Cleaning Up A Week of Broken Glass

I'm in the process of gathering more information for the next post in my series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy, so today's post will not be a continued exposition of Chapter 5.  I do, however, want to make a few more comments on the attempted takeover of the U.S. Congress by pro-Trump thugs this past week.  

First, we now know that the mob that assaulted the Capitol had been preparing its action for weeks.  We also know that the mob had been preparing to abduct members of Congress at gunpoint and bind them with zip ties and rope.  We know that most of the organizing and coordinating between the various thugs who assaulted the Capitol had taken place online, in full view of the FBI and the Capitol police.  We now also know for a fact that white American evangelicals and their pastors comprised a large part of the mob.  We also know that similar mobs stormed a California county house and surrounded a number of state houses last week.  We know that several Republican lawmakers (such as this man) joined in the call to commit violence.  We now know that pro-Trump fascists and other persons associated with the Far Right have infiltrated many police departments across the United States.  (See this, this, and this for instance.)  We know that some of these officers traveled to Washington DC last week to join the riot.

And we know that those who orchestrated last week's trouble are making plans - in plain sight - to do it again.  

So how to respond to all of this?  If you're like me, your first reaction is likely to feel a great and terrible anger - an indignation which has an element of righteousness to it, yet which leads to rash errors if not properly guided and handled.  That anger can lead to moralizing, which is both an innocuous response and a rather useless one.  The people who orchestrated last week's events have no morals, no better angels that anyone can appeal to.  They will be deaf to your sermons.  So that leads to the second of several possible reactions: the urge to go to the streets and organize counter-demonstrations against the fascists!  But there is a problem with this approach, namely, that the fascists, like a pack of rabid dogs, are keen to provoke violence.  If they succeed by their violence in provoking you to counter-violence, you become part of the problem.  (Unfortunately, this has already started to happen.  Remember what I wrote a while back about relying on mass protest rallies?)

So let's consider the third response: to construct a strategy for nonviolently shifting the balance of power away from those who want to dominate the rest of us.  Consider the following perspective from Part 1 of Gene Sharp's The Politics of Nonviolent Action: that the source of armed conflict between various groups of people is the belief that political power is like a solid, durable stone that can be possessed only by the strongest and most violent members of society.  This belief is false, however.  And the power of an oppressor can be disintegrated by a people who build their own social power and withdraw their consent from the oppressor.  

This is good news.  I consider myself a fundamentalist Christian, which means that unlike the vast majority of white American evangelicals, I believe I'm supposed to obey the Sermon on the Mount and not physically threaten my fellow human beings.  (This is why I don't own a gun.)  However, I know that there are tens of millions of white American evangelicals who stand ready "in the name of Jesus" to harm, oppress, and even kill their fellow human beings.  Yet they comprise a continually shrinking minority of the population.  This means that their power is declining.  This is especially true when one considers that the power they claim does not consist of knowing how to do useful things that benefit their fellow human beings.  Rather, it consists almost entirely in the assault rifles that many of them openly carry everywhere like pacifiers or security blankets, without which they would feel like ghosts upon the earth.  Those of the oppressed who do choose to build the power that comes from knowing how to do useful, meaningful work will therefore go far.  Consider the constructive example of the  Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado.  Consider Titus 3:14.  And don't let the terror which your oppressor seeks to instill divert you from patiently building your power by the daily practice of beautifully good work.  To put it another way, don't let these evil people get inside your OODA loop.

There is more good news: Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple have surgically removed Donald Trump's metaphorical mouth.  He can't post garbage online, and the Parler site has been denied access to the Google Store.  Lastly, I just want to say God Bless Arnold Schwarzenegger!  Just when I was ready to write off all Republicans as irredeemably evil, former Governor Schwarzenegger has forced me to eat my words.  And get this: he is leading an initiative to restore voting access to as many disenfranchised Americans as possible.  (See this and this also.)

The Confused Villains Of The Piece

As I write this, I am suffering from a bit of sleep deprivation.  I spent too much of last night and early this morning reading the news about the Congressional ratification of Biden's election victory and the riot by pro-Trump thugs in Washington D.C. yesterday.  Sleep deprivation tends to make me cranky.  To the Thug-In-Chief, I have a message: you're done.  Shut up and get out.

I do want to mention that in my morning Bible reading, I started the Book of Revelation a few weeks ago.  (I've also been reading the Book of Exodus in the evenings - but lately I slacked off.  I need to get back to it.  Tonight, however, I may just go to bed early.)  Reading Revelation took me on a bit of a trip down memory lane.  Way back when I was a new Christian, in the early days of the racking up of the miles of my pilgrimage, I was exposed to a number of white evangelical authors whose books offered to expound and explain Revelation to people like me.  The books all tended to have the same formula, with the following elements:

• The preaching of the doctrine of the pre-Tribulation rapture, in which believers will supernaturally be whisked away from the earth to Heaven just prior to the period of human history in which mankind must suffer through the final conflict of this present age.
• The teaching that the reason why the United States is not mentioned in the Biblical account of that final conflict is because most of the people of the United States will be caught up in the pre-Tribulation rapture, thus causing the U.S. to cease to exist as an earthly nation.
• The reason why most of the people of the United States will be raptured is because this is a Christian nation!  Hey, it's obvious - especially when we vote Republican, oppose gun control and socialism (note: whenever you say this word, be sure to pronounce the "s's" with a sinister hiss - something like this: "ssssssocialisssssmmmmm..."), support family values and the free market, and believe that the United States is Biblically mandated to kill anyone who thinks otherwise. 

These tenets are encapsulated in books like The Late Great Planet Earth, Peace, Prosperity, and the Coming Holocaust, and (of course) the Left Behind books.  But there's a funny thing about all of these books (and of the books of the related genre of the baptized version of the myth of redemptive violence, including all the books of Frank Peretti).  The thing is that even though the pre-Tribulationists are convinced that Christians will be whisked away from the earth just prior to the appearance of the Antichrist, they are obsessively fixated on the dangers posed by certain cultural trends which they consider to be the deceptions that will trigger the End Times and initiate a wave of persecution of Christians.  Note my description of their "definition" of a Christian in the third bullet point in my list of points above.  Such a definition is an apt description of many of the Americans who have aligned themselves with white supremacy, so that white supremacy has come to be regarded by many as synonymous with Christianity, and white America has just happened to become regarded as the hero of the drama of the end of this present age.

