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.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Friday, December 27, 2019
No Room At The Realtor's
I am increasingly trying to live a disconnected life - as, in, disconnected from digital media. It's one of my ways of coping with a world ruled by very bad actors who want to make very bad news. (Another coping mechanism of mine is to work to create collective expressions of good news via collective constructive organic work. But I digress.)
This week, however, a bad actor managed to insert a bit of bad news into my consciousness. It happened while I was driving in Southern California on one of my regular visits to family. If you don't have streaming Internet because you don't want to be addicted to your smartphone, and yet you do want to know why you're stuck in traffic (and boy, was I stuck!), you have little choice but to listen to the radio for traffic updates. Being exposed to alarming headlines is an unavoidable risk of getting your information this way. So it was that I heard that Donald Trump is starting to attack Democratic leaders from states that have been experiencing a surge in homelessness.
This piqued my interest for a number of reasons. First, almost the only claims to legitimacy which Trump has are the performance metrics of the visible, formal economy. Those metrics paint a wildly optimistic picture of the American economy. (NASDAQ sets new records! Dow sets new records! Unemployment below 4 percent!) Yet the "boots-on-the-ground" reality which many of us see paints an entirely different picture, One of the parts of that picture concerns the epidemic of homelessness whose rate of increase jumped drastically under the Trump regime.
Trump's tweets this week about the homeless crisis contain a note of outrage over the lack of help which the homeless are receiving, yet as noted in at least one of the articles linked in this post, Trump is proposing actions which would exacerbate the homeless crisis even further by reducing the availability of affordable housing. His outrage is therefore hypocritical.
It might be good to examine the roots of homelessness in the United States, for I want to suggest that homelessness is a feature (and not a bug) of the very system of oligarchic capitalism and radical individualism that characterize American society. I don't have time today to get into a rigorous defense of my hypothesis, but I think it good to list a few items of history:
Two further observations. First, it is useful to see Trump as, among other things, a symptom of a greater evil. We know that Russia worked hard to insure that Trump would capture the White House, so we can see Trump in a very real sense as a manifestation of the will of the oligarchy (and its chief oligarch Putin) who now rule Russia. If the symptoms of extreme wealth inequality are now ballooning in America under Trump, it is only logical that we should see them ballooning in Putin's Russia as well, as has been noted in journalism covering the Russian homelessness crisis. See "St. Petersburg Tackles a Homelessness Crisis Moscow Won't Address," for instance, where you will read that Russia treats its homeless population the same way a narcissistic parent treats an imperfect child - as a limb to be amputated. One other similarity between Russia and the United States is that even during Russia's 21st-century supposed "roaring decade" (or more, accurately, "roaring few years" of high oil revenues from 2008 to 2015-2016), there were between one and five million children living on the street in Russia.
Second, both Trump and the Russian leadership find it useful to maintain a narcissistic facade of perfection, and to project their actual imperfections onto scapegoats who can be demonized by being "otherized." But on closer examination, the perfection which they seek to portray looks unsettlingly similar to the fragile bubble-film perfection of America in the Roaring Twenties. Most of 1920's America was suffering, yet the nation was deluded by the media portrayals of the good fortune of the rich. It required only a very small shift in consciousness to burst that delusion. The shift occurred once the wealthy were confronted with a crisis they could not handle. And then suddenly those who had been suffering all along began to become "activized." A similar phase change may be in our not too distant future.
This week, however, a bad actor managed to insert a bit of bad news into my consciousness. It happened while I was driving in Southern California on one of my regular visits to family. If you don't have streaming Internet because you don't want to be addicted to your smartphone, and yet you do want to know why you're stuck in traffic (and boy, was I stuck!), you have little choice but to listen to the radio for traffic updates. Being exposed to alarming headlines is an unavoidable risk of getting your information this way. So it was that I heard that Donald Trump is starting to attack Democratic leaders from states that have been experiencing a surge in homelessness.
