ancianita
ancianita's JournalGlenn Greenwald On What Western Countries Can Learn From the Balsinaro Election
Openness, at this point, about other countries' swing to the right, is useful.
One way I see this: Why GG seems to endorse the end of a center left democracy, and how he understands retrograde fascist governance, coincides with the way the Kochs want the U.S. to understand the failures of democratic majority rule.
Another way I see this: Understanding is the booby prize. Even if it's a current events lesson.
Enjoy your divided population's class war, Glenn.
I'll be watching what good your politics does for Brazil's People, and how the establishment class deals with you.
Youth -- Our Inspiration
Here I am, stuck on this couch
Scrolling through my notes
Heart was broken, still not growing, nah
Waking up to headlines
Filled with devastation again
My heart is broken
But I keep going
Pain, but I won't let it turn into hate
No, I won't let it change me
Never losing sight of the one I keep inside
Now, I know it
Yeah, I know it
You can't take my youth away
This soul of mine will never break
As long as I wake up today
You can't take my youth away
You can't take my youth away
This soul of mine will never break
As long as I wake up today
You can't take my youth away
You can't take my youth away
It's hard to sleep at night
Knowing what's outside
Feeling hopeless
I need focus
You hit me with words I never heard
Come out your mouth
To be honest
I don't want it, no
Pain, but I won't let it turn into hate
No, I won't let it change me
You can't take my youth away
This soul of mine will never break
As long as I wake up today
You can't take my youth away
Divide and Conquer -- Transforming Citizens into Mobs -- Begins With "Lock Her Up"
1.Campaign messages that were once temporary have now become daily news propaganda.
Why? To transform a united country into a divided one through political war.
At a designated campaign time, Democrats began with "I'm With Her".
In the now-permanent campaign time, Republicans continue with "Lock Her Up"!
2.
How?
Continue with identity issues begun a century ago.
Lead the drumbeat against women in public service.
Have Mike Pence, Michael Flynn, Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, whip up mobs' drumbeat of chants, from the Cleveland RNC to Iowa to Phoenix to Montana to Michigan to Maryland.
Brainwash crowds with the media as "enemies of the people"; stir fear about race war, immigrant invasions; then scale up to hit half the population -- women -- not just Hillary.
By midterms, have the Mob President take over the fake democratic wrestling match with the drumbeat chants of his mobs.
For American women the end game used to be about locking you OUT; now it has become about locking you UP.
3.
Why mob politics?
To end law as access to justice, establish lack of tranquility with permanent political campaigning, and create minority rule.
Re-cut old gender division wounds among and between women (over issues like "which gender has the greater moral call to 'protect' the unborn, men, other women); combine that new cuts among their male allies (who are true men? what makes women human? equal? deserving of equality? protection?)
To slice and dice identities within the body politic on a much bigger scale can re-brainwash citizens with ancient animosities faster than the 'old school' scheduled campaign seasons have.
“Her” was never just about Clinton.
"Her" was always about the male dominance by public incrimination of women -- from professional or in elected officials -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Dr. Christine Blasy Ford, Elizabeth Warren, Nancy Pelosi -- to trafficked immigrant children.
"Her" is about mockery, stigma, incrimination, punishment of women
-- who dare call any male opponent a gullible puppet,
-- who decry any male sexual predators,
-- who refuse to accept male excuses that sexual assault talk is “locker room talk,” "bragging rights," "just jokes."
"Her" is about slapping alien status on all women, girls, boys, too, who refuse to accept the patriarchal yoke. Those who bear that yoke are allowed to "come to papa."
From Iowa to Michigan to Cleveland to Pennsylvania to Maryland, mobs won't say it, maybe don't even know it, but through their crowd fun, they send male dominion messages to all women, girls and boys.
4.
Trump, as mob president, has whipped up 20 or more mobs with the following messages to:
-- Women who aspire to run for office. Message: Men made laws for themselves, not for you.
