There's Something Happening Here

From my distant perch, I have watched the protests unfold over the last few days. It reminded me of the Sixties, but not in a good way. More like the echo of an old failing. In the old days, the protests hovered around a focus on the Vietnam War, but were often focused instead, and in scattershot fashion, on the draft, or war in general, or the military, or the government, or nuclear weapons, or something else. This weekend there were also numerous, semi-related demonstrations. There were protests by women’s groups, anti-capitalists, civil-society groups, anti-Trumpsters, anarchists, and no doubt many others.

A much higher level of focus and coordination will be required if any of these protests are going to amount to anything.

These protests were a natural and necessary response to the vicious, inhuman policies and rhetoric of the new administration and the new congress. It was all very admirable, generally. But there will need to be rather a lot more commitment shown, a lot more discipline learned, and a lot more sacrifices made, if anything is going to be accomplished.

Most importantly, or should I say, Most Importantly, please consider that Mr. Trump is not really important in any of this. He is only a distraction, and only for the next eighteen months or so. The real enemy is the Republican Party, at the Federal and the State level. It’s their agenda that threatens us, and their ecstatic glee at having arrived in the position from which they can actually accomplish their Satanic goals should provide all of the motivation that anyone would need to oppose them.

That’s worth repeating: Mr. I-Have-The-Best-Words is only a distraction. The Republicans will use him as a lightning rod for all of the outrage and contempt that they will be generating, he and they together, for the next year-and-change. In that time the Republicans will solidify their position as being totally in charge. Then they’ll dump Herr Drumpf like a hot potato. What, you doubt it? After a few years of this, you’d just love to enter an election cycle with President DJT at the top of the ticket? No, you wouldn’t. I didn’t think so. Believe me, they have no plans to do so. It’ll be President Pence for years by then, after four more years of Gerrymandering and anti-voting-rights legislation.

Need I remind you, again, that the Republican agenda is: 1) to unwind all of the social advances of the New Deal, including, but not limited to, Social Security, collective bargaining, and government regulation of capitalism; 2) to reduce the Federal Government to, in their own words, something so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub; 3) to further enhance the financial position of the growing billionaire class; and 4) to aid and abet the large corporations in their exploitation and despoliation of the county’s resources, not to mention the resources of the entire world.  We have known this for thirty-five years now, known it to an absolute certainty. They have said as much, out loud, and their every action has supported this agenda. So yes, I use the term “Satanic” advisedly.

And what, pray tell, is the Republican agenda for average Americans? The legendary “American People?”  Very clearly, that agenda is increased medical insecurity; increased income insecurity; increased retirement insecurity; severely restricted human, civil and constitutional rights; greater levels of debt-slavery; and ever increasing levels of incarceration. Republican voters! That sound that you hear is a combination of laughter, ice tinkling in cocktails, and a giant toilet flushing.

If it gets any worse, Americans will be retreating to the woods to live as hunter-gatherers, squatting and poaching, no doubt, on land owned by billionaires.

That Republicans can still get elected to anything at all is a testament to the reduced circumstances of common sense and independent thinking in our new digital world. Capturing and neutralizing minds is way too easy these days. It’s like the fucking Walking Dead out there, for crying out loud.

So please, I’m begging you, get organized with the protests, and get focused on the real enemy, the Republicans. Right now, they think that they are in the drivers’ seat. They think, in their twisted Ayn Randian way, that they are the meritorious winners in this social struggle of winners and losers. It’s a sad future for them as well though. They will also be thrown under the bus, in their turn, by their masters, the corporate/billionaire cabal.

Oh! How the real money laughs at mediocrities like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan! The real money still needs them to push their agenda, and those congressional fools settle for peanuts to help the real money get what they want! What a laugh riot! Those idiots in congress ask for only a couple of million dollars to pass legislation that puts hundreds of millions in the pockets of the real money! One percent or so, man, what an investment! What assholes. Myself, I wouldn't do it for a nickel less than 12.5%. Someday, and that day will come, the Mitch McConnells and the Paul Ryans of the world will retire to what seems, to them, like splendor, on their several tens of millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Maybe a hundred million! Oh! La-la! What a bunch of Rubes.

About those sacrifices that will be required, read on at your peril. Down in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, a couple of hundred people were arrested and charged with “felony rioting.” That one carries a fine of up to $250,000 and ten years in prison. That’s a “message,” right there. The message is: if you own a house that you do not want to lose, do not appear at demonstrations. You will lose that house to the fine. The ten years in prison part, I guess we all understand that.

It would be lovely if tens of thousands of people would go out and get themselves arrested and subjected to those charges. That would be embarrassing to the government, they might even back off. But only a few hundred people? A few times? No deterrent there. Those people are just going down, and millions more are staying right there at home from now on, not wanting to actually pay such a weirdly excessive price for their opinions.

The land of the free . . . Freedom of Speech! I said it before, back in the Sixties. When times are good, you have the right to have a gently expressed opinion; when times get rough, you have the right to get your head cracked open by a night-stick.

The brutal repression will work. That’s my firm opinion. Afghans would line up to do the ten years, but Americans are not made of such stern stuff. Yeah, I said it. And it’s true, too.  Americans are afraid of protest, because they’re afraid to lose what little advantage they have left. Shit, I’m often afraid to write so directly on this stupid little blog. Only my insignificance empowers me, and saves me from imposed indigence through fines.  

What about it, brothers and sisters? “. . . ([Y]ou’d better) stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

So what do I expect? Me? I expect things to drift along, more or less how they’ve been going since World War II. A continuing state of emergency, a constant acceleration of executive power, a constant expansion of the security state, the inexorable comeback of the billionaire class, the return of working people to penury, the continued erosion of our constitutional rights and the final destruction of the New Deal. No less!

And who’s going to stop it all? The Democratic Party? I think we can all put “paid” to that avenue of assistance. The Greens? Whatever other political parties exist by now out on the fringes of our politics? Give those ideas up right now. Ineffectual bloggers like me? Certainly not. Bloggers with much more talent and energy than me? Sorry, no. God? Oh, honey, no. I’m starting to believe in Satan, but the possibility of assistance from God holds no promise for me at all.

All we can do is hope that they leave us with some entertainment in our abasement. Can we please keep our YouTube, sir? And our wi-fi? Can we keep our air-conditioning if we live in Florida? The electric bill will be low in any case, because people will be out most of the day working multiple jobs to pay for health care. Upon retirement, the non-rich Americans of the future can expect to be driven out into the metaphoric snow, because you can be sure that the United States of Ayn Rand will have no place for useless eaters.  Did I say retirement? I’m afraid we’ll all be on the work-till-you-die program before long.

I remember a slightly better America, and that America would be worth trying to recreate and perfect. I’ve also read about several historical Americas that were not so great, several even quite horrible. Guess which direction we’ve decided to go in the future? The 1880s, with wi-fi. Good luck with that.