Ending America's 21st century embrace of fascism

 Neo-fascism, neo-libertarianism - a couple of terms used to describe the current political bent of the USA. Neither term is accurate enough to describe the peculiar mix of retrograde racism, misogyny and econo-Christian elevation of exclusionary capitalism being practiced by the Republican National Committee as it promotes the secret agenda of America's ultra-right wing. 

Our nation is suffering the effects of a 75 year plus program of subversion and propaganda. Instead of teaching inclusion and respect, we are being divided and steered toward internal conflict. Good people made unholy versus good people characterized as unholy. And I do mean to to use the term unholy. It has been said of the environment: There are no places that are not sacred - only the sacred and the desecrated. The opposing forces within our body politic are analogous to opposing attitudes on the environment. One point of view sees opportunity for transforming nature into monetary gain, the other sees evidence of a divine balance as the new science of ecology discovers the subtle interplay behind the scenes of our physical existence.

The unholy billionaire - some are well intentioned - but the unholy billionaire will use all manner of subterfuge, propaganda and pecuniary advantage to gain control of the resources that will advance their profit making, and taking. This is capitalism without a conscience, an ungoverned vehicle blindly racing toward destruction of the planet that nurtures us all. Zero-sum gaming and subjugation of a growing lower class are not goals, but merely consequences of this neo-fascism.

The traditional definition of fascism describes a state that has nationalized all the means of production in service of a central governance, often built around a charismatic central power figure. The all-powerful dictator controls systems previously administered by private enterprise - not content with being confined to the usual beneficial programs of government that exist to promote a common good. Services cost money and the only profit therein is elicited through graft and corruption, so the dictator will seize factories, transportation, banks - subsuming enterprise, redefining privately owned business as property of the state.

The difference with America's "neo-fascism" is that existing corporations band together behind the scenes to bend regulations, decrease their taxation (destroying a system designed to serve a citizenry that in fact supports their corporations) and thus control the means of production and generation of capital. As always, the problem is not with the system itself, the problem stems from the moral failings of the human condition.

There is no easy solution. Our current systemic inequity cannot be cured by legislation. One could design a capitalistic system with rational restraints, but however excellent the design, human beings will find a way to subvert the system for personal gain. This is why the search for a conspiracy will ultimately end in failure. Contemporary techniques for "gaming the system" exist in the mind of the gamer, and the supposed conspirators are merely a convenient collusion of like-minded amoral profiteers. In the fifties the US congress searched for an alleged crime conspiracy among Italian-Americans termed 'the Mafia,' with a code of silence called 'omerta.' One afternoon as a Congressman grilled a suspect, trying to gain an admission he was a member of this mythical crime organization, the frustrated mobster spoke out, "There's no such thing as a 'Mafia,' it's just a bunch of guys who know each other!"

  And so it is - no conspiracy - just a shared attitude. "Wink-wink." As long as you "know how to play the game" you're in the club, your personal chance for financial leverage is insured. And the goal of increased personal profit, no matter the cost to others, is normalized with never a thought for any "collateral damage," to borrow a popular immoral semanticism used to disguise the evil of warfare. And warfare as practiced by the United States is nothing but an extension of capital "c" Capitalism. It's a de facto religion of profit, and the savvy clergyman will reinforce the connection that profit is next to godliness! Corrupt churches reinforce, aid and abet the impoverishment of the populace while tossing out hints of a distant scriptural salvation.

  The saving grace of the planet will come from the secular, the agnostic and the atheist, and the occasional sincere church, mosque, ashram, kibbutz - anywhere individuals are exercising their own innate connection with creation, finding the "God" within. Finding the sacred in the scientific, finding the God of Einstein and Spinoza, the unity of the Buddha, this will save the planet! No political system or "ism" of any kind holds the key to our salvation as a species. Convincing our fellow humans to find the divinity within, and "wink-wink," realizing all is holy, worthy of respect and nurturing, this the task that will unite us. Then we will willingly harness the fruits of scientific knowledge, the power of the computer, to abandon destruction and work on building a sane future for our children and grandchildren.

Help ever, hurt never. Each one, teach one. Tell your friends...

Patriotism or Nationalism? Americanism, or Racism? Ballot 2020

  I was born in Portland, Oregon in 1943.  When I was a child, America was emerging from the darkness of World War II. There was no particular ebullience in the air, more a sense of relief, and release from the hardships of rationing and deprivation that began with the great Depression and continued through the war years. Of course there was laughter and joy, but there was also caution with family finances and restraint when it came to any optimism about the future.

