When the Political Becomes Personal: an Epiphany

WHEN DISASTER STRIKES, I instinctively think of myself as being utterly and irremediably alone. I view myself as not just on my own in the context of the immediate crisis – as rising or falling solely on the basis of my own (severely limited) resources, but also as being cast off, banished, abandoned, alone in such a profound and absolute sense, I dare not ask for help lest it trigger my immediate, emphatic and quite possibly violent rejection as an unwanted burden. I remember encountering, about the time I was nine years old, the concept of being marooned – that is, transported to some desolately uninhabited isle in a dangerously tropical latitude and left there to live or die however fate might decree – a circumstance the emotional and material horrors of which I instantly understood and with which I fully emphasized, seemingly with every cell in my body. Such was the character of my childhood, a span of years the chief lesson of which was that any admission of neediness invariably invited retribution, the greater the need, the more severe the reprisal. I was, to put it bluntly, a thoroughly despised child – the legacy of which (as the events of the past week made clear) – I had not fully transcended even at age 74.

Even at the best of times, my relationship with computers is defined by an undertow of extreme anxiety. Not only is the computer the prime exemplar of invasive alien technology – an artifact of the morally imbecilic Otherworld of capitalism, where infinite greed is ultimate virtue and the tyranny of the One Percent over all the rest of us is reckoned a divinely ordained right – it is also the electronic scab that destroyed the realm of print journalism, which in the pre-computer era I assumed would always be my professional home. The computer abolished six of every seven newspaper jobs – copy editor, typographer, photo-engraver, compositor, proof-reader and stereotyper – and it piled all their duties on the reporters, reducing us all to miserably overworked, wretchedly underpaid clerks whose sole function is to fill the spaces between the advertisements with whatever drivel comes most readily to hand. Worse, the computer also permanently disempowered us; its downsizing of the workforce destroyed our unions, without which we are no better off, in terms of influence over working conditions and compensation, than the most abjectly submissive antebellum slaves owned by the most sneeringly sadistic masters. So – yes – not only do I fear computers. I also despise them.

 

My fear of these accursed machines has two components. One is the ruinous cost of repair and replacement, and with it all the self-contempt capitalism imposes on one's psyche when one is a financial failure. The other is the sure knowledge a single accidental keystroke can destroy hours, days, weeks, even years of work. As a consequence, each time I write something, each time I digitize a photograph, I relive the sheer horror that followed the loss of all my life's work in the 1983 fire and – because of my dyslexic penchant for fucking up even the most simple procedures  – I am again awash in the self-hatred that is an inevitable component of dyslexia. Plus all these factors are multiplied to the Nth power by the sure knowledge should anything go seriously wrong with my computer, repair and replacement is unquestionably beyond the inescapable limits forever imposed on my life by my fiscal inadequacies – the fact that, in capitalist terms (which are the terms now forced on every one of us from the moment we are born), I am a loser, a worthless piece of shit, white trash, a bum.

The great irony implicit in all this – or, if you will, the sadistic joke played on me by a malevolent god – is that the computer, this alien machine I so despise, has been made utterly indispensable to my self-fulfillment. Writing, especially now that arthritic crippling has radically reduced my ability to photograph, is as essential to my psychological survival as breathing is to its physical counterpart. But the easy world into which I was born, an implicitly democratic realm wherein the only tools one needed for writing were pen and paper, or at the most an (indestructible) mechanical typewriter and a ream of foolscap, is no more. It has been replaced by the fiscally malevolent, implicitly hierarchical, zero-tolerance world typified by the computer: a realm in which even the formerly free-for-the-taking potential of self-expression has been turned into a profit center, with the result those of us for whom such expression is vital now must live – unless we are genuinely wealthy – in constant terror we will be silenced by poverty, which in this new world is the most effective censor of all. Thus the computer – this accursed machine on which my psychological survival is hopelessly dependent – is also the instrument that forces me, literally every day and like nothing else ever in my personal history, into intimate interaction with the miasma of neurotic negativity that underlies my operational consciousness.

