Travails of Trudeau le Petit

Tags

america, cia, communist revolution, cuba, Fidel Castro, justin trudeau, Pierre Trudeau

 

So, he won’t be going to the funeral of Fidel Castro, because his “schedule does not permit it”. Fidel came to the funeral of Trudeau le Grand. When major world leaders die, their counterparts usually attend obsequies, even though no one’s schedule probably permits it. It’s pathetic really – since it is not the schedule but public opinion that prevents him from going. Having said that Fidel was “a remarkable politician”, and received the usual backlash of hate from right-wing no-nothings, le Petit ought to have delivered a little history to those who think yesterday is long ago. But, since he did not, I will.

In 1959, the youthful Fidel overthrew Juan Batista, a brutal puppet-dictator, controlled largely by the American Mafia, whose members regarded Cuba as their personal fiefdom, a cess-pit for smuggling, gambling, drugs, prostitution, and other forms of exploitation. No one in Washington then thought this was such a bad idea, and Fidel was invited to the US in 1963, for what should have been talks to normalize relations between the two nations. But, because of the usual hysterical reactions to anything progressive – mainly from the demented Republican-fringe – exception was taken to Fidel’s appropriations of land and property, taken from fleeing millionaire gangsters and given back to the poor farmers from whom it had been stolen, these talks ended in acrimony. Bagman for the Mob, Meyer Lansky’s relatives even recently tried to reclaim his illicit Cuban properties. In 1963, Fidel addressed the United Nations, saying that he had been looking for friends in the West, but had only found one in Soviet Russian Premier, Nikita Krushchev. Encouraged by Moscow, he then conceived the idea of fomenting revolutions across Central America – something the area was ripe for, yet also something guaranteed to raise Washington’s hackles. Fidel’s sister, Juanita Castro, who has lived in Miami for the last fifty years, says that this was when her brother turned his back on the democratic revolution he had initially proclaimed, adopting the hard-line dictatorial stance favoured by Moscow.

We now know that, over the succeeding years, there were over 600 risibly unsuccessful attempts by the US Government to assassinate Fidel. If someone tried to kill you over 600 times, in what kind of light would you regard them? Nonetheless, during the hopeful presidency of Jimmy Carter, a former staff member of the US Embassy in Havana – closed in 1961 – was sent to Cuba as an envoy to re-open talks between the two nations. There seemed to be a chance in those years, but, again, paranoid agents of big business in Washington, ever-fearful of the commie plague that would end their own form of tyranny, stymied all attempts at a reasonable compromise. And when the Messiah, Ronald Reagan, came to power, he naturally had no desire to parley with any pinko lair of Satan – not that affable Ronnie knew anything at all about Cuba, beyond the smuggled cigars he offered to guests. The relationship fell into decay until Obama, who, to his everlasting credit, used his Executive Order – one of the few tools left him by a stacked Congress – in an attempt to open up dialogue. By then, the Soviet Union had collapsed, Fidel was ailing, and his brother, Raoul, led the country. Russia’s new czar, Vladimir Putin, showed no interest in the Caribbean nation, and Cuba was, and is, in need of powerful friends.

As part of his new Art of the American Deal, Herr Trump has, unsurprisingly, threatened to close down what little has been opened up with Cuba, unless his particular demands are met. Of course, typically, we have no real idea what these demands will be – but it is not looking good. No doubt, Fidel is glad not to be obliged to see the future.

In a very minute nutshell, that is the history lesson. In any accounts of the 20^th century, Fidel will always have his own chapter, and many of these accounts may well note that the Canadian Prime Minister, son of Fidel’s good and lifelong friend, could not be bothered to attend his funeral – in a pallid attempt to salvage a rapidly sinking public image. It will be interesting to see what his hectic schedule actually entails for the dates in question. Boo!

 

Paul William Roberts

 

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Fidel Castro RIP & The Travels of Trudeau le Petit

Tags

Bay of Pigs, cia, cuba, Fidel Castro, Francophonie, human rights, John F Kennedy, justin trudeau, USA, Women's Rights

Fidel Castro RIP

 

Without any doubt, Fidel Castro will remain one of the 20^th-century’s major historical figures. But there are two stories about Fidel – just as there are two stories about everyone and everything. To some, Fidel will always be the heroic revolutionary who rescued Cuba from a corrupt kleptocracy and instituted an egalitarian society in defiance of Washington and the West. To others, he was a brutal tyrant who crushed all opposition and trampled over human rights. In fact, both stories are true. To the Marxist, however, the “opposition” crushed would be greedy class-traitors, and the human rights trampled over would be those of people seeking to debase the moral climate of society. It is worth remembering that Plato’s vision for his Socratic Republic entailed expelling all the poets and artists as social debasers – even though Socrates himself was sentenced to death for “corrupting the morals of youth”.

