Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: 'Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine’ (2015)

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). First part: Bread and Roses. I first caught this on Free Speech TV. It provides a good sampling, focusing in good part on the Robber Baron period and the impact of the First World War.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) devoted much of his energy on consciousness raising, building up an appreciation of the history of people and clashes and changes often forgotten or -- like the eight hour work day -- taken for granted. His work is influential; and he was a sweet person.   

"Between 1900 and 1920, like Howard Zinn’s parents, more than 14 million immigrants arrived in the United States. They came fleeing poverty or war, racism or religious persecution. They dreamed of a promised land, of wealth, or simply of a better life. The New World opened its arms wide to the poor and huddled masses of the Old: its unwanted, its fugitives, and even a few utopians . . . After all, the rapidly expanding industries of the time required cheap labor, and immigrant workers - men, women and children - were easy to exploit. But the same period also saw the birth of organized labor, with its strikes and conflicts, and the appearance of great figures like Emma Goldman, Mother Jones, Eugene Debs and the Wobblies."  (Source here). 

Olivier Azam and Daniel Mermet: Howard Zinn, une histoire populaire américaine (2015). Zinn's A People's History of the United States was originally published in 1980.

Zinn Education Project: link here.

Les mutins de Pangée est une coopérative audiovisuelle et cinématographique de production, d’édition et de distribution (en salles, DVD, VOD). Here is a a link.

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

Halle Butler, 'Jillian' (2015), Part I

Halle Butler, Jillian. Chicago: Curbside Splendor, 2015.

I read this twice in a row, first to see what happens and secondly, to see how things happen. 

Musing on Butler's style and substance, I had a vision of Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult, Tully) working with Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Bad Lieutenant) to create a variation on Charles Schulz's Peanuts. It's wacky, sad and right on.

The setting is not overplayed, but there are clues that the location is Chicago (North Side, Far North Side, Northwest Side, Palatine or thereabouts), and the time is the 21st century, with lingering vestiges of the 20th (an office fax machine, for instance).

If you approach the main characters with the Dalai Lama's discussion of Compassion in mind, you will truly empathize with them. "To be genuine, compassion must be based on respect for the other, and on the realization that others have the right to be happy and overcome suffering, just as much as you. On this basis, since you can see that others are suffering, you develop a genuine sense of concern for them." (The Essential Dalai Lama: His Important Teachings, edited by Rajiv Mehrotra, New York: Penguin, 2005, p. 22).

Jillian Bradley is, on the surface, recklessly optimistic, while her office co-worker and foil Megan is heedlessly cynical. Both are unmoored, lost, nearly alone (socially alienated, trapped in their own minds) as they deal with contemporary life, complete with its endless economic constrictions, demands and expectations. The raucous humor of Butler's approach underscores the daunting realities of their lives. It's a bit like Ulysses through the scrim of two 21st century adult female workers who must deal with the indignities, absurdities and possibilities of daily life. 

Another post will delve into additional details, but the main things to keep in mind for now are that Jillian has a young son, Adam, and she adds a dog, Crispy, to the volatile mix of her household economy; while Megan, depressed and cutting -- wickedly so, at times -- has a dubious paramour, Randy, and even more dubious frenemies to contend with. It is through their interconnecting social -- and socio-economic -- relations that Jillian and Megan must operate, and with which many readers will undoubtedly relate. 

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Mary Karr: 'The Art of Memoir' (2015, 2016)

Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir. New York: Harper Perennial, 2016; originally published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2015. 

Karr is primarily known as a poet and memoirist; she also teaches, which is how this tome originated, through years of teaching experience. One of the book's "takeaways" (in the shady parlance of our day) is her list of "Required Reading - Mostly Memoirs and Some Hybrids" (pages 221-227). The core text is more pick-and-choose -- whatever may help.

Mary Karr's advice on how to get going with the writing process: "The idea is to unclench your mind's claws . . . don't judge how your thoughts might jet around at first. Eventually you'll start identifying . . . with that detached, watcher self and less with your prattling head." (page 31).

On voice: "The voice should permit a range of emotional tones -- too wiseass, and it denies pathos; too pathetic, and it's shrill. It sets and varies distance from both the material and the reader -- from cool and diffident to high-strung and close." (page 36).

