Miss Manners' Guide to Massacre Debate Etiquette

Mrs. Alan Greenspan (Andrea Mitchell) is all upset that Donald Trump is using the San Bernardino shooting to boost his candidacy. "Incredibly, his response is poll-driven," she groused to MTP Daily host Chuck Todd on MSNBC last night. "He said, twice, that 'every time there's a tragedy, my poll numbers go up!'"

Of course, she couldn't leave it at that, because whenever Beltway insiders get together for a chat, etiquette dictates that for every right-wing idiot, there has to be a left-wing counter-idiot.Therefore Mitchell went on to complain, "It's just that there's a creepiness going on on both sides, the fact that there was, you know, prayer shaming going on and the bloggers!"

Chuck choked out something like "prayer, for crying out loud, now they're attacking prayer of all things?" National Journal pundit Ron Fournier added that the partisan debate over the San Bernardino massacre has become as radicalized as the shooters themselves. The debate is irresponsible, he said, because both sides are attacking each other while cravenly ignoring the real threat(s). If they were serious adults, they would be bipartisanly selling the fear and the terror that every concerned citizen should be experiencing.

Fournier: He (President Obama) knows where this is headed and he knows his party is headed in the wrong direction ... In a sane political environment, if you have one party doing prayer shaming and another party demonizing and profiling Muslims, they'd be laughed out of politics. They would be marginalized. We wouldn't write about them [crosstalk] We have two very dysfunctional parties and a media now that is not even [crosstalk]

Mitchell: This is not a serious political debate.

Todd: No.

Fournier: It's dangerous.

Both sides do it! There is a serious Permawar going on here, yet Trump is demonizing Muslims for his own gain, and libruls are demonizing prayer for theirs. Oh, the humanity. Oh, the false equivalence.

What Andrea Mitchell ludicrously calls "prayer shaming" is nothing more than calling out politicians who Tweet their maudlin "thoughts and prayers" after every mass shooting, rather than Tweet out their demands for immediate gun control legislation. This has nothing to do with shaming religious people who pray. This has everything to do with exposing hypocrisy.  

Fournier is right that the "debate" has become radicalized. The chattering class is radically stupid and irresponsible for framing everything around partisanship, politics, and the interests of the ruling class in keeping us all afraid, very afraid. While complaining about partisanship trumping (sorry) terror, they're continuously wallowing in partisanship themselves. Heaven forbid that they examine their own alleged consciences for some insight in how they themselves are muddying the "debate" by churning up militaristic fever even as they champion horse-race politics.

The term "prayer shaming" has actually been around for awhile.  The Atlantic ran a piece by Emma Green, suspiciously published immediately after the California shooting. It was as though they had it on file and ready to go. This is obviously what gave Andrea Mitchell her convenient talking points: 

There’s a clear claim being made here, and one with an edge: Democrats care about doing something and taking action while Republicans waste time offering meaningless prayers. These two reactions, policy-making and praying, are portrayed as mutually exclusive, coming from totally contrasting worldviews. Elsewhere on Twitter, full-on prayer shaming set in: Anger about the shooting was turned not toward the perpetrator or perpetrators, whose identities are still unknown, but at those who offered their prayers.

 (snip)

There are many assumptions packed into these attacks on prayer: that all religious people, and specifically Christians, are gun supporters, and vice versa. That people who care about gun control can’t be religious, and if they are, they should keep quiet in the aftermath of yet another heart-wrenching act of violence. At one time in American history, liberals and conservatives shared a language of God, but that’s clearly no longer the case; any invocation of faith is taken as implicit advocacy of right-wing political beliefs.
The most powerful evidence against this backlash toward prayer comes not from the Twitterverse, but from San Bernardino. “Pray for us,” a woman texted her father from inside the Inland Regional Center, while she and her colleagues hid from the gunfire. Outside the building, evacuated workers bowed their heads and held hands. They prayed.

This is missing the point, I think. Nobody is "prayer-shaming" or making fun of religion in these Tweets. As a matter of fact, the prayer-shamer shamers and PC police should also probably alert us to the fact that actual thought-shaming is  going on here, too, since the more secular Thoughts invariably precede Prayers in these hypocritical Tweets. We should know that no alleged prayer can ever sail through the air without first attaching to itself the propaganda rocket booster known as magical thinking.

