Cobb

The Saga Continues

It has been about two months since I finished Darth Plagueis, and something about the depth at which its author, James Luceno, has considered the Star Wars galaxy has faded a bit from memory. Today I am about 27 hours from seeing the next installment, Episode VII, and I am struck by the extent to which the collection of stories may become legend. I am convinced that 100 years from now, Darth Vader's helmet and his theme music will remain recognizable. We are in that era we often wonder about. Did Italians have any idea that La Traviata would be now what it was then? These space operas of ours are both popular and flecked with elements of genius. With Star Wars, it is clearly the music, as it is also with Halo, but I digress. 

At this moment in time, the latest film in the series has made over a billion dollars worldwide in about two weeks. This is a new class of production, methinks. 

If Star Wars should be about anything, then it should be a meditation on the use of force. The Force. You see Anakin Skywalker was 'the One' to bring balance to The Force. In the end he did so as Vader whose extraordinary skill and exceptional experiences gave him reasons to doubt both the Jedi and the Sith. Watching Episode III, even through the bad acting made me feel a great deal of sympathy for young Skywalker's tortured existence. The central deprivation of love which is the discipline of the Jedi only saves them in that Vader has betrayed that discipline in having the twins Luke and Leia. It is his love for Luke that has him dispose of the Emperor, Darth Sidious. 

In A New Hope, there is a total of 6 known force users;

Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Palpatine and Vader.

Four are Jedi, two are Sith.

By midway through Return of the Jedi, both Obi-wan and Yoda have fallen, leaving 4 known force users.

Then, when Luke is aboard the Death Star, about to be struck down by the Empire (believed to be the last remaining Jedi and offspring of Anakin Skywalker), Vader saves his son and throws Palpatine into the main core reactor of the Death Star - which stops the assumingly last remaining Jedi from dying and shows there is still good in Vader.

Vader defeated both the Jedi and the Sith - the Jedi in Revenge of the Sith, the Sith in Return of the Jedi - and it is for this reason that he has brought balance to the force; it's just nobody in the films considered to bring true balance between good and evil, you need to eliminate both.

These mechanics can provide drama as the pendulum swings from Sith to Jedi as time goes on and the series goes forward. If those in possession of the property would spend some time examining the effects of the rules of the Sith and the Jedi and their effects on the people of the Galaxy, that would be a useful expansion of the story. So far it has pretty much been all about palace intrigue at the highest level. Only in The Empire Strikes Back could we see how Vader's Army extended its influence to other worlds, particularly Bespin and the exile of Yoda on Dagoba. Still, these were fairly close to the story of the force users, but we did at least see the bald commander who took audible cues from Lando Calrissian three degrees of separation from Luke. As well, those who reported to Jabba were equally far. 

There being hundreds of known worlds in the Galaxy, it seems unlikely that there would be but one intrigue of Force users. This is something that must be dealt with head on in the upcoming series. As a long time KOTOR player, fleshing out the differing approaches to the understanding, study and use of the Force has been made manifest in other media. The films should catch up as the saga continues.

Dumbing Down Racism

The deliberate attempt to redefine racism is done in order to sustain the fiction that there is more that can be done politically, beyond a reasonable guarantee of civil equality, to alleviate racism.

 

The direction in the US is to make even more and more insults, slights, harassments and petty outrages to be included in 'racism'. This has taken the form of 'triggers' and 'microaggressions' whose remedies are politically correct speech and 'safe spaces'. The aim is to sensitize individuals to this and then come up with 'solutions'. These solutions will deliver attention, influence, money and votes to their originators who are the Multiculturalists. The redefinition of racism to ever more sensitive levels and calls for a 'national discussion' satisfies the fetishes of 'experts' who would rescue victims of this 'abuse'.

 

The effect of the acceptance of this sensitization is the induced crippling of the protected class. It sustains what Toni Morrison called the 'dilemma of the rescued'. Ultimately it goes against self-determination, this is why it is subversive and wrong.

 

Right now and I suspect for the foreseeable future this is just more nonsense and a waste of dignified people's time. It will ultimately become worrisome if and when some tipping point is reached at which time pluralities of Americans believe it is time to criminalize more racism. Currently, the commission of felonies may be considered a hate crime if it is determined that racial animus is proximate cause for the act and/or it is done as a terrorist act of intimidation to the public. If America decides in some future time to add racial scrutiny for misdemeanors, then we will have reached an Orwellian level of dystopia in many ways. Primarily because it will have infantilized the protected class so completely that it will be generally accepted that they need a police state to survive.

 

The first clue to this kind of thinking has already emerged. It is already widely accepted in the popular wisdom that black Americans calling themselves 'nigger' is neutral, but that a white American calling a black American 'nigger' is an amount of provocation that a black American is psychologically incapable of handling or ignoring. These kind of simple minded double standards are part of the politics of victimology and will always be around, and will continue to take root in weaker minds and flower into vines that strangle self-determination.

