Any of us lost in this accelerating abyss of bewilderment - wondering why so much of life has become untenable on so many different levels - will find the answers right here in this piece by Thom Hartmann.
The "who" and "how" of dark forces are not so invisible after reading this..
I don't believe there is a supernatural force holding us back. Also not a force of nature. In my lifetime, our knowledge base has expanded faster than in any other time of history. We've filled in the periodic table and identify millions of "new" objects in the cosmos, and identify previously unknown subatomic particles. We spent years trying to find the top quark and Higgs boson. ...only to find out there's even more we don't know.
I'm not a politician. But is seems that the only path we]we have is we still have a semblance of democracy and if we sweep out the Barbarians, the "middle class could be revitalized, homelessness ended, and medical and student debt would become things of the past — as they are in every other developed country in the world."
I'm not a psychiatrist but when people say they're fearful and depressed I recommend a little Gestalt therapy.... register Democrats and get happy.
Millions of unregistered folk trend heavily Democratic. Also millions of persuadable Democrats need GOTV.
It’s not magic, but they TRY to keep Citizen’s United in the shadows — not that it’s not a very well known entity, but it’s not clearly understood among those who don’t care to pay attention to such things. People are aware that it empowers spending money, but Thom tells us how that is affecting everything …
Get those Democratic votes out in November. They are the medicine for this dis-ease ..
“If Citizens United were reversed — either by Congress or expanding the Supreme Court — and we went back to politicians having to answer to their voters rather than their largest donors, America could quickly get back on track.”… for this to be successful… we MUST WIN… in November!!!
Like I said the other day, the 14th amendment did not confer "personhood" on entities without flesh and blood. If I were Garland I'd ask for a rehearing on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886). Either a mistake in the headnote or outright fraud.
Spot on. Citizens United is blocking progress on climate, guns, healthcare and just about all life-affirming choices for governance. Greed is ugly and powerful. My money is on the American people to get to the polls in November so we can end the bribery system republicans have put in place.
The invisible dark force has always been within our societies. It is greed. I have been watching a series on YouTube called "Fall of Civilizations." Episode seven, Songhei of West Africa, is a good example of the combination of climate, greed, and technology that brought down a once thriving civilization. This episode includes a discussion of imperialism and the how and why the power is lost by one empire and is taken by another. Of course, I must compare our time and place to what has happened before.
Hartmann has insight into our problems and agree that Citizens United must be reversed, but there is something else about ourselves that must be understood before we break the cycle of climbing to great heights as a civilization and then tumbling backwards. Paul Cooper, the producer of "Fall of Civilizations included the fact that 20 percent of the wealthiest are considered to be psychopaths while only one percent of the general population are considered to fit the diagnosis. I'm guessing most of the poor who are psychopaths are in prison. Watching Trump maneuver through the Justice system, I'm starting to understand why our society can't move forward with what we need for the good of all.
This picture is complicated by the sad reality that someone with Clarence Thomas' mindset probably doesn't always need to be bribed because he is a true believer who would be inclined to deny climate destabilization is manmade and whose decisions are all based on twisted, reactionary, superstitious, and religious doctrine and dogma. He represents millions of people who think like he does and who see liberals, Democrats, and "woke" people as being controlled by the evil invisible force of Satan. Our problem is much bigger than bribery, although there is every reason to put an immediate end to it and that should be the starting point.
Thomas did not get bribed to make decisions. He got paid for work well done. The only hope is that the Dems sweep the election, get rid of the filibuster and expand the court. Thomas and Alito are just crazy. The 3 Trump/McConnell appointees are just Republican attack dogs who got their Constitutional training in exclusive, private, Catholic prep schools. God-fearing people who fear Black, Brown and poor people even more.
Thomas is the racist instrument for turning back the clock on all civil rights gains, except Loving v Virginia. He is the Steven, the house slave, that drinks brandy with his master and coaches him how to deal with recalcitrant field slaves in Django Unchained, only one better he has a white wife and thinks that he has arrived.
I find it wortha study that Thomas, Herschel Walker, Tim Scott, Candace Owens, Mark Robinson, Byron Donalds, Kanye and 99% of all Quisling Tump humpers are married to or have white lovers.
