Speaking Of Symbolism…

Most sane observers understand that Trump’s wall is entirely symbolic. If built, it clearly wouldn’t prevent the entry of undocumented folks (the majority of whom fly in and overstay their visas) or the successful smuggling of drugs (which tend to come by ship or air).

Even Fox News rebutted the Administration’s claim that 4,000 terrorists had been stopped at the Southern border (the actual number appears to be 6 people on the watch list). I’m told that most of the Saudis responsible for 9/11 entered through Canada.

The obscenely expensive wall Trump wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico is solely intended to send a message: ignore the poem on Lady Liberty. If you are brown, you aren’t welcome.

The government shutdown triggered by his tantrum over the wall provided Trump watchers with another symbol–one more example of how truly corrupt our know-nothing President can be. Not that most of us needed the reminder.

As federal employees tried to figure out how they would pay their mortgages and put food on the table during the shutdown, as landlords threatened to evict tenants dependent upon Section 8 vouchers that stopped coming, as millions of Americans who rely on SNAP (food stamps) faced the likelihood that those benefits wouldn’t be forthcoming…Talking Points Memo reported that the President managed to keep a historic site incorporated in his hotel fully staffed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Smithsonian museums are closed. There are no federal staffers to answer tourists’ questions at the Lincoln Memorial. And across the United States, national parks are cluttered with trash. Yet despite the federal government shutdown, a historic clock tower at the Trump International Hotel remained open Friday for its handful of visitors, staffed by green-clad National Park Service rangers.

“We’re open!” one National Park Service ranger declared around lunchtime, pushing an elevator button for a lone visitor entering the site through a side entrance to ride to the top of the 315-foot-high, nearly 120-year-old clock tower.

The Trump administration appears to have gone out of its way to keep the attraction in the federally owned building that houses the Trump hotel open and staffed with National Park Service rangers, even as other federal agencies shut all but the most essential services.

A watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information request over the Trump Hotel’s exemption from a shutdown that furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers and crippled many agencies.

Completed in 1899, the Romanesque-style former post office is on the National Register of Historic Places. The GSA pays for the National Park Service to run the building’s clock tower for visits by the general public. The tower initially closed to the public after the shutdown started. The GSA noticed then that the deal under which the park service staffs the site had expired, and renewed it, and the park service reopened the tower this week, the agency said.

There could hardly be a clearer symbol of Trump’s priorities.

Are more than 800,000 hard-working federal workers desperately trying to make ends meet? Is air travel becoming dangerous as TSA personnel call in sick rather than continue working without pay? Are the national parks overflowing with trash? Well, first things first–we certainly don’t want to inconvenience Trump’s business.

The wall is a symbol of his bigotry; the park rangers tending to the clock tower are a symbol of his self-engrossed avarice.

His presidency is a shameful symbol of national decline.

39 Comments

  1. It’s FUTURCIDE. We’re undermining the whole fuck’en planet. Maybe I should go out and demonstrate by setting myself on fire. However, I doubt if anyone would notice at this point in time.

    It’s like watching a monster movie. And the only remedy is to set the monster on fire. I’m not joking.

  2. Exactly WHAT is Trump’s wall a symbol of…other than his own egotistical idiocy?

    Is there any LEGAL basis for his demand or the shutdown? When McConnell cannot be forced to hold hearings on the newly submitted bipartisan bills to end the shutdown to continue wall negotiations (as he could not be forced to hold hearings on President Obama’s nominated SCOTUS candidate); does the House have any Constitutional power to force McConnell or the Senate into action? I believe he is doing this so all finger-pointing would not be directly at Trump and the Republican party…and because he has so far been allowed to rule this country…including during the Obama administration.