Don't get me wrong.  I accept the Book of Revelation as part of God's holy Word.  And I support family values - especially when the proponents of these values practice what they preach (which many of them haven't done).  Nor should anything I say in this post be construed as an indication that I think Trump is the Antichrist.  I don't.  It's not that Trump is not evil enough to be, but rather that he is too stupid.  But what if the people who congratulate themselves as the heroes of the End Times are confused about who the real heroes and villains are - like a dog who thinks he's a cat?  Consider the support which white evangelical leaders have given to Trump all throughout the sorry pile of used toilet paper that comprises his political career.  Consider their statements of their support, such statements as "If God could use a wicked king like Cyrus or Nebuchadnezzar to advance His Kingdom, then we must accept that God is using Trump.  We must not criticize Trump, but instead we must support him!"  Such statements are usually bundled with admonitions to Trump's critics to submit to their rulers as commanded in Romans 13.  Funny, but these same evangelical leaders seem to suffer from collective amnesia regarding Romans 13 when their political opponents win elections.  Maybe that's why some of their followers were toting pipe bombs and firearms yesterday.

Let me restate what has been obvious for a long time: white American evangelicals and their leaders do not really accept the Bible as a guide for their own lives.  Otherwise, they would obey the Sermon on the Mount, wouldn't they?  And they would speak truth to power like John the Baptist did - even when it was politically inconvenient and they had to tell the truth to their own President - wouldn't they?  No, rather, the god of white American evangelicals is raw, naked, secular political and economic power.  In their pursuit of this power, they have forgotten that the Bible says that no lie is of the truth.  By hitching their wagon to a serial liar like Trump, they have become not only nihilists, but syncretists.  Like a junkie and his needle, they have shown that they will support and ally themselves with anyone who gives them their power fix - even if the people they support live wicked lives that deny the Gospel, even if they are so corrupt that they try to give themselves Presidential pardons in order to avoid jail, even if they go so far as to sympathize with openly New Age or Satanic white supremacist groups like the Order of Nine Angels.  This means that should the Rapture actually occur after the Tribulation, there will be white American evangelicals during the Tribulation who will align themselves with the Antichrist and "take the mark of the Beast" as long as the Antichrist promises them a seat at the table of political power.

Which means that when the Rapture occurs, a lot of evangelicals will be left behind.

The Gross Polluter of the North

Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park

Image by Jarek Tuszynski

Posted to Wikimedia Commons on 28 December 2008 under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

"Jalopy": an old car in a dilapidated condition.  Definition by Oxford Languages.  Synonyms: "rust bucket", carcancha.  Rust buckets are often "gross polluters" - that is, cars that can't pass smog or DEQ tests no matter how much money you throw at them.  I know this, because many years ago, when I was still living in Southern California and I was a dirt-poor undergraduate college student, I drove one.

As we look at what are hopefully the last gasps of the Trump presidency, I think it is helpful to explore the role that the Russian government played in Trump's initial rise to power, as well as the motivations which the Russians had for playing that role.  Trump showed himself to be every bit a "blast-from-the-past" racist, bigot, big-shot Republican, friend of the rich, and anti-environmentalist.  In this, he was a mirror of the regime and mindset of Vladimir Putin.  I have previously traced on this blog the motivations for the racism and revanchism ("Let's Make Ourselves Great Again!") of both these men.  (See this, this, and this, for instance.  Also see this by Olga Doroshenko.)  Trump's friendliness toward the rich has obvious motives.  But why did the Russians see fit to help the rise of such a rabid anti-environmentalist?

As I have considered this question over the last few weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the anti-environmental motives of Trump and Putin have less to do with deep psychological causes than with a certain perverted pragmatism.  Let's look at that pragmatism from a Russian perspective, and we'll start with the current state of the Russian economy.  According to Investopedia, Russia's economy in March 2020 was smaller than any of the top ten national economies in the world.  (It is interesting to note that each of the economies of India and Brazil is larger than that of Russia.)  And according to a 2018 Forbes article, Russia's economy is smaller than that of the U.S. state of Texas.  However, the Russian economy is still very heavily dependent on the export of minerals, whereas the economy of Texas is more diversified.  (Don't let that make you complacent if you live in Texas - the U.S. economy also has certain weaknesses, which I will continue to explore in future posts.)  The Russian economy has not been able to transition to reliance on export of high-value manufactured goods, despite recent dubious Russian claims of having invented a coronavirus vaccine.  

To see how dependent Russia is on exports of raw materials, consider the top ten Russian exports according to this source:

1. Mineral fuels including oil (52.2 percent of total exports)
2. Iron, steel (4.3 percent)
3. Gems, precious metals (3.6 percent)
4. Machinery including computers (2.1 percent)
5. Wood (2 percent)
6. Fertilizers (2 percent)
7. Cereals (1.9 percent)
8. Aluminum (1.4 percent)
9. Electrical machinery & equipment (1.3 percent)
10. Copper (1.2 percent)

As can be seen, the export of finished high-value manufactured goods comprises only 3.4 percent of the total value of Russian exports.  The bulk of the export revenue earned by Russia consists of sales of mineral fuels including oil.

But there's a problem.  While it is certainly true that the global peak of production of conventional oil has certainly passed, it is also true that advances in renewable energy technology have made this peak far less relevant and far less disruptive to industrial societies overall than many of the "peakists" were predicting from 2007 onward.  In fact, the German Energy Watch Group, which correctly tracked the peaking of global conventional oil production, also correctly tracked the rise in use of renewables, particularly solar photovoltaic power production.  This rise in use is being driven by continued advances in solar PV cell manufacturing and battery storage which are driving down the cost of solar PV systems and making them affordable to ever-wider markets.

This presents a big problem for countries whose wealth is predicated so heavily on a foundation of exporting mineral fuels.  I would like to suggest the possibility that the power base of Russian elites relies heavily on the foundation of the extraction and sale of raw materials including oil, gas, and other mineral fuels, and that developments which threaten global markets for these resources or which drive down the price of these resources are a serious threat to the survival of the members of these Russian elites.  It is therefore interesting to note the connection between climate science denialism and the positions of many (but certainly not all) of the most prominent members of the Global Far Right.

Thus it is that in Russia, according to a June 2020 Moscow Times article, renewables (excluding hydropower) account for only 0.16 percent of electric energy production.  Investment in renewable energy installation is almost completely nonexistent.  On the other hand, China is one of the world's leading investors in wind and solar energy, and is a major manufacturer of solar and wind energy conversion equipment.  China is also poised to take the lead in innovative renewable energy technologies.  Thus, the future looks bright for Chinese plans to transition to a non-polluting future, according to this August 2020 Forbes article.  And China is by no means the only nation investing in renewable energy technology.  

Therefore technological advances, serious investments, and the emergence of global climate preservation movements have threatened a key source of Russian export revenue.  Let's consider one potential implication of a successful "Green New Deal": a reversal of Arctic sea ice loss that is potentially great enough to deny Russian access to hypothetical mineral deposits as far north as the North Pole.  Putin showed his own belief in climate change by laying claim to these mineral deposits as far back as 2001 - a claim which the Russian government renewed in 2015.  If the Arctic sea ice returns to anything like its normal non-climate-altered extent, that spells the end for cheap and easy Russian access to additional mineral resources.

