Mendocino County Today: Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024

Rainy Day | Pink Clouds | Rainfall Totals | Gray Clouds | Ed Notes | Laytonville Geiger's | AV Newsletter | Exit Date | Starbucks Skirmish | Free Meal | Spansule | High Noon | Camp Fun | 1938 Wedding | Yesterday's Catch | Scotia Ferry | Country Concept | Hip Replacement | S.A.D. | Electricity Explained | Something Big | Scariest Part | War Party | Arizona Mining | Perfect Offering | Dragon Kite

RAIN AND HIGH MOUNTAIN SNOW are forecast to increase today through this evening as a cold front moves into Northwest California. Showers and isolated thunderstorms will follow tonight. Showers are then forecast to taper off during the day on Wednesday. Progressively colder storms with lower snow levels are expected Friday through Sunday. More precipitation is probable early to mid next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): A cloudy 49F on the coast this Tuesday morning. You can expect rain today & tomorrow morning. Clearing later Wednesday then only slight chance of rain Thursday early. Some rain later Thursday - Friday morning. Or something like that...

MONTHLY RAINFALL TOTALS for the 2023-24 rain season (Oct-Sep):

Boonville (14.06" total)

2023
0.76" Oct
3.28" Nov
10.02" Dec

Yorkville (18.64" total)

2023
1.32" Oct
4.84" Nov
12.48" Dec

ED NOTES

NEW YEAR’S EVE came and went in Boonville with some premature gunshots at 8:30pm, and later there was a minor racket from fireworks. But the big night seems to have been the most sedate in years in all parts of Mendocino County because, perhaps, people are more generally apprehensive than optimistic.

JOAN BURROUGHS WRITES: Great article re the Ricard property. Years ago I asked a member of AVCSD why eminent domain on the dangerous Ricard property is not being considered by the AVCSD. Bottom line answer: leaving Ricard out of any legal activity is because Ricard has two parcel votes on the sewer/water issue, they needed every vote they could get.

The Ricard property likely is contaminated from unresolved water and sewer issues — it is monitored by the state Water System CA2300733 official name: Haehl Street Water. The report from the state indicates the main well is inactive and raw. It would appear the property might not ever be sold under present conditions - it probably has no value as it now sits - unless the municipal sewer/water system is approved that is.

In 2016 AVCSD gathered water samples on Haehl Street re this municipal monster; they stated they knew where the contamination was located within walking distance of homes in the area. As a result this entire sewer/water fiasco could have been avoided if Mendocino County Public Health had bothered to step up and do its job by alleviating overcrowding and demanding sewer oversight with a board of local directors willing to listen to parcel owners.

Millions of dollars already spent might have been alleviated by working with parcel owners to assure them they will get grant assistance they need through AVCSD. To this day, AVCSD is still determined to go ahead with this monumental undertaking that is simply not approved by most Boonville parcel owners. Until there is a proven substantial need we should not be discussing millions of dollars more to be spent on engineers, planners, map producers, on and on; we should be working toward getting the community of Boonville back on its feet by helping those who truly need assistance. 

(BTW Karen Alturas was one of the original owners at some point in time.)

THE ANNUAL FRAUD is about to commence: Mendocino County Homeless Services Continuum of Care (MCHSCoC) will be conducting its annual unsheltered Point-In-Time (PIT) Count which will be held on the morning of Wednesday, January 24, 2024. 

(THERE GOES ONE, DEBBIE! Oops, no. That's Craig Stehr, post modern troubadour.)

THE POINT IN TIME (PIT) Count is mandated by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and is used by the State of California and multiple Federal Departments to calculate allocations of homeless services funding. The data received through the PIT Count will help our local community to identify needs and develop planning to engage and support those persons experiencing homelessness throughout Mendocino County.

CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE a looser funding method? 

FROM THE MARBUT REPORT: 

“Point-in-Time Count (PITC) data is inflated.

”The Point-in-Time-Count (PITC) was developed by HUD with the hope of ascertaining the number of families and individuals experiencing homelessness within a community. Unfortunately, for a variety of methodological reasons, PITCs across the USA are often very inaccurate and vary widely in methodological rigor. This is a national challenge and many communities across the USA are struggling with this issue. Mendocino County’s experience with this issue is thus not unique. Nationally, HUD has realized the weaknesses of PITC and has stated that it would like to move from using PITC data to using Coordinated Entry and Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data (thus the new Federal mandate for having a coordinated entry system with HMIS tracking).