This piqued my interest for a number of reasons. First, almost the only claims to legitimacy which Trump has are the performance metrics of the visible, formal economy. Those metrics paint a wildly optimistic picture of the American economy. (NASDAQ sets new records! Dow sets new records! Unemployment below 4 percent!) Yet the "boots-on-the-ground" reality which many of us see paints an entirely different picture, One of the parts of that picture concerns the epidemic of homelessness whose rate of increase jumped drastically under the Trump regime.
Trump's tweets this week about the homeless crisis contain a note of outrage over the lack of help which the homeless are receiving, yet as noted in at least one of the articles linked in this post, Trump is proposing actions which would exacerbate the homeless crisis even further by reducing the availability of affordable housing. His outrage is therefore hypocritical.
It might be good to examine the roots of homelessness in the United States, for I want to suggest that homelessness is a feature (and not a bug) of the very system of oligarchic capitalism and radical individualism that characterize American society. I don't have time today to get into a rigorous defense of my hypothesis, but I think it good to list a few items of history:
- Homelessness has been a feature of American society since the 1870's, and has been closely linked to two phenomena: the enforcement of the cultural notion that the only respectable living arrangement is for people to own their own homes (thus eliminating shared housing, boarders, and other "non-standard" arrangements), combined with the increasing expense of achieving this ideal. (Source: "Home and Homelessness in the United States: Changing Ideals and Realities", A. R. Veness, 1991)
- Homelessness was a surprisingly strong feature of the "Roaring Twenties", which has been widely taught to children by historiographers as being a time of rising prosperity for the majority of Americans. In reality, it was anything but. (Source: "Poverty in the Prosperous Years: The Working Poor of the 1920's and Today," B. Payne, 2013)
- During the 1920's, more than 60 percent of Americans lived below the poverty line. (Source: BBC GSCE CCEA, Retrieved 27 December 2019)
Two further observations. First, it is useful to see Trump as, among other things, a symptom of a greater evil. We know that Russia worked hard to insure that Trump would capture the White House, so we can see Trump in a very real sense as a manifestation of the will of the oligarchy (and its chief oligarch Putin) who now rule Russia. If the symptoms of extreme wealth inequality are now ballooning in America under Trump, it is only logical that we should see them ballooning in Putin's Russia as well, as has been noted in journalism covering the Russian homelessness crisis. See "St. Petersburg Tackles a Homelessness Crisis Moscow Won't Address," for instance, where you will read that Russia treats its homeless population the same way a narcissistic parent treats an imperfect child - as a limb to be amputated. One other similarity between Russia and the United States is that even during Russia's 21st-century supposed "roaring decade" (or more, accurately, "roaring few years" of high oil revenues from 2008 to 2015-2016), there were between one and five million children living on the street in Russia.
Second, both Trump and the Russian leadership find it useful to maintain a narcissistic facade of perfection, and to project their actual imperfections onto scapegoats who can be demonized by being "otherized." But on closer examination, the perfection which they seek to portray looks unsettlingly similar to the fragile bubble-film perfection of America in the Roaring Twenties. Most of 1920's America was suffering, yet the nation was deluded by the media portrayals of the good fortune of the rich. It required only a very small shift in consciousness to burst that delusion. The shift occurred once the wealthy were confronted with a crisis they could not handle. And then suddenly those who had been suffering all along began to become "activized." A similar phase change may be in our not too distant future.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
A Clarifying of Stance
As regular readers of this blog know well, from October 2017 until a few weeks ago, I took a break from writing posts in order to focus on things that very much need to be done in realspace with real people and not disembodied clouds of electrons. Many of those things require ongoing work, so my posting will continue to be spotty for the next several months.
However, I do check my stats from time to time, and I noticed that this blog got several hundred hits during the last few days. I also noticed that visitors to this blog have been reading the extensive back catalog of posts I have written. There come times in the history of anyone who uses words when they have to eat a few of their own words, and I have lately realized that I need to eat some of mine. So here goes...
I started blogging back in 2006-2007, when I was just beginning to awaken to the real nature of white American power. I had been (and still am) a Christian, and a big part of the teaching I received from mainstream American evangelicalism was the notion that I should support American supremacy wherever and whenever possible because America was God's nation, and that the Republican Party was the party of true Godliness and Christian virtue. My process of detoxing from that Kool-Aid began with my leaving an abusive church run by a family of petty criminals. From that point I began to notice the patterns of abuse which not only appear in abusive churches whose leaders are not held accountable, but also extend to corporations, political parties, and nations whose leaders put themselves above accountability.