    WHAT IS LEGAL ABOUT ANY OF THIS SHUTDOWN AND TRUMP’S DEMAND FOR BILLIONS OF DOLLARS FOR A WALL? Regarding those 6 on the “watch list”; why has ICE not weeded out possible terrorists from the hundreds of immigrants they arrested and separated from their children or stopped the drugs coming over the Mexican border when that is their responsibility under Homeland Security regulations? We have a Border Patrol to protect the many thousands of miles of our borders; including the borders of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico and other island territories; we also have a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Department to deal with those stopped at all of our borders. FIVE BILLION, SIX HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS TO WALL US IN ALONG APPROXIMATELY 700 MILES OF BORDER IS THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE LEVEL OF PRICE GOUGING THIS COUNTRY WILL EVER SEE.

    The only symbolism I can see in any of this is FOLLOW THE MONEY – including where our tax dollars are going to support Trump and his family in the manner to which he has always been accustomed and fill offshore bank accounts of his administrators and supporters and how many members of Congress?

  3. No, the Constitution sets aside both houses of Congress as independent entities. The problem lies with the Republicans who populate the Senate. Mitch McConnell went home to Kentucky so he wouldn’t have to hear the noise coming from rational, honest Senators. He and the likes of John Cornyn, Ted Cruz and the other compromised Republicans in the Senate are only worried about their reelection. They think that this will be forgotten history by 2020. Moreover, they do NOT want to get in Trump’s crosshairs, because they are feeble-minded and easily frightened. Corrupt, compromised people will do nothing that goes against the strong father model they are compelled to follow.

    Nothing will change until Republican Senators actually fulfill their Constitutional duties and actually do something that looks like governing for the people of the country instead of their donors.

  4. Republican Senators will not do anything to fulfill their Constitutional duties until it becomes politically expedient to do so. Forget ethics and morality and common sense. If they ever were motivated by those things they would have acted long before this latest crisis.

  5. Some interesting facts:

    The $1.6 billion appropriated for border security was the exact amount requested initially by the administration.

    That is the same amount requested and appropriated for FY 2018. Of that amount, only 40% was spent

    Supposition:

    He doesn’t want a wall. He doesn’t care if he gets it or not. He wants chaos.

  6. federal employees are worried about putting food on their children, so sayeth the dumbass dubya.

  7. Isn’t it in fact all about keeping the spotlight OFF the ramping up of inquiries into the Trump administration and the likely disclosures coming from Mueller? If nothing else, Trump is a master distractor.

  8. Every day I wake up and get sick to my stomach that IQ45 has caused more problems than he solved overnight. This is a nightmare.

    Did anyone see Thomas Friedman’s interview on Wolf Blitzer yesterday? He was on fire! That is a must see interview.

    Marv, glad you’re back and hope your recovery was easy. Cheers.

  9. All of this talk is a waste of time. Trump is a Monster, the result of a failed attempt to manipulate the DNA of the BODY POLITIC by Gordon McLendon and Bunker Hunt.

    I’ve warned about this at least on one prior occasion on this blog, at least a year or so ago. I will say it again. Rent or purchase the CD of “The Killer Shrews” from Amazon.

    We’re witnessing a failed attempt to manipulate the DNA just like the failed attempt in the movie. Gordon McLendon who had the role of the mad scientist in the movie attempted to do the same thing in real life and we’re now seeing it played out just like in the movie, an uncontrollable disaster. All you have to do is replace a SHREW in your mind with the vision of DONALD TRUMP. It is as simple as that. I’ve tracked this political evolution for almost 50 years. Quit denying it.

  10. Peggy: “He wants chaos.” See Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine – the rise of disaster capitalism.” Milton Friedman et al wrote the Rx for destroying democracy: witness Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Iraq, New Orleans after Katrina. Remember the Green Zone in Baghdad, soon to include your hometown. Will Halliburton be installed as the government?

  11. Wayne,

    I’m in total agreement with you. But you have to look at the problem starting with the source like any disease. Trump is the product of a MIND VIRUS gone wild. You must go back to GROUND ZERO as you would in the treatment of any lethal virus, if you want to find a solution.