”When PITCs are “incentivized” around the USA, like the giving out of grocery cards in exchange for participation, there is often over-counting. In some cases, individuals change their name and information so they can receive another incentive. In other cases, volunteers give out more than one incentive to an individual or pocket the incentive thus inflating the numbers. Additional problems occur when volunteers count vehicles and building structures, and then apply nonscientific multipliers instead of counting actual people. These inflationary multipliers are often based on assumptions and not on rigorous data modeling. When it comes to counting within encampments, the numbers are often highly inflated since “recent activity or presence of individuals” is often counted rather than counting actual observed individuals. Furthermore, because of weather and police activities, people often move between encampment sites which often means an individual’s “activity” ends up being counted multiple times at multiple sites rather than only once at the site where they are actually currently living. Additionally, extreme good or bad weather on the day of the count can increase or decrease the number of volunteer counters thus affecting the overall efficacy of the count. Weather can also change the patterns of individuals experiencing homelessness. Finally, when the count time is extended past a 24-hour period, individuals are sometimes counted more than once at different locations.”

JOHN McCURDY, a great basketball player who still holds his own and then some in national senior hoops tournaments, once worked for the old Union Lumber Company in Fort Bragg. John passed this way just last month, and this is what he saw in FB: “Fort Bragg has three stop lights. It had none when I lived there. Looked at the motel owned by Affinito. Typical builder, violate the law because the government will relent. That motel sure took a lovely view away. Stopped in Fort Bragg and the old company store building. When I first went to work for Union Lumber I had to charge everything at the company store until I got a paycheck. They would deduct your store purchases from your check. I don’t remember how long it took me to get a full paycheck, but I would say at least three months. The Tennessee Ernie Ford song lyric ‘I owe my soul to the company store’ still rings in my ears now and then.” 

GETTING BOONVILLE, as a community, to tuck in its shirt and stand up straight isn’t likely any time soon. Gualala just buried its power lines. Hopland buried theirs years ago. Boonville? Not even on the list. But Point Arena came up with $426,000 to create a pedestrian and bike path from the center of town down to Arena Cove. $426,000! There’s just as much grant-savvy in Anderson Valley, and there’s a lot more money here than in PA, but we ain’t got no trails, no sidewalks, no trees, no benches, no public bathrooms, no plan. Sure, individual property owners do what they can to spruce up their properties, but as a community our town looks like we got here about thirty minutes ago then got hit by a tornado. 

THE MISSUS buys all my clothes at Goodwill. You can tell? You like spending $40 for a shirt, $50 for trousers when you can get a perfectly serviceable garment at Goodwill or kindred thrift store for $7 and $10? Anyway, the other day she picked me up a pair of trousers in the front pocket of which was a pass issued to Frank Blackmon of the defunct SF Examiner by Stanford University to all its sporting events. Nice trousers too. (The distinction between trousers and pants was a hard-learned one in Marine boot camp. Men wear trousers, women pants, you see, and not to know the difference in 1957 in that particular place, got the dunce somewhere between 30 and 40 knowledge knocks, repeated knuckle raps to the forehead until a lump the size of a goose egg appeared into whose newly created space the new information could be stored.) So I put on my new pants and went for a walk on the mean streets of San Anselmo, oblivious that the fly on the thrift store trousers had flown. I wondered as I walked why a few people smirked as I passed. But it wasn’t until I was deep in the library that I learned the terrible reason for my new popularity. To avoid being seen on my return trip I had to stick to the less-traveled streets, pausing to pretend to be studying a plant or building with my body turned to shield my shame from approaching pedestrians. Goodwill or good riddance? Sometimes it’s a close call.

ANDERSON VALLEY VILLAGE NEWSLETTER January 2024

Happy New Year!

Happy Birthday to our wonderful members and volunteers: Gail Gester, Lauren Keating, Philip Thomas, Steven Wood, Ronnie Holland, Mary Anne Payne, Victoria Center, Val Muchowski, David Severn, Christine Clark.

