To the president's thinking, that pesky Brexit was actually a distant nightmare they never would have. The very people seemingly so educated in predictive technologies ignored the economic seismograph. Then, crack! Thursday's political earthquake happened, and it is now seeking after-shocks. They will be coming in for many months, and it is exhilarating as much as scary to finally see it happen.
World events have supplanted and riddled the sleazy slumber of the politically correct corporate world of its well-heeled rituals that reaped the profits from the rest - the world's working poor and middle class that they left at the side of the road. The Obama administration foolishly continues to pay lip service to the globalization effort, reflected in an EU trance which changed Europe into a business Balkanization characterized by the worst of American business values. American values of the Clinton kind; they were those that Bill Clinton espoused with his fellow neocon-in-arms and friendly foe, Newt Gingrich, in the mid-90s. Clinton cut his "bipartisan" sell-out deals that shredded the welfare safety net, built new prisons, and signed stupid treaties, notably NAFTA. Clinton unabashedly pardoned crime syndicate bosses and left Leonard Pelletier in prison. Hillary is now picking up his legacy and apparently expects Americans should be OK with all of it. Not exactly.
But I digress.
Obama's appointment this week for the CES event at Stanford could not be avoided. Before heading to California, he had assumed that Brits would be as comfortable in their EU skin as the rest of us must be in his politically correct and fashionably peaceful land of diversity, E Pluribus Unum, the land of the so-called melting pot, the one now boiling over. Obama has had it hermetically sealed under a high flame for the last four years. What should he expect would happen? If you said Brexit, "terrorists" and the outed genie of perverted jihad, you hit the mark.
As the President entered the Stanford stage, oozing the ointment of corporate comfort in the slightly sleazy capitalist zone, he is captured waving at the assembled foreign entrepreneurs there. He secured the 2016 convention in the USA for the first time since it returned from the Mideast and Africa tour de force in the years since 2010. Along with his billionaire supplicant sidekick, Mark Zuckerman, who stepped up in a t-shirt and sneakers, (because he can), the stage was set for sharing the love with the hundreds of assembled millennials of the international corporate love-fest, exuding more than a little necessary good business foreplay to offset the farce.
Aziz Anzari writes to the NYT: "There are approximately 3.3 million Muslim Americans. After the attack in Orlando, The Times reported that the F.B.I. is investigating 1,000 potential “homegrown violent extremists,” a majority of whom are most likely connected in some way to the Islamic State. If everyone on that list is Muslim American, that is 0.03 percent of the Muslim American population. If you round that number, it is 0 percent. The overwhelming number of Muslim Americans have as much in common with that monster in Orlando as any white person has with any of the white terrorists who shoot up movie theaters or schools or abortion clinics.I get it. Nothing is happening here in the USA. If it is, and it's bad, it must be the whites, the racists. Never a terrorist.
Long before you arrived, in 1966, my mother got arrested in Selma, and in Chicago in 1967, and I sat to interview the likes of Frank Colin, leader of the US Nazi Party, and "visited" with Richard Speck, mass murderer of Chicago nurses. I know about criminals and fascists. While studying in Spain in 1969, probably before you were born, for no apparent reason other than my long hair, I got arrested by the Guardia Civil, AKA los hombres de Sombrero de Tres Picos (men in the three corner hats), Franco's fascist FBI that made students like me disappear into the night far outside Madrid. How I got out alive is a story in itself.
But Aziz, really, I do get it! You have problems here in the land of E Pluribus Unum. You're brown, and others here are white. Race is as old as dirt around America. We were founded killing the native tribes, and the black 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers did it better than any white troops. America is a tad more complex then you seem to think.
Switch gears. Fast forward. Doug Stanhope was my middle-aged white, perpetually drunk, comedian next door neighbor in Bisbee, Arizona. He's a bit crazy, and very white. My America, too. I love them all: the white people, some on Harleys, with blue hair, blacks with an attitude, Asians and Arabs with good and bad ideas, Mexicans and Latinos dancing to Cumbia and Norteno, and anyone else on board who wants to take a trip inside what is happening GOOD in this country in 2016.
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Johnny Depp Los Angeles, CA. 19th February, 2016Johnny Depp writes: "He’s a depraved reluctant visionary and debauched accidental guru who wears old suits that were likely once some dead fucker’s Saturday night prowling outfit - he’s a man of the people who says what must be said for no one else will - total honesty - consequence be damned - no fluffy outside no creamy inside - you get what you get and deal with it - he is our savior - for here in this life where the only guarantee is the ceasing of breath and a healthy death tax for our loved ones, he is the one man who dares to plunge the cold dagger of truth deep into the collective brain-dead psyche of our species for the ultimate benefit of all humankind, and certainly not since my dearest friend and mentor Hunter (Thompson) have I known an individual with such a profoundly strong sense of moral justice - it makes me sick so I suppose I must ultimately admit that I do not like this man I speak of - I fucking love him. Him being Doug Stanhope."
Stanhope, Doug. Digging Up Mother: A Love Story
We are entering a new time in America. It is not the way so many describe it, as if a Trump presidency would turn us all out of the closet as little Hitlers and the like. But I wish I could convey how much I also loved my poor Arab friends in Iraq who took the bullets for me after I came safely home and Obama abandoned them to death by ISIS. One friend in particular was in Kirkuk with me, and he was assigned to help American soldiers keep the peace at night when every single Kurd, Arab and other gotta-get-even killing man-machines came out like bats in the night.
One night, he recounted, a Ha-boob came in like the Apocalypse. The storm moved half a mountain of sand through the air for forty endless minutes and buried our tents, equipment and MRAPS mired in the sands of the streets of Kirkuk. No one fought that night.
"I got under my blanket because our MRAP was swaying side to side. I know the guys (the American soldiers) heard a lot of Allahs coming out from under my blanket that night." How true. There are no atheists in a foxhole, or a god-fearing sandstorm! We live if we're lucky, and hopefully learn a little in the process.
White people are no different than anyone else, Aziz. We are good and bad, and so are all races. Religion, now, that is another story. We have to work a little more on that.
