DEMOCRACY NEEDS INEQUALITY NARROWED

 Which of these two thoughts do you experience as truer?
"If everyone had 'enough' money anyway, who would work?"
"Is no good to have too much time. Must have work."
I experience the latter as much, much truer and I don't think I'm alone in that. I say, nearly all of us hoomins want and need some kind of regular work, even if we don't necessarily need the pay, although nearly all of us do need that too.
Let's pause and ask ourselves here: what do each and all of us need from our work? Certainly we all need to be able to support ourselves and, if we're lucky enough to have one, to at least help to support our families. But don't we all really need more than that from our work? I suggest that the following are things we need from our work, each and all of us:
1) We need to feel that we make a positive difference for our jobs, workplaces and workmates.
2) We need the mix of routine and novelty with which our work often presents us. We need this in our overall life and, ideally, our work should be of a piece in that.
3) We need to feel the dignity work gives us. This is why tyrannical bosses are such a spoiler and bearable only under severe threat of privation without that particular job or that the job offers high chance for advancement. Sometimes both.
But most of us have  known bosses who enjoy being unaccountably tyrannical, haven't we?
Let me make something clear here: a boss who drives herself at least as hard as she drives her underlings is not necessarily a tyrant. I've had two such bosses and was married to one of them (she died 11 years ago) and I would've followed either one down Hell's mouth!
It seems to me that a tyrant's perverse joy in his tyranny is in direct relation to how wealthy that tyrant is. When power, especially the power of the purse, is accountable to no one else on any regular basis--it is then that Lord Acton's dictum about power's tendencies are the most true.
And does anyone remember a survey about how much satisfaction money affords most of us, pun partially intended? I remember it quite well. It was done some years ago and it showed that, after money allowed enough to be well-clothed, sheltered and nourished and enough so that neither serious illness nor educating the children would be a financial catastrophe and to take decent vacations twice a year, the satisfaction money gave dropped pretty sharply for most people who lack the lust to be among today's slave masters. Back when this survey was made, that meant for most of us, $75,000 per year would be enough for everything. And perhaps when we've made it really possible (meaning without incurring a mountain of debt) for everyone to get the education they want and to have the health care they need, maybe that figure will drop.
One saying too many of the already-too-wealthy seem to disregard but is none the less true is, when we all do better, we ALL do better. This means that, so far from employment going down when the minimum wage goes up, it will likely go the other way. Spending is what drives the economy, and when more people have more money they spend more. Especially on things which they couldn't afford before. And, in absolute terms, the wealthy actually do better too. But when they feel too many others, perhaps especially those with darker skins, do better, the already-too-wealthy seem not to want to do that much better themselves. It would seem that they'd actually be content to be, in raw numbers, less wealthy provided that the non-wealthy were either abjectly, wretchedly poor and under the cruel necessity of being toadies, servants and slaves to them!
Could there be a clearer picture of the corrupting effects of gross inequality?!
Theology common to (at least) the Abrahamian faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) speaks warningly of the corrupting effects of too much wealth, especially wealth which is unaccountable to other humans! Who has the chutzpa to stand and tell me, or anyone else, that they are any less corruptible than the rest of us? We used to believe that the rich, because they had what they wanted, were less corruptible than the poor or middling. What I see before my eyes in this year of Grace two thousand and twenty gives me very, very serious doubts about that. Now, it looks as if, for a few anyhow, riches do not dull the lust for more power, which makes the riches they already have very, very dangerous to democracy. Very possibly, they could prove lethal to democracy and indeed to human civilization as well.
We need some new criteria for leadership. Bernie is a good prototype; so might Joe and Kamala be. In any case, they are far better than the alternative which stands to prove to be cyanide to both democracy and civilization. But I cite Bernie because he is one who shows he really understands that politics is not all about him, it's about US and the programs we need to, really, stabilize and strengthen both democracy and human civilization. We need more leaders who understand that and who are far more activated by the desire to serve rather than their own greed for wealth and/or power. And bear in mind that leaders of small parties might be ego-driven too. But if I have any way to 'spot' them, that'll have to be in another post. Do I hear sighs of relief?

FOR MY FELLOW PALEFACES--WAKE UP NOW!!