Actually, there is not much thought or insight of any kind in evidence within the mainstream media. There are, though, lots of buzzwords passing as mentation in an echo chamber, an embarrassment of bromides passing as political courage and will.

I nominate the term "platitude-shaming" to replace prayer-shaming. Or is that too radical?

Just Another Normal Massacre

So far, anyway (I'm writing this at 8:27 a.m.) the usual suspects of Xenophobistan are curiously mute about yesterday's mass shooting, allegedly committed by a husband (American) and wife (Pakistani) team who met in Saudi Arabia. Either it's to their credit that the warmongers of Congress and CNN are not screaming IsisIsisIsis! at the top of their lungs before seeing even a shred of evidence, or else they're afraid to offend their friends, the Saudis. Remember that the 28 redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission Report allegedly show a Saudi royal connection to that terror attack. And Saudi Arabia, despite its sordid and brutal regime, is a close partner of the US as well as its largest arms customer. President Obama  brokered the latest multi-billion-dollar deal of high-tech weaponry just this past fall.

I think it's safe to assume that if the wife had hailed from Syria, the usual suspects would have been jockeying for anti-immigrant position before the crack of dawn.

So I'm not going to speculate on the motive* behind the latest shooting. But I think it's fair game to speculate on the motives of the speculators. I think it is fair, even desirable, to watch the Thoughts and Prayers hypocrite squad squirm in helpless silence. I think it's also fair to speculate on a correlation between the frequent mass shootings and the epidemic of human misery wrought by the financial crisis and all its unindicted economic terrorists.

It's true that mass murder by firearm is rapidly becoming the New Normal, with not even a week separating the California massacre and the atrocity at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. These "incidents" are all melding into one sickening bloodbath. As the New York Times points out, there is, on average, one mass shooting in the United States every single day. Most of them are greeted by a giant group yawn. Most are simply not bloody enough or spectacular enough or politically co-optable enough to merit interruption by the mass media of its daily broadcasts of Donald Trump rallies.

From today's Times:

Including the worst mass shooting of the year, which unfolded horrifically on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a total of 462 people have died and 1,314 have been wounded in such attacks this year, many of which occurred on streets or in public settings, the databases indicate.

It is impossible to know whether the number of such shootings has risen in recent years because the databases go back only a couple of years. More data is available for mass shootings calculated by a different standard, one used by congressional researchers and other experts who study mass killings: four or more dead. But experts fiercely debate whether mass shootings by that more deadly standard have remained level or ticked up slightly in recent years.

Still, say experts, there is no real way to measure whether mass shootings are truly on the upswing. The US has been a violent country ever since the Pilgrims landed and started exterminating the aboriginals. But what is truly on the upswing, says criminologist James Fox, is fear. “A lot of that has been because of the nature of media coverage," he told the Times. "In the ’70s and ’80s, we didn’t hear about it on the Internet — because there was no Internet — and we didn’t have cable news channels that would devote 24 hours of coverage.”

We didn't have 24/7 coverage of Donald Trump and his closest fascist rival, the truly awesomely scary Ted Cruz.

Meanwhile, the Scottsdale (AZ) Gun Club is going ahead with its annual Christmas family fun extravaganza. For only $15 ($10 for members) you get your choice of weapons to hold while posing for a picture with Santa himself. As a special added bonus, they'll take your kids' fingerprints, for free.... because, freedom. Because taking fingerprints is what passes for responsible gun safety in gun states. 

 And in case you were worried about President Obama's recent ban on the importation of Russian-made AK-47s (pictured above) in order to punish Vlad Putin over Crimea, don't be. Because now they're made in America. Whoever said offshoring is destroying good American jobs is nuts, especially since the slogan of the new company is "Russian heritage, American innovation."

Although the new American assault rifle company is headquartered in Pennsylvania, the CEO refuses, for some reason, to divulge the location of his physical factory. So, you might ask, how is he advertising for those great-paying new American manufacturing jobs? Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he is using robots instead of humans from the Rust Belt.

It's the American heritage and it's the American way: Ka-ching and Ka-boom.

