Author Archives: oinsketta

Some of Irv’s favorite phrases

The other night my dinner companions were talking about how hungry they were, as we waited for a table.   In similar situations my father often said “I’m so hungry, I could eat pork.”

Out of the blue, and with great manic cheerfulness, he’d demand in his best R rolling German accent:  “have you rrrelatives in Cherrrrrmany?”.

In relation to nothing in particular he might say “up your nalgas with a meat hook.”   Years later I’d learn the definition of nalgas [1].

Once in a while he’d burst forth with a string of words like “Tanganyika!  Tuskegee!  Brrrritish Emmmmpire!”  

He would raise his fist and say “Lumumba died for freedom.”  (He did, actually).

In closing a chat with a colleague from the Human Relations Unit, or any kind of ironic hipster he might run into, he’d say “keep the faith.” 

More than once, to my mother’s pretended amusement (she’d smile, tears in her eyes, nostrils flared) he’d say “Ehvvy, if I had your nose full of dimes, I’d never have to work again.”   

He said, more than once, “he has all the attributes of a dog, except loyalty.”

He had many occasions, since he provided me with much to complain about, to remind me “you’d complain if you were hung with a new rope.” 

If he was ever asked to guess what someone had bought him as a present he would immediately say “a combination egg and beet slicer.”   

Said in a disturbingly martial spirit, rather than with his usual ironic delivery: “you and your sister might win this battle, but you’re going to lose the war.”   What the fuck was up with that?   It was said about things like refusing to drink four glasses of cow’s milk a day.   

“Easy for you to make fun of a dead man, wise ass,” said the skeleton of my father snappishly.  “It’s just like you, too.  Wait until you’re dead, and your son writes a memoir of your life– oops, I forgot, you don’t have a son, do you? You have a cat you call the Baron.”   

The Baron is not my son, I had a paternity test done.  Besides, I work for the Baron.  What kind of father does that make me?   

“Don’t get me started, you ungrateful bastard,” said the skeleton.  “By the way, Elie, do you realize that the two bags of rituxan they infused into your arm recently cost more than twice what you paid for law school?”

Obviously, but you knew I knew that.   

“Droll,” said the skeleton of my father.  “Meditate some more, there are more of my memorable phrases you will remember later.  If not, I’ll try to remind you.  Now if you will excuse me….” and with that, his mouth still open, he ostentatiously fell asleep.

 

 

 

[1] 

noun
buttocks
nalgas,
asentaderas,
grupa
prat
imbécil,
nalgas
arse
culo, asno, burro,
nalgas,
tonto,
gilipollas
hams
nalgas

Capitalism Marches On

It wasn’t the Russians who put the giant angry two-year old into the White House, it was us, Charlie.   It was years of increasingly right-wing Republican rule (the party is an appendage of what used to be its extremist wing) and increasingly “centrist” Democratic rule as the most unscrupulous of our wealthiest citizens organized to divide and conquer the country.  Bill Clinton, the “greatest Republican president of the 20th century”, and Barack Obama, two charismatic neoliberals, adhered to many of the same policies as their Republican colleagues.  Endless war on a global scale, mass incarceration, government secrecy, a graceful dance around American poverty, economic policies that keep wealth concentrated and the spoils of the economy distributed upwards.  In the end many Americans correctly saw little difference between the parties. 

Both work mainly for the interests of wealthy donors and their well-paid lobbyists and both parties have presided over increasingly stark income and wealth inequality.  Candidates of neither party are likely to risk alienating free-spending billionaires with pressing agendas, including many corporate “persons”, intent only on profit, who enjoy many times the rights of ordinary citizens.

Of course, it’s not that there is no difference between the parties, as we see daily.   We had a dramatic demonstration of what cynical fucks working for cynical fucks will do with their Reduce Tax on the Wealthy and Corporations Bill including doubling the already high threshold for “Death Tax” and backdoor Obamacare Repeal.   As usual, Amy Goodman and writing partner Denis Moynihan produced a thoughtful and inspiring commentary.  Check out their piece about The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (aka The Arbeit Macht Frei Act)  rammed through on a straight party line 52-48 vote late Wednesday night, during the winter solstice, on ‘the darkest day of the year‘.

There is a big difference between the parties, of course, on certain issues, if not on the major economic and military ones.  The Democrats, for the most part, are not as extreme and ‘disciplined’ as their far right colleagues on the other side of the aisle.  On social issues, the polarizing “wedge issues” we are all now so familiar with reflexively fighting over, of course, the parties are far apart.  Democrats see homosexuality as part of nature, not a mortal threat to the family and a personal affront to Jesus Christ himself.  Democrats are more progressive on race relations, protective of a woman’s right to the final say over her pregnancy, in favor of humane immigration policies, concerned with controlling gun violence, concerned with providing a fig leaf of dignity to the least among us, believers in science, concerned with taking steps to slow catastrophic climate change, willing to discuss many issues based on the actual facts of the case instead of constantly repeating talking points and misleading mantras like “Death Tax”.   

It is possible, as we have seen, to have all of these “liberal” social policies and still rule on behalf of the wealthiest and most selfish while waging endless, self-perpetuating wars, mostly in secret, on a worldwide battlefield while leaving the disenfranchised at home to fend largely for themselves.  It is called “neoliberalism”.