It is often indicative of character when people rejoice over the death of a figure beloved of many – and this is what is happening now in the Floridian Cuban community. Many of these people escaped the island, or were expelled by Fidel, either as criminals or class-traitors. It is easy to understand both points of view, but I have been to Cuba a number of times, and am inclined to think that Fidel did far more good than bad. The complaints of emigres are all too often that their purloined wealth was confiscated, either in the form of land returned to the peasants who farmed it, or from confiscated rentier properties, which contribute nothing to national productivity. Few seem to remember the state Cuba was in before Fidel’s revolution. Run by a puppet dictator, it was ostensibly owned by the American Mafia, which had turned it into a private fiefdom of gambling and prostitution. The crime colony island of Spectre in Ian Fleming’s excellent James Bond novels is based on Cuba – Fleming himself lived in nearby Jamaica. Before this period, Cuba had been invaded and plundered by the US as part of a burgeoning would-be tropical empire. The United Fruit Company, active across the Caribbean and Central America, was owned by the Mafia. Like many Third World nations, the island was still in the 17^th-century when the 20^th-century dawned. Fidel Castro seized it by the neck and dragged it forwards, as Mao had done in China, and Stalin had done in Russia. When absolute power corrupts absolutely, what happens? It would seem to be a galloping paranoia, a fear of all critics and criticism – real or imagined. In Fidel’s case, however, it seems to have been more real than imagined. We know for a fact that the CIA were trying to kill him – preposterously at times. Someone was once hired to put a poisonous powder into his shoes that would make his hair and beard fall out – presumably on the premise that such an un-American beard must be the source of his power. Then, of course, there was the disastrous Bay of Pigs attempt at invasion. True, Fidel had allowed the Soviets to place nuclear missiles on the island, but he seems to have realized he was just a pawn in a far larger game, ordering the missiles disarmed and returned to Russia – and thereby averting the Apocalypse. John F. Kennedy’s sensible withdrawal from conflict with Cuba is said by some to be the cause of his assassination – which seems to have been a plot by the Mafia and Cuban exiles.

Few countries are suited to immediate democracy, and Cuba is certainly one of them. This, of course, assumes that democracy is even viable anywhere. Yet, whatever Fidel did, he was adored by the vast majority of Cubans for over fifty years. Most had seen their lives improve dramatically. When I was first there, the Leader would drive himself around Havana in a jeep, cigar clenched in his teeth, and stop to chat with anyone he encountered. He was not a man of the people – he was educated at a private Jesuit school with Pierre Elliot Trudeau – yet he understood the people, and they responded to him with love. At least ten million people will be mourning him tonight. Cuba is definitely a far better place because of him – and the greater good is a Marxist principle.

One of my favourite anecdotes about Fidel is from the memoirs of Kenneth Tynan, the eminent theatre critic and playwright. He was on the island with Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway and others. Cuba’s most famous resident, Hemingway had not left after the revolution, as some seem to think he did. Indeed, understanding the island better than most, he approved of Fidel, who, like most of his close revolutionary comrades, was still very young at the time. This lustrous crew were awaiting an audience with young Fidel, when Truman Capote said, to whoever was listening, “Do you think that boy over there would go get us some tacos if I gave him the money?”

“Unlikely,” said Hemingway, “he’s the Minister of Health…”

 

The Travels of Trudeau le Petit

 

He’s swanning around Africa now, bleating about women’s rights, and denying his party fund-raising is dubious. A PM used to be able to avoid these embarrassing questions on foreign trips – but not anymore. Like his bromancee, Obama, he seems to be so thoroughly decent and innocent that one is inclined to believe his protestations. But, with innocence, comes naivety. At the Madagascar Francophonie, countries seem to have issues far more pressing than those Trudeau is blabbing about. Mali, for example. The French want Canadian troops in there and elsewhere to help quell chaos. But le Petit seems more concerned with women’s rights across the continent. Perhaps this is a grave problem to many western industrial women, who only hear about Africa in the media. But, to the Liberians or South Sudanese, the appearance of this bright and bushy white kid preaching modernity must be perplexing. Imagine if he had beamed himself down into 19^th-century England, during the Industrial Revolution, declaring votes for women and a fair minimum wage. Even the Proletariat, whose average age of death was then nineteen, would have thought he was out of his tree. Change comes slowly, and if it comes quickly there is upheaval and mayhem – and then no improvement at all. Karl Marx understood this, and he advocated gradual change from the top down to avoid catastrophe. He believed the revolution, when it came, would happen in England – because he thought it depended upon general education. What happened in Russia would have surprised him, and he wouldn’t have approved of it in any way. It is hard to accept that le Petit is so naïve he thinks western social values can be instantly implemented by nations that are still effectively in the late 18^th-century. They have many other more pressing issues than human rights, so why keep harping on the topic? I hate to think that Trudeau is only doing it to court favour with his dewy-eyed fans back home…

