It’s Not About Policy Anymore

This essay is the result of more than three and a half years of corruption, incompetence, and most of all, a betrayal of the American ideal; the likes of which this country has never seen.  I remember my reaction the day donald trump announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States.  I said to myself: “What, does he think he’s going to do, waltz into the White House and be CEO of the United States?”  That answer, as we all know now, is “yes,” that’s exactly what donald trump thinks he should be able to do.

I recently had a short conversation with a good friend about the plans for this essay, and her reaction was that her concern is not so much for the preservation of this republic, but for the damage being done to mankind’s hope for building a world called for by God and His Christ, and for, as Jesus taught us to pray, bringing the kingdom of heaven here.  This was proper, because she is, I feel, at the core of her soul, a godly, spiritual creature.  I, on the other hand, am, at my core, a political creature, and my concern is for the preservation and survival of this republic, and the chance to realize what this great American experiment in self-governance can be; not only to America, but to the world.

The American republic, my dear readers, is under attack and we, as citizens of this republic, are secretly sworn at birth to “defend it and the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.”  We all know that there are foreign enemies of the United States, but the most dangerous enemy, and the one that is the greatest threat to our republic now is the president of the United States. 

Spreading Our Legs

In the summer of 2018 Donald Trump traveled to Helsinki, Finland to meet with the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin.  This meeting was, essentially, the event that laid before the American people exactly how unsophisticated and uninformed Donald Trump really is concerning the complex nature of international relations.  This is particularly true regarding the ends which Putin seeks for both the United States and the world.

I find it difficult to fathom what Donald Trump could have possibly hoped to have accomplished in his two hour and ten minute, one-on-one, unrecorded meeting with Putin, other than compromising an entire treasure trove of classified US intelligence on a host of subjects.  Thankfully, most of the facts uncovered by the highly sophisticated and informed US intelligence and law enforcement communities regarding Russia’s successful operation to secure victory for donald trump in the 2016 American presidential election are not known to Donald Trump, as they are part of an investigation into his criminal collusion with a foreign power to secure political office in the United States.

As payment for Russia’s assistance, the trump administration refuses to act upon the evidence laid before it regarding Russia’s attacks on the American republic.  They refuse to assist in securing future elections against foreign interference and, in fact, have threatened to remove the security clearances from those within the intelligence community that have been the most vocal critics of the administration’s lack of willingness to protect the American people and their democratic institutions from the likes of Putin and his gangsters in the Kremlin.

Donald Trump is spreading our legs before the insatiable sexual-political appetite of Vladimir Putin, and his cowardly enablers in the republican party refuse to step in and put a stop to it.  As cover for their collective cowardice, they claim to see the issue as one of policy and not the survival of the republic. They are also, for some ungodly reason, scared of donald trump..

In March of 2018 the Department of Homeland Security and The FBI issued an alert with the following title: “Alert TA18- 074A: “Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and other Critical Infrastructure Sectors.”  The message of this document is that the Russian Government continues to target strategic American infrastructure (this includes our oil and electrical systems, and nuclear facilities), as well as both governmental and non-governmental institutional and organizations. 

Neither the republican-controlled Senate, nor the White House has acted on this information.  Why is this?  The only answer can be because the republican party is now no longer the party of fiscal conservatism, but the party of trump and his ‘they’re stupid, so say anything’ populism.   Republicans the country over are now somehow beholden to him and his base.  They feel they are beholden to trump as we know trump is beholden to Putin.  trump and Putin are the same; each of them cares only for themselves.

I realize that many Trump supporters and apologists will be offended by my last statement, but the evidence is too compelling.  Aside from Trump’s subservient and borderline traitorous performance in Helsinki, the following incidents lay Trump’s pro-Russian–anti-American agenda bare before the American people and the world.

However, before I outline these incidents, I want to offer a few bare, numerical statistics which are very relevant to the situation in which we now find ourselves. The numbers below are pre-pandemic:

  • The US annual GDP is approximately twenty-two trillion dollars (US) in goods and services produced.
  • The EU annual GDP is approximately nineteen trillion dollars in goods and services produced.
  • The Russian Federation’s annual GDP is approximately one point three trillion dollars in goods and services produced.

What these numbers make clear, in a nutshell, is that Russia has absolutely nothing that the United States needs or wants; they produce no products that can compete in our domestic marketplace, and they have no domestic consumer marketplace for American products.  The European Union, on the other hand, not only has goods and services which the American consumer both needs and wants, but it also has the domestic consumer marketplace that desires American products in vast quantities.

Now I shall review several incidents introduced prior to that information:

First, before, during, and after, trump’s important meeting with our European allies, which preceded his personal humiliation in Finland, he continually harangued and insulted our closest allies and largest trading partners in the world.  He actually went so far as to call our closest European allies our “foes” in an official statement delivered through his Twitter account. All of this was done to please Putin, who needs a fractured and dysfunctional NATO alliance if he is to realize his plans of reabsorbing large portions of Russia’s western frontier back into a post-Soviet greater Russian Federation.

Most experts in these matters believe that his first targets will be the Baltic States of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. The Russian Federation has all the land it could ever want. What it needs (as it has always needed) are western ports, and vast buffer spaces against Western militaries.

Second, before this rancourous display at the NATO summit, President trump publicly called for the re-admittance of Russia back into the G7, once more making it the G8. Russia was expelled from this group of the world’s largest economies in retribution for their invasion of the Ukraine and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Of course, with an annual GDP of only 1.3 trillion dollars, they don’t really belong there, anyway.

Of course, no one in the US government had any idea that President Trump would make such a ludicrous suggestion and state, publicly, a complete reversal of a core American foreign policy developed over decades of cooperation with our sister states in Europe. Not only does this reversal possess no benefit at all to the United States, but it actually creates a more dangerous global environment for the United States and its allies. It is, of course, of great benefit to Vladimir Putin.

Third, both during and after transition from the Obama Administration to the trump administration, the State Department was given the directive of finding ways to lift economic sanctions on Russia, return diplomatic compounds, and ease tensions with Moscow.

Fourth, In May of 2018 the Trump Administration, under orders from new National Security Advisor, John Bolton, eliminated the position of Cyber Security Coordinator from the National Security Council.  It is well known within the various wings of our national security apparatus that John Bolton has virtually no cyber-security knowledge or experience, and now this country has no single coordinator of the most relevant and immediate threat to our national security to assist him in advising the President.

The reasoning given for this move was to help streamline the government’s response to cyber-based threats emanating from our adversaries in the world.  However, you don’t have to be a political scientist to realize that when you disperse responsibilities in this manner, you act against the very concept of streamlining.  The United State’s cyber-security functions will now be coordinated by two individuals with differing responsibilities.

Fifth, to date, after three and a half year in office, the trump administration, to the chagrin of Congress and the American electorate as a whole, has neither devised, submitted, nor, apparently, even considered any plan to protect the American democratic electoral system from foreign cyber attacks.  It is obvious that they have no intention of either developing any such plan, submitting any such plan to Congress and the people, or even enacting any sort of ad hoc plan to protect our sacred democratic processes from foreign interference.

Instead, they intend to spread our legs before the greatest adversary of the United States; Vladimir Putin.  This intent to undermine American democracy by the trump administration extends beyond the aspects above, they are also pursuing it in a backdoor manner such as the incidents below:

First, on the same day the the indictment against Russian national, Marina Butina, was unsealed, charging her with, among other things, using the NRA to funnel Russian money to republican candidates and conservative causes in the United States, the US Treasury Department, under orders from the trump administration, announced that the NRA and other similar entities will no longer have to reveal to the IRS the identity of their donors.

Second, during the Transition process from The Barak Obama Administration to the donald trump Administration, Jared Kushner held a secret meeting with the head of a Kremlin-linked Russian Bank currently the target of US and other international sanctions.  The president of this bank has personal ties to the Russian Federal Security Service and Vladimir Putin.

This list of offenses against the American republic could go on almost indefinitely, but I must end them in order to move to the next section of this essay.

The Man who Would be King

Donald Trump admires the strong man, the autocrat, the dictator who can have people murdered with a wisp of his breath.  Men who are above the law in their countries.  Unfortunately for him, he is in the United States, and will never realize his dreams of being able to rule by decree — okay, so that may not be entirely true, since the republican controlled senate is unwilling to operate as part of a separate and equal branch of government.  So let me rephrase — Unfortunately, he is in the United States, and there are limits on the point to which he can rule by decree.

This is no secret.  It is why he praises them above those weak presidents and prime ministers of Europe who respect that cumbersome and unnecessary rule of law. Trump has no idea why they seem to relish the restrictions put upon them by their nations’ laws, history, constitutions, and the basic precepts of democracy.  It is why he is drawn to monsters like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.  It is also why, while he attended the NATO summit, he spent a great deal of time associating with President Erdogan of Turkey; a man who was not only almost overthrown by a coup d’état in 2016 after having himself declared “president for life,” but has also moved his country so far from the democratic principles of the European states with which it is aligned, that Turkey is in danger of being expelled from NATO, and sanctioned by the European Union.

