When people in 2050 look back, they will acknowledge this was a year of note, an ending and a beginning. Congressional Dems said no more. The case was closed on climate crisis denial. You can't fix it if you don't admit it.
Ending the fossil fuel industry denial took all this valuable time. Now we need to hold them accountable for what they knew about the damage and failed to stop. We can begin to deny permits for new fossil fuel projects by using their own words. Maybe they do care about what happens to their great-grandchildren. During the Congressional hearings, Representative Katie Porter did a brilliant job of showing how greedy they are with the land leases. It was a big F-you.
Just how "bought-off" is Congress? I don't feel that way about my representatives. Yet, we know the money in politics is evil just for making us doubt our political system. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. And so we fight on....
Ain't Katie awesome?! Sadly, irrelevant. As long as she has horns and a tail per 40 percent, and 40 percent own 60 pct. of Senate and State legislatures, how you gon' win that fight?
Another great perspective on the root cause of all the really bad things in the world. No one has said it better, and your solution is the most succinct answer that describes exactly what needs to be done- “There is only one force that can make this happen now: citizen outrage.”
The good news is, there is plenty of citizen outrage to go around and it can be used as a force for goodness (for e.g., to work with our public sector decision-makers to promote our general welfare and protect us from those who would do things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests.)
There is an abundance of citizen outrage just waiting to be inspired and networked by the right set of progressive leaders. These leaders need to collaborate with a uniform message to attract 3.5% of our citizens by promoting the right purpose with, of course, great framing/branding/messaging and technology (which makes it pretty easy to laser focus citizen outrage using persistent nonviolent resistance and most of our First Amendment rights). The purpose is to elect candidates that will pledge to work with our citizens to promote our general welfare using best practice-based solutions, and protect us from the bad guys. In addition, to get my vote a candidate must pledge to Move To Amend if elected, support 100% public campaign financing, and work to build a role model public education system as well as a role model public healthcare system.
If "citizen outrage" correlates to all Thom's paragraphs beginning with "the majority of Americans," what we have here is evidence that the grand idea of America is toast. It took many peons to maintain the lifestyle of barons and princes. Feudalism and similar systems seem to be history's norm. Numbers mostly don't count, historically speaking. Who has the most guns in America?
I regard “citizen outrage” as a kind of human “activated complex” in that it is the state that millions of Americans find ourselves in, and it won’t take much to inspire us to get active. I find that there are three things that bode well for the future if we can effectively use our citizens’ outrage. First, there is more citizen outrage now than in any other time (i.e., plenty of supply). Second, being able to focus that outrage on doing good things should be pretty easy with contemporary knowledge and technology. Third, assuming that our government’s purpose is to promote our general welfare and protect us from oligarchs, we already know how to best meet that purpose through role model education and all the goodness that that would generate.
Now we just need our progressive leaders to show 12 million of us how we can use our First Amendment rights to neutralize the oligarchs’ power over our government’s decision-makers.
As always, it all comes down to what is learned. Basically we just need to motivate 3.5% of our fellow Americans to learn that we’ve been flimflammed as well as learn how to neutralize the oligarchs’ power over our government’s decision-makers. Maybe Thom could offer everyone a Christmas discount when one buys all of his Hidden History books. If you read them and don’t understand the oligarchs’ grifting ways and why we need to care, you have learned to be bad at learning.
As a dear friend, who trekked from east Prussia as Russian invasion moved west during WW2 with a horse cart, said to me about voting, "you may not care about politics but politics cares about you".
Here's one part of my battle plan: I tell every young person I know that politics, no matter how much you hate it or it bores you, affects your life in every way and every day. Then you tell them again and give them examples. Time will end the stranglehold of the 40%. The youth and the diverse people of this nation will reclaim our democracy from their cold, dead hands.
Representative Katie Porter is 47-ish, she will make a great president some time around 2040.