* On second thought, I wouldn't be surprised if postpartum depressive psychosis turned out to be a contributing factor. Six months after the birth of her first child, the culture shock of moving from a repressive society, husband just returned to work after a pretty long parental leave by American standards... the timing is certainly right. The husband could have been the follower in this madness, which seems to be a hybrid of workplace violence and terror attack and suicide by cop. I'm sure we'll find out eventually. But at the end of the day, what difference does a motive make? People are dead because guns are rampant.

When Everything Old Is New Again

Talk about feeling every arthritic inch the geezer. When I was Googling the netz to research my usual snarky story on Christmas toys and Christmas joy, I came across a piece by toy historian Philip Reed, who'd dredged up an old Gannett newspaper piece by Yours Truly, from way back yonder in 1978.

Then, as now, Star Wars was all the rage. Reading my old article brought back memories of how sick I was of Star Wars even then. And I wasn't the only one. Remember the parody by Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live? I used to sing that lounge lizard ditty under my breath all of the time, to the tune of the Star Wars theme song.... Star Wars, Nothing but Star Wars, Nothing but Star Wars, All of the Time.

I also used to sing it to my two stepsons when they came over on the weekends and announced that all they wanted for Christmas was Star Wars crap. When the older guy came to visit me again over the summer, and we were reminiscing, he said the thing he most remembers about those days was me, singing the Star Wars song parody to them over and over again, like a demented lullaby. All of the time. Oy vey. He got me singing it inwardly again, totally against my will.

  So you will be glad, or sad, as the case might be, to learn that Star Wars toys are only ranked Number 5 in popularity this year. It must be the toy version of the Vietnam Syndrome.

But don't despair. Because on top of the 2015 Wish List, according to Google (who else?) are drones. President Obama may once have joked that you'll never see them coming, but they're coming this year, right down the chimney. Whoosh. Maybe the drones can do us all a favor and blast the Star Wars crap right out of the sky.

Number Two is something called Shopkins, which I confess I have never heard of. Google them if you feel like it. I don't feel like it. There is enough crass consumerism without trying to make it sound like a cuddly kitty.

Hoverboards are in third place. Judging from the photo, they look just the perfect gift from stressed-out parents who in the olden days would just sarcastically tell the kids to go out and play in traffic. Seriously, this gizmo has "trip to the emergency room" written all over it. So make sure your Obamacare policy is up to date before putting it under the tree this year.

Look Ma, No Hands! (who needs teeth anyway)

Number 4 is Legos. There is nothing dangerous about Legos, unless you give them to a child who likes to eat tiny objects. Or unless you're a mom who foolishly walks around barefoot the week after Christmas, or who foolishly doesn't check for loose bits of plastic among the pine needles before vacuuming the rug. Legos are death to vacuum cleaners and toes alike. Take it from one who knows.

Number 5 is actually Star Wars-specific, not general Star Wars crapola. This year's hot item is a Droid. Maybe it will get the kids used to the Jobless Economy. No Luddite action figures this Yule, I guess.

But re-reading my old article, I was kind of stunned to remember that back in the day, they actually sold a doll that changed its skin color! Suntan Eric and his entire family of melanin addicts went from pasty white to deep bronze if you held them under the light, then back to privileged pale once rescued from the intense wattage.

And then there was Baby Wet N Care. I wrote,

 Not only does it wet, but its little derriere erupts in big red spots. But never fear: "YOU make her well, curing that unsightly diaper rash with a special cream, ingredients unknown.

And if you really care about Baby Wet N Care, you'll want to invest in the special "electronic beat stethoscope", sold separately. That, apparently, will diagnose baby's heart murmur before it's too late.

I don't know if another Baby accessory was a CPS worker, or if you were just supposed to use Suntan Eric's wife to play the part. If she was healthy enough, that is. The Suntan Family didn't come provided with any mystery lotion to protect them from those cancer-causing rays.

Toy-sellers could never get away with advertising this 70s doll today:

One of the more unusual dolls on the market this year is Ideal's "Whoopsie," about $13. The package makes it sound as though this creature comes from an advertisement in the back pages of a men's magazine. "Just squeeze my soft tummy," she coos on the label. "My hair flips up and I whistle "Whoopsie!"

