Dear Stephen: A Letter to an English Friend About Life Under Trump

Dear Stephen,

Courtesy of Inkygirl, creative commons license.

It’s pretty clear to me that there was collusion between not just the Russians and Trump's team but Trump himself. He brags that he doesn't play by the rules, and that he games the system. I'm sure some voters saw that as an asset, as if knowing how to beat the system meant that he understood it and could win the Washington game for them, but that's the same lie we were told when Bush and 

Obama tried to persuade us that the guys who caused the financial meltdown were just the guys to fix it, since no one understood it better than them. The biggest lie was in the last phrase- they didn't understand it. Then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform." That quote is from the New Yorker. From NBC: “A critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down,” Greenspan said. “I still do not fully understand why it happened.”

I don't think  Trump thought he would lose without help from Putin. I think it's simply the way he operates. What  evidence beyond his behavior for the last seventy years is needed to observe that the fat fuck has no moral compass? The goddamned media has bought into the current "post truth" fetish. The only reason they cover him now is the same reason they gave him a trillion dollars worth of free advertising during the campaign. The media loves conflict and Trump is loaded for bear with potential conflict. He's certain clickbait, and the media doesn't give a shit if it's negative or positive- “Just look at our fucking ads, stupid". They're corporate whores, and covering his reality show antics is a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for good investigative journalism.

There are a few things going on with Trump that although  they aren't news ought to be repeated here. One, he lies so egregiously and so often that it's difficult to sort it all out and winnow out whatever germ of truth might have accidentally wandered into his remarks.. Second, although he claims not to care what others think of him, he's in fact so thin skinned that he can't let any criticism slide, no matter how trivial. He tries to cover his dumb ass with bluster in cases like this. Hence, when he blurted out that he fired James Comey to end the investigation into his ties with Russia, it was not only true- disconcerting enough coming from a congenital liar-  but bluster. It was Trump's great "Fuck you!" to the system. He doesn't have a feel for politics at all, and cut the legs out from under his entire staff, who were trying to pass off their own outrageous and completely different lie that Comey was fired for being mean to Hillary. But of course we're reeling from the audacity of it all and stand by gobsmacked. He hasn't been able to decide which he's going to react with, one of the lies or more bluster, so he's used both and we're left wondering if he's arrogant or stupid, when in fact both things are true. In any case it was an unbelievably stupid admission, bluster or not.

It couldn't be more obvious, or more simple, that Comey was fired for exactly the reason Trump gave- he didn't like the Trump/Russia investigation and wanted to end it. The simplest explanation is very often the most likely, and whether Trump had chosen to lie or tell the truth, ending the investigation is the one thing he might think he had to gain from dismissing Comey. But of course he only succeeded in making himself guilty of obstruction of justice, coincidentally the exact offense that brought Richard Nixon face to face with impeachment and resulted in his resignation to avoid that fate.

What Hunter S. Thompson wrote about Nixon over forty years ago is also true of Trump: The son-of-a-bitch ought to have his nuts ripped off with a plastic fork. When Trump thumbs his nose at the system he gets big cheers from his hard core of supporters, but what he's thumbing his nose at is our system of checks and balances and our rule of law. He thinks he's above the law and his staunchest backers are looking for revenge against a government that they think has sold them down the river, so every nail he drives in the coffin of the republic sends them into an ecstasy of perceived retaliation. They don't recognize white privilege and are so blind to it that equality looks like oppression to them. And they have no loyalty to that system anymore for all their protestations of patriotism and love for America. They claim to love a vanished America, and indeed many of them do pine for the vanished and traitorius Confederate States of America, paragon of Christian virtue that it was.

There is a recent article in The Nation magazine  by Susan McWilliams:  "This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson.”.

(https://www.thenation.com/article/this-political-theorist-predicted-the-rise-of-trumpism-his-name-was-hunter-s-thompson/)

McWilliams points out that Thompson described the culture and motivation of our present class of Trump deplorables fifty years ago in his book " Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs". Thompson chronicled the philosophy of violent and total retribution that was followed by the Angels  against anyone who crossed them, which meant pretty much any outsider, and almost all of us are outsiders to them. I remember the book well, and Thompson in his turn had credited Nelson Algren from his book, "A Walk on the Wild Side". 

"Algren’s book opens with one of the best historical descriptions of American white

trash ever written.

 He traces the Linkhorn ancestry back to the first wave of bonded

servants to arrive on these shores. These were the dregs of society from all over the British

Isles – misfits, criminals, debtors, social bankrupts of every type and description – all of

them willing to sign oppressive work contracts with future employers in exchange for

ocean passage to the New World. Once here, they endured a form of slavery for a year or

two – during which they were fed and sheltered by the boss – and when their time of

bondage ended, they were turned loose to make their own way."