It is why, when Erdogan was reelected in a non-contested presidential race — his most competent and vocal opponents were in prison — in which he essentially had himself named president for life, that trump called him personally to congratulate him on his electoral victory.  I should mention that he did this over the strong objections of his foreign policy advisors.  He also called Vladimir Putin after he was “reelected” in 2018 in one of the most corrupt presidential campaigns in history, again, over the strong objections of his foreign policy advisors.

Donald Trump wants to be a dictator and feels slighted by an unfair world because he is not.  Kim Jon Un can have his own uncle accused of treason and then taken out and shot!  Why can’t Trump do that with Mueller?  This democracy thing is nothing more than a nuisance!

Trump loves and admires the dictators of the world so much that he will do almost anything to curry their favor. In March, 2018 in Singapore, president trump agreed to cancel joint military exercises with our close ally, South Korea.  Believe me, that was one big gift to his new dictator friend.  However, neither South Korea nor our other major ally in the region, Japan, nor even critical actors within the foreign policy sections of the American government were aware that such a concession was even being considered by the White House until it was announced at the end of the meeting.

The US Secretary of Defense had no idea that such a dramatic change in US National Security policy was even being considered. No one with any expertise, or position of responsibility in the complicated world of international relations was consulted. No one, that is, except donald trump’s boss, and the man whose interests donald trump serves; Vladimir Putin.

In the aftermath of president Trump’s many and still unknown concessions to North Korea in his private meeting with Kim Jong Un, it has come to light that in 2017 Vladimir Putin, in a private call between him and president trump, suggested that the US-South Korean joint exercises should be cancelled, indicating that such a move would be a good way to ameliorate Kim Jong Un’s aggressive rhetoric. Such an act would also, of course, drive another wedge between the greater global alliance among the world’s democracies, which Putin needs to be fractured in order to realize his greater plans.

Perhaps Putin was right.  Since the Trump/Un summit the North Korean dictator’s public bravado has been a great deal more, shall we say, ameliorated, but his regime continues to develop nuclear weapons, and the United States’ intelligence community has just released a report detailing the facts that North Korea’s nuclear program has continued unabated.  In fact, according to the NSA, they are now developing a new generation of intercontinental delivery vehicles capable of striking any target in the continental United States.  The response of the Trump administration to this new research was, and I quote: “North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat to the United States.” That was their entire response.  This, of course, is the “Art of the Deal” at work: bankrupt six times over.

UnAmerican Activities…There Ought To Be a Committee

For what, exactly, does the United States of America stand in this world?  This is not a rhetorical question, for the answer points to the heart of what America is; not only to its own citizens and the non-citizens who have emigrated here, but to the people of the world as a whole.  The United States, more than any other country on this planet is a symbol, and in that sense it is supposed to be a symbol of what can be achieved by humanity if the whole of the planet comes together to work on a project dedicated to lifting the human spirit.

Corruption and cronyism are part and parcel of human politics.  They always have been and they always will be, for that is the nature of human, coercive power over another.  It is, in many respects, the water that nourishes a politician’s tree of power.  This, however, does not mean that we should or must accept its presence in our political system.  After all, maybe the greatest prospect of a republic is its innate ability, if acted upon, to minimize, if not defeat corruption.

The corruption emanating from the White House under the direction of donald trump is like nothing ever seen in American history.  What is remarkable is that the president doesn’t care, because he knows that his base of uneducated white men with racist views don’t care.  As far as they are concerned, as long as they can watch football, drink beer, and use the word “nigger” when among their other uneducated, white friends, trump can do whatever he wants.

The rest of us are not so simple, and we see that the corruption of the trump Administration is in its greater part a threat to America’s place in this world as a symbol of humanity’s common goal.  I agree that we are a nation of laws, but since we are the United States of America, we must always first be a nation of compassion.  When the law and compassion collide, the law must be circumvented or loosely interpreted in some manner that will allow our natural sense of compassion to win the day.   Without this prerogative, we cease to be anything more than just another country.

Family Separation

This country continues to suffer through one of the most horrible episodes in its history.  It does not not, of course, compare in any way to the genocide to which the white, European interlopers subjected the indigenous peoples of this continent, nor to the horrors of forced enslavement of millions of African hostages and their children, nor to the Holocaust, but it is, to contemporary America, no less humiliating.  This stated policy of the trump administration is one of the cruelest things any state could do to a family; forcibly take the children away from their parents mere moments after the family has appealed for that which must separate America from all other countries: mercy.

Try, if you can, to place yourself in the shoes of these people for just a moment.  You have uprooted your family from their home, and all they know and hold dear, because of conditions that make it impossible to stay.  You are poor, uneducated, have no idea at all how to navigate the bureaucratic matrix where you are, so you and your spouse decide that if only you and your children can make it to America, you can make a better life…and so you set out on this journey into the unknown.

That, my dear readers, is absolutely appalling, and perhaps the most unAmerican thing any administration could do, short of mass slaughter.  Please remember that this was not the actions of some small group of bigoted zealots acting without authorization from their superiors.  This forced family separation was the stated policy of the trump administration and it carried out bu agents of the United States Government.  When asked by a reporter about the solution to this open hatred at the White House, Trump said, and I quote: “You want a solution? Don’t come to our country illegally!”  Our Embarrassment-in-Chief never fails to live down to the world’s expectations of him.

The Muslim Ban

Bigotry has many roots in a person’s heart, and every one of us knows that it simmers just beneath the surface in all of us.  Most of us, however, are able to see this innate human bigotry, recognize its darkness, and keep it confined, like a genie in a bottle, deep in the core of our existence; minimized and marginalized as it should be.

Unfortunately, in recent decades there have come the voices of men and women of the Christian and political far right who have sought to loose this evil genie that rages against its confinement in us all.  After years and years of preaching to those weakest souls among us who were susceptible to fringe principles, they finally found the fool who could rub the lamp in the hearts of so many who have had their souls distorted by the human racism menace; the fool’s name is donald trump.

One of the most prominent and characteristic properties of both Mr. trump and his base is a basic lack of knowledge of history.  I have never met a person who possesses a deep and abiding knowledge of, or love of, history to have been as openly bigoted as those who’s voices are so loud today in American politics.  It doesn’t happen because people with a knowledge of history possess a consciousness of the suffering that bigotry and fear causes in a nation.

Also, another aspect of this insanity of the “Muslim Ban” is that it is not borne out by the statistics associated with it.  The fact that the only terrorist attack by foreigners who came into our country for that sole purpose was on September 11th, 2001.  Since that day, the number of people killed in terror attacks by people of the Muslim faith in the United States number only sixty-four. That’s nineteen years.

Note: Since 2007, a minimum of 283 people, including 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School have been killed in mass shooting terror attacks by whites (280 by men, 3 by a woman) in the United States.  Hundreds of others were wounded in these attacks.

Each of these Muslim perpetrators was a legal resident of the United States who lived peaceably among his and her neighbors for years; until, of course, people of the Muslim faith and Islam in general began to become vilified by American society as a whole.  These ordinary people found themselves living in a society which, under the auspices of the right-wing press, no longer allowed them to be just people, but labeled them as terrorists, one and all.  Eventually, there will be those among them who become susceptible the message of groups like ISIL, or Al-Qaeda.  Of these people, a small percentage will look for a way to strike back at those who have marginalized them and hated them simply because they are not white, evangelical christians.

Closing

This essay could go on until trump is either voted out or forcibly removed from office, but I must end it.  I will close by stating clearly that donald trump is the greatest threat to the American Republic since England’s King George III.  This man, of course, was King of England during the American war of independence.  He had not only the means, but also the desire and the will to destroy the United States of America.  Hitler posed no such threat.  The Japanese Imperial war government of the 1930s and 1940s posed no such threat.  Donald Trump poses such a threat.

As Americans; a nation to whom this world looks for leadership in the cause of freedom, we must reject the trajectory on which we now find our country, and realign ourselves with the western democracies with which we have so much in common.

We must, each of us, go to the polls when called.

Conversation 1: The Evangelical Virus

I had this conversation recently, and really, I guess, it was more of an argument, and it was about trump.

My antagonist stated that “they’re not gonna get the virus because they’re christians.”  I hesitated, thought about it for a moment, and then said: “I don’t think that’s what you’re really saying.  I think that what you’re saying, I mean really saying, is that you and your friends won’t get sick from this virus because you’re white, conservative, evangelical, christians.”  They hesitated, almost as if they wanted to argue that my statement was untrue, but then just kind of shrugged, as if to say: “Yeah, well, okay.”  As you can imagine, my brain was whispering “Oh My God!” to my soul over and over again.  Needless to say, I was pretty appalled by such an admission.  