  While kids on our block were occupied with the joys of baseball in the street, spring kite flying, sling shots, clamp-on skates, winter sledding and snowball fights, we were also aware that while the great war was over, there was another war in Korea. And while some houses still had blue and gold stars in the window for sons who had been injured or perished in the second world war, there was now a new gold star mom up the street, and it was a neighborhood secret that one of the families had a draft dodger son living in their attic.

  The incongruity of one family losing their son while another hid their draft age son in the attic was not lost on us, whether child or adult. But being called to duty against the Chinese in Korea wasn't the same universal call to action that the simultaneous threats of Germany in Europe and Japan in the Pacific had presented. We would overhear the grownups: Korea was a "police action," "Truman's war," not even a real declared war. For a few brief years, America had enjoyed the role of a victorious savior. The "stars and stripes," the flag with 48 stars was flown proudly. A mock-up of the Liberty Bell on a short truck bed visited school playgrounds once a year. On Memorial Day soldiers with chrome helmets fired 21 gun salutes at the local cemetery. The 4th of July featured colorful parades and neighborhood fireworks included cherry bombs, "buzz bombs," Roman candles, and we would dance around and wave hand-held sparklers. Patriotism and national pride stemmed from the victories of the righteous. Egalitarian democracy had prevailed and would continue to keep the world safe for democracy! And we felt the spirit of American justice would buoy up the newly constituted United Nations as we looked forward to a future of world unity.

  That was my childish perspective, and I suppose that vision colors my outlook even now, as an adult in my seventies. But there's been a lot of "water under the bridge." The family moved to California, finding a home in midtown Palo Alto in early 1953. The Korean War was over, but the threat of Communist Russia - whether real, perceived, or manufactured - began to color our foreign policy and filtered through to our daily lives. For some, the "red menace" became a fixation. McCarthyism came to the fore. Labor unions were suspect. Were there spies in the neighborhood? In the workplace? Infiltrating the schools? It became imperative to develop the hydrogen bomb, and guided missiles. There were "duck and cover" exercises in the schools, and the light from atom bomb tests in Nevada could be viewed from our living room window when we got up to watch the tests on our black and white TV at 4:45am.

  In early 1954, inspired by Roger Bannister running a mile in under 4 minutes, we measured the perimeter of our schoolyard with the help of our 5th grade teacher and a bicycle wheel with a counter attached, calculating 4 and 1/2 laps would make a mile. The grammar school record came close to 6 minutes, and by 1956, local high school runner Ron Larrieu recorded a respectable 4:20.1 mile! While we were occupied with the challenge of the four minute mile, another seminal event had occurred within a day of Bannister's triumph, the fall of the French at Dien Bien Phu to Viet Namese nationalists in what was then known as French Indo-China. US loyalty to our French allies would later impel our country to blindly carry the torch of colonialism in Southeast Asia and ignore the request for alliance from the new leader of North Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh. And in 1957 the Russians launched their little beeping Sputnik satellite and school curriculums suddenly became weighted toward math and science.

  Other seminal events of the mid to late fifties involved desegregating schools, notably in the Southern US, while championing civil rights in general, and overcoming ridiculously entrenched voter suppression. America's founding documents, while greatly inspired by the humanitarianism of the French Enlightenment, had been diluted by the necessity of compromise with the states whose economies depended on the slave trade. Sometimes termed as "America's original sin," the abhorrent treatment of people of color was rooted in an unenlightened philosophy of white male superiority. The fallacy of this thinking appears as a subconscious assumption that cripples our country yet, denying equality of education, limiting economic access, and equally subjugating both women and people of color - a double whammy for some!

  While Abraham Lincoln reunited a divided America after the Civil War, the freeing of slaves was likely a pragmatic move to bolster the strength of the Union Army as much as it was a moral imperative to, at last, live up to the letter of a founding document that maintained "all men are created equal." And even that noble phrase carries within it the great semantic dilemma of the English language, that the predominate pronoun for "human being" seemingly excludes the female of the species! Nearly 250 years into the history of this new nation that embodies the hopes of most of the planet for equality of opportunity and true justice for all, we still suffer from our original myopia, still strive to implement our highest ideals.

  And there are those among us who actually work against the achievement of our American dream. Some are blinded by an ethic of white superiority, basically misogynistic as well. A common feature of the denier of equality is holding a value that places individual property ownership above the health and well being of their community. We need to examine this belief in the elevation of property ownership over other more humane values! If the original American settlers had an ounce of humility, they would have recognized they were invading a pristine continent with an existing culture that lived in harmony with nature. Alas, the "civilized" culture that "discovered" America was not civilized at all, but instead carried the hubris of the conqueror. Unfortunately, the soldiers of fortune who would endure the hardship and loneliness of great sea voyages into unknown lands were often motivated by the opportunity to pillage, rape and return as heroes, honored by their country and venerated by society.