 

It's always in somebody's interest to suggest that 'minorities' are incapable of self-determination without paternalistic political intervention. And of course, it is in those interests to attempt to be racially deterministic. Just listen to them say how African history is inescapable for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Listen to them say how race and racism are an inescapable world altering system.

 

Law or Honor

Author Stephen Pinker makes the most sense to me. He says that most people in the world are socially functioning as societies of law or as societies of honor. Where you have legal codes, people are systemically equal as the law tends to treat all individuals the same, and prosecution of the law is more or less even. Where you have honor codes, people literally take the law into their own hands. This has always been the case in all of humanity throughout history and the trend of course in modern countries is towards a society of law.

 

However there are parts of the world where democratic institutions are defective, or simply not trusted. So what do people do? They take the law into their own hands. Mafia. Drug Cartels. Gangs. Religions. Cults. Charismatics. Secret Societies. Alternative Lifestyles. All kinds of people in small groups for all kinds of reasons decide that The Law doesn't apply to them and they will deliver the kind of justice they feel is most appropriate.

 

You talk about my mama? I'm going to kick your ass! You rape my sister? I don't care what the law says, I'm exacting revenge. You blaspheme my god? I don't care what the law says, I'm going to cut off your head. You insult my people? I don't care what the law says, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. You disrespect El Jefe? You will pay in blood. Honor codes are not random, but they are inconsistent and irregularly applied as compared to systems of law.

 

Now obviously  there are various mixes of these regimes. You can go into any neighborhood and ask the people what fraction of the democratic system of law they trust, and what do they think they need to take into their own hands. You'll get some combination. In the US, there are a significant fraction of people who have, for their own various reasons, decided against the legal system. For them, there is no justice in the justice system, so they opt out. They redefine justice as something to be delivered by 'the people' aka their honor codes. Unless and until they subject their codes to legal review and democratic vote, they can claim whatever moral high ground they wish, but honor codes can never and will never be democratic or embrace civil equality, and they will never be the law of the land.

 

Once you understand this phenomenon, all becomes clear. It is the central question facing American society today.

 

Who Hates Muslims Most?

Well the answer, obviously, is Muslims.

I'm thinking about the difference between Serbs and Croats. The overwhelming majority of Americans, when we got involved in the Croatian war, could not tell the difference between a Serb and a Croat. Since they were white, the American Left, like the overwhelming majority of Americans couldn't raise any red herrings about race. 

My friend Jim mentions the Daesh strategy and how Trump is playing into it by 'encouraging' Americans to hate Muslims. Well even if you give that statement full credibility, Daesh and other Islamic sects and forces in the region have a huge headstart on Donald Trump. Surely only American Muslims of a dainty persuasion have any need to fear their neighbors. We Americans aren't the ones who look with steely eyed determination to figure if one is Alawite, Sunni, Shi'a or Salafist. We're not so finely discriminatory. In the Middle East of course, such identification is much more likely to be a matter of life and death. 

What's so damning about this, Jim, is that if the Daesh strategy is to frighten Americans into hating Muslims indiscriminately, it also presumes that Muslims will only have one direction to go towards safety, which is into the arms of Daesh. That means Daesh itself presumes the exact same amount of patriotism from American Muslims as do the worst haters - presicely none. And that killing Americans only helps to prove where such Muslim sentiments ultimately lie. Essentially Daesh expects that Muslims will find more protection in radicalization than in the ordinary defense of Constitutional laws.

I don't presume that Trump has suggested that Muslim citizens in America be marked and segregated. If he has, then that's easy enough to demonstrate. 'Fear mongering' is just politically incorrect talk.

A moratorium on immigration in light of this kind of war is just another new wrinkle in a new kind of war. Even if we stopped all immigration 100% how is this wrong?

Anyway, having read the article, it does reveal the prescience of those who said we should fight them over there before they gain a beachhead over here. But we know how to integrate people. Simply give them, as citizens, Constitutional liberty. American dissidents are just as much to blame as authentic haters precisely because they argue that there is no moral justification for a hard line in citizenship. it will come down to that. And the next President had better nail that down quickly. It's not a numbers problem, its a principles problem, and we cannot afford to be wishy washy. Either you pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which is stands, or you pledge alliegiance to your race, your tribe, your gender, your creed, your color, your religion. In otherwords, multiculturalism needs to be shown the door and replaced by Liberal Enlightenment Pluralism, as was always intended.

Aside from all that, flat destruction of Raqqa and a scorched earth strategy on all IS territory will destroy the base and eviscerate the base from which all potential IS recruits might draw inspiration. If IS has no homeland and no second standard then integration is would be jihadis's only non-suicidal option.

