I Don’t Buy the “Hillary Sucks” Narrative

At all. I never did. In one prepared essay some time ago on this blog I stated that the Democratic party floated what I believed were two excellent candidates, and in Wayne’s World-speak added, “One is just way more excellent than the other,” referring of course to Bernie Sanders. I manned phone banks for Bernie, wrote letters to editors and contributed several hundred dollars to the Sanders campaign, and in my opinion we blew it in passing over Sanders as our choice in this election. But as one who has a way of blowing things in my own free time, believe me when I tell you, you can blow something, and then you can blow something big. Electing Donald Trump would be blowing something big.

I’m going to dispense with the third party argument in short shrift here because it really has no place. If someone wants to make the case that a vote for Johnson or Stein has a forward impact on the presidency, please take me up on the following bet. Your one thousand dollars against my ten thousand dollars that either Trump or Clinton will win the presidency. If Johnson or Stein wins, ten grand is yours. If not, I get one large out of little Tiffany’s college fund. We know one thing with absolute certainty about the election in November. It will be Clinton or Trump. Period. If you wish to influence that, vote for Clinton or Trump. That’s where it begins and ends. The two-party system is baked into the constitution, it’s baked into our history, and it is baked into the industrial-election complex. And it’s not going to change this year. You lose voting third party, you really lose writing in, and you really, really lose staying home.

If you think voting third party is sending a message and if you’re in a “sure-fire” Hillary state like California, maybe make your Green vote in good conscience, but that kind of gaming your own elections may have made the difference in England leaving the European Union. Whatever message someone might be sending with a third party vote, the one that is heard is that there are “fill in the blank” percentage of Americans who have checked out of any sphere of influence. And it’s a shame. The Greens mindset in particular resonates in terms of policy across a good bit of the Democratic platform. People considering voting Green had to have observed an undeniable pushing to the left that occurred as a result of political brinkmanship on Sanders’ part. That kind of influence would be utterly lost under a Trump administration. The Green Party can’t even qualify on the ballot for the presidency in half of American states, making those votes the definition of spoilers, and a clear indicator that the chief energies of the Greens might best be spent in state and local races to establish a solid political base before just making a series of desperate runs at the top office. It’s no more than advertising for the party, and doing so at the expense of the admittedly flawed version of Democracy we observe in the US.

I don’t think voting third party is wise, and I additionally believe the “lesser of two evils” riff is largely a canard. There’s only one evil in this campaign, and it was really orange today. There are so many levels of Clinton hatred delusion that it’s a challenge to figure out which tin foil hat to rip off first, and though it pains me to even mention it, there is a worst of the worst, and that is the hit squad theory. Some people’s hatred of the Clintons is white hot, like a blast furnace melting a cauldron of steel, and their eagerness to indict and impugn them is such that their normal adult discrimination escapes them, and otherwise thinking people endorse the claim that a trail of murders follows the Clinton legacy. If you’re in that camp, you’re around the bend as far my ability to reach you is concerned, and I don’t respect your mind.

The accusation that she is in deep collusion with Wall Street interests, however, earns every inch of the scrutiny it is getting. But the way I am looking at this issue is that the only way to lessen corporate influence in the American electorate over the course of the next ten years must begin with the repeal of Citizen’s United. Under the coming presidency, certainly two and most likely three justices will be appointed. I honestly doubt that Trump’s plan is to betray everyone he pandered to in the election and appoint liberal justices. He is the hero of the coal-rolling, Tweety Bird mudflap truck owner, and he’s going to give them the hanging judge their injured souls have been craving. Under a right wing reactionary Supreme Court, Citizen’s United is going nowhere, and that spells the end of campaign finance reform. Campaign finance was a disgrace before Citizen’s United. It has since become a travesty. Ipso facto, if reducing corporate influence in American elections is a priority, Clinton is the logical vote.

As to that corporate collusion, Bernie Sanders supporters, many of whom are young and perhaps even in their first political campaign, need to understand that they happen to have saddled the unicorn. Sanders is the one politician in modern times who has mounted a credible national campaign without relying on corporate donors. It’s astonishing. He is not one of a rare few, he is alone in this regard. The one. The mack Daddy. You know, the Daddy mack. The GOAT. Hopefully not unrepeatable, but at this juncture, the Sanders campaign was unique. A few wealthy corporate donors finance the rest of the political landscape in large measure, and for some candidates in near entirety. With Republicans, that is a natural fit. Big pharmaceutical, big insurance, big oil, big finance and weapons manufacturers are all looking for tax and regulation easements, and the Randian objectivism that for whatever reason also resonates with lower and middle class Republicans holds sacred those same ideals of unfettered capitalism.

