The Past and Future Harm of Donald J Trump

These words are not my own. They are (as far as I know) the words of Reddit user kor_hookmaster in a post on r/politics. If Reddit had a way to highlight comments rather than the main submission, I would just link to that. Unfortunately, I’ve shared comment links on social media and with friends and family, and people are confused by the Reddit UI. I think the comment is brilliant and I could not have said it any better. I thank this user for the work put into making such a comment.

I think because the normalization of Trump and his erosion of political norms over the last 5 years, many people don’t seem to see just how unfathomably dangerous and downright fascist this entire situation has become.

Donald Trump lost. He lost. That is irrefutable and indisputable. He has refused to concede. Not only has he refused to concede, he’s actively telling his millions of supporters that he actually won and that the opposition STOLE the election from him. He’s not saying there was some counting error or computer malfunction. He claims that a crime was committed. It’s absolutely inexcusable and outright seditious, as many in this subbreddit already know.

The founding fathers, for all their faults as men, were not stupid. Far from it. They understood how critically important it was that the absolute powers of a monarch (or a despot/dictator) needed to be diffused among many, and that those many separate entities would need to act as checks on one another. That’s why there’s essentially three branches of government in every iteration of democracies around the world; they each hold a fraction of the power that was once reserved for a sole monarch. This division is a check against corruption and the inherent nature of power to corrupt those who wield it. The only reason that democracy – any democracy, not just the American version – can survive is through a peaceful transfer of power. Without it, there is chaos. Several thousand years of recorded history taught the founding fathers that when absolute power is concentrated in one individual, when that individual dies or are overthrown, countless people suffer. Endless wars of succession and conflicts over who has the rightful claim to power plagued us for generations. Without a peaceful and legally delineated method to hand diffuse power from one individual to the next, there’s nothing to stop someone from raising an army, crossing the proverbial Rubicon, and grabbing the reins of power by force. That’s the real magic of a democratic system: that we all collectively agree that the power of the state is peacefully and legally passed down without bloodshed or recrimination. It’s something that only works because we all believe it does, much like the inherent value of money. It’s something we take for granted, but it’s really astonishing given most of human history.

There is a method baked right into the constitution for someone who thinks they lost an election if they believe it was unfair, or corrupt, or stolen: You take it to the courts – to the separate branch – for it to be ruled on. It’s the reason why the president-elect doesn’t just assume power the day after the election. If there’s a legitimate claim to malfeasance or miscounting, it goes to the courts, each side presents its case, and the judicial branch has the time to weigh the evidence and make a ruling.

This isn’t just hypothetical – it’s already happened. In 2000 the electoral college came down to one state: Florida. Gore lost to Bush by less than a thousand votes. The night of the election Gore conceded, and then in the following days as the picture became more clear, he retracted his concession and took the matter to the courts. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, and he lost. They made their ruling and gave the election to Bush. That’s the way it’s supposed to happen, it’s how the founding fathers designed it. No civil war. No bloodshed. 

Did Gore claim that the Bush stole the election? Did he sulk away to his mansion and call himself the “real” president? Did he whip his supporters into a frenzy, tell them to “stop the steal” and unleash them on the capital building when the votes were going to be certified? No. He conceded

. Not only did he concede, he thanked his supporters for their hard work, congratulated Bush, and told his people to throw their support behind the President-elect. Because that’s what you do in a democracy. It’s not because he’s some decent guy, it’s your responsibility as a participant in the electoral process.

You throw your hat into the ring. You run your campaign and try to sway the voters. If you lose, you concede. It’s not just a formality, it’s critically important to the health of the country as a whole. Every candidate knows this. Kerry conceded in 2004. McCain in 2008 and Romney in 2012. Nixon

conceded when he lost to Kennedy in 1960, and Nixon was an irredeemable piece of shit. (Skip to 5:50 to hear Nixon describe the importance of concession and uniting around the victor)

Each speech is essentially the same: thanking supporters, officially conceding, and throwing your support behind the new president-elect and urging your supporters to do the same. Candidates, even the irredeemably shitty ones, know that elections are vicious and divisive, so effort needs to be made to try and unite afterwards. No one man is bigger or more important than the whole.

People need to have faith in the process, that elections are fair and free, and that the candidate with the most votes (or electoral votes) wins. If they doubt that very foundational premise some of them will resort to violence. They’ll resort to violence because they’ll believe that the legal channels for peaceful resolution aren’t relevant. That’s why the insurrectionists on January 6th thought they were being “patriots”. It’s a mass self-delusion that was perpetuated and allowed to fester and grow because Trump spent five years gaslighting the country and refusing to concede an election he lost. They might be ignorant authoritarians, but they wouldn’t be storming the capital without Trump and his big lie.

