Slideshows

They Moved the Moon: The California Genocide; a slideshow set to two Warren Zevon Songs
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They Moved the Moon: The California Genocide; a slideshow set to two Warren Zevon Songs

Also posted, in slightly different form, about four days ago on The Daily Kos. This diary and the slideshow which accompanies it, were inspired by Meteor Blades’ diary of June 25th, “On the 141st Anniversary of Custer’s Well-Remembered Last Stand, why is California’s Genocide Forgotten?” As a native Californian, albeit of European ancestry, I was wondering how I could have missed this, although I was certainly aware of the controversy surrounding Father Junipero Serra’s sanctification, as well as more vaguely aware of the lynchings, riots, and institutional racism occasionally (as I then thought) practiced against Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Chinese-Americans, Japanese Americans, and African-Americans. I was not aware of how systematic, murderously successful, and popularly and legally prevalent it was. When Meteor Blades’ title asks how people could have forgotten it, I found myself asking how I could have forgotten it? The answer is, as I am sure is true for most white Californians, is that we never learned about it in the first place, and what scraps we did know were largely the product of a highly selective and—let’s face it—whitewashed popular culture (as I remember, there were a couple of episodes of Bonanza—and I think one of Gunsmoke—that dealt with racism against Chinese immigrants, and every two or three seasons one of the longer running westerns would have an episode that would at least obliquely address unfair treatment of Native Americans).

Not to rehearse Meteor Blades well-researched and far superior diary, he recounts the steady, popularly-supported decimation of California’s indigenous population:

There was one massacre after another after another after another, in each of which more California Indians were killed than were soldiers of Custer’s regiment in Montana. White Californians, the vast majority of them newcomers, had reduced the California Indian population to about 30,000 by 1873.

Even more appalling (although not so surprising, given that I had been living in East Texas for twenty years by this time, so I was perfectly aware not only that such things had happened in the past, but that they were still going on), were the ways in which the legal, judicial, electoral, and economic systems were manipulated so that Native Americans could be rendered powerless, exploited, stolen from, and murdered with impunity, with the public support of both politicians and many local newspapers. According to Benjamin Madley in the Los Angeles Times (quoted at greater and even more horrifying length in Meteor Blades’ diary),

California’s Legislature first convened in 1850, and one of its initial orders of business was banning all Indians from voting, barring those with “one-half of Indian blood” or more from giving evidence for or against whites in criminal cases, and denying Indians the right to serve as jurors. California legislators later banned Indians from serving as attorneys. In combination, these laws largely shut Indians out of participation in and protection by the state legal system. This amounted to a virtual grant of impunity to those who attacked them.

Institutionalized racism and oppression thus go back to the very roots of California statehood, by no means limited to Orange County or South Central, as sometimes seems to be case in media portrayals. Of course, racism, brutality, and forced conversions dated back to the very founding of the Spanish Mission system, but there were qualitative and quantitive differences once the Gold Rush started and California joined the United States as it hurtled towards civil war. As Iberian points out in his comment on Meteor Blades’ diary:

The Spanish system and missions where oppressive, abusive and murderous but they were not genocidal. There wasn’t any intent of eliminating the native population. After the gold rush and statehood the native populations were intentionally exterminated, and the mixed and Spanish/Mexican populations prosecuted, assaulted and dispossessed in many cases, other Hispanics that came also for the gold rush also assaulted and the anti-Chinese hysteria raging in pogroms. All of it not only sanctioned by local and state officials but at the request of the local government and even California Senators in DC. Ethnic cleansing in California has a horrible history the worse for the native populations, but extending to many other ethnic groups.