When this computer went bad last week – when it began crashing just as I was attempting to finish my volunteer production of a monthly newsletter 50 other persons had come to depend on for information and entertainment – I first struggled for several hours to solve the problem. I am its founder, editor, primary writer and chief photographer. In these roles I also do all the infinitely tedious work formerly done by mechanical department employees: typesetters, compositors, photo engravers, stereotypers and all the others whose jobs have been abolished by the computer. But my computer knowledge is woefully inadequate – I have neither the money nor, in all probability, the remaining years of life to earn the degree in computer science essential to achieve the level of competence I increasingly seem to require – and so all my efforts failed. My word-processing system, it seemed, was dead. So were three other voluntary editorial projects. Nor would I, so silenced, be of any further use to 15 Now Tacoma. I had fallen into the abyss of hopelessness that is the defining characteristic of today's inescapable poverty.

In that state I wrote two notes:

I'm sorry to inform you my computer's word processing system crashed last night and cannot be revived. This kills the July newsletter and – depending on repair cost – it may kill the newsletter entirely...I am so very sorry to have let everyone down this way. As poor as I am, I should never have made the newsletter commitment to begin with, for I should have anticipated that equipment failure would eventually terminate my ability to produce it.

My deepest apologies,

Loren Bliss

The second, to some of my comrades on the 15 Now Tacoma Organizing Committee, said much the same thing, albeit in more detail:

My word processing system is dead beyond resurrection, which essentially ends life as I knew it until such time as I can afford the hundreds of dollars it will take to get it repaired or replaced – if indeed I will ever be able to afford it at all. 

The system crashed last night as i was finishing the monthly newsletter I produce for the apartment complex in which I live, destroying the newsletter and inflicting on me the odium of unfulfilled commitments to my neighbors with all the associated loss of credibility.

This also ends for the foreseeable future my ability to do anything of real value for anyone else, either  for 15 Now or via my blog, and it probably kills the latter as readership once lost through atrophy is never regained. 

The crash is total, which is to say my entire document file is effectively obliterated as any attempt to access anything in it crashes the entire WP system. 

Yes I have another computer, a new laptop generously given to me by my second wife based on our mistaken understanding it would be compatible with this custom-made desktop machine, a gift  I have been running since 2009.  But it turns out such compatibility  – like so much else in my life – is forever  beyond my financial reach.  Hence the laptop is effectively useless, not just because of systemic incompatibility imposed by  Microshaft monopolization policies, but also because of the  fact that – since computers to me truly are alien technology -- it would take me at least three months to become even marginally competent with a new system.

For the computer cognoscenti amongst you, the desktop operating system is Ubuntu, with Open Office Writer word processing and Gimp photo software. The laptop is Microsoft – Microsoft 8 as I recall – and (or so I am authoritatively told) Microsoft 8  is designed so that it cannot be used with any open source software without the intervention of a professional Nurd, which is of course prohibitively expensive. 

So there was no way to retrieve data from my desktop machine and download it onto the laptop even before the desktop WP system crashed -- and now of course everything on the desktop is beyond recovery, irretrievable because of my inability to pay the horrendous costs of salvaging it.  Worse, Microshaft 8 mandates purchasing Microsoft Office and – if one needs photo software – also buying PhotoShop, either of which are forever beyond my financial capabilities.

Plus of course there is also Microshaft's notorious vulnerability to viruses and malware.

In short I am not only shut down but reduced to utter uselessness.

Moreover this comes at the worst possible time in my life. I am scheduled for cataract surgery on the 15th and again on the 29th, and though the surgery is actually relatively minor, the associated medication regimen is a full-time commitment that demands rigidly scheduling my life for the next approximately four weeks, shackled to an  alarm clock set to ring every four hours. 

Because I do not have an automobile, this puts me in the odious and frankly terrifying position of being utterly dependent on other people for all vital errands because the uncertainty of the local transit system could interrupt the medication schedule with dire results. 

This same medication schedule combined with my lack of an automobile plus  post-operative 30-day limitations on lifting anything heavier than 15 pounds also prevents me from being able to schlep the desktop computer around in search of a repair facility that will not rip me off – with a likelihood of success, even under the very best of conditions, probably  about equal to that of finding an honest used car salesman.