No matter, I knew I had to continue, so I gathered myself and said: “I don’t think I understand.  Are you saying that Putin created a virus that attacks an organism based upon its political beliefs?”  Of course, they immediately stated back rather angrily: “Its a Chinese virus!”

I said: “Well, I think that’s open to debate, but we’ll get back to that in a minute.  Right now, I want to explore this physio-political virus you imagine.  What I believe you’ve stated is that there is a virus that will demonstrate its worst symptoms, including death, primarily in people whose politics are left-leaning, or who hold progressive political philosophies.”

“I don’t know about that.  That would mean that there is a physiological, and I mean anatomical dimension associated with any set of political views or thoughts, and that somebody has found the means to isolate those physical traits associated with very specific thought patterns, and then develop a virus that can reliably carry its ‘attack’ data through thousands of generations of reproduction through mitosis, because each virus cell has a rather short life-span. They then engineered the cells to attack only a specific group of human beings with certain political beliefs.  I don’t think the science exists to do that.  I don’t think it can be done.”

They replied, quite quickly, and surprisingly matter-of-factly: “God could do it.”

Right then and there, almost before they finished the statement, I knew I was done, beaten.  The strange logic of superstition will always, to use the most grotesque terms possible, ‘trump’ knowledge.  You cannot argue with superstition, because superstition is based upon, and exists within, a non-argumentative reality.  There is no doubting of the superstation, it is just accepted.

We all know that it’s impossible for a large, furry, bloodthirsty creature with an insatiable appetite for human flesh to live in the cellar of a single-family house in suburban America, yet the superstition persists, doesn’t it?  “I don’t know what could have happened to Johnny, he was playing right there in front of the cellar door…well, yeah, it was open this time, when it’s usually closed…”  You can’t argue with that. Johnny’s toys are still there, but he’s gone without a trace, and we all know “The Thing In the Cellar” got him.

Anyway, it took me about a second and a half to regain myself after their expert parry of my conclusion, and in the next seven seconds after that, I fought one of the greatest battles of all time within my consciousness.  Half of me wanted to lean forward, with a furrowing of my brow, and a look that never tried to hide my utter disdain for what I had just heard, and say: “What the fuck did you just say?”  The other half was telling me: “No, let’s hold onto that card for a while.  I mean, why yell “Bingo!” now, when you can yell “Blackout!” later?”

I had to respond to that statement eventually, so after about twenty seconds of pensive reflection, I leaned forward, gave a small tilt of my head that was meant to convey a sort of perplexed surrender, took a sip of my coffee, and said: “Well, I agree, I guess. I mean, God could construct such a virus and unleash it into the world to kill people like me.  That’s okay, I can deal with the statistical possibility that God could do that.  If we accept that proposition, then the question really is; would he?”

“I mean, I don’t think God does things for his own amusement, I believe he does things to try to get us to learn lessons about love and compassion, and about caring for each other, and the poor, and things like that.  I really hope you agree with me when I say that God would have no interest in wiping out all those damned libs, as some people call them.  Unless, of course, God is now in Heaven doing your bidding.  I mean, shit, that would be the bomb of all bombs, wouldn’t it?  All that prayer really paid off, huh?”

They didn’t respond.  I think they were really angry.

I decided then that I was going to go on an all out offensive to either make them leave, make them cry, or, preferably, make them leave crying.  So I waited a few seconds, then continued:

“So, let’s check out this virus thing. I mean, I know God could do it, but we need to also look at other possibilities, if it was, as you seem to suggest, manufactured.  So if it’s not made by God, who would have an interest in making it, and throwing it out into the world to wreak absolute havoc with civilization.”

“Check this out.  I’m gonna give you some numbers here, but not a lot.  They’re really important numbers, so I need you to pay attention.  The last reliable, pre-virus, number for the US annual GDP is approximately 22 trillion dollars (US).  The approximate annual GDP of the EU countries is 19.5 trillion dollars (US).  The approximate annual GDP of the People’s Republic of China is 13.5 trillion dollars (US).  The approximate annual GDP of the Russian Federation is 1.3 trillion dollars (US).”

“Numbers are great, I love them…in moderation.  Numbers are just numbers, nothing more, but like everybody else, they have a story to tell, and these numbers tell this story:  The US and the EU have large, well developed, consumer segments of their economies.  The Chinese are primarily a manufacture/export economy.  They have a growing consumer class, but they’re still ‘manufacture/export.’  The Russians…well, the Russian people are ratting each other out to Putin’s security services in order to get their hands on a wood burning stove.”

“What it also says is that China has absolutely no interest in the chaos caused by this virus.  The Chinese Government depends on healthy consumer segments of the western economies in order to keep their own economy afloat.  I mean, where do you think all of those exports go, Russia?  Not likely.  If the Western consumerist economies go in the tank, China’s economy goes with them.”

“Putin on the other hand, has every interest in the chaos and disruption caused by this novel coronavirus.  If the other major economies of the planet go to hell in a hand-basket, that helps Russia’s power position in the world and, as a bonus, Putin’s reputation at home.  Now, of course, all of this is only good if Putin can keep the curve pretty flat in Russia, and so far, he appears to have fucked that part up.  But that’s another story, which is especially troubling, because Putin doesn’t really care.”

“Also, the Russians and the Chinese share over 2,600 miles of border.  Do you think it would be difficult for the Ruskies to sneak that virus over the border and release it in a city like, I don’t know, Wuhan, maybe?  Not really.”

“Now get this, and this important, because this is where the entire scenario changes.  In May of 2019 the Pentagon published a “white paper” titled, now get this: “Russian Strategic Intentions: A Strategic, Multilayer Assessment.”  Pretty to the point, wouldn’t you say?  Anyway, one of the key findings of the almost thirty experts from a broad range of fields who contributed to this paper was that Putin, and thereby the Russian State, considers itself to be at war with the United States, and the West in general.”

“Part of the problem for the West is that the US and the Russians have completely differing views of the very nature of warfare.  The US seems to think that war is a zero-sum game: you are either at war with somebody, or you are not at war with them, and war encompasses a very distinct set of mutually aggressive actions; namely, the movement of armies.  The Russians see warfare completely differently, and really, much more maturely.  In their view, if you see another country as a competitor, then every aspect of your relationship, is organized to contribute to your clandestine war effort.”

“If there was any SOB on the planet who would even try to develop and release this virus, thereby sending the planet into chaos by killing off vast numbers of those damned libs, it would be Putin.  Either that, or, according to your logic, God is doing this either for personal amusement, or, once again, to kill off vast numbers of those damned libs, including me.”

“Of course, there is another possibility that we haven’t explored.  It is that this virus has actually been around for thousands of years, at least, and just existed in the deepest, darkest recesses of this planet.  It existed in places we were never meant to go, but we did, and when we did, we came into contact with it, and our bodies, since it’s a “novel” virus to humans, have no defense against it.”

“Now, I know that such a convoluted set of circumstances sounds rather scientific, but that’s because it’s a scientific explanation for the pandemic.  Science, and scientific explanations for events and, well, viruses, we all know, are to be held immediately suspect.  I think you’ll agree with me that this is due to science’s bias toward evidence and method, and its complete rejection of opinion and conjecture.  I mean who who would trust a bunch of scientists, experts and, hell, educated people in general, right?  They have an end-game in there somewhere, I guarantee it.”

“Why trust them, when trump knows the truth, when trump is the truth? Anyway, in the end, the point of all this is that Donald Trump is a complete dick.”

And that pissed them off.

Peace and Love to All,

Niemand

An Open Letter To My Fellow Progressives

The point of this letter is unmistakeable, the reasons are just as recognizable, and both are as important as anything this republic has ever faced.  The point of this very brief letter to my fellow progressives is this: Get behind Joe Biden, and use your organizational networks to their fullest capacity to elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  It’s as simple as that.

Why?  Here’s why.  In January of 2018, I published an essay on my blog-site,  overwhelmingweirdness.com (which I highly suggest for insightful essays on Politics, Society, and a host of other subjects,  There’s also a nice selection of my short fiction).  Anyway, enough about that.  The title of the essay is “It’s not About Policy Anymore.”  I wrote and published that essay a couple of days after donald trump stood next to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and demonstrated in both word and deed, that he would do anything to please Putin, including denouncing this country’s entire intelligence community, because Putin supposedly “strongly denied” having meddled in the 2016 presidential election, when supposedly asked about the matter by donald trump during their hour-long, non-recorded meeting.  Trump made it clear, in that absolutely humiliating display in Finland, who’s interests he would pursue in the world: Putin’s.