Trump had every legal right to contest the results of the 2020 election in the courts. He did. Over 60 lawsuits filed in multiple states. It went to the Supreme Court. He lost every single one. Those lawsuits failed or were tossed out because there was legitimately zero proof of the massive fraud and theft Trump was claiming.

The recent Vanity Fair interview with Trump is probably one of the scariest things I’ve read in a long while. Among the never-ending predictable lies and bullshit we come to expect from Trump came the fact that he was disappointed in the federal and state judges he appointed that decided against him or tossed out his lawsuits. He was upset with Brett Kavanagh and the conservative judges on the Supreme Court for their disloyalty. THEIR DISLOYALTY. 

This is surreal. It’s beyond the pale. The President of the United States is upset that a separate branch of the federal government didn’t show him sufficient loyalty. What the everlasting fuck is this fascist nonsense? The federal government is not a mafia family. Federal judges don’t owe anyone loyalty – regardless of whether they’re from the same party or if they’ve been appointed by someone. Your merit is not judged on your loyalty, especially when your very role is to remain impartial and interpret the law. Judges are loyal to the constitution, not the President!  It’s in their very oath of office!

This is why Trump is such a threat. It’s not just his ignorance, his incompetence, his vanity, his vindictiveness, his narcissism. Those are all horrible qualities to have. He’s a threat because he’s willing to completely disregard and tear down the very bedrock principles of democracy (the separation of authority and the peaceful transfer of power) to serve his needs. His ego can’t handle a loss, so the constitution and everything that makes democracy a functional alternative to despotism and authoritarianism can burn. 

Trump isn’t just the worst president in history, he’s a threat to the very fabric of the country. Because of the slow crawl of his erosion of norms, the frenetic pace of 24 hour news, the short attention span of our modern society, and a media obsessed with ratings over information, Trump has been allowed to get away with this behaviour. The fact that Republicans are lining up and falling over each other to supplicate themselves before this man should be a stain that should never wash off and should be their legacy. If there is any justice in the world, history will not be kind to these enabling sycophants who actively helped this cancerous growth. 

I wish I was being hyperbolic, I really do. But there’s no other way to see that one political party and millions of Americans are not only fine with authoritarianism, but will actively cheer it on and promote its rise.

Sure, a case can be made that this was inevitable given the course of the Republican party for the last 30 years. Trump is a mutated strain of their brand of “conservatism” which doesn’t really seem to stand for anything at this point beyond the acquisition and protection of power. But Trump is still far more dangerous than the original pathogen: he’s a force that wants to ensure that facts don’t mean anything and that loyalty is the only currency that matters. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m screaming into the void about some of this, but I feel like Trump’s antics and firehose of bullshit is causing millions of people to lose sight of the forest for the trees. Hell, they’re losing sight of the galaxy for the pebbles of sand on the beach.

The only way I see out of this is if he faces legal ramifications for what he’s done. If he’s permitted to get away with it, and run in 2024, and win? That’s the absolute nightmare scenario.

How did we get here [blaming young people for their plight]?

Smitty7242 said it well:

Rick Perlstein has a series of books about the restoration of conservatism, most notably economic, laissez-faire conservatism, in the United States beginning in the late 1970’s.

His most recent book is called Reaganland and it came out in 2020. As with all of his other books, I am listening to it on Audible because I am a lazy young whipper snapper.

The books are amazing, and they really go a ways to explaining what has happened to our economy and why the members of the older generations are morally opposed to recognizing the reality of it.

The economic realities of our parents’ and grandparents’ world rested on the solid foundation of the New Deal, and of the economically liberal philosophies that underpinned it – that if the economy is getting to a point where regular people are unable to afford the standard of living, the government can and should intervene to assist such regular people, even if large corporations and the very wealthy people who administer those corporations scream that such assistance is communism and usurps the prerogative of the nobility. Also that labor unions are a good thing and should be supported and encouraged by the government.

