The Wandering Commentator
2.21.2025 WHO IS ELON MUSK?
Hermann Goering for the 21st century
2.07.2025 CAFES AND THE GOOD LIFE
Anyone who has spent much time in Europe, especially in the Mediterranean countries, has experienced that certain goodness of life, at least as compared to a life in the U.S., that local people seem to create in ways almost unknown in America. There are the pleasures of strolling about streets surrounded by beautiful architecture, streets that engage one’s curiosity, whether laid out at random or carefully planned to create grand imperial vistas; there are ample opportunities for people-watching; and there are pastry shops, cheese shops, wine shops, and clothing stores on almost any block. And, for a visitor, there are the pleasures of figuring out how to do the most ordinary things in a foreign port…how to order a lunch, to ride on a bus, or to buy a theater ticket. For me, one of the greatest pleasures is finding coffee houses and enjoying coffee of a quality rarely to be found elsewhere. The city where I am currently ensconced is famous for its coffee and for its cafes, many of them from the Belle Epoch, with others of more recent vintage. It is in these places of relaxation and quiet that I am most reminded of the fungible quality of life in America, where everything seems be exploited for quick profit and uniformity, a sameness that Americans find stupidly appealing and about which their ignorance renders them unaware of not having the best of everything, if of anything. Contrary to the common belief, Starbucks is a shit cafe. The qualities of a European cafe that make it a delight for passing the time are several. The most obvious and first apprehended is design. The cafe where I am sitting as I write this is over 120 years old, it’s Art Nouveau decoration and fixtures largely unchanged since its first days. The epergne which holds blood oranges, lemons and limes is a small masterpiece of between-the-wars elegance. The walls are kitted out with cartouches of idealized women in flowing frocks and, oddly enough, naked men posed as classical gods. The table tops are marble over bases of elaborate wrought iron. Service is slow, simpatico, just attentive enough to avoid annoyance but not be invasive. One is never bothered by some ill bred waiter bustling up and demanding if everything is “cool” for “you guys.” Once I have settled in a had a gaze at the surroundings, ordered my coffee with cream, and a slice of apple strudel, I begin noticing the other folks at their tables. There is a soft buzz of conversation held in quiet voices, with no irritating muzak blasting in from speakers stupidly placed just overhead. A whisper of jazz is in the background, speakers invisible. One thing that leaps out at me is that people are sitting and reading actual books and newspapers….you know, the old things with paper pages that you have to move your hand to turn. Cell phones and computers are not much on view, and then only in front of obvious misfits and foreigners. Locals know better. Most of the tables are surrounded by groups of amiable chatterers, the art of conversation not yet extinct. Some are clearly family groups, but mostly there seem to be friends intent on being together, including the dogs quietly resting under the tables. None of this comes to mind when I remember the last coffee shop I was in before I left the U.S. In my mid-sized home city, it is a place considered by many to be a pleasant spot for…..what? The coffee is mediocre, but good by American standards. The most common activity is staring at a computer screen or idiotically swiping at a cell phone. A few people are playing a board game in the back. Most of the sound comes from piped in noise, not from conversation. In fact, if someone is speaking, most likely it is to an invisible being connected through earbuds, those most stupid of devices that resemble infected puss dripping from one’s ears. There is nothing beautiful or even well designed about the place. The decor appears thrown together, an agglomeration of junk that suggests something between a child’s unkempt bedroom and an untalented student’s project on functionalism. When I am in Europe my day is punctuated by coffees. My first cafe is for a morning cappuccino accompanied by croissant; the second for a post-lunch double espresso with a bite of well made pastry; the last is often for a couple of glasses of local wine stretched over as many hours conversing with buddies. Another marvel of European cafes is their lack of class distinctions—not the case with every shop, but always with the ones that repeatedly draw me in. It’s common to sit at a table with a furniture restorer, a judge, a business consultant and a farmer who has brought a load of his homemade sausages and produce in to the weekly market. Friends, clients, relatives of all estates, folks who respect each other, can mix on equal terms and enjoy each other’s quirks—a type of diversity that I rarely find at home, where diversity generates so much talk (of late mostly condemnation) but surprisingly little reality. Throughout a couple of centuries many writers have waxed eloquent about coffee, the emporiums that prepare and serve it, and the bushel basket of social goods that it engenders. I’ll give one more ‘thumbs up,’ though, for excellent coffee and friendship, rapidly dying together in the U.S., where all must be commodified and drained of human warmth, that land where morality has never been of the highest sort, but now is sunk to even more treacherous depths. Coffee won’t save us, but it can bond us together in resistance to social violence and mediocre living.Collapsible text is great for longer section titles and descriptions. It gives people access to all the info they need, while keeping your layout clean. Link your text to anything, or set your text box to expand on click. Write your text here...