I am actually encouraged by the loudmouthed divisiveness of our diversity. Americans talk much more shit than a little and we entertain incredible fantasies of violent retribution. And yes when we do so it's with Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves. All of us talk this kind of Quentin Tarentino talk from time to time. Getting medieval on somebody's ass is part of the lexicon. But it's also something Americans don't actually do, unless and until it's war. And war is something Americans don't enter into lightly. 

So we will continue our loudmouth faux bigotry and insult people's mothers, telling them to kiss the ugliest parts of our body politic. But we won't do anything violent. We live deep in rhetorical hatred and violence every day, and we never forget the mentality. But American life is far too pleasant for us to take all that talk seriously. When somebody is actually crazy enough to put those words into action, we're all shocked. So it's difficult for most American to conceive of Daesh's motivations as anything but desperate, stupid insanity. 

Search as you may for actual scientifically vetted statistics for the fatalities whose proximate cause is Islamophobia, you won't find it. (Until you do, and I place it here)

Think About the Future

Today I purchased three movies for 35 bucks. They are episodes 1,2,3 from Star Wars in the Blu-Ray format. I'm going to play them on my HDTV via my XBox One. And yes I do have studio monitors and a fat Yamaha 12 inch 300W subwoofer. As I stood in line at Target checking out, the woman in front of me used $200 in Target issued currency that were given to her in the form of smart cards. While she dawdled, I decided to listen to some Star Wars music that I streamed over my smartphone, and read an article about social psychology. 

I had to hurry back home because one of my daughters had all four of her wisdom teeth removed under sedation and the other one got numbed up from a deep scrub. December is big dentistry month around here. So we're all at home this afternoon watching the marathon in advance of the next episode that we've reserved seats for online. 

Somebody asked what if the Internet wasn't able to make a profit. So I answered:

It would be like the old internet, when nobody knew how to profit from it.

It would be horribly expensive, like it was. Because people had to buy the pieces like 50 separate modems ,without the expectation of ever getting money from it. I was a member of Public Access Networks Corporation.   It was the first ISP.  You never heard such drama as they had to take from Nynex and AT&T as to why they should lease a circuit to a bunch of computer nerds just so they could talk to each other by computer. Why not use a phone? What kind of business are you anyway?

There would be no innovation. Because if you were the clever negotiator at Panix, so what? Just because you can get a deal with them doesn't mean you can get one with Pac Bell.

The list goes on and on. Anything where there's no profit in it gets ignored by people with money. No good ideas will come, no innovations, no standards all because no people are spending money on the basic premise.

I was on the internet before there was an internet (1984). It was small, expensive, claustrophobic, slow, obscure, and difficult to use. And even then we knew all the things it *could* be used for. We just had to wait until people could figure out how to make money on it. We're all better off because they did.

 

So I remembered way back 20 odd years ago when you couldn't buy a PC with a credit card from a retail store. Or maybe I'm just remembering that I never had $2400 worth of credit for my PowerMac 7100. But I do remember that the very existence of CompUSA was a miracle, and soon came Incredible Universe and other places that just didn't get it, like the Gateway store. But soon enough Samsung introduced themselves and the new flatscreen & DVD wars opened up with the Matrix blowing every mind. The winner, Best Buy, that now houses McIntosh and most of the surviving high end audio. 

 

Of course what really is making me think the fact that we're in the future owes a great deal to one man, who is our contemporary Edison. That is Elon Musk who just returned his first stage rocket to land back at Cape Canaveral the other night. Yay SpaceX. Yay Tesla. Yay PayPal. I've been using PayPal for 15 years now, and it has been 10 years since Ford reintroduced the Ford GT. Now I can buy a stock 500HP Mustang factory fresh off the lot. Of course I also have to give props to Jeff Bezos who is one of those great innovators without which the Internet would be a hodgepodge of MUDs and MOOs. As much as many people love Google and Facebook... well, there's arhitecture and there's suburban sprawl. I give a greater hat tip to Wolfram and Wikipedia. 

 

But this digital future feels very good to me. Mostly because I understand it and I can afford it and I don't absolutely depend upon it. It's good to be alive now.

20th Century Mortality

There's a great spreadsheet here.

 

Markets Matter More

What do you think of when you think of diversity? Go ahead. Try and think of diversity. I bet you can't do it. How many kinds of diversity do you think there are? And when did 'variety' become 'diversity'? Are you upset that I'm talking about race? No you should be upset that you're *thinking* about race. But that's what 'diversity' was invented to do, add racial consciousness to your thinking about variety. 

So if you think about a demographic survey, you probably would put some 'diversity' questions on there, and you wouldn't end up with much that works in the real world of markets. You would just place yourself into the shallow but powerful world of identity politics, and naturally you would be angry. Now do you understand? So let's think a minute about markets and proper marketing.

