Tag: beliefs

Weird Tales

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I became dismayed and extremely frustrated the other day when somebody for which I carry a lot of respect and affection parroted to me the same right wing propaganda that constantly proliferates on You Tube and Facebook. Both sources are essentially ‘Rabbit Holes,’ programmed to drive gossip, controversy and sensationalism while selling ads.

Between the paranoia and the propaganda, much of it not even generated in this country, our adversaries have gotten America’s number. We are a society that appears to be coming apart at the seams. Only the slightest encouragement is required to cause us to turn on one another like frightened dogs. Since Americans tend to trust our screens more than our actual experience we are VERY ripe for programming and manipulation. Tell a good yarn and it’s certain you’ll create a following. Provide a cliffhanger or sense of constant crisis and you can, like Trump, create a cult.

A cult functions like a cancer on the collective consciousness. Ideology is substituted for facts, programming takes the place of thinking, Individuals begin to function like robots. People once regarded as intelligent humans begin repeating the currently circulating memes and claims in a kind of science fiction nightmare that features suffocating hordes of mindless clones.

When a sufficient number are pulled into the myriad belief systems and ideologies that offer alternatives to the actual processing and evaluation of information, collective decision making becomes almost impossible. There can be no accord, because every position becomes an absolute. The quest for solutions becomes a battle between religions.

So, here we are America, trapped in our own tar pits of misinformation and increasingly obsessive fanaticism. As a nation we appear to be suffering various forms of mass psychosis, shouting at one another from totally different perceptions of reality.

The anxiety of the final days and weeks leading us toward our fate is that we don’t really know how bad is the disease. We know it’s pretty bad, and it’s spreading in waves, mostly driven by social media and those who profit from chaos. Everyday the stories and rumors get more imaginative and ridiculous, while people huddle in groups formed mainly to reinforce their own fears and premeditations.

Perhaps there are still enough Americans out there who are capable of rational decision making, who aren’t afraid of facts and data, who can make the mental leap to figure out that voting out of fear and insecurity will only lead to more of the same.

It’s hard to tell. Rational people find themselves trying to be heard above the noise, and the noise is everywhere. In the year 2020, with pandemic, racial tensions, climate change and election fever all appearing to peak at once, we will be forced to see more clearly, once the dust settles, just who and what peers back at us in the mirror.

Continue reading “Weird Tales”

Seventy

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This week I approach my seventieth birthday. It’s the same as Thomas Jefferson’s, with whose passions and contradictions I can totally relate, particularly the fact that his vision so far exceeded his grasp. As a privileged and prosperous inheritor of great wealth in an economy based on slavery, as an obssesive tabulator of facts and figures and an elevated member of a race and culture that considered itself inherently superior to all others, Jefferson’s restless mind would not allow him to reside in any fixed station. Instead he imagined an ideal world, nonexistent at the time, where every human being had, by virtue of being, inherent and inalienable rights to pursue satisfaction in whatever way they could. The nation he helped to get off the ground has yet to achieve those ideals, having been saddled, as was Jefferson, with the contradictions between commerce and equality.

Today I took a walk into the center of my city to find a public mailbox and to appreciate the beauty of an early spring day in Santa Fe. The streets were mostly quiet, except for occasional cruisers in huge pickup trucks and a flotilla of motorcycles that wove themselves around the Plaza. A few couples and isolated characters wandered like me past the close galleries and restaurants, museums and churches, appreciating the blossoming trees and the opportunity to pull down our face masks to appreciate their scents in the open air. As I walked I listened to Zen talks given from Mount Tremper in New York via podcasts on my iphone. I contemplated my own conflicts and contradictions and my own position in regards to the present and the future.

In contemplating the inner struggles of the past three years it occurred to me that I could turn things, so to speak, on their head. Instead of seeing only chaos and obstacles culminating in the crashing and devastating halt of the pandemic, I could see all of this as an opportunity. Perhaps, as we each approach a sense of possible and impending mortality, we can sort out the the wheat from the chaff both in our individual natures and in the world at large.

The basic contradiction in American culture, it seems to me, is where the cult of individual freedom clashes with the common welfare, and by extension where the demands of a capitalist system clash with the aspirations of democratic institutions. Perhaps, with the ascendency of the present administration, these contradictions have been put before us in as plain a vision as could be possible. As a nation addicted to celebrity culture and to the pursuit of personal wealth we’ve managed to elevate to the highest level the perfect embodiment of pure ego and self interest, devoid of empathy or of compassion or of any consideration that transcends the possession of pure power and an illusion of control. Some of us have done this out of avarice and some out of fear and pure desperation.

For those of us who have conceived of a different world, governed by the notion that the welfare of one is inseparable from the welfare of the whole, these three years plus have been both a travesty and a challenge. Most importantly, it has daily shown, in our responses and reactions who we really are, at our best and at our worst.

For me, it has fully exposed a current of rage and resentment that I’ve lived with for most of my life, and which I’ve strived to suppress or which has been the engine of my own self judgement. Where does it come from? Perhaps some is inherited through family dynamics or early childhood disappointments and frustrations. Not a little has emerged out of the pure disillusionment of having been raised with the highest ideals only to see them continually subverted within the world I’m forced to navigate. Some of it is a product of an empathic reaction to gross injustice done to others. Whatever it’s origin, this steady undercurrent of rage has in many ways made my life and the experience of those around me more difficult, rather than less.

For this I am deeply aggrieved.

Yet, on the other side of rage is compassion. I’ve long considered his to be my greatest failing. On the one hand, I’ve always experienced an acute sense of empathy with those who suffer in this world. On the other hand I’ve allowed those feelings to feed my sense of outrage against those whom I perceive to be the propagators of that suffering. In my mind and in my emotions I’ve separated those who I perceive as the victims from those I’ve perceived as the victimizers. As our culture has become more and more polarized, between the rich and the poor, the white and the non-white, the powerful and the weak, this has metastasized into what amounts to an internal ‘civil war’ that I find myself fighting on a daily and hourly basis. There are the ‘good’ guys and the ‘bad’ guys, and my vision doesn’t allow for anything between total victory or total defeat.

