Category Archives: Politics

It Wasn’t a Riot It Wasn’t a Protest; It Was an Assault

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There are those who partisanship exceeds their patriotism and insist that the assault on the Capitol Jan 6, 2021, was really a protest or a riot. They are wrong and nothing they say in the matter of the nation’s governance should be given any weight.

A protest is a collective action to bring attention to a cause or event. Protests can and often do involve illegal actions, blocking freeways and the like. Illegality in protests should be dealt with in the courts, not overly harshly nor overly leniently but the illegal actions do not transform or alter the intent of the protest, to draw attention to a subject.

A riot is an emotional outburst that is shared by multiple individuals and is often contagious. Riots have no direct goals. While an event such as an unjustified death at the hands of authorities can ignite a riot the riot itself burns like an uncontrolled fire. They often spread beyond the inciting cause, causing property damage and too often person injury and death to individuals unassociated with the perceived injustice.

An assault is violence with a goal, a purpose, something to be achieved. An assault can be highly coordinated and planned such as the invasion of fortress Europe on D-Day or as disorganized and spontaneous as impulse mugging for cash. What is central is that there is a goal to be achieved and not a message to be conveyed or uncontrolled emotional burst.

The attack on the U.S. Capital Jan 6, 2021, was an assault with the purpose, the goal, of preventing the certification of the Presidential election and thereby preventing the peaceful transfer of power from the Former President to President-elect Biden. Placing quotations around insurrection is a lie.

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The Word ‘Enemy’ is Dangerous

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A friend retweeted a Twitter posting where a conservative supposedly defined ‘woke.’ The tweet contained nothing that any linguist would consider a ‘definition’ but rather a word-salad screed about what they considered the dangerous aspects of ‘woke’ including unsupported assertions of ‘death cult’ and the like. My friend commented in his retweeting that it is was important to know ‘the enemy.’

Now, I am not going to get into the futile and unproductive argument over what is ‘woke.’ In my opinion that term is used as carelessly as ‘fascist’ was deployed by many for decades prior to our current social political crisis.

What I am fascinated with is the term ‘enemy.’ An enemy is someone or faction that you cannot reasonably work with without degrading or corrupting your own standards. The overuse of ‘enemy’ in domestic political terms leads to a breakdown of governance.

If you want to tax high income people at a greater rate than others, that doesn’t make you an enemy. Policy, in general, isn’t the basis for enmity but rather disagreement. It is possible to have serious, vigorous, and even heated debates and arguments over policy without being enemies.

However, when you describe your political opponents as wanting to ‘destroy civilization’ and ‘end the nation’ then you make it impossible to work with them. Your very language has placed them beyond the pale of acceptability and that chains your own actions.

Look at the war in Europe. Many people on both the left and the right see the vital importance in assisting a democratic and free nation in defending itself against a brutal, savage war launched by its dictatorial neighbor. And yet that assistance to held captive and withheld because to actually do the work to get it out requires working with the ‘enemy.’

On a less critical issue, keeping an insurrectionist out of the presidency, political aid is coming from those who served with the insurrection in his previous administration. I have no love for Pence. I know that given the chance he would harm those I care about with his deluded sense of morality, but I will not label him an ‘enemy’ making it impossible to work with him.  I will accept his assistance but never forget what it is he is and what he would want to achieve.

The word ‘enemy’ is dangerous and should be applied quite carefully.

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Believe in Something, Do not Simply Oppose

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The title of this post is deceptively simple. Particularly when it comes to politics, everyone believes in something and by believing in that thing they come to opposes those who do not.

But therein lies the trap.

Once you are fixed on those who oppose you, it is so much easier to keep them in your sights than to question yourself or your fellow travelers. This sets you up to follow your fellow travelers down terrible paths because each and every one of you continue to stand firm against those you oppose.

