NOW. NOW. NOW!

 Well, it's happened. We no longer have a SCOTUS. We have a Fascist Grand Council (hereafter the FGC) which still calls itself the SCOTUS, but is no longer. By their decision yesterday, they have shown their only interest in the Constitution is to make it solely an instrument for the rule of the rich white males! Their only interest in democracy is to drive a stake through its heart and bury it twelve feel under!
So, fellow citizens, if you wish to remain citizens and not decline into subjects, and abject subjects at that, now--right now--is the time to rise up and say 'NO!!' to what the FGC has handed--or, rather, thrown down in our general direction and in the autocratic style familiar in prerevolutionary Versailles and/or St. Petersburg!
I say that by such an action they have sawn off the branch on which we all sit, including them, although it's likely they'll be drawn apart by wild horses sooner than acknowledge that. That they themselves have thereby abrogated their authority.
A warning to my 'fellow' pale males without money: in a way, we shall be their first targets. They will target us with lies. They (that is, the FGC, national GOP politicians, the Fascist noise-and-lies machine) will try to convince us that we, too, are part and parcel of the same class as they. Why, some of them will even condescend to enter our bars and taverns and maybe even will buy us a beer and invite us to sit down with them--if they think they can get what they want from us!
No, brothers, be not deceived: all that mob sees us as their useful dogs, to keep the women and everyone of color at a 'safe' (for them and them only!) distance and to be abundantly fed with crow--that is, by and with James (or Jane?) Crow, Esq. Jim Crow has put on 'bidness' attire, gussied up his name and has hired a secretary. If we were to put on our best and come into their clubs, most of them would scowl at us and hiss, "What the hell are you doing here?!"
But with the women and anyone of color, they won't even waste time trying to humbug them. They'll tell them flatly, "We don't share any power with you anymore! Get back to the kitchen, the barns, the cornfields, the whoopie-houses and stay there! Our word, and only our word, is law to y'all!"
What they don't tell us is those words also apply to us, their supposed 'brethren'--but only when it serves their interest. Apart from that, they mean those words to apply to us as well.
The FGC's decision yesterday carries with it the implication that wealthy white males can do as they like with anything and anyone they choose. Including making free with our goods, our monies and our womenfolk. Droit de seigneur is back all right, but not necessarily for us. Only for them!
Some time ago, actually in the wake of the 2016 election, the time came to dust off Madame and prepare to use her. We are now overdue for that. Maybe only in the sense of disabling the political and economic power of our currently ruling oligarchy, but I say, by any means necessary!
All of us, male and female, whatever color of skin, hair and eyes we have, who have little or no more wealth than our humble homes and vehicles and whatever skills we may have, need now to join together and unseat our Fascist Grand Council, put the Fascist noise-and-lies machine out of business and dump almost any and every officeholder with (R) before or after their names, depending on local circumstances.
Can we wait till midterms? I'm not sure of that anymore. Hath not this FGC given Trumpelthinskin a more effective tool to suspend or cancel elections altogether? I'm not sure but it surely looks and feels that way to me.
Now is the time for all of us who have no or little wealth to rise up and take back what rightfully belongs to all of us, all of We The People. God willing, we shall do this nonviolently but if the Fascists start shooting, let us respond. Now, fellow citizens (for the moment anyway). Now, all colors, races, ethnicities and faiths. Now, men and women. Now. Now. Now!

 

ORGANIZE! UNITE! WIN!

 

Well, here we are, back to the 1930s. The great, mostly white middle class produced by postwar legislation and the boom on which it rode, is now mostly gone. Sixty percent of Americans are again living hand-to-mouth. And yet, our ignoble oligarchs are still not satisfied. And they won't even be satisfied with medieval-style ownership of all us peasants!

Most of you have, courtesy of Faux News and other such fascist media, have fallen for the lie that the political and economic descendants of the planters have been using on us ever since Bacon's Rebellion in the Virginia colony of the 1670s.

One of that rebellion's remarkably rich ironies is, it actually began because enough newly-freed indentured servants thought that the colonial legislature wasn't grabbing enough of the natives' land quickly enough!

But whatever its roots, Bacon's Rebellion terrified the Virginia planters because black and white indentured servants made common cause against the Virginia aristocracy. From then on, blacks were to be slaves all their lives and whites would be indentured for a few years, then used to do the planters' dirty work while being fed the lie that THEY were now part of the ruling class!

How many of you have been told that lie and swallowed it in its current form? That you, too, might be rich one day and it'll all be by your own efforts?

