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!

Thank$ Be To Terror

Yesterday I singled out the New York Times's David Brooks as the worst kind of neocon hack, using psychobabble to try and soothe the reading public into overcoming those "sickly inhibitions" which get in the way of civilian embrace of Permawar.

But if truth be told, Brooks is only a sickly pale guppy compared to the ravenous shark named CNN. Brooks only burbles out two columns a week when he isn't adopting an avuncular persona for folksy "debates" on PBS with Mark Shields. CNN, on the other hand, has been manically churning the fetid propaganda waters non-stop, resulting in a bloody maelstrom in which fear begets more fear, profits beget more profits.

As Farron Cousins of Ring of Fire explains, it's all about the ratings.  Like any shark worth its endless rows of teeth, CNN is nothing if not a bona fide eating machine:

Cousins didn't need to tell me to stop watching CNN. (Except for the first GOP debate, I've never watched Fox.)  I shut CNN off of my own volition a week ago because the war porn made me feel so sickly. MSNBC is a little better, because it does occasionally interrupt the war porn to cover other news. I have no idea how CNN will tear itself away from the bombs and death when it hosts the next Republican debate. On second thought, what is a Republican debate but bombs and death, xenophobia and paranoia? What are Donald Trump and Marco Rubio but political porn stars?

What is CNN but a subsidiary of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA, the FBI, the CIA and the State Department? Thanks to what the late Sheldon Wolin called Inverted Totalitarianism, the USA doesn't need the equivalent of a state-owned Pravda, because the government and the corporate media are essentially one and the same outfit. CNN feeds the war machine, and the war machine feeds CNN. It's a totally voluntary, totally corrupt arrangement.

They're all doing their military Keynesian part: Pentagon spending fuels CNN's profits, and CNN's propaganda begets more military profits, and more military profits beget more weapons manufacturing and more weapons sales beget more war and death and more catastrophes beget more fear and the overcoming of those sickly inhibitions.

From Reuters (h/t Robert Sadin):  

The U.S. government is working hard to ensure quicker processing of U.S. foreign arms sales, which surged 36 percent to $46.6 billion in fiscal 2015 and look set to remain strong in coming years, a top Pentagon official said.

"Projections are still strong," Vice Admiral Joe Rixey, who heads the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.
He said the agency was trying to sort out the impact of a much stronger-than-expected fourth quarter as it finalized its forecast for arms sales in fiscal 2016, which began Oct. 1.

The fight against Islamic State militants and other armed conflicts around the globe were fueling demand for U.S. missile defense equipment, helicopters and munitions, Rixey said, a shift from 10 years ago when the focus was on fighter jets.

"It's worldwide. The demand signal is coming in Europe, in the Pacific and in Centcom," he said, referring to the U.S. Central Command region, which includes the Middle East and Afghanistan.

CNN is also forecast to enjoy a stronger than expected fourth quarter, what with all that extra ad revenue generated by all those excess military profits and excess Trumpian xenophobia. People always switch on the boob tube whenever they're frightened to death, and then the boob tube makes sure that they become even more frightened to death. The endless propaganda feedback loop is as perpetual as war itself.

The  civil rights anthem of the Military-Industrial Complex: We Shall Overcome.... your sickly inhibitions.

So how about we overcome their propaganda and boycott the war profiteers as a form of protest? Don't spend money on any of the products and services you've seen advertised on CNN before you shut it off. These include most pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter pain killers, breakfast cereals, sugar and corn and toxic cleaning products which necessitate the pharmaceuticals, and anything manufactured by Koch Industries.

Let's give peace a chance. Let's also give them a piece of our minds as we take a million tiny but painful Piranha-like bites out of their tender, overstuffed shark-flesh.  

Overcoming Sickly Inhibitions, the David Brooks Way

David Brooks As Doctor Pangloss (graphic by Kat Garcia)

David Brooks, resident hack of the Neocon Thought Collective, echoed that granddaddy of all neocon hacks, Norman Podhoretz, in his column today. He attempted to put a cheery Panglossian spin -- with some truly creepy eugenic baseline undertones -- on war, suffering and death.