When I started looking at demographics and psychographics in the 80s, I was supremely impressed by the work of Claritas, which has since been acquired by Nielsen. Claritas clustered demographic information, primarily by observing buying patterns by zipcode, into 54 clusters. They have extended the original PRIZM into two new clustering systems called P$YCLE and ConneXions.

The guy behind this Michael Weiss has probably made a couple fortunes. Here's a review of a book he wrote in 2000:

"Primary age group: 35-64... Median household income: $80,600... Median home value: $247,000... Predominant ideology: moderate Republican... Preferences: car phones, domestic wine, Land Rovers."

If this sounds like you, then you're a part of what's known as the "Winner's Circle" cluster. If not, then you probably fall into one of 61 other lifestyle clusters with names such as "Urban Gold Coast," "Pools & Patios," "God's Country," "Golden Ponds," and "Shotguns & Pickups." In The Clustered World, demographic detective Michael Weiss draws on the work of market research firm Claritas and its PRIZM cluster system to render a richly detailed view of the many neighborhoods and demographic segments that make up the United States. According to Weiss, the image of America as a melting pot is simply inaccurate--think salad bar, instead. He writes, "For a nation that's always valued community, this breakup of the mass market into balkanized population segments is as momentous as the collapse of Communism.... Today, the country's new motto should be 'E pluribus pluriba': 'Out of many, many.'"

In addition to explaining the cluster concept, Weiss shows how marketers can put clusters to work to understand consumers better and sell everything from college educations to Dodge Caravans. Weiss also looks beyond the U.S. population to lifestyle clusters in Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, South Africa, and Spain. Marketers and social observers will find this pointillist view incredibly useful and perhaps a little disturbing. The overriding truth behind The Clustered World is that, like it or not, "You are like your neighbors." And in case you're wondering what cluster you belong to, Weiss includes the URL for the Claritas Web site (yawyl.claritas.com), where you can enter your ZIP code to find out more about you and your neighbors. --Harry C. Edwards

So whereas far too many Americans have only learned to relate to each other in terms of race and gender and politics, things that really don't describe the actual choices we make in our lives, Weiss and others see how looking at what you actually purchase (thousands of times in you life) when you shop, are more accurate measures of your behavior.

This is why people who always try to identify others by these old static terms are poor beggars, but retailers get all the money. Retailers are really too smart to let race and gender be determining factors.

Here's my cluster:

Bigotry Explained

Bigotry is sustained evangelical prejudice.  

For example. I might say that Stephen Curry is a freak of nature and the Golden State Warriors are cheating and therefore should be expelled from the NBA. Bigotry is me getting on the radio and saying that every time somebody mentions basketball, in hopes that I get other people to see things my way. I don't want to give Stephen Curry a fair deal. My mind is made up and it is impossible to change. I don't care about evidence to the contrary, I don't care about proof, I don't care what you say, my convictions are permanent. Anyone who opposes my position is an enemy of mine. I am a bigot.

If I only get on the radio, or only cruise to websites that talk about the NBA, not only am I a bigot, but I am a fanatic. I cannot change my mind and I will not change the subject.

Now I happen to think that there are a certain number of people in the US who cannot stand criticism. They are dainty thin-skinned milk drinkers who are triggered by microaggressions and are offended all of the time. They demand safe spaces and warning labels on life. But most despicably, they slander their critics as bigots, and project that America is chock full to the rafters with fanatical bigots. Except for the fact that this is their only contribution to society, they might be more correct. However the loud screeching noises they emit travels to foreign shores and takes root. So people who have no experience in America take the words of these crybabies seriously, and thus pollute the difference and distance between criticism and bigotry. 

I come from an educational background which is 180 degrees from the way children are miseducated today. Today, children are taught that they are inherently valuable and that they have all kinds of choices for which they will be held accountable. That no matter what choice they make, they are still valuable.  I was taught that I am an empty vessel to be filled by the spirit of ideas and that only a few, well understood ideas were worthwhile. I was to discipline and conform myself to a seasoned understanding of those ideas. If I filled the vessel of self with garbage, then I would stink. Today's inherently valuable children think themselves incapable of smelling foul, and their relentlessly foul language and behavior confirms it. 

I hope that they will reform their ways. Garbage collection is still done around here. 

A Shallow Lexicographical Analysis of the Paris Agreement on the Framework Convention on Climate Change (Draft Decision CP 21)

I don't know much about treaty language, and quite frankly I'm not even sure if this document is a treaty. You can read it for yourself here. If you're like me, you'll get bored reading it because it looks like hacked together code in a tortuous but logical syntax. Ultimately you want to know if the code will run and what it accomplishes. So you look toward the action words. Here is my analysis.

