Who will Trump's cultists blame when they finally understand they've been conned?

(Be aware: NAC is going away soon)

Donald Trump's entire "career" in and out of politics has been one long, sustained confidence trick. The owners of capital "get it," and shill with enthusiasm because they can only gain from the con man's game.

Generally speaking, when the victims of a con game realize they've been duped, they're angry. It may or may not be the con man's fault, but it's not theirs; no one likes looking in the mirror and confronting their own gullibility.

Politically, it's never been about Trump's narcissistic grifting. Rather, it's about wealth consolidating its power and enhancing its vampiric capital accumulation as the populace is distracted by the grift; and, it's about those Americans, primarily white, who've embraced Trump's con game with open arms.


When they realize they've been had, as inevitably they will, who's up to be blamed? It won't be Trump himself, as rejecting a deity is hard work, and he'll be exonerated by having been "stabbed in the back" or some such nonsense.

It won't be the con man's disappointed victims, swindled and left to founder, because the mirror's cracked by the weight of the dominant caste racism and gibberish.

I think most of us already have a suspicion about the answer to this question, and it's not a pleasant one. In a collective sense, why do humans cherish being conned? Now if you'll excuse me, I have a pitchfork to sharpen.

---

This "Never Trumper" is hilarious. She cannot countenance the grift, but on the other hand, because providing health care and other basic public services would be both unAmerican and unfair to the accumulators of capital, she just might change her mind. 

Yawn.   

Sorry, I don’t mean to make a pro or con statement about what should happen with health care. I’m saying that some version of socialized medicine exists in most European countries, and I think we would agree that they’re all democracies.

I didn’t suggest that the imposition of socialized medicine was somehow going to end our democracy. I merely said that it was going to usher in things that were irreversible that were not going to be good for our country.

Democrats? Acting more aggressively? Probably a pipe dream, but worth a post at least.

This is a slightly rosy assessment of policy options, especially in imagining there'll be a transition as we've known it; again tonight Donald Trump trolled the country about not going away peacefully. 

And all my white Republican friends were silent like tombs. I believe categorically that what we're witnessing at the present time is (a) the cancerous decay of late-stage capitalism; (b) the equally malignant pathology of decadent capital accumulation; and (c) a fanatical determination on the part of white America to remain the dominant caste, come what may.

I've no firm idea how I can help those in need, given that the bulk of you insist on identifying with the abysmal, corrupt two-party system.

But I'm open to suggestions.

Republicans will replace RBG but Democrats hold the trump cards – no, really, by David Litt (The Guardian)

Progressives should not worry about what will happen if they mimic McConnell’s constitutional hardball. Their representatives need only act with a little less restraint

... For one thing, America’s political institutions are currently biased – in many cases quite aggressively – in favor of conservatives. Restrictive voting laws make casting a ballot disproportionately difficult for lower-income, non-white and young Americans. Unprecedented gerrymandering gives Republicans a built-in advantage in the race for the House, and according to FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, the Senate’s bias toward rural states makes the chamber about seven points redder than the nation as a whole. Thanks to the electoral college, two of the past five presidential elections have been won by Republicans who lost the popular vote – one reason why even before Justice Ginsburg’s death, 15 of the past 19 supreme court justices were appointed by GOP presidents.

The conservative movement, in other words, already had it pretty good. The average American disagrees with Republican orthodoxy on every major issue: healthcare, climate change, gun violence, immigration, taxes, Covid response. Yet thanks to the biases embedded in the American political process, Republicans have not just remained viable, but secured extraordinary amounts of power. We can’t know for certain who would benefit from upending the status quo that existed at the time of Justice Ginsburg’s passing – but we do know which party has the most to lose.

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER: This three-hour documentary film about George Corley Wallace is a must-watch.

I didn't expect to embark this week upon a long-delayed detour through the life of George C. Wallace (1919-1998) in order to process what obviously are a handful of unresolved issues from my upbringing.





Well, you never know when it's going to happen, do you? Ever since the advent of Donald Trump, the parallels between the coddled New Yorker and the rural Alabamian have been obvious and frequently discussed.

I sat them out, because I really didn't want to think about how my father and so many of his friends were huge Wallace supporters in the late 1960s.

Time to get my act together. Here's an article about the making of the documentary (which was released in 2000). I strongly recommend that you set aside three hours, with strong drink if that's what it takes, and watch the complete film.

My weekly ON THE AVENUES column this Thursday likely will explain the rest ... well, insofar as it can be explained.

"Barack Obama is using his post-presidency to attack the Left and protect the status quo."

In the beginning, I was a fan, but in the end, one must allow facts to be facts. It isn't always easy. Maybe we learn something, maybe not. Barack Obama disappointed while in office, and continues to do so amid his post-presidency.

The Real Barack Obama Has Finally Revealed Himself, by Luke Savage (Jacobin)

Barack Obama is using his post-presidency to attack the Left and protect the status quo. The historical myth believed by so many liberals that Obama was a progressive leader who was hemmed in by the presidency's political constraints is collapsing fast.

... Equipped with fame, wealth, and a vast reservoir of residual goodwill Obama now has more power to do good in an hour than most of us do in a lifetime. The demands of etiquette and propriety notwithstanding, he no longer has intransigent Blue Dog senators to appease, donors to placate, or personal electoral considerations to keep him up at night. When he speaks or acts, we can be reasonably certain he does so out of sincere choice and that the substance of his words and actions reflect the real Barack Obama and how he honestly sees the world.

It therefore tells us a great deal that, given the latitude, resources, and moral authority with which to influence events, Obama has spent his post-presidency cozying up to the global elite and delivering vapid speeches to corporate interests in exchange for unthinkable sums of money.

(snip)

When Obama has spoken about or intervened in politics, it’s most often been to bolster the neoliberal center-right or attack and undermine the Left. Having emerged from seclusion to endorse the likes of Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau, Obama also rang up Britain’s austerity-loving Conservative prime minister Theresa May on election night in 2017 to offer reassurance and trash the Labour Party’s electoral prospects. Only last week, while denouncing the Democratic Party’s “activist wing,” the former president who had once introduced himself to the nation as a progressive, community-minded outsider inveighed against those pushing for a more ambitious direction — contemptuously instructing a group of wealthy donors not to concern themselves too-much with the irrational zealotry of “certain left-leaning Twitter feeds.”

"How America Ends: A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?"

Medieval demographics, Ljubljana.

A long read, a good read. The Census Bureau projects that America will become “minority white” by 2045. If I'm lucky enough to still be around at the age of 85, I'll raise a glass.

How America Ends: A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together? by Yoni Appelbaum (The Atlantic)

Democracy depends on the consent of the losers. For most of the 20th century, parties and candidates in the United States have competed in elections with the understanding that electoral defeats are neither permanent nor intolerable. The losers could accept the result, adjust their ideas and coalitions, and move on to fight in the next election. Ideas and policies would be contested, sometimes viciously, but however heated the rhetoric got, defeat was not generally equated with political annihilation. The stakes could feel high, but rarely existential. In recent years, however, beginning before the election of Donald Trump and accelerating since, that has changed.

“Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage,” Trump told the crowd at his reelection kickoff event in Orlando in June. “They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.” This is the core of the president’s pitch to his supporters: He is all that stands between them and the abyss ...

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: Have some Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter. Or don't. It's okay, either way.

On Thursday we tapped a keg of Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter at Pints&union. To be honest, I didn't think we'd have the opportunity to score a keg, but one materialized and it sounded like fun to me.

What's more, in spite of a few negative on-line reviews, Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter tastes pretty good. One reviewer slagged a thin body, but it's no lighter than Fuller's London Porter, perhaps because -- huge revelation here -- Yuengling's way of making porter for the last 190 years has not been "robust" in the current parlance.

I'd call it an English-style brown porter, and in this instance syrup and cocoa nibs are added. The chocolate character is sweet but balanced. It isn't cloying, as I read one reviewer describe it. The usual problem remains the skill set of the reviewers, not the product itself.

But I digress.

Reaction has been good, but it occurred to me that some might disapprove of Yuengling owing to politics. There may have been a time when I was among these conscientious objectors, and naturally I respect the point of view of anyone who has a principled reason to not drink, eat or consume anything.

As an example, I've managed to avoid Chick-fil-A for decades, primarily because the name and concept strike me as tacky. I also try to avoid chains whenever possible, and stay away from "fast food" as a rule save for weenie wagons, Cincy chili and the occasional White Castle run. I'm told there are extensive reasons to refrain from Chick-fil-A on grounds of socio-political distinctions, and that's fine, too. However, it isn't necessary. It's tacky fast food, and that's enough for me.

I seem to have digressed again.

As it pertains to Yuengling as a company, and to Hershey's Chocolate Porter as a beer ... and as these pertain to Old Man Yuengling donating to Donald Trump's campaign and entertaining Trump's son at the brewery ... it might be noted that the brewery sent beer to the detested socialist Franklin Delano Roosevelt to celebrate the end of Prohibition. Another horrid "left-winger," Barack Obama, apparently pronounced Yuengling his favorite beer of all (source).

It also bears a quick reminder that the American brewing business at all levels, whether macro or craft, is diverse socially and politically, and not a monolithic entity. You may believe "craft" beer is left/liberal/progressive, but you might well be mistaken. It's not that easy.

Dick Yuengling is the fifth generation to run the family's brewery, and his four daughters are the sixth. The latter are largely in control now, meaning that not only is Yuengling one of the oldest independent family-run breweries in the United States, but it's also one of the oldest businesses of any sort -- and it's a female-run company to boot, something I thought we've all agreed is desirable.

Here's a headline from September.

Yuengling Partners with Pink Boots Society to Launch Yuengling Women in Brewing Scholarship

America’s Oldest Brewery donates $50,000 to support brewing education

Thursday, September 5, 2019 — Pottsville, PA – D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc., America’s Oldest Brewery®, announced today a $50,000 donation to the Pink Boots Society, a nonprofit focused on assisting, inspiring and encouraging women beer professionals. With this donation, Pink Boots will partner with Yuengling to launch the Yuengling Women in Brewing Scholarship to further advance education for women in the brewing industry.

This doesn't seem fascistic to me.

As a company, Yuengling has survived the American Civil War (Bobby Lee's troops got to Gettysburg, within one hundred miles of the brewery), raw material restrictions borne of two world wars, and Prohibition. Amid boycott calls, the elder Yuengling has shrugged. I'm sure he and I would disagree about certain aspects of politics. I'm also fairly certain we could find a way to have both beers and conversations.

To repeat, I'm one hundred percent in favor of principles, and equally strident in defense of your right to exercise them. I've done plenty of it myself. The problem I've come to see with boycotts of just about anything -- Yuengling because Trump, Founders because racism and Chick-fil-A because homophobia -- is they don't come anywhere close to addressing the root cause of society's ills.

We're getting ready to go out of town, and the Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter will be gone by the time we return. Go drink one at Pints if it suits you, or something else if not.

If it were possible to get a keg of Lord Chesterfield, Yuengling's golden ale, I'd buy it -- and it surprises me that none of the establishments in downtown New Albany have chosen to sell Yuengling Golden Pilsner on draft regularly.

As a final thought, Yuengling aside, just wait until Christmas. I have a surprise beer coming.

ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

 -- Hans Christian Andersen, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” recently quoted at Jeff Gahan’s campaign kick-back-off

---

NA Confidential’s 15th birthday arrives on October 20, 2019, to be followed two weeks later by Election Day.

That’s when we will learn if Jeff Gahan’s time-tested platform of power-grabbing, influence-peddling and campaign finance loot accumulation has been crass enough to buy him a third straight term as Anchor City’s Wizard of Bling -- something that hasn’t occurred since 1955, when C. Pralle Erni did it on a platform of support for public housing, as opposed to Gahan’s palpable and ongoing war against the community’s least fortunate.

But enough of that.

You already know how I feel about Gahan’s vapid Reign of Error, and so today we examine a viable alternative. In retrospect, NA Confidential’s entire 5,475-day-long journey through New Albany’s Open Air Museum of Ignorance, Superstition, Backwardness and Treachery now seems to have been pointing to this juncture, all along.

I suppose it has taken 15 years because I’ve always been a methodical learner, suspicious of sudden epiphanies and more disposed to trust the accumulation of evidence that seeps through, day by day, over long periods of time. The learning curve is a harsh mistress, and it can be a maddening maze, so I allow plenty of chances for front porch cigar pondering before jumping to my conclusions.

Taking all of it together, there is a strong likelihood that I’ll begin drinking at the blog’s forthcoming 15th birthday party, and continue the process until after the ballots have been counted.

Don’t worry, readers. I’m a trained professional. Beverage alcohol contains the minimum daily requirements for all mandated food groups, just so long as you continue eating tacos and pizza throughout the binge.

As such, let’s avoid the late October politics rush. If you’re looking for quality endorsements, you’ve come to the “right” place for a lifelong leftist like me.

In 2019, this European-style Social Democrat will be voting for Mark Seabrook for mayor of New Albany.

Before telling you why, just a wee bit of personal background. I’ve come to understand that my political frame of reference is utterly negated by America’s two-party system and the “traditional” call-and-response psychoses stemming from it.

I’ve lived in Floyd County, Indiana my entire life, the most recent half within New Albany city limits, and yet in political terms I might as well be in exile. As such, a born contrarian’s iconoclasm outranks even booze as an escape mechanism.

The votes I cast must be examined on a case by case basis amid forever shifting circumstances, which come down to this: What course of local action is most sensible, and which candidate is best suited to pursue it, irrespective of political party affiliation?

It took a long time to see that simple lockstep ideology cannot suffice for me, as neither major political party in America takes an interest in expressing my beliefs. I’m left to cope as best I can, honing my intellectual survival skills, and searching the dumpsters for discarded fish bones and carrot shavings to make a thin soup of sustenance.

Pragmatism, here I come, and it feels good.