A good time was had by all at the AV Village Holiday Party at the Senior Center! We burned our woes and sang together at the piano. Feeling lucky to have such a wonderful collection of characters in this little community.…

mailchi.mp/c7d16b684de8/anderson-valley-village-newsletter-august-5467659?e=358077c1c9

TEETH CLEANED AND READY FOR PLOWSHARES

Warmest spiritual greetings, Please be advised that I am doing nothing of any importance in Ukiah, California, while the Divine Absolute continues to work through this body-mind complex.  The medical situation is now over.  The viral bacterial blood infection has been fully eliminated.  The teeth were recently cleaned at the hygienist's office at Adventist Health-Ukiah Valley.  Social security is incoming and thus there is money in the checking account.  Am welcome to be at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center until March 9th at noon, which is my exit date.  Free food continues to be served at Plowshares Peace & Justice Center.  

Craig Louis Stehr

CHRIS SKYHAWK: 

Well 2024 is just a few minutes old and I’ve ALREADY had my 1st fight of the year! I often get my morning cuppa from the nearby Starbucks; not b /c I like corporate coffee; but this is very close to where I live, i can hop on my electric w/chair and b there in 10 minutes; so that’s nice, and of course I’ve become pals with the baristas and some of the other locals who visit the place; well today I rolled in and as I set up in my little corner; some out of towner was berating them about something (IDK what) but she was VERY arrogant and berating the entire staff saying lots of shitty things like “I NEVER had this happen at any other Starbucks, just you guys, congratulations!” She was just awful and it was painful to watch, as she left the counter she was facing me and I told her that her attitude sucked and needed to change; our voices got very loud; she told me I needed to mind my own business

Me: I’d love to but you’re doing this in a public space

She (In a louder voice): I’ve never had such awful service at any other Starbucks

Me (at a volume level that matched hers): whatever; that doesn’t give you the right to berate ppl

She (in a quieter voice; realizing that I was not going to back down): so call the police

Me: also in a quieter voice to match hers, but loud enough that I was certain the staff could hear me: I’d love to, but they don’t arrest ppl for being Assholes

With that she spun on her heels, walked out to her fancy new SUV smoked a cigarette and left

And the staff expressed a lot of verbal gratitude and paid for my coffee

Hello 2024!

A READER WRITES: After reading Jim Dodge's comment on The AVA's misspelling of the word “tweaker,” I feel compelled to advise him that the correct spelling of time release capsules is “spansule,” not “spanshell.”

SEND ME MONEY

Happy New Year

It is high noon on New Year’s Day at the Building Bridges Homeless Resource Center in sunny Ukiah, California; just another picture postcard perfect day in wine country.

Craig Louis Stehr

Rent me an apartment: craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

Send me money: Paypal.me/craiglouisstehr

ON THIS DAY IN MENDOCINO HISTORY…

January 1, 1938 - Grace Maxwell became the bride of Emil LaVerne “Buck” Haglund at her mother’s home on Kasten Street. Grace was the daughter of Elsie (Tobin) Maxwell and the late Perley Maxwell, a well-known Mendocino building contractor and photographer.

The living room of the Maxwell home was prettily decorated with potted plants, ferns and huckleberry. Evelyn Bowman sang, “I Love You Truly,” accompanied by Alice (Switzer) Elliott, wife of Main Street store owner Burtt Elliott. Alice later played the wedding march. Grace entered the room on the arm of her brother, Kenneth, who gave her away in marriage. The bride took her place beside the groom, with bride’s maid Evelyn Bowman and best man Lester Anderson nearby.

A brief ring ceremony was performed by Rev. Kent. “After congratulations and hand shaking, dainty refreshments of brick ice cream, bride cake and wedding cake with coffee were served, the bride cutting the cakes which were served by Misses Ann and Rene Borgna, Evelyn Bowman and Jennie Haglund. The happy couple took their departure through showers of rice for a brief honeymoon.” On their return, they made their home at 345 Morrow Street in Fort Bragg.

CATCH OF THE DAY, Monday, January 1, 2024

MANDY ARMS, Willits. Assault with deadly weapon not a gun.