What has become increasingly clear to me, in this cultural moment when the rug has been pulled out from under both the perpetrators and their victims, is that we are all relatively helpless in the face of forces that are so much larger than our petty struggles over greed and ego. So, now the question becomes whether I can overcome my feelings of rage and resentment, and join once again the collective experience of the human race in a manner that goes beyond ego and ideology, and is nothing more than a reflection of the forces that I perceive as the enemy.

* * *

In the last couple of months the vicissitudes of age have finally caught up with me. The work I do for a living has taken a deep toll on my body. My shoulders are a tight mess, the tips of my fingers have grown numb with the carpel tunnel effects of the former, yesterday when I took out my bike for the first time since the Fall, I had trouble lifting my leg high enough to mount up. My plans for the future and for retirement are, as a consequence, all in serious question. On top of this is the virus and a question about how my previously strong immune system has stood the vicissitudes of age. In short, the question of mortality stands before me as never before.

The lesson that I believe needs to be learned is that the outcomes are out of my hands, and that my responsibility to myself is to live this life as much as I can in a state of acceptance rather than one of eternal conflict. This is admittedly very difficult for someone who feels both like a warrior and a disillusioned idealist. I will always be a warrior. What I need to let go of is the disillusionment. Then I can begin to address the problems and situations in front of me without having to view them through the destructive discoloring of rage.

Who knows, perhaps the possibility of compassion is not even out of reach. Perhaps even that possibility can extend to an America still caught between dream and reality and having to face its own collective demons.

Stretching

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I’ve in the last week picked up a copy of a book composed by Timothy Leary and associates back in 1994, two years before Leary’s death in 1996, and around the time when I was imbedded in the post-psychedelic New Age culture of art and speculation that nested in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’d actually passed by Doctor Tim in person as he toured as guest speaker and celebrity for some sort of exploratory consciousness fair that took place at the city’s main Convention Center.

I am certainly no stranger to Leary’s thought and his writings. From the time when he was advocating from an eminent platform at Harvard for boundary breaking explorations of consciousness via LSD and Psylocibn, to the time when I spent days trying to process my own headlong perceptual journeys out to the boundaries of consciousness and beyond. I travelled along parallel paths while Leary made his way through prison and exile and paranoia and the trials that came along with pop stardom and self deification.

When I walked into my dormitory room at Case Western Reserve one night, getting off on some form of chemically induced revery I heard Leary’s voice come over the radio, telling me to, “Sit down Ralph.” He then took me on a guided verbal tour of my brain, the universe and the whole history of human DNA. It turns out that the ‘Ralph’ in the recording, played that night over the student station was of Leary at Harvard conducting an LSD session with one of his grad students, Ralph Metzner. I didn’t learn this until years later, and in the meanwhile carried it around with me like the inner knowledge of some secret synchronistic initiation, a mystery for which I sought no further solution.

The book I’m reading is one I wasn’t particularly familiar with, lent to me by a friend. It’s called “Chaos & Cyber Culture.” By 1994 Leary as visionary prophet had been largely discredited by both popular and serious academic culture. He had spent time in prison, in Europe and in North Africa, in flight from the American police, hobnobbing with revolutionary elites and movie stars and science fiction writers, hounded by governments and ideologues of the Left and the Right. The 60’s dream of storming the barricades of capitalist/consumer culture had long ago faded or been absorbed and replaced by the high octane quest for new meaning and new wealth accelerated by revolutions in technology and communication.

Society was itself going through the initial stages of the sort of destabilization one encounters on an acid trip. Timothy Leary, along with many former prophets and outlaws and explorers were now mere flotsam in massively circulating currents of change. He was gone before the currents would peak and then break into fading fragments after September of 2001.

The book is a collection of words and images splattered across pages designed in the mode of a psychedelic version of The Whole Earth Catalog. There are dozens of typefaces in all sizes floating in the form of giant quotes and poster graphics and images from the past and the future. There are interviews and conversations with the likes of William Gibson and William Burroughs and David Byrne and all sorts of artifacts assembled around a political documentary and summary of sorts of Leary’s broad visions of past, present and possible future.

Other than in worlds of extreme science fiction I haven’t read anything like this in years. Drawing on history, art, mysticism, biology, psychology, computer science and literature, framed with over-the-top optimism regarding the future of civilization and human consciousness, Leary’s vision has no boundaries, and in reading I grow increasingly aware of how much my vision and that of my culture has narrowed over these past four decades. As a nation and as a world we’ve become increasingly ruled by fear and apprehension, which by nature is a narrowing of consciousness to the primitive state of flight or fight that responds robotically to a wider and wider range of stimuli.

We sit in our cocoons of political power and economic anxiety and anticipate the worst. We are a shell-shocked population with eyes and ears open to more and more information but with less ability to integrate it into something that makes sense. We live in a world of chaos, awaiting signs of the next real ‘strange attractor’ that we hope can assemble all of this mess into meaning. We’ve entered a historic and geological period where the shocks come in accelerating waves of war, recession, natural disasters and forced migrations, and our response is to reach out to the person who promises to protect us and shield us and make it all right. Increasingly we realize that the future can’t be controlled by any power wielded by the few for the supposed welfare of the many. Individually we awake once again to the knowledge that the portraits we perceive of the world around us are painted mostly by ourselves.

At first this makes us all feel incredibly alone, until we make an effort to explore and find new ways to make contact with one another, not as crowds or constituents or mobs or armies, but as fully responsible human beings. Our challenge always, is to create entirely new realities for ourselves, through our storytelling and our imagining, that are fluid and adaptable enough to deal with the constant change that our world throws at us. We have the tools to do it, and our task is to awake to our possibilities and to summon the courage to face and dismiss those who would build walls out of our fear.

Reply to Michael Moore

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Today I was sent a pretty dire and dismal analysis written by Michael Moore, predicting that Trump will inevitably win the election because Americans are so pissed off that they will vote primarily for the sole purpose of disrupting the system. (I’ve included the piece below, in case you haven’t seen it.)

Well written. Very scary. I think it represents beyond anything a severe hangover from watching too much of the recent Republican Convention.

I’ve long come to take most of what Michael Moore says as containing more than a grain of hyperbole. He’s an entertainer after all, not a politician.

Michael lives in the left-wing bubble, which is almost as deluded as the right-wing one, except for it being inflicted with a sense of bizarre defeatism that derives an almost perverse pleasure from losing and being able to say, “I told you so.”