Well, those same corporations fund the elections of Democrats as well, who have a much tougher sell to these corporations with their message. The Democratic Party only exists in modern America because of women, minorities, young people, labor and college-educated people. The general drift of all of these demographics is for taxation equity and social justice, which is a terrible fit for corporations. So for a Democratic Party leader to run against heavily funded Republicans requires some concessions, especially in the biggest of the big leagues. This essay is long and tedious enough without a litany of these Faustian bargains, but I have been watching this woman pretty closely for twenty-five years of my life, and when she makes a deal, it doesn’t come easy and it doesn’t come cheap. My democratic ideals are on balance well-represented with Hillary Clinton, and if you look at her senate voting record, it doesn’t differ in the main from that of Bernie Sanders.

It is easy to go down the rabbit hole of sketchy conspiracy theories and read a ration of garbage on Hillary Clinton. I've read a pretty fair amount of it, and I remain unconvinced of what seems to be a prevalent narrative that she is in any way driven by forces that are pernicious to this country. She is a real patriot and has undergone more scrutiny than a lone porno magazine making its way around a scout jamboree, and unlike the magazine, betraying no evidence of wrongdoing.

From a practical perspective, the presidency is much like any hiring situation. You hire the smartest, most experienced, most aptly tempered individual that is available for the job. There are two candidates. We are not so much electing a president as we are hiring one. So, what do you think? Should we hire a tough old lady who knows her way around Washington to watch our money or an egomaniacal racist nutbag who has never held public office? Hillary Clinton has a deeper contact list than anyone in the world, and quality working relationships with most of its leaders. She is highly respected across the globe and is seen as a steady hand on the rudder, a stabilizing force in a very tricky world. She is tough, smart, hardworking, fair-minded, sensible and liberal, and I will take that in my president, proudly.

The Dallas Shooting: The Worst of a Kind

America finds its new worst thing every once in a while, or at least an event that is the worst in a new way. Maybe Sandy Hook was the worst overall. Or Oklahoma City. Children. Anytime it’s children it’s the worst, a statement that itself reveals there no longer to be any such thing in America as the single worst. But this shooting of a dozen police officers maintaining order at a large street protest is the worst in its way. Its timing, its disinformed intent, its gruesome expression, its disrespect for the first amendment and its five times fatal result all thrust the Dallas shooting into the pantheon of the other great American worsts.

The most important aspect of this story is one that few of us are going to be much help on, and that is the individual stories of grief that now accompany each of these five destroyed lives. They involve wives, children, parents, friends and colleagues. They involve countless lessons that will remain forever untaught, countless people who will be loved that much less, and dozens of individuals who will suddenly be tasked with starting over. These massive and eternal rips in so many family portraits and the wounded officers who will be rising from their hospital beds with some combination of rage, survivor’s guilt and PTSD, are ongoing tragedies that will continue their ripple effects for decades and apart from those flaccid old standbys, thoughts and prayers, there’s not much an average citizen can do to effect easement in any tangible way to the souls who are standing at the epicenter of these tragedies.

I was feeling some movement on the issue that sparked the murderous assault. Slow, incremental, inadequate, yes, but movement. It is reflected in Newt Gingrich’s heavily covered utterance yesterday that he had come to believe that being black in America presented a sense of being at an inherent risk because of the color of one’s skin. Within vast swaths of the American population there has existed a delusion something akin to, “We cut them loose in 1863 and we've hardly bothered them since then.” But you can’t be taken seriously anymore if you’re trying to pretend there doesn’t exist a schism in American policing. Anecdotal and statistical evidence supports that there is, and if you are white and you’ve walked the other side of the street in segregated America for whatever reason, you’ve seen it and felt it as well.

If my hopefulness for what I perceived as the early stages of a national conversation moving in the right direction was another of my Pollyanna fantasies, then this assassination of five and wounding of seven men working the job of keeping the shooter’s city safe derailed nothing. But if there was movement, I think it’s hobbled that movement for now, and because one misguided soul decided to speak for millions of Americans who shared his frustration but not his madness, the momentum for improving racial parity in police encounters has been lost, perhaps for a long time. 

God, Guns and Gays, a Collision in Orlando

The amount of pandering to religious zeal varies according to political expediency and the nuisance level of the complainers. On the gay rights issue there are enough votes to be won in the central and southern states by condoning homophobia for it to be exploited by t-partyish American politicians; Kim Davis is your f’rinstance there. Huckabee was well aware of Kim Davis’s use-by date and he milked it until its expiration. The last thing he said to her was, “Lose my number.”

