#where American democracy dies

[verycleverboy]

Portrait Of An American Sunset

The author's summary from Bluesky: "In a shocking week even by the low standards of Republicans, I wrote about where we are and how we got here, and how many often forget that supremacy and fascism are things Trump found and harnessed, not his innovations. He didn't invade; he was summoned."

Having our bodies and lives dominated forever by greedy religious freaks is still largely unpopular with the larger population of awesome freaks who are not greedy freaks or religious freaks, however, and it's also against our constitution, too boot. In order to deal with this problem of unpopular and illegal goals in a governmental system that's meant to run on what is popular and legal, the fascists also intend to end democracy, and they sure have been making strides with rules they've changed and rules they're changing. In the swing state of Georgia, Republican election saboteurs have seized control of the election process and are rather predictably sabotaging the election, which they claim they are doing in the name of protecting the election. And Republicans are pushing an election law they call SAVE, which they claim is written to protect elections from fraud, even though the danger they are safeguarding against is non-existent, and one real effect of the rule may be to prevent women from voting. And they're trying to move the goalposts in Nebraska—even though the voting has already started—to claw back a single electoral vote Republicans have managed to let squirt free of its moorings, and they say they're engaged in this clear disenfranchisement of the people in the name of letting the will of the people be heard. This means that every 2 years or so the main choice we're making is whether or not we ever get to make choices again, doesn't seem sustainable, probably because it isn't sustainable. It's like playing football against a team that only has to score a single touchdown to win no matter what the scoreboard says, because instead of playing football they spend their energy changing the rules, and now they've got one that states that if they (and only they) score one touchdown, then they get to execute any referees they don't like—according to the head referees, who they have been bribing. And if all the cheating fails and they lose anyway, then retaliatory violence is all but assured, partly because that's what happened last time and partly because that's what they are promising. This gang wants killing and they intend to have killing, one way or another.

Moxon's article not only touches on the Mark Robinson nightmare in my backyard, but the depressing contention that CNN (the outlet whose "unforgivably leftist" tag only works when you've cultivated a population that's never read or seen anything "unforgivably leftist" in their lives except as a sitcom trope) didn't even touch the worst of it because it was unpublishable. Which begs the question, "How do you (a corporate news source) define 'unpublishable' in 2024?"

And he includes a reminder that Mitt Romney, the Republican who other Republicans still send death threats for having one moment of conscience, also ran on an anti-immigration platform in 2012. The main difference between then and now, Moxon argues, is conservatives (in the leadership, at least) don't pretend to be decent about it anymore.

They're doing all this openly because doing it openly is maximally menacing for the people they want to target, and fascists enjoy the fear of others, because the fear of others demonstrates that they are still dominating others. They're lying about why they're doing it, not because most of them don't know that they are lying, but because getting away with lies demonstrates domination. And the lies are ridiculous and laughably obvious because getting away with obvious lies demonstrates more dominance than being forced to craft believable ones does. They're calling themselves heroes for doing it, even while they mock and scorn true heroism, because being held blameless for abuse when you are the cause demonstrates dominance most of all. And they're getting away with it, because our institutions and systems and even the political opposition favors civility and politeness to truth and consequences. Even acting as if fascists intend to do what they say they intend to do is seen as gauche. And so fascists play on, in a land of zero consequences for fascists.

(Oh for god sakes, read the full thing. Then when you're done reading, keep reading some more. Read harder. Read better.)

[porterdavis]

A message to 72 million Americans

That's the number of you who found a way to justify to yourself voting for Donald Trump for President. His character is well-known and disqualifying on its face....felonies, sexual assaults, fraud, deceit, and a documented lack of qualifications. Nonetheless, you chose him over a generational talent with proven capabilities, not least of which is a sense of joy in governing.

My message to you is short and concise: You own this. From this point on -- it's on you.

Every woman that dies in a hospital parking lot because the ER can't deal with her miscarriage, blocked by Trump's abortion laws -- that's on you.

Every family that is torn apart by brownshirt government agents in middle-of-the-night deportation raids -- that's on you.

Every train derailment due to safety regulations being eliminated, spilling toxic chemicals killing and poisoning people for generations -- that's on you.

Every Ukrainian woman killed in her house by a Russian drone because the US has abandoned its support -- that's on you. Same with Gazans, West Bank settlers, Lebanese, and Taiwanese. That's on you.

Twice in the last eight years I have allowed my hopes to be raised by the prospect of the US getting a sane, female leader to break the cycle of old white men doing the same old things. That was on me.

But now it's time for rear-guard action. No, not some preposterous militia-style play-acting like Proud Boys or III percenters. No, it's time to observe, take notes, offer resistance where possible, preserve evidence for possible judicial action if democracy survives.

I will never forget and I will never forgive the 72 million who chose selfish interests to let misogyny and racism determine their votes for a man who has promised to destroy the democracy that millions of our forbears fought to defend both at home and on foreign shores.

My time is almost done. I'm not worried for myself, but I look at my grandchildren and I cry for what will be denied them...the democracy and freedoms that 72 million people have so cravenly cast aside.

This is on you.

[littlestpersimmon]

Jose Rizal, the philippine national hero (chosen by the American occupation but whatever lol) believed in peaceful means to achieve liberation, even tried to convince his contemporaries to NOT revolt. And the Spaniards still marched him off to prison where he was eventually executed via firing squad.

Andres Bonifacio, dude who rebelled against both the Americans and the Spaniards, started the revolution that lead to the philippines being among the first democracies of Asia and the entire global south. And the American occupation had him assassinated by the puppet government they set up.

Rizal grew up a member of the bourgeoisie, while Bonifacio grew up among the lower classes. And it didn't matter, because regardless of how differently they resisted, they were both killed by the oppressive regimes they were under. The difference is that Andres died fighting, dedicating his life to the rebellion, and his dream of liberating his people.

Anyways. If a lot of you guys are constantly picking between two lesser and greater evils, what difference do you have from medieval peasants waiting for a benevolent king to have mercy on you.

[schraubd]

New Frontiers of Darkness

The Washington Post has unveiled its new slogan to supplement (in practice, supplant) the old "Democracy Dies in Darkness": "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." I can't tell you how much I hate this. First of all, even out of context, it sounds both comically corporate and unbearably patronizing. "Riveting storytelling for all of America" sounds like how to market the Scholastic Book Fairs for emerging readers, not one of America's papers of record. But of course, we must take this slogan in context. And the context is the Post spending the last few months humiliating itself and dynamiting its journalistic credibility by repeated acts of groveling towards the MAGA movement. And I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but this slogan really encapsulates the media's self-delusion that it is part of the liberal family. Again, recall my thesis here: the media thinks its main audience is liberals, and so it sees its job as to challenge liberals with "alternative perspectives" or "competing views" (as opposed to just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may). One implication of this is that conservatives are a growth audience (because of course the Post in its prior manifestation couldn't be speaking to them) -- this is what "for all of America" means. We're no longer speaking just to the latte-sipping coastal elites, but to all of America. And lest you think I'm projecting, they're being quite explicit that this is what they mean: Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has made comments in line with the new mission statement in conversations with Post journalists in recent years, according to two people familiar with those discussions. Mr. Bezos has expressed hopes that The Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives, the people said. Now nominally, recognizing that conservatives are part of the audience could mean that the Post starts committing to telling them things they don't want to hear. For example, they could be informed, in no uncertain terms, how Trump's tariffs will crush working families with spiraling grocery bills. Or they could be told, in clear-eyed fashion, of how Trump's inner circle is proposing increasingly fascistic and lawless abuses of government power. Or they could be shown, without varnish or spin, how the Republican Party has begun to view sexual assault and rape as virtues in its political leaders -- not even a secret to be ashamed of, but as an affirmative basis for support and promotion. But of course, we all know that is not what Bezos and his cronies have in mind. "Riveting storytelling" suggests that what they want is sensation and soothing -- to reaffirm their (new) readers' priors, never to challenge them with something as dirty and discomforting as the truth. Conservatives can't tolerate hearing that Donald Trump was a grotesquely unsuitable choice for the presidency, and so the Post (even in its editorial endorsements) won't aggravate them. The Post knows that many if not most of Trump's cabinet picks fail the most basic (by the Post's own lights!) criteria of qualification for office in a democratic society -- respecting the outcomes of a democratic process -- and so the Post will just pretend it doesn't matter. The Scholastic Book Fair analogy is more than snark, for this is of a piece with the broader trend of infantilizing the American right. Conservatives, once again, are being treated as children, and spoiled children as that -- whatever junk keeps their attention, that's what will be provided.  A once great newspaper, reduced to an entertaining diversion for spoiled, coddled brats. Maybe the slogan isn't so bad after all. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/lpZWSRu