1.25.2025 THE RoT (REIGN of TERROR) HAS BEGUN
I was planning to write an essay on a non-political topic this week, but I can’t let the first week of Agent Orange’s tenure pass without comment. I try not to listen to or to read many discussions of his actions, as it’s all just angering and depressing. Most pundits can’t get beyond trying to find rational explanations of his seemingly random dictates. But his program is actually quite clear and needs little explanation. The RoT has become government policy. The goal is to create chaos in the society, the chaos that causes people to fear for their jobs and their families, to hunker down and keep their mouths shut for fear of retribution. The AO’s actions are taken straight from the playbook of National Socialism, Nazism. The clearest indication is his pardon of the Jan 6th criminals, which now gives him a group of thugs who are beyond the law and eagerly await an excuse to indulge in more violence. This group will quickly grow in numbers. They are the SA, the brown shirts, of Nazi Germany whose purpose was to intimidate, to brutalize or kill anyone opposing the regime. Along with the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, thus legalizing the use of the military for domestic control, the stage is now set for marshal law to spread across the country, enforced by the thug brigade. The AO’s dictates have created fear of losing jobs, medical coverage, the right to speak out about important issues such as disease threats, and a host of others. These dictates are initially aimed at federal workers, the low-hanging fruit, but will spread throughout the economy and our lives. And no one in government even dares to speak out. The spineless Republicans, in control of all branches of government, including the Court of Supreme Stupidity, are all goosestepping in line, fists raised. Democrats are cowering in their corners nursing their election wounds, as ineffectual as usual. The initial targets of persecution are immigrants and LGBTQ+. The immigrants are already trembling in fear of when ICE comes pounding on the door at 2:00 am. Watch out all queers! Within six months we will be crashing back into the years of the McCarthy era.
1.18.2025 IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP
I have been trying to settle down to write for the past three or four days with little success. My goal was to write something that was not so steeped in negativism as the past two posts, but finding a topic about which I can remain optimistic or positive is elusive. Most trains of thought lead, one way or another, back to despair, fear, a paranoia about the future. Each day’s headlines are enough to send me into an emotional paralysis. This situation is not new. It is not my reaction to the election of Agent Orange (the AO) to the oval office, I have been thinking and feeling this way for at least a decade, but the thought of the inauguration in a few days certainly intensifies things. An article by Stephanie McCrummen in the current issue of Atlantic, “Army of God,” outlines a terrifying manifestation of evangelical Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), an extreme right wing movement which, if the author is to be believed, is widespread throughout the country, counting millions of adherents. The Southern Poverty Law Center states that, “NAR is the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.” Its supporters include people from all economic groups and are racially mixed and socially diverse. What they have in common is the belief that they are the chosen soldiers of God whom He has called to wage war against the secular state, replacing it with a theocracy which is only vaguely defined but which is apparently a Paradise where they are in complete control and all dissenters have been exterminated or otherwise eliminated. Those who have to be eliminated, of course, include all homosexuals and other queer people, anyone who fails to share the NAR point of view and submit to its control, and adherents of most other religions, especially Islam and Hinduism. The scariest part of all of this, though, is that many of the key people in the new administration, guiding its policy, are members of the NAR. I don’t need to dwell on the horrific acts that throughout history have been rationalized as commanded by God, or the gods. Few human states are more impervious to reason than zealotry for violence justified as being the will of God. Typical of such movements, the NAR’s rhetoric is heavily centered on spiritual warfare, destroying current governments and persecuting sinners. There is little to be known about what is to come next or what it will look like. Violence and destruction are always easier things to promote and to enact than the envisioning and creation of good. My purpose here is not to go into a detailed exposition of the NAR. Many other writers have studied it in depth. I am more concerned about my own reaction to current events, a certain paranoia about my life and my future. I will emphasize again that this feeling of dread is not new, it has just been intensified by the final triumph of the sociopathic right. One of my themes