Later: 

Drifting became a habit; with dead roots in the Old World and none in the New, the

Linkhorns were not of a mind to dig in and cultivate things. Bondage too became a habit,

but it was only the temporary kind. They were not pioneers, but sleazy rearguard camp followers of the original westward movement. By the time the Linkhorns arrived anywhere

the land was already taken – so they worked for a while and moved on. Their world was a

violent, boozing limbo between the pits of despair and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. They

kept drifting west, chasing jobs, rumors, homestead grabs or the luck of some front-running

kin. They lived off the surface of the land, like armyworms, stripping it of whatever they

could before moving on. It was a day-to-day existence, and there was always more land to

the west.

 Some stayed behind and their lineal descendants are still there – in the Carolinas,

Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee. There were dropouts all along the way: hillbillies,

Okies, Arkies – they’re all the same people. Texas is a living monument to the breed. So is southern California."

I know these people, Stephen. I grew up with them, went to school with them  and worked with them. Lived next door to them. I don't shrink at all from identifying them as deplorables and racists. Not many of them ever  did believe that Trump would fix their problems or bring back their jobs, dumb as they are. What they liked were the things that repelled the rest of us, Trump's open misogyny and bigotry. They liked his fascism. He blamed the same people they blame- anyone seen as not "one of us", and they're out to burn down the system, burn it all down, since being white and Christian is no longer enough to buy them special treatment. In the past was a time when no matter how low they were in the pecking order, at least they weren't black or brown skinned or Jews, and by God that meant something. If the system won't give them back what they once had they mean to see to it that nobody has it.

In an earlier time we'd have been able to count on a congress that still had some vestiges of decency to thwart Trump's ambition and restrain his excesses, but this is no longer that time. The "Freedom Caucus" wing of the House, put there in the rebellion once known as the Tea Party, was elected by the folks Thompson and Algren described, Bible thumping, hellfire and brimstone preaching, hard drinking and bitter, and the right wing ideologues that make up the rest of the Republican congress are more interested in their own agenda of stripping away the last threads of an already shredded New Deal. Theirs is a bankrupt political philosophy demonstrated to be false time and again, but these are Ayn Rand devoteés and they believe with the fervor and fanaticism of true believers. They are beholden to huge muti-national corporations which are now the sugar tit they suckle. Democrats will put up some resistance but many of them are nursing from the same tit. The Democrats will bring a hacky sack to a street fight.

Plainly the incidents of Russian hacking and Comey's ill-advised tepid dismissal of the email charges against Hillary had an effect on the election. Only a fool would find nothing suspicious about the timing of that move. But concentrating on that distracts attention from an unrelenting assault by the Republican party in legislatures across the country on the voting rights of minorities, most of whom would vote Democratic. Voter suppression is not there yet, but it’s approaching the old Jim Crow years and includes the conservative Supreme Court’s repudiation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. When you add in the apathy many of those same voters feel, and the defeat of the most acceptable alternative to either Hillary or Trump- Bernie Sanders- the voting rolls were trimmed and diverted enough for Trump to just squeeze in. 

And squeeze he did! He won the popular vote in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a tiny amount, giving him the bare edge in electoral votes. Inquiries into the legality and accuracy of the vote were slammed shut by Republican legislatures in each case and we may never know whether there was hacking at the state level by the Russians or ballot manipulation by the Republicans. Journalist Greg Palast has reported on shenanigins in several states, but of course it’s buried in an avalanche of clown show performances by the Trump administration. And given the constant barrage of misdeeds by that administration, it seems likely that any election irregularities will take a permanent back seat to more pressing issues, leaving us vulnerable to a repeat performance in 2020. 

We’ve been there and done that. In the election of 2000 it was made clear that reform of our federal elections was badly needed and that some kind of standardization of procedures by the states was in order. We have had one Democratic House since then and they did not address it. You can bet your last quid that no Republican congress is going to devote itself to the mantra of one man, one vote. As far as they’re concerned money talks and everything else walks. It’s interesting to me that the Old South and the Dixiecrats who waved its flag considered blacks to be property and thus ineligible to vote, while now they’re married to the party whose idea is that property should indeed have a vote. 

William Hutson 

The letter above was penned by my husband, William Hutson. Bill writes political commentary and humor at another blogging site and regularly corresponds with friends overseas. 