However, there apparently is a thriving black market for vintage Baby Whoopsies, even films of her in action. I Googled her, but my conscience prevents me from providing any links.  Although I do think it's rather tempting to wrap her up, put her on a Hoverboard, and then aim a drone straight at her.

Stayed tuned for more Christmas cheer the rest of the month. Coming soon: another Sardonicky update on that perennial NSA favorite: Elf on a Shelf.

Commentariat Central

By reader request, here's another one of my irregular New York Times comment dumps. Look out below!

Maureen Dowd, King Kevin vs. Queen Cersei, Nov. 26.

This is an annual holiday tradition for the center-left Dowd, as she relinquishes her entire valuable column space to her ignorant right-wing brother. As we are constantly being informed by Democratic Party-leaning blogs and pundits, no family Thanksgiving dinner is complete without the presence of at least one ignorant right-wing jerk to give us agita. Except mine, of course. My right-wing relatives are either dead and in their graves, or they're permanently banished from my sight. Maureen is game though, and this year Kevin  comments as non-factually as humanly possible on all the presidential candidates.)

My response:

Hey, Kevin!
You seem to be getting your disinformation on Bernie from the Wall Street Journal. You obviously missed the response by economist Gerald Friedman, who's used actual math to prove that HR 676 (Medicare for All) would save $5 trillion over 10 years, because it would get rid of private insurers and also enable lower drug and device prices through the process of negotiation. This is money that would go back into people's pockets until they spend it to stimulate the economy. It would help stop the great carve-out of the middle class! It would be good for businesses, allowing them to invest the ton of money saved from the clutches of a greedy private insurance system back into salaries for a loyal workforce and to expanding their businesses. More here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-friedman/the-wall-street-journal-k_...

Economist Joe Firestone, in his book "Fiscal Myths of the 2016 Campaign" estimates the savings from Medicare for All at as much as $11 trillion over 10 years, when you factor in how it would limit the rise in our current out-of-control health care costs to the level of inflation. His figures are based on the efficiency of Canada's own single payer program.

HR 676 - covering medical, dental, drug therapy, and mental health - is not only humane. It is fiscally responsible.

Health care is a basic human right in every other advanced country.

You don't want America to be unexceptional, do you, Kevin?

Feel the Bern!

*******

Paul Krugman, Inequality and the City, Nov. 30.

In another in a continuing series of increasingly tone-deaf columns, Krugman this go-round summons up his shallow inner Carrie Bradshaw to kvetch how cool and hip, but expensive, New York City is getting to be. But the Mayor is aware of income disparity, by golly, and Krugman himself vows to return to the lesser people's housing difficulties in another column, someday. Today, though, it's all about gentrification being a glass half-full (of Dom Perignon, presumably.)

My comment:

While Mayor de Blasio "understands" that the less well off are being driven out by high rents, and housing policy is a subject that Prof. Krugman says he "has to return to another day," the people affected certainly aren't twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the elites to do something or say something on their behalf.

The Movement for Justice in El Barrio, a grassroots coalition, has been fighting against gentrification and the expulsive forces of global capitalism for years now. And the mayor's plan to build luxury housing in East Harlem would force people out of neighborhoods they've called home for generations.

"Affordable" as defined by the mayor is an income between $46,620 and $62,150 for a family of three. Yet, the median income for a family of three in East Harlem is only $33,600. Since families and small businesses would be driven out by his plan, they're demanding that existing housing and small businesses be left intact.

They've presented a 10-point plan to "prevent El Barrio from becoming a gold mine for large corporations and a paradise for the rich."

So far, their proposal has fallen on deaf official ears. But the protests will continue. The civil rights song "We Shall Not Be Moved" is both a blast from the past, and a blast of fresh air overcoming the stench of an oligarchy gone wild.

*****

David Brooks, The Green Tech Solution, Dec. 1. 

Without mentioning Bill Gates by name, Brooks dutifully echoes the green energy marketing ploy of America's godzillionaire and self-anointed policy guru. (see yesterday's post.) Instead, Brooks pretends to be inspired by Alexander Hamilton, the founding father of American banking and now a resurrected hip-hop musical sensation on Broadway. Brooks says the Republicans are pretend-stoopid for not believing in climate change, when there is so much money to be made in pretend-climate amelioration!