So you can still make a little hay by persecuting gays in America, but cake by cake, license by license, soldier by soldier, the majority has come to welcome and celebrate the LGBT component of their workplaces,  their social scenes and their families.

In the rest of America we pretty much all have gay friends or family members at this point so it has become less practical for politicians and government officials to gave a wink and a nod to sub rosa gay persecution, especially in large cities, which has in turn made more gay men and women comfortable coming out of the closet and integrating into a diverse and functioning democratic society. That cow is out of the barn and closeted homosexuality, once the norm, is now largely a relic of an ignorant past. It is difficult to imagine even small American cities not having open, thriving gay social scene.

That's a bad mix with the Islamic form of zealotry. A scene that could eventually birth a gay bar could never exist under Islam, so someone becoming an Islamic zealot in America is going to have a dissonance with homosexual acceptance in society. Islamic zealotry is about as vile as it gets. It is Christian zealotry’s ugly cousin. It has all of the smug superiority of its Christian counterpart but with a small-minded, thuggish vocabulary of expression that now includes suicide vests, high-capacity semi-automatic rifles and car bombs. 

Christian zealotry has a different cut to its jib. It thinks big when it objects to a particular sexuality. It stalls AIDS research. It humiliates entire classes of people over bathrooms. It seeks to destroy psychology and inflict shame. Muslim zealots don’t do the vision thing. Instead they reach for the largest scope of terror their pathetic imaginations can devise that day and take it as far as they can take it. In this case it was shooting up the gay bar.

Three worlds collided in Orlando. America's phlegmatic though palpable easement of morays pertaining to sexual orientation, the NRA’s lock on Congress, and religious fundamentalism. Facts continue to be revealed about the case, but the moral of the story fits both the Koran and the Bible, and indeed, numerous Christian pastors and Dan Patrick, Texas’ Lieutenant Governor, have already given the mass murderer their pats on the back, thumbs up and atta boys.

The murderer believes mankind's godlessness to be the problem. I and millions like me believe mankind's vision of God to be the problem. What that means is, we have a real problem.

Letting Go of Bernie Sanders

As Bernie Sanders speaks beautifully and passionately not twenty-five miles from where I sit, as I close the mail-in ballot that carries my vote for him here in California, as I clear my schedule for some phone banking this weekend, I’m despondent because I’m thinking about the campaign and in my mind I have ceded defeat, as have many of us who were feeling the Bern. We all turn at different times; some have let go before me, some have yet to, and I am currently in the process. Some will hang on psychologically until the moment of nomination, perhaps even afterward. Much of the #NeverHillary arm of Sanders support is tipping the king as well and are already voicing their rationalization of voting for Jill Stein or Bugs Bunny, writing in Bernie Sanders or just staying home. Not me. Jill Stein is not even on the ballot in many states and as such is the purest kind of spoiler. Staying home abrogates your civic duty on down ballot elections and the Bugs Bunny thing, though adorable, is not helpful for anyone.

I was an avid Sanders supporter and will be until the end. The end of the primary, that is, and at that point I will load all of my eggs into the Hillary basket. I hope Sanders plays nine innings and maximizes his pressure on the DNC and the rest of the party apparatus to take the progressive arm of the party seriously, but I am also preparing myself for the change. The fact of Sanders having secured five appointments to the Platform Committee today validates his having stayed in it this long, just as his staying in through California and into the convention will likely garner still greater progressive influence. But the best way for the Sanders campaign to remain relevant in the coming administration is to ensure a Democratic victory in the fall, as Sanders progressives will mean next to nothing under a Trump presidency.

In my opinion, the Democratic side fielded two very different candidates this presidential campaign year, both of them excellent. Some number of my liberal friends will blanch at this, but if you look at Clinton’s senate voting record, you will see that her policy dispositions aren’t too far right of the candidate I was supporting. She is a hardcore policy wonk, from the nuts and bolts of legislation to the teeth pulling of appropriation to the final job of implementation, and her network is vast. There is no more prepared person in the country to be president and no more connected person in terms of having good working relationships with all of the major players on the world stage. Relative to her opponent, the comparison would be laughable were the consequences of a Trump presidency not so dire. No learning on the job needed with a Clinton presidency and the sigh of relief that world markets would breathe could be measured in the hundreds of billions.

