EARTH DAY 4/22/20

What happened to the Republican Party? The got hit with a contagion: Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Even the more thoughtful “conservative websites” I have encountered are drowning in snark, from offering subscription incentives like bottles of  “liberal tears” to endlessly fanning the flames of partisan discord with “I know you are but what am I” type headlines. Among many gleeful tropes hashed out endlessly, is that “libs” are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, which, like so many proclamations on the right, is pure projection. Yes, projection. That is when you accuse someone of doing what you yourself are doing. Call others dishonest when you wallow in dishonesty, call others weak when you are pathetically underprepared, and so on. Need I go on? Just read the news. Oh, maybe I should stipulate which news.

Now I don’t want to be snarky myself, because I am often reminded, we don’t want to upset the people who are so sensitive that they would cut off their noses to spite their faces. That’s right, those folks who just hate the “democrat party” so much they would rather be Russians (you know who you are, just read that shirt you’re wearing) or who are perfectly content to follow a leader whose integrity they wouldn’t trust on a battlefield or a construction site—Why? Because he is nothing but a show-biz boob who has been doling out the same shtick for the last five years. “Lock her Up”, “It’s a hoax”, “It’s a witch-hunt” “Fake News” “Nasty journalist, Nasty question, Nasty woman” “Build the wall.” “It’s beautiful, so Perfect, the Best.” I guess he fired his writers too, this stuff is feeling pretty old. Who would trust this guy in any real-world scenario? Would you let him care for your child, your grandmother? A suitcase of cash? Your business? You think he’d keep his word? Pay you back? How did legions of Americans loose their judgment? And prioritize resentment over common sense? How did we become a nation wallowing in self pity and anger with a preening blowhard as our mascot?

How did we get here?

As with so many things in American life, the answer is: branding. America’s  consumer culture sees reality through the lens of an ad campaign. Since the Mad-Men days of the 50s, advertising has been designed to define what sort of person you are: Levis, Marlboro, Coke, Ford, Apple, Nike, The Red Sox. Over time, the citizen has come to see him or herself as a series of brand choices, and with the advent of Cable TV, news became a brand too, with a whole world view defined by your brand. It is hard to recall that the Red and Blue delineation between political parties only took hold in 2000; that’s because the brands weren’t as defined, there used to be crossover in politics.  Now there can be no ambiguity whatsoever, and partisans on both left and right sneer at the centrists. 

And what is the Republican Brand? Fortified by FOX news and the Murdoch news empire, the Republican brand has drifted towards magical thinking and vindictiveness. It is all well and good to have conservative policies, but when they are increasingly supported by false and cherry-picked evidence, we have a growing crisis of rhetoric over reality. To avoid altogether any discomfort from opposing viewpoints it has become expedient to vilify professionals, elites, the educated, scientists and experts in any field.  And when the left reacts with stunned outrage, the right delights and ratchets up the stakes until our public discourse is an orgy of irrational extremes. 

Since the 1980’s: The Republican Party has drifted towards nihilism and intransigence and the rejection of empirical information.  You can say what you like about the left, about liberals and bleeding hearts and shrill gotcha politics and big government and identity warriors, but in the aggregate, the preoccupations of the left are based on actual real-world societal problems: financial inequality, environmental destabilization, and social, racial and sexual injustices. Not so much with the Right. Petulance and magical thinking has become enmeshed in the identity of the once mighty conservative to the point that they are afraid of things they needn’t be and deny very real threats coming their way. News flash: Immigrants didn’t take your jobs away, and Climate Change will upend your life.

There is a very clear lineage from Ronald Reagan’s sunny denials of AIDS, environmental deregulation and inequality, to Newt Gingrich, unwilling to compromise across the aisle while fomenting partisan resentment, to the lies of the Bush presidency about war, weapons of mass destruction and energy policy. There are myriad other characters on the right whose stances preclude reasonable debate: Grover Norquist decrees taxes shall not be raised for any reason whatsoever, and the government should be small enough to be drowned in the bathtub. The Tea Party, which emerged to combat Obama’s reign, came to epitomize anti-government rhetoric, and now the Freedom Caucus, a cadre of conservative and libertarian Congress-members carries on that legacy. Also joining the bandwagon were Christian Nationalists, which Reagan had begun courting in the 80s with the remarkable reframing of Christian tenants proclaiming God wants you to be rich. The ascent of these ideological factions has irrevocably altered the character of the right wing in America. This is a political party using all the power of politics to dismantle Government and render it impotent. Reagan made it perfectly clear what the agenda was: “Government is not the solution, Government is the problem.”