While I certainly am and will presumably remain capable of walking from my dwelling to the Methodist church for 15 Now meetings, I see no point in my attendance because without the machinery required for writing and editing, I am of no use to the group (or anyone else including my neighbors in this apartment complex), and I would therefore be nothing but a body presumptuously occupying space but contributing nothing.  Thus very regretfully I am going to have to drop out of 15 Now (and to divorce myself from all my other former activities too) until such time as the eye-surgery protocols are complete and these other matters are resolved. 

When that happens – or more truthfully (because of the financial prohibitions that could well mean my lack of a WP system is permanent), IF that happens – I  will of course happily rejoin the 15 Now community.

Sorrowfully,
Loren Bliss 

 

Note that nowhere in these despairing letters did I ask for assistance from any of the people to whom they were addressed. So conditioned was I by my childhood, it never occurred to me to ask – and had it done so, I simply wouldn't have dared. Automatically – and as I now realize, with implicit unfairness to my friends, colleagues and comrades – I assumed no such help would be forthcoming. Again I was trapped by the bitter lessons of my childhood: my repeatedly proven belief any request of such magnitude would trigger not just a contemptuous refusal but severe reprisals as well. Beneath that emotional quagmire was a residual layer of reflexive terror as compelling as any whip-wielding overseer in its mandate for silence. Meanwhile, in sheer panic, I kept wrestling with the computer problem, trying desperately to find some way to save at least the newsletter text, an effort that culminated in an exhausting series of all-nighters – three in four days (with never more than two hours of sleep at any one time) – a relentless drive fueled by rage, frustration and a sense of karmic obstruction more infuriating than anything in memory.

Finally I forced myself to ask a computer-wise friend named Pat Fletcher for help, but the conversation quickly deteriorated into an argument. Seemingly the clash was fostered by my inability to speak Nurdish – that is, to clearly explain what was happening, what remedies I had attempted and what I had already learned would not solve the problem. But knowing what I know now, I cannot doubt our differences were at least equally fueled by the silent inertial momentum of my childhood conditioning. In any case, when I managed to salvage the newsletter text – the result of the third overnight effort, a quest prompted by a hunch and culminating in a lucky accident (I cannot possibly explain what I did, nor could I ever do it again) – Pat became the true savior of the entire project by rounding up its separate pieces and herding them into printable form. As a result of her work, the newsletter was published and distributed this morning. Thank you Pat.

 

Meanwhile five fellow organizing-committee members – Max Hyland, Katelyn Driskill, Alan OldStudent, Terry Fuller and Sarah Morken – had responded to my letter of disgruntlement. That anyone bothered to reply was itself a surprise; I had intended to vanish until the computer problem was solved, felt I should explain my impending disappearance, and anticipated nothing more than silence in response. But here within hours – in one instance within minutes – were their emails offering useful advice and urging me to persevere. Max went even further, and now thanks to a four-hour effort on his part, I have a new word-processing system plus new-found friendships with him and his partner Katelyn cemented by our mutual discovery we can talk of politics and history and art and personal experience until the proverbial wee hours and – best of all – do so with the blessed bohemian intensity that characterized the most memorable interactions of my years in Manhattan. Thank you Alan and Terry and Sarah. And thank you most of all Max and Katelyn: indeed you remind me of my late and long-ago SWP friends from Chelsea: Joe Bevando and Marilyn Werstler, with whom I traveled to Washington D.C. in the politically uncertain days after the Kent State and Jackson State massacres, there to demonstrate against Nixon, the Vietnam War and capitalist atrocities in general.

But none of this came into focus until this morning, after I finally managed to get something approaching a full night's sleep. I awoke realizing the events following the initial computer crash, which occurred around 8:30 Thursday evening (10 July 2014), had somehow flushed a negative paradigm from my subconscious, a process eerily parallel to how Max purged the corrupted WP system from my computer. All I knew in my first moments of wakefulness was a collection of words, “epiphany” and “the political as personal,” but I arose vowing to pull into the sharpest possible focus whatever it was they might symbolize. The above text is the result. Now though I realize I had already been on epiphany's brink when I posted my “sandbagged” message last night: “a classic example of the reality embodied in the line 'I get by with a little help from my friends'...expressions both of friendship and Working Class solidarity...” But a note to Pat this morning said it all: “I had no idea I am held in such high regard by my comrades in 15 Now. I am stunned, moved beyond my ability to express it.  In Seattle, even as the founding photographer of The Sun, I was always despised as an Outlander; here (in Tacoma) I am not just welcomed but valued, much as I was when here c. 1978-1982,  much as I always was in Manhattan and NJ.”