 

Paul William Roberts

Standing Rock

In this early winter of our discontent, it is a joy to have a genuinely inspiring and heartwarming news story. Or is it a news story? The assembled nation of Protectors of the Earth – as they nobly title themselves – at Standing Rock, North Dakota, are not getting anything like the media attention their project merits. They want to stop an oil pipeline that will go through indigenous territory, through burial grounds and sacred sites, and they seem grimly determined to achieve this goal. Perhaps the great story of our times will prove, historically, to be the awakening of First Nations peoples after a few centuries of brutally imposed slumber and passive acquiescence. The Standing Rock conflict – which has already witnessed violent aggression from US authorities – has attracted support from around the world. Indigenous peoples from Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, Africa, South America, and Canada have travelled there in an unprecedented show of solidarity, not just for their brothers and sisters, but for the preservation of this planet from corporate greed and despoliation. Thanks to the wonderfully charming and insightful CBC Radio show, Unreserved, hosted by Rosanna Deerchild, I was able to hear some of the voices from Standing Rock, and listen to Neil Young performing his song written for the movement. He alone of luminaries so far has had the decency to go there. What I heard was extremely moving. After generations of the vilest persecution, the only rightful inhabitants of this continent have managed to preserve so much of their exquisite culture and its deep bond with the Earth. No one I listened to separated love and care for the planet from spiritual beliefs. The Earth is our Great Mother and we must protect her at all costs – or else we have nothing. I thought that, for so many years, we white folk have been telling them what to do, what to think, what to be – and now, at the end, it is they who are teaching us how to live. This great struggle hardly appears in the media, yet it will be remembered as a turning point in North American history. The people there need our constant attention and many kinds of help, for the coming year will not be easy. Apparently, those who wish to assist the Protectors, with food and provisions for a long winter, can simply send them to: First Nations, Standing Rock, North Dakota. If I still had my eyesight, I’d be down there, but I shall send my love and prayers every day to all of those modern heroes.

Leonard and Bob: An Anecdote

It was 1984, or early ’85. I was with Leonard Cohen in his Montreal walk-up duplex – not the current Place Portugal apartment, but a similar one in the same area. We were assiduously working on a bottle of cognac and a carton of Marlboros, and somewhat laconically working on ideas for a video. The telephone rang – something it did not often do. Leonard’s side of the conversation was much like this: “Yeah? Oh, okay. Why not? Uh-huh. Listen, I’m with a friend – can he come too? Okay. Uh-huh. Yes. Around seven-thirtythen? Right. Uh-huh. Fine. Okay.” When he’d replaced the receiver, I asked Leonard who was calling. “Some lady for Bob Dylan,” he said. “Evidently he’s playing in town and wants to meet me. I asked if you could come and she said it was okay. I suppose we’d better leave now…’

I thought how cool is this? I remember it was raining hard – a hard rain – and we had trouble flagging down a cab. Sodden, smoking damp cigarettes in the back seat, I asked Leonard when he’d last seen Dylan. Both of their careers had taken a bit of a nose-dive during recent years. Not that I then knew it then, but both were also about to rocket back up to a new zenith. “Oh,” Leonard replied, “I’ve never met him before…” I’d always imagined they were comrades-in-arms, poetic Jews bound by shared culture and acclaim. It seemed obvious that they’d be close friends. Yet Leonard and Bob had never met? This, I thought, will be an historic meeting – like Goethe meeting Napoleon. Voila, un homme. In retrospect, it was more like Yeats meeting Eliot.

On Leonard’s instructions, our cab slushed through melting snow around to a grim rear door of the stadium. We stood in pouring rain waiting for a knock on the iron door to be answered. A massively muscled black man peered out suspiciously. We were ushered through corridors smelling of old sweat and sneakers to what must have been a dressing room. Bare lightbulbs circled a cracked mirror. We were alone. The most noticeable thing about this room was the rack of identical outfits. A black leather jacket and faded blue jeans. There must have been twenty of them draped over hangers. This was Dylan’s costume du jour – perhaps harking back to his sixties’ glory-days? Leonard and I sat smoking in a resonant silence.

Then the door burst open and in walked Bob Dylan, in a black leather jacket and jeans, his hair like a bed-spring-factory explosion. Courteous as always, Leonard introduced me. I had in fact met Dylan in London years before, but the event was so unmemorable – presumably for us both – that I didn’t mention it. Dylan said, “Hey, man,” and gave a limp handshake. He had a way of looking at you sideways, as if hiding some hideous deformation on the other side of his face. Many years later, when we played chess, he would look at the board in a similar manner. The historic conversation went something like this:

 

Dylan: Good to see you, man – how’re you doin’?

