Notes on Democracy

Aren't all the theocracies, dictatorships, authoritarian states including this one, calling themselves Democracies? People throw "democracy" around much in the same way they say " there is a god" as if its crazy to believe otherwise. Is there any difference between Joe Biden, the Pope, or the Ayatollah? Depending on what you believe they all share the power of authority without any real justification for that power other than they got elected (in one form or another). 

Democracy has taken on so many positive/parasitic terms to its self -righteous breast, such as free, equality, and other pc words that have little or nothing to do with actual democracy.

So, what is a democracy according to a dictionary?

"Government by which people hold the ruling power either directly or through elected representatives. Rule by the ruled? (Is that even possible?). "The principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment or the practice of this principle."

I can hardly imagine a modern government that truly represents a democracy as defined. Voting restrictions not limited to space but including restrictions on race, religion, level of wealth, property have been and continue to be enacted in every nation on earth. And to believe that the ruled actually rule the rulers they have chosen is pure fallacy.

Its true, any politician or elected official can quickly fall from grace, but rarely for defrauding the people they supposedly represent, which is another fallacy in itself, for the majority of time, most politicians are elected by a minority of registered voters, and certainly, a minority of possible voters. The fact is most people don't vote.

A rationalist can say thats too fucking bad for them, they don't have any right to complain then. No vote. No rights. But it isnt them who do all the hand wringing about whats happening, it's the losers at the polls who are forever complaining about the other side of things. In america it seems, there is a belief that once one side has lost, the battle is not lost, and the war goes on. The only thing we're voting on is whose authority are we going to halfway listen to. Outside of that nothing changes because we've already bought into the system many times over, with waves of one-sided inequality, injustice, policy that shifts like a desert sandstorm. There is no right because what is right today may be wrong tomorrow and no wrong because what's wrong today will be institutionalized and enshrined in tomorrow.

Is iran a democracy and a theocracy? Is brazil a democracy and an authoritarian state? Is cuba a democracy and an autocratic socialist nation? Is america a democracy and a benevolent tongued oligarchy?

Sherin Ebadi, a prominent Iranian woman who was Iran's first court judge in 2006 and awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2003 and who has been in exile since 2008 and who supports current protests angry over the Iranian government murder of a woman who did not wear her hijab.

Over fifty percent in irans university are women.

Forced hijab, life expectancy is 50 percent than men, cannot travel without permission of husband.

She also says in iran most of the prisoners are minorities. This is not exceptional, unless anyone wants to explain why all nations prisons house the minorities of race, ethnic, political dissent.

Is Iran more civilized despite its issues than say, Saudi Arabia, who controls and manages its women life-prisoners much better?

How do we evaluate what happens in other places? Does the left use authority to convey their points as much as the right? Most certainly. Everybody plays to the middleman. Accepting and encouraging revolution in other countries and believing in their own national exceptionalism within their own borders.

Are Irans problems and issues any more serious and immediate than americas? Or any of the other theocracies america supports by NOT having worldwide media coverage on their problems.

Ukraine is another example of this. Zelensky is an ex- comedian who probably only has an ear for Ukraines militant fascist organizations

In all honesty, im not sure of having self-exiled authorities belabor what is ordinary criticism of any and every authoritarian regime throughout the world. Ebadi is in England where Liz Truss just resigned her forty-four-day prime ministership. Western nations, including the US are beset with their own democratic problems, such as voting restrictions amid elections, economic pressures mostly upon low income, working people, inability to stem neo- fascist, violent elements within the society, not to mention the racism

Almost any criticism of foreign prisons by authorities experiencing a plethora of exceptionalism insight is cancelled by the fact that american prisons contain the same anti-humanitarian ideology as every other prison system.

Let's leave revolution in other countries to the revolutionaries. Leaders will emerge and there will be backward and forward progress, as revolutions move forward through time. 

Revolution is like climate change and evolution. Revolution is the gradual emergence of humanitarian reason over the other human traits of reliance on authoritarianism, the belief that following rather than allowing, and the use of violence as a tool of oppressing disagreement.

Sent from my iPad

Change

 

Authority and Fascism

Authoritarianism and fascism.

Fascism is not the end of result of political, social and cultural adversity, but a process of intersecting authority for controlling the public political narrative that is left up to the independently contrived efforts of those personalities espousing political power as a solution to all political, social, cultural, and natural contradictions.

The doctrines of fascism are mainly opportunistic and have little to do with the contrivances of constitutional, legal, or other acceptable or traditional methods for enacting change.