  Let's, for a moment, imagine what our present life might be like had the ancestors of our dominant ruling class came to the New World as somewhat enlightened souls with a hunger for knowledge and understanding rather than marauders intent on securing riches and the false honor of conquest. They would have endeavored to establish communication with the original people as morally ethical and equivalent human beings. First encounters are sometimes fatal to one or both of the parties involved, adrenalin running high! Depending on the needs of "tribal" protocols and protection for both the invader and the native, sometimes kindness is taken for weakness, or a good offense is considered a necessary defense. But when and if communication was established, through language and symbology, imagine the new attitudes and philosophies that could have been brought back to European societies.

  What a puzzle it would have been for what we call 'western civilization' to consider a culture where no one owns the land - instead, participating in a shared stewardship - perhaps too radical a concept! Or, perhaps - too gentle - to consider a harmonious relationship with planet and society, where actions are considered in the context of their effect seven generations hence? Alas the deed has been done. The clash of civilizations with concomitant human and cultural genocide and annihilation by disease - it's all history now. We missed our chance to learn values and techniques that would have mitigated the effects of the industrial revolution. We could have learned much from the values and dignity of other cultures, perhaps enough to avoid committing the evil sins of colonization and imperialism. Yes, save for the studies of cultural anthropologists, philosophical seekers and sages, as a species we lost the opportunity to learn from indigenous people worldwide, the true biblical "stewards of the earth!" Of course, their ranks decimated, they are still here, and much knowledge is still intact. But because male ego and aggression has dominated the global arena for centuries, we have developed a bias against the acceptance of external wisdom - let alone to actively seek its guidance!

  Nevertheless, embracing the knowledge and wisdom of all peoples, and organizing this learning - all learning - and applying it to our contemporary problems is our best chance to save the planet, improve our governance, and increase the quality of life for all humanity. Drop the dogma, eschew recognition for individual contribution, put 'profit uber alles' on hold. Use the burgeoning tool of Artificial Intelligence, meld planetary knowledge into a cohesive plan to mitigate, illuminate and set straight the damage caused by errors of the past. The resulting plan, or plans, to correct environmental devastation, design harmonized systems to carry us forward non-destructively, provide equal opportunity and access to capital for all - this challenges the pre-enlightenment acquisitive philosophy that drives us, and has driven us, to destructive individualism and the concentration of wealth that sits uselessly in the hands of an amoral few.

  Presently, we are stalled. "Business as usual" will not ask the proper questions, and perpetuates our inability to act for species self-preservation. "Zero-sum" philosophies found in libertarianism and self-aggrandizing capitalism are the antithesis of the Ubuntu inspired new philosophy we need to embrace in order to save our planet, improve the quality of life for every person and move to a balanced global economy that will improve rather than desecrate the earth.

  In this regard, because the US has amassed so much of the world's wealth and military power, the disintegration of our government into warring factions controlled by moneyed corporate interests has become the greatest threat to our planet's future. Starting as early as 1945, some Americans, suffused with racism and greed, have been planning a takedown and dismantling of all processes that would diminish their wealth and encourage non-white proliferation and power. Beginning with the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1964, the Republican party shifted away from the Eastern seaboard millionaires, who at least had a pragmatic political interest in the public well-being. The party is now controlled by a new cadre of self-serving hyper-libertarians intent on disenfranchising people of color, dismantling all government programs they imagine are depleting the pocketbooks of the ultra-rich (that they serve and hope to become). And as a matter of course they are altering statutes, laws and restrictions that would impede their minority takeover of our government.

  In order to seize power, they claim to respect the Constitution, but they disregard it - or warp its interpretation to serve their ends. These destructive millionaires cum billionaires disguised as Republicans promote their own twisted version of a selfish libertarianism. In reality, their philosophy only benefits the few at the top. The tenets they promote - small government, lower taxes, increased individual freedom through removal of restrictive laws - are attractive to some naive individuals as "pie in the sky" but in application the result is utter devastation for all but the favored few who would control all methods for the production of wealth. And because the only path to a total dismantling of all restrictions blocking this unholy pursuit is through minority rule, they must resort to factual obfuscation, legal distortion and emotional appeal.

  So in today's America of 2020, one of the two major parties, the Democrats, would hold on to their individual positions of power by attracting voters through a promise of increased governmental benefits. The assumption implicit in their approach is that everyone would enjoy an improved quality of life with thoughtful government services. The Democrat's philosophy has a certain appeal to their unique demographics, and the opposition that has taken the Republican name but trashed its former philosophy appeals to another set of demographics that values individualism, and money in the pocket because it's not being given away to the "undeserving." Citizens expect their government to provide certain basic services, so the nurturing and building that would be provided by the Democrats egalitarian view has a broader intrinsic appeal than the stripping away of services that results from a neo-libertarian small government. Thus the "Republicans" have developed all manner of subterfuge to achieve their goals.