SHANNON ARNOLD, Ukiah. Assault, public nuisance, vandalism, resisting. (Frequent Flyer)

FORREST BERTOLUCCI, Clearlake/Willits. Harboring wanted felon, false reporting of crime.

WAYLON GRAY, Bakersfield/Piercy. DUI, child endangerment.

GEORGE ORTIZ, Ukiah. DUI-alcohol&drugs, controlled substance, suspended license.

JEVIN WOLFE, Willits. DUI. Suspended license for DUI.

ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

What is a country? It’s not a life form, it’s a made-up concept by some group of people. And I’m supposed to sacrifice the most precious gift that God has ever created, just because another person says to?

I’m willing to die to directly protect the people I love and that’s it. I’d bet God would approve. And I don’t want to hurt anyone.

This so-called ‘country idea’ consists of many, many persons who seem to hate a whole group of people with African ancestry, or those of a certain sex or sexual orientation, or those of a certain religion, or those born in another country, or those of certain political leanings, or those who need to take mind altering substances to cope with everyday living, or those who don’t have enough financial resources. And I’m supposed to die for them? No fucking way!

I’m not perfect – I don’t know if I’m a good person or suffer the same maladies as those I describe above.

WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP SAVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY?

by Robert Reich

What can the rest of us do between now and the election to help save American democracy?

Ten suggestions from Robert Reich:

1. Become even more politically active. For some of us, this will mean taking more time out of our normal lives — up to and including getting out the vote in critical swing states. For others, it will mean phone banking, making political contributions, writing letters to editors, and calling friends and relations in key states.

2. Do not succumb to the tempting anesthesias of complacency or cynicism. The stakes are too high. Even if you cannot take much time out of your normal life for direct politics, you will need to organize, mobilize, and energize your friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

3. Counter lies with truth. When you hear someone repeating a Trump Republican lie, correct it. This will require that you prepare yourself with facts, logic, analysis, and sources.

4. Do not tolerate bigotry and hate. Call it out. Stand up to it. Denounce it. Demand that others denounce it, too.

5. Do not resort to name-calling, bullying, intimidation, violence, or any of the other tactics that Trump followers may be using. We cannot save democracy through anti-democratic means.

6. Be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition. Understand why someone might decide to support Trump, but don’t waste your time and energy trying to convert them. Use your time and energy on those who still have open minds.

7. Don’t waste your time commiserating with people who already agree with you. Don’t gripe, whine, wring your hands, and kvetch with other anti-Trumpers about how awful Trump and his Republican enablers are. Don’t snivel over or criticize Biden and the Democrats for failing to communicate more effectively how bad Trump and his Republican enablers are. None of this will get you anything except an upset stomach or worse.

8. Don’t decide to sit this election out or vote for a third-party candidate because you don’t especially like Biden and you’re tired of voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Biden may not be perfect, but he’s not the lesser of two evils. Trump is truly evil.

9. Demonstrate, but don’t confuse demonstrating for political action. You may find it gratifying to stand on a corner in Berkeley or Cambridge or any other liberal precinct with a sign asking drivers to “honk if you hate fascism” and elicit lots of honks. But this is as politically effectual as taking a warm shower. Organize people who don’t normally vote to vote for Biden. Mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts in your community. Get young people involved.

10. Don’t get distracted by the latest sensationalist post or story by or about Trump. Don’t let the media’s short-term attention span divert your eyes from the prize — the survival of American democracy during one of the greatest stress tests it has had to endure, organized by one of the worst demagogues in American history.

I cannot overstate how critical the outcome of the next 10 months will be to everything we believe in. And the importance of your participation. We must win this. And then continue to do the work of making our democracy and economy work for the many, rather than the few at the top.

THE GREAT CLARIFICATION

by James Kunstler

“Time for The Great Uprising to defeat The Great Reset. This isn’t just an R vs. D question in 2023. It’s a 1776 moment.” —Vivek Ramaswamy

I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back.

After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you… the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.

We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality. What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness.

It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because… she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.

All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions — a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown.

The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities. There is so much to do.

