What If? (Trump's America 2019)

BBC News) Today marks the third anniversary of an important day in the ascendancy of president Donald Trump.  In February of 2016 vice president Christie, while he was still governor of New Jersey, endorsed Trump, making him the first established Republican to do so.  This endorsement laid the groundwork for other prominent Republicans to be willing to throw their support behind Trump, and for the party machinery to assist him in his election victory.  This support was especially crucial after the 2016 election ended without Trump, Hilary Clinton, or third party candidate Michael Bloomberg getting a majority of the electoral vote.  Although Trump did not get a plurality, trailing Clinton, House Republicans threw the balance to his side.

It has been impossible for the BBC to talk to Trump or Christie to discuss this anniversary, since only journalists vetted by Secretary of Information Scarborough are allowed access to the president.  Other outlets, such as the New York Times, have not been so lucky.  A libel lawsuit conducted under new laws formulated by Trump has left that newspaper bankrupt and unable to operate.  Because the United Kingdom has not remained allied with the United States in Trump's recent military interventions, the BBC too has been threatened with lawsuits by the Trump government.

With American armed forces currently deployed in the oil fields of Iraq and on the Mexican side of the border with the United States, Trump has been restricting the media even more on the grounds of protecting the nation in a time of war.  Just last week he sent the American army over the Rio Grande, where maquiladoras (Mexican factories on the border) have been forcibly shut down after the Mexican government refused to pay for the wall Trump is currently building. Sources in the US military also say that the maquiladoras may be burned down, or failing that, turned into dumping grounds for the millions of undocumented immigrants that are currently being held in makeshift internment camps in the Nevada and Utah deserts.

After what some insiders call a plastic surgery operation gone wrong, Trump has not appeared in public for the past four days.  Rumors about the leader's ill health, combined with unrest over the policies of mass deportation and invasion, have led some to think that a palace coup may be in the offing. The suspension of Congressional elections in 2018 after armed skirmishes broke out between federal agents carrying out deportation orders and undocumented workers in several immigrant neighborhoods was seen as a step too far by some powerful Republicans.  Others see a potential power grab by vice president Chris Christie, information minister Joe Scarborough, secretary of the interior Sarah Palin, or even chief justice Andrew Napolitano.  Fox News, now the de facto government organ, has been showing nothing but reruns of Trump campaign rallies from 2016 and reruns of The Apprentice, leading some to wonder if his death is imminent.  Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch have both refused to comment.

Our Endangered, Outmoded Constitution

Chile had constitutional rule for 140 years before 1973. There's no reason an American constitutional crisis couldn't have a similar ending

Americans like to brag about having kept with the same constitution since 1787, a world record by far in terms of written constitutions.  I've long thought this was a problem, since the American Constitution was drawn up before there had been other examples of modern republics to draw from.  It was also drawn up with the assumption that political parties would not be powerful forces in American political life and with the express intention of thwarting popular will.  The electoral college meant to put the vote  for president in the hands of the "right sort" of propertied man.  The federal system gave each state equal representation in the Senate, before a proliferation of low-population states made that body completely undemocratic.  That same Senate is allowed to make its own rules, rules that allow minorities to block votes with ease and even individual Senators to put a "hold" on an appointment without even providing a reason.  We have now reached a point of constitutional dysfunction that a Supreme Court justice can die and the Senate majority leader can proclaim that he has no intention of even considering the president's appointment, and he just might be able to get away with it.

This pronouncement comes after years of blocked judicial appointments and legislative gridlock.  Our system of government simply isn't functioning properly.  It's also completely schizophrenic.  The principle of "one person-one vote" is part of our judicial system, but when it comes to the Senate, Wyoming gets the same representation as California.  Despite its obsolescence, we still use the Electoral College which can, as in 2000, give the presidency to the candidate with fewer votes.  It also nakedly violates the principle of one person-one vote.

These have been endemic issues for a long time.  In recent weeks, the failures of our constitutional system have been put in high relief by the Republican Senate's apparent desire not to vote on any candidate that president Obama nominates for the Supreme Court.  This is an unprecedented move, and one that our dysfunctional system allows for.  In fact, while this case is getting attention, most people are unaware that the Senate has consistently been blocking Obama's nominees to lower courts as well.  Our higher courts are going unstaffed because an outmoded constitution assumes that such a thing would never happen.  When it was written, these kinds of partisan issues were never expected to be part of the task of appointing judges.  But guess what, they are.