My response:

At the Paris summit, world leaders are spending at least as much time strategizing over wars in Syria and elsewhere as they are over climate change amelioration. While they're all preening for their photo-ops and spouting their platitudes, another group of global bigwigs is gathering in Brussels to plot the secretive Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership (TTIP).

According to documents obtained by the Guardian, climate change cover-up artist Exxon Mobil has been given "unique access" to the sessions. The company is providing input on how to circumvent/repeal US law, establish ties with cooperative US government officials, and hoodwink the public and environmental groups so as to grease the skids for the now-banned export of US fossil fuels to Europe.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/26/ttip-talks-eu-alleged...

 Should the TTIP pass, the ensuing liberalization of oil and gas trade would dramatically spike global emissions and feed Big Oil's profits to even more grotesque proportions. Some of these profits, as we well know, go into the campaign coffers of the American congress critters who do industry's bidding and vote against legislation and treaties attempting to halt climate change.

He wasn't a founding father, but I'll go with Abraham Lincoln:

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity."

*****

Parul Sehgal, The Profound Emptiness of 'Resilience,' Dec. 1. I loved this magazine piece about neoliberal buzzwords and class/racial privilege. Readers know that I have long mocked President Obama's obsession with this exact dog-whistling propaganda phraseology in order to justify war, austerity, the New Economy, and crapification in general. Thanks to the hard work, sacrifice, grit and determination of the American people, we are able to oppress a whole nation full of docile sheep and greatly reward and expand an unprecedented oligarchic ruling class to make America Great Again has been the subliminal theme-song of many a campaign speech and Saturday address by Big Guy.


My comment:

This was a joy to read, because Resilience and its mawkish cousin, Grit, have been my pet peeves for years.

They are neoliberal-speak for "Get used to it, plebs, because you are so, so screwed."

Last week it was moralizing pundit David Brooks who applauded survivors of war and terror as having that certain resilience that enables them to bounce back stronger than ever. If perchance you can't bounce back, then there must be something wrong with you.

Last year, President Obama announced a $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition. May the best Apocalypse with the most smiley-face emojis win!

And from his second Inaugural:

is generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. (Applause.) An economic recovery has begun. (Applause.) America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together. (Applause.)"

Whenever I feel that dread Resilience gremlin approaching, I immediately seize it before it gets the chance to attack me.

Resilience is the civic passivity that lulls us into voting for a pre-vetted candidate every four years while pretending that we still live in a democracy.

Embrace your rage, and live to tell the tale.

Last Tango in Paris

 On second thought, maybe we should call it the Moonwalk. Or maybe even the Hustle.

In what's being described as a do-or-die moment, world leaders converged on Paris to dance around what to do aspirationally, sometime in the future maybe, about climate change and the death of the planet. It remains to be seen whether this Elite Urge-a-Thon will have any oxygen in it.

 President Obama, well-protected by a small security army, called the crucial United Nations summit "an act of defiance" against the recent terror attacks, and  called for cooperation.... among world leaders. He urged regular folks not to be cynical.

Meanwhile, out in the streets, police fired tear gas on regular folks in order to clear the air of voices and human bodies having the poor taste to demand action now. The climate may be changing, but police crackdowns on peaceful protests at international meetings of elites are certainly always in the global forecast. (Oops, my bad. I was told not to be cynical.)

Speaking of man-made pollution, China is cooperating in the Paris talks not a moment too soon. The atmosphere got so bad in Beijing today that life itself has had to be temporarily shut down. Factories and schools closed and residents advised to shelter in place indoors until a wind from the right direction kicks up and blows the terroristic threat into somebody else's neighborhood, or preferably way up into the stratosphere where nobody can actually see what's left of the ozone layer.

Elsewhere on the planet, where the air is still fairly breathable and peaceful protest is still allowed, millions of people came out to support climate change reversal. Sardonicky contributor "Jay-Ottawa" participated in this march in the Canadian capitol on Sunday:

Meanwhile, Prince Charles touched down in Paris to demand that governments stop fossil fuel subsidies. He should know. His mum, Queen Elizabeth, owns a fortune in uranium mines.