It's down to us now.
This election will show whether we are still a free country or whether we're headed straight for fascism. Considering all that the fascists have done to try and delegitimize this election and indeed the whole democratic process, the margin still feels too narrow to me. So, to those either still hypnotized by Trump-ery, or soured by cynicism or who think they just don't have time for democracy and citizenship, let me acquaint you with what's in store for all our children and grandchildren and further posterity (if any of them will be alive by then) if we don't utterly trounce Trump-ery and the Repiglicans who have so eagerly embraced it.
The air and water will get dirtier. Clean air and water will get costlier as will medical care, decent food and education. All the 'basics' for life will become rarer and costlier even while basically useless gadgets stay the same price or even go to a lower price. This will mean that all of us frantically running on our hamster-wheels will have to go faster. There will be battles to get the essentials of life; the battle lines will be partially drawn by skin color. A large paleface minority, myself among them, will be on the side of people of color. God willing, the palefaces who FINALLY realize they really are no better off than anyone else of any other color will join us 'racial renegadoes'.
But what about my fellow-palefaces who have tangible excuses for thinking themselves 'better' and 'more hardworking'? Let me address a question to you: what do you really value the most? Surely it isn't anything material like that McMansion for which you went into hock, am I right? Isn't it your children and grandchildren? Do you want them to have to fight off hungry and desperate bands of people who have literally nothing left to lose for life's survival basics? Or do you think the answer is enough firepower to mow all those lazy n***er, s**c and 'Injun' grasshoppers down? Who will bury or cremate all of them then?
And do you want your children and grandchildren to have to work ever harder to have those basics? Get a few things straight here for a change: Trump and the too-wealthy people he serves are no friends of yours any more than they're friends to people of color. But the people of color mostly already know this. You need to learn this fast, along with the fact that the upward mobility rate in our country is now the second-lowest in the 'developed' world. At this rate, our upward mobility rate will soon be close to that of pre-Revolutionary France. Which means your children and grandchildren's chances of being even as well off as you, never mind better off, are going down, DOWN, down, down. (Thanks, Boss.) And that is because of the overweening greed of the already far-too-wealthy, NOT because of the needs of the poor, whether they're white, black, brown or red.
And imagine a planet where half the population, not to mention countless animals, have died of either famine, floods, fires and other natural disasters or of ever-newer pathogens. Who will bury or otherwise attend to all those corpses? How many of them do you think will probably just lie where they fell and rot right there? Perhaps this, more than anything else, will drive home to the already-too-wealthy how little they can insulate themselves from the rest of us in the end: the smell.
Yes, the smell. Imagine a planet where the smell of decomposition never, or almost never, leaves the air. You won't like this fact at all, but it remains a fact: if you don't vote, and vote the straight Democratic ticket, this election season, you are ultimately voting for a planet where the smell of rot will never leave the nostrils of our children and grandchildren. Just think that over. And don't take my word for it; do your own research. If you want to tell me I'm mistaken, go right ahead--but first show me hard evidence that I am mistaken. The only way it occurs to me I could be mistaken is if, once half the humans are dead and rotting, nature returns with a vengeance: forests and savannas are regenerated and expanded and pump new oxygen into the atmosphere.
Let's leave our posterity a planet where they won't have to smell rot every day, every hour, maybe every minute. Trounce Trump. Regenerate and expand democracy! WAKE UP, FELLOW PALEFACES!

