My inbox was loaded this morning when I turned on my computer with positive and negative propaganda-Michael Moore and Reich for the Democrats and a host of others. Mark Taylor's-
"ELECTION DAY! Spittin' Into The Wind... AGAIN! The jig is up. The mask is off. The diaper has dropped. The con has run its course. We have spun all the way down to a choice between a nonsensical laughing gas bag and a bill-skipping con man"- did not strike me as funny at all. Inspiring apathy and distrust -discouragement is not what we need. We need people participating in the community-experiencing the community-get out from behind your screens at least do your minimal civic duty and vote. National politics is distant-virtual- engagement in local civic projects-local politics is where you rub shoulders with real people tends to make people less alienated. The wealth of volunteers-election workers enabling the voting to go on are not wasting their time nor are they fools. The fools are the ones that sit back in the arrogance thinking they know it all-complacency- apathy are the real enemies of participatory democracy. There is no such thing as non-participatory democracy.
Unless you are engaged in community projects-if what you know about politics is from what you read and watched on screens-then you do not really understand politics-you have merely consumed virtual realities. The wisest thing my political science department did was hire a retired mayor to be professor of municipal politics. "That's what you read but that's not how it works" he would inject with insight from experience.
It is easy to be negative-it's easy to be a critic-to mock-it's a beautiful thing to offer insights from experience-it's easy to write pages about what's wrong- a daily reactionary summary of the headlines-it's a real thing to model what's right. Bill McKibben and Matt Stroller do not publish every day they are too busy too engaged in the real workings-projects-Bill in community environmental projects-Matt tracking progress in anti-trust initiatives. They are deeply engaged in going after our too biggest problems-climate change and the concentration of wealth. I learn more from them than any journalists-except of course America's most engaged citizen-the citizen who modeled citizenship more than any American-Citizen Nader. He is now 90 and his radio hour is still the richest hour of experience-based insight available.
I think the system is designed to instill and encourage deference and feelings of powerlessness, even hopelessness, so that you then look for a "savior" from the Blue or Red teams. The tragic thing is that it's working.
We should vote. Think of it this way. For 5 minutes every two years we have a say in our government. The other 1,051,893 minutes belong to the politicians and the bureaucrats.
Editor's note. If you're a member of the Republican Party you also get an additional 5 minutes every 4 years to choose your party's Presidential nominee. If you're a member of the Democrat Party this provision does not apply to you as the Central Committee of your (sic) party will choose the nominee. Tough luck there, comrades.
"Dewey Defeats Truman" :/ :o) Disastrous for Harris! In retrospect if the Democrats could have a do-over I'm sure they wouldn't have tried to gloss over Bidens decline imho then insert Harris so late in the game that ultimately led to her as well as their downfall..!
As everyone knows, I hope, there is one priority for all Americans - to break the grip of Zionism that is shown so clearly by this election. Here in Illinois the grip is very tight in our state legislature. Illinois was the first state to pass an anti-BDS bill. What follows is my email today to yet another American Zionist billionaire, Illinois Governor Pritzger, eagerly seeking higher office...
"Governor Pritzger, America's pledge allegiance to the flag ends with the words liberty and justice for all. I am very concerned by your endorsement of Zionism in your support of President Biden and Kamala Harris who are fully supporting the unlimited slaughter going on by Israel with American weapons and money, even American lives if a war with Iran is started as desired by Israeli PM Netanyahu. Zionism has no use for liberty and justice for all and in ethnic cleansing is the antithesis of it. No American can be loyal to our country and also be Zionist, epic hypocrisy but the case for so many American politicians. President Biden is a traitor for declaring himself a Zionist and is a war criminal for doing so in concert with PM Netanyahu. That there is no uproar over this is because of the power of Zionist money in US politics. You must openly declare that you are for liberty and justice for all and renounce support of Israel. To not do so is anti-American. I am extremely concerned about the presence of Zionism in the Illinois legislature where my own representative Robyn Gabel, in all else a humanitarian, declares herself Zionist. This is also true for my representative in Congress, Jan Schakowsky. I want my country back, for it to regain the stature it had before tying itself to Zionism and the unending slaughter that has made President Biden a war criminal alongside Israeli PM Netanyahu. I stand AGAINST Zionism as any American, including you, should."