Keep it real: "You'll need both sides of yourself -- the beautiful and the beastly -- to hold a reader's attention. . . Sadly, without a writer's dark side on view -- the pettiness and vanity and schemes -- pages give off the whiff of bullshit." (page 38).

On revision: "the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age, which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality." (page 211).

"For me, the last 20 percent of a book's improvement takes 95 percent of the effort -- all in the editing. . . In the long run, the revision process feels better if you approach it with curiosity . . . Writing . . . means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world . . . you do that by fighting for elegance and beauty, redoing or cutting the flabby, disordered parts." (page 215). Amen to that. 

Today's Rune: Initiation.

Televisión Española: 'El Ministerio del Tiempo' / 'The Ministry of Time:' Season One, Episode 5 (2015)

Now on Netflix, Televisión Española's El Ministerio del Tiempo / The Ministry of Time. My mother and one of my sisters have been watching this, and now I'm into it!

Season One, Episode 5 (2015):  Cualquier tiempo pasado / Every Past Time. In this episode, members of the Ministry of Time go back to the Spanish Civil War (1937) and to 1981, and another one goes back to around the turn of the twentieth century to meet a young Picasso, in three different attempts to attain or forge a receipt for Picasso's Guernica, which another time traveler is trying to thwart in 1981. 

A fun series, perfect for anyone wanting to learn about Spanish culture, history and language. (English subtitles included).

The secret Ministry of Time has multiple portals and can access Spain's past -- but only inside Spain. People are recruited from various ages, then cross-trained for time travel.

Imagine the possibilities!  The active viewer has to engage -- and use critical thinking. It's mind-expanding on multiple fronts!

A woman from the 1800s must consider the different attitudes and social mores of the 21st century, and, then, say, go to the 16th century, and come back again. A soldier from 16th century Flanders muses over changes in technology, communications, transportation, and gender roles. The viewer must empathize to grok these different and changing viewpoints. 

On the sly, certain people go back in time to "fix" personal memories. But if they do anything drastic, the present may be changed (enigmas of time, paradox, anomaly).

Painter Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) badly wants to meet Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). They do meet, and discuss Francisco Goya (1746-1828), among other things. Keepin' it real -- a real cool time!

All aboard for funtime!  

Today's Rune: Harvest. 

Federico García Lorca, 'Poet in Spain' (2017): Part II

The center of Granada, Spain: Plaza de la Trinidad, summer of 2015

Continuing with Sarah Arvio's new Spanish-to-English translations in the bilingual Federico García Lorca, Poet in Spain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017). Part I can be found by this link.

From "Falseta:"

"Gente con el corazón / en la cabeza,"    (page 150)

"Folks with their hearts / in their heads" (page 151)

From "San Miguel / Granada:"

"Vienen manolas comiendo / semillas de girasloes, 

los culos grandes y ocultos / como planetas de cobre." (page 210)

"Flashy gals from Madrid / munch flower seeds

their big secret rumps / like coppery planets"   (page 211)

[Nota bene: "culos" = "asses"].

From "San Rafael / Córdoba:"

"vendedores de tabaco / huyen por el  roto muro."    (page 212)

"All the tobacco hawkers / flee through the broken wall" (page 213)

From "El poeta pide a su amor que le escriba" / "The Poet Asks His Love to Write to Him:"

"Corazón interior no necesita / la miel helada que la luna vierte." (page 338)

"An inner heart does not need / the icy honey spilled by the moon (page 339)

I also dig Arvio's translation of Lorca's play, Bodas de sangre / Blood Wedding (1932) which helped me better grok the Moon (pages 452-453) and the "Mendiga / Beggar" (pages 454+).

Repeating from Part I about this book: Fun and fascinating in the sun, under the moon or even by electric light, it is. 

Today's Rune: Protection.

Isabel Allende: 'El amante japonés: Una novela' / 'The Japanese Lover: A Novel' (2015)

Isabel Allende: El amante japonés: Una novela / The Japanese Lover: A Novel (2015). A quick, easy read. It's strange to see allusions to very recent events in a novel, connected with the upheavals of the 1930s and 1940s. 