MORE TREASON TO DEMOCRACY

 Yesterday, a very disturbing executive order was issued. If pursued, it can lead to an end of a non-partisan civil service doing its necessary jobs and its replacement by a jumble of servile neo-feudal wards of political and/or corporate oligarchs enriching only themselves and their personal masters. This confirms my suspicion: what the Repiglican party in DC has in mind is the extinguishing of democracy and replacing it with an oligarchic, neo-feudal tyranny! And they hardly even 'cover' it anymore!
Some Repiglicans (the political ancestors of those that now rule the party) used to characterize the FDR and Truman administrations as 'twenty years of treason'. What they meant then and mean now is no betrayal by Democrats to foreign powers but that they (the Repiglicans) were no longer seen as God's Anointed Rulers and that, like kings of old, they could do no wrong because of who they were! But they were never really replaced (that was a mistake!) but only supplemented by people who had been examined to see that they could do the jobs for which they applied and who were sworn to defend no particular person but only the American People and the Constitution.
This is what these would-be Lords and Ladies hate the most: that allegiance is given to the country and its people as a whole and to our basic law, aka the Constitution rather than to Worthy Persons like, of course, themselves! And that sort of personal liege-lord (or lady) tie is what they wish to bring back, albeit in 21st century clothing that won't creak and clank as armor would! The only thing they hate more than allegiance given to the people and their Constitution are co-operative government programs that actually work and erase the need for Great Lords and Ladies--like Social Security! Let me also say that the Repiglicans appear to have committed actual treason in pursuit of power and done it on an alarmingly consistent  basis from the time that Nixon dangled the prospect of a better deal for Thieu of South Vietnam if he, Nixon, won the 1968 election through the Reagan campaign's dealings with Iran for them to keep the hostages until Reagan was inaugurated and the Iran-Contra shenanigans right up to the present election where Trump is soliciting foreign aid to help his campaign as he did four years ago. Never mind twenty years; the Repiglicans seem to have committed treason with alarming consistency for FIFTY years! Emblazon this on the heavens and on our brains: FIFTY YEARS OF TREASON!!!
I now appeal to every Democrat and every progressive now running for office, perhaps especially to the top of the ticket. Joe, I hate to tell you this but if you think there'll be a return to bipartisan collegiality once the Trump incubus is gone, you're fooling yourself. The Repiglicans have been behaving with progressively less honor since Gingrinch was in the House and now they behave with none. You, and all the rest of us, need to treat them like the fascisti traitors that they are and ride over them (whenever possible) they way they seek to ride over our country: as roughshod as possible! Sorry to have to say this but, for the foreseeable (to me) future, bipartisanship is and will remain a thing of the past. Only if and when the Repiglicans become Republicans again, with a commitment to democracy at least equal to our own, can bipartisan collegiality return without endangering democracy!
Nor will we be able to afford incrementalism. If we are to save our planet and civilization in time, your administration will need to take long, bold steps and hit the ground running doing so. Let's deal fairly with the Lincoln Project and their associates as they have chosen country and Constitution over party and neo-feudalism but also with a few grains of salt. Change needs to be far-reaching now. Let's get ready to start implementing it the hour after (God willing) we win the election.