Sorry-not-sorry to tell you that you've been sold a bill of goods! IF your grandchildren are lucky, they'll be doing exactly the same work you're doing now! If they're UNlucky, they'll be literal beggars and some will have their their starved, probably unburied carcasses merging with landfills! And you can guess what your granddaughters might have to do in order to keep breathing, can't you?

One lie you've been told is, y'all, or your grandparents, made it by their own efforts while others (and we know who THAT means) 'had things handed to them'.

THAT lie started the day after the 13th Amendment made technical slavery illegal in the whole country. Some of you may remember that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the 'states in rebellion', not to the loyal slave states. And, since so few of us have known any African-American, LAtino or native individuals, too many of us have swallowed that LIE, generation after generation!

And now, as a pretty direct result of too many of us allowing ourselves to be pitted against other working people of different skin shades, what every president beginning with FDR and ending with Carter has built, fostered and maintained is....gone, gone, GONE! No more middle class majority; too many of us started to think of ourselves as aristocrats! Not a smart move when your family's middle-class prosperity was built on the GI Bill and FHA insured home loans!

This next item is something neither most of you, or parents and grandparents, could have been expected to know or even ask after: those programs were secretly 'labelled' 'For White Men Only, or Almost'. Almost no African-American, Latino or Native applying to those programs got anything from them!

Again, this is something almost none of you could be expected to know.

I know about it because I heard about it and did my homework and because my daddy was also a Southern white anti-racist. And probably mostly because of him I was lucky to grow up in what is still too rare in our country: a successfully racially (AND economically) integrated neighborhood. Three cheers for West Mt. Airy!

This is how I know no person of color ever got anything we didn't get first and out of which they were initially shut out for too long! Yes-sir-ee! Y'all got help and they didn't, at least till the 1960s! And even then they were only added to the list. Which is to say, you were never excluded from help on racial grounds!

But you, and/or your parents and/or grandparents,swallowed the hornswoggle!

Now, if we are to return to the days when there were no billionaires (although there've always been wealthy individuals, and that's OK) we need to TAX the rich according to their ability to pay! Maybe in order to do that, some of you need to understand that the likelihood of your families becoming wealthy is about as likely as being able to reach the moon by flapping your arms!

Most of our current billionaire class is making sure that none of you or your grandkids will EVER be able to join their ranks! If you want our children and grandchildren to have a real chance at better lives, first requirement is: you have to want this for ALL our children of all colors and act, especially vote, accordingly! Don't fall for ANYTHING that tries to pin our problems on some low-power group that can barely hit back OR onto honestly earned, disinterested expertise, but FOLLOW. THE. MONEY. As the citizens of the Roman Republic once asked, Cui bono? Who benefits?

Our oligarchs try very, very hard to prevent you, or anyone honest and not downright worshipful towards them, from finding the money trail! Every single law that makes following the money harder for ordinary folk has to go into the trashcan!

Organize across the lines of race, ethnicity and faith!

WE now stand on the brink, if we do it together, of creating something that human history has not yet seen: a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith, secular, representative, democratic republic!

Until now, we Americans have been pioneers of one form or another! And now history is giving us another chance to be pioneers again--this time for all of us! White, Native, Black, Latino, Asian, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh or whatever! Let's return to what we have been in this respect and NOT let the greedy, ruthless, dam' near psychopathic billionaire class knock us apart!

STICK WITH WESTERN CIV, FELLOW LIBS, PROGS, ETC.

