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 who are doing all this?
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 at 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... getting us on a path that might lead to the stars.
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."
11 comments:
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!
MCS is a towering hypocrite and deeply evil traitor. Clearly stated enough? Roberts defends the right of state legislatures to define THEIR OWN (and congressional) deistricts to ensure that no matter how unpopular their party becomes, they can never again lose power in that state. Get rid of partisan gerrymandering and yes, racial districts should now be unnecessary. In fact, Dems were TRICKED into supporting them, since they WERE a method to gerrymander-minimize Democrat representation. Only now these state goppers are so insatiable that they wish to gerry away even that sliver of packed-together dem representation.
It could bite them in the ass. Gawd I hope so. And did I mention you are a deeply evil traitor, sir?
The framing suggests this is not the motivation in Tennessee, otherwise why move so quickly? Why cancel elections in play? Why lock out the only black representative from the meeting that redrew boundaries to eliminate his district?
btw it's been noted that the council elections just held in the UK may have been crowed as a win for Reform, but not in Scotland, where JK Rowling is now represented by two trans councillors.
Jibberer! One thing drives that. Blue states where so much better for so long that they drew millions who are now CROWDED. EVERY 'problem' you aim at Califoirnia is a price of spectacular success in a paradise that got so overwhelmed that yes, the lower cost of living draws some back away. It's called slosh.
Meanwhile CA is now thew world's 4th economy, the most creative, productive (One QUARTER of the nation's food!) and fun place on Earth. Despite you liars screeching denunciations for all my life. WE PAY YOUR BILLS you freaking ingrates.
If we set aside Utah and Illinois as outliers (or even if we don’t) average rates of almost every turpitude are far higher across Red-run states than Blue-led ones: from gambling, addiction, STDs, domestic violence and murder to teen sex, divorce and net tax parasitism on the rest of the nation.
That is a huge, easily-proved fact and it should discredit all ‘conservative’ claims of good governance, especially when you add in the fact that national Republican administrations are always spendthrift wastrels, sending deficits skyrocketing, while Democratic ones are always far more fiscally responsible. Always. And I welcome $$$ wagers on any of that.
Throw in the failure of a single Rightist 'supply side economics’ prediction ever, ever to come true, with the sole outcome of rocketing wealth disparities, along with the deliberate war on science and the planet, and the stench gets overwhelming, even before we go on to all the lies and treason and their war against the US military officer corps and Trump's deliberate disbanding our ant-terrorism agents (*remember that one!*)... plus an ongoing list of other insanities, a mile high.
But the turpitude gap. That is what says it all.
And yes, you are a damned traitor.
I see he ran away.
Complete retreat. Interesting.
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