Category Archives: 2024 Trip to Southwest USA

Surging Domestic Terrorism

2024 Trip to Southwest USA, American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, Domestic Terrorism

 

The American criminal investigation by the FBI into what happened on Capitol Hill in Washington on January 6 2021 is the largest investigation it has ever undertaken. More than 1,200 people have already been charged with more than 900 of those convicted by courts of law. Republicans and many other Americans don’t seem to grasp this. These are 900 people who have already either admitted their guilt or been found guilty by a court of law.  And it is expected that hundreds of more charges will be laid. Yet many of them believe this is not true. Because that is what Fox News and their spiritual leader tell them.

There are so many investigations that the FBI basically acknowledges that it will not be able to complete all of the investigations before the Statute of Limitations expires!  That means many people who should be charged won’t be charged because it will be too late. Many domestic terrorists will be released or not even charged because the FBI is overwhelmed.

This is not fake news. This is fact. In fact, it is a brutal fact. These are Americans who were incited to appear at the Capitol on that day because Donald Trump said, “it’s going to be crazy.”  And “It will be wild.” And for once Trump was exactly right. It was crazy and it was wild.

I watched it unfold on television for hours that day, and to me it was completely unbelievable. Yet there it was right before my eyes. I saw much of it. And it was a riot. It was not a bunch of overly enthusiastic tourists as many Republicans alleged. Those were not crisis actors. This was a riot and for hours the president of the United States did nothing to stop it. Instead, he poured gasoline on the flames. Trump told his followers that day, “We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

 One of the interesting things about this riot is the varied reactions from Americans. Many on the American right have pooh-poohed it. American House Republican Representative Matt Gaetz said the rioters who breached the Capitol that day were not Trump supporters but were members of the violent left-wing terrorist group known as Antifa, masquerading as Trump supporters.  In effect, he said, it may look like a duck, walk like duck and quack like a duck, but still not be a duck.  And of course, all of this he claimed without any evidence whatsoever.

Many of the rioters violently tried to throttle the police and Capitol security forces. Many of those officers feared for their lives.  Many of the rioters were chanting “Hang Mike Pence” over and over again, because they were disappointed that he did not support Trump’s attempt to steal the election by subverting the electoral count  in the House of Representatives that day. Some of them even carried gallows to the event ready for use when needed!  Many of them were hunting for Senator Barbara Pelosi, likely for a similar purpose.

It was indeed crazy!

 

A Poor Choice of Words

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, The Sleep of Reason

 

According to the Guardian, George Santos  claimed to have graduated from Baruch College but “The college found no record of Santos as a student.” The best part though was his response when interviewed by the Guardian to these revelations, “Santos confessed he hadn’t graduated from “from any institution of higher learning” and had used a “poor choice of words”. A bald lie in his world becomes “a poor choice of words.”

The Guardian also reported “Santos’s campaign website said that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during the second world war.” The truth he admitted “Santos’s campaign website said that his mother was Jewish and his grandparents escaped the Nazis during the second world war.”

I could go on and on about these lies but will confine myself to one more (this is hard). The Guardian reported that. a local paper reported on his alleged fraud in 2020 and called him “George Scamtos.” His amazingly lame response according to the Guardian was to say ““I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then,” he told Piers Morgan, adding he “didn’t think” he would get caught.”  Santos is the poster child for the death of truth in America. 

Santos has been accused of vast number of lies. And the list keeps growing like a monster.

All he had to say when caught in a lie was that he didn’t think he would get caught. That’s all that matters in FantasyLand.

 

 

The Oklahoma City Massacre: Where Right-wing Hatred Ran Deep

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, American Fascism, Domestic Terrorism, Political Violence, Right-wing Extremism

 

On April 19, 1995, just after 9  in the morning, another very important incident occurred in Oklahoma City.  It was the second anniversary of the Waco massacre. A rush of people was moving into the Alfred P. Murrah federal building at that time. Many of them were children. There was a day care in the building.

Timothy McVeigh wanted people to remember what had happened at Waco 2 years earlier. He wanted people to remember what happened there for a thousand years. Sort of like the proposed 1,000-year reign of the Nazis in Germany.  I suspect both episodes might  be remembered for a thousand years. Heinous crimes have a habit of staying in memory. Good deeds rarely get such sustained attention.

McVeigh had 5,000 pounds of explosive ammonium nitrate and nitro methane in the back of his rental truck. He lit a 2 minute fuse under the day care centre in the federal building. Think about that: he parked the truck, locked it, immediately under a day care center filled with kids. McVey walked away to a get-away vehicle.  The explosion killed 168 people including 19 children. It was called, “the worst act of terrorism in American history.” And it was home grown.