So we have a strange shift in politics, where now it is the right wing that detests authority and the government, a sentiment formally reserved for hippies and commies. It is the right wing that employs relativism over empirical truth, just like the leather-elbowed English teachers of yester-year’s elite universities. Who, we must wonder, does this serve? Corporations.  The markets. Big Biz. The moneyed class, the super-rich. Get rid of government, get rid of regulation, get rid of oversight, get rid of civic responsibility.  Privatize everything under the sun. It is the worship of money and the markets that drive the current Republican Party. No wonder they have found their perfect leader in Donald Trump, who can not see anything of merit besides money, vindictiveness and validation. Oh, Republicans may lament his tweets, but they know they have found their new front man. 

What we see here is a drift away from reality, only possible out of a smug, elitist, entitled belief that everything will be fine even if you don’t do the maintenance to keep things actually working properly. Smug? Elitist? Yes, I mean people who think they will never be shot by a gun, that climate change will never effect them, that they can choose which science to believe, that they can ignore the poor, mock and disdain the disenfranchised, that they will be untouched, protected by their anger and hatred and guns or money, the color of their skin.  They seem to despise immigrants, gays, blacks, Hollywood Elites, Californians, New Yorkers, Jews, Government workers, atheists, alternative power, small cars, animals, vegetables, elites, experts, artists, the post office, trains, libraries, football players, clean water, the environment and the climate—it is a long litany of hate they have, and make no mistake, the left has answered in kind with hatred and intolerance of their own. And all of it served up on TV 24/7 and through the Twitter Wars. Oh, the humanity of modern man.

But what really happened?

It is a sad irony that the working class that was destroyed when the money people became internationalists by shipping jobs overseas, shuttering the American factories to build stuff elsewhere— a sad irony that same working class has found commonality with the very corporatists that forever altered their livelihood. Branding is a powerful thing, and the idea is to get your brand to appeal to as many people as possible. More recently a panic over “deep-state” entities—formally known as career professionals employed by the government—has given rise to the notion of a cadre of partisan hoodlums conspiring against the outsiders who came to fix Washington. It is a narrative as convoluted as a spy novel. 

So we have corporatists and the forgotten workers united in their disdain for government, vs. the scolding liberals who in their own entitled comfort turned from pocketbook issues to identity politics in their rash embrace of moral purity. Now we have each side howling that the other has become unreasonable, while at the same time disparaging any in their ranks who displays even a whiff of compromise or nuance with an opposing viewpoint. America has become detached from reality and succumbed to a cacophony of hysterical tribal infighting.

Against this backdrop we find ourselves afflicted by a world Pandemic. The right wing apparatus finds itself completely incapable of responding. Government has been dismantled, their media is so accustomed to crafting its own version of reality, it can’t respond, The Entertainer-in-Chief can’t follow the plot, and there is no mechanism to get our nation to agree on a way out. This is because we no longer operate under a common narrative: Is health what matters? Is the economy what matters? If government tells us to stay at home, why would I listen to government? If no one is telling the truth, and all truth is biased, culturally or by conspiracy, there is no base-line moral framework from which to draw. 

For anyone who cares, this is the same dilemma we face with climate change, only with Covid-19, you can actually see the bodies piling up, so it is harder to deny. But Trump has not failed to impress with his utter bewilderment at how to help a nation in need. He is simply incapable of rising above the petty snark for which he has been rewarded all his life. So yes there is a Derangement. The blind following of Trump is a derangement.  His followers have lost the ability to judge Trump on the merits of his character and actions. Or more likely, they love how easily he can illicit those “liberal tears.” 

But nature knows no political party and those that want to bring up the facts as they are understood based on Science and Reason and Inquiry and Investigation and Deduction are devalued by a society long used to elevating opinion pundits over real information. When did one political party decide everything was a hoax? When deforestation, oil spills, pollution, gun violence and climate change became the collateral damage of capitalist over-reach. Blame Rachel Carson, who had the audacity to write Silent Spring in 1962 and challenge the pesticide producers. That’s when industry woke up and realized the truth must not get out.