As I remember, when I studied the local Native American tribes of Kern County back in grammar school, they were presented quite sympathetically: I still remember watching short films showing how the local natives ground acorns and made meal, while men hunted deer and participated in fascinating sweat lodge ceremonies. I realize now, of course, how dangerously easy it is to romanticize a people who essentially no longer exist. Such appropriated but conveniently invisible peoples provide one’s existence with history, continuity, and a kind of Edenic past; while by their absence they make no claims upon you in the present. With this in mind, here is a slideshow set to Warren Zevon’s “They Moved the Moon” and “Join Me in L.A.” I had considered using his brilliant “Carmelita” in the second half, but I must admit I kind of like it this way. Although probably not as well known, “Join Me” has a kind of snarky energy, and permits an ending of hopeful defiance—if not of optimism—about the future (I also learned a bit about the Tongva and other tribes that inhabited the Los Angeles basin, so the song allowed me to focus the slideshow even more locally in its second half). I had already done a slideshow on Holocaust denial, and another on the persecution of marginal groups from the Middle Ages to the present, but I felt maybe it was time to explore something more uncomfortably close to home. Anyway, here it is—while the slideshow doesn’t begin to do justice to the magnitude of the event, it does do something. What that is, remains for you to decide:

Slave to the Algo(Rhythm): A Grace Jones inspired Slideshow on Math, Alienation, Inequality, and Oppression
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Slave to the Algo(Rhythm): A Grace Jones inspired Slideshow on Math, Alienation, Inequality, and Oppression

Previously published (in slightly different form) on The Daily Kos. I had the rather unpleasant experience of being in prison lately. It wasn’t a surprise, in that it was a result of an arrest back in January that itself was the result of my own stupidity and despair. In essence, I turned myself into the court (as required) on Thursday morning at the end of June, went on the bus down to the County Jail around Thursday noon, and was in fact released by about one o’clock Friday afternoon. As the Torah I had brought to read was confiscated (I had been incorrectly told that you could bring a religious book—in fact you can’t bring anything from the outside at all without having it taken away at some point). Also taken (as I expected) were my self-phone, medication, a small amount of cash, and shoe laces, all of which were taken away at the local court where I was first processed, and then the rest of my clothes were exchanged for not totally unattractive prison blues and slippers when I arrived at County.  I never actually got assigned a bed, but—having identified myself as a member of a “special” population—was kept in a holding cell all night with other members of my “group.” Some seemed like nice people, some not so nice, and some simply disturbed; but the same could be said about the guards, deputies, and prison staff in more or less equal proportions.

Physically, the most unpleasant part was how cold it got, especially towards the end of the night, as it was impossible to get blankets or sheets, I suppose on the rationale that a prisoner’s death from hypothermia or exposure was easier to explain than suicide by bedsheet or blanket (although—if you were really determined to kill yourself and didn’t mind your corpse being partially unclothed—I’m pretty sure your prison-issued trousers would work just as well).  Psychologically, the worst part was the sense that you didn’t exist, as it quickly became apparent how practiced prison employees were at ignoring the inmates in this holding cell. You could actually see them turn to avert their eyes as they approached the long glass window that faced the prison corridor which basically everyone had to walk down in order to complete their processing and get assigned a bed and—I imagine—privileges like being able to get a book from the prison library.  When they reached the end of the long glass window, their heads would snap back, so they could see us (at most) out of the corner of their eye. Although decals on the windows told us in emphatic terms to contact the guards if someone tried to commit suicide, there seemed to be no way to do this, even if they were only a few feet away on the other side of the glass. Presumably, if you splashed enough blood on the windows, one of the more compassionate and observant guards would eventually notice. Please go below the fold for more, and a cool video I made.

My attorney had e-mailed me that I would be reporting for my 96 hour sentence with two days credit for time served. So I was surprised to discover on Thursday morning that the court had no record of my two days credit (my lawyer was not present) A number of people told me I might be released early, but it was unclear was who made the decision about early release, as it didn’t seem to be the bailiff or the judge I appeared before (it wasn’t really a hearing or a trial, just an appearance).  One of the sheriffs at the local jail explained that it was all based on how crowded the jail was and what category of prisoner you were. That’s when I understood: the decision would be made not be any human being, but by a computer that had been programed by human beings based on algorithms that they had designed at the behest of their employers. While I was certainly aware of algorithms, especially in terms of how they are used in Search Engines, the experience really brought home how much they have come to dominate virtually every aspect of modern life: not only search engines but the legal system, the financial sector, advertising, and even–increasingly—the arts.