The climate does change periodically without human made causes. But that doesn't mean we're not causing the current warming and erratic changes that are happening. The problem is that we don't have a system of cooperation to deal with whatever threatens humanity whether it is a drought lasting for generations or an asteroid. Those at the top always try to stay there at the expense of everyone else, even if it means everything is destroyed. How do we keep mentally ill people from acquiring so much money that they can take power in the first place?
Assuming that your question is not just rhetorical, I think Thom has provided answers in his book which is currently being offered a chapter at a time on Sunday and daily in his daily take and live commentary. Going back to higher rates of taxation on corporations and on wealth would make a huge difference. Laws which limit ownership of multiple types of media and which prohibit dark money would also help. However, a more lasting solution involves education and changing perceptions within society of greed, right-wing fallacies, and the supposed superiority of certain people based on wealth and ethnicity, race, or religion. Nothing is being done along those lines because schooling is in the grip of reactionaries and super-moralists as a consequence of the power inappropriately allocated to authoritarians by school attendance laws which stupidly assign responsibility for defining what happens in schools to state executives, officials, and their jock buddies.
When we had a nuclear crisis over Three Mile Island, we argued that the Pa. Supreme Court should be sentenced to live there. Come the revolution, the Supreme Court should be moved to Paradise California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)
Great start with the much needed take down of fossil fuel advertising, in all its many and varied forms, colors, shapes (usually attractive young healthy models), and iterations. As for the rest of the well constructed wish list, you were right to throw in the towel with the corrupt SCOTUS Citizens United decision. With Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald's insurrection in 2021, for which he has yet to be held accountable, and with his chief promoter, Steve Bannon, still out running scot free, why should any of us believe that the current government is able/willing to mete out justice to the super-rich? Voting Blue in November is our last hope.
But GOP have only represented the rich for over 100 years. Let's hope if Biden gets re-elected he doesn't appoint people like Garland to the two Supreme Court seats and let's hope he fires Garland!
Oligopolies in one industry tend to promote consolidation in others. One concern is the rise of the “big three” investment houses, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Together, these firms now manage around $22 trillion in assets, including much of America’s retirement savings, and a big chunk of the stock market.
Sharma, Ruchir. What Went Wrong with Capitalism (p. 187). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
We are no longer citizens of anything! We are subjects moved around and controlled by money. Mammon is our god, our illusion. He doesn't care if we are a democracy or an autocracy. Her followers will act the same with either. When a people discard and change their god, they suffer greatly. "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood, where the straight path no longer lay." ~Dante There may not be a line in all of literature that describes us any better. We are lost, searching for a god to replace Mammon. We are in a state where our imagination has failed us!
David Richardson: Google is your friend. I did a deep dive as to who owns who in broadcast and cable media, in Pharmaceuticals and Health care, in defense, and in almost all segments of our economy and the names Vanguard, Black Rock and State Street keep coming up as the primary institutional investors.
The major individual investors are also CEO's and or chairman, Robert Igor, Newhouse Family, Brian L Roberts
Was it Grover Cleveland that said, The business of Americ is Business?
I see a ship called USA, Inc, with a Captain elected every four years, and a crew elected every 2 years with captains mast elected every six years, the passengers have the say on who the owners vet for captain and crew. With a new Captain the ship drifts port or starboard, and with a new captain the course is righted, despite the course corrections and drift, the destination stays true
USA Inc is a joint venture enterprise, the shareholders can be determined if you drill down.
Vanguard, Black Rock, State Street and a few others own or control most of America, but are themselves Corporations with CEO's and Board of Directors.
Board of directors are often CEO's of other companies and sit on other board of directors.
Imagine a Limousine stopping at Weyerhauser, picking up it's CEO or Chairman, then stopping at Boeing and picking up it's CEO, then stopping at Starbucks, then Microsoft, then Adobe, etc until it has picked up the entire board of Vanguard. This is only an example, I haven't delved into the composition of Vanguard.
Calvin Coolidge! The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: “This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone….
Mellon: "I've made a bet—quite a large one—that I can make you say three words.”
