Rantish

What I saw of the eclipse: 6:35 a.m. HST. Just humid;  couldn't make out anything, really.

I'm feeling pretty good. The codeine drugs I'm taking keep me comfortable.  They also make me indolent!  No wonder so many young addicts are lounging around instead of being productive. Why bother?  Life is grand if I get my fix.  I really can't cut back on the amount of hydrocodone I'm taking, which I need to keep down mucus secretions, but I never take more than prescribed.

I'm understanding that the current crop of disasters will not leave the rich unscathed. Even Trump and Rush are going to suffer setbacks, as their Florida properties get destroyed. . If the public balks at giving them large sums of our tax money to rebuild, we might even see some serious efforts in the direction of reducing inequality:distributing money more fairly. They might have to share the loot with others who need to put their lives back together.  Too optimistic? Maybe. In his book, Capital, Thomas Piketty points out that after the disasters of WWII the ruling class had to make concessions to the (white,male) masses in order to create over-all prosperity, strengthen American imperialism and contain the threat of Communism. Less favored groups shared in some of the prosperity but had no power but rather were dependent on the good will of the white males. It was important to be useful to them and not to make them angry with demands. Once the draft was gone, the younger men could cash in and get their share of the goodies.Women and minorities were getting rebellious, though, and the fight was on.

The  right, now in its decadent end phase,  can no longer deliver the goods, not to their base, even,  and so this is the golden opportunity for Democrats to work to pr0vide a decent way of life to the masses and save what can be saved. After all, a system that fosters misery is not worth upholding. Satisfying though it may be to give non-whites and non-males a hard time, no matter how looked down on,  we are necessary and are truly sick and tired of the arrogance of white men. Trump is the type of the decadent paterfamilias who claims to protect but spreads misery around. Sanders is a man with an ego that far outstrips his abilities. 

I can hardly wait to read Hillary Clinton's book.  I am seriously angry at the Bernie people who still keep trying to  get me to share in their enthusiasm for him. One such person did call me up and indicated that she knew she had been fooled, but she could not bring herself to apologize. She was one of a group here who have made a career out of styling themselves as the moral left as against the "establishment," even as they commandeer the good jobs, grants, etc. while being careful to kick rivals down the ladder by impugning them with charges of being less than pure. That was what Sanders did to Clinton, of course.

Sanders was on Chris Hayes's program last night putting on his act. Hayes is right to give him a forum, and apparently he can stand to talk to him. All that eye rolling, the tight lips, the grating voice. He is not as unattractive as Trump, but Trump is sui generis in the unattractive department.

Sanders is an old leftie who never left the 60s. It was his big era. The attention, the praise, the girls...  I remember how full of themselves those white leftie rabblerousers were and how most of them found some nice way to get along after the draft was abolished. (That was their real issue.) I hated the 60s, mostly. No new vistas opened up for me until the 70s, which for me involved getting out of the U.S.

Time marches on, and Sanders does not seem to notice. I guess you could call him an old firebrand!  Most risible is his claim that Democrats can't talk to working class people like the folks he grew up with in Brooklyn. For  the most part they don't interest me. Why do I have to care?  Why is it that their take on life is one I must strive to understand (so authentic, so man of the people-ish, the only authentic Americans, the ones who really work).. Why are they entitled to so much understanding when life goes wrong for them, whereas for me it's just fate and I should bear up under it all?

Comments

[Michael Strickland]

Good rant. And yes, if I hear another old white male leftie (and I am one) go on about how we need to organize the people, I roll my eyes with you.

[Wisewebwoman]

Thanks Hattie. I've had it up to here
with privileged White males. They run rampant in my own province spouting shyte. As they do everywhere.

XO
WWW

[Celia]

Went to the Democratic caucus here and grew repeatedly angry and fed up with the Bernie supporters claiming the high ground as "moral compasses" while giving the election away. Bunch of fools.

[Z]

Sanders is mainstream Democrat and the Clintons are conservative Democrats, with views that were those of moderate Republicans back then. There were actual leftists then, and more actual leftists earlier, and there are people to the left of Sanders now.

I think that really, there's a huge difference in political point of view between the Clinton people and the further left people. You say it is betrayal but why do you think you have rights to me, the right to tell me how think? What makes you so much better and more deserving than people like me? I don't tell you who to vote for, I just realize you are far more conservative than I.

[Hattie]

People like me, workaday women, are tired of being patronized and want to see politicians who put our interests first.

[Brandon]

I'll say this about Hillary's book: It should be atop the bestseller chart upon its premiere.