A source of resentment for some Sanders supporters has been the clear advantage Clinton has had in terms of Democratic establishment support and preference. Isn’t that fair enough though? Sanders is an Independent and has been his entire political career. He stepped into the Democratic Party’s apparatus solely to launch this bid, and as is the case with any organization, its inevitable tilt is going to favor someone who has been involved in the support and maintenance of that apparatus for a long time. I have been a Sanders believer since well before he declared his candidacy and I fully expected the handicap to extend beyond name recognition and into the murky netherworld of party machinery. It’s the nature of David and Goliath schemes.

A fair way to think of it is that Sanders was up against a reticent party apparatus that was the practical equivalent of what Trump was fighting. Each ran into the headwinds of their own chosen party establishment. Trump’s victory over the Republican establishment was undeniable in spite of the advantages afforded the other candidates by virtue of its preference for them. Sanders was unable to compensate for the advantages that were afforded Clinton by the DNC. Membership has its privileges. Sanders needed to win conspicuously against all slings and arrows like Trump did, and he just damn didn’t

Still, our side presented a case clearly and fearlessly in the face of a daunting rival, and though we lost (or seem to have), we made a sizable impact that will not be ignored in the party platform and rules, and consequentially in down-ticket funds allocation. It is, as Sanders says, the beginning of a political revolution, and this has been a mighty shot across the bow. The best way to make Sanders’ accomplishments this primary season all for naught would be to participate in a boycott that would damage Hillary’s chances in November. A lot of my fellow Sanders boosters say they won’t support Hillary in the general election, but I don’t think that’s wise. Supporting Hillary Clinton in her historic bid for the presidency is an essential element of maximizing the impact of Bernie Sanders’ unprecedented campaign.

Hillary is a hawk, but her foreign policy connections and relationships are deeper than anyone on the planet, and her major moves in foreign policy will never be capricious. Trump would start a war just to watch stuff blow up or because some world leader rubbed him the wrong way.

The Supreme Court affects people in their most intimate places. To have its direction steered by a hand that is callous and dismissive of large groups would be a travesty of civilization.

Hillary is nothing if not stable. Trump is nothing if not unstable. Markets like stability. You do the math.

The reasons a Clinton presidency would be more just, safe and prosperous than a Trump presidency are myriad, and all three categories are very much in delicate balance. I’ve heard the give-up mentality of voting for Trump just so the pendulum swings, just so America gets what it deserves, just to set the rhinoceros loose in the art museum and see what happens, but I say let’s not find out. That’s not a serious and sober way to look at America, this year, right now, for the next four or eight years. Trump versus Clinton. There is no question as to which of these two individuals is qualified to be president of the United States and which is not. My preferred candidate did not prevail, but decent, thinking people need to consider the importance of this election. 

A friend of mine recently talked about holding his nose and voting for Clinton. The fact is that he would be pinching off the stench of a four decades-long career of fighting smartly and effectively for children and families. He would be sparing himself the reek of bravely championing LGBT concerns at home and abroad before it was politically expedient. Holding your nose and voting for Hillary lets you avoid the fetor of a career-long commitment to broadening access to healthcare in America. I guess that kind of courage and confidence in domestic and international affairs really makes you grab for the clothespins.

My fellow Sanders supporters and I swung for the fences and did the improbable this past year. We financed a national presidential primary on spare change and let the most powerful political organization in America know that there is a large, informed, motivated and engaged portion of the citizenry that is not happy with the status quo. We will be considered in this coming administration, but remember folks, only if Clinton prevails in November. It is important to demonstrate engagement through local activism and electing progressive candidates to state legislatures, city councils, school boards, dogcatcher positions and the like, while at the same time keeping the pressure on at the federal level; the best way for a Sanders supporter to do that right now is to see that Hillary Clinton is elected president in November, not Donald Trump.  

Things You Should Know When You Go to a Jazz Jam

The majority of jazz music is defined by improvised collaboration, and whether you are a professional with the night off or a nervous student holding a gig bag at a nightclub doorway, one of the most exciting and satisfying things a jazz musician can do is participate in a jam session. This article doesn’t seek to advise you on how to improve your playing or your jazz knowledge; it is merely intended to help you step into jam sessions with greater comfort and confidence.