I, like most Americans, am sick to death of this status quo.  I find it disturbing that most Americans have no idea what neoliberalism is: open-minded on “social issues”, a free-market capitalist on matters of the economy and war.   I was not blinded enough by my disgust with the spineless Democratic party, or my distaste for the unpopular candidate they skewed the primary process to put on the ballot, to vote for a huckster to blow the whole thing up, to end government as we know it, an insane and obvious  liar, born rich, who divides the world into winners (the rich) and losers (the rest of you contemptible motherfuckers).   The man is the perfect front man for his adopted party.   He advocates only for himself, serving whoever kisses up to him the most lavishly and those who share his shamelessly narrow self-interest. 

The people, except for beneficiaries of his in-your-fucking-face tax giveaway and those 30% still too blinded by anger and hatred to see how tragically foolish they were to vote for him,  hate him.  The losers mostly hate him.  Winners, of course, shit, he’s one of them!  And longtime wet dreams of extreme right-wing fringe nuts are finally within their sweaty grasp.  No taxes paid by the born booted and spurred inheritors of vast fortunes and the longed for dismantling of the New Deal social safety net, and Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps, and Obamacare, and aid to children and to the old and infirm and all the rest of societies hapless losers. 

You see, now that the deficit has been increased by the amount given back to America’s wealthiest, a projected $1,400,000,000,000.00, deep cuts to social programs, those despicable “entitlements” that the poor seem to feel entitled to (who the fuck do they think they are?  The wealthy?), are more pressing than ever to keep the deficit in line.   The Koch brothers’ father, Mr. John Birch, and demented fucking Fred Christ Trump are coming all over themselves in hell.  Good for you, boys, good for you.

Having a Bully for a Parent

“Is it really fair to call me a bully?” asked the skeleton of my father, from his grave outside of Peekskill.  

Yeah.  

“Well, nice to see no equivocation, I suppose,” said the skeleton.  “I assume you have this whole thing worked out, how Uncle Aren and his wife bullied my mother, how she bullied me, blah, blah, blah….”  

Actually, I had something else in mind.  With a bullying maniac in the White House, someone who sees the world as black and white, the way you always did, someone as intent on winning…  

“Or actually, intent on not losing, as you pointed out a few weeks ago.  The battle is not really to win, it’s to not be defeated again.  That’s a genuine insight you had right there, Elie.  People who divide the world into winners and losers, black and white, good and evil, are desperate not to find themselves on the wrong side of that cruel chasm.  Their self-esteem is tied to never being beaten again.   They’re desperate not to be what they think of as losers.  If the world has no nuance, you are either loyal or a traitor.”  

All true, as far as I can see.  Anyway, having experienced that kind of upbringing, by a parent desperate never to be wrong, who bellows ‘it’s my way or the highway’ when he feels cornered, I have a certain understanding of this despicable creature we have dominating the news like an eternally crying baby with a voice as loud as an atom bomb.  

“Are atom bombs really loud?” said the skeleton.  “You should probably run that one by Jeeves, Elie.  What if the mushroom cloud is supremely silent as it melts all life within its radius?”

I take your point, but I don’t give a shit.  I had some thoughts about the psyche of this clown president, after seeing a short, well-done documentary about his family history.   The film was called Meet the Trumps: From Immigrant to President.   A 47 minute 2017 BBC production I saw on Netflix yesterday, and recommend  highly.

“Do tell,” said the skeleton, with a yawn, or a silent scream.

Trump had an older brother, Fred Jr., Freddy, who was bright, good looking, fun-loving, interested in others, beloved.  Fred Christ Trump senior, an immense piece of shit, as far as anyone can tell, a guy who ruthlessly took advantage of government contracts for middle class housing to enrich himself obscenely, if arguably just within the letter of the law (he settled a federal discrimination suit agreeing not to violate the new Fair Housing Act, without admitting he had), was grooming Freddy ascend to the throne of the Trump Empire.  Freddy cruelly disappointed his father by siding with the tenants of a building Trump owned and putting in new windows for them.  This inexcusable breach of business ethics demonstrated to Fred Christ Trump that Freddy lacked what it took to lead the House of Trump.   

Frederich Trump, Fred Christ Trump’s father, had made a small fortune by sheer audacity at the turn of the twentieth century.   He came from Germany (at sixteen to seek his fortune, the second time because he’d been deported from his homeland) to become an American immigrant success story.  He died fairly young, leaving a nice nest egg that his oldest son, Fred Christ, turned into an actual fortune after becoming head of the family and surpassing the entrepreneurial accomplishments of his bold, entrepreneurial father.

In the documentary they take a moment to follow the tragic demise of Freddy Trump.  Never suited to life as a ruthless corporate titan, he left the family business and became a commercial pilot.  At some point he lost that job, possibly connected with an increasingly intrusive alcohol habit.   He wound up working as a maintenance man in some Trump apartment building.  Then he finished drinking himself to death, and died, at 43.