---

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
-- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, quoted at a recent Redevelopment Commission meeting

Let’s begin by stating for the public record that Mark Seabrook’s lengthy experience as an office holder in both city and county government, and more importantly to me, his career as an independent small businessman, recommend him highly for the office of mayor according to any prevailing criteria of which I’m aware.

Eight years of Democratic Party propaganda would have you believe that Gahan’s ascendancy to power came via divine right, as though the goddesses themselves sent him to us as the only human being truly capable of ruling the New Albanian rabble -- hence Gahan’s surreal, unintentionally hilarious cult of personality and his fatuous claims to have made not one single error his entire time as an elected official.

That’s sheer bullshit, of course.

Even the majority of local DemoDisneyDixiecrats know that Gahan’s pipe dreams of glory and grandiosity are disturbing and delusional. They bow, scrape and toe the line only because so many of them are in it for the beak-wetting, and that’s why we must continue to follow Dear Leader’s financial trail: In Pecunia Veritas.

Seabrook is perfectly capable of being mayor, of performing mayoral tasks and delegating responsibilities to mayoral appointees.

Seabrook has wider experience in elected office than Gahan, and having been elected to multiple terms in office and not only one, he has benefited from far more hours of real hands-on time governance than presumed kingmakers like Gahan’s venal and cadaverous toady Warren Nash, who was a veritable Olympian of mayoral ineptitude until his clothes-free protégé came along to make veneer great again.

Seabrook has given no indication that he seeks the office of mayor in order to be a paid media superstar with his face attached to shopping carts, crosswalks, full-page lifestyle magazine advertisements, and any other unfortunate inanimate objects lacking the good sense to get the hell out of the way.

Seabrook will be surrounded and advised by the most capable cast of adjutants and actual thinkers that we’ve seen for a while in this city, including (although not confined to) sitting councilman Al Knable, (hopefully soon to be) councilman Scott Stewart, State Representative Ed Clere, party chairman Shawn Carruthers and quite a few others, and with a younger generation of energetic, principled leaders on the horizon.

Seabrook can be expected to appoint similarly solid representatives to serve on non-elected boards, and to see that these boards remain transparent and answerable to elected officials -- and hence, to the ratepayers themselves.

Seabrook will be questioned by some who doubt he possesses the stamina to serve as mayor, but he has been admirably pro-active and transparent in addressing his physical health concerns. As I can personally attest, those interacting with him lately encounter a nimble and fully engaged mind. I won’t begrudge Seabrook a nap now and then; imagine the vast amount of time he’ll save by NOT wasting the many hours Gahan needs each day to preen, posture and pretend to be an omniscient messiah.

Seabrook’s fitness for office cannot be denied, although Democrats lacking other suitable cudgels will lie about it. When they do, ask these increasingly wild-eyed ward heelers if they’ve ever experienced shame. Some actually might have.

Seabrook proposes that our city return to the task of efficient daily management, while ceasing to function as convenient set props and stage furniture for the tinhorn theatrical aspirations of a failed wood products salesman.

Seabrook aims at transparent operations and accountability, not exaggerated claims and play-acting. To summarize, he seeks to return governance to functional adults who possess long attention spans and small egos, and this is exactly what we need in New Albany at this point in time.

Seabrook will need all these attributes as well as a skilled team to begin cleansing our tainted City Hall.

---

Q: What do Gahan supporters say when the Kool-Aid and Loaded Rice Krispies Treats run out?

A: Dude, this mayor really sucks.

Now for a few random thoughts about Mayor Seabrook’s probable challenges.

Future costs must be identified and contained.

Among Gahan’s ritualistic bait ‘n’ switch tactics has been an infrastructure Ponzi scheme, borrowing massive sums of money against future “growth” and shifting the burden of repayment to the children and grandchildren of voters dazzled by bright shiny objects.

The problem: As we add infrastructure embellishments of questionable need, and considering the cost of borrowing to finance them, we’re also steadily adding maintenance and upkeep expenses that aren’t “included” in the glossy touts.

It is likely that one of Seabrook’s first tasks as mayor will be to conduct a complete and thorough audit of the city’s finances. Given the inevitable filing cabinet bonfires we’ll see on December 31, this might prove to be a daunting task, but a necessary one to restore sanity to the municipality’s tortured financials.

Gahan’s pestiferous swamp must be drained.

Seabrook will conduct a purge of the Democratic Party’s fat and sassy governing clique, and it’s about time. Nowhere within the code of ordinances can be found commandments proclaiming the feather-bedded entitlement on the part of gilded functionaries like Nash, party chairman Adam Dickey and Irving Joshua to lifetime sinecures on appointed boards.

A cleansing flush is necessary, and waiting off to the side, whether Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents, Druids or Monarchists, there are bright individuals, fresh ideas and new blood patiently awaiting their long overdue turns at the wheel.

I’m convinced Seabrook and his team will act to enable them.

The Democratic Party’s doctrine of non-cooperation must be curbed.

One hallmark of the Democratic Party’s perennial stranglehold on municipal government is an absolute refusal to cooperate with Republicans at any level. Granted, there are social policy occasions when this makes sense (see Pence, Mike), but the little-discussed flip side in a state like ours possessing a solidly Republican governmental apparatus is Gahan’s legacy of missed opportunities for cooperation with people like Clere and Ron Grooms, so as to leverage scarce resources toward genuinely useful goals. Gahan prefers putting it on the TIF One credit card, and this politically-motivated non-cooperation means we pay more than we should.

It won’t happen with Seabrook as mayor.

City-county relations must be improved.

It’s true that even in a county as small as ours, there’ll always be differences between urban, suburban and rural residents as they pertain to definitions about “quality of life.” The more I’ve learned about urbanization, suburbanization and guy-in-the-backwoods-hut-ization, within the contexts of transportation, land use, environmental impacts and a score of other considerations, the greater the complexity.

We may not know the answer to every question, but a house divided still can’t stand. Governmental units working together rather than separately might actually be useful -- for a change. It needn’t be “unigov” to cooperate where applicable for the collective good. It’s just sanity.

Ever since Democrats misplaced their mojo outside city limits, the party has pursued a policy of open hostility to county government. Indeed, at times this has been fact-based. Far more often the motivation has been one of pure and spiteful disruption. I think daily life is challenging enough without waging an ongoing Uncivil Cold War, and I believe the Floyd County Republican Party doesn’t bear the primary burden of bad behavior in this matter.

With Seabrook as mayor, perhaps we can begin thinking about rowing together when applicable.

---

Is Mark Seabrook flawless?

Of course he isn’t.

Not a single human being occupying elected office is free of error, in spite of Deaf Gahan’s incessant, mirror-gazing and narcissistic insistence to the contrary. Seabrook’s record in city and county government can be thoughtfully dissected like any other, as with the coal dust disposal scandal occurring during his tenure as commissioner, or those disagreeing with his advocacy of the hospital sale.

No one’s perfect, leaders are elected to make decisions, and the chips fall. Some imperfections merit a higher level of scrutiny than others. However, of most importance to me as a lifelong left-winger is this consideration:

I wouldn’t endorse Seabrook or any other Republican if I thought for a moment they harbored secret plans to impose a vicious right-wing dictatorship on New Albany.