   They have been developing their playbook in a concentrated way for 75 years, since the inception of the John Birch Society. The American right uses some very specific issues to attract splinter demographics that don't see their needs specifically addressed by the Democrats. These include anti-abortionists, whites unhappy with integrated schools, and business owners bristling under laws that increase expense even though they protect consumers and workers. Add ranchers, developers and industries that would profit from the opening of federal lands, and removal of environmental restrictions, to name a few. The right also uses gerrymandering, selective voter suppression, control of the courts and excesses of corporate PAC money to influence elections. Regardless of the emotional popularity of their positions, the net result of a full implementation of these retrograde goals would be a great rolling back of beneficial policies, removing hard fought gains developed over a century and a half of effort. 

  The 2020 presidential election will decide whether our country leads the way toward saving our planet, and finally fulfilling the American dream. Or instead we turn our back on science, allow the continued ravages of the Covid virus in the name of "herd immunity" and witness piece by piece destruction of the participatory democracy that was nobly designed and given to us by our nation's founders. At the present time, a few swing states could determine the outcome of the election because of the arcane nature of America's election process. We don't elect the president by popular vote - the archaic "electoral college" determines the winner through a patchwork of differing state rules and census determined apportionment. The current constituency of the Republican party is the de facto heir apparent to the Confederacy, and reality TV "star" Donald Trump is the enabler-in-chief for the dark destructive forces that care nothing of the high ideals that motivated the American revolution and the authoring of our founding documents.

  If you, or someone you know is planning to vote for Donald Trump, or a Republican candidate for the House of Representatives or Senate - don't do it - and talk them out of it. This election is our last chance to save America from a hostile takeover of our democracy by corporate neo-fascists employing a plan they've been building for decades! We must turn them back now. If you're a lifelong Republican, please wake up, your party has been taken over by a libertarian coup. As appealing as the antics of Donald Trump might be, to them, he is only a fortunate, temporary aberration! The Koch Bros, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Institute, i360 and a host of other ultra-minority traitors to the true spirit of American democracy are using him, and they're conning you! This is the one year to make an exception to your rule. If you love America, vote Democratic now! Retake and rebuild your party later, develop a new conservatism that returns to classic values, like a balanced budget, the rights of the individual, a rational gun control and licensing program. Your party has been hijacked, and if you vote Republican this year you'll be voting for a nationalistic, racist minority that embodies principles the very opposite of the ideals our nation was founded on! 

   Flag-waving Trump supporters, I'm sorry. No one likes to be told they've been played! Trump's only appeal is emotional, and sadly, somewhat juvenile. You've given the middle finger to the Liberals for four years, now it's time to "stand back and stand by" in the name of democracy. Joe Biden is a loving, concerned individual, a lot closer to the middle of the road than the Democrats favorite socialist, Bernie Sanders. Trump is a fool and a tool, it's time for a leader. You've had your fun, now grow up and vote blue. The stakes are too high to continue middle finger politics. The damage the secret billionaires behind the curtain will do, if you allow them, will affect you in many unimagined ways, and a Republican vote this year will betray the founders of our country. Vote blue, if only just this once. Then take some time to re-read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Check out the writings of Thomas Paine, look up the nature of the debates that led up to the Constitutional Congress. You can regroup for 2022, 2024, and reconstitute the Republican party policies in a way that doesn't require re-districting or voter suppression to win an election.

  Save your party, save your country, save your planet!

  It's important to vote blue this time around, thank you!

Trump is the Swamp

This man and the cadre aligned with him are the greatest danger our country has ever faced. This is the invasion of the pod people. They have no souls. They have contempt for those who believe their lies. America's secret Nazi sympathizers who gave lip service to the fight against Hitler mounted a campaign to control our resources, scour the land of non-Aryans and those who dared to live alternate life-styles starting as early as 1945. There is a marbled cancer in our land, and good people in positions of influence dare not tell it like it is or suffer career ruin, family and personal injury. WAKE UP!

