoguery.

 

For the losing half, the 48.3% who voted against him, there is only numbness and shock as we face four long years of chaos and retribution. Persecution and harassment awaits the “fake news” (aka MSN mainstream news) while legal prosecution awaits perceived political opponents as “his DOJ” actually is "weaponized". Basically a wrecking ball is being readied  to slam into responsible governance.

 

The MSN paid punditry presently is now grudgingly  'splain' how it happened and getting us prepared for January 20, 2025. And the Democratic Party must regroup and come to terms with its historic monumental defeat. Yet almost half voted for Harris, just a crucial little less.

 

As non-MAGA citizens we must for now stand by helplessly as his demolition team is assembled assisted by a well funded network of right wing think tanks led by the Heritage Institute. Their game plan known as Project 2025 is an execrable concoction of fevered reactionary wet dreams first unveiled this the summer. Despite Trump's lying denial of affiliation, it was cooked up by Trumpian alumni aided by the same hotheads that brought  us the Tea Party during the Obama administration. They have concocted this witches brew to slosh all over the guiless American public. In their fevered paranoid imagination they believe the entire country has fallen victim an imaginary authortarian yet decadent liberalism that wants to stiffle Christianity, free speech and the 2nd Amendment while running interference for LGBT especially the T's.

 

This goes beyond Trump and is part of a ongoing broader ideological confrontation with modernity which is seen as 'the enemy within' and which they wish to attack from all sides. They see the US government with its post 1930's legacy of managing the brutal excesses of Late Capitalism in what they 'regulatory state', the see within academia with the college educated leaning left politically; they see it deeply ingrained in the culture in all its forms: news media, entertainment, even leaking into professional sports.  In short this is the new billionaire ruling class's response to widespread public discord new resulting from shocking new levels of income and wealth disparity. This is a worldwide phenomena. This could be seen a neo-fascist version of a total cultural reset much like Mao Tse Tung's 1962 infamous Cultural Revolution - but from the right. Trump and his MAGA nonsense is a just the latest tool to be used by the master oligarchs. .

 

As things set in through the crucial second half of this decade with a MAGA-run and reworked federal government taking over, we are in for a real 'sea change' both literally and figuratively. And at any time the full weight of the climate crisis could set in as one or more of the forecasted tipping points are reached and all hell will breaks loose.

 

 

                      UNACKNOWLEDGED BRINKSMANSHIP 

                 

           

        Strategic nuclear arsenals (2022)

USA : 3,508 includes ICBMs, SLBMs and bombers (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)

Russia: 2,565 includes ICBMs, SLBMs and bombers (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)

In my undergraduate college daze I didn't much give a shit about politics. I watched it unfold with no strong opinions, emotionally detached. That all changed when I got my butt drafted into the Army in 1966 to fight against the 'evil ' Communist North Vietnamese. Fortunately I never ended up shipping out and winding up "in country " as they called it. Suffice to say I have followed 'the news' (and the politics behind it) intensely ever since.

And as such I have seen many wars come and go with the USA involved in many (or most) of them: Korea, Vietnam, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Al Queda, ISIS. And now we have two going on at once: the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Hamas/Hezbollah war. 

It appears to me with respect to the Ukraine-Russian imbroglio we are dangerously close to nuclear war as step by step escalation and counter escalation unfolds? That is we are again as in our long Cold War with the Soviet Union, again engaged in brinksmanship, risking the entire planet livable existence for old fashioned geopolitics. Some experts (whose opinions never see the light of day in the main stream media) also think so. Visit Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia) or John Mershiemer (Univ of Chicago) on Youtube. The credentials of alternate sources, that is their expertise, honesty and agenda-free nature is important, especially if one assumes that mainstream media has baked-in biases and underlying  pecuniary motives. One such alternative source is Sheerpost . Sheerpost is run by Robert Sheer, a former columnist for the LA Times.

A contributor to Sheerpost is Scott Ritter. Currently Ritter is very concerned about the Biden Administration's handling of the Ukraine War. He believes Biden's team is engaging in very dangerous WW III nuclear war brinkmanship. Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.

Also, here is a recent interview with Norwegian scholar, Glenn Diesen, who likewise is concerned that we are in serious danger of pushing the Russians into the use of nuclear weapons.

One can never know the overall story as an ongoing crisis unfolds and is reported in the mainstream media especially with respect to wars. My experience over the years is that the most influential media (NY Times and Washington Post and TV network news) are almost always supportive of any military engagement  the US is involved in. Only after the fact does the underlying truth surface, and sometimes that takes years.

 

Sacks on our Heads

 

                   Sacks on our Heads

 

 

Americans (and Germans probably pictured above) are amazingly sanguine about the Climate Crisis as compared to people in other responsible countries.  While we are the greatest emitter per person and the second greatest per person in total behind China, we are number twelve in terms of concern. (The chart below excludes China, Russia and Iran, all high emitters.)