[librarycards]

I’ve seen a lot of discourse about Aaron Bushnell and madness, with reactionary genocidaires saying it is madness, and leftists saying it is not madness but principled protest. In my mind I am thinking about madness and sanity under empire, thinking I am surely mad and wondering why anyone is trying to be sane. If you have the capacity, can you share your thoughts on the madness of this moment, or point to others who have shared those thoughts?

you have very much captured the spirit of what i think! there's that common aphorism that goes something like, 'if this world is sane, then of course i'm mad' etc. etc., while i think this doesn't fully capture the specific genealogy and politic of Madness as contemporary scholar-activists understand it, it does provide a quick & effective explanation of Aaron's (z"l) decision to make the ultimate sacrifice in support of Palestinian liberation.

it isn't useful to understand his choices as solely Mad (in terms of an embrace of opacity and nonsensicality/illegibility - in fact, quite the opposite, he took pains to be explicit and serious as to his reasoning and methodology so that u.s. media discourse would struggle to obfuscate it [even though they still are]).

however, it *is* useful to use a Mad conceptual framework for some elements of Aaron's choice, and as a means of understanding pathologized forms of protest –– not only suicide, but med strike, hunger strike, etc. these forms of protest, as many have said, are designed to distress onlookers. they are designed to push against the bounds of the common[/]sensical, to gift us with possible alternatives to, you know, getting a police permit and marching in circles, AND, to the complacent, grease the stopped-up gears of their own imaginations. because Aaron did what is, in many ways (even to those of us who have attempted suicide before) unimaginable: he died. we have not yet died. he died yelling "Free Palestine." he died, and lived his last moments with a degree of moral turpitude, courage, and singleminded commitment to a cause that few will ever achieve, and yet one that –– as Aaron himself acknowledged Palestinians must muster every day.

here is where Madness comes in: Aaron acted as a linker of worlds: between that which many usamericans, and many others who have never undergone military siege/genocide, find exists outside the realm of the imaginable. a world that many would prefer to pretend does not, can not, could not exist. a world from which hegemonic media would have "us" (white americans/others in the ~western world~) believe could never exist, not least because our own military hegemons (with Aaron, until the other day, as one of their sentient weapons) protect "democracy" –– that is, the supposed exceptionality/exemption of the "(white) u.s. citizen" from terror, from sociopolitical Madness, from the absolute violence of settler colonialism. Aaron, in short, brought that unimaginable violence home. he forced us to reckon with the brutal truth of martyrdom, here. as someone on here mentioned, he used his status as an airman in what is perhaps the most effective weaponization of privilege i have ever seen. he killed a soldier, and that soldier was himself.

of course media is leaping and will continue to leap on this as evidence of extremism, of dangerous insanity, etc. etc. in radical movements. always has been. read The Protest Psychosis. the idea of insanity has been used by basically every state power to justify disposal, because it's convenient: by claiming one is insane, you also claim all of their appeals to reason are the result of their insanity. this is called anasognosia. it's a cute little trick. it isn't new. the best way to approach this is to maintain two things: one, that Aaron's choice was rational given a clearsighted understanding of the scale of genocide that's currently taking place. AND, to question those –– leftists included! pro-pal folks included! –– who uncritically cite 'mental illness' as the reason for Aaron's suicide.

this is not because Aaron wasn't what some would call "mentally ill" –– i don't know him, i do not live in his head. the point is, it does not matter if he was diagnosed with anything or not. it does not matter if he was already suicidal or not. it does not matter if he had tried to kill himself before. none of it fucking matters, and attempts to reduce this act to the result of a mad(dened) mind is to distract from the political project he pursued. he performed a politically Mad act, to which his imagined internal pathology was irrelevant. he broke consensus reality, even if only for a moment. he linked worlds. Palestinians felt it. that is what matters.

so, how did he connect worlds? he did something Mad. it is useful to understand suicide as a Mad act, so long as we are careful not to fall into the pathologizing traps that exclude suicidal people as interlocutors outright. he showed many of us, activists included, what we could be doing - the lengths to which it is possible to go in support of liberation. he did not, and i am not, encourage/ing everyone else to kill themselves. self-immolation is effective, in many ways, because so few people do it. we need to stay alive to continue the fight. however, Aaron tore the fabric of the reasonable, the possible, and the legal (consider the pigs who approached his burning body with guns) to disrupt a collective consciousness that would rather move on, equivocate, forget, tune-out. that is Mad. Madness is necessary in our movements, all of them.

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Anita Pollitzer

Arrested For Picketing The White House

Anita Pollitzer was a women’s rights activist and leader of the suffragette movement of the early 20th century. She was instrumental in the passage of the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting American women the long-denied right to vote in 1920.

Born in 1894 in Charleston SC, Anita’s parents were Eastern European Jews whose family fled the old country because of antisemitism. Anita’s keen intellect and creative mind were evident at an early age, as was her charismatic personality. She was raised in a traditional Jewish home and as a teenager taught Sunday school at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, the oldest continually active congregation in America.

After graduating from high school, Anita moved to New York to attend Teacher’s College, where she majored in art education and became friends with photographer Georgia O’Keeffe. When Anita saw some of her friend’s charcoal drawings in 1915, she was so impressed that she took them to her friend gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz and O’Keeffe later married and became one of the most famous artistic power couples in American history.

Anita wrote a book about her friendship with O’Keeffe, A Woman on Paper, that wasn’t published until 1988, long after both women were deceased. Book reviewer Lynne Bundesen said, “it is a book that tells you that the voices of the most independent, far-seeing women of the times, the pioneers of women’s rights and visions talked to each other as gushing, enthusiastic, eager and confused schoolgirls straight out of the Victorian era – as they may not have talked with their men.”

Around this time, Anita became involved with the movement for women’s suffrage. Incredibly, seventy years after Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s Women’s Rights Convention in 1848, American women were still unable to exercise the most basic right in a democracy – the right to vote. Anita joined the National Women’s Party (NWP), a political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women’s suffrage. Anita became a party organizer, traveling all over the United States to advocate for her cause. Her friendliness, charm, and reasoned yet passionate arguments for her cause helped create a groundswell of support among both women and men for a constitutional amendment to guarantee women’s right to vote. She spoke to everyday Americans, as well as state legislators and was very successful in bringing her cause to the forefront of public conversation.

In 1917, Anita was a leader of the Silent Sentinels, also known as the Sentinals of Liberty, a group of women from the NWP who picketed outside the White House to protest President Woodrow Wilson’s lack of support for suffrage. They held signs saying “Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty” and “What will you do for woman suffrage.” This vigil lasted two and a half years, through blizzards and heat waves, and pioneered the “silent protest” activism strategy. During this time, the women were constantly harassed, insulted, bullied. Anita, a visible leader of the movement, was arrested but remained undeterred from her mission.