  12. The Iowa Republican, Steve King, said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

    A comment in this article on King summarizes very truthfully: >>> For 50% of them, they either a) simply voted for King because he was a Republican b) looked past his comments while condemning them or c) were totally fine — or even supportive — of King’s views on immigration and race.
    =====================================
    This is the Reactionary Right Wing Evangelical Republican Party of today. King’s comments while totally inaccurate and displaying a complete lack of intellect would fit in to Right Wing Radio or some Right Wing Web Site. However, you must consider that Steve King was elected to Congress.

    No one should pretend that there are “Moderate” Republicans. The Republican Party of today is Jim Crow in mind, body and spirit. Some are simply better at not vomiting out like King their true colors, an example would be McConnell.

  13. Pressure builds up:

    Hometown paper to McConnell: ‘Now would be a good time to choose to lead’

    Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has the power to end the Trump shutdown. He’s just refuses to use it. Now even his hometown paper is calling him out for his lack of leadership on the issue.

    In response to McConnell’s refusal to allow a vote to reopen the government, the Lexington Herald-Leader Editorial Board wrote, “we have one word: Override.”

    The GOP-led Senate passed a spending bill in December with the unanimous consent of every single senator. Even if Trump does not like the funding levels, there seems to be enough support to override a potential veto and reopen the government.

    But McConnell is refusing to exercise the powers granted to Congress in the constitution for the good of the country.

    “Now would be a good time to choose to lead,” the newspaper advised McConnell. https://shareblue.com/mitch-mcconnell-hometown-paper-trump-shutdown-lead/?fbclid=IwAR1XHRl84hwmmgLFxofnSsyfCQgwUx8UfwOvT3U4d3XUSePRYOe4w6pdUWw
    ==========================================================================

    Some have compared McConnell’s looks to a turtle, he has in fear of President Agent Orange pulled his head back into his shell.

  14. McConnell has effectively given the vote of the Senate to Trump by not allowing any bill Trump doesn’t like to come to a vote. If the House did the same thing, and with the judiciary stymied by the case or controversy requirement, then we have no tripartite government or checks and balances or a vote by the governed for their governors as envisioned by Madison but rather a vote for dictatorship and the end of our democracy.

    Such a devolution of power is especially worrisome in view of the fact that a counter investigation of the beneficiary of such a dictatorship by the FBI as a Russian agent is now underway, which makes one wonder whether Mitch is in on plot as well. These are dangerous times calling for vigilance by all citizens.

  15. This is another reality TV show that demonstrates that # 45 has no regard for the needs of other people. He has betrayed 800,000 people who dutifully serve our country. I am certain that many of them are not paid all that well.

    I knew he was bigoted before he got elected. I knew he would play on people’s fears before he got elected. That’s what he is doing with this symbolic “wall.” His base still does not understand that the idea that “father knows best” , that an authoritarian government is not what’s best for our country at this time.

    What’s sad is that both Congress and # 45 cannot come to the table and create an effective compromise which would include granting citizenship to immigrants who were brought here as children. They are part of the promise of America’s future. # 45 can’t open his mind to look at creative, innovative ways to patrol the border which might be much more effective than a wall. There is no discussion of how to empower the Coast Guard, border patrol agents, and air traffic security so that they can protect our country from the drug cartels who smuggle drugs in by air, sea, and our legal ports.

    And don’t get me started on how the systems of our health care industry laid the ground for an opioid epidemic.

    Of course what’s missing from this conversation is our contribution to the instability in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador which creates conditions for their citizens that make them want to immigrate to the US.

    I have no idea what must happen in order for this stalemate to end. I just want it to end. I just want people in Congress and #45 to start serving the American people instead of their partisan agenda.

