A number of similarities between how we treat First Americans and how they treat the Palestinians.
Leonard Peltier Tests Positive for Covid-19
-
ICMag and The Vault are running a NEW contest in October! You can check it here. Prizes are seeds & forum premium access. Come join in!
top of the heap to third world status in one generation
- Thread starter Gry
- Start date
A number of similarities between how we treat First Americans and how they treat the Palestinians.
Leonard Peltier Tests Positive for Covid-19
The governor of California recently denied parole to Sirhan Sirhan.
Am left with the impression that he has presidential ambition.
More rounds were pulled out of the woodwork than Sirhans gun could hold.
Each of the sites of our political executions has been changed, torn
down or removed.
Am left with the impression that he has presidential ambition.
More rounds were pulled out of the woodwork than Sirhans gun could hold.
Each of the sites of our political executions has been changed, torn
down or removed.
Ukraine Content. run time 30 min
https://dissentradio.com/radio/22_01_27_decampkpfk.mp3
If you find this content interesting, I have more of the same
which is more recent, and equal if not more revealing content.
Anyone know of a decent hosting site that I put a 14 meg audio file on.
https://dissentradio.com/radio/22_01_27_decampkpfk.mp3
If you find this content interesting, I have more of the same
which is more recent, and equal if not more revealing content.
Anyone know of a decent hosting site that I put a 14 meg audio file on.
Current description of CIA control of the media. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and Edward Curtin
https://live.childrenshealthdefense... .how/oaFe9QWzPR
Video, run time 47 minutes 11 seconds. Uncomfortable insight
https://live.childrenshealthdefense... .how/oaFe9QWzPR
Video, run time 47 minutes 11 seconds. Uncomfortable insight
The Kept and the Killed
By Erica X Eisen
Of the 270,000 photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed”. Erica X Eisen examines the history behind this hole-punched archive and the unknowable void at its center.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-kept-and-the-killed?utm_source=pocket-newtab
By Erica X Eisen
Of the 270,000 photographs commissioned by the US Farm Security Administration to document the Great Depression, more than a third were “killed”. Erica X Eisen examines the history behind this hole-punched archive and the unknowable void at its center.
https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-kept-and-the-killed?utm_source=pocket-newtab
i read quite a bit about this a while back. one of the photographers that traveled around for the govt saved a bunch of the pix they did not want shown to the public. the federal govt was very aware by that point just how powerful pictures could be, and how dangerous & difficult to control public opinion was...those of depression era and drought ravaged communities & doomed families/pitiful children were - not - going into the newspapers or news reels. in hard times, normal people are desperate for any good news.
A well maintained history.
Macron was kept away from Putin in Kremlin for ‘refusing Russian Covid test’
‘We could not accept that they get their hands on the president’s DNA’ a member of Macron’s entourage said
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...in-in-kremlin-for-refusing-russian-covid-test
‘We could not accept that they get their hands on the president’s DNA’ a member of Macron’s entourage said
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...in-in-kremlin-for-refusing-russian-covid-test
It is not hard to get someone's DNA if they really want it. That excuse sounds fishy to me. Both men were not wearing masks. If either one had covid it wouldn't have been impossible for it to travel across that table.
It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart
The older we get, the more we need our friends—and the harder it is to keep them
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...ng-happiness/621305/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
The older we get, the more we need our friends—and the harder it is to keep them
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin...ng-happiness/621305/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
just reading this leaves scars. i'm down to maybe...two? at the most, and i'm not sure about 1 of them, lol. most died on me, the inconsiderate bastards. i went to a funeral of a family friend, and my dad looked quite sad. i knew they weren't THAT good of friends, and asked him what was wrong. he said "at this rate, there won't be anyone i know to come to MY funeral..." he was wrong. one lady that he and my mother had been friends with for forty years managed to make it. just one...
The older I get the less I'm interested in nightly activities. Many of my older friends have passed on. I like hanging out getting high with good conversation at home. The younger lads don't seem to like that much. They cant hang very long, they're out the door off to go do something more exciting lol.
