Big Money, Groping, Grabbing, and Gaslighting

“Even if the news is fake news, it’s true.”

Money and Power

Excess: According to the Guardian, “Salvator Mundi, the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting of Jesus Christ commissioned by King Louis XII of France more than 500 years ago, has sold at Christie’s in New York for $450.3m, including auction house premium, shattering the world record for any work of art sold at auction.” According to the story the big guns were bidding up the price 20 to 30 million dollars at a time.

Currently the Republican majority in the House and Senate aim to pass tax and health care legislation aimed at reducing tax rates on wealthy corporations and billionaire donors (Adelsons, Koch Bros. Mercers) by cutting Medicaid, eliminating tuition and interest deductions for college students, state and local tax deductions for home owners in the short term and reducing Social Security and Medicare benefits long term for lower and middle class working stiffs. More record setting art purchases.

By taking aim at progressive programs of the 1930s Roosevelt era and the 60s Johnson era civil rights program, Republicans are institutionalizing wealth inequality and a permanent Plutocracy.

This attempted Republican coup of democracy emulates the Putin coup in Russia, where the Oligarchs privatized state assets. Meanwhile Putin has seduced the Puto Trump, whose capitalist-white power ideology aims to replace a system of checks and balances with the mandate of a dictator. See the unclassified Steel dossier now being verified by the Mueller investigation.

But the phallus will rule: keep women and minorities in their place.

National Security: Boys Play with Nukes

According to the NYT, “President Trump and North Korea have prompted Congress to do something it hasn’t done in more than four decades: formally consider changes to the law that gives American presidents the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons.
“As the first formal hearing on the issue in 41 years unfolded before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Senator Christopher Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, bluntly outlined the stakes with a president who “is so unstable, is so volatile, has a decision-making process that is so quixotic that he might order a nuclear weapons strike that is wildly out of step with U.S. national security interests.”
“Republicans were not as harsh nor so Trump-centric. But Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is the committee’s chairman, and recently expressed concern that Mr. Trump could lead the country to World War III, said it was important to examine the “realities of this system” by which the use of nuclear weapons is decided. He’s right.”

Guns: The Phallic Symbol

The Guardian says, “America’s gun super-owners, have amassed huge collections. Just 3% of American adults own a collective 133m firearms – half of America’s total gun stock. These owners have collections that range from eight to 140 guns, the 2015 study found. Their average collection: 17 guns each.”

In effect mass shootings occur on a regular basis, underscored by the educators who are trained in the arts of “run,” “hide,” “fight,” and the teachers who saved their kids by locking the doors at an elementary school in California against the Rancho Tehama Reserve shooter.

The Gun has become the metaphysical substitute for a perverse interpretation of the white man’s God, a phallic instrument of patriarchy power. As Mao said, power comes from the barrel of a gun. And if they can’t get it up, they will grope and grab.

Gropers, Grabbers, Gaslighters

As for the “gropers,” whether in Hollywood or the White House, in Alabama or L.A. and New York, the elephant in the room or the phallus has become central to expressions of male behavior from Clinton to Trump, to Harvey Weinstein, to Judge Roy Moore, the white Evangelical preacher, who, like the Roman Catholic pederasts, cruised churches for boys and/or  malls for teenage pussy. According to “One of the women, Tina Johnson,” she said “Mr. Moore had groped her buttocks in 1991, when she was 28. “He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it.” Other victims ranged in age from 14 to 18 as the 30 something assistant D.A. exercised his “droit de seigneur.”

Of the women coming forward in today’s culture none have spoken with a louder voice than pop rocker Taylor Swift, who said about a radio DJ, repeatedly in a Denver courtroom: “He grabbed my bare ass,” according to the Denver Post. And she repeated the remark on the stand in court, repeatedly: “He grabbed my ass.” Say it loud and clear: “He grabbed my ass.”

When a woman complains, historically and currently, the patriarchal culture claims she’s “crazy” and figuratively or in reality blames and “gaslights” her for the alleged sins of Eve, the seductive symbol of man’s fall, the alleged victim of the temptress.

Here in Taos the male patriarchy is alive and well, currently and historically. Local community leaders have “gassed” elected and appointed women at the Taos County Commission, like Lorraine Coca Ruiz in he early double aughts, at the Town of Taos, Los Machos attacked Erlinda Gonzales, just as the current patriarchs gas light Judi Cantu. At Kit Carson Electric Coop Luisa Valerio Mylet serves as the solo female among ten trustees, who resort to physical abuse when one of their own disagrees with the conformist culture. Once Luisa in her sixties brought her father to a meeting in order to stop the “hitos” from gaslighting her.

(See accompanying story about Gladys Kozoll)

Divide and Conquer

The propaganda machine of the Oligarchs and Plutocrats have used divisiveness against the working and middle classes in small towns and suburbs. “The 2016 [election] results suggest that residents of a diminishing number of decisively white American towns and small cities — even those which supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — can now be politically mobilized around race, ethnicity, multiculturalism and immigration,” according to Thomas B. Edsall in the NYT.

Think back locally to historical Taos when the white occupiers used artillery to massacre 150 Taos Pueblo men, women, and children who were scapegoated for the scalping and death of Gov. Bent at the hands of Native and Native Hispanic insurgents, who dared resist the 1846-1848 invasion and genocide associated with Manifest Destiny.

The message is clear today: See who occupies America’s vast prison system.