I remember when I heard about it that day. My immediate reaction was that it must have been initiated by some radical Islamic terrorists. A lot of Americans had the same presumption. We were wrong. It was set by radical domestic right-wing terrorists! This was home grown terrorism.

As Justin Ling said, “Oklahoma City followed years of apocalyptic declarations and incitement from the fringes of right-wing radio.”  This is what president Bill Clinton said at the time in response: “They leave the impression by their very words that violence is acceptable. You ought to see some of the things that are regularly said over the airwaves in American today.  Clinton ought to know. He and his wife Hillary were subjected to hate on the airwaves of America for years. they still are.  Perhaps no one in America has been more hated by the American right-wing than the two of them. They were frequently accused of hideous crimes such as accusations that they killed and ate—yes ate—hundreds of children. These were the wildest untrue and hateful accusations that could a have been hurled in America. This too went on for years.

Hatred runs deep in the American right-wing.

And of course, these wild accusations were made, as always, without any evidence to back them up.  The American right-wing does not need evidence to set them off. All they need is unsubstantiated claims and hate which are enough to light the fuse to the hate.

Yet Rush Limbaugh challenged Clinton the very next day on his radio show:

“Talk is not a crime and talk is not the culprit here. Talk didn’t buy the fertilizer, and the fuel oil. Talk didn’t drive the van and talk didn’t rent the van. A person did. A lunatic did.”

Yes, but talk ignited the flame that lit the fuse! Hateful talk can do that. Years of hateful talk can have an effect. The German Nazis proved that in Germany, as did the fascist Hutus in Rwanda, as did Donald Trump in America.

Talk is cheap, but hateful talk is costly.

Tyranny is in the Eyes of the Beholder

2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Right-wing Extremism

 

It has been cool in Arizona since we arrived. This is not uncommon in Arizona in January.  We are just grateful that it is only cool and not cold or worse, not bone-chilling cold. Recently, for the first time we went to the pool that all members of our little community are entitled to use. We enjoy it there. We get to swim, lounge in the hot tub and meet friends. If it were not for the pool, we would not have met very many people here. That is why we prefer semi-public pools to private pools. We deliberately chose our house this year because it did not have a pool. The house we rented last year lost about 80% of its back yard to the pool. A pool we didn’t use! We prefer the extra space and larger communal pool.

As soon as we arrived, we met 2 friends. They are former New Yorkers with a strong New York accident and strong New York opinions. We have enjoyed many chats with them, although we often disagree.  They are not liberals as most people around here would expect. In fact, the husband is a Trump supporter.

He was eager to talk to me about what he called was a “very disturbing incident” he had noticed on the Internet. I was leery, but interested so gladly accepted his gift of the URL when he flagged down our car on the way home from the pool. He wanted my opinion as a lawyer even though I am a lowly recovering lawyer.  So at his request I watched the YouTube report.

Rebel News played a video that apparently is making quite a splash on the Internet.  It outraged my Arizona friend. It showed a reporter approaching Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland aggressively approached by Dave Menzies a reporter for Rebel News as she was briskly walking down a sidewalk or parking lot in a city. He immediately stuck a microphone into her face as she continued walking, showing no interest in being interviewed. He wanted to know why a particular Iranian group was not listed as a terrorist and why her government was supporting “Islamo-Nationalism?”

Ms Freeland immediately veered off to the other side of the sidewalk and kept walking without talking to hm. Although the reporter walked right up to her, sticking the microphone in her face I did not see that he touched her. The Deputy Prime Minister was accompanied by her personal RCMP detail, which is hardly surprising since she has been accosted by extremists on a number of occasions. She is entitled to her security and has no obligation to talk to everyone who approaches her on the street whether a reporter or not. She had the right to ignore the reporter. The police have a duty to protect her.

In my opinion the police officers over reacted by arresting the man. They said they were arresting him and later I believe briefly charged him with assault, but quickly released him without charges. The police would have been much smarter to talk to him to make sure he was not a danger to the Cabinet Minister, and then once assured that she was not in danger, let him go. Arresting him or charging him was not necessary or even helpful in my view. Reporters do what he did, from time to time. It is rather rude and annoying but would not amount to an assault in my view. A police man claimed the reporter had pushed into him, but I could not see what he did. I suspect it was minor incident.

Menzies was upset at his treatment. While handcuffed he talked to his own cameraman and his own microphone and told viewers,

 “This is your Canada now folks. This is the Gestapo taking Black Faces’ orders [referring to Prime Minister Trudeau]. Outrageous! Meanwhile the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp is not a terrorist organization…It is against the law in Black Faces’s Canada to ask insensitive questions.”

 

But Rebel News was outraged. And so apparently is the entire right wing led by, of course, Fox News, the largest cable news network in the US.