I particularly enjoyed the various points of view, ranging from the much older Alma to one of her caregivers and mentees, Irina. Both have immigrant backgrounds -- Alma, a refugee sent to California by concerned family during the encroachment of the Nazi menace, Irina rescued from the poverty of Moldova (though out of the frying pan into the fire). There's a Japanese family whose patriarch had moved to California to become a gardener well before the Second World War, breaking the family tradition of militarism, and numerous other characters. Ichimei Fukuda, son of the gardener and a gardener himself, is "the Japanese lover" -- Alma's.

The Japanese angle adds historical flourishes. There's a religious component with Ōmoto, a modern offshoot of Shinto that publishes tracts in the international language Esperanto. There's the holistic aspect of landscape gardening; internment during World War II preceded by the burial of the family war sword; and note of the highly decorated Japanese American combat unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (whose history is worth a book of its own -- including those they fought in Europe, ranging from Germans to various detachments surprisingly fighting alongside them -- the Germans --  originating from Somalia, Poland, India and other unexpected places). 

A pretty cool, undemanding novel that deals with age and life changes, varied circumstances, refugees, immigrants, love and history, all laced together nicely.

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Svetlana Alexievich: 'The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II'

Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Random House, 2017. У войны не женское лицо: Russian language edition originally published in 1985. The author won a Nobel Prize for literature in 2015.

“’History will spend hundreds of years trying to understand: What was it? What sort of people were they? Where did they come from?’” (page 51)

“There have been thousands of wars on earth . . . but war remains, as it has always been, one of the chief human mysteries. Nothing has changed. I am trying to bring that great history down to human scale, in order to understand something. Yet in this seemingly small and easily observable territory . . . everything is still less comprehensible, less predictable than in history.” (page 139)

“'Once during a drill . . . We finished shooting and were going back. I picked some violets. A little bouquet. I picked it up and tied it to my bayonet. And went on like that.’” (page 52)

"There is not only shooting and killing people, mining and demining, bombing and exploding, going into hand-to-hand combat -- there is also laundering, cooking kasha, baking bread, cleaning cauldrons, tending horses, repairing machinery . . . Ever during war life consists by more than half of banal things. And of trifles, too . . ." (page [159])

"'Dense forests, continuous wire fences with rotted stakes, overgrown minefields. Flowerbeds gone to seed. There were always mines hiding there; the Germans loved flowerbeds. Once there were people digging potatoes in a field, and next to them we were digging mines . . ." (page 222)

After a contingent of Soviet sailors hit a minefield, many were killed. But Olga Vasilevna refused to terrorize German POWS. "I hadn't forgotten, I hadn't forgotten a thing. But I couldn't hit a prisoner, if only because he was already defenseless. Everybody decided that for himself, and it was important." (page 151)

"'If you ask what color war is, I’ll tell you – the color of earth. For a sapper . . . The black, yellow, clayey color of earth . . . Two months later I wasn’t killed, I was wounded. My first wound was light. And I stopped thinking about death . . .’” (page 213)

A lieutenant, commander of a sapper-miner platoon: “We’d spend the whole day watching everything attentively and drawing up a map of the observed front line and marking the places where changes in the surface of the terrain appeared, If we saw bumps on the ground or lumps of soil, dirty snow, trampled grass or dew smeared on the grass, that was what we were after . . . our goal . . . It was clear that German sappers had placed mines there . . . It was necessary to find out . . . [w]hat sort of mines they had put there: antitroop, antitank, or surprise mines. We marked the enemy’s firing points . . . We felt the ground inch by inch. Made corridors in the mine fields. All the work was done by crawling . . .” (page 217)

In addition to serving as pilots, snipers and partisan fighters, Soviet woman also served as doctors, nurses, drivers, mechanics and in many other capacities. Survivors retained memories of harrowing, brutal events that never quite went away. Alexievich has ensured that these people and what they lived through will not be forgotten. Wars will continue, though, remembered or not -- that fact, it seems, nothing can change. 

Today's Rune: Signals.  

Richard Rhodes: 'Hell and Good Company' (2015)

Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).  