Here is my point by point response to his analysis:

  1. Believe me, I understand Michael’s pessimism toward America and the American people, which is undoubtedly based in his experience of growing up in the boom and bust of a prosperous and then depressed Rust Belt industrial economy. I also come from from the Rust Belt, growing up in Cleveland, which has a population largely made up of people descended from Eastern European ancestry. There is a kind of innate and culturally derived pessimism that one can sense when walking down the streets of old neighborhoods not yet gentrified. It’s an attitude of expecting the worst outcomes, one that I’ve found myself struggling with for most of my life. To project that pessimism and cynicism on the rest of the nation is probably going a bit too far.
  2. Yes, the angry white male is definitely a central factor here. Beneath issues like the TPP or Superdelegates or the ‘Rigged System’ is the underlying factor of a challenge to white male supremacy. At this level, ironically the only real difference between the Trump supporters and many of the ‘Bernie or Bust’ people is that one movement is spearheaded by old white guys and the other by young ones. The totally unhinged red meat rhetoric raised against Hillary Clinton from both Left and Right goes way beyond disagreements over policy. It apparently emerges out of some deep seated psychological terror topping even the guilt ridden projections that white culture has about race. The question comes down to whether a shrinking minority of frightened old white guys with their wives and spoiled children have the voting advantage to overcome all of the other rising elements in American voting culture. I was once even more skeptical than Michael, before Obama overcame two centuries of deep seated racism to win the popular vote and gain two terms as president. Yes, the middle class is angry and making a spectacle of itself. At the same time the economy is in better shape than it was in many places outside of the Rust Belt. Hell, even Cleveland is looking more prosperous and confident these days, and most of that confidence is from the younger people that are revitalizing the city’s image of itself.
  3. The kids. The portrait Michael paints of millennials is rather cynical and demeaning. Perhaps it’s based mostly on encounters with disappointed Bernie supporters who just can’t get over the fact that they didn’t get what they wanted. Believe it or not, I have encountered young people who are enthusiastic about electing a woman president and who actually respect Hillary Clinton. I also know young people who vote intelligently, for other reasons than that their favorite rock star candidate isn’t on the ballot, and whose motivations are less superficial than what Michael implies.
  4. If the results of the election depended on the millennial vote this would be a more convincing argument. While many politically active millennials may be ‘depressed’ because Bernie didn’t go the distance, they are likely to be even more depressed at the prospect of four or more years of FuckFace von Clownstick  The complex maneuvering exhibited this week by Hillary and her supporters shows an understanding that in order to win one has to appeal to moderate voters as well as progressive ones. (While Tim Kaine agreed to pull back from his total support for the TPP, the progressive favorite Elizabeth Warren appeared with President Obama in the weekly White House Briefing talking about defending consumer rights. Both popular politicians are supporting Clinton.)
  5. Again, Michael presumes that the past eight years of an improving economy under a still very popular Democratic president will drive a majority of voters into a mindset of disruptive anarchy that will motivate them to vote solely for the purpose of ‘upsetting the apple cart’ and ‘making mommy and daddy mad.’ For those represented by the Republican Convention this is undoubtedly true. To extend this expectation to the whole country, it seems to me, requires an extremely cynical view of the larger voting public. This year the Republican Convention, in spite of being hyped as the greatest political show “ever,” had lower ratings than the one that nominated Romney. If the country was as ready for a disruptive revolution as Mr. Moore, the Bernie Bern and the Trump people anticipate, I suspect that it would have done much better.
The one underlying point that Michael makes that I agree with is that the deciding factor in this election will be the degree to which America’s vision of itself has been swallowed by apathy and anger. As far as that goes, I suppose one’s opinion is shaped by who one listens to. If history is of any measure, American voters tend to shy away from extremes on either side of the equation. Are we ready for a revolution? We’ll see.

How many people actually went to see Michael’s last movie?

5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win

Friends:

I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I gave it to you straight last summer when I told you that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president. And now I have even more awful, depressing news for you: Donald J. Trump is going to win in November. This wretched, ignorant, dangerous part-time clown and full time sociopath is going to be our next president. President Trump. Go ahead and say the words, ‘cause you’ll be saying them for the next four years: “PRESIDENT TRUMP.”

Never in my life have I wanted to be proven wrong more than I do right now.

I can see what you’re doing right now. You’re shaking your head wildly – “No, Mike, this won’t happen!” Unfortunately, you are living in a bubble that comes with an adjoining echo chamber where you and your friends are convinced the American people are not going to elect an idiot for president. You alternate between being appalled at him and laughing at him because of his latest crazy comment or his embarrassingly narcissistic stance on everything because everything is about him. And then you listen to Hillary and you behold our very first female president, someone the world respects, someone who is whip-smart and cares about kids, who will continue the Obama legacy because that is what the American people clearly want! Yes! Four more years of this!

You need to exit that bubble right now. You need to stop living in denial and face the truth which you know deep down is very, very real. Trying to soothe yourself with the facts – “77% of the electorate are women, people of color, young adults under 35 and Trump cant win a majority of any of them!” – or logic – “people aren’t going to vote for a buffoon or against their own best interests!” – is your brain’s way of trying to protect you from trauma. Like when you hear a loud noise on the street and you think, “oh, a tire just blew out,” or, “wow, who’s playing with firecrackers?” because you don’t want to think you just heard someone being shot with a gun. It’s the same reason why all the initial news and eyewitness reports on 9/11 said “a small plane accidentally flew into the World Trade Center.” We want to – we need to – hope for the best because, frankly, life is already a shit show and it’s hard enough struggling to get by from paycheck to paycheck. We can’t handle much more bad news. So our mental state goes to default when something scary is actually, truly happening. The first people plowed down by the truck in Nice spent their final moments on earth waving at the driver whom they thought had simply lost control of his truck, trying to tell him that he jumped the curb: “Watch out!,” they shouted. “There are people on the sidewalk!”

Well, folks, this isn’t an accident. It is happening. And if you believe Hillary Clinton is going to beat Trump with facts and smarts and logic, then you obviously missed the past year of 56 primaries and caucuses where 16 Republican candidates tried that and every kitchen sink they could throw at Trump and nothing could stop his juggernaut. As of today, as things stand now, I believe this is going to happen – and in order to deal with it, I need you first to acknowledge it, and then maybe, just maybe, we can find a way out of the mess we’re in.

