All Things Must Pass

This year I became an octogenarian. Eighty years old. Far older than I ever expected, but thankful and happy to be here. The bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons happened when I was still an infant. I am older than the states of Israel, India free of British rule, Pakistan and the People’s Republic of China. During my 80 years we have had the Korean war, the Vietnam war, two invasions of Iraq, invasions of Grenada, Panama and Afghanistan, and the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran.

On the positive side, the overthrow of dictatorship in Cuba happened when I was 14. Apartheid South Africa was transformed into a democratic nation in 1994. Colonial regimes throughout the African continent were overthrown and replaced by local governments. The Soviet Union collapsed. The British Empire, on which the sun supposedly never sets, is much smaller than it was when I was born.

It has been a long, strange trip during my lifetime. Harry Truman was president when I was born in Chicago in 1945. In 1951 he fired the "allied" commanding general of the Korean war Douglas MacArthur for insubordination. MacArthur went on a tour of ticker tape parades around the country, with the largest being held Chicago, 3 million people. I was one of them, and threw gravel at his open-air limo with my sister, having no confetti, but feeling obliged to throw something. It is one of my happiest childhood memories. MacArthur may have been generating support for a coup d'état, but failed to get much traction. 

My dad began a surgery residency at the VA hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1952, and we lived there for three years. TV was new in those days, and a neighbor from across the street invited my siblings and me over to watch her TV set during the day. 

Unfortunately, the only thing that was on was presidential conventions – both Democratic and Republican. Immensely boring, especially to kids, the conventions dragged on and on, but I learned a lot about politics by osmosis. Delegations from every state carried signs and announced themselves as "from the great state of Tennessee, or Idaho, California," etc. Fulminating speeches went on endlessly. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois was the Democratic nominee, and WWII general Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Republican choice. Eisenhower defeated Stevenson handily. I remember Stevenson being portrayed as an "egghead," an intellectual out of touch with common people. Eisenhower defeated Stevenson again in 1956. My parents were quietly New Deal democrats, and voted for Stevenson. 

Growing up Catholic, I was inspired by the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, and was devastated by his assassination three years later. A few months after this my gloom was replaced by the cheerful arrival of the Beatles, whose upbeat and quirky music gave the country and the world a reason to be happy again.

In July 1968 I was drafted into the armed forces, and signed up for an extra year in the Army to get a school, projector repair. The commander in chief was President Lyndon Johnson, who replaced Kennedy after he was killed. Then came Nixon, who was commander in chief for the rest of my time as a soldier.

The first time I voted for president was in the 1968 election, for Democrat Hubert Humphrey. He was the commencement speaker at my college graduation the year previous, and was the default choice, considering the alternative. He lost to Richard Nixon, who claimed to have a "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam, and to instill "law and order" after years of racial unrest. His stock grandstand slogan was that he was going to appoint a new Attorney General, which of course all new presidents do. The Attorney General at the time, Ramsey Clark, was a "liberal," and worked to advance minority rights and the rights of criminal defendants.

I campaigned for George McGovern in 1972 with a group called Veterans for McGovern, knocking on doors in some pretty backward towns in southern Illinois. Not one person said they were going to vote for McGovern. He lost to Richard Nixon in a landslide, with Nixon resigning two years later for campaign shenanigans, which became known as the Watergate scandal.

I fell for a phony TV ad in 1976 by crackpot Lyndon LaRouche, who campaigned as the candidate of the "U.S. Labor Party." It was a grift, but the name Labor Party was enough to convince me to vote for him over Jimmy Carter, who didn’t seem to stand for anything.

In 1980 I voted for Barry Commoner of the Citizens Party. I had interviewed for a job with him in 1974, and though I didn’t get hired, I felt a loyalty to him and his ideas. He wrote the pioneering work "The Closing Circle," and the groundbreaking follow up book "The Poverty of Power," both as pertinent now as when they were written. 

He, as well as incumbent president Jimmy Carter, was defeated by movie actor Ronald Reagan, who demagogued with the slogan "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." He announced his candidacy in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered in 1963.

Walter Mondale was the Democratic candidate in 1984. I had covered his U.S. Senate appointment speech in 1964 for my school newspaper in Minnesota, and felt some kinship and loyalty to him. Plus, he was a far better candidate than the corrupt and dangerous Ronald Reagan. I voted for Mondale, but he lost to Reagan, having insufficient powers of demagoguery. Plus, Mondale honestly said he would raise taxes – something no other presidential candidate has done in modern memory.

I voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988, unenthusiastically, and Bill Clinton in 1992, with some enthusiasm. Clinton defeated the incumbent George H.W. Bush, wager of the first phony invasion of Iraq. Clinton gave us Neoliberalism and "The end of welfare as we know it!"

In 1996 I voted for Ralph Nader, a far better candidate than the offerings of the two major parties. I voted for Nader again in 2000, with Clinton heir Al Gore being defeated by another and even more corrupt than his father George W. Bush. Bush looked the other way when warned of impending terrorist attacks, invaded Afghanistan, then lied the country into invading Iraq for a second time.

After Bush we had Barack Obama for eight years. He brought dignity back to the office, but continued cluelessly with Neoliberalism and international adventurism. He tried to limit the criminal activities of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine, but was weak and largely ineffective. We continued to send billions in aid and weaponry to Israel without much hesitation.

