Listening to
last night’s debate, I wondered if Democrats who were “rattled” by a poll that
claimed that 59 percent of respondents thought that Donald Trump was the
“moderate” candidate were justified in this fear. I expected the debate to put
that nonsense to rest in the minds of some of those people. As expected, Kamala
Harris remained stable and in control, while Trump—apparently irritated by her
attacks on his fitness and competency, and her visible amusement at some of his
absurd lies—was flailing about with the usual personal attacks and made-up
numbers taken out of thin air. Trump’s incompetency is such that it is clear
that if he is elected, he would not be running the country, but fascist goons
like Stephen Miller and others who are motivated by nothing more than juvenile contrariness and master race fantasies.
Is the country in
that bad a shape as Trump claims? I mean, really? One must wonder what country
Trump thinks he is living in, sounding like a clownish functionary from the
Russian propaganda ministry. His refusal to say he supports Ukraine independence and employing
Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban as a "reliable source" demonstrated his discomfort
with democratic norms. His accusations of immigrants eating pets is typical of his
dehumanizing people and total lack of simple human decency.
And of course he
lied about this, he lied about that; a little research will tell you that U.S.
job figures showed 2.7 million fewer people were working when Trump left office
than we he started. A little research will tell you that Iran and North Korea
became more dangerous because of Trump’s amateurish meddling. A little research
will tell you that Trisha Meili, the victim in the Central Park jogger case, is
not only not dead (as Trump insinuated), but still alive at 64, an author and activist.
The NPR
commentators unanimously called the debate a TKO for Harris; Fox News, despite
the usual suspects enamored with Trump’s mere repeating of their own lies on
national television, was apparently so rattled
by Trump’s “performance” that they immediately offered to host a debate.
Harris probably unwisely suggested another debate, but if held by Fox News it
should be declined because it would a hit job, the “motivation” behind it
clearly to save Trump from himself and not make his Fox News "advisors" look like complete fools.
And wouldn’t you
know it, but this person…
….who Arwa
Mahdawi of The Guardian was half-convinced was a “secret” Trump supporter for failing to publicly disown it or saying anything at all,
announced that after Harris’ debate performance had convinced her that all the
issues she holds personally dear in deference to her self-involvement, Taylor
Swift came out on Instagram to first say that she was “aware” of the
possibility of misinformation in the above image, although she didn’t
explicitly condemn it, and second to say that she was voting for Harris after
all. Isn’t it amazing that something like this is actually headline news in
this day and age?
The world is a
zero sum game; not everyone can be a “chief,” because then who will do all the
work to make a few people super rich? It all has to start from somewhere. What
good is a lot of money if there is nothing to buy with it? Nothing from nothing equals nothing, and what is Trump feeding working people who make people like him rich? A bunch of empty propaganda with zero calories.
Unfortunately we live in a world where nothing is actually “free,” not even silence.
I was in the Seattle Central Library the other day, which is more a “tourist
attraction” than any place to do any real work (let alone reading books). Remember the “good old days” when one of the tasks of a librarian was to insure
the library was a place where you could work in peace and quiet?
Well, not
anymore. The “library,” at least the downtown branch, is a place where people
(some of them homeless) can treat as a “community center” where they can talk,
yell or play their music or videos if they so choose, because once you “relax”
the rules for some, rules no longer mean anything. In fact, if you complain
about the noise, you are the one who is “the problem.”
And so I was
working on this post, the final entry for my “dictionary,” when I became aware of
jawing and joking a half-dozen rows down. Maybe this is just me, but noise in “quiet”
environments is more irritating than it is in environments where you expect to
hear a lot of noise. So I “asked” whoever these people were to “shut-up”—who I
figured were just a couple of “tourists” who were just there to look around.
What I heard in response was some arrogant, combative individual who wanted to
pick a fight.
All he had to do
was be “respectful” and tone it down. Instead, this person who identified himself
as a library employee, deliberately wanted to escalate the situation. What for? What was his motivation to insist on
carrying on a nonexistent argument? When I pointed out
he was the one shouting, not me, like some street punk he huffed and puffed his
way to the table I was working and “presented” himself, in a fashion—and I do
mean “fashion”—which if intended to create the impression that people were reacting to that instead of his bullying behavior, the latter rendered it counter-productive.