SOCIAL SECURITY, DEMOCRACY & FEUDALISM

        A day or two ago, I asked Nick Hanauer a question on FB. Considering how obvious it is that, when we all do better, we all (including the rich) do better and the adamant opposition of most of the obscenely rich to any measure which helps anyone other than themselves alone, this is what I asked:
Would most of these unimaginably rich people choose to be less rich if, by being so, they could also see the rest of us reduced to a new feudal state of dependency upon them? I suspect the answer is 'yes' but I don't know for sure and wanted to check it with Mr. Hanauer. I haven't heard back from him yet and I just checked FB.
In any case, the most powerful witnesses for an unfortunately affirmative answer to my question seem to be the obscenely rich themselves, led by one who wants us to think he's obscenely rich but who, according to the NYT and other credible news outlets, is actually much closer to being bankrupt for what will probably be the final time in his misspent life.
If (God and the people forbid!) Trump is re-elected, he will seek to eliminate the payroll tax which funds Social Security. And not only decades from now but also right here. right now! This would mean that Social Security would run out of money in 2023--well within the lifetime of senior citizens largely dependent on that program. Trump also says Social Security will be financed other ways. I don't believe the lying bastard for a New York nanosecond, but for argument's sake let's allow he might actually be telling the truth. How would it be done? I certainly don't know, but Trump himself provides a clue to how it would be shaped and delivered. Remember how he wanted his signature on all the relief checks?
Based on that and certain other characteristics common to him and other members of our new Ignobility, I think he'd like to send out boxes of coins of middling worth (at best) as often as necessary and to have every coin struck with the image of Emperor Trump! With some sort of message that, if you want to continue having regular meals with a decent roof overhead, you'd better be the Emperor's Loyal Subject! Most of those most wealthy love this sort of thing. It flatters their vanity and allows them to troll around with the sort of self-satisfied, self-righteous smirk which Trump and others may have forever rendered infamous. Anyhow, let's hope so. By being Generous For Service, the rich can deceive themselves about being generous and big-hearted. And they adore doing this. Almost as much as many of them are addicted to gambling on the stock market with other people's money--another reason they hate Social Security. Their greed drives them to want to put their filthy fingers on our money!
The far right has always hated Social Security not because it doesn't work but because it DOES work and works very well indeed!!! It shows how well government for, of and by the people can work for a huge majority of the people! It checks the power of the wealthiest among us and also hints that maybe it's not really necessary to have a small number of obscenely wealthy people. And this last probably shivers the timbers of the wealthiest among us right down to their splinters!
Let no one mistake me here: I do not support any idea which says we all must be absolutely equal; there will always be great and small among human beings. But if democracy is to live and flourish, democratic societies have to have not only strong floors below which no one is allowed to fall but also ceilings above which no one is allowed too much privately held wealth--which means, no one, nor any small group, should be powerful enough to endanger anyone else's human rights.
Mutual support and aid programs by citizens to citizens, with all contributing according to their ability  to pay, end the need for patronage from the wealthy when they are worked and used as they should be. The Swiss, so I understand, have been doing this for centuries. They've even taxed themselves to support the arts, no less. And the Gnomes among them have the good sense to pay their fair share as Swiss citizens. At least it looks that way from a 4000-mile distance.
For at least the last forty years, we have flattered the rich in increasingly abject ways with our politicians in the lead. That needs to stop right here, right now! We need to distinguish between wealthy persons as regards 1) how they got their wealth and 2) what they do with it. And no, we don't all want to be obscenely rich either! There's another lie to scrap pronto! A few years back, someone did a study as to how much satisfaction wealth afforded anyone (pun intended) and it turned out, once people had enough to 1) maintain themselves and family in reasonable comfort, 2) not worry about an unexpected illness being a financial catastrophe, 3) to educate one's children, have OK vacations twice yearly and retire in modest comfort--more than necessary for this afforded only diminishing satisfaction for most people. But there will always be those psycho/sociopaths who enjoy reducing human beings to the status of marionettes. And we need to make sure that they will they will never, or as near to it as humans can manage, be able to do so outside of their own little circles.
The payroll tax ought to be increased. Social Security should be expanded as should all social programs which help the middle classes and the poorer classes as well!

DEMOLISH THE WALL OF SILENCE!!!

I'm a white, straightly married, middle-aged Anglo-Saxon. And I mean this specifically as being of English descent. English. That's most of, but not interchangeable with, British. British=English, Scots or Welsh. I have a little Scots in the family tree, but my dad's side is still mostly English.
My point here is, I am a member of what seems still to be this country's ruling caste. The only thing that makes me otherwise is that I haven't any money more than necessary for the modest comfort in which I, my wife and our pets live. And I am seething with rage at what really seems to be, more and more, Gestapo and SS-style thugs in uniform who gun unarmed people down, especially black and brown people, and almost never reap the just consequences of their actions!
All you M**ks, D*gos and, to use Mr. Dooley's description, 'Pollackies' who are now presidents of those mafias called police unions such as the FOP, listen up and listen good!! Don't you dare lie to me about how 'you'll never be one who we need to subdue' or some codswallop, to use a relatively polite term, like that! It is true that any injustice, anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere! By the way, how do the epithets that were applied to your grandparents or, maybe, your great-grandparents feel to you now? Getting the point a bit, are we? I certainly hope so!
And yet, I am still ready to believe that most of you genuinely want to 'serve and protect' all the people equally. At least you may start out that way before the thuggish 'police culture' swallows you up!
If you wish to be and remain reputable enforcers of the laws, there is a large obstacle in your way that has to be utterly demolished if the respect of people like myself mean a tinker's curse to any of you. And that obstacle is the Blue Wall of Silence. You worthy officers who are not mere uniformed thugs and have no desire to be that need to speak up NOW!!! If you don't all want to be known as 'pigs' to a growing number of citizens like myself, you're going to have to be 'rats' to the thugs among you!
You already know you'll have to look out for each other; those among you who know the story of Frank Serpico know that well enough. And I can well imagine how you may already feel yourselves between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes. I frankly don't envy you. But hear this from a member of this country's still-ruling caste: you can either let the boars, aka the thuggish pigs, rule your forces and thereby lose more and more respect and trust from your fellow-citizens including many of those who share my lineage, or you can 'rat', and, when enough of you do so at roughly the same time, change the 'police culture' to one which really does protect and serve all your fellow law-abiding citizens--and thereby regain, probably with interest, what should be your most prized asset: the trust and respect of all your fellow-citizens.
Maybe some of you whine inwardly or openly, 'Do we have to be the ones to do this? Isn't there anyone else?' Well, point me out someone who might shape how the police operate more than you do, and I'll send them a copy of this post. For good or ill, it's primarily on y'all and I think you know it.
So what will you be? Protectors and servants for real who understand and appreciate being made accountable to civil authority, or uniformed thugs who are outright hated and not trusted at all by a growing number of fellow citizens who feel like they're under harsh military occupation?
To me your trouser-legs are looking increasingly like you're wearing jackboots, and--well, I am in my sixties, but that metal on your cap looks alarmingly like a Totenkopf!
Worthy officers of the law, it's up to you. Right here, right now. Choose wisely and remember we take oaths to the Constitution, not to any person.