As with firearms, there is nothing inherently bad about algorithms, but they can easily used for biased, unethical, or just plain evil purposes by human beings. As the old saying goes, numbers don’t lie, but people lie with numbers.  They inevitably reflect the biases and petty concerns of the people who design them and—too a much greater degree—the people who hire those programmers to design them. Anyway, I came up with the idea for this slideshow last Friday night around midnight, after I had gotten tired of playing find the shape in the stain (oh look, this one resembles a dinosaur; here’s one that looks like a turd, oh no, wait—I think it is . . . I think I’ll move further away). I actually had a copy of the eponymous Grace Jones album that “Slave to the Rhythm” was released on back in the eighties (a slightly different mix than the one I use for the slideshow), although I haven’t seen or listened to it in years.  By the way, I am not saying we should get rid of all algorithms, which is probably impossible as they are essentially hard wired into us, but merely that we should stop and think about what we are doing so that the algorithms we make will actually promote equity, fairness, and even connection to our fellow, suffering human brothers and sisters. It almost comes across as a joke when you state it like that, which is itself kind of sad. Anyway, here is the slideshow:

 Peace.
Sunshine Superman: A Relentlessly Optimistic Slideshow about Love
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Sunshine Superman: A Relentlessly Optimistic Slideshow about Love

I basically made this in response to a challenge from my psychologist to try to make a wholly optimistic, even happy slideshow. If you look at the ones I’ve posted so far, although they may evolve from hurting to healing, none of them are exactly odes to joy. Frankly, I haven’t posted the really dark ones, although you can see most of them on my YouTube channel. This one, for example, looks at the Holocaust and Holocaust denial, while this one looks at notable killings in Texas. None of them offers much in the way of consolation or hope, but they both came out of a very dark place and time in my life, which was actually only several months ago. I still wonder if they aren’t more accurate evaluations of the human condition that this one, which was inspired partly by my boyhood love of Donovan, and in part by my psychologist’s challenge. While there is a lot I like about it, at times it does seem a little false and phony to me (kind of like what is called a “Hollywood” ending, which is so popular precisely because it does not reflect what people too often experience in their actual, empirical and subjective experience). Personally, I’ve always been tempermentally inclined to agree with Dorothy Parker:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.

Actually, I thought that the “To Build a Rocket Boys” slideshow did a better job of getting across the emotional complexity of experience while at the same time maintaining a generally optimistic thrust.

Certainly, I do not deny the possibility of happiness, even with other people, despite Sartre’s famous saying about them. It certainly exists, and some people are better at it than others, porbably mostly because of their natural predisposition, but also because external circumstances–often beyond their control–inevitably impact them. Anyway, I hope you like it, and that it makes you feel good about yourself, other people, or both; if nothing else, perhaps it will hold out the possibility that things might get better.

 

Build a Rocket Boys: An Optimistic Slideshow inspired by Elbow’s “Lippy Kids”

I’m pretty sure that my earliest career aspiration was to be an aeronautical engineer. In part, I knew that such a path–combining as it did mathematical skill, engineering, and practical application–would please my Dad, who I desperately wanted to please. It was pretty much a given that I would go to Caltech, as he had done to get his geology degree, and I have fond memories of attending parent/child days at the college, whose obvious intention was to get the sons (and, to a lesser degree, daughters) of alumni to come to the venerable Pasadena institution as what would now be called “legacy” students. I was actually quite attracted to the idea of going. One of my few books growing up that I actually owned was a History of Flight, and I was fascinated by stories of the Montgofliers, Otto Lilienthal, Edmund Langley, the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtis, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Charles Lindbergh.  This was the sixties, and the romance of flight (e.g. “Catch Me if You Can”) and space travel were perhaps at their height. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a particularly skilled mathematician, my intuitive sense of space and ability to manipulate it were probably below average, and anything that required neatness, precision, a steady hand, and a keen eye (e.g. almost all scientific experiments) were pretty much beyond my sloppy, imprecise, clumsy, and near-sighted capabilities.