 

 

July 21 and 22 were back to back the hottest two days ever recorded, yet it wasn't even a lead story on the key US online news sources (NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times). So much is happening in terms of weird bad dangerous weather that people (and MSM editors) have become blasé. Climate change related bad news has become just another ho hum every-thing-is-getting-worse news item. Many Americans have simply given up worrying about it - if they ever did. Also one's political views play a role especially in the US. If politically on the right especially if having contracted MAGAitis, people are in moderate to full denial regarding human responsibility for climate change . But even those who are concerned are experiencing 'distress fatigue' along with what could be termed 'distraction syndrome'. And underlying it all is a sense of powerlessness.

For right wingers in the US climate related disasters - mega-fires, 1,000 year floods, more Cat 5 hurricanes and tornadoes, long term droughts are just some other poor fucker's bad luck – like traffic accidents or being picked off in a mass shooting. Yet ever more distressing data keeps pouring in re: CO2 levels increases, ocean acidfication, coral reef loss, glacial melt rates, cessation of the warming currents affecting Europe, increases in extinctions and so on. Apparently for nearly half (45%) of the US population it is just part of the regular (mostly bad) news cycle. As per the chart above degrees of denial range from disengagement, to doubts about science, to full-on dismissiveness. That 45% figure coincides with support for the now dangerously reactionary, anti-science fully Trumpized GOP.

 

Globally politicians in leadership positions (prime ministers, presidents and such) must first do what they can to keep their always teetering economies afloat or they might be bumped out. So they all only pay lip service to the climate change issue grave as it is and only take baby steps in terms of real change. But they always send delegates to the annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, more commonly known as COP(_). COPs come up with much promising and posturing but nothing really changes the grim upward climb of greenhouse gases. There is always lots of upbeat talk about more sustainable of this and that promising technologies with blissful aspirations, but precious few solid commitments. So things just keep getting worse as we blow past targeted barriers and move ever closer to some deadly tipping point.

The US and China are both making some limited measurable progress. In the US C02 is down by 11% from 2005. And China now produces inexpensive solar panels and EVs.  But much more needs to be done here to even reach the our goal of 50% reduction by 2030; made more difficult now that the Supreme Court has limited the authority of all federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is abundant research and information available from concerned researchers and activists globally. For instance the Collapse Chronicles is a newsletter that comes out every day. This is from the July 27 edition. In it was a from a paper by William H.Rees. It is an excellent concise summation of what we face and how deeply embedded this problem is and how shallow are our simplistic diagnosis and proposed remedies.

The human enterprise is in overshoot; we exceed the long-term carrying capacity of Earth and are degrading the biophysical basis of our own existence. Despite decades of cumulative evidence, the world community has failed dismally in efforts to address this problem. I argue that cultural evolution and global change have outpaced bio-evolution; despite millennia of evolutionary history, the human brain and associated cognitive processes are functionally obsolete to deal with the human eco-crisis. H. sapiens tends to respond to problems in simplistic, reductionist, mechanical ways. Simplistic diagnoses lead to simplistic remedies. Politically acceptable technical ‘solutions’ to global warming assume fossil fuels are the problem, require major capital investment and are promoted on the basis of profit potential, thousands of well-paying jobs and bland assurances that climate change can readily be rectified. If successful, this would merely extend overshoot. Complexity demands a systemic approach; to address overshoot requires unprecedented international cooperation in the design of coordinated policies to ensure a socially-just economic contraction, mostly in high-income countries, and significant population reductions everywhere. The ultimate goal should be a human population in the vicinity of two billion thriving more equitably in ‘steady-state’ within the biophysical means of nature.

Below is a chart showing our collective global failure to date.

And then there is food. Kind of important, right? This from the David Wallace-Wells in NY Times (7/28/24):

..NASA calls it “the challenge of our generation” - how to save the food system from what he calls a “quadruple squeeze.” First, the problem of productivity and hunger. Second, the risk to ecosystems, under threat from fertilizer runoff deforestation and other pollution. Third, the challenge of nutritional deficiency, as those foods we are growing more of are generally getting worse for us over time. And finally climate, which is driving a “fundamental change across most breadbaskets on the planet,” he says. “It’s pretty complicated,” he admits. “And the scary part is that we have to solve them all.”

 

A final word

Before this climate catastrophe unwinds any further, first and foremost we have to prevent the head-up-their-asses quasi-fascist political opportunists like the Trump 'n Vance tag team and their wholly owned subsidiary, the GOP, from commandeering the Presidency and putting their idiotic retrogressive and Handmaiden's Tale 2025 vision in place.  If that can be prevented, the entire US political establishment must be redirected away from business as usual. 