TURNING OVER ROCKS

Today, I have more than a few uncomfortable thoughts slowly swirling in my cerebral cauldron.
The Jews did, and in the West they still mostly do, their best to assimilate into their host nations.
Then certain people in those same nations said, no, Jews can never be assimilated. Because we are 'pure white' and they are 'black', all they can do is pollute and defile our blue-haired blond-eyed oh-so-eugenical bloodstream. And as Jew-hatred grew in openness over Europe, not only Germany, but much of Europe (especially Eastern Europe) was primed for the Shoah. This had nothing to do with religious difference; one Christian saint (and another?) were murdered because their DNA was Jewish.
In an all-too-similar way, haven't most African-Americans done the best they knew to do in terms of being peaceable and hardworking citizens? And how much more have they got, if anything more, than did the Jews for all their efforts to assimilate? Their most prosperous towns and neighborhoods were burned to ashes when enough peckerwoodies got jealous enough. And in the case of Greenwood in 1921, the Oklahoma National Guard even participated by bombing Greenwood from the air! Not to mention Rosewood, Florida, two years later! And in no case did the law lift a finger to save any black life or smatch of black property; they were usually among the lawbreakers!
Islam has little to no right to speak in this. Maybe (and this is highly questionable) they didn't make a difference between Islamized Jews and native Arab Muslims, but that difference will likely be shown to be more marginal than Islamists want to make it out to be. And they certainly have no right to present themselves as the Black Man's Champeen. Not after being the original, largest-scale and probably still going slave-traders with by far the largest casualty number. John Azumah Adembillah writes about this in his Legacy of Arab Islam in Africa. As to present Arab racism, look no further than what bro Eldridge (Cleaver) had to say about Algeria after living there for eight years!
The realization that, whatever we do or try to do to please our 'majority' hosts, they still want to kill us and too many of those that say they don't want to will turn their heads when our murderers do their dirty work, is something that Jews and African-Americans have in common in this country. God knows how many groups have that in common over the globe!
This is why there is a Nation of Islam today. This is also why majorities of Israeli voters (most of whom, or their parents or grandparents, have now returned from elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa) consistently vote Likud or further right. This is why The Cheltenham Kid, aka Bibi Netanyahu, has such an adoring mob still at his heels. Both groups know that their host majorities are only comfortable with them so long as they are at those majorities' mercy--and why the 'Palestinians' will never accept Jewish sovereignty at all until and unless they are left with no.other.choice.
It's also why GOP legislators in 1967 California became pro-gun control with remarkable speed once the Black Panthers started carrying in order to keep today's slave catchers from getting homicidally brutal with their people! And it's also why the armed thugs in Lansing were treated with kid gloves while the peaceful protestors this past week were met with weapons of war!
It is true that the work of ending racism in all its systemic manifestations is work we palefaces need to do. It is also true that, in sharing real power, we palefaces will be, at least partially, putting our fates into the hands of Outsiders to Our Tribe. I hope, at this point in our history, our collective consciousness of crimes committed by our ancestors and, arising from that, the still-mostly unarticulated terror of having the same measure meted unto us, will prove not quite as strong as the two things which I see as having led the West to its still-current, albeit seriously challenged, summit.
The first of these two things I see as a vigorous tradition of self-criticism. Someone once wrote that 'Western Civilization was born in the creative tension between Jerusalem and Athens' and I for one would say there's a very good case to be made for that! The Jews had, and still have, just such a vigorous self-critical tradition from the prophets even unto this day. The ancient Greeks were sticklers for accurate observation and careful recording of those observation. The idea of 'citizenship' also begins with the ancient Greeks and was underlined and amplified by the ancient Romans who conquered the Greeks and Jews. And if anyone still reads the ancient Romans forward from the time of the Gracchi, they'll find a lot of critical writings! Finally, I defy any and all my readers to find us any civilization so openly critical of itself as Western civilization is. Seriously. And good luck in trying to find such a society; I think you'll need it.
The second is allied to this. Medieval Europe was actually remarkably open to new technologies and didn't much care whence they came for the most part, although it was a bit of a struggle to get Christendom to adopt what was originally called the Hindu-Arabic system of numbers. We need to hold onto this willingness to try new ways of doing things. Especially as the need to re-green our earth and at least slow down climate change grows more and more urgent.
In the USA, we at least say anyone who's willing to live by the rule of law and the ways of democracy (including passionate but civil discussion of issues and ideas) can be a full citizen. It's past time for us palefaces to do what is needful to make that as real as we possibly can--while we still are a majority. Trump and his idolaters have chosen the way of  darkness--the way of naked tribalism. We need to make a one-eighty and not go the Trumpery way again; at least not within the lifetimes of those now drawing breath. Amen and amen.