Russia has a very different culture than the west. A history of invasion, submission to a strong man, started with the sons of Jenghis Khan, who left their DNA in a good swath of the population. the Tsars, Ivan the Terrible, the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin ad now Putin
The culture has never really experience liberty,equality, fraternity, their legacy, their expectation is that of the all powerful, all seeing strongman., and perfect supplicants for the state sanctioned agents they call Priests.
They don't know what do with freedom, our constitution provides them a license to steal and murder, it is like letting a kid loose in a candy store
Russians are inured to autocracy and cruelty. Americans aren't. There will be a period of orgasm, the Christian nationalists revel in their power, but ti will pass, once their standard of living deteriorates and the once orgasmic Trump humper, discover that dissent will not be tolerated.
The real force behind MAGA, and behind every authoritarian government in the world is the desire for the very, very rich, to make sure that they control the governments so they can not only protect their wealth, they can increase it. Power=Money=Power=Money. In the US, this began with Reagan's "Greed is good.". The wealth gap had been closing and the middle class increasing until then. He changed the tax laws and attacked unions. The Republicans have gone from being "conservatives" to being the party of total fraud and corruption, and they are not ashamed of doing it.
Citizens United was the result of years of bribing the court. The court we have now obviously will to let people die in mass shootings just so a few people can make money selling machine guns. But it’s more than that. They want to keep the population divided and scared so they can be exploited to work for low wages and pay high rents. Read about how the heads of the Steward Hospital chain took all the money and let the hospitals and patients die. Then they pay Trump, Congress, and the judges. Corruption all the way down.
The fiction of the Supreme Court, It is like the Golem of the rabbincal tale. It doesn't exist until given life by breathing it's name. Andrew Jackson, a genocidal racist, none the less nailed it, when Chief Marshall Justice ruled that Indian Removal Act was unconstitutional. He said Justice Marshal has ruled now let him enforce his ruing.
Governor Abbot of Texas told the Supreme court to go get fucked, and has not suffered any consequences. Red states will ignore any ruling of the supreme court that they don't like, and they will get away with it The Court ruled against Alabama's redistricting map, but they went ahead anyway.
Faubus told SCOTUS to go fuck themselves when the ruled against them in Brown v Board of Education. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to escort the kids into Little Rock high, and mobilized the National Guard, which Faubus had turned out to keep the kids out.
Only Democrats are the fools which honor SCOTUS rulings. The executive has power that it is afraid to use, and if SCOTUS rules against them, then do what Texas and Alabama have done, ignore them
The enemies of Democracy are using the freedoms democracy provides to destroy democracy.
I think there is already a large movement of people who are not only disregarding but opposing SCOTUS decisions. Here is Mass we invite people to come for abortions and we protect their privacy and protect the clinics. We also have strict gun laws and outlaw bump stocks. We also have almost universal healthcare, a decent tax structure, the best free public suburban education, a vibrant well-paying economy. We are doing our best to overcome our racist past. We have a gay woman governor, and women in most of our highest offices. there are certainly lots of flaws, as it is impossible to afford a house, but we are protecting ourselves from the worst of what could happen.
Earth , Wind , Fire & Water . Aristotle proposed a Fifth Element - one that was less tangible but certainly around . Science Fiction came up with The Fifth Element
represented by the life force itself .
Apparently we now have discovered
another form of dark matter - exemplified
by the billionaire class- $ $ $ .
Will the life force prevail- or will we be sucked into the black hole ?
The aristocracy of today likes it the way it was back in the dark ages! When anyone who disagreed with them could be sent down to the dungeon and tortured!
The Trump cult have been conditioned to be ungrateful, sadistic narcissists, by their elders who have been brainwashed by their elders and it usually starts in their church. There is a lot of Satan floating around organized religion. A dark invisible Force! Exposing the children to supernatural or insane logic is child abuse!
Agreed. Fundamentalism of any kind insists on monotheistic final solutions. All light and no darkness or vice versa. In Xtian forms this teaching creates a stark dualism within which there are White hats (eg KKK) and Black hats (eg Witches). Such simple minded worldviews always invoke their own destruction. When such ignorant individuals grab social power the trick is learning how to avoid direct conflict, upon which they thrive, and therein going down with them. The Enlightenment philosophies that informed the American Experiment were an initial attempt to do just that. No easy answers, that is their weakness, just a constant revolutionary work in progress.