  16. AgingLGrl – I feel the same way…each day feeling more and more discouraged and downright sad. I did see Thomas Friedman’s interview yesterday. Although, I felt worse after hearing his comments and noticing his discouraging tone when he admitted he doesn’t see change coming – republicans standing up to trump any time soon.
    A speech by Jon Tester, the senator from Montana, pleading to end the shutdown and criticizing McConnell has been making the rounds on Facebook.

    https://www.tester.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=6572

  17. Thanks Linda, I watched that clip of Sen Tester as well. He too, said what we are all thinking.

  18. While the ego of #45 and Republican politics allows this giant temper tantrum to continue, U.S citizens continue to suffer. Working for no pay isn’t even close to indentured servitude since the “employer” isn’t putting a roof overhead, clothes on backs, or food on the table. Puerto Rico has been totally forgotten (any wonder why they feel like non-citizens; worse than ugly, unwanted step-children). Discrimination and bigotry are commonplace. Don’t get me started on the matter of families and children being imprisoned for coming over our border without approval with hopes of safe haven and a future. This is not the U.S. I was born into. (I do not say America, since Canadians also consider themselves as being from America.) All this insanity because some sane folks see this southern border wall business as unnecessary and a tremendous waste of money that can be used for more important things? This is insanity!
    This MUST stop!

  19. Gerald; thank you! McConnell has stated repeatedly that he will not allow a vote on any bill he knows Trump will refuse to sign. He doesn’t want Trump or the Republican party to be blamed for this shutdown…in reality, if he would allow the vote in the Senate it would send a message to Trump he has rarely heard since January 20, 2017. That word is NO! Why aren’t Republican Senators speaking out to put their brothers and sisters back to work and getting paychecks? If the House cannot override the Senate; can the Senate override McConnell? Can McConnell be removed from his position by a majority of the Senators?

    And those of you in Indiana who voted against Joe Donnelly, didn’t vote for him or didn’t vote at all…you bear part of the responsibility for this Trump wall/government shutdown tragedy.

  20. I agree, ML. This is why the media has a field day with Donald – he’s not a polished liar. His Veep, however, is a very polished liar who sometimes gets caught which is why his public relations folks demand the questions before an interview. If they don’t like your questions, no interview.

    When Rep. Tim Brown was stealing Muncie Community Schools from the people and handing it over to Ball State (the state), I initially asked one fluff question which was answered over email. I even explained in advance that I’m not like the journalists in Indy. So, I asked a more direct question which caught them in their machinations of first robbing the district of valuable assets and then stealing the district itself, guess what?

    Now imagine if your a political reporter in Indy and your job is to line up interviews with our state representatives. If you are committed to fact-finding, you need to ask tough questions because your readers want to be informed. Read Chomsky’s Five Filters of Media.

    And this goes to the same comment Marv has mentioned twice the past two days:

    “But you have to look at the problem starting with the source like any disease.”

    Western Medicine doesn’t treat the source, Marv. It treats the symptoms.

    If you want to treat the causes and conditions, you’ll have to venture into Eastern Traditions.

    Also, if you want to get to the source of the problem, you need to fact-find and ask difficult questions. This is not allowed in the current economic/political culture. It’s why Americans cannot agree on the problem.

    If we had a free and independent press which served the people, not advertisers/shareholders, our country would look entirely different today than it currently does. All we have now is targeted propaganda.

  21. Todd,

    “Western Medicine doesn’t treat the source, Marv. It treats the symptoms.

    If you want to treat the causes and conditions, you’ll have to venture into Eastern Traditions.”.

    I received a copy of “A Year with Hafiz”a Sufis poet from the 14th century, based on the translations by Ralph Waldo Emerson as a Christmas present. My best friend is deep into Buddhist meditation and has been influencing me along those lines for many, many years. Emerson wrote about Hafiz, “He fears nothing. He sees too far, he sees throughout; such is the only man I wish to see or be.”

    Many thanks for providing me with an explanation for a major reason why we in the West are having so much difficulty in dealing with a problem, which appears to me to be as clear as day.