Don’t get me wrong. I have great hope for the country I live in. Things are better. The left has won the cultural wars. Gays and lesbians can get married. A majority of Americans now take the liberal position on just about every polling question posed to them: Equal pay for women – check. Abortion should be legal – check. Stronger environmental laws – check. More gun control – check. Legalize marijuana – check. A huge shift has taken place – just ask the socialist who won 22 states this year. And there is no doubt in my mind that if people could vote from their couch at home on their X-box or PlayStation, Hillary would win in a landslide.

But that is not how it works in America. People have to leave the house and get in line to vote. And if they live in poor, Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, they not only have a longer line to wait in, everything is being done to literally stop them from casting a ballot. So in most elections it’s hard to get even 50% to turn out to vote. And therein lies the problem for November – who is going to have the most motivated, most inspired voters show up to vote? You know the answer to this question. Who’s the candidate with the most rabid supporters? Whose crazed fans are going to be up at 5 AM on Election Day, kicking ass all day long, all the way until the last polling place has closed, making sure every Tom, Dick and Harry (and Bob and Joe and Billy Bob and Billy Joe and Billy Bob Joe) has cast his ballot?  That’s right. That’s the high level of danger we’re in. And don’t fool yourself — no amount of compelling Hillary TV ads, or outfacting him in the debates or Libertarians siphoning votes away from Trump is going to stop his mojo.

Here are the 5 reasons Trump is going to win:

  1. Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.  I believe Trump is going to focus much of his attention on the four blue states in the rustbelt of the upper Great Lakes – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Four traditionally Democratic states – but each of them have elected a Republican governor since 2010 (only Pennsylvania has now finally elected a Democrat). In the Michigan primary in March, more Michiganders came out to vote for the Republicans (1.32 million) that the Democrats (1.19 million). Trump is ahead of Hillary in the latest polls in Pennsylvania and tied with her in Ohio. Tied? How can the race be this close after everything Trump has said and done? Well maybe it’s because he’s said (correctly) that the Clintons’ support of NAFTA helped to destroy the industrial states of the Upper Midwest. Trump is going to hammer Clinton on this and her support of TPP and other trade policies that have royally screwed the people of these four states. When Trump stood in the shadow of a Ford Motor factory during the Michigan primary, he threatened the corporation that if they did indeed go ahead with their planned closure of that factory and move it to Mexico, he would slap a 35% tariff on any Mexican-built cars shipped back to the United States. It was sweet, sweet music to the ears of the working class of Michigan, and when he tossed in his threat to Apple that he would force them to stop making their iPhones in China and build them here in America, well, hearts swooned and Trump walked away with a big victory that should have gone to the governor next-door, John Kasich.

From Green Bay to Pittsburgh, this, my friends, is the middle of England – broken, depressed, struggling, the smokestacks strewn across the countryside with the carcass of what we use to call the Middle Class. Angry, embittered working (and nonworking) people who were lied to by the trickle-down of Reagan and abandoned by Democrats who still try to talk a good line but are really just looking forward to rub one out with a lobbyist from Goldman Sachs who’ll write them nice big check before leaving the room. What happened in the UK with Brexit is going to happen here. Elmer Gantry shows up looking like Boris Johnson and just says whatever shit he can make up to convince the masses that this is their chance! To stick to ALL of them, all who wrecked their American Dream! And now The Outsider, Donald Trump, has arrived to clean house! You don’t have to agree with him! You don’t even have to like him! He is your personal Molotov cocktail to throw right into the center of the bastards who did this to you! SEND A MESSAGE! TRUMP IS YOUR MESSENGER!

And this is where the math comes in. In 2012, Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. Add up the electoral votes cast by Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It’s 64. All Trump needs to do to win is to carry, as he’s expected to do, the swath of traditional red states from Idaho to Georgia (states that’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton), and then he just needs these four rust belt states. He doesn’t need Florida. He doesn’t need Colorado or Virginia. Just Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And that will put him over the top. This is how it will happen in November.

  1. The Last Stand of the Angry White Man. Our male-dominated, 240-year run of the USA is coming to an end. A woman is about to take over! How did this happen?! On our watch! There were warning signs, but we ignored them. Nixon, the gender traitor, imposing Title IX on us, the rule that said girls in school should get an equal chance at playing sports. Then they let them fly commercial jets. Before we knew it, Beyoncé stormed on the field at this year’s Super Bowl (our game!) with an army of Black Women, fists raised, declaring that our domination was hereby terminated! Oh, the humanity!

That’s a small peek into the mind of the Endangered White Male. There is a sense that the power has slipped out of their hands, that their way of doing things is no longer how things are done. This monster, the “Feminazi,”the thing that as Trump says, “bleeds through her eyes or wherever she bleeds,” has conquered us — and now, after having had to endure eight years of a black man telling us what to do, we’re supposed to just sit back and take eight years of a woman bossing us around? After that it’ll be eight years of the gays in the White House! Then the transgenders! You can see where this is going. By then animals will have been granted human rights and a fuckin’ hamster is going to be running the country. This has to stop!

  1. The Hillary Problem. Can we speak honestly, just among ourselves? And before we do, let me state, I actually like Hillary – a lot – and I think she has been given a bad rap she doesn’t deserve. But her vote for the Iraq War made me promise her that I would never vote for her again. To date, I haven’t broken that promise. For the sake of preventing a proto-fascist from becoming our commander-in-chief, I’m breaking that promise. I sadly believe Clinton will find a way to get us in some kind of military action. She’s a hawk, to the right of Obama. But Trump’s psycho finger will be on The Button, and that is that. Done and done.