My first election was back in 1980 and I voted Reagan over Carter. I did not believe Carter to be a bad man, but I did believe that he was in over his head. My political path went along with the GOP but even then, I took care to keep my own head. I never supported the more religious aspects of the party and there were times when my votes when to the Democratic politicians over such issues. I have always known that I supported equality, the right to choose, and other programs that set me apart. I cannot be dogmatic.

Knowing what I believed to be right and wrong made it possible for me to see that the GOP had taken a terrible turn when it embraced torture. My conservative friends saw me as a ‘one issue’ voter when I walked away from the GOP over that, but it is not that the ‘one issue’ was torture but rather it was right and wrong. (I had argued passionately against the invasion of Iraq.)

The follow the crowd mentality that continued to support the party after the torture debacle is *in part* what helped the party to fall into line behind Trump.

My conservative friends who have spent their entire political lives opposing the Democratic party have lost their way. If you could travel backwards in time to 1990’s and warn them that as they supported the impeachment of Clinton and the endless investigations of the couple that in the future, they would support an obvious conman and fraud who gave support to Russia as it invaded its neighbors they would steadfastly and with utter confidence tell you that would never happen. That their support of the GOP has limits. But of course, it doesn’t because the GOP continues to oppose the Democratic Party. Fixate on your opponents and you will lose yourself.

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Peer Pressure Isn’t Just Teenagers

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We tend to think of ‘peer pressure’ as something that is a trouble for teenagers. A scene in a badly scripted After School movie where the bad kid Tommy tells the good kid Jimmy that if he wants to be cool Jimmy needs to take a drag on the joint. Of course, it doesn’t work like that in real life at all. It’s not so much as pressure from one or two people as much as it is the Fear of Missing Out. People are doing something, having fun, being social. It’s rare that anyone verbally chastises someone into participating but rather the need to maintain the social life, to be accepted, to be with the group instead of outside it that sweeps people along. It’s far less ‘pressure’ as it is a swift river’s current. it can be fought but it is so much easier to flow with the waters.

This applies to adult as much as it applies to teenagers. It is a major component of why so many rational normal Republicans now move with Trump.

Oh, there are the true Trumpists, authoritarians and neo-fascists for whom the dream of state power is a one that frightens the rest of us, but I do believe that they are the minority. The trouble is that to maintain their social lives, their social contacts, and to avoid being ostracized by their friends and peers far too many simply swim with the current. They have lived their entire adult lives with the concept that the Democrats are not just wrong but evil. It’s beyond their imagination and conception that they are now the anti-Americans. So, despite their criticisms of Bill Clinton for dodging the draft, breaking the law, or unproved accusations of sexual assault and grifty financial dealings, or their charges that Obama was an unready novice with over inflated ego, they have wedded themselves to Trump. The hypocrisy of their support is unseen they are drowned in the swift river of the need to be accepted by their peers and our nation is worse off because of their weakness.

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GOP, Look in the Mirror.

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At the end of the 1970s Conservatives criticized President Carter for his lackluster response to Russian aggression with the invasion of its neighbor, Afghanistan.

During the 1980s a common critique of the Democratic party by the GOP was that the liberal of the party were too favorably inclined to our geo-political rivals the Russians.

By the 1990s and the collapse of the Soviets GOP found new failing to launch at their political opponents. President Clinton they charged was a guilty of financial fraud, despite a massive investigation that yielded no proof of this, and a sexual predator, lacking the moral standing to be president. When Clinton foolishly committed perjury over his sexual dalliances the battle cry became ‘rule of law.’ Impeachment they insisted was required for a president that held the law in such contempt.

With the new century the GOP once again shifted in which traits made their political foes utterly unacceptable. President Obama, in addition to being a narcissist, was at times a ruthless Chicago politician and a naive neophyte easily manipulated by the forces around him. A fool easily manipulated by enemies of America when they stroked his over inflated ego.