I keep hearing figures in the public arena say they have a creepy feeling that something big is going to happen. Well, sure, something’s got to give. So much hyper-complexity has been heaped onto the apparatus of shakedown that just about nothing works in America anymore. The Internet is obviously a major part of that. We’ve allowed digital magic to invade every scrap of territory in our daily doings, to the degree that there is no longer enough for humans to do — but, alas, digital magic is only a pale simulacrum of real human magic. The virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic. Why do you think there are so many people barely alive in a haze of opiate drugs splayed on the sidewalks of San Francisco, the epicenter of Internet wealth and power?

The “something big” could well be the Web-down crisis that is nervously tweeted about. If it went on for more than couple of weeks, most everything we depend on would cease to work, from food supplies to clean water to communications to what has been lately operating as “money.” That would be a clarifying interlude for sure. Among the few things that would still work in the event of a massive attack on the Internet are human brains, human bodies, and firearms. That combo could be as much a recipe for order as for chaos. I believe in the fairly short term, most of us would opt for order. As far as I’m concerned, there’s already been enough chaos, just about every bit of it unnecessary.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 2024 is on. It’s the time many of us have been waiting for. We’re in it. Stay alert. Make the right choices. Exercise situational awareness. Get ready to walk with consequence. It’s here, and it’s not “queer.”

(kunstler.com)

THE WAR PARTY TANTRUM

Voters keep rejecting the colonial project, but institutional America won't take no for an answer

by Matt Taibbi

Niall Ferguson, Scottish historian and Hoover Institution Fellow, published a Bloomberg column yesterday mourning the death of the imperial project. Americans are incorrigible in their selfishness, it seems, insisting on domestic investment when they should be volunteering to die in faraway deserts and jungles with smiles on their faces, like 19th century Britons:

“Most Americans have no great enthusiasm for spending large parts of their lives in far-flung hot, poor and dangerous countries… Today, fully 57% of Republican voters, and 51% of Independents, say that ‘US interests are better served by using our resources to improve life for ordinary Americans at home.’ Just a third agree that ‘US interests are best served by supporting freedom and democracy around the world when they are under threat.’ I am with the minority on this question…”

Ferguson lustily supported the War on Terror and never forgave George W. Bush for failing to commit enough lives to colonize Iraq, which in our combat-squeamish hands became, he lamented, “a Haiti on the Tigris.” Now he’s beside himself that a population not even being asked to send its own sons and daughters to death refuses to back open-ended war in Ukraine. America’s “attention deficit disorder,” he complains, “is now so severe that the public expresses impatience with wars it is merely being asked to support with money and material.”

Ferguson reads like a parody of a U.K. imperialist, like Colonel Mustard reading The White Man’s Burden on endless loop. The tone of recent columns suggests he’s never interacted socially with someone worth less than two million dollars. In September, he conceded the U.S. made commitments to Ukraine totaling $76.8 billion, and “like anything involving the word ‘billion,’ that sounds like a lot of money.” However, he wrote, that paltry sum “amounts to just 0.33% of U.S. GDP,” a pittance compared to wars in Vietnam (five times that percentage) or Iraq (four times). 

Never mind that Vietnam and Iraq were historic lessons in the futility of doubling down in the face of moral and strategic defeat. The notion that $76.8 billion isn’t a lot of money was such a wonderfully stupid idea that Paul Krugman of the New York Times appropriated it right away. Krugman changed the bare minimum of words for his cut-and-paste job, like a “Biggest Loser” contestant expending just enough effort to reach the remote:

“In the 18 months after the Russian invasion, U.S. aid totaled $77 billion. That may sound like a lot… But… Ukraine aid accounts for less than 1 percent of federal spending (and less than 0.3 percent of G.D.P.).”

Krugman couched the unwillingness to spend 1% of the budget as “Why MAGA wants to Betray Ukraine,” then quoted the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Strain in saying this betrayal was a “Seinfeld Shutdown,” i.e., a revolt “about nothing.” Venturing into the unfamiliar waters of literary invention, Krugman then said he preferred the concept of a “Network shutdown, as in people shouting ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!’” 