Meanwhile, philanthrocapitalist, education "reformer," and unelected world leader Bill Gates burned thousands of gallons of polluting private jet fuel to travel to the City of Light to announce his "initiative" for clean energy research and development. Investment opportunities for the well-connected will abound, all in the name of capitalistic concern-trolling the poor people of the world. Gates, whose Microsoft technology (and its detritus) outsourced to China helps to create the smog, is an opponent of fossil fuel divestment. Therefore, his billion-dollar pledge to "study" green energy will surely help influence the heads of state to speak softly and carry a big twig during their minuet of a talk-fest. No world leader will even think to protest the fact that the Chinese factory workers who help make Gates a gazillionaire live like prisoners while they're trying to breathe all that polluted air.

Eighty billionaires, with Gates in or near the lead, now own as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire world population. This is a guy who fancies himself a postmodern Citizen Kane, complete with the $125 million estate that he so 'umbly named Xanadu 2.0.

  Factoring in his 23-car garage, I think we can all rest assured that Bill Gates is absolutely sincere in combating climate change. Oops. There goes my cynicism again!

Don't Bother, They're Here

 (Optional soothing musical accompaniment.)

Isn't it rich? As the corporate press engages in a frenzy of hand-wringing over the potential Trump regime that they're doing their utmost to create, they're losing sight of the Big Picture.

  Because whether it's draped in the American flag or whether it's nesting inside Trump's comb-over like a plague of lice, fascism is already here. We're already living under a corporate police state: government of, by, and for the oligarchs. This status quo is just making it all that much easier for Donald Trump to rise to power and glory, for Donald Trump to rise in the polls every time he rebukes the standards of political correctness and milks the resentment of the masses. Every time he instigates a campaign rally beating of a protester, or makes fun of a disabled journalist, the cameras are there and the talking heads have something exciting to talk about.

If we had a true democracy, or even a modicum of representative government run by public officials kept honest by an adversarial press, the Donald Trump Experience never would have survived its audition. Trump is only filling a vacuum, serving the corrupt status quo in the imperial end-times.

With his own uniquely usual flair, meanwhile, President Barack Obama is leading the most secretive administration in modern history. He accomplishes this feat by appearing to be accessible and calm and earnest and above-board. After all, a day doesn't go by when the man isn't on TV, whether it's pardoning a turkey with the kids, or holding a news conference on Permawar, or schmoozing with comedians on talk shows. He can't even let next week's 50th anniversary of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" go by without interrupting the festivities to do a really cool imitation of the obfuscatory adult-speak in the show. He has no intention of losing his timing this late in his career. (I was so looking forward to the telecast until I saw the teaser of Barack and Michelle co-opting all the fun with their scary, sincere hokiness.)

Just as George W. Bush paved the way for Obama, Obama is only making it easier for a President Trump.

And yet....

In a rare burst of investigative adversarial journalism, the New York Times today exposes the authoritarian, defensive mindset ingrained within the smiley-face Obama administration. We all knew that this White House has been, as Times journalist James Risen points out, "the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation." But now his colleague Eric Lichtblau informs us that Obama is even clamping down on his own government watchdogs. He not only "stopped opening doors," he slammed them shut, locked them, and then threw away the key:

The Justice Department watchdogs ran into an unexpected roadblock last year when they began examining the role of federal drug agents in the fatal shootings of unarmed civilians during raids in Honduras.

The Drug Enforcement Administration balked at turning over emails from senior officials tied to the raids, according to the department’s inspector general. It took nearly a year of wrangling before the D.E.A. was willing to turn over all its records in a case that the inspector general said raised “serious questions” about agents’ use of deadly force.

The continuing Honduran inquiry is one of at least 20 investigations across the government that have been slowed, stymied or sometimes closed because of a long-simmering dispute between the Obama administration and its own watchdogs over the shrinking access of inspectors general to confidential records, according to records and interviews.

A New York University professor calls Obama's crackdown on government watchdogs "the most aggressive assault on the inspector general program since the beginning," -- a defanging so complete that their jobs might as well be abolished.