Keeping our 18th century Constitution has also led to massive distortions in what rights our citizens have.  Because of the very ill-worded 2nd Amendment, owning an assault rifle has become an inviolable right.  But due to the 18th century values of the Constitution, education and health care are NOT things that the people have a right to, which is insane.  Compare this to Germany, whose Basic Law written after World War II guarantees rights to health care, education, and equal rights to both men and women.  (In America the ERA failed to get ratified in the 1970s.)

As a nation we sing hosannas to the legal millstone around our collective neck.  Of course, there is no real way forward.  A constitutional convention in this day and age would be impossible considering the depth of political division.  There is no way to compromise between a libertarian and social democratic vision of society.  The states have become so ingrained in our mental and physical maps that there is no erasing them or our ridiculously confused federal system.  The only thing to do is sit back and watch the current fatally flawed system be manipulated and gamed, until one day the whole thing just collapses.

Make no mistake, when the collapse comes it will be at the hands of radical conservatives.  They have shown a propensity for proclaiming their love of the constitution all while thinking that the ends always justify the means when it comes to accomplishing their goals.  They are rabid true believers who feel that they are "saving" the country, and thus can do whatever needs to be done. In the last twenty years we've already seen an impeachment over a BJ, a stolen election, multiple government shutdown hostage situations, restrictions on voting rights, unprecedented use of the filibuster, and now refusing to act on any Supreme Court nominee.  I'm beginning to think that the ultimate day of reckoning is coming sooner rather than later.  The history of the Americas is littered with examples of rightist reactionaries suspending constitutions in order destroy their leftist opponents.  Let's not pretend that the same thing can't happen here.

Music For Troubled Times

Ever since Saturday night a feeling of dread has accompanied me. It has to do with Donald Trump winning the South Carolina primary, and the feeling that his candidacy is actually viable.  Right now I must admit that I think he stands a fifty-fifty chance of getting the Republican nomination.  While one would assume that such a large percentage of people dislike Trump and his ideas that he would be destroyed in the general election, stranger things have happened.  A Trump nomination could bring about a Bloomberg third party run, which would sink Clinton or Sanders. If Clinton is the nominee the email scandal could maybe turn into something big.  Basically, it’s a chance I’d rather not take.  And even if Trump does not win the nomination, the fact that so many Americans are behind such a vulgar, fascistic man who appeals to the worst instincts in this country is depressing enough.

On top of all of this we had yet another mass shooting met with a collective shrug this weekend.  Police still get away with murder and the wealthy keep choking off opportunity for others.  I’ve turned to music to salve my soul.  Here’s some songs for these troubled times.

Ray Charles “The Danger Zone”

This is an absolutely beautiful song in its dejection, but one that expresses the dread of living when “the world is in an uproar.”  According to the song, “the danger zone is everywhere.”

Arcade Fire “Windowsill”

This is a song and album I associate very strongly with the Bush years.  It starts with a litany of “I don’t wanna”s before the last, devastating one: “I don’t wanna live in America no more.”  This is a song of disgust at a country gone insane, one I am really feeling right now. “Because the tide is high/ and it’s rising still/ but I don’t want to see it at my windowsill.”

The War On Drugs “Under The Pressure”

This gorgeous song sounds like it comes from an alternate-universe 1980s when the production techniques of the day were slightly toned down and put to use for art’s sake.  It has a wonderful driving quality, which is why I often listen to it while I ride the subway on the way to work, “trying not to crack under the pressure.” 

Bob Dylan "Political World"

The War on Drugs' sound reminds me very powerfully of Bob Dylan circa Oh Mercy, an album that dealt with the broken-ness of the world.  "Political World" puts the point most starkly, speaking of a world where "Love don't have any place/ we're living in times where men commit crimes/ but crime don't have any face."  That just about sums it up, don't it?