The protests worked. By 1918, President Wilson supported the federal amendment. It still had to pass Congress, and Anita became a feminist legend when she befriended Congressman Harry Burn of Tennessee and convinced him to cast the deciding vote for the amendment, which passed in 1920, enfranchising 26 million American women.

Anita married press agent Elie Edson in 1928 and they lived in New York together for almost fifty years. Elie encouraged his wife’s activism, and after the 19th amendment passed, Anita continued working with the NWP. She lobbied legislators to pass laws ensuring women’s property rights and ban unfair salary practices. Anita traveled to Europe to use her experience to help women there organize for equal rights.

Elie died in 1971, and soon after Anita suffered a stroke from which she never recovered. Anita Pollitzer passed away four years later in New York City.

For her passionate work to enfranchise 26 million American women, we honor Anita Pollitzer as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[detroitpedxing]

(Archived News, Sept. 17. 2024) Second Apparent Assassination Attempt on Trump Prompts Alarm Abroad

There is widespread concern that the November election will not end well and that American democracy has frayed to the breaking point.

In the nine years since Donald J. Trump entered American politics, the global perception of the United States has been shaken by the image of a fractured, unpredictable nation. First one, then a second apparent attempt on the former president’s life have accentuated international concerns, raising fears of violent turmoil spiraling toward civil war.

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, has said he is “very worried” and “deeply troubled” by what the F.B.I. said was an attempt to kill Mr. Trump at his Florida golf course, fewer than 50 days before the presidential election and two months after a bullet bloodied the ear of Mr. Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

“Violence has no part to play at all in any political process,” Mr. Starmer said.

Yet, violence has played a core part in this stormy, lurching American political campaign, and not only in the two apparent assassination attempts. There is now widespread concern across the globe that the November election will not end well and that American democracy, once a beacon to the world, has frayed to the breaking point.

In Mexico, where elections this year were the most violent in the country’s recent history, with 41 candidates and aspirants for public office assassinated, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Even though what happened is still unclear, we regret the violence against former President Donald Trump. The path is democracy and peace.”

At a time of wars in Europe and the Middle East and widespread global insecurity as China and Russia assert the superiority of their autocratic models, American precariousness weighs heavily.

Corentin Sellin, a French history professor, said the “brutalization of American politics” had left France “wondering whether the presidential campaign will finish peacefully.”

France was stunned, he said, by the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, and “there is this notion that the story that started with that insurrection has not yet ended,” and that the Nov. 5 election will determine how it does.

The threat of violence — at times, even the need for it — has been a core part of Mr. Trump’s message.

He has already cast doubt on the credibility of the coming November election results. He has persistently laced his language with calls to “fight” and used incendiary terms to insult immigrants. Just before the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, he urged followers to “fight like hell” or they would not “have a country any more.” In general, he has shown an ironclad incapacity to accept many truths, including the result of the 2020 election.

Democrats have responded by depicting Mr. Trump as a direct menace to American democracy, a “weird” would-be autocrat of fascist tendencies and a “threat to our freedoms,” in the words of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. The left-leaning New Republic magazine portrayed Mr. Trump as Hitler on a recent cover, expressing the view that a second Trump term is likely to lead to some form of American tyranny.

Some Europeans see things in a very different light.

“They tried to do everything,” said Andrea Di Giuseppe, a lawmaker with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party. “They tried to bring Trump down with trials, they tried to bring him down with insinuations, they tried to bring him down by scaring people that ‘if Trump arrives democracy ends.’ Then, since all these attempts did not work, they tried to kill him.”

The authorities have identified a suspect in the Florida episode, Ryan W. Routh, a 58-year-old building contractor with a criminal history and a passionate embrace of the Ukrainian cause. He was charged in federal court with two firearms counts. More charges may follow.

Responding to the apparent assassination attempt, Carsten Luther, an online editor for international affairs, gave voice to deep concerns about the survival of American democracy in the respected German weekly Die Zeit. “The warnings of a civil war can be heard and no longer sound completely unrealistic,” he wrote. “It seems almost banal, as if it was bound to happen at some point.”

Of course, other Western societies, including France and Germany, are also viscerally divided and have seen the rise of xenophobic, far-right parties with many of the same messages as Mr. Trump. In May, an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia left him critically injured.

But a far more restrictive European gun culture has curbed the extent of political violence while leaving Europeans alarmed and incredulous at the ease with which Americans are able to obtain weapons.

Félix Maradiaga, a former Nicaraguan presidential candidate and political prisoner who is now a fellow at the University of Virginia, said that polarization, intolerance and the widespread availability of high-caliber weapons in the United States had led to a “perfect storm.”

“The world is watching, and the stakes could not be higher,” he added. “Russia and China are undoubtedly taking satisfaction in this deterioration of democracy.”

Lebohang Pheko, a senior research fellow at South Africa’s Trade Collective, an economics research institute, said that she perceived “a militarization of everyday life in the United States, and this essentially seems to be spilling into these elections.”

Mr. Trump has often appeared to seek this very militarization of which he has narrowly escaped being a victim. The multimillionaire son of a real-estate developer from Queens, he has positioned himself as the defender of the gun-toting, God-fearing American frontier against what he portrays as the Democrats’ politically correct socialist takeover.

Alluding to his Democratic opponents, he has blamed “the things that they say about me” for the first assassination attempt and the second episode, not the easy access to guns that he defends.

The question now is how violent will this political confrontation in America prove. For many around the world, it seems to contain the seeds of rampant conflict.

“There is a sort of reciprocal delegitimization, where the political opponent is no longer a normal political competitor, but also an existential enemy,” said Mario Del Pero, a professor of United States and International History at Sciences Po University in Paris. He called this process “a degradation of political and public discourse.”

In the United States, this has been a degradation compounded by guns, as much of the world sees it.

“Style over substance. Image over issues. Lies over facts. Distractions over policy. Repeated violence,” said Tomasz Płudowski, the deputy dean of the School of Social Science, AEH, in Warsaw. “That seems to be the contemporary American reality.”

The core confrontation in Western societies is no longer over internal issues. It is global vs. national, the connected living in the “somewhere” of the knowledge economy vs. the forgotten living “nowhere” in industrial wastelands and rural areas.

There lies the frustration, even fury, on which a Trump or a Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right French National Rally, or Ms. Meloni in Italy have been able to build.

The perceived vulnerability of American democracy has already provoked many reactions around the world, from Russian gloating and interference to European anxiety about its security. Few countries in the developing world want American lessons in how to run their societies these days.

Yet, a fascination with the United States endures, and the checks and balances of its institutions have proved resilient, including through the first Trump term.

Mr. Trump often cites the template of Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary: neutralizing an independent judiciary, subjugating much of the media, demonizing migrants and creating loyal new elites through crony capitalism. But it would not be easy to impose in America.

Still, the world is anxious. The 48 days to the election feel like a long time.

“In the end, the only real final word is for the American people,” said Mr. Di Giuseppe, the Italian lawmaker. “And if you want to defeat a person whom you think is not fit to govern the United States of America, you have to defeat him in a democratic system with elections, not with justice or Kalashnikovs.”

[liquidorcard]

Eyyy, well look at that. I call Lily somewhere in between being a neoliberal and classic conservative, and she proves me exactly right but not a day later. That was nice of her. Thanks, Lorch.

Because emotions are high right now, I want to very much stress that, yeah-- the American election was between the Dems being their typical shiteating selves and the Republicans reaching their final form as explicit, out-and-out facists. Uh, clearly those weren't two equally valid choices-- even compared to last time Trump won, where he at least put effort into appearing more as a moderate.

But let's be frank here, the nature of the capitalist hellscape the west currently exists in means that more than ever, people are desperate to be thrown a bone when it comes to the economy. And because in the west we also have piss poor econ comprehension and can barely recognize a Pyramid scheme on the small scale, let alone the nationwide one we currently have, people have been conditioned to vote red when they're struggling financially-- despite Republicans routine history of making the economy worse.