The idea was that, broadly speaking, the weaker aspects of the economy should be the greatest direct beneficiaries of state intervention because otherwise, these people will get no help. The corporate class will not assist them, because that class shortsightedly sees poverty among the masses as good because it keeps labor prices low, and makes wealth more exclusive and thus more prestigious. The corporate class does not see that this commitment to poverty eventually hurts even the rich, as the poor become less invested in society as a whole and thus more willing to detach from and rebel against it – possibly by electing the kinds of governments being seen in Europe during the New Deal, which Roosevelt hoped the New Deal would prevent in the States.

Although this system worked magnificently and created the strongest and broadest economy in the world by the 1950’s, one in which people working factory jobs that once allowed them to live in one room tenements were now owning homes, buying cars and saving for their children to go to college, the corporate class was never very enthusiastic about it. However, the New Deal rhetoric had so successfully painted laissez-faire conservatism as thinly veiled corporate greed and the main cause of the Great Depression, that there didn’t seem to be anything they could do about it.

That is, until a younger generation of conservatives began to develop an exciting new breed of conservatism called the “New Right,” exemplified by William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. This version of laissez-faire emphasized the “liberty” aspect of reducing regulation of corporate interests, and vilified government assistance to the working class as a big government scheme to crush the freedom of the free market.

The New Right took all of the resentment that the New Dealers had piled onto the corporate class and transferred it to a heretofore allegedly unrecognized shadow class of “permanent bureaucracy” (what Trumpism would term “the Deep State”), whose oppression of corporate interests was just the first step in eventually forcing all “regular Americans” into Soviet gulags.

Although this vision of the evil deep state crushing our freedoms on the pretext of helping the poor is just common sense reality to today’s rank and file conservatives, in mid-century America it went hard against the general grain. Thus, to bolster the popularity of this bold new philosophy, the New Right tied their argument to any sort of resentment against “newfangled values” that it could find.

Thus, resistance to gay rights became “the self-appointed bureaucratic nanny state wants to force us to let our sons learn how to be gay, just like it wants to rob hard workers of the money they earn in order to spend it on frivolous government welfare programs aimed to encourage things like homosexuality,” or “government assistance is part of the overall liberal scheme to empower the lazy and undermine the strong, in order to weaken America for an eventual union with the Soviets, which is what these liberals really want,” etc.

In the late 1970’s, our economy was really struggling – not because the government was choking the ingenuity and work ethic of the corporate class, but because our post-war virtual monopoly of international production was over, and because we had become highly dependent on foreign oil whose price could be dictated by the whims of strongmen.

The New Right jumped on this apparent crisis as proof that what they had been saying since the 1950’s was true, and that if we didn’t act quickly to get the government out of the economy, we would soon be taken over by socialists using the crisis they had intentionally created in order to finally fully crush American freedom.

The man who won the White House in 1980, who had been pushing this philosophy since the late 1950’s, was swept in on a popular tide of approval for this formerly laughable philosophy. And it continues to be the religion of the Republican party to this day.

The mechanisms in place in the world that our parents grew up in to distribute wealth more fairly are no longer in place. They are no longer in place because our parents’ generation was fooled into believing that these mechanisms were responsible for economic problems in the 1970’s and 1980’s that were actually largely unrelated to our New Deal economic system and philosophy. They therefore elected people who destroyed these mechanisms, and they cheered for the rebirth of American freedom while it happened.

They cannot admit they were wrong. Therefore, if things are shittier for our generation than for theirs, it must be due to our laziness and sense of entitlement. Far from admitting that the philosophy of the New Right is responsible for the explosion in cost of living, and the resultant decrease in quality of life for a broader and broader section of the American population, they claim that any economic problems are the result of lingering liberalism, and cry that the only way to full prosperity is more economic conservatism. And they’ve taught many of their children to believe this as well.

Thus, even many members of our younger generations seem perfectly willing to pick up this misguided torch. God help us all.

I’m actually in that generation (barely) that is the problem. The boomers. I’m not here to pat myself on the back because I was against Reagan, and what he did this country, back in the 80’s. I’m here to say, everyone needs to understand this history and how we got where we are. Trump was the literal result of what started in 1980. The fight against that tide is not over. While Trump lost in 2020, the forces at work are busy making sure that an extremist can win in 2024 (and many of them in 2022!) by restricting voting. But, that’s the subject of another blog.

Fox News has aired 126 segments on trans student-athletes. They could only find nine nationwide.

Article here. I thought forgottencalipers said it well:

DUDE LOOK AT THIS THREAD

these people are frothing at the mouth about what other parents and their kids decide to do… about what they wear, how they refer to themselves etc even though it has ZERO bearing on their life

They support bills that literally criminalize evidence based health care for trans youth

They support genital exams before kids can kick soccer balls

These people aren’t libertarian. They’re retarded. They want government so big it has a magnifying glass looking at a child’s taint.