Let’s face it: Our biggest problem here isn’t Trump – it’s Hillary. She is hugely unpopular — nearly 70% of all voters think she is untrustworthy and dishonest. She represents the old way of politics, not really believing in anything other than what can get you elected. That’s why she fights against gays getting married one moment, and the next she’s officiating a gay marriage. Young women are among her biggest detractors, which has to hurt considering it’s the sacrifices and the battles that Hillary and other women of her generation endured so that this younger generation would never have to be told by the Barbara Bushes of the world that they should just shut up and go bake some cookies. But the kids don’t like her, and not a day goes by that a millennial doesn’t tell me they aren’t voting for her. No Democrat, and certainly no independent, is waking up on November 8th excited to run out and vote for Hillary the way they did the day Obama became president or when Bernie was on the primary ballot. The enthusiasm just isn’t there. And because this election is going to come down to just one thing — who drags the most people out of the house and gets them to the polls — Trump right now is in the catbird seat.

  1. The Depressed Sanders Vote. Stop fretting about Bernie’s supporters not voting for Clinton – we’re voting for Clinton! The polls already show that more Sanders voters will vote for Hillary this year than the number of Hillary primary voters in ’08 who then voted for Obama. This is not the problem. The fire alarm that should be going off is that while the average Bernie backer will drag him/herself to the polls that day to somewhat reluctantly vote for Hillary, it will be what’s called a “depressed vote” – meaning the voter doesn’t bring five people to vote with her. He doesn’t volunteer 10 hours in the month leading up to the election. She never talks in an excited voice when asked why she’s voting for Hillary. A depressed voter. Because, when you’re young, you have zero tolerance for phonies and BS. Returning to the Clinton/Bush era for them is like suddenly having to pay for music, or using MySpace or carrying around one of those big-ass portable phones. They’re not going to vote for Trump; some will vote third party, but many will just stay home. Hillary Clinton is going to have to do something to give them a reason to support her  — and picking a moderate, bland-o, middle of the road old white guy as her running mate is not the kind of edgy move that tells millenials that their vote is important to Hillary. Having two women on the ticket – that was an exciting idea. But then Hillary got scared and has decided to play it safe. This is just one example of how she is killing the youth vote.
  1. The Jesse Ventura Effect. Finally, do not discount the electorate’s ability to be mischievous or underestimate how any millions fancy themselves as closet anarchists once they draw the curtain and are all alone in the voting booth. It’s one of the few places left in society where there are no security cameras, no listening devices, no spouses, no kids, no boss, no cops, there’s not even a friggin’ time limit. You can take as long as you need in there and no one can make you do anything. You can push the button and vote a straight party line, or you can write in Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. There are no rules. And because of that, and the anger that so many have toward a broken political system, millions are going to vote for Trump not because they agree with him, not because they like his bigotry or ego, but just because they can. Just because it will upset the apple cart and make mommy and daddy mad. And in the same way like when you’re standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and your mind wonders for a moment what would that feel like to go over that thing, a lot of people are going to love being in the position of puppetmaster and plunking down for Trump just to see what that might look like. Remember back in the ‘90s when the people of Minnesota elected a professional wrestler as their governor? They didn’t do this because they’re stupid or thought that Jesse Ventura was some sort of statesman or political intellectual. They did so just because they could. Minnesota is one of the smartest states in the country. It is also filled with people who have a dark sense of humor — and voting for Ventura was their version of a good practical joke on a sick political system. This is going to happen again with Trump.

Coming back to the hotel after appearing on Bill Maher’s Republican Convention special this week on HBO, a man stopped me. “Mike,” he said, “we have to vote for Trump. We HAVE to shake things up.” That was it. That was enough for him. To “shake things up.” President Trump would indeed do just that, and a good chunk of the electorate would like to sit in the bleachers and watch that reality show.

(Next week I will post my thoughts on Trump’s Achilles Heel and how I think he can be beat.)

ALSO: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/michael-moores-5-reasons-why-trump-will-win

Yours,
Michael Moore

Batman v Superman

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I don’t usually give much credence to film reviews, particularly bad ones, and so far reviews of the new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice movie have been atrocious. The movie might be awesome and I’m sure I’ll see it eventually, as I’m totally addicted to the genre. The reviews I’ve read indicate that in its attitude of ponderous self absorption and gloom it’s the diametric opposite of a movie like Deadpool. That film continually cracks jokes at itself, reminding us that it’s just a movie and we are an audience entertained by a story about a regular guy who has some real problems along with his unasked for super powers. The most successful superhero movies thus far have rarely dispensed with a liberal dose of humor amid the action and the power punches and all the nefarious scheming. In fact, a key to the enormous success of Marvel Studios (and the long running success of the comic book brand) is that it’s never abandoned a sense of fun, even in its darkest moments. No matter their extraordinary powers, Marvel characters tend to act like actual, regular people, just as screwed up and petty as the rest of us. Their ‘gifts’ always have the double edge of being both an isolating burden as much as a potential benefit to humanity. They are never an embodiment of perfect virtue or perfect evil. Even a character like Thor (who is actually a God) is subject to the foibles and misperceptions of humanity. Iron Man protects himself with a solid armor of egotism. Daredevil and the Hulk struggle with deep wells of  repressed anger. Jennifer Jones is full of self-recrimination and doubt.
There are many who simply don’t get the point of these characters or this genre. For me they express one of the best uses of the spectacular nature of the screen. Like the oldest narratives that we know of, they offer us exaggerated embodiments of the qualities that make us human. By use of the mask and the costume they create enough distance so that we are able to contemplate our own natures objectively, evaluating the core values at the center of our moral and ethical universe. To a large extent this is what all movies and plays and operas and fictions do, by the very act of creating a simulated universe existing outside of our own. In the case of the superhero genre character hugs the edges of caricature thus bringing sharp emphasis to particular qualities and tendencies. In the growing pantheon of a comic book universe we begin to see realms that have more than a little relationship to the archetypal edifices of Olympus or a Valhalla, and are at least as rich and nuanced as anything that the Greeks or Norsemen came up with. By bringing the archetypes down to the level of our familiar world and merging them with familiar characters and situations we’ve expanded the potential of drama to reach into the collective psyches of whole cultures where we can expose the inner fears and hopes that unite and divide us.
These are moral dramas and passion plays. They harken back to the medieval pageants and morality plays of the 15th and 16th centuries that are at the origins of our modern secular dramas. In an age in which so much of what has held our civilizations together is being challenged we’ve contrived to discover new ways to ask the important questions about what binds us to one another. The trick to doing this without crossing a line into the ridiculous, is a proper mix of passion and humor, reflection and action that both draws us into the drama and allows us to experience it’s separate elements as distinct embodiments that we can feel. When we watch a superhero on the screen we actually, in effect, put on that costume and carry it away with us.
Personally I’ve preferred the Marvel approach to this archetypal realm. The DC universe has always appeared a little too sharply divided between good and evil, it’s characters taking themselves a little too seriously for my taste. As for Batman and Superman, I enjoyed the somewhat parodic nature of the early Batman revivals on screen, and considered the sheer dramatic energy of the Christopher Nolan/Frank Miller Batman movies to be exceptional. The key to the Batman character’s appeal is that he exists half in shadow. Superman I find a bit problematic. The original mold created in the late 30s and 40’s during an enormous worldwide struggle between totalitarianism and democracy presented him appropriately as the perfect embodiment of “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” The character emerged out of the heroic fantasies of a couple of young jewish guys who longed to identify and assimilate into the dream of the red, white and blue. In my own perceptions as a young man feeling like an outsider in a post war world of unquestioned conformity Superman came off to me a little too saintly, a little too ’straight.’ As for Batman, Green Arrow and Green Hornet they were all rich guys who helped humanity out of some sense of charity or guilt. They had big cars and influence and certainly never had to worry about holding a job.
The genius of Stan Lee and his legacy lies in his assistance that his heroes never get too big for their own britches. The ones that do pretty much are guaranteed to end up as villains. Thor doesn’t help us because he’s a god, but just because he likes us. Spiderman is an awkward teenager growing into an awkward adult. Doctor Strange is an arrogant greed head who is led by difficult circumstances into a spiritual conversion. Black Widow is haunted by crimes she was compelled to commit in a former life. Most importantly, the effect of their actions as heroes is rarely without unforeseen consequences, making their lives and the lives of those around them even more complicated. I could relate to all of these guys.
Of course, in the years since my childhood, the approach of both the Marvel and the DC universe has become more and more similar. But, as a person who is used to Apple computers, using Windows always feels somewhat constricting, even though it looks and acts more and more like what we’re used to. Another analogy perhaps is the difference between the Democratic and Republican mindsets, where one sees the world through progressive glasses and the other through conservative ones. With “Dawn of Justice” DC and Warner Brothers hopes to achieve the kind of success that Marvel and Disney have attained in the past decade. Perhaps these gigantic struggles between corporate entities, political philosophies, and comic book universes is like an endless set of mirrors for the struggles taking place within each of us. Perhaps ‘Batman and Superman,’ both who are after all supposed to be the ‘good guys,’ is an apt echo of the battle we are now waging within cultures, political parties, religions and within ourselves.