Obviously the neurotic reflexes associated with such a longstanding paradigm as described above do not vanish overnight. But at least I have finally learned how to ask for help when I need it.

Hence I will say it one more time: thank you Pat, Max, Katelyn, Alan, Sarah and Terry.

* * * * * *

Outside Agitation Elsewhere: (In Case You Missed It)

The Hobby Lobby decision, which I am coming to realize is the anti-woman equivalent of the anti-African American Dred Scott decision  (see also below), continues to provoke a perplexing combination of futile gestures (e.g., the doomed effort to ameliorate it with legislation rendered impossible by a permanently deadlocked Congress), and boiling anger further intensified by the growing understanding of its ruinous impact.

Not only does Hobby Lobby undermine the rights of women and minorities; it also opens, as never before in U.S. judicial history, the door to the imposition of Christian theocracy – just as its obediently misogynistic, dutifully anti-democratic Roman Catholic signatories clearly intend.

(Which prompts an impertinent question that is dark indeed: could it be President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's avowed and oft-proven defiance of Vatican rule was yet another of the motives that prompted his assassination?)

Thus when Al Jazeera America reported on the latest misogynistic atrocities  inflicted by Justice Scalia and his surrogate Inquisition, “Court Expands Reach of Hobby Lobby on Eve of Holiday Weekend,” I posted a pair of angry comments to the discussion thread. The first was pro forma:

There's no “maybe” about it: that's exactly what's happening, though the perpetrators are Christian clergymen, not mullahs.

Meanwhile, a few of us – Chris Hedges, Nat Hentoff, Jeff Sharlet, Susan Jacoby, Kevin Phillips and myself – have been warning for years about the encroachment of theocracy.

Having encountered Christianity's hatefulness in rural Washington and the South (where the colloquial name for the Ku Klux Klan is “the Saturday night men's Bible-study class”), I damn the theocrats as “Christofascists” and “JesuNazis.”

Too extreme? Hardly; I know from experience that is precisely what they are.

But we are the Cassandras of our era. Our words are belittled as sensationalism, rejected as paranoia.

The secular public is too smugly self-absorbed to awaken to the threat.

 

Shackled by political correctness, the Left dares not acknowledge the growing might of Christian fanaticism. That would require acknowledging both the stranglehold Christianity has on the U.S. masses and the parallel menaces of radical Islam and theocratic Judaism.

The moderate churches, mosques and temples are gagged by ecumenicism. That's why they do not speak out against the threat.

And the two major parties were long ago taken over by the fanatics. Read Sharlet's The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (Harper: 2008).

Now, like some reincarnation of the Inquisition, the Supreme Court is pouncing.

* * *

My second contribution to the “Court Expands” thread is a short piece of which I will remain proud at least for the rest of my life:

 

Inspired by #m, may I suggest the following:

SCOTUS MALORUM (court of evil); SCOTUS MENDACEM (court of lies); SCOTUS IGNORANTUM (court of ignorance); SCOTUS HORRIBILIS (court of horror)...and then my favorite:

SCOTUS ASINORUM (court of asses).

This last has true Roman lineage. It is from "pons asinorum, literally 'bridge of asses': a humorous name for the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, from the difficulty which beginners or dull-witted persons find in 'getting over' or mastering it." (A Dictionary of Latin Words and Phrases, Oxford University Press: 1998)

Then of course there is Scalia, a disease so awful even medical writers are afraid to describe it, lest the description itself vector the bacteria.

* * * * * *

Now though the work of SCOTUS HORRIBILIS has wreaked so much emotional havoc, the response is deteriorating into terrified giggles of satire and disbelief.  Hence “Scalia's Major Screw-Up: How SCOTUS Just Gave Liberals a Huge Gift.” Hence too my caustic retort:

Ms. Ruden's too-cute assumption, that because of its Hobby Lobby decision, SCOTUS ASINORUM “cannot refuse religious exemptions from selected tax obligations,” belongs in an editor's garbage can.