The battle of those owning fossil fuel and the adjacent products is just getting started. First came the students and divestment and now a "big ask" that the advertising be banned. Fantastic, and good-on Secretary General Guterres!. Let there be light to combat the darkness. That's you Thom, every-damn-day, so thanks.
Speaking of darkness, there was an article in Newsweek about states under air quality alerts: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma. Several more have air quality alerts, but these four asked their citizens to fuel-up at specific times due to extreme heat. I honestly did not know this was a "thing". Here is the why from a GOOGLE search:
"Refuel in the evening after 7:00 p.m., so fuel vapors will not have a chance to "cook" during the hottest part of the day, turning into ozone. 3) When refueling your car, stop at the click - when the nozzle clicks off. Don't overfill or drip fuel. Spilled fuel creates ozone-causing vapors as it evaporates."
Or one could do their best to buy an electric car as soon as they could afford it. My old hybrid will probably be replaced by a used EV if it dies before I do. It won't be a Tesla---that particular billionaire proves your point perfectly.
The big money horse is already out of the barn. We can perhaps gain on it with a blue November, but given our corrupt SCOTUS, I doubt it will be caught and tamed by anything consistent with democracy and the rule of law. For most of human history, force and violence have been the major change agents for good as well as ill. We may be close to seeing that here yet again, bad and unpredictable in outcome though that will be. Because our current system will not break the power of the morbidly rich. No matter what happens in November.
Earth , Wind , Fire & Water . Aristotle proposed a Fifth Element - one that was less tangible but certainly around . Science Fiction came up with The Fifth Element
represented by the life force itself .
Apparently we now have discovered
another form of dark matter - exemplified
by the billionaire class- $ $ $ .
Will the life force prevail- or will we be sucked into the black hole ?
One can hope that an expanded Supreme Court would engage in an anti-corruption clean up to reverse decisions based on imaginary facts, non-existent history, and the amicus brief mill.
Increasing the # of justices on the supreme court might be a temporary solution but unless it is coupled with really strong legal requirements for ethical behavior it is NOT the needed solution.
Largely through your writings, Mr. Hartmann, but also through the likes of Robert Reich, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Bernie Sanders and more, your closing understatement, while sardonic, is also very direct and simple. VERY little of this prescriptive talk comes from sitting congressmen, governors, or presidents. Through Whitehouse came his Scheme talks which illuminated how much of a long game gaining control of SCOTUS was, and to what end it was gained. Thomas and Alito ARE brazen in their "above it all" stances, and that IS in the mainstream, but The Scheme is decidedly NOT. Nor is what you reveal. Give the urgency of what the stakes ARE this year that make the LAST two elections feel trivial, why is these revelations not forthcoming from the Democratic leadership? "All we have to do" can be achieved, against all odds, of we take back the House, hold the Senate and the Presidency, so WHY isn't this insidious coup being laid bare and talked about on every news show, every single weekend, every single day? What, it hasn't gotten to be important enough yet?
I have come to accept that The Matrix is real. But the truth is, it doesn't require the almighty power of The One. It requires are a whole shit load of leaders to start making noise as if they've talked about this, as if they KNOW about this. And what's meant by references to the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers. NOBODY (except the few in the "radical left") talks about the transferred TRILLIONS since Reagan, and I have yet to see the evidence that they care enough to fix it.
You DO educate, Thom. But you also surely do enflame and rankle and pull back the curtains of those who claim to be opposed to the evils revealed but then act like we're too stupid to understand the one underlying root cause of so much that, if fixed, would fix EVERYTHING.
Any of us lost in this accelerating abyss of bewilderment - wondering why so much of life has become untenable on so many different levels - will find the answers right here in this piece by Thom Hartmann.
The "who" and "how" of dark forces are not so invisible after reading this..
I don't believe there is a supernatural force holding us back. Also not a force of nature. In my lifetime, our knowledge base has expanded faster than in any other time of history. We've filled in the periodic table and identify millions of "new" objects in the cosmos, and identify previously unknown subatomic particles. We spent years trying to find the top quark and Higgs boson. ...only to find out there's even more we don't know.