 I have what might be seriously unhappy news for a good many of my fellow liberals, progressives, 'greenies', etc.
If you cherish such ideas as democracy, the rule of law and justice for all (including other creatures and ecosystems) under that law, the only civilization that even entertains such quaint notions is that which has in large part grown from the creative tension 'between Athens and Jerusalem'--that is, Western civilization and its subsidiary cultures.
Because of what Jerusalem brings to the table, there is some understanding that the strong should uphold and strengthen the weak. 'A flickering wick He will not quench,' etc. Does Muslim culture say or live this at all? Do the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, or of the Americas say or do likewise?
Athens brings the faculty of clear and acute observation; Jerusalem a cultivation of compassion which stood alone in the ancient world, along with the ongoing attempt to apply divine revelation to human life. Both may well have self-critical faculties probably unequalled in the ancient world and still all too rare in today's world. I defy one and all to show us any culture or civilization with anything like such setups!
I've heard a little of the concept of ubuntu, summed up as 'Because we are, I am'.
Well and good. We of and in the West have, indeed, historically not paid enough attention (at least for perhaps the last two centuries) to connections between ourselves and other creatures and life-forms. Certainly in the US of A, neoliberal individualism has gone some ways too far; I'll be one of the first to agree with that!
Two things are important to remember here: first, as I've written before, democracy is based not on any Romantic claptrap about the (on life-support) Goodness of Humankind but on exactly the opposite: every single hoomin is equally corruptible by economic and political power, which are almost always the same thing, and only other humans can check the corruption of others. If we want God to keep us free of such corruption, we must ask Him to do so and ask that on a continuing basis--and be prepared for responses to come from unexpected quarters.
Second, by reminding the rich and powerful that they are as human and as mortal as the rest of us, we are actually doing them a mighty service. Without such reminders, wouldn't they find themselves diving towards Dives in record time? I certainly think so. As we contain and constrain their power, we also pull their eternal souls back from the lip of the Fiery Pit on the edge of which they totter!
I know of no other culture or civilization that, at least in theory and at least sometimes in practice, puts such checks on those entrusted with such power. If anyone else does, well, friends, speak up right now and hold not your peace! Expound on the arcadias of which most of us won't know and tell us how they do it! After all, democracy is not yet complete and will probably not be within the lifetimes of nearly all of us currently breathing! We can still use quite a bit of help that way.
Two places in the ancient world strike me: first, Cahokia, where it seems that the natives of that area tried 'civilization' but eventually gave it up as not worth it. Second, Mohenjo-Daro, which seems to have been remarkably democratic inasmuch as it shows it had sanitation facilities for all its inhabitants and no monarchical great palaces or temples or anything like that. We've probably only begun to scratch the surface of what each place will be able to tell us today!
Dr. Franklin acknowledged the Six Nations as being (at least in part) as being more politically and organizationally advanced than us colonists and he sought to copy certain sections of how they ran their business. Another strength of Western civilization: the ability to note and, when beneficial to at least some folks, adapt parts of other cultures.
Anyhow, fellow liberals, progressives, etc., stick with Western civilization. Yeah, it's had and has its own shortcomings. Find me a culture and civilization that doesn't have them on our fallen planet!
Stop trying to be better than Jesus Who asked the rich young man, "Why do you call me 'good'? There is none good save God."
And, finally (I hear the relieved sighs!) don't forget that the underpinning for the Enlightenment which provides much of our intellectual fuel has very definitely Judeo-Christian underpinnings. Ponder that long and well, brothers and sisters.

THE INEQUALITY OF ISLAM WITH JUDAISM & CHRISTIANITY

 

Let's not deceive ourselves about Islam. Islam per se is not our enemy, but they have a l-o-n-g way to go before they can be equal partners with (most of) Christianity and Judaism in Abrahamian culture and civilization.

Why do I say this? Simply this: today, most Christians and nearly all Jews understand how inherently evil slave trading and slave holding are and nearly all the 'voices' in both faith communities reflect this. Not so with Islam. Islam was the 'faith' that opened the first (which might still be proceeding under the law's radar) great slave trade, the trans-Sahara slave trade which has lasted not four but fourTEEN centuries with a death rate closer to 85 percent rather than the 25 percent or so from the Atlantic slave trade--which, btw, began as an extension of the trans-Sahara slave trade!

No: in the absence of Muslim voices unafraid to raise themselves against slavery and slave-trading across the board and in favor of EQUAL human rights and dignity for ALL, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, I for one neither can nor will accept the 'equality' of Islam with Christianity and Judaism.
Individual Muslims are another matter. Toward them I hope I will always show Christian charity, mercy and forbearance.

Some will say, it took Christendom long enough to come to that point. Just so. But it has, and almost from the beginning it had figures which were at least uneasy about the implications of slave-trading and slave-holding and who raised their voices accordingly. All the way back to Fray Anton Montecito who scourged his fellow Spaniards for their treatment of the natives in 1512--five years before the Reformation began.

Who can Islam put up beside Fray Anton, Bartolome de las Casas, Samuel de Champlain, Roger Williams and John Woolman? If such figures are there, why do we know nothing about them?

Until and unless such figures can be found and put among pioneers of human freedom, 'mainstream' Islam cannot be seen as an equal and we may need to treat it as a likely enemy of human freedom.

Leftists, be not deceived: if the Islamists win a jihad, you'll be among the first batch of the executed and your alliance with them will make exactly NO difference!