In addition to that, devastatingly large amounts of the voting population is too mentally exhausted to actually keep up with politics, if not vote at all. Why Reps win when they do can't be boiled down to a single primary factor-- but they do remarkably better the less people actually go out and vote. That's why Reps put so much time and effort into voter suppression-- and what probably really won Biden the election last time was how accessible voting was made because of covid.

Similar factors at play here in Canada, but, just speaking on the specifics of the American system here in particular.

Anyone with any degree of meaningful knowledge of history knows-- though not an absolute rule-- facist rhetoric tends to get it's big break in the wake of economic hardship and extreme financial inequality. Yes, the Biden administration did a lot to improve the economy. Yes, a lot of the economic hardship was a direct result of the first Trump term-- but there's just not enough economic and political literacy in the west to have that understood.

People tend to focus on the true MAGA voters here-- and though they are a significant portion of Trump's success in the 2024 election, don't get me wrong; the reality is, the swing demo here was likely a lot of people who were tired and frustrated, saw the orange man be big strong tough bullish leader man, and made their choice out of ignorance and ideas popagandized to them from birth about how the political system works. Or just couldn't be fucked to vote at all out of a sense of doom. As someone who wholly believes in democracy I want to steer away from the idea the population is just too dumb to vote responsibly. They're not. But western democracy has been eroded away by decades of upon decades of small obfuscation that adds up over time to a death by a thousand cuts.

Of course though, Lily so wholly believes in the system, is so profoundly fucking ready to make an appeal to the meritocracy of the western Democratic system as it currently is-- nah. Can't be the system is broken. Can't be that we are in need of radical reform.

I know there's some debate there as to whether or not the Dems' passive support for the Palestinian genocide really costed them the election or not. I personally think it did-- but not that they would have nessesarily won by a sweeping success otherwise. Of course, there are a million other factors that likely added up. To some extent (though it's debatable to how much) Kamala is a woman of colour. She was already heavily associated with the Biden administration and already technically in power. That disastrous first debate with Biden probably did a profound amount of damage out of the gate.

But she did ALSO run on an anti-immigrant position (just a more moderate one.) She also didn't do enough to distinguish herself from the Biden administration-- and she might have not have been able to. She changed her stance on fracking. She didn't do enough to outline (even just as a lie) about how she was going to simulate the economy from the bottom-up position. And though her campaign engaged in some of the smack-talk dunking on the Reps' ridiculous wedge issue bullshitting near the beginning, they very stupidly didn't keep up that energy for some absolutely godforsaken reason even though it was what was carrying her momentum at one point more than anything else. Despite myself never really fucking trusting politicians, I actually really liked Waltz. They fucking leashed him almost immediately in an absolutely braindead move.

And once again, here's fucking Lily being Queen Ghoul over here saying Harris was campaigning on a platform of "harm reduction" over a fucking GENOCIDE. Holy shitballs Lily. That's quite the take, EVEN FOR YOU. You could have blamed Biden. You would have been wrong, but. Antisemitism is unfortunately still pretty acceptable in the left, and people generally don't get the difference between Israel's government and its citizens-- or jewish people as a whole. You've been comfortable being antisemitic in the past, your fanbase is already primed for it. I'd prefer you not being the fucking bigot you are at all Lily, but like, at least that would have been your average level of awful. NOT MAKING EXCUSES FOR COMPLIANCE WITH GENOCIDE. The fuck is wrong with you!?

Also, there's no way to transition into this but, I gotta point this out: Yes Lily is being her usual profoundly unselfaware self as per fucking usual-- even though I don't think every person who voted republican is inherently a monster, her own fucking beloved brother ABSOLUTELY IS.

We actually agree on that point, Lily. Cameron and people like him need to be shot into the fucking sun.

[ask-crammaster-ham]

fuck joe biden really and truly. he hasnt done a thing to stop the genocide against Palestinians on their stolen land because it is in his best interest to see to it that Israel reminds a colonial, imperial hub for America to tap into. to vote for joe biden (as would be the case for all complicit world leaders) is to vote for someone whose willful funding of Israeli military actions has led to the unthinkable murders of countless colonized Palestinians by the IOF for simply living on the land Israel seeks to occupy. could you earnestly say that's where you want your vote to go anymore than to a republican? if a palestinian dies either way, what's the point? if americans suffer while their government sends billions in military money overseas, what's the point? democracy is a joke at this point. it just doesn't exist and if we continue to pretend it does, we're further than ever from what it should be. All these politicians leave is a trail of blood. biden is as much of a monster as trump, and perhaps in some ways, it's worse because of how much he pretends he isn't a monster. make the democratic party suffer this november for its unwillingness to represent the majority of Americans: the working class, the underprivileged, those who want to make the world materially better - not starve and make it worse.

if you find your way here, take this seriously. anti-imperialism is the only solution, for the world to get better the american empire must fall. there is no american dream or foundational truth where justice and liberty define america. america is defined by blood.

[reasonsforhope]

"If I wanted to convince you of the reality of human progress, of the fact that we as a species have advanced materially, morally, and politically over our time on this planet, I could quote you chapter and verse from a thick stack of development statistics.

I could tell you that a little more than 200 years ago, nearly half of all children born died before they reached their 15th birthday, and that today it’s less than 5 percent globally. I could tell you that in pre-industrial times, starvation was a constant specter and life expectancy was in the 30s at best. [Note: This is average life expectancy, old people did still exist in olden times] I could tell you that at the dawn of the 19th century, barely more than one person in 10 was literate, while today that ratio has been nearly reversed. I could tell you that today is, on average, the best time to be alive in human history.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be convinced.

In one 2017 Pew poll, a plurality of Americans — people who, perhaps more than anywhere else, are heirs to the benefits of centuries of material and political progress — reported that life was better 50 years ago than it is today. A 2015 survey of thousands of adults in nine rich countries found that 10 percent or fewer believed that the world was getting better. On the internet, a strange nostalgia persists for the supposedly better times before industrialization, when ordinary people supposedly worked less and life was allegedly simpler and healthier. (They didn’t and it wasn’t.)

Looking backward, we imagine a halcyon past that never was; looking forward, it seems to many as if, in the words of young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, “the world is getting more and more grim every day.”

So it’s boom times for doom times. But the apocalyptic mindset that has gripped so many of us not only understates how far we’ve come, but how much further we can still go. The real story of progress today is its remarkable expansion to the rest of the world in recent decades. In 1950, life expectancy in Africa was just 40; today, it’s past 62. Meanwhile more than 1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990 alone.

But there’s more to do — much more. That hundreds of millions of people still go without the benefit of electricity or live in states still racked by violence and injustice isn’t so much an indictment of progress as it is an indication that there is still more low-hanging fruit to harvest.

The world hasn’t become a better place for nearly everyone who lives on it because we wished it so. The astounding economic and technological progress made over the past 200 years has been the result of deliberate policies, a drive to invent and innovate, one advance building upon another. And as our material condition improved, so, for the most part, did our morals and politics — not as a side effect, but as a direct consequence. It’s simply easier to be good when the world isn’t zero-sum.

Which isn’t to say that the record of progress is one of unending wins. For every problem it solved — the lack of usable energy in the pre-fossil fuel days, for instance — it often created a new one, like climate change. But just as a primary way climate change is being addressed is through innovation that has drastically reduced the price of clean energy, so progress tends to be the best route to solving the problems that progress itself can create.

The biggest danger we face today, if we care about actually making the future a more perfect place, isn’t that industrial civilization will choke on its own exhaust or that democracy will crumble or that AI will rise up and overthrow us all. It’s that we will cease believing in the one force that raised humanity out of tens of thousands of years of general misery: the very idea of progress.