It’s fucking disgusting.

These people are ANGRY about a small, inconsequential and vulnerable part of society – why? Because Tucker told them so and their amygdala is the largest part of their testicle sized brain.

They’ll continue voting for tax cuts for the rich and corporate bailouts as long as a trans kid can’t kick a soccer ball before having his dick examined.

This has been the only strategy of the GOP for the last 4 decades. Whip up a culture war, using fear (they’re coming for your XXX!! where XXX is kids, country or money), to make you forget about or not notice:

• tax breaks for the rich
• the shrinking middle class
• the war on poor people
• the industrial-prison complex
• the wars for oil

It is literally insane.

Stop worry about trans kids, and trans people in general, and start worrying about what these people are doing to you. They are stealing your future and consigning you to a life of poverty.

And who thinks this is a good idea?

The history of Netanyahu’s party

This is not my content, I’m just highlighting it. Original author is JustMeStoppingBy from here.

Extremism and nationalism is bad for everyone, whether it be Trump’s version or Netanyahu’s version.

I was utterly blown away when I learned the history of Netanyahu’s party (Likud). It made his behavior, and the views of his party, make so much more sense.

Long comment coming up, but history ain’t short…

Prior to the creation and independence of Israel there was a large paramilitary group named Haganah. This group basically provided protection for the Jewish people arriving and living in what was then Mandate Palestine. Though an armed force, they emphasized self-restraint and weren’t really that radical. This changed at the end of WW2 as Britain sought to slow the immigration of Jewish people. Haganah turned to sabotage and bombing transportation routes in response.

Interestingly, after Israel declared it’s independence, Haganah was dissolved and basically became the IDF.

But backtracking a bit, Haganah’s self-restraint irked the more radical members who thought violence was the answer. These radicals split off and formed the groups Irgun and Lehi. During their time active, these two groups engaged in shootouts with UK troops, massacres, committed bombings, assassinations (the most high profile of which being a British diplomat), and tit-for-tat murders.

When Israel announced it’s independence and sought to bring Irgun and Lehi into the IDF fold, a portion of Irgun rebelled and actually acted rose in insurrection against the Israeli government. This resulted in violence and death on both sides. Irgun was named as a terrorist organization by numerous countries, including the USA and UK, and by many Israelis. Irgun was dissolved only after the IDF surrounded them and forced them to surrender under threat of death. They were then brought into the IDF as soldiers.

As for Lehi, they were pretty extreme right wing in their views. Steeped in racism they envisioned a totalitarian government controlling 100% of the borders of ancient Genesis, which they believed belonged to them eternally. After Israel declared it’s independence Lehi was actually outlawed as a terrorist organization by the Israeli government.

Worth mentioning is that Israel then gave amnesty to all Lehi members, and in 1980 awarded them with the Lehi ribbon in recognition for their contributions to the creation of Israel. It raises eyebrows that they would recognize and reward what they disavowed as a terrorist group because it helped create Israel, while at that time enduring bombings by terrorist groups seeking to establish Palestine. But that’s another topic.

So why am I talking about paramilitary groups?

Because Irgun went on to form Herut, a right-wing nationalist party that ran in Israel’s first election. Though they were publicly denounced by a number of prominent Jewish figures (including Einstein) as a terrorist party and as fascists, they still won seats. One of those victors was Herut’s head, Menachem Begin, who had been the founder of Irgun.

After decades of Herut floating around in the political sphere, in 1973 they merged with a couple other right-wing parties to form the Likud party. You probably know that name, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

1973 marked a turning point for these right-wingers. They had grown to close the gap between them and the democratic socialist parties who had led Israel since it’s creation.

By 1977 they had grown in influence to win the election. First came Menachem Begin, who was mentioned above. Yes, the former leader of the terrorist organization Irgun, who had headed the denounced “terrorist, fascist” party Herut, became Prime Minister of Israel. Not just once, but twice. He served from 1977-1981. Everyone can thank him for being the one for encouraging settlements in occupied areas. He is the grandfather to the conflicts still going on over these settlements.

Poor health forced him to resign and hand over the reins to a fellow Likud member, Yitzhak Shamir. This was another former Irgun member, until he had switched to Lehi (the more radical of the two) and became Lehi’s leader. So one former literal terrorist hands the reins of Israel off to another former terrorist – one with even more extreme views rooted in xenophobia.