I had voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and in 2004 while still under the influence of mainstream American evangelical Kool-Aid, but in 2006, the contradictions and injustices of the Bush administration proved to be too much for me to swallow. As a person of color, what especially triggered my gag reflex was the appearance of overt anti-Latino racist campaign ads sponsored by the Republicans.
From 2007 onward, therefore, I began to search for and be drawn to writers whose perspective was not jingoist American patriotism. That unfortunately was the time during which writers such as Dmitry Orlov were becoming popular. He was a smooth talker, and his writing accurately captured many of the criticisms I had of America and of the historical and ongoing use of American power to oppress the vulnerable.
Over time (and especially as the police murders of unarmed African-Americans became much more obvious), the criticisms voiced by Orlov were joined by criticisms voiced by other Russian writers and media outlets like Russia Today. What I did not know was that these voices were not being raised in order to call America to repentance or to provide a viable alternative to the things they were criticizing, but to divide America in order that Russia might take the place of global hegemon. I also did not fully understand the extent to which national narcissism, exceptionalism, racism, white supremacy, and intolerance of other cultures had become part of the bedrock of Russian culture and society.
Thus it was that if you were reading my posts from 2007 up to 2016, you would have detected a strong pro-Russian bias. But those days are over. What ended them was the election of Donald Trump and the revelation of the part played by the Russian government in installing neo-fascist leaders and governments in many nations of the Global North. What ended my pro-Russian bias was also the revelation of the role played by people like Aleksandr Dugin in the formulation of Putin's geopolitical strategy. The words I must eat are the words I spoke in praise of Russia (and Putin) as some sort of viable alternative to the oppression which characterizes American power. Russia is no alternative. To steal a bit from Tolkien, Russia is to the United States what Boromir and Gollum were to the One Ring.
So...if you want to read my back catalog, please also read a few of these posts:
However, I do check my stats from time to time, and I noticed that this blog got several hundred hits during the last few days. I also noticed that visitors to this blog have been reading the extensive back catalog of posts I have written. There come times in the history of anyone who uses words when they have to eat a few of their own words, and I have lately realized that I need to eat some of mine. So here goes...
I started blogging back in 2006-2007, when I was just beginning to awaken to the real nature of white American power. I had been (and still am) a Christian, and a big part of the teaching I received from mainstream American evangelicalism was the notion that I should support American supremacy wherever and whenever possible because America was God's nation, and that the Republican Party was the party of true Godliness and Christian virtue. My process of detoxing from that Kool-Aid began with my leaving an abusive church run by a family of petty criminals. From that point I began to notice the patterns of abuse which not only appear in abusive churches whose leaders are not held accountable, but also extend to corporations, political parties, and nations whose leaders put themselves above accountability.
I had voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and in 2004 while still under the influence of mainstream American evangelical Kool-Aid, but in 2006, the contradictions and injustices of the Bush administration proved to be too much for me to swallow. As a person of color, what especially triggered my gag reflex was the appearance of overt anti-Latino racist campaign ads sponsored by the Republicans.
From 2007 onward, therefore, I began to search for and be drawn to writers whose perspective was not jingoist American patriotism. That unfortunately was the time during which writers such as Dmitry Orlov were becoming popular. He was a smooth talker, and his writing accurately captured many of the criticisms I had of America and of the historical and ongoing use of American power to oppress the vulnerable.
Over time (and especially as the police murders of unarmed African-Americans became much more obvious), the criticisms voiced by Orlov were joined by criticisms voiced by other Russian writers and media outlets like Russia Today. What I did not know was that these voices were not being raised in order to call America to repentance or to provide a viable alternative to the things they were criticizing, but to divide America in order that Russia might take the place of global hegemon. I also did not fully understand the extent to which national narcissism, exceptionalism, racism, white supremacy, and intolerance of other cultures had become part of the bedrock of Russian culture and society.
