Spin Easy Time!: What Mark Upon This World?

Spin Easy Time!: What Mark Upon This World?: What mark will we make, we bloggers, upon this world?  What stain will we leave to prove that we were ever here at all? There was a highly...

The above link is to a post hereon from October 25, 2014. I just checked and Doghouse Riley's blog is still on Blogspot in its entirety. The actual name of the blog, or the heading anyway, is, "Bats Left/Throws Right." It's a great blog, one of the best that I've ever seen. Riley has been dead for six years now, but the blog goes on. Why, it's enough to give some of us hope!

Prepare To Be Fined

(Beta Version. Parental Alert.) 

Today I read that a woman who has been sheltering in a sanctuary church is being fined over $450,000 by ICE. In another article I read that ICE has sent notices to other similarly situated immigrants in five states. The fines are all between $300,000 and $500,000. I would venture to guess that all of these individuals are judgment proof, although the existence of the liens will make it more difficult for them to remain in the U.S. The church, on the other hand, is not judgment proof. They have something to lose. This is just the ball getting rolling, folks. It's going to be a rough ride.

This is how they are going to get us, we who fall into one of the categories for “other.” Fines, or other monetary assessments, are a nice, clean way to destroy someone's life without the trouble of harming them or incarcerating them. This is my greatest fear.

So far it's all been very tentative. When people demonstrated at Trump's inauguration, there were charges filed, and a lot of good, upright citizens were arrested and charged with “illegal assembly,” or “failure to disperse,” or something. As is now routine, the situation immediately gave rise to creative new charges, backed up by new laws in several states, and draconian new penalties. Ambitious prosecutors wondered what was stopping them from charging the demonstrators with the crime of “rioting.” If any property was damaged in the “riot,” all of those charged could be assessed a share of the costs. The problem is that no one seems to care anymore if this government behavior has a chilling effect on our Constitutional rights to protest and associate with our fellows. This will terrify anyone with a house, or money in the bank, into immediate submission, or at least anticipatory obedience.

So, the power of money, as either a taking of it, an unpaid fine as a crime to be used as the basis for deportation, or a financial “Sword of Damocles” to prevent access to future wealth, is not lost on our sainted rulers.

(The fines are about $800 per day, per immigrant in a sanctuary location. According to abcnews.go.com, “ICE has had the authority to issue civil fines for decades, but didn't begin using it until last December.” All of this sanctuary activity also appeared on apnews.com and washingtonpost.com. I read about it at nytimes.com on July 4, 2019.)

The terror of financial ruination, that's the main idea. You may, in fact, be judgment-proof, which means that the lien on you will be unenforceable, because you don't have any money or any thing that is worth money. If you think about it, or get any good advice, you still don't want a lien hanging over your head. If, someday, you get your wheels back on the ground and want to buy a house, the mortgage will not go through until the lien is cleared. Ditto for a loan to start a business. Half a million dollars is a big lien.

Now imagine a civil fine imposed on you by some federal agency for criticizing the president. You know that this president would love to punish every single American citizen who had ever said anything mean about him. Any other president in history would laugh it all off, probably mentioning people getting ten years in the Gulag for calling Stalin “Uncle Mustache.” Trump's feeling are easier to hurt than any previous president, and he always wants to get revenge for any slight, however small. I'm starting to wonder if it is prudent for me to say mean things about Trump on this blog, even though the low readership will probably keep me safe.

Or not! The number of eyes, or readers, or the hit-count of a blog, will probably not be the trigger for such fines of retribution. No, the buy-in will more likely be the fact of the offending statement coupled with property or money in the bank. Why impose fines on the judgment-proof when there are so many offenders with something to steal? Unless, as is the case with the sanctuary immigrants, the intention is simply to introduce the concept.

As more and more of our Constitutional rights, freedoms, and privileges slip away, almost anything becomes possible. Remember that something like “free speech” only means what the Supreme Court says it means. If they say that free speech does not cover criticism of the president, well then it doesn't. It's just that simple. And if they also say that fines are okay as punishment, then fines become perfectly okay. This could all be administered by the United States Secret Service, an armed agency with the power to arrest that is charged with protecting the president and the rest of our leaders. They now fall under the Department of Homeland Security, just like ICE. Giving them the same authority to impose civil fines that ICE already enjoys should not be difficult.

People should really pay more attention to things like this. It is very easy these days for too many people to say, “those people are here illegally! ICE is just enforcing the law.” This kind of ratification of horrible things like family separation, and putting immigrants, including isolated children, into concentration camps, and tons of other frightening things that would not have been tolerated forty or fifty years ago, should not go unchallenged. These things are wrong, and they violate all of the norms and traditions of America as I understand them.

When will people wake up to the danger that this presents to us, to all of us? And to our children, and to our grandchildren? The sanctuary churches are also breaking the law. Will people feel the same when the churches are fined millions of dollars and their property is seized to cover the judgment? What about after that, when fines are being imposed for things that we cannot even imagine yet?

This is a slippery slope. Our president seems to enjoy the chaos and the bullying. The ICE agents are also having a great time, as we recently discovered on their own social media outlets. Other federal agencies could easily be brought in for some of the fun. America could turn into a police state before you could say, “Jack Robinson.”

This is all very disturbing, and it deserves more of people's attention.

Appendix Number One:

Federal Agencies with Police Powers

1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);
2. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF);
3. Homeland Security;
4. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE);
5. Customs and Border Protection;
6. The Treasury Police;
7. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA);
8. The National Security Agency (NSA);
9. The United States Secret Service;

10. The United States Postal Police;
11. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA);
12. The United States Marshall Service;
13. The IRS Criminal Investigation Division;
14. The Park Police;
15. The Capitol Police;
16. The Government Publication Office Police;
17. The Office of Protective Services (for NASA);
18. The Federal Reserve Board Police;
19. The Mint Police; and
20. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing Police.