Enough is enough. We need to re-examine the assumptions underlying how we have set up society. It is clear the U.S.A. needs a reassessment. And do not speak of a booming economy before the virus, there was so much not working for the average American that has now been laid bare by the pandemic. We need to establish a new American Ethos that allows everyone to save face and unfetter from this idiotic binary thinking: open-boarders-free-college-free-health-care, vs. never-abortion-no-gun-control-never-a-regulation-in-industry-at-all. What are these cartoonish solutions to life’s complex problems? 

A way out?

Cooperation is the fundamental mode of survival for large groups of humans, the alternative is anarchy and chaos. Government is the word we give to group cooperation. Citizenship is the word we use to validate the individual’s responsibility to participate in government. In order to inspire a large group to cooperate we need a common narrative. In America we had the American Dream, the melting pot, we welcome the stranger, we revere the rugged individual, the strong silent type, representing the values of the common working man. Now we have millionaire shrill pundits like Limbaugh and Hannity fanning the flames of discord; it is particularly perilous at a time when the president is also a vapid show biz puppet that only understands ratings. 

If you want to be elected, you are participating in Government. Government is the means by which society organizes itself. Governmental policy should acknowledge certain assumptions. We need a new American Myth, much like the old one, based on universal religious tenants of humility and decency, and principals based in humanist and democratic and (formally) American ideals of fairness and dignity. Impartial scientific methodology should guide our understanding of reality while intangibles like spirituality and morality and openness must also shape our society. 

And finally, and perhaps most significantly, the worship of the market must be balanced with the sustainability of society. This means higher wages for the essential workers, lower pay and bonuses for the CEOs. Many recoil at the idea of endless government handouts, and since Reagan, portraits of lazy workers and welfare mothers have led to the grotesque characterization of government workers, janitors, nurses, delivery people, postal workers, kitchen staff, farm pickers, drivers—all as insufferable, criminal low-lifes—talk about elitist! Where did this pathetic prejudice all come from but from the political and pundit class? For if the leaders behave like cads, why shouldn’t everyone? The lie is revealed. The priorities of our system are revealed: Health care by for-profit companies? How many years did we have to hear about “Death Panels” from the right, frightening their constituents into opposing Government health care? How many hours of idiotic debate based on a complete fabrication? When an insurance company is deciding the value of giving you your operation is that not a Death Panel? And what of the Global Warming “Hoax”? How long must we endure these idiotic digressions from reality?

A society should be built on principles of balance and humility, not just for reasons of morality and justice, but to be sustainable and to earn the power of righteousness. These are not weak positions. Weakness is trying to get away with things that will catch up to you eventually, like denying reality: The reality of climate disruption, the reality of demographic changes, the reality that our gerrymandered system denies opportunity and equality to legions of citizens. The new American ethos looks these realities in the eye and invites us all to band together to make changes that are bold and lasting.

Covid-19 has upended America as we knew it. We should learn from the reality that confronts us now and take a break from the political dog and pony show and try to rebuild a better society for the future. 

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1/5/20
Obviously the focus of this website is not to keep the “Blog” up-to-date. But dropping a line here to indicate that I stand by the ideas presented in this site, even though I am not checking in daily or even monthly. In fact the idea is not to chase daily, hourly stories but to contemplate principals that will build a foundation for a way out of the catastrophes that we face. As the reading list on this site indicates, there is a consistent perspective dating back to the 60s warning us of and anticipating our current dilemma: The three-headed hydra of climate collapse, corporatism and fake messaging. All the pleas for rational and measured solutions embedded in this site are infused with the urgency and knowledge that great, immeasurable apocalyptic harm is the alternative to waking up and finding common purpose as creatures on this planet.

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4/26/19
Well, I missed my own anniversary, which was Earth Day, April 22 2019. So it’s been two years since I launched disconnex.com. It was never my intention to blog in any sort of regular way, I am not a political junkie and I don’t have a lot to contribute on a day to day basis that isn’t being said better by smarter people. My main contribution to the noise out there is the perspective I have laid out in these pages. As for what’s changed in two years, well I do try to track the stories I find compelling on my Facebook adjunct disconnexnewsfeed, in order to curate the barrage of news stories and opinions into a coherent narrative.