Changing Humanity's "Normal" Forever

Progress may be about where we’re going, but it’s impossible to understand without returning to where we’ve been. So let’s take a trip back to the foreign country that was the early years of the 19th century.

In 1820, according to data compiled by the historian Michail Moatsos, about three-quarters of the world’s population earned so little that they could not afford even a tiny living space, some heat and, hopefully, enough food to stave off malnutrition.

It was a state that we would now call “extreme poverty,” except that for most people back then, it wasn’t extreme — it was simply life.

What matters here for the story of progress isn’t the fact that the overwhelming majority of humankind lived in destitution. It’s that this was the norm, and had been the norm since essentially… forever. Poverty, illiteracy, premature death — these weren’t problems, as we would come to define them in our time. They were simply the background reality of being human, as largely unchangeable as birth and death itself...

Between 10,000 BCE and 1700, the average global population growth rate was just 0.04 percent per year. And that wasn’t because human beings weren’t having babies. They were simply dying, in great numbers: at birth, giving birth, in childhood from now-preventable diseases, and in young adulthood from now-preventable wars and violence.

It was only with the progress of industrialization that we broke out of [this long cycle], producing enough food to feed the mounting billions, enough scientific breakthroughs to conquer old killers like smallpox and the measles, and enough political advances to dwindle violent death.

Between 1800 and today, our numbers grew from around 1 billion to 8 billion. And that 8 billion aren’t just healthier, richer, and better educated. On average, they can expect to live more than twice as long. The writer Steven Johnson has called this achievement humanity’s “extra life” — but that extra isn’t just the decades that have been added to our lifespans. It’s the extra people that have been added to our numbers. I’m probably one of them, and you probably are too...

The progress we’ve earned has hardly been uninterrupted or perfectly distributed... [But] once we could prove in practice that the lot of humanity didn’t have to be hand-to-mouth existence, we could see that progress could continue to expand.

Current Progress "Flows Overwhelmingly" to the Developing World

The long twentieth century came late to the Global South, but it did get there. Between 1960 and today, India and China, together home to nearly one in every three people alive today, have seen life expectancy rise from 45 to 70 and 33 to 78, respectively. Per-capita GDP over those years rose some 2,600 percent for India and an astounding 13,400 percent for China, with the latter lifting an estimated 800 million people out of extreme poverty.

In the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa, progress has been slower and later, but shouldn’t be underestimated. When we see the drastic decline in child mortality — which has fallen since 1990 from 18.1 percent of all children in that region to 7.4 percent in 2021 — or the more than 20 million measles deaths that have been prevented since 2000 in Africa alone, this is progress continuing to happen now, with the benefits overwhelmingly flowing to the poorest among us.

Vanishing Autocracies

In 1800, according to Our World in Data, zero — none, nada, zip — people lived in what we would now classify as a liberal democracy. Just 22 million people — about 2 percent of the global population — lived in what the site classifies as “electoral autocracies,” meaning that what democracy they had was limited, and limited to a subset of the population.

One hundred years later, things weren’t much better — there were actual liberal democracies, but fewer than 1 percent of the world’s population lived in them...

Today just 2 billion people live in countries that are classified as closed autocracies — relatively few legal rights, no real electoral democracy — and most of them are in China...

Expanding Human Rights

All you have to do is roll the clock back a few decades to see the way that rights, on the whole, have been extended wider and wider: to LGBTQ citizens, to people of color, to women. The fundamental fact is that as much as the technological and economic world of 2023 would be unrecognizable to people in 1800, the same is true of the political world.

Nor can you disentangle that political progress from material progress. Take the gradual but definitive emancipation of women. That has been a hard-fought, ongoing battle, chiefly waged by women who saw the inherent unfairness of a male-dominated society.

But it was aided by the invention of labor-saving technologies in the home like washing machines and refrigerators that primarily gave time back to women and made it easier for them to move into the workforce.

These are all examples of the expansion of the circle of moral concern — the enlargement of who and what is considered worthy of respect and rights, from the foundation of the family or tribe all the way to humans around the world (and increasingly non-human animals as well). And it can’t be separated from the hard fact of material progress.

Leaving a Zero-Sum World Behind

The pre-industrial world was a zero-sum one... In a zero-sum world, you advance only at the expense of others, by taking from a set stock, not by adding, which is why wars of conquest between great powers were so common hundreds of years ago, or why homicide between neighbors was so much more frequent in the pre-industrial era.

We have obviously not eradicated violence, including by the state itself. But a society that can produce more of what it needs and wants is one that will be less inclined to fight over what it has, either with its neighbors or with itself. It’s not that the humans of 2023 are necessarily better, more moral, than their ancestors 200 or more years ago. It’s that war and violence cease to make economic sense...

Doomerism, at its heart, may be that exhaustion made manifest.

But just as we need continued advances in clean tech or biosecurity to protect ourselves from some of the existential threats we’ve inadvertently created, so do we need continued progress to address the problems that have been with us always: of want, of freedom, even of mortality. Nothing can dispel the terminal exhaustion that seems endemic in 2023 better than the idea that there is so much more left to do to lift millions out of poverty and misery while protecting the future — which is possible, thanks to the path of the progress we’ve made.

And we’ll know we’re successful if our descendants can one day look back on the present with the same mix of sympathy and relief with which we should look back on our past. How, they’ll wonder, did they ever live like that?"

-via Vox, 3/20/23

Note: I would seriously recommend reading the whole article--because as long as this post is, this is only about half of it! The article contains a lot more information about the hows and whys of human progress, and it also definitely made me cry the first time I read it.

[eugenedebs1920]

If you can’t win. Cheat! That seems to be the platform for the once, Grand Ol Party. That party died with Eisenhower. Nixon was a paranoid, racist criminal, who would do what it took to keep power. The “Reagan Revolution” was nothing more than a script written for a literal actor to do the bidding of Wall Street and big banks. W. Bush was more of the same , but at least he was a war hero. H.W. Bush was the least qualified candidate for president until his maga successor would stumble into the oval office 16 years later.

The Republican Party is the same racist fucks that use to head the Democratic Party before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s not blue or red, Democrat or Republican. It’s conservative v liberal. The conservative holding on to “the good ol days”. Yea!? What were those!? When you could treat a person of color like a second class citizen and all your other white friends would smile with approval. Tradition. What tradition is that conservatives?! Do we need to go farther back than that?! How bout when you could own another human being and make him do the work while you sat around and reaped the rewards? If that boy get outta line he’ll be gettin the whip! Fucking disgusting! Conservative. What the fuck you conserving!? Sure ain’t morality! Sure ain’t the rule of law! Sure ain’t the planet! Sure ain’t “family values”! Sure ain’t the Constitution, or our democracy, or our institutions, the courts, the balance of power, ethics, honor, dignity, pride! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU CONSERVING!?!? Because from where I’m standing, it’s hate. Because from where I’m standing, it’s voter suppression. Because from where I’m standing it’s corruption. Just like Reconstruction, just like the Jim Crow south, same shit. Different time. Same assholes!

Prove me wrong……

I’m almost as pissed At liberals as conservatives! (Not really) Do you want to make a change for good in this world?! Do you want to see equality as the law of the land!? Do you want acceptance and love to be the norm!? Where everyone is taken care of, we’re kind to those we know, and those we don’t. A place where corporate greed isn’t the main itinerary. Where being well educated is achievable to all Americans regardless of socioeconomic status? Do you want to live in a country where the bottom 50% of earners make more than 3% of the wealth?! Do you want fair banking and lending practices? A clean environment to live in, to be able to buy a house, raise a family, in a nation where the air is safe to breathe, where the water is safe to drink, where you don’t have to worry if your kid is going to get shot up at school?! Do you want civil rights, woman’s rights, LGBTQ rights, human rights, elderly protection, environmental protection, liberty, freedom, the right to pursue happiness?! Is that something you would like?!

