I am with you, Bill. I have already signed up to subscribe to newsletters from both Kennedy and Williamson. They represent very interesting possible alternatives to the Biden/Blinken/Nuland/Austin "Cold War" dinosaurs. Of course, both Kennedy and Williamson have been smeared and denigrated by the NYT and Washington Post, both of which just parrot the dinosaurs. They are shameless, rabid supporters of the "Cold War" dinosaur ideology, which is based on American Exceptionalism and US Global Hegemony. Both of these are the two key components of the disease that infects the US body politic. As you have noted, in the latest column by Chris Hedges has described in great detail all the symptoms of this disease. Unless and until the disease is excised from the body politic, the rot and corruption will continue to fester and spread.
To repeat my comments on another thread, RFK Jr.'s rabid, unfounded anti-vaxx stance, in the face of overwhelming proof that vaccines are safe, makes me doubt his suitability as a candidate. Add to that some decidedly anti-green actions/policies when he worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and RFK Jr. appears as prone to going back on his word as Biden.
Marianne Williamson, as far as I know, is a person of high integrity. I'd just question her lack of experience with making national policy, along with her knowledgeability of and capacity to deal with foreign policy.
I do agree, though, that adding more candidates to the mix is a good thing, and yes, it's a certainty the DNC and the MSM will smear Biden's rivals for the nomination.
It doesn't matter what Biden's record was. His sycophantic news media will be overjoyed to tell us he is brilliant and that there is something wrong with us if we don't agree.
I was encouraged by a poll showing that both parties have tanked, each with about 25% of the polled indicating they were of one party or the other. 49% of those polled said they were independent, a huge shift over the years.
With Joe and Victoria Nuland, there will be more WAR, DEATH & DESTRUCTION of Ukrainians and Russians as the US dances around having to FACE Russia directly in the WAR it planned, instead of using Ukrainians as the US Sacrificial Lambs and Cannon Fodder.
I feel for this Ukrainian soldier who obviously is holding back tears as someone from The New York Times is questioning him: https://youtu.be/GeelZuwRxhY
He may as well be saying WAR IS HELL as we’ve all heard said at some Time or Another! If the US and Russia do clash directly since US policy is for whatever it takes and NATO cannot lose, we may well see the FIRES OF HELL unfold all around us?
Trump wasn’t the 1st to threaten FIRE AND FURY as he does here, but the fact that he did, is a Sign from the Earthly POWER confirming WE ARE that Generation that has to deal with it: https://youtu.be/8p1JIgTuKQk
This is from the last chapter of the Major Jewish Prophet in Isaiah 66;
For behold, the Lord shall come with FIRE, and like a tempest,
His chariots, to render His anger with FURY, and His rebuke with flames of FIRE.
In a VERY REAL PROBABLE SENSE, FIRE AND FURY most likely take this form in THIS MATERIAL WORLD. We can see it’s already on that PATH DAY BY DAY: https://youtu.be/7VG2aJyIFrA
Can the People not see it? It’s not seriously discussed at the Street Level as a THREAT TO OUR LIVES and the END of the Pyramid System we are trapped in with the rich and Powerful minority at the top with the poor, homeless and oppressed increasing at the bottom!
It does take the MSM to awaken the People to be Vigilant to what’s really going on in the World larger than ourselves and our small space in it.
Eisenhower warned us and his wise council is spurned. General-President Eisenhower was the LAST REAL Commander-in-Chief. He knew WAR IS HELL.
That’s why after 8 Years as President knowing how the System works, WARNED Society about an expanding Military-Industrial-Educational Complex.
In his 1st Year as President, the US DoD Budget was $60 BILLION a Year. Now it consumes more Tax Dollars than is Budgeted for Civilian NEEDS.
THAT US MIC is making a KILLING off the Ukraine WAR, more than anyone!!!
Business is BOOMing! Profits galore for US Oligarchs.
The American People don’t seem to care, oblivious to the FIRE AND FURY building up out of Public View ready to crash on everyone’s heads as spoken by Trump in POWER and written by Isaiah some 2600 years ago.
In the Time of the Revelation and Armageddon/WWIII, the text says the Lord will come as a thief.
That's not to steal, but the sense is at a Time least expected.
(Edited and corrected from 1st posting in the original Bracing Views site)
Bill, as a Canadian I can't vote for any US President. To me it seems so un-Democratic in The Free World when decisions made exclusively in the US for US Interests and Purposes only could destroy CanaDa, not only the perceived US Enemy that must be destroyed so the US Rules Supreme and unchallenged in THIS MATERIAL WORLD.