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11/15/17
I am so fucking sick of hearing democrats call the Republicans "heartless" when critiquing bad policy. Call it what it is: bad policy, immoral and indefensible. We don't need government that is nice and cuddly, we need government that responds to realistic problems with clarity of mind and efficient solutions. Stop bringing emotion into the discussion. Health care is a mess and it should be corrected, regulation is not an inconvenience that is crushing job growth, it is a necessary hinderance to blatant desecration of our common health and heritage. The very purpose of government is to stand in opposition to the private sector's rapacious urges and manage the capitalist impulse, and thereby facilitating a livable society for the majority of law-abiding citizens. Government is not designed to provide pay-back for corporate donors nor a system that enables profiteers to run rampant. How could the common man support a predatory system that benefits a small minority of people? Only if they are being lied to.  All arguments put forth by Democrats must appeal to a civic-minded, fact-based construct. If the Republicans can argue their cause within the same structure without lying then let us hear their argument. In short, health care is not a "right"—health care is the very reason we have a society of cooperating individuals engaged in a social contract to keep people in good physical and mental health. Government's purpose is to create a framework so a society can function without rampant violence, decay, pollution and constant danger. The very existence of government is to uphold these pillars of society, to make a livable community for the most amount of people. Now, what if we were to define society as a structure designed to make the most amount of people live in fear of pollution, crime, corporate predators, lies from the media, hysterical commercialization, credit card scams, bank scams, blatant lies in advertising, low paying jobs, food deserts, bad insurance, and so on. Would you call that "heartless"? I would call it unsustainable, corrupt and immoral. The Republicans of 2017 use emotion to win arguments, that is all they have. The Democrats should wield righteous, clear, sensible arguments. We all know the conventional wisdom that emotion wins out in the short term, but consider the emotion of standing on principal, that used to count for something.

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10/28/17
Listen up people, you had your fun. You either see Trump as a despicable narcissist, a petulant child, or an iconoclast shaking things up. We seem to endlessly speak about his campaign promises and his base, the 35% of Americans who revel in his mud-slinging. We wring hands over the destruction of the Republican Party, or the descent into a frothing racist pussy-grabbing underbelly of the formally marginalized. Endless talk of the bubble and the division between parties, the breakdown of language, the elimination of truth... But what about the policy? That is in the end all that matters.

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7/27/17
Yesterday our so-called-president tweeted that Transgender folks were no longer allowed to serve in the military. There was no explanation, no study, no press release. The papers today called it "cruel". They call the health care debacle "cruel". I reject that characterization. I believe "cruel" allows for the strength of the perpetrator. I do not wish to grant him that strength. These craven narcissistic jack-asses are pathetic cowards who wield their administrative power with the grace of a wrecking ball. They are so disconnected from the effect of their actions and blinded by the sycophants that surround them (sycophant: a person who acts obsequiously toward someone important in order to gain advantage.) that they have lost even the ability to defend their actions: "We are doing this because we promised to" is the best they can come up with. These people are not doing their jobs. They are free loaders, obstructionists, con-artists. Hey, I get that there is a "small government" conservative perspective, and I have no desire for a big, bloated self-perpetuating bureaucratic monolith running Washington, but right/left points-of-view are no longer in play here anymore. If it were, there would be debate in the Senate, robust debate to find the best solutions through compromise and negotiation. But that is long gone. There are people in power who have forgotten the mission, don't even care to pretend any more. They are so partisan they don't remember what their arguments were: Mitch McConnel admitted coal was never coming back for economic reasons, but damn, he's still fighting against anything that would replace coal. These folks want to repeal Obamacare with no clue what they would replace it with. It is partisanship in its purest form, devoid of any substance or solutions for the society they are supposed to be governing. And their supporters? Same thing. No end game, just destroy "the other side". Oh and then there is Donald Trump, who says the Russian Probe is the "Greatest Witch Hunt Ever perpetrated on a President". Wow, tell that to the immigrants whose families were torn apart by his witch hunt policies, tell that to the Trannies who are going to be hunted out of the Military, tell that to the blacks, the gays, the latinos, the Muslims, the"leakers," the journalists; tell that to the Intelligence community, to Comey and to Jeff Session (!) — I'd say they all know a thing about Witch Hunts, Donny. "Cruel." Don't even. These guys are pathetic. Graceless, immoral, smug, spineless cowards. All they know are witch hunts.