Then came Trump, the culmination of all the crimes of previous presidents. A deranged and malevolent criminal sociopath, we were lucky to survive the four years of his first presidency. He was defeated in his attempt at reelection by hapless Joe Biden, but now he's back, and more malevolent then ever. We may not be so lucky this time. 

Trump is so thoroughly evil, though, that I am confident it will be his undoing. It is one thing to be a Ted Bundy-type serial killer on an individual or small group level, but to behave towards the entire planet of 8.2 billion people with criminal intent is a level of malevolence that is beyond the capacity of one human being, no matter how much help he has.

Especially if he is old. Evil acts roll off Trump like water off a duck’s back, but it takes a toll. He is a mortal human being, and he is getting older every day. He will be gone soon.

We will have President Vance for a while. It will be a time of great opportunity. J.D.Vance is, at best, a very weak copy of Trump, soulless, but without charisma, no cult following. Trump's bevy of sycophants is not likely to fall in line with Vance, and the infighting and jockeying for power should be the undoing of our brief flirtation with fascism. We can have a fresh start. 
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Here's a song. John Lennon. The Beatles. The Beatles again. And again. The Beatles in India. Life will go on after Trump. Meanwhile, we might need a place of escape every so often. So much to remember. A long, strange trip song. A great state to be from. A cure for Trump blues. You might feel like this sometimes, but it passes. Here's something that is passing before our eyes. An allegoric irony for the Titanic of the American empire.

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R.I.P. Chuck Mangione. I saw him perform with his group in 1974, one of the best concerts ever. A sample of his hits.

R.I.P. Loni Anderson. Her role in WKRP in Cincinnati was vital and brilliant. Here are some highlights.

R.I.P. Flaco Jiménez. Such a great musical presence for so many decades. A sampler of his joyful music. Here he is with Ry Cooder. Another song with Ry Cooder for the times in which we live. Sometimes it feels like we are all in one of these.

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I sent the following in an email to the letters page of Haaretz, Israel's less propagandistic newspaper on July 15. It didn't get printed.

From: John Hamilton 

To: lte@haaretz.co.il 

Tue, Jul 15 at 8:24 PM

 
To The Editor:

The Pursuit Of Happiness

I wonder if the people of Israel will be happy when the genocide is over. There has never been a genocide so complete, so thorough and so plain for all to see in modern history. In Germany it was not complete, thorough or plainly obvious. They kept it pretty well hidden until near the end. As in Germany, though, this one will end badly. 

The sponsor is disintegrating, the world economy is about to fall, and the climate has had about enough of all of us. It will be very difficult to live anywhere on this planet, but I can think of no place I would want to be less than in Israel. 

John Hamilton 

Madison, Wisconsin USA

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Noam Chomsky on why the U.S. supports Israel.

Nelson Mandela talking about Palestine.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking at a pro-Palestine rally in Cape Town 2014.

How Israel became a fascist state.

And, a history of Israel's army of occupation.

A song for Israel (and all of us).

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Here's a little something I sent to a Democracy Now segment on YouTube:

Democracy Now serves a vital purpose in telling the truth, exposing corruption and giving voice to those who wouldn't be heard otherwise. Still, I find it aggravating with its litany approach, or what I call additive outrage. It goes nowhere, parading outrage after outrage in a staccato fashion, similar to the syncopated finger picking of bluegrass banjo. Outrage after outrage after outrage. It is not good for anyone's mental health.

For example, Donald Trump. We all know he is an evil human being, so no litany is going to make us see him as additionally evil, kind of like Etch-a-Sketch, where the slate is wiped clean every day, only to start a new litany of outrages. Today he's really, really, really a fascist!

Maybe Democracy Now can try a different approach, respecting viewers and listeners. Present Trump as a human being - an evil human being for sure, but with a character that can be analyzed and understood. He is a deranged and malevolent criminal sociopath, intent on mass revenge against real and imagined enemies. He also is 79 years old, far past the age that an evil human being would normally be in failing health, if not no longer alive. Pay attention to what his niece Mary Trump, a psychologist, says about him. Understand what she says and remember it, every day. It is not Etch-a-Sketch. He is the same Donald Trump today as he was yesterday, and will be tomorrow.

Another perspective is to get out of being stuck in the Western intellectual tradition of reductionism, to reduce every possible event, instance, fact and person as completely independent of everything else that has ever happened in the entire Universe. We live in an interconnected, synergistic world, where everything happens in relation to everything else. It is an ecosystem. Today we have an ecosystem of evil, and it can be changed and overcome by seeing it in relationship.

Perfect example: Donald Trump. He is a human being in a 79-year old body, he is enraged much of the time, he has bad health habits, and he is severely mentally ill, as well as being a sociopath. Because he has lasted this long does not mean he is going to last forever. Time is militating against him. I believe he will be gone soon. We should now plan and strategize what to do when he falls. His sycophants will be lost without him, though many are equally sociopathic. They can be played-off against each other, outmaneuvered, outsmarted and disempowered easier than most of us would believe. That of course requires not giving them power, something anathema to people who call themselves "leftists," though the metaphor of left versus right is no more than a metaphor.

In other words, have some confidence, some intention, some vision of a better future. The world is as you see it. If you see it as syncopation, good luck. Learn to play the banjo. It's more fun. If you see it as interconnected, play a part in that interconnection.