The faces-the loss....in America

 

        We cry. We rage. Again our hearts are broken. It is an aberration. It is an American act.

      As we look at photos of each of the victims we are crushed by the loss of innocence, the sweet childhood, the promise, the hope of young lives, the murdered love of family. We are killing America. 

    We destroy our truth, we bury our aspirational promise of the Constitution to be a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility. We do not secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and posterity. We kill them. We put money and political power over the sweet faces and the future of our children in America.

    Here a teen boy can not buy a beer, but he can buy assault weapons. Why shouldn't 21 years be the mandatory minimum for a gun purchase? Why? Because Republicans are owned by and work for the gun makers. Because Republicans are now afraid to cross the gun crazy nation they and the NRA created during decades of clever deception about the 2nd Amendment.  Because Republicans, not even 10 of them, will vote to make that a law. They are American cowards.

    President Biden is limited in what he can. Politics is why. Were it his to act unilaterally, gun safety laws would change. Democrats, who have been pushing gun laws since the murder of innocents in Newtown, are now doubling down on efforts to find ways to bring 10 Republicans into support of the change that 76% of the American people want. 

    Now parents, grand parents, and caregivers worry about their loved ones. They and teachers and counselors have the  task of explaining to their children or wards that American children, just like them, may be killed in their school, or at the super market, or movie theatre, or church by an assault weapon because there are so many guns and they are so easy to buy, in America. 

    Gun manufactures bought the NRA and turned it into the money pipeline for Senators and Representatives who have worked for decades to loosen gun laws. Fewer regulations mean more sales. Now that right wing looney authoritarians control the Republican party there is a population of gun owning folks, confused about the 2nd Amendment, who are willing to fight to keep their assault weapons. They are also Americans.

    Background checks, age requirements, tighter security on sales and transactions does not mean the Federal government is "coming after your weapon(s)." But a lot of people have been misled and manipulated by the NRA and Republicans into thinking that, in America.

    No one can deny there is an epidemic of mass killings in one nation on this planet. There have been many moments like the pain, grief, shock, loss and hurt we now endure. It is an American ritual.

    Can enough Republicans find a sense of virtue, decency, and goodness, to honor at least 10 of the dead children? Can the two Democrat problem weasels stay with their party for once and can the Senate finally give the American people what they want in gun laws? Now, that would be an American victory.

    Love the children. Keep them safe.

    See you down the trail.

     

Defusing the Bomb

        Talk of war, cultural or otherwise, is dangerous, emotionally precipitous and enables forces that strangle rationality.

      There is no shortage of bad actors in this destructive detour of the American experience. We'll take a closer look after first some good news and diversion.

        The numbers are up, some 3,500% at the Pismo Beach Monarch butterfly grove.

        The Monarchs fly some 1500 hundred miles to winter on the California Central coast. The numbers had been in decline.

        Scholars say the habitat they seek, in which to cluster, is being destroyed for development. Pesticides, and changing climate patterns have also taken a toll.

        The increase this year at the grove is encouraging as people on the central coast have been planting milkweed which attracts the butterflies.

shadowland

        As a kid I was fascinated by shadows and shadow play. The other day I noticed our new kitten "discover" his shadow. It surprised him. 

        Shadows make for fascinating photos. 

        Please permit these shots to offer you a visual rest, as we dive into the bad blood being stirred by shadow warriors.

        Those who know war and war zones are not those who are exciting the strife. 

        War is an act of desperation. It means that diplomacy, rationality and problem solving has failed. It means we have failed as human beings. 

        The more that media instigators, Twitter and Facebook combatants, and the under educated amp up the rhetoric, the more they foreclose on understanding, settlement  and their own enlightenment. The more they divide us!

        There is a large and unhealthy dose of delusional thinking in the nation. Those who buy into the big lie should sue the right wing cable networks and social media outlets for mental abuse. Propaganda has gotten us to this point. We are on edge.