I start my 80th Year May 21, so that makes me a Contemporary of Biden.
I do know about the 2014 US/CIA Coup/regime change of the Elected Russian friendly Ukraine government.
The US installed the UN-elected US PROXY anti-Russian government Victoria Nuland said she wanted even before the Coup was Completed and a Done Deal.
All that happened while Biden was responsible for the Ukraine File under Obama.
Victoria Nuland still has influence over Biden as he says he will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. The Defence Secretary says it's only to "BLEED RUSSIA" oblivious to all the Ukrainians bleeding!
Common Sense tells me that US-Biden Attitude will not lead THIS MATERIAL WORLD to a good place, except for the Billionaires who already have their well stocked luxurious BOMB shelters!
As for Biden continuing Trump's Economic War with China, the US is terrified of China's Economic Prowess on the rise.
With the US Economic-Social Pyramid System, American Finances are at the precipice of default and collapse.
If China continues along this Path of Development, it could put the US Car Industries out of Business.
Two of the worst-performing US tech stocks this week – Cisco and Tesla – have something in common: Both ran into a buzz-saw of Chinese competition. At the New York opening on April 21, Telsa had lost more than 12% during the week and Cisco more than 8.1%. Tesla’s Chinese competitor BYD announced an $11,400 electrical vehicle, a challenge to Tesla’s lowest-cost offering at about $33,000.
It's a sad reality we must accept that no truly meaningful changes or resolution of the most substantive problems of the nation or world are likely forthcoming from the two faces of the established order. The power establishment maintains those two faces so to give the ruse of choice- when on most of the fundamentally important issues, there is bipartisan consensus or at least refusal to act.
Both RFK and Williamson have flaws (who doesn't?) that will make it easier for the power elite of the Dem. Party to squash their campaigns. The Party has been well practiced in how to do that, both times to keep that 'radical' Sanders sandbagged. To that end they can count on the complicity of the 'liberal' side of the media- including of course the corporate "public" media of PBS & NPR.
I'd prefer RFK as Williamson just doesn't have the chops and her self-contradictory positions on the war in Ukraine affirm that; suggesting she'd be easily misled if she got anywhere near the White House. For his part, though, RFK's early anti-vaccine activism (long before COVID emerged), is IMO unfortunate baggage because especially the early positions (e.g. about the Autism-vaccine mercury connection) were highly dubious.
Regardless of any merits of RFK's positions on vaccines, however, he'll be an easy target for the DP establishment. And given his anti-war / anti-imperial stances, and the thorough brainwashing about 'threats posed by Russia and China', the Party leadership might not even have to so thoroughly choreograph the nomination by using people like Liz Warren and other faux progressives to split that side of the Party well and long enough for the establishment choice to 'emerge' and make the final results a mere formality.
I only question why RFK, of all people, would choose to run as a Dem. He's a bright fellow, with plenty of accrued understanding of the Dems and the corrupted political system at large. He certainly should know that the Party isn't at all democratic and he therefore hasn't a snowball's chance.
Given those odds against, could he think that his candidacy would somehow move the needle on anything more than the campaign rhetoric? It's all too apparent, from even Hedges' brief accounting of Biden's campaign rhetoric vs. results (as noted by you, Bill), that the value of campaign rhetoric is nothing beyond that of persuading gullible/ hopeful voters.
Any such needle moving during a campaign will last as long as a snowball in August.
I have a Marianne2024 sign in my yard and that is in Tennessee. No one has asked me who she is or what she stands for. I also appreciate RFK getting into the race because I think with multiple alternative candidates in the race the media will not be able to ignore both of them. Maybe Dennis Kucinich should jump back in. Either way as you say Bill, the main stream media is going to vilify and marginalize, can't disrupt our dysfunctional status quo.
I must respectfully disagree with your statement about Kennedy's opposition to the Covid 19 vaccines. He was an ardent opponent of vaccination long before SARS-CoV-2 arrived on the scene. As a physicist who believes that technology cannot solve social problems, I nonetheless cannot support someone whose attitudes appear to prevent his being able to make good decisions on issues involving science or technology
Without the Internet, most probably, I never would have known this US History.
'The Presidential Campaign of Convict 9653'
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918.