Cohen: Pretty good, man – how’re you doing?

Dylan: I’m good, man. Where’re you livin’ now?

Cohen: Oh, here and in LA. Where’re you living?

Dylan: Well, I’m on the road now. But usually in LA…

Cohen: LA, eh?

Dylan: Lot of the time… You’re there too?

Cohen: Yeah, I’m there a lot…

Dylan: In LA?

Cohen: Yeah, in LA…

Dylan: Me too. How’re you doin’, man?

Cohen: Not at all bad. And you?

Dylan: Me? I’m still on the road…

Cohen: Yeah, heading to another joint, eh?

Dylan: Headin’ to Buffalo next, man…

Cohen: Oh, I see… But you’re doing okay?

Dylan: I s’pose… Hey, man, I really dug that song of yours, Hallelujah…

Cohen: Thanks, man. I love that one of yours, I and I…

Dylan: Oh yeah… How long it take you to write that song, man?

Cohen: Er…Oh, I think about three years… How long did you spend on I and I?

Dylan: ‘bout ten minutes…

Cohen: Oh, really? So, you’re doing okay, are you?

Dylan: Yeah, man, pretty fine… How’re you doin’?

Cohen: I’m good. Kind of quiet, you know?

Dylan: Quiet? Nah, too much noise. But you’re in LA, are you?

Cohen: Part of the year – winters. What about you?

Dylan: I’m there… Good to see you, man…

Cohen: You too, man…

Dylan: So, how’re you doin’?

It did not take me long to work out that these cultural Titans had nothing to say to one another. When it was firmly established that each was doing okay, and that both of them lived at times in LA – although neither suggested they might visit one another there – the toe-curlingly awkward exchange was terminated by a lady telling Dylan he was on stage in ten minutes. He told Leonard it was nice to see him, ignored me totally, and vanished back through the door.

“Shall we see the concert?” I asked Leonard, assuming we would.

“I think not,” he replied. “We should get back to work…”

In the cab going back to work, I remarked that the two of them had little to talk about.

“It’s true,” said Leonard Cohen.

After meeting TS Eliot for the first and only time, William Butler Yeats had one comment: “That man will not let me look into his soul.”

President Pence

Tags

Donald Trump, impeachment, mike pence, politics, United States of America

 

I should warn readers that my spellings tend to be phonetic, since, being blind, I can hear words or names but not see them.

 

A fellow named Professor Alan Lichtman, of the American University in Washington, has correctly predicted the result of numerous previous electoral campaigns, based, it seems, on the views of the electorate regarding White House incumbents and their parties. He predicted Trump’s win a year ago using such criteria. But he has also predicted Trump’s impeachment, this based, he says, more on “gut-feeling” than on any hard evidence. Yet he also points to the panorama of potentially egregious charges already levelled in the courts against the President-Elect. These include the fraudulent use of a charitable organization, several alleged business scams, and the extravagant embarrassment of the so-called Trump University rip-off. There are also a number of sexual-assault accusations, any one of which could effloresce into a reason for impeachment. It was, he says, the Paula Jones case that exacerbated Bill Clinton’s impeachment process. No one cares what kind of mire befalls Trump, of course, but, as Lichtman reminds us, impeachment would mean Mike Pence as President. And nothing would please hardcore Republicans more than having this Bible-bashing nonentity in the Oval Office. Gone would be LGBT rights. Gone would be women’s rights to control their own bodies. And gone would be the worldwide alliances upon which US foreign policy has relied for its imperial adventures. Given the potential causes, we must wonder what it is that justifies impeachment. I believe it was the accidental President Ford who, when trying to impeach a Supreme Court judge, was asked this question. He said that impeachment was whatever the Congress decided it was. There is in fact no clear legal definition. Given the Republican domination that will be, come late January, this ought to be worrying for the President-Elect. He should have picked Bernie Sanders as VP, not someone the Republican vultures would far prefer. Ever since the Friendly Red Giant, Ronald Reagan, they have adored the lovable marionette, the Prez so affable and decent he will persuade everyone that Up is Down, or Night Day. They have to know that Trump will not be so malleable -–if indeed he is malleable at all. Watch for a movement to impeach spearheaded by his own party. And then look out for real trouble, as the corporate lackeys try to make American investor-profits great again… and far from the IRS claws.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

Coming up: by popular request, some Leonard Cohen anecdotes.