This is another well-written book about the endlessly absorbing Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Rhodes interweaves personal accounts (of nurses, doctors, artists, officers) with technical observations (types of equipment, processes, construction of air raid shelters) in a winning combination, because he also manages to keep the book fairly short.

"War is chaotic. People come and go. I decided to pin my narrative not to the people but to the chronology of the war itself, starting at the beginning and marching through to the end." (page xvii).

Lots of people make their way in and out of and then back into the narrative as the war moves along. Many have poignant arcs, such as that of Patience Darton and Robert Aaquist: "Love made a space for them, but love doesn't conquer all." (page 221).

There are tales of Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, John Dos Passos, André Malraux, Joan Miró, and much about medical efforts and hospitals. Nearly one in five doctors in the anti-fascist International Brigades were women (page 187).

Rhodes favors the side of the Republic defending against the fascist and Nazi-backed Nationalists, and he shows greatest sympathy where it seems most appropriate. The Spanish people are given their due, but this is mostly a collective story told from the outside in, mostly through the words of international participants or semi-omnisciently.

I like the specificity of detail that Rhodes delves into from time to time. I've learned new things about the war. Not only about the heroism of the various medical corps, but more about the Germans sent by Hitler, too: "The Condor Legion deployed to Spain by ship . . . consisted initially of thirty-seven officers, 3,786 men, and ninety-two factory-new aircraft, including three squadrons of Junkers-52 bombers, three squadrons of Heinkel 51 biplane fighters, two squadrons of Heinkel 45 and Heinkel 70 reconnaissance bombers, and a seaplane squadron . . . Hitler also sent tank companies, antitank platoons, signals units, and submarines to bolster Franco's forces. Mussolini contributed not only planes, tanks, and submarines but also tens of thousands of infantry." (page 29).

One of the legacies of the Spanish Civil War is in the use of air power to bomb civilian targets en masse, with ruthless repetition -- a terrible legacy, indeed, especially when one side gains air supremacy against a virtually helpless enemy stuck on or under the ground. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  

James Ward's 'Adventures in Stationary' (2015): Postcards

James Ward, Adventures in Stationary: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case (London: Profile Books, 2015; first published in Great Britain in 2014). If you dig office supplies, art supplies and the like, you would/will absolutely dig this jaunty romp through the ups and downs of office artifacts, competing designs, rivalries and everything from paper clips and liquid paper to staplers. 

For this post, we shall consider only one chapter of Adventures in Stationary: Chapter 7: "Wish you were here" -- the postcard (mostly). 

"As a child," Ward notes, "I'd often send myself a postcard when I went on family holidays . . . . " (knowing it would only arrive well after his return home.) "The postcard was like a time capsule, sent from myself to myself, but the version of myself who sent the postcard was irritatingly smug. 'I'm sitting by the pool,' I'd write. 'I might go for another swim after I finish writing this. Anything good on TV in England? How's the weather?' Back at home, reading this message, I'd reconcile the sense of jealousy I felt toward the version of myself who was still on holiday with the fact that I knew things that he didn't. I knew, for instance, that he'd leave his sunglasses behind in his hotel room and that his flight would be delayed on the way home." (Adventures in Stationary, page 148).

Ward is a witty one, and clever, too: "I think postcards are probably more fun to send than to receive." (Ibid., page 149).

He then takes his readers through the development of "saucy" postcards, a section that morphs into a consideration of "floaty pens" such as the "tip 'n' strip" and on to "things shaped like other things" and "stationary shaped like other stationary" (Ibid., pages 158-159). 

It's a wild world. You don't even need to live inside of Twin Peaks to sense it. 

Next is but another true statement: Adventures in Stationary can help you light your way back through the dark swirls of the digital world -- with a smile. 

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Café retrouvé: Patti Smith's 'M Train' (2015)

Patti Smith, M Train. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

A writer's life: Patti Smith's 

Peregrine

Pilgrimage 

Coffee

Dreams

Memory

Air 

Movement 

Stillness

Ink

Rain

Artifact

Time Regained/Le Temps retrouvé

El café veracruzano fue pionero para tener una denominación de origen en México

Inamorato, mother, son. "I made my coffee in her pot and sat and wrote at a card table in the kitchen by the screen door. A photograph of Albert Camus hung next to the light switch . . . My son, seeing him every day, got the idea that Camus was an uncle who lived far away . . . "(pages [71-72]). 