Let's close with a snapshot of pollution in Russia, which has recently been "enjoying" record high levels of air pollution (including a city which routinely has the dirtiest air on the planet) and coastal waters that are sickening surfers and killing thousands of animals.  A small price to pay in order to keep certain elites in power, eh?  And now you can understand the helpfulness of the Trump administration toward those Russian elites in the rolling back U.S. vehicle fuel economy standards this year.

The Shape of Our Struggle

Things in the United States are turning out about as I expected in the aftermath of Joe Biden's election victory over Donald Trump.  Trump's response has been what he told us all along that it would be.  Indeed, even when Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016, he had told us that he would not accept a legitimate election loss.  The deep existential foundations of Trump's malignant narcissism are the motive behind his refusal in 2020 to accept a loss that is becoming more painfully obvious with each passing day.

Over the last four years, Trump has managed to pack many offices of the Federal government with sycophants who have no principles other than self-seeking loyalty to Trump.  Anyone with competence and principles who was part of his administration at any time has by now left.  He has packed the Federal judiciary with unrighteous judges.  And he is now packing the Pentagon with loyalists.  

All of this leads naturally to the question of what decent people in the United States should do if Trump refuses to leave office, or if he succeeds in getting corrupt courts to void a legitimate election, or if he stages a military coup.  My answer to such a question is contained in the many posts I have written which explain strategic nonviolent resistance on this blog.  Strategic nonviolent resistance is a key component of the struggle of an oppressed people to liberate themselves from a tyrant, dictator, or oppressor.  If you're looking for what you can do to contribute to that struggle, please read these posts.

A few points must be made.  First, you must get ready to organize with your neighbors.  Second, you must organize to massively and collectively withdraw your economic and political cooperation from the system.  This will massively raise the costs borne by a Trump dictatorship and make such a dictatorship unsustainable.  (Think of such things as strikes and boycotts of large businesses (such as Fox News) that support Trump.  DO NOT base your struggle solely on mass protest marches!)  Third, you must remain nonviolent in your struggle.  This is not just for moral reasons!  It is also because the moment you allow violence, you decrease your chances that your liberation struggle will succeed.  (If you don't believe me, please read Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan.  Or watch some of the YouTube videos of Erica Chenoweth.)  

Fourth, you must begin NOW to study strategic nonviolent resistance if you haven't yet started.  Fighters who lack skill never win.  If you want to win, you must study.  But learn only from reputable sources.  Here is a short list of sources I consider trustworthy:

• The Albert Einstein Institution
• The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)
• Teachers and practitioners of community organizing.

One source which I would urge you to stay away from is the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC).  From their founding up to the end of 2016, their courses and publications presented valuable information and good advice.  But from 2017 onward, something began to change.  Thus in one of their online courses which took place after 2016, Daniel Dixon of the ICNC suggested that violent and nonviolent forms of resistance could be combined in a movement to make the movement stronger.  (By the way, all available evidence on social movements proves the exact opposite.)  His exact words were, "An organizing friend of mine likes to talk about 'synergy of tactics' as opposed to 'diversity of tactics'.  By this he means that violent forms of protest can work alongside nonviolent forms of protest to create something that is more powerful than either could accomplish individually."  This is complete garbage.  He is not the only one to make suggestions that are harmful to liberation struggles.  Tom Hastings of the ICNC suggested this year that there were times and cases in which a nonviolent resistance movement could help its cause by destroying property.  That too is garbage.  If you engage in violence (including property destruction) you will make it harder to shift the pillars of support of the dictator's regime.  And we want to make it as easy as possible for people who now support Trump to walk away from him.

This weekend, God willing, I will be continuing my series on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp.  Stay tuned.  

The Undermining Madness

 For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled,
and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.

- Luke 14:11

Whenever a person quotes a Bible verse as a maxim, there is a very natural tendency among those who hear him to regard his words as mere moralizing that have no immediate bearing on physical reality.  The effect is similar to the effect on people who hear exhortations to quit smoking or to start exercising because of the bad consequences that will come someday - someday... - if they don't.  But I have argued in several places on this blog (such as here) that the "someday" consequences of moral choices begin right now, the moment the choices are made, and that they can be observed and empirically measured just as physical phenomena in the natural world can be observed and measured.  Therefore it should be possible to observe objectively the outworkings of the Divine humiliation of a person the moment that person begins to exalt himself.  

I have also argued that these outworkings (known in this blog as the outworkings of damnation) are now being seen in the United States of America, and that these outworkings can be objectively traced.  The United States is a nation that made itself great by oppressing and/or dispossessing people who were poor and nonwhite.  But the United States has gone through periods of awakening of conscience in which many of its citizens sought to right the wrongs that were done by the dominant culture against other people.  The efforts of these awakened people were, however, opposed and often thwarted by those members of the dominant culture who wanted to remain dominant at all costs.  Thus the nation endured a civil war in which Southern plantation owners were economically wiped out because they had built their wealth on the backs of slaves.  These Southerners refused to learn the moral lesson of their suffering, and went on to try to recreate as much of their old supremacy as possible.  So the United States had to go through a second struggle of conscience, namely the 1960's Civil Rights struggle.  However, the gains won during that struggle were again seen by certain members of the dominant culture as an unacceptable threat to their dreams of domination at all costs.  For the Civil Rights struggle sought to create a nation (and eventually a world) in which everyone on earth shares the earth on a basis of equality.  Those members of the dominant culture who felt threatened by such a world therefore engineered a social movement designed to undo all the progress made by the Civil Rights struggle in order to create a world in which one group of people gets to Make Itself Great Again by trashing everyone else on earth.

And so we come to the present time in which Donald Trump has lost the 2020 U.S. Presidential election by almost five million votes and counting, yet both he and his supporters refuse to concede his loss.  The reactionary social movement which put Trump into office in 2016 has been over 40 years in the making.  Some of its heavyweight architects include people like Rupert Murdoch (media mogul and owner of News Corporation and the Fox TV network), Ralph Reed (chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and former president of the "Christian Coalition"), Ronald Reagan, and the Koch family.  Some of its most influential mouthpieces include Wally George (Blast from the past! Anyone remember him?), Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson.  Donald Trump, therefore, is not just a great big problem, but he is a symptom of a much larger problem.