The point of that essay was that even though I have had disagreements with conservatives all of my adult life, all of us wanted the same thing, a better America, and we have been able to discuss our differences on various issues like adults.  We continue to want the same thing, but we differ on what is the best path to the “more perfect union” spoken of in the preamble of the Constitution of the United States.

This is no longer the case, and it’s not about policy anymore.  It’s about the survival of this republic, and the very clear and present threat donald trump’s political career poses to it.  The situation with donald trump was bad when he stood next to his boss in Finland, now it is an incredibly real threat to our republic that not only serves the interests of Vladimir Putin, but also supports and encourages vigilante violence by his supporters to not only subdue dissent in this country, but to simply eliminate calls for changes to aspects of American culture that really shouldn’t concern him.

That’s the truth of the matter.  As progressive citizens, we all want the Democratic Party to be further to the left.  I, personally, want a Biden/Harris Administration to support and pursue: single-payer health care, a massive increase in funding for our educational systems, an immediate 30% reduction in the military budget, the annihilation of “qualified immunity” for police officers who shoot people, the adoption of a green energy initiative for the country that is in line with, and supports, the efforts of our European allies, the reestablishment of our alliances before 2017, true liberty and true justice for the true all in this country, and a host of other policies.

Maybe a Biden/Harris Administration will pursue these policies, and maybe they won’t, but we have to play the long game, here.  If we must wait, then we must wait, and as we wait, we must build our strength, and our organizational foundations and networks.  However, let me be crystal clear, we have to set our policy squabbles with the centrist forces in the Democratic Party aside for right now, and fight the fight that must be fought in order to rid this country of donald trump.

In very real terms, if you have been fooled into disbelieving donald trump’s very basic, very real, and very active evil, because he acts, at times, like a complete imbecile, then you are, well, a fool.  Donald trump is playing a very real, and very violent game with our democracy, and we must all unite to put a stop to it.  Know this, the Republican Party’s voter suppression efforts of the last thirty years are nothing compared to what donald trump has planned for the United States if he can pull it off.

We must unite, as citizens: with the center of the Democratic Party, and all actual patriotic Americans of what used to be the Republican Party who stand against the tumor that has taken what they loved from them, and rid this country of any influence from the trump family.  We can resume our debates with these other groups later, but right now, the survival of this country, and all for which it has hoped to stand is at stake.

We must not fail.

Christoph Niemand

Reductionism and the Strange Politics of Donald Trump

One of the most basic tenets of politics in the age of democracies and republics is that politicians will generally try, as best they can, to appeal to as broad a base as possible.  This is not to say that all politicians try to do this at the expense of the things in which they believe, but that they moderate their stance on these beliefs, realizing that compromise is the hallmark of a functioning democracy…and adulthood.

Donald Trump is evidently trying a different approach.  Mr. Trump seems determined to reduce his constituency to the absolute smallest number possible, and hope that this will win him a victory in November.  Over the space of his entire political existence, Donald Trump has sought to insult, degrade, and alienate every group of people in this country not solidly behind is presidency.  It doesn’t matter whether that group is identified by their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political views, or any other characteristic.  If they are not within his base, his hatred and/or complete contempt for them is proudly brandished every day.

Who are these people who make up Trump’s ‘base?’  They are primarily members of three basic groups: conservative christian evangelicals, white nationalists, and gun toters.  Make no mistake, together, they make up a significant portion of the electorate, but they also overlap to a great extent, sharing some common characteristics.

Specifically, they are politically unsophisticated with little or no perception of what comprises a republic and its mechanisms of operation through the democratic process.  They have little or no concept of the art of compromise, and how this purely ‘adult’ form of conflict resolution serves to preserve and perpetuate a republic.  They are poorly or under-educated, and rarely have any college experience.  Those who do, lack a unified, holistic, and egalitarian view of the world outside of what is told to them by the governors of the Southern Baptist Convention.  The political and religious teachings of this group are, essentially, bigoted, exclusionary, nationalistic, and imperial.  Lastly, they are white people who live in a continuous cycle of fear of non-white, non-heterosexual, non-conforming people.  This fear cycle peaks when these groups demand equal justice under the law, and equal rights and treatment within society as a whole.

The inherent problem with Trump’s strategy is that in 2016, people either on the fringes of this base, or who simply, for whatever reason, did not want to vote for Hillary Clinton and voted for him, are gone.  They have three and a half years of the Trump presidency to completely alienate them from Trump and his personal brand of American fascism.  This portion of the electorate reflects the true manner in which Trump has decided to practice this strange reductionism.  He has enthusiastically and horrifically driven from him every rational and truly patriotic American who does not worship him, as does his base, but who may have considered supporting him in 2020.

What, then, is the overall strategy?  It must be this: Donald Trump is banking on the chaos and destruction that his core base will bring upon America when he loses the election.  He will promise and, to some extent, deliver the chaos he promised some months ago when asked what his strategy for reelection would be.  He will issue his call to arms; claiming that the liberals stole the election, that they are out to destroy America, and that he will save them if only they will go out and kill, and maim, and burn America to the ground in his name.

I think he will be surprised at how few people will actually be willing to do so on his behalf.  It will happen, make no mistake, but we must be willing to absorb this spasm of violence of his core base and continue, as one nation, dedicated to the propositions laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and codified in our ever evolving Constitution.  Eventually, Donald Trump will fade into history as a sickening footnote to what can happen to any nation, if the people do not actively participate in its democratic procedures.

When asked what type of government he and the other framers of the Constitution had designed, Benjamin Franklin is rumored to have said the following: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  Today, Donald Trump is the greatest testament since Adolf Hitler, that we must rededicate ourselves to keeping it. Related to Mr. Franklin’s attributed statement above is the following: “All it takes for evil to prevail, is for good people to do nothing.” We must, as a nation, in every peaceful and constitutionally protected manner possible, repudiate in the strongest possible terms, the toxic presidency of Donald Trump. We must rededicate ourselves to keeping the republic that Franklin warned us would be constantly under attack from enemies both outside and within our own country.  If we do not, evil will triumph.

Peace and Love to All

Christoph Niemand, Citizen X

George Floyd: 3 Factors

This essay was initially going to contain two factors that contributed to George Floyd’s murder by the Minneapolis police department, but another came to mind, and felt I needed to expand the scope of the treatise to include it. The three factors I will explore are: Racism, The Deal, and Our Endless wars. These, of course are only three of many factors that helped to bring us to our current state of crisis, but I am limiting my observations to these three. I will then offer a few concluding remarks. To be clear; when I use the term crisis, I do not mean the massive protests sweeping across this country. The crisis is the wanton murder of American citizens by a bloated and viciously violent police force.

Racism:

Racism is not and American phenomenon. Racism is a human phenomenon. It is, I believe, endemic to our species, and may even be written into our genome. Consider this, we are an animal species that congregates in packs and herds. We call them societies and communities, but when we boil this down to its constituent elements, that is what our groupings are; packs and herds. Other mammals that congregate in such a manner always shun and act against the intrusion of an outsider. Humans are no different.

Humanity has spent a lot of energy throughout its existence trying to overcome this scourge and, barring that, at least minimize its effect on how we conduct our lives. We will never completely eliminate racism from human society, but it is one of the most worthwhile endeavors we, as a species and as individuals, could ever undertake. The human world has made great strides and continuous progress in this effort to be inclusive of each other. Many of our sister countries in Europe continue to do so, even under the pressure of right-wing groups that seek to undermine this effort.

Others are moving forward, but the United States of America is moving backward, and we are moving backward at an alarming rate of speed. We are so far back in time on issues of race, now, that black Americans are murdered in white-initiated hate crimes at an insanely high rate. The murder of Ahmaud Arbery is just the latest example.

Many have said that Arbery shouldn’t have resisted, when confronted by two white men carrying guns. There may have been a time in the American South when that was true [okay, stop laughing]…There has never been such a time. So, consider this, A black teenager is jogging through a mainly white area in the American South, two white guys confront him by pointing guns at him. He knows that the only way he will survive the confrontation is to, if possible, wrest one of these guns from one of the white guys and defend himself on somewhat equal footing. Short of that, he knows that they’re going to kill him; for the sport of it if nothing else.

The worst part of the issue of race in America is that we now have a president who stands firmly with the two white guys in the scenario above. The president of the United States depends upon the solid voting block of southern, Christian, “white power” racists. These people make up a large portion of his base constituency, and he is as faithful to them as Mary was to Jesus.

Racism in America today is propelled by not only what seems to be its endemic, natural part of the human species, but now it is also supported and bolstered by the highest office of the executive branch of the US government.