Strain’s Seinfeld metaphor made rhetorical sense, but the point of the brilliantly prescient Network was that ordinary people tend to boil over with justified rage when fed bullshit on a daily basis by mass-media hacks like, well, Paul Krugman. A “Network shutdown” is the opposite of a revolt “about nothing.” The Nobel-winning columnist went on to conclude of the unwillingness to spend on Ukraine, “Nothing short of a coup can satisfy this inchoate rage.” Voters, he said, object to war spending because “They want Putin to win” and are “enemies of democracy, both abroad and at home.”

Ferguson and Krugman represent a widening bubble of establishment buffoons who, like Scooby-Doo villains, really do regard voters as meddling kids gumming the works of empire. Ferguson’s buddies at the Hoover Institution have been hammering the need for shows of force across the board: not just Ukraine, but also Gaza and Taiwan. Visiting National Security fellow Jakub Grygiel took to the Wall Street Journal to rip the “illusion” that “greater trade and wealth produce peace,” arguing, as Hoover put it in last month’s national security briefing, that “only military power can defend and advance the interests of the US and its allies.” Former Deputy National Security Advisor Nadia Schadlow likewise complained that “the US and its allies have forgotten the central goal of geopolitics: to maintain the balance of military power.” 

These people won’t be convinced that American voters have actual reasons to object to their policy ideas. It’s a trifle, apparently, that the people asked to fight their Middle Eastern wars were told — by another Hoover/Stanford creature, incidentally, in Condoleezza Rice — they were doing so to protect America, because we “don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Just a year after Condi nearly scared the beard off Wolf Blitzer with that 2003 interview, Ferguson whined in the New York Times about America’s obsession with Vietnam and “quagmires,” offering a scolding reminder that Britain’s 19th century experience taught that “colonial rule” will “require severity.” 

Ferguson might have been right, but Americans never consented to fight and die for “colonial rule,” and had every right to refuse to do so once it became clear that was the motive. They’ve rejected the colonial project at the ballot at least twice, first in 2008 with Barack Obama, whose “meteoric rise” according even to Ferguson was “based on not having supported the war,” then again — this is true, there’s no way around this — in 2016, when Donald Trump began promising to “keep America out of these endless, ridiculous, stupid, foreign wars in countries that you’ve never even heard of.” 

Trump wasn’t any kind of traditional antiwar figure, but his running commentary on America’s interventionist plan was hilarious and exactly what the average person would say, if shown the ledger of recent Pentagon “accomplishments.” He had a talent for puking on Beltway war pieties, saying, “They can do what they want there, frankly” about Iran in Syria, or tweeting that the Kurds fought with us, but “but were paid massive amounts of money and equipment to do so.” This behavior inspired fits among foreign policy wonks accustomed to having even their most idiotic pronouncements hailed as Timeless Wisdom, but Trump capturing votes of war-weary Americans in 2016 showed how the public felt about such people, and his recent campaign to stall the Ukraine project has been successful for the same reason. 

Rather than listen to voters, the Beltway establishment has elected to denounce their judgments as ignorant, baseless, racist, and at least in the mind of Ferguson, grounded in something like cowardice, a lack of Victorian bottle. This, from a Scottish intellectual who’d surely end up dressed like a deer on the hood of an F-150 if he went to any VFW hall and repeated his tweedy lecture about Americans’ fear of “hot, poor, and dangerous” places.

Heading into a historic election season — or non-election season, as it seems after Colorado and Maine — there’s a reason we need to listen to these war party tantrums about voter intransigence. What’s the real motive for the extraordinary amount of anti-democratic intervention on the part of institutional America we’ve already seen in this cycle not just with regard to Trump, but candidates like Robert K. Kennedy, Jr., Marianne Williamson, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Cornel West? 

The cover story is fear of right-wing dictatorship, but it feels like the more likely explanation is that establishment patience with voters in general has been exhausted. These people just don’t know how to hide what they think. It’s a little on-the-nose, for instance, that the same empire pimps at Stanford who worked with the National Endowment for Democracy (read: the CIA) to craft a playbook for dealing with “anti-democratic” behavior “to delegitimize elections” abroad, also created the Election Integrity Partnership content moderation program at home to deal with posts about “delegitimization.” Whether describing the “inchoate rage” in Serbia or South Carolina, you’ll find the same language now.

A NEW YEAR SONG

"Anthem" by Leonard Cohen

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government —
signs for all to see.

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring …

You can add up the parts
but you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.