Now, this being
Seattle, you have to understand the concept of “different strokes for different
folks,” and this guy was definitely stroking different. Imagine Marilyn Manson
in a dress (well, maybe not so hard to imagine for those who are his “fans”). When
I say “counter-productive,” I mean it was obvious that this guy wanted to draw
attention to himself in order to draw a particular view from people. The
“problem” was that hardly anyone would have noticed or cared what this white
guy “looked like,” but this guy was looking to play a “victim” by trying to
claim that I was “judging” him by his appearance and not his actions—and I hadn’t
even see him before he started his noise-making and decided to show himself for my "entertainment."
Of course,
security and other librarians stopped by, none of them who claimed to have
heard this guy’s rude and contemptible behavior. It all soon died down, but I
couldn’t help but to observe that some people are desperate to portray
themselves as a “victim of society,” but their behavior negates that; for most
of the world it is ships passing in night, but people like this want to cause a
shipwreck. I was born an “alien,” and I can’t change that in the eyes of many
(or most); but this guy, he chose to be an “alien” by drawing attention to
himself by being a rude asshole, and it appears in retrospect based in on a few
encounters the next day that the librarians knew this as well.
This is a case where
a great deal of effort is put into “causes” that they should just leave alone
because it is all in their head and there is no benefit from it. This can also happen to people who believe they are a cut above the common run, and are indignant that anyone would believe that they have any
taint or association with the unwanted “others,” and efforts to disprove such
associations often only backfire because people might ask “What is he trying to
hide?”
That is story of
the 1976 French film Mr. Klein, where
the beginning credits tell us it is based on “the experiences of several
individuals,” implying factual events in France from 1942 involving the
infamous the Vélodrome d'Hive round-up of French Jews. So it is we see a man
named Robert Klein (Alain Delon) as an apolitical, amoral art dealer who takes
advantage of desperate French Jews looking to sell off their valuable artwork
before the Gestapo and their French police collaborators steal it for nothing,
but for only centimes on the franc.
One day a Jewish
newspaper is left at his residence; outraged that someone either believes he is
Jewish or is trying to frame him, Klein first goes to the publisher, and then
to the police to file a complaint. He immediately comes under suspicion, since
despite the fact he doesn’t “look” Jewish, and Klein is a technically a German
name, in France it is seen as a “Jewish” name. He is advised by his lawyer not
to draw attention to himself and just let the thing die, but he is intrigued by
the existence of this “doppelganger” who he shares the same name with, and
conducts an “investigation” of this man, who he never actually sees, but
discovers he appears like him in a general way.
What follows is
that in a series of coincidences, Klein goes from suspect to “confirmation” of
being this Jewish man; being only “suspected” he is not required to wear the
yellow Star of David, but since art dealers are stereotyped as being all Jews,
Klein finds his apartment invaded by police and all his artwork and other
valuables confiscated. His lawyer attempts to dissuade him from doing
“suspicious” things, but Klein will not be stopped: he is determined to find
this other Klein.
He goes too far
in his quest, even telling a landlady, who claims to have never seen the Jewish
Klein’s face, that he wants to rent the rundown room where he once lived. Realizing
it isn’t safe for him to remain in France, he is given the opportunity to
escape the country with a forged passport provided by his lawyer. However, he
meets a woman who informs him that the other Robert Klein was at the train
station they just left, and unable to control his foolish quest he jumps off the
train to find him. Having contacted him using the phone number he found at the
doppelganger’s apartment, he arranges for them to meet, but instead when police
arrive to arrest the Jewish Klein in the aforementioned round-up of French
Jews, they only find our Robert Klein.