for decades has been the slow, steady decline of the U.S. into fascism. The country has always been close to it with its racism, its support of the rich at the expense of the people at large, its obsession with guns and violence, its lack of basic social services, and its propaganda about how moral it is in comparison to the rest of the world. The U.S. has been diseased from its very founding moments. So it is no surprise that at some point the lid comes off and the anti-democratic, gun slinging, slogan screaming hoard takes control. It is easy to imagine the terror that has seized the Hispanic population of the country. A huge portion of them have someone in their lives—parent, child, friend—who is undocumented or in some minor way has offended the state. These lives have always been edgy and uncertain, each day being tense, wondering if they would get apprehended. With the pledge of the administration to wage a war against immigrants, starting with mass deportations, the terror must be near unbearable. Imagine lying in bed at night wondering when the banging will start on the door and ICE will come charging in, guns drawn. I have been trying to settle down to write for the past three or four days with little success. My goal was to write something that was not so steeped in negativism as the past two posts, but finding a topic about which I can remain optimistic or positive is elusive. Most trains of thought lead, one way or another, back to despair, fear, a paranoia about the future. Each day’s headlines are enough to send me into an emotional paralysis. This situation is not new. It is not my reaction to the election of Agent Orange (the AO) to the oval office, I have been thinking and feeling this way for at least a decade, but the thought of the inauguration in a few days certainly intensifies things. An article by Stephanie McCrummen in the current issue of Atlantic, “Army of God,” outlines a terrifying manifestation of evangelical Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), an extreme right wing movement which, if the author is to be believed, is widespread throughout the country, counting millions of adherents. The Southern Poverty Law Center states that, “NAR is the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.” Its supporters include people from all economic groups and are racially mixed and socially diverse. What they have in common is the belief that they are the chosen soldiers of God whom He has called to wage war against the secular state, replacing it with a theocracy which is only vaguely defined but which is apparently a Paradise where they are in complete control and all dissenters have been exterminated or otherwise eliminated. Those who have to be eliminated, of course, include all homosexuals and other queer people, anyone who fails to share the NAR point of view and submit to its control, and adherents of most other religions, especially Islam and Hinduism. The scariest part of all of this, though, is that many of the key people in the new administration, guiding its policy, are members of the NAR. I don’t need to dwell on the horrific acts that throughout history have been rationalized as commanded by God, or the gods. Few human states are more impervious to reason than zealotry for violence justified as being the will of God. Typical of such movements, the NAR’s rhetoric is heavily centered on spiritual warfare, destroying current governments and persecuting sinners. There is little to be known about what is to come next or what it will look like. Violence and destruction are always easier things to promote and to enact than the envisioning and creation of good. My purpose here is not to go into a detailed exposition of the NAR. Many other writers have studied it in depth. I am more concerned about my own reaction to current events, a certain paranoia about my life and my future. I will emphasize again that this feeling of dread is not new, it has just been intensified by the final triumph of the sociopathic right. One of my themes for decades has been the slow, steady decline of the U.S. into fascism. The country has always been close to it with its racism, its support of the rich at the expense of the people at large, its obsession with guns and violence, its lack of basic social services, and its propaganda about how moral it is in comparison to the rest of the world. The U.S. has been diseased from its very founding moments. So it is no surprise that at some point the lid comes off and the anti-democratic, gun slinging, slogan screaming hoard takes control. It is easy to imagine the terror that has seized the Hispanic population of the country. A huge portion of them have someone in their lives—parent, child, friend—who is undocumented or in some minor way has offended the state. These lives have always been edgy and uncertain, each day being tense, wondering if they would get apprehended. With the pledge of the administration to wage a war against immigrants, starting with mass deportations, the terror must be near unbearable. Imagine lying in bed at night wondering when the banging will start on the door and ICE will come charging in, guns drawn.
