A REQUEST TO THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Google tells me how many times each day my blog is visited, but it does not tell me how many individual people visit. Now, it is obvious that some people check in many times each day and I would imagine that there are regular readers who do not check in every day, so taking all and all I think there must be perhaps several thousand people around the world who could be considered regular readers of this blog.

 

The comments section is dominated by no more than seven or eight people, depending on how you disambiguate the anonymati. It may of course be that the rest of the readers have no interest in commenting but every so often I catch sight of an interesting comment that almost gets lost in the flood of MS multipart comments or S. Wallerstein’s comments or those of LFC.

 

I feel like the teacher in whose classroom two or three of the students dominate the discussion while less forward members of the class sit quietly. I would like to give those other 2000 or so people a chance to speak up if they wish without feeling that they must push their way into the discussion. So I am going to ask that for one week starting today, the small number of regular commentators simply remain silent. I am aware that I can curate the blog and painstakingly delete all of the comments by the usual suspects but I do not want to do that. The comments are not unwarranted or uninteresting or inappropriate, although they do seem to be getting more querulous and petulant, but they simply take up all the available oxygen in the comments space.

 

So I will ask you please if you have been one of the regular commenters simply to withhold your comments for one week. No cute little remarks with a self-deprecating apology for breaking silence or any nonsense like that. Just knock it off for one week and give other people a chance.

 

Now it is entirely possible that when this quiet empty space appears in the comments section, none of those folks who have up till now not commented will seize the opportunity. They may be quite content to read what is on the blog without nodding in. So be it. We shall see for one week whether there are folks out there who have been wanting to speak up but have been put off by the flood of comments from those who appear so often.

 

I shall continue to blog of course. I mean, it is my blog after all so the timeout does not apply to me. I am counting on the rest of you to respect my wishes.

PARIS: THE HARDEST JIGSAW PUZZLE SUSIE AND I HAVE EVER DONE

 

1000 Pieces 

THINGS DON'T LOOK GOOD

I am growing increasingly apprehensive about the near term political future and tranquility of this country. I am especially concerned about the decision of a large group of Republican attorneys general to join the Texas suit calling for the overthrow of the presidential results in four states that went for Biden. I think it is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court will even consider the case and if they were actually to rule in favor of the appellants you could write the epitaph of what counts as American democracy. But consider what this suit does. It puts high-ranking officials in 12 states publicly on record as claiming that Biden has not been legitimately elected. Add that to the silence of all but a handful of congressional Republicans and you have a festering disaster. Perhaps 40 or 50 million Americans who already believe the election was “rigged” now have the support of a large number of respected or at least putatively respected state public officials who not merely echo conspiracy theories but have actually put their names to a legal filing with the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

This is not going away. In the middle run it could be the death of the Republican Party as we know it but in the short run it is going to make it almost impossible for Biden to govern. His first task will be to oversee the vaccination of 250 million or more Americans and noncitizen residents. Suppose the rollout of the vaccine begins and Biden gets praise in the media for it, as would be customary with such an effort under any president. Trump will begin by claiming credit, but if he is not given that credit, does anyone think that he would not try to undermine the effort by claiming that the vaccine is illegitimate or dangerous or unnecessary?

 

Blithely optimistic commentators keep saying that after the electoral college meets or after the Congress votes to accept their report Republican legislators will start acknowledging that Biden is the duly elected president. I think that is extremely unlikely, especially in light of such developments as the action of the Republican attorneys general. If the Democrats take the two senatorial seats in Georgia, some of the damage can be avoided or repaired although by no means most of it, but if, as is after all likely, Republicans hold one or two of those seats, the Senate will be controlled by people unwilling to accept the election as legitimate and unprepared even to acknowledge that Biden is president.

 

Never mind that large numbers of the election doubters are armed to the teeth. I think we are in for some very bad times. Interestingly enough and somewhat unexpectedly, the strongest voice I have heard arguing for an implacable war without quarter against the election doubters in the Republican Party as it now stands is former conservative Republican operative and advisor Steve Schmidt. 

If Biden is delusional enough to suppose that after January 20 he can “reach across the aisle” and establish a working relationship with the people who were his colleagues in the Senate in the old days, and if he proves to be incapable of quickly adjusting himself to the reality that this is impossible, then we have a political and also a social disaster on our hands.

 

On the bright side, I managed to finish a rather tricky Thursday New York Times crossword puzzle, although in more time than the Thursday puzzle usually take me. Sufficient unto the day…

CLOSE CALL

We are now watching a full-scale fascist coup attempt in slow motion with assorted comic interludes. The attempt will almost certainly fail, thank God, but we are coming a great deal closer than most people, myself included, would have thought possible.

 

In order to seize control of the United States, Trump needs some or all of six elements of the American power structure: the Army, the Republican Party, the corporate elite, the judiciary, the senior administrative hierarchy of the federal government, and at least a good deal of the state and local administrative hierarchy. He has complete control of two of these six – the Republican Party and the senior administrative hierarchy of the federal government. But he has failed to take control of any element of the judiciary, he has little or no support of the state and local administrative hierarchy, the corporate elite has clearly decided to sit this one out, and far and away most important of all he has no control of the Army.

 

Trump is a buffoon and many of his closest aides – most notably Rudy Giuliani – are buffoons as well, but it would be a very bad mistake to suppose that because of his personal inadequacies, which are legion, he is not really a threat. Sophisticated, accomplished, well-educated elites perpetually underestimate fascist wannabes whom they would shrink from inviting to a dinner party.