-- Women who obtain high positions in business and government. Message: Men made order for themselves; you serve only that order.
-- Women currently in government. Message: your days are numbered on the power stage men built; watch your back.
-- Women and girl migrants come to America to flee danger. Message: there is no protection for women and children here.
-- Women try to exercise their reproductive rights. Message: neither you nor your doctor have private rights to reproductive health.
-- Women who speak about sexual harassment and abuse. Message: no one will believe you.
-- Women turn to law enforcement for rape, with 200,143 still untested rape kits. Message: justice and freedom are for men.
Out loud the 20+ mobs have said: You're with HER? Lock HER up!
5.
Keep in mind George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" --
When "alt-" is the standard, truth is subversive.
When "mob" is the standard, citizen is subversive.
When "men" is the standard, non-man is subversive.
Viggo Mortensen reads Albert Camus' Lecture, "The Human Crisis"
Key ideas: suffering; learning what the human crisis is; how we change to solve it worldwide; hope
To skip introductions (context), start at 16:22
Full transcript: https://www.scribd.com/document/341261228/The-Human-Crisis-Albert-Camus-Lecture
Once people began to realize the truth lay in communicating with each other, and mutual recognition of each other’s dignity, it became clear that this very communication was what had to be served.
To maintain this communication, men needed to be free, since a master and a slave have nothing in common. And one cannot speak and communicate with a slave. Yes, bondage is a silence. The most terrible silence of all. To maintain this communication we had to eliminate injustice because there is no contact between the oppressed and the profiteer. Need is also relegated to silence.
To maintain this communication we had to eliminate lying and violence. For the man who lies closes himself off from other men, and he who tortures and constrains imposes an irrevocable silence. From the negative impetus that was the starting point of our revolt, we drew an ethos of liberty and sincerity. Yes, it was the act of communication that was needed to oppose the murderous world. That’s what we understood going forward, and this communication must be maintained today if we are to protect ourselves from murder.
As we know now, we must fight against injustice, against slavery and terror. Because these three scourges are what makes silence reign among men, what builds barriers between them, what renders them invisible to one another and prevent them from finding the only value that might save them from this desperate world: the extended of man’s struggling against fate.
What must we do? Call things by their name and understand that we kill millions of people each time we agree to think certain thoughts. You don’t think badly because you think you are a murderer, you are a murderer because you think badly. Hence, you can be a murderer without ever having killed, and this is why we are all more or less murderers.
The first thing to do is simply to reject in thought and action any acquiescent or fatalistic way of thinking.
The second thing to do is to unburden the world of the terror that reigns today and prevents clear thought...
The third thing to do, whenever possible, is to put politics back in its true place, a secondary one. We need not furnish the world with a political or moral gospel or catechism. The great misfortune of our time is precisely that politics pretends to provide us with a catechism, with a complete philosophy, and sometimes even with rules for loving. But the role of politics is to keep things in order ...
The fourth thing to be done is to seek out and to create, on the very foundation of our negativity, positive values that will reconcile negative thought with the potential for positive action. That is the work of philosophers, which I have barely touched upon here.
The fifth thing is to fully understand that this attitude means creating a universalism in which all people of good will can come together. To leave solitude behind we must speak. But we must always speak frankly and on all occasions never lie and always say everything we know to be true. But we can only speak a truth in a world in which it is defined and found in values shared by everyone. It isn’t Mr. Hitler who decides what’s true or false. Nobody in this world, now or ever, should have the right to decide that their own truth is good enough to impose on others ... The freedom we must finally win is the freedom not to lie. Only then can we discover our reasons for living and for dying.
We can’t pretend to escape from history for we are in history ... We want only to rediscover the paths to civilization where man, without urning his back on history, will no longer be enslaved by it. With the obligation each person incurs with regard to others will be balanced by time for reflection, pleasure, and the happiness every person owes themselves.