1.03.2025 DEGENERATE LIBERALISM
I had the good luck to be out of the U.S. during the presidential election and for several weeks afterwards. Among the many fortunate aspects of my absence was that I was spared having to participate in the myriad conversations, news analyses and op eds about why Harris lost. The Finns didn’t seem to much care and neither did I. The one thing that did strike me about the headlines on the topic, which I mostly skipped over, was that almost none of them saw her loss as part of a wider historical trend. Instead, her loss was attributed to errors and weaknesses in her campaign strategy. I view her loss as the outcome of a political and historical process that has been ramping up with ever greater force since the election of Regan—it could be argued that it began even before that. The process is the descent of the country into fascism and what may well turn out to be autocracy. Harris and Walz’ faults had little to do with it. The decades-long degeneration of liberalism into a class-bound, self-blinded political ethos had everything to do with it. Most of my liberal friends, diligently doing their recycling, supporting LGBTQ+ issues and Black Lives Matter, made the assumption that I voted for Harris along with them. I did not, but I found it best not to disclose this since, on the few occasions that I did, it resulted in getting yelled at and sometimes accused of being responsible for the demise of democracy. I had made a promise to myself after the 2020 election that I would never again vote for a presidential candidate that I found morally repulsive, and Harris was repulsive. I suppose that if it were possible to make a scale of comparative moral repulsivity—0 = righteous, 10 = utterly despicable—Harris would rank a bit lower on the scale than Trump—she is not a convicted criminal, nor has she ever bragged about grabbing cock in elevators—but such comparisons are ultimately of little meaning. A better scale might be a stench scale. But who cares whether the stench is ranked as a 10 or a 7? One wants to escape from the room in either case. Harris’ moral degradation was abundantly clear in her pledged support for the genocidal government of Israel, her pledge to continue the current inhumane treatment of refugees trying to cross the southern boarder, in her lack of policy to alleviate poverty, to address the useless and unjust mass incarceration of young men, mostly black, her failure to address the hideous, profit driven mess that is known as American healthcare, and the list goes on. Harris was just one more Democrat willing to abuse desperate people for her own political convenience and to let the bulk of our countrymen continue to struggle in poverty while her own class benefits from economic prosperity. She was nothing more than one more exemplar of a bankrupt liberalism, degraded and vacuous. The most fearsome aspect of Harris’ lack of moral leadership was not her loss of the oval office. In fact it isn’t her at all. The scary part is that the huge number of people who voted for her consider themselves to be morally sound as they support candidates and government that is ever closer to a reign of terror, one to be unleashed in full on the 20th of January. Democrat voters should liken themselves to the good German burgers, most of them decent folk, who sat by doing nothing much while the state persecuted Jews, homosexuals, and anyone else that they could target. It wasn’t because Germans are inherently bad people—they are no worse than any other nationality. They were just complacent. As long as the terror didn’t directly enter their homes, they were willing to sit drinking their beer, allowing others to be sent to the camps, just trying to lead their lives without inconvenience or threat. We’re all aware of Hannah Arendt’s term, the banality of evil. It beautifully describes Democrats. Aaron Bushnell, the young Air Force serviceman who immolated himself in front of the Israeli embassy to protest the genocide in Gaza and the U.S. support therefor, posted the following on his FaceBook account shortly before setting himself on fire: “Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now.” Since a friend brought this statement to my attention I have thought about it countless times. It is so very true. What were white, American Christians doing while Jim Crow was forcing generations of black people to remain in poverty? Decorating their Christmas tress and praying for peace, prosperity and equality for all. What did the U.S. electorate do in the face of our nation’s support of Israeli genocide against