Yes; the higher the elected office, the more this prospect does concern me, but it’s entirely irrelevant insofar as City Hall in New Albany is concerned. After all, Gahan the purported progressive darling has made no effort whatever to impose a vicious left-wing dictatorship on the city.

Mind you, he has imposed a vicious, elitist, cliquish dictatorship dedicated to duping progressives in order to satisfy cash-hungry sycophants. However, this isn’t to be confused with left, right or any other ideological standpoint. Rather, it’s all about a small-timer, C-minus homeboy student’s obsession with pay-to-play patronage and cold, hard cash.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t endorse Seabrook if the best I could say about him is, “Well, at least he isn’t Gahan.”

If the equation devolves to “anyone except Gahan” then I’d be obliged to consider Dan Coffey’s independent mayoral candidacy, and although I know precisely what it means in political terms to be in Coffey’s position outside the two mainstream party camps, surely we all grasp that this election is about Seabrook and Gahan, one on one.

In conclusion, both tactically and cynically, I might support Seabrook to supplant Gahan, who simply has to go.

Personally, I’d rather vote FOR Mark Seabrook out of conviction that he’d be a good mayor.

And he would.

So I will.

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Endorsement Compendium:

• Vote Stefanie Griffith for New Albany City Council District 1.
• Vote Scott Stewart for New Albany City Council District 2.
• Vote for Thunder the Wonder Ferret as a write-in for New Albany City Council District 3.
• Vote Cisa Kubley for New Albany City Council District 4.
• Vote Josh "JT" Turner for New Albany City Council District 5.
• Vote Scott Blair for New Albany City Council District 6.
• Vote Al Knable and Christina Estill for New Albany City Council At-Large.
• Vote your conscience for New Albany City Clerk, as both candidates are excellent.
• ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.

---

Recent columns:

September 12: ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business (2016).

September 5: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, September 1989.

August 29: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

August 22: ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Divisiveness, or the condition wherein your opponent disrupts, but never you.

You may have noticed that the Floyd County Democratic Party seldom has anything positive to say about Republicans hereabouts ... and quite often the other way around, too.

Not exactly a revelation, but a factoid worth noting.

It's not a stretch to suggest that Democratic Party chairman Adam Dickey's default setting on the urban hustings is to dissent from Republican-dominated county government, disparage the dastardly opposition, mobilize city voters and seek to produce a majority of a single ballot from the discord thus engendered. 

Rather divisive, wouldn't you say?

Well, of course it is. Divisiveness is a hallmark of the two-party system. Both "sides" do it -- and if "unity" is the aim, why are there sides on the first place?

The whole point of politics is to divide the pool of voters into more or less likely groups for delivering a sales pitch, then to secure the support of the ones who seem to lean toward one's own side rather than the opponent's. Divisiveness is inevitable, isn't it? The trick is to reunify once the election's through, and that's a can of worms in itself.

None of this is particularly novel. I raise the topic of divisiveness (a four-syllable word, and consequently illegal in New Albanian political discourse) because we gadflies -- as well as our fellow dissenters, apostasists, resisters, contrarians, non-conformists, dissidents, skeptics, objectors, protesters, refuseniks, heretics and just plain stubborn yokels -- aren't being divisive at all.

Rather we're questioning the established order, examining the prevailing power structures and exercising free speech to do precisely what a newspaper would do if we had one: To ask questions of the pillars and expect sensible answers from them.

When the emperor prances about without any clothes, shouldn't we point out the absurdity? And shouldn't someone get him a damn robe, or something?

Telling the truth isn't divisive at all. It's obligatory, and an antidote to the prevailing Kool-Aid. The closer to the grassroots you are, the more necessary it gets.

No one ever said it would be easy. The path of least resistance is to accept the platitudes and go along to get along.

But what's the fun in THAT?

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business (2016).

The notion to repeat these thoughts from the Pre-Trump Pleistocene (okay, 2016) came when yet another News and Tribune staffer recently departed for greener fields at Louisville Business First, the latter having become an admitted source of information for me during the course of writing web site posts for Food & Dining Magazine. 

Let's turn back the clock.

---

June 23, 2016: ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

“I used to say I practiced clinical medicine, now I say I practice political medicine, because it’s the mother of all illnesses. And we have to fix this one if we’re going to fix the things that are literally killing us.”
-- Dr. Jill Stein

I’ll return to politics in a moment, because naturally business must come first. Note that my contempt for the breathless contents of business-oriented publications is boundless. It is eternal. It is the stuff of inebriated, chortling legend.

Talk numbers to me, baby.

Um, no. Rather not.

Business porn is where good writing goes to die, condemned to sadistic asphyxiation in the service of coded buzz-speak and greasy greenback envy of the sort that only a One Southern Indiana oligarchy fetishist truly can appreciate when curled up in pajamas by the stock market ticker app, with an ice-cold Bud Light Lime and a box of handy tissues – doused in aloe, of course.

However, every now and then a stray provocation slips through my cordon sanitaire, as here:

How to survive political hostility when trying to run a business, by Terry Brock, Contributing Writer, Louisville Business First

Whoa! Have you sensed the level of political rivalry in this year’s election?

This seems to be much more intense this year. Notice the attacks on Trump supporters and the attacks by Trump supporters on opposition attendees at Trump rallies.

Yes, the American political scene has been known to be particularly venomous throughout history ...

… Yet, this election seems even more vicious, at least by 20th and 21st century standards. I’m wondering how it affects relationship marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs like you and me.

Here are some ideas …

Venomous and vicious – which is to say, potentially important. This election may influence everyday business reality for generations to come. It may engender revolution, ignite reaction, or reinforce an uneasy status quo.

In short, the 2016 election truly matters for small business persons and entrepreneurs, and consequently, the consultant Brock’s bullet points counsel complete and utter detachment from the election (for their maddening details, kindly fluff Louisville Business First by visiting its web site).

• Political sharing idea #1 — Politics shouldn’t mix with business
• Political sharing idea #2 — You’ve got more important things to do — like focus on business!
• Political sharing idea #3 — If you must share politics, do it in the right place
• Political sharing idea #4 — You can lose customers
• Political sharing idea #5 — Avoid politics in public

And who’s this guy again?

Terry Brock gives real-world, practical tips on how to generate revenue and increase productivity.

Not that 1Si's self-interested cadres care one jot, but my practical advice differs markedly. I generally advise small business persons and entrepreneurs to make an earnest effort to understand politics and elections, particularly at the local level, where it impacts them the most, and to actively participate in these exercises.

Concurrently, is there any valid excuse for squandering potentially productive work time by reading business-oriented publications?

Business writing should not ever be mixed with actual business. Don’t these business people have more important things to do than read -- you know, like focusing on their businesses?

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In mid-rant, I was reminded of a passage in Dylon Jones’ remarkable profile of “The Independent” (that’s me) in the June, 2016 edition of Louisville Magazine.

The profile  -- as of 2019 it isn't accessible on-line, but Dylon told me he'll fix that -- is required reading for the likes of Terry Brock, Wendy Dant Chesser and Adam Dickey – but I digress all too readily.