I'm not a politician. But is seems that the only path we]we have is we still have a semblance of democracy and if we sweep out the Barbarians, the "middle class could be revitalized, homelessness ended, and medical and student debt would become things of the past — as they are in every other developed country in the world."
I'm not a psychiatrist but when people say they're fearful and depressed I recommend a little Gestalt therapy.... register Democrats and get happy.
Millions of unregistered folk trend heavily Democratic. Also millions of persuadable Democrats need GOTV.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/
It’s not magic, but they TRY to keep Citizen’s United in the shadows — not that it’s not a very well known entity, but it’s not clearly understood among those who don’t care to pay attention to such things. People are aware that it empowers spending money, but Thom tells us how that is affecting everything …
Get those Democratic votes out in November. They are the medicine for this dis-ease ..
“If Citizens United were reversed — either by Congress or expanding the Supreme Court — and we went back to politicians having to answer to their voters rather than their largest donors, America could quickly get back on track.”… for this to be successful… we MUST WIN… in November!!!
Like I said the other day, the 14th amendment did not confer "personhood" on entities without flesh and blood. If I were Garland I'd ask for a rehearing on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886). Either a mistake in the headnote or outright fraud.
Spot on. Citizens United is blocking progress on climate, guns, healthcare and just about all life-affirming choices for governance. Greed is ugly and powerful. My money is on the American people to get to the polls in November so we can end the bribery system republicans have put in place.
🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻(Excellent commentary!)
The invisible dark force has always been within our societies. It is greed. I have been watching a series on YouTube called "Fall of Civilizations." Episode seven, Songhei of West Africa, is a good example of the combination of climate, greed, and technology that brought down a once thriving civilization. This episode includes a discussion of imperialism and the how and why the power is lost by one empire and is taken by another. Of course, I must compare our time and place to what has happened before.
Hartmann has insight into our problems and agree that Citizens United must be reversed, but there is something else about ourselves that must be understood before we break the cycle of climbing to great heights as a civilization and then tumbling backwards. Paul Cooper, the producer of "Fall of Civilizations included the fact that 20 percent of the wealthiest are considered to be psychopaths while only one percent of the general population are considered to fit the diagnosis. I'm guessing most of the poor who are psychopaths are in prison. Watching Trump maneuver through the Justice system, I'm starting to understand why our society can't move forward with what we need for the good of all.
This picture is complicated by the sad reality that someone with Clarence Thomas' mindset probably doesn't always need to be bribed because he is a true believer who would be inclined to deny climate destabilization is manmade and whose decisions are all based on twisted, reactionary, superstitious, and religious doctrine and dogma. He represents millions of people who think like he does and who see liberals, Democrats, and "woke" people as being controlled by the evil invisible force of Satan. Our problem is much bigger than bribery, although there is every reason to put an immediate end to it and that should be the starting point.
Thomas did not get bribed to make decisions. He got paid for work well done. The only hope is that the Dems sweep the election, get rid of the filibuster and expand the court. Thomas and Alito are just crazy. The 3 Trump/McConnell appointees are just Republican attack dogs who got their Constitutional training in exclusive, private, Catholic prep schools. God-fearing people who fear Black, Brown and poor people even more.
Thomas is the racist instrument for turning back the clock on all civil rights gains, except Loving v Virginia. He is the Steven, the house slave, that drinks brandy with his master and coaches him how to deal with recalcitrant field slaves in Django Unchained, only one better he has a white wife and thinks that he has arrived.
I find it wortha study that Thomas, Herschel Walker, Tim Scott, Candace Owens, Mark Robinson, Byron Donalds, Kanye and 99% of all Quisling Tump humpers are married to or have white lovers.
The climate does change periodically without human made causes. But that doesn't mean we're not causing the current warming and erratic changes that are happening. The problem is that we don't have a system of cooperation to deal with whatever threatens humanity whether it is a drought lasting for generations or an asteroid. Those at the top always try to stay there at the expense of everyone else, even if it means everything is destroyed. How do we keep mentally ill people from acquiring so much money that they can take power in the first place?