Remembrance Week

Tags

carl marx, climate change, Donald Trump, election law, electoral college, federal reserve, leonard cohen, the future of america

 

 

If you are the Dealer

          I’m out of the game

• Leonard Cohen

 

‘Dealer’ is a common Cohen euphemism for ‘president’ or any kind of boss-man. Indeed, as far back as his poetry of the late-fifties, gambling appears as a metaphor for life itself, in which you are playing with the greatest dealer of all. The words and music of Leonard Cohen have been a staple of my life for fifty years, and his death was a harder blow than I’d ever anticipated it would be. My personal issues aside, what a diabolical week! Through the agency of my wife, I placed upon his Montreal doorstep this morning a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. In his characteristically self-effacing way, Leonard would be amazed by the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. I can hear him saying, ‘It’s just the Lightforce of the Lord shining through me that they feel…’ Yes, indeed.

 

In retrospect, I was appalled by my attempt to put an optimistic spin on the election of Donald Trump. There is clearly little or nothing optimistic about a Trump presidency. I do not know enough about Constitutional Law to say whether or not a legal challenge to the election-result is viable. However, I do know that hardly any Americans can explain the phenomenon of Electoral College votes – which mean that the election goes to whoever wins over 270 such statewide votes, and not to whoever gains the most votes, as Hilary Clinton seems to have done last week. You elect electors and not candidates? It makes no sense. Like the private ownership of the Federal Reserve, it is one of those fundamentally inexplicable anomalies that breed theories of conspiracy, or at least of occluded double-dealing. It is a curious turn of events that has the Democrats questioning this election and not, as he’d suggested, Trump’s Republicans. The whole US system, with its usually ignored or down-played mid-terms, its Electoral College, and its general federal-state confusion has long been called into question. But I think it is democracy itself that needs to be questioned. One of its more modern pioneers, Rousseau, says, in his Social Contract, that it is a perfect system, yet one only suited to a perfect society of gods. He maintains that some peoples will never be able to handle democracy. The US seems to be one of these. The Socratic ideal, espoused in Plato’s Republic, theorizes a perfect rule by philosopher-kings, of which Piere Elliot Trudeau was once acclaimed by some as an example. But ancient Greece was hardly democratic – like the US, it was an oligarchy – and the Platonic republic suggests outlawing poets, writers, and perhaps artists of any kind. They’re a menace to societal tranquility.

I once wrote a piece – for Harper’s, I think – suggesting that a vote needed to be earned, and was not a right. There ought to be some kind of basic test before you could vote — state what the candidates’ platforms are about, for example. Nothing severe, but not multiple-choice either. Why would you vote, went the argument, if you do not know why you’re voting? The piece garnered great hostility – I was a fascist, mainly – yet I now wonder whence the hostility came. I’d assumed it was from the Left, but this recent election makes me think it may have been the Right. They do have more to gain from an ignorant electorate — those whose political views exist only as moronic slogans. There is of course also the great mystery of a proletariat consistently voting against its own best interests. Who has ever explained this, except by family tradition or amped-up media rhetoric? An earned vote would at least prevent millions from casting a self-destructive ballot. But those millions also comprise the most easily-swayed segments of society. Right-wing barkers and howlers have long accused universities in particular of being bastions of the Left. This has always struck me as a self-refuting allegation, inasmuch as it points to the most intelligent being drawn to liberal politics. It is natural that right-wing elites have always opposed state-subsidized further-ed for the needy. It is education alone that will change society for the better by ensuring a fully-informed vote. To this extent, America is still back where Europe was during the Industrial Revolution. And, in truth, no western nation will achieve democratic ideals until the system of private schools is abolished. I have lectured in such schools and can assure readers that their small classes and numerous other perquisites – not least of which are opportunities to socialize with others in elite strata of society – guarantee advantages way, way beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. The very few exceptions – mainly, it seems, in venture capital or Silicon Valley – simply prove the rule. I have friends willing to pay for such offspring-benefits – and, no doubt, I would have too if the money had been there. But the playing-field must be levelled if we are to call ourselves a democracy. It is a simple fact that wealth ought not be hereditary – that merit alone must determine social status and its rewards.

As we have seen most clearly with Trump – yet it preceded him – further education, with its fancy big words, and its theorized scorn for the working man, is in fact undesirable, and even a social ill. It is what those of us who questioned Marx and Trotsky referred to fearfully as ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the idea of government by the under-educated for the uneducated. Of course, it would in fact be manipulation of the uneducated by the well-educated posing as blue-collar oafs. Marx saw the workers rising like Lazarus, yet he did not envisage this happening without universal education. He also saw the fiest revolution happening in relatively well-educated England, not serf-owning Russia. The Russian proletariat were only roused by leaders posing as fellow-workers. One thinks of that malevolent goblin Lenin in his worker’s cap, and of Mao in his custom-tailored Mao-jacket, which from a great distance resembled attire of the dispossessed hundreds of millions.