The act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson. The law made it illegal for a U.S. citizen to “wilfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government” or to discourage compliance with the draft or voluntary enlistment into the military.
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
Jonathan Cook has a different take on the firing of Tucker Carlson from FOX.
'Tucker Carlson’s firing reveals how afraid the media is of independent journalists'
The TV host paid the price because he tried the impossible: straddling the divide between corporate media and critical journalism
While the left is busy hating on Tucker Carlson, and not without reason, it is missing the bigger picture. Carlson was a genuine aberration in US corporate media. Which is why he is gone – sacked by media “titan” Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, over the years Carlson played on white fears, placing him firmly on the right. But he also gave over his massive corporate platform at Fox News to some of the most critical and thoughtful independent journalists and pundits around – from Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore.
(This article has video clips backing this up)
Carlson not only brought them into the living rooms of Main Street, but he undoubtedly helped them grow their audiences and influence.
In that way, he exposed ordinary Americans to critical perspectives, especially on US foreign policy, that they had no hope of hearing anywhere else – and most certainly not from so-called “liberal” corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC.
And he did so while constantly ridiculing the media’s craven collusion with those in power.
But all that is being ignored. Media analysis of Carlson’s departure has focused so far almost exclusively on his clashes with Fox News management, and a series of disrespectful tweets, that have come to light as a result of the recent Dominion court case, in which Murdoch was forced to settle with a massive payout.
But those clashes cannot be understood outside a wider context in which Carlson was pushing against institutional media constraints at Fox designed to prevent the real work of journalism – holding the powerful to account.
It would be interesting to see how a poll of Americans went when asked: "Who do You want to be the next President? Trump, Biden, or Neither/Somebody Else?"
Permit me to offer ~ as an Alternative to and Antidote for what America’s Ruling Political Class has planned for Election2024 ~ an article posted to WordPress Bracing Views on April 10, 2022 re Elections2022 and 2024: “Reforming America's Elections the NOTC Way”…:
<<< Joe Biden versus Donald Trump in 2024 is a grim "choice" indeed for most Americans. America's duopoly gives us candidates who promise that "nothing will fundamentally change" in power relations in America, meaning your voice will never be heard in the halls of power. How do we change that? Jeffrey Moebus has a dramatic proposal worthy of careful consideration. Read on! W.J. Astore >>>
THE NOTC WAY, by Jeffrey Moebus
As it stands right now, in every federal election to be held in 2022 and 2024, Americans will have five choices. They will be able to:
~ 1. Vote for the Democrat.
~ 2. Vote for the Republican.
~ 3. Vote Third Party.
~ 4. Write-In.
~ 5. Not Vote.
What if there was a sixth choice?
What if on every ballot for every federal election there was also a designated spot for "None Of These Candidates," or NOTC?
This presents the argument that "None Of These Candidates" should be on every ballot of every federal election, and proposes a nation-wide campaign to give the American Voters a real Alternative to ~ and an actual Antidote for ~ what America's Ruling Political Class will give them for choices in 2022 and 2024: To make "None Of These Candidates" a mandatory choice on every ballot in every federal election held in the United States for Election2022 and Election2024.
Its ultimate purpose is to give a meaningful vote ~ and voice ~ to that cohort of Totally Forgotten Voters who have been disenfranchised since the beginning of elections in America, and to offer a very quick, simple, easy, and low cost solution to that problem.
ASSUMPTIONS. It is assumed, first of all, that there will indeed be elections in those years; which, face it folks, at this point, no one can honestly, realistically, absolutely, positively guarantee. And second, that the choices presented to the American Voters will be, at most, some subtle but suitable variation of the present, as follows:
~ 1. The corporatist, crony "democratic capitalist," neoconservative/neoliberal, post-modern "liberalism" and "conservativism" of the Carter-Reagan-Bush I-Clinton-Cheney/Bush II-Obama-Biden breed [which includes any "anti-Trump" Republicans intent on maintaining some semblance of a non-Trumped GOP].
~ 2. The populist, nativist, neo-mercantilist, protectionist, proto-national socialism [with its attendant racist, sexist, xenophobic, patriotist wrapped-in the-Flag-mouthing-the-Bible noise while wiping their butts with the Constitution] of Trump, Trumpatismo, the Trumpatistas, and its inevitable gaggle of Greenes, Proud Boys, and Apprentice Emperor-Wannabe Spawns like DeSantis.