Assuming that your question is not just rhetorical, I think Thom has provided answers in his book which is currently being offered a chapter at a time on Sunday and daily in his daily take and live commentary. Going back to higher rates of taxation on corporations and on wealth would make a huge difference. Laws which limit ownership of multiple types of media and which prohibit dark money would also help. However, a more lasting solution involves education and changing perceptions within society of greed, right-wing fallacies, and the supposed superiority of certain people based on wealth and ethnicity, race, or religion. Nothing is being done along those lines because schooling is in the grip of reactionaries and super-moralists as a consequence of the power inappropriately allocated to authoritarians by school attendance laws which stupidly assign responsibility for defining what happens in schools to state executives, officials, and their jock buddies.
When we had a nuclear crisis over Three Mile Island, we argued that the Pa. Supreme Court should be sentenced to live there. Come the revolution, the Supreme Court should be moved to Paradise California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ETN21RZwwI
Yes. Good idea.
Great start with the much needed take down of fossil fuel advertising, in all its many and varied forms, colors, shapes (usually attractive young healthy models), and iterations. As for the rest of the well constructed wish list, you were right to throw in the towel with the corrupt SCOTUS Citizens United decision. With Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald's insurrection in 2021, for which he has yet to be held accountable, and with his chief promoter, Steve Bannon, still out running scot free, why should any of us believe that the current government is able/willing to mete out justice to the super-rich? Voting Blue in November is our last hope.
“Voting Blue in November is our last hope.”…and… I think… our only hope!!!
As we voters watch, the rust is corrupting the mettle of American culture. The Supremes have become the extremes supporting only The 1%.
But GOP have only represented the rich for over 100 years. Let's hope if Biden gets re-elected he doesn't appoint people like Garland to the two Supreme Court seats and let's hope he fires Garland!
David Richardson
just now
Oligopolies in one industry tend to promote consolidation in others. One concern is the rise of the “big three” investment houses, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. Together, these firms now manage around $22 trillion in assets, including much of America’s retirement savings, and a big chunk of the stock market.
Sharma, Ruchir. What Went Wrong with Capitalism (p. 187). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.
We are no longer citizens of anything! We are subjects moved around and controlled by money. Mammon is our god, our illusion. He doesn't care if we are a democracy or an autocracy. Her followers will act the same with either. When a people discard and change their god, they suffer greatly. "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood, where the straight path no longer lay." ~Dante There may not be a line in all of literature that describes us any better. We are lost, searching for a god to replace Mammon. We are in a state where our imagination has failed us!
David Richardson: Google is your friend. I did a deep dive as to who owns who in broadcast and cable media, in Pharmaceuticals and Health care, in defense, and in almost all segments of our economy and the names Vanguard, Black Rock and State Street keep coming up as the primary institutional investors.
The major individual investors are also CEO's and or chairman, Robert Igor, Newhouse Family, Brian L Roberts
Was it Grover Cleveland that said, The business of Americ is Business?
I see a ship called USA, Inc, with a Captain elected every four years, and a crew elected every 2 years with captains mast elected every six years, the passengers have the say on who the owners vet for captain and crew. With a new Captain the ship drifts port or starboard, and with a new captain the course is righted, despite the course corrections and drift, the destination stays true
USA Inc is a joint venture enterprise, the shareholders can be determined if you drill down.
Vanguard, Black Rock, State Street and a few others own or control most of America, but are themselves Corporations with CEO's and Board of Directors.
Board of directors are often CEO's of other companies and sit on other board of directors.
Imagine a Limousine stopping at Weyerhauser, picking up it's CEO or Chairman, then stopping at Boeing and picking up it's CEO, then stopping at Starbucks, then Microsoft, then Adobe, etc until it has picked up the entire board of Vanguard. This is only an example, I haven't delved into the composition of Vanguard.
Calvin Coolidge! The political genius of President Coolidge, Walter Lippmann pointed out in 1926, was his talent for effectively doing nothing: “This active inactivity suits the mood and certain of the needs of the country admirably. It suits all the business interests which want to be let alone….
Mellon: "I've made a bet—quite a large one—that I can make you say three words.”
