Groundhog Day

For close to 10 years I crisscrossed the land, playing the Blues in just about any place that would have us. I came to know our American brothers quite well and love them dearly. This week's Camino a Ítaca looks back and hopefully is wrong about the way forward. You can click over and read the original version here in Spanish (tambien se puede ver la version en castellano abajo en PDF) or read the English version below. 

So, it's finally over. After four years of seeing the name fester like a wound on every other page of the newspapers and after 1,500 days of listening to his name mangled and mispronounced on foreign television, it's finally come to an end. Trump and his particular brand of vileness has been ushered out of the White House and will once again return to being associated with real estate scams, bankrupt companies, failed business ventures, reality TV, porn stars and pedophiles. The failed Big Brother Washington edition experiment has come to a screeching trainwreck finish with its winner, or should I say loser, absconding in the dark of night. Leaving the cleaning crew the difficult job of trying to get rid of the stench of four years' worth of takeout food before the Biden's move back in. It's a reek that will linger over the country while making its way overseas for some time to come now.

From afar it seems almost incomprehensible. How was it possible that such an obvious huckster was able to cheat and lie his way into the most powerful position on earth? How could such a large percentage of the noble American public be duped into believing such an obvious snake oil salesman straight out of a cheap Western movie?

The answer may be simpler than you think.

It just might be that they felt that they had nowhere else to turn. On two of the most recent occasions they had indeed voted for the 'nice guy'. The one with the charming smile, the model family and who possessed the uncanny ability to form complete sentences. In the 90s they had tried it with Clinton and then after the debacle with the Texan, they gave it another try with Saint Obama. They deposited their vote with all of their, excuse the pun, hope and what did they get in return? Nothing.

After the punishing Regan-Bush Sr. years, the Democratic party saw the writing on the wall and completely turned its back on their traditional, working class power base and decided to get in bed with where the real power lie, big business. Those very people you now see, shouting out, correctly pronouncing the orange beast's name and insisting that the election was stolen used to be Democratic voters. In the 90s they saw with their own eyes Bill Clinton give the keys to the executive bathroom to the big tech companies, eviscerate what little welfare existed and then repeal banking regulations that had held the banks in check. They then watched while Obama bailed out the banks that started the great recession while starting seven new wars, and what happened? He got the Nobel Peace prize. The supposedly progressive party had accomplished things that conservatives could only dream of doing. This is why Hillary Clinton lost to an orange clown. The people felt they had nowhere to turn. Just watch as what little hope turns to more bitterness as the 78-year-old Washington lifer in fact, brings things 'back to normal'. It's a stark warning to governments around the world, start actually listening to and working for the people or the next Trump might not be so dumb.

When, where and How

This week's Camino a Ítaca looks at my passionate desire to be able to get back on the camino to Ítaca, or anywhere else for that matter. A desire to get back to some semblance of normalcy, to be able to move about and travel without fear and not dread the virus. Give me that jab as soon as possible, just tell me when, where and how. You can read the originally posted version in Spanish here or the English version below. También puede ver un pdf de la versión en español si se desplaza hacia abajo.

I could just barely see the fading evening light glinting off of the Caspian through the window. The table was set for guests with sweets, tea and sugar cubes that, as is custom in the region, are held under your tongue as you sip your unsweetened tea. My student and I were just about to explore the intricacies of English verbs when she noticed the time and asked if we could take a short pause. With that said, she nonchalantly rolled up her sleeve, reached over to a nearby table and grabbed an elastic band and then wrapped it tightly around her arm while holding one of the ends in her teeth. In order to somehow dissimulate my unease, I picked up my tea and practiced my tea drinking technique while I watched her pick up a needle and a vial of something and then slowly yet methodically, and with an obviously practiced manner, stick it in her arm. In a moment it was over and she put her tools back and turned to me, “Where were we?”

She noticed my surprise and apologized, “Sorry, but my doctor told me that I had to take my antibiotics regularly.” My face must have betrayed my startlement, and she went on, “That's right, in the West you normally take pills but during the USSR we usually took medicine like this and who can trust nurses these days. Like everyone else in the country, they will either want a bribe or who knows what they will shoot you up with.” It was true, the country had done a complete 180 and gone from Soviet-style communism to a particular totalitarian neofascism. Trust was in short supply, both sides had failed them. The poor Azeris like my student had suffered through two opposite yet equally dystopian regimes and could no longer trust anyone, driving them to the point where people were self-injecting themselves out of fear and distrust.

Think back to when you first heard the word Pfizer? Throw in words like Oxford and Moderna and your memory will jog back at least seven or eight month ago to when the first glimmer of hope of a vaccine appeared. Hope we might finally overcome this dreadful pandemic. Seven or eight months to prepare for one of the most complicated operations of our time. And yet, where are the vaccines? Trust in the vaccine you say? I don't know about you, but I would like it on a boat, with a goat, in the rain, on a train, in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse, here or there, it in my eye, under my fingernail and even under my tongue if need be, but please make it available.

The inability to roll out this vaccine quickly and efficiently verges on criminal negligence. Partisan questions can be raised about whether the lockdowns were strict enough or if they were enacted in time, but no one, absolutely no one in their right mind can question the desperate need to get these vaccines into people as quickly as possible. If it takes McDonald's style drive-thru's like in Israel, so be it and if our leaders are too incompetent, too useless to do it, give it to me and, like my student, I'll take a chance.