Then toughen the fuck up! Quit this cancel culture, delicate snowflake bullshit! We’re not woke!!! We’re liberals!. The racist are coming with torches to lynch a motha fucker, you gunna stand up and fight, or curl up in a ball and cry!? The fuckin rules have been thrown out long ago. These pricks DONT FUCKING CARE! They will burn this shit down and wait for us to put it out with our liberal tears. Fuck that! If they’re going to burn this shit down we’re locking them In the fucking building while it burns to the ground. The gloves are off. No more going in to the boxing ring holding true to the sport while our opponent has a baseball bat and is ready to swing for the fences at us.

The high road has got us nowhere but low. So let’s stay there. If they’re want to play dirty and skirt the rules, so can we. If we don’t! And fuckin soon! They’ll be nothing left to fight for.

[catdotjpeg]

On February 2nd, the Associated Press analyzed satellite imagery which showed “new demolition along a 1-kilometer-wide path on the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel.” The images, which revealed the recent destruction of Palestinian farmland, warehouses and other buildings, suggested that Israel had started creating what it has called a “buffer zone” in areas of Gaza adjoining the Israeli border, a project that Israeli leaders have been trying to pursue as part of their invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s October 7th attack. Israeli officials claim that such a step is necessary to allow residents of communities in the south of Israel to return to their homes without fear of another attack. “[All along] the Gaza Strip . . . we will have a margin. And they will not be able to get in,” Avi Dichter, Israel’s agriculture minister, told reporters on October 19th. “It will be a fire zone. And no matter who you are, you will never be able to come close to the Israeli border.”

For months, United States and European officials have repeatedly voiced opposition to the idea of Israel’s permanent militarized border zone within Gaza, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying in November that there should be “no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza” and “no reduction in the territory of Gaza”—both outcomes that would likely result from such a zone. But the AP’s analysis, coupled with other recent events, indicate that Israel is forging ahead with creating its “fire zone” despite such objections. Indeed, on January 23rd, Israeli soldiers in Gaza were actively laying mines in and around two buildings in central Gaza close to the border with Israel, intending to destroy them, when a grenade fired by a Palestinian militant caused the explosives to go off, killing 21 soldiers. In the aftermath of the attack, three Israeli officials anonymously told the New York Times Israel was demolishing the buildings to create a “security zone,” while an Israeli military spokesperson said the soldiers who had died were operating to “create the security conditions for the return of the residents of the south to their homes.”

Israel’s work on the zone comes amid widespread speculation about the future of Gaza after the eventual end of Israel’s ongoing genocidal assault, which has already killed at least 27,000 people. American, Arab, and Israeli officials have debated what comes next for the coastal enclave, with Western governments pushing for a revitalized Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza—which Israel opposes—and far-right Israeli ministers advocating to expel Palestinians from Gaza and build renewed Israeli settlements. Yet even as these policy discussions remain unresolved, Israel is unilaterally exerting control over Gaza’s post-war reality by constructing a militarized zone inside the enclave that materially shrinks the amount of Palestinian land while leaving open room for Israeli Jewish resettlement of the Strip. The strategy recalls Israel’s modus operandi in the West Bank, where Israel has built hundreds of settlements in order to create “facts on the ground” to entrench its control before the international community can do anything about it.

Current and former military officials portray the creation of a militarized Israeli zone inside Gaza as necessary to prevent another attack on southern Israeli communities near the border. “People coming back to their homes [in Israel] don’t want to see someone [in Gaza] take out a rifle or an anti-tank missile or come to the fence, cross it, and kill them,” said Jacob Nagel, a former national security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a neoconservative think tank that advocates for US intervention in the Middle East. “We have to show them that the area there is empty. Otherwise, it would be very tough for them to come back.” But Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza, said creating a so-called buffer zone through the demolition of Palestinian homes and neighborhoods will only fuel more violence. “In the areas that were systematically razed and wiped out, you’re giving people a very strong revenge incentive,” he said. “Israel is basically creating a recruitment poster [for Palestinian militant groups].” Indeed, the creation of the zone is likely to add to the list of Israeli war crimes committed in Gaza since October 7th. According to research by Corey Scher, a PhD student at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, Israel has destroyed or damaged 143,900 structures throughout Gaza since October 7th, around 1,329 of which were in the proposed zone. Human rights experts have said that the destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure may constitute war crimes. And if the Israeli zone continues to be created, more such homes will likely be demolished. “If there are no concrete, direct security grounds for why these houses have to be torn down, the destruction of civilian homes is completely illegal,” said Miriam Marmur, public advocacy director at Gisha, an Israeli human rights group focusing on Gaza. Nagel, however, is not concerned with such complaints: “There are no civilian buildings in Gaza,” he said, claiming that most buildings in the Strip are filled with weapons or contain tunnel entrances.

Keeping Palestinians out of the zone is also likely to involve further violations of international law. Some former Israeli officials have suggested laying mines in the border area, though the Israeli army has not publicly committed to this idea. Nagel predicted that the zone would be enforced by live fire. “I like to call it a ‘killing zone,’ but since ‘killing zone’ is not a nice term, we use the words ‘buffer zone,’” Nagel told Jewish Currents, clarifying that regardless of what the area is called, he thinks that “someone [who] is moving there without permission is going to be dead.” Such a policy would be illegal under international law, said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch. “No territory can ever be a free-fire zone,” he said. Shakir added that, under international law, live fire force can only be deployed during war if it is proportionate—meaning that attacks on a military site must not include harm to civilians that is excessive in comparison to the expected military advantage of an operation—and if it discriminates between civilians and combatants.

There is precedent for Israel using lethal force to limit Palestinians’ access to land near the Israeli border. Since Israel pulled soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, the army has violently barred most Gazans from coming within 300 meters of the Israeli barrier—a policy that has led to indiscriminate attacks against Palestinian civilians in that zone, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. From 2010 to 2017, Israeli soldiers opened fire 1,300 times in the 300 meter area, killing 161 Gazans there, according to Gisha. In 2018, when Palestinian protestors started the Great March of Return, congregating near the border to call for the end of Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the right of return to lands they were expelled from in 1948, Israeli snipers responded by shooting and killing 223 Palestinians. Over the years, Israeli soldiers have also cracked down on Palestinian farmers and herders working in the zone, sometimes spraying herbicide or razing farmland in order to enforce the prohibition on Palestinians coming near the Israeli barrier. Marmur said that many of these enforcement measures violated international law. “There is little reason to believe that the new buffer zone would be enforced differently, raising concern over an expansion of Israel’s illegal practices,” she said.

The militarized zone Israel is now planning to impose within Gaza would triple the size of the pre-October 7th iteration, severely impacting Palestinians in the Strip. The demolitions would worsen the housing crisis in the enclave, where nearly 70% of homes in Gaza have now been damaged or destroyed by Israeli bombs. In addition to leaving potentially thousands with no home to return to, the zone would deepen food insecurity in the Strip, since a third of Gaza’s agricultural land lies in the proposed zone. Due to Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian aid entering the Strip, Palestinians in Gaza already face a hunger crisis and virtually every family skips a meal every day, with 400,000 people at risk of starvation. The loss of further farmland will only compound this situation. In addition to these dire short term effects, the new Israeli zone may permanently “eat away Palestinian lands, adding to years of systemic dispossession of Palestinians,” Marmur said. Israeli officials claim that their control of this land will be “temporary,” but Nadia Hardman, a researcher in the Refugee and Migrants Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, told Jewish Currents that the scale of the destruction in the region indicates that Palestinians won’t be able to return their homes there “at any point in the foreseeable future.”

