It’s been about a month and a half since we last had a new photo essay on the site. So let’s get caught up, starting with the ever-fiscally-important day after Thanksgiving. This particular day started in downtown Seattle the way most days start, with men waiting for the temporary main library to open. Some of these men are homeless, seeking a place to sit indoors while the shelters are closed. Others are simply retired or unemployed, seeking a morning’s worth of free entertainment and/or learning.

The “Buy Nothing Day” kids were out in force, denouncing squaresville commercialism without positing any positive alternatives. The sign depicted above was made, and then defaced, by a fan of Adbusters magazine pretending to be a conservative.

(Left-wing parodies of right-wing attitudes almost always get it wrong—nobody on the right ever speaks specifically for such lefty-insult terms as “commodification ” or “patriarchy.” Right-wing parodists are, natch, just as errant about lefty attitudes, wrongly imagining that anybody would speak in favor of such righty-insult terms as “special rights” or “takings.”)

Outside the Bon Marche, a busy crew was handing out free samples of Krispy Kreme donuts (I refuse to use the more formal “doughnut” for such an informal snack food). The chain, which in recent years has generated media hype far beyond its size (still fewer than 150 branches nationally, concentrated in the south) has been ringing Seattle’s far suburbs and will open its first in-town branch next year.

No snack product could live up to Krispy Kreme’s hype. But it is an impressive product. Its lightness, fresh aroma, and melt-in-your-mouth texture all belie the massive sugar rush that hits you after six bites.

One lady did offer a proactive alternative to the bigtime shopping mania, and didn’t need Photoshop to make it.

Among those who didn’t heed, or didn’t see, that lady’s message: The nearly 100 who camped out in anticipation of the Adidas Store’s moonlight sale.

THE NIGHT OF DEC. 7 featured hundreds of holiday parties around town. The one I went to was the opening of 13 Fridas, 13 Years, 13 Days, at muralist James Crespinel’s studio-gallery in Belltown.

Crespinel has been painting his own impressions of Frida Klaho over the years, and displayed some of them as a tie-in to the movie and the Seattle Art Museum’s current Mexican-impressionism exhibit.

The opening was a stupendous gala with authentic Mexi-snacks, singers (including our ol’ pal Yva Las Vegas, above), and dancers (below).

Later that same night, a somewhat different tribute to strength and beauty was offered at the nearby Rendezvous by the Burning Hearts burlesque troupe. This is one of the seven ladies who paraded around in whimsical mini-attire for a surly drunken Santa.

Other St. Nicks of all assorted sizes, shapes, and demeanors cavorted about the greater downtown area as part of the annual NIght of 1,000 Santas spectacle, enacted in cities across North America.

WE’VE NEVER HAD many good things to say about Ronald Reagan. But a member of an email list we’re on recently reminded us of a speech Reagan made during the 1964 Goldwater campaign, containing these prescient words:

“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.”

In the current Seattle Weekly, editor Knute Berger ponders whether the GOP zeitgeist really is heading in the direction of classic fascism.

He starts by noting the terms “fascist” and “Nazi” have become overused in recent decades to the point of near-meaninglessness. I can agree, having personally listened to a guy describing marijuana laws as a worse abuse of authority than the Holocaust. And, as I’ve already mentioned, the most predictable cliche in online discussion boards is for a “thread” to collapse into mutual Nazi-name calling.

So now we have a national government that achieved power by insider dealmaking, unabashed demagoguery, and outright theft; out to systematically dismantle representative democracy, civil liberties, and most of the Constitution; placing its perceived political opponents on lists of “terror suspects” to be denied freedom to travel; desirious to replace the whole civil-service system with a “privatization” scheme based on big-money cronyism; preaching “Christian morality” but behaving in an extremely un-Christlike manner; adamant about busting the treasury for billionaires’ tax breaks; eager to force its will upon any and every other nation; justifying all its crimes under the telltale slogan “homeland security.”

And the terms that might best describe this particular form of despotism have devolved, among some swaths of the populace, into almost meaningless all-purpose epithets, commonly used to denounce anything from the movie-ratings system to no-parking zones.

The new age people say we become whatever we’re obsessed with, whether that obsession is based in love or hatred. At least since the Reagan era and probably earlier, the post-hippie left has been obsessed with finding fascism everywhere outside its own subculture, so as to smugly claim to be the one and only defenders of freedom. It’s difficult to work for economic justice, to run election campaigns, or to fight class-action lawsuits. It’s far, far easier to simply draw Hitler moustaches onto the faces of every politician, to sneer at “new world orders,” and to dismiss every U.S. citizen outside of your own little clique as a quasi-goosestepper.

I’m not saying the left, mystically yet inadvertantly, willed the current politick into being. But it didn’t help to just assume all these years that it was already here, just so you could feel good about yourself. It didn’t help to vilify the regular citizens you should be defending. It didn’t help to reject actual political participation.