          Both the the right and left claim guilty players. 

on the right

        The blitz on the credibility of the election, a fully delusional and dishonest effort is none-the-less believed by an misinformed mass. It's testament to the power of brainwashing. Tragically, it is compounded by the majority of the Republican party in Washington.

        Republicans try to ignore the January 6th Insurrection and attack. If they were to summon honesty and candor, it would go a long way to lesson the impact of the blood thirsty right wing lunatics fomenting for "war." Party complicity speeds destruction of our belief in democratic principles. 

        The American Republic is being undone by Republican collusion with lies and authoritarianism. 

on the left

        No less an unlikely alliance than Linguistic scholar and author John McWhorter and political strategist James Carville precisely describe the progressive left's destructive impact-"Wokeness."

      Carville says it's "faculty lounge foolishness" and it's killing Democrat's appeal. McWhorter's new book "Woke Racism:How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America" makes the case that Woke is in fact racist. He says it is a kind of intellectual suicide as well. 

       It is typical of far left ideology. No matter how well intended a new "social moralism" or idea may be, it can often be elitist, out of touch, and without "real world" grounding. Far left ideas can be as ill hatched and damaging as far right fear mongering and racism. 

        "Cancel Culture" is fascism. Those who engage in it are foolish, and enemies of free speech and thought. 

right wing fear

        There are historic principles at work behind this conflict of values and attitudes. 

        Conservative politics has always been fueled in part by fear. There is the fear of changing the norm, or the status quo as a bedrock. Conservatives have seen "socialism" or "marxism" like some see the boogeyman. It was there in trying to stop the union movement, in the civil rights movement, in welfare or child care or medical relief legislation. It's like Henny Penny and the "sky is falling." 

         Critical Theory, an intellectual discipline for study, a tool for understanding, is in the minds of conservative strategists and polemicists a communist or marxist plan to dismantle the Republic. Never mind free thought, the freedom that comes with challenging a premise or intellectuality. Now mobs are storming school boards fomenting about CRT when it is likely the majority of them never took a class in legal theory, philosophy, criticism, or civil rights. But it's red meat and rally's the base.

 

effetely left

        There is often an arrogance in liberal certitude. So sure that virtue is on their side when it comes to extending liberties, or using government as a tool to aid and assist, they too quickly dismiss those who disagree as being racist, ignorant or unbathed.

        Brian Williams refers to that wing of the Democrat party as the Whole Food's wing. Smug, self confident, and out of touch with the most of America.

there is no same as it ever was

       Progressives have been leavening in the loaf of American politics. Our founders were progressive thinkers, in fact they were radicals even revolutionaries. 

       Progressive thought is in the DNA of America. They seed ideas about progress, and reform. They are a good counter punch to the monied oligarchs who own a kind of wealthy selfishness/stinginess that has driven Republican business worship. It is "the rich take care of the rich" politics of the last century. Please recall that it took a turn coat elite Republican to bust his party when they got too much of their way in the gilded age. Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts, brought regulation, standards for food and drugs, giving the average citizen a break after they had been savaged by the wealthy, and robber barons. Republicans look out for business and wealth. 

        Democratic compassionates have tried to bend the levers of government to uplift the downtrodden, level it out, bring equality to the table and make government service for the public a reality. Democrats reason those services are needed and taxes are a way to pay for it. They think the wealthy should pay a fair rate. 

        The wealthy, corporations, and bankers of course bristle at the idea of a large government providing for child care, family leaves, public assistance and keeping up roads and bridges especially if it means they need to pay taxes or that government tries to penetrate their off shore veil and tax shelters. Republicans are their representatives. 

        More or less this has been the battle-line, and historically it worked its way to finding legislation and governance through compromise or a middle ground. It has rewarded both views periodically, pendulum like. 

    A point I've tried insert is that over the years liberals and conservatives, Democrat and Republicans and have swapped positions, changed views, morphed, helix like. Case in point, Democrats were once the racists, Republicans were the racial progressives.

        This mutability underscores the insanity of this angry time in America. We have been on a slide to this moment of division for some time. To understand that, one needs a sense of history, a knowledge of government, a long view and an understanding of driving forces. One must also believe in a commonweal, or common good. There is little of that now!