A permanent Israeli zone inside Gaza stands to significantly reshape the balance of power in any post-war scenario. In addition to allowing Israel to take over parts of Gaza’s territory—in the process creating, as per Shehada, “conditions that would push people to leave the territory”—such a zone could also pave the way for the building of new Israeli settlements. Resettling Gaza has been a long-standing demand of the Israeli right, one that has gained new momentum since October 7th. Indeed, on January 28th, a thousand Israeli settlers and their supporters—including 12 ministers from the ruling Likud party, along with national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich—joined a Jerusalem conference to promote the resettlement of Gaza. Members of Likud have also proposed legislation to repeal the ban on Israeli civilians entering Gaza, which would allow settlers a foothold in the territory. Observers say a permanent Israeli zone in Gaza is likely to accelerate this process. “We have watched this play out again and again in the West Bank and also in Gaza before 2005: Israeli settlements always start off with a security justification,” said Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It starts with a military base going up somewhere and then the area being declared a no go zone. And then slowly that security justification becomes muted—and then we start seeing settlements.”

Yet even as human rights advocates raise such alarms about the consequences of the zone, the US may be softening its opposition to the project. That opposition was never particularly forceful: “There’s been very little outrage from the US administration about the creation of the buffer zone as it’s been happening in real time,” Hassan said. As a result, Israel has proceeded by simply disregarding the US’s reservations, an approach that seems to have paid off. Last month, Blinken hinted the US may accept a temporary Israeli buffer zone inside the Gaza border, saying there may need to be “transitional arrangements” to ensure Israel’s security and “make sure that October 7th can never happen again.” But according to Hassan, “there’s not a lot of credibility regarding Israeli assertions that these things are going to be temporary.” She pointed to how Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank was originally portrayed by Israeli officials as a temporary security measure, only for it to remain standing 20 years later—with Israeli officials coming to openly describe it as a permanent border between Israel and the occupied West Bank. Israel’s temporary measures, Hassan concluded, “have a way of sticking around for a long time.”

-- "An Israeli “Buffer Zone” Could Shape Gaza’s Post-War Reality" by Alex Kane for Jewish Currents, 6 Feb 2024

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

This piece was called “Do You Hear Something?”, a comment on American distraction and sometimes, willful blindness.

[Steve Brodner]

+

Tuesday was a maddening day. It included the following:

The ongoing collapse of US tech oligarchs into shameless obedience to Trump accelerating into freefall.

Judge Aileen Cannon issuing a lawless order prohibiting the DOJ from releasing Jack Smith’s report.

Trump holding an insane news conference that bristled with lies —many of which were dutifully repeated by the media without question or challenge. (The NYTimes was a rare exception, refuting fourteen of Trump’s “falsehoods,” although there were many more.)

Trump raising the possibility of using military force to occupy the Panama Canal and invade NATO allies Canada and Greenland.

Republicans on the North Carolina Supreme Court staging a “self-coup” to prevent a duly elected candidate from taking her seat on the NC Court.

That’s a lot. Any single item from above would be a record-setting level of craziness over four years in a different presidential administration. Trump managed to pack them into a single day.

I am hearing from readers who are distraught about the newest round of developments. One reader sent an email saying,

I am particularly overwrought this evening, watching my friends flee from the Palisades [wildfire in Los Angeles] and then a press conference with Trump where he says he can't guarantee not using the military to take over Greenland and Panama, and that Ashley Babbit was the only person who died on January 6 and that there were no guns [among the insurrectionists]. Please help me! Is this really happening? I feel my world falling apart.

I understand the feelings expressed by the reader, which are undoubtedly exacerbated by concern for family and friends in path of the wildfires in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening.

At root, however, we must acknowledge that what we are experiencing is not normal. Indeed, it is unprecedented in the history of our nation. Feeling overwhelmed, confused, anxious, or angry is a normal human reaction. Indeed, not experiencing those feelings (to some degree) is not a normal human reaction.

The events of Tuesday (discussed in more detail below) confirm that the decision of the grassroots movements to organize in opposition and resistance to Trump's agenda is both righteous and necessary. Someone must hold back the tide of disinformation and depravity that is central to Trump's agenda.

Watching billionaires surrender to Trump from fear or greed should make us feel like superheroes of the resistance. We do not have the insulating wealth of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg. And yet, we have found the courage and moral clarity to stand our ground against Trump's agenda.

Compared to you, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg are small, petty, pathetic creatures who will be remembered as collaborators in the same way the Vichy government of France is remembered as a puppet regime of the Third Reich.

Yes, the events of Tuesday were upsetting and alarming. But they confirm that our cause is just, and our path is true. We are in the right, no matter how often people tell us to “give Trump a chance” or that “Democrats are at fault” for losing the election.

We are standing on the bulwarks of democracy, defending the rule of law. We have no time for the naysayers and issue spotters. We have real work to do. Stay strong, keep the faith, and keep your eyes on the horizon!

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[petervintonjr]

"Most of all, I want the work I may do in the years to come --if the years are granted me-- to be critically sound."

Meet Washington, D.C.'s own Otelia Cromwell, scholar, professor, and long-term inspiration to many. Born in 1874 into a time when the nation's capital boasted the singular (and unusual) highest percentage of educated African Americans in all of the United States; an uncharacteristic atmosphere of relative social equality among Free Blacks and recently-freed Blacks, where great cultural emphasis was placed on literacy --the city was then known as the capital of "Colored Aristocracy." Otelia was born to Lucy McGuinn and John Wesley Cromwell, the first of six children. John Wesley was himself a lawyer, educator, and journalist who instilled in his eldest daughter the values of education as the best path to one's own personal and economic power. John Wesley was a founding member of the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, a forum which boasted W.E.B. Du Bois (see Lesson #1 in this series) and Frederick Douglass (Lesson #2) as occasional guest speakers. With a childhood steeped in this kind of exposure, it is little surprise that Otelia took the risk of transferring from Howard University to Smith College (already a prestigious liberal arts college for women), where she excelled in classical studies and from which she eventually graduated in 1900 --making her its first-ever Black woman to matriculate. She pivoted easily into an education career of her own, teaching language studies at the famed M Street School (see Lessons #138 and #145 in this series for more on this particular institution), but eventually turned her attention to postgraduate studies --a brave act in itself given the entrenched segregated systems that surrounded her.

In 1910, Otelia Cromwell first earned her Master's degree from Columbia University, and then in 1926 attained a Ph.D in English from Yale --the first-ever Black woman to earn a doctorate degree from that school. In 1930 she returned to her beloved District of Columbia as a professor of English Language and Literature, at Miner Teachers College (which would later become the University of the District of Columbia); and she herself rose to chair of the literature department. She taught at Miner until her retirement in 1944; editing and publishing many studies during her time there --significantly Readings From Negro Authors for Schools and Colleges (1931), which she co-edited with Du Bois. In 1958 the Harvard University Press published her definitive scholarly work; a study of the life and achievements of Quaker abolitionist and activist Lucretia Mott.

Cromwell's choice of Mott as her subject was no whim; she had long studied Mott's role in shaping women's rights; openly noting the paradox of a nation that paid lip-service to democracy and social equality, but yet demanded a segregated Armed Forces. In many ways Cromwell foresaw the civil rights movements of the 1960's, confidently predicting that her own students would soon find in themselves the strength and perseverance to effect substantive change. Cromwell died in 1972 at the age of 98. In 1989 Smith College instituted the tradition of Cromwell Day; a celebration of Otelia's determined life of quiet but firm barrier-breaking. This day expanded to also include the achievements of Otelia's niece (and fellow Smith alum) Adelaide Cromwell, who would eventually be the first Black professor to be appointed at Smith. The Day is devoted to exploring community partnerships and individual responsibilities to better identify --and address-- structural racism and intrinsic oppression.

[belgianhistoryguy]

The major political parties of Belgium

So, I'm Belgian, and our politics is a lovely complicated mess, so let's go over the major political parties together shall we? Before we do that though you have to know that the major families are divided by language.