Rupert Murdoch has famously called Donald Trump an idiot.  Note that Murdoch's exact words included an unprintable expletive before the word "idiot", thus signaling Murdoch's extreme distaste and disgust for Trump.  But Rupert Murdoch must realize that Trump is a creation of Murdoch and of his media empire.  Has Trump played fast and loose with reality and truth?  So has Murdoch, whose media outlets have lied about everything from anthropogenic climate change to the effect of bovine growth hormone on humans who drink milk to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and on and on.  And not only has Murdoch created a head of state whose relationship with the truth is "relaxed" (to quote one of Trump's fellow Republicans), but Murdoch's media empire has created an entire population whose relationship with the truth is similarly relaxed.  In fact, it is so relaxed that the sole basis on which these people choose what they will believe is whether or not a statement of fact makes them feel good or grants them their hearts' desire.  That desire is for supremacy at all costs.  Without these people, there would have been no President Trump.

But reality does not make concessions, which is why, according to the Associated Press, in the 376 U.S. counties with the highest number of new COVID-19 cases per capita, 93 percent of registered voters voted for Trump.  Also note that although Trump tried to use his recovery from COVID-19 to assert that the pandemic is no big deal, an analysis by Business Insider reveals that the treatment he received would have cost the average American $650,000 out of pocket.  That means that a lot of diehard true believers in Trump are going to die soon.  And the attitude of Trump supporters concerning the pandemic is a symptom of their self-destructive attitude toward reality itself.

For it can be argued that malignant narcissism is a progressive disease with an ultimately terminal outcome in 100 percent of cases.  The first stage begins with callous disregard of the rights of others and of our duty toward others.  The last stage begins with flagrant, self-destructive disregard of reality itself.  This is illustrated beautifully in a paper I read a few months ago titled, "Why Tyrants Go Too Far: Malignant Narcissism and Absolute Power."  The abstract to this paper begins thus: "This article explores the puzzling behavior of tyrants who undermine themselves once in power..."  The author, Betty Glad, outlines the following progression: 

Stage 1: A narcissism which aspires for greatness, yet which is held in check by the reality of the challenges of climbing a ladder of success.  

Stage 2: The diminishing of the narcissist's ability to test reality once he reaches his desired level of supremacy.  

Stage 3: The narcissist's acting out his fantasies of greatness instead of grounding his actions in a reasonable response to reality.  

Stage 4 (the final stage): The narcissist's crashing and burning against that cold, hard reality which he refused to acknowledge.  

I would argue that Trump and his supporters are now somewhere between stages 3 and 4.  I would like therefore to use an example from my own personal history to sketch how I think the Trump presidency might end.  

As I mentioned way back in the early days of my blogging, I used to be a member of a religious cult (or if you want to be euphemistic, an "abusive church") known as the Assemblies of George Geftakys.  George Geftakys was, of course, a classic malignant narcissist.  And as such a narcissist, he soon passed into stage 3 of the progression I outlined above.  That stage for him consisted of pretending that he and his family were the picture of perfection even though he was forcing young women in his assemblies to become his personal secretaries so that he could force himself on them sexually, and even though he knew that his oldest son was a wife-beater and child abuser.  His crash-and-burn phase came when the sins of his family became widely known to the members of the cult he had built.  What is interesting is what came afterward, when many members of the cult confronted George, and eventually forced his excommunication.

These members (many of whom became ex-members like me) thought that by confronting George and his henchmen we could get them to acknowledge their wrongdoing and repent.  THAT NEVER HAPPENED.  For it would have required George to admit that his whole life as he had presented it to us had been a fraud.  Instead, he and his wife moved to an upscale retirement community in the California Inland Empire, where he continued to advertise himself as a great missionary and pastor, adding to this that he was a native of Greece even though he had told us that he was born in the U.S.A.  To the very end of his life, George continued to live in a bubble of self-aggrandizing fantasy.  Given the parallels between the demise of George Geftakys and the current state of Donald Trump and his supporters, I expect something similar to happen now.  We should prepare ourselves to deal with it.

P.S. If you want to hear more about George's final crash-and-burn phase, click here.

A Message from Me to Donald Trump

Mr. Trump,

You have lost your bid for re-election.  I know that the Bible says that we are to be subject to our leaders.  But you have two strikes against you.  First, our subjection to our leaders carries only as far as their subjection to an impartial moral standard that is larger than them.  You have refused to submit to that standard for most of your life, and you have refused to submit to that standard during every single day of your presidency.  And you refuse to submit to the laws of a nation in which you legitimately and fairly lost the November 2020 presidential election.

Therefore, I will not submit to you at all or acknowledge you as the President of the United States after January 19th, 2021.  If you are still occupying the White House on January 21st, 2021, I intend to do everything I can to build a nonviolent liberation struggle to oust you.  Your narcissism, your nihilism, and your associations with thugs such as Vladimir Putin must end.  To use a phrase of yours that has recently been much quoted, you're fired.  

A Constellation Of Alarm Lights

As we approach more closely the conclusion of election season in the United States, I thought it would be good to list four ways in which the presidency of Donald Trump has impacted the people who live in the United States in 2020.  There are, of course, many more ways in which Trump has impacted us, but I don't have time to list them all.  Here are the four that I do have time to list:

COVID-19

As of today, 29 October 2020, there have been around 9 million documented infections in the U.S., resulting in around 233,000 deaths.  The situation is constantly changing; thus I can't give exact numbers.  (Note that according to the linked source, five of the top ten nations impacted by COVID-19 are all led by men who are associated either with white supremacy or the global Far Right.)  The death rate in the United States is 2.5 percent of the total infection rate, which means that slightly more than one out of every fifty people who become infected will die.  We now know that many survivors of the initial infection must battle its long-term effects.  One of the widespread effects is cognitive damage.  Another widespread long-term effect is medical bankruptcy, due to the high cost of treatment in a nation whose ruling party does not believe in universal health care.  Note that the U.S. is still the world leader in COVID-19 infections and deaths, far exceeding most of the nations on the African continent.   And at the rate at which new infections are increasing, we may see within the next few months a situation in which one out of every ten people in the U.S. has been infected.  This will make staying free from infection very interesting for the rest of us.  Truly, Trump has made America great!

SHORTAGES

The stupid trade wars and mismanagement of the coronavirus threat by the Trump administration have led the U.S. into an era of widespread shortages.  A partial list includes the following:

• Medical supplies, including prescription medications
• Aluminum
• Coins
• Light trucks

This is in addition to the widespread shortages of grocery items we saw this past spring.

DEFLATION

Deflation can be viewed as the consequence of a sudden collapse in demand for goods in an economy.  For those who have cash, deflation can seem like a good thing, but it is actually a sign of a national economy that is going into shock as businesses can't earn enough revenue to keep their doors open.  Deflation thus frequently leads to sudden inflation or even hyperinflation once the amount of goods formerly provided by formerly operational businesses decreases beyond a certain level.  We are in a deflationary period right now, as documented here and here.