When people in 2050 look back, they will acknowledge this was a year of note, an ending and a beginning. Congressional Dems said no more. The case was closed on climate crisis denial. You can't fix it if you don't admit it.
Ending the fossil fuel industry denial took all this valuable time. Now we need to hold them accountable for what they knew about the damage and failed to stop. We can begin to deny permits for new fossil fuel projects by using their own words. Maybe they do care about what happens to their great-grandchildren. During the Congressional hearings, Representative Katie Porter did a brilliant job of showing how greedy they are with the land leases. It was a big F-you.
Just how "bought-off" is Congress? I don't feel that way about my representatives. Yet, we know the money in politics is evil just for making us doubt our political system. Corporations are not people. Money is not speech. And so we fight on....
Ain't Katie awesome?! Sadly, irrelevant. As long as she has horns and a tail per 40 percent, and 40 percent own 60 pct. of Senate and State legislatures, how you gon' win that fight?
Another great perspective on the root cause of all the really bad things in the world. No one has said it better, and your solution is the most succinct answer that describes exactly what needs to be done- “There is only one force that can make this happen now: citizen outrage.”
The good news is, there is plenty of citizen outrage to go around and it can be used as a force for goodness (for e.g., to work with our public sector decision-makers to promote our general welfare and protect us from those who would do things adverse to our rights and our communities’ interests.)
There is an abundance of citizen outrage just waiting to be inspired and networked by the right set of progressive leaders. These leaders need to collaborate with a uniform message to attract 3.5% of our citizens by promoting the right purpose with, of course, great framing/branding/messaging and technology (which makes it pretty easy to laser focus citizen outrage using persistent nonviolent resistance and most of our First Amendment rights). The purpose is to elect candidates that will pledge to work with our citizens to promote our general welfare using best practice-based solutions, and protect us from the bad guys. In addition, to get my vote a candidate must pledge to Move To Amend if elected, support 100% public campaign financing, and work to build a role model public education system as well as a role model public healthcare system.
If "citizen outrage" correlates to all Thom's paragraphs beginning with "the majority of Americans," what we have here is evidence that the grand idea of America is toast. It took many peons to maintain the lifestyle of barons and princes. Feudalism and similar systems seem to be history's norm. Numbers mostly don't count, historically speaking. Who has the most guns in America?
I regard “citizen outrage” as a kind of human “activated complex” in that it is the state that millions of Americans find ourselves in, and it won’t take much to inspire us to get active. I find that there are three things that bode well for the future if we can effectively use our citizens’ outrage. First, there is more citizen outrage now than in any other time (i.e., plenty of supply). Second, being able to focus that outrage on doing good things should be pretty easy with contemporary knowledge and technology. Third, assuming that our government’s purpose is to promote our general welfare and protect us from oligarchs, we already know how to best meet that purpose through role model education and all the goodness that that would generate.
Now we just need our progressive leaders to show 12 million of us how we can use our First Amendment rights to neutralize the oligarchs’ power over our government’s decision-makers.
As always, it all comes down to what is learned. Basically we just need to motivate 3.5% of our fellow Americans to learn that we’ve been flimflammed as well as learn how to neutralize the oligarchs’ power over our government’s decision-makers. Maybe Thom could offer everyone a Christmas discount when one buys all of his Hidden History books. If you read them and don’t understand the oligarchs’ grifting ways and why we need to care, you have learned to be bad at learning.
As a dear friend, who trekked from east Prussia as Russian invasion moved west during WW2 with a horse cart, said to me about voting, "you may not care about politics but politics cares about you".
For Daphne and all.
Here's one part of my battle plan: I tell every young person I know that politics, no matter how much you hate it or it bores you, affects your life in every way and every day. Then you tell them again and give them examples. Time will end the stranglehold of the 40%. The youth and the diverse people of this nation will reclaim our democracy from their cold, dead hands.
Representative Katie Porter is 47-ish, she will make a great president some time around 2040.