Sheriffs Team Up With The Feds To Hold Up Armored Car Company, Civil Forfeiture Makes It Possible
https://www.forbes.com/sites/institu...h=705faaa73851
Highway robbery with badges. That is what Empyreal Logistics, a national armored car company, has been the victim of multiple times within the last year. Five times, drivers with the company have been pulled over for flimsy reasons with officers seizing the cash they were transporting on behalf of customers a total of three times.
No one has been arrested or charged with a crime, but if law enforcement is successful in using civil forfeiture to take the money, they will be able to spend it on themselves. The fact that the seizures defy state and federal laws is why “highway robbery” is the correct way to characterize what is going on.
It started this summer in Kansas. Empyreal Logistics provides secure cash transit for state-legal cannabis businesses. A driver was on their way to Kansas City, Missouri to pick up money from medical cannabis dispensaries when they were pulled over by a Kansas sheriff’s deputy. The driver was not cited for anything and truthfully told the deputy about their business in Kansas City.
On the return trip the next day, a deputy pulled over the car and seized $165,000. The driver wasn’t ticketed or arrested. The funds were handed over to the federal government, with the U.S. Attorney for Kansas filing a civil forfeiture action to take all of it. Under the federal “equitable sharing” program, the sheriff’s office could get up to 80% of the proceeds if the government wins.
While Empyreal’s was contesting the Kansas seizure, the San Bernardino County Sheriff started targeting vehicles transporting proceeds from state-legal businesses in California. Again, the drivers were pulled over on flimsy reasons and never arrested or given a citation. And again, the funds were handed over to the federal government for federal prosecutors to take through civil forfeiture.
While Empyreal provided the San Bernardino County Sheriff with detailed information showing that it was moving money from legal businesses to financial institutions, just a few weeks later the same truck was pulled over again.
While deputies covered up the vehicle’s security cameras, the audio feed captured the true motivation for the seizures. Deputies counting the money expressed disappointment when it turned out the vehicle was carrying half the amount of cash compared to the first seizure. Still, between the two seizures, deputies had taken more than $1.1 million. Again, the funds were sent to federal law enforcement since state-legal cannabis proceeds clearly could not be forfeited under California law.
But can the federal government use civil forfeiture to take money from medical cannabis businesses that are legal within their state? The answer is a clear “no.”
While Congress has not acted to legalize cannabis on the federal level, it has instituted a “hands-off” policy when it comes to interfering with state-legal medical cannabis operations. According to federal law, the Department of Justice and its agencies cannot spend any money to prevent states from implementing their own laws that authorize medical cannabis.
And in regard to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s stops, California law explicitly protects Empyreal and others who transport money for commercial cannabis operations. Lawmakers passed this statute to enhance public safety. It is patently obvious that forcing cannabis businesses to figure out how to safely store or transfer significant amounts of cash themselves could increase opportunities for criminals.
What’s going on in Kansas and Southern California isn’t about public safety. It’s about exploiting federal law in order to enrich law enforcement. No one is acting to shut down Empyreal’s customers since that would be an obvious violation of state and federal law. No one at Empyreal has been charged with any crime or even given a moving violation.
The targeting of Empyreal’s vehicles reinforces that civil forfeiture is less about fighting crime and more about generating revenue for law enforcement. When Seattle University economics professor Dr. Brian Kelly examined the federal equitable sharing program, he found that forfeiture had no meaningful effect on crimes solved and did not decrease drug use. He did find that forfeiture increased when local economies suffered and government revenues dried up.
Empyreal is now working with the Institute for Justice to end these illegal seizures. The company filed a federal lawsuit in California against the San Bernardino County Sheriff, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. The company’s and its drivers’ constitutional rights have been violated over and over again.
These cases demonstrate once again how civil forfeiture has distorted law enforcement priorities and why it needs to be abolished. A criminal trial is the correct venue for figuring out whether law enforcement should be able to take millions of dollars. People should have the right to legal representation and the government should have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Anything less is unjust and un-American.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/institu...h=705faaa73851
Highway robbery with badges. That is what Empyreal Logistics, a national armored car company, has been the victim of multiple times within the last year. Five times, drivers with the company have been pulled over for flimsy reasons with officers seizing the cash they were transporting on behalf of customers a total of three times.