PROBABLY FUTILE CALL TO 'FELLOW' PALE MALES

 So now MAGA and their Orange Julius Caesar have served notice on us: NO more heroes of color, no female heroes or exemplars to be held up AT ALL! And pale male mediocrities (maybe I should apply for a post; more than one person might see me as such a critter) will be promoted over better qualified women and people of color! And saying to all the out-groups, your excellence will no longer earn you anything; only saying 'Sho' Massa!' loud enough and long enough may get you a few picayunes!
But to all those pale males who think, perhaps with tremulous near-ecstasy, they are about to be restored to their 'rightful' position with the lowest of them still better than the best people of color, let me let you in on a secret which today's 'planters' will probably chase me down for telling you:
The new rule for women and people of color that excellence will gain you nothing but the blindest obedience may get you something also applies to....y'all! To all us pale males without money, connections or social capital!
Yes, that's right! We too are now subject to the same rules the oligarchs are reinstating for women and people of color. But no one, except women and people of color, are telling us that!
And how do I know this? I know it because of memories which came out in therapy decades after my dad erected a firewall against them by means of hypnosis. Memories of seeing my father rankly abused by his planter of a boss at the small Midwestern women's college where he worked and on which campus we then lived. I also know it by hints he dropped about his being let go from another business a few years later. Whether there's a connection between the two I don't know and don't expect to know in this world.
But I do know that my dad did what was expected of him and he still got knocked in the head. Maybe twice. And he was a white Southerner of mixed British ancestry (English, Scots, Welsh) Our family name is of impeccably English origin. Maybe what knocked him askew is that we come from the Southern whites the ex-planters called 'scalawags' during Reconstruction.
That is, Southern whites willing to work with the freedmen and the Yankee Carpetbagger transplants in the Reconstruction state governments. The ones with antebellum memories of being squeezed and muzzled by the greedy, arrogant and prideful planters. The ones who know why no Southern state had any public education for anyone of any color until Reconstruction. And the ones who knew that, already by 1835, no Southern state was any kind of democracy even for white men! Only for rich white men!
So two colors determined whether these states were democracies: white and green! Or, back then, white and gold, as coin was still 'specie' as was said. That fits better as white and gold were also the colors of the prerevolutionary French monarchy--and we all know what happened to that!
Probably that's a big part of how I got to be a second-generation Southern white anti-racist.
I used to wonder why my dad had such a passionate hatred for 'whiteness'. The sixteen years since January 2009, and much of what I've seen and heard during them, have answered that question most emphatically. Today, I share my dad's deep hatred of the falsehood called 'whiteness', possibly with interest.
Anyway, 'fellow' pale males, I have pathetically little hope of you. I have little hope that you won't take the devil's bargain which, once again, the oligarchs offer you of doing their dirty work in exchange for lying to yourselves and thinking yourselves one of the ruling caste when you're not. You're only their bitches doing the work they consider too nasty for their delicate, inbred, palsied hands!
Mind you, I would never be happier to be mistaken in this than now. If you wise up and join with people of all colors and all women to build a strong working people's coalition capable of demanding what our country needs and seeing it done, I will be very pleasantly surprised!
Prove even LBJ mistaken when he said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Prove both me and LBJ mistaken in that! You call yourselves Christians; so show yourselves so by not needing to look down on anyone!

FOR DEMOCRACY'S SAKE, DO NOT 'FOLLOW ORDERS'!

 

If I were the Canadian Prime Minister, I would be ordering a general mobilization, troops to the border and put a conscription bill before Parliament after Trumpelthinskin's latest expression of greedy lust to absorb our neighbor! Further, I would appeal to our Armed Forces to refuse to invade Canada if Orange Julius Caesar issues orders to do so. I might even suggest they might want to turn their weapons on the whole MAGA/Project 2025/Federalist Society gang!

What Donelon is after is the marginalizing of ALL of us who are not white, male, straight and RICH! And I suggest in the strongest possible terms that all my 'fellow' palefaces, be they male or female, should examine themselves to see whether, and how, each of us may have colluded in the marginalizing of our fellow citizens with darker skins and/or different sexual orientations, because, now, Donelon means to send us the same way unless we become their overseers and slave-patrollers! So, then, what will you do?

Will you take the devil's bargain that the oligarchs MAY (not necessarily WILL) offer you or will you do what's best for ALL of us, including y'all, and join with black, brown, yellow and red working people and be part of a working people's Rainbow Coalition?

I remember November 4, 2008. My heart was so full that night as I witnessed the election of Obama, something I did not expect to see in my lifetime. I actually thought we were becoming post-racial.

The sixteen years between then and now have taught this straight pale male a hard and bitter lesson.

I thought we were moving past racism. LOL, right? So much for what a straight pale male can know, right?