If, as Berger asks, the Republicans really are morphing into fascists, it’s a different kind than the old Italian, German, Japanese, Greek, Chilean, or Spanish versions. For one thing, it’ll claim to not be racist, at least on the higher official levels (welcoming the participation of anti-Castro Cubans and Condoleeza Rice, making convoluted distinctions between “good Arabs” and “bad Arabs”). It might not demand disciplinarian lifestyles, at least not among the affluent. It’ll proclaim freedom of religion (except for Muslims).

But in the aspects that count, the trends are ominous. Militaristic huzzas-huzzas everywhere you look. A fast-narrowing range of acceptable-in-public opinions (that gets even narrower in the big national media). A regime steadily disrobing any claims to be operating on behalf of anyone but big moneybags. Federal spies and goons running about unrestrained.

Working to turn back these trends is the single most important thing any of us can do now. It transcends all single-issue causes, which would be rendered moot if the power-grabbers continue. And it’s a helluva lot more important than individual or collective ego trips.

IN SOMEWHAT HAPPIER NEWS, The Seattle monorail referendum survived the late-absentee count to pass by 868 votes. Yet its opponents, ever-virulant about the people meddling in decisions deemed the exclusive domain of “experts,” will still try to kill it through backdoor state legislation and other tactics. What part of YES don’t you understand?

…a hopeful mood and awful music.

This morning I experienced a lousy mood and terrific music.

I deliberately stayed away from election-nite coverage, instead watching the surprisingly good Sonics win their fourth straight basketball game. Then I stopped by the new Carpenters’ Hall in Belltown. (The old hall had been razed several years ago for a high-rise condo, incorporating the smaller new union hall.) There, the monorail campaigners held their party. The aforementioned awful music was provided by a lowest-common-denominator “blooze” band, churning out tedious arrangements of the tritest ’60s-nostalgia hits.

(Memo to all campaign organizers: Progressive politics isn’t just for Big Chillers anymore.)

But aside from that, it was a triumphal evening. Asking taxpayers to make a major investment during tuff economic times is always a challenge. (Note the inglorious defeat of the statewide highway levy.) But despite that, and despite the powers-that-be’s smear and scare campaigns, the monorail referendum achieved a solid lead in the polls, pending the late absentees. The city came together to create a better future for itself, in the form of a tourist-friendly commuter system (or a commuter-friendly tourist attraction).

Then in the morning came the horrible news. The GOP goon squad held onto the U.S. House and had regained at least a tie in the Senate. This means the Consitution-busters, the domestic enemies of freedom, have a rubber-stamp Congress to pass any roughshod legislation, appoint any crook, and give away the whole country to the billionaires.

Of course, the Democrats hadn’t provided much of a hindrance to these schemes anyway. Maybe this second-straight electoral debacle will, once and for all, finally discredit the Democratic Leadership Council and its Right Lite policy of subjugation.

The terrific music that cheered me up today came from the previously discredited Trio cable channel. This morning it showed one of the hundreds of British music shows in its library. This particular hour compiled old performance footage by scads of early punk legends (Sex Pistols, Clash, Jam, Iggy, Siouxsie, Joy Division, Buzzcocks, Undertones). It all cheered me up immensely.

You have every right to ask why I’d frown at 1967 nostalgia music but grin at 1977 nostalgia music. Well, there’s a reason. The band at the monorail party interpreted old Beatles and Stones numbers into slowed-down, dumbed-down exercises in collective self-congratulation. The live performances in the punk documentary were brisk, brash statements of mass resistance. The Thatcher and Reagan regimes (like the Bush regime today, only slightly less stupidly) were on jugggernauts to redistribute wealth upward, to spread war and poverty, to make the world safe for corporate graft. Punk rock, at its best, was one big loud defiant NO! to the whole reactionary worldview.

(Progressive politics isn’t just for slam-dancers anymore either. But punk’s classic note of rejecting the given situation, and creating/demanding a more human-scale world, is something we could all use a lot more of now.)

Remember that and everything will become much clearer. Including this story noting the unprecedented use of government officials in GOP Congressional campaigning.

…a long, scathing anti-Bush essay to the UK paper The Observer. It’s not online (which means the American masses on whose behalf he speaks won’t get to read it). But a short summary of it sez he calls for a big investigation (by whom?) into whether the administration knew about 9/11 in advance and chose to do nothing, because it would further the Bush gang’s anti-freedom domestic agenda. The summary also includes the following quotation:

“We still don’t know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected President with the oil and gas Bush-Cheney junta.”

(Of course, it should be noted the “popularly elected President” in Vidal’s quotation is his own distant cousin.)

…could be put in check if he had less lethal means to express it; thus the website “Buy Bush a Playstation2!”

SOME MORE PAUL KRUGMAN, this time concerning the big-money boys’ drive to create a permanent political advantage for themselves.

WE’RE NOT REALLY POETRY PEOPLE HERE, but can’t help admire UW prof Richard Kenny’s versified thoughts about the “timorous Congress” acceding to war-fever.

…the first nor the only person to equate G.W.B. with the moniker “King George” (see three items below).