Yet Klein has
one more opportunity to escape: his lawyer arrives with his birth certificate
and records proving that his parents and grandparents were Christians. But
Klein “sees” in the crowd the man he believes to be the other Klein and informs
his lawyer that he “will be back.” But instead he passes the point of no
return, when still looking for the other Klein he goes through the gate into
the area that is controlled by German soldiers rather than French police. He is
shoved into a cattle car, destiny likely Auschwitz, and now he can only mull
over his eventual fate, his face a picture of resignation that he allowed
himself to become the Jewish version of Robert Klein, although not yet realizing that his destiny is likely to become nothing
but burnt ashes:
The film is
somewhat ironic since later Delon would be the subject of scrutiny over his
views on Jews and the Holocaust, but here at least he gives his star power to a
film that is revealing about the French complicity in the Holocaust.
On the other hand, the 1969 French documentary The Sorrow and the Pity on the subject
was radioactive in France for years, and not allowed to be seen on French
television for a decade. I purchased the Arrow Blu-ray instead of the domestic
Milestone release because it includes an extra that features a televised debate
between the filmmaker and historians, with high school age students inputting
their own views about the subject of French complicity after watching the
documentary; while a few were more honest about racial views (then, not necessarily now), many simply fell back on the
notion that people were scared for themselves, and that “we are not like that
anymore.”
Of course the
Dreyfus Affair had already exposed the underlying anti-Semitism in French
society beforehand, and the fact that Dreyfus was eventually exonerated was due
more to political backlash rather than social growth. After all, Karl Marx was Jewish, and
anti-Jewish propaganda when France was under Nazi control or influence (Vichy),
made clear the connection between Jews and “Bolshevism”—just another way in
this country of saying “socialism.”
This is all
ironic given that the far-right National Rally party gained the most votes by a
single party in the national election (37 percent), and despite the fact that
left-wing parties formed a coalition to win a plurality of seats in the
National Assembly, Emmanuel Macron chose instead to select as prime minister a
right-wing politician from a second-run
party, inspiring outrage from the left after they had aided Macron and his
center-right party in overcoming the far-right threat. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Lee Hokstadder writes
French President Emmanuel Macron last week
handed a noose to the nation’s hard right, a movement animated by bigotry, and
empowered it to hang his government whenever it likes. Macron, backed into a
corner of his own making, named a new prime minister whose survival, along with
the cabinet’s, will depend on the support of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, a
party whose trademark is rejection of France’s vibrant multicultural diversity…
... Now, Macron has allowed not just a crack
in the firewall but a yawning breach, brought about by his impulsive decision
to shuffle France’s political deck when no such move was necessary. How Le Pen
will deploy that leverage — by pressing for her party’s populist, right-wing
agenda or by hewing to the center — will become clearer over the coming months.
What is extraordinary is that after years on the margins, the French far right
now has a chokehold on government policies and the nation’s future.
And none of this
had to happen; Macron was frightened by the electoral success of the far-right
in the EU elections, and so to “prove” to himself that this was not the “will
of the people,” he called a snap election, What did happen instead is that Macron
allowed the far-right National Rally an opportunity to control the government.
He is being accused thus of “endangering democracy” and ignoring the “will of
the people”—or at least a majority of it—who are not ready to hand power to a
party with the usual far-right populist rhetoric: immigration, crime and
inflation, all exaggerated and all meant to frighten people.
All of this of
course disguises the real problems in France—a rapidly aging population,
rising debt fueled by an enormous public sector (21 percent of the labor force is
in government compared to 13 percent in the US), and an overly generous public
pension system with fewer workers to pay for it. It is ironic that the
far-right in France opposes working age immigrants who fill jobs and pay taxes,
since telling lies about them is also the “strategy” of Trump and the far-right
in this country to avoid discussing the issues that really affect the lives of
people and the future.
Some people
think that problems can be “killed” by shooting them with blanks; of course
when they are done shooting, the “problem” is still standing. In a review of
the Netflix film version of JD Vance’s Hillbilly
Elegy, which Scott Mendelson in Forbes
called “pandering poverty porn,” he notes that the Ron Howard-directed film
(oh, and he has “second thoughts” about it now?)—the
screenplay of which edits out most of Vance’s more extreme views—argues
that if he thinks that
…hard work and determination are the only
determining factors without wondering why, if that’s the case, such a story
would be unique enough to justify an awards-season movie. It goes without
saying that the film doesn’t touch on trickle-down economics and the
outsourcing/automation of American labor, the Reagan-era gutting of public
education and social programs or the over-prescription of Oxycontin. Todd
Phillips’ Joker
is a more honest look at the
macro causes of micro ills. The notion that Bev “stopped trying” negates the
very real social and corporate causes of poverty.