And where is the GOP today? Slavishly devoted to a man that shows utter deference to the Russian regime, who praised the slaughter of people peacefully demonstrating for freedom as ‘strength.’ Who defrauds small businesses and individuals. A man so egotistical that everything must be about himself. A man who tried to overthrow a free, fair, and legitimate election in order to illegally retain power and who has been found accountable in court for sexual assault.

All the major criticisms the conservatives have hurled with disdain and hate at their opponents that have embraced in their strong man. Everything that said mattered was nothing more than a lie.

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The Multi-Factor Hypocrisy of the GOP

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Back in the 1980s I can clearly recall several of my conservative/libertarian friends asserting with utter confidence that the people who voted for liberal parties only did so out of self-interest. That the goodies distributed by the liberal essentially ‘bought’ the votes of their supporter while the conservative electorate were motivated by principals and devotion to constitutional order.

As Luke Skywalker has said, ‘Every word of that is wrong.’

The GOP has been exposed as hypocrites on every vector of their supposed principals.

As the party lines up behind a candidate that scoffs at the law and the constitution it is clear that the only thing that motivates them is the desire to get what they personally want. Principals are for suckers.

Tax cuts for the wealthy.

Deregulation of the industrialists.

Oppression of minorities for the authoritarians.

And guns for the enthusiasts.

All other considerations secondary. Constitution expendable.

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The End of the Non-Primary?

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Today as I write this the first votes in the first primary for the 2024 presidential election are being cast. Last week was the Iowa caucuses in which, braving truly terrible weather, Trump’s supporter gave him a victory with massive margins. Today it is likely that in New Hampshire Trump’s only remaining opponent, the ethically chameleon Nikki Halley, to his dominance will be swept aside. OH, there is a small possibility that Nikki will squeak out a tiny number of votes more than Trump. The state is notorious for knifing the winner of the Iowa contest, the electorate there is made up of much greater numbers of the politically moderate and it is a contest where it is easy for people to cross over and vote in the primary that does not match their political party. Clawing each and every vote from these non-Trumpist could possibly push her just barely ahead of Trump, but that is meaningless.

For one, Trump never loses. He is only the winner, or he is cheated. A GOP electorate that has been trained and fashioned to accept charges of ‘rigged’ on trump’s behalf means that a marginally victory is no victory at all. If she fights that she actually won it sinks her utterly with the base and if she doesn’t fight, well, then she loses.

It is also meaningless because there are no other states in the primary where she can replicate even such a tiny victory. Any sort of ‘victory’ here only prolongs the terminal state of her campaign. She’s a dead pol with only an illusion of life.

The GOP is truly and utterly Trump’s party. Policy doesn’t matter, principal doesn’t matter, laws do not matter, the only goal is Trump’s goal, and he serves only himself. I fervently hope that he never returns to any sort of political power, that the GOP is crushed in November to such an utter ruin that it is forced to rebuild and perhaps be reborn a saner party.

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A Party of Quislings

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Saturday marked the 3rd anniversary of the violent attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 US Presidential election. For a moment, and only a fleeting moment, many elected Republicans saw clearly that their party’s leader was a criminal desperate to retain power that had been duly, legally, and properly removed from his grasp. The moment passed and now the entire rotten party is as corrupt as depraved and as unworthy of the American people as their mentally addled and emotionally stunted leader.

Of course, they do not see it that way. It has been illuminating to watch ‘conservatives’ online twist, distorted and invert the traits and characteristics of their political opponents. In their projection it is Joe Biden that is the corrupt criminal, trading political access for cash. It is Joe Biden twisted and warped with anger. It is Joe Biden that is that violates the constitution and that strips the rights away from the people. Each of these imagined ‘charges’ is of course the reality of Donald Trump but the dissonance between what they want, their own selfish policies and the vehicle that must lash themselves to in order to get it breaks their minds and forces the funhouse mirror interpretation of reality, one where all their crimes are neatly placed on the shoulders of others leaving their hands clean and their morality unblemished.

But the truth remains.

It is the Republican party that has an utter disregard for the rule of law.