Meanwhile, Donald, who’d shown an increasing mean streak as an adolescent, had graduated from the military academy he’d been sent to to man him up.  To build up his self-esteem while he was at the academy, his parents, Fred Christ and Mary, would bring a pretty girl with them every week when they visited Donald.  The girls looked like models, noted a former classmate of Trump’s, possibly because they were.   Donald would be photographed posing with this succession of good looking young women and went on to win the all-male academy’s Lady’s Man award.   Shades of The Apprentice, I thought when I saw that.

At twenty-five, with his father under investigation in Congress for shady business practices,  Donald was appointed president of his iron-willed father’s real estate empire.  He soon found himself under the stinking wing of a truly notorious piece of shit, vicious, closeted gay homophobe Roy Cohn. [1]  Cohn, among his other notorious works, represented the dons of the five crime families, as well as George Steinbrenner, and became Donald’s consigliere and mentor, before losing a four year battle against disbarment and dying of AIDS.  

In 1981 Freddy died.  There’s a clip of Trump describing his brother.   It is striking how uncharacteristically human his tone is, how clearly full of love he is describing his big brother.    He laments that his father, and he, pushed Freddy into a life he wasn’t cut out for, then goes on to explain:  

“… I had a brother who was an extraordinary guy, he was an absolutely brilliant personality, he was handsome, good at sports, he was wonderful, people loved him, he was nice, everybody wanted to be his friend, people confided in him, he was truly a nice human being….” Then he springs the trap shut, in characteristic fashion: “… and people took advantage of him.”  The lesson he learned from his wonderful brother’s life and death is ‘don’t be too nice, or people will fuck you.”

Years later the demented Fred Christ would agree to cut Freddy’s heirs out of his will.   Donald took the opportunity to give a final fuck you to his beloved too nice loser brother’s family by cutting off promised money to pay for medical care for Freddy’s grandchild, born with cerebral palsy.

“I understand that up there, above the ground, it is impossible to resist talking about, thinking about, bitching about, this giant, stinking pantload you have in the bully pulpit.  Makes me glad I’m already dead, I have to say. But this shit-smear too shall pass, along with the 32% who say they don’t regret having voted for him.  They all pass, the Roy Cohns, the Fred and Donald Trumps alike.  

“I know it’s not all in your hands, not entirely a matter of your will, but I wish you could somehow focus on finishing a nice sample of my story to send to agents.  Get an agent, Elie, before it’s too late.  Find a nice ten page sample, print it out, and send it to a dozen agents, and a few literary rags while you’re at it.  That’s how you avoid being too nice and having people take advantage of you.”

It’s my way or the fucking highway, dad.  You like that fucking dirt bed you have there?  Good, then be quiet and go back to sleep. 

“Yah-vold, mein herr,” said the skeleton, giving a feeble Nazi salute and slouching back into his grave.

[1]  Some readers (Jews in particular) might find this review of two biographies of Cohn the reviewer waded through, disturbingly fascinating.

20171220_144243.png

(above) the self-hating Roy Cohn, living picture of Dorian Grey.

Procedure Codes

I suppose one way providers can fight back while being paid 20% of their billed rate for services is by skillfully working the procedure codes.  I may be wrong, but I suspect this may be the case.   The thought never occurred to me until yesterday when I got the approval from Healthfirst for the minor surgical procedure I had two weeks ago.

I had diagnosed the tiny cancer cell on my nose myself.  I had only felt that intermittent slightly stabbing pain twice before.   Each other time it had been a basal cell on my nose.   The growth was so tiny that neither the dermatologist nor the surgeon she sent me to could actually see it.   I pointed to a spot on the bridge of my nose under which the basal cell, its visible part about the size of a pinprick (if the pin is very sharp), was slowly growing.  The surgeon told me that since we’d caught it so early there would be no need for a skin graft, just a couple of tiny stitches that would leave no scar.

The surgery was painful, due, according to the red haired surgeon, to the skin sensitivity of people with red or reddish hair (my beard, before turning white, was red).  It turns out the surgeon had made a slit the length of my nose, dug out the basal cell from underneath, and left a line of large black stitches about the size of an eyebrow, from my left tear duct to the top of my left nostril.   When I first changed the bandage I had a bit of a shock at the size of the incision to remove something smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.  Sekhnet, of course, had a theory about why the long cut was the right thing to do.

Tomorrow I go to get the stitches out.  Yesterday I received approval from Healthfirst for the procedure, which they informed me would be good between the two dates indicated (first date about four weeks ago, the second date rapidly approaching).   They approved five separate procedures:

17311  MOHS MICROGRAPHIC TECHNIQUE, INCLUDING REMOVAL OF ALL GROSS TUMOR, SURGICAL EXCISION OF TISSUE SPECIMENS, MAPPING, COLOR CODING OF SPECIMENS, MICROSCOPIC EXAMINATION OF SPECIMENS

17312  MOHS MICROGRAPHIC TECHNIQUE, INCLUDING REMOVAL OF ALL GROSS TUMOR, SURGICAL EXCISION OF TISSUE SPECIMENS BY THE SURGEON, AND HISTOPATHOLOGIC PREPARATION INCLUDING ROUTINE STAIN(S) (EG, HEMATOXYL)  