In this way fascism is a revolutionary premise for both right- and left-wing efforts to enact radical change. In pre-mussolini italy both socialists and fascists marched and rioted, sometimes within blocks of each other. Both explored and improvised by marching, striking, violence toward each other, against government, at the same time appealing to a generally inactive, stagnant public to act. Most modern-day dictators and even progressive power seekers utilize these tactics, donald trump being the most representative of the current power seekers, utilizing a specific form of misdirection and misinformation campaigns, proxy violence on the street by gangs and agitated followers, misuse of legal and law enforcement institutions, etc in order to create an atmosphere of confusion, delegitimizing the established political structure.

The belief that the two opposing users of a fascistic approach have opposing views is a complete outlier because neither the left nor the right have any conception, though they say otherwise, of how to build a new society of their liking in the midst of the capitalistic nightmare everyone lives in.

The fascistic mentality then becomes more an exercise in violence, destruction of mostly symbolic representations such as small business, chaos in the public sphere, similar to construction conglomerates tearing down to the ground the old to build the new obsolete with the same ideas and worn-out fixes.

One good example of this is our freeway system originally designed to move people quickly from place to place but almost immediately inadequate due to the number of cars and people so now transportation engineers run in place trying to add lanes, widen streets, do this do that, while in the meantime slowing almost to amstsndstill every fives or so the publics need to get somewhere they really dont need to go.

But its not just cars that we unnecessarily rely on but of course, the oil we ride on, in the industries we depend on, the agriculture we need, the weapns we have to defend ourselves from the primarily russian hordes knocking on our shores.

Its our greed, our fear, our stupidity that sweeps us into the trash heap of timeless lost causes. 

Fascism and all of its mindless, deconstructive tendencies is merely one facet of an anti-revolutionary future because weve allowed authoritarianism in many forms, christian and other religious belief systems that make no sense in a modern world, a disbelief in radical change because we're all so fearful of giving up what we actually dont need, such as old ideas of authority and who or what we need to listen to.

I was watching abc local news the other night and there were a string of repeated anti-abortion advertisements during the commercial breaks that i havent noticed anywhere else yet. For those, like me, who believe that california represents the most influential, though maybe not yet the most progressive, state in the us and this gives it a secure place in the fight against this growing lawless and violent nation, might start noticing that the fight will be pressed from the likes of florida and texas, the two main opponents of any liberalization or progressive values in america.

Are the congressional investigations into the Jan 6th Insurrection merely a sideshow to prove how in america democracy and justice co-exist, yet time and time again the wealthy and powerful cohorts of this insurrection and other political anti-heroes consistently go free, if they're ever held up to their misdeeds at all.

Biden and the democrats are continually trying to re-educate us in the principal that political power is maintained by hope and faith in stagnated legislative procedures rather than executive decision making, before the regulatory legislation of the last several decades was laid to waste, the lack of preparation for the enforcement of regulations portended the demise.

All those out there playing in the fringeland between the animal/natural world and the artificial world created by artificial men, believe they are genuine advocates and supporters of the animal and natural world issues, are playing with fire and rage.

Religion is the first phalange against any change.

We know what we don't want, don't need, don't have but do we have the slightest idea of what we can do, won't do, or can't do? Senseless traditions, institutional stagnation, bad ideas and beliefs are keeping us from moving on into the future with real hope. All we really have are false promises and an extreme gullibility.

Thank you george monbiot.

Sent from my iPad

Innocence Are they?

 

Innocence

In the belly of the beast we’re all living,

And into the belly of the beast,

They all want to come.

There is an axiom among common men,

That the closer you get to the gun pointed at you,

Then the sooner you should have started to run.

 

The thing I like about Hannah Arendt is that she defined the face of evil for what it really is, an abstraction. It is not Eichmann’s face who has mistakenly been placed in our minds as evil’s poster boy archtype. To accept that rendition misses the point of her remarkable insight.

Rarely, do we recognize evil because we humans, whether intelligently or not, haven’t ever moved beyond archetypes, prototypes and stereotype classification frameworks, call them mental cages if you want, for those who don’t think but only react to what they believe is good and evil.

The rigidity of thinking in america is about as banal as anything can be, beginning in our belief of american supremacy and exceptionalism that every american is imbued with but also the religious, cultural, and economic beliefs from which all of us use to make sure we fall into the proper hierarchy, our own self-interest, our survival backups, because as individuals we are really nothing. No one survives on their own but depending on each person’s ability to deny or abstract where or how they survive, where the meat and potatoes come from, where the shit goes, who cleans up the messes, and who makes them, none of us is unique, a product of the american up by your own bootstraps mentality that prevails in american individualism.

