Sunday, October 16, 2016

WE JUST WANT TO HEAR IT SAID


Now and then I have a post all lined out in my head that I feel is absolutely definitive, that lines out the issues so clearly that no one would think of disagreeeing.  And then someone addresses the subject in just the way I would have, except better.  I’m grateful.  Here’s one I don’t have to write:  http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/  I’m just giving you a link because it’s full of illustrations I don't want to drop.  I got the link off “Terrierman.com” who digs for the earthy truth about everything.

As soon as I began to criticize Trump on this blog (criticize being a euphemism), people in Valier began to draw away and look at me funny.  It’s not comfortable, but it’s understandable, since I lived in Browning so long and went to grad school -- both markers for "Other".  We know that people like that are likely to be arrogant, amoral and lazy — just read all the time.  Write but never get published.

Here’s my short parallel version of the “Cracked” version of the situation, though mine is a little more paranoid and befuddled.  The people who plan political campaigns are perfectly well aware that everyone in the country is bummed and enraged by the constant discovery of new inequities in money, education, hiring, justice, safety, on and on and on.  It’s a labyrinth that changes all the time and no one seems to get ahead except some knothead loudmouth like Trump, who can consort with Putin, double-cross employees, say all the things people are not supposed to say —- on and on and on.  My theory is that he was chosen because he is unelectable.  Deliberately.  

Because “they” want Hilary elected to protect their interests.  Those faceless people behind the scenes care nothing about nations, but an unsympathetic US president could make trouble, like shining spotlights where it should remain dark.  The laws have been quietly altered, the courts have been quietly packed, the money has been quietly shifted to protected places, and wars are just troublesome enough to keep most people preoccupied — esp. the ones who children were just killed in a home bombed to the ground.

These shadowy international consortium people probably don’t know the whole larger group — like spy rings, they only know their links.  There is no “head” in the sense of a king or pope.  The structure just grew, like a slime mold or sheet bacteria forming opportunistically, responding to conditions.  They are not pushing guns — they are responding to people’s fear by providing guns.  They are not deliberately getting people hooked on drugs, they are simply providing what the people crave.  We can't get a grip on fear or craving.

The concept of “crime” doesn’t apply because it implies some sort of morality that should be identified and resisted by society.  But much of the “crime” is no longer even considered immoral except in cultures still hanging onto standards from last century.  I watch “Blue Bloods” in which NRA spokesperson Tom Selleck is meant to be irreproachable, rescuing the innocent and eliminating corruption.  His son constantly illustrates the effectiveness of going out of control.  The show often looks like an advertisement for booze: fancy Scotch and proletariat beer.  The women are excruciatingly thin.  Etc. etc.  Alcoholism and anorexia kill.

There are few white collar crimes addressed because they don’t make for drama.  But most of the really destructive crimes are the quiet dispossession of the assets of hard-working people.  A whole culture put on the street in SF.  The overbearing seizure of land for industrial purposes.  The mysterious evaporation of economic systems.  We’re doubting our genius economists now, suspecting all their trickling was just leaky logic in their thinking.  

It’s interesting to think about “Blue Bloods” in comparison to “Longmire.” In Wyoming the population is thin and the problems are not so much cops sorting through tenements as keeping track of who has jurisdiction on which side of the highway.  And what if your cell phone doesn't work?

Historians are beginning to bring up some fascinating examples from the past:  “Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber. In ancient city-states such as Babylon, Sumeria and Judaea, rulers found it necessary to cancel all consumer debt from time to time to keep peasants from becoming permanent debt-peons and thus kept society from being torn apart.”  And delancyplace.com is rounding them up.  We’re having to look back to the invention of coins, the invention of writing, the invention of walled cities to unravel the hidden tendencies that have pressed us into suffering today.  Our prisons are our poor-houses.

I drove to Shelby to do the wash and discovered that the laundromat is deteriorated like all the others because it was built on the premise of a denser population in a boom time when the standard of living and mobility didn’t mean everyone created their own laundry.  Some — like me — still don’t have the infrastructure plumbing necessary for a private machine.  Currently my toilet won’t flush properly.  A washing machine is way beyond my pipes and drains.   But on the way to the laundromat I drove under a high tension electrical line that we all opposed.  Just like the pipeline over in Sioux country.

The internet, of course, throws everything into a totally new pattern that’s still moving fast.  We can see our heroes aging.  Out with the coins, out with the written word, out with all the familiar boundaries and languages.  It’s not just that we don’t know where our allegiances should go, we don’t know what the options are.  Or what the consequences might be.


Trump is a stalking horse, a Judas goat, a distraction and a joke.  Others manage him and he doesn’t even know it.  His family is probably in on the joke. The US citizens evidently are not.  But what he’s saying, what people are feeding him to say — stuff he doesn’t believe — is what the rest of us want to hear.  We just want it so badly, so very badly.  It seems like truth to us, even if it’s pre-recorded and delivered like vaudeville shtick.

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