The Weird Times

Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces

The Weird Times #10: July 19, 2020

Thank you, John Lewis. We will miss you but never forget what you did and what you said.

“You must be able and prepared to give until you cannot give any more. We must use our time and our space on this little planet that we call Earth to make a lasting contribution, to leave it a little better than we found it, and now that need is greater than ever before.”

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Do not become bitter or hostile. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. We will find a way to make a way out of no way.”

John Lewis, far left, Martin Luther King, fourth from left, and other civil rights leaders on the March on Washington in August 1963. Photograph: Arnie Sachs/REX/Shutterstock

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Media coverage of Trump’s commutation of his associate Roger Stone’s prison sentence has pushed the Russia bounty story out of the headlines. Knowing Trump’s skill at distraction, it’s hard to believe this is a coincidence. -Heather Cox Richardson, July 13, “Letters from an American”

Even after almost four years of being president, Trump dominates the news cycle and our consciousness in a way no other American leader has ever done. The similarities to Hitler and other lesser authoritarian figures cannot be ignored. The media now at least tries to contextualize Trump’s lies and fabrications, demands and tantrums, but the psychological effect of their relentless coverage of him on the American population is clear. We have been desensitized, distracted and controlled. We do not set the agenda for our daily lives. The Roger Stone story, the Dr. Fauci story, the Vindman story, and all the others, play an important role in Trump’s successful effort to control our thinking and awareness.

We spend time consuming and reacting to those stories, and therefore we fail to recognize the scope of the damage to our institutions and polity, how the government is being eaten from the inside, people are losing their health insurance (5.4 million reported just last week), evicted (millions), that armed Homeland Security forces now occupy American cities (Portland, OR, more to come). The administration is trying to cook the books on COVID-19, hiding the number of Americans infected, hospitalized and killed by the virus and is now surreptitiously placing ever stronger chokepoints on freedom and democracy. And Trump and his cabal is preparing to undermine the upcoming election with fake news, social media manipulation and ultimately, a military response to any civic action (which they will characterize as criminal and revolutionary).

It is crucial to call out what we plainly see, and to resist being manipulated, propagandized and controlled. And to be ready to stand up for democracy, even if it means sacrificing our time and our bodies.

What this administration is really about: corporate welfare and social control.

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How Trump is Helping Tycoons Exploit the Pandemic, Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, July 13, 2020

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Aside from being both a master manipulator and a Trojan Horse for crony capitalism, Trump is a sociopath, so we get this: Trump Says He “Disagreed” With Privately Funded Border Wall, So Why Did His Administration Award the Builder $1.7 Billion in Contracts to Erect More Walls? (Reported by ProPublica – send them money!)

Information control is a tenet of authoritarianism. The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning tomorrow, send all coronaravirus patient information to a central database in Washington. Officials say the change will streamline data gathering at the Department of Health and Human Services, and help the White House coronavirus task force track the virus and allocate scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir.

And now unfolding, the story from Portland. Unidentified officers in unmarked cars are pulling people off the streets and taking them to unknown locations. Customs and Border Protection appears to have supplied these “officers.” The Nation has acquired a memo that outlines a special task force (Protecting American Communities Task Force – PACT-  created within DHS through Trump’s “Executive Order on Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues and Combating Recent Criminal Violence.”)

These illegal detentions appear designed to trigger protests by the local community to provide Trump with evidence of the violent civic unrest he claims to be quelling. (Note to Portland – don’t take the bait – sue, protest, make noise, but keep your cool and watch out for provocateurs.)

When asked about the arrests in Portland, Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli told NPR that “this is a posture we intend to continue not just in Portland but in any of the facilities that we're responsible for around the country.”

Camouflaged federal agents have descended on Portland, Trevor Timm, The Guardian, 7.18.20

It can happen here. It will happen here. Be prepared to fight back against fascism.

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Author Don Winslow has devoted his considerable personal resources to making a series of ads about Trump. This one is about Trump and DeVos’s insane approach to reopening schools. Watch it here!

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Police officers stood by, unmoved, as protesters shouted “Put on your masks!” during a demonstration in Brooklyn. Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

Police in Seattle, Washington, wearing masks made by the Red Cross, during the influenza pandemic, December 1918. National Archives

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The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Muscogee nation (and by extension, other indigenous tribes) that their reservation was never dis-established. Eastern Oklahoma, including Tulsa (Tulasi) and Broken Arrow, are on land that still belongs to native peoples. Our Muscogee people suffered for generations in the hope of a better tomorrow. It’s finally here, Jonodev Chaudhuri, Washington Post, July 15, 2020

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Well the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry any more
'Cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door
Think this through with me, let me know your mind — Uncle John’s Band, The Grateful Dead (Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter)

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Michael Wolfe:

Loose Change

The weeks line up. Their surfaces are hot

As car hoods on a long commute in August.

This light that once fell neatly, arranging our

Workday into parts, looks pinched and severed.

Even skeletons try to hang together,

but I feel scattered, like tossed loose change passing

A toll booth. Whether we head for Oakland

Or Long Island, it will cost. I picked this lane

Because the live faith of the Dead confers

More feeling than the dead faith of the living,

Who bet that going through the motions will

Deliver them from loss. In a masked country

Who can tell if the race belongs to the swift

Or the persevering? Ten to win on

The old grey. A penny for your thoughts.

                                    July 2020

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In a promised lie you made us believe
For many men there is so much grief
And my mind is proud but it aches with rage
And if I live too long I'm afraid I'll die
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one
Strangers on this road we are on
We are not two we are one — Strangers, (The Kinks) by Ray Davies and Dave Davies.

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David Wilk:

Inside the Dog

“Inside of a dog it's too dark to read” — Groucho Marx

there are days when it feels like

summer will never come

and maybe it shouldn’t

in some ways this darkness

is appealing or 

maybe it’s just too easy

to get used to living 

like a fugitive from your own life

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Time's gone inside out
Time gets distorted when
There's intense gravity — Inside Out by Spoon

“If you love it, let me know, if you hate it, let me go….”