Palestinians? We submitted to a political contest between two candidates both of whom supported the genocide. The list is endless. Regardless of the protests of “what else could we do?” there were choices that could have been made. One of the positive things about democracy is that the people at large do have the power to influence political outcomes. The people can resist by massive protest and by refusing to support candidates who wallow in immorality. The argument of choosing one candidate over another because one is slightly less objectionable is an argument in favor of complacency. Unfortunately, all to few of us will actually make any attempt to challenge the status quo of socially organized, state sponsored oppression. As we anticipate the inauguration of our new president, Agent Orange, who has already stated that he will take charge of the reign of terror already in operation for many decades and will fuel it to unprecedented levels of destruction, we, people who want to lead morally commendable lives, can still take action. But we won’t. We will be like Germans eating their pfeffernüsse and dancing around their tannenbaums while the smoke from the extermination camps wafts overhead.
12.23.2024 CHRISTMAS RESISTANCE
Sitting with a cappuccino, I had just finished watching Daniel Craig’s new film “Queer,” an unfortunate film for a superb actor. The first hour of the two-hour-plus film was an intense, engaging, erotic, well written masterpiece. The remainder rapidly degenerated into foolishness trying to mimic “Raiders of the Lost Arc,” together with hissing serpents guarding the temple of the crazy high priestess in the middle of the jungle—an unfortunate end to such a promising start. Prior to the start of “Queer” the audience was informed that other movies for the Christmas season included two thrillers, one a satanic romp and the other a sex thriller. The coffee shop was in a strip mall on the edge of my small, liberal city, where, as in every place in America other than the middle of a forest, seasonal jingles were tinkling from speakers, carols encouraging shoppers to show their love through retail. Overall, the prospect was dismal, the same dullness that I experience anew each year. Lost in my reverie of negativity, my eye was caught by a man, rather tall, bearded, seemingly around thirty, dressed in a ski toboggan, wool plaid jacket, skirt and hiking boots. The skirt was ankle-length and flouncy with red and white ruffles, reminding me of something that a woman in the mountains of Ecuador might wear for a celebration. As he strode past, clearly intent on his destination, I felt a wind of relief, a puff of lightness, passing through myself. I might even call it a whiff of optimism, sweet and encouraging, wafting up through the flatulence of the season’s hypocrisy. I was immediately grateful for this man’s fleeting presence in my life and community. There was nothing effeminate about his appearance or behavior, or at least my fantasy of his story didn’t lead me in that direction. This was not a man trying to adopt the signs and stereotypical behaviors of women. Here was a man throwing the finger to societal norms because he refused to be governed by practices that he considered insupportable. Even in my queer-friendly city men wearing skirts without being “trans” are a rare thing and cause immediate discomfort, especially in hetero circles. Of course I didn’t actually know what this fellow’s meanings or circumstances are. I created him to satisfy my own needs of the moment—my need for a community of people who understand that resisting and defying our social and governmental norms is essential if we are to keep ourselves from decaying into the fetid pool of fascism, a process already so far advanced that it is difficult to be optimistic that we can reverse it. I began asking myself if I was feeling a bit hopeful. Hopeful for what? Knowing that the next day I would have to sit through yet another Christmas Eve sermon blathering on about Christ’s coming as a sign of hope and light, the serial vacuous message which one must endure—or ignore—during a service that is tolerable only because of the beautiful music. It occurred to me that this ordinary interpretation of the birth narrative is utterly misguided. The birth of Jesus was a nativity in the milieu of class-driven terror. It is hard for us who live comfortable lives in the relative security (or delusions thereof) of our material possessions to imagine what the reality of life was for Mary and Joseph, a poor, low class laborer’s family whose every moment was subject to