The list also includes all five branches of the military, with their associated police elements (as seen on TV, i.e., NCIS: New Orleans), and The Federal Bureau of Prisons. There are also forces that are assigned to every branch of the government, and every federal agency. All together, there are sixty-five (65) federal agencies that have firearms and the power to arrest. (The number 65 comes from “discoverpolicing.org,” a site that seems to be concerned with police department accreditation and job availability. It is a very pro-police site.)

Captain Beefheart - KHSU Interview (December 2nd, 1972)

This is a great interview with Don Van Vliet in a good mood. KHSU is the station for Humboldt State University in northern California. The interviewer is a typical college station disc jockey, overawed by the situation and trying to be cool. Don is very patient with the kid, and maintains a very friendly tone throughout. He makes sure to plug his latest release, which shows that he was not completely immune to commercial considerations. Very interesting and entertaining. 

Captain Beefheart - Clear Spot

Released in late 1972. See interview, above. 

Trump, Comforting Lies, And Totalitarianism

The news is all so terrible now that I can't stand to look at it. Ditto, Facebook. I enjoy YouTube, like most people, and there was a time when I might watch the new “Trump fans say the damnedest things” video. Through it all, the common thread is the constant stream of bald-faced lies from Trump, and the constant chorus of “hell, yeah!” from his fans and enablers. It has grown tiresome, at least for me it has. There are mysterious aspects to this phenomenon.

I don't know the people in the YouTube videos, so it's easy to dismiss them as uneducated Rubes and borderline cretins. They believe everything that Trump or Fox News tells them, even if they have seen the truth with their own eyes (things that are contrary to statements that Trump has made that were rebroadcast on TV thousands of times). They believe lies that are chronologically impossible (President Obama was in office and totally responsible for 9/11). They appear to be in some kind of fugue state, where all of the lines of reality have lost their power to bind. These people appear to be stupid.

It's harder to accept that they are being stupid when you see it on Facebook and it's people that you have known for many decades. You know that these people are not stupid, not at all, not even close. Not crazy, either. It's people that went through some kind of education and on to successful family lives. Many of them are very prosperous, as a result of either some kind of business ownership or a cleverly managed career in a lucrative field. And yet they, like the actual Rubes and ignoramuses, blithely repeat impossible lies or repost horrible calumnies against Democratic politicians, or anyone else that their echo chamber has focused their hatred on. They praise Trump to the high heaven and talk about the imaginary great job that he has done on the economy, diplomacy, jobs, the military, and immigration, among many other things. Why they do this is a mystery, or it was until the miracle of reading books provided a partial/ possible answer this week.

I read, no, it's too much to say that I “read” the New York Times every day. I do subscribe, and I do scan the entire portal every morning, but I only read half a dozen or eight of the articles on average. You can get some good information from that. I also scan things like the Raw Story; the Daily Beast; Slate; Salon; Truthdig; and Think Progress. I also subscribe to the Atlantic Magazine and Harper's Magazine. I don't read every word of those, either, but I read a lot. My experience of life, however, has taught me that to become really informed one must take up actual books and read them. This point was driven home in the last week or so.

I've been reading references to Hannah Arendt in serious articles for decades now, and she is a remarkably lucid and quotable woman. Was, if you consider that she died many years ago. I finally took the plunge and put a famous book of hers on my Kindle. A piece of one, actually. I was afraid that the entirety of “Origins of Totalitarianism” would be too much for me, so I ordered a copy of “Totalitarianism,” which is the last of the three parts of that larger work. The fact that the three sections of the book are available individually reassures me that I am not the only lazy person around here. I've been filing up a notebook with quotes, but my purpose today is simple and straightforward. The book provides a valuable clue as to why otherwise intelligent and moral people would believe such impossible lies and support such unacceptable behavior. I'm here to share it. 

Ms. Arendt talks at length about the mob, and mass man (people being handled in bulk, having lost their individuality), and the conditions under which totalitarian ideologies thrive. The key seems to be periods of rapid change, changes in people's social status and financial security, changes in society, in societal mores and norms, changes in borders and identities and politics, changes of all kinds that are so fast and furious that people look for relief. They can't take the uncertainty of it all. This could explain why so many of our family and friends have jumped on the crazy train, since America and the world have been adding new technologies, new people, and new ideas at a previously unheard of rate. The combination of chaos, uncertainty, and loss of status has made them look for solutions to their psychological and emotional suffering. An ideology, or a demagogue, appears with a way out. It is, of course, a house of cards built of lies, but people are in such a dismal condition that they prefer the certainty of the lies to the uncertainty of the facts around them. The lies are consistent, which is comforting, as opposed to the facts, which are chaotic. This dynamic was played out in the episodes of Nazism in Germany, and Soviet Communism in Russia. Communism in China too, I suppose. If one were prone to worry, one might suspect that it is playing out in the United States today.

It is more likely, however, that we will experience only some kind of dictatorship, rather than the full-blown totalitarian experience. My guess is a dictatorship not of one individual, but rather of a small class of people, or families. An oligarchy, with the extremely wealthy installed as the decision makers behind some kind of Potemkin Village of optical-illusion democracy.

Is it time to start worrying about that result? No, not at all. It's way past time. That's what we have already.

Brenda Holloway, Every Little Bit Hurts (1962 Del-Fi original)

It's late. I'm tired. You should hear this. Original version, two years before the Motown hit. You're welcome. 

Wendy Rene - Bar B Q

Please see the comment on the Rufus and Carla cut, below.