• Requests: 50
• Decides: 48
• Invites: 12
• Recognizes: 7
• Urges: 6
• Resolves: 4
• Agrees: 3
• Provides: 2
• Call Upon: 1
• Establishes: 1
• Notes With Concern: 1
• Acknowledges with Appreciation: 1

Also note missing words:

• Demands: 0
• Penalizes: 0
• Finances: 0 
• Guarantees: 0
• Assures: 0

 

Hooray for our team!

Overpoliced: Remembering the LA Riots

These days I am thinking back through several evolutions of my writing and going back some 20 odd years. As I present materials here, I am doing so in collaboration with an oral history project sponsored by Polytechnic School in Pasadena. I have presented them the following essay as well as some background materials from my old websites. There are three contexts of interest in looking back.

• Firstly is my own evolution as a writer in expressing more directly what I think and feel and my commitment to clarity rather than cleverness. It was my desire to be artistic and clever that obscured the few things I had worth saying back in the day.
• Second is expansion upon the idea that Americans are drawn to the political aspects of social control in much of their politics. I used to speak often of the 'political majority' with the direct implication that they wished to use law and order issues to clumsily exert control through police on political minorities, including and especially me. I still find politics overburdened with social traffic and it is still my number one issue when it comes to politics, but I appreciate more the dissonance inherent and the lack of continuity in governance.
• Third is my satisfaction with my own appreciation for and explanation of black rage in American politics. I wonder if it will remain as front of mind and captivating in these coming post-Obama years. I suspect that as soon as the King is out of office, these will become the 'good old days' of racial amity. But it's certainly not as called for these days as it was when America lived in fear of NWA, Public Enemy, Khalid Muhammad and Spike Lee.

To the essay:

In the days after the beating of Rodney King, I thought a lot about whether or not it was reasonable to distrust police. I myself had never feared police, but I did get a lot of police attention. Having lived all over Los Angeles County, I had a variety of experiences with cops. One day, long from LA I counted the number and it was 17. 16 traffic stops and detentions and one arrest, for a traffic warrant on a car I no longer drove. 2 citations, maybe 3. I was part of a captive population, a population driven to fear gangs and rap. I was caught up in the crosswinds.

There have been many times since that I have tried to make something out of all that because it's something many people want to hear. But the truth of it all is very simple. None of that truly hurt me.

Nevertheless while I still lived in Los Angeles, I couldn't do nothing. And so I did what I thought I should, which was to take my weekends up driving around and searching for police brutality. I had never been struck by an officer, but surely somebody had. I had never been cursed by an officer, but surely somebody had. I have seen officers behaving rudely and in one case my girlfriend and I had our parking space stolen by an off duty cop. She told me that he threatened her after the fact, and although I never saw it myself, I supported her testimony in court. I hear he was severely reprimanded. And yet I have never been a victim. I have never been frightened. I have been unsure. I have been angry. I have even been disgusted. I have never been hurt. But I wanted to find somebody who had, and so I searched. I thought it would be an easy search because I was convinced we were over-policed.

I searched up and down Crenshaw Boulevard. I searched Inglewood. I searched Leimert Park. I followed the sirens in my BMW. I followed them with my videocamera, because surely I had seen the black youth cuffed on the curb. That happened all the time, right? But when I looked I didn't find what I was searching for. I arrived at car accidents minutes after the fact. I arrived at fires. After having given up far too many weekend afternoons looking for trouble and finding none, I found myself in Mar Vista one day. I followed yet another squad car and stumbled onto a bonanza. At least 6 cars were just behind Venice High School. It was a charity basketball game. The cops weren't giving bruises, they were giving prizes. And so I stopped searching.

But everyone was still angry. Everyone could recite the names by heart. Latasha Harlins got no justice. Rodney King got no justice. Michael Zinzun lost an eye. We all still yelled about Ron Settles. We all knew about Don Jackson and the plate glass window. We lived in a time of loud talk and misunderstanding. Ahh when do we not? And we all had plenty to say. But I was a writer, probably not a very good one, as I look back in retrospect, but not a bad one either. I was a guerrilla poet. A YouTuber before the days of YouTube trying to get my footage on community TV. My words from those days still evoke the world of those days. They expressed the searching for meaning in the anger and frustration. They expressed the desire for truth in a sea of uncertainty. They sought the head bobs of recognition and the head shakes of sadness. But what was the end?

