I planned to do a weekend post about how the insatiable (and thus insane) top oligarchs are sparking a world wide revival of the moribund works of Karl Marx. (Alas.) And thusly they seem determined to reserve their rides on Uber Tumbrels.
But that will have to await another time. After I issue the next update of my book on AI... AILIEN MINDS.
Meanwhile, I have to address an even more dire phenomenon that's pervading across the liberal-o-sphere. Something so silly and unjustified that it plays into the very hands of those seeking to wreck Enlightenment Civilization.
Despair.
== The Role of the Courts ==
This essay (not one of mine) makes a strong argument that the Roberts Supreme Court has been betraying the American Republic in many ways, but above all… Two Supreme Court Decisions and the Dismembering of Madison’s Republic, by Earl R. Smith II, PhD.
...and they were, alas! By a Republican Party that is now the most tightly disciplined partisan machine in the history of the republic.
Still, I won't deny that the American Republic -- indeed the entire Enlightenment Experiment that let us escape 6000 years of dreary feudalism -- is in deadly danger! Hence I have tried hard to fulfill my own task in all of this. To imagine possible ways to make things better.
Seriously, If you want to see 35 pragmatic and quickly actionable measures to repair the damage, see my full list of proposed Newer Deal tactics and reforms. And pass them on to folks who might act on them!
== In despair? Go to a mirror and... ==
On this blog's comment thread, some are expressing despair. Especially now that the Roberts Supreme Court has stopped pretending to be anything other than a Confederate/Kremlin shill, led by our generation's Roger Taney. And sure, 1859 looked pretty dire, too. As did 1776, when the American Revolution was saved from the pit of despond by Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets - Common Sense and The American Crisis - girded the resolve of brave, shivering patriots to keep fighting for a dimly-perceived better world.
How can I reject despair? Especially when few of you - certainly not even one of the sanctimonious despair wallowers - will actually go and read the epochally stirring words that Paine wrote? As if speaking specifically to you?
Perhaps it is a matter of personality. Wherein I deem despair to be grotesque and somewhat inhuman. But also a kind of pathetically ingrate laziness. So unjustified, when we are typing or narrating into miraculous devices, in comfort with nearby snacks, breathing air that (in urban areas) is vastly better than it had been, when I was young, with a self-repairing Ozone layer and yearly INCREASES in the number of trees on Earth...
... and (for now at least) freedom to research anything, and speak as we wish. For now, at least.
And sure, I read Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE about past civilization fails, more-often-then-not due to environmental negligence, and I know what's at stake. Criminy, do YOU know anyone who has fought this fight harder and longer than I have? From EARTH to The Transparent Society and so on? (Maybe Kim Stanley Robinson.) So,I got some cred.
When solar/wind/tidal+batteries are plunging in price and rocketing in emplacement, it would seem the only thing saving carbon-based electricity is the dam data centers. Which I discuss in Ailien Minds, by the way.
The news is dire, yes. and so is the blatant desperation of the Putinist/Foxites, who can see that a vast majority of citizens are growing aware and angry, as in 1859, and no amount of gerrymandered cheating will save the Kremlin shills from an approaching political comeuppance .
== What the traitors will attempt ==
And so it is their villainous desperation that I fear! Because the Project 2025 SOBs will certainly - by now - have concocted a plan for some dire event - perhaps on a 9/11 scale or bigger - to 'justify' an emergency declaration of martial law. Why else would they have already - via Trump - fired or distracted a majority of counter-terror officials, agents and officers and JAGs?
The coming 'event' will only be prevented if they KNOW that we are ready and wary. That we will all hit the streets shouting "Reichstag Fire!"
... and "Appomattox!" And then do much more, to prove the stupidity of proto-feudalists who wage war on all the folks who know law and cyber... along with bio, chem, nuclear and every other potential recourse. And who know where every single prepper bunker lies, and how to crack them open. (Yes, we know, boys.)
Alas, did I mention "stupid"? As they surround themselves with flatterers who croon them into believing they will be immortal lords? That they can terrorize and terrify us into submission. Or coax the masses to blame all the fact professions, as in A Canticle for Leibowitz, instead of the delusional oligarchs,
So no, I am not a Pollyanna. I am shouting warnings!