Tuesday Night, 7PM to 9PM

Most clubs that feature live jazz have regularly scheduled sit-in sessions, usually during early evening hours on off nights. They are a great way for young musicians to develop real world experience and for established musicians to play with old friends and meet new players. The tradition of the jazz jam session goes back a long way and has a variety of protocols and traditions that vary from session to session. They vary so widely, in fact, that a first recommendation from this desk is to get a feel for the session before deciding to sign up, or perhaps, before even bringing your instrument into the club. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First, there are as many kinds of jazz jam sessions as there are kinds of jazz. Some lean more toward standards and the great American songbook, some have a be-bop orientation, some lean toward post-bop modal material, some are more oriented to fusion, and so on. If you lack the vocabulary the session is using, you probably won’t be comfortable trying to fit in, and attempting to drag a session out of what it has already established as its character and into your own bailiwick can be an unwelcome imposition. It is always best to identify and respect the tradition the session is seeking to present, and if it isn’t your bag, well, maybe that’s not the session for you. Have no fear, though: there is a jam out there somewhere that celebrates the style you most want to play.

Second, even if the session fits your appetite in terms of idiom, it may not match your playing level. Although they are fewer and further between than they once were, there is still some component of the jazz “cutting session,” a high-level competitive steeplechase of a jam session in which the local jazz cognoscenti do their best to intimidate one another into having an off night and set upon newcomers with a particular viciousness. Those sessions are satisfying and fun if you can indeed hang at that level, but if you can’t even, or even if you can’t quite but you jump in anyway, it can be an unpleasant experience for you and for the band.

Baby Steps Before Giant Steps

At a jazz jam session, when you get called up as a horn player with a rhythm section already on stage, you will sometimes be able to call the tune. If you have practiced the head of a jazz tune and know its changes well, I recommend talking to the host of the session before you go on, and telling him or her the tune or tunes you are prepared for. I have never seen a jam session host throw anyone to the wolves after that kind of outreach.

It's also not unheard of to bring lead sheets in, especially for a singer who prefers odd keys. There is a certain monotony that can come of selection after selection of jazz standards, each with identical arrangements, so while it's not cool to take over the vibe of a session, it absolutely is cool to bring in printed sheet music for the bass player and piano player to follow. It's a fine line, one that you'll have an easier time locating if you check out the session a little bit before you decide to join in.

It’s good to bring a couple of backups in mind as an alternative to your big number, as someone else might already have played it that evening, or it might be the bass player’s least favorite song to play, or maybe it was the piano player’s ex-husband’s favorite song. There are many reasons a bandstand suggestion gets passed over, so you should show up at the session with a minimum of three songs prepared, each of which resides logically within the framework of the session. I recommend at least ten exhaustively prepared songs, but if you don’t have three right in your pocket and ready to go, perhaps your time is better spent developing repertoire than it is bringing just your favorite song to the jam.

Nice-to-Know and Need-to-Know

There exists a deep and rich catalog of jazz material, but there are some songs that rise above the nice-to-know category and find themselves instead in the need-to-know category. I have culled a list of ten songs here that are more than a good idea to have in your repertoire when attending a jazz jam session. In many circles, not knowing these ten songs will quickly identify you as not having done the minimum amount of preparation. After each song title is one or more DGRs (darn good reasons) for learning them, along with an inspirational quote.

All The Things You Are

You get to practice your ii-V sequences in five different keys. “Disneyland can wait, Ma. I’m going to practice my ii-V sequences!”

All of Me

Up-tempo peppiness for your Dixieland chops. Amuse yourself with some ii-V changes and a counterclockwise circle of fifths. “This song is great for making up humorous alternate lyrics.”

All Blues

This one has a three feel, and you can hear the changes coming from a mile away. Blues musicians, this is a good way for you to put a toe into the water. “Trumpet players get to break out the Harmon mute on this one.”

Autumn Leaves

It shifts between G major and its relative minor, E minor, and offers vast soloing opportunities over both structures. It was recorded more in Bb/G minor, but was printed in the wrong key in the famous "Real Book," a much relied-upon collection of tunes. Be prepared for both! “Such a great melody, even Sting couldn’t resist appropriating it (Moon Over Bourbon Street).”

Blue Bossa

It has an R&B equivalent in Mustang Sally and a bluegrass equivalent in Wagon Wheel, in that it's called a bit too often, but you need to know this tune. Here we get to contrast a major II-V7-I sequence with a minor ii-V7-I. “Don’t threaten me with a good time!”

Footprints

Wide open for glorious runs and arpeggios, and it is in three. There's a hipper (correct would be more accurate) turnaround that a lot of bands don't play; the hipper turnaround is a nice-to-know, but the tune itself is a need-to-know. Ask the band if they play the turnaround F#m7b5 / B7/ Em7b5/ A7, and if they begin to squint, expect the D7 to Db7. “Here is a Wayne Shorter composition that is easy to understand and play.”