Thus it was that if you were reading my posts from 2007 up to 2016, you would have detected a strong pro-Russian bias. But those days are over. What ended them was the election of Donald Trump and the revelation of the part played by the Russian government in installing neo-fascist leaders and governments in many nations of the Global North. What ended my pro-Russian bias was also the revelation of the role played by people like Aleksandr Dugin in the formulation of Putin's geopolitical strategy. The words I must eat are the words I spoke in praise of Russia (and Putin) as some sort of viable alternative to the oppression which characterizes American power. Russia is no alternative. To steal a bit from Tolkien, Russia is to the United States what Boromir and Gollum were to the One Ring.
So...if you want to read my back catalog, please also read a few of these posts:
- The Black Hole At The Imperial Center
- No Strangers to Самовлюбленность
- The Resistance Heats Up In Russia
- Or, any of the posts that fall under the heading of "The Revanchism of the Third Rome."
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Fall-Winter 2019-2020: Please Drive Less
Why, you may ask. Well, you may have noticed that gas prices have been on the rise here in the U.S. However, my reasons for asking you to drive less extend a bit beyond trying to save you some change. My reasons actually extend into the realm of geopolitics, as you might have guessed. Here are some geopolitical reasons for you to chew on:
First, Russia is largely a petro-state whose economy depends to an excessive degree on exports of raw materials. This means that the stability of the Putin regime depends on a high price of oil and other exported extractive resources. The high price of oil between 2007 and 2012 allowed Putin to make a sort of bargain with the Russian people: allow Putin to be an autocrat in exchange for "stability", "order", and "prosperity." Low oil prices and sanctions have undermined this bargain - hence Putin's attempt to deflect attention from Russian domestic woes by his invasion of the Ukraine and his military operations in Syria. (Indeed, his intervention in Syria was meant to distract Russians from the failures of his operations in the Ukraine.)
Second, the unraveling of the Russian economy has provided the Russian opposition to Putin with a huge window of opportunity. The economic stagnation (nay, even contraction!) which Russian society has experienced from 2014 onward has exposed the hollowness of the bargain which Russian citizens were enticed to make with Mr. Putin. As a result, resistance against Putin has spread like wildfire - especially from 2017 until now. Russians are increasingly experiencing "cognitive liberation", with the result that the attempts by the Russian government to use harsh punishment to quell public protests have instead made an increasing number of Russians even more determined to protest. This is a prime example of the dynamic of "backfire" at work in a civil resistance struggle. Once backfire starts to happen in a sustained way in an oppressed population, the oppressor or autocrat is in dire straits!
Third, it is quite possible that recent events related to the rise in oil prices may be an attempt by Putin to scrape together enough cash to re-instate his "bargain" with his own people. Consider the drone attack against Saudi oil production facilities a few weeks ago. Some blamed "Houthi rebels" while Trump blamed Iran. I certainly do not claim to have the proof needed to tell you exactly who did it. But I do know that Saudi oil production facilities experienced a cyberattack in 2018, and that that cyberattack originated from the Russian "Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics". It is also known that Russia has initiated cyberattacks against Ukrainian power distribution infrastructure and other Western targets. And it is known that Russia and Saudi Arabia are oil production rivals. The 2018 cyberattack was not the first against Saudi oil facilities. It seems that whoever wants to knock Saudi Arabia out of the oil exporting game has gone from throwing electronic signals at them to throwing bombs and bullets. And this past week an Iranian oil tanker was attacked off the Saudi coast. These are the reasons why oil and gasoline prices have been climbing lately. High oil prices might prop up Putin's regime a little longer.
Fourth, whatever we on the outside can do to deny Putin what he wants helps to remove from the earth a threatening regime that wants to take over the world. This reason should actually have been first on the list. Don't like Putin (or his familiar spirit, Aleksandr Dugin)? Then walk, bike or take public transit to the places you need to go. Save a few bucks (and the world) in the process. By the way, for every finger I point at you, there are three pointing back at me! If I get up early tomorrow (contingent on getting to bed early tonight), I can bike to work...
