Month: June 2017

Paraphrased from Kris Kristofferson. Too bad Janis isn’t around to sing it.

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ stoppin’ me
Nothin’s, worth nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no
And, feelin’ good was easy, Lord, when po’ folk sang the blues
You know, feelin’ good was good enough for me
Good enough for me and elite folk like me

I have been trying for over a month to write something that explains what is happening around/to us. The problem is that the audience consists of people who can’t see what is happening and those who don’t want to.

The other problem is that the situation we are approaching is not Fascism. It isn’t that simple.

Throughout history, Fascism has involved a national leader, often elected, and his relatively small Cadre. There have been struggles, many lengthy and bloody, to end the reign of terror brought on by such people. Once the leader and Cadre are defeated, things return to normal. Through this view, many people see Trump as the leader, Like Hitler or Mussolini, with a cadre of Bannon, et al. The popular notion is that Trump will be impeached and it will be over. We will return to normal.

Hopes and effort are put on Russiagate (ugh, Watergate had nothing to do with water; it was a hotel, but the media seem to speak/write English as a second language…and I don’t really know what the first one is). It’s the talk of the town. It’s the talk of Indivisible. It’s the talk of the talk shows. There will probably be a lot of folks partying down if/when Trump is deposed.

I say if because Republicans control the government and because there are some (including me) question the wisdom of impeaching Trump. Folks who think that way know that the problem will not go away. The next several in line are not as dumb as Trump, which makes them vastly more dangerous.

As people are in awe of the Great Wizard, the little men behind the screen are manipulate them into repression. The men behind the  screen have spent over four decades setting up the Great Wizard. They are almost at the end of the game. They have bought the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, unions, universities, news and entertainment media, and even church groups. All of those who have been bought are following the script. Those who do not are considered to be the enemy. We have reached the point of once great news sources like New York Times and Washington Post are resembling Pravda of decades ago. News and commentary that does not follow the approved script has taken refuge on internet to be free of corporate masters providing the approved script. That is why there is such an effort to suppress the use of internet. The Communist Party in China does it, why can’t we?

Trump is eliminating regulations as fast as he can. We are on the trail of important things: monuments, food, and environment. However, those pesky regulations are also issued by Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Highway Administration, and others of similar importance in our daily existence.

Since my work has, for the past 50 years, has been heavily affected by regulations (FRA), most of which came about when the government got tired of destruction and carnage, I saw where Trump was going as soon as he started his regulations rant.

This morning, I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrc1EmUhWOE

…which demonstrates that they don’t need SS-like police or even soldiers to bring us into line or kill us. They can do it in craftier, sneakier, more benign ways.

The video contains material that some don’t want to hear. It may offend some. That’s been my problem about trying to tie our current situation to Fascism. It is Plutocracy, or perhaps more accurately, Oligarchic Plutocracy that we are facing. Trump is the smoke, not the fire. We absolutely must work on methods to end the reign of the Oligarchic Plutocracy (a rather substantial group of Really Rich with a Lot Of Power taking over the government with the goal of eliminating it, allowing them to do whatever they want to whomever they want, whenever they want).

Get a copy of Dark Money by Jane Mayer. If this video doesn’t open your eyes wide enough, the book (also available on audio CD) will.

Many folks talk so often about beating up the past, beating a dead horse, etc. every time last year’s election or this year’s failures are brought up. It’s funny that so many folks consider the review of the game video by the team, criticizing their own performance, to be standard procedure, but going over political failures is beating a dead horse.

We have folks who decry starting a class war at any mention of the Beyond Ultra Rich. They sound like Neville Chamberlain pronouncing that Hitler was an honorable guy and if he was allowed to annex Czechoslovakia unchallenged, all would be fine.

Folks, There IS a class war going on. Have no doubt about it. It has been going on for over 40 years while we more or less let it happen. We are about to lose – we, the way we live, everything we believe in, and everything we treasure.

While this is going on, we fall for the distractions: Trump, Bush, Cheney, the other Bush, and even Bill Clinton (talk about the honorable guy with the best intentions ruse).

We also fall for the ruse of having two parties. Mussolini perpetrated that ruse, but he was merely a small-scale dictator. In general, we have two divisions of the same party: Republican and Republican Light. Republican Light has lost most of the country to Republican. Is that a result of extreme stupidity on the part of those we call leaders, or part of the plan? Even the Democratic leaders, such as they are, are pretty much rich folks, so stupidity is not likely.

Action items?

