The No Damn Good, 2

These are strange days, and it's not because we have mentally impaired leadership. That's something we're used to: Wilson was incapacitated, Nixon was paranoid. Reagan was senile, W. was out to lunch. What is different is a new political party and many voters willing to destroy our national institutions in order to (1) stay in power or (2) regain control of women's reproductive capacity.

A friend wrote: If I could have lunch with anyone living or dead, I'd choose Lindsay Graham, dead.

It isn't Boofer Kavanaugh who makes me sick. I feel sick.  It's the senators and voters who support Boofer. It's the ugliness of old white men and their wives, defending white women's privileges. The ugliness of Hatch and McConnell and Kennedy and Graham, who push the darkest aspects of human nature into the foreground. The irony is that as progressives we have maintained a focus on the bright side of human nature, while genuine conservatives have always warned us that people are no damn good. And now people calling themselves conservatives (actually weird, far-right radicals) are defending humanity at its worst and promoting the no damn good to high office. What could be more absurd than calling Mexicans racist while transforming a known preppy rapist into a Supreme Court judge?

Useless Thoughts

Useless thoughts:

We owe Boofer Kavanaugh this much fairness, that we apply to his appearance before the Judiciary Committee the same exact standards we would use if Ruth Bader Ginsberg had appeared and wept in self-pity. 

Does the Supreme Court need another justice who believes himself the victim of a conspiracy? Of course. Absolutely. But this time he should be named Noemi.

If I write something scurrilous like this, who should be blamed? I blame Facebook.

Hamilton, the Musical

Not having seen "Hamilton,"  I am completely neutral about the musical and an impartial judge. I did see "Oklahoma!" last summer, a version in which all the cowboys in Oklahoma were gay, so I am not put off by the idea of a musical in which George Washington is black.

I don't suppose Washington was actually very black, maybe just a little. Historians generally agree that the musical gets all the facts wrong, but in a musical, a work of fiction, that doesn't matter (see "Oklahoma!") Think of the play as science fiction about a parallel universe. Enjoy. That's what I do. 

I know little about Hamilton other than that he owned slaves in New York City, not uncommon, and hoped to use military force to keep the dumb guys in their place, which was on small farms.  I know more about Jefferson, the most intellectually sophisticated President in our nation's history. I assume he's in the musical, too, probably the hero.

I've heard only one song from "Hamilton," and it was charming. I understand little about music, but I did watch a group of black athletes, including LeBron James, discussing the rap in "Hamilton." They thought it sucked, but can I trust LeBron James on this kind of music?

My conclusion in this report is that "Hamilton" will make a good movie if they cast Joy Reid or Idris Elba as our first President. I assume Elba can do an American accent.

The Borders (according to the Border Patrol)

Suppose I, born in Compton, sit on a bench at Courthouse Square (about 60 mules north of San Francisco). Can the Border Patrol grab me off that bench without a warrant, transport me to a local hospital, have medical personnel search my body cavities, feed me a pill to flush my bowels so they can inspect my turds and then tell the hospital to bill me for $5,000?  

Yes.  They do that to American citizens..

I'm fairly safe, though, because the Border Patrol uses a complexion code chart in their work, one that runs "from white to sallow to olive and black." I'm an old white man, and I sure as hell don't want to be sallow (whatever that is) or olive (green?).

I was surprised yesterday to read in Harper's that the Border Patrol makes warrantless arrests of American citizens all over its designated border areas, which are anyplace within 100 miles of a border. Borders include the Pacific Ocean, the Great Lakes, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. The entire state of Michigan is border. So the Border Patrol is policing about 200 million citizens, and I am not talking about ICE.  

Boofer Kavanaugh Needs a Broken Nose

I’ve seen rich kids like Boofer Kavanaugh before, but it was a long time ago, when I was in high school

At the time I had never been in a street fight, but my father had been in many. He’d taught me two things. First, always get in the first punch, because many street fights last one punch. Second, hit them in the nose and break it.

He wasn't the perfect father, but I had reason to love him.