13152  REPAIR, COMPLEX, EYELIDS, NOSE, EARS AND/OR LIPS; 2.6 CM TO 7.5 CM  [1.02362″ TO 2.95276″ –ED]

14060  ADJACENT TISSUE TRANSFER OR REARRANGEMENT, EYELIDS-ADJACENT TISSUE TRANSFER OR REARRANGEMENT, EYELIDS NOSE EARS AND/OR LIPS; DEFECT 10 SQ CM OR LESS  [3.93701″]  

14061   ADJACENT TISSUE TRANSFER OR REARRANGEMENT, EYELIDS-ADJACENT TISSUE TRANSFER OR REARRANGEMENT, EYELIDS NOSE EARS AND/OR LIPS; DEFECT 10.1 SQ CM TO 30.0 SQ CM  [3.93701 SQ INCHES TO 11.811 SQ INCHES– ED.]  

Could all be on the up and up, I suppose.  Until they start digging they don’t know if that tiny tumor will be less than an inch across or the size of 30% of my face.  Fair enough.  The rest of that stuff, I’m not sure about.  Maybe it explains why the incision came so close to my left tear duct, where the stitches start.   Maybe I am just so bitter about corporate medicine, and so aware of the psychopathic nature of the corporation, that I just suspect the worst from these “persons”.  As for the humans– I think about the surgeon’s failure to provide me with pain medication after a surgery she acknowledged was painful for me, as it would be for her,  But why be judgmental?

Still, you know, it makes sense, from the point of view of the provider, being squeezed and nickeled and dimed on their bills by powerful insurance companies, to bill for every possible procedure.  The eyelid adjacent stuff may be very lucrative, for all I know.  Who am I, who has never run a successful business, never been an entrepreneur, never had to answer to a room full of very wealthy, pissed off shareholders, to opine about anyone’s business practices?  

Hopefully there will be little pain tomorrow when I get the stitches out, that I won’t find it necessary to ask the surgeon any pointed questions, and that, true to her word, the long line of stitches will leave no scar.   Otherwise I’ll get me an eyepatch, and a parrot, and limp down the street cursing their salty, scurvy wives and unwashed ill-reputed mothers.   Arrrgh.

 

 

 

 

 

Explanation of Benefits

You’ve got to love the in-your-face shamelessness of the American profit motive.  Check this one out, for your health, which is a lucrative commodity in our exceptional  economy, even as many continue to die every day for failure to sufficiently monetize their own self-worth.  I believe the numbers in this story will blow your mind.

American medical treatment, famously expensive, is generally paid for through private insurance companies or government insurance schemes like the Veteran’s Administration, Medicare and Medicaid.   It would be foolish for an American to seek any kind of major health treatment without insurance, it’s a recipe for lifelong debt and/or bankruptcy.   With insurance, pay enough every month, and on time, and you’re pretty much covered, much of the time.  Like a good patriarchal neighbor, the insurance company will step in and negotiate for you.

After any medical service the insurance company sends you a chart called the Explanation of Benefits, or EOB.  The EOB tells you, for the first time, what the medical facility charged you for treatment.   The next column informs you what the insurance company agreed to pay, the rate negotiated between the insurance company and the ‘provider’ (or ‘doctor’ to us old fashioned folks).  The next column tells you what the insurance company actually paid of this negotiated rate and the amount of that rate applied to the deductible, or MOOP, if applicable, and then what you owe. 

As I’ve noted here before, under the Patient Protection Act the doctor or medical facility cannot tell you the price of treatment until everyone gets their EOB.  The insurance company cannot tell you the price prior to treatment, because, until they get the bill from the provider, they don’t prepare the EOB.  Go to the restaurant, order what you want from a menu without prices, or the specials (waiter can’t tell you the prices), and we’ll bill you for the entire amount a month or two from now, no problem.  If you pay monthly meal insurance premiums, we’ll make sure the restaurant doesn’t gouge you too badly.   This way everyone makes money!   

When I went for my first infusion of rituximab (or rituxan) I learned something cool.   I was presented with a contract to sign before I was sent upstairs for treatment.  The last section claimed, on my behalf, that I’d been informed of the price of the rituxan treatment I was about to get and that I agreed to pay the full price if insurance refused to pay any part of my bill.  I returned to the woman behind the desk, pointed to the language and asked her what the price was.   She told me, in a friendly way, that she had no idea, that they’d tell me upstairs.

Here’s the cool thing I learned.  I circled the bullshit language about being informed of the price and crossed out the signature line, with the full approval of the woman behind the desk.  She smiled, nodded, photocopied the contract and handed me my copy.  I went upstairs for treatment.  They also had no idea what the price of the treatment was.   We’d all heard it’s very expensive, that’s all we knew.

Six weeks after the first infusion I got the EOB.  For some weird reason I owe $33.54.  A couple of five dollar charges, a twenty, and some change.  The total bill for the first of two treatments was $44,129.58 — putting the total for the two infusions at over $88,000.   The loose change I owe is the full negotiated price for the injection of methylpredinosone/sodium succinate, billed at $14.38.   For some reason insurance won’t pay the negotiated $3.54 for that shit, you know.  Why would they?  Fuck that shit — you pay it.

