A RIFF ON THE STATE OF THE STATE
For anyone now, nine months into the Trump presidency, to admire the man, it must take something like the faith of those fanaticized thirteenth century crusaders; but at the other pole of simplification, there also are those who blame him for everything.
Two acquaintances whom you’ve met in this column before, Caspar Onions and Sam Picarty, talking politics with friends at the bakery, talk of nothing but Trump’s transgressions; blame him for everything but the weather and, just as the rest of us, while they too have their litanies of complaint, like an angry child who blames one villainous meanie for everything that went wrong today in the school yard, their reiterated refrain is, - you guessed it- “I hate Donald Trump.”
For both Sam and Oscar, “talking politics,” is nothing more than flat-out bad-mouthing Trump, Trump and only Trump, that’s it; Trump, and no one else.
And they’re not alone, not at all, for I hear “I hate Donald Trump” everywhere and almost every day.
Does everyone need a school yard bully to gripe and whine about?
It’s not as if we didn’t have a paid-and-packaged congress, owned-and- operated by the Zionist Lobby and a host of Corporate conspirators -Exxon, Boeing Aircraft, Tyson Foods or, for that matter, a Department of State whose proconsuls have been consumed with destroying Russia while also obsequiously devoted to the sanctification of Israel since the oldest octogenerian Senate-member’s post-puberty celebration.
As I’ve mentioned before, we have a notoriously-energetic national cheat-everybody-industry of Attowney-at-law councilors dedicated to advising clients how to side-step the law, -avoiding legal jeopardy for fast-and-loose extra-legal should-be-criminal transactions you didn’t even know existed and, make money for the Aspen hide-away, doing it.
One firm I recently learned of, boasts two hundred and fifty vice-presidents, advising corporate clients on the marketing of processed meals with the sweetest poisons you’d ever want; another, advising on glamorous summer wear, inside-and-out-impregnated with toxic dyes sure to hospitalize half the volley ballers at the beach, and, another, a major Pharmaceutical malignant, advertising prostate miracle cures that do nothing.
And, when in 1969-70, at the personal request of the CEOs of ITT, United Fruit , and sundry others, US Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, Allen, Director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, set the regime change “artists” from CIA Operations, out to destroying the economy and, eradicating what was to become the democratically elected government of Pro-socialist Chilean President Salv ador Allende,, Amercan-based, “international” Public Relations firms such as Hill nd Knowlton, hooked up with such already boots-on-the-ground law-manipulators, in order to make viciously sadistic Dulles-installed and School-of-the Americas-trained, mass-murderous military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, seem to be Father Christmas himself -at least, to the uninformed, unknowing, and compliantly believing American public.
And for sure, as you won’t be surprised to read, that whole three-year ordeal was serialized by our government’s legacy media, into a Disneyesque fantasy-fairy tale, cosmetically apotheosizing The Beacon of Democracy, having transmogrified a Chilean population of semi-landless peasants into a permanently feudal de-facto slavery.
‘‘A Triumph of Capitalist Progress,” someone said.
“The government lies,” wrote Izzy Stone, independent journalist / publisher of the I. F. Stone Weekly over 60 years ago, and since then, more heroic refugees from years with the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, the Washington Post, The New York Times and many, many, others nation-wide, have established -now hundreds around the world- of independent, superbly reliable on-line news and commentary sites, such as Joe Lauria’s, Consortium News, originally established by the tragically late-journalist, Robert Parry; Ramparts veteran, Bob Scheer’s, Scheer Report;, former Superior Court Judge, Andrew Napolitano’s, extraordinary Interview and Commentary site, Judgin Freedom and, such independent and often brilliant commentators as the indefatigable, Chris Hedges, Catlin Johnstone, and former UN weapons expert, Scott Ritter.
And, interviewed on independent media sites somewhere almost every day it seems, are such internationally respected scholars and authorities as University of Chicago, Foreign Affairs expert, Professor John Mearscheimer, UN Economic Development expert, Professor Jeffery Sachs, and former US Secretary of State Intelligence Briefing Officer, retired LT. COL., Douglass MacGreggor.
Thought of only a few years ago, and still now, by milque-toast status-quo liberals as nutzy-crazed radical- right social media, such sources as these still have comparatively smaller subscription lists than the New York Times of thirty years ago; but they’re growing rapidly, and in sync with the near-desperate Times, now looking more and more like a “Face Book Boutique,”every day, -as a deliberately anonymous Pentagon “Four Star,” put it not so long ago.
But waiting with me on the Costco front pedestal footing as Elaine was being fitted for a new pair of glasses, Tom Stonewall, a friend of more than thirty years, and coffee companion through fair weather and Los-Osos- foggy, Tom Stonewall had another take on things. Nodding toward the unending flow of customers coming and going, he said, “look at them;. Most of them don’t look like they’ll make it to the door.” And then, even more rhetorically, “You think Costco shoppers a cross-section of America?
It wasn’t a question; rather an off-the-wall observation, for the flow of folks was a sadly impressive mix: so many coming and going looked uncomfortably out of shape.
Many seriously overweight, many sickly, more than a few walking with obvious effort, haggard, sour and harried.
“They can’t have the stuff to give a shit for much” Tom said.
“The American people don’t know they’re a people,” I answered.
“What’d you call it the other day, “a moral-coward-culture?” Tom remembered, “They fuckin’ don wanna know anything. You can see it”.
“Oscar says NPR fits his personality,” I reminded him.”
“If the shit fits,” Tom concluded, "that mealy-mouth don wanna know nothin’ ever -and plenty like him; -there’s your fuckin’ ‘"moral coward-culture."