While I did eventually go to UCLA–a highly respected school on the west coast–there was little question that (in my father’s eyes at least) I was “settling” and taking the easy way out. Real scientists, those who did real work in the real world, whose work had fairly obvious real world consequences, went to Caltech; posers and liberal arts students went to UCLA.  In some sense that I still can’t quite explain, disappointing my father was worse than incurring his wrath, and it isn’t as if he would go on and on about what a failure I was. A look, a casual remark, or an occasional offhand gesture would be enough to convey the scope and magnitude of my inadequacy.

Nevertheless, I always kept my early interest in, even love of, flight and space travel. It was probably one of sources of my almost immediate attraction to the Elbow song, “Lippy Kids,” a song which seems to be about the intense friendships, almost arbitrary social rituals, and seemingly unlimited potential we still tend to identify with youth. To be honest, I don’t think the song is about building rockets in any literal way, but rather striving for and sometimes even achieving distant and lofty goals in whatever field of endeavor one might be drawn to. I had been kind of wanting to do a slideshow about this song (I love Elbow, by the way, and am really looking forward to seeing them again at The Wiltern this November), and two events last Tuesday sort of stimulated me to create this. The first was my psychologist suggesting that I might try making a slideshow that was wholly upbeat and optimistic as opposed to one that progressed from a bleak view of the world to a more positive one (e.g. “Bitter Salt,” and “Siren’s Song”). While this isn’t wholly optimistic, it comes close. Tuesday afternoon, I visited JPL on a tour, bringing my camera, and took lots of photos. This is actually the first slideshow I’ve done where some of the photography is actually my own, and I hope to develop that more in the future. The tour also brought back my early passions for flight and space travel, as well as the self-fulfillment (self-actualization?) that comes from doing something you love.  In that sense, it’s a kind of audio visual love letter to precocious, lippy kids everywhere. Hope you like it.

I am aware (as I hope is apparent in the slideshow) that it wasn’t just boys building rockets and studying science. With that in mind, this one is for Pam.

Season of the Witch: Revisited
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Season of the Witch: Revisited

“Season of the Witch” was so unlike Donovan’s generally optimistic, New Age-anticipating, romantic catalog that I always sort of assumed it was a cover (and I actually had a copy of his Greatest Hits growing up that plainly lists him as the writer).  The song’s sense of dislocation and paranoia, of things falling apart, seemed a world away from “Mellow Yellow,” “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,” or “Sunshine Superman,” even if you were never totally sure what the latter song was about.  Nevertheless, I loved his version of “Season,” and I still consider it about the best out there.

The slideshow was an interesting one to make, in that I started seeing connections between things, such as witch hunts and anit-semitisim, eugenics and white power, Hair Furor and King Leopold, that I had never really thought of as having much relation before. I also had no idea James Garfield had such a way with words, at least until he was assassinated. I originally planned it as examination of anti-Semitism, but it ended up becoming much broader than that, for better or worse, which is really for you to decide.

I was interested in the topic of Anti-Semitism, in part because–although I was raised as a Catholic and have no Jewish relations as far as I know–it seemed as if at least once a year a complete stranger would stop me on the street and ask me if I was Jewish. Sometimes they accepted my slightly apologetic denials without further questioning, although occasionally they could be quite persistent, seemingly absolutely certain about their identification. I, after all, had only my memories, as well as my personal and familial experience, to go on; they had . . . what, exactly?  Whatever it was, at least some of them seemed to have absolute faith in their ability to “divine” a Jew. I have to admit, it happened with enough regularity up until middle age, that I found myself wondering about what it was  that they were reacting to? My hair (dark, but not stereotypically curly), my nose (big but not hooked), my glasses (I never had the impression that bad eyesight was an ethnic or religious signifier)?  Could they be privy to some information about myself that had been kept hidden from me? Perhaps they wanted to invite me to some ultra-cool, ultra-exclusive party? Maybe they just wanted to put my name on a list for some mysterious future purpose, not necessarily a malevolent one, although I couldn’t help wondering a little.