It was Podhoretz who wrote that post-Vietnam, fed-up Americans needed a lot of guidance and prodding in order to "overcome the sickly inhibitions against the use of force." He actually cast aversion toward war as a disease rather than as a rational human response. Noam Chomsky explained the classic fascist propaganda techniques used to sell and re-sell modern American military aggression in his own classic volume, "Media Control":

"There were these sickly inhibitions against violence on the part of a large part of the public. People just didn't understand why we should go around torturing people and killing people and carpet bombing them. It's very dangerous for a population to be overcome by these sickly inhibitions, as Goebbels understood, because then there's a limit on foreign adventures. It's necessary, as the Washington Post put it rather proudly during the Gulf War hysteria, to instill in people respect for "martial value." That's important. If you want to have a violent society that uses force around the world to achieve the ends of its own domestic elite, it's necessary to have a proper appreciation of the martial virtues and none of these sickly inhibitions about using violence."

Just as the Vietnam Syndrome was temporarily overcome by the propaganda of the media-political nexus to justify the invasion of Iraq, so too is the bellicose thought collective trying to overcome the Iraq Syndrome to justify a turbocharged surge in the wider Middle East War, which Pope Francis has aptly called a "piecemeal World War III." 

Just as they justified Iraq by co-opting the 9/11 terror attacks, so too are they co-opting the Paris massacre to bomb, bomb, bomb again. And again. And some more. With no end in sight.

Enter David Brooks with his fascist, bizarre "Tales of the Super Survivors", which aims to convince us that suffering and catastrophe and terror are really good for us:

It’s horrible, of course, but over the past few years the findings of academic research into the effects of these traumas have shifted in a more positive direction. Human beings are more resilient than we’d earlier thought. Many people bounce back from hard knocks and experience surges of post-traumatic growth.

In the first place, post-traumatic stress disorder rates are lower than many of us imagine. According to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only about 13 percent of the first responders on 9/11 had symptoms that would qualify as a stress disorder. Only about 13 percent of the people who saw the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in person experienced PTSD in the next six months. The best general rule for all of society seems to be that at least 75 percent of the people who experience a life-threatening or violent event emerge without a stress disorder.

There are actual uncomplaining people out there, seemingly ground into psychic mulch only to bounce back fully formed, and so full of joy that they spread the Pollyannish gladness to everyone around them. They are virtual latter-day Übermenschen wearing happy face emojis.  Brooks gushes on,

 That is to say, they have positive illusions about their own talents, and an optimist’s faith in their own abilities to control the future. But they have no illusions about the world around them. They accept what they have lost quickly. They see problems clearly. They work hard. Work is the reliable cure for sorrow.

Optimism, altruism, and the ability to tell a good story as you work till you drop are the Brooksian cures for all that ails the maimed, the stabbed, the bombed, the troubled, the naked and the dead.

My published comment:

The theme of today's sermon from Mount Plutocrat: Get over yourselves, plebs!

Voltaire wrote a scathing masterpiece on such phony optimism in the 18th century. His anti-hero, Pangloss (who it's fun to envision as our favorite chin-stroking pundit-philosopher who gets paid to go on champagne-soaked $120,000 vacations for the rich) advises Candide that despite earthquake, plague, poverty, capitalistic predators and corrupt priests, this is still the best of all possible worlds. The French Revolution ensued, of course. People were as sick and tired of the sanctimonious claptrap that Voltaire satirized as they are now.

Fast forward to the postmodern Age of Terror, and Brooks grotesquely enthuses that only 13% of 9/11 first responders came down with PTSD in the first six months. 

 Duh. As most grief experts will tell you, reaction to trauma is often delayed for years or decades. Six months is still the numb stage for a lot of people. Brook's little guide to "l'optimisme" also doesn't factor in the cancers and other diseases just now manifesting themselves from that event. And forget about the hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi victims of American wars of aggression who didn't get to see another sunny side of life.

This is the age of terror, all right. It's the economic terror of a deregulated plutonomy that's scaring us, impoverishing us, and quite literally killing us.

And Brook's Rx is resilience and story-telling?

Mr. Brooks: please get over yourself.

 When Brooksian Resilience Bites You in the Ass, Be Strong and Carry On

Managed Democracy Follies

The thought leaders of the universe are now pondering the unimaginable, that Donald Trump will indeed win the nomination of the Grand Guignol Party.