He's not a card-carrying Nazi - but he's a self-aggrandizing narcissist with no empathy, using fascist techniques. His attack on the news media is an attack on freedom of speech. He's a sarcastic liar who has no respect for people who believe his lies. He's duped millions of people who hoped for the image he presented - but his campaigning is a facade. He does sound bites to play to the worst racists and white collar crooks, then flipflops for the more commercial mainstream media. He's only about more money for himself and has become the perfect actor to implement the long term goals of right wing destroyers of liberty like the Koch family. Some creep just contributed $25 million to the McConnell campaign. That has nothing to do with the betterment of the general population! BLM is only proposing at long last equality! The danger of a people's movement like BLM is that they will unite behind a slogan. (RIP John Lewis) "Defunding" is a stupid choice of words. There's a percentage of sadistic racists in police uniforms - just a percentage. Good men in blue are appalled by the haters who have infiltrated the PD. Prisons for profit. From slavery to chain gangs and Jim Crow, and now it's disproportionate incarceration of people of color. The Republican party has been taken over by ugly men and ugly women full of disgusting hatred and they'd be happy to turn the US into a third world country if only they could control the resources. Look at the rape of our national monuments for mining! It's absolutely ludicrous for any thinking adult to back the destructiveness of these mean, conniving throwbacks - closet anti-Americans who would just as soon have a revived Confederacy, whatever serves their evil purpose.

Contrary to right wing rhetoric, the left is not telling us we "can't run our own lives." The agents of the conservative conquest are putting words in the mouth of a caricature liberal they created as a "straw man." To achieve their revolution of the minority they must have an enemy. United we stand, so they have been assiduously working over 75 years to divide us. We're being fooled and hoodwinked by power seeking, wealth-collaring, unprincipled narrow minded bigots and philanderers. Every stone they cast at "the left," every accusation they make is a projection straight out of their own evil hearts that mirrors their own sins! Trump and his ilk were cavorting with Epstein and his crowd, many Republicans in power are closet perverts who would rape their male pages. Child sex slavery? It wasn't Hillary! How do you think they came up with the idea? They're the ones who traffic teenage girls. How many children separated from their parents at the border who cannot be reunited because the US border system doesn't know their names or where they are? Why is South America such a mess? Because instead of building up all the Americas our "industrialists" and "businessmen" stole their natural wealth. US prison and deportation policies created MS13, the gangs are symptoms of our oppression. You've got to band together as a last resort in a society that denies adequate education, redlines housing and denies access to capital - poverty enforced through unemployment and lack of opportunity.

Because of our natural innocence, many of us don't see it. I hope this "rant" of mine doesn't anger or depress you, dear reader. It's my anger, it's my frustration, because my eyes were opened to the duplicity of power a long time ago and I am so frustrated that good people "on the right" can't see how we are being divided. The liars and schemers masquerade as good souls, but it's just a means to an end. Wool over your eyes!

Yes, some of us drank the kool-aid and don't understand this, but the DHS is just like the SS. "45" will likely refuse to acknowledge the results of the election and in that case Federal Marshals and National Guard troops will have to pull him out of the White House. Racist white power militias and "boogaloo boys" are likely to be in armed conflict with U.S. soldiers. Herr Kommandant Trump is the perfect front man for the myriad of right wingers who's antecedents were rooting for Hitler and didn't want the US to join WWII. John Birch, Heritage Foundation, i360 - the list goes on - all fifth column organizations seeking to suspend the Constitution and end representative democracy. Traitors!

This is my final response to their studied aggression: President Trump is sending an un-credentialed occupying army into cities that are led by "liberal" mayors. He is acting in the manner of classic dictators, that, in a matter of public record, he says he admires. Mussolini is perhaps the best example although he has mentioned Hitler and Kim Jong Un. These are uninvited, unconstitutional storm troopers. On an individual basis they may act with uncontrolled violence and fear no reprisal because they, in essence, are Trump's private gestapo.

The era we are in is no longer "politics as usual." We are victims of the death of truth in America. The authority of the Portland police has been usurped by an invading force. I marched with the Occupy movement in Portland a few years ago. The protestors at that time were quite clearly a cross section of the community, including families with children. Extended protests in Portland are attracting those who relish confrontation and destruction of property - for many reasons - including lack of hope from living in an America of diminishing opportunity as the corporate noose draws tighter. And now they are motivated to fight the anonymous force cloaked in brown camouflage. The far right movement to control America's resources and subjugate the citizens in the manner of a corrupt dictatorship has been proceeding apace since 1945 (or earlier!). Trump is the perfect "strong man" to lead their revolution. 2020 is the last chance for these invisible elites with their lust for control because the Republicans as presently constituted will never win another election. They aren't even Republicans anymore! And every accusation they hurl at Democrats and "liberals" symbolizes an evil that they themselves perpetrate and know too well. Their lies and propaganda are representative of their own thought processes and soiled consciousness. I know their rhetoric, I get Trump mailings, I get polls and questionnaires from Heritage Foundation, and all their twisted logic and loaded questions make me sick.