My last chance for romance was a date to the Umbrellas installation by Christo. It never happened. I decided not to care. For these and other personal and economic reasons, I decided to leave Los Angeles. When I left it, just after my 30th birthday, LA seemed destined in every way to end up as corrupt and dysfunctional as the film 'Strange Days'. My girlfriend at the time met Angela Bassett on the set and they discussed and debated the ending of the film, a film that was about a desperate, corrupt city heading for self-destruction amidst the doomsaying rap prophets of rage at the end of the millennium. So I got sick and tired of Los Angeles and was glad to be rid of the place. I found in New York, a very different kind of view of what happened in my hometown. It was both refreshing and tiresome to hear a completely new kind of misinformation and distance from the seething on the ground in LA. Still, I hated Los Angeles. I couldn't take it any longer.

I continued my writing, determined to keep my real experiences alive. I was part of that mob of disappointment, but I was articulate in a different dimension. I would be heard wherever. New York, now. I would continue with my poetry and my raps and my novel in the East.

The night of the riots found me in my Brooklyn apartment waking up to the news. It was late Thursday evening when I heard about the verdicts. I'm glad I wasn't in Los Angeles, but I felt as though I had a strange kind of brotherhood with the place. I expected that brotherhood to show up in the streets of Brooklyn where they had their own explosions about Gavin Cato and Yankel Rosenbaum, whom I didn't care about. So when I went outdoors to exerpeince that street, the street was silent. I walked alone at midnight in Brooklyn, communing with no one. The silence was absurd. Brooklyn cared about Brooklyn, not Los Angeles.

Yet the following day, all of us professionals in Midtown Manhattan were excused to go home early. People who wanted to riot were getting up their nerve, and so the message went out for us to head for the hills. So I did, and I then immediately returned in my street gear and found myself in Times Square. Here was my chance to make myself known - LA is my hometown I said. I was having a whirlwind of associative thoughts in my own head, and I wanted to say what I wanted to say, but the emotion of the day was to be rage. I was no prophet of rage, but I did what I could to rock the boulevard. To my right, on stage at Times Square was the legendary lawyer William Kunstler. Mine was the last speech, and so we departed southbound to Thompkins Square Park. Whose Streets? Our Streets!

I mocked the people who didn't care and I found it ironically delicious that they were now caught up in our crosswinds. They now had to fear our self-righteous condescension instead of the other way around for once. But it wasn't truly rewarding. I ended up corralled by New York's finest who had determined that we wouldn't reach the symbolic ground zero of Thompkins Square, whose radical history I couldn't get a straight answer about weeks afterwards.

But I got no satisfaction. My dense evocative prose collapsed under its own overburdened symbolism. It was atrocious writing that could only make sense to people who shared all of my insights. But I never had an audience to unpack all that weight, to go through it piece by piece and put the right emphasis on the right parts. I learned at long last to put all that in perspective, and I am grateful for the pain and passion I put into that part of my life. In the final measure I have had meaning and richness not only from family and career, but from the life of a writer making sense of himself and his times.

The LA Riots gave us all an opportunity to find out what goes wrong when people fail to trust their democratic institutions. We fall back to our tribes, tribes who cannot support us in the end, like political writing that tries to tie everything of significance to one or two events in history. Analogies always fail. Nothing can ever be summarized. There is not enough text in the world to contain a single soul, so no words here or anywhere can truthfully say what it fully means to the survivors of the dead. They will just be names, and do we know them? No, we don't.

My father spent hours taking photos of the ruins. I got sick of looking at them and pulled them out of my photo album. All the links on my Los Angeles Riot Research Page have gone dead, and only a few scanned pictures remain. Everything has been hacked and repacked, and all that remain are ghosts and echoes.

I have become the man who understands what I didn't as the young man blowing at his own sails thinking I was powering my own ship forward. I can read the crosswinds now and I am relaxed on a friendly shore. I understand our responsibilities better. I recognize the time it takes to capture an idea for what it is alone without pulling in an entire symbolic universe. So I am happy to stand and talk about what I believed and why, what I learned and how, and what I now know and what that means. We are changed.

Today, I think the most important lesson to be learned is similar to what I thought it was then. We are over-policed. We over police ourselves and we don't let go of old ideas and old bad behaviors. We think that everything and everyone can be corrected and thus must be corrected. We pretend to want every kind of justice at all times, but in fact none of us can stand the scrutiny. And sometimes what we need most of all, when we think we can join a brotherhood of righteous anger and contempt just around the corner, is a perfectly silent night. 

 

Trump's Head

My guess is that the American Left has been waiting a very long time to have somebody like Trump validate about one actual half of the anti-democratic & repugnant things they truly believe about all Republicans. What they can't really abide is the fact that the party elders truly don't like him. It makes them laugh and cry at the same time. Maybe Trump is just Trump. I mean if you've paid attention, how could anyone really believe that he's anything other than what he's always been? There is nothing that he has done that deserves to either put his head on a platter or in a Presidential jar. But what's in his head, really? Can there be anybody who believes that he's not saying everything that comes to mind? I find it hard to believe that he can be surprising when it comes to ideas.