        We've become fractured, with short attention spans, easily diverted and manipulated, media has become shallow, politics has become a profession, elections are a business, too many of the players are egoists, zealots or racketeers. Newt Gingrich was the modern virus that killed off collegiality, compromise, negotiation, and truthful legislative government. 

The Republican party allowed itself to taken over by thugs more interested in themselves than national consensus or good.

            They've become anti democracy fascists in the grip of a mob boss mentality. The Democrats with no real majority are being held hostage by an internal fight between progressives and moderates while two selfish outliers see how much they can get for themselves. At its best the system is sick, and the America body politic needs emergency triage.

        We are shouting at each other, behaving horribly, and not interested in holding the center. Idiots want to provoke a fight, or secede, and sadly, tragically a huge percentage are being roiled up in a giant and malignant fantasy.

        Scholarship and the work of historians will look upon this time in America as the nadir. We have failed as human beings, we have failed as citizens. We have failed to think for ourselves and we have become angry and frequently stupid mobs.

        If people put national interests over their clique lust,

if a few Republicans would act with honor, a transformative and long overdue infusion of investment in our people, our very essence, and our national bones would energize commerce and spirit and would rapidly marginalize the lies, the liars, the fringe, and make all of the culture war/civil war talk so much hot air.

        81 Million voters, the largest vote ever, cast their ballots to depose and dispose of a malignant force. The will of the majority of us is being stymied by selfishness, ignorance and cowardice that allows the basest, most villainous, venal and contemptible behavior to become common place. 

        If we don't lower the volume, and begin to listen, truly listen, open our minds and reclaim our national soul of aspiration we will indeed become the wretched and dissolute states of America.

        It is time for reason and cool heads. Time to honor the idea of civil debate, not war. Time to understand the radiating power and good that comes in compromise. It is time for an age of reconciliation.

        There is probably something in this that angered you.

Will this make a difference or cause even one of you to widen your view? I suspect the answer is no.

      So to Addie and Henry, my grandchildren, I hope that when you read this, your world will be less strident and that we humans treat each other with more decency and respect.

       Regardless of your reality, please know no one is always right, that all ideas are the work of mere humans and subject to all the foibles that make us the complicated, confounding and wonderful beings that we are. We are all children of creation, imperfect but we share the planet, and we share a future, and each life, each one of us is sacred. Our destiny should not be to divide and to make war, but rather to work for peace and understanding. Truth matters. In the end truth rules.

        In the end there are no shadows. Everything comes into the light.

 

        See you down the trail. 

ON THE BRINK..............IF

        Approaching two years of pandemic living, humankind is the poorer for it. 

    "When your negativity bucket is full, it's full!" said the Rat as he threw neighbor Bob off the cliff in the cartoon strip Pearls Before Swine.

     We are devolving.

    Extraordinary souls have devoted themselves to others, to healing and to the common good, but almost everybody else is  worried or angry or both. 

     We've begun to understand we are a planet of grief, grievances and that pieces do not fit as they did. Life as we knew it is also a victim. 

        Those things, organizations, structure, mores, routines and all that held us together as a last tendril of civility are gone or are changed, drastically. We find ourselves on the brink emotionally, politically, and as a planet.

        Petulance has become our happy face.

       Our manner of living pays it no honor, nor even nods acknowledgement, but this growling spectacle of how we live with each other, is being measured. Standards change of course and so, in that way, we are scored by comparison. 

        History has the last word. Presently we are at war over values of culture. The battle-line is the nexus of I and we. 

        How do we live into and what do we expect from society? How do we get along?

        Media is the clarion. 

        Radio, television and social media have morphed story telling and journalism. It's changed reporting and our expectations. 

         Curated and aggregated information, like all things, was subject to human foibles. That is how racism, male supremacy,  cultural bias and the like got baked into normative assumptions. Though overdue and limited, old media was and is, self-correcting.               