Girl From Ipanema

This song, if there is one, is the definitive bossa nova. “Gentlemen, you don’t know it yet, but your future wife is in the audience and she wants to sing it.”

Green Dolphin Street

It starts with Imaj7 and goes to Imin7 in the first four bars. Add in the ii-V7-Is, and the soloist can make a real statement. The pros tend to play this one in Eb, though it's in the "Real Book" in C, so you can get a clash on some bandstands. “Books have been written about this one song.”

Song For My Father

This song is generally played in F minor, and everyone in the band will understand if as a horn player you cannot contain your joy over that fact. “It’s in F minor! It’s in F minor!”

Summertime

It can be a disaster, and it is beloved by great and dreadful singers alike. Keep your fingers crossed! In the case of a fine rendition, this is an opportunity for you to complement a singer’s performance. “Understand the lyric, its place in Porgy and Bess, and stress your sensitivity to the vocalist; you just may play something extraordinary.” 

Watermelon Man

Pentatonic joy for one and all. “Pentatonic joy for one and all!”

This is a nice list of tunes to know, because they cover a wide range of tempos, keys and feels. Footprints is a bright jazz ¾, Watermelon Man is a funk groove, Song For My Father is usually played with a Latin feel, All Blues is a blues with an unconventional turnaround, Summertime and Girl From Ipanema are favored by a lot of vocalists, and Footprints, Blue Bossa, Autumn Leaves and Green Dolphin Street are each rewarding to learn, and carry with them a certain jazz credibility.

Who’s the Boss?

If you called the tune, guess what? It’s you. If you have a tempo in mind, you have two choices. Count it off yourself, or communicate your preferred tempo to the drummer. I like to leave it to the drummer because it is within his or her area of specialty and because the band is accustomed to taking the count-off from the drummer already. I recommend stating the name of the tune and the key in a clear and authoritative voice. Something like this: “Autumn Leaves, key of B flat. Right about here.” Then snap the tempo and give an indication to the drummer that you’d like the cue to come from behind the kit. That indication can be a nod, a point, or a verbal command. Let’s say the drummer’s name is Sparky. You might say something like, “Autumn Leaves, key of B flat. Tempo right about here (snapping your fingers). Stomp it off, Sparky.”

Generally speaking, the horns will play the “head,” or the main theme of the tune. After the head has been played, sometimes once, sometimes twice, the band will instinctively look to you for cues. I recommend taking the first solo if you called the tune. This eliminates one instance of having to cue a soloist, but that is nothing you need to stick to religiously.

After all of the soloists for that tune have had their shot, cue the head again, often done by pointing at your head. It is worth noting here that not every player on the stage needs a solo on every tune. Pay attention to who has soloed recently and who hasn’t, and cue them inversely. Have your second tune in mind and ready to go in case you were so awesome that you are asked to stay. You may be called upon to pick the tune again. Select it and say it clearly, and see if there is any objection from the band. If not, snap your tempo and once again call out to your drummer: “Stomp it off right about here, Sparky!”

Oh Won’t You Stay

It’s bad form to play your songs and then leave the club. When the players at jam sessions have stayed to listen to you, you should stay and listen to them. You don’t have to hang around until the last bar and get thrown out, screaming as they drag you away, “More jazz! I need more jazz!” Sticking around for a minimum of two performers after you is a good rule. The moments following your stage time is an opportunity to talk to some of the other players, make connections, or bathe in the adulation of your followers.

Most of all, have fun with it. Take your music seriously in the practice room and at your performances, but less so at jam sessions. There’s not a lot at stake on Tuesday at 7:30, so relax and enjoy the shared music and humanity you find there. It is a place to learn, to make mistakes, and to accept the mistakes of others, so just stomp it off, Sparky; I’ll see you around the jams.

I stumbled across a five-year old essay on Donald Trump.

Some thoughts on Donald Trump...May, 2011

Now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, Donald Trump may be the world’s biggest asshole. Hyperbole? Perhaps. But I hate this guy. I have on many occasions made reference to my demographic insignificance, the fact that things I like are generally not commercially successful, and that the things I don’t like often are. My favorite types of music are jazz and bluegrass. Neither are big money makers. My least favorite music is cheesy R&B power ballads (Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Michael Bolton, etc). Hugely successful. So, my white-hot, blinding detestation of Donald Trump may likewise leave me with few cohorts, but I know what I feel, and I really, truly hate this guy.