~ 3. The noisy but intellectually, ideologically, and politically bankrupt and bereft neo-progressive, proto-democratic socialism of the "socialistic democrats" of the Sandersista/Warrenite, "Squad," Green New Dealer ilk, and their Spawn. [Note: Just one question for starters...: How have those folks done on America's war with Russia in Ukraine?]
BACKGROUND. The seed for all this was planted back in the first week of November 2016, as that Presidential Campaign began to finally, mercifully grind its way to its conclusion. It suddenly became painfully obvious that if Clinton and/or Trump were the very best that our Ruling Political Class [RPC] could come up with to be America's next President, then this Nation, this Country and Land, and, above all, this "We, the People" were in deeply serious, seriously deep trouble. [Note: Consider what a re-run of 2020 in 2024 ~ Biden vs Trump ~ means.]
And it wasn't just that - from the headlines, polls, blogosphere, and social media - that it was easy to conclude that Donald Trump was the patsy in a conspiracy to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. Because, at the same time, it was just as easily concluded that The Hillary was part of a plot to ensconce The Donald. Take your pick.
But what was far, far more to the point was that it grew increasingly evident that, less than a couple of days to the election, more people wanted Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States, than wanted Either of them to sit in the Oval Office come January 20, 2017.
That, on the one hand, many people will vote for Clinton - because, and only because, they don't want Trump as President - rather than because they actually do want her to be President. And that, on the other hand, many people will similarly vote for Trump - because, and only because, they don't want Clinton as President - rather than because they actually do want him to be President.
Which raised the immediate question: So who does somebody vote For if they want neither Trump nor Clinton ~ nor any of the Third Party candidates ~ as their next President? Stated differently: How do these people vote Against all the candidates that the Ruling Political Class has deigned to gift them?
I am with you, Bill. I have already signed up to subscribe to newsletters from both Kennedy and Williamson. They represent very interesting possible alternatives to the Biden/Blinken/Nuland/Austin "Cold War" dinosaurs. Of course, both Kennedy and Williamson have been smeared and denigrated by the NYT and Washington Post, both of which just parrot the dinosaurs. They are shameless, rabid supporters of the "Cold War" dinosaur ideology, which is based on American Exceptionalism and US Global Hegemony. Both of these are the two key components of the disease that infects the US body politic. As you have noted, in the latest column by Chris Hedges has described in great detail all the symptoms of this disease. Unless and until the disease is excised from the body politic, the rot and corruption will continue to fester and spread.
To repeat my comments on another thread, RFK Jr.'s rabid, unfounded anti-vaxx stance, in the face of overwhelming proof that vaccines are safe, makes me doubt his suitability as a candidate. Add to that some decidedly anti-green actions/policies when he worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council, and RFK Jr. appears as prone to going back on his word as Biden.
Marianne Williamson, as far as I know, is a person of high integrity. I'd just question her lack of experience with making national policy, along with her knowledgeability of and capacity to deal with foreign policy.
I do agree, though, that adding more candidates to the mix is a good thing, and yes, it's a certainty the DNC and the MSM will smear Biden's rivals for the nomination.
It doesn't matter what Biden's record was. His sycophantic news media will be overjoyed to tell us he is brilliant and that there is something wrong with us if we don't agree.
I was encouraged by a poll showing that both parties have tanked, each with about 25% of the polled indicating they were of one party or the other. 49% of those polled said they were independent, a huge shift over the years.
With Joe and Victoria Nuland, there will be more WAR, DEATH & DESTRUCTION of Ukrainians and Russians as the US dances around having to FACE Russia directly in the WAR it planned, instead of using Ukrainians as the US Sacrificial Lambs and Cannon Fodder.
I feel for this Ukrainian soldier who obviously is holding back tears as someone from The New York Times is questioning him: https://youtu.be/GeelZuwRxhY
He may as well be saying WAR IS HELL as we’ve all heard said at some Time or Another! If the US and Russia do clash directly since US policy is for whatever it takes and NATO cannot lose, we may well see the FIRES OF HELL unfold all around us?
Trump wasn’t the 1st to threaten FIRE AND FURY as he does here, but the fact that he did, is a Sign from the Earthly POWER confirming WE ARE that Generation that has to deal with it: https://youtu.be/8p1JIgTuKQk
This is from the last chapter of the Major Jewish Prophet in Isaiah 66;
For behold, the Lord shall come with FIRE, and like a tempest,
His chariots, to render His anger with FURY, and His rebuke with flames of FIRE.