It’s More Than The Economy

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For those of you who have read my recent postings on Facebook I offer this expanded version of an essay length draft that emerged from an attempt to understand why Hillary Clinton (whom I support) has drawn in the primaries the lion’s share of support from people of color. The post was written in a hurry with one finger and the result was rather uneven, full of unedited typos and could be easily misunderstood (I am definitely not anti-Bernie). The post emerged after an argument with an avid Sanders supporter who ranted at me for my support of both Obama and Clinton, as he views both of them as traitors to the liberal cause. I don’t see either of them that way, but that’s really beside the point. If Democrats are to win the upcoming election, and I consider that crucial for the advance or perhaps survival of any sort of liberal agenda over the next decade, then we must understand the dynamics of the race. What follows includes many speculations on the motives and responses of black Americans. As I am not black these are only theories, although I’ve had some intimate insights into black culture and find that my own reactions to the Hillary/Bernie debate often have lined up with sentiments expressed by people of color in the Democratic primaries so far. Thus, I’ll give it a whirl.

More Than The Economy  

Progressives appear somewhat mystified why so many people of color appear to favor Clinton over Sanders. Are black people just ignorant of the facts? Don’t they know what’s good for them? Maybe it’s just that they don’t know Bernie and don’t realize how badly the Clintons and Obama have repeatedly betrayed them over the years.  

Well, first of all, white people have been telling black people what’s good for them for centuries. The values that middle-class white people may assume based on their own experience can’t possibly take into account the influence of knowing that when one walks down the street one may be executed for the crime of one’s skin color. Not any more than a man can understand the experience of a woman trying to gain respect in a milieu that has been dominated by male values for so many centuries. In a society wracked with so many double standards one simply can’t understand what’s at play in this election cycle without evaluating it through lenses that factor in the effects of racism and sexism. 

The progressive left has been trash talking the first black president almost ever since he took office under the shadow of an impending recession. From the beginning Obama was forced to put aside much of his social agenda in order to deal with the conditions of an economic meltdown. In the process he didn’t follow the advice of many of those who advocated a more progressive economic agenda. Instead he put precedent upon saving the banks and the auto industry, viewing them as the driving forces of the American economy. He didn’t take an effective stand against the Republican governor of Wisconsin in advocating for the unions, choosing not to get tangled in a state level confrontation. After the disastrous 2010 midterms when, as many predicted, Obama’s former ‘fans’ mostly didn’t show up to follow up on their ‘revolution’ the president was pushed even more to the right as he treaded the all-to-delicate minefield that a black president must walk in order to prove to a polarized, mostly white electorate that he’s not a dangerous alien agent trying to subvert the American Dream. Meanwhile the anti-Obama rhetoric on the left accelerated to a crescendo that rivaled that on the right, and it continues to this day. It turns out that those who voted for ‘hope’ and ‘change’ apparently assumed that change is somehow driven from the top in a sort of weird political echo of Ronald Reagan’s ’trickle-down’ theory of the economy. Having lost the congress and most of the governorships and state legislatures in a more effective and committed revolution led by the Tea Party Republicans, leading to a decimation of the process of court appointments and resulting delay in advancing any effective reforms, the president has been forced to govern almost exclusively by Executive Order.  

Despite all of this Obama managed to realign many of the priorities of the executive branch, make some strides in advancing an environmental agenda and to bring about radical adjustments in a health care system that has resisted any kind of significant reform for several decades. He remains one of the most popular presidents in recent history, particularly with people of color. If this is a mystery it seems to me that one shouldn’t underestimate the radical historic, cultural and symbolic significance of having a black family in the White House. To those who have gone through centuries of white dominance the spectacle of a black man leading the most powerful nation on earth in itself is a profound revolutionary statement. Nevertheless his presidency has served to focus the racist backlash that has for many years hidden just under the surface of American culture.         