Here’s the thing, though.  The full retail sticker price for the infusion of rituxan turned out to be $33,730.20.   Guess what the insurance company paid?  It might be fun to guess, so I’ll hide the Amount Covered by Plan in this footnote, if you’d like to play at home [1].  It gets better, somehow.  The chemotherapy administration, intravenous infusion, was billed at $6,910.  Play along with us at home, won’t you?  The amount I am responsible for is at footnote 2.  Take your wildest guess what part of that I owe. [2]

Everyone will tell me, correctly, that I’m lucky to have insurance, fortunate that I paid last month’s premium on time, didn’t get bounced off insurance before they could pick up all but $33 of the more than $40,000 I was billed.   This time it was a damned good deal.

The larger question, of course, is what the fuck?  What is a fair and reasonable price for the medical treatment I received?  Is that question really unanswerable?   Is the total mystery of the price really necessary so that everyone makes maximum profit?  I don’t get it.  The provider was satisfied to get less than 20% of what they billed as full payment for the expensive, possibly life-saving treatment they provided?  Pennies on the dollar, as President Trump likes to say about paying to settle something like the fraud case against him for Trump U (“Hey, Trump YOOOO, assbite!”).   

They sued then candidate Trump for $40,000,00 and, through the art of the deal, he paid a mere $25,000,000, or pennies on the dollar (a mere 62 pennies on the dollar), to make the problem vanish forever.  But one would have to agree, my insurance company did a much, much better, and a far more artful, deal for themselves, and for me (see footnotes).

Look, I get that corporate capitalism is an amoral predator with only one aim– to make money by the bushel, cut any possible corner to make more profit, and have a team of top notch attorneys poised to fight regulators and liability for any expensive harm the entity causes, any fraud it commits, pay as little as possible for any deaths it causes.   It’s all understandable.  The business of America is business, as America’s wealthiest often say.   

The greediest and richest are indisputably entitled to unlimited acquisition, to as many luxury homes, private planes and yachts as they like, while the takers, well, they get what we grudgingly give the fucking parasites.  In America every parasite has a cell phone and a refrigerator, and a TV, and they’re all still bitching, and taking drugs, and having children out of wedlock.  While the children of billionaires will soon no longer have to worry about being taxed so much as a penny on every dollar of the unimaginable fortunes they will inherit. 

Of course, the children of the super-rich deserve every inherited nickel for being natural aristocrats in the land of the free and the home of the new landed gentry.  That blessed top 0.2% (two tenths of the wealthiest one percent, that is), the children of our most successful money acquirers and hoarders (“job creators”), is finally on the threshold of liberation from that scourge of the children of the super-rich, the hated Death Tax.  If you’re born poor, well, suck it.   If the choice is five or ten ‘to die for’ homes for me —  and I really need just one or two more, got my heart set on a sweet little pied a terre in Paris — and zero homes for you and your parasite children — is it really a choice?

I’m not going to change any hearts and minds here among the handful who stumble on these words.  All I can hope to do (while noting my own monstrous ingratitude for the great medical deal I just got) is set the outrageousness of this set up out as clearly as I can.  What the fucking fuck?   Is this really the best Americans deserve?  In our exceptional nation, the likes of which the world has never known?   God shed his grace on thee, motherfucker, and if you don’t believe it, curl up and die somewhere for all the rest of us fucking care.  Have a nice day!  Have a blessed day!

 

[1] $7,475.70 of the $33,730.20 billed, every red cent paid by Healthfirst.   22%, baby!

[2]  $5.  Healthfirst ain’t paying jack for that one, but they got  me a pretty sweet deal, I have to say.  Knocked the price down from $6,910 — to five bucks.  I’ll take it, I guess.  Talk about pennies on the dollar… 0.0007 pennies per dollar!!!   Suck on that, Don, you fucking loser.

1945

An old friend recently told me of a film called 1945, a production making the rounds in selected cinemas.  He said he thought it was available on Nexflix, where I recently saw the 57 minute documentary.  [1]   He didn’t want to spoil it for me, but told me it’s a remarkable piece of work, as I recall he said it used  until recently unknown footage from right after the war, in the summer of 1945.  He told me it was well worth checking out.

I preface this short discussion, which I place under the category of Ahimsa, to say that as a guide to one’s own life, there is no more admirable path than non-harm.   We don’t need to kill other creatures in order to eat, we don’t need to browbeat those we disagree with, we don’t need to break heads.   There are alternatives to each of these things.   You can live well on a vegan diet.   You can mildly and directly make points in a conversation with somebody you might be tempted to browbeat.  You can usually leave the room when the temptation to break somebody’s head is about to become unbearable.    I think Ahimsa works beautifully with “what is hateful to you, don’t do to somebody else” the classical Jewish statement of the Golden Rule, formulated by Hillel.  

If you are stuck in a room, or a prison, or a camp, or a city, where violence is the rule and your survival is an open question, Ahimsa begins to seem like less of an absolute.  If you are starving to death you are as likely as not to eventually kill an animal and eat it (or have someone else kill it, butcher it, and cook it, then you can eat it).   Few fellow vegans would be self-righteous enough to fault you for it.  If someone slaughters your family, and then comes for you, a Gandhian smile of resignation is probably not the best move.  Contrary to what the Great Souled One urged on the Jews in the path of Germany, Nazi-types will never be moved by Soul Force.