As I write this at the beginning of 2021, a year already designated in people’s minds as HOPE RENEWED, another one day high in covid deaths is set in the country, surrounding so many of us who are ensconced in a lifestyle, though not entirely exempt from the dark outside, much like revelers in Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, this natural dilemma primarily affects poor, disadvantaged and economically disabled human beings.

I am not blind to the good of individuals but I am not blind to the insidious, banal motivations of the powerful, those who shoulder none of the responsibilities in society as well deny their own outlaw culpability, belief they are above the law or beyond the law because they make the law.

It's said that the liberal class and it’s somewhat resistant agenda is merely to give voice to what is seen by many as flaws in the institutions that surround, confound, and control us, but, also, to provide protection for those institutional flaws by telling us that change is the heart of our democracy when, in reality, change comes hard, hardly ever comes but we always have hope.

MAGA Republicans and the Emergence of American Fascism by Kraig Schwartz

           Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and his “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) platform, there has been much discussion in the media about fascism, authoritarianism and right-wing political movements.  This discussion is not limited to the U.S, as extreme right-wing politics are ascendant in Europe, Brazil, and the Philippines.  An authoritarian nationalist regime has consolidated power in Hungary.  A right-wing anti-immigrant party with fascist roots is forming a government after recent elections in Sweden. Moreover, in Italy, the country that coined the term fascism one hundred years ago, has elected a new government rooted in Mussolini’s fascist party.  All of these aforementioned developments are alarming to many governments and people all over the world.

The late Madeline Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, did much to enhance the current discussion in her 2018 book: Fascism: A Warning.  Speaking as a survivor of European fascism, her book is a warning; in it she said fascism could happen again, right here in the U.S.  In recent weeks Joe Biden has joined the discussion, describing Trump’s MAGA Republicans as “semi-fascists.” Those MAGA Republicans, now the largest cohort of their party and in Congress, are pushing back against Mr. Biden’s choice of words.  But should we be concerned? Is fascism really a threat? After all, fascism was soundly defeated and buried with the wreckage of World War II.

Fascist movements originated in the 1920s and 1930s in response to a very deep economic, social and political crisis. Throughout Europe, millions of people were unemployed, people were hungry, cities lay in ruin, unhappy workers were ascendant, and instability was the order of the day.  Moreover, weak governments were not able to meet the challenges presented.   On the other hand, the Soviet Union was addressing the crisis with revolutionary power, building socialism, and serving as a model for much of the working class. There was no unemployment in the USSR, yet the Soviet model was rejected, attacked by the armies of the West and feared by the center and the right. 

The European fascist movements were led by charismatic leaders, Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy.  Both men promised their respective people a resolution to the problems of the times.  And, those promises were cast in broad nationalist and racial terms, almost mystical in their accounting.  Mussolini promised the Italian people that the Mediterranean would again be a “Roman lake.” Hitler promised Germans that as “one empire, one people, one leader” they would build the Third Reich. Both leaders rejected liberal democracy and socialism as solutions to the problems they faced.  Instead, they called for building strong militarized states to aggressively make their homelands great. 

Fascists relied upon the shock troops (paramilitaries) of the masses, namely Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts, to intimidate their opponents, mobilize the masses, and build the institutions of the state. When necessary, they used violence against their political enemies.  So, are Trump’s MAGA Republicans fascists? Is his movement fascist? How does it match the fascist metric outlined above that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s? Well, Trump’s MAGA movement is racist, anti-democratic, and authoritarian in character, led by a charismatic leader who is manipulating and degrading the democratic process in order to obtain state power. He has used violence or the the threat of violence to achieve his anti-democratic objectives, particularly the January 6th coup attempt, where MAGA Republicans were flanked by Trump’s shock troops, including the Proud Boys, QAnon, the Oath Keepers and others, just as the Black Shirts and Brown Shirts had aided both Mussolini and Hitler in their quest for power. MAGA Republicans have passed the test. Collectively they are the fascist base of Trump’s Republican Party.

What will MAGA Republicans do if they obtain and build a fascist state? They will probably not launch mass executions of the Jews or other ethnic minorities, but they will eliminate laws and rules that support a pluralistic and democratic society, strengthening white supremacy and corporate capitalism while they do so.  We do not have to wait for a genocide to declare that fascism has arrived.  Fascism is here; it has a different face than it did in the 1930s.   If it continues to be enabled, democracy as we know it will disappear.  The rights of people embraced by the state and the responsibilities of the state towards the people will diminish.   Fascists will restrict voting rights, limit the specific freedoms of the people (abortion for example), repress unions, deny free speech, expand the military, withdraw from NATO, and bring non-white immigration to a halt.  Moreover, a consolidated fascist state will use violence to maintain social and political control.