The people in Gaza do not benefit from those of us who are paralyzed by it. They are too busy dodging bombs- finding the dead-looking for water- there is no time literally no space to sit and be depressed that will come later and as Nader-and other observers note so will retaliation and residual effects perhaps greater than 9/11. Gazans do benefit from Protesters the interrupting Kamal’s joy. They do benefit from those TikTok videos being spread- They do benefit from Jill Stein getting votes.
OUR ELECTORAL SERFDOM by Jacob G. Hornberger / The Future of Freedom Foundation 5 Nov 24 EXTRACTS
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one thing is certain: We will continue to live our lives as serfs under the welfare-state/warfare-state/regulated-managed economy way of life under which we have all been born and raised. That’s because the only thing we are doing in this presidential race is the same thing we have always done in presidential races all of our lives. We are electing someone who will preside over the system that makes us serfs....
It doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is elected president today. Neither one of them will be calling the shots. It is the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA who will continue to call the shots. Whether it is Trump or Harris, he or she will be answering to the national-security branch of the government, just as the Congress and the Supreme Court do.
For example, Trump has vowed that if he is elected this time around, he will do what he vowed to do last time — order a release of the long-secret JFK-assassination-related records of the national-security establishment, specifically the CIA. No, he won’t — unless they permit him to do so. In my opinion, that’s why he didn’t release them last time — because they wouldn’t let him. They could let him do so this time to enable him to have the appearance of being in charge, but the matter is entirely up to them. And make no mistake about it: Both Trump and Harris will defer to whatever the national-security branch wants....
As long as America remains a national-security state, there will always be continuous war, conflicts, tensions, crises, and official enemies, adversaries, competitors, and opponents that are generated by the national-security establishment itself. Opposing this war or that war is nothing more than playing a game of whack-a-mole. To end the forever wars requires a dismantling and termination of the national-security state and a restoration of a limited-government republic....
Our job as libertarians is not to elect someone who is going to preside over our serfdom. Our job as libertarians is to lead America to freedom. A necessary prerequisite for achieving a genuinely free society is to dismantle the national-security establishment and restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic. There is no way that anyone who lives under a national-security state form of governmental structure can be considered free....
Note: Hornberger also speaks of dismantling The Welfare State, ending The Drug and Immigration Wars, terminating the Federal Reserve System, and a separation of School and State just like the separation of Church and State.
A final comment — I’m sorry. It is contrarian again — But in an election for President of our country, voting is not, to my mind, for sending “messages.” With a consequential situation like the one we are in, voting is MAKING A CHOICE ABOUT OUR FUTURE. {that’s not yelling — that’s emphasis}.
Messages are fine in their place — they are REALLY necessary in the daily course of our political interactions, to inflluence and move our government in directions we want it to move — but this election puts someone into our White House, giving that perso IMMENSE power over our lives both internationally AND domestically, and that’s WAY more than any simple message … Every vote has a value in that process … THINK about who we are allowing to take residence in our White House … Not a message. An act. With consequences.
VOTE, and vote carefully, and stay engaged during the rest of the years between votes, when your messages will be important to influence policy … But today, be very careful how you vote, because it is going to help or hinder one of two people getting into our White House, and THAT matters …
I voted for Stein, but I must admit that I have lost all faith in our dysfunctional voting system where each state runs the voting in different ways, where the electoral college determines the winner, not the popular vote, and where voter rolls can be purged randomly in different places. That isn't voting, that is a farse. But I still vote to make sure that any person who is for peace gets some votes. We really shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that votes are counted honestly in each precinct, because we know they aren't. We know that the Supreme Court could step in any time again and stop a recount. We know that the electronic voting systems are not reliable. So while I continue to vote, I fully understand why some people don't. I used to enjoy voting, but that seems like a distant memory at this point.
No matter who is Elected, the issue of the Israeli Military Occupation of Palestine for the last 57 YEARS will be paramount!
Christiane Amanpour on PBS showed this Interview of 2 Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank who made a movie about what's really happening in the West Bank last night. Western MSM rarely cover in depth the Palestinian experience of the Israeli Military OCCUPATION, other than being Israeli Propagandists.