No one has been arrested or charged with a crime, but if law enforcement is successful in using civil forfeiture to take the money, they will be able to spend it on themselves. The fact that the seizures defy state and federal laws is why “highway robbery” is the correct way to characterize what is going on.
It started this summer in Kansas. Empyreal Logistics provides secure cash transit for state-legal cannabis businesses. A driver was on their way to Kansas City, Missouri to pick up money from medical cannabis dispensaries when they were pulled over by a Kansas sheriff’s deputy. The driver was not cited for anything and truthfully told the deputy about their business in Kansas City.
On the return trip the next day, a deputy pulled over the car and seized $165,000. The driver wasn’t ticketed or arrested. The funds were handed over to the federal government, with the U.S. Attorney for Kansas filing a civil forfeiture action to take all of it. Under the federal “equitable sharing” program, the sheriff’s office could get up to 80% of the proceeds if the government wins.
While Empyreal’s was contesting the Kansas seizure, the San Bernardino County Sheriff started targeting vehicles transporting proceeds from state-legal businesses in California. Again, the drivers were pulled over on flimsy reasons and never arrested or given a citation. And again, the funds were handed over to the federal government for federal prosecutors to take through civil forfeiture.
While Empyreal provided the San Bernardino County Sheriff with detailed information showing that it was moving money from legal businesses to financial institutions, just a few weeks later the same truck was pulled over again.
While deputies covered up the vehicle’s security cameras, the audio feed captured the true motivation for the seizures. Deputies counting the money expressed disappointment when it turned out the vehicle was carrying half the amount of cash compared to the first seizure. Still, between the two seizures, deputies had taken more than $1.1 million. Again, the funds were sent to federal law enforcement since state-legal cannabis proceeds clearly could not be forfeited under California law.
But can the federal government use civil forfeiture to take money from medical cannabis businesses that are legal within their state? The answer is a clear “no.”
While Congress has not acted to legalize cannabis on the federal level, it has instituted a “hands-off” policy when it comes to interfering with state-legal medical cannabis operations. According to federal law, the Department of Justice and its agencies cannot spend any money to prevent states from implementing their own laws that authorize medical cannabis.
And in regard to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s stops, California law explicitly protects Empyreal and others who transport money for commercial cannabis operations. Lawmakers passed this statute to enhance public safety. It is patently obvious that forcing cannabis businesses to figure out how to safely store or transfer significant amounts of cash themselves could increase opportunities for criminals.
What’s going on in Kansas and Southern California isn’t about public safety. It’s about exploiting federal law in order to enrich law enforcement. No one is acting to shut down Empyreal’s customers since that would be an obvious violation of state and federal law. No one at Empyreal has been charged with any crime or even given a moving violation.
The targeting of Empyreal’s vehicles reinforces that civil forfeiture is less about fighting crime and more about generating revenue for law enforcement. When Seattle University economics professor Dr. Brian Kelly examined the federal equitable sharing program, he found that forfeiture had no meaningful effect on crimes solved and did not decrease drug use. He did find that forfeiture increased when local economies suffered and government revenues dried up.
Empyreal is now working with the Institute for Justice to end these illegal seizures. The company filed a federal lawsuit in California against the San Bernardino County Sheriff, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI. The company’s and its drivers’ constitutional rights have been violated over and over again.
These cases demonstrate once again how civil forfeiture has distorted law enforcement priorities and why it needs to be abolished. A criminal trial is the correct venue for figuring out whether law enforcement should be able to take millions of dollars. People should have the right to legal representation and the government should have to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Anything less is unjust and un-American.
they have to be picky about where to strike. a few states are restricting/outlawing the process completely, which is the right thing to do. this "policing for profit" bullshit only makes LEO out to be MORE of an enemy to the citizens than they already were. i've said for months that folks only take so much before they start shooting first. has anyone noted the rise in LEO being assaulted, shot at, etc recently? i'm not siding with those that pull the trigger in most cases, just pointing out that it is happening more as LEO loses what little respect it had in the community. at this rate, they'll have to ride around in 3 or 4 car convoys, 4 officers per car for their own (relative) safety before long. maybe they saw this coming, and it's why they want repurposed military armored vehicles?
