Tag: liberalism

The Trump Re-Election Campaign in Los Angeles.

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On foot to LA Fitness on Sepulveda this morning, I passed Wendy’s near Erwin. 

It was about 7:30 AM, and the restaurant wasn’t opened yet. There were no cars in the takeout lane. 

But there, in the alley, sitting along the curb, across from the takeout window, was an old woman squatting and peeing. Her urine came out and ran down towards the sidewalk. I just kept walking.

Later on, after the gym, she was asleep on the bus bench.

A temporary home.

There are no adequate words to describe the degradation and humiliation that public defecation brings to both the perpetrator and the witness.

Her normal biological action did not rank up there with the tens of thousands who live in group tents, in trash camps, along sidewalks, under bridges, within public parks in the City of Angels on Hiatus.

Just one of many living in the filth and neglect of our city.

But this is reality in LA and in so many other cities like Seattle, Portland and San Francisco that once thought such acts unthinkable. All these cities hate Trump. And all these cities call themselves sanctuaries.

A sanctuary to me is a holy place, a reverent place, a place kept scrupulously clean because people worship there and respect the ideals that make a place a sanctuary from all the evils of life, all the injustices. Inside a sanctuary there is quiet, and calm and peace and you go there to pray and find solace. There are churches, there are mosques, there are synagogues, there are temples, there are parks and courtyards that are sanctuaries all over the world.

What kind of sanctuary is present day Los Angeles?

We don’t have a single public park un-desecrated by trash, shopping baskets, sleeping drunks, tents. Perhaps 30% of the bus stops are makeshift homeless homes, pushing out legitimate bus riders who wait on their feet in the blistering sun.

Woodley Park, 2018.
  • Bus Bench: Sepulveda at Victory.

We have a hapless and synthetic mayor, Mr. Garbageciti, whose public pronouncements are so ineffective that they carry the weight of a meme.

In every car and in every kitchen across Los Angeles people of every political persuasion are asking: how can this be happening?

As hated as Trump is in this state, with every illegality and breakdown of law and order, ordinary liberal minded and tolerant people in California are moving away from the Democratic Party ideals of understanding, empathy, government regulation or government program, and hankering for a strong man or woman who will take drastic, emergency and militant steps to stop the disease of allowing people to live and do everything publicly they should be doing privately. 

The surprise that awaits liberals in 2020 is that anyone should be surprised when Trump is re-elected. .

1960: Peace March at Kester and Noble in Sherman Oaks, CA.

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Photo by George Brich, Valley Times./ LAPL/Public Domain

At the height of the Cold War, a brave and liberal minded group of progressive people marched through Los Angeles and eventually ended up in Moscow where they worked to defuse tensions between the US and the Soviet Union.

Los Angeles at that time was a conservative, anti-communist city whose main industry, Hollywood, was just emerging from the blacklist and any association with Russia was tantamount to career suicide.

The Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA) was an American anti-war group, created in 1957. Its purpose : resist the US government‘s testing of nuclear weapons. It used non-violence to oppose atomic military tools.

The group was often attacked as pacifist and for its welcoming of African-Americans into the fold.

Photograph article dated December 22, 1960 partially reads, “Eight foot–sore peace walkers marched through the Valley Wednesday on the 11-month tour that will take them from San Francisco to Moscow, Russia. The placard-bearing marchers, who represent the Committee for Nonviolent Action, stopped Wednesday night at Highland avenue and Hollywood boulevard in Hollywood. They will remain in the Los Angeles area until Christmas day when they will resume their march toward Tucson, Ariz. In addition to having their board and room paid for by the committee, which is composed of 60 Americans, the hikers have seven administrators and advance publicity men making the tour with them.” Bruce McIntyre, 20, leads the peace walking team along Ventura Blvd. near Noble Ave.

The Color Has Changed, the Situation Remains the Same.

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In the aftermath of the glow over President Elect Obama’s win, the great national back pat and international acclaim for our nation, continues. WE ELECTED A DARK SKINNED MAN! Tears were pouring out, because our racist country could now point to that one example who surmounted the odds and would now take the oath of office in January 2009.

But as Shelby Steele points out in the Los Angeles Times, Obama has been masterful at putting forth an idealism that implies that a vote against him would be an act of cynicism. “His talent was to project an idealized vision of a post-racial America — and then to have that vision define political decency. Thus, a failure to support Obama politically implied a failure of decency.”

Steele argues that some white Americans would like to vote for a black person because it absolves them of the sin of racism. He writes that Obama’s racial identity, not his political views, form the strength of his new compact with the American people. “In fact, this was his only true political originality. On the level of public policy, he was quite unremarkable. His economics were the redistributive axioms of old-fashioned Keynesianism; his social thought was recycled Great Society. But all this policy boilerplate was freshened up — given an air of “change” — by the dreamy post-racial and post-ideological kitsch he dressed it in, “ Steele says.

But the larger issue, goes to the heart of how America sees itself in the world. We are convinced that our power is unlimited. That if we only put our minds and money to work, we can end terrorism, control global warming, make the Israelis and Palestinians love each other, and insure health care for everyone. True conservatives are wary of such great ambitions, but we have just come out of eight years of neo-conservatism with its doctrine of pre-emptive war and American exceptionalism.

When Obama takes office, the expectations will again be completely ridiculous. The world expects America to be different. Obama’s supporters think he will withdraw our troops from Iraq and begin to enact national health insurance.  But by February 1, 2009 I expect the honeymoon will be over.

I voted for Obama. I like Obama. In fact, he made me cry several times during his election campaign.  I’m glad he won.

But I am nauseated, tired and sick of hearing about how his melanin, and Kenyan father, somehow ushers in a new era of change.

Skin color as change is no change at all. It’s the same old racism.