        Now, however, we watch algorithms, products of human reasoning, maturing through data and machine learning, amass power and influence, though unrestrained by idealism, values, faith, principles and standards of decency and civility. It shows.

        No one elected the tech titans, yet their profit making platforms are addictive and they bend culture. Old media plays along. The manic pandemic lifestyle wedded us more intensely to our screens. Everything has changed as we live in a feedback loop of discordance. So much of life is like fingernails on a blackboard.

        Snark, "gotcha," and the takedown is the code of behavior and modus operandi. There is not enough probing for understanding and there is way too much lunging for the throat.

      Correspondents feed their social media streams, and maintain a "following" in addition to the work of being experts on their beat. Time was when only information and fact gathering was the job. Developing sources and contacts takes time, now devoted to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds.     

        This era of media practices "false equivalency." It is lazy, stupid and deplorable. 

      Here's how it works. A correspondent, news anchor or writer will give value to lies and deceptions, that are obvious political stunts or posturing, by how they pose a question. It is prompted by the seeking of an artificial "balance" or pretense of objectivity. 

     It's kept the Trump big lie and all of it's perverted manifestations alive. Even talking about it breaths more life into it. Raising it gives it an undeserved sort of credibility. Think  Cyber Ninja vote "recount" in Arizona, as one example.

     Republicans have no agenda. They will condemn neither the insurrection nor the Trump lies. When one of them trots out a fallacy, or an absurd claim, it is used as a kind of block and check to what Democrats or the administration say, do or propose. I am waiting for the flat earth society to get street credibility when a major news organization cites them in a story. 

    Lies are lies, crazy is crazy and bull shit is bull shit. A responsible media would call it out and not be trapped into shilling the ludicrous. 

       "News by flavor" has sharpened the edges between us. In fact it is only about business, building ratings and selling ads, but the poor fools who consume hours of the stuff end up duped and manipulated.

        Chronic news "content slant and skew," propagandizing and active disinformation is destroying us by division and diminishing the value of information. Too few seek multiple sources and verifiable credibility.

        There is no reason Mitch McConnell should be believed. He leads a party that is out to destroy a democratic republic and its time honored rules. McConnell is seen and quoted but rarely if ever challenged about dirty tricks and deception. 

        Presently he is delaying the calendar, trying to avoid a voting rights bill that could put a stop to the fraudulent voter suppression blitzkrieg of Trump's fascists. He's trying to stop passage of legislation, notably the infrastructure funding, that 70% of Americans support. He's playing brinksmanship even on government funding which is to pay for the $8 Trillion he and Trump added to the debt. He is incapable of bipartisanship, even to the benefit of his own voters.

       McConnell is playing a death match for the sake of power. What he says is given credibility by media, but he is never challenged on motive. It is spineless reporting.

        The evacuation of Afghanistan moved more humans than any time in history. More allies and friends were moved from harm than in any war. The media and republican inspired take was "a botched job."  History will cite the full story of stopping this nation's longest war, fraudulent and mismanaged from the start.    

        

     There is seething pressure building among many. They want to see Democrats unite, and not squander opportunity at a time of peril. Since Reagan, Republicans have tried to undo the Democrat social pact with America. 

     Republicans have given tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations, cut social spending and shrunk government service at every opportunity. The nation is now crumbling, our standing in the world is slipping in categories like health, income and education. 

    The more serious challenge is more sinister than policy differences.

      Republicans are so without belief, they gave their party to Trump and he is the front man for a dumbed down populism, white supremacy, looney nationalism and dark money. Republicans aid and abet foreign enemies and enable a wealthy cabal to use Trumpism to turn our democracy into an autocracy. 

        Even in the face of such a dire and toxic scene, the Democrats again are at war with themselves unable to see the bigger picture. 

        Politics and government is damaged and a global crisis only makes it worse.

   

       There has been exceptional reporting and stunning revelations but that valuable information has to compete for bandwidth. Media suffers as we all do, from fatigue and pandemic depression. Fear and anger are dominant emotions.