OUR 'PRESIDENT' IS AURIC GOLDFINGER AND A LOGICAL END TO THE PAST 40 YEARS

Apart from the first part of the title, and perhaps other snippets in this post, I'm not saying anything in this post that has not been said aforetime. Although I haven't seen anyone else besides my good self draw attention to this little tidbit: In 1980, not only was there far less of a gap in wages and salaries in private industry but even less of a gap in healthcare and educational pay grades.
In the last forty years, we seemed to think we could improve both healthcare and education by opening them to the profit motive. What we have really done is almost completely gutted and ruined both! In both areas of endeavor, the profit motive should be at most secondary as long as we want to attract those most suited to them. And we've continued to 'parrot' that truth as an excuse not to pay either secondary medical personnel (I'm not sure about doctors) or classroom teachers nearly enough! The stories of teachers buying supplies for their students out of their own pockets are no less than legion and are one factor making us the shame of the civilized world, to which we now only partially belong! It's past time to put a swift and ruthless end to the profit motive, aside from reasonable salaries for all, in both fields and to also thus end the especially pernicious private-prison business!!
We are now at the point where rich con men who sell nothing, nothing, NOTHING of real value may be more admired by a too-large portion of our population than such self-sacrificing teachers and millionaire medical celebrities whose real medical knowledge might be a bit on the sketchy side are more respected than the doctors, nurses and others who do the hard day-in day-out work in the clinics, hospitals and labs! This has something to do with why Democrats, liberals and progressives mostly lose even if the measures they back are favored by large majorities: we seek to develop and cultivate critical understanding while the GOP and further right only wants to brand efficiently!
Efficient branding is Twain's lie that can be halfway around the world before the truth of critical understanding can put on its boots!
And in either exalting the most lucrative and neglecting society's mostly unrespected but indispensable humble helpers, or acquiescing in that exaltation, do we have anyone to blame but ourselves? I for one say 'no'!
If we strive for economic and social justice by allowing and encouraging labor to organize, by starting to make real restitution for stolen land and coerced unpaid labor, if we start to really respect the 'helping professionals' among us by paying them adequately and establish a firm limit to how much wealth any individual, family or other small group can hold (enough to render it impossible for any oligarchy to rise again) and if we start to heavily invest in replacing, renewing and regenerating common resources, we may yet save ourselves. But we cannot save ourselves without doing these things! And we can only do these things working together and with our collective future (and the threat of no future looming over us) very much in mind!
If my words don't wake up at least a few people, I hope they at least hearten those already awake. And I've enlisted Shirley Bassey to help in this. If Trump is Auric Goldfinger (and I maintain he is) listen to this and think about who the Golden Girl Goldfinger kisses might be!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D1nK7q2i8I

And if Shirley Bassey doesn't wake you up--go drink bleach!!!