I have been aware of Donald Trump for many years now, and have hardly given him a second thought. My assessment of him has never been positive or negative per se, rather I have traditionally not had an opinion one way or another. I have always recognized his egotism as pathetic and laughable, and have generally regarded him as a cartoonish embodiment of a stereotypical American business tycoon, an entity that served as a sideshow bit player in the landscape of news and media in America. Donald Trump. Ha ha ha. Rich jerk with stupid hair. Who cares? Perhaps I am relatively alone on this point, but once he presumed to aspire to the presidency, I began to care. I began to hate Donald Trump’s guts.

I have previously referenced my demographic insignificance, but I can’t imagine that I am utterly alone in this. While Doc Watson doesn’t sell a mountain of records, he does sell a few, and likewise, I suspect that there are others who previously didn’t pay a second thought to Donald Trump who now recognize him as a smarmy, vile toad of a man; a boor, a rude, classless lout who chose to punk America in a vainglorious ruse to slake the thirst of his limitless ego without regard to the damage and disruption suffered by the nation that afforded him all of his success.

Then he launched his big lie about running for executive office and hitched his star to the tired out non-issue of Obama’s birth certificate in an attempt to discredit the president as the driving precept of his cardboard replica of a presidential bid. No new ideas, no forward thinking, no opinions on American 21st century challenges, just a cowardly sabotage of his president, all for the sake of a lie. He never intended to run this year, but was completely comfortable lying to me, to you, and to America. This exemplifies the contempt and dismissive attitude with which he regards the average American. We are a joke to him, an ignorant mass, a vast pool of fools that is there to be manipulated. He is a cynic and scoundrel of the highest order who views the American social and economic landscape as his combined playground and toilet.

Every step of the way on his bogus intimation of a presidential run was another opportunity for soothing his pathological need for self-aggrandizement. When Obama finally sighed, rolled his eyes and produced the birth certificate, Trump expressed his feeling of “honor” at having forced this hand. Well guess what? The few people in America left who didn’t already believe Obama to have been born in America at the time of the "big reveal" still don’t. They are the same deluded fools who believe Bin Laden either to be still alive or to have been dead for years. There is a part of the American population who either due to their racism, ignorance or addiction to Fox News prefer to exist in a bubble that deflects any common sense with regard to this president. The number of minds changed because of the presentation of the long form birth certificate is zero. So what was accomplished? Nothing but a further division of the already vast fissure in American society.

Donald Trump is an ineloquent, selfish jerk. He is also a liar and a coward, and knowing that a non-cartoon businessman like Mitt Romney or an informed statesman like Ron Paul would make a meal of him in the primary debates, he floated his phony presidential bid in a disgusting ploy to enhance his branding and to get a few more eyeballs on his excruciatingly unentertaining television show. Then he bailed out before he had to defend his legitimacy. To hell with this guy. I’d urge a boycott of his income properties and his television show, but what good would it do? I am, as I have said before, demographically insignificant.

What Every Trump Supporter Has in Common is Their Having Been Fooled

Donald Trump is ahead of us on a thing that PT Barnum figured out a century ago; that there is a sucker born every minute. HL Mencken was all over it too: "No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people."

I am not suggesting that all of Donald Trump’s supporters are stupid. Many are, make no mistake about that. Many, many, many of them are. And not just good old folksy, C-student stupid either. I mean full-on ice cream cone to the forehead stupid. And while there is plenty of stupid in the Trump camp, it does not compose anywhere near the entirety of Trump’s following. What all Trump supporters do have in common, however, is that every one of them has been fooled. The more you support Trump, the more you have been fooled. If you more or less like what he says and might vote for him, you’ve been a little bit fooled. If you have four Trump signs, one in each of the four windows of your dismal apartment, you’ve been completely fooled.

And Donald Trump knows how to fool people. He has been connecting with the reality TV demographic for more than a decade now; he knows how big it is, how unfulfilled it is, how simple it prefers its truths, and how it aches to identify the architect of its frustration. Take terrorism, for instance.

Trump’s solution to foreign terrorism in the US is to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. This idea resonates with the Honey Boo Boo demographic, because most of the people who like this idea don’t fly internationally. The disruption involved in banning Muslims from entering the United States on airplanes would cripple entire airlines, disrupt commerce and pleasure trips to an unprecedented level, and cause phenomenal ill will across the world, all to a net result of zero. It would be a bold gesture, yes, but oftentimes, as in this case, boldness has stupidity as its concomitant. The idea of banning all Muslims from travel into the United States is breathtaking in its stupidity, and yet, it resonates.