Jones writes:

I have a conversation with someone at the (Bank Street Brewhouse) who threatens to hunt me down if I identify them. I could, but won’t. I don’t believe in “off the record,” especially not retroactively. But I do believe in letting certain wounds – whatever they may be – heal beyond public gaze.

“Did you get the part about how Roger destroyed his business?” they said. “No one from city hall comes here.”

Then: “Don’t quote me.”

“Well, who could I talk to about that?” I asked.

“Anyone on the street,” they said.

As Elton John once observed, it’s a sad, sad situation – and it’s getting more and more absurd. After all, if it’s true that "city hall" stopped coming to Bank Street Brewhouse, then I managed to achieve a cherished goal of Americans from coast to coast, for it means I personally saw to it that GOVERNMENT GOT OUT OF OUR LIVES.

You’d think I’d be paid handsomely for this, not basely insulted. If only I could bottle this government-free formula, and hastily sell it to AB-InBev; that’d get my face on the cover of a business publication, for sure.

---

It’s an unspeakably dreary landscape. There’s the professional business consulting class, recommending that entrepreneurs accustomed to taking fabulous risks – who’d never have gone into small business in the first place without standing tall for something – adopt generic, beige Pablum as a staple of their professional diets.

Then there’s the shrill claim that political extremism destroyed my own business, and that’s odd, because when I behaved exactly the same way for more than 15 years while standing atop a soap box situated behind the bar at Rich O’s, my behavior was edifying, entertaining and educational; probably an alcoholic Commie, though few seemed to mind.

Brock would be so proud of me: I helped generate revenue and increased productivity. We have medals for that, right?

And plaques?

However, there is a difference in scope between eras, and it is genuinely instructive. During the period of my nightly barside preaching at the Public House, subject matter typically pertained to national and international affairs.

There were opinions aplenty, but they were safe, in the sense that it’s a breeze to pontificate when lubricated, and there is no way to directly influence the outcome.

Because denouncing the Iranians from a barstool is easy. Repeating these words on a downtown Tehran street corner to their faces – well, that’s hard. Distance and liquidity enhance vehemence and courage.

And yet, if my university political science professor was right, and politics is all about the allocation of power … and if Tip O’Neill was right, and all politics is local … then for a local business, the allocation of local power is a critically important local variable, isn’t it?

Local political power structures play a huge role in determining business conditions and influencing business decisions, every day, throughout the year – don’t they?

And these local political power brokers live right here among us, right?

Theoretically, their proximity is as sweaty and direct as democracy gets. The grassroots can be no closer to you than the councilman residing two doors down. If a two-way street would lift your business, and yet it still runs in only one direction, then political power is being arrayed against you.

How does one hope to rectify the imbalance and fix the street without becoming part of the solution?

But no one from city hall comes here …

Perhaps their absence is a reflection on the prejudices of city hall, not the business or the proprietor, and their negligence is an abuse of political power, not its proper exercise.

Perhaps my political involvement has been grassroots-up, in reply to their top-down, because contrary to American default assumptions, self-defense still can exist apart from firearms.

Perhaps we can cure the mother of all illnesses right here at home, where it’s as close as it will ever be, but administering the needed medicine requires involvement and engagement, not cowering from a distance, head stuck in a business publication, pants around ankles.

1Si espouses unity on behalf of The Man, but I prefer unity in defiance of the Man. As citizen Franklin said, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

He was a good businessman, that Benny.

---

The preceding prompted a follow-up the very next day.

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June 24, 2016: Business publications, and why I should know better than to tangle with an Over 50 Marketing Thought Leader. 

Yesterday my weekly column made reference to an Insider Louisville piece by Terry Brock, hastily assuming he was a local writer, but this is mistaken. He actually lives in Florida, and appears to be quite renowned.

I appreciate that Brock took the time to post a comment about my column, and of course I'd love to have a beer with him if he comes through town while on tour.

Terry Brock has left a new comment on your post:

ON THE AVENUES: There's no business like no business, and it's none of your business.

Brilliant piece, Roger! I love every word of it. Yes, I believe we need a separation of business and politics and businesses should focus on their business.

You raise some excellent points about local issues. That is important. For many of us, "local" is Planet Earth. We focus on issues that affect many and are tied together based more on values and aspirations than a defined piece of dirt where we happen to live currently.

Hey, I would *LOVE* to talk with you more about this. Sounds like these types of discussions would be best over some of that good craft beer you have up there in New Albany! For doing such an outstanding job on this piece, I owe you a nice beer, or other beverage of your choice!

Thanx for writing this. Simply brilliant, Roger! Keep up the good work!

Terry Brock - TerryBrock.com

Here's my most renowned contribution to business marketing. It's rather politicized, though only because I fully intended it to be that way.

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Terry Brock and I never got together, unfortunately. My former business finally disgorged me in February of 2018, and City Hall currently is engaged in a great struggle to renew its pay and privileges for another four years. When Dylon posts the profile text, I'll link readers to it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have several "business publications" to ignore ... and adult beverages to consume.

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Recent columns:

September 5: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to traditional Danish lunch in Copenhagen, September 1989.

August 29: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to "Pagan Life," a weekly column devoted to heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

August 22: ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

August 15: ON THE AVENUES: Breakfast is better with those gorgeous little herrings.

Even without Trump's one-percenters and Boris's Brexiteers, "Neoliberalism has reached its Brezhnev phase."

Because the way out from detrimental neoliberalism isn't more of the same.

What we are finding with Neoliberalism Economicus is that it is not adaptive for individuals or societies. Rather it works like a parasite that bleeds energy away from its host with false stories that appear beneficial at first but are ultimately deadly. The virus grows by perpetuating fictions. These fictions are attractive because their appeal does not rely on facts but rather on the need for power and status. The neoliberal narrative has remained compelling in part because it appeals to powerful interests in society and those who emulate them.

Can someone find us a big-ass trash can, ashcan, ash heap, dustbin, dust heap or garbage heap? We'll be needing one, the other or them all to deposit the remains of neoliberalism.

The insidious ideology pushing us towards a Brexit cliff-edge, by George Monbiot (The Guardian)

At first sight it’s incomprehensible. Why risk everything for a no-deal Brexit? Breaking up their own party, losing their parliamentary majority, dismantling the UK, trashing the economy, triggering shortages of food and medicine: how could any objective, for the Conservative and Unionist party, be worth this? What good does it do them?

Yes, some people will benefit. To judge by recent donations to the Conservative party, some very rich people approve of Boris Johnson’s policies. A no-deal Brexit might favour hedge funds that thrive on uncertainty, financiers seeking to short the pound, vulture capitalists hoping to mop up cheap property if markets collapse. But the winners are likely to be greatly outnumbered by the losers, among whom are many powerful commercial interests.

We make a mistake when we assume that money is the main motivation. Our unreformed, corrupt and corrupting political funding system ensures it is an important factor. But what counts above all else is ideology, as ideology successfully pursued is the means to power. You cannot exercise true power over other people unless you can shape the way they think, and shape their behaviour on the basis of that thought. The long-term interests of ideology differ from the short-term interests of politics.