The Deal:

Long ago, America made a deal. That deal was that it is okay for cops to kill people. The origins of this deal are shrouded in mystery, because the deal isn’t written down anywhere. It’s not quantified, or codified in any recognizable manner, but it is there. We all, as Americans, know that it is there. Not all societies, especially Western societies have made such a deal, but America has, and this is the main reason why we live in the most violent society humanity has ever known.

It has been propelled in many ways, and not the least of which is Hollywood. American television and film is rife with with cops killing people. Most people the cops kill in television and film, are “bad guys,” but there is, occasionally the collateral damage, average person, who just happens to take a cop’s bullet. Either way, it always ends up a ‘righteous kill.’

When I consider this issue of The Deal being propelled by Hollywood, I have the image from the end of the movie “48 Hours.” Particularly, the scene in which our main bad guy is charging at Nick Nolte’s character, and Nick Nolte stands there, expressionless, and starts shooting the guy. He doesn’t hit the guy center-mass once, but stands there firing round after round at him, and he doesn’t miss once, He unloads somewhere around six bullets into the guy, and afterwards, everything’s cool. Yeah, everything is cool, and he goes home and has a good night’s rest; it’s been a tough case.

On top of this basic problem of our entertainment industries glorifying the killing of people by cops, you have also the glorification of killing in general. Take any number of series from American television, and the glorification of killing is at the core of it. All of your westerns, almost all of your police shows (except Barney Miller), and many others. How do we solve problems in America? With a bullet…or six.

Regarding cops and their relationship to The Deal, the problem is this; once you tell cops that it’s okay for them to kill people, they’re going to start killing people. Eventually, they will not only kill people, but they will begin to kill people with impunity. This is because The Deal, in order to actually be a deal, and not an aspiration, has to be backed up by government policy, and supported by the court system. These are the two pillars that gave rise to “qualified immunity.” If cops don’t have qualified immunity, then there is no Deal. There can be no deal if cops spend one day in the county jail, or even worse, “life in prison without the possibility of parole” for killing people…you know, like you and me.

Our Endless Wars:

George Floyd may very well have been murdered, not so much by the cop who kneeled on his neck until he was dead, as much as he was by America’s endless wars. This ‘rogue state’ situation in which America now finds itself began with the Reagan Administration and has continued, almost unabated, since then. It was during the Reagan years that the efforts by conservatives to de-fund education and over-fund our military machine began to occur in earnest.

Once the United States began to shift its international priorities from collective, diplomatic engagement, and leadership in multilateral organizations like the United Nations, to a unilateral and adventurist foreign policy based upon military might, the era of endless war became inevitable. How then, does this affect the murder of George Floyd? The age of endless wars murdered George Floyd through its creation of the militarized police force.

I believe that may be the most significant factor in his death. We have vast numbers of people coming out of combat-driven military service every day. These people need to find employment when they discharge back into society. These people, and all of us, would like to find employment in a field in which we feel comfortable. Your basic military veteran feels comfortable carrying a gun. There is only one profession in America, outside of the military, in which members carry guns, and that is the domestic police force. This is one of the major factors in the militarization of our domestic police forces.

The core problem here is training. Domestic police forces should enter any situation with the following thought process at the center of their training: “We have citizens here in a conflict, how can I best diffuse the tensions here, and serve the proposition of domestic tranquility, using arrest tactics only if absolutely necessary, and deadly force only as a last resort to save people’s lives.” When a philosophy like that is at the core of police training, peace will reign in your society. There will always be violence in any society, but a domestic police force that operates on the principles in the statement above will be a factor in minimizing incidents of violence.

Military forces are not trained that way. Military forces are trained, very simply, to identify and neutralize enemies. When you bring that philosophy into the realm of domestic policing, your society is in big trouble, because not only will the police see themselves as a separated cadre of former soldiers, but they will bring the philosophy of ‘identify and neutralize’ the enemies here to their policing practices. This is the core problem of the militarization of police forces. George Floyd was identified and neutralized.

What do we do?:

Let me start with this: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all people are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator, by God, with certain unalienable rights that can never be taken from them by any person or people. That among these rights are life…yes, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, people create government, and these governments derive their just powers only from the consent of the people. Also, that whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter, or completely sweep aside that government, and to form a new one; laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to secure their future safety and happiness.

The rebellion must not stop. The people have to realize that unless they press their knee down onto the neck of this government, no change will happen. The politicians will pay lip service to the plight of black Americans’ being subjected to state-sponsored terrorism at the hands of the police, just as they pay lip service to the thousands of people killed in this country by gun violence every year, but lip service is all it will be.

The majority of our politicians are members of the wealthy, shareholder class. Let me say this as an aside: just because you own a couple of stocks here and there, and play a little in the market, doesn’t make you a member of the shareholder class. The shareholder class is made up of the wealthy; the top 10%. The corporate CEO’s who, in the name of their money, have stolen our government. Therefore, we must understand, that unless we confront them and their police with ever increasing numbers and determination which they cannot match, nothing will happen.

This is what we must do. It is not easy, and the government will resist. They have had the American people on the defensive for too long. It is time to turn the tables on them and make them defend what they have done. We should take heart, though, because your average politician is a coward, and just a small amount of courage and discipline on our part, will take us a long way towards a “new government” in which the words of Thomas Jefferson paraphrased above can have true meaning.

Peace,

Niemand

I Will Strike Back

This is a letter from that which you call your mother; a letter from Mother Earth to the human species. You may not want to recognize me, and that is fine. You can say this is a letter from one of your gods, or whomever. None of that matters to me. Make the author whomever you wish, because the message will be the same, no matter who you want to believe writes this letter to you.

Please do not misunderstand me, and let me point out something from the start: I love you. I really do love you. You have such a capacity for creating beautiful things from the gifts I give you, and to see the love of which you are capable is amazing, even for me. Like all mothers, my love for you is unconditional, for if I am your Mother Earth, then you are my children. I have sought to care for you and protect you for countless millennia, but you have taken this love and spat in my face for it.

So, humanity, my message to you, here, is plain, and should be all too evident at this point: I will strike back. If it weren’t so sad that I have to even say any of this, it would almost be funny. You call me “Mother Earth,” but if you treated your earthly mothers in the manner in which you treat me, each of you would spend the rest of your life in a prison. I can take more abuse that you can even imagine. I have taken it, and sought always to comfort and renew for you.

Think of all of the things you have done to me. When you pierce me for your precious oil, you invade and infect the very blood that runs through my veins. When you burrow deep into me for your gold, and your diamonds, you steal from my very heart. When you carve out massive quarries and take the vast mineral wealth I possess, you leave scars upon me that will never fully heal.

I am the very planet on which you live, and I have provided everything for you. All that you have comes from me; the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the clothes you wear. In your greed, you have polluted my waters, you have cursed my food, and you now even carve away at the very forests I have given you that provide your precious air.

What will you do when there is not enough air for everyone; all seven-plus billion of you? Will you ration it to the wealthiest of you? Will you bottle it and sell it? Yes, I suppose you will. When you have killed off all of the insects I sustain that are the agents of the sustenance I provide for you, what will you do? When there are not enough bees to pollinate my plants and insure your survival, what will you do? “Ration and sell,” that’s what you’ll do. When the ice caps have melted away, what will you do? When that happens, you will die, that’s what you’ll do.

Through all you have done, I have continued to filter your damage and renew myself for you. Filter and renew, filter and renew, those are the two base functions to which you have reduced me. I am no longer able to thrive and produce new and wonderful beauty for the animals of this world to see, because you have reduced me to a commodity whose sole function is to “filter and renew.”

Through all of this, I have loved you and cared for you, but when you cross a certain line, I WILL STRIKE BACK. I will strike back at you in ways you can never imagine. I will send storms to you the likes of which you have never seen, My hurricanes will grow in size and fury, my tornadoes will grow in size and fury, my fires will grow in size and fury. My visible wrath will be of a size and a fury that should make you tremble, and would make you tremble, were you not too proud.

Remember this, though, humanity: All of these are just a prelude to the full and true expression of my wrath. When I truly strike back at you, I will do so with things you cannot even see. It will be the microscopic world I sustain that will come upon you. They will come from the darkest recesses of my biosphere: places you should never have gone, but in your foolishness, pride, and greed went anyway. These great agents of wrath are my viruses and my bacteria.

Without great destruction of property, without floods that wash away whole towns and villages, without tsunamis that can make an entire island vanish, they will quietly and effortlessly sweep aside all you have made. They will make your systems and your economies crumble. They will hit the “reset” button on your civilization.

World War III is upon you, and I will win, for in the end, know this, for this is the greatest truth you will ever know: I can survive without you, but you cannot survive without me. Through all of this, the wealthiest of you will scramble to maintain their places on their thrones, but they will fall.

