Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Joni Mitchell)

[thanks to Judi for this amazing graphic!]

We interrupt this previously-scheduled post (as if you didn't know already, unless you live under a rock!) to share that President Donald Trump and his wife Melania have tested positive for the coronavirus.  All I care to say at this point is that, tempting as it is, I am not wishing him death; I do, however, hope he feels a serious impact from the virus:  physically, emotionally, politically.  Can you say Karma?

Also, thanks to Sarah for this a few hours ago:

@johnmlester

Replying to 

@AngrierWHStaff

Looks like RBG successfully argued her first hearing with the lord

1:33 AM · Oct 2, 2020·Twitter for Android

I watched the first of the Presidential debates Tuesday night, and I'm still, a few days later, more than a bit shaken.  

MSNBC had a wonderful hour prior during which, before a segment with Hillary Clinton (as the only person who had debated Trump previously, four years ago), Rachel Maddow talked about Hillary having a crystal ball four years ago, and showed clips from the various encounters.  Frightening.  Validating.

I love the trifecta of Maddow, Joy Reid, and Niccole Wallace, both pre- and post-political events.  They warned that Biden needed to stick to his message and *not take the bait* from Trump but, unfortunately, that is exactly what happened.  The debate was described by CNN anchor Jake Tapper as "a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck" and by CNN correspondent Dana Bash more succinctly as "a shitshow."  I was very disappointed, which segued to pissed, that Biden allowed himself to succumb to Trump's tactics, admittedly difficult amidst the constant interruptions, falsehoods, and attacks.  Biden could have done without his own comments of racist, liar, clown, worst president ever, and shut up (even though we know they're all true).  He lowered his standards, when he could/should have risen above (yes, even when his own sons' reputations were impugned).  The best thing he did, toward the end, is that he began to talk to the camera (the constituency) in a calm collected manner about what he will do to get our country back on track.

The evening left me traumatized and anxious and, after listening to more Rachel and company, I had the proverbial epiphany.  They compared him to an abuser and, having grown up in a household where my father later became exactly that (physically as well as emotionally with my mother and brother; emotionally to myself and my sister), I recognized the signs.  Yelling is a trigger for me; I don't hear words, only volume, and I shut down.  Because Trump is all about power and control (and money), I realized he was abusing Biden, Chris Wallace (the moderator), and the American people by subjecting us to his irrational tirade.

Also, Rachel won the Internet with logorrhea... 😲

To be continued...

P.S. Did you know that today is World Smile Day (celebrated the first Friday in October)? Why do we have a world smile day? The story begins with the creation of the smiley face by Harvey Ball in 1963. As the commercialization of the smiley face was running rampant, Harvey believed the true meaning of the smiley face was being lost. Therefore, he started World Smile Day to have one special day to remind us to smile and give acts of kindness. 

P.P.S  I am so saddened by something I read in my UUCFL (former church) newsletter.  He was a wonderful person as well as sound guy, and my altar is ablaze for his smooth transition:  Tripp Page, a long time member of UUCFL, has entered hospice care in his new home in Hilo, Hawa'ii. Tripp was a big part of the Labyrinth Cafe at UUCFL. He was a dear friend to many... 💔

NR:  The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede  (excellent, so far!)

SONG:  Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joni Mitchell (based on the text of Second Coming, a poem by William Butler Yeats)

BOOK:  An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi, Alejandro Giraldo (Illustrator)

POEM:  Momentum 2016 by Eileen Myles

for Hillary Clinton

How perfect the American sky out there
Innocent perhaps of our goings on
Let everyone turn around once one day
Let them pull the lever, write your name
Awesome the keenness of your focus, Hill
Regarding debating, regarding knowing
You inspire me to stay still, to act
You probably had breakfast this morning
Oregon was one of your stops
Understanding the northwest is part of your job
Remembering everyday a woman chooses to keep running
Every day you learn more
Meet more people
You daily become our president
May every inch of this journey
And every moment of your female campaign unabashedly
Nail it like the girl I met at breakfast at Marfa Burrito. Her name? Victory!

[My note:  More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.  The Democrat outpaced President-elect Donald Trump by almost 2.9 million votes, with 65,844,954 (48.2%) to his 62,979,879 (46.1%), according to revised and certified final election results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.]

QUOTE:  “Watching that debate was like hot-boxing a port-a-potty with crystal meth. In Phoenix. In July. It was like being hit on the head with a lead pipe in a room filled with nitrous oxide. It was like watching a two-person performance of ‘12 Angry Men’ where one actor played one part and one was mad enough for the other 11.” ~ Seth Meyers

Yes We Can (will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas)

The following article has been sitting in my inbox for the past two weeks... and the YouTube video (lyrics on the right-side) arrived only hours ago - seems as if they were MFEO (Made For Each Other in Sleepless in Seattle-speak), eh?... :-)

To think one of these candidates will end up as the Democratic Party nominee is amazing, and the fact one could very well choose the other as a running mate is beyond gratifying - talk about the ultimate win-win (yes we can!).

The woman vs. the black guy
Who's more terrifying to red states, smart Hillary or savvy Barack? The nation trembles
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

It's the question everyone seems to want to address, the imponderable and frightening and slightly insane sociopolitical phenomenon that's happening right now to such a degree that even the left is falling all over itself trying to digest and parse and comprehend it all at once, and simply can't.

It is this: Just how the hell did it come to pass and which planets finally aligned and what sort of Kool-Aid has been gulped by the universe that the two white-hot Dem frontrunners, the two brightest lights on the political spectrum for the 2008 presidential election also just so happen to be members of the two most controversial/least represented groups in modern uber-white ultra-patriarchal American snake-oil politics — which is to say, a smart, savvy woman and a smart, savvy black male?

