For many of us who live in the United States, the November 2016 election shows overwhelming evidence of election fraud and tampering by the Trump regime and the Russian government. The nation was pacified into accepting the election results by the argument that it was really Trump's capture of a number of "battleground" or "swing" states, combined with the peculiarities of the Electoral College, that allowed Trump to "win".
Lest the same strategy is being revived to condition Americans to accept another fraudulent "victory" for Trump in 2020, I thought it would be good to re-post a 2017 interview I held with Rick Lass of the United States Green Party in which he described what happened when members of the Green Party asked for recounts of vote results in three of these "battleground" states. The response from the governments of these three states is illuminating, but hardly surprising, as the leaders of these states value earthly power above truth-telling. If you want to listen to the interview, there is a download link in the original post.
Showing posts with label 2016 election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2016 election. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Saturday, November 26, 2016
A Thinking Cap for Resisters
In the wake of Donald Trump's ill-gotten capture of the Presidency, it has been mildly interesting to see mainstream television entertainers pleading with Americans to give Donald a chance. I guess it's only fitting that among his flying monkeys should be people who make a living by acting silly or by pretending to be what they are not. The Donald fits right in with them, as the former star of a cheesy "reality" TV series. Those who study dysfunctional family dynamics will also recognize the parallels between the people begging us to give the Donald a chance and those members of dysfunctional families who cover and make excuses for those members of their own families who are the actual cause of family dysfunction.
The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership. And every day he has failed the test in one way or another. Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance. Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.
Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign. (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.) I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character. This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.
Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist. Resistance, moreover, is not optional. If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure. If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.
Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent. There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians. (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo. If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14. By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)
But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent. A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University. In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent. Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent. In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war. Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.
The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels." After all, it may not have any "better angels!" Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.
As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources. (See this and this, for instance.) One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject. If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.
The problem is that ever since it was announced that the Donald "won" the Electoral College (with only 25 percent of all people in America of voting age supporting him!), he has had chance after chance to show that he is capable of sane, moral, just and fair leadership. And every day he has failed the test in one way or another. Asking the majority of people of voting age in this country to give him a chance sounds a bit like a violent and/or substance-abusing husband asking his wife to give him another chance even when there is no evidence that the husband has begun to do the hard work of repentance. Those of us who are being asked to "give him a chance" are therefore being asked to ignore the lessons of pattern recognition, to ignore the data points supplied by the trajectory of Donald's life from way back in the day up to the present, to expect that a man who has enthusiastically pursued a course of selfishness and petty evil and has shown no sign of changing his course will suddenly be a different person tomorrow.
Those of us who have to live in this country under a Trump presidency would do well to avoid having any hopeful illusions about him. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the Donald will try to do just about everything he threatened to do during his campaign. (The leaders of some of the countries which the Donald threatened during his campaign are assuming that very thing, and have begun to issue warnings that if the new administration revokes certain treaties and agreements, or re-imposes certain sanctions, there will be consequences.) I think it is also reasonable to assume that many of the more objectionable types who have latched onto Trump and to whom he pandered during his campaign are an accurate reflection of his character. This means that a large number of us will be targeted for suffering, repression, denial of equal protection, false imprisonment, economic discrimination and threat of physical violence by these types.
Therefore, it will be necessary for us to resist. Resistance, moreover, is not optional. If we don't resist, we will suffer for sure. If we do resist, we may still suffer - but we might also win.
Moreover, the resistance must be nonviolent. There are ethical and moral reasons for this, especially for those of us who are Christians. (No, this is not the time for so-called "Christian patriots" to bust out their hardware and their ammo. If you're in that crowd, grab a clue from Luke 3:14. By the way, the translation I quoted renders this verse exactly as it is written in the Greek, so don't try to weasel out of it.)
But there are also very pragmatic reasons why the resistance must be entirely nonviolent. A number of those reasons have been captured in the work of Maria J. Stephan of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and by and Erica Chenoweth of Wesleyan University. In a 2008 paper titled, "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict," Chenoweth and Stephan examined a large number of nonviolent resistance efforts which took place over the last hundred years or so, and discovered the shocking fact that nonviolent resistance movements had a success rate of over 50 percent. Violent resistance movements, on the other hand, had a success rate of only 26 percent. In addition, societies which experienced successful nonviolent resistance tended to be much more stable and peaceful afterward than those societies which experienced violent revolution or civil war. Chenoweth and Stephan have expanded their findings and published them in a book, and there are other researchers who have confirmed their findings as well.