I never really felt threatened, partly because these encounters usually took place on relatively populous, public streets, usually in the afternoon, and the tone of the questions usually came across as interested rather than hostile. Certainly, many people take pride in their ability to identify and “size up” other people, although I couldn’t escape drawing the conclusion that many such people aren’t nearly as expert at it as they seemed to think. I have no doubt they were right some of the time, but that isn’t really a very impressive trick of discernment. In any event, at about the time I turned forty, this annual ritual of mis-recognition evolved into a more benign form. Instead of being asked if I was Jewish, I started to be asked (again, by complete strangers) if I were Steven Spielberg? I quickly developed what seemed to be a convincing comeback for this: “No; he’s thinner, richer, and more talented than I am.” Rather to my disappointment, no one ever continued to insist that I was Spielberg in spite of my denials; my contention that I was overweight, not terribly rich, and not terribly talented was just so obviously, so empirically, so intuitively true, that they usually laughed, nodded, and walked away. No one, of course, ever asked who I was, but I have a feeling that this is not a question that gets asked much in modern American society, which may itself be symptomaic of the problems addressed in this slideshow:

Despite its rather bleak perspective on human beings, I hope somebody can take something positive out of it.

Kathleen: Another slideshow about mortality, this one inspired by a Townes Van Zandt song.
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Kathleen: Another slideshow about mortality, this one inspired by a Townes Van Zandt song.

This is another one of Townes’ more oblique and allusive songs (cf. “Our Mother the Mountain”), and I certainly see how one could interpret in different ways–most obviously as about alcohol and/or drugs. As I am now looking at those as sort of a way of avoiding the anxiety caused by avoiding rather than confronting mortality, I of course place the song in the visual context of grief, loss, isolation, and death. As you might guess, I’ve been reading Irvin D. Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy, and its explorations have unquestionably had an effect on me.  In some sense this is another slideshow about existential dread, and about some of the more dysfunctional ways we deal with pain. At the same time, Townes has created a beautiful, mysterious song about pain, loss, and how we flawed human beings deal with such things, and I hope that the images, timings and movements I have chosen for the slideshow do it justice.  I really believe that quote from Kathleen Raine above, by the way, and it also ends the slideshow.

Here’s a video that I just ran into last night for the first time (I didn’t even think Moby was still relevant–obviously, I just hadn’t been paying attention).  In some sense it explores some of the same issues–isolation, pain, grief, empathy, and how we deal we such things–but on a much more universal and apocalyptic level.

Substitute: Richard Donald Milhouse John Nixon Trump
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Substitute: Richard Donald Milhouse John Nixon Trump

Previously posted, in somewhat different form, on The Daily Kos. The Who song “Substitute” always seemed to be a perfect description of how I lived my life, displacing or substituting easier or less anxiety-producing people, goals, and life perspectives for ones that I seemed unwilling or unable to cope with. Studying medieval literature and religion thus substituted for the Catholicism I was raised in, my mentor became a kind of substitute father who I felt it was at least possible to please, and alcohol replaced romantic relationships. Everybody does this to some degree, in part simply because circumstances or the inner drives of our personalities force us to.

This slideshow applies this playful early Who song to our current president, who of course displaced Obama (displacement being basically part of how our political system is structured), a change that I believe represents a yearning to return to an even earlier time and president when—at least in the cultural memory of certain segments of the electorate—“other” people knew their place and ethical behavior was neither practiced nor really expected as long as a superficial respectability and deniability was maintained, even in the face of considerable factual evidence.

On a personal level, you don’t usually actually marry your Mom, but you might marry someone who styles their hair in a remarkably similar way; when booze loses its ability to depress your anxiety or create a false sense of self-confidence, you find other substances or life strategies to substitute for it. In its extreme form, you end up living a kind of fake life, in which legitimacy is conferred by status symbols and your ability to get other people—and by a kind of feedback loop even yourself—to accept them as authentic. Oh well, before digging myself into a hole I can’t get out of by pretending to a knowledge of human psychology and motive that I don’t actually have, here’s the brief slideshow. This is the 2nd version of “Substitute” from The BBC Sessions album (a kind of substitute “Substitute”), which I liked for its crispness, concision, and the overt sarcasm in Roger Daltrey’s vocals, which is much more muted in some of the group’s more pop recordings of the song. I kept the count in, possibly as a symbol of inevitable repetitiveness of such behavior, but mostly because it sounds pretty cool.