When all of this happens, you will then, in the humility I hope you can experience, have the opportunity to filter and renew as I have done so often. You will have the opportunity to truly look inside yourselves and see truths that have always been there, but from which you have turned and blinded yourselves. When all of this happens, you and I will have the opportunity to once again live together. The greatest difference will be that this time our relationship must be a mutually supportive symbiosis, and not the ‘parasite — host’ relationship we have now. You have become a parasite upon me, and I am sick of it.

I am sorry, for one thing, my dear humans. When I strike back at you, those who suffer the most will be those who have dedicated their lives to caring for others. These are your doctors and nurses. They are the ambulance drivers, and the police and fire fighters. They will suffer in serving the rest of you; in doing what your gods have called them to do, because they will live and work in such close proximity to my wrath. In this I am truly sorry, but I cannot avoid it. I weep for them as they shield the mass of you from humanity’s punishment.

Next, although I cannot stop it, the mass of workers who serve others, including the wealthy. They will suffer because of their sheer numbers. They will suffer, because they will have no choice but to enter the fray of my wrath. They must eat, keep a roof over their heads, and they must feed their children. They are the working poor, and they know that they must work to survive from one paycheck to the next.

The wealthiest of you. Through your history, they have always made fortunes off of war, but they will not profit from this one. It will consume them as it will all others. Their gated communities, where the poor are not allowed, will not protect them from my assault. Their hoarding of healthcare in places like the United States, where the care of doctors is not for everyone, will not shield them. They are my true target, but to reach them I must reach everyone.

Humanity, let me remind you once again that I love you, but now I am striking back at you, and I will not stop until you have learned your lesson. My advice to you is to learn well and quickly.

Peace and love to all,

Niemand

Short Posts From Another Platform

I don’t post items here as much as I think I ought to, and I think that this is because the items I post here are longer and more ‘in-depth’ analyses than items that I write elsewhere. The items I write elsewhere are really quite short. However, as short as they are, I think they are no less poignant, or valuable as social commentary. Therefore, I have decided to place some of those here. All of these are posted on either the “Rants and Raves,” or “Politics” sections of Craigslist. One of the reasons I like posting there is because the very nature of the platform forces me to be brief, and we all know that if given the opportunity, I can go on, and on! Anyway, here are two of my more recent posts:

Protests: Posted 20 April, 2020

For almost a week, now, I have watched coverage of people protesting the “Stay at Home” orders issued by governors. In one particular image, I noticed a man carrying a sign that read “If you sacrifice liberty for security, you deserve neither.” I have been familiar with that saying for a long time (that guy didn’t come up with that), and do, for the most part, agree with it.

However, there is another saying at play here that is extremely important, and tempers that saying, in 2020, with a bit of reason. This second saying is: “Your rights end where the other guy’s nose begins.” It is here, where these two sayings converge, that the protesters and those who support them from their couches and keyboards, go off the rails, and lose any semblance reasoned adulthood.

Each of these people, as well as you and me, have the right to be free in our person, our thoughts, our beliefs, and our lives. What we do not have the right to do, is to exercise these rights at the expense of the same rights in others. I understand their desire for things to be like they were. I wish as much as anybody that we could go back in time, and that this entire global pandemic would never happen, but I can’t. I can’t, you can’t, America can’t, the world can’t.

The world will never be as it was, and what the future shape of this global society will look like over the long-term is anybody’s guess. The problem, now, it that these protesters seem to think that their desire for freedom of mobility (and that’s what it is, really, a desire to be mobile again) is more important than the rights of others to live at all. This virus is a killer. It doesn’t kill everybody, but it kills at a very high rate compared to similar viruses, and epidemiologists the world over are amazed at how efficient it is at transmitting itself from one host to the next.

Therefore, I urge everyone reading this to know that your rights, liberties, and freedoms are important, but they are not all-important, and neither you, nor they, exist in a vacuum. We exist in this whole thing together, and we must all help to guard the rights of everyone, and one of those rights is to not be harmed by someone else exercising their perceived liberties.

The last point I want to make is definitely directed at the protesters and their supporters. I hope you understand, that as the people from Info Wars, and other conspiracy theory factories are telling you to get out there and protest against this made-up, deep state scare game code-named “Covid-19,” they are doing so as they hunker down in their germ free homes, studios, and bunkers. You get out there and get sick from an imaginary virus, and spread it to others, while they sit at home, safe from what they tell you isn’t real. Each of you needs to be aware of that.

Peace, and stay safe

The Signs: Posted 04 May, 2020

I saw some news coverage today of the armed, “patriot” rallies from the last couple of days. One thing in particular, has struck me about these gatherings: The Signs. To be honest, you can carry a million American flags wherever you like, but if your message is as Un-American as is that of these people, then these flags, and their value as a symbol of anything that is good, and decent, and holding any compassion for anyone, fades to nothing. All that is left is the hollow attempt of the flag-bearers to hide their hatred behind something they have no right to even touch. The only flags to which they have a right are the confederate flags that outnumber the American flags at their rallies and the swastikas they dare not pull off the wall of their ‘man caves’ at home.

In reference to signs, I saw a woman carrying a home-made sign that read: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI, JB! Arbeit Macht Frei. I don’t know what could possibly possess a person to carry such a thing, but after hours of careful consideration, I have decided that it comes down to three different possible goals on her part. Before I continue, for those who don’t know, “Arbeit Macht Frei” is German for “Work Sets You Free,” and these words adorned (for lack of a better term) the entrance to the Auschwitz extermination camp in Nazi Germany.

So, here’s what I think this woman was trying to say:

1. She’s too absolutely stupid to know anything about those words, and how they have become synonymous with hatred and death. In her stupidity, she took four Scrabble games, threw all of the letters in a bag. then reached her hand in, grabbed some letters, and that’s what came out. She then took her Sharpie, scribbled it out on a piece of foam-core from her local Hobby Lobby, and the next thing you know, there she is on global news, proudly holding Arbeit Mach Frei above her head.

2. She knows at least something about where those words come from, and what they have come to symbolize, but is too insensitive to anyone else’s experience in this world to give a shit. She’s a neo-conservative because first, they’re all white, and second, because they seem to not give a shit about anybody but themselves, and that suits her just fine. Oh, yeah, and that wall. She loves the wall.

3. She is keenly aware of all of the horrific connotations that surround those words, and chose them carefully. She brought that sign out of the depths of the darkness of her soul for a very specific purpose; to say in a loud and clear voice for all to see and hear: “Yeah, you’re damned right! Arbeit Macht Frei, you fucking Jews!”

Unfortunately, I think it’s number 3.

“People” (again, for lack of a better term) who carry signs like this, who tote around flags of the Confederacy, and mark themselves as cowards beyond what has heretofore been the known limit of cowardice, by thinking that they are somehow intimidating the rest of us by sporting guns in public, lose a lot in this world. Two of the most important things they lose are the right to call themselves either a “patriot,” or even an American. They are something less than either.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you found those two posts rewarding.

Peace and Love to all,

Neimand

The 2020 Election Will Come Down To…

I want to keep this essay as succinct as possible, and so discussion of the various topics chosen will not be as in-depth as they would be if I were writing on only a single topic. Therefore, in keeping with the air of brevity that will surround the body of the essay, let me begin with this: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care, and people who don’t. I hate to simplify things to that extent, but it really does frame the 2020 general election in its proper context. I should, however, be just a little more specific in this, and so I shall revise that opening statement on the election to: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care for the world beyond their immediate reach, and people who don’t.

When I say ‘care,’ I mean, specifically, the difference between people who see only their basic, immediate, financial, or cultural needs and desires, and people who take a broader, more holistic look further into the future. Those who look further into this future see and act upon not only their own needs and desires, but those of the planet and all of its peoples as well.

Allow me to be specific regarding four of the issues which will direct this campaign:

Fiscal Policy and Taxation

I am not exactly certain why this is an issue I need to discuss, but it is. It is, because there is no area of American political life in which fear and untruths are used more rampantly, than taxation. Conservatives have long used the spectre of the “tax and spend democrat” to keep its party afloat. They have had to do this, because, really, they haven’t had much else to use in order to bring a sufficient number of middle-class voters to the polls to vote for them. This ploy worked for several decades, but now the truth is coming out, and the neo-conservatives who have taken control of the republican party are being shown for what they are. Their ‘philosophy,’ for lack of a better term, is not ‘tax and spend,’ it is just ‘spend.’

The results of such policies are inevitable; higher deficits, cuts to social programs designed to help those in poverty climb out and into a condition of self-sustainability in a rapidly evolving social economy, and fewer and fewer dollars available to spend on education for our children in order to insure that they are able to compete in the inter-connected global economy. This, combined with an unabated growth in military spending, can lead to only two things; economic disaster and war. Regarding war in this context, we could ask: “Why is there still war in the world, with all of the death and destruction it has caused throughout history?” The answer is simple; there is still war, because two things persist in human culture. First, there is organized religion. Second, there is always a very small segment of every society that makes very large sums of money off of war.

