Irritating Joseph Stalin

Saturday Santa Rosa opened its new town square, which it built at great cost, after closing the city’s main street permanently. The voters weren’t consulted. As far as I can tell, this project was sold as a helpful change for businesses situated near the square. The idea was to drive away the many homeless and turn the downtown area into an attraction for the few people who could find parking. Three or four businesses, including my favorite restaurant, failed and vanished during the blight of construction.

The end result is a expanse of concrete that would irritate Joseph Stalin. The ugliness of the square might help achieve one of its goals: what homeless teenager  will choose to linger on a block-wide cement field?  What abandoned mental patient will sit on the flat surface in the rain or under a baking sun?

The good town squares (Sonoma, Healdsburg, even Windsor) are solid grass and trees and benches, earthy smells and deep shade. Santa Rosa chose to create a brutal eyesore unfit for human use. And the chuckle-headed city leaders could not be happier. 

The Times Fails Again

There are those who encourage me to subscribe to the New York Times. We did take the paper for about 30 years while we were working Back East, and it had its good side. Unlike the Press Democrat, the Times does not publish letters to the editor written by crackpots. But I quit on the Times when it helped push our country into a pointless war against Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of us. By "us" I mean ordinary people in Iraq and in the armed forces.

This morning I woke to read that the Times has hired a opinion writer who denies, in part, the science of climate change, a dope who compares science to opinion polling. The Times has apparently decided to follow the Press Democrat and widen its potential sales appeal to the lunatic fringe. The next step will be for the Times to print letters to the editor from Holocaust deniers and segregationists.   

Dump Freitas

In Sonoma County you might soon encounter a genuine human being holding a petition to recall Sheriff Steve Freitas. He’s the dunce who promoted a deputy after the deputy lost his head and shot to death a Latino child holding a toy gun. The shooter was training a younger deputy at the time, which gives you an idea of Freitas’s ability to make good personnel decisions. The sheriff is a danger to you and to me. 

We need someone smarter who will do less harm. I’m signing the petition. 

Paul Ryan's Missing Parts

At this point, believe it or not, more than half a million dogs have had their empty ball sacks filled with neuticles (plastic inserts). The size of each neuticle (they are sold separately) will depend on age and weight. If you plan to send a pair of the best (UltraPlus) to Paul Ryan, it may cost you around $1200. 

The Consistent Evangelicals

Many of us wondered why 80% of the evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, a mentally impaired vulgarian with no religious sense, married three times, an unceasing liar, an assaulter of women, etc. Holly Worthen has provided the answer in The Atlantic. From 1776 on, there has been an alliance between evangelical types and the 1%.

If you look back at American political history, what you see is that evangelicals support the rich authoritarian candidate. This isn't something new. Consider who heads evangelical churches, some of which were founded by authoritarians seeking access to sex. In their eyes, God intends that each family, church and nation be headed by a benign dictator who makes his own rules. To them that is the natural order. Jesus, morality, science and justice be damned. To evangelicals the imaginary free market is sacred.

That old American belief in a natural order is fading, and the evangelicals grow afraid.

Colossal

We just saw "Colossal," a truly unpleasant fantasy film about alcoholism and male privilege, starring Anne Hathaway as the drunken victim. Here’s the problem movies have these days. The best things on TV are better written than the best movies. 

Confederate Memorial Day

Yesterday was Confederate Memorial Day, celebrated by two of our fifty states. Last night Trevor Noah asked what black Americans are supposed to do on Confederate Memorial Day. How should they celebrate?  I have a suggestion.

I should pause to admit that Confederate Memorial Day is an insult to my family and any family with ancestors who joined the American army and fought to save the union or free the slaves. 

About 400,000 African-Americans risked their lives in the Union army. My proposal is that 400,000 black people put on replicas of the blue uniform and then march to the grave of our racist attorney general,  Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, and urinate on it. 

I know, I know, Sessions isn’t dead yet, and voters may choose to wait to pee on his resting place, but I suspect that he has already purchased a gravesite or a tomb with a statue of this tiny fellow whipping an attractive enslaved woman. Voters could pee there, or they could just wait. Sessions is shriveled and barely alive. The wait won’t be long.

France

I'm going to pretend this is about France.

It seems to me that the rise of right-wing populism in the western democracies springs from two causes. This sort of thing has happened before, and the nations have recovered, but this time it might be more fundamental. I am particularly interested in the Le Pen vote in France, where the Trump-figure drew her support from young voters.

France today is faced with two major problems.  The first is global warming, which has already set in motion civil wars and mass migrations, in which hungry people start to go where the food is. Populists detest immigrants. The second problem is that capitalism, as it replaces workers with robots, can no longer generate enough good jobs to keep people employed. France's standard model, where every adult works and earns a decent living, is starting to fail. Robots are cheaper than employees, and French capitalism works on the principle that cheaper expenses create profits. 

The first step is to admit that France has a problem and that the French need to consider some modifications.

(also on Facebook) 

What We Share With Trump

The political left ignores its connections to Donald Trump. In the April 3rd THE NEW YORKER, Ethan Kuperberg exposes liberal hypocrisy in a brilliant article, “What I Have In Common with Trump.” 

Some things Kuperberg has in common with Trump.

 1.  Melania has shown no interest in having sex with him. 

2,   Kuperberg has never read THE ART OF THE DEAL.

3.   He has never been elected President of the United States.

And so on. You might want to look at this sobering analysis.