First, Russia is largely a petro-state whose economy depends to an excessive degree on exports of raw materials. This means that the stability of the Putin regime depends on a high price of oil and other exported extractive resources. The high price of oil between 2007 and 2012 allowed Putin to make a sort of bargain with the Russian people: allow Putin to be an autocrat in exchange for "stability", "order", and "prosperity." Low oil prices and sanctions have undermined this bargain - hence Putin's attempt to deflect attention from Russian domestic woes by his invasion of the Ukraine and his military operations in Syria. (Indeed, his intervention in Syria was meant to distract Russians from the failures of his operations in the Ukraine.)
Second, the unraveling of the Russian economy has provided the Russian opposition to Putin with a huge window of opportunity. The economic stagnation (nay, even contraction!) which Russian society has experienced from 2014 onward has exposed the hollowness of the bargain which Russian citizens were enticed to make with Mr. Putin. As a result, resistance against Putin has spread like wildfire - especially from 2017 until now. Russians are increasingly experiencing "cognitive liberation", with the result that the attempts by the Russian government to use harsh punishment to quell public protests have instead made an increasing number of Russians even more determined to protest. This is a prime example of the dynamic of "backfire" at work in a civil resistance struggle. Once backfire starts to happen in a sustained way in an oppressed population, the oppressor or autocrat is in dire straits!
Third, it is quite possible that recent events related to the rise in oil prices may be an attempt by Putin to scrape together enough cash to re-instate his "bargain" with his own people. Consider the drone attack against Saudi oil production facilities a few weeks ago. Some blamed "Houthi rebels" while Trump blamed Iran. I certainly do not claim to have the proof needed to tell you exactly who did it. But I do know that Saudi oil production facilities experienced a cyberattack in 2018, and that that cyberattack originated from the Russian "Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics". It is also known that Russia has initiated cyberattacks against Ukrainian power distribution infrastructure and other Western targets. And it is known that Russia and Saudi Arabia are oil production rivals. The 2018 cyberattack was not the first against Saudi oil facilities. It seems that whoever wants to knock Saudi Arabia out of the oil exporting game has gone from throwing electronic signals at them to throwing bombs and bullets. And this past week an Iranian oil tanker was attacked off the Saudi coast. These are the reasons why oil and gasoline prices have been climbing lately. High oil prices might prop up Putin's regime a little longer.
Fourth, whatever we on the outside can do to deny Putin what he wants helps to remove from the earth a threatening regime that wants to take over the world. This reason should actually have been first on the list. Don't like Putin (or his familiar spirit, Aleksandr Dugin)? Then walk, bike or take public transit to the places you need to go. Save a few bucks (and the world) in the process. By the way, for every finger I point at you, there are three pointing back at me! If I get up early tomorrow (contingent on getting to bed early tonight), I can bike to work...
Friday, October 4, 2019
The On-Line Airing of National Dirty Laundry
To those who may have missed blog posts from me over the last several months, I offer my apologies. There are things in realspace which have demanded my attention, and there are only 168 hours in any given week...
But I thought I'd post a few links to information that reveals the extent to which mainstream American culture has become blatantly evil. First, the Fullerton Observer has kindly rendered a good public service in posting summaries of the key findings of the Mueller Report On the Investigation Into Russian Interference In the 2016 Presidential Election. At the end of their final summary, they have also kindly provided a link to audio recordings of a reading of the entire report. This means that anyone who wants to know what the report says can get it all straight from the horse's mouth - even if they don't have time to read it all.
Secondly, there are a number of new reports exposing the hypocrisy of the white American evangelical/Protestant Church, which continues to staunchly support the presidency of Donald Trump. Here's a small sample:
One side note: remember all the supposed "terrorist" incidents involving so-called "Arab extremists" in Europe and the United States during the last decade? These incidents had the convenient effect of turning public sentiment in Europe and the United States against immigrants - especially dark-skinned or non-Christian immigrants. Many of us wondered at the time who could be behind these attacks, because we considered them to be false flags. Having examined Russian propaganda over the last few years, I've come to a certain conclusion - a conclusion informed by the fact that Russia actively sought to build a network of regimes in the world's richest countries that worked to exclude the world's dark-skinned and/or non-Christian peoples from the wealth of these nations. Russia has also become well-known for "hybrid warfare." You draw your own conclusions...