Coolidge: "You lose,”
Followed by "a chicken in every pot!"
Yep, the next step is a full blown kleptocracy, just like Russia.
Russia has a very different culture than the west. A history of invasion, submission to a strong man, started with the sons of Jenghis Khan, who left their DNA in a good swath of the population. the Tsars, Ivan the Terrible, the Bolsheviks, Lenin, Stalin ad now Putin
The culture has never really experience liberty,equality, fraternity, their legacy, their expectation is that of the all powerful, all seeing strongman., and perfect supplicants for the state sanctioned agents they call Priests.
They don't know what do with freedom, our constitution provides them a license to steal and murder, it is like letting a kid loose in a candy store
Russians are inured to autocracy and cruelty. Americans aren't. There will be a period of orgasm, the Christian nationalists revel in their power, but ti will pass, once their standard of living deteriorates and the once orgasmic Trump humper, discover that dissent will not be tolerated.
The real force behind MAGA, and behind every authoritarian government in the world is the desire for the very, very rich, to make sure that they control the governments so they can not only protect their wealth, they can increase it. Power=Money=Power=Money. In the US, this began with Reagan's "Greed is good.". The wealth gap had been closing and the middle class increasing until then. He changed the tax laws and attacked unions. The Republicans have gone from being "conservatives" to being the party of total fraud and corruption, and they are not ashamed of doing it.
Citizens United was the result of years of bribing the court. The court we have now obviously will to let people die in mass shootings just so a few people can make money selling machine guns. But it’s more than that. They want to keep the population divided and scared so they can be exploited to work for low wages and pay high rents. Read about how the heads of the Steward Hospital chain took all the money and let the hospitals and patients die. Then they pay Trump, Congress, and the judges. Corruption all the way down.
The fiction of the Supreme Court, It is like the Golem of the rabbincal tale. It doesn't exist until given life by breathing it's name. Andrew Jackson, a genocidal racist, none the less nailed it, when Chief Marshall Justice ruled that Indian Removal Act was unconstitutional. He said Justice Marshal has ruled now let him enforce his ruing.
Governor Abbot of Texas told the Supreme court to go get fucked, and has not suffered any consequences. Red states will ignore any ruling of the supreme court that they don't like, and they will get away with it The Court ruled against Alabama's redistricting map, but they went ahead anyway.
Faubus told SCOTUS to go fuck themselves when the ruled against them in Brown v Board of Education. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to escort the kids into Little Rock high, and mobilized the National Guard, which Faubus had turned out to keep the kids out.
Only Democrats are the fools which honor SCOTUS rulings. The executive has power that it is afraid to use, and if SCOTUS rules against them, then do what Texas and Alabama have done, ignore them
The enemies of Democracy are using the freedoms democracy provides to destroy democracy.
I think there is already a large movement of people who are not only disregarding but opposing SCOTUS decisions. Here is Mass we invite people to come for abortions and we protect their privacy and protect the clinics. We also have strict gun laws and outlaw bump stocks. We also have almost universal healthcare, a decent tax structure, the best free public suburban education, a vibrant well-paying economy. We are doing our best to overcome our racist past. We have a gay woman governor, and women in most of our highest offices. there are certainly lots of flaws, as it is impossible to afford a house, but we are protecting ourselves from the worst of what could happen.
Well said, particularly the last sentence. Sounds like a campaign slogan.
I was replying to William.
Up until Aristotle , there were 4 elements
Earth , Wind , Fire & Water . Aristotle proposed a Fifth Element - one that was less tangible but certainly around . Science Fiction came up with The Fifth Element
represented by the life force itself .
Apparently we now have discovered
another form of dark matter - exemplified
by the billionaire class- $ $ $ .
Will the life force prevail- or will we be sucked into the black hole ?
The aristocracy of today likes it the way it was back in the dark ages! When anyone who disagreed with them could be sent down to the dungeon and tortured!
The Trump cult have been conditioned to be ungrateful, sadistic narcissists, by their elders who have been brainwashed by their elders and it usually starts in their church. There is a lot of Satan floating around organized religion. A dark invisible Force! Exposing the children to supernatural or insane logic is child abuse!