In a situation like ours, optimism seems scandalous.
We know that those of us who are dead today were the best among us, since they appointed themselves. And we who are still living must remind ourselves that we are only alive because we did less than others. And this is why we continue to live a contradiction. The only difference is that this generation can now join this contradiction to an immense hope for humankind ...
Our struggles, our hopes, and our demands seen from afar may appear confused or futile to you. And it is true that on the road to wisdom and truth, if there is one, these men have not chosen the straightest or the simplest path. This is because neither the world nor history have offered them anything straghtforward or simple. They are trying to forge with their own hand the secret they could not find in their given condition. And perhaps they will fail. But I am convinced that if they fail, so will the world.
In a Europe still poisoned by violence and deep seated hatred, in a world torn apart by terror, they try to save for mankind what can still be saved. And that is their only ambition. If such an effort can find some expression in France, and if this evening I have been able to give you a faint idea of the passion for justice that inspires all French people, it will be our sole consolation, and my humblest source of pride.
Michael Eric Dyson: Half Blast 5:57, Full Blast 9:05 -- White Supremacy By Ventriloquism
My favorite part of Dyson's analysis is at 10:40, when Dyson answers:
I miss the old Kanye who agreed with Professor Muhammad at Harvard, who writes about the condemnation of blackness;
I miss the old Kanye who understood that we are dealing with serious insidious forces that undermine us,
The Kanye who joined Jay Z to talk about black excellence and the quest of black excellence and how it's being roadblocked;
I miss the Kanye who loved Tupac, and who said just the other day, "I got lynched by some crooked cops, and to this day those same cops on the beat gettin' major pay, when I get my check they takin' tax out, we payin the cops to knock ' the blacks out".
I miss that Kanye who brings high intelligence.... there are ways in which hip hop can serve as a useful forum to articulate valuable ideas that people of color find resonant in the application to our situation.
Right now, this Kanye is a Kanye who is Kanye Mess, not Kanye West, not Kanye at his best and that's the real tragedy for my dear friend and great artist.
Trump and McConnell don't know mobs from citizens.
1.
Citizens' thinking rules their emotions.
Citizens’ thinking comes from multiple experts who are AN authority on their topics and subjects — i.e., climate change; counting anything; fact-based history; fact-based truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Citizens assemblies are their own.
Mobs' emotions rule their thinking.
Mobs’ emo thinking comes from a central leader’s mantras, repeated by the mob — i.e., “ build that wall!” “Mexico!” "lock her up!” “drill, baby, drill”.
Their leader stands IN authority, revs up mobs with mantra chants, plays to victim feelings with claims like, “climate change is a hoax;” “ alt-facts are as good as libtard facts;” “confederate history,” “lock her up!"
2.
Citizens go for win-win compromise, a new testament ethic which includes "rehab" and "reintegration back into society” through support networks.
Mobs go for win-lose no-compromise, old testament eye-for-an-eye ethic which includes "deserved" poverty, punishment and stigmatizing exclusion, with no support network but church.
3.
Citizens' politics is open, informed, free to express differences, guided by rule of law; no one is punished by death for their words or protest actions.
Mobs' politics is closed, based on belief systems from holy books, guided by religious and demagogic leaders who punish by the letter of the law, but who themselves are above the law. Legal punishment by death is part of mob politics.
4.
In law and order democracy, when crises come up, citizens err on the side of rule of law and lawyers -- democracy.
Mobs err on the side of rule by order and force -- fascism.
5.
Russia is that final straw. Citizens will never stand for America's laws being dictated by Russia or its tools. Citizens' would rather fight to kick Russians, and Russian influence, out.
Mobs would rather have the "wrong and strong" rule of Russia. Mobs say, “Get over it,” “Grow up," “Get used to it.”
Citizens won't wait for mobs to come to their senses.