But I thought I'd post a few links to information that reveals the extent to which mainstream American culture has become blatantly evil. First, the Fullerton Observer has kindly rendered a good public service in posting summaries of the key findings of the Mueller Report On the Investigation Into Russian Interference In the 2016 Presidential Election. At the end of their final summary, they have also kindly provided a link to audio recordings of a reading of the entire report. This means that anyone who wants to know what the report says can get it all straight from the horse's mouth - even if they don't have time to read it all.
Secondly, there are a number of new reports exposing the hypocrisy of the white American evangelical/Protestant Church, which continues to staunchly support the presidency of Donald Trump. Here's a small sample:
- New Study Exposes Hypocrisy of the Religious Right
- "Someone's Gotta Tell the Freakin' Truth": Jerry Falwell's Aides Break Their Silence
- Her Evangelical Megachurch Was Her World. Then Her Daughter Said She Was Molested by a Minister.
- Haggard's Law (Note: in posting this link, let me emphasize that I am a Bible-believing Christian. However, I object to using "God-talk" to try to gain political leverage to elect candidates to office who use the power of the State to murder dark-skinned people - or to rip the children of these dark-skinned people out of the arms of their parents in order to throw the children into cages - er, I mean, "detention centers.") (A second note: Vladimir Putin may himself be a case of Haggard's Law in action. Several years ago, during a photo op with Russian citizens, he lifted the t-shirt of a pre-adolescent boy and kissed the boy on his stomach. You can watch it here. Recently that boy, who is now a man, stated that he liked the kiss, but if you look at the linked photo, the boy seems to be surprised and slightly revolted. Maybe he decided that he liked saying he liked it more than he liked the possibility that he would be forced to drink a polonium cocktail! Putin as Катехон? Ha, ha!)
One side note: remember all the supposed "terrorist" incidents involving so-called "Arab extremists" in Europe and the United States during the last decade? These incidents had the convenient effect of turning public sentiment in Europe and the United States against immigrants - especially dark-skinned or non-Christian immigrants. Many of us wondered at the time who could be behind these attacks, because we considered them to be false flags. Having examined Russian propaganda over the last few years, I've come to a certain conclusion - a conclusion informed by the fact that Russia actively sought to build a network of regimes in the world's richest countries that worked to exclude the world's dark-skinned and/or non-Christian peoples from the wealth of these nations. Russia has also become well-known for "hybrid warfare." You draw your own conclusions...
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Being Positively Disruptive
As many readers may have noticed, I haven't spent much time in writing essays for this blog over the last three or four months. You might also have guessed from this that I've been very, very busy. While many people I know have been glued to their TV's, computers, and smartphones, addicted to the torrent of toxic drama, crazy-making and bad news being generated by a certain doofus with orange hair who now claims to be the President of the United States, I've been occupied with making some good news of my own. Let me fill you in on the details.
First, the tutoring initiative in which I am involved, which I mentioned in this post and this one, is now expanding from one location to three. Our roster of teachers has both changed and grown. I believe there are now thirteen of us, and more may be joining in the next few months. While two of our groups are continuing to focus on basic mathematics, one group is developing a science curriculum aimed at teaching appropriate technology and self-sufficiency/sustainability in the context of developing alternative institutions. That group is being led by a woman from an African-American/Asian background and a Native American woman, and they are writing a series of science experiments and activity packets aimed at youth from 10 to 20 years of age.
And we have a fourth group composed of writers, who are developing and editing a math curriculum to be used by all of our groups, complete with workbooks and worksheets. (As soon as I am done with this post, I will be working on addition and subtraction worksheets. If idleness is the devil's workshop, I won't have to worry about getting into trouble for a long time!)