By graciously endorsing Obama after bowing out to the inevitable, and then accepting the appointment and very prominently serving as the international face of his administration, Hillary Clinton bound herself to Obama’s legacy. To many of us who support her, and who have supported her in the past, the prospect of a woman president would mark at least as revolutionary a sea change, and perhaps even a greater one than Obama’s election achieved. By emphasizing her continuing support for Obama and his policies while speaking against the infantile bigotry on the Republican side she has made the clash of pissed off Republicans on one side and equally pissed off progressive Democrats look to many like the continuation of the gridlocked politics of the last eight years. To many people of color this endless feuding must look like a street fight between opposing white gangs battling over the crumbs of a failing middle class, while the plight of people of color is that they are having trouble even reaching the middle class.  There is lots of talk about a revolution, but right now it looks like a bunch of pissed off people pointing fingers and calling names. If we do get a revolution my sense is that it’s more likely to be driven by the more organized grassroots efforts of the conservative right. 

By reducing every problem to that of income inequality and suggesting that those who support another candidate are all ‘elitists’ who want to preserve the status quo is both insulting and demeaning to those whose support for a candidate may be based on a more nuanced view of cultural issues connected to race or gender or merely the desire to keep Republicans from appointing the next Supreme Court judges. America’s problems are much deeper and much more complex than a purely economic analysis can penetrate. True, economics can aggravate and be aggravated by our deep cultural divisions, but fixing the economy won’t necessarily address those deeper issues. The strident rhetoric of the finger pointers directed at those who have different priorities isn’t a tactic that’s any more inclusive than the racist rhetoric of a Donald Trump.

For the most part I agree with Bernie Sander’s critique of the American economy. If he is able to organize an inclusive enough voting coalition to overcome the Democratic establishment that supports Hillary Clinton I will gladly and enthusiastically support that coalition in the general election, just as I did the candidacy of Barack Obama. If Bernie can overcome the long odds and prove to me that he can expand his base significantly beyond the educated young (and mostly white) I will happily convert. Until then I will support the candidate who can win, and who may not advance or believe in all the goals of the liberal left, but who can effectively hold off the organized forces of extreme reaction on the right and perhaps even push back a little. 

Good and Evil

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So how do you define ‘good and evil?’ Who are the ‘good’ guys and who are the ‘bad’ guys?

I think that dividing people up that way is both too simple and very dangerous. This is precisely the way that those with a hunger for power at any cost usually proceed.

Republicans are now obsessed with the ‘terrorist threat.’ But turn the mirror around and who are the terrorists? I personally think that that the GOP has become more and more of a terrorist organization. In every election their focus is on whoever they see as the enemy and why we should be afraid and how we should go to war. Isn’t the job of the terrorist to inspire terror? Personally I see the killing of 3 people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs an act of terrorism directly inspired by the inflammatory rhetoric and gross distortions of the truth by Republicans, solely for political gain. This wasn’t an act waged by a Syrian refugee or somebody from the middle east. It was a deranged white guy who raved in court about a conspiracy between Planned Parenthood, the courts, his lawyers and the media to “kill the babies.” Meanwhile people are being terrorized and clinics being vandalized all around the country also in response to the rhetoric. And do you even know the truth behind the accusations? There is actually none. So, who are the terrorists, and how are they any different than the people they want us to go to war with?

I believe that too many Americans are mired in hypocrisy. On the one hand they live lives of comparative wealth that is made possible by the wars and exploitation of people all over the world, and then when any of their precious ‘freedom’ is threatened (freedom to carry a gun, freedom to poison the earth, freedom to be an asshole), they rave that the very government that they have elected to protect that freedom is either corrupt or incompetent or evil. Whenever some of the rest of the world leaks in they blame the government, and if the government then overreacts in order to cover it’s ass they still blame the government. So they change the government like they change their wardrobes and expect that everything will be different, and when it isn’t they blame the government some more.

I don’t have a high opinion of the America that cheers at the racist demagoguery of a Donald Trump, or at anyone who will point the finger at others, telling them that somebody else is the reason for all of their problems. I’m pretty skeptical toward whoever is pointing fingers while they rant about the American Dream. I question whether those caught up in the dream are willing to look at themselves when it’s so easy to be distracted by blaming somebody else.

The way I deal with all of this absurdity is to step back from it and look at the bigger picture. First of all, I believe that the American system of government is amazingly well designed to weather the ever shifting moods of a population caught in whatever winds are blowing through the moment. It’s designed like a huge machine that’s regulated by a complex system of checks and balances, and it’s incredibly difficult to change unless the people’s will is engaged and organized consistently over a long period of time. Of course this is frustrating, but it’s a challenge that those who are truly committed to change are able to meet, because they have faith in their success and the virtue of their cause and they don’t give up. The catch in all of this is that the thing was designed to function with an educated electorate. This is how slavery was ended, how women got the vote, how the south was desegregated, how labor laws were passed, and countless other accomplishments. I believe that those who are truly cynical are those who think that, because their particular agenda isn’t the current law of the land, it’s because some evil forces are in control. I do believe that Americans have exactly the government that they have earned. Does that make me cynical? I simply choose not to let “The People” off the hook.

I’m more of a patriot than it may appear. I also have strong faith in the long run that the truth will win over the lies and that the collective consciousness of human beings continues to evolve in America and all over the earth. The evidence of this is everywhere if one takes the time to look. The biggest obstruction is caused by those who promote fear (greed being a result of the fear of ‘losing’ wealth, property, power, etc.). As a part of our now almost constant election cycles the rhetoric of fear heats up as does the rhetoric of diplomacy. Each one of us has to chose which voice we will listen to. I simply will not buy into the prevailing paranoia, because there, I think, is the sure road to hell.

I enjoy the battle of rhetoric and words that are the lifeblood of any true democracy. I love the fact that elected officials can battle with words and still reach a compromise from diametrically opposed positions. In fact, I love the game of politics. It’s certainly an improvement over settling everything between us with guns. I suspect the motives of those who are so impatient with the process that when they aren’t getting everything they want they believe it isn’t working or else they choose to opt out completely. I wonder if it’s actually democracy they believe in.