Trump doesn’t wear tacky Mafia-suits from his own line, nor one of his own frightening collection of cheap, sweatshop-made silk Trump Neckties. It is admittedly true that he has managed to find an expensive tailor to dress him with equal vulgarity. Yet one must assume that, with his pricey hair-weave or toupee, he closely resembles the self-image many a laid-off coal worker or dirt-poor farm labourer has of their lottery-winning selves. Trump has always been a vulgarian – whose excesses were only matched by his first wife – so I am not suggesting demonic cunning going back decades. His awful TV show probably showed us the real public man. His problem now is different, though. As my friend, Richard Sparks observed, he’s narcissistic, self-promotional, venal, greedy, power-hungry, and he needs to be loved – all of these being excellent qualities for a politician. The need to be loved by all, however, may be what saves us. We are now hearing a more reticent Trump – liked Obama, loved the concern and patriotism of anti-Trump demonstrators – so we can imagine a Trump already looking towards his historical record as another Lincoln, a healer of divisions, a political Titan. He will not enjoy being president – no one ever has – so all the job will hold for him is the explosive bloating of his baggy brand to interstellar dimensions. Resigned to being a minor footnote in financial history, he now faces the possibility of bestriding the known world like a Colossus, an American Caesar, a Yankee Frederick the Great,  or a Brooklyn Napoleon (minus Waterloo). We can only hope that the compromising minutiae of the job turn him to these greener pastures: Uncle Trump’s fireside chats-of-the-Union.

Trump’s victory aside, has there been anything more despicable than the Republicans who scorned him when the chips looked to be down now trying to crawl up his arse for positions and preferment? That shameless pawn of vested interests and extravagantly unprincipled Beltway whore, House Speaker Paul Ryan, taking Trump up to the Capitol’s mount to show him all the kingdoms of the world – truly sickening! And he’s just one of a disgusting troupe of hypocritical bum-lickers. One hopes Trump won’t forget so quickly the league of back-stabbers. Yet when you hear of such hoary old Nazi reptiles as Newt Gingrich and Rudolfo Giuliani – surely long since cast into the Lake of Fire? – you cannot help but think of replacing the Statue of Liberty’s slogan thus: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here… No wonder California wants to leave the Union.

 

As I’ve said, all US refugees welcome up here in the Laurentians. It’s inexpensive, and we ought to survive the Global Warming apocalypse longer than most – not hat having the last laugh will be very consoling.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

President Trump

Tags

election, nightmare, politics, trump, United States of America

 

Ouch!

 

I firmly believe that it doesn’t really matter who is president. The great machine runs on. The people who really make decisions are still there. Policies are still in place, and changing them takes time, as well as consensus. A mechanism as vast and complex as the United States cannot be rewired or rejigged by one man or one mere election. Yet the aftermath of last night’s dunces’ jamboree leaves a very sour taste in the mouth. The election and the man may not change anything, but they do indicate a national mood, a mass-proclivity. If immigration stats are accurate, this may have been the last US election in which the proclivity of white males has any decisive impact. A damn good thing that would be too – if yesterday’s vote is anything to go by. Presumably, people voted for Donald Trump’s media image, which was, of course, despicable. I say ‘was’ because we will see, and indeed we are already seeing, a different Trump. The belligerent divisive oaf becomes the gracious national healer, a President-Elect for all the people. If we accept the great I.F. Stone’s maxim, that all politicians lie about everything all the time, and if we accept that Trump is a politician (it is surely absurd to suggest that someone who runs a two-year campaign to snare the White House is not a politician), then we must accept the fact that we don’t really know Trump at all. It may even be possible that Trump doesn’t really know Trump at all. Gone forever is the publicity-hungry fat-cat businessman and beauty-show predator. Gone forever is the need for self-promotion. Gone too is the craving for financial success. Such desires, and many others, are more than adequately fulfilled by becoming the most powerful man on earth. The Trump Empire is probably already looking risibly puny to its erstwhile emperor. The insatiable yearnings that have fueled his life were all abruptly sated around 3 a.m. this morning. As life-changing experiences go, this one must be exceptional. It’s somewhat like me applying to be CEO of Procter & Gamble and getting the job. The learning-curve will be steep. We all know something about household cleaning-products, just as we all know something about politics, but running the Free World will be a little more tricky than bullying around wildly variegated aspects of the Trumpire. There is, of course, no reason to believe he cannot be a competent US President – or even a good one. As said, we don’t really know him – but now we hope he knows himself more than but slenderly. With Congress and the Senate stacked in his favour, President Trump will be able to further, if not his own agenda, at least the Republican one, without let or hindrance for two years — until the 2018 mid-terms.