CURRENCY DECLINE

Trump's trade wars, unpredictability and belligerence have turned off many nations, and the resulting decline in America's soft power has thus weakened the U.S. dollar.  There are voices now predicting a serious decline in the U.S. dollar perhaps amounting to a crash.  (See this and this for instance.)  If that happens, the United States will no longer need to worry about cheap foreign goods displacing American products.  For those foreign goods will no longer be cheap, and the people of the United States will have to get by with learning to reuse and salvage things.  It should be quite an education.

The Cheating Elephant, Part 2

This is a follow-up to my most recent post.  Lately, reality (both personally and as a U.S. citizen) has been so stressful that I've taken to watching YouTube videos of musicians making music from countries outside the Anglo-Euro-Slavic orbit.  Seeing them make their music and seeing how happy and mentally balanced they are is therapeutic for me, especially when I don't have the time to make my own music.  One thing I don't like, however, is YouTube ads which are political in nature - especially when they promote Donald Trump or Fox News or other right-wing sewage.

Tonight there was an ad on YouTube sponsored by Facebook promoting their new "Voting Information Center."  Whenever Facebook says that they are trying to do something good, I get suspicious.  The new Facebook Voting Information Center is supposed to provide accurate fact checks on statements made during the U.S. election campaigns.  But according to Vox, in August of this year Facebook had not yet fact-checked or contradicted Donald Trump's false statements about voting by mail.  That makes me wonder what else they have not yet fact-checked.  Also, they have not blocked Trump from making Facebook posts.  To me, it still looks somewhat like Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump are still joined together in unholy union.  I'll check my own facts, thank you.

Apologies for a Delay

This past weekend I had fully intended to post my third installment of my commentary and "study guide" for Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  But last Friday, I allowed my computer to perform an operating system upgrade that broke more things than it fixed.  So I spent a number of sleepless hours over the weekend trying to figure out what was wrong.  Finally I gave up in disgust and loaded a fresh copy of the latest version of Linux Mint.  I like troubleshooting computers almost as much as I like working on cars - which is to say, not very much.  At least things work now.

While I was thus occupied, it seems that Donald Trump was hospitalized because of a COVID-19 infection.  I just found this out yesterday.  Although the situation is still quite fluid, I believe that the study of strategic nonviolent resistance is still relevant for those who are members of oppressed and marginalized peoples.  Regardless of what happens to Trump (and I hear that he "released" himself from the hospital yesterday and returned to the White House), we must remember that Trump himself is merely a symptom of a larger disease.  Therefore, I will publish that third post this upcoming weekend, God willing.

In the meantime, please check out the following recent posts of mine:

• Nihil Nixed
• The Go to Jail Truth

Causes of Cognitive Dissonance and National Narcissistic Rage

Here's another "quickie" post.  And it has to do with White American foreign policy under Donald Trump and the perceptions of other nations which have been created for American consumption by its most powerful media outlets.  I want to make one suggestion and one observation.  The suggestion: the foreign policy of the United States against China is actually an expression of White supremacist narcissistic rage against China on account of the fact that a nation of over one billion non-White people has made itself an independent success.  That was not supposed to happen.  Rather, China was supposed to live forever in the thrall of the United States, because China was supposed to be forever dependent on the United States.  The United States was supposed to be forever the dominant player, dictating to everyone else on earth what they can and cannot do.  China is neatly contradicting that expectation.  You may not know this, but China has successfully orbited two space stations and sent a robot probe to the moon, and has launched a robot mission to Mars. 

And China is not the only nonwhite, non-European nation to have begun its own exploration of outer space.  The United Arab Emirates has also launched a robot probe to Mars.  China and the UAE join India in the successful development of demanding technologies for space travel.  

But the most pleasantly surprising news is much closer to home.  When COVID-19 first broke upon the world scene, many commentators in the Global North expected that the pandemic would decimate the nations of Black Africa, who were seen as perennial "savages" perennially in need of rescue by White "saviors."  However, it now appears that the nations of the African continent have done very, very well in containing the pandemic and limiting both infections and deaths.  Living on the African continent is becoming safer than living in the United States.  This is due to the commonsense approaches of various African governments to the challenge of providing health care for the common good.  (For what it's worth, I should also note that according to one source, the nations of Africa have a better airline safety record than Russia.)

In short, the rest of the world seems to have learned in large measure how to live (and to live well!) without the United States.  This will undoubtedly deprive Trump of the narcissistic supply he had hoped to enjoy by withholding access to America and its resources from people whom he deemed to be much more needy than America.  Instead of that enjoyment, Trump now finds himself in the position of the evil mother in the Grimm fairy tale Snow White.

Some Cats You Don't Mess With

The Internet seems to be abuzz lately with news stories and opinion pieces about Donald Trump's efforts and intentions to make himself President for life.  Some of these pieces cite Trump's attacks on Black Lives Matter organizers as his attempt to construct a "Reichstag moment."  (Note to BLM: If Trump succeeds in doing so, it won't be because he is very smart and very powerful.  Rather, it will be because of your repeated failures of strategic thinking, as I have repeatedly pointed out to you.  Read some books on strategic nonviolent resistance and effective community organizing!)

The tone of these stories and essays began to bother me this afternoon - first, because when people get hysterical, their hysteria can become contagious.  Hysteria prevents people from getting necessary work done and turns them into zombies glued to their screens - a good thing for advertisers and media companies, but a bad thing for the zombies.  Second, the tone of these pieces seems to subtly convey the message that Trump is such an overwhelming threat that resistance is useless.  Thus, if you can't turn yourself into a successful refugee to another country, you may as well kiss life goodbye.

I have a problem with that point of view.  I have chosen not to try to become a refugee.  I know moreover that there is an entire suite of things an oppressed people can do to shatter the power of a dictator who rises up over them, and that this suite of things is effective because it does not depend on violence to succeed.  Doing these things involves hard work and sometimes significant suffering and risk, and there is always the possibility of failure.  However, it must be realized that there is always also the possibility of success.

I am thinking just now of several YouTube videos and news stories about cat owners or members of families who own cats in which one of the family members was threatened or attacked by a dog and the cat in the house righteously thrashed the dog.  (See this also.)  If cats could talk, the cats who choose to throw down on dogs might explain themselves thus: "If I just give up and do nothing, horrible things will happen.  If I choose to resist, horrible things might still happen.  But there is also the possibility - however slim - that I might win.  So let's throw some blows!"

If a cat can be that brave, then maybe some of the humans in our midst should take a deep breath and get a grip.  In the face of the threat posed by Trump, the following questions should be asked:

1. Are we who are among his targets willing to resist?
2. Are we who are willing to resist also willing to study the most effective methods of resistance?

If you answered Yes to both of these questions, then watch this blog for my comments on Chapter 2 of "From D to D."

