Columns

Smithereens: Reflections on Bits & Pieces

Gar Smith

Sunday January 24, 2021 - 01:30:00 PM

Happy Blue Year!

What a difference a day makes—as long as it's an Inauguration Day.

What a healing ceremony. A parade of presidential couples. A physically distanced and face-masked crowd of congregants. A powerful pint-sized poet. Garth Brooks hobnobbing and hugging, J-Lo blazing through the octaves and issuing a platform-shaking shout for justice in Spanish, and Gaga turning her back on the audience to lift her hand toward the banner waving high atop the Capitol building as she sang "our flag was still there!"

Instead of a sea of red caps and MAGA shirts, we had the President-elect and First Lady alongside the VP-elect and the Second Gentleman, solemnly observing 400,000 lanterns lining the Reflection Pool at the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting on lives lost and the challenges ahead.

Wonderful to see the plea for unity reflected in the garments of the attendees—specifically the predominance of purple hues over blatant reds or blues.

And then the balm of Biden's Oval Office signatures authorizing a stack of healing Executive Actions: Reviving the Paris Accord; Rejoining the World Health Organization; Halting the Keystone oil pipeline; Reversing policies that targeted the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and Endangered Species Act; Reinstating the protected status of vast stretches of threatened wilderness on land and in the waters off the coast of Maine; Reviving energy efficiency guidelines; Protecting undocumented children raised in the US; Ending Trump's Muslim Travel Ban; Banning oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

That's a pretty impressive stack of good deeds for any president's first days in office, so forgive my partisan glee, if I repeat the partisan greeting: "Happy Blue Year!"

Some More Action Plans for Team Biden

Jon Rainwater, Executive Director of Peace Action has some encouraging words for the new year: "There are several new pro-peace champions in Congress . . . . Congress will be younger and more diverse than ever, and some new members are taking bolder, more pro-peace stands on foreign policy. Let's rally them behind a pro-peace platform that will:

• Replace the tragic war in Yemen with humanitarian aid and diplomacy

• End a reckless new nuclear arms race and cut massive nuclear weapons funding

• Engage in sustained diplomacy, not saber-rattling with Iran

• Cut the bloated Pentagon budget and shift those resources to urgent needs like health care

• End the borderless "forever" war on terror and bring US troops home

Drain the Swamp

According to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee PAC (aka Bold Progressives), "Corporate PACs are announcing they will stop donating to any of the 147 congressional Republicans—like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley—who voted to overturn our democratic election."

American Express has promised to never again donate to any of these "traitors," Hallmark is demanding their money back, and The Washington Post reports the “deluge of announcements” is creating pressure on others. This week, the country's top three music labels—Warner, Universal, and Sony—announced that they will halt future PAC donations to the GOP's would-be ballot pirates.

Still on the political fence: AMC Theaters, Bacardi, Burger King, and Samsung.

Click out the PCCC's #DrainTheTraitors page to see which corporations need pressure. And help push them to take a stand!

Has This Happened to You? Yet?

Walking across the parking lot to my office in the ActivSpace building in West Berkeley, I spotted another masked resident approaching. He waved and asked "How you doin' these days? Great to see you!" We began to exchange updates on work, health and all the usual et ceteras but, after two minutes of chatter (during which I desperately ransacked my memory to come up with his name), I finally had to confess: "I really don't have a clue who you are."

To which he replied: "You mean you aren't Mike Kane, the famous racing car photographer?"

My guess is that similar masked encounters are happening a lot these days.

Street Scenes and Sidewalk Sightings

Noted a note on a clear, plastic bag pinned to a wooden power pole on Hopkins Street in North Berkeley. "For the person that took the puzzle we left: we found a piece that you might need!"

Sure enough, the missing part of the jigsaw puzzle was visible inside the bag.

Poetic Licenses

There's a green Jeep Wrangler that always seems to be parked in the same spot, day-after-day, without moving. Maybe the explanation is to be found in the license plate, which reads: H8CAMPNG

Spotted on the streets of Berkeley: a big black Honda van with a plate reading "POLLN8R." Why, "Pollenator"? Maybe because the van is a bee-hemoth. (Apologies for the "dad joke.")

A VW making a turn on Dwight flashed a plate reading: FOX4LOX. I snapped a photo and gave the driver a thumbs up. In return, he gave me a grin and a chin-nod.

QAnon Q&A

Question: In the bloody aftermath of the assault on the Capitol building, QAnon defender and Pro-Trump Congressmember Scott Perry (R-PA) demanded to know: “How does the president incite an attack that was pre-planned and already underway before his speech concluded?”