Think well of the site, and outfit
Tracking Russian Military Vehicles on the Move
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources...s-on-the-move/
Tracking Russian Military Vehicles on the Move
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources...s-on-the-move/
Congressman Adam Kinzinger is worried about a second American civil war. “I don’t think that’s too far of a bridge to recognize,” he said earlier this week, adding, “It’s going to be armed groups against armed groups, targeted assassination and violence.”
There is an active movement within the United States trying to start a civil war. They’re armed and serious, having already tried to kidnap and murder the Governor of Michigan and the Vice President of the United States.
You may not recall names like Pat Crusius, Anders Breivik or James Fields, but members of a dozen different white supremacist groups in America can tell you details of the lives of the El Paso murderer of 23 Hispanic people, the Norwegian killer of 77 “liberals” (most children), and the man who killed Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others at the “Jews Will Not Replace Us” rally in Charlottesville. All are heroes to the movement.
They’re also students of how to start civil wars. They believe that when a certain threshold of mistrust and grievance is hit, all it takes is a small event to trigger much wider bloodshed. They’ve internalized the lessons Barbara F. Walter lays out in her seminal book How Civil Wars Start.
Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and his gun-loving friends get it, too. Massie recently argued that the tipping point will come when “30 to 40 percent could agree that [the American government] was legitimate tyranny and it needed to be thrown off” and openly argued that people should be sufficiently well-armed to take on the US Marines. (The clip’s at the bottom of this story.)
Finishing that sentence, Massey added, “they [those trying to bring down the American government] need to have sufficient power without asking for extra permission – it should be right there and completely available to them in their living room in order to effect the change.”
His buddies on the podcast where he made this assertion went even farther, saying that Americans should be able to possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to, presumably, fight against America’s police and military and take down our government.
So, how did we get here, and what’s the best way to avoid bloodshed and chaos?
The “how we got here” part began in a big way with the Reagan Revolution in 1981, when Republicans took over the government and flipped us out of FDR’s New Deal and into Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism.
Reagan’s neoliberalism not only took a meat-axe to unions and working people, it began the destruction of the most critical currency a government has: trust.
That decade also saw the first generation of non-white immigrants allowed into the US because of immigration law reform in 1965 as well as a 3-million person immigrant surge that Reagan “legalized” in 1986 getting “the browning of American” underway.
And around that time came the GOP’s “voter fraud” hysteria, along with Reagan’s assertion that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Those two memes together have destroyed the faith once held by millions of Americans’ in our government itself.
Reagan cut taxes on the morbidly rich from 74 percent down to 25 percent while raising taxes on working-class people 11 times, massively widening the American inequality gap.
There wasn’t a single billionaire in the country when he took that unprecedented step: today there are hundreds, and their money bins are so overflowing that they’re shooting themselves into outer space with the loose change spilling out.
Working people were totally left behind by the Reagan Revolution, as Republicans in business, state governments, and on the Supreme Court went gunning for labor unions, which had been a traditional base of support for the Democratic Party. Within a decade we went from a third of Americans having union job and wage protections to fewer than ten percent. Today it’s under six percent.
As a result, income at the bottom 90 percent of the wage scale have been functionally frozen since the 80s and, in many cases, have actually declined; the standard of living a single wage-earner could provide a family in 1980 now requires two people working full time jobs.
People will tolerate a lot of privation and pain if they’ve grown up with it, but when you take things away from people, they notice it and react with rage. In this case, Reaganism stole a middle class lifestyle from millions of working class white people, and they’re pissed.
As the white working class woke up to how they’d been screwed, Limbaugh and Fox came along to tell them who was responsible: all those dark-skinned people they were seeing in increasing numbers.