The difference in the 2020 election will, in this sphere of activity, come down to the difference between those who are still susceptible to the republican party’s efforts to protect the wealth of a small segment of society by raising, once again, the ghoul of ‘tax and spend,’ and those who are tired of watching the vast wealth generated by more than a hundred million American citizens and immigrants flow into the hands of a smaller and smaller cabal of the ultra-wealthy. People who, thanks to republican taxation policy, pay less in taxes than a middle-class family living pay-check to pay-check.

Environmental Policy

There is no more stark division between the two groups of voters who will come forward in the 2020 election than how people look at environmental policy. This includes not only our policies regarding how we treat our rivers, forests, and other environmentally vulnerable aspects of life on earth at the local level, but also the broader issues surrounding the deleterious effects of our species on the changing climate of the world. It is, in many respects, the same as the difference between people who voted for Barak Obama and people who voted for John McCain in 2008.

By 2008, the country had endured eight years of the Bush Administration’s attempts to remove science from governmental policy in scientific matters in favor of religious superstition. Senator Obama was very forceful in stating that he intended to return science to its rightful place in several areas of policy which George W. Bush had handed over to the lords of superstition and their “it’s in the bible” (and, for lack of a better term) bullshit. John McCain and his running mate, the crazy Sarah Palin, in opposition to science, were happy to leave these vital areas of scientific and medical research in the hands of right wing evangelical power brokers.

I have often wondered why someone would argue against doing all we can to protect this planet and its resources, and so I have posed a question to numerous people who either completely deny the scientific data on human influence on the planet’s continuous warming, or who grant that human activity may have a negligible effect upon climate change, but not enough to warrant any sort of change in energy policy and/or means by which we feed the electrical grid.

The question I pose is quite simple, and is: “Why do you think these things?” After enduring a few minutes of being berated as a tree-hugging liberal, I continue to pursue an intelligible answer. Without fail, the issue, for them, comes down to money. Specifically, they declare that various corporate interests in the fossil fuel and related industries wouldn’t be able to make money hand over fist if we start to regulate their activities, legislate real and consequential protections for this planet, and move purposefully toward a sustainable energy grid based upon clean and renewable energy sources.

INSERT: –> An open letter to the fossil fuel industry:

Dear Fossil fuel industry: Thanks! No, really, thanks. You have, over the last one hundred seventy-five years, been one of the great motor forces that have allowed innumerable, beneficial advances in humanity’s drunken stagger through history. Yes, you also powered the “German War Machine” of World War II, and continue to fuel the imperial war machine of the United States, but I’m not here to bring up the bad things you’ve done. I’m here to say “thank you” and “good bye.”

Good bye, fossil fuel industry and all of your associated lobbyists. You’ve had a good run, but your time is up. Unfortunately, you have become a nasty, belligerent relic of another time; another century. Go to sleep, go on a permanent vacation, go anywhere, but just go. You’re done, so do us all a favor and go quietly into the night. Fade away. Seriously, if you don’t, the people of this world will eventually have to shoot you in the back of your head, and no one wants to have to clean that up, especially you. So just go. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya! Bye.

That was fun, but back to our story. So, in 2020, when people go to the polls, they will vote either for a candidate who vows to protect this planet from the excesses of modern, corporate, vulture capitalism, or they will vote to allow vulture capitalism to not only eat them whole, but continue to defile and destroy our planet in the process.

Foreign Policy

First of all, I have to state a rather unsavory fact; most Americans are completely unaware of the complex nature and intricate patterns of relationships that make up the whole of US foreign policy. This “environment of nuance,” as I shall label it, has been a target of the contemporary conservative movement for more that thirty years. Their unrelenting attacks on elitists, a.k.a. people with high levels of education, experience, and expertise, who know both what they’re doing and the subjects about which they talk, have resulted in a national view that American foreign policy should be conducted in the manner that pecking orders among boys are established on an elementary school playground: through firepower.

The conservatives of yesteryear, as hawkish as they were, had an understanding of, and appreciation for, this environment of nuance. The rank and file conservatives of today do not, and this has led them to create the term “Deep State.” In the views of today’s social and racial conservatives, anyone with the education, expertise, and experience mentioned above, are operatives of the deep state.

This has led to the marginalization of complex and effective diplomacy and the intellectually elevated people who carry it out in favor of military adventurism. Generals, after all, can never be members of the deep state, they are, after all, generals. I, personally, cannot even imagine the logic behind that statement, but some, apparently, can. In order to conduct a comprehensive and effective foreign policy, your country’s diplomats must be everywhere that they can be, and the worst facet of America’s simplistic ‘diplomacy through firepower’ efforts means that our military must be everywhere.

In terms of foreign policy, the difference in the 2020 election will come down to two differing viewpoints. First, it will be between those people who care how America pursue its interests, and those who don’t. Will we pursue our interests in a diplomatic environment of nuance, or will we pursue these interests through the playground logic of diplomacy through the barrel of a gun?

Second, and most importantly, the difference in the 2020 election will also come down to those who care exactly what interests America pursues. Will we, as a nation-state pursue the interests of the wealthy and their money; embracing the saying that “The business of America is business,” or will we pursue the global interests of freedom, equality, and peace?

This second option is the interest imagined not only by the founders of this American experiment, but also, if we are to believe the conservative christians who tell us that God has a hand in what America does, of God itself. The first option, is the interest of the world’s enemy.

The Constitution

Here we have the real, core issue facing this country as we move forward. This is the heart of the matter; the “crux of the biscuit” as it were.

I maintain that the people or territories of any nation-state can be attacked from without by an almost innumerable set of forces, but their constitution can only be attacked from within. It is only by nefarious, internal means that a constitution — the legal protections, rights, liberties, and responsibilities therein bestowed upon the citizens and others who live under its umbrella — can be undermined.

The Constitution of the United States of America is under attack today as never before, and really, when you think about it, that is the saddest and most troubling political statement any person could write. It is sad and troubling, but given the manner in which the political climate of this country has evolved over the last forty years, not unexpected.

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, and I quote him more frequently than any other person who played a role in the founding of this country. Today shall be no different, for Mr. Jefferson said the following: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is natural manure” Any democracy must occasionally pass through such a painful renaissance; for time, institutional processes, and the day to day burden of knowing that it is up to each of us to keep the republic, can drain the individual of their enthusiasm for living in a democratic state.

I used to think that it would require approximately a decade of the American people being subjected to life under the jackboot of a fascist dictatorship for them to finally realize what they had and lost in this great American experiment. I was wrong. The mid-term elections of 2018 and the continuing elections of 2019 have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all it took was two years of a man like donald trump in the White House. His presence there, and the previously unseen level of corruption and outright contempt for the principles of this republic he brought to this revered office, raised the alarm within the American electorate that their republic, and all for which it should stand in the world, was in jeopardy.

So, regarding the issue of this country’s constitution, the 2020 election will come down to the difference between those understand that policy will always flow between the interests of the left and the right, and in so doing, we, as a nation, will move inexorably forward toward “a more perfect union,” and those who are prepared to discard such a sacred document in reverence for the persona of an individual who has somehow captured their spirit.

Our constitution must remain intact, and this means several things, Primarily, for my purposes here, it means that its provisions for punishment of those who abuse the power vested in them for their own personal and political gain must be enforced without deference.

Closing

I realize that this essay is written with a very broad brush, and that an ‘environment of nuance’ exists within each of the four sections above. I also realize that there are numerous aspects of this country’s future that will impact people’s voting behavior in the next presidential election that I did not discuss; immigration, and racial justice are just two of the subjects about which I could have written. I chose the four divisions above because they are some of the most contentious and important items we must consider when November 3rd, 2020 dawns.

My dear readers, this country is at a crossroads like never before, and we must watch our legislators carefully to see how they handle the solemn duty that will soon be laid before them. The evidence against this president is mounting quickly and shows no signs of diminishing its pace. If anything, I believe we can expect it to accelerate. This means that the United States Senate will almost definitely hold a trial to decide if this president shall be removed from office. We must watch to see if they make their decision based upon the evidence, or some lower teir considerations.

I wish each and every one of you peace,

Christoph Niemand

The Loss

On April 15, 2019 the world lost something it can never replace. It lost Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris. I could have written the name of this wonderful building, this symbol, in its Americanized “Notre Dame” annunciation, but I cannot do that. The remaining structure of this architectural achievement deserves its proper name, and its proper name, in the beautiful “Language of Love” is Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris; The Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris.