 

I must say that as a veteran – however long ago my service and however insignificant its nature – I take a certain satisfaction in the fact that the uniformed services have completely resisted Trump’s efforts to use them as instruments of his dictatorial desires. I may not like what the US military has been used for by the presidents of the last 70 years but I have always admired their self-discipline, their efficiency, and their steadfast support of the Constitution (I say that as an unrepentant anarchist, by the way).

 

Would the Democratic Party have so completely subordinated itself to the fascist and authoritarian desires of a president of their party? I honestly do not know, although I suspect you would see more openly courageous resistance than has been manifest in the Republican Party.

 

As I have remarked on this blog before, one of the few benefits of this fascist coup attempt is that it will weaken and perhaps even put to rest the collective American fantasy that the United States is “exceptional,” that it is not subject to the forces of fascism and authoritarianism that have darkened the history of the rest of the world for centuries.

 

As I sit in comfortable isolation and watch this coup attempt unfold, I find myself wondering what the future of American politics will be and most particularly what the future will be for the Republican Party. At the moment, only 10% of those elected on the Republican ticket to the Senate or House of Representatives have publicly acknowledged that Joe Biden won the election. I think it is extremely likely that a sizable proportion of the remaining 90% will never acknowledge that Biden won honestly. Completely lacking anything remotely resembling character and desperate to hold on to their jobs, the men and women of The Grand Old Party will continue, with winks, nods, dog whistles, and bullhorns to tell their voters that Trump wuz robbed. In the short run, this may actually help us in the Georgia runoffs but in the longer run it threatens serious social and political disorder and dysfunction.

 

Now you might imagine that as a professed anarchist I would welcome the evaporation of the belief in the myth of the legitimacy of the state but you would be wrong. Ever since I wrote my little defense of anarchism, I have been quite well aware that it might be necessary to foster rather than to undermine that myth in order to accomplish all the concrete changes that I desire in the society in which I have spent my entire long life. The civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, the union movement, the struggle for a livable wage, the campaign for universal healthcare, and, perhaps most important of all, the effort to address climate change – all of these can be accomplished in a modern world only with organized effective political action, and that action can succeed only if those who commit their energies and lives to it are sustained by a belief in the legitimacy of popular democracy.

 

I am desperately grateful that Trump managed to bring out enough Biden voters to defeat himself and perhaps that should be sufficient. But I fear for the future.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE "PARIS"

Susie and I, being forbidden both by the French and by rational self-interest from visiting our apartment in Paris, decided that the next best thing would be to do a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Paris. Since moving to a retirement community, I have become somewhat addicted to jigsaw puzzles and I say, without the slightest modicum of modesty, that I am rather good at it. But this is the hardest one we have ever tackled. Just sorting out the edge pieces and assembling the outline was a very big job. Then Susie put together the Eiffel Tower and I attached it to an edge piece, givinng me for a brief moment the sense that we were making great progress. I then did Notre Dame and that looks great, but then things got really really difficult. Lots of tiny little figures in a variety of settings and a seemingly endless series of Parisian buildings, each with slightly different windows. I am quite confident we will finish it before we get the vaccine, but that means another several months at a minimum.

Oh well, that and the daily New York Times crossword puzzle online will keep me amused until January 5, when we shall see how the Georgia runoff elections come out.

By the way, during the nine months that we have been essentially in quarantine, I have lost about 9 pounds so this is not all bad.

I realize these remarks are not up to the level of the recent flood of comments, which are very very serious, but this is after all a blog, which is to say a web log, so I figure triviality has its place here. I promise to say something more serious about the world in future posts.

THIS AND THAT

1.  When you take a one hour walk at 7 AM wearing short pants and it is 29°, you get cold.

2.  It appears that Trump may actually succeed in getting the two Democratic senatorial candidates in Georgia elected by persuading his loyal cult followers not to participate in a rigged election. Should this happen, it would be strong evidence that God exists and that she has a wicked sense of humor.

3.  I listened yesterday to the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board offering the opinion that the pandemic will accelerate the movement to online and virtual economic activity and that this will quite disproportionately disadvantage the poor, the nonwhite, and those with fewer educational credentials. The thought was not new to me but I was quite impressed by who was offering it publicly. Later on, when my knees thaw out, I will try to speculate for a bit on the lasting changes that we will be dealing with even after everybody gets vaccinated.

4.  It is not all bad being old. Susie and I should be right in line after those of our generation in nursing facilities. I am beginning to think we might actually be able to go back to Paris next June in time for the annual celebration called Fete de la Musique.  (Forgive the absence of the circumflex – there are limits to this dictating program.) 

LAST MINUTE GIG

I spent two hours yesterday afternoon as the guest at a graduate Columbia seminar on anarchism taught by a distinguished member of the Columbia University comparative literature department, Stethis Gourgouris.  15 bright students scattered all across the world, having just read my little book In Defense of Anarachism and my essay On Violence.  It was great fun, although I must confess tiring for an old guy. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

As Donald Sutherland, in a wonderful turn as Mr. Bennett, says at the end of the recent remake of Pride and Prejudice, I am quite at my leisure, so if anyone across the world is looking for a guest in a university seminar, I am available.

Once again, there is something to be said for zoom.