Yitzhak Shamir would wind up serving as Prime Minister for 7 years, making him the third longest serving Prime Minister for Israel.

At this point the old social democrats reclaimed power, but held it for only 4 years as a new challenger defeats them in 1996 – a Likud politician named Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu lost power in 1999, reclaimed it in 2009, and has held it ever since. He is the longest serving Prime Minister in Israel. He quite literally leads a political party that has it’s roots in terrorism.

The extreme positions of it’s past leaders (former terrorists themselves with extreme xenophobia) explain why we have seen the government act as they have. It explains why they are so bent on preventing there from ever being a Palestine. The roots of IDF incorporating these terrorist groups into their forces explain an origin for the kinds of violence and xenophobia that exists in them. From the very beginning they sought to control all of the land there, and they’re going to wind up achieving that.

From Israel’s first election in 1949 to today (72 years in total), 32 of those years have been under the control of Likud. The fact that the party and it’s leadership’s history is so unknown is absolutely insane – as is the fact that these guys were able to grab hold of power in the first place. Israel’s government and military has been hijacked by extremists and radicals whose activities and groups were condemned and outlawed by what Israel had at first been.

This is an absolute travesty. A stolen dream, a hijacking of the Jewish identity, and an assurance of a future wracked by violence. I wish more people knew this history.

And bokavitch points out that the loss of power by the social democrats in 1996 was due to this:

You left out a crucial detail: They lost power because PM Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist to derail the peace agreement he signed with Yassir Arafat.

What is happening right now in Israel and the US is due to the rise of these cults of personality. We must stop them, so that sanity can prevail and people can live in peace.

You might ask, why aren’t I writing about the extremists on the Palestinian side? Because Israel holds all the power here and Netanyahu is the one pushing the powerful side in the wrong direction.

My Kamala Harris awakening

They say that Kamala Harris is a conservative mole and is not fit to be the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. The they in this case is almost everyone in the media, ironically even some Republicans point it out, to undermine her with Democratic voters. This idea had seeped into my brain. I wasn’t that thrilled by Biden’s choice. Until today, that is.

My awakening is the result of read Reginald Dwayne Betts’s Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me. I now believe she is the VP candidate we need. She is perfect for this time. Please read it. Or, if prefer, you can listen to The Daily Podcast episode where the article is read by J. D. Jackson.

The proof that Trump is a fascist

NOTE: Credit 100% goes to user PoppinKREAM on Reddit. Linking to comments on reddit is often confusing. If Reddit would have a mode for viewing a comment as the main part of the page, I would stop copying the content of comments I love and making an easily shareable version of them.

To the many of us who have been paying attention none of these fascist tactics come as a surprise. President Trump’s words & actions over the summer months were horrifying. He has incited and supported violence several times.

1. He shared a video that said “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”^[1]
2. He tweeted a video of a Trump supporter yelling “White power.”^[2]
3. He tweeted that “when the looting starts the shooting starts.”^[3] A saying that is historically tied to a racist Miami police chief from the 60’s.^[4]
4. Police in Washington, D.C. brutally dispersed an entirely peaceful crowd exercising their first amendment.^[5] The police attacked Australian journalists causing the Australian government to call for an investigation.^[6] Violence erupted so that the President could hold a photo op with a bible. The former minister of the church went on CNN and stated that Trump’s actions were sacrilege.^[7]

President Trump’s praise for authoritarians;

President Trump has joked about wanting to consolidate his power like his dictator colleague in China, President Xi.^[8] President Trump has repeatedly joked about serving for more than the legal limit of 2 terms as president.^[9] President Trump has repeatedly praised dictators including Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, and el-Sisi.^[10] In 2018 President Trump praised brutal dictator^[11] Kim Jong Un calling him “strong, funny, and smart.”^[12] At last years G7 summit President Trump loudly asked “where’s my favourite dictator?” as he awaited for the Egyptian dictator.

From me to my brothers and sisters who support Donald J. Trump

Life has become such a drag from what I remember it being in the 80’s and 90’s. For those old enough, I think you know what I mean. However, I now know that the carefree life I had then was due to my privilege of being able to wear blinders. I had money, a good job and friends, and I thought the world was getting better every year.

However, the last 10-12 years have shown me the world is a much meaner place. #MeToo and #BLM opened my eyes wider. I’ve always had empathy for others, but I didn’t see the extent of the pain out there. We wear blinders to be happy, until we can’t.