the whims of Herod, a tyrannical, capricious and sadistic ruler. Rather than an event of sweetness and light, the nativity story is one of anxiety and threat. Mary, in her last few days of pregnancy and expecting a birth at any time, was forced to go on a long journey, perhaps by foot or, at best, on a donkey, to comply with a government decree about tax registration. Ending up in some kind of barn, perhaps no more than a lean-to, she gives birth without mother, sisters, or anyone but Joseph at her side. Childbirth was a perilous event—maternal and infant mortality was extremely high. Nursing an infant to health was a dodgy business, with a very high rate of death within the first few weeks of life. If the Gospel of Matthew is to be believed, at some point after the birth three wise men, or kings of some kind, arrive to see the baby, bringing opulent gifts that were clearly intended for some royal child, not for the offspring of peasants. What were Mary and Joseph supposed to do with myrrh, a type of perfume or incense? What she needed far more than the baubles of wealth was a clean place to stay and healthy food. After this rather terrifying beginning, the couple gets words that Herod is slaughtering all of the children in the land under the age of two, and they have to flee into Egypt, a strange and foreign land, to hide Jesus from him, remaining for an unknown period of time. Perhaps Joseph was able to pawn the gifts of the magi in order to finance their flight and exile. Overall, the birth of Jesus was anything but a time of harmonious choirs of angels singing Christmas ditties as Mary and Joseph lounged around eating too many cookies. For anyone, even for one having the ironclad faith of Mary, Jesus’ early years would have been fraught with fear, stress and anxiety, not the saccharine smells of essential oils wafting from dispensers hung on a plastic pine tree. The survival of the family was imperiled again and again. The Nativity story is a story of threat, persecution, fear, and suffering, as Mary and Joseph are forced to flee from their home, the only place they have ever known, in order to protect their lives and the life of their son. It is a story of resistance and survival. It was the beginning of a life spent defying government, refusing to be quashed by circumstances, of openly challenging cultural norms and class privilege. This is a life understood in a way far different from the usual pulpit pabulum that we hear cooed out during the Christmas season. Our anodyne messages are no more than self-indulgent jingles created to anesthetize ourselves from the realities of billions of people whose lives are imperiled everyday, all too often by the weaponry, economic systems and narratives of hatred in which we, the prosperous, participate on a daily basis. To those billions, our Christmas gifts, our stories and celebrations, displays of our wealth, are best viewed as acts of oppression and persecution, a turning away from the reality of Jesus’ birth. Our churches that consider themselves as mouthpieces of Christian social justice with sermons that reflect the class-bound, self-serving, milquetoast liberalism that has become embodied in the Democratic party are to no less extent culprits in persecution. The handsome man striding past my coffee shop window wearing a swishing skirt seems to me to be—or at least I imagine him to be—making a moral statement closer to the message of the Nativity than our jingley carols, gift wrappings and anodyne sermons. I have no idea, and make no suppositions about his sexual identity or desires—he is simply a man refusing to be bound by the conventions of an oppressive society. As a symbol of resistance, it is small but comes far closer to the ethos of the birth of Jesus than our conventional signs and celebrations. I hope that next year at this time, when we will be nearly one full year into the second administration of Agent Orange, I will have the fortitude to stand in defiance of the cruelty and oppression that he has already declared to impose on the country, to say nothing of those conditions which already exist as part of our cultural mainstream. By next year the surveillance state will be embedded even more deeply than it already is and the terror police will have been unleashed on society even more ferociously. The Christmas message is not about hope but, rather, about having the courage to stand in defiance of Herod, to resist state sanctioned inhumanity. Christmas tinsel and Chrismons (a cooked-up word that always makes me cringe) are embarrassments. Men striding in skirts are crucial.