I was pleasantly surprised she went that far and tweeted this to her, "Christiane, It would be better for Humanity if you did more reports on what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank since an Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment became the underlying POWER of the Netanyahu government in January 2023, long before October 7."
I have no illusions about it. Tweeting the Politically Powerful and MSM talking heads opinion influencers, they may not even see it? The Spirit has no physical limitations!
The States should consult with Elections CanaDa. You don't see long lineups for Federal Elections like appears to be usual in this US Election. There are enough voting sites in every district/riding, long lineups like that are unusual.
Lineups like that have an effect of Voter Suppression except for committed, determined Voters, and there is no valid reason for it to be like that.
There are those who share Emma Goldman's sentiment that "If voting could actually, really change anything, it would be illegal." [What has changed as a result of any American election since the one in 2004?]
Or they remember Papa Joe Stalin's timeless admonition that "It's not who votes that counts; it's who counts the votes." [We will soon see this played out in spades, won’t we?]
Or, they can only concur I00% with George Carlin's "Don't vote. It only encourages the motherfuckers." [As opposed to mere “bastards.”}
But one other reason folks don't vote is because there is no candidate that they can, in all honesty and sincerity, actually vote FOR, even if it is just AGAINST somebody or even Everybody else.
It will be very interesting to see what the Eligible Voter Turnout percentage is this year, as compared to 2020 and 2016.
My inbox was loaded this morning when I turned on my computer with positive and negative propaganda-Michael Moore and Reich for the Democrats and a host of others. Mark Taylor's-
"ELECTION DAY! Spittin' Into The Wind... AGAIN! The jig is up. The mask is off. The diaper has dropped. The con has run its course. We have spun all the way down to a choice between a nonsensical laughing gas bag and a bill-skipping con man"- did not strike me as funny at all. Inspiring apathy and distrust -discouragement is not what we need. We need people participating in the community-experiencing the community-get out from behind your screens at least do your minimal civic duty and vote. National politics is distant-virtual- engagement in local civic projects-local politics is where you rub shoulders with real people tends to make people less alienated. The wealth of volunteers-election workers enabling the voting to go on are not wasting their time nor are they fools. The fools are the ones that sit back in the arrogance thinking they know it all-complacency- apathy are the real enemies of participatory democracy. There is no such thing as non-participatory democracy.
Yes--we must participate.
Unless you are engaged in community projects-if what you know about politics is from what you read and watched on screens-then you do not really understand politics-you have merely consumed virtual realities. The wisest thing my political science department did was hire a retired mayor to be professor of municipal politics. "That's what you read but that's not how it works" he would inject with insight from experience.
It is easy to be negative-it's easy to be a critic-to mock-it's a beautiful thing to offer insights from experience-it's easy to write pages about what's wrong- a daily reactionary summary of the headlines-it's a real thing to model what's right. Bill McKibben and Matt Stroller do not publish every day they are too busy too engaged in the real workings-projects-Bill in community environmental projects-Matt tracking progress in anti-trust initiatives. They are deeply engaged in going after our too biggest problems-climate change and the concentration of wealth. I learn more from them than any journalists-except of course America's most engaged citizen-the citizen who modeled citizenship more than any American-Citizen Nader. He is now 90 and his radio hour is still the richest hour of experience-based insight available.
I think the system is designed to instill and encourage deference and feelings of powerlessness, even hopelessness, so that you then look for a "savior" from the Blue or Red teams. The tragic thing is that it's working.
We should vote. Think of it this way. For 5 minutes every two years we have a say in our government. The other 1,051,893 minutes belong to the politicians and the bureaucrats.
Editor's note. If you're a member of the Republican Party you also get an additional 5 minutes every 4 years to choose your party's Presidential nominee. If you're a member of the Democrat Party this provision does not apply to you as the Central Committee of your (sic) party will choose the nominee. Tough luck there, comrades.
Voted today. The energy for local issues is reassuring.
"Dewey Defeats Truman" :/ :o) Disastrous for Harris! In retrospect if the Democrats could have a do-over I'm sure they wouldn't have tried to gloss over Bidens decline imho then insert Harris so late in the game that ultimately led to her as well as their downfall..!