It is the Republican Party that strips people of their rights.

It is the Republican Party that has contempt for our two centuries of democratic rule.

It is th Republican Party that capitulates and appeases out enemies and the enemies of freedom around the globe.

They are a party of Quislings.

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An Unimaginable Future

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I was born in the early 1960s making be part of the tail-end of that massive generation the Baby Boomers. Bright beckoning futures such as Star Trek filled my childhood while the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation hovered over our heads. For decades the go-to and standby baddies of most fiction was the menacing duplicitous and seemingly everywhere conspiracy of International Communism as exported to ever trouble spot around the globe by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but we just called it Russia.

The United States led the ‘Free World’ against the spreading, infecting, and corrupting influence, and subversion of freedom by Russia. Our allies, while not always endeared to out ways and over-sized personalities, stood shoulder to shoulder with us in that fight, united in the belief that freedom was a universal good. Even if we, and I mean all of the allies, more often than we’d ever admit, fell short of that lofty ideal. The striving for that goal, for a more perfect realization of freedom for humanity, for the rights of self-determination, is what stood as apart from the vast police states of Russia and her brood of puppet nations.

Throughout the 1980s I had friends across the American Political spectrum and my conservative ones were steadfast in the belief that Russia posed a threat to democracy and freedom. That Russian intelligence services infiltrated and manipulated groups in our open society creating conflict and divisions that weakened the ‘free world.’ They were right. After the fall of the USSR so much came to light about their massive operations attempting to exploit both our divisions and our freedoms against us. My conservative friends crowed in being proved right.

And now I live in a future that would have been unimaginable to all of us in the 1980s. I don’t mean the power computers we carry about in our pockets like so many dimes, nor do I mean the fantastic imagery we created with keystrokes, or that we can now launch and land rockets as we envisioned in the SF movies of the 1950s.

No, I mean that those same conservatives who crowed so loudly about their correct detection of the threats to our freedoms have so willingly, so enthusiastically wedded themselves to the very same threat. That violations of the constitutional order and attempts to steal power from legitimate free and fair elections are swept away as mere distraction of ‘personality.’

Back in the 1980s a common criticism of the left from my conservative friends was that the people on the left were only voting for their own selfish interests, free food, and money from the teat of the government. It is clear now that this charge is quite accurate to the conservatives. All professed dedication to the ideals of democracy and the ‘free world’ are casually overthrown for the party that promises to keep delivering the goodies you want. Maybe those goodies are tax cuts and commerce unrestrained by the public good. Maybe it’s the power to compel people to live by your own hypocritical ethics. Or perhaps it’s the promise to not encumber your choice in firearms. Whatever the ‘goodie’ it is clear that the ideals of Freedom are disposable when weight against that selfish interest.

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The Current War in the Middle East

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I have not a lot to say about the matter because I am fully aware of just how little I know, how little I understand, and how terribly complex the entire situation is. I have not the arrogance to presume the wisdom to proscribe solutions. I am as Theodoen when in the film he utters ‘What can men do against such reckless hate?’

To my eye there is no doubt that injustice has been perpetrated by all involved parties, and it is equally clear that not all injustices are anywhere close to equal.

Because one side in a conflict is evil or commits evil does not absolve its opponents or elevate them to be ‘good.’ Evil committed remains evil.

It does seem to me that both sides are trapped by the delusion that they can with acts of cruelty, vengeance, and malice ‘break the spirit’ or their enemies. This is such a rare occurrence as to be nearly unheard of. The Blitz did not break the British, nor did indiscriminate bombing break the Germans. Even in the face of Atomic horrors the Japanese people would have continued to fight, their spirit had not been broken, only a rational judgement by some their leaders and their Emperor summoned up the courage to surrender. Atrocities will not break the Israelis and cruelties will not break the Palestinians. We can only hope and work for the day when rational reasoned judgment finally brings a lasting peace because peace is never won by punishing vengeance.

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