NOV 6
Force 200,143 Rape Kit Tests -- Unindicted Male Rapists Outnumber Women Liars
Rape is not just women's problem. Or even their "credibility problem."
Rape AND its institutionalized coverup, is a criminal problem of men.
To women and male allies: Do not wait -- do not wait -- for the statutes of limitation to make raped women's evidence moot.
Prosecutors in every state must be dragged into courts to explain why 200,143 rape kits have been stockpiled, untested for years. Raped women's legal recourse is ignored for years, sitting in boxes in warehouses while their rapists walk free. All over this country.
Courts, lawyers and prosecutors must do their fucking jobs. Stop insisting and start prosecuting chiefs and labs responsible for rape kit testing.
The very existence of these hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits disproves the media-amplified claim that if some women lie, all women are not to be trusted.
Only .005 women are found to lie about rape. Almost no one is falsely accused of rape.
https://www.thecut.com/amp/article/false-rape-accusations.html?__twitter_impression=true
These 200,143 rape kits lead to DNA identifiable rapists. Once test results identify rapists, their adjudication more than makes up for any women who lie about being raped.
Humans lie. These rape kits don't lie. Women went through the pain and suffering of hours of paperwork, interviews and submitting to rape kit swabs and identification.
Any patriarchalist claims about women liars are worthless. Patriarchal coverup is the new rape.
All men bear the stigma of their male-run, institutionalized coverup.
Women should never have to do legal battle alone to get equal justice before ANY law, especially rape laws.
By planetary standards, Rape has been a WAR CRIME since 1949.
All Our Structural Problem: "My Job Is Done Here." Don McGahn's Kavanaugh Project
The paid political tools of THE corporate party, supported by the forty-year foundation of Koch think tanks, foundations and media work, will soon have completed the following.Restructure media.
Restructure federal voting via the FEC.
Restructure state voting via ALEC, gerrymandering, roll purges.
Restructure all federal courts.
Install a pro-corporate president.
What remains to be done:
Establish corporate legal dominance through courts.
Convene a constitutional convention and create the linchpin clause of the congressional supermajority vote for all legislation.
The death of majority democracy will take care of itself.
Which has been Charles Koch's and the deceased James M. Buchanan's goal since the 70's.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23585673/voter-suppression-republican-brett-kavanaugh-don-mcgahn/
Which is where Don McGahn came in. He was the vehicle through which this strategy was implemented at the FEC. McGahn's primary task at the FEC was to break down the country's system of elections.
McGahn's portfolio in the White House includes sliding judicial nominees through the process—a job Brett Kavanaugh once held ...
Every institution of government that the Republicans have controlled for nearly 20 years has been tasked with this, and now they pretty much control all of them, at least until the first week of November.
Brett Kavanaugh has been at the center of those efforts. So has Don McGahn. This is the part of the tale that is not about the president* at all.
Howard Dean said, last time I saw him speak: "Politics is war."
We have been out-strategized.
We need to shift strategy.
If anyone has any thoughts on strategy shifts, we need to read them on DU.
Joe Manchin's Problem Is All Our Structural Problem
McConnell is from Kentucky, a Trump state. He's likely doing his constituents' bidding by filling the Supreme Court with justices who will lean right on the Constitution.
Joe Manchin, from West Virginia, betrayed his fellow Dems because he was scared of getting his ass kicked there next month, since his state went for Trump by like 20 points. Manchin and McCaskill DO fear spiteful constituents and the opposing party's politics of spite.
The system is rigged structurally. It's obvious sometimes, but sometimes we forget in the heat of issues.
Sparsely populated states get too many senators and densely populated states get too few.
Add to that the gerrymandered Congressional districts, and the fact that the Electoral College reflects the Senate misrepresentation in favor of rural states.
The game is rigged against not just progressives, but the rise of any new majority party in those rural states.
We're being ruled by a tyrannical anti-democracy minority.
Restructuring begins at the ballot box. Every last goddam election.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
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Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
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