This, I believe, is the key to understanding what is happening today. The Brexit ultras in government are not just Brexit ultras. They are neoliberal ultras, and Brexit is a highly effective means of promoting this failed ideology. It’s the ultimate shock doctrine, using a public emergency to justify the imposition of policies that wouldn’t be accepted in ordinary times. Whether they really want no deal or not, the threat of it creates the political space in which they can apply their ideas ...

"David Koch was a rich man who used his fortune to influence our politics with an eye toward further enriching himself."

One malign influencer has gone, and of course that's for the greater good, but Koch's passing does nothing to alter the rot because his money remains right here, undoubtedly to be used for the same nefarious ends as before. 

David Koch Got What He Paid For, by John Nichols (The Nation)

The late Koch brother bought influence using PACs and other proxies. A prank call to Scott Walker revealed the truth about how the Kochs had their way with Republican politicians.

 ... Enter Scott Walker, a struggling Wisconsin politician who was angling for a governorship. The Kochs threw their support behind Walker, with David Koch declaring: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years. We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.” According to The Palm Beach Post, where the quote originally appeared, Koch used “we” to refer to Americans for Prosperity, the group that he and his brother used as one of their vehicles for manipulating our politics.

Even before he knew the Kochs personally, Walker recognized what the brothers had done for him, and for ambitious young men like him. Spending by the Kochs, via direct donations and independent expenditures, played a definitional role in generating the “Republican wave” of 2010, the year Walker was elected.

Walker’s understanding of this debt led to an incident that revealed much of what Americans will remember about David Koch, even though he was not an actual participant. In February 2011, as tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, librarians, and their allies marched in opposition to Walker’s attack on unions and collective-bargaining rights for public employees, the phone rang in the governor’s office. The caller identified himself as David Koch and was put through to Walker.

The caller—a brilliant prankster (the late Ian Murphy) who was pretending to be Koch—was soon trading notes with the governor about the “vested interest” that Koch Industries had in Walker’s assault on unions. The 20-minute conversation revealed the obsequious deference of an elected Republican governor to the benefactors of his 2010 race—and, as it would turn out, of the campaigns that followed for Walker, who faced a citizen-demanded recall and tough reelection fights before he was finally defeated in 2018.

Here’s the critical exchange from 2011:

Koch caller: “Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.”

Walker: “All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support in helping us move the cause forward…”

Koch caller: “Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. ”

Walker: “Well, that’s just it.”

Yes, that is just it.

The manipulations of democracy that David Koch and his brother funded—extreme gerrymandering, defenses of an Electoral College that has prevented popular-vote winners from becoming president, voter suppression schemes, and assaults on unions—did much to elect Republicans like Walker. But the most recent Republican president has turned the movement David and Charles Koch envisioned toward extremes that more closely mirror the fever dreams of their father. And if Democrats ever get their act together, they will, for the sake of not just their party but the future of society and the planet, be required to upend what the Kochs have done.

So the full measure of David Koch’s influence has yet to be made.

Elections are coming, so participate in the Municipal Digital Forum at The Aggregate.

Here's the lowdown in their own words.

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Municipal Digital Forum

We are a little under three months away from Southern Indiana’s Municipal Elections (held on November 5th) and ideas, plans, and details have not yet been highlighted or announced by many candidates from either political party. We hope this will be a way for them to do so.

In an effort to make information more accessible and to ensure that voters know where the candidates stand on the issues of the day, The Aggregate News is hosting a Digital Forum.

Candidates from across Southern Indiana are encouraged to answer the questions we ask in this Google Form. From there, we will create a guidebook for anyone to access on our site for free.

In addition to asking candidates for more information and direct answers to our questions, we will also be conducting an informal survey (not a scientific poll) of Southern Indiana voters, you can fill out the information in this Google Form.

We will be looking for common threads, areas of bipartisan agreement, and suggested solutions to problems from voters and candidates alike. From there, we’ll do some digging and offer thoughtful analysis and investigative reporting on the results.

We hope you’ll join us in making information more accessible across our region!

For candidates and businesses who may wish to advertise on the candidate guide, fill out this form.

Forms will be closed on September 20th at midnight.

A thought for independent downtown business owners: Those favoring an equitable distribution of power must begin by organizing themselves, so as to achieve it.

Last night I had a few words to say about the forthcoming demise of NA Social, and my comments have generated varied responses.

This is good. It's why I write in the first place. It was my aim all along to follow last evening's post with this one, so to extend the discussion, it's important not to confuse the overarching issue.

A political scientist named Harold Lasswell defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how," and concurrently, the late Tip O'Neill was fond of repeating the axiom, "all politics is local."

So: Politics is power, and politics is local.

Kelly's original experience with Develop New Albany was about local politics, in the sense that Develop New Albany, with whom she butted heads, is an organization with "official" power derived from City Hall. In effect, City Hall has "recognized" DNA as the holder of certain powers, and understandably, DNA protects the power it has gained.

Unfortunately for DNA, the power it has gained falls almost exclusively into the realm of glorified prom planning committee. This is a favorable outcome for political power-brokers, but unfortunately it results in DNA neglecting other aspects of its Main Street mission -- to its detriment.

After Kelly's horrific experience with Taco Walk, she created NA Social, a very informal and highly creative pop-up concept, which in the eyes of some constituted a challenge to the power held by DNA.

In some ways it may have been true, and in others not; Kelly herself may or may not have had the interest or ability to nurture a long-term challenge to DNA's sanctioned pre-eminence. She may or may not have cared.

These distinctions aren't important. What's important is that power once acquired seldom is relinquished without a negotiation (at the very least), and often action of a more direct nature. If nothing else, Kelly proved that.

Personalities aside, the existence of two similar entities (NA Social and DNA) should not have been an issue. But pie slice dimensions obviously still matter, and given the realities of an evolving scene, dissonance probably was inevitable.

As I've said many times before, and it's a plain, simple fact, the fundamental problem with an organization like DNA tying itself so closely with City Hall -- this one or any other one -- is that when DNA asks a business to "join," the business faces interpreting an unspoken and delicate question: Will refusal to "join" be interpreted as withholding tribute from an incumbent mayor's power structure? 

Politics is power, politics is local. Don't think for a millisecond that the prime possessor of political power at this moment (Jeff Gahan) isn't aware that an organization like DNA can be exploited to enhance his own power. It can be, and it is being.

The difference between this unquestionable reality and the classic experience of paying protection money to the mafioso is one of degree alone. The basic principle is exactly the same.

In turn, this is why I've always advocated that independent business owners have only one true path if they wish to protect and advance their interests as stakeholders: join together as indies to create an indie business association, which organizes indies to assist indies. 

As it stands, the city's current political power-brokers agree publicly that somewhere north of $50 million (it might well be twice that) has been invested during the past few in the general vicinity of downtown ... by indies. This outstrips government's own investments by a huge margin.

What these same political power-brokers won't concede, at least aloud, is that if the extent of these investments were to be backed by an independent business alliance looking out for its own interests, spheres of influence (read: power) would be altered overnight.