Lichtblau goes on to report that an investigation of the Commerce Department's  records on (probably tepid or non-existent) international trade enforcement actions was summarily shut down because such disclosures would have violated the "proprietary rights" of businesses. Altogether, the article reveals, the Obama administration has restricted access of investigators to the records of 70 different government agencies. The lone exception has been at the Justice Department, which held sway over the Drug Enforcement Agency. That case revolves around the deaths of four Honduran civilians, including one child, in a botched raid. Additionally, DEA agents reportedly shot down civilian planes, a clear violation of international law.

Meanwhile, writes Lichtblau, the government watchdogs have been forced to take their complaints to Congress in hopes of getting them to stage a bipartisan intervention.

And meanwhile, pundits like Timothy Egan and Paul Krugman are staging a freak-out over Donald Trump and the other right-wing clowns. Send 'em in, because otherwise the faux-liberals would have nothing to talk or write about. Heaven forbid that they ever take on the corruption within their own party.

If Trump is elected, he wouldn't be able to contain himself. The man cannot keep his foul mouth shut. He wouldn't be able to resist bragging every time his Brownshirts shoot down a plane and or drone a wedding party to death or bomb a hospital on purpose. He'd bring some much-needed transparency right back into the fascist White House.

My published response to the Lichtblau piece:

When a coalition of open government advocates awarded President Obama its Transparency Award in 2011 to mark Sunshine Law Week, the press was barred from covering the event. When the media tried to get a transcript of his remarks, there was none available.

Some cynics surmised at the time that the award was meant to be "aspirational," just like the Nobel Peace Prize. We now know how ironic both of these honorifics have turned out to be.

Orwellian doesn't even begin to describe the paranoia and secrecy of this administration. It out-Bushes Bush, even out-Nixons Nixon.

Around the time of the Transparency Award secret ceremony, the A.P. obtained emails showing that Homeland Security workers were accusing senior Obama officials of "meddling" with release of files requested under the FOIA. Morale in that agency and other government agencies has been going down each successive year of his administration. This might also have something to do with Obama's "insider threat" directive, which requires government workers to spy on each other.

And yet the White House continues to brag about how transparent it is, when in fact opacity was built in from Day 1. Obama had promised, for example, to broadcast the health law negotiations on C-Span. Once elected, he then proceeded to give away the store to the insurance and drug lobbies behind closed doors, while still promising to fight for a "public option" in his public remarks.

Secretive, Orwellian.... and deeply, deeply corrupt.

Don't you love farce? No, you say?

Well, maybe next year. And I'm not talking about Hillary or Trump.

Replace the Bliss of Obama with the Bern of Bernie, and now we're talking business. Democracy might be salvageable after all.
 

Let's Talk Turkey

As long as Woodrow Wilson is finally getting blowback for his racist pathologies, what's to prevent the nation going full Howard Zinn on this special day? We are long overdue for a factual correction to the entirety of our pathological revisionist history. We need a giant group nudge into some pretty harsh realities, if we have any hope of overcoming the hideous dogma of American exceptionalism and endless war. Our very lives depend upon owning up to the sordid past

Thanksgiving, which has evolved over the past century into our great national feast day of holy obligation and gluttony, gets its current inspiration from the myth of the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims going all post-racial multicultural and stuffing their faces before living happily ever after in peace, love and understanding. (It was just a temporary treaty.) We've been taught to view the aboriginals as uncultured primitives, and the Pilgrims as upright austere folk in funny hats fleeing from religious persecution to start life anew in the Land of the Free. We're falsely taught that this land was very sparsely populated, that there were plenty of wide open spaces just there for the sharing.

We've been taught wrong. Before the arrival of the Pilgrims, there were numerous Indian nations with millions of people prospering up and down the East Coast, later to be beatified as the Thirteen Original Colonies. Aboriginal people were never considered by either the colonial settlers or the later "Founders" to have been endowed with certain inalienable rights. They were considered aliens in their own land, which they had populated for thousands or even tens of thousands of years before Miles Standish and Cotton Mather arrived on the scene to scatter their imperialistic brimstone.

As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in An Indigenous People's History of the United States, 

 In the founding myth of the United States, the colonists acquired a vast expanse of land from a scattering of benighted peoples who were hardly using it -- an unforgivable offense to the Puritan work ethic. The historical record is clear, however, that European colonists shoved aside a large network of small and large nations whose governments, commerce, arts and sciences agricultures, technologies, theologies, philosophies and institutions were intricately developed, nations that maintained sophisticated relations with one another and with the environments that supported them.