U2 "Seconds"

I know it's trendy to knock U2 these days, but we shouldn't lost sight of how great they were in their heyday.  This ominous song came out in 1983, in the midst of renewed threats of nuclear war, the subject of the song.  It's a very pretty song about that lingering fear that the world can be blown up with the push of a button.  Thinking about Trump's finger on that button makes me shudder.

Track of the Week: REM "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)"

We've now entered a strange and liminal part of the year that I usually just refer to as "late winter," but whose effects are more profound than that mundane moniker suggests.  There are signs of spring, but it's not here yet.  Winter has just about worn me down by now.  Growing up it was always rotten because I was usually depriving myself of something I liked because of Lent. For a sports-obsessed kid it was the pits because football was over, baseball hadn't started, and in basketball March Madness and the NBA playoffs hadn't arrived yet.  I also tend to get sick this time of year, and this year was no exception.  Just as I recovered from a wretched bout with the flu, my wife contracted it, and has been laid up for three days.

The air is filled with a mysterious ennui, but also a faint whiff of the green blast of spring life just over the horizon.  That mood has always been the perfect one for listening to REM's early music, which has a similar air of mystery and anticipation about it.  I find this to be the case especially with Chronic Town, their debut EP, released in 1982.  Fitting the title, "Carnival of Sorts (Box Cars)" starts with the sound of a faded carousel calliope, before the punky guitar and driving drums come in.  The chorus has one of Peter Buck's best descending, jangly guitar figures, a real beauty.  Like most early REM songs, the lyrics are intentionally vague and sung in a way as to be incomprehensible.  That, of course, only adds to the mystery, one just as ineffable as the strange stirrings in my soul on a late February day when the chill wind carries just a hint of verdant warmth.

Seven Years Of Politics On The Brink

Our modern political insanity dates from Rush Limbaugh's speech seven years ago

We are approaching an ignominious, important, and yet forgotten anniversary in American political life, and one that explains the recent conservative response to the death of Antonin Scalia.  On February 28, 2009, after Republicans had taken a massive electoral beating after their severe mismanagement of the economy led to a fearsome crash, many important conservatives gathered at the CPAC conference.  On that day Rush Limbaugh, clad in an open-necked black suit with slicked down hair like a Bulgarian mafiosi, gave a fiery speech calling for massive resistance to the Obama administration.  The response was boisterous enthusiasm that helped propel the complete and total commitment to destroying the president at all costs.  Even if conservatives had already decided upon that course of action, Limbaugh's speech amounted to a public declaration of that intention by the conservative movement.

It's hard to remember now, but back at the time of Obama's inauguration, it looked as if conservatives were going to have to bend to a tidal wave of support for the new president.  Democrats had large majorities in both houses of Congress, and the massive crowds that showed up to cheer Obama's inauguration seemed to be harbingers of the end of the 30-year-long reign of political conservatism in DC.  After all, an opposition party compromising with a massively popular new president was nothing new.  Democrats controlled the House under Reagan, but still passed his massive tax and social spending cuts in the early 80s.  Perhaps some in the Republican establishment were ready to play (relatively) nice in 2009, but the conservative media wouldn't let it.

Well before Limbaugh's speech on the 28th, Fox News premiered the Glenn Beck Program on January 19th, the day before Obama's nomination.  Beck would soon fulminate against the president with a heaping dose of paranoia and conspiratorial thinking.  He would call progressives "fascists," much like Jonah Goldberg, whose book making the same ridiculous claim was just published in 2008. The conservative media had been paying attention during the election, and saw the response that Sarah Palin received by appealing to the worst instincts of their base.  She would be a prophet of the coming changes.

The conservative political leadership was confronted by its own failure in November of 2008.  It could very well have licked its wounds and stepped aside for a bit, taking some time to think about what to do next.  It didn't do that, of course.  After seeing the response that Limbaugh and Beck were getting from the rank and file by appealing more directly and crudely to it than even Palin did, it decided to treat Barack Obama as if he were an illegitimate president and an enemy of the country.  That has been the modus operandi of the Republican Party for seven long years now, with disastrous consequences for the country.  This is why Marco Rubio, a supposed "moderate" constantly claims that the president is intentionally trying to destroy the country.  This is why an obvious sociopath like Ted Cruz has rallied the Tea Party base despite alienating everyone who actually knows him. And this, ultimately, is why Donald Trump is the leading candidate for the Republican nomination.  The leadership has talked a big game for years, raising the expectations of their base beyond what's realistically possible.  Trump has managed to somehow convince a plurality of that base that he will actually make their wildest desires come true.  After years of lies, hatred, calumny, and disinformation being fed the conservative base by both its politicians and media, such an outcome is hardly surprising.