On another front, a group of us at work are planning to launch a campaign to collect donations for the Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Irma. I am thinking we will present the campaign as an opportunity to spend money for a good cause instead of spending money on holiday shopping. We will also promote news sources that are providing accurate coverage of the situation in Puerto Rico, as opposed to many American news sources and the White House. My goal is to provide a positive disruption in three ways:
Lastly, it looks like I may have a few opportunities over the next couple of months to talk about resistance and related topics in front of a few audiences. It looks like my part in the resistance being mounted by oppressed people is likely to get quite a bit larger.
First, the tutoring initiative in which I am involved, which I mentioned in this post and this one, is now expanding from one location to three. Our roster of teachers has both changed and grown. I believe there are now thirteen of us, and more may be joining in the next few months. While two of our groups are continuing to focus on basic mathematics, one group is developing a science curriculum aimed at teaching appropriate technology and self-sufficiency/sustainability in the context of developing alternative institutions. That group is being led by a woman from an African-American/Asian background and a Native American woman, and they are writing a series of science experiments and activity packets aimed at youth from 10 to 20 years of age.
And we have a fourth group composed of writers, who are developing and editing a math curriculum to be used by all of our groups, complete with workbooks and worksheets. (As soon as I am done with this post, I will be working on addition and subtraction worksheets. If idleness is the devil's workshop, I won't have to worry about getting into trouble for a long time!)
On another front, a group of us at work are planning to launch a campaign to collect donations for the Puerto Rican victims of Hurricane Irma. I am thinking we will present the campaign as an opportunity to spend money for a good cause instead of spending money on holiday shopping. We will also promote news sources that are providing accurate coverage of the situation in Puerto Rico, as opposed to many American news sources and the White House. My goal is to provide a positive disruption in three ways:
- By providing concrete relief to people whom our current regime would like to starve,
- By shunting money away from the usual recipients in our consumer economy during this holiday season,
- And by providing ongoing evidence that our current regime and its President are illegitimate.
Lastly, it looks like I may have a few opportunities over the next couple of months to talk about resistance and related topics in front of a few audiences. It looks like my part in the resistance being mounted by oppressed people is likely to get quite a bit larger.
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Puerto Rico - A Humanitarian Disaster
The Federal response to the hurricane which recently devastated Puerto Rico is not unexpected. Indeed, it is symptomatic of the disease of a large swath of American society - a swath who are full of empathy toward those victims of Hurricane Harvey who happened to be wealthy and white - yet full of sleepy neglect or overt hostility toward everyone else. Now that sleepy neglect has hypnotized many Americans (but not a majority, thank God!), lost as they are in their individualism and addicted to their consumerism, while the overt hostility issues forth sporadically from the current President like projectile emesis from an infant who has been burped too vigorously. Note, though, that the hostility is provoked only when someone manages to break through the President's own sleepy indifference and his perverted preoccupation with himself. Then, if you are that someone, watch yourself, lest you get yourself spewed on.
Meanwhile, a lot of people in Puerto Rico are about to die. This is not because there are no Federal resources available to help them, but because the Federal government is now run by a bunch of rich and incompetent pigs. Decent people who have the means to find out the actual situation on the island (and not the sanitized FEMA version) should be appalled. Those evangelicals who supported (and continue to support) the President should take a look at the last half of Luke 16 before they go to bed tonight.
But let's not stop with just being appalled. Let us do what we can ourselves to contribute to disaster relief in Puerto Rico. The President, like an alcoholic absentee father, has made himself unavailable to provide for the common good. Here is a link to a page listing organizations to which you can make a donation for the relief of the suffering of the people of Puerto Rico.
Meanwhile, a lot of people in Puerto Rico are about to die. This is not because there are no Federal resources available to help them, but because the Federal government is now run by a bunch of rich and incompetent pigs. Decent people who have the means to find out the actual situation on the island (and not the sanitized FEMA version) should be appalled. Those evangelicals who supported (and continue to support) the President should take a look at the last half of Luke 16 before they go to bed tonight.
But let's not stop with just being appalled. Let us do what we can ourselves to contribute to disaster relief in Puerto Rico. The President, like an alcoholic absentee father, has made himself unavailable to provide for the common good. Here is a link to a page listing organizations to which you can make a donation for the relief of the suffering of the people of Puerto Rico.
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