Tom Rinaldo
Tom Rinaldo's JournalWhen will an anti-obscene wealth/greed message break through, and how?
That's what it will take to restore our democracy. The oligarchy has rapidly consolidated power here, and with every advance it makes avenues of resistance to it are closed off.
It is an entrenched creed in establishment America that it is a God given right for an individual to accumulate as much wealth as he or she is capable of accumulating, regardless of how much severe deprivation and suffering spreads and deepens all around them..
Gluttony was once considered a cardinal sin. It was instinctive for decent people to be repelled by it, but our culture celebrates those who amass mind boggling fortunes by virtually any means necessary, while belittling those in need. Americans now worship the Golden Calf.
We theoretically still have a free press, for those who can afford to own it. And those who do have intrinsic biases and interests they use that "free press" to further. The rest of us are "free" to share our thoughts, but billionaires like Musk and Zuckerberg control the algorithms that determine who will read them.
Most Americans can run for an elected office, but very few can accumulate the resources needed to do so viably. And even those few with the extraordinary talent needed to inspire massive grass roots fundraising from hundreds of thousands of small donors, can be cancelled out by one billionaire writing a check equivalent to 1/10,000th of their discretionary wealth.
Until obscene wealth is once again recognized as obscene by most Americans, real democracy has little chance. Until the Elon Musk's of this world are recognized as the true robber barons that they are, rather than being feted as visionary leaders, we will not successfully oppose them.
In a democracy no one has a god given right to oppress anyone, but that is exactly what the very existence of obscene wealth enables.
I've pulled back from politics and I don't feel guilty about it. Not yet.
I'm turning away from ugly truths much more often than not. Little if anything that I'm involved in lately has any larger meaning, beyond the people who i interact with daily.. After years of avoiding Netflix I'm now binging on "The Crown", after burning through "The Extraordinary Attorney Woo" and "The Queen's Gambit" in rapid succession.
I'm not trying to figure out where the Democratic Party "went wrong." I'm not following the contest for the next DNC Chair. I'm not preparing for any upcoming fights. If i was a drinker I would probably be drinking a little bit more than usual. If I had money to burn i would be looking into tropical islands for a getaway.
Reality is as depressing as I've ever experienced it. Worse things have happened to me and my loved ones than Donald Trump winning the presidency, but those events count as personal tragedies and hardships. This is more like everything I believe in being strangled and core ideals being slaughtered. I don't like the America I wake up in every day. I know much worse is coming, and I'm not lifting a finger to stop it. Not Yet anyway. Because I'm depleted.
There is a time to fight, and a time for licking your wounds. The latter is a part of the cycle, and needed for restoring strength. We are in this for a very long haul. I guess I'm still trying to catch my breath.. I know there is work ahead.
We have to become masters at exploiting pain
Of course I mean pain that we wished did not exist, pain that we tried our best to prevent, and pain that we will do all that we can to end. Trump's presidency will cause massive pain. That is certain. Since we could not prevent it the best that we can do is make sure that all the suffering is not completely in vain. We must be prepared to turn it to our political advantage where and whenever possible. That's what I mean by exploitation in this context.
We have to make sure that Trump and the Republicans receive all of the blame for all of the pain that they will cause. We all know the rhetorical question, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if suffering occurs in a neighborhood and no one is there to document it, is anyone hurt? Obviously yes, for those who suffered, but outside of that neighborhood the suffering can still be invisible. The suffering can not be invisible. It must be captured, and broadcast, and shared in emails endlessly.
Horrible suffering existed for generations in the Jim Crow south. Part of the genus of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. was to highlight and shove that suffering into the faces of "ordinary Americans" (whites) so that they could no longer could hide from their complicity in perpetuating it.
Americans were no less racist in 1964 and 1965 when the Civil Rights and Voting Acts were passed than they are now. And fundamentally they were no less racist in 1964 and 1965 than they were in 1960 and 1961. The difference was that they watched Bull Connor sic police attack dogs on peaceful Black protestors on their TVs. The difference was that they saw broadcasts of mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers mourning the deaths of young black school girls at funerals for the children killed in a church bombing in Birmingham.
When legitimate refugees get murdered in Guatemala after Trump forcibly deports them, Americans should see the bloody details on TV. When an elder dies in an unheated apartment because she couldn't afford her bills Americans need to learn her name. Yes there sometimes is coverage of this sort on American media now. A little bit here, a little bit there, for the most part easily avoidable for most people, who go on as if nothing is happening. We must be experts at amplifying that news. It can't remain avoidable.