In the face of certain brutality, only physical force is useful.  Brutes know this instinctively, from having been humiliated enough to become violent.   The Nazis did not come to power in Germany on the strength of their ideas– they came to power because they were the most ruthless, determined and disciplined head-breakers in Germany.   They knew that many people who feel powerless admire, and will identify, with decisive, brutal action portrayed in a heroic light.   As for the rest, only a few heads have to be broken publicly before the rest will fall into line.  The Nazis did far more than break heads, they had camps waiting for anyone who opposed them in any way.  Many were killed, starved and brutalized in these camps.

One of the Nazi goals was lebensraum, “living room”, defined by google translate as “habitat” which is also a synonym for heimat, which translates to “homeland”, a phrase modern American fascist types adopted after the attacks on 9/11 that apparently changed history forever.   Nazis invaded Poland, in a brutal and unprovoked blitzkreig, and enslaved the Poles, taking their best land for ethnic Germans.  They also killed most of Poland’s three million Jews while they were there.   The Nazis set the standard for ruthless regimes, we compare all such regimes to those murderous, enslaving no-holds-barred motherfuckers.

1945, using film noirshot after the German surrender, in the months immediately after Mr. Hitler poisoned Eva Braun, and his dog, and shot himself in the mouth, documents what the filmmakers call “the largest episode of ethnic cleansing in history.”   Twelve million ethnic Germans, we are told, were displaced, very badly treated and up to a quarter of a million killed.  Worse ethnic cleansing than the one immediately preceding it?   There’s an argument to be made there.

There are films of atrocious conditions for ethnic Germans forced to flee their new homes, after only five years as lords and masters.  Thousands died on forced death marches back to the old heimat.  As many as 250,000 lost their lives in those terrible post-war months.   In a soccer stadium, in front of a huge Czech crowd, German men were forced to remove their shirts.  The twenty one men with SS tattoos (the SS were the most fanatical of the Nazis, the elite units personally loyal to the Fuhrer) were brutally beaten to death, sadistically, revived with a bucket of cold salt water to the face, beaten again, revived again, beaten until they were dead.   Children were starved.  Several of the survivors cry as they recall what they were subjected to by the brutal “victors” of history’s then most brutal war.

I have to say, I watched this all pretty much unmoved.   Which surprised me.  I couldn’t feel much sympathy for these victims.   I wondered, more than once, why no mention was made of the ethnic cleansing so recently undertaken by the German government.   There was no mention, by the BBC narrator, of the extermination — or even the existence– of so many Jews, homosexuals, Slavic slave laborers and other untermensch enemy of the state types. [2]  There seemed to be no concession to human nature on the part of the filmmakers who describe this brutality as something as abhorrent and incomprehensible as that shown by the Nazis.

I realize I am not a disinterested observer.  Nazis marched through the areas where my grandparents on both sides came from.  When the German army and the SS were done marching through the Ukraine and Belarus, everyone besides my four grandparents in New York were dead.   So beating a few SS men to death for the amusement of a vicious crowd of people recently liberated from Nazi rule does not sound so bestial.   I understand it was horrible for the German men standing shirtless in the stadium as the most fit and brutal among them were beaten to death, but I found myself philosophical about it. 

The experience of watching the documentary and my reaction to it made me understand something troubling about the human condition.  We may be lifelong opponents of torture and sadism, of capital punishment.   But show us the perpetrators of our family’s slow death by starvation, torture and finally shooting and we will, if given the chance, fuck those people up.   This is one of the horrors of the human condition– this limitation of our powers of empathy that fuels the endless cycle of righteous rage and violent revenge.

I get a chance to ponder this horror several times every day, as our Divider-in-Chief regularly throws bloody meat to his irrational “base” and the shrewd billionaires who put him into office.   I don’t generally cheer for the idea of anybody having a painful, prolonged heart attack in the middle of an incoherent world-televised live speech.  But if it has to happen…. if you know what I’m sayin’….

 

[1] Oy yoy yoy!   This BBC production is not the movie my friend told me about!    I went to check the title for the BBC subtitle (“The Savage Peace”) and found this film, also called 1945, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 94%, the one my friend urged me to see:

On a summer day in 1945, an Orthodox man and his grown son return to a village in Hungary while the villagers prepare for the wedding of the town clerk’s son.  The townspeople – suspicious, remorseful, fearful, and cunning, expect the worst and behave accordingly. The town clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s deported Jews and expects them to demand their illegally acquired property back.

Guess I’ll have to go to the Lincoln Plaza Cinema to check it out. 

[2] A friend pointed out that the BBC occasionally displays a highly refined, almost irreproachably subtle, version of well-born anti-Semitism.  

 

Mettez le crayon sur le pupitre

My sister and I both took French in school.  Any time the subject came up our father would chirp “mettez le crayon sur le pupitre”.    Put the pencil on the desk.