The conservative politicians know that they have struck a devil's bargain, but so far, it's worked for them.  They may have lost the presidency, but mobilizing their foot soldiers has helped them turn statehouses red in numerous blue states and to control both houses of Congress.  The obstructionist tactics have made it impossible for the president to properly govern the country, and the occasional debt ceiling hostage crisis forces him to give ground.  For that reason this nightmare won't end until the Republican party is kept out of holding the Senate, House, and White House for at least three election cycles.  Until the political strategy articulated by Limbaugh seven years ago starts to no longer pay off, it will be with us.

Billboard Top Ten February 21, 1987

I was going to limit myself to one top ten breakdown a month, but I've spent the last four days seriously ill and in need of the kind of goofy pick me up you can only get from 80s pop music.

10. Cyndi Lauper "Change of Heart"

Hellooooooo 80s!  The synths and drums are IN YOUR FACE!  This is a sad contrast to Lauper's first album, which had more unique singles like "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Time After Time."  If you ever needed a master class in 80s overproduction techniques, just listen to this song.

9. Ready for the World "Love You Down"

Soul music had become so processed and systematized by the late 80s that Public Enemy was prompted to write "Who Stole the Soul?"  Is there some slap bass?  Oh you bet!  All over it, baby. This song is the musical equivalent of the lead singer's jheri curl and wispy mustache combo, a true time capsule.

8. Madonna "Open Your Heart"

Okay, now we're in the major leagues.  Yes the gated snare drums are over the top and the synths shinier than a disco ball, but Madonna really adds something here.  Unlike on her earlier records, she's really learned to use the lower register of her voice, and it sounds great, almost enough to make me forget the computerized juggernaut sound beneath it all.

7. Lionel Richie "Ballerina Girl"

Now if there is a true master of mid-80s top 40 pop music, it's got to be Lionel Richie.  Here's a very tasteful little ballad, with strings that remind me more of 70s than 80s pop.  Evidently he wrote it for his daughter Nicole, and for that reason as the father of daughters I guess I can't mock it that much. It does sound like the kind of thing written specifically for father-daughter dances at weddings.  It also marks Richie's last trip into the top 10, a sign that the late 80s were going to be a different pop landscape.

6.  The Jets "You Got It All"

Watery electric piano and smoooooth sax? Aw yeah, it's an 80s pop ballad alright.  I was not surprised to discover that this song was written by Rupert Holmes, the man responsible for "The Pina Colada Song."  I liked The Jets back then, but more for their danceable stuff.

5. Samantha Fox "Touch Me"

Gulp.  This song made 11 year old Bear feel things he hadn't quite felt before listening to the radio.  I had a friend on the wrong side of the tracks who I'd started to drift from -and would eventually end up in Boys Town- who loved this song.  I was intrigued and a bit scared by the raw sexual force that was Samantha Fox, a voluptuous cockney with a limited singing range.  The song's utter lack of quality just didn't register with me.

4. Huey Lewis and the News "Jacob's Ladder"

Now it wouldn't be an 80s countdown without a little Huey Lewis, would it?  I will defend the band's 1983 Sports album as a fun collection of bar band music gone pop.  Unfortunately, by the time they put out Fore! all of their bar band spirit was gone.  The tacky suit on the cover knows the score.  This song just….isn't that good.  It's the musical equivalent of a flat bottle of Perrier overheating in a yuppie's 1987 BMW.

3. Chicago "Will You Still Love Me"

One of the small number of post-Peter Cetera songs by Chicago to hit the top ten.  This is full-on 80s ballad cheese, the kind of thing I imagine teens necking to in the back of their Datsuns after the football game.  Of course, there are a few loud guitar crashes here and there, but it's pretty weak sauce.