Not only can I no longer wear blinders and I can no longer hold my tongue.

To my Republican brothers and sisters:

Stop pretending it is virtuous voting for a Republican just because they will help overturn Roe v Wade. Or voting for them because they will give your company a tax break. Or voting for them because you personally will pay less in taxes. Vote for the least evil person on the ballot. This is how we get less evil candidates, by skewing things to less evil. There are less evil Republicans and Democrats. Vote for them.

Hate and fear are being used to divide us. Immigrants. Blacks. Asians. Jews. Mexicans. Gays. Be wary of anyone that peddles hate toward any group. Their motives are manipulation. Their motive is to remove your attention from other things in this world. Like the theft of resources, the subjugation of people, the transfer of wealth and the destruction of democratic checks and balances. We have more in common than the differences which divide us. Everyone has the right to respect and opportunity. We have enough resources to go around. We don’t need to step on others to rise up.

The leader of our country is a demagogue. A demagogue is a leader who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions, prejudice, and ignorance to arouse some against others, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation. That is exactly what we saw in the first Presidential debate, on Sept 29, 2020.

You need to stop listening to the hate out there. Whether it be on Fox News, or posts on Facebook or Twitter, or some random place on the internet. Think critically and be skeptical. The internet connects us all, but it now appears that humans were not ready for this real-time, unfiltered information that is the internet of today. Bad actors, both inside and outside our country, are manipulating everyone. Republicans seem to be falling for it more than others, however. Witness the rise of QAnon and the ascendance of our current President.

Our President is a very bad person. Just last night, when given the chance to denounce white supremacy, he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by (that is a right-leaning publication). That is so far from acceptable it leaves me speechless. His rhetoric has gotten people killed. The murder of Hannah Graham was encouraged by our President. He also refused to denounce the movement responsible for her death. He will cause more deaths unless we stand up to the hate and fear he peddles.

Our President is financially compromised. The recent view of his taxes shows he is deeply in debt. To whom? We do not know, but it is possible it is to foreign banks and oligarchs. Checks and balances are no longer enough to preserve our democracy from someone that sidles up to dictators like Putin or Jong-un. He treats murderous dictators better than our friends, the Allies of WWII.

Stop demonizing people you don’t agree with. Members of the Democratic party are not pedophiles holding children in the basement of a pizza parlour in DC. Atheists not trusted by 45% of Americans to hold the office of President of the US.

We are approaching a time when it might not be possible to turn the tide back from demagogues. Once they gain enough power over us, we will lose the rule of law and the fabric of democracy will disintegrate. Is it so impossible to conceive of this? The people of 1930’s Germany thought so. Once it happens, it will be too late. Much blood will be spilled to get back what we lost. The it here is the election of anyone that peddles hate and fear. Do not elect them to any office in this land.

Thank you for listening.

Quotes to remember

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”

unknown someone on the internet

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.”

unknown someone on the internet

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived that distinguish one man from another.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24529929

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable…
The aim of the High is to remain where they are.
The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High.
The aim of the Low, when they have an aim — for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives — is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again.

George Orwell “1984” (published in 1949)

“To maintain relationships as an adult you need regularly scheduled
recurring events. Whether its a cookout every other Sunday, phone
calls every Sunday, a Friday happy hour, Thursday night online gaming,
Sunday walk, … what doesn’t really matter, it’s the frequence that
does.”

Seen on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/news)

QAnon is the canary in the coal mine of Democracy

QAnon seems like something everyone could, or perhaps should, ignore. It started as a 4chan account that spews insane theories about many things. I mean, who reads the words on that page and says yeah, that could be true, I better look into this? QAnon is a symptom of our very ill society. QAnon is a cult.

We now know who is behind QAnon: Jason Gelinas. Is it 100% certain? No, but it’s pretty certain. Who is this guy? A security analyst for Citigroup. However, his identity is no longer important. The impact in the real world is. We now have a member of Congress who publicly subscribes to the theories of QAnon. I’ll let you follow links above to find out more about QAnon, or for you to do your own web searches to find information.

I was profoundly impressed by a comment on reddit:

People need to stop dismissing the power of the cult, and the deadly mass-appeal of the narrative. This isn’t “an 8-chan joke that got out of hand”, and it’s not “just based on a Podesa e-mail”. It’s well-honed Nazi propaganda that has been modernized to custom-fit a broad range of modern fears and prejudices.