[nick]

It's hard to see how the present reactionary regimes in the UK and US can survive much longer, given the way they're systematically wrecking their respective countries. On just about every indicator, Theresa May and the Tories are making everyone worse off - static wages, rising inflation, sky-high rents, insecure employment etc. Surely like Trump they'll be thrown out eventually?

[Marianna]

Left politics are antiquated, based on the notion that if the Lumpen only understood what is good and righteous, they would revolt and smash the system. There is no understanding at all of how low the average white American is, how self involved, how limited in outlook, how ineducable. Hey, I went to school with them! I worked with them! Some of them are even family members! They are like Trump. They like him because he is vulgar and mediocre, like them. They fancy a tribalism. If I were a cartoonist, I would depict them circling the wagons, sniffing each others' butts.
So against that there is the left wing virtue signaling: more righteous than thou. I blame the 60s. It was a great and fun era for some. The young table pounders did very well, got rich and famous and were still getting away with their act, right up to and including the fiasco of the Bernie campaign. Well, that's done, except for Bernie's trademark rant, while the monster he created in his eagerness to destroy Hillary Clinton twitches in its death throes.
Business people will tell you right to your face that all they care about is the bottom line. Is that so hard to understand? They offer a few goodies to their compliant followers, but they are the ones who own things. Unluckily for all of us, they no longer can control the forces their greed has unleashed, and they are taking us all down with them. There used to be places to escape to, but that's over. It's an overriding catastrophic system which has us all trapped. We are all Floridians now.
So let's hum a few bars of Solidarity Forever while Bernie leads his minions over the cliff. Honestly.

[Janininsanfran]

Nice rant. Organizers don't really organize people -- good ones just put themselves in position so that when people get so pissed or desperate that they want to act, the organizer has something useful to offer. It's a subtle craft that looks easy when it works.

Glad you are enjoying indolence. Cheers from the Camino.

[Marianna]

Jan: I wish I could be with you. I do get homesick for Europe and especially Spain.

[Marianna]

Jan: I hear you. But the organizers are presumably guided by altruism while the desperate ones are focused on their self interest. How does this become a coalition? How does this work for change?
I notice that the Houston floods created a host of feel-good human interest stories of people rescuing people and pets , sheltering people,feeding people and so on. Showing again what big hearts we Americans have. I'm not hearing many stories like that around Irma. Instead, the rescue workers are locking themselves into safe spaces and won't come out until the storm passes.
We have well and truly had it and just don't want to admit our true nature: selfish and defensive.
As they say in German, "Rettet euch wer kann." Rescue yourself if you can.

[Brandon]

"Instead, the rescue workers are locking themselves into safe spaces and won't come out until the storm passes."

Where are you hearing this?

[Marianna]

On the news.

[Brandon]

Like this, then.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2017/live-updates/weather/hurricane-irma-a-monster-storms-devastating-path/at-the-orlando-convention-center-floridas-multi-state-rescue-operation-is-ready-to-go/?utm_term=.763583121316

[Marianna]

I get your point, but why all the heroic posturing? In Cuba the army simply went out and gathered people up.They couldn't stay. They had no fatalities.

[Brandon]

At first I thought you meant the people who were going to ride out the storm when you wrote "all the heroic posturing." I hope the press keeps track of the rescue efforts.

Cuba is not much smaller than Florida in area or population. Its preparation for hurricanes is noteworthy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_Emergency_Response_System#References

[Janininsanfran]

Are organizers motivated by altruism? Not sure. Organizing is not particularly humane or empathetic. It is more a rare, sometimes useful, vocation to manage conflict, perhaps to win something for people collectively. Organizers are not necessarily nice people, tho one hopes they are good people.

Reached Melide, Galicia today, only 52k from Santiago de Compostela..

[Marianna]

Brandon: Oh, OK. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Jan: We are lucky here to have a Mayor we can trust, Harry Kim! He is a civil defense expert. Still, wouldn't it be great to have a federal civil defense program like Cuba's? It's funny, but I did not get much of a feeling that Cubans were idealistic but rather pretty hard headed and realistic about matters of survival. I did not get the sense that there was much of a moral burden on people. After all, Castro said more than once, if you don't like it, leave! Many dedicated revolutionaries urged their children to go and find opportunities elsewhere. We could have picked the refugees up: god knows there are plenty of fancy boats down there, instead of letting so many perish at sea. That would have displayed the generosity we like to pat ourselves on the back for but never really extend.
You are getting close to your goal! I am quite jealous, of course.

[Marianna]

Jan: Maybe it's organizing in such a hit or miss fashion that's the real problem.

[Brandon]

"[W]ouldn't it be great to have a federal civil defense program like Cuba's?"

What is FEMA?

[Marianna]

Not too great and Trump is ruining it.