I used not to know why my dad detested 'whiteness', including his own. Boy, do I ever know why now and don't I share it--with interest!

I exhort you all to turn from your heedless ways and complete the rainbow of a working people's coalition to defend and extend democracy! Help us stay on the path of building something that has, so far, been absent from human history: a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith representative democratic republic!

Take up the pioneers' path and let's march forward together on it!

• 
  

CAN'T YOU GET THE IDEAS RIGHT SIDE UP?!

 We all need to 'know our tribes'. But neither can we make them into idols without losing what is best in them.
And this is just what both Islamists and 'Christian' nationalists do. They seek to grab all power in whatever countries are cursed by them. They seek to rob their neighbors of their God-given freedom of conscience, faith and worship. And, since neither can conceive of a god who is no more than the head of their particular tribes, they believe the whole world is organized exactly as are they and that all the talk about 'creative freedom' and 'the marketplace of ideas' is simply a ruse to clear the path for 'atheistic, komm'niss, sosh'list, FAG i-dees'.
Well, pardners, why, then, do you need the state's help in fighting such 'idees'? If your ideas are better for us and healthier for the planet, why are you losing the contention of ideas and losing it bigtime without prohibition on criticizing this or even saying that? Like, for instance, wanting to prohibit even the use of the words 'climate change'? Or any criticism of Islam and/or the Qur'an?
If your ideas come direct from God as you claim, why do they bring so much more DEATH and misery in their wake? No, dudes, I for one don't buy it. Serving the Lord our God with all our minds does NOT mean, we switch our minds off! No; the God I know wants us to engage our minds with his, even to the point of speaking up even to Him and asking why--but be prepared for at least the implication you can't digest His reply--at least not yet.
My continuing conversation with God seems to indicate that He shares infomation and answers question on a need-to-know/ability-to-digest basis. That is, whether we really need to know and/or can digest whatever answer(s) there might be. And He knows this far better than we can, in much the same way as we know what's good for our children's bodies and minds; what they can digest.
Those who want to 'freeze' their societies either in the 1950s or at around 1000 seem to think that they know what's good for the rest of us because they want complete and total overlordship over the rest of us--including those of us far more advanced than they are! Again, no dice, dudes! And you Islamists, beware: I have an electric shaver with your beards' names on them!
And your belief that you can 'freeze' culture is still more evil and ridiculous! If you knew any truthful history, you'd know how culture changes all! the! time!
Imagine culture as a 'tube' which is, indeed needs to be, open-ended towards the future! If you want a vigorous culture attractive to others, that's how it needs to be. Try to sew up the end of the tube pointing towards the future and you seal your culture's death warrant, for it will wither without the oxygen which comes from cultural interaction.
G. B. Shaw once wrote, "Our societies' vigor springs not from the purity of our genes, but from us being arrant mongrels." And I for one say he was right.
Anyone who owns dogs or cats, or who works with them, has seen how some breeds can be overbred and, when they are, they acquire ailments unknown to the more vigorous and fortunate mongrels, or mutts as we call them here.
I don't know what animal example the apostles of the lie of 'racial purity' will cite, but I have all dogs and all cats to cite to prove that lie for what it is!
I suggest the proponents of such lies as racial and/or cultural 'purity' are motivated by the nagging knowledge that their cultures, or subcultures, or 'tribes' really are less advanced than they 'ought to be.'
And they are eaten up with envy. Both among our fascisti and in too many Middle East Studies departments, they try to dress up their bad ideas with ten-dollar words which have nothing real behind them except bigotry.
Are they trying to be better than the Son of Man who, when a rich young man (a ruler? not sure) asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to attain eternal life?" responded with, "Why do you call me 'good'? There is none good save God."? Then they've set themselves up a mountain which cannot be climbed except by freely given and unmerited Grace. Are you ready to take hold of that? Not everyone is by a long shot!
We liberals have been too civil and polite for far too long. We need to refresh our memories as to whence the ideas we know are true come and to express them in as few words as is possible. Beginning with that, the more rights we all have, the more secure everyone's rights are. Power, not human dignity, is the zero-sum game and NO, the two are not the same by any means!
If you're interested in finding out more why we almost always get these ideas upside-down, askew, or any way but the right way, here's a link to another post where I put out an idea which I hope will be helpful.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1544353602029642191/6491367396937253970
No: diversity is, within a universally-supported democratic framework, our strength in the West, both in the variety of our DNA and how quickly we assimilate helpful new materials into our cultures. Within the universal support of democracy, diversity is not a weakness but a strength.