Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Just remember these two(no comfort, sorry).

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."  - HST

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
away."  - PKD
  

    
“I’m just so disappointed in Homo sapiens”

A species remarkably I’ll-adapted for long term survival, likely to
be functionally extinct in a few hundred years, though full
biological extinction of a species with global distribution may take
somewhat longer.
  

    
* ill* adapted 
  

    
I'm having a sort of Roddy Piper in "They Live" experience. I line
in a time and place where most people had the choice between a
public servant and a self-dealer who revels in his monstrosity, and
they chose the latter. This IS who the collective-we, are.

By 2017 I could no longer stand the sight or sound of the guy. I
couldn't stand the site or sound of cartoonists illustrating and
commenting on him, actors portraying him, or comedians parodying
him. I can only absorb the horrors he wreaks, filtered through text.

I'm in ostrich mode for the moment. I'm not sure I can cope unless I
keep him and what he's about to do, as removed from my mind to the
greatest extent I can manage. I'm not at all certain that I can
continue to be a high information voter and carry on.

My instinct is to express my values by being an asset to my local
community and let the nation go to the devil, if that's its choice.

I don't know how I'll feel in one month or six. I don't know how
I'll feel once anticipated horrors become our lived reality. I feel
hopeless, helpless, and a bit ashamed of myself. There is a grey
mist that feels like it can't lift, and perhaps shouldn't.
  

    
Others have said it. This _is_ depressing. It could be as bad as we
fear, and the last American "free and fair" election (to the
incomplete degree that it aspired in that direction). 

We do need to take time to take care of ourselves. But, ultimately,
it is about changing the stories. Biden-Harris gave us a glimpse of
a much better path forward, in action. Bernie and Warren are still
here. AOC is still here. The important thing is to get back to local
organizing. When people can see themselves make a difference, they
change. Elections aren't really won at the national level - they're
won when the local stuff drives the States drives the nation. If our
locals aren't seeing their communities, if they vote, they vote for
themselves and their perceived tribe.

It's not the first time we've been kicked in the teeth. It's going
to take a lot of work to maybe get another chance after this one.
But, first, we need some time to take care of ourselves.
  

    
At an event I attended last night, reference was made to the group
"Waging Non-violence": "The key to taking effective action in a
Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear,
isolation, exhaustion and disorientation."

https://wagingnonviolence.org/
  

    
That organization has an excellent set of recommendations going
forward, at a link Larry posted in <363> and that I had posted
elsewhere:
<https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins/>
  

    
I found this article useful, especially this paragraph:

"People too often think hope is smiles and sunshine, when it’s fury
in the face of danger and oppression, and pressing on in the storm."


Rebecca Solnit

Authoritarians like Trump love fear, defeatism, surrender. Do not
give them what they want

<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/09/authoritarians-like-trump-love-f
ear-defeatism-surrender-do-not-give-them-what-they-want>
  

    
I'm a little more open to pieces like that than I was immediately
after the tragedy. I know that's what people who write think pieces
do; they jump in and offer what they can. But I wasn't ready to hear
anything then, really.

This I'll read.

Today is probably a shit day for the most tentative to choose to
peek out - what with Stephen Miller poised to join the kill unit. If
I weren't already out of that mode, this would chase me right back
in.

Sunday's geeze* was a truly healing experience - some two dozen
Wellbeings enjoying just being in the same space, a lot of us
talking about how to best improve the world in ways that we can
still fathom in this moment. I left feeling renewed. Not to where I
was pre-election when we still had hope, but better.

In the spirit of what we were doing in the Before - door-knocking,
sending texts, donating money - what are you doing or thinking of
doing that might make things a bit better?

I'm looking into helping out on a crisis phone line. The obligation
is 15 hours of training, then 4 hours a week, a total 200 hour
commitment. I think I can handle that.

What about you?

*For those reading from outside, a "geeze" is a Bay Area-born series
of gatherings that's spreading into other places, too. A real joy to
see each other in real spaces.
  

    
(It's a short form of "Geezers Getting Coffee". Unrelated to other
usage of "geeze".)
  

    
>I think Bernie Sanders would have beat Trump in a general election.

Setting aside Biden hanging on and no competitive Democratic primary
process and Harris having barely three months to run a year's worth
of campaign:

My response is that broadly speaking, class alone does not explain
this election's annihilation of the center-left. 

Bernie's a strict marxist in excluding racism and misogyny from his
analysis. He's far from the only one. 