We all have very different points of view, different life experiences. If you're a "red hat," you have revealed yourself as intransigent (temporarily, I hope) and from your perspective, I suppose this author is equally stubborn and unmoveable. This may seem strange to some, but the House of Blues in Los Angeles had these two phrases emblazoned on the stage curtains, audience left and right: "help ever, hurt never" and "each one teach one." The latter phrase also suggests that one be humble and teachable. I will change if persuaded. I am open - teach me - with facts, not slogans.

I will be cloistered in my home engaged in creative projects for the duration of the Covid Crisis, and the burgeoning Revolution. I cannot afford to continue spinning wheels where there is no engagement, no result for my efforts. At this point I will "rest my case." There are many modern Paul Reveres sounding the alarm. Our current crises will play out as they will.

Aho, we are all related!
❤️🙏☮️😉🕉
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Zero Sum versus Rising Tide

It’s actually quite simple. Patriarchy v matriarchy. Oligarchy v community. Corporation v individual. Two philosophies dividing.

Is this as eternal as the Tao? This schism, this attitudinal canyon, is this the Achilles heel of the human race? The Libertarian point of view espoused by the current version of Republicanism starts with the feeling that “what’s mine is mine, period.” This leads further to “I got mine, now you go out and get yours, and leave me alone.” The response from the excluded majority was articulated nicely by none other than the great entertainer and artist Mr. James Brown: “Open up the door - I’ll get it myself!” What some might call neoconservative-ism, libertarian-ism, Republican-ism (whatever!), is suffused with an egocentrism that says “I am not my brothers keeper, I am not responsible for your well-being.” And at the root of this attitude of exclusion is the concept of zero sum transactions: whatever I give to help others will subtract from what I can provide for “me and mine.”

A fallacy of ancient tribal attitudes, the blind spot of paternalism, the intrinsic flaw of Libertarianism is the blind assumption that transactions are essentially “zero sum.” And the log in the eye of democratic socialism is “don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax the man behind the tree.” It’s not enough to maintain the status quo. We can’t continue with semi-sacred capitalism as a sacred cow. The “leftist” would simply take the overage from the corporation and spread the spoils among the impoverished, give lip service to improving education, provide support for “green industries” without examining their efficacy, and through failures of imagination, continue our exploitation of the planet without truly addressing the inequities caused by the profit motive and its siren song that leads to greed and lust for power. Where is the middle path? How can we maintain proper levels of human comfort, encourage arts and culture, provide lifelong education, provide medical care for all and cease challenging our very existence by cannibalizing our host, the lovely planet Earth?

We’re all in this together, this thing called “life.” We espouse love, sense of family and security for our family, our kin, our tribe. But if our security, prosperity and growth is impinged upon, challenged by the growth or acquisitiveness of another tribe, soon we adopt an “us v them” viewpoint. This leads to skirmishes, conflict, even full-fledged warfare. In the extreme, histories of bloodshed and concomitant atrocities create continuing enmity and provide a didactic base that argues in favor of standing armies and the warehousing of weaponry. Hence, we devote a good portion of our wealth and personal energy to nonproductive, even destructive endeavors. It is so much easier to destroy rather than build. And the time has come to recognize and redefine the goals of civilized society.

The evidence is in. It’s not open to discussion any more. Humanity, the species homo sapiens, has developed a survival methodology akin to a snake eating its tail. We are destroying the planet that nurtures us. When our numbers were fewer and our knowledge of interconnectedness incomplete, our concept of “conquering” nature appeared to serve us well. We now know that indigenous cultures living in harmony with their geography, biblical exhortations to act as caretakers of creation, these are the voices that must prevail. If not, we will all perish and those who manage to extend their tenancy on this planet will live lives unnatural and foreign to what they once knew, lives tragically circumscribed and ultimately not worth living.

Freedom of Speech is dying

R.I.P. First Amendment, 1791-2020?

The “Federalists” are winning their battle to transform the U.S. government into a monarchy.

I first became aware of the continuing attack on the Bill of Rights in 1987. I had washed out of a 12 year Silicon Valley quality assurance career after a lay-off - computer scanning of resumes ruled me out because I had an Associate degree in digital electronics (not a BS). But I found a sales job at a retail computer store on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, and early in my tenure a detective from the local PD visited to explain limits on the actions we could take against shoplifting and thievery. For one, we could not pursue and physically harm anyone once they were out the door and off our premises. At first he followed the script, a factual recital of the stores legal rights and restrictions, but soon he launched into a diatribe against the Bill of Rights. Apparently, law enforcement found unreasonable restrictions to their authority and a coddling of criminals in the Fifth Amendment, and of course the Miranda Rights.