Mendelson points
out the hypocrisy in the belief that “everyone” can be a “winner” in this
society; you know, “all chiefs and no Indians”; I mean if everyone was a
Yale-educated lawyer who made his money (with the cash help of right-wing
billionaire Peter Thiel, who Vance recently “begged” for campaign funds) as a
venture capitalist and not helping people in need of legal help (what a waste
of an education), essentially ripping off entrepreneurs for their own gain as
noted by this law firm 1
and shown here:
And so we are supposed to ignore
the fact that people like Vance (oh, hell, and like Trump) insure that the
“people” who support Trump that Vance supposedly gave “voice” to are left in
low-paying jobs (or jobs at all) to make people like him who create or make
nothing rich.
So arrogant,
self-privileged con artists like Vance scolds and feeds people a fake line,
running government like a “business,” where the profits of corporations and
wealth of the rich come first, and the needs of the people come last (if not
disregarded altogether). Mendelson notes
that
This is what pundits talk about when we hear
about folks ‘voting against their own self-interest.’ Although it’s also argued
that, for too many white voters, white supremacy is in their self-interest to
the point of denying themselves just to make sure that ‘those people’ don’t
also benefit. Needless to say, the very idea of racism doesn’t play a role in
this sanded-down fable.
When people act
against the own interests, like Robert Klein, and become so “outraged” that people
they don’t even know is trying to “destroy” them, they become their own worst
enemy, and destroy themselves in the end; why did this man try to race his bike
through the center of an intersection in front of a left turn signal?
It’s just not “smart,”
just as it isn’t voting for Trump again. You just have to say enough is enough.
In John Sayles’ 1983 film Baby It’s You,
Jill tells Sheik “We’re not in high school anymore!” That is something some
people need to learn; it’s about going somewhere, or going nowhere. They need
to “grow-up” and finally get it into their heads that Trump is a “fad” that had
its day, and we need to learn from our mistakes. He’s not the “answer.” In 2020
he left the country like this…
…and why do we
want to return to that? Well, folks, if you don’t like democracy because your
guy didn’t win, there are other places to go. The Daily Mail tell us that
Brits have
already signed up for Vladimir Putin's offer to escape the woke West and move
to Russia for its traditional values, reports in the country claim. Already 17
people have been in touch with Russian diplomats in Britain seeking details of
Putin's fast-track residence permits, Moscow has said. It comes after Putin
changed immigration laws to tempt Westerners to embrace his dictatorship.
Of course it ain’t
over until its over, and unless the Trump fad ends, we won’t even see this
country turn into a zero sum game: if people like Trump, Vance, Thiel, Musk and
the like have their way, you might as well follow all those migrants out of
town for all the “benefit” their plans have for you.
On Fox News’
“The Five” Jessica Tarlov, exhausted from being the lone exhibiter of common
sense on the panel who dared her fellow panelists to explain the nonsense
coming out of Trump’s mouth and the fact that nothing he proposes helps working
people, stopped David Gutfield cold when he said “Look, I know…” with “You know
what?” “I know tariffs.” “I dated tariffs.” At least Gutfield had a sense of
humor about it; his fellow right-wing panelists sat stonefaced, the one liberal
on the panel “trumping” them all with something they are not used to
encountering: the undisputable truth.
Trump is keen
with those one-line policy proposals that demonstrate that he is keenly aware not of his working class "base," but those on the far-right with the knives and scissors. When
asked if he supports a child day care tax credit, he avoids the question by
talking about “tariffs” that will generate “lots of money” as if that is going
to solve working families’ day care issues. Trump talks about inflation, but
tariffs certainly are drivers of inflation, since they add cost to imported
products, which will be borne on people who can least afford it. It would only
“work” if the U.S. manufactured products of a like nature that then could
compete better, but it hasn’t been doing that since at least the Carter
administration. Again, Trump’s proposals
add-up to zero benefit for working people.
