Category Archives: Current Affairs

Trump Is Crowned In Fayetteville NC — March 9

On the way out, when I stopped to take a photo of this gentleman hawking his anti-Trump shirts, as the crowd streamed around him, I asked if he’d had any trouble.

“None so far,” he said. “Kinda surprising.”

But after that evening, maybe not so surprising. An audience: customers. That’s what they were. Not for their Wal-Marts, but instead at one of Trump’s now belly-up casinos. After all, Trump’s career has been built on selling, not only his name, but making his name synonymous with the gambler’s pipe dream of being an instant winner.

And it looked to me like that’s what the crowd came for: to buy (one more time) the promise of making America, not “great” again, but making it (and them) instant winners (“We’re gonna win, win, win!”). Pull the right lever, and the bells will ring, the colored lights flash, and the coins, or the chips, will come pouring out and piling up.

I’m Off To See The (Trump) Wizard – (March 9)

Well, perhaps Lowell was mistaken in the claim that such crossroads-choices come but once in a lifetime. Still, we can do no better than hear some more of his verse,

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth’s systems to and fro;
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,
And glad Truth’s yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future’s heart.

So the Evil’s triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill . . . .
They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom’s new-lit altar-fires;
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away
To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to-day?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth . . . .

Bernie Sanders, Jack Shafer & The Day After

Sanders has been a fighter who is a gentleman.

This combination is rare enough in our public life; but beyond merely being admirable, it is one that will wear well. Sanders may have been defeated in his presidential run, but he has not been disgraced, nor have his ideas been discredited. He and they will persist.

On the political side, his disciplined focus on economic inequality has been expressed in policy proposals which, whether you like them are not, are rational and plausible. If he wants to spend more than a trillion dollars on infrastructure, education & expanded health care, he is also clear that all this would be paid for, with higher taxes. It would not be a shower of “free stuff”; there is no “voo-doo” in his economics.
Moreover, his stubbornly consistent message of economic justice was timely when he first raised it more than forty years ago, not long after president Lyndon Johnson had declared (and lost) a war on poverty. It has only become more intense through the years, is urgent now, and will remain high in public consciousness thru the next president’s term, whoever occupies the White House. Sanders will still be strategically positioned to affect coming policy debates.

2016: Politics “When The Sky Darkens”

Most years, I put up with politics: it’s as necessary as taking out the trash, but only about as interesting.
Sure I have my preferences, and occasionally a candidate is exciting, for awhile. But usually I’m eager to get it over with, and go back to what feels like real life.
This year is different. I’m following the campaigns as closely as I can, with a morbid, horrified fascination.
The NY Times’s Roger Cohen gets at the reason why: Democracies can die.
Many parts of our former republic, including civil liberties, are already close to catatonic; and profoundly anti-democratic forces (the secret security state, the war machine) are already loose and beyond our control (which is why we mostly prefer not to think about them).

But all this could get much, much worse, depending on how this political year turns out.
Cohen comes at the 2016 campaign from the BTDT (“Been There, Done That”) perspective, of those who have seen — and lived– this movie before. It’s also a movie which is being remade in more and more corners of their continent. And What about Ours?

Clinton’s Big Donors: No Wonder They’re Complaining

Clinton’s Big Donors: No Wonder They’re Complaining Some Inside Scoop On A Clinton Campaign Huddle; and an exclusive photo: Bernie’s billionaires! The NY Times‘s “First Draft” report on a Feb. 17 meeting of top Clinton campaign donors.First, campaign manager Robby Mook “told the donors that the outcome in Nevada” was too close to call: “depending … Continue reading Clinton’s Big Donors: No Wonder They’re Complaining →