The people who are already on our side already understand. The people who hate people who are different from themselves will continue to celebrate their suffering. But their are others who can be touched. Social change, political change, happens when they are.
Well, we picked up a House seat from my district in NY - CD19
Hudson Valley/Catskill Mountains and west.
From Kingston's Daily Freeman:
"Democrat Josh Riley has defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Marc Molinaro in a contentious race for the 19th Congressional district seat.With 96% of the votes counted, Riley led Molinaro, 190,221 to 177,150, or 51.8% to 48.2% as of 1:17 a.m. Wednesday. "
Molinari defeated Riley for the same seat in 2022. So we won back at least one of NY's Democratic Congressional seats. I'm still holding out faint hope that Democrats can win the majority in the House of representatives. Not likely, I admit.
I just want to say that, no matter what happens, Kamala and team have run a brilliant race
This morning as I head off to the polls (I didn't vote early because my regular polling station is literally across the street from me) I'm so proud to be a Democrat. I know enough to know that no candidate with a ghost of a chance of winning will ever agree 100% with my positions and priorities. Compromise is woven into the fabric of democracy.. That's OK, better some compromises than a Civil War. At a time when MAGA Republicans seemingly prefer a Civil War to compromise, Kamala has been a steady beacon of sanity, hope, compassion and competence.
She has become the standard bearer for the promise of America, a promise that I never stopped believing in, though my eyes have long been open to the horrors embedded in American history and the injustices still being perpetuated by some. I find her message to be pitch perfect. Now it is up to Americans to decide what type nation they believe in, what type nation their children will grow up in.
I long have blamed the media for the rise of Trump, for good reasons. The mainstream media still seems incapable of conveying the full truth about Trump, and what he represents, consistently. But at this point I can no longer blame the media if Trump wins. Enough of the unvarnished truth about Trump and his ilk has been revealed for anyone with eyes to see. It's all on us now, the people, the citizens of this great Republic.
If Kamala wins, and I think she will, we will have dodged another bullet. But the machine guns out there that have been spraying us with them will remain. I don't know what type of massive grass roots effort it will take to remedy that ugly truth, but we damn well better figure it out. Too many untested assumptions about Americans widespread love for democracy have proven hollow under stress.
Let's make this absurdly simple. Because it is. Trump is a Bad Man. Bad Men should not be given power.
How many Americans really believe Trump is a good guy? Maybe twenty percent. That's the same percentage of Americans who believe the government uses Covid-19 vaccines to secretly microchip the public. Most Trump supporters know he's an asshole, but he's their asshole, damn it. But they wouldn't want Trump as their son's soccer coach, and they sure as hell wouldn't want him as their daughter's soccer coach. The man palled around with Jeffry Epstein for years. He boasted to Howard Stern that as the owner of the Miss Teen USA beauty pageant he could ‘get away’ with walking into the dressing room to ‘inspect’ beautiful women. A jury found him liable for sexual abuse, for God's sake. This is not a good guy..
Trump lies. He lies about everything. He even cheats at golf. And no, Mexico didn't pay for the wall. Trump isn't the only person who can save America from anything, no matter how big a braggart he may be. Most people who claim to be brilliant business men don't launch their careers with a 400 million dollar inheritance and go on to declare bankruptcy six times. He's still stiffing cities all across the country for unpaid bills he racks up at his rallies.
Trump has been found guilty in court of fraud. His charity foundation was legally shut down for failing to be a charity. His university was shuttered for selling a false bill of goods to students and leaving them with nothing more than debt. Trump is, officially, a Bad Man. From the 1970s until he was elected president in 2016, Donald Trump and his businesses were involved in over 4,000 legal cases in United States federal and state courts. How many of us know anyone who's been involved in more than one or two?
Trump is lewd. Trump is vulgar. Trump spews hate like an open faucet. He dodged the draft to avoid one war and mocks Americans who fought in others. And for this he thinks he should be Commander in Chief. Trump makes Secret Service agents who protect him stay in properties that he personally owns, and inflates the cost the government pays for their rooms. He hawks crypto currency, and sneakers, and watches, and bibles. Bibles with his own name on them.
Trump never loved a pet in his life. He has zero sense of humor. Trump demands absolute loyalty from absolutely everyone, from common citizens who dare not protest his policies less the military be turned against them, to his Vice President who Trump disdainfully offered to a lynch mob when Pence wouldn't disregard the Constitution for him. But Trump is loyal only to his greed.
Trump is a Bad Man. Bad men do bad things, that's what makes them bad. And bad men should never be given power over 350 million Americans.