Another simple fact: Among those City Hall operatives currently representing the city downtown, not one has been an entrepreneur, an independent business owner/operator, or anything at all apart from an emissary of political power. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, nor right about it. It's neuter. However, I'd suggest it's a telling commentary that people unaware of what indie operators experience are constantly eager to offer advice to those who are.

One undisputed practice that unites all of this:

"divide and conquer"

To gain or maintain power by generating tension among others, especially those less powerful, so that they cannot unite in opposition.

Even as "divide and conquer" occurs downtown insofar as City Hall's relationships with its constituents are concerned, another factor has disrupted what formerly was a more collegial, egalitarian setting -- maybe for the better, maybe not.

I refer to a more opportunistic class of potential investors, less motivated by the entrepreneurial zeal of current stakeholders, and interested primarily in the percentages as they pertain to profitability. Power is money, and money talks. Speaking only for myself, I'm forever suspicious of talking about money, and money alone.

But being divided and lacking a common vision is an invitation to those viewing what we've built as a vehicle for profit, absent the equity so many smallholders have invested along with their cash.

My conclusion is that NA Social is like a band that came along, had some hits, played some shows, then disappeared again. Comebacks are forever possible, but as I can say from personal experience, the sole necessary ingredient for a comeback is going away.

Anyone desiring independence during at a time when the chosen and anointed few typically behave like the Ticketmaster/Live Nation monopoly will find it's not easy. Stop allowing yourselves to be divided and conquered by those who derive their power from your labors. They can't do it on their own, so why allow them to charge you so that they claim credit?

And I'm not talking about DNA, either. Those favoring an equitable distribution of power must begin by organizing themselves, so as to achieve it.

Come what may, I gotta be me.

The clock for New Albany's municipal elections in 2019 has started ticking in earnest. As the article quoted below attests, the single biggest issue is convincing those of you prone to incessant complaints about local issues to realize that local issues typically are resolved locally.

You may love NA Confidential and you may hate it, but one thing you cannot say about this entity is that we ignore what's happening, right here where we live.

During our time in Gdansk, the Confidentials spent much time talking about current events, whether they pertain to the planet, our country, this city or ourselves. Our inescapable conclusion is one of transition. Old realities always yield to new ones, but it seems the process is particularly acute at the moment. Maybe it's always been.

I've spent much time lately agonizing publicly about where this blog has been, and where it's going. There's no need to revisit these ruminations, apart from saying there's a tightrope I've been walking; where it leads is anyone's guess, and all I know for sure is I can't go backward.

As for politics, politics is about power, but power needn't be entirely political. This may or may not have anything to do with me, although each of us would like to enjoy a semblance of power when it comes to our own destiny -- whatever that means.

Maybe this: There's a place for me somewhere in this place.

I've never known exactly where or what this is, and I may not always have clicked the right boxes when it comes to pursuing it. Still, there seems to be little choice apart from continuing to grope forward in an effort to find out.

It'd be nice to enjoy universal approval of friends and neighbors in the process, and make fewer enemies, except the one irrefutable conclusion to be drawn from the journey thus far is the sheer unlikelihood of such an outcome. I can't change the past, although I can change how I interact in the future. 

In the coming months, it will remain my aim to be part of the local solution, and to refrain from being a problem.

Does this resolution involve politics, business, advocacy or polemics?

Of course it does, and that's about all I can say. I'd be more precise if I could. Whether this means running for, against, away or towards this, that or another is impossible for me to say. At this point, all I know for sure is that my evident lot in life is to give a damn, as opposed to not caring.

It's a blessing, or a curse. 

National Politics Has Taken Over America, by Emma Green (The Atlantic)

Democrats are finally investing in state-level elections. But candidates in those races face big obstacles in trying to get voters to care.

 ... Despite her daughter’s objections, Felicia French decided to run. At first, Anna agreed to help her out for a few weeks, which turned into a few months. Then she was hooked. “The further we went on the campaign, the more energized I got,” Anna said. “The people we were meeting … saw my mom as this person who could really create positive change.” The more she saw other people getting excited about a state-level election, she said, “the more I realized: Well, maybe this is the way we change it.”

snip

Elections on this level have a different feel than multimillion-dollar national races. Candidates are less polished. Many of the issues are more immediate. With margins of victory sometimes as close as a couple hundred votes, it’s easier to imagine that every ballot could determine the outcome of races.

But for all the inspiration that state- and local-level elections might offer, candidates also face extraordinary challenges—including having to argue that their races actually matter. National issues seem to have become the center of American politics, expanding to take over even the most parochial races.

This year, a slew of organizations, volunteers, and nominees have tried to refocus voters’ attention on what’s happening in their states and towns. To succeed, they’ll have to transform an entire political culture in which voters are obsessively focused on Washington, intensely tribalized, and essentially ignorant of how government can powerfully shape their lives, starting at the statehouse.

Former speaker of the house tip o’neill used to evangelize his view that “all politics is local,” but these days, it often seems like all politics is national. Local news coverage has collapsed and become increasingly centralized. President Donald Trump is at the center of every cable-news story. Research suggests that voters are less engaged and informed on local issues than national ones. And according to organizations working to influence state- and local-level races this year, faraway scandals have often been the central conversation when local candidates knock on voters’ doors.

snip

The premise of federalism is that government works best when it’s functioning at levels big and small; that politicians can be most effective and accountable when they are close to the people they represent. In practice, it can be difficult to see evidence of the connection between local politicians and their constituents—and easy to see why so many people seem to prefer national battles over state-level politics.

Eight Days of Gdansk, October 30: Gdańsk raises the flag (again) against a wave of populism sweeping Poland.

I've wanted to visit Gdansk for a very long time, since at least the mid-1980s when Solidarity faced off against the Polish communist regime. For various reasons, I never made it to Gdansk until now.

When it comes to the lengthy history of a place like Gdansk, it can be exhausting just reading the Wikipedia article. However, we need to begin somewhere.

Gdańsk (formerly Danzig) is a Polish city on the Baltic coast. It is the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship and the capital of Kashubia, Poland's principal seaport and the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.

The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay (of the Baltic Sea), in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a population approaching 1.4 million. Gdańsk itself has a population of 460,427 (December 2012), making it the largest city in the Pomerania region of Northern Poland.

During the coming week, as we're on the ground, there'll be pre-written daily posts highlighting a few interesting aspects of Gdansk.

As an introduction, a pertinent question: Does the emergence of the reactionary, xenophobic and authoritarian Law and Justice party in Poland imply an opposite and equal reaction -- or, something like a Solidarity Mach II, with the city of Gdansk again leading the resistance?

The answer goes beyond the merely academic. After all, this troubled planet is the real world, not the Disney variety.

Free City of Gdańsk – How Poland’s window to the world rises against populism, by Wojciech Ciesla (Investigate-Europe)

Gdańsk, Poland’s window to the world and cradle of the Solidarity democracy movement, raises the flag again against a wave of populism sweeping the country.