Racism came to America long before the importation of African people for purposes of enslavement. According to Dunbar-Ortiz, Britons were enticed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the usual ploy: a marketing campaign. In 1630, the Mayflower conquerors developed their own seal. "The central image depicts a near-naked native holding a harmless, flimsy-looking bow and arrow and inscribed with the plea, 'Come over and help us.'"

The doctrine of "liberal interventionism" dies hard, as evidenced by the USA's recent adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and the presence of at least a thousand military bases encircling the globe.
 
  Thanksgiving might be more properly marked as Native Genocide Remembrance Day -- or, if you want to be euphemistic, National Colonial Settlement Day. The tradition of using religion as an excuse to invade, occupy, rape, plunder, terrorize and exterminate is nothing new. Now most publicized by ISIS, it was also the casus belli of the European settlers who landed on Plymouth Rock in the 17th century.

When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, there were 40,000 Wampanoags living in 67 separate villages in the territory. Today, only 4,000 of their direct descendants remain in New England.

  There were plenty of other victims of Puritan religious fundamentalism, too. From Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States:

 The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

 The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land. And they seemed to want also to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area. The murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnaper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war on the Pequots in 1636.

 A punitive expedition left Boston to attack the Narraganset Indians on Block Island, who were lumped with the Pequots. As Governor Winthrop wrote: "They had commission to put to death the men of Block Island, but to spare the women and children, and to bring them away, and to take possession of the island; and from thence to go to the Pequods to demand the murderers of Captain Stone and other English, and one thousand fathom of wampum for damages, etc. and some of their children as hostages, which if they should refuse, they were to obtain it by force."

The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops. Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again. One of the officers of that expedition, in his account, gives some insight into the Pequots they encountered: "The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying, What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for? They not thinking we intended war, went on cheerfully... -"

Unfortunately, the current revisionist-in-chief is not only not getting with the Zinn reality program, he's doubling down on the imperialistic propaganda. Barack Obama, from today's Thanksgiving address:

 Hi, everybody. In 1620, a small band of pilgrims came to this continent, refugees who had fled persecution and violence in their native land. Nearly 400 years later, we remember their part in the American story -- and we honor the men and women who helped them in their time of need.

He couldn't even mention the Pequots and Wampanoags by name, could he? It might make his audience ask whatever happened to them all, anyway? There never was, and never will be, a "Je Suis Pequot" rallying cry in the United States.

Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims -- men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families. What makes America America is that we offer that chance. We turn Lady Liberty's light to the world, and widen our circle of concern to say that all God's children are worthy of our compassion and care. That's part of what makes this the greatest country on Earth.

Of course, the indigenous people never made the Pilgrims go through background checks, get fingerprinted, and then wait at least two years before entering the premises, as Obama's America is forcing the Muslim refugees to do. They never locked up mother and child pilgrims fleeing Central American violence in Homeland Security prisons until one humane, outraged judge finally ordered their release. The aboriginal communities did not then put ankle bracelets on the Pilgrims in order to track their every move. They never put the Pilgrims back on the boat and told them to get lost. I think that Obama is getting the plunderers and the plundered all mixed up in his jingoistic pipe dream.  

Obama also didn't mention that Pilgrims sold many of the native people into slavery on sugar plantations, and that descendants of the Wampanoag nation have recently been discovered living on Caribbean islands. Globalized capitalism is nothing new.

Still, there's nothing wrong with traveling to holiday Fantasy Land, as long as the fiction satirizes and pummels the plunderers. The following retelling of the Thanksgiving legend is getting to be an annual Sardonicky tradition. It turns the Calvinist "origin myth" of the first Thanksgiving and the unholy birth of American Exceptionalism right on its head:

Wednesday (playing "Pocahontas")): Wait!
 Amanda:  What?
  Wednesday: We cannot break bread with you.
  Amanda: Huh? Becky, what's going on?
  Becky: [whispered] Wednesday!
  Wednesday: You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, you will play golf, and enjoy hot hors d'oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, "Do not trust the Pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller."
  Amanda: Gary, she's changing the words.
  Wednesday: And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground. 

*****

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!