I wonder if it has finally occurred to mainstream media like the New York Times...
...just how incredibly bad it will look for them if Trump's increasing dementia becomes impossible to hide by Inauguration Day,, should Trump regain the presidency. How the hell did they "miss it"? That's a question they won't have any answer for, let alone a good one..
Trump's warning signs have been flashing Red for months, but the mainstream media has chosen to blow right through them, and for the most part refused to cover it. They had no trouble, of course, endlessly covering Biden's supposed age related issues before he withdrew, however.. Trump would be the oldest President ever inaugurated should he win in November, yet that fact is barely noted. Can you imagine the public reaction to a full Inaugural Address by Trump being viewed in full by tens of millions? Knowing that his four year term in office is not yet one day old? It's all going down hill, and fast. It could well become the political story of the century so far, when the 25th amendment needs to be invoked during Trump's first year in office (whether or not it actually would be, given the deplorable state of the Republican story, is another matter.)
They have less than three weeks to go for their coverage of Trump to catch of with the reality of his rapid deterioration. There are signs that they may be starting to desperately play catch up on this story, but their efforts so far do not begin to approach the magnitude of this story. Time is running out.
Those young enough to hope for another fifty years of life will vote on their entire future this November
This November we will collectively decide the nature of the nation we subsequently will spend our lives in. It could be the last time we have that choice. Under the democracy all of us grew up with, no matter which decade we were born in, mistakes could be corrected, wrong courses could be reversed. When poor leaders took power from good ones, we the people had an opportunity to restore better ones to power next time around. That's how a democracy functions, and we all became accustomed to that. We have taken it for granted for our whole lives.
Well, most of us have anyway. Not so for black Americans living in the Jim Crow South. For approximately eighty years, roughly the life span of a person, blacks lived under a one party state that permanently relegated them to second class citizen status. When white nationalist forces retook control of the South after the era of Reconstruction lapsed, freedom could not be restored at the ballot box with the next election. That took hundreds of lives brutally lost, and generations who lived each day under the menace of physical violence being used against them should they in any way challenge the powers that be. The police, the courts, the entire legal system, routinely weighed in on the side of the oppressors. And public dissent was a life threatening behavior.
When an authoritarian oriented regime secures a measure of power, it immediately alters the playing field so that any future contest for power is waged under conditions markedly advantageous to itself. As its power then is further consolidated, only token opposition remains "free" to "organize" against it. Serious opposition is minimally seriously harassed, and those compelled to engage in it increasingly do so at great risk to both their health and freedom.
The majority of Americans have no frigging idea what it is like to take part in opposing an authoritarian regime. In isolated cases American dissidents have been killed through the direct power of the state (as opposed to by shadowy "death squads" that date all the way back to the KKK). That happened to members of the Black Panther Party among others.
But in the democracy that still usually functions in the USA, one is much more likely to be held for several days on trespassing charges after a campus demonstration, than to be kidnapped, shot at by authorities, or thrown in prison for ten years over an act of protest. Yet there is nothing any more set in stone about our civil liberties protections as they currently exist than there was about Roe V. Wade, which so many assumed would always be there, after almost 50 years as the law of the land.
When it is said that "Democracy is Fragile," that's what it means. It can all go away. The people can be made to serve the state rather than the other way around. There are always powerful forces that want nothing more than to use government to compel most citizens to work for the interests of a privileged few. During the transition toward full authoritarian rule, they might employ some window dressing to disguise their true intent. Once their hold on power is consolidated they no longer need bother with that.
Authoritarian rule is a one way street, U turns not permitted. Get on that road and there is no turning back, not without a real and often bloody fight, with the odds heavily stacked against you. Some authoritarian leaders, like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hungary's Viktor Orbán, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and most notoriously Adolf Hitler, gain their initial beach head of power through the workings of a democracy, flawed as they may have been at the time. Others, like Chile's Augusto Pinoche and Spain's Francisco Franco, come to power through force, powered by a fervent appeal to nationalism. Once they become leaders of their lands, they often remain so for life (with the system they installed sometimes spitting up another strongman to replace them when death intervenes.)
A nation like Spain was among the relatively lucky ones. It non violently moved back into the light of democracy upon Franco's death in 1975, 36 years after the dictator first seized power. It took World War II to dislodge the Third Reich in Germany, after twelve years in power and millions of lives lost. Augusto Pinochet overthrew Chile's democratic government in 1973. His17-year rule was given a legal framework through a controversial 1980 plebiscite, establishing a new constitution drafted by a government-appointed commission. Growing public resistance led Pinochet to step down in 1990, but he continued to serve as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army for eight more years, an implicit threat to those might break with his policies..