Firebugs Of A Feather

 

What a devil!

Human dysfunction tends to run in patterns.  And this blog has noted several times the similarities in the types of dysfunction that characterizes Russia in the age of Putin and the United States in the age of Trump.  So my curiosity was piqued today when I checked the stats for this blog and discovered that I had gotten a lot of hits from Russia over the last 24 hours.  "Someone over there," thought I, "must be very interested in my most recent blog post.  Or maybe they just have a general interest in my blogging!  Who could it be, and why???"

I could think of only two reasons why people in Russia might be interested in what I have to say.  Either those reading my stuff are members of the FSB who have put a price on my head, or there are ordinary, everyday Russians who are facing the same deadly dysfunction which has characterized the United States under Trump.  Because I am a very little fish in a very big pond, I concluded that it must be the latter.

So I Googled "wildfires russia 2020" and came up with the following interesting hits:

• "Wildfires in Siberia have burned down an area larger than Greece," CBS News
• "Another Intense Summer of Fires in Siberia," NASA Earth Observatory
• "Russia's Wildfires Double in Size Within Week", TASS (via the Moscow Times)
• "Nearly 300 wildfires in Siberia amid record warm weather," phys.org

To the ordinary people in Russia who want to just live and let live - to those who are not interested in building an empire or trashing people who are not white and not Russian - I extend my sympathy to you this fire season.  I hope moreover that I can provide some consolation to you, knowing that "the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished in your brotherhood that is in the world," as the Good Book says.  We have our climate arsonist to deal with, and unfortunately you have yours as well.

And to those in the United States and elsewhere who continue to drink Trump-flavored Kool-Aid, let's do Russia a favor.  Trump blames the overwhelming severity of wildfires in the United States on "poor forest management," suggesting that we ought to send people into our wildlands to rake up leaves.  Let's send Trump to Siberia to do some raking.  Just make sure he doesn't have any matches.

A Bed In Sheol

 Twilight comes early.

Sunset choked to death on clouds of ash. 

"Eat the fruit of this tree

and you shall be like God" -

but the idol of our godhood,

kindled by that pyrotechnic tree,

burns now to the ground.

I live in a city which hasn't seen blue sky or stars now for the last five days and counting.  I have been inside my house for about the same amount of time, and during that time there has not been a day in which the air has not smelled like smoke.  I should have gotten a lot done in that time (including house cleaning and repair, writing a blog post, and other business), but instead I must confess that I've been somewhat glued to websites like this:

• Portland Oregon Weather Underground
• Oregon Department of Environmental Quality - Air Quality Monitoring Data
• Oregon Smoke Information
• AirNow Interactive Map of Air Quality
• Smoke Forecast - FireSmoke.ca

Call my preoccupation a fetish, but as Samuel Johnson once said, "Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."  This year is beginning to feel to me like the run-up to a mass execution.  First, the stupidity and malignancy of Donald Trump.  Then the coronavirus.  Then the emergence of a blatant, murderous racism reminiscent of the American South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the very public murders of unarmed African-Americans.  Now massive wildfires for those of us in the American West, and a very active hurricane season for those on the eastern and southern seaboards of the United States.

A few facts about the wildfires.  First, for the last three days, the smoke has produced widespread areas of pollution levels that have been designated as hazardous by State and Federal agencies.  That's "hazardous", as in, "Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities."  Second, the three biggest pollutants of concern have been smoke particles with diameters of 2.5 microns and below, smoke particles in the 10 micron range, and carbon monoxide.  The presence of carbon monoxide is especially troubling because CO is only produced when there is not enough oxygen present to ensure at least a stoichiometric mix of oxygen and carbon-bearing materials.

Many of the fires have been caused by downed power lines or by lightning.  Many of the fires have also been caused by typical human activity.  But the fires have also become yet another occasion for political posturing by the American Right.  Trump claims that this season's wildfires are the result of "poor forest management," but the facts don't support him.  Many of the wildfires that have started this fall did not originate in forests.  And there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the worsening fire seasons worldwide are a consequence of manmade climate change.  Much of that evidence was compiled over the last two or three decades by national laboratories funded by the United States Government.  Names like Livermore, Berkeley, and Argonne come to mind.  These national laboratories are now the victims of Trump budget cuts.  Therefore I expect that like the coronavirus, or deteriorating social relations, or fraying social safety nets, or a declining currency, Trump will willfully and deliberately botch his response to this exigency also.

And that had me thinking at 4 am this morning.  You see, these things don't just impact me as a series of facts that fit into an analysis.  (Even though I'm rather strongly geeky!)  I am thinking of how last Monday I enjoyed an evening walk through the neighborhood and spent time in my backyard watering the veggies and playing my guitar beneath a clear twilight sky with two cats at my feet.  That was my chill time, my therapy which enabled me to cope with a world that has recently become chaotic because of rich and powerful doofuses who want to Make Themselves Great Again due to long-standing inferiority complexes.  Trump is such a doofus.  But I thought I had learned to take him in stride even as I saw through his attempts to cause chaos.  Now the consequences of his doofus chaos have flared up in new and unexpected ways - much like the re-emergence of flames from a fire that was not properly put out.  And it's not just his doofus-ness.  It's his constant gaslighting, his absolute refusal to tell the truth about anything, lest he lose what he perceives to be the advantage of pulling the wool over the eyes of those who listen to him.  It's getting to be a bit much.

So because I had a hard time sleeping at 4 am, I was searching the Web for stories of Americans who have left the country for good within the last few years.  And I was checking out what it would take for me to emigrate to Canada.  (I found out that I'm just a few points shy of the minimum needed for a technical professional to be allowed to emigrate.)  But then I thought of the people I'd be abandoning if I did such a thing.  And I thought of how even the world's best places did not start out that way.  They were built by the sweat equity of those who were willing to sacrifice to try to construct a righteous order in the midst of chaos.  I also thought of how some of the world's best places are under attack from those who want to impose their chaos on what was a righteous order.  Becoming a refugee is a temporary protection at best.  And one can't be a refugee forever.

But trying to build or defend a righteous order in the midst of the chaos that is the United States just now seems to me like trying to make my bed in Sheol.  (Or if you like the King James Bible, it seems like trying to make my bed in hell.)  At least the Good Book promises that though I make my bed in such places, there is One Who is with me.  And the art of making a sleep-worthy bed in unpleasant places will become a valuable skill as the great societies of the world run up against the reality of resource constraints and as their leaders grapple with the involuntary ending of their dreams of godhood.  On that note, I'm going to lie down and try to take a nap.

P.S. Here and here are a couple of links to some interesting articles on wildfires and climate change.