We need more people to think about elections in this way. Voting really does matter.
If voting didn't matter, they wouldn't be spending billions trying to tell you how to vote.
And all those billions are going directly into the pockets of America's Ruling Political Caste's Propaganda wing, the MSM/CON.
The RPC does not care how the American Peoples vote. It will do what it intends to do, Whoever gets elected.
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." ..... "Won't Get Fooled Again" - The Who
As everyone knows, I hope, there is one priority for all Americans - to break the grip of Zionism that is shown so clearly by this election. Here in Illinois the grip is very tight in our state legislature. Illinois was the first state to pass an anti-BDS bill. What follows is my email today to yet another American Zionist billionaire, Illinois Governor Pritzger, eagerly seeking higher office...
"Governor Pritzger, America's pledge allegiance to the flag ends with the words liberty and justice for all. I am very concerned by your endorsement of Zionism in your support of President Biden and Kamala Harris who are fully supporting the unlimited slaughter going on by Israel with American weapons and money, even American lives if a war with Iran is started as desired by Israeli PM Netanyahu. Zionism has no use for liberty and justice for all and in ethnic cleansing is the antithesis of it. No American can be loyal to our country and also be Zionist, epic hypocrisy but the case for so many American politicians. President Biden is a traitor for declaring himself a Zionist and is a war criminal for doing so in concert with PM Netanyahu. That there is no uproar over this is because of the power of Zionist money in US politics. You must openly declare that you are for liberty and justice for all and renounce support of Israel. To not do so is anti-American. I am extremely concerned about the presence of Zionism in the Illinois legislature where my own representative Robyn Gabel, in all else a humanitarian, declares herself Zionist. This is also true for my representative in Congress, Jan Schakowsky. I want my country back, for it to regain the stature it had before tying itself to Zionism and the unending slaughter that has made President Biden a war criminal alongside Israeli PM Netanyahu. I stand AGAINST Zionism as any American, including you, should."
Bill, today Jeffery Nall published a deep dive into the ethics of voting for third parties.
See
Success without Victory
Why Third Party Resistance to the Duopoly Is Not Meaningless
The people in Gaza do not benefit from those of us who are paralyzed by it. They are too busy dodging bombs- finding the dead-looking for water- there is no time literally no space to sit and be depressed that will come later and as Nader-and other observers note so will retaliation and residual effects perhaps greater than 9/11. Gazans do benefit from Protesters the interrupting Kamal’s joy. They do benefit from those TikTok videos being spread- They do benefit from Jill Stein getting votes.
OUR ELECTORAL SERFDOM by Jacob G. Hornberger / The Future of Freedom Foundation 5 Nov 24 EXTRACTS
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one thing is certain: We will continue to live our lives as serfs under the welfare-state/warfare-state/regulated-managed economy way of life under which we have all been born and raised. That’s because the only thing we are doing in this presidential race is the same thing we have always done in presidential races all of our lives. We are electing someone who will preside over the system that makes us serfs....
It doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris is elected president today. Neither one of them will be calling the shots. It is the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA who will continue to call the shots. Whether it is Trump or Harris, he or she will be answering to the national-security branch of the government, just as the Congress and the Supreme Court do.
For example, Trump has vowed that if he is elected this time around, he will do what he vowed to do last time — order a release of the long-secret JFK-assassination-related records of the national-security establishment, specifically the CIA. No, he won’t — unless they permit him to do so. In my opinion, that’s why he didn’t release them last time — because they wouldn’t let him. They could let him do so this time to enable him to have the appearance of being in charge, but the matter is entirely up to them. And make no mistake about it: Both Trump and Harris will defer to whatever the national-security branch wants....
As long as America remains a national-security state, there will always be continuous war, conflicts, tensions, crises, and official enemies, adversaries, competitors, and opponents that are generated by the national-security establishment itself. Opposing this war or that war is nothing more than playing a game of whack-a-mole. To end the forever wars requires a dismantling and termination of the national-security state and a restoration of a limited-government republic....
Our job as libertarians is not to elect someone who is going to preside over our serfdom. Our job as libertarians is to lead America to freedom. A necessary prerequisite for achieving a genuinely free society is to dismantle the national-security establishment and restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic. There is no way that anyone who lives under a national-security state form of governmental structure can be considered free....