2. Georgia Satellites "Keep Your Hands To Yourself"

Yes Yes Yes YES!  Now this is what I am talking about!  A song played by an actual band that doesn't sound like it's been sequenced within an inch of its life.  The drums sound like drums, not bricks hitting the pavement.  It has SWING and RHYTHM and still manages to rock.  I also think it's a pretty funny tune about the reality of eventually needing to settle down and leave one's rough and rowdy ways behind.  Before the Black Crowes showed up the Georgia Satellites revived the southern rock of the seventies on this track.  Is it derivative?  Sure, but it's a helluva lot more fun and real than most of the other stuff on the charts.

1. Bon Jovi "Livin' On A Prayer"

But of course, it had to end with this.  Nothing in recent years chaps my breeches like the idea that Jon Bon Jovi somehow belongs in the same Jersey rock pantheon as Bruce Springsteen.  Bon Jovi has managed to attain this level of praise by never going away, and always having a knack for producing some more lame, middle of the road music just attuned enough the radio of the time to get hits.  I will at least give them credit for two things on this song: 1. Centering the song on gritty working class reality 2. The infectious chorus.  Just remember, y'all, diseases are infectious, too.

A Brief Historical Analysis Of Baseball's Divisional Era (1969-1995)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent history of baseball, and that with my obsession with historical periodization made me realize that the period between 1969 and 1995 forms a distinct and important era in baseball’s history.  It is also the period that coincides with the creation of divisions in 1969 and the beginning of the wild card format in 1995.  If I had the time, inclination, resources, and ability I would write a book length history of the topic. Since I possess none of these things, I’ll sum up the themes in this blog post. 

In a lot of ways, 1969 marks a real turning point in baseball’s history.  It was the first year that an expansion team (the Mets) won a World Series.  Expansion in that year also necessitated the division system and playoffs.  In 1969 baseball expanded across the border into Canada with the Expos, an early moment in the internationalization of the game, which would only continue to get more intense over time.  This combined with the movement of teams and integration in the preceeding years made baseball something very different than came before.  

It certainly began to look different.  If you look at film of the '69 series, the teams are wearing flannel uniforms that you could picture on the bodies of Lou Gehrig and Josh Gibson.  Very soon, with the Oakland As as early adopters, double-knits came into fashion, as well as more outlandish and inventive colors.  The same As wore white shoes and bright gold pullover jerseys.  Soon enough the world would witness the Astros' "tequila sunrise" look and the Taco Bell Padres unis.  Add to that the many teams sporting road blues, solid color looks, and a elastic waistbands.  An average fan in 1969 would not recognize half the teams playing in 1976.  Just as the mid-90s rolled around, this sartorial inventiveness began to fade.  Belts replaced elastic, baggy pants billowed, and gray became the solitary road color and white practically the only home one.

In terms of stadiums, the multipurpose sports complex replaced the old ballparks, a trend that began in the 1960s that became dominating by 1969.  In 1995, only Wrigley and Fenway remained of the original parks (Yankee Stadium's renovation in the 70s completely changed its character.)  At the end of the divisional era, new baseball-only stadiums began to be built, and with the success of Camden Yards, opening in 1992, the template for the retro stadium was set.  Over half the parks in the major leagues have been built since the end of the Divisional Era, a truly amazing statistic.  A fan as late as 1990 would only have known a third of the current parks.

This isn't all about looks, though.  If there's a defining attribute of the Divisional Era, it's labor strife.  The strike of 1994, and the attempt by owners to field replacement players in 1995, makes an appropriate bookend, along with Curt Flood challenging the reserve clause by refusing a trade in 1969.  Flood's effort eventually led to the advent of free agency in the mid-70s, which is one of the biggest changes to the game in professional baseball's history.  The players, once docile, became assertive in this era, and the owners, feeling betrayed, clashed time and time again with their teams.  This meant strikes in 1972, 1981, 1985, and 1994, with the strike in 1981 eliminating a large chunk of the season, and the strike in 1994 canceling the World Series.  It also meant collusion by the owners in the 80s to try to thwart free agency.  The players clearly won this long war, and the last twenty years have been marked by a labor peace that is the result of the owners having to accept things that they had tried to destroy or undermine.  The amount of money flowing into baseball from cable TV has also made it easy to make everyone happy.