Why We Need Politicians in American Politics

If you live in the U.S., the first thing you probably think you know about politics is that politicians are lying, corrupt bastards and the world would be a much better place without them.

Let's think that through for a few paragraphs, shall we?

It's true that politicians are often evasive and love to answer questions that have nothing to do with the question asked. It's also true that politicians can also be corrupt and greedy, or at least they can seem to be overly-focused on campaign money and political 'pork'-- that is, projects and laws that benefit only the people who live in their own districts and states.

Current common sense dictates that these qualities have damaged our nation so severely that we should now seek to elect only people of pure ideals and ideas, or businessmen, not politicians, and certainly not 'political insiders'--a term that can mean a lot of things but usually refers to a politicians who have been around Washington for many years.

I think that the second part of this phrase--the part that wants to clean up Washington by ridding it of nasty, murky politicians--is where common sense gets it dead wrong. 

Although it might sound strange in this acid historical moment, I would argue that what looks like evasiveness (lying) and greed (corruption) to the American public, is actually part of a whole set of political skills necessary to the process of getting anything done. By purifying government of people who know how to use these skills, we, the public, have created paralysis and division--so much paralysis and division that our government has ceased to function normally.

In short, we need politicians. Plug your nose if you must, but we need skilled politicians badly.

Politicians do the ugly, hard, thankless work of bargaining and negotiating that most of us do not want to even see much less do, and without them we are left with a bunch of egomaniac loudmouths who like to go on talk shows and cable news programs but don't do much else.

A few of these zealots (Ted Cruz, are your listening?) enjoy pitching infantile tantrums that shut down the government over figments of the public imagination but keep the representatives in the public eye. This tactic is even less helpful than simply blathering on about your high principles and refusing to compromise those principals while Rome burns down around you.

It's easy to see how after Nixon and Watergate we confidently ushered in this era of political purity.

It's somewhat harder to see how to rewind this particular tape and try something more traditional and boring.

The Art of the Deal in D.C.

Jimmy Carter makes the point that in any political negotiation, every faction has to feel like it is secretly winning. If one faction holds most of the cards, that winning faction has to leave an opening for the other side to back off gracefully and save face.

If this sounds complicated that's because it is, and not everyone is good at it.

If you are a businessman, you may be able to take a scorched earth attitude and push through hostile takeovers and humiliating deals that leave your opponent resentful and grinding an axe. But if you are a public servant and you behave this way, you soon find yourself isolated and unable to push through the simplest piece of legislation.

Business and public service are not the same thing. Business is about making money. Public service is about, well, serving the public--doing the greatest good for the greatest number, even if the action that accomplishes that is not the action that creates maximum financial profit.

Michigan elected a corporate businessman to be its governor in the last election. That catastrophic bit of wishful thinking resulted in the permanent poisoning of thousands of children in Flint, MI in an effort to save, literally, a few cents per gallon on public water.

From the point of view of a corporation, which has very limited liability for such things, this was a smart move. From the point of view of public service, it was an unforgivable betrayal.

One Man's "Pork" is Another Man's Paycheck

For decades Alaska's Ted Stevens specialized in "pork", doing so well at bringing home the bacon for his constituents that Alaskans received yearly checks from the oil industry instead of paying state taxes. That is what got Stevens reelected term after term.

Stevens' focus on political pork is an extreme example, but it illustrates how what looks excessive at the national level looks quite different locally. Before Washington became so divided and dysfunctional, pork was one of the most powerful chips in getting landmark legislation through Congress.

Lyndon Johnson used promises of pork to get the Civil Rights Act passed. Lincoln used the same technique to pass the Emancipation Proclamation. In the process of negotiating these historic changes for America, both Presidents kept many cards close to their chests, and both were ready and able to politically push their fellow poker players against the wall if necessary.

Politics is a game, and the game has rules, and you can cheat and win. But if you throw the game out and just beat your chest in fury, nothing gets done.

Chasing Out the Good Guys

For the last decade the Republican party has been purging its members of moderates and insiders, men (mostly men) who had years of successful across-the-aisle politicking under their belts. Intelligent men respected by both sides have walked away in disgust.

In Indiana, where I was born, the exodus started with Evan Bayh and continued on to Dick Lugar, a man so universally respected on the topic of foreign policy that members of both parties relied on his expertise. These men were replaced with Tea Party zealots, newcomers who believe being a good representative means compromising nothing. The GOP now even includes Congressional representatives who don't believe in government.

