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When You Wish Upon A Star beautiful reharm! www.tiktok.com/t/ZT236o7… š¶
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Finished reading: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North š
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Great coverage of what’s happening right now on Democracy Now! www.democracynow.org/shows/202…
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Watch Rick Stevesā hour-long special on fascism: www.ricksteves.com/watch-rea…
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Good discussion between Jon Stewart and Ezra Klein: youtu.be/NcZxaFfxl…
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They are dismantling the Smithsonian now: www.bbc.com/news/arti…
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Professor who studies fascism is leaving the US due to extreme liklihood it becomes a fascist dictatorship: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2…
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Hey, weāre kinda ignoring the fact that heās trying to write new federal election laws by decree. This is DEEPLY unconstitutional and must be stopped at once: www.cato.org/blog/pres…
This is coming from Cato Institute; not exactly a bastion of the left.
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Chomsky from a few years ago talking about right now: youtu.be/i2QFrIflX…
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This is lawless state terrorism perpetrated on us by our own government.
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This is some gestapo shit right here: www.threads.net/@ratigupt…
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When Republicans Say America Is Not a Democracy, They're Right ā It's a Corporatocracy
America, we need to talk. This just isnāt working, and something has to change. Iāll come right out and say it: This country is broken. Completely fucked. We have elections, but power belongs to the billionaires. This isnāt some big secret. Through media manipulation and consolidation, it isnāt necessary to rig elections in the traditionally understood sense of the word: The owners of this country ā the oligarchs ā can simply predetermine all of our choices before weāve ever had a chance to consider the options.
Take politics. We have two political parties: The Democrats and the Republicans. Thereās of course a handful of inconsequential parties that exist, but whatās important to realize is that here we have a legalized duopoly where these two parties get special treatment on just about every ballot in the country, and onerous restrictions make it next to impossible for those other candidates and third-parties to ever even make it onto a ballot.
So why is this acceptable in a nation that believes ostensibly in freedom of thought, priding itself on the god of free markets and the hallowed marketplace of ideas? Why arenāt political parties able to compete freely in this country without being locked into a limited ideological spectrum? If thereās a radical right in America, then why isnāt there a radical left? If you think the Democrats are radical, think again: Liberalism is by definition a centrist political philosophy. We only tend to think of it as the āleftā because itās more liberal only in relative comparison to the Republicans. But liberalism is not the left. In any other country, this is evidently the case, and when we look at the policies of the Democratic Party, we can see that this is so.
The Republicans would have us believe that the Democrats are raging communists, who are ready to replace their confederate statues with Chairman Mao or Stalin. And you know, in the Peopleās Republic of Seattle, we do actually have a Lenin statue, but guess what: We also have Amazon here. We pioneered the $15 minimum wage in this country, but to get that accomplishment it required the election of a socialist city councilwoman, which tangentially was not the cityās first brush with leftism. The right loves to talk about protecting history and heritage. Funny how they never talk about the history of labor movements, of working-class rebellion, of people rising up against the elite.
Whatās being missed here is that the Republicans are just performing their role, which is to constrain the debate and to rein in the Democratic Party from becoming a truly leftist party. The Democratic mayor here only announced that minimum wage increase when it was clear that our socialist candidate was going to win. Democrats run scared shitless at any hint of a notion that they might be a scary socialist, but when thereās an actual socialist on the ballot, all of a sudden real changes start to happen that they can take credit for. Interesting. š¤
This isnāt the first time this has happened before. FDR, notwithstanding his obvious flaws, has long been one of my personal idols because of the New Deal, but a hard truth we on the left are going to need to come to grips with was that he didnāt champion these policies purely out of altruism, he sold it to the monied interests that already controlled this country on the basis of preventing an all-out socialist revolution here. This was partially about self-preservation, although the results were undeniably transcendent in their improvement to the conditions of the average American. The 1950s middle class that we think of with such deep nostalgia was made possible by these policies: They literally made America great.
So here we are today, where just a few short years ago, in 2016, we had Bernie Sanders running for president. We know how that went. He was wildly popular and cut across political boundaries, but was thwarted despite his deep popularity. DNC official Donna Brazille admitted that they straight-up, actually-for-real, rigged that primary to prevent Bernie Sanders from becoming president.
Now does this sound like a political party that is actually fighting for you? Every time the Democrats have power, they fall all over themselves to figure out how to fuck it up. But every time the Republicans have power, they donāt waste any time dismantling core features of our political system. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. We must actually be insane.
Not for me. Iām done. Iām no longer a Democrat, and Iām tossing the liberal label aside. I believe in social democracy as a goal for good governance. I believe in social justice and I believe in equity for people. Furthermore, I believe that we need to start having truly honest debate about the world in which we want to create and live. Politics cannot simply be soundbytes and an ever-escalating war of gotchas. We are driving our ship of state right off of a cliff and weāre taking the entire world with us given the enormous problems of climate change.
All of this is the fault of the wealthy. The richest three people in America own half of all the wealth in this country, and since money is a direct representation of relative power, itās clear that corporations have all of it. They bought our government long before Trump got here. They own it, they run it, and theyāve broken it. Trump is merely a counter coup. What Republican voters donāt appreciate about him is that heās not here to fix the system; heās here to hijack a broken system and use it to benefit himself.