Answer: On December 19, 2020, you send out a tweet with the following invitation: ""Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

The Great, Online QAnon Meltdown

An article in the Huffington Post reports the QAnon community was devastated by Biden's successful inauguration. "For believers of QAnon—the far-right conspiracy theory that holds Donald Trump as a deity-like figure secretly battling a 'deep state' cabal of pedophiles who control the government—, things weren’t supposed to go down this way." The shadow community of QAnoners had been lead to believe that "on Wednesday, at long last, the Bidens, Obamas and Clintons would be rounded up and executed for child sex trafficking, treason and other crimes. Trump, having finally conquered evil, would remain in power."

The 185,000-strong QAnon community on Gab and their 34,000 cohorts on Telegram, were looking forward to "THE GRAND FINALE" and, as HuffPo reported, salivating "over the idea of decapitations and sexual violence against prominent Democrats."

Instead, as the inauguration unfolded with quite, calm, grace, the QAnon community began to collapse into angry confusion. “When do the arrests start??” “NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED!!!” “It’s over.” “I feel sick, disgusted and disappointed.” "Have we been duped???” “You played us all.” “So now we have proof Q was total bullshit.” “HOW COULD WE BELIEVE THIS FOR SO LONG? ARE WE ALL IDIOTS?”

But conspiranoid thinking is resilient and, in some cases, invincible. HuffPo reports that some QAnoners merely posted new conspiracy theories to banish disbelief. "A few suggested that the video of Biden becoming president was a deepfake and that he was actually locked away behind bars as it played across the nation." Others simply repeated the mantra: “Q wouldn’t do this to us. He wouldn’t let us down. Don’t lose hope.”

Taking the Needle

I initially thought it quaint when the BBC reported Brits were rushing to protect themselves from COVID-19 by "getting their jabs." In the US, of course, we don't get "jabs," we get "shots." Wait a minute! Is this another case of America's "militarized language"? A pistol or rifle delivers "shots." A needle delivers pokes but I'm not sure "getting poked" is going to catch on. So I guess I'm stuck with "inoculation," which seems like a more pleasant substitute for "injection."

Lesson: If You Run for Office, Don't Invested in Body Bags

One of the reasons the Georgia Senate race flipped the state from red to blue was because of the corruption of the GOP incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue—and because of opposition ads exposing their corruption. Case in point: the following Faux News ad from the political action group Bold Progressives, which racked up 250,000 views in the first 4 hours after it was posted.

YouTube Satirists Serenade Donald Out the Door

Randy Rainbow, take a bow! This may be the best Randy Rainbow Trump-trouncing tape I've seen to date. Epic in scope; epic in scorn. (And when Randy hits the high-octave range, there's nothing false about that falsetto.)

It takes a good deal of talent to turn a song like "My Girl" into a tirade against Trump. Well done, Roy Zimmerman and crew!

For more "Bye-Bye-Donald" songs, scroll to the end. And definitely seek out James Corden's Broadway-worthy rendition of "One More Day."

The DoD Tries to Co-opt MLK

On January 18, Martin Luther King Day, the Pentagon sent out a short Tweet acknowledging the slain civil rights leader:

Today, we honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as a national day of service. It’s a day on, not off. #MartinLutherKingJrDay

On January 18, Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, offered some of Dr. King's own words—is the Pentagon listening?

From King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963):
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”

From King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” speech at Riverside Church (April 4, 1967):
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. ... We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

From King’s speech announcing the Poor People’s March on Washington (December 4, 1967):
America is at a crossroads of history, and it is critically important for us, as a nation and a society, to choose a new path and move upon it with resolution and courage. ... Consider, for example, the spectacle of ... a nation gorged on money while millions of its citizens are denied a good education, adequate health services, decent housing, meaningful employment, and even respect, and are then told to be responsible.

A Long-lost Song for Fred Trump

In December 1950, folk-singer/activist Woody Guthrie took up residence in Brooklyn's Beach Haven Apartments. His landlord was Fred Trump, father of Donald. Guthrie was repulsed when he discovered that hundreds of African-American residents had lost their homes when the Federal Housing Administration helped Trump "gentrify" the neighborhood. Once established, Fred Trump would not rent Beach Haven apartments to African-Americans and was sued repeatedly for alleged racist housing discrimination. In 1954, Guthrie wrote (but never recorded) the following song.

Old Man Trump
Words by Woody Guthrie

I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate
He stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed that color line
Here at his Beach Haven family project

Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower
Where no black folks come to roam,
No, no, Old Man Trump!
Old Beach Haven ain't my home!

I'm calling out my welcome to you and your man both
Welcoming you here to Beach Haven
To love in any way you please and to have some kind of a decent place
To have your kids raised up in.

Goodbye to Donald J. Trump: A Video Archive