The Divisional Era is also very interesting from the standpoint of race.  While Jackie Robinson broken the color line in 1947 and many players of color followed, many teams (most notably the Red Sox) resisted integration.  Black stars could easily find a spot on major league rosters, but second tier black players often got overlooked when a white player of similar ability was the other option.  Robinson's last public speech was at Three Rivers Stadium in 1972, during the World Series.  It was an appropriate location, considering the the hometown Pirates had fielded the first lineup without a white player in a game the season before.  That Pirates lineup reflected the rising numbers of black and Latino players at the time, which would lead in 1986 to 19% of major league players being black.  At this speech Robinson lauded the increased number of players of color in the game, but also called for more diversity in terms of managers and front offices.  Soon enough, in 1975, Frank Robinson would manage the Cleveland Indians.  The Blue Jays would win the 1992 and 1993 World Series helmed by Cito Gaston.  However, after the mid-80s the number of black players would start to decline, and there were still signs of racism in baseball, most notable Al Campanis' infamous interview with Ted Koppel, where he implied that black players did not have the intellectual capacity to be managers.  If anything, the Divisional Era both saw deeper integration and illustrated the racist barriers that still existed.

The Divisional Era is very much a transitional period when baseball figured out how to prosper while both no longer being the nation's top spectator sport and breaking away from its past.  Baseball attendance had dipped in the 1960s while the NFL rose and baseball owners remained stuck in the past.  In the late 70s and early 80s, however, attendance started shooting up.  During the 1980s baseball returned to a prominent place in the media landscape and pop cultural mind.  Several baseball movies were hits, and The Natural, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams have managed to remain in cultural memory.

Beyond a return to pop cultural relevance, the baseball renaissance might have been primarily due to the way baseball was played in the Divisional Era, which was compelling in its balance.  For a long time baseball got boring with station-to-station tactics in the supposed "golden age" of the 50s, when attendance lagged.  (I get the feeling that the preponderance of baseball writers who grew up in the New York area in that time, when the three teams were all great, has something to do with the golden age misnomer.)  Then, just as speed and excitement began to return, pitching became so over-dominant that they had to lower the mound after the 1968 season.  While there were ups and downs in terms of offense, the game was pretty balanced in this era, rebounding from the second dead ball era in the early 70s, but not shooting up in offense until around 1993.  Another round of expansion and the increased use of steroids probably had something to do with that.  In 1996, the runs per game average for a single team would clear the 5.00 mark for the first time since 1936, a sign that the juiced era was on in full force.  During most of the Divisional Era the game included both power and speed, and strikeout rates while rising were much lower than they are today, making for exciting play.

Despite seeing a recovery from the stagnating attendance in the postwar period, the Divisional Era also saw the halo finally and permanently fall off of the game.  To be sure, there had been other scandalous times, such as the reaction to the 1919 White Sox throwing the World Series, but now there was no going back to a norm where baseball's purity was assumed.  This has a lot to do with the general questioning and dethroning of American institutions in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.  The seminal point for baseball was Jim Bouton's Ball Four, which came out in 1970 and described the dirty realities of ballplayers' lives. Joe Pepitone's memoir, which came out a few years later, did much the same work.  Scandals involving baseball players and managers grabbed the headlines, from prominent players being involved in a cocaine ring to Pete Rose betting on baseball.  It is impossible to understand the level of reaction against steroids without taking this period into account.  It established a powerful discourse of baseball as a fallen game, and a standard of behavior not expected of other major sports.

Above everything else, the Divisional Era was the time when baseball learned to adjust to no longer being the top sport in American life, or to being an institution with any assumed level of purity.  It learned, through its revived status in popular culture, that its history and nostalgia for its past were powerful forces.  That emphasis on staying connected to a rich past would come out most visibly in the new "retro" ballparks that followed Camden Yards.  It was a period of survival and adjustment, coming before the "juicing" of the game and all that entailed.  Grayer heads than mine may fondly recall Mantle, Aaron, and Mays, but for me and others this Divisional Era was our golden age.