Corona Jottings: Intermittent Speculations (#19)

The rats are abandoning the sinking ship of state. It’s a long list, so I won’t begin to record them, but newspapers will print their names. As dolts say, the list is long. Well, I’ll mention one of the worst, good old Lindsey Graham, the changeling from South Carolina, who is such a collection of unpleasantness I won’t catalog that either. Mitch McConnell took it upon himself to lecture the Senate at how un-American Hawley/Cruz’s play was and his wife, the Transportation Secretary, that marriage of many conveniences, resigned in lofty and last minute umbrage at the unsightliness of it all (the riffraff marauding in the Capitol, that is.) Those who are surprised at the invasion by the lumpen of the seat of government are either naive, uniformed, or hapless co-conspirators, expressing surprise, that is, at the violent denouement of the Trump Administration, its first act at least, as it approaches its final flame out. Ah, all that broken glass. It looked like Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, or in any number of Wisconsin towns, after the right-wing vandals started smashing windows. There’s still time and worse can happen, but the attack on the U.S. Capitol should come as no surprise. What was surprising was the mixed reaction of a minority of the participants as they found themselves wandering around the various sacrosanct chambers, the stunned expressions on their faces. From the multiple video sources, digital phones, in-place cameras, a viewer could see an approximation of awe on some, or, at least, wonder, something approaching amazement, not necessarily feelings that have often overtaken them. I presume those were people who don’t frequent many monumental buildings of government. That was the strangest reaction, but those poses quickly faded, and others took over, the kid-in-the-candy-store look, especially from the dozen, or so, who were milling about in the Senate chamber in various patriotic costumes. I’ve been saying Trump the Terrible is terrible from the start and those who thought he was the rabid dog that could be tamed, the useful idiot who could be used, are now quickly backtracking – Republican office holders, especially. A bit late in the game. As the sprite Lindsey offered, quoted by the Boston Globe, “it breaks my heart that my friend, a president of consequence, would allow yesterday to happen.” Ah, yes, a president of consequence. There are all sorts of consequences here. Lindsey’s heart, I take it, is, or has been, often broken. We still have a dirty dozen of days left wherein more Trump chaos can be generated. The odious GOP Senators, the too long serving and disliked Cruz and the new-be Hawley, need be shunned, but will their voters do so? Even I find it hard to believe that nearly 150 House Republican representatives would vote in the affirmative for the hogwash they were being sold about the Pennsylvania election. Among them was my “representative”, Wacky Jackie Walorski, the Trump sycophant, who knows little and repeats it often. Thanks to the usual tortured gerrymandering in Indiana she keeps her seat. Now that the Hawley/Cruz fiasco is being denounced by some Republicans, the GOP House representatives who went along should be forever branded as seditious lunatics, or worse, but, of course, they won’t be. The only illuminating surprise in the last few days has been the Democrat Senate sweep in Georgia, Georgia on my mind. I thought maybe one seat (swapping out the skinny appointed gal for a guy) was possible, but to win both races. Hallelujah! Trump was a laughingstock when he ran and won the presidency. Now the United States is a laughingstock. Even though some Republicans see what their dark bargain has brought us all, it will not be a rehabilitating tonic. It’s been well known for decades that we get the president we deserve and Trump has been no different. The Donald was not so much an aberration as a culmination. I don’t know what kind of rabbit Biden/Harris can pull out of their hat, but, thanks again to Georgia, they have at least, best, 24 months to wow us.

Ted's Excellent Mansplaining

I was exercising at my university’s faculty gym when Ted Cruz was laboriously mansplaining why he was choosing Carly Fiorina as his virtual Veep for his holographic future presidency. It was a classic case: I, Ted Cruz, a man, will now tell you why I have the good judgment to select Carly, a woman, the glass-ceiling shatter-er. Fiorina may or may not have the potty-mouth of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s character in Veep, which seems to be the chief qualification of our modern era, but, at this point, who cares? While exercising away, I kept wondering when Cruz was going to bring on Fiorina, since I had been on the elliptical machine beyond my usual allotment of time and Cruz, who had appeared around 4:15 was still blabbering on after 4:30.