In a VERY REAL PROBABLE SENSE, FIRE AND FURY most likely take this form in THIS MATERIAL WORLD. We can see it’s already on that PATH DAY BY DAY: https://youtu.be/7VG2aJyIFrA
Can the People not see it? It’s not seriously discussed at the Street Level as a THREAT TO OUR LIVES and the END of the Pyramid System we are trapped in with the rich and Powerful minority at the top with the poor, homeless and oppressed increasing at the bottom!
It does take the MSM to awaken the People to be Vigilant to what’s really going on in the World larger than ourselves and our small space in it.
Eisenhower warned us and his wise council is spurned. General-President Eisenhower was the LAST REAL Commander-in-Chief. He knew WAR IS HELL.
That’s why after 8 Years as President knowing how the System works, WARNED Society about an expanding Military-Industrial-Educational Complex.
In his 1st Year as President, the US DoD Budget was $60 BILLION a Year. Now it consumes more Tax Dollars than is Budgeted for Civilian NEEDS.
THAT US MIC is making a KILLING off the Ukraine WAR, more than anyone!!!
Business is BOOMing! Profits galore for US Oligarchs.
The American People don’t seem to care, oblivious to the FIRE AND FURY building up out of Public View ready to crash on everyone’s heads as spoken by Trump in POWER and written by Isaiah some 2600 years ago.
In the Time of the Revelation and Armageddon/WWIII, the text says the Lord will come as a thief.
That's not to steal, but the sense is at a Time least expected.
(Edited and corrected from 1st posting in the original Bracing Views site)
Bill, as a Canadian I can't vote for any US President. To me it seems so un-Democratic in The Free World when decisions made exclusively in the US for US Interests and Purposes only could destroy CanaDa, not only the perceived US Enemy that must be destroyed so the US Rules Supreme and unchallenged in THIS MATERIAL WORLD.
MacLeans Magazine, August 31, 1981: https://ray032.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/macleans.jpg
I start my 80th Year May 21, so that makes me a Contemporary of Biden.
I do know about the 2014 US/CIA Coup/regime change of the Elected Russian friendly Ukraine government.
The US installed the UN-elected US PROXY anti-Russian government Victoria Nuland said she wanted even before the Coup was Completed and a Done Deal.
All that happened while Biden was responsible for the Ukraine File under Obama.
Victoria Nuland still has influence over Biden as he says he will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. The Defence Secretary says it's only to "BLEED RUSSIA" oblivious to all the Ukrainians bleeding!
Common Sense tells me that US-Biden Attitude will not lead THIS MATERIAL WORLD to a good place, except for the Billionaires who already have their well stocked luxurious BOMB shelters!
As for Biden continuing Trump's Economic War with China, the US is terrified of China's Economic Prowess on the rise.
With the US Economic-Social Pyramid System, American Finances are at the precipice of default and collapse.
If China continues along this Path of Development, it could put the US Car Industries out of Business.
Two of the worst-performing US tech stocks this week – Cisco and Tesla – have something in common: Both ran into a buzz-saw of Chinese competition. At the New York opening on April 21, Telsa had lost more than 12% during the week and Cisco more than 8.1%. Tesla’s Chinese competitor BYD announced an $11,400 electrical vehicle, a challenge to Tesla’s lowest-cost offering at about $33,000.
https://asiatimes.com/2023/04/chinas-4th-industrial-revolution-rattles-us-tech-stocks/
Is China aiming to overtake the West's EV Market too with stylish designs like this and lower costs?
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=541484288189824&set=a.516071267397793
We know China is already the World Leader in high speed rail nothing in the West comes close to.
The fastest train service measured by peak operational speed is the Shanghai maglev train which can reach 431 km/h (268 mph)
Unlike US trains do so often, they don't derail jumping off the tracks at much lower speeds.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230422-chinese-ev-dominance-hastens-end-of-petrol-engine-era
It's a sad reality we must accept that no truly meaningful changes or resolution of the most substantive problems of the nation or world are likely forthcoming from the two faces of the established order. The power establishment maintains those two faces so to give the ruse of choice- when on most of the fundamentally important issues, there is bipartisan consensus or at least refusal to act.
Both RFK and Williamson have flaws (who doesn't?) that will make it easier for the power elite of the Dem. Party to squash their campaigns. The Party has been well practiced in how to do that, both times to keep that 'radical' Sanders sandbagged. To that end they can count on the complicity of the 'liberal' side of the media- including of course the corporate "public" media of PBS & NPR.