No, we should “pity”
the rich. While it is true that those in the upper-income brackets pay the
large majority of federal income taxes, we must remember they still make gobs
of money, a lot more than when there was a 90 percent marginal tax rate on
income above the exorbitant that was instituted during the FDR administration
to insure that rich were not keeping all the money for themselves. The
following graphic shows that the lower-end pays the vast majority of the FICA
and Medicare payroll taxes, and is about 45 percent of all federal deductions
taken out of most people’s checks. Unlike the federal income tax, none are subject
to refund:
What this tells us is that just maybe if there is a "problem" keeping Social Security and Medicare solvent the answer is staring us right in the face?
Of course the
states need to gouge working people too. Here in Washington State, there is the
WA Cares Fund to pay for “long term care services,” the WA Paid Family and
Medical Leave tax (which of course is
not meant to help me or anyone I know),
and the state workers compensation fund. If you own property, you likely
see property taxes increase every so often to pay for new projects. The state
has no income tax, just the regressive sales tax, which tends to hit the
lower-income types the hardest; this is also true of “red states” that brag of
not having state income taxes that unnecessarily “burden” the well-off; no,
that’s for poor people to be burdened.
It’s not hard to
understand that some people just don’t “get it.,” especially if they don’t
watch MSNBC. We know about Fox News, but CNN has been faking it as a “moderate”
voice, to the point of being accused of “sanitizing” and “sanewashing” Trump’s
incoherent rally speeches; we remember that CNN was also accused of aiding Trump’s
election in 2016 by giving his rants endless screen time without comment.
We live in a world where sometimes you have expectations, but you have no control over it. For example this Amazon driver ignored both the delivery window of 10AM to 3PM requested for this "rush delivery" and the permanent instructions stating that the business opened at 9 AM:
This person didn't even input the correct city when he made this faked entry. This "rush delivery" was subsequently "lost" and had to be reordered and delivered by the usual way, two days late.
But we expect someone who is running for the highest office in the land to be in control at least of his sanity, and Trump certainly isn't one of those people. He repeated the same one-liner lies he’s told endless
times during the debate and some people will take this as “evidence” of that he
can put together a string of coherent sentences better than Joe Biden could,
but as we saw even during the first debate when asked specific yes or no answers he was
unable to commit to any actual policy plan, other than deport, deport, deport,
and drill, drill, drill. The evidence
from his campaign speeches shows that he is losing his mind, his social media
posts completely unhinged…
…and he won’t be
in “charge” of anything if elected again, but simply a “front” for the
activities for white nationalists with their own dark vision of what they want this
country to be. In Texas, Steve Hanley notes that the Texas Supreme Court upheld
the creation of new “special courts” stocked with judges who have in the past
proven to be in the pocket of the polluters in the fossil fuel industry, whose existence is Gov.
Greg Abbott’s payback to the industry for dumping tons of campaign
cash in his coffers.
Unlike most judges who are elected by the people, “Instead,
they have been handpicked over the last two months by Greg Abbott personally.
They are to serve two-year terms, which means if they dare to rule against the
whims of the governor, they can be dumped overboard fairly quickly replaced by someone
who will shut up and do what they are told.”
In Texas,
political influence is easy to buy if you are rich or are a corporation. Working
people in Texas still haven’t gotten the message yet, continuing to vote for
corrupt politicians like Abbott and Ken Paxton whose only interest is power and
how to keep it. Hanley ends by noting that “For those who are paying
attention, this is exactly the kind of unequal justice we can expect all across
America if there is a second Trump presidency. You have been warned. Please
vote wisely.”
We shall see. Some people seem to think that the act of "thinking" is too exhausting:
If
politics is a zero sum game where there are only “winners” and “losers,” in the
end nobody wins if there is no country to “win” left. Think about that.