A quarter-mile from the canal house, coffee at the 7-11. The one at 25000 Jefferson Avenue, or the one at 23019 near the Kroger at Nine Mile, both in St. Clair Shores, Michigan? 

Confusingly, Patti Smith mentions the St. Clair River, but I think of it more as Lake St. Clair.  

I remember early morning runs, when it was cold outside, to pick up coffee at both of these 7-11 stores. And, when it was warmer out, an abandoned fish-and-tackle shop just off Jefferson.

"To me it looked like Tangier, though I had never been there. I sat on the ground in the corner surrounded by low white walls, shelving real time, free to rove the smooth bridge connecting past and present. My Morocco. I followed whatever train I wanted" (page [72]).

I remember all the people I met or knew around there. And social spaces. Steve's Back Room. Fishbones. Golden Chopsticks. Andiamo's. Pat O'Brien's. The public library and to the north, the Blue Goose. To the west, Shores Inn. Cedar Garden. The US Post Office. Hallmark's. El Charro. Grecian Table. The Bowling Alley and Linda's attached. Tim Horton. A connection with Van Morrison's father. Ice on the lake.

Snap! Ding the bell. You don't need to go home, but you can't stay here forever. 

My favorite coffee for some time, Peet's out of San Francisco, celebrates fifty years, or fifty-one this year, of making coffee. There's something about their blend and roasting process that makes me love the taste of their French, House and Major Dickason's Blend in particular.  

The best single coffee I ever tasted was in Italy -- espresso. The worst and weakest, in Pan Handle Texas and in Oklahoma. 

When I was growing up, my parents made coffee often, let's not forget.  On special occasions, a big percolator was set up to keep it flowing. 

Haven't missed a cup of coffee for more than a day since I was seventeen. Something to look forward to every morning, sort of like a little daily miracle of life, resumed. 

Today's Rune: Defense. Veracruz coffee: see El Universal Veracruz (9/9/2011), link here.

Liz Garbus: 'What Happened, Miss Simone?' (2015)

Liz Garbus' What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) is a thrilling, consciousness-raising documentary about Nina Simone, the High Priestess of Soul. 

The inescapable context of the life of Nina Simone (1933-2003) was and is the intractable racial divisiveness of the USA. American society just can't seem to get it together as a whole.

Born in North Carolina before becoming Nina Simone, Nina was known locally as Eunice Waymon. Eunice/Nina became a classically trained Julliard pianist. Her most active recording years took her from the late 1950s into the 1970s. She became a powerful civil and human rights advocate.

However, disgusted with the slow pace of social progress in the United States (and to escape from her violent ex-cop husband), she went on to live more freely in Barbados and London before finally basing herself, for the last ten years of her life, in the South of France. 

A strong and unique singer and person, Nina's mental health suffered in later years -- perhaps, one may suspect, in part from earlier domestic abuse. But when she was on, she was truly spectacular, even towards the end.

What Happened, Miss Simone? is an outstanding Netflix Documentary and RadicalMedia/Moxie Firecracker Production. I waited for the 2016 DVD, which includes a companion CD. The latter has a sampling that highlights many of Nina's most powerful tracks, ranging from "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and "I Put a Spell on You" to "Mississippi Goddamn" and "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out." I dig it!

Today's Rune: Protection. 

Amy J. Berg's 'Janis: Little Girl Blue' (2015)

Amy J. Berg's Janis: Little Girl Blue (2015), a state of the art documentary biography of Janis Joplin (1943-1970), presents her life in a most compelling, sensitive and soulful manner. My first serious foray into this field was Howard Alk's Janis (1974), which I saw at the Melkweg in Amsterdam when I was twenty-two -- and I loved it, not to mention the audience's raucous response. Now I'd consider Alk's documentary as a complement or supplement to Berg's. There have been other films, and there have been excellent books on Janis, too. As anyone who knows her music can testify, Janis Joplin was intense. Amy J. Berg has done her justice here. 