I'd prefer RFK as Williamson just doesn't have the chops and her self-contradictory positions on the war in Ukraine affirm that; suggesting she'd be easily misled if she got anywhere near the White House. For his part, though, RFK's early anti-vaccine activism (long before COVID emerged), is IMO unfortunate baggage because especially the early positions (e.g. about the Autism-vaccine mercury connection) were highly dubious.
Regardless of any merits of RFK's positions on vaccines, however, he'll be an easy target for the DP establishment. And given his anti-war / anti-imperial stances, and the thorough brainwashing about 'threats posed by Russia and China', the Party leadership might not even have to so thoroughly choreograph the nomination by using people like Liz Warren and other faux progressives to split that side of the Party well and long enough for the establishment choice to 'emerge' and make the final results a mere formality.
I only question why RFK, of all people, would choose to run as a Dem. He's a bright fellow, with plenty of accrued understanding of the Dems and the corrupted political system at large. He certainly should know that the Party isn't at all democratic and he therefore hasn't a snowball's chance.
Given those odds against, could he think that his candidacy would somehow move the needle on anything more than the campaign rhetoric? It's all too apparent, from even Hedges' brief accounting of Biden's campaign rhetoric vs. results (as noted by you, Bill), that the value of campaign rhetoric is nothing beyond that of persuading gullible/ hopeful voters.
Any such needle moving during a campaign will last as long as a snowball in August.
I have a Marianne2024 sign in my yard and that is in Tennessee. No one has asked me who she is or what she stands for. I also appreciate RFK getting into the race because I think with multiple alternative candidates in the race the media will not be able to ignore both of them. Maybe Dennis Kucinich should jump back in. Either way as you say Bill, the main stream media is going to vilify and marginalize, can't disrupt our dysfunctional status quo.
I must respectfully disagree with your statement about Kennedy's opposition to the Covid 19 vaccines. He was an ardent opponent of vaccination long before SARS-CoV-2 arrived on the scene. As a physicist who believes that technology cannot solve social problems, I nonetheless cannot support someone whose attitudes appear to prevent his being able to make good decisions on issues involving science or technology
Without the Internet, most probably, I never would have known this US History.
'The Presidential Campaign of Convict 9653'
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918.
The act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson. The law made it illegal for a U.S. citizen to “wilfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the United States government” or to discourage compliance with the draft or voluntary enlistment into the military.
In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
https://portside.org/2023-04-28/presidential-campaign-convict-9653
Jonathan Cook has a different take on the firing of Tucker Carlson from FOX.
'Tucker Carlson’s firing reveals how afraid the media is of independent journalists'
The TV host paid the price because he tried the impossible: straddling the divide between corporate media and critical journalism
While the left is busy hating on Tucker Carlson, and not without reason, it is missing the bigger picture. Carlson was a genuine aberration in US corporate media. Which is why he is gone – sacked by media “titan” Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, over the years Carlson played on white fears, placing him firmly on the right. But he also gave over his massive corporate platform at Fox News to some of the most critical and thoughtful independent journalists and pundits around – from Glenn Greenwald and Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore.
(This article has video clips backing this up)
Carlson not only brought them into the living rooms of Main Street, but he undoubtedly helped them grow their audiences and influence.
In that way, he exposed ordinary Americans to critical perspectives, especially on US foreign policy, that they had no hope of hearing anywhere else – and most certainly not from so-called “liberal” corporate media outlets like CNN and MSNBC.
And he did so while constantly ridiculing the media’s craven collusion with those in power.
But all that is being ignored. Media analysis of Carlson’s departure has focused so far almost exclusively on his clashes with Fox News management, and a series of disrespectful tweets, that have come to light as a result of the recent Dominion court case, in which Murdoch was forced to settle with a massive payout.
But those clashes cannot be understood outside a wider context in which Carlson was pushing against institutional media constraints at Fox designed to prevent the real work of journalism – holding the powerful to account.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2023-04-26/tucker-carlsons-firing-reveals-how-afraid-the-media-is-of-independent-journalists/
It would be interesting to see how a poll of Americans went when asked: "Who do You want to be the next President? Trump, Biden, or Neither/Somebody Else?"