There’s a whole anti-Bush site called “The Madness of King George,” another called “The Ribald Reign of King George the Second,” and regular references to the moniker on the satirical sites “GWBush.com” and “The One True Bix.” A Google search even find the moniker used in an essay by a self-described “conservative Christian” radio talk host, accusing Bush of trying to turn the US into a Stalin-style police state.

A FEW ITEMS AGO, I mentioned the curious creatures I’ve deemed “liberal-buts.” Here’s one of the more effective examples of liberal-but forensics I’ve seen lately. Professional gadfly writer Christopher Hitchens has written a pro-war screed for the London Mirror. In UK tabloid fashion, it consists of short paragraphs containing short sentences, and expresses its premise loudly and doubtlessly. Hitchens wants us to view a forced ouster of Saddam as a righteous liberation movement any consistent leftist should applaud, and chastizes anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

I don’t agree with him.

I’d more easily foresee Saddam’s ouster as a costlier, more violent version of Manuel Noriega’s ouster from Panama or Alexander Dubcek’s ouster from Czechoslovakia–the forced retirement of a fomer client-state dictator who’d tried to break off on his own. There’s no guarantee any successor Iraqi regime would be any less cruel to its own people than the regime there now; just that it would be, by design, more amenable to US business interests.

…in the piece below, here’s a guy who wonders whether Bush, an admitted former “heavy drinker,” fits the personality profile known in AA groups as that of a “dry drunk.”

David Halberstam’s 1972 book The Best and the Brightest

vividly describes the steps by which the Kennedy-Johnson administration, chock full of Ivy League thinkers and respected analysts, stumbled into the morass that was the Vietnam war. Among the most important factors in the stumble, according to Halmerstam, were the limited perspectives these operatives chose to view. They decided early on that theirs was a winnable war to defend a stable, pro-democracy ally; they chose to ignore any analyis or research that differed from the scenario. (I’m naturally vastly oversimplifying Halmerstam here; read the book itself for the whole sad story.)

The same thing’s happening now. Only the people doing it know they’re doing it. Our current battle-criers decided long ago they wanted to conquer and colonize Iraq. (An Australian newspaper story claims they’d started plans for an Iraq war even before Bush’s inaguration.)

We’ve got a whole Executive Branch establishment that, for all intents and purposes, proudly only listens to Rush Limbaugh, only watches the Fox News Channel, and only reads The Weekly Standard and books from ideological publishers like Regnery. This establishment does have staff people who scan CNN and the NY Times, but just to learn what its “Others” are saying in order to craft virulent rebuttals.

This establishment loves to scoff at liberals’ “political correctness,” but is fetishistically devoted to ideological conformity within its own ranks. It believes it’s always right, not because it’s smart but because it’s pure.

Actually, “pure” isn’t the right word, because it implies a sense of moralistic self-denial. These guys (and a few gals) want everybody else to do all the sacrificing; while they grow ever wealthier and more powerful.

We started with a book reference; we’ll move now to a film reference.

There’s a film, based on a stage play, set in an era in which a ruling class lived as libertine wastrels and the masses were subjected to strict authoritarianism.

An era enmeshed with domestic turmoil and colonial wars. An era of fierce political name-calling and backbiting. An era in which defenders of the corrupt social order will do anything to maintain their privileged status, despite the hindrance of an unelected ruler who often talks nonsense and behaves absentmindedly.

In short, an era with resemblances to our own.

Yes, we’re all currently suffering from, and for, the madness of King George.

THIS IS A FEW WEEKS OLD,…but James Ridgway’s point-by-point rundown of an Administration steadily sending our nation into ruin still reads quite ominous.

HEY, WE’VE GOT OURSELVES a good old-fashioned dock lockout on our hands, just like in the heyday of organized labor. Think of it as a showdown against the steady erosion of worker rights. During the long build-up to this crisis, our unelected president once threatened to use federal troops as scab workers on the docks. If that happens, watch him then try to authorize dock management to hire permanent replacement workers.

In 1981, Reagan destroyed the air traffic controllers’ union and got away with it. The tactic even boosted the old dodderer’s image as a tough-talkin’ “Ronbo.” I suspect the current Penna. Ave. occupant won’t be so lucky. If he turns the longshore lockout into yet another excuse to suck up to corporate power and stick it to everyone else, we just might end up seeing the precarious status of the Austin bully droop, leading perhaps to even more unstable and implausible warmongering poses. If we’re lucky, he’ll collapse from the combined burden of his amassing lies, before he bombasts his way into WWIII.

…has long been one of those New Republic liberal-buts. (That’s a fella who says “I’m a liberal, but…” just before he endorses every conservative position.) But now, even Kinsley’s sounding the alarm on war posturing as a domestic attack against democracy:

“The official U.S. government message on how citizens should decide about going to war is, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads about it.’ Last week the White House issued a sort of Official Souvenir Guide to the Bush administration’s national security policy, and it is full of rhetoric about democracy. Yet that policy itself, including at least one likely war, has been imposed on the country entirely without benefit of democracy. George W.’s war on Iraq will be the reductio ad absurdum of America’s long, slow abandonment of any pretense that the people have any say in the question of whether their government will send some of them far away to kill and die.”