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7/19/17
Interview with Sebastian Junger has been posted. My mission is to speak with characters that break the partisan mold. I fantasize about right-leaning people watching a disconnex video or reading one of our pages and thinking "yeah, cool, right"... I resent that the national mood has been placed in the hands of Hucksters like Sean Hannity— imagine an influential figure like that advocating for cooperation, compromise and a sensible way forward. As I write this I understand the operative word here is "sensible" but, dear reader, it is no trap, I refer you back to my original assertion that while life is subjective for sure, in matters of public policy we have to allow a definition that speaks of sustainability. And we have experts to help us ascertain what is sustainable...

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5/17/17
Let me say that somehow I doubt Ossoff will win in Georgia. I would love to be wrong. But beyond the race, I find it so disheartening what the race indicates about our politics. Because I am on a lot of democrat's e-mail lists, I have a first hand view of the shrill tactics used to coerce money from alarmed liberals glued to their keyboards. Here is a sampling of the headlines and content of the e-mails that lead into a plea for money: “Catastrophe” “Disaster” “Disgusting” “Insulted” “I am pleading” “Do Not Delete” “No One Saw This Coming” “We’re panicking” "Massive Loss" "Crushing Loss" "State of Emergency" "All hope Lost" "Kiss all Hope Goodbye" "pack up. go home. it’s done." "nothing left. give up." as well as the standard "they have out-spent us" or "contribute before midnight so we can achieve our goal", etc. How does any of this build good governance? This approach reenforces a narrative of our democracy as a money-driven enterprise in which the team with the biggest coffers wins. It presents a persona of the democratic party as frightened, alarmed, defeated. Nowhere in these e-mails is there a description of Osoff's policies, we are asked to take it at face value that we are hoping for a win to hurt Trump's feelings. This perpetuates the cult of personality that started this political death spiral. Meanwhile, while the democrats are reactionary whiners, the right wing gleefully reports that they have turned the term "fake news" against the left and that the liberals are hysterical, intolerant, violent, anti-free speech—a preposterous characterization that is gaining traction, because if there's one thing the right can do it is control the message. How can the perpetrators of "Pizzagate" and "Sandy Hook truthers" gain the upper hand in a war of ideas? If there is no message from progressives other than Trump is bad and give us money, it aint gonna be that hard. 

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5/1/17
Trump crosses a line. Rejects Paris agreement, rejects science, rejects cooperation. They are laughing at you Donald. You are pathetic. Hope his base can sustain him. All for the base. Ahhh the base. You mean the throat cutters in Portland. Hope they are happy. More throat cutting. Onwards into Trump's future. Syria and Nicaragua. Fantastic. Trump is a whupped dog, a mocked, humiliated individual, a debased, foolish man. And he is dangerous. Let's see this play out. But make no mistake, the entire Republican Party and media and monied apparatus stands behind him. This is their decision, and America will stumble with their full throated support. America 5th! Nature abhors a vacuum, Don. You have just handed The EU, China and India moral authority in the world and a path forward to international domination. They are laughing at you, true dat.

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4/17/17
Regarding the endless drumbeat of the media against the White House and the hysteria over Russian ties to the Trump administration, let us say that the media may be be piling on, but the White House is making it pretty easy. Does anyone think the right-wing media didn't want to ensnare Obama in scandal? They simply didn't have the ammo. Though they never stopped harping on Benghazi and the Clinton e-mails. Amazing to see Fox news reporting on obscure stories rather than the current mayhem; they are literally trying to change the subject. I would say what is at issue is Trump's lack of engagement in the issues, the distractions he is causing and the intransigence of his supporters and the craven double standards of the GOP. It remains to be seen how much chaos Trump can generate before those on the right bail: they "just can't quit him."