Erdogan served as Prime Minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014, then became President under a revised constitution and remains in that office today, marking 21 years of control and counting. Viktor Orban first came to power in Hungary in 1998 but was voted out of office four years later. He learned from that defeat, and upon returning to power in 2010 systematically began undermining the foundation of Hungary's democracy. He has not lost an election since.
It is easy to forget that Vladimir Putin first rose to power during Russia's brief democratic era-. When Boris Yeltsin resigned from office in 1999, Putin became acting president and, in less than four months, was elected to his first term as president. Russia's constitution limited Presidents to two consecutive four year terms, so Putin shifted over to the Prime Minister's office for four years when his time was up (while retaining behind the scenes full authority) and then ran for his old office again. He has never left it since. When constitutional time limits on Russia's presidency next loomed, Putin arranged for a new constitution to be enacted that abolished them. People have been falling out of windows in Russia ever since.
But one does not have to agree that a Trump victory will imperil our continued democracy, and the civil liberties that we now consider rights, to accept that the quality of life in America will largely be determined for a lifetime or more by the decision Americans make in this coming November's election.
Over the last fifteen years the Roberts Supreme Court opened up the floodgates to unlimited special interest money corrupting our political system, gutted Affirmative Action legislative provisions, stripped away Voting Act rights protections, ended Roe V. Wade, and granted criminal immunity to Presidents while performing "Official Acts." Whoever we elect in November will likely get to make the next two or more appointments to the Supreme Court, potentially cementing a super conservative majority on that body for a generation or more, one that will make rulings that long outlive those justices themselves.
And then there literally is the world we will inhabit, for as long as we each may be blessed to inhabit it. Science says that our world has literally reached the tipping point with climate change. One candidate respects that science and the urgency it convey, and is committed to policies that can forestall runaway climate change. The other believes that most of our problems would be solved by drilling for more oil, and weakening regulations designed to protect the environment. Each would govern in accord with their world view The consequences of voters choosing poorly this time might be irreversible.
The 2024 election is about so much more than how excited we are about who is running for President. Choose the country you want to spend your life in. Either way you will long live with the consequences.
Remember how the "Black Lives Matter" movement swept across the nation...
...after George Floyd's murder? Yes, his killing was a horrendous instance of racism and police violence, but it was far from the first horrific instance of racism and police violence we've witnessed as a nation (nor of course the last.) We can analyze what about it triggered such a massive response at that moment in time (the video tape of Floyd's murder being one obvious reason) but it is secondary to the point I'm making:
It was a fundamental societal inflection point that triggered a massive activist response that brought millions of people into the streets, including in towns and cities that rarely if ever had experienced such wide scale activism concerning racial justice. The conditions for such an explosive reaction had been building up for decades. A spark finally set it off, and masses of people were moved to take action.
Trump and his authoritarian MAGA movement, with its blatant White Christian Nationalist overtones and it's overt appeal to a return to the way America was run in the early 1950's, when women and minorities still "knew their place", has been casting a pall on hopes and dreams ever since Trump descended down that escalator ranting about "Mexican rapists." At times it resembled an evil tide that we were virtually powerless to prevent from sweeping over us. with the 2024 presidential election contest, prior to this past weekend, taking on the feel of a slowly evolving nightmare as a Trump victory became more and more possible, even likely.
And then Joe Biden made the monumental and personally courageous decision to stand down for reelection, choosing instead to pass the torch of leadership on to a younger generation in the person of Kamala Harris. Old fears flickered for a moment; could America accept a woman, a black woman at that, as it's next president? That's a question that can't be definitively answered until after the November election. But the pessimism that question embodies could not hold up under the avalanche of hope Kamala's candidacy has unleashed.
Younger generations of voters in particular, and millions of women in America who were poised to celebrate the election of America's first female president in Hillary Clinton before Trump narrowly defeated her in the electoral college with the help of the media's obsession with "her emails", have woken to the renewed potential that the future is ours to mold, if we work for, fight for, and believe in it hard enough.
A switch has been flipped. Progressive forces are mobilizing and taking to the field of battle. Lethargy born of depression is falling away. Activism is surging. Kamala is rising.
Musk gives 45 million a month to Trump. What will it take before "X" stops being cited in every tenth thread here?
I don't need to see those video clips that badly.
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Member since: Mon Oct 20, 2003, 05:39 PMNumber of posts: 23,015