         Deep analysis, visionary strategies, pragmatic determination still exist but they have trouble cutting through the noise and fog of a pandemic infected planet following four years of turmoil of the most incompetent and simply the most evil and divisive presidency in US history. We are exhausted. Sick and tired. It's a helluva position to be in when we face existential challenge, to our nation and to the planet. 

        If our systems are broken, if common sense no longer exists, if people don't believe science, if one of our great parties has become a cult, there is only one place to go as we stand on the brink. As beat up as we may be, we must go within, summon strength, honor our aspirations, stand on the shoulders of all who have faced adversity, embrace whatever is sacred in our life and be a light bearer whenever, wherever, and however we can.

        

          Stay strong! This too will pass.

          See you down the trail. 

           IF

            by Rudyard Kipling

  If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

EVIDENCE OF VOTE FRAUD--A THEFT OF OUR RIGHTS

it is that time of year

    Dear reader, please know there is more seasonal pleasantness ahead, but first

it is that time of year

     Election Season. I love my daughter's tribute to and statement about campaign yard signs and the pending election.

they are stealing votes

     Two blatant examples expose what is a strategy to deny minority votes. Over the last few political seasons the Republican party has employed tactics similar to the white racists in Dixie to deny citizens their right to vote. 

      Consider Brian Kemp, the Georgia Secretary of State who is running as the Republican candidate for Governor against Stacey Abrams the African American woman who is the Democrat candidate.

       Kemp has purged between 340-500 thousand current residents from voting. Kemp is known as "The Wizard of Voter Suppression" for good cause because of his bag of Republican tricks.

       An AP (associated press) analysis shows 73% of voters dropped by what he calls "the exact match" system were black. 

       The Center for Investigative Reporting program Reveal and American Public Media report more than a half million voters have been purged and many them may not be aware.

       Kemp has employed a "use it or lose it" technique, sending out post cards that look like junk mail, even to voters who are already registered and primarily only to black or minority neighborhoods. 

      He has used "the exact match" trick. If a name is not exactly as it was written by a voting registrar, though incorrect, even if a person can produce an ID with their name and address they are not allowed to vote. Here's the big problem with that, and in more places than Georgia, voting registrars may intentionally misspell a name, or they may not fully understand a pronunciation or spelling of an ethnic name. It is what the registrar writes that counts and if that registrar is working for Kemp or Republicans in other states, they have incentive to suppress votes in areas strong in Democrats.

      In Florida and in Arizona there are similar complaints by Hispanics because the white registrars do not understand or cannot spell names correctly or misspell them intentionally. 

      You may have heard the news this week where Kemp was caught on tape, for the second time, worrying about black voters and how to counter that.

       Consider the case of Dodge City Kansas, the historic and iconic old west town. The Republican clerk moved a majority Hispanic voting site to place outside of the city limits and one mile from the nearest bus stop. It gets worse. That precinct is supposed to handle 13 thousand voters, imagine the waiting time. Those 13 thousand voters in that one precinct compare to an average of 1,200 voters in other Dodge precincts. 

       The population of Dodge is 60% Hispanic, mostly all legal citizens, but because of efforts to suppress in the past 3 elections only 17% of the vote is Hispanic, though registration is closer to the town's percentage of Hispanic. In the meantime the anglo vote is 61% though the white population is only 40% of the community. Suppression works.

       There are at least nine states practicing voter suppression and they are all red states, carried by Trump.

       Trumps own voting fraud commission was disbanded in shame when they found no evidence of voting fraud. Despite that, and there is only one way to say this, Trump himself still lies about that. 

     A member of the Commission, an elected official from Maine said the commission came to a rapid end when others began to suspect the commission was  trying to frame a report that was not true.  

       "I think the reason why they disbanded it was because they really didn't want anybody to know what they were talking about and working on behind the scenes, which was this report that was being framed up without any of our knowledge. We hadn't even done any substantive discussion about what a report would look like and they were writing it. So I think that speaks to what the goal was, which was to validate the president's claims-not to do any type of investigation our explication of what those claims would look like or produce."  Matthew Dunlap commission member in interview with Don Gonyea.