Fascism in the U.S. will be different than it was in Italy or Germany. It will be “kinder and gentler.” We won't have death camps for our declared enemies or social outcasts, but we will have compounds for the homeless, and libraries that have been purified. 

So, who is a fascist these days?  Trump may be a fascist, Marjorie Taylor Greene may be a fascist., and on and on. Ultimately though, it's not the individuals that we should measure.  It is the overall movement we should evaluate. Right now, the MAGA Republicans, in fits, starts and pieces is dismantling the democratic state. And it is all those fits and starts over time that will lead to fascist control.   Will MAGA Republicans continue to embrace violence? Will MAGA Republicans continue to use the state to restrict democracy and freedom? Will MAGA Republicans continue to support the use of violence? The answer to these questions will unfold in the months ahead.  The answers will reveal where this country is going and whether fascist power will reign.  If the answers are in the affirmative keep you seat belts on.  

 

Kraig Schwartz Ph.D  is a retired teacher of political science and history, having spent 30 years teaching in the community colleges of Seattle

2024 Anarchism, Fascism, and the Staus Quo

 

2024- anarchism, fascism and the status quo

Defining political terms is one of the hardest intellectual exercises around. Everyone has an opinion of what should or should not be. And that’s just under normal circumstances, not an election year, like we’re in right now, 2022, with perhaps the single most defining election in american history coming up in 2024.

Why is it so defining?  The election of Donald Trump took many so called liberal/left leaning/ and some real conservatives by surprise. The reason is simple. Trump represents a clear representation of a real rising american fascist party, that is still ill defined, unorganized (for elections), though with his election in 2016 it is apparent the manipulation of the media, the resounding acknowledgement of a middle class and working- class tipping toward a fascist ideal of tear it down first, then we’ll think about rebuilding, have made the usual foolishness of a fascist movement in america more possible than it’s ever been.

Five years after candidate Trump campaigned, then won the election, upheavals in the Departments of Justice, Legislative disengagement, and judicial tampering, six years later we still are unable to tell how big the problem is. With Trump, at this moment, being hounded by the Justice Department, NY tax investigations, and Jan 6^th panels, it appears that what once seemed like unswerving loyalty to him a year ago has transferred to the mini-Trumps running state houses and legislatures across the country. Certainly, food for thought as to what the future holds in American society.

America has seen many right and left radical movements in its relatively recent status as a world power. According to Paxton, America may have been the first nation state to experience the first, real fascist organization, in the KKK. However, despite the ideals of the KKK that continue to live on in most southern states and millions of white supremacist lexicons, most people have learned from their history books that fascism is a european thing, circa world war 2, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco. All the other demagogues in the world before and since merely represent themselves as “dictatorships”, which by itself covers a lot of ground in trying to distinguish between types of nation states.

One real difference between the dictatorship and the democratically elected authoritarian state, like what we have in America, is that fascism doesn’t care about any of that. Fascism has one basic goal. Destroy whatever institutions the public puts its faith in and take power by deinstitutionalizing the society in whatever way the movement dictates.

With all this, the coming mid-term election of this year and general election campaign trail opening up in less than a year for 2024, the american public will once again be asked to choose between the lesser of an infinite number of evils with little good in sight.

It is with a certain amount of trepidation that we progressives for the lack of a better term begin to try and sort out how it will work. As journalists, artists, historians, intellectuals, writers we feel it is our obligation to attempt to discern the various motives, politics, and movements that will pass by in this parade of old, traditional, meandering political philosophies, and working-class ideals, including both the real and imagined ways government does not work for you.

We have to start at a point of definition. Trump and his ism is a fascist movement, fashioned from a Mussolini type of fascism that utilized all the socialist, individualist, power-based ideals and models defined by those who analyze political movements. It is personality (cult) based, it has no agenda other than the above mentioned ideal that the state should be destroyed by any means necessary, which can include using the very mechanism the state uses, such as voting, enforcement of the law, waiving of pre-determined rights already established by tradition etc, or by violence in the streets, creating chaos, doubt, and confusion of long-standing public truths.

We will examine these phenomenon as we progress through the electoral process, using the media, actual examples of the ways violence and the media work hand in hand in leading the public conscience on.

It is important to understand many of the media outlets, the general public at large, religious organizations, political groups, all use, unintentionally or not, resources designed to influence the one main entity, the public mind to vote, not from an actual engagement in the electoral process, but as a fearful, disengaged, uneducated, unthinking electorate.