Years later, when the subject of French came up in my uncle’s house my uncle immediately chirped “mettez le crayon sur le pupitre.”  My sister and I both laughed.   

My uncle explained:  we had the same French teacher. 

Congratulations, Alabama

Alabama seems to have narrowly avoided national shame today by not electing the Ayatollah of Alabama to the U.S. Senate.  News of the result in the Alabama special election was a relief with an aftertaste of hope.   Negative campaigning and bullying alone may not carry the day right now in American elections.    We’ve all had a long look at the results when the most adept at innuendo and insult attain high office.  Unaccountable, unqualified people in office, incompetent stewards of our resources and rights, doing a bad job.

Congratulations to Senator-elect Doug Jones, congratulations to the voters of Alabama.   Congratulations to the Alabama Election Commission for integrity and to the Alabama Secretary of State for not suppressing the vote to the extent that a fundamentalist Christian thug, twice removed from the bench by his fellow judges in Alabama for flagrant contempt of the Constitution, could be elected to represent you in Washington, D.C..  As I write this, with all 67 counties reporting, the projected margin of victory is less than 2%, currently less than 21,000 votes.  This one has been a squeaker.  It turns out the GOP was right to try to suppress black and Latino votes:  Jones got virtually all of the votes that “minorities” were able to cast in Alabama.  Moore had 70% of the white vote, naturally enough.

In a defense related to Moore’s dismissal of accusations by women he creeped out when they were teenagers, and he an adult assistant district attorney, I think Mike Huckabee’s daughter, the press secretary who replaced Sean Spicer, said it all yesterday in her defense of Donald Trump in the face of renewed allegations of unwanted sexual contact brought by now nineteen women.   It underscored the Trump/Moore lawless approach to governing and the rule of law.  She said, in essence: “y’all voted him into office and the question of if he did or did not years ago grope those women who are accusing him again now is irrelevant.”   Following her, eh, logic, I guess the fact that Moore was defeated means those women weren’t lying about his unwanted sexual attention when they were in high school.

I was delighted to find a complete transcript of the recent press conference where this issue was discussed fully provided on whitehouse.gov.

A grateful thank you to the Trump administration for this unexpected and very welcome example of full government transparency.  I wish the policies of Obama and Cheney had been anywhere near this transparent: 

Francesca.

Q    Thank you, Sarah.  I wanted to ask you about the women who came forward today against the President.  They first were on a television show and then they were at a press conference.  And they said that he should resign, and then also that there should be a congressional investigation.  And I know that you’ve said that this has already been litigated in the last election, but I wanted to get your specific reaction to this idea that there should be a congressional investigation into this.

MS. SANDERS:  Look, the President has addressed these accusations directly and denied all of these allegations. [1]  And this took place long before he was elected to be President. [2]   And the people of this country, at a decisive election, supported President Trump [3] , and we feel like these allegations have been answered through that process [4].

Kristen.

MS. SANDERS:  Sarah, thank you.  I want to follow up on that.  But first, a little bit of breaking news we just learned about:  The Pentagon apparently will now allow transgender people to enlist in the military beginning January 1st.  Your reaction to that?  And any follow-up action you’re going to take?

MS. SANDERS:  Yeah, as of right now, they’re simply complying with a court order and preparing to implement a previous policy to remain in compliance.  The Department of Justice is currently reviewing the legal options to ensure that the President’s directive can be implemented.  [5]

And for anything further and any specifics on both of those matters, I’d refer you to the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice.

Q    Okay, and one follow-up —

MS. SANDERS:  Sorry, Mara.

Q    One follow-up very quickly on — just very quickly, Sarah.

MS. SANDERS:  Sorry, Kristen.  Mara, go ahead.

Q    Can I just ask you about Nikki Haley’s comments saying that the President —

MS. SANDERS:  Mara, go ahead.

Q    I’ll pick that up for you, Kristen.

MS. SANDERS:  She’s going to pick it up for you.

Q    Nikki Haley, as I’m sure you know, said, when asked does the election mean that’s a settled issue — which you’ve been arguing from the podium here — she said, “I know he was elected, but women should always feel comfortable coming forward and we should all be willing to listen to them,” specifically referring to the accusers of the President.  Does the President agree with her?

MS. SANDERS:  Look, as the President said himself, he thinks it’s a good thing that women are coming forward, but he also feels strongly that a mere allegation shouldn’t determine the course.  And, in this case, the President has denied any of these allegations, as have eyewitnesses.  And several reports have shown those eyewitnesses also back up the President’s claim in this process.  [6]

And again, the American people knew this and voted for the President, and we feel like we’re ready to move forward in that process.

Q    But he thinks it’s a good thing that the women who accused him are coming forward now, again?

MS. SANDERS:  The President has said that it’s a good thing for women to be able to feel comfortable in coming forward, generally speaking.  [7]

Jacqueline.

Q    I just want to go off of that, Sarah.  But the President told Howard Stern in 2005 that he had walked into a teen beauty pageant dressing room where he said that teen contestants had no clothes on because he could sort of get away with things like that.  Is that not an admission of sexual harassmen

MS. SANDERS:  Look, the President has spoken about this directly.  I don’t have anything further to add on the process.