Permit me to offer ~ as an Alternative to and Antidote for what America’s Ruling Political Class has planned for Election2024 ~ an article posted to WordPress Bracing Views on April 10, 2022 re Elections2022 and 2024: “Reforming America's Elections the NOTC Way”…:
<<< Joe Biden versus Donald Trump in 2024 is a grim "choice" indeed for most Americans. America's duopoly gives us candidates who promise that "nothing will fundamentally change" in power relations in America, meaning your voice will never be heard in the halls of power. How do we change that? Jeffrey Moebus has a dramatic proposal worthy of careful consideration. Read on! W.J. Astore >>>
THE NOTC WAY, by Jeffrey Moebus
As it stands right now, in every federal election to be held in 2022 and 2024, Americans will have five choices. They will be able to:
~ 1. Vote for the Democrat.
~ 2. Vote for the Republican.
~ 3. Vote Third Party.
~ 4. Write-In.
~ 5. Not Vote.
What if there was a sixth choice?
What if on every ballot for every federal election there was also a designated spot for "None Of These Candidates," or NOTC?
This presents the argument that "None Of These Candidates" should be on every ballot of every federal election, and proposes a nation-wide campaign to give the American Voters a real Alternative to ~ and an actual Antidote for ~ what America's Ruling Political Class will give them for choices in 2022 and 2024: To make "None Of These Candidates" a mandatory choice on every ballot in every federal election held in the United States for Election2022 and Election2024.
Its ultimate purpose is to give a meaningful vote ~ and voice ~ to that cohort of Totally Forgotten Voters who have been disenfranchised since the beginning of elections in America, and to offer a very quick, simple, easy, and low cost solution to that problem.
ASSUMPTIONS. It is assumed, first of all, that there will indeed be elections in those years; which, face it folks, at this point, no one can honestly, realistically, absolutely, positively guarantee. And second, that the choices presented to the American Voters will be, at most, some subtle but suitable variation of the present, as follows:
~ 1. The corporatist, crony "democratic capitalist," neoconservative/neoliberal, post-modern "liberalism" and "conservativism" of the Carter-Reagan-Bush I-Clinton-Cheney/Bush II-Obama-Biden breed [which includes any "anti-Trump" Republicans intent on maintaining some semblance of a non-Trumped GOP].
~ 2. The populist, nativist, neo-mercantilist, protectionist, proto-national socialism [with its attendant racist, sexist, xenophobic, patriotist wrapped-in the-Flag-mouthing-the-Bible noise while wiping their butts with the Constitution] of Trump, Trumpatismo, the Trumpatistas, and its inevitable gaggle of Greenes, Proud Boys, and Apprentice Emperor-Wannabe Spawns like DeSantis.
~ 3. The noisy but intellectually, ideologically, and politically bankrupt and bereft neo-progressive, proto-democratic socialism of the "socialistic democrats" of the Sandersista/Warrenite, "Squad," Green New Dealer ilk, and their Spawn. [Note: Just one question for starters...: How have those folks done on America's war with Russia in Ukraine?]
BACKGROUND. The seed for all this was planted back in the first week of November 2016, as that Presidential Campaign began to finally, mercifully grind its way to its conclusion. It suddenly became painfully obvious that if Clinton and/or Trump were the very best that our Ruling Political Class [RPC] could come up with to be America's next President, then this Nation, this Country and Land, and, above all, this "We, the People" were in deeply serious, seriously deep trouble. [Note: Consider what a re-run of 2020 in 2024 ~ Biden vs Trump ~ means.]
And it wasn't just that - from the headlines, polls, blogosphere, and social media - that it was easy to conclude that Donald Trump was the patsy in a conspiracy to put Hillary Clinton in the White House. Because, at the same time, it was just as easily concluded that The Hillary was part of a plot to ensconce The Donald. Take your pick.
But what was far, far more to the point was that it grew increasingly evident that, less than a couple of days to the election, more people wanted Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States, than wanted Either of them to sit in the Oval Office come January 20, 2017.
That, on the one hand, many people will vote for Clinton - because, and only because, they don't want Trump as President - rather than because they actually do want her to be President. And that, on the other hand, many people will similarly vote for Trump - because, and only because, they don't want Clinton as President - rather than because they actually do want him to be President.
Which raised the immediate question: So who does somebody vote For if they want neither Trump nor Clinton ~ nor any of the Third Party candidates ~ as their next President? Stated differently: How do these people vote Against all the candidates that the Ruling Political Class has deigned to gift them?
Continued at https://bracingviews.com/2022/04/10/reforming-americas-elections-the-notc-way/