I think anyone with any sense of humanity can understand that the building the world lost yesterday was far more than the bricks, the massive stones that framed its towers, the wood which supported the structure for over 800 years, the statues of the faithful, of saints, of kings, and of queens that looked out upon the common folk like you and me, the gargoyles whose presence was meant to protect it and those inside from the evil of this world, the beautiful rose window which dominated its façade and itself stood as a symbol of the beauty that life can be, and its spire that reached from the roof to, as does Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, perhaps touch the very being of God and lament to Him our failings in His name. It was more. Notre Dame was always more. It shall always be more.

Not only was Notre Dame de Paris more than these things to the French people, but it was a symbol of sorts to the whole world. It symbolized the beauty that can be achieved by humanity when we seek to honor something greater than ourselves. The cathedral was not, in all of its grandeur, the largest in Europe, it was not, in all of its beauty, the most beautiful. There are buildings from the 11th to the 13th centuries that surpass this church in Paris in these statistics. I could name a few, but not here, for this piece is dedicated the Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris.

For those reading this piece who never had the opportunity to either stand in the presence of this building, or inside of it, it was small; smaller than one might imagine, given its status as a symbol of humanity’s yearning for grace. Perhaps it was the flying buttresses that projected from its exterior, maintaining the integrity of the structure with such solid delicacy that created the mirage that the interior was massive. Perhaps it is just that it was “Notre Dame.” However, as small as it may have physically been, the feeling one had when inside of it was indescribable. One was overcome by the infiniteness of the God which this building was built to honor. One was overcome by the faith of those who built this building over a span of over 100 years. Generations of people were born, lived, and died in the service of building this beautiful cathedral. Think about that for a moment; in a time and place when life expectancy was barely 50 years, if you survived childhood, multiple generations of families worked on this structure.

Notre Dame was, in many ways, the symbol of church as sanctuary. Whether you were the grotesque figure of a Quasimodo, or one with the sordid past of a Jean Valjean, all churches were a place where you could find peace, rest, and sanctuary. This tradition was capsulized by Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris like no other holy building on earth. It lived as a testament to the grace and forgiveness that God gives us all, without any petition on our part.

I know that the cathedral ‘continues to be,’ that the exterior structure still stands, and that the people of this world, artisans from every corner of the globe will come, in faith and love, to rebuild and restore the building, but it will be forever changed. It will never be the same, and this is why I use the past tense when referring to it. For as long as we have Paris, we will have a Notre Dame, but now, both Paris and this beloved cathedral will forever be changed.

This building, this achievement of beauty in pursuit of grace, is a special place to the world, but why, might you ask, am I so moved to write of the loss we have suffered. I write because there are few, if any, places in this world that are special beyond words to me. Notre Dame de Paris was this place in my life. It was the most special place I will ever know, the most special place I have ever been.

It was in this building, in a small alcove away from everything and everyone else that I sat in November of 2009. I sat on this simple wooden bench that could have been 500 years old. I sat there thinking and then began to cry. Before I knew it, I was on my knees sobbing, and there, for the first time in my life, I petitioned God of my own volition. I begged Him to keep my family safe; my parents, my daughter, my wife, my friends. I told Him I could take care of myself, and that He shouldn’t worry about me, but I asked him to use His protective powers to keep them safe from the evils of this world that I knew would come their way.

In that little alcove, nestled within that symbol of the beauty humanity can achieve, I allowed myself to feel His presence for the first time. It was a presence I suppose I always knew existed, but that I had always denied. As everyone else has been, so I, too, have been on my knees before, but there, in that place, in that building I was on my knees before God for the first time in my life. Now, however, that small alcove, to which I am certain God called me so that we could talk, is gone forever. The simple bench that might have been 500 years old is gone forever, and God will never be able to call anyone over to that alcove, as He did for me, again. I am astounded to think of the numbers of people to whom he spoke and comforted in that little alcove. I am also heart-broken that none shall now follow.

Those moments were a beautiful surrender that I hope everyone will experience in their life, for it changed mine forever. There, in Le Cathedral de Notre Dame de Paris, is where I felt the unwavering love of God envelope me for the first time. This is why there is no place on earth that could ever be as special to me as that ‘smaller than you would think’ church in the heart of Paris. This is why I feel a profound sense of loss, for this cathedral, this global symbol of love, and beauty, and grace, and one of the most wonderful parts of my life, is now gone.

May God protect you all,

Niemand

National Organization for Science, Humanity, Information, and Technology Report

The National Organization for Science, Humanity, Information and Technology report 273.05.7, 20-06-2018

The National Organization for Science, Humanity, Information and Technology has released its most recent study on education, several other social behavioral factors, and their corresponding affect on voting preferences.

To complete this study, a random sampling of 75,000 people was taken from a control group consisting of 125,000 participants.  The study required 18 months to complete and each participant answered a 26-page questionnaire, which was divided into 7 distinct investigative areas, or chapters.  These areas of investigation were: level of formal education, geographic living environments, philosophical profiles, psychological profiles, religious beliefs and practices, sexual habits and preferences, and voting behavior.

The final report and white paper (Library of Congress # 18-7655092), available from the organization’s website, outlines an incredibly wide range of findings, which go well beyond mere correlation, and can only be explained as distinct characteristic properties of varying populations within the larger social construct.

Some of the more interesting findings were:

Those people who voted in a more progressive manner, as distinct from those who portray themselves as merely in the ‘liberal’ voting bloc, were overwhelmingly more educated, possessed a well balanced and egalitarian philosophical view of the world, were psychologically more stable, and possessed sexual norms which remain almost exclusively within the parameters of normal behavior and desires.

Conversely, among those people who voted in a more conservative manner, the study showed that those who identified themselves as ‘traditional’ republicans also possessed a level of education slightly above the mean value of the larger control group, and possessed a well considered philosophical view of the world.  However, this group also was more likely to suffer with issues on the peripheral margins of psychological disorders.  Chief among these were mild forms of bi-polar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.  This group also, like those identified in the progressive voting bloc, seem to possess sexual desires and behavior within socially acceptable norms, with only a 20% increase in a desire to experience what are identified as sexual taboos.

This desire to explore and experience sexual taboos was present with a heightened feeling of fear of rejection by close friends if these desires were ever expressed through actions, which the researchers believe may account for the rise in psychological disorders among this group.

Within the bloc that consider themselves to be ‘conservative,’ but not what is generally accepted as ‘traditional republican’ voter, the findings of the study were quite stark and revealing.  This group was distinguished in the study though a series of questions regarding conservative fiscal policy, foreign policy, domestic social policy, and religious belief structures.  No fewer than 15 questions were specifically structured to indicate an individual’s support for the current president.

This group had a staggering 98% positive attitude toward the current administration even though unrelated questions about tax issues (including wealth distribution inequities), education policy, and health care among others, showed a distinctly high level of disapproval with current initiatives.  These questions were placed within the study twice; once with wording completely unrelated to the persona of the president, and the second time reworded so that the initiative was expressed as an invention or policy of Mr. Trump.  This was especially true in questions about racial policy and equality, immigration policy, and global trade policy.

In an overall setting, the larger stream of data sets revealed the following: Respondents who identified themselves as conservative, but almost solely in relation to their attachment to Mr. Trump, and not based upon any consistent support for the traditionally conservative polices mentioned above, conformed to the following set of characteristics.  These people were 75% more likely than other groups to have no college education.  Of this group, 98% of them indicated no interest in ever attending college, and actually exhibited a fear and/or skepticism toward even the most basic post-secondary education.  Still within this group, 65% of them received a high school diploma, but more than half of these respondents, 58.7%, received a Graduation Equivalency Diploma (GED) from their State Board of Education.

Further, almost 99% of this group was not in possession of any holistic philosophical view of mankind and the world in general.  They were 77% more likely to identify themselves as religious conservatives, indicating a belief that A) the entire bible is the word of God, and B) that there is no error within the bible itself.  This is in stark contrast to almost all other groups within the study.  Even those within other identified groups who also identified themselves as religious conservatives, indicated a belief in the value of varying interpretations of scripture.

Regarding other areas of identified behaviors in the study, this group was 83% more likely than all other identified groups to suffer serious psychological maladies, which are, for the most part, untreated except through opioid-based medication.  Drug and alcohol abuse among this group, though elevated to some extent in most other groups, is rampant, with meth-amphetamines, being the primary drug of choice.

Lastly, the group that self-identified, above all other variants, as Trump supporters first and foremost, were 99% more likely than all other groups to prefer sexual relations with animals, rather than other humans.  Farm animals were preferred, but those who live in an urban or suburban environment seemed quite happy with any neighborhood dogs, or cats they can lure behind their trailer.  But who needs a study to figure that out.

Predictably, 100% of all respondents identified in all other groups agree that they would prefer if the trump supporters went ahead and just had sex with animals.  The rest of humanity doesn’t really want them to reproduce.