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4/10/17
Regarding the Comey firing, I would like to accept for the sake of argument that Rod J. Rosenstein came into office end of April and did his homework and came to the startling conclusion that Comey had been inappropriate in his handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail debacle. Let's take that at face value, and accept further that Sessions who is supposed to be recused on matters of the election, has every right to step in and pass Rosenstein's letter to Trump which lead to Trump's decisive action. Ok, fine. Now, without delay, to show non-partisan response it only seems appropriate to appoint an independent prosecutor. How could it make any sense that Trump should appoint his own investigator. That is objectively absurd, surely. As for Kellyanne's eye-rolling "Russia, Russia, Russia" she is merely dog whistling to the Republican base who somehow have learned to love the Russians in the last six months and couldn't care less how their boy got elected. Meanwhile, Trump's policies continue to place America in jeopardy while the public obsess over his erratic behavior: healthcare, climate change, infrastructure, immigration, national security, these are the matters that need addressing. Oh, and Donald, thanks for clarifying in your letter to Comey that you weren't being investigated by him (three times!). Trump supporters, that's a relief to hear. 

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4/5/17
I decided to go public with the site last night after the healthcare vote got me riled up. I know there's a lot of refining to do here but thought I'd throw my hat in the ring. If you check back in periodically I hope to have more videos, maybe some interviews, better content (I could get some others to write stuff), or maybe I'll go back to making horror movies.

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4/2/17
So there is a tussle over at the New York Times because they hired a conservative op-ed columnist named Bret Stephens who is a Climate Skeptic. His first column was a typical eye-rolling and condescending piece of writing in the tradition Bjorn Lomborg (The Skeptical Environmentalist). As with Bjorn, Stephens assures us he is not a denier but worries about the poor and our ability to pay for any immediate action on climate ("immediate" means now, 29 years after the problem was first presented to the US Congress). The op-ed piece offers a perfect opportunity to respond to the tepid arguments of so-called thoughtful conservatives on the issue. He also makes the correlation that since polls mis-predicted Hillary Clinton's win in the 2016 election, scientific prediction is therefor untrustworthy. WOW. That's a stretch. Telling that he conflates opinions with facts. Sounds like just a bunch of sore-winner talk (though to be fair the ever sensible Stephens is no fan of Trump.) The response to the column is what this dispatch is about, however: the beloved Climate Scientist James Hansen who has fought tirelessly for decades to bring America to its senses on climate, asked readers to drop their subscription to the NYT in protest, siting the editor's defense of Stephens and his characterization of Climate as a "left-leaning" issue. I agree that this is despicable, and as a life-long reader of the Times, I am so annoyed by all this. However, I say let Stephens publish his tripe and let clear minds respond: the thinness of his arguments, the bias and smugness of his position, let it be on full display for readers to respond (and respond they did; Stephens' follow-up column published 4/2/17 is a rebuttal to the comments section of his first post, and in my opinion only further exposes his facetious position: he sights the misguided support of Ethanol as a reason there's nothing we can possibly do to combat Fossil Fuel production. He doesn't note that Solar and Wind are the fastest growing part of the energy sector...). In my opinion the real story is the call to boycott the Times, like the call to shut down Conservative speakers at Universities (most recently Ann Coulter and Milo What's-his-name). I say let them speak. Let the left sharpen their arguments. Let this debate happen in plain site. Stop trying to shut out the other side. In fact, try to understand the opposition and even find common ground (yes you read that correctly). That is not to say acquiesce to falsehoods and bad arguments, but instead, listen politely and call out the hypocrisy with guts and brains. As for the Times, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR, Democracy Now! — all are biased in one direction or another; each will sink or swim on its own merits and integrity if readers are vigilant and informed. If you have been an environmentalist for any length of time, you already know the heartbreak of having your perspective shut out of public discourse on both sides of politics (presidential debates anyone?) because you know what—? Nature doesn't vote, and she doesn't get ratings, but she does have the final say.

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EARTH DAY 22 APRIL 2017
And so it begins. I am launching DISCONNEX before it is done because it will never be done. But the time is now to share and to continue to develop ideas that articulate a way forward in this tumultuous world. I make no claim to being smarter or more informed than anyone else, but I am compelled to try to make sense of the world as an artist and as a citizen and to share the insights I have with those who might be inclined to ponder yet another perspective in the cacophony of ideas that make up our media-drenched culture.