The Omar Wasow Re-Election Strategy

I don't watch or listen to news much these days.  (Even I have limits on how much garbage I can swallow in a day!)  So it was surprising to me to hear that the entire city of Portland, Oregon is "entirely ablaze all the time."  Thus says our orange-haired President of the United States, a man who I am sure has never told a lie in his life... Question to self: if Portland is entirely ablaze, why did I not see dozens of fire engines trying to put out the blaze as I went to the grocery store today?  Why was the store not on fire?  Why did I sleep so well last night?

Yet there have been fires - deliberately set by rioters - oops, I mean, "violent protesters" recently.  These "protesters" have also made appearances in several cities throughout the United States, as I am sure you are all aware.  Their modus operandi seems to be to cause as much provocative, polarizing property destruction (including tearing down statues and setting fires) and cause as much provocative, polarizing unrest as possible.  Some of them are no longer even pretending to be associated with Black Lives Matter or with the struggle against racism.  According to one source, the Antifa has made its reappearance among these "protestors".  Note that according to some sources, these who are causing property damage are White.  (Additional note: I have deleted the source I originally cited.  He has since turned out to be unreliable.)

Let me suggest that it's useless telling these people that they are actually helping the cause of Donald Trump as he seeks to demonize those who are opposed to him.  They already know that - which is why they are doing what they are doing.  Their tactics are reminiscent of the staged battles between the Antifa and various right-wing groups in Portland and elsewhere during the 2018 mid-term elections.  They are also reminiscent of vandalism perpetrated by Russian agents in Ukraine.

Why does Trump think that injecting violence into American society (and especially into the protests against racist oppression) will help him?  (For yes, there is overwhelming evidence that people aligned with Trump are behind the injection of violence into American politics in 2020!)  Let me suggest that even though Trump probably doesn't read anything much more complicated than coloring books, he has advisors who do know how to read.  And I'm sure that they have heard by now of a man named Omar Wasow.  Mr. Wasow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton.  He also did a study which is by now quite famous among students of strategic nonviolent resistance.  That study showed that the 1960's civil rights struggle achieved its most impressive gains when it was most strongly non-violent.  That study also showed that when protests began to become violent, the violence actually hurt the cause of the protestors and helped Richard Nixon to win the 1968 presidential election.

And that is Mr. Trump's only hope of a road to a legitimate election victory this November.  You see, even dictators can learn new tricks (or at least try to recycle old ones), as Will Dobson documented in his book titled, The Dictator's Learning Curve.  And for the last ten years or so, dictators around the world have been staying up all night studying how to thwart strategic nonviolent resistance.  By the way, I highly respect Dr. Wasow and his work.  It's a shame to see his work put to evil uses.  

But will Trump's gambit work?  Let me suggest that in 1968, there was not a coronavirus pandemic or its resulting economic fallout to deal with.  Let me also suggest that Slobodan Milosevic lost the election which deposed him even though he also resorted to dirty tricks.  And lastly, let me note that the Democrats flipped the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.  Also, Dr. Wasow has two pieces of very good news.  First, the current data show that 93 percent of anti-racism protests this year have been peaceful and nondestructive, according to a recent Washington Post article.  Second, Trump's gambit does not appear to be working, according to additional recent articles in the Washington Post and on NPR.

2nd Repost: The Libertarian Lifeboat

COVID-19 continues to march through the "Land of the Free," leaving a trail of death, joblessness and bankruptcies of small and large businesses.  The United States of America is reaping the fruits of having allowed itself to become "Murdochified."  And in case you are one of those people now suffering hard times who thought a few months ago that it could never happen to you, I've got a story for you.  The story will help you to figure out what it is that you bought when you made a deal with the Devil - that is, the devil of libertarianism, greed, hatred of social safety nets, and selfishness.  This story will also be of benefit to those of us who have had to put up with a Murdochified country for the last three and a half years.

The version of the story which I am linking here is actually its second incarnation.  If you want to read the original version, click here.  And I will have a more research-heavy original post this weekend, God willing.

Whadja Do With The Money?!

Two Filthy Men, Two Filthy Regimes

Image captured in late 2016, retrieved from phorum.vietbao.com 

on 21 June 2020.  Similar images from 2016 and early 2017

can be seen here, here, and here.

*Note: I noticed this weekend that this blog had several dozen visits from people who live outside of the United States.  Thanks very much for reading my posts!  If English is not your first language, please let me explain the title of today's post more clearly.  The word "whadja" is not actually proper English.  It is instead an American slang contraction of the words, "what did you...", or of "what do you..."  So my title in standard English would read, "What did you do with the money?!"  And now, on to today's post.

From the time I was six years old to the time I turned eight years old, my parents sent me to Catholic school.   The schools I attended provided lunch for their students, but this was contingent on the families of each of the students paying a weekly lunch allowance.  It's been a long while since those days, but I vaguely remember that the usual procedure for families was to put each week's "lunch money" into an envelope, and attach the envelope to each child's clothes with a safety pin on each Monday morning before the kid went to school.  I think my parents used to admonish me to give the envelope to the nuns the moment I got to school.  

But one morning I became curious to know what was in the envelope, and so I opened it before my arrival.  When I found out what was inside, I became full of ambitious ideas of how I would like to spend the money.  The result was that when I got to school, I handed the nuns an empty envelope.  Little did I know that the school was not going to feed me just because of my good looks.  Little did I also know that they would place an urgent call to my parents.  But what I did know was that my parents were firm believers in the laying on of hands in order to cure their children from foolishness.  When I got home that day, hands were therefore laid on me.

These events should have served as a valuable lesson, namely that money is a means of transmitting the benefits of honest labors between two people.  My dad had worked hard in order to earn the money which was given to me to give to the nuns in exchange for the hard work that other adults had done in making a nutritious lunch for a bunch of kids.  Money therefore could be seen as a reliable transmitter of value only as long as it symbolized an exchange of the value of one kind of necessary work for the value of other kinds of necessary work.  Empty lunch money envelopes, on the other hand, were not a symbol of exchange of one kind of value for another.  I wish I could say that the events of that day had taught me right then this valuable lesson, but at the age of six, I was still just a goofy, gel-brained boy out "raising Cain", to put it euphemistically.  

I do understand the lesson now.  But as I look at the uses to which American money have been put lately, I am not sure that very many of the people at the top of the American economic pyramid understand this lesson.  Nor am I quite sure that some of these people are not still gel-brained six-year-old Cain-raisers trapped in adult bodies.  For it increasingly appears that the exchange of money between the most powerful players no longer represents an exchange of differing kinds of necessary, valuable labor.  American money is therefore increasingly not a reliable transmitter of value between two parties who both do various kinds of necessary work.  