I doubt if there will be a Wall – too complicated, too expensive, too silly – but I have little doubt that the modest advancements in social justice made under Obama will be on the scrap-heap inside a year. What does this say about the American electorate? The mentality of a populace able to elect George W. Bush for eight years, then Barrak Obama for eight years, and now Trump is baffling. As my wife said, it’s like a woman who has dated a crunchy-granola feminist organic gardener, doesn’t like it, and instead dates a dope-dealing biker who beats her. She won’t like that either, but will be too scared to leave the brute for four years, after which time she finds a black civil rights activist who writes poetry. The giddiness aside, what does such fickle capriciousness mean? Do most Americans not actually have any enduring values or principles? It has always been a puzzle why blue-collar workers consistently vote against their own best interests by favouring Republicans, yet perhaps this is just part of a greater and more general malaise? Or does a Trumpresidency signify something else? This could just as easily be a triumph of xenophobic, racist and divisive politics as it could be a more thoughtful, mature distaste for career politicians and vested interests. I will admit that the latter is mostly wishful thinking – but, as Miles Davis said, what’s wrong with that?.

However, one thing was painfully obvious and disgraceful last night. All the US media networks – even Fox – displayed a distinct Democrat bias, as did every pollster, with the notable exception of the Los Angeles Times. How else can one explain poll after poll over the past week claiming a victory for Hilary Clinton? Either polling methods are so inaccurate as to be worthless, or else they’re a function of wish-fulfillment. Every poll bar one was wrong? Unlikely. The performance of Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper on CNN was little short of embarrassing. Scurrying around the country for palatable interviewees, they followed news of each Trump victory with a thousand reasons why it didn’t constitute an election triumph. The calling of results in swing-states was delayed for an improbably long time, and even when it happened was palliated by increasingly arcane and complex explanations for why Trump couldn’t win. One felt sorry for the dolled-up hacks on Fox, who either could barely conceal their Clinton bias, or else really didn’t have a candidate running. Not absolutely everything Trump has said was nonsense. There is indeed a distinct media bias, and it ranges over many topics. There would be nothing wrong with this were it not for the oppressively limited ownership of all major media. And such bias is more repellent in CNN or the New York Times than it is in Fox or some tabloids. With the latter, you know where you stand – although no one on Fox last night seemed to have a floor beneath his feet. Trump’s relationship with the media will be interesting to follow. Now the great self-promoter has no more need to promote himself, will his PR skills stand him in good stead or be a liability?

Since no good result was possible for this egregious election, it is hard to feel that disappointed about it. I know my American friends are, though, and I offer them a box of Kleenex. But the sun still rose this morning, and the financial markets will survive their panic or take a Xanax. Nothing is ever as bad as we imagine it is, so the optimist in me looks forward to a pleasant surprise in the Oval Office. I couldn’t say what this surprise might be, but, my fellow Americans, you can all come to hide in my attic until the nightmare or the world ends.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

 

Oh America

Tags

election, politics, United States of America, voting

Do the right thing.

 

Love,

PWR

All Hallows Eve

Tags

death, joy, leonard cohen, love, music, songs, volcanos, Werner Hertzog

 

I have always liked this day, this night, which grows increasingly poignant as Time decays. So many lovely souls now lost to the dateless night closing in on us all. So many. My lifeline to the planet’s progress, or egress, CBC Radio’s The World At Six, is 50 years old today. Ho-hum. The police in Montreal are now tapping a journalist’s telephone. The Great American Disaster now slouches towards its inevitably foul finale, with the FBI illegally interfering in an election that, one hopes, will remain the all-time nadir of western democracy. This is a day for reflection and remembrance. The earth has grown still and silent, as life retreats below to wait for spring and more life. A winter chill envelops huddled trees and empty fields. Up here, in the mountains, even people seem to disappear until the tenderness of new green leaves is once more seen. Byron and Algis are off to Mexico. It is usually a melancholy time, yet I find myself thinking of not-so-small mercies, the recent blessings that have come.

By now, I have purchased Leonard Cohen’s latest album, You Want It Darker, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration. Previously, I thought the title song was cause enough for rejoicing – and, to be honest, I expected no more. Now I find this is one of his very best albums – which, for Cohen, is saying a lot – a compilation of ten exquisite songs almost heartbreaking in their truth and beauty. It was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, who has created a masterpiece of subtle restraint, with plaintive strings, reminiscent of Beethoven’s Last Quartets, always haunting his father’s balefully evocative and irreducibly concise words.

 

If you are the Dealer

                   I’m out of the game

                   If you are the Healer

                   Then I’m broken and lame –

                   You want it darker?