Biden has unequivocally supported unions. His administration has
been the most anti-trust in generations. The IRA will create (would
have created?) 10s of thousands of good working class jobs. So
will/would the CHIPS act. Republicans have made no secret of wanting
to gut them both, whether or not that actually happens.

Were millions and millions of working class voters this dumb? 

Or are there other factors involved here?
  

    
>> Were millions and millions of working class voters this dumb? 

Absolutely. Kamala and Tim should have driven a Monster Truck over a
mound of flaming copies of Project 2025, followed by John Cena
riding in on a Longhorn Bull carrying a When We Fight - We Win!
flag.

I meant Bernie could have beat Trump in 2016, unless Wall Street
focused on crushing him. He had a real populist agenda/message that
was getting real traction. I think he could have belittled Trump to
great effect in front of crowds of young people. He knows how to
express anger in public. He could have goaded the TV host into
apoplexy. 

We’ll never know, but I think it would have been worth trying. I
knew how much my low info right winger relatives loathed HRC. I
didn’t commit to her candidacy until Jerry Brown endorsed her. I
still had reservations based on my own observations of RW culture,
but I figured he knew better. 

My family has been active in Democratic politics in California for
150 years. Many were/are public servants. I’ve been working for the
party faithfully since the Mondale campaign. I’m afraid the party
has become too much an enterprise with its own interests, and not a
vehicle for advancing an agenda that serves the constituency. It has
been co-opted. 
  

    
I'm in ostrich mode for now but will come out soon. I think it's
important to bear witness, to help how we can, and to know what is
being done. Not paying attention will help bad things happen. I
don't know yet what I'll get involved with but I plan to find
something.
  

    
Bernie hadn't built relationships with nationwide Democratic
constituencies the way Clinton had. He didn't have a chance.
  

    
Plus, he's an old, Jewish socialist with no legislative legacy
despite decades in Congress. I don't know how that would've played.

I love Bernie. And I agree he'd have made a far more dynamic
candidate. 
  

    
Not a very good president, though. The ideas he brought us were/are
very important.
  

    
He might have been a weak president, but Trump would be selling
steaks, and doing crooked development deals. 
  

    
My dirt-simple model of the Americal electorate is: if they are
unhappy, they vote against the incumbent party. That's it. They
don't care that the challenger will obviously make them much more
unhappy. They don't care that the numbers show the incumbent party
has been improving things. They don't care that a lot of their
unhappiness coms from lies told by the challenger. None of that
matters.

In this model, the only candidate who had a chance of making the
electorate happy was Harris. And when she started, shouting her
message of joy, her poll numbers went up up up. If she had stuck
with that message, and talked about tangible things that the voters
actually want, she'd have won in a landslide.
  

    
>If she had stuck with that message, and talked about tangible
things that the voters actually want, she'd have won in a landslide.

That makes sense, but only if the voters had been able to actually
hear her message. Which most didn’t because 100% of their news and
information came from a steady diet of Fox News, Newsmax, One
America, Sinclair, Christian radio, Xitter, Joe Rogan and other
right wing podcasts, etc. They probably had no idea she was shouting
a message of joy, or any clue what her policies were. They just
believed whatever lies they were told about her and that was all
they knew.
  

    
Large numbers of voters googled “Did Biden drop out?” on election
day. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s an Idiocracy. Kamala needed to drive
Monster Trucks into stadiums, and make videos of her leading drum
lines. She needed to go on podcasts and say lots of rude things
about TFG. Nice and reasonable is a losing strategy. Maybe a Lucha
Libre tag team match between her and Walz, and a couple of
Trump/Vance types.

Bread and circuses. That’s the ticket.
  

    
Except Black women don't get to say rude things because then they'll
be angry and that makes no sense because how angry does Donald Trump
need to be (or act) before people talk about angry, corrupt,
entitled, white sociopathic malignant narcissist?
  

    
Yes, a red news bubble that's almost impossible to infiltrate, and a
multiracial female candidate, you don't need more than that.
  

    
<jef> pretty much describes the senate race in PA, as if the senator's
position could directly change local economics.
  

    
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is nominating
former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

The decision lines up another staunch ally of Israel for Trump’s
incoming administration, after he announced Monday he would appoint
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) to be U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations. Trump ran for president promising to wind down overseas
conflicts, including the war in Gaza that broke out after Hamas
attacked Israel last year.

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/12/trump-administration-transi
tion/#link-P7DRD7XFMFGQJFXAUC2MX325UI>
  

    
By winding it down I understood him to mean flattening and handing
over the beachfront property to his son-in-law.