In failing to meet the desperate needs of the people, the Democrats ā fully enveloped by the corporations ā have enabled all of this. And thatās why America is not a Democracy.
Voting harder will not solve our problems, and our representatives will not save us. Schumerās CR vote made that abundantly clear. The courts are the very last thread that keep the Constitution barely alive, but thatās dwindling fast in light of Speaker Johnsonās threat to dissolve courts who rule against the Trump regime.
History isnāt written yet, so what will you do? If real change only happens when they fear losing control, then our job is simple: Make them afraid. The media isnāt your friend in this regard. They will bury your protests. I watched them bury Bernie by simply ignoring him. And somehow, somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the fact that protesting isnāt just about lobbying representatives or to get media attention, but itās to lobby your neighbors and open their eyes to whatās happening. And if no one stands with you, stand anyway. Alone, you are impossible to erase.
āAnd so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you ā ask what you can do for your country.ā
u up?
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Bernie Sanders is the only honest politician we have: youtu.be/7EirWe1z3…
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Something we should get wise to is that the republicansā function here is to pander to their base and to terrorize the center-left. The Signal scandal is a distraction from their threats and actions today to dismantle the courts and limit your voting rights. Monitor good news sources like a hawk.
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I don’t think we in Seattle appreciate the richness of our local history as much as we ought to. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat…
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Disenfranchisement. He is trying to take away your right to vote by making it significantly harder to prove your existence and easier to disqualify ballots: www.pbs.org/newshour/…
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Now Congress threatens to dismantle courts that rule against the regime: www.usatoday.com/story/new…
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I’ve heard people wonder what happened to news anchors like Walter Cronkite. They still exist: Her name is Amy Goodman.
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She has lived in the US legally since she was 7 and they want to deport her because she protested. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2…
Lawless intimidation to stifle dissent. I see it and I won’t be silent about it.
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I watched a lot of Noam Chomsky interviews last night. He was right about everything. He warned us for decades. Decades.
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Go Protest Now! A free tiling protest sign maker.
I can’t stand by and do nothing while our republic is replaced with a fascist dictatorship. As I wrote earlier this week, it hit me rather traumatically that I need to stop waiting to do something about the helplessness I feel right now, and I need to start DOING SOMETHING about it.
That first came in the form of doing lone protesting earlier this week, which is a thing that was incredibly uncomfortable for me to psyche myself up to do, but as I mentioned, I’ve come to understand that it’s actually our most potent personal political power, possibly more than voting. When you stand somewhere alone on a public sidewalk, quietly holding a sign, you command the attention of your neighbors. Your message is unambiguous and it is impossible to justify its suppression without drawing immediate attention.
As I went through the process of making my sign, it occurred to me that sign-making probably ought to be easier to accomplish in general. Sure I could have used markers to write something out, but I have terrible handwriting. We live in the computer age anyway. Except I didn’t have access to a giant sign printer. Unless I wanted to go find one at maybe like an office supply store? Frankly, I didn’t want to go down that path.
So I decided to use my own home printer. This would require me to create a bunch of tiles out of 8.5"x11" paper and cut and assemble them together on the 22"x28" poster board I had already picked up a week earlier. Designing the sign and tiling it was doable with software I already had, but it wasn’t exactly super dead simple to figure out how to do either. I can figure out how to use these programs. Not everybody can.
You shouldn’t need to use Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat to make a large tiled sign. Maybe such things can be done in applications like Microsoft Word? But again, that’s just yet another program others might not have easy access to and need to figure out. There should be a dead simple and free process for digitally making signs like this that doesn’t even require access to a computer or downloading apps. Many younger folks use phones only for everything, and tend to eschew desktop computing altogether.
In a republic, the barrier to entry for exercising the right to protest should be zero. That’s why I made Go Protest Now! It’s entirely free to use, works on desktop and mobile in any web browser, and there is no monetization strategy here and no data mining I’m doing. DreamHost (my site hosting provider) does track site hits, but I’m certainly not doing anything on my own.
Hopefully, you’ll find this to be a useful tool. You can get a sense of what its workflow is like in this other post I wrote up about it. The most important thing isn’t what kind of sign you have, but that you get out there and let your neighbors know what’s going on. Whether it’s through protesting, or talking to friends, neighbors, and strangers. People need to know about the current situation so that they can join in and help us to stop it.
There is an urgent need to take action now. Good luck to all of us! ā
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The people who react with a š in response to every post that criticizes Trump ought to LOOK IN A MIRROR when wondering how something like the holocaust could have happened. What’s happening right now is deadly serious and you’re enabling it.
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My new tiling protest sign creator now sorta works on mobile. It’s brand new and a little bit buggy though. Give it a try and lemme know how it works for you. Video included to show workflow. You can get to it at go-protest.us
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First pass of a WIP tiling protest sign creator, called Go Protest Now!
It does NOT work on mobile yet: www.brianward.us/go-protes…
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It cannot be credible in the face of so much insanity that the political force ostensibly charged with stopping a blindingly clear right-wing coup is only ONE POINT ahead in the polls! Lack of clarity in polling results leads to confusion about moral certainty: Are we mounting an honest opposition?
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