Cruz obviously loves the sound of his voice. He grins inappropriately during his speeches and his unhappy slice of smile signifies the pleasure he takes hearing his own voice. I left the exercise room fifteen minutes later and Cruz was still there yapping. No Carly. I don’t tweet much, but had I a smart phone, as a number of other fellow exercisers did, staring transfixed at their small screens, I might have tweeted: #Where is she?

I saw later in the day from various news outlets that Fiorina finally made it to the podium, to little effect. God knows Carly understands losing, having done it so often both in the private and public sector. From the clips I saw, she evidently sang a song and seems to have pleasant voice while singing.

Indiana is now hot. Cruz and Carly came to South Bend yesterday and clogged up the downtown when I tried to get to the road show version of The Book of Mormon (I’m trying for contrast here) playing at the Morris Performing Arts Center. A lot of Cruz supporters in his crowd at the nearby Century Center were obese (less at the Mormon musical, which was wonderful theatrically, but reprehensible in every other way), though I don’t think, unlike the First Lady, Cruz considers obesity a national health issue. I am not body shaming, I’m just reporting. In any case, the Cruz rally was in one of the Century Center’s smaller venues, a room I last was in when a friend took me to a cat show held there. Lots of cats in cages.

Trump is coming to the Century Center on Monday night and Bernie Sanders is booked there Sunday, May Day. Hillary Clinton appeared at a more or less private setting, the AM General plant outside of the city that now makes Mercedes-Benz-es for the China market, a couple of days ago.

Some commentators out there in mediaworld are saying that Indiana may be someone’s Alamo, Cruz, Trump’s, it’s hard to tell. The connection is very thin. Maybe it’s because Cruz is a Senator from Texas. Is he Jim Bowie, Santa Anna, Davy Crockett, the Mexicans, the fort? It doesn’t make much sense. Who is running over whom? I guess it’s the last-stand business.

Truth might be the first casualty in war, but language seems to be the first in campaigns. Now, the self-presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, wants to slogan-ize once again America First! Not that many voters are going to think of Charles Lindbergh and his various enthusiasms pre-WWII that were attached to the slogan when first coined. Lindbergh loved the Luftwaffe. Poor Lindbergh. He flew planes. The Donald owns many. Perhaps Pat Buchanan is Trump’s unacknowledged campaign model.

Locally, there are contested races down ticket going on throughout Indiana, which may or may not affect the upcoming election. A Senate seat is open, thanks to the happy retirement of Dan Coats. He returned to Indiana in 2010 to assume the seat vacated by Evan Bayh. Coats is the only recidivist Senator, once retired, active lobbyist, then elected once again.

But the Democrats are still hoping for a win eventually against Mike Pence, the current governor, former right-wing radio talker (The Mike Pence Show), who even moderate Republicans have difficulty putting up with, especially after the costly fiasco of his Religious Freedom Restoration Act of late March, 2015. Pence was pictured with what looked like a high school production cast of Nunsense, after he signed the bill. Yes, let us restore all those lost religious freedoms! Pence has half-heatedly “endorsed” Ted Cruz, “I will be voting for Ted Cruz....” this coming Tuesday. Democrats have John Gregg running, who has run and lost before, but this time is changing his image, becoming a bit less rustic.

But it is the Republican primary for Senate that is interesting. Two contenders, Marlin Stutzman and Todd Young, both GOP Indiana district U.S. representatives, are lashing out at each other for the position, given Coats’ departure and longing for the hard work of lobbying. No love lost there, just like most of the Republican presidential primary cohort. Both candidates are really unappetizing, so there’s a slim chance for the potential Democratic candidate. Baron Hill, who lost to Coats a long time ago, in 1990, is serving as the warm-body sacrifice.

But, what really goes on here in Indiana won’t be covered much in our week in the sun. It’ll be more drive-by journalism, the 90 plus percent hoping for good visuals, the desired seen and heard reportage. On the bright side, if Trump gets the nomination Pence may well lose his reelection. I am not much into predictions - I was wrong about water beds way back when - but in the presidential primary race here I will predict wins for Bernie and The Donald. In any case, it will be close.


This ran in the Huffington Post on April 29, 2016. Click here.