 Paul Krugman, for example, got his liberal conscience so rattled that he broke with New York Times protocol and wrote the verboten word "shit" in a blog-post about the looming specter of our first openly fascist presidential nominee. The ravening right-wing base is hellbent on electing somebody willing to "bomb the shit out of Muslims" and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, Krugman wrote.

My response:

Trump is doing what establishment Dems have had little stomach for or interest in: he is destroying the Republican Party. I can hardly wait for the convention -- if, in fact the GOP elders don't decide to broker it or cancel it altogether in the interest of their own survival. Maybe they'll dream up a new outside terrorist threat in order to maintain their own reign of terror.

Meanwhile, polls show Bernie Sanders beating Trump at wider margins than would Hillary Clinton -- who, unsurprisingly enough, is tacking further to the right now that she's again been declared inevitable. Can't you just imagine a debate between the two of them, with Trump bragging that his daughter and Chelsea are BFFs, and that he gave so generously to the Clinton family slush fund? That will be sure to bring out Democratic voters in droves.

Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton

Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans don't need to red-bait Bernie on single payer healthcare when they have Hillary to do it for them. She is now ridiculously claiming that government-run health care would be a burden on the middle class, when it actually would be a savings boon to everybody. She's essentially saying that it's better to pay private insurance predators for their profit than to pay Uncle Sam in the interests of the common good.

  The good news is that younger voters are backing Bernie over both Hillary and Trump. Although it might not happen this cycle, change is inevitable. Out with the old neoliberal order, in with the new New Deal.

Naturally, Krugman and the rest of the Gray Lady claque dare not mention  inconvenient polls reflecting actual popular opinion and sentiment. Patrick Healy. for instance, broke away from his He Who Must Not Be Named or Taken Seriously political theater beat long enough to write a front-page piece insisting that liberal voters are upset mainly with the "lingering" optics -- not the actual substance -- of Hillary Clinton's sordid ties to Wall Street: 

At a time when liberals are ascendant in the party, many Democrats believe her merely having “represented Wall Street as a senator from New York,” as Mrs. Clinton reminded viewers in an October debate, is bad enough.

 It is an image problem that she cannot seem to shake.

Her advisers say most Democrats like her economic policies and believe she would fight for middle-class and low-income Americans. Most opinion polls put Mrs. Clinton well ahead of Mr. Sanders nationally and in Iowa, and they are running even in New Hampshire, but she fares worse than him on questions about taking on Wall Street and special interests. And even if Mrs. Clinton sews up the nomination quickly, subdued enthusiasm among the party’s liberal base could complicate efforts to energize Democratic turnout for the general election.

Healy fails to mention the polls showing that Bernie would beat Trump, possibly in a landslide. He also parrots the talking point of her operatives who claim that just because she takes Wall Street money doesn't mean she will do Wall Street's bidding. Say what?

My published comment: 

Corruption in the 21st century is more nuanced than in the olden days, when crooked politicians would accept bags full of cash in the dead of night in return for a specific favor. No longer does this rule of the quid pro quo apply. So, for Hillary's surrogates to claim that her millions from Wall Street doesn't translate into rewards for oligarchs is disingenuous at best.
As Gilens and Page established in their studies of "affluence and influence," huge donations from the wealthy ensure that, over time, they will get most of what they want. And what they want is privatization of public spaces, corporate coups disguised as "free trade," and fewer social services for the poor and the working class.

Her surrogates claim that the Clintons' "third way" neoliberal crusade of 90s deregulation is a thing of the past. But up until a year ago, they were working closely with Pete Peterson's "Fix the Debt" astroturf campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare. As Secretary of State, Hillary traveled to Greece to urge more pain for suffering people. She grotesquely called banker-dictated austerity "chemotherapy to get rid of the cancer," stating that cuts in social programs "will make Greece more competitive, will make Greece more business-friendly. We think that is essential for the kind of growth and recovery that is expected in the 21st century when businesses can go anywhere in the world and capital can follow."

I know exactly who Hillary is fighting for. And it ain't us.