Full article at https://www.fff.org/2024/11/05/our-electoral-serfdom/ .
Note: Hornberger also speaks of dismantling The Welfare State, ending The Drug and Immigration Wars, terminating the Federal Reserve System, and a separation of School and State just like the separation of Church and State.
A final comment — I’m sorry. It is contrarian again — But in an election for President of our country, voting is not, to my mind, for sending “messages.” With a consequential situation like the one we are in, voting is MAKING A CHOICE ABOUT OUR FUTURE. {that’s not yelling — that’s emphasis}.
Messages are fine in their place — they are REALLY necessary in the daily course of our political interactions, to inflluence and move our government in directions we want it to move — but this election puts someone into our White House, giving that perso IMMENSE power over our lives both internationally AND domestically, and that’s WAY more than any simple message … Every vote has a value in that process … THINK about who we are allowing to take residence in our White House … Not a message. An act. With consequences.
VOTE, and vote carefully, and stay engaged during the rest of the years between votes, when your messages will be important to influence policy … But today, be very careful how you vote, because it is going to help or hinder one of two people getting into our White House, and THAT matters …
Over and out.
I voted for Stein, but I must admit that I have lost all faith in our dysfunctional voting system where each state runs the voting in different ways, where the electoral college determines the winner, not the popular vote, and where voter rolls can be purged randomly in different places. That isn't voting, that is a farse. But I still vote to make sure that any person who is for peace gets some votes. We really shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that votes are counted honestly in each precinct, because we know they aren't. We know that the Supreme Court could step in any time again and stop a recount. We know that the electronic voting systems are not reliable. So while I continue to vote, I fully understand why some people don't. I used to enjoy voting, but that seems like a distant memory at this point.
No matter who is Elected, the issue of the Israeli Military Occupation of Palestine for the last 57 YEARS will be paramount!
Christiane Amanpour on PBS showed this Interview of 2 Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank who made a movie about what's really happening in the West Bank last night. Western MSM rarely cover in depth the Palestinian experience of the Israeli Military OCCUPATION, other than being Israeli Propagandists.
https://x.com/i/status/1853540502282358945
I was pleasantly surprised she went that far and tweeted this to her, "Christiane, It would be better for Humanity if you did more reports on what's happening in Gaza and the West Bank since an Old Testament Jewish Religious Establishment became the underlying POWER of the Netanyahu government in January 2023, long before October 7."
I have no illusions about it. Tweeting the Politically Powerful and MSM talking heads opinion influencers, they may not even see it? The Spirit has no physical limitations!
Yes, I think they rarely read the comments, Ray, but other people do. At least you tried.
This comment is in the X thread,
StopAntisemitism is horrified CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour has the gall to refer to the IDF as “occupational forces”.
An apology is warranted @amanpour
The States should consult with Elections CanaDa. You don't see long lineups for Federal Elections like appears to be usual in this US Election. There are enough voting sites in every district/riding, long lineups like that are unusual.
Lineups like that have an effect of Voter Suppression except for committed, determined Voters, and there is no valid reason for it to be like that.
Vote early, vote often! That's the old Chicago way ...
People don't vote for lots of reasons.
There are those who share Emma Goldman's sentiment that "If voting could actually, really change anything, it would be illegal." [What has changed as a result of any American election since the one in 2004?]
Or they remember Papa Joe Stalin's timeless admonition that "It's not who votes that counts; it's who counts the votes." [We will soon see this played out in spades, won’t we?]
Or, they can only concur I00% with George Carlin's "Don't vote. It only encourages the motherfuckers." [As opposed to mere “bastards.”}
But one other reason folks don't vote is because there is no candidate that they can, in all honesty and sincerity, actually vote FOR, even if it is just AGAINST somebody or even Everybody else.
It will be very interesting to see what the Eligible Voter Turnout percentage is this year, as compared to 2020 and 2016.
Then they could vote NOTC.
That's what i tried to do. But, interestingly enough, in Alaska, write-in voting for President is not permitted.
It's okay for every other election, just not POTUS. i'm sure there's an interesting story behind how that came to be, eh?