Q    And the American public —

MS. SANDERS:  We’re going to do one question today, guys, to move around.

Q    Two ISIS attacks in New York City — or ISIS-inspired attacks in New York City just recently.  Is the President concerned that there is a growing threat against people inspired by ISIS who have been radicalized online?

 

[1]  Trump responded that all the women telling similar stories about him are liars, threatened to sue all of them in court, claimed he never even met most of them and scoffed that half of the ones he did meet were dogs he’d never dream of trying to stick a finger up, the thought itself being repellant to him.    

[2]  And that matters why?

[3]  An election Trump lost by almost 3,000,000 votes and won by a razor thin 70,000 strategically placed votes in five key states that garnered an Electoral College margin of victory.

[4]  Sarah, how does the process of this narrow, brilliantly calculated and executed Electoral College victory have any relation to the question of whether or not Trump did what he boasted of?   Nineteen women tell similar stories about a groping, molesting person entirely consistent with the Boor-in-Chief’s public persona.   What does his magically narrow Electoral College defeat of an intensely disliked opponent have to do with whether he forced himself on these women?  

[5]  This item, while offered mainly to change the subject, means that Trump’s petulant, sensationalist tweet about banning transgender persons for the U.S. Armed Forces was just another impulsive presidential tweet and that there will be no change to existing law on the military’s policy of allowing transgender enlistment.

[6]  What on earth does this actually mean, Sarah?  Was Trump himself the eye witness who corroborates that he didn’t do what the women said he did?

[7] Although all the women who had accused him were, in fact, complete liars trying to cause irreparable harm to his good name, nasty women he promised to sue in court for defamation,  plus, he never met them, or if he did, most of them were dogs he wouldn’t molest with a ten foot poll.

 

Alabama’s Voter ID Law

There is an ongoing federal lawsuit in Alabama, brought by the NAACP and others, over restrictive voter ID laws in the state that the plaintiffs claim are voter suppression measures disproportionately targeting black and Latino citizens.   Here is a short description of the lawsuit from the Alabama Public Radio website (in other news, did you know W.C. Handy is known worldwide as the Father of the Blues?)

Here are legal papers from the lawsuit itself, plaintiffs responding to the Alabama Secretary of State’s motion to have the case dismissed for lack of triable issues of fact.

Trial was set for September 11, 2017, according to the APR piece, but it seems the trial is now set for February, 2018.  Oh well.  Here is a recent op-ed by a guy who heads a church group fighting the Alabama voter suppression measures.  He does not even mention Alabama’s closure of more than thirty DMV offices where many voters could have secured the newly required photo IDs.   Nor the closure of some voting sites in majority black and hispanic precincts.  

Fortunately we live in a land of law, (he said sardonically).   Here is one shining example of the Supreme law of the land in the land of law we live in:

When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state, there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.

(from the Civil Rights Cases, 1883)

You may have to wait ninety years or so for your taste of justice, as these special favorites of the law had to, starting 18 years after the end of the Civil War, but doesn’t that just make it taste sweeter? 

(Rhetorical question, no answer required.)

In a closely contested election, the more votes of your opponent you can cause not to be cast, the better your chance of a narrow victory you can call a mandate.   It’s tempting to say, looking at some of the in-your-face racist bullshit that puts on the finery of American law in our great post-racial society, that this country is doomed.  Think about it, though.  We are probably no more doomed than the rest of the world that the powerful psychopaths at the helm are so heedless about destroying. 

They’re doing a hell of a job, Brownie, hell of a job.

Just for Fun

You’ve got to love these top ten lists.  America is into rankings, big time.   Our entire culture is based on competition and the myth of the big, happy winner and the pathetic, miserable loser.   The competition is not always fair, admittedly, and the rankings are not always accurate or verifiable, but let’s play a little game I just thought up (instead of jumping out of my skin, my only other option at the moment.)

Bear in mind that these rankings were reported in that notorious Commie rag Forbes (note how their “rankings” diverge from the alleged source of the article — check out the sad case of Colorado, for example [1]), so take that into consideration when playing, but play the game along with us anyway, it’s fun in a sick way.  We’re seeing how the top ten in education and the bottom ten in education cast their votes in the 2016 Electoral College.

Ranking the states for educational attainment, based on some formula you can read about in the linked Forbes piece, you get the top ten (one to ten) according to Forbes:  Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, Washington, New Jersey.   Their votes in the Electoral College equal 90.   

The bottom ten are (bottom to top):  West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Nevada, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma.  These states represent a total of 104 Electoral College votes, Texas with an outsized 38.   

Top ten best educated states?  All ninety electors went to that nasty woman, loser Hillary Clinton.

Bottom ten worst educated states?  98 of those 104 Electoral College votes went to America’s greatest winner, and the most popular president in human history, Donald J. Trump. 

Only Nevada with its six electors bet against the former casino tycoon, fucking up the wonderful symmetry of this diverting game.

Here’s the 2016 electoral college map, if you want to fill out the rest of the board.  

Thanks for playing, y’all.

 

[1]  Colorado is either #3 or #14, depending on whether you believe Forbes or the report by an outfit called Wallethub that its article is based on.