In addition to the detective’s attack on Constitutional Amendments protecting the citizenry from broad governmental power, I became aware of a propagandizing effort from clandestine conservative forces. The young salesmen I worked with had elevated their own quest for personal rights into a “me-first” attitude that embraced the worst aspects of sales. The caricature of a lying unethical, SPIF-taking, up-selling, slick talking, red tie wearing, black BMW driving money-grubber was their role model and ideal. I went to dinners and parties with these new “Libertarians” and listened to jokes and negative verbal screeds directed at their object of derision, those they deemed clueless “Liberals.” They even had anti-Liberal joke books: “What’s the definition of a liberal? Someone who’ll give you the shirt off someone else’s back!” They showed me a quasi-official looking document that had adopted the cover colors, size and style of a U.S. military manual that purported to disclose the Carter White House as a source of drug importing and distribution with photos of Carter supposedly illicitly partying with the Allman Brothers when they visited. How the world had changed during my 12 years of head down attention to an engineering career! In essence, “Where had all the flowers gone?”

I suppose I could be criticized for my feckless indifference to changing societal mores but I was sandbagged, appalled by the derision directed toward attitudes of compassion, community and equality. Before long the Iran-Contra scandal hit the popular press and again I was surprised by the great numbers of people who found Oliver North a heroic figure. Ronald Reagan, who greatly exacerbated the homeless problem by closing state mental institutions, and presided over a great recession was now considered a near god. And behind these attitudinal changes there was a relentless program mounted by organizations I couldn’t trace, cut from the same cloth as the John Birch Society, Heritage Society, Cato Institute, Ayn Rand Institute, and scores of others, e.g.: https://71republic.com/2018/09/24/the-15-organizations-every-young-libertarian-should-know/

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

It prohibits the passage of any law which would “abridge” freedom of speech, or freedom of the press. But we now have a president who demonizes the press and encourages derision and mocking of any thought he deems inappropriate. So, while Congress has not passed any laws restricting the press or the exercise of free speech, we are in a new reality! The Republican Party has abandoned Constitutional ideals. In fealty to and fear of reprisal from President Trump, their popular demagogue, acting like spineless lackeys and sycophants under the sway of corporate influence and decades of ultra-conservative erosion of centrist values, they mutely stand by as their strangely electable figurehead fills the digital forum with aspersion and lies, as well as extracting revenge on truth-tellers and excoriating any thoughtful opposition. The current president has established a tone in the country’s discourse befitting of a dictatorship. There are no sedition laws, but the penalties are in place: lose your job, suffer threats to self and family. And the enforcement will come from anyone attitudinally aligned with the current corrupt administration.

Ironically, the birth of the United States of America came in large part from the great embrace of individual freedoms found in the writings of the French Enlightenment. The success of the American revolution and the values espoused by the U.S. Constitution greatly informed the creation of the United Nations charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, where Article 19 states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

This broader interpretation for freedom of speech can also be construed as a defense for contemporary uses of social media to promote hateful ideas and untruths. But there are differences between opinion and distortion of fact, information versus studied mistruth and the unrestrained promulgation of ideas repugnant to societal morals and ethics. The current administration and body politic in the United States ignores expressions of negativity and evil when it strengthens their position but will denigrate media sources counter to their agenda and will indeed interfere with individuals who bear witness and provide information exposing administrational malice, collusion and criminality.

Further, the flagrant abuses of the Republican President and Senate have created an atmosphere where vigilantism and violence selectively directed at enemies of “conservative” thinking is allowed with a shrug. Holding ideas contrary to the “party line” exposes one to potential ad hoc punishment, as if the thought itself is a crime creating and inciting an inevitable, sometimes violent response.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). From Wikipedia:

“The... ICCPR later amends [Article 19] by stating that the exercise of these rights carries ‘special duties and responsibilities’ and may ‘therefore be subject to certain restrictions’ when necessary ‘[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others’ or ‘[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals’.”

Hence libel, flagrant immorality, “hate speech” and the encouragement of dangerous and unhealthy practices may be constrained. But in our topsy turvy world today the President himself exhibits a communication style that approaches libelous, prides sexual conquest and misogyny and reeks of racial intolerance. He has publicly called for brutal action against protestors, which qualifies as disturbing the public order. And his denial of scientific evidence regarding planetary climate disaster and resulting removal of environmental pollution controls qualifies as speech so damaging it affects public health. We’re in an Orwellian world now where good is bad, bad is good. As the poet Rumi said:

“The world is upside down

He who should be hanged in the public square is crowned emperor

People applaud”

Presidential encouragement for vigilante action against those who have different ideas and opinions has the effect of squelching opposition, silencing free speech. His autocratic “you’re fired” leadership style has cowed the formerly honorable GOP into a subservient silent lockstep. Only one man stood up against the party leader to look at the honest truth and vote to remove the divisive fool who hoodwinked the public to gain election for self-elevation rather than the public good. The example set by Donald Trump and the anti-Constitutionalists formerly known as the Republican Party runs against the noble ideals America was founded on. No law was passed, but the current wave of populism has the effect of stifling dialogue and silencing opposition. Though the concept of free speech still exists, it is dying in the U.S. and may well be pronounced dead this coming November!