Kavanaugh, as I will call this rich kid from a prep school, and I were at the same dance, and he was drunk and bothering my date. She got testy, so I stopped him, and he insisted we take it out into the night air. Fine. Everyone followed us outside, and once on the grass, he started a run at me (not a sound approach to a brawl). I set myself and hit him in the face as hard as I could, breaking his aristocratic nose and dropping him like a sack of elegant manure. 

Boofer Kavanaugh is another mean drunk. He needs a good beating. In his senate hearing today, he was mean while sober, yelling, insulting women senators, acting belligerent, much like the lightly-brained Lindsay Graham, who rose at the appointed moment to defend what he dotes on. 

Trump's Lips

Trump has the oddest mouth on television. As he speaks his lips writhe forward, away from the gums, as if grasping for contact with the real. Word-gas forms around his tongue. Behind the prehensile lips, in the deep shadows of his maw, two rows of baby teeth cry for ground meat and American cheese and giant boobs four or five times a day, regular, heavy, very heavy feedings. The lips, beyond conscious control, smirk in fearful embarrassment and wiggle this way and that as defensive slime flaps them outward in irregular patterns--is what some people have claimed. 

A Deserved Loss of FaIth

A solid majority of Americans, after the New Deal, believed in our system. Then we were lied into a war in Vietnam, lied to about Watergate, lied to about people of color, lied into a pointless war against Iraq and now lied to about a rapist named Kavanaugh. Bill  Clinton joined the process of weakening New Deal supports for people in need. Today polls show that a large majority of voters share a hard-earned cynicism about an oligarchical "democracy" that values greed and power far above the happiness of our people. 

The problem is not with the "deep state," the civil service, government employees, Washington media, etc. The problem is that Alexander Hamilton's intense campaign for a financial oligarchy has managed to subjugate half of one political party and all of the other. The consequence is a fragmenting, alienated society unable to build trust or consensus. Jefferson warned us. Ben Franklin warned us. We had a republic once, a flawed republic. We've lost it. Voters are angry and confused--many voters support idiotic candidates, looking for change in any form. To regain even a semblance of democracy, we need a cleansing movement, a giant shift. That's not news--it's obvious.

Jefferson

Presidential reputations rise and fall. In my lifetime, I've noticed two remarkable changes.  When I was in college Truman was considered one of the worst Presidents in history, largely because of a relentless Republican campaign to paint him as corrupt and soft on Communism. That's all gone now. And Grant was portrayed by my history professors as a brutal drunken general and a foolish or corrupt President.

In recent years younger historians have pointed out that Grant won the Civil War, popping Lee like a pimple, and, as President, smashed the KKK, enforced the civil rights of people of color and wrote America's best autobiography on his deathbed.   (You can see how these achievements disqualified Grant in the books of Southern professors.)

At the moment Thomas Jefferson's reputation is in disarray, in part because, although he very quietly considered slavery a bad thing, he did nothing about it. But it may be time to reconsider. Jefferson was the most radical President we've had, opposed to Hamilton's goal of maintaining a governing oligarchy. Jefferson did not like oligarchies. "Those who rule are a confederacy against the happiness of the mass of people," he wrote in a letter. At the time of his death, Jefferson believed he had defeated the Hamiltons of America--but, dude, look at us now.

Rules of the Game

It turns out that Unindicted Co-Conspirator and USA President Spanky has a below average penis, according to Ms. Daniels, a porn actress. She did not find Spanky a generous lover. This is too much information, but it may explain why Spanky nominated a high school rapist to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Self-centered and under-endowed, Spanky strongly dislikes women (and men).

There’s no legal bar against rapists serving as justices. Before Spanky became President, there was, apparently, a tacit understanding that Presidents wouldn’t nominate rapists,murderers or child molesters. Of course it may not have been a conscious understanding. It’s probable that no prior President, not even Nixon, had given the matter any thought. 

This points out a problem with laws or rules in general. They don’t begin to cover the possibilities halfwits can dream up. We rely on unspoken understandings to keep society functional. Spanky sees unspoken understandings as opportunities to cheat.