Q is a full-on Nazi and didn’t want to release the full “story” because historians and other knowledgeable people would have clocked it as being The Protocols of the Elders of Zion right away, warning the public that it was Nazi propaganda. By doling it out little bits at a time, dropping “breadcrumbs” of “information”, he/she/they avoided such attention and were able to infect a larger chunk of the population. Modernizing it to focus on allegations of pedophilia made it seem to be about the (very real) problem of human trafficking, which is exponentially more believable than the blood libel.

Over time, these accusations of a small but wealthy and powerful cabal of pedophiles (which evidence and prior media scandals support) grew to include accusations that this group also included all Jews (read: international banking and other powerful capitalist institutions), all LGBTQ, nearly all Democrats, nearly all government employees (the “deep state”). It also grew to include accusations that, in addition to using children for sex, they were drinking their blood and harvesting their organs for satanic rituals and immortality potions (a modern addition), and trying to destroy all of civilization (superimposing this conspiracy theory onto Christian fears of “displacement” by secular society and white fears of “displacement” by minority races).

On the face of it, this is insane. I’ve followed the QAnon phenomenon since the beginning. I dismissed it as the work of savvy internet troll. Internet trolls are everywhere. It’s the scourge of our time. Facebook. Twitter. They are everywhere. Yes, there are trolls on the right and the left, but there are many more on the right.

Here’s the the powerful conclusion (emphasis in original):

It’s not merely asinine, it’s not just crazy — it’s a highly weaponized meme made to plug into a broad constellation of fears and hatreds. It is building up numerous sleeper-cells of people calling for genocide. So stop flooding posts like this with your 1-sentence dismissals. Stop patting yourself on the back for knowing that pizza place had no basement. Stop boasting that “I didn’t fall for it like those idiots!” and start thinking about how we’re going to resist those idiots’ growing calls for genocide and political violence. Start educating yourself on how this thing is metastasizing and start educating others.

The very institutions on which we depend are crumbling. From a communications official at the Department of Health and Human Services:

The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus made outlandish and false accusations on Sunday that career government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.

There is a lot of chatter from the right about what will happen if they lose the election in November. That chatter isn’t targeted at us, it’s a signal to their kind that they will need to take up arms against “left-wing hit squads” to preserve democracy.

It is no longer enough to just vote. We have much deeper problems than who wins in November 2020. Our democracy is at stake.

ADDENDUM

A comment to the above comment resonated with me:

The premise is that people were attracted to the flat Earth theory because it provided a grand narrative that validated feelings that rich, educated, elites were conspiring to trick and mock them, but it eventually ran out of new things to talk about. At the same time QAnon arrived to provide better heroes and villains and an unlimited supply of new stories to validate the tribal hunch that people who disagree with you aren’t mistaken, they’re all-powerful and malign.

For 30 years I’ve been ruminating on why conservatives seem to hate intellectuals. John Kerry was mocked for being one. Obama feared the label. Why? The above comment provides a hypothesis, that Red-state Americans think that liberals on the coasts are looking down on them and laughing. Being a member of the QAnon cult is one way to thumb your nose at all those liberals. I read an AMA (Ask Me Anything) of a former flat earther. He said the main appeal for him was that he was being a contrarian, and that he loved arguing with people about whether the earth was flat. He knew it wasn’t, but he got a perverse pleasure (his words) from the arguments, and the frustration they caused in the others.

That’s enough for now. Peace.

Killer Mike made me do this

I grew up in Louisville, KY. In the 60’s. My part of town had only White people. As far as the eye could see. White people. But every weekend, my entire family would pile into the family car and drive to see my grandparents. They lived on the other side of the Louisville. We lived in the eastern suburbs. They lived in the middle of the poorest part of Louisville, the slums of the west end.

The drive from our home to theirs was a little surreal. I found it fascinating that my grandparents lived what seemed the literal center of where 90% of the Black people in Louisville lived. In a run-down, two-story Victorian house. Filled with junk. And records that were the wrong size and a player that played them. 78 rpm, 12 inch records. I was told that when they bought the house it was an all White neighborhood, but that slowly all the White people left and Black people moved in. At some point, and I have no idea when, they were literally the only White family left.

I can’t really be sure they were the only White family. I didn’t check. But in all the years we made that Sunday trip to bring food and groceries to my grandparents, I never remember seeing a White person that I wasn’t related to.