The loyal Trumpster will stand arms akimbo with shaking head and muttering, “Whatever it takes, man, whatever it takes.” This despite the fact that more people are killed by armed toddlers in America than are killed by foreign terrorists. This wildly disproportionate and illogical approach is attractive precisely because of its boldness. Its implausibility is born of inexperience with international travel and an understanding of how the United States fits into it. Wholly apart from the financial, political and family disruptions, assuming such a program could be implemented, what would be the verification methodology? Where does it take place? Would there have to be a new global norm for passports? Would they all need to be recalled and stamped with the individual’s faith now? Or does the interrogation happen at the airport?

“Mister Mohammed, are you Muslim?”

“No ma’am, I am Zoroastrian.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Um, quick, what’s the Avesta?”

“It is the chief Zoroastrian text.”

“Right this way, sir…”

Let’s be serious. Anyone who was trying to get in by ducking the ban could claim to be Bahá'í. Might you encounter a discussion with an Alawite as to whether the syncretistic aspects of the Alawites places them outside Mr. Trump’s definition of what a Muslim is? Who is going to arbitrate all of these theosophical quibbles? Who is going to determine that so-and-so is or isn’t a practicing Mandaeist? There are a fair number of Yarsanists and Samaritans in the Middle East, as well as pockets of Shabakists, Ishikists, Ali-Illahists. How do you tell a sunny Christian from a Sunni Muslim? Okay, I’m being ridiculous, but you get my point.

This all makes sense to Trump’s television audience though, because if you reduce it to the rubric of “Ban All Muslims,” it takes on a simplistic, feel-good sense of having made a bold step after all of this mealy-mouthed pussyfooting we’ve been doing. It quickly identifies itself as a stupid idea once you even begin to think about it, but that’s the other side of the coin Trump traffics in; the seeming fact that it doesn’t quite sound stupid until you actually do begin to think about it. The trick then becomes to keep people from thinking about it.

Give people an idea, a big, stupid idea, and then quickly move on to the next big, stupid idea. Like the wall. Which sounds good to some people. Again, until you actually start to think about it. And once you do, you quickly realize that it is as stupid as the idea of trying to identify one and a half billion people as being ineligible for air travel to the US. With immigration currently at sum zero, it is something of a solution without a problem. Add in the mass deportation component, and people like the idea even better. The reality of a crumbling farm industry alongside parents being ripped away from their children and loaded onto railcars is part of the not-thinking-it-through that Trump is counting on. Again, the trick is to sum up the big, stupid idea in three words, and then move on to the next big, stupid idea. Ban all Muslims. Build the wall. Deport the illegals.

Trump’s trick of getting people not to think works because it’s easy and it can feel good in the moment if you are sufficiently angry and resentful. A powerful personality has identified the enemy and boldly pledged that he would do something to vanquish it. Something big, something bold. And they have faith that he can and will, because they’ve seen him perform forcefully in boardrooms. 

Episodes of “The Apprentice” have availed them fly-on-the-wall status, and they saw firsthand the prowess of a powerful leader. Of course it’s just a silly cardboard replica, a Potemkin village of an office environment with no actual consequences in the downside and a sudden and unrealistic return on the upside. No one learns a thing from it, and the only winner, as always, is Trump himself. But this is the lazy thinking of Trump’s audience: the desire for easily identified heroes and villains, for predictable justice in terms of consequence and rewards.

It is easy, binary thinking. People need either to be fired or hired. Not developed, managed or educated. Countries need to be thought of as either good or bad and deserving of either subsidy or invasion, and not much else in between. Through his rhetoric, Trump has instructed his slack-jawed, doe-eyed, zombie-like followers to appeal to their basest instincts for guidance rather than any long-codified core ethics and morality.

As rooted a thing as civic education, sports environments and academics are, those places where most Americans learned how to get along and work in teams, it can all fall to dust in an instant with the right appeal to fear and resentment. Trump understands all of this. He is exploiting it, and it is irresponsible and I think highly detestable of him. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t always mean you should, and in this case I believe he shouldn’t have, and that he has orchestrated all of this is to his great shame. He has reawakened a sleeping giant of racism and hatred that was on its way to across-the-board social unacceptability.

The real damage is that Trump has fooled a lot of people into thinking that it’s okay to be judgmental, prejudiced, unforgiving, violent and cruel. And it’s not. Trump is wrong, and his followers have been fooled. The other piece of bad news is that when this has passed, with Trump not being president, he is going to betray every single one of his supporters and return to business as usual. And where will they go then?