No More Bystanding, Just Stand Up for Yourself

 

 

The hero

It used to be Every now and then, I reverted, once the dust, smoke, clogged freeway cleared, to the notion that I'm possibly glad to live in california as though california has some special place beyond my own history. Although, there is a tendency in america to not only be a nationalist (and to believe in some sort of american exceptionalism) but, also, an indistinct, vague belief that where one lives i.e., state, city, or town has some special relationship to us who live there. It's not about patriotism, thats reserved for the nation, but the flag of the confederacy or tolkien empire manifests a pride that cannot be denied, and should it?

Nowhere is this more apparent than in sports where one's affiliation with a home team is nearly as passionate as the furor over going to a righteous war.

These are mens ideals. Its about the underdog rising up to smite the one with all the weight, david vs goliath, and get the praise and if the passion you have is for the champ, then to crush david over and over again. And get the boos.

Sent from my iPad

Dawn Rises at Pt. Reyes

The Dawn Rising (pt reyes 2022)

Listening to the coyotes and the roosters compete.

On the news, listen to this nations weep.

Two different civilizations meet.

The crows join in with their ca-ca-cawing tweet.

The quarter moon floats as fog retreats.

This is my morning greet.

As good as it gets, for a moment so sweet.

Bezos rocket to the moon blasts off, 

blows up,

Zelenskies fight wears on, combat hard, 

Camo clothes only to the media core.

Hardliners rule the roost.

There's no sin so greatly prided where

victims must compensate the sinners,

The losers must bend to the winner

The games must go on, the date must turn to rape.

To the losers of the day, inside the churches,

Who knows what they prey on?

(Thanks to phil ochs for a little bit of that line)

Trying to keep the memories straight.

Up sysyfys (sorry to the greeks for that one) hill like a rolling stone.

And don't forget the clamoring crows

Exploding loudly from the trees.

Enacting out some bird sexual frenzy.

Sent from my iPad

Escaping Poverty

 

Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years of Perfect Living With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong

In a 2017 article written for the Atlantic called Economic Mobility Requires the Nearly Impossible, MIT economist Peter Temin argues that economic inequality results in two distinct classes. And only one of them has any power to transcend the chaos within the institutional prejudices of the typical middle or lower class.

How is one to move up from a lower group to a higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That's a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended.

Modern wealthier families contend with this nowadays by hiring career counselors early on in their child's educational experience, like the beginning of high school and sometimes prior to that, if they're talking about getting their child in a more exclusive high school. Everything, including much of their child's social, cultural experiences come under this counselors perusal.

For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design.

Despite the bleak portrait that he paints, he doesn't believe that the U.S. necessarily has to be like this. He offers five proposals that he says might help the country return to more equal footing. Some are fairly clear levers that many before him have recommending pulling: expanding access to and improving public education (particularly early education), repairing infrastructure, investing less in programs like prisons that oppress poor minorities, and increasing funding for those that can help build social capital and increase economic mobility. But other suggestions of his are more ambitious and involve fundamentally changing the cultural beliefs that have been reinforced over generations. Temin advocates doing away with the belief that private agencies can act in the interest of all citizens in the way that public entities can, and should. His final recommendation is to address systemic racism by reviving the spirit of the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s, when civil-rights legislation helped to desegregate schools and give black Americans more political and economic power.

And this my dears is what's called the REVOLUTION because there's no way in hell the reforms mentioned above are going to happen without a clear case of Major Fucking Change in People's Minds by not pursuing an imaginary American dream. This article is the hundredth thousandth reiteration of what economic, philosophic, political radicals have been saying over and over-There are inequities and injustices in the system not just because there is simply a lack of resources, education for the majority of people (social Darwinism) as if it just turned out that way. It's more than a lack of resources, education because that's what the top tier of wealthy and political leaders want and have consciously structured the social order. In other words, a different world has been created for us that takes pure luck and special circumstances such as social hierarchy, race, privilege to move into the next tier, which by the way is just another level of moral poverty. It's not only an unfair rigged system but morally bankrupt, yet for all the affected people, all those affected by the "isms" are left to only "praying" for a change of heart within the very system that punishes them.

In this society to be a victim of one kind or another is a special class in itself. The ironic thing is that as true American individualists most white people think each of their circumstances is unique when pitted against the class prejudices that rule the social order. Every non-white human being is affected by the color of their skin and wherever the negative aspect of that prejudice can be used it will be. The same goes for most working women, although you have to go deeper than the mostly white, college educated, professional women that one sees everywhere. Most women, as well as men, regardless of color are working for low wages and not visualized (as real) when everyone considers inequity and injustice in this country.

My solution: spend the next sixteen years or whatever it takes to be perfect, and openly carry a LOADED VOTE with you everywhere you go. Show no mercy and no compromise.