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

Way it is...

The U.S. senate response to articles of impeachment is a sad spectacle. Senate Republicans offering their soul to the devil, cloaking their abandonment of constitutional principles behind a facade of red tie anger. I can’t separate my own frustration and anger at these fat suit power brokers from the angst and sadness that comes from watching my beloved America foundering on the rocks as Captain Queeg’s spiraling madness becomes a contagion. Better to let someone else offer an essay on this travesty!

GW Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson

"With the impeachment trial of President Trump beginning in earnest, right-wing populism has come full circle. Trump was elected on the theory that American politics had become corrupt and broken. Now he is calling upon his party and his followers to normalize corruption and brokenness as essential features of our political order. It is a bold maneuver by a skilled demagogue. Trump has cultivated disrespect for politics as a dirty business and now seeks to benefit from dramatically lowered public standards.

The question at stake in the Senate trial is plain: Is the use of public funds as leverage to gain private, political benefits from a foreign government an impeachable abuse of presidential power? The matter is so simple that Trump’s Republican defenders are reduced to babbling incoherence in trying to avoid it. When asked whether Trump’s solicitation of foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election was proper, Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) responded, “Well, those are just statements, political. They make them all the time. . . . People do things. Things happen.”

“Things happen.” This is a revealingly ludicrous response to a charge of public corruption. No, trying to cheat in a presidential election is not like losing your keys or getting caught in the rain without your umbrella. Those are the kinds of “things” that just happen. The evidence that Trump cut off military aid to a friendly government in the middle of an armed conflict to compel that government to announce the investigation of a political rival is overwhelming. Several administration officials found this action so unethical, dangerous and disturbing that they expressed their alarm to relevant authorities. Those who dismiss such accusations as a political vendetta or a coup attempt are engaged in willful deception.

And because Trump denies any wrongdoing — pronouncing his own actions “perfect” — senators who vote for his vindication are effectively blessing such abuses in the future. Their action would set an expectation of corruption at the highest levels of our government.

All this would be particularly damaging to our constitutional order because Trump’s abuse of power is, for many supporters, the essence of his political appeal. Incidents such as the Ukraine shakedown are not excesses or outliers. They represent an approach to governing that resembles a crime syndicate. Anyone Trump can hire or fire is assumed to be an operative, sworn to personal loyalty. Fixers and factotums are employed to impose the leader’s will and to weed out resistance. Discipline is assured through the fear of swift and cruel reprisal. Any action that “owns the Democrats” or defeats the “deep state” is justified because Trump’s opponents are disloyal to the United States and seek its ruin.

This is a world where ethical rules count for nothing. A world where character is for chumps. A world where institutional constraints are temporary obstacles and the pursuit of power takes priority over every norm or principle.

Do elected Republicans really want to live in such a world? At one point they generally claimed, above all, to be constitutionalists. But in our constitutional order, power is legitimate because it is checked. In our system of government, patriotism means institutionalism.

Most abuses of power are eventually attacks on the separation of powers. And that is exactly what the Senate now faces.

Trump challenged Congress by withholding congressionally appropriated military assistance. Though there are limited circumstances in which spending can be legally delayed, the Trump administration did not notify Congress that it was making an exception in this case. Budget officials within the administration warned that this action violated the law, which was also the conclusion of a recent Government Accountability Office report.

Trump has challenged Congress by urging officials to defy lawful subpoenas and by blocking the production of documents — essentially declaring the White House immune from oversight.

And Trump has challenged Congress by directly disputing the legitimacy of the impeachment process. White House lawyers have declared impeachment to be “a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election.” But America’s Founders specially included an impeachment provision in the Constitution to overturn the result of an election when the president engages in misconduct and betrays the public trust. Trump is essentially claiming that he should be accountable only to voters — an argument that may sound reasonable but has nothing to do with our system of government.

These challenges clarify the stakes of impeachment. Will Republican senators allow partisanship to override their institutional obligations? Probably. Would this make them complicit, not only in an unethical presidential act, but also in the further decay of the constitutional order? Definitely."