What is my take? The police over reacted. There was no need as far as I could see to arrest him. The police  had the right to keep the reporter away since Ms. Freeland did not want to talk to him, but he did nothing as far as I could see to reason to arrest him.  However, there is also no need for the right-wing apoplexy over what happened. This was not a major gestapo incident.  Tyranny is in the eyes of the beholder. Fox News finds tyranny where it wants to. Other news outlets do the same. We viewers should watch them all with our critical lenses securely in place. We, on either side of such issues, should not make mountains out of molehills

I am afraid my America friend will be disappointed in my Casper Milquetoast answers. Maybe, he should get a better lawyer.

 

Using Artificial Intelligence to Amplify the worst of religion

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Artificial Intelligence, religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Somewhere on this trip to the southern USA I also learned  that in India spiritual guides are giving advice to truth seekers.  Nothing really unusual about that, in the most religious country in the world. India, not the United States has earned that designation. But this time there is a difference. The spiritual guides are AI Chatbots! Spiritual advice is being given online by machines without human intervention. Apparently, thousands of people have signed up for the spiritual advice from the Bhagavad Gita an epic scripture that has the answers to all our problems.  Many Indians in the past have got spiritual advice from that source but not with the twist of AI to tailor the advice to you!

 

According to Salimah Shivji of the CBC, people are now fearful that some will use religion online to spike up political violence?  This is not impossible. We have all seen what happened in the US in earlier elections. As well, look at some of the things American televangelists have done. Much of it does not inspire confidence. After all, the internet is quite capable of amplifying the worst of religion, just as it currently does with politics!

 

Garbage Guru

2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Simple Life

 

 

On our second day in Arizona we attended to urgent business. We went for supplies including Costco and then refreshments from Total Wine where we passed a man wearing T-shirt that read, Garbage Guru.  What is a garbage guru?

Since I had no idea when I got home, I checked with he who knows everything. Professor Google.

I found there were a few people or organizations who claimed the title. The most interesting one I found was the was one from New York City.  Ms. Nagle the New York Sanitation Department’s very own anthropologist-in-residence going by the name of Nats.  Nats is a garbage guru who studies garbage in the largest city in America. She pointed out, quite fairly, that we (all of us not just New Yorkers) are part of a throw-away culture where few people pay any attention to our stuff that we throw out. We don’t pay attention to the consequences of just throwing everything away.

As Nats said, “we are also therefore creating a kind of waste stream that will probably outlive even our children’s children because plastic in particular is such a new product, such a new chemistry, in human history, we don’t know it’s half-life.” Her position with the City is actually honorary. I found that a bit disappointing.

She is actually a professor  at New York University who spends a lot of time looking at garbage. She reminds me of this guy who used to regularly go through Bob Dylan’s garbage and then report on it to his legions of fans. Even though I was a big Dylan fan, I did not think this would be worth a lot of time.

Speaking to a bunch of sanitation workers at a workshop, Nats explained to them, “I will also make clear to you that it is far more dangerous than being a cop or a firefighter. According to the bureau of labor statistics you are three times more likely to be killed in the line of duty as a sanitation worker.”

Who would have known that?

 

Solutions not Stunts

2018 Trip to Ottawa, 2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Immigration and Refugees

 

President Joe Biden, early in his presidency, presented a comprehensive plan for immigration reform.  When he did that, he acknowledged the current system is broken. Everyone agrees it is broken, but how to fix?  Not so easy.

I think that is the right approach. But it must be bi-partisan. I don’t know if it is or not. But it is such a big problem both sides of the House must work together to fix it. Solutions must be real.  Not just stunts like sending asylum seekers to “Sanctuary Cities” in the north. Democrats should stop declaring them. They are unhelpful. And the entire country must pay the costs, not merely states on the border or states where all the asylum seekers and immigrants want to go. States and cities can’t afford to pay the costs. The federal government should pay the real cost.

Republicans claim Democrats want open borders. I don’t think that is true.  Obama was known as the Deporter-in-Chief. He just did not brag about it like Trump. But he deported a lot of people.

Frankly, I think most politicians, on both sides, don’t really want to deal with the problems. They prefer stunts, because they are much easier than the hard work of real reform and real solutions. It is much easier to get sound bites for stunts. Stunts and harangues seem attractive to the voters, so they get the politicians they deserve.

 

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA

One things travellers learn quickly on a road trip is that life is hard when you’re stupid.  We actually learned that lesson a couple of years ago on our way down south. No adventures this year.  That earlier year was different.