I'm sympathetic to anyone who grits his teeth at Trump. When I think of the type of tasteless zillionaires who run the media, I think they'd be perfectly at home with Trump. The kind of socially cynical person who runs gilded casinos or produces insipid reality TV, or degenerate gangta music, are all the same color to me. Why shouldn't the person who collects dirty nickels and dimes aggregate billions in nihilist America?

For several years I've been looking for an elevated Left. I don't think I'll ever be satisfied but I have faith, if not confidence, that Enlightenment Liberals still believe in class, noblesse and society. So whoever, wherever such people are, I'm happy to join with them in opposition to the kind of shrill blowhard that is Trump. I don't blame America for having credulous people and I don't blame the people for being angry or feeling that Trump expresses that anger well. It's simply that we should all know that great leaders don't scream. Helpless people scream. And I sincerely believe that Donald Trump is the kind of helpless person who simply cannot understand the limits of his power. He thinks that he can do in government what he cannot do in real estate or entertainment, and for those questions that make him itch, he wants the power to make the itch go away. Now. 

He strikes me as the kind of man who is longing to enter a new world of troubles and demand the begging question "Don't you know who I am?"  He presumes that solutions to nagging issues are matters of will and power. In many cases he may very well be right, but I'm convinced that in most case, those his incuriosity and following will not allow him to explore, matters are more nuanced and complicated than he would like to admit. So he simplifies. He would not govern with carrots and sticks but with luxury prizes and total annihilation. I don't imagine that there is anyone with whom Trump can be reasoned. I perceive him to be a master of the sucker punch and so you underestimate his intelligence at your own peril. But there's a problem with Trump's kind of victories; they are ill-suited for a republic of the sort we are, but eerily proper for the sort of fascist state we could become. It is never enough to have the power of the people made manifest through the office and person of the President of the United States. And this is something neither Trump nor Obama grasp. 

Obama's own trump card was his willingness to end the war in Iraq with speed and finality. Like Trump he took a moral absolutist position and called everyone else out as unclear and bedraggled. Obama's election, in my estimation, was the primarily the embodiment of a war-weary nation. All that had to be done was a mustering of the will to undo all that George W. Bush had done. And in the simplistic eyes of his opposition it was Iraq, Gitmo and Afghanistan, in that order. "Yes we can" was the answer to the following three questions. "Can we stop the useless war in Iraq?, Can we shutdown Gitmo? Can we get out of a land war in Asia?" Obama thus elected promised to run full speed ahead and damn the complications. The rest of his geopolitical positioning was merely flavor. He was not, in any way I could perceive, a canny statesman with the skills necessary to retain American geopolitical leadership. He simply put on the brotherhood suit and profiled and speechified. He refused all risks of positioning his foreign policy in any other direction but polite withdrawal. Obama believed America's boots on the ground made too much noise and stepped on too many toes. So he assumed the Christlike position of global footwasher. Just right for his ego. Of course in the long run, predictable consequences frustrated Obama's ambitions. The war in Iraq was not useless. The closure of Gitmo fell short of judicial scrutiny, and the substitution of drones for troops in Asia has backfired.  

Trump too wants to focus on what he thinks he can do for America right here at home. He projects nothing beyond our shores but the pride of a jingo, and wants to lock down fortress America behind impenetrable walls. Accomplishing that shouldn't be such a leap considering how far Obama has weakened our extended arms. So we have another inward looking presidential candidate who sees that America has run off the rails. But here is one who is ready not to blame it on evil Americans in the other party, but on evil countries beyond our borders. 

So, now I'm going to turn slightly. And if I have to take lumps for it, sobeit. To the extent that I care about politics, there are only quibbles that I have with Trump's stated positions. If a one term president could accomplish what he has prioritized it wouldn't be a bad deal for the country. In other words, if a nicer guy, somebody more 'presidential' enacted the Trump agenda, I wouldn't have much beef with it. So how fair is it to suggest that what is clearly ass backwards about Trump's history as a self-aggrandizing blowhard is exactly wrong for the nation? Sadly, the only thing I have to indicate it is how correct I was about Obama and his fascist temptations and the extent to which he was ready to go rhetorically to solidify position, inside of office as well as on the trail. 

These days I'm reading about how the Cold War went close to disaster several times and the circumstances under which the distrust of countries and politics was far more consequential than it is today. I'm also going to give the holdouts some credit on matters of national security given the type and amount of threats we have evidently survived. That's not a firm footing by a longshot, but I am tending to trust the country's distaste for Trump, as partisan as that is. The problem is, none of his platform positions are fundamentally bad. Say what you like about the man, and believe me character counts, but he is not promoting dangerous ideas. Still, I'm afraid that you cannot have the agenda without the man. So as for Trump,  I accept that agenda, I reject that man.