By the way, that rather cryptic photograph I picked to illustrate the lyric, “the simple things you see are all complicated,” showing Woody Guthrie, Trump looming over an apartment block, and Trump’s father Frederick, refers to this story, which I hadn’t been aware of before. Speaking of things I had not been aware of, here is a possibly even more danceable, and even more depressing vision than the one above. Here is a song–not from half a century ago, but from “Now,” that I ran into about five minutes ago, and was apparently first posted to YouTube two (now three) days ago. Wow. This so nails me, or at least the me of a just a few months ago.  It doesn’t help that the “viewer” character who ages during the video really comes to look like a thinner me, the fear is certainly there in the eyes, giving way to a kind of tired, hungover stare. If the Townshend song focuses on how substitution works in personal relationships, the Moby song wants to illustrate its psychological cost in the most devastating way possible.  Anyway, although I had nothing to do with this video, it seems to be about me, and this is a personal blog, so I’m posting it here.

Apart from a considerable production budget, Moby’s singing, writing, arranging talent, and producing his song and the video attached to it, and his rather penetrating ability to express the depressive mind and how it reacts to the world around it, what’s his got that mine hasn’t?

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Much Better Bets: A Slideshow about Romance, People, & Pets

The two slideshows I’ve done on Loudon Wainwright songs (“Men,” and “Dead Man”) exemplify Loudon in his serious, almost philosophical mode, although he is probably better known for his sardonic, humorous side as well as an almost brutal, self-mocking honesty and insight. I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be a funny song (the audience laughs, anyway), but like a lot of humor it has a rather cutting edge to it that cuts rather close to home.  Personally, I think it would be a great song for a holiday for all those people without Valentines (perhaps February 15th, or maybe the Ides of March).  It is also a tribute to all those non-human companions that make life bearable (ha! Note the visual pun in the last frame).  The song is, of course, “Much Better Bets,” and this is the version from his “So Damn Happy” live album (a great album, by the way).

This is for Sharon, Curt, and Ziggy (they’ll know why if they watch it to the end).

Two Slideshows about Trump
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Two Slideshows about Trump

But you know I predicted it; I knew he had to fall.
How did it happen, I hope his sufferihng was small.
Tell me every detail, I’ve got to know it all,
And do you have a picture of the pain?

—Phil Ochs, “The Crucifixion”

I really had planned on posting a nice, uplifting Donovan slideshow after last week’s horrific “War on Drugs,” but recent events kind of forced my hand. Some people will find much of the first (and some of the second humorous), although in a rather rueful, pained way (some people will be offended by both, but they probably aren’t likely to see them in the first place). The resignation of Scott Spicer as White House Press Secretary last week and the firing of Reince Priebus  as White Chief of Staff yesterday for having displeased Hair Furor, just made both of these terribly timely (The Pride Parade and Unhappy Anniversary have been previously published on The Daily Kos). Despite the introductory quote from Phil Ochs,  there is nothing particularly prophetic about predicting their downfall. This is simply what happens who choose to associate themselves with Trump. The title is partly a misnomer, because only the second slideshow is really about Trump; the first focuses on people in his orbit and explores his effect on them which–despite all the notoriety, temporary power, and occasional wealth their relationship with our fearless leader brings them–seems to be more traumatic than anything else.

As I suggest above, this slideshow focuses on those who hitch themselves to Donald’s star rather than Hair Furor himself. I consciously crafted it to generally fit the narrative of  one of Loudon Wainwright III’s older songs, “Unhappy Anniversary.” It basically is a love story told in reverse (sort of like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal), which I always assumed was a semi-autobiographical take on Loudon’s marriage to Kate Mcgarrigle (this was just an assumption on my part, I have no inside information). I had been playing with the idea of using it as a way of illustrating some parts of America falling out of and then in love with Trump (remember, we are going backwards in time). Anyway, this is the result (I think from late last May), and I am reasonably happy with how it turned out.