The US Democratic party with its moribund 20th century warfare Keynesism and geopolitical pissing contests with other thermonuclear armed adversaries must be stopped. Their weak tea lip service to this world-historical crisis and their slow walking fossil fuel tolerant approach must be wound down. We need to get serious, otherwise our gooses are cooked - literally .

PLEASE JOE, GO!

 

 

The blood is in the water. For Democrats ridding themselves of a losing presidential candidate has become the issue of the day. The big debate has exposed Joe Biden as a politician whose cognitive skills are in steep decline and who has lost his edge even when not having Mitch McConnell moments. But he is loathe to admit it. The frantic attempt of his family and staff and DNC loyalists (and a few journalists) to put Humpty Dumpty back together again is a sad spectacle. But make no mistake, this is a gift from the gods. That is if the beleaguered Democratic Party can seize this grand opportunity. With the right fresh new presidential candidate, the Demos can save us from a Supreme Court enabled wannabe dictator. Properly presented the entire November election could be reconfigured and energized.

The Demos and the centrist mainstream media, which more or less sets the parameters of  'respectable opinion', has now turned against Biden. After the debate disaster it was shockingly obvious that Joe Biden will be even easier prey for Donald Trump than previously feared. It was the sclerotic inept Democratic Party leadership, the DNC, who forced retread Joe Biden on us in the first place as they did in the 2016 election with Hillary Clinton. Recall the 2016 Democratic Party primary debates when we somehow ended up with Biden even as he had limped along near the rear of the pack as assessed by the NY Times opinion writers. It was Bernie Sanders who led by recognizing the widespread discord and proposed necessary drastic but popular solutions. And many voters in the hinterlands not yet MAGAtized by Trump were receptive. In later post election interviews many said they would have voted for Sanders had he been an option.

Yet Biden's first term has turned out better than expected. He presided over some solid un-appreciated domestic policy successes including the (falsely named) but hugely significant Inflation Reduction Act, which amounted to a badly needed major infrastructure rebuild. It had many elements of the 'Green New Deal' that the right wing had so successfully derided both in name and concept. And (also underappreciated), the inflation of the early Biden term more or less has receded. But the discord it created never abated, and Biden remained unpopular. Hence the gambit of The Debate which was envisioned to expose Trump for the lying scumbag and convicted criminal that he is.

Biden, being the oldest US president ever, had importantly promised to serve just one term. His was to be a 'bridge' administration, handing it off to another younger more energetic Democrat in 2024. Now here he stands, never appreciated, remaining unpopular (always polling in the mid 30's in popularity), saddled with two open-ended wars, and now blowing it bad in 'The Big Debate' . But he refuses to step down. The debate was supposed to re-inflate his campaign but instead it left it with four flat tires.

Most of the same centrist coalition that supported his 2020 run now recognizes the Biden 2024 campaign is doomed. And it this is a serious situation; the dark shadow of rising anti-democratic forces globally are upon us. Some label it Neofacism. If Biden loses the election it could affect House and Senate races. We could end up with all three branches of our government in the hands of hashly reactionary authoritarian forces. And we have no Supreme Court as a last resort anymore. The majority of them are leading the charge.

However we have a chance for the Democrats to reboot. Biden in his floundering performance is diamond in the rough. He just needs to be convinced that his presidency will be appreciated and he will go down in history as a heroic figure if he simply abides by his earlier agreement and steps down after his one very successful term. He he fights it to the bitter end as presently seems inclined to do and loses the election which the numbers indicate he will, he is opening the floodgates to God know what. One thing we do know the great calamity of our time, the Climate Crisis, will certainly be fatally ignored.

 

 

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Unsolicted Advice for the Democrats

                             EMBRACING MR. GENOCIDE: NO!

                                         A resounding photo ...

Despite Trump's serious legal travails and now an actual conviction on 34 felonies,Trump is still on track to win the election. And Biden's has added two more vote losing weights to drag behind him:

• The Hamas-Israel war – The Biden administration's support of Israel's brutal over-reaction to the Oct 7 Hamas terrorist attack risks losing some portion of his college educated supporters. There have been 37,658 Palestinians killed so far by Israel's IDF vs 1,139 Israelis originally in October killed by Hamas.  And has as we know demonstrations have broken out at leading universities around the country - and have been forcefully put down.

• Tiktok –Congress with Biden's support is mounting a silly attack of this largely insipid but popular Chinese owned online platform. This could lose many young naive first time voters. Furthermore, it sets a dangerous precedence of the government banning 'unwanted' internet platforms. No one has clearly elucidated how China could or is using the data accrued from this platform in malicious ways. 