The Dutch speaking parties

Groen: literally meaning green, the dutch-speaking ecologist party, broadly left, a lot of socialist policies with more of a emphasis on nature and a burning hatred for nuclear power.

Vooruit: literally meaning forward, this is the socialist party on this side of the language border. They have a lot your standard socialist standpoints (strong unions, higher wages, strong social safety measures) and are also socially/culturally left, being pro lgbtq+, for expanding abortion access... They are also less scared of nuclear power.

Open VLD: translates as the open flemish liberal democrats (yeah this is where the names start to become acronyms). This party is liberal in the non american sense, that is to say they are pro free market, pro business, believes that prices regulate themselves, doesn't think the government should own companies... They are also socially liberal, for expanding access to abortion and euthanasia, as well as surrogacy.

CD&V: translates as christian, democratic and flemish, a christian democratic party, with a somewhat weird dichotomy of pro worker and pro business standpoints (which involves some 150 years of belgian history involving the catholic party and the daensists). Broadly somewhat centrist swinging left or right depending on the issue. In favour of affordable access to healthcare and other progressive economic policies, but opposed to for example abortion, euthanasia and surrogacy.

N-VA: the new-Flemish alliance, socially conservative and economically liberal but especially the larger of the two Flemish nationalist parties (that is, being in favor of breaking up Belgium with an independent Flanders, which is the northern, dutch speaking half of Belgium). In favour of lower taxes, against higher minimum wages, tough on immigration but not by far as racist about it as the next party. Socially it is a mixed bag, supports lgbtq rights (to an extent) and abortion access.

Vlaams belang: Literally Flemish interest, the country's most far right party: again this party is Flemish-Nationalist. Immigration and integration are this party's key issue, holding identitarian beliefs. The party claims to not be neoliberal but the media and at least one major labour union disagree with that. They campaign under slogans such as "making flanders yours again", and are hostile to muslim fundamentalism and political islam anywhere they see or perceive it. Some conservative muslims do in turn vote for the party because of its socially right wing standpoints, supporting what it considers traditional norms and values. The party is also subject of the so called "cordon sanitaire", an agreement between the other major parties to not govern with VB. Members of other parties who do govern with VB are liable to lose their membership

The French (and German) speaking parties

Ecolo: short for the French word for ecological this is the French-speaking ecologist/green party. Again they hold broadly socialist and ecologist beliefs, want to fight climate change and promote new political practices to make Belgium more of a participatory democracy.

PS: literally translating as "socialist party" this is, rather unsurprisingly, the French-speaking socialist party, standing for much the same things as Vooruit, supporting equality, fair work, social justice and international solidarity. This party suplied the country's openly gay former prime minister, Elio di Rupo.

MR: literally translating as "reformer movement" or "reformist movement". Another liberal party, in favour of free markets and less government intervention in the economy, as well as social freedoms such as abortion and euthanasia.

Les Engagés: literally "the engaged ones", a centrist and progressive party again with origins in the Christian-democrat movement. They are similarly socially liberal but not as much as, for example the PS or ecolo. Economically they are also more or less liberal with the occasional more social minded idea.

DéFI: short for "democratic, federalist, independent" this party claims to represent the interests of French speakers in Brussels and Wallonia. Their ideology is a mix centrism, federalism (expanded power to the regions instead of the Belgian federal government.), social liberalism and some mild nationalism. This party is a split off from MR.

The one major party active in the entire country

PVDA-PTB: translating as the "party of labour of Belgium" this is the country's Marxist communist party (not in some hyperbolic sense, that is their official political ideology. The party is a strong proponent of LGBTQ right, abortion and euthanasia access. It is opposed to market capitalism and in the shorter term wishes to expand the Belgian social safety net. It is also severely anti NATO. Its rhetoric has rather little space for any nuance, earning it a stamp as a populist party.

[misfitwashere]

Trump's first week: The Real Story

Let it be known

ROBERT REICH

JAN 26READ IN APP

Friends,

Before I post my Sunday cartoon I want to share with you some thoughts about the first week of Trump II. 

The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.” 

Rubbish. 

What’s Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites. 

Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy. 

He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men. 

He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another — over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone. 

Trump’s divisive policies will cause great harm, to be sure, and we must do everything we can to protect those who are vulnerable to them. But his cruel divisiveness is deflecting attention from the main event. 

The media reported on all the hot-buttons Trump pushed: The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants (now referred to as “aliens”) are being turned away at the border. Immigration agents are freed to target hospitals, schools, and churches in search of people to deport. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will be barred from paying for many abortions.

All awful to be sure, but the bigger story is Trump’s consolidation of power — substituting loyalists for experts across the government, using retribution to intimidate others, purging the government’s independent inspectors general, giving the Defense Department more authority over civilian life (and putting a raving loyalist in charge), giving Elon Musk authority to cut spending and roll back regulations, and readying a massive tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations. 

Americans aren’t seeing this big story yet because Trump’s divisiveness is masking it. 

One example: Trump fired Lina Khan, the aggressive monopoly-buster chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and replaced her with corporate stooge Andrew Ferguson. As a result, giant corporations and their CEOs are now free to get even bigger — merging with one another, acquiring smaller companies, and using predatory bullying to wipe out competitors. These are key steps on the road toward even more concentrated oligarchic control. 

Yet what’s been reported this week is that Ferguson is purging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies from the Federal Trade Commission. 

I’m not playing down the importance of DEI. I’m just saying that the really big shift is happening behind the rightward flip. In fact, the terms “left” and “right” mean less and less now. The big story is about power and wealth moving into fewer and fewer hands.

Trump is the frontman. The three richest men in the world (Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) stood prominently before him when he was sworn in last week. Trump has appointed other billionaires to key positions. 

Behind them is a coterie of billionaires pushing for more oligarchic control of America (among them, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone). 

Their two key inside players are Musk and JD Vance.

The oligarchs are counting on Vance to become president when Trump is incapacitated or dies in office, or clings to power beyond 2028 and turns power over to Vance. Vance will manage the final transition to an oligarchic form of government. 

Recall that Vance would never have been elected senator from Ohio in 2022 were it not for Thiel’s $15 million investment in him (by far the largest portion of Vance’s campaign fund). 

Thiel knew what he was buying. Vance had worked for Thiel’s California venture capital firm before running for the Senate and was part of Thiel’s group of rich crypto bros, tech executives, back-to-the-landers, and disaffected far-right intellectuals.

Because Thiel had been a major funder of Trump’s 2016 presidential run, he had significant influence with Trump when urging him to pick Vance for vice president.

Thiel once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power.

That’s the whole point. Thiel and his fellow billionaire oligarchs want it all. 

Their intellectual godfather is Curtis Yarvin, a 51-year-old computer engineer who believes that political power in the United States has been held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream media, whose commitment to equality and justice is eroding social order.

Yarvin thinks democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful. They should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major “shareholders” select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime.

The first step toward achieving Yarvin’s vision was offered by Vance in a 2021 podcast — replace “every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state … with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say” – as did Andrew Jackson – that “the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

Yarvin’s emphasis on the inefficiency of democratic government is the seed for Musk’s department of government efficiency, itself another step toward Yarvin’s joint-stock corporation of oligarchs. 

A third step: cryptocurrency substitutes for the U.S. dollar. This would shift financial controls out of a democratically elected system of government and into the hands of oligarchs who control crypto. 

Make no mistake: Trump’s first week was a catastrophe for many vulnerable people. But the biggest story was his startling initial moves from democracy to oligarchy. 

My hope lies in Americans noticing this. 

As I’ve said, not since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century has such vast wealth turned itself into power so unapologetically, unashamedly, and defiantly.

Americans don’t abide aristocracy. We were founded in revolt against unaccountable power and wealth. We will not tolerate this barefaced takeover.

The backlash, when it comes, will be stunning.