But those who despair over some despicably partisan, election-cheat court rulings are staring at epiphenomena, not the real danger.
No, those who despair are historical ignoramuses, too lazy to look at how past Hero Generations girded themselves for a fight that's worth grit and courage and pain, to win. Tom Paine, especially. But also Lincoln, FDR. The soaring words of Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt...
If I could, I would slap you glowering gloom-addicts silly! Till you get up off the couch and shout:
"Okay! Okay! I'll FIGHT instead of wallowing in desolate grumpiness! Now stop that or I'll slap you back! Let's go."
5 comments:
I looked at the "Two Supreme Court Decisions and the Dismembering of Madison’s Republic" paper and it is mostly just hysteria. Citizen's United simply made it clear that you could contribute to political campaigns as a member of a group as well as individually.
What did the most damage to what the founders designed was the 17th amendment. That changed the Senate from an assembly of State's Ambassadors to just another popularly elected body.
As for Louisiana v. Callais, Clarice Feldman described what it did better than I can:
This week, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, ended decades of race-engineering in how congressional districts are drawn. The opinion is likely not only to benefit Republicans by increasing their representation in Congress, but it also should end racial engineering in a multitude of local institutions, to the benefit of all. It signals the beginning of the end for progressive governance, begun by President Woodrow Wilson (ironically, a segregationist), whose vision conflicts with the Constitution. [ https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/scotus_tolls_the_bell_on_racial_gerrymandering.html ]"
Citizen's United simply made it clear that you could contribute to political campaigns as a member of a group as well as individually.
Not that simple. It made it clear that while individuals have limits on political contributions, corporations do not. Including foreign corporations, if that concept even means anything.
"...ended decades of race-engineering in how congressional districts are drawn."
Who are you trying to kid. Even the supporters of Alito's decision approve of it because it allows for race-engineering in districting. It's just that it allows states to draw districts designed to dilute black representation rather than consolidating it.
How else does one describe the slicing of a city like Memphis or New Orleans into thin segments each watered down by the rural white population surrounding them?
Neither you nor that Feldman guy can argue with a straight face that the districts in Texas or Louisiana or Tennessee are drawn without regard to race. You simply approve of districts drawn to favor whites rather than minorities. At least be honest about that. But "honest Republican" has become an oxymoron.
The Voting Rights Act was dealing with a real racial problem: White politicians were using gerrymandering to slice apart black communities and squash their political power.
Now, SCOTUS is blithely ignoring the issue of political/racial community: say, the black community heavily supports a single Party (Dems) then politicians (GOPS) are slicing up black communities via partisanship and short-circuiting the desire of the Voting Rights Act. Racial gerrymandering under the guise of partisan gerrymandering.
The underlying focus of redistricting could be to have Congress people elected to serve communities. Congress could pass a law to forbid slicing up communities when drawing districts. But then big population centers might drive Congressional representation and we'd be setting up a Rural vs Urban battle. Well, maybe that's a better outcome... I don't know... I'm left with the conclusion that "Gerrymandering SUCKS" and I don't know how we fix that.
Despair is a tool that is wielded to encourage acceptance and compliance.
As Alex Steffen, the former editor for Worldchanging, once put it:
"Optimism is a political act. Those who benefit from the status quo are perfectly happy for us to think nothing is going to get any better. In fact, these days, cynicism is obedience."
Looking at the 'triumphs of the will' being celebrated by the far right and confederates at the moment, I am struck by how flimsy they are rather than how all-conquering. They only serve to show people what lie beneath the masks and, if the mask wearers think it no longer matters, they've been listening to their own news services for too long. (I predict the emergency Tennessee shuffle will bite in embarrassing places.) Orban's electoral defeat means that a lot of the crypto funding is drying up.
There are ways to counter cynicism. All it takes is effort(!).
---
On a lighter note, this 1952 Pentagon memo, from the just released UFO stuff provides a laugh from the past (and a nod to TASAT, Lance Corporal Jones, and Douglas Adams):
"There is likely nothing to be done at the moment to prepare for these possibilities (the only body of writing available on the subject in an emergency is science fiction), because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic"
Don't panic!
I think Chief Justice John Roberts is correct, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
I certainly don't see any need NOW to consider race in districting. There are a number of black respresentatives from majority white districts.
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