Revenge of the Sixties

Ted Cruz, the Dump Trump movement’s great white hope, is the kind of guy who gave high school debate teams a bad name. A hectoring know-it-all who favors Chautauqua — not Hillary Clinton’s Chautauqua — stage gestures and oratory. Ineffably smug. But the oddity is that the Democratic number two, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, shares some of these same qualities, the hectoring know-it-all side at least, though he seems, unlike Cruz, lovable and grand fatherly.

I recently gave a talk at Lone Star College in Houston on the humanities and income inequality. Lone Star is part of the state’s junior college system and the students know first hand a lot about income inequality. I brought up the 19th century bohemian tradition, which meant to make poverty bearable and discussed beatniks, hippies, and the short period during the Sixties and beginning Seventies when anti-materialism was afoot. Back then there was enough surplus capital around, and higher education, at least in state schools, was not very pricey. Students actually had time on their hands to join movements and protest and organize.

Of course, that period ended with a bang and hardly a whimper. Reverence for the rich came in full bore with Ronald Reagan. Education policy changed, resulting in the for-profit college explosion over the last three decades, a form of privatizing, which was going on everywhere, even, and most stealthily, in the military itself. First end the draft, second begin to privatize around the edges. In modern history one result of that could be seen in Benghazi, an event more about contractors than enlisted soldiers.

During the same time line Wall Street average salaries in the NYC securities industry went from about 50 thousand dollars a year in 1981, double that of all other private sector jobs, to 400 thousand a year by 2008, whereas other jobs were only slightly above 55 thousand. The Wall Street bonus economy bloomed in the 1980s. Salaries skyrocketed from double to more than six times everyone else’s.

That rise didn’t just affect people working on Wall Street. CEOs across the land, top executives at most every corporation, including academia, felt deep in their souls that they were being underpaid. If those twenty-somethings at Goldman Sachs were making a half million, why weren’t they? Salary inflation at the top was contagious. During the 1970s the ratio of CEO pay to the company’s workers was around 20 to 1. By 2012 it went to 350 to 1. And that figure is the average.

These three developments, privatization, Wall Street profligacy, CEO salaries, were not disconnected. It was an imperfect storm, but well thought out. One example of this forward thinking is the so-called Powell Manifesto, his “Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System,” written by the future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell in 1971.

Various commentators claim it “influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s ‘hands-off business’ philosophy.” The memo is a remarkable document, prescient and alarming, though not in general circulation till the 1990s.

The right-wing think tanks were created and the changes to universities certainly came to fruition, though even Powell didn’t foresee the wholesale privatization, or the creation of the one percent, resulting in the current state of income inequality. The one percent/ninety-nine percent phrase was more or less coined in 2011, during the Occupy Wall Street eruption — though a movement largely feckless, the Occupy label has continued, stuck on all sorts of demonstrations.

Our culture values persistence and Bernie Sanders has been persistent. He has two or three things to say and he’s being saying them since he began to run for office in Vermont during the 1970s. What is amazing is that it has taken nearly five decades for his message to be heard. He is the revenge of the Sixties, a pied piper who has captured the young, with the distilled elixir of his (and my) youth. He has stepped out intact from a Sixties time capsule. He doesn’t look like a hippie, a beatnik, no serape or beads, no candles in Chianti bottles.

Bernie Sanders wears suits, but the excesses of the right over the same span have become so egregious, brazen, and successful, that no one, even the least sophisticated (i.e. Trump supporters), can miss or deny it, especially college students who are footing a lot of the bill — just to be educated. The older folk who are solidly in Bernie’s camp tend to be remnants of Ralph Nader-ites; Nader, in his youthful incarnation, was one of Powell’s chief villains in his mordant memo.

And though Bernie is running for the Democratic nomination, his campaign does have the atmospherics of a third party contest. As does Donald Trump’s. There is a divide being created that may turn into a chasm and it is still unknown if it can be healed, if Hillary Clinton ends up the nominee. As Bernie would remember, back in 1968 a lot of the titular Democratic young did not vote for Hubert Humphrey, allowing Nixon’s win, because, as was often said back then, progressives wanted to “heighten the contradictions.” Humphrey lost by less than one percent of the vote. Alas, over the decades, thanks to the Republican right, the contradictions have certainly been heightened.

The Huffington Post version can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-o/revenge-of-the-sixties_b_9634464.html