        Other investigations, less partisan than the Presidents also find there has been almost no voter fraud, the types of which Republicans are trying to prevent. The truth is, Republicans are the perpetrators of the fraud by trying to prevent votes for Democrats.

       Trumps own repeated lies seems to have dulled the nation's sensitivity to the importance of truth. There are countless excuses invoked by those who support him, "That's just how he is. That's just how he does business. What difference does it make? Who cares the economy is on a roll."

      Voter suppression is wrong. To permit it, or to allow it without loud and rancorous challenge is dangerous. It is one more warning sign, a replication of what we have seen in history. 

      The markers are adding up. Russian interference, a divide and conquer style and a terribly divided nation, a minority president overturning years of majority policy, playing to a racist base, trying to discredit media, the arrest and indictment of most of his closest advisors, siding with dictators, an inability to tell the truth and an overt attempt to restrict voting rights is as Anti American as Putin, or the Imams of Iran. It is no wonder those who work with him closely call him a moron. What does that say about those who still support him?

      Thanks for reading through this. It needs to be said in as many places as it can be. As Bob Woodward said, "be worried."

and now something nice

     Harvest season on the California Central Coast. The colors of the season as the grape leaves change.

    See you down the trail.

PERPETUITY and AN INNER MEASURE

Sequoia National Park

      Being in the presence of an ancient can do a lot to widen your view. Beholding a 2-3 thousand year old tree puts a perspective on human endeavors and foibles.

 Audubon Society Sweet Springs Nature Preserve Los Osos Ca.

    Even a less august eucalyptus grove displays endurance,  the contortions, changes and adjustments demanded of life. 

     Are humans any less subject?

 Sweet Springs Preserve

    And we are grateful for green spaces, preserves, national and state parks where that which is older is paid respect. And where we can rest, focus and gain clarity.

    Do you think we'd see a different behavior if House and Senate members did a nature centered retreat-a kind of outward bound recess? I like to think that a thread of decency would appear even in the contemptible Mitch McConnell.

    He's even more of a "gloomy Gus" these days, a weakened and failed leader who has presided over a colossal failure and collapse of majority politics. 

    It is good for all of us the mean spirited and punitive Republican Health Care plan seems to be dying. Surprising that a party that controls everything-White House, Senate, House and that has been shrilly condemning the Affordable Health Care Act for 6 years, can't govern, can't legislate and has no vision for America and can't do what they said they would do "on day 1." It is a disastrous administration and nations see us as weaker and unreliable.

    So maybe a couple of weeks of hiking and camping in Yosemite, or the Bridger Teton Wilderness or in Denali could do our Senators and Representatives a world of good, and us too.

    I wish we could get our bloated, sexual predator and lying tweeter in chief into the wilds. Oh boy, could you imagine? But that would probably result in a blown body part and would sadly end the camp out.

    Being in nature however clarifies an undeniable truth. Behind our politics, regardless of stripe or affiliation is an assumption about the power of human life and its durability. We move through our days owning an attitude of perpetuity. It ain't so!

    We are merely passing through. The best we can hope for is 7-9 decades. We are all amazed at how quickly it passes. 

    So why do we behave the way we do? We damage, scar, despoil, deplete our planet. And we brutalize, terrorize, destroy and kill, including each other. And for what ends?

     The health care plan is a case in point. Since all of us, even the most healthy, have limited days how can we be punitive or restrictive? 

      Providing health care to everyone is right. Arguing "there have always been the poor," or the fact that some can't afford coverage is "just the price of modern life" or "the way it is," is wrong.  Politics that enshrine those attitudes are mean and venal.

     Health care should not be a political doctrine, it is a matter of health, and if it is not a right, then it is our responsibility to each other. There is also the deep and complicated topic of the role of "profit" in the practice of health and healing. 

     I am one of those who believe our higher aspirations and greater good is to be just and merciful. Any thing else is delusional bull shit, the sort of which that leads humanity to our inhumane treatment of each other and our only planet.

     See you down the trail.