  22. German philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth, is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”

    Today, we witness the truth of this statement with the followers of President Agent Orange and Pastor Pence. The followers of President Agent Orange (Trumpteer’s) demonstrate this inability to discern a fact from from a lie – to be clear – they must ignore the previous statement by President Agent Orange in order to accept the latest tweet.

    Example Mexico will pay for the Wall. Now it is the Democrats fault we have a government shut down, because the Democrats are blocking funding for the Wall per Agent Orange. The ability of the Trumpteer’s to think rationally has been destroyed.

  23. Monotonous,

    “The ability of the Trumpteer’s to think rationally has been destroyed.”

    Rhetoric is totally useless. Everything is based on deception of one kind or another. I believe our only chance is through some type of visual description like that from an MRI or Sonar.

    One of my doctors commented to me a few years ago, “Marvin, you have an MRI on the whole political situation.” With that in mind, I have been working for a few months on what I call: PSSI [Political Sub-Surface Imaging]. You have to have the ability to return to the beginning in order to have a clear picture of the progression over time.

    As Walter Cronkite noted many years ago, “We’re dealing with White Supremacy masked with Christianity.” History will confirm, that the tide of W.W. II changed with the advancement of Sonar technology.

  24. In 2016 when it was revealed that Americans had become too complacent, that the fact of a black President had reawakened incipient racism and that the power of social media had as an unforeseen consequence created the ability of our enemies to influence our elections, we realized (and wrote here often) that chaos would follow. It has exactly as we anticipated.

    I believe that most of us also realized that it would be limited to four years, of which we have already survived the worst two, and it would have far reaching effects that would take years to recover from.

    I would submit that we are right on the track that we thought this train wreck would follow.

    The current shutdown chaos will of course end. The Mueller investigation will of course conclude. McConnell will of course end his career in shame. Some of the criminals who thought that supporting Trump would enrich them will be in jail. Some, who are just as guilty won’t be held accountable. Americans who love democracy will be fully awake and take back the country.

    The one thing that perhaps can’t be anticipated yet is will there still be a viable Republican Party? I think that one clue to that will be will they separate from Trump to end the shutdown which is costing them potential votes daily now?

  25. SECOND COMING


    Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold,
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.


    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
    William Butler Yeats

    This evangelical symbolism came to mind; but where the hell are the Three Wise Men?

  26. “Are more than 800,000 hard-working federal workers desperately trying to make ends meet?”

    Perhaps they should move where the jobs are? Perhaps they should join the private sector?

    Who cares?

    The Obama administration didn’t give a damn about millions of homeowners. The majority of them being Black.

    Instead,the vultures were bailed out. No one will forget. No one will forget 30 plus years of Democratic Party inefficiency and moral bankruptcy brought forth Trump. Blame everyone and anyone but yourselves.

    What will you do when the DNC will announce the candidate will be a privileged white male? That would seem to belie most of the rants among this forum.

    Back to those workers. Now,Democrats want to act as if they really give a damn about the little people?

    This is nothing more than Recreational Outrage from the cult of the Democratic Party.

  27. Yesterday, I read several comments on a FB post by either the WaPo or NYT. There were a number of Fed employees who are furloughed who stated that they were willing to go to work without pay in order to get what they considered a wall for national security. One comment was that she wanted a wall but did not want to pay for it herself. It is amazing how short-sighted and willfully ignorant some of our federal employees are. It is as if they don’t understand that any taxpayer money authorized to build the wall will be paid for by those same taxpayers, not Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, drug traffickers or corrupt actors in Asia. It was sad and disheartening.

    I also saw an article stating that 12 Congresspersons have more wealth collectively than the rest of both the House and Senate put together. As JoAnn always says, “Follow the money.”

  28. About McConnell:
    He is fundamentally corrupt and has been in the pocket of the Koch brothers for decades. How else do we explain a long-time Senator so casually abdicating his Constitutional duty to govern as a separate, and co-equal branch of government.