The goal of nonviolent resistance is not necessarily to persuade an oppressive, powerful and violent opponent to "listen to its better angels." After all, it may not have any "better angels!" Rather, the goal is to deprive the opponent of its ability to continue its oppression by removing the sources of power of that oppression.
As for the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance, there are a number of sources. (See this and this, for instance.) One source I have been enjoying over the last few days is How Nonviolent Struggle Works, by Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institution. How Nonviolent Struggle Works is a short, easy-to-read condensation of a much longer book by Mr. Sharp, who has written several lengthy books on the subject. If you see yourself as a resister in these days, and you're wondering what to do, Mr. Sharp's short book would be a good place to start.
Friday, September 16, 2016
I Don't Care About Benghazi
There. I said it. But why did it need to be said?
Many people have written about the campaign of Donald Trump that his campaign is entirely self-financed and that he is thus a self-made populist phenomenon. People who say such things conveniently neglect the fact that Mr. Trump is getting a lot of free publicity both from the American mainstream media (which is by now almost wholly owned by a handful of pathological people) and by well-placed members of foreign governments (among which is the government of Russia).
One big source of publicity for Mr. Trump is the Republican-controlled Congress, which has been trying very hard now for the last few years to make the American people outraged over the deaths of some American ambassadors to Libya, and to blame their deaths on a supposed failure on the part of the American State Department to provide them with adequate protection. But here's the thing. First, the U.S. overthrew the government of Libya in a totally un-justified act of aggression in 2011. NATO bombed Libya back to the Stone Age and turned millions of Libyans into refugees who have since been allowed to drown in the Mediterranean Sea or die of exposure in refugee camps in their desperate bid for asylum in Europe. So it's hard for me to get worked up over American operatives suffering a bit of collateral damage in their bid to make Libya an American possession.
But the attempt to stir up outrage over Benghazi stinks even more when one considers that the attack has all the makings of a false flag operation, complete with assigning of blame to "Islamic militants" tied to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. The fact that the Republicans are attempting to use Benghazi as a rallying cry shows that they are just as neocon as they accuse the Democrats of being. And the fact that the Republicans have no remorse for the Libyans whose lives have been wrecked by American aggression, along with the record of all the things Donald Trump has said over the last few years shows the real motivation of the Republicans and of all who support Trump: to establish a world and a nation subject to white supremacy, a world which continues to be victimized by the rich, the powerful and the privileged. What I care about is what these people intend to do to the rest of us - not only to the nonwhite, but to everyone who is poor enough to be counted as prey by these people. I care that the U.S. is in danger of being ruled by a maniacally malignant man who is desperately looking for a scapegoated group onto whom he can vomit his hostility. Excuse me while I gag.
Many people have written about the campaign of Donald Trump that his campaign is entirely self-financed and that he is thus a self-made populist phenomenon. People who say such things conveniently neglect the fact that Mr. Trump is getting a lot of free publicity both from the American mainstream media (which is by now almost wholly owned by a handful of pathological people) and by well-placed members of foreign governments (among which is the government of Russia).
One big source of publicity for Mr. Trump is the Republican-controlled Congress, which has been trying very hard now for the last few years to make the American people outraged over the deaths of some American ambassadors to Libya, and to blame their deaths on a supposed failure on the part of the American State Department to provide them with adequate protection. But here's the thing. First, the U.S. overthrew the government of Libya in a totally un-justified act of aggression in 2011. NATO bombed Libya back to the Stone Age and turned millions of Libyans into refugees who have since been allowed to drown in the Mediterranean Sea or die of exposure in refugee camps in their desperate bid for asylum in Europe. So it's hard for me to get worked up over American operatives suffering a bit of collateral damage in their bid to make Libya an American possession.
But the attempt to stir up outrage over Benghazi stinks even more when one considers that the attack has all the makings of a false flag operation, complete with assigning of blame to "Islamic militants" tied to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. The fact that the Republicans are attempting to use Benghazi as a rallying cry shows that they are just as neocon as they accuse the Democrats of being. And the fact that the Republicans have no remorse for the Libyans whose lives have been wrecked by American aggression, along with the record of all the things Donald Trump has said over the last few years shows the real motivation of the Republicans and of all who support Trump: to establish a world and a nation subject to white supremacy, a world which continues to be victimized by the rich, the powerful and the privileged. What I care about is what these people intend to do to the rest of us - not only to the nonwhite, but to everyone who is poor enough to be counted as prey by these people. I care that the U.S. is in danger of being ruled by a maniacally malignant man who is desperately looking for a scapegoated group onto whom he can vomit his hostility. Excuse me while I gag.
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