I am thinking of the American stock exchanges (NYSE, S&P 500, and NASDAQ, to name a few) in the aftermath of Donald Trump's seizure of the White House in 2016.  What is interesting to note is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) shot up over 2,000 points from November 2016 to February 2017.  (Source: Statista.  See this also from MarketWatch.)  Since January 2017, the DJIA has closed below 20,000 only once.  The DJIA has instead flown on a somewhat phugoid trajectory within a range from 22,000 to 28,000 points for most of Trump's presidency.  During the upswings in the DJIA and other exchanges, Trump has boasted of these upswings as proof that he is indeed "Making America Great Again!"  But what has really been going on behind the scenes?  (Aside from the exploding numbers of tent cities and homeless encampments throughout the United States!)

First, it is no secret that much of the increase in corporate asset prices has been driven by stock buybacks, as noted in the following stories:

• "Why Stock Buybacks Are Dangerous For The Economy," Harvard Business Review, January 2020.  (Note: this essay was published before the coronavirus pandemic became a major economic issue.)
• "Companies Have Been Buying Back Massive Amounts Of Stock This Year," CNBC, July 2019.
• "S&P 500 Q4 2018 Buybacks Set 4th Consecutive Quarterly Record at $223 Billion; 2018 Sets Record $806 Billion," S&P Global, March 2019

According to various sources, corporate buybacks of publicly traded stocks in U.S. stock exchanges have totaled over $2 trillion from 2017 until now.  This is troubling because it used to be that the price of a share of a company's stock was a reflection of the value of the amount and quality of the work done by the owners and employees of the company.  But due to the tax cuts passed by a Republican-controlled Congress under Donald Trump, the money that should have gone into corporate taxes or into investment in increasing the value of meaningful labor has instead gone to boosting shareholder dividends, stock prices, and CEO bonuses.  The prices of shares of corporate stock therefore no longer reflect the genuine value of the things produced by the corporations whose stock is publicly traded. 

This is even clearer when we consider what has happened to U.S. productivity during Trump's presidency.  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported widespread declines in American manufacturing productivity in 2018.  This is a reflection of a decline in global worker productivity during 2018 and 2019.  American worker productivity also declined during the last half of 2019.  The decline in productivity extends also to the construction industry, according to this source.  And Servaas Storm of the Institute for New Economic Thinking states his view that the reasons for falling American productivity are "‘under-consumption’ driven by stagnating real wages, rising inequality and greater job insecurity and polarization."  In other words, falling American productivity is being caused by the very factors which Donald Trump has maximized.

But as I said in a previous post tracing the outworkings of damnation on American society, I am not here to editorialize or to moralize.  I write this post only to hypothesize how this situation might end.  For "the wages of sin is death", and the regime of Donald Trump is based on the premise of America's most privileged holders of wealth and power sinning against the rest of humanity by making themselves great at everyone else's expense.  I am therefore wondering how this one special group of parasites is about to die.  For the most powerful economic players in the United States have made it clear in 2020 that one of their main objectives is to prop up the value of the financial assets of their cronies at all costs.  Therefore, the Fed has this year made itself a purchaser of corporate bonds.  This includes buying the debt of corporations which should have crashed and burned because the value of the things they produced declined to the level of junk.  This is also why the DJIA for instance has consistently closed above 23,000 over the last two months even as the coronavirus pandemic deals a shattering blow to the actual productive capacity of the U.S. economy.  (Note: it is not only the U.S. central bank which is propping up asset prices.  See this also.)

Now, if the financial "bodily organ" which creates U.S. dollars uses them to prop up stock prices of corporations which produce no real value, what does that do to the U.S. dollar as a reliable transmitter of value?  (To put it another way, what would happen to your body if your bone marrow suddenly began producing red blood cells that could not carry oxygen to your vital organs?)  Consider also that the Fed's ability to prop up asset prices depends on the Fed's ability to sell U.S. debt to foreign governments.  And consider that the U.S. government is already hopelessly in debt (especially due to huge deficits under Trump), with the likelihood of repayment growing more distant by the day.  What happens when foreign governments begin to refuse to buy any more U.S. debt and start asking, "Whadja do with the money?!"

The Defeat of the Violent Flanks

In two of my most recent posts I wrote that protest is not a good method of nonviolent resistance in the age of Trump, because oppressors know how to inject violence into nonviolent protests in order to discredit the protests and legitimize violent crackdowns on protest. But it looks like I’m going to have to eat my words based on the reports I’ve been reading over the last 24 hours concerning the protests over the police murder of George Floyd.

Believe me, I’m quite happy to eat my words just now. Some of the things that are now being reported are wonderful. It now appears that the leaders of the protests have figured out how to separate their protests as far as possible from the violent infiltrators who are coming from the Antifa, the Boogaloo Boys, and other violent white extremist groups. Because the protest leaders and the relatives of those African-Americans recently killed by police violence are insisting that the protests remain peaceful, the protests have gained increased legitimacy among the general public. Because the protest leaders have sought to promote strict nonviolent discipline among the protesters, the protest leaders have been able to get police and National Guard personnel to join with the protesters in showing solidarity with the victims of racist violence, as seen in the many recent media pictures of National Guard troops laying down their shields in support of the protests and police kneeling with the protesters to show their solidarity with the cause of the protests. (See this, this, and this.)  In some cases, police can be seen not only kneeling with the protesters, but holding hands with them and marching with them in solidarity. (See this also.)  And in one case, police who knelt with protesters joined with them in reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

This has made it much harder for Donald Trump to justify sending the U.S. military in to stop the protests. In fact, former President George W. Bush released a statement affirming the right of Americans to protest injustice and calling on Americans to build a society which is just and fair for all. Even televangelist Pat Robertson has spoken against Trump’s call to send in U.S. troops against U.S. citizens. And the U.S. defense secretary has stated that he will refuse any orders by Trump to attack American citizens.  It appears that Trump’s pillars of support are dissolving!

Lastly, it appears that the protest leaders have discovered some of the literature on strategic nonviolent resistance. One of the protest leaders spoke of the triumph of “people power.” The phrase “people power” was used by Filipinos to describe their nonviolent overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos back in the 1980’s. Trump is now starting to look like Marcos, or like Slobodan Milosevic just before OTPOR overthrew him in Serbia's own nonviolent revolution.  The protesters against racism in America have powerfully succeeded in making oppression backfire on the oppressor.

I wonder what Putin’s Russia thinks of all of this, since it is clear that the Russian government has been behind the rise of many far-Right national leaders (including Trump) over the last several years.  It must be hard for him to see that all the work he did to mess up the United States seems now to be going up in smoke. Maybe a people power revolution will come soon to a town near him!

One warning: though there is much good news coming out of the re-emerging movement for racial justice, we can't yet claim victory.  Trump is still President.  Therefore, we must remain vigilant, stay on the offensive, and make ourselves as smart and resourceful as possible.