Lest Democrats get too smug here, it's worth noting that the Democratic Party shows signs of following the same self-destructive pattern, insisting on the ejection of "insiders" (read: people who know how to get shit done) with politically correct satisfactorily left-leaning speech givers. Witness the Bernie or Bust phenomenon during the current Presidential campaign, a movement that became so insistent on ideological purity that Bernie himself was no longer good enough.

Reality is Not a Reality Show

Reality shows are cheap, filled with drama, and not much happens in them. Their main appeal is spectacle. Viewers get to watch people behaving outrageously and often cruelly and best of all, to feel superior to the people on the show. 

Reality, on the other hand, is expensive. Reality sucks the life out of everyone sooner or later, and that is why people cluster together in communities--so the strong can help the weak, knowing that other strong members will be there for them when their hard times come. To negotiate reality, as opposed to a reality show, we really are stronger together, but working together is hard.

If you think working with other people isn't hard, join any committee formed to accomplish anything, and see how that works out for you. I once was put in charge of a community that was to make PNB sandwiches and lemonade for a street fair. The internal discussion on how to get this done got so heated and acrimonious that after many, many hours of fruitless arguing one member mutinied and ordered all of it catered before anyone could stop her.

I could have made fifty PNB sandwiches and 5 gallons of lemonade for under twenty bucks in an hour or so, but we had to do it together, so we spent over $100 in the end.

You Monster, You Miscreant, You Public Servant!

So many surreal political moments have been floating by lately that I'm kind of losing track of them all, but one of the weirdest was surely the way Donald Trump kept flinging the ultimate insult at Hillary Clinton in the second televised debate. Not that she was married to a hound. Not that she set up her own email server. But that she had been working hard behind the scenes in Washington DC, doing the grunt work, the negotiating, the behind the scenes politicking that almost no one knows how to do anymore for THIRTY YEARS!!

He said this over and over again, and it started to make me a little woozy. There was a time when pointing out a public servant's longevity in DC would have been the highest praise and most genuine compliment. But we are now living in the age of the Reality Show, not actual reality, a time when competence in public service is considered a liability.

I don't have all the answers. In fact, I hardly have any answers. But I do think I have a sense of what the right questions are, and I do believe too many voters are not asking them.

I would also say, if you don't like the government you have, then step up and get involved in government.

Don't want to do that? Too messy? Too corrupt and smelly and time consuming?

Then maybe think about voting for people who are experienced in politics, not just good at shooting off their mouths.

You don't have to have a beer with them or even like them.

You just have to go to the polls and make an informed choice based on experience and facts.

A Pox on Both Your Houses

I'm not a scientist, but my opponent...

I just can't care about American politics anymore.

The process has become so farcical it is painful to watch: Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum running around pummeling each other on a sinking shop, arguing about whether the deck chairs should be red or blue. Or purple.

I cried the first time I saw Titanic, not because Leonardo DiCaprio was so cute before he got all hairy and paunchy and middle-aged, but because I saw the film as this big sappy metaphor for what was happening to the United States.

Here we are, seventeen years later (is that even possible?), and the nose of the ship is pointing almost straight up, and most of us are floating around in the ice water thinking, "Wow, this is some serious bullshit," and what do we get from our fearless leaders?

Don't ask. It isn't funny anymore.

I did learn some good stuff this week though, stuff that might turn out to be helpful at some point. Like, did you know that you can make bread out of wood?

You can!

Start with a type of wood that doesn't have tannin in it, like beech. Most woods that are heavy in tannin are conifers, but I confess I am not well-versed (yet) in the best-tasting types of wood for bread making. I suppose it depends on what kind of bread you are making.

Anyway, chop the wood into the tiniest little slivers you possibly can, then boil it for a long time, then boil it again, then boil it again. Oh hell, boil it one more time.

Now, let it dry a bit, and then spread the chips on a baking sheet at bake at 275 degrees or so for a long time, like, until they are bone dry.

Take the baked woodchips out, let them cool, then pulverize them with a meat grinder, a food processor, a coffee grinder, or whatever you can lay your hands on until you have a fine powder, or at least a coarse meal.

Now, make your bread out of that.

You can also eat acorns, which are high in protein and not bad tasting if you know what to do with them. You have to either peel and boil them for 45 minutes, or soak them in fresh water for a week, changing the water every day.

That gets the tannin out, which is bitter and nasty. It also smokes out any bugs.

Once you've soaked your acorns you can toast them in the oven or grind them into meal and add them to your wood bread to give it some actual nutritional value.

And here's the important thing:

Once you've gone to the trouble of making bread out of wood and acorns so you don't fucking starve, share it with your neighbors, because you don't want to pull a Little Red Hen on everyone.

But your Congressperson?

That guy can go suck a rock.