I was told the other day by a so-called ‘friend’ on Facebook that I was “Fucking deluded” because I wasn’t giving my money and support to his particular candidate, who represents the “people” while my candidate was one of the “oppressors.” My response was to point out that to call anyone who disagrees with your ideology the ‘enemy’ is not likely to win many elections. I told him that I agreed with many of his candidate’s positions and appreciated his contribution to the dialogue and that I wished him well, but that my support would go to the candidate that I believe can not only win the election but can govern.

Then I ‘unfriended’ the bastard.

Here I Am

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Here. Here I am. My first weekend here in this beast of the city. The snow has fallen and encased the new apartment. The maze of the city closes in around me. I’ve left Elysium for an engagement with the edges. To the West the wave of mountains rises against the plain, houses are sprawled across in patchy subdivisions from here all the way to the northern farmlands. The city is always growing, already too big for itself.

Elysium the Beautiful breeds insanity. One loses touch, drifting into the mind of strange paranoias and bizarre scenarios of good and evil. I’m happy to be away from all that nonsense. The secret life of farmers and suburbanites. Iowa, Indiana, Missouri, Everywhere the Word goes out, “I own this, as far as I can imagine. This is mine. No government or people will take it away.” Yet, wildfires rage, with no satisfactory explanation, for we know no history and only want life to be simple.

I have been assured, by those who claim to know, that I am the victim of a strange conspiracy and here I sit in quiet winter solitude, contemplating that possibility. It occurs to me that I’ve been around for too may lifetimes not to be able to smell evil when I encounter it. After all, evil’s really just a mirror of myself, or a part of me anyway. I know it too intimately not to recognize it in others.

There’s plenty of evil in this world, mostly pushed by ambitious hucksters with boring agendas, something about telling us who to fear and who to hate. Then they sell us books and dvd’s and lure us to their online sites where the major promotion is themselves. They are mostly paid very well by the very people they claim are the ‘adversaries,’ those whose interests are served by turning people against one another. They point at the Jews or the Blacks or the Chinese or the ‘Socialists,’ or whoever is leaving those ‘mysterious’ con trails in the heavens, seeding our precious air with their filthy mind control.

Oh shit, I’m just tired of all this. I’ll just walk away from it now, away from these helpless fears, away from useless arguments that ignore history and are only angry frightened screaming into darkness. The people downstairs are my companions, shouting mindlessly at the t.v. while their Broncos win. There is no place to hide from the world here and it’s somehow soothing to be alone, away from anyone that can be trusted.

You once complained about a teabag that was folded beautifully in a paper pyramid – a waste of paper, time and energy! – you said. You only felt compelled to complain. “Where is the ocean,” you said, “Where are the trees?” “Where is the desert?” What is the real question?

When I came to the city I thought that I was leaving a refuge and returning to the edges of the world. I was wrong to think so, to find out that the vast maze of city provides the only real refuge of anonymity. I am totally submerged in the great darkness that’s civilization with all of its pain and glory. Every face that I see is a lie and there is little possibility for truth, only acceptance, abandonment and perhaps some ultimate contentment while surrendering to the oceanic flow.

I don’t know where this life has taken me. I am both pirate and defender of this realm and I bellow from within a font of night jewels. I no longer need your company or your approval and I will do what I must to see us to the end. Your spies and secret sailors, those who reveal all of the hidden plans are useless now. The plan is older than the wind that blows above the deserts and will continue at all costs and we will either serve or fail given our own particular gifts.

Welcome to the new world order.

Spielberg and Kubrick

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Ever since seeing it for the first time I’ve regarded “A.I.” as Steven Spielberg’s most challenging and interesting film. The creative collaboration between two directors with such different styles (but similar obsessions with detail) is almost diabolical in it’s interweaving. One can almost sense the tension between their approaches in every scene, making every moment a trajectory toward another revelation of the unexpected. Spielberg’s urge toward resolution struggles against Kubrick’s insistence that there are no clear answers to who we are or where we’re going. We never really know whether the affections that surround the protagonist are ‘real’ feelings or merely the programmed responses of an automata, or whether it matters. The unrelenting action of a Spielberg movie becomes the container for a path that leads us toward serious contemplation.

Kubrick very purposefully handed this project to his friend with a very specific outline (including musical scores) to be completed after his death. One of his underlying themes is to question the very emotional agenda informing the majority of films, and certainly those of Spielberg. On one level the movie is a debate over our motivations for going to the movies, whether to open ourselves to unique points of view or merely to have our familiar button’s pushed?
The tension comes to a crest in the last scene, which has sparked numerous debates and harsh criticism, but which embodies the movie’s essential paradox. Some have criticized it for catering to Spielberg’s emotional agenda by leaving us on a note that’s overly sentimental. With the exception of this film, I’ve often thought that Spielberg’s films would benefit by cutting out the last 15 minutes of ‘tying it all up.) I believe, however, that this conclusion is inevitable to the degree that we identify with the character of the automata (played brilliantly by the young Haley Joel Osmet) instead of seeing that the overall outlook of the film, from the beginning shots of a drowned city to the final one of the lights going out, is that humanity is quite likely a species doomed to be a figment of memory in an otherwise indifferent universe..

Think Maybe

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Here is certainly one of the most valuable sites on the Internet, devoted to independent cinema focused on the issues facing our world. Do you truly want to know what is happening outside of the Matrix? This is like taking the ‘red’ pill:

Thought Maybe

Among the best on the thoughtmaybe.com site are the films of Adam Curtis. His documentaries meld the straightforward documentary narrative commentary of ‘Frontline’ with an impressionistic style reminiscent of the films of Jean Luc Godard. Curtis goes far beyond ‘Frontline’ in revealing how historical situations emerge out of the assumptions and delusions with which we’ve been programmed. Unlike those who sell conspiracy in order to make a buck and keep us feeling victimized Curtis delivers a coherent analysis and critique of our civilization and how we got here. The secrets held in plain sight are revealed in the context of unfolding history. Are you ready to take off the blinders?

The Films of Adam Curtis

Given the current pitched battles in Afghanistan I particularly recommend the film called Bitter Lake, which traces that country’s history with the Britain and America going back to 1946.