   

One hopes Biden's campaign for reelection has yet to really commence, since at this point in time it seems, at least here in blue state California, to be almost invisible. Biden's target rich opportunity of media appearances following Trump's recent multiple felony convictions featured the same old squint-eyed Joe with his low wattage underwhelming speaking style. His flat emotionless approach may have worked well in his years as the perennial Senator from Delaware, but he now needs to step up his game. He must compensate for his aged frail appearance by emerging as a fierce pissed off veteran hardcore pol. No laid back calm demeanor will do against a lying, conniving, self serving political ogre and skillfully dangerous demagogue like the Orange One. Moreover all the loyal Repub craven political hacks (like the reprehensible Marco Rubio and the satanic looking Ted Cruz) are now so infected with MAGAitis that they slavishly (or zombie like) imitate Trump's rhetorical use of ugly overstatement, grandiose exaggeration and false factoids pulled from the ass.

Biden must begin enthusiastically and stridently to educate the American public on the two biggies :

• The economy - It's not that bad; most people who want to work are working. The fact that prices are not going back down is not inflation and what inflation lingers (down to 3.5%) is largely due to market control by monopolies and oligopolies. Somehow the Democrats must reiterate that housing costs (always going up) and gas prices at the pump (fluctuate wildly based on global oil prices) are not the fault of the president. Econ 101 should be taught in high school.

• The world is overheating -If Trump regains the presidency, any hard won (but still inadequate) steps to confront this never-before crisis that affects everyone will be reversed. Donald Trump and many Repubs are in denial regarding the great crisis of our lifetime. If Trump and his people get in, the participation of the US which is the greatest per capita contributor and second greatest aggregate contributor (behind China) of green house gases will pull out and try to reverse what has been accomplished. That would be no small setback.

   

   The Democrats need to be more aggressive in educating the public on quintessential underlying issues not just emotional ones. Quit following the poll numbers based on known concerns; create poll numbers based new ones. The DNC will have the money. Many well heeled members of the upper middle class are alarmed at the prospect of our electorate voting in an autocrat and they can be persuaded to cough up more donations. Those who are managing Biden's media campaign must move away from simplistic obvious partisan propaganda pieces and invite creative, intellectual and scientific types to produce strong engaging informative material that educates the public as to the absolute urgency surrounding certain issues- especially the Climate Crisis.

   

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quiet may day at berkeley

 

A Quiet May Day at UC Berkeley

 

On May 1st I visited the usual epicenter of violent protest, UC Berkeley. Their participation in the Pro-Palestine/ Israel divestment movement was you could almost say was calm and dignified. Tents stretched for some 50 yards on the grassy area in front of Sproul Hall with an audio tape running of a woman speaking in I assume the language of the Palestinians. Large posters were draped above the main entrance to Sproul Hall proclaiming: “ Free Palestine Encampment Until UC Divests”. Basically this is a divestment movement just like the one that stopped South African apartheid.

Most of the uproar is of media footage of police breaking up the peaceful encampments. Like the Black Lives Matter movement, 90% of the demo-nstrations are totally peaceful. But as in the case of many progressive movements some of the members are loud mouth fools and overstate their case which the media always seizes on. Recall the foolish calls to 'defund the police' which the media repeated ad nauseam and the right-wingers got so much mileage out of.

Nicholas Kristrof in his a recent NY Times column makes a valid point with respect to the short term efficacy of campus protest. It will not change Biden's (and the US in general) cozy relationship with Israel. But history is about the long run not the short run. In 1968 presidntial election Nixon was certainly helped by the Silent Majority's reaction to the anti-war movement as well as no one on the political left (including us as college students) wanted to vote for the Democratic Party's Hubert Humphrey and his support of the Viet Nam war. However I did (grudgingly) vote for him as I felt the Democratic Party's domestic policy would be better than that of Nixon and the always reactionary GOP. Sound familiar? And in 2024 we will have to vote for Biden regardless of his unconscionable support of Israel's horrendous literal overkill (34,000+ vs 1200) policy in Gaza . This nationwide college campus protest movement is historical. The media always reacts to the immediate drama of events and only deals with them in depth after the fact. I don't recall the so called 'establishment' being particularly supportive of Martin Luther King and his cohort while they were being attacked by dogs and fire hoses. It was just news then.

Much of the current uproar and chaos is occurring at universities that are dependent on wealthy donors who apparently support Israel's brutal overreaction in Gaza. State supported public schools seem to be less apt to call in the tact squad at least in California's UC system. The ruckus at UCLA was not caused by the protesters but by the counter-protesters violently attacking them.

Unfortunately the NYTimes has been tacitly supportive of Biden's clumsy and contradictory support (armaments for the IDF and food for its victims) of war criminal Bibi Netayahu. And as usual most of the mainstream media takes its lead from the Graylady.

And as Kurt Vonnegut used to end his novels - 'so it goes'.