TO THE POLITICALLY DISENGAGED

This post is primarily for those who have, for whatever reason, disengaged from the political process and the corresponding functions — especially that of voting.
Now, I know that many, indeed a dangerously growing number of you, are simply too tired and otherwise taxed to take much if any notice of politics. While I, having worked as a caterer, can certainly understand this, even to you I must repeat: elections have consequences. And the consequences of the last election are at work making, or at least aiming to make, your already-difficult lives even harder. I can understand that, between worrying about your own health and the disaster a serious illness would be and the need to hold down two (more?) jobs or keep that tiny business going simply to feed the kids and make sure they stay safe at school, you feel there isn’t enough of you to be a real citizen instead of a mere subject, a helot, a serf to the criminally and obscenely wealthy. I suggest you start thinking again about politics, even if you can only do so during your commutes either in a car or on public transportation. Start with how hardly anyone — IF anyone — speaks for you. Then ponder what you might be able to do under current circumstances. It might be as small a thing as a potluck or a cookout with neighbors on a day off where you can all seriously talk about how you and many others like you might actually participate in active change for the better. Take it step by careful step; I don’t want y’all neglecting family (including pets) or anything else you cherish for ‘bigger things’. I’m all for doing ‘small things with great love’ as a recently canonized saint put it.
Now, to those who have disengaged for less urgent reasons, here come my sternest words. You, without the pressure of necessity and under the illusion that politics is extraneous to ‘real life’, have chosen to degrade yourselves from citizens to subjects. And by so doing, you may have also become a fit instrument to degrade others into subjection as well. Maybe most of you are more ‘I-do-my-thing-you-do-your-thing’ types, but if you are, tell me this: when a wannabe despot says to you, “You ain’t doing your thing no more; all of you WILL do MY thing and ONLY my thing.”, what will you do then?
 I suggest you take serious stock to see whether you’ve lost the habit of common action either for certain improvements OR, perhaps more importantly, against internal threats that come disguised — that is, they’re not dark-skinned with black berets or shades. Nothing has brought me closer to despair than to see how many breaches of rights, how much blatant and unapologetic corruption it takes to get y’all to grab the nearest pitchforks, torches or whatever else may be at hand!!
The two main parties are NOT all the same and at least one still has an active wing for real change! I wanna know, what will it take to get y’all to step up to the level of citizens and TAKE PART?! I can certainly understand it if big money and the corruption that comes with it has disgusted you; that’s the basic reason I didn’t go into politics in the 1980s — I could see where the incessant begging for money was going even then!
I’m making myself a candidate for President of the United States with an entirely different campaign. This campaign will be largely online and I won’t be asking for ANY money if I can avoid it. For this campaign, the process is a big part of the point. If you support my platform (to which there will be a link at the end of this post) and like the idea of an entirely differently-engineered campaign, you can share this post along with an earlier one titled Is This Really Such A Loony Idea? with as many others as possible. Find out when the earliest date is to begin collecting signatures to be on the 2020 ballot (and how many are necessary in your state) and then get going on collecting them! I’m conflicted whether or not to be part of a primary or go in as an independent, but time will tell.
As the great Athenian statesman Pericles said two and a half millennia ago, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” Politics are a condition of human life and Jane Goodall has told us our nearest cousins the chimpanzees also practice politics. That’s right; google it for yourself. If you don’t want to be pushed round by politics then push back — now.
Here’s the link to my current platform — and don’t feel shy about suggesting additions or revisions either. Only one thing anyone needs to give up in this campaign: hate.
http://nopartyline.blogspot.com/2011/06/to-all-my-fellow-americans-especially.html

IS THIS REALLY SUCH A LOONY IDEA?

One morning last October, I read a pair of columns with which I couldn’t agree more. One was by Jim Sleeper and was basically a rant about the spinelessness of most powerful Democrats. This column and another one by Charles Blow which I read this morning have my mental wheels moving. Allow me to quote Jim Sleeper’s last paragraph immediately below and then proceed to my main topic.
“Until and unless Democrats are forced by well organized movements to challenge the regime of casino-like financing, predatory lending and consumer-bamboozling that they’ve done so much to sustain under the falsely compensatory drapery of United Colors of Benetton “diversity,” the true and urgent claims of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter will always lose to the belligerence of the Brett Kavanaughs and the bitter resentments of the less “entitled” politically incorrect.”

Maybe ‘guerrilla’ political campaigns are a way to do this. I’m thinking harder than ever about launching a ‘stealth’ campaign for president (and encouraging others to do likewise for Congress and state legislatures if and when necessary) which , I hope, can also prove to be an end run around big money. There’ll be a link to my current ‘platform’. at the bottom of this post. What I want to do is share the platform with the clear understanding that the overriding job for all of us must be ‘save the planet’. Some concerns at least appear more urgent, but none are longer range. And in order to tackle longer-range concerns than we’re generally doing now, anyone who runs for office under this platform has to have at least two, maybe three, essential traits:

1) The ability to listen without an ‘override’ style

2) A strong sense of themselves quite apart from being politically powerful persons

3) An understanding that there ARE rule-or-ruin groups and individuals (like patriarchalists, fossil-fuel billionaires and Islamists, to use three examples) and they MUST be dealt with very sternly indeed across the board!

Since I have neither the means nor the time to travel, I will ask political friends and allies in all the states if they’d circulate petitions to put me, and anyone running for other offices, on the ballot there. I’m not even sure they need to let me know; maybe I too should be surprised in November 2020.

You may think this a quite loony idea; well and good. But just let it simmer and imagine ‘stealth’ campaigns using low-cost communications and making an end run round big money by people who won’t feel themselves non-entities without more power than the rest of us! And imagine the MSM caught entirely, or almost entirely, by surprise on Election Day — but this time for something really good!

I admit to having no political experience but I have watched and studied politics for half a century (since I was almost 12). I also know a good deal of history, geography, theology and the Bible. I also itch to throw the ‘religious’ Right off the ground I see them as having usurped. In any case, my observations and knowledge dwarfs the current usurper — yeah, not like that’s too difficult, I know.

If, after mulling this over, this appeals to you, please share it with those who you know to be political allies in each state so we can get things rolling. Let’s make this a campaign where the people can say, “We did it ourselves.” Another post, more to the disengaged, will follow hard upon this.

http://nopartyline.blogspot.com/2011/06/to-all-my-fellow-americans-especially.html