• Spread the word. Trump et al. are not the problem. They are the distraction.
• Spread the word. Read or listen to Dark Money and The Shock Doctrine. If you don’t have time, do it anyway, even if you listen or read ten minutes at a time.
• Spread the word. The last element described in the cited Naomi Klein video is know history. Study history like your life depended on it. It does. Look for the “alternative” sources. For example, some folks consider Roger Stone’s work to be revisionist and conspiracy theory. That’s what we have been taught to think. The material matches much of what I have learned from other sources over the past 55 years and matches what I have more recently learned from other sources. Part of the study of history involves Sun Tsu’s war strategy of know your enemy.
• Spread the word. Learn all you can. Extract knowledge from what the corporate media call news, mostly in the form of generating your own questions about the content. Ask why, then do some research and connect the dots. Keep asking why. Keep connecting the dots.
• Spread the word. Get all of the alternative media information that you can. Guaranteed, it will not match the information you get from corporate media. That’s the point. You’re not supposed to consider alternative media. We’re told that Russia Today is propaganda under the direct control of Putin. We’re supposed to blindly believe that so that we don’t go there to see Chris Hedges (fired for opposing the approved pro war media script in US media), Lee Camp (one of the organize of Occupy Wall Street), Larry King, Thom Hartmann, and others who have an anti-establishment (plutocracy) view. We’re told that opposition to the corporatist policy is actually part of a Russian conspiracy. Russia is teaching us subliminally to do what we are doing, opposing the corporatist system. Yeah, there is pro Russia stuff (just as there is endless pro-American stuff in all of the corporate media sources) If you’re thinking, you see it and question, look for more information and think more about what you know…then question it. Funny, the RT slogan is Question More and we’re not supposed to see their material (maybe because the slogan encourages us to think and question?)
• Spread the word. Organize! The resistance movement we are all part of looks like the French Resistance in the early years of German Occupation, before de Gaulle organized them into a formidable force. Even Indivisible looks like the early French Resistance. We have Indivisible here, indivisible there, indivisible somewhere else, and Indivisible Guide. All of the Indivisibles are theoretically coordinated, but without a single comprehensive means of communication and no definitive leadership. Everyone has Facebook pages and sub-pages, and mailing lists, and websites galore. However, try to follow a subject in this mess, even just locally. La Résistance did better listening to Radio London for code words than we do with lots of advanced technological means of communication that are scattered like Quaker Puffed Wheat, shot from guns.
• Spread the word. We need a single, effective, cohesive plan. That can’t happen until the rest is done. Yes, we need demonstrations and events in the short term. They are more of a morale builder and catalyst for cohesion, like the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942. It had no effect on the outcome of the war except to make Americans think that we were doing something and make the Japanese think that we were thinking about them.

We must make a careful examination of what is going on and connect the dots. There is a lot of finger pointing about the Georgia 6 special election. Ossoff lost because of Democratic strategy. Ossoff lost because the district has always been Republican. Ossoff lost because of his campaigning practices (a photo op with a Muslim group – Really?) More money was spent on that race than any house race in history. Part of their strategy is to bleed us dry. We can’t outspend them, but they want us to try. Their plan is backed up by the Democratic consultants who advise candidates to be Republican Light and throw tons of money at the election. That money goes back to the folks who brought us pay for play politics by way of the corporate media. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr1JStfBfM0)

Meanwhile, Greg Palast (The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) found evidence of election fraud that you won’t hear about anywhere else except alternative sources (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDIF1Opv_yE).

We need action – now. Progressive strategy will not work against the rampant election fraud. Between Gerrymandering and Crosscheck, we virtually cannot win…but we’ll spend a lot of money losing. We need lawsuits, lots of them. We need to sue every state involved in Crosscheck. We need to sue every state party involved in Gerrymandering. We need to sue individuals in charge of voter suppression, the secretaries of state of every state involved. Lawsuits take time. We need to get started NOW! I have made the mistake, in an altruistic fog, of sending lots of campaign money to what now looks like merely the tactics of the well-paid Democratic political consultants. I have nothing against real consultants who have expertise that their clients do not possess. I’m one of them. These political consultants are taking a lot of money to promote a losing strategy – repeatedly. Is the party that stupid, or is it part of the plan? If ACLU or any other group is going to barrage the establishment with lawsuits, I’ll gladly pitch in. At this point, that action will do more than any funds for individual candidates (in most places). That movement must be a concerted, well-organized, nationwide effort.

The rest of the plan must be derived from all of the previous steps in sort of reverse order. Organize. Study all of the information sources, including the ones you are told to ignore. Study History. Question, Question, Question and Question more. Connect the dots. Discuss it using a cohesive nationwide communication medium that we don’t have (get one is part of the plan), and go on from there with developing an effective nationwide strategy that is more effective than shooting water at the smoke that is Trump instead of the fire that is 1% of the population.

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Thos