With my grandparents lived my Uncle William. A kind but damaged soul. He had lived with his mother all his life, except for the time he was away at war. Which war? Not sure. I’m guessing WWII, but we never talked about it. I remember riding on his shoulders. His always scruffy beard, which hurt when he rubbed it on me. He was my gentle giant.

What I can tell you about that time in my life, as a pre-teen, was that I loved going to that house on Catalpa St, in Louisville, KY. I saw wonderous things. A bee hive hanging from the eve of their roof. Pristine, functional, hand-built vintage cars in the garage, created from parts by my Uncle. The people of the neighborhood sitting on their porch swings, just like us. Talking away the evening. Just like us. In the cool breeze of summer.

I remember the friendly, but tentative looks I received when I ventured out beyond their small yard. This oblivious White boy not really understanding how the world worked. I felt unnaturally safe in that neighborhood. Like I was somewhere that nothing bad would happen, even though it was a place that was avoided by all other White people. I imagined that other White people wouldn’t be welcomed. Was I welcomed? In my mind, I was accepted as one of them. Because my grandparents didn’t want to move away just because there were Black people everywhere. That was my fantasy.

We moved from KY to CA when I was in HS. I went to a community college and transferred to UC Berkeley. Between my first and second year, I got a summer job at Chevron Research in Richmond, CA. It was a job obtained by my privilege. My father was an executive at Chevron. He pulled some strings and some scientists had a cocky programmer-wannabe from UCB on their hands. I did good work, but I didn’t kid myself that they cared about what I did. They told me even if it was useful, how could they maintain it once I left?

On the same floor where I worked I was introduced to another UCB student. She had a specific station where she worked, but my job afforded me roaming abilities. I roamed near her station a few times a day. We talked. We flirted. One day I was talking with her at her lab station and I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew she wanted me to kiss her. I leaned in for a light kiss. Emelda and I embarked on a summer and fall romance. People from different worlds. She lived due south of campus with her mother. A miniscule apartment near the BART tracks, close to Children’s Hospital. I remember walking through Sather Gate at lunch time with her, hand in hand, through a huge crowd and someone behind me saying Nigger lover! I remember spinning around and looking for the source of that phrase. I remember her pulling me toward our destination. I remember feeling flush with anger. I remember not understanding her reaction. I was so young.

Emelda and I were not meant to be together for the long term, if for no other reason than we were too young and naive. Our relationship was an experiment for both of us, I think. We both wanted to experience that other world. One that was so different from our own. That can never be the basis of a deep connection. I learned and experienced so much, though.

Early on, her mother took me aside and said you better not stop calling on me when you two break up. Every time I went over there, it felt like the west end of Louisville. I felt comfortable. Even when I got unfriendly stares from people in that neighborhood, from people that didn’t accept that I should be there. I knew why they were angry at White people and why they didn’t want me there. It was easy for me to ignore that. I was just there temporarily.

Emelda dropped out of UCB. I started a company. In 1989 my company moved into a building close to that same campus where Emelda and I had walked, hand in hand. In the lobby of that building was a credit union. It was for University and State Employees, of which I was one when I joined. I had worked in the Computer Science department of UCB for several years while a student.

One day, waiting in line for a teller, I turned around to find a Black woman behind me with a small child on her hip. The way she balanced the child on her hip caught my eye. It seemed almost acrobatic, improbable because the child’s weight was too small to counter hers. At some point, minutes after first seeing her, I realized the woman was Emelda. It had been 10 years, but I was pretty sure. I didn’t turn around. I didn’t introduce myself. I didn’t connect with an old friend. I pretended I didn’t know her.

What does all this have to do with Killer Mike? Killer Mike was on the The Late Show, as a guest. Part 1 and part 2. Killer Mike is an amazing human being. I only get to see him when there is some crisis in the land. Or when he’s stumping for Bernie Sanders. At the end of the interview, Steven asked Killer Mike what White Americans could to do help solve the problems that led to the death of George Floyd and uncountable others like him. Killer Mike said to go to YouTube and search for Jane Elliott videos. So, I did. If you want to be amazed by a the impact one human can have on another, watch some of those videos.

I’ve been attuned to the problems of race since I was very young. I’m also aware that some things are so deep you cannot feel them. This country has a race problem. The result of the 2016 was a shock to me. I don’t think it was a shock to Black people in America. That’s how deep it is.

I don’t have the solution to our problems, but I know self examination is part of the cure. The words above are part of my journey.

I also know so many of us in America are sick and tired of Black people, all non-Whites really, being treated as less than human. The time for change is now. More than ever.