Our final destination for the day this year was Watertown, South Dakota. It was the same a few years ago. This is where I once did one of the stupider things I have ever done, a few years ago. We had been travelling south on I-29 when it started to get icy. Because we were “smart” we stopped early and hunkered down in a hotel. We were so pleased with our decision we immediately enjoyed a cocktail in the hotel room so we could toast our brilliance. We were relaxed in our hotel room when things really started to get ugly. Visibility was low and the road became treacherously icy. When we went out to eat dinner, I turned right from the Main Street when I ought not to have done that. Chris tried her best to tell me I was going back on I-29 but I didn’t listen. Hubris and ignorance led to my sad downfall. This brought me right back onto I-29 as she said when conditions were much worse than before. And we had to travel 12 miles down I-29 to the next exit to turnaround and then drove 12 miles back again on the iciest road I have ever driven on. Cars and trucks were in the ditch everywhere. I drove very slowly riding on nothing but white knuckles and guts while cursing my stupidity all the way. Fortunately, we did make it back without incident.

 

That year, I compounded my mistake the next day. Blizzard conditions continued and we spent the entire day in Watertown.  Early in the afternoon I decided to see if I could open the car doors.  It turned out I could not. The locks were completely locked with ice. So I trudged half a mile in bitterly cold and windy conditions to Wal-Mart to buy some lock de-icer and then walked all the way back to the hotel. I quickly proceeded to see if the de-icer would do the trick. It did quite nicely. So far so good. Then I noticed Chris waving at me from the doorway of the hotel as I was working on the lock. She had thought I might be doing something stupid outside. What made her think that?  I was annoyed because she was slowing me down and I wanted to get out of the cold as quickly as possible. I waved her off, but she persisted bugging me until I stopped to talk to her. Then she pointed out I was de-icing the wrong car!  The vehicles on the parking lot were covered with snow so all looked similar.  Well, I had done my good deed for the day. I de-iced the wrong car!

 

Someone must have been very pleased to find their car doors working perfectly. Meanwhile I had to de-ice my own car too. Why don’t I listen better to my lovely wife? Don’t answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me. No. It will incriminate me. As I keep saying, life is very hard when you are stupid.

Well this year, I at least, I did not do anything that stupid. Driving conditions were perfect. After we arrived in Watertown, Chris and I went to eat at Appleby’s, restaurant which was the least obnoxious of the chain restaurants in town. The food was quite tasty and the bartender fixed me a grand Old Fashioned with bourbon. The meals were satisfactory.

Today I proved the Bible wrong. The Bible says, “As a dog returneth to his vomit so a fool returneth to his folly. I say, not always,

It was a great first day on the trip. Life was good when we were not stupid.

 

Things no longer work

2024 Trip to South West United States, 2024 Trip to Southwest USA, Decline of the west

 

Once again we have headed to the southern part of the USA to escape the harshness of Canada’s winter. Our first stop in the U.S. was Fargo where we purchased gasoline. This was a surreal experience. The gas station was large and highly visible from I-29 to which it was adjacent.  As Julie Gold said in her famous song, “From a distance there is harmony, and it echoes thru the land.”

 

This day it was a serious illusion. When we got closer we noticed that most of the gasoline nozzles were covered with a paper sign that said, “Not working.” The diesel pumps were working but not most of the ones for ordinary gas. Almost all the regular pumps were not working, so I lined up behind a row of cars going toward one of the pumps without a sign. When I got there, after a considerable delay, the pump would not deliver gas after I signed in with my credit card. I went inside to explain my problem to the clerk. When he came out the same thing happened. Gas was not pumping and a grade of gas could not be selected. It did not work for him either. At least until it miraculously worked. Then, of course, when the job was completed the machine refused to disgorge a receipt. Since Christiane insists on receipts, I had to go back inside a second time to beg for a receipt.

 

As the clerk was making the receipt for me, I asked him what was the problem with this service station. Why did so many pumps not work? He merely shrugged his shoulders and grinned sheepishly, as if to say, ‘what do you expect in the USA?’

 

This is how many things operate here in the richest country in the world and the leader of the free west. The Americans claim the US is the best country in the world. Many Americans worship the country. They consider it “exceptional.” Sadly, evidence of exceptionalism is lacking.  It is exceptional in its polarized and dysfunctional politics. In fact, I believe that the profound dysfunction in their political system is a mirror of a much deeper dysfunction in society.  America is in serious decline. Things are falling apart,. The center cannot hold. But baubles hide that. And what do the people do about it?  They shrug their shoulder and grin. Sheepishly.

 

Nobody cares that things don’t work. The expect that. They are resigned to that. Just like no one expects politicians to tell the truth. Again, they expect that, and are resigned to it. That is nation in decline. And since the US is the leader of the west, this demonstrates that the west is declining. That is a problem.