As Walter documents in How Civil Wars Start, when an ethnic, language, or racial majority of a population experiences a rapid (one or two generation) significant loss of status and wealth — as happened in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Syria — grievance politics come to the fore and revolutionary groups made up of the newly disenfranchised appear.
Pretty soon you have armed militias and open rebellions against the rule of law; it often happens so fast that afterwards people say they never saw it coming.
That’s where we’re at in America now, and it was first set up by the election of 1981.
Reaganism (aka neoliberalism) took a huge bite out of the wealth and power of working class white people, reducing millions from the middle class to the working poor.
Reagan also negotiated what became NAFTA and the WTO, which led to over 60,000 factories and tens of millions of jobs moving offshore, and no president since has taken a significant action to stop or even slow the process.
Then came Donald Trump, not only pointing out how Republicans in his billionaire class were ripping off working people but doubling down by telling Americans all the way back in the 2015 primaries that our entire political system is “rigged” against working class white voters.
Pointing out the truth about how Reaganism gutted the middle class (America’s middle class, once around 65% of us, slipped below the 50% of the population mark in 2015) let Trump wipe the floor that year with his primary opponents, and today his Big Lie about the 2020 election is believed by more than half of all Republican voters.
And, while not usually mentioned in the mainstream press, just attend a Trump rally or ask any of his followers: they believe all that “voter fraud” is being committed by Black people in big cities, a meme Trump hammered for five years and continues to spout with lies about “busloads” of people crossing state lines to vote twice.
When there’s a shared sense of grievance combined with mistrust of government, these white supremacists know, small events can flare into a wider civil war without warning.
The idea isn’t new within the white supremacist movement; they just haven’t yet hit a critical mass. Tim McVeigh thought he’d trigger a war against the Clinton administration when he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in an imitation of the inciting incident in the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries.
In that book — now the “bible” of the white supremacist movement, according to the FBI — the hero Earl Turner blows up a Federal Building but the government overreacts by sending agents out to confiscate guns from the good, patriotic white people across the nation. They rise up and begin an orgy of chaos and death; in the end the “mud races” are all dead (including Jews) and the white supremacist hero helps run the new “European culture” nation.
All of this racism, outrage, and anger has also been amplified since around 2008 when Obama was elected president, coincidentally with the near-universal adoption of smartphone-based social media, whose algorithms were described yesterday by Tristan Harris on Brian Stelter’s On The Media show as a “civil war for profit business model.”
So, what do we do?
Walter and other political observers point out that the way to diminish the power and appeal of rightwing terror movements and recover trust in a government is at least a two-step process.
First, Americans have to trust that their democracy works. That means adopting systems and laws like virtually every other developed nation in the world has to inspire and retain trust in their political system.
Canada, for example, has an independent, nonpartisan national voting agency (“Elections Canada”) that’s transparent and makes sure the vote is available to all citizens. Canadian law also puts a cap on money in politics that limits the influence of both the morbidly rich and giant corporations, and funds education in civics and critical thinking.
Second, the Americans who’ve been the victims of Reaganism’s gutting of the middle class have to stop feeling like they’re constantly on the edge of panic. When more than half the country would be crippled by an unexpected $1000 expense, you’re sitting on a power keg.
Other advanced democracies have solved this problem by expanding union rights and the social safety net, including free or low-cost medical care and debt-free college/trade school education.
When people have a good job and income, they tend not to become terrorists. America’s slogan could become, “If Canada can do it, why can’t we?”
And, finally, as I lay out in my new book The Hidden History of Big Brother, Congress must come to terms with the damage caused by social media algorithms designed to maximize outrage and profits at the expense of rational discourse, shared facts/reality, and democracy itself.
We have two and a half years before the 2024 election to put this country back on track and the Biden administration has offered legislation that would have done much of this, including Build Back Better that would restore the American middle class, along with serious voting rights reforms that would restore trust in the integrity of elections.
They were blocked by every Republican in the House and Senate along with two turncoat Democrats in the Senate, but if Democrats can expand their majorities in the election this November, America will have another chance to avoid Kinsinger’s nightmare scenario.
It may be our last.
Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatch
After Rep. Thomas Massie asserted that American citizens must possess weapons powerful enough to overthrow the government should 30-40% agree it's necessary, Tim Pool declared that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right to own nuclear and biological weapons.
February 10th 2022
Thom Hartmann.com
There is an active movement within the United States trying to start a civil war. They’re armed and serious, having already tried to kidnap and murder the Governor of Michigan and the Vice President of the United States.
You may not recall names like Pat Crusius, Anders Breivik or James Fields, but members of a dozen different white supremacist groups in America can tell you details of the lives of the El Paso murderer of 23 Hispanic people, the Norwegian killer of 77 “liberals” (most children), and the man who killed Heather Heyer and injured dozens of others at the “Jews Will Not Replace Us” rally in Charlottesville. All are heroes to the movement.
They’re also students of how to start civil wars. They believe that when a certain threshold of mistrust and grievance is hit, all it takes is a small event to trigger much wider bloodshed. They’ve internalized the lessons Barbara F. Walter lays out in her seminal book How Civil Wars Start.
Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie and his gun-loving friends get it, too. Massie recently argued that the tipping point will come when “30 to 40 percent could agree that [the American government] was legitimate tyranny and it needed to be thrown off” and openly argued that people should be sufficiently well-armed to take on the US Marines. (The clip’s at the bottom of this story.)
Finishing that sentence, Massey added, “they [those trying to bring down the American government] need to have sufficient power without asking for extra permission – it should be right there and completely available to them in their living room in order to effect the change.”
His buddies on the podcast where he made this assertion went even farther, saying that Americans should be able to possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons to, presumably, fight against America’s police and military and take down our government.
So, how did we get here, and what’s the best way to avoid bloodshed and chaos?
The “how we got here” part began in a big way with the Reagan Revolution in 1981, when Republicans took over the government and flipped us out of FDR’s New Deal and into Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism.
Reagan’s neoliberalism not only took a meat-axe to unions and working people, it began the destruction of the most critical currency a government has: trust.
That decade also saw the first generation of non-white immigrants allowed into the US because of immigration law reform in 1965 as well as a 3-million person immigrant surge that Reagan “legalized” in 1986 getting “the browning of American” underway.
And around that time came the GOP’s “voter fraud” hysteria, along with Reagan’s assertion that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”
Those two memes together have destroyed the faith once held by millions of Americans’ in our government itself.
Reagan cut taxes on the morbidly rich from 74 percent down to 25 percent while raising taxes on working-class people 11 times, massively widening the American inequality gap.
There wasn’t a single billionaire in the country when he took that unprecedented step: today there are hundreds, and their money bins are so overflowing that they’re shooting themselves into outer space with the loose change spilling out.
Working people were totally left behind by the Reagan Revolution, as Republicans in business, state governments, and on the Supreme Court went gunning for labor unions, which had been a traditional base of support for the Democratic Party. Within a decade we went from a third of Americans having union job and wage protections to fewer than ten percent. Today it’s under six percent.
As a result, income at the bottom 90 percent of the wage scale have been functionally frozen since the 80s and, in many cases, have actually declined; the standard of living a single wage-earner could provide a family in 1980 now requires two people working full time jobs.
People will tolerate a lot of privation and pain if they’ve grown up with it, but when you take things away from people, they notice it and react with rage. In this case, Reaganism stole a middle class lifestyle from millions of working class white people, and they’re pissed.
As the white working class woke up to how they’d been screwed, Limbaugh and Fox came along to tell them who was responsible: all those dark-skinned people they were seeing in increasing numbers.
As Walter documents in How Civil Wars Start, when an ethnic, language, or racial majority of a population experiences a rapid (one or two generation) significant loss of status and wealth — as happened in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Syria — grievance politics come to the fore and revolutionary groups made up of the newly disenfranchised appear.
Pretty soon you have armed militias and open rebellions against the rule of law; it often happens so fast that afterwards people say they never saw it coming.
That’s where we’re at in America now, and it was first set up by the election of 1981.
