Groundhog Day: déjà vu all over again

How many times must we go through this?

Groundhog Day: déjà vu all over again. Same, same, SAME is a deadening way to live.

The 1993 movie is still one of the most popular comedy films ever made, with a title, Groundhog Day, that’s become shorthand to describe a monotonous, unpleasant and repetitive situation.

The past dozen days have been an emotional Groundhog Day. The alarm goes off and we start the day learning about yet another other lawless power grab, gratuitous act of vengeance, or chaotic disruption of the systems on which millions of Americans depend.

It’s an authoritarian tactic called “flooding the zone”—dumping so many dangerous or outlandish moves at once that ‘the enemy,’ (regular folks, the opposition party, the news media) are paralyzed by the onslaught. Some of the shit gets picked up or blocked, but there’s so much of it, significant pieces slip through unnoticed until suddenly you’ve lost your job or your research grant, or your Social Security check or your nanny or all your Hispanic employees. From Rebecca Solnit:

…the reason authoritarians are authoritarians is that they’re unpopular. They have to use the threat of force along with intimidation and suppression tactics to get their way. They endeavor to scare people into obeying, whether or not they agree, and not being scared and not obeying helps demonstrate how finite their power is and how much of ours remains even in the bleakest circumstances.

[We need to be loud!] Call lies lies, call cruelty cruelty, call fascism fascism, call violations of the constitution and human rights by their true names.

Ezra Klein also noted that Trump’s mega-moves are also signs of weakness:

The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now… Or so he wants you to think.

In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him….

Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021. [And he has very narrow margins in both Houses]

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks.

Our money!!! Our personal info!!! Elon’s got it all.

Unelected MultiBillionaire White Nationalist grabs hold of your federal government, your personal data, and your $Trillion Treasury’s checkbook.
Yesterday we learned that the unelected unvetted unconfirmed co-president Elon Musk bullied the Treasury Secretary to resign, and to give him AND his team the digital keys to the Treasury Department’s payment system. He’s got access not just to OUR hard-earned taxpayer money, it’s also our Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and much much more. How many ways could he use spend OUR money and share sell OUR information… and to whom? or to what foreign country?

Call your representatives and make a BIG FUCKING STINK. Call GOP reps in other states and say you’re a constituent from ___city name and _____ zip code in that state.

Sorry—got distracted there. Back to Groundhog Day

What is the ‘spice of life?’ A thought experiment:

• Imagine if every single day (24 hours a day) year-round was a balmy 75 degrees. Never a wisp of fog or drop of rain. Never windy. Every day 24 hours of perfect sunny weather.

• Also, imagine that all the trees were the same variety of maple in the same shade of deep green, and all the bushes were roses, covered with lovely wilt-free blossoms. The only vegetable in existence was a potato.

• Let’s say medium-rare filet mignon is your favorite food in the whole world. Imagine if you had to eat filet mignon (not any other protein source ever). Or maybe it’s chocolate ice cream you must eat every day for the rest of your life and never any other dessert.

• What if all the people you knew were so similar to you in opinions, education, background, appearance, interests and perspectives that you hardly needed to talk because you knew exactly what they were going to say and do?

You’d go bonkers. Our brains depend on regular change: weather, season, scenery, activity, experiences, and people. If nothing ever changes, our senses are dulled, we lose all curiosity and appreciation. Nothing is a surprise and everything is flat and lifeless.

Erasure at the Federal Government—Nothing to see here…

Diversity is another way to say variety, which is not only the spice of life, it’s also essential to our survival. Monoculture in agriculture is a recipe for disaster. Breeding between members of the same gene pool weaken the following generations. America is a very diverse country, geographically, demographically, politically, religiously, culturally. Our diversity has always been a strength. The Trump Party wants us all to be white, Christian, male, MAGA and complacent.

Diversity goes hand in hand with inclusion—you can’t be diverse without including a variety of voices. (Equity is a topic for another day.)

A country that does not value diversity is doomed to fail. And governmental failure is what they want.

Do you?

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PUT YOURSELF IN THE PATH OF BEAUTY

From a display of psychedelic posters from the 1960s at the Portland Art Museum, a design after a famous Art Nouveau poster by Alphonse Mucha. But this one featuring an old friend of mine from my folkie days in Cambridge—Jim Kweskin and his Jug Band.