 

Her pathetic belief the U,S, is still a representative democracy – and her implicit belief in the consistency of judicial principle – is absurd. The U.S. has become a plutocratic empire. The sole function of SCOTUS MALORUM is perpetuating capitalist governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us.

In this context, making light of Hobby Lobby, which for the nation's women is the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision, is like laughing at the convulsions of a lynch-mob victim.

Meanwhile it's easy to imagine the Roberts Court granting “religious exemptions” to the Ku Klux Klan, known throughout the South as “the Saturday Night Men's Bible-Study Class.” But there is no possibility SCOTUS PRO DOCTRINA FIDEI would grant such dispensations to Left-leaning Protestants.

Indeed such a ruling from the Robber Court is even less likely than acquittal by the original Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei – the Inquisition – which tortured suspected heretics until they confessed, then burned them alive in an “Auto da Fey” – a “celebration of faith.”

Besides which, all “religious exemptions” further the cause of theocracy, the One Percent's final solution to Working Class rebelliousness.

* * *

Then there was my response to a hostile poster on the same thread:

Since when is it "defeatist" to demand an unflinchingly realistic appraisal of reality? 

Indeed your accusation and Ms. Ruden's essay each illustrate major aspects of the most savagely counter-revolutionary (and therefore oppressively reactionary) tendency in U.S. society: making light of genuine horror, and denouncing those of us who are unafraid to name its awfulness.

Quoth Sun Tzu: "Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."

LB/14 July 2014

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Terribly Sick, I Can Only Link to Outside Agitation Off-Site

WOKE UP THIS morning sick as the proverbial dog: fever of 102F, entire body an uncooperative mass of aches, brain too fuzzy to focus  on anything but the most mundane tasks, no other symptoms yet. Hence, with my apologies,  this collection of my earlier posts on the comment threads of other sites: 

*

“Pentagon & NSA Officials: Assassinate Edward Snowden”  David Sirota of PandoDaily exposes the murderousness at the core of the USian Empire. I link Sirota's courageous work to a report on the extent to which the empire is ruled by white racism  and argue its combination of racism and murder proves it's the de facto Fourth Reich. As Sirota's disclosures imply, “the only relevant question now is when will the government – which is disguising its broader genocidal intentions as cutbacks in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment compensation – begin openly murdering not just dissidents but all of us it and its One Percent masters want dead.”

*****

“Why is Washington paying Catholic hospitals to take away healthcare?”Monica Harrington of Catholic Watch reports on how the eternally misogynistic Catholic Church is using taxpayer dollars to buy up Washington state's healthcare system and prohibit end-of-life, contraception and maternity care. The usual cadre of Christian zealots denounce her reporting as “hatred,” but I – late to the fair – post a bibliography of texts and links that support her work by documenting even more of the hideous truth about the USian Empire's rush toward theocracy.

*****

“Westlake businesses hold the city's bike plan hostage” Eric Scigliano exposes another example of the Ayn Rand selfishness and political cowardice that lurks beneath the Big Lie of “progressive” Seattle. I point out the associated thread is a perfect example of the reactionary, malevolently auto-centric hatefulness that -- in Seattle as in Tacoma -- invariably rises to the surface of Pugetopolis political cesspool to obstruct any and all improvements in public transport.

*****

“Steubenville Rapist Released After 10 Months, While Activist Who Exposed Him Faces 10 Year Sentence”  Jodie Gummow of AlterNet updates the atrocity story. I point out it is the One Party of Two Names -- the fact the president and all the other Democrats and Republicans are, in reality, members of a single party representing only the One Percent -- that makes our nation the fascist despotism it is. The FBI – part of the massive secret police apparatus that protects the Ruling Class and sustains its fascist tyranny – is merely following orders.

*****

Divide between Governor, Republicans Paralyzes Washington State. This was not the title of John Stang's informative report on state government, but it should have been. As I said last year, the Republican coup in the Senate kills any remaining hope of humanitarian policy-making in Washington state. It also – cunningly (and exactly as intended) – gives the Democrats the ability to muddy the political waters by spouting humanitarian rhetoric. The Ruling Class allows it because there's not the slightest chance any of it will ever be enacted. Moreover, the Democrats' Big Lie re-emergence as a (bogus) party of the people serves the Ruling Class by weakening the voter-appeal of genuine humanitarians -- that is, Kshama Sawant and other socialists. Thus, by discrediting government, the One Percent prevails.

