AncienTrails

Imbolc and the Durango Moon

Decided I’m still on vacation through the end of next week. Why break up a good run when another one starts next Monday?

Result: Breakfast out at the Conifer Cafe.

Kent, my server, had a military haircut, civilian style. High sidewalls somewhat grown out and short bangs. A cleancut All American boy. He also had a waiter’s book with an American flag on the front. Hmm.

A vacation book by John Grisham, The Whistler, sat on my table. “What’s your book about?” “Lawyers and crooked judges.” “Well. We could sure use more rule of law here.” Kent tapped the American flag then pulled out a $2 bill and pointed to the picture in a practiced move. “I always keep Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe close. Those brilliant framers.” He went off to put in my order for eggs over easy and country fried steak.

Pondered that.

At the end of my meal when Kent came to collect my check, I asked him, “So. In your opinion what’s the greatest threat to the rule of law right now?”

He looked a little surprised, then pleased. He gathered his ideas, looking at the blue Colorado morning.

“The first one is that two branches of our government are illegitimate.”

When I gave him a puzzled look, he said, “Dominion and those other voting machine companies. All connected to foreign powers. We need to go back to paper ballots, something we can check and backup.”

Oh. But he had more.

A serious face. “Then we passed the Glass-Stegall act and gave banks the ability to do anything they want.” Oh. Yeah. Populists and I agree at points. This is one of them.

“In the 2010’s we basically legalized propaganda. I’d say voting and the banks though. Those are the biggest threats.”

He didn’t explain legalizing propaganda and I didn’t press. I’d heard what interested me.

Kent was not stupid, nor in a way, preachy. He stated all this as fact. Fact that anyone one paying attention already knew.

I agree that the three things he mentioned, along with Citizens United, are big threats to our democracy. And, on Glass-Steagall, I agree 100%.

Voting rules and measures represent the most exigent threat to our democracy because of the legislation, bolstered by the Big Lie, that puts more and more hurdles in the way of voters. That means we don’t get a free and fair election.

Legalizing propaganda. Making it easier and easier for the dissemination of false “facts” through social media, message boards, and far-right wing media has made it impossible to have a decent conversation rooted in reality. As Kent illustrated.

So here we are. What Kent seemed most like was a Mormon missionary. Clean, respectable, polite and convinced of things so wacky you wouldn’t to spend long talking to him. Oh, and there’s that too close to religious reverence for “our brilliant framers.” Yeah, white men all. Land and slave owners. Convinced that life was fine that way. But also brilliant, yes.

Gonna take a long, long time to sort out.

Summer and the Aloha Moon

“The Iron Age

Last was the age of iron: suddenly,

all forms of evil burst forth upon this time

of baser mettle; modesty, fidelity,

and truth departed; in their absence came

fraud, guile, deceit, the use of violence,

and shameful lusting after acquisitions. (Bk 1: 172-177)

…

Now men demand that the rich earth provide

more than the crops and sustenance it owes..” (Bk 1: 185,6)

Charles Martin, trans. Ovid’s Metamorphoses (published 8 A.C.E.)

By now you’ve seen the latest. (In)Justice Roberts: “…it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.” Answered in dissent:

“Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, countered: “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”” Washington Post, 6/30/2022

This on the heels of Dobbs and the decision making concealed carry not only easier, but paving the way for a possible elimination of any form of gun control. Not to mention the ominous foreshadowing by (In)Justice Thomas about LGBTQA+ rights.

And who knows what may lie beyond them since a friend who knows the law, Cousin Diane, pointed out that Loving v. Virginia is the case that gave the rationale for granting same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws against any one of a different gender orientation. If Loving goes, even (In)Justice Thomas will be in trouble. Course he already is. That Ginni.

A time of rampant unashamed racism tightening governmental control (oh, the irony) over women’s bodies will disproportionately effect poor women and women of color in red states. You know the demographics of the Deep South. Intersectionality on display. Classism and racism combine to grind down ever further the women of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Florida. At least now you can go to school and pray for them.

Groups focused on root causes of racism, classism, climate change, the abysmal state of American agriculture, and immigration get my money, my attention, and my hopes.

The High Country News is a progressive voice in the West, edited and printed out of Paonia, Colorado. In this issue it has a wonderful article by a Native writer, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, titled Environmental Justice is Only the Beginning. Here’s a taste of her thinking:

“Manifest destiny and technology-intensive modernism, amplified by the incentive of capital, have resulted in gross-mismanagement, and in many cases, total destruction of forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, wetlands, watersheds ocean and desert biomes and countless other ecosystems-all within a few short centuries of European arrival.” HCN, July, 2022, p42-43

Black Lives Matter, The Root, and the Southern Poverty Law Project are my go to sources about racism. I’m sure there are other, equally good organizations, but these seem level-headed, aimed at the goal, and actively pursuing racial justice in tangible ways. That tangible ways is important to me. Abstract theorizing is necessary. Yes to Critical Race Theory for example, but if that’s all there is, nothing changes.

Classism.org has an easy to grasp definition with a page full of examples. In many ways this is my core justice issue having grown up in a working class town in agricultural/industrial middle America. Many of my friend’s parents were faithful members of the UAW and got the benefits that accrue from organized workers facing down the bosses of multi-national corporations.

Many of my friends themselves suffered when Detroit did not do well as Volkswagen and Toyota ripped into their sales in the 1970’s. My hometown, Alexandria, as I’ve written here before, was never the same after. Two factories employing thousands of workers went dark over a few years.

Democratic socialism is the answer to oligarchy, but the oligarchs consistently use the boogeyman of communism, which they don’t understand either, to paint socialists as nothing more than Friends of Russia.

So. Why the Devil and the GOP? Because behind each ism I’ve discussed and the horrendous, terrifying decisions of this Extreme Court, lies capitalist America. And not just capitalist America but a few of its most rapacious winners like fellow gangsters Bezos, Gates, Thiel, and Musk. Straight Outta the C suite, brother. The oligarchs.

Our culture’s deepest injustices have their roots in the Golden Calf. Some believe it was destroyed at the base of Mt. Sinai, but it keeps getting rebuilt by frightened individuals who must amass more and more and more to feel safe. Gold is not safety. Gold is a prison, a place to hide from what you fear. Often it’s a place high up, surrounded by glass and looking out on the lights of the city below.

I’m not going to discuss right now how the oligarchs have convinced the white working class to fear the same things they do, but it is not accidental, and the story has it source deep in American history.

That’s it, then. The Devil’s party is the GOP. Not because they’re satanists, no, but because they worship an idol made of bonds and stock options. The GOP is the party of the oligarchs. Money in its diverse guises is their center of value rather than other people and the planet on which we live.

And, the Devil has taken control.