    I am almost 77, and I never expected to see our government being suborned by such traitorous behavior by our own elected officials. What does this say about the people of Kentucky? Have they no other viable choices? How did McConnell become a multi-millionaire on $160,000 per year? Why is his wife in Trump’s cabinet? Is this why McConnell is turning his back on the American people? Would Trump fire her (Elaine Chow) if McConnell rebuffed Trump’s idiocy? Gee, maybe there are reasons for anti-nepotism laws in government.

    This web of deceit and criminal behavior goes far, far deeper than Mitch McConnell. He is merely a symptom of the graft, corruption and lawlessness of the entire Republican party and Donald Trump in particular. Why, for example, isn’t the Senate investigating Trump’s naked violations of the emoluments clause in the Constitution? Is their power addiction so great that they have forgotten to be statesmen and women? Republicanism has transcended from being conservative, prudent and careful into a gang of power-grabbing thieves filled with hate, bigotry and disdain for working people – even those who work for THEM. THEY are responsible for gerrymandering states and districts to ensure power and steal votes. THEY are responsible for voter roll purges that deny legal voters their rights. THEY are responsible for floating moronic law suits that a compliant, Republican-dominated SCOTUS accepted, declaring that corporations are people and money equals speech. The Banana Republic Operators Manual couldn’t ask for a better chapter #1 than Citizens United v. FEC.

    Sorry for the rant, but it should be clear to all that Republicanism, in its current form, must be eliminated from our governments at all levels from towns to states to Washington, D.C.

  29. Robin: “…the idea that “father knows best” , that an authoritarian government is not what’s best for our country at this time.”

    AT THIS TIME???!!! Should I presume you mean it would be good at some other time?

  30. PINBALL PHILOSOPHY…OR THAT DANGED VOID…or…
    I have found the fundamental cause as to why the little steel ball in the pinball machine did not register for me a very impressive score.

    One by one I examined each bumper and flipper and hole and ramp that that little steel ball encountered, the speed, the angle, the measure of resistance, the tilt of the playing field, beginning with its last encounter, and each time I had to move on to examine the previous bumper or flipper or hole or ramp. There were twenty in all but only thirteen that the ball actually engaged, some more than once. But after a while I learned that each movement of the ball was only a symptom of the angle and speed by which the ball impacted the previous device.

    It is exciting to analyze something so complex so thoroughly and to know that that brainiac analysis has a rather impressive name among philosophers: Reductionism.

    And REDUCTIONISM works!

    Staying true to the tenets of Reductionism, I found the original cause of my failure to score very high – the SPRING-LOADED PLUNGER. Just don’t ever let go of it; don’t let that ball fly in the first place, and you will never have to worry about the score it achieves.

    ALL HAIL REDUCTIONISM WE WHO…

    But…but…but Who made the plunger? Likely a whole team of conspirators designed the pinball machine in the first place. And then, whoever they may be, they had parents…who had parents…who had parents…

    and so tirelessly I traced this problem down the Reductionist curlicue to a conspiratorial single cell…but then further …and further…all the way to the Big Bang.

    Just as I furrow the space between my eyes and glower at Big Bang, it speaks up to say, “But before me there was the Void; how can you blame me when there was that danged Void?

  31. I have thought often of late about the photo spread of djt and the ms. Universe members (all who were nude and in various poses of sexual explicity… But he has a number of the photos specifically with ‘ms. Mexico’ – It is like there is this image there that suddenly begs a question – why that woman in particular and in the most provocative of poses? (this was all publicly shown in Hustler Magazine, and posted all over the place on the web and Facebook.) And yet we ask why the wall? – Well actually to me it isn’t only Mexicans or people of color though they are a favorite punching bag of his – it is his ego. The ‘wall’ – quite symbolically and literally says he wants to be ‘Ghengis drumpf’! I mean it is like Netanyahu (a true trumpie lover) in Israel – a huge concrete wall to keep out the enemy within (!)- he wants to outdo them all. It isn’t just bigotry it isn’t just fascism it isn’t just that he wants to make himself president for life…(oh yes he does!) – it is simply that he is insane for ‘power over’. He is a fat baby with a really stinky russian made diaper that wants his way or no way! – And folks, I say it is time we found his little inner child and beat its little ass!