In an icy chill, residents of Gdańsk, never before connected to any movement, are protesting outside a local court against a new law of the Law and Justice party (PiS) that seeks to subordinate the judiciary and local elections to government authority. Around 400 people have gathered in the cold. They carry lit candles, their symbol of defiance. Across Poland tens of thousands more have taken to the streets to protest against a wholesale power grab by the governing PiS.

Two years of democratic backsliding have already passed in Poland under the leadership of the PiS. Step by step the party has stripped the judiciary of its independence. The latest law has provoked protests in more than 40 cities. In Gdańsk the few hundred protestors risk easy identification by the police, who, according to Roman Daszczyński, journalist and editor-in-chief of the www.gdansk.pl portal, record the protest from beginning to end. People are well aware of this but still come out despite the fear among those who work in state-controlled enterprises or institutions of reprisals. Gdańsk city is controlled by the liberal Civic Platform, but the voivodship, the next level up of regional administration which employs thousands of people, is controlled by Law and Justice. It’s much easier to find anonymity among the tens of thousands of people protesting in Warsaw, says Daszczyński.

A familiar figure emerges

From within the crowd, candles flickering in the cold breeze, a corpulent figure with a familiar grey walrus mustache steps out on to the stairs. Lech Wałęsa, the legendary Gdańsk shipyard electrician who in 1980 led the march to freedom of a 38 million-strong nation. Wałęsa, the first President of independent Poland after 1990 and still a resident of Gdańsk, stands with the protesters.

“You have probably noticed that things are going badly with Poland,” he says. “PiS are destroying everything we have gained so far. We are fighting it with the whole world behind us. I had thought I would be able to take a rest. I’ve already worked a bit in my life. But from what I see we have to wake up and get back to work. I do not agree with the destruction of Poland. We must do everything to reject this group from power as soon as possible!” says Wałęsa to huge applause ...

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Next summer will be the 30th anniversary of my month’s stay in the German Democratic Republic, or as we still refer to the fading image in our cracked rear view mirrors, East Germany.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to spend more than three months in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and the USSR. This period remains a defining experience in my life, something that continues to intrigue and haunt me all these years later.

Regular readers of the NA Confidential blog know this, seeing as I’ve told the story so many times before. In 1989, I was still traveling in Europe when suddenly the Berlin Wall came down. No one expected it, least of all the Ost Berliners who lined up at checkpoints on the fateful evening of November 9 with little more in mind than seeing what life was like on the other side.

Earlier the same day, border guards would have opened fire on them for trying to cross.

For them, for me, for virtually all of us, the Cold War’s spheres of influence seemed eternal at the time. We had no idea drastic change was just around the corner. There were minor fissures, hairline cracks and other warning signs, but no indication they wouldn’t be resolved within the overall context of the postwar victors’ division of power.

Here, there and everywhere, politics ultimately is about power -- who has it, who doesn’t, who is in, who is out -- and who ultimately decides. In East Germany, the Communist regime addressed the people like this: If you’re not with us, you’re against us.

However, it was different in Hungary, no less a Communist state than the GDR, and to be sure, capable of undemocratic threats and repression when necessary. Hungarian leader Janos Kadar artfully borrowed money from the capitalist countries in order to make consumer goods more readily available, thus altering the political power equation: If you’re not against us, you’re for us.

These days it is assumed that political power is about money and vice versa, but in fact it isn’t always about money, even for Mitch McConnell, and as numerous small-time, tinhorn dictators have proven. Not all those Communist-era kingpins were in it for the money, although the closer you got to the Balkans, the more likely there’d be noticeable self-enrichment. Like Kadar, some of them were personally austere.

I’ve always cited Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu as the worst composite of all worlds. He was a true doctrinal believer in Marxism-Leninism who didn’t at all practice what he preached, amassing personal wealth amid widespread societal misery, and also imbued with an evangelistic mission to inflict his inner aesthetic (read: atrocities) on a captive population.

It was power, all right, and the oppressive ability to puff his own ego by commanding uniformity in thought and design from people who didn’t possess the means to resist -- or so Ceausescu thought, until he learned the hard way.

You’ll recall the year 1989 concluding with Ceausescu in the company of his widely detested wife Elena, the two of them captured by revolutionaries, given only a cursory trial and then shot on the spot in the courtyard of a school.

It is reputed that those soldiers chosen to carry out the verdict refused the option of a conscience-salving random blank round, and were so eager they actually started shooting before the video was ready to record the executions.

Frustrated small-timers like Ceausescu who possess grand, unfulfilled ambitions invariably become the worst leaders of all, and to repeat, it isn’t always about the money. Rather, their purported political stewardship becomes a process for assuaging the pain of being picked last for kickball in elementary school.

They begin by seeking vengeance against their perceived betters, but like any addiction, soon too much evening-up isn’t enough, and it doesn’t take long before these big fish in small ponds are mashing members of their own peer group underfoot.

Granted, some of them die with their boots off, in bed. Sick and old, Kadar began seeing the ghosts of the people he’d ordered killed on his way to the top. All the goulash communism in Budapest couldn’t help him by then, and Shakespeare would have had a field day with Kadar’s dementia-laden inner terror.

In 1989, the DDR’s Erich Honecker already was suffering from cancer, perhaps the outcome of his nation’s institutionalized environmental catastrophe. Honecker fled the collapsing police state of his own creation and washed up in Chile, where the terminal disease killed him with the same remorseless efficiency as policeman manning his wall’s many towers targeted potential escapees.

And so I say death to chains … and to tyrants, every last one of them.

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Maybe I’m digressing, maybe not, so let me try to arrive at a point. While a particular monopoly on political power may seem to be permanent and irreversible, history is filled with evidence to the contrary, and in 1989, as explained here, I witnessed it myself.

The Berlin Wall would stand forever, right up to the point when emboldened ordinary people began chipping at the asbestos-laced monstrosity with screwdrivers, shovels, tire irons and their bare hands. In less than a year, Germany was reunified. The East Bloc disappeared almost overnight, and a few years later, so did the USSR.

The elites, juntas and cliques may seem to have all the power, all the money, all the propaganda, and all the guns – metaphorical or otherwise.

But they never, ever have a monopoly on truth, honesty or simple human decency.

Paranoia’s a big destroyer. So is hubris. Even worse is the reality once addressed by John Lennon: “One thing you can’t hide, is when you’re crippled inside.”

It can be hidden for a while, though not forever. Back in 2008, there was a huge red maple on the west side of our house. It seemed healthy enough, then one night we heard a crash. A branch had fallen, barely missing our car parked in the driveway. Shining a flashlight up the trunk, we could see the tree was hollow and termite infested.

There was little choice except to have the red maple taken down, which was done just a few days before the damaging straight-line winds from the hurricane occurring to the southwest, in the Gulf of Mexico, which probably would have knocked the hollow tree on our house.

I really hated losing that tree. But we needed to be rid of it before further damage occurred. Trees are to be loved, but has anyone of sound mind ever fretted over losing a despot?

This guy got it right.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This passage wasn’t written by Vaclav Havel, Lech Walesa or even the fellow clad in denim carving away at the Berlin Wall with his souvenir Bulgarian pen knife.

Rather, it was Thomas Jefferson.

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