Agreed. Fundamentalism of any kind insists on monotheistic final solutions. All light and no darkness or vice versa. In Xtian forms this teaching creates a stark dualism within which there are White hats (eg KKK) and Black hats (eg Witches). Such simple minded worldviews always invoke their own destruction. When such ignorant individuals grab social power the trick is learning how to avoid direct conflict, upon which they thrive, and therein going down with them. The Enlightenment philosophies that informed the American Experiment were an initial attempt to do just that. No easy answers, that is their weakness, just a constant revolutionary work in progress.
The battle of those owning fossil fuel and the adjacent products is just getting started. First came the students and divestment and now a "big ask" that the advertising be banned. Fantastic, and good-on Secretary General Guterres!. Let there be light to combat the darkness. That's you Thom, every-damn-day, so thanks.
Speaking of darkness, there was an article in Newsweek about states under air quality alerts: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma. Several more have air quality alerts, but these four asked their citizens to fuel-up at specific times due to extreme heat. I honestly did not know this was a "thing". Here is the why from a GOOGLE search:
"Refuel in the evening after 7:00 p.m., so fuel vapors will not have a chance to "cook" during the hottest part of the day, turning into ozone. 3) When refueling your car, stop at the click - when the nozzle clicks off. Don't overfill or drip fuel. Spilled fuel creates ozone-causing vapors as it evaporates."
Or one could do their best to buy an electric car as soon as they could afford it. My old hybrid will probably be replaced by a used EV if it dies before I do. It won't be a Tesla---that particular billionaire proves your point perfectly.
The big money horse is already out of the barn. We can perhaps gain on it with a blue November, but given our corrupt SCOTUS, I doubt it will be caught and tamed by anything consistent with democracy and the rule of law. For most of human history, force and violence have been the major change agents for good as well as ill. We may be close to seeing that here yet again, bad and unpredictable in outcome though that will be. Because our current system will not break the power of the morbidly rich. No matter what happens in November.
Up until Aristotle , there were 4 elements
Earth , Wind , Fire & Water . Aristotle proposed a Fifth Element - one that was less tangible but certainly around . Science Fiction came up with The Fifth Element
represented by the life force itself .
Apparently we now have discovered
another form of dark matter - exemplified
by the billionaire class- $ $ $ .
Will the life force prevail- or will we be sucked into the black hole ?
One can hope that an expanded Supreme Court would engage in an anti-corruption clean up to reverse decisions based on imaginary facts, non-existent history, and the amicus brief mill.
Increasing the # of justices on the supreme court might be a temporary solution but unless it is coupled with really strong legal requirements for ethical behavior it is NOT the needed solution.
Largely through your writings, Mr. Hartmann, but also through the likes of Robert Reich, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Bernie Sanders and more, your closing understatement, while sardonic, is also very direct and simple. VERY little of this prescriptive talk comes from sitting congressmen, governors, or presidents. Through Whitehouse came his Scheme talks which illuminated how much of a long game gaining control of SCOTUS was, and to what end it was gained. Thomas and Alito ARE brazen in their "above it all" stances, and that IS in the mainstream, but The Scheme is decidedly NOT. Nor is what you reveal. Give the urgency of what the stakes ARE this year that make the LAST two elections feel trivial, why is these revelations not forthcoming from the Democratic leadership? "All we have to do" can be achieved, against all odds, of we take back the House, hold the Senate and the Presidency, so WHY isn't this insidious coup being laid bare and talked about on every news show, every single weekend, every single day? What, it hasn't gotten to be important enough yet?
I have come to accept that The Matrix is real. But the truth is, it doesn't require the almighty power of The One. It requires are a whole shit load of leaders to start making noise as if they've talked about this, as if they KNOW about this. And what's meant by references to the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers. NOBODY (except the few in the "radical left") talks about the transferred TRILLIONS since Reagan, and I have yet to see the evidence that they care enough to fix it.
You DO educate, Thom. But you also surely do enflame and rankle and pull back the curtains of those who claim to be opposed to the evils revealed but then act like we're too stupid to understand the one underlying root cause of so much that, if fixed, would fix EVERYTHING.