LB/19 January 2014 

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Beware the Christian Fanatics: Are You Their Next Target?

“RAM”: more Tacoma graffiti from the newly rediscovered work I did in 2009. Of course I cannot state with any certainty the artist's intent, but the trinity of monster, phallic serpent and human appears to be mostly an expression of anger and disgust at life itself. Leica M4, Voigtlander f/1.7 35mm Ultron, Kodak 800 color negative film, exposure not recorded. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013.  Click on picture to view it full size.

*

THE FRIGHTENING SUCCESS of the stealth campaign by Christian fanatics to abolish the reproductive and deathbed rights of Washington state citizens  shows us just how devastatingly effective such extra-legal measures can be. Now even Group Health – the Puget Sound-area health care cooperative that was formerly a national leader in the fight for women's reproductive freedom – has retreated from its hitherto uncompromising stance on access to abortion and end-of-life choices. Not only have its agreements with Catholic hospitals severely restricted its members' options (for which see the OAN essay linked above), it has also omitted abortion coverage from its Obamacare programs. 
 
Meanwhile the Roman Catholic Church has already bought or acquired policy-making control of approximately half the state's hospitals, thereby imposing de facto bans on abortion and legally assisted suicide in all the associated service areas. Never mind the bans are brazen defiance of the will of the people, the voters who legalized abortion and approved death with dignity as an alternative for those who are terminally ill. The church fathers have learned, no doubt from the One Percent, how to use the institutional structures of capitalism to make the ballot box irrelevant and reduce the Constitution to executive toilet paper
. 

As if that were not scary enough, two ultra-conservative legislators – one a Protestant, the other a Catholic – are sponsoring a bill that would make it legal for Christian doctors, pharmacists and business owners to persecute nonbelievers  by denying birth control to women and refusing to provide care and services to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

Sen. Adam Kline (D-Seattle), who has emerged as the chief opponent of the measure, Senate Bill 3090,  warns its passage would also enable medical professionals and merchants who belong to white-supremacist Christian sects to withhold medical care, prescription drugs and many other services from African-Americans, Hispanics, First Nations peoples and non-whites in general.  Even the Ku Klux Klan – known throughout the South as “the Saturday Night Men's Bible Study Class” (and reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be active in Kirkland and Yakima) – could claim religious protection for its bigotry.

The bill's sponsors are Sen. Mike Padden (R-Spokane) and Sen. Steve O'Ban (R-Tacoma). Padden's credentials are summarized on his state Senate web site, with additional details on Google. O'Ban's political biography is likewise available from the Senate,  with a more inclusive portrait on the left-leaning Washblog site.

Political insiders assure me SB 3090 has no chance of passage during the 2013-2014 legislative session. But the mere fact of its introduction proves again the relentless intent of the Christian fanatics, who have traded their denominational antagonisms for the solidarity of a formidable political-action cult. Instead of battling one another, its members whether Protestant or Catholic now wage war against human sexuality. Ecclesiastical attorneys are meanwhile reinterpreting “freedom of religion” to include the alleged “right” of the faithful to discriminate against non-believers, with SB 3090 one of many kindred measures nationwide. In every instance, the goal of such legislation is to further the imposition of Christian theocracy on the United States.

The associated electoral strategy and tactics are exemplified in the state of Washington by John Connelly's 2012 campaign for a Tacoma state Senate seat. Unsuccessful despite his all-time-record spending, it provides a rare glimpse of the fanatics' organizational structure,  which not only transcends denominational boundaries but encompasses both major political parties as well. Though Connelly ran as a Democrat, it should be noted that particular label is often meaningless and not infrequently a deliberate deception, a confusing reality exemplified by the president's stunning shape-shift from Obama the Orator to Barack the Betrayer. Had Connelly won, it was feared he'd side with the Republicans against marriage equality and reproductive freedom.

What else was at stake is demonstrated by how two other conservative Democrats betrayed their constituents and enabled a state Senate coup that gave the Republicans control of the entire Legislature. 