I realize that I am employing some awfully broad stereotypes here, particularly when I look at the “Trump voter” in general rather than at specific individuals, and for that I apologize if anyone is offended. For all I know, the poor whites in those photographs didn’t vote for Trump (and much of his support came from people–usually white people–who were not impoverished at all); it is at least as likely that the poor people didn’t vote at all, and I suppose it is at least conceivable that one or more of them voted for Hillary. In a similar vein, I suspect that the woman in the photograph at the top of this diary is in fact expressing ecstasy rather than horror at suddenly being within touching distance of her American idol; it’s probably an accident of timing that it comes across as horror in the photograph. Still, it was too good not to use.

As the Firesign Theater said, “Forward, into the Past!”  This slideshow I made over a year ago (actually the first one I did, I think with iDVD rather than iMovie, which is why it tends to use different kinds of technical effects), at the beginning of April 2016, when it was only starting to become apparent how popular Hair Furor really was. Its obvious intent was to persuade people not to vote for Trump, and its lack of success is probably a pretty good measure of my power and influence. Looking at it now, though, I am struck by  how sympathetic it was to our current president, who–through circumsances, his own choices, as well as their consequences–became the person he is. The sympathy is mostly the result of Don Mclean‘s brilliant, scathing, and little heard song, although I do seem to have chosen a number of photos in which the then-presidential candidate looks distinctly depressed and–therefore–a possible object of empathy.

The following is from my introduction to the video on YouTube:  A slideshow on the life of Donald Trump. Set to “The Pride Parade” by Don Mclean. The song is from the album “Don Maclean,” which was the follow up album to his massively successful “American Pie” (still widely available on DVD). I had always assumed the song was an immensely probing, rather cynical self-evaluation following his sudden success. It obviously has a much more universal application than that, as I hope this slideshow shows (frankly, it always seemed to be about me); however, it applies quite well to our own Hair Furor.

By the way, although I obviously made it to convince people not to vote for Trump, I have to admit I now see it as profoundly empathetic to him, not as a presidential candidate, but as a suffering, isolated human being (apparently he does have an almost pathological fear of being alone). By the way, a few footnotes, the guy with the moustache early in the slide show is Trump’s father, Frederick Trump (slumlord and, apparently, KKK member). The really creepy looking guy sitting in the wing chair holding the American flag is Roy Cohn, Trump’s acknowledged mentor in dirty tricks and a self-loathing homosexual (he has a big part in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America), he also appears in a number of pictures with Trump indulging in New York City night life–I know Trump is supposed to be a teetotaler, but he sure looks stoned to me); the guy in the mug shot is Jeffrey Epstein, financier and noted pedophile. Trump has at various times claimed to be one of his best friends, and other times to have never met him. I think he was the man who procured the 13 year old girl that Trump is alleged to have raped back in the nineties (to be fair, apparently he also did some procuring for Bill Clinton too). The guy in the hospital bed that Trump appears to be looking at (they are actually two separate photos) is a very young John McCain (you might remember there was something of a controversy when Trump said McCain was no hero; only losers are POWs, after all). I am assuming you recognize Ronald Reagan, Ben Carson, and Chris Christie (I’m still impressed by that photograph of Christie talking to Trump; I didn’t even think it was possible to get a fake, forced laugh across in a still photo, but it actually does). The guy Trump is shaking hands with in the photograph above the one where he calls Fox News viewers the dumbest voters in America is David Bossie, the head of Citizen’s United (he is basically the one who opened the floodgates to money taking over U.S. politics, which of course it was well on the way to doing anyway). He also apparently helped Trump set up his campaign and hire his first group of campaign staff, as the Donald tried to assuage his wounded ego by running.

Next week, I promise something more upbeat, unless–of course–events intervene.