It should be said that I am, in my own way, trying to be Trumplike, in that I seek the kind of self-determination and wealth that will make me and my family largely immune to the deprivations of those pendulum swings of policy that attack middle class and poor Americans in the pocketbook. I am truly sad to see that we do not do for the common man in natural and apolitical way such that America simply means that this is the land of economic opportunity. We have the blueprint and we keep shitting on it through overreach and irresponsible sloppiness. I'm talking about the Debt and the Deficit and squirrelly trade deals with global cabals. I'm talking about regulatory capture and environmental madness that made American cars suck so badly during the 80s. I don't want to be dependent on tit-for-tat politics between the two parties holding up government benefits for me to jump and snap at like a hungry dog. I want to be a fat, strong, lazy dog chasing my own rabbits when I feel like it. I want to have enough freedom and money to choose better, and more often than between the false dichotomies provided like clockwork by the American two party system. And I want to be able to fail on my own and learn from my own failure without bringing acrimony against political partisans. In other words, I want the kind of aloof self-determination that Trump has. The thing is, that I know that I don't have patience with people and I'm not at that point in my life where I have enough dosh saved up and enough bucket list items checked off so that I am ready to serve the common man.

Something about Trump convinces me that although he does have the dosh, that he's not truly motivated to serve. I think he just wants to win.

Dear America, Here's Your Fascist Solution

First, the original screed, applied to guns, from the newly viral Sara Benincasa

Dear America: Here’s Your Gun Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want gun ownership to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Weapons and sit for hours. I want folks who own guns to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to own and use a gun.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Gun ownership isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for firearms, with hunting weapons and vintage/historic weapons exempt. I want the sale of weapons to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising for firearms to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes. There will be a black market for guns as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for gun owners should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to take a human life you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American militia.

 

Now let's change it slightly:
Dear America: Here’s Your Religion Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want religious faith to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Religion and sit for hours. I want folks who pray to God to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to possess and use your faith.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary influence.

Faith isn’t some inalienable right granted by 'God'. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for religious property, with large churches and vintage/historical landmarks exempt. I want the sale of religious paraphernalia to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising of religions to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes for religious reasons. There will be a black market for prayer rugs, crosses & Stars of David as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for the religious should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to influence a human life you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American's religion.

--

Dear America: Here’s Your Gay Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want gay marriage to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Sex and sit for hours. I want folks who own penises to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to own and safely use a penis.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Anal sex isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a federal tax break for gay to straight conversions, with interior decorators, playwrites & historical stereotypes exempt. I want the sale of gay marriage licenses to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want media coverage for gays to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end AIDS. It won’t end rape or child molestation either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes. There will be a black market for gay sex as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for gay penis owners should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to prevent a human conception you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American homosexual.

 

Dear America: Here’s Your Final Solution

Here’s some common sense for you. I want life, liberty and pursuit of happiness to be as boring and annoying as car ownership. I want you to go to some Department of Liberty and sit for hours. I want folks who claim citizenship to prove their skill, their mental and physical health, and to be licensed and reviewed over the years just as happens with our driver’s licenses. You earn the right to own and drive a vehicle; earn the right to possess and use your citizenship.

Quibble with me over semantics if you want to; what is a “right” vs. what is a “privilege.” I’ll be busy with my friends and colleagues trying to prevent more unnecessary deaths.

Due process isn’t some inalienable right granted by God. Remember, the Constitution was written by men coming out of a long and bloody war near the end of the 18th century. It was written for their time.

It also included the “right” to own a human being.

Things change.

Folks evolve.

I want a voluntary federal buyback program for private property, with special exemptions permissible. I want the sale of printed material to be even more tightly controlled than the sale of Xanax and other controlled substances. I want advertising of apolitical opinion to be as regulated as DTC (direct to consumer) advertising for pharmaceuticals (“May cause shortness of breath, long-lasting boners, etc.”) We can do all of this. It’ll create jobs, believe it or not: regulators, educators, enforcers.

It will not end murder. It won’t end rape or robbery either. It WILL make it harder to commit those crimes for all citizens. There will be a black market for prohibited materials as there is for any coveted item in a capitalist society. (And I’m not anti-capitalism, btw. I’m a big fan! Sorry, hippies. I do love you guys, by the way, you’re very nice people with good instincts.)

Continuing education credits for all citizens should be required, just as they are with medical professionals. When you have a greater ability to be exercise your citizenship you have a greater responsibility to prove your fitness to wield the tools that may create that end.

And that’s how the fuck you well-regulate a goddamn American.

--

 

So always remember. Things change. Folks evolve.  Semantic quibbles about rights can be ignored, we have serious work to be done.  Are you part of the solution or are you part of the problem?