Reaganism (aka neoliberalism) took a huge bite out of the wealth and power of working class white people, reducing millions from the middle class to the working poor.
Reagan also negotiated what became NAFTA and the WTO, which led to over 60,000 factories and tens of millions of jobs moving offshore, and no president since has taken a significant action to stop or even slow the process.
Then came Donald Trump, not only pointing out how Republicans in his billionaire class were ripping off working people but doubling down by telling Americans all the way back in the 2015 primaries that our entire political system is “rigged” against working class white voters.
Pointing out the truth about how Reaganism gutted the middle class (America’s middle class, once around 65% of us, slipped below the 50% of the population mark in 2015) let Trump wipe the floor that year with his primary opponents, and today his Big Lie about the 2020 election is believed by more than half of all Republican voters.
And, while not usually mentioned in the mainstream press, just attend a Trump rally or ask any of his followers: they believe all that “voter fraud” is being committed by Black people in big cities, a meme Trump hammered for five years and continues to spout with lies about “busloads” of people crossing state lines to vote twice.
When there’s a shared sense of grievance combined with mistrust of government, these white supremacists know, small events can flare into a wider civil war without warning.
The idea isn’t new within the white supremacist movement; they just haven’t yet hit a critical mass. Tim McVeigh thought he’d trigger a war against the Clinton administration when he blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building in an imitation of the inciting incident in the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries.
In that book — now the “bible” of the white supremacist movement, according to the FBI — the hero Earl Turner blows up a Federal Building but the government overreacts by sending agents out to confiscate guns from the good, patriotic white people across the nation. They rise up and begin an orgy of chaos and death; in the end the “mud races” are all dead (including Jews) and the white supremacist hero helps run the new “European culture” nation.
All of this racism, outrage, and anger has also been amplified since around 2008 when Obama was elected president, coincidentally with the near-universal adoption of smartphone-based social media, whose algorithms were described yesterday by Tristan Harris on Brian Stelter’s On The Media show as a “civil war for profit business model.”
So, what do we do?
Walter and other political observers point out that the way to diminish the power and appeal of rightwing terror movements and recover trust in a government is at least a two-step process.
First, Americans have to trust that their democracy works. That means adopting systems and laws like virtually every other developed nation in the world has to inspire and retain trust in their political system.
Canada, for example, has an independent, nonpartisan national voting agency (“Elections Canada”) that’s transparent and makes sure the vote is available to all citizens. Canadian law also puts a cap on money in politics that limits the influence of both the morbidly rich and giant corporations, and funds education in civics and critical thinking.
Second, the Americans who’ve been the victims of Reaganism’s gutting of the middle class have to stop feeling like they’re constantly on the edge of panic. When more than half the country would be crippled by an unexpected $1000 expense, you’re sitting on a power keg.
Other advanced democracies have solved this problem by expanding union rights and the social safety net, including free or low-cost medical care and debt-free college/trade school education.
When people have a good job and income, they tend not to become terrorists. America’s slogan could become, “If Canada can do it, why can’t we?”
And, finally, as I lay out in my new book The Hidden History of Big Brother, Congress must come to terms with the damage caused by social media algorithms designed to maximize outrage and profits at the expense of rational discourse, shared facts/reality, and democracy itself.
We have two and a half years before the 2024 election to put this country back on track and the Biden administration has offered legislation that would have done much of this, including Build Back Better that would restore the American middle class, along with serious voting rights reforms that would restore trust in the integrity of elections.
They were blocked by every Republican in the House and Senate along with two turncoat Democrats in the Senate, but if Democrats can expand their majorities in the election this November, America will have another chance to avoid Kinsinger’s nightmare scenario.
It may be our last.
Right Wing Watch @RightWingWatchAfter Rep. Thomas Massie asserted that American citizens must possess weapons powerful enough to overthrow the government should 30-40% agree it's necessary, Tim Pool declared that the 2nd Amendment protects the individual right to own nuclear and biological weapons.
February 10th 2022
Thom Hartmann.com
BarknPunkin
Member
#5232
Excellent work, thank you for the post.
Excellent work, thank you for the post.