In all probability the Republican takeover was scripted well before the 2012 election. And Connelly's record-breaking expenditures suggest he desperately wanted to be part of it. But even without the Tacoman's participation, the coup has paralyzed state government. (“Coup” is the label I correctly affixed to this cunning overthrow of representative democracy weeks before any of the state's other journalists dared so much as whisper the word, for which scroll down to the linked story's comment thread.)

Predictably, the paralysis has had dire consequences, especially for women and mass-transit users. The former were treated as if their demands for guaranteed inclusion of birth control in employer-provided health insurance marked them as sluts; the latter – myself included – are routinely damned as parasites who are dependent on the “welfare” provided by minimal bus service and pathetically undersized rail operations. 

If the situation in Washington state seems familiar, that's because an eerily similar affliction paralyzes the federal government. The result is unbreakable gridlock save when congressional Democrats and Republicans join hands in unanimous or near-unanimous votes to (further) nullify the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. It's no longer Democrats versus Republicans. It's now the One Party of Two Names versus the entire 99 Percent. And that One Party is methodically imposing the new paradigm of USian governance: absolute power and unlimited profit for the One Percent, total subjugation for all the rest of us. 

But why has Washington, of all the allegedly “progressive” coastal states, been singled out for theocratic transformation? Wouldn't the forces of Christian fanaticism be more successful if they continued their efforts in openly theocratic jurisdictions like Texas  or North Dakatoa?

 

Obviously, locale alone is not the answer. Wherever one might be in the United States, the imposition of despotism via the marketplace is actually quite easy. This is because there is no economic democracy anywhere in the nation. Big Business – which generously finances the drive toward theocracy as its favored means of guaranteeing a maximally submissive workforce – has nearly absolute power. Its lawyers have manipulated the laws to deny anyone who is on business property – particularly in workplaces and shopping malls – the liberties theoretically guaranteed by the Constitution. And private property rights generally trump all others, particularly when the property owner is an all-powerful corporation. Though abortion is at present a constitutional right, business enterprises (including non-profits) cannot be forced to provide it. 

Also, as proven by Washington's oft-demonstrated 45-year hostility to mass transit,  the state's voters hide a decidedly hypocritical preference for the savagery of Ayn Rand economics beneath their claims of “progressive” political sensibilities. Perhaps – recognizing how quickly one sort of bigotry can be morphed into another – the Christian fanatics believe they can gradually expand Washington's hatred of transit users into a more general hatefulness. That vindictive hope would surely explain the misogyny, homophobia and racism now evident in SB 3090. In any case, it's clear the state is again functioning as a test-lab for the One Percent's strategies and tactics of oppression.

Meanwhile the magnitude of the fanatical Christian threat to health care throughout the United States is revealed in the coverage given it on 12 May by The New York Times and by the website Think Progress the next day.  (These stories appeared less than three weeks after the Outside Agitator's Notebook report published on 25 April and linked in this essay's lead paragraph. It was not the first time OAN with its small but international readership has seemingly influenced coverage of U.S. domestic conflicts.) Nevertheless, the USian mainstream media refuses to acknowledge the theocratic threat as such. It's as if the editors and reporters believe they can eliminate the fanatical Christian onslaught merely by tabooing any mention of its long-range intent. The taboo is apparent whether in Ruling Class publications like NYT or pseudo-leftist Internet journals like TP. Meanwhile the anti-theocratic warnings by Chris Hedges, Jeff Sharlet and several other notably credible authors go unheeded, putting all humanity at risk.

For those who foolishly continue to doubt we are in deadly peril, I can only suggest they remember the direction taken by Rome after Constantine decreed Christianity its state religion. In its day, Rome ruled the greatest empire of the ongoing patriarchal age, just as the United States rules that age's greatest empire ever.  Now imagine the USian empire becoming the modern counterpart of post-Constantine Rome, like Romani imperii post Constantinum, a fanatical Christian theocracy maintained by the most powerful military machine of its time and, again like that Rome, believing itself divinely tasked to impose a new world order, commanding its subjects to bow down to the cross of Jesus or die. I can already hear the One-President-Under-God declaring his fulfillment of biblical prophecy: “brethren in Christ, it is with heavy heart I come before you to announce we have to nuke this planet to save our souls from the Devil.”

LB/15 September 2013

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