  32. Thank you so much Marv for not joking!! You are absolutely right on all counts. Most of America has not yet awakened to the grave risks Trump’s so-called “Presidency presents, not only in regard to the future of this country as we have known it but for the entire world. We seem to be merely lollygagging and playing for time as if we will be able to quickly fix the tremendous damage this man has done, a lot of it at the behest of Mr. Putin on top of the naked aggression that his country has committed against this one without any credible response at all from us and that time is quickly running out!!

  33. Tom,

    I think we both see things better because of our military backgrounds. You don’t delay a response when you’re under attack. People die, movements die, countries die, environments die. There’s absolutely no response other than useless talk.
    We’re blind to the extent of the problem. The following is from an interview Bill Moyers had with the author E. L. Doctorow In “Bill Moyers, A World of Ideas” (Doubleday, New York, 1989) pp. 83, 85:

    “Doctorow: The artist isn’t immune to his life and times. To a certain extent he is conditioned by them and has to overcome them. Ireland was always in Joyce even though he left and wandered around. You see that when you read his work. What I mean to say is that it’s not just the writers today, although you would expect more of them if you were an artist: ITS EVERYBODY. We seem to be living in a state of mind that’s controlling us as a nation but that we haven’t quite defined yet. We’re living a national ideology that’s INVISIBLE TO US because we’re INSIDE IT.

    Moyers: Like a fish in the ocean cannot analyze the ocean. But what is this general climate that we don’t quite seem to be aware of?

    Doctorow: Well I would rephrase that to say we’ve been living according to premises that we haven’t examined for a long time, premises that seemed to be valid and workable for us right after World War II, but which now, forty or forty-five years [now about 75 years] later, CONTINUE TO GO UNEXAMINED, EVEN THOUGH THEY DIRECT OUR NATIONAL LIFE……Another example is the level of political discourse in this country as it’s existed in the past eight or ten years—the pieties, the simplistic reliance on the worst impulses.

    Moyers: THE BIG STORY. You once said our writers are less and less inclined to take on the big story.

    Doctorow: The big story is always the NATIONAL SOUL—who are we, what are we trying to do, WHAT IS OUR FATE, where will we stand in the moral universe when these things are reckoned? That’s always the big story.

    E. L. Doctorow thinks the best writers are a nuisance to authority because they prefer the UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH to the COMFORTABLE LIE.”

  34. Tom,

    With the present alignment representing democracy in America, there is no possibility of creating POLITICAL EQUILIBRIUM. Our present situation is no different than the problems that were created at the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, where the Germans infiltrated our front lines by dressing their advance guard in American uniforms, thus creating a gap in our FRONT which folded our defenses.

    This is the same type of DECEPTION STRATEGY which was successfully used against the “pluralistic front” formed in the ’60s to defend the newly created Civil Rights laws. The SPLC/ADL ALLIANCE formed in the early ’90s and led by Morris Dees is the DECEPTION, whether knowingly or not, pulled off by the Far Right/Religious Right. THE JEWS ARE FROZEN. THIS GAP MUST BE PLUGGED NOW. It prevents the creation of a COUNTERVAILING FORCE. I’ve tried to explain this many times, as recent as yesterday, on this blog to no avail. I’m sure you have witnessed that for some time.

    Presently, there is no ability to make an effective stand. As I’m sure you are aware, a continuation of this state of affairs will eventually turn into something akin to “hell on earth,” much sooner than later.

  35. Another way to destroy the government is to purge it of its workers. The administration is chipping away at our government in layers. Nothing this group does surprises me.
    Again, you all have enlightened me.

    Aging Girl, I am living vicariously through you. Am too old now but regardless of the inconvenience and impermanence of your way of life, the richness of your experiences is something I long for in my next life.

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