                   We kill the flame…

 

          Leonard Cohen was not well when he recorded this album, it seems. The sessions were held in his house, and the microphone fixed up over a medical chair. No doubt the extreme physical exertions of his recent tours – falling to his knees to sing Hallelujah – exacted a toll. The songs do indeed sound elegiac, yet I hear no sense of an end-time farewell, as some do. Indeed, the gently tinkling piano and the modest cooing of back-up singers lends a hopeful air to extravagantly ambiguous lyrics. Flames may be killed, he might be “out of the game” – but his heart has always been heavy with a love so bittersweet it is barely distinguishable from sorrow. Even the phrase, “I’m ready, my Lord,” which repeats in the title song, is not a quietus – Leonard has long been ready for his Lord, and, unsurprisingly, he still is. Although now he may be:

 

Somebody who

Has given up on me and you…

 

I might be that somebody too, so I can dig it – as we used to say.

 

I’d better drink this glass of blood

Try to say the Grace Try to keep the peace…

 

They are not words of weary resignation. So many of these fine songs express the equanimity that comes

 

Year by year

Month by month

Day by day

Thought by thought

 

I’m not sure why Leonard Cohen’s triumph at 82 should so transfix me with joy – yet it does. Possibly it encourages me, at 66, to anticipate many more years of abundance? Possibly. But, listening to all the shitty contemporary music which spurts from my radio if I don’t get there fast enough, I am inclined to think it is because great singer-songwriters may be waning, but they’re not dead yet – and, who knows, they may inspire another generation to match standards that seem anything but standard? Well, Lenny, what a feat!

 

Equally delightful is Werner Herzog’s latest film, Into the Inferno, now available on Netflicks. Of course, I could not actually see it, but I heard it, and heard about it. Ostensibly a look at volcanoes and volcanologists, it is naturally far, far more than that, delving into matters as deep and dark as those Leonard Cohen toys with. The footage of eruptions and lava-flows is evidently mind-boggling, yet much of this is stock-footage – and Herzog happily admits it. What interests him is the ancient interplay between humankind and this most dramatic display of nature’s destructive potency. Numerous far-flung regions have a mythology inextricably linked to the earth’s proclivity for devouring her inhabitants in a rage of molten rock, of pyro-caustic rivers rushing down at a thousand miles an hour to obliterate all that was once a landscape unchanged in millennia. One South Pacific island even has a relatively recent commemorative cult. Jon Frum, an American GI, parachuted – presumably by accident – into the island’s volcano crater. But, like Jesus, he will one day return, bringing gifts of bubble-gum, candy, and washing-machines for everyone. This is not a barroom yarn. It is a nascent religion – one that could, if circumstances permitted it, dominate half the world. Herzog does not ridicule it either. With his usual wry wisdom, he presents it in comparison with Christianity – and these comparisons are many. Herzog is the perfect polite observer, always eager to understand another’s point of view, and never judgmental. Somehow, he manages to enter North Korea, where a great volcano – Mount Pekatu – has been incorporated into the ruling party’s mythology. Noting the country’s restrictions on media, the director simply informs us that North Korea prefers to be seen from its own point of view. He allows the images to speak for themselves – the “human pixels” choreographed in displays of hundreds of weeping thousands celebrating the nation’s birth. It would be mawkish to comment on such images. Instead, Herzog pinpoints nuggets of information that reveal far more even than his images. The original Kim Il Jong, for example, the fighter against “Japanese imperialism” who fathered the nation, also declared himself the “leader for all eternity” – which is why his son and , now, his grandson have never declared themselves leaders. There can be no other leader. As Herzog shows us, the nominative leaders are always portrayed with the volcano behind them. It is a metaphor for strength, and a symbol of the regime’s connection to North Korea’s vast antiquity. We see students in military dress sing odes to the volcano, and Herzog merely remarks, in his droll way, that it is hard to picture American college freshmen and women performing such a ritual in deadly seriousness. Hard? It is impossible. In Ethiopia, he stumbles across anthropologists who have just uncovered fossilized human remains a hundred-thousand years old. It is only the third such find in all of Africa, and he captures beautifully the mood of scientists whose lives generally involve sweeping through dust and finding nothing. It is, perhaps, his interest in human reactions to the extraordinary that makes Herzog such an exceptionally great director. This, and his willingness to allow his films to jolt off on tangents offering huge digressions. Here, he muses on our distant ancestors, their short lives dictated entirely by a natural world we have now learned to subdue – and will possibly destroy in the process. His film is a powerful reminder of the planet’s proven ability to destroy itself unaided. Herzog’s histories of ancient volcanic events – one of them nearly exterminating the inchoate homo sapiens – are essential to our current dilemma of believing ourselves to be brutal masters of the planet. Nothing matches the earth herself in brutality. We merely float upon an inferno, that can shrug us off whenever it wishes. Thank you, Werner Herzog, for so many wonderful films, so much bizarre fun, and a great deal to think about. Now the Ghoulies are coming to my door…

 

Paul William Roberts