It's a stunning thing to watch. Right now, the various spurts of venom aimed at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from conservative pundits and politicos are, at best, scattershot and convulsive, with only MSNBC's Chris Matthews proving himself to be a consistent blowhard jackass in his relentless slamming of Hillary by claiming that she only made it this far due to adultery-survivor sympathy. Hey, Chris? 2001 called. It wants its puerile, sexist analysis back. Thank you.

Yes indeed, the sexism that surrounds Clinton's run like a toxic fog is almost too easy to spot. (Fox News is, naturally, fueling its entire 2008 programming schedule with it.) It is de facto, built-in, implied and inherent in the coverage of just about everything she does, and what's most amazing to me is that people are still surprised that the sexism is there at all, much less so apparent and shameless.

To which I can only reply: I'm sorry, did you somehow miss the last seven years of brutal, testosterone-drunk war-sucking macho neocon hell? Did your noise-canceling headphones somehow block out the sound of those 10,000 tiny, clashing penises, banging like Satan's own baby rattle all the way from Osama's cave to the Oval Office to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's gay fetish dungeon in downtown Tehran?

Because truly, while a record number of women currently serve in Congress, Washington is still very much an inbred old-boy's network, so deeply entrenched in ancient male power structures and so drunk on stagnant machismo and so poisoned by the Christian right's woman-in-her-place mentality, it will require a couple more decades and a few hundred more dead southern congressmen before the innate sexism finally fades to a tolerable scar.

(Actually, at the moment, it's tough to tell which aspect the right hates more about Hillary: the fact that she's a woman or the fact that she's a Clinton. I think it's a lethal mix of both, the unconscionable right-wing double whammy, insult added to injury and all resulting in a liberal vagina monologue the misogynistic right is simply not ready to hear.)

As for Obama, well, he's not so easy. The inherent racism simmering all over Bush Nation right now over his, um, Negro-ness? Blackitude? Really good tan? (they don't know what to call it, safely) is decidedly more subtle, more insidious, less acceptable as public display than flat-out, everyday Chris Matthews-grade sexism, and therefore, not so easy to spot. Not yet, anyway.

So far, no one on the right really seems to know the best way to play the race card against Obama. Not that they won't try. Will they go after the drug thing? Paint him as a friend to scary hip-hop thug rappers? Resort to saying 'Obama' and 'Osama' in the same sentence so as to confuse the same red state knuckle-draggers who still believe Saddam orchestrated 9/11? Hard to tell. But rest assured, they'll find a way.

Or, you know, maybe they won't. After all, the right has its own heaping bucket of problems right now, not the least of which is the weakest and craziest and least palatable field of GOP contenders in 50 years. There's the chipper creationist nutball who loves him some Chuck Norris, the stupefied Mormon mannequin who simply cannot believe the world is so icky and complicated, the doddering Iraq-loving war vet who seems to be getting more unstable by the minute, and the cross-dressing former New York mayor who has "9/11" tattooed on his ego in fake blood. And oh yes, a zany old anti-choice libertarian who somehow keeps raising piles of cash and sending fascinating postcards from the edge of political reason. Cool!

Perhaps this is the best news of all. The right is a fractured, inchoate mess, with the once Karl Rove-unified evangelical core now gloriously splintered and disillusioned and completely unsure where to turn to find a candidate who will hate gays and slam women's rights and mistrust foreigners as much as Bush promised, but never completely delivered. They can't yet attack Obama because they're too busy destroying themselves.

But I'm most amazed/amused at the one big question that keeps hovering over the media and infiltrating the political blogs — does all this excitement over Hillary and Barack mean the nation is finally ready for a female president? A black president? Have we, at long last, come so far that a guy like John Edwards, an excellent, likable, all-around candidate and a classic populist southern Democrat, actually finishes third?

The answer, I'm afraid, is no, we are not ready. Not by a long shot.

This is the big, astounding myth. See, "ready" would imply we've more or less eliminated the sexism and at least come to terms with the racism, and therefore neither is much of a factor in the slightest. It's a bit like asking if America is finally ready to rid itself of its toxic love of guns and strips malls and numb Christian groupthink. In other words, if you have to ask, we ain't.

However, we do seem to be at this weird flash point, a privileged moment in political history where the anti-Bush recoil has become so potent and the right-wing collapse is so profound and the women/youth vote (at least at the moment) seems so invigorated that it all might coalesce just right and catapult a woman or a black male into the presidency, despite the hardcore misogyny and racism built like a cancer into the framework of this nation. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Look at it this way: Much in the same way Bush whored Sept. 11 to drag the nation to its lowest emotional, fiscal and political point in 100 years, so could the new wave of enraged, inspired voters leverage the Bush nightmare itself to bounce us as far as possible in the other direction. Hell, it could be even weirder than that: Hillary or Obama wins the nomination, chooses the other as running mate. Talk about your perfect liberal storm.

Are we ready for it? Doesn't matter. Quit asking what amounts to a dispiriting, futile question, and let's go find out.

SONG: Yes We Can by will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas (will.i.am's comments on the writing of the song)

BOOK: The Politics of Hope: Reviving the Dream of Democracy by Donna Zajonc

POEM: Beginners by Denise Levertov

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

"From too much love of living,

Hope and desire set free,

Even the weariest river

Winds somewhere to the sea-"

But we have only begun

To love the earth.

We have only begun

To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?

- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?

- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,

only begun to envision

how it might be

to live as siblings with beast and flower,

not as oppressors.

Surely our river

cannot already be hastening

into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot

drag, in the silt,

all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet

-there is too much broken

that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other

that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know

the power that is in us if we would join

our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must

complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

QUOTE: A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night and a bright, infinite future." ~ Leonard Bernstein, The New York Times, 30 October 1988