Today's Rune: Signals. 

The 2016 Playbook: A Lot of Moving Parts

The 2016 presidential election cycle in the USA has been going strong since mid-2015! 

Here's a quick guide to the language of this grueling campaign. Most of the terminology is a sort of coded shorthand slang. 

Keep eyes and ears open next time the election comes up anywhere in the public sphere. How many of these can you find in print, on a screen or in open conversation? 

Every one of these is from personal observation -- paying attention not to "political content" but to wordplay.

The parlance of the 2016 election

Baked-in = this is the given situation or trend you have to work with.

Optics = how things look. Theatre -- most of politics.

Wheelhouse = area of expertise or leadership. 

Full-throated = enthusiastic, "all in" vs. half-assed or reluctant.

Strategic = "big picture," long-term goals kept in mind, "eyes on the prize."

Battleground states = states "up for grabs," "purple states" not completely dominated by Democrats, Republicans, or some other faction. 

Doubling down = total commitment, increasing pressure.

Unpack = fully analyze or consider repercussions.

Transparency = what seems to be, really is more or less factual.

Takeaway = that which one has "unpacked" or learned from an incident or text.

Rigged = everything is a set up from behind a veil. Fixed. Unfair insider advantage. 

Pay to play (or pay-to-play) = enter a field or project only by paying a fee of some kind. 

Donor class = super rich people who back candidates as in a horse race.

Outsider = not presently a part of the status quo, usually meaning Washington, DC or a state or local equivalent. 

False flag = conspiracy theory jargon. Things are not what they seem. A shooting is actually a hoax put on by those who would make you do something else according to their diabolical hidden agenda.

Dog whistle = coded language meant to exploit fear or hatred of one or more groups. 

Playbook = plan of action, strategy, tactics, aiming at winning an election or turning out votes.

Unforced error = get into trouble of one's own accord, usually by saying or doing something foolish in the public sphere. 

Spin = twisting facts or events to protect one's own candidate or belief system.

Game changer = some kind of major shift in the arc of events.

Punching up and down = aggressively attacking.

Reset = let's try this again with a different emphasis.

Reboot = let's try this again with a different emphasis and a staff shake-up.

Pivot = Same as reset and reboot, with lightning agility.

On message = stick to the plan, the script, don't wander off into "unforced errors."

At the end of the day = when all is said and done.

No there there = making a mountain out of a molehill. Response to those trying to create a scandal out of opponents' errors.

Going forward = from here on out. Really. We mean it. 

Political correctness = usually, cultural sensitivity. A favorite "punching bag" for those who prefer to use blunt force or nastier language.

A lot of moving parts = it's complicated, consider the repercussions, everything must work together if we are to succeed.

Branding = logo, gimmick, slogan, phrase. Goes back to burning ownership marks into livestock, enslaved people, prisoners or fraternity members with hot pokers. Pretty ugly concept when you think about it.  

Backlash = see branding. Goes back to whipping people on their backs until they bleed out and die, or carry scars for the rest of their lives. Usually a "backlash" is a "response" to some action, event or "unforced error."

Firestorm = great controversy. Compare with firebombing of Tokyo or atomic attack on Nagasaki -- political controversies never (or rarely) come close to the gravitas and tragedy of such actual wartime atrocities.

Meltdown = see firestorm. Compare with Chernobyl or Fukishima. I don't think so. 

Thanks to examination of the media-driven and media-exploiting style of Donald J. Trump, more sophisticated 2016 analysis includes such terms as:

Paralipsis (aka Apophasis)= drawing attention to something without stating it directly.

Down-ballot = for Republicans fearful of a Trumpian disaster, trying to save their lower slates of candidates.

Hostage video = when Trump is forced to read things that are distasteful to him from a teleprompter, such as his begrudging support for down-ballot candidates.     

Trumpenproletariat = a play on the Marxian term, Lumpenproletariat. "Here demagogues and fascists of various stripes find some area of the mass base in time of struggle and social breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a society in decay." (Source: here). That is to say, the frustrated and angry masses from which Trump draws his support. By contrast, Bernie Sanders supporters are "vanguards of the political revolution."

Today's Rune: Harvest.