Nearly 900 other readers weighed in. The people have spoken, and they are not taking kindly to Hillary Clinton's shit-bombs. The top-rated commenter, "Harry 1213," had this to say:

 Three weeks ago I sat next to a retired Vermont school teacher at a library benefit dinner in rural Vermont. When I asked the teacher what he thought about Bernie Sanders, he related the following: in 1975 he and Sanders were each manning tables at a bookseller's convention. The bookselling business was slow and for three days they talked about the world. According to the retired teacher, Bernie said "the same things in 1975 that he's saying now about income inequality and Wall Street." The undemocratic dominance of our economy and opportunities by the big banks, mortgage lenders, Wall Street, and all the corporate lobbyists didn't just happen during one administration, it goes back a long time, involving both Republican and Democratic politicians. Wouldn't it be great for our country's economic and democratic future if we could elect someone who appears to have been consistently and honestly on the side of the working people?

From "Martin" of New York:

 If Clinton is elected, I know exactly what will happen. She will move to the "center," the Republicans will declare that she's a socialist or a communist who must be stopped at all cost, and she will compromise with them in an effort to be or appear effective. Been there and done that too many times. If Sanders were elected, I have no idea what would happen, except that he will continue trying in word and deed to address the fact that our political system is a fraud.

And from "Tudor Bornwell," my imaginary friend:

 Leave poor Hillary alo-o-o-ne! Don't be, as President Obama chided us when he extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, a bunch of "sanctimonious purists" who keep insisting on reducing the worst wealth inequality in American history. Do your jobs as citizen/consumer-frogs in a slowly simmering centrist Democratic pot instead of in a GOP cauldron immediately set at a high, thrombling boil.

We dare not speak ill of Hill. Doing so will lead directly to the election of Donald Trump.* So knock it off, everybody. As the late Sheldon Wolin rightly observed, we live now under a system of inverted totalitarianism, or managed democracy. Our job as citizens is to shut up about our pre-vetted corrupt candidates and pull the lever for the Lesser Evil every four years in the faint hope that our demise as a country might therefore be slightly delayed, and maybe even a tad less painful.

That this article by Patrick Healy again stresses style and image over facts, history, character and ethics is no surprise, seeing as how he comes to the political beat directly from the theater beat. All the world's a stage, and all of us are merely being played.

 * The New York Times does not mention some polls showing that in a general election match-up, Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump in a landslide. The truth might hurt Hillary's chances, as would more Democratic debates on nights when people would actually be watching.

Read 'em all. They might make you feel slightly less pessimistic about humanity in general.

But wait! I think I spoke too soon. To make you feel twice as pessimistic about humanity, as if that were even possible, you will be grimly happy to learn that resident conservative Times pundit David Brooks is a huge Hillary fan, because among her many other right-wing credentials, she wants to bomb the shit out of various countries. Brooks had absolute wargasms over her hawkish speech last week before the Council on Foreign Relations, veering as she did far to the right even of Drone President Barack Obama. Of course, Brooks's own staid definition of bombing the shit out of countries is prettified into killing people with "mature resolve." Hillary's hawkish approach to dealing with the Middle East, he enthused, is "multilayered and coherent" and "supple and sophisticated,"  as opposed to, say, the stupid shit-bombs of Donald Trump. Her shit not only doesn't stink; according to Brooks, it is formed like a brain encased in solid gold.

My published response:

If corporatism and corruption had not destroyed democracy in this country, Hillary Clinton would be running as the true Republican she is. Wall Street is for her, the generals are for her, the multinationals laundering money through her family foundation are for her, and David Brooks is for her.

And in a general election, Bernie Sanders (or any true liberal for that matter) would probably beat her. Because like Bernie says, we are sick and tired of getting screwed by a de facto oligarchy, which is only good at expelling people once it has extracted every last minute of underpaid labor from them. We're tired of being ground into human mulch before being tossed in the refuse dump of disposable people.
 Many of us are too busy or tired to care that a multimillionaire politician has a smarter, wonkier plan for waging war and shedding blood. And if we actually are paying attention, we are thoroughly disgusted that this is what electoral politics has come to. We have no choice about whether we want war or not. We are only invited to pick which corrupt politician we'd prefer to do the killing (euphemized as surgical drone strikes and the like.)

Hillary Clinton, appearing before an elite think tank run by corporations, generals and bankers and the media shills who serve them, hilariously declared that